Email marketing is complicated. A number factors and subfactors govern deliverability. The potential for email rendering problems is mind-bogglingly large. And email technology and tactical issues continue to evolve.
However, not everything in email is complex.
Some aspects are quite simple — and yet companies still regularly struggle with them. In most cases, they’re probably just unaware of the problem or just how easy the fix is. In other cases, turnover on their email team means expertise in the channel’s nuances has been lost. Whatever the reason, here are 10 common email marketing mistakes that are relatively simple to fix:
1. Not Using a Recognizable Sender Name
Subject lines get too much credit for driving open rates. Your sender name actually has a bigger impact on whether your subscribers open your emails. That makes sense for two reasons:
First, email marketing is a permission-based channel, so who’s sending an email to a recipient is critical. If your subscriber doesn’t recognize your name, it can lead to your emails being ignored or, worse, reported as spam. And second, email marketing is a relationship-based channel, so your sender name represents the value that your subscriber has gotten from your emails and from your brand previously.
So, put your brand name front and center and don’t change it from email to email. If you want to safely mix things up with your sender name, try using from name extension strategies. For example, you can emphasize that an email is about a Black Friday sale by changing your sender name to “YourBrand Black Friday.”
2. Not Optimizing Your Preview Text
Preview text is the text from inside your email that’s displayed in the inbox either to the right of your subject line in inboxes like Gmail or underneath your subject line in inboxes like the iPhone Mail app. Often, inboxes display twice as many characters of preview text as they do subject line text, so it’s a valuable opportunity to communicate more to your subscribers about what your emails is about before they open it.
Make sure you take full advantage of what text appears as preview text by using either visible or invisible preheader text. But more than that, run some A/B tests on your preview text, just like brands routinely do for their subject lines. And if you want to take it up a notch further, use multivariate testing to try different subject line and preview text combinations to see which one drives the most clicks for your email.
3. Including Too Much Copy
A good rule for writing marketing copy is to write what you’d like to say, and then cut the number of words in half. A good rule of writing email marketing copy is to cut the word count in half again.
Many marketers seem to have lost their talent for brevity, says Fabricio Lopez, Expert Services Cloud Manager for Oracle Marketing Consulting. “I grew up in South America during the ‘80s when telegrams were still very prominent,” he says. “I used to watch my siblings write incredible messages as part of their jobs. I think we lost that ability when email entered the scene, although Twitter brought back some of that ability. In my opinion, marketers should practice getting the message reduced to the least number of words possible and then embellish it from that point, the result should be a concise and hard hitting CTA.”
If you can’t avoid sending an email with a lot of copy, make sure that you break the copy up and make use of subheads and bullets where you can. That will make the copy much more approachable.
4. Using Font Sizes That Are Too Small, Especially on Mobile Devices
Using responsive email design isn’t enough. Brands also need to use mobile-friendly design principles. Chief among those principles is using font sizes that are big enough for people young and old to easily read in a variety of environments, such as outside in the sun or in bed in the dark.
For standard text, we recommend text that’s 14pt to 18pt. Your headlines and subheads should be even bigger. If this recommendation alarms you because you worry it will make your emails longer or limit what you can put above the fold, keep in mind that while many subscribers will scroll below the fold, almost no one will pinch-and-zoom in order to read your text.
5. Using Low-Contrast Text
When the colour of your text is similar in value to the colour of your background, your text can be difficult for some subscribers to read, particularly if your text size is small. Using high-contrast text — such as black text on a white background — not only helps people who have poor vision, but is also better for someone who’s out in bright sunlight with their mobile device. It’s also just better for everyone in general.
Text should have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, according to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. If the text is 18pt or larger or is bold and 14pt or larger, a contrast ratio of 3:1 is fine.
The trickier problem that I see routinely is brands running HTML text over background images that have colours with highly varied values. The result is that some of the text is legible while other portions are not. The solutions to this include picking a different image, darkening or lightening the image, cropping the image differently, and positioning the text differently.
6. Not Using Alt Text for Your Images, When Appropriate
Sometimes the images in your emails don’t load, usually either because the subscriber is blocking them or they are experiencing bandwidth issues because of spotty wifi or cellular coverage. When this happens, your images won’t be displayed to help convey your email’s message.
To serve your subscribers in these situations, as well as to serve your subscribers who are using screen readers, be sure to add alt text to your images, when appropriate. That “when appropriate” is important, because not every image needs alt text. Logos and product images? Absolutely. But generic images that are there to set a mood? Generally using an alt tag on those isn’t necessary and leads to unhelpful alt text like “picture of a sunset” (which is a real example of alt text I’ve seen).
7. Using Graphical Buttons
Creating call-to-action buttons that are completely graphical means that the text of your CTA won’t appear at all if images are disabled or don’t load. For that reason, marketers should always use bulletproof buttons, where hyperlinked HTML text is placed over a button made from a filled table cell or some other non-image-based construct.
Once you settle on a button design that you like, use it everywhere, just change the CTA text. That turns this shift into largely a one-time effort.
8. Clustering Hyperlinked Elements Too Closely Together
In a world full of touchscreens, both on mobile and larger devices, being touch-friendly is important. When linked images and text are too close to each other, it’s easy for people to miss their target and end up on a landing page they’re not interested in. Getting one click is hard enough, so expecting a second click because your email is poorly designed is unrealistic.
Using larger text, as already mentioned, can help. But having decent padding between hyperlinked elements is the biggest key. This is particularly important for CTA buttons. Having plenty of white space around them not only makes them easy to click, but also makes them stand out, which is exactly what you want your CTAs to do.
Also, avoid linking items that you don’t need to. Focus on linking the elements of your design that people are most likely to click on, such as product images, buttons and text links.
9. Making Your Unsubscribe Link Difficult to Find
Some brands are still under the impression that if they make their unsubscribe link difficult to find that fewer subscribers will opt-out. Unfortunately, when people can’t find the unsubscribe link because it’s small or buried in a big block of administrative text or legalese, they simply click the report spam button instead.
For subscribers, the effect is the same: no more emails from the brand. However, for the brand, their spam complaint rate has gone up, potentially hurting their deliverability. Plus, they probably irritated the subscriber, making them less likely to re-subscribe at any point in the future.
10. Having Your Emails Clipped in Gmail
If the coding of your email (excluding the file sizes for any images) is more than 102K, Gmail will clip your email and force your subscribers to click a “View entire message” link to see the rest of your message.
Besides looking suspicious, clipping hides content from your subscribers … including your unsubscribe link. So, not only does having your email clipped reduce its effectiveness, it erodes trust and leads to elevated spam complaints from subscribers who can’t find your unsubscribe link.
All of these mistakes have relatively easy solutions. Some, like writing effective and meaningful preview text or alt text, take a little time for each email you send. Others, like font sizes and button designs, are one-time efforts that pay off for the long haul. All are very much worthwhile.
Chad S. White is the author of Email Marketing Rules and Head of Research for Oracle Marketing Consulting, a global full-service digital marketing agency inside of Oracle.
