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How to Make Money on Instagram From Home

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The unprecedented effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic can’t be understated. In the United States alone, the economy shrank by about 32% between the months of April and June as governments imposed lockdowns and multiple business sectors (including healthcare) cut back on spending to attempt to weather any challenges.

Unfortunately, many establishments have had to cut a significant amount of costs to cope – and labour is definitely among them. To push through the uncertainty and continue to make a living in a time where social distancing becomes the new norm and physical meetings are discouraged for health and safety reasons, knowing your way around the internet has become a necessity.

eCommerce sales in particular have seen sharp increases during the peak lockdown months. eCommerce sales rose by 49% in April, with online groceries, electronics, and book sales leading the way. It isn’t just necessities people are buying – it seems like leisure items to cope are in high demand as well.

Identify the key opportunities

This is where opportunity knocks. Everyone is online, limiting their movements, and looking for ways to make their time both more productive (remote work is quickly becoming part of the “new normal,” whether companies are ready or not) and more fun (Nintendo reported a whopping 400% increase in earnings for the first quarter because of the pandemic).

So regardless of if you’re running your own business or just looking to earn some extra income to help pass the time, the market is there: now it’s just a matter of finding a way to tap into it.

That’s where Instagram comes in. Social media usage has increased overall due to the pandemic, but it’s Instagram that has scored the greatest growth in that area: total time spent on the platform is expected to grow by 14% this year, or more than 3 minutes of additional time per user per day. If you want to be seen, Instagram is the place to go – and to earn.

Here are the various ways to monetize your time spent on social media and link up with others on Instagram who might just need exactly what you can offer.

1. Bring the spirit of entrepreneurship online

Instagram has been a great boon for entrepreneurs, online sellers, and businesses pivoting to digital channels to improve sustainability during the pandemic. Instagram itself has acknowledged this, and laid out a brief primer on how to get started:

  • On the most basic level, communicate all details about your brand with the posts you make on your Feed. The former will be the backbone of your Instagram content, so share important announcements, product details, and address frequently asked questions for prospective customers.
Bring-the-Spirit-of-Entrepreneurship-Online-Make-Money-on-Instagram
  • Utilize Instagram’s built-in eCommerce tools to support your business. By connecting your Instagram account to your business’ official Facebook catalogue, you can apply for Instagram Shopping features. Once approved, this will allow you to tag products in feed posts (up to five per image) and Stories (one sticker per Story), which immediately allows customers to see the name of each item, its corresponding price, and a direct link to purchase via your catalogue.

Our tip? If you’re one person or a small business, eschew the formalities and be your authentic self. Don’t be afraid to share more personal details with your audience. They understand more than ever the importance of sales for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs, and being a bit more open with your story online can translate into loyal customers who believe in you not just because of your products, but because of the care behind them.

2. Share your creative resources

For those whose skill sets lie in creative fields, then you may have already been on Instagram or any similarly visual-heavy social media platform. You can leverage your digital know-how and create services that will allow you to partner with others trying to build their own presence online, too.

This can include:

  • Selling photo editing and graphic design to individuals and brands for use on their social networks and websites. This is prevalent in the realm of influencer marketing communities on Instagram, wherein influencers and photographers create and share their signature photo editing presets for apps to assist others in emulating their desired aesthetics.
  • Providing detailed tutorials and sharing snippets of them online. With the pandemic bringing everyone into their homes and urging them to try new hobbies or hone their skills, any knowledge you have in this department has the potential to greatly benefit others around you. Share some useful tips and tricks for your chosen hobby on your Instagram feed, and once you build enough interest, start adding links to a full package (or even a mentoring session) available for purchase. If the quality of your content is good enough, people will be buying – so present them in an easy-to-understand and appealing way.

3. Try out affiliate marketing

The sharp increase in eCommerce use amidst the coronavirus pandemic means affiliate marketing had the chance to take off in a big way—and it did. For the unfamiliar, affiliate marketing is when organizations or individuals partner with a specific eCommerce brand to receive a commission if they refer their own audience to purchase the brand’s items. Think of the codes you see some Instagram users provide when posting photos of sporting goods from their favoured brands.

You can distinguish affiliate marketing from the more common sponsored posts you see on Instagram by the inclusion of certain discount codes or links in a post or bio. While sponsored posts may see brands provide products for an influencer to use or post about, affiliate marketing is more performance-based: affiliates get a commission based on the number of clicks or sales they get from referring users to the partner website.

Just be sure to find programs related to industries experiencing unexpected booms during the pandemic, to be on the safe side. These industries include gifts and occasions, home and garden, health and fitness, food and drink, and beauty brands. Note the seasons, too – surprisingly, despite overall cost-cutting measures to save money at home, consumers aren’t expecting to spend any less this year during special holiday events like Christmas and Black Friday, so timing your affiliate marketing promotions right becomes a factor as well.

4. Find freelance clients

The pandemic has accelerated the need for businesses to take measures and undergo digital transformation, lest they get left behind and stagnate from the lack of revenue brought by decreased foot traffic and tighter regulations. If you’re a digital marketer in need of extra support, this could be the perfect time to seek out freelance clients to support any other income you might be earning.

You can easily use Instagram to build your online portfolio (or direct traffic to an existing one, if you already have a website or blog). This means putting the services you want to sell to others into practice and optimizing your Instagram profile to support it.

