Successful brands put the customer first. They monitor their customers’ behaviors and leverage their needs to enhance the buying process. You can also boost your revenue by optimizing the customer experience. If you want to take this concept one step further, you need to focus on one important element that will increase sales. Personalization. Personalizing the customer experience is a winning strategy. In fact, 96% of marketers agree that their efforts to personalize their customers’ experience advance their relationships with customers. Furthermore, 88% of marketers say they’ve seen a measurable improvement in their businesses after implementing customer personalization tactics. But only 33% of businesses feel confident they have the tools to properly personalize the customer experience. That’s what inspired me to write this guide. Some of you may already know you need to create a more personalized experience for your customers, but you just don’t know what to do. Or maybe you’re trying to improve your existing efforts. Regardless of your situation, I’ll explain what you need to do. These are the best ways to increase sales by accommodating the needs of your customers and personalizing their experience. Encourage your customers to create profilesOne of the first things you need to do is allow your customers to create profiles on your platform. Those profiles will help you implement other strategies as we continue through this guide. Once the accounts are created, you’ll be able to monitor the behaviors of your customers based on their profiles. Your customers are perfectly comfortable with you tracking their habits as long as it’s improving their experience. As you can see from these numbers, customers want you to:
Not only are your customers comfortable with you monitoring their behaviors through their profiles, but they actually expect it. In fact, more than half of consumers say they expect brands to anticipate their needs so they can receive relevant suggestions. You’ll eventually be able to recommend products based on shopping and browsing behavior, but we’ll discuss that in greater detail later. The best way to encourage your customers to create accounts is by making it as easy as possible for them. They don’t want to take tons of unnecessary steps to set up their accounts. Make sure you limit your form fields needed for the account creation. Think about what information you need from the customer that will help you personalize their experience. Basically, anything they’d provide you with during an optimized checkout process is enough to create a profile. Add a simple checkbox to the checkout that says something like “create a customer profile” to accomplish this. Both you and your customers will benefit from this option. The personalized content on their profiles will improve their experience and ultimately drive more sales. Segment your email subscribersCollecting email addresses needs to be a priority for your business. But if you want to personalize the customer experience, you need to make sure you’re delivering relevant content to their inboxes. The best way to do this is by segmenting your email lists: Although everyone who signs up to receive emails from your company might be interested in your brand, it doesn’t mean they have the same wants and needs. You need to learn how to write marketing emails that don’t get marked as spam. Grouping your subscribers into separate lists will ensure they don’t receive irrelevant information. Let’s take customer profiles as an example. If a customer creates a profile during the checkout process, you’ll know their address because they need to provide you with shipping and billing information. Your customers in Texas shouldn’t be getting the same emails as your customers in New Hampshire if your company is advertising a winter sale. Those subscribers in Texas don’t care about discounted winter hats and ski pants. That’s why segmented email campaigns can result in a 760% revenue increase. Marketers say 58% of their revenue comes from emails that are properly segmented and targeted. Recent studies show the differences between segmented emails compared to non-segmented campaigns. Segmented emails have:
Higher opens and clicks paired with fewer bounces and unsubscribes put your company in a great position to increase sales. Store information for faster checkoutsAgain, customer profiles are important here. Make sure you ask for the information required to complete a purchase only once. After that, you can store the information to expedite the purchasing process in the future. Each step a customer has to take to buy something decreases the chances they’ll complete this action. Having to enter their name, address, and credit card information into your platform every time is tedious. The whole reason why they created a profile was to improve their experience. Take a look at how Delta uses this strategy: By saving credit card information in their customer profiles, people can book a flight fast and easily. They don’t even need to have their cards on them. Every ecommerce company needs to incorporate this strategy. Customers will be able to add items to their carts and complete transactions with just a few clicks. This will help you improve your conversion rates and drive more sales. Implement geotargeting practicesAs I explained earlier, you can use the customer’s location to personalize their experience. In addition to segmenting your email lists by location, you can also tailor the content on your website based on the country your customers are browsing from. Take a look at this example from the SAXX website: Their customers are primarily located in the United States and Canada. While the two countries may be similar, the company still wants to offer tailored customer experience based on the location of their customers. For example, Canadian customers will want to see measurements of clothing in centimeters since they use the metric system. And people browsing in the United States will see “color,” while the Canadians will see “colour.” Yes, any English-speaking person can understand American English, but not having the site customized to the customer location can still hurt the company’s sales. By allowing its website visitors to choose their country, SAXX ensures they’ll be shown the right content. Those of you who have an international brand need to take this process one step further. Look at the options on the Nike website: Your website isn’t the only platform that can be personalized based on location. You can use your mobile app to pinpoint the exact location of your customers as opposed to broader locations, e.g., the state or country. When someone downloads your app, ask them to agree to share their location with you so you can track it. Then, you can send them notifications using geofencing technology. With geofencing, you can set up an area around one of your store locations. When an app user enters the location, they’ll get a notification that encourages them to make a purchase. For example, let’s say you own a restaurant chain. Someone with your mobile app walks within a block of one of your locations during lunch time. You can send them a discount off their lunch purchase that day. Create a customer loyalty programWhen you’re implementing customer personalization tactics, you shouldn’t aim to generate a one-time sale. You want these efforts to lead to customer retention, resulting in recurring purchases. That’s why you should come up with an effective customer loyalty program. Studies show 82% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands offering loyalty programs. Plus, loyal customers spend more money. Just look at these numbers: Customers who have purchased from your brand multiple times add items to their carts at a higher rate, have higher conversion rates, and generate more revenue per shopping session. You can set up your loyalty program in a few different ways. The most basic option would be to give your customers a reward after a predetermined number of visits or purchases. You’ve seen these before. You may go to a local food truck outside of your office for lunch. They probably have some kind of a punch card that rewards you with a free sandwich on your tenth visit or some other reward scheme. But the best customer loyalty programs reward their highest spending customers. Set rewards based on spending tiers. This will give your customers an incentive to spend even more money. Allowing them to track their progress on their customer profiles or from the mobile app will improve their personalized shopping experience. Listen to customer feedbackAccording to research, 68% of consumers abandon a business because they don’t feel the brand cares about them. That’s why you should use surveys and interviews to generate more money for your business. This will show your customers you value their opinions. However, just asking your customers to provide feedback isn’t enough. You actually need to make changes based on those suggestions. But first, you need to analyze the results of the feedback. Don’t just implement changes for the sake of it—that won’t deliver a return on your investment. But if you notice that a large percentage of your customers are providing similar feedback and suggestions to improve your process, you should take that very seriously. Implementing these changes will make your customers realize they are part of your process and create a bond with your brand. Recommend relevant productsI briefly mentioned this earlier, but I wanted to discuss it again in greater detail. You already know you need to use the information provided in the customer profiles to personalize content for them. But there are certain pieces of extremely valuable information that you can’t get via a form field: what the customers are looking for and what they are buying. But you can find out that information through the browsing and purchase histories of your customers. That information will allow you to suggest relevant products to them. If you do, consumers will be more likely to buy from your brand, whether you operate online or in person: Recommending products to your customers also narrows their options. Roughly 40% of consumers left a website to buy from a competitor instead because they felt overwhelmed by too many options. Don’t let this happen to you. If one of your customers recently purchased a surfboard and a wetsuit, it’s safe to say they’ll be spending time at the beach and in the water. So you could suggest something like a paddleboard and sunscreen because it’s relevant to their purchase history. Let your customers be part of the personalization processCombine your personalization strategy with an interactive process. If a customer doesn’t have a profile, you can still get more information from them to personalize the content they see. For example, Warby Parker has a feature on its website I love. Obviously, glasses aren’t a one-size-fits-all product. But with so many options, it can be overwhelming for consumers to find exactly what they’re looking for. To help narrow the results, the brand asks their customers some questions. First, it asks if you’re browsing for men’s or women’s styles. Then, the questionnaire asks the type of fit you’re looking for. As you can see, the cartoon faces are all of men because that’s what I selected in the first step. It’s another subtle personalized touch. Next, they want to know your color preferences for glasses. After that, you need to provide them with the shapes of frames you prefer the most. The questions get even more detailed. Warby Parker asks when you had your last eye exam. It also wants to know if you’re interested in eyeglasses, sunglasses, or both. This relates to my last point about narrowing down the results. You don’t want to overwhelm your customers. Now the product results will be based on the preferences chosen by the customer. Write content from the first person perspectiveTry to establish a personal relationship with your customers. In theory, this is much easier for small business owners who actually see their customers on a regular basis. But even if you’re an ecommerce shop or a global brand, there are still ways for you to create this type of relationship based on how you communicate with your customers. By writing content from the first person perspective, just like I do when I blog, you will make your customers feel more comfortable. Write as if you’re talking to a friend. You don’t need to be formal all the time. Don’t get me wrong: you should still write using proper grammar and avoiding slang terms. Just write as if you’re having a casual conversation. Do this with your emails, blogs, and content on your website. Sign emails using your name. Your emails should be coming from [email protected]. Don’t send marketing emails from non-personalized addresses, like [email protected]. Craft personalized email subject lines and contentLet’s continue talking about your email marketing strategy. In addition to segmenting your lists and writing content from the first person perspective, you need to learn how to craft subject lines that generate results. After all, if nobody opens your emails, they’re useless. Research shows that personalized subject lines have tons of benefits: Your messages will get opened at higher rates and have more clicks. As you can see from the graph, these clicks ultimately lead to improved customer satisfaction and higher sales as well. ConclusionYour customers want and expect a personalized shopping experience. It’s your job to deliver this to them. Start by encouraging customers to create profiles on your website. When you add subscribers to your email list, segment them based on the information they provided you with. Let customers store information in their accounts, expediting the checkout process. Use geotargeting to show website visitors and app users personalized content based on their locations. Implement a customer loyalty program. Listen to the feedback your customers give you. Monitor their browsing and purchase histories to recommend relevant product suggestions. Create an interactive personalization process to help your customers narrow product results. Learn how to write content and email subject lines with a personal message. Once you implement these personalization strategies, you’ll enhance the customer experience and ultimately drive more sales. What strategies is your business using to personalize the customer experience? via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/31/how-to-increase-sales-by-personalizing-the-customer-experience/
