How to Use TikTok in Business: A Step-by-Step Guide

tik-tok.png

Just when you thought social media had peaked, along came TikTok. This platform seemingly skyrocketed overnight, becoming an insanely popular app for both businesses and consumers alike. From challenges to tutorials to memes, TikTok is the cream of the crop in the video marketing trend.

If you've been struggling to determine how you can make TikTok work for your business, check out this step-by-step guide.

Outline Your Goals and Success Metrics

When it comes to marketing your business, you should always look before you leap. Taking time to outline your goals and success metrics is an effective way to ensure you're making the most of your efforts. These goals should pertain to both launching your TikTok account, as well as working it into your overall social media strategy.

For example, you should make a research about TikTok video length and format goals to help you understand the framework of your content. Setting goals for posting frequency and gaining followers will also give you something to strive for. Determine the ultimate goal of your TikTok page— is it to build brand awareness or yield conversions?

Create an Account

Once you've taken time to understand what you hope to accomplish, create an account. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to create a TikTok account for your business:

  1. Open the TikTok app on a smartphone.

  2. Tap the notification or profile tab to launch the sign-up prompt.

  3. Sign up using an email attached to your business.

  4. Add a birthdate - this can be the launch date of your business or an arbitrary date.

  5. Choose whether you want to receive a confirmation via phone or email and enter the relevant information.

  6. When you receive your confirmation code, enter it into the confirmation field.

  7. Create a password and confirm. You'll be prompted with a reCaptcha. Click the checkbox, and you're done. 

Once you have your account set up, edit your profile to match the rest of your social media branding. This step is important for brand consistency and awareness.

Develop a Content Strategy

One of the benefits of TikTok is that you can generate content on the go. While this flexibility is handy, it's still wise to have a content strategy in place for planning purposes.

Outline how often you plan on posting and what those posts will consist of. For example, you might decide to offer a blend of tutorial videos, behind-the-scenes snapshots, and monthly challenges. Creating a content strategy will help you determine how much content you must create and curate to develop a consistent posting schedule.

tik=tok2.png

Create and Curate Content

When you use TikTok, you'll either create or curate content. Creating a bank of videos in bulk is a fantastic way to start building a following and generating interest.

While original videos are a great approach to TikTok, sharing curated content is also beneficial for connecting with an audience. This approach also helps your business save time and money on marketing efforts by capitalizing on user-generated content (UGC). Sharing UGC not only fills your content calendar but adds social proof and trust to your business.

For example, sharing a video of someone modeling your latest clothing line shows your audience that real people have purchased your products and are satisfied with the results. Consider this an interactive form of an online review.

tik-tok3.png

Analyze and Adapt

As with any marketing campaign, flexibility and logic are a must. Take the time to analyze the results of your efforts against your goals and milestones. Take a deep dive into what's working and what's falling flat. This approach will help you make data-driven decisions and adapt your efforts to better connect with your audience.

By taking a strategic, well-planned approach to using TikTok, your business can connect with new customers and exciting opportunities.

 

3 Ways to Improve SaaS Customer Experience

The major difference between traditional business models and SaaS companies is that the latter ones do not rely on one-time purchases. To succeed in a hypercompetitive SaaS landscape, your company should focus on improving customer experiences, encouraging brand loyalty, and retaining customers.

Here are a few tried and tested tactics to help you boost SaaS customer satisfaction.

1 . Monitor Customer Experiences from Multiple Perspective

To extract value from customer data, you should thoroughly analyze it from the viewpoint of your marketing, sales, and customer service departments. 

Marketing

A SaaS marketing team focuses on customer acquisition. Therefore, they can tell you what digital channels your prospective customers use the most, what content generates qualified leads, and what marketing tactics inspire brand loyalty. This customer data will help you adapt your marketing campaigns to boost brand awareness and increase sales. If you are looking to create animated videos for your digital channels, there are intuitive drag and drop video makers out there such as OFFEO

Sales

Your sales team focuses on what motivates users to purchase your products. They understand what challenges SaaS customers face and how they expect your product to solve their problem. Your sales data can also help you understand the why behind your missed opportunities so you can adapt your sales tactics and product features to your audience’s needs.

  • Customer support

Once you collect marketing and sales data, you need to align them with real-life customer experiences. And, that is where your customer service shines. Namely, your customer support team communicates with customers daily, learning about their product frustrations and problems. 

One of the major benefits of customer support data is its honesty. Needing actionable tips to solve problems, customers will provide detailed feedback. By understanding their problems, you will improve your customer service and improve your products’ features.  

Screen Shot 2020-06-23 at 1.42.30 PM.png

2. Adopt Agile DevOps Approaches

Customer-oriented applications need to be designed, built, and deployed strategically. That is why you should focus on breaking down the silos between your development, operations, marketing, and sales teams. 

Only by creating cross-functional teams will you be able to launch products faster, increase project control, mitigate risks, achieve better product quality, and provide better customer experiences. That is exactly why you should adopt the agile DevOps mindset

The goal of DevOps is to develop, release, test, and update products faster within a CD (continuous development) and CI (continuous integration) cycle. The most typical stages of a DevOps approach are:

  • Planning

  • Building

  • Continuous integration

  • Development

  • Automation

  • Seeking continuous customer feedback

The DevOps process brings different teams together, improving their productivity. By working closely with the operations team, developers will understand customers’ needs and work towards their goals. This will help you reduce long delivery cycles, without compromising user experiences.

3. Improve Multi-Channel Customer Support

To inspire SaaS customers to choose you over your competitors, you need to provide exceptional customer support. You should provide real-time, multi-channel customer support to address your customers’ inquiries on all channels they use. 

Improve your call center

When facing complex problems, many customers will call your support center. To improve the effectiveness of their call centers, many companies decide to replace a traditional landline phone system with VoIP.

Standing for Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP services offer multiple business benefits: 

  • Improved call quality: The quality of calls is superb, as long as you have a solid internet connection. VoIP providers also offer noise-canceling microphones and call compression, allowing you to minimize interruption and boost call quality.

  • Mobility: As VoIP is delivered via the internet, it offers consistent customer support, irrespective of your location. 

  • Advanced call analytics: Most VoIP providers let you record phone calls and track real-time call data on personalized dashboards. Using them, you can track customers’ interactions with your brand, measure their brand sentiment, identify business trends, and make data-backed decisions.

Combine live chat and chatbots to provide immediate feedback

When needing quick solutions to their problems, customers do not want to wait hours for your email response. That is where investing in live chat support on your website and social channels can help. 

Many SaaS businesses also decide to automate their live chat support by investing in a chatbot. AI chatbots can answer generic and repetitive questions fast, keeping the conversation natural. Above all, they can provide real-time customer support, irrespective of your customers’ time zone, letting your live chat agents focus on complex customer inquiries.

Provide self-service options

Stats say that 67% of customers prefer self-service over talking to your customer support representative. SaaS companies should allow customers to find answers to their questions themselves. There are many ways to do so.

For example, you could start an online community, where SaaS customers would answer each other’s questions. You should also build and update a detailed knowledge base, where you would create helpful articles and publish the most quality user-generated content by your customers to help users resolve problems faster.

Over to You

To remain competitive in the growing SaaS industry, you need to build a customer-oriented brand. 

Synchronize your development, operations, and sales teams to speed software-to-market and build SaaS products that address your customers’ needs. 

Next, offer multi-channel customer support to address your target audiences’ questions and problems, regardless of the device or channel they use. 

Finally, do not forget to track and analyze customer data to stay on top of market trends and provide personalized customer experiences.

6 Proven Tips to Maximize Your Amazon Conversion Rates and Drive Sales

The Importance of AI (6).png

One of the best things about Amazon is that they do all the heavy lifting for you.

Being the biggest online store in the world, the platform drives more people in your listing, mostly a crowd of buyers that are ready to make a purchase. Hence, all you need to do is that your e-commerce copy can drive search traffic and sales.

What is Conversion Rate?

Before we move on, let's define what conversion rate is first. In a nutshell, a conversion rate is the number of people who completed a goal (conversion) compared to those who just landed on your website to browse.

 For instance, you drove 100 organic website traffic yesterday, and 50 of them purchased your products. Then you have a 50% conversion rate.

Having high conversion rates means that you are successful with your marketing and web design. It also means that people want what you are selling.

Now, how do you add on these efforts and boost your Amazon sales? Here are some tips that you need to keep in mind to boost your conversion rates in your e-commerce platform:

Strengthen Your Amazon SEO

Amazon SEO is an essential factor that you need to consider if you want to rank high on the platform’s search results and ultimately make sales. 

Utilize keywords that have high search and buyer intent to portray your products in a much more detailed outlook. 

Your title should also provide a quick intro to your product, bullet points will convince buyers why they will want to buy your product over others, and your product description should have your brand story, specifications, and so on. 

Do not ignore backend search terms as well. Although they are not entirely visible, they can play a significant role in enhancing the strength of your keywords. 

Write Accurate and Engaging Product Descriptions

Make use of the SEO basics, such as keyword research, to give your product descriptions a facelift. This will ensure that it's seen by the right people. 

Also, try to avoid text-heavy descriptions. The thing is people just scan your content. And if your product descriptions are just huge chunks of texts, then your potential customers might miss out on something important. So, make it short and sweet.

Intrigued customers will click on links to know more about your products. And if you're lucky, they'll be adding more to their carts. 

blog-image-june.png

Offer Competitive Pricing and Other Perks

Another strategy that most Amazon sellers tap into is repricing. That way, they can match up with their competition. 

You can do this manually or you can tap into automated repricing tools on Amazon to adjust the pricing of your products accordingly. This allows you to match the lowest or most competitive amount in the market at that time. 

Trial Amazon Pay Per Click

Amazon pay-per-click is one of the best ways you can boost your conversions, enhance your sales, and make you place a higher listing. 

This will show up in plain view to your customers on a prime location on their screen. Then, once your sales start to pick-up, your organic ranking will improve as well. 

Take note that most of your products will appear as Sponsored. These ads are usually keyword targeted, and they show up on search results where keywords are often used by the customer. 

