PSPINC Official Company Blog

Marketing Analytics: Key Metrics To Look Out For

Jan

9

Utilizing data analytics in marketing is vital to succeeding. With its ability to analyze and even predict data, it can do wonders in perfecting marketing strategies, saving time and money, developing a better understanding of your customers, creating better-performing content, and optimizing marketing channels. The challenging part of marketing analytics, however, consists of how marketing data has changed over the years. It’s also hard to figure out what marketers should look out for since there’s so much data easily available to you. Every platform has its own nuances, so there are different key metrics marketers should look out for.

Key Metrics on Google Platforms (Analytics/Ads)

Website Performance Metrics

Traffic (Page Views): a metric that measures how many times a single user views a page
Most visited pages: a metric that breaks down what the most visited pages are to website visitors
Search ranking: a metric that shows your website's position in the search engine results page (SERP) for a specific query
Unique visits: a metric that counts the number of visitors to a website, but only counts their first visit
Conversions: a metric that counts an important user action like making a purchase, filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, etc.

(Paid) Digital Ad Metrics

Impressions: a metric that measures the number of times a user sees the ad.
Click-through rate (CTR): the percentage of people who click on the ad, determined by dividing the number of clicks by the number of times your ad is shown and multiplying that number by 100 (impressions). The higher this number is, the better.
Cost-per-click (CPC): a metric that measures how much it costs each time someone clicks on your ad. The lower this number is, the better.
Conversions: a metric that counts an important user action like making a purchase, filling out a form, signing up for a newsletter, etc.
Conversion rate: the percentage of people who convert (purchase, fill out a form, sign up for a newsletter, etc.), determined by dividing the number of users who convert by the overall size of the audience and multiplying that number by 100.
Engagement rate: the percentage of people who engage (click, like, share, comment, etc.) with your ad, determined by dividing the total number of engagements by the total number of followers and multiplying that number by 100.

Key Metrics on Other Marketing Platforms

person holding smartphone with apps shown: facebook, snapchat, instagram, twitter, chrome, gmail, spotify, messenger

Social Media Metrics

Total reach: the number of users that saw your content (also known as impressions).
Likes: the number of people who like your content.
Views: the number of people who view your content.
Comments: the number of people who comment on your content.
Shares: the number of people who share your content.
Followers: the number of people who follow your account.
Subscribers: the number of people who subscribe to your account.

Email Marketing Metrics

Open rate: the percentage of people who open your email, determined by dividing the number of people who open your email by the number of people who received the email and multiplying that number by 100.
Click rate: the percentage of people who click on links within your email, determined by dividing the number of people who clicked on links in your email by the number of people who received the email and multiplying that number by 100.

Aside from just the mass amount of marketing data there is to analyze, other challenges include the difficulty of reading through that analytical info. Just like all marketing, it continues to change and evolve over the years. That’s why we provide bi-weekly reports in all our marketing package plans, making it easier for small businesses everywhere to market their business.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #branding #business #businesstips #digitalmarketing #email #facebook #google #instagram #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #officetips #seo #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #twitter #web

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 200 “The Importance of Brand Design”

Dec

28

One of the most important parts of running a business involves developing and maintaining your brand. While there are multiple definitions of what a brand is, in its simplest form, a brand is an immediately recognizable identity that differentiates itself from others. Having a clear brand for your company is especially vital for small businesses because it helps you establish credibility and trust with your target audience. For a small business, credibility and trust are crucial to long-term success.

Larger businesses will probably already have credibility built in because they’ve spent years growing and perfecting their brand. So, as a small business, making your brand clear to your customers will give you a competitive edge over other small businesses. One way that’ll help establish your brand is through brand attributes like your company’s logo. Whether you’re just starting or looking for a design refresh, we’ve got you covered! Starting at just $200 a logo, you can get a professional brand logo at an affordable price. Get started by heading over to our Brand and Graphic Design page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #brand #branding #business #businesstips #design #digitalmarketing #graphicdesign #logo #logodesign #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #technology #web #webdesign #website

The 5 Biggest Marketing Trends to Look Out For in 2024

Dec

26

As this year comes to a close, we’re reflecting on how marketing has evolved over the past year and how we can improve for next year, not only for our company but for our customers as well. When looking back, one thing’s for certain: advancements in technology are driving the trends that will only become even more popular next year. Here are five of the biggest marketing trends to look out for in 2024.

1. AI Marketing Automation

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has become an increasing trend over the past few years in multiple industries, but many marketers have also jumped on the bandwagon. Marketers have started using AI to create content and to take advantage of how AI integration analyzes data, personalizes customers’ experiences, and optimizes campaigns. Integrating AI into marketing strategies also helps hyper-personalize content, which has gained popularity over the past year.

