What Should Be Your Digital Marketing Resolutions for 2016

As the New Year approaches, it’s already too late to waste time in thinking what you could have done to make your digital marketing strategies better or what could have gone right (or wrong) throughout the passing year. If you’re not having a competently designed Digital Marketing strategy and sensibly implementing it, it’s wise to set some crucial Digital Marketing resolutions for 2016. Let the coming year be a year of efficiency and success. Here’s a list of some top Digital Marketing resolutions for 2016, as the new year is waiting to start in only a few days (or I should say hours?)

What Should be Your Digital Marketing Resolutions for 2016

Embracing New Social Media Platforms and Saying ‘Good Bye’ to the Wrong Ones:
It’s on top of my list of Digital Marketing resolutions for 2016 because I believe many of the business are already making a lot of mistakes by wasting time and money on social networks that don’t even matter to their customers and avoiding networks that could open the door to success for them. I’ve seen so many businesses being on networks just for the sake of being there. It’s not only increasing the monetary cost of managing these pages or profiles but also killing a lot of time. It’s time to say “good bye” to all the networks that you think don’t bring good leads to you. If your potential customers are not on a social network, eliminate it from your list. Hurry up! On the other hand, you may also be missing out on some platforms that are important for your industry. Embrace new social media platforms if your future and existing customers are already present there!

Cleaning up the Messes:

Spend a day or two in cleaning up all the messes made on your website, analytics and social media profiles. May it be a page that takes too long to load on your visitors’ browsers or a page location that leaves your visitors with nothing but a blank 404 page. Go through every corner of your website to look for a mess and when you find one, fix it right away! It’s not just your website, fix problems on your Google Analytics account, too. As seen in most cases, spam bots are very active when it comes to ruining your analytics. You can use filters to exclude traffic coming from referrer spam websites or use a plugin on your WordPress website that blocks bots, such as, Bot Block or Analytics Spam 
Blocker. Here’s a list of notorious spam bots:

List Of Spam Bots

That’s not all! You need to clean up your social media accounts too. Make sure that you remove all the unwanted and spammy posts and ban spammers from your list of followers. Also, make sure that your description text, images, post captions etc. are all in good shape.

Revising Tracking Data and Re-assigning Your Goals:

You need to set your goals for a year even before it starts. If you have set goals for 2015, it’s time to revise them for the New Year. Also, you may be tracking conversions using conversion pixel or retargeting your audience using Google AdWord’s remarketing pixel. Make sure that you make all the changes that are necessary to keep your tracking data up to date.

Focusing on Mobile:

As Danyl Bosomworth stated in one of his articles published on Smart Insights, the number of mobile users accessing the internet has surpassed the number of desktop users in early 2014. We live in a world where your customers are not only using different devices to visit your website but also, the same customer is visiting your website using different devices. There you see how important responsive design can be for your buyer’s journey and the ultimate success of your business! If your website is not mobile friendly already, you’re losing a substantial number of customers, every day. Let your website go responsive, now! Desktop-only websites are slowly turning less useful. On top of that, search engines like Google penalize websites that are not mobile-friendly.

Diving Into Analytics:

If you’re not already keeping your eyes on the traffic that visit your website and how they interact with it, you’re in darkness. Start using web analytics from the year ahead. Google Analytics is a handy tool for webmasters all over the world. If you are using WordPress, we have a tutorial for you on how to set up Google Analytics on your WordPress websites. Google Analytics sheds light on the interaction between your website and its visitors. It shows you who visit your website, what they do while they are on your website when they visit your website, where did they come to your website from and much more. More importantly, analytics is important when it comes to measuring your content’s performance, your website’s SEO and your online advertising ROI (Return on Investment.) Google Analytics is free to use. It offers powerful custom reports. It also helps you in tracking your digital marketing campaigns. There’s no time to waste! Start using analytics from the coming year.

A/B Split Testing:

When it comes to online advertising, A/B split testing is way too important for maximizing your ROI. It’s a strategy in marketing in which two versions (A and B) are tested against each other. Your key goal is to identify changes that increase the chance of what you desire to happen, happening. For example, you can use two versions of landing pages to see which one performs better. Once you gain insight into the comparison, you can eliminate the low-performing one and increase your advertising budget on the high-performing one. Same goes for your email marketing campaigns. A/B split testing is useful in cases of Facebook advertising, Google AdWord campaigns, Email marketing etc.

Creating Contents That Matter to Your Customers:

Have you heard the saying ‘Content is king?’ In today’s world of business, content is at the heart of your marketing. Right content, when created for the right audience at the right time, can both bring new prospects for the business and demonstrate the business’s expertise in the relevant industry. Start a blog for your business, if you don’t have one already! A blog is the best way to attracting your potential customers or clients to you, instead of trying to approach them. Effective content marketing is all about creating high-quality content that matters to your customers, may it be a blog post educating them about the product or service they need, or a video showing how to use your product, or may be an infographic that your customers find useful at the stage of the buying process they’re at. Educate your customers, provide meaningful information to them, help them make their purchase decisions, create value to your potential buyers. That’s how you kickstart content marketing. You need to promote your content all across the web to make sure that it reach the right people at the right time. This continuous process of value creation will step by step move your potential customer closer to your business. If you don’t have an efficient content strategy, get your content marketing efforts started from the new year.

