The Daily Carnage

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Factors of Voice Search Optimization

AUGUST 24, 2021

Voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are how many people are simplifying their lives, especially with internet searches.

As if you didn’t have enough SEO headaches, how do you ensure that you rank high for voice searches? Forbes asked their Communications Council how and these are the main takeaways for influencing your voice search optimization:

Choose Long-Tail Keywords: The biggest adjustment you can make is, of course, to your keywords. Optimize your site with long-tail keywords of five to nine words that are highly relevant to your product or service.
Focus on Local Search: Voice search results rely heavily on local search results that are location-specific or use available business information. So typically, if you optimize for local search, you optimize voice results as well.
Keep Content Conversational: Searching with your voice is often much longer or more detailed than a keyboard inquiry. Good web content should anticipate any questions your users may have, and then answer them through your content. Think like your audience!
Optimize for Both: So while voice search is conversational, a lot of traditional SEO is about concise keyword searches. A great place to support both is with your FAQ’s page and to always answer “who,” “what,” “where,” or “how.”
Don’t Forget Dialects: Where does your target customer live? Every location speaks different languages, dialects, speech patterns, slang, and idioms. So marketers should ensure that keywords are optimized for each specific region they are trying to reach.
Spelling vs Speaking: Keep in mind that creative spelling of brand names or products can look great visually, but can translate poorly to voice search if there is ambiguity or mispronunciations.

Check out the full list of Expert Panel answers in Forbes’ article for more voice search tips!

2021 Marketing Automation Statistics

AUGUST 23, 2021

Marketing automation is now a part of almost every marketing strategy in one way or another. As technology and available marketing automation tools continue to move forward, automation will become easier to implement, and even more widespread. In 2021, let’s see what the data has to say about that!

Findstack has put together a great list of trends regarding automation. These were some of the most interesting takeaways we found from it:

About 51% of companies are using marketing automation and 61% of those said it was difficult to implement. Good marketing automation is a long game strategy and investment.
Marketing automation pay off: 80% of marketing automation users saw their number of leads increase, and 77% saw the number of conversions increase (now those some sweet stats to think about).
16% of marketers believe that their #1 challenge is creating quality automation. Just because so many people are doing it, doesn’t mean they are doing it right.
Using chatbots can help save up to 30% of customer support costs. And chatbots are a whole conversational marketing strategy in itself when done well.
63% of marketers plan to increase their marketing automation budget this year. Are you one of these marketers, too? Tell us in today’s poll.

Automation isn’t new, and it definitely isn’t going anywhere soon. Check out Findstack’s full piece for more marketing automation statistics, examples, sources, and trends.

11 Principles of Design

AUGUST 22, 2021

There are a lot of elements that make a “good” design. We know, it can be kind of subjective, but there are still some basic truths to good UI, UX, and appealing visuals.

Dribble gave 11 design principles every designer and beholder should be familiar with. These are the 5 biggest ones according to The Daily Carnage:

Hierarchy: This one is a touchy subject for designers. “Can you just make all the text a bigger font?” If we had a nickle every time that was asked…Your eyes need things to gravitate to and they can’t do that if all elements are treated the same. Visual hierarchy uses scale, color, different typefaces, sizes, and font weights to break out elements and create interest.
Alignment: It’s in our nature to want things to align together. While there is a method to the madness at times, having text or design work together with alignment, patterns, or positioning is going to create the most visual appeal.
Emphasis: This is all with the user in mind. And for some reason, this aspect of design often falls flat. Knowing where to draw to a CTA, image, or other element separates someone who can make things pretty from a UX beast.
Negative Space: Give us some space! Some breathing room is great when it comes to designs, and more is more with this techiqnue. The more white/negative space, the more attention you’re putting on an element.
Contrast: We love contrast with color, shapes, or similar properties of elements. A huge reason we love it is for accessibility. Contrast between elements, especially text on a background, is also essential for accessible design. It should never be an afterthought!

These were our favs but for the other six principles, check out the full Dribble blog post. Sometimes great design is meant to break “the rules” and sometimes its beautiful because it’s by the books. Either way, revisit this list and see what concepts you can use in your next project.

