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How to strengthen your brand’s reputation with simple content marketing strategies

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By Timothy Carter.

  • Content should add value to the conversation by making strong points or sharing research.
  • Your brand’s reputation could suffer if it’s associated with regular bad content.
  • Although good content takes time and money to produce, it can offer great return on investment.

Content marketing is one of the dominant strategies in the modern digital marketing world. That’s partially due to its accessibility (since anyone can write and publish content on the web). But it’s also a testament to its effectiveness.

Of course, practicing content marketing isn’t a sure-fire way to generate traffic or even build your brand reputation — especially now. The truth is, marketers everywhere are suffering from the effects of “bad” content, whether they’re the ones writing it or not.

If content marketing is going to survive as a strategy, we need to collectively address it.

What is bad content?

Bad content is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s typically content produced for its own sake, rather than to serve a specific purpose. Instead of being written to inform the public or entertain a specific target audience, it’s written merely to generate traffic or improve the visibility of the brand.

That said, the intent of the piece isn’t the main problem. The main problem is that the content cuts corners, or otherwise adds little value to a given conversation. It doesn’t cover new ground. It doesn’t make strong points. It doesn’t offer new research. Sometimes, it’s not even well written, ending up riddled with typos and semantic errors.

The ongoing publication and syndication of bad content leads to a host of negative consequences for marketers, both on a first order (affecting the publisher directly) and a second order (affecting everyone, even those not publishing bad content).

First order effects

Writing and publishing bad content will negatively impact your brand, even if you see some marginal increases in traffic or brand recognition.

For example:

  • Reputational damage. When a person reads an empty or poorly researched piece of content, they often look to the author to see who’s responsible for it. If your brand is associated with bad content, it’s going to take a reputational hit, sooner or later. You don’t want to be known as the company that makes shoddy content.
  • SEO issues. In some cases, an influx of hastily written content can actually harm your positions in search engines. Google‘s search ranking algorithm significantly considers content quality when evaluating trustworthiness and eventual positions; in other words, if you care about search engine optimization (SEO), bad content will do more harm than good.
  • ROI and cost issues. Writing a piece of bad content still takes time, money and effort. If the bulk of your content marketing strategy is centred on “bad” pieces, it’s going to ruin your return on investment (ROI).

Second order effects

Bad content in circulation also affects the entire marketing industry — even if you’re not immediately aware of these effects.

Consider:

  • Consumer trust. Consumer trust in brands is already at an all-time low. It’s part of the reason why traditional advertising is met with such scepticism and cynicism in the modern era. The more the internet is flooded with bad content, engineered for marketing purposes only, the more consumer trust is going to fall; increasingly, companies will be seen as greedy manipulators that don’t care about quality.
  • The efficacy of content marketing. Content marketing originated as a way to build trust with consumers — that’s what made it powerful. But as bad content becomes the new norm, content marketing suffers reputational damage. Everyone’s strategy takes a hit.
  • Content pollution. Here’s the thing about bad content — it’s cheap and easy to produce. It’s therefore easy to flood the internet with bad content. This “content pollution” makes it harder and harder for good content to stand out and get the attention it deserves.

Is your content bad?

Generally speaking, you should have an intuition for whether or not your content is “bad.” If you only care about it as a tool for generating traffic, if you outsource the work to non-native speakers or if you rush through the content with no regard to its structure, research or writing, you probably have bad content on your hands.

But if you’re in a grey area and you’re not sure whether your content meets a decent threshold of quality, there are some aspects you can check:

  • Research. Are your claims backed with evidence? Did you look up the counterarguments? Which sources do you cite?
  • Purpose. Are you genuinely trying to inform or help people? Or are you only interested in optimizing for a specific keyword?
  • Grammar, spelling, syntax, etc. Your finished content should be flawless after a few rounds of review and revision.
  • Feedback. How do your readers feel about this content? This is arguably the most important factor, so run surveys to collect more feedback.

There isn’t much you can do about other businesses and individuals writing and publishing bad content, but you can take control over your own approach. Take some time to audit your current content marketing strategy (if you have one) and re-prioritize the quality of your work.

Feature Image Credit: Marketers should have an intuition for whether or not their content is bad or something people will enjoy. Carlina Teteris

By Timothy Carter

Sourced from Insider

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Best SEO Tips to Implement in 2021 – Website Ranking on Google

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By Tommylandz, 

In this article SEOLEVELUP focuses on strategies for better SEO that can help you rank higher on Google in 2021.

With more than 4.5 Billion Google searches a day, you will need to play by the rules of Google to rank high enough for potential visitors to come across your content. Improving your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts is one of the best ways to ensure that you are making full use of your content. Check out our SEO Tips that will help your website improve online visibility and rankings.

Before you get started, be sure to get our FREE SEO Audit if you want to see needed improvements to your website! Also check out our Google reviews and read some success stories!

Organizations need a way to assess and view their SEO activities in today’s data-driven environment to stay ahead. To accomplish this, 73% of marketers use SEO tools to refine their content and improve Google’s content ratings.

You can increase the probability of obtaining organic website traffic by introducing small changes to the content of your website.

In this article I focus on strategies for better SEO that can help you rank higher on Google in 2021. In the new year, it will break down Best SEO Companies for small business and clarify some strategies to enhance SEO.

Best SEO Tips to Implement in 2021

Monitor with a Program that works with Search Engines

Understanding Google Analytics is the best step that you can take in enhancing your SEO in 2021. Google Analytics is a helpful tool to understand your website, so you can make good decisions based on results.

Not only can statistics help you understand how you rank, but also your audience, so that content can be better created for them.

Google Analytics can be a fantastic tool over time to target the customers better. Some of the indicators you can learn from visitors to your site include:

What browsers they use

Google Analytics will give you powerful insights on which browsers your customers use. By concentrating on web design on the most-used browsers, will allow you to enhance their experience.

The devices used to visit your site

Similar to knowing the browsers your customers use, knowing what devices they use can be helpful. There are more web users on those pages than desktop users or vice versa. Understanding the metrics of your website will allow you to develop content customized to the screen size that is most widely used, improving the user experience.

Understand your competition

Google Analytics also provides insights into traffic from rivals. When determining how to boost your content and outrank rivals, this knowledge can be useful.

Refresh Website with new material

There is one thing in common with content marketers who create high-ranking content. They provide readers with engaging content topics. Successful marketing managers track patterns and discussions to brainstorm content ideas. This ensures that at some stage you’re going to have to revisit low-performing content.

Consider what kind of content would resonate with your audience when designing your content marketing strategy. From there, you can analyse what headlines will do well for that subject and whether you can establish some prequel topics.

Many content marketers consider mind maps to be useful. Using a mind map for visual individuals will help you present all of your future topic ideas. It will enable you to create larger topics that can be built into similar, smaller items. Visualizing your content plan can help you grasp it completely sometimes.

Ensure you create your Content around Keywords

Researching keywords not only works for your content and helps to develop your piece’s framework but it also allows you to understand what your audience wants to read. You can help build a content strategy to boost SEO by understanding what keywords are best for your target audience and content type.

