The goal might be clear, but the path is not as simple. TikTok is all about trending content and creativity, but it’s a competitive platform that’s changing all the time. What worked yesterday might not work today or tomorrow. You need to be creative and offer quality to stand out.

In this post, we’ll keep you updated on what’s trending on TikTok in 2023. You can use the ideas below to improve your marketing strategy and see better results.

Reasons Why You Should Use TikTok as a Business

Following TikTok trends can deliver awesome results for your business. It’s a trend-based platform that can potentially get you more organic reach than any other marketing strategy. With the right content, your videos on TikTok can go viral overnight and help you reach a wider audience than you ever imagined.

But, why is TikTok important for businesses?

TikTok is a great place to spread awareness for your brand. It’s a platform with a priority of discovering creative, new content.

It’s all about the trends. Users use it to search for trending songs, challenges, hashtags, or any other idea that’s currently blowing up. As a business, the best strategy is to jump on the wagon and use the trends. And if you are really creative, you can even start a new one!

Here are just a few of the many reasons why TikTok marketing is a smart idea for businesses in 2023:

• TikTok is projected to reach 2 billion users by the end of 2024
• TikTok constantly makes updates for businesses (such as their Creative Center of 2022). It also announced a WooCommerce integration so that businesses can synchronize their products and track data.
• Due to the major growth of the platform, we can expect spending to increase on TikTok

The competition is getting bigger every day. As the desire to spend on ads increases, the price of advertising will also increase. So, if you take advantage of the low prices now, you can stay ahead of the curve.

Not to mention, since the platform sees a growth in users, it will be much harder to beat the growing competition in the future. Brands will all fight for the same - reach the audience, and it will get harder to do this with more competitors on the platform.

Top 9 TikTok Trends You Should Follow

What’s trending on TikTok right now? The social media platform is full of ideas, but only the best are buzzing and attracting the attention of most users. With that in mind, here are some most-followed, new TikTok trends to use to promote your brand this year:

1. Trending Sounds and Songs

Most of the trends on TikTok are tied to audio content. One of the fastest and most effective ways to find the current trends is to go through the trending songs and sounds.

These change often, so checking the top sounds and songs is a strategy that works at any moment. You can see what music people love listening to while they watch videos, what type of content it fits - and create it using the same audio content.

There are 2 ways to create content based on trending audio:

• Go to the search bar and search for ‘viral sounds’ or ‘trending songs’
• If you have an idea for content, type in the idea, and look at the top videos that come up to see what sounds and songs they are using

2. Branded Hashtag Challenge

The branded hashtag challenge has been trending for some time now. This is, by far, one of the most successful TikTok marketing strategies for brands. To use it, create your own hashtag and use it in a challenge for your audience.

The idea is to encourage users to create videos based on the requirements of your challenge. They are required to use the branded hashtag when they upload the video.

Take, for instance, the branded hashtag challenge by Nissan Australia. The company managed to raise awareness for their new sporty car, the JUKE by introducing a challenge with a prize. The challenge resulted in 34,000+ video creations and hashtag usage, and the campaign reached over 129 million video views!

Simmons achieved even greater results with their branded hashtag challenge - over 1.1 million video creators and an incredible 6 billion video views! The mattress brand launched its #Snoozzzapalooza hashtag challenge during the COVID-19 quarantine, encouraging the community to create content from the comfort of their home.

3. User-generated Content

User-generated content works across all platforms. People are more likely to trust a brand that has a strong reputation on the market. Around 45% of consumers globally will check social media reviews and videos before they buy a product or service.

But, what if you take an extra step in this direction? What if you encourage your users to create TikTok videos where they use your product, talk about it, and share their experiences?

Good UGC makes your brand more trustworthy in the eyes of the audience. Instead of your marketing team coming up with content to impress the audience, you can ask the existing customers to create videos. You can send them a product to open, assemble, use, and rate, or ask them to talk about their experience on video.

4. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is focused on people with great influence with a targeted audience - people who promote brands and help you reach a big audience.

Influencers are a big TikTok trend these days. They have a lot of power over your targeted audience and collaborating with them can help you reach out faster - and better.

There’s no reason why you can’t combine this strategy with others, too. Nike used the TikTok creator @Ben to kick-start their branded hashtag challenge #MagicBoots. As the heart of the campaign, the influencer with 2.2 million followers helped Nike reach the key target demographic.

The results? They had 317 million views, over 160 thousand videos with the hashtag, and over 215 thousand new followers!

5. Duets

Duets are side-by-side videos and a new TikTok trend. Recently, people have started creating content where you can see their reaction to existing content from other users. You can mimic other people’s content, react to it for the audience, or create something new based on the original.

TikTok users are big fans of duets. They are engaging, fun, and a great way to repurpose trending content. For your business, this is a great way to leverage trends on TikTok from other users and increase your brand’s visibility.

6. TikTok Live Videos

If you have at least a thousand followers, you can create live streams on TikTok. It’s a trending form of content that helps your customers see how your business works in real time, communicate with you, get updates, and much more.

You can use TikTok Live to reveal the work of your business. You can use them to talk about important topics or share something special with your audience. It’s a type of content that offers exclusivity and, unlike ready and edited content pieces, it’s more real and authentic.

7. ASMR Videos

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response or ASMR triggers good feelings when the person listens to a sound or watches something on the screen. ASMR videos are trending across all platforms today, especially TikTok. Also known as ‘satisfying’ videos, these can include anything from cooking to carpet cleaning to making art or mixing pigments into slime.

Take an idea that represents your brand, create satisfying content, and accompany it with soothing music to make the experience more engaging.

8. Pack an Order Videos

Does your business sell physical products? If this is the case, one of the TikTok trends to follow is to film yourself or your employees packing an order. ‘Pack an order with me’ videos take customers behind the scenes.

In some way, these resemble the ASMR videos. They are satisfying to watch and as an additional perk, they help you connect better with your audience.

9. Tutorials and How-tos

How-to videos on TikTok are short and sweet. In up to a minute, you can tell your customers how to complete a task, use your product, or simply give them advice.

Tutorials and how-to videos have been trending for a while. Use your expertise to teach your viewers something fun or something they might not know.

Are You Ready to Transform Your TikTok Strategy?

TikTok is one of the top social media platforms in the world - and it’s ideal for building brand awareness. If you keep yourself informed about the latest TikTok trends, you can create videos with bigger potential to go viral. Remember, it only takes one viral video to get your brand’s name to thousands, if not millions of users, so keep trying!

FAQ

[Q1]Does marketing on TikTok pay real money?[/Q1]

[A1] There are many ways to earn money through TikTok marketing. With the TikTok Creator Fund, creators can also receive financial rewards based on views, likes, shares, and comments. Businesses can directly sell on TikTok. Through live gifting, followers can send creators gifts that can be converted into cash.[/A1]

[Q2]What’s the most popular TikTok category today?[/Q2]

[A2]The most popular TikTok category today is ‘entertainment’. The hashtag has over 535 billion views in 2023.[/A2]

[Q3]What is the best time to post for businesses on TikTok?[/Q3]

[A3]The best posting time depends on your targeted audience. According to Social Pilot, a generally accepted trend among marketers for TikTok posting is 10 to 11:50 am, 2:304 pm, and 6:30 to 9:30 pm.[/A3]

[Q4]When does a TikTok video become ‘viral’?[/Q4]

[A4]When a video reaches 250,000 views, it is considered viral on TikTok.[/A4]

The post 9 TikTok Trends You Should Know as a Business appeared first on Business2Community.

As a small business owner, you know this – you’ve done your homework. You have created a website and are now looking to maximize your online visibility for your spend. Read below for 9 helpful digital marketing tips to help your small business get noticed.

Digital Marketing Needs Valuable Content

Before we get into the 9 digital marketing tips, it is important you have a content marketing strategy in place helping you to prioritize and target your audiences effectively.

You might have heard the saying, “content is king.” All marketing initiatives revolve around content. The content, itself, can take many forms; however, what always remains the same is the content you produce should always provide your audience with value.

Value drives prospective customers into your funnel. Once they trust your brand or business, you can begin to guide them through your customer journey strategy and inform them of new goods and services you provide to actively peak their curiosity.

Valuable content should also increase the visibility of your website; people share and re-purpose valuable content on their sites. The more visible your website is, the more likely customers will see it when they are searching online for certain niches your business deals with.

By having a good strategy, you can increase your visibility, create a noticeable brand, and grow your business in no time at all.

An effective content marketing strategy involves having value-added content to draw targeted customers and clients to visit your website. In blog posts, there should be internal links to products or services pages, making it easier for prospective customers to get to.

It is also advisable to have content that is engaging and targeted at your core audience, since they are the most likely to convert.

Sharing your content on different social media platforms will help increase your visibility, although remember to leverage those platforms by including links to draw audiences to visit your main website.

It is also important to create fresh content regularly, whether it is on a daily, weekly, or bi-weekly basis. Engage a professional SEO and social media management expert to assist you in these initiatives if need be.

By remaining active on your website, you can monitor customer feedback and respond to any questions by reading comments or including a help center API. Remaining active on customer dialogue is vital because it helps you understand your customer and their needs.

Now, we are ready to get into the 9 digital marketing tips on how to better market your website.

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1. Market to Mobile Devices

Virtually everyone today has a mobile device, whether it be a smartphone or a tablet. Today, mobile devices are targeted as a tool to advertise goods and services.

You can employ a mobile marketing strategy to help market your website online. This can be achieved by using online SMS marketing services. These services provide software you can use to create lists and messages that are specifically drafted for your targeted mobile audience.

Messages can include a short notification about your business’ goods or services and an invitation to visit your website using a link provided in the message. The receiver can easily access your website through the link if their device is internet-enabled.

Mobile is one of the fastest ways to communicate with your customers because most people will have their mobile devices with them at all times.

2. Target Social Media Audiences

Businesses today cannot afford to go without a social media presence because this is where most consumers are to be found. Having the right social media marketing strategy can make a huge difference on your bottom line.

By sheer numbers of users, the most popular platforms for marketing are Facebook and Instagram. Both of these platforms have options for advertising and should be used in any social media marketing campaign.

Facebook ads should be the first place you start advertising your business. It’s simple to create ads, and they can be relatively cheap to test. My suggestion is to create sponsored posts audiences can see in their timelines. Split test with two different types of ad copy and track any clicks.

Experiment for between 3-5 days while varying posts throughout different times of the day: morning, afternoon and night to see what works best. It’s then a process of putting more money towards what works.

Facebook lets you target audiences in unique ways. There are general demographic and geographic information you can input, but where Facebook really shines is in its ability to include interests and relevant groups and pages into your targets.

Find closely aligning interests and groups to your business, test your ad copy, and keep track of which perform the best.

In order to track results, install a Facebook Pixel into your website header, so you can then later mine data from it to create re-targeting lists and lookalike audiences in Facebook’s custom audiences section.

Instagram is proving to be a powerful platform for advertising as well. They don’t have quite as many users as Facebook but are experiencing rapid growth year-over-year. Stories is their biggest new feature. It’s proving to be its most successful mode of advertising.

To get Instagram success for your business, create advertisements and promotions in your story highlights. Be sure to save and archive your stories because they expire 24 hours after their initial launch.

When saved, compile your ads and promotions and intersperse them into your story highlights or create specific highlights just for ads and promotions, so you can showcase them at the top of your account page.

By doing this, you’re making it easy for your core audience and newcomers to make purchases.

3. Use Videos and Live Streams Events

Using videos and live streaming are some of the most effective digital marketing tips you can employ. Facebook reports 100 million hours of video is watched every day by 500 million people on its platform.

You can also engage your audiences by live streaming an event. Doing so will help consumers view your services and products in real time. By live streaming, you create a more human brand for your business, which resonates more deeply with consumers.

You can also pay for video ads on video-focused platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo. The videos and ads will create visibility for your business.

Moreover, by including a link, you can encourage the audience to visit your website, where they can get more information about the products and services you are offering.

4. Tailor Email Marketing Content

Email marketing is another mode of communication that can help you market your website online. The content of your email newsletters should be tailored towards things like insightful tips, trends, and new information about your products and services.

Through your newsletters, recipients will get to know about any new developments concerning your business’ product catalog. It can also include new information on your industry as a whole, so shake it up and keep people entertained through variety.

This strategy works more effectively as opposed to trying to sell to consumers directly without any additional information. Remember, new information typically ignites curiosity within prospective customers, encouraging them to visit your website.

Digital marketing will continue to evolve, and it is important to adapt continuously to new trends by updating effective website marketing strategies.

By having a responsive website and continuously tracking your website traffic through analyzing key digital marketing metrics, you can accurately assess online consumer activity and employ strategies to funnel consumers to your most important pages to grow your business.

5. Find Audiences on Niche Podcasts

Podcasts have become the new gold standard in the auditory listening space. They are highly engaging and more personalized towards niches than typical radio. As traditional radio shows are declining in viewership, podcasts have been surging. This makes them an excellent source for advertising.

People connect more personally with hosts of podcast shows because most podcasts, even if well produced, are more personalized and informal.

Since it’s very easy to listen to multiple episodes at a time, listeners begin to identify more closely to hosts and place a deeper trust in them as they continue to listen through episodes.

This tends to make them more receptive to advertising, especially when the host brings their own personality to the copy. Podcasts also target niches more accurately by virtue of subject matter alone.

If someone is interested in web design, they’ll be able to find web design focused podcasts easier than they would on traditional radio or television.

With access to podcasts through mobile devices, listeners can supplement their commutes with podcasts and turn that down time into effective learning or enjoyment.

These changing media consumption patterns are creating large opportunities for marketers to reach their audiences more frequently through podcasts.

If you’re looking to include podcast marketing into your budget for this year, here are industry standard prices for advertisements, according to Advertise Cast:

• $15 for a 10-second ad CPM
• $18 for a 30-second ad CPM
• $25 for a 60-second ad CPM

(CPM stands for “cost per mille” and is a marketing short-term for per 1000)

6. Free Traffic From Forums

Forums are valuable resources because they work as virtual word-of-mouth platforms. In these communities, all types of dialogues occur between parties.

There are seemingly an endless amount of forums online; however, it only takes a few to drive quality referral traffic to your website. People, who are trusted, typically provide advice, recommendations and offer solutions to others who are in need of answers.

If your brand assumes the role as a trusted source, you can begin to offer your services as solutions to great effect. The only caveat is it takes a while before you can become a trusted member.

Those who are impatient try to shoe-horn in their website and immediately sabotage any future sales because they didn’t consider the larger picture. Forum marketing is a long-term marketing strategy.

They won’t typically yield the kind of revenue generation you’re looking for in just a matter of months. At the earliest, you should wait between 5-6 months before you post about your website as a remedy to a problem.

With that said, if you join the community and involve yourself by posting to inform members further about topics they’re passionate about, you will set your website up for success down the road.

Virtual communities like to support their own. If you build a good relationship, you will see benefits without having use spend. Forum marketing is a long-term marketing strategy. The strategies themselves, could encompass different primary goals outside of revenue generation alone.

If you find a forum that isn’t the best fit for revenue generation; however, encourages customers to use your products in new and interesting ways, you’ll find your business will grow from organic word-of-mouth.

It’s important to pay attention to these types of communities because they can offer free feedback on how you can improve your website. Even if most aren’t converting for you, they can provide invaluable insights on upcoming trends, new and interesting features and competitive analysis.

Take note not to post too frequently yourself. You want the community to govern and generate the conversation themselves. If you lead the conversation too frequently, you might miss out on insights on how your website usage is evolving in new directions.

Reddit

The largest forum on the internet. It has a word-wide reach of millions and covers almost any topic you can think of. This is the forum you want to be seen on.

Because of its inordinate size, the key to making effective use of Reddit is to find subreddits suiting your niche. Begin your forum marketing plan by joining a few subreddits, adding value to the group, and keeping posts to a consistent but manageable pace.

To begin your initial search, input this line of code into Google:

[site:reddit.com <your niche> -inurl:”comments”]

From this search query string, you’ll find forums you can join to target people in your niche.

Just remember, you’re beginning a marathon, not a sprint. You are working towards a prolonged benefit, so play it cool and be patient. Form a content calendar and post regularly to build your trust among the Redditors.

People who use Reddit are savvy. They can tell when a marketer is among them. The way to get around this is to be patient. Join an account as a person rather than an entity, and provide tips relevant to users’ needs.

If you push your website too quickly, people will get a sense you’re a marketer and ban you from their subreddit. Keep in mind each subreddit has its own flavour. What works in some subreddits won’t work in others.

Some subreddits will have a tone where they include memes to communicate, and others will be centered around lengthy worded posts. Keep adhering to the general guidelines of each subreddit and do your best to help others. If you do this, you will be fine.

After some time, you’ll come to a point where you have given back to the community and built some trust. It’s at this moment where you can select appropriate questions and provide answers, including a link to your website proposed as a solution.

7. Facebook Page vs Group Uses

You will find marketing strategy used on forums will be very similar to marketing strategy on Facebook pages and groups. They will all center on long-term, value-based approaches.

Unlike Facebook paid alternatives, people will be attracted towards content that can help them in some way or another.

Pages

Pages are a simple way to create a public profile for your website or business. They enable people to get information directly from you without having to leave Facebook. They’re a great addition to your marketing strategy in that you can easily provide free resources, tips and promotions.

In order to get the most out of your page, target users who are likely to engage with your page content and give you much needed social proof. You can do this by targeting page Like ads towards your core demographics.

Promoting your page with these ads makes it more likely you’re getting views from interested parties over generic page Like invites.

If you find your page is growing stale, try changing the frequency and times of your posts. You can experiment posting content throughout the day and track which times receive the most content.

It then becomes a matter of putting out more posts during times where you receive the most engagement.

Groups

Diving in further, groups work differently than pages. Groups require you to ask for permission to join; they are not public like pages.

Facebook has a great feature in its groups section. There are all kinds of communities covering topics fitting to all niches. You will find your niche has many groups associated to it.

Your task is to find these niche groups and categorize them accordingly to relevancy, engagement and users. Once you find the top groups for your business, create an encompassing content calendar for all of them.

My suggestion is to pick around 5 groups and schedule a post to each one corresponding to the day of the week; each group post gets it own day. This will keep you engaged in these communities.

Focus on providing value with your answers and occasionally begin dropping links to your website in posts. As more users see your posts, the more likely you will begin to grow your organic Facebook group traffic.

Remember to follow the rules of the group. Put in some time researching how people post, interact, and comment. You’re looking to replicate general user behaviour, so you’re not pushing products or services on the community.

From there, you can start dropping in links to your website, where it’s helpful. If you’re ever unsure if it’s okay to put a link in your post, ask an administrator.

8. Referral Marketing From Answers

When looking for questions on blogs, you want to have the best and most liked answer. This can be a hard task if you are competing with a variety of answers. Find questions in your nice that are new or already have between 1-2 answers.

You’ll find the answers given to many of these questions could be expanded into further detail. Answering smaller niche questions well can make you stand out from the rest.

If you’re having trouble coming up with answers, look at the most up-voted or liked answers and try to discern similarities between them. This can give you an outline to use when developing answers to unique questions.

You will find most top rated answers aren’t just blunt answers, but give context to the issues before they answer them.

If there are multiple questions covering a topic you are an authority on, use this opportunity to create a blog post where you can answer their needs by giving them a link to your website. This is a powerful tactic that can drive a lot of organic traffic to your website, if used correctly.

The last thing to consider when writing an answer is how attached to the subject you are. You need to be passionate about the topic you are answering because it shows, believe me.

If the topic is dry and could use some energy, try putting some of your personality into your answer. Every answer should be specific, but it should also be written in a way that shows your originality, humour, or enthusiasm.

Quora

On a quick side note, Quora is a great resource for finding questions concerning your niche you can answer. Take from what you learned about answering blogs and apply it here as well.

In addition, think of answering questions on Quora like that of guest posting: find the right niche and people to answer to. Once you find the best questions you can answer confidently, give your answer complete with a link to your website for further information.

You will come off as an authority with the added benefit of a potential new lead.

9. Free Resources for Sign Ups

The final tactic on the list, offer a free marketing resource to your audience. It has to provide value; otherwise, don’t make it at all. People will only use what is of value to them, whether it is free or not.

Common free resources that have been working well over the past year have been guides and infographics. Consider creating one of these documents as marketing collateral, include it on your site and offer it as a link for download.

When clicked, you can prompt visitors to subscribe to your email newsletter in exchange for your resource.

