Why, you ask? Let’s dive a little deeper.

First and foremost, understand that your bounce rate does not generate any income. Sure, there are instances where the two are connected, but more often than not, your bounce rate has little to no affect on revenue-creating results (conversions) or an increase in sales for your business.

Does your website contain a blog? If so, that is probably contributing to an increased bounce rate. Contrary to popular marketing belief, a blog almost always increases your bounce rate primarily because the nature of blog readers is to read and then leave. They have no intention of lingering or taking action once they have finished reading what they came for. The important number to look for in terms of your blog is the number of visitors. Even if they only remain on your site to read the most recent blog, odds are they will come back to your blog page time and time again. With that in mind, blogs are a great location to place inbound links.

So, is there any value in looking at your bounce rate? Sure. Bounce rates can help diagnose more specific problems. For example, if one page is underperforming in conversions, a bounce rate can help figure out what exactly is going on. Just remember that bounce rate is a signal and a diagnosis tool, not an end-all-be-all number to stress over.

Looking to gain more insight into your web analytics? Our team is at the ready! Contact us to get started today.

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Below are a few tips and instructions on how to create and implement a successful virtual event:

• Strategize and Plan: Treat the virtual event the same way you would a physical event and plan accordingly. Define your theme, messages, guests and timeframe. But because the event is not an in-person one, thought will have to be given to how you interact with attendees. Strategize how, and with what technology, to best translate your ideas and event outline into an engaging virtual event.
• Get the Word Out: Promoting a virtual event takes a different level of communication than a live event because it requires keeping your audience engaged the entire time leading up to the show. A few ways to do this include a promo video, speaker announcements, agenda teasers, user-friendly registration, commercials, etc. Creating a thorough editorial calendar prior to the event is monumental in making sure enough communication is being put out.
• Post-Event Content: Your virtual event has the opportunity to provide you with numerous valuable content to use post-event. Plan ahead to gather this information, such as presentations, FAQs, quotes from speakers, event analytics and more to use in your marketing plan going forward.
• Continue to Be a Valued Source of Content: This is your chance to use content marketing around your virtual event to build an online presence and community. With more branded content at your fingertips, a continuous stream of post-event interaction can be crafted for your audience. Offering an event recap in the form of an email or blog post, making event presentations available on-demand, sharing audience testimonials, or repackaging content into other usable formats are all ways to keep engagement high.

Virtual events are having a big moment right now, but we believe they will always have a place in a successful content marketing plan. Interested in hosting one? Vista14 can help you with all of your digital marketing needs, including virtual events!

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One of the biggest things to know is where each of these devices is pulling their information from.

• Apple pulls things like business data, reviews and photos from Apple Maps, Yelp, TripAdvisor and a few others.
• Google gets everything like basic business information, reviews, photos, etc. from Google My Business. A recent study showed that Google Home is the most accurate of all devices, answering 81% of queries correctly.
• Amazon pulls a lot of business data from Yelp and recently signed a deal with Yext, a business listings platform, that states that Yext will now submit business data directly to Amazon. If you are not yet listed on Yext, it is important that you do so.
• Microsoft collects business information from Bing but gets reviews and photos from Yelp and other sources.

But what does all this really mean in terms of optimizing voice search for your local business? The best way to optimize voice search for your local business is to enhance your normal desktop or mobile search strategy. You do this by optimizing your listings in Google My Business, Apple Maps, Yelp, Bing, Yext, etc., especially if you are not even listed on one of these. Take control of how your business is being displayed in the sources that these devices are constantly pulling information from. Optimizing through all of these is what impacts Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana and how they respond to prompts based on your geographic location to the user. For example, if a user asks about plant nurseries in Houston, TX, the voice device will answer with a list of the top-rated ones within that user’s zip code or current address, the same as if that user were to physically type this into a search engine. How do you get your local nursery on that list? By monitoring your ratings and reviews online, keeping your business address and description up-to-date and making sure you have a listing in each platform that information is being collected from.

All in all, the first step to take when trying to optimize your voice search is to make sure you are currently being seen by those conducting a desktop or mobile search. From there, you can make efforts to claim and optimize how your business is being seen by the sources that voice devices pull information from. Contact Vista14 today to get started on a voice search strategy for your local business!

