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To succeed as a small or medium-sized business (SMB), employees must work smarter. Tight budgets and scrappy teams require innovation at every level — from the Founder and CMO, e-commerce Marketing Director to VP of Marketing, Social Media Director to Paid Search Strategist. This opportunity to bring creativity and agility to the table is one of the many reasons why employees find SMBs rewarding workplaces. Employees can help define the company vision. They can imagine ways to actualize this vision. And often, with SMBs, the product offering aligns with employee values and belief systems. 

But let’s face it. The job of a digital marketing decision-maker within an SMB can be challenging— from the long hours to shifting budget priorities. Some might say digital marketing for an SMB is just as hard as creating the company product, thanks to ever-changing platforms, resources, content demands, and time constraints. Getting seen by the right audience can be difficult.

A challenging digital marketing world

Tasked with a new campaign, the digital marketing lead faces questions on how to create, target and execute digital advertising: When do you launch a digital campaign? What platform do you advertise on? How do you reach your target audience? What do you even post?

Digital marketers understand online advertising is key to amplifying their brand, but often they’re not clear where to begin; SMB advertising starts to feel like a ball-and-chain. Rapid changes in the advertising industry also contribute to marketer overwhelm. Consumer behaviors and demands for privacy are forcing brands to adapt how they reach and best serve people’s needs. While the digital marketing space can feel overwhelming, now is a crucial time for marketers to forge deeper relationships with people.

“You need to continually create and revamp the things that work, staying timely. It never ends. We have to keep tweaking our graphics to make sure they’re going to catch attention. It’s not like back in the day when you could run an ad in a newspaper and that same ad was going to run for six weeks, and you were done with it. You constantly have to make content to stay top-of-mind.“

To help accelerate SMB growth, Microsoft developed a quantitative and qualitative research program to better understand how SMBs manage their digital marketing today and to identify the pain points digital marketing leads face. Advertising decision makers of companies with less than 200 employees participated in a 15-minute survey to understand their needs and top pain points within the digital advertising landscape. Microsoft later conducted qualitative interviews to dig deeper into SMB needs. Most respondents noted they had few internal resources to support their efforts and often relied on agencies or freelancers for support (typically for content production or digital campaign management and optimization).

Four universal digital marketing pain points

The SMB founders and employees surveyed had different marketing POVs and experienced challenges unique to their roles. Some respondents were big-picture thinkers struggling to keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape, while others valued flexibility, optimization and results but had a tough time justifying marketing dollars spent. Many focused outward, eager to explore new ways to become and stay relevant on emerging social platforms like TikTok, while other leaders spent a large amount of time inside marketing brainstorming sessions, developing strategy with their team.

Although the findings were as diverse (and interesting) as the businesses surveyed, four clear SMB challenges emerged as shared frustrations: content creation, time and resource constraints, platform fragmentation, and evaluating ROI/ROAS. Read on for details about shared SMB marketer pain points.

Content creation

A shared frustration with SMB respondents was the volume and type of content deliverables required per campaign — and the reality that content takes time and effort to create. Many people and review cycles are necessary to strategize, envision, develop, write, design, update and optimize a successful digital marketing campaign. This constant demand for content tests SMBs’ bandwidth to fully execute the planned marketing vision.

“Coming up with the right content and being able to put that content together…that’s driving everything these days. Having the right content and current content. For me, it’s a resource thing, I don’t have the resources to generate content in a timely manner. Keeping it fresh.“

Time and resource constraints

The list of tasks for digital advertising marketers is extensive — from determining the marketing budget to developing and distributing content, managing digital campaigns, to analyzing and optimizing marketing efforts…and everything in between. Marketers have much to do but little time or resources to get the work done. The study shows that, out of necessity, SMB digital marketers are forced to either become marketing “Jacks and Jills of all trades” or are left scrambling to find freelancers or agencies to get tasks accomplished. The result? Mixing varying resources produces varying results.

