Personalized online ads must work for the same reason advertising must work; it wouldn’t be a trillion-dollar industry if it didn’t work. Even supplements and organic food are only $140 billion, and those are really popular things that don’t work. Advertising is not popular at all but good luck succeeding without it.
Yet there are limits for what people accept without being uncomfortable. In robots and animation, that has long been termed the ‘uncanny valley’ – where something is not lifelike enough to look real but too lifelike to be acceptable. Some digital marketing has its own uncanny valley; where it becomes unsettling. Examples are people who say they mentioned something in the presence of their Amazon Echo and then ads on Facebook began to target them.
It’s technically impressive, but even more creepy. You feel like you’re walking around London and being monitored all of the time, except on your phone.
It doesn’t backfire on the technology backbone, it backfires on the companies in the ads, making you less likely to buy that brand even if you expressed interest in the general product. We all recognize we are under constant surveillance but resent when it becomes too obvious, according to a recent paper.
With over 1,800 online participants across three studies, the authors targeted some with advertisements for things like Nike sneakers and fabricated headphones after those were mentioned. The control groups were not digitally targeted. Then people rated how uncomfortable they felt and the authors created a Component Process Model of Creepiness.
It is pretty on-the-nose, even for the humanities, this was an online experiment using people paid through Amazon Mechanical Turk, not the normal population, but 75 percent who expressed discomfort were concerned about the manipulation and surveillance aspects of the technology. These are surveys, not behaviour, and therefore only EXPLORATORY, but on a 7-point scale for intent to purchase, the authors said a 1-point increase in discomfort meant willingness to purchase the product by half a point.
Like people who declared they are boycotting Paramount Plus because the company is buying Warner Brothers Discovery but never subscribed to either, their opinions mean little. Bud Light, on the other hand, had a very real, very dramatic turn in revenue when they sought to use advertising to do more than sell beer.
That is what needs to be considered. If someone is searching for a product, they probably want to buy it, and for most people price/value overrules the fact that they got a targeted ad after searching for it on another device. Some of us even game the system; if I see something I might like but it is from weird name in a Facebook ad, I click on it and then click back, knowing a few minutes later a company that isn’t some Chinese drop-shipper will advertise it to me.
So companies are probably still smart to target people digitally, even considering blowback. Because advertising is about, as car executives in the 1960s said, “moving the iron”, not being worried about whether or not someone is annoyed. If your recents are decent and your price is competitive, you are winning just the same.
Unwanted, unsolicited marketing emails, texts and instant messages feel like an unavoidable fact of modern life. But there are actually legal restrictions on spamming that apply to every business selling to Australian shoppers.
Clothing company Lululemon Athletica Australia just paid a A$702,900 penalty for infringing those rules when it sent more than 370,000 emails without an unsubscribe option.
This is how you can stop or report persistent marketing spam – and why we need to tighten those rules even further.
What do Australia’s anti-spam rules say?
The rules of the Spam Act are fairly straightforward.
First, the law prohibits a person or business from sending unsolicited commercial “electronic messages”: emails, texts or instant messages. That means a business must have a person’s consent before sending them marketing messages.
Second, the Spam Act makes it a rule for any person or business sending a commercial message to include an option to unsubscribe from future messages.
The unsubscribe function has to be clear and work for at least 30 days. And it mustn’t require a person to provide additional personal information, or login or sign up for a user account, to opt out.
The rules apply when the sender or recipient of the message is located in Australia.
However, there are some exceptions. The rules don’t apply to messages from certain kinds of entities: registered charities, educational institutions, government bodies and, most controversially, registered political parties.
How can you report marketing spam?
Anyone who thinks they’ve received a message that doesn’t meet the rules can complain to the regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
Even if you don’t want to make a complaint, you can still report it by:
forwarding email spam to [email protected] (do not change the subject line or add any text)
forwarding SMS or MMS spam to 0429 999 888 (standard message charges apply).
If ACMA finds a business has violated the rules, they can face hefty fines.
Last year, Tabcorp was fined $4 million for non-compliant SMS and WhatsApp messages to its VIP customers.
Telstra also paid a $626,000 penalty for sending more than 10 million text messages that did not comply with Australia’s spam laws.
The year before, the Commonwealth Bank landed a $7.5 million fine for sending millions of marketing messages without people’s consent or a working unsubscribe option. It was the bank’s second major breach of the spam rules, after it was fined $3.55 million in 2023.
Why Lululemon was fined
In its latest case, announced this week, ACMA foundLululemon Athletica Australia failed to provide an unsubscribe option in thousands of messages sent between 1 December 2024 and 5 January 2025. (The company is a local subsidiary of global “athleisure” brand Lululemon, based in Canada.)
As a result, Lululemon here in Australia was fined $702,900. It also agreed to take steps to ensure future compliance, including appointing an independent consultant to review its procedures, training personnel, and reporting on compliance to ACMA.
Which messages are covered by the Spam Act?
Interestingly, Lululemon initially argued its messages were not subject to the anti-spam rules.
The rules only apply to commercial messages: when one of the purposes of the message is to advertise, promote or offer to supply goods or services. This won’t include purely factual communications about a good or service you’ve purchased, such as delivery updates, payment reminders, notices of product faults.
Lululemon pointed out that its messages contained factual information, sent for transactional purposes.
Importantly, however, they also contained links back to Lululemon’s website and social media pages. The links had titles like “shop accessories”. That was enough to trigger the Spam Act rules.
The line between factual, marketing and entertainment content is increasingly hard to discern online.