Next Steps

Operating small businesses are hard on your wallet; that’s why you’ll notice most of the tips on this list don’t require a ton of money to implement. Take a hard look at your marketing strategy and find some time to incorporate some of these tips.

If you do, you’ll see your business grow.

Read more:

• Four Digital Marketing Tips That Will Set Your Small Business Apart
• 4 Key Things Every Marketer Should Know About Walled Gardens
• Best SEO Software: Top SEO tools for keyword research linkbuilding and competitor analysis

The post Digital Marketing Tips: 9 Ways To Market Your Website appeared first on Business2Community.

Reaching your intended audience and building a customer base requires strategy. Most entrepreneurs excel at the first part. They are eager, competent, and capable of supplying their target customers with a desired product or service. Where many entrepreneurs fail, however, is effectively promoting their offering.

Fortunately, there are many senior-friendly tools to help, and if you implement a few simple principles, you can position your company for long-term success. Consider these tips for upping your marketing game as a senior entrepreneur!

Marketing for Seniors – Tips and Tricks to Be Successful

Maintain a Network

The first step is to learn how to create your professional network. Seek out local chances to connect with other professionals and people with whom you can develop a mutually beneficial relationship. Joining your local chamber of commerce, attending industry events, and being active on social media are effective ways to expand your network.

You’ll also want to update your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn has quickly become one of the most effective channels for online networking. Here are three quick tips for incorporating LinkedIn into your brand-building efforts: fully optimize your profile, aim for consistent engagement, and create new connections.

Listen to Your Target Customers

All of your marketing efforts will revolve around your target customers. If you haven’t clearly defined your target customers, you will need to do so before putting more effort into your marketing strategies.

Who do you want to buy your product? Who is most likely to purchase your product or service? You can build customer profiles based on various characteristics, including age, background, income level, and geographic location. This is where creating a buyer persona comes in handy – the better you understand your customers’ needs and how you’re solving them, the more successful your business will be!

Once you have an idea of your target market, begin to find ways to reach them. One easy way to do this is to ask current or prospective customers how they heard about your business. When modifying your marketing strategy, create an online survey or give one out at your physical location, and then reference the survey answers. This can give you a pretty good idea of whether you should focus your energy on networking, content marketing, social media, or other outlets.

Keep a Top-Notch Website

Digital marketing revolves around a high-quality website. Make sure your site is up for the task. It should have an eye-catching design, be easy to use and navigate, and provide users with valuable, industry-related information. If you lack web design and development experience, you may benefit from hiring a professional to build your site. And be sure to update your site regularly!

Build a Social Media Presence

Many companies only use social media to promote their brands. And, believe it or not, they get everything they need from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and other platforms to build a customer base and boost sales.

However, even if you are using other marketing channels, it’s critical to engage consumers on social media. Keep your pages up to date with relevant information, and remain available to answer questions and resolve problems from your customers via social media.

Explore the Tools Available

Finally, you might be surprised by how much you can do yourself when given the right tools. These days, there is unique software for almost every aspect of marketing. Look for a top-notch website builder to get started on your site and explore logo creators and video editing software that can help you develop promotional materials.

To maintain a healthy customer base, you may also find it worthwhile to invest in SEO analytic tools and customer relationship management (CRM) software. And if you need help with your social media management, there are tools to help with that as well!

There are plenty of resources to help you excel at marketing in your golden years in this day and age. You must get your brand in front of customers if you hope to succeed long-term. Remember to prioritize your professional network and find out how to reach your target audience more effectively. Lastly, create a world-class website, engage customers on social media, and take advantage of all the tech tools at your disposal.

Read More:

• Best Email Marketing Software
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The post Digital Marketing Basics for Senior Business Owners appeared first on Business2Community.

You also might have outbound links that bring users to other websites. These links might include external resources that you want to reference so you can come across as a valuable resource yourself.

Your website might have links to payment portals or other kinds of websites. Whatever the case may be, you can track outbound link clicks using Google Tag Manager with Google Analytics.

Google Tag Manager is a great tool you can use to deploy tracking for a number of user actions, including file downloads and scroll tracking, without developer support.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv9d-9L_pMU[/embed]

WHY USE GOOGLE TAG MANAGER

Not only does Google Tag Manager save you from bugging developers to implement tracking, it makes it easy to track a lot of user actions on your website like outbound link clicks.

There are a few ways you can easily track outbound link clicks. Google Tag Manager actually provides you with a built-in variable that you can use specifically for outbound link tracking. You can configure an auto-event variable to check if clicks on links are outbound.

If you want to exclude affiliated websites, for example, a subdomain or another website in your ecosystem of your digital presence, you can easily add an exclusion list.

Not to mention, Google Tag Manager also allows you to test the tracking yourself.

OUTBOUND LINK TRACKING EXAMPLES

Some web pages on this website might include outbound links to the Growth Learner YouTube channel, to social media channels, or other web properties in the Growth Learner ecosystem.

For example, if one of the website goals is to drive traffic to the YouTube channel, a goal could be created using the outbound link event specifically to the YouTube channel.

Another website that uses many outbound links is USA.gov. It’s a government website that guides visitors to government information, resources, and services.

By looking at the homepage above the fold, you can tell they probably have a number of outbound links to other government websites.

USA.gov website

The web page with information on applying for renewing passports probably includes an outbound link to state.gov. The web pages for tax refund and stimulus check status probably include an outbound link to IRS.gov.

USING OUTBOUND LINK CLICK DATA

Depending on what the outbound links are and how close they align to the goals of the website, a goal may be created based on the user clicking on that outbound link. Just like the example with the Growth Learner YouTube channel.

For content sites like USA.gov, outbound links may serve an important purpose to the website. If a user lands on a page whose sole purpose is to provide outbound links to the correct resource, tracking these outbound link clicks will prove quite valuable.

Tracking outbound link clicks can provide you great insight into how successful your web pages are. You can use this data to improve the experience and the value that you provide to your visitors.

This article originally appeared on Growth Learner and has been republished with permission.

Read More:

• Best Email Marketing Software
• Top SEO Marketing Tools
• Best SEO Software: Top SEO Tools for Keyword Research Linkbuilding and Competitor Analysis

The post Tracking Outbound Links with Google Tag Manager for Google Analytics appeared first on Business2Community.

Marketers have often relied on third-party data because it serves as a substitute for first-party data. This approach to collecting data and targeting ads has enabled brands and companies to gain insights similar to first-party data about customer behavior, even without direct access to crucial customer information from first- or second-party sources. A good example is Facebook's ad targeting data.

However, with privacy concerns growing exponentially and third-party tracking abilities becoming restricted, first-party targeting strategies are becoming more and more fruitful and necessary than ever before.

Some examples of first-party data include email lists, CRM data, survey results, and cell phone numbers. Additionally, an often overlooked 'list' is your social media followings. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and even Linkedin can and should become listening audiences that believe in your brand, products, or services.

There are several reasons why first-person data will become increasingly important and lucrative to marketers:

1. First-Party Data is Real: Due to privacy issues, users online are blocking third parties from seeing their browsing history and personal details. To overcome this challenge, companies are finding new methods to gather first-party data, like direct customer interactions through surveys or email lists, rather than buying user information from third-party sites like Quantcast or Acxiom.

2. First-Party Data is Secure: Collecting first-party data in-house rather than second or third party means that the data you are looking to target does not have to be shared with or even exist on any other site besides your own domain. This increases security and ensures that first-party information doesn't get compromised by malicious actors.

3. First-Party Data is Direct: first-party data allows for first-hand information to be collected directly from the first party (the brand or company), rather than through a third party who then uses that first-party data to target ads toward users on the first party's site. It can also help companies avoid problems with legacy infrastructure, as first-party data owners can collect and use their information without needing to pass it through expired or expiring first or second parties like cookies.

4. First-Party Data is Engaging: this direct engagement between brands and customers will lead consumers to interact more willingly with targeted advertisements, leading them again to increase engagement with first-party content.

First-party data is a unique asset that empowers marketers to build stronger, more relevant relationships with audiences.

As first-party data becomes increasingly valuable, expect to see brands and companies rely on these customer interactions to collect first-hand insights from consumers. As a result, third-party tracking abilities will continue to decrease while first-party data collection will become a priority for forward-thinking marketers who wish to engage with their audiences more personally.

This focus on first-party data can lead to better-targeted ads and increased user engagement across the web. Brands can ensure that their message is reaching the right people at the right time, which could help increase conversions and improve ROI. In turn, this means that

In 2022 first-party data will be the most important tool at your disposal as you seek an advantage over the competition. Make first-party data work for you by investing in the long game of building and segmenting lists and data. Collect first-party wherever possible and ensure your databases are refreshed often.

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What matters is 1) our intent and 2) how we use the information.

So what is our intent? Is it good or evil?

People work so they have enough money to buy what they need and want. Free markets reward hard work. If you are willing to learn and put that knowledge to work to help others, you will earn money. If you are careful to spend less than you earn, you will be able to save some of that money, and that saved money will help you buy a car, a house, a college education for your children, and ultimately have enough to retire on. That is the promise of the free market system.

So is it evil to disrupt this happy scenario with temptations? Promises about how people can look better, feel better, age more gracefully, and impress their friends? Not a simple question. What about the entrepreneur who comes up with a wrinkle-reducing product that actually works? What if the people who buy the product feel better about themselves and more confidently go about their work?

On the other hand, if the product doesn’t work at all, the intent is to make money at the expense of the customer, who will not see the promised positive results. The line between good and evil is pretty obvious in this case. By extension, marketers who help promote this non-working product are as guilty as the manufacturer.

So it comes down to truth. Is the product or service really what we promise it will be? Or are we making promises that the product or service cannot fulfill?

As the digital marketing tools have become more powerful, allowing those with non-truthful intentions to blanket the digital landscape with their messages, a compensating, counteractive wave has come into play. As we are all well aware, customers can tell each other what their experiences were. “This stuff does NOT do what it promises,” the reviewer might type into Amazon. If enough people have that same negative experience, the chances of that product being successful are greatly reduced.

The customers can easily share their truths.

The good guy/gal quandary

In my experience, most entrepreneurs have good intentions. I’ve worked with hundreds of company founders and owners; except for the occasional jerk (granted, we avoid them), they were all hard-working, well-intentioned people who wanted to “make a difference in the world” on the positive side of the scale.

And yes, of course, there are bad apples. They get a lot of press, because they behave in a way that is slightly (or massively) outrageous.

The company owners who go about their business in an ethical and honest fashion, and treat their employees and customers with respect are just not very newsworthy. That kind of goodness is boring, frankly.

Which means, of course, that the good guys and gals have to work harder to get their products and services in front of others. They don’t have any desire to be outrageous or controversial; on the contrary, they want to be good providers and protectors of their families and companies. They’d rather not be a target. They don’t thrive on controversy. They thrive on succeeding, while being guided by their conscience.

Ethics: Where is the line?

I’ve noticed a slippery slope sliding into conversations about business, from those entering the workforce for the first time. “Everybody else does it,” is one of the phrases that are bandied about when discussing what is ethical and what is not. But just because everyone else is doing it, and yes, they have profited by it, doesn’t make it right.

One of the tests of whether something is ethical or not is the “How would I feel if it were done to me” test. If you were considering buying something that, unbeknownst to you, had a dangerous flaw, how would you feel if someone lied to you about it? How would you feel if the salesperson “left out” something that you really needed to know, but didn’t want to wreck the sale by bringing it up? How would you feel if the manufacturer of a rather amazing foundation that “erased wrinkles” failed to mention that, over time, the product permanently damaged your skin?

Interesting how we all know that when we are being taken advantage of, we definitely don’t like it. We decide, once we realize the deception, that we never want to do business with that company again, and we make sure we also warn others away.

There is a related issue at work here. I have hired more than a few people to work for our company who have worked in situations where they were uncomfortable because of the way their employers treated customers and employees. These employers took advantage and were deceptive.

So it is not only the business owners who face the ethical dilemma, but those who work for them. Sometimes one person in the company can practice or encourage deception, thus creating a toxic environment that negatively affects everyone who works within it.

“I’m not calling to sell you anything.”

The phone rings at dinnertime. The person on the line wants to engage you in a conversation that will, according to the script they are following, turn you into a customer. They start asking you questions. You know where this is going, and you really aren’t in the market for what they’re selling, so you interrupt the flow and say, “Sorry, I’m not a good prospect for you. We have that situation well in hand.” Or something similar. In other words, “I don’t want to buy what you are selling.”

“Oh, I’m not calling to sell you anything,” the person says. This is a boldfaced lie, one that is also on the script.

Personally, I can’t resist laughing when this happens, because it is so ridiculous. Of course they are calling to sell me something. Why else would they be calling?

And, frankly, it’s insulting. The caller is treating the customer like the customer is a fool.

Would you like it if someone treated you like a fool? Of course not.

This brings us back to the fact that selling honestly is much more difficult than selling deceptively and non-respectfully. But selling deceptively is not really selling. It is lying.

What is ethical selling, then? It is, obviously, telling the absolute truth. Telling the customer the specifics, without garnishment, and also the pros and the cons. Helping the customer make a regret-free decision. Educating the customer on the tradeoffs, because there are always tradeoffs.

During our time on earth, we have two choices. We can contribute to the goodness that helps others and elevates all human activity, or we can contribute to the destructive behavior that diminishes all human activity, and makes everyone uncomfortable. What we do in business every day makes the world a better place . . . or not.

Digital or not. Doesn’t matter. The principles are the same.

I know where I want to be.

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Is the driver for digital transformation, business?

When it comes to actioning digital transformation, analysing business reasoning and business sponsors is important. Digital transformation must be part of a market strategy within a business plan. Digital transformation and changes often come as part of an omnichannel approach which means that systems across the business as a whole will be affected and changed. This is why business must be a key driver to actioning digital transformation as it can be lengthy to initially implement. For example, if there is a new product launch and how will the launch of this product be using digital. From manufacturing processes to the marketing itself, what does digital actually look like for a business?

Data is Key

Implementing digital transformation means that, as a business, users or customers of any digital space could be offering data of some kind. Whether this is from the shopping habits of customers to exploring what age range a certain product attracts, ensuring there are security systems in place will ensure that data breaches are not likely and data is secure. That will increase customer trust and is a very important principle when it comes to digital transformation. This is usually the most difficult part of a digital transformation, as data security systems are crucial to any digital transformation and. Systems themselves can be complex from a security perspective.

The Power of Analytics

The choice to implement digital systems and digital transformation is often based on the analytics that can come as a result of it. The analytics can allow a business to retain strategies based on what analytics can show about a consumer. For example, if part of a digital transformation for a company is bounce rate (users leaving the site after clicking) then the types of content that are making people leave can be changed.

The power that analytics hold could very much be the deciding factor in how a company moves forwards and what more it can do to offer its customers. There may even be something that is revealed that may have otherwise not been noticed or assumed, such as a new target market.

Meeting Customer Expectations and Needs

One of the key benefits and principles of digital transformation is the ability to meet new customer demands and wants. Customers want more access to information than ever before and the digital experience that they encounter is something that could be the incentive or prevention of them using your business. Creating and establishing a pleasant digital experience can be an excellent way to personalise marketing and find out what parts of a digital process a customer responds well to and what products and services could potentially serve customers the best and in the best way.

Application Development

As part of the digital transformation process, considering the development of an app and being able to create a prototype for that is something that is often considered. From being able to offer users of the apps extra discounts or easier usability, the development of an app may very well be of use for your business or company. Alongside what an app can offer, the design, coding database and testing will be at the forefront of an app design and can be a crucial part of the digital transformation process.

Automating Processes

As the technology space is developing so is the demand for automation. This would make automation of certain digital processes part of digital transformation for a business. The ability to automate certain digital processes would mean that the need for IT involvement would be significantly decreased. This could range from how certain instructions are managed to updates being automated.

Security and Risk

Data security and encryption are an extremely primary part of digital transformation. Factoring in security and risk into every layer of coding and applications will reduce the risk of hacking and general data breaches. This is not only for the customer or consumer but also for the company security also. There is a large emphasis placed on security and the security standards and audits are considered central when it comes to managing the risk and security of any new technology exercised during digital transformation.

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The good news is that CMOs do understand the role of marketing technology and why it’s needed to stay relevant and competitive in the marketplace. But it’s critical to ensure that you are maximizing your technology investments and spending wisely.

Here are 5 reasons why you should optimize your marketing tech stack as you plan for 2022:

1. Increase Your Operational Efficiency

Despite the high points of adopting new marketing technology, 82% of salespeople and marketers are still losing up to 5 hours a week (give or take) for managing different applications–logging in, logging out, forgetting passwords, resetting passwords, exporting large data sets. In marketing, time is currency, and most would agree that time is much better spent building a revenue pipeline and delivering high-converting creative content to audiences.

Here are a few questions to consider when optimizing your tech for operational efficiency:

• Does it offer integration? Integration can help consolidate all your apps so you have a single source of truth for your data.
• Does it offer speed to insight? How much data mining is needed to get answers?
• Does it provide an open API? APIs allow for sharing of information between applications. An open or public API allows for external developers to build applications that leverage what the API offers.
• Does it genuinely add value or is it just fun to use?
• Does it add to collaboration or take away from it?

2. Optimize How You Use Your Data

The money is literally in the list. You’ll want to audit your martech stack to see if you’re maximizing usage and driving adoption from the entire marketing organization. You'll want to make sure that you have the best customer data to generate actionable insights and drive sales at scale. The benefit of marketing automation is that it does exactly what it’s supposed to do. It’s an engine and can drive demand and sales on repeat. You can literally turn it on, walk away and it won't stop working.

The challenge is that it does exactly what it’s supposed to do and nothing more. The data and insights generated from marketing automation must be delivered to the entire marketing organization for everyone’s benefit. The data will then deliver business value versus just campaign value.

3. Align Disparate Teams

Too often marketing teams work in silos within the same company resulting in lost productivity, reduced ROIs and at times, hurt feelings. Marketing technology can help bridge the gap. Audit your tech stack to identify where intelligence and automation resources can be shared to make the end-to-end sales cycle more efficient and your conversion rates higher.

Here are a few basic examples of how to integrate this from a technology perspective:

• Map the percentage of leads generated by marketing that have been followed up on by sales vs. how many have converted to sales (an indication of the quality of the leads). Document the results in a marketing dashboard and share with it with the marketing and sales team.
• If your sales teams need more touch points to convert, identify if there's a misalignment with the messaging provided at the marketing stage. A social conversation analysis mapped to the buyer journey is one way to do this.

The most effective way to align disparate teams is to launch fully integrated global marketing programs. This will force collaboration with marketing, sales and PR teams across all regions.

4. Reduce Your Software Spends

The costs of building and maintaining your tech stack can peck away at a sizeable chunk of your company’s budget. On the one hand, you’ll want to factor in how effectively your software meets your larger goals of achieving targets, streamlining workflows, and providing the best possible user experience.

You’ll also want to consider the following:

• Can you reduce the number of users? With marketing technology, some pricing plans can vary depending on the number of users.
• Are there tools you can do without? Audit your tech stack to see if you’re currently using other software that can essentially perform the same tasks.
• Are you using more data than you need to? You may be able to get on a lower pricing plan if you get rid of data that’s redundant or no longer useful. With many social listening vendors, they charge by data usage and that can add up really quickly.
• Are there less expensive alternatives in the market? Technology is constantly evolving, particularly in the martech space. You may be able to find more cost-effective solutions now than were possible years before.

5. Gain a Competitive Edge with Innovation

As your business starts to grow, you’ll want to make use of newer and more innovative technology for all components of your marketing team whether its’ SEO, social media or even performance marketing. Customers evolve and their behavior change constantly. Technology is also evolving. If you’re not keeping up with customers, you can easily lose out.

Innovation can help you get more creative with your products, break out of stagnation, and help maximize your marketing budgets and investments. It can be challenging keeping up with the continuous evolution of marketing technology. But innovation doesn’t necessarily need to come from outside.

Meet regularly with your sales and marketing teams and encourage innovative solutions through rewards schemes. Everybody becomes invested in innovation when it trickles down from the top.

The post 5 Reasons Why You Need to Optimize Your Digital Marketing Tech Stack in 2022 appeared first on Business2Community.

Internet marketing glossary of terms

Internet Marketing Terms Glossary

1. A/B testing – Also called split testing, A/B testing is the process of comparing two versions of a web page in order to evaluate and compare the performance of both pages.

2. Affiliate – An affiliate is an entity with a relationship with other larger entities. This term is usually used in affiliate marketing, where individual publishes affiliate links that usually earn them commission from the company that is linked to.