When launching a new campaign, product or new line of service, many businesses – both large and small – choose to forgo an important step: market research. While many companies cite cost as the reason to skip this crucial step, others think it’s too time consuming or simply not necessary.
This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Market research is the most critical piece of a marketing launch because it helps businesses understand the audience segment and, by extension, the actual need of a product or service.
Some companies think it should be the first thing cut when discussing an upcoming launch. Because it’s a long-term payoff and doesn’t immediately turn into revenue, it’s quickly ignored or discarded for something more immediate.
If you’re not doing market research, what needs to be remembered is it’s very likely your competitors are. And the business with the better understanding of what a consumer needs and wants is going to come out on top.
Take Target. It’s hard to believe from such a large company, but when they launched their brand in Canada, they skipped market research and banked on name recognition to drive customer traffic. After buying the leases for a defunct discount chain in Canada in 2013, Target quickly turned the empty stores into new Target stores.
The big store conglomerate spent millions on marketing on social media, radio, TV and billboards but never took the time to deep dive into the specific Canadian consumer segment. Customers in Canada knew the brand, but when they went into stores, they saw different products than what they’d seen in U.S. stores and prices were higher. It took less than two years for Target to close its Canadian stores and call the launch a failure.
The main lesson learned is: Do your market research! The time and cost of doing proper research is worth the investment, every time. And here’s a secret: it doesn’t have to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sure, if you’re Pepsi and launching a new beverage or Nike testing out a new shoe, market research will cost upwards of millions. But if you’re a small business trying to determine whether you should launch a new line of business, or if a product is a good fit for a specific locale, there are cost effective ways to do your market research. Some are even free!
Here are a few of the best tried-and-true best practices in market research:
Free Please!
Before you dip your toe into paid research, use the free online tools at your disposal. The best tool? Google. Search the phrase you’ll use to describe your product and review its popularity. If the popularity is high, ie. millions of searches, it’s in high demand. If there are only a couple hundred results, you may be barking up the wrong tree.
Another important tool is the keyword search query within Google Adwords. Their keyword research tool tells you how frequently certain words and phrases are searched and how they changed over time. This tool gives insight not only into what is being searched, but how. It will help refine the best words and phrases to use when promoting your product or business. And it will also give insight into the popularity and search volume of those terms.
Go Digital
For many, the image that comes to mind when you say “market research” is a person standing in the grocery store offering free samples of a new product. And while that can be effective, the digital realm is a much easier and faster option. You don’t get quite as many opinions standing in line in the grocery store as you might running an online poll. Think 20 people versus 5,000: That’s a significant difference.
LinkedIn and Twitter both host online polling and provide solid results. It’s important to slice and dice the audience until you’re polling the right segment. Make sure your geographical location is accurate – it’s not uncommon for those polling to accidentally use a much bigger geo target setting than necessary, which can skew results.
You can hire a third party vendor to do your polling and/or surveying or find a self-serve platform, like Survey Monkey. The best way to determine which solution is by budget and campaign size. If your budget is $10,000 or less, use a plug-and-play, self-serve option. Anything over $10,000 should be handled by the pros.
And don’t forget simple ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter. Running an A/B test using different images, slogans, and copy can tell you what is resonating with your target audience – and what isn’t.
Email For The Win
Another smart tactic to use for market research is an email marketing campaign. Whether you use an internal email list or purchase one from companies that specialize in list creation, targeting a segment audience via email works phenomenally well.
There are many digital ad agencies that specialize in surveys. They help you buy legitimate lists to purchase within a specific vertical which is a great way to target specifically. For example, if you’re a dental manufacturing company, there are very specific lists you can buy to help you find and target dentists. You can break down the list by location, speciality, size of practice, etc. Email marketing is an effective way to do market research without breaking the bank.
Market research can make or break your business. Be smart and put in the time and effort to make sure your product or line of business is truly going to resonate with your target audience.
The world may be changing, but for the entrepreneurs one thing just remains the same. Email marketing is still king. There are 4 billion daily email users, and that number is expected to surpass 5.6 billion by 2025. Sixty-four percent of small businesses use email to reach customers because it’s cost-effective, efficient, and it works like a charm.
Stephen Phillips – Hostreviews.co.uk/Unsplash
There are many reasons why email marketing is better for your business than social media, but if you’re not sure what you’re doing, that could spell an expensive disaster for your business. Make sure your strategy is up to snuff with help from The 2022 Premium Mailchimp & Email Marketing Mastery Super Bundle. It’s on sale for just $34 (reg. $2,800).
This 14-course bundle includes courses from top instructors like Entrepreneur Academy (4.6/5 instructor rating), Ryan Ford (4.3/5 rating), and Phil Ebiner (4.6/5 rating).
Across this massive bundle, you’ll learn absolutely everything you need to know to build a successful email marketing strategy. Through these courses, you’ll learn how to build your email list by mastering landing pages, how to write better headlines and how to write copy for any part of a business or marketing campaign, and how to improve the response rate to your direct marketing campaigns.
Through a comprehensive set of courses, you’ll learn how to fully automate your email marketing campaigns using tools like Mailchimp and Microsoft Outlook. Of course, you’ll also learn email etiquette and copywriting tricks that will help you get the most engagement possible with as many people as possible. By the end of these courses, you’ll be able to scale an email marketing strategy that your business can be proud of and will keep bringing customers back for more.
As data privacy regulations evolve, marketing communications professionals have a responsibility to adapt their marketing strategies with new best practices as they arise. While there are certainly strategies that companies can adopt, new and unexpected changes can present challenges to even the most seasoned professionals. Historically, marketers have dealt with regulations lawmakers pass in different countries and have pivoted their strategies to comply with those legal changes. However, now marketers are faced with a new dilemma; what do we do when a technology manufacturer implements its own data privacy features outside of those that are already regulated? Well, that day is here, and most notably, it is impacting email marketing.
In June, Apple announced that it was launching new features to help its customers better control how their data is shared with companies. Apple’s new update to iOS centres on user privacy and data tracking. The Mail Privacy Protection feature will allow users to open emails without alerting the sender and avoid disclosing their IP addresses, which marketers usually need to track user data. When this was first announced, marketers scrambled to determine how this would impact our ability to track email open rates and click-through rates. Most email marketing platforms put a tracking “pixel” in emails users send. Previously, people who used Apple devices to read emails that were sent out by marketers were tracked via that pixel. With the new update, if the user turns that function off, there is concern that marketers will not be able to track whether that person opens or clicks through the email. Additionally, Hide My Emailis a newer feature that Apple has rolled out. This function creates a randomized email address instead of a real one so that the user’s identity remains private. Simply put, this could impact a marketer’s ability to track email deliverability rates and user metrics. While there are email privacy applications for Android phones, there are currently no built-in email masking tools for the Android platform. Thus, the only segment of users this would impact would be Apple iOS users.
