Looking for some email marketing tips for more subscribers? A few ways to increase email subscribers include creating compelling lead magnets, optimizing sign-up forms for user experience, leveraging social media platforms, and offering exclusive content. Personalizing emails, segmenting lists for targeted messaging, and using engaging subject lines are key. Regular testing and analyzing subscriber behavior for insights also contribute to growing an email list effectively.
Email marketing is important because it remains one of the most effective ways to communicate with prospects and customers. The average open rate varies from industry to industry, with those in the hobbies industry getting the highest open rate of 28.85%, and the highest click-through rate of 5.41%. Perhaps not so shockingly, daily deals and e-coupon emails get the lowest open rate of 13.87%, and the lowest click-through rate of 1.81%.
The point is, that some industries do better with email marketing than others, just due to the nature of the business. But no matter which niche you’re serving and the size of your subscription base, you should focus on creating quality emails – they too, are content just like your blog posts, eBooks, infographics, and videos.
If you’re aiming to get 100% of your subscribers opening 100% of your emails, you’re going to be disappointed. The fact is, people are constantly inundated with email, and not every message you send out will interest them. And even if it does, there’s a chance they won’t even see it.
You’d think that because of how much email we get, as more than 205 billion are sent and received each day, email marketing wouldn’t be worth it anymore, but the data shows otherwise. The Direct Marketing Association says email marketing yields an estimated 4,300% ROI. Every dollar you spend on email marketing offers a return of $44. You should keep sending emails because email marketing remains nearly 40 times more effective than social media when it comes to acquiring customers.
Take a look at these tips to help improve your email marketing strategy so you can get more subscribers.
1. Your Subject Lines Matter
Your subject line is your only chance to grab your subscriber’s attention.1/3 of recipients open emails based on the subject alone. 2/3 of them report email as spam based on subject line (whether they’re subscribed or not.)
There are all kinds of stats out there about the best words to use, the words you should avoid – the best length to use… but in all honesty, none of these really matter. They can help you with general guidelines, but those stats are based on small samples from one company, or a global average, with a relatively small sample compared to all email accounts.
Emails with personalized subject lines – such as using the subscriber’s first name, are 26% more likely to be opened. When you consider that personalized emails provide an overall boost to all industries email open rates, but certain industries, like travel and consumer products see above average rates (40.8 and 41.8% respectively), while others like media and entertainment and business products and services see below average rates (1.1% and 13.3% respectively), it’s hard to say exactly what the impact will have for you and your business. Plus, not all brands are personalizing their subject lines – and this can skew the data.
The best thing you can do is you own testing, specific to your audience – and you can do it each time you start a new venture, because no two audiences will be exactly the same. Do this by gathering a set of your email subscribers and splitting them into two even groups.
Send one half of the list an email with one subject line – then the other half of the list with another. 24 hours after the messages are sent, use your email marketing platform to determine which messages are opened, and which ones are not.
Test again and again as desired to find the words and phrases your audience responds to, for each type of message you send.
2. Subscribe to Your Own Lists
You know what your messages will say, of course, but you need to be a subscriber on your own list so you can make sure your messages are going out when you expect them to, and look the way they are supposed to. If you can’t find your own messages, or notice they’re going to your spam filter, then you can spot issues and fix them before they start to negatively affect your list. If you’re segmenting – more on that below – make sure your email address is included in all the segments so you can see what each email looks like – not just the ones to the general list.
3. Subscribe to Lists of Experts in Your Niche
This is an excellent way to do a competitive analysis of sorts. You can see what other industry experts are doing, and see how well what you’re doing matches it. If they’re wildly popular with an audience that’s similar to yours, you can mimic their approach. Don’t copy exactly what they’re doing, of course, but you can make adjustments to your strategy to improve your efforts.
4. Harness the Power of Segmentation
Nearly half of email marketers are sending everyone the same message. When you consider that not everyone needs to hear the same message – some people on your list have made purchases from you, while others maybe haven’t yet – this is not the ideal approach. Personalization goes a long way, not only in those subject lines, but in conversion, too.
How you choose to segment your customers is up to you, and a lot of it will depend on your strategy. Some options include segmentation based on:
Location/geography
Gender
Age
Job function
Persona
Buying frequency
Change in buying behavior
Past purchases
Purchase interests
Purchase cycle
Stage in the sales cycle
Industry
Education level
Organization type
Seniority level
Interest level
Content topic
Content format
Change in level of content engagement
Satisfaction index
Customers who’ve referred others to you
Customers who haven’t left reviews of your business/products
Customers who’ve abandoned their shopping carts
Customers who’ve abandoned forms on your website
Customer usage – helpful for services/apps
Event attendance
Page views
Calls-to-action clicks
Research provides proof of the benefits of list segmentation. On a global level, across all segmented campaigns, compared to their non-segmented counterparts:
Opens: 63% higher
Unique Opens: 82% higher
Clicks: 27% higher
Bounces: 36% lower
Abuse Reports: 7% lower
Unsubscribes: 36% lower
Segmentation can be considered part of personalization – as each person receives an email that’s more relevant to their experience with your brand. A 2013 study from Experian showed that personalized promotional emails increased transaction rates and revenue per email 600% compared to non-personalized emails. It also showed personalized promotional emails had 29% higher open rates and 41% more unique click through rates. Another source indicates personalized emails increase conversion rates by 10%, while yet another says segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue.
5. Format for Mobile
Yes, some people still check their emails from a desktop computer. But, as mobile has overtaken desktop for internet usage, more and more people are turning to mobile devices to check their email, too. An estimated 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices, but 75% of Gmail’s 900 million accounts are accessed via mobile. If your messages are not displaying correctly, then you’re going to have a hard time convincing people to read and click through, let along open any future messages from you.
It’s also worth mentioning that Gmail is the most-used mail client online. As such, make sure you’re formatted to look great there. Plus, do what you can to land in the “primary” tab, so your messages are more likely to be seen.
6. Stop Wasting Time
Shorter emails have the highest open and click rates. That’s not to say you can’t and won’t have success with longer emails. But, generally speaking, people prefer it when you get straight to the point. It saves time for you, because you’re not having to write as much in each email, and it saves time for them because it doesn’t take as long to scan, or read.
Try to limit your emails to just a couple of paragraphs or less. If it needs to be longer, put the information in a blog post, and then include a link to the blog post in the email. There’s no guarantee people will click through to the blog post and read it, but then again, there’s no real guarantee they’d read the entirety of the email, either. It’s a gamble either way, so you may as well do your best to make it convenient for your readership.
7. It’s Not About the Sales Pitch
Yes, the point of email marketing is to grow your list so you can make more money. But, email marketing is just like social media. You don’t, or you shouldn’t, promote your business with every single post on Facebook or Twitter. And every email you send out shouldn’t be a sales pitch for something you’re offering.
When you’re running a sale, it’s one thing to send an email to let people know. But, when every single email you send out has something directly to do with selling your products, it becomes a hassle for your subscribers. They want information about your company, and want to stay connected to you, but when you’re constantly pitching them for money – they’ll stop reading. Your emails will be deleted, or possibly reported as spam. And the worst possible reaction? They unsubscribe from your list.
8. Speak as if You’re Writing to a Friend
When you write your emails, write as though you’re speaking directly to the persona like the two of you are friends. This helps build an emotional connection with the reader, and ensures you’re not using a bunch of industry jargon. When someone is on your email list, they need to feel like they are part of an exclusive club of people – compared to the people who may be your customers, but aren’t part of your list.
9. Make it Easy for People to Sign Up
If you want more subscribers, don’t make them hunt for the form. Keep it on the sidebar of the home page. Include it as a call to action on your blog posts. For instance, something like, “Like what you see here? Get more by signing up for our email list below.”
Other quick and easy ways to boost your subscriber count include:
Include a link to your opt-in page on your Facebook page, or pin a Facebook post to the top of your page. You can also add a sign up button as a call to action button on Facebook.
Add the link to your Twitter bio, too. If you don’t like that idea, you can pin a tweet to your landing page or email magnet.
Add your opt-in link to your email signature. This way every business email you send gives the potential for a new subscriber.
Test an exit-intent popup – giving users one more chance to sign up before they go. It’ll only popup for people who haven’t subscribed already. If there’s a negative response, then you can always remove it later. Try split-testing it to see what happens, as certain audiences will respond better to it than others.
10. Practice Makes Perfect
The more you write emails to your list, the better you’ll become at it. Of course, the more you segment your list, the more emails you’ll have to write. But, because each of these emails can be written in a friendly manner, speaking directly to that audience segment, it should be easier to write each message. And because you want to keep them as short as possible out of respect for the reader’s time (and yours), it shouldn’t take you too long to get into the habit of cranking out those messages when you need to. Plus, many messages, like the shopping cart abandonment or request for review email can be written once and sent out to whomever, as needed.
What other tips do you have to improve your email marketing? What have you found to be successful for your business? Tell me in the comments below.
An editorial calendar for your blog helps you keep up with what needs to be written and published and when. It’s a good idea to put one together for the month, if not for the year, at the beginning of the year. It helps you plan your blog’s content around marketing campaigns, holidays, and other events, too. Knowing what you’ve got coming up ensures your content and other assets are always ready to go ahead of time off and sick days. Plus, if you’ve got a team of people working on the blog, the editorial calendar keeps everyone working from the same page – saving time and potential frustration from duplicated efforts.
Step One: Determine Your Categories
If you’re working with a brand new blog, you’ll need to determine the categories you’ll use. If you have an existing blog, it’s a good time to do an audit. What are the broad topics you cover on your blog? Those are good places to start with your categories.
If you’ve already got categories, take a look at where you placed posts in the past year. Are there any categories you’re not using? Are there any categories you could combine into one? Are there any new categories you should add based on a new direction you’re taking with your blog this year?
Step Two: Post Frequency
How often are you going to post on your blog? Nothing says you have to post every day, but whatever schedule you’re going to follow, it’s a good idea to keep it consistently, for the sake of your audience.
If you’re not sure what you can commit to, start small with one to three posts a week. As you get more comfortable with it, you can decide whether or not you want to increase it, or add another writer or two to your team.
Step Three: Spreadsheet or in Your Blog?
For most people, the spreadsheet seems to be the easy answer. But, the older your blog gets, or the more people you have involved in the topic selection and post approval process, the harder it can be to manage.
If You Opt for a Spreadsheet:
If the spreadsheet seems to be the easiest thing for you to do, make sure you have columns for the following information.
Post Date
Author – if you’re part of a multi-author blog
Working Title – at least just the topic you want to cover
Post Description – this can be something to remind you what you want to cover, or it can be a meta description, if you want. If it’s a basic description of what you want to cover, it can help you when it comes time to write the meta description for SEO purposes.
Status – draft, written, scheduled, published, hold
Category
Tags and Keywords
Calls to Action
Notes/Resources
This will help you keep track of what you need to write and publish and when. If you need to share it with others, use something like Google Sheets or add it to a shared folder in Dropbox or OneDrive.
WordPress Plugins to Help You
If a spreadsheet seems like it will be too much work to keep up with as things scale, you can keep an editorial calendar right within your blog, using a plugin.
Editorial Calendar: This is a free, no-frills option, which works wonderfully for a single blogger. It presents a calendar format where you can create a new post, which automatically places one in draft on that date. If you change your mind and want to move it, simply click and drag it over to the new date. As your blog grows, this one will continue to do you well. However, you may find it becomes less effective if you bring on additional authors to contribute.
CoSchedule: This is a premium plugin that will run you $10/month. But, for many, it’s worth it simply because of the additional features it offers compares to free plugins. It’s a great option for people who are working as part of a team, because it makes it easy for everyone to leave notes and comments for each other. Plus, you can add tasks to each post, and assign those tasks and posts to anyone on the team. You can make the tasks anything you want – so it can be as simple as “research for X post” or “image creation” or something completely different and unrelated. One reason people like CoSchedule is the fact that you can manage your social media promotion from the calendar, crafting and scheduling social media updates to go along with each post. And, your blog posts aren’t the only thing you can add to the social media calendar.
EditFlow: This is a free plugin that works well for teams. It’s a lot like the Editorial Calendar plugin, but has additional features like editorial comments, custom post statuses, and user groups, so you as the blog owner can more easily collaborate with your writing team, and even on a post-by-post basis. The idea is to reduce the number of emails that go back and forth between the writer and editor, and by keeping the notes for each post in a central place, you save time and effort. Custom statuses make it easier for you to create the workflow that works best for you, and allows you to focus solely on posts in each status group. For instance, if you have “needs edits” you can sit down and work with all the writers on posts that need editing before they can move to “ready for scheduling”. Then, you can look at all the posts in that category and schedule them out as needed to fit with your posting frequency.
Step Four: Plan for Guest Posts and Roundups
You don’t have to have something to fill every single part of the calendar on the days you intend to publish. You can leave room for curated link round ups, and guest posts from other bloggers, too. And until you gain enough traction to get people submitting guest posts to you, you can use networks to help you.
My Blog Guest: This is a free website for guest bloggers. You can sign up and offer guest blog content to other bloggers, and also let bloggers know you’re open to receiving and publishing guest posts from them. You can use the platform to network with other bloggers and build relationships, too.
Blogger LinkUp: This website is a list of resources for bloggers, but part of the website is dedicated to connecting bloggers and guest posters. You can submit requests for the type of posts you’re looking for, and other people can reach out to submit posts that fit those guidelines.
Becoming a part of these two sites can help you fill your editorial calendar with quality content without having to write every single thing yourself. As far as roundups go, you can host your own, or use them to promote your content on other blogs.
There’s some debate as to whether guest posts are a viable part of an SEO strategy anymore. In fact, Matt Cutts, a Google employee, said himself that guest blogging is no longer effective for SEO in January 2014. He says it’s gotten too spammy, and just doesn’t carry the same weight as it used to.
Others argue the practice isn’t dead – the statement from Cutts just meant the low quality fluff wasn’t going to pass anymore. Focus on quality, and the rest will fall into place. That’s why we’re still talking about guest blogging/posting years later. If you’re a good writer (or hire a good one to ghost for you) and can provide quality and value with each of your posts – whether they’re going on your blog, another blog, or a major publishing platform – then that’s all that really matters.
Step Five: Start Filling Everything In
The beauty of an editorial calendar is the flexibility that’s built into it. As ideas start coming to you, start filling in as many details as much as possible. You’ll only be locked in to certain topics for certain times of the year – such as holiday topics around those days – but everything else you can move around as you see fit.
It’s up to you how much work you want to do at this stage – simply coming up with basic topic ideas could be enough, or, you may want to go more in-depth here, to make the actual writing stage simpler when the time comes.
What I like to do is come up with as many ideas as possible, place them on my calendar, and then when I’m finished there, I focus on the week at hand with more detail – finding keywords, images, and some basic links for research. Once I write a couple posts for the week, I’ll go back add more details to the topics for the rest of the month, so I can sit down and just write, for the most part.
That’s what works for me, but I realize that workflow won’t work for everyone. The beauty of the calendar is you can setup a workflow that works well for you. You may choose to batch your topics, batch your images… or write full post outlines, working only one week at a time for the whole year. Play around with it until you find the most efficient workflow that makes sense for you.
Step Six: Write and Schedule
Even if you don’t get the whole thing filled in right away, start writing and scheduling the first posts you have on tap for at least the first week, if not the first week or two. You don’t want to get too far ahead if your topics rely on timeliness, but you want to be far enough ahead to where you can take an unexpected day off without throwing off your entire blogging schedule.
I like to sit down once a week and write the posts for the week, going back to my editorial calendar to see what’s on tap. Some weeks, when I know I have more going on than usual, I will write less. But, the weeks when I know I have time, I will write a few more, just to make sure I have a steady flow of content ready to be published.
Step Seven: Consider What and How You Can Repurpose
Just because you’ve written a blog post on a topic doesn’t mean you can’t use that post or topic again. I’ve written about all the ways you can repurpose content, to help you get those creative juices flowing.
Keep Yourself On Track with Your Calendar
Blogging is hard work, and since consistency is the key to making it work for your business, your editorial calendar is a critical tool for your success. It should keep you from running out of things to blog about, and give you what you need to write ahead of time when you have extra time to devote to your blog.
What kind of editorial calendar do you use? Do you keep it with your social media calendar, or separate from it? Tell me in the comments below.
Today’s consumer belongs to an average of 13.4 loyalty programs, but are only active in 6.7. More than half of brands (57%) say they’ll increase loyalty program budgets in 2017. Why? The simple fact is it costs more to sell to a brand new customer than it does to sell to an existing one. It makes good business sense to reward the people who are loyal to your company, to keep them coming back for more, and convert them to brand ambassadors who are out there championing for you.
But, unfortunately for marketers, it’s not just slapping together any old program and seeing results. To see a return on investment (ROI) on your program, it’s critical to lay the necessary groundwork to foster success once it launches to your customer base. Want to make sure you build a program that fits into that active 6.7?
Developing the Right Loyalty Program for Your Business
Mine Your Data
A 2014 poll revealed 67% of customers would be willing to give information to businesses in exchange for better products and services. Though it is limited to rather basic information like name and demographics, 34% are willing to provide contact information to get more personalized offerings.
Take a look at the customer data you have on hand and see if you can identify any patterns. What products are most popular? Least popular? What’s the average order value? What percentage of your customer base is new vs. returning? How many times have your most loyal customers shopped with you? How many people are using promotional codes to save money?
This information can help you decide what kind of structure you need to develop your program with, as well as provide insights into what rewards would likely perform the best with your audience.
Choose Your Goals
What do you want to accomplish with the program? Of course you want to increase your customer base and profits, but what else is there? Do you want to drive engagement? Whatever your goals may be, make sure you program aligns with it.
