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How To Structure An Influencer Strategy

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By Leslie Licano.

Clients come to our agency looking for ways to take an omnichannel approach to public relations and marketing more frequently now than ever before. In addition to an uptick in traditional media campaigns and innovative social programs, we’ve seen an increase in the return on investment that our clients are seeing through influencer marketing campaigns.

If you’re thinking about starting an influencer campaign, you’re not alone. Influencer marketing is expected to grow from a $2 billion industry in 2017 to a $10 billion industry by 2020. It’s proven to have a strong return on investment, and it allows public relations teams to really dial into a target market. While Instagram is the leading platform for influencer marketing, influencers also can be found on YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and just about any other social media vehicle you can think of.

So how can you structure your influencer strategy to get the most from every post? Here are a few things to consider:

What are the goals of your campaign? Do you want to increase awareness? Generate leads? Drive sales? Boost brand reputation? Determine what you want to accomplish and how you’re going to measure the results. Engagement is a popular data point to measure, but make sure that’s the right fit for your brand. Also, ensure everyone on your team, including the influencer you choose, is aware of goals and measurement plans.

Decide on a budget. It’s important to know how much money you have to spend on an influencer campaign. Most influencers are pay to play, with rates as low as $200 per post up to tens of thousands of dollars per post. Is your budget large enough to get the posting frequency you may need to make an influencer campaign viable? Look at influencer marketing as you would any other marketing campaign — you may have to spend money to get the results you want.

Narrow your demographic, and determine your target market. Your target market for an influencer campaign might be slightly different from your regular target market. Make sure the influencer you select has a majority following within your target demographic. No matter how much you like an influencer or the aesthetics of their posts, if their following doesn’t match your target needs, it doesn’t make sense to engage with them.

Research influencers to find the right fit. This is such an important step, and there’s so much to consider. Before moving forward with any influencer, make sure that they fit your brand naturally. It’s vital to be authentic in these posts, so an influencer who’s excited about your product and has a following comprised of your target demographic is ideal. Another important step is to make sure that the influencer hasn’t embellished their following with bots. Third-party measurement and analytics tools are great for checking out influencers and making sure they’re on the up-and-up.

Determine content with your hired influencer. In general, let the influencer to take the lead here. If the content is going to feel authentic, it likely needs to come from them. Their followers will probably be able to pick out a brand-crafted post from a mile away. That said, provide some guidelines, concept ideas and product information to help them, or you may inadvertently set yourself up to fail. Additionally, make sure that they’re familiar with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines for your type of product. For example, many influencers today are involved in the promotion of health products, which is heavily regulated by the FTC. Influencers may need to announce that the content is sponsored or label it as advertising and ensure that they’re being careful not to make false claims regarding a product’s effectiveness to avoid misleading followers.

So are you ready to get your influencer campaign up and running? Approach influencer strategy as you would any other new campaign. Set your goals, budget and target demographic, and do your research to make sure that the partners you choose are the right fit for your brand — just as you would research any other person you might hire for the team. With a detailed strategy that covers all these bases, you’re likely to see positive results.

By Leslie Licano

Co-Founder of Beyond Fifteen Communications, a SoCal PR and communications firm known for taking clients beyond their 15 minutes of fame.

Sourced from Forbes

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How Do You Identify your Target Audience in Social Media

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Without knowing how to properly identify your target market, it will be difficult for you to make a perfect pitch that will convert your audience into customers. Most businesses fail on this part as they tend to reach out to anyone interested in their services.

The problem with this targeting approach is it appeals to a broad audience. Doing this will give your services a hard time to stand out from the growing competition online.

To avoid wasting your marketing efforts, you need to narrow down your niche. Your business will increase its tendency to generate leads and sales if you place it in a specific market. No business can target everyone.

To get you started, here’s a handful of tips on defining your target audience.

1. Who are your ideal customers?

The initial step in developing your social media marketing strategies is to know the interests and characteristics of your audience. This information is vital in understanding your buyer personas. Know the reasons why they like your services or products and what drives them to trust your business.

Surveys are a helpful tool to ask your customers about their preference and how they want their problems to be solved. This will give you an insight into how you will communicate and interact with them.

2. Check out the competition

If you are new to the business and just starting out, it is obviously hard to squeeze in the tight competition. But it does not mean that you don’t stand a chance. Do not compete with the giants. They have been there for a reason. They have worked hard for years to establish their online reputation.

Study the audience they are targeting including their current customers. Look out for the potential market that they might overlook and take advantage of it. Instead of competing in the same market, focus on the niche market and build your solid foundation there.

3. Conduct a Product/Service Analysis

No matter how good your marketing strategies are, your business will not grow if you have the wrong product or service. This is the reason why your company exists. Remember that it is not about only the products and services you are offering but the benefits that they provide.

Do not too much of the product. Instead, highlight their important features and how they can solve people’s problems and needs. For example, you are offering web design services. The benefit is you will be giving businesses professional brand identity. This unique identity will make them stand out, increase exposure, and attract more customers.

