You’re waiting for the train on your way to work. You’ve got a long day ahead, and don’t feel like swinging by the grocery store afterward. Fortunately, there’s a supermarket kiosk on the platform. You scan the barcodes with your phone and arrange for your food to be delivered when you get home.

As you cross the street to your office building, the strap of your computer bag finally breaks. You don’t have time to run out and get a new one, but that’s okay. Once you’re in your office, you log on to the company’s website, put on the augmented reality headset, and virtually try on different bags.

At lunch, you head down to your usual restaurant. The AI in the touch-screen kiosk suggests sandwiches you might like based on your order history, then uses facial recognition to complete the order and charge your account.

This is phygital marketing – all made possible by advances in augmented reality (AR).

The global AR and virtual reality (VR) markets are expected to reach 18.8 billion USD by the end of 2020 – over 78% growth from spending in 2019. By 2025, that growth is only expected to increase exponentially.

With the sophistication of AR/VR tech, more companies are incorporating it into their campaigns – and more consumers are expecting it.

In this Process Street post, we’ll take an in-depth look at the what and why of phygital marketing, but you can also skip ahead to one of the following sections:

• Phygital isn’t a real word… Is it?
• Living in a phygital world: Nintendo, Porsche, and Sephora
• Phygitalizing your brand

Let’s get phygital!

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With nine years in the aviation industry, Daniel Martin is an experienced team-builder with several high-performance content creation teams under his belt. He is currently the Head of Customer Success at LinkDoctor.

As of October 2019, there were 1.72 billion websites on the Internet. Keeping up with reputation and rank is important for any website owner, but it’d be impossible to manually check every site one-by-one.

Google has developed a ranking algorithm that crawls through billions of websites in a short time. This algorithm determines the site’s relevance and trustworthiness based on several factors, including backlinks from other sites.

A backlink is equivalent to statements such as “I trust this website,” or “This is a valuable website.” This is why link-building has become necessary to get higher ranks on the Internet.

High-ranking sites are more visible on search engines’ results, which leads to higher conversion rates and traffic.

When it comes to organic links, though, you can’t just ask other sites to give them to you; you need to earn them. But how do you get other sites to link to yours?

In this article, I’ll cover everything you need to know about:

• What are organic links and link building?
• Focus on gaining these high-quality links
• Low-quality organic links to avoid
• How to deal with toxic backlinks to your website
• Determining the best strategy to gain organic links
• Understanding user behavior and interests to increase organic traffic
• Identifying your site’s customer personas for more tailored content
• How to create high-quality, linkable assets other sites will want to use
• Optimizing your website for better organic links
• Leveraging social media for more backlinks

Read on for step-by-step instructions on sowing those backlinks to your site!

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“An hour of planning can save you ten hours of doing.” – Dale Carnegie

The formula for success on social media can seem like trying to pick the lottery’s winning numbers – impossible, with a dash of blind luck. What if you could predict some of the outcomes? The game becomes a lot easier, right?

One of the keys to success on social media is creating a well-thought-out social media content calendar process – another is executing it!

Having worked for a creative marketing agency, I understand the difficulty of creating a well-structured social media content calendar process. Waiting for approvals from your clients feels like rallying against Roger Federer at Wimbledon (his social media game is ace too). While cornering your colleague who still owes you that spellcheck is awkward at best.

So how do you become the Roger Federer of social media?

All it takes is a 3-step process to get the ultimate social media content calendar. But first, let’s see what you’ll learn about in this blog post.

• What is a social media content calendar? 
• Why do I need a social media content calendar? 
• What social media content calendar tools are out there?
• The 3-step social media content calendar process

Click the headings to jump ahead, or stick with me as we rally for serve.
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This is a guest post from Alissa Zucker, marketing manager and writer at Mcessay. You can find her reading classical philosophy and writing short fiction in her spare time.

It’s predicted that by the end of 2020, businesses will have spent ~$110 billion on digital advertising alone in the US. To put that into context, that’s more money spent on digital advertising than what would be spent on both television and print ads combined.

This just goes to show the importance of digital advertising in the modern marketing communication mix.

It is essential that every business know how to effectively market their products and services in order to not only survive, but to grow and prosper in a competitive global market.

It’s not uncommon when questioned about marketing, that a business owner will simply produce a business card, a brochure stitched together using a Microsoft Office template, or a barely functional website with little to no traffic.

In this Process Street post, I want to provide you with an overview of everything you need to know about the marketing communication mix, including:

• The updated marketing mix: The 7 Ps of marketing
• What exactly is the marketing communication mix?
• Twelve factors of the marketing communication mix
• How to make the most of the marketing communication mix

Before diving into the specifics of the marketing communication mix, let’s first discuss the 7Ps of marketing.
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Lesley Vos is a content strategist at Bid4Papers, specializing in data research, copywriting, and content promotion. She has been published on Moz, CXL, Forbes, and more. Follow her on Twitter to read her latest articles.