Note that this is usually a low-risk strategy. You will only pay if a customer clicks on an ad that will take them to your product listing. Meaning, you will be receiving visitors that your optimized product listing will then convert. 

Upsell Relevant Items

One of the quickest and most effective ways to grow your existing customer base is to upsell relevant items. 

While the probability of selling your products to someone new is a bit low, the probability of selling to a current customer is high at approximately 70 percent

Gain More Positive Reviews

A large number of online buyers trust customer reviews. So, reviews on Amazon play a key role when it comes to maintaining and improving the reputation of your product. Reviews also play a large impact on how buyers make purchasing decisions. 

So, having positive (and verified) Amazon reviews increase your chances to have more purchases.

If you have bad reviews, on the other hand, it is best that you respond quickly to them and address any issues. 

You can also try testing the quality of your products to ensure that it is aligned with the promises that you have made on your listing page. At the same time, re-launch to your buyers regularly to get good ratings. This will allow you to keep the level of your ratings up, and get through tough times.

Send out email campaigns that politely ask your customer to review your product and that you would appreciate hearing their views on it. 

Key Takeaway

As Amazon continues to grow, you must know how to thrive and be a successful seller on the platform.

Luckily, there are several ways you can do to maximize your Amazon listing and generate sales. So we hope that you can take away at least one thing from this post and apply it on your own listing.

How to Design Services for an Outstanding Customer Journey

The Importance of AI (12).png

We'll begin with a little reminder: a customer journey includes virtually any customer experience with a product or a service, from the first time they became aware of your company to the last day they are with you. Now, it is in your best interest to do everything in your power in making their journey memorable and, above all, satisfactory. Let's learn how your services can be designed to make your customers truly satisfied in the long-term.  

Areas to keep in mind at all times

The philosophy behind enabling an outstanding customer journey is, in fact, quite simple, the customer needs to the focus of your undivided attention. To do so, listen to what they need, offer it, and deliver and observe how your services make them feel. Keep things simple, provide a timely response to requests, inquiries, and complaints, and let your customers know their opinion is valued. Your goal is to make them feel acknowledged, involved and valued.

Improve the customer feedback input

One of the initial steps in designing new customer services is carefully studying the ones currently offered. Naturally, the best way to do it is from the customer’s point of view. Still, do not make the usual mistake of relying much on the info gained from customer focus groups. The problem with them is that some participants will be more dominant, some quite reserved while the rest will go with the flow. Your aim should be to hear as many individual voices as possible. Conducting ethnographic research that will include individual email surveys, customer interviews at the store, and online questionnaires would be complex but, at the same time, a more rewarding approach.

Cultivate your customer experience ecosystem

As you probably know, every service has its front and backside. And, for this service to be perfectly functional, every component needs to run flawlessly. For example, your sales and advertising sectors need to work in sync with the HR and finance departments. The well-being of an ecosystem depends on all of its components and the specific role they play. When one of them changes, all others have to evolve, as well. In a nutshell, the fundamental task of service designers is to cultivate all parts of the customer experience ecosystem. As this master's degree in service design explains, professionals in this field need to continually evaluate and transform the existing services, create new ones, encourage experimental attitude and sensitivity towards the latest innovations.

The Importance of AI (13).png

Create a customer journey map

To fully understand how your customers perceive and experience your service, it is essential to monitor their entire involvement. This includes everything from the very first time they became aware of your brand until this very moment in time. Analyzing all the phases and touchpoints they went through and where they eventually ended will give you a critical insight in creating an improved future service design. Again, it is essential to emphasize that all your departments need to be involved in providing a seamless customer experience.

Practice what you preach

How many times have you entered a store following their latest advertisement only to find that the discounts advertised are not fully applied or that the promised complimentary coffee was the worst one you ever tasted? Did you go back there after such disappointment? Of course not, and neither will your customers if you make the same mistake. Building customers' trust takes time and losing it only a second. So, before you announce anything, make sure you can live up to it at all times.

Keep the customers informed and engaged

As mentioned before, each step of your customer journey is vital in keeping their interaction with your brand alive. You have to nourish them and help them transit from one stage to another. The safest way to do so is to keep them engaged and informed. Once the interaction is lost, there are increased chances for the customer to lose interest in your brand in general. You should always have the next step in place to smoothly guide your customers to the next touchpoint of their experience with your company.

If you want to design services that will provide your customers with exactly what they need, all parts of your company need to work in sync, focus on customers' experience and keep them engaged throughout your entire interaction. 

How You're Actually Holding Your Online Store Back

The Importance of AI (11).png

Even while businesses of many kinds suffer due to the lockdown measures imposed to combat the spread of COVID-19, some industries have been able to continue largely unaffected: and e-commerce is one of them. In fact, the widespread confinement and closure of brick-and-mortar stores have led to an uptick in online ordering, allowing some sellers to flourish.

This is worth noting because merchants have always had excuses for why their stores aren’t performing as well as they might, and this pandemic is the current favorite justification. If you run an online store and are consistently dissatisfied with the results, there’s a great chance that you’re holding your store back to some extent.

Does this mean that you’ll be doing big business if you stop getting in the way? No, obviously not, but it does mean that you can likely achieve meaningful improvements if you commit to polishing your approach. Here are some ways in which you’re plausibly self-sabotaging:

You’re letting your product range stagnate

Part of the appeal of e-commerce can be the relative ease of upkeep. You develop your store (or throw it together using a template), configure it, add the products you want to sell, and let it run. If you’re using a conventional fulfillment model then you just need to monitor the orders and ship them — and if you’re using drop shipping then you don’t really need to do anything at all.

The problem with this relaxed approach is that product ranges aren’t evergreen. Items often become popular for short times and then lose all their mainstream appeal, with the prime example in recent memory being fidget spinners. They were everywhere for a time… then they weren’t. And there’s surely still some demand for them, but nowhere near as much as there was.

And even when you pick product types that are evergreen, the products themselves won’t be. New models will enter the market. Old ones will fall out of favor. If you’re still stocking products that are effectively obsolete, then you shouldn’t be surprised to see them sell in small numbers. 

What you need to do is semi-regularly update your range. Follow industry blogs and social media trends to find new products worth stocking. Clear out old stock that isn’t selling. And if you’re dropshipping, don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ve already reviewed all the options: new suppliers pop up all the time and current ones often update their ranges too.

You’re not doing enough marketing

For the most part (barring those run by brands big enough to be household names or at least industry stalwarts), online stores don’t make sales if they’re just left to run. They need to be promoted, yet some sellers assume that a lack of orders means there’s no interest in what they’re offering. If you’re not running any PPC campaigns or doing any content marketing, then it’s nearly miraculous that your store has survived for this long.

A great PPC campaign uses finely-honed targeting to reach the ideal audience: the people most likely to be receptive and spend in large amounts. You can advertise through Google, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitch… the options are extensive but don’t try to target them all at the same time. Pick two or three that best suit your store niche.

Content marketing is all about building up your brand, demonstrating expertise to encourage people to trust you, and showcasing your products where possible. It takes time and consistent effort to make content marketing work, but if you start now (perhaps releasing two blog posts per week) then you can make a lot of headway in a year.

You’re providing inadequate support

Perhaps the best thing any online store can do (or any store in general) is to focus on customer support. The happier you make any given customer, the more likely they’ll be to come back and spend more, the more receptive they’ll be to your marketing, the more forgiving they’ll be of average prices, and the better the chance of them driving referrals will be. Even so, it’s oddly common for sellers to assume that their work is done once orders are completed.

Adjust your operational process to put a lot of emphasis on post-sale support. Reach out to recent customers to see if they’re happy. Offer discounts for other products. Ask them for feedback and action any good suggestions to show that you care about making your company better. It’s really hard to find new customers, and if you can maintain even a small number of loyal customers, your store can achieve excellent results for a long time.

If you’re making one or more of these mistakes at the moment, try not to get too frustrated. Instead, focus on the positive: that you have the opportunity to make up for your mistakes and improve the performance of your store with relative ease.

How to Create a Social Media Marketing Strategy step by step?

The_Importance_of_AI_(10).png

Have you ever wondered why social media has gained so much importance? It initially got popular as a communication channel or interaction platform. The paradigm has changed a lot and at the moment, it is one of the strongest marketing modes. Brands and corporate organizations spend the largest portion of their product promotion budget on social media channels. These days, even sellers operating on a very small scale have Updated pages on Facebook. They add fresh posts and pictures to attract the audience. The success of a product/brand is determined by the number of followers and positive comments it has.

Developing a strategy

Every social media campaign does not attract a storm of people. A fact is that a good chunk fails because the right tips are not followed. Therefore, following the right practices is important. Here is how you can design a productive marketing process in a stepwise sequential manner.

1. Provision of quality enriched content regularly

The popularity of a social media campaign depends a lot on the quality of content that readers get to read. To start with, it should be well researched and properly compiled. Other than that, it is quite important to use a synonym changer so that rewriting is up to the mark. Always remember that publishing copied information can be the immediate burial of your brand.

Using a dependable rewriting tool means that you would not have to spend any time on it. Secondly, it would be easy to operate with tight deadlines and produce top-notch content without delays. Each post published should be catchy and provide key insights into the brand. If you are about to launch a product sale, make sure that it is promoted through all social media channels. At times, we see that some posts are stuffed with facts. This practice causes severe boredom and people lose interest. Hence, the goal is to provide unique content in a unique catchy manner.

2. Constant competitor analysis

If you are an online brand, always keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. Even one mistake can place you right at the bottom. Have a check on the traffic rate they are getting. Secondly, when making sure that you are not missing on any of the important keywords. The traffic rate can drop immediately if commonly used search phrases are not a part of the content. Websites lose their ranks because they do not include the correct keywords. Keeping an eye on rival brands can help you in strengthening your own position.

3. Who is your target audience?

Every product/set of services is not purchased by everyone. People have preferences on the basis of age group, gender, need and other factors. It is important to have a clear insight into potential customers. If your product is coffee, most working people would be interested in it. Hence, captions and post titles will have to be created accordingly

  • An integral part of any social media marketing strategy is communication with buyers. If you know who would buy your product, it will be easier to interact in an effective manner. Some brands have a good financial budget if they have established a market position. At times, sellers do not have clarity about the intended audience. In such cases, you can create personas and see which people are showing interest. Go through their comments and analyze their needs. This would help you in creating the right marketing tactics.