I’ve stated only a few vital Digital Marketing resolutions for 2016. Let me know in the comment section if you have more to add to the list. I’d like to know about your Digital Marketing resolutions for 2016.

How to Name a Business

When you finally decide to start a new business, the first question you ask yourself is “What will be the name of my business?” If you have no idea what to name a business this article will tell you how to choose one for yours. My guess is that you come up with about ten to fifteen names at first. But then you can’t be certain which one is the best. Maybe you make a list of top five names that you like. There still remains confusion! Choosing the right name for your business is the first step toward building a successful brand. Some entrepreneurs try to pick a name without thinking much and makes his first big mistake. Later on, when they realize that their business name has some serious issues, they want to change it by all means which costs them a lot of sufferings and in most cases, money. Remember that your company name will be on all of your products, websites, promotional materials etc. So naming a business is not to be taken carelessly. But then there’s no specific how-to guide that will help a startup hero choose the best name for his venture! But it is easy to avoid mistakes and consider the most important facts, Right? This article gives you a list of things to do and remember before you make a mistake in naming your startup.

How to Name a Business?

The first pain point is to find a list of names that reflect your identity. Take your pen and a piece of paper. Write down all your ideas. Among the names that came in your mind, you need to select 10 good business names. The only thing to remember while brainstorming is that your business name should be:

1. Easy to remember
2. Timeless/Everlasting
3. Easy to pronounce and
4. Easy to Spell

There are various ways popular companies have been named. Let’s have a look at the different methods.

Related to Product/Service/Industry: It is great to choose a name that is related to your business/offerings. Unfortunately, domains for this type of names are almost impossible to find available nowadays! It is hard to find a one-word domain still available. But if you are lucky enough to find a business-related name, that’s great!

Random Real-life Objects: There are some business names that have nothing to do with the business they are in, yet have been very popular, such as, apple, Amazon etc. But the problem with such names is that you have little chances to find domain names for them!

Misspelled Words: Another idea is to manipulate letters and misspell a popular word to get a business name, such as, fiverr, flickr, reddit etc. These names mean nothing, but if you spell them correctly, they mean something, such as fiver, flicker and read it!

Compound Words: A very effective way to name your business is combining two words into one and use it as the name of your business. For example, Facebook, LinkedIn, GoDaddy, Microsoft, MySpace, HootSuite etc. The best thing about this approach is that the domains are easier to find available for these names than for “one meaning word” names!

New Words: Sometimes, randomly made up words work best! At least, this method worked for a few popular brands, such a, Skype, Hulu, Meebo, Zynga, Zillow, Yipit etc. You can come up with one, but be careful about how it sounds. Don’t choose a made up word that sounds a lot like an existing negative word.

Google It
You surely do not want to take the hurdle of explaining which similar sounding business firms have nothing to do with your business. Before you pick a name, google it! See what comes up. Try image search! Without doing this, you may have to face embarrassment afterwards. Who knows! For example, I’ve once picked a name for one of my very serious themed business, that I found very similar to the name of a pornographic website. Thank God I decided to google it before selecting the name.

Check if Domain Name is Available:
It’s not easy to find a domain available for a business name unless the name is absolutely meaningless! Once you have a list of names that you’d like to consider, try checking for domain availability for all of them. You can use this tool for this purpose. The worst mistake some entrepreneurs make is that they add a hyphen (-) in the domain. Never commit this sin! This way you will only make it harder for your possible clients/customers to find you online. If you don’t find a domain available for a name, forget the name! Go for the others. Always pick .com at first. Aim at .com .net and .org simultaneously.

Social Media Handles:
Nowadays, it is nearly impossible to conduct business without having strong presence in social media. It boosts your company’s growth. List out the names of the social networking websites that your business will be active on. Now check if the names are available on those websites.

Seek Opinion From Others:
When you have a very short list of names, it’s time to go out and seek opinions from others. Don’t just ask your friends and family members for opinions. This is where a lot of entrepreneur go wrong! Most of them will never tell you the harsh truth about your business name. You need to consult the people you’re going to sell to. Seek opinion from them. This way you can get the most genuine opinion you could ever get! But here’s something you should know! Sometimes you need to be a little autocratic! Just because 10 out of 15 people have chosen a name, you don’t need to pick that. You need to consider your intuition too! That’s the best thing about being an entrepreneur. If they don’t like what you liked, ask them why? If they like what you didn’t like so much, ask them why? The idea is to mix a little bit of your own intuition and opinions from others.

At this point, I’m almost certain about the fact that you have one or two names in your list. Now it’s time to confirm whether these names are legal to use.

Is This Name Registered by Some Other Entity?

Now that you know that your name has no issues with domains and social media handles, the next step is to pick a name that is not in use in the state/country you are going to conduct your business operations in. It is important to know if someone else has already registered the name you’d like to select. Some states have made database searches available. Which means, you can simply search the availability online or consult the authority. If this service is not available in the place where your business will operate, go visit the authority. Go to the US Patent and Trademark Authority Office to make sure that the name is not taken.

This way, you can get one or two names. Choose one. It is easier to choose one out of two options than one out of ten or fifteen options. Now that you know what and how to name a business, pick the right name. When you have the name ready, register the domains (.com, .net and, if possible, .org) and social media handles. Also, register the company name as per the local legal system.