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6 Tips to Help Solve Today’s Real-Time Marketing Challenges

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How can marketers tackle the challenges of real-time marketing? They need to be organized, quick and prepared for multiple outcomes, according to Brock Murray, COO of seoplus+, a digital marketing agency. “If a client doesn’t like an idea, don’t be hurt by it — have another one ready,” Murray said. “In other words, don’t just be on time, be a step ahead. Also, if there’s a communication problem between you and the client, comply with whichever method of communication the client prefers.”

We caught up with Murray and others who shared ways marketers can address the challenges associated with real-time marketing, which Gartner calls one of the transformational strategies of the martech ecosystem of the next decade.

Take Customer from ‘Ideation to Actualization’

Responsiveness from customers and constant overall communication is the key to being a successful real-time marketer, according to Murray. This ensures you and customers are on the same page throughout various stages — from ideation to actualization, he said.

“Whatever method of communication works best for the client that will allow for faster approval, which will transition to the company’s success, should be the only thing that matters,” Murray added. “… Over time, your goal should be to build trust with your customers, so you have some leeway and can react quickly without being micro-managed through the process. If you strongly believe you’re not putting the customer at risk of anything and that your decision will, in fact, benefit them, your customer should have your trust to move forward. However, that trust doesn’t come easy but can be earned by continuously going the extra mile for them and showing that you care.”

Deploy Rules-Based Approach for CX

To counter challenges with real-time marketing, marketers should employ a contextual, rules-based approach when using data to inform their CX strategies, according to Will Crocker, senior director of customer experience at Braze. “This includes,” he said, “triggering engagement campaigns that should feel timely and interactive for customers and be based upon data including customer preferences, behaviors and decisions, as well as product/brand context.”

For example, before sending a push notification about a flash sale to a customer who abandoned their shopping cart, a retailer’s system should verify that specific product’s availability and tailor the message accordingly.

Machine Learning Allows for Refined Approach

Until a few years ago, tracking customers’ digital behavior was done with the help of their past data, such as their browsing history, psychographic and demographic data and prior purchases, according to Jaykishan Panchal, SEO and content marketing manager at E2M Solutions. However, progress in cloud infrastructure, machine learning and data processing has empowered brands to determine consumer patterns in real-time.

“Machine learning technology, for instance, allows a more refined approach to purchase recommendations because you no longer need a customer’s entire history to engage with them,” Panchal said. “AI is capable of absorbing even the most elusive indicators from a user, use its powerful algorithms, and create a digital user experience in accordance with their current physical reality.”

Don’t Forget About Brand Training

Panchal advises to provide adequate training to your front-line staff so they’re aware of everything there is to know about pertinent content topics, your brand’s central message and your company’s best practices for responding to problems. “This information will help them create and publish content in a short span of time without going wrong,” Panchal said.

Activate Brand Ambassadors

To deal with problems like staying up-to-date on the latest news and events and a lack of staff resources, leverage brand ambassadors, whether they be employees, happy customers or influencers, according to Jonathan Chan, head of marketing at Insane Growth. “Unless you’re a multimillion-dollar brand that can afford to hire staff dedicated solely to constantly monitoring social media and the news, activating your brand ambassadors is a great way for brands to keep up-to-date and stay in the conversation.”

Setting this up isn’t easy, but it’s best to view it as an affiliate program of sorts, Chan added. Select people are invited to be a part of the brand ambassador program. They’re given incentives to speak on behalf of the brand, and that can include doing things like responding to comments, offering coupon codes at their own discretion, or just starting conversations about the brand’s latest initiative.

Creating the Right Marketing Sequences

Being too reactive can be solved by brands taking the time to create the right marketing sequences to ensure a consistent and seamless customer experience. “At its most basic level there’s your basic email marketing automation, where certain email sequences are triggered by specific actions,” Chan said. “To adopt a more multi-channel approach, this requires taking a deep dive into analytics and rigorously monitoring where customers are coming from and what actions they take next. Taking advantage of interactive content like chatbots is one of the best ways to do this in my opinion.”

Feature Image Credit: Northwest Retail

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Sourced from CMS Wire

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How to Build an Email Marketing List From Scratch

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By Jared Atchison

Building an effective email marketing list can help grow your business in numerous ways.

If you have yet to build an email marketing list, you’re missing out on a key way to help you achieve your business goals.

Email trumps every other channel in terms of conversions and return on investment (ROI). Research shows that for every dollar spent on email campaigns, you get a $44 ROI. In addition, 91% of subscribers are open to receiving promotional emails from brands. Digging deeper into research, you’ll find that you can’t go wrong with an email list if you want to grow your business to new heights and cater to customers.

There are nearly four billion email users worldwide, and with so much activity, it’s crucial to take advantage of this channel to market to customers. When built to target the right audience, growing an email list can be one of the most effective and lucrative strategies for your business. It provides communication between brand and customer, sends subscribers relevant content and lets businesses collect user feedback.

Email marketing is important because it turns everyday website visitors into paying customers. When someone signs up to join your email list, it’s clear they’re interested in your brand. All you have to do next is send them relevant content, cater to their needs and keep them happy. Since it costs five times more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones, it’s crucial to pay attention to email subscribers.

Based on what offer they signed up for, you can then segment your subscribers, send them relevant content and move them down the sales funnel. Building a list from scratch can be challenging, but it’s not impossible.

Here are 5 key ways how to build an email list from the ground up

1. Create personalized landing pages

It’s better to create separate landing pages for each campaign rather than one landing page for several campaigns. Why? Because people come to your website for different reasons, looking for different things. One generalized landing page is not going to cater to the masses the way you think it will. Instead, it’ll drive visitors away because they aren’t finding what they’re looking for.

Personalization is the key to creating landing pages your visitors want to engage with. If you’re a furniture company and you create a landing page for every piece of furniture in your store, then you aren’t catering to the small group focused on armchairs. When they don’t see offers for armchairs, they’ll quickly leave your website. The same goes for any website that doesn’t use personalization in its marketing strategy.

