editor, Author at Mediastreet

In Sales

What Makes A Successful Landing Page: 11 Must-Have Elements

September 7, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Forbes

In this era of online marketing, a landing page is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. In most cases, the difference between closing a sale and having a consumer choose a competitor can be chalked up to not having an engaging landing page.

Professionals in the field can immediately spot if a landing page has the right features that will convert visitors or simply make them look for something else. But what are these elusive elements that make up the perfect elements of a landing page? We asked 11 experts from Forbes Agency Council to share some of the crucial and irreplaceable components a landing page should have in order to convert visitors. Here’s what they said.

1. Simplicity And Efficiency

Limit the narrative. Simplicity is key in telling the story efficiently. Be focused with your approach and don’t make it about multiple offerings. Center on that one thing that makes the product or service the best option and make sure it’s obvious. Great visuals help, but to convince a consumer, you need to hammer home the value. – Paul E. Benninghove, Pavone Marketing Group

2. Crystal-Clear Value Proposition

A crystal-clear value proposition will make or break your landing page’s conversion rate. If a visitor doesn’t immediately understand what you’re selling, and why they must have it (or learn more about it), you’ve lost them. So don’t get too clever in your headline — just make sure it’s working hard to convey the compelling reason a visitor should read on. – Howard Breindel, DeSantis Breindel

3. Direct Message, Minimalist Design

A direct message and a minimalist design are key to a successful landing page. I have seen a 30 to 50+% conversion on landing pages with a concise message, form at the top and simple form with fewer than five fields. A landing page with a simplified design and direct message increases your conversion rate and gets the prospect to the next step of the buyer’s journey. – Elyse Flynn Meyer, Prism Global Marketing Solutions

4. Fast Loading Time

Load time plays a critical part in the success of a landing page. Visitors don’t like to wait, and each year, that wait time becomes shorter before they decide to hit the back button. The last thing you want is a beautiful landing page that nobody sees load. Always consider load time when creating landing pages; watch your image sizes and make sure to compress any that are too large. – Randy Soderman, Soderman SEO

5. Message Match

The most important part of landing pages is message match. You have to make sure your landing page (particularly the copy) matches where they came from. If they clicked on an ad about a 20% off promo code, your headline needs to say exactly that. People are looking for instant confirmation they are on the right page or they will bounce off. Make sure your lander matches up with your source! – Marc Hardgrove, The HOTH

6. Strong Call To Action

Apart from the obvious requirement for eye-pleasing design with minimal wording, you need a strong call to action. Limited-time offer deals are one of the most effective ways to trigger impulse buying and increase sales, in addition to selling a solution to a common customer problem. Know your target market! – Sophie Bowman, Brand Branding PR

7. Problem-Solving Differentiators

Include problem-solving differentiators. As marketers, we can get caught up in showcasing features. We can’t forget that the landing page needs to provide a valuable solution. Filling your pages with jargon can do more to alienate audiences than convert them. How will you save them time, cash and business headaches? Focus on how your unique approach will add greater value than your competition’s. – Bernard May, National Positions

8. Authenticity

You must express “why” you, your company, your product or your service has value and purpose. No one is going to dig to find out what you need them to know. Keep it simple, direct and impactful, and make sure it’s authentic to your brand and consistent with all other communication platforms. Be clear on what you offer and what people can expect when they engage you. – Pat Fiore, FIORE

9. Great Creative

Your brand is your story, and if your creative is an afterthought, your potential customer may be turned off. Show your customers you care about your relationship. With all the clutter out there, it’s helpful to stand out and know the story you’re telling. Putting effort into your communication, both your messaging and visuals, will give your story the presentation it deserves. – Marc Becker, The Tangent Agency

10. Testimonials, Mobile Optimization

There are two key elements that I consider really important: 1) Testimonials — at least three real reviews or videos from actual customers increase the conversion rate dramatically; 2) Mobile optimization — it seems obvious in 2020, but many people still don’t realize how optimized should a landing page be, and they don’t test it on several mobile devices before launching it. – Stefano Mongardi, TheWebMate

11. Quizzes And Tests

Include quizzes and tests in your landing page. We found that quizzes and tests perform better. Not all landing pages can have a simple “Do You Qualify?” style test, but if you can, include it instead of a standard contact information form. – Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design

Sourced from Forbes

In News

7 Things to Consider Before Scheduling Instagram Posts

September 7, 2020 No Comments

By Chris Makara.

It’s been a while now since Instagram updated its API to allow for third party tools to be used to help schedule Instagram posts.

Depending on how you use social media for business, you may or may not have explored this option.

If you have, great! Share your experience in the comments below.

If you haven’t, the big question for today is… why not?

Every month, 1 billion people use Instagram. Companies that aren’t on social media, or those that rarely post, are missing out on a free or pay-as-you-go marketing opportunity.

And in this world, companies with a purpose and the ability to connect to consumers as people are the ones in business for the long haul.

Why Businesses Should Use Instagram In Scheduling Instagram Posts

Image Source

So what do you stand to gain by boosting your Instagram strategy? What does Instagram scheduling offer that manual posting is lacking? Is there room for advanced social media content automation?

Here are 7 things to ask yourself before you get down to business scheduling Instagram posts.

1. How much time are you wasting every day manually posting Instagram updates?

When you add up the time it takes to stop, think about a post, capture the image, make your image Insta-worthy, consider and craft the copy, and post to Instagram, you’re looking at a couple of decent chunks of time taken out of your day. Not to mention the time wasted getting back into your workflow once that’s been interrupted.

Advance scheduling of Instagram posts allows you to set aside a block of time at your convenience to do all this at once. No interrupting other work and no time spent refocusing, which means you’re actively increasing your productivity to get more done in a shorter amount of time. You can set it all up and then move on to the next thing, knowing posting for the day/week/month is taken care of.

Bulk.ly Advance Scheduling Of Instagram Posts

2. What could you be doing with the time you get back in efficiency gains?

Do you have other social media sites that could use some attention? How about engaging with your audience? Or even exploring new business opportunities?

Consider what you “never” have time for and have always wanted to do. If this list is compelling enough, then the hours saved by scheduling Instagram posts in advance may be worth more than you originally considered.

3. Do your updates often contain copy or fact mistakes?

Rushing to manually post in real-time can lead to oversights when it comes to proper spelling or fact-checking. If you’re catching yourself making mistakes on a regular basis, it may be because of a lack of focus or the pressure to hurry and get a post out between meetings or before lunch.

When you take time to build out a calendar of posts and schedule content in advance, you can double-check copy for spelling and grammar mistakes and identify pieces of information you need to research further… before posting. All without the pressure of daily responsibilities calling on you every step of the way.