Here are some tips for solidifying your Instagram marketing:

  • Use relevant keywords in your Instagram bio to assist search engines. Add a touch of whimsy and customization as well by using different fonts, adding special characters, or even inserting some emojis to direct the eye to key information.
  • Write engaging Instagram captions aimed directly at reeling in your target demographic – appeal to emotion, use call-to-action phrases in each post, format them well (and keep them on the lengthy side), and remember to include hashtags for 12.6% more engagement than posts without them.
  • Share social proof with user-generated content, especially positive client testimonials. Do you have any happy customers willing to share their feedback? Make special feature posts detailing the specific services they availed, how you’ve helped them, and how they’ve been able to support you in return with the work they offered.

Final thoughts

Instagram has the potential to be an effective source of income for anyone seeking new opportunities this year. The catch? Now that everyone else is online – buying online, communicating online, and working online – so are your competitors, equally vying for customers’ attention and finding their own stride with monetizing their Instagram presence.

That’s why brand-building should be a core aspect to consider, regardless of whichever path you choose to make money on Instagram. Take the time to brainstorm and plan out even the most basic foundations of your online brand – the visuals – since that’s precisely what Instagram excels at showcasing. Photo editing and graphic design tools like Canva, Instasize, and more are free to download and user-friendly, created by experts who know what works visually and what doesn’t.

Ultimately, keeping your health and safety a priority by limiting movement as the world slowly transitions into a post-pandemic state doesn’t need to come at the expense of losing all the ways you can make a living. Keep your eyes out, get creative with all the tools available to you, and come out even stronger for it.

By

Denise Langenegger is part of the team at Instasize – a content creating tool kit for anyone editing photos and online content on mobile. 

Sourced from Jeffbullas.com

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WordPress: A Platform for Successful SEO

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Sourced from The Southern Maryland Chronicle

There is no sense in launching an online project if it cannot worthily engage in competition in its dedicated niche. Therefore, digital promotion is one of the key things to consider when creating an online product. If you want to get a good position in the search engine rankings, then you need to take the SEO side of the project seriously.

Fortunately, using WordPress gives you an edge as this CMS takes care of the basic SEO optimization from the outset. This is one of the many other reasons why many project managers, site owners, and webmasters give preference to the WordPress content management system.

How to Make Your WordPress Project Perform the Best?

There are some things you can do to take your WordPress SEO to the next level. Before creating your promotion strategy, make sure that your WP site has been professionally developed by the beetroot.co team or another qualified company.

  1. Install WordPress SEO plugins;
  2. Choose one of the SEO-friendly themes;
  3. Turn on the visibility of your site for search engines;
  4. Set up your permalink structure;
  5. Add meta tags;
  6. Optimize images.

Let’s go through this list step by step so that you have an idea of how it works and what you should do on your end.

1. Install WordPress SEO Plugins

WordPress already has some solid SEO features built-in. But you can take it to the next level by using dedicated SEO plugins. The best SEO plugin on the market is Yoast SEO. With this solution, you can perfectly optimize every page. The plugin also has a built-in analytics solution based on the latest algorithm updates. You can even create an XML sitemap and add schema mark-up to your site in a couple of clicks.

2. Choose Among SEO-friendly Themes

What is essential for SEO of your site? One of the key parameters taken into account during ranking is the time users spend on a site. Thus, the theme of your website is crucial. It does not matter which kind of a platform you have got – an online store, business site, or even an art gallery, you will find a suitable theme among those offered by WordPress.

The design influences not only how appealing your site will be for the target audience. The better it is designed, the easier it is for users to find the information they are looking for. In its turn, this will make your visitors fulfil the desired action and decrease the chances they just leave your website. With a low bounce rate, the search engine will better rank your platform.

3. Turn on the Visibility of Your Site for Search Engines

WordPress has a built-in setting that will hide your site from search engines. It can be useful when you are just creating your site; it will prohibit ranking it for this time. If you’ve applied a few tips from our list but haven’t seen an improvement in your site’s rankings, this setting may be the reason.

4. Set up Your Permalink Structure

When you first install WordPress on your site page, the posts may have a strange URL structure. This default structure is not the best choice for your SEO efforts. The more search-engine-friendly URL structure is the post-name setting. By switching to this setting, you can include the title of your post or page and even a keyword in the link. If you make these changes later, you will have to redirect the old URLs. You can do this with the Change Permalink Helper plugin. Just enter your older URLs, and they will be redirected to your updated URLs.

5. Add Meta Tags

Google does not clearly state how meta tags influence the ranking of a particular resource. However, they definitely influence the appeal of your site in the search results. If you have got a WordPress-based site, you can install one of the plugins mentioned above and easily add the meta tags. Those who are not prone to do this manually can make use of automatic functions that get the required information for the automatic creation of meta tags.

6. Optimize Images

Your site won’t be interesting if there are no pictures and videos. Thanks to the features of the CMS, WordPress-based sites allow adding as many images as you want. However, adding them is not sufficient. You need to optimize the images and videos. First of all, it is necessary to add descriptions of images and alt tags. Also, make sure that the pictures are loading fast. Otherwise, you should compress them. There are a lot of WordPress plugins that can help cope with this task easily.

We have listed not all the steps you need to take for a successful SEO. In general, having a site foresees permanent work with it. If you choose a platform that does not create any complications, this is a great investment in the future. WordPress is the choice you will be grateful for many years in the future.