Google-friendly writing depends on a balance between keywords and everyday language being proven. This implies that it should be written in such a way that your content flows naturally. In your content, keywords should naturally come up so that you don’t have to stuff your content at the last minute.

There is an option for the Keyword Magic Tool where you can look up related keywords for your primary keyword. To help you identify whether it is something you will want to add to your content.

You will see how closely related a keyword is and its search volume. You can talk with your SEO Agency and can make small changes to boost your SEO ranking gradually.

Expand your Portfolio Backlink

Even if you follow all of the tips related to on-page technical SEO, Google’s front page will still not be proven. A large portion of SEO deals with backlinks and whether high-authority sites generate backlinks.

Diversity in backlinks can come from two sources, specifically: The type of backlink
In general, a dofollow or nofollow would be your backlink, with a dofollow bearing more weight.

A site where the backlink originates

For example, if you are promoting your content and targeting publishers to run a story, the source of your backlink will be the site that links back to your content.

A diverse portfolio of backlinks signals to Google that your website is an authoritative source. Also that you naturally create links versus relying on automated tools or other spam tactics.

Use Appropriate Header tags

You want to be aware of how you organize the content on the page while creating content. With the most relevant details at the top of the page, each page should have content arranged logically.

Studies have noticed that 80% of readers spend much of their time at the top of the page looking at the content. How great are these SEO Tips?

Google does not, however, inherently index meaning exclusively to what is at the top of the list. To see if it’s comprehensive, they look at the article as a whole. So with that in mind, you may need to put some effort into how the page is laid out.

Consider adding jump links to the top of your page to get the most out of the keywords you’re targeting.

Not only does this create a more enjoyable user experience, but it also encourages you to use your header tags to go after Google Gathering Information from a sample in more innovative ways.

Conclusion

Search engines work overtime to list the billions of websites on the internet because of the content being made and released quickly. Get in touch with us today and we can discuss how to improve your online rankings.

Besides, you can improve SEO on your site and start ranking higher on Google by using tools to look at critical factors that affect it, such as loading speed, content problems, meta tags, linking, and crawlability.

I hope you enjoyed these amazing SEO Tips and be sure to get a FREE SEO Audit today!

By Tommylandz

Sourced by Patch

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Top Tips for Choosing an SEO Agency

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By Steve Hall.

In 2021, harnessing the power of SEO is a necessity for all businesses, regardless of their size or industry. The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated the power of the digital; companies that had a pre-established online presence found it far easier to navigate the challenges of lockdowns and border closures than those that didn’t.

SEO is quite a technical area of marketing, which is why many companies opt to outsource their SEO activities to external agencies. While this is a great strategy, there tends to be an enormous difference in the quality of work and results obtained between various SEO companies. So, how can you tell the good from the bad?

If you are searching for a team specializing in SEO in Melbourne, read on to discover what factors you should consider (and which agencies you should definitely steer clear of!)

What does an SEO agency do?

Before picking an SEO agency, it’s important that you understand their exact function.

SEO stands for ‘search engine optimisation’, which is the process of making improvements to your site to increase search engine visibility. When you search a term — known as a keyword — using a search engine, the engine will crawl through every page on the internet, taking into account a variety of factors to present the website they think best matches what you are looking for.

These factors can include:

  • How secure a website is
  • The page load speed
  • Whether or not a site is mobile friendly
  • ‘Crawlability’ — that is, whether or not the engine’s bots can access a page.
  • Analytics on user engagement
  • The presence of quality, keyword optimised content
  • Backlink profile.

It is the role of an SEO agency to put together a strategy that elevates your website to the top of the search engine results page, or SERP.

SEO is different to ‘pay per click’ advertising, or PPC, in that you cannot pay to have a site elevated to the top of organic search results. It takes insider knowledge, a strategic mindset, and hard work to get a website ranking for any one particular keyword. A good SEO agency understands this and knows that your end goal is to have more traffic to your site that results in increased profits.

How to choose an SEO agency

First up — why do I need an SEO agency?

While it’s true that there are some areas of SEO you can implement yourself, it really is a job best left to the professionals. By hiring a reputable SEO company in Australia, your company can focus on what they do best while benefiting from the experience and knowledge of SEO experts.

However, not all SEO agencies are created equal, and there are literally thousands of them out there. When deciding between agencies, consider the following key points:

1. Make sure they know what they’re talking about

One of the great things about SEO is the amount of resources there are out there. The SEO community is enormous and very willing to share their knowledge with newcomers.

The downside of this is that many agencies claim to be SEO experts when they only really have beginner knowledge. SEO is more of a science than an art and it takes extreme skill and patience to execute proven strategies.

That’s the other thing about SEO — it takes time. Don’t be fooled by any agency who promises quick results. In reality, it can take months to improve keyword ranking, particularly if you are operating by the SEO rules.

An agency that advertises lightning fast turnaround may be following ‘black-hat’ techniques. If Google, or any other search engines, catches on to the fact that you are trying to bend the rules, they can blacklist your website and send it plummeting to the bottom of the search rankings.

Be discerning about who you trust your website with and only work with agencies who have proven results and know what they’re talking about.

2. Understand your own goals

SEO is really just another form of marketing, and the end goal of any marketing strategy is to increase customer engagement (and profits). For most people, this will be their SEO goal.

However, amidst terms like ‘keyword ranking’ ‘traffic’ ‘lead generation’ and ‘page speed’, this goal can quickly get lost. Before meeting with an SEO agency, make sure you have sat down internally and discussed your future direction. If your goals line up with the expertise and strategies of your SEO agency, you are more likely to have a successful campaign and get a return on your marketing investment.

3. Ask for recommendations

When it comes time to pick an SEO agency, many people turn to Google. After all, a team that specialises in search engine ranking should occupy a top spot on the Google results page, right?

Well, not necessarily. A better strategy might be to ask for recommendations within your industry or from other similarly sized companies. There are many factors that go into a good SEO agency, and not all of them can be demonstrated through a quick Google search.

4. Communication is key

Finally, prioritise communication. Ideally, your SEO agency should report to you on a monthly basis. This report can include what kinds of on-page, technical, and off-page activities they have undertaken and what the results have been — increased keyword ranking, improved page speed, and more.

Whether these reports are accompanied by in-person (or virtual) meetings is up to you. However, when you’re trusting your website and search engine rankings with an external agency, more communication is always better than less.

Finding an SEO company in Australia is no easy task. Take your time, meet with agencies in-person, and ask all the questions you need so that you can be confident in your choice. Then sit back and let the SEO experts do the work for you!

By Steve Hall

Sourced from AdRANTS

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CEO Guide: Mapping Out Your Ordinary Ideal Week

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By Simon Severino

If you have no time, you have no priorities.

Life isn’t perfect, but you could have an ideal week. It is your choice to make it happen.

You can either design your business wherein you’re in control, or your business controls you. You can live your life on purpose. Or you can draw yourself into reaction mode.

These days, I find that planning out the week and thinking about things seriously are two rare attributes of busy entrepreneurs. Many entrepreneurs tend to go with the flow, spending their time agreeing to their business demands instead of getting their priorities straight beforehand.