4. Do you forget to post some days? Then overdo it on others?

Inconsistency in posting not only confuses your audience, but also erodes their trust. When will they get new information? Can they expect to see images of that new product you’re offering on sale today?

If they get something different every time, are constantly waiting for an update, or feel like your posts are so frequent it’s overwhelming, they’re going to stop following and engaging.

There are countless social media marketing tools that allow you to build out a schedule that’s balanced and that delivers when you say you will. Scheduling posts allows you to do that, no matter what your day brings because it’s all taken care of in advance.

Buffer Social Media Marketing Took for Scheduling Instagram Posts

5. Do you have a strategy when it comes to hashtag use?

Some businesses have abandoned any hashtag strategy altogether in favor of flooding updates with them. This strategy seems to be the go-to for businesses with a lack of time and forethought. They’re essentially throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks.

When you plan what you’re going to post and schedule everything out in advance, you can more readily identify common themes and research the most popular hashtags related to your topic, product, industry, customer base, etc.

Posting with a handful of smart, well-researched hashtags can ensure your updates end up in the right feeds, in front of your target audience.

6. Would highlighting relevant events or holidays on social media benefit your business?

It seems like there’s some kind of holiday trending every day on social media. Days celebrating pancakes, dogs, boyfriends, movies… depending on your industry, leveraging these “holidays”, as well as national holidays, for use in a social media marketing campaign could be a smart way to reach current and potential customers.

But in the frenzy of other priorities, we tend to lose track of dates or miss out on proper lead time to execute on a formerly brainstormed campaign idea. Building out calendars in advance and scheduling posts helps with awareness of planning windows and makes it more likely that there will be ample execution time.

7. Have you considered automation?

If you’re looking to grow your business with Instagram and take advanced scheduling to the next level, automation may be right for you.

Automation only maximizes the litany of benefits mentioned above, in that you can let go of regularly coming up with new content to schedule and having to update your queued content lists as they run dry.

With automation, the posts keep posting – all you need to do is add one-off updates (breaking news, product promotions, etc.) into the mix as they arise.

Of course, you’ll need to first identify enough evergreen content to share so that your updates will remain relevant, and so you’ll have enough content to populate your queues so followers aren’t seeing the same posts all the time.

Tools like Bulk.ly can be synced directly to Buffer and often feature product blogs full of helpful articles to help you learn how to use automation to advance your business and social media goals.

Instagram Autimations for Scheduling Instagram Posts

Instant doesn’t translate well from personal to business

The “insta” nature of Instagram suggests that this platform is made for instant posting, instant engagement – capturing an instant and getting it out to your followers in real-time.

That makes sense for personal accounts and social media celebrities. But for businesses, such a strategy is less effective and wrought with risks, from missed opportunities to reputation-damaging mistakes.

Scheduling Instagram posts merges both worlds, with automation taking it to the next level.

One last thing to consider: Can you really afford NOT to schedule your Instagram updates?

Guest author: Since 2003, Chris Makara has developed a broad digital marketing background with a focus on SEO, Social Media, Automation and Analytics. He is the founder of Bulkly, a social media automation tool for individuals and small businesses.

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By Chris Makara

Sourced from Jeff Bullas

In News

The story of content marketing

September 4, 2020 No Comments

BY: AILEEN LAMB

Content marketing has its roots in custom publications, specifically John Deere’s The Furrow, which launched in 1895. Still in production today, the original brand magazine was ahead of its time, teaching farmers ways to be more profitable. Fast forward 125 years and value creation is still at the centre of what content marketers do. Only now, we’re operating in a world of rapid tech evolution and growing economic uncertainty.

Custom publishing started evolving into the platform-agnostic content marketing in the mid-2000s. New Media, which began operating as a custom publisher for brands in 1998, dropped the “Publishing” from its name in 2011 to signal its transition to a digital-first content agency.

Digital enabled the shift from assuming what customers wanted or needed to know – now they can tell us directly. Today, brands that listen to and engage in honest conversation with their customers are the ones excelling in the marketing game.

Over the past decade, the volume of content consumed on digital devices has increased at an incredible rate. And Covid-19 accelerated this even more, with much of the world confined to homes sometime during the 2020 global pandemic.

South African statistics showed a rapid increase in online traffic when lockdown started in March 2020. While this is slowly decreasing as the economy opens up, it remains high. As Covid-19 fatigue has set in, users have migrated from news channels to more localised content on what they can do and how during the adjusted lockdown regulations.

This has certainly been picked up on food brands. Food24 (owned by New Media) and Woolworths Taste saw a 78% and a 181% increase in unique users respectively when lockdown level 5 was in effect. This follows local and global trends, where isolation and social distancing have both necessitated far more home cooking and given people time to learn and experiment. Many South Africans were also seeking to recreate the magic of eating out at home.

SimilarWeb shows that visits to the top 100 cooking and recipes websites worldwide increased by 33% from February 2020 to April 2020. In terms of the South African audience, total visits for this category increased by a massive 86%, understandably, given the lack of food delivery options under Level 5 lockdown.

Chapter 2: from vanity metrics to true ROI

To connect with a customer, it’s clear that you have to offer them content that’s relevant to them on their preferred platform. There is a tendency to stop there though, to focus on views, shares, likes and comments. But content marketing, when measured correctly, should be linked to specific business outcomes and data collected from customer engagement through to point of sale and beyond.

When Taste adapted its content strategy in response to lockdown, it was not to increase sales, which might have been seen as profiteering off a crisis, it was to make the lives of the Woolworths shopper easier, supporting them with affordable, pantry-friendly recipes. We worked with keyword research, data from social media and data on top-selling products to predict and respond to trends.

This was so successful that Woolworths decided to continue posting Taste content to its own channels and, despite lockdown regulations easing, to continue featuring “lo-fi” made-at-home videos. Another result was that click-through rates on strategic content on Woolworths’ direct mailers peaked, with one content piece receiving a 66% CTR and another receiving 59.7% CTR in March.

An example of concrete ROI that directly ties to the bottom line is Vodacom. Calls to Vodacom’s customer care line have dropped by many thousands as a direct result of SEO-optimised how-to content on the Vodacom now! blog. Using a formula developed by the client, we’ve been able to determine that these posts save Vodacom around a quarter of a million rand a month. Vodacom customers – and, as a bonus, its competitors’ customers – are finding this content via Google.

How do you determine what’s of value to your client’s customers though? And how do you strategically plan your content to make sure it aligns with what they’re looking for, ultimately leading to ROI? Market research and consumer insights are key, and the digital revolution has allowed us to read people in a way print never could. Layering these insights into marketing calendars ensures a balance between what clients want and what their audiences need.

