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33 Smart & Effective Ways to Increase Blog Traffic

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By Steve Allen

Do you want to increase blog traffic for more leads, sales, affiliate, or ad revenue?

Well, look no further.

Because in this post, I’m diving into 33 ways to get more traffic to your blog.

When you apply these tips, you’ll benefit from:

  • Consistent traffic that improves over time
  • Growing your audience
  • More leads and sales
  • And more

So, if you’re ready, let’s dive right in.

Whatever your niche, there are millions of potential customers out there wanting to do business with you.

And you know that getting more traffic to your blog is your best chance of success.

Here are 33 incredibly smart ways to increase blog traffic and grow your business.

1. Know your audience

You know a blog has huge potential for the growth and success of your business.

But, do you know your audience?

If you spend your precious time publishing valuable content on your blog, but it doesn’t gel with the reader, then it’s time wasted.

You need to define a specific problem your niche market struggles with and address it directly.

It’s too much for any business owner to help everyone on the planet, so focus on an individual person.

Because what is personal to an individual is usually most general.

Getting inside the heads of your audience will help you understand them.

Join communities, forums, and groups and start a conversation with people to understand what they truly need.

It will make all the difference when your traffic pours in.

2. Optimize for SEO

If you want consistent traffic growth for your blog, aim to increase organic traffic.

This is traffic you receive from organic search results in search engines.

If you’re going to publish blog posts anyway, you may as well optimize them for a better chance of ranking.

It only requires a few steps to optimize your articles for SEO.

Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Do keyword research

Find keywords that people are already searching for and focus your articles on these terms.

Include the keyword in the title, subheading, and body of the content.

Step 2: Create epic content

Look at the top 10 results in Google for your chosen keyword and aim to improve your article by providing more value.

More on this later.

Step 3: Format your articles for readability

Keep people on the page longer and help search engines understand your content with proper formatting.

Use subheadings, bold text, images, quotes, and videos where possible. No one likes to read huge blocks of text.

Build relevancy by linking to other articles on your blog.

Each article should answer the readers’ query, but expand on it by linking to other related content you publish.

3. Run Ads on Social Media

Do you have a budget to run ads?

That’s great!

Because running ads can be the fastest way to increase blog traffic, grow your email list, and make more money.

Simply choose a social media site where you can buy ads, such as Facebook.

You’ll need a Facebook page for your blog and a business account to run ads.

Then you can create ads that drive traffic to your articles.

My article on the best Udemy courses mentions a course that might help with this.

It’s a Facebook ads course that teaches you everything you need to know to run Facebook ads effectively.

4. Optimize Your Site for Conversions

Increasing blog traffic has its benefits, but it’s the right traffic that’s makes the difference.

You could have thousands of visitors, but if you’re targeting the wrong people with your content, they will never convert.

That’s why it’s wise to optimize for conversions, not just traffic.

Here are a few pointers to get you started:

  • Use effective copywriting for blogs: Using sales copy in your blog posts provides structure to your articles. It also influences readers to do what you want them to do.
  • Offer a great UX (User Experience): From the design of your blog to the way you serve your audience, your user experience speaks a thousand words.
  • Always leave a CTA (Call to Action): Don’t leave your readers in the dark. If they don’t know what you offer, they won’t look. Use a clear CTA to improve conversions.
  • Track everything: Add Google Analytics or other tracking so that you know how well your blog is performing.

5. Retarget Visitors on Other Platforms

Stop losing out on visitors leaving your blog and never returning. Instead, set up retargeting ads to increase your rate of return visitors.

There are many benefits of retargeting your blog traffic.

  • It develops brand awareness
  • Reminds previous visitors to continue where they left off
  • Adds opportunity to capture leads
  • Maintains a steady flow of traffic that would otherwise be lost

To retarget your blog traffic on Facebook, go to your ad manager account and create a new custom audience.

You can then target people who visited specific pages, i.e. your blog posts.

Then, with your ad, bring people back to the specific blog posts they viewed or a landing page to capture their email address.

6. Grow a Twitter following

Twitter.com is the 9th most visited website globally and the world’s 7th favorite social networking site, according to Hootsuite.

It has also seen a surge of growth since 2020 and is expected to reach 335 million active users by 2024.

Growing a following on any social network has its benefits, but each offers different methods of interacting with its users.

What makes Twitter unique is the real-time communication and the users’ interest in learning.

Unlike some social media sites, Twitter’s user base is growth-oriented and connects well with accounts that educate and offer valuable information.

They have recently introduced a new feature, currently being tested with select accounts. It’s the ability to publish long form posts, called Notes.

This creates an entirely new dynamic of interacting with your audience, growing an account, and generating blog traffic.

7. Only Create High-Quality Content

Gone are the days where you could post 500-word articles about your personal life and grow organically.

Because of the sheer amount of high-quality blog posts being published every day, your content must be world-class to stand out.

In addition, the evolution of technology has changed the way people consume information, which adds distractibility and the need for instant gratification.

Therefore, the articles you publish need to be engaging, informative, and of high value. Subpar won’t cut it.

Just remember that perfection isn’t the goal. Done is better than perfect. The luxury with blog content is that you can always make improvements in the future.

8. Use IFTTT to Automate Social Media Sharing

I love automation, and technology has made it incredibly easy for us to reap its benefits.

For example, IFTTT is a free automation tool that lets you connect to almost any website or social network together.

It stands for If This Then That, which means you can make something happen on one website when another thing happens on a different website.

Specifically, when you publish a new blog post, you can broadcast it to your social media accounts automatically.

Here’s how.

Create an IFTTT account and launch a new automation with the WordPress applet.

Select Any new post and connect your WordPress blog:

Click on Create Trigger and you’ll be directed to select “Then That” step:

Then search for Twitter and choose “Post a tweet”:

Connect your Twitter account and click create action:

Now, whenever you publish a new blog post, it’ll automatically post a tweet to your Twitter followers.

9. Write Scientifically Shareable Content

It turns out there are psychological and scientific reasons content goes viral.

And you can up your chances of viral traffic when you understand why.

First, neuroscience tells us that people share content that is entertaining, inspiring, and useful, not just for ourselves, but for other people.

Evidence shows that a specific region in the brain lights up, suggesting we’re on the lookout for information interesting enough to share.

Second, psychology suggests we share content that expresses who we are.

If an article portrays the version of ourselves we want to become, we are more likely to share it.

And another reason people share content is to nurture our relationships and feel connected.

This is apparent in a study undertaken by The New York Times Customer Insight Group. The results show that 78% of respondents said “it let them stay connected to people they may not otherwise stay in touch with.”

And a further 73% of them said they shared information because it allowed them to connect with others who shared their interests.

So try to add blog content proven to get shares and you’ll more likely increase blog traffic.

10. Develop a Pinterest Strategy

Pinterest has over 433 million active users and is considered the 4th most popular social networking site.

It’s also not just a social network, but a search engine.

That means it works in a similar way to Google and YouTube when displaying search results.

The Pinterest algorithm analyses accounts and their content based on four sets of criteria:

  • Domain quality
  • Pin quality
  • Pinner quality
  • Topic relevance

If you develop a strategy that adheres to the algorithm and post consistently, you can explode your traffic with Pinterest.

11. Add social sharing buttons

Want people to share your blog posts on their social media accounts?

Then add social share buttons.

When you give readers the opportunity to share your content, it can do a few things:

  • Build credibility by displaying the share count
  • Send positive signals for your brand
  • Grow your social media following
  • And give you a bump in blog traffic

It’s super easy to set up. Here’s how:

In WordPress, head over to your plugins library and search for “social buttons”.

