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Coronavirus and your digital marketing strategy

During the Pandemic the world is currently facing, many businesses have closed their doors and stopped trading due to government guidelines. We are seeing a spike in the number of people online due to being home and surfing the internet! Now is a perfect time if your business isn’t online, to get online. We have put together some tips your business should be doing during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Social Media

Don’t go quiet! Now, more than ever businesses should be utilising social media platforms and the benefit these can have on business growth. Due to people working at home and using the internet more, the general public is consuming a lot more content. Get creating content from home. Some ideas for you:

If you have a blog on your website, start posting more and more and then you can share these articles on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin.
People LOVE listening to podcasts, get started and invite people through Zoom to join you for an hour or so and have a general chit chat about business and what you do. Everyone has a lot more time on their hands now so you might as well be productive with it!
If you are a ‘brick and mortar business’ stream live to your Facebook Page, this will allow you to engage with your customers and you can also show some of your products. If you don’t have an online store set up, people can send a message to your page and pay via bank transfer. You can then post your items out to them.
Reuse old content and jazz it up a bit so you can still be posting on your social media platforms!
Use this time to set up and play with new social media platforms, one of our favourites is TikTok. Think of it as the new version of Vine and the organic reach is phenomenal, you might even go viral

Website

A lot of our web and hosting clients have had to close their doors, if you have a website, add a pop up to let users know if you’re still open or delivery as normal. You could also send an email campaign out to inform your customers what your business is doing during this pandemic. If you don’t have an online store, now is a great time to get set up and start trading. You send us an email and we can get you up and running in a week or two!

SEO

Don’t pause your SEO activities, watch the trending keywords, write an article for that, gather some guest posts. If you still have not done any SEO optimisation for your website, just go for On-Page SEO optimisation, you may have higher chances of getting ranking without backlinks. If you’re trying for high volume keywords and it takes too long to get the first position within a quick time frame, rank for featured snippets – it will increase the click-through rate.

Optimise your website for voice search and include optimised video’s in the website (who doesn’t like a video?!) also use video in your social media marketing campaigns for better engagement. You can also update your Google my business listing if you’re closed, change numbers if you’re working from home.

From all of us here at Nautilus Marketing, please stay safe and well over the next few weeks or months. We will get over this

What makes a perfect logo?

In an age where design templates are common, making your business stand out with a logo has never been more important. If you’ve been wondering how to make a perfect logo – you’re on the right track.

Branding helps your company stand out from the crowd and create a lasting impression. The logo is the first thing customers see, so it should be relatable to your brand. Of course, quality is a must.

What Is a Logo?

Before getting into what makes a perfect logo, it is important to define what a logo is and why it is used.

Put simply, a logo is an identifiable symbol or image associated with your brand that gives customers a lasting impression of your business. Ideally, customers should see your logo and think of you.

The phrase “a picture speaks a thousand words” is very true with logos.

Logos absolutely speak about your brand, just with a simple image rather than hundreds of words.

Types of Logos

Depending on who you ask, there are varying amounts of logo types. Some people say five, some people say nine, who knows, maybe it’s 23?

Our partner Wix published an excellent piece on the Wix Creative blog about types of logos. It can give you a well-rounded idea of the different logo types you could implement, which is helpful for relaying your request to the graphics team you hire.

The Nautilus graphics team have noted that there tends to be about six types of logos in the vast majority of cases.

Wordmarks/ logotypes – The name of a company written in a distinguishable typeface.
Letterforms – One letter logos of the brand name’s first letter (example – Netflix’s ‘N’)
Lettermarks – Typography logos of the brand’s initials
Symbols – A symbol that reflects the name or messaging of your brand. For instance, the Apple logo.
Mascots – Friendly and engaging symbols of fictitious characters or animals. This may need tweaking for official dealings, but a mascot can be a strong boost for a brand.

All you need to know (for now) is the major principles of logo design. There are plenty of resources online if you wanted to get further information.

Emblems – Badge logos, similar to crests. They combine text and symbolic imagery. Emblems are somewhat of a trend for newer businesses, owing to the space emblems leave for a strong slogan.

Having an idea of the type of logo you want is great and can be super helpful when talking to a team. If you have no idea where to start, usually a graphic designer can walk you through different options and help you decide.

Try not to overthink which type of logo you should go for. Make a measured, but fairly off-the-cuff decision and see it through.

Too many people get caught up on what type of logo their business should have. Most of the time, it’s unnecessary stress.

What Is the Logo Design Process?

