Mediaboss Marketing

What are the key challenges you face in the training world? How will Brexit impact the industry? Which courses and delivery types are proving most popular in 2017? How does your organisation measure up to others?

Every year, we like to take the industrys pulse, to find out how training professionals feel about the current direction of the industry. As ever, the professionals surveyed for this years report come from a wide range of backgrounds and offered some great insights into their current and planned operations, the kinds of courses and delivery types they feel most effective, and how they promote them in a world dominated by digital marketing and online transactions. All that, at a time when the advantages and disadvantages of withdrawing from the European Union, and its effect on training, remain unclear and artificial intelligence and automation continue to reign supreme.

So, what have we learnt? You can read the 2017 report right here for a full breakdown of results and analysis, but three observations really stand out to us

There were two major challenges that professionals are facing when running a successful training company: Promoting courses against an increasingly competitive landscape. Well-publicised skills shortages across the country mean that training, more than ever, is in high demand and that leads to more and more professionals setting up training companies.

Despite that, our research suggests that while many find that marketing courses is a struggle, the tools being deployed are old-school. Reputation and referrals were highlighted as the most effective ways of gaining new businesses, while digital marketing methods, such as Google Ads, email campaigns and search engine optimisation, were shunned. Despite its importance as a marketing tool, SEO ranked right at the bottom; considered the least effective way to publicise company and courses.

Its still too early to precisely tell what effects Brexit will have on the country, much less the training industry, but if the professionals we surveyed are anything to go by, the impact will be negative. 53%, in fact, believe that Brexit will be damaging to our industry. But, much like the referendum itself, the results were close. A total of 47% believed that itll either have a positive impact (5%) on the industry or that it will have no impact whatsoever (42%). Indeed, one of the most common comments we received was that its just too early to tell. One to watch, then!

We then asked what were the possible advantages and disadvantages of withdrawing from the European Union. When it came to disadvantages, it was a clear landslide: A full 74% believe the biggest problem will be a lack of support from the EU in future. On the other hand, encouraging homegrown talent was listed as the A* advantage of EU withdrawal.

Lets back-track a bit. Remember those digital marketing tools were not taking advantage of? Well, thats not the only technology were shunning. When quizzed about the systems used to managing training, there were three answers that dominated: CRM, a dedicated training management system and spreadsheets. Yes, they may be clunky, time-consuming to use and ill-equipped for the modern training company, but basic spreadsheets still being deployed by a full 37% of organisations out there.

The technology deficit is commonplace elsewhere too. For one thing, 32% of our respondents claimed that they dont offer online course booking facilities a fantastically high percentage given that we can buy everything from comics to cucumbers online. The real problem with not offering online facilities, of course, is three-fold. At a time when internet shopping has become routine, businesses who arent offering online booking methods risk reduced sales, a lack of customer insight, and perhaps most damaging reputational impact; seen as less legitimate compared to businesses who do offer online booking. That might not be fair, but when it comes to maintaining an online presence, its all about perception, as well as ensuring convenience for your delegates.

Want to find out how you and your training company compare? View the full report here.

Originally posted here:
Training Industry Benchmark Survey Findings 2017 - TrainingZone.co.uk (blog)

Forbes

When To Name Your Company After Yourself Forbes If you have a unique name, using it as your brand name can be an easy way to win the SEO game so you come up first in Google searches. Coming up with a great business name that you're excited about can be ... Sure you may write a book called "Money ...

Originally posted here:
When To Name Your Company After Yourself - Forbes

Everyone wants to rank better on Google; no one wants to be on page 2 or 3 in a Google search result. Its no surprise that this is why youre reading this article; you want to rank better too. If youre anything like me, youre tired of spending a whole lot of money on methods that just dont seem to work and thats why your search has to lead you here. With limited resources, you need to know where to focus your efforts to have confidence in getting your rankings up and also stable. Its quite easy to get confused by the many articles that highlight the importance of Googles 200 ranking factors (you probably dont even know all of them yourself).

