The Psychology of Color in Marketing and Branding

Reach and engagement are the two main metrics that companies typically use to track social media marketing, but there there are still questions about how to optimize their efforts and marketing dollars between these two measurements. While it is often thought that reach and engagement are equally important, ideal optimization between the two depends on the overall goals of the business. This article will help to explain both metrics, and look at their overall value for marketing efforts.

What is reach?
Reach is a measure of the range of influence of any content - it is the measurement of how content is spread across various social media channels. At the most basic level, reach can be thought of as the number of eyes your content is being seen by. For example, on Facebook, total reach is the number of people that have seen your post. Your post reaches someone when it shows up on their news feed. Reach is simply the amount of people that have seen your post whether they engage in the post at all.

Total reach can be broken down into three categories, wich include: organic, viral and paid. Organic reach is the number of unique people who saw your post on their feed. Viral reach is the number of unique people who saw your post from a story published by a friend or someone you know. Paid reach is the number of unique people who saw your post through an ad.

What is engagement?
Engagement measures the actions taken by users on your posts. Continuing with the Facebook example, engagement is measured as the number of times your post is liked, shared or commented on. So the more interesting or unique your post is, the more likely you will have increased activity and engagement on these posts.

Engagement is largely driven by the content of posts and the strategy of a company’s marketing team. It is achieved over time as marketing efforts build a dynamic community where consumers actively share content and stories.

Should you reach? Or should you engage?
Now that you know that both reach and engagement are critical components within the marketing strategy, the question is, which is the best strategy for companies to follow? Increased reach leads to increased awareness, while increased engagement leads to building a strong community around your brand.

It makes sense that your business would want to extend its reach out to as many people as possible, however, many times recipients are not really looking at this message, it is just being displayed on a site they are on. While reach is important as a building block, engagement is a better way to measure whether or not a given message is resonating and helping to build and promote engagement, while getting followers actively involved. Although both reach and engagement are important, the way to really optimize these tools is by using them both. Reach first, and engage second.

If your business needs help optimizing its marketing efforts or has no idea where to even start, Northeast Kingdom Online can help! We offer a full social media marketing package , called NEKO Reach which gives you the freedom to worry about other important details of your business, while we worry about every aspect of your social marketing. Give us a call today at 802-473-1887 and see how we can help minimize stress and optimize your marketing performance!

It is no surprise that companies will spend a significant amount of time and money on advertising and marketing their brand’s products or services. Advertising and marketing used to be offered only on offline channels such as TV and print.

Now marketing and advertising has shiftedsignificantlytowards the digital age. Unlike old-fashioned advertising, what is so great about the digital world is it's ability to do real time tracking. Now, with digital marketing and digital advertising you can track and tweak your ads for better performance as often as you need to which will help to get better results.

While the benefits of digital advertising seem endless, as a brand how can you make sure that you’re maximizing performance and boosting your ROI? When implementing campaigns, there are various practices in which will help get the best results possible. I have outlined five steps of how these practices can be integrated into your marketing strategy.

Step 1: Provide Clear Calls-To-Action (CTA)
Every successful advertising campaign should contain a clear and compelling CTA. This tells the user what their next step is and is how they get from the advertisement back to your site. This helps to keep the consumer move further down the funnel and closer to the point of conversion.

Step 2: Provide A Compelling Message
With any digital platform, messaging is a critical step as it’s the central communication with a potential customer. Data shows that you lose the attention of most digital users within just a few seconds. With this limited time to gather the users interest, it is crucial to provide a compelling message to these users. Stick to messaging that provokes emotion and encourages users to click through the ad. The best practice for this is to just provide a short catchy phrase.

Step 3: Provide Designated Landing Pages
Whatever the content may be, it is incredibly important that you drive users to a landing page that is relevant to that content. This simple, yet crucial step will help to keep users on your site, offer better user experience, and ultimately improve conversion rate.

Step 4: Imagery Matters
For each digital campaign, it is essential that you think about how you’re serving users with these ads. Users on average spend about 5 hours per day on their computer or mobile devices. Sources show that users are likely to see about 5,000 ads or brands within that time. There is no way that our brain absorbs all 5,000 of these ads or brands, so having catchy imagery helps to get your ad to stand out over competitors.

Step 5: Test, Monitor, And Test Again
You’ve probably heard it said several times, that for any marketing channel, testing the effectiveness of your efforts is important. When running a digital campaign, this is no exception. Without monitoring your campaigns you are not able to identify areas that are succeeding vs. areas that need improvement. There are so many factors in setting up a campaign that need to be taken into consideration, some being; the time of day, language choice, audience segment, image selection, or other targeting options. With so many factors to consider, it is critical that you pay attention to these factors and monitor which campaigns are doing better based on the varying elements. Often times, we create two similar campaigns, where we can test ads with varying content. This is called A/B testing.

In this day and age, digital marketing has serious potential. For most brands, it’s one of the top most effective ways to get your company, products or services in front of a qualified and targeted user. Keep in mind the above tips when you are creating your campaigns and trying to optimize your conversion rate.

For more information on this article, check out:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabrielshaoolian/2017/04/24/5-digital-marketing-tips-to-increase-your-b...
http://blog.telesian.com/how-many-advertisements-do-we-see-each-day/

The psychology of color and how it relates to persuasion is one of the most interesting and controversial aspects of marketing. This is because color has been known to have a powerful psychological impact on people’s behavior and decisions, and this knowledge has been harnessed all too well by designers and marketers alike.

