Outbound Marketing and Inbound Marketing

The easiest way to divide the marketing areas into two groups: Outbound Marketing and Inbound Marketing. Outbound Marketing one in which the company takes the initiative to the client and wants to take their attention. Tools that can be used here are advertising on radio, press, television, billboards, campaigns in Google Ads, Facebook Ads and other social media, mailing, pop-ups on the site, active sales through merchants, etc. This type of activity has many advantages – allows you to reach a wide audience, is simple and quick to implement, and often you don’t have to wait long for its results. On the other hand, too pushy Outbound Marketing can be irritating to recipients and discourage the brand – that’s why it is sometimes even called disruptive marketing. But has his time passed? Rather not, when used sensitively, it can still bring the company quite a lot of profit.

Inbound Marketing, stands in opposition to it. It means activities that make the customer find the brand and visit it by himself. It is much less obtrusive, you can even compare it to slowly attracting potential customers. This can be done using profiles on social media, sharing blog articles, videos, guides, podcasts or website positioning so that it appears as high as possible in search results. A difficult to implement, but a very effective variety of Inbound Marketing is viral marketing, i.e. publishing content that Internet users will themselves massively disseminate, thus providing the brand with free advertising.

SEM

SEM (Search Engine Marketing), i.e. search engine marketing, are all those activities that we take to make the brand visible in the search results in Google, Bing, Yandex or other search engines. It includes both activities aimed at increasing organic traffic (SEO) and paid advertising (PPC). When we talk about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), we mean the positioning of the website for the most profitable key phrases. Increasing visibility in organic results includes technical optimization of the website, creating texts containing keywords, acquiring valuable external links and many other activities that are individually selected for a given website.

When it comes to PPC (pay per click), there are advertising campaigns launched in the Google Ads system. Thanks to them, we can make the website appear as a sponsored link in the search results or, for example, place our products above the list of results and in the Google Shopping tab. Of course, Google Ads also provides many other advertising formats, thanks to which you can advertise on YouTube or the Google advertising network.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is currently one of the most frequently chosen areas of marketing. It involves attracting audiences by offering them valuable content for free that will bring them to your site and later possibly benefit from the offer. As part of content marketing, or content marketing, you can create a company blog, YouTube channel, infographics, guides, webinars, podcasts and any other form that potential customers may be interested in. Such content should not be strictly promotional, advertising of individual products or brands may be slightly highlighted in the background, but the main goal is to provide the recipient with valuable advice or inspiration. It is not about the sale itself, but about attracting the customer to the brand, building in him the feeling that he got something without incurring any costs. Thanks to content, it is also possible to arouse sympathy for the brand – show who creates it, what values ​​it believes, and what it emphasizes.

Social Media Marketing

Marketing in social media is a very important element in building relationships with potential customers. It shortens the distance between them and the brand, allows for more free contact, gives recipients a space to express their own opinions and a sense of influence on shaping the future of the brand. It also allows you to show the company from a more human side, because you can place less serious content on social media than on a film page.

When we talk about social media marketing, we mean keeping official brand profiles, but also creating groups or events focused around this brand. An element of Social Media Marketing are also paid ads in various formats – promoting a website, profile, specific post or aimed at gaining new recipients. Of course, not all social media will be appropriate for every brand, but it is worth appearing in at least one or two channels outside your own website. The most popular social media today are YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, but it is not worth underestimating the potential of other platforms, such as LinkedIn, Twitter or Pinterest.

E-mail Marketing

E-mail Marketing is a type of direct marketing in which we send messages directly to recipients from our mailing list. They are designed to build relationships with recipients, and then skillfully maintain them. As part of E-mail Marketing, we can send information about discounts and promotions, new products, test the satisfaction with the services provided, etc. Newsletters in which we send the recipients interesting content are also popular forms of e-mail marketing: a collection of the most interesting content from the last weeks or even material not available from any other channels. However, it is very important to be moderate and not to turn E-mail Marketing into regular spam. If users find brand messages on a daily basis, there is a good chance that they will get annoyed and simply revoke consent to receive the emails.