By using a landing page creative tool, you can create individual landing pages for each campaign. You can take subscribers who signed up for a specific offer or campaign and segment them according to their behavior on your website. The more landing pages you create, the better, since companies who increase their landing pages from 10 to 15 see a 55% increase in leads.

2. Use a timed popup

Timed popup opt-ins are effective because they appear to users after they’ve already spent time scrolling through your content. Unlike static forms, they use the element of surprise to encourage visitors to hand over their information. If someone is already engaging with your content and an opt-in appears, there’s a good chance they’ll join your email list.

Pay attention to the word “timed.” A popup should not appear after one second of someone visiting your website. It’s irritating and doesn’t give people the chance to consume your content before you bombard them with an opt-in form. Set up your popup so that it appears after a set time, or once a user scrolls to a certain point of the webpage.

Take it a step further by turning your popup into a simple survey. Limit it to no more than two questions followed by the opt-in that collects users’ email addresses. You can ask anything that helps you determine how to cater to them better, such as how their experience on your website is or if user navigation is easy. Kill two birds with one stone by collecting user feedback and growing your email list at the same time.

3. Simplify your forms

According to a recent study, 55% of B2B professionals say their top priority is increasing lead generation. It’s a struggle many marketers face as they try to grow their brand and its following. An easy way to collect more leads is by simplifying your opt-in forms.

You need to make it as easy as possible for visitors to join your email list. For new visitors especially, they won’t bother dealing with an opt-in that’s difficult to navigate or asks for 12 different pieces of information. It might not seem like a big deal, but when you go out of your way to make things complicated, you’ll see your conversions remain stagnant. Removing as little as one form field can increase form conversions by 26%, so avoid adding several fields in your forms.

4. Create a lead magnet

Instead of showing a standard opt-in to visitors, what if you incentivized their reason for signing up? As much as 30% of people will return to complete a form if they get something in return, which is why creating a lead magnet increases conversions.

Lead magnets are free resources you provided your audience in exchange for their email. Visitors gain access to high-quality content while you gain a new email subscriber, which is the perfect start to a mutually beneficial brand-customer relationship.

Examples of lead magnets include:

  • Ebooks
  • Templates
  • Checklists
  • Guides
  • Whitepapers
  • Webinars

Whatever freebie you offer subscribers, the important thing is that it has value. No one will bother giving you their contact information for content that doesn’t have anything to offer. Make sure you teach something new or provide excitement and intrigue so that the subscribers you convert stay for the long haul.

5. Host a giveaway

If you want to increase your subscribers, build buzz around your brand, and heighten its recognition, consider hosting a giveaway. Giveaways are fun and encourage those within your target market to check out your website.

It’s important to find a giveaway plugin for WordPress that works for what you’re trying to achieve. Pay attention to the specific features you want so you pick the one that’s right for your campaign.

Choose a giveaway prize that sparks interest in your audience. Offer them something you know they want so they’re more likely to enter.

Set rules that do the work for you. For example, you could create a rule that subscribers must tag a friend in your giveaway post to enter. That way, they spread the word about your giveaway and encourage their friends to enter as well, increasing your subscribers. If you plan your giveaway with a strategy in place, your email list will grow.

Building an email list is something every marketer and business owner must do to succeed. Email is the easiest, most responsive channel for generating leads and sales, and it connects brands to their audiences. When you market your email list to visitors by giving them content they care about and making it easy to subscribe, it makes all the difference in your conversions.

By Jared Atchison

Co-Founder of WPForms, one of the largest WordPress contact form plugins in the market. I have been programming for over a decade and enjoy creating plugins that help people create powerful web designs without touching code.

Sourced from business.com

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Discovering Brand: The Value Of Marketing For Research Nonprofits

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By Howard Breindel

In our work with nonprofit research institutions, we’ve found that many of them are often hesitant about marketing. Many of them believe their missions — and their accomplishments — should sell themselves.

In the past, this just-the-facts communications approach may have been sufficient for research nonprofits, since they could depend on generous government funding. However, the funding landscape has changed. Stagnant federal funding has forced an increasing reliance on philanthropy, which has introduced research institutions to a new audience with new motivations: results-oriented, high net worth individuals.

In a crowded field of institutions vying for donations from business-minded individuals, just-the-facts communication likely won’t cut it. Instead, I believe that institutions need to provide the kind of experience that potential donors have come to demand at the companies they lead. And I’ve noticed that to do so, the most successful fundraisers have taken on a series of purpose-driven branding transformations.

From Piecemeal To Purpose

If you look at best-in-class research brands, you’ll notice that most lead with a clear and singular purpose. These stand in contrast to some others, who have difficulty communicating succinctly what all their activities connect to and build toward. That’s understandable — scientific minds aren’t usually geared toward generalizations. However, in my experience, clear, higher-level messaging can resonate with potential philanthropists who come from business backgrounds. A good example is the Salk Institute. Although it has 10 research areas, it unites them with a single purpose listed on its homepage: “Where cures begin: We explore the very foundations of life for the benefit of all.”

One useful activity for articulating a nonprofit’s purpose is to think collectively about the role it plays in the world. Is the research about making discoveries? Creating cures? Caring for patients? Nailing down this answer can help lead to a refined and united purpose.

From Niche To Narrative  

Personal relationships can be key to attracting sustained donations from high net worth individuals. Philanthropists often want to feel like partners, not ATMs, so building a rapport and maintaining open communication is crucial. However, creating compelling communications can be difficult for those who don’t come from a business development background. That’s where branding and marketing come in. They provide a platform that can be expanded into a tool kit to help employees speak about the common mission with ease, rather than getting bogged down with details or jargon. When equipped with writing guides, talking points and other turnkey communications tools, every employee can serve as a passionate brand advocate who makes philanthropists feel informed about the organization’s projects and excited to work with it.

