Making The Most Of Your Time written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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As businesses continue to store more data on computers and the internet, there continue to be cybercriminals who see opportunities to exploit security flaws. In 2020, daily ransomware attacks increased by 50%. Some of the biggest cyber attacks occurred just this year; Colonial Pipeline was the target of the largest attack on a US energy system and Acer reported the largest known ransom demand from a cyberattack, at $50 million. From 2015 to 2020, ransomware damages increased 7,000-fold, from $24 million to $170 billion. Let’s examine the role of cyber insurance.

A Growing Issue

Why is this problem growing? Simply put, the opportunities for cybercriminals are everywhere. By 2023, 5.3 billion people worldwide will have internet access. World data will more than triple by 2022, with half that data stored in the cloud. When data is shared across apps and between cloud services, it is made more vulnerable to attack.

In the most famous cyber attack cases that target large corporations, the chaos and confusion rarely results in a company’s downfall. For small to midsize businesses (SMBs), on the other hand, cyber attacks are a common, easily fatal experience. Last year, 2 in 3 SMBs fell victim to at least one cyber attack. Of those who suffered, 3 in 5 went out of businesses within 6 months after a data breach or hack. A successful cyber attack costs its victim more than money. When systems are shut down, business operations halt. Orders are delayed or unfulfilled. Customers are never pleased to hear a familiar business has suffered a data breach; many stop shopping at victimized locations.

The Role of Cyber Insurance

What can businesses of all sizes do to heal from this terrible assault on their operations? They can purchase cyber insurance for their business. For SMBs, cyber insurance policies typically cover up to $1 million in damages. Damages include profit losses from halted operations or immediate harm to reputation, liabilities arising from contract penalties and media fines, and lawsuits that range from class-actions to regulatory investigations. Cyber insurance isn’t exhaustive; physical property damaged by a cyberattack is not replaced, and stolen intellectual property is not protected. Despite this, many companies view cyber insurance as worthwhile.

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Why Businesses Should Be Using Video In 2021 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Influencer marketing, which refers to leveraging the social media presence of influencers to promote products and services, has evolved over the last few years. A 2020 study of influencer marketing found that 73% of marketers had increased their budgetary allocation for influencer marketing over the last year. 60% of markets said they believed influencer marketing gave a better return on investment than traditional advertising. Halfway through the year, this is a good time to consider how influencer marketing is evolving in 2021.

Each year of the last few years has seen marketers increase their use of influencer marketing. 2021 is no different. The number of social media platforms may have changed, with TikTok playing a bigger role than ever, but the trend remains the same. TikTok has exploded since its arrival and is now a mainstream platform that no marketer can afford to ignore. Marketers have learned that a scattergun approach is suboptimal. It’s clear now that you have to focus your energy on the platform that your most profitable segment of customers prefers. This is the simplest, and most profitable path for brands to take. You target a passionate audience on the platform they love and generate meaningful returns.

By the end of the year, influencer marketing is expected to be worth $13.8 billion, its highest valuation ever. Since 2019, the market has attracted over 240 agencies and platforms. This show of strength is reflected in marketing budgets. We expect that 75% of brands will allocate some portion of their marketing budgets to influencer marketing. Brands seem comfortable to develop long-lasting associations with influencers, with many brands choosing to continue working with the same influencers in subsequent campaigns. Influencers are paid in a variety of ways, according to their standing. The bare minimum expectation is that influencers receive products or discounts in payment for their services. Brands have different ways of measuring the success of a campaign, most of which centre around sales. For instance, a brand can study the number of people who used a discount code when purchasing a product or service. TikTok is a very important platform when it comes to this strategy, but as we said earlier, the best platform is the platform your most profitable customer segment loves.

In the past, brands would look for influencers with big audiences, but many are finding success by working with influencers based on a combination of the size of the influencer’s audience, and the interests of their audience. For example, if your brand sells sunglasses that protect eyes from blue light, you could approach an influencer who has 1 million followers, but if only a small fraction of them are interested in these sunglasses, it is better to work with a less influential influencer, whose audience loves these amazing sunglasses. This realization has led some brands to trim the number of influencers they work with and focus on those who actually generate revenue.

An interesting trend that has emerged is using employees to create content for their firm’s social media platforms. It’s not yet clear how effective this strategy will be, but it is certainly interesting.

