Digital Marketing in Today's World

 A lot is being said about digital marketing these days. This article attempts to see what it is all about and how we can use it to further our business.

Digital marketing - Definition

The advertising and promotion of a business through digital channels or media is called digital marketing https://barrazacarlos.com/. Digital media includes the radio, television, mobile, social media platforms, websites, etc. Any marketing that is delivered through electronic means is called digital marketing. However, any person to person marketing and print marketing is not considered digital marketing. Most items of today are connected to the digital world through QR codes, URL landing pages, text codes, bar codes and online directories.

Digital Media - Why The Focus?

The shift to digital media has become very popular because of the easy personalized access that every business owner has, and also because it is easier to track the progress and results of an advertising campaign at every stage. Another reason is the low-cost, engagement of customers allowed by the media, availability of the channel to businesses of any size and it is helpful for any owner of a new business.

For consumers, Internet marketing is a boon amidst their fast paced routines. Any consumer reached out to their mobile phone to seek out the products and services that they want.

How to Build Your Business and Brand with Internet Marketing?

You can effectively build a business of any size though digital marketing at a lower cost. The foundation of all digital marketing efforts of a business is its website. Ensure that your website has the following characteristics:

· Adequate representation of the brand

· Relates to target audience

· Is at the top of search engine listings

· Is easy to navigate

· Is up-to-date

· Provides channels through the customer can communicate

· Able to connect with other marketing efforts/channels

Build a business website using a firm that has expert knowledge in website building and search engine optimization. This is the most important investment of your business. Once the website has been made live then managing the content is most important. Timely email campaigns, publishing of blogs, reaching out through social media platforms, etc., assume more importance than ever as they can make or break your business. Use search engine optimization to attract your clients with the right words and meta phrases. It would also remain at the top of the search engine listings thus ensuring a good amount of traffic to the website.

Because of the stiff competition that the keywords have, it is a good idea to support SEO with pay-per-click advertising. This may be difficult in the beginning but will settle down with some diligent work. The cost can be reasonable for this campaign too. Beyond any of these you can reach out to your targeted audience through any other channel. But ultimately, they should tie into your business website.

It is a good idea to tie up with a digital marketing agency to help your business have the right kind of effective online presence.

Jameson General Store was a historical treasure in the small North Carolina Community. Jim Jameson, the owner, had been part of the family legacy over 100 years old. The company had seen bad times, including The Great Depression. However, their hard work and customer loyalty had sustained the company's success.

Even when a neighboring community got its Walmart's Marketplace Store, their customers remained loyal. Jim did not believe in utilizing online advertising and social media platforms. He believed that these activities were only a fad. Yet, their customers gradually started shopping online because Jameson General Store was limited in its product offerings.

In fact, most of the business that Jameson Store lost was not to local competitors, but online sellers. Jim was adamant about resisting the temptation about shopping online. Yet, when he saw his own 10-year-old grandson purchase a difficult item to locate in the area online at significant costs, Jim had to ponder his current marketing strategy with the changing landscape in the nation.

Today's customers can purchase a variety of items online with minimum effort. Given this scenario, brick and mortar companies are fighting to stay alive with the fierce internet competition. According to a 2017 survey conducted by Square and Mercury Analytics looking at 1,164 U.S. business owners, the following observations were made:

96% of Americans with internet access have made an online purchase in their life, 80% in the past month alone.

51% of Americans prefer to shop online.

67% of Millennials and 56% of Gen Xers prefer to shop online rather than in-store.

Millennials and Gen Xers spend nearly 50% as much time shopping online each week (six hours) than their older counterparts (four hours).

51% of seniors have shopped on marketplaces, 66% at large retailer sites, 30% on web stores or independent boutiques, and 44% at category-specific online stores.

Marketing professionals understand the importance of the internet and how to effectively leverage this power. According to Socialmedia.com, 90% of marketers use social media for their businesses. Sadly, many small businesses do not recognize this fact. Many businesses had opted to bury their heads in the sand in hopes that this 'internet thing' will go away. It hadn't!

In fact, e-Commerce is growing more than 23% annually; however, 46% of American small businesses do not have a website according to Square and Mercury Analytics research. This article focuses on how small businesses can leverage digital marketing to achieve greater success and enhance their market opportunities.

Digital marketing should be a tool that every serious small business should utilize. Digital marketing goes by many names such as e-commerce marketing, online marketing, and internet marketing. Digital marketing can be defined as "the marketing of products or services using digital channels to reach consumers." The key objective is to promote brands the usage of the internet.

Digital marketing extends beyond internet marketing to include channels that do not require the use of the internet. Some digital marketing channels include websites, social media platforms, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), blogging, podcasts, and online advertising to name a few. Beyond technology gimmicks, businesses should know their customers and their core competencies. Digital marketing is not a silver bullet. Digital marketing is a tool for the savvy business professional.

Catherine Juan, Donnie Greiling, and Catherine Buerkle, authors of Internet Marketing: Start to Finish, suggest that effective digital marketing requires plenty of careful planning. They add, "The heart of getting real traction out of your internet marketing program is to tie marketing and sales data together, with metrics. Track what you're doing, track the impact, and track the resulting sales." Looking at the landscape of technology and internet innovation, small businesses should think strategically about the following five digital marketing trends:

• Artificial Intelligence - Some people develop elaborate doom-day scenarios of machines to control the world. However, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming a way of life in marketing. AI can be defined as 'the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.' Voice Activation technology like Amazon's Echo is bringing AI into public attention. By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their purchases without interacting with a person.

• Internet Searching - Buyers are more knowledgeable than ever with access to the internet. In fact, 81% of shoppers conduct online research before making big purchases. Thus, exploring how to utilize search engine optimization and getting your business at the top of searches is an invaluable step.

