A Freelancer's Collection of Scammed Articles

                Speed, efficacy and fast pace can be considered the bare necessities in online marketing these days. A few extra minutes or hours of delay in your responses to an inquiry e-mail or contact form submission could cause your potential client to lose interest and before you know it, you have lost a lead that could have converted. This is where autoresponder messages come in.

                Autoresponder messages can be thought of as one of the best tools for e-mail marketing - autopilot responses served through a series of emails to your customer email list. Whether your current business objectives are geared towards remarketing, audience expansion or a simple leads generation, autoresponder messages can serve your business well and should be a basic necessity when setting up your business.

                These e-mails are set up in advance to nurture your leads. When we submit and enquiry or send an e-mail, a response even as simple as “Thank you for subscribing,” or “We acknowledge the receipt of your e-mail” is very well appreciated. With personalization of the autoresponder messages, every single one of your business leads gets their unique experience and interaction with the best contents you provide. Another possible usage of these e-mails is to build up anticipation and a follower lists for your next product or service launch. Either way, you have your autoresponder messages build trust and relationship with your potential clients for you without you needing to lift up a finger – after setting it up first, of course.

                Instead of having to send a message to cater to each potential client’s sign-up or subscription date with you, you can set up this series of e-mail, perhaps the first of which is sent right after the user subscribes as a thank-you message. Two days later, the e-mail detailing free courses and e-books can be scheduled to be sent to the same user, followed by another e-mail prompting for him or her to sign up for an informative webinar your company will hold next month AND get a list of tutorials from your website – all for free!

                By promoting what the users can get simply by subscribing to your business’ e-mails, the autoresponder messages can be utilized as a form of a mini-course where users can learn something fruitful in the form of 7 e-mails throughout 20 days, or any other frequency and duration you might prefer. Everyone loves free stuff, and so when you portray your business webinars, tutorials or free e-books and courses in this manner, you can use your autoresponder e-mails as a free leads magnet.

                Imagine the possibilities if you were to use this function on your e-commerce site! You can remarket your products to your audiences with a personal promotion code just for a certain duration after they have viewed products on your site, added items to their cart without checking out, or even suggest similar products based on their purchase history. By utilizing e-mail segmentation to make the e-mails to your customer list more specific – e-mail A for visitors who visited your homepage, e-mail B for those who have interacted with your ads, so on and so forth, you can tailor the best e-mails to the most suitable audiences, whether you want the e-mail sequences to be sent on the spot or to be schedule for later.

                Platforms such as MailChimp and HubSpot are highly reputable and allow you to do all the functions listed above, while leaving the customization options and settings to you! You can schedule your autoresponder messages to be heavily-focused on your readers and what they need, ensure that your e-mail contents are geared towards conversion – which means that the content has to be of some benefit to them and sent with several days in between as so to not be flagged as spam by some users, as well as ensuring that the e-mails have attention-catching subject lines and highly-relevant content.

Pair the above criteria up along with frequent monitoring and improvement by using A/B testing and you’re all set to go! Remember to check for the open rates and clickthrough rates of the autoresponder messages you sent, which on average across all industries is about 22.87% and 3.26% respectively. If the rates are lower than expected for your particular industry, you should go through your e-mail content again to ensure that the copy is relevant and valuable to your leads. Last but not least, high unsubscribe rates could be an indicator of an unhealthy autoresponder e-mail set up so be sure to find out the cause before you lose more potential leads.

In a nutshell, autoresponders are beyond automating e-mails, and should be used to proactively engage with and nurture your leads with the end goal for them to convert. Improve your e-mail marketing today with effective autoresponder e-mail series if you haven’t already done so today!

                Pay-per-click advertising services are the new go-to when it comes to search engine marketing due to its efficacy and value. Its value mainly lies in the pricing factor where you only need to pay for every click you get on your advertisement instead of paying for every view or impression your ad gets whenever it shows up in the search results. With these ad clicks in mind, every advertiser would have one business aim when it comes to advertising - generating business leads which can turn into conversions.