Butt, A. (2020, March 6). Voice Search Statistics And Trends For 2020. Retrieved March 6, 2020, from https://quoracreative.com/article/voice-search-statistics-trends

Shanfelt, E. (2018, November 19). How to Optimize for Local Business Voice Search – Alexa, Siri, and Google. Retrieved March 6, 2020, from https://localmarketinginstitute.com/optimize-local-business-voice-search-alexa-siri-google/

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If you haven’t implemented data into your marketing campaign, then you’re missing out on discovering customer insights and analytics that can help create stronger marketing campaigns. Rooted in research and analytics, data-driven marketing takes a scientific approach and utilizes proprietary technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning to conduct hyper targeted marketing campaigns with AI-engineered content and influencers that are matched to your customers. Vista14 is excited to begin working with a data-driven influencer marketing company that custom curates and deploys highly effective campaigns that consistently outperform traditional marketing investments and yield better return on investment (ROI).

How is data-driven marketing different than traditional?

• Data-driven marketing collects millions of bits of public data to better understand, detect, manage and measure each campaign. Through this data collection and analysis, the content that is published is inspired by artificial intelligence (AI) to leverage the appropriate social platforms for each brand campaign. In addition, data-driven marketing does not use popular influencer databases or celebrity influencers, nor does it look at the number of followers to determine their influence. Instead, influencer research is conducted to find those that are engaged with their audiences and who’s content is best aligned with your company and the unique campaign.

What is Micro-Influencing?

• Micro-influencing is when brands partner with social media acconts that have smaller amounts of followers. This is done in an effort to have their brand promoted in a way that is more authentic and stands out from typical sponsored ads.
• These micro-influencers are usually well-known in their specific industry and have high levels of engagement with their followers, making them ideal for brands looking to extend their reach within a niche audience. In a recent survey, over 82% of consumers said they were likely to buy something a micro-influencer recommended because they trust their opinion.
• Another bonus? Micro-influencers are generally less expensive than celebrities, some even willing to promote products they like for free.

How does Artificial Intelligence (AI) Come into Play?

• AI marketing is a method of leveraging customer data and AI concepts in order to predict your customer’s next move and improve the customer journey. AI helps brands and marketers build a clearer picture of who their target audience is to ensure the right message is delivered to the right person at the right time, using the right channel.
• AI can also help marketers analyze search patterns to identify keywords, phrases or channels where brands should be focusing their efforts. This technology can also dig deeper into user demographics to discover potential clients and deliver the ideal content to them.

How is All of this Measured?

• There are a few factors that are measured through data-driven marketing, such as each unique campaign’s reach, ROI, content engagement relative to the reach, success of the micro-influencer and more.
• This data is analyzed by artificial intelligence, human intelligence and machine learning to better understand consumer trends and narratives relevant to the campaign. The result is the development of a marketing campaign that is scientifically created to market towards your target audience, thus increasing brand awareness and driving sales.

Utilizing data to drive marketing efforts is an efficient way to discover turn-key campaign solutions through insightful reporting and collaboration. Don’t let an inconclusive marketing campaign keep you from growing your business. Contact Vista14 today to get started on a successful campaign today!

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“Hey Alexa, where can I find XYZ?”

If you’re even remotely connected to modern technology, then you know what, or rather who, Alexa is, and that you can virtually ask her anything and receive an answer. These curated answers are entitled “skills” and there are currently more than 30,000 available today. With so many skills out there, it seems that adding a new skill to Alexa’s library is an easy task. So is it that so many companies struggle with how to integrate voice technology into their marketing strategy? If you’re one of the brands that finds itself lost on designing an Alexa skill for your brand, here are a few tips that may help.

