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Digital Marketing Agency Entrepreneurs, Beware: Four Pitfalls To Look Out For When Starting

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By Brian D. Evans.

The “cool factor” of being an entrepreneur is at an all-time high. Everyone seems to want to be a successful entrepreneur. Among many paths, starting and running a digital marketing agency seems to be popular. Many people feel that since they went viral on Instagram, they can be successful in social media marketing or managing other aspects of marketing for others.

Unfortunately, the learning curve (and competition) is more robust than you might think. If you get past all the hurdles and booby traps, you can have a successful digital marketing agency. I should know — I started and built a digital agency that went on to be ranked as one of the fastest-growing in America.

But there are many things to look out for, none less important than these dreaded pitfalls that many gloss over when they get started:

1. Signing The Wrong Types Of Clients Too Quickly

Never rush into your first three sales. These are the most important sales that set you up for success — or massive failure.

I see far too many new digital agency owners boasting about how they get sales within a few days of opening up their doors. Everyone wants to make that first sale. But often, people will lower their standards or take not-so-ideal clients just to get going, which can be a huge mistake.

I had an experience early on where I took in the wrong type of client. The client was the opposite of all of the standards I set for myself and my company. My core values, reputation and ethics are critical to me. After a few months of working with this client, we realized the mistake and cut them loose.

My top recommendation is to stick to your core values as a company, once you know what those are. And it’s important to decide those early on, or you don’t really know what type of client you are after, which makes a disaster scenario more likely. If you start accepting clients without guidelines in place, you are more likely to get the wrong types.

2. Setting Expectations And Not Protecting Yourself Legally

One of the sad realities of toxic startup culture is that companies not doing well will often look for a scapegoat. Marketers can be easy targets and tend to get blamed for almost everything that goes wrong.

Now, when you add in a more substantial sum of money, and a startup hires your digital marketing agency, the stakes get even higher. You could be hired to grow someone’s social media engagement, but the next thing you know they are wondering why a household publication hasn’t covered them yet. Or, you could be hired to help with press and communications, but the client asks why they haven’t gotten any sales yet. A lot of this misguided scapegoat mentality you can’t control. But this comes down to two things you can control: setting expectations properly and protecting yourself legally.

At a minimum, proper expectation-setting involves making it crystal clear what you are willing to do (and not do) to help your clients. Then, reinforce your deliverables by not agreeing to anything additional unless you amend the agreement (and charge more for it). Finally, never do verbal agreements, and always permanently set things in stone with contracts that you have made through your own lawyers, explicitly stating what’s included (and not included, if there’s any doubt). Then, disputes have to rise from the contract rather than through unrecorded or convoluted conversation history.

3. Focusing On The Wrong Markets And Spreading Too Thin

Focusing on the wrong markets goes hand in hand with selecting the wrong initial clients, and can be just as bad. Just like choosing the wrong clients, picking the wrong industry to focus on can also be devastating. For example, I consulted a digital agency that was adamant about getting into the mobile app space. The problem was, other than being app consumers, nobody on the team knew the first thing about successfully marketing a mobile app.

It’s important to know what your and your team’s core competencies are as marketers. If you don’t know the first thing about marketing mobile apps, stay away until you do, or until you hire someone who can help with that.

The one last pitfall worth mentioning is avoiding working in too many separate industries. You don’t want 10 clients in 10 vastly different industries — that’s going to make your life way more complicated. You ideally want no more than one or two types of unrelated markets, depending on your scale and capabilities.

4. Not Adopting A Winning Mindset

I’ve always been an optimist, and it has served me well. But being a smart optimist comes with a responsibility to look out for the dangers as well — just as being a pessimist is not going to work too well if you don’t have at least one ear open for “positive” upsides. I’ve adopted the mindset of “hope for the best but plan for the worst,” which I think can work for many people and, ultimately, provide a formula for a great mindset.

This mindset can apply to many areas of life and business. Still, for the sake of the topic at hand, you should hope that marketing is going to go well and things will be smooth and dandy, but plan for if it wouldn’t, and come up with ways to overdeliver on the value that you provide. Don’t mistake this for throwing in tons of extras that aren’t agreed upon and set the wrong expectations. I’m talking about finding small ways to overdeliver without setting the bar at a level that you can’t sustain.

Growing my agency over 2,000% in just a few years has taught me many things. If you can keep these pitfalls that I learned in mind when building and operating your digital marketing agency, you’ll be in a much more sustainable position with a big leg up on the competition.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Brian D. Evans

Inc 500 Entrepreneur. Founder at Influencive, a motivational platform, and BDE Ventures, a marketing and consulting agency.

Sourced from Forbes

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3 Laws for Attracting New Clients

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By Imran Tariq.

When running a client-based business, the weeks and months can feel like roller coasters. Clients naturally come and go, depending on your packages and your churn rate. As entrepreneur Melyssa Griffin says, “Getting clients can be one of the most difficult and anxiety-inducing struggles for a business owner.”

