It’s the most wonderful time of the year for businesses! Your business should have a holiday marketing strategy by now. But, if you haven’t planned out one yet, don’t worry. We will help you develop your holiday marketing strategy. 

In this blog, we listed some ideas that can help you get more sales and revenue this season. Without further ado, let’s dive into it!

Start Your Marketing Campaign Early

Start as early as possible! Before December rolls around, your target market should start thinking about your brand and their holiday shopping. This is why you should always need to work on your seasonal marketing campaign early.

Before November or December, holiday marketing campaigns can already be launched. Most people buy gifts early even though there are also many consumers who are prone to last-minute shopping. Get the attention of this audience by delivering out holiday advertisements and seasonal sales ahead of time. With this strategy, you can motivate these early shoppers to purchase your product.

It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year for CONTENT

Since it’s important to start your holiday marketing campaign early, it is in your best interest to also plan your holiday content in advance so you can be ready to publish once the timing is right.

By reading this blog, we know you are already thinking about it and that’s a great place to start!

You should not wait until the day before a sale to send an email, and you cannot expect to rank in SEO with your content overnight. You will have a wealth of holiday content ideas once it’s time to go live when you start today.

Try to take a look back at your previous holiday content and think about what you can learn. If you had content that performed well, maybe it only needs to be revised a bit to be updated. Use a holiday content calendar to stay on top of the year’s trending keywords. Of course, there may be some items from last season that you’d prefer to forget. You can also look for content from other websites to base your content when you create a new one. One more thing, you can also change your website design to a holiday theme.

Have A Compelling Offer or Give Out A Holiday Sale

Holiday discounts can serve important purposes. It can serve to drive sales for the busiest buying season of the year. It also makes your brand more competitive, with discounts being offered by competitors, so it is necessary to offer some holiday sales and special offers. 

You can also consider whether there is something you can add that comes at little or no cost. You can either give a bundle a product or service or maybe offer a free consultation. All you need is a little imagination.

Produce Festive Ads

You can focus on creating ads that feature a holiday theme in the ad copy or graphics, if you are investing in pay-per-click advertising, For example, your ad copy may put in the text layout, “Get the perfect gift this holiday season,” to emphasize the holidays and/or put holiday decor on your graphics. You can definitely extend this strategy to your content too.

Gratitude Is Always On-Trend

The theme of gratitude extends by weaving its way through all the season’s holidays because the end of the year is an emotional time. So might as well give thanks to your potential and existing customers this season.

Holiday content trends may come and go but what will never go out of style is showing gratitude for your customers and community. Consumers always love to hear they are  appreciated or have made an impact.

You can definitely do an entire gratitude campaign. The only caveat is that your expressions of gratitude must be genuine. So get personal! Some examples are providing a special offer or discount code for your loyal customers, hosting a giveaway, shouting out your customers or members of your audience on social media or creating hand-written notes or letters in every purchase.

iManila can definitely help you with your future holiday campaigns. With 26 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative information technology, web, and digital solutions. 

As one of the best web hosting providers in the Philippines, iManila is also a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, technical support, and digital marketing services needs.  Talk to us!

The holiday season is just around the corner and so are the holiday shoppers. In a survey, 85% of consumers said that online shopping is part of their holiday shopping plans. And as an online business owner, you cannot just disregard this statistic.

With that being said, is your business website ready for a high volume of website traffic and engagement? Review your web hosting plan. Everything depends on your hosting solution – performance, resources, security, control – everything!

If your e-commerce website is hosted on a dedicated server, there is no need to worry about its overall performance during the holidays. But, if it is hosted on a different server, you may want to make a switch before the holiday comes.

So, why migrate to a dedicated server? Let’s have a closer look.

Supports massive website traffic

If you have a shared web hosting plan, your website would have a hard time to deliver high quality performance when a certain number of daily visitors is reached. This is because resources are split among multiple websites in this type of solution.