3. Algorithm – An algorithm is a computer program used by search engines to look for clues or signals, which enable them to deliver relevant search results to the users.

4. Algorithm update – Search engines regularly update their algorithm in order to adapt it, to ensure the relevance of the search engine results and to implement new technologies to index and rank websites.

5. Application – Application is software or technology, also called an application program, which is designed to perform a certain function.

6. B2B – In internet marketing, B2B (short for business-to-business) refers to the exchange of information, products or services between businesses.

7. Back-end tool – Back-end tool is an application or program used to manage the back-end of the website. Changes done this way then reflect to the front-end of a website.

8. Benchmark – Benchmark is a point of reference against something that is measured and compared.

9. Bounce rate – This metric represents the number of people who have left the website after visiting only one page. Based on Google’s recommendations, bounce rates below 40% is acceptable.

10. Branding – Branding is one of the marketing tasks that is done in the purpose of establishing an image or an association with a product in the minds of the consumers and potential consumers through different types of marketing campaigns.

11. Call-to-action button (CTA) – It is a button posted on the website that encourages visitors to do the action promoted by the button, such as call, sign up, register, etc.

12. Code – In computing, a code is a set of instructions that are written to enable a program to perform the task assigned by the instructions.

13. Content – Content is information that conveys a story, shares relevant data and explains something to an online users. Different types of content, such as written content, images and videos, are created to attract, engage and convert website visitors, social media followers, email subscribers, etc.

14. Conversion – In online marketing, a sale is usually considered a conversion. When you achieve a conversion, it means that you have managed to convert website visitors into paying customers. Depending on the website, different action can also be considered a conversion, such as sign up for a newsletter, downloading a file, becoming a social follower, etc.

15. Convert – To convert visitors is a term usually used for the act of turning a visitor into a paying customer.

16. Cookies – Pieces of data that are sent and stored to your computer when you use a browser to visit a website are called cookies. The purpose of the cookies is to record user’s browsing activity and to adapt the website so that it matches the interests of the user.

17. Copyright – Copyright is an exclusive legal right given to the owner of content that is created.

18. CPM – CPM stands for cost-per-mile and it represents cost per thousand impressions. It is one of the advertising payment plans, where you pay the price per thousand views.

19. CRO – CRO stands for conversion rate optimization, and it represents the rate at which visitors, browsing your website, convert to customers.

20. DNS – Data sour name is a data structure containing information about a certain database. DNS allows connection to this database.

21. Email marketing – Email marketing is a type of internet marketing where the process of promoting a website is conducted through email campaign.

22. Engagement – This term refers to the possibility of connecting with customers in order to establish long-term connection and to increase the influence.

23. Entry page – An entry page is one of the pages on a website that the visitors first see once they arrive to your website. It is also called a landing page.

24. eWoM – Electronic word of mouth is the online version of traditional word of mouth marketing. In this form, marketing relies on the positive or negative statement about the company, which is provided by the customers, and shared via online media, such as social networks, email, etc.

25. Exit page – Exit page is the last page the users access, before they leave the website.

26. Google penalty – Google penalty has a negative impact on your website ranking, as Google lowers the ranking on your website due to penalty. Penalty can be unfortunate due to an algorithm update, or your website can be penalized due to the usage of manipulative and misleading techniques, which are called black hat SEO.

27. HTML page – HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and it represents the standardized system for tagging text files. HTML page is a web page that uses HTML to tag the content, which allows search engines to identify different parts of the text.

28. HTML validator – HTML validator is a program used to check markup elements of HTML in order to detect any potential errors.

29. Impression – In internet marketing, impression, also called view, is achieved each time an online visitor sees the information, without the need to click on it.

30. Inbound marketing – Inbound marketing refers to the activities done by marketers in the purpose of producing interest, and attracting the visitors to the website, where you have the opportunity to convert those visitors.

31. JavaScript – JavaScript is a scripting language used in the HTML file of a website.

32. Keyword – Keyword is a word or phrase that is used to describe the content of the web page. Keywords are used in different types of internet marketing, such as SEO, paid advertising, etc.

33. Keyword density – Keyword density is the percentage of usage of the keyword or keyword phrase on the web page.

34. Keyword research – This refers to the process of finding the most relevant keywords you should use on your website, when it comes to content optimization. Since search engine results are categorized based on the keywords, you need to use only relevant keywords in order to make sure that you attract relevant traffic.

35. Keyword stuffing – Keyword stuffing is the process of adding too many keywords to the content. The purpose of this activity is to manipulate search engine algorithm in ranking a website better, but this practice is penalized by search engines, which is why it is not recommended to apply keyword stuffing in content optimization.

36. KPI – Key performance indicator is a type of measurement used to evaluate the performance of the website.

37. Landing page – A landing page, also called a lead capture page or a lander, is a single page that appears after the user has clicked on the link in the search engine result, search engine ad, the link posted on social media, link included in the email campaign, etc.

38. Lead – In online marketing, a lead is a potential sale contact. This means that only those contacts that are most likely to become your customers, due to their interests, needs, etc. are called leads. Different strategies in internet marketing are used to generate leads.

39. Meta tag – This is the coding system used in HTML to mark the content of the website in order to allow search engines to understand the data. The meta tags provide the meta data about the HTML document.

40. Metric – Metric is a measure that is used to track and monitor a specific element of a website in order to evaluate the website performance.

41. Mobile device – A mobile device is a small portable computing device, such as a smart phone or a tablet.

42. Mobile-friendly – This term is usually used for website design. Mobile-friendly website is the website that users can access using any mobile device, without this impairing user experience.

43. Multivariate testing – Multivariate testing refers to the process of testing a web page where multiple variables are modified, in order to determine the combination of the variables that gives best results.

44. Off-page – The factors that affect ranking, which are not available on the actual website include external links.

45. Online advertising – Online advertising, also called internet advertising, is the form of marketing that uses the internet to promote a business and distribute promotional messages.

46. On-page – The factors that affect ranking, which are available on the actual website include tags, keywords, content, etc.

47. Optimization – Optimization is the process of improving different on-site and off-site elements according to SEO guidelines, in order to improve the positioning of the website in the search engine results pages.

Various aspects of a website can be optimized, such as content optimization, title optimization, image optimization, video optimization, etc.

48. Opt in/out – Signing up for or leaving a marketer’s email newsletter and list.

49. Organic reach – The total number of unique people who saw your website or post through unpaid distribution.

50. Outbound marketing – Outbound marketing refers to using external sources to spread the word of your website. Unlike inbound marketing, outbound methods use external sources, both paid and unpaid to generate leads and improve website performance.

51. Paid reach – The total number of unique people who saw your website or post through paid distribution.

52. Personalization – This refers to the process of tailoring something according to specific needs.

Personalization is an approach especially recommended in social media marketing, as well as in email marketing, as it allows you to establish a connection with social followers or email subscribers.

53. Platform – A platform is a computer system on which application is run.

54. Positioning – In internet marketing, positioning refers to the position of the website in the search engine results pages. Since pages positioned at the top of the results get more visits, positioning is an important activity of internet marketing.

55. PPC – PPC, short for pay-per-click, is a type of paid advertising used in online marketing, where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad, which can be shown in the search engine result pages as sponsored results, or on social networks.

56. Proxy – A proxy or proxy server is another computer through which communication between the client and the resource is established.

57. Ranking – Ranking refers to the position of a website in search engine result pages. As search engine position websites based on different criteria that affect ranking, it is important to follow search engine guidelines in order to improve ranking and thus promote your website.

58. Reach – Reach is the total number of people who are able to see you message or internet marketing campaign.

59. Referral – This refers to the page that is linking to another page.

60. ROI – Return on investment, commonly known as profitability ratio, is the benefit the investor achieved through its investment. ROI is a comparison of the profit you were able to achieve and the initial investment.

61. Search query – Search query is a term a user types into the search engine. There are different types of search queries, depending on what kind of information users search for using search engines.

62. SEM – Search engine marketing is a type of internet marketing where the website is promoted through search engines, using both unpaid (SEO) and paid (PPC) methods.

63. SEO – Search engine optimization is a type of internet marketing where the ranking of the website is improved using unpaid methods.

64. SERP – SERP stands for search engine results page, and it is the page, which is shown to the users after they type a search query into the search engine. The search engine results page shows the results that are related to the query, including both sponsored (paid) results, as well as organic results.

65. Session – A session is a presence of specific IP address that has not visited the website within the past 30 minutes. In terms of a website, a session is occasionally defined as a visit.

66. SMM – Social media marketing is a type of online marketing that uses social media websites to promote a business, increase traffic and generate leads.

67. Strategy – Strategy is a well-developed business plan that involves the plan and the analysis of the current situation, the goals that should be achieved by implementation of the strategy, the set of actions to be performed, as well as ways to monitor and measure the efficiency of the strategy. In terms of internet marketing, internet marketing strategy involves planning and tasks to be performed as a part of internet marketing.

68. Target audience – Target audience is the group of online users you want to reach. You should optimize your internet marketing strategy in order to maximize the chances of reaching your target audience, as those users are more likely to become your customers, subscribers, followers, etc.

69. Targeting – Targeting is the process of selecting. It usually refers to the selection of potential customers, in order to establish a group, often called a target group, of those who are most likely to become your customers.

70. Trademark – Trademark is a design, which is recognizable and it represents an image of a company, business or individual.

71. Traffic – In the online world, traffic refers to the flow of data. When it comes to websites, traffic represents the amount of data insight sent and received by the visitors of that website, regardless whether or not the paid or unpaid method was used.

72. URL – Uniform Resource Locator refers to the location of the file on the internet. It is the address of the website, which you type into the browser in order to find a particular website.

73. User – In terms of online world, a user is a person who uses the internet to find information or to establish contact.

74. Visibility – Visibility is the chance of your website appearing in the search engine results pages. Internet marketing is supposed to increase the visibility of your website, and thus increase the possibility of your website appearing in the organic results.

75. Visit – Visit, also called a session, is the measurement used to signify user’s action happening in a particular period.

76. W3C – W3C stand for the World Wide Web Consortium and it represents the community working together to develop and improve web standards.

77. Web analytics tool – These tools are used as a part of web analytics, in the purpose of monitoring and analyzing the performance of the website.

78. Web browsing – Web browsing is the process of using a web browser, a software application, in order to search for information online.

79. Webmaster – Webmaster is the person who creates and manages a website.

80. Website analytics – The collection of different metrics, such as website visits, bounce rate, session duration, referrals, etc. represents website analytics. These data about the website are used to analyze and monitor the performance of the website.

81. Website directory – A website directory, also called a link directory, is a website that specializes in featuring links to other websites, which are divided based on the categories.

82. Website navigation – Website navigation represents the structure of the website that is used to direct users to different parts of the website.

83. Website saturation – This term refers to the number of web pages from a single domain, that are indexed by search engines.

84. Whois tool – This is an online tool, which allows you to type the URL you want to check and to see who owns the website. Additional information includes owner’s email, hosting company, the domain expiring date, etc…

When you register a domain, you can choose to hide this information, in which case Whois tool will not show these results when your website is analyzed.

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Hi, welcome back to another blog of Your Digital Marketing Journey in this season. I'm talking about the mistakes that I made as a first time entrepreneur and we are up to mistake five. I'm going to start off this blog with the quote that you may have heard, which is "Marketing is a marathon, not a sprint". I think that this quote really makes a lot of sense as an entrepreneur. When you're marketing your product or your service and you're constantly talking about it, you do expect to see results. But if you keep it in mind that marketing is a long term thing, then you will work according to a defined digital marketing strategy. You need to understand that it takes time for people to really start trusting you and wanting to do business with you. Without this understanding, you may become inconsistent with your marketing.

Why do you need a long-term digital marketing strategy?

Let me give you a simple example of social media. When you start with your social media, obviously you have zero followers, but you start posting and you start posting consistently. You figure out a schedule for your week and you start creating content and posting it regularly for your followers to see. And of course, you'll see a follower growth. The follower growth may differ from person to person, but you will see that your followers start growing.

Now, imagine that you're not able to post for a month or so. Will your followers continue to grow? Maybe! But will they grow at the same rate as they were growing before? Definitely not. As you stop marketing, people forget about you and the growth slows down.

Take Coca Cola, for example. They're about 100 years old and they've been selling their drinks across the world during that time. Yet they're still coming out with new campaigns like putting your name on the bottle. Why would they do that if they had already established themselves? It is because people change. Audiences change, their preferences change. So they have to keep marketing and they have to keep being relevant. When you start marketing, your goal is to get people to know about you and as you continue marketing to the same set of people, they will convert into buyers.

How to be consistent with your marketing?

Now that you know that not being consistent with your marketing is a mistake, what can you do to stay consistent? I'll give you a few tips from my experience.

Marketing plan: The first thing is to have a plan. Have a clear marketing strategy for a specific duration. Something like three months is a good idea, when you're starting out. As you get better at it, you can start planning for a year in advance. Your marketing strategy should take into account what your objective is for that duration, what channels you want to have a presence on, and what is the messaging on those channels.

Budget: Once you've decided the plan, the next step is to decide a budget and the resources that you need. With small businesses this does become a challenge because you do not have the budgets of a big company. That's why it is important to plan your budget in advance. You know what you need to market, and then your budget can either be a limiting factor or it can help you achieve that. So having a clear budget in mind will help you allocate that much amount to marketing and not worry about it affecting different aspects of your business. Also, be clear about the resources that you need. For instance, if you need graphic design resources, do you even have them in your company, or will you need to hire someone? If you need to hire someone, of course, that goes into your budget. So aligning your budget and your resources to your strategy will help you have a very clear plan of where you want to be in the next three months.

Batch your content: The third thing (and I really advise this!) is to create content for your campaign in batches. For example, if you are running a campaign on social media, then create all that content in one go. Don't think that you would be able to do it at the last minute because I guarantee you that you won't be able to do it. And also when you're working on a group of content, it does look consistent because you created it in one go. This applies to anything whether it is video, blogs or anything else that is part of your campaign for that duration.

Keeping track: When you have a long term plan, it is important to keep track of all your dates for all your actions. And if you have a team, this becomes even more important because you need to know who is doing what and when will they deliver it by. Whether it's just yourself or your team, know what needs to be delivered when in order to achieve what you have planned. With a team, it is important to go in for a productivity tool like Asana, where everyone else also has the visibility of who's doing what.

These four steps should help you to stay consistent with your marketing. Marketing is an important aspect of your business, and you cannot afford to stop your efforts as you get busy with other things. So creating a plan every three months and outlining what all you need to do will help you to stay on top of all of your marketing activities. A long-term digital marketing strategy will help your business to grow slowly and steadily.

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The post Marketing Mistake 5: Not Having a Long-Term Digital Marketing Strategy appeared first on Business2Community.

One of the most essential features of running an online business is selling online courses. Many people are now getting introduced to the world of eLearning.

Opting for such a category of online courses will prove extremely beneficial for you because it currently being in high demand. Now the question arises on what online course idea to implement because there are many options to explore in this category.

We are here to solve this confusion of yours with a list of 10 potentially in-demand most profitable online courses. Make sure to choose the one that has a chance of attracting maximum audiences to ensure great benefits.

Additionally whatever course you are going to choose should fit the criteria of the learner's comfort. With this article, you will learn how to pick the perfect online learning course that will yield the maximum profit.

The increase in popularity of eLearning has led to many online course platforms having sprung up to provide the best quality services to students and workers.

Thus, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to choose the ideal online course topic ideas for you (2021 edition).

Which Are the Most Profitable Online Course Ideas For eLearning?

A good online course should target a specific audience to which you can deliver the best content to ensure success. In other words, your niche should not be for anyone and everyone.

Although it may sound peculiar, this is the only way to run a best-selling online course.

Take a look at the list of profitable niches for online courses to earn a large sum of money from home.

Remember these topics are general. If you are passionate about your course to really stand out amongst the lot, study your targeted audience. Then only you would be able to deliver the course as productively as possible.

To explain simply, just don’t target your course to be accessible for everyone. Ponder on who would get the most benefit from your online course idea. Work accordingly for that specific audience.

1. Computers and Technology

We live in a digital era. It has now become a necessity to be aware of the potential applications computers and technology has to offer.

Computers and technology have enabled us all to stay up-to-date on the latest Google trends. Meanwhile, technology is evolving steadily. Many are still behind it, or others are trying to think ahead of the present technology.

A computer is an essential technology that we can use in many efficient ways. They are not only useful to get information or for entertainment purposes. But one can even learn to earn passive income through online work.

For these purposes, online IT-related courses like programming, web design, and development through WordPress are very much in demand. They are a great source of income.

Web designers and developers are in great demand in this era of technology. Organizing a free course to sell in this niche can prove to be extremely profitable for you.

Its short tech-related courses would be aimed at students who want to excel in skills and become financially independent.

These tech-related courses are highly in demand because of the increasing importance of the virtual world. You can target a huge audience if you opt for any technical niche from the below-given options.

Other courses that you could opt for regarding the in-demand niche of computers and technology are listed below:

• Cell phone repair
• Creating a website
• Machine learning
• Artificial Intelligence
• Robotics
• Software programming
• Cyber security
• Adobe Premiere
• Digital video editing
• Photoshop learning
• Podcast production
• Web designing

These are some course creator ideas that could earn you a great amount of money because of its trending need. Especially amongst undergraduate students who are looking for part-time work by learning a useful skill.

2. Business and Management

With technology, the world also saw a revolutionary change. This included business startups webinar getting introduced to varied ideas.

This approach gave rise to the introduction of many new professions in the business and project management field. Numerous audiences turned their hobbies into businesses and earned a desirable amount of income as well.

The demand for eLearning about business strategies and entrepreneurship programs has highly increased because of it. Nowadays, everyone desires to earn money by monetizing what they love to do.

What is better than making Personal Finance through things you enjoy? Of course, nothing! Ever since the freelancing and startups market has surged up, this topic is always in high demand by entrepreneurs.

Business programs include teaching audiences with diversified ideas but little experience on how to run a successful business campaign

Entrepreneurship online courses are perfect for beginners to learn the basics of starting a self-owned business.

In recent years, small businesses have sprung up everywhere reaching the limits of success. A course that teaches these strategies will help people reach their goals in no time at all.

You can also teach regarding the social media branding of products a businessman is targeting to sell. Digital marketing fundamentals have now been marked as an important aspect of online business and hence in demand.

And you should dive deeper into the business coaching industry trends when trying to start an online course on the following niches:

• Affiliate marketing
• Dropshipping
• E-commerce
• SEO
• Time Management
• Blogger
• Personal Brand
• Freelancing
• Amazon FBA
• Digital marketing
• Blog writing to promote business
• Branding of products through social media
• Launching a start-up
• Growth strategies
• Personal financing and revenue from the business

These brainstorming ideas are currently hot on the market. Choose any of the ones you think you can deliver to the audience efficiently.

As more people try to start their own businesses, you can attract masses to your business and entrepreneurship information.

3. Arts and Crafts

There are many people who take online courses in order to learn or improve their skills and make a satisfactory income.

Drawing, painting, sketching, and other hobbies have given a lot of artists a way to earn money through their hobbies. This niche not only earns money but also gives a source of entertainment to the learner.

In order to serve this niche, you must have artistic skills and be able to deliver them to audiences online. Content Creation samples of your work to attract the targeted audience. This is definitely going to assist in content marketing.

With e-commerce websites like Etsy and Amazon, millions of crafters can sell their products online and make money.

With courses in Arts and Crafts, providing knowledge and skills, students can take a deep dive into entrepreneurship ventures.

The demand for this niche in the market is marked by more people being attracted to art and crafts. You can target this audience and deliver your artistic skills to them.

Taking such courses can help students, freelancers, stay-at-home parents, artists, and other home-bound individuals earn a handsome income. All by putting their artistic skills at work.

Therefore, the following niches are hot currently in arts and crafts:

• Drawing
• Knitting
• Graphic Design
• Photography
• Animation
• Architecture
• Digital art
• Illustration
• Graphic designing
• Photography
• Jewelry designing
• Patchwork
• Interior design

Arts and crafts in the field of interest. Many people just learn it for fun. There are many real and virtual art-related courses you can deliver. Choose appropriately!

4. Physical well-being

Health has become an extremely important niche, especially after the crisis of global pandemics. Everyone wishes to be healthy and happy in their life by eating better and following an effective exercise regime.

You can opt to sell an online learning course relating to health management. That would teach the learner effective ways to ensure proper eating habits in order to lead a healthy life.