So, what if there were “laws” for attracting clients that worked every time? Perhaps if you stayed ahead of the curve and instituted practices that would bring clients to you regularly, you wouldn’t have to scramble to invest in ads the next time you feel low on clients. With that in mind, here are three laws any entrepreneur should follow to attract new clients.

1. Appeal to them with content they’re likely to engage with.

The first and arguably most important way to attract new clients is to use content marketing, which entails creating value-driven content for your social media pages, blog or anywhere else your ideal customer might search for information on your business. As Jay Baer blogs for Convince & Convert, “Smart content creation doesn’t have an expiration date.” As long as your expertly tailored content is floating out there on the web, it’s likely to find your target customers one way or another.

And regardless of how it finds your target customer, the creation itself is important because it establishes you as a leader. In a blog post for Pennington Creative, Heather Mcdonald puts it well when she says, “When customers are vetting companies, they’re looking for something more than a price tag. They want to do business with people who know their industry and are experts in their field.” If you can answer your target customer’s questions and provide them with the answers and insights they need from a Google search, they’ll remember your company as the expert.

2. Utilize social media networks.

In today’s digital age, there’s no reason you shouldn’t utilize social media networks to attract new clients. After all, you have a whole world of potential customers in the palm of your hand. How to utilize them, however, is a loaded question with dozens of potential answers, all of which should be considered in tandem. You should offer quality content and branded stories with smart hashtags, but perhaps the most important thing to do is to be conscientious of the community you’re building, both on your business’s social pages and your own.

Alice Jackson recommends in a blog for Design Hill that replying to every comment and direct message you receive can help build organic engagement. The more that your followers can feel like they know you — either your personal brand or you as the founder on your company page — the more they’ll come to trust you. The same is true for if you receive a message on LinkedIn or Facebook. Reply, even if the message appears to be automated or part of a mass-emailing list. You’ll start to become top of mind.

3. Mirror your ideal client.

It’s a simple rule of attraction: Like attracts like, so you’re more likely to attract clients if you’re mirroring their actions and interacting with their social circles. Kent Littlejohn, CEO of Client.com, swears by this law, explaining, “You need to remember that your reputation precedes you in the business world, so in order to make sure your potential clients have an interest, do high-quality deals and hire your own high-quality, high-ticket people as a way of breaking into networks of ideal clients.”

Because everything comes down to the crowd you’re in for networking, make sure you’re hiring and engaging with the type of people you want to work with, i.e. mirror them.

This is also an ethical matter, too. In all of your business dealings, act as you’d want a client to act towards you. Chances are that the reputation you’ll build for yourself will warrant referrals, even from those you’ve hired. And the more referrals, the more clients, which means more referrals and more client attraction. These laws will get you there.

Feature Image Credit: Thomas Barwick | Getty Images 

By Imran Tariq

Co-Founder and CEO of Webmetrix Group

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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Five Simple Steps To Demonstrate The Full Value Of Marketing

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By Meta Karagianni.

I have two daughters under the age of ten, and I am trying to instill in them an appreciation for and understanding of the value of money. Every week our girls get an allowance, and we discuss where and how they want to use their money. We have often been pleasantly surprised at some of their spending choices.

In B2B organizations, leaders may be surprised at all the ways marketing contributes to the business, as marketing may not be fully communicating its value. The notion of marketing accountability is not something new — these roles have always been accountable for the size of the marketing database, the number of people who attend an event, the click-through rate on an email campaign and, ultimately, pipeline contribution. What has changed is the level of accountability, the importance of the things we are accountable for and to whom we are accountable. Some may argue that this is a positive change, but many CMOs still find it challenging to demonstrate where marketing adds value to the business. Our 2019 Global CMO Study showed that marketing’s contribution to the business is one of the top five areas that will influence the marketing strategy over the next two years.

Today, more than ever before, marketing leaders have access to a plethora of data. They have been using that data to develop better dashboards and conduct before-and-after analysis to show how their efforts impact the business. And yet the struggle to communicate marketing’s value persists. Although we can’t give up on these efforts, one thing is clear: They are not enough. As one of the CMOs I was speaking with put it: “There are people who understand what we do and there are also stakeholders who don’t know or don’t even believe what we do.”

To deal once and for all with the sceptics and the non-believers, CMOs must go beyond dashboards, using a different approach to show clearly and holistically how marketing creates value for the business. This year, SiriusDecisions developed and launched our new B2B Marketing Value Model, which helps CMOs to do exactly that (see my earlier blog post “Not Just Leads and Pipeline: How to Show the Full Value of Marketing.” Since then, I have been partnering with clients to operationalize the B2B Marketing Value Model in their organizations using these five simple steps:

  1. Identify all the audiences — internal and external — that marketing impacts. Starting with that view provides a powerful perspective that anchors value-related discussions, especially as the role of marketing expands across a wider number of audiences as go-to-market strategies and business models continue to evolve.
  2. Start populating the two layers of the model, identifying what marketing does that delivers value to these different audiences and how that work delivers value to the business. Once we put these components in place, we are ready to start using the model.
  3. Map the current state. Identify the areas where internal stakeholders perceive value is delivered by marketing today.
  4. Map the future state. Introduce what’s possible by highlighting all the areas in the model where marketing delivers value, although stakeholders don’t necessarily understand this. Prioritize focus areas to expand discussions. Marketing leaders can’t win all battles at once.
  5. Build the operational capability and bring data-driven examples that allow marketing leaders to articulate marketing’s value in the areas selected in step two.