Also make sure you have a clear goal for your customers to shoot for – a free product or discount is usually the right answer.
Keep the Structure Simple
The more complex a loyalty program structure becomes, the harder it is for your employees to keep up with, and the less likely customers are to participate. Your program should be simple, like a punch card – buy X products, get 1 free. Or, if you want to go a bit more sophisticated, earn X points per $1 spent. Get rewards at X points. Create tiered rewards to encourage people to spend more and save their reward points.
Dell, for instance, has an incredibly simple program. Their Advantage Rewards program gives 10% of your purchase price back to you in the form of an electronic gift card, if you pay for your purchase with a Dell Preferred Financing account. You have 90 days to use the card after issuance. Plus, you’ll automatically get free two-shipping on your order just for being a member. Members get monthly discount offers, and access to partner offers from FedEx, Sprint, SocialShield, and Iolo Technologies. It doesn’t matter how you pay to get those benefits.
Kohl’s Yes to You Rewards offers a reward program to all shoppers, regardless of payment method used. Earn a point for every dollar spent over the course of a month. Every 100 points translates to $5 in Kohl’s cash. Plus, you’ll get eight offers a year, and $10 Kohl’s Cash for your birthday.
Ford’s Owner Advantage Rewards program allows customers to earn 5% back in credit on parts and service purchases, regardless of a vehicle’s make or model. When you’re ready to redeem, you can apply all, or a portion of your rewards balance to your purchase.
Each program is unique in the benefits it offers to customers, but they all keep it easy to earn and redeem rewards. And, because sign up is simple, participation is likely higher than if it required a complex process. The majority of customers (70%) will not sign up for a program if they think the registration process is inconvenient and time-consuming.
Choose Awesome Rewards (You Can Afford)
Of course the rewards should serve as an incentive for your customers to want to redeem them, but they also need to be something you can afford to give without cutting too deeply into your profit margin. This is why free product credit is usually the default reward.
The Starbucks Rewards program used to be based on the number of times you visited over the span of a year. Now, to increase participation, they’ve switched the program to earning two stars for every dollar spend. In the past, customers had to visit 12 times (transactions) to earn “Gold” status, which earned them a free food or drink item. The company said customers were asking baristas to ring up items separately to get more stars, making everything take longer. Now, customers have to earn 125 stars to hit that reward. At $5 visit, that’s still about 12 visits.
About one in six customers is a member of the program, and those members spend an average of three times more than a non-member customer.
Will There Be a Membership Fee?
This really depends on your industry, current customer base, and what the competition is doing. A lot of the time, charging a fee is not the answer. While it does do a bit to guarantee people will actually use the program, it may turn some customers off.
Amazon Prime is the perfect example of a loyalty program with a membership fee. You don’t earn rewards like you do with programs I’ve already mentioned, but the membership comes with a number of perks. For $99/year, subscribers get:
Free two-day shipping on eligible products
Free same day delivery in eligible zip codes
Free two-hour delivery or scheduled delivery on eligible items in eligible zip codes
Restaurant delivery in eligible zip codes.
Free release-date delivery on eligible pre-ordered items
Unlimited streaming in Prime Video
Unlimited ad-free streaming in Prime Music
Unlimited photo storage in Prime Photos
Access to Prime Pantry where members can get low-priced grocery and household items for a flat rate of $5.99 shipped.
Access to Amazon Elements, a line of every day products
Access to Amazon Dash buttons
Prime Early Access: 30-minute early access to lightening deals
Kindle Owners’ Lending Library
Prime Reading
Membership sharing
And more
It offers value to people who place a lot of online orders because of the free shipping, but if that’s the only benefit you’re able to use, or you don’t order much, it doesn’t make much sense to join.
2014 data suggests about 45% of Amazon’s customers are Prime members, and those members spend an average of $1,500 a year, compared to non-Prime members spending an average of $625 a year.
Barnes & Noble also charges a fee to participate in their loyalty program. For $25/year, members get more than $50 in bonus coupons when they join. Over the course of the year, members get special savings throughout the year, and free one to three-day shipping on all online orders.
Use the Program to Stay in Touch with Your Customers
Your customers are likely already signed up to receive emails from you, but there should be a segment of your list specifically for the people who are members of your program. This way you can send them exclusive offers and give extra thanks for their participation in the program. Plus, if you’re ever looking for feedback on the program, you can reach out to them direction.
Market, Market, and Market Some More
The program isn’t going to do a bit of good unless people know about it. You need to make sure your existing customers know about the program, and can sign up easily the next time the shop with you, either online or in-store.
Run ad campaigns on social media to notify your current and prospective fans about the program. Write and distribute a press release to spread the word. Include information about the program and how to join in your email newsletter sent to current subscribers.
Go With the Flow
You must be able to analyze the results of the program after launch, and see how well it’s working. If people aren’t responding the way you anticipated, conduct a survey to get feedback about it. Watch how patterns in shopping are changing. Try adjusting the program to make it more enticing based on available data insights.
Depending on what feedback indicates you could:
Simplify the signup process
Remove the need for a physical card
Lower the reward thresholds
Increase the value of the rewards
Add bonuses for referring new members to the program
Decrease membership fee
The Benefits of a Customer Loyalty Program
Increased Customer Retention
Keep your existing customer base making purchases from you longer and more often. And, a loyalty program can help you find the customers you lost, and find ways to try to win them back. You’ll over time learn who your best customers are, so you can make sure they are treated well. You’ll start to notice patterns in their buying behavior, which you can use to create better products and services and tailor your marketing campaigns accordingly.
Gather More Data
Not only do you get to see what’s selling, you can see who’s buying it. This allows you to send more personalized offers, which customers appreciate. The more data you have on your customers and how they’re interacting with your business, the better your marketing efforts can be.
Increased Sales – and Profit
When customers have incentive to shop with you more often, they usually will. As such, you should see an increase in overall sales – either in the form of additional transactions, higher AOV, or a combination of the two. And with more sales, comes more profit. Plus, your loyalty program may entice new customers to shop with you, adding to the benefit.
Why Customer Loyalty Programs Work
Rewards programs work mainly based on the psychological principles of ego, and the fact that humans are competitive by nature. One study showed people love collecting points, even when the points have no monetary value. Even though you can’t exchange points for tangible benefits, people will still spend a lot of time accumulating the points just to beat others, or to compete with themselves. If you really want to cash in on this phenomenon, add tiers to your program like Starbucks, to encourage people to keep going to get the higher level rewards.
Do you have a customer loyalty program? Why, or why not? If you do, what have you found to be the most effective? Has the ROI been worth it? Tell me all about it in the comments.
You use images online and off – for nearly everything in your business. Your business card, flyers, brochures, menus, social media graphics, blog posts… they are everywhere. And if you’re just Googling the images you want, and saving from there, you could be in serious trouble. If the licensing isn’t right – you’re stealing.
The Creative Commons licenses are a blessing for creatives and small businesses alike. Creatives often don’t want their work used for free without credit, but at the same time, small businesses don’t have the budget to be paying for expensive stock photography all the time. This set of licenses allows creatives to get their work distributed with credit, while also giving small business owners a large library of content to work with in their projects.
Even still, not all Creative Commons licenses are appropriate, and it’s important to understand the differences between them. If you misuse photos, you’re potentially opening yourself up to a world of legal trouble. For instance, if you alter a photo that has a no derives license, or use a non-commercial only photo for commercial purposes, you’re violating the terms of the license, and therefore are breaking copyright law.
It is possible to use Google to find content you can use under those licenses, so if you’re doing that, you should be okay. To do this:
Under the “usage rights” option, choose the one that is most appropriate for you to use. For instance, if you intend to use the images for commercial purposes, you’ll need to make sure you exclude non-commercial. If you want to be able to make adjustments to the image, select the “free to use, share, or modify, even commercially” option to return only results with that license.
This is the most open of the license, allowing people to distribute, edit, and build upon the original work, even for commercial purposes, so long as they credit the original creator of the work.
To attribute the work, simply include something along the lines of “Photo Credit: Author” with a link to the image or the creator’s profile.
This is the same license as the one above, with the addition of the fact that the new creation is licensed in the same way. This means any derivatives of the work will carry the same license, even for commercial use. This is the license Wikipedia uses, so creators who hope to see their works there should use the same.
This license allows for redistribution, whether commercial or non-commercial, so long as it is distributed unchanged, and includes credit to the original creator of the work. It cannot be altered in any way.
This license allows the original work to be altered and distributed for non-commercial uses, as long as credit is given to the original creator. If you’re using the images for business purposes, or anything that will help make you money, you cannot use photos under this license.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
This license allows the original work to be altered and distributed for non-commercial uses, as long as credit is given to the original creator. Any derivatives of the work must carry the same license.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
This license allows the original work to be distributed for non-commercial uses, as long as credit is given to the original creator. It cannot be used for commercial purposes, and it cannot be altered to create new works. This is the most restrictive licensing, but works for personal projects.
CC0 – Public Domain – All Rights Granted/No Rights Reserved
With this license, the creators of the original work choose to waive their interest in the work, thereby adding it to the public domain. This allows others to build upon and enhance the works, or reuse them for any purpose, either commercial or non-commercial, without restriction under copyright law.
This is the best license for you to use for projects, either commercial, or non, if you’re not sure about the restrictions on the license. If you cannot afford an enhanced or an extended license on another platform, try looking for a similar photo with CC0 licensing, to make sure you’re covered legally.
Finding License Information
Most photo repositories provide the licensing information for each photo on the download page. Pexels, for instance, provides the source of the image, along with the license type, and the basic information about the license before you download it. All photos on this site, as well as the photos and video found on Pixabay are licensed with CC0, so you can use it however you wish, without attribution.
Flickr, on the other hand, features photos with a variety of licenses, so you must be careful if you find a photo there you want to use. Businesses should always select the “Commercial use allowed” option on the search. And if you plan to add or change anything on it, make sure you choose the “Commercial use & mods allowed” option.
What About Stock Photos?
If you’re licensing photos from stock repositories like Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, or Dreamstime, you are paying for the license to use the photos, so no attribution is required. But, it is important to pay attention to the details of the license to make sure you remain compliant. Some licenses only give you the right to use the image online, and not in print.
For instance, the Adobe Stock Standard license, gives you the right to create no more than 500,000 copies of the images in “print, digital documents, software, or by broadcasting to more than 500,000 viewers.” You cannot create products for resale where the main value is the image itself. This means you can’t make t-shirts and coffee mugs or similar products that feature the images. The Enhanced license, which is automatically included with videos and premium images, you get the same thing you’ll find in the standard license, but the 500,000 copy/view restriction is lifted. If you want to create products for resale, you’ll have to pay for the Extended license, as this removes the copy restriction and the resale restriction.
A Shutterstock standard image license, however, offers a bit of a difference. Beyond the same 500,000 copies/viewers limitation, it also allows images to be used in film, video, TV series, or multimedia productions, without regard to audience size, so long as the production budget does not exceed $10,000. You must have the enhanced license if you want to lift restrictions on the number of reproductions, impressions, or budget; or if you want to create merchandise, or use it for wall art in a commercial space, rather than sell the art itself.
If you purchase a photo with a standard license for one project, and want to use it again in another, you’ll need to license it again.
Where to Find Images
I’ve written a post about tools for stellar social media images, which covers a number of places you can find images with CC0 licensing, or paid licensing stock. But, beyond that, there are several Creative Commons platforms you can use to find what you need for your projects – whether images or video.
Flickr: Find thousands of images from all over the world to use in your projects.
YouTube: Find thousands of videos from all over the world to use in your projects.
Vimeo: This is another video hosting service that offers an alternative to using YouTube content.
Bandcamp: Find music to suit any project you’re working on.
500px: This is another platform for finding photos you can use in projects. Photographers can join and include their photos on the website. The 500px Marketplace includes a selection of royalty-free stock photos.
Internet Archive: This is a non-profit library of websites, music, books, audio files, movies, and software, all available for free.
Jamendo: This is a platform for finding music available under Creative Commons. You can find communities, playlists, and latest releases. It’s possible to search for music by genre. Even if you don’t want to use it for commercial purposes, it can be a great way to discover new artists and have great music to add to your multimedia projects.
Know the License Before You Do Anything
It’s absolutely imperative to know the license before you do anything to the photo, or include it in a blog post, or as part of any other materials for your business. When in doubt, use images with the CC0 license. Make sure you keep track of where the images come from, so you can prove their license if necessary.
What Can Happen if You Violate Licensing?
The original creator of the media, whether it’s a photo, video, or audio, may choose to take no action, either because he or she doesn’t notice, or is happy with the exposure. But, they also have the option to:
Get the media removed by sending a DMCA Takedown Notice. Though the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a part of U.S. Copyright law, the content doesn’t have to be copyrighted to process the takedown or request the content be taken down.
Send your company a Cease and Desist Letter. This is a document that tells you to stop doing what you’re doing, and to repair any harm you’ve caused as a result of the action. It is not legally binding, or a guarantee of a lawsuit. However, if you don’t follow it, it could result in legal action being taken against you.
Send a bill with a copy of the licensing agreement, along with a letter saying you’ve committed yourself to paying the licensing fee since you’re already using the photo.
Sue you for copyright infringement. This typically only happens when the creator has the funds to hire a lawyer. Copyright infringement suits are complex, and come with a three-year statute of limitations. This means that even if you don’t get sued right away, the creator has up to three years from the initial infringement to bring a lawsuit to court. If the court finds you guilty, you could have to pay damages, up to $150,000 to the media’s creator.
Do You Attribute Images When It’s Not Required?
You’ll see a photo credit for each of the photos I include in my blog posts. I license them from Adobe Stock, or pull them from Creative Commons sources. Though many of my images legally require no attribution, I include attribution anyway. It covers me legally, while sharing the love. It’s better to be safe than sorry.
Where do you get the images you use for your business? Did you know about all the different Creative Commons licenses?
Infographics have become one of the most popular ways to share large amounts of information in an easy to understand format. When done properly they are visually pleasing, interesting, and useful. One of the best ways to repurpose popular content is to design a new infographic using the information. Once the infographic is ready to publish, use some of the following techniques to promote your infographics and ensure as many people as possible can benefit from it.
Locate the Right Influencers
Think about the most important aspect of the infographic and who would benefit from the information. Look for social media influencers in this niche. Reach out to them via email or social media with a link to the infographic and why you think it might be of interest to them and their followers.
Influencers have received a great deal of press in niches such as beauty and food but there are relevant and active influencers in every field. Finding a big name that is in a completely different area will not provide the desired results since it does not place the infographic in front of those who will truly be interested in what it has to say. Ensure the influencer(s) chosen align with the message of the infographic and the intended marketing goals. Even if their realm of influence is not as extensive as some of the bigger names, they still have access to new people and their extended social networks, which can greatly improve the impact of your infographic.
Promote Your Infographics on Pinterest
Pinterest is one of the most obvious locations for sharing an image like an infographic. Pinterest is formatted to showcase gorgeous images, so it makes perfect sense to start there. It is a visual search engine designed for social sharing. Make sure the design is impeccable and the pin is clear and crisp.
To ensure it is found when people are searching for the topic, it is vital to write the description with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. Unlike many other social media platforms that rely on hashtags, Pinterest is primarily a search engine and content written for it should reflect this. A string of keywords may be tempting but thoughtfully written text will be far more effective.
Pinterest is also one of the few places the infographic will be visible in its entirety. Make sure the company name and website are clearly identified at the top of the infographic to help people identify who provided the content.
Get Creative With Your Infographic on Instagram
Instagram requires a different promotional approach for infographics because the format is more limited. It is possible to address this in several ways. You can create a cover image the shows only part of the infographic to be promoted on Instagram, create a video that shows the entire thing, or use SlideShare to break the infographic down into individual components.
Instagram is a site that relies heavily on hashtags to help people locate images and accounts of interest to them. Once the image is posted with a brief description and one or two hashtags, use numerous hashtags in the first comment of the image to take advantage of the most popular and relevant hashtags without cluttering up the description.
You can also tag individuals or companies that have been mentioned or quoted in the infographic. Alternatively, you may want to tag influencers or accounts who may have inspired the development of the piece.
Share Your Infographic on Facebook
Facebook has a wide variety of dimensional requirements depending upon how the image will be used. Having a cheat sheet for social media image dimensions will be useful for promotional purposes and will make it much easier to create an image that can be easily viewed and shared on Facebook.
It will usually be necessary to create a thumbnail image of the infographic with a link back to the original image. Alternatively, a cover image can be displayed or the infographic can be cropped to only show the heading or a specific portion that will make people want to see the full image.
It can be more difficult to ensure followers see content posted on Facebook due to the nearly constant changes in the news feed algorithm. One option is to create a Facebook ad and carefully select the targeting options to ensure the infographic is put in front of users who are most likely to find it interesting.
Link Back to Your Infographic on Twitter
Posting to Twitter is a mix of how to post in Instagram and Facebook. You will want to use hashtags and link back to original image. If any of the experts or companies mentioned in the infographic are active on Twitter, tagging them may help attract their followers and result in a retweet that will reach a much larger audience. This is another platform where sharing a thumbnail or cropped image may be more beneficial. However, a well written description accompanied by a link to the infographic can also work.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is an excellent way to reach a larger audience in your field or complimentary areas. Locate blogs that accept guest posts and develop ideas for a piece that is related to the infographic to be promoted. The aim is to provide added value to the blog’s readers.
It is surprising to many aspiring writers just how many blogs accept and even encourage guest bloggers to submit pitches relevant to their audience. Just remember, it isn’t enough to simply restate the information in the infographic, it is necessary to create new content that uses the infographic as one source.
Solid Content
For any promotional methods to work, the infographic must be created with well researched information. It must be clear, offer valuable insight or information to the audience. If it is visually appealing but does not offer new insights, it will quickly be dismissed by those who take the time to view it and hurt your credibility.