In a few moments, youre going to learn about how Google treats content and how that all plays a part in improving your rankings. And the best part is you dont need to be an expert to take advantage of the information that Im about to share with you. This information will not only help you to increase your brand awareness but also to increase customer acquisition and boost your products or services.

Where are your customers?

Ive always gotten the old school advice that if youre looking for a book then the best place to look is in the library. So if youre looking to get stable rankings, wouldnt it be best to first find out where most of your potential customers are hanging out online in order to offer them your services? There are close to 3 billion social media users worldwide, up by 22% this year. Thats approximately a 37% global penetration according to a research done by Social Media Today.

Its no wonder so many companies are investing in social media customer service strategies training for their employees. But why you might ask?

A study done by Gartner found that the dissatisfaction stemming from failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15% in churn rate for existing customers, so while your goal is to gain stable ranking, social media customer service strategies are key to that overall goal. The more satisfied customers you retain then the more they talk about you on social media, the more they talk about you online then the more Google recognizes your brand.

How does Google treat Social Media content and how does this affect your ranking?

Google uses Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to effectively rank pages. SEO is the process of getting traffic from the free or organic search results on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Googles objective is to always provide the most relevant results to the users request; promoting authority pages at the top of its rankings.

The YouTube channel Google Webmasters released a video with Googles Matt Cutts in 2014. In that video, while Cutts made it very clear that Google does not use social signaling to rank your pages, he did however, state that Facebook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index, and so if something occurs on Twitter or occurs on Facebook and were able to crawl it then we can return that in our search results.

Many SEO and internet marketing experts outline that posting links to your websites on popular social media websites can definitely boost your rankings and grow your business. The links that are posted on a social media account such can be recognized as credible backlinks and thereby influencing page ranks.

How does all of this tie in to give you better rankings? With almost 3 billion monthly active users on social media, it has become a very powerful tool to drive traffic to your website which will help you to rank well. You can drive traffic to your website via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and others using a simple 4-step system. And the best part is were giving those steps to you for FREE!

If you follow these simple steps then you will be able to use the traffic from social media to boost your website statistics, therefore, increasing your Google rank:

By using your social media profile to post short sentences with a link to your blogs, you will start to generate traffic from your profile to your website for free (especially if your followers share content from your website). But you wont achieve this by simply posting a link to your website on your profile. You see, when you post a link on your social media, it is flagged with a nofollow tag which instructs Googles search engine bots that the link should not influence the link targets ranking. But by including keywords in your profiles bio, headlines, summaries, posts, and links, that your target audience would be likely to use which would actually display your profile in search results.

Its simple logic. The larger your following on social media is the more it helps Google to measure the authenticity of your users click through from social media to your website. After all, you wouldnt have had a community of followers visiting your website if you were only posting a bunch of sham. Also, the more your posts are shared the more search engines assume that the content is of value. You just need to ensure that those posts contain the keywords that your target audience may be searching for.

Remember that Googles main objective is to always provide the most relevant results to its users. Therefore, once persons search for those keywords they may come across your profile and the content that you post, some of which includes a link to your website. Those readers who visit your website and love the content will naturally share it on social media thus increasing the authenticity of click through which improves your website statistics that will rank you better on Google.

As your social media community and brand begins to grow, it will help to reinforce your relevance. This will lead to persons reaching out you and commenting on your posts on a daily basis and perhaps asking about your products or services. It will be very important that you learn good social media customer service strategies in order to keep your audience fully engaged and talking about your brand.

That being said, social media can definitely help you to increase your rankings by making posts that engage your users enough that they want to naturally share your content as well. Quality is key.