SiriusDecisions Command Center® data shows that high-performing marketing organizations are 64% more likely to say they have a measurement-driven culture. That’s a big shift for many organizations, as this goes beyond measurement and reporting. As the role of marketing expands, marketing leaders need to demonstrate how they are accountable for all of the ways marketing adds value for the organization.

Here is my advice for marketing leaders: Pause to think about what you have achieved with your teams and where you want to make an impact in 2020 and beyond. Then step back from your day-to-day activities and take stock of all the audiences the marketing function serves and the value you deliver to them. Use that perspective to navigate your future discussions about marketing value. As my kids surprised me with some of their choices, you may find that your peers, leadership team or board are surprised by all the ways marketing impacts the business.

Download the eBook from SiriusDecisions 2019 Global CMO Study.

By Meta Karagianni

This post was written by Meta Karagianni Service Director, European CMO Strategies at SiriusDecisions product line by Forrester, and originally appeared here. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

Sourced from Forbes

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Why marketers must look beyond cookies and rethink data in the 2020s

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By Thomas Hobbs

Marketers must stop prioritising strategies built around cookie data if they’re to succeed in the 2020s. Speaking on a panel at The Drum’s Predictions 2020 event at Sea Containers this week, Andy Chandler, Adjust’s VP for UK and Ireland, called for brands to evolve in the post-cookie world and start to work out whether they’re truly adding value to their customers’ lives.

“With Google Chrome getting rid of third party cookies, brands need to start looking at data differently or they’re going to very quickly get left behind,” he explained. “We are moving into a cookie-less world, where consumers are interacting more with apps than browsers, so the way we measure data needs to truly reflect that. We need to keep evolving and keep up with where people are, ensuring we add real value to their lives.”

A recent feature by The Drum explored the impact of Google’s plans to “render third-party cookies obsolete” and how brands must now respond. According to Ed Preedy, chief revenue office at Cavai, one solution could be for brands to use online messenger apps to speak directly to their consumers. He says messenger apps can ensure more tailored advertising and better conversion rates when it comes to making a purchase.

He added: “In 2019, there were 73 trillion posts across all messaging apps. And in markets like APAC and Latin America, something like 63% of consumers purchased over a messaging app or spoke directly to a business. These are becoming hotbeds for commercial opportunity and it will only grow in the decade ahead in the UK too.

“Messaging apps allow for a genuine two-way interaction. They qualify what users want and who they are almost instantly, so therefore the advertising that runs is contextually relevant. They will become so much more important as cookies start to dissipate. I think there will be a wider move to more personalised platforms, where advertising is less random.”

It was a frank assessment that Tanzil Bukhari, managing director for EMEA at DoubleVerify, very much agreed with. He insisted consumers now want to see more relevant advertising and that getting rid of cookies will ensure this happens more consistently. “The Google Chrome announcement will mean publishers have to offer much richer and directional content, and that’s only a good thing.”

Using data in the right way

But there was also a message of caution in the air, with Vodafone’s brand director Maria Koutsoudakis warning that brands and agencies who prioritise data too heavily risk becoming irrelevant, on a panel earlier that morning alongside Ogilvy CEO UK, Michael Frolich. Koutsoudakis asked the audience: “When was the last time you spoke to a customer? If you stood back from click attributions and A/V testing then what do you really know about your customers now?

“By only really focusing on data, there’s a risk we create a generation of marketers who don’t understand brand, consumers or behavioural change and aren’t agile enough to cope with it. There needs to be more of a blend of people being on the ground, really speaking to their customers, as well as having a good data strategy. If marketers only care about digital metrics then there’s a risk they become irrelevant in marketing in the 2020s.”

With consumer data obviously so important to the UK mobile network’s business, she admitted it has taken a back step to ensure it’s precious about protecting it. “We don’t sell this data as we can’t afford to lose our consumers’ trust,” she admitted. “Being so cautious might mean we get left behind, but I think it’s worth it as we can’t take any chances.”

Frolich agreed with Koutsoudakis’ sentiment. In the 2020s, he said ad agencies shouldn’t be using client and third party data unless they can absolutely prove it has a positive impact on creativity and this in turn enriches the lives of their customers.

“We aren’t a data company, we are a creative agency,” he insisted. “We use client data and third party data to feed our creativity and build better work that consumers then enjoy. If you’re using this data and it isn’t creating better human insights then you’re using it incorrectly.

“Agencies have bought big data companies and it isn’t working because they’re not using the information to create better marketing. If we can work with a client like Vodafone and use their data to feed better creativity then we’re winning.”

The sentiments around trust were picked on another panel, where Courtney Wylie, VP of product & marketing, Mention Me had a word of caution: “We’re going to continue to see this evolving trend of lack of trust. A declining trust in influencers, brands, marketing channels.”