However, as ACMA’s recent actions make clear, the Spam Act is clear on this point. A message may have multiple purposes – but if one is to advertise, promote or offer goods or services, the rules will apply.
Still, the kinds of messages captured by the spam legislation are a mere drop in the ocean of digital advertising we encounter everyday elsewhere online including our social media feeds. Ads are tailored and targeted to each of us in real-time, using vast amounts of data.
Back in 2022, the federal Attorney-General’s department recommended updating Australia’s privacy laws to adapt to modern digital advertising.
If implemented, those changes would give consumers more choices to opt out of the broader range of targeted advertising we see. It would also improve transparency about the use of profiling in advertising, and add restrictions on using sensitive information.
The current Spam Act has been in place since 2003. The online advertising ecosystem has shifted dramatically over the past 20 years.
While ACMA’s recent enforcement actions demonstrate the continued relevance and need for education about anti-spamming laws, updating those laws is now long overdue.
Personalized online ads must work for the same reason advertising must work; it wouldn’t be a trillion-dollar industry if it didn’t work. Even supplements and organic food are only $140 billion, and those are really popular things that don’t work. Advertising is not popular at all but good luck succeeding without it.
Yet there are limits for what people accept without being uncomfortable. In robots and animation, that has long been termed the ‘uncanny valley’ – where something is not lifelike enough to look real but too lifelike to be acceptable. Some digital marketing has its own uncanny valley; where it becomes unsettling. Examples are people who say they mentioned something in the presence of their Amazon Echo and then ads on Facebook began to target them.
It’s technically impressive, but even more creepy. You feel like you’re walking around London and being monitored all of the time, except on your phone.
It doesn’t backfire on the technology backbone, it backfires on the companies in the ads, making you less likely to buy that brand even if you expressed interest in the general product. We all recognize we are under constant surveillance but resent when it becomes too obvious, according to a recent paper.
With over 1,800 online participants across three studies, the authors targeted some with advertisements for things like Nike sneakers and fabricated headphones after those were mentioned. The control groups were not digitally targeted. Then people rated how uncomfortable they felt and the authors created a Component Process Model of Creepiness.
It is pretty on-the-nose, even for the humanities, this was an online experiment using people paid through Amazon Mechanical Turk, not the normal population, but 75 percent who expressed discomfort were concerned about the manipulation and surveillance aspects of the technology. These are surveys, not behavior, and therefore only EXPLORATORY, but on a 7-point scale for intent to purchase, the authors said a 1-point increase in discomfort meant willingness to purchase the product by half a point.
Like people who declared they are boycotting Paramount Plus because the company is buying Warner Brothers Discovery but never subscribed to either, their opinions mean little. Bud Light, on the other hand, had a very real, very dramatic turn in revenue when they sought to use advertising to do more than sell beer.
That is what needs to be considered. If someone is searching for a product, they probably want to buy it, and for most people price/value overrules the fact that they got a targeted ad after searching for it on another device. Some of us even game the system; if I see something I might like but it is from weird name in a Facebook ad, I click on it and then click back, knowing a few minutes later a company that isn’t some Chinese drop-shipper will advertise it to me.
So companies are probably still smart to target people digitally, even considering blowback. Because advertising is about, as car executives in the 1960s said, “moving the iron”, not being worried about whether or not someone is annoyed. If your recents are decent and your price is competitive, you are winning just the same.
Despite the growth of online marketing and digital sales tactics, more brands are struggling to connect with their customers and target audiences. To reunite with them, they need to do these things.
With the world becoming more hyperconnected following the mainstream adoption of the online ecosystem, more brands are struggling than ever before to connect with their customers. Changing economic conditions, a shifting consumer perspective and evolving technology have driven a wedge between brands and their target audience.
The multi-facet and blossoming digital landscape has allowed businesses and brands to have a plethora of information and consumer data at their disposal, allowing them to create more personalized online experiences and cater to a digitally-centric marketplace.
However, at the same time these technologies have brought more attention to the importance of customer preference, the same systems have simultaneously created a disconnect among brands and consumers.
The path to disconnection
The strategies that once helped marketers reach their audience are no longer working as effectively as they once did. Nearly 30% of marketers experience average-to-no returns on their online and digital marketing investments.
Even with seemingly limitless access to consumer information, different research shows that 68.6% of businesses have little understanding of how their customers think and how to cater to these evolving needs.
Although technology is at the crux of the disconnection crisis, other leading factors, including hybrid and remote working models, have also led to greater feelings of less engagement among teams and customers.
In a 2022 State of Remote Work Report, nearly 52% of employees that started working remotely due to the pandemic are feeling less connected with their coworkers. Efforts to get employees back into the office during recent years have been met with hostility, as the majority of workers now favor increased autonomy and flexibility in their day-to-day work lives.
The disconnection between brands and customers, as well as brands and technology, have fueled stagnant growth for online representation — shrinking the bottom line performance of businesses.
While multiple other challenges can present themselves to business owners and entrepreneurs, reconnecting with customers in a digitally-centered world has posed far greater problems than many would have imagined.
Reuniting the brand and the consumer
Managing several customer retention strategies over different platforms requires not only the know-how on how to manage all of these systems but also requires a large team of clued-up professionals that know how to efficiently execute these strategies without fail.
While this doesn’t seem impossible, seemingly out of reach for smaller business ventures and startups, leveraging key strategies that ensure ongoing brand development and message delivery can become an effective tool through which marketers can narrow the divide between brands and customers.