4. Imposter accounts can ruin you forever

It is a fact that well-known brands have more customers than newer ones. This difference is not created without years of endless hard work. The journey to survive competition, reach to the top and stay there requires immense dedication. It is good if you have reached that level but be aware of imposters who want a bite of your reputation.

  • Imposter accounts are mostly made by cheap sellers who want to attract people by using your name. They may be selling copied versions of your products at very cheap rates. For them, this is a winning situation because they are able to earn profits without any hard work. However, for any legitimate brand, this can result in a complete shutdown as well. People considering the counterfeiters may think that the original brand is behind the selling campaign. When people begin facing quality problems, the actual buyers would start vanishing.

  • Keep an eye on how visitors are responding on social media. If you see that suddenly people have started complaining about low quality or showing happiness due to low prices, start looking for counterfeiters. A good prevention technique is providing social media links on your website. In this way, buyers would not trust the wrong sellers unintentionally.

5. Choosing the channels that will work for you

A smart mindset is needed to select the right social media channels for a brand marketing campaign. It is not necessary to be active on all modes including Facebook, Insta, YouTube and Twitter. To begin with, check the requirements that your product has. If you only have to post photos and text content is not needed, Instagram would suit you more than Facebook. Similarly, you also need to consider what the targeted audience is using. As a brand, you should be active on the same channel.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that social media is the most powerful platform for product promotion these days. This does not mean that you can achieve the needed success without having the right strategy. There are several factors which you should focus on so that the correct strategy is implemented. To begin with, be aware of the audience you are targeting. This is not something you would be able to figure out instantly. Other than that, keeping an eye on the present competition is important as well.

At times, brands suffer because they do not keep a check on how their rivals are progressing. To prevent them from going ahead, it is important to analyze their performance at all times.


How to Use Bonuses to Increase Your Conversion Rate

how-to-use-bonuses-to-increase-your-conversion-rate.png

Last year on Cyber Monday, customers spent $9.4 billion online. The Cyber 5 online sales, these are the five days across the Thanksgiving Weekend, accounted for $28.5 billion in sales. It’s a lot of money, so it shouldn’t be surprising that in the US, the top shopping days make up 45% of annual holiday sales.

The reason people go so crazy - shoppers want a bargain.

people-go-so-crazy.gif

A flash sale is sure to draw in crowds of shoppers. Bonuses are just as effective. In this article, I’ll show you how to use bonuses to boost your sales. Let’s start with the very basics.

What are Bonuses & Why Should You Use Them

You see bonuses everywhere. When you go to the supermarket and see a bottle of hand lotion with a free smaller bottle from the same brand, you’re looking at a bonus. When you see your usual razor blades packaged with some aftershave at a heavily discounted price, you’re also looking at a bonus.

Bonuses are used all the time by digital marketers to help push undecided customers into making a purchase. Here’s an example from a sales page for a digital marketing product.

bonus.jpg

A study conducted by the University of Minnesota found that shoppers preferred getting bonus items over discounts. They determined that a 33% discount didn’t have the same resonance among customers as getting 50% more of a product and that offering, 50% more lotion, resulted in a 73% jump in sales. 

Bonuses work, they discovered, because most shoppers couldn’t be bothered to compute how much they were going to save. After all, not everyone can do fractions on the fly.

They also discovered people associate more value with the words “more” and “free” compared to “less.” In other words, they wanted to get more than what they paid for instead of paying less for the same thing. As you can see from the example above, the difference between a bonus and a sale comes down to positioning. Fundamentally, with a sale or a bonus, the offer is often the same.

Understanding the Customer Persona

I like to compare bonuses to making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It’s not going to be a sandwich if it doesn’t have a top slice of bread, a layer of peanut butter, a layer of jelly, and a bottom slice. I mean, I’m partial to open-faced sandwiches, but you get the picture.

Now, think of your promotion as the very same sandwich. Let’s say your main product is a timesheet app. The peanut butter and jelly layers are the main product that you’re selling. You can also think of the main product as just the peanut butter or the jelly, depending on which spread you like better. The bonuses you’re offering are the slices of bread. What can you offer as a bonus to entice customers to sign up for it?

More often than not, your bonuses should be related to your main product. Now, if you’re a hardcore PB&J sandwich fan, you’ll leave the Wonderbread on the shelf and get a couple of slices of pumpernickel bread, which in my opinion, is the only bread that makes a half-decent sandwich.

The bonuses you create should align with the pain points your customers face. To create effective bonuses, you need to understand your potential customers. A well-defined customer persona will help you identify those pain points and where you can add value.

Taking the timesheet app as an example, here are some possible bonuses for a potential customer.

customer-persona.png

Notice how the possible bonuses add value to a potential customer and address problems they are likely to face. I cannot reiterate this often enough: a good bonus must pair well with your main product.

How to Come Up with a Relevant Offer

Theoretically, you can offer anything in your product line as a bonus (or team up with another business). However, you should ask yourself, Does it make sense to offer it as a bonus?

Following our sandwich analogy earlier: does your bonus make your sandwich taste great, or will it go better with some other sandwich? I suppose some people add mustard to their PB&J. It’s not my thing, and I think a lot of people will agree with me. So let’s stick to what most people like, shall we?

The easiest thing to offer as a bonus is a free complimentary product or service. For example, if you are running an e-commerce store, you might decide to run a three for two offer. Or, the least expensive thing you purchase is free or comes at a discounted price. These types of offers can help either increase the amount a consumer spends or increase the conversion rate on their existing purchase.

video-game-offers.jpg

Giving away a product for free has its downsides. If you give away a product that costs you money, that will reduce your profit margins. It might be worth it for the increased sales. It's also a good way to get rid of surplus stock. However, you'll need to make that decision on a case by case basis.

You can add a bonus that has a one-time cost of course. In some niches, PLR products offer you a way to get around this. Some marketplaces offer white label software, eBooks, website themes, and more that you can purchase and then giveaway with an offer. Alternatively, you could make a course, white paper, or information product to give away with an offer.

How to Sell Your Bonus

We’ve covered how to come up with a suitable bonus for an offer. Now, I want to discuss how to position your bonus. This is important. To really boost your sales, you need to sell your bonus, not just give it to them.

Earlier in this article, I showed you an example bonus product from a sales page for a digital software product. Here’s another example from that page.

how-to-sell-your-bonus.jpg

There are a couple of things I want to highlight the way the bonus is positioned:

  • There’s a monetary value attached to the offer (really important)

  • A short description of the product, how it offers value, and how it relates to the product

  • The bonus appears before the buy button

Giving the bonus a monetary value, and providing it before the buy button will help increase sales.

Of course, this assumes people are already on the sales page. If you were funneling people to an offer, say via a webinar or email campaign, you might create a landing page with bonuses that people would see before they arrive on the sales page.

Here’s an example of how you could stack bonuses together on a squeeze page.

stack-bonuses-together.jpg

You should add a video before the bonuses to provide context. This helps people make the link between the bonuses on offer, and the product they are thinking about purchasing.

Finally, you can add an element of pressure by offering a limited time bonus. This will create a sense of urgency to your offer, which will help boost sales.

Conclusion

Bonuses are a proven way to boost sales. In this guide, I showed you how to create a relevant offer with bonuses that would interest your audience. Your bonuses should always be something your audience will appreciate. Be careful not to fall into the trap of offering something totally unrelated to your main product. It should ideally be something that adds value to your product.

Finally, make sure to sell your bonus. Give your bonus a financial value, so they know what they are getting. You can even stack bonuses together until it gets to the point where you have a “no brainer offer.” When you have the perfect offer, your customers won’t be able to stop themselves from making a purchase.


Strategic Ways to Improve your E-commerce Store’s Performance

strategic-ways-to-improve-your-ecommerce-stores-performance.png

Striving to become “the most customer-centric company on Earth,” Amazon has set the bar high for smaller e-commerce brands.

Today, shoppers expect online retail brands to provide exceptional customer service, create amazing content, and understand their specific needs and preferences. They are even ready to pay more for relevant deals and products.

So, apart from competitive prices, what techniques should you use to improve your e-commerce store’s performance?

Keep your Site Easily Navigable

Many customers will abandon your website if it is difficult to navigate through. To avoid that, ensure your visitors can find the right products and purchase them effortlessly.

Start by optimizing your navigation menu. Reduce the number of categories and subcategories. Instead of traditional drop-down menus, consider using hamburger navigation bars that will save you lots of space. They bring all your links to a single place and perform great both on desktop and mobile devices.

Apart from a navigation bar, add search boxes and filtering options that will help those customers find specific products and brands.

Add internal links to help customers explore new content.

Show breadcrumbs to help visitors understand where they are while browsing through your site

ecommerce-stores-performance.png

Provide Exceptional Customer Service

With so many brands in your industry, you need to give your customers a good reason to purchase from you. Before making buying decisions, customers will compare different online stores, their services, products, prices, etc.

Apart from amazing website design and top-quality products, seamless customer service will help you stand out in the competitive market. According to research, 1 in 3 customers would not purchase from you again after a negative experience with your brand, while over 90% of them would never come back after two negative experiences.

To provide exceptional customer support, offer real-time feedback across multiple channels. Provide live chat options. Once your customer support representatives clock off, let customers chat with your website or social media chatbot that provides relevant feedback 24/7. You should also have a detailed knowledge base and an FAQ section for users that prefer self-service.

Keep Communications Transparent

E-commerce logistics plays an important role in increasing customer satisfaction. If a customer sees a product on your website, adds it to the shopping cart, spends time filling out the form, and then sees that the product is temporarily out of stock, they will probably leave your site frustrated. The same applies to delivery services. The abovementioned study says that half of the customers believe that retailers are responsible for product delays, while 74% of them say that late deliveries harm brand perceptions.

That is why you need to keep your communications with customers transparent. Let customers track their package. Before purchasing from you, inform them about the estimated delivery date. Show how many items there are in your stock. Amazon does this for every product on its site. If there are any shipping problems, keep customers updated and provide refunds.