However, the way the relationship between agencies and brands works will become a lot more adaptable over the coming years, with a one-size-fits-all approach now completely redundant. John Readman, CEO & Founder, Modo25, explained: “In past there were only two options: work with an agency or do something in-house, but we will see these lines blurring more and more. There’s no reason why a combination of both won’t be the best way forward.”

Talking about the way forward, Andrew Challier, chief client officer, Ebiquity predicted that the industry will finally see “the rebirth of creativity and the importance of creativity in engaging people and reaching people in a meaningful way.”

A more ethical way of thinking could impact Facebook and Amazon

As we move further into the 2020s, some of the event’s panellists warned that established retailers and social media brands could start to fall short, as consumers switch to a more ethical way of thinking.

“Yes, lot’s of people still buy off Amazon, but the fact Brits also want to become more engaged with their local community means independent retailers should be confident heading into this new decade,” predicted Hero Brown, founder of Muddy Stilettos.

She explained further: “We’ve noticed a real shift in our readers wanting to support the high street more and more, and there’s this ethical thinking coming through, which could be detrimental to an Amazon. Shoppers want real-life experiences, even from online brands. They’re starting to get tired of faceless fast transactions and want to see brands brought to life in a more physical way. This trend will only intensify in 2020.”

Meanwhile, Darren Savage, chief strategy officer at Tribal, would like to see Facebook’s dominancy recede in the social media space. “I think major firms who consistently lie will come unstuck in the 2020s as people won’t put up with it anymore,” he said. “An immoral toxic cess-pit like Facebook will come tumbling down.

“The blatant lies they tell around consumer data will mean people will leave the platform in much bigger numbers. Truth is more important than ever before and just being a big business isn’t going to protect you if you mislead consumers.”

Proving you’re making a difference

This ethical way of thinking also extends to a brand’s commitment to sustainability, and Misha Sokolov, co-founder of MNFST, believes this will only rise in importance over the coming years.

“I spoke recently to someone at the Volkswagen Group and he was telling me how they calculated they were responsible for 1% of all global emissions, and that’s why they now want to be carbon neutral within 10 years,” he said. “The smartest brands won’t just put a nice message on their packaging, but do something that has a provable positive impact on the environment and helping reduce climate change. It must happen automatically as brands will lose market share if consumers don’t think their being ethical enough. There’s no excuse in the 2020s.”

And businesses shouldn’t just think of sustainability in environmental terms either, with it also being just as wrapped up in how a brand and business treats its employees. Stéphanie Genin, global VP of enterprise marketing at Hootsuite, says employee advocacy will be a huge trend moving forward, as consumer want to ensure their favourite brands treat their staff good before supporting them with a purchase.

She added: “Employee advocacy and employee generated content will become so so important. When you empower employees to be the communicator of what your business stands for it really adds to brand value and boosts sales. I think marketers are missing a trick by not prioritising this more heavily.”

However, Readman, added none of this will work unless it’s part of a global governance policy. “It’s all good being sustainable and doing good things for employees in one market, but if it’s not something you’re doing consistently across the board then consumers will work it out and there will be a backlash.”

Meanwhile, for John Young, executive creative director and co-founder, M-is, as brands start to really understand the consumers through personal engagagement, “the advertising budgets will transfer into experiential budgets.”

Be as safe as possible

Another topic of conversation that came up throughout the day was brands ensuring the data they keep on consumers remains safe, especially as more and more of their ads are traded programmatically.

Francesco Petruzzelli, chief technology officer at Bidstack, said that 13% of global ads are currently fraudulent and that while major brands know it’s a “big issue”, they’re not necessarily doing enough to prevent it. “We acquired a publishing guard to protect publishers, but I find a lot of people aren’t thinking seriously enough about this issue. It won’t go away!”

Dan Lowden, chief strategy officer at Whiteops, added how he recently worked with a major brand who believed bots were accounting for up to 5% of fake views of its £10m campaign, but says his team worked out they were actually accounting for 36% of traffic.

Looking ahead, he concluded: “The bad guys aren’t going to let up and will keep on persisting with cyber crime in the 2020s. We all need to be serious about tackling this problem and do more to collaborate as an industry to ensure that marketing dollars are genuinely being spent on human engagement and not just robots.”

By Thomas Hobbs

Sourced from The Drum

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Is It Time To Walk Away From Your Startup Idea? 15 Ways To Decide

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Sourced from Forbes.

Starting a new business can come with doubt and uncertainty. But what happens when that doubt has less to do with nerves and more to do with your gut warning you of potential failure? At a certain point, it may be prudent to walk away from your startup and pursue a different path.

So how do you know when you’ve reached that point? Below, a panel of Forbes Coaches Council members each shared one way an entrepreneur can understand whether they should let their startup idea go or keep at it until they see success.