You’ll see a ton of plugins to choose from. Choose one you like and install it.

I’m using Simple Social Media Share Buttons by WPBrigade.

Once you’ve experimented with the settings, you’ll see the buttons appear on your articles.

12. Track Keyword Rankings

Want to get the most from your SEO efforts?

To know your top-performing articles, you’ll need to know where they rank. Monitoring traffic isn’t enough.

That’s because you’ll only see traffic from search engines when your articles show up on page one.

Using a rank tracking tool gives you insights into how well your on-page optimization is taking shape.

The screenshot above is the rank tracker SerpRobot, which offers some valuable insights.

It’s also a very affordable way to see a complete overview of all your search ranking positions.

Here’s how it works:

Create an account here. You get a free 14-day trial.

Sign into your account and add a project. Fill out the details of your website and add the keywords you are trying to rank for:

The SerpRobot bots will get to work, searching Google to see where your blog posts or pages show up.

Once it’s done, you can view your ranking positions in this table view:

The table shows the keyword, ranking position, keyword volume, and the URL.

When you know which articles are performing best on your blog, you can focus more of your attention on this type of content.

Try SerpRobot Here

13. Post content on Medium

Medium is a publishing platform who calls themselves “the YouTube for writers,” and receives around 143 million monthly visits.

That’s a lot of traffic. And we can take a slice of this to increase blog traffic.

To be successful on Medium, you’ll need to commit to the long game.

Like other platforms, such as Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, or Facebook, posting a few pieces of content and abandoning ship won’t be enough.

You must be consistent.

That being said, there are several actionable tips you can follow to improve your chances.

Here are just a few:

  • Publishing on a Saturday morning can increase your chances of standing out
  • Include images to make your stories more engaging
  • Add tags to your articles
  • 400 words and up are usually the most popular

Don’t forget to link to the articles you publish on your own blog to get a steady steam of traffic.

14. Create a YouTube Channel

Want to take advantage of YouTube’s 14.3 billion visits per month?

Then why not create a YouTube channel?

All you need to do is turn your blog posts into videos and upload them to the platform.

You can get a decent amount of blog traffic and potentially grow an additional income stream.

That’s right. If you grow your channel to 1000+ subscribers and 4000 watch hours, you can monetize your channel with ads.

To make the most of your video creation skills, follow these simple guidelines to grow your channel fast:

Replicate what already works

Find channels in the same niche as you and view their top videos:

Recreate these videos in your own unique way and you’ll show up in the suggested videos section:

Use keywords that people search for

Use a tool like vidIQ to see which keywords people are searching for:

Then target these keywords in your video title, description, and tags.

When you publish new videos, you can add links in several places.

Mainly in the description and the comments. And you can pin the comment so it stays at the top.

And, don’t forget to add a link to your profile header:

Ask people to subscribe

Asking people to subscribe is like adding a call to action button on a landing page.

Sometime, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

Mention other videos to keep people watching

When recording a video, mention previous videos you’ve already published and add a card for people to click on.

It will make people want to subscribe to your channel because of your valuable content.

15. Start a Podcast

The more places you publish content, the more opportunities you’ll have for driving blog traffic.

And a podcast is one of those opportunities.

Podcast experts tell us that starting a podcast is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to grow an online business.

All you need is a laptop or mobile device and a mic, which you might already have. And unlike writing and publishing articles, podcast episodes can be faster to produce.

You just have to find some topics to talk about by looking at the top-performing podcast episodes in your niche.

Then share your unique perspective on the topic.

Here’s an excellent video by Pat Flynn with a detailed tutorial:

16. Get Interviewed on Other Podcasts

Starting your own podcast might be a smart way to drive more traffic to your site, but being a guest on other podcasts takes it to another level.

When you’re invited for an interview on others’ podcasts, you are potentially being exposed to a wider audience.

That’s because many podcasters have already built up a following. And you’ll almost always gain a backlink from their website.

That not only gives you a traffic boost but also a domain authority boost, which will improve your SEO positions.

To get interviewed on podcasts, follow these simple steps:

  • Find relevant podcasts by browsing iTunes or doing a Google search with the keywords, “best [your niche] podcasts.”
  • Choose the podcasts to reach out to. Make sure they regularly have guests and a big audience. You can gauge this by their number of reviews.
  • Find the podcast owners’ contact details using Hunter.io and send them a pitch.

Make your pitch high-quality and respect the podcasters’ time.

The more they resonate with your story (make it brief), and think you’re right for their audience, you’ll get a higher response rate and more invites.

17. Repurpose Your Content

Creating content and only posting it in one place is a huge waste of potential.

Instead, repurpose your content on multiple channels in a variety of ways. This will give you the biggest return on the time and effort it takes to create content.

Here’s a bulletproof strategy to follow:

Write a Medium article that covers a broad range of topics you write about on your blog. Then link to multiple articles on your blog from the Medium post.

Then turn those articles you published on your blog into YouTube videos.

And you could even take the audio from the YouTube videos and publish them as a podcast.

Next, take some ideas you shared in the articles and add them to a Tweet Deck for automatic publishing to your Twitter account.

Last, take the YouTube videos and turn them into a free Udemy course.

More on getting traffic with a Udemy course later.

Internal linking might be the least-used marketing strategy available, yet yield significant results.

That’s because content marketing is so effective at building trust, improving conversions, and generating more traffic to your blog.

But when you have tons of published blog posts that don’t link to each other, you’re preventing search engines from recognizing their value.

What you need to do is insert 2-5 links from each of your articles to your other articles. But, it can take some time if you have a lot of articles.

To speed up this process, use a plugin such as Link Whisper to do the heavy lifting for you.

Once installed, it searches through your articles and makes internal linking suggestions.

Instead of sifting through articles to find a relevant keyword to interlink to the right blog post, it automates the whole process for you.

Try Link Whisper

19. Host a Contest or Giveaway

Everybody loves a giveaway. The chance of winning an epic prize for little effort is appealing to most of us.

And you, as a blogger can use them to get tons of traffic.

Here’s how it works.

Using a plugin called RafflePress, you embed the contest sign-up widget to a blog post announcing your giveaway.

People enter the contest by entering their email, but that’s not all. They also have the option to enter multiple times for extra entries.

They do this in a variety of ways, including:

  • Following you on social media
  • Subscribing to your YouTube channel
  • Sharing the contest on social media
  • Emailing the content with others with a special link

You can define how many entries they get for each action they take.

The best way for them to get entries is referring it to their friends. This is what can make your contest go viral.

Your contest will have more success if the prize is something valuable and relevant to your audience.

Get RafflePress Here

20. Add Your Two Cents on Reddit

Marketing on Reddit is something only the bravest marketers attempt.

That’s because everyone knows how much Reddit users hate marketers.

Still, it doesn’t stop us from sharing our words of wisdom from time to time.

The fact is, Reddit is the 9th most used social media platform in the U.S. and has 430 million monthly active users.

Join the site and create some educational posts, ask questions, and give your two cents build some traction.

21. Post on Other People’s Blogs

Also known as “Guest blogging,” this has been a strategy growing a blog since the beginning of time, it seems.

The process is simple:

  • Find blogs in your niche that already have a following and traffic
  • Reach out to them and pitch your guest post idea
  • When accepted, write the post and send it over

That’s it!

To make this work, you’ll need to reach out to a lot of bloggers and study the right type of content their audience would love.

You’ll get more accepted guest posts and a higher percentage of traffic.

22. Create Content for Google Discover

Google Discover content is the suggestions made on Google and Android devices, based on the users’ search behaviour.