Sure, to do any of that, you will first need to optimize your manufacturing and inventory management processes. Keeping track of your materials, orders, inventory, and sales can be complex if you are still entering data manually into spreadsheets. This is where you could use cloud-based manufacturing software and centralize these activities under a single platform.

Personalize User Experiences

Surveys show that 62% of online customers expect to get personalized offers. For them, one-size-fits-all offers do not work anymore. There are numerous ways to tailor your e-commerce brand messaging to your customers’ specific needs:

  • Track customers’ geolocation, browsing patterns, and historical purchases to offer more relevant products and services.

  • Segment your emails. When a customer signs up for your newsletter list, ask them about what kind of products, promotions, and content they are interested in. Based on their preferences, segment customers into relevant groups and send the promotions they care about.

  • Personalize user experiences on your website. Use AI chatbots to personalize interactions with customers and recommend relevant products. Sephora even lets users upload their photos to try out different makeup products and choose the right one.

Create Awesome Content

In the digital marketing landscape, content creation is critical. It lets you position yourself as an authoritative online resource, engage users, and deliver value to them.

Start by creating informative, unique, and data-backed articles. Produce infographics, whitepapers, comprehensive how-to guides, and tutorials to solve your customers’ problems and inform them about the latest industry trends.

Focus on visual content. Remember that your customers cannot see or feel your products. Take photos of products from multiple angles. Use 360-degree videos that will make your products even more appealing. Video content, such as unboxing videos or tutorials, is always great, as it evokes emotions in users, engages them, and inspires brand loyalty.

Finally, focus on user-generated content. Make testimonial videos and let your satisfied customers tell your story. Case studies will explain what problems your customers faced and how they solved them using your products.

Conclusions

Today’s e-commerce landscape has become increasingly customer-centric. Precisely because of that, you should optimize your website with your shoppers’ needs in mind. And, these tactics may serve as your solid starting point.


How AI in Marketing Leading to Better Conversions

how-ai-in-marketing-leading-to-better-conversions.png

In this Digital Era in which we are living, People have unlimited access to information like brand value, products, and services. A conventional meaning of Artificial Intelligence (AI) might be the capacity of innovation to learn and associate with human procedures. To this definition, we include the exceptionally favorable position provided by the speed at which information can be analyzed and processed. Truth be told, AI is experiencing many procedures connected to innovation and digital marketing is one of them: Artificial Intelligence and digital marketing are shaping a relentless pair.

Role of Artificial Intelligence in Digital Marketing

Artificial intelligence permits numerous procedures to be a lot quicker and progressively proficient, through the improvement of programming and machines that associate with one another. That is the reason Artificial Intelligence and digital marketing go connected at the hip.

In digital marketing, and away from AI usefulness would be the capacity to investigate great many client information. From this data analysis, it turns out to be significantly more practical to foresee practices and improve the nature of the client experience.

How AI increases Conversation Rates?

Artificial intelligence permits numerous procedures to be a lot quicker and progressively proficient, through the improvement of programming and machines that associate with one another. That is the reason Artificial Intelligence and digital marketing go connected at the hip.

In digital marketing, and away from AI usefulness would be the capacity to investigate great many client information. From this analysis, it turns out to be significantly more practical to foresee practices and improve the nature of the client experience. Read how AI can help in your social media marketing in 2020

Analyzing clients

There are AI items that are extraordinarily intended to more readily get crowds. They can comprehend the interests of the crowd, just as to foresee their responses. These procedures are estimated rapidly, to such an extent that if a human brain needed to break down information than AI programming, it would invest unquestionably more energy in the activity. That is what it's everything about: Through information, which are the fingerprints left by individuals on the internet, AI-based programming can play out various exercises identified with that conduct. The test is for the marketing ventures to utilize that information so as to give clients what they need when they need it.

Content creation

In spite of the fact that AI tools will most likely be unable to make content, for example, sentiment pieces or a digital masterpiece, the facts demonstrate that they are at present fit for making information-based content that they can get to. Simulated intelligence-based software With access to certain data, you will have the option to compose a report and even a report. This has the upside of sparing time as well as fit for making content equipped for pulling in guests to sites. These kinds of activities are equipped for revealing investment funds in time as well as priceless money related assets. In the event that this doesn't persuade you, effectively enormous news offices around the globe are utilizing instruments of this sort to create content. As indicated by certain specialists, these contents don't contrast based on what is composed of an individual.

Smart Email marketing

Artificial intelligence is an innovation that imitates human intellectual capacities, for example, learning and thinking, for business purposes, including email marketing. Through artificial intelligence, advertisers can break down a lot of information and computerize procedures to make them progressively effective. In this way, they can actualize the data rapidly and for a huge scope and recognize what sort of emails to send, to whom, how frequently and when. With the help of Best Free Email Services , a combination of AI and Email marketing has become smarter, faster and secured.

Increases client engagement

Generally, email marketing experts needed to do manual tests to locate the correct blend of the subject, email bodies, and pictures for various crowds. This procedure was unwieldy and defenseless to human blunder.

Presently, artificial intelligence advances improve this procedure by rapidly producing content that gives the best chance and income results. This spares a great deal of time for the group and permits working with more blends of components, bringing about progressively powerful emails. You can also send free emails using Free SMTP Server Providers.

Reduces website error pages

Introduction to AI in marketing, also reduces errors which can be triggered on websites sometimes. And hence it reduces client engagement. Whenever a client experiences a web error e.g, Error 404 not found, The AI tries it to fix automatically to eliminate this common Web error or maybe divert it into some smarter way possible. Which doesn’t affect client engagement and conversion rates?

Introduction of chatbots

The chatbots are run on computer programming that takes part in discussions with individuals who utilize a blend of artificial intelligence, mechanized informing and rules dependent on language. While conventional talk applications are frequently overseen by one individual inside the association, overseen by an outsider client care supplier, or a mix of both, AI and chatbots go connected at the hip.

In the event that you browse or buy items or administrations on the web, odds are you've discovered a client support chatbot. You may not have seen, in light of the fact that they are intended to copy genuine associations with online client support delegates. Like conventional talk boxes, they frequently show up when you visit a site just because, and can be shut totally, limited, briefly shut, or limited, contingent upon automatic settings.

With regards to ways chatbots can improve client assistance for organizations, the conceivable outcomes are unfathomable. They empower clients to talk legitimately with the organization for speedy reactions, making it simple for the client and the organization to tackle straightforward client support issues.

Retargeting

With the help of Ai, it allows us to achieve a degree of accuracy never observed in retargeting efforts. For instance, a few clients may react better to an email sent an hour subsequent to leaving the store, while others may improve to have a day or two to consider it. Artificial intelligence makes it conceivable to fragment them fittingly to connect with them at the perfect time and offer them the offer they have to urge them to complete their buy.

AI predicts Purchasing models

Machine learning strategies include the utilization of calculations to "learn" from sets of authentic information, this information the AI can make prescient models. For instance, Customer Journey models dependent on foreseeing practices that depend on specific occasions, for example, client scores dependent on their likelihood of changing over.

Each tool that chips away at Artificial Intelligence has various qualities or qualities. Some are better for drawing in customers, while others are valuable for changing over or reconnecting past customers.

Generate reach to target audiences

Reaching Target audiences include the utilization of the resources or systems, for example, Search Engine Optimization, Inbound marketing, Content marketing, and other strategies that bring visitors to your site and start them on the purchaser's excursion through work processes that are produced and that, appropriately applied, can be utilized at this phase to draw in more guests and give the individuals who go to your site with an additionally captivating encounter.

Updated with the trend

Big data is a variable that you can gauge very well with AI and, right now, can perceive its preferences and distinguish what is starting to be a trend. Artificial intelligence starts to be a ground-breaking link in any digital marketing procedure.


5 Ways a New Online Store Can Get Ahead in Marketing

new-online-store-can-get-ahead-in-marketing.jpg

For many budding entrepreneurs, establishing an online store is considered a no brainer.

The internet is a fantastic place, rife with business opportunities, offering low start-up costs and an instantaneous global reach.

However, a few years on from the digital revolution, the online landscape is looking a little saturated -- with big brands, media influencers, and other new stores all scrapping for attention -- maintaining a strong presence online is no mean feat.

While establishing a foothold may be harder than ever, with the right approach, climbing the ladder has never reaped higher rewards.

There remains no real distance separating you and your consumers, just a search engine and a click of a mouse. If you have a will to sell and a strong plan in place; your audience is there, waiting for you to make the right moves.

Here are 5 effective tactics that new online stores should take to get ahead in marketing:

Use Influencers

Social media has changed the way we perceive the world and is one of the single largest ways the internet has shaped modern culture. So, of course, tapping into this unending resource should be high up in the marketing strategy of any successful business.

Influencers, in particular, are a valuable commodity that helps bridge the gap between a store and its consumers. Current buying practices stem from a decision-making ecosystem, meaning, we are influenced by recommendations in a trusted community.

Remember, the influencer is the consumer’s friend, not a faceless company with an agenda.

A recommendation from an influencer is a powerful opportunity, as they are the figureheads of an existing community. Word travels to numerous others who want to share their same values (giving reliability and notoriety to your new store).

Working with an influencer will humanize your brand, making consumers more likely to approach you. Fortunately for new businesses, smaller influencers tend to be in the same scrap for attention, so working with each other can be an all-round beneficial practice.

Be an expert by creating a blog

Creating content is a key and effective marketing tool for a developing brand, especially if you know who and what to target.

Therefore, integrating a blog, that is aimed towards your particular niche is one of the best things a new store can do. As you are establishing yourself as a reliable source of information about the products or services you sell. 

To observe success through utilizing this strategy you’ll need to maintain a consistent level of output and obvious value in what you are writing.

Aim content at people you want to attract to your store, be sharp, snappy and palatable for online readers. People do not generally have the time to wade through long essays, best to stick to interesting, digestible snippets of information.

Be aware of SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the actions taken to raise the position of a website in search engine rankings. This creates a higher rate of organic traffic regularly traveling through a site.

This, in many ways, is the core of any online marketing technique and is applicable to all businesses -- young or old, large or small. For an online store, this means that more people are naturally finding you online on a day to day basis.