After you listed all the benefits, identify the people that will be needing them. For example, you may target start-up businesses interested in creating an impressive company image. From there, you will narrow it down. What niche? House cleaning? Interior design start-ups? You have a choice.

4. Target Specific Demographics

The closer you are to the target, the higher the chances that you will hit them. You do not want to launch your marketing campaign and hope someone would buy your product and avail to your service.

Consider these essential factors:

Age – Are you targeting teens, adults, stay-at-home moms, etc.? Make sure that your approach is suitable to the age of your target audience so that they can easily relate.

Location – Are you going local or national? Where are your customers located? What is the community looks like?

Gender – If your business is selling make-up and beauty products, you’re probably targeting women.

Income level – Look at the price of your product or service. Is it affordable? It’s hard to market an expensive product especially if your customers belong to a low or middle-income class. Put yourself on their shoes.

5. Identify the behavior of your target audience

In addition to demographics, you should also determine the psychographics. Does it fit their interests? For example, you don’t want to sell solar panels in the area that has a typically cold climate. Your products should appeal to your customer’s personality, values, and lifestyle.

Once they find out that your products and services provide significance to their daily lives, they would likely go after it.

6. Determine the platforms Your Audience are commonly using

Not all social media platforms work the same. They have different strengths and weaknesses. By understanding the online behavior of your audience, you will know what channel you will utilize. Most demographics are using Facebook while is Instagram is a great platform which makes use of photos to promote businesses. Twitter is a good channel to get to know of the latest news and trends and LinkedIn is the best platform to reach out to industry leaders and professionals.

7. Tailor your Content

Observe what your competitors are doing and have an idea why they are successful. What are the methods they are using to drive engagement? What other areas do they lack? Will you be able to exploit their shortcomings?

If you’re on the budget, you can use SMM services from digital marketing agencies like Search Media. When promoting content in social media, do not focus on self-promotion. Share relevant content from trusted sources and industry experts to develop trust and credibility.

Spend time on social media to understand audience behavior such as when is the time there are most active users. This information will help you learn when is the best time to post and share your content.

Not only that, social media is not all about posting! Reach more people by encouraging interaction and communication. Build an active community where people can constantly see and hear from you.

8. Be a problem-solver

Make people feel that you are not just a business but a human too who can understand their feelings and interests. Research their pain points and base your marketing on solving those problems. By giving your brand a voice, you can create more influence, attract more followers, and build more opportunity to connect with your customers.

Sourced from

Right Mix Marketing focuses on digital marketing, technology, eCommerce, entrepreneurship and business related content. Want to become a contributor at RMM? Email us on rightmixmarketing [at] gmail [dot] com !

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How to Write a Great Retail Business Plan for Your Store

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By Tiffany Walden.

Every successful business has a strong retail business plan. It’s one of the first things many investors and donors ask for when inquiring about your business. Why, you ask? That’s because a business plan details your business’ short- and long-term goals, and lists the steps and financial requirements necessary to achieve those goals.

To help you get started, we’ve outlined what you should include in your retail business plan. If you follow these tips, you’ll be well on your way to creating a strong foundation for a viable retail business.

Provide a company description

Your company description is one of the most important aspects of your retail business plan. This section should reflect how you want people to envision your business. It should include the logo, concept, ownership and business structure, design, and layout. Think of a retail shop that you enjoy. What is it about that business’s logo, concept, and design that stands out to you?

Include information from target market and industry analysis

A retail market analysis is a deep look at your industry, competition, and geography. All of these things need to be defined in your retail business plan in order for investors to have a full picture of what your particular brand is and how it fits into the overall retail puzzle.

  • Target market and customer analysis: You’ve probably heard business owners say they want to target anyone interested in their brand. However, defining your target market makes it much easier for you to see who your audience is and how to best market your company to that audience. When researching and analyzing your target market and customer base, it’s important to figure out the characteristics of your ideal customer. From there, dig deeper to determine your ideal customer’s age, location, gender, income and education levels, marital status, and more.
  • Industry analysis and industry segment: An industry analysis is a qualitative and quantitative assessment of your retail market. It looks at upcoming trends in retail, what’s selling and what’s not, and more. Once you know the state of the overall industry, break it down a bit further. What trends are you seeing for specific products and categories?
  • Competitor analysis: You need to take a deep look at how your competitors fit into the puzzle. When analyzing your retail market and location, research which of your competitors has the biggest market share, how close competitor retailers are to your location, and what advantages your brand has over the competition.
  • SWOT analysis: The last thing to check out is your SWOT analysis, which looks at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities your brand can capitalize on, and threats from tough competition. When you add SWOT to your retail business plan, you can identify and focus on your strengths so you can minimize weakness and stand out from your competition.

Explain your products

This is where the fun begins. Everyone, especially investors, wants to know exactly what they can buy at your store. In your retail business plan, you want to be as detailed as possible about the items you’ll be selling.