For this niche, the target audience is generally young men striving to gain muscle mass or shed some pounds. They will surely be interested in your online course if you target the ways of these through exercise and diet.

Health management isn’t just limited to bodybuilding but also anti-aging methods as well as disease controlling ways. Offer courses that cover this area and many healthcare audiences will approach you.

The audience to target can also involve middle-aged people who are willing to work on improving their health. They would definitely pay to hear expert advice on ways to be in better shape and mind.

Also, the pandemic has led to a rising number of mental health issues in people of every age. This niche can prove very profitable for you if you use it to spread awareness and teach students about mental health.

The vast amount of health-related data is available on the internet is progressively increasing.

Online courses related to health provide information regarding the ideal lifestyle, effects of food consumption, and disease control methods. In addition to this, such online programs also help raise awareness about mental health problems.

Thus, selling your own online course on a health-related niche is a good step. The following topics are famous:

• Meditation
• Vegan cooking
• Acupressure
• Weight Loss
• Herbalism
• Personal Development
• Diet and nutrition
• Skincare regimen
• Therapeutic aromatherapy
• Yoga
• Public health
• Biological medicine
• Global health awareness program

5. Education

Online courses on education can absolutely not replace the traditional classroom methods. It could though complement well for those who aim to learn but are short on resources like time or convenience.

This is an essential niche for teachers as well as students aiming to choose this profession in the near future. In fact, teachers could also gain benefits from these courses to increase their knowledge on several topics.

The demand for educational courses has currently increased because of the ease it provides in learning important topics. Many people aim at learning things online because it is easy and convenient. Hence, they take up online courses for educating themselves.

The profession of teaching is now not just limited to teachers. Anyone who is willing to spread knowledge on particular topics can teach the masses.

These courses help professionals to build new skills and a student-friendly teaching method. Also, when students take up these courses, they can easily teach others by effective means to earn financial support.

It would also be great if students could get online training to learn and develop their presentation skills.

Due to the sudden shift to eLearning, courses addressing various modes and approaches to teaching and learning are high in demand.

There is no better way to invest your time than in the process of learning and transferring that knowledge to others.

Hence, here are a few niches that potentially relate to the educational department and could earn you a large audience.

• Presentation skills
• Media training
• Public Speaking
• Teaching English
• Starting a coaching business
• Online course creation
• Real Estate
• Law
• Languages
• Office management
• Logical reasoning
• Mental health short courses

What online courses are in demand?

According to onlinecoursereport.com, Machine Learning with Python from IBM is the most in-demand online course.

Let’s dig into the details of it. Saeed Aghabozorgi, Senior IBM Data Scientist, will teach you about Machine Learning, studying computer algorithms.

Machine learning is one step forward in the world of in-demand artificial intelligence. It analyses data and statistics to predict potential outcomes and trends. It can prove extremely beneficial in this era of technology.

In this course, you learn the basics of machine learning in the approachable and well-manageable language, Python. It is a five-week-long course. In addition, it demands 4-5 hours of homework per week.

With no participation fee, you will receive a verified certificate for $39 through this online course.

On the second number, we have Harvard’s Introduction to Computer Science. This course is the most famous and in-demand course offered by Harvard University. This course teaches students the craft of programming.

Moreover, computer science is going to be the center of attention in the near future seeing the rise of technology. This course will assist you in the field of problem-solving, a life-changing skill in the virtual world.

You will learn how software and hardware are developed, designed, and analyzed. All to solve scientific, social, and business obstacles.

The mentioned course consists of programming problems in 9 sets, which approximately take 10-20 hours each to solve. Students who can pass the final test and these nine problems are eligible to receive the certificate. So contact them via email list.

Participation is free, but on completion, a certificate of $90 is to be purchased.

Conclusion

The virtual world has now marked an important place in the lives of human beings. Technology is being introduced in every aspect of real life from business to medicine. Hence, we should realize the importance of the online world.

Availing benefits from the online platform is the sole goal of this article. There has been a review of all the top trending online courses so you can choose the best one for you.

Online courses have caused great benefits to people of every age who have the will to learn and deliver. In a pandemic, the number of learners increased and hence the demand for such courses in various niches.

In this article, a few essential niches were covered like technology, business, data science entrepreneurship, health, education, arts and crafts. The article also discussed numerous ways to cover these niches.

As such, you must choose an eLearning course that reaches a large audience eager to start online businesses.

Online courses are convenient to learn and affordable for all ages. So, one can easily choose the ideal course for themselves.

The topics mentioned above will help you filter what course you want to sell and earn money. Aim for a particular audience, and your online course will flourish for sure. Have a great time choosing!

Read more: Thinkific Review: Should You Use this Teaching Software?

The post 5 Most Profitable Online Course Ideas of 2021 appeared first on Business2Community.

Amazing deals on the latest tech, fresh clothing styles, and many other lifestyle products have us all buzzing, and who can blame us? This is the time when we want and expect more than ever. Almost everyone is thrilled and ready to celebrate.

The mood is cheerful, and businesses are seeing their sales soar!

When everything is in abundance, why should marketers shy away from demanding an extra lot of customers? These extra customers would probably be the conversions from the traffic on their business’s website.

So, they would want to put in extra effort into attracting more traffic to their site if they want to boost their product sales.

To boost and increase their sales and conversion business should need business plan templates for promoting their products during this festive seasons to reach their target.

One way to achieve this is to practice Search Engine Optimization at its best.

This technique will bring your business into the spotlight in no time if done right. Since sales are at their highest during the holiday season, it is likely that competition will be high amongst online stores. If you want yours to peak through and grab customers, you will have to be vigilant with your SEO practices.

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Key Takeaways:

• Early Campaign Launch: Start your holiday campaigns well in advance to capture early shoppers and gain a competitive edge.
• Long-Tail and Seasonal Keywords: Leverage long-tail and seasonal keywords for more targeted search traffic.
• Holiday-Themed Landing Pages: Create dedicated landing pages to centralize offers, keywords, and festive-specific CTAs for enhanced SEO.
• Incentives and Rewards: Offering free gifts or shipping on certain purchases encourages customers to buy more.
• Strategic Link Building: Use both internal linking and off-page SEO with seasonal anchor texts to boost page authority and visibility.
• Festive Hashtags: Boost social media engagement with holiday-specific hashtags for greater reach and user-generated content.

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Keeping all of this in mind, we have enlisted 8 marketing tips to boost your website traffic this holiday season:

1. Commence your marketing campaign well before time

A lot of businesses make the mistake of delaying their holiday campaigning strategy and losing out on sales.

As a marketer, you must think about placing your brand in your target market’s head before the season arrives. That is, customers should think of shopping from your before December begins. Launching your holiday marketing campaign before November or December can your brand an edge in the market.

This will specifically work out for the customers who buy holiday gifts early on. You can easily tap into the early shopper with your holiday offers released ahead of time.

2. Target long-tail keywords

Once you are over and done with high-intent keywords and popular keywords, you should move your focus to long-tail keywords.

These keywords make for a significant part of the overall web searches. Hence, if you miss out on targeting these, you might be missing out on an opportunity to get some serious traffic on your website.

3. Use seasonal keywords

Every festival has its own set of keywords that trend across the web. Seasonal SEO would be based on these sets of keywords. For example: for Christmas keywords like Christmas decor, Christmas gifting, Christmas lighting, etc, will trend.

If you do not target seasonal keywords, your store will not show up in the search results. Hence, you should include popular seasonal keywords in your product pages, landing pages, offer announcements, or blogs.

4. Design holiday landing pages

Landing pages designed for the holidays will prove to be your golden ticket to winning festive sales and SEO.

Here is what a festive landing page will do for you:

• Festive goals will be more targeted or specific
• Allows for a festive specific call to action
• Acts as a common home for all specific keywords
• Will show up all offers and product announcements, in a single space

These perks will immediately boost the chances of your pages ranking higher than non-centralized festive pages. Moreover, increased visibility will rope in organic traffic that will help you to generate leads, conversions and sales.

5. Offer free rewards

This is the one trick in a marketer’s handbook that never fails to perform. Everyone loves stuff that comes at no cost. So, you make use of that to your benefit. When you attest a free product or purchase gift along with the main purchase, the customers simply won’t be able to resist.

This strategy can be used very smartly to lure customers into spending more with your company.

For example: if you give free products on purchases above $50, the customer will end up spending that amount with your company just for the sake of that free product.

Especially during holidays when everyone is in the mood for giving back, your customers will surely like to be on the receiving end of the gifting.

So, if you do not want to offer free rewards per se, you can offer free shipping instead. All these tactics with amplified highlights on offers, promotions, and savings will definitely bring increased sales volumes.

6. Do festive promotion link building

If you do not already know of the importance of off-page SEO, let us elaborate on that.

A quality link to your web page will signal Google crawlers that the webpage is a valuable content piece. When Google receives this signal, it will shoot up the ranking of your page. This is what we mean by off-page SEO.

Backlinking is a strategic way to bring traffic to your web pages from other portals or websites. And when links are “Do follow” in nature, the Page authority and domain authority.

You must also consider the importance of anchor text. Quality backlinks should be sought from festive-specific anchor texts like Black Friday deals, Christmas offers, Halloween costumes, etc.

7. Have a solid internal linking setup

The strength of your linking profile will not solely depend on the number of backlinks you have but also on your internal linking structure.

Whenever you create and publish content, keep an eye out for opportunities for internal links. The overall user experience will improve with this method along with a better SEO position, ultimately leading to more traffic on your website. So, if you are writing and publishing any new holiday content, try to give links from that to your internal pages.

8. Use the power of hashtags

If you are into social media marketing and have been doing it for a while, you must be aware of the kind of power that hashtags hold. They have the capacity to make your content seen loud and clear and even make it go viral.

You will be able to fully utilize their ability on platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

Focus on holiday-specific hashtags and boost your chances of getting spotted by a maximum number of potential customers. The best part about hashtags is that they are easy to remember and they can encourage user-generated content.

All armed to get some serious traffic this holiday season now?

This was a very handy handbook for you to ace your holiday marketing strategy like never before.

You can gather up an experienced team of SEO professionals and with all hands on deck, imagine the kind of exposure you can get for your brand this season.

With a well-executed holiday marketing strategy, you can significantly increase website traffic and conversion rates during this peak season.

By integrating early campaign launches, optimizing for seasonal keywords, and offering customer incentives, your brand will stand out amidst the holiday noise. Leverage these strategies to not only attract more visitors but also to turn them into loyal customers who keep coming back long after the holiday lights are packed away.

Embrace the season’s unique opportunities with a blend of SEO, social media, and engaging content to make this holiday your most profitable yet.

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The post 8 Marketing Tips to Boost Your Website Traffic This Festive Season appeared first on Business2Community.

That’s because so much of a company's success solely relies on its ability to sell. Actually, let me rephrase that, all of a company’s success relies on its ability to sell. And in the age of ecommerce, many of a company's sales will come via its website. In fact, according to The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce, the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the third quarter of 2021 totaled $204.6 billion –which was actually a decrease of 3.2% from the second quarter of 2021.

And with so much of a company’s sales coming by way of its website – there’s still a sufficient amount of revenue that is still unfulfilled simply because of a few…let’s say digital marketing mishaps. No need to agonize, this article isn’t going to be about some magical SEO hack that will solve all of your ecommerce woes. And while SEO is important, it can only help people find your website – but then what?

These 3 digital marketing tactics to increase your website’s conversion rates are focused on helping you entice the people that visit your website to make a purchase once they arrive. But enough of the introduction. Let’s get to the tactics that are going to help put you in the category of executives that smile whenever they think of sales and have dreams about sales instead of nightmares.

Put your main feature first

As a consumer, don’t you just get frustrated whenever you log on to a website to order a company’s main feature and instead, end up on one of the pages of the sites' other featured products that you’re probably not interested in purchasing?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware of the milk philosophy of marketing. For those unfamiliar with the milk philosophy – have you ever asked yourself, “Why is that the milk is always located in the back of every grocery store?”

Well, the milk philosophy to marketing is centered around the concept that by placing milk in the coolers in the back of the store, customers are more likely to see and be enticed by other items on their way to grabbing the milk. I must admit that the tactic has worked on me plenty of times while grocery shopping (be honest, how many times have you purchased items that you had no intent on purchasing while grocery shopping? I can’t be the only one).

And while the milk philosophy is highly effective on consumers at grocery stores. It’s not nearly as effective for customers shopping online. In fact, according to a survey from 451research, 61% of US consumers that shop online prefer websites that make their products easy to find.

Think about it along these lines; let's say that you own a company that sells snowboards online. If your data shows that the most popular item on your website amongst consumers is a particular snowboard, then that snowboard should be the first thing that visitors see whenever they log on your website.

Contrary to what other digital marketers may tell you about featuring peripheral items above-the-fold on your website in order to help those products sell more. When it comes to shopping online, consumers prefer ease and speed. In other words, they want what they came for. There’s other ways to feature your peripheral items – one way is by highlighting them on your website's shopping cart at the time of, or after – a consumer makes purchase.

It’s important to remember that in order to increase conversions, you must give the consumer what they came for as soon as possible before they go elsewhere (which will increase your bounce rate). If consumers come to your site for milk, make sure that milk is the first thing they see when they arrive on your website. You can sell your other items in the aisles (on particular pages) or at the checkout – like grocery stores do with candy bars (they also got that one right).

Simplify selections (UX)

This one may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many websites don’t simplify the purchasing process on their website. In order to increase conversion rate, it’s imperative that you secure the sale as soon as possible. That means ensuring that visitors can make a purchase in as few clicks as possible. The more clicks that a consumer has to make to get what they came for, the more likely they’ll look for it elsewhere – which is missed revenue for your company!

Instead of helping your competitors confiscate your current and potential customers – be proactive and make sure that the user’s experience on your website is pleasurable and makes it easy as possible for visitors to navigate with no hurdles. Especially when it comes to making a purchase! Remember, the least amount of clicks to make a purchase – the better.

In their book R.E.D Marketing, former YUM! Brands CEO Greg Creed and Yum! Brands CMO Ken Muench stated, “Relevance and distinctiveness can make your brand more mentally available and appropriate for their times, but only ease can - with a few tweaks, pull your rivals' customers into your locations overnight.”

Ease-of-purchase on your website will not only increase conversion amongst your current customers – it’ll also lead to some of your competitors' customers churning and becoming your customers. Which will certainly increase your conversion rate exponentially.

Be scarce

I don’t have to tell you that as humans, we’re very enigmatic (some more than others). So oftentimes, things that seem very practical; like purchasing something that we’re interested in – or not purchasing something that we have no interest in, can become a decision that’s unnecessarily strenuous to us mentally.

For example, have you ever been on a date with someone at a restaurant, and the person that you were on the date with had ample time to check out the menu, but when the waiter came to take their order – they still weren't prepared to make a decision on what they wanted to order? (if not, you probably was the one on the date that couldn’t decide what to order…you’re not alone – we’ve all been there)

The reason that choices that should be effortless for us, become arduous, is because we’re innately wired to become more finicky when options are abundant – and more resolute when things are scarce. In his book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, author and behavioral scientist Dr. Robert B. Cialdini stated, “A less available item is more desired and valued.”

So, in knowing that as humans – we’re innately wired to desire and value things that are more scarce, help your customers make a decision by utilizing the law of scarcity to work on your behalf. The way to do that is by showing visitors on your website that you only have a limited supply of a certain product or a certain service will only be available for a certain price for a certain amount of time. This will cause tension – and tension invokes action.

Here’s a few ways that you can apply the law of scarcity on your website:

• “Only 5 shirts left - purchase now!”

• “Upgrade your phone in the next two days and get 50% off.”
• “We noticed you viewed these items – we only have 3 left in stock.”

Some would say that this is manipulation. But if it actually helps a customer make a decision that they’re having trouble making, is it wrong? I’ll leave that answer for the ethics professors. The way I see it, as long as you’re telling the truth…I don’t see the harm in causing tension.

Hate it or love it – the fear of missing out (FOMO) is a very effective tool to invoke a desired action. As humans, the fear of not having something we may want is one of the things that makes us tick. I think Cialdini stated it best when he said, “The idea of potential loss plays a huge role in decision making. In fact, people seem to be more motivated by the thought of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value.”

The proper application of scarcity tactics on your website will increase conversion rate because people are naturally more inclined to act on the thought of losing something than the possibility of gaining something. But as a responsible marketer – it’s your job to ensure that once the consumer does make a purchase, your product or service will be a gain for the consumer and not a loss.

Originally published here.

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• Top SEO Marketing Tools
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The post 3 Digital Marketing Tactics That Will Increase Your Website’s Conversion Rate appeared first on Business2Community.

When working with influencer marketing, forging strong relationships between your brand and the creators you work with is essential for a successful campaign. But just how simple is it to achieve this affinity?

In this article, we’ll cover five best practices for influencer/brand collaborations so that your influencer marketing strategy runs as smoothly as possible in 2022 and beyond.

Give your influencers creative freedom

The best influencer marketing strategies revolve around the influencer’s content being authentic and relatable, which in turn helps to build a strong audience connection. When brands opt for collaborations with an influencer, they should be open minded and put their trust in the influencer. If a brand is very specific about an exact brief and art direction, they’ll lose the authenticity as it won’t feel like the influencer themselves is creating the content.

It can be undeniably daunting, handing over creative control to a creator. However, keep the reins too tight and it will become painfully clear to the influencer’s audience that the content is synthetic. Creative freedom is needed for the collaboration and influencer strategy to work, but of course control of certain aspects can and should be maintained by the brand: any incentives you offer, for example, or the calls to action. Striking this balance will not only generally result in a higher ROI but it will also protect the audience relationship for future collaborations and campaigns.

Leverage audience insights

With the influencer marketing industry growing year on year, it can feel like a labyrinth to the uninitiated. But with an experienced influencer acting as your guide, you can unlock a wealth of audience intelligence. Influencers know a huge amount about the industry and they know their audience better than anyone else, engaging with them across comments and direct messages every day to build on this knowledge. Brands can capitalise on this by approaching influencers as consultants, allowing them to shape and refine your strategy to best resonate with your target audience.

Influencers are regularly confronted with the dilemma of posting the content they love creating vs posting the content that gets the most engagement. When trying to decide on what to post, influencers need to look at the stats and make sure that there’s a balance between giving people what they want to see but also staying true to themselves and the content they enjoy posting as an influencer. This challenge can be compounded when a brand gets involved and a third agenda is added to the mix.

Having learned how to balance their own (sometimes contradictory) objectives, influencers can lean on historical performance and engagement data to optimise your influencer strategy, advising as to what content will be most effective, when to post and how to make sure your message ingratiates you to your prospects.

Find a strong brand affinity

The first step to finding a good brand match when considering influencers is to look at their post history and ensure that it fits with your narrative and echoes your values. After all, if you’re a sustainability brand then collaborating with the fast fashion fanatic is unlikely to feel cohesive. Further to this, they are unlikely to reflect your target in their audience—which is the second thing you should analyse.

When you’re then at the point of reaching out to an influencer, influencers will generally first try to establish both if they know and like the brand, as well as whether their audience would be interested in it. If your product or offering is new to the influencer then it can be invaluable to offer a trial period to see if the influencer is happy to recommend your brand before signing off on paid work.

The reason this is important is that influencers that genuinely like a brand and its products will likely create better content, playing into that thirst for authenticity and, as a result, generating higher levels of engagement and conversion.

You don’t have to do everything yourself

Many brands are still hesitant around influencer marketing over a fear of execution and ensuring results, something that is often exacerbated by limited resources in-house. However, effective influencer marketing is not an insignificant commitment, and it also isn’t something that has to be done entirely internally. It’s no surprise that 80% of B2C brands are outsourcing their influencer marketing. Influencer marketing often works best when executed collaboratively by a brand and an influencer marketing partner.

There are many benefits of taking this approach. Brands can capitalise on the established influencer relationships of an agency and let them deal with the mundane, everyday tasks, while planning out the more creative activities in-house.

Influencers have bills to pay too

In the early days of influencer marketing, a lot of brands relied on offering free products in exchange for exposure. Unfortunately, we still see a lot of that today, and the reality is that brands that do this or who fail to pay influencers on time are grossly underestimating (and undercompensating) the real value of influencer marketing and the creators that make it possible. Many content creators work full-time and still have bills to pay, so brands should always be reliable when it comes to payments and overall maintain good work ethics.

