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How to Generate Sales using Social Media

The growth of Social Media usage is a huge factor in why social selling has been adopted. The process of engaging with potential customers through the use of social media is continuously emerging. Your goal is to turn your target audience into loyal and paying customers.

If you are ready to move beyond brand awareness and engagement, here are some ways to generate sales using social media: 

  1.   Choose the most relevant Social Media Platform.

When it comes to social selling, the first step is to first determine the right platform where your target audience is most active. Don’t get caught up in the huge world of social networks. Make sure that you consider your audience demographics.

How do you know which one is right for your business? Should you focus on one platform? What about all of them? Choosing the right platform to sell on is similar to choosing the right platform to use as your social media outlet.

If you’re selling products to a more youthful audience, use Facebook and Instagram. If you sell products or services aimed towards businesses and professionals, then we would recommend you try Facebook and LinkedIn. You may also consider YouTube and Twitter.

Take note as well that, the more places you are, the more exposure your brand will have. The more options you offer to consumers; the more customers you will attract.

  1.   Provide Value by sharing relevant content.

Today, content marketing is the favorite method of most marketers. It is always effective to raise brand awareness, build entire communities around a business and, in the end, drive incremental sales. There are also a few pros and cons when it comes to user generated content.

More than 50% of B2B buyers seek out information on products and services on Social Media. Therefore, every business has a great opportunity to create quality content, and once successfully achieved, it becomes the most powerful way to convince prospects to become customers.

  1.   Advertise on Social Media.

One of the fascinating things about social advertising is that there is virtually no limit to your ability to scale. We’re here to tell you that advertising and selling on social media is here to stay.

Social Media Advertising will increase your brand’s visibility by widening the audience of your educational, engaging, and entertaining content. It helps boost your leads and sales by reaching people that are more likely to be interested in your products and services.

There is no better marketing strategy for e-commerce sites than social media ads. No other avenue can deliver consistent and quality leads and gain customers than by creating engaging with your direct clients through social media. It’s important to choose your platform, run your campaign and get the most out of social media ads.

Your future customers are already on social media shopping at exactly this moment. If they aren’t looking for your products and searching for your services, then it means they are probably being served by your competitors. Don’t allow that to happen. 

We at iManila, with 25 years of experience in the industry, can help you set up your Social Media business account, assist you with social media management, social media ads, and your other digital marketing needs. We can help you create, generate and maintain business by engaging with your customers through your different social media platforms. 

iManila is committed to providing our clients with innovative digital solutions. We are a full-service website development and digital marketing agency ready to help you with your website design and development, hosting, and digital marketing needs. Inquire now and message us today!

Benefits of Managed Hosting for Businesses

In the past few years we’ve seen the growth and popularity of the cloud as a channel for businesses to host their data. However, for those who want more control over their data, deploying more traditional means of web hosting is still a viable option. A lot of businesses have a misconception that because they want more control over their data that they would need to invest a large amount for dedicated IT technicians to manage their hosting requirements. This is where our managed hosting services comes into the picture. 

What is Managed Hosting?

Much like dedicated hosting, Managed Hosting is where a web provider (ISP) owns servers that single or multiple customers rent and utilize. With Managed Hosting, it is the providers who manage the hardware and operating system on behalf of their clients. This lets companies concentrate more on their own website maintenance and other business activities as they let the provider do the hosting for them. 

Cost effectiveness 

This is the best benefit you can get from Managed Hosting. Having a managed hosting service contract saves you a great deal of money for having dedicated IT technicians in your company. The right provider can carefully assess what your company needs and cater their service only based on what you need at the very moment. 

Because businesses would be paying for a service, they would need to just incur a monthly fee. This means that the costs are predictable and easy to manage. With the provider doing the hosting for them, any issues that would arise on their side, especially when it comes to uptime and availability, would have to be handled by the provider.

Savings in time and effort 

Fixes such as maintenance of the server, software updates, and data storage would not be the concern of the business as they let their provider manage all of these. This lets the business focus their time and attention to running the business operations and do what they do best. For businesses with no existing IT department, this is a huge benefit as they do not need to hire people or spend time mastering the technology and networks. If you’re wondering if it’s finally time to upgrade your hosting package, you’re right! 