The Final Frontier: Space Marketing

AUGUST 18, 2021

While this idea for space marketing is nothing new, it’s definitely here and here to stay. The advancement of technology is the obvious reason, but commercial space travel and space tourism as a whole is going to be the huge reason why marketing in space is going to grow exponentially.

NASA has had a policy that prohibits any outside branding or advertisements on its equipment, but space isn’t as exclusive as it used to be. Major players like Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin are all racing hot and heavy to become the biggest names of space marketing.

Though still budding, space tourism is moving fast! So where will that take branding, brand partnerships, galactic marketing? Here are brands already launching space marketing campaigns:

Pizza Hut sends a salami pizza to the ISS in 2001. Making it the first pizza to be delivered to space.
NASA has made their own fragrance, and Travis Scott partnering with Breydo to make cosmic scents.
Miller Lite sends off their seltzer in a (CGI-based) rocket.
Tenga, the adult toy company, is planning to send a rocket of their own.

Looking ahead:

Orbital Assembly Corporation’s Voyager Station, a space hotel, is set to be completed in 2027.
NASA has done a number of collaborations (Converse, Vans, G-Shock, to name a few) and we see it becoming the norm for space attire as Under Armor is Virgin Galactic‘s official apparel partner.

See more examples of brands that have already gotten started in the space market on HypeBeast’s list of examples.

How Beauty Brands Build Lasting Customer Connections

AUGUST 16, 2021

Brand loyalty comes from a place of love. The key to building brand love? Knowing your consumers. What they like, don’t like, what they care about, and what leaves a positive impression on them.

All brands tackle changing consumer trends, but there’s a lot to be said about beauty brands making and managing the crazy world of cosmetics and beauty standards. Not to mention the battle to create brand conversations when face-to-face interactions aren’t as possible as they used to be.

Overall, these are the 11 ways brands are building positive relationships with their customers:

Corporate social responsibility
Optimism and positive content
Employee branding and promotion
Strategic sponsorships
Stellar customer experience
Engaging in trends
Smart influencer partnerships
Driving conversations on social media
Positive PR
Engaging fandoms
Being aspirational

There’s a lot of moving pieces here, but it’s worth the payoff. Building that emotional connection between brands and consumers leads to increased sales and brand advocacy. Beauty brands bank on that emotional appeal, especially leaning into positivity. Especially during the pandemic, beauty brands provided emotional reassurance or an opportunity to escape reality to a degree.

Adweek gives detailed examples of brands doing it right out there for connecting with their customers from a recent Talkwalker report of the 50 most loved brands of 2021. Their main brand spotlight is the story of Huda Kattan, the founder of Huda Beauty. For more details, check out their full article.

The 5 Stages of Conducting a Marketing Experiment

AUGUST 15, 2021

There is never a single formula for successful marketing. Every brand has to find its own special sauce for effective advertising and audience-pleasing content. How do they find it? Marketers have to roll up their lab jacket sleeves and experiment. It’s all about testing, tinkering, and tracking what works.

Here are the five steps to get started in your own marketing experiments:

Hypothesize: A hypothesis is an educated guess based on your existing knowledge. To start hypothesizing, ask yourself about your current channels, audience, trends, etc. and see what you can do to influence a given component to your overall marketing.
Research: Time to gather some information and similar brand experiments. This stage might even influence your original hypothesis, depending on your findings. Ain’t nothing wrong with shifting gears.
Measurements: This stage is all about establishing your metrics and KPIs. A key performance indicator, or KPI, is a performance measurement to keep you on track. Gathering this information would include looking at analytics for your site, email, social media, and all other channels.
Execution: Time to make it official! Be sure there is only one variable in any given experiment so you can truly determine what influenced a result. Perform a change to that variable, and see the results for a set testing period before changing a different variable.
Analysis: Once your marketing experiment has been done its testing time frame, review the results against the metrics you defined earlier. Sometimes further testing is needed, and you’ll find different tests to do on your variable.

Marketing experiments are our way of measuring effectiveness and deciding whether to change or add something to our ever-changing strategies. For specific examples on marketing experiments, check out the full Business 2 Community article.