• Plan Ahead. Don’t be so eager to get a skill onto the market that you fail to create a great and useful one. Alexa users are not shy to leave negative reviews on skills they find dissatisfying so make sure you go into the planning process with an idea of your skill, how it will be developed and how much of your budget you’re willing to allot to it.
• Keep The Human Aspect Alive. We aren’t arguing that Alexa is a real person, but users certainly interact with her as if she is. With that in mind, keep your skill dialogue brief and to the point, yet still upbeat and conversational. Avoid complex, industry-specific language that may leave your listener more confused. The best way to know if you have a good skill dialogue is to actually read it out loud to someone. Simple enough, right?
• Remember, Alexa Is Not Perfect. Just like we stated before, Alexa is a piece of technology, not a person. Therefore, her technology may encounter issues with your skill, such as not responding correctly or providing the wrong answer. To combat this issue, make sure your dialogue includes a wide variety of phrases people may use to address Alexa and have several error messages ready, like redirecting them closer to your original messaging or asking them to clarify.
• Make Your Skill Known. New skills are being added to Alexa’s library every day, making it more difficult for users to find your specific one without prior knowledge that it exists. As a result, it is important to heavily promote your skill through social media and on your website, with instructions on how to use it. The more users hear or read your skill’s language, the easier it will be for them to automatically remember it.
• Utilize Your Voice Search Strategy. Once you become more comfortable with voice search as a marketing strategy to interact with your customers, consider adding in voice shopping initiatives or digital voice advertisements to encourage users to ask Alexa to find your brand specifically.

If done correctly, developing an Alexa skill will do wonders for your brand in terms of brand recognition, customer interaction and sales. If this is something you’d like to consider for your company, Vista14 is here to help! Contact us here to learn more.

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It’s no surprise that, with the rise of smartphones and tablets, building custom mobile apps is the smartest financial move a business can make. In 2018, there were over 200 billion app downloads and that number is projected to reach 258 billion by 2022. A mobile app is actually fairly easy to build. But before we get ahead of ourselves, why should your business consider creating an app in the first place?

Benefits of Having a Mobile App:

• Increase the value of your business
  • In a world where everyone we see is glued to their phone, being mobile-friendly is a must and a mobile app is the easiest way to do so. The average customer spends over three hours on their mobile devices each day, 87% of which is spent in apps. They don’t want to have to switch devices in order to access your business’s content. In fact, they won’t.
• Increase customer engagement
  • Mobile apps allow you to interact with customers in real time and guide them through each step of the sales cycle, resulting in more sales and more profit. Offering a mobile app gives the customer the opportunity to interact with you anytime they are on their mobile device. This provides you with more options to enhance customer service and build on that relationship. Many businesses offer exclusive discounts to app users, provide free product or service information, offer instant customer support chat and more.
• Increase brand recognition
  • Arguably, the space your brand will be seen the most is mobile. In addition, 74% of millennials admit that they open a mobile app when bored, making brand awareness even more prevalent. Whether they open the app every day or not, simply seeing your branded logo on their smartphone screen keeps you fresh in their minds. This increase in customer communication makes it easier to begin a sales conversation, thus making your sales cycle shorter.
• Increase market dominance
  • If you want to be position as the leading solution in your target market, you have to increase your competitive value. A mobile app accomplishes this because it provides more value to the customer by being more accessible and it helps to capture a larger share of your market as customer acquisition increases.
• Increase customer insights
  • Utilizing customer feedback and data is the holy grail of business management. The amount of demographic and psychographic data that a mobile app collects helps you get into the minds and hearts of your customers to determine what influences their purchasing decisions.

If you’re relying solely on your website to fulfill your business goals, you may be missing out on key factor to propel your business to its highest potential. Even if you feel restrained by your budget or creativity, an app can be within your reach. If you are interested in working with Vista 14 to create a mobile app for your business, please contact us here.

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Voice search is growing at a rapid pace and it’s changing the way people search for and interact with brands, SEO strategies and the overall customer experience. There are already over 45 million voice-assisted devices being used in the United States, like the Amazon Echo and Google Home. This growth in popularity means one thing for businesses – jump on the voice strategy train or fall behind your competitors.

Just like smartphones in the hand of every person you pass on the sidewalk, voice technology isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, it is only going to improve year after year.

Adopting a voice strategy isn’t just a marketing tactic to adopt in order stay on trend but rather it is an opportunity to create a unique, personal and memorable customer experience with your brand. For example, when done appropriately, a voice strategy advertisement comes off as much more natural and seamless than that of a television or social media ad. It also lends way to create a more user-friendly customer experience because voice search interactions provide instant results.