It’s a tool for helping people keep up to date with content they would be interested in.

And the best part?

As long as your website is optimized well, there’s nothing you need to do to show up in the Google Discover feed.

If you want to learn more, then check out our article, How To Optimize For Google Discover.

23. Track Website Performance

Applying all these tactics won’t matter if you don’t know which one is working.

That’s why you must track your performance.

You can do that with Google Analytics and reading my other article, Google Analytics for blogs.

In summary, you create a GA4 account, add a Google analytics plugin, and you’re good to go.

When you implement a strategy, you’ll know whether to keep at it or try something different.

24. Start a Newsletter

It’s a well-known fact that more than 70% of your traffic will never return to your website.

But capture their email with a free lead magnet or irresistible newsletter and you’re onto a winner.

That’s because you can keep on engaging with your email list, a bit like you would on your social media channels.

The difference?

Email marketing almost always outperforms social media marketing by a longshot.

According to a Derek Halpern, after performing a test between Twitter, Google+ and his email list, the results were staggering.

In the space of one hour, he received 50 clicks from Twitter, 75 clicks from Google Plus, and 1200 clicks from his email list.

The bottom line is that email is a powerful and effective way of sending targeted traffic to your blog.

25. Answer Questions on Quora

Did you know Quora has over 300 million active users?

You know what that means?

Millions of people are actively using the platform:

  • To get their questions answered
  • To learn something new
  • Or for entertainment

And you could be one of those experts who answers their questions and provides them with what they’re looking for.

Here’s how it works.

Search for a topic you specialize in and choose a question to answer:

Click on the Answer button and start writing:

The key with Quora, like any form of marketing, is to provide value. And for best results, answer questions every day.

You also want to format your answers like you would with a blog post, using bullets points, images, bold text, and quotes.

And, don’t forget to add links to your blog. You’ll start gaining traction after a few weeks of consistent publishing.

26. Add Push Notifications to Your Site

Push notifications are those popups you see on some websites, asking if you want to be notified of new posts.

If you already get a sizable number of visitors, this could be an opportunity to bring some of them back when you post new content.

All you need to do is add a WordPress plugin. The most popular one is called OneSignal.

Once it’s installed, you’ll need to create a free account. Then, it’ll connect your API key to the plugin and you can switch on the popup for your readers.

Now, when people show up on your blog, they will be able to opt-in to Push notifications in their browser every time you publish an article.

27. Share Old Content on Social Media

Make the most out of your old blog posts by sharing them with your social accounts.

The best about this tip is that the content is already written.

And you can even automate the process with a clever plugin.

Revive Old Posts is a free and premium WordPress plugin that does exactly what the name suggests; revives old post.

Doing so can give you a boost in blog traffic, without you lifting a finger.

Get Revive Old Posts Here

28. Take part in Online Forums

There are thousands (maybe even millions) of forums online. And using them to your advantage could bring that extra needed traffic.

Not to mention, find more people to grow your audience.

Some of the most popular forums are Quora and Quora alternatives, but they are quite broad.

A better forum to drive some traffic is a niche forum.

Forums that specialize in a niche will have more engaging members. Even if they have fewer members, you can still get decent results.

To find your own niche forum, search Google for “[niche] + forum” or “best forums for [niche].”

For example, if your niche is yoga, you would type *best yoga forums*, sign up, and start contributing.

29. Create a Facebook Group

Facebook groups are a great way to provide support for your audience and to build a thriving community.

It’s also an excellent way to drive additional traffic to your blog.

Growing a thriving Facebook group is no small feat, but to keep your members happy, here are a few guidelines to follow:

  • Avoid only posting the articles you publish
  • Provide value and offer support
  • Try to be active in the group every day
  • Share content created by other bloggers and creators
  • Avoid turning your group into a place dedicated to promoting yourself

When you use your Facebook group for help and support, your members will be more engaged when you share your blog posts.

30. Hijack Someone Else’s Newsletter

I recently heard a strategy being used by Chris Von Wilpert of Content Mavericks, where he promotes his lead magnet in other people’s newsletters.

It’s like guest posts, only better.

It works by partnering with other bloggers in your niche and promoting each others’ lead magnet.

It’s kind of genius really, because once you have people on your list, you can share your blog content and market your offerings.

To pull this off, you need to have already built an audience yourself, otherwise there won’t be any incentive for people to partner with you.

Then, it’s all about getting your pitch right. Do this step well and you’re off to a great start.

31. Self-Publish a Kindle Book

Want to write your own book?

Well, this is possible for anyone these days thanks to Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP).

And if you give your readers an incentive to go to your blog, this will certainly increase your traffic.

You can offer anything from another book to a discount on your products or services.

The most popular way to advertise with paid search traffic is through Google Ads.

As long as you understand how to run paid search ads, there’s no faster way of driving traffic.

The only downfall is that it costs money, but it doesn’t need to be hundreds or thousands.

The trick is to find low competition keywords that have a high amount of searches.

Set yourself a daily budget and see your traffic pouring in.

33. Launch a Free Course on Udemy

Udemy is one of the largest online course platforms on the internet.

The platform has over 40 million active users and 70,000 instructors (learnopoly.com) teaching anything from web development and marketing to personal development and yoga.

Apart from using Udemy as an additional revenue source, you can launch a free course to build brand awareness and drive traffic back to your website.

If you market your course well on other platforms and provide substantial value, it will also help you gain trust and credibility for your brand.

To get traffic to your blog from Udemy, you can create an instructor’s profile and add a to link to your website.

Following their guidelines, you may promote other links in your last course lecture, which need to include the word “bonus”.

This link can be anything you link. You blog, a landing page to capture leads, or to promote a paid course you offer.

Here’s a great example by instructor Vanessa Van Edwards who offers this free course called, “7 Scientifically Proven Steps to Increase Your Influence”.

It has over 300,000 enrolled students and 25,000+ reviews. If only 1% of her students were to visit her blog or website, that would be more than 3,000 visitors.

Conclusion: How to 

Phew! That’s a lot of ways to increase blog traffic. Of course, you may not need to try all of them, because 2-3 decent traffic sources could be enough.

Which ones will you try?

Don’t forget, traffic isn’t everything. Conversions are also important, as is your ability to play the long game by developing a strategy and sticking to it.

The bottom line; try one thing at a time, go all in for a few months and monitor your results. Then rinse and repeat until you find what works best for you.

By Steve Allen

Sourced from Niche Pursuits

 

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How Omnichannel Marketing Feeds Into Stronger Customer Experiences

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By Jennifer Torres
Omnichannel marketing is the key to meeting customers where they’re at and ensuring cohesive experiences across channels and devices.

It’s midnight in Arizona, and Martin can’t sleep. He opens his iPad and begins scrolling through a collection of flat screen TVs on the Walmart website. Within ten minutes, one catches his eye, and he drops it in his cart and finalizes the purchase.

Across the country in Florida, it’s 3 a.m., and Emily is on her smartphone eyeing a set of golf clubs a local pro shop advertised in an email. With a flick and click, they’re hers.

Once relegated to after-work hours or weekends, shoppers now make purchases around the clock — while at work, lunch, during their commute, on vacation and when they can’t sleep at 3 a.m.

And they often switch between multiple devices throughout the day. There’s the work computer, a personal laptop, home desktop, smart phone and iPad. And that doesn’t account for brick-and-mortar shoppers that want an in-store experience.

Brands can meet these customers where they are by offering products and services across various online and offline channels — on a website, app or social media account, via email or text, at retail locations and public events. Companies can capture it all through omnichannel marketing.

What Is Omnichannel Marketing?