Sourced from The Southern Maryland Chronicle

 

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11 Original Ways To Leverage Influencer Marketing For Maximum Impact

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Sourced from Forbes

Although influencer marketing is not a new phenomenon, it seems to evolve more quickly than other forms of marketing and advertising. As more and more creators enter the market, intent on becoming paid influencers, smart brands and the agencies they work with know that effectively partnering with an influencer takes more than just a large number of followers.

The key is to leverage the organic influence of the right people to create deeper engagement between their followers and your brand, and countless variables will affect your strategy. Here, 11 members of Forbes Agency Council look at some of the most original iterations of influencer marketing that brands can use to stand out to target audiences in unique and memorable ways.

1. Technical Subject Matter Experts As Influencers

For companies targeting technical audiences, influencers are smart, experienced engineers and other technical subject matter experts who routinely comment on industry trends and technical challenges with their unique points of view. Partner with these pundits, who are often found associated with industry groups or publications. Another option is to create your own influencer within company ranks. – Wendy Covey, TREW Marketing

2. Podcast Host Endorsements

Host endorsements on podcasts are a great form of influencer marketing. The most recent audience studies show that at least one in three Americans listened to a podcast in the month prior. Marketers and advertisers are taking notice of the host’s (influencer’s) unique ability to not only provide reach, but also connection and economic results. It’s an “opt-in” channel where show hosts have listeners’ undivided attention and trust. – Kurt Kaufer, Ad Results Media

3. Shoppable Influencer Content

Influencer marketing started as an awareness tactic, but the industry has truly matured. We’ve seen that influencers tell compelling stories that not only drive awareness, but can also generate purchase intent. And now, with click-to-cart companies such as SmartCommerce and new features in Instagram, influencer content can be shoppable, allowing consumers to go from interest to cart in just a single click. – Maria Sipka, Linqia

4. Influencer Marketing Efforts Tied To A Cause

Tie your influencer marketing efforts to a cause. Microsoft’s #MakeWhatsNext campaign, for example, encourages young girls to pursue careers in STEM. On International Women’s Day, the brand teamed up with National Geographic to feature photos of women scientists that generated millions of likes and spurred significant engagement. – Scott Baradell, Idea Grove

5. Influencer Content As Paid Social Ads

We’ve seen a huge rise in using influencer content as paid social ads for remarketing audiences in the last 30, 60 or 90 days. This allows companies to avoid ad fatigue and leverage unique influencer content to build credibility, trust and desire for the product or service. – Brian Meert, AdvertiseMint

6. Turning Employees Into Influencers

A highly original form of influencer marketing is taking someone that works for you and making that person an influencer. We have clients that sell beauty products. Instead of paying someone on the outside, they’ve showcased their own people using the products. As they acquire a following, the company has an in-house influencer already on payroll. Better still, this is a repeatable step. – Danny Star, Website Depot

7. Brand Ambassadors Programs

Brand ambassadors programs as a type of influencer marketing sound more impactful and authentic to audiences who look at brand ambassadors as people with an emotional attachment to the brand, and adore it to an extent that they are ready to promote it. With an emphasis on brand ambassadors programs, consumers feel like owners of the brand and become fully engaged with it. – Elissar Hajj Zarwi, Comma Hub

8. Invitation-Only Facebook Groups

An innovative form of influencer marketing consists of private and invitation-only online Facebook groups sponsored by the marketer to create the sense of a safe and exclusive space for members of a community united by a shared interest to bond with each other. You need to request and be approved by the marketer to join the group. Once inside, the influencers keep the conversation alive with questions and participation that inspire others to engage. – Abigail Hirschhorn, Human Intelligence | H.I.

9. The Rise Of TikTok Influencers

TikTok is the wild west of influencer marketing and a fertile ground for brands to test and learn with branded TikTok videos. Compared to other platforms, the number of brands activating TikTok campaigns is relatively low, so your brand may be the first in your category to become established on the platform. Now is a great time to take advantage of the light-hearted content native to the platform. – Corbett Drummey, Popular Pays

10. Influencer Marketing On Instagram

Influencer marketing on Instagram is what I see as the most undervalued, high-return investment a business or brand can make. Pairing with the right influencer for your brand can not only generate sales and new customers, but also exponentially grow your business. An Instagram influencer’s loyal community of followers will try any product or service the influencer pushes as long as it aligns. – Tony Pec, Y Not You Media

11. Influencer Takeovers Of Brands’ Social Media

Having an influencer take over a brand’s social media channel can be a powerful collaboration that gives a brand instant credibility and reaches a new market. From fashion labels having celebrity DJs livestream on their channels to a celebrity providing an online edit of a magazine’s feed, this form of marketing is becoming more impactful by the minute. – Adrian Falk, Believe Advertising & PR

Sourced from Forbes

Successful PR, media strategy, creative and advertising executives from Forbes Agency Council share trends and tips

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Pay Attention to Attention Analytics

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By Lisa Bradne.

Featuring: Lisa Bradner, general manager of analytics at Yieldmo

Forbes Business Council member Lisa Bradner, general manager of analytics at Yieldmo, explains how attention analytics goes beyond impressions and click-through rates to provide even more details on the reach and effectiveness of online and mobile advertising.

Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Inside Forbes Councils!