• Mobile Communications - Most Americans have grown accustomed to instant gratification and easy access to technology. Mobile and tablet e-commerce will reach $293B by 2018. Smartphone and tablets are part of this wave of innovation. Mobile will account for 72% of the U.S. digital ad spend by 2019. Marketers recognize that mobile marketing is an untapped business tool.

• Social Media - Social media platforms, like Facebook, allows buyers to connect with each other virtually. 65% of business-to-business companies have acquired customers through LinkedIn ads. Marketers realize this value.

• Web Content - Good content will attract customers. In fact, customers are more likely to purchase from sellers with good, relevant videos/photos on their website. 52% of marketing professionals globally name the video as the type of content with the best ROI.

Faced with the tenants of competition, small businesses need to utilize digital marketing. Some small businesses may be hesitant to explore digital marketing due to their lack of trust and understanding of the internet. Philip Kotler and Kevin Keller, authors of Marketing Management, note "Top firms are comfortable using technology to improve the way they do business with their business-to-business customers."

This article demonstrated that today's small businesses can utilize digital marketing to enhance their market opportunities. Hopefully, gaining this knowledge will help business owners so that they will not continue to bury their heads in the sand. The internet is here to stay. Pray that you are listening to this message.

Will Online Casinos Ever Bring Us Personal Slot Games?

If you go to Las Vegas, people love to keep an eye on 'their' machine. If you see a slot game with a cup on the seat, it means that the machine is reserved whilst the player has just gone to grab a bite to eat and drink or has gone to the bathroom. So why do players like to do this? Well, many slot game players have built a number of false propositions around their play, assuming that the more they play a game and the more money they punt, the more likely the slot game is to pay out. No matter what you say to these players they'll always want to come back to the machine they've been playing on for several hours, and they'll no doubt feel really cheated if someone else jumps in their seat and then hits a big win.

Will there ever be a situation where slot games operate in this fashion online? It's certainly possible for a casino to record the status of a slot game when a player exits and then loads the exact same game mode when the player returns. The issue is however, there's no way the player could tell if the game was in the same state as when they left. The reason for this is because a slot game works on a completely random number generator (RNG), which means no matter how long you've been pumping the money into a slot game https://zaabet.net/, you can't influence the game's outcome. There could be a greater advantage to playing the online versions of the casino slots, as players can sit in the comfort of their own homes and not be distracted by other players in close proximity.

In essence, online slots players ultimately have as much chance of hitting a jackpot on your first spin as your hundredth spin, and for this reason we very much doubt if there is any currency in online casinos ever providing players with personal slot games. You can take your favourite slot machine for a test drive online for free at world renowned operators, including Sky Vegas.

I'm hoping with the evolution of the online gaming world this will happen eventually, there's no better feeling for some than playing your favourite Vegas slot online, knowing that if you take a break you can get back to exactly where you left it.

If this does not come to fruition, perhaps we could get a virtual waitress to top us up with tea, coffee and hot dogs while we play.

About Thunderstruck 2 Slot

Recently Microgaming software company released a new slot machine called Thunderstruck 2. It's a 5 reel 300 coin video bonus slot machine with 243 permanently enabled ways to win. This slot game has many unique features like the Great Hall of Spins including four types of free spins, the Wild Storm feature which can be activated randomly during the game and transforms up to 5 reels into wild reels. Also the game has a new achievements feature which help you to track your winnings status by highlighting symbol combinations that you have won. Besides these unique features, Thunderstruck 2 slot game has standard features and bonus symbols like wild substitutions and scatter winnings. It's a very interesting game with many chances to win. Let's review all features of this online slot machine.

Thunderstruck 2 Symbols

The Thunderstruck Logo symbol is a wild and multiplier symbol, so it can help you to generate more winning combinations by substituting for other symbols. Also when it acts as a wild symbol it doubles the payout of this winning combination. A highest jackpot of 1000 coins is paid out when you hit five the Thunderstruck Logo symbols on a payline.

The Bonus Hummer symbol is a scatter symbol, this means you can receive scatters on any reels and generate winning combinations which can pay up to 200 times your bet. Three or more the Bonus Hummer symbols landing on any five reels activate the Great Hall of Spins bonus game.

Thunderstruck 2 Bonus Games

The Great Hall of Spins bonus round has four types of free spin bonus game, three of four games are locked. To unlock all four games you must activate the Great Hall of Spins a specific number of times. So the Valkyrie bonus round is permanently available and you can start playing it. In this bonus game you will be awarded with 10 free spins and a 5x multiplier.

A second game Loki becomes available when you activate the Great Hall of Spins five times. In the Loki game you receive 15 free spins and if you receive a Wild Magic symbol on reel 3 during this bonus game you will activate the Wild Magic feature which transforms up to 14 random regular symbols into Wild Magic symbols, and you will be able to complete more winning combinations with these symbols.

The Odin bonus round is activated when you start the Great Hall of Spins 10 times. The Odin game awards you win 20 free spins, and if you have a win, one of two Odin's ravens will transform any symbols in to wild and multiplier symbols. This means that these transformed symbols will help you to complete more winning combinations and win more because they double or triple the payout where they act as wild symbols.

Activate the Great Hall of Spins 15 times and you will be able to play the Thor free spins bonus game. In the Thor game you will be awarded with 25 free spins and the Rolling Reels feature, which allows symbols in a winning combination explode and disappear, and allows symbols above the exploded symbols cascade into the empty spaces. The new symbols also can generate winning combinations, explode and disappear.

The Wild Storm bonus game can be randomly activated during the regular slot game in the Thunderstruck II slot game. In this game up to five reels are transformed into wild reels. This means that you again have additional chances to generate winning combinations and win more.