The data-driven digital journey we’ve taken has allowed us to continue adding value to our clients. Years ago, we began to work with them to purposively ramp up their digital migration. This has kept them relevant to consumers, diversified our portfolio and further reduced our dependency on print ad revenues.

The next chapter: from digital-first to interactive experience

New Media completed its acquisition of established tech solutions agency Swipe iX in June 2020. This brought the full-stack app and web development, and UX and interaction design into the stable.

Swipe iX also specialises in emerging technologies such as machine learning systems that target the most relevant content to those who would most benefit from it, and big data-powered gamification techniques that can help motivate interactions with content. Augmented and virtual reality platforms, as they continue to mature, will also play a much bigger part in creating immersive content experiences, as will the use of conversational agents in crafting interactive storytelling experiences.

If you provide customers with what they want and tailor it according to your business objectives, it’s a win-win. As the story of content marketing unfolds further, the ethical usage of data and emerging technologies will increasingly come into play, deepening the connection between brands and their customers.

Machine learning, AR, VR and the like are not just “cool”, they pack a real punch in terms of telling engaging brand stories, ultimately improving customer affinity and retention, even in the midst of a global crisis.

BY: AILEEN LAMB

Sourced from BIZCOMMUNITY

In News

Content and Content Marketing Are Not the Same. Here’s How to Frame the Top 11 Content Formats.

September 4, 2020 No Comments

By Julia McCoy.

The term ‘content marketing’ is getting thrown around a lot, but discerning marketers know what’s going on: A lot of things getting labelled as content marketing are anything but.

On the internet, content is anything that expresses thoughts, information or experiences through written, visual, or audio form.

This article is content. The 95 million photos uploaded to Instagram today are content. The 500 hours’ worth of videos uploaded to YouTube in the last 60 seconds are all content.

The internet is built with content and always has been. It also means everyone has content, and everyone creates it all the time.

That creates some confusion when it comes to content versus content marketing. A lot of content is intended to market a brand … but that doesn’t mean the brand does content marketing.

Here’s why.

What does content marketing really look like?

Content marketing is a strategic approach to marketing that emphasizes the creation and delivery of valuable content to attract, retain and convert a clearly defined audience.

In other words, it’s using content strategically to provide solutions to problems that either your business or your readers have. Great examples abound:

The fitness brand that creates a community and encourages its subscribers to share knowledge.
The home décor retailer that distributes a monthly magazine on minimalism and good housekeeping practices.
The SaaS platform that uses gamification to encourage users to discover and get to know its features.
The travel company that uses a thrilling interactive website to hint at the experiences it offers.
The health supplement site that publishes a vegan recipe blog.

Do you see a difference? All of these efforts position you as an authority in your industry, demonstrate your expertise in your topic over the long run and cultivate trust in your audience by putting their needs and interests first.

How to tell if you’re doing it right

You’re doing content marketing (and not just content creation or digital marketing) if your content:

Puts your audience first. Be customer-focused, not company-focused. You’re delivering helpful, valuable content and letting the customer decide when they trust you enough to buy from you.
Links back to a business goal or solution to a problem. You’ve laid out how your content works together to further your business goals.
Rarely, if ever, actively promotes your brand outright. CTAs are great, but you aren’t trying to push your readers to your solutions.
Attracts readers to your turf. You’re building authority by providing readers with a destination to which they can keep returning.
Gets published consistently and continuously. You’re building trust by proving you’re an expert in the matter over time rather than publishing one-offs.
Uses metrics to measure and optimize. You can identify what’s performing well, and where you need to improve based on data.

To master content marketing, you must master these 11 content types.

High-performing content is central to your content marketing, but the way you craft it can make or break your strategy. It’s not enough to simply create eBooks, blogs and catchy social media that provide helpful information … that’s still biased toward your brand.

People are catching on to even that now.

Yet, with all the content creation that you will still do, it can be easy to lose your focus. Here’s an overview of how to use the eleven main types of content in content marketing:

Blogs. Make sure they’re optimized for SEO because they’re one of the best ways to boost your page ranks. Include a CTA and consider opening up comments for further engagement.
Case studies. Illustrate your expertise by taking your readers on a journey that showcases solutions to their pain points.
eBooks. They make great lead magnets, especially when you craft a magnetizing title and supply information people can’t find elsewhere.
Emails. Write direct, powerful, concise copy that contains information that can change your readers’ lives. They’re a direct line to your audience and can build long-lasting relationships when done well.
Headlines. Powerful, compelling headlines (that don’t sound spammy!) let your readers know exactly what they’re getting. They’re also a great way to convey brand with language.
Meta titles and descriptions. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes and let them know you have the answers they’re searching for right now.
Product descriptions. Optimize with keywords and describe products in terms of benefits rather than features.
Social media posts. Create an experience that puts them at the center and encourages engagement. This helps your audience connect with your brand emotionally and can help you find their pain points.
Video scripts. Tell your brand’s story engagingly. You can also include the script text on the page to make your content more accessible, and boost SEO.
Web content. Make important or helpful information prominent, include a clear CTA, and use high-quality images to craft a powerful message.
White papers. Explore relevant topics in-depth and give your target audience ideas that they can apply to their own problems or daily life.

Content making content marketing work: an example

By now, I hope I’ve demonstrated how content creation is intrinsic to content marketing. However, just because you’re creating content, it doesn’t mean you’re doing content marketing.

I want to drive things home with an example.

Let’s say that we’re growing an athletic clothing brand and looking for ways to attract more customers to our e-commerce site. We’ve decided to turn to content marketing for help. It might look like this:

1. You want to increase your brand’s presence on Google and social media, but you don’t want to constantly annoy your readers with ads. How else can you get your brand in front of your readers?

You decide that the best way forward is to start a blog full of topics that interest your readers. A few things that come to mind include clean eating, exercising at home, and personal empowerment. You can also talk about clothes, of course, but your models can all wear your brand, which eliminates the need for more direct advertising.

2. You start your blog, set up your social media and let your following know about it.

Engagement metrics indicate that readers are most excited about exercising at home. Looking through their comments, you notice that things like staying focused, finding the right space, and keeping a schedule are all major pain points that they have.

3. You respond by creating an online guide to exercising at home.

You use a combination of eBooks chock-full of challenges that are available as lead magnets, and video tutorials for exercises hosted on your site. To demonstrate how popular your guides are, you create a way for users to record their progress and encourage each other.

4. To maintain engagement, you start up an email newsletter with the latest challenges, shoutouts for people who have achieved their goals and occasionally a promo here or there.

Throughout this, you continue to grow your online community, adding more content to your blog that addresses questions or pain points. You even start a hashtag that your followers can use to highlight their fitness efforts so that they can spread the word about you.

5. At some point, you realize that you can enrich your readers’ experience with case studies and white papers.

You begin to include “white papers” about health and fitness that are relevant to your target audience. You also start to create case studies of “success stories” from your community.