If brands aren’t reliable, organised or ethical when it comes to influencer marketing, the influencers they work with will be put off and the word can quickly spread, ultimately leading to missed collaboration opportunities for the brands as influencers do in fact have a very strong influence on their audiences and other content creators.

Summing it up

Influencer marketing is becoming more sophisticated each year, with new additions to platforms and smarter strategies being deployed. For this reason, it’s important to know how to work effectively within the channel and with the creators who lead it if you want to secure a positive ROI whilst making all parties happy in the process.

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The post 5 Best Practices to Start Your 2022 Influencer Strategy Strong appeared first on Business2Community.

Today, mobile is everything! Because everyone is hooked to their phones, mobile marketing is an easier, better way to communicate with customers and promote your products. Businesses must adapt their marketing strategies to keep up with technological advances. And that means using mobile apps as marketing channels.

As technology becomes more divided, marketing does too. Mobile apps have become a must-have for businesses of all sizes. The main benefit of marketing through a mobile app is that you can target audiences based on their behaviors rather than just demographics. This allows you to craft more personalized messages that engage your customers and guide them through the sales process.

What’s the difference between mobile app marketing and mobile marketing? Mobile marketing refers to any marketing done on a mobile device, which includes app marketing and SMS marketing. Mobile app marketing is a more specific term that focuses on developing marketing campaigns to engage with your customers right after they download your app.

Using mobile apps as a marketing channel offers the convenience of in-app purchases, which increases the likelihood of repeat purchases.

Benefits Of A Mobile App For Business

Should your business have an app? There’s no other answer to this question other than a resounding yes!

Mobile Apps offer valuable marketing opportunities that help you reach and engage your target audience. The benefits of mobile apps for business include:

1. Improved customer engagement

Mobile Apps are a direct communication channel. If there’s one thing customers appreciate about a business, it’s great customer service. Sometimes the only difference between a lead and a conversion is how quickly customers can access valuable information and get a response.

Beyond support, mobile apps are great for collecting customer feedback. Customers are more likely to leave a review or ask questions if the process is easy, fast, and convenient.

2. More targeted marketing

Having a mobile app means you can leverage data-driven marketing by tracking shopping behavior to enhance your marketing strategies and recommend products you know your customers will love.

What this means is that your marketing campaigns are very specific to individual customers. Mobile apps mean you can reach customers in real-time with extremely targeted marketing that's bound to work.

3. Capitalize on the ubiquity of mobile devices

Yet another advantage of app marketing is that users carry their devices wherever they go. As a result, you can use location-based services to offer customers discounts, deals, or promotions based on their proximity to a store.

The Mobile App Marketing Funnel

Just because you have an app doesn’t mean your conversion rates will automatically rise. It’s crucial to understand the mobile app marketing funnels so you can draw customers to your business and gain their loyalty.

The mobile app marketing funnel has 4 major stages:

• Awareness – The goal here is to attract targeted users to your app, and your strategy is to focus your marketing on channels where your users are known to congregate. You can raise awareness through social media, paid advertising, and app review websites.
• Conversion – A conversion is any action a customer takes that adds monetary value to your business and typically occurs when a user: downloads your app and creates an account to make an in-app purchase.
• Customer relationship – Now, this is how you nurture customers to keep them coming back for more. Otherwise, your app will be just another application on their phone. Utilize push notifications and in-app messaging to gain their attention and keep them opening your app.
• Retention – Keep your customers happy through loyalty programs and offer rewards for completing surveys. Remember, it’s more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain a loyal customer.

The key to successful marketing is to create a seamless purchase journey for customers. That’s why all your communication channels, from social media to SMS and app marketing, must work together to deliver a consistent message aimed at empowering the consumer.

Creating the Ultimate Business App

It’s all about branding and the customer experience. The best business apps are those that are easily identifiable and easy to use. Without proper branding, customers won’t find your app appealing enough to download. Your brand instantly communicates what customers should expect of you and determines the demographic of people you attract.

The two biggest mistakes you can make while creating a mobile app are failing to define the real goal of the app and designing a poor user interface. Perform market research to determine if your customers really need an app and what they would use it for? Perhaps, a more responsive website design would be a better investment. If not, it's crucial to ensure your app fills a gap in your marketing.

A poor user interface will break your mobile app marketing. Consumers have neither the time nor patience to push through a slow, tedious interface to make a purchase or engage with your team. A good UX can actually guarantee the success of your venture, allowing you to nurture your leads better.

The article was originally published here.

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The post Mobile App as a Marketing Channel appeared first on Business2Community.

Don’t let this happen to your thank you pages! A thank you page with missing elements can make all the difference between a fleeting customer and a loyal customer.

In this post, we share 16 thank you page examples that prove just that. And we’re going to have some fun by giving each one a quality score from 1-20 based on four key factors:

1. Clarity
2. Next steps
3. Creativity
4. Level of appreciation

Our criteria for these thank you page examples

Before we get into the details, here are the thank you page best practices we used in our evaluation:

Keep it short and sweet

When it comes to thank you pages, the more concise the better. A few sentences should do the trick. If you have more information to relay, you should have a follow up method in place beyond your thank you page.

Also, there should be a prominent heading on the page clearly confirming that the user has successfully completed the action.

Be clear and purposeful with next steps

When users get to your thank you page, you don’t want them wondering “Now what?” If there are additional steps to be taken to complete the action, make these clear.

And even though they’ve completed an action already, now it’s time to keep them engaged. Add in a second call to action, such as to:

• Share on social
• Join a referral program
• Claim a discount
• Leave a review
• Download a guide or case study
• Book a demo or consult

These are great opportunities to push your customers further down the funnel. Whichever one you choose, make those next steps clear so you can get a conversion boost and open the doors for further interaction.

For example, our content download thank you pages have a clear green button to get the guide and then a clear next step to try our free Google Ads Grader tool.

Less is more...

There’s nothing worse than a busy thank you page. If you’re including too many visuals, callouts for next steps, or calls to action, you’ll end up with an eye sore that will just confuse viewers. In fact, multiple offers can decrease landing page conversions by up to 266%. So don’t lose sight of the purpose of your thank you page. Treat it like a landing page and test out different variants until you know what truly works.

...but keep it eye-catching

While you don’t want to confuse your viewers, you still want to catch their attention. But with landing pages, you only have about eight seconds to make an impression, and this number could be even less for thank you pages. Plus, people are 80% more likely to read content if it’s combined with bold, attention-grabbing imagery. So be sure to have at least one eye-catching element to grab attention in a pinch.

This thank you page uses appealing imagery and a clear white button to draw your eye to the desired action.

...and on-brand

Just like a landing page should be consistent with the ad before it, your thank you page should be consistent with the landing page before it. To maintain brand consistency, be sure that your thank you page copy and visuals match up with your style guide. This means including similar colors, logos, as well as voice and text styling as your website or other company materials.

Actually say thank you...

While it’s great to get bonus engagement activity from your thank you page, don’t lose sight of the point behind it: to thank your customers! 91% of consumers say they’re more likely to do business with companies that appreciate their customers. One of the easiest ways for your business to do just that is by simply saying thank you.

...and personalize it!

Personalized CTAs convert 202% better than normal CTAs. This means you should segment your thank you page offers to match your various audience personas for better results. You could also use automation to get the page to contain the first name they provided in the form.

Thank you page examples we can learn from

With the above tips in mind, we’re now going to review some thank you page examples from across the web.: Let’s have some fun rating each one based on the elements below:

• Clarity: Is the thank you page concise and organized? Does it clearly confirm the action the user just took?
• Next steps: Are next steps clear without being aggressive or underwhelming? Are they easy to take?
• Creativity: Does the thank you page have fun, eye-catching visuals or copy? Is it consistent with the brand?
• Level of appreciation: Does the brand say thank you in a thoughtful or personalized way?

We’ll assign a score of 1-5 for each of these four elements (five being strongest), so the maximum quality score is 20.

1. Kuat

The first thank you page example comes from biking brand Kuat.

Our thank you page score: 11

• Clarity: 2
  While “PRODUCT REGISTRATION” is loud and clear, the user doesn’t get explicit confirmation that they’ve successfully registered until they read the body text. But Kuat does provide support contact information, which is helpful.
• Next steps:1
  Asking customers for a review is a great idea for a next step, since reviews are crucial for local SEO, but Kuat gives several different options and doesn’t link to them, so there is almost zero chance the user will take this action.
• Creativity: 4
  The page is on-brand and uses a creative and eye-catching image, but the copy is slightly bland.
• Level of appreciation: 4
  Kuat says thanks in the body text, but could replace the “PRODUCT REGISTRATION” heading with “Thanks for registering your product!” But it does express appreciation for its customers’ support in the bold text.

2. Kickresume

This Kickresume thank you page example confirms an ebook send.

Image source

Our thank you page score: 12

• Organization: 5
  This is the perfect example of a sweet and simple thank you page. “Your book is on the way!” confirms the action taken and adds a level of excitement. However, calling it a "book" could confuse viewers, since this is for an ebook, and it could have mentioned when and where users can expect it.
• Next steps: 4
  The next step—to share the ebook on social—is clear and the buttons to share are put right below for ease of access.
• Creativity: 3
  The call-to-action phrase is creative, and encouraging users to help their friends get a dream job is a clever way of marketing with emotion. Otherwise the page is blank and bland.
• Level of appreciation: 0
  Kickresume forgot to thank its customers! It could have said something like “Thanks for letting us help you!” or "Thanks for downloading the ebook!"

3. SimplyMeasured

This SimplyMeasured thank you page example is for a free reporting guide download.

Image source

Our thank you page score: 15

• Organization: 5
  This page confirms that the user has completed the required action and tells them how to obtain the guide without any fluff. And kudos to them for calling out a potential customer pain point when receiving their guide and how to resolve it if needed.
• Next steps: 2
  By keeping the navigation bar, SimplyMeasured offers another CTA at the top (to request a demo), but could have pointed to it a bit more clearly.
• Creativity: 3. The visual of its dashboards is eye-catching without being distracting, and brand consistency is clear here, but the copy doesn’t feel super friendly or compelling.
• Level of appreciation: 5
  Saying thank you twice never hurts!

4. Content Marketing Institute

Content Marketing Institute had this thank you page for folks who signed up to download specific courses.

Image source

Our thank you page score: 14

• Clarity: 5
  Am I surprised that a content marketing brand thank you page embodied crystal clear copywriting? Not in the slightest. CMI makes its thank you clear with a black, bolded headline and then provides the link to download the course with “as promised” right after it. It also reinforces what, exactly, the user just downloaded with multiple mentions of the course name.
• Next steps: 1
  People love to follow trends, so the suggestions of other popular content is a nice touch. However, there are three options to download, plus an event registration CTA, and each offer is the same color and size as the CTA to download the intended course. And then there are the options in the navigation bar. So while the copy is cohesive and it flows nicely, there is too much of it for a thank you page and users could struggle to pick where to go next.
• Creativity: 3
  CMI’s clean graphics here take the cake. The simple imagery to go along with the selected course gives a customized feel and the page stays on-brand. But as mentioned, the page is busy and overwhelming.
• Level of appreciation: 5
  Bold, black, and exclamation point—no complaints here!

5. Wrike

Online productivity tool Wrike displays this colorful thank you page after an ebook download.

Our thank you page score: 20

• Clarity: 5
  The content throughout this thank you page example is not only clear, concise, and organized, but the steps to get the eBook are also super easy—they can even click the button to view the guide right in their browser.
• Next steps: 5
  In comparison to the CMI thank you page example above, this is a much better way of providing additional content. With less text and fewer options on the page, it’s easier for viewers to quickly make a decision. Plus, suggesting related resources that don’t require a download may convert better since these people have already completed a download once.
• Creativity: 5
  Wrike seriously deserves full points here because it was able to make a visually appealing thank you page using abstract graphics—which is refreshing. It also keeps its viewers engaged in a unique way by suggesting content to take them back to the site.
• Level of appreciation: 5
  Unlike other forms of content creation, thank pages are one of the few areas where exclamation points are okay. The big, friendly exclamation point at the end of Wrike’s thank you adds emphasis to its level of appreciation.

6. Backlinko

This thank you page example by Backlinko is for a newsletter sign up.

Image source

Our thank you page score: 11

• Clarity: 4
  While the user hasn’t quite completed all of the required actions, the page could still use a heading that confirms completion of the first step.
• Next steps: 4
  The next step here—to confirm your subscription—is clear. And Backlinko is one step ahead of its customers with the reminder to check their spam folder. However, the screenshot of the call to action button in the email it is referring to could lead users to think that this is the button to click and is broken. And why so many steps to confirm, Backlinko? I know it’s the usual “go to your email to confirm,” but spelling out the steps like this makes it seem like a chore.
• Creativity: 3
  SEO can be daunting to some, so Backlinko’s mention of “link building strategies” and “SEO tips” drives home the value of the newsletter and encourages the user to confirm their subscription. But while the content is strong and conversational, the page is visually lackluster and unappealing.
• Level of appreciation: 0
  This is a multi-step process, and Backlinko hasn’t yet thanked its user for subscribing. Instead, it comes right out of the gate with an urgent and stern-sounding message.

7. Grimont Wines

This thank you page example by Grimont Wines is for completed purchases.

Image source

Our thank you page score: 17

• Organization: 5
  No complaints here! The confirmation is clear and the copy is organized and concise.
• Next steps: 3
  Grimont Wines incentivize users to make another purchase with a 20% discount offer, and the countdown to when this offer expires adds urgency. However, it could have made this offer more prominent with bigger text and a link back to its shopping page, and the social share buttons on the bottom could distract users away from taking the primary action.
• Creativity: 4
  The thank you page design matches that of the bottle which is aesthetically pleasing and draws the eye into the thank you text. And the live countdown portion adds a level of fun and excitement. However, the super-light text style is hard to read.
• Level of appreciation: 5
  I love how the thank you is highlighted in the middle of the thank you page for an added punch of appreciation.

8. The Name Stamp

The name Stamp’s post-purchase thank you page is a two-in-one combo with its note of appreciation and secret offer.

Our thank you page score: 20

• Clarity: 5
  The organization of this thank you page is on-brand for The Name Stamp’s site—keeping everything consolidated to the middle of the page to draw the eye in so nothing gets missed. And even with two large headings on the page, The Name Stamp makes both the completed action and the next steps clear.
• Next steps: 5
  In comparison to the thank you page example above, Name Stamp promotes its deal more clearly. Using “secret” in their copy entices viewers because it adds a feeling of exclusivity.
• Creativity: 5
  Emojis are a welcome twist to a standard thank you page. The emojis not only match the brand well but also help to make the appreciation and promotion portions pop.
• Level of appreciation: 5
  Another super appreciative thank you page example with two thank you sentiments included.

9. Hubspot

This thank you page example is from Hubspot for downloading a free ebook.

Image source

Our thank you page score: 15

Between the personalization, purpose, and pretty design, this thank you page is hitting (mostly) all the marks!

• Clarity: 5
  Hubspot provides clear confirmation that the user has completed the action and how to get the ebook. They also bullet out the ebook’s highlights to pack a value punch.
• Next steps: 5
  Hubspot is a household name for all things conversion optimization, so it's no surprise this thank you page example is a top contender. Including the two action options next to one another makes it easy for viewers to quickly understand their options—but the bright and contrasting “Download” button color adds an attractive pop and keeps the visitor focused on the primary action Hubspot wants them to take.
• Creativity: 4
  The visualization of the ebook and brand consistency gives Hubspot’s thank you page some flair. However, what really sells on this thank you page is the insertion of the user’s name to add a personal touch.
• Level of appreciation: 1
  At this point, a thank you would be necessary because this person has already input their valuable information. However, the personalized name insertion can still make the customer feel appreciated.

10. RoboForm

This RoboForm thank you page example is for signing up to use its free product.

Image source

Our thank you page score: 10

• Clarity: 1
  The copy is brief, but the heading only indirectly confirms that the user has signed up. Plus, what did they sign up for? Why should they be glad they did?
• Next steps: 1
  The action Roboform wants you to take is super clear: to join their referral program. However, since there isn’t consistency in capitalization between the two headings, it’s not clear that you’ll be getting one of their paid products, Roboform Everywhere, for free. Rather it sounds like by referring customers, you’ll be doing them a favor and getting Roboform everywhere.
• Creativity: 5
  Roboform’s creative elements stay consistent with its brand and compliment its adorable robot mascot nicely. And instead of a standard “thank you” it offers a compliment to butter up its customers—which helps them stand out.
• Level of appreciation: 3
  This is not a standard thank you, but Roboform still gets points for still making users feel appreciated in a different way.

11. Educators for Excellence

Educators for Excellence wraps up our thank you page example roundup with a page made for event registrants.

Our thank you page score: 15

• Organization: 5
  The confirmation here is loud and clear. This is one of the few thank you page examples with contact information. For events, including a link for contacts is super helpful.
• Next steps: 2
  Aside from contacting for questions, it’s unclear what Educators for Excellence is looking for you to do next. The three prominent CTA buttons are layered on top of all the other options within the main navigation bar and footer.
• Creativity: 4
  In terms of creative, this thank you page is clean with simple green accents—which is on brand for Educators for Excellence. However, with all that text this thank you page could benefit from a visual. Perhaps a compelling picture showing what to expect at the event.
• Level of appreciation: 4
  While this brand also says thank you twice like a couple of our other thank you page examples, the lack of punctuation makes me feel like something is still missing here.

Use these thank you page examples to perfect yours

Use these thank you page examples as your go-to for your next thank you page brainstorm. And even though I covered a lot above, I want to leave you with some final reminders.

• Clearly confirm the action you’re thanking your customers for and tell them what to expect next.
• Don’t be afraid to bullet out a few of your offer’s highlights to pack a value punch.
• Use trigger emails to send a follow up to your leads and customers post-action.
• Think about what you can add to your thank you page as “icing on the cake,” like a discount code, downloadable coupon, or any other sales promotion.
• Treat your thank you page as you would a landing page! That means constantly testing out different variants until you know what truly works.

Most importantly, keep your thank you page simple and engaging so your brand’s personality and creativity shines through.

Now that you know how to tell a good thank you page example from a bad one, let us know in the comments which thank you page you think is best!

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The post 16 Great (and Not So Great) Thank You Page Examples to Learn From appeared first on Business2Community.

The pandemic changed the way shoppers browse and buy, with a heavy focus on e-commerce and online ordering. According to McKinsey, lockdowns, as well as a shift in consumer priorities toward health and safety, condensed five years of e-commerce growth into three months.

These big changes are important for CPG marketers to notice and use, especially when planning their digital strategies for 2022. Keep reading for insights that will help you keep up with trends in CPG digital marketing. And make sure to read to the end of this blog to get your 4 tips before you go!

New Consumer Trends That CPG Marketers Should Note

Since March 2020, notable consumer trends have emerged. Although these trends were accelerated by the pandemic, they aren’t at all contingent on it. Even as pandemic restrictions start to loosen in North America, consumers are sticking to their newly established shopping behaviours. Here are 4 key consumer trends CPG marketers should know:

With the uptick in e-commerce and time spent on mobile devices, m-commerce is top-of-mind in 2021.

eMarketer research shows US retail m-commerce sales grew at 41.4% in 2020 and will grow another 15.2% in 2021, to reach $359.32 billion. Annual m-commerce sales are expected to nearly double between 2021 and 2025.

With many consumers continuing to work from home, the homebody economy will persist into 2022.

When surveyed by Deloitte, US executives almost universally (95%) see the work-from-home trend continuing, and predict that the top purchase drivers will be health and safety (92%), trust (92%), and quality (88%) this year.

Consumers want brands to address sustainability and reflect other core values.

According to the Conference Board Global Consumer Confidence Survey, conducted in collaboration with Nielsen, 81% of global respondents feel strongly that companies should help improve the environment, while nearly half of American consumers say they would change their consumption habits to reduce their impact on the environment.

In June 2020, Mindshare found that 68% of US adults believed brands should speak out against racial inequality and injustice, while Visa found that 75% of millennials would support businesses and causes in response to social justice protests.

Consumers are trying new shopping behaviours.

The pandemic has driven acceleration of e-commerce adoption, as well as shopping behaviours that make the e-commerce experiences frictionless, like buy now, pay later (BNPL) and flexible payment options. But behaviours aren’t the only new things consumers are trying, they’ve been more open to trying new brands, too.