The world’s demand for video content is enormous. It makes up 80% of all online traffic, and yet 53% of people want to see even more videos from brands they support!

In short, if you don’t consider video a part of your marketing plans, you’re missing a huge opportunity to grow. Not only does video content impact your brand’s authority, but it also can improve your traffic and overall search engine rankings by far.

But this is all easier said than done.

While producing and sharing a video might seem a great idea, you need to remember that it should complement your overall SEO and marketing strategy. After all, if you fail to organize and optimize your video content in the early stages, not only will it cost you a pretty sum, but it will be money spent in vain.

That’s why, in this guest post for Process Street, I’ll discuss video SEO marketing and optimization so your video content can achieve better rankings.

Just read through the following sections:

• What is video SEO?
• Planning your video content (with basic video SEO marketing practices)
• How to optimize video content for search and higher rankings
• Use Process Street for all your video and marketing needs!

Or, if you wanted to start working through an SEO checklist straight away, use this template.

Click here to get SEO Checklist: The Keyword Research Process!

Lights, camera, action,

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This is a guest post from Dave Schneider, a serial entrepreneur & co-founder of shortlist.io, a marketing “un-agency” that serves as an outsourced dedicated marketing team. He has also co-founded Less.churn, a churn reduction app, prior to selling it in 2018. Dave loves to travel the world, and has visited over 65 countries. In his spare time, he writes about SaaS and business at DaveSchneider.me.

The vast majority of product launches fail.

According to a study done by the University of Toronto, the failure rate for new products in the retail grocery industry is 70-80%. And, the situation across all sectors is even more dia, Harvard professor Clayton Christensen estimates that the fail rate of new products across all boards is around 95%.

Evidently, coming up with an innovative and awe-inspiring product you think people will love is simply not enough. In order to mitigate failure and overcome challenges, you will need to prioritize and optimize how you market your product.

Fortunately, this Process Street article is here to provide you with all the tools and digital hacks you will need to successfully market and launch your product.

Feel free to jump to a specific section of this post by clicking on the relevant subheader below. If not, just keep on scrolling.

• How to have a successful product launch
• Building a successful product launch strategy
• How and when to develop an MVP
• How to manage email lists for a successful product launch
• Using Process Street for all your business needs

Read on for a rundown of product launch basics.
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Who is Kanye West?

A musical genius? A passionate campaigner? Jesus? Or a spontaneous, unintelligible twitter ranter?

“I’m telling you, I am Warhol. I am the number one most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare, in the flesh. Walt Disney. Nike. Google…”

“A lot of people here felt like they lost. You know why? Because y’all been lied to. Google lied to you. Facebook lied to you. Radio lied to you”

“My greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live”

Kanye West is a brilliant example of how impulsive, unplanned communication can ruin a reputation.

But it’s not only famous celebrities that suffer the cost of off-the-cuff comms.

Unplanned communication is costing companies over $37 billion every year. This is no surprise when you consider that over 60% of companies don’t create or follow a communication plan.

It’s time to stop winging it and start planning it.

Read this Process Street post, grab our free communication plan template, and learn how to communicate properly, as we go through the following:

• The basics: What a communication plan is
• Three must-have communication plans
• Why having a communication plan is a no-brainer (with true stories)
• How to build a communication plan with Process Street

If you’re keen to start planning your communication right now, grab this free Communication Plan Template Checklist:

Click here to access the Communication Plan Template Checklist!

(Sign up for a free trial here, if you’re not yet a Process Street user)

Let’s start talking…
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Travis Taborek is an SEO and content marketing specialist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s a graduate of General Assembly’s digital marketing course, and has since written content and optimized websites for Wescover and TiVo. He also has a side-business doing PR and social media work for indie games and reviews indie games in his spare time. His most recent accomplishment was finishing Homestuck and thereby winning shelter-in-place.

Back in 2011, you might have been able to get away with uploading your indie game to Steam’s marketplace and expect a revenue of $30-50K in the first year, without any effort or marketing knowledge.

Hell, you might have even been able to get away with that as late as 2014. But these golden days for indie game developers are long gone.

Steam has made many changes to the way it promotes indie games and the current market is far more saturated. There are more game developers than ever and tools like Unity and Unreal have made game development more accessible than ever.

Just getting that final build finished and uploaded to your storefront of choice is no longer enough. To have a successful launch, whether you’re a solo dev or a small team, you have to understand how to market your game.