“You spend a lot of time to do a quality check on content, because once it goes up there, it’s up there…Creating and monitoring content has been the thing that takes the most time because it’s only one piece of what I do here, and I’m the only person that’s doing it right now…it just takes time.“

Platform fragmentation

The stress of platform fragmentation is another shared SMB hurdle, as marketers face large quantities of information to learn, manage, and analyze. This is because digital marketers use many campaign and reporting platforms with unique algorithms and ad formats. Plus, these platforms and tools are continuously evolving. Digital advertising leaders experience overwhelm, not only with the many CMS platforms, reporting tools and analytic insights available but also with feature updates within each tool. Forced to keep up with platforms and upgrades, marketers experience pressure to hire more people to diversify the learning load.

“Algorithms change all the time. You have to be specialized in digital marketing to understand everything. My marketing department also works in shopper marketing and trade marketing. The amount of specialization that we can get to a degree is limited.“

Evaluating ROI/ROAS

Evaluating a campaign’s return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS) has always been challenging — but respondents note that it is even harder to track conversions and gauge true campaign ROI/ROAS with recent privacy changes. Another shared challenge is the perceived lack of standardized metric consistency or transparency across platforms. When developing reports for executives, respondents are tasked with piecing together multiple reports from different platforms to paint a clear picture of a campaign’s tangible return on investment.

“I think conversions are really frustrating. Some of that is the iOS update stuff that happened recently…it’s not accurate because it’s not giving conversions from Facebook. I want to have a completely accurate ROI for digital campaigns, and I don’t feel I’m getting that.“

SMB digital advertising solutions

In today’s digital space, businesses need smarter solutions to grow their business online and find new customers. SMBs are time-constrained and know every click matters. That is why Microsoft Advertising offers its newly redesigned Smart Campaigns experience to make online advertising easier and help small to medium-sized businesses reach more customers across leading advertising and social media platforms.

Smart Campaigns empowers digital marketing leaders to easily reach high-value customers across the web who have higher buying power, spend more online, and are more likely to engage with ads. It’s easy to get started. Marketers set up ads in a matter of minutes while they watch in real-time as the platform intuitively improves the ad, measures its performance, and shows understandable results across platforms.

A new feature within Smart Campaigns is Multi-platform. With Multi-platform, SMBs can expand their reach and maximize their investment by using one ad tool to target many channels like Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Microsoft Advertising. Instead of creating ads on fragmented platforms to launch and monitor a campaign, SMBs can save time by running ads on multiple platforms in minutes.

Smart Campaigns with Multi-platform is a new digital marketing ecosystem designed to eliminate SMB digital marketing pain points and connect marketers with people at the right moments across work and life.   

“Hearing that everything could be in one place and that you could manage it all on different platforms, that’s exciting and innovative…I would be very interested. Being able to log on and do everything and see everything in one spot would save me time. That would be amazing.”

The post 4 digital marketing pain points SMBs face today appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Original source: https://searchengineland.com/4-digital-marketing-pain-points-smbs-face-today-389126

What is the greatest skill in SEO?

If you believe this tweet, it’s patience.

Although patience is a great answer, I would never say there is a “greatest” SEO skill.

Why?

Because SEO requires various hard skills (things you can learn or be taught) and soft skills (how you work and interact with others) to succeed.

As I’ve always found, asking many SEO professionals one question will get a wide variety of opinions. So I asked several SEO professionals what they would consider the greatest skill in SEO.

Here’s what they told me.

1. Research and troubleshooting

Dave Davies, Lead SEO, Weights & Biases  

• “As far as greatest skills go, I have to go with the stock SEO answer: It depends. In this case, though, it really does.

  If the practitioner is content-focused, then writing skills combined with strong research abilities (both SEO and subject-based) would definitely top my list. If the practitioner is a technical SEO, then the most important skills skew to technical knowledge – but even that branches out.

  If they work as a contractor, then they likely need to have a broad understanding of different tech and a strong ability to research specifics and work with developers. If they’re an in-house SEO or platform-specific contractor, then they would likely need a stronger grasp of a specific stack, and possibly deployment capabilities.

  The one skill that every SEO needs is research and troubleshooting capabilities. If they can’t do that, their career will be short. Thankfully, if you’re reading this, you do your research.”

2. Critical thinking

Dan Taylor, Head of Technical SEO, SALT.agency  

• “For me, one of the greater skills for SEO professionals to develop is critical thinking. The SEO ecosystem is awash with noise and claims, with varying levels of data and anecdotal evidence to support them. Far too often, much of this content and advice is taken verbatim and applied to own situations without a second thought, with the expectation that the implementation will yield the same results.

