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3 Things You Must Know When Marketing on Youtube

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Marketing your services and your business through YouTube sounds super simple, but there are guidelines to be aware of if you want your videos to be found.

Leveraging YouTube means being able to know and understand the users of the platform, what metrics to track and what to create content about in the first place. When you have these pieces of the puzzle down, your channel will become a natural extension of your lead generation efforts.

Here are three things to keep in mind when marketing on Youtube:

1. Obey the laws of YouTube SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is a fancy term for making your content visible in search engines such that when people search for a term your content comes up in search results. In other words, if you’re searching for “how to start a podcast with an iPhone”, then your content should be optimized with keywords, tags and a title supporting that search phrase.

Another point to remember is that you should not be making content that people aren’t searching for. If you’re trying to answer a question people don’t have or solving a problem that doesn’t exist, your videos will go nowhere and people won’t find your business or your content.

2. Know which metrics to measure

Like any platform, there are many metrics you could use to measure the success of your channel and its ability to generate leads and revenue. Most often people look at subscriber count and number of views to measure success, but that’s not actually what YouTube loves to see. YouTube, like any other platform, wants to keep viewers on the platform for as long as possible — so it’s going to pay attention to metrics in support of that goal. To that end, what you want to pay the most attention to is your average view duration and click-through rate.

The average view duration is a good indication of how long your viewers are spending watching your content. When that’s high, YouTube recognizes that your content is good for the platform and will likely push out more of it on their platform. The click-through rate is a measure of the percentage of viewers who click through to your view after it’s been presented to them (like on the home page or as a suggested video). This is an important signal in determining that your content is relevant to viewers and is more likely to keep them on the platform and coming back for more.

3. Answer specific questions

People come to YouTube to be entertained and to learn. YouTube is, after all, a search engine. Your video should be able to provide the information they need. In return, you are boosting the authority of your business and your channel in the eyes of the viewer. They are then more likely to get to know you and your business.

When you answer specific questions with your YouTube videos, it can be as specific as, “How to change the colour of a menu item on Elementor” (I know because I Googled that very thing this afternoon.) If you’re not sure where to start, begin by listing the 25 most frequently asked questions in your niche or line of work. Don’t worry that they seem too basic because people are looking for the answers to these questions.

The more videos you make, the larger your audience will eventually be. Then, you’ll be able to tailor your content to their questions. But it all starts with answering specific questions.

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Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor

Zach Benson is the founder of Assistagram, a company that empowers influencers and Fortune 500 companies to connect with real followers in their target audience. Benson helps influencers and brands cut through the noise to accrue millions of new followers on Instagram.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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How I Turned the Mistakes of My First Start-up into Wins for My Second One

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By Rihards Piks

When I founded my first company, Grafomap, I was an idealist. But, like many freshly baked entrepreneurs, I saw this personalized map poster startup almost as my own child and felt the need to take care of it nearly 24/7.

To further blur the line between my personal and professional life, Grafomap was born out of a friendship with my childhood friend Martins. However, with time, I realized that my company had become my work and my child, hobby, and pastime.

When I started with Supliful last year, I had learned a few painful lessons, and this time I was determined to approach business management with a more balanced and composed mindset. This is a story of how I faced entrepreneur burnout and how this painful experience taught me to become a smarter business leader the second time around.

I didn’t know what burnout was until it hit me — Hard

At Grafomap, my responsibility was all things marketing, but somehow I became involved in sales processes, human resources, accounting, and other areas. So it’s probably not surprising that, after working at full speed for several months, exhaustion and burnout crept up on me. I felt constantly anxious and insecure, having doubts whether the business would stay afloat for another month.

Looking back, I think these were the main factors that caused me to hit the wall:

  • First, micromanaging and trying to become involved in almost every process.
  • Taking all the opportunities that came my way and not filtering the valuable ones from mere time-wasters.
  • Long working hours and not knowing how to separate work from private life.

Two years into developing Grafomap, I felt I had hit rock bottom. The business model was seriously lacking repeat purchases. A constant need to find new sales channels, new ideas, and approaches for attracting customers was tiring and frustrating. A business must find a way to acquire repeat customers for better profitability. The one-and-done model is the way to go insane.