From Collection To Cohesion

I’ve noticed that research institutions are often siloed into specialized laboratories. While this may be the most effective way to advance discovery, listing these labs for external, nonexpert audiences can be overwhelming. For example, one institution lists some 37 labs, centers, institutes and groups on its homepage, leaving the visitor drowning in information that dilutes the organization’s overall focus.

Without shaking up operations, institutions can reconsider their brand architecture and how it can better contribute to a cohesive message. For example, does every lab need its own sub-brand, or is this diluting the main organization’s equity? Would descriptive naming — at least in external communications — be clearer than acronyms? Answers will be different for every organization, but in many cases, rethinking brand architecture may streamline external communications, presenting a unified, mission-driven organization rather than a list of programs.

From Telling To Showing

Often, philanthropists are swayed by the on-the-ground experience at a research institution. Branding, marketing and design can help bring this experience to individuals while they’re still at their desks. Think of a website as a virtual tour. Use photography and video to show research in action and highlight the experience of visiting and working with the organization. For example, rather than simply listing the unique features of its campus, the Salk Institute presents digital exhibits on its history and architecture, using video and rich media to immerse the viewer in the Salk experience.

Brand storytelling is also an effective way to fulfill donors’ desires for results, which can be difficult to do in the research sector, where progress is slow and incremental. This can be a tough pill to swallow for results-obsessed donors; 54% of high net worth donors aren’t sure whether their investments are having the intended impact, which doesn’t bode well for continued support. Storytelling can help organizations show results that are hard to quantify. Whether it’s researcher blogs, TED Talks or practical guides for the community, this type of content can demonstrate impact.

The work research institutes do is vital, and their continued success relies on the generosity of a new generation of market-minded philanthropists. Reaching and convincing this audience will likely require researchers to enter an unfamiliar world: that of branding. However, by grounding their branding and marketing in a strong purpose, they can bridge the gap and tell a compelling donor story that cuts through the clutter and stays true to the organization’s values and mission.

Feature Image Credit: Pexels

By Howard Breindel

Howard Breindel is the Co-CEO at DeSantis Breindel, the leading B2B branding agency in New York City.

Sourced from Forbes

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‘Who actually loves authentic content?’ Brands need to understand their value exchange

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By Ryan Reddick

A few years ago I was working on the Coffee vs Gangs content series. After a successful launch, which saw Kenco help young Hondurans out of gangs by training them as coffee farmers, l found myself in an all agency meeting. After some initial self-congratulatory backslapping, discussion of the ‘raw authenticity’ led to a new addition to the group confidently chiming in.

‘I loved the first series and was wondering if it might be possible to see some of the kids from the gangs drinking Kenco’.

Awkward pause.

We’ll come back to that.

Fast-forward a few years to The Drum Content Awards, of which I recently had the pleasure of sitting on the judging panel. To kick off the day all the judges took part in an ice breaker, where we were asked to share our thoughts on ‘authenticity’ in content.

A question like this is catnip for content professionals. And the 25 of us, all released from our respective agencies formed a warm cosy echo chamber. One which made us feel reassured that we are all saying the same things to our clients and none of us are doing it wrong.

I listened. But I contributed nothing. Because the only thought I had ringing around my head was ‘isn’t all this just bollocks?’ Which wouldn’t have gone down well at all.

That’s not to say that my fellow judges didn’t engage in an intelligent and considered discussion. But this wasn’t about them. It was about the concept of ‘authenticity’ itself.

Before I go on, I dare any current creative or content specialist to review their proposals, treatments and pitches delivered in the last three months and not cringe at overuse bordering on abuse of the word.

The truth is, it’s become a dog whistle we blow on in front of our colleagues and clients to try and sell ideas without thinking about it. But when you actually think about it, it means very little on the outside world.

When was the last time anyone saw a piece of content and said ‘I love it because of its authenticity’?

Never.

Because no one ever says that.

Alongside ‘disruptive’, ‘authentic’ has become a nonsense husk of a word that means nothing and everything to us in our comfy communications and marketing circles.

That’s not to say that Kaepernick or Patagonia Black Friday didn’t come from a truly brilliant place. In the same way that featuring a bunch of troubled kids from gangs drinking Kenco obviously comes from a hideous one. But let’s not over inflate the sentiment behind this too much. Or to bastardise the words of Scroobius Pip –

Nike. Just a brand

Patagonia. Just a brand

Kenco. Just a brand

When a consumer engages with any form of content made by a brand or business an unspoken contract is entered into. ‘I know you are trying to sell me something or make me like you so I eventually buy something. But I’m willing to let you do that in exchange for getting something back’.

And this is far more authentic than authenticity. Because authenticity may be dead, but the authentic value exchange is very much alive.

I am willing to engage with your marketing, communication or advertising in exchange for you entertaining me. Making me laugh. Teaching me something new. Helping me with utility that enables me to do my job better.

Authentic value exchange. Much better. Not hiding behind the fact that something is authentic just for the sake of it when we all know what’s going on. Consumers are not stupid.

And that’s what was great about judging The Drum Content Awards. To see so many examples of exceptional work that creates a compelling value exchange between brand and consumer.

Examples that used comedy in exchange for brand trust around online security (Santander), that answered fuel economy questions in exchange for consideration of an electric alternative (Nissan Leaf) and that showed future parents what having children really looks like to build market share of their baby wipe brand (WaterWipes).

And by the way, in case you were interested.

We never featured any gang member drinking Kenco.

Now that’s authentic.

Feature Image Credit: ‘Who actually loves authentic content?’ Brands need to understand their value exchange

By Ryan Reddick

Ryan Reddick, creative director, Edelman is a judge for The Drum Content Awards 2019. A full list of the finalists can be found here. The awards ceremony will take place in London on October 30 at The Marriot Grosvenor Square Hotel, tickets can be purchased now.