                Leads meanwhile are generally a list of potential clients that have showed their interest in your services, be it through an inquiry form on your webpage, a phone call to request for a quotation before agreeing to anything, or even individuals who signed up for your business newsletter! The key to registering these leads is to milk them while they are hot and fresh, which means that the sooner you contact the individuals interested in your services and products, the better qualified the leads will be since they will most likely remember what they have just recently signed up for. These individuals will, in turn, be more likely to schedule an appointment with you straightaway, heightening their chances of converting to a customer for your business.

                What then, would be the best approach for generating leads? When it comes to gaining potential business clients using, say, local plumbing leads, up to 95% of mobile users search for local information such as “Plumbing services near me”. 61% of these searchers would then resort to call the advertiser’s business contact, 59% of them visit the business itself and 44% of the mobile searches end up making purchases. Overall, 88% of local searchers will take action very quickly – within 24 hours after the search has been done. From these statistics, one can note that mobile-user clients are just as important, if not more, than computer and tablet users.

                This makes mobile-friendly webpages that cater to real customers searching for your business in your serviced areas really crucial to business growth. 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned once the website takes more than 3 seconds to load, which makes website optimization more and more important these days. Mobile sites should, ideally, have easy navigation and access for your potential clients to contact you with a click-to-call action as well as a location extension for them to find you easily if they wish for a store visit. Clear information on the services you provide is also advisable, and last but not least, your website should be SEO-friendly and listed on local directories to ensure that your business can be found. Note: This service comes free with us!

In short, starting off with an informative website with a prominent call-to-action and a click-to-call function as well as an effective advertising campaigns on various platforms – supported by local listings, you can get high quality leads through direct phone calls which have a much higher chance of conversions, earning you a new customer if not a returning one. As such, buying leads can be an effective strategy in gaining an effective return-of-investment (ROI). What’s a little cost when you can get high returns?

That is where City Leads Pro comes in to help. Using the consistent example throughout this entire article, services on demand such as those from plumbers will require an outstanding search engine marketing strategy. Plumbing leads, especially from phone calls, are the most crucial point of sales since the searches are usually only performed when the plumber’s services are required – a leaky faucet here, a pipe reinstallation project there; It is all about the exact point of time when potential clients are searching for the services. For starters, we will perform an extensive research of your servicing area and come up with a price quotation for our services to keep up with the demand of your services in your area so that you can get a rough idea of how much expenses you can expect before you commit to our services.

City Leads Pro create these localized webpages for your clients to see with a simple search whether it is on their mobile phones, on their computer, tablets or other electronic devices they might use to perform a search on the internet. With a search query such as “Plumbers near me”, users can easily see an ad which when clicked, directs to the webpage that we have designed and optimized for you where the user can immediately call you if they so wish – which is incredibly likely if they need to stop their kitchen sink from flooding the entire kitchen area, as an example.

To ease the process for them to find your services, we market your webpage with your contact details which can lead them straight to your office phone or mobile device with a single click. To give you an upper edge, we promote your website on local listings, while also utilizing Google, Bing and Yahoo advertising campaigns to ensure that we reach clients on all major search engines.

The charges for our services are only invoiced weekly to you whenever you receive genuine calls – which excludes hang-ups, calls from competitors to spend your budget, wrong number dials or any other irrelevant calls, just like pay-per-click advertising, so you do not have to worry about paying for leads that end up being irrelevant to your business’ profitability. Remember, the perks of our services lie mainly in the fact where you are only charged for genuine, high quality leads for your business which were directed from the website that we made for you, so you won’t have to pay for leads asking for directions to your competitor, spam calls from anonymous directories or anything similar. We also offer transparent reporting of the results from your campaign with us.

Interested to find out more? City Leads Pro lets you start getting phone-verified leads in your local area with no contract or set-up fees and more importantly, deposit and commitment free! You are welcome to cancel our services anytime you’d like with no extra charges. Simply fill up a form on our website to start getting live, verified leads today! Other than local area plumbing leads, we also provide our services for various other industries such as landscaping, painting and staining and car dealers and many others. Get your local high-quality leads today with City Leads Pro. 