Meet customers where they are
An effective growth strategy starts by building awareness of where customers are and refocusing on the overall customer connection through these channels.
Often brands look at customers through the viewpoint of management, hoping to deliver a marketing message from every angle possible. Unfortunately, these strategies create a further breach between the two, making it harder for brands to see growing message engagement.
Overwhelming consumers with targeted ads, emails, blog posts and online content has led to an increase in digital fatigue. Start by focusing on a growth strategy that looks to enrich the customer’s online journey, and use these channels to foster more purposeful connections.
Have a data-driven approach
Paradoxically, data can be a key ingredient in the marketing growth strategy that can help bring the brand back into the peripheral view of the client.
Using data ensures that businesses have a clear understanding of where to find their target audience, and how to effectively deliver their branding message. Consider where customers often start their online journey, track their online activity, and what their preferences are in terms of social media platforms and other digital channels.
A report by BrightEdge Research found that 68% of online interaction starts through search engines. Using these metrics in combination with customer activity already starts creating a clear picture of how data can create a more proactive marketing approach, without having to overwhelm audiences.
Evolve beyond CRM technologies
Instead of managing customers through outdated CRM technologies, try to instead focus on how to structure a platform that can offer marketers better flexibility and scalability. Building a central, yet consistent customer experience requires businesses to migrate their data away from siloed databases.
Evolving beyond the familiar does however require substantial financial input, especially in the case of utilizing shared cloud-based data platforms.
Building more fluid connections between marketing techniques, sales and customer feedback ensures that brands can deliver high-quality messaging, but at the same time improve their overall customer engagement.
More consumers than ever before value things such as speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and on-demand customer service following a report that found 80% of American consumers now consider these important elements as part of a positive customer experience journey.
Adopting ways to break down different silos within the business, and integrating these efforts onto one advanced platform gives businesses the technological edge above their competitors.
Improve purchasing channels
Now more than ever, it’s important for brands to step up to the plate and create purchasing channels that cater to their target audience and help improve the overall online experience by improving backend sales systems such as fast, safe and reliable checkout features on ecommerce platforms.
Not only do online stores need to be more customer-oriented in terms of finalizing purchases and minimizing the possibility of cart abandonment, but there should be substantial efforts directed toward creating mobile-friendly experiences.
A growing number of internet users have reported using shopping applications on smartphones and/or tablets, with research showing that 69.4% of online consumers now prefer these methods as opposed to ordinary websites.
Taking the time to properly integrate these features into the digital marketing strategy might seem a bit far off during the early stages of business development. Yet, these are the consumer trends that are reshaping the way brands can connect with their audiences and further grow their digital impression.
Now is the time to stay connected
Building a marketing growth strategy that ensures the effective delivery of brand messages requires businesses to be more agile and adaptable in a fast-changing digital ecosystem.
With consumers constantly evolving and trends rapidly changing, being united with loyal customers means that brands need to have a better understanding of where to find their customers online, but also how to construct an online experience without overwhelming them at the same time.
Finding a balance means that businesses and marketing teams need to be more open to trying new methods, but at the same time, develop strategies that are unique to their clientele, brand and online presence.
Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor, Founder of OTOS. Pierre Raymond is a bilingual project consultant/business analyst with over 20 years of experience in financial services and data management IT solutions.
SEO is one of the most popular branches of online marketing today. And there’s a good reason for that – SEO continues to produce great results and the ROI is incredible, especially compared to paid media.
But with the growth of SEO, many businesses became interested in using SEO to grow their companies. With that interest came a challenge for agencies… How do you present the work you’ve done for your clients and which SEO metrics do you choose to showcase your success?
Having worked with hundreds of agencies, we know the exact SEO metrics you need to show your clients to prove that you’re getting them the results they seek. And in this article, we’ll reveal what those SEO metrics are!
Organic traffic
There are plenty of vanity metrics in SEO, but organic traffic is not one of them. Simply put, if your agency is doing its job well, your client’s organic traffic should be increasing steadily each month.
Of course, you should let your clients know that they cannot expect meaningful results after just one month of content marketing and SEO.
However, beyond 2-3 months, your clients will expect a steady increase in organic traffic and this is a KPI you should always include in your reports.
With the average conversion rate hovering around 2% depending on the industry, the difference between 10,000 and 100,000 website visitors can make a huge impact on your client’s bottom line.
It doesn’t take a marketing expert to know that more people on your client’s website usually translates to higher profits. This brings us to our next point.
Conversions from organic traffic
If you set up your SEO reporting tool properly, tracking this metric is a breeze. Clients want to know the immediate impact of SEO activities on their bottom line and this is the easiest way to show them that.
With each new conversion that came in from organic search and content marketing, you can show your clients the exact value and effectiveness of SEO as a strategy. The key here is to do two things.
One, set up proper attribution so you and your clients are on the same page when it comes to what a conversion is. Two, set up a baseline so you can compare organic traffic conversions compared to PPC, social media and other channels.
Keyword rankings
Even if your client knows nothing about SEO, they likely understand the value of ranking well for their desired keywords. Even without an SEO expert, they know well enough which keywords they want to rank for and which of them brings in new revenue.
First off, make sure to report on keyword movements for existing keywords, especially the money keywords that bring in conversions. If there are any movements at all, they’ll want to know about them.
Moreover, update your clients about the total number of keywords they’re ranking for. While not the ultimate SEO metric, this is a pretty good signal that your SEO and content marketing efforts are going in the right direction.