But as helpful as AI technology has been to the marketing industry, it’s important not to employ a “set it and forget it” type of strategy. It’s still a largely developing technology, so there are still times when it’ll get things wrong, so it’s better to use AI integration in a more collaborative approach.

2. Video Marketing

person recording a video with their phone

As we’ve mentioned before, video marketing, especially short-form video marketing, has become more popular over the past few years. The rise of TikTok, Facebook/Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts made this clear. Other video marketing tactics that have also shown great success include live streaming and interactive video content. For more tips, check out our blog post all about how to start marketing with short-form videos.

3. User-Generated Content (UGC)

a person presenting user-generated content results to a marketing team

One of the best ways to build credibility, increase user engagement, and foster a sense of community online is through user-generated content (UGC), which just refers to content your customers share about you online. This usually involves encouraging customers to share their experiences with your brand on social media through a specific hashtag or throwing contests where the best entry wins. But there are other ways to garner content from your customers.

Customer reviews, either on Google, Facebook, Yelp, or any other platform, also count as user-generated content. It just takes a little more work to share it on social media since it isn’t already on the same platform. You can either take a screenshot and resize it for social media, or you can add it into a template of sorts from a site like Canva to share with your social media followers.

4. Social Shopping

Over the past year especially, selling and shopping directly on social media has only become more accessible with Facebook Marketplace, Instagram’s buy button, and TikTok Shop. It’s pushed social shopping more toward social media, being an e-commerce ecosystem all on its own. With social shopping already gaining popularity, marketers expect this will significantly impact the online shopping landscape.

5. Privacy and Data Protection

One of the largest growing concerns among customers today consists of protecting their data, thanks to the uptick in cybercrimes over the past few years. Because of this, customers are much more informed and vigilant about how others handle their data and how they share their data. On the business side, it’s important to implement secure data collection and storage practices to protect your employees’ accounts, which is easy to do with a password manager like Pass Wizard. On the consumer-facing side, businesses should be very transparent about their data collection and storage practices and obtain explicit consent when collecting user data.

With how fast technology evolves today, there are bound to be many more marketing trends coming next year that we haven’t anticipated. However, our team here at PSPINC has the experience and expertise to help you grow your business by strengthening your marketing efforts. Whether it’s social media marketing, paid ads on Google, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, or even blogging, we’ve got you covered. Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#ai #b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #data #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingonline #marketingtips #passwordmanager #sales #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #ugc #usergeneratedcontent #videomarketing #web #website

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 196 “Benefits of Custom Web Development”

Nov

30

While it’s more costly, custom web development is well worth it in the end because of how beneficial it is for your brand. Custom web development benefits businesses, especially small businesses by:

1. Increasing security: Businesses can implement robust security measures to keep their data safe from cyber-attacks with the help of custom web development.

2. Giving businesses the ability to scale over time with their website: A successful business doesn’t stay the same forever, so their website shouldn’t either. Custom web development makes it easier to adapt to how your business and website change over time.

3. Tailoring to your brand: While there are multiple popular website builders and templates out there, custom web development allows for more branding opportunities and gives the website a personalized touch that templates just can’t offer.

4. Creating custom features: Every business is unique in what it offers, the customers they have, and what they need to succeed. Custom web development makes it possible for features that aren’t readily available on popular web builders.

5. Increasing search engine optimization (SEO): With more control over the website, developers can create the site with SEO in mind, which makes it easier for your site to rank higher organically in search engine results.

At PSPINC, we’ve worked with small businesses for decades to custom-develop websites to help them succeed. To request custom development from us, head over to our Web and App Development page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#b2b #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #google #marketing #marketingdigital #pspinc #seo #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #webdexpress #websitebuilder #webtools #wordpress

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 195 “Establishing Brand Identity Through Design”

Nov

23

Brand identity is important to any business, especially small businesses. Large businesses have an advantage in terms of credibility compared to small businesses. A solid brand identity helps small businesses gain credibility and inspire customer loyalty. But what is brand identity? Internally, it’s the values your company stands for and how you want your customers to feel about you. Externally, it’s your logo and other graphic design attributes.