Limited bandwidth is no longer satisfactory these days. Unlimited calls and texts being included in data plans are now part of the norms, and any mobile site tab that takes more than 3 seconds to load risk being closed without waiting for it to load completely. This makes data speed just as important when considering which data plans to get. With 2018 creeping up close on us, we have reviewed the best unlimited data plans for a single individual.

Aside from the unlimited talk, text and data, at just $70 each month the T-Mobile One Plan lets you stream up to 480p without much issues, which means that you can stream Netflix on the go with standard DVD quality wherever you go. Although this plan supports only 3G hotspot, you can utilize the data plan worry-free as there are no hidden charges in their data plan. What you see and get is what you pay for! Overall, T-Mobile One definitely takes the lead in the list of mobile carriers in its data limits, capped at 30GB with 4G LTE data before your data speed gets slowed down to 3G speeds. Frequent flier? This plan gives you access to unlimited free GoGo Wi-Fi on selected flights! Best for frequent travelers seeking good monetary value in their purchases without demanding for the best quality.

Slightly pricier than the first option, this plan provides up to 22GB of data before throttling whenever there is network congestion, and the 4G LTE speeds enable you to stream HD videos with zero worries. If you frequently use your phone as a hotspot, this plan is perfect for you as it provides up to 10GB of data at high 4G LTE speeds as well, capping at 128kbps speed after you reach the threshold. Want some extra perks? You have access to unlimited talk and texts, even to over 120 countries from the USA! To give you that final push to get this data plan, you can even get a $25 discount on AT&T Direct TV and free HBO credits. What’s more to ask for with all these perks? This plan is perfect for regular hotspot users seeking perfection even in their daily video streaming.

If you are simply looking for the cheapest option, Sprint Unlimited is your go-to at only $50 a month. Capping at the lowest limit out of the three options, this plan provides up to 23GB of full 4G LTE speed data before slowing down to an unspecified speed. You can stream up to 1080p, and use up to 8Mbps while you are gaming before the service slows down. Music streaming meanwhile is capped at 1.5Mbps, which is just about sufficient, before the data throttles as well. Up to 4G LTE hotspot data is provided, before it gets slowed down to a 2G speed, significantly poorer than the other two plans. While this plan is still sustainable at the beginning of 2018, it’s important to keep in mind that the data plan will raise its price by $10 beginning from the 20^th of July, 2018.

Bottom Line: If price is not a concern, go for AT&T Unlimited Plus. Intermediate value can be found with T-Mobile One, and Sprint can ease your financial worries a little more than other plans.

8 Technologies That Could Change Digital Marketing Forever

With technology rapidly changing and improving, there’s no telling which direction it might go from one day to the next – While services like AdWords & Bing Ads were all the rage previously, as these technologies advance, there are a lot more for digital marketers and advertising agencies to consider adding on to their business; even more so since more traditional media such as TV or printed advertisements are slowly dying off. It is then extremely important for advertising agencies and businesses to keep up with the digital marketing trends & technologies and get into them before they become too famous or mainstream for their advertisements to make a difference. Below, we have reviewed 8 of the most recent technologies that can change digital marketing forever. Most of them have not rolled out to the public yet, instead only limited to certain states or regions as more beta testing is under way.

                Search advertising is out, and voice search marketing could be the next up and trending form of advertising technology. Google Home works as an in-home device, and is almost fully hands-free. Activated with a simple, “OK, Google”, this home assistant can be integrated with other smart home devices to utilize Google Chromecast and play movies or music on the devices connected to it. Currently having about 23.8% of the voice-enabled speaker market, it is projected that by year 2019 39.3% of millennials will own at least one smart assistance in their home. Users can utilize this home assistant to get the answers to a simple query such as “Cheapest hotel rates in Budapest on the 29^th of December 2018,” by just voicing the question out loud. When and where will voice search advertising stand in the next few years? No one knows yet, but Google has informed that they are still years away from monetizing voice searches like how search, display and other ad formats have been for the past years.