Unlike with a dedicated server, even if your business website exceeds 1,000 daily unique visitors, high quality service is guaranteed.

Increases security

Expect hackers and other cyber threats to be on the prowl during the holidays. Increase your website’s security and protection by moving it to a dedicated server. This solution provides stronger security than a shared server. 

For instance, distributed denial of service (DDoS) has been on the rise for years. It refers to a cyber threat that floods a site with fake traffic in order to shut down a server. If you’re using a shared server, you don’t stand a chance against DDoS resulting in downtime during the holidays. However, with a dedicated server you get to enjoy DDoS protection and the capability to add more protection as needed.

This is also highly recommended for those business websites that deal with sensitive, large amounts of private data.

Improves page loading speed

Slow page-loading time can be frustrating. If your page takes longer than three seconds to load, expect holiday shoppers to abandon you. Plus, it could harm your search engine optimization (SEO), making it hard for potential customers to find you.

But, the good news is that you can optimize your page loading speed by migrating to a dedicated server. Again, since the server is exclusive for your use alone, therefore, all the resources are for your own consumption too.

Provides huge storage capacity

In a shared web hosting solution the storage is limited since the server’s storage is shared to multiple websites. Unlike with a dedicated server, the storage is all yours. You will be needing all that storage for the holidays. Imagine, holiday content, promotions, shoppers’ data, web design – all of these take a huge storage space.

Gives you peace of mind during the holidays

As an entrepreneur, you’ll be worrying about a lot of things this holiday season – inventory, marketing campaigns, sales, and others. By having a dedicated server, you can cross out your business website’s performance on the list. You’ll have the assurance that your website will perform at its best, working for your advantage during the holiday season.

Gear up for the holiday season. Keep up with the demands of the occasion than be sorry later on. Upgrade your hosting plan now to a dedicated server with iManila!

With 26 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative information technology, web, and digital solutions. 

As one of the best web hosting providers in the Philippines, iManila is also a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, technical support, and digital marketing services needs.  Talk to us!

Christmas is just around the corner and a lot of people have already started spreading Christmas spirits through their websites. How about you? If you haven’t done any preparation yet for your site, don’t worry, you still have time to make some quick changes.

To make the process a bit faster, we have prepared some web design tips to make your website merry during the holidays.  So, let’s get started!

Consider holiday color scheme

Try adjusting the colors of your current web design to come up with a shade associated with the holidays without losing your branding. For example, if your brand color is red, you may adjust it to a burgundy red, maroon, or crimson. If it’s blue, try the shade cyan cobalt blue and maybe add some touches of silver. Play with your website’s color scheme and you’ll find how your website can easily carry a unique holiday theme.

Choose eye-catching CTAs

Call To Actions (CTAs) that are holiday inspired are a great way to gather online customers in the Christmas shopping spirit. CTAs like “sweet treats from us to yours”, “12 days of surprises”, “‘tis the season to glam up” and such will definitely catch your website visitors’ attention.

Just as well, don’t forget to put importance in the proper placement of your CTAs on your business website. Put it on your homepage where people can immediately see it. You may also insert it on other high-traffic subpages of your site if you want.

Add creative banners or pop-ups

While some may call it a “call to action”, banners or pop-ups are a good addition to your site. It allows your business website to have more space for images and links. You could use this to highlight special holiday offers or a link to your holiday catalog. It’s great for extra emphasis.

Switch your fonts

For a holiday themed web design, consider choosing unique font designs that are often used during holiday greetings or on holiday decorations. In that way, you can also lift the spirit of the holiday to your consumers. Consider cursive fonts, which is a very popular choice among e-commerce websites.

Update your business logo

You can change your logo by adding some holiday decorations into it. You can either change it into a holiday themed color or add a Santa Claus hat. This is to show your consumers that you are celebrating the holidays with them.

Include holiday offers

Add some holiday offers to your business website. May it be a holiday item, a christmas card, or holiday gift wrappers, it would be a great addition to your site. Just make sure that it is still in line with the brand or product that you are originally selling.