If it’s clothes, include whether there will be tops, pants, and/or shoes. Will customers be able to purchase accessories there? What sizes will you carry? What about plus sizes? Here is where you want to show your vision for your retail shop and feed the imagination with vivid descriptions of what your products will look and feel like.

Additionally, you should include information about your supplier and any contracts you need to have with suppliers to keep your shelves full. Will your items be made overseas or in the U.S.? How will you manage inventory? What will happen to the items you don’t sell? You should also detail your pricing strategy: how much will items cost? Will there be regular sales? How much will your sales be?

Address operational needs

Thinking about how to run your business is an important aspect when first starting out. Therefore, it’s important to assess various retail operations and determine a custom strategy for your business.

  • Supply chain: This is part of inventory management. Making sure that your supply chain runs smoothly is the best way to ensure profits. Include how you’ll control and oversee ordering inventory, store that inventory, and control the amount of product for sale. This helps to ensure you never run out of product or overpay for it.
  • Merchandising: You need a merchandising plan to show how you’ll plan, buy, and sell your products to maximize your return on investment while meeting market demands.
  • Technology: How will you complete transactions? One way to streamline everything from sales and inventory to orders and customer directory is through Square for Retail. Square for Retail allows you to keep track of every aspect of your business in a way that helps optimize business profitability.

Create an organizational structure

If you’re going to run a successful business, investors will want to know its legal structure. Will you operate as a sole proprietor, general partnership, limited partnership, LLC, or corporation? Choosing a business entity determines how you file state and federal taxes each year, which affects your earnings and profits.

Additionally, you need to include how many team members your retail shop employs. Who will serve on the management team? Who will work under the managers? How will this play into the overall structure of your company?

When you’re thinking about your team, technology such as Square for Retail can help make life much easier. You can integrate your POS system to centralize payments and sync calendars. You’ll have a centralized place with customer information, in case you want to market promotions or sales directly to them via email.

Assess marketing

Here is where we start getting into the nitty gritty of your retail marketing strategy. You want to include a positioning statement, which explains how you want the outside world to perceive your brand. For your positioning statement, write a description of how your retail shop differs from others, how customers will enjoy your brand differently than that of competitors, the category in which your brand competes, and any compelling reasons why your target audience should have confidence in your claims.

Additionally, you want to include which channels you’ll use to open your business and which channels you’ll continue to use to promote your business. This can include digital channels such as a website, social media platforms, and rewards and loyalty programs.

Provide a financial plan

Your financial plan helps investors understand how your business will make money to achieve its strategic goals and objectives. For your retail shop, you need to conduct a financial analysis and analyze your startup costs, funding options, break-even point, and projected profit and loss. Using these plus a cash flow analysis benefits your financial plan, as well.

When analyzing your startup costs, you should look at everything it takes to run your business. That includes everything from the products you sell in your store to the technology you use to build and maintain your store’s website and point of sale. Investors need to know how much money your retail store will cost up front, and how long it will take for them to see a return on their investment.

Another important area to look at is your break-even analysis. Investors will want to see this breakdown. Essentially, the break-even analysis is a look at how much revenue you need to justify how much you’re spending.

Running a business is no easy feat, but Square is here to help. We have all the tools you need to start, run, and grow your business, whether you’re selling in person, online, or both. And we’ve made all our tools to work together as one system, saving you time and money — and making decisions easier. So you can get back to doing the work you love and focusing on whatever’s next. See how Square works.

By Tiffany Walden

Tiffany Walden is a contributor at Square where she covers everything from the importance of mentorship for minority entrepreneurs to how business owners can use technology to combat challenges within their respective industries.

Sourced from Square

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Tired of Waiting for Customer Responses? Start Text Messaging to Get Ahold of Anyone, Anywhere in Real Time.

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The world is full of spam. Don’t let your business’s message be part of it.

We live in a world full of spam.  Everywhere we go, brands are tracking and following us. Hence, we as consumers have become adept at ignoring ads, content and emails.

And, whether the outreach we receive comes in through emails, cold calls or other unsolicited communication channels from a business, our experience is one of a pervasive itch; and we find that the more we ignore that itch, the more the annoyance eases.

While customers and prospects are growing ever more irritated — and more adept at avoiding unwanted contact — the entrepreneurs on the other side of the communication channel are struggling to rise above the noise and be heard.

Are you one of those entrepreneurs struggling to reach your customers? Here’s what to do.

There is a better way. Start text messaging.

By using text-messaging software, your business and your team can more easily engage in real-time human-to-human conversations and reduce the spammy, sales-pitchy jargon that customers are all too familiar with.

With 98 percent read rates and 40 percent response rates, according to MarketingProfs data, text messaging is increasingly how consumers prefer to communicate.

Today, 89 percent of people always have their smartphone within reach, and more than 5 billion people around the world are connected to a mobile device. It’s no wonder, then, that text messaging is becoming the way businesses new and old are getting real engagement with customers.

Here are some best practices businesses should follow when text messaging customers to avoid being ignored or blocked:

Be careful about your initial text message engagement.

