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Advertising & Marketing

Top 5 traits of a good SEO consultant in London

Every business wants to be in the top positions in the search results. You will reap enormous benefits if you can get there, you’ll get more customers and improve your bottom line almost instantly.

But this is hard, and many businesses struggle to achieve this.

You can work in house to reach this goal, or you can outsource this work to an SEO consultant in London.

But how do you know if a consultant can really get you to that top spot? Here are 5 traits to look out for to help you answer that question.

How long have they been working as an SEO?

Always ask this question. A great SEO consultant will have worked on many sites over a number of years.

Look for around 10 years minimum. This will be enough to have experienced a lot of what Google can throw at you.

Reviews, reviews, reviews

Why not check reviews of the SEO consultant you are looking to hire? Knowing that other businesses have worked with this consultant can rest your mind.

You can see what the results of those working relationships were and use this information to understand if the professional will be a good fit for your project.

A genuine passion for SEO

You really want to work with a consultant that is passionate about the industry they work in and the services they deliver.

Does the consultant you are looking to hire regularly attend conferences? Do they have a social media account where they are engaging with the SEO community?

The founder of SEOtagg in London is regularly attending these conferences and posting tips and tricks on his Twitter account. This shows the passionate site to his SEO work, and is what leads to great results for his clients.

Do they guarantee results?

Of course you can’t guarantee this. But a good SEO will tell you what you can expect and offer some kind of guarantee around this.

This could be as simple as just showing ranking growth. But it can’t hurt to ask your SEO consultant that guarantees they can give you.

Will they talk to you in person?

Another greta way of telling the truly great SEOs form the average is to have a call with the head consultant.

James says that he personally introduces himself to every potential client, ensuring transparency and ensuring that he can provide what the client needs.

These calls are often the most revealing part of the onboarding process, and they ensure that both client and consultant are on the same page for the project going forward.

There you have it, look for these traits next time you are in the market for a great SEO consultant in London.

Related: read more about location data for advertising and marketing.

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Advertising & Marketing

The Digital Marketing Trends To Look Out For At DMEXCO 2019

Europe’s largest digital marketing conference begins this week. Around 40,000 brand innovators, ad tech masters, digital marketers and everything in-between will convene in Cologne for DMEXCO 2019.

To get ready we will be looking at the key digital marketing trends that will define the conference. 

 

GDPR is still on the agenda

Whilst the 25th of May seems a long way back, It’s still difficult to avoid this topic at the moment. There’s still a large amount of the digital marketing space that is uncertain about GDPR and what it means for their business.

The industry is beginning to accept the responsibility that comes with the digitalization of the marketing space. Many companies are talking more about transparency and privacy. They have shifted to make these ideals fundamental to their company operations. 

Getting the balance right between privacy and relevant, personal marketing is the challenge. The digital marketing industry needs to win the argument on privacy. To do this it needs to explain the true value that using personal data can provide for the consumer. It must do this whilst developing a trusted relationship with customers regarding data. 

At DMEXCO 2019 expect GDPR to still be front and centre. It will still be the elephant in the room for many talks and sessions. We hope that more discussions on the topic will focus on what the industry has learned.  As well as this we want to see best practices for companies to make the most out of the legislation. 

Personalisation is still what consumers want

More and more consumers are aware that brands are using their data. After the introduction of GDPR and an increased number of data breaches they expect this data to be used to provide high value, improved and highly personal experiences. 

Consumers want a personalised experience. Brands are moving towards this but there’s still a way to go. Many consumers are still finding a majority of their brand experiences are falling short of the mark. 

At DMEXCO 2019 expect to see personalisation take centre stage. We hope to hear valuable lessons on how leaders are getting it right.

There will still be conversation around the nature of generating data for this purpose. But expect more focus to be on how to use the data more effectively. Look out for discussion on how new data types can be used to create memorable, personalised consumer experiences. 

 

AI and automation is now everywhere

Consumers are demanding instant responses from the brands that they interact with. The best brands are starting to engage with their customers automatically. These brands have drastically reduced the time between a customer touch point and the desired result. 

The companies that are succeeding in this space are the ones that are experimenting with AI. They are using technology to automate their response to consumers at every point of the consumer journey. 

Treating customers on a one to one basis and providing an omnichannel experience is top of many brands wish list. Some are even getting this right already with the increasing presence of AI, chatbots and other automation tools. 