Another reason it is important to incorporate voice search strategies into your digital marketing plan is because it drives changes in SEO best practices. Consumers interact differently with vocal search queries versus text-based ones. Why is this so? For one, voice queries tend to be a little longer which allows your brand to incorporate more keyword phrases into the messaging. Once again, voice searches provide instant gratification. Instead of having to search through an entire search engine result page, consumers are provided with one, clearly stated answer. This opens a whole new door of competition as businesses fight to be the top result.

Though the evidence to support this is not conclusive, one thing that seems clear is that businesses that utilize voice strategy will be found easier by customers. If you haven’t adopted a voice strategy yet, do not fear! Because the whole idea is fairly new, there are still opportunities to get a head start against your competition. On the other hand, if your competitors are already implementing a voice strategy into their marketing tactics and you aren’t, chances are those voice assistants are sending your prospects directly to your competition. Even more reason to look into adopting a voice search strategy!

One of the first things your business can do to get started is create Google actions or Alexa skills. There are currently over 2,000 actions for Google Assistant and 30,000 skills for Alexa that allow voice assistants to react to user commands and queries. Use the opportunity to really get creative with these, like Tide or Domino’s Pizza. With a simple question to a device, customers can receive advice on removing stains from Tide or order pizza from Domino’s without ever picking up the phone.

As it continues to grow, voice technology will become increasingly important for businesses and their digital marketing plans. Interested in getting started? Vista 14 can help you with all your digital marketing needs, including voice search strategy!

Simon. (2019, November 15). Why your Brand Should Have a Voice Search Strategy. Retrieved January 23, 2020, from https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-us/blog/voice-search-why-your-brand-needs-a-voice-strategy

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In addition to inspiring a more focused creative effort, our data driven process enables the continued monitoring that a campaign needs to remain successful.  One of our most effective tools for evaluating success is our proprietary Committed Visitor Index (CVI). Keeping the customer journey as a focal point, our CVI breaks away from static metrics like bounce rate by breaking down where customers go on your site, how long they stay there and whether or not they take the actions that you want them to take. Where bounce rate lacks nuance and fails to account for context, CVI helps you to better focus on address the visitors who are actually engaging with your business.

One of the most significant tools in both measuring and increasing your CVI are strategically crafted landing pages. Across different industries, a quality landing page is a key difference maker in improving conversion rates. While the performance of standard issue landing pages varies drastically across industries, the top 10% of successful landing pages consistently perform three to five times better than average regardless of industry or focus. We tirelessly monitor these success stories and craft our landing pages to ensure that our clients are among them. With an optimized web site and the appropriate measurement tactics in place, we then position strategic consumer touch points across different channels to direct prospects to specific landing pages through a clear and effective call-to-action. Using these touch points, we can then evaluate media channel effectiveness in real time and make adjustments accordingly.

In an increasingly digital world, gauging when, how and even why your customers engage with your brand is essential to success. With this information in hand, both your media and creative strategies become a more dynamic product that can be meaningfully adjusted to compliment areas of strength and to convert challenges into opportunities for growth. With our tools and our team, there’s practically nothing that can stand in the way of you and your brand in 2020.

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Video is one of humanity’s most engaging communication tools. It can memorialize a story, capture an emotion and transcend the spoken word – frame by frame. So, it’s a rather obvious fit for any company looking to boost their visibility and engage even more with their desired audience. In in fact, a recent report showed that usingthe word “Video” in an email subject line boosts open rates 20% and click-through rates 40% . So, we wanted to share some simple, inexpensive ways to incorporate video into your marketing strategy.

Video is the most consumed content online. There’s no magical, mystical or supernatural reason behind why audiences respond so well to video. People simply enjoy having multiple senses engaged at once, and the emotional responses these senses provoke. It’s the exact reason why film and television have endured as art forms. It’s also why 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with best ROI(Syndacast Report). Humans are visual creatures.

So, naturally, it makes sense that marketing can and does benefit from video – just think of the “I only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials” cliché. Or how you probably still remember commercial jingles and catchphrases from your childhood. Just think about a recent commercial you’ve seen and if it stood out to you or not.