Digital Trends That are Shaping CPG Marketing

We’ve already highlighted some of the common consumer trends that have emerged since the start of the pandemic. These trends have been noted across verticals, making them relevant to most marketers. But there are digital trends that are particularly important for CPG marketers to note. Below, we’re exploring how personalization and emerging formats are both key CPG digital marketing trends that are gaining increasing relevance.

Personalization

In an increasingly digital and uncertain world, personalization is essential for the success of CPG brands. For example, 70% of the top DTC subscription brands use product quizzes to help personalize the customer experience. Quizzes and other personalization tactics help customers to select the products that fit them best, which leads to a higher likelihood of conversion, and more potential for long-term customer loyalty.

Another tactic that CPG digital marketers can use to improve personalization is contextual targeting. Contextual advertising is a cookieless targeting method that leverages content rather than user data to reach the right audience, at the right time. By targeting based on content, you can reach consumers who are in a receptive frame of mind. When your ads match the content that a consumer is browsing, those ads feel more natural and personalized to the user, which is what they want.

Emerging Formats

The pandemic led to a massive drop in commuting time, and with work from home becoming a permanent norm, the newly established “homebody economy” is likely to stick around. And it’s these consumer behaviours that have helped drive a surge in the popularity of new and emerging formats–like digital audio.

A major lesson of 2020 was that digital audio is resilient and adaptable. Commuting used to be a major driver of digital audio’s popularity, but despite the loss of that commuting time, active digital audio listeners spent over 2 hours per day with such media in 2020, and more than 70% of US adults listened to digital audio content at least once a month last year. We expect that the adoption of digital audio will continue to grow in the coming years. By 2025, 67.1% of Americans (218.6M) will be listening to digital audio.

How CPG Marketers Can Drive Results in 2022

With shopping and product discovery increasingly moving online, the digital space will become more competitive. This massive shift to e-commerce has created the need for digital marketing strategies that speak to consumers on a personal level.

CPG digital marketers will have to do more to speak directly to the consumer while they browse online, and brands will need a strong online presence and coherent digital strategy if they expect to remain competitive in an increasingly crowded space. But making the shift to online also comes with unique benefits. CPG brands can gather more detailed data and insights about their consumers to support a more robust digital strategy.

Here are 4 tips to keep in mind as you put together your 2022 CPG digital marketing strategy:

1. With consumer shopping behaviour rapidly changing, ensure your data strategy is fresh and nimble. Use your transactional data to target new or lapsed buyers, whose change in shopping behaviour could be explained by the pandemic. Build Custom Segments or try contextual advertising to target the ‘at-home’ consumers in the upper funnel—people who are browsing recipe blogs or interested in self-care.
2. Segment your audience to allow for personalization and optimization. Break these audience tactics into different campaigns to test performance. Then, optimize toward key performance indicators (KPIs), such as brand awareness or sales lift.
3. Reach shoppers at every stage of the customer journey with channels that mimic that journey. Try incorporating OTT and digital video into your awareness tactics, and heavy-up on mobile throughout the funnel. Retarget off of video completion rates (VCR) with high-impact, interactive display units that strengthen your branding. Test out performance-driving native ads to mimic the feel of blog content and target those reading blogs and product reviews.
4. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in a pandemic world—personalization is key. Use contextual advertising to reach consumers who are in a receptive frame of mind. For example, if you’re selling cosmetics, use contextual targeting to ensure your ads appear alongside content that consumers interested in makeup are consuming, like blogs that cover makeup trends. That way, your ads are personalized to the users that they are served to.

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The post 4 Tips For a Strategic CPG Digital Marketing Campaign (And the Trends to Back Them Up) appeared first on Business2Community.

Sponsored Communities

One major way to strengthen relationships with communities is with word-of-mouth marketing.

The other main way community marketing can work for you is with investment in “sponsored communities.”

Why sponsor a community? The main benefits include low costs, high customer loyalty, increased authenticity, and more possibilities for innovation. When done correctly, sponsored communities won’t just create more brand-loyal evangelists, they’ll grow your audience over time.

If you’re still reading this, you’re probably already thinking of the community you want to reach. It may be a state, town, or even just a neighborhood. Whoever it is, your first step is to do the research.

Who Is Your Community?

First, you’ll need a rich description of your community.

The goal is to get into the minds of your audience: what motivates them, what are their aspirations and fears, what are their unmet needs, and, importantly, how do they feel about your brand? While there are many ways to do it, all methods require research: talking to members of the target audience. This can be achieved through focus groups, online surveys, or one-on-one interviews. Regardless of how you do it, you need to get a productive dialog going.

From there you can build a range of personae that captures each type of community member. These personae can be broken up by age, employment, background, interests—really any way you want do it. Now you have a crystal-clear picture of your customer community!

What Brand Story Will You Tell Your Community?

Before you can reach your community, you have to think about how you can motivate people to care, listen, engage, buy, and stay. The key to this, of course, is clear and aligned story.

Think: what is that one thing your brand can hang its hat on, that thing that truly separates it from a sea of sameness? Play the “so-what” game, and don’t be afraid to push back. Really expand your thinking about what makes your brand truly special. Then capture that essence in a single brand story that will provide the foundation for your brand strategy and activation.

Also think hard about how your audience feels about your brand. What did you learn in your research, are there things you should change? What tactics or methods can you apply that will help your brand bring this community closer together? Integrate these ideas in your story work.

Which Platforms Allow You to Reach Your Community?

Here’s the part where you begin to strategically apply your story to your community in real time.

When it comes to digital platforms, there are tons of options available. TikTok is popular right now, but don’t assume it will work for your specific community. Audiences on TikTok are young and they skew toward pop culture—is that your audience? If it is, fabulous! But if not, keep looking.

If your audience is young or middle-aged professionals, LinkedIn will be the appropriate platform. Twitter is very oriented toward news and topical conversation; Instagram and YouTube have a broader appeal and offer lots of possibilities for paid advertising; and Facebook has an older, family-oriented audience. Other options include Slack, Clubhouse, Spectrum, NextDoor, and plenty more. Investigate them all.

Most community marketing requires that your brand be prominent on at least two of these platforms. This is where your work in story and research should pay off. In essence, you’re reminding your audience why they value your brand and inviting them to take a closer look at who you are. Focused, successful digital strategies take time and effort, but in the end they enlighten you, as the brand, as much as they enlighten your customers.

Where Are You Taking Your Community?

Once you’ve done the audience research, brand story work, and executed on your digital strategy, you’ll need to take your community somewhere. And I mean that literally!

Bringing people together is at the heart of community life. So all of this work must result in one thing: a public event or series of public events. These can be anything from a conference to a fair to an anniversary party celebrating your brand. The reason doesn’t actually matter, but plan something fun and give your community something to look forward to: free stuff, good deals, or a bit of entertainment.

If you don’t have the budget for a live event, don’t worry. During the pandemic, many marketing events took place online with great success. Webinars, free trainings, ask-me-anything sessions, live-streamed performances, and much more. Get creative and think of a way to bring your community to you.

The Takeaway

Investing in your audience with community marketing is how you expand your reputation by digging deeper and connecting with those who already buy from you. The point of all this, of course, is to highlight your brand in the minds of your customers as a way of getting them talking to each other about your brand. Once you do that, you’ll watch your brand story gain traction and start to move on its own, building trust, loyalty, and success anywhere it goes.

The post Reaching Real Communities with Digital Marketing appeared first on Business2Community.

That reluctance has now all but disappeared. Around £17bn work of luxury goods are sold online, equivalent to 8% of all sales worldwide.

The mobile phones most of us used 10 years ago bear no relation to the black slab portable touchscreen computers we carry around on which we can find and compare luxury items and everything else within seconds.

In a new report entitled ‘The Future of Luxury’ written by students of the International Master in Luxury Management (IMLUX) programme, 80% of sales are now “digitally influenced” compared with 45% just seven years ago.

What does this mean? On individuals’ buying journeys, four in five purchasers accessed “digital touchpoints” at least twice before purchasing a product or service. Brands have no control over some of those touchpoints – they are bloggers, influencers, and social media peers consumers look to for advice.

Luxury brands are investing much greater sums of money in these newer forms of marketing with the goal of increasing sales and forging meaningful online connections with more of their target demographic.

In this article, we reflect on the most successful approaches taken to digital marketing by luxury brands with a specific focus on their websites and their social media campaigns.

Search engine optimisation

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Established brands have an in-built advantage when people are searching for them or their best-known products online.

Take the examples of Pandora and Tiffany’s – two very successful brands.

For terms like “Pandora bracelets”, “Pandora charms”, “Tiffany engagement rings”, and “Tiffany’s necklaces”, both brands finish in first place in the organic (not paid for) search results on Google.

Neither company fell into the trap that many well-known firms do of relying on the power and recognizability of their brands to drive traffic to their sites.

Pandora’s keyword-driven SEO strategy and tightly-structured URLs result in them finishing first for non-brand-specific terms like “promise rings”, “earrings”, “bracelets” and “charms”. Likewise, Tiffany’s finishes first for “women jewelry”, “shop jewelry”, and “real pearls necklace”.

Your keyword strategy should target winning terms that align with your product range, but don’t depend on customers including your brand name in their search. This allows you to compete with other luxury brands and reach consumers who can afford your products but may not think of your brand when they are ready to buy a specific item.

Telling your brand story through great content

Google prefers sites that are consistently updated and added to, just like Pandora and Tiffany’s add to theirs with regular blog posts.

Ideally, much of your written content should be pillar content – content so thorough and generous with its information that others link to it.

Articles about your products, articles about the history of the company, articles providing visitors with the information they need to make an informed purchase. Share with visitors the reason your company exists as well as what it is that you do and why.

Video marketing also offers exciting opportunities. For example, a luxury tour operator may want to create extensively written articles about the destinations they take clients to – articles about a destination’s history, its finest restaurants, local opportunities to appreciate art, and more backed up with a 2-3 minute to immerse their visitors even more.

Whether text, imagery, or videos, extra value can be extracted from content again and again by promoting it via your social media channels and email newsletters.

Generate excitement for your products

Some brands want to sell online but others require further contact with a prospect before a sale takes place.

When someone visits a page where a sale can take place or when they can leave their contact details for follow-up, assume that this may be the last time you’ll ever see them.

Use persuasive text, beautiful images, and engaging videos to showcase your brand and explain why the product or service someone is interested in is the right choice. Back that up, if possible, with testimonials from customers and reviewers to show the visitor why others think your brand and what you sell was the right choice for them too. After all, part of any luxury brand’s appeal is “social proof”.

Apple may or may not be a luxury brand – the debate continues. However, it may just be a phone but the way they present the iPhone 13 Pro on their site is one of the reasons that many consider their products as top-of-the-range, beautiful, and luxurious.

Building your email list

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Consider every visitor as an opportunity to make a lasting connection by inviting them to subscribe to your email newsletter.

Email marketing delivers a very high return – up to 2,500%. Many companies use email marketing as an opportunity to send promotion after promotion to their subscribers but email marketing for luxury brands should be different. With all luxury products and services, part of the reason why people purchase them is that they’re subscribing to a lifestyle as well as enjoying the benefits of the product or service.

The emails your clients receive should look and feel just as much instinctively part of your company as any direct mail campaign you would send out. The email’s layout, choice of words (particularly in the subject line), and overall aesthetic should feel intrinsically part of your overall external communications and marcomms approach.

Creating a feeling of exclusivity

Early concerns that an online presence would somehow dilute the exclusivity of luxury products and services have proven to be unfounded. Some argue that the opposite may, in fact, be true.

If one of the functions of owning luxury products is to display status to others, the case could be made that owners of luxury products now have higher perceived status than ever before.

This is because the internet has greatly increased the public’s awareness of the quality of these products and their exclusivity of individual brands. This new visibility has created new demand for these products and services but, because the price they’re offered at is often an insurmountable barrier to entry for most, that demand remains unsatisfied. This lack of satisfaction creates a feedback loop where, over time, the perceived exclusivity increases.

For your actual customers, you can a feeling of exclusivity online through a mixture of:

• loyalty perks,
• concierge services (like those offered by luxury magazine SWM to its clients), and
• online private members groups.

If your company has the branch network to support it, combining the online and offline worlds by inviting your most important clients to events like launch parties where they can meet and interact with other like-minded advocates will further develop their existing loyalty and increase the probability of selling more often to this important cohort.

Attractive, functional UX

Consumers now demand that all companies’ websites are accessible on whatever device they’re using.

For a standard website, 55% of their traffic comes from mobile phones. People visiting the desktop version of a website stay 4 minutes and 50 seconds longer on a site than those visiting the mobile version.

Mobile users value ease of navigation around a website and they don’t expect to have to work particularly hard to find the information they want.

Luxury brand social media

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According to the Business of Fashion, luxury clients post twice as much as the average user, interact three times more, and consume five time as much content. Gen Z will be responsible for 45% of luxury brands’ sales in 2025 spending up to six hours of their weeks doing online shopping.

Visual social networks

Many luxury products are admired for their physical appearance as well as the materials they’re made from. Likewise, luxury service providers offer their clients moments and experiences they can share with their friends and followers.

Instagram offers brands the opportunity to tell their story through images and videos. You can encourage your followers and clients to share their experiences with other followers and clients through user-generated content to create a community.

Pinterest’s 460 million users are worth targeting for luxury brands.

Using social media to generate sales and website traffic

For luxury brands comfortable with the idea of selling their products and services via social media platforms, Facebook Ads can deliver highly targeted advertising to your key audiences which they can act upon immediately to order from you.

Social media offers all companies including luxury brands the opportunity to connect on a personal level with its new and future client base. While the vast majority of your content should not be nakedly commercial in that it’s there to drive new sales and traffic to your website, some of it should be.

While you address new and future clients on Facebook and Instagram, your company is a guest on a platform over which you have no control over how it works or the rules governing it. Encouraging social media followers to come to your site where you do have full control gives you the opportunity to capture their direct contact details either through newsletter subscription or when they purchase from you.

The post How to Do Digital Marketing for Luxury Brands appeared first on Business2Community.

WordPress page builders provide an easy way to make changes or customize your website without having to deal with technical aspects. Here are the five best drag and drop builders for WordPress.

Introduction: What is a WordPress Page Builder?

WordPress Page Builder is a plugin that enables you to create a website with a visual editor.

There are many different types of WordPress page builders, but the three most popular ones are Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi. Although in this article we will also cover a couple of more WordPress page builders including Visual Composer Website Builder & Themify Builder.

Why use a WordPress page builder?

When we start a blog, many of the beginners may have a hard time figuring out how to work the WordPress page's layout.

Most of the premium WordPress themes come with different page layouts. They're hard to customize for someone who doesn't know HTML and CSS very well. Hence using a visual page builder is the most optimum option.

This is why people often ask questions like: 'How can I use drag and drop functions in WordPress?' or 'Can I use an easy to use page builder that allows for using drag and drop elements?'

There are a lot of plugins for WordPress, and they all let you drag and drop in order to create pages. This means you can custom design your site without having to write any code at all.

Considering how many WordPress page builder plugins there are, we decided to compare a variety of them here in order to help you settle on one that suits your specific needs. Which won't permit any fretting.

We used the following criteria to rank these WordPress page builders: their ease-of-use, level of flexibility, and their design.

So let’s dive in without wasting any time -

Top 5 Best WordPress Page Builders for Designers & Developers

1. Elementor
2. Beaver Builder
3. Divi
4. Visual Composer Website Builder
5. Themify Builder

Elementor

Elementor is much, much more than just a WordPress plugin. Used by more than 6.5% of all the world’s websites, Elementor is the go-to platform for web creators looking to build a WordPress website, code-free.

Offering WordPress users an extensive free version, Elementor boasts all the necessary features needed to craft a stunning, comprehensive site.

The centerpiece of its platform, Elementor’s drag & drop editor offers users more than 90 widgets (including 20 designed for eCommerce websites). Additionally, users leverage more than 300 templates and make use of Elementor’s flagship theme, Hello.

Those looking to get up and running with a WordPress website as quickly as possible can opt for one of Elementor’s Full Site Kits.

Fully functioning and designer-made, Kits are complete WordPress websites that Elementor users can easily customize to fit their needs and brand guidelines. Once they’re done, all that’s left is to hit publish and...Voila, you’re up and running!

Kits are especially useful for SMB owners looking to go live with an online store with minimum hassle.
There are a number of dynamic eCommerce Kits to choose from.

Elementor’s subscription packages start at $49 a year.

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder is a premium plugin that helps you create pages in WordPress using a drag and drop interface. They're one of the best page builders on the market today, so your business should highly consider their service.

Its interface is designed with a walkthrough that makes it easy for novice users to get up and running.

Beaver Builder offers a live drag and drop interface. Seeing changes happen to your page in real-time, you'll be able to see all changes you're making on your site. Beaver builder also has the ability for users to click through

It comes with modules that let you insert anything you want, including sliders, backgrounds, carousels, content blocks, buttons, and much more.

It's easy to make a charming landing page for your website. There are at least 30 templates you can use to get going quickly and add your own personal touch.

The latest update includes support for the Gutenberg block editor, which means you don't have to worry--it will work perfectly.

Pricing starts at $ 99 for unlimited sites.

Divi

Divi is a drag and drop template that has a plugin that will help you generate pages in WordPress. It is very easy to use and has at least 20 template designs to suit different types of websites.

Like Beaver Builder, Divi Builder is a visual drag-and-drop page builder that features a WYSIWYG editor.

You can directly click on the page and start to edit your pages using a real-time preview of all the changes. You do not need to save to see a preview of your new design since you will be watching it at the same time.

Divi has at least 46 content modules that you can drag and drop anywhere on the layout. You can organize it by means of three types of sections, 20 types of rows and carry out the customization of each of the elements through the advanced settings.

With this tool, you will be able to create any design that you imagine in a personalized way in a few minutes. Also, you can save these designs if you want to use them in the future for your website. It also offers you the possibility of exporting them.

The Divi Builder plugin is basically the backbone of the Divi theme, making it work efficiently with any other WordPress theme.

The price is within $ 89 per year and you have a lifetime plan available.

Divi is a great WordPressBuilder option. Though lacking in certain respects (especially when compared with Elementor) Divi nevertheless boasts a powerful page builder with great possibilities for unlimited layouts. In addition to this, you will have at your disposal a large number of content modules that will offer you the possibility of generating any type of website you have in mind.

Visual Composer Website Builder

Visual Composer was one of the first WordPress page builders to come out. Its high-quality and incredibly user-friendly interface makes it perfect for freelance developers who want to save time when working with clients.

It is convenient to use, with it’s drag-and-drop builder, templates that are pre-made and content elements that can be chosen. Professional templates are available too.

The emergence of frontend editing tools has paved the way for many developers to design quality websites with ease. One such plugin is Divi and this article will explore how it can help you out. Unlike the other programs on our list, logo maker software lets you work with headers, footers and sidebars.

The WordPress Plugin has been designed to allow you to personalize the appearance of your site with elegant backgrounds, gradient stripes, video backgrounds, and much more. Column blocks in Grid systems are flexible and can be configured to your needs. Create layouts based on factors like columns, row space, column spacing, image width & alignment.

Visual Composer works with all WordPress themes, keeping your custom design in mind.

You also have ideal support for the new Gutenberg editor, Yoast SEO, and Google Fonts.

This tool was designed with professionals in mind, which is evident in the level of detail that they’ve put into building it. Things like color selection are important because they can help you use the rest of the design to create a memorable, pleasing experience for your customers.

Its price starts at $ 59 by acquiring a site license.

A visual Composer is a tool that inexperienced- or newbie website designers can use for editing their webpages, as it's easy to use and offers a lot of functions. By dragging and dropping some content blocks together, you'll be able to create eye-catching layouts with ease.

Themify Builder

With more than 300 WordPress themes at your disposal, Themify is one of the most popular stores on the web. All of these themes include a builder that uses WordPress's Content Management System. You can also download the Themify Page Builder plugin to build your own website with this tool.

This page builder is one of the easiest to use & while it feels intuitive, some of its features require you to install some separate WordPress plugins. Still, there are plenty of modules that can be used within the builder without needing additional plugins.

The plugin has at least 40 templates to choose from that can be used in various industries, including photography, restaurants, portfolios, gyms, and music.

You can create incredible landing pages in just seconds thanks to the single-click import and editing of designs.

Themify Builder has a live editor to make on-the-fly changes. You can edit your site right from the back end, or work on your pages using the live editor. Changes update automatically as you make them.

In addition to this, you also have designs ready to use on any of our pages

The price is within $ 39 with a pack of generator plugins. The main plugin is completely free.