Customers desire a positive, seamless experience — no matter the path they take or device they use. Omnichannel marketing seeks to enable that desire by creating a cohesive, unified journey for each customer across all brand channels.

Cohesiveness across channels is a critical component. As opposed to multichannel marketing, which includes multiple channels that remain separate, omnichannel allows all online and offline channels to work in unison across touchpoints, devices and departments. With it, customers can bounce from smartphone to laptop to retail store and have a smooth experience.

Major Retailers Embrace It

Many large retailers have already incorporated omnichannel strategies, making the customer journey easier and more convenient.

  • Starbucks provides an app for use both online and in-store, incorporating a rewards program that allows customers to avoid lines and order ahead, gain free refills, use birthday bonuses and earn points for free products.
  • Amazon aligns its experience across a retail website, streaming service, mobile apps and connected Alexa devices and smartwatches.
  • Walgreens unifies its brand between in-store and online purchases through a customer loyalty program app that provides rewards, discounts and information about in-store events and sales.
  • Home Depot offers an app to help customers find products online and in-store, also including live chat and image search.
  • Disney app and loyalty cards allow visitors to check ride times and book tickets without standing in a long line.

Social Media Sells

With an active, integrated presence on social media accounts, brands have the opportunity to create a community.

A report from Statista predicted that by 2026, worldwide sales through social media platforms will reach $2.9 trillion — with the most influential content for buyers coming from posts made by acquaintances and connections.

McKinsey & Company reported that, with 60% to 70% of consumers researching and making purchases online and in-store, omnichannel is here to stay and will continue to grow. Their research also revealed that social media channels influence all age groups — particularly younger customers.

Outstanding Omnichannel

If the message a brand sends is unified and consistent across all channels, it better be a good one. Knowing what’s important to consumers today can help organizations create the best communications and serve to reflect their commitment to providing a positive customer experience.

Salesforce’s 2022 analysis of consumer and business buyer data revealed several factors worthy  of consideration when creating an omnichannel platform, including:

Favourite Channels

  • Phone
  • In-person
  • Online chat

Channel Surfing

  • Customers turn to an average of nine different channels to communicate with companies.
  • 57% of customers prefer to engage through digital channels, but 43% prefer non-digital channels — meaning satisfying customers generally requires great experiences both online and offline.

Loyalty

  • 83% of customers say they’re more loyal to companies that provide consistency across departments.
  • 71% of consumers switched brands at least once in the past year. The top three reasons were better deals, better product quality and better customer service.

Experience

  • 88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services.
  • 94% say a positive customer service experience makes them more likely to purchase again.

Emotion

  • 62% of customers feel an emotional connection to the brands they buy from most.

A recent Forrester report indicated that while customer experience rankings decreased for 19% of brands in 2022, the highest rankings were achieved by brands that provided customers with “high emotional quality” across their experiences.

And happy customers are a forgiving bunch — with data revealing that 54% of customers who feel happy, valued and appreciated are more willing to forgive brand mistakes.

Omnichannel in Action

Karla Medrano, a registered nurse and founder and operator of SGM Medical Marketing, said omnichannel marketing isn’t just about using every available channel for marketing, although that’s important too. It’s also about breaking down an organization’s various customer-facing channel-based silos.

“Being omnichannel is about taking a consumer-centric view of marketing tactics,” Medrano said. “In other words, the consumer’s experience comes first and your organization needs to be seamless in its branding, messaging and online and offline presence.”

When tasked with assisting AmbitCare in developing a stronger digital presence, Medrano employed an omnichannel strategy.

AmbitCare, a provider of free resources to physicians, caregivers and patients affected by rare diseases, had an inadequate social media presence. Medrano’s agency began to define content pillars and cohesive messaging across all channels to help potential patients learn about services. They also created content for the Spanish-speaking population.

After 60 days, said Medrano, the total net audience increased 81.3%.

Recently, her team implemented an omnichannel marketing strategy for a health/wellness start-up app specializing in post-partum. It’s still in the testing phase, but so far, Medrano said the results have been promising.

The app creators came to the agency with the issue of poor adherence rates; they wanted to find a way to help participants finish the program. Medrano created video content, personalized email templates and a system to respond to questions and concerns in a timely manner.

As a result of this strategy, Medrano said adherence rates improved by 40%.

“My omnichannel approach via texts, emails, video content and therapeutic communication to help moms through the program made them feel heard and supported,” she explained.

Omnichannel Oversights

According to a McKinsey & Company report, while the right omnichannel approach can potentially increase brand value, a disjointed or disorganized strategy can destroy it.

Medrano said that a few common errors in the omnichannel strategy include automating everything and thinking that being on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., is enough.

“Sometimes people need to know that there is a human on the other side so they can feel supported,” Medrano said. “A brand can have 10 channels and have rotten customer service vs. a brand that can have three channels and have quality customer service that includes a chat box, timely email responses, personalized attention, courtesy calls, flexible pay options, SMS and more.”

She said another mistake is not asking for customer feedback and not providing staff with proper training to ensure a cohesive conversation, tone and branding.

“Leadership doesn’t interact directly with customers, so they don’t always know what works and what doesn’t,” Medrano explained. “Every single interaction customers have with your brand…should help them feel heard and supported. Otherwise, you can potentially lose customers, receive bad reviews and lose revenue.”

Branding Blunders

With over 15 years of experience guiding large consumer brands to develop customer experiences that deliver shared value, Freelance CX Strategist Jenny Neilsen offered her list of the recurring mistakes brands make in their omnichannel marketing strategy:

  • Brands trying to scale their high-level brand messaging across channels without considering the devices or experience. Each marketing asset should be helping to move the prospect through the funnel, not just shouting the same tag line at them.
  • Saying they do omnichannel, but there is little coordination between in-house teams and agencies executing or designing the assets. All that equates to is running a lot of advertising simultaneously with little cohesion.
  • Not using what they know about their audiences to execute a smart campaign.

“Brands need to understand and use online and offline data points to deploy personalized experiences across channels and physical locations,” Neilsen said. “Every brand has hurdles when it comes to the shape and location of their data, so they either need to roll up their sleeves and make the data work for them manually or invest in technology to help them do it faster.”

It’s Not for Everyone

As founder of Jennis Consulting Group and co-founder of Founders Compass, a mentoring consultancy for new start-ups, Steve Jennis places omnichannel marketing at the bottom of the priority list for start-ups.

He believes omnichannel marketing is good for customer retention because customers return to places where they have a good buying experience. But for a new business, he classifies it as a “back-end operational process that comes after marketing and sales have been successful.” A good product coupled with solid marketing and sales should come first.

“Without good marketing and sales, omnichannel is useless as customers don’t have a good reason to buy anyway,” Jennis said. “As such, it’s pretty low down as a priority for a start-up unless it gives you a real competitive advantage. But better products, marketing and sales will be more effective at that than channel choices.”

By Jennifer Torres

Sourced from CMSWIRE

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AB InBev ‘increasingly’ looking to buy media on attention over CPM

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By Michaela Jefferson

The global CEO of AB InBev’s in-house agency draftLine believes the media industry will continue to make a “directional shift” towards attention as a primary trading metric.

AB InBev is “increasingly” moving away from buying media purely on traditional cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) and towards buying “attentive reach”, according to the global CEO of the alcoholic drinks giant’s in-house agency, draftLine.

Media performance metrics have come under growing scrutiny over recent years, particularly those measuring effectiveness of digital media. With the value of metrics such as shares, opportunity to see and viewability being questioned, some brands are experimenting with ways to measure the level of actual attention consumers pay to their ads across different channels.