Technology in this area is advancing extremely quickly. The top brands are learning how to utilize this tech to identify customer needs. It’s being used to process huge amounts of data and turn this into actionable insights. 

Expect there to be many discussions around AI, automation and it’s ability to put the customer at the centre of the brand experience. 

 

Data is increasingly important to achieve digital marketing goals

Many companies are using data effectively in their digital marketing. The relationship between consumer data and consumer needs is more in focus than it has been in previous years. 

The potential of data in digital marketing is huge. Brands realise this but often struggle to maximize this potential. 

To do more with data companies will need to be smarter about how they source their data and be much better at turning the data into actionable insights.

Expect many workshops and talks that look to explain how to use data effectively. Learn about new data sets and how your organization can use these to meet its goals.

DMEXCO 2019

These are the main digital marketing trends that will be aired at the conference. Digital marketing in 2019 seems to be focusing on how to get the right balance between privacy and providing true value for the consumer. 

For all your data and personalisation needs, speak to Tamoco. We’ll be DMEXCO and would love to hear your take on the biggest challenges facing digital marketers. 

 

Related: read more about location data for advertising and marketing.

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Advertising & Marketing

Big Data And Big Brands – Why Data Is The New Brand

Big data brands

The modern brand faces many challenges. In today’s world consumers exist in multiple locations, across many devices and they have different expectations of what a brand should be.

The modern consumer has set the bar pretty high. Brands need to keep up with consumer’s fast-changing needs and desires.

From personalization to the user interface, the consumer has demanded that brands can adapt and communicate with each consumer on an individual level.

Information should be the heart and soul of a brand. Big data is helping to achieve these goals and create a new kind of brand.

In this way, data is becoming the new brand.

Why is big data important?

Most brands realise that data is important to the success of their business. But the brands that are really at the forefront of the digital revolution are the ones that have learned how to make the most of this data.

Placing data at the centre of business strategy is more important than ever. As the competition gets smarter, those that can find a way to utilize the data that is generated from the modern world will be the ones that succeed.

 

Why is data the new brand – big data applications

Big data and personalization

Data is the new personalization. The best brands know exactly what their customers want. They know when they want it. They know how they want it.

The thing is this isn’t guesswork. These brands are delivering personalization with information. Big data and personalized messaging form part of any successful brand strategy.

These brands have a method of generating data from their customers. They are effective in managing this data. And finally, they are efficient in using this data to understand customer success.

 

How does data inform personalization?

Big data personalization is being utilized by more and more brands. It involves using consumer-generated data to understand behaviour. The brands that are doing this best utilise multiple data sets in order to deliver engaging and personal experiences to customers.

 

Big data and product development

Developing products is hard. Data helps to generate product ideas by helping to illustrate how the customer actually use a brand’s product.

Brands that get product development right are using information to inform their process. They are using data in product rollouts and how new features are used to inform future product development.

These metrics can be more than just simple usage data. The explosion of different data types has provided much better insights into how customer use a product.

Powerful data mapping techniques are being used to map new datasets over existing data sources to provide even more insight to product designers. It’s not just about when and how much the customer interacts with the brand.

It’s now about looking at where and why customers use a product or interact with your brand. The top brands are using this data to inform their decision making. Extra datasets, such as location can give far more insights into how your product is being used.

 

Big data and business intelligence

Implementing a data strategy has had a wide-ranging positive impact outside of the marketing and product departments.

Data is helping brands to become predictive instead of reactive to consumer trends. The leading brands don’t just understand what their customers want, they can identify these earlier than ever before. All thanks to data.

In verticals such as retail, analytics data can be crucial. Becoming a digital-first brand involves using actionable data to gain a competitive advantage.

New data sets are helping brands to fill in the gaps. Especially in industries that have traditionally been slow to gather consumer data.

Business intelligence is now fuelled by data sets such as purchase data, location data and IoT data, amongst others.

The financial sector is using data sets such as location to predict the earnings and ultimately the financial success of brands. So why can’t brands use the same data to inform their strategy?

These data sets can be instrumental in helping brand management plan intelligently. Big data can help predict where to open new stores. They can help understand what consumers want and help find where these customers will be in the future. As well as this big data can be used across a brands marketing arsenal, from targeting to SEO tactics. You could even get yourself a UK SEO consultant to implement these. Even when using the big tools (such as BuzzSumo) there are many great free BuzzSumo alternatives to help with these tactics. 