The default WordPress editor can be hard to master and leaves a lot of room for error. This frustration often leads to users trying out other free alternatives like Themify Builder. It has a ton of features and is one of the most user-friendly builders we've tested, but it also costs money after the trial period ends.

Read more:

• Why You Should Not Use a Free WordPress Theme
• Best Cheap WordPress Hosting

The post 5 of the Best WordPress Page Builders For Better Design, Ease of Use & More appeared first on Business2Community.

If you’re considering a career in digital marketing, you’re in the right place. Read on to learn about the ideal skillsets, how you can get started, and more.

What makes a great digital marketer?

More than any particular degree or prior experience, there are core personality traits and soft skills that can predict a successful future in digital marketing.

Curiosity

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
-Albert Einstein

For me, this tops the list as the most important trait for digital marketers. As talked about by marketing giants like Seth Godin, a great digital marketer is naturally curious. They search for answers. They go beyond the superficial to dig deeper into data, customer mindsets, and brand offerings to discover valuable insights that frame opportunities, fuel strategies, and propel businesses forward.

Love for lifelong learning

It’s going to be a common theme, but digital marketing is a dynamic field. To keep up, you’ll have to be dedicated to continuous learning. At Stryve, each team member is given an education fund to make this happen. With that, we’re encouraged to attend conferences, enroll in programs, and pick up the latest books to expand our knowledge and stay on the cutting edge.

Attention to detail

Just one typo in your ad copy can make the most professional ad look amateur. Just one transposition error on a report can make the data tell a completely different story. Attention to detail is critical. While digital marketers may have the luxury of being able to update campaigns and fix the majority of errors on the fly, it takes a sharp eye to catch these mistakes in order to fix them.

Project & people management

Digital marketers need to be able to stay on top of things—budgets, timelines, due dates, scope, team members, and, oh yeah…the actual work itself. Whether you’re executing on a website, a PPC campaign, or a content marketing piece, you’ll likely be working with a variety of people–copywriters, graphic designers, developers, salespeople–to get your project to the finish line. You’re responsible for setting them up for success, so you better be organized and clear in your directions.

Communication skills

That brings us to communication. From communicating with customers and your internal team to communicating the benefits of a product and the values of a brand, communication is at the core of digital marketing.

What is a full-stack digital marketer?

First coined by Marcelo Calbuccia in 2013, a full-stack digital marketer is someone who is proficient at many or most aspects of digital marketing. They can launch a PPC campaign, create a content marketing strategy, then quickly pivot to wireframing a website all in a day’s work. Basically, they can do it all without specializing in any one thing.

Similar to the full-stack marketer is the “T-shaped” marketer, which is someone with a very deep understanding of one skillset, such as SEM, and then a general understanding of everything else.

Both of these types of marketers thrive in start-ups and SMBs where they’re either the lone marketer or part of a very small team. To make up for small headcounts, they wear several different hats to fuel the growth of the business.

How do I become a full-stack marketer?

At the core of a full-stack digital marketer is a person who is technical, strategic, analytical, and creative. Armed with these skills and a commitment to continuous learning, they’re unafraid of diving into uncharted waters and figuring out how to swim to ensure their work doesn’t sink.

At Stryve, we take the full-stack approach. With each employee possessing a broad skill set and a knack for figuring things out, we’re able to work efficiently and keep our project teams lean. With that, we never have too many cooks in the kitchen.

Staying on top of everything in digital marketing is pretty hard, to say the least. That’s why our team of digital marketers depends on each other to share tips and tricks as we move from one project to the next. We communicate our wins and losses so others can benefit from our own experiences. We recommend books, podcasts, and other resources. Keeping up with an always-changing industry is a lot easier when you approach it this way.

Is digital marketing hard?

Sure, digital marketing can be hard at times. Recently, one of the biggest challenges has been the move towards more privacy regulations that limit our access to third-party data and view of user activity, such as the iOS 15 email privacy feature. Meanwhile, the expectations of digital marketing have not changed, with stakeholders still expecting the same level of performance and reporting.

Other than regulatory changes, unpredictable technology means that digital marketing is constantly changing, often with no heads up.

Is digital marketing a stressful job?

I won’t lie to you. There are definitely days where I feel like I’m sprinting from one thing to the next with no time to catch my breath. Sometimes I feel totally overwhelmed by just how much there is to know about digital marketing. Sometimes it seems like as soon as I get comfortable with a platform, I’ll log in to find it’s been completely redesigned and I don’t know where anything is anymore. And sometimes I’ll conquer a huge challenge and it makes it all worthwhile.

Digital marketing can definitely be stressful. It can be challenging and unpredictable but the wins are extremely rewarding. The days usually speed by as I put my analytical and creative brain hemispheres to work solving new and novel challenges. If you’re a natural problem solver, then digital marketing might be for you.

Is digital marketing a good career?

If being a digital nomad appeals to you, there are few better careers than digital marketing. With just a laptop and the internet, you can work from anywhere in the world.

But what about the impending threat of robots taking all our jobs? While we’re seeing a big increase in the utilization of AI in digital marketing, it definitely won’t be replacing us humans any time soon. In fact, we depend on technology and AI to bring efficiency while we bring the empathy, creativity, and humanization that’s needed to connect with consumers. For the foreseeable future at least, robots are on our side.

Of course, a good career usually involves good compensation. To find out what digital marketers earn for their efforts, try researching on LinkedIn Salary or Glassdoor as rates can vary by location, title, industry, and company.

Is digital marketing a good career for introverts?

Absolutely! Fellow introvert checking in and I can say that digital marketing has been a very satisfying career. Now, you will need to interact with people on occasion, especially as your responsibilities grow, but it’s balanced with plenty of independent work. Personally, I find that introverts excel in digital marketing, due to their excellent listening skills, empathy, curiosity, and attention to detail. With more and more companies going 100% remote, the talents of introverts have shined brighter, as WFH situations have reduced interruptions and face time while giving introverts the quiet they crave.

What’s it like working at a digital marketing agency?

If you’re the kind of person who thinks that variety is the spice of life, agency life may be the perfect fit.

At an agency, you’ll work with a revolving door of clients spanning across different industries. Juggling several projects at once, no two days are the same. There are new faces, new objectives, new audiences, new tactics. Even if your clients stick around for years under a retainer, that extended relationship will get deeper over time and reveal new opportunities along the way. If you get tired of the same thing day in and day out, you’ll never be bored at an agency.

Variety isn’t always a good thing, though. With so many clients and projects on the go at once, navigating priorities is a never-ending battle. To each of your clients, they’re the most important, so you’ll have to manage workloads and deadlines with conflicting priorities.

You’ll also need to be highly adaptable, using different software and platforms depending on your client’s workflows. One client might be using Trello to project manage, one might be using Jira, and one might be on Asana. Now apply this to everything: CRMs, website platforms, communication platforms, etc. If learning new technology is difficult for you, you will struggle at an agency.

How can I start a career in digital marketing?

Digital marketing is one of the most accessible careers to get started in. You can find tons and tons of free resources online that will introduce you to the basics of digital marketing. You can also get first-hand experience without spending much money at all. Here are some things that will give you a great foundation to build on:

• Creating a website or blog and learning how to track performance with Google Analytics
• Creating a podcast or YouTube channel and growing your audience
• Volunteering to run PPC campaigns for a local business
• Getting certifications from Google Ads, Hubspot, Moz, etc.

How can I stand out when applying for a digital marketing job?

Start with a solid foundation–a well-designed resume and well-written cover letter. I know cover letters are falling out of fashion, but we read every single one. They give great insight into the applicant’s personality (and if it doesn’t, it should!), writing style, and command of the language. On that note, please, please use a tool like Grammarly to avoid making typos! Nothing takes down a resume quite like, “strong attention to detal.”

Within your cover letter and resume, show us how you’re all the things that make a great digital marketer. Even if you’re fresh out of school with no experience, or transitioning from a totally different career, there are plenty of ways to show how you’d be a great fit. Load up on the free courses mentioned in the previous section. Turn your hobbies into something you can market online. Volunteer for a non-profit. Many of us here at Stryve had side hustles and passion projects that gave us an opportunity to practice digital marketing even before we started working in the field.

If you’ve got the basics down but you really want to go that extra mile you can do something creative like the applicants who:

• Made us a TikTok about why they’d be a great fit
• Made a video cover letter
• Sent us a pizza after their interview (referencing our job posting about loving pizza)

While these things helped the candidates get their feet in the door, pizza isn’t going to make up for a resume full of typos.

Digital marketing is in demand

I don’t think digital marketing has ever been more in demand. At the time of writing this, we’re nearly 2 years into the pandemic which has kicked off a new era of digital transformation. Businesses that had previously shrugged off digital marketing are now wholeheartedly embracing it. There has been a growing shift towards self-directed research–even in B2B–with salespeople the very last touchpoint (if at all) in the buyer’s journey, rather than the gatekeeper of it.

The pandemic has also pushed people to reevaluate their careers and lifestyle. If you’re looking for something fast-paced but stable, stressful but rewarding, demanding but flexible, digital marketing might be exactly what you’re looking for.

The post Everything You Wanted to Know About a Career in Digital Marketing appeared first on Business2Community.

Social media marketing, for example, offers a fabulous opportunity to develop a targeted presence economically. However, a company must understand where their most likely clients spend their time, how they communicate, their likes and dislikes, and problems they hope to solve.

What is a Customer Profile?

A customer profile describes your prospective and current customers’ buying behaviors, demographics, interests, everyday activities, and pain points that influence their purchasing decisions. By creating and adjusting their consumer profiles, marketers can adapt their strategies and campaigns to focus on similar customers.

Building from your existing data, you should begin to create a clear image of the attributes and behaviors of prospective customers that will guide your future marketing strategies.

How Does a Customer Profile Differ from a Buyer Persona?

A Buyer Persona is a generally fictionalized version of the group of buyers that you might hope to target, often developed before your products have reached the market.

On the other hand, a customer profile is a data-driven analysis of past successful conversions, identifying the common psychographic characteristics that drove their decisions to buy. These are the customer profiling characteristics that influence how and where your product advertising and brand-building should focus.

Advantages of an Effective Customer Profile

Your customer profile should be specific. Boiling down your profile to a demographic that targets billions of people leaves you with virtually no direction. More detailed criteria that focus on the primary target allows you to:

• Identify prospects that are most likely to convert
• Reduce marketing and acquisition costs per conversion
• Focus better on individual buyers for bot sales and continuing support
• Generate more fact-based rather than speculative decisions
• Define eCommerce and social media strategies that take your message where your most likely customers are hanging out.

Building Your Customer Profile

Accumulating sufficient data from existing customers to fine-tune a compelling customer profile is the main challenge. Here are some steps to help create a profile that works:

1. Review specific details with your Sales Team to find some common characteristics they may have noted in successful sales situations. How did those customers arrive at the point of buying your products?
2. Survey past clients. Specify common characteristics from sales data, customer reviews, and feedback. Determine distinct age groups, gender, and means of contact. Were they buying from a desktop or mobile device, for example?
3. Identify which online forums are most important for your customer base.
4. Who are your customers’ prominent influencers?
5. Where was the purchase originated? Hopefully, you can identify by city, state, country, and continent to identify trends.
6. Investigate your industry and competitors, seeking details about the specific places and methods where their marketing efforts are concentrated.

What’s Next with Customer Data Profiling

With more resources than ever to develop a brand and create a lasting presence, effective enterprises know that customer data profiling is an essential tool for success. While businesses would simply purchase “broadside” advertising through TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines in the past, marketers today can create very specific content in online locations frequented by individuals who are most likely to purchase your products or services.

Companies that are not fully aware of the characteristics and habits of their most likely customers are destined to flounder as the competition moves ahead. Take the time to unearth the data and tools that will help to define your customers, and create your strategy to meet the demand precisely where it exists.

The post was originally published here.

The post Understanding Your Target Customer: Creating a Customer Profile appeared first on Business2Community.

If you were anywhere near the Internet, you most likely saw that Facebook Inc. was rebranded as Meta.

I know what you’re thinking. “Big deal, they changed their name. It was probably a PR move to distract people from all the recent bad press and whistleblower leaks.”

You might be onto something, but this is far more than slapping a new label on the same old thing. This marks Facebook’s official transformation from being a social media company to becoming a metaverse company. It’s significant.

Even if you weren’t able to watch the 77-minute introduction of Meta, you likely saw some pretty funny memes circulating the web. This keynote from Zuckerberg highlights his commitment to the metaverse and his vision for the new brand. Meta is all in on the metaverse and that’s no joke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP1h2Hzgyzg

But what is the metaverse? Who’s involved and why should you care? Let’s get started.

What is the metaverse?

It’s a simple question that right now doesn’t have a simple answer. As I write this blog in November 2021, the metaverse is an aspirational term for a future, more tangible digital world.

The term “metaverse” can be traced back to Neal Stephenson’s 1992 Sci-fi novel Snow Crash. Stephenson describes the metaverse as a collective virtual space that serves as a digital reality where all humans would simultaneously co-exist. This concept is furthered in Ernest Clines’ 2011 novel (and 2018 film of the same name) Ready Player One.

Zuckerberg speaks more to how this space would feel as a social environment. The metaverse will be “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience—not just looking at it”. A crucial part of Meta’s metaverse (try saying that 10 times fast) is presence– feeling as though you’re actually there with another person or in another place.

So while there is no universal definition, the metaverse has begun to take shape through shared understandings and the feelings of shared space.

What’s changed?

With the concept of the metaverse having been around for over 30 years, why should you believe now’s the time it’ll actually take shape? How are things different today than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago? What’s changed?

Big business backing

It’s become clear that businesses are taking the metaverse seriously with Meta, Microsoft, Netflix, and other prominent global businesses all wanting a piece of the action. This is why Facebook Inc’s official name change is so significant. It’s one thing to have Oculus headsets and some ongoing R&D in the virtual space, but it’s another thing to rebrand with the metaverse as your north star. With tech, software, and consumer brands pouring money and resources into the metaverse’s development, it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing the resulting changes.

Technological advances

Understandably, Stephenson’s description of the metaverse in Snow Crash must’ve felt lightyears away. In 1992 people were still listening to music on their fancy new Sony Discman. Y2K was barely on the horizon. A shared digital space where everyone would live and interact with one another was total science fiction.

In 2021, though, we’ve already seen a number of sci-fi gadgets become a reality. VR and AR spaces are real. Virtual Reality headsets aren’t only available, they’re actually somewhat affordable. Tech has come a long way in the last few decades and while we won’t see the fully actualized metaverse for years, it doesn’t mean new innovations, services, and experiences won’t be created in the meantime.

An increase in remote experiences

When the pandemic began in March 2020, we were forced to adapt to remote working and digital ways of socializing. For the last year and a half, it’s felt like everything’s been online.

At Stryve, remote work hasn’t resulted in any sort of regression in productivity. The work gets done, but the lack of in-person interactions has made integrating new team members and building connections more difficult. I can speak to this personally. I joined the team over eight months ago and I’ve only met my coworkers twice. Thanks, COVID.

But what if these embodied experiences that Zuckerberg foresees become reality? A day where we physically feel like we’re in the same space. A day where we can virtually interact in the same ways we would in person at the office, at school, at a sporting event, etc. This thought would’ve seemed crazy in 2018, but after the last year and a half of remote life, I can’t be the only one hoping for it.

Why should marketers care?

As we’ve talked about many times in our blogs, the best marketers never stop learning and exploring new possibilities in the field. When Stryve was founded, the concept of digital and social media marketing was still in its infancy. A lot of companies struggled to see the business potential of platforms like Facebook. Fast forward 13 years and anyone not utilizing some sort of social media strategy is a dinosaur. Life comes at you fast.

If you don’t innovate or continuously explore future possible growth areas, you could be missing out on huge opportunities.

NFT’s, Gaming, and Virtual Experiences

While some brands take the “wait-and-see” approach to these new spaces, others are diving right in. Brands like The Toronto Raptors, Coca-Cola, Disney, and AS Roma have already begun leveraging NFTs to provide their customers access to innovative experiences, content, and exclusive offers. Have no clue what NFTs are or how they work? Don’t worry, here’s a guide to NFTs.

We’ve also seen glimpses of the metaverse in the gaming space. Platforms like Roblox and online games like Fortnite are expanding into other entertainment, social, and e-commerce realms, going as far as hosting virtual concerts for artists like Travis Scott and Ariana Grande with millions of ‘attendees’ around the world.

On Roblox, brands like Gucci, Vans, and Warner Bros. have created interactive virtual experiences. Roblox VP of Brand Partnerships, Christina Wootton has gone on the record saying, “the metaverse is bigger than gaming, we’re ushering in this new category of human co-experience. It’s an immersive place where people can come and connect with one another and have shared virtual experiences. They can do things together, such as work, learn, play, shop, and experience entertainment.”

If you’re in marketing, how could these opportunities not excite you?

Like Rome, the metaverse won’t be built in a day. These technologies will take time to develop, perfect, regulate, and catch on. But as we’ve learned through the pandemic, the world can change in the blink of an eye. Incorporating the metaverse may not be in your plans come January 2022, but these virtual spaces are evolving and with them comes untapped potential.

Read More:

• Best Metaverse Crypto Coins
• Best Metaverse Real Estate Projects – How to Buy Real Estate & Land in the Metaverse
• Best Metaverse NFT Projects

The post A Beginner’s Guide to the Metaverse appeared first on Business2Community.

This kind of spending means crowded ad platforms, which makes it more difficult to stand out.

If your business has a five- or six-figure digital advertising budget, you can put more money behind campaigns. But this is exactly what has caused online ad prices to increase by an average of 45% on Google and Facebook (and up to 1000% in some sectors).

If you don’t have those kinds of resources or would rather not continually increase spending, you need to think outside the box.

In this article, we’ll talk about some less saturated digital advertising strategies you can use to get ahead. We’ll also show you what it takes to create advertising that gets people to act.

Advertising in the current landscape

To steal customers away from competitors without throwing endless amounts of money at major advertising platforms, work smarter, not harder.

This means relying on creativity and quality.

It also means leveraging data and intent to optimize your advertising better.

Before you begin using tactics to hit your goals, tap into your analytics and search data. Understand how users interact with your pages and ask yourself:

• Which pages get the most traffic?
• Where do visitors spend the most time?
• Which actions do visitors take?
• Which terms are people using to search for your products?

Use this information to identify what interests your audience.

Dig into your sales data too. Detail the customer demographics that purchase certain products or services. This will help you build a picture of the target audience that will underpin your digital advertising strategy.

It will also ensure you’re not “spraying and praying” with campaigns—and you’re not wasting your budget.

Next, look at the current state of your market:

• Who’s interested in your product or services?
• How many of them are likely to buy?
• Who are your competitors?
• What do their advertising strategies look like (i.e. What types of ads are they running, and on which platforms?)

This is most likely covering old ground, but it helps to know that your audience and market position remain relevant before investing in something that may fall flat.

By conducting competitive research, you can spot new opportunities to grab audience share.

For example, instead of bidding on the same terms as rival platform Asana, which will probably be more expensive, monday.com bids on its competitor’s name:

Because of lower competition, competitor brand names tend to be cheaper. Monday.com can also gain brand awareness and competitive advantage by appearing in front of a relevant audience.

Putting more constraints on your creativity are two significant challenges:

1. Ad blockers

Research shows that over 42% of internet users worldwide now use ad blockers to reduce how much advertising they see.

Men tend to use ad blockers more than women, and they’re most popular among men aged 16-34.

Consider how ad blocking usage may impact reaching your target audience.

It’s also important to consider why people decide to use ad blockers:

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While there’s nothing you can do about there being too many ads on the internet, ad irrelevance, intrusiveness, and size are all elements to consider.

Use what you know about your audience to create relevant ads, but proceed with caution.

Popup ads, full-screen mobile ads, and auto-playing and prestitial video ads, for example, all have high disapproval ratings from users, pushing them towards using ad blockers.

2. User privacy

The rollout of GDPR and anti-cookie policies by major browsers have impacted real-time bidding platforms and cookie-reliant advertising methods.

Mobile analysts say that fewer than one in three users are likely to grant permission, while 96% of U.S. users opted out of app tracking in the iOS 14.5 update.

To reach privacy-focused users, performance marketing platforms recommend that advertisers use contextual advertising, first-party data, and consent-based targeting.

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What these challenges make clear is that your advertising needs to do three things:

1. Grab attention

2. Build trust

3. Offer value

Let’s look at four digital advertising strategies to help you achieve these aims.