Many business owners complain that they don’t have time, especially if they’re wearing too many hats inside their business. But the truth is, if something matters to us significantly, we will make time. Shifting your mindset from having no time to having enough time is done by simply changing how you approach and clarify your priorities.
And if you want to grow your business, you need to achieve clarity on high-value activities. If you’re clear with your priorities, you can do better, meaningful work that will pivot your business to the next level.

Being proactive in your business starts by mapping out your “ideal ordinary week.”

Your Ideal Ordinary Week

Creating your ideal ordinary week is a powerful approach to help you design your week according to your needs and where you want your business to be. This is important because if you don’t take an approach like this, everything will fall into your calendar, and you will be lost.

You need to create space and boundaries to really stay on the playing field of your own game.

So, for example, I have a simple rule that I always follow when it comes to protecting my boundaries: In the morning, I do my top three tasks because I have optimal energy. Plus, I have fewer distractions since most people are not working yet. This is my time to create stuff for myself and my business while maintaining my pace and momentum. As a result, I get more things done in less time while growing my business faster.

In the afternoon, I have meetings, joint ventures and discussions about deals, business growth, collaborations or coaching our coaches.

Know When To Say Yes And When To Say No 

Your ideal ordinary week is not one that’s out of reach or unrealistic. Your real ideal ordinary week depends on how you operate, your patterns, strengths and weaknesses. It’s like a binder that connects your best life and business with your daily specific actions that support your higher goals.

If you can decide what your ideal ordinary week looks like, at least you will have a blueprint — one you can put into a Google calendar or just put on the wall. You’ll make many micro-decisions every day that will gradually evolve your week to become that ideal week.

Whenever somebody asks for a meeting, you can aim to accept an appointment for when you want it to be. For example, if I want the meeting to be on Friday morning, I move them gradually there. And that forms part of your ideal week.

Most of your ideal week is up to you to decide on, so let’s design it.

Step 1: Set your intentions.

I recommend that you set an intention every day.

Let’s just say you set Monday as a “sale day.” You can say, “My goal is setting sales calls for the closer to close on the phone. On Monday, I will reach out to 200 people so that 10 of them get onto a closing call with the closer.”

Another day might be “team day,” where you are available to your teammates to help with whatever pops up. Another might be the “marketing day,” where you work on recording videos for your clients or other marketing needs.

Basically, set intentions each week that will serve you and your business — no hard rules for this. Let your creativity do its magic.

Step 2: Define the elements that make up your week.

After you’ve set intentions, think about the elements of your week. Our most successful clients at Strategy Sprints have these elements in place. I find that the most-used elements are fulfilment, team time, marketing, me time, sales, growth and hiring.

Step 3: Put time blockers into your calendar.

Growth is the business of business. It is when you work on the form, fit and function of your sales process, marketing process and fulfilment process.

Make sure to have enough time blocked in advance to work on the business. This includes your company’s vision, positioning, joint ventures, collaboration, franchise system, affiliate system, blue ocean strategy, how you can differentiate, hiring and firing.

Step 4: Track your projects.

Sometimes, I have to review my project list so they are always updated. I close the projects that are done. For the ones that I am not running well, I may discontinue them. So, I update the list and make sure it reflects every new project.

Now you have a blueprint for how to create your ideal ordinary week as a CEO. Life is short, so do the stuff that matters.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Simon Severino

Simon Severino is the CEO of Strategy Sprints®. The Strategy Sprints® method doubles revenue in 90 days.  Read Simon Severino’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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IOS 14.5 App Tracking Transparency rewires digital marketing

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By Don Fluckinger,

If your business strategy fully relied on iOS tracking for survival, your company was probably in trouble before 14.5 came out this week, marketing experts say.

Apple’s iOS 14.5 App Tracking Transparency for mobile devices gives phone and tablet owners more control over data surveillance — apps tracking behaviour in other apps to customize ads. For marketers, that may mean one of their go-to tools has been taken out of the digital toolbox, or at least will be severely blunted.

Apple made its intentions known that it would require app developers to give users a choice to opt in to data tracking across apps late last year. Facebook immediately hit back, claiming that less-targeted Facebook ads would harm small businesses. Small businesses and agencies that cater to them reaffirmed that notion.

Experts said that while less iOS tracking will change how digital marketing is done, it probably won’t have a big effect on marketing strategy and technology for many large businesses. That’s because in the last two years, marketing teams have worked hard to comply with new consumer privacy laws that lay the groundwork for customer opt-ins on data use.

Google and Apple both plan to eliminate third-party browser cookies, too. Taken together, privacy opt-outs and the slow death of third-party cookies either already have or will in the very near future dilute the value of data gleaned from digital ads.

“If marketers were really being honest about why we’re freaking out about this — and why Facebook is freaking out about this — it’s because shady behaviour begets shadier action, and we’ve been doing it since the dawn of time,” said Liz Miller, an analyst at Constellation Research. “The losers in this situation are companies who look at giving customers control of their own data as a bad thing.”

Who will opt out?

Apple turned on iOS 14.5 App Tracking Transparency this week, which manifests as a pop-up window in apps. Some developers, however, turned on the features earlier in preparation of iOS 14.5. AppsFlyer, which manages mobile attribution of digital ads — keeping track of what ads drive what activity — analyzed 13 million consumer answers to data-tracking prompts among about 300-plus apps hosted by these early adopters during a three-week period before iOS 14.5 went live.

AppsFlyer found that people opted in for ad targeting approximately 41% of the time. Half the apps had at least 32% opt-in rates. But there was a difference in the kinds of apps people said “yes” to, said Shani Rosenfelder, head of content and mobile insights at AppsFlyer. The more well-known and trusted a brand was, such as in the utilities, shopping or social arenas, opt-in rates tended to be higher.

Brands that had less of a connection to their users, such as game developers, saw lower opt-in rates. Only the largest, most well-known game developers saw opt-in rates comparable with non-game apps. Brands that app users have done business with in the past, such as shopping apps, tend to be more trusted when the opt-in window pops up.

iOS 14.5 Software Update

Apple

Apple mobile device users get App Tracking Transparency in the iOS update released this week.

“Things may change, but we are cautiously optimistic that opt-in rates will be higher than anticipated for marketers and for users,” Rosenfelder said. “It remains to be seen what the real opt-in rate will be.”

To persuade app users to opt in to ad tracking, AppsFlyer found that three messages Apple allows developers to put in the App Tracking Transparency pop-up may effectively drive positive results: Opting in helps the app to remain free, opting in helps show users content that is relevant to them and “we prohibit the use of your data for any purpose other than providing you with relevant experiences.”

AppsFlyer notes that Apple prohibits the use of discounts or other offers to induce users to opt into iOS data tracking across apps.

Marketing strategies will change

In anticipation of a drop-off in cross-app tracking data, agencies and consultants who work with marketers have been developing strategies to replace it. The companies that are panicking now are the ones that put off planning for App Tracking Transparency during pandemic disruptions, said Zach Baze, chief intelligence officer at Hawkeye, a digital agency that runs Epsilon adtech as well as first-party data platforms.

The hardest-hit marketers will be those that built businesses on mobile advertising or hyper-targeted ads, and they will have to adjust to survive, Baze said. For small businesses, those ads were cost-efficient. For most companies, though, the loss of cross-app data will reinvigorate the creativity that precision advertising tools made obsolete, and they probably have at least gotten started on cleaning up their first-party data on the customers they already have.