Managed Hosting also means that the company would only need to interact with one party which is the hosting provider, instead of taking matters into their own hands. This frees up the time spent evaluating many different parties involved when managing IT technology. 

Security 

The security of your server is one of the biggest priorities of any business. One of the hallmarks of a good hosting provider is one that can guarantee security. This can range from anywhere to security audits, spam filtering, firewall configurations, and OS updates. The hosting providers should be equipped to have all the tools and experience to deal with any issues related to server security. It is part of their job to cover for any security vulnerabilities and prevent any kind of attack. By having a managed hosting service contract, you can be assured that whenever your server is experiencing vulnerabilities, you have a team you can run to who will easily be able to address these issues. 

Guaranteed Uptime

Because the responsibility of managing the system as well as its troubleshooting is now placed on the provider, this means you are guaranteed of your system’s uptime. Server monitoring is an important aspect for any organization and because constant attention is needed for this, having a hosting provider can go a long way in making sure the network is up and running and is available for your business and your clients. 

Backups 

Data loss is something many companies wish to avoid altogether. This is why regular data backups are necessary to keep your server secure and intact. A Managed Hosting provider can give you that peace of mind because of the measures and processes they have to ensure that your data is properly backed up. 

For any business with a web or online presence, choosing the right hosting package is only the first step. Ensuring that you have an in-house or outsourced personnel to oversee your web and email hosting is another. Don’t lose precious business hours simply trying to figure out how to manage your hosting or server. Ask for help and secure a managed hosting service contract to ensure that your data is backed up properly and your hosting is properly secured and running. 

With 25 years of experience in the industry and as a certified IT company at its core, iManila is ready to help you with your hosting, website development, digital marketing and technical support needs. Learn how iManila can help manage your business’ hosting requirements. 

5 Social Media Strategies for Branding

Did you know that social media has been around for over 41 years now? But it wasn’t until Facebook launched its app a little over a decade ago, when businesses realized that it is actually a great tool for marketing. 

Social media bridges brands to the world. With almost 84% of today’s Internet users already on social media, it is no surprise how it came so easy for brands to build awareness and triple in revenue. On the onset of a business venture, what many experienced marketers and advertisers would suggest is to prioritize building your branding and later on your social media presence.  

To consistently communicate your brand across all the marketing touchpoints is already a lot of work, let alone social media. As a marketer, you should make sure that you communicate the same messaging tone in your email marketing campaign as well as in your social media platform. But how do you speak the same tone across different platforms? And how will you easily capture someone who’s a stranger to your brand? 

The answer is strategic branding. 

Branding isn’t only about fonts, logos, texts, imagery, or colors. It’s an emotion that you want your audiences to feel about you. These are basically unspoken feelings that speak so much about you. If your branding is tacky or messy then people would assume that the product might be messy too. But if you communicate your brand with professionalism and sincere intent, your branding will communicate that for you.  

What is branding? 

What a normal person would think if asked about branding would probably be a brand’s logo, its images, and such famous brands such as Coca-Cola, McDonalds or Apple. Well, people are not exactly wrong about that because these brands have made past the parameters of branding and marketing.  

Take it from Coca Cola. Did you know that 94% of the world’s population recognizes the brand? On top of that, it’s the second most understood word, next to “Okay”. That’s how powerful branding and marketing can be.  

The goal of branding is to create a character for your brand – what it values, what it serves, and how it is beneficial to people. It is generally how you want your brand to be seen. Your brand may not exist forever, but consumer’s perception will.  

Branding goals 

Upon creating your social media strategy, you should think of your objectives and what other things you want to accomplish. These are some common goals you should take note of.  

  • Driving awareness and consideration 
  • Building brand loyalty and trust 
  • Generating leads  
  • Increasing sales 
  • Providing high-standard customer service 
  • Increasing the value of the brand

Common Social Media Strategies 

Once you set up your goals, you should start strategizing your social media, set your target audiences, and start creating content fit for them. 