Use content advertising to fight rising costs

The concept of content advertising is a relatively new one. Influencer Marketing defines it as:

“…creating content that will be promoted through paid distribution channels like sponsored placements, advertisements, and pay-per-click campaigns. Its primary focus is to create brand awareness by putting your content in front of an audience that will find it engaging or compelling, aka your target audience.”

Content advertising taps into the benefits of content marketing to provide consumers with interesting, valuable resources that build trust in a brand. Except it does it without relying on organic search engine optimization to make an impact.

The idea is to create a piece of content that’s so relevant to your audience that they don’t care how it’s promoted. They just want to consume it.

In this sense, it’s indistinguishable from organic content. It also shouldn’t be confused with native ads, which rely on consumers being unable to work out which content is promoted and which is organic.

For example, HubSpot used content advertising to promote a free guide on brand building to a targeted audience on Facebook:

This ad mirrors the look and feel of the content Hubspot regularly posts on its timeline, meaning people don’t feel they’re being blatantly advertised to:

Proquo promoted its brand strategy guide using Google Ads to build brand awareness by targeting top of the funnel search terms such as “brand marketing guide”:

Like content marketing assets, both brands aim to capture attention and gain conversions on the strength of the content.

An industry report or “ultimate” guide offers more to the target audience than a general “top tips” blog post. It’s also better suited to those in the brand awareness stage than an ad offering a product tour or free trial.

What both do differently from typical content marketing pieces is speed up lead generation by directing prospects to a landing page to capture details. Here’s Proquo’s lead generation landing page:

By doing this, they’re able to progress prospects through the funnel more quickly, reducing cost per acquisition.

Another great use of content advertising can be found in email marketing. This involves securing a placement in newsletters with a focused audience.

Take Really Good Emails, which often link to content created by others:

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Because subscribers trust content recommended by Really Good Emails, they’re more likely to click on a link, giving brands the chance to access new markets.

The content marketing asset doesn’t have to be produced specifically for advertising.

Here’s what WordStream’s Dan Shewan had to say about an Adwords (now Google Ads) guide it advertised on Facebook:
“We didn’t create this guide specifically to promote it on Facebook. Instead, we took some original content and turned it into a downloadable guide, then promoted it. In the end, it doesn’t matter if content is made just for a certain campaign or repurposed […] what matters is having a clear business goal for each campaign and properly targeting your audience.”
Repurposing can help you minimize the time, effort, and money you spend creating content for ads and achieve some quick wins.

It also lets you minimize risk. If a piece of content has already been well-received by your target audience, there’s every chance it will go down well with new audiences.

Here are some tips for getting started with content advertising:

• Start with repurposing. Look at past marketing campaigns to identify successful content and test it with target audiences.
• Identify successful brands or industry leaders with a similar target audience and approach them about paid placements.
• Ensure content is relevant to your conversion funnel. For example, in the awareness stage use how-to guides, whitepapers, explainer videos, etc. In the consideration stage, use demo videos, webinars, free trials, etc.
• Above all else, ensure content delivers value.

Leverage Performance PR to build trust with cold traffic

Performance PR taps into an undisputed fact of SEO content marketing: backlinks are best.

It works by getting your site links featured on reputable publications or in influencer content that is typically hard to obtain. And those links can have a powerful impact on your industry reputation and web traffic.

A link on a popular website immediately puts your brand in front of a large audience, giving you access to cold traffic. The simple act of being mentioned on that website will also raise your profile.

Let’s look at a couple of examples.

Databricks

This Entrepreneur post on indispensable skills for data scientists is written by a team member at Databricks:

The fact that the content is featured on an established site like Entrepreneur indicates that it’s trustworthy.

That Databricks is contributing to Entrepreneur shows they know their stuff. The tips are valuable and intrigue the target audience to find out more about what they offer. The included link to their site makes that journey easy.

Kajabi

In this example, Promotion PR overlaps with influencer marketing.

By having its product reviewed and linked to by industry influencer Lane Sebring, Kajabi has raised the profile of its product.

With studies showing as many as 92% of consumers trust an influencer more than an advertisement or traditional celebrity endorsement, this type of PR can have a more positive impact on Kajabi’s product than a typical display ad.

For fans of Lane’s content, his mention of Kajabi instantly makes it worthwhile. For someone stumbling across this content for the first time, Lane’s online following tells them that his opinion holds weight and the review is worth listening to. By signing up through Lane’s link, viewers can also grab a free trial and bonus templates.

But even without clicks, these links are working hard for their brands.

This is because high-quality backlinks (i.e. those from sites with a high domain rating) strongly correlate with higher rankings.

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And the more of them your website has, the higher it will rank in search engines, giving you more traffic.

Additionally, high authority backlinks help to improve your Domain Authority and search presence.

For your advertising spend, you’re getting paid benefits and a boost to your search engine marketing campaigns. You’re also getting your brand in places where it’s not competing head-to-head with the competition.

And while you can share content across your own social channels or in newsletters, promotion is handled by the source. This gives your product or service a wide reach without having to invest in organic or paid content to promote it.

Promotion PR is built on relationships

Promotion PR thrives on the links you forge with agencies, publishers, and journalists.

You can build PR relationships by researching industry publications and influencers for paid PR opportunities and establishing long-term working connections.

Make sure to keep budget in mind; the more money you have to spend, the more coverage you get. The best way to approach it is to start with a couple of promotions or influencers and measure results. Then, grow your campaign.

Before committing to a publication or influencer, find out about their reach. What size audience can they offer you? Also, ask to see case studies and discover what they’ve been able to do for similar brands.

The other option is to partner with a PR agency. This is likely to be more beneficial if you want to appear in large publications.

Agencies like GR0, for example, can acquire links in publications like the New York Times, Yahoo.com, and Forbes.

This kind of exposure can be hard to get on your own. It can also scale credibility quickly. If you’re a startup looking to make an immediate splash or a brand looking to grow visibility, teaming with an agency will make all the difference.

Embrace programmatic advertising

In a world where more people are blocking ads, programmatic advertising is table stakes.

Acuity Ads defines programmatic advertising as:

“…the automated buying and selling of online advertising.

“This automation makes transactions efficient and more effective, streamlining the process and consolidating your digital advertising efforts in one technology platform.”

Marketing Week adds a bit more context:

“Put simply, brands or agencies use a demand-side platform (DSP) to decide which impressions to buy and how much to pay for them, while publishers use a supply-side platform (SSP) to sell ad space to brands. These two platforms are then matched up in real time.”

It’s all about using tech and consumer data to serve people targeted ads in the right place, at the right time.

This guarantees impressions and allows you to scale at volume to reach audiences across the internet.

Take The Economist. To tempt curious buyers into trying its publication, it tapped into its subscriber data to identify relevant and engaging content to deliver through retargeting. This included web and app usage and reader preferences.

Using this data, it created audience segments for seven areas:

1. Finance
2. Economics
3. Politics
4. Careers
5. Technology
6. Good deeds
7. Social justice

It then built lookalike audiences from these segments, with each receiving ads tailored to their preferences. Someone interested in politics, for example, would see banner ads related to a recent story on politics.

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From more than 60 targeted ad versions, The Economist generated 650,000 prospects. 3.6 million people took action after seeing the ads. And the campaign return on investment was 10:1 on a £1.2 million budget.

In terms of sentiment, awareness grew by 64%, consideration by 22% and “willingness to recommend” by 10%.

How to use programmatic advertising to reach your target audience

For programmatic advertising to work effectively and efficiently, you need:

1. The right data

2. The right model

3. Continual tracking

1. Use the right data

Programmatic advertising is only as good as the data you have to work from. Advertisers will have three tiers of data to inform their programmatic marketing strategy.

• First-party data: The data advertisers hold on their customers
• Second-party data: The data collected and shared by someone else, like an agency (often used when there isn’t enough first-party data on a segment)
• Third-party data: The data sold to the advertiser by an external data collection source (often used when targeting a new segment you don’t have any data on)

2. Find the right model

The tech you use to buy programmatically is key in making an impact.

The most common method is going through an agency and using a DSP to buy advertising with the help of automation.

Another option is to run programmatic in-house. According to Bannerflow, more brands are shifting towards this method to improve transparency.

“…bringing programmatic buying in-house means brands have increased transparency across the whole process. This helps businesses to heighten the effectiveness of campaigns by improving reach, lowering ad spend and increasing efficiency.

Programmatic advertising has established itself as a key digital marketing tool across the industry. How effective programmatic can be in terms of efficient targeting at scale helps brands to quickly identify where ad spend needs to be weighted. This can help to explain why many businesses across the world are choosing to create capacity to handle this effort internally.”

In theory, buying programmatic can be done with access to a DSP and a credit card. But it’s a big step to take.

If you’re new to programmatic marketing, start by partnering with a reputable agency. This will allow you to hit the ground running with your advertising.

Transition to an in-house programmatic team can be done gradually as you build up an understanding of what programmatic entails.

3. Continual tracking

Whether you run your programmatic advertising or have an agency work on your behalf, ensure you’re on top of your campaigns.

Pair real-time analytics with qualitative data gathered from customer surveys and sales conversations to deliver the right mix of advertising for your audience.

Measure the success of campaigns closely from start to finish, tweaking copy, creative and audience settings and running continued A/B tests where required. This will help to reduce wasted spend and give you the best possible ROI.

Experiment with new and emerging platforms and channels

Everyone fights for supremacy over high-value keywords on Facebook and Google Ads. You need to stand out by trying something new.

By experimenting and testing emerging platforms, you can access an untapped market at a fraction of the cost of the more established players.

For example, Reddit, which has long been notoriously hostile towards ads, has proven to be successful for several brands.

Duracell received more than 250 million impressions and a 16.3% increase in brand awareness from ads on the platform.

And Woodchuck Hard Cider’s promoted post gained over 20 million impressions and over 5,000 comments, giving the company its highest sales month for seven years:

Because emerging platforms like Reddit are less saturated than Facebook and Instagram, CPMs and CPCs are lower, meaning you get more bang for your advertising buck.

This was proven in experiments run by Agorapulse. When comparing Reddit to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, impressions and clicks were higher and CPC was lower on Reddit.

So, which emerging platforms should you have your eye on?

According to EmberTribe, these are the current up-and-coming players:

• Twitch
• Spotify
• Hulu
• RevContent
• Pandora
• TikTok
• Snapchat
• BuySellAds
• Reddit
• Quora

Not all of these platforms will be well suited to your brand (BuySellAds, for instance, is primarily focused on SaaS tech rather than consumer products).

Therefore, it’s important to lay solid foundations before adding anything new to your advertising strategy.

Here are some best practices to help you do this:

1. Assess the strength of each platform or channel

Try to understand which audiences use these platforms and why. To find which platforms are worth a closer look, ask:

• Who is the audience?
• What market penetration does the platform or channel have?
• What sort of behaviour does it create?
• What is the use case?

2. Find out if the platform or channel fits with your core audience

How do your audience’s habits and preferences fit with the general demographics and user behavior of the platform or channel?

The channels with the most overlap between your audience and the new audience are where you’ll find the best success for your ads.

3. Ensure the platform or channel supports your business objectives

Any new addition to your digital advertising strategy must tie into your goals.

For example, if your goal is to reach more people, digital audio streaming platforms like Spotify or Pandora can help you meet that goal. However, if your goal is to foster loyalty, a more community-based platform like Reddit or Quora may be better suited.

Assess the strengths and weaknesses of each platform independently to see how it can help fulfill your aims.

4. Check that the platform or channel is a good fit stylistically

Any platform or channel that you choose is a reflection of your brand. You need to engage your audience in ways that fit with how they use their channels.

Look at whether your tone, voice, and creative direction fit with how organic content is consumed.

Will you need to adapt your creative guidelines to suit the audience and specific ad placements? This may require additional resources to produce the right type of creative. You’ll then need to decide whether this is worth it for the audience you can access.

5. Start small and build

It’s hard to tell how successful a new platform will be until the data starts rolling in. Therefore, it’s best to play it safe. To get started:

• Look at what successful brands are doing with their ads and see how you can adapt them to your campaigns
• Test messaging that performed well on other ad platforms to see how well it works on an emerging channel
• Move some budget over from channels with diminishing returns
• Once you know the new channel is working well, move more budget over

What great ad copy and creative looks like

Promotion PR aside, the success of your digital advertising strategy comes down to the strength of your creative.

As well as cutting through the noise and grabbing attention, great advertising must generate strong brand recall while conveying a message that people can remember.

In other words, a person must be able to remember who you are and what you said. Or as advertising pioneer Bill Bernbach said:

“Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.”

A good example of this is Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign. Those three words don’t belong to Nike, but most people remember them as being related to Nike’s motivational campaign.

According to MetrixLab, who conducted “numerous advertising meta-analyses across more than 20 different verticals, and in every major region globally,” 12 themes are most common in the strongest digital ad creative:

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Let’s look at some examples of brands that hit these themes to inspire your ad creation.

1. Adobe

Abobe’s display ad combines eye-catching imagery with simple copy:

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By splitting the photo to look like a before and after, Adobe shows how its software can transform a photo in the simplest way possible.

The copy serves as a call to action that resonates with the brand’s target audience of creatives, including designers, graphic designers, and video editors.

Images grab attention. Use them to do the heavy lifting in your ads.

2. Disney+

Disney+ uses evocative imagery and an enticing CTA to inspire action:

The copy reinforces this: “Stream the best stories in the world”.

The ad is then capped off with an offer for users to start a free trial, eliminating risk in the minds of undecided customers while rewarding those looking for a good deal.

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s social media customer story video uses social proof to sell its Sales Navigator feature:

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With 79% of people saying they trust reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family, LinkedIn drives home their credibility by using real people in videos.

The video itself uses subtitles. As many as 69% of people view videos with the sound off. Adding captions to your social media ads can capture and keep attention, no matter where your audience is viewing it.

The copy is short and sweet, and the CTA is clear, allowing viewers to learn more without leaving Instagram.

4. Urban Decay

Urban Decay’s ad is another example of combining striking product imagery and clever copy to grab attention with display advertising:

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The ad is in keeping with the brand’s edgy marketing and tone of voice, ensuring that it appeals to the right audience of young, beauty-conscious individuals.

The copy says a lot in a few words, using the imagery of “honey” to express the indulgence of the product.

When creating ads, stay true to your brand and audience. Your ads are what entice people, but it’s what you do after that turns them into customers. Your ads should be in keeping with how you present yourself online and offline.

5. Todd Brown Marketing

This split-screen style Facebook ad is proof that advertising isn’t all about big-budget creative:

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The split-screen design tells a simple story: using this system, marketers can take prospects from cold to hot. This works well with social media advertising, where getting your point across quickly is important to sustain interest.

They’ve also leaned on short, benefit-driven copy. To compel your target audience, show them how you can make their lives easier and do it quickly.

6. Mailchimp

Mailchimp’s search ads increase the potential of its ad by using sitelinks.

Sitelinks appear at the foot of Google Ads and can be used to segment the searchers in SERPs, sending targeted traffic to your landing pages and increasing conversions.

Mailchimp’s ad copy also leads with benefits. It calls out ways to make the customers’ lives easier, like the ease of sending emails and creating the perfect landing page.

Like Disney+, the word “free” is used several times to eliminate risk and inviting users off the fence.

Whatever kind of ad you’re running for digital advertising campaigns, you’ll be well served by following advertising industry legend Leo Burnett’s advice:

“Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.”

Conclusion

As ad spend grows in the coming years, competing on major platforms will become harder for small and large brands alike.

Experimenting with different strategies and running ad campaigns on less saturated platforms will allow you to maintain your competitive edge without having to rely on money as the dominant factor.

Test some of the strategies, channels and platforms we’ve covered in this article. Start small and measure results. As the data rolls in, you’ll begin to see where’s best to delegate your resources.

Most importantly, create ads and content that deliver value. As more consumers take charge of what they see online, advertising that helps prospects solve problems or achieve their aims is what will win.

Read more:

• 5 of the Biggest and Still the Best Online Advertising Methods
• Top 9 SEO Marketing Tools

The post How to Craft a Digital Advertising Strategy That Combats Rising Costs and Captures New Customers appeared first on Business2Community.

An expert can do many different things for you, including setting up conversion tracking or analyzing data from previous campaigns. As Peter Kent, the author of PPC For Dummies and PPC Expert Witness points out, the right PPC expert is worth their weight in gold when it comes to getting results.

8 Important Steps to Gain the Competitive Advantage

Here are 8 important steps you can take to set up a successful campaign with and get an advantage over your competitors:

1. Conduct Keyword Research: When setting up campaigns, you should research the types of keywords relevant to your industry. This is important to generate targeted traffic and have a higher conversion rate for each ad group.

You can get a lot of great ideas from your competitors. Analyze the types of keywords they are using, and pay attention to their ad copy as well. If you find that something in one campaign or ad group works well, consider incorporating it into your own campaigns so you too, will have success.

2. Compare Your Ad Copy to the Competition: It's important to compare your ad copy against the competition to have a better understanding of how it performs. You should conduct A/B split testing with certain elements to find out what works best for generating conversions.

Using negative keywords is also crucial if you want higher quality leads and lower costs at the same time. These are words that would not relate well to your business or be relevant enough that potential customers are likely searching for them when considering purchasing from you.

If you're uncomfortable conducting tests on your own, then consider hiring an expert who will manage these tasks while taking away some of the stress associated with running successful PPC campaigns.

3. Spy What Type of Ads Your Competitors are Running: Which kind of ads is your competition running? If they're not doing PPC advertising, then you should be. Make sure to launch an ad campaign and test which type of advertisement works best for generating traffic.

You could run a variety of different types depending on the industry that you are in. For instance, if you're selling products online, it would make sense to have product images featured directly within the advertisements themselves rather than just text-based ads. This will give potential customers more incentive to click so they can view what's being offered upfront without any additional effort required from them whatsoever.

4. Find Out Where They're Advertising: Another thing you should do is find out where your competition is advertising. If they are getting results from a particular source, then it would be wise to try the same one yourself.

If you're not sure which sites work best for PPC campaigns, get in touch with an expert who can help you conduct A/B split testing of different ad networks until you see positive ROIs and conversions begin pouring in.

At this point, your cost per click will likely be lower than that of competitors due to using more effective keywords within ads themselves. This has been made possible thanks to all of the research conducted on other sources and having a better campaign structure overall – making use of negative keywords and so forth.

5. Use Landing Pages Specifically Designed for Conversions: There are many other things besides PPC campaigns that go into successfully achieving conversions with marketing efforts. Landing pages specifically designed for conversions are a great way to encourage potential customers to make purchases.

This is why it's important not to neglect this part of the process when running PPC campaigns. You don't want people clicking on your ads only to bounce right back out before there was ever an opportunity for them to engage with what you had available. Having high-quality landing pages will help prevent this from happening and result in more leads overall.

6. Monitor Progress Closely: You should monitor results closely by checking up on costs per lead/click, conversion rate, CTR, etc. If certain elements aren't performing well enough, then consider testing different ad copy or targeting keywords that have received less traffic beforehand so they'll be cheaper at the same time.

Remember not to limit yourself by just running PPC campaigns through Google AdWords because many other strategies can be implemented to gain a competitive advantage in marketing efforts. Soon enough, you'll start noticing more traffic coming your way, which could result in increased conversions if everything is done properly from the get-go.

7. Consider Creating Discounts or Sales Events: One thing you could do is create discounts or sales events to encourage more people to make purchases. This can be done simply by changing up pricing for a limited time only and will likely generate additional revenue that was otherwise not made prior.

Many other things can be tried depending on what sort of business you have at hand and your marketing budget. However, these are just some strategies that work best if PPC campaigns aren't producing results alone, so don't rely solely upon them when trying to achieve conversions online because the competition won't do this either. With an expert's help, though, everything should fall into place quite nicely in due time.

8. Put Your Competitive Intelligence to Work: Your company's competitive intelligence should be used to determine where your competitors are advertising and what keywords they're targeting.

Use landing pages designed for conversions, monitor the results closely, and make changes as needed. Consider creating sales events or discounts if PPC campaigns aren't producing enough revenue alone. Use an expert's help with all of this so you can achieve great things.

Conclusion

If you are ready to gain a competitive advantage in the digital marketing world, it is time for you to get help from an expert. PPC experts can use their expertise and experience with search engine optimization efforts to create a strategy to make your business stand out among competitors. They've seen many businesses succeed using their methods because they provide what they need most at this point in the game—a competitive edge against their competition. Take some time today to learn more about how experts work together to build up your company's online presence.

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