As we were slowly going bankrupt (up to the point of taking personal loans to save the business), we sat down and refocused our priorities and stayed only with a few marketing and sales tactics that had proven to be effective. We managed to grow Grafomap to $1.5M revenue and then decided to sell the business.

After selling my first serious business and taking a little rest, I couldn’t stay idle for long. Then, a new idea came along, and it was linked to food supplements and dropshipping – an industry we had already familiarized ourselves with, thanks to Grafomap.

Me, sending out the very first Supliful order.

What I did differently with my second business

My painful experience with Grafomap and a few other smaller business endeavors before that taught me several valuable lessons about leading a company. Now I am thankful for everything I had done wrong before – as it made me able to start on a better foot with Supliful.

You don’t want to ruin your future. However, I believe that entrepreneurs have very promising ideas that can be destroyed by mismanagement.

Here’s what I did differently with my second serious business

Supliful — Strict prioritizing

When starting your business, the backlog of tasks and plans seems endless and overwhelming. However, I had already learned the hard way the importance of prioritizing and viewing your time as the most valuable resource. Especially when you’re a company owner, you have to evaluate all the steps and responsibilities you take and be 100% sure you’re investing your time in the right things.

To begin with, I prioritized creating a Minimum Viable Product or MVP for Supliful to start attracting customers and test the idea’s success in practice. I got some valuable feedback, and together with Martins working on improving our service to make it more profitable. During this time, I transferred many of my operational tasks to other colleagues, focusing on company goals and other crucial aspects of the business.

Delegating more

From the first months of Supliful, I created a structure for who’s responsible for what. I wasn’t going to repeat the mistake of trying to participate in every aspect of the business. So I managed to transition from being a one-person orchestra to a conductor.

In particular, here’s what I did:

  • I made a list of my priorities and focused on them instead of constantly checking my team’s performance.
  • We hired several great people and trusted them to fulfil their responsibilities.
  • I outsourced professionals to help us with copywriting, influencer marketing, etc.
  • When some processes required my participation, I scheduled weekly or monthly meetings with the respective team to stay in the loop about the most critical operations.

Tailoring marketing tactics to the brand’s buyer persona

During the five years of Grafomap, I was responsible for marketing — and I think there wasn’t a single marketing strategy that I hadn’t tried. From pay-per-click ads to content marketing – you name it, and I tried it, based on the belief that a good marketing strategy is a diversified one.

I ended up in another extreme – my marketing efforts were scattered, and there was an evident lack of focus on what worked best.

With Supliful, I started with a few tactics I believed would be most effective – social ads and influencer marketing. I already knew which tactics work best in different development stages, and I ensured that every marketing effort resonated with our buyer persona.

Today, I make thought-out and data-based decisions, and I’m not afraid to change the approach if I see that my chosen tactic doesn’t bring the expected results.

Generating repeat purchases

One of the main stumbling blocks that prevented Grafomap from success in the long term was the lack of repeat purchases. While people really enjoyed our custom-made posters, they rarely needed more than one to hang on their walls.

61% of businesses say that the majority of their revenue comes from repeat buyers. When even the customers who loved your product don’t come back to get more of it, you’ve got a problem because you’ll have to be constantly chasing new customers.

Therefore with Supliful, we decided to focus on developing our repeat purchase strategy early on. As a result, we came up with ideas for generating repeat sales for Supliful’s supplements and our subscription model.

The university of mistake correction

Thanks to the ups and downs in my career as an entrepreneur, I’ve understood that learning from your mistakes is a craft in itself. It can be equally necessary as a university degree — at least to serial entrepreneurs like myself.

When something goes wrong, be sure to find, study, and learn — the reason behind the failure and proudly correct your mistakes. As long as you don’t give up, you don’t have to fear failure. Even though you always give your best, you’ll find that mistakes are a natural part of the business management process.

Feature Image Credit: Provided by the Author

By Rihards Piks

Sourced from readwrite

 

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18 Instagram Tools to Improve Your Marketing

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Want to do more with Instagram? Wondering if there are any tools to make it easier?

In this article, you’ll discover 18 tools that will help you optimize your efforts on Instagram, from creating content to running engaging contests.

Instagram Content Creation Tools

Instagram’s filters and editing tools can help you produce great-looking content but using native tools exclusively often means your content looks just like everyone else’s. These third-party content creation and design tools can help your Instagram stories, reels, and posts stand out.