So, what are marketers to do because of these developments? First, while we may want to throw our hands up and quit, we should not stop marketing via email (or stop any type of marketing, for that matter). This simply means we must do a better job of engaging with our current prospects and customers. As marketers, we should re-evaluate what our prospects and customers both want and need.
This starts with creating relevant content that is impactful and that converts. Traditional inbound marketing methodologies work by educating prospects (and customers) to help them make purchasing decisions. By incorporating inbound marketing tactics with meaningful content, those individuals who interact with a brand will likely continue to do so regardless of the communication channel. Now is an ideal time to consider the resources you have available on your teams, including thought leaders within the organization who are outside the marketing department, to develop content that resonates.
You can’t just send emails and hope for a response.
Email marketing is either alive and well or completely ineffective depending on whom you ask.
And it almost always comes down to the execution of the campaign.
Cold-email marketing is a powerful way to generate leads, clients, buyers and users.
But you can’t just send emails and hope for a response. Not when the average office worker gets 121 emails every single day.
Here are three cold-email-marketing tips I’ve used to land major corporate client deals and how you can leverage them too.
1. Prioritize niche targeting first
Selecting and targeting a specific audience with a specific offer is critical to cold-email marketing.
No matter how great your offer is, if your audience is misaligned, they won’t convert.
Targeting goes beyond simple filters like “software companies” and deeper into specifics. For example, your targeting might be: Software companies in the cyber-security space who raised a series A this year of at least $X million and have X employees.
Being more specific nets better results because you can scale personalization much faster.
A great place to start targeting and building lists is Crunchbase or LinkedIn, where you can locate and sort companies by various metrics.
This also helps you identify which decision-makers you’ll need to contact. For instance, you won’t want to reach out to CEOs of larger companies, but you might want to reach out to CEOs of newly funded startups.
With tools like Crunchbase, you can sort and filter lists of companies by size and decision-maker.
Before you craft any templates for any campaign, know who your specific target audience is.
2. Time in months and quarters instead of days and hours
The time of day you send an email is a minute portion of your success. It’s likely not a huge factor.
Instead, when it comes to timing, you should prioritize business schedules and the time of year you are sending campaigns.
For example, if you run an ecommerce business, cold emails to potential customers around the holidays will convert much higher as people are eager to find great gifts for their family and friends.
As an agency, we prioritize cold emails toward the end of quarterly business cycles.
Why? Because companies begin to reassess their spending, their budgets and what changes they need to make (or goals to hit) in the upcoming months.
Emailing at the start of a quarter is likely too late as decisions have been made and contracts have been signed.
In addition, campaigns in the fourth quarter of the year are likely to convert highest as companies often have room left in the budget to experiment with new services and strategies.
This is an open door for you to pitch your solution to their specific problem.
Timing the day, minute or hour is often pointless. But timing the month or quarter with targeted promotions can net huge results.
3. Avoid faux personalization
When you read content about email marketing, you often read advice like, “Personalize your emails.”
And typically, the given structure to follow is something like, “I love what your company is doing…”
This type of personalization isn’t really personalization. It’s faux personalization that’s been done by too many people for too long. When something is new and novel, it works very well. Once the masses adopt it, it becomes far less effective.
Faux personalization can be spotted quickly. So, what do you do instead?
You have two distinct options. With Option A , you can opt for zero personalization and prioritize targeting and sending volume (how many emails you send per day, week, month). Or with Option B, you can focus on smaller lists with deep, real personalization.
Personally, I have found far better results with Option A. Cold-email marketing is often a numbers game, no matter how much personalization you add. No amount of ego-bait and friendly statements can produce a budget out of thin air or the need for your service or product.
Option A gets right to the point and wastes no time for the prospect.
Your email can be as simple as this:
Hi ____,
My company does XYZ for companies like yours (list a few examples for social proof and credibility).
I’m confident we could improve/solve XYZ problem.
No idea if something like this is on your radar right now, but if it sounds like something worth exploring, I’d love to chat and see if a relationship would make sense.
An email like this gets straight to the point and has one goal: to get a response. If you overwhelm a prospect with your entire life story and lines upon lines of “personalization,” you likely won’t get a response.
People are short on time. Remember, they deal with 121 work emails daily. Make yours short, to the point, and targeted at the right audience, and you’ll increase your open and response rates, landing more clients.
Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor. Jeremy is the Co-Founder at uSERP, a digital brand building agency. He’s also the Chief Marketing Officer at Wordable, which he acquired in 2020. On the side, he grows SaaS start-ups like responsely.com.
Email marketing can be extremely effective for advertising products, whether through sale announcements or updates highlighting new items. But this marketing channel can also be leveraged in a number of other ways to connect with customers on a more direct and personal level, ultimately leading to more purchases.
If you’re looking to expand your current email marketing efforts, it’s important to explore and execute the right strategies for your business. Below, nine members of Young Entrepreneur Council shared some of their favourite email marketing strategies that go beyond just selling a product.