Considering that “outreach overload” is already prevalent, businesses certainly do not want customers’ text message inboxes filling up, either.

Texts are typically personal — they’re where communication with friends, family and co-workers intimately take place. To avoid spamming people, make sure first that a connection with a customer or prospect is established. Perhaps this person stopped by a booth at an industry conference, connected with you on social media or met you at a networking event. Whatever it was, make sure that the initial connection is there before you blast messages to a list procured from a database.

Build an authentic connection.

Business is all about relationships, and especially for emerging businesses, relationships are key to building strong relationships quickly and early.

In the same way that personal relationships need to be nurtured, customers need individualized time and attention to connect with a business. Teams reaching out to customers should take the time to get to know the individual — his or her preferences, desires, goals and interests — before asking for anything (“Buy this,” “Download that,” etc.).

This way, calls to action can be personalized — instead of sounding like they’re coming from a robot or automated system. Text messaging is a great way to build up this authenticity, as it reaches customers where they are (on their smartphones) and allows them to respond on their own terms.

Respond in real time.

We now live in an  on-demand economy. Customers expect everything instantly, and via smartphone. Hailing a ride, ordering food or depositing checks are just a few of the countless ways consumers are getting used to their needs being met right away.

However, considering that just about anyone with a smartphone is using it not only to communicate but as an instant gratification device, it makes sense that text messaging is becoming a key way to reach just about any target market.

Just as businesses need to make their products and services available in real time, they also need to respond to requests, questions and feedback in the same way. Text messaging is a great way to achieve this since most consumers have their smartphones at their fingertips at any given moment.

Provide value.

Every interaction with a customer should be focused on delivering value. A business serves to help customers in all that they do, whether that be connecting them to a viable job opportunity, getting in touch with remote healthcare providers quickly or making sure lenders and lessees can communicate on contracts efficiently.

Bottom line: The more value that’s provided throughout the communication lifecycle, the more likely a prospect is to stay on the hook, build trust and become not just a customer, but an advocate. Again, text messaging is a great way to send touch points, but will only be effective if value is delivered. Too many “asks” run the risk of deterring a customer for good.

Text messaging is transforming the way business is done. From ignored, spammy messages to personalized, authentic conversations with a real human, text messaging is making it easier than ever for businesses to enable their teams to engage with their target market.

In a world where customers expect value, connection and on-demand everything, text messaging is the way to satisfy these expectations. It may be the best channel for you, too.

Feature Image Credit: FG Trade | Getty Images 

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Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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These 7 steps will launch your business for good

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By Marjan De Jong, 

Do you recognise these moments, that your mind is drifting away, and you think about all the things that you could do to make this world a better place?

  • If only you had the perfect idea…..
  • If only you had more time…..
  • If only you knew how to move it forward…..

Stop beating around the bush. If you want to change the world, start a business! 

Does this sound terrifying? Is this way out of your comfort zone? Are you not the stereotype entrepreneur?

Good! Because this world does not need more stereotype entrepreneurs! This world needs fresh insights from people outside the business, with innovative, groundbreaking ideas. People with the heart in the right place who really want to make an impact and are willing to go the extra mile.

This article will show you which 7 steps you have to take to launch your business for good.

Step 1: self reflection

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” –  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Before you start chasing wild ideas, start with 10 minutes of self reflection:

  • Think of three moments in your life that you were most happy. When was it and why?
  • What are you really good at?
  • Ask your friends, spouse, family, colleagues what you are good at.
  • What do you enjoy doing the most?
  • If you look at your life now, what would you like to eliminate right away?
  • What would happen if you would fill this space with something that would give you a purpose and would make you really happy.

Write down a list of things this could be. Make it a long list with at least 10 things but preferably 25 things you are reasonably good at and that would make you happy. From teaching, to coaching, to cooking, to surfing, to helping neighbours.

Do not limit yourself to ideas that need to bring in money or that someone needs. Start with yourself as the center piece. The rest will follow.

Step 2: what the world needs

“If you want to change the world, start a business” – Willemijn Verloop

Which problems in the world do you care about?

Write down a list of causes, worries, problems or interests that you connect with. It can be anything: the local community center, rare bird species, illiteracy and the well being of children. Make it a long list with at least 10 things but preferably 25 things you care about.

Now bring both lists together. Where do they match?

Helping neighbours links to the community center.

Can you link teaching to rare bird species?

Or link multiple things together: Cooking for neighbours at the community center, teaching children to read, write, cook, and surf. Or teaching people to stop running and connect again with themselves and their environment. To look around, watch the birds, go surfing and cook together. At this stage anything is possible.

Step 3: define what you can be paid for

“Be clear about the purpose of money. Money is like health.  It is necessary for survival but it is not what you live for.”  – Ernie J Zelinski

Take the connected ideas from step one and two and think how you can be paid for these services. And who will be paying for it.

Are people willing to pay for a day or a program that helps them to stop running and connect again with themselves and their environment?

Who is paying the teachers that teach kids how to read, write, surf and cook? Can you do this is a regular school? Do you want to set up your own school? Or can you offer this in the form of training modules?