Animoto

Producing eye-catching video content for Instagram can be incredibly time-consuming, even for experienced designers. Animoto’s video storyboards can save you time, whether you want to create feed videos, reels, or stories.

This desktop app has templates for everything from tutorials to testimonials to product promotions so you can efficiently create Instagram content that aligns with your marketing goals. You can even cut production costs with Animoto’s stock images and videos while adding your brand’s unique stamp with animations and overlays.

Are you running out of royalty-free music clips to use with your video content? Animoto has thousands of songs in a long list of genres so you can create the perfect audio environment.

Cost: Free and paid plans

Canva

When you want an app that goes beyond video and can also design Instagram posts and stories, Canva is a good all-in-one pick. This desktop and mobile app has dozens of templates for every type of Instagram content, along with stock images and graphics to incorporate into your designs. You can also create custom layouts from scratch.

Click HERE to read the remainder of the article.

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Sourced from Social Media Examiner

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4 Ways to Market Your Business to Local Consumers

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By Peter Roesler

Local advertising is an effective way to extend your business’s reach, but it can be tricky if you don’t know where to start.

Engaging your local community is essential if you want to get it off the ground and work toward success. Thanks to my years of marketing experience building and nurturing local relationships, I have a good idea of what does and doesn’t work. Any local marketing effort aims to nurture lasting relationships that will help increase brand awareness and revenue. To do this, you must form genuine connections with people in your community, develop an effective strategy and remain patient.

Here, consider some of my top tips to build your local marketing strategy.

Participate in Community Involvement

Giving back, when and if you can, is highly recommended. You can volunteer to assist at local events, help clean up or do garden work at nearby parks, or sponsor a local school’s charity event. Community involvement allows you to meet amazing people in your neighborhood who may become clients or refer you to others who become clients. Volunteering is a win-win situation. You have the chance to help those in need, all while expanding your network and increasing business visibility.

Work with Other Local Businesses

Another way to effectively market your business is to reach out to other local businesses. It may be surprising to find out how many are willing to partner with you in some way.

For example, another business may have a lot of foot traffic but a limited email list. In this case, you could offer to mention their business in your online newsletter for some type of physical advertising on their premises. You can create the partnership that works best for you.

Offer Local Discounts

Giving out coupon codes and free shipping to your local area will help encourage more people to order from you. Word of mouth is powerful, and this is a great way to leverage this marketing technique. It will also help increase loyalty within the local area.

Use Personalized Messaging

Take time to personalize your branding to your local community. For example, if you sell physical products, give more attention to the local area by designing them with local sports teams’ colors, mascots, and more. Consumers want to feel close to the purchases they make, and there’s no better way to create this feeling than by providing something unique. You can also offer a “special edition” of your product that’s available to your community, creating the mindset there’s even more value behind this product.

When engaging with and marketing to the local community, be sure to keep the tips and information here in mind, which will help ensure you reach people locally and provide them with information, resources, and products they want and need. With the right local advertising strategy, it will be easier to help get your business off the ground or establish a new customer base, both of which are essential to your long-term success.

By Peter Roesler

Sourced from Inc.

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5 Reasons Why Landing Pages Are a Must-Have Element of Any Marketing Strategy

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By Peter Roesler

I have designed, published, and tested thousands of landing pages through my years in marketing. All this time, work, and effort resulted in discovering the main reasons why you should have landing pages for your business’s site. If you aren’t using landing pages, now is a good time to change that. Here’s why:

Increase Conversions

Quality landing pages result in more conversions. Whether it is newsletter subscriptions, sign-ups, downloads, lead generation, or something else, when you use landing pages, you experience higher conversion rates than sites that don’t.

Remember, having a landing page doesn’t guarantee a higher conversion rate. Instead, landing pages provide you with the tools to improve conversion rates as time passes.

Reduced Cost Per Acquisition

Cost per acquisition (CPA) is the total cost of acquiring a new customer. While there’s no universal set number to acquiring a customer, I’ve found that it’s much less when you have landing pages in place.

Landing pages increase conversions and help produce a higher return on investment (ROI). I’ve also found that landing pages also increase your Google pay-per-click (PPC) Quality Scores. This results in a lower cost per click, which reduces the cost per conversion and eventually a lower CPA.

