How to Sell More with Content Marketing

All businesses strive to increase their profit margin using various marketing strategies. Content marketing is one tactic used to improve your company’s revenue. Many advertisers overlook this form of marketing because they don’t understand its full potential. Let’s take a look at how content marketing can help your business grow and become a leader in your industry.

Advertisers use content marketing to attract new customers to a brand. You can use this form of marketing on your company’s website to transform it into a hub filled with valuable information. This content could include weekly blogs or articles featuring exciting topics, all related to what your company is selling.

When you use content marketing on your website, look forward to adding many more pages. You will be using more keywords and phrases, and you will have more interesting links to add to social media. Your updated content will also provide you with a reason to send out an email to your customers. That will help you to strike up a conversation with members of your target audience as you also build up your brand’s credibility.

Did you know that content marketing could also promote your customer lifetime value? While content marketing is helpful when it comes to attracting more customers, gaining more prospects is never an easy task. Therefore, you should think about other routes to take to increase your revenue that doesn’t require you to expand your target audience. To do this, you will need to increase the value of your current customers.

When you use content marketing, you are consistently putting out new information that will help you reach out to your customers as often as you can. You always want to bring your most popular products or services back to the front burner when it comes to your frequent customers. They are the consumers who help keep you in business, those who stay loyal to your brand for many years.

But there are also customers who may stay loyal, yet only purchase from your company once or twice per year. These are the people that require your focus and attention. Content marketing can help inspire them to eliminate the lag time between their purchases.

There are times when a consumer may be in need of a product you sell, but it gets pushed aside to a later date. Sending out an email or adding relevant content to your website can help to reduce the amount of time between their purchases and increase your profits.

Many people say that the best form of advertising is word-of-mouth. And in most cases, that’s very true. If you want your customers talking to their close friends, co-workers and family members about your brand, then you need to provide them with something exciting to discuss. That means you need to come up with content that they will love and want to share with others.

To be more proactive with your word-of-mouth advertising efforts, you should try publishing something extraordinary and relatable to your customers. Look into everyday problems that your products or services can solve. Then send out a notification to your customers and ask them to share the content with others who they feel would enjoy it.

Did you know that you can use content marketing in such a way that it will help you cut down on your expenses as a business owner? With the right strategy, you can decrease the number of hours your customer support team members work, saving you money. That proves that your company profits are not just tied to the revenue you make, but also your overall company expenses.

Once you begin using more content marketing on your website, on social media, and in newsletter emails to your customers, you will quickly see how beneficial this marketing tactic can be. Content marketing allows you and your sales team to deliver quality leads that take less time to create.

5 Essential Tools for Facebook Marketing

When your company could use a boost in sales, Facebook is an excellent place to turn to. The social media giant has helped all types of businesses, from those just starting out to those that have been around for decades, reach out directly to their target audience.

If you haven’t created a page for your business on Facebook, or you feel that your social media marketing strategy could use an upgrade, here are a few essential tools that you should try to help improve your Facebook marketing game.

To get the most out of your Facebook marketing strategies, you need to make sure that you’re reaching out to every member of your target audience. You can connect with potential customers all over the world, so, if your business can serve international customers, why not take full advantage of that?

Facebook has a couple of tools to help you reach out to your target audience such as EdgeRank and the Reach Generator.

EdgeRank is an algorithm Facebook uses to determine what content is the most screen worthy. There are three factors that determine if your content is valuable enough to appear, and those are weight, time, and affinity.

Facebook determines the weight score, or popularity score based on the type and the amount of interaction your post receives such as likes or comments. The time score looks at how relevant your content remains over time, and the affinity score is based on how many times fans engaged with your company’s posts in the past.

Now on to the Reach Generator. This tool can expose your target audience to updates about your products that they otherwise may not see. Facebook stated that your basic post made by a company will only reach around 16% of fans. By using the Reach Generator, major brands can reach as many as 98% of their fans throughout a 28-day period. You can receive twice as much engagement using this tool as well.