                This also brings changes to the keyword selection and heightens the importance of SEO keywords, even those long-tail phrases that users tend to submit over voice searches as compared to text searches. As an example, users will search “gas station near me” on Google, but through voice search, most of them are used to submitting queries such as “Where are the gas stations near me?”

Amazon Echo

                Similar to Google Home but holding a much higher voice-controlled speaker market at a staggeringly high 70% in 2018 alone, Alexa users along with Google Home users have been known to use natural language more – which clearly displays the user intents. As mentioned above, vendors and business owners have to start considering adding question phrases to their digital marketing campaigns to ensure that their business shows up first on the list to be read out loud by Alexa or Google. Unlike the traditional text searches with queries such as “fish food”, where users could simply be reviewing the types of fish food, or shops selling fish food nearby, voice search users will reveal their intentions clearly so that the search results are highly relevant. They will search with question phrases – what, who, how, where and the like – and it was found recently that these voice searches are geared towards local areas.

                This means that local vendors will need to start adding on to their online presence now more than ever! Your local, business and crowd-sourced sites needs to be regularly updated and active to ensure that your business can be found by these voice assistance. With these searches on the rise, it is important to ensure that your listings include the correct & updated phone numbers & addresses so that you are not left out in these long-tail queries searching for your services & products.

                While still not very common in suburban areas, multi-display digital signage and video walls are growing to become something more mainstream in bigger public places; Airports, restaurants, hotels and transportation centres – frequently high-traffic areas – are employing this method of digital advertising to market their ad slots to other businesses when they are not using it to further advertise their new services and products. Most of these video walls will include front and rear displays, and while these can feature LED, LCD or plasma displays, about 90% of the video wall market is filled by front projection walls and LCD displays. This could perhaps be due to the smaller bezels and lower prices for displays larger than 32”.

                Whereas digital signage typically takes up the size of a plasma TV, these video walls are much bigger and recently with touch integrated into these walls with infrared technology and capacitive touches, immersive experiences for users become the main goal of their ad projection. The ads need be interesting before this was in, and now it is also important that the ad truly engages with its audiences. User experience for video walls will be quite drastically different as compared to touch experiences on smaller devices such as by using a tablet. Video walls containing several smaller screens are different from and better than having a single big LCD display - due to the resolution required and how immersive the user experience can be on the video wall projection.

                When one thinks about Oculus Rift, it is common for their first thoughts to go towards Virtual Reality games. However, there is much more than just an immersive gaming experience for users now. Similar to video walls, these virtual reality simulators stress on immersive experiences. But this certainly opens a window of opportunity to brands to explore 360-degree views and experiences, or even entering the gaming concept to captivate their audiences. Traveling agencies in particular, can take 260-degree views and videos of areas they are advertising, and allow users to experience the fantastic view for themselves as part of their creative marketing strategy. Rather than just relying on descriptive texts like “featuring beautiful views of the sunset,” tourism hotspots can deliver the views straight to users without them having to even leave their seat.

                While most advertisers have not caught the wave on this entire virtual reality concept yet due to their pricing, it could be less pricey in the future. Currently, a 3-minute virtual reality video can cost more than $1 million just for production, but with technology’s rapid changes and new hardware & software frequently popping up, it is expected that as the hype dies down a little, the virtual reality concept will take digital marketing by the storm. Other industries can make use of this technology as well – imagine the experiences for a 3D interior designer!

                Microsoft’s HoloLens are relatively new when compared to Oculus Rift. While both products focus on virtual reality and its consumer engagement experience, Microsoft associated this product of theirs with a more technical, workspace-like and business-centered touch. The HoloLens centers around a custom holographic processing unit, making holographic computing possible. Just like other VR units, the HoloLens, when worn by a group of people, allow them to be ‘linked’ and viewed as hologram figures in another user’s view. So, what else can digital marketers utilize for their advertising & marketing strategies? In the healthcare & medicine sector for instance, a virtual-reality symptom checker could help doctors and patients understand each other more. In the gaming industry, of course, one can view and play an RPG game on a whole new level – quite personally.