Optimize Your Landing Page
One of the main goals of promoting an infographic is to generate new interest in your brand or the brands featured. To do this most effectively, optimizing the landing page where the infographic is hosted is necessary. Make sure it is mobile friendly and the image is large enough to easily read as soon as visitors arrive.
The landing page needs to load quickly, be attractive, and be very user friendly with few distractions. It is a key component in successfully promoting the infographic.
Make Embedding Easy
Part of this optimization is making it easy for those who want to use your infographic. To do this, create an HTML embed code that is positioned directly underneath the image. This will allow anyone to easily put the infographic on their website or blog and will ensure it links back to your website.
Social Sharing Buttons
Word of mouth is still one of the most influential methods of promotion. The difference between people talking about a product or company thirty years ago and today is simply the way in which they talk to one another. We don’t have to be in physical proximity to suggest something to a friend. In fact, some studies suggest our tendency to interact on social media may decrease person-to-person interactions.
To better facilitate these types of online personal recommendations today, make it easy for people to share content on their preferred social media platforms. There are several strategic methods of placing these buttons and choosing the one that fits most naturally with your site design is key in encouraging visitors to share content.
At the end of the infographic make a request for readers to share with their social networks if they found the information useful. People are more likely to share when a specific request has been made for them to do so, especially if the content felt relevant to them at a personal level.
Email List
Building an email list is arguably one of the most important marketing tools today. Your subscribers have already decided your content is valuable enough to them to follow it regularly. Include a thumbnail of the infographic in an email with a link to take them to the full image. This will allow them to view it more easily and share it with others on their favorite social media platforms.
The landing page for your infographic is also an excellent opportunity to grow your email list. Include a bonus that is related to the infographic that people can receive if they sign up to receive emails from your site. This will give you a larger reach for future promotional efforts.
Self-Publish
Always host the infographic on your own website. This is content created by your brand to help others. It creates an association for peoplebetween the topic and the brand and begins to build your authority in the field. Hosting it anywhere else gives away that power and makes it impossible to ensure the link will be live should anyone else decide to share it at some point in the future. It also allows your site to build legitimate backlinks that are important for good SEO.
Strong Accompanying Article
Part of hosting the infographic on your own site is the ability to have it accompany a more detailed article. Once people arrive at the landing page to look at the infographic they are more inclined to stay and read any relevant information. When additional information is included beyond what is available on the infographic itself, people are more likely to engage with the site and share on social media.
Creating high quality content is good for readers and great for SEO and marketing purposes. It gives visitors a reason to trust your site’s content, decreases bounce rate, and ensures greater understanding of your message and brand. It has been proven to increase both leads and conversions and it’s just good business to provide the best quality product possible.
Infographic Directories
Infographic directories are a great way for people who are interested in finding images on specific topics to find your work. Every site has different submission regulations, so check out the rules before posting.
Editorial Calendar
Promoting your infographic will not quickly be checked off a to-do list. Many of the strategies require patience and persistence. Using Pinterest, guest blogging, and reaching out to industry experts who may be interested in using the infographic in an upcoming piece will require extended effort. Include promotional tactics as part of an ongoing editorial calendar. Select new influencers or bloggers to reach out to on a weekly or monthly basis and spread out tweets, retweets, and promoting the targeted pin on Pinterest to reach the greatest number of people.
Press Release
For larger companies, creating a press release to distribute can effectively promote new infographics. First, ensure the press release is well written and created with best SEO practices. Then distribute it to a press release site or send it directly to industry experts who may be interested.
Creating a powerful infographic is a labor of love. It requires extensive research, great copywriting, and creative talent to create the colors, format, and typography necessary to create a beautiful image people want to read and share. It is natural to want to see this content used and shared by others. The effort and skill it takes to create brilliant infographics makes people even more eager to share their work with the world. Be willing to stretch outside the typical blog promotion tactics to reach a wider audience.
Are there any other ways to promote your infographics that I missed? Which ones work well for you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Many brands lack a key piece of the puzzle for consistency – a brand style guide. Why do you need one? Well, if you’re like a lot of businesses out there, you’ve got several people, some in-house, some contracted, working to produce all your collateral and assets. And if you don’t want to spend a lot of time editing to ensure everything looks like it came from the same place, the brand style guide can save the day.
You can use the guide to create anything you need for your brand – your website, advertisements, social media graphics, internal memos, or anything else your heart desires. I know you’re thinking, “If these things are such life savers, why aren’t more businesses using them?” The answer is quite simple: they take time and effort to create – and time, especially for the small business owner, is a precious commodity, often better spent on different tasks.
But, imagine this:
You hire a designer to get your logo situated. You’re happy with it – you have your colors, fonts, spacing, and all that figured out. You move on, and months down the road, you need the information again. Your original designer doesn’t have the files anymore, and can’t take on new work. You have a deadline for a new project that needs the assets, so you have no choice but to go find a second designer – and thus find yourself explaining the needs for colors, fonts, and spacing, yet again.
Your brand style guide, if you’d had it established, would cut all that craziness out – because it clearly outlines your requirements. You can hand it off with to that second designer, and anything they, or a third, or fourth designer creates, will look the same as what that first designer created, and you’re not spending time – when your business is growing and you’re busy with other tasks – rehashing all the details to get what you need.
That’s why I’ve created this handy little cheatsheet – a guide to style guides, if you will, to help you.
Determine Logo Size and Placement Requirements for the Brand Style Guide
Your logo is an essential part of your brand, and needs to be consistent as you go along. Use your style guide to dictate the ways you allow use of your logo. You should include any acceptable variations – such as black and white usage. As important as proper usage is, your brand style guide should also clearly define unacceptable logo usage.
For guideline examples, you can take a look at Google and their requirements.. They tell you exactly what you can do, and exactly what you cannot, to remain in compliance. For instance, you must distinguish the trademark from the surrounding text. You cannot use anything other than Google approved artwork, and you should not feature the brand in any way that could imply a relationship between your company and Google. For more inspiration, check out the Apple Style Guide.
Choose Your Color Palette
Orange is orange, and red is red, right? Wrong. Colors can have slight variations from program to program, and from designer to designer. This is why you must establish the color palette in the beginning, and stick to it over time.
You can choose whatever colors you want, and with the HEX color codes in the style guide, designers, regardless of who works on what design asset, will always been the same. But, beyond the HEX codes for web uses, you’ll also need the CMYK values and Pantone colors for anything that will be printed. This is because of slight differences between the RGB colors used for the web, and CMYK used in print. Sometimes, though, these differences are much more drastic than you’d think, so it’s important to check them manually to ensure accuracy to save time and money before printing.
Regardless of the fonts you choose – they should be a reflection of your corporate identity. And beyond that, the typography must remain consistent to send a professional message. In your brand style guide, you can dictate which fonts are used, the size and typeface used, and how. It’s okay to have a variety of type faces, as long as the purpose is established for each. The style guide tells designers which ones to use and where. If possible, go beyond the size, factoring in kerning and leading, for true consistency.
Choose Your Iconography
Patterns and icons can be used to set your brand apart from others, if they are used effectively. You don’t have to have iconography, or patterns of course, but they can be useful on your website or packaging. Take for instance, the pattern on the inside of the box from Game of Love, done by October Ink.
Choose Your Photography Specifications
Photography is certainly a reflection of your brand, and depending on the style, can evoke the wrong response from the audience. Photos are necessary for all brands – even if you’re not taking photos of actual products. If you routinely work with photographers, include style and specification notes to help make their job easier. As you can see from the Barnes & Noble Style Guide, there’s a page completely dedicated to photography.
Some photographers can shoot in whatever style you ask, while others shoot in their own unique style. This is why knowing what you want ahead of time, and providing the information to photographers you want to work with, can be beneficial, saving you time and money.
Factor in Your Web-Specific Elements
Your website needs to match your brand as much as anything else. Many of thing things you create for print will work for digital, but there are also elements you’ll need only for online – like Facebook and Twitter profile covers, and other social media images, that you may not have considered.
Your website will have elements like buttons, that aren’t used anywhere else, but should still match your brand. Don’t forget to consider your 404 page – an error for the user. You could design it to at least make it fun.
Remember Your Brand Voice
Your brand voice and brand style guide go hand in hand. You should sound and look a certain way – and even though it’d be nice, it’s not always possible to have the same person writing for you all the time. Even if you have the same person producing your web content, that person may not be available to write the copy for print, and so on. That’s where the brand voice comes in handy – giving anyone who writes for you some basic guidelines to follow so that everything has the same sound.
In this section, you can include words and phrases you want to appear, along with a list of words that should be avoided. Information about the target audience for your website can also be helpful.
Bonus: Writing Style Guide
As a kind of extension to the point above – I thought I would add a writing style guide as a bonus. Ideally, this document should be separate from the brand style guide, because your designers aren’t necessarily going to be your writers and your writers won’t necessarily be you designers. But, if you ever have one person who will be handling both, you could easily distribute both guides to them.
Your writing style guide is basically the same as your brand style guide, except it refers to the formatting and rules regarding the text on your website and printed brand materials. The key is to keep the document fairly short.
Being comprehensive is a good thing, but if the document gets too long, it’s hard to use on a daily basis. That’s why information about your branding, or content operations, should be kept separate.
Your writing style guide should include:
Style Manual: There are two big ones to use – AP Style or Chicago Manual of Style. Look through them to compare, and then choose which one you want to adopt. They both have online subscriptions available you can purchase for your team to reference. There may be some exceptions to the rules for your branding, tone, and style, and you’ll want to highlight those, as well. Things to consider here include: what to abbreviate, what to capitalize, and whether or not you use an Oxford comma.
Troublesome Words: ecommerce or e-commerce? Website or web site? Ebook or eBook or e-book? Internet or internet? And so on…
Style and Tone: How should the content sound to the reader? Are you okay with the use of industry jargon? Should the content be written conversationally? Academically? Is humor okay? If so, what level of humor?
Personas: We’ve already covered the importance of buyer personas, and how to create them. Anyone who’s writing content for you can benefit from seeing these, so they know they’re crafting the content in such a way that speaks to the audience.
Graphics and Formatting: This isn’t quite the same as stuff in your brand style guide, because it refers to the use of images in your content, and how it is to be formatted. What size images are acceptable? What formats? How should images be included in the content? How should they be aligned? How should images be attributed to the source? Where should attribution be? Below the image or at the end of the article? Should text wrap around the images? What headers are used and when? Are bold, italics, and underlining allowed? Under which instances? What kind of bullets should be used? How should numbered lists appear?
Acceptable Sources for Research: What sources are okay for information? What sources are not okay? Which brands (competition) are not okay to mention? What sources (Wikipedia) are not okay to use? Which sources do you prefer your writers to use?
Sourcing Protocol: Which format do you want writers to use when sourcing data? Is just linking to the information okay, or do they need to use a certain citation method? Which citation method?
Examples of Right vs. Wrong: Provide examples of the right way and the wrong way to do things – from the troublesome words and style, to the graphics and formatting, and the way the sources are cited. This way, writers can see what they’re supposed to do and how it should look, so they have something for reference.
Invest Time Now, for Smoother Operations Later
No one says your brand or writing style guides have to be done right now or even in a single sitting. In fact, it’s a good idea to involve other people in the creation of both documents, to ensure you’re not missing anything. It can be a pain in the neck to go over these details now, yes, but it can be an even bigger pain when you’ve got several assets that don’t look and sound consistent with your brand messaging.
If you’re a startup with a limited budget, Canva at Work can help you. You can save a brand kit, with colors, fonts, and a variety of templates for documents and images you’d use online and off, in the account. This can make it easier to keep track of everything as you go.
When your style guides are done, make them easy for the people who need them to find them and use them. Include them in your company’s internal wiki, a shared Dropbox or Google Drive folder, or somewhere else that makes sense. Have them readily accessible for any freelancers who may need them.
Your style guides, both brand and writing, are “living” documents. Any time new questions or issues arise regarding proper usage and you develop a solution, make sure it is included in the updated version of the guide. Date your guides with each release, so you can make sure everyone is using the most up-to-date option.
Does your company use a brand or writing style guide? Why or why not? If you haven’t created one now, is this on your list of things to do in 2017? Share your thoughts with me in the comments below.
Whether you set personal New Year’s resolutions or not – and whether you’re still sticking to them at the end of January, this is a wonderful time to reflect on where you are with your business, conduct an end of year analysis, and set some goals to help carry you through 2017.
The Power of Goal Setting
Goals give you direction – something to aim for, to keep you moving forward. It’s easy to get lost in a storm of options for your business, and when you have ideas flowing through you, you can pick one thing up and work on it – then move on to the next. As a result, nothing’s really organized, and you haven’t made clear progress on anything. By goal setting, you have a clear cut plan on what you want to do, so you can work toward getting there. Then, you get there, and move on to the next one.
Goals make it easy to climb mountains. When you’re just starting out, getting to the big dream can seem like such a task you get discouraged. Instead of wondering how you’ll get to the top of that mountain and giving up before you even start the climb, goals are like little campsites on the journey. As you move through each one, you’ll feel more energized to make it to the next one and so on, until suddenly, before you know it, you’re at the top of that mountain, and you’ve accomplished your dream.
Goal setting inspire us. It’s about more than creating a plan and keeping yourself accountable – I’ll get to that in a minute – but it’s about giving us the inspiration we need to take action and keep working toward our dreams. If you don’t make it a goal and start taking steps to reach it, why do you believe you can accomplish it? Dreams without progress, albeit slow at times, are nothing more than vague concepts in your head. Make it happen!
Goal setting hold us accountable. Writing down your goals, complete with a timeline for when you hope to achieve them can help you look back and re-evaluate if you don’t accomplish your goals. It’s humbling to look back on a goal you set yourself six months, one year, and five years ago, realizing that you were supposed to get more done than you actually did. It’s a sign that what you’re doing isn’t working, and you have to make some real changes to get where you want to.
On the other hand, it is highly gratifying to look back at those goals and realize you’ve not only accomplished them, but surpassed them. Either way, it’s a great look at how far you’ve come, whether you missed the mark or not.
More than 80% of small business owners don’t keep track of their business goals. Nearly half of the people who take the time to write their goals down (40%), don’t go back to check whether the goals were achieved.
Think About What You Want to Accomplish
Sit down with a pen and paper and think about the things you want to accomplish in business. Some example goals to get you started include:
Delegate at least X% of my work to other team members.
Increase number of clients by X% or add X clients.
Increase profit by $X or $X%.
Decrease customer churn by X%.
Give yourself concrete, measurable numbers, so you know whether or not you achieved the goal. If you don’t, you can simply delegate a single task and say you’ve reached your goal.
When Do You Want to Accomplish It?
Now, so you take action and don’t allow yourself to get lazy, add a timeline to your goal. For example:
Delegate at least 10% of my work to other team members by the end of January 2017.
Add five new clients by the end of February 2017.
Increase profit by $5,000 in the first half of 2017, or increase profits by 50% by December 31, 2017.
Decrease customer churn by 5% in the first half of 2017.
Without this timeline, it will be easy to lose sight of your goal and move onto other things. The timeline gives you a finite date to accomplish the goal, making it easier to make and stick to a plan to get it done.
Determine a reasonable amount of time it will take to complete the goal. You may need to break the goal into sub goals and determine how long each of those will take to get a better idea of how much time it will take.
When setting up your timeline, build in a buffer of extra time for each step, since most of the time, things take longer than we expect them to. Then, consider how much time you can devote each day or week to completing the goal.
Once you know how long it takes to complete the goal and how much time you can devote to it, design the schedule for starting each sub goal so you can stay on track.
For instance, if you want to lose 30 pounds, and you can reasonably only lose one pound a week, you know you’ll reach your goal in about seven months. You could lose five pounds in a bit over a month.
How Can You Make It Happen?
Here comes the fun part. How can you make your goals happen? What do you have to do to get to where you want to go?
In the case of the goal to delegate your tasks, you’ll need to first decide which tasks you can easily delegate, and then decide who you can delegate them to. If you don’t have a staff on hand already, you’ll need to first decide if you’re going to hire actual employees, or if you’re going to find freelancers to outsource the work to.
Then, you’ll need to train them to handle whatever tasks you want to delegate. This may take a few minutes, a few days, weeks, or months, depending on the complexity of the tasks you’re passing off. Though you’ll have to invest time and energy into the initial training, the time savings in the long run can help you focus on other areas of the business where only your talents and skills will suffice.
When it comes to adding clients – there are several ways you can do this, so you’ll need to decide which methods you’re going to use, and then take steps to implement them. Are you going to invest more money in advertising? Are you going to ask your current clients to send you referrals? Invest more time and effort in online marketing? Post flyers? Pass out more business cards? Attend more networking events? Run sales and discounts to entice new customers to come on board? A combination of several of these options?
If your goal is to increase profits, you can use many tactics like the ones above to bring in more customers – because more paying customers mean more money in your pocket. But, you can also tackle this from the other side, by working to reduce expenses, too.
Are there vendor service contracts you can either cut or renegotiate at a lower rate? Different vendors offering better deals for the products and services you need to run your business? Can you use less paper and ink and shift more documents to digital only?
If you want to decrease customer churn, you need a strategy. It’s not just one or two small things you can do and suddenly have better customer retention. One of the best things you can do is train your sales team to set and meet the appropriate expectations from the start. If you can’t deliver on your promises, then of course the customer’s not going to be happy.
To develop a customer retention strategy, ask yourself how you are different from the competition, and what your customers lose when they leave you for the competition. Knowing the answers to these questions helps you zero in on your competitive advantage. Once you know what this is, make some changes to highlight these advantages so customers see them as clear differentiators.