New and lost backlinks
If your client is fairly new to SEO, understanding the importance of backlinks for their website and SEO is crucial. Make sure to educate your client base about what a backlink is, how it influences search engine results and what differentiates a good from a bad backlink.
The problem that often happens with backlinks is that they cost a lot of money to do right. White hat link building requires lots of hands-on work and many times, there are hidden costs involved, such as paying writers, editors and people in charge of outreach.
When you want to report on backlinks, be sure to include both new and lost backlinks in your report, especially in correlation with new pages that are ranking. This is a surefire way to convince any client about the importance of backlinks for SEO and overall business growth.
Bounce rate from organic traffic
A bounce happens when a visitor lands on a page and leaves it without going any further or taking any action. A bounce in itself is not a bad thing, but it usually signals that the visitor found nothing of value on the page and decided to leave.
A bounce rate is a good signal that you need to work on your content and provide a meaningful, engaging experience for your visitors. Make sure the content is structured well, with plenty of internal links to help them move on to other pages on your website.
More importantly, a high bounce rate is a ranking signal for search engines such as Google. Your clients should be aware that a high bounce rate can significantly impact not just their rankings but also their revenue. This is a metric that belongs on every SEO report.
Page load speed
It doesn’t take much to figure out why a fast website matters in 2022 and beyond. A website that loads fast provides a great user experience and makes visitors want to stay and click through.
Your website page load speed is more of a technical website issue but it should be included in your monthly or weekly SEO report. If you see a sudden slump in page load speed, this means that there’s a technical aspect of your client’s website that needs to be addressed.
More importantly, page load speed is another major ranking factor for Google and other search engines. If a website takes too long to load, the visitor will bounce immediately after opening a link, resulting in high bounce rates and short session duration. The end result? Poor user experience and a drop in rankings.
Wrapping up
With so many buzzwords and mysteries surrounding SEO, focusing on what really matters can be difficult. And when you’re dealing with clients who have little understanding of internet marketing, you really need to be proactive and choose the metrics that make an impact and are easy to understand.
Are you happy with the number of leads your marketing campaigns are generating? Or, do you wish they were a bit more effective?
If you’re serious about growing your business—whether it’s a B2B company, an e-commerce store, or a startup—increasing the number of leads should be a top priority. Setting up online campaigns is a good start, but it’s not enough. You need to optimize those marketing campaigns to squeeze every last lead from your funnel.
Are you ready to get to work? Here are seven strategies to generate leads like never before.
Why Are Leads so Crucial to Business Growth?
Two of marketers’ top priorities are generating leads and converting those leads to customers. Only increasing customer satisfaction comes close to the importance of getting new leads.
A bar graph of the top marketing priorities in the next 12 months.
It’s no surprise that lead generation is a top priority. Without a continuous flow of new leads, sales dry up. Without sales, there’s no revenue. And without revenue, your business folds.
What’s more, most people who land on your site won’t purchase right away. You need to constantly collect leads so you can nurture them and convert them into buyers in the future.
Not just any leads will do, however. Referrals, conferences, and cold calling are all great lead generation strategies, but they aren’t enough. You also need to learn how to generate more leads from your online campaigns.
Why are advertising leads better? Using targeting you can gather better leads faster and even automate parts of the process. How do you make sure your ads are driving quality leads?
How to Generate Leads Online: 7 Strategies to Drive More Leads
If you aren’t sure how to create a lead generation campaign, I have previous articles to walk you through the process. What I’m going to do is show you how to generate leads online by improving your existing ad campaigns.
Optimize Your Landing Page
Your landing page (or squeeze page) is one of the most important elements of your online lead generation campaign. The goal is to leave the visitor with no choice but to hand over information in exchange for something valuable.
Landing pages convert better than most other ads or offers. The average conversion rate is 2.35 percent, but some have conversion rates in excess of 10 percent. If your landing page’s conversion rate isn’t pushing double digits, you should look to optimize one or more elements ASAP.
I recommend looking at your page’s copy, including its headline, first. Make sure your copy is short, sharp, and engaging. Users need to understand exactly what your product is and how it helps them within a few seconds of landing on your site. Make sure you focus on the benefits of your product to the user, not its features.
Spend more time tweaking and testing your headline than anything else. This will be the first thing a user reads and one of the biggest deciding factors in whether they continue browsing the rest of the page.
You can speed up a user’s understanding of your product by including a video on your landing page. A good chunk of your audience would rather watch a video than read your copy, which is why 76 percent of sales teams say video is key to securing more deals.
Finally, remove all distractions from your page. The layout should be as simple as possible and there’s no need for a navigation bar or links to any other pages on your site. This leaves the user with two options: close their browser window or sign up.
ConvertKit’s Creator Pass is a fantastic example of how to create a great landing page. There’s no headline navigation, the headline copy offers a clear benefit, and there’s an enticing call to action right in front of you.
Generate more leads by optimizing your landing page.
Offer Real Value
Arguably the most important part of your landing page isn’t the copy, image, or CTA. It’s the piece of content, tool, or resource you offer in return for each lead’s email address.
For most brands, gated content takes the form of a PDF download, something like an ebook or a whitepaper. But it doesn’t have to be. Case studies, surveys, webinars and video series are all excellent types of gated content.
Whatever form your gated content takes, it must deliver tremendous value. Otherwise leads will leave your funnel as quickly as they entered. How do you deliver value? By solving a problem your leads have. What are their pain points? Where do they get stuck? What expertise can you leverage to make their lives a little bit easier?
Delivering value also means presenting gated content in the best way possible. Make it visually appealing, with images, videos, and other forms of multimedia content. The nicer it is for your leads to consume, the more they’ll engage with it.