Here at PSPINC, we pride ourselves on helping small businesses every step of the way in the design process. If you’re unsure what your brand should be or what it should look like, or if you’re looking for a fresh rebrand for your company, we have your back! Whether it’s creating a logo design, designing a business card, or custom designing your website, we have you covered. Just visit our brand and graphic design page and/or our web design page to get started.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #branding #business #businesstips #design #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #sales #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdesign #website #webtools

Marketing With Short-Form Videos

Nov

14

Over the past few years, short-form videos have become more popular, especially with the rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook/Instagram Stories, and YouTube Shorts. As technology has continued to progress, people have become more accustomed to the conveniences it has to offer, and their attention spans have also shrunk along with it. Many social media platforms have taken notice, so short-form videos have become more valued in their algorithm when it comes to what users are more likely to see on their timelines.

8 Steps to Start

close-up photo of person holding his black headphones and video editing software open on his computer

Start with research: just like every marketing endeavor, it always starts with research. In this case, look at what your competitors are doing and see what you can use in your own strategy.
Experiment: discover which trends, themes, and overall tones work for you. Don’t be afraid of trying out different content ideas and getting creative.
Schedule your videos: find the right posting frequency that will work best for your brand.
Repurpose your content: instead of starting from scratch, see what you can reuse from the content you’ve already created and posted. Maybe it’s part of a blog post or a clip from a longer YouTube video.
Find the right blend: determine how often to post each type of content using what you learned from your research and experimenting steps.
Keep your online community in mind: create good social content by looking at what types of content your audience responds to — what kinds of content do they want to see from you?
Humanize your brand: feature your employees, show behind-the-scenes content, and lean into humor. People want to know the people behind the brand, not just what you’re selling.
Engage with your audience: interact with users in your comment section and encourage people to engage with you.

Luckily for marketers, creating short-form videos on social media is easy and will help increase brand awareness, drive engagement, and capture people’s attention. It’s also a much more cost-effective way to market your business since these videos will only be anywhere between three seconds to one minute long. Plus, you can even reuse some of the marketing content you’ve already created, which will also cut down on the time you’ll spend creating short-term videos.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #facebook #instagram #instagramreels #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #reels #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #tiktok #twitter #web #youtube #youtubeshorts

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 193 “New Marketing Packages”

Nov

9

We are thrilled to announce that we now have new marketing packages available to fit your specific business needs. From small businesses just looking to spread awareness to those who want to completely transform their digital marketing strategy, we have the right plan for you.

pspinc marketing plans

Our plans are billed monthly, without any minimum contract. However, we recommend you run your ad campaign for at least three months for the best results. Our team has the experience and expertise to help you grow your business by strengthening your marketing efforts. Whether it’s social media marketing, paid ads on Google, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, or even blogging, we’ve got you covered. Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #b2b #blog #branding #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #pspinc #searchengineoptimization #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #webtools

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 192 “Dreamersi Email Hosting”

Nov

2

As a small business, one of the most important parts of marketing your business consists of boosting your overall credibility. Bigger brands have the advantage of being well-known and, therefore, trustworthy. So, they don’t have to work as hard to gain that trust from potential customers. An easy way to establish your business’s credibility is through your email. If your email ends with your website name, it looks much more professional as opposed to if it were a Gmail or Yahoo email address.

Right now, we are offering free email migration from your current email (excluding Microsoft 365) to our premiere email hosting service, Dreamersi. The best part of Dreamersi email hosting is that you can add as many users as you want to your email hosting plan. For just $8.25/month for an unlimited number of email accounts, you can’t get better than that. If you don’t already have your own domain name for your website, we’ve got you covered there, too! You can get a free domain included with our Dreamersi email hosting plan, or pair it with our web hosting plan! Get started today.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #digitalmarketing #dreamersi #ecommerce #email #emailhosting #hosting #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #newsletter #pspinc #smallbusiness #tech #technology #webdevelopment #webhosting #website

How Meta's New Lawsuit Will Affect Marketing Towards Young People

Oct

31

On October 24, 2023, 41 U.S. states and the District of Columbia sued Meta, alleging their social media platforms, namely Facebook and Instagram, knowingly contributed to the youth mental health crisis. In the lawsuit, they claim Facebook and Instagram are not only addictive and harmful to young users through numerous features like copious alerts, notifications, and infinitely scrolling feeds. They also claim these features “negatively impact teens’ mental health”, specifically because they encourage social comparisons and promote body dysmorphia through likes or photo filters.