Take the time to listen to what your customers are saying, and make it easy for them to give you feedback. Use customer satisfaction surveys, because they’re easy to implement and you can send them after the sale. The information customers give you in those surveys is highly valuable. You can use their insights to help stop customer churn and improve your overall service for new customers.
For best results, keep the surveys branded and personalized. Make it responsive so customers can easily access the survey from either their desktop or their mobile devices. Keep it short – under 10 questions – so more people are likely to complete it. They don’t want to take too much time out of their day, and you should respect that. Make sure you have a clear objective with each survey, knowing the information you want before you send the first one. Track your feedback over time, so you can watch for changes in customer satisfaction levels.
Beyond using customer satisfaction surveys, you can also call your customers. You can engage them on social media, and use social listening tools to find out what people are saying about your brand. By listening to customer feedback, you can find the problems that are negatively affecting their experience – then take action to address it before the customer leaves for the competition.
Goals Aren’t Set in Stone
The beauty of a goal is that you can change it as necessary, and you can make as many smaller goals as you want along the way. Simply saying, “I want to increase profits” or “I want to lose weight” isn’t enough. While your ultimate goal may be to increase profits by 500% or lose 100 pounds, that’s a huge mountain to try to climb all at once.
Instead, start with something like, “I want to increase profits by 20% next quarter” or “I want to lose 5 pounds by one month from today.” These smaller goals are more attainable and less overwhelming, so when you reach them, you can set new mini-goals to help you get to that final goal. But, let’s say you reach that first goal before you expected to – increasing profits by 20% in the first month of the next quarter. Now, you can challenge yourself to take it further. As your business changes, your goals should change. If you find that your goal is a little too lofty, it’s okay to go backslide a bit to a more reasonable goal.
Your business goals help you measure your success. They help you make sure everyone in leadership positions is on the same page – even if it’s only you, for now. They help you understand the effects of your business decisions, and guide you in the right directions.
Since these goals are not set in stone – make a list of goals now, and work toward them. Then, when you get through the first half of the year, sit down and reassess where you are. Continually monitor your business progress against your goals, so you can decide whether or not you need to adjust course before you had originally intended. Almost half (46%) of companies review and revise their goals on a regular basis over the course of a year.
Do you set goals for yourself every year, either business or personal? Why or why not? Tell me in the comments. I’d love to hear from both sides on this one.
Your company story is a vital part of your branding and customer experience. It sets the tone for who you are, and what customers can expect from you. It’s the foundation of building connections with your customers, because when all is said and done, you’re in the business of solving problems for your customers, and doing so in a way that makes people happy. The money you get as a result, is really nothing more than a reflection of your business model and satisfied customers.
Storytelling is an incredibly powerful way to build relationships. It brings people together – think about sitting with your grandparents, listening to them talk about what life was like when they were growing up. Didn’t it make you feel closer to them? Storytelling for business remains powerful regardless of where you are, the language you speak, or how big your brand is. When done right, a compelling brand story can give small businesses an edge against the competition.
And in doing marketing well, you’ll use storytelling for business in more than just your brand story. You’ll weave it into every type of content you’re producing, whether it’s blog content, ad content, infographic content, or a video script.
Every day, customers are bombarded with advertising to the point where they often feel overwhelmed, and start ignoring it. You’re not immune to this effect, so you know what I’m talking about. As marketers, we need to remember what it’s like from the customer standpoint, and use our storytelling ability to stand out from the competition.
With that said, let’s take a closer look at what your story is telling customers – to make sure you’re not only sending the right message, but doing it in the best possible way.
Is Your Story Customer Centric?
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is crafting a story that’s about them. To connect with your customers, especially on the emotional level required to build a relationship, you have to stop thinking (and talking) about your company, and change the perspective. Customers don’t care about how awesome you are and what you’ve achieved. They care about what you can do for them.
It’s easy to make your brand story company-centric, and while you may think this is the approach that works, the truth is it risks coming off as egotistical and boring. People aren’t going to have a good impression of your business, and they most certainly aren’t going to connect with you on an emotional level.
Is Your Story Truthful?
The word “story” often connotes a sense of make-believe, but when it comes to your brand, truth is essential. Any and all marketing content should be showing, rather than telling, customers how your company is relatable. Everything should be based in real situations, helping real people, built on real emotion, and fact.
Is Your Story Original?
Unless your pioneering an industry, chances are that there’s at least one other company in your space, competing for the same customer base you are. You may have a similar brand story, but no matter how similar you are to another company, you must create originality when storytelling for business. One of the best ways to do this is to consider what’s interesting about your company, and why this is important. This is what makes you different from the rest of the businesses that are out there doing the same thing you are, even if they’re doing it for the same reasons.
How to Write a Compelling Brand Story
Start with notes about where you came from as a company, where you are now, and where you’re heading. Begin with who the founder is, and why the company was started in the first place. Don’t leave out any details – your customers want to know the inspiration behind what motivated you to start the business. Be sure to highlight the points that show why you’re in business – the true purpose of your organization.
Next, develop a statement to explain why your company exists. Keep it different from your company mission and vision statements – it does not fall into either of these categories. Instead, this statement takes the deeper purpose of the company into consideration… what matters to the customers and the stakeholders, and is driven by values.
If you’re struggling with this part, ask yourself:
Why is our company here?
How are we making the world better?
This will give you the basis for your statement, and it’s with that statement in hand that you’ll be able to craft your story. It is the starting point, and from there, you’ll aim for a one-page document that supposed it.
It should tell the narrative of your brand – where you’ve come from, and where you’re going, in an authentic and truthful manner. Write it with a conversational tone, to draw your audience in and engage them. Pretend your talking to someone new over drinks, rather than giving a professional presentation. Keep it short. Write everything you want to say, to get your thoughts out on paper. Then edit. And edit again if necessary. There’s no minimum word count required to convey your message effectively.
TOMS is the perfect example. The company story clearly tells customers the founder, Blake Mycoskie, saw the hardships Argentinean children faced growing up with out shoes, while he was traveling there in 2006. He decided he wanted to help, by building a shoe company that would send a new pair of shoes to someone in need, for every single pair customers purchase.
Today, the company has given more than 60 million pairs of shoes to children in need, across 70 countries. Since the shoes have been such a success, they also launched TOMS’ Eyewear in 2011, giving glasses and eye treatments to those who need it, with the purchase of each pair of glasses. Beyond giving eyesight to more than 400,000 people in need, it helps support community-based eye care programs, and helps create jobs to provide basic eye care.
In 2014, the company launched TOMS Roasting Co. to provide more than 335,000 weeks of safe water in six countries. With each purchase of the company’s coffee, a one week supply of water is given to someone in need.
But that wasn’t enough, either. In 2015, the company went on to start Bag Collection to help train skilled birth attendants, and sending birth kits to help women safely deliver their babies. As of 2016, the program has helped more than 25,000 mothers.
Storytelling for business tells the truth – showcasing numbers to demonstrate how purchasing their products helps those in need. Yes, there’s the charitable angle to pull at the heart strings for easier engagement compared to some other industries, but the point remains the same. Tell your story to speak to your customers, and you’ve made headway in converting those prospects into buyers.
Editing Your Existing Brand Story
Let’s say you’ve already got a brand story, but you want to make what you have more compelling for your audience. Begin with focusing on why you’re doing whatever it is you do. Ask yourself:
Why am I (are we) passionate about what we do every day?
Why do I (we) wake up in the morning?
If you’re not sure where to start with the answers to these questions, ask your customers why they’re loyal to you. Ask you employees why they work for you, and their motivation for coming into work every day. Use search engines and social listening tools to find out what people are saying about your company, and how they’re talking about you.
If you’re dealing with a company-centric story, you’ll want to scrap the whole thing, or at least look for ways you can take the current text and spin it to a customer-centric style. For instance, instead of:
We build websites and online communities.
We make dog toys.
We offer home security services.
Try:
We build websites and online communities to help our clients tell their stories and share their message with the world.
We create dog toys that help keep Spot busy for hours on end, while keeping him safe, so you can rest easy knowing he’s in good hands.
We offer home security services because we’ve been there. No one should ever feel unsafe in their own home, or violated as the result of a burglary.
You’re still saying what you do, but your delving a bit into the why of you do what you do.
What makes you different than the competition? How are your products or services better at solving your customers pain points than the other solutions out there? Rethink what you’re selling. When you’re up against a lot of competition in the same space, it becomes less about the products and services themselves, and more about the experience you give customers.
If company A and company B have the same exact product and A is priced $5 lower, that doesn’t necessarily mean company A will get all of the business. While most people think of price as the key differentiator, an average of 97% of global customers say customer service is a key differentiator in their decision to use, or step away from, a company. Since 60% of customers say they have higher expectations for customer service now than they had just 12 months ago, this can be difficult. But, what it tells us is that if you, as company B, strive to provide a better overall customer experience, making the customer feel appreciated and valued, you can keep hold on a viable piece of the market share.
The Story is Done – Now What?
Once your story is done, it must be engaging and easy to share. One study shows one of every five minutes spent online is spend on social media. Why is this a big deal? Your audience is more than likely sharing content with a significant portion of the time they spend online… and you want customers to share yours to gain exposure to new prospects.
To make your brand story sharable and more distinctive from the rest, try these ideas:
Go beyond the standard text. Include photos and video. Photos enhance your story, but videos enhance it further. You have a number of options here: showcase your office space, manufacturing space, employees, and more. In your video, feature employees that speak about why they work for you, and how they hope the company helps customers. Whatever you choose to cover in the video – make it personal and feature it along side your narrative so viewers have context. It’s okay to feature customers in photos and video, too, as long as you have their legal consent to do so.
Add quotes. Getting thoughts from customers who are out there championing your brand adds distinction from the competition. You can also include quotes from leadership and business partners, if they help tell the “why” behind your story. Highlight the words or sentences that tell or support your story, with some visual flare.
The End…?
Your story doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t remain the same over time. As you grow and expand, meet and exceed goals, and keep dreaming for the future, your brand story should change and evolve as a reflection. Does it mean changing details? Maybe, if new details become relevant. But, as long as you keep the customer in mind, along side why you are in business and what motivates you, you’re in good shape.
What does your brand story say about your company? Are you pleased with the message?
Think about it – when you’re trying to buy the perfect anniversary gift for your spouse, or the perfect gift for your best friend, you can see them in your mind as you’re shopping. You can see what they want and what they need, the things they’d most likely be interested in, what they love, and what they hate. You may not always know what they don’t need, but what you know about them helps you make sure you’re on the right track to the gift that wows… no matter the occasion. That’s how buyer personas work.
Buyer personas, also known as customer avatars, are fictional representations of the person or group of people who are most likely to purchase your product or service. Before you begin any kind of marketing campaign, it is worth taking the time to develop a comprehensive avatar for each segment of your audience. It’s how you can better understand what those people want and need from you.
Why You Need Buyer Personas
Having a buyer persona to represent each major segment of your ideal audience will make it significantly easier to tailor your marketing messages, so they speak directly to your prospective customers.
A well-developed customer avatar comes with multiple benefits:
An increased understanding of your customer’s needs.
A better idea of prospects’ buying behavior
Insight to help you develop new (and better) products and services to suit your customer’s needs
Knowing where your customers spend their time
Higher quality leads – which usually translates to better conversion rates (and more profit in your pocket)
Who is Your Target Audience?
With knowledge about what it is you’re offering, and how you’re different from the competition, think about who your ideal customer is, and what they look like – the same way you consider the person you’re shopping for when buying a gift.
Ask yourself:
Is my audience all male? All female? Both genders? What’s the proportion of men to women? Is this a product for men that women would buy for them? Take this into consideration as you shape your marketing plans.
How old are my customers? What’s the age range I’m looking to target the most?
Where do my customers live?
What’s their relationship status? Are they married? Do they have children?
What is their annual income?
What is their educational background?
What is their career path? Job title? Daily responsibilities? (This is particularly important for B2B marketers.)
What are their hobbies and interests?
What are their biggest challenges? (This will help you figure out how your products or services will solve them)
What are their favorite websites? Blogs to read?
What language(s) do they speak?
What is their motivation to buy your products/services? Why are they buying your products/services?
What are their concerns about buying your products/services? What reservations do they have about buying your products/services?
Of course, you don’t have to have the answers to all of these questions about each one of your personas, and you may have additional questions based on your niche. No matter the question, the goal should always be to get to know your customers better through the buyer personas you create. This way, you’ll be able to communicate more effectively, and improve your ad targeting efficiency.
Putting it Together to Create Personas
If you’ve already got an established website, start looking at the analytics data to see what you can find out about the audience demographics, and fill in the details from there. Beyond your website analytics, you can look at Facebook Insights and other social media data to get an idea of what’s going on within the audience you already have, so you can better determine how to attract the audience you want – if the audience you’ve got doesn’t quite match what you’re going for.
For the most effective buyer personas, you’ll want to craft a story of sorts, an actual “person” to represent each segment of the audience. You can even go so far as to find a photo and give a name to each persona, to make communicating to that person easier… since you’ll be writing your marketing copy as if you were speaking directly to them.
Let’s say you’re marketing a weight loss supplement, specifically designed for women. Your buyer personas may look a bit like this:
Locations: United States, Canada
Age: 18-50
Gender: Female
Interests: Health and wellness, fitness, cooking, travel
Education level: College student/graduate
Relationship status: Single/Married, No Children/Children
Language: English
Buying motivation: Wants to get healthy and lose weight
Buying concerns: Worried about scams, price conscious
Sarah, in her early 30s, is a new mom, and is worried about her metabolism slowing down with age. She’s limited on time, because she’s dealing with the baby, trying to get back into the swing of working full-time. So, she doesn’t want to take the time to go to the gym every day, but likes the idea of doing exercises at home, that she can do either with the baby, or while the baby is in the swing next to her work out area. She’s interested in quick workouts, that she can fit in between chores – and she doesn’t mind spending money on healthier food, because she’s investing in her health so she’s around to see her baby grow up. She is worried, though, about spending too much money on a garbage supplement that won’t work – or something that will give her horrible side effects that many weight loss supplements cause. She is the type that will go to her doctor to discuss the safety of the supplement before she starts using it because she doesn’t want it to interact with any of her medications.
Or, you have something that looks like this:
Tonya, in her mid-40s, is a single woman, who’s always been a little overweight. She never had kids, she’s busy with a full-time job, where she works as an executive. She’s tried every diet under the sun, and even when she followed things to the letter, she didn’t get the results she’s looking for. She knows she’s up against hormonal changes with age, so she went to her doctor to make sure there’s no underlying medical reason for her difficulty for weight loss.
She’s ready to try your product, if you can show her the real science behind yours is different from the hundreds of other competing products out there. She doesn’t like the idea of an autoshipment “free” trial like so many others do – she just wants to buy a bottle, try it, and see what happens. She’s a real skeptic, but the right words can make her pull the trigger, and if you make her happy, she’ll be quite the brand advocate for you.
See how these two women both have the same core reason – wanting to get healthy and lose weight – for coming to you? But how they have different backgrounds and buying concerns? See how you’ll need to appeal to both of them in your marketing material? These are completely fictional, written off the top of my head, but fully plausible potential customers you could run into – and you need to consider how you’ll deal with them.
In Sarah’s case, and in Tonya’s, you’ll need more than the standard before and after photos that so many products are marketed with. Even with a “results not typical” legal blanket to protect you, most customers are too skeptical to really pay attention. So, what can you do? Don’t just say your product is supported by clinical studies. If you haven’t had your full product studied, at least show the actual studies on the ingredients in your product. Make it easy for your customers to get the information they need. Offer a no-strings attached free trial – don’t require autoshipment programs, but give the option for convenience. Make it easy to return the product if someone doesn’t like it – and make sure your money back guarantee beats the competition. It’s an uphill battle in the weight loss supplement world, but you can do it well, if you do it right – and that’s providing a quality product supported by quality service.
If you’re marketing an exercise bike, on the other hand, your personas will change a bit:
Locations: United States, Canada
Age: 18-50
Gender: Male and Female
Interests: Health and wellness, fitness, cooking, travel, sports and outdoors
Education level: High School grad, College student/graduate
Relationship status: Single/Married, No Children/Children
Language: English
Buying motivation: Wants to get healthy and lose weight without having to go to a gym to do it
Buying concerns: Worried about quality, size/space/storage, price conscious
We’re still in the same basic health and fitness arena, but now instead of focusing solely on women with a weight loss supplement, we’ve branched out to include men. And rather than something you add to your diet, we’re focused on exercising you can do at home. A lot of the basic information is the same – but you can see how these differences can create an entirely different persona when we dig into the details and create a story for each of them.
If we follow with Sarah – all we have to do is change the fact that she’s worried about the pill not working, to not having enough space for the bike… and needing a compact solution she can easily fold and put away when she’s done.
If we follow with Tonya, we have to play on the fact that she can workout whenever she has time – there’s no need to worry about paying for an expensive gym membership, and she can do it before or after work, or before bed.. while she’s watching TV.
Then, we’ll need to create a new persona, or two, to target the men who are also going to be interested in the bike – playing to the “macho” side of things, if necessary.
Making Your Personas Work for You
With your completed buyer personas in hand, you’ll be able to craft a full-fledged digital marketing strategy that’s designed to cater to each of the people in your audience. Though the exercise may take some time to fully develop, it’s worth the time and effort in the beginning, since it will help reduce the need to guess about what works and what doesn’t.
It’s important to remember, though, that as your business grows and evolves, the customer personas won’t always remain the same. Use the data you gather from various sources throughout your campaigns to see how well they match your personas. It’s possible you won’t get everything right on the first try, but as you get more data, you can make adjustments to fine-tune those personas.
The key is to always keep the customer’s needs at the forefront, and when you notice those needs change, adapt accordingly. Being rigid and unwilling to go with the flow, will not do your business or your customers any favors.