Add holiday themed photos

For the final web design tip, add holiday themed photos. Since you already changed your website color, fonts, and so on, use Christmas themed photos as well. In this way, it will look more put together.

We hope that these web design tips help you redesign your website for the holidays. You can always continually edit your website to accommodate for specific holidays ahead. Don’t forget to create quick changes to your social media pages as well to lift up the spirit of Christmas.

Need help redesigning your website? Talk to the experts of iManila!

With 26 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative information technology, web, and digital solutions. 

As one of the best web hosting providers in the Philippines, iManila is also a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, technical support, and digital marketing services needs.  Talk to us!

With the growing popularity of Facebook nowadays, it is no surprise that many businesses utilize this platform for online advertising. If you’re one of those people who are planning to invest in social media advertising specifically in Facebook Ads but don’t know where to start, then you’re in the right place! 

In this blog, we listed various types of Facebook Ads to help you decide what’s perfect for your business! Read to know more.

Types of Facebook ads

Stories ads

Stories ads are a type of digital marketing that shows up when users are watching stories rather than scrolling through their news feed. Since stories are trending right now, this is actually a great way to promote your products. To make it effective, your image or videos must appear in a vertical format so that they can work properly.

Messenger ads

Messenger ads are a great option for businesses that want to add a personal touch to their products and services. They usually appear in users’ chat tabs as well as in between messenger stories. When using this type of ad, you can edit the messenger chat and redirect them to their preferred destination. It can either redirect to your website, app, or a direct message with your Facebook page.

Augmented reality ads

If you want something different and want to give a unique experience to your audience, then Augmented reality ads are definitely a great option to use. In this ad, users have the ability to view your products from new angles and virtually explore the products. Overall, this gives your audience a realistic shopping experience.

Image ads

As the name suggests, image ads use photos to advertise products and services. It allow marketers to use boosted posts or create dedicated ads for Facebook image ads and a call to action.  Take note that Facebook recommends keeping the words to less than 20% of the image. Too many words may be distracting for users. As a result, it could lead to the rejection of your ad.

Video ads

Video ads are one of the most popular Facebook ads that are used today as it tends to be more engaging and informative. This is perfect for start-up businesses to use since it is highly engaging and effective to use. Currently, more than 1.25 billion people consume video on the platform each month. To make this type of ad effective, all you need to do is follow your video requirements, including Facebook ad sizes, aspect ratio, and video length.

Instant Experience ads

This is another type of ad that gives users a unique experience. Basically, Instant Experience Ads feature a full-screen, multimedia ad that delivers rich content experiences to audiences. Compared to other social media ads in this list, it has a lot of capabilities that allow users to view images, watch videos, swipe through carousels, click through to tagged products, and even tilt to pan for unique angles. Overall, this is a highly engaging Facebook ad type and leverages a combination of assets to give your audience an immersive user experience.

Poll ads

If you’re a start-up business or planning to launch a new campaign and want to know the interests of your audience, Poll ads are the way to go! This type of ad gives marketers the ability to survey their targeted audience with a question, offering them two answers to choose from. This is an effective ad for boosting engagement with your existing audience, as well as generating brand awareness among new potential customers.

Slideshow ads

Slideshow ads are a great option to use if your team is simply looking to repurpose ad assets you already have. What happens here is Facebook takes your image ads and puts the files together in a slideshow video format. This can help you leverage the power of video without needing an extra budget for videos, which can be costly.

Collection ads

If you have a commerce platform for your business and want to turn Facebook users into online buyers, then collection ads might work for you. It features a main image or video, as well as three smaller images that showcase your other products underneath. Moreover, once they click this ad, it can redirect them to the actual commerce website to purchase the product.

Carousel ads

Similar to collection ads, it lets marketers feature images to advertise their products. The only difference is that carousel ads can feature up to 10 images or videos. What’s great about this is that every image or video can have a unique link, so this is a great Facebook ad type if you’re promoting a product collection.