The following are the top social media strategies that you may refer to in creating yours:  

  • Start with the basics 

Color palettes, lines, shapes, texts, and imagery are your basics. Make sure that these basic requirements for branding swarm across your social media platforms.  

You may play around your banner photo or video on Facebook or twitter, and make sure to make your logo as your profile picture on all your platforms. This is important to allow people to instantly recognize your brand even only by staring at your cover image or reading your bio.  

One tip is to try to create a brand book which will serve as official documentation of your brand requirements as well as the correct usages and applications of your branding elements. It’s crucial that you create a brand book especially if you are working with an agency who manages your social media pages or website. 

Once you’re done with the basics, you may now move on to the intermediate stages.  

  • Improve your visual branding 

If your target markets are the Gen Z and the millennials, it’s apparent that you should extend your visual branding to a higher level. These groups of consumers are visual predators; they do not just settle for lackluster visuals.  

While getting high-quality visuals for your imaging is a good move, being consistent in using images that reflect your brand is also a must.  

Make sure that all the images that you use apply your brand colors or the type of graphics that you usually use. Doing so helps people to easily recognize your brand as the one using those unique styles.  

For example, Apple is known for its monochromatic black, white and gray visuals. While Louis Vuitton is popularly known for its brown-leather canvas with quatrefoils and the LV monogram that is immediately recognizable. While of course, Coca-Cola is very famous for its Christmas polar bear commercials. 

In short words, try to be unique and take time to shape your visual branding.  

  • Develop marketing personas 

Vary your marketing personas in each platform so you can easily resonate your message to them. You may have already set your target audiences in the beginning, but still try to create different personas to capture all different markets. For example, your audiences on Twitter could be millennials aged 22-30 while on Instagram your audiences could be the professional types. This way, you can narrow your content ideas depending on the people who mostly engage to your social media pages.  

  • Establish your brand voice 

This is pretty important especially that messaging is one great factor in a consumer purchase. Your voice should reflect the principles and attributes your brand is trying to build. For example, if your market is families or parents with kids then your brand voice should be tailored for them. Make your messaging more passionate and let it evoke a sense of concern for your target consumers.  

On the other hand, if your target market is the youngsters or children, then make your brand voice fun and relatable. And if they are the elderly, then you may need to be straightforward, honest, and should sound practical and valuable.  

These are only a few of the most important tactics in creating good branding for your social media campaigns and for your business. In this present time throughout the global pandemic, there are also different Social Media Strategies to consider. Whether your goal is to spread awareness or increase your sales, your branding should always reflect who you really are as a brand. 

Having difficult on where to begin? With 25 years of experience in the industry, iManila is dedicated to creating innovative digital solutions through its range of services such as website development, hosting, and digital marketing. Let’s work together to help get you started in moving your business online! Inquire now and message us today.

The Importance of Tech Support for your Business

All businesses are generally composed of individuals who specialize in different fields that add to the value of the company. One such team that many companies usually miss out on is the technical support team. 

Having a technical support department or team is fundamental especially if your business has been highly reliant on online tools and if your brand has been building its online presence. Having a technical support department basically ensures that there is a dedicated team to maintain your hardware and software systems, addressing your employees’ technical or connectivity concerns, and resolving all office-related technical issues.

There will be no perfect situation, especially in the digital realm. In this digital age when everyone is now online, the possible online security issues that you, your website and your emails can encounter is endless. So, if your business has a dedicated technical support team, it will be easier for your team to receive support not just when it comes to troubleshooting common problems, but it will help them get back to their tasks at hand with minimal technical issues and downtime. 

Here are some reasons why a technical support team is very important to your business:

Maintenance 

The main reason why a technical support team is much needed for your business is because hardware and software systems need maintenance. For many companies, if you have a website and you advertise your business online or rely on a system for your daily operations, you need to have a technical support team to assist in addressing common connectivity and technical concerns. Your technical support department is a dedicated team that should be responsible for resolving technical problems, working on technical aspects of a project, or implementing changes on a system as needed. Having a technical support team to lean on or utilize can be extremely useful for your business and helps minimize downtime in an otherwise working operational environment. 