4 Soft Skills Designers Need to Stand Out

AUGUST 10, 2021

We’re living in a competitive marketing world and graphic design and creative work are on their own cutthroat island. So how do designers stand out of the crowd? It’s not enough to have an eye. How are you making things happen in this digital landscape?

In most professions, you have to keep up with trends and industries. With design, you might have to expand whole skill sets. Even having some motion design, UI, and UX design skills are essential. You can probably learn new programs easily, but what about your soft skills?

Here are four soft skills designers need to be great designers:

Generating Ideas: It may seem like a no-brainer, but great designers are great thinkers. Execution is great, but conceptualizing and big thinking go a long way for designers, especially when it comes to leading teams.
Effective Communication: Pitches, rationales, and collaboration are all a part of the job. Having good communication skills can come in handy when being a subject matter expert explaining a design concept.
Writing Skills: Talk the talk. Write the write. Lorem ipsum all day, but don’t overlook copy as a part of design.
People Skills: Without people—clients, colleagues, and especially audiences—what is design? Having a way with people gets you far in any industry, but designers need to be able to connect with their teams and clients for delivering more effectively on briefs and projects.

Staking a claim in your own design career path means mastering these soft skills. You’ll dominate projects and have that edge above peers. For more details, check out the full Creative Boom piece.

10 Brands Doing Gen Z Friendly Marketing on TikTok

AUGUST 9, 2021

Gen Z humor. Gen Z buying habits. Gen Z brand loyalty. Marketers can’t ignore these things when strategizing content, and we’re seeing more and more brands can’t afford to ignore TikTok. Adweek highlights 10 brands that are working TikTok in a way that appeals to Gen Z:

Chipotle: They understand the consumers’ relationship with their burrito and bowl products, and use TikTok for storytelling.
NBA: Their strategy is frequently posting exclusive, behind-the-scenes, and live content in the form of short stories.
AriZona Beverages: C’mon. They have “Z” emphasized in their name and have a nuanced meme game.
e.l.f. Cosmetics: Always seems ahead of the platform curve making a dedicated Twitch stream, creative TikTok challenges, and original audio.
Ryanair: Airport culture is a mood and Ryanair uses it for content creation that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Maybelline: Queens of UGC, Maybelline has fun with their product marketing and challenges in a way that really engages Gen Zers.
Aerie: They understand TikTok is all about short-form and real product demonstration.
Walmart: They have honed in on lifestyle content and funny short-form content on products without getting too specific.
Crumbl Cookies: Food porn and understanding when trends are no longer trending have done them good.
Pattern Brands: Like hacks are done by plenty of TikTok creators, so this home improvement brand wanted to do it better.

We’ve seen a good mix of product-first marketing on TikTok but no matter what you do, you have to do it with personality. Check out the full Adweek article for detailed examples of these brands working it for Gen Z.

The Difference Between Digital Marketing and Social Media

AUGUST 8, 2021

“Digital Marketing” is usually used as an umbrella term for anything involving a website, phone, or computer. Social media gets lumped into the digital world often since it lives on all three of those. BUT there is a difference when it comes to digital marketing and marketing on social media in your strategy. EconoTimes defines how and which one to use for your brand.

Social Media Marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience.

Digital Marketing, as we said, encompasses all internet and online technologies as well as digital media.

But let’s get down to the big differences that SMM offers:

It’s great for drilling down into your target audience directly. Social media platforms offer customer information like interests, education, and age.
On top of paid advertising, you get an extra layer of an organic brand experience for users. Audiences will follow or find you based on your content here, making it different from other content you’re putting out online.
You are always in control of how much money you will spend and worry less about bidding.

Which one should you care about? That depends on what you want to use a paid advertising strategy for. In a perfect world, you could distribute your budget across all channels and your brand lived happily ever after. In reality, you’re gonna have to think about if you should go the social media route or other digital marketing routes. Fortunately, you have a lot of platforms to choose from.

Regardless, social media profiles should always be active for the sake of brand awareness and organic traffic. Read the full EconoTimes article for examples and tips.