6. As fitness centers start to notice what you’re doing, you start getting offers for sponsored classes and requests to sell your brand in their shops.

Your content marketing is now extending your brand’s reach into the offline world. You’ll continue all of the efforts above, as the results are feeding further content production.

Can you spot all eleven content types above? Look carefully. They’re here.

(Bonus: Do you know what brand I just described? Spoiler: This is Athleta’s content marketing strategy. Check it out at https://events.athleta.com/)

Now you know the difference between content and content marketing in 2020.

The main difference between content versus content marketing? Content marketing involves a lot more than just content creation. In fact, the emphasis isn’t content creation at all, but crafting an experience that improves the lives of your readers. If you’re putting your readers first, addressing pain points and producing exceptional quality content consistently, then you’ll grow your brand while you cultivate authority and trust. That’s content marketing.

Hopefully, I’ve left you with an idea or two about your content marketing strategy. Now, go forth and convert that target audience into passionate fans.

Feature Image Credit: sunanman | Getty Images

By Julia McCoy

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

SaaS Marketing: How to Get More Quality Leads for Your Brand

September 4, 2020 No Comments

By Brent Csutoras

Discover three tactics that can help your SaaS brand become more discoverable and exponentially grow qualified lead volume.

Many SaaS marketers are working diligently but they are just not seeing the marketing qualified lead (MQL) growth they’re striving for.

On August 12, I moderated a sponsored Search Engine Journal webinar presented by Garrett Mehrguth, CEO, Directive.

Mehrguth explored:

Actionable ways to make SaaS brands more discoverable on search engines.
Strategic methods to build brand impressions.
The actual math behind why the current marketing funnel is financially broken.

Here’s a recap of the webinar presentation.

SaaS Marketing: A Differentiated Approach

Have you ever felt helpless to grow your pipeline?

Are you working hard, but not getting results?

You aren’t alone.

Many marketers are experiencing the same things – for a plethora of reasons.

But one of the biggest reasons is that things have changed with the funnel.

In the old funnel, marketers needed to do top of funnel awareness campaigns because consumers can’t
discover the brand without them.

But then websites like Amazon and Yelp started to grow by aggregating people’s opinions of a product.

And now, people are able to get their own interest in something, evaluate their options, then become aware of what exists, and so on.

In this new funnel, what’s so so important is understanding the reality you’re playing.

So how do we adapt to this new reality as SaaS marketers?

The Big Idea: Your Brand Is Better Than Your Website

The big idea that we need to embrace here is that your brand is now more important than your website.

This isn’t to say your website doesn’t matter – it’s just that it matters less compared to your brand.

Bottom of Funnel: Websites Are No Longer Ranking

If you look at the B2C query [best day trading software], you’ll find four ads above the fold:

Here, your click-through rate doesn’t widely vary from the fourth spot to the first spot.

Mostly your CPC does OK.

Down below, there are SERP features and then different third-party review sites.

What’s really interesting about this is that individual websites and their core pages are no longer ranking – and that’s for a B2C query.

Now, if you look at a B2B query for [best accounting software], you’ll see SERP features at the top, four ads, and then PCMag.com, Capterra, and other review sites.

QuickBooks, one of the most popular software companies among business owners for accounting have a very strong market share, yet you won’t see their website anywhere in the organic listings for this query.

It’s not that QuickBooks has bad SEO.

It’s that the search engine results pages have changed.

If consumers have expressed that they want to hear what other people are saying before they buy a $5
burrito, then they will surely want information before they buy a $20,000 software.

And so what Google decided to do here was put their searcher first.

They realized that these searchers want unbiased information.

So if you aren’t showing up on these queries, you’re missing out on up to 30% of your market share.

SEO is no longer about trying to get your website to rank for bottom of the funnel queries because it can’t – Google won’t allow it.

Another thing is that some third-party and review sites are starting to bid.

This is driving up the cost per click, decreasing the profitability, and it’s cutting competition.

This new reality is happening and we need to be aware of it.

Organic CTR

Almost all SaaS marketers still universally default to advertising at Google Ads.

The truth is, that’s not necessarily the best option.

If you advertise on Google Ads, you’re going to average a 2-4% click-through rate.

Let’s say 100 people are searching for that accounting software query.

If our plan to advertise the people with purchase intent on a search engine is G0ogle Ads, we’re only capturing 4% of the total addressable market.

While the number one organic result is now a listing on a third-party website.

This means you can be a start-up accounting software company, build a great product, and get some raving fans (i.e. 10-15 users compared to the millions on QuickBooks).

Immediately, you’ll look like a true competitor to QuickBooks by simply paying to be X, Y or Z on a review site.

When you change your fundamental and understand how you can position your brand in a strong spot, you’ll have the chance to capture the number one spot and get up to 32% of market share.

With this, you almost have complete discoverability and that is an important part of being able to drive marketing qualified leads (MQLs).

Across millions of dollars of spend across multiple SaaS clients, Mehrguth’s team is averaging a 4% CTR.

You don’t necessarily want too high of a click-through rate because ideally, you want to use your ad copy to pre-qualify your clicks.

In other words, if you are required to do X amount of seats or X amount of price, a really great way especially if you’re a mid-market or enterprise organization who doesn’t win on price but instead on quality, you can include
base fundamental pricing in your ads.

Then you’ll essentially be able to disqualify the wrong clicks, qualify the right ones, and lower your cost per
acquisition (CPA).

Many SaaS companies have been brainwashed that the lower your CPA, the better.

What they do is they take your most expensive terms and they stop bidding.

Unfortunately, sometimes your most expensive terms are also your most valuable.

Even though third-party sites, such as Capterra and Software Advice, have much higher CPCs, they have much better close rates and cost per opportunity.

This means you are getting more qualified leads.

Financial Model

How SaaS owners decide to allocate capital is the most important part of marketing.

Simply reallocating where you spend your money can help grow your business significantly.

To do this, you can follow what’s called LTV:CAC modelling where you are going to understand the actual lifetime value versus the customer acquisition cost of all of your marketing channels.

There are two ways to proceed with this.

LTV:CAC SaaS Non-Trial

If you have a SaaS firm and you don’t do a free trial, here’s the spreadsheet you can use.

You also have a budget template where you can model out different scenarios and then look at each of your channels in real time.

It also allows you to put in all your numbers (i.e., at the product level) and calculate it.

You can run through any type of scenario and see what’s most efficient.

This is helpful because the second you start modelling this out, driving budget, and working on these types of elements, you’ll get much better alignment from your CFO and build trust with the CMO.

LTV:CAC SaaS Free Trial

If your SaaS offers free trial, you can use a simple but awesome model where you can see how much your team costing, software costing, ad spend, how many customers you want, etc.