Showcase and Optimize Your Offers

Every offer needs a home and landing pages provide this home. Depending on your marketing strategy, you may have several offers to showcase, including referral programs, promotions, white papers, resource guides, on-demand webinars, and more.

The information you collect and share on the landing page varies based on the type of offer you’re looking to highlight the most. Because of this, you need flexibility for changing form fields, editing layouts, and optimizing the design and copy– a standard, set template doesn’t work. Your offers also need an easy, shareable link that are easily found on your landing page.

Scale Your Marketing

With landing pages, you scale your marketing without scaling your resources, money, or time. In the past, building landing pages took a lot of time and money. However, this isn’t the case today. It’s easy, fast, and affordable to create and publish new offers and pages on your website. This makes it possible to increase your marketing efforts without spending too much time or effort.

Test and Validate New Ideas

You have the option to spend resources, money, and time to build an entire website for something new you offer and then wait and see if anyone likes it. Another smarter option is to use a landing page to validate the audience’s response and collect feedback on an idea to see if spending more money on it is a smart idea.

When it comes to creating a marketing strategy today, implementing landing pages is a must. These offer you a chance to increase conversions, reach more customers, and quickly add new offers to your site.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Peter Roesler

Sourced from Inc.

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Mistakes You’re Making in Social Media Marketing

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By Deanna Ritchie

The world is filled with billions of users on social media across the globe, and that number is growing each day; and we can watch as the issues to increase.

Social media users have resulted in social media platforms becoming among the most popular virtual places.

Traditional marketing methods, such as commercials on TV, are usually only one-way communications, delivering a brand to the consumer. But social media marketing encourages engagement. It facilitates multi-directional communication, which:

  • Businesses can interact with their customers
  • Customers can interact with the brand’s image by providing feedback.
  • Customers can connect with fellow customers via posting posts.

As a brand’s owner and marketer, you can connect with a variety of potential customers in a matter of seconds with the use of pay-per-click.

There’s plenty to benefit from using social media for marketing. However, if your efforts haven’t yielded any results, you may be making some of the typical marketing mistakes that people make. Becoming aware of these marketing mistakes can help make the right choices and avoid the following mistakes.

1. You’re Operating Blindly

One of the most costly mistakes you can make with your advertising on social networks is to shoot blindly and expect to see results. Instead, you must be sure to treat it with the same seriousness that you would for any other campaign in marketing.

Make a strategy — a clearly defined social media marketing strategy. It’s an essential ingredient in an effective social media presence.

  • An effective social media advertising plan will guarantee that you’re posting content that will help you achieve your business goals. This will stop you from investing your time and energy in a campaign that is bound to fail.

You have scheduled and planned your posts in time. Regularly posting helps you build and maintain your online presence that is organic.

How can you develop an effective strategy?

A simple plan is not enough. You require a master plan that covers:

  • What are you hoping to benefit from your social networks? New leads? Increased brand recognition? If you aren’t sure what you’re after, it’s impossible to achieve it.
  • Who do you want to target?
  • Your action plan. What type of posts will you create? What strategies will you use to promote your content to reach your desired viewers? Do you require more videos?
  • The team is responsible for the management of your accounts.
  • The time and the money you’ll invest in social media advertising.

Your most crucial performance indicators.

Find out what you want from social media — and learn how you can achieve it. Then you will be on the right track towards achieving your total capacity on social media.

2. You’re Aiming at the Wrong People

There is a plan in the right place. However, if you’re trying to reach the wrong people or not targeting the right audience, you’ll have an issue of wasting time and funds. There will be a lot of followers with little contribution to your objectives–an audience that isn’t the ideal client.

In general, Facebook is the most popular social network in the world.

But, it doesn’t suggest that you should solely focus your marketing efforts exclusively on Facebook.

Social Media Platforms

First, define your target audience. The target audience is the group of people who are most likely to be interested in your service or product. You can determine who these individuals are based on income, age or education level, location, or even behaviour.

If you’re active across multiple social media platforms, be sure to focus on the popular platforms for your targeted audience.

For example, data shows that Instagram is most popular with those aged between 18 and 29.

Pinterest is the most popular social media platform among women. While Snapchat, as well as Twitter, are popular with those aged between 18 and 29.

LinkedIn might be more suitable for you if you’re working in the B2B sector.