Key Takeaways

  • Attention analytics refers to the practice of using attention signal to understand the quality of an ad experience, which includes baseline ad and page signals as well as gestural data. Gestural data includes phone tilts, scrolls back on an ad, touches inside the ad, and other signals that may indicate interest in the ad.
  • A good ad experience is one that doesn’t simply interrupt, but also provides the viewer with some value and invites them to participate further.
  • Attention analytics is one metric that can be employed to measure the effectiveness of an ad, in addition to viewability and click-through. Many combinations of attention signals can be used to improve different advertiser KPIs.
  • Yieldmo’s clients have seen more than a 45% cost-adjusted lift from implementing insights from attention analytics.

Additional Resources

Five PR and Social Media Strategies To Boost Your Sales, Leads and Likes by Adrian Folk, Believe Advertising & PR

Five Strategies To Supercharge Your Google Ads Campaigns by Todd Maxwell, eMaximize

Tweetable Insights

“Attention analytics is the practice of using attention signals to understand the quality of an ad experience… Are they touching it? Are they scrolling through it? Are they scrolling back? How much attention are they paying to that ad?” — @lisabradner of @Yieldmo

“When something is of interest to you, you tilt your phone up in the vertical plane to look at it. You’ll notice now that you do that a lot; that’s our definition of a scroll that is a very strong sign that something has gotten someone’s attention.” — @lisabradner of @Yieldmo

Featured Member

Lisa Bradner is a seasoned strategic media and marketing leader with more than 20 years experience leading organizational change. Having worked as a client, as an analyst, as an agency leader and now as general manager of Yieldmo‘s analytics business, she has seen from all sides the opportunities and challenges of integrating technology and data into marketing to create better more holistic experiences for consumers.

Sourced from Forbes

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Sinch announces Conversation API to bring together multiple messaging tools

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By Ron Miller.

As communicating with customers across the world grows ever more challenging due to multiple channels, tools and networking providers, companies are looking for a way to simplify it all. Sinch, a company that makes communications APIs, announced a new tool this morning called the Conversation API designed to make it easier to interact with customers across the planet using multiple messaging products.

Sinch chief product officer Vikram Khandpur says that business is being conducted in different messaging channels such as SMS, WhatsApp or Viber depending on location, and businesses have to be able to communicate with their customers wherever they happen to be from a technology and geographic standpoint. What’s more, this need has become even more pronounced during a pandemic when online communication has become paramount.

Khandpur says that up until now, Sinch has concentrated on optimizing the SMS experience for actions like customer acquisition, customer engagement, delivery notifications and customer support. Now the company wants to take that next step into richer omni-channel messaging.

The idea is to provide a set of tools to help marketing teams communicate across these multiple channels by walking them through the processes required by each player. “By writing to our API, what we can provide is that we can get our customers on all these platforms if they are not already on these platforms,” he said.

He uses WhatsApp as an example because it has a very defined process for brands to work with it. “On WhatsApp, there is this concept of creating these pre-approved templates, and they need to be reviewed, curated and finally approved by the WhatsApp team. We help them with that process, and then do the same with other channels and platforms, so we take that complexity away from the brand,” Khandpur explained.

He adds, “By giving us that message once, we take care of all of [the different tools] behind the scenes transcoding when needed. So if you give us a very rich message with images and videos, WhatsApp may want to render it in a certain way, but then Viber renders that in a different way, and we take care of that.

Sinch Conv API Transcoding

Examples of transcoding across messaging channels. Image Credits: Sinch

Marketers can use the Conversation API to define parameters like using WhatsApp first in India, but if the targeted customer doesn’t open WhatsApp, then fall back to SMS.

The company has made four acquisitions in the last year, including ACL Mobile in India and SAP’s Interconnect Messaging business, to enhance its presence across the world.

Sinch, which competes with Twilio in the communications API space, may be one of the most successful companies you never heard of, generating more than $500 million in revenue last year while processing over 110 billion messages.

The company launched in Sweden in 2008 and has never taken a dime of venture capital, yet has been profitable since the early days. In fact, it’s publicly traded on the NASDAQ Exchange in Stockholm and will be reporting earnings.

Feature Image Credits: valentinrussanov / Getty Images

By Ron Miller

Sourced from TC TechCrunch

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11 Best YouTube Marketing Hacks To Create Viral YouTube Channel

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Sourced from FINCYTE

In this article, we will discuss the best YouTube marketing strategies to make your channel go viral. Every YouTuber wants to improve their channel like more views, comments on your YouTube videos.

First thing, YouTube is the second-largest platform in the world. There are millions of channels that have been created on YouTube. It has more than 2 billion active users, and 50+ content creators are present on the YouTube channel.

In case you forget to follow any strategies, you have failed to improve YouTube marketing. In this article, we are going to learn some fantastic tips to help you.

Let us get started!

11 Best YouTube Marketing Hacks To Create Viral YouTube Channel

1. Build Amazing Content

Making content is a common thing for all YouTuber. But what is different between you & your niche. Before creating a video, you should analyse your competitor’s content like what they do, what keywords they used, length of the content and audience support, etc. Now, you have a clear idea about how to make video content.

Also, make sure that your content will be loved and easily grasp the audience. This is the ultimate strategy to improve your content.

YouTube provides several kinds of video content that can help you get more views are-

  • Vlog
  • Interviews
  • Product Review
  • Q & A Videos
  • How to videos etc.

2. Add a Watermark

If you want to get more subscribers for your channel and get the views, you have to use the best method – watermark.

Now, everyone thinks about what a watermark is?