Assistance 

As being said, a technical support team can resolve any technical or technological issue you are facing. Doing so helps other employees complete tasks efficiently and frees you up from doing menial work that may interrupt your usual tasks, business projects or in assisting client and customer concerns. The reality is, in this day and age, your company needs a dedicated and knowledgeable technical support specialist to assist you in handling your network, operating systems and connections. Imagine a whole office with network connectivity issues or with hardware and software concerns – and no knowledgeable person to help out with the situation! What kind of a chaotic office environment that would be! 

Partnership

Speaking of partners, in all businesses it is important to have a partner to help grow your business. So, when you sign a support service contract, you effectively sign a business partner. You have invested in them, and in return they invest in you. A support service builds a relationship with you and is there to assist you and help you grow. They want you to succeed and continue with your usual operations without much distractions. In addition to the business relationship, a personal relationship is also established. The personal relationship with you allows a support technician to tailor their work in a way that is most beneficial to you based on their knowledge and your company’s needs and objectives. 

You may also read through our blog about Tech Support benefits for your business.

Share your goals with us and be our partner in building your brand. With 25 years of experience in the industry, iManila, is an IT company at its core and is now a full-service digital marketing agency ready to help you from your technical support requirements to your website development needs, your hosting requirements to taking your business online through digital marketing. Visit our website at www.imanila.ph to learn more or drop us a message at [email protected].  

10 Tips to Boost your Website’s SEO

For someone who’s foreign to SEO, they say that it’s a slow burn. It’s true that SEO is indeed a slow burn, but regardless, it’s still the only way to rank higher in search engines organically. SEO is vital in making sure that your website is not only visible but also up to date.

There are lots of ways to know what is SEO and how to run a search engine optimization campaign. In this blog, we’ll provide you some tips on what to do to help boost your website’s SEO. 

Don’t Disregard your About Page

When you visit a website’s homepage, the next page most visitors click on is the About page to learn more about the brand and what it can offer. After all, the About page is the second most visited page, while the homepage remains to be the most visited one. Making brief yet understandable information about your brand keeps your visitors staying longer – which tells search engines that your website is of high importance and should be taken seriously due to many visitors staying longer on it.

To add more dazzle on your page, why not add a picture of yourself or your team members and at the same time, detailed information about what you do and your company’s mission and vision. Don’t forget to add important keywords related to your business to let search engines better understand what your brand is about. 

Your Homepage is also important

As important as your About page is your Homepage. Just like the detailed information in your about page, your homepage should also be filled with words relating to what you can do and the services or products you are most known for. While images may not be enough, make sure to have some written copy on your homepage. You can add a short description or a preview of your about page that will help increase visits to your inner pages.

Images need to be Optimized too

You’ll notice that most creative websites are filled with images. Aside from it being a part of their creative brand, having optimized images on your website also helps for ranking. Make sure to optimize those images to avoid having a slow website loading time, which affects the website ranking in Google searches.

Our tip: upload files that are not larger than 2,500 pixels. That’s enough to have high resolution images on any screen.

Fix your Titles and Descriptions

In Google Search, keywords are powerful, and so are your titles and descriptions. Use keywords that are relevant to your target market as visitors will click when they scroll through search results. But take note – not everything should be in your titles and descriptions. Pick out the most important words that will stand as your keywords. And make sure to keep it between 30 and 60 characters for titles and between 70 and 140 characters for descriptions.

Get your website certified with an SSL Certificate

More than putting the right information on your website – your website must be protected and security must never be a last priority. As visitors, we want to make sure that when we visit a website, it is protected from harmful problems and viruses. It is also important in search engines to have an SSL certificate to know that your website is secured and protected.

To secure an SSL certificate, iManila offers different packages depending on your needs. This ensures that the data shared between your website and your visitors are secured, encrypted, and safe from any hackers or intruders. This is apparent when the “padlock” symbol is present before the website’s URL and the https protocol becomes visible on the client browser.