Get a FREE Buyer Persona Template
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I know that’s not what you wanted to hear – I see you over there, beaming from ear to ear because this month’s page views were 200% higher than they were this time last year. I’m not here to rain on your parade – but I’m here to let you know you may want to consider shifting your mindset and tracking different metrics. You’ll see a different, better picture of what’s really going on with your audience.
Sorry, guys, it’s time to stop bragging about how many people saw your video on Facebook, and how many people read your blog posts. It’s not how many people you reach, it’s how many you connect with.
Click Metrics vs. Attention Metrics
Until recently, click metrics, such as page views and sessions, have been the golden standard for success in online marketing. The more people you had clicking on your stuff, the better, right? But as we’ve continued to grow and evolve, those numbers don’t hold as much weight as we’d like for them to.
Ultimately, click metrics tell us how many people see our content, but they don’t tell us what really matters – how many people are paying attention to what you have to say. It doesn’t do your business any good if people are looking and ignoring it. You want people to take action – so that’s what attention metrics look at. While measuring attention metrics isn’t as easy as click metrics these days, you can still get insights if you analyze any of the following:
Comments: How many comments are you getting on your blog posts? On your social media posts? If people are taking the time to comment, they’ve read what you have to say, and are moved enough to reply to you. Not only this, but comments can be an excellent source to learn more about your readers and what they want from you. You can use the comment section to elaborate further on an issue, and even get inspiration for future content. Since it’s easy to share your posts with a click, some may say the blog comment doesn’t have as much value as it used to, but the other line of thought is that your content moved them enough to take the time to respond.
Shares and Mentions: How many people are sharing your content? How many people are mentioning your brand online? If people are sharing your posts – either from your website or your social media accounts – they’re interested in what you have to say, and believe their network could benefit from it in some shape or form. Many social sharing plugins like Social Warfare and SumoMe can show share counts on your posts. But tools like BuzzSumo and PostReach can help you see more information about the people who are sharing your posts on Twitter. Start monitoring your feed for a bit after each post goes live so you can see how people are responding to it.
Time Spent: Look at the time they’re spending on each page in your Google Analytics account. Generally, the longer they spend on the site, clicking around, the more attention they’re paying to what they’re looking at. It’s always possible that someone clicked on your site, and then got distracted, and looked at another tab, took a phone call, took the dog for a walk – and left your tab open, so, take this one with a grain of salt – looking at the user journey throughout your site as an indication of what they were actually doing during their session.
View-through Rate: Though this metric is exclusive to video content, it’s still a good indication of how much attention people are paying to your content. Many times, people will click and start watching a video, only to fall off somewhere before getting to the end of it. The view-through rate lets you know the percentage of your audience that’s actually watching the video from start to finish.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): This helps measure the loyalty between a brand and its customers. You can also use it to measure the value your blog is giving your readers. Calculate your score, by asking a simple question: “How likely are you, on a sale from 0 to 10, to recommend our blog to your friends or colleagues?” Anyone who scores in the 9-10 range is a promoter, or someone who will keep reading/buying and fueling your growth. Anyone in the 7-8 range is a passive, or someone who’s satisfied, but vulnerable to offers from your competition. Any in the 0-6 range is a detractor, or someone who is unhappy and can damage your brand, impeding your growth. Subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters to get your NPS – which can range from a low of -100 (when all customers are detractors) to a high of 100 (when all customers are promoters). Tools like SurveyMonkey and io can help you conduct your own NPS survey on your blog.
Creating Attention Worthy Content
I’ve got some more disappointing news for you, too – the average human attention span is now just eight seconds, (down from 12 seconds) meaning goldfish pay attention longer than we do. Not good news for anyone who’s in the business of getting people to focus, I know, but fortunately, there are things we can do to defeat this awful statistic, and draw people into our world.
Think Before You Write: Before you spend a lot of time typing away writing about this awesome idea you’ve just come up with, make sure it is actionable, you know what makes it unique, and at least have a decent idea of the group of people who will share and amplify it for you. This way, you go into every piece you write with a plan, and you’re already aware of the value you’re giving your audience.
Make it Actionable: Don’t just talk at your audience. Show them how to do something. Teach them something. This isn’t a how-to post, but it’s still actionable because you can read it and take action based on something you’ve learned from it. Even in this article, I give you the tools you need to get started with monitoring your social reach and running your own NPS survey, so once you’re done reading, you can take action to improve your marketing efforts. Why does writing an actionable article matter? According to a New York Times study, practical, useful information gets shared online more than any other type of content.
Write In-Depth Content: This piece will be near the 2,000 to 2,500-word mark by the time I’m done with it. While you may be inclined to think it’s because I’m a long-winded guy who loves to “hear himself talk”, it’s because in-depth content correlates to higher share and link counts. Though the correlation dates back to 2012, it still rings true. Sure, correlation isn’t causation, but it could be a result of having more useful information packed into a piece.
Make it Unique: The internet makes it possible for anyone, anywhere, anytime, to write something about anything they want – and put it online for others to read. Just because it’s possible and there for everyone to read, however, doesn’t make it good. And if you’re not doing what you can to stand out from the crowd that’s writing crap, then you’ll get lost in a sea of it. Some topics are easier than others to add a unique element to, but there are several ways to put your own spin on it. Everything from timing, to depth on the topic, to your own perspective/experience, your own company data/research can make your article different than one of mine, even if it’s on the same topic.
Write a Damn Good Headline: You’ve only got a few seconds to grab their attention, and your headline’s going to be what does it. I’m not talking about garbage clickbait – there’s not much I hate more. Don’t give me something like, “She Lost Her Arm in a Car Accident… and You Won’t Believe What Happens Next!” Give me value. Entice me. Tell me what you’re going to share with me – and make me want to click it. But after I click it, give me value. Think of your headline as a promise – and if I’ve taken the time to click on it and start reading, make sure you deliver. It’s keeping your promise with the article that will make me that much more likely to keep giving you my attention. It’s the second that people feel like the article isn’t providing what the headline promises that they’re distracted by something else… and no longer giving you their attention. You may still have a window open on their screen, but what good is that doing you? None.
Use Images and/or Video: Text is still a dominant format online, but we’re seeing the rise of video. People process images and video faster than they do text, and these additions can help capture and hold attention, simply because of the increased visual interest. If you want to present your blog content in a different way, you can try formatting it into an infographic. Plus, visual content assists with information recall later – which is important when you’re aiming to increase brand awareness.
Appeal to Emotion: The best ideas have some kind of emotional hook, whether positive or negative. While it’s true content charged with positive emotion gets shared more often than negative, there are some instances where hitting the negative makes sense. If nothing else, appeal to surprise, by providing your audience with something new and interesting.
Use Language Your Audience Knows: There’s nothing wrong with teaching people new concepts, but do it in a way you know they’re familiar with. If you’re speaking a bunch of industry jargon, or talking over their heads, do you think they’re going to take the time to research it so they understand? Sure, there’s a chance a few people will, but most people will abandon ship. It’s hard to hold attention on something you don’t understand, no matter how much you want to.
Does Attention Guarantee Your Content Will Go Viral?
No – nothing you do will ever guarantee anything you write will go viral. But, if you’re producing high-quality content that holds attention, it certainly doesn’t hurt the chance that you content will spread far and wide. And, depending on what you consider viral, you could possibly hit your mark. If you’re just starting out and your content gets shared 500 times? That could feel viral to you. But, if you’ve been at this marketing thing for years, and your most popular piece was shared 5,000 times within the first couple days of going live? Those 500 shares won’t really feel viral to you, will they?
Focus less on the idea of potentially going viral, and more on giving your audience the value they seek. It will provide a much bigger pay off in the end… because going viral once doesn’t mean you’ve cracked some secret code and you’ll get that kind of success each time.
Your Mission… Should You Choose to Accept It…
You’re almost to the end, and if you’ve made it this far with me, thank you for your attention. I value it more than you know. But, now, it’s time to give you some homework. Go to your blog, your Google Analytics, and social media insights. Take a look at the data and see what your brand looks like based on attention metrics rather than clicks.
Capturing and holding attention? Great work. You’re onto something, so keep it up.
Results not so good? Okay, don’t beat yourself up too much. Get to work. You know what to do, and if you don’t, let’s talk.
Where do you stand on the metrics marketers should be watching? Do clicks still matter? Share your thoughts with me below. Let me know if and how this post helped you.
Crafting a digital marketing strategy is difficult work, whether you’re a new or seasoned marketer. What worked in the past may not work now, and with constant market changes – the addition of new platforms, algorithm adjustments, and more competition – nothing is a guarantee of success right out of the gate. But, just because something is a “failure” doesn’t mean it’s a waste of your time and effort. Everything is a lesson in marketing – and there’s a solution for everyone. Even not-so-glamorous brands can rock digital marketing. It’s all in the plan, and knowing how to reach your audience.
The most important factor to build into your digital marketing strategy, no matter what the scope, goals, or objectives may be, is agility. Having a plan is critical, but having a back up plan, or the ability to make adjustments based on what you see happening before, during, and after each of the campaigns in your strategy begins is vital to your success. Staying the course when data indicates it is time to pivot can be absolutely detrimental, wasting time and money, and negatively affecting brand image or customer loyalty.
This infographic breaks the process of creating your digital marketing strategy down into six steps – each building on the previous to make it simpler for you to build a strategy that gets you through the next month, quarter, or year, if you’d like.
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Part of me always wanted to go into psychology, but I decided spending 12 years in school to earn a Ph.D. was a lot – and I wasn’t sure I could handle my own issues, let alone help countless others with theirs. The mind and the way it works has always fascinated me, so it’s no real surprise I ended up in marketing. After all, the two share a lot in common. Marketing doesn’t focus on helping people solve their problems like a therapy session, but it still involves using psychological tactics to communicate brand messaging – and stellar brands develop products and services to help their audience solve problems.
When I realized how much psychology and marketing are truly related and intertwined, I decided to go back to my love of the science to see how my tactics were working with the way people are naturally wired.
Try these hacks, and you’ll see your campaigns grow faster and better than ever before.
The Scarcity Effect – Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)
This all comes down to supply and demand. The rarer something is, the more people want it, and the more valuable it becomes. People don’t like to miss out on a good deal – whether it’s because it’s available for a limited time or because of limited quantity. Why do you think Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year, and people line up for hours before the stores open?
Take for instance the 1975 study that shows us just how much we’re wired to avoid missing out. Researchers had two cookie jars – one with 10 cookies, and the other with two cookies. Participants were asked to rate the cookies, not knowing that they were the exact same. The cookies in the jar with only two in it received much higher ratings than the jar with 10 – demonstrating that we place more value on what we think is rarer.
To make this work for you:
“Only X copies available at this price!”
“This limited-time deal only lasts until…”
“Act now! This deal goes public in…”
Instant Gratification – Give People Rewards Immediately
Humans love instant gratification – we want what we want, and we want it now. We’re taught to practice and embrace delayed gratification with phrases like, “Be patient”, “Good things come to those who wait”, and “Hard work pays off”.
So, if we’re taught to delay gratification for better rewards, why are we driven by the seemingly constant desire to get rewards right this second? It comes down to our survival instincts – and needing food and water right now.
Fortunately for us marketers, that instant gratification wiring can apply to things outside our basic needs – applying to the desire for the latest and greatest.
Give people what they want in your content. If they do something you want them to do – say subscribe to your email list – give them a discount to your store that they can use for a limited time. It activates reciprocity, instant gratification, and the scarcity principle in one shot.
Make People Feel Good – Happy Headlines
People love to feel good – and articles that evoke positive emotion are more likely to go viral than those that are built around negative emotion. But, you have to get their attention with headlines, too. On average, 500% more people will read your headline than the copy.
Use a tool like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to test headlines before you publish your content, and see what happens to your traffic.
Create a Bit of Mystery – We’re Naturally Curious Creatures
As humans, we love to figure things out – which means teasing with a secret is a wonderful way to capture attention. Take for instance the story of Social Triggers growth. Derek Halpern launched the website in 2011, and went from a relatively unknown blog to one of the best on the Internet in no time… because he created mystery.
He wrote about his growth, but didn’t say how he was achieving it, or that he was intentionally leaving those points out as a social experiment. People began to write their own blog posts, attempting to reverse engineer his success, so they could replicate it themselves. As a result, he got even more traffic and grew his readership, helping him grow even faster.
It’s the same reason we see all kinds of sites dedicated to rumors of the next big thing from companies like Apple and Samsung. We know they’re releasing new devices and products every year, and we know they keep things under wraps, but boy do we have fun trying to figure things out before the launch day!
Want to create some mystery on your own? Try these:
“I can’t say anything yet…” used sparingly and appropriately
Build your content calendar around upcoming product/service launches.
Convert each benefit/feature coming in an updated edition into a blog post of its own, to create a series to keep people on the hook, rather than publishing a single overview post.
Use Social Proof
The theory of social proof suggests that people will follow along with the actions or recommendations of another group of people, as long as they like them or trust them. It comes from the desire to belong to a group – and can also be referred to as the “me too” effect.
The good news for you is there’s all kinds of social proof to choose from, and you can use more than one form – so long as it makes sense to do so.
Expert: This is why influencer marketing works – because of the halo effect.
Celebrity: We see it everywhere – Weight Watchers, Proactiv, Covergirl… the idea is that when a celebrity is properly matched to a brand, it can do wonders. But, if it’s not a good match, it can tarnish the brand image.
Wisdom of Your Friends: You’re more likely to trust recommendations from people you know – so that’s why social widgets show you how many of your friends like a Facebook page, or follow an account on Twitter. When you know your friend likes or uses them, you’re more apt to check them out, too.
Wisdom of the Crowd: McDonald’s and their Billions and Billions served on the sign – it’s about belonging to the crowd, and is tied to FOMO.
User: User reviews, social fan counts, social share counts… anything that shows others are interacting with your brand.
Unconscious Branding
Even though we’re dealing with a lot of ad blindness, studies show that people process advertising, even if they’re not consciously considering it. How many times do you ask yourself, “Where have I seen that before?” When you do that – you’re trying to find a memory of unconscious branding. So, how can you make that work for you?
Place your logo in your social media headers.
Add your logo to blog post images.
Use the same profile image on all social media platforms.
Add branded images to your tweets and other social media posts.
Add your logo to your email signature.
Avoid Fancy Fonts – Unless they Fit Your Message
Whether you realize it or not, the font you choose can have a dramatic effect on the number of people who are looking at your content. While it may be tempting to choose a font because it’s “different” or “looks pretty”, there are certain typefaces that work better to help you communicate your message – and matching it with your brand will help make a connection with your audience.
Use these guidelines to help you choose a font that will reinforce your message.
Look and Feel: Look at the graphic below. Read the words, and notice how you get a somewhat confused feeling. It’s because the fonts just don’t match what the words are saying.
Placement: If you’re putting text on top of an image, it’s a good idea to make a box with your text, by ensuring the beginning and end of each line starts and finishes at the same place. You do this by adjusting font sizes on each line of text.
One Font: You don’t have to use multiple fonts to create visual interest and highlight certain words. To keep your text from being a distraction on your image, use one font throughout. In the image below – which I grabbed from Canva’s template library – you can see the same font is used throughout the entire image…but it’s anything but boring.
Transparency: If you want to make the text in an image pop – instead of playing with colors and the fonts themselves, reduce the transparency on the image. It makes the background a bit lighter, without taking away from the image itself.
Kerning: See the tiny space between each character in this text? That’s kerning. And when it’s off – either because the letters are too close together, or too far apart – that negatively affects the overall design.
Yes, I know I just said you don’t have to use more than one font in you design, but it is possible to pair them, as long as you know what you’re doing.
The ambiguity effect is the bias that means people will more than likely choose the product or service they know the results of, compared to one that they don’t. It lies in the underlying fear of the unknown. If you don’t have enough product information, or your product comes off as unfamiliar, buyers are much less likely to choose it. But – you can make use of this knowledge, and make it work for you.
Make use of statistics. People trust them, and will hardly ever take the time to do their own research. Use it to your advantage by making the research easy for them.
Use metaphors: When giving customers options, do what you can to deliver it with a metaphor, too. This will help bring meaning, familiarity, and comfort to the decision-making process.
Keep it easy. Whatever option you want your audience to choose, make sure it’s simple, clear, and concise.
Attention Bias
According to the Attention Bias, our perception is affected by recurring thoughts. For instance, people who think frequently about the clothes they’re wearing, tend to pay more attention to the clothes they see others wearing. Those with eating disorders pay more attention to food stimuli, while addicts pay more attention to the drug-related stimuli. This may impact memories, because they are more focused on the stimuli, rather than the details of the overall picture. It could translate to memory distortion, inaccuracy, or incompleteness.
Use it in your marketing by making it easier for people to think of you more often. Do this using any number of tactics, such as:
Blogging regularly.
Posting on social media every day.
Re-sharing your content regularly.
Posting your articles on other sites – like Huffington Post and Medium
Guest posting original articles.
The Cheerleading Effect
The Cheerleading Effect says that seeing faces in groups makes them appear more attractive. It all comes down to belonging in a group in comparison to isolation. No one really likes to be alone all the time. The group mentality can be incredibly helpful in marketing, since naturally we’re wired to want to stay in a group where it is safe. Use this bias to your advantage in marketing by:
Clustering a bunch of testimonials together, instead of listing just one or two.
Displaying user reviews to demonstrate user engagement
You Don’t Have to be a Psych Major to Make It Work in Marketing
Though it may seem like you need to have a background in psychology to make it part of your strategy, the great thing is – the work has already been done for you. Massive amounts of research is already there to support these principles, and you’re not out to reinvent the wheel. You’re just out to effectively use human nature to get your desired result.