1. Test Your Doubts Against The Data

Emotional decisions, both in personal and business lives, tend to have debatable outcomes at best. A better way is to formulate those doubts into tangible hypotheses that can be proven or disproved. Then it is rather simple: Consult with peers, collect and analyze data or do both. The end result is rather straightforward: Either the concern is legit or it is not. – Kamyar Shah, World Consulting Group

2. Define Your Direction And Goals

An entrepreneur’s most powerful asset is their mindset. As you define direction and goals, use the BEE acronym to guide change. Belief: What belief do you need or desire in that learning or goal? Effort: Change takes effort and practice. Effortless: Trust the process and it will become effortless! – Dr. Denise Trudeau-Poskas, Blue Egg Leadership

3. Listen To Your Inner Voice And Write It Down

Concerns for entrepreneurs come at the oddest times, such as in the car, at 4 a.m., during a workout or in a meeting. When I am listening to that inner voice, I try to quickly write down the thoughts that may include doubts, concerns or ideas as they come out. I listen to the voice. I can then distill what makes sense and what doesn’t. Track these doubts, examine, share and then take action. – John M. O’Connor, Career Pro Inc.

4. Pay Attention To The ‘Dip’

One book I hand out to nearly all my clients is The Dip by Seth Godin. He talks about the low point where so many entrepreneurs tend to doubt their ideas because they can’t see the progress they are making, but they are so close to a breakthrough. It helps them see that they aren’t alone and, 99% of the time, following through on their strategy will get them where they want to go. – Racheal Cook, Racheal Cook MBA

5. Ask Yourself If It Feels OK To Walk Away

Your body will know the answer. If you feel in your body that you are considering the option to walk away and it doesn’t feel good, then you know that you have to keep pursuing the idea. The idea or the “how” of the idea may have to shift, but the fact that you want to be an entrepreneur didn’t. Listen to the small voice. Also have sounding boards you can talk to who will help you to talk it through. – Monica Thakrar, MTI

6. Run A Competitive Analysis

Entrepreneurs are successful because of passion, intuition and grit. This is also the formula for failure if they don’t have data to inform solid decisions. Market research is invaluable to identify the market opportunity. If you are able to add competitive analysis to the research, you can validate your decision to stay and how to redirect and refine your efforts. – Maureen Metcalf, Innovative Leadership Institute

7. Consider The Impact

It is not uncommon for people to feel doubt. The problem develops when we turn down opportunities based on that doubt. Consider the worst-case scenario if something goes wrong. Will that be the end of the world or just a great learning experience? If a startup is making you unhappy and having an impact on your health, it is time to walk away. – Dr. Diane Hamilton, Tonerra

8. Decide If You’re Willing To Ask For Help

Being an entrepreneur is really hard. Aside from exhausting hours, the constant pull from every direction and doubts, there can be a lack of knowledge and experience. If you’re not willing to ask for help, listen to others or invest in coaching; it may be a sign that you’re just not ready to go it on your own. This means you’re not yet where you need to be (personally) to succeed in this moment. – Miranda VonFricken, Miranda VonFricken Mastermind Coaching

9. Analyze Your Sales Numbers

In business, numbers never lie. If sales are nonexistent, that justifies switching gears. If sales are slow, that’s an indication to increase marketing or niche down the target market and ideal client profile. Either way, sales numbers provide an indication regarding the best course of action. Analyze the best and worst selling products and services to find out why they are or are not selling. – Lori A. Manns, Quality Media Consultant Group LLC

10. Run Tests And Share The Results With Customers

Test your ideas in a scientific and methodical manner in order to see whether your hypothesis can prove to be validated. Here’s what that means. First, ask a question and do background research. Next, construct a hypothesis and test it by doing an experiment. Analyze the data and draw a conclusion. Share your results with your customers to see what to do next. – Brian M Harman, PhD, MBA, Business Management Hallmark

11. Make Sure Your Head Is In The Game And You’re Not ‘BOB-ing’

There are ventures that just aren’t meant to be, but more frequently an entrepreneur struggles simply because they’re caught in “business owner belief” (BOB). An entrepreneurial mindset is hungry, driven, passionate and excited to start each day. A BOB mindset has a lot of, “I shouldn’t have to” around learning to sell, market, get help or move beyond belief the product or service is enough. – Laura DeCarlo, Career Directors International

12. Talk It Out With Colleagues

All successful entrepreneurs have someone they share their thoughts with. If your gut is telling you something, it is your subconscious trying to share a thought. Don’t ignore it; discuss it with a colleague and, through the process of discussion, you will identify the root cause of your concern. Now you can make decisions and decide whether you need a course correction on your path to success. – Mark Savinson, Strategy to Revenue

13. Look For The Small Wins

Believe me, I have been there! Doubt happens. What’s kept me driven and motivated as a solopreneur is taking a look at the small wins. Did you land a paying client? Did you get amazing feedback or testimonials from clients? Did you get responses from folks you networked with, thus planting the seeds for future business? Celebrate this momentum and remember why you’re doing this in the first place. – Joyel Crawford, Crawford Leadership Strategies, LLC.