Using data as a competitive advantage should be a fundamental part of any brand’s strategy.

 

Brands and big data examples

Many brands come to mind when you think of big data. What do all of these brands have in common? They understand the value of different datasets. They use the data effectively

 

Netflix

Netflix has understood the benefits of data from the very beginning. A user’s viewing history is used to suggest new content in real time. It’s used to recommend new shows and it’s used to do this at the right moment.

Netflix uses data and analytics to understand what it’s users want to watch. This data is also used to predict trends and it’s used to commission new original content. This is an example of using data sets to become a predictive brand.

 

Hedge funds

The investment space is quick to realise the impact that data can have. This is an industry that lives and dies by its ability to predict the trends of huge amounts of people and the businesses that they interact with.

The sheer quantity of data is not all of the story. Getting the right data is more important. Hedge funds have seen some success by utilising data sets that aren’t commonly used. These are useful as they can provide insights that have previously been unattainable.

A great example of this is location data. Accurately mapping footfall and visits with location data can give a new insight into the offline world – a place where large-scale macro trends have been difficult to pin down.

Using these insights to predict financial trends can give financial companies the edge.

 

Conclusion – data is the new brand

As a brand you need to ask yourself – Is there a better kind of data that can help to inform your needs. You need to be sure that you can use data quickly and effectively.

Data is instrumental in the process of personalization, building great products and gaining business intelligence.

If you want to be a smart brand that can understand and predicts what the consumer wants you need data. If you want to deliver this in a personal and engaging way you need data. If this is what you aspire to then you will eventually arrive at big data. That’s why data is the new brand.

Related: read more about location data for advertising and marketing.

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Advertising & Marketing

The Role of Marketing in the Success of College Startups

When you have a bright idea for a college startup, the most important thing is getting your message across and promoting it. Since we are living in the age of technology and have access to the means of digital marketing, it’s important to plan things ahead and estimate all the limitations and advantages. Depending on your target audience and budget, you have to know the risks as you work on your college startup. Since most cases will belong to innovative solutions, the role of marketing starts the very minute you start to describe your project or compare it to what’s already available.

The Role of Marketing in the Success of College Startups

– Promoting Your Ideas and Thoughts.

One of the most important roles of marketing for students’ ideas is to promote your ideas and thoughts correctly. It should be done by estimating your resources and budget, as it will help you to choose the right methods.  This way, you won’t have to take risks for something you cannot handle. Nevertheless, do some research first, study your target audience, and don’t ignore checking Writing Universe if you need to create a written description or compose a commercial text for your project. Once you do everything right and make things sound interesting, you are already halfway there!

– Making Things Appealing to Investors.

Another aspect of correct marketing is good grammar and accessibility of your college startup. It has to be accurate and condensed as you structure your objectives without promising too much. If you take the time to work on your marketing factor and branding, you will make things appealing to investors, especially foreigners. This way, you can receive a scholarship or additional funding when you try your best to make things clear. Think about both lengthy and short presentations that will help you to participate in workshops and video conferences where you can promote your student startup. It will help you to stay ready all the time and adjust things quickly based on the marketing limitations!

– Combining Research for Your Project.

Another role of marketing is the way you can use what you study as a college student and implement your skills for an important project. If you are unsure about success, start with various marketing tools and estimate how things can be attached to your academic curriculum. It will help you to stay updated all the time and consider assistance from your college as it can make a significant contribution to the scientific community.

– Global Cooperation and Community Work.

Unless it’s something that you wish to plan locally, do not forget that we have social media to promote and inspire our projects. Keep things active, and don’t forget to communicate with your visitors! Even if you do something related to environmental protection or promote unique summer camp ideas, you can distribute your ideas and work worldwide. It will help other people become inspired and establish a partnership with your college startup. Remember that something may start locally and as something small, yet if you do proper marketing, it can turn into a global project.

Tracking Your Progress is Essential!