Sourced from The Drum

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How Customer Segmentation and Targeting Can Increase Your Email Open Rates

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Sourced from www.squareup.com

What exactly are customer segmentation and targeting?

What is customer segmentation?

First things first, let’s talk about customer segmentation. It may sound intimidating, but customer segmentation is a way to separate your audience into groups according to categories like gender, age, and similar interests. By dividing your customers into groups, you’re able to send each group an email with products, promotions, or coupons that they might find interesting and are more likely to buy.

Within Square Marketing, you can access filter options including Last Visited, Hasn’t Visited, Card on File, etc.,which allow you to create groups of customers you’d like to target. You can also filter based by location if you have multiple stores and only want to target customers who have purchased from a particular location.

It’s worth noting, there are also smart groups that are automatically updated for your regular customers and those customers that were regular but have become lapsed. You can view and update the definitions of these smart groups by going into your Customer Directory within your Square Dashboard, clicking on All Customers, selecting Regulars or Lapsed, and going to Edit.

Creating buyer personas, which are profiles of your ideal customer, may help you decide how you want to divide up your audience base to send them the most relevant email. When creating buyer personas you may want to consider the following:

  1. The demographics of your customers: Age, gender and income bracket can impact what products your customers may be interested in. For instance, Millennials and baby boomers are unlikely to have similar interests. (You can find more information on customer demographics using third-party or industry data).
  2. Your customers’ hobbies: Maybe some of your customers are bakers and maybe some are gardeners. No matter their hobby, it’s useful to know how to segment your audience.

What is customer targeting?

Once you’ve identified your customer segments, you can clearly target your ideal customers with the products they’re most likely to buy. Customer targeting can help focus your messaging so your email is most appealing to the specific customer segmentation you want to reach.

Think of customer segmentation as putting your customers into like-minded buying groups and customer targeting as the messaging you use specific to each of those groups. By “targeting” your customers with messages that most resonate with them, you’re more likely to get them to take that next step and click-through to buy your product.

Using customer segmentation and targeting in your business

By identifying and segmenting your customers into groups according to the marketing categories you have identified with buyer personas, your email marketing can go further.

Segmentation allows you to focus on groups of customers and target them specifically, rather than trying to target all of your customers in one group. Your email marketing is much more likely to be successful if you’re targeting individual groups who you know are more likely to engage with a certain product as opposed to blindly sending it to your entire list.

Also, if you’re still on the fence about segmentation, consider that “marketers have found a 760 percent increase in email revenue from segmented campaigns,” according to Campaign Monitor.

Sometimes it’s easier to use a specific example than marketing terms. So, let’s say that you own a chocolate shop. You know through your Square Dashboard that you have a group of customers who buy lots of your dark chocolate sea salt caramel (but of course they would –– who doesn’t love dark chocolate with sea salt?).

You could target this audience segment with an email letting them know about a sale you’re having on dark chocolate sea salt caramels. By sending them a sale on a product you know they love, they are more likely to buy the product (did we mention we would buy your dark chocolate sea salt caramels? Because we will). It’s really that simple—and a method you can start using today in Square Marketing.

Sourced from www.squareup.com

 

 

 

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Website marketing: The definitive guide

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By Castleford

What is website marketing?

Website marketing is the strategic promotion of a website to drive relevant traffic to the site. The goal is typically to attract people who may be interested in a company’s products or services. More traffic coming to a site means more opportunities to put your value proposition in front of potential customers.

The goal of most website marketing strategies is to rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs) through the implementation of search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics, content marketing, social media engagement, and other digital and offline efforts.

In the majority of industries, pages that rank in the first SERP position get more than 50% of the traffic for their target keywords. There’s a steep drop-off for pages ranking in the second and third positions, and pages in positions 5-20 compete for less than 5% of traffic.

Properly managed, a website marketing strategy can help your business attract new customers and ultimately expand your business’s share of the market.

Your website is your best marketing tool

These days, your brand’s website is the primary channel in which users can learn about your brand and take actions that directly contribute to the growth of your business.

Getting a lot of shares and likes on social media is good – but only if it translates to desired actions. For example, posting funny memes to your brand’s Facebook page may be a good way to increase your social following. But the real goal is to get those users to your website where they will not only be less distracted by competing brands, but also have more ways to interact with your content and offerings.

How to promote your website

To the uninitiated, website promotion can seem like a daunting task.

With an estimated 1.6 billion registered websites in 2019 and more than 4 billion active internet users, standing out feels like an impossible task.

The good news is that there’s nothing impossible about it.

When you understand what your audience is looking for and how search engines identify quality websites, the internet is your oyster.

SEO

As the name implies, SEO is the set of methodologies used to make websites both accessible to search engines and appealing to readers.

Modern ranking algorithms like those used by Google are designed to sniff out dozens of signals that make websites useful and trustworthy.

Moz has done a great job summarising the critical needs of SEO:

Backlinks

Never forget that the web is a network, and movement between network nodes (websites) is crucial not only to digital marketing, but to the modern global economy as a whole.

So if you think about website traffic as a form of currency, it makes sense that you would want to receive it from reputable sources. Just as you wouldn’t want to take money from a shady lender, you don’t want traffic from irrelevant or disreputable sources.

Backlinks – which drive traffic from another site to your own – are extremely important promotional tools. Credible backlinks signal to search engines that your content is trustworthy and relevant.

Influencers

Influencers are connectors; they are people who have established reputations as knowledgeable experts, trendsetters and entertaining personalities. They have large audiences of social followers who enjoy the influencer’s content and actively participate in online conversations.

Brands partner with influencers to appeal to new audience segments and extend the reach of their messages. In 2019, influencer marketing spend is predicted to more than double 2017 figures, with 69% going toward B2C campaigns.

Email signatures

The average worker sends and receives 121 emails per day, so why not put those outgoing messages to work promoting your website?