The logo design process sees some differences depending on the company. Businesspeople can spend hours agonizing over logos and struggling to get past this stage because of so much conflicting information out there.

We keep it simple. Generally, our logo design process goes like this:

Brief: We conduct a phone call/email conversation with you to get an idea of what you are looking for.
Research: We research your company history, its competitors, and the company itself.
Mocks: Our design team create some logo varaitions and different ideas which we present to you.
Final Tweaks: Feedback is important. We’re okay with a couple of revisions if the first version is not quite what you’re looking for.
Files: When everyone’s happy, we’ll send you the final image files, design files, and copyright.

And just like that you’ll have your new logo. If you wonder how much a logo design costs, you can look around and see if it matches your expectations and your budget.

You can also use a QR code generator to transform your logo into a QR code. This not only serves as a unique visual identifier but also offers a functional benefit, seamlessly connecting your audience to your website or online content with a simple scan.

What Are the Most Important Logo Design Principles?

So much can be written about logo design principles.

All you need to know (for now) is the major principles of logo design. There are plenty of resources online if you wanted to get further information.

1. Stick to Clear Fonts

The main things you should keep in mind are that your logo should contain clear fonts, so that they are easily read.

Only when your brand is stratosphere-levels of recognisability should you risk having cursive or stylistic fonts in your logo.

2. Two Colours Max

Your logo should have no more two colours, so that it is more simple and easily memorable to the customer.

No point in trying to break the wheel here, your customers need to get a clear, concise image of your brand.

3. Clear Symbols and Elements

If you want to express your logo in a symbol, make sure to keep it clear and memorable.

If you have a complicated symbol, it’s not going to stick in anyone’s mind. You want a striking image, something that’s easily memorable.

It’s not the easiest thing to come up with a small symbol or image that captures your entire brand. This is why a lot of brands opt to go for text-only logos.

Keep in mind that you can always change your logo over time (infrequently), so you’re not glued to one type of logo forever.

4. Get A Vector File Version

Your logo should be designed in a vector file, as vector files do not lose quality when you resize and stay in proportion.

Your logo should look good placed on a light background or dark, with you being able to invert the colours according to the background.

Who Should Make Your Logo?

You may be wondering who should make your business’ logo. We advise using a top-notch graphic designer, preferably one that has a wide portfolio of successful logo design examples for you to check out.

Fiverr and Upwork graphic designers are also an option, though you should consider that many of these will be new starters to the trade. It may cost you less, but high-quality work is less assured.

Before designing a logo, you should have a clear concept, understanding of your target market, and some examples from competitors/collaborators in the industry.

Kickstart Your Brand With a Stunning Logo

The logo will never be as important as your product, but it will certainly help. You shouldn’t prioritize a logo over the basics of your business.

Equally, you shouldn’t delay on sprucing your brand up with a stunning logo to give it a marketing kickstart.

Designing a logo that captures your brand can be done in one meeting. Why wait? Book a discovery call today.

Top Facebook Ad tips to skyrocket your business ?

While planning, some upcoming Facebook campaigns, I noticed a couple of new features Facebook recently introduced to ease the life of advertisers. These features are super cool and worth a try. Check them out!

Split testing:

Split testing is just same like A/B testing, in which Facebook will test your campaigns on the basis of the parameters you select. It also allows testing 3 variations like A/B/C testing. You can select the one of the following option and Facebook will make variations for you. You can only test one variable at a time. It will create different group of audience and run the campaign.

Split testing is available only for these types of campaigns:

How to create a split test?

When you open your ad manager or power editor, you will get an option to create the campaign, there you will select the checkbox which will ask you to do split testing in the campaign.

It can be done at the ad set level for 3 variables:

Delivery optimization: You can optimize the ad set for various delivery options available in this section.

Facebook offers the following techniques to test:

You can select any option to test your ad sets, to get the highest value. I would recommend to go with Conversion to see which ad is performing better for conversion. In both the variations you can change the bids, you can make it manual/automatic. Remaining settings for the campaign will be same as normal campaign.

Audiences: You can select the audience from your previously saved audience list. You can select 2 or 3 different saved audiences and Facebook will split those audiences to test the best performing segment.

Placements: There are basically two types of placements are available, automatic and manual. In the automatic Facebook will decide the placement, on the other hand, you can select the platforms where you want to show your ad. You can customize the placement by selecting the place like a right side box, or news feed etc.

After selecting the desired option you can simply set the budget for the split test campaign. There are two types of budget methods are available such as:

Even split: The budget will be divided equally into two ad sets.

Weighted split: The budget will be split into different percentage as per the requirement. Like you can split the budget into 80-20% or 60-40% and so on.