  A common example in SEO happens when working with a client (and other stakeholders) on a website redesign. More often than not, the designs, and some proposed technical implementations, will be taken from other websites without considering the ‘other’ factors that go into how a website ranks. Just because eBay, the BBC, Amazon, etc. do X, doesn’t mean X will work for Bob’s Hardware or Bob’s Finance Co.

  With critical thinking, SEOs should read a study online, see the inputs and outcomes, and then intentionally find other studies that contradict these results – and then form their own opinions and influence their strategies with application to the current client scenario.”

John McAlpin, Director of SEO Strategy, Cardinal Digital Marketing

• “Most experienced SEO professionals will likely say that the most important skill is a soft skill. I’d say that’s pretty spot-on.

  In my opinion, the most important SEO skill is critical thinking. Not everything in SEO is black and white. There’s always a middle ground. It takes real detective skills to find the answers.”

3. Problem-solving

Elmer Boutin, VP of Operations, WrightIMC

• “Problem-solving and the ability to see the big picture. We often get so bogged down in the minutia of various SEO tasks that we miss the big picture of what’s going on between the website, the search engines, the potential visitors, and the business the website represents.

  Taking a step back and looking at things from end to end can help us solve problems more than fretting over things like meta description length or figuring out the optimum time to release a blog post.”

Corey Morris, Chief Strategy Officer, Voltage  

• “The greatest skill in SEO is problem-solving. It rarely goes according to plan.

  Adapting, finding new ways, and exploring all resources for technical, on-page, IT, UX and off-page factors are all critical to success. Using a checklist, and checking boxes, won’t get you far.”

4. Experimenting

Himani Kankaria, Founder, Missive Digital

• “The greatest skill in SEO is experimenting. One thing that works for one business or industry is not necessarily what would work for another. You cannot judge that without testing.

  Also, most of the projects have different audience buying and browsing perspectives, technologies for the website UX, content, how we build the navigation, etc. So you need to keep checking what works for your website, client, or employer because SEO is ever-evolving, and one cannot learn or unlearn new or outdated things without experimenting. Sometimes, we learn from someone else’s experiments, so experimenting is a super duper skill in SEO.”

5. Business acumen

Trond Lyngbø, Founder, Search Planet 

• “As an SEO consultant specializing in enterprise-level SEO consulting for enterprise ecommerce companies and omnichannel retailers, I value SEO strategies that are not SEO strategies for Google, but SEO for business performance results, productivity and economic growth.

  A solid understanding of business, business processes, workflow automation and cross-functional alignment is worth gold in this segment.”

Connie Chen, SEO Specialist, Moving Traffic Media

• “Commercial awareness (ROI) and soft skills because you need to be able to translate the work that you’re doing into measurable impact for your stakeholders. You must also know how to distill technical ideas into concepts that make sense to those stakeholders.”

6. Adaptability 

Maria White, Head of SEO, Kurt Geiger

• “SEO is a spectrum. As such, it is hard to dominate all skills (Technical, Data, Content, PR, Story Telling, Management and more). These skills change as Google and search evolve. Every Google algorithm shapes the way we do SEO.

  Given that the only constant is change, then the best skill to succeed is the ability to adapt. Changes are the norm when working in an agency: new clients, bigger clients, various budgets, fast pace and more. If, along with that, we add constant changes to the algorithm that involves changing the way we work, then here is where only those with the ability to adapt will not only survive but they will thrive.”

Holly Miller Anderson, Lead SEO Product Manager, Under Armour

• “The greatest skill in SEO is adaptability. SEO is a learned skill from technical to content. But adaptability is a choice.”

7. Communication

Casey Markee, Owner, Media Wyse

• “SEO requires an ability to clearly explain concepts and objectives, usually in many different ways, to many different people. Your ability to do so, professionally and emotionlessly, is a big part of your daily success.”

8. Ability to learn

Chris Silver Smith, President, Argent Media

• “The greatest skill in SEO is the ability to learn. One constant in SEO is change – one must learn new things and flex to adapt to new ways constantly.”