Another helpful Facebook ad tool is the Open Graph. This tool makes it possible for any action expressed on the social media page to provide you with a great marketing opportunity. One good example of use of the Open Graph system is streaming music apps.

When you listen to a song on Pandora, you have the option to share what you’re listening to with your friends. By doing so, your friends will see that you like the song, they may like or leave a comment on the post. Pandora gets free exposure (as well as the band you’re listening to).

A good piece of advice about placing ads on Facebook, is that sometimes less is more. According to marketing experts, sharing information just for the sake of hearing yourself talk is pointless and a waste of time. What that means is that if you want to make your target audience feel like they are a part of something big, then don’t make them feel like they’re constantly marketed to all the time.

For some companies, making posts more fun and interactive is the best way to sell their brand. It shows that there is more to your company than just the products you make, which can give your company a more relatable and friendly outlook. While this may not be a tool, it is a helpful piece of advice that really works.

And finally, the Facebook Page Manager is a tool that can help your online marketing team save time. This tool allows you to keep track of everything your followers are up to so that you can learn more about your target audience with less research involved. It also allows you to manage up to 50 pages from your smartphone device so that you can check out page activity no matter where you are.

There are plenty of other marketing tools available to Facebook users that can help your company grow and gain profit. Some may work better for your specific brand than others so it’s a good idea to experiment to find out which of these essential tools will work best for you.

We hope that you have gained some valuable information concerning how to gain more exposure for your company on Facebook. 

Why People Share: The Psychology Behind Social Media

Social media has taken the internet by storm. There are 31.25 million Facebook messages, 347,222 tweets, 17,361 LinkedIn profile views, 48,611 Instagram pictures, and 300 hours of YouTube videos uploaded each minute. The internet is full of content that’s constantly being created or shared.

We already know what is happening, but let’s dig a little deeper and get to the “why” of it. Why do people love sharing on social media? What’s the psychology behind it?

As luck would have it, a study by the New York Times Consumer Insight Group found the answer for us. Researchers concluded that there were five major reasons why people share on social media:

Entertainment

Perhaps this is the most obvious answer, but it was also the least common reason out of the five. Everyone loves a good dog video or a funny prank that they can laugh at and share with their friends. After all, what is the internet for if not entertainment?

Less than half of shares are motivated by entertainment or passion. Nevertheless, it does explain the tendency for funny YouTube videos to go viral as people want all their friends to see it.

Supporting a cause

It’s almost impossible to go onto social media and not see someone talking about a cause they are passionate about. The study found that 84% of respondents use social media to share their support for a social cause. Whether it’s fighting against immigration bans or police brutality, social media remains a powerful tool for expression.

A perfect example of this would be the Ice Bucket Challenge. Politicians, celebrities, athletes, and hundreds of others all participated in this viral challenge which helped raise over $130 million for various ALS organizations.

Self-Fulfillment

Related to the above point, many people share on social media to feel good about themselves. A simple click of a button can let all your Facebook friends know how they can best provide relief to hurricanes or donate to their local homeless shelter.

Sure, some might call it slacktivism, but it’s hard to overlook just how excellent social media is for raising awareness of important causes. It’s an easy way for people to make themselves feel better while fighting for a good and noble cause.

Expressing Yourself

The study found that 68% of respondents love sharing things that they feel helps them express who they are. Whether someone is showing the world their love of dogs or how excited they are for the latest blockbuster summer hit, there’s something that just feels good about expressing yourself. No places are as good at showing someone’s uniqueness as social media.

It only takes a few clicks to let the world know who you are and what you like. Many people don’t have the chance to divulge such details about themselves in the regular world, so social media provides a wonderful vehicle where they can truly be themselves without fear of judgment or restriction.

Friendship

This last point takes us to the social aspect of social media. More and more people are making new friends and connections online. It doesn’t matter if you’re finding your next hot date on Tinder or connecting with a potential new business partner on LinkedIn—social media and the internet has made meeting new people much easier than ever.