Real Time Marketing

It is a very difficult type of marketing that requires immediate reactions to the current situation. It consists in sharing content, most often on social media, in some way referring to a famous, widely commented event. However, the condition for a successful action is to create an interesting and creative reference in a very short time – publication of the material a week after the incident will not amuse anyone, and may even irritate the recipient. After all, something new happens every day and news becomes a thing of the past faster than ever. An example of a successful RTM is an advertisement published when Great Britain left the European Union. The company then published a graphic with a question resembling a system message: “Are you sure you want to delete 1 GB?” A funny, ambiguous reference quickly circulated the Internet, giving the company a lot of sympathy for users.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing assumes promoting the brand through cooperation with celebrities and generally recognizable people on the Internet – for example, bloggers or a popular YouTube channel. Such people can become the face or partner of the brand, but constant cooperation is not necessary here. A common practice of companies is to send products to influencers in return for publishing their reviews on their channels. In this way, the brand gains access to the group of recipients associated around the celebrity and additional interest – after all, for many people recommending a product by an idol is much more motivating to use the offer than any advertising on the Internet or outside it.

Guerrilla Marketing

This type of marketing uses very unconventional methods to interest the recipient with a product or service. Its main goal is to evoke strong emotions in the recipient – shock, amusement or even terror. As a result, the ad is very memorable and widely commented, which gives it additional publicity. For this purpose, you can use urban space, for example by creating murals or city games, or an element of surprise – for example a flash mob or performance. An example is the promotion of the new season of the series Money Heist carried out by Netflix. A few weeks before the premiere, posters with photos of the main characters and a designated reward for their arrest, similar to the “wanted letters” in Westerns, began to appear on advertising posts in the cities. The posters were devoid of the Netflix logo and there was no mention of the series in them, so they interested passers-by and made them search the Internet for information what they meant.

Word of mouth marketing

Word of mouth marketing is based on the fact that a large part of recipients trust the opinions of their friends and friends more than advertising messages. Therefore, it is worth providing them with the so-called social proof, i.e. social proof of rightness – information from other users that a given product or service has proven successful and is recommended. This effect can be achieved, for example, by introducing a referral program for clients. In return for recommending the brand to their friends, they get a cash bonus, discount or any other remuneration.

A widely used, although debatable in terms of ethics, method is also posting comments or opinions about the company by the company, using false nicknames and giving the recipient the impression that the customers praise the brand. A variation of word-of-mouth marketing is the so-called buzz marketing based on making noise around an upcoming event or product to be released. In such cases, people employed by the company often maintain the interest of the recipients, encourage discussion, fuel curiosesity and generally build an atmosphere of expectation, skillfully involving the real recipients of the brand in the dialogue. Thanks to this, the product premiere has a chance to become louder and more widely discussed in the media.

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation is an area dealing with the acquisition and analysis of information about recipients. These are not so much personal data as information about users’ behavior on the Internet, their professional and private situation, interests or current needs. Such data is used to show the recipient personalized advertisements for products and services that they are likely to be interested in. Of course, they are not analyzed by a human, but with the use of advanced technologies in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The collection of user data is currently very controversial and some companies are at least partially withdrawing from the most ethically questionable activities (eg Google withdraws from third party cookies). However, many different entities collect data and use it for marketing purposes, and some recipients appreciate receiving personalized, not accidental, advertisements.

ATL

ATL (above the line) includes traditional advertising channels such as radio, press or television, as well as outdoor advertising, i.e. placed outside the place of residence of the potential customer. It is about all kinds of billboards, posters, citylights, etc. Many brands still carry out this type of marketing, but it is much more expensive than more modern methods of promotion. Why? First of all, you often have to pay dearly for a good place in the city space, airtime or newspaper advertising. Second, we have little influence on who sees our ads. We cannot define the target group as precisely as in online activities, therefore a very small percentage of recipients will actually be interested in the product. The return on investment may therefore be minimal or not even cover the costs in some cases. This does not mean that this type of advertising is bad. Showing oneself in a respected magazine or on a channel with high audience builds the prestige and recognition of the brand. Due to the price, however, it is reserved for companies with a large advertising budget.

User Interface and User Experience – what is it?

