Pt. 2: Marketing Strategies and Tactics to Increase your Journal Impact Factor
As part of an ongoing series on how to implement changes on a strategic and tactical level to increase your journal impact factor, we focus on short-term and long-term marketing channels in this article. This is part two of the series, click to view part 1: 18 Ways to Increase your Journal Impact Factor Part three of the series will focus on how this could work for you through the application of a few. Stay tuned by signing up below!
Review:
A Journal Impact Factor [JIF] often affects readers’ and contributors’ awareness of its publications. The traditional approach to improving your impact factors is, of course, publishing quality publications. But there are other ways to increase your factor.
With the mass explosion of connectivity, marketing has taken an even more important role in placing the right content, in front of the right people, at the right time. This is still a somewhat untapped area for Journals or academia in general.
This article will touch upon every aspect of (digital) marketing and what makes it an incredible tool to generate engagement. Some elbow grease and savvy will allow you to establish a foothold that will lead to an increase of your journal impact factor. Additionally, several links to great resources have been added into each header to allow you to start deep-diving into the world of digital marketing and how it can help you grow your journal in a number of ways!
Search Engine Management (SEM)
The exact definition of SEM will vary by source however, at the base level, SEM is the management of how you appear on a search engine. Primarily, there are two ways to increase/display your presence when a user searches for an answer to their query, organically and paid. Organic results are the medium in which you appear, in a ranked fashion, in relation to a query. These results are produced through the effort of SEO strategy, tactics, and optimization (we will touch on optimization, CRO, in a moment).
These results are indirectly paid for, meaning the results are produced either through paying an agency, internal staff member, company, or freelancer for their work. Paid results are just that, paid for. In relation to google, they have a platform that based off keywords, you can bid to appear for certain queries. Through money, time, and effort you will develop your keyword list, copy (written and display), and try to generate a click that leads to a conversion via your advertisement.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO): is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or webpage in a search engine’s unpaid results—often “organic”, or “earned” results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a website appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users; these visitors can then be converted into customers. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, video search, academic search,[2] news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. SEO differs from local search engine optimization in that the latter is focused on optimizing a business’ online presence so that its web pages will be displayed by search engines when a user enters a local search for its products or services. The former instead is more focused on national or international searches.
As a digital marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the computer programmed algorithms which dictate search engine behavior, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, adding content, using HTML, and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic. SEO is an great growth factor for any business, with a time investment it will lead to the strongest traffic without continued pay.
Search Engine Advertising (SEA):
SEA is a method of placing online advertisements on web pages such as google or bing that show results from search engine queries. Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published content.
Search advertisements are targeted to match key search terms, keywords, entered on search engines. Consumers will often use a search engine to answer questions, identify and compare purchasing options immediately before making a purchasing decision, as well as a wide variety of additional activities.
The opportunity to present consumers with advertisements tailored to their immediate interests encourages consumers to click on search ads instead of moving lower to view organic results. For the online user, Sponsored Search Advertising offers highly relevant search results which are based on the consumer’s own queries and, thus, they are considered less intrusive than banner advertisements or pop-ups advertising.
Search engine advertising has become an everyday strategy and tactic to increase targeted traffic, engagement, and conversion for up-to-date businesses and marketers.
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. Regardless of what type of marketing tactics you use, content marketing should be part of your process, not something separate. Quality content is part of all forms of marketing:
- Social media marketing: Content marketing strategy comes before your social media strategy.
- SEO: Search engines reward businesses that publish quality, consistent content.
- PR: Successful PR strategies address issues readers care about, not their business.
- SEA/PPC: For PPC/SEA to work, you need great content behind it.
- Inbound marketing: Content is key to driving inbound traffic and leads.
- Content strategy: Content strategy is part of most content marketing strategies.
Inbound marketing is focused on attracting customers through relevant and helpful content and adding value at every stage in your customer’s buying journey. With inbound marketing, potential customers find you through channels like blogs, search engines, and social media.
Unlike outbound marketing, inbound marketing does not need to fight for potential customers attention. By creating content designed to address the problems and needs of your ideal customers, you attract qualified prospects and build trust and credibility for your business
Email marketing is the highly effective digital marketing strategy of sending emails to prospects and customers. Effective email marketing converts prospects into customers, and turns one-time buyers into loyal, raving fans.
Social media marketing is the process of creating content that you have tailored to the context of each individual social media platform in order to drive user engagement and sharing.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Quite simply, conversion rate optimization (CRO) is a system for increasing the percentage of visitors to a website that convert into customers,[1] or more generally, take any desired action on a webpage.
Digital marketing is complex, however, it is incredibly easy to get started by focusing on a few chosen channels and tactics. If you think about it, with the content housed in your journal you already have a distinct advantage moving forward.
Part three of the series will focus on how this could work for you through the application of a chosen few. Stay tuned by signing up below!