For the cooking for neighbours idea, who will pay for it? Can you get subsidy from the government? Can you ask the people who can afford it, to pay for the people with less income?

There are many possibilities. Some with the potential of a successful business, some with the potential to create massive impact. It is up to you what you value most:

  • Are you looking for a purpose and for fulfilment in your life?
  • Do you want to find this in your work?
  • Do you want make a good living out of it?

You don’t have to answer these questions with a yes. You can be perfectly happy being a volunteer at the local community center and cook for the neighbours. But you can also decide to take it to the next level and partner up with an NGO that is doing this throughout the country and can help you scale your efforts. If your goal is to make a good living out of it, then you have to look for ideas with more commercial possibilities. It is your choice.

Step 4: chose you business model for good

“My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.” ― Steve Jobs

There are lots of business models for good, but most are not widely known. I cover two examples that fit the ideas mentioned above.

Social franchising

If you decide to cook for the community each week, find funding and grow your community service, then also look into the possibility of social franchising. If you have developed a great formula yourself and you want to grow your service to other communities you can scale your idea by means of social franchising. Social franchising looks a lot like regular franchising but the goal is not to increase revenue, but to scale your impact.

On the other hand, if you have just started cooking at the community center, you can also decide to become a franchisee and partner up with an origination that already has a proven track record of raising funds, has deals with supermarkets to pick up left over food and has a professional training program for volunteers. This would really help you to set up a professional and smooth organization with impact in no time.

One for one

One for one is widely used. TOMS was one of the first to start with this concept. If you buy a pair of TOMS shoes, TOMS gives one pair to a child in need of shoes. Over the years they have developed this further, involving local shoe manufactures and adding eye care. If you buy one pair of glasses, TOMS helps restore sight to a person in need. They are now developing their business model further to one purchase one purpose. For every purchase you do, you support a local charity of your choice.

Another example of one for one is Pampers, who partnered with UNICEF in 2006 to eliminate tetanus. Anyone can get tetanus, but the disease is particularly common and serious in newborn babies and pregnant women. For every Pampers diaper or wipe product with a “One-Pack = One Vaccine” sticker Pampers provided UNICEF with funding for one life-saving tetanus vaccine to protect a mother and her newborn in the developing world.

The one for one model can also be applied to the example in this article. If you would for example sell surf trainings to kids, you could think of sponsoring the education of one child in a developing country for one month.

Step 5: check out your target market

“If you want to create messages that resonate with your audience, you need to know what they care about.” – Nate Elliott

The first four steps have given you multiple business ideas. For each of these ideas we will now look into the target market. Who will buy your product or service? Who is willing to pay for it? What are the characteristics of these people?

Depending on your money goal, this step will most likely eliminate some of your business ideas. Go out and ask around what people think of your idea and how much they are willing to pay for it. Even better. Start testing it. The surf idea can be easily tested. Are the surfing lessons you offer just as good or better than the competition? If this is the case, your one for one model might work. If your surf lessons are not as good as the competition, then it will not work out. Quality comes first, doing good comes after.

If you have found the perfect business idea that fits your personal work, life and money goals, then you dive deeper in this one idea.

Step 6: create your story

“Nobody likes to be sold to, but everyone loves a good story.” – Dave Kerpen

The first thing you do, is write your story.

Why did you start this business? Who are you doing this for? Why are you so attached to this cause?

The good thing about a business for good is that you do not have to make up a story. You write down your personal story in such a way that people will be attracted to it. People have to recognise themselves in your story. Connect on an emotional level. Explain how it made you feel. Explain the surroundings. Drag your audience into your story. If they care about the same cause, they will instantly feel a connection.

Next you share your story.

Go back to everything you know about your target market. Where do they hang out? Where can you share your story with them?

Social media gives many opportunities nowadays, but this can also give you the impressions you have to be everywhere. Select a few channels where you can reach your target market. Quality first, quantity second. It is for example better to be really visible on one channel every day, then on lots of channels only a once a month.

Look beyond social media channels. Social media channels are not your own. If Facebook decides to change their algorithm, you might reach way less people. This happened already and will most likely only get worse. So also build our own channels. Build for example an e-mail list and send your audience a weekly newsletter. Again quality first. If a weekly newsletter is not doable, start with a monthly newsletter. The more often you do it, the easier it will become.

Step 7: fail fast

“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.” – Richard Branson

The last step is to get going! Just start. Try out the things that you think might work, based on the insights you gained from your target market. Check the statistics. You may have a lot of likes, but if no one buys your product, you are not there yet. Find our where the problem lies and try again. Keep trying. Do not give up.You can change anything. If it does not work, go back to your initial idea and see what needs to be fixed. Use the feedback and use all the new insights to take the next step. Building a business is not easy, but imagine how you will feel when you nail it and you are making massive impact and a great living.

Are you ready to start?

I have created a free checklist for you to start a successful business with impact. If you tick off all the boxes, you have laid the perfect foundation for your business for good.