Any email that comes from your brand’s domain name should include a link back to your website. That way, any reader who is interested in learning more about your offerings can easily get to your site without any extra steps.

Quality content

Some have said that content marketing is the only type of marketing left. And while there’s certainly room for disagreement there, it’s true that content marketing is more relevant than ever.

Content provides site visitors with immediate value in the form of new knowledge and insights. For many visitors, it’s the sole reason to view your site.

If you want people to stay on your site long enough to absorb your messages, you need highly engaging content.

We’ll talk more about that farther down.

Building an effective website marketing strategy

Marketing your website effectively requires a deep understanding of several disciplines, including analytics, modern mobile technology trends, human psychology, inbound and outbound methodologies, and more.

Conduct a site analysis

Everything you do to increase the amount of traffic coming to your site should be measured. It’s the only way to know how effective your strategies are and the only way you’ll be able to identify new opportunities to attract more visitors.

For example, if you implement a content marketing strategy, you’ll want to measure traffic coming to your blog articles, the number of click-throughs each one produces, the amount of time visitors spend reading the content and more.

Thankfully, Google Analytics is free and fairly intuitive to use, though certain types of site analysis are best left to professionals.

But there is more good news: By setting up a Google Analytics account for your website and running monthly reports, you’ll be ahead of 49% of B2B marketers.

Consider mobile optimisation

The internet is quickly becoming a mobile-first environment.

More people are conducting searches, reading content and doing business from their smartphones every day. In Q1 2019, mobile search accounted for 64% of organic traffic, up from 57% in 2018.

In fact, Google began to use the mobile version of webpages for indexing and ranking way back in 2018.

To rank highly, webpages must be able to load fast on mobile devices and display their content in a manner that is mobile friendly. That means image optimisation and dynamic site markup are essential for SEO moving forward.

Managed properly, search marketing can increase web traffic significantly without raising costs exponentially.

Map the user journey

How do users move through your website?

Do they find you organically through a blog post and then browse your product pages?

What about when they arrive from your social media page?

Asking these and similar questions will help you develop a user experience that encourages visitors to stay longer and read more.

You may want to consider developing multiple user journeys for distinct buyer personas. Your Google Analytics dashboard can show you where users are currently leaving your site so you can optimise those pages.

In addition to thinking of site utilisation as a journey your users take, consider other models, such as the marketing flywheel, that seek to build SEO momentum over time.

Develop email campaigns

Email marketing is one of the most popular and useful forms of web marketing currently available.

From small businesses to the enterprise, email lists are the lifeblood of sales. They can also help you pull in returning visitors with engaging content, special promotions and more.

Cold emails – messages sent to prospects with whom you have no prior relationship – require a personal touch, and a little humor, to fully engage your target audience. Your subject lines should be eye-catching and succinct. The best strategies use content to capture visitor emails, then reinforce that relationship with additional, more relevant content.

Leverage PPC

Pay-per-click ads can be an effective way to drive more traffic to your site, but they require a more substantial investment.

As the name implies, businesses only pay when someone clicks on the ad.

These days, PPC is most effective when used in tandem with another channel like content marketing, because visitors need more information than can fit in an ad before they make a purchase decision.

Types of website marketing services

Website marketing is a full time commitment.

Brands big and small often outsource some or all of their digital marketing efforts to agencies because they lack the internal resources to run effective multichannel campaigns.

Here are some examples of what might be shopped out:

SEO

Google and other search engines are constantly updating their algorithms. Specialist marketing agencies maintain an updated working knowledge of SEO best practices to ensure their clients comply with the latest standards and methodologies.

Content production and optimisation

It’s easy to hire someone to write a few hundred words of blog copy, but marketing agencies can do so much more. Agencies will conduct market and subject matter research, develop written and visual content, promote web content and update assets as needed.

Email marketing

Though many aspects of email marketing campaigns can be automated with the right technology, someone still needs to write and format engaging content. Agencies can help businesses develop and implement end-to-end email campaigns based around unique campaign objectives.

Managed PPC

Marketing agencies can help businesses create PPC campaigns with eye-catching headlines and text. Consultants can fully manage bidding strategies to maximise the reach and ROI of every campaign.

Content and website marketing

Content marketing and website marketing go hand in hand.

Once you’ve attracted readers through your promotional efforts, you need something for them to engage with. After all, if users come to your site only to find a few paragraphs of sales messages, they’re likely to bounce.

However, when relevant users come to your site and find useful information, they’ll not only stick around to read it, but they will also be more likely to take an action, such as signing up for a newsletter or contacting your sales team.

Content development and publication requires a scientific approach

The content you publish on your site needs to be highly relevant to your readers’ needs; it also needs to be visually interesting and easy to parse. Indeed, there are so many factors at play, and site owners need to take a scientific approach to content production and publication.

Considering 1.2% of all indexed pages are responsible for 68% of all website traffic, it should be clear why a scientific approach is necessary to attract people to your site.

The best content marketers consider many things when approaching every piece of content, including:

  • Target audience: Who will get the most use out of the content? What are their pain points? Where are they in the buying process? What content formats do they prefer? What social media marketing channels do they respond to?
  • Commercial goals: What conversion action should readers take? How can we measure the impact of our content?
  • Keywords: Does the content use language that users actually search for? Do pages competing for similar keywords offer greater depth and breadth of subject matter expertise?
  • Tone and branding: Does the content conform to the brand voice?
  • Visuals: Does the imagery and typography reflect the brand? Does it align with the written content?

In addition to these considerations, content marketers also think strategically about which platforms to publish content to, what social channels to promote that content on, the best time of day to publish content and much more.

Your website is probably the most important and powerful marketing tool you have. With plenty of care and strategic thinking, it can become your biggest source of business growth. Take what you’ve learned here and put it to good use. Let us know how it goes in the comments!

By Castleford

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10 Effective Content Marketing Ideas for Your Ecommerce Business Every Marketer Needs To Know

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Sourced from Fincyte

Creating a content marketing strategy for your eCommerce business isn’t always easy, but you need to have one if you want to succeed.