People tend to overlook irrelevant content. Therefore, it is best to be careful not to make assumptions about the audience you intend to reach.

Examine them and modify your content to meet the needs and expectations of your audience. Your content should be valuable to your readers and incentivize them to interact with it.

Your tone must also be appropriate for the social network platform you are using. The type of content that your viewers are looking for varies across platforms.

Facebook users, for example, will expect a casual, fun, playful, and fun tone — it is an excellent place to connect and advertise. However, LinkedIn works best with a moderately formal tone, and Instagram is predominantly focused on aesthetics and is a great place to show your diversity.

  • Increase the reach of your potential audience with features such as captions and subtitles.
  • You can watch your videos even in loud spaces, like office spaces or in noisy areas.
  • Understand dialogues where participants speak rapidly.
  • Be alert, and help you transmit your message.
  • Access your content even if you have hearing difficulties.

3. SEO Best Practices are Neglected in Your Social Media Marketing

The biggest mistake companies make is not recognizing the importance of SEO to make their social media campaigns effective.

Similar to how you’re focused on SEO when writing content for your blog, such as landing pages and other web content. It would help if you did the same thing with social media.

Engaging in SEO will aid in ensuring your profile, product, or service is ranked higher in results from searches. This increases the organic search engine traffic that comes to your website and boosts your following.

The number of shares, likes, and comments your posts receive online determines your posts’ social media rankings and reach. So, especially to begin with — you will want to post regularly and share quality and exciting content. To stay competitive, plan to always show up with info, and put out quality content. Also, set your social media up to make it easy for your readers to share your content with friends and contacts by including attractive CTAs.

Use keywords. Find the most compelling phrases and words when researching keywords for your blog posts. Then, use them in the social posts you make.

Visual content is among the most powerful SEO strategies you can employ. Use relevant and high-quality images, video, additional images of products or services, and GIFs. Use all content that loads fast — and make sure your site loads fast.

The decision to include subtitles on videos and captions on images or GIFs is also to your advantage. Google, as well as other engines, can’t view the video. However, the search engines can read the text to index and search for the content, making your content more visible.

Implement SEO strategies, and you’ll notice an increase in impact.

4. Over-the-top brand promotions with no actual content

For most people, social media is an opportunity to connect and discuss opinions, keep informed on the latest happenings, and be motivated.

So, if you’re using it only to increase brand awareness and create auto-generated backlinks to your website, you’re not doing it right.

Why are you looking to create content that sparks people’s curiosity and conversation? First, have your goal very clear in your mind.

Feature Image Credit: George Becker; Pexels

By Deanna Ritchie

Managing Editor at ReadWrite

Deanna is the Managing Editor at ReadWrite. Previously she worked as the Editor in Chief for Start-up Grind and has over 20+ years of experience in content management and content development.

Sourced from readwrite

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The best organic marketing strategies for small business

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Learn which marketing strategies for small business to use

You’re ready to market your small business, and you have several strategies available to you. Will you market yourself through Facebook or Twitter, pay for ads on Google Search, invest in great website content, or start to build out your email list?

When you’re developing your marketing strategy and funnel, and utilizing the best CRM software to keep track of your project, it can be helpful to split your approaches into two broad areas:

  1. Organic marketing strategies for small business, which help your website, articles, and other content appear on search engines and arrive in people’s inboxes
  2. Paid promotion, where you pay for ads to be shown next to search engine results, on websites, and in social media feeds

Getting a foundation in small business marketing

Below, we’re going to discuss organic marketing strategies for small business, and how these can become an essential part of your overall marketing strategy. We’ll dig into the three main organic channels, and look at the best resources, software, tools, and platforms for each one.

We’re building on topics we’ve explored in our previous guides, specifically:

We recommend you scan through the above posts to get a good grounding on the concepts we’ll be exploring in this guide.

Let’s get into it.

The basics of organic marketing

person using Google Search on laptop

Utilizing Google Search is just one part of organic marketing strategy (Image credit: Unsplash)

Organic marketing is about promoting your business in three main ways:

  • Website content marketing that you post on your website or other sites that will attract people to your online business
  • Social media content that you share into various social media networks, so that your followers and fans can see and react to that content
  • Newsletter and email content that you send to people who have joined your mailing list

Organic marketing is distinct from paid advertising, because you don’t pay for your content to be shown to your audience. You may still need to pay for the original content creation, but once you’ve done that, you’re relying on organic search, social media feeds, and emails to promote your business.