Another role of marketing in the success of every college startup is the tracking and analysis of the progress as things take off. If you are unsure about the best ways to stay in control, you can start by taking simple notes on paper or estimating things as you check the comments on social media or any other platforms. Depending on how and where you promote your startup, it’s possible to install various solutions like Google AdSense or Google Analytics to check your target audience and track the behavior patterns. Contrary to popular belief, these tools are intuitive and won’t be overly challenging, even for beginners. Now, when you can make changes based on your success, your marketing methods will always remain open-minded and flexible.

BIO

Mary Herd is always striving for innovations as she explores the fields of education, culture, and technology. As an educator and content analyst, she loves to write and share helpful recommendations. Follow Mary and find inspiration as you work on your business startup ideas.

Related: read more about location data for advertising and marketing.

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Advertising & Marketing

Mobile Targeting – Get Programmatic & Social Right With Data

There have been issues with data accuracy in mobile targeting in the past. Targeting the right person in the best moment is still the appropriate goal for marketers. But to do this effectively, the data that fuels campaigns must be reliable.

If marketers don’t work from reliable data sets then the information is useless, and mobile targeting will be more of the same.

Today, the availability of scalable first-party data sets is there. Brands and advertisers need to be able to understand what good data should look like.

We’ll look at a few fundamentals to look for that will ensure your mobile targeting campaigns are powered by quality data. We’ll also discuss the effect this will have on different mobile targeting channels.

 

What is quality location data?

When we talk about data we look for the following attributes:

  • First-party – is the data from a first party source. Second-hand data that is unverifiable is not helpful as it could be inaccurate or out of date.
  • Sensor-driven – this means that the data sets are sourced from accurate sensors. Precise and reliable data sets are sourced from multiple sensor types to ensure accuracy and scale.
  • Real-time – Datasets must be immediate in order to verify accuracy. To achieve effective personalisation and mobile targeting, action must be taken based on data sets that are real-time.

 

Programmatic advertising & location data

Location is a fantastic trigger to help fuel mobile marketing campaigns. That is if you can get the moment right.

Programmatic has always had its problems – automation is difficult to get right. A lot has been said about programmatic and it’s effect on delivering relevant content to the right person at the right time.

We’ve all seen and remember poor individual use cases of programmatic advertising. Mobile programmatic targeting has taken the plunge and aims to put data at the centre.

However, problems of accuracy remain if the data that is being used to fuel programmatic advertising isn’t accurate.

Location-based marketing and programmatic are effective when the following conditions are met:

  • Mobile targeting can be achieved in real-time
  • Data is derived from accurate, sensor-driven networks
  • The data is first-party

Without this programmatic mobile targeting will be ineffective. Outdated data sets can mean that you completely miss the relevant moment to target audiences.

It can also mean that your attempts to personalize the experience miss the mark. We all know how important personalization is to the modern marketer.

There are a lot of companies that claim to provide accurate data, but these are rarely meeting the three conditions we just discussed.

Often the data is third-party, it’s driven not by accurate sensors, but vague lat/long indicators. It’s often not live or real-time either.

So make sure your data partner can deliver on those three points. This will allow your programmatic mobile targeting to truly feel personal. It’s also important to get a good understanding of what stream processing is.

 

Location-based social media marketing

With organic social media becoming more obsolete, more brands are looking at increasing their ad spend on social to ensure that they reach audiences constantly. One way to do so is by using social media management tools that automate posting regularly on all social channels for maximum reach.

Social targeting options allow for geographic targeting.  But the accuracy of these targeting options is yet to be verified. How do you know you aren’t targeting a user who checked in there over a week ago?

Let’s analyse current social media mobile targeting options in relation to our three commandments.

Real-time – Facebook’s geographical targeting feature is rather vague when talking about its geo-targeting options. Or at least when talking about the speed of the targeting. “people recently in this location” is how they describe it. But there’s little in the way of how recent.

Now, this is useful for some advertisers, but to create a truly personalized and real-time experience, it has to be instant.

Accurate sensor-driven – Again it’s hard to tell exactly how Facebook sources its location data. We suspect that a large proportion of data is derived from check-ins on the Facebook platform. This does raise some issues – it relies on the user selecting the right location, for example.

Social is a powerful channel for targeting users. But the potential is even greater if brands can accurately target users in real-time. It’s even more effective if this is done in relevant locations and with personalized content. This can even be leveraged to create social proof.

In order to achieve that, the data that fuels social targeting and retargeting needs to be accurate.