According to the study, 78% of respondents share on social media to keep in touch with old friends. It makes sense when you consider that the vast majority of Facebook friend lists are people that most users never keep in touch with. Sharing content allows them to reconnect with those who they haven’t talked to in a while and rekindle old friendships.

Conclusion

It’s impossible to deny the massive influence that social media has in our current day and age. The influence of companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram also allows brands to capitalize on new opportunities as they can reach people who are just casually scrolling through pages from the comfort of their phone.

Take a look at your content and ask how it plays in to one of these five psychological factors. You never know what sort of marketing strategies might arise after a little bit of introspection. 

What Millennials Want From Brands?

Whether you like it or not, millennials are becoming one of the fastest-growing demographics in the US. They will be your future customers and your future workers. With new demographics comes new ways of doing things.

Millennials have gotten a bad rep. They’re lazy, they’re narcissistic, they’re entitled, and they’re the “me generation.” They’re addicted to technology and can’t put down their smartphones. They believe that everyone deserves equal recognition, regardless of how much work they put in.

Not only are many of these statements wrong, such myths will make it difficult for companies to adapt to a new demographic. So, what do millennials want from brands? 

Here are a few things they look for:

Authenticity

Millennials want brands to be real and authentic. A study by Concentric Marketing found that 49% of millennials return that they know and trust. Many millennials see companies as nameless and faceless corporations. Social media is a great way for such companies to engage with millennials and show their authenticity.

Social influence

Millennials are very receptive to content on social media websites, particularly if that content is shared by trusted friends and family. The Concentric Marketing study found that 55% of millennials find out about products from friends, 40% of millennials buy from brands recommended by friends and family, and 85% of millennials tell friends about products they enjoy.

Social causes

Millennials want to change the word for the better. In fact, 2014 Millennial Impact Report found that 87% of millennials gave donations to at least one nonprofit in 2013. Millennials support companies that give to charities and want their donations to be spent wisely and transparently. A great way to do this is to promise to give a certain fraction of your profits to various charities and causes. Use social media to advertise your company’s humanitarian efforts and millennials will notice.

Purpose

Millennials are much more likely to buy products if the brand’s values match their own. This requires more than just a good marketing campaign or a catchy slogan. It involves transparency for how the products are created and how companies operate. Branding must be consistent across all social media platforms to keep the message strong and consistent.

Engagement

Millennials want to engage with brands. They want to have dialogues rather than monologues. They want to listen and they want to be listened to.

Brands should engage with millennials. Find ways to allow them to participate and share their thoughts and opinions. Internet contests and open Q&A sessions are two great ways that companies can reach out to their audience. Brands who invite millennials to be a part of the experience will ultimately succeed at capturing their attention and winning their hearts.

Conclusion

Millennials represent the largest growing demographic and most brands must appeal to them one way or another. A 2016 study from Statista found that Americans aged 25-34 spent more time on the internet than any other age group. In fact, that group spent an overage of 2,891 minutes on the internet via PC every single month! Add this to the popularity of smartphone and tablet apps and you have an internet-addicted generation.

Your company’s internet presence can give them what they need: authenticity, social influence, social causes, purpose, and engagement. You can interact with your audience members, build a loyal fan base, ask for their feedback, and tailor your strategy accordingly.

Ask yourself how your company upholds these values on social media and study your marketing metrics to see how engaged millennials are with your company. You may find that your internet marketing needs to be updated to become more appealing to millennials.  And, if you’d like more access to invaluable online marketing strategies, check out my done-for-you system.

What Is People-Based Marketing?

Marketing is all about reaching people and all marketers want to find out how to reach the greatest amount of people with the smallest amount of effort. This often means sending the same generic message to hundreds, if not thousands, of people. However, everyone is unique and therefore has unique needs. What is relevant to one person might not be relevant to the next. It’s hard to be that brand that appeals to everyone since each person is so different. This is where people-based marketing comes in.

What It Is

People-based marketing represents the original promise of digital and internet marketing; it allows you to replace your broadcast with personalized messages and experiences that the consumer wants to see. It allows brands to establish a marketing system centred around the individual consumer and utilize plenty of data to track that person’s behaviour and spending habits. People-based marketing strategies revolve around the consumer and all marketing efforts are aligned to fit their needs.