Website content marketing strategies

laptop open on website on table

Website content marketing can come via your own site, social media, and a range of other third-party mediums (Image credit: Unsplash)

You can use website content marketing in several ways:

  • Create content that you publish on your own website, so that your pages show up in organic search when people are looking for keywords related to your industry, products, and services
  • Create content that you publish on other websites, with a link back to your website to help boost the likelihood of appearing in search (by creating backlinks)
  • Create content that you publish on third-party platforms like YouTube, Medium, Reddit, and so on, which drives interest in your business
  • Create organic social media content (we’ll get into that a little later)

How to create website content marketing

Here’s a breakdown of the steps you can follow to develop excellent website content marketing:

  1. Develop a content strategy: You don’t just want to be creating content at random – it should all be part of a cohesive marketing strategy. That means building a marketing plan, and aligning your content and channels so you’re communicating in the right way, to the right people, at the right time.
  2. Decide on the type of content you want to create: You have plenty of options here, including: blog articles; videos; explainers; landing pages; images and illustrations; podcasts and audio; branding and graphic design; website design; and more.
  3. Define the content and create instructions: Decide on what you want the content to be, how it should look, the approach it should take, and other key factors.
  4. Find someone to create the content: Depending on your skills and abilities, you can create the content yourself, get an employee to do it, or bring in outside freelance help. For example, the author of this article is a freelance writer who specializes in business and technology.
  5. Work together to create the content: Go through a content draft, creation, review, and feedback process, so that you get the content you want.
  6. Decide where you will publish the content: You might choose to publish on your own website, on a related site as guest content, or on a third-party platform.
  7. Publish the content and track results: Use analytics and other tools to see how your content does, so you can tweak, refine, and create high-performing content in future.

Best content marketing software and tools 

  • Project and content tracking: GatherContent, Monday.com, Clickup, Asana
  • Content creation: Adobe Creative Cloud (Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, etc), MS Office, Google Office Suite, Canva
  • Tracking visitors to your sites, how they got there, and what they did: Google Analytics
  • Content marketing keywords and tracking: Google Search Console, Google Analytics, HubSpot, SEMRush, and other tools

Best freelance content marketer hiring platforms and companies 

The best platforms and companies to find and hire freelance content creators from include Fiverr, Fiverr Pro, Upwork, Toptal, 99Designs, LinkedIn, and individual job websites.

Social media organic content marketing strategies

A group of cubes all displaying social media logos

Social media marketing takes multiple forms, including content creation, forums for discussion, and much more (Image credit: Shuttestock/Bloomicon)

You can use social media marketing through several different methods:

  • Building an overall social media strategy of what you’re going to post and when
  • Setting up pages, groups, and accounts that your audience can like and follow
  • Creating and sharing content on your favourite social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn
  • Managing groups and discussions on social media
  • Engaging with customers, comments, and other interactions with your brand

How to manage your social media organic marketing 

You’ll follow some of the same steps with organic social media marketing as you would with regular website content marketing, so we won’t get into too much of that detail here. Instead, it’s helpful to focus on content marketing approaches that are specific to social media. You will want to:

  1. Develop an organic social media content strategy: As per website content marketing, but with a focus on the social networks where your customers are likely to hand out.
  2. Decide on the type of social media content you want to create: As per website content marketing.
  3. Define the social media content and create instructions: As per website content marketing.
  4. Find someone to create the social media content: As per website content marketing, except you’ll want to find someone who specializes in social media content creation, as it’s a very specific skill set.
  5. Find someone to manage your social media: Hire a social media marketing manager/coordinator who can monitor, manage, and communicate through your social media accounts.
  6. Work together to create the social media content:  As per website content marketing.
  7. Decide where you will publish the social media content:  As per website content marketing, except you will need to match the content with the social media channel: for example, very visual posts for Instagram and Pinterest, professional posts for LinkedIn, short posts for Twitter, and so on.
  8. Publish the social media content and track results:  As per website content marketing.