And then it’ll compute your LTV:CAC ratio, as well as months to recover.

You can start to use it as a log to get better at forecasting budgeting.

Validated Tactics

If you’re the CMO of a mid-market to enterprise SaaS firm, here are a few validated tactics to consider if you want to increase your marketing qualified leads.

Paid tactics

Google Ads
Podcasts
LinkedIn
Review Sites
Terminus
Sponsored Webinars

Organic tactics

SEO
Content
Partner Marketing
PR

One thing you need to have in place before you get too deep in your tactics is to make sure you have the foundation right.

You may have all sorts of templates or tools to use, but that’s codependent on how people move through your funnel.

Ideally, anyone on your team should be able to go into your marketing platform, get the data they need, and be effective.

Nothing is more powerful than your team having the information they need when they need it – and being
able to actually do it themselves.

So now that you have your spreadsheet right, you’ll also need your data.

What’s next?

With revenue being such a big gap, you should also be thinking about OCT, or offline conversion tracking.

That would entail integrating SalesForce into your Google Ads.

The reason this is so important is because Google has come a long way and you can now trust Google Smart
Bidding.

Directive’s paid search team rebuilt all their accounts in Q2 and migrated away from the old-school way of thinking of single keyword ad groups and started bringing their clients into target CPA.

Now the issue with target CPA is how do you determine it if you don’t know your LTV:CAC ratio?

So this is why using the budget modeling template is really helpful.

1. Smart Broad Campaigns

The way Smart Broad campaigns work is that you’re going to “trust” Google’s engine.

You’ll want to integrate it with Salesforce using offline conversion tracking and then run broad keywords.

You can’t just let your account run wild so negatives are super critical.

Daily management is also extremely important.

2. Conversation Ads

One of the issues with SEO and PPC in the traditional sense is that you can’t control firmographic data.

Google has rolled out some white-label reports with industries and employee size, but the data’s not there yet.

But LinkedIn always had this phenomenal ability to give firmographic data.

For instance, you can target demand gen marketers with x amount of employees in these industries.

You can use “single persona ad groups or campaigns”, write essential one asset, and advertise to a specific target audience.

Now that conversation ads are here, it gets even better.

Conversation ads allow advertisers to “start conversations with professionals and business decision-makers via LinkedIn Messaging.”

You can use this to book a discovery call, leverage gift-giving as an offer, and so much more.

Mehrguth’s team has been working on this and saw exceptional results across the board.

3. Content Marketing with Partners

Content marketing is tough especially for SaaS companies that don’t have a brand.

Producing content is useless if you don’t have a distribution plan in place.

This is why your content marketing needs its promotion buit in.

PR is tough because you are trying to be the guest. Let’s simply reverse the roles.

Consider these ideas to boost your content marketing campaigns:

Sour interviews.
SaaS marketing competition.
Friday roundtables.

Empowering People

Marketing starts with your team and needs to bubble up into your vision at a boil.

Create a culture where your team can submit new ideas and has their own model.

Share this Financial Model for Submitting New Content Ideas to your team members to encourage them to make a business case.

All of a sudden, you’ve just given your team rocket fuel.

They can now drive strategy, have complete alignment, know if a campaign’s going to be successful, and be fully empowered.

Q&A

Here are just some of the attendee questions answered by Garrett Mehrguth.

Q: You talked about branding. I often find it difficult to justify ROI for spend done behind branding. Have you ever come across such a dilemma?

Garrett Mehrguth (GH): A lot of times, people think about how much money they need to spend to grow.

What I’ve found is that in B2B, we have really long sales cycles.

It’s always challenging to get funding from finance to spend at the top of the funnel. We often get money for the bottom of the funnel because it’s easy to prove ROI quickly.

However, we know that the bottom of the funnel is co-dependent on brand, but it seems like the “results” come just from the bottom of the funnel.

However, time goes by, and you start to wonder why you haven’t built a brand.

So when you think about brand advertising, try to set your budget up to spend just enough, so you never stop, so that eventually you can prove it out.

From there, start to grow that budget slowly.

A small budget used strategically, that you let run its course, with incremental growth is a wise way to change your financial modelling and get more approval.

Q: Our SaaS is dipping our toes into marketing. What are the 1-3 tactics or channels I should focus my attention on so I can get some immediate wins and maximize my small budget?

GM: Review sites, Google ads, and case studies.

By Brent Csutoras

Managing Partner at Search Engine Journal and a Digital Marketing Consultant, providing consulting, training, and coaching services at an hourly … [Read full bio]

Sourced from Search Engine Journal

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4 Reasons Why It’s Time to Refresh Your SEO Strategy

September 3, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from appPicker

When was the last time you gave any real thought to your approach to search engine optimization? If you’re having trouble remembering, that’s a sure sign that you need to make some changes. With the help of a professional with one of the Toronto firms offering SEO services, it’s possible to take an objective look at what you have in place and decide what needs to change. Here are some of the reasons why you should call a professional now.

Old Methods No Longer Work

SEO is not a fixed science by any means. Over the years, things change in ways that make older methods obsolete. That’s not obsolete as in no longer working. It could mean obsolete as in methods that now hurt rather than help your search engine rankings.

Stepping away from old methods is the first thing that needs to happen. The next thing is replacing those older and now worthless strategies with new ones that fit into today’s world. When that happens, you will notice that traffic to your pages begins to increase again.

People Search in Different Ways Now

You also need to understand that people search for things online in different ways today. Using a search engine is still one of the major ways to find everything from places to eat to where to purchase gift cards. The thing is that they may be conducting those searches using social media sites or apps designed specifically for searches.

You need to tap into each of these options. That includes establishing social media accounts and using practical SEO methods to create posts. It also means using SEO to attract attention from those apps so that your business shows up in those searches. A professional will know how to help you with both approaches.

There are Tools Available Today That Didn’t Exist a Few Years Ago

You also need to learn about all the SEO tools that help you capture data about visits to your pages, where mentions of the company are showing up in social media and other online spots, and even how many of those visits in mentions are converting into cash. You’ll also need to learn how to use tools to see how effective your banner and video ads are these days. All this information will help you make better decisions about your online marketing efforts.

Your Blog and Website is Looking Dated

The layout for your blog and the website is still good, but it’s beginning to look a bit like a turn of the century effort. Now is the time to talk with an expert and see what can be done to refresh the look of those two important parts of your online presence. Along the way, you can also look into what it would take to ensure those pages display properly on smartphone and tablet screens. Given how many people use those types of devices to access the Internet, this change would be in your best interests and possibly boost the traffic.