Here’s an example of a non-ebook lead magnet from Leadpages:
Generate more leads by offering real value to the consumer.
They know their leads often struggle to create high converting pages, so they created a training course to solve that issue.
Use Automation to Nurture Leads
Collecting leads is just the first step of the process; you also need to nurture them. Only two percent of sales are made at first contact, yet most salespeople give up after the first attempt. If you automate the follow-up process, you don’t have to worry about a thing.
I recommend using email to nurture when possible. It is a great way to drip feed messages to your leads, it also generates massive ROI. According to research by the Direct Marketing Association, the ROI of email marketing is £42 for every £1 spent.
If you don’t have an email automation platform yet, check out my review of the best solutions. Then integrate your landing page’s form so every email is automatically added to your mailing list.
Next, create an automated series of emails that is sent out at regular intervals. Your goal is to take leads through each stage of the buying process—and that means providing them with the right educational content at the right time. Start by educating them about your wider industry and their general problems. A couple of emails later, you can start to focus on your product and service and how you can help.
The more emails you send, the more you can make your product the hero of the email, and the more direct you can be with the lead.
Use Chatbots to Turn Conversations Into High-Quality Leads
Your salespeople aren’t the only ones who can nurture leads. Chatbots can automate almost every part of the lead generation process. They’re incredibly effective at it, too. Over half of businesses that use AI-powered chatbots generate better quality leads.
Start by replacing forms on your landing page with a chat bot. Forms can be long-winded and rarely offer a great user experience. Chatbots make it easier for prospects to fill out their details. In some cases, users may not even be aware they’re filling out a lead form.
You can also use chatbots to respond to leads at lightning speed. Response time matters in lead generation. A study by Harvard Business Review shows businesses that respond to leads in under five minutes are 100 times more likely to convert them. With chatbots, you can automate the response process and send a message as soon as a lead fills out a form.
Finally, use chatbots to nurture and qualify leads. Chatbots can ask the same qualifying question as your salespeople to separate the wheat from the chaff. The best can be sent directly to sales, while everyone else is added to a nurturing sequence.
Drift’s chatbot is an excellent example of this. It asks a qualifying question as soon as someone lands on the site, putting them straight through to a sales rep if they’re ready.
Generate more leads by utilizing chat bots.
Use Multi-Platform Campaigns
How many platforms are you using to advertise your landing page and gated content? You probably aren’t using enough.
Today’s customer journey is long. Most don’t convert to customers the first time they land on your site. The majority probably won’t sign up on your landing page, either. A recent Google study found it takes between 20 and 500 touchpoints to become a customer.
The solution is a multi-touch campaign, where your message is delivered in multiple formats across multiple channels.
Advertising on a range of channels maximizes the chances that potential customers will see and click your ad. It’s a numbers game at the end of the day. The more shots you take, the more chances you have to score.
Leverage Personalization
If you want an easy way to increase conversion rates at every stage of your online lead generation campaign, try personalization. In a survey of B2B sales and marketing professionals, over three-quarters (77 percent) said personalization made for better customer relationships, and over half (55 percent) said personalization led to higher sales conversions.
How can you add personalization into your funnels to generate leads?
Start by personalizing your ads. While Apple may have made creating hyper-personalized ads a lot harder, Google still makes it relatively easy to personalize paid search ads with dynamic ads.
Next, personalize your landing page, particularly the call to action. Research shows personalized CTAs achieve 202 percent better conversions. Marketing tools like HubSpot and Unbounce can help you create dynamic CTAs that change depending on who views them. But you could also go old school and create several different versions of your page for each ad group and personalize the copy accordingly.
Finally, build personalization into your email automation tool. Every major email marketing tool makes it easy to automatically insert the recipient’s name into the subject line and body copy, so there’s absolutely no excuse not to personalize your nurturing emails.
Target Your Ads Carefully
There’s no point wasting resources nurturing leads who will never buy your product. That’s why you need to target your lead generation ads carefully.
I will say it’s important not to be too hasty when judging the performance of your landing page ads. When pruning and optimizing ad campaigns, don’t just judge performance based on how many people they send to your landing page that sign up. That’s a good measure, but it’s not as important as how many people actually convert into customers.
Think about it. One ad campaign could have a ridiculously high signup conversion rate of 20 percent. But if only a tiny fraction of those people make a purchase, it’s not a particularly effective ad. An ad campaign with a much lower signup conversion rate could be far more effective at generating high-quality leads.
Of course, this means you’re going to have to wait longer to collect relevant data. But the end result should be a much more targeted and effective ad campaign.
The best way to target ads effectively? Target keywords with higher buyer intent. These are search terms that indicate the user is closer to conversion.
Frequently Asked Questions About Generating More Leads
How do you build a lead generation campaign?
Start by having an objective and defining your target audience. Create a valuable piece of gated content and drive traffic to it using paid ads. Collect emails and then use email to nurture those leads.
What is an example of a lead generation marketing campaign?
A gated whitepaper is an example of a lead generation marketing campaign. Webinars can also be used as a lead generation marketing campaign to acquire leads and nurture them using video
How do I optimize my lead generation campaign?
There are several strategies to optimize lead generation campaigns. Improve your landing page copy, put your emails on autopilot, use chatbots to speed up response time, and personalize messaging.
Where should I advertise for my lead gen campaign?
Social media platforms are one of the most cost-effective places to advertise your lead generation campaign. But the important thing is to advertise wherever your target audience hangs out online.