Add a Blog Page

Having a blog page is one of the most essential needs prior to starting an SEO campaign for your website. This page will give you the opportunity to add more content and photos related to your brand. Much more is that you can write articles and hit targeted keywords for better ranking. Just choose the best blog content you want to feature to keep your visitors interested and coming back to read more. Having updated articles and blogs will greatly boost your website ranking in search engine algorithms.

Research on the best Keywords

As ‘Keywords’ are being mentioned several times in this blog, it is because it’s very important to research on the best keywords related to your brand to keep your website visible and in high ranks in search engines.

To intensify your keyword research, you can use Google Search Console to look at what keywords people are typically searching when they find your website.

Build your backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to your own. It is like a form of promoting a website from another website. Backlinks from other reputable websites with lots of traffic adds validity to your website in search engines. Backlinks typically happen organically when you publish great content on your website. Great content usually gets recognized by other websites and is organically shared without incurring additional costs. For websites that are very eager to rank higher and get backlinks immediately, you can contact high ranking websites directly to request for backlinks, or in some cases, pay for a guest post. Just make sure that you request a backlink from a legitimate and valid website that is related to your business. Otherwise, getting a backlink may just result in a higher bounce rate to your website. 

Avoid 404 pages

A lot of marketers often forget that as they focus on perfecting their SEO campaigns, that there are some 404 pages on their website – which is the page where your visitors end up when visiting a page that does not exist. 404 pages are basically roadblocks to visitors. This stops the flow of traffic between pages and often users who experience 404 pages drop out of the website immediately. Make sure to check on all of the pages to see that everything is working smoothly. 404 pages essentially does not help your website increase in ranking. 

Always connect your website to Google Analytics

This is highly important especially for someone who relies on results. Google Analytics lets you understand everything you want to know and all the data results you need for better understanding and future recommendations.

Google Analytics won’t help improve your SEO, but it will give you the chance to understand your users better and tell you what you may need to improve on in your website to help you rank better on search engines.

Now that we’ve mentioned these tips to help you get started on your SEO campaign, the next step is to stay updated with the latest trends to be visible and be on top of search results in the long run. As we said earlier, SEO is a slow burning process but well worth it in the end once you are ranking versus all of your competitors. 

iManila is your next big partner when it comes to website creation, website maintenance and website optimization. With 25 years of experience in the industry, iManila is a full-service website development and digital marketing agency ready to help you with your website design and development, hosting, and digital marketing needs. Let’s start your online journey now!

The Ultimate Guide for Facebook Ad Optimization Success

Optimizing an ad is more than just recalibrating audiences or installing pixels or SDKs for tracking. There’s a whole new world of optimization tactics that are just waiting to be unfolded. For someone new to this, it might take you time to master everything, but when you finally get a grasp of the process, all the rest will eventually come in handy.

For few others who are lucky enough to have already mastered ad optimization, they already know how optimization could improve their campaigns dramatically. In this article, we will introduce to you some tips and tricks to help you level up your Facebook ads campaigns.

In this guide, we will teach you how to:

  •     Increase your Click-through-Rate
  •     Lower Cost-per-Click
  •     Increase your Return-on-Ad Spend
  •     Increasing your sales without increasing your budget
  1.   Optimize the likes and shares of your ad

For some first-time advertisers, high engagements are their basis for success. It may be challenging to get lots of engagements especially if you are running brand awareness or reach-optimized ads which do not guarantee engagement at all.

Engagement in general is social proof but how will you get high likes and shares if you just started out your business? There’s a hack that might work for you.

When setting up a Facebook ad campaign, you’ve got two options, the default being: create new ads for every ad set and campaign. Advertisers usually create ads but this time try using “Use Existing Post”. This option gives you the opportunity to get all the engagement in one ad.

The tip is to publish the post on your Facebook Page and run multiple campaigns using that same ad.

  1. Optimize your ad schedule 

If you are running your ads on a schedule, you may need to try running it 24/7 or have Facebook use its algorithm. The reason behind this is that you may not want to miss any opportunity that you probably already had.

But if you feel like that there should only be a specific time to activate your ads, well then try checking your performance data on the ads manager. There you can access which times of the day and days of the week your ads perform the best.