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Do you have lots of social media followers? Want to learn how to turn those followers into dollars? Right now, there are people making a living on social media without selling anything. We’ve all seen those profiles of seemingly regular people with tons of followers. It always seems as if they’re traveling or doing something fun. But what exactly do they do to fund this fairytale lifestyle? They are social influencers. Experts predict that in the next two years, global influencer marketing will be a $5-10 billion dollar industry. In 2017, 86% of marketers relied on influencer marketing campaigns at some point during the year. And 39% of marketers say they have increased their influencer marketing budgets for 2018. All of this is promising news if you’re interested in making a living on social media as an influencer. Even if you don’t have lots of followers right now, this guide will show you what you need to do to make yourself more appealing to marketers and brands. In the past, I’ve explained how to use micro influencers to increase your product credibility. But now I wanted to write an informative guide aimed to help influencers make more money. With influencer marketing making my list of the top marketing trends to look for in 2018, there is plenty of money to be made in this space if you position yourself accordingly. These are the top 11 ways to make a living on social media without selling any products. 1. Pick a platformThe first thing you need to do is decide which platform you’re going to prioritize the most. Ultimately, you’ll want to have profiles set up on as many social networks as possible, but one needs to be your bread and butter. Research shows that nearly all social influencers work on Instagram. In 2018, more than 82% of social influencers said that Instagram is their number one platform. Just over 12% responded with YouTube, and less than 2% said Facebook. That’s probably because 76% of influencers say that Instagram has the best tools compared to other social platforms. Based on these numbers, I highly recommend picking Instagram as your top priority. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel here. If other influencers are having so much success on Instagram, you should be able to follow in their footsteps. Your other social profiles should be used to enhance the image of your personal brand and ultimately expand your reach. But you can use Facebook and Twitter to try to get more followers on Instagram. 2. Join a network for influencersAnother way to make money on social media is by joining networks made for influencers. These platforms are used to connect brands with people based on their followers and specialties. Brandwatch is a great place to start. Let’s say you share lots of content related to yoga and holistic health on your social media profiles. Your followers are obviously interested in this content as well, which is why they are following you in the first place. If you join one of these networks, it will be easier for brands to find you if they have a product or service related to your content. If a brand wants to work with an influencer to sell their newest yoga mat and yoga clothing, it’ll get matched with you through these networks. You can handle all communication with the brands through these platforms as well. This can help you stay organized as opposed to using direct messaging through social media. Once you get lots of followers, it’s tough to keep up with all of the messages in your inbox. I recently wrote about my favorite platforms for effectively managing social influencers. The post was intended for brands, but it’s helpful for influencers to read through it as well. Go through the list to see which platforms fit your wants and needs the most. 3. Boost your engagement ratesThe reason why brands want to work with social influencers is they historically have extremely high engagement rates. In fact, brands named engagement as the top metric for measuring the success of influencer marketing campaigns. If you want to make yourself more appealing, you can show brands how high your engagement rates are with your followers. Start by learning how to write captions that drive engagement. You want your followers to like, comment, tag, view, and share your content. Respond to your followers. I know, this can be tricky, especially for those of you who have tens of thousands of followers. But the key is getting into a habit of making time to respond. At the very least, like their comment if you can’t respond to it. Remember, we’re treating this as your job. If you want to make a living on social media, you need to dedicate a certain amount of time each day toward making yourself a more valuable influencer. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Engaging with your followers will help them feel a personal connection with you. When you recommend a brand to them, they will be more likely to act on your recommendation, making your marketing campaigns more successful. 4. Give away free stuffEveryone wants to get something free. To increase engagement with your followers, hosting a giveaway is one of your top options. Once you start negotiating with brands and deciding what kind of content you should be posting, you can suggest a giveaway. Ultimately, the decision is theirs. They will be the ones paying you for sponsored content. But you don’t have to commit to anything you’re uncomfortable with. If you think the content they want you to post doesn’t add value to your followers, you can respectfully turn down the offer. After all, you don’t want to lose credibility by posting everything and anything someone presents to you. Otherwise, you could see a drop in engagement from your followers. Take a look at this post from Instagram personality Jen Selter: Jen has more than 12 million followers on Instagram. How do you keep 12 million people entertained? Don’t spam them. Yes, it’s clear that this post is promoting a brand. But she’s doing it in a way that adds value to her followers by giving them a chance to win something free. This post has all the elements required to run a profitable giveaway. If you are still trying to grow your following, giving something away could be the best way to do that, even if you aren’t getting paid by any brands yet. It may be worth spending $100 out of your own pocket on a gift card, for example, to give away to your followers. Then you can show brands how good your engagement rates were for that campaign as you move forward with your career as an influencer. 5. Use multiple hashtagsIf you’re trying to make money on social media, you can’t be afraid to use hashtags. But don’t use only one per post. Research shows that using multiple hashtags leads to higher engagement rates. The magic number here is seven. Posts with seven hashtags have the highest engagement rates. But that doesn’t mean you should go overboard. Using more than eight hashtags on one single post can seem spammy. Use a variety of hashtags. Some should be broad and intended to reach the highest number of people. For example, #tbt or “throwback Thursday” is a popular hashtag used on social media. So your post would be exposed to the masses. However, you don’t want to get lost in the shuffle. Create some unique and more specific hashtags appropriate for each campaign. If you look at the giveaway example again, you’ll see that Jen used #JenSelterGIVEAWAY in per post to stand out. 6. Partner with a mobile appAll too often I see social influencers partner with the same types of brands. They’re promoting clothing, fitness apparel, accessories, and food. While there is nothing wrong with this strategy, it may not be sustainable for long-term growth. Those brands will end up using other influencers in the future once they feel they’ve gotten the most out of you and if your cost per post rate gets too high. Think outside the box and try to partner with unique brands, such as mobile applications. Here’s a great example of this strategy used by social influencer Eric Rubens: Eric has more than 380k followers on Instagram. If you look at his bio, he promotes a few different things related to his personal brand image. You can see his YouTube name and link to his website. But look at what I highlighted. It’s his partnership with Explorest, a new mobile application. The idea behind this app is very unique. It shows users exact directions to places where they can take cool photographs. This idea also fits within Eric’s personal image. If you look through his profile, he takes amazing photographs of places all over the world. So his followers are obviously interested in this type of content. That’s why he was able to successfully partner with a mobile app such as Explorest. 7. Find your nicheIt’s tempting for new influencers to take jobs from any brand that offers them money. But you need to understand how these posts can impact your future. You don’t want to partner with any brand that goes against your core values and beliefs. Furthermore, you need to analyze how this content will affect your followers and how you’re perceived by other brands moving forward. Let’s look at an example to show you what I’m talking about. Here is James Tollefson’s Instagram biography: James has just over 23k followers, which is a great number for micro influencers. While his biography doesn’t promote anything specifically, like in the previous example, it tells you more about his life and who he is. He’s a software engineer, living in San Diego, who is a fitness enthusiast. Now, just saying you’re a fitness enthusiast and being a fitness enthusiast are two different things. Let’s take a look at his pictures to see if they fit the description: As you can see, the content definitely fits the biography. James shares content related to his fitness journey, and he promotes products that fit that niche. If you join a community that connects brands and influencers, you want to make sure your content fits your speciality. Don’t say you’re a foodie in your biography and then never share content related to food or work with brands in that industry. It doesn’t make sense, and it won’t make you any money. 8. Know your worthAccording to research, 80% of influencers say sponsored content is their primary source of income. This ranked higher than advertisements and affiliate links. Only 33% of influencers actually sign a contract with sponsors. You’ve got to make sure you protect yourself and get paid for your work. Don’t just post content for brands who offer to send you free products. That’s not enough if you’re trying to make a living. As you can see from the graph below, marketers are planning to increase their marketing budgets for influencers: Only 5% of marketers say they’re going to decrease their influencer marketing budgets. The money is out there. It’s just a matter of finding it. Don’t settle. How much is a post worth? The numbers will vary based on the number of followers you have and your engagement rates. On average, 66% of businesses pay less than $250 per post. And 27% pay between $250 and $1,000. Just 4% pay up to $3,000 per post. Unless you’re a celebrity, you probably won’t see $3,000 for one post. But with that said, it’s not unreasonable to aim for that $250-1,000 window. Let’s say in a week you share two sponsored posts from two different brands. One pays you $750, and the other pays $250. If you can continue getting rates like that steadily throughout the year, you’ll make more than $50k annually. 9. Post high-quality photosLook back at all the examples I showed you so far. What do all of them have in common? High-quality content. If you want to become a social influencer, you need to make sure you’re sharing only quality photos. Buy a professional camera if you have to. Or at least get yourself a new smartphone that takes better pictures. Invest in yourself. As you saw in the example of partnering with a mobile app, taking high-quality photos can lead to big opportunities for you. Just look at Albert Hongbo Yang’s Instagram profile: These images are breathtaking. Albert has over 24k followers who are interested in his photos, which is a huge leveraging point when it comes to working with brands. Even if you don’t want to sell products on Instagram, if your photos are good enough, you can make money as a photographer. Post pictures that draw attention and make you seem more legitimate. Refer to my guide how to take and edit photos without hiring a professional to help you with this. 10. Fully disclose your relationships with brandsPart of being a social influencer means you need to fully disclose your relationships with brands. First of all, you don’t want to mislead any of your followers or cause them to distrust you. That’s not right. But more importantly, it’s a requirement by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC says that these disclosures must be clear and obvious. It doesn’t want you to use anything ambiguous, like #thanks or #collab, which could be misinterpreted. You also can’t rely on a disclosure that will only be seen if people “click more” or view the content on a separate landing page. To show you how to properly disclosure your relationships, look at this post from Anastasia Ashley: Anastasia is promoting La Roche-Posay skincare products. As you can see, she clearly tagged them in her caption and used the hashtag #sponsored to disclose her relationship with the brand. There is definitely nothing ambiguous about that. She’s complying with FTC regulations. 11. Promote your servicesOK, so you want to make a living on social media without selling any products. But you can still sell your services. Earlier I explained how you could make a living by taking high-quality photos and then leverage your photography skills to make money. That’s just one way to do it, but there are plenty of others. For example, let’s take a look at Rob Atkin’s Instagram profile. Rob is promoting his personal website in the biography. Clearly, he’s a personal trainer. But the way he positions his services is much more creative than just saying “personal trainer.” Instead, he uses creative phrases such as “I help busy people get abs” and “fitness specialist” to promote his services. As you can see from his posts, his content fits into that niche, which is extremely important, as I mentioned earlier. So if you want to make money on social media without selling any products, consider using your distribution channels to promote your services instead. ConclusionThere is tons of money to be made on social media right now. People are making a living without selling a single product. Those of you who have a large social following can use your profiles to get paid by brands. Even if you don’t have lots of followers right now, you can increase your following and engagement metrics to make yourself more appealing to prospective clients. If you follow the tips and advice I’ve outlined in this guide, you can turn your social media profile into a money-making machine. How are you leveraging your social media followers to make money as a social influencer? via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/29/11-ways-to-make-a-living-on-social-media-without-even-selling-a-single-product/ To survive, local businesses need to learn how to adapt to the modern way of marketing. If you are seeing a plateau or decline in sales, it’s time for you to mix up your marketing strategy. Even if your small business is profitable right now, you need to stay ahead of your competition to remain successful in the future. Analyze the latest marketing trends. Recognize the consumer buying behavior. Learn how to get more money from your existing customers. Unfortunately, only 33% of small businesses reach the 10-year mark. The rest fail. I don’t want you to become the sad statistic. This was my inspiration for writing this guide. If your company is new, you need to do everything possible to stay strong for years to come. Local businesses that have been around for decades may be ready for a marketing facelift. Your strategies that worked 20 years ago probably won’t be as successful in 2018 and beyond. I narrowed down the top 15 marketing tactics for local business owners. Use this guide as a reference for your future marketing campaigns. 1. Set up your free listing with GoogleHow are new customers finding you? If you’re old-school, you may be relying on word of mouth, radio promotions, print ads, and direct mailing. But last year, 97% of consumers searched the Internet for a local business. Furthermore, positive online reviews make 73% of consumers trust local businesses. That’s why you need to make sure your local business is listed on Google. When people use the Internet to search for something, they start with Google. Setting up your free Google listing makes it easy for consumers to find you when they search for terms related to your business. Your listing will have all your information:
You’ll be able to add photos to give people a better understanding of the way you operate. Customers will also be able to add photos. They’ll write reviews about your local business for other people to see, which will have a major impact on your successful. You need to learn how to get your customers to recommend your brand to others. Your star rating is the number one factor used by consumers to determine whether they’ll buy from your local business. In fact, 94% of customers will use businesses with a 4-star rating. 2. Start bloggingAs you’ve just seen, consumers use the Internet to find local businesses. That means you need to understand the basic principles of SEO if you want to increase your chances of getting ranked as a top result. Roughly 47% of clicks go to the top three positions of Google search results. Blogging will help you tremendously with your SEO strategy. Just look at these numbers: More website traffic, more followers, and more leads will ultimately translate to increased profits. Publishing new blog posts means your website will be updated more frequently with fresh content, which will increase your chances of getting a higher search ranking. Plus, your posts are a great place to add keywords prospective customers may be searching for when browsing online. Once you’re able to establish a steady group of readers for your blog, they’ll visit your website on a regular basis. The more they visit your site, the greater the chances you’ll have of getting them to convert. 3. Join a local groupLocal businesses need to remain active in their communities. Joining a local group is a great way to stay connected with residents and other business owners. I suggest joining your local Chamber of Commerce. There will be a small annual fee, but it’s worth it. Attending these meetings and events will expose your brand to other businesses. Will your competitors be part of these groups? It’s possible. But that’s even more of a reason for you to be there. Let’s say you own a local t-shirt company. Another local business may be hosting an event in town and need custom shirts made. Rather than ordering the shirts online, they’ll be more inclined to use your services if you both belong to the same local group. That’s the whole idea behind joining. The businesses look out for one another and always try to support local brands. 4. Give back to the communityBeing part of a local community also means you need to give back. If you’re charitable, don’t be shy about your involvement. Consumers want to hear about how your local business supports charitable causes. Research shows 91% of customers say they are willing to switch brands if it means supporting one associated with a charitable cause. And 85% of consumers will have a more positive image of your local business if you support a charity they care about. You can even ask your community and customers which charities you should support. Studies show 39% of people want to help decide on the charities a business supports by a voting system. It’s a safe bet to associate with local charities. This will definitely help you and your business become closer to your community. You can approach this in many ways. For starters, you can make an annual contribution to a charity. You can also run special promotions with a certain percentage of sales on a particular day or week goes to a cause. Giving back to your community doesn’t always mean donating to a charity. For example, let’s say you own a local restaurant. You can provide food for a public high school graduation event. These types of parties run by the school are intended to keep students safe and sober on the night of their graduation. 5. Run contestsContests are a great way to get people excited about your local business. The best way to run these contests is through online platforms. Leverage your social media profiles for this strategy. Run contests that encourage user-generated content. For example, ask your followers to post pictures related to your business. Then pick a winner based on who gets the most likes on their photo. The whole idea behind these contests is to grow your social media following. If people see their friends and family posting about your local business on their social profiles, it will increase your exposure and increase the chances of them following you as well. Now you’ll be able to post promotional content aimed at your new followers that converts them into customers. 6. Verify your information on YelpIn addition to your Google listing, your local business will also have profiles set up on other platforms, whether you signed up or not. For example, you may have a Yelp profile because customers rated and reviewed your business. It’s important that you make sure all your information such as your store hours, phone number, address, and website is accurate on these platforms. More than 90% of consumers make a purchase after viewing a business on Yelp. If a customer tries to contact you and the phone number is wrong, or if they show up to your store thinking you’re open and you’re actually closed, it’s going to hurt you. It’s in your best interest to claim your business on Yelp so that you can control the information in your listing. 7. Implement a customer loyalty programIf you’re looking for a fast way to increase sales, you need to learn how to create a customer loyalty program. The best part about this marketing tactic is you can make more money without having to acquire new customers. Your focus will be on getting your existing customers to spend more money. The goal of your loyalty program should focus on two things:
By accomplishing these two things, you’ll be able to drive growth through sales. More than 82% of consumers are more likely to shop at stores with customer loyalty programs. Your loyalty program could be something as simple as a punch card. On the 10th visit, the customer gets a free reward or something like that. Or you can set up a system that’s a little bit more in-depth. Reward your highest spending customers by implementing a loyalty program based on different spending tiers. The best way to track this type of program is with a customer profile or mobile app, but we’ll discuss that in greater detail shortly. 8. Offer discountsConsumers are price-sensitive. As a local business, you need to recognize this and adjust your pricing accordingly. Some of you may be hesitant to offer discounts because you feel like it lowers the value of your brand. Plus, your current prices may not yield profits if you offer discounts. If that’s the case, you should consider raising your base prices. Then offer discounts on those new prices. Psychologically, this is more appealing to your customers. They want to feel they’re getting a deal. If your local business has an ecommerce store, an active discount code will increase your chances of getting more sales. Whether you’re selling online, in-store, or both, it’s important your business offers coupons and discounts to your customers. 9. Increase your social media presenceWe briefly discussed social media earlier when we talked about running contests to promote your local business. You need to establish an active presence on as many social media platforms as possible. Sure, you might be on Facebook. But that’s not enough. Last year, more than half of small businesses increased their social media investment for platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. If you have a local B2B company, you also need to prioritize networks such as LinkedIn. Just 43% of small businesses share content and engage with their followers on a daily basis. That number should be much higher. I know what you’re thinking. Running a small business is tough. You’re already putting in long days, and you just don’t have enough time to focus on your social media strategy. Don’t get overwhelmed. Check out my favorite time-saving social media marketing tools to help you automate the process. 10. Partner with a local influencerTo take your social media marketing strategy to the next level, you should consider working with local influencers. These are people in the community who have a large social following. You can pay them to promote your local business on their distribution channels to increase your reach. The best part about this strategy is it’s relatively inexpensive. Each post will likely only cost you a couple hundred bucks at most, and you can even pay them less if you offer them some free stuff as well. Influencers have extremely high engagement rates with their followers, and their audiences trust their recommendations. 11. Set up a customer referral programImplementing a customer referral program is one of my favorite ways to acquire new customers without doing any work. The idea behind this strategy is to get your current customers to do all the heavy lifting. It’s a strategy that focuses on both customer retention and customer acquisition, which are the top two most significant retail drivers. For your referral program to be successful, you need to offer an incentive to both parties. Reward your existing customers for each referral. This gives them the motivation to get out there and refer your local business to as many people as possible. As for the new customer, they’ll need some type of incentive as well to get them in the door. If they’re satisfied with their purchase, they’ll start referring new customers as well. This can turn into a highly profitable cycle for your business. That’s because 86% of consumers say their close friends influence their decisions to make a purchase. Simply put, referrals work. 12. Add subscribers to your email listDon’t underestimate email marketing. While it may not be the newest or sexiest marketing tactic, it’s one of the most effective strategies out there. According to research, 81% of small business owners say email marketing drives customer acquisition. And 80% of them say they were successful in using email marketing to retain customers. This strategy is extremely profitable. For every $1 spent on email marketing, your local business can expect to see a $44 return. In fact, 77% of your email ROI will come from campaigns that are targeted, segmented, and triggered. But your email strategy won’t be effective if you don’t have subscribers. Focus your efforts on getting more customers to join your list, and the rest will take care of itself if you stay on top of your campaigns. 13. Launch a mobile appIt doesn’t matter what type of business you have or what industry you’re in, I can promise you your customers are using mobile devices. If you have the funds available, you need to consider launching a mobile app for your local business. That’s because the majority of mobile time is spent using apps. Studies indicate 63% of consumers prefer an app compared to a mobile site because it’s more convenient. And 57% of users like apps because they are faster than mobile sites. You may not think an app is necessary for your local business right now, but it will be in the future. Even if you’re not ready to start this process today, you need to plan to do it soon. Once your app launches, it will help you personalize the customer experience. You can use your app to facilitate your customer loyalty programs and customer referral programs, which I talked about earlier. If you already have a live app or you’re in the process of building one, refer to my guide on how to improve the profitability of your small business mobile app. 14. Set up Google AlertsGoogle Alerts will help you monitor what’s being said about your business online. Reports will be emailed to you anytime your local business or other keywords are published on the Internet. This will help you stay on top of the latest news, whether it’s positive or negative. For example, let’s say some blogger writes an unfavorable post about your brand online. You’ll be able to see it and act accordingly right away as opposed to finding out about the post weeks later. Or, on the flip side, if a local news publication writes a positive article about your business, you can share that content on your website and your social media channels. 15. Improve your customer serviceYour local business needs to provide excellent customer service: How does good customer service help your business? Well, as I previously discussed, prospective customers will use a number of different tools and platforms to research your business. They’ll read reviews online, check social media, and take advice from their friends and family. If you’re able to provide high-quality customer service, it will be evident in the way you’re perceived online. As a result, your current customers will keep coming back, and you’ll get new customers walking through your doors as well. ConclusionAs a local business, you can’t afford to fall behind your competition. Take a look at your current marketing campaigns, and ask yourself whether they’re generating the results you’re looking for. It might be time to switch up your marketing strategy. If you’re looking for new ways to promote your local business, use this guide as a reference. I’m not expecting you to implement all these strategies overnight. But go through the list, and prioritize some of these tactics based on the needs of your business. What types of marketing strategies are you using to promote your local business? via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/27/how-to-promote-your-local-business-with-these-15-marketing-strategies/ Are you looking for a new way to spice up your marketing strategy? Your current promotions may be effective for now, but you need to mix things up. After a while, using the same marketing tactics over and over again gets stale. Promotional contests are one of my favorite ways to keep an audience engaged. This is a great opportunity for you to increase brand awareness and even build hype for a new product launch. The best promotions give something away to participants. There are a few different types of such promotions. Contests require some type of skill. People who enter a contest will need to put forth some type of effort in order to win. The winner of a contest gets selected by judges or through a voting system. This differs from a lottery or sweepstakes. Sweepstakes do not require any skill whatsoever. The winners of sweepstakes get drawn randomly, based on luck. For example, you could randomly select one of your Instagram followers as a winner just because they follow your brand’s account. A lottery requires a participant to purchase something to be entered into a draw. Today, I won’t focus on sweepstakes or lotteries. Contests are a better alternative because if you set them up properly, they will encourage user-generated content (UGC). User-generated content increases the chances that your audience will engage with your advertisements: As you can see from these numbers, encouraging users to share images will be beneficial as well. It’s only natural to use this information to your advantage when you’re setting up a contest. If you have never run a contest before, you may not know where to start. That was my inspiration for writing this guide. I’ll explain how you can run a profitable contest that encourages user-generated content. As a result, you’ll be able to generate more leads and ultimately increase your profits. Here’s what you need to do. Pick a prizeThe first step in running a contest is determining what the winner will get. This may sound simple, but it still requires some thought on your end. The more valuable the product, the more likely people will participate. For example, if you’re giving away a t-shirt, it won’t get anyone very excited. But if the contest winner receives something like a new camera, drone, or pair of sneakers, it’s much more enticing. I’m not saying you need to give away the most expensive product your company sells, but make sure your prize is worth the time and effort required for people to enter. This will help you get greater participation. Just look at how the value of your prize impacts the engagement rates: Your prize also needs to be appropriate. For example, let’s say you have a business that primarily targets teenagers. You probably shouldn’t be running a contest for a free trip to Las Vegas. It’s not appropriate for your audience, and it doesn’t speak to them. Instead, giving away one of your newest products is a much more reasonable prize idea to consider. Make sure your prize is related to your marketing goals. Ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish and promote with each contest: a product, service, or event. The prize should align with these goals as opposed to being a random giveaway item. Establish the rulesYour contest needs to have clearly established rules. Explain how people can enter to win. Come up with a deadline for entries. Narrow down the eligibility of your contest, based on things such as age or location. For example, depending on the prize and your brand, you may be offering the prize only to residents of the United States who are at least 21 years old. Let people know that purchases aren’t required to enter and that making a purchase does not increase the chances of winning the contest. The criteria participants are being judged on need to be clear as well. Here are some examples to consider:
I like it when brands use criteria such as likes or shares to determine the winner as opposed to relying on a judge’s decision. That way it’s clear to everyone who won, and people won’t think you’re playing favorites. But I’ll leave that for you to decide. You also need to share the odds of winning, privacy laws for revealing the identity of the contest winner, and the date and time the winner will be announced. All of this needs to be clear so that it’s fair and everyone understands the rules. Otherwise, there could be some confusion. For example, let’s say you run a contest in which the winner is determined by the comment with the highest number of likes. But you forget to set a deadline. You pick a winner, but a few weeks later someone else gets more likes on a new comment. How will you handle that? You won’t take a prize away from someone who already won. But you won’t want to tell the other person it’s too late because it could hurt your relationship with them. You may be forced to give away multiple items. This confusion will be avoided if the rules are clearly established. Select a platformHow will you run the contest?