Conclusion: Generate More Leads to Improve Marketing ROI
Improving your online marketing campaigns and optimizing how you generate leads are the keys to growing your business. But you don’t have to use all of the strategies I’ve listed all at once.
Optimizing your campaigns should be an ongoing endeavour, so pick one or two of these strategies to implement at a time. Pretty soon you’ll send your ROI skyrocketing.
Growing your online business can be difficult, especially if you’re doing it alone. You need the right marketing tool if you want your online marketing plan to succeed.
Growing your online business can be difficult, especially if you’re doing it alone. You need the right marketing tool if you want your online marketing plan to succeed. Small business owners often try to do their own marketing, but this can be very time-consuming and ineffective.
There are many great tools available that can help you reach your target audience and achieve your marketing goals. In this blog post, we will talk about 6 marketing tools you must have to grow your online business.
So, let’s get started!
6 Marketing Tools You Must Have To Grow Your Online Business
If you aren’t sure which marketing tool is best for your business, go to the KickAss MasterMinds website which carefully reviews various marketing tools and determine which will work best for your business. Plus, they offer an amazing community and support system to help you succeed.
We’ve put together a list of 6 popular marketing tools that we believe are essential for any business looking to grow online. These tools include:
Buffer
Buffer is one of the most popular social media scheduling tools for the web and mobile, designed to manage accounts on social networks. In the beginning, Buffer was a simple tool for scheduling Twitter posts, but now it’s become a more powerful tool for managing social media.
This tool allows users to schedule posts to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram Stories, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. You can also analyse your results and engage with your audience.
Even though it works for large companies, it is perfect for start-ups and small businesses who want to automate and optimize their social media strategies.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the most popular and best online marketing tools out there, so you are probably familiar with it. Ahrefs offers tools to build links and analyse competitors, track rank and audit your sites. When you are starting a business, it is a good idea to search for all your competitors in order to improve your marketing campaign.
Find out which backlinks they have and see if you can get the same ones for yourself. The majority of Ahrefs’s functionality is geared towards marketing professionals. Ahrefs is a popular website optimization tool for high Google rankings.
Hubspot
When it comes to marketing, sales, or CRM, Hubspot is a leading player. Hubspot tool helps you to create web forms, start an email marketing campaign, or analyse the behaviour of visitors. This tool is ideal for businesses of any size. You will find it quite useful for driving traffic, converting leads to customers, and keeping the teams organized and efficient.
MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing tools that allow you to send out emails to your customers. This tool offers several key features such as Website traffic tracking, Email templates, Widespread software integrations, Drip campaign design, and It’s free for small companies.
You can automate your emails with MailChimp and design campaigns with ease. The tool is easy to use, even though some of its marketing automation features are limited. If you want something more powerful, you might want to check out a tool like Autopilot or HubSpot. However, MailChimp is a great choice if you’re just starting out.
SEMrush
A successful marketing campaign and content are essential in this competitive era. With SEMrush, you can find valuable keywords, earn backlinks, and keep a close eye on your site’s performance.
It is easy for beginners to analyse organic and paid search results with this tool. With these tools, digital marketing and PPC experts can monitor their competitors and improve ranking.
ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is a popular marketing and sales funnel builder tool that helps you create high-converting websites and sales funnels. With ClickFunnels, you can create custom landing pages, email opt-ins, and order forms that will help you convert more leads into customers.
Plus, with the built-in split testing feature, you can test different versions of your funnel to see which one converts the most leads into customers.
Conclusion
If you want your online marketing plan to be successful, you need the right marketing tool. These tools will help you to reach new customers, connect with your audience, and increase sales. Therefore, if you’re looking to grow your business, be sure to use these marketing tools. Apart from these tools, there are many more that are not included in the list but are helpful for your digital marketing strategy.
Online marketing is an essential strategy for any business.
The internet allows all businesses to reach new customers who would otherwise be impossible to contact. Online marketing can be a very effective tool, but it’s important to measure your results, so you know what works and what doesn’t.
How to get started in online marketing?
To get started with online marketing. there are so many tasks that you have to complete before marketing your business.
Letting someone spend their precious money isn’t easy! Make sure you offer them the best deal ever.
Step 1. Start a website
The first step is to start your own website. A website is the foundation of any online business and so you should not neglect it. If you do not have one, create it immediately. The best way to get started is through WordPress.
You can use Wix or Squarespace but the problem is they don’t have SEO reach more than WordPress.
Step 2. List Your Products
The second step is to list your products or services. It means that your website should be fully operated and if anyone visits your website he/she gets the idea of what your business is about, and what services you are providing.
Step 3. Start Blog
Blog? Yes. You should post blogs on your website in order to explain everything about your business and services. It makes transparency for the customer, and it builds trust.
Step 4. FAQs
When someone visits your website he/she may get a lot of questions about your product or services. In order to give the answers, your website must have FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) section.
Step 5. Registration
Make sure that if someone visits your website, he must signup in order to take advantage of your products or services. It’s important to keep your customers for a long time.
Social Media Marketing
Social media is more than just a platform for sharing updates and photos. It’s the place where the majority of consumers spend most of their time online.
With such a high volume of people on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, advertisers are shifting their focus from traditional marketing channels to focus on social media.
Let’s talk about the 5 ways that are used to increase your sales.
1. Facebook/Instagram Marketing
Today the most common way of marketing is through social networks. This type of advertising allows firms to build and maintain relationships with their customers.
You can promote your products or services and customers can send you their feedback instantly, which means that you don’t have to wait to find out whether your campaign succeeded or not.