1. Include Relevant Information And Advice
Nobody wants to be spammed with a hard sell through newsletters. We try to add value to our audience with content and we include a segment called “Management Minute” with tangible business advice relevant to them. Create digestible nuggets of information for them to get real value and then in every two or three newsletters, include a selling element. It operates like any other relationship. You can’t just be taking from them—you also have to give something in return. – Saana Azzam, MENA Speakers
2. Offer Free Materials
Email marketing is an essential component for any successful business. It can be used to reach potential customers, drive traffic and increase sales. However, in order for it to be effective, it needs to be leveraged correctly. In my experience, I have found offering valuable free materials such as an ebook or newsletter to be very helpful in getting readers’ attention. It’s important to remember that just because someone is receiving your email does not mean they are engaged in reading it. In order to have engaged readers, you need to offer them something worth their while. – Nic DeAngelo, Saint Investment Group
3. Create A Narrative
Reel in the audience with a storyline. Create a storyline or a narrative with drips of emails. You reinforce or introduce your brand creatively, increase your rates of engagement and get them looking for your next communication. Leverage autoresponders so every new subscriber goes through this story-based email sequence. Audiences get offers and deals all day long for products, but to really stand out from competitors, you want to give them something to look forward to that is not simply you asking for them to buy your products. Start to entertain an audience, and you will sell more products and increase engagement. – Matthew Capala, Alphametic
4. Focus On Product Education
Email marketing should be used as a way to stay in touch with your customers over the long run. In fact, you don’t want to advertise your products too often. Instead, focus on things like product education and helping people understand how to use your products to achieve their goals. When users know how to use your products effectively and see positive effects in their life, they’ll see the value of being your customer. Email marketing, when done well, leads to customer retention, which saves on marketing expenses and helps grow your business. – Blair Williams, MemberPress
5. Add ‘Get To Know Us’ Interviews
Interview your employees. Make the interviews fun and about the hobbies, interests and professional experiences of the person you are interviewing. This will make them more engaging to the viewer. You can name the series “Meet the [Your Company Name] Team” and release a new interview weekly and send it to your customers and prospects via email. If possible, you should leverage video since you’ll be able to post it to your YouTube channel. You can also post it to your blog along with written takeaways or a summary. Once you have the content, you can then share it across your social media channels, highlight it in a company newsletter and, of course, use it for emailing. – Kristopher Brian Jones, LSEO.com
6. Address Customer Concerns
Use email marketing to proactively address customer concerns, increase loyalty and reduce return rates. A lot of times, customers have questions but they might ask them only at crucial moments when they’re already frustrated. With strategic post-purchase emails, you can educate them more about the products they purchased, different use cases and strategies for resolving any common issues they may come across. The more you highlight these things, the more customers are able to take full advantage of the product while also resolving their own issues. This reduces the risk of them turning around and getting upset over email or the phone, and they’ll be more likely to love and keep the product. – Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep Mattress
7. Encourage Customers To Submit Reviews
You can grow your business through email marketing by encouraging customers to submit their reviews. Online reviews are a form of social proof that can boost sales and encourage visitors to take action on your site. You can add a call-to-action button to your emails after customers make a purchase that leads them back to your site where they can write a review and insert a rating. This will help other customers make informed buying decisions so you can grow your business. – Stephanie Wells, Formidable Forms
8. Share Your Successes
Sharing updates via email marketing lets your customer know that your business is active. We send emails from time to time that tell people about the new features we’ve added and important milestones we’ve hit. Such updates build confidence in our business. This keeps people loyal to the brand because we’re offering them features they want and can use to achieve their goals. For example, one of our accelerator brands experienced a milestone where its customers crossed one billion in payments received. It was a landmark event that we shared on different platforms. Such an email update builds your reputation and encourages all customers to continue buying from you. – Syed Balkhi, WPBeginner
9. Send Event Reminders
You can use email marketing to grow your other marketing channels. For instance, if you’re holding a free webinar, you could send a notification to your email subscribers just in case they don’t follow you on sites like Facebook and Twitter. This small gesture of reaching out will lead to more event signups and engagement. There’s a good chance some of your attendees will end up purchasing a product from your business, even though that wasn’t the intent of your email. – John Turner, SeedProd LLC
Nowadays, businesses are becoming very competitive and as such, the need for internet marketing strategies has become crucial in helping you to increase your online presence. This means that it is vital for every business to make use of the internet and social media platforms to market their products and services.
Here are some effective digital marketing strategies:
1. User data analysis
This is a marketing strategy that basically focuses on data gathering and analysis. Understanding the needs and desires of your customers can be done through this process. Professionals at smartboost.com understand how to serve your customers better by understanding their digital footprints and all things related to design. This will greatly help you to improve the way you market products and services.
2. Social media presence
The best thing about social media platforms is that they make it easier for one brand or company to interact with other brands and companies in an online space where content sharing takes place. This means that you can share your content on various other platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter among others without necessarily overloading your end users with lots of information. Having a strong social media presence also gives brands more opportunities to interact with their customers.
3. Website design
A website is the main channel that companies use to market their brands and services effectively, which implies that it should be designed in a very special way that will attract more customers. Having a beautiful website design helps bring visitors to your site, who can then be written about your products and services.
4. Social media app development
Social media apps are becoming increasingly popular among people all across the world because they allow for easier sharing of content among different social media platforms. This means you need to focus on developing attractive social media apps to increase traffic to your website. These apps should be easy to use by everyone, irrespective of age or location.
5. Live-streaming
This is one of the best marketing strategies that will allow you to share content with your customers. This can be done in form of videos or images on different social media platforms. By doing so, it keeps your target audience more engaged, and this keeps them coming back to see what’s new about your business. It also allows for customer feedback, which can help improve products and services offered by businesses.
6. Email marketing
Email marketing is a very effective type of digital marketing because it gives you an opportunity to interact directly with your target audience who are into making business deals. You just need to send out emails that advertise the deals that are being offered by your company at different price points compared to other companies that may offer similar products and services.
7. Search engine optimization
SEO is basically a process of ensuring that your website gets ranked high on search engines for keywords related to your products and services to attract more customers who are interested in what you have got to offer. It also involves making sure that the content of your website is original, relevant, and easy-to-read to encourage sharing, which ultimately boosts traffic to your site. SEO becomes more effective when combined with social media marketing.
8. Digital PR
This is not usually done by most businesses, but it is an effective strategy for boosting digital presence. This kind of PR is better suited for websites that are likely to be referred to by other sites because it helps them boost their traffic too without necessarily compromising your integrity.
9. Mobile marketing
Having an app on different mobile platforms gives you more opportunities to interact with your customers and also get feedback about what they like most about your brands and services, which makes it easier for you to market it in the right way. You can even use Wi-Fi or Bluetooth technology to make sure people can easily find information about your brand, product, or service while they are on the go (on buses, trains, cars, etc.).
10. Video marketing
This is one of the best ways of communicating directly with customers through video sharing on different social media platforms. It also gives you an opportunity to showcase your product or service in a very attractive way, which will help increase traffic to your site and at the same time create awareness about what your company is willing to offer. This can be done through television ads, YouTube videos, podcasting, etc.
Why is online presence important for marketing strategies?
For any business to grow and be profitable, they need to have a strong online presence. This is because more and more people prefer doing their shopping, booking tickets for events, and making other business transactions online. When it comes to marketing strategies, businesses cannot afford to ignore the internet when they want to attract new customers or retain the current ones.
However, not all websites get the same number of visitors who can convert into customers. That means that some sites are likely to perform better than others, depending on how easy it is for potential customers to find information about them and actually go ahead and make a purchase. Prospective clients prefer visiting sites that are easy-to-read, professional-looking, with lots of information about products and services offered by companies.
What are the benefits of having a strong online presence?
With a strong online presence, your business will gain more visibility, especially with the help of social media platforms that are always available for people to search for products and services. This is why you need to use different marketing strategies because they give you the opportunity to be close to potential customers who may become lifelong clients if they see your site as a source of quality products or services.
You can also make good use of social media tools by sharing customer reviews about your brands, upcoming deals, and discounts, etc. which is bound to make them pay another visit to your site. If this continues over time, chances are you will have a steady flow of traffic on your website that is likely to increase as people share news about it with their friends and relatives through different social media platforms, making your online presence grow rapidly.
Marketing strategies are the best tools you can use to promote your brand or services online. This is because they effectively help you attract more customers as well as retain the ones you already have as potential clients. When you have a good number of visitors, it means that your online presence has been boosted and this is the beginning of the success of your company.
Digital marketing has become a necessity for any business attempting to survive in this day and age. It’s been said that the most important thing is not the amount of money you spend on digital marketing but the way you spend it. What does this mean? Well, certain categories within digital marketing will give you more benefits than others, depending on your company’s size and goals.
Digital Marketing is constantly changing, but there are some foundational categories of digital marketing you need to have a strong grasp of to thrive in the digital ecosystem. To learn more about the top digital marketing disciplines and the software tools for digital marketing. we asked the experts and here’s what they shared.