Watermark is just an image that would display in your YouTube videos. So many brands use their logos in the place of the watermark. Whenever it’s displayed on the screen, the non- subscriber audience turns into subscribing to your videos.

Once you can follow the strategies, the next metric should be effective in getting more YouTube comments on YouTube.

3. Optimizing the YouTube Channel

Many YouTube stars thought that just optimizing the videos is enough to get popular. But, the actual answer is no.

You should optimize your entire channel with the help of keywords. Using keywords is the best quality method to improve your ranking and get more and more YouTube views too.

i. Video Title

The title should be creative, informative, and descriptive. The title characters are less than 65 characters and make strong content.

Placing keywords at the beginning of the title helps to increase the visibility and ranking of your videos.

ii. Video Description

This section helps to increase brand awareness among peoples. It should be 5000 characters. Add 2-3 keywords in the section, which helps to improve visibility.

4. Compelling Thumbnail Images

Thumbnail is the heart of the video content. Because most content will be popular based on the thumbnail. YouTube thumbnail is the first impression to get the audience into your videos.

You are creating a thumbnail to use high-quality images. Also, you need to ensure that you use an appealing image to grab the audience’s attention.

There are several rules to making a thumbnail:

  • It should less than 2 MB
  • The images format are .JPG, .PNG, .JPEG
  • Thumbnail ratio – 16:9
  • You can change the background, font, border, graphics, etc.

5. Collaborate with YouTube Influencers

Having a YouTuber and working with them is the most successful way to get more subscribers and become popular. Because those influencers already have tons of followers for their channel.

Once you have decided to work with any influencers, you should choose the perfect influencers who will improve the subscribers count on your videos and then create some amazing collaborations with them.

One or more than video, you both can work. Also, this is a way to impress the audience. After, the audience can easily find your face and get your idea in your video content. In this way, you could connect the audience and also get some fantastic love.

6. Build a Community

Many people think that YouTube is just a video searching and sharing platform. No, it’s completely wrong.

YouTube has a vast community basis like viewers, subscribers, and users, etc. Hence, you want to make more views and likes for your videos; you need to make a community for yourself.

In the community, you can post your engaging content that can be loved by the audience. Make a community for your business, and spread your content.

7. Increase the Watch Time

YouTube is one of the incoming platforms for YouTube influencers. It is the specific method of making which the videos would be present anywhere.

Many viewers come into your video present on the homepage, and most audiences enter your video based on the subscriptions or the suggested videos.

You can get more views when your video is presented on the homepage of YouTube. Increasing the watch time for your videos, you can earn money from YouTube.

Here are some tips to increase watch time on your YouTube channel:

  • You should be using cards throughout your videos
  • Use long-tail YouTube keywords in your content
  • Always focus on audience retention
  • Titles and thumbnails should be appropriately reflected in your content

8. Promote Your videos on Other Social Media

People spend their time on YouTube, and also they are spending most of the social media channels as well.

Sharing your videos are the top most strategies. Whether your subscribers or followers forget to see your video on YouTube, there are chances to see your video clips on other media channels.

Hence, after posting your video on YouTube, you will share the link on social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Better, you will create an individual account for your videos and include links or clips on the account. With this, you can get more viewers to your channel. Don’t forget to add the CTA options.

9. Create Playlists

You noticed many top brands that perform well on YouTube because they have some playlists in their channels.

Now, your question is, really are playlists performing well?

The honest is that the playlist will ensure that you can get more attention from the audience in the first place, which specifically takes a lot of effort. Categorizing your videos are most convenient whenever your audience searches for the video they can easily find.

This job is a little bit tough because you can first find the same categorized video and make it into the playlist.

10. Use Cards and End Screens

Use cards and end screens are essential tools that you can use for business promotion videos on your YouTube channel.

First, you should verify the YouTube account to have these same features.

The second thing is that you can use the fantastic features on your YouTube videos to ensure that the audience likes it.

Include CTAs options that you can use for the YouTube video and get the best results.

11. Transcribe the Videos

It is all good to make a great video, but sometimes that the audience needs a proper transcription.

The worldwide audience can see your video due to some language constraints. There are closed captions provided by YouTube, or else you can add it as subtitles when making the video.

These strategies will help you get more views because most audiences who don’t speak your language can understand your content.

Sourced from FINCYTE

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The evolving consumer: How COVID-19 is changing the way we shop

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Sourced from McKinsey & Company

Consumer shopping and spending habits look different today. Which changes will persist? What trends should retailers bear in mind heading into the holidays?

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has altered how, when, and where we shop and what we buy. Digital has become more important than ever, brand loyalty has been shaken, and spending levels and are still below precrisis levels. During a McKinsey Live webinar, partner Kelsey Robinson and senior expert Tamara Charm discussed today’s trends in US consumer spending—and which ones are most likely to stick.

Flight to digital: Digital adoption across sectors has increased dramatically in the past few months. Over the course of just 15 days, virtual appointments multiplied by ten. In five months, Disney+ built a subscription base that had taken Netflix seven years to achieve. Remote working, learning, and shopping likewise have surged. Reliance on digital was growing before the pandemic began, and a meaningful amount of this online penetration is expected to persist after the pandemic is over.

Shift to value: The increase in digital shopping hasn’t compensated for the decrease in consumer spending overall. One-third of Americans have reported a decrease in their household income during the crisis, and 40 percent say they are spending more carefully. Indeed, consumers expect to spend less in discretionary categories, such as apparel, vehicles, and travel, while more on essentials such as groceries and household supplies.