Helpful tools such as Google Lighthouse can be used to aid your understanding of how well your website is performing. The more effective your SEO, the greater your overall marketing strategies will perform.

Explore every channel

As with all businesses it is important to take note and understand trends in the marketplace. Ecommerce is certainly not a predictable market, making it vital to cover every avenue.

For example, we are witnessing a huge swing to phone usage. It has been projected that in 2021, over 50% of e-commerce sales will be made on a handheld device. This illustrates that buying habits are developing rapidly alongside technology, to be successful a business must know how to keep up.

Social media is a fantastic way to start molding your channels into a functional multi-use platform, directly connecting you with the customer at the point of sale. Over time you will begin to pick the trends and tactics that work best for you.

For mobile shoppers, though, digital drives the customer experience. For this reason, using one platform to manage sales across all channels (store, marketplaces, and social) is a must. Exploring every channel and allowing potential customers to reach out on their terms channel will help new stores stand out in crowded markets.

Find brands to collaborate with

As discussed, the online world is full of competitors, but sometimes it can be incredibly effective to work with other companies.

Find a company that fits alongside your work, which does not directly compete or affiliate with existing competitors. 

Reaching out for cross-promotions extends your store's sphere of influence. Suppose your company sourced and sold pre-loved collectible sneakers, and you found another company that restored, cleaned and customized sneakers - this would provide easy and compatible opportunities for you to work together for mutual benefit.

For example, work together on Interbrand promotions and promote them on your social media pages. You could also write blogs on one another’s websites about each other’s expertise.

The possibilities of cross-promotion are endless, go get creative. Given the right brands, it can be a sure recipe for success.

Setting up a successful new online store is tricky business nowadays and can feel daunting to many professionals.

However, implementing these 5 strategies will give you and your new store the best chance to reap the huge rewards the e-commerce industry can offer.


How to Create a Successful Content Strategy for International Business

content-strategy-for-international-business.png

Companies looking to develop an effective international marketing strategy need to focus on delivering value on a local level. When your business is addressing global audiences, reaching them in a locally relevant manner is vital.

There are no "one size fits all" solutions. For a compelling, high-quality content that will engage consumers around the globe, it has to suit local audiences' preferences in target countries.

If you are looking to expand your business overseas and build a sophisticated content strategy, read on!

1. Know your global audience

When you plan on spreading the business across the border, you should identify which countries show interest in your products or services. Determine who your audience is and where they live.

Bear in mind that only 20 percent of all internet users are native-English speakers. And more importantly, almost 73 percent of consumers say they would rather buy a product when information in their language is available.

This means that languages highly influence consumers' shopping behaviors.

When you know your global audience well, you will know which approach to implement in which market.

2. Don't just translate the content

To reach new markets converting content from one language to another won't do. Localization is the key! You need to localize your copies and adapt the content to your target audience's cultural specifics.

Get to know the specifics of the countries you plan to target. Think about jokes, wordplay, politics, holidays, or social customs – they differ from one state to the other.

People of different nationalities may not get a pun that works perfectly in the U.S. Misused language may not seem like a big thing, but it can take away from your credibility.

Researching content that is the most effective at engaging people in different countries is crucial to create successful localized strategies.

3. Hire native speakers

When deciding on who will execute the content strategy, make sure to consider best practices. Using the services of an outdoor provider is highly recommended if you want to reach new markets.

By working with local experts, you can rest assured that the marketing strategy will be crafted well for each country. Marketers from targeted countries will know best what works for your ideal consumers.

They can quickly get a grip on your terminology and flag specific issues or considerations that need to be addressed.

They will recreate the original text in a new language to convey the same message with cultural distinctiveness in mind. A well-executed transcreation process makes advertising more efficient by taking into account cultural specifics and nuances of language.

4. Include local, recognizable & relatable figures in your marketing campaigns

Content is more powerful when it has a name and a face attached. Stories from real people your audience recognizes and can relate to are more effective.

It is the human element that draws the audience in and captures their attention.

Featuring local figures and experts can help in better communicating your message to the target audience, and it can also attract the right people.

Guest posts by local experts, entrepreneurs, or beauty bloggers providing unique insights and experiences are what users crave.

Growing business and reaching new markets is all about building trust and reputation, so consider well who you want to include in your marketing campaigns.

5. Leverage paid social media campaigns

Popular social media networks differ from one market to another. Research which social media channels your potential audience most likely use within targeted countries. This is extremely important if you want to participate in Russian or Chinese markets.

Again, localization is the answer – localizing your social media pages instead of publishing posts in one language only will benefit your marketing efforts. Also, you need to adapt your social media posts to the local audience.

Since free social media campaigns aren't as effective as paid ones, more and more businesses are turning to the latter.

Paid social media campaigns allow you to target your ideal consumer globally and more. Besides demographic targeting, they include complete control over your budget and other useful features.

6. The importance of understanding cultural differences

Research each nationality you're targeting to identify main topics of interest. Pay attention to wording since some phrases or expressions may be considered offensive in certain countries.

You need to be extra cautious about content creation due to cultural sensitivities and different perceptions of some terms. Understanding cultural differences is critical to avoid offending your audience.

Google Trends can help you find the hottest topics and popular keywords in a specific country that you can use for blog posts and other content.

Also, be aware of local market regulatory restrictions.

For a successful global content strategy, you need to resonate with people's values, beliefs, sensitivities, and their specific perspective on life that may be very unlike yours and what you are familiar with.

It takes time to understand each market well, but when you do, it's much easier to build a strong international customer base.


How to Boost Conversion Rates for Healthcare Websites

healthcare-practitioner.png

A healthcare practitioner will never tell you they look at their practice as a business. They have a noble profession and they thrive by helping other people. However, in its essence, your practice is a business. You want to attract more patients, and you’re competing against other practices.

That’s why we’ve been seeing so many websites for healthcare professionals being launched lately. Healthcare practitioners realize that they have to boost their practices, and building an online presence is part of the process. 

Is Healthcare Marketing Ethical?

We can’t deny the fact that there’s some controversy behind healthcare marketing. You must never promote your services through an exaggerated campaign.

You have to respect the principles of bioethics. Advertising is okay, as long as it is 100% truthful and you don’t promise anything that you can’t deliver. Developing and maintaining a relationship with the audience should be the main goal of healthcare websites. The website serves to inform visitors about the services, procedures, staff, and prices.

When you want to increase the conversion rate, you mustn’t create unjustified expectations. You’ll keep your promotions as realistic as possible. The ultimate goal is to make your practice better than the competition and explain why that’s the case. We’ll tell you how to do that.  

How to Boost Website Conversions for a Healthcare Practice through Ethical Marketing

  • Use Testimonials

When talking about truthful marketing, testimonials are the first thing that comes to mind. You should allow the users of your practice to post transparent testimonials on Facebook and other platforms. Don’t delete any of them, even if they are extremely negative. If someone had an unpleasant experience in your practice, try to repair the damage as much as possible. Make sure you’ve done everything possible to help that person. Respond to the comment, offering further assistance in your practice.

Where does your website come into this picture? You’ll feature some of the best testimonials there. Don’t go for the fake, inflated testimonials that we usually see across sites. Your audience can see right through them. If your patients agree, use their real names. You can feature screenshots of the feedback you received on social media, too.

To make the testimonials more relevant, you can include more information about the specific cases. If your patients agree, you can share documents that showcase the case and the treatment they received. You will hide all sensitive information, and you’ll turn the feedback into a case study supported by facts.

Before people use a particular service, they check their online reputation. They will search for reviews on Reddit and Quora, and they will look into personal experiences shared by bloggers. They want to know more about the doctor and the practice. When they conduct research, you want them to find the testimonials at your site. That’s why your marketing team will use specific techniques that list that page in Google’s results. 

  • Enable a Live Chat Feature at the Website

No matter how many reviews and testimonials they read, your audience will still have questions. You may feature the most informative content at your blog and website, but they will still have underlying questions. If they have any questions or doubts, they will want to contact your practice.

The traditional way to do this is over the phone. Healthcare practices are in-office businesses, which might not even have an online presence. People are used to calling. But if they see a convenient website that features an instant communication tool, the practice gets bonus points in their eyes.

Who represents your practice when people call? The same employees can take care of the live chat. Hopefully, they are not constantly on the phone during their work hours. Some people will choose to contact them through instant form or live chat, and your representatives will answer ASAP.

Many websites use chatbots. This type of software is programmed to answer the most commonly asked questions. It can provide information about prices or available appointment dates. However, a representative is still needed to provide support for complex issues. Some patients will ask about their treatment, so the representative will have to ask a doctor and respond. 

If someone is interested in the practice and uses live chat to get information, you have a big chance to convert them into actual users.

boost-website-conversions-healthcare.jpg
  • Analyze Your Results

When you want to boost the results that your website achieves, you’ll have to analyze the results and compare them to the goals you set.

  • Attract more unique visitors on the website. For this, your marketing team will rely on search engine optimization strategies. They will use keywords that people usually use when searching for the services you provide. They will develop high-quality content that includes those keywords. But to know how many unique monthly visitors this campaign attracts on a monthly basis, you’ll have to check the analytics for your site.

  • Compare how web traffic rises and declines. Did you post a very special piece of content that attracted many visitors? How did it help you improve the site’s position in the search engine results? You can use a site ranking tool to see that. If you notice that your positions are declining, analyze why that happens. Are your competitors publishing better content? Maybe you failed to share new content for a longer period of time?

  • In addition to unique visitor numbers and search engine rankings, you should also analyze the clicks you get from ads. Do you promote your practice through Google, Facebook, or Instagram ads? How many visitors do these ads bring to your website? How many of them do you manage to convert? Is an investment in paid advertising worth the results?  

  • You should also analyze the number of times a particular video has been viewed. The theme of the video says a lot: if it received many views, you should focus on publishing that kind of content. It’s what your audience needs, so you have to make the website useful for them.

  • Add Different Call-to-Action Buttons

Calls to action are a common marketing strategy across industry. However, in terms of healthcare marketing, they can be controversial. “Buy now,” “Get a discount” or “Get a free trial version” are calls to action that work for websites that sell things. But you’ll have to think of something different; something that won’t make your visitors feel like you’re selling something to them.