An expert can help you identify and evaluate the immediate constituents of any SEO strategy and what they mean for your business. With a few simple changes and adding a few new things to the mix, you could reach many more consumers and enhance along with your revenue by a significant margin.

Sourced from appPicker

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Easy Tips for Building a Powerful Email List

September 3, 2020 No Comments

By Alex Sixt.

Email marketing has been running strong for decades, but as social media and other digital channels continue to influence marketing strategies, email has become a second thought for many brands. Thing is, email is still as powerful as ever, and your email list is the secret sauce that bring your brand tons of new business.

A solid email list can benefit your brand by helping to reach customers beyond social media or traditional marketing. So, if you’re ready, grab another cup of cold brew coffee, and let’s chat about how to build your email list up to success.

Use an email marketing tool.

Email marketing can be confusing enough as it is, so why not recruit a tool to help you get organized? Getting organized is a crucial step in the process of building your email list and, luckily, there are plenty of email marketing tools out there to help you with this step. Although every platform is different, each offers a place to store your email marketing content and information about your email list to help make every email campaign an experience for subscribers.

All platforms have a price range for their services that is structured according to the size of your email list, and almost every one offers some version of a free plan. That’s right- email marketing services that don’t even cost you a penny, at least until your email list grows beyond what the free plan allows (sigh, the price of being successful). Take your time to research all options and decide which one is right for your email marketing strategy. Once you’ve chosen a platform, sit back, relax, and start to build that email list in peace knowing that your email marketing functions are well managed.

Add an opt-in form to your website.

There are customers who actively want to find a way to sign up for your email list—we love those people. We also don’t want to lose them by making the process so complicated that to sign up seems more like a task than an opportunity. To make it easier for wannabe subscribers, create a user-friendly opt-in form. An opt-in form essentially gives the company consent to send emails to an address, and this is often achieved by a subscriber simply entering their email and pressing “submit.” Sounds easy, right?

Simplicity is key when creating an opt-in form; no one wants to jump through hoops just to be on an email list. To make it even more accessible, display the opt-in form in a highly visible place, such as your home page. This will prevent the form from getting lost in the mix with all of your other web content, and make visitors more likely to sign up.

Offer an incentive for subscribing.

Who doesn’t love free stuff? Obviously, most people do and the same applies to your customers. Full price never seems that attractive, but it sounds much more doable with a discount offered at the small price of entering an email address. Offering incentives is a fantastic way to grow your email list, as it makes customers feel that they’re getting something in exchange for receiving your brand’s emails.

Make sure the discount being offered is well worth the customer’s time, as many will breeze past an offer if they feel it simply isn’t worth the pennies off their purchase. Another trick is to make them second guess their decision to close your pop-up by getting creative whit the buttons. It’s easier to turn down an offer when a button simply says “No thanks” rather than, “No, I don’t want 20 percent off and exclusive access to subscriber-only sales.” This will encourage the user to rethink their decision, giving them their prized discount while simultaneously building your email list.

Send a welcome email.

Sit back and think about a time that you truly felt welcomed into a store, home, or event. What made you feel like you were appreciated, just for stepping foot through the door? Let’s apply those experiences to your email list. Much like attending an occasion or visiting someone’s home, your subscribers should feel that your brand is excited that they’ve joined the party.

And nothing puts a stop to that wonderful feeling quicker than a simple “Please confirm your email address” message landing into their inbox. Your subscribers should feel appreciated from the second they hit the “submit” button to join your email list. The good news is, it’s much easier than you’d think to give that warm, fuzzy feeling in an email. Thank your new subscriber for joining and add relevant, up to date information about the valuable content they’ll receive from now on.

Create a pop-up form.

We’ve all seen it before: you’re shopping on a website when suddenly, the page you were viewing is blocked by a peppy welcome window that offers a discount if you enter your email. Once again, you’ve been lured into a common email marketing trick: the pop-up form. Popup forms are an excellent tactic to build your email list with an easy hook; like taking candy from a baby, except we would never do that because babies are adorable and no one wants to deal with the temper tantrum aftermath.

When designing a pop-up window, it’s important to think like the customer rather than someone who needs to build an email list. It’s simply not enough to say, “Hey there stranger, sign up to subscribe to our daily emails now,” because very few customers will go for something that doesn’t benefit them. Instead, consider including something to catch their attention such as a discount code for their first purchase (reference #3). This will build the foundation for a good relationship with your new subscriber, and help you grow your email list quickly.

Advertise the email newsletter on social media.

Remember how I mentioned at the beginning that social media plays a large part in marketing? Good, I’m glad you were paying attention because you’ll need to remember that as you build your email list. Although social media tends to get most of the marketing credit, that doesn’t mean you should totally neglect it when developing your email marketing strategy; it may just be the key to boosting it. Many potential subscribers are actually sitting in your follower count right now, which means promoting your email newsletter will reach further than traditional pop-ups or opt-in forms ever could.

Remember, when promoting your email newsletter on social media, users must be given a good reason to subscribe, else you risk your social media efforts going to waste. To help users feel like they absolutely must subscribe to your email list, push discounts and other offers that users can only get when signing up with their email. Better yet, detail how subscribers will benefit from signing up, such as sale privileges and exclusive brand content. When subscribers feel that they’re becoming a member of something worthwhile rather than a daily spam email, they’ll be more likely to stay subscribed and tell their friends, too.

If you’re unsure about how to grow your email list, you’re not alone. With marketing shifting towards other popular digital channels, it can seem that email is in the back of consumer’s minds. However, email is still a successful way to reach your customers, and there’s enormous value in putting time into building an email list. Figure out what techniques work best for you and watch your email list grow!

Feature Image credit: Rawf8 | Getty Images

By Alex Sixt.

This article was written by Alex Sixt, an Entrepreneur NEXT powered by Assemble expert. If you are looking to take the NEXT step in your business then we encourage you to check out Entrepreneur NEXT powered by Assemble.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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The Future Of Networking And Events: There Is No Going Back

September 2, 2020 No Comments

By Ben Chodor

The past several months have forced businesses in every industry to assess their preparedness and flexibility. For some, that involved scaling quickly and becoming fully digitized; for others, it meant focusing on digital to bridge the gap while shelter-in-place orders were in effect around the globe. From what I’ve seen, the event industry experienced both kinds of changes. I have worked in the digital video industry for more than 20 years, and I had never seen such a quick, dramatic shift.

Events and conferences around the world have been cancelled, postponed or transformed into full virtual events. We are nearly six months in, and there still does not appear to be an end to social distancing in sight. As leaders, we want to remain optimistic, but the odds of being able to travel and attend in-person conferences and events remain low for the foreseeable future. It’s also worth considering how comfortable people will be with attending in-person events in the future. Will they want to go? Will attendees shake hands? How many people will be permitted indoors? These are all valid questions and conversations the industry is having.