Social platforms have always focused on personalization of the news feed. But this highlights some of the problems with facebook ads – they aren’t relevant.

Facebook has spent so much time personalizing the organic news feed but then delivers any ad at any time.

This means that brands and advertisers who embark on Instagram marketing can ensure that relevant, in the moment ads, reach users using Instagram stories data will be on to a winning formula.

 

Post mobile targeting attribution

The same can be applied to attribution. Post mobile targeting attribution is valuable for advertisers and marketers. It’s important to measure attribution, especially in the offline world. Mobile location data has been instrumental in this. Closing the online to offline attribution loop is now possible thanks to device location data.

But again, to truly understand physical conversions, marketers need accurate and real-time data sets.

 

Conclusions

Mobile targeting is a powerful tool for marketers to reach users with personalised messages, at the right moment. Location data and location intelligence helps provide the context that mobile targeting takes place.

Whether programmatic or social, mobile targeting requires data. This data must be accurate, real-time and first-party to ensure that location-based mobile marketing is effective.

Precise data is now available at scale. This means that marketers now have a powerful tool at their disposal, as long as they utilize the right data sets.

Related: read more about location data for advertising and marketing.

Categories
Advertising & Marketing

The huge opportunity that Apple’s NFC announcement presents

Apple has announced support for NFC tags on their newest phone and watch models. Whilst Android has supported the technology since 2010, Apple is now joining the party and allowing brands to connect with millions of extra smartphone users.

As the world looks towards mobile first, there are still many wide-ranging applications for NFC at different stages of the customer journey. NFC is effective at engaging with lingering audiences in specific environments. We’ve been running this kind of campaign for brands for over four years. Here are a few ways that brands can utilize them to engage with their mobile customers.

 

Interactive content

Brands can use NFC as a part of their existing physical advertising strategy by adding interactivity to real-world advertising. This adds another dimension to your advertising and allows customers to access digital content through the physical world.

NFC tags vastly improve product engagement inside a store or venue. The tags are very small and can be placed inside product labels. Tapping the tag with a device can reveal product information and ensure that your message directly reaches the customer when they in the optimal micro-moment.

For stores or venues, the possibilities are endless. Think making your food order by tapping the item on the menu. Or for stores that have large items, it’s possible to tap an assembled item in a showroom to arrange for collection or delivery at the end of the store journey.

 

App downloads

Have you recently seen a physical advertisement for an app and liked the look of it? The customer journey from this moment to downloading the app to your device is lengthy and there’s a high potential for audiences to not get past in the App Store search bar. With NFC you can simply tap your device on the advert and it will automatically take you to the relevant page.

For brands with a dedicated app, this can help to drive sales and app downloads simultaneously. Improving the customer journey from advert to download should be a priority for app-driven businesses.

 

Drive social campaigns

Brands can utilise NFC to allow audiences to quickly engage with and add a social element to their campaigns. Whether it’s tap to check in or tap to follow/like a brand page, NFC provides an interactive social aspect to physical advertising. Nearly every active consumer is linked to a social media account and engaging with this can provide brands with long-term value from a single interactive engagement.

Beyond the immediate like or check-in, it’s important for brands to look at the lifetime value of having someone engage with their social media account. NFC makes this interaction simpler for the consumer.

 

Insights for brands

As with all aspects of mobile marketing – insights are key for brands that are keen to develop their mobile marketing strategy and understand their customers. NFC campaigns provide value beyond engagement by offering brands in-depth insights around the audiences that interact with their content. This provides the opportunity to retarget those who engage with their brand. Social tags can provide further insights into audiences. It’s possible to retarget users based on social brand interaction and NFC can facilitate this.

Tamoco is already well placed to help brands benefit from NFC tags. We’re monitoring what the Apple announcement will mean for NFC accessibility – whether it will be a native feaature, or require an seperate app to activate. But the general consensus is that brands will now have a much larger audience at their disposal, and can utilise the power of NFC tags to drive engagement.  Connecting the offline product and the online world with NFC technology can help brands to create more relevant relationships with their audiences.

Apple’s history of avoiding NFC seems to be a thing of the past. Tamoco is on the cutting edge of NFC technology – we’ll be working closely with brands to reach new audiences using NFC. Get in touch to discuss how to plan your mobile marketing strategy once the new devices ship later this year.

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