9. Persistence

Ludwig Makhyan, Co-founder, MAZELESS 

• “Persistence is the greatest skill, where you don’t get disappointed by failures and continue to learn, push to improve, engage with other teams and cooperate for the greater success of the business you represent.” 

10. Cross-collaboration

Jon Clark, Managing Partner, Moving Traffic Media

• “Cross-collaboration is an incredibly valuable skill. SEO is one of the few skills/roles that sits at the crossroads of nearly every department in an organization: design, development, content, UX, PR, marketing, engineering, quality assurance, analytics, and more.”

11. Understanding the user

Mike Grehan, SVP of Corporate Communications, NP Digital

• “The greatest skill of an SEO is to fully understand the “information need” of an end user. They don’t start their research as a consumer or a B2C customer or B2B, or anything other than a human being trying to solve a problem. Help Google to help them – and Google will surely help you!”

12. Inquisitiveness

Mark Jackson, President and CEO, Vizion Interactive

• “An inquisitive mind. In SEO,  you can be a technically gifted and super bright person or a content marketing expert, but if you lack an inquisitive mind, you may not be looking at a project from all the possible angles.”

13. Ability to know what matters

Olaf Kopp, Co-founder and Head of SEO, Aufgesang

• “The greatest skill in SEO is “ranking experience.” You can do a lot in SEO. But only 20% of that ensures 80% of success. Only with enough experience in knowing which tasks are effective, in which case makes the difference between good and average SEOs.”

Joe Devita, Managing Partner, Moving Traffic Media

• “The ability to stay focused on the optimization signals that matter rather than be distracted by all the noise.”

The post 13 essential SEO skills you need to succeed appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Original source: https://searchengineland.com/essential-seo-skills-388876

Home Business Magazine Online

Community engagement is one of the most important aspects of any successful organization. Experts like Richard Wesselt in Collegeville, PA, understand it allows organizations to build relationships with their customers and stakeholders and helps create a sense of community around the company or product. This article will discuss the seven core principles of community engagement. These principles will help you create a successful community engagement strategy for your business!

Careful Planning Is Required

When it comes to community engagement, planning is essential. Without a plan, it can be challenging to identify goals and objectives or to track progress. Furthermore, without a dream, it can be easy to become reactive instead of proactive, responding to crises instead of taking steps to prevent them. Planning also allows community members to have a say in how resources are used and build trust between those working together. In short, planning is key to effective community engagement.

Active Listening Is Important

To engage with a community, it is important to first listen to what they say. This involves more than just hearing the words spoken – it also means taking the time to understand the needs and wants of the community. Only then can you begin to develop a relationship and build trust. Listening also allows you to identify pain points and potential areas of improvement.

Richard Wesselt says to help you listen more effectively, there are a few tips. Create a safe and welcoming environment where people feel comfortable speaking their minds and encourage open communication by asking questions and allowing people to share their thoughts and feelings freely. Try to avoid making assumptions and instead focus on gathering information. Finally, follow up after listening sessions to show that you value the community’s input.

Respect Must Be Given

When working with a community, it is essential to remember that respect must be given to earn it. This means listening to what community members say, valuing their input, and treating them with courtesy and consideration. It also means avoiding condescension or speaking down to people. Finally, respect also means acknowledging and celebrating the diversity of the community.

Communication Must Be Open

Richard Wesselt says for community engagement to be successful, communication must be open. This means being transparent about your goals, objectives, and plans. It also means being accessible and available to answer questions and address concerns. Furthermore, open communication requires that you provide timely updates and information to the community.

Collaboration Is Crucial

Community engagement is all about working together towards a common goal. This means that collaboration is crucial. The partnership allows different stakeholders to share their expertise and ideas and help create buy-in for new initiatives. Furthermore, it can help build relationships and trust between other groups.

Negotiation Skills Are Important

In any community engagement effort, there will be times when negotiation skills are required. This is because not everyone will always agree on everything. However, it is essential to remember that compromise is vital. You can build relationships, resolve conflicts, and move forward by being willing to negotiate and find common ground.

Patience Is Essential

Working with a community can be a long-term endeavor. This is because change takes time, and it takes time to build trust and relationships. Therefore, it is essential to be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are strong communities. You can create a lasting bond between your organization and the community by being patient and taking the time to nurture relationships.

Why Are These Principles Important?