 

By Marjan De Jong, 

Sourced from Thrive Global

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Five tips on how to identify a marketing ‘insight’

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Sourced from mu media update

In marketing and business, good insights are like Fabergé eggs — rare, fascinating and, in many ways, mythical, says Claire Denham-Dyson, head anthropologist at Demographica.

The strongest strategy does not evolve without a powerful insight to lead it, and robust research backing it up. Anthropologists in B2B marketing spend hours with decision-makers in the B2B world, speaking to them about their worlds. They also observe their workplaces, how they engage with products and the social dynamics between the client (sales) and their client (the ‘buyer’).

While today there is material that explains what an insight is, very little of it explains how you get to one, or just how daunting the task can be.

As anthropology is a descriptive human science that uses detail and subjectivity to understand people, culture or dynamics, anthropologists are in a great position to illuminate the world of the target market. However, even the greatest researcher can be useless if they cannot distill their work and leverage all this information.

Here are five tips on how to identify an ‘insight’:

1. Be aware

There are many types of insights. There are psychological insights that reference what people are feeling on an unspoken but emotional or psychological level. There are also cultural insights that dictate why certain rituals, practices or social norms have come to have power. And finally, there are behavioral insights that provide a compelling understanding of why and how people do the things they do.

This list is not exhaustive, nor are the types/kinds of insights closed — as most of the human world, they are messy and can overlap or reference more than one aspect of human existence. Remember that what you came to find will greatly influence how you perceive what you find.

2. Immerse yourself

You need to spend time in field. You need to speak to people, ask difficult questions and shadow them. You need to be a stalker, an empath and incredibly curious and detail-oriented.

The discipline of anthropology teaches you to deeply immerse yourself in the world of the target market — this means using all your senses (all 21 of them) to become present. Document everything.

3. Make sense of the data

After the many hours immersed in your target’s world, collecting ‘thick/rich’ data and compiling archives of transcriptions, photos and maps, you can begin to ‘sensemake’ the data.

Sensemaking is a fancy term for trying to understand the way the world works for the consumer. This means a second immersion — but this time, you deep dive into your data.

In this second immersion, you should identify fragments of knowledge, critical moments, meaningful observations and times when you felt confused or emotional. Your subjectivity is part of the sensemaking process, and digging deeper into why both your target market (and you) felt or acted the way you did.

4. Start your insight beating

The word ‘beating’ is used because identifying an insight is a process of pain, growth and discomfort. This part requires an ability to locate contradictory or compelling tensions.

It involves long working sessions of picking up and dropping ideas until you feel yourself seeing the bigger picture. Often, you know you have an insight when you literally feel it.

Insight is just a new perspective, and there is a feeling that accompanies this new realisation. You should feel the ‘a-ha’ — that tiny surge of positivity or optimism in your body that clicks the argument into place.

5. Land it

Once you finally have the insight, you can backtrack and build the stories that got you to it. This involves using evidence (quotes, images, stories or observations) to lay out the landscape and set up the tension through contradictory or deepening information that describes and isolates the problem.

This should set you up to reveal the insight. The insight should solve the tension. It should explain what people are feeling or being motivated by on a very deep level. It also should provide a fresh, informed and vigorous angle on the problem.

At this point, you have shared knowledge. You have taken a lot of information, unpacked and challenged it, and then you have synthesised it in such a way that has a purpose.

Whatever industry you work in, being insightful is as valuable as having experience. If you can be comfortable in the diversity of experiences people have, you will be well-poised to shape and locate insights. Within our vast continent, there are a wealth of insights waiting to be uncovered and leveraged in meaningful ways.

With a strong insight, a campaign can go from being a communication effort to a truly reciprocal experience for both the buyer and the brand. Brands evolve when they truly understand their market.

Equipped with a good insight, you can help your client solve a real problem that often has nothing to do with the product, but everything to do with the buyer’s world. Unsurprisingly, highly connected buyers are the most valuable ones.

For more information, visit www.demographica.co.za. You can also follow Demographica on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.

Feature Image Credit: Vecteezy

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Craig Huey Big Data Meets Big Marketing, Who Wins?

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Big data and big marketing are becoming one. What does that mean for your privacy? We’re seeing advanced data modeling concepts applied to consumer databases, which provides companies with the ability to identify and expand their target markets. It also results in less junk mail, less spam and less telemarketing calls. Perhaps there is a bright side to this after all.

Listen to “Craig Huey Big Data Meets Big Marketing, Who Wins? #4425” on Spreaker.

 

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Why A/B Can Be the Key to Marketing Success

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Sourced from Inc

This form of testing can yield important insights.

With the amount of competition you face to get your email seen by your target market, you need to eliminate the noise by grabbing your audience’s attention. People are attracted to different options for different reasons. A/B split testing will tell you what your audience prefers, so you can create successful email campaigns.

A/B testing is when you compare and test two different versions of your email to see which brings in higher conversions and why. This allows you to create future campaigns that increase engagement and expand reach, because you’re giving your audience exactly what they want.