Here are a few call-to-action buttons that work for healthcare websites:

When you’re sure that the text for your call-to-action buttons is adequate, you have to think about the design. These calls to action must be visible. They should catch the viewer’s attention as soon as they land on the website. You can position them at the top of each page, but at the bottom as well. No one likes scrolling back up after they read the text on the page and decided to book an appointment.

Don’t get too fancy with the graphics. Stay simple; it’s a healthcare website after all. Still, these buttons should vary in color from the rest of the website, so they will be easily noticeable.

  • Rely on Visual Content

What’s your target audience? If you target women in their reproductive years, you can use “feminine” colors that would add a softer appeal to the entire site. If this is an IVF clinic, you can use visuals of parents with babies. You can also share videos of doctors talking about the procedures, photographs of happy couples who achieved success at your clinic, or animated videos explaining the process of conception.

Infographics are highly useful, too. This format is great for compressing a lot of statistical data in a single publication without overwhelming the reader.

Figure out the “vibe” of your audience and use visuals that convey the goals they want to achieve through the treatment they get at your practice.

Don’t Waste Time!

The idea that a healthcare website is there solely to inform potential patients should be abandoned. It’s there to serve as the face of your practice to a broader audience. It’s where people get all the information they need, but it’s also the place where you have a chance to convert visitors into real users.

Boosting the conversion rates isn’t difficult if you know what you’re doing. Even if you don’t have a highly professional marketing team, you can use a few strategies that will have a positive effect. Featuring testimonials, visuals, and call-to-action buttons shouldn’t be that hard. You don’t need a technical team to install a live chat at your site; you can easily find the tool and add it as an extension. As for website analytics, they come with a learning curve. But no matter how experienced or inexperienced you are, website maintenance is something that you can learn.

That being said, it’s always better to have a team taking care of online marketing. They will convey the goals and values of your practice, and they will make it attractive to potential patients.


Top 5 Benefits of Social Media Marketing in 2020

social-media-marketing-in-2020.png

The business world has taken a turn with the advent of social media. Because of social media, many businesses have over performed. Social media became the most powerful tool for marketers, bloggers, and businesses. However, some people believe that social media is just for the short term. But the fact is that they don’t know the real benefits of social media marketing. This article focuses on the advantages of social media marketing for business.

If you don’t know how to effectively use social media marketing for your business then you can take the help of social media marketing services. However, if you are just starting out you can learn it on your own. A number of resources are available on the internet. Now let us know the top 5 benefits of social media marketing 

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Have you ever tried social media marketing for your business? And if you're not sure whether it can be helpful or even worth spending your time and money on social media, then stick with me until the end. In this post, I will be showing you the top 5 benefits of social media marketing in 2020.

1. Easier and Efficient

The best thing about social media marketing is you don’t need any professional training or education to be a social media marketer. If you have a passion for learning you can easily learn social media marketing online. You can use it to apply in your business, and you can also make a career out of it. However, you need to be consistent and up to date with the latest social media tools and trends regularly. Social media marketing is very effective because you can plan and control your marketing strategies with advanced tools offered by social networks. 

2.  Cost-effective Marketing

There is no question of comparing social media marketing with any other type of marketing in terms of cost. Because almost all social media networks do not charge a single penny to register and use most marketing tools. The premium versions and the paid tools are also very less. That why most marketers, bloggers, and businesses are adopting social media marketing as their primary means of marketing in 2020.  If you have never tried social media marketing, then try and measure the result you are getting from it. But, many people struggle in social media marketing because they don't know how to do it, you need to be careful and use a good strategy.

3.  Increases Brand Awareness

Due to the vast number of users, social media became the prime means of marketing for marketers, businesses, and brands for promotion. As a marketer, your goal is to spread your brand across a large audience and social media offers that platform. It provides the opportunity to interact with a wide number of viewers from various parts of the world and to find potential leads. People easily get to know your brand because of social media marketing. 

4. Improves Customer Engagement

Social media has the highest rate of customer engagement due to its attractive user interface. Various forms of content can be uploaded on the web within very less time. The most important thing is that you get a feeling of talking and connecting with people from different parts of the world. And this scope attracted a number of people to spend their time on social media. 

The reach has a lot of advantages for your business. Because you can easily study consumer behavior and deliver relevant content to your audience. The more engagement the consumer has, the higher the rate of return. You can also collect feedback on your products through social media, which is another benefit.

5. Higher Search Engine Ranking

One more advantage of social media marketing is that it can increase the search engine ranking of your site. If you know how to use SEO keywords in your content, you can attract more organic traffic to your website. However, it is a bit difficult to write SEO friendly article in the beginning but you can learn it easily. Learning about keyword research can make it easier to write SEO content. However, social media posts cannot solve all your search engine goals, but it will definitely add a positive impact on your search engine ranking.

Conclusion

Now you know the advantages of social media marketing and how it affects your business growth. Start learning, prepare a good social media marketing strategy and apply it to your business. Note that the goal is to keep up to date with the new trends in social media, so be consistent and follow trends. When you're looking for social media marketing strategies, you can opt for paid social media marketing services, or you can learn online on your own. Please feel free to ask your questions about social media marketing in the comments section.


Author Bio

Mashum Mollah is the Founder at ‘Blogstellar’. A passionate blogger by heart and an entrepreneur by profession, the ‘Blogging Engineer’ is on a mission to help people passionate about blogging transform their passion into full-time businesses.

Implementing an Agile Approach to Social Media Marketing

agile-approach-to-social-media-marketing.png

With the social media marketing trend growing stronger than ever, the need for better marketing strategies is also increasing. Nowadays, marketing companies are trying to find innovative means of handling social media marketing. And if you are looking for ways to improve your marketing team’s productivity and success, you might want to consider implementing an agile marketing approach.

What is Agile Marketing?

A growing trend in the marketing industry, the agile methodology refers to the process of using a collection of tools and processes to improve a team’s focus and overall productivity. An agile marketing approach empowers your team to collaborate and communicate better and to perform tasks more efficiently even in rapid iterations.

The Agile process also aims to improve decision making by using verified data for guidance and to enable your team to respond to changes quickly. By implementing an agile approach, you can enable your team to work more efficiently and accomplish more tasks in a shorter span of time.

Why Go Agile for Social Media Marketing

agile-for-social- media-marketing.png

Implementing agile marketing offers a variety of benefits. If you are thinking about ramping up your social media marketing efforts, the Agile methodology is possibly the best way for you to streamline your process. Here are some of the advantages of implementing an Agile social media marketing approach:

  • Improves your team’s efficiency and response time, thus increasing overall productivity.

  • Encourages teams to collaborate better and communicate effectively.

  • Enhances your team’s flexibility and adaptability.

  • Allows you to measure your team’s performance.

  • Makes it easy to improve your processes and stay competitive as a marketing team.

How to Jumpstart an Agile Social Media Marketing Strategy

If you want to set up an effective agile marketing strategy for your team, here are some of the things you should take into account.

1. Set clear marketing goals.

To give your team a clearer direction, it’s essential that you set up clear marketing goals. Whether you want to get more website visitors or increase your sales, it’s important that you specify your goals and see to it that your whole team understands them. This way, they can all pitch in to accomplish all of your tasks when it comes to marketing your brand on social media. You can start by scheduling a meeting with your team to plan your whole strategy and establish your goals.

2. Break down tasks into smaller, more manageable functions.

Once you have set up your marketing goals, you can now start assigning responsibilities to your team members. Marketing is a huge undertaking. So to make it more manageable for your whole team, it’s better that you divide the tasks into smaller activities that you can easily assign to your team members.

For example, if you want to promote your brand through various social media platforms, you can form different micro teams to handle marketing through each of your selected platforms. Then each member of your micro team can handle more specific tasks, such as preparing images, copywriting, scheduling, tracking and more.

3. Delegate tasks wisely.

delegate-tasks-wisely.png

When it comes to delegating work, it’s important that you consider the skills required to accomplish each task. An agile team should always see to it that they are making the most of their available resources. And for an agile marketing team, taking advantage of your team’s individual skills can help boost your team’s overall productivity. For you to decide wisely on how to delegate your tasks, you should first know what their strengths are.

Ideally, your team should be made up of professionals who are familiar with the ins and outs of the marketing industry. Your team should have a copywriter, graphic designer, SEO and ads specialists, as well as analytics experts. With an all-star team, you can easily delegate tasks and see to it that they are performed properly to the best of their abilities.

4. Use tools to monitor your progress.

Technology has made it easy for workers to achieve optimal efficiency by taking advantage of various productivity tools. When it comes to implementing an agile social media marketing campaign, a team manager should also have the right set of tools to monitor the progress of their efforts. Each task should be laid out using a visual project management tool such as a Scrum or Kanban board. This way, it will be easier for you to keep track of your team’s individual and overall performance. To be an effective agile marketing team, you and your team should see to it that all tasks are processed in rapid iteration to avoid wasting time and other resources.

5. Measure and analyze results.

measure-and-analyze-results.png

Another important factor to consider when going agile is your team’s ability to measure your social media marketing performance. How are your efforts paying off? Are you gaining more followers? Is your return of investment (ROI) rate improving? Are you able to convert more followers into sales? These are some of the things that you should take into account. This is also where the marketing goals you have set comes into play.

Depending on the goals you have initially set, you should see to it that you are using analytics tools to measure your marketing performance from the get-go. This will allow you to better understand the trends in your market and to continuously improve your methods. The data you’ve gathered can also help you determine which methods and platforms work better for you when it comes to promoting your brand on social media.

6. Scale and repeat based on outcome.

Once you have gathered enough data from your current marketing strategies, you will now be able to determine which techniques and platforms are delivering better results for you. Once you have identified what works best for the brand you are promoting, you can now ramp up your efforts and switch your team’s focus towards the strategies that work better. You can continue the iteration in rapid succession as part of your agile marketing approach. And with a visual project management board, you can efficiently repeat tasks more efficiently.