Facebook and Instagram are two of the biggest social networks in the world. If you manage to get a lot of likes, followers, and comments on your pages, then it will be easier for you to sell more products or services.
2. YouTube Marketing
Youtube is the second biggest search engine in the world. If you want to tap into this audience, you need to create youtube ads. Creating a youtube ad is simple and easy if you know how to do it.
Create a compelling video of your product or service. Upload the video on Youtube and use an effective title that will intrigue viewers. Write down a list of keywords related to your business.
Pro Tip: Make your ad video’s first 3 seconds compelling and attractive. That’s where you can grab your targeted audience to watch your full ad. If your ad video is good enough it will bring traffic to your website.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing can help you build relationships with your customers and provide valuable information that they want to receive.
It is a great way to build a community around your brand, and it helps to increase sales.
It keeps you in front of your customers and allows you to have conversations with them that help you learn more about what they need and want from your business.
But, How do you get E-mail subscribers?
That’s the important question that may come into your mind. At the start of this story, I have told you about adding a signup feature to your website. That’s where your answer is.
Whenever someone registers or signup to your website, you will receive his/her e-mail address. In short, he/she subscribes to your business email marketing.
4. Sponsor The Creators
The best way to market your business on social media is to sponsor YouTubers. These creators have the skill to sell anyone’s brand. Their audience trusts them and whenever they recommend your services or products, there are high chances of high sales. But make sure you are providing the best quality.
There are so many businesses we all came to know from YouTubers. For example:
Skillshare
Squarespace
StoryBlocks
Envato Elements
5. Give Free Trials
People are afraid of losing money on garbage. In order to attract them, you need to provide free trials so that these people try your product or service without the fear of losing money.
If your product or service makes their life easy they will definitely make a purchase.
Try to develop trust between your brand and your customers.
Learn more about digital marketing for small business
Digital marketing, also known as online marketing, involves publishing online marketing communications, promotions and digital adverts to connect with customers. It can include email, social media, and web-based ad banners.
Using the best CRM software can be a good starting point with digital marketing, helping develop customer relations and establishing what connections they may have with your firm. From there, you can use targeted marketing for specific interests.
What does digital marketing do?
Digital marketing transposes standard marketing into the online world (Image credit: Pexels)
Digital marketing is the natural evolution of traditional marketing. While the latter focuses on magazine ads, billboards, and direct mailings, digital marketing uses online video, website adverts, search engine marketing, and much more.
It can be divided up into more hands-off advertising, such as by displaying an advert to a customer as they watch a video or browse a website; or it can be more direct, such as via social media. Whether through sponsored adverts on a social media platform, or by a company posting information on their social media, it all comes under the banner of digital marketing.
A separate field includes search engine optimization (SEO), with websites that rank highly in search results often performing best amongst their customers. In conjunction with content marketing, it enables customers to gain more attention from potential clients, via driving awareness of the product.
After all, Google is often a key place for all consumers to search for something, so ranking highly proves beneficial.
How departments can use digital marketing for small businesses
Various different SMB departments can take advantage of, and utilize, digital marketing functions and services (Image credit: Pexels)
Customer service
Digital marketing in conjunction with good customer service can build up customer insight, ensuring that customers get the best service possible. Combined with digital marketing tools like HubSpot, Hootsuite, and various CRM software platforms, customer services can be more informed about the past history of a customer, as well as how they have previously interacted with a marketing campaign.
That leads to better customer service for the client, as they feel more like they’re gaining an individual service rather than being treated as a number. It also typically leads to issues being solved faster.
Sales
Sales relies heavily on good marketing. With more people using the internet and social media than ever before, digital marketing is a key component of that. With good quality digital marketing providing a strong message to potential customers, a sales team has an easier job converting a lead into a sale.
In turn, a customer feels far more informed thanks to seeing more of a product via digital marketing, so that they feel more confident in knowing they have purchased the right product for their needs.
Particularly for small businesses, a good reputation and a personal service goes a long way, meaning a well-combined digital marketing campaign and sales department ensures everyone is happy, and that feedback is positive.
Marketing
Traditional marketing and digital marketing can co-exist. For some businesses, one type may work better than the other.
It’s important to keep options open when starting out on a marketing campaign. Using marketing automation can help cut down some of the more tedious tasks associated with both traditional and digital marketing. B2B marketing automation may be required for small businesses that work with other companies.
Via automation, it’s possible to schedule social media messages to be sent out at a specific time. Automated emails can also be helpful. At all times, it’s important for both sides of marketing to communicate too, with CRM software helping here.
HR
HR departments can use digital marketing as a form of virtual paper trail. The HR department can check that marketing is working effectively by monitoring sales leads that are developed through it, via the use of relevant software.
They can also predict more accurately what the future holds for a small business based on prior results. From there, the department can work out if more investment in terms of employees need to be made when it comes to digital marketing services, which can also be used to help with recruitment.
Finance
Finance’s main role in conjunction with digital marketing is to determine budgets. A finance department can track the performance of individuals as well as specific campaigns, knowing where investment needs to be made to make the best of a digital marketing strategy.
It can also test scenarios to determine where the most successful marketing campaigns might lie, before creating reports that show what’s likely to occur. Being able to allocate budgets most appropriately is immensely useful to digital marketing, especially when it comes to acquiring funds for SEO-based campaigns, or purchasing social media software that aids automation.