The seven core principles of community engagement are essential because they provide a framework for successfully engaging with a community. Following these principles, you can create a strategy tailored to your community’s needs and build relationships and trust. Furthermore, these principles can help you avoid common pitfalls and set you up for success.

How to Use These Principles

The seven core principles of community engagement can help you create a successful strategy for working with your community. However, it is essential to remember that each community is unique, and what works in one situation might not work in another. Therefore, it is crucial to tailor your approach to the specific needs and wants of the community you are working with. By doing so, you can create a truly effective plan.

Richard Wesselt says you should also keep these principles in mind as you implement your community engagement strategy. Doing so will help you stay on track and ensure that you respect the community and work collaboratively towards a common goal. Furthermore, you can ensure that your community engagement efforts are genuinely effective by regularly evaluating your progress and making adjustments as needed.

Final Thoughts

The seven core principles of community engagement can help you create a successful strategy for working with your community. However, it is essential to remember that each community is unique, and what works in one situation might not work in another. Therefore, it is crucial to tailor your approach to the specific needs and wants of the community you are working with. By doing so, you can create a truly effective plan.

The post Richard Wesselt Shares the Seven Core Principles of Community Engagement appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

Original source: https://homebusinessmag.com/businesses/success-tips/richard-wesselt-shares-seven-core-principles-community-engagement/

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Beauty giant Avon have released their latest findings regarding the amount of money we lose every single year from unused beauty products we purchase. According to the research, the average woman spends £1,365 annually on skincare, makeup and toiletries. 

However, most admit that around 75% of the products they purchase go partially or completely unused. Those aged 16 to 24 spend the most on cosmetic and beauty products, the study shows. In fact, the average spend for this age group is £300 per year on toiletries and fragrances, £312 on face makeup and £200 on nail products. 

1 in 3 of those studied admitted to owning products over five years old, and one quarter said they have multiple products with the same function. This means thousands of pounds are left sitting in bathroom cabinets and drawers every year, unused. 

As the cost of living rises rapidly, 80% of women are unwilling to give up cosmetic items to save money. However, 61% did say they are in search of cheaper alternatives. Just over half of those surveyed (52%) said value is something they look for when shopping for beauty items. 

Avon teamed up with model and author Louise Boyce, to get some top tips on how to be a savvy spender when it comes to your beauty regime. You don’t have to compromise on results in order to save money! Here are Louise’s top tips: 

Use multi-functional products 

With 1 in 3 of us suggesting we have multiple products with the same function, it could be a good idea to buy products with multiple benefits, instead of lots of different products. 

Check your makeup bag regularly 

Almost a quarter of women (22%) say they rarely finish products they own. 1 in 3 also say they have products almost half a decade old which they hang onto. Check expiration dates and have a clear out. This will help you see what you have left to work with. Although it is tempting to buy new, try to use up the products you have before buying more. It may also become a personal challenge for you and you can rediscover old favourites you may not have used in a while. 

Create your own tinted moisturiser 

If you aren’t a fan of full coverage foundation and want to try a tinted moisturiser, why not make your own? Instead of splashing out on yet another product, mix your foundation with your favourite moisturiser to create your very own tinted moisturiser. 

Increase the lifespan of your products 

If your mascara is a little dry, blast it with the hairdryer for a few seconds to warm it up and reverse the drying. Louise also suggests adding micellar water to smashed powders and eyeshadows to press them back into place. 

Have a spare lippy? 

If you have lots of unused lipsticks, why not use them in a different way? Doubling up your lipstick as a blusher or an eyeshadow is a great way to use up lipstick. If it’s a shade you aren’t keen on for your lips, give it a go on your cheeks, nose and chin to give yourself a natural, dewy flush. 

Get a sample 

Many shops offer free samples, you just have to ask! Don’t buy a full-sized version of a product you are unsure you will enjoy and use. This way, you can test the colour, texture, scent, durability and your skin’s tolerance. 

Do you have any top tips to save on cosmetics or breathe new life into unused beauty products? Leave a comment below!

The post Over £1,000 lost every year to unused beauty products appeared first on MoneyMagpie.

Original source: https://www.moneymagpie.com/make-money/over-1000-lost-every-year-from-unused-beauty-products