In principle, marketing your game is relatively straightforward; you just need to know where to start. If you understand who you’re making the game for (your audience) and how to talk about your game as a product (meaning: you’re able to communicate what your game offers and how that aligns to the expectations of your target audience), then you’ve already done most of the hard work. The rest is as simple as following a process.

Once you have this base knowledge, it’s just about taking your product to market and doing the legwork that’s involved with getting the word out and making sure you get eyes on the finished product.

This Process Street article takes a look at one strategy for marketing your indie game: social media marketing.

What is social media marketing?

It’s basically exactly what it sounds like: using social media to get your game in front of your target audience. The term ‘social media marketing’ is a bit vague and encompasses a bunch of different approaches; we’ll be looking at some of the different ways you can use social media to market your game in this article.

Social media marketing is great for connecting on an intimate level with your fans and building lasting communities around your game, from early development until launch, and beyond. When done properly, it can allow you to develop trusting relationships with your audience that will drive them to not just purchase one of your games, but every game you put out.

Here’s a high-level overview of what we’ll be looking at:

• The theory of social media marketing, and how it relates to indie games
• Social media best practices for indie games
• What platforms do I use, and how do I use them?
• A/B Testing and Analytics: How do you know whether what you’re doing is working?
• Social media management tools to use
• Additional marketing resources

Let’s get started beginning with the theory of social media marketing.
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I shouldn’t be here.

I should be sitting in a field, sipping a lukewarm cider, waiting for Aerosmith to come on stage and blow me away.

I should’ve been at the Glastonbury music festival; the UK’s (muddier) equivalent to Coachella.

But thanks to Covid-19 I’m not.

I’m stuck in my hot, stuffy office.

Although it’s heartbreaking, I’m not the only person affected by the decision to cancel the biggest event in my calendar, and music festivals and social occasions aren’t the only events to get canned because of the pandemic.

Most business trips, in-person meetings, and big, costly conferences have also been canceled or postponed.

In fact, talking of conferences, the number of canceled conferences is said to be costing the economy billions. As a direct example, the losses from major tech conferences alone have soared beyond $1 billion.

But, before you start contributing to these losses and canceling your own conferences, there is another way.

Welcome to the world of virtual conferences.

As more and more businesses start to think of new, innovative ways to carry on with ‘business as usual’ during this troubling time, this Process Street post takes a look at the virtual conference. Not only is it a stop-gap until the virus disappears and normal life resumes, but it’s a great permanent replacement for the traditional, physical conference.

Join me as we discover the answers to the following questions:

• What is a virtual conference?
• Why run a virtual conference?
• What should I consider when running a virtual conference?
• How do I run a virtual conference (with Process Street)?

Plus! On top of all that, we’ve developed four virtual conference process templates that you can use, for free, to help you plan and run the best, kick-ass virtual conference.

If you’re itching to see them, dive in and take a sneak peek:

Or pop into any of the other templates in this post directly from this list:

• Planning a Virtual Conference Checklist
• Running a Virtual Conference Checklist
• Process for Troubleshooting Virtual Conference Issues Checklist
• Hosting a Live Webinar Checklist

Take that Covid-19! We’re going virtual…
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This is a guest post by Tom Siani, an online marketing expert with up to 4 years of experience in the digital industry. He is also collaborating with some well-known brands to generate traffic, create a sales funnel, and increase online sales. He has written a considerable number of articles about marketing via social media, brand marketing, blogging, and search visibility.

With over 50% of the world’s population using social media, a number that is only increasing, you can see how social media marketing is critical for reaching potential customers and driving sales.

With this in mind, in this Process Street article we look at how you can improve your social media marketing strategy to get ahead of the game. Specifically, we turn our attention to social media marketing automation.

We’ll explain the advantages of using social media marketing automation as part of your social media marketing strategy, in addition to presenting you with our top 5 social media marketing automation tools you can sign up and use today. Sound good?

But wait there is more!

To kick-off this article, I present Process Street as your critical social media marketing accomplice.

At Process Street, we have been working hard to provide you with practical template tools to assist you in delivering an optimal social media marketing strategy.

These template resources are listed below. Click on the links provided to jump straight in. Alternatively, scroll down to find out more.

• Buffers Social Media Etiquette Checklist
• Social Listening Strategy Process Checklist
• Social Media Image Design
• Social Media Influencer Outreach Checklist
• Social Media Manager Daily Checklist
• Social Media SLA Management Checklist Template
• Social Media SLA Metric Tracking Process Template

If you want to jump to a specific section in this article, click on the relevant subheader below. If not, continue scrolling!

• Use a social media marketing checklist
• Social media marketing automation: What is it, and the benefits of automation
• 5 Top social media marketing tools

Let’s get started!
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