Apple’s iOS moves, in tandem with Google eliminating third-party cookies by next year, will force companies to use that first-party customer data to drive better customer experiences, instead of outsourcing tracking to Facebook and its competitors.

Apple iOS tracking

Apple

Tracking via iOS can still happen as it did before — but in version 14.5, Apple forces developers to explain themselves to iPad and iPhone users.

“Responsible marketers have seen this coming; it’s part of a tidal wave of a cookie-less future, and it’s probably a part of a market correction,” Baze said. “Apple is a lifestyle brand, not a data company, so it is diametrically at odds with Google or Facebook. Apple is just looking out for the experience of the consumers that they market to — which is what marketers should have been doing all along.”

Facebook, in a blog post, said small businesses will be adversely affected by the iOS tracking changes. Consultant Athan Slotkin, who works with small businesses and entrepreneurial startups on marketing and business planning, said companies that offer specialized products and sell exclusively online will be hardest hit.

Many small companies, he said, start and end their advertising plans with Facebook and Instagram. Sometimes they aren’t even aware of targeting tools those platforms run to lower costs and more precisely find customers more likely to be interested in what they’re selling.

Slotkin said he advises clients to diversify investment over different online channels, whether it’s straight SEO, TikTok, Clubhouse or other ad platforms. New and emerging social platforms typically offer more organic reach, he said, so they may represent better returns for cash-strapped small businesses. More than that, though, Slotkin advises businesses to collect and invest in their own customer data.

Get their email address, and don’t just get their consent, because that feels a little like it’s under duress. Get them enthused to share their email address because they’re interested in hearing from you and they value what you do.

Athan SlotkinSmall business consultant

“Part of my thought process — even before all this happened — is the value of owning the customer relationship and communicating with them directly,” Slotkin said. “Get their email address, and don’t just get their consent, because that feels a little like it’s under duress. Get them enthused to share their email address because they’re interested in hearing from you and they value what you do.”

CDPs move up in priority

The customer data platform (CDP) is one way to activate first-party data a company owns for marketing purposes. As Apple, Google and privacy-minded legislators put more control over data surveillance into the hands of consumers, CDPs may provide new paths for marketers to reach customers.

Many companies have mixed-vendor stacks for CRM, marketing automation, e-commerce and customer service. CDPs function as a customer data traffic manager to update marketing efforts in real time as customers buy things, browse, call customer service and fill out surveys. In turn, marketing tools can send offers to those customers or add them to campaigns as they reveal more about their preferences and needs.

For their part, CDP vendors are watching how interactions between companies and their customers will be governed by future privacy laws and those already on the books. BlueConic, a CDP vendor, strives to build flexibility into its data management features to anticipate scenarios that go much further than iOS 14.5.

“We need to be looking at the potential that every interaction with a customer will need to be consented — at the moment of interaction,” said Cory Munchbach, COO of BlueConic. “We play that out all the way — every time you come to a website or every time you come in-store, you, as a brand, have to earn the right for the customer to authenticate who they are and give you that identity. That raises the bar on customer experience.”

Optimizely, formerly Episerver, acquired the Zaius CDP last month. Peter Yeung, CIO and general counsel at Optimizely, agrees that companies that are more transparent about their customer data use will be better off in the long run.

As for App Tracking Transparency, Yeung said he feels that Apple is playing catch-up in a marketplace where consumers feel increasingly insecure about data breaches. Apple, he added, also probably wants to distance itself from Facebook and its subsidiary WhatsApp, whose data-tracking methods are under Federal Trade Commission scrutiny.

Yet iOS 14.5 gives a “romanticized vision” of choice to consumers, he said. It sounds good. But anyone who has tried to opt out of data tracking in apps then looks at their Gmail to see what is left, for example, realizes just how convenient personalized notifications and tailored emails are for things like keeping in touch with friends.

It’s great that technology companies are empowering individuals to choose to whom they give their data, Yeung said. Consent will become the product roadmap bedrock for many digital marketing vendors. But personalization is still in early stages, and the experiences will at first have much room for improvement.

“I don’t believe it’s the end of personalization,” Yeung said. “What you’ll find is that technology companies will find ways to become more and more clever in terms of how to create a personalized experience without identifying you as an individual, building a profile of an anonymous user that they kind of, sort of know what they look like or their activities are, but they can’t identify as an individual.”

Hawkeye’s Baze said that CDPs might become the tool that saves personalization, taking it to heights that cross-app tracking never could as marketers begin to use more of their features and integrate them more fully into their tech stacks. But CDP users must first get their data in order before they can effectively deploy those features. His company’s third-party data will enhance the insights that first-party data reveals, he said.

“First-party data is the best data; it’s the most actionable,” Baze said. “But a lot of CTOs have spent a lot of money on data infrastructure the last five to eight years. What they’re finding out is that the data that’s in those is incomplete, badly organized, its hygiene is not good, and it’s not that hardworking.”

By Don Fluckinger,

Sourced from TechTarget

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Windows of Opportunity Created by the Lockdown

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The pandemic has many downside

The pandemic has many downsides, like the increased difficulty of beginning a new enterprise. Funding, for example, proves complicated as financial institutions become tight-fisted with their money. So, aspiring entrepreneurs find it hard to get cash.

Existing businesses have also been hit hard by the coronavirus, resulting in higher levels of unemployment all around.

Fortunately, many with jobs have saved a substantial amount of money during the pandemic using financial instruments such as tax-free ISA shares and stocks and money market mutual funds. This increase in disposable income could translate easily into golden business opportunities for the savvy entrepreneur.

A depressed economy doesn’t have to mean the end of the world. Hard times build good character and create good businesses. The best way to take advantage of this unique opportunity afforded by the pandemic is outlined in this article, starting with the benefits.

Benefits of starting a business during the pandemic

Common sense dictates that starting a new venture while the world is in chaos is not the best idea. Yet, companies founded during difficult times are better able to weather storms than their fair-weather counterparts.

Because most ventures launch during economically robust times, pandemic-era businesses enjoy the exclusive pleasure of having fewer competitors with whom to deal. During uncertain times, existing organizations do not want to spend money drumming up new ideas. Here lies a gap for an enterprising individual to contribute bold, original ideas to the marketplace.

Lurking in the turbulent economy are increased cost savings for newcomers who wish to open a business at this point. Operating expenses decrease as things like fixed cash outflow – mortgage, for example – can now be appropriated at inexpensive rates. Novice business owners can also benefit from their more influential bargaining power. They are in a position where they can come to agreeable terms with various stakeholders and develop beneficial new business relationships as a bonus.

New businesses stand to benefit from spiked levels of customer loyalty. This consumer-facing advantage contributes significantly to the permanence of a small organization. Country-specific tax incentives also aid business robustness. In the U.K., for example, small businesses receive VAT relief and have grants earmarked for them in the national budget.

Eligibility for government assistance will largely depend on the organization of the business in question.

Use market research to choose the right business type

When uncertainties arise, a sound organizational setup will stand any entrepreneur in good stead. Market research provides a wealth of information that can aid the decision-making process in the early stages of beginning a business.