All these options may seem viable, but remember, you’re trying to encourage user-generated content. That’s why you need to choose platforms where participants can see submissions from other participants. Social media works best for this purpose. Running a contest on social media will help your account grow faster. Platforms such as email and Snapchat wouldn’t be helpful for this type of contest. You can still use your website to run a contest based on UGC. Just use the forums section or a dedicated landing page for user submissions. Running the same contest on multiple platforms and selecting a winner from each one is also an option. Or you could run the contest on just one platform but promote it on all your distribution channels. For example, if you’re running a Facebook contest, you can use Instagram, Twitter, your website, and email list to promote it. You want to pick the platform that will generate the best response. If you have 1,000 Twitter followers and 20k Instagram followers, it obviously makes more sense to run your contest on Instagram. Create a unique hashtag for the contestUse hashtags as a promotional tool. It’s a great way for people to enter your contest. For example, let’s say you’re running a contest on social media with user photos. You are encouraging participants to upload images to their personal profiles. But how will you find them to judge them? By having the participants add a hashtag to the caption. This strategy has many benefits. For starters, it will keep you organized so that you can run a fair and legitimate contest. It will be clear to everyone who enters. But it also puts all those pictures in one place. Now people who enter will see the photos submitted by other people who don’t follow your brand or follow people who submitted the photo. This helps increase brand awareness and grow your social media following. If you’re struggling to think of a good hashtag, you can use an online tool such as All Hashtag to help you generate one: Be creative, but keep it simple. Think about the readability of your hashtag. You can capitalize the first letter of each word to make it easier for people to read and understand. Run contests encouraging likes, comments, and sharesThis addresses the user-generated content aspect of contests—your ultimate goal. If you run a contest on Instagram and tell your followers to enter by sending you a direct message, this action will not create UGC. But encouraging people to like, comment, and share will definitely do the trick. You want them to complete these actions on your posts as well as their own. Run photo contests or best comment contests. Reward people for getting the most likes or shares on their posts. These are all great ways to encourage user-generated content. As you can see from these numbers, user-generated content will ultimately help you boost ecommerce sales on your website. The numbers above show that UGC increases the chances of online shoppers making a purchase. That’s because your promotion stays on their minds. They may not visit your website every day, but they’re active on social media. The contest serves as a reminder of your brand. Even if people aren’t participating, they’ll still see it. Promote your contestYou’ve launched your contest, posted the rules, and set a deadline. That’s great. Now what? Don’t just set it and forget it. Continue posting updates and reminders about the contest. Leverage all your distribution channels for this.
Your followers may not have seen your original post from last week. But your story can serve as a countdown and constant reminder that you’re running the contest. All this will help you get the highest number of participants and ultimately the most user-generated content. Leverage relationships with social influencersInfluencers can help you promote your contests through their profiles. Now your contest will be shown to a new audience, who may not know you or follow your brand on social media. Have influencers promote contests the same way you did. Tell them to share the rules, set a deadline, and promote the hashtag. The idea behind this strategy is to create social proof: People are more likely to trust and follow recommendations from real people whom they follow on social media. You can approach this strategy in a couple of ways:
Now more people can participate even if they don’t want to follow your brand. Running multiple contests increases the number of participants and the amount of user-generated content created for your company. Pick a winnerWhen someone wins the contest, you need to take the time to announce it. Make this seem like a big deal. Share the winning entry so everyone can see it. Tag the winner’s social media profile. Just make sure to clearly describe all these aspects of your contest in your original rules. You don’t want to violate someone’s right to privacy without their permission. Announcing the winner will have many benefits. First of all, the winner will feel great, enjoying the praise. As a result, they will become a loyal customer and will be more likely to buy from you in the future. They may even share a “thank you” post that will be seen by their followers. Announcing the winner also shows people your contest is legitimate. Take a look at this Mint blog post, announcing a contest winner: As you can see, Mint tagged the user profile and shared a screenshot of the winner’s post. Now people know the contest was real and a real person won. Anyone can verify this by clicking the profile and referring to the entry. This also gives more people an incentive to enter contests run by your company in the future. They’ll want to get the same praise and recognition for their efforts as this winner did. Run contests on a regular basisIf you run lots of contests, you’ll generate tons of UGC. Switch things up. Try running contests on different platforms to see which ones work the best. Change your prizes. After running several contests, you’ll be able to tell which ones had the highest participation. I’d say it’s in your best interest to leverage your social media accounts for contests. It’s a great place to encourage user-generated content, and it promotes brand loyalty: 53% of people who follow brands on social media are more loyal to those companies. Those are the types of people whom you want to target. Once you figure out which contests were the most successful, you can continue running those. ConclusionContests are a great way to build brand awareness. But running contests that encourage user-generated content is even more effective because they can ultimately drive sales for your business. Select a prize with a high value and relevance to your target audience. Otherwise, people won’t have an incentive to participate. Explain the rules so everyone is on the same page. This will help you avoid confusion down the road. Decide which platform you want to run the contest on. You could even run a contest on multiple platforms. But no matter what you decide, you’ll need to promote it on all your distribution channels. Use social influencers to help spread the word as well. Come up with a unique hashtag for each contest. Run contests that encourage likes, shares, and comments. Make it seem like a big deal when you announce the winner. Continue to run more contests in the future to get the most user-generated content for your brand. What platforms does your brand use to run contests that encourage user-generated content? via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/24/how-to-run-contests-that-encourage-user-generated-content/ How fast does it take for your website to load? You may not think about this question very often, but it’s arguably the most important aspect of your site. That’s because 47% of people expect pages to load in just two seconds or less. Failure to meet this benchmark will crush your conversions. In fact, 40% of website visitors will abandon pages if they take more than three seconds to load. If you see high bounce and low conversion rates on your website, page load speed could be the issue. It’s also worth noting that websites with simple designs have higher conversion rates. Simply put, the longer it takes for your website to load, the higher your page abandonment rates will be: Here’s something else you need to consider. People are impatient—80% of people who abandon your website due to slow loading times will not return. That’s right. Consumers are used to getting instant results. If you can’t deliver what they’re looking for, they’ll visit a competitor’s site that loads faster and never look back. Just a one-second delay could be costing you big bucks. Improving your page loading time will optimize the customer experience and ultimately help you increase revenue. In addition to optimizing the design principles of your website, you also need to understand the elements impacting the loading time and correct any mistakes you’re making. But where do you start? I’ve identified the top principles that increase the speed of your website and boost the loading time. Go through this list, and implement these methods on your site. 1. Reduce HTTP requestsIf you are not familiar with technical terms, don’t worry—I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible. HTTP is short for hypertext transfer protocol. These requests and responses transfer data from one point of a network to another. When you type in a website address, you are telling your browser to establish a TCP connection that responds to the URL. Your computer, or whatever device you’re using, will send an HTTP request to the server to open the page. According to a study by Yahoo, downloading different parts of a web page is 80% of the loading time. Long loading times will increase your bounce rates: If you have lots of elements on the page, such as scripts, images, and stylesheets, there will be an HTTP request for each one. To reduce these requests, review your developer tools for the site. This will tell you how long each element takes to load and will show you the total number of requests on each page. Eliminate any unnecessary files. You can also combine some files together, but we’ll discuss that concept in greater detail shortly. 2. Improve the TTFBTTFB stands for time to first byte. Basically, this is the length of time a web browser needs to wait until the first byte of data is received from the server. According to Google, your TTFB should be less than 200ms for optimal performance. Here are some potential reasons why your server may not be responding fast:
Once you’re able to identify why the response time is so high, you can improve your TTFB. Research shows that the median TTFB for running a website on Pantheon is three times faster than running it on alternatives: You may want to consider this information if you want to improve your time to first byte. This will help speed up the DNS lookup, server processing, and response times. 3. Reduce the response time of your serverYour page loading speed is directly related to your DNS lookup time. DNS stands for domain name system. It’s a server with a database of IP addresses and names of hosts. When someone types a website URL into a web browser, the DNS server converts that IP address to show the location of it on the Internet. IP addresses are long strings of numbers. This eliminates the need for users to memorize these various number combinations. But if this step takes too long, you may want to consider switching to a DNS provider with a faster service. A slow DNS increases the amount of time web browsers take to locate your site. By speeding up this process, you will speed up your overall page loading time. 4. Enable cachingWhen someone visits a website, the elements on each page they visit are temporarily stored on a hard drive, which is called a cache. When they visit the same website again, the browser can load the page, using the stored data, without sending another HTTP request back to the server. This relates to my discussion about minimizing HTTP requests. It’s a great option, especially for those of you who are using visual elements to improve your website. Enabling caching will speed up the loading time for your repeat website visitors. It’s important because you want to accommodate users who browse your site frequently. 5. Minify and combine your filesAs you’ve just seen, each file on your site increases the loading time. That’s because they require additional HTTP requests. This holds true for all HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files. But you can reduce the sizes of these files without having to eliminate them, which I talked about earlier. I recommend trying the WordPress Rocket plugin or a similar program: As you can see, this plugin makes it easy for you to minify and combine these files with just a few clicks. But what does this do to your pages? Basically, minification simplifies the files. It will remove unnecessary characters, such as white space, new lines, formatting, and comments. Minifying your files eliminates anything that isn’t needed for the code to function. Combining files is as simple and straightforward as it sounds. For example, let’s say a page on your site has six JavaScript files and eight CSS files. By combining similar files, you could have just two HTTP requests as opposed to 14. But if you use HTTP/2, the combining process won’t have as much of an impact on your loading time because several requests can happen simultaneously. 6. Implement asynchronous loadingAfter your JavaScript and CSS files have been combined and minified, you can optimize the way they get loaded on your pages. There are two options for loading CSS and JavaScript files:
Loading scripts synchronously means they are loading one at a time. The order is determined by where they appear on the page. Asynchronous loading will load some scripts at the same time. Implementing this loading strategy will speed up your website. Synchronous loading can slow down your page loading speed: if just one file has an issue or takes a long time to load, nothing else will start until that is complete. 7. Select the best hosting option When it comes to hosting a website, most people make the mistake of choosing the cheapest option. Sure, this may be a viable option for now, but it’s not a long-term solution. As your website traffic grows, you’ll need to upgrade your hosting. There are three ways for you to host your website:
For the most part, shared hosting will be the least expensive choice. That’s because you’ll be sharing things like RAM and disk space with other websites also hosted on that server. If you decide to use VPS hosting, you’ll be sharing server space with other websites, but you’ll have certain portions for your own resources. Here’s the difference between shared hosting and VPS hosting: VPS hosting will be more expensive, but it’s beneficial if you have more website traffic. This will also make it easier for you to deliver more resource-intensive content. A dedicated server will give you the most space. That’s because there is a direct line from the server resources to your website. But this type of hosting requires more work on your end. The setup is a bit more technical, and you’ll need a knowledgeable person to configure everything for you. Although a dedicated server is the most expensive option, it will give you the most control over your site. Consider updating your server hosting if you have lots of traffic causing slow loading times. 8. Eliminate unnecessary redirectsThere are a few different reasons for redirects on your website. For example, if you’re tracking clicks or connecting different parts of a website together, it will require the browser to redirect from one URL to another. But this increases latency and adds an extra HTTP request. Obviously, you want to avoid that. Don’t set up more than one redirect for the same resource. If you must have a redirect, it should go straight from the start point to the target page. Your URL references should always be updated whenever a resource changes its location. Don’t reference URLs that redirect to other URLs on your pages. If you have extra domains that result in redirects but don’t serve a purpose, get rid of them altogether. 9. Install Google PageSpeedGoogle PageSpeed has lots of benefits for your loading time. It changes the resources on the web page to improve the bandwidth usage and latency. After you install Google PageSpeed on your server, it will automatically use all the best practices for web performance. You won’t have to change the content. The installation of this software alone can help you speed up your page loading time. 10. Compress your files and imagesIf you have small files, your pages will load faster. The easiest way to improve your load time is by using Gzip to compress your files. To see whether you have Gzip enabled, use the Check Gzip Compression tool: This will give you a report showing the total size of compressed files compared to your uncompressed data. In addition to compressing your files, you should also compress your images. To those of you using WordPress, I recommend something like the Smush Image Compression plugin. ConclusionIt doesn’t matter what type of business you have or what industry you’re in, if you have a website, you need to prioritize the page loading time. Slow pages will cause users to abandon your site. The majority of those users won’t return. This is obviously a conversion killer. To prevent this from happening, you need to understand the different factors impacting your website loading time. Use this guide as a reference. Don’t feel overwhelmed. If you need to make lots of changes, you don’t need to implement everything at once. But I’d say you should get started on this sooner rather than later. Following the tips on this list will help your website load faster. What elements of your website need to be changed to boost the page loading time? via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/22/the-top-10-principles-that-boost-your-website-loading-time/ Those of you who know me know how much I promote blogging. I’ve been doing it for years, and I use blogging as a tool for lead generation. But having a blog has many other benefits as well. Driving more traffic to your website is arguably one of the most important reasons for running a blog. Think of it like this. How often would you say the same person comes back to your website? Depending on the nature of your site and your brand, it may not be too often. This is especially true if you have an ecommerce site. People don’t want to buy things from you on a daily basis. Sure, you may have had some success by implementing customer loyalty strategies, but even the most loyal customers probably won’t visit your site every day. Blogging gives people a reason to come back to view your site on a regular basis. If you can establish a steady audience of readers, they will continue to visit your site to read your blog. Once they’re on the site, they will be more likely to convert into buyers. Research shows that the publishing frequency of your blog posts has a direct impact on customer acquisition: But if you want to publish posts frequently, you’ll need to mix up your content. Blogging about the same thing over and over again is boring. That’s why you need to learn how to write different posts to keep your readers interested and engaged. Here are the top 11 types of posts that will drive traffic to your website. Use this guide as a reference so you can always come up with fresh ideas for your blog. 1. Informative guidesStick to the basics. Informative posts or “how to” guides are some of the most popular types of posts on the Internet. You have to understand how people search for content online. If you’re trying to drive traffic to your website organically, your blog posts need to be SEO-friendly. When someone wants to learn how to do something, they will literally type “how to” into the search engine to find information about it. If your post appears as a top result, you’ll get more traffic to your site. But to get ranked toward the top of the list, your guides must be helpful. Getting more people to read your posts and spend time on the page will improve your search ranking. Here’s a great example of these types of posts on the HubSpot website: As you can see, three of the top six featured posts on the homepage of its marketing blog explain how to do something. If you’re writing these types of posts, you need to make sure your explanation is clear. Describe each step in a separate subsection with its own subheading. Take screenshots, and use boxes, arrows, and other annotations so readers can see what you’re talking about. 2. Video blogsIf writing comes naturally to you, it will help you tremendously when it comes to blogging. But some people have trouble translating their thoughts into words on the page. If you think you’re a better speaker than writer, you may want to consider running a video blog. As a marketer, you need to recognize how video content drives results: Video content will increase your organic search traffic by 157% and also increase the time people spend on your site. People probably won’t read your posts word for word. They’ll just skim through them. But videos keep people engaged. Your video blogs have seemingly endless opportunities. The content of each video is completely up to you. You may even consider turning an informative “how to” post, which I previously discussed, into a video tutorial. Video blogs don’t need to stand on their own. You can mix in video posts with your conventional written blog posts. Here’s an example of how I do this on the Neil Patel blog: As you can see, the post on the left is a video blog. But the blog published on the right is a regular post. 3. Guest postsGuest blogging has tons of benefits. If websites give you the opportunity to blog for them, don’t turn them down. Bloggers have the wrong mentality when it comes to guests posts. I see this problem all the time. They would much rather focus on producing new content for their own sites as opposed to someone else’s. But they don’t realize how writing for another site can benefit them. Allow me to explain. The people who currently read your blog are already familiar with your voice and content. That’s what keeps them coming back. However, other people might also enjoy your content, but they don’t know you yet. Getting featured on another website through a guest post will expose you and your brand to a new audience. If you can impress these readers, they may be more likely to visit your site in the future. Plus, you can build backlinks through your guest posts that drive more traffic to your website and ultimately improve your SEO as well. This will help you get more organic search traffic moving forward. 4. Long blogsIf you’re writing short posts just to save time and put out as much content as possible, it’s probably not working to your advantage. Your blog posts should be long. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, the length of your content is linked to search engine optimization. Longer posts will give you the opportunity to add more links, images, and keywords to your posts. Google will reward you for this. Furthermore, a higher percentage of bloggers who publish longer posts reported stronger results from these efforts: If you are not taking the word length into consideration when you’re writing, you need to reevaluate your strategy. I’d recommend publishing content that is 1,500 words at a minimum. But you can even shoot for 2,000 or 2,500+ words for certain posts. Again, people won’t read your posts word for word. So don’t have really long paragraphs in these posts. Use short sentences, headers, and visual elements to break up your content. This is especially important for longer blog posts. 5. ListsLists are another common type of blog post. I use lists all the time. In fact, what you’re reading right now is one of my lists. One of the reasons why list posts are so popular is that your readers know what to expect. They can scroll through each point on the list without having to read through the entire thing. Readers like it when content is straightforward and organized. Vary the formula for writing titles of list posts. Here are some examples to show you what I’m talking about:
The list goes on and on, pun intended. But you get the point. Changing the position of the number within the title of your list ensures your content doesn’t appear stale. If someone looks through your blog and sees that each title starts with a number, they may not be interested in reading it. Switch up the numbers as well. While top ten lists may be popular, they can get boring too. Google the topic before you start writing. Try to come up with a list longer than other lists in the search query. This will give you an advantage over your competitors. 6. Product reviewsReviewing products and services is another great way to drive traffic to your blog. As we’ve said before, you need to understand how people search for content on the Internet. If they are interested in a product, they’ll want to read reviews about it. Here’s an example of a recent blog post from TechRadar that reviews multiple products in the same post: There are a few different ways to decide what products to review. For starters, you could review items your company sells. The only issue with this strategy is that people will know your opinion is biased. You won’t post an unfavorable review about something you’re selling. But if your blog covers a specific industry, you can review new releases. Make sure the reviews are relevant. Refer back to the example above. The article is reviewing the most recent iPhone products. It wouldn’t make sense to review models released five years ago. If you decide to review products on a regular basis, establish a flow to such posts so your readers know what to expect. Start with a product overview, and explain what the product does. Then, you can discuss specifications and other details. List the price and where it can be purchased. The review should have some form of a pros and cons list. Reviews should ultimately express your stance on the item. For example, you can explain which people would benefit most from the product. 7. InfographicsAs I’ve said before, you need to incorporate visual content into your blog posts. But you can take this strategy to the next level by publishing blog posts that are almost exclusively infographics. Creating custom infographics can help you build more backlinks as well. Here’s why. Other websites are always looking for content that will help improve their blog posts. If you can come up with relevant, accurate, and visually appealing infographics, these sites will use them in their blogs. As a result, you’ll get credit for the image source. People who see your infographics on other sites may be inclined to click the link to visit your website. Furthermore, these links will also improve your SEO ranking, which I’ve previously discussed. 8. StoriesLearning how to tell a story is an art. Once you master this skill, the quality of your blog posts will improve. A great story will keep your readers on the edge of their seats. You need to understand the impact storytelling has on our brains: When readers have an emotional response to your story, dopamine gets released from their brains. Use this information to your advantage. The best stories are written to elicit some type of emotion, whatever that may be. The choice is up to you. Maybe you want your readers to feel sad or angry while they’re reading your posts. And some of you may prefer to evoke joy, surprise, or love. If you can make your readers feel emotions, they’ll be more likely to continue reading the blog. As a result, they’ll come back to read more in the future. Depending on the nature of your story, it can also generate traffic based on curiosity alone. For example, if I saw a blog post that said something like “How I Caught a Shark With a Pair of Jeans,” I would be very inclined to click on it to find out what happened. 9. Controversial postsControversy can spark some interest. This interest will lead to website traffic. That said, you need to tread carefully with this approach. Depending on what stance you take on a particular topic, you could potentially destroy your brand’s image. You don’t want this strategy to backfire. It’s best to avoid topics such as race, religion, and politics. Don’t say anything that would offend someone. When writing a controversial blog post, try not to pick a side. Instead, bring up the issue and try to generate a discussion in the comments section. Truthfully, I wouldn’t recommend this strategy to all websites. But for some of you, this type of blog post may fit well with your brand image and target audience. 10. Breaking newsUse your blog to discuss breaking news topics. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should try to compete with actual news outlets. But you can still write about recent events. When it comes to breaking news, timing is everything. Being the first one to break a story isn’t always the best. Sometimes you’re better off waiting to publish your content until all the facts are straight. You don’t want to get a reputation for posting unreliable information. Here’s an example of a news story published on the TechCrunch blog: Make sure your news story is relevant to your business. For example, let’s say you run a fashion blog. A breaking news story about a technological advancement isn’t related to your brand, so don’t write about it. 11. Data-driven guidesWhenever you’re writing an informative guide, back it up with statistics. Use data only from authority sources, and give them credit for the information. Adding data to your guides shows your readers your content is legitimate. You didn’t just pull ideas out of thin air. You took the time to conduct research and then formed opinions based on your findings. I use this strategy all the time. Before I take a stance or give advice, I find numbers to back up my claims. If you are interested in doing original research, consider highlighting your case studies in a blog post. This will help you get traffic from organic searches as well as through backlinks whenever another site uses your study as a source of information. ConclusionYour website needs a blog. But having a blog alone won’t necessarily drive traffic to your website. Producing the same type of content for each post is boring and won’t deliver the results you’re looking for. That’s why you need to learn how to write different types of blog posts. Some of your posts may not even need to be text-heavy. You can use video blogs and infographics to enhance your content. Anyone with a blog can benefit from using this guide as a reference. Adding these 11 types of posts to your website will increase your overall site traffic. What types of posts are you using to drive traffic to your website? via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/20/how-to-drive-more-traffic-to-your-website-with-these-11-types-of-blog-posts/ Social media marketing has become a necessity for brand survival in today’s day and age. But simply creating profiles on these platforms and hoping the rest will take care of itself is not an effective strategy. You need to be active on social media. While you may have already recognized the importance of social sites such as Facebook, it’s time for you to focus on other platforms—specifcally, Instagram. Instagram, with its features and benefits, was part of the top social media trends of 2018 I wrote about. Instagram has more than 1 billion users. Of those users, 500 million use the platform on a daily basis. Only Facebook and YouTube have more active users. For the most part, Instagram users are younger. Nearly 60% of Instagram users in the United States are under the age of 30. This is important to recognize if you’re segmenting your target audience with generational marketing. How can you use Instagram to promote your brand effectively? Your content might be great, but if nobody sees what you’re posting, you won’t have results. That’s why you need to focus on engagement metrics:
You need to measure all these to determine the success of your Instagram marketing campaigns. If you need some help with this, I can steer you in the right direction. I’ve identified and explained the top 13 ways to improve your engagement rates on Instagram. Review the tips I’ve explained in this guide, and apply the tactics to your brand’s page. 1. Utilize hashtagsDo you remember the days when we used to refer to the tic-tac-toe board as a pound sign? Well, social media changed that symbol forever. Now the symbol (#) at the bottom right-hand side of your telephone keypad is more commonly referred to as a hashtag. As a social media marketer, you need to incorporate hashtags into your Instagram strategy. Research shows that the majority of posts by the top brands on social media only use a few hashtags: If the top brands are using them, your brand needs to as well. Furthermore, 70% of Instagram hashtags are branded. Posts with only one hashtag receive 12.6% greater engagement than posts without hashtags. When deciding what hashtags to use, you want to be broad to appeal to the widest possible audience. However, hashtags that are too broad will not stand out. On the other hand, if your hashtag is extremely unique, nobody will search for it. You need to find some middle ground for your hashtag. Even though the top brands aren’t using many hashtags, research shows that engagement rates reach their peak when a post has nine hashtags. It’s also worth noting that hashtags with 21 characters have the highest engagement rates. And 24-character hashtags were second on this list. You don’t need to be shy with the number of hashtags or characters you’re using. Just don’t go overboard, or you’ll appear too spammy. 2. Promote your Instagram posts on all your distribution channelsTo have higher and more valuable engagement rates, you need to increase your social following. If your social media marketing strategy is effective, you can convert your Instagram followers into customers. This needs to be your ultimate goal. To get more followers, you need to promote your Instagram profile on all your distribution channels:
As a result, you’ll get more traffic to your Instagram page. Because of this increased traffic more people will follow your page. Even if people don’t follow you right away, at least they are exposed to your brand. Now your content may appear on their page, and they might engage with your posts in the future. 3. Run a contestContests are another great way to gain exposure for your brand. In addition to the increased brand awareness, contests run on Instagram have been proven to dramatically boost engagement rates. It’s because contests encourage user-generated content. Plus, the fact that you’re giving something away to the winner entices people to participate. Overall, it’s a winning strategy. The best contests incorporate hashtags, which is something I discussed earlier. Set up a unique hashtag for each contest you run. It will allow you to track all participants’ submissions. Further, this will make it easier for you to judge the winner. And this unique hashtag will also be a way through which other people can see your brand and its popularity. Instagram users who may have never heard of your brand might see posts from contest participants. As a result, these users may be enticed to follow your page. Once they start following you, they will be more likely to engage with your content. 4. Add emojis to your captionsEmojis. These little animations are no longer just for your personal messages. Brands are starting to use them as well to drive engagements. In fact, 56% of Instagram profiles use emojis. In the last year, emoji usage on Instagram went up by 19%. Adding emojis to your post increases engagement by 2.07%. This makes sense. Emojis in captions add a personal touch to your posts. Users will feel as if they’re looking at posts from a friend as opposed to some giant corporation. The added comfort your followers will feel when seeing posts with emojis will encourage them to engage with your posts. Besides that, you need to learn how to write Instagram captions that drive engagement. Ask your followers to comment on your posts with their favorite emoji or an emoji that best describes the reaction to your content. I expect the trends related to emoji usage to continue rising in the foreseeable future. 5. Share videosWhile Instagram may have started as a platform for sharing photos, the social network has adapted to the new trends and made appropriate changes. Initially, Instagram had a 15-second limit on videos when the feature was first made available in 2013. But that number jumped to 60 seconds a few years later. As a result, the amount of time users spent watching videos increased by 40% in the first six months of the change. It’s no secret that consumers want to see more video content. But how will videos affect your engagement rates? Let’s take a look: As you can see, videos on Instagram typically get more than double the number of comments compared to photos. While photos get more likes than videos, your Instagram videos will still get plenty of views, even if users aren’t liking them. Mix up your content, and start posting more videos. I’m not saying you need to shy away from photos completely, but try to find a balance between the two. 6. Don’t be boringAs I just finished saying, you need to change up your content strategy on Instagram. Posting similar photos from different angles and just changing the caption slightly will bore your followers. Nobody wants to follow accounts like that, and people certainly won’t engage with your posts. Post funny content. If you make people laugh, they’ll be more likely to tag their friends in the comments. This will help increase your engagement metrics. If it fits with your brand image, you can even post content that’s edgy, controversial, or even somewhat sexual in nature—anything that’s going to raise some eyebrows and grab the attention of users. Share crazy news. Be provocative. Post surprising or shocking photos and videos. Just don’t do anything that might damage your brand reputation. But try to make sure you’re not posting the same thing over and over again. That’s boring and won’t drive engagement. 7. Know the best times to postTo get high engagement on your posts, you need to make sure your audience sees your content. That’s why you need to determine the best times to post. I’m referring to the time of day in addition to the best days of the week. There are lots of different answers to this question, depending on whom you ask. That said, I like these results from CoSchedule: Their research shows that Mondays and Thursdays are the best days of the week to post although, for the most part, your metrics on weekdays will be pretty similar. Engagement on Sundays is the lowest. That’s probably because people are out and about doing things on the weekend. If they’re busy, they won’t be active on social media as much. The times you post will also be determined by your target audience. For example, let’s say your brand is targeting consumers who live in the United States. It’s worth noting that 80% of the US population is located in the Eastern and Central Time Zones. These are the types of things you need to take into consideration before you post something. 8. Form relationships with social influencersIn addition to sharing your Instagram content on your distribution channels, you can leverage your relationships with social influencers to expose your profile to a wider audience. These people can promote your brand, products, and profile to their followers. Since social influencers have great engagement rates with their audiences, those results will translate to your page. That’s because users trust social influencers. If they endorse your brand, it will increase the chances of more people viewing your page. Now that they’ve landed on your page, they’ll engage with your content. You can combine this strategy with one of the other tips I’ve discussed, such as contests. Let a social influencer give away one of your products as a promotional campaign for your Instagram page. Influencers are also great options for account takeovers, but we’ll discuss this strategy in greater detail shortly. 9. Post pictures of facesYou know you need to post content on a regular basis. But what type of photos should you be posting? I highly recommend posting images with faces. That’s because photos with faces receive 38% more likes than photos without faces. Look at how Nike used this concept on its Instagram profile: As you can see, eight of these nine consecutive posts contain faces. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the only type of content you should be posting. But when in doubt, share a picture that shows someone’s face. 10. Add subtitles to your videosWe already established you need to share video content on Instagram to drive engagement. But I’ve got a way for you to make your video strategy even better. Add subtitles. Video subtitles increase view times by 12%. It’s worth noting that on Facebook, 85% of videos are watched without sound. Since Facebook owns Instagram, we can safely assume those numbers translate to Instagram as well. 11. Tag your locationYou posted a picture of someone’s face and added a hashtag to your caption. It’s time to post, right? Not so fast. Before you post your photos, you should tag their locations. Research shows that posts with tagged locations have 79% higher engagement rates. You can add a location tag even if you aren’t actually there. If your office is in San Francisco but you’re trying to promote something in Miami, you can still add Miami to the tag. Just don’t get caught with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background of your photo, or users will know you’re not in Miami. Check out this example from Lululemon. This image was shared on July 28, 2018. The date corresponds with the Hermosa Beach Open, which is an AVP beach volleyball tournament. Was this photo actually taken on this day at this location? Maybe. But maybe not. Either way, it’s promoting beach volleyball gear during a beach volleyball tournament at that location. So the location fits the post. 12. Announce a new post in your storyYou need to learn how to use Instagram story to promote your business. When you add a new post to your profile, announce it on your story. This will double your engagement metrics. First, you’ll get a view and impression on your story. Then, users will be enticed to view the new post. After that, you can encourage them to like and comment on the post by implementing the other strategies I’ve discussed so far. 13. Leverage takeoversThis relates to the discussion about social influencers. An influencer may allow you to take over their account for a period of time. You can post content to their story or even broadcast a live video. On the flip side, you can let an influencer take over your account. Here’s an example from Shopify: Amber Mac not only took over the Shopify account but also promoted it on her profile as well. Now her followers have a reason to visit the Shopify profile to see what she’s up to over there. This will boost the engagement metrics during that time period. Furthermore, if those users like the content you post as a guest of another account, they may end up following your page, which increases your chances of having additional engagements with those users moving forward. ConclusionYour Instagram profile is a valuable marketing tool. But you’ll be successful only if you know how to use this tool correctly. Ultimately, your content needs to drive engagements. Getting users to like, comment, view, share, and click on your posts will increase your brand exposure and help you generate more leads. As a result, your business will be more profitable. If you’re unhappy with your current engagement rates or if you think there’s room for improvement, refer to this guide. Implement the tactics listed above to boost your Instagram engagement rates. How is your brand using Instagram to focus on user engagement? via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/17/13-ways-to-improve-your-engagement-rates-on-your-instagram-posts/ Moovly launches powerful new WordPress Plugin// function popupCenter(pageURL, w,h) {var left = (screen.width/2)-(w/2);var top = (screen.height/2)-(h/2);var targetWin = window.open (pageURL, '_blank','toolbar=no, location=no, directories=no, status=no, menubar=no, scrollbars=no, resizable=no, copyhistory=no, width='+w+', height='+h+', top='+top+', left='+left);}function pinIt(){var e = document.createElement("script");e.setAttribute('type','text/javascript');e.setAttribute('charset','UTF-8');e.setAttribute('src','https://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinmarklet.js?r='+Math.random()*99999999); document.body.appendChild(e);} // About MoovlyMoovly is a cloud-based multimedia platform that enables everyone to create engaging multimedia content by making it affordable, intuitive and simple. Users choose from extensive content libraries in various styles and can add their own images, movies and sounds to create captivating videos and presentations. Finished work is published on major social channels like Facebook and YouTube, shared for viewing or editing in the online Moovly User Gallery or downloaded with the click of a button. Today, Moovly is used in education, businesses of any size and government, non-government and non-profit organizations. Moovly is also adopted by private consumers and broadcasters to create videos that explain, promote, engage, inspire, educate and entertain. Videos can be played on mobile devices, TV screens, digital billboards and more. Moovly makes video content reusable, easy to edit, fast to update and translatable, all in-house. Platform flexibility and powerful API mean Moovly can offer, custom styles and branded libraries, white-labelled and custom skinned interfaces, single sign-on high-level security, quality of service priority queuing, premium support and commercial other services. For additional information regarding Moovly, please refer to its website at www.moovly.com.