What This Means for Marketers

Ultimately, regardless of where this lawsuit goes, other social media platforms may feel inclined to add more features and/or privacy settings designed to restrict usage on younger users. With the reality of social media platforms likely enforcing more regulation through features and default privacy settings over younger users, social media ads and posts may not reach much of their younger audience. Therefore, marketers should:

Market on other social media platforms specifically designed for younger people. Ex: Snapchat, YouTube Kids, TikTok, etc.
Focus on creating engaging content - for organic social media content, engaging content performs best with younger users, so use that to your advantage. The more young people interact with your engaging organic content, the more it'll show for similar users, like others in their age group.
Partner with influencers - young people are more likely to trust recommendations from their favorite influencers and engage with their content. This can also include popular celebrities among your target demographic.
Determine where else your audience is online - social media may take up a lot of young people's time, but it isn't the only place they're spending their energy online. Find out what other websites they're browsing and advertise there instead.
Target an older audience instead - even if you usually target a younger audience, it's possible you're missing out on revenue you could be earning from older potential customers.

This concern over young kids using social media and the effects it has on their mental heath isn’t a new one. In 2021, a Facebook whistleblower who was later revealed as Frances Haugen leaked internal research, proving Meta knew the negative effects their social media platforms made on young people. In response, Instagram said they were working on features that would combat this. However, it’s hard to know what tech companies can do to improve it. Even then, this concern won't go away, so it's important that marketing professionals are proactive in how they market young people.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #blog #business #businesstips #digitalmarketing #facebook #instagram #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #mentalhealth #meta #news #smallbusiness #snapchat #socialmedia #tech #technology #tiktok #web #youtube #youtubekids

Why Threads Hasn’t Taken Off (Yet?)

Oct

24

Back in July, Meta (the company behind Facebook and Instagram) released Threads, their text-based social media platform after weeks of speculation that would directly compete with X (formerly Twitter). Because of how easy it was for users to sign up, ten million people joined the app within seven hours of its launch according to Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO.

But now, more than three months later, Threads’ popularity has dwindled. Sensor Data reports that at its peak, 44 million daily active users were on Threads. Just a few weeks later, at the end of July, there were only eight million daily active users—an 82% drop. Many users have stopped posting and many have even forgotten about the platform altogether. Largely due to the fact that it just isn’t built out enough with the robust features that users crave on social media.

Lack of Popular Features

Every popular social media platform has its own niche, along with key features. However, Threads is still missing a lot of those features, including but not limited to a Discover page, direct message functions, and the ability to share Threads posts via Instagram direct messages, among others. It wasn’t until the end of July when Threads rolled out a Following feed and it wasn’t until August when Threads released a web version for desktop users. The other unknown thus far is whether Meta will expand their advertising network to Threads. Meta is known for being great for advertisers, but unless their daily active user count goes back up, advertisers may not be willing to spend advertising dollars on Threads.

While they’re going in the right direction in terms of working on adding more features, Threads is still missing something that will make them stand apart from their competitors. Many saw Threads as the direct competitor to X, and the fact that users’ accounts could connect to their Instagram pages and bring over their following was an attractive asset, but it wasn’t enough to keep users on the platform. Overall, many have theorized that Meta released Threads quickly when users were looking for a better alternative to X. Unfortunately, developers hadn’t really built out the program enough to really retain users on the platform. While Meta developers continue to work on adding more features to the platform, it may be a while before users will consider Threads to be a real threat to a platform like X.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#advertising #app #blog #branding #business #businesstips #digitalmarketing #facebook #instagram #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingtips #meta #mobile #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tech #technology #threads #twitter #web #webdevelopment #website #x

PSPINC Official Company Blog

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Marketing Analytics: Key Metrics To Look Out For

Key Metrics on Google Platforms (Analytics/Ads)

Website Performance Metrics

(Paid) Digital Ad Metrics

Key Metrics on Other Marketing Platforms

Social Media Metrics

Email Marketing Metrics

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 200 “The Importance of Brand Design”

The 5 Biggest Marketing Trends to Look Out For in 2024

1. AI Marketing Automation

2. Video Marketing

3. User-Generated Content (UGC)

4. Social Shopping

5. Privacy and Data Protection

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 196 “Benefits of Custom Web Development”

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 195 “Establishing Brand Identity Through Design”

Marketing With Short-Form Videos

8 Steps to Start

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 193 “New Marketing Packages”

What’s New Newsletter Vol. 192 “Dreamersi Email Hosting”

How Meta's New Lawsuit Will Affect Marketing Towards Young People

What This Means for Marketers

Why Threads Hasn’t Taken Off (Yet?)

Lack of Popular Features

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Key Metrics on Google Platforms (Analytics/Ads)

Website Performance Metrics

(Paid) Digital Ad Metrics

Key Metrics on Other Marketing Platforms

Social Media Metrics

Email Marketing Metrics

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1. AI Marketing Automation

2. Video Marketing

3. User-Generated Content (UGC)

4. Social Shopping

5. Privacy and Data Protection

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