One company that utilizes people-based marketing very well is Spotify. Users stream music for several hours a day, often depending on their mood. Listening habits change when the user is relaxing, driving, or exercising and Spotify tracks all this data.

Spotify’s algorithms help create customized and personalized experiences for its users. It will recommend new releases that the listener might enjoy, create personalized playlists based on listening habits, and even remind users of music that they haven’t listened to in a while. These features make users feel like Spotify is tuned into their specific wants and needs.

The best way to utilize a people-based marketing strategy is by paying attention to the three main elements:

Identification

This is the first and most important part of people-based marketing. Without any identification, everyone you’re trying to target might as well be a nameless and faceless person.

Cookies used to be the main method of tracking internet users, but this method is slowly becoming outdated. More people are using multiple devices, especially smartphones, to connect to the internet and much of this information cannot be tracked using cookies.

One of the main ways to identify people is with deterministic targeting which targets users based on accounts and email addresses. For example, Amazon can track what someone is doing whether they’re using a desktop browser, mobile app, Kindle, or Alexa since it requires them to use the same account for all platforms.

Another strategy is called probabilistic targeting which uses data analysis to link devices based on things like location and IP addresses. For example, if a computer and a smartphone are both connected to the same home Wi-Fi address, it’s a possibility that both devices are owned by the same person.

Data

You want to find out the most you can about your consumer by collecting data. You can use identifiers such as email addresses to dig up all sorts of information about their habits. This includes, but isn’t limited to, what devices they use, what they like and share on social media, who they follow on social media, what they’ve purchased, what product reviews they’ve read or written, which products they’ve looked at, and how often they spend.

Automation

Lastly, automation is what will make your life easier. You probably have received several automated marketing emails in your life, many of which were tailored to your personal needs. Common automated emails you might have received are:

• Telling you events or products you might be interested in based on your history
  
• Telling you that your shopping cart isn’t empty
  
• Telling you when an item is restocked
  
• Asking you if the product arrived on time
  
• Asking you if the product was in satisfactory condition
  
• Asking you how much you liked the product
  
• Asking you to leave a review

Conclusion

People-based marketing is the future of marketing. You should strive to aim for individuals rather than masses for a more effective marketing strategy.

One easy way to do this is to use an identity resolution service like LiveRamp IdentityLink which helps identify consumers and track their habits. You should also utilize digital marketing platforms to keep a database of consumers and track their unique habits.

It’s not a stretch to say that people-based marketing can completely transform how your company reaches out to consumers and makes sales. 

Online Marketing Myths You Probably Believe

Marketing online is already incredibly difficult. Sure, you have the entirety of the internet to appeal to, but it also means that you’re competing against countless other online marketers. The internet is a vast place and standing out against a sea of competitors isn’t an easy feat, but a successful online marketing campaign can easily bring you the customers you’re looking for.

Unfortunately, many marketers are far too misguided about what they think works and doesn’t work on the internet. Many marketers go barking up the wrong tree so to speak and end up wasting time and resources on fruitless endeavors. Here are just a few commonly held myths that end up hurting marketers:

Myth #1: We need to be on as many social media platforms as possible.

It’s true that you certainly want to get your message out to as many people as possible, but not all audiences equally deserve your attention. There are countless social media platforms to take advantage of - Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, etc - but that doesn’t mean you need to use all of them.

Each social media platform has a different audience and those audiences are all interested in different things. Do you think a company like Tastemade that markets by making cooking videos would have as much success on LinkedIn as they do on Facebook? Would a company for elderly people like Life Alert want to market on Snapchat where 71% of its members are under 34?

Rather than trying to spread yourself thin, choose the most ideal platforms and focus your efforts there. You can expand your marketing efforts when you can acquire more overhead, but it’s best to play to your strengths while still starting out.

Myth #2: My company needs to be #1 on SEO results for important keywords.