For further information please contact: Brendon Grunewald Dan Whittle The post Moovly launches powerful new WordPress Plugin appeared first on Moovly - Create videos and video presentations. from Moovly – Create videos and video presentations https://www.moovly.com/investors/moovly-launches-powerful-new-wordpress-plugin via IFTTT from https://seanbrian0.blogspot.com/2018/08/moovly-launches-powerful-new-wordpress.html It’s no secret we’re living in a mobile world. As marketers, we need to recognize that our current and prospective customers are active on their mobile devices. That’s why you need to learn how to optimize your web design for mobile users. But some of you may have taken this one step further and built a mobile app. That’s great news, and you’re definitely headed in the right direction. Mobile apps are increasing in popularity. If you saw my top mobile trends that are dominating 2018, you’re aware of this. In fact, over half of small businesses in the United States either have mobile apps or are planning to develop one. Further, 55% of these business owners say they are using mobile apps to drive sales. Those of you who already developed an app have an advantage over your competition. But your app won’t be successful unless you can get people to download it. Ultimately, the more downloads you get, the greater the chance you’ll have of getting more sales and increasing your total revenue. The ranking of your mobile app has a direct correlation with how many downloads you’ll get. Ironically, getting lots of downloads will also improve the ranking of your app. It’s a constant cycle. Basically, if you’re able to get downloads, the popularity of your app will increase. As a result, the ranking will improve, and the downloads will continue. While it may sound complicated at first, it’s not difficult to understand. I’ll explain what you need to do to drive downloads and improve the ranking of your mobile app. Understand the basic concepts of app store optimization (ASO)For starters, you need to understand ASO, which is short for app store optimization. Having a mobile app without focusing on ASO is like having a website without focusing on SEO (search engine optimization). ASO is extremely important. That’s because such a large percentage of app users discover new apps by browsing the app stores: Think of the app store as a general search engine. Someone knows what they want but doesn’t know where to find it. So they type some general terms into the search box. Just like with a web browser, mobile users aren’t going to go searching through dozens of results after they conduct a search. They’re going to select one of the top results. Those are the apps that will get the most number of downloads. It’s the same concept as Google searches. The top ranking results will get the majority of the traffic. You need to learn which factors can increase your chances of getting ranked higher according to ASO. We’ll cover some of these concepts as we continue. Recognize the differences between the Apple App Store and Google Play StoreLet’s continue talking about the basics. There are two main app stores. The Apple App Store is for apps available to download on iOS devices, whereas the Google Play Store is for Android users. Depending on your business, your app might be available on just one or both of these platforms. You need to know which factors impact your ranking in each store. The algorithms for ranking apps are not the same. Here are some of the key similarities and differences between the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store: As you can see, the title of your app has the highest impact on your ranking in both stores. We’ll talk more about your title in greater detail shortly. Similarly, the ratings and reviews of your app also affect the ranking of your app on each platform. However, there are some major differences as well. Your app’s description impacts rankings in the Google Play Store. But iOS users may not download your app unless you’re able to describe it, even though it doesn’t directly impact your ASO. But we’ll discuss tips for writing app descriptions later on. The keywords field in Apple App Store apps will impact your ranking, but that field isn’t even an option in the Google Play Store. Ultimately, you’ve got to find a balance between these two stores. You can’t expect the same ASO strategy to work for each platform, so you’ll need to make the necessary changes in your listing in each store. Make sure you have a great titleYou need to put some thought into creating a title for your app. This may be easier for some of you compared to others. For example, if you already have an established business and your app is just an extension of that company, you’ll want the name to be the same for your branding purposes. But those of you who are launching an app as a completely new business will benefit from reviewing my tips for naming your startup. You want the title of your app to explain the function of your app and what it does. Here’s an example of a great title from OfferUp: OfferUp is an app designed for buying and selling goods. As you can see, those keywords are also included in the title for ASO purposes. However, it’s worth noting that the Google Play Store could potentially suspend your app if you’re using repetitive and irrelevant keywords in your title just to improve your ASO ranking. Here’s something else to take into consideration. The Google Play Store gives you a 50 character limit to name your app. But the Apple App Store has a 30 character limit for titles. As far as the ASO algorithms are concerned, having different names on each platform won’t impact downloads. However, from a branding perspective, you want your app name to be identical in each store. Here’s why. Let’s say a user who has an iOS device downloads your app from the Apple App Store. Then they recommend it to a friend who has an Android phone. If the names are different, it can cause some major confusion. That new user may not be able to find your app if they’re searching for the wrong title. Write an informative descriptionAs I explained earlier, your app description impacts your ranking in the Google Play Store. This is a great opportunity for you to include relevant keywords that prospective users may search for when browsing for a new app. Even though your description is irrelevant to your ASO ranking on the Apple App Store, you still need to write one that’s informative. Why? Well, how else will people know what your app does? Sure, the title may give them some kind of indication, but the description is your chance to shine and explain your app’s functionality. If you want to know how to write a great description, take a look at this example from Uber: I pointed out some of my favorite parts. For starters, the entire description won’t be displayed when a user first clicks on the app. That’s why the opening lines are the most important. In the first three sentences of this description, Uber clearly explains what its app does. As the description continues, they showcase the platform’s availability in cities across the globe. There is even a simple step-by-step guide to explain how the app works. Another great part about this description is how it promotes all the services offered within the app. Customers who want a simple and affordable way to get around will benefit from using uberX. If someone wants to save even more money, the description recommends uberPOOL. The description explains that UberBLACK is intended for customers who want to ride in a high-end vehicle. Uber also offers rides to app users who need accessibility features and to people who are traveling in big groups. All of this information was clearly written in the description. Keep this in mind when you’re writing the description for your app. Make sure it’s simple while still highlighting the top features and how the app works. Encourage users to rate and review your appHow your app is rated and reviewed will have an impact on your ranking in both app stores. So it’s important you encourage users to review your app. Your star rating impacts your ranking in a number of ways. First of all, the higher your rating, the greater your chances of getting ranked higher. And having four or five stars increases the chances that consumers will download your app. In fact, 79% of users check ratings and read reviews before they download a new app. As you can see in the graphic above, if your app is rated too low, people won’t even consider downloading it. This is why it’s important for you to encourage users to rate and review your app. For the most part, people won’t write a review unless they have a really good experience or something terrible happens. But an average user has no reason to go out of their way to write a review. That’s why you need to ask them. Otherwise, your app ratings will just be from people who experienced something extreme. Send users a popup or push notification that gives them an incentive to rate your app and write a review. This will improve your ASO and make your app more appealing to new users. Improving the star rating of your app will do more than just increase your ranking. It also has a direct correlation with your conversions. Check out this example from Medium: Its conversion rates went from 36% to 47% as the app star rating jumped from 3.9 to 4.3. Improving the rating by such a small margin increased the app’s conversions by more than 10%. Use screenshots to showcase the in-app experienceYour title and description can do only so much. It’s one thing to tell users what your app can do, but it’s another thing to actually show them. That’s why you need to include screenshots. Screenshots give you a chance to show off your app’s versatility. For example, you wouldn’t want to show four screenshots of one feature. It makes much more sense to showcase different features with each image. Let’s say you have an app for your ecommerce store. Showing screenshots of just products isn’t utilizing the option to its full potential. You’re better off showing screenshots of your navigation, search options, checkout procedure, and payment methods. This will give the prospective user a much better indication of how the app functions. Now, your screenshots aren’t directly tied to ASO. However, they’ll help you drive more downloads, which will ultimately improve your ranking. Here’s a great example of screenshots displayed on the Delta app listing: As you can see, each screenshot shows something different. The first image shows what the app looks like on the day of travel. It’s a digital boarding pass that can save you time at the airport. Next is an image that displays the user’s profile. The Delta app also shows travel notifications in an organized feed. This can keep users informed if there is a gate change or flight delay. Finally, the last screenshot shows how users can book a trip directly within the app. Varying screenshots increase the chances of your app being downloaded. Create a video to demonstrate your appIn addition to taking screenshots, you can also use videos to demonstrate how your app works. Just take a look at these numbers that show how many of the top 50 apps in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store incorporate videos: As you can see, the majority of the top grossing apps on both platforms use videos. Users are three times more likely to download an app after watching a video about it, so this strategy will definitely help you drive downloads. Design an eye-catching app iconDon’t overlook the design of your app icon. While this doesn’t necessarily affect ASO, it will still have an impact on downloads and how your app is perceived. The app icon needs to be attractive so that it stands apart from other apps when users are browsing. It should be memorable and related to your overall branding strategy. Don’t make it too similar to another app, especially if it’s your competitor. Think about how your app is going to look once it’s downloaded to various devices. It needs to be visible against as many backgrounds as possible. Take a look at the Slack mobile app icon: It’s colorful and draws attention. But it’s still simple. Do you notice anything else about this app listing? It has a video in addition to screenshots, which is a strategy I just finished discussing. Promote the app on all of your distribution channelsTo get more downloads, ratings, and reviews, you need to promote your app. Leverage all your distribution channels for this. Convert your social media followers into app users. Create YouTube content that drives people to your app store listing. Market the app to your email subscribers. Share download links to the app on your website. Here’s an example of this strategy put to use by Hotel Tonight: Even if you’re running your app as a new business without any physical stores or online purchase options, you still need to have a website as a promotional tool. ConclusionYou invested hard work, time, and money into your mobile app. But the job isn’t quite done yet. Now that your app has launched, you need to take the proper steps to improve its ranking. This will help you get more downloads. Conduct research on ASO. Learn the differences between listing your app on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. Focus on your title. Write an informative description. Use screenshots to show the app’s functionality. Create a video demonstration. Encourage users to rate and review your app. Design an app icon that draws the attention of prospective users. Make