14. Review Your Business Data With A Financial Advisor

Financial data is a critical flag to startup success or failure. Consistent review and discussion of key business data with a financial advisor provides entrepreneurs information to better understand their business status and supports key decision making. Being financially responsible will help to keep you from poor decision making, financial mismanagement and developing a sound exit strategy. – Lori Harris, Harris Whitesell Consulting

15. Trust Your Intuition, Not Your Instinct

A “gut feeling” is instinct based on past experiences. It’s not the right gauge in business as you are in the present creating your future. The only way to know if it’s time to walk away from a startup is by listening to your own intuition. Only you can decipher if your business is aligned with your values, beliefs and purpose. You will feel aligned if it’s heart-driven and will know to keep at it. – Whitney Mullings, Whitney Mullings

Sourced from Forbes.

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Google Is Making It Harder to Tell the Difference Between Ads and Search Results

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By Jason Aten.

Two changes to how Google displays search results will likely have a real impact on your business.

Most of us think of Google as the place to go and get answers to just about everything. In fact, 90 percent of all search queries use Google, accounting for almost half of all internet traffic. If you’re an entrepreneur or marketer, you know that Google’s primary business is selling targeted advertising along with every one of those searches. In fact, Google is the largest advertising platform in the world.

The intersection of those two realities just got a little clearer, while the distinction became less so with a few recent changes made by Google. Here’s what changed recently, as well as what it means to your business.

Ads Versus Organic Results

Google Ads are extremely effective, because advertisers are able to target ads to the keywords people search for. People depend on Google to give them the highest-quality results for their questions, which is why appearing at the top of a search results page is so valuable to marketers and content creators.

For a long time, it was obvious that there was a difference between results that appear organically–ranked highly on the basis of their relevance and quality–and those that appeared prominently because they are paid ads. Over time, however, Google has made the distinction less clear.

The latest example blurs the line almost completely by adding a “fav” icon to the organic results, and including the link above the result, both of which make them look far closer to the ads above.

While it isn’t clear what result this is likely to have for individual businesses, the motivation seems clear: Increase click-through on ads. Since the majority of visitors click on the top three or four search results, making the paid and organic results look as similar to each other as possible is going to lead to more clicks on the paid results since they appear at the top.

That matters if your business depends on appearing at the top of search results, and might mean that it’s time to evaluate whether your content and search engine marketing strategy still make sense after these changes.

Snippets and Search Results

Another change, which could easily have an even larger impact on marketers, is that Google now says that when a site captures a snippet for a given search query, that site won’t also appear in the normal search results. The snippet is one of the most valuable positions in a search result page (SERP), and is the most prominent result. For example, in the SERP below, the snippet includes the list from the article about the best iPhone apps.

In the past, that article would also have appeared in the search results below. Now, the snippet is considered a position in the results. Google’s Search Liaison Twitter account explained the change:

That seems logical, but it also has a real impact on websites that currently have the snippet for a given search term, and will now have less presence in the SERP. As with the first change, this can have a real effect on the amount of traffic your website gets if your primary strategy has been organic search.

Sometimes it might be easy to forget that ultimately, while Google’s mission might be to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” it’s a business.

Businesses exist to make money, and Google is very good at making money. As it gets even better at it, it isn’t always clear where the line is between making information useful and using information to make money. That’s a good reminder for businesses that have made organic search a major part of their marketing plan. If that’s you, it might be time to consider how these changes will affect your strategy. Because, make no mistake, they absolutely do.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Jason Aten

Sourced from Inc.

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Challenge Accepted: The Top 5 Obstacles B2B Marketers Face

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By Shannon Prager

Business-to-business marketers are responsible for raising awareness, generating leads to drive revenue and differentiating their organization from its competitors. A B2B marketer faces a different set of challenges with each campaign. If these challenges are not combatted, they can significantly lower the business’s efficiency and revenue.

As the president of a marketing agency, here are the top challenges I’ve observed B2B marketers are facing today and how you and your team can combat them:

1. Generating Quality Leads 

In today’s digital era, many platforms exist to publish and promote marketing content. The digital space is so cluttered with content, consumers no longer have to seek out information. Push notifications, geo-targeting, customized ads and messages, and site pop-ups deliver tailored content to every user.

B2B marketers can struggle to create enough demand for their content. Because of the plethora of content syndication opportunities available today, B2B marketers often lack understanding of which channel is right for their message.

An effective way to address this problem is doing research on the type of content your target audience actually wants — such as video, blogs, etc. — about the topics that are keeping them up at night. Creating high-quality content that provides the reader with value will gain their trust, and they will come back for more.

2. Knowing The Right Target Audience 

Strong marketing strategies should satisfy the needs of customers at every level of the customer journey. You must know your audience and what they care about in order to reach them. But, there’s a lot that goes into a B2B buyer’s decision-making process, such as how their company does business and their personal preferences. This can make it challenging to determine your target audience.

Studying your customers’ buying process enables you to segment your buyers by their pains and their needs, so you can deliver a more personalized experience when communicating and marketing to them.

3. Proving ROI

Return on investment attribution remains one of the most common challenges facing many B2B marketers. In order for a marketer to comprehend the effectiveness of each piece of content, each campaign and the overall strategy, a marketer must be able to attribute a relatively accurate amount of revenue to them.