What kind of psychological principles do you regularly use in your marketing campaigns? How has using psychology to support your tactics improved your results? Share your experiences with me in a comment below.
If you’re looking to sell online – there are no shortage of services to assist you. Here’s a look at nine options to choose from. Some ecommerce platforms are better suited toward beginners who have only a handful of products to sell, while others are highly robust with nearly limitless capabilities.
Shopify
As one of the most well-known eCommerce platforms available on the market today, Shopify offers a user-friendly interface, so those with little to no web design experience can build a professional looking shop in just a few minutes. There are more than 100 templates to start from, and those who are more technical have the option to customize the appearance using HTML and CSS. With Shopify Plus, you can easily scale the business and sell across multiple channels, including social media, Amazon, and eBay.
Shopify integrates with more than 50 payment gateways, so you’re in complete control of the payment methods you want to accept. When you sign up for an account, you’ll be assigned to a coach who will guide you through how to set up your store and give you advice on how to sell your products. New accounts are given $100 in Google AdWords credit to start their marketing, and Shopify comes with a built-in iPhone app for customers who want to make purchases on the go.
Shopify offers three plans, starting at $29.99/month with no transaction fees, though there are limitations on products and files unless you opt for the unlimited plan which will cost you $179.99/month. There are no setup fees or service contracts, and the plans come with a 14-day free trial. There are no restrictions on the products you can sell.
Etsy
Etsy is a niche ecommerce platform, focusing on handmade and vintage items, and crafting supplies or tools needed to create items. Creating an account is free, but the service takes a 3.5% transaction fee once an item sells, and there is a 20 cent listing fee for every item listed. That 20 cent fee covers four months, or until the item sells. Then, after the transaction fee, there’s a 3% plus 25 cents payment processing fee.
Etsy includes a built-in analytics platform so you can see how well the shop is doing. The design process is simple, using a drag-and-drop platform so you can have a website up and running in minutes. Shop owners can buy and print discounted postage and can attract more buyers with promoted listings.
Etsy also offers Pattern, which is a platform priced at $15 a month to create a website around the store. With Pattern, you can setup a custom domain. The domain is not included, and the themes are fairly limited. If you decide to use it, you can connect it to your Google Analytics to get traffic data. Pattern comes with a free 30-day trial.
It’s an ideal solution for people who don’t want to spend time handling a payment gateway and have products that fit within the sales niche. But, for most people, it’s a rather limited (and expensive) ecommerce platform. It’s also an ideal choice for people who want to sell wholesale.
Big Cartel
Another niche ecommerce platform, Big Cartel is designed for authors, crafters, bakers, and photographers. The web-based, full hosted platform has hundreds of web templates to choose from, and takes zero transaction fees. It’s easy to add and manage products and discounts. But, if you’re a shop selling mass quantities of products, you’ll need something else. If you’re looking for more advanced features, you’ll also need another platform.
If you’ve got five or fewer products, you can take advantage of the free plan, with Facebook store access, basic statistics, and basic customization. This plan lacks the ability to add discount codes, or the ability to use a custom domain.
Paid plans start at $9.99/month, and go to $29.99/month, covering anywhere from 25 to 300 products depending on tier. All paid plans include the ability to add five images per product, additional stats, full customization with access to HTML, inventory tracking, discount codes, and a custom URL.
Integrations are limited to a few add-ons, but using Zapier (another paid service) allows you to expand those integrations.
Bigcommerce
Bigcommerce is a full website builder that produces responsive websites without needing to know code, or even much about web design in general. Everything you need to add and manage products and accept payments is included. There are customizable shipping options, with a tax system and drop shipping features. Users also get a variety of reports, marketing tools, and advanced search engine optimization options. With Bigcommerce, you can also sell products in person, via social media, and on various marketplaces. App integrations make it easy to manage everything from a central platform. Options include marketing, shipping, accounting, and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, to name a few.
Pricing starts at $29.95 a month. Enterprise plans are available with custom pricing, where you must call and speak to a consultant to develop a plan that fits your needs. The standard plan is enough for someone just starting out, while the enterprise plan is best for a fast-growing and well-established brand. It comes with a 15-day free trial to get you started.
WooCommerce
If you’re using WordPress to host your store, WooCommerce can be a good option. It’s a free plugin, but has an extensive marketplace of free and paid extensions so you can add features and integrations to create a truly customized store. Extensions handle everything from account and customer service, to point of sale, shipping, tax, reporting, and marketing. Free options include: Stipe, Amazon Payments, Conversio, Shippo, and more. Paid options include: WooCommerce Bookings, WooSubscriptions, WooCommerce Memberships, InfusionSoft, and more.
This is a good solution for people who are familiar with WordPress and are comfortable managing all the aspects of the store on their own. The WordPress and WooCommerce combo is my favorite ecommerce platform for most online stores. For those who are a little less technical, this may not be the best choice.
SquareSpace
SquareSpace began as a cloud-based content management system, offering user-friendly web design services with high quality templates, but they’ve added ecommerce capabilities to the platform. They have a limited number of features for the commerce part – even though the CMS allows several integrations. Squarespace Commerce themselves says the platform is best suited for stores with less than 200 SKUs. Basic features such as packing slips, coupons, and Mailchimp integration are included. Pricing starts at $26/month. There’s a 14-day free trial, with no credit card required.
LemonStand
LemonStand is an ecommerce platform designed specifically for rapidly growing stores. It works well for people who don’t want to spend a lot of time customizing beyond the logo and product pages. But, it is also a perfect solution for companies that want to develop a completely custom online store, since everyone can access the full code. If you want to run your own website with a lot of custom options, but don’t know code – move on to another platform.
LemonStand doesn’t take any transaction fees, meaning you only have to pay the payment processor fees. Though it integrates with more than 100 tools, the open API allows you to build any app integration you need to ensure your workflow runs smoothly. Though you need advanced technical knowledge to handle this, the LemonStand platform is built based on the assumption you’ll work with a developer to build the store.
Other features include tracking sales, split-testing, custom order statuses, landing pages, and unlimited product images. There are plenty of templates you can use to get started if you don’t plan on doing a lot of customization.
Pricing starts at $49.month and includes one staff user, with unlimited products in your store. The highest tier plan is $149/month and includes 10 staff users, digital product selling, web hooks, subscriptions, custom fields, concierge setup, and more.
Volusion
Volusion is a cloud-based ecommerce solution, offering full-service options for more than 40,000 online retailers, including some big names like Intel and 3M. One thing that sets them apart from the competition is the fact that most features are built directly into the dashboard, so there’s no need to purchase third-party apps and worry about integrations to manage your stoe. Plus, there’s a live and abandoned shopping cart feature, so you can see who’s actually completing the checkout process and follow up with those that aren’t. It integrates with Amazon and eBay so you can track inventory if you choose to sell on outside marketplaces.
Volusion has a mobile app for iOS and Android devices, so you can monitor orders and inventory on the go. There’s also the ability to take orders by phone, which can be processed from directly within the store dashboard.
There’s no setup wizard like you see with some competitors, but there is a getting started guide and a series of tutorial videos to walk you through the key areas of the store. All plans come with free setup and unlimited storage. Pricing starts at $15 a month for up to 100 products, and tops out at $135 a month for unlimited products. There are no transaction fees on any plan, making this an affordable solution for both small and enterprise businesses.
3dCart
3dCart is one of the oldest eCommerce site building solutions on the market today. It comes with a free domain for life, and a 15-day free trial. When you sign up for your account, you’ll be given access to more than 100 mobile-friendly store themes, a mobile store, a Facebook store, and access to 24/7 customer support. Beyond offering the shopping cart service, it comes with extras like the ability to create an affiliate program, and support for drop shipping.
Plans range from $19.99/month to $99.99/month. The lowest tier plan includes up to 100 products, with up to 4,000 visits a month, and includes $25 in free advertising credit. The highest tier plan can host an unlimited number of products, comes with $75 in free advertising credit, and includes unlimited email accounts, daily deals, group deals, and an autoresponder.
When it comes to choosing the right ecommerce store for your needs, consider not only the ease of use and price, but the: number of products, the integrations, your level of design and development experience, and how the platform will fit into your overall workflow. Many platforms allow you to scale your efforts as your store grows.
What’s your favorite ecommerce platform? Which one do you feel is best and why? Any tips for successful ecommerce in general? Let’s talk about them in the comments below.
Ads in cars – In a world where everyone is constantly on-the-go, and mobile internet usage has overtaken the desktop, it makes sense to take the future of digital marketing to the next place we’re always connected – our vehicles.
Americans spend an average of more than 17,600 minutes driving every year, breaking down to an average of 48 minutes per day driving, and there’s massive revenue potential just by taking advantage of the technology we’ve already got in today’s cars. The radio has been in control of advertising in the car for years.
The Connected Car
The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the massive network of objects that are connected to the internet. Any “smart” items, from refrigerators, to beds, to light bulbs, are part of the IoT. We achieve this with the use of sensors and actuators embedded in the objects themselves. We’ve been adding cars to IoT for years, with each newer model having something newer and better to offer than in years past.
New cars on the market today are jam-packed with technology, including:
Navigation/GPS
Voice Control with Touchscreen Infotainment systems
It’s that screen that advertisers can make use of by placing ads in cars. Even though it acts as a central hub for controlling everything in the car, it’s also prime real estate for advertisers. Pandora is ahead of the crowd with their programmatic targeting network for in-car ads. Over time, more ad impressions will become available as more applications move to the car dashboard. The ad exchange platform will continue to grow, and buyers can use the standard targeting data, including location, to buy ads.
Integrating the Car into the Cross-Screen Ecosystem
Cross-screen marketing is a major part of getting messages to consumers today because they consume the same content, even though it may be presented differently, across screens. Consumers are known to use two devices at the same time – often watching TV while they use a tablet or smartphone. As people continue to move across screens, or even use more at a time to accomplish tasks, we’ll start to see an increase in cross-screen advertising campaigns.
Take for instance AdColony, a mobile video ad company. They used cross-screen strategy to promote a client’s consumer packaged goods brand. One set of users was targeted using just a TV ad about the brand, with another set of users targeted using a TV, iPad, and iPhone ad campaign. Brand recall was 43% for the cross-screen campaign audience, compared to just 6% for the TV only version. Purchase intent was 18% for the TV only campaign, and 31% for the cross-screen audience.
As more people transition to newer vehicles with screens and connected features, we’ll have the chance to integrate this screen into the ecosystem, supporting existing cross-screen advertising tactics. Imagine what the recall and purchase intent statistics would be if people were able to see ads for brands on TV, mobile devices, and in the car? Of course, there’d have to be a cap on the number of exposures presented in a certain period of time, to combat desensitization and potentially overwhelming prospects, but frequency capping is fairly easy to accomplish.
Think about it for a second – we have refrigerators that can remind us when we’re out of milk and even check spoilage levels from our phones. Why not have our car tell us to stop and grab a gallon when we pass the next grocery store in five miles? Why not advertise cookies or cereal to go along with that gallon of milk? If we have to go to the grocery store anyway, we’ll be more apt to “crave” that cereal or cookie if we’ve just heard an ad for either of them.
Using navigation history, advertisers can learn where drivers spend most of their time, and the stores, restaurants, and other places they frequent most often. Then, when people are on the road en route to one of those places, they can get relevant advertisements throughout their journey.
Ads in Cars in Action
Imagine this scenario:
You’re out of town for a work conference. You’ve already ordered room service for dinner to avoid having to venture out into the unknown city and deal with the traffic, and you’re so sick of it, so you decide to go for a drive.
You don’t know where to eat, or where to park. That’s where the infotainment system in your car comes to your rescue. With your location at hand, your car will tell you where you can safely park, and provide you with coupons and special offers from the restaurants nearby that parking spot.
This contextual marketing is ideal for marketers because it means customers more likely to make a purchase, and for many drivers, it’s the perfect situation. You get suggestions to solve your immediate problems. You can get a deal on your dinner, then drive back to the hotel and rest to prepare for the next day at the conference.
It’s already happening with Aha Radio, using audio advertising. Location-based offers are sent to the in-dash systems, for instance, an offer for a free drink and chips at the local Subway restaurant that’s coming up in a few miles. The driver simply has to tap a “thumbs up” icon on the screen, and the coupon is delivered directly to their email box for use at the restaurant.
Aha Radio is pre-loaded on nearly 50 types of cars, including models from: Scion, Subaru, Honda, Acura, Mazda, Ford, and Chrysler.
On the other hand, there are many drivers who may find this kind of advertising obtrusive – and just another way to gain entrance into your life, in the privacy of the car. To be successful, in-car advertising must remain useful, and cannot be viewed as annoying. The more connected cars become, the more control drivers will have in terms of their preferences to adjust their advertising.
It’s possible there may be an option to setup profiles for each driver – much like you can connect more than one phone to the car via Bluetooth, but only one phone can be active at a time. This would be an ideal for a one-car family where both partners use the car regularly. One partner may have completely different interests – and the flexibility of driver profiles will keep the advertising relevant to the person driving the car, rather than becoming annoying, and a waste of advertising dollars.
In-Car Advertising in Ride Shares
Though Uber and Lyft drivers are actively being discouraged from using in-car advertising, there’s a platform for it. We see advertising in taxis in many major cities, so Vugo was created as a way for rideshare drivers to display ads on tablets located in the backseats. With the car’s GPS, location based ads are served to the tablet, allowing the drivers to earn an estimated $3/hour to pad their income while driving passengers from point A to point B. Uber argues that because the platform ads little to the ride sharing experience, they will be deactivating any cars that opt to use this service.
“People-Based” Marketing
While it’s true people are spending more time on mobile devices overall, 25% of people use at least three, if not more, mobile devices every day, and 40% switch devices to complete an activity. What this means is targeting a single device may not be the best approach, since we rely on web cookies to handle this for us. Instead, the answer is people-based marketing.
With this method, we’re no longer marketing to a browser cookie and trying to connect the dots from device to person. It’s now possible to upload prospect information directly to advertising platforms like Facebook and Instagram using the Custom Audiences feature. With that, ads target the users specifically across any device. This method still isn’t foolproof because people don’t always use the same email address consistently between their social media accounts and business platforms, but often performs better compared to the typical cookie-based approach.
What About Drivers Without Connected Cars?
Even if your main demographic is still stuck driving an older car that lacks these connected features, many of them are available as aftermarket additions. Though people may shutter at the idea of adding technology to an older car, the fact that there are standalone GPS systems and other aftermarket accessories means we as marketers still have a chance to target people with ads in cars, despite what kind of car they actually may be driving. Aha Radio is available on aftermarket units from Kenwood, Alpine, and Pioneer.
The Connected Car – The Future of Digital Marketing
The “connected car” offers a whole new world of opportunity for marketers. By placing ads in cars, it’s now possible to reach people where they were previously only reachable at a limited level with out-of-home advertising or radio ads. The smart marketers will consider this new media in their strategies, and those who are eager to adopt it in this rapidly emerging space will have an advantage over those who are late to the game.
Have you noticed any ads in cars recently? Tell us about them (where, why and when) in the comments section below.
Eric Sachs joined host Matthew Gonzalez on EntHead to discuss building your client base with digital marketing, and the importance of trust and transparency.
In this 28-minute episode, Eric and Matthew discuss:
Conversion optimization
How to strengthen your reputation with transparency and digital presence
The importance of looking ahead and adapting as fast as your industry
Prioritizing transparency, responsiveness, and keeping work in-house as a business owner
Matthew: Alright, EntHheads, welcome to our next podcast.
Today we feature Eric Sachs. Eric hails from California. He’s founder of Sachs Marketing Group who specializes in SEO and digital marketing. He’s been working at this for a while, so he’s certainly, in my opinion, an authoritarian in the matter, and certainly knows way more than I do. Hopefully he can help you throughout this podcast.
As a reminder hit us up on Facebook.com/enthead, and, of course, visit us on iTunes and give us a rating. Let us know what you like, what you don’t like. That way we can always address and learn to build your trust. With that, Eric, on behalf of all the EntHheads out there, welcome to our podcast.
Eric: Thank you, thank you very much, Matthew, for having me. I appreciate it.
Matthew: So you came as a referral from a fellow colleague now of Mark Chapman, who’s also been featured on enthead. He highly recommended you, which means for our point of view, enthead, we like to feature really authoritarian people who know and have been in the industry for a little while now. For our listeners out there who are looking to jump into SEO or digital marketing in general, we kind of like to feature individuals like yourself. Maybe just tell us a little bit about your Sachs Marketing Group.
Eric: Sure. We are, as you mentioned, a digital marketing firm. We focus primarily on the organic approach to digital marketing – search engine optimization, social media development. We do a ton of web design actually and we never really ever intended to be a web design firm, but it just sort of happened organically. We’ve been around six years. In fact, we’re just coming up on our six-year anniversary. We are in our third office. We’re sort of in a growth expansion mode.
Matthew: So you guys have been expanding now in your third office. That’s a great problem to have. Those listening in, that’s a great sign of growth. We know we target the show for individuals who are roughly in their second, third year and beyond. We’ll certainly get into some of those lessons learned. With those kinds of experiences in your sixth year, you’re on probably your next growth pattern. I think that’s awesome.
Eric: Thank you.
Matthew: Maybe digging down a bit now into the weeds of what you guys do, marketing in various formats in terms of digital marketing. Are there better methods out there to help convert optimization techniques from an SEO perspective?
Eric: The answer is yes. I think when we talk about conversion, really we’re talking not so much as an SEO perspective. SEO, loosely defined is getting a website found and search engines for relevant search queries. When we talk conversions, we’re really talking about what happens after the visitor hits the website.