Lead ads

Lead ads are beneficial for business owners who are looking to grow their email database and potential customers. With this social media ad, digital marketers can create a survey form that the audience can fill out and submit a form. Moreover, lead ads auto-populate most of the fields in the survey so people can fill it out easily. As a result, it reduces friction, which makes them more likely to complete the signup form.

Dynamic ads

Dynamic ads is a type of social media marketing strategy that connects your store’s product catalog with your Facebook. Compared to other ads here in this list, the ads they see are personalized and relevant to their personal interests. With this ad, you can create carousel ads for different categories and show them to users who’ve visited pages within the corresponding category.

Now that you know all the options, invest in a digital marketing agency now, and let us help you achieve your Facebook advertising goals!

With 26 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative online marketing services in the Philippines. iManila is a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, technical support, and digital marketing services needs. 

Work together with top advertising and digital marketing agencies in the Philippines like iManila and make your brand goals become reality. Talk to us!

An auction takes place for the keyword every time there is an ad spot on a search engine results page. Multiple factors including bid amount and ad quality decide who will appear in the top position.

These auctions are what keeps the gears of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising moving. They begin when someone searches for something on a search engine.

Now, what is PPC?

Pay-Per-Click is a form of Search Engine Marketing. It is a model of digital marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time their ads get a click. It’s a way of buying visits to your site, rather than attempting to “earn” those visits organically.

What are the different types of PPC?

One of the most common types of PPC is the paid search ad. When people search for things online, especially if it’s a commercial search – meaning, the user is looking for something to buy – these ads appear automatically.

This could be anything from a mobile search to a local service search like someone looking for a caterer in their area to someone shopping for a gift searching “best anniversary gift for wife”. These searches trigger pay-per-click ads.

In pay-per-click advertising, businesses running ads are only charged when a user actually clicks on their ad, hence the name “pay-per-click.”

Other forms of PPC advertising include display advertising, typically, serving banner ads and remarketing.

What are keywords and why do we use them?

Connecting advertisers to users’ search queries, keywords lie at the center of PPC advertising. Queries are the actual words that users type into the search box of a search engine to find results.

Marketers use keywords to target users by matching their queries. Keywords work as generalized abstractions of a wide range of search queries prone to irregularities like misspellings. Advertisers can match search queries with more or less precision, depending on the keyword match types they use. It can be a broad match, phrase match, or exact match. 

Budgets & Bids

Advertisers need to choose how much they are willing to spend on a given keyword to participate in the auction.

Budgets should be set depending on the overall campaign strategy, but bids are a more precise way of controlling spend.

When creating a campaign, all ad groups must have bids, but keyword-level bids override ad group level bids. Most advertisers use automated bidding strategies. This allows them to set a specific goal for their campaigns and identify the most appropriate bid for each auction. It can be applied to individual campaigns or a portfolio of multiple campaigns.

This may sound a lot to you especially if you’re new to the online advertising world. But, don’t worry because iManila is here to help!

A certified and badged Google Partner since 2019, iManila is also a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, technical support, and digital marketing services needs.

Work together with top advertising companies in the Philippines like iManila and make your brand goals a reality. Talk to us!

Why do we need a website developer? What do they do? Such technologies as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript define the way we interact with the websites we see online. But what remains the crucial or sensitive part of a website development life cycle are the stages of information gathering, planning, and post-launching.

In this blog we will discover how the general website development process may look like. Here are seven important steps in the process of developing a website:

1. Information Gathering
2. Planning
3. Design
4. Content Writing and Assembly
5. Coding
6. Testing, Review & Launch
7. Maintenance

Step 1. Gather Details & Information: Purpose, Main Goals, and Target Audience

This is the stage of discovering and researching, and finding out what the steps will look like. The most important task at this point is to understand your future website’s objective and target audience in order to understand what kind of website you will need to build in the first place. 