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Social media has been arguably the biggest innovation of the 21st Century to date and if not the biggest certainly the most impactful. The rise of Facebook Instagram and latterly TikTok has changed the way we communicate and interact with one another in both a social and business sense. Now as social media is adapting to welcome the emergence of augmented reality technology were getting our first glimpses into how marketing may change forever as a result. (Image: eMarketer) As we can see from the data above the number of US social network augmented reality users is expected to climb to over 48 million by 2022 with the rise of platforms like TikTok attributed as a driving force for such change. The emergence of AR as a key trend in the future of social media holds significant potential for marketers looking for new ways to engage with users at a time when more traditional marketing techniques are struggling to adapt to a post-Covid-19 pandemic business landscape. (Image: McKinsey) As the data above shows the digitization of customer interactions has accelerated at a significant rate all around the world forcing marketers to think faster about how they can adapt to these new web-based frontiers. With this in mind lets take a deeper look into the role that augmented reality will play in the future of social media marketing: Galvanizing The Product Experience There are countless platforms and apps that have been developed to replicate the virtual try on experience for brands in augmented reality but lets look to Facebooks work with AR as a prominent example. Social media giants Facebook have been effective in their accommodation of augmented reality for multiple purposes. To help to encourage adoption Facebooks Messenger app incorporated some AR games like Asteroids Attack and Dont Smile into its entertainment offerings. These games simply utilized a similar technology to the AR filters were used to seeing on platforms like Snapchat and Instagram to enable users to navigate a spaceship using their faces and mobile phone camera and enter into staring competitions with friends. The social media platform has also integrated 3D filters into its business offerings meaning that its become much easier for brands to use the platform to create augmented content for their audience. This has enabled the social network to allow sellers to create a virtual product experience scenario where products can be superimposed into reality using a smartphone or device camera in order for customers to see what they look like while trying on certain products. One example of AR in action could be found in the handbag campaigns of Facebook where customers could use their cameras to understand how big the bags actually were helping them to make a more informed decision about making a purchase. (Image: Website Design Kingston) Sunglasses giants Michael Kors have utilized Facebooks AR capabilities to great effect giving users the power to virtually try on various pairs of sunglasses without having to leave the house. This approach has been highly effective against the backdrop of Covid-19 where users were unable to shop in brick-and-mortar stores. The move also represents a more engaging evolution of online shopping where Michael Kors can step away from traditional static shopping experiences for products like we can see in traditional stores here to a fully immersive purchasing event that can be enjoyed. AR Filters to Upgrade Promotion Although AR face filters are nothing new their impact among younger social media users show the potential of augmented reality marketing on social media. Social media platforms like Snapchat offer a range of augmented filters that users can apply to appear more like animals or add crowns or other interactive elements to their faces. But these filters dont have to just be reserved for fun and games. (Image: YouTube) Businesses can utilize branded filters to great effect in promoting their brands on social media. For example Taco Bell created a Snapchat filter that transforms the faces of users into tacos. To say this quirky campaign to celebrate Cinco de Mayo worked is something of an understatement. The filters amassed 224 million views in the space of a single day all with the Taco Bell logo ever-present in the bottom corner of the screen. This shows that businesses can do much more than just integrate virtual try ons in their AR campaigns. Engaging content can be leveraged in AR to great effect even if its unique selling point is simply quirkiness. The Future of More Comprehensive AR The future of social AR may already be emerging in the form of a social media platform that digitally follows us wherever we go. Octi is an app that generates a virtual belt of social media posts based on facial recognition of the person on the other side of your smartphone camera. When the app recognises who youre interacting with in real life their recent posts statuses and multimedia appear around them in their orbit as a means of helping social media users to react more effectively in person. (Image: Mobile AR News) Although this technology may seem a little invasive at present its implications for both consumers and businesses alike could be limitless as the wearables industry catches up. Through the use of the next generation of smart glasses it may be possible for digital content to virtually follow us around. The implications of this could be huge for businesses that are aiming to make traditional approaches to advertising more innovative. In the future similar technology could mean that AR glasses users may look to traditional billboard ads wherein facial recognition technology could kick in to bring the billboard to life or it could work in a similar way when a customer is passing a brick-and-mortar store. Augmented reality may be one of the biggest marketing evolutionary steps since the early days of social media. Together businesses can develop significantly more immersive campaigns for audiences that dont rely on hard sells and that simply work by building trust in the brand. In a post-pandemic world where much of marketing has already been pushed into a digital field AR may help to recapture some of the traditional try on and interaction experiences that have so far seemed lost in an online world. The futures certainly bright for social media marketing and the development of augmented reality could take it to the next level. The post Avenues for Augmentation: How AR Will Change Social Media Marketing Forever appeared first on Social Media Explorer. Original source: https://socialmediaexplorer.com/business-innovation-2/avenues-for-augmentation-how-ar-will-change-social-media-marketing-forever/ The post Avenues for Augmentation: How AR Will Change Social Media Marketing Forever appeared first on connect social networks. via Connect Social Networks http://connectsocialnetworks.com/avenues-for-augmentation-how-ar-will-change-social-media-marketing-forever/

Your business growth relies heavily on sales and if you want to boost your sales, you need to have a robust online presence.