If equipped with immersive touch experiences, viewers can experience how a product works in the virtual reality space, and these interactions within the VR experience can be reported back to the marketer in real-time. With plenty of these insights and increasing options to have detailed targeting aimed at users who have interacted with certain points of their campaign, virtual reality can be just a simple starting point with plenty of space to improve. Other businesses considering using virtual reality to market their products but are unsure where to start can make use of 3D advertising as a placeholder meanwhile.

Automation is getting stronger day by day, replacing needs for actual human workers and positions. Basic customer service-related questions can be answered with pre-set keyword-based questions and answers to ensure that customers get their replies instantly. Facebook is one of the first few platforms to utilize this function – pre-programed chatbots. Business owners can set up several question and answer sets that users can click on, and without even being there, these same owners can set an auto-response to indicate that the users’ messages have been received and will be replied soon. This is, of course, only if there are no pre-existing answers to answer the users’ queries.

Bigger brands like RedBull have started utilizing this feature on their Facebook page to connect with its users. By simply entering the chat, users will be greeted with multiple-choice questions such as “Are you interested to know more about the recent RedBull events?” or “Send me promotional details!” that they can simply click and get an answer for immediately. These answers can point to specific pages of their website, or just a simple answer if so desired. With enough time spent configuring the messages, businesses can potentially leave their chatbot unmonitored for a while, even while setting the chatbot to send visitors to the page of their latest promotion as a greeting or end-message. Imagine the possibilities this feature could entail!

                You might know this better as artificial intelligence, although technically, deep machine learning is a subset of AI. This is the basis of how chatbots can function. Basically, personalized digital experience is created from a big collection of data which frequently gets updated as their increase the algorithm networks to mimic human intelligence as closely as possible. While this is not entirely new, deep machine learning has just begun to slowly creep into the digital marketplace to help organizations with their marketing automation processes.

                How far can you automate with deep machine learning, you might wonder. Since machine-learning technology is advancing quickly, it enables a large amount of analytical data to be processed to gain some insights that actually leads to some critical information. This information could be used to improve your marketing campaigns by using detailed targeting towards the audiences that you might not have noticed before. Since they slowly build their algorithm network, you can be sure to gain insightful data that are more personalized and lead-driven, or whichever campaign objective that you are more interested in. Anyhow, data-driven storytelling using machine learning is sure to be more user-friendly to understand, and it has also started to derive upcoming trends and applications based on existing data. The more data you collect, the more insights you can get, so surveys’ importance could still be maintained despite all the changes in digital marketing recently.

                If you were not familiar with Waymo, this is a project started by Google in 2009 as a self-driving technology company. While this is still under way of further optimization and is only slowly rolling out in the United States, the concept of self-driving cars can bring a huge change in digital marketing. Imagine if you do not need to focus on the road while ‘driving’. Users who are already mobile-heavy would be able to utilize their phones even more, pretty much focusing their entire concentration on their screens. This would mean that billboards, road signs and small posters by the road will serve less and less function as self-driving cars become even more common anywhere around the world. Instead, the focus on mobile advertising could become more important than ever when this car eventually starts becoming more famous. Like the VR concept and augmented reality however, this product could be taking a much longer time before monetization based on these vehicles gets more attention and options, or even start to become effective at all.

                This also brings the possibilities of advertisements on third party apps such as Google Map, Waze or other navigation apps on their vehicle becoming increasingly important. In fact, just recently, sponsored advertisements have started to appear in Google Map, resulting in some locations become more prominent and noticeable than other locations. This further stress on the importance of keeping your business listing updated.

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https://www.5foldmarketing.com/voice-search-marketing-future/

https://marketingland.com/amazon-controls-70-percent-digital-assistant-device-market-214046

https://www.digitalsignagetoday.com/articles/video-walls-are-coming-catch-the-wave/

http://www.adweek.com/digital/how-oculus-rift-about-reshape-marketing-creativity-162124/

https://waymo.com/

https://www.hannonhill.com/resources/blog/2017/5-ways-ai-is-transforming-digital-marketing.html

http://www.digitalistmag.com/customer-experience/2017/05/09/incorporating-machine-learning-into-digital-marketing-plan-05073410