Grab an Idea and Get Started

If you’re looking to expand your marketing repertoire into video, don’t try to make viral happen – unless you enjoy coming off as a desperate brand that’s trying too hard. Be authentic but be creative.

All of your time, energy and resources should go toward crafting an original, compelling final product. Try to keep your video between 30 and 90 seconds – the optimal viewing for shareworthy content. Viewers can figure out pretty quickly what is – and is not – designed to pull numbers rather than pique curiosity. Cynicism and calculation yield very little in terms of establishing your brand as one worth engaging. In the long run, you should place your investment in the qualitative rather than the quantitative.

Luckily, creating videos these days is a far easier undertaking than it was even five years ago. Even tight budgets have plenty of free tools available to help them get started:

• Most smartphones and tablets these days have native video apps, or more professional-looking options for $10 or less. While not the first feature-length film shot entirely on an iPhone, Tangerinereceived critical praise at Sundance. There’s no reason you can’t record your own commercial.
• Both TikTok and Instagramuse native apps to create and upload super short films (photos, too, in the latter’s case).
• YouTubeand Vimeoallow you to upload, edit and track the metrics of your videos.
• Animotofunctions as a sort of digital media collage or slideshow with video, text and photos.

Friendly reminder: If you plan to embed your video on your website or in an ad, be kind and don’t autoplay. Disrupting your intended audience only serves to turn them off of your brand.

Once again, the simplest solution is the best solution. Video should be an experience that conjures up an emotion (or cluster of emotions), then asks the audience to channel those feelings somewhere. Take the opportunity to create a memorable moment with your brand.

Need some help? We are always here to kick around ideas. Give us a shout.

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Whether the message goes from business-to-business or direct to consumer, social media is an important part of maintaining a strong brand image and promoting visibility. With 90% of businesses turning to social mediato achieve growth, more messages than ever are competing for the same audiences. In order to ensure that their messages are engaging the right prospects at the right times, brands need to embrace channels beyond Facebook and Twitter and use each one clearly and strategically.

Introducing: The Editorial Calendar

Any successful journey begins with a well-drawn map, and a potential customer’s path to purchase should be no exception.  This is why we begin our creative process by developing a monthly editorial calendar for each client. In creating your editorial calendar, we break down a full content strategy by day, channel, theme and available opportunities.

Once we have established our goals and defined an appropriate target audience, we break down the buying cycle and develop an appropriate content strategy. Each month is assigned its own theme and goal, and media-specific content is planned out accordingly. Having this framework in place doesn’t merely result in more effective content, it also gives our clients time to evaluate whether or not our plan is right for them. Having content strategies planned in advance also gives our team the space to effectively incorporate new developments into your marketing mix.  Rather than creating discord by jumping on each passing bandwagon, we use the themes and goals that we’ve established to direct any new media component.

Using the Calendar to Engage your Audience

It’s no secret that branded social content faces an uphill battle when it comes to gaining attention, as 1 in 4 consumers reportthat they ‘mostly’ or ‘always’ ignore a brand’s posts in their social feeds. Avoiding this pitfall is one of Vista 14’s foremost objectives in developing an editorial calendar, which is why our strategy emphasizes sharable, likable content alongside directly promotional posts. Whether they’re sales-minded or just-for-fun, when your followers are liking your posts regularly, your organic reach grows as customers begin to look out for your latest posts. Sharing original and curated content doesn’t simply give your audience something to interact with; many marketers that curate content indicate that it has increased their brand’s visibility, thought leadership, SEO, web traffic and, most importantly, buyer engagement (Curata). But in order for great content to have the right impact, customers need to be able to find it in their preferred channels. That’s why Vista 14 incorporates new and appropriate media channels as an integral part of your editorial strategy. Whether on YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn or an entirely new channel altogether, positioning your message to fit into the customer’s journey is the focal point of any new editorial calendar.

With current consumers reporting dissatisfaction with typical social media marketing, there’s a strong chance that your brand could be doing better. With our system in place, your customers won’t just have more opportunities to engage with your message, they will be presented with content that they find interesting and worthy of their attention. When a strong product or service can engage the right clientele effectively, there’s almost no limit to the growth that can be accomplished.

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