Content marketing provides a way to differentiate your business from the competition and show that you offer something unique to consumers.

It’s a great way to build rapport with customers, improve rankings, humanize your brand and take your ecommerce business to the next level.

10 Best Content Marketing Ideas

Here are ten ideas for creating a solid content marketing strategy.

1# Set your goals

SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. You need absolute clarity about what you want to achieve with your content and how you will go about promoting it. Do you want to generate leads, promote your brand, or build a community?

If you don’t have a clear goal, you can’t focus your content and it will be difficult to know where to promote it.

If you want to create a simple marketing calendar including details such as topic, content details, keywords and target persona, Hubspot offers some free Microsoft Excel templates for this purpose.

2# Know who you’re writing for

A top priority for 73% of content creators is to create more engaging content. The only way to do this is to get to grips with who your customers are and what they are really interested in.

You need to create a customer persona from data which you can obtain in many different ways such as surveys, telephone and face-to-face interviews.

Building up a comprehensive persona gives you the power to write directly to a person. At the very least, you need to make sure you know the age ranges, gender breakdown, geographic location and purchasing power of your target audience.

3# Identify content that resonates with your audience

It’s no use writing content if it doesn’t resonate with your audience. If you’re writing for an audience of sophisticated, fashionable woman, how-to articles revealing style tips would be a good fit.

If you’re writing for millennials, entertaining content full of gifs would be more appropriate. There are endless types of content and topics and you need to focus on what your audience will read because it offers value to them.

4# Produce consistent, high-quality content

It is better to create fewer high-quality posts than huge volumes of lackluster content. Make sure your headlines are arresting – don’t over-sensationalize but try to capture the attention of your audience.

Always include pictures because humans process images much faster than text. A good mix of content includes videos, infographics, images and text.

Everything you publish should be well-researched – always check your facts and never make promises you can’t deliver on. If you don’t produce content on a regular basis, you will lose out on traffic and if necessary, use the help of freelance content creators.

If you are managing the marketing for your business and also studying part-time or if you are a full-time student, it’s better to take help from a dissertation service or  an essay writing service for your writing requirements for thesis, dissertation and college essays.

This will allow you to have more free time and focus equally well on college work and the website or the brand that you are working on for content marketing. The essay writers service helps you choose the best best paper writing service reviews for your writing needs. Specialized my assignmenthelp offer you quality work in less time.

5# Use the right marketing channels

Spend time creating practical, credible, entertaining content and then spend more time distributing it through the right channels.

This may sound daunting but here are some ideas for a content distribution strategy.

  • Post your content on your social media channels.
  • Reach out to communities or forums that may be interested in your content.
  • Send emails to your current customers with links to your latest content.
  • Let influencers know if you mentioned them in a blog post.
  • Syndicate your content piece on large news sites.
  • Transform your content into another type of content and publish it on a different platform.

6# Make your content actionable

You need to make sure that people are able to act on what you put out. Pull people in by promising to fix their pain or add value to their lives. Provide them with solid, evidence-based information and you will earn their trust. Once you have earned their trust, they will be ready to take the action you suggest.

If your content is not producing sales for your business, it is failing in its purpose. You need to use calls to action – they won’t be obnoxious or annoying to your customers if you’ve already built trust and they will bring results. Put your calls-to-action in optimized, strategic positions, run A/B tests on them, and invite users to buy your products.

7# Appeal to the emotions

Your content will have more impact if you can appeal to the emotions of your audience. The brands that tend to thrive are those who are adept at eliciting the right emotions. They know how to evoke awe, laughter, amusement, or joy. Using images and stories is a great way to elicit emotion.

Images of faces and certain colors can help to make your audience feel a specific emotion. Why not identify a specific color that’s tied to a certain emotion and incorporate it in your content. For example, if you have a romantic post about Valentine’s Day gifts, incorporate the color pink.

8# Improve your conversion funnel

You may know how to produce high-quality content, but you may not understand how to turn it into sales. Your conversion funnel is the path a customer takes from being a first-time visitor to an actual customer.

You should be able to define the main channels a customer passes through, such as visiting your site, becoming an email subscriber, visiting your sales pages and becoming a customer.

You can use analytics to find out if you have an effective conversion funnel. If no-one is buying your products, it could mean that your product doesn’t meet the needs of your audience – either you have the wrong product or the wrong audience.

9# Don’t overlook search engine optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization has evolved over the past ten years and SEO experts use many different best practices to earn ranking. SEO is complex and you might not want to go into all the intricacies.

However, it doesn’t hurt to at least research targeted keywords and learn how to use some basic website optimization to improve your rankings. There are many resources available to help you test your site’s SEO health over time, such as SEMrush.

10# Use influencer content marketing

Consumers are becoming blind to advertisements and you need to incorporate different strategies to appeal to them.

Aligning with an “influencer” or someone who has a large following and credibility in a certain niche enables co-creation of content that will build awareness and drive sales.

Using social media influencers helps to generate measurable results when they subtly promote your brand.

Conclusion

What is of primary importance is to create quality content and then do whatever you can to share and promote it. You don’t have to worry about all the more complex aspects until you have mastered the basics.

By putting these ideas into practice, you will be able to make sure your content marketing is focused and brings you better results.

Author Bio:Sharon is marketing specialist in essay writer service and writer from Manchester, UK. When she has a minute, she loves to share a few of her thoughts about marketing, writing and blogging with you. Currently, she is working as a marketer at BestEssay. You could follow Sharon on Facebook.

Sourced from Fincyte

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8 steps for building an effective content calendar

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By Sammi Caramela

Every good content marketing strategy starts with a well-planned content calendar.

Here are eight steps for building an effective calendar:

1. Design your calendar. Choose a format: an actual calendar template, a spreadsheet, a PDF template or even an online project management tool. From there, decide how to map out your content (e.g., weeks or months in advance). You can start short term and expand as you come up with ideas.