Studying the business environment – particularly the activities of similar companies – can inspire prospective merchants. In the marketplace of ideas, there is often no need to reinvent the wheel. By offering minor changes to already established, successful commercial concepts, a new enterprise can easily make the best of the pandemic.

Analysing future customers is another way to get valuable information for planned business ventures. Well-organized focus groups allow participants to describe their attitudes towards products or services in their language. This information is necessary feedback for those looking to dip their toes in entrepreneurship.

There are several ways to seize the opportunities afforded by the pandemic. Some business types that are thriving right now include cleaning services, virtual exercise sessions, and mask-making.

COVID-compliant surroundings are in high demand. Both corporate bodies and private individuals increasingly require expert cleaning services in the New Normal. For this type of business, demand will very likely outlast the pandemic.

A healthy immune system is a somewhat effective weapon against the coronavirus. Keeping fit is a great way to boost the immune system. Ordinarily, going to the gym formed part of most people’s health regimes. However, the pandemic tangibly hit the exercise industry. It bounced back through the popularization of virtual exercise. In this way, the fitness market cleverly demonstrated its resilience and ability to reinvent itself.

Using masks as protective gear is common for non-essential workers. Everyone wears one now out in public. As the pandemic rolls on, consumer demand is increasing for chic and trendy masks. For example, many actors during awards season often have designer masks to match their bespoke outfits. Large corporations have contributed to the demand by having their employees wear trademarked masks.

Whatever business type a budding entrepreneur chooses, a key ingredient is the new company’s flexibility.

Adaptability

Part of staying adaptable as a new business is writing a recession-proof business plan. A detailed strategy like this will show prospective investors, vendors, and other stakeholders that the individual behind the enterprise knows what they are doing.

Separating private funds from company funds is a solid strategy that will help a novice firm remain flexible. The wise entrepreneur will open a dedicated bank account for business operations and budget prudently so the new business can endure.

It was mentioned above that cost savings are lurking in upheaval caused by the pandemic. Human Resource is an area in which a company can demonstrate flexibility and prudence. Rather than adding full-time staff members to the payroll, begin by subcontracting talented individuals as needed. If it is necessary to hire any employees, honesty about what the company can afford to offer is a good policy.

Digital Marketing

Marketing online is about more than selling goods virtually. A thriving online personality based on empathy and efficiency helps a business to stand out.

Empathy is enhanced when a business makes clever use of its social media accounts to engage its client base. Companies demonstrate efficiency when they make the most of technology to enlarge their market reach. Innovative email campaigns and user-friendly websites play a big part in crafting a company’s virtual image.

Overall, it is a good business practice to have a robust online presence. Marketing in this way increases the longevity of new organizations.

Conclusion

Contrary to received wisdom, it is possible to begin a small business amidst challenging global circumstances. Success depends on flexibility, a reliable online presence, and a sturdy business plan.

No one knows how long the pandemic will last. Plucky entrepreneurs who show foresight in their business planning will do well in current and future uncertainties.

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Sourced from INFLUENCIVE

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Don’t Ditch Long-Term Strategic Planning. Start With These Questions Instead

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By Dave McKeown

The last year has been exhausting for leaders but now might be the perfect time to reassess.

When countries and states began to declare stay-at-home orders at the beginning of the pandemic, most business leaders took a strategic nose dive right into the runway. Forget annual plans or even quarterly goals; the only strategic outlook was on the day-to-day actions to mitigate the immediate crisis, ensure the safety of their people, and to put in place a plan for survival.

Then, over the course of the ensuing 12 months as local economies ebbed and flowed with changing case rates and shifting guidelines and mandates, many organizations began to cast longer-term plans only to have them thrown back on the trash heap due to another circumstance outside their control.

The result of all this is an exhausted workforce and a lack of appetite from leaders to begin lifting their horizon of focus. The question I get asked most often now is “Should we even look to build long-term plans with so much uncertainty still around?”

To which my answer is an unequivocal ‘yes.’ From my perspective, proactivity is always better than reactivity and there’s actually much that you can still control. Not to mention that thinking long-term will help to rev up your engines again and ensure you’re not caught flat-footed.

To that end, here are three practical things you can do today to elevate your focus to the long term.

Reset your guiding principles

A strange thing started to happen about 3 months into the pandemic. All of a sudden, leadership teams started to get laser-focused on what was truly important to them. Whether it was their core values and culture, key customers, or their core offering, they found themselves in a position of greater clarity of what guided them.

Things are allowed to accrete when organizations are growing; a product line here, a new process there. None of which on their own are problematic but over time they add up and run the risk of obscuring who you are, what you do, and who you serve. It’s not that you’ve lost sight completely, but things are definitely murky.

Then, when options are limited and you’re forced into survival mode, those additions which seemed like a good idea at the time start to feel more like a liability and it’s much easier to shed them.

Now is a good time to codify those shifts, to reset your guiding principles. Get your team in a room and answer these questions with a forward rather than backward-looking perspective:

  • Who do we serve?
  • What problem do we solve?
  • What’s our solution?
  • What makes us different?
  • What impact does that have?
  • Why is that important to us?
  • What characteristics do we value?

There’ll likely be some spirited debate to the answers here and that’s great. Your job is to look for key themes and then capture the consensus.

Re-imagine what you could achieve

For a great number of business leaders, the last year has sucked out the appetite for risk. Too many variables have reduced their ability to realistically size up the potential upside of rolling the dice on a new product offering, marketing campaign, or geographical expansion.

And yet, the dynamics of these next 12 months could well be ideal for experimenting with some new ideas. With economists estimating global growth this year around 4 percent, there will be a lot of opportunity for those organizations that are ready.

Having re-set your guiding principles, you could be well poised to capitalize on this coming period of exuberance by re-imaging what you could achieve as an organization.

Here are some great questions to ask your team to begin that discussion.

One year from now what would be the:

  • Most obvious thing for us to achieve?
  • Boldest thing we could achieve?
  • Easiest thing we could achieve?
  • Hardest thing we could achieve?
  • Wackiest thing we could achieve?

Encourage your team to dream a little bigger and then set two or three specific goals for the next 12 months.

Run some experiments

One thing we have learned from the last 12 months is that it’s important not to keep all your hopes pinned on one strategy or one product or one market. When the rug gets pulled out from underneath it’s much easier to survive when you have a number of horses in the race.

When you run multiple strategies toward the same goal you get the opportunity to spread your bets, see which one takes off and if needs be pivot to another approach at a moment’s notice.

Rather than defining one clear strategy for each goal that you have, run three to five shorter-term experiments to see which might pay off and then go all-in on those that are bringing you success.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Dave McKeown

Sourced from Inc.

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4 Branding Strategies Every Startup Founder Should Know About

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By Zaheer Dodhia

Having a solid branding strategy is key for a smooth launch.

Getting your start-up off the ground takes a hefty dose of planning, as any seasoned entrepreneur will tell you. It isn’t just about listing your products and services and finding financial backing, either — though those are important keys.

One of the most vital aspects of getting a new venture off to a good start is the branding — and not just colours, fonts, and so on, but the strategy behind every branding decision you make. As an entrepreneur myself, I can vouch for the importance of strategizing, rather than a scattershot approach! Of course, newcomers to the start-up world may not have a solid grasp on this.