Although running your ad 24/7 can be beneficial to your brand, creating a custom schedule can also help in decreasing your Ad frequency so your audiences won’t get bored with your ads quickly.

  1. Avoid recycling your ad creatives

Don’t ever bore your audiences with the same old graphics. This is a crucial key point that advertisers should be aware of themselves.

What you can do to avoid this is to do these optimization hacks:

  •         Create ad variations with different ad designs;
  •         Set up a campaign with multiple ad sets and different ads, and schedule every ad set to be active on a different weekday.

This way, people won’t see the same ads every day.

  1. Optimize your ad placements

Ad placements play a huge impact on an advertising campaign especially on its ad costs.

Some advertisers choose to advertise only on specific platforms like Instagram alone or most of the time just Facebook placements. What people don’t know is that you can miss massive opportunities by limiting your placements to just Facebook alone. Try using “Automatic placements”.

From there, log in to Facebook Ads Manager and use the breakdown menu to break down your campaigns by placement to see which placement had the most engagement.

After knowing your best ad placements, go ahead and optimize your campaigns accordingly:

  •         Increase your bids on the top-performing ad placements;
  •         Remove ad placements that underperformed or did not perform at all.
  1.  Always A/B test

What other way to clearly see the effectiveness of your ads than doing an A/B Test? Always try to test to see which works and which does not.

For your creatives, primarily, try to vary your graphics in terms of colors, designs, visuals but make sure to still be within your branding. Try to A/B test your messaging as well.

For the targeting, you may choose to do prospecting or getting prospective audiences, remarketing which is retargeting your previous audiences, or lookalike audiences which are your potential consumers that have the same interests as your current customers.

For your placements, you may also want to try testing the automatic placements and manual placements.

These are only five of the most important and basic optimization tactics that you should practice early on. These tips will not only improve your campaigns but will definitely get you more sales eventually and get the most out of social media advertising.

At  iManila, we create strategic Facebook campaigns in line with your objectives. From awareness, consideration to conversion ads, we have the right Facebook ad professionals to do the job for you. We can help you reach your Facebook Ad optimization goals. With 25 years of experience in the industry, iManila is committed to providing our clients with innovative digital solutions. We are a full-service website development and digital marketing agency ready to help you with your website design and development, hosting, and digital marketing needs. Inquire now or message us today!

Is it Finally Time to Upgrade your Hosting Package?

Hosting plans will always vary in storage and specifications. Most website owners don’t know a lot about hosting. They usually opt for a free or the cheapest plan they can find and focus on designing their website. Over time, basic hosting plans become very limiting.

Remember that as your business grows, you need to consider better hosting options. Hosting packages are an investment, and you have to choose wisely. It should be engineered for powerful and reliable performance online.

At this point, you may be wondering if it’s time to consider upgrading your plan. Let’s help you with your decision. Here are some signs that it is finally time to upgrade your hosting package:

  1. You’re concerned about website security.

Your website hosting should be fairly secure and is using quality security and protection for your site. No platform can be 100% sure of site security, that’s why it’s important to follow different ways to improve website security. That said, as your website grows, there will be a lot of advanced security features needed to help make sure that your site is safe 24/7.

  1. Your website is not getting quality performance and traffic.

Your website should be optimized. First off, it’s important to check if your website is always being analyzed, meaning that your website uptime is clear. Your website should consistently drive traffic, and handle concurrent users well. If that’s not the case for you, then it’s possible that you are not getting enough resources and your current hosting plan can’t handle a website that’s optimized for speed.

  1. Your current plan doesn’t provide enough space and resources.

As your website generates more user activity, adds more pages and files, your site will take up additional space and require more server resources to be able to run smoothly and not experience any downtime. There are different types of websites that are perfect for specific types of hosting packages.

Once your databases and files are exceeding their set limits, outgoing emails take longer to be delivered and other resources begin to run out. This means that you need heftier hosting plans such as a business cloud hosting service, a WordPress secure hosting, or maybe even a dedicated server.