2. Organize content types. Create personas of potential customers, considering any questions or concerns that you can address for them. Ask what brand voice you want to project. Do you want to be casual, professional or somewhere in between? Define your brand’s identity, and ensure your content reflects it. Identify content categories: long blog posts, short blog posts, social media updates, photos, videos, infographics and so on. This will help you vary your posts rather than exhausting one or two formats. You might color-code each type of content to help you visualize it.

3. Determine how often you want to post. Depending on your resources—business size, number of employees, free time—and what works for your business, you might post on certain platforms daily, semiweekly, weekly, biweekly or even less frequently. Regardless, it’s important to be consistent. For instance, if you publish a blog post each week, specify a day and tell your followers, so they know when to expect it. On social media, post more frequently to be considered an “active” user.

4. Look for opportunities to repurpose content. Despite the massive demand for “new” content, you don’t have to come up with original assets for every channel every day. There easy ways to slice, dice and stretch the content you create for one medium for use on another. If you write a blog post, you can take adapt a snippet for a Facebook caption. Highlight key elements for a text-based video on Instagram. You might even turn sections into an appealing infographic. You can also update older, high-performing content with new information. The more mileage you can get out of a piece of content, the easier it will be to sustain your content marketing efforts.

5. Be flexible enough to jump on trending topics. Along with a steady stream of “evergreen” content ideas, you might also post timely content covering industry developments or current events. This will help establish you as a relevant and credible expert in your field.

6. Ask your team for help. The more people you include in brainstorming, the more insights and ideas you’ll gain. Plus, you’ll have more people to delegate to, which will help you tackle more projects in less time.

7. Schedule cross-channel content. When planning content, integrate other types of marketing into your strategy. For instance, pair a blog post with a social media update, and schedule them to go live on the same day. Also, engage with other bloggers or influencers in your industry or niche, through follows, comments, “likes” and shares.

8. Measure your content performance and adapt. As you publish your content, check your stats to evaluate posts’ performance. Maybe your audience prefers short listicles to long blog posts, or maybe they want more videos and fewer photos. Whatever the results, don’t be afraid to make adjustments and experiment with new ideas.

By Sammi Caramela

Sourced from ragan

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What Does ‘Marketing Strategy’ Really Mean?

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By Shannon Prager

John Wanamaker, marketing pioneer of the 19th century, is famously quoted to have said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Though this statement was made more than 100 years ago, I believe it still rings true for many business-to-business technology companies.

As the founder and president of a B2B marketing firm, I know that unlike Wanamaker, modern companies have advanced marketing automation and analytics platforms at their fingertips. But these platforms alone can’t build a solid strategy. They need input.

Why Marketing Strategy Matters 

In the quest to automate marketing journeys with artificial intelligence and machine learning, it’s easy to overlook the essential element that defines your product or service’s value to the market.

“Marketing strategy” is a loose term few fully understand. It’s not the same as marketing planning or a go-to-market strategy. Let’s define the terms:

• A marketing strategy details a company’s long-term marketing goals and objectives.

• Marketing planning aims to achieve marketing strategy goals with tactical activities and campaigns.

• A go-to-market strategy is the value proposition launched to potential customers. It’s often attached to a company, product or service launch.

The challenge most companies run into, especially in the B2B technology space, is failing to create marketing strategies that are supported by qualitative and quantitative research.

Anyone can write a marketing strategy, but if it’s lacking a clear value proposition based on customer research and buyer personas, it’s unlikely to move your business forward.

Elements Of An Effective Marketing Strategy

The most successful marketing strategies contain three core elements: deep customer knowledge, distinct branding and messaging, and market analysis.

Let’s dig deeper.

1. Understand your customers.

This sounds simple. You probably already have some idea of who your ideal customers are. But do you really know them?

Assuming, rather than asking questions, is where many marketing organizations run into trouble. Quality customer research takes time and needs to be updated a least once per year.

To truly know your customers, you must understand:

• What they want.

• What pains them.

• Where they’re searching for in a solution.

• How to reach them (i.e., content, social media, email, website, etc.).

These dynamics change, and without proper feedback loops, you could miss out on important shifts and opportunities within the marketplace.

At many of the companies we work with, time and resources get in the way of creating and updating effective buyer personas. If companies have them at all, they’re often a few years old and at the bottom of someone’s priority list to update. The companies we see generating the greatest return on investment commit to refreshing customer research and buyer personas annually.

If you are performing the customer research yourself, this yearly refresh may take the form of a nice sample size of interviews with your newest customers to evaluate and restudy their buying patterns. The findings should be captured and collected in a consistent way and shared across your teams so they can be operationalized.

2. Know your brand and messaging.

Clearly defined brands are remembered. Think of Apple or IBM: Their iconic branding didn’t pop up overnight. It was clearly defined, consistently presented and intelligently refreshed over time.

Once you know who your ideal customer is, you can use that data to build a strong brand and value proposition that attracts the right audience. Your value proposition is directly tied to the benefit(s) you offer customers and what sets you apart from your competitors. We find that studying buying patterns and asking the right questions about value and differentiation can give you direct insight into how a customer values and speaks about what sets you apart. Then the heavy work becomes storyboarding it and integrating it across your brand and messaging.

3. Keep tabs on your market position.

Anyone can say they’re No. 1 in a product or service category, but can they back it up? Making grand proclamations without supporting data can set your organization up for disappointment. To stay relevant:

• Routinely review competitor strategies.

• Compare your positioning to competitors.

• Identify what makes your organization special.

• Focus on your unique differentiators in messaging.

• Copyright key phrases and language that’s essential to your brand.

• Call out competitors that “borrow” your messaging.

How To Execute Your Marketing Strategy 

Once you understand your customers and have clear branding and messaging and a way to track your market position, you’re ready to go to market. A strong go-to-market strategy should:

• Be multifaceted.