In June 2020, AB InBev joined the likes of Mars, Diageo, British Gas and Reckitt on the then-recently launched Attention Council, a confederation of brands, agencies and publishers working to understand how attention can be used as a trading currency for media.

Meanwhile, the price of media has been rising rapidly post-pandemic. Forecasts from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and Ebiquity for 2022 suggest the cost of digital media will inflate by 6.4%, while total offline media will inflate 5.5%. TV is expected to have the highest cost inflation at 9%, while outdoor media’s cost inflation will be 5.7% and radio’s 4.9%.

It’s about getting the reach you need and making sure you’re capturing the right amount of attention.

Tracy Stallard, AB InBev

“The media industry has historically sold itself on CPM and on the idea that an impression is an impression and a reach point is a reach point,” explains draftLine’s Tracy Stallard, speaking to Marketing Week at this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

“Increasingly we’re thinking about attentive reach. How much attention are we really capturing in this moment? Is the individual in a moment when they can actually be open to a new message or a new way of thinking about a brand?”

When looking at the media marketplace from the perspective of attention, there remains some “pricing discrepancy” compared to a pure CPM perspective, she adds.

Passion points

Stallard is also global vice-president of consumer experiences at the company, leading a team which takes a particular focus on how AB InBev’s brands – which include Stella Artois, Corona and Budweiser – use passion points such as sports, hobbies or interests.

“We know that consumers are much more attune to receiving new messages when they’re in something that they’re actively leaning into and that tends to be their passion points. So we’re really looking at using attention as the way we want to transact and buy rather than just a CPM approach,” she says.

While media channels including cinema, magazines, TV and news brands have been particularly vocal in their support of attention as a metric for trading and measuring performance, Stallard says AB InBev hasn’t yet found itself prioritising one channel over another.

“We’re not channel focused, we’re people focused. At the end of the day, we’re trying to make sure we’re reaching people in the right place and the right way,” she says.

“It’s about getting the reach you need and making sure you’re capturing the right amount of attention.”

Stallard adds she is closely watching developments in the attention measurement space, predicting this segment of the industry will continue to grow.

“I do think that will be a directional shift the media industry will be making,” she says.

By Michaela Jefferson

Sourced from MarketingWeek

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4 Ways to Use Automation for Customer Success

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By Kelly Richardson

By improving efficiency and eliminating human error, automation might be the best move for businesses today.

You may think that automation is something that requires an intense technical infrastructure backed by a big budget to boot. But the truth is, even small businesses can use simple automation tools to improve customer success.

Business owners are always looking for ways to streamline processes and make operations more efficient. One way to do this is by using automation tools to manage customer interactions.

What is customer success automation?

Customer success automation is the process of using technology to automate tasks and procedures to accomplish goals related to customer success. This can include everything from customer onboarding and engagement to retention and support.

Automation can help you improve efficiency and accuracy, freeing up time for your team to focus on more strategic tasks. It can also help you improve the customer experience, making it easier and faster to get the help they need. Not to mention you take the element of human error completely off the board.

Every business wants loyal customers, and what better way to get them than to keep them happy and satisfied with fast and efficient service?

Is automation for customer success expensive?

The answer to this question is no–there are many ways to use customer success automation without breaking the bank. In fact, some of the most effective techniques are pretty simple and easy to implement.

You don’t need a software developer to automate some of the processes in your business. With the right tools, you can automate tasks related to customer success easily and inexpensively.

Automate emails and follow-ups.

Instead of spending hours creating and sending emails to individual customers, you can use automated tools that can send emails whenever the time is ripe.

There are a lot of email marketing tools like ActiveCampaign or Mailshake that can send those for you. Just remember that when using email automation, it’s crucial to avoid getting flagged as spam.

Fortunately, most modern email marketing tools let you specify conditions and triggers before firing off automated messages.

Automate outreach from sentiment in your existing online conversations.

A 2022 survey by CompleteCSM revealed that 79 percent of businesses struggled to manage the rising expectations of customers, with response time and “bedside manner” being two of the many challenges affecting the customer experience.

One solution is to set up automated and templated responses to an overall downturn in customer sentiment over a series of conversations. The ability to locate and respond to a situation before it escalates by looking at customer sentiment from your existing systems can give days’ or weeks’ advance warning of a waning customer.

Automate customer re-engagement.

All businesses have cold leads that haven’t responded to interactions–stubbornly refusing to move down the sales funnel.

As a business owner, you’d want to reach out to them. But it would be inefficient to implement a manual approach in doing so.

Having an automated re-engagement strategy for such situations can help you reactivate cold leads and reduce churn rate. A typical strategy is to send an automated re-engagement email after a specific number of days have passed since their previous interaction. Again, this can be easily accomplished with the right email marketing tool.

Create self-onboarding experiences.

The simplest automation strategy for customer success is to automate the onboarding experience.

Greet new users with links to important resources and free downloadables. For SaaS companies, engineer a self-paced learning process via in-app tours or tutorial videos.

Remember, customer success is your success. By improving efficiency and eliminating human error, automation might be the best move for businesses in today’s age.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Kelly Richardson

Co-founder of Infobrandz. She likes to help people build businesses through visual communication and her influential blogs.

Sourced from Inc.

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How to Generate More Leads Through Your Online Marketing Campaigns

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Sourced from Neil Patel

Are you happy with the number of leads your marketing campaigns are generating? Or, do you wish they were a bit more effective?

If you’re serious about growing your business—whether it’s a B2B company, an e-commerce store, or a startup—increasing the number of leads should be a top priority. Setting up online campaigns is a good start, but it’s not enough. You need to optimize those marketing campaigns to squeeze every last lead from your funnel.

Are you ready to get to work? Here are seven strategies to generate leads like never before.

Why Are Leads so Crucial to Business Growth?

Two of marketers’ top priorities are generating leads and converting those leads to customers. Only increasing customer satisfaction comes close to the importance of getting new leads.

A bar graph of the top marketing priorities in the next 12 months.
A bar graph of the top marketing priorities in the next 12 months.

It’s no surprise that lead generation is a top priority. Without a continuous flow of new leads, sales dry up. Without sales, there’s no revenue. And without revenue, your business folds.

What’s more, most people who land on your site won’t purchase right away. You need to constantly collect leads so you can nurture them and convert them into buyers in the future.

Not just any leads will do, however. Referrals, conferences, and cold calling are all great lead generation strategies, but they aren’t enough. You also need to learn how to generate more leads from your online campaigns.

Why are advertising leads better? Using targeting you can gather better leads faster and even automate parts of the process. How do you make sure your ads are driving quality leads?

How to Generate Leads Online: 7 Strategies to Drive More Leads

If you aren’t sure how to create a lead generation campaign, I have previous articles to walk you through the process. What I’m going to do is show you how to generate leads online by improving your existing ad campaigns.

Optimize Your Landing Page

Your landing page (or squeeze page) is one of the most important elements of your online lead generation campaign. The goal is to leave the visitor with no choice but to hand over information in exchange for something valuable.

Landing pages convert better than most other ads or offers. The average conversion rate is 2.35 percent, but some have conversion rates in excess of 10 percent. If your landing page’s conversion rate isn’t pushing double digits, you should look to optimize one or more elements ASAP.

I recommend looking at your page’s copy, including its headline, first. Make sure your copy is short, sharp, and engaging. Users need to understand exactly what your product is and how it helps them within a few seconds of landing on your site. Make sure you focus on the benefits of your product to the user, not its features.

Spend more time tweaking and testing your headline than anything else. This will be the first thing a user reads and one of the biggest deciding factors in whether they continue browsing the rest of the page.