We can call the user interface a representation of the way in which the user gives commands to a program and the program accomplishes certain tasks. The interface communicates the user with the program. These are primarily technical aspects – quick access to the necessary functions, correct description, content distribution, information hierarchy, but also visuals – colors or typography. The same menu on the website can be transparent or not very intuitive depending on the font, colors, icons, contrast or border used. In the case of websites, a part of the UI will therefore be each interactive element that, after performing an action (e.g. clicking), will result in a specific response. When creating or rebuilding a website and application, when we talk about UI, we usually mean GUI, i.e. a graphical representation of the HCI relationship (human-computer interaction).

UX is a much broader term. Covers the entire user experience with a given product. While this term often applies to websites or applications, it can be applied to virtually any good or service. Even when using a pen, wallet, TV remote control or a tea mug, we feel certain emotions that result from the functionality, convenience of use, usefulness or aesthetic setting of the product. The task of the user experience specialist is to make the entire process of contact with the product as simple and pleasant as possible for the customer – this requires constant testing of the solutions used.

According to the research of Paraphrase-Online.com, the appropriate UI on the website can increase the conversion rate by 200%, and the appropriate UX by up to 400%. Of course, in most cases the result will not be that spectacular, but there is no doubt that these issues are of great importance in terms of a website’s ability to generate profit.

UI and UX – differences

There is no online business for which the user interface and user experience are not essential. Behind every website, portal, e-shop and application, there are business goals that will be achieved by the correct UI and UX. What’s more, an incorrect interface or user experience can deepen the drops and lower the conversion rate, which we will never know without audit, testing and expert error search.

The interface specialist designs and implements solutions, while the UX specialist plans and analyzes the entire structure of the user experience – he conducts research before and during product development, tests the behavior on an existing product, checks how the competition has dealt with certain aspects, conducts an audit and detects errors, users struggle with during service.

UI is one of the elements that make up UX – just like UX, it is one of the elements that make up web development.

The best example of what is UI and what is UX can be the design of many paths in city parks. They are often designed in such a way that requires the stroller (user) to turn only at an angle of 90 degrees – like the heroes of games from the era of 8-bit consoles. It is aesthetic, theoretically sensible, but practice shows that pedestrian paths appear almost immediately in places that the designer did not anticipate. Walkers choose a method that will provide them with a shorter path to their destination – they create their own UX solution, in spite of the original UI. And it may not be the prettiest, but such a path trodden in the grass is more convenient than beautiful, paved and thoughtful alleys.

When it comes to the UX / UI of websites and applications, it happens repeatedly that the website owner invests in a new version of the website – a prettier and more modern one. The number of visitors remains the same, but sales are falling – very often this is the result of errors in the UX design. When conducting tests and analyzing heat maps, it sometimes turns out, for example, that users try to click on graphics or other places on the website that are not interactive. The design used turns out to be misleading and, as a result, visitors leave the site. Even though the UI was designed correctly, UX and the modeling of user flow paths failed.

Why are UX / UI so important?

UX and UI have a huge impact on a website’s ability to generate conversions (e-commerce) or collect leads (service industry). These concepts also concern the issue of website positioning – Google’s algorithm, when determining the order of pages in search results, takes into account whether the website is intuitive, ergo whether the user will probably spend more time on it and interact with it.

A. User Perspective
A person entering a website – no matter from what source – expects transparency and user-friendliness. The user wants the path to obtain specific information or make a purchase as smooth and as short as possible. Research shows that the vast majority of people visiting the website will not come back if the UX does not meet their expectations. When the online store takes too many steps to complete the transaction, the conversion rate is kept low. As internet users, we are more likely to use websites that simply do not irritate during service, work quickly, do not waste our time, and at the same time are aesthetically pleasing and “pleasing to the eye”.

B. The perspective of Google crawlers
In the past, web crawlers who visit pages to index them only paid attention to the keywords in the content and the number of links. This is the past – today Google analyzes not only content and links, but also a number of other factors during positioning. There are several hundred of them – assessed, among others, loading speed or how the page displays at different resolutions (for example, whether the text does not go outside the frame). A web crawler tries to play the role of a user and promote those pages that the Internet user is probably expecting by entering a given phrase into the search engine.