As we think about reopening and what the future of networking and events will look like, it’s important to note that there is no going back. It’s unrealistic to think that the planning and learning curve that marketers and those of us in the event industry have experienced will be forgotten. However, the forced adoption of digital events has generated additional marketing opportunities and identified new ways to enhance the overall experience and maximize the potential for those participating.

Adapting to change is hard, and business leaders have been trying their best to understand what the new normal will entail. Change requires people to push themselves beyond their comfort zones, and because of that, not everyone is always in agreement. Not everyone will adopt a virtual event strategy, and some may be slower to transition. We’ve seen other industries experience similar changes like this. For example, in the early 2000s, digital media was on the rise and was considered to be the demise of print publications. Today, both print and digital remain. I do not anticipate that in-person events will fade from our future calendars and lives completely. Instead, I see virtual and physical events working together in tandem — as a hybrid, an insurance policy or another way to expand reach and capitalize on marketing to specific audiences globally.

Entering uncharted territory can be intimidating. Prior to the pandemic, virtual events were used in a limited fashion. Today, millions are attending virtual events from their homes, saving time and money and allowing themselves to comfortably partake in sessions and engage when they choose to. While the shift to virtual events may sound rather simple, there are several different elements involved that require coordination, collaboration and direction.

Here are some tips and suggestions for those looking to combine in-person and virtual events in 2021 and beyond.

Plan In Advance

We’ve seen events get cancelled completely or postponed due to severe weather, travel restrictions and now a pandemic. Rather than having to shift your strategy and revamp an entire event in record time, consider planning to have both in-person and virtual events from the beginning. By having the in-person event team and virtual event team collaborate during the initial planning phase, you’ll be one step closer to providing a smooth experience regardless of circumstances beyond your control.

Make The Experiences Complementary

Both events should have a creative element to them, but they should also intertwine and complement each other. If you are branding a venue a certain way or unveiling something special, be sure to marry the branding and hype across both events. Bring online and in-person attendees together by encouraging them to engage in your app and in chat rooms during live Q&As and more.

Give Sponsors The Chance To Reach Both Audiences

In-person booths now have the opportunity to become digital as well. Having an on-the-ground team go live on location at the sponsorship booths for those attending virtually can be a win for all parties involved. Organizers may also consider hiring an audio-visual team to set up projection screens throughout the venue to showcase online programming, questions, sponsorship reels or product demonstrations taking place from different locations throughout the world.

Catalog The Content

Map out what content will be available both in-person and virtually, and devise a marketing plan to promote the materials and maximize content distribution. This makes it convenient for attendees to access what they want when they want, and it also can decrease printing costs for vendors. Whether it’s marketing materials or recorded videos from on-site sessions, make sure the content is easily accessible for both virtual and in-person attendees. This gives the latter the opportunity to replay sessions and presentations they may have missed while attending other activities in different halls or networking.

While we wait for the world to return to some form of normalcy, it’s evident to me that we will not go back to where we once were. The events industry has evolved. Marketers, event organizers, attendees and businesses should embrace the new format, which blends the best of both worlds — physical and virtual. To continue to deliver exceptional experiences, consider the different audiences and their locations, and get creative in combining both in-person and virtual events.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Ben Chodor

Ben Chodor is President of Intrado Digital Media. Read Ben Chodor’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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7 Ways to Generate Unique Web App Ideas for Your Startup to Consider

September 2, 2020 No Comments

By Sagar Sharma.

Execution of an idea is easier than generating the one. The idea will remain the same for web app idea creation and implementation. If you are a startup, then it is important for you to introduce web applications with a unique idea or less popular concepts. Companies are exploring all possible horizons to introduce new solutions almost every day.

It seems quite challenging to stay competitive by launching a unique idea when a high competition out there. Moreover, it is difficult to find the untouched one when the online platform has plenty of web app ideas.

Actually, it’s tough, but not impossible. All you need to do is to go the extra mile to analyze your different business aspects. It helps you to identify the gaps and fill them by launching the right web solution.

Here are a few practices that you can consider to generate unique web app ideas.

7 Ways to Generate Unique Web App Ideas

1 – Analyze Yourself

Your Company/Business

Whether you own a well-established company or startup, to stay competitive it is very important to find out and nurture the new web app ideas. For that, you need to closely analyze the challenges and needs of your business that create hurdles in the path of your success.

Nobody understands your company better than you. So, first of all, start exploring who your company has developed to be. You need to identify the strength and weaknesses of your company.

Moreover, define the unique capabilities of your company in terms of product, service, or technology that make you different from other companies like you. Analyze the other business aspects and identify which affect or disrupt your business development.

Your Employee

Another most important aspect of any organization is its employees. Spend time to understand your team members. Allow them to be part of the software development process. Collect the different perspectives and ideas shared by your team.

You will realize that everyone gives a different yet unique point of views if you allow your employees to be part of your business plan. They provide you many of the idea that you would never ever think of it and a large number of resources that you have missed while generating the idea.

Here are a few questions that you have to ask yourself to generate a potential web app idea.

What are the weaknesses and strengths of my company?
What field does my company operate in?
What does help my company to win over my rivals?
What values does my company attempt to uphold?
What is disrupting my company’s development?

2 – Listen to Your Customers

The key crux for identifying the excellent web app idea is to stay in connection with your target audience to whom you need to serve. You need to learn many things from your customers. All you need to do id just listen to them and observe their behavior. Here is how you can do it.

Focus on where your customers spend most of their time
Identify how customers interact with your products/services and brand
Analyze the journey of the customers while using your product

Moreover, you can learn about the great web app ideas by analyzing the pain points and issues your customers are facing and develop a web platform that resolves their challenges. Interaction with your customers helps you to generate more web app idea.

For example; if your customers are facing challenges related to customer services, then you can consider adding a chat section in your web application or website. It allows customers to have a quick chat with your executives and resolve their issues. Customers find this a more convenient way to contact your company.

To understand the needs and challenges of your customers, you can schedule calls or send a questionnaire to them in order to collect their suggestions. This will help you to know what you should do next.

3 – Analyze your Business Strategy

For either the startup or the established firm, a business roadmap is very essential. While defining your plans define your long term and short term goals, clarify your vision and mission, and create strategies for future development.

Utilize your experience and current knowledge base to evolve new solutions to attain your future business objectives and plans. The next step would be to find out the way to execute them through a robust web solution. Define the design, features, functionality, and support that your web application needs to achieve your business goals and drive success.

Before designing a business plan for your organization, you should ask the below questions to yourself.

What are the long term goals of my company?
What are the short term goals of my company?
How will I achieve the goals of my company?
Have I attained any goals since I have started my company?
Which operations of my organization the web application amplify?