Top Categories for Digital Marketing
If there is a universal truth in digital marketing, every marketing executive has their own ideas of how marketing should be done and even how many marketing categories there are. Working in such a rapidly evolving industry means that new marketing categories can crop up all the time.
Even in the past ten years, there has been a huge jump in how digital marketing is understood. However, like Kate Adams, SVP of Marketing at Boston, MA-based Validity, said, “while marketing categories aid in creating brand awareness, recognition and trust, what a lot of marketers don’t realize is that the success of their digital campaigns is highly contingent on the health of their data.”
To understand more about each category, let’s take a closer look at some of the most popular digital marketing categories.
SEO
For some marketers, SEO is the pillar of their campaigns. This is because SEO is applicable to the other digital marketing categories. For instance, you’d have to use relevant SEO keywords in your drip campaigns and content marketing to make them effective and engaging, which is why SEO and research are fundamental for digital marketing.
SEO Tools
“When it comes to doing SEO, our go-to tools would be SEMrush and Ahrefs. We find using SEMrush helpful as it allows us to quantify our website’s estimated reach and also determine our site’s domain and/or resource authority,” shares Maya Levi, Marketing Manager at Tel Aviv, Israel-based ReturnGO.
SEM
Search engine marketing (SEM) refers to the practice of leveraging paid advertising that appears on the search engine results pages (or SERPs). In search engine marketing, companies place bids on keywords that Google visitors might use when looking for certain products or services, which gives the company the opportunity for their ads to appear alongside results for those search queries.
SEM Tools
According to Christopher Moore Chief Marketing Officer at Mooresville, NC.-based Quiet Light, “The best tool for pay-per-click advertising is Google Ads Editor as it allows you to create and edit different ad campaigns across different Google accounts making it far easier to manage your various campaigns and edit ads as the campaign goes along to make them more SEO friendly.”
Content Marketing
Content can take many forms, from blog posts to voice instructions delivered through IoT devices. Since it can takes many forms, it is often seen as the lifeblood of marketing campaigns. Due to its flexibility, content marketing has a central and all-encompassing role in every marketing strategy and can be tailored to fit customer needs before, during and after the buying process.
Content Marketing Tools
There are many content tools out there to help improve your content marketing. They can help build, grammar, content suggestions and SEO best practices. Examples include Grammarly, Ink and Jarvis.ai. Most of these are artificial intelligence-based apps that helps marketers overcome writer’s block and create content more consistently across niches, and ensure SEO is baked-in to the process.
Email Marketing
Getting into inboxes and engaging recipients through email marketing has become more challenging than ever before, with inbox volume nearly doubling year-over-year. Email marketing tools can help simplify email marketing campaigns and provide crucial insights to help increase engagement and improve execution.
Email Marketing Tools
A good piece of advice is that you should always start with an ESP (email service provider) that fits your budget and your brand. “Flodesk is a great option for paid with no tiered plans, but if you want to start with free, MailerLite is another popular one with a generous amount of free subscribers before you need to upgrade your plan,” shares Abby Sherman, Director of Strategy at Minneapolis, MN.-based Snap Agency.
Data Analytics
Without data, marketing is nothing but guesswork. On the other hand, the inappropriate use of data can definitely cripple even the best-laid plans. “Marketing and sales teams waste up to 50% of their time dealing with data quality issues,” confesses Adams. “From duplicate records to outdated contact information. If companies aren’t reaching the right audience, their marketing efforts (and money) are going to waste,” she continued.
Data Analytics Tools
“To gather data and insights, we supplement our usage of SEMrush with Google Analytics (GA),” said Levi. “Google Analytics is easy to set up, and it allows us to stay on top of our social networking profiles and website’s performances. Through the data that we get from GA, we can resolve marketing roadblocks that we encounter along the way strategically,” she shared.
All in all, to make it easier for you to meet the demands of digital marketing, it’s best if you choose and invest in the right software that will make the research, execution, and optimization of these efforts much easier for you. Some of these helpful apps include CRM tools, automation software, and collaboration tools that, with the help of personalization and a human touch, will help you create relevant and effective marketing campaigns.
The last few years have seen a huge increase in internet penetration and web technologies worldwide. Consequently, the marketing landscape has evolved to give us bigger and better marketing channels to reach the right audience at the right time.
However, not all marketing channels are well-suited for a small business. For example, if you’re a local eatery, you wouldn’t want to spend thousands of dollars on a nationwide TV commercial.
As such, you must be aware of the small business marketing channels most likely to make a positive impact on your specific product or service.
Best marketing channels for small business
Here’s my list of the best channels to consider when promoting your small business. I’ll walk you through a brief explanation of each channel, why it matters, and how to get started.
#1. Email Marketing
Despite being an old channel in terms of internet years, email still has the potential to reach 3.9 billion people as of 2020, and this number is expected to touch 4.3 billion users in 2023.
Email marketing can not just reach a wide audience, but also delivers the best returns. As per an industry census, 73% of people ranked email as an excellent marketing channel.
Plus, DMA states that every $1 spent on email marketing leads to a $42 average return on investment.
Writing a series of emails and sending it to potential customers based on a carefully planned timeline can help you establish a relationship, build trust and make them interested in your product or service.
It will allow you to capture email addresses through your website, social media accounts, marketing events, and other avenues. In addition, you’ll be able to create a series of emails, along with an automation workflow, to send these emails to your contact list.
Whether it’s for research, entertainment, or shopping, a search engine is the first place most people start with. And then they’ll click one of the top results that show up on the first page of organic search engine results.
This is what makes organic search another effective marketing channel for a small business.
When a customer searches for a query related to your product or service, the goal is to get the pages from your website to rank higher than those of competitors. Doing this will ensure a consistent stream of traffic and leads into your sales funnel.
The process of getting listed and strengthening your website’s presence in organic search engine result pages (SERPs) is known as SEO. It will involve researching the best keywords you want to rank for, and then optimizing the pages on your website for your selected keywords.
#3. Mobile Devices
Mobile usage has been on the rise for many years now, and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down. 50.88% of online traffic in 2020 came from mobile devices.
Customers prefer businesses that can provide the information and communication they need through SMS, WhatsApp, and other mobile apps.
So it only makes sense to promote your small business to users of mobile and tablet devices.
There are a number of ways to capitalize on the mobile trend, the most prominent of which is having a mobile-responsive website. It’s no longer acceptable to have an outdated website that doesn’t adapt to different screen sizes.
#4. Word-of-Mouth Marketing
It’s no surprise that people trust other customers over you and your marketing team.
Marketers usually have an agenda, but a customer will spread the word about a brand, whether online or offline, only if the brand has truly delighted them. That’s why 9 out of 10 customers read reviews when considering a purchase.
There’s no shortcut to using this marketing channel for your benefit. You will really need to put in the work to ensure a great customer experience throughout the buyer’s journey.