C. Website Owner Perspective
Websites have different purposes depending on the business model. Content websites that depend on ad impressions primarily focus on increasing traffic. In the case of websites of stores or companies from the service industry, a large number of visitors does not matter that much – the quality of traffic counts. Ultimately, the website owner cares about users who browse and buy products or ask for a service quote. As in the second point – acquiring users on the website from positioning makes sense if the positioned phrases and the traffic generated from them ultimately result in an increase in the conversion rate. Some keywords make a marked increase in traffic, but if they are not profitable, they are of little use. The UX of a website or application should also be designed in such a way that customers can follow their personal and business goals. Win-win.

It is not easy to consider all three aspects for which UX and UI are designed at once. For this reason, it is important that UX and UI specialists are in the team when designing or modifying the website. In the case of web development, intuition gives way to analysis, data and tests. The fact that something seems functional and aesthetic does not mean that it is – the devil is in the details, even seemingly trivial, such as the size or color of the button that allows you to add a product to the basket.

The scope of work of a UI specialist and the areas of UX expert’s activity

UI and UX are aspects that need to be taken care of when designing and / or optimizing the website. What will the specialists’ tasks be?

What will a UI specialist pay attention to?
– Broadly understood good graphic design practices: inter-subject light, complementary colors, composition;
– Mental models and design utility, such as the laws of Hick or Fitts;
– Typography – selection of an appropriate font and its size;
– Design, technology and industry trends;
– Color psychology – what colors and their combinations evoke specific feelings in people;
– Goals and limitations resulting from the brief, such as resolutions for which views are to be designed, matching to grids to facilitate the work of front-enders;
– Comments from the UX and other specialists.

What will a UX specialist pay attention to?
– The entire scope of work of a UI specialist;
– Broadly understood good information architecture practices;
– Solutions used in the industry and at the closest competitors;
– Persons – profile, demographics, behavior, habits, expectations;
– User digital proficiency;
– Technical limits (including CMS or server restrictions);
– Goals and limitations resulting from the brief;
– Business goals and principles of exemplary modeling of funnels to the goal (conversion funnels);
– Model user stories and user flow based on research and analyzes;
– Available analytics and A / B test results – for existing pages;
– Comments from UI and other specialists;
– Etc.

If you’re wondering whether you should invest in improving your current business website or designing a completely new one, getting a professional UX / UI audit out of the box is a great first step. Auditors will thoroughly examine, among others the structure of purchase funnels and user flow paths, identify current and potential problems, conduct technological tests and check the information structure on the website. Recognizing errors is essential to improving your results.

What tools does Paraphrase-Online.com use when conducting an audit?

Among the many tools, depending on the package, our specialists carry out a detailed UX / UI audit using, among others:

Among the many tools, depending on the package, our specialists carry out a detailed UX / UI audit using, among others:
– Heat maps – show the elements of the page where the mouse cursor appears most often, where users make clicks or to which part of the page they scroll;
– User session recording – allows you to see how users browse the website and where the elements that inhibit the purchasing process are located;
– Research on areas that confuse and annoy users on the site, such as dead click, rage clicks, misclicks and signals of frustration, such as “thrashed cursor” (a glossary of these terms can be found here);
– Study of the purchasing process and user journey – you can read more about it in a separate article on our blog;
– A / B tests – we choose two seemingly equivalent options and check which of them brings better results in practice;
– User profile research – we check which people are browsing the website, who convert best, why they abandon shopping carts and how to adjust the site to their needs.

UI / UX microfiche:
– Dead clicks – clicks that do not activate anything;
– Rage clicks – clicks that appear when a frustrated user clicks vigorously and repeatedly in a given place because he has difficulty activating a button or link;
– Misclicks – unintentional clicks on a button other than assumed by the user;
– Thrashed cursor – this is the term when the user begins to make chaotic, uncoordinated mouse movements – most often while waiting for the page to load or when the page / page element does not work as it should.

User Interface and User Experience are of great importance both for users who come to the website and for search engine crawlers – and thus, they affect the company’s financial results. If you are not satisfied with these aspects of the company’s website or you wonder what can be improved on it, please contact the UX audit specialist at Paraphrase-Online.com!