• Tell your story.

• Be scalable.

• Focus on customers.

The Bottom Line: Research First — Or Accept Mediocre Results 

Before investing a dime on any marketing program or content creation, get to know your ideal target customer first. Skipping this essential first step will mean throwing thousands of dollars down the drain.

The companies we see achieving the highest returns on marketing investments spend time on intensive customer and market research to fully understand their customers and prospects before creating a single program or advertisement to try to catch their attention.

The research tools and resources exist to generate holistic buyer personas that will empower your marketing team to craft more powerful and effective campaigns and messages.

It’s simple, really: Either invest the extra time and effort on customer and market research upfront or pay the price later in conversations.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Shannon Prager

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

Sourced from Forbes

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What Does Disruptive Marketing Look Like?

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By Adrian Johansen

With so much advertising trying to get consumers’ attention, what breaks through the noise? Disruptive advertising is all about breaking through that monotony, pulling the prospective consumers’ attention, and creating a revision in their perspective.

Being daring or interesting enough to alter someone’s perspective in a short ad is a tall order. While “disruptive marketing” is a newer moniker and we have new forms of media to assist us with disruption, it’s hardly a new concept. Disruptive marketing has long existed, especially in the realm of pop culture.

What is Disruptive Marketing?

Disruptive marketing tends to not only make the viewer stop what they’re doing, but to engage and participate directly, often with their emotions. Disruptive marketing can take the form of a simple black and white advertisement, a three-dimensional video stopping someone in the street, or guerilla marketing tactics, such as flash mobs. All of these examples have the potential to garner attention in fascinating ways, though many of them are now digital.

Specifically, disruptive marketing is identifiable as:

  • Accessible: Things that were once inaccessible to most people due to financial inequity or lack or technology are now available to many, making the product and the means of advertising it disruptive.
  • Innovative: Fresh and new, innovative products require four components: scale (a critical mass using them), frequency in use, an actively engaged audience, and diversity, valuing the contributions of customers as community members.

War is Over: A Classic Example of Disruptive Marketing

In December of 1969, Yoko Ono and John Lennon launched their famous “War is Over!” campaign in twelve cities. The messages, posted on billboards, said:

“WAR IS OVER!

If you want it

Happy Christmas from John & Yoko”

This message delivered:

  • A disruptive statement, which seemed factually untrue: The United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, and many people who read the sign wanted the war to end.
  • A means for the audience to achieve what’s being advertised (end of war): This is a promise and an invitation for participation in anti-war activities, but it doesn’t initially ask the participant to do much more than change their mindset.
  • A closing of goodwill: The message is intended to leave the viewer with kindness, regardless of their feelings on the advertisement.
  • A personalized and emotional connection: Most knew who John and Yoko were, and their brand already brought with it feelings, visualizations, and familiar sounds.

Additionally, it’s designed to be disruptive in a minimalistic fashion, presented in an uncomplicated way with sans serif font.

Disruptive Advertising: Personal and Local

The old dog of disruptive marketing has learned some new tricks since John and Yoko’s famous billboards. Available technology now bombards consumers with more ads, but also presents unique opportunities for disruption.

Augmented reality (AR) is one such arena for advertising that is both personal and local. Let’s take a look at the free-to-download AR game Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, taking place in the famous Potterverse created by J. K. Rowling.

Wizards Unite utilizes geolocation tracking to present gamers with challenges superimposed onto their real-world phone cameras. When they look at a park bench when the game is active, for example, they might find an evil wizard standing on it, challenging them to combat. This experience is incredibly personal and tailored to the player’s location; the entire experience also draws on a decades-long attachment to the Harry Potter book series and movies.

With this game, the user can become immersed in a world that also evokes sentimental feelings, and possibly feelings of empowerment. Now for the sell: local businesses can appear in the game as respites for the gamers, providing them with free in-game resources. AT&T Wireless stores show up this way, causing gamers to not only head towards those physical locations, but to associate the AT&T brand positively with their beloved favorite, Harry Potter.

This creates an innovative brand association for AT&T as well as repetitive engagement with AT&T stores. Combined with innovation and engagement, this memorable brand experience and positive association creates a successful disruptive marketing strategy.

How to Plan and Execute a Disruptive Marketing Campaign

Since the end of “Game of Thrones,” we all understand the magnitude and impact of the series on our viewing habits and pop culture, but let’s think back to the 2011 series debut. Audiences were just getting used to video streaming services (even Netflix had started with DVD delivery) and the idea of being a geek all about dragons wasn’t entirely cool back then.

HBO changed that. In addition to encouraging consumers to embrace HBO Go for its premium content, they employed dramatic marketing techniques. Like the Potter game, the technology was disruptive, and so was the marketing that went along with it.

Press contacts received immersive press kits with in-world items prior to the launch of the series, and HBO didn’t stop there. By the time the series finale premiered in 2019, HBO co-sponsored a Bleed for the Throne blood drive and a worldwide scavenger hunt. Again, these events were exciting, participatory, engaging and, you guessed it, disruptive.

How did HBO start with a show based on a book series enjoyed by a niche group of fans to marketing one of the most culturally pervasive and popular series of all time? They had a careful, long-term marketing plan that even expanded their core base by making it cool to like dragons.

Behind the scenes, this only happens when marketers communicate well internally, adequately manage sensitive information (no spoilers!) and standardize their process for success. While each marketing effort seems quirky and creative, it’s clearly the result of careful in-house communications and strategic partnerships on HBO’s part.

From a black and white ad in the late 1960s to AR wizards and worldwide scavenger hunts for items of Westeros, disruptive marketing works best for innovative technologies and cultural touchstones. These disruptions help audiences form emotional connections with innovative brands, clearly communicating the nature of the products or services advertised and engaging audiences in the use of forward-thinking technology with thought-provoking messages.

By Adrian Johansen

Sourced from PromotionWorld

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