Shock to loyalty: Since the crisis began, three-quarters of US consumers have changed something about the way they shop, including one-third who have tried a new shopping method such as delivery or curbside pickup and nearly one-third who have tried a different retailer. Value—which might entail lower prices, promotions, larger package sizes, or less expensive shipping—is the primary reason for this unexpected shift to different brands. There has been a move to products that are less expensive.

Homebody economy: Only about a third of US consumers are engaging in normal out-of-home activities, and 80 percent say they’re concerned when they leave home. Spending reflects this shift, with more consumers spending money on at-home activities such as gardening as well as software and electronics for working—or learning—from home. When consumers do venture out, it’s most often to shop for groceries and other necessities.

New holiday outlook: Only 19 percent of Americans are optimistic about the prospect of a fast economic rebound in the United States. It’s therefore not surprising that 42 percent of US consumers intend to spend less on holiday shopping this year than last year, and roughly half, across multiple generations, expect to do more shopping online. In keeping with the renewed focus on value, it’s also likely that more consumers will pursue blockbuster holiday sales this year.

Questions and answers from the webinar

  1. What are your thoughts about how global markets compare with the US data?
    Across many countries, including the United States, Brazil, Mexico, and much of Europe, our five themes—flight to digital, shift to value, shock to loyalty, homebody economy, and new holiday outlook—hold to varying degrees. Asia looks notably different. In China, consumers are no longer ensconced in a homebody economy, as they regularly venture out for day-to-day activities. In Japan, the shock to loyalty was notably smaller: while in all other countries, more than half of consumers made a change, in Japan only about a third of consumers did. In India, there is positive spend momentum among the consumer class as consumers prepare for the holidays.
  2. Do you see a bifurcation with consumer perception of value? Are some consumers buying less but buying better, while other consumers are price shopping more often?
    While consumers across the board are looking for value in what they buy, lower-income consumers are trading down more than higher-income consumers are. In the higher-income bands, we’re also seeing consumers more likely to prioritize quality of goods and purpose-driven brands as reasons to try new brands or new places to shop, although the search for value is dominant.
  3. How do you think firms can create value during holiday season, especially for online shopping?
    For the holiday season, firms should think about the following:

    • Provide consumers with multiple options to fulfill orders (e.g., buying online, in-store pickup, and curbside pickup). Consumers have shown us that they will change retailers during COVID-19 as they adapt to a redefined sense of convenience. It will be important to provide consumers the products they want, when and where they want to buy them.
    • Motivate holiday shopping now. Given the rush to online shopping and anticipated fulfillment challenges, retailers have already begun to “pull demand forward”—through early product availability, surgical promotions or offers, and direct communications to shoppers.
    • Invest in digital infrastructure and operation logistics. Given the expected heightened traffic on websites and mobile apps, retailers should ensure that their digital/mobile storefronts and operational backbone can support the increase in volume. This also means upping warehousing and customer support (e.g., chat functions).
    • Build the basket. With less opportunity for consumers to explore and touch and feel products in stores, retailers will need to focus on personalizing the best assortment for each shopper, building baskets based on known customer characteristics, preferences, and categories, and SKUs with tailwinds this holiday season.

For more on this topic, please watch the webinar recording and read the article “Consumer sentiment and behavior continue to reflect the uncertainty of the COVID-19 crisis.”

Sourced from McKinsey & Company

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Gartner Says 80% of B2B Sales Interactions Between Suppliers and Buyers Will Occur in Digital Channels by 2025

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By Tim Hughes.

Interesting article by Gartner, here are some of the highlights

“Over the next five years, an even greater rise in digital interactions between buyers and suppliers will break traditional sales models.”

“The Gartner Future of Sales 2025 report predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. Chief sales officers (CSOs) and other senior sales leaders must accept that buying preferences have permanently changed and, as a result, so too will the role of sellers.”

 “Sales organizations must be able to sell to customers everywhere the customer expects to engage, interact and transact with suppliers”

“Gartner defines the future of sales as the permanent transformation of organizations’ sales strategies, processes and allocation of resources, moving from a seller-centric to a buyer-centric orientation and shifting from analog sales processes to ….  digital-first engagement with customers.”

“Gartner research shows buyers typically only spend 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers when considering a purchase. With less and less customer face time, virtual selling via digital channels will predominate.”

“B2B sales reps need to embrace … a new manner of engaging customers, matching their sales activity to their customers’ buying practices and information-collecting needs.”

Pipeline – What can we do to maximize pipeline?

This requires us all to do what we can across the business to be in the pipeline building business.

We also have to be totally honest with ourselves here.  “What got us here, won’t get us there”.  We all know that business has changed due to the Pandemic and we have to change our sales and marketing models or run out of cash, without the right pipeline.  Research from Hubspot shows that “the number of deals created dropped 11% the week of April 6.”  I’m writing this in October 2020, do we really think that the deals created has picked up?

This diagram is of the deal drop in the US up to the 4th June 2020.

Let’s look at two of the most traditional ways of marketing before the pandemic, digital advertising and email marketing.

Digital Advertising

Yesterday I had a fascinating conversation with a Martin Lucas for an up and coming #TimTalk (my podcast) and the following figures are engagement rates for digital advertising.