SEO can be a difficult game to play and it’s never easy to get to the top of a Google search for popular keywords. For example, if you are running a shoe store, it would be very nice to be the first result when someone types “shoes” into Google.

However, it might be more beneficial and realistic to aim for mastering long tail keywords - that is longer and more specific phrases. Long tail keywords make up 70% of Google searches and generally indicate that a consumer is more willing to convert and purchase than a short tail generic search.

For example, “shoes” is a short tail keyword that might be used for someone who’s simply browsing the internet while someone who uses long tail keywords like “black dress shoes,” “good running shoes,” “cheap sneakers,” or “sandals for summer” are probably ready to buy.

Myth #3: This other company is doing it, so, why can’t we?

It’s tempting to look at successful companies and try and imitate what they’re doing. Sometimes it works such as when Instagram copies Snapchat’s story features and ended up beating Snapchat at their own game. However, this isn’t always the case.

Take the example of the Amazon Fire Phone: Amazon’s short-lived attempt at entering the smartphone market. The phone’s multiple flaws and inability to stand up to Samsung or Apple means that its obituary was written rather quickly. On the other hand, Amazon has been instrumental in killing Borders and has companies like Sears, Macy’s, and Best Buy on the ropes.

The takeaway is that what works for one company doesn’t work for everyone else. If it did, every company would be doing the same thing. You have a different audience, different brand, different mission, and a different set of values. Find your own unique voice.

Myth #4: Email is dead. Long live the new social media king.

Social media might be the new big thing, but don’t count out email just yet. Believe it or not, a study from McKinsey & Company found that companies acquire new customers via email 40 times more than they do on Facebook and Twitter combined.  The study also found that 91% of consumers check their email every day, make purchases three times more often via email than via social media, and that they order 17% more when ordering via email.

Clearly, there is a lot of misinformation in the air as to how online marketing should be done. Knowing what works and what doesn’t work can mean the difference between life and death for your company. For more handy internet marketing tips, check out my done-for-you system.

9 Awesome Tools to Help Your Twitter Game

With over 328 monthly active users, it’s hard not to acknowledge the power and popularity of one of the world’s most prominent social media platforms. The microblogging trend has taken the internet by storm and it’s easy for anyone to follow their favourite brands and celebrities from the ease of their phone. You too can take advantage of this platform by utilizing these handy tools to boost your marketing efforts.

Hashtagify

Twitter is all about hashtags and there’s nothing better at finding the right hashtag than Hashtagify. If you want to know which hashtags work best for your industry, Hashtagify is the tool for you. With over 40 million hashtags in its repository, Hashtagify will be your best friend to get noticed during hashtag searches.

Tweriod

The clever combination of “Twitter” and “period” should tell you all you need to know about this app. You can spy on your followers and see when they are most active on Twitter, therefore giving you a better idea of when to post during peak times. Combine this with a scheduling app and watch your retweets climb higher.

Buffer

Speaking of scheduling apps, Buffer gives you the ability to schedule tweets and posts at certain times. This is especially useful when trying to target your audience during peak times or when experimenting with different time zones and the like. You can pre-write all your tweets and have them scheduled to be sent out in a few hours or even a few weeks.

Twilert

Another clever combination of words, this app alerts you when your keywords are messaged on Twitter. For example, you might opt in to receive emails whenever someone mentions your brand name on Twitter, allowing you to swiftly respond to them. Managing your social media presence and watching what people are saying about your brand is incredibly important to maintain a positive image of your company.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is great because it does two things. The first is that it shortens your links which is very useful for fitting in everything you need to say even with the new 280-character limit. The second thing Bit.ly does is track the number of clicks so you can see how many people actually interacted with your link.

TweetChat

One of the most annoying aspects of Twitter is that you can’t interact with someone directly unless you send them a direct message or input their handle in a private tweet. Luckily, TweetChat changes all that. This handy app allows you to have private conversations without all that other annoying hassle.

BuzzSumo

This tool used by everyone from BuzzFeed, Rolling Stone, National Geographic, IBM, Expedia, and more. It’s most useful feature is that it allows you to see what sort of content related