Then set up email automation to reach out to customers to ask for feedback on their experience, and if they’re happy with your product or service, request a testimonial.
#5. Video Marketing
If you haven’t yet jumped on the video bandwagon, there’s no better time to do so.
When asked how they prefer to learn more about a product or service, 69% of people in a survey mentioned watching a video.
If you run a small business, you don’t need a big production team to start video marketing. It’s possible to create videos affordably. For instance, you use a camcorder to record videos that answer customer questions, introduce your team, or showcase customer testimonials.
These videos may not be as polished, but they can still win over your audience with their authentic look and feel.
#6. Business Blog
A blog is a must-have marketing channel for your small business. With a business blog, you get a dedicated platform to educate current and potential customers on the topics related to your niche.
Six out of ten buyers say that blog posts are valuable at the start of their purchase journey.
A business blog is like a central content hub that attracts prospects, helps you turn visitors into leads, and strengthens your online presence on other marketing channels.
With several intuitive blogging platforms available online, starting a business blog these days is relatively easy. All you need is a domain name, hosting, and content management system, the most popular being WordPress.
#7. Social Media
Next up on our list is Social Media. 72% of US adults say that they use at least one social media website.
Social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more allow your small business to build rapport with your audience.
When you interact with your customers at the same place where their friends are, your business becomes a part of their personal network.
Plus, social media posts are easy to share, leading to word-of-mouth opportunities.
To get started with social media marketing, pick the social media platforms where your target customers are the most active and work on building an active presence.
#8. Paid Search (Pay-Per-Click Ads)
Paid Search refers to advertising your website near the top of search engine result pages, instead of getting found organically.
You are required to pay only when a user clicks on your ad, which is why another name for paid search is PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising.
This is a drastically different model from traditional outdoor advertising, in which you pay for your ads to be displayed, regardless of whether they trigger any action from the viewer.
Paid search ads may cost more than some of the other marketing channels on our list. However, they offer a unique benefit that no other channel can – the potential to generate results fast. In fact, 66% of CMOs expect to increase spend on paid search in 2021.
Display ads allow you to use image banners and videos to show an offer to your target audience on the websites they are likely to visit. Here’s an example:
Google’s Display Network, for instance, allows you to create display ads with the potential to reach 90% of internet users worldwide.
These ads can also be shown on email platforms, social media, and other digital channels that provide ad placements.
You can use them in isolation, but the real game-changer with these types of ads is targeting people who have already visited your website or opted into your email newsletter. This is referred to as remarketing.
Final thoughts
Each marketing channel is unique, with its own quirks, strengths, and weaknesses. And so is each business.
However, the most common mistake small business owners make is trying to focus on every channel available.
While you go through this list, pick only two or three channels at a time that seem the best fit for our business and customers.
Define goals and key metrics to measure the performance for each channel. This way, you can increase investment in high-performing channels and boost ROI.
Keep adjusting your strategy to make room for new channels and drop the non-profitable channels to cut costs as required. The more adaptable your small business is to the changes in the marketing space, the more stable your growth and prosperity will be.
Guest author: Hitesh Sahni is a content strategy consultant, editor, and founder of Smemark, an upscale content marketing studio helping brands and agencies in multiple niches accelerate growth with superior, scalable content writing for 10+ years.
Get the word out about your blog with these strategies.
Writing high-quality content is only a small part of creating and maintaining a successful blog. To further increase site traffic and attract more readers to your site, you’ll need to work on blog promotion.
Luckily, there are plenty of strategies that are cost-effective and easy to implement.
Read on to discover how to promote your blog effectively in ten different ways – start experimenting with any of these solutions and watch the traffic roll into your site.
Before learning how to promote your blog, the first step you should take is optimizing your site for search engines. With good SEO, it will be much easier for a blog to rank high on search engine result pages (SERPs) and attract more traffic.
Many factors impact a site’s SEO performance, including the website platform and hosting service you choose to create a blog. These two aspects determine the overall consistency of the site experience you offer to visitors.
When choosing a platform to build a blog, consider starting with a content management system (CMS). This tool makes it easy for non-technical users to create and manage a website. It also offers complete control over a site’s design, functionality, and SEO.
One of the best CMSs to get started with is WordPress. It comes built-in with many SEO features, including meta descriptions, a customizable URL structure, and the ability to use page titles.
Keep in mind that there are two different versions of WordPress – WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Although both platforms provide the same quality of SEO performance, the latter gives users more freedom to utilize plugins to further improve their SEO.
Make sure to also pick a web hosting service that’s reliable, fast, and secure. Some of the top hosting providers to consider are:
Hostinger – has excellent performance and comes with an SEO toolkit to evaluate technical SEO issues on a website. Their hosting prices start at $1.39/month.
Bluehost – offers several SEO tools to increase site traffic. The cost of starting a WordPress blog with their shared hosting plans startsfrom $3.95/month.
HostGator – provides great uptime and speed. The fee of creating a blog with this web host’s shared hosting solutions starting at $2.75/month.
Aside from choosing the right platform and hosting service, there are other blog SEO practices to keep in mind in order to increase blog traffic:
Choose a mobile-friendly theme – Mobile page load speed is a key metric that Google uses when determining a site’s search ranking. That’s why it’s crucial to make a blog responsive to any device.
Internal linking – Internal links can boost a blog’s traffic since they help Google understand and rank the site better. Internal linking also allows visitors to navigate a blog easily.
Use a CDN provider – A content delivery network (CDN) can boost the speed and reduce the resource usage of a website.
Link out to other sites – Including links to some high-quality and authoritative websites can help search engine crawlers understand what a post is about.
Compress images – Reducing the file size of blog posts’ images can speed up a site and improve page loading times.
To manage and monitor your blog’s search engine rankings, make sure to use the best SEO tools for the job, such as SEMRush or Ahrefs.
Additionally, take advantage of free Google SEO tools such as Google Analytics to see the in-depth breakdown of your blog traffic, helping you identify how well your SEO efforts are working.
Knowing the important keywords to use on your blog posts can also improve the blog’s ranking on SERPs and generate valuable traffic. These terms can be discovered by doing keyword research.
Keyword research helps bloggers to create content their visitors are searching for. This process also reveals how many people are searching for a specific keyword and how high the competition is.
(Image credit: SpyFu)
There are plenty of keyword research tools such as KWFinder and SpyFu that can be used to discover keywords, common questions, and topics for content.
When doing keyword research, consider these aspects to decide the best keywords for your blog:
Searcher’s intent – This refers to website users’ intention when searching Google for a specific term. To attract qualified traffic, be sure to choose keywords that match your target audience’s user intent.
Search volume – A keyword’s search volume shows how competitive the term is. Try to target keywords with great search volume since they can increase a blog’s chance to generate significant organic traffic. Keep in mind, however, that it requires more effort to rank for terms with high search volume.
Traffic potential – To identify the keyword’s traffic potential of a topic, use tools like Ahrefs and see how much traffic the current top-ranking pages get and what other keywords they rank for. This process can help you prioritize your keywords and find related terms that users are searching for.