sure to promote your app on as many distribution channels as possible. If you follow the tips I’ve outlined in this guide, your app ranking will improve, and you’ll get more downloads. These downloads will ultimately translate into higher profits. How are you using ASO principles to increase your mobile app ranking? via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/15/how-to-improve-the-ranking-of-your-business-mobile-app/ With so many new content marketing strategies out there today, it can be tempting to look past your email list. After all, how important can it be? To say the least, email marketing is crucial. It needs to remain part of your core marketing foundation. Research shows that 99% of consumers check their emails every single day. Between personal email addresses, work accounts, computers, and mobile devices, some consumers check their inboxes even up to 20 times per day. More than 80% of retailers say email marketing is the driving force behind their acquisition and customer retention strategies. From a marketing perspective, sending emails is an extremely cost-effective strategy as well. On average, the ROI yields $40 for every dollar spent, which is the highest among other strategies. But your email campaigns won’t work unless you have lots of subscribers. That’s why you need to learn how to build your first email list from scratch. While you may understand the importance of growing your subscriber list, you need to recognize the impact your growth strategy has on your website. Yes, you want people to opt in to your email content, but at what cost? You don’t want to overwhelm your website visitors and bombard them with nonstop sign-up requests and notifications. This will backfire. If the people visiting your website get annoyed, they may leave and never come back. Fortunately, there are ways you can get more email subscribers without annoying your website visitors. I’ll show you ways you can implement these tactics on your website. Let’s dive in. Add a sidebar to your homepageYou need to come up with ways to promote your email list without spoiling the user experience. After all, you still want visitors to consume your content. That’s why a sidebar on your homepage is the perfect place to include an email opt-in form. As you may have noticed, I use this strategy on the QuickSprout blog. It’s simple yet effective. Visitors can navigate through my website and read my blog without being annoyed by giant bells and whistles trying to get them to subscribe to my email list. The size, placement, and location of the opt-in button on my sidebar are subtle, yet clear and legible. In addition to placing a sidebar to your homepage, you can place it on other pages of your website as well. This will increase your chances of getting more subscribers. First of all, not everyone will navigate directly to your homepage. If someone lands on another page through an organic search, you still want them to see your sidebar. Furthermore, since the sidebar is subtle, it’s possible a website visitor could overlook it on your homepage. As long as it’s out of the way and doesn’t obstruct their navigation experience, it won’t be annoying if you place it on multiple pages. Create a separate landing pageAnother way to get more email subscribers is by building a dedicated landing page for opt-ins. This definitely won’t annoy your website visitors since they won’t see the page unless they navigate to it. Plus, having a separate landing page will make it easier for you to promote your email list through other marketing channels. For example, if you’re promoting your email content to followers on social media, you can provide a link to this page rather than your homepage. Look at how Moz accomplishes this strategy with its dedicated opt-in landing page: I really like the way MOZ pitches its email list. Rather than just asking customers to subscribe to its newsletters, it differentiates itself from the competition. Website visitors know exactly what they’ll be getting if they sign up to receive this content. There won’t be any surprises. Moz will deliver them the top ten articles about online marketing and SEO on a semi-monthly basis. The visitor also knows that their inbox won’t get flooded with too much promotional content if they subscribe. Allow visitors to create an account before making a purchaseYou can also get more email subscribers by making it easy for visitors to provide you with their information while they’re completing another action on the site. The idea here is that you want to limit the number of steps for any given process. For example, let’s say a customer wants to create an account on your website. If they provide you with their email address at that time, they shouldn’t have to do it again to sign up for emails. I recommend combining the account creation strategy with your email opt-in method when customers are making a purchase. Look at this example from Lululemon: As you can see, the brand gives its website visitors an option to create an account before starting the checkout process. By creating an account, they also sign up for emails. That said, you don’t want to force people into your email list. The customer can easily uncheck the box if they don’t want to subscribe. We’ll talk more about these checkboxes during the checkout process in greater detail shortly. Trigger pop-ups when visitors display intent to exitAs I said before, you don’t want to overwhelm your website visitors with pop-ups. If someone lands on your page and a pop-up takes over the screen within the first few seconds, it’ll annoy the visitor. You don’t want this to happen. But timing is everything. You can set a pop-up to appear when a website visitor displays an exit intent. OptinMonster provides this technology and uses the strategy on its own website: Interestingly enough, I was on the website reading more about its exit-intent technology. There was a hyperlink within the content that said “9 unique exit intent popups,” which I highlighted above for you to see. I thought it was interesting and relevant, so I clicked to open it in a new tab. That’s when the popup came. The exit-intent technology recognized I opened a link in a new tab, which means I was probably going to leave the current page to read it. OptinMonster used this popup as an opportunity to collect email addresses. To those of you interested in implementing this strategy, I’d recommend checking out this software. It’s refreshing when brands practice what they preach, and the technology worked as advertised when I was browsing on this site. Pin a sticky bar to all your pagesSticky bars are similar to sidebars, discussed earlier. Sidebars are located on the side of your pages, just as the name implies. But sticky bars get placed at the top of the page. As users scroll, the sticky bar remains in place. You can use services such as Unbouce to build sticky bars for your website. As website visitors scroll and navigate, they’ll always see the option to sign up for your emails. Users won’t perceive it as annoying because the sticky bar isn’t intrusive and won’t disrupt their experience as they browse through your site. Place your subscribe boxes at the bottom of your contentAgain, we don’t want your opt-in requests to take over your website. Your website visitors need to be able to read through your content without being interrupted. That’s why placing the subscribe boxes at the bottom of your pages is a viable strategy. There are several benefits to this method. First of all, it doesn’t impede the user browsing experience. But it also gives your website visitors a chance to consume your content. If they’ve never been on your site before, why would they want to sign up to receive emails from you within the first few seconds of their visit? But after they have a chance to navigate and scroll to the bottom of your page, they’ll be more familiar with you and your service or product. This is your chance to tell them you have an email list. Check out how ProBlogger uses this tactic on its website: As you can see, the subscribe boxes are at the very bottom of the page. This is another example of how the information included tells prospective subscribers exactly what they’ll be receiving if they sign up for emails. It’s a weekly newsletter that provides advice, tips, and tutorials on blogging. Consider moving the placement of your current opt-in boxes to the bottom of your pages. Create an opt-in checkbox during the checkout processEarlier I talked about how you can collect email addresses by giving customers the option to create an account before they make a purchase. That said, you don’t want to force people to create an account just to buy something. If you have a long and complicated checkout process, it will hurt your conversion rates. That’s why you need to understand and implement my shopping cart abandonment prevention tactics. Even if a customer doesn’t create an account, they’ll still need to provide you with their email address to get a receipt, order confirmation, and shipping information. Add a simple checkbox to this process that gives the consumer an option to sign up for your email list. Here’s an example of how Walmart uses this strategy: Walmart has a guest checkout option. If people don’t have an account, they can make a purchase without creating one. As you can see, an email address is still a requirement to complete the purchase. They added a simple checkbox below the email field so their customers can subscribe. Similar to the example we saw earlier, if someone doesn’t want to opt in, all they need to do is uncheck the box. Offer an incentive to subscribeSometimes, people need some motivation to do something. Sure, your newsletter may be informative, but is that really intriguing enough to get customers to sign up for emails? Giving them an incentive to sign up can increase the chances that they’ll opt in. When in doubt, remember that monetary benefits and discounts are always a safe bet. Consumers are sensitive to prices. Everyone wants to save money when possible. If you offer your website visitors a way to get a discount by providing their email address, they’ll probably go for it. Look at how TOMS implements this strategy on its ecommerce website: Yes, I know it’s a pop-up. However, it’s not too obtrusive, and it’s easy for visitors to close the popup if they don’t want to see it. Plus, it won’t be perceived as annoying if they are getting something in return. Add a slider boxSlider boxes are similar to pop-up windows, but they are less intrusive. Rather than popping up and taking over the screen, they simply slide into view to draw the visitor’s attention, remaining in the corner of the screen. Here’s an example of how BuildFire uses sliders on its website: This slider is specifically designed to collect email addresses. Notice how big the slider is on the page. It probably takes up maybe 20% of the screen, at most. Visitors can still scroll and navigate without a problem. If the visitor doesn’t want to subscribe, they can easily close the slider box without getting annoyed or frustrated. Thoughtfully place a subscribe box at the beginning of your homepageIf collecting email addresses is one of your primary marketing strategies right now, you may not want to bury the opt-in buttons at the bottom of your page or on a separate landing page. You can still promote your email list at the beginning of your homepage. Just make sure it’s done tastefully. Let’s look at how ConversionXL uses this strategy on its website: The company felt getting subscribers was important enough to put the invitation to subscribe at the beginning of its homepage. There’s nothing wrong with that. But notice that it doesn’t take over the entire page. The pages does both: displays other content and collects email addresses. If you want to apply this strategy to your website, make sure you consider the layout to help you design a homepage that converts. ConclusionYou need to prioritize your email marketing strategy and constantly try to add more subscribers to your list. That said, you don’t want to annoy your website visitors. Promote your email list with a sidebar or sticky bar. Create a separate landing page dedicated to adding subscribers. Collect email addresses during the checkout process. You can do this whether customers are creating an account or going through a guest checkout procedure. If you use pop-ups, trigger them when a visitor shows an exit intent. Or you can use a slider that takes up less space on the screen. Placing the subscribe boxes at the bottom of your pages gives your website visitors a chance to consume your content uninterrupted. There’s nothing wrong with asking for email addresses at the beginning of your homepage. Just make sure it’s done tastefully. And don’t forget to offer your site visitors an incentive to subscribe. If you follow the tips I’ve outlined in this guide, you’ll grow your email list while keeping your website visitors happy. How are you getting website visitors to subscribe to your email list without interfering with their browsing experience? via Quick Sprout https://www.quicksprout.com/2018/08/13/how-to-get-more-email-subscribers-without-annoying-your-website-visitors/ |
Sean BrianWhile radishes deter certain insects naturally, they require similar growing conditions as carrots. Although the crops both have roots, radishes grow and germinate quicker, allowing carrots to continue growing in the soil space available when the radishes are harvested, Archives
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