When we talk conversions, we’re really talking about what happens after the visitor hits the website. There are a multitude of tools that we use. If we find that, for example with one of our clients, we’ve improved their organic reach pretty dramatically. We’ve increased the number of unique visits to their website, and it’s not paying off. Their phone is not ringing, they’re not getting leads, they’re not getting sales, they’re not converting. That typically points to a problem with the website.
There are sort of best practices in web conversion. We look at things like color palette and position of actionable elements on the web page, the path to convert, if it’s too confusing or not intuitive enough. The answer is yes, there are things that can be done, and certainly we can get into those.
Matthew: Okay. Very good. You definitely hit a couple items that we need to think about and that is once you’re out there, it takes a little bit of time. It’s not going to be a big bang solution and may require some adjustments, as with everything. Absolutely, we’ll get into some of those techniques a bit better and we can do that to a degree now.
Digging a little deeper, for someone who is in business, been in business for at least two or three years, and they’re looking to maybe promote their reputation. Even if they’re not in trouble, but they want to get out there and promote their reputation. From an SEO perspective, are there any best of breed efforts that an organization can do so?
Eric: Yeah, absolutely. Certainly paying attention to their reputation and specifically negative reviews. Typically, if you’ve been in business for any length of time, you’re probably going to have at least some negative reviews. You can’t please all the people all the time. We look at negative reviews as an opportunity to demonstrate just how much your business cares about its business. Just how much your business cares about its customers, in terms of how you respond to those negative reviews.
Matthew: Yeah, you’re right. You can’t please everybody. You might have some negative reviews, absolutely.
Eric: Just for our [6:25], these best practices that you speak of are really deeply ingrained in our company’s culture. We’re really transparent in what we do.
We don’t hide behind industry secrets, techno-babble that people really don’t understand. We explain to our customers in plain English what we’re doing. An active social media presence I think really goes a long way in terms in communicating with your fan base on social channels. Then reviews, not only always attempting to garner positive reviews, but also again responding to the negative ones is really important.
There are some tools – there are review aggregators that exist that will scrape the web and find reviews on various different platforms like Yelp! and Angie’s List and Google Plus and so forth and then pull them into a feed that you can display on your website to kind of show people what the overall sentiment is on the web about your company without requiring that they go and dig for that.
I think that’s really important.
Matthew: Perfect. I think you gave a lot of good deep tools to use to better kind of maybe optimize increase reputation. A lot of companies don’t do that. They don’t think to even gather reviews, go to all of that.
Eric: Yeah, or they do and I’ve often seen them do it wrong. In other words, you’ve seen the websites where there’s like the review page or the testimonial page and it’s just really done by the web master.
They’re just embedded. I think that today we tend to have very savvy consumers, very sort of web and tech comfortable consumers, and everyone, I believe, sort of takes those reviews with a grain of salt. Unless they’re done on a platform. There are some review platforms – can I say names?
Matthew: Sure.
Eric: Like for example, Trust Pilot. Trust Pilot is sort of seen as almost industry standard review platform. The reason why it’s so well trusted is that it’s very difficult to do a fake review on Trust Pilot. They sort of vet out the person who’s posting the review. They look at their IP address. They have them create an account.
You’re pretty assured that if you’re looking at a review on Trust Pilot it’s probably a legitimate review. At least there’s a better chance than not that it’s a legitimate review. Trust Pilot also has a partnership with Google, so ultimately as you build your reputation with Trust Pilot and you increase your score and your number of stars, just like Yelp! is like 0 to 5. Those stars actually show in the search engine result pages. We use Trust Pilot with a lot of our clients. We also use Trust Pilot personally. I just think it’s a great platform. That’s one tool. There are others.
There’s one called Bird Eye, which we use sometimes. Bird Eye is more of an aggregator. Again, it’s a scraper. It finds all the reviews online and aggregates them. With Bird Eye, you as the user have the ability to filter reviews. You could tell Bird Eye’s platform only show the reviews that are 4 stars or better. Conversely, with Trust Pilot, if you get a bad review on Trust Pilot, you can’t hide it. It’s there forever. You have different tools for different things I guess. There are definitely ways to show reviews and show testimonials without simply just typing them into a web page. I think that those sort of fall on deaf ears oftentimes.
Matthew: Quite true. Thanks for those tools. I hadn’t heard some of those, and learned a new industry acronym regarding [10:13]. That’s great. I think we learn more and more every time to get authoritarians like yourself. Awesome job.
Eric: Happy to help.
Matthew: That’s what we’re here for. Kind of looking, based on your experiences, into the present and the future, if someone’s now thinking about building a digital marketing plan, integrating search engine optimization, what should they be thinking about or what trends do you foresee happening in the next 12 months? What do you foresee coming down the pike?
Eric: The SEO space is always changing. Google’s constantly updating and editing algorithms. It’s a very fluid space. Best practices six weeks ago have changed today.
I would say the average typically business owner who’s focused on growing their business that maybe doesn’t have a background in digital marketing or doesn’t have the time to really keep their finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the digital space, should probably look to an outside source to help. That said, as a start-up maybe with a limited marketing budget, there are certainly things that someone could do to help their online presence and efforts that they can implement, that would certainly help.
I think you asked what are some of those sort of best of breed efforts. The reality is every company is a media company these days. No one really goes to the phone book to find what they’re looking for.
Really it comes down to content.
The companies that produce the best content win. It’s not just about long form content. In other words, it’s not necessarily quantity, but rather quality; well-researched topics with data and sources cited. Content that would resonate with your target audience. You should know your target audience well. Know their demographic and know what they’re interested in and what they’d be interested to read and potentially share with their friends and family and share on their social channels. Not just the written word. Video content, audio content. There’s a surge in voice-based searches using Google Assistant, which is build into Google home and Google pixel.
Really, it’s just getting – we live in the information age. People, I believe, tend to gravitate toward people who are authorities in the space. If I’m looking for someone to repair my roof, I want to contact the person who knows the most about roof repair. I’m going to determine that as a consumer by the information that person’s putting out on the web.
Matthew: Absolutely. Appreciate the kind of forecast. We’ve heard that as well. I think you’re right on point with some of the other individuals we’ve had regarding digital marketing, looking at Google ads and Facebook ads and how fast that industry changes and how fluid, like you said, I think that’s the right word you used, just update based on necessity. It is hard to look out 12 months. My background being in the IT space, I can resonate with that loudly. Appreciate that and can definitely relate. Those of you planning out there, just realize as you plan your search engine optimization, digital marketing best practices and strategy, realize that a best practice is to be fluid and change. I think that’s kind of what Eric’s hitting up here.
Switching gears here a little bit. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in relation to marketing or digital marketing. As a business owner yourself, over the years or maybe even the present, are there any tools, processes, procedures that you use in business to help you run your business that you’d like to share with listeners? You said man, I wish a few other people knew about this because it’s so cool. Not just cool, but it actually helps my cost bottom line, what have you.
Anything you’d like to recommend?
Eric: Matthew, I think you could have done an entire podcast on this topic.
Matthew: I always do. Actually I do. Every podcast I ask the same question so I think I almost do.
Eric: Not necessarily specific to the digital marketing space but just business in general. We don’t have time for the story about how my business was developed, but just in a nutshell version, is it was an accident. I didn’t intend on building a business. It just sort of happened. I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t have a model, I didn’t have money, I didn’t have credit, I didn’t have anything. I just started making decisions that I thought made sense to me and put myself in the shoes of the consumer and thought what would I want if I were a consumer.
Some of these processes or procedures just kind of fall into a common sense doctrine I think. Transparency, especially in the digital marketing space, but I think in any business, transparency is huge. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of deception, a lot of consumers that have had bad tastes in their mouths as result of being mistreated in the past. Again, not in the digital space.
Responsiveness I think is huge. One of the main complaints we hear about some of our clients that have come to us from our competitors is just waiting too long to respond. Leaving a voicemail, not hearing back. Sending an email and not getting a response for two days. There’s really no excuse today with how connected and how digital we are to not be Johnny-on-the-Spot in terms of responding to your client’s inquiries or concerns. There are tools that certainly help with that. Email is one, phone calls, face-to-face meetings, certainly text message, SMS. Google Docs is an amazing tool that’s free and it’s one of the main tools we use to allow our clients to kind of look over our shoulders and watch us work. We create a daily workflow spreadsheet and share it with our clients. Because it’s web-based and real time and extremely secure, it’s just an amazing way to take some of that guess work out of it. It goes more toward the transparency we spoke of earlier.
Just kind of doing the right thing. Sort of back to the Golden Rule, and it sounds almost crazy to mentioned, but if someone pays you to do a job, I honestly think you should do the job. Maybe more so in the digital space than perhaps the mechanic. What I’m referring to is not that outsourcing is a horrible way to run a business, and in certain businesses, it makes a lot of sense. When I built this business, I thought if people are going to pay us to do something, we should do it and not send it somewhere else to be done where we have absolutely not control over the quality of work that’s being done.
Then there’s other kind of things that are a little more light. For example, I’m standing at my desk right now. It’s kind of a geek thing, but I have this cool desk that allows me to stand or sit if I want do. In terms in running a business, I found that I was here 10 hours a day and my butt started to hurt after awhile. I got a desk that stands up. Then I’ll go even a little farther out of the realm of perhaps what you thought the answer to this question might be. I ride an Adventure motorcycle. I do a lot of off-road and on-road Adventure type motorcycle riding. It clears my head. It’s throttle therapy. It allows me to kind of clear my head and not get so bogged down with work. To come back and be fresh and be 100% to service our clients.
Really that’s the last thing I’ll say on this topic. Honestly, I tell people the way I developed this business was I took a shower every day, I came to work and I asked myself how can I be of service to my clients. I honestly believe if you believe on that, if you focus on how to serve the client, everything else will fall into place. The money will come, the accolades, the online reputation, everything else will come if you’re truly focused on how can we be of service to our clients. How can we help our clients to grow their business? Or how can we make the best yogurt, or how can we repair the roof the best? Whatever it is, everything else will kind of fall into place.
Matthew: Well said. I think you gave us an extremely well-rounded approach to that question. You gave us some tools, some processes and procedures. I think you’re the first to do all three. That’s awesome. Just recently in a recent podcast, somebody, I think it was Danielle [19:37] answered it probably different. Normally everybody leans on the tools. That’s fine, because we ask it. She gave us more of a process and procedure. You’re the second one to do that as well regarding just how you handle yourself, your business, etc. What I took out of that, and there was a lot, is very much the ethics and transparency in terms of a common theme throughout this discussion. Based on that, we’ll get you out on this. Any final lessons learned in running your business that you’d like to share with the [20:12] listening out there? Anything you think as an authoritarian in your area or even outside your area, any lessons learned you’d like to share?
Eric: Because I didn’t have a plan or a business model to follow; it sort of happened, as I mentioned, organically. I didn’t know a lot. I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned from those mistakes. You hear this all the time. People learn from their mistakes and then counsel others to prevent others from making those same mistakes. We had issues along the way, throughout the last six years, that I could have avoided had I maybe consulted with someone. A lot of that also worked to my benefit. Do you have time for a quick story or are we short on time?
Matthew: No, of course, you have all the time that you have to offer.
Eric: It was about two years into the business that I got a call from our merchant provider. This is the merchant company that ran our Visa card, MasterCard, American Express, so forth. He called me and he said Eric, aren’t you an SEO company? I said, yeah, absolutely. He said you’ve never had a chargeback, meaning in those two years we had never had any client dispute a charge. I said I know. Isn’t that great? I was kind of proud of that. He kind of chuckled and he said it’s great. Ironically, I guess he gets paid a little bit on chargebacks so he would have preferred that I have had a couple. He’s like that’s not the point. The point is we have many other SEO companies in our book of business and all of them, without exception, you being the exception, regularly have chargebacks month after month after month. He gave me the numbers. I don’t remember what they were. It was pretty high.
He said in two years you’ve never had one. Why is that? I said I don’t know. I didn’t, but I wanted to find out. I hung up and I started doing some research. I found that there’s sort of a standard approach to business in the digital realm. Certainly not everybody, every digital marketing firm follows this approach, but I’d go out on a limb and say the vast majority sort of do. It’s really just a model based on client acquisition. Whether it’s a call center or a sales team; bring on clients, bring on clients, promise them the world typically. Hey, we’ll do all this great stuff for you in 90 days usually. Then when a client comes onboard, generally the work is going to be outsourced and because the difference in economy, you can charge several thousand dollars a month here in the states for a digital marketing campaign, couple of hundred bucks, pennies on the dollar in another country. The rest is all margin so it’s a very profitable model.
If the client doesn’t get what they were promised in 30, 60, 90-days and they cancel, it’s not a really big deal because you’re just going to replace them with new clients. It’s basically a model that based that’s about a 90-day retention, highly focused on client acquisitions. So it makes sense. They didn’t get what they were promised in 90-days, they get upset, they chargeback, you get negative reviews. Our model was completely different. It wasn’t completely different because I had a good model to follow. Again, it was completely different because I was just doing what I thought made sense. To me, it made sense if people were going to pay me to do a job, that I should do that job. It made sense to me that I could keep clients long-term, I’d be more profitable in the long end. It made sense to me to be of service to the client so that they got really results so they would be really happy with us.
Our model was one with a focus on client retention much, much more than client acquisition. In fact, to this day, we don’t have a sales staff. We don’t have a call center. I literally sit and wait for my phone to ring. It rings off the hook. I know it’s kind of funny that I’m a marketer and I really don’t do much marketing. Through referral business and our organic results online, we get tons and tons of new clients all the time, and we have amazing retention. Our very first client ever, six years ago, is still with us today. Clients stay for years with us. To date, six years in, we’ve never had a credit card chargeback. We’ve never had a dispute with a client.
My competitors would argue that they’re more profitable than I am because they bring on much, much more business on a per month basis than I do. I would argue that I really prefer my model because I’m building long-term mutually beneficial relationships with our clients that are based on relationship. I can’t tell you how many invites to company Christmas parties each year. We’ve really become an integral part of our client’s business. They wouldn’t think to cancel us because they’re getting amazing return as a result of our efforts.
I would say in closing, just in terms of our culture or what a business’s culture should be in my humble opinion; I’m reiterating the focus on how we can help clients, how we can produce the best product, how we can deliver the best service, and really prioritizing the success of your clients over your own success. The rest will just come. It will be easy if you’re focused on the right things.
Matthew: Awesome story. I firmly believe that. I had a very similar business model when I had my businesses. I didn’t have 1000 clients, I had the ones who always mattered to me. Kind of like you, I waited for my phone to ring. Marketing was something I did, but it wasn’t a major push. For those listening out there, it is a business model to potentially adapt and adopt right here coming from a marketer himself and the way he runs his company.
Eric, we really appreciate your time. This has all been super knowledgeable for myself and I’m sure everyone out there listening in. We know this is going to provide great value once this gets downloaded and people listen in and take action.
Eric: You’re so welcome, and thank you again for the opportunity. I’m really honored to have been selected for this and again, thank you.
Matthew: We’re honored as well. Thank you. Alright Eric, before we get you out, let everybody know how they can get a hold of you best.
Eric: Sure. They obviously can come to our website, which is sachsmarketingroup.com, and the last name is S-A-C-H-S. Again, sachsmarketinggroup.com. You can call the office if you’d like. Our number is 818-889-3232. You can follow me on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or any available social media channel, certainly LinkedIn. We also have a toll-free number if you’d like, 866-992-3742. I think if you just go to the website, you’ll find all the different ways to contact us.
The Accelerated Mobile Pages, or Google AMP, is an open-source project designed to increase the speed at which pages load on mobile devices. Launched in February 2016, studies show websites that implement the AMP technology load anywhere between 15% to 85% faster than the same non-AMP version. Many publishers, including BBC and BuzzFeed are already using it. Though initially aimed only at news stories from online publishers, ecommerce providers like eBay are also using it. If your website can benefit from the AMP carousel style results, it’s worth considering.
How Does It Work?
By stripping down the website’s code to a restricted version of HTML, and disallowing the use of most JavaScript, the file sizes are smaller, which means they load faster. Sounds kind of boring, right? There’s a special AMP JS library that can be used to add rich content to the website, so most people won’t miss much.
But, what really helps speed things up is the fact that Google hosts a cached version these websites on their own servers, so when a user clicks your AMP site from the search engine results page, they’re getting content directly from Google servers.
What It Means for Designers and Developers
AMP means designers and developers need to shift to factor it into their mobile web design. Unless you have a good grasp on coding, it can be difficult to implement. Under the AMP protocol:
All third-party JavaScript is removed from the critical path
Resource loading is prioritized
Web fonts are optimized
Style calculations are minimized
Documents are pre-rendered with the preconnect API, only downloading resources above the fold. Resources that may use a lot of CPU power aren’t downloaded.
Designers are advised to design for the user experience first, regardless of whether or not that means it’s harder for the developer to implement. Place priority on anything that improves the user experience, but compromise when necessary. Just because it can be made fast doesn’t mean it will translate to a positive user experience. Focus on your design on the web browsers of today, instead of trying to get ahead and designing for a future, faster, browser.
For designers and developers who want to dig in and get their feet wet, there are plenty of tutorials and templates on the AMP project website. For the do-it-yourself designers, there’s a WordPress plugin that can assist with proper implementation, but it’s worth noting that custom styling, widget, and side bar items won’t carry over, and and everything must be canonicalized correctly to avoid duplicate content issues.
What It Means for Consumers and Publishers
The entire aim of the AMP project is to improve the mobile user experience. Data from Kissmetrics shows 47% of consumers expect a webpage to load within two seconds, and 40% of users will abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load. Mobile users expect a similar experience from a desktop on their smartphones and tablets. If your website’s page response time is delayed by just one second, your conversion rate can decrease by 7%. If you’re an e-commerce site that earns $25,000/day, that translates to a $625,000 annual loss in revenue.