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How Social Media Marketing Stabilize Your Google Ranking - JOSIC - Digital Intelligence

Ingenuity Digital Holdings (IDHL) which trades as The WebMarketing Group, Ingenuity Digital and NetConstruct is one of the largest group of full service digital agencies in the UK. With offices in Central London, Harrogate and Wetherby, IDHL has a growing team of 110 professional, creative, marketing and technical people. Trading for 16 years IDHL has a record of strong growth and profitability and is proud of its diverse portfolio of clients including some of the finest national and international companies. IDHL offer a full range of internet marketing services which include Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social Media, PPC, Online PR, and DADI award-nominated web design and development. Over the years IDHL have achieved an outstanding reputation for delivering innovative, high quality results to clients. A transparent, analytical approach, outstanding account management coupled with intellectual property developed over 16 years has helped them establish an enviable market leading position.

This is a fantastic opportunity to take WMGs existing enviable client base to the next level as far as programmatic display advertising is concerned. This role, sitting within the Paid Media team would be suitable for someone with 3+ years programmatic experience (minimum), and an all-rounder who could plan, execute, report and deliver outstanding results to clients. We are looking for someone who is organised and not afraid of a challenge as they will be the go-to person in the business for programmatic knowledge and support.

Duties will include but not limited to; Plan, build, execute and report on our clients programmatic campaigns. Be responsible for delivering new service offerings and product developments within the Paid Media team. Perform daily and weekly campaign optimisation. Work alongside PPC, CRO, SEO Digital PR and creative teams to deliver a fully integrated strategy, encompassing multiple different elements. Build relationships with internal and external stakeholders. Support the marketing department to produce programmatic collateral across several formats. Performance assessment in relation to clients, teams, processes and company. Training, on-going monitoring and assessment of the training needs within the team (and further business) and help develop and deliver appropriate training programmes for teams and individuals. Products and processes

Key Qualifications and Attributes: We are looking for someone who is driven, with boundless energy and enthusiasm as well as steely determination to succeed. They will need to hit the ground running. This role has huge opportunity with the potential for career development in a rapidly growing team with ambitious plans for the future.

The ideal candidate: will have 3+ years experience in a programmatic display role gained from a search agency or in-house position will be organised, determined and persistent Have excellent written and verbal communication skills and a strong client service ethos with ability to build lasting relationships will have meticulous attention to detail and be a perfectionist with a very analytical mind will have strong knowledge of Microsoft Office packages; specifically Excel and PowerPoint is required.

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Programmatic Display Lead - Prolific North

Johnnie Hunter, left, and Scottie Yant with the Nashville Seal of Satisfaction Award.

Eight years ago, Scottie Yant decided it was time to pull out all the stops and see exactly where his company, Ace Exterminating of Joelton, Tenn., could go.

After plugging away for about 20 years, I realized Ace wasnt growing at the rate I knew it could, Yant shares. When I read Think and Grow Rich, I realized that I didnt have to be the smartest person; I just needed to surround myself with competent people. So thats what I did: I hired people who were smart and confident, who could find better ways to do things.

One of those people was Johnnie Hunter, now Aces vice president. Hunter came to the firm with an open mind and a commitment to reenergizing the company. He reports the company has grown revenues from $1.6 million in 2008 to $6.4 million in 2016. Weve grown steadily in the 18- to 20-percent range over the past several years, he says. Last year, we opened three new branches (for a total of six), and we plan to open three more each year for the next five years.

How are they growing so aggressively? Ace has stepped up efforts in three areas:

MARKETING. Creating a stronger digital presence via its website and social media outlets also has fueled Aces fire. Hunter says, We worked with an SEO (search engine optimization) company and several social media experts to build brand awareness, and these efforts really paid off. We decided to build an in-house marketing department to keep these efforts going, and to continue identifying and implementing new ideas for promoting our brand.

Above all else, Yant and Hunter agree that its the commitment of Ace employees that has turned the company into such a fast-growing contender. Every person on our team knows we want to keep growing, Yant says. We dont just ask our people to do things. We help them understand our goals and how we intend to reach them. Were all very excited to be pulling in the same direction to make that happen.

Read this article:
New to the List: Ace Exterminating Shares Keys to Strategic Growth - PCT Magazine