Step 2. Plan: Sitemap Creation

At this second stage of the business website development cycle, the website developer creates data that allows a user to see and judge how the whole website will look like.

From the information that was gathered together in the first phase, the sitemap is created.

The sitemap should show the relations between the main areas of your business website. It must  show you the “relationship” between the different pages of a website, so you can judge how easy it will be for the end-user to find the required information.

Step 3. Design/Layout: Review and Approval 

In this third stage, you’ll be able to see your business website slowly come to life. All  visual content – photos and videos – are created. This is when you’ll first be able to see what your website could look like – applying your business’ branding colors and guidelines. During this stage, take note to always keep your target audience in mind imagining what they will think once you see your website for the first time. 

Step 4.  Content Writing

Content writing should not be underestimated.  In this fourth step, it is important to put in writing everything you would like to communicate to the end users of your business website. Take note to add call-to-action action buttons clearly indicating what you would like your end users to do once they have read your content. Don’t rush into this step. Consider the right headlines to ensure that your users immediately understand what your business is all about. 

Step 5. Coding

This step will take up the longest time in the entire website development process. This fifth step – which is the most important step – is the phase in the process when a website developer essentially creates your website using a unique programming language that will allow it to be available and usable online. Be extremely patient during this step of the website development process as website coding may take some time especially if your business website requires a lot of functionalities. We recommend you hire a trusted professional to do this especially if you don’t have the coding experience or expertise yourself. 

Step 6. Test, Review, and Launch

Every single link should be tested just to make sure that there are dead links or errors in any pages. Check every single form and call-to-action button. Review all content to find any possible typographical errors. Very important: Check to see for the site’s mobile responsiveness as well. 

Step 7. Maintenance: Regular Updating

A website is more of a service. It’s not enough to just deliver a business website to a business owner. You should also consider that every detail or element always works right. Most importantly, always be prepared to update any and all content, upgrade features and functionalities and create any changes as your business evolves and grows.

Bear in mind that website development doesn’t start with just coding and doesn’t end after the day you finally launch or complete your business website. Owning a business website is a continuous process of updating, upgrading and maintaining. Ensure that you are either familiar with how your website works or you have someone on call to help ensure that it’s perfectly secure and efficient for your target audiences.

With 26 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative online marketing services in the Philippines. iManila is a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, technical support, and digital marketing services needs.

Work together with top advertising companies in the Philippines like iManila and make your brand goals become reality. Talk to us!

When planning a business website, most people focus on how it will look and its functionalities. Other important elements such as its domain name becomes an afterthought. That shouldn’t be the case.

In fact, domain names should be prioritized as well. Why? Well, for starters, your business’ website domain name is your business’ online name and address. People will search you using this name. You will be regarded with this name. And of course, with over 1.3 billion websites on the internet, having your own unique domain name is just a no-brainer.

But, wait! This is just the tip of the iceberg. Learn more about how a domain name can benefit your business in the long run and why it’s worth your money. Read below!

A Domain name makes your business searchable

When you create your business website on a third-party website hosting provider, they will give you a subdomain as part of your address. You’ll end up with an address that looks similar to this hostsite.com/yourname, which can be difficult to remember.

By publishing your website on your own domain name, users would be more likely to remember you. Aside from it being straightforward, there’s no extra characters to type or remember. Having a domain name that’s short and easy to remember allows users to visit and revisit your website easily. 

A Domain name makes your business professional (and legitimate)

Having your content on a third-party blogging site and having an address like this hostsite.com/yourname can seem unprofessional. Plus, given that these third-party blogging platforms are usually used for informal sharing, it would be harder to build a trustworthy, professional identity.

Meanwhile, buying a domain name shows that your business is legitimate. It boosts your business’ professionalism online and gives an impression that you have long term business goals. It tells online users that you want to be seen and found by them anytime, anywhere. 