Conclusion

No matter what social media platforms you decide to use, an agile marketing approach can definitely boost your team’s productivity. With your preparation, along with your business tools and data-guided decisions, can easily ramp up your marketing efforts and achieve your marketing goals faster and more efficiently.


Christine_Joy_Leal.jpg

About the Author

Christine Joy Leal is an experienced freelance writer and content manager, wife and mother-of-two. She loves keeping things in order and enjoys using the Kanban and Agile methodologies to manage all her writing projects, daily tasks, and other personal matters that require efficient organization. Apart from managing her busy content writing career, she also enjoys books, movies, TV series, online games, music, and crocheting. She also writes blogs for Kanban Zone and for her personal website.

B2B Influencer Marketing: 4 Strategies that Move the Needle

B2B-Influencer-Marketing.jpg

With the passage of time, the trend of marketing has been changed dramatically. In this competitive era, many brands are moving towards influencer marketing. This concept of marketing is in full swing these days and just like in B2C marketing, it is gaining great popularity in B2B marketing. However, the ratio of using influencer marketing in the B2C business is still higher.

Using the concept of influencer marketing in the B2C business is simple because we know who our targeted customers are. However, it is much difficult when it comes to B2B. The ones we are dealing with are not sometimes the actual decision-makers of the firm. The gatekeepers of complex decision making are different. Thus, we have to work hard so that these decision-makers might look at our content by chance.

Let us see how we can use influencer marketing effectively in B2B business by using these four smart strategies:

1. Co-creating Content with top-notch Experts

content-creation.jpg

Like many other strategies, this strategy of co-creating content is a win-win strategy for both parties. It also helps in saving a lot of budget. Now, we have to pick the right influencers here. It is ideal to select the ones who have already used our brand. Convincing these influencers is easier than the new ones.

We can search for them by looking at people who tweeted about our brand, who recommended it and who talked about it a few months back. We can also use a tool called Followerwonk for getting a list of influencers.

We can use case studies since influencers will love to share their success stories. In these case studies, we can tag the influencers. Similarly, we can go for video content. Though it requires a good budget, it is one of the best ways of marketing these days. Research shows that 80% of people prefer watching videos rather than reading content.

We can also do research collaborations with a B2B influencer. If we have compiled our data, we can ask the influencer of the B2B market to post it on their blog. For instance, you have collected all the data and statistics about the best pdf converters available online, you can then ask a relevant but top-notch blogger to post it on their website. There is a great tool called BuzzSumo that can provide us ideas regarding the type of data for B2B marketing. We can also look into B2B content marketing strategies for selecting unique topics.

2. Selecting a brand ambassador from your loyal customer group

brand-ambassador.jpg

Although there is a huge list of influencers, persuading them to collaborate with you is not a simple task. You should get ready to be ignored by hundreds of them. However, there is a solution to it and that is using your own loyal customers as brand ambassadors. These loyal customers are easier to convince since they already have experience with your brand and we do not need to sell our brand from scratch.

We can use a few tactics for turning our B2B customers into supporters. Arranging programs like giving some extra points for commenting on your blog post is a great idea. This will increase customer engagement and you will be able to identify the champions.

Similarly, you can make some exclusive groups and add our loyal B2B customers into it. You need to make sure that these groups are highly formal since we are dealing with B2B clients. Adding loyal customers into this group will give them a special feeling and a chance for better interaction. Thus, you will get to know who your loyal customer actually is. You will be able to build a strong bond and ask them for becoming a brand ambassador in return.

3. Always research for new Influencers

Although you have a big group of influencers to work with, you have no guarantee when they will switch to other brands. Thus, you need to keep hunting for potential influencers so that your marketing strategy is not be affected.

You can look for the influencers used by your competitors and try to reach them. Since they are working with your niche, they can switch brands if they get convinced by you. You can also use links to their site to show your interest.

Influencers love it when you share their content. You can use new and creative ways of sharing their content on different social media channels. Opt for some unique ways which they have not used. When they will see that you are putting efforts into this content then they will definitely get in touch with you. However, you should make efforts for the influencers who actually need your content sharing.

For instance, if someone writes a post on Moz, he does not need you to share his content. His post will do well in any case. Thus, you need to see which influencers will actually become happy when you share their content with them and then try to build a relationship with them. Similarly, you can send some corporate gifts to the new influencers. This is a great way of getting in touch with them.

4. Arranging offline events for relationship building

We always have a list of influencers whom we want to meet but have never met so far. Arranging some offline events is a great way of inviting them and having a face-to-face conversation. The old-school thinking that eye-to-eye contact cannot beat any other form of conversation is true.

We can arrange some events only for VIPs. When you invite your influencers on the list of VIPs, they will get a great feeling. Similarly, we can arrange some award functions. Since award functions are arranged in grand events, they require a lot of budget, time and dedication. If you are short of budget, going for a pre or post-event party is also ideal.

In short, B2B influencer marketing has made its unique way of success after looking at the outcomes of B2C influencer marketing. We have to keep searching for new influencers, use different tactics and make smart strategies to keep the needle moving. Since in B2B marketing, we deal in large purchases that do not happen on a daily basis, we need to come out of our comfort zone and make use of the best influencers.


5 Tools and Solutions that Safeguard Your Business

Source: Freepik

Source: Freepik

Data security is becoming a pressing issue for business leaders nowadays, simply because it only takes a single security breach to ruin a brand’s reputation, alienate consumers, and drive the company straight into the ground. The modern customer values their privacy, so if they share their personal information (such as credit card info) with your company, they expect you to guard that information with your name and your brand. Naturally, you can’t allow a single act of social engineering or a single cyberattack to be successful if you want to preserve your brand’s reputation over the long term.

Yet, you never know, someone might try to breach your firewalls, or an inept employee might give away sensitive information via email thinking that they are sending it to the right person. Needless to say, you have to avoid these scenarios at all costs, so let’s take a look at the five tools and solutions you need to introduce in order to safeguard your business.

Combine Software and Hardware Firewalls

Every device in your company needs to have the proper software firewall installed as the first line of defense against nefarious online activity, malicious files and executables, and more. However, it’s not enough to launch a firewall straight out of the box, because ready-to-go software is rarely optimized to the exact needs of your company and your employees. This results in a subpar security measure that is bound to let something slip through the cracks at one point or another. It’s important that you optimize all software firewalls on every device with the right settings and levels of security.

Read more about Content Marketing Services.

Source: Freepik

Source: Freepik

Next, be sure to introduce a hardware firewall into the workspace as well. This is a physical device that safeguards your entire network and all of your devices by acting as a proxy between your workspace and the online world. You can use it to filter incoming traffic and protect all of your devices, even in the case when an operating system stops working.

Use Data Encryption Tools

Nowadays, business data is exchanged every day, all day, through numerous devices. From the smartphones, your employees use to manage work on the go, to their laptops and stationary PCs, every device is a potential security risk if it falls into the wrong hands, or if your employees accidentally send sensitive data to the wrong person. Assuming that you have conducted comprehensive workshops with your employees pertaining to information storage and management to prevent the latter problem, you can minimize the risk of data leaks with encryption tools.

These tools serve to encode all data and make it accessible only to the people with the corresponding encryption key. This means that when you send sensitive information to someone, they need to have the right key in order to decrypt the data, but that doesn’t mean that encryption prevents the data from falling into the wrong hands. It does, however, make it impossible for someone to view it, which makes it a powerful security tool.

Monitor your network in real-time

No matter how well-educated your employees might on proper online conduct and data management, and no matter how powerful your firewalls might be, that still doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t monitor your network or that you should let your employees send and receive sensitive data as they please. Instead, your goal should be to retain as much control of your internal network through a reliable secure web gateway that will allow you to restrict access to certain websites, monitor all incoming traffic, and elevate your cybersecurity measures across the board.

Source: Freepik

Source: Freepik

In turn, a network security tool will help you keep your employees productive by limiting their time on non-work-related websites (which minimizes the chance of data leaks), it will help you optimize bandwidth usage, and even leverage intelligent P2P identification to stay in control of your network on all fronts.

Close all Potential Data Leaks

Another important tool you should consider integrating into your operation is a vulnerability scanner. This is a handy tool that will automatically detect any security weak points in your system, and advise you on the best way forward. You can use this tool to not only identify weak points but also prioritize them and schedule maintenance and upkeep. This way, your IT consulting company or cloud provider will have an easier time optimizing your infrastructure to your exact requirements.

Up your Password Strength

On a final note, always remember that passwords serve as the first line of defense for your business, which is why you can’t let your employees create their own passwords, as they tend to be predictable and weak. Instead, be sure to use a password management tool that will generate truly randomized passwords for all devices and applications, which will deter all intruders simply because they are nearly impossible to crack.

Wrapping Up

The threats of cyberattacks and social engineering are too real nowadays, which is why elevating data security should be one of your top priorities. Integrating these tools will allow you to safeguard all of your business data, and in turn, safeguard your brand’s reputation.


4 Content Marketing Trends To Follow in 2020

Content Marketing Trends

We have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that the content marketing strategy that has been working for your brand perfectly in 2019 will not work in 2020. The good news is that if you adapt your strategy to current content marketing trends, your content marketing agency will easily achieve the desired results in the new year.

The key problem is that modern customers feel overwhelmed by the content options. And as you have probably noticed, it’s getting more challenging to grab their attention. To understand what specific content your target audience is ready to consume, check out the following four content marketing trends.

Video Content

Video content is not a new trend. And it’s highly likely that your current content marketing strategy is focused on video content production. But the point is that to succeed in 2020, you should generate even more videos than you did before.

Results of the resent survey reveal that 54% of consumers want to see more videos from brands and businesses they follow online. So you should expand your video content strategy, and start shooting new types of videos. Here are a few content ideas to consider:

  • TikTok videos – If you target Generation Z, you must create videos for this new popular social media app. Since consumers are becoming increasingly skeptical of traditional ads, the raw, unedited videos on TikTok help to engage the audience better than other types of content.

  • How-to videos – Are you struggling to sell products that are new to the market? Try to create videos that explain how to use, apply, wear, install, or clean your products. Provide your customers with the answers to the most frequent questions, and you will double your sales.