AMP removes the clutter of full-page ads, along with the annoyance of slow loading times and full-page ads. And, because the website files are ultimately smaller, they’ll save you money in data use.
Wait, what? No ads? How is ad revenue based publisher supposed to make it in the days of AMP design? Fortunately for them, there’s an AMP for Ads program that’s designed to allow publishers to create compliant ads for AMP sites, translating to faster ad load time, too. Mobile users often scroll faster than standard web pages can even load the ads, which is a major issue for marketers.
Data from PageFair indicates there are 198 million active ad block users around the world, and it grew by 41% globally between 2014 and 2015. Perhaps what’s even more depressing for marketers is the average click through rate for display ads across all formats and placements is a dismal 0.06%. Adding faster, relevant ads to the AMP experience may help combat the blindness issue for marketers, increasing the potential for ad-based revenue.
Since Google serves a cached version of the site, when a user shares the AMP version, it’s going to point to Google’s version, rather than the live version of the site, which could negatively affect publisher traffic.
But What About Search Engine Optimization?
If you’re worried about AMP and your SEO efforts, Richard Gingras, Google’s senior director of news and products has said, “[sites that adopt AMP won’t] get a massive boost in search ranking. Though because speed matters, he also said, “If we had two articles that from a signaling perspective scored the same in all other characteristics but for speed, then yes, we will give an emphasis to the one with speed because that is what users find compelling.”
Is Google AMP good, or bad? Ultimately, it’s a good thing because user experience is a major part of what drives the online economy. But, it comes with its share of drawbacks for marketers and developers. Load time isn’t a direct ranking factor, and creating an AMP compliant website isn’t just as simple as flipping a switch.
Because the technology is fairly new, and we’ll likely see bugs being ironed out for quite sometime, it’s too soon to say whether or not AMP really is the future of the mobile web. Yes, there is the potential for major implications for the mobile web, but we won’t know for sure until we see how widely adopted it becomes. Not everything Google develops becomes an instant hit, as evidenced by Google+ accounts and the authorship markup. It’s always possible it too, will flop, but only time will tell.
When it comes to determining and implementing an SEO strategy for your business, many aspects will likely come into play. The main decision you will first need to make is whether you will manage your SEO campaign in-house or contract out to an SEO agency. For most small or new businesses, cost will be a driving factor for this decision. Search engine optimization is no quick process – it is a slow, building activity that will see return and progress over time.
Cost
While fronting the funds for an SEO campaign may seem daunting, it is the first thing you’ll probably need to consider. If you are to hire an in-house expert (or team of experts), you’l need to look into providing competitive salaries for the employees. If you take the agency approach, most agencies create SEO packages for every budget. These packages can be scaled as you grow; meaning, if you only have a small amount of funding to use in the beginning, your campaign can start small and grow larger as funding becomes available. Depending on the range of services and current needs, you can personalize your SEO package.
Expertise
Contracting out to an agency means that you will get the expertise of a team of professionals. Content writers, SEO strategists, social media marketers, graphic designers, programmers, and others work together on your campaign, essentially being the most efficient option for you. An in-house SEO generalist will likely need to wear many hats and shift gears constantly, making their work potentially less efficient.
Although one option may make more sense than the other for specific companies, working with an agency likely provides the most bang for your buck. The type of very professional, efficient work that we’ve come to expect from an agency will help to get your SEO strategy up and running.
Click here to read the full article by Jayson DeMers for Forbes.
Community management positions are routinely extended to recent graduates and “social media natives,” meaning those who routinely use various social media tools for personal or professional use. Christie Fidura poses an intriguing question..If community managers are recent graduates (and therefore new to the company or brand), do they understand how the business runs? What the community goals and values are? Community managers are responsible for creating a sense of community among the various divisions within the company and to “sell” the vision of community to each user, helping them understand and value the community. To do so, the community manager must understand each department, its needs and challenges and what it will value from its community, a difficult task for someone with little or no business experience.
Customer Support, PR, Social, Marketing, Product Development… each of them should understand the goals and objectives for having a Community, which will ensure their focus on it, and increase the overall value which can be obtained from the Community.
Engaging each of these departments will ensure that everyone is involved in building a valuable community that works for them, and having them on board can do wonders for the culture and community. Getting your colleagues on board will not only make your job easier, but also they will understand the value of community building. Before Community Managers can evangelize for their company or product they need to be experts, which means research across the organization and building a community to share with users.
As soon-to-be graduates look for jobs in community management positions, many will ask what they can do to be successful starting and throughout their career? Mashable put together a list of tips for being a successful Community Manger:
Be a Genuine Advocate for Your Product or Brand. Research and put in the time in the beginning to understand the company and product. The best community managers are ones that are passionate about what they represent. Being genuine and authentic cannot be understated in community management. (It’s also hard to fake!)
Empathize with Users. Loving the company is one thing, but understanding users is another. Community managers will often need to address “users’ pain points” and respond to complaints. This takes a great deal of understanding and communication skills.
Build Your Communication Skills. Not only to execute Point #2, communication skills are also a prerequisite to engaging users and communicating effectively.
Create Your Own Blog. Before you get hired as a community manager, blogging can set you apart by demonstrating your voice and knowledge on creating a brand.
Build Up Your Skill Set. It will come as no surprise that community managers will wear multiple hats during their tenure and having other skills like web design, some coding and SEO can help when you take on various projects.
Go Further Than Digital. Engaging the community is more than just communicating via social media. Reach out to your community, meet with people in your industry, build relationships. In an ever-changing industry, keeping up with other professionals and learning from one other will benefit you and your company.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and learn as you begin (or revamp) your Community Management career!
You may have heard by now that Google is rolling out a new update to its algorithm on April 21st – one that will place more emphasis on what Google defines as “mobile-friendly” websites. A report released last year attributed up to 60% of overall search to mobile devices, and Google’s change will reflect this in the way it shifts focus toward mobile search. Websites that do not pass Google’s mobile-friendly test will show up farther down in the search results in comparison to sites that do meet the criteria to pass for mobile-friendly.
It is somewhat important to note that this new change will not affect searches conducted on computers – only searches that are conducted on mobile devices. However, given the high volume of searches that are now being made via mobile, it is certainly worth your time and effort to be mobile-friendly.
So what does this mean for your site?
Check your site for compatibility with mobile devices via Google’s mobile-friendly test (which can be found HERE). If your site is not set up for mobile, Google will highlight the changes that need to be made. Key focus lies upon quick loading for mobile devices, easy accessibility, and buttons that are of appropriate size and functionality for smaller, mobile screens.
Click here to read more about the change from Michael Liedtke for Huff Post Tech.
You might be familiar with search engine optimization or search engine marketing, but are they one in the same? While SEO and SEM are often lumped together or referred to interchangeably, they are in fact different. Both methods work to improve online traffic and leverage brand awareness, but it is important to be able to differentiate the two.
So what’s what?
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
SEO, a component of the larger concept of SEM, is the process by which a website is optimized for keywords and web development to improve natural (or organic) search engine results. SEO evolves continuously in order to best respond to changes in search engine algorithms and includes both on-page and off-page components. These components range from keyword optimization and blogging to high quality back links and social sharing. Organic search results are often affected by social networking platforms and social media development as well.
What is Search Engine Marketing (SEM)?
SEM is the process by which websites increase their visibility and traffic through advertising and optimization. These strategies will include SEO tactics, as well as paid search, pay per click (PPC) advertising, reputation management, and boosted social media marketing.
To clarify, the two terms are very closely related, but SEO is more specifically a central component of SEM. Marketers often try to substantiate that one is better than the other, but it really depends on what your campaign is trying to accomplish. While organic SEO can be a sustainable, long-term approach, PPC or other paid SEM methods will show more immediate ROI. Whether you choose to utilize organic SEO tactics or paid SEM tactics, digital marketing campaigns will see substantial impact on traffic and brand awareness as a result.
In 2014, mobile exceeded PC internet usage. While the majority of users’ time was spent on apps, mobile Internet usage made up 28 percent of total worldwide web traffic. Search engines are the most popular sites with 77 percent of mobile users accessing them, ahead of social networking, retail and video sharing sites. Having a strong SEO strategy in place is important if you want to capture the growing mobile market. One of the best ways to do this is by implementing a mobile website design.
Mobile Design and SEO
While there might be some confusion over Google’s stance on mobile SEO, there is one thing that is not contested: Google is putting an emphasis on mobile-friendly sites. In 2014 they announced a “mobile-friendly” tag for sites that meet all of Google’s criteria for mobile optimization and also mentioned they were planning to test the mobile-friendly criteria as an additional signal for page ranking. What does this mean for you? Basically, if your site is not optimized for mobile, it will rank much lower in search results, which will ultimately reduce your organic reach.
While there are three different options for a mobile configuration, Google recommends a responsive web design as the best way to target mobile users. A responsive design allows a site to reformat itself depending on what device it is displayed on, making it user-friendly on tablets, smartphones and desktops. The best part is that it uses a single URL, which makes it simpler for Google to crawl and index content. But just because it’s responsive doesn’t necessarily mean it is mobile-friendly. Ultimately, the choice of whether to offer a separate URL, responsive web design or dynamic service (uses the same URL but generates a different version of HTML based on device) is up to you as Google does not favor any particular format.
There are, however, several best practices to ensure your site is mobile-friendly for all design formats.
Page Speed
74 percent of users will leave a site if it takes longer than 5 seconds to load. Due to hardware and connectivity issues, load times are even more important on mobile devices as users are generally using for immediate information needs. One of the best ways to reduce your load speed is to optimize your images to a smaller size, minimize code, utilize browser cache and reduce redirects.
Avoid Flash and Pop Ups
There are many mobile devices that do not have the Flash plugin available. Rather than alienate these users, you may want to simply avoid Flash altogether on your site. If you want to utilize some fun effects like an image slider, you should take advantage of HTML5 instead.
Another thing to avoid is pop-ups, whether that’s to subscribe to your newsletter or receive a free ebook. These pop-ups are intrusive to mobile users who are coming to your site for a specific reason. They are often difficult to close out of as well, which could lead to a high bounce rate.
Utilize CSS, JavaScript and Images
In the early day, many mobile devices could not support these elements so many webmasters would simply block them. Today, smartphones and tablets are more than capable of displaying all of these features. Not to mention, search bots are crawling your site for these elements in order to categorize your mobile site solution.
Optimize for Local Search
On mobile, 4 in 5 searches are local in nature. Of these local searchers, 88 percent take action within a day whether that’s contacting the business, visiting it or making a purchase. Due to the overwhelming popularity of local searches on mobile, Google has added local signals in the mobile search algorithm. If your business has a local element you should take the opportunity to optimize for local SEO. This means:
Standardizing name, address and phone number
Include city and state in your metadata
Think Mobile First
While smartphones and tablets might be revolutionary in the technology industry, it still has its limits. The easiest way to ensure your site is mobile-friendly is to approach your entire design with a mobile first mindset. This way you will already have tackled the issues of the small screen, less powerful processor and touch based navigation.
There is a very unique consideration specific to e-commerce websites that could dramatically impact their ability to rank well in search engine result pages: Curated Content.
Lets say you have an e-commerce website and you sell a particular line of clothing as an authorized re-seller. The clothing manufacturer will almost always provide you their approved product images and product descriptions to use on your website.
The Problem:
In many cases, the product descriptions provided are the exact same product descriptions that appear on thousands of other websites in the same market. All of the other authorized re-sellers (your competitors) use the exact same content provided by the clothing manufacturer. In fact, assuming the clothing manufacturer has a retail website of their own, they themselves are using the exact same product descriptions on their site. As a result, there tends to be TONS of duplicated content on the web in the form of product descriptions that have been “curated” from the manufacturer. There is a universally accepted assumption that search engines do not want duplicated content in their index. In some cases, search engines even consider duplicate content a form of plagiarism (it’s an ugly word).
The Solution:
To avoid having this issue negatively impact your organic rankings, we suggest you re-write ALL of the product descriptions on your website. The product descriptions need to be original content written by someone who knows the products intimately. Depending on the number of products offered this might be a very large job. We believe that if you elect to implement this change, you should enjoy some very tangible benefits:
1. Once the new content is posted, your organic rankings should improve considerably. Once the search engines crawl and index the new product descriptions, they should remove any penalties they may currently be imposing. We believe you should see a jump in rankings once this is indexing process has occurred.
2. There is a concept in marketing (all marketing) referred to as “noise.” Noise can be defined as a lack of differentiation in a saturated market. Doing something other than what the vast majority of your competitors are doing will help your website to standout and be noticed. Re-writing your product descriptions in a way that differentiates your company from all the other e-commerce sites that are selling the same products, should help you to build name recognition, build your brand and convert more visitors to sales.
Please feel free to comment on this post and share with our visitors how re-writing your product descriptions have impacted your organic rankings.
Are ranking reports the “gold standard” for tracking the progress of an SEO campaign? We think NOT.
There are a TON of outside influences that impact rankings when you (or someone else) searches for your website on Google:
If you have been to your website before, your website will show higher in the search engine result pages for Google
If you are signed into your Gmail account and do a Google search for your website using the same browser, your website will show higher in the search engine result pages for Google
If your friends on Google + have liked your website, it will show up higher in the search engine result pages for Google
If you search for your website from one city/state, and then search again from another city/state, your website will show up differently because Google geo-targets your IP address
Your search results will also be impacted by the location you have set in your Google search
SEO companies (including Sachs Marketing Group) have always used ranking reports to show progress to their clients. The software used to find ranking positions strips away all of the factors above and gives a “default” ranking position. The point we are trying to make is this:
“Who cares about your default ranking position?”
We respectfully submit that SEO companies have been placing way too much emphasis on ranking reports as a barometer of SEO success. The outside influences listed above are real – so real in fact that to dismiss them with a ranking report that strips them away doesn’t make a lot of sense.
A much better indicator is analytics. By monitoring your analytics (site visits) we can hone in on your market and find your audience.
We are continually researching and monitoring our client’s markets. We are actively involved in the process of finding your audience:
Who are they?
How are they finding your site?
Where are they coming from?
What are they looking at?
What are they paying attention to?
What topics interest them?
What are the topics that indicate a stronger buying interest than others?
Once we know the above, it’s our job to leverage this information. We need to separate you and your company from the “noise” – The lack of differentiation in a saturated market. We need to stand out above the rest. This will lead to increased traffic and conversions – regardless of where you are ranking!
Here’s the bottom line:
The one indicator that trumps all the rest for determining the success or failure of any SEO / Internet Marketing efforts is: CONVERSIONS (sales, leads, phone calls, etc…). If our client’s sales have increased as a result of our efforts than it doesn’t really matter where their site ranks once we strip away all of the influencers listed above right? ROI is what we strive to produce for our clients – much more than so than rankings.
Eric Sachs
CEO – Sachs Marketing Group
If you are reading this on any other blog than Sachs Marketing Group or via my RSS Feed, it is stolen content without credit.
You can find me on Twitter via @SMGguy
Come and visit our blog at https://sachsmarketinggroup.com/blog/
The first step in any comprehensive SEO campaign is good, thorough keyword research. You need to identify specific keywords for your industry. At Sachs Marketing Group we evaluate keywords using several different metrics:
How many times is that keyword searched locally and globally?
Of the number of times that keyword was searched, how many people searching did so with a credit card in their hand and actually bought something when they found what they were searching for?
How much competition exists for each keyword (this will help determine the amount of time it will take us to rank on Google’s page-1 for a specific keyword)
Are the keywords good in terms of conversions?
Ex: If you are selling tickets to a Dodger game, the keyword “Dodgers Tickets” would be MUCH better for conversions than “Dodgers” or “Dodgers Schedule.”
Once the keywords are chosen, we do all the on-site and off-site SEO necessary to rank your website for those same specific keywords in the top pages of Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Contact us today for a free, SEO analytic review of your website and web presence!
If you are reading this on any other blog than Sachs Marketing Group or via my RSS Feed, it is stolen content without credit.
You can find me on Twitter via @SMGguy
Come and visit our blog at https://sachsmarketinggroup.com/blog/
Recently, Google has been on a HUGE push to “level the playing field” in terms of SEO and organic search rankings. Google wants to rank each webpage/website on it’s merit exclusively. In keeping with this mission, they have penalized websites that have paid backlinks pointing to them. The thinking was (is) that they do not want “site A” to rank higher than “site B” simply because the owners of “site A” might have a ton of money to spend on high PR backlinks!
This has rocked the SEO world again! Tons of website that usually enjoy page 1 Google rankings simply because they were spending obscene amounts of money on very high PR backlinks, are now being demoted in the rankings and/or de-indexed all together! Basically, until very recently, one could “buy their way” to Google’s page 1 by paying for high PR backlinks (either individual links on high PR websites OR by paying for inclusion in high PR link networks). This tactic is no longer kosher according to Google and if they find paid links, they will demote the website that the links point to.
In an effort to prove their point and show how serious they are, Google even penalized themselves! Google recently demoted it’s own website (www.google.com/chrome) because the people on the Chrome team had paid for videos about Chrome (sponsored posts). Today, if you search for “browser” in Google, you will no longer find Google Chrome. Here is a statement from Google:
We’ve investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site’s PageRank for a period of at least 60 days. We strive to enforce Google’s webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site.
Google uses a number of methods to detect paid links, including a bunch of very advanced algorithmic techniques. If you have ANY paid links, we are suggesting that you remove them all, going back as far as you have paid for links ASAP.If you have any questions about paid links that you may have, please don’t hesitate to contact us so we can evaluate the links for you.
Google said that if you have been paying for links for two years, go back two years and remove those paid links. If it is five years, go back five years. Google wants to see a serious attempt to remove all the paid links you acquired over the years.
Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.
However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.
Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:
Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file
Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such as excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.
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