Keyword difficulty – Many SEO analytics tools provide this metric to show how difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword. The higher the score of the term, the more competitive it is.
(Image credit: Pixabay)
Once you have a list of terms to rank for, it’s time to use them for on-page SEO. Here are some key places on a blog to use these keywords:
Page titles – A blog page title is the first element of a site page that people notice in the SERPs. Make sure to use a target keyword at the start of the page title to have both Google and your audience recognize the main subject of the page.
Subheadings – The purpose of subheadings is to make content scannable. Using target keywords in subheadings can increase a content’s relevance for the readers.
Content – It’s one of the most important search ranking factors. Thus, try to include keywords naturally throughout the content and avoid keyword stuffing.
URLs – Using a clean URL with a keyword can improve a site’s architecture, make a blog easier to navigate, and help it rank higher in relevant search results.
Meta descriptions – A meta description is a short explanation that shows up on SERPs under the page title. To boost a page’s click-through rate, try to create a compelling description using target keywords.
Images – Always use alt text for pictures to help search engine crawlers understand your images. Additionally, alt text is vital to a blog’s accessibility since it allows visually impaired users better understand an on-page image.
Remember to use Google Search Console to track your current keyword positioning and analyse which pages drive traffic to your blog.
(Image credit: Geralt / Pixabay)
3. Use email marketing
Email marketing can be one of the most effective ways of promoting your blog and converting visitors if done correctly. This blog promotion strategy helps you notify readers of new blog posts or share any good news with ease.
Sending personalized messages to blog visitors can also help create meaningful relationships with them, keep the audience hooked with high-quality content, and boost engagement on a blog.
The first step to take before getting started with email marketing is to build an email list, a collection of email addresses used to send promotional material.
Here are a few ways to build an email list:
Offer an incentive – Consider giving readers an incentive like a free course, eBook, or cheat sheet in exchange for their email address.
Collect emails directly from the blog – Create a signup form and place it on your home page. Make it stand out and attract readers’ attention with a strong and compelling call to action (CTA).
Create content upgrades – A content upgrade is a valuable offer that complements an article that the reader is already interested in, created to get a visitor’s email address.
Once you have a mailing list, look for email marketing software like Constant Contact or MailChimp. Using an email marketing tool makes it easier to create attractive email templates, deliver emails to large groups of contacts, track messages, and view analytics.
The next step is to craft email content that can lead visitors back to your blog. Here are some tips on how to promote your blog with the use of effective promotional emails:
(Image credit: Darius Foroux)
Provide valuable insight for readers – Use your email to convince readers that your blog post can solve their problems. This email newsletter from Darius Foroux is a great example:
Highlight the content value in the email subject – Readers might receive dozens of promotions every day, so try to capture their attention by creating a short, compelling email subject that clearly states the value of your content.
Create personalized subject lines – Including recipient names in the email’s subject can lead to a 21.2 percent open rate. It can also make the subscribers feel like the email is crafted specifically for them, which helps to build relationships and establish trust.
Make it easy to read – Keep the email clean and easy to digest by using appealing pictures and paragraph breaks.
Use links – Avoid adding attachments to a message since it can affect email deliverability, making it more likely to get lost in spam filters. Instead, use call-to-action links to grab subscriber’s attention and encourage them to act.
Proofreading – To make your emails look more professional, be sure to check for any grammar errors before sending them out.
To get more exposure quickly and efficiently, try sharing your blog post on popular social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest.
Here are some of the benefits of using social media sites to promote your blog:
Increase blog traffic – Sharing content on different social networks helps bloggers reach a wider audience. Additionally, if the content provides value to the users, they might share it further and recommend it to others.
Cost-effective – With social media channels, bloggers can make their site visible to a targeted audience for free.
Improve engagement with the audience – A blogger can also have a personal and meaningful conversation with their readers through social networks. Devoting time to communicate with the audience will help to build trust.
Social media platforms aren’t all created the same, so try to focus on the most relevant social networks that suit your target audience. For instance, if you’re targeting female readers, then Pinterest might be the right social media for you.
Here are other tips for leveraging social media and bringing more traffic to your blog:
Add a blog link to the bio – A social media bio is the first thing people see on an account. Make sure to use it to drive traffic to your site or blog content.
Share engaging content using existing posts – Use a free tool like Canva to convert your top blog articles into appealing graphics.
Integrate social media icons into the site – Adding social media icons to a blog makes it easier for visitors to share blog content with their audience.
Post regularly – Be sure to know how often you should share in a specific social network. For example, Twitter users should share at least one tweet a day.
Use hashtags – Utilizing a hashtag is a great way to expand the reach of a post and connect it to a specific conversation, topic, or event. Hashtags also make it easier to locate other relevant content around particular terms.
Join online groups – Become part of a social community such as the ones found in LinkedIn, or a Facebook group to share content and increase the visibility of your blog.
Find the optimal time for posting – Knowing the optimum time to post on your chosen channel can help you get more clicks and engagements. Thankfully, most social platforms have an analytics or insights tool that provides this information. Once you know the best times to post, start planning and preparing your content in advance using social media management tools like Buffer.
Remember that social media is a two-way engagement platform that requires actual interaction. Don’t just reappear whenever you have a new blog post – instead, maintain a regular presence on a social network by starting conversations, responding to comments, and answering questions.
5. Promote your blog with online paid advertising
If you have a budget you’re willing to spend, consider using online paid advertising to promote your blog content. This strategy refers to a marketing method where you pay for ad spots to attract internet traffic.
With the paid promotion, your page can appear right in front of your target audience in no time. It’s also possible to see the results as soon as your ads go live.
Online paid marketing can feature one or more digital channels, including search engine results pages (SERPs) and social media platforms.
The process of increasing blog visibility on SERPs through paid advertising is usually known as search engine marketing (SEM). This method relies on keywords to target users when they’re performing searches in a search engine.
Here’s an example of how advertisements appear for the keywords “how to boost your SEO”:
(Image credit: Google)
To promote a blog with search advertising, try using a popular online marketing service like Google Ads.
Also, consider the following suggestions before getting started with paid search ads:
Be clear on budget and expectations – Make sure to have a specific budget to avoid overspending and clear goals in order to analyse whether a campaign works or not.
Keep the quality score up – A quality score rates the relevance of both your ads and keywords. Having a great quality score can help to keep your ad costs low.
Bid on competitive blog keywords – If your competitors have a lot of traffic for their brand name, try to target those keywords with your ads. This way, searchers will see your relevant content and go to your blog post instead of those of the competitors.
Another form of paid advertising is social media ads. This blog promotion method lets you target users based on their locations, specific interests, and buying behaviours.
Some of the best social media sites for advertising are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Here are a few tips on how to promote your blog with social media advertising:
Design the ads with mobile in mind – Since 91 percent of users access social channels via mobile devices, ensure your ads incorporate easy-to-view images on the small screen.