Consider testing your subject line, call-to-action copy, call-to-action button color, color scheme, and images. It’s important to test only one element of your email at a time; otherwise, it will be difficult to track why conversions went up or down, because there are multiple variables to consider.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

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Avoid These Four Mistakes When Target Marketing

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By Jared Atchison.

It’s hard to create a business without the consumer in mind. If anything, it’s downright impossible. You need to know what your audience wants if you’re going to provide them with solutions to their problems. To know what they want, you have to dig deep and find all the dirt you can get your hands on.

Target marketing comes in handy because it gives you crucial information about your customers that will help you serve them better. Without knowing details about who your target market is, your business is bound to suffer and not reach its goals in time. According to Google Trends, the search for conversion rate optimization continues to increase year by year as businesses struggle to gain the conversions they want. With proper target marketing, you rid your business of many of its conversion obstacles.

Let’s look at four common mistakes marketers make when performing target marketing and how you can avoid them.

You don’t know your customers.

The art of target marketing is that it knows everything about the customer down to their most recent issue. It gives you crucial information so you’re able to tailor your content and products to their needs.

Marketers create buyer personas to nail down the pain points of their audience so they can come up with solutions. These are detailed, data-driven profiles of your ideal customers or target market. To create buyer personas, you need to consider all the details of your audience, including their demographics and psychographics.

• Demographics: Your audience’s demographics are matter-of-fact details about them, such as age, gender, profession, race, location, education, income and relationship status.

• Psychographics: Your audience’s psychographics include personal details about them, like their buying behavior, hobbies, interests, values, attitudes and personality traits.

All of these details are essential in building accurate representations of your target market.

You aren’t engaging with your audience.

It’s difficult to understand who you’re targeting and how you can solve their problems without interacting with them first. Take advantage of email, social media and question-and-answer platforms where you can ask questions to get to know your target audience. This will allow you to serve them better as you narrow down your target audience.

If you have existing customers, email them with a survey or questionnaire that asks them what you don’t already know. Reach out to your followers on social media to get their thoughts. Follow hashtags in your niche or industry and scour users’ questions. Use Q&A platforms like Quora or Reddit to see what questions people are asking and what they have trouble with. Google Trends shows you trending topics locally or around the world.

The more information you can collect on your target market, the more refined your business efforts will be.

You haven’t spied on the competition.

As a new business, it’s crucial to know what’s going on with your competition. You want to understand their strategy so you can create one that’s even better. This allows you to optimize your brand to fit your customers’ interests more appropriately, which will increase your conversions.

Take a good look at your competitors’ audiences to see what they’re about. Who are they targeting? What do their customers look like? What are their audience’s needs and most pressing concerns? How do they price their products and services? How big or small is their following?

When you figure out their target market, make yours more refined and streamlined. The deeper you can delve into your niche, the more specific of a group you can target, which can lead you to a pool of devoted, loyal customers. Spying on the competition can help you look closely at who’s being ignored in your industry so you can be the one to serve them.

You aren’t analysing your data.

If you have existing customers, you have a goldmine of important data you can use to refine your target market. Tracking your website analytics will tell you all sorts of useful things, such as what content is performing best, which products are most favoured, how well your traffic is doing, level of engagement and more.

If you find that your business isn’t performing at the level you were hoping, it’s time to review your data to figure out where the issues are. Google Analytics will give you the important metrics you need to evaluate your website such as bounce rate, engagement level, views and more.

Analysing your data will also help you answer questions like:

• Am I marketing to the right group of people?

• Can my products and services be solutions to their problems?

• Do I need to change my business idea to better appeal to my audience?

• Are there enough people in my target market? Do I need to broaden or narrow my target?

• What drives my audience to take action?

When you have a clear understanding of who you’re marketing to, you’ll be able to create marketing messages that appeal to your intended audience. The more streamlined your target, the better you’re able to serve them and bring them solutions. Marketing to the right buyers is the most efficient and effective approach and will help your business growth accelerate quicker. Conducting extensive research on your target buyer will ultimately bring you the revenue and numbers you want to see.

By Jared Atchison.

Jared is the co-founder of WPForms, a drag & drop form builder for WordPress that’s being used on over 400,000 websites.

Sourced from Forbes

 

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These 3 common marketing mistakes are poking holes in your funnel

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By Ben Jacobson.

From my perspective, it seems like most marketers are making the same mistakes – common funnel-draining mistakes that are fixable over just a few weeks or maybe months.

Are you converting as many people as your product is capable of converting?

It’s a question I think about a lot when I’m working on my marketing projects. Is there a gap between the quality of the product and the quality of my marketing? Is my marketing funnel underselling a phenomenal product?

It might seem like a silly question, but it’s something many marketers struggle with. Some 61 percent of marketers list “generating traffic and leads” among the top challenges they face, and 39 percent select “proving the ROI of our marketing activities.” And those are challenges that cripple the very core of a marketer’s purpose (to generate leads and improve ROI).