Color is universal and is a source of information. People make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interactions with either people or products. Research shows that about 62‐90 percent of the assessment is based on colors alone.

Here are some ways in which the psychology of color impacts branding and marketing as a whole.

• Purchasing intent is greatly affected by colors due to the impact they have on how a brand is perceived.

• Color helps to create brand identity. Research has shown that there is a substantial connection between the use of colors and customers' perceptions of a brand's personality.

• Environmental and cultural perceptions play a strong role in dictating color appropriateness for different genders. 
  

Keep this information in mind when choosing your brand's primary color palette. Given the utterly different taste preferences shown, it pays to appeal more to men or women depending on whom makes up a larger percentage of your ideal buyers.

For more information about this article, check out:  https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233843

It is no secret that Northeast Kingdom Online has earned the Google Partner badge. Having this badge is very beneficial for advertising agencies, digital marketing professionals, and other online consultants who manage AdWords accounts.

Being a Google Partner means that we deliver quality service to our customers, offer a competitive advantage to our clients, and have received the proper training to help grow businesses online. Here are three benefits of being a Google Certified Partner:

Connect with Google: Companies who have earned their Google Partner status may have access to additional events, training sessions, and more.

Keep up with PPC Best Practices: To maintain Google Partner status, agency team members must take and pass two certification exams. One of the mandatory exams includes AdWords Fundamentals. For the second exam, you are then able to pick based on what your advertising goals are, these options include Search, Display, Shopping, Video, and Mobile Advertising. As a Google Partner, we are also able to attend free training sessions to keep up with the latest PPC practices

Stay in front of Competition with Beta Features: Companies that have earned a Google Partner badge have access to Google’s beta features, which means that after Google has developed a new feature or application, Google partners can test and use out these features before it is available to the general public.

There are several benefits included in being a Google certified Partner. For more information about how to become a Google Partner and more benefits of being partners with Google, check out:  https://support.google.com/partners/answer/3125774?hl=en

Thanks to mobile, our primary job as marketers is to be there and be useful for consumers in moments of need. Utilizing micro-moments in the digital world is now more crucial than ever before. Before we go in depth about why micro-moments are so important, I am sure many of you are asking yourselves, what are micro-moments?

Micro-moments are moments when someone is looking for answers, I want to know, I want to go, I want to do, and I want to buy.  Moments when the spotlight of intent is shimmering in our direction.

For example, when someone walks by a person that has a yellow umbrella and thinks to themselves, “Hey, I really like that umbrella!” They will often times then look up yellow umbrellas online to purchase now or in the future. This is a micro-moment!

Today 65 percent of transactions start on mobile. With such a high shift towards the use of mobile phones, it is more important now than ever to take advantage of these moments.

As a marketing professional, I cannot stress enough how important it is to simply be there and be useful during the consumer decision journey. This includes asking yourself several questions regarding this journey.

1. What do consumers want to learn about your category, products, or services?
2. Are you helping consumers find nearby branches and locations on their mobile devices?
3. Where are consumers researching your products? How can you support consumers who are researching on-the-go?

It is very important to be prepared to answer these questions for the consumer the first time they get onto your site. Without utility in the moment, not only will consumers move on, they actually might not ever come back.

For more information about how to utilize micro-moments, check out:

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/micro-moments/future-of-marketing-machine-learni...

Digital user experiences are more important than ever. Whether it’s on the web, mobile, or a digital assistant, consumers’ relationships with technology continue to evolve. People are finding faster and more efficient ways to get things done. As a result, brands are no longer competing with other brands in their category. They’re now competing with the best digital experience a user has ever had.

First and foremost, what the heck is SEO??? SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the manipulation of key words within a website which allows search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) to decipher what your website has to offer. When someone conducts a search on the web, the search engine uses a very complex set of algorithms to find only the most relevant pages to that specific search. Search engines send robots, otherwise known as "spiders," to "crawl" through your pages to find the key words which are meticulously placed that relate to the search conducted in just fractions of a second. The more relevant the information found on your pages relates to the search, the higher you will place in that search. These are often referred to as "natural," "organic," or "earned" results. Effective use of SEO costs nothing, but will allow you to stand out to really rise above your competitors. 

Have you ever gone to visit a website on your phone only to find it takes to long to load or you can’t easily find the information you are searching for? Most consumers have a pretty short attention span and will abandon your website. In fact, KISSmetrics through Google(2013) found that 61% of visitors will abandon a site that isn't mobile-friendly and 40% of consumers will abandon a web page that takes longer than three seconds to load. With that short attention span, your website must be top notch and optimized to ensure you are not losing potential clients.

Have you ever noticed how simple it is to identify some business just by a simple image or logo they have? Recognizing a brand based solely on its logo is the result of consistency, repetitiveness and targeting through a huge market. Some companies have mastered this by even further by including a catchy tune or phrase so consistent- that it dominates the market. That simple tune- “I’m lovin it” is hard to mistake. It automatically plugs the hymn in with it in my mind. “Ba-da-da-da-dum… I’m lovin it.”** Have you figured it out yet?