1.61% Facebook

1.91% Google

0.35% Programmatic (this is where ads follow you around when you browse)

That means that digital advertising has a 98.81% failure rate and based on the amount of money that is spent on digital advertising, that means that $265 Billion is wasted on advertising every year.  This is an example of one area where before the pandemic it was seen as Ok to make spend like this, now it’s flushing dollars down the toilet.  Another example is email marketing.

Email Marketing

According to Hubspot, the response rate to emails fell to a record low of 2.1% in April 2020. Said differently, 98% of our efforts to reach new prospects failed.

Hubspot say in the report “Sales teams are sending about 50% more email to prospects than they were pre-COVID, but responses continue to drop. Last week, sales response rates hit an all-time low for 2020 at 2.1%, a lower response rate than Christmas week 2019.”

Diagram from Hubspot showing the number of emails being sent going up and the response reducing.

Hubspot also said “These trends tell an important story. Email prospecting, to put it bluntly, is out of control. It’s easy to send thousands of emails with just a few clicks, and in a chaotic time, we understand why sales teams are sending so many. But volume and quality is a tradeoff — the time a team saves by sending out email blasts is wasted if that outreach isn’t personalized, relevant, and helpful. These gaps are clear in the data.”

High Performing Businesses Use Social Strategically 

In this report by Simon Kemp he outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.

What Is A High Performance Business in The Post Pandemic World?

If you are a modern high performing business where social media is strategic to your business, or you hope it will be strategic to the business read on.

How Social Media Has Been used in the Past

Social media has been used tactically in the past within the business.  Often it will be in digital marketing, which sits in marketing and this involves tweeting a broadcast message along the lines of “buy our product, because it’s great”.  There maybe differences on platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but the message is the same.  This is often called omnichannel.  You use all the channels, including email and cold calling and you push out the same message.

This is fundamentally broken, see statistics above.

Adverting, email marketing and cold calling are based on interruption and broadcast and social is based on permission and relationship.  This is a mistake that most companies make.

Social / Digital Virtual / Remote Selling Comes of Age

I wrote the book “Social Selling – techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers”, which is available on Amazon worldwide.  I also wrote the blog “How to get 10 C-Level meetings a week using Twitter”.  These are stepping stones in the evolvement of social.  Both showing to the world that there was (and is) a business reason why you should have a social project in your business and the fact there is a return on investment (ROI).

The Social Business is Born

Back in 2018 we found that our social selling programs were “repeatable and predictable”.  Whenever we ran them it would create 30% more revenue and reduce the sales cycle by 40%.  This is pretty cool and something we are very proud of.

Where Do We Go From Here?

For those unsure of what to do, DLA Ignite will complete a review of your current social / digital / virtual / remote selling capability.  For free.

We will take your team (up top 10) and perform a complete root and branch Social Media Performance Assessment.

Sales, Marketing, Management, Technical, HR. Procurement ….whoever you want to include.

This will include: Profiles, connections, followers, inbound and outbound activity, content, engagement, follow up, results.

(Happy to provide the list of deliverables).

We will map your business against the DLA Ignite baseline and present back to you our findings. We will show you where improvements can be made and what results should be expected.  No hard sell, just present back to you a road map.

You entered lock down analogue, this is your chance to leave this pandemic, digital.

Please contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team here, so please pick one of our industry experts or one of our experts in your geographical locality.  Our website is here.

The Gartner Future of Sales 2025 report predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. Chief sales officers (CSOs) and other senior sales leaders must accept that buying preferences have permanently changed and, as a result, so too will the role of sellers.

https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/future-of-sales-2025-why-b2b-sales-needs-a-digital-first-approach/

 

By Tim Hughes.

Sourced from dla Digital Leadership Associates

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The 3 Mistakes That Are Killing Your Authority Marketing

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Position yourself as an authority and have you’ll prospects knocking on your door.

What if prospects came to you? That’s the point of authority marketing.

Authority marketing is a multifaceted approach that includes content marketing, public relations, speaking, and for many, authorship. Some call it “attraction marketing” or “doing thought leadership.” But whatever you choose to call it, the goal is to position yourself as an authority and have prospects knocking on your door.

This approach is particularly valuable in this era of information availability. Most sales conversations don’t start with a prospect actually reaching out to you or your sales team. The sales process often starts with a web search.

People who decide to market their authority take control of what appears in that web search. When the results of a web search position you and your company as experts in your field, your credibility rises.

Consultants, coaches, and professional service providers struggle with credibility when the bar to entry for their respective fields is so low. Marketing their authority helps them get higher-paying clients. Not to mention, making a point to incorporate speaking engagements, interviews, and written contributions builds marketing momentum pretty quickly.

If authority marketing is such a rock-solid strategy, how are people “killing” it? Well, there are a few key steps that are consistently neglected by almost everyone who engages in authority marketing.

Related: What Is ‘Authority Marketing’ and How Do You Achieve It?

1. Waiting for opportunities to come to you

People work hard to build their email and social media audiences. They believe that if they “get big enough,” opportunities will come to them. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It is true that when the environment aligns with your expertise, people may reach out to you.

For example, more diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consultants are being asked for their expertise for a variety of marketing opportunities. But what about when the news cycle moves on? It’s not that DEI isn’t a topic that people are talking about consistently. But what do you do when people aren’t reaching out anymore?

Public relations pro Jennifer McGinley recommends consistently reaching out and building your web of connections.