A Domain name gives you control

Having a domain name gives you control in two ways. First, it gives you full control over your page. When you use a third-party platform, chances are when the site closes down, it will take everything on it – including all of your content and online identity. It’s horrible. Some third parties even claim full ownership of everything posted there. When this happens, you have no right to do whatever you please with your content.

Second, having a domain name gives you control over your online identity. When you buy a domain name, it’s yours exclusively. No one on the internet can use it as long as you’re paying for it. Think of it as the most affordable branding tool there is in the market.

Chances are – The Domain Name You Want is Already Taken 

If you’re still hesitant whether to buy a domain name or not for your business website, just do it. Do your business a favor and purchase your online address today. A basic domain name is so affordable – you don’t need to think twice. With thousands of businesses being registered everyday – chances are that the domain name you want is no longer available – and once all of the possible variations of your business domain name have been purchased, you will most likely not be able to own it anytime soon (or at least not for an affordable price).

We can help! Check here now if your preferred domain name is still available!

With 26 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila – a digital marketing agency, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative online marketing services in the Philippines that can help convert your website visitors into quality leads or potential customers.

As one of the best web hosting providers in the Philippines, iManila is also a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, technical support, and digital marketing services needs.  Talk to us!

PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages that is most commonly used by many web developers today.

To date, the World Wide Web Technology Surveys (W3Techs) have seen that PHP is used by over 78% of all the websites that use a server-side programming language. This means that for almost every 8 out of 10 websites you visit, PHP plays a very vital role. In addition, this scripting language also plays an important role in all websites using a WordPress content management system (CMS).

This general-purpose language not only is responsible for adding functionality to web pages but also for applying Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) to websites. However, as with any piece of software, PHP has a release life cycle it has to adhere to in order to make improvements. In order for PHP to maximize its functions, constantly updating your PHP version is very important. If you still have never tried updating your PHP version, we recommend considering to do so by checking out some of the benefits it can provide your website once it has been updated:

Security

By updating your PHP version, you will be able to ensure that your website is running on a version that is fully supported and regularly updated for security threats. Some of the threats that may affect your website include: 

• DoS
• Code execution
• Overflow
• Memory corruption
• XSS
• Directory traversal
• Information traversal
• Retrieval

Keep in mind, numerous vulnerabilities inherent to older PHP versions become exposed, so updating constantly is important.

Support

Another reason why you need to update your PHP version is the support that it provides your website. Remember, the older your PHP version is, the more prone it is to threats, therefore increasing the chances of your site having issues. Not only that, developers who are working on your website project may encounter big problems if you have an outdated website.

Having a supported PHP version ensures that your websites are regularly monitored and improved.

Better opportunities for Web Developers

Most website developers prefer to work on newer versions of PHP simply due to the fact that there have been so many new features added between PHP 5.2 and PHP 7.4. Some of the new features include:

• Combined comparison operator
• Null coalesce operator
• New type hinting
• Anonymous classes
• Nullable types
• Iterable and void returns
• Multi-catch exception handling
• Keys usable in lists
• More negative string offsets
• Number operators and malformed numbers
• HTTP/2 server push
• Preloading
• Spread operator in array expression
• Arrow functions 2.0 (short closures)
• Null coalescing assignment operator
• Typed properties 2.0
• Weak references
• Covariant returns and contravariant parameters
• New custom object serialization mechanism

In Summary: The Importance of upgrading your PHP versions

Overall, upgrading your PHP to the latest version is a great way to ensure the security of your website. Not to mention, newer versions of this programming language will not only offer performance improvements, but also help with compatibility issues and overall performance as well.

Don’t know where to begin? No idea on how to update the PHP version of your website? Get help from the industry experts. 

With 26 years of experience in the industry and an IT company at its core, iManila, having been one of the first Internet Service Providers in the Philippines, is committed to providing our clients with innovative online marketing services in the Philippines. iManila is a full-service business web development company and digital marketing agency in the Philippines ready to help you with your web design and development, website update and maintenance, web hosting, email hosting, technical support, and digital marketing services needs. Contact us today!