4 – Analyze Your Marketing

Have a close look at your marketing processes and analyze if you can transform any manual activity at the web application.

Identify the marketing activities that require a huge investment. You should investigate how to reduce such expenses by transforming marketing activities to a web platform.

For example; you can consider the web application for your loyalty program that helps you to eliminate the expenses of the printed material for the product or service marketing. It is proven that digital material has a wider reach than the printed one. You can engage more target audience by transforming your marketing activities to the web platforms.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself before shifting your marketing activities to a web platform.

Will the web app be supported to add a new revenue stream?
Will the web app help accomplish your business goals?
What operations of my business can shift to web applications?

5 – Analyze Your Industry

To generate new web app ideas, it is very essential to watch the changing industry trends closely. Get profound insights into the changing beliefs and expectations of your target audience.

Today, there are plenty of resources available that you can refer to understand the latest trends of your domain. You can keep referring the websites like Entrepreneurs, Springwise, and Trendwatching.

All these platforms cover the global trends so it will be difficult for you to evaluate and identify the trends that are relevant to the local target market of your business.

6 – Analyze Your Competitors

Competitors are technically rivals but many times they help in achieving business success. They apply different strategies to outshine you. To stay competitive, they continually check the latest trends, explore new and innovative methods, and copy any of your ideas to boost business growth.

You can go with the react approach if you find your competitors’ business grows due to the implementation of certain strategies, you should adopt it. You do copy but copy smartly. Don’t simply implement their strategies as it is. Twist the strategies as per your business needs and nature.

Here, I don’t nor want to encourage you to copy the ideas. All I mean is to consider the competitors’ strategy as a base platform. You need to break it down into different components and apply reverse engineering to create your own strategy for success.

The invention of new ideas or mechanics is not the only way to generate fresh web app ideas. You can identify the gaps that your competitors are not able to fill and build a solution that brings that gap.

Questions you need to ask yourself while analyzing your competitors.

What strategies has your competitor implemented?
What strategies help them to attain success?
What strategies have not delivered them potential results?
What faults and gaps do you identify in your competitors’ strategies?
How to create your own strategy based on the experience you have learned from your competitors?

7 – Analyze the Businesses Outside Your Industry

Just like you, the business of different domains focuses on their industries. They spend considerable time in defining the best practices for their sector. Eventually, they all end up by creating a similar type of experience in the long term.

Please understand, considering an identical idea and adding a new coating over it is not the only way to identify the new concept for our web applications. Sometimes, bridging the gaps between the two different concepts and industries also helps you in creating a unique web app idea.

Stay different from the crowd by merging more than one concept from irrelevant industries in a single web app. This will definitely spark a unique idea.

List of questions you should ask yourself while analyzing the irrelevant industries.

Can I consider different concepts from multiple industries to create a robust strategy for my business?
Can I break out of the industry I belong to and discovering outside influences?

Final Thoughts…

Generate potential web app ideas by following the above mentioned ways. You can discover, develop, and implement it to stand out from your industry crowd. Along with helping you stay competitive, it helps you deliver value to your domain and target audience by addressing unresolved issues and unfilled gaps.

Once you are done with the idea generation, you need to connect with reliable web development service providers that help you in bringing your idea to life by developing the exact web applications as you expected.

By Sagar Sharma

CTO @Credencys Solutions Inc.

Sagar holds the position of Chief Technology Officer at Credencys Solutions Inc., a Mobile App Development Company. He is responsible for all the technical operations, as well as leading the company’s revolutionary offerings. He is helping companies navigate the Digital journey in an Agile environment. Share your app idea at [email protected]. Sagar has two main areas of focus – Technology and Processes. He has worked in leadership positions in various Fortune 500 companies and has been instrumental in driving success through digital transformation. He is also an enthusiastic Agile Coach.

Sourced from readwrite

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How To Reduce Digital Marketing Costs And Increase Effectiveness

September 2, 2020 No Comments

By Phil Laboon.

I opened my first digital marketing company in 2001, and it was one of the first of its kind. We didn’t offer web development, graphic design or even hosting — we just did digital marketing, and we did it well. As word got out, we quickly started growing with agencies all over the state and had them calling to white label our services to their clients. At the time, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to generate new weekly clients without any real effort. Some of the larger traditional marketing agencies were giving more than I could handle, and we had to upgrade offices three times in two years.

Everything was great until a larger client asked me to jump on a call and help him with an unhappy client who was threatening to quit. I didn’t want to upset the reseller, so I spent an hour preparing all the research and data to show them how we helped increase search engine rankings, conversions and almost every other measurable metric. I presented everything to the client and thought, “There is no way they can complain about the results.” And then the client said something I’ll never forget: “I’m sorry, but this isn’t worth the $30,000 I spent in the last three months.” You see, we were only charging the agency $1,000 a month, and unbeknownst to us, the agency was charging a 1,000% premium to the client.

That day I sat with my employees and told them we were no longer going to white label but were focusing on owning the entire relationship. We tripled our prices, ramped up sales materials and never looked back. From my years of owning a white-label digital marketing company, here are the top ways I learned a small to medium-sized business can reduce their marketing costs while actually increasing performance.

1. Go Straight To The Source

Every agency I have ever worked with has outsourced much of the heavy lifting, whether it disclosed it or not. While its team may have organized or handled the high-level items, the majority of work was done via freelancers or outsourced overseas. If you bring in your own specialists, you can avoid paying $150 to $200 an hour for the same work you can get for $15 to $20.

2. Set Up Tangible Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Most digital marketing companies will tell you it takes time to generate sales on a new campaign, which is 100% true — but what they leave out is that there are many other metrics you should be watching to make sure the campaign is scaling. Here are some of the things you want to monitor every week:

• Search engine optimization (SEO): Organic rankings, page views, bounce rate.

• Pay-per-click (PPC)/search engine marketing (SEM): Engagement, cost per lead, cost per click, quality score.

• Content marketing: Social shares, time on page, off-page clicks.

3. Use Independent Reporting

Most digital marketing agencies cherry-pick the metrics and data so there is always something positive to show the client. I highly recommend everyone install their own independent reporting so they can see what is really happening on the account. Even if you just use free options like Google Analytics, you will have a much better understanding of the effectiveness of the campaign.

At the end of the day, digital marketing is not an exact science, and there are many variables as to why some campaigns succeed and some fall flat on their face. However, if you are willing to follow the simple suggestions above, you should have a much higher chance of success on your next campaign.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Phil Laboon

A serial entrepreneur and currently the CEO and co-founder of the fast-growing performance marketing company Growth Stackers.

Sourced from Forbes

Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invitation-only, fee-based organization comprised of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs 45 and younger. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co. Questions about an article? Email [email protected].