You can speed up a user’s understanding of your product by including a video on your landing page. A good chunk of your audience would rather watch a video than read your copy, which is why 76 percent of sales teams say video is key to securing more deals.

Finally, remove all distractions from your page. The layout should be as simple as possible and there’s no need for a navigation bar or links to any other pages on your site. This leaves the user with two options: close their browser window or sign up.

ConvertKit’s Creator Pass is a fantastic example of how to create a great landing page. There’s no headline navigation, the headline copy offers a clear benefit, and there’s an enticing call to action right in front of you.

An example of an effective landing page by ConvertKit.
Generate more leads by optimizing your landing page.

Offer Real Value

Arguably the most important part of your landing page isn’t the copy, image, or CTA. It’s the piece of content, tool, or resource you offer in return for each lead’s email address.

For most brands, gated content takes the form of a PDF download, something like an ebook or a whitepaper. But it doesn’t have to be. Case studies, surveys, webinars and video series are all excellent types of gated content.

Whatever form your gated content takes, it must deliver tremendous value. Otherwise leads will leave your funnel as quickly as they entered. How do you deliver value? By solving a problem your leads have. What are their pain points? Where do they get stuck? What expertise can you leverage to make their lives a little bit easier?

Delivering value also means presenting gated content in the best way possible. Make it visually appealing, with images, videos, and other forms of multimedia content. The nicer it is for your leads to consume, the more they’ll engage with it.

Here’s an example of a non-ebook lead magnet from Leadpages:

An example of an effective landing page that offers value to the consumer from Leadpages.
Generate more leads by offering real value to the consumer.

They know their leads often struggle to create high converting pages, so they created a training course to solve that issue.

Use Automation to Nurture Leads

Collecting leads is just the first step of the process; you also need to nurture them. Only two percent of sales are made at first contact, yet most salespeople give up after the first attempt. If you automate the follow-up process, you don’t have to worry about a thing.

I recommend using email to nurture when possible. It is a great way to drip feed messages to your leads, it also generates massive ROI. According to research by the Direct Marketing Association, the ROI of email marketing is £42 for every £1 spent.

If you don’t have an email automation platform yet, check out my review of the best solutions. Then integrate your landing page’s form so every email is automatically added to your mailing list.

Next, create an automated series of emails that is sent out at regular intervals. Your goal is to take leads through each stage of the buying process—and that means providing them with the right educational content at the right time. Start by educating them about your wider industry and their general problems. A couple of emails later, you can start to focus on your product and service and how you can help.

The more emails you send, the more you can make your product the hero of the email, and the more direct you can be with the lead.

Use Chatbots to Turn Conversations Into High-Quality Leads

Your salespeople aren’t the only ones who can nurture leads. Chatbots can automate almost every part of the lead generation process. They’re incredibly effective at it, too. Over half of businesses that use AI-powered chatbots generate better quality leads.

Start by replacing forms on your landing page with a chat bot. Forms can be long-winded and rarely offer a great user experience. Chatbots make it easier for prospects to fill out their details. In some cases, users may not even be aware they’re filling out a lead form.

You can also use chatbots to respond to leads at lightning speed. Response time matters in lead generation. A study by Harvard Business Review shows businesses that respond to leads in under five minutes are 100 times more likely to convert them. With chatbots, you can automate the response process and send a message as soon as a lead fills out a form.

Finally, use chatbots to nurture and qualify leads. Chatbots can ask the same qualifying question as your salespeople to separate the wheat from the chaff. The best can be sent directly to sales, while everyone else is added to a nurturing sequence.

Drift’s chatbot is an excellent example of this. It asks a qualifying question as soon as someone lands on the site, putting them straight through to a sales rep if they’re ready.

A text conversation started by a chat bot about driving conversation on its website.
Generate more leads by utilizing chat bots.

Use Multi-Platform Campaigns

How many platforms are you using to advertise your landing page and gated content? You probably aren’t using enough.

Today’s customer journey is long. Most don’t convert to customers the first time they land on your site. The majority probably won’t sign up on your landing page, either. A recent Google study found it takes between 20 and 500 touchpoints to become a customer.

The solution is a multi-touch campaign, where your message is delivered in multiple formats across multiple channels.

Advertising on a range of channels maximizes the chances that potential customers will see and click your ad. It’s a numbers game at the end of the day. The more shots you take, the more chances you have to score.

Leverage Personalization

If you want an easy way to increase conversion rates at every stage of your online lead generation campaign, try personalization. In a survey of B2B sales and marketing professionals, over three-quarters (77 percent) said personalization made for better customer relationships, and over half (55 percent) said personalization led to higher sales conversions.

How can you add personalization into your funnels to generate leads?

Start by personalizing your ads. While Apple may have made creating hyper-personalized ads a lot harder, Google still makes it relatively easy to personalize paid search ads with dynamic ads.

Next, personalize your landing page, particularly the call to action. Research shows personalized CTAs achieve 202 percent better conversions. Marketing tools like HubSpot and Unbounce can help you create dynamic CTAs that change depending on who views them. But you could also go old school and create several different versions of your page for each ad group and personalize the copy accordingly.

Finally, build personalization into your email automation tool. Every major email marketing tool makes it easy to automatically insert the recipient’s name into the subject line and body copy, so there’s absolutely no excuse not to personalize your nurturing emails.

Target Your Ads Carefully

There’s no point wasting resources nurturing leads who will never buy your product. That’s why you need to target your lead generation ads carefully.

I’ve written extensively about how to find your target audience and identify target markets for paid campaigns, so I’m not going to cover old ground here.

I will say it’s important not to be too hasty when judging the performance of your landing page ads. When pruning and optimizing ad campaigns, don’t just judge performance based on how many people they send to your landing page that sign up. That’s a good measure, but it’s not as important as how many people actually convert into customers.

Think about it. One ad campaign could have a ridiculously high signup conversion rate of 20 percent. But if only a tiny fraction of those people make a purchase, it’s not a particularly effective ad. An ad campaign with a much lower signup conversion rate could be far more effective at generating high-quality leads.

Of course, this means you’re going to have to wait longer to collect relevant data. But the end result should be a much more targeted and effective ad campaign.

The best way to target ads effectively? Target keywords with higher buyer intent. These are search terms that indicate the user is closer to conversion.

Frequently Asked Questions About Generating More Leads

How do you build a lead generation campaign?

Start by having an objective and defining your target audience. Create a valuable piece of gated content and drive traffic to it using paid ads. Collect emails and then use email to nurture those leads.

What is an example of a lead generation marketing campaign?

A gated whitepaper is an example of a lead generation marketing campaign. Webinars can also be used as a lead generation marketing campaign to acquire leads and nurture them using video

How do I optimize my lead generation campaign?

There are several strategies to optimize lead generation campaigns. Improve your landing page copy, put your emails on autopilot, use chatbots to speed up response time, and personalize messaging.

Where should I advertise for my lead gen campaign?

Social media platforms are one of the most cost-effective places to advertise your lead generation campaign. But the important thing is to advertise wherever your target audience hangs out online.

Conclusion: Generate More Leads to Improve Marketing ROI

Improving your online marketing campaigns and optimizing how you generate leads are the keys to growing your business. But you don’t have to use all of the strategies I’ve listed all at once.

Optimizing your campaigns should be an ongoing endeavour, so pick one or two of these strategies to implement at a time. Pretty soon you’ll send your ROI skyrocketing.

Sourced from Neil Patel

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Hit show Lego Masters shares the building blocks of branded entertainment

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By Hannah Bowler

Brands have been experimenting with branded entertainment for decades, but few have managed to cut through and become long-running international hits. That’s until Lego Masters came along and rewrote the rule book. Lucas Green, global head of content operations at international distributor Banijay, tells brands how they can replicate its success.