Use videos – A video is more engaging and has a better return on investment (ROI) than other media types.
Test your ads – Try A/B testing your ads to see what works best for your campaign and make the most of your spending.
(Image credit: Pixabay)
6. Guest post on popular blogs
Guest posting on other blogs is an excellent way to promote your blog since it lets you expose your brand to other bloggers’ loyal audiences. This method also helps to establish yourself as an authority figure and connect with other thought leaders in a niche.
(Image credit: OnTopList)
To find guest blogging opportunities, go to blog directories like AllTop, Bloglovin, and OnTopList. These websites can help people discover relevant blogs in a niche that might accept guest posting.
Once you have a list of potential blogs to guest post on, use a backlink analysis tool like Moz to check the domain authority for each of the sites you’re considering – the higher a blog’s domain authority, the easier it can rank in search engines. Doing this also showcases whether these sites provide good value in terms of links.
Keep the following tips and tricks in mind to get started with guest blogging:
Form a genuine relationship with the site owners – Many website owners only take guest content from bloggers they already know and trust. Thus, try to connect with them first before sending a pitch by subscribing to their newsletter, leaving comments on their blog posts, and commenting on their social content.
Keep the pitch short and straight to the point – Since most site owners don’t have the time to read long emails, keep your email as brief and direct as possible.
Link to your blog articles – Some sites might let guest bloggers backlink to their site, helping to drive referral traffic and lead to better search visibility for the blog. Bloggers can use Google Analytics to track traffic from this guest posting effort.
Ask the audience to leave comments – Encourage readers to post their opinions and share the content. This helps to have the content rank for different keywords that are naturally mentioned in the comments.
Take advantage of the author’s profile – Guest bloggers can also include their blog’s link in the author’s bio, which helps to drive people to their site.
7. Reach out to other bloggers
Another viable blog promotion solution is the conduction of blogger outreach. It’s a marketing strategy that involves getting the help of well-known bloggers or influencers to improve a blog’s exposure by offering something in return, such as a fee, backlink, product, or service.
With this blog promotion method, new bloggers can acquire high-quality backlinks, attract quality traffic, and expand their network.
(Image credit: Lumanu)
To get started with blogger outreach, look for influencers in your niche using tools like GroupHigh, Influencity, and Lumanu.
Then, refer to these tips on how to promote your blog by leveraging the loyal audience of others:
Get the influencers to notice you – Mention influencers on social media and promote their relevant content to make them recognize you.
Interview professionals – Aside from asking for an inbound link from influencers, bloggers can also invite them for an interview. When the interview is published, the influencers might also share it with their audiences.
Try broken link building – A great tip to get backlinks from influencers without paying a dime is to identify broken links on their blogs and present your content as an alternative replacement.
Track the results – Use a backlink checker like Majestic to see which influencers are giving you the best coverage and the most leads.
Cultivate relationships – After getting blog coverage from an influencer, make sure to maintain your relationship with them. The stronger the relationship, the longer the benefits can last for your blog.
8. Get your blog on social bookmarking sites
A social bookmarking site is a platform to read and save a specific web page or article. With this tool, users can access their bookmarks from any device at any time.
Social bookmarking sites are great places to share blog posts with new readers. When your content is listed on or shared through a bookmarking site, it can result in massive increases in traffic back to your blog.
To begin with this blog promotion method, bloggers need to choose a platform to participate in and submit their content to that site. Some of the most popular bookmarking websites are Digg, Flipboard, and Pocket.
(Image credit: DZone)
Bloggers can also share their blog posts on niche social bookmarking sites like GrowthHackers and DZone to generate more relevant shares and traffic.
Here are a few tips on how to promote your blog content on a social bookmarking site:
Make the headlines count – Some social bookmarking platforms might only display the article’s title. Thus, compel potential readers to click on your link by using a catchy, captivating headline.
Add a featured image – Make the article stand out on the news feeds by using attractive graphics.
Keep the description length in mind – Some sites might limit the description space to 150 characters, so try to make the description short and match the content.
Utilize social bookmarking buttons on the blog – Consider adding a social bookmarking button on your site to let readers bookmark content with ease.
9. Promote your blog in online forums
Another excellent method of blog promotion is to join online forums. Being part of online communities lets you interact, contribute, and bring value to a niche group of people.
Joining online forums also allows bloggers to share their knowledge, which can help establish their expertise in a field.
However, finding niche forums can be overwhelming, especially in some of the biggest online communities like Reddit.
(Image credit: FindAForum)
To discover a forum that matches your field faster, try using an internet resource like FindAForum. Simply go to its categories section or enter your niche in the search bar to find a list of discussion forums.
Here are some suggestions on how to promote your blog via online forums:
Participate – To develop trust and make people more willing to engage in a blog, be prepared to contribute to the forum regularly. Try to answer questions, provide quality responses, and link to helpful resources.
Start a thread – Another way to prove that you’re a valuable member is to create your own threads. Begin by making a shorter and different version of your blog content and use it to start a new thread.
Create a signature – Some forums let users create a signature or a text that appears below a post or thread. Take advantage of this signature to make a call to action to bring traffic to your site.
10. Try reciprocal sharing sites
Bloggers can also use a reciprocal sharing site to promote their blog. Using this method, they need to share other users’ content on their social media accounts to get their blog posts promoted.
(Image credit: Triberr)
One of the most popular reciprocal sharing websites is Triberr. This tool makes it simple and easy to grow your audience, find great posts to share with readers, and network with other bloggers.
When using a reciprocal sharing site, make sure to share content that is editorial in line with the type of post you want to be known for curating – it helps increase your credibility and exposure in a specific niche.
Also, remember to include relevant images, graphics, or relevant stock photos to make your content stand out.
Another tip is to be consistent and make it a habit to regularly share posts or respond to comments. The more consistent you post and interact with other users, the more reliable you seem to be.
(Image credit: Pixabay)
Promoting your blog
Aside from publishing awesome content, bloggers must also spend time and effort promoting their blogs. Without a promotion strategy, it can be difficult for a blog to grow and generate a steady stream of readers coming to check the site out.
The most effective strategy for you also depends on the resources at your disposal, such as the budget, skill set, and timeframe.
Here are ten strategies on how to promote your blog and get more qualified visitors:
Utilize SEO for your blog
Do proper keyword research
Use email marketing
Share your blog on social media
Promote your blog with online paid advertising
Guest post on popular blogs
Reach out to other blogs
Get your blog on social bookmarking sites
Promote your blog in online forums
Try reciprocal sharing sites
Keep in mind that it may take a few weeks or months before you notice a significant increase in your traffic and online ranking.
Also check out our complete list of the best web hosting services
Désiré has been musing and writing about technology in a career spanning four decades. Following an eight-year stint at ITProPortal.com where he discovered the joys of global techfests, Désiré now heads up TechRadar Pro. He has an affinity for anything hardware and staunchly refuses to stop writing reviews of obscure products or cover niche B2B software-as-a-service providers.