B2B organizations often find it difficult to prove ROI because of the multiple points of contact a marketer must make before a business purchases their product or service. B2B purchasing decisions often involve interacting with a number of professionals within a company in a variety of ways, so the sales cycle is much longer and more complex. Tracking the revenue that these interactions generate can be extremely time-consuming and convoluted, as the purchase process is not linear and the financial benefits of the marketing effort are often not reaped until long after their execution.

I advise organizations to tackle this issue by facilitating two-way communication between your company’s marketing and sales teams, in addition to implementing reporting tools into your regular analysis.

4. Optimizing Your Website 

A B2B company’s website is a marketing asset that is working all day, every day, to generate traffic and convert prospects into customers. Keeping your site functional, fast and user-friendly is essential for any B2B business.

This is an umbrella issue that encompasses a variety of challenges, including:

• Optimizing SEO;

• Producing strong messaging that speaks to the pains of your buyers;

• Engaging website users with your content;

• Designing pages in an easy-to-read, yet appealing style.

It takes different skill sets to effectively manage all these types of projects, so having strong marketing partners is important to ensure you can get the right skill for the right role.

5. Strategic Marketing Planning

To plan or not to plan? While it takes time, I firmly believe that to effectively market to your customers, you must know them inside and out and plan accordingly.

Ask yourself the following questions about your customers:

• How do your customers form their plans?

• How do they evaluate solutions?

• Where else do they search for information to educate and later purchase?

• Where do they get recommendations and purchasing advice?

I believe by conducting buyer persona research, you can overcome the common challenge of marketing to the wrong consumer or marketing with the wrong message at the wrong time. Customers’ answers to these questions can inform email marketing, social media, outreach to influencers and more.

So, you have some or all of these challenges. Now what?

From creating a personalized website experience to generating quality leads, marketers face a different set of challenges. A seasoned team of marketing strategists can help you identify and overcome the marketing challenges your B2B is facing. Whether it is an in-house marketer at your organization or employing a marketing agency to fill your unique gaps, surround yourself with those who are professionals in the space so you can get the results you need.

Feature  Image Credit: Getty

By Shannon Prager

Shannon Prager is President of Leadit Marketing, a marketing and demand gen agency focused on B2B tech and professional services companies. Read Shannon Prager’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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The Product-Market Fit Code: Why many companies fail to crack and what startups need to learn

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By Nilesh Maurya

  • While there could be many reasons built around why products fail, there have been products that have crossed these boundaries and had so many wrong ingredients in their failure sometimes becomes inevitable.

  • While these product failures do leave behind a lot of lessons to learn, it’s in the hands of managers to educate and engage with all the teams early on.

By Nilesh Maurya

Nilesh Maurya is Director-Investment Banking at Omega Capital Consultants.

Sourced form CNBC TV18

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Three Social Media Marketing Trends To Watch In 2020

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By Stephanie Wells.

With the new year here, it’s time for marketers to solidify their strategies for more productive, effective results. The marketing landscape is constantly changing and evolving, and if businesses don’t keep up, they’ll see a drop in conversions and revenue.

For social media, this is especially true. Users continue to interact in different ways and use social platforms to engage with brands they do business with. In 2019, 79% of the U.S. population had a social networking profile.

Imagine a business that doesn’t know the first thing about how to use social media to engage their customers. You may have a large following, but if you don’t utilize your platform, you won’t see positive results.

It’s important to keep up with the upcoming social media marketing trends so you and your team create a strategy that’s effective and fruitful. Here are a few trends to watch in 2020 that you can apply to your social media marketing strategy.

Building Online Communities

What keeps users coming back on social media time and time again? When you get tired of the memes, acquaintances’ life updates and baby photos, what entices people to continue using social platforms in their leisure time?

Social media provides a stable platform of connectivity between people who otherwise wouldn’t coexist as easily. People lead busy lives, and even those you’re close to can become estranged when there’s so much going on. Perhaps a more significant reason people continue using social media is to be part of a bigger community where they feel valued, respected and loved.

In 2020, social media marketers should put more emphasis on building online communities to grow their customer base. There will be more focus on responding to users, cultivating conversations and building authentic brand-consumer relationships. All of these elements will encourage repeat customers and increased engagement.

Humanizing Your Brand

Brands are constantly fighting to grab their audience’s attention and persuade them to look their way. There are so many marketing messages pushed on consumers day in and day out that it takes extra effort to reel them in. How can you intrigue your customers when you have so many competitive forces standing in your way? You humanize your brand.

In the upcoming year, marketers will put more focus on adding human elements to their social marketing messages. There’s no room for robotic, traditional advertising that makes it difficult to produce results. If you want to connect with consumers, then you need to humanize your brand and create relationships beyond your products and services.

Brands are already leveraging the use of memes, slang and pop culture to relate to their customers and build long-lasting customer relationships. I predict this trend will continue to rise in the new year as consumers demand more personalization from the businesses they invest in.

Social Purchasing

Marketers aim to please their customers and provide them with smooth experiences. This includes sharpening website design, improving navigation and offering superior customer support. It also means providing additional convenience wherever possible so businesses have a higher chance of converting customers and generating sales.