Best social media marketing software and tools 

  • Social media content creation: Adobe Creative Cloud (Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, etc), MS Office, Google Office Suite, Canva
  • Tracking visitors to your websites, how they got there, and what they did: Google Analytics
  • Social media marketing, monitoring, and tracking: Google Analytics, HubSpot, Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social

Email and newsletter organic content marketing strategies

man writing out email marketing steps on whiteboard

Creating marketing strategies for email and newsletter campaigns means promoting yourself to existing leads (Image credit: Unsplash)

Email and newsletter marketing are slightly different from the other methods we’ve mentioned, as you’ll be marketing to people who have already signed up for your email list. This does mean a slightly different approach, as you’ll be sharing information with leads who already know about your business. The process tends to work as follows:

  • Encourage people to sign up to receive emails from you, normally by incentivizing them through a lead magnet or similar marketing
  • Build an email list of interested leads
  • Create an email marketing campaign that sends out helpful news, guides, and information about your products and services
  • Setup email automation to send out your emails
  • Track the effectiveness of your email campaigns

How to create emails and newsletters 

You’ll follow some of the same steps with newsletter and email marketing as you would with regular website content marketing. We’ll cover that briefly, but focus more on the aspects that are unique to email and newsletters.

  1. Develop an email and newsletter marketing campaign: You’ll want to put together a step-by-step marketing strategy and campaign for the specific mix of emails you send out, together with a timeline for emailing after a customer has signed up.
  2. Decide on the type of email content you want to create: As per website content marketing.
  3. Define the email content and create instructions: As per website content marketing.
  4. Find someone to create the email content: As per website content marketing, except you’ll want to find someone who specializes in email and newsletter content creation; also consider the other parts of the email campaign, as these emails will “drip” out and build on each other.
  5. Work together to create the email content: As per website content marketing.
  6. Use email software to automate your drip campaign: We’ve listed some helpful software below.
  7. Send out your emails and track results: You will want to measure open rates and how often people click through.

Best email marketing software and tools 

  • Email content creation: Adobe Creative Cloud (Illustrator, Photoshop, Premier, etc), MS Office, Google Office Suite, Canva
  • Email marketing and tracking: Constant Contact, MailChimp, and other tools

Marketing automation software can be incredibly helpful for managing your organic channels. From scheduling social media posts to sending out emails on the right timeline, here’s a guide to creating an automated marketing flow that works for you.

Organic marketing is incredibly useful for businesses. Used well, it can create powerful connections, share helpful information, and build trust—which are great starting points for selling your products and services.

Feature Image Credit: Unsplash

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Paul is a professional writer who creates extensively researched, expert, in-depth guides across business, finance, and technology. He loves the challenge of taking complex subjects and breaking them down so they are easy to understand. He can quote ‘The Princess Bride’ in its entirety and believes the secret to good writing is Earl Grey tea.

Sourced from techradar.pro

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6 Reasons Infographics Can Help Your Content Strategy

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Sourced from Katy Times

(NewsUSA) – It wasn’t that long ago that Infographics were the “It” tool for public relations and marketing – until they weren’t.

To understand why infographics should still be a viable campaign strategy for clients, we need to understand the history behind them.

In 2012, everyone was producing infographics — usually of low-quality design, although as agencies became more versed in how effective these could be as a sales to market a client’s product, more high-design infographics began emerging. In fact, according to one experienced UK-based SEO and content provider says he was creating 200 to 300 infographics per year in 2014.

In 2016, the industry became flooded, and journalists began rejecting pitches that included, to date, these time-tested marketing strategies.

Fast forward four years, and there remains an argument for keeping infographics as a viable marketing tool in your stable of resources that you pitch to clients. Here’s why:

  • They have a visual appeal. It’s no surprise that visually presented information is more appealing to the eye than a mountain of text, which means that a graphically-told story will usually pique a reader’s interest before any information is processed.
  • They are easy to comprehend. The brain is wired in such a way that visual are able to be processed much faster than language. In fact, according to studies, people can follow visual instructions more than 323 percent better than written instructions.
  • They are easily recalled. If you’re trying to make an impression on a would-be customer, know this: according to studies people can recall only about 10 percent of written content three days after reading it versus 65 percent of information presented in visual form.
  • They are shareable. Infographics can break down potentially complex information into the bite-size pieces that we have become accustomed to in a visually-appealing format that has the ability to be recalled. In this way, people are more likely to share the content of the infographic.
  • They can help to increase sales. Go back to the bullet point on recall because it’s worth repeating: the human brain is better at retaining visuals more than text. This means that if you have a complex product or service (think an IT company such as Oracle), it would stand to reason that presenting processes and benefits of using a company’s product might be better presented visually in an infographic, rather than a block of text. This in turn, will help you to stand out from your competition.
  • They aren’t being promoted as heavily today. There’s no better time than today to start using a tool that has, for many been shelved at worst, and been put on the back burner at best. Think of it this way: if your competitors aren’t using this sales tool, why wouldn’t you? As long as you use a format that is visually appealing to tell your client’s story or present a product or service, it remains a great way to not only attract attention, but for potential customers to remember you.