Here are four branding strategies that every start-up founder should know going in.

Related: The Secret Ingredients to a Successful Branding Strategy

1. Brand your promotions

It’s a common experience, and I’ve seen it myself — a new start-up launches, only to see a slump in expectations. The idea, concept, execution, brand personality, all of the details that matter are great. Logically, the start-up should succeed.

What was lacking? Many times, the founder and branding team neglected to demonstrate an immediate value to the potential customer. A customer that is on the fence about trying out a new brand can often be swayed by a promotional aspect. That could be anything from a free gift to a percentage off their first purchase and beyond. The point is that it adds extra impetus to their consideration of you as a newcomer.

Beyond that, however, there are other aspects to promotions that can enhance this branding strategy. Namely, branding your promotions. As we know, branding isn’t just about the visual aspect — it’s about the experience, the values, and other more intangible things. So when I say “brand your promotions,” I mean more than just stamping your advertising with your logo.

Ensure that your promotions fit the spirit, purpose, and values of your start-up. And it’s not about just the initial purchase from a new customer — you want to build a repeat client base. Choosing an initial promotion combined with a loyalty program is an excellent two-for-one branding strategy that can intrigue your audience and help them along down the consumer’s journey.

2. Establish and maintain your social media presence

A second branding strategy centres around social media. These days, what doesn’t? Social media is a useful tool for start-ups. More than three and a half billion people use social media worldwide, with numbers projected to continue to climb steeply. Consumers are increasingly turning to official social media accounts to research new brands, learn more about them, get the opinions of others regarding them, and interact with the brands themselves.

Here are a few important aspects of this particular brand strategy:

  • Know your audience, and know what social media platform they favor. Facebook is the top platform for most brands, but the demographic that uses it is gradually changing. For example, the percentage of teens on Facebook has gone from 71 percent to 67 percent over the last six years, and continues to drop. Teens as a demographic are increasingly turning to Instagram and other platforms that are still building, like Snapchat. So analyse your audience, and leverage their social media preferences to get the most bang for your branding buck.
  • Get verified. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube all have a verification process for brands, celebrities, and other types of accounts. Verified status elevates your content and can even affect how readily and frequently it is viewed. Check on the process for each social media platform and let your audience know that they’re interacting with the real deal.
  • Speaking of interacting, respond to everything. Everything. Even if it’s just a thumb’s up or a like, it’s a great way of building a connection with your customer on an individual level. If you can’t handle all of that yourself, outsource it to a social media manager with a friendly, respectful disposition.

3. Use cohesive visual branding

Through your start-up’s development, you’ve worked with graphic designers and brand developers to put together a style guide for your branding. Colour palettes, fonts, graphics, visual styles, and so on — everything needs to fit together coherently, as though it belongs to the same family. Because it does, but you might be surprised at how many small business owners and start-up entrepreneurs then forget about the importance of using that style guide once they get going.

Don’t forget about it. Keep going back to that well. Use your style guide to inform every visual and stylistic decision you make for every piece of product packaging, marketing, and beyond. This is especially important when it comes to your website. Ensure that your website is so well-branded that everyone knows what brand it belongs to when they visit, even if they don’t see the logo right off the bat. But also, make sure your logo is on there.

It’s true that branding strategies aren’t solely about the visual aspects. But that’s no excuse for letting that slide. With your site, social media accounts, and marketing materials, you’ve given your brand a place to live. Make sure you mark it and own it.

4. Evoke an emotional response

A final branding strategy that really works for start-up founders is a little more difficult to pinpoint, but no less effective for all that: get an emotional reaction. How you ask? Here are a few methods:

  • Tell your story. Get to the nitty-gritty of why you started this business, what motivates you to continue, the challenges you went through, everything. Everyone loves a good story.
  • Broadcast your values. Make sure that your audience understands where you’re coming from and what you want to achieve — and why. Ideally, your brand’s values will align with your audience’s values and make an emotional connection.
  • Be yourself. Audiences react well to brands that they perceive as authentic and personal. Don’t cover over the things that make you unique; celebrate the quirks of personality that made your brand what it is.

Each of these aspects — and more — contributes to an emotional connection between your brand and your audience. Research, real life, and common sense all point to the fact that consumers are more likely to work with a brand when they feel a personal connection it.

Your start-up can be the new best friend of your audience — and there’s no more successful way to help a new brand grow than that.

By Zaheer Dodhia

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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Digital Marketing in 2021: A Holistic Strategy You’ve Never Heard Before

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By Devansh Khetrapal

Aren’t you tired of skimming through the internet and not being able to find a Digital Marketing Strategy that would help you scale up your business and generate steady growth? We were all looking for that magic pill, until now!

What I’m about to share with you is a thought process most elite marketers wouldn’t dare to talk about, just so that they can keep the cream to themselves. I started researching about this a year ago and the information I’ve gathered during this period is every last drop of the good stuff that I’ve shared below.

The Holy Trinity of Digital Marketing

Did you know that global B2C eCommerce sales are expected to reach $4.5 trillion by 2021? As more and more businesses are growing, Digital Marketing Experts are constantly calibrating and testing their own strategies to stand out and grow.

However, no matter how unconventional their methods may be, you don’t need to worry. All you have to do is optimize the following 3 aspects of your website and you’re bound to see substantial growth.

Traffic

One of the main focuses of a Digital Marketing Strategy is to drive traffic to your website, and not just any traffic, but relevant traffic. In order to make sure that happens, you have to incorporate keywords throughout your landing page that are relevant to what you’re selling, whether directly or indirectly.

There are 2 ways to drive traffic to your website:-

Paid Traffic

Let’s be honest. Most of the niches are highly saturated and in order to stand out, you either have to come up with something entirely new so you’ll organically thrive or advertise your services. Most successful businesses rely on both. However, advertising seems to be an effective revenue-generating tool if done right.

A good advertisement involves a headline that hooks, and a landing page with an attractive banner and sufficient information about your product.

There are 5 typical sources wherefrom you can drive paid traffic to your website:-

  • Display Ads – The ones that you see when you’re reading a blog. They’re around the edges, adjacent to the blog, usually in a square or rectangular box.
  • Search Engine Ads – The ones that pop on top of other search results. They look like the first search results but you see a little “ad” icon to signify that it’s an advertisement.
  • Discovery Ads – If you’re ever scrolling on Google, YouTube, or Gmail, then you have come across a Discovery ad. On YouTube, it has a panel with an image and “Learn More” is written below it. In Gmail, you’ll find it in Social and Promotion Tabs.
  • Sponsored Content – When you’re reading a blog and there’s a panel that looks like another blog but it’s actually a landing page, which could be anything from a blog to a product advertisement.
  • Influencer Marketing – Using social media influencers to promote your product. Lately, this has become just as mainstream as other forms of advertising.

Organic Traffic

When someone discovers your business on the internet when you didn’t advertise it, it means you were able to drive traffic organically on your website. Growing your business organically is a discipline in itself. The fact that people were able to discover you organically, indicates that you did a good job with SEO.