Keep in mind that your website security, traffic, and resources are important and what matters most is that your website is safe and working and has available resources that include disk space, storage, bandwidth, and databases. Before uploading your website, make sure to always contact your hosting provider if your hosting package or server is compatible with your website and vice versa. 

A web hosting plan needs to be efficient and flexible for growth. Upgrading a hosting plan is worth investing in just for the sake of user experience alone. Take time to experience your current hosting as a website visitor and see if it’s helping with your business growth or holding you back. Or imagine what it’s like to be your client always receiving a message bounce whenever they contact you via email. 

Upgrading your hosting package should be considered as a good investment as it’s a good sign that your business is on the fast track of growth and is in need of more resources online. 

With 25 years of experience in the industry, iManila is committed to providing our clients with innovative digital solutions. We are a full-service website design and development, hosting, and digital marketing agency ready to help you with all your online needs. We are dedicated to providing solutions for your website and email hosting needs, to make sure that your resources online are at par with your business’ requirements. Send us a message and get free consolation from our dedicated sales team, who will help you identify exactly what kind of hosting package you need for your business!

iManila: Improving lives through technology since 1996. 

Important Question: Does your business need a mobile app?

Data shows that people spend over three hours on their phones on average, per day. App stores house millions of mobile apps which many businesses have joined the trend on. As a business owner, it always seems like a good idea to join the bandwagon and get an app developed. Apps can be a great avenue for gaining exposure and be a great channel as active app users can be of great value to the business. 

But before you get started into building your new mobile app, there are things to keep in mind and consider first, because the reality is, building an app requires a lot of resources. In this article, we will lay out the points to consider on whether or not your business needs a mobile app. 

Your website’s mobile friendliness

Before diving into a whole other channel, it’s best to look back at your current website and see how it holds up with mobile users. Because a majority of people use their phones when browsing the internet, the readiness of your website to meet those demands is of great value. If your website has a responsive web design, then it is optimized for viewing in smaller screens such as phones and tablets. There are a lot of essential elements for website success this 2021. If your business website is still lacking in the mobile-friendliness department, then now is a good time to reconsider this first before considering investment in a mobile app. 

How the app can solve a customer problem

The purpose of an app is to provide additional functionality that mere websites or social media pages cannot offer. If you find that the website will not be providing additional convenience or added use to your customers, then it is best not to build an app in the first place. This will just be a waste of resources as your app will find a hard time resonating with potential customers. Having an app that will not resonate with your potential customers, essentially means investing in an app that your users will not bother to download on their mobile phones or worse – will opt not to use simply because it doesn’t add any value to them.  

Retaining customer data

If your business is one that is reliant on repeat customers, having an app can help in the entry of information. This is applicable in e-commerce stores or food delivery service types of businesses as these require customers to fill out their information. An app can help in this issue so that your customers would not have to enter the information each time, helping boost your sales. But again, if your business does not yet have a loyal customer base, it might be good for you to consider investing in your website or on digital marketing efforts instead. Businesses that have successfully run on mobile apps have built a huge loyal customer base mainly due to their consistent promotions, digital marketing and customer loyalty campaigns. If you don’t have any of these types of campaigns in mind yet, best to go back to your drawing board before investing more capital in your mobile app. 

The channels that your competitors use

Checking out what your direct competitors have as channels would be handy in knowing possible areas for improvement. If they use an app, you can check out how the app holds up in the app store ratings and customer reviews. This can help you gauge the usefulness of the app and its effectiveness to your target consumer base. If they have an app, then that means that you are possibly missing out on a crucial channel, and see where you can improve as compared to their mobile app. If none of your direct competitors have a mobile app, then maybe it is an indication that having an app is not the best channel to reach your customers. 

The verdict 

If these points resonate with your business, then it may be a solid sign that building a mobile app may either be the next best course of action for you OR that it’s something that is not suitable for your business. Otherwise, sticking with the channels that work for you is still a good course of action. At the very least, a mobile responsive website works for a great majority of small businesses. With any of your digital marketing strategies, it is always important to keep in mind that with each touchpoint whether it be a mobile app, website, or social media page, that you are delivering your customers some real value. 