The bottom line is that infographics continue to be a solid tool when used correctly and can potentially add fantastic benefits as part of a wider content marketing strategy.

Sourced from Katy Times

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The Most Effective Marketing Channel You’re Probably Not Using, But Should

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By Nicole Braley

There is one major question facing companies: Is your 2022 marketing plan focused on the right things? As marketers, we’re always tuned in to our audiences. But the last two years may have shifted our approach to clients and prospects. We now understand their need to connect better than ever before, and we’ve been able to adapt, legitimizing their concerns, acting as guides and solving new problems together.

But this approach and renewed focus is not just limited to marketers, it includes employees. After the past two years, we’re more in touch, more empathetic and more motivated to drive opportunity. And this renewed focus on employee experience (EX) is directly related to customer experience (CX).

CX is becoming, more and more, a critical component of the marketing suite. CX looks at the entirety of the lifecycle of the customer, and because of this, many companies are moving CX under marketing. Leaders across all industries are seeing the revenue correlation between EX and CX – engaged employees lead to better customer experience, and thus, better sales – and companies are working to have all cylinders firing to make that a reality. Employee advocacy programs are the most effective and cost-efficient way to do it.

It is incredibly powerful when you have the breadth of your employees promoting and sharing the good news and work of the organization, and amplifying your market messaging to customers and prospects. Not to mention, it’s 100% free. The best kind of marketing!

How To Execute An Employee Advocacy Program

So, what is employee advocacy? Entrepreneur defines it well: “Employee advocacy occurs when employees actively represent the company’s brand on social media channels, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and even specialty hiring sites like Glassdoor. Grassroots social media efforts are effective because the message comes not from executives or from the human resources department — who obviously have a stake in increasing sales or attracting top talent — but from actual employees.”

The first step to building an internal program is getting executive buy-in. Leadership needs to see the value – and model behaviour as such – for the program to take off and maintain its effectiveness.

You also need to get your employees engaged as well. Share messaging internally to explain the program and the benefits for both the company and the employees. Let your team know you’re giving them the opportunity to build their professional reputation online, while also helping spread the word about the brand by sharing stories on their social networks.

Once executives and employees are on board, it’s time to operationalize. There are many web-based platforms to help manage, distribute and publish content. Using technology to help with the content creation and amplification is a must. The goal is to create content on a daily basis so the company has a variety of content to share, and trying to manage that process without the benefit of a platform can be tedious and overwhelming. Plus, tech provides metrics to track employee engagement.

What type of content is populated in an employee advocacy tool? You can promote earned media, the launch of new websites, executive interviews, articles featuring or written by staff, company blog posts, the list goes on. If it features your company or an employee, it’s content worth sharing. And because the content is coming from the marketing team, you get to control the messaging! If you’re in marketing, you know just how crucial that is.

The Most Important Part Of Employee Advocacy

In reality, the execution of a program doesn’t start with the actual doing. It starts with transparency and socialization. Transparency is the single most important way to build trust and awareness company wide. Boil down your plan to the essence of what it’s doing for your customers, and how/why employees should get excited.

Clearly outline to internal business leaders how marketing and employee advocacy will drive business, and through which focus areas. Discussing with them helps get full alignment, and gives internal stakeholders the opportunity to ask questions.

Employee advocacy programs are the best way to help EX drive a better CX. Getting the word out, from the mouths of employees instead of the public relations team, in an authentic way generates positive brand awareness. Your 2022 marketing plans need to include an employee advocacy program.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Nicole Braley

Nicole R. Braley is a marketing executive, servant leader, career coach, and a frequent speaker for business media. Connect today: LinkedIn. Read Nicole Braley’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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