People find you either when they’re searching for you (or for similar services) on Google, or on Social Media platforms (could be Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc). According to Search Engine Journal, 70% of the links people click on are Organic. Even though ads work, it’s clear that a lot of people just skip the first 3 links on Google because we habitually understand that they’re advertisements.

How Do I Maximize Traffic On My Website?

Create a Keyword Database

In generating both organic and paid traffic, you require keywords that resonate with your target audience. What most people underestimate is the power that these keywords hold. Using tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc will help you find the right keywords by offering several parameters.

Any SEO expert can tell you that you should use keywords with high search volume and low keyword difficulty, but knowing what keywords to target is a refined process, and if you’re serious about your business, then here’s what you should do:-

Make 5 columns in an excel sheet. One for the keywords, and the other 4 for “Intent”, “Relevance”, “Trending”, and “IRT Score”. Refer to the excel sheet below:-

In the above image, I have taken an example of a web development company and used 4 keywords. Each of these has been assigned a corresponding score between 1 to 4 and has been totalled in the column IRT score. Let me explain what these are and what their implications are:-

  • Intent – This signifies how transactional is the intent of the keyword. If the keyword is highly transactional, it has a score of 4, and if it’s not at all transactional, it has a score of 1. In the above image, the keyword “Hire Web Developer” is highly transactional, and the keyword “ReactJS vs Laravel” isn’t transactional at all and hence, they’ve been assigned scores 4 and 1 respectively.
  • Relevance – This will signify how relevant the keyword is for you. If the keyword has a product or service that you offer, then you may rate it between 1 to 4 in terms of relevance. In the above image, the keyword “Hire a .Net Developer” is rated as 1 because the web development company isn’t relevant to the kind of development services they’re offering.
  • Trending – The more the keyword is trending on Google or any other search engine, the higher will be its trending score and vice versa. In the above image, “ReactJS vs Laravel” is a keyword that has a significantly high search volume on Google and hence, has a trending score of 3.
  • IRT Score – IRT is simply the aggregate score of the columns “Intent”, “Relevance”, and “Trending”.

If you make a list of all the relevant keywords, you can segregate and prioritize them on the basis of these 3 parameters. The IRT score will serve as an extremely quick and reliable guide since the higher the IRT score, the more important the keyword will be for you.

Optimize Technical Performance

Did you know that the first 5 seconds of page-load time have the highest impact on the conversion rate? According to Portent, website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load-time.

Optimizing page loading speed is only a factor and not a Digital Marketing Strategy in itself. However, improving the overall architecture of your website can help you make sure that your target audience doesn’t wander away from your landing page. Besides, the longer the page load time, the worse it is for SEO performance.

Here’s are some questions you need to ask yourself:-

  • Are internal pages getting enough internal link votes?
    The internal pages of your website should have at least 10 internal links. The more links, the more will be the Page Authority.
  • Are all pages 3 (or less) clicks deep?
    No pages should be more than 3-clicks deep. This is to make sure that your pages are being crawled and indexed well. For Google, more clicks mean less valuable, and vice versa.
  • Are all internal links using effective anchor text?
    Always use exact match anchor text with your links. Here’s a catch though – If you have a huge site, you will end up using several internal links for a keyword in pursuit of site navigation, in which case you need to dial down on external links. You need to make sure that you avoid getting external links otherwise it will lead to over-optimization of the anchor text. Eg. if you have 1000 internal links for “chamomile tea”, be less aggressive on having external links with the same anchor text.
  • Are there any pages with existing backlinks?
    Your top internal linking targets should be pages with high Page Authority. You can boost the page authority by linking pages that already have high authority.

Create Intelligent SEO Content

Having intelligent SEO content serves you in 2 ways – It will help you rank your content and will be interesting to read as well. Most writers can’t get the right mix of these 2 tangents in their content.

Ideally, 80% of your content should be keyword targeted and 20% of it should be a link bait (designed to attract backlinks). This is a long-term strategy to improve the Domain Authority of your website. This means that you’ll be able to rank on highly competitive keywords.

Here are the steps you need to follow:-

  • Select a qualified keyword – We already discussed this in the above header “creating a keyword database”.
  • Map the keyword to an existing page – If you don’t have a page targeting this qualified keyword, create a new one. Update and optimize the existing pages before creating a new page.
  • Only target one keyword on one page – If you have multiple pages targeting the same keyword, you either consolidate those pages, and/or delete or redirect the pages that don’t have good quality content.
  • Create an SEO content brief – In the SEO content brief you’ll hand over to your writer, you can mention the estimated value of this keyword (CPC x clicks), the SERP features that need to be kept in mind, the estimated organic CTR of the keyword, target word count, search intent, how many backlinks you need to rank, etc.

Conversions

Did you know that 92% of your website visitors aren’t ready to buy? We’ve talked about how you can generate traffic to your website to generate more leads, but that wouldn’t mean anything if your leads aren’t getting converted.

What you need to do is nurture these visitors until they become a qualified lead. The majority of those remaining 8% visitors are highly motivated to buy, so even if you use decent keyword targeting and copywriting, you can easily convert these. However, to get the rest 92% on board, you need to create a nurture sequence.

Here’s what you need to do:-

Create a Lead Magnet

Anything that incentivizes the visitor to sign up for your email list is called a lead magnet. It could simply be a free training webinar, a video series, or an ebook. The key is to keep these incentives really simple.

Segregate the Qualified and Unqualified Leads

Just because some visitors signed up via email, doesn’t mean they’re qualified. You can find out which leads qualify and which don’t by using 2 ways:-

  • New Subscriber Survey – This can include all the basic questions relevant to your target customer.
  • Use Trigger Links – Send a welcome email with 2 or 3 links and when the subscriber clicks on one of those, they get tagged based on what they clicked. For example, if you send an email saying “What best describes you?” and give 2 or 3 options, and based on what they click on, they get tagged accordingly, so that you can send them relevant content from that moment on. You can use Drip to accomplish this.

Created Automated Nurture Sequence

Now that you’ve qualified those leads and have segregated them into relevant categories, it’s time to nurture them. You have to accept the fact that leads convert instantly. Realistically, you have to treat them as if they don’t plan on buying for the next 6 – 12 months.

You can lay back and take your time to plan how you can add value to these people’s lives every now and then during this period. What you should do is to create an automated nurture sequence and send them value-added material, which will develop trust over time. Next thing you know, they’ll already be sold.

If the nurture sequence is solid, then these leads will be moved into a different automated sequence. This is highly dependent on your business model, but with a successful digital marketing strategy, the goal is to gradually build up and pitch them when the time is right.

Remarketing

You already understand that 92% of your website visitors aren’t interested in buying anything, so basically, they’re just bouncing away from your website without taking any action. This means that there’s so much untapped potential that you’re missing out on, unless you’re remarketing.

Remarketing is the way to reach those 92% by reaching them even when they aren’t on your website. This can be achieved through the following ways:-

Enable Tracking Pixel

A tracking pixel is an HTML code snippet that is loaded when a user visits a website or opens an email. It is useful for tracking user behaviour and conversions. At a bare minimum, you should have Google and Facebook tracking enabled on your website. Depending on the nature of your business, you could enable it on Bing, Instagram, Quora, Reddit, or even TikTok.