Reach your customers with the right digital solutions. With 25 years of experience in the industry, iManila is committed to providing our clients with innovative digital solutions through website design and development, hosting, digital marketing and mobile apps development. Still trying to figure out exactly what your business needs? Let’s talk and we can help you identify the right solutions for your business. 

Important Question: Does your business need a mobile app?

Your website is your most important resume, as it tells your visitors what your brand is all about. But with every visit, one must highlight the first thing that everyone sees whenever they land on a website – its landing page.

Landing pages are one of the most vital foundations of lead generation. However, most companies don’t use them enough, or at all. Most of us would give more attention to the website’s homepage instead. At the end of the day, it is the first room in your computer-generated storefront when visitors “walk” through the door.

More so, a landing page is a critical must-have for any website because it offers a targeted platform for converting higher percentages of visitors into leads. And with the latest trends such as email marketing, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and other online channels, you have the capability to send traffic to specific locations (landing pages) containing the right messages for each audience. 

Landing pages essentially tell your visitors what you want them to do and why they should make a specific action now. When done right, your website landing page can definitely bring a positive impact on how you generate leads or sales through your website. 

In this week’s blog, we’ll share some tips on how to maximize your website’s landing page. 

  • Know the Elements of your Landing Page

First and foremost, you must know the basic elements of a landing page. These elements should comprise your landing page such as a headline and an optional sub-headline, brief description of what you offer, at least one supporting image or short video, and other supporting proof elements such as testimonials, customer logos, or security badges. And most of all, include a form on the landing page itself to capture information. In some cases, if you can’t put a form, you may use a large call-to-action (CTA) button to direct your visitors to what they need to do next. 

  • Use Separate Landing Pages

Homepages are typically jam-packed with messaging, making visitors feel lost. Also, using a main site product page is not recommended either. Even if you’d spent so much time perfecting your homepage and its sub-pages, a committed landing page will perform much better at converting visitors into online returning customers or audiences because they know what they want. In this day and age, when you’re running a digital campaign or promotion, make sure that when users click on an ad – they are immediately directed to learn more details about the promotions, rather than just ending up in your homepage with too much information for them to even figure out why they clicked the digital ad in the first place. 

  • Make Your Purpose Clear and Concise

Keeping your landing page clear and concise will naturally make your visitors do the main action. Moreover, avoid stuffing too much information on your landing page as your visitors would be confused and might leave immediately. When visitors see your page, make sure they are automatically able to see what it is all about and it automatically tells them what you want them to do. Limit the amount of copy, images, media, and links to only what’s needed, and establish your content in an orderly manner. And don’t forget that a call-to-action button might just be your best bet as it tells your visitors what to do next – which is specifically to CLICK HERE!

  • Limit Your Navigation 

The main purpose of a landing page is to encourage your visitors to take one specific action. Of course, you want to keep your visitors on the landing page for as long as possible not until they have done an action. Having a complicated navigation might prompt them to continue wandering. Remember that at this time when people have very short attention spans – that a long navigation doesn’t mean a better website. Trust us on this! If not, read more about this in our other blog article, Debunking the Most Common Website Myths. 

  • Create Many Landing Pages as much as possible

This may sound a lot of work but believe us, this works wonders. For every campaign or offer, create a new, specific landing page. As they say, the more landing pages you create, the more prospects for converting more traffic into leads. For more options, you can also include social media sharing links or a social sharing widget on your landing pages so visitors can easily share that content with their own personal networks, and in turn, drive more chances for converting leads.

These must haves’ will give you plenty of time to create and perfect your landing pages as this will allow your business to grow by receiving leads from your potential customers. Effective landing pages are what will turn your website into a lead generating machine.

In this digital age, a well-designed website is not only aesthetics, but overall user experience. At iManila, we create highly-functional and beautifully designed websites that can support your business objectives – whether that means driving awareness, lead generation, or even increasing sales. With 25 years of experience in the industry, iManila is committed to providing our clients with innovative digital solutions. We are a full-service website development and digital marketing agency ready to help you with your website design and development, hosting, and digital marketing needs. Let’s talk and we’ll help you keep your website relevant and up to date.