Features and benefits of digital marketing for small business
You can reach more customers and improve sales by investing in digital marketing (Image credit: Pexels)
Modernization
Digital marketing is the most modern form of marketing. It’s not essential for all firms to implement, but it’s a good way of making even the smallest of businesses look very modern. Its modern nature is highly varied, ensuring that anyone can reach out to potential clients through various forms of social media, or go further by using advertising services to expand their horizons online.
Reaches a wide range of people
Because digital marketing is online, it can reach a wider range of people than traditional marketing that often relies on geography to make things possible. A social media presence ensures that a business can reach out to potential clients hundreds or even thousands of miles away, with locale no longer being a limited factor in getting the message out.
Thanks to algorithms on social media platforms, such messages can also pinpoint users that find the service more relevant, rather than relying upon adverts at bus stops or in local magazines, which tend to provide more scattershot results.
Better return on investment
A lot of digital marketing can be achieved relatively inexpensively compared to billboards or TV adverts. Devising a social media campaign takes time and money, but issuing it is relatively straightforward, meaning a better return on your investment.
It’s also more efficient, which saves the business time. Once certain services are set up, digital marketing can soon pay for itself through better reach and sales performance.
Better lead quality
Much of digital marketing is focused on a personalized service. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media services all use algorithms to recommend services and accounts that are most likely to be of interest to a user. By using social media for your digital marketing, users can instantly appeal to the customers best suited to them; meaning customers aren’t distracted by something irrelevant, and that a company’s sales team has genuinely-interested clients.
Builds up brand recognition
Marketing isn’t just about sales. It’s also about establishing brand familiarity. A name that someone sees everywhere is a name they are more likely to recommend to people, even if it’s not a product they use themselves. In the case of digital marketing, a strong social media presence can help immensely with creating a positive view.
It doesn’t need to be used for customer service or selling products. Many successful campaigns simply encourage interaction in a fun way, making a company seem more human than just a place to buy a product. It can even be used to develop product ideas.
Online marketing is the new-age reality and has opened a bold new world for entrepreneurs. However, the plethora of opportunities and promotional strategies available can be crippling to many entrepreneurs. Several startups and small businesses struggle with developing an effective strategy for enhancing their brand awareness. Given below are 5 expert-curated strategies to help entrepreneurs build their brand awareness.
1. Stay Updated About What Is Going Around You
Building brand awareness also calls for ‘awareness’ from your side. Based on the niche of your brand, stay updated about what is happening in the industry. Also, constantly analyze whether the requirements of your target audience have changed. It’s also essential that you remain in constant light about the latest marketing trends. For example, online video consumption has enormously risen in recent times. A study says that 83% of marketers believe that video is an important way of constant marketing, and it’s not a trend to be simply ignored. Hence, staying updated about all that’s happening around is very crucial for building brand awareness.
2. Create Resources For Your Audience
What do creating resources suggest? Brands can provide ‘how-to’ information and educate the audience about how their products or services are beneficial and provide solutions. Also, resources help the audience to understand the expertise of the brand and the team behind it. Most importantly, resources are shareable. Audiences share and re-share resources they find interesting and engaging. Infographics, tables, slides and how-to guides and videos are all examples of resources.
Confluencr – India’s largest influencer marketing agency partnered with Mirraw- a humble young brand with ambitious goals. Mirraw focuses on Indian ethnic wear, jewellery, and accessories with a clientele across India, Europe, and the United States. Mirraw’s goal was to build an enhanced presence in the market in the coming few years. The campaign that Confluencr designed for Mirraw was pivoted around building brand awareness across Instagram. Our campaign involved the promotion of resourceful content and hence we launched the ‘Your Kurti Fit’ campaign. What was it about? It was about spreading awareness about the importance of finding the perfect fit for apparel- because every person is unique. Micro and nano influencers collaborated with the brand for this campaign many of whom were lifestyle, fashion, and mom bloggers. The campaign received 43K+ engagement, 325K+ total views, 23K+ total likes, and 2,301 comments. That’s how powerful resourceful content is.
3. Build Your Brand Around Community And A Sense Of Belonging
A sense of belonging is a basic human need. People respond positively when they feel that they belong to a certain place or people. A study says that 13% of consumers are willing to pay 31-50% more if they notice that a certain product or service is making a positive impact on society. Hence, people’s sense of self is hugely reliant on the feeling of being a part of a community. Hence, if a brand promotes a sense of ‘we’ and relates itself to a bigger collective, people will sense that it shares common values and purpose. Hence, position your business with the community and people will realise that your brand is not just another name for a product or a service, but an extension of their lives.
4. Enhance The Customer Experience And Satisfaction
A brand, especially a young business should always go above and beyond to provide both potential and present customers ultimate satisfaction. This should be the ultimate goal of a business. Unsatisfied customers are a piece of bad news in the age of online reviews. Happy and satisfied customers will leave positive feedback and will likely recommend the brand to several others.
5. Consistency Is The Key
A lack of consistency will create a barrier between the customers and the brand. Hence, consistency is one of the most effective strategies for amplifying brand awareness. People will not remember everything they see or hear on social media or online platforms. Hence, Entrepreneurs should keep in constant touch. Research says that consistent presentation of a brand will enhance the revenue by 33%. Hence, a brand should stay consistently connected with the audience until it builds significant momentum.
Conclusion
Effective strategies can amplify brand awareness, help reach more prospective customers and also build value for your brand. They positively impact the scalability of your brand, helping you to inflate your brand awareness with each step you take. Don’t rely on quick fixes. Rather, think of long-term benefits. That way you will be able to increase brand awareness in the right manner with the right audience.