“It’s so important to be proactive and consistently connecting and serving others in order to be seen as an expert or authority in your field,” she says. “The more visible you are, the more credible you can become. Essentially you are building a community. Clear, consistent content and communication build a community.”

Even when you get momentum, you should always be on the hunt for better opportunities. Once you’ve built up your speaker’s resume or Expert’s Portfolio, you’ll be able to secure opportunities that dramatically increase your credibility.

Some of the largest conferences have an application process for speakers. So even when you start getting invitations, be sure to actively seek out new opportunities to showcase your expertise.

2. Not creating authentic content

Take note of the adjective before “content” in this subheading. Authenticity is your unique marketability factor. What will people find when they click through to your website? If you’re hoping they’ll hire you or invite you to speak, your site had better be good.

In many cases, people find a website and blog devoid of any personality. Your site may be described as “professional, approachable, and competent.” What’s wrong with that? Well, ask yourself, how many other business websites can be described in this manner? A professional, approachable, and competent website won’t keep you from getting some clients. But it’s lukewarm at best, which means your website isn’t providing the highest ROI possible.

This is where authentic content comes in. When someone lands on your site, they should experience your unique brand. If your personal brand drives a lot of your business, as it does for a lot of service professionals, then your site visitor should feel as if perusing your site helps them get to know you.

Don’t view it as “just your website” or “just your blog.” Think of all of your content efforts as contributing to your content library. You may create unique content for a particular social media platform. But if it performs well with your audience, then you need to invest in growing your content library and creating content on your site.

Sarah Noel Block, founder of marketing consultancy Tiny Marketing, often counsels her clients to invest in what they own. “Too often, businesses get wrapped up in focusing on quick-win marketing like social media or paid ads. Instead, focus on what you own, not what you rent. You rent social media. TikTok can go down tomorrow,” she advises. “Rather, focus on what you own — your website and your email list. Building a content library increases your SEO, your Know, Like, and Trust factor, your email list, and gives you something to say in email and social media marketing. It’s the marketing that keeps on giving.”

If you approach your content authentically, then your prospects (marketing opportunities or new business) will already feel as if they know you. This is one of the ways they convince themselves that you’re a good fit before they even speak with you.

Not that even rote topics can use your fresh take. Many professionals take the time to create content surrounding common topics related to their expertise for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. There’s nothing wrong with this as long as you remember one thing: your unique experiences are what make this content special.

Explaining why it’s important to create header tags in blog posts and website content is a good topic for a content professional. But when you add in the story about having to edit 50+ blog posts for a client to better optimize their content, you do two things:

  • You show that you go all out for your clients.
  • You give them a story to remember your tip with.

Anyone can give a tip. But that story belongs exclusively to you.

3. Not marketing your expertise-showcasing opportunities

Have you been a guest on a professional webinar or podcast? Much to the dismay of many event organizers and show hosts, guests often don’t market their appearances. This is a missed opportunity to support your host and also to market yourself.

Marketing an expertise-showcasing opportunity allows you to get in front of your host’s audience outside of the opportunity itself. More important, it gives you a chance to interact with that audience.

Bill Sherman, the co-host of the Leveraging Thought Leadership Podcast, offers a few great recommendations. At a minimum, guests should comment and like any post where the event organizer, article author, or podcast host mentions them. A thoughtful comment on social media, especially LinkedIn, can really push up engagement — engagement that’s great for you and the organizer, author, or host.

Next, he said that podcast guests should “rate and review the episode on whatever podcast player they use. It will help the episode (and the podcast as a whole) show up more frequently in searches.”

He also shared that when guests engage with audience members who leave comments on social media, he’s thrilled. It doesn’t happen often for most podcast hosts and community builders, but when it does, it creates conversations that lead to all sorts of beneficial connections.

These engagement opportunities are critical for expanding your network and building your authority. Because most people don’t engage this way after an expertise-showcasing opportunity, you’ll stand out even more when you do. Not to mention, the people who take the time to comment warrant a response from you. They could be your people, but not if you ignore them.

Fix these three mistakes and your authority marketing will take off

If you’re making one or all three of these mistakes, there’s good news. You can work to fix them right now. Go back to your most recent interviews and engage with the audience in the comments. Get started on your content plan so you can build up your content library at any time. Actively seek out the opportunities you need to grow your authority and your business.

Being aware of a problem is half the battle. Now you have the knowledge to fix it.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images 

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Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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US Healthcare and Pharma Is Among the Fastest-Growing Digital Ad Spenders

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By Blake Droesch

The healthcare and pharma industry has been slower to embrace digital marketing compared with other US verticals we track. Heavy regulation makes ad targeting more difficult, which has kept traditional media buys and in-person marketing popular. However, the coronavirus pandemic restricted many of these in-person touchpoints, which caused both the B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) aspects of the healthcare and pharma industry to further embrace digital advertising.

We expect the US healthcare and pharma industry will spend $9.53 billion on digital advertising this year, up 14.2% from 2019.

With a public health crisis serving as the single biggest factor impacting advertising this year, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that healthcare and pharma will be among the fastest-growing industries in digital ad spending, coming second only to the computing products and consumer electronics vertical (whose spend will grow by 18.0% in 2020).

While healthcare and pharma digital ad spend has grown faster in previous years, its 2020 growth is substantial, as the total US digital ad market is expected to grow by only 1.7%.

By Blake Droesch

Sourced from eMarketer

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