According to Statista, in 2017 e-commerce alone pulled above $2 trillion in global sales, and statistics suggests that it will be doubled by 2021.

So if you want to accelerate your sales, you need to have a top rated SEO Service Australia strategy in place.

The realm of E-commerce is cruel, and training and executing cutting-edge SEO methods can provide you with the support you require to get visible online, transform more prospects into true clients, and finally increase sales. But SEO is not constant, its parameters change continuously, and best methods evolve, so it can be challenging to understand if you’re executing the proper strategy to boost sales with search engine optimization.

If one technique doesn’t work then don’t worry, you will have several techniques you can perform. This article will help you guide you through how SEO can help double your sales for your ecommerce store.

Putting Relevant Keywords:

Keywords play a pivotal role in your overall SEO strategy. They are one of the major components of search engine optimization as well.

Without keywords, internet users may never discover you when they go looking, and this is the reason keywords are the foundation of your SEO technique.

Suppose, for example, that your business sells hand-made shirts. A conspicuous keyword express that you will need to rank for is, all things considered, high-quality hand-made shirts. Notwithstanding, there are different keywords and expressions that clients are typing to find products very much like yours, and it depends upon you to figure out what they are and how you are inserting them in your

The Remarkability Formula For Small Business Owners written by Sara Nay read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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This episode of the Agency Spark Podcast is brought to you by Airborne, a sales engagement platform. Learn more about how to set your team up for success at Airborneapp.io. Sales Engagement Platforms are fundamental to the Modern Tech Stack. Airborne delivers everything you would expect from a Sales Engagement Platform and then some. Get the most out of every interaction and make your team more effective with Airborne.

It’s no secret that social media is a huge part of the lives of millions, if not billions, of people. Social media is a way to connect with, communicate, and share with others, but it’s also incredibly beneficial for businesses. Social media is good for advertising, it can help build a brand, create and distribute content, and help a business grow. Let’s dig deeper into exactly how.

Advertising

Today, social media sites are full of content, with ads being a big portion of that content. While it may seem like social media is flooded with advertisements, almost all of these ads are targeted, meaning that they are directed to a particular audience. Not everyone on social media needs a contractor, but there are some people that do, and there are even some people that do and don’t even know it. This is why it’s important to know and understand your target audience. This not only refers to who they are demographically (gender, age, etc.) but also which social media platforms they are more likely to use.

Branding

Social media is especially helpful for small businesses that have just started, allowing them to build their brand. It’s a good way to make more people aware of your company since you can list things like your company name, logo, location, services provided, hours of operation, and even pictures on your company’s social media business page.

Content Creation

Content can be anything like photos, videos, text, and ads. It’s also like a portfolio of your work where you can showcase your services and finished products. When your loyal customers share your content, it can then be viewed by their network, which increases the chances of you gaining new customers. Consistently creating content on your social media business page also keeps your followers (including both current and potential customers) engaged, and helps you to engage more with your audience. This keeps a line of communication open between your company and your audience/customers. You should post some form of content on a regular basis, whether you keep this portion of your business in-house, or if you choose to outsource it.

Growth

When you’re creating social media business pages for your company, make sure to include a link to your website. Even in the construction business, it’s important to have a website. Social media pages are just an extension of your website, with your website having more detail and just as much content. When you post content to your pages and have your ads running throughout different platforms, this drives all of that traffic back to your website. This is also a good way to reach those who may be interested in your services, but have no idea where to start— when they visit your website they may find the contractor and services they need for a specific project.

Networking

Social media can also be beneficial for connecting you with other businesses. For example, you may need to connect with other businesses to provide services or materials for your business, such as specialty tools or a truck rental company to supply trucks to carry your equipment. Not only do consumers benefit from social media by finding your services, but you’ll also be able to find services that will help your construction business operate more efficiently.

Conclusion

Social media is a powerful tool that has helped billions of people connect with each other, and it has also helped businesses connect with consumers. At one point, it wasn’t necessary for companies to have a presence on social media, but now it’s cardinal in order to have your business thrive and continue to grow. Using social media allows you to reach an exponentially higher number of potential customers than the traditional ways of expanding a business. It does take a significant amount of time and money, but the success you’ll see greatly outweighs these initial costs.

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Growing Your Business Through Referral Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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The Justin Brady Show – The Ultimate Marketing Engine written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

2020 and 2021 disrupted business as usual, and as business owners changed their strategy, some of it was good for us. You can catch my conversation with Justin Brady on The Justin Brady Show where we discuss all of the positive marketing lessons and how we can apply those to future challenging events.

Listen to the episode here: https://justinkbrady.com/notes/john-jantsch-ultimate-marketing-engine/

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