Create Intent-Based Campaigns

Based on what pages a visitor is viewing, you can understand their intent and should target advertisements that are designed accordingly. For example, if someone visits your website, read a blog, and just exit, then you shouldn’t advertise to them to buy your service right away.

What you can do instead is move them down your sales funnel and target with a lead magnet that’s related to the blog that they were reading. Heck, you can even split test your visitors, see what induces a favourable response for you and then use that as the main campaign.

Wrapping Up

If you were trying to understand how to reduce marketing costs, I wouldn’t blame you. All these tools can be costly and when you’re starting out, it can be an unexpectedly high expense. You can rely on free tools or consult a Digital Marketing Expert as well.

Hopefully, this Digital Marketing strategy served as an all-encompassing guide for you to understand how marketing really works, and how vast the role of relevant targeting can be. You can do your own litmus test to figure out what works for you.

By Devansh Khetrapal

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Sourced from Business 2 Community

 

 

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Why You Shouldn’t Engage with Customer Complaints on Twitter

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By Alireza Golmohammadi, Taha Havakhor, Dinesh Gauri, and Joseph Comprix

Over the last several years, it’s become increasingly common for consumers to share their negative experiences with brands on social media. According to the 2020 National Consumer Rage Study, the number of customers who prefer to vent their grievances via digital platforms rather than by phone or in-person has tripled in the last three years, and 48% of American consumers rely on social media to gauge other people’s experiences with a company’s products and services. This represents a major shift from traditional, more private mechanisms for fielding customer complaints, creating both challenges and opportunities for brands looking to engage with their customers.

Specifically, while the common wisdom for many firms has been to respond to complaints promptly and publicly, this approach comes with some major potential drawbacks. Public responses can demonstrate that an organization cares about its customers and is proactive in addressing their needs, but these responses can also attract attention to those negative experiences. On Twitter in particular, responding to a complaint makes the original post visible to the brand’s entire audience (whereas if the brand doesn’t respond, the post will only be visible to the customer’s followers). A high volume of customer complaints can turn a firm’s page into a complaint arena, potentially impacting both consumer and investor sentiment towards the brand (a phenomenon we call complaint publicization).

Given these trade-offs, what’s the best way for companies to handle complaints on social media? We conducted a large-scale analysis of Twitter traffic for S&P 500 companies that had Twitter pages from 2014 and 2015 (a total of 375 firms), and found that the negative effects of complaint publicization consistently outweighed any positive impact of signalling care for customers.

In our first study, we measured the volume of firm tweets, customer complaint tweets, and firm responses for each quarter, and then compared those numbers to changes in the firms’ market value and perceived quality (a measure of consumer attitudes towards brands, based on large-scale survey data). Based on this data, we defined two types of social media strategies: open strategies, in which firms provided public responses to at least 75% of complaints, and closed strategies, in which at least 75% of the time, firms responded with just a single message directing the complainant to a private forum.

We found that the more a firm responded to complaints, the more likely it was to fall in both value and in perceived brand quality. In addition, we also found that when firms responded to complaints publicly on Twitter, it would often drown out their other tweets, leading to lower engagement rates for their non-complaint-related tweets.

In our second study, we looked at firms’ social media activity in the wake of product recalls. Product recalls offered a useful, controlled setting for our tests because they tend to generate a large volume of unexpected negative customer feedback, making it easier to compare the immediate impact of different social media strategies. Controlling for other factors such as the seriousness of the recall, the firms’ financial position, and brand recognition, we looked at whether these different response strategies were associated with short-term changes in firm stock price or changes in the volume of complaints going forward. We found that closed strategies were associated with less volatility in stock price and a lower number of future complaints, while companies that pursued open strategies were likely to experience a greater drop in stock price and deal with a greater number of customer complaints the following month.

Clearly, public engagement with unhappy customers isn’t always the right move. Of course, the answer isn’t just to ignore complaints, but rather, the most successful companies in our sample generally responded to complaints with a public message inviting the customer to continue the conversation using a private channel — that is, a closed response strategy, in contrast to an open strategy that inundates a firm’s page with lengthy exchanges with each complainant.

Delta uses an open response strategy.

For example, Delta Airlines uses an open response strategy, consistently responding to customer complaints on Twitter with multiple public messages. The brand is so committed to openly engaging with customers that they actually shut down their designated customer service handle (@DeltaAssist), and now respond to customer service complaints directly from their primary Twitter handle (@Delta). While Delta’s focus on providing customers with a seamless, transparent experience is admirable, our analysis suggests that this strategy could be dramatically increasing the public exposure of their negative customer interactions, and is thus likely having a significant negative impact on their stock price and brand image.

McDonald’s uses a closed response strategy.

McDonald’s, on the other hand, mostly uses a closed response strategy. They generally respond to any negative tweets that tag their account (@McDonalds) or include the word “McDonald’s” with a survey link, ending the Twitter exchange and allowing the company to respond in a private channel. As a result, their Twitter presence is much less dominated by complaints.

Of course, the complaint response strategy is just one lever marketers can pull when attempting to balance attentiveness to unhappy customers with harmful complaint publicization. For example, many social media platforms offer features that can reduce the visibility of complaints, whether the brand engages with them or not. On both Facebook and Twitter, firms can “pin” posts to the top of their page, ensuring that their own content (rather than complaints and response communications) is always displayed most prominently.

Furthermore, it is always important to consider the unique context of each social media platform, as well as the particular customer engagement strategies that will align the best with a brand’s unique business context. But in general, our results suggest that the broadly accepted best practice of providing timely, detailed, public responses can have some serious negative repercussions, especially on social media platforms where content sorting algorithms are likely to promote complaints more heavily if brands respond to them. Customers love to voice their complaints on social media — but engagement on these highly public platforms can end up excessively amplifying these voices, encouraging other unhappy customers to chime in and ultimately reducing the brand’s value in the eyes of both customers and investors.

Feature Image Credit: HBR Staff/Twitter illucesco/Getty Images

By Alireza Golmohammadi, Taha Havakhor, Dinesh Gauri, and Joseph Comprix

  • AG
    Alireza Golmohammadi is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Collins College of Business at the University of Tulsa. His research focuses on digital marketing and social media analytics. He has published in the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Retailing, among others.
  • TH
    Taha Havakhor is currently the Research Director of the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) and an Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems in the Fox School of Business at Temple University. His scholarly work, published in top business outlets such as MIS Quarterly, Journal of MIS, and Information Systems Research, focuses on IS strategy and the business value of IT. Taha actively engages with tech entrepreneurial communities in various advisory roles.
  • DG
    Dinesh Gauri is a Professor and Walmart chair in the Department of Marketing at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. He is also the Executive Director of retail information at the Walton College. His research and teaching interests include retailing, pricing, marketing analytics, shopper marketing, e-commerce and social media marketing. He advises for various companies in these areas and is a recognized leader in marketing.
  • JC
    Joseph Comprix is a Professor at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. He has a PhD from the University of Illinois and taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Arizona State University before joining Syracuse in 2008. He has published in journals such as the Journal of Accounting and Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting Horizons, and the Journal of the American Taxation Association.

Sourced from Harvard Business Review

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