Lego Masters is the holy grail of branded entertainment. The show, which is jointly owned by production outfit Tuesday’s Child, and The Lego Group, represented by Banijay, was first released in 2017 on Channel 4. It has gone on to spawn 18 international adaptations and is in its third season in a primetime slot on Fox hosted by the actor Will Arnett.

“[Lego Masters] has spread all over the world and taken on a new life of its own – in quite a short space of time it’s become a global hit,” Green says.

The format originated with UK producers Tuesday’s Child, which pitched it to the toymakers. Green says Lego is inundated with requests, but the format convinced it that it would be executed in the right way and in line with its brand values.

“If you are going to do a show about competitive brick-making there is only one market leader in that space – it’s Lego, there is no question about which brand you want to be associated with,” Green says.

A tricky aspect of executing brand-related content is negotiating the various territory-specific sponsorship regulations that prohibit the number of direct brand references or logos. In the case of Lego Masters, the producers couldn’t show any Lego sets that were on sale. To overcome this, Green says any show should be a “reaffirmation of your brand values.”

“All the creative beats of the show, the tone of the show and the sense of humour and playfulness,” it’s all Lego, he says. “It’s about driving home those core principles of Lego, even if it’s not just a matter of how many seconds you can get a Lego on the screen.”

Green reminds brands and agencies executing branded content not to forget the storytelling. “That is what helps create that long-form programming beyond an advertising campaign.” In the case of Lego that’s creating epic builds, jeopardy and human stories, he says.

“Don’t underestimate the decades of experience TV format producers have learned about building a story – it’s about the narrative, how you sustain an audience, how you get them to binge-watch your show and how to integrate your brand,” Green advises.

In terms of the editorial process, Green says it involves the producers of the show in collaboration with Lego. “Without Lego’s involvement it wouldn’t be possible,” he says. “It’s a perfect example of how producers and brands can work together.”

By Hannah Bowler

Sourced from The Drum

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Partnership Powers On-Brand Marketing, Customer Retention

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By Nancy Dunham

When it comes to data, act more like Disney, software provider Treasure Data tells automobile dealers.

Dealers want the data they collect to benefit their stores, but Andrew Shaffer, automotive industry principal of software provider Treasure Data, Mountain View, CA, suggests dealers consider how that data benefits their customers.

Disney does that, Shaffer reminds attendees at Automotive Retail 2022, presented by Reuters in Las Vegas.

“They know when you’ve been to their resort three times, five times,” he says. “We are bringing a platform to the (automotive) marketplace that’s really going to help brands create more relevant experience, ultimately help them drive better segmentation.”

Treasure Data partnered with San Francisco-based marketing and data management company Acxiom’s Real Identity to assist dealerships and OEMs in identifying, acquiring and retaining customers through cookieless technologies.

“We feel we’re bringing this brand to the marketplace that’s really going to help create a more relevant experience, ultimately help them drive better segmentation,” says John Campos, industry managing director-automotive for Acxiom. And as the December deadline for the FTC’s Safeguard Rule inches close, both speakers note their companies are dedicated to reducing clients’ risks in regulatory compliance.

Successful dealers find streamlined data systems are vital to target their marketing correctly, says Campos. That isn’t easy to achieve when considering trends in the metaverse that will soon include all forms of digital marketing. The question is how to track and engage customers across all channels.

“The Acxiom side of the equation is data and identity. And the Treasury data side of the equation is a platform to help you automate that customer experience,” Campos says. “(We combine efforts to provide) a single environment where you’re able to unify all your first-party data. ‘How did the customer engage on my website, my emails? In the future, it will be digital retailing. And we’re bringing all of that together in one environment.”

The new program streamlines data delivery and analysis and allows clients to optimize it.

“That’s where you can find out ‘Am I spending my marketing budget in the right place?’” Campos says. “And customers want you to know and remember who they are. And ultimately, the best customers are going to leverage their data to truly drive the most growth pre-and post-sale and deliver a truly personalized customer experience.”

The more efficient a dealership’s marketing and customer interactions, the more likely revenue and customer retention will grow, Campos says.

One stumbling block dealers face is how to keep their brand messages on target throughout the different channels.

“We help you drive more building-specific campaigns to get people (to your) the dealership by finding what’s important to them,” says Shaffer. “(You can) offer them a very unique opportunity, a very unique incentive to come into the dealership and drive greater service.”

By Nancy Dunham

Sourced from WARDSAUTO

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How To Prepare Your Business For The Perfect Exit Deal

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It’s every entrepreneur’s dream to walk away from their business with the biggest payday of their life.

“It’s important to learn from your mistakes, but it is BETTER to learn from other people’s mistakes, and it is BEST to learn from other people’s successes. It accelerates your own success.

– Jim Rohn

Truer words have never been spoken… especially when it comes to preparing your business for a successful and profitable exit.

And isn’t that every entrepreneur’s dream? To walk away from your business with the biggest payday of your life?

My friend Joey Osborne built the Mosquito Authority franchise over a 15-year period and recently had an eight-figure payday after being acquired by a private equity firm but he says:

“What you don’t know can really hurt you.”

He lost his first 7 figure deal because he didn’t have the knowledge & tools he needed. When he finally understood the process, he positioned himself to get an 8-figure deal upfront and an even larger payday down the road in what’s known in the industry as “the second bite of the apple.”

What is “the second bite of the apple?”

The private equity firm brings in professional management, helps the business grow, does more acquisitions, and at some point will sell the bigger business.

At that point, Joey will get paid again.

I’ve sold 5 businesses over the last 20 years and NOT having the information & tools that I’m about to share with you cost me over $2,000,0000 in cash, not to mention the time and effort I wasted. In Joey’s case, he would have saved $100,000’s in wasted effort, and put another $3,000,000 in his pocket.

Joey says that knowing what your business is worth is just the 1st step in selling it. The hardest part is getting your business ready to sell in order to get its best value.

You don’t know – what you don’t know.

I spent three days with Joey talking about what it takes to get acquired by a big PE firm as he did. Together we outlined “The 5 Steps to Be Acquired By Private Equity” that any founder can model.

The 5 Steps to Be Acquired By Private Equity:

  1. Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze? (Do you and your team have the right mindset?)
  • Have you considered what your life will be like after you sell?
  • Is your spouse/partner on the same page?
  • Have you considered your employees and maintained confidentiality? Your employee’s first instinct will be – “How does this affect me? The buyer will want to know the employees are staying.
  • Are you willing to take on another full-time job? (Selling to a private equity firm is like having a second full-time job until it closes.)
  • Are you willing to spend six figures getting the right due diligence?
  • Are you prepared to work hard and fast? (Keeping in mind “Time Kills Deals.”)
  1. Sizzle or Steak? (How’s your branding?)
  • Have you taken an honest look at your branding and how you appear to the public in the last six months? (The aesthetic appeal and appearance of your business matters. Does your business look like a $10mm company or does it have a $200 website?)
  • Do you have a branding guide or checklist? (Every business needs one.)
  • How are you positioned against your competitors?
  • Is your messaging and marketing working?
  • Do you and your business have a good origin story or “Big Why?” (Is it easy to tell and remember?)
  1. Warts and All (Credibility and the Believability) FYI: Private Equity buyers do NOT want you or your company to be perfect. 
  • They are looking for little things they can fix. They see those issues as being “Multipliers” – that they can profit from with their own unique skill sets and resources.
  • Part of their profit plans includes finding your company’s “warts” so they can fix them and leverage the improvements to increase their profits. Warts are good!
  • Are there skeletons in your closet the buyer needs to know about that could kill the deal or make a turnaround or 2nd sale impossible? You want to disclose them BEFORE they find them – because they will find them. It pays to be honest upfront, every business has negatives. Being honest increases trust with the buyer.
  1. Good Guts (The People / Processes / Financials / Management)
  • Are your books in order? If not, are you willing to get them fixed?
  • How frequently do you audit your books? (I learned – if your books are audited every quarter, you can close a deal in 30 days.)
  • Have you fully documented the processes (SOPs Standard Operating Procedures) of your business? The Private Equity firm is looking for ways to cut costs, improve efficiencies, and leverage assets. Your documentation not only gives them a track to run on when they take over – more importantly, it gives them clues on improving your efficiencies.
  • Do you have written agreements with key suppliers / distributors / dealers / etc.?
  • Do you have the right management and support team in place now? (This is BIG)
  • If not – are you willing to start hiring the right people?
  1. The Buyer (Absolute MUSTs when you start talking to a buyer, plus the 2nd Bite of the Apple)
  • The buyer has to be friendly.
  • You have to like them, trust them, and feel good about them
  • Ideally, they are willing to be flexible with the buyout structure – to fit both your needs.
  • Working with your buyer is a serious relationship – just like a marriage. Especially if you stay on in any fashion, or if there’s a “claw back” option for the buyer to take back some of the money.
  • They are intelligent and interested in making money – but not greedy. (2nd bite of apple incentive)
  • They need to give you a clear timeline and you need to understand them.

Being acquired by an equity firm is a lot of work but it’s well worth it. I’ve had five exits but no “2nd bites” like Joey. That’s simply because I wasn’t aware that this was an option and lacked the sophistication or opportunity to make it happen.

Joey Osborne has created a Shark Tank Matchmaking system for founders and Private Equity that leads to a highly profitable exit. If you want to sell your business, Joey is your guy. Don’t leave millions on the table! Learn from our mistakes, so you can maximize your opportunity. You and your family deserve it! Watch the whole interview HERE.

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TikTok offers free training to court small businesses

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By Mia Sato

The program includes guides to advertising on TikTok

TikTok is rolling out a new program aimed at bringing more small and medium-sized businesses to the platform.

The six-week program, called “Follow Me,” includes step-by-step guides teaching businesses how to use TikTok to grow their companies — including how to advertise on the app. The courses are free to enrol in and will include lessons on running campaigns on TikTok and tips from businesses using the platform.

Virtually unknown businesses or products going viral is one of the hallmarks of TikTok, where a visit to a restaurant and a video of a kitchen sponge have the same chance of being seen by millions. Many small business owners have turned to TikTok to promote their companies, and individual customers have in turn built enormous platforms themselves through product reviews, recommendations, and tutorials. TikTok’s new courses could onboard more businesses chasing viral success and turn them into advertisers.

In the past few months, TikTok has introduced more ways for creators to make money via advertising on the platform. In May, the company said it would begin sharing ad revenue with some creators, who would get 50 percent when ads run alongside top-performing videos. Shortly after, TikTok announced Branded Mission, a feature that allows advertisers to solicit videos from creators — who essentially make content on spec — with selected posts being used as ads.

TikTok’s revenue last year was nearly $4 billion and came largely from ads, according to Bloomberg. And it’s projected to grow this year as the company continues building up its advertising apparatus in hopes of competing with Google and Meta, which dominate digital advertising.

Feature Image Credit: Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

By Mia Sato

Sourced from THE VERGE

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AR: what’s next and how can marketers embrace the tech?

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By Marcus Foley

As augmented reality (AR) progresses and technology continues to evolve, Tommy co-founder and chief growth officer Marcus Foley considers how it can be used in new industries.

AR has moved into the mainstream. For some age groups, it’s phenomenally familiar already. It’s still an exciting and fast-moving growth area for the marketing industry, developing at pace. The global AR market is expected to expand with a 40%+ compound annual growth rate in the next six to eight years. It’s allowing brands to create experiences that only a few years ago we couldn’t imagine delivering on a phone to a waiting crowd of millions (or billions – 3.5 billion users globally, as it stands). Even fewer than this many people would be confident enough to pick it up, play, share and create with it. Now we’re delivering hundreds every few months.

Tommy predict where the evolution of AR will take the advertising industry. Image: Lucrezia Carnelos/Unsplash

Tommy predicts where the evolution of AR will take the advertising industry / Lucrezia Carnelos via Unsplash

At Tommy, we spend a lot of time designing, making and geeking out over AR experiences. This is partly driven by being an official partner for TikTok, and working with a considerable number of household name entertainment brands. AR can be a brilliant tool for famous characters and their fans, and we’ll come on to that, but it is also becoming increasingly important for the retail sector – 71% of shoppers recently reported they would shop with a retailer more often if it offered AR.

Why is AR so attractive to shoppers? For the relevant brands, it’s the ease and speed of product trial, which can be mind-blowing these days. Want to try a new hair color? Click, it’s done. You like it? Click, it’s in your basket. Want to see that new sofa, in your chosen fabric, in your lounge? Click, it’s done. It might save two or three trips to the showroom. What has changed is that it’s become easier to deliver on devices without the need for apps, it’s much easier to use and it’s far more convincing, which has opened up the market. This is without talking about the myriad of fashion brands that have tested, trialled or permanently used AR in their purchase journey. Trying on, personalizing, seeing things in your context – these all de-risk the purchase and give customers the confidence to buy.

What else is pushing AR into familiar spaces and sometimes unexpected hands? Social media, of course. What’s interesting about AR in these spaces is that it has become a part of turning the traditional model of influence on its head. In social media, AR is helping everyday people (not brands or celebrities) to tell more immersive, richer stories with unlimited creative possibilities – without a budget or a studio – from their own special effects lab. Where once the technology barriers and costs kept this as a domain for the few, it’s now in the hands of a huge volume of people. With so many individuals and ideas with such powerful tools, it takes storytelling and share ability to a whole new level.

The younger generations are often the instigator, but all generations are being exposed to AR through their peers, friends and family. It might be in photos and videos using lenses, a shared moment playing a game at a family event, or a website where a convenient trial moment is embedded into the customer journey. If you ask them, ‘Do you use AR?’, they would probably say no, but they are part of a growing number of people who are starting to see the blend of digital and physical imagery as being ‘normal.’ Of course, it’s not just Josephine Bloggs putting bunny ears on Granny – it’s also the creators and brands that are intentionally building an audience that is driving expectation and desire for AR too.

So what about them? For one, the entertainment industry loves AR, and albeit from our slightly biased perspective, is doing some amazing work to bring their IP to people in immersive moments that were previously impossible. Combining novel experiences with getting a fan closer to their favourite characters – in many cases appearing as their favourite foe or hero – can go a long way to encourage people to try, create and share. The noise from each major release ripples through feeds and, once again, AR becomes less novelty and more expected. Those who don’t have it become the odd ones out.

AR is no longer a novelty – and the expectation and desire for it is growing. What does this mean for marketers? It means that it’s time to start having a serious think about AR, and to identify if it works for your product and target market. This is not to advocate for the use of technology where it doesn’t fit, but to encourage you to explore, and at least understand, how your customers are using these tools to engage with people, products and places. It’s great fun, and its capacity to inspire and connect people with pure entertainment moments shouldn’t be overlooked. However, it’s more than that – it’s a shift in the way we experience brand and product that is here to stay.

By Marcus Foley

Sourced from The Drum

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