LTV customer:

Another cool feature is a customer lifetime value feature. Facebook recently added this option in Facebook audience section. To understand the feature you must be aware of lookalike audiences in Facebook. When you create lookalike audience, you upload a list of the customers and Facebook finds the people matches to that audience. By using LTV feature, Facebook will find those audiences, which are most beneficial for your business.

So what exactly the customer lifetime value is?

Basically the transactions made by the customers with the company in past relationship are defined by the value of the client. It’s completely monetary, and depends on how much a client paid you. The lookalike audience for higher LTV customers could drive valuable customers to the business. Facebook uses LTV to find people similar to your highest value customers.

You can create the audience in Business manager -> Audience section.

These are the following steps you need to take to target LTV audience.

To use the Value-Based Lookalike feature, you will upload a list of identifiers as well as a value-based attribute. You can select the available fields which you want to add to your customer file and targeting options. By doing this you will get the customers which are most likely to convert and high potential.

Fullscreen Canvas Experience:

Another feature is a Fullscreen Canvas feature for mobile experience. You can create a custom layout.

When you check the small box ‘Add a fullscreen Canvas’, the field will be expanded to select the template for image, video etc. All the templates are optimized from different business objectives such as acquire new leads, sale the product, showcase your business. There is an advance template builder is also available for customized templates as well. You can create your own custom templates to provide better user experience to mobile users.

When you select the template, you can edit the text, button, image, link and other attributes according to your business needs.

We used these features for a few of our campaigns so far. Now its become easier to reduce the cost of the campaigning to get leads. Cost per click is reduced and CTR is better than previous campaigns. We loved these tools and hope you will find them useful too!

There are many Social Media Marketing Agencies out there, if you want to chat with one of our nerds do get in touch!

6 Ways To Optimise Your Blog Posts For SEO

If you have a blog, chances are you already understand the importance of business blogging. But do you know how to optimise your blog posts to make them more search engine friendly?

The truth is, many bloggers fail to take advantage of the enormous marketing potential of their blogs. In fact, a recent study by blogger.com shows that although roughly 60% of businesses have blogs, 65% of those blog owners haven’t even updated in the past year! By providing fresh, relevant content and performing basic blog post optimisation, you can take advantage of the many benefits blogging offers.

Here are six easy search engine optimisation (SEO) tips to help get your blog noticed.

Number 1 – Do your research. Keyword research is essential for on page optimization. Chances are you are naturally including keywords without realizing it simply by providing valuable content on a topic. However, there are a variety of tools and techniques for finding related keywords relevant to your blog post that you may not have considered. The Google Adwords Keyword Tool and semrush.com both offer great tools that allow you to find keywords related to your topic and even spy on your competition to see what words and phrases they are targeting to bring traffic to their sites.

Number 2 – Utilize keywords throughout your post. Once you have targeted a couple of valuable, relevant keywords, it is important to place them where they will have the most impact for humans and search engine crawlers indexing your content. Try to include them in the following places:- Headings and subheadings
– Introductory sentence
– Concluding paragraph
– Anchor text (text you hyperlink to other related pages on your site)
– Title tags and meta descriptionsA word of caution: Don’t engage in keyword stuffing, which is the act of filling your content with so many keywords that it becomes difficult to read. Not only will this irritate your blog followers, it will also get you penalized by Google. A couple of strategically placed keywords will do the trick.

Number 3 – Optimize your images. Whenever you upload a photo to your blog, be sure to include keywords in the file name and fill out the alternate text field with a brief, keyword rich description of the photo.

Number 4 – Reference others with links. When you mention another blogger or article in your blog post, include a link to the information you are referencing. Not only is it good blogging etiquette, but you may also get lucky and receive a link back. Quality links are a valuable commodity for any site looking to rank higher in search engine results pages.

Number 5 – Give readers the opportunity to subscribe to your blog. Include prominently placed RSS or Feed Subscription Buttons and offer viewers the ability to subscribe to your posts via email when possible. This allows your blog followers to have instant notification of your latest posts without having to periodically check your site for new content.

Number 6 – Use social media to broaden the reach of your blog posts. As a small business, you may be utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or other social media sites to create connections with potential and current customers. Why not promote your blog content on these sites for even more web exposure? Free programs like Hootsuite make it easy to post links to your latest blog post on all of your social media sites with just a couple of clicks. You can even schedule your posts ahead of time!

By following these simple SEO tips, you can encourage higher rankings in SERPS, increased web traffic, and higher customer conversion rates.

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