Image source: https://www.stateofinbound.com/

But from my perspective, it seems like most marketers are making the same mistakes – common funnel-draining mistakes that are fixable over just a few weeks or maybe months.

From my experience, these are three of the most common snafus.

1. You’re ignoring the facts (AKA data)

Perhaps no industry changes as quickly as the marketing industry. The psychology of why people buy doesn’t change, of course, but the methods do. Not long ago, for instance, only deluded marketers would have hedged their bets on the lead-generating prowess of LinkedIn. Now, it’s a platform representing 500 million members with tips emerging from every corner of the web with a quick “generate leads on LinkedIn” Google search.

Facebook advertising, SEO best practices, and even the up-and-coming Tik-Tok have changed and are consistently changing the marketing environment.

If you stop paying attention, you fall behind.

But that doesn’t just apply to the marketing space as a whole, it applies to your market specifically – the people who stand to benefit most from your products.

Every company is different, and so too is every market. And if you don’t pay close attention to how your prospects are interacting with your marketing touchpoints, you’ll convert less people than you could – it’s that simple.

Sadly, 74 percent of marketers admit that they don’t know how to track their data. Don’t be one of them. Install and fully understand Google Analytics, use a heatmap and A/B testing tool like VWO or CrazyEgg, and use UTMs to track links clicks. Your lead generation volume will thank you.

2. People are entering your funnel for the wrong reason

The bottom of your marketing funnel is going to leak like the Titanic after a long voyage if you don’t put the right people in that funnel.

From my experience, the reason that people sign up for your email list should be very similar to the reason that they buy your products, or at least related. If they sign up for your email list because they want to win a free trip to the Caribbean and then you try to sell them enterprise-grade IT automation software, it might not be the best fit.

Similarly, I’ve found that using PR to get mentions on sites relevant to your target market (i.e. where your prospects spend time) and working with influencers who already have a following full of your ideal customers are two great ways to ensure you’re attracting the right people to your funnel.

This point is well illustrated with the power of the Facebook pixel, as explained in this case study. Paleo Bakehouse was a modest home business based in Miami.

Looking to boost sales, the couple behind the business sought the help of Juice, a digital advertising agency, which changed up the way that Paleo Bakehouse was running their Facebook ads. Simply by switching campaigns to the conversion ad objective, adding a Facebook pixel to the client’s website, leveraging lookalike audiences, and retargeting stickier website visitors, they were able to make sure their paid media reached people who had already demonstrated interest in Paleo Bakehouse’s products. This change alone resulted in a 260 percent increase in purchases and over $311,000 in revenue lift.

Of course, that’s just one example of what can happen when you focus your time and energy on converting people who have signalled interest in your products. But this simple truth applies to all of your marketing efforts and your funnel as a whole. Attract the right people to your funnel in the first place, and they’ll be far more likely to buy your products when the time comes.

3. You don’t understand your ideal market (but you think you do)

It’s easy to assume that you understand your target market – that with some quick visualizations and inference-making, you’ll create a useful customer avatar.

And to some degree that’s true. There’s certainly something to be said for putting yourself in your target market’s shoes.

The problem is, 80 percent of consumers don’t feel understood by the average brand. Which means that you have to be the one that really gets them. But you know the most surefire way to understand your market?

Ask them what they want, what they fear, who they are, what they do, how many kids they have, why they’re on your list, and lots of other revealing questions. The more you really know about your market (rather than just think you know), the better you’ll be able to cater your marketing materials specifically to those people and their needs.

Surveys work wonderfully. So too does calling your customers, spending time in the forums where your target market hangs out – even looking at competitors who are trying to communicate with a similar market can help you understand the people you’re trying to convert.

ConversionXL is proof of this. After launching CXL Institute, the company watched as purchases and engagements plummeted month after month for a full quarter. As a final hail mary (before calling it quits), CXL used surveys to try and figure out why people weren’t engaging with the new product like they had expected. Eventually, they found out that people weren’t buying for two primary (and easy-to-fix) reasons: the price was too expensive and they didn’t have time to actually use it.

With that, they changed their targeting for the product to focus on bigger businesses with more generous budgets, and now, according to a case study from Hotjar, the CXL Institute’s business is healthy and sustainable. But they never would have known how to fix it if they didn’t take the time to understand their market.

Fixing your leaky funnel

The reality is, most funnels leak for only a few reasons – the same reasons. And it’s rarely because of a bad product (even a terrible product can sell like hotcakes with the right marketing) or lack of product-market fit. More often, it’s because you’re ignoring the data, people are entering your funnel for the wrong reasons, or you don’t fully understand your ideal market.

Fortunately, plugging those holes is relatively simple. Pay more attention to the data (and set up tracking if you don’t already have it), create interest consistency across the entire customer experience, and send surveys to your past customers.

With that, you’ll be head-and-shoulders above most other marketers.

By Ben Jacobson

Ben Jacobson is a marketing strategy consultant based in Israel. His specialties include social media and branded content for the B2B sector. Ben can be reached via Twitter @osbennn.

Sourced from TNW

 

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