That’s why I expect purchasing through social media to continue to grow as a trend for the upcoming year. Companies already bombard users with ad after ad based on their previous searches. Users are used to seeing products they want when they log into social media. More businesses will use this to their advantage by enabling shopping directly through social platforms.

Providing convenience is one of the key ways to drive sales and persuade users to click through. If your brand offers a positive user experience (UX) for customers, you’re sure to see an increase in conversions and engagement.

If you want to boost your social media marketing efforts for the upcoming year, then it’s crucial to pay attention to the trends. You can expect a bigger emphasis on building authentic relationships, social purchasing and humanization to bring audiences and businesses together.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Stephanie Wells

Steph is the founder of Formidable Forms, a drag + drop form builder for WordPress that empowers freelancers to create form-based solutions.

Sourced from Forbes

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Smartly.io Research Finds Half of 2020 Marketing Budgets Will be Allocated to Social Media Ads

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Sourced from yahoo! finance

Marketers expect to invest heavily in social automation technology to streamline inefficiencies

Smartly.io, the leading social media advertising automation platform for creative and performance marketers, today announced new research outlining how retail marketers plan to spend their advertising budgets in 2020. Commissioned by Smartly.io and conducted by WBR Insights, the research arm of the eTail event series, the survey results indicate that social media advertising will be a primary focus for retail brands hoping to reach consumers where they are most active.

Smartly.io’s research revealed that 52 percent of retail marketers will spend more on social advertising than they did in 2019. Further, 50 percent of retail advertisers are planning to spend at least half of their annual marketing budget on social media advertising. With eMarketer estimating that U.S. digital ad spend would reach $129 billion by the end of 2019, Smartly.io’s data indicates that retail marketers plan to allocate nearly $65 billion to social media ads in the decade’s first year. When compared to 2019, 96 percent of respondents plan to bump up their spending on Facebook this year, while Twitter (56 percent) and Instagram (22 percent) also see healthy increases.

In terms of where retail marketers currently advertise, Twitter (75 percent) and Instagram (59 percent) fare well, but Facebook is far and away their favorite social advertising platform, with 96 percent adoption. In fact, 36 percent reported that Facebook is the platform they dedicate the most spend toward, and 41 percent say it also gives them the best return on ad spend (ROAS).

“The past decade put social advertising on the map for most retail marketers, and our findings indicate that it will only continue to grow in 2020,” said Robert Rothschild, VP and global head of marketing at Smartly.io. “Retail marketers recognize the value that social media ads bring to their campaigns, and they are focused on understanding which levers to pull to generate even more engagement and revenue. Capturing the attention of today’s consumer demands that advertisers tell stories that seamlessly blend with the organic content that their audience already consumes. Investing in visual storytelling enables retail marketers to connect with consumers on an emotional and highly relevant level. Shifting spend to story ads, diversifying across social networks like Pinterest, bridging the gap between performance and creative teams, and investing in technology to scale creative and deliver incrementality in ad performance are ideal solutions that will allow teams to work faster and smarter in the year to come.”

Although marketers see a positive return on their dollar, many admit that the process is often still too manual and inefficient to easily manage. Survey results showed that 83 percent feel that there is room for improvement when it comes to automating parts of their ad creation and deployment, and 66 percent do not use any automation technology. To reduce these inefficiencies, 39 percent of retail marketing teams indicated that they will invest in more robust social advertising tools in 2020.

Additional findings from the study include:

  • 29 percent of retail marketers noted Instagram is the social network where they spend the most on social ads
  • Nearly half (48 percent) feel their performance marketing and creative teams do not collaborate effectively in all stages of the marketing process
  • 61 percent say that their creative production and ad delivery involves manual processes that are often time-consuming
  • 47 percent of retail marketers plan to increase their use of dynamic ads on social media
  • 39 percent predict they will manage social advertising in-house
  • 35 percent feel that their KPIs will change from how they were measured in 2019

Download the complete Smartly.io research report on our website. Smartly.io recently raised €200 million in funding in December 2019 to support future growth of the company. Visit Smartly.io’s website to learn more about its capabilities, and follow Smartly.io on Twitter for the latest updates on company announcements.

About the Study
In November of 2019, Smartly.io partnered with WBR Insights and eTail to survey 100 U.S. retail marketing decision-makers to understand their plans for social media advertising in 2020. Respondents spanned roles in brand marketing, eCommerce and sales, creative and design, product and performance marketing, and digital advertising, and gave their answers via phone call. All respondents were age 18+ and located in the U.S., and represented retail brands generating over $200 million in total annual revenue in sectors like apparel, home furnishing, hardware, electronics and appliances, specialty retail, sporting goods, department stores, entertainment and hospitality, supermarkets, and toys.

About Smartly.io
Powering beautifully effective ads, Smartly.io automates every step of social advertising to unlock greater performance and creativity. We combine creative production and ad buying automation with outstanding customer service to help 600+ brands scale their results – not headcount – on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. We are a fast-growing community of 350+ Smartlies with 16 offices around the world, managing over €2.5B in ad spend and growing rapidly and profitably. Visit smartly.io to learn more.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200123005090/en/

Sourced from yahoo! finance

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