  • Customer testimonials – People do really care about the opinions of others. So if your satisfied customers share video testimonials, it will help you to convince your prospective buyers to try your products.

  • Unboxing videos – Modern customers are obsessed with this type of content, and scientists still struggle to explain why. Unboxing videos are cheap to produce, so even if you operate on a tight marketing budget, you can afford it.

Content Personalization

According to the recent marketing research, 90% of consumers feel positively towards the brands that “treat them as an individual”. And they feel negatively towards the brands that use a “one-size-fits-all” approach in marketing. For this reason, the primary tasks of every modern company are to produce personalized content and to create a personalized shopping experience.

Here is a list of tools you can use to boost your content personalization efforts:

  • SurveyMonkey. If you want to personalize your content, you should know your customers better first. Survey Monkey is a great tool you can use to run a survey and collect the personal data you need.

  • TopEssayWriting – it’s a writing service that employs highly-qualified content strategists. You can use it to create personalized social media posts, emails, articles, and other textual content.

  • If-So Dynamic Content – it’s a WordPress plugin that allows personalizing any content. The plugin automatically adds or replaces content according to the visitor’s profile or interaction with the site.

  • MailChimp. It’s an email marketing tool that allows companies to send the content that matters to the target audience the most. If you want to create a personalized shopping experience for every customer, use MailChimp.

  • ClassyEssay – It’s another online writing service. You can use it to get professional assistance from experts in content personalization.

User-generated Content

Studies show that 66% of UK buyers and 63% of US buyers trust customer photos and videos more than they trust content published by brands. And it means that that if you want to convince your target audience to buy your products, you don’t really need to work hard to create tons of content. You can just use content published by your real customers for free.

“User-generated content (UGC) is a game-changing trend that you can use to improve your business. In 2020, don’t spend your entire marketing budget on content production. Invest some money in engaging your customers in a content generation – and you will be amazed at results” says Trevor Robbins, a content strategist at Studyker and WriteScout.

Here are a few tips on how to collect more user-generated content:

  • Choose a branded hashtag, if you haven’t chosen one yet.

  • Use the bio of your social media account to explain to your customers what they should do to get a chance to be featured on your website or Instagram.

  • To boost your efforts, use email marketing. Offer your customers a small reward (e.g., discount for the next purchase, coupon code) for writing a review.

Voice Search

Voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s Bixby, Google Assistant, are not a new thing to the market. According to new research, seven out of 10 owners of the voice-controlled devices now use devices daily, up from four in 10 a year ago.

People use voice assistants not only to check the weather or play music but also to research and buy products. And the experts suggest that voice-based shopping will jump to $40 billion in 2022.

If you want your brand to benefit from this trend, you should adjust your content marketing strategy accordingly. There are four things to consider when creating content for voice search:

  • Choose long-tail keywords over short-tail keywords.

  • Use more natural language and write your blog in a conversational tone.

  • Add frequently asked questions with answers to blog posts

  • Simplify everything. Substitute sophisticated phrases with the words that people use in real-life conversations. For instance, write the word “use” instead of “utilize”.

In Conclusion

Follow these five content marketing trends in 2020, and you will achieve all the goals set. Also, keep watching the market and revisit your strategy if a new trend emerges. Don’t ignore the trends, and your business will stay profitable in the long run.


About Angela Baker

Angela Baker is a self-driven specialist who is currently working as a freelance writer at BeGraded and Subjecto writing services and is trying to improve herself and her blogging career. She is always seeking to discover new ways for personal and professional growth and is convinced that it’s always important to broaden horizons. That's why Angela develops and improves her skills throughout the writing process to help to inspire people. Also, she writes for LiveInspiredMagazine, rounding out her professional writing career.

Content Marketing Tactics You Need To Have In Your Strategy Today!

The_Importance_of_AI_(2).png

For quite some time, content marketing has become a valuable aspect in a marketers’ success. Today, almost all the B2B buyers are emphasizing content for making better purchasing decisions and are also accessing content at a much higher rate via their mobiles and tabs. All these trends have led to higher user reliance on the content in research and purchase decisions.

However, even though content marketing is a valuable aspect, only 69% of the businesses have a documented marketing strategy, say sources. And in this 69 %, some companies use KPIs to measure their success, while others rely on marketing ROI. But, whatever the metrics may be, it is no surprise that a documented marketing strategy is essential to make your content marketing campaign a success. At least that’s what almost 51% of the B2B marketers have to say!

So, if you’re sailing on the same boat and thinking about how to build a perfect content marketing strategy for your business, then congrats, you’re at the right place! In this article, we’ll be covering some vital content marketing tactics you need to have in your business strategy.

Let’s get started!

#1. Identify Your Business Goals

The first and foremost aspect of creating a robust content marketing strategy is to identify your business goals accurately. The short statement stating your business goals will make your business priorities more transparent and would also help you to make a successful marketing campaign. It will correctly deliver the right content to your target audience and will also provide you the benefits of a particular marketing campaign.

Some common examples of business goals include -

  1. Improving revenues

  2. Making more sales

  3. Getting more traffic

  4. SEO Success

  5. Social Media Engagement, and much more

#2. Emphasize On Visual Content

People often skim content nowadays, and that’s the most hurtful thing for a writer to hear. According to a source, almost 80% of the readers skim the content written in the article. However, it isn’t true that if they skim your first paragraph, they don’t read your article. They do, and if there are eye-catching visuals, then chances get almost double. Visuals increase the desire to read content by nearly 80%, and that’s why popular sites such as Venngage, uses almost 200 images in a single article.

However, using blunt images cannot be considered as visual-rich content. The modern generation needs a little more than that because of their cliche nature. So, to solve the issue and to make your content more appealing, you can try and involve infographics, charts and graphs, relevant images, slideshow, and so on. You can even try to include high-quality videos to make your post more appealing, as readers are 85% more interested to buy your product after watching a video about it.  

#3. Share a Readable & Well Written Content

A perfectly explained, and exciting content has more chances of getting shared by the people than a plain blunt text. And while pointing out the readable content, we are talking about the content with -

  1. Longer Length (up to 2000-2500 words)

  2. Full of Visuals

  3. Emotionally appealing

  4. Trustworthy (Full of facts)

  5. Promotable, and so on

So, always try to create content that satisfies all the points mentioned above. It should be shareable, hilarious, relatable to your target users, and should focus on their pain points. Please write at least a 2000-word article, and share it with an influencer to get his/her feedback. If your post is good enough, the chances are that they can even share that on their social media platform.

#4. Don’t Forget To Include Facts

As discussed in the point mentioned above, a trustworthy article has more chances of getting shared by the people than an ordinary story-telling post. You need to be very careful while building content and should always act according to the facts and actual information. It might be possible that what was true three years ago might not be at present.

So, think, tactically! Instead of believing in a certain thing, try to get accurate information about it. Although the chances of getting different results are high, that’s how we become experts! Through brainstorming and a creative mind, you can come up with new ideas that others can inspire from in the future.

#5. Leverage the Hedgehog Content Model

You might be thinking what a hedgehog has to do with the content marketing strategy! Well, it simply indicates that you should start from where you currently are. A hedgehog model implies that you should start small in your initial days, and then should proceed to achieve higher results. It would be best if you stopped worrying about generating 1000 monthly visitors in your starting days.

Focus on creating a consistent content marketing strategy and then scale it up as your business grows. If you can achieve those small targets, then the possibility of attaining more also increases significantly. You can start by sharing your content with your friends over your social media platform. The same concept can be applied to your email marketing campaign too.

#6. Figure Out the Best Content Channels

As you start posting content on various social media platforms, after a specific time, you might get an idea of where you’re getting the most of your audience. So, it would be best if you started focusing on it. In other words, working on a particular platform for making a successful online presence is necessary to make your marketing strategy work. It’s best to focus on what’s working for you rather than trying all of them simultaneously.

However, to be very sure about your most beneficial marketing channel, you need to rely on web analytics. Don’t worry, the internet today is filled with web analytics tools that provide you with the vital user-engagement data. For instance, you can use the Google Analytics tool to see where your content is being shared the most. You can also get to know the top content that was most liked by your target audience and can then work to create more such content.

#7. Use Native Ads but Don’t Be Deceptive

Native ads are an aspect of online marketing where the content matches the platform on which it is shared. To be more precise, native ads mean perfect content for the users of a particular platform. It would be best if you were very specific about the content you’re sharing, as in, it should relate with the audience on that platform.

Native ads aren’t new to the marketing world; they are prevalent for quite some time. This fantastic marketing tactic helps to make your content more than a promotional piece of shit. Though many people think that native ads don’t work like regular marketing techniques since they don’t look like ads, many big companies NYtimes and Newscred, promote native ads openly. All in all, if you want native ads to be a part of your marketing strategy, then post content related to the sharing platform you are using.

#8. Conduct a Competitor Analysis

Knowing what your competitors are doing isn’t optional today if you want to be successful in the global market. You need to identify your competitors at an early stage and should keep an eye on them to succeed in the competitive market. You can even integrate this crucial research into your marketing strategy to improve and transform your vital business aspects.

Improved business automatically implies better conversion rates, and that’s what everyone here is looking for! And the most popular way of spying on your competitors is through automated tools. For instance, you can search a keyword related to your niche on Google and can see which all companies are using those keywords and are competing with you.

#9. Be Ready To Evolve

Last but not least, be ready to evolve. And with that we mean, to change gradually with time. If you are involved in content marketing strategy, then you should always remain flexible and should adapt to the latest ongoing trends in the app development market. And if you’re a user, you should always try to read great topics to increase your knowledge about the current trends.

Evolving as a business also signifies keeping pace with modern users. With the digitization in the global market, things tend to change drastically, and so the user’s thoughts. So, always look for the topics that are generating enough results, and if it isn’t, then leaving it is the best solution. Remember, to stay updated and to be flexible, and you’re good to go!

Final Takeaway!

So, what were some of the content marketing tactics that could help you in making your business successful in the global market? Apart from all these strategies mentioned above, there are many other tactics like continually running A/B tests, paying attention to the core business values, segmenting users, etc. You can always select what best suits your business needs. In the end, it’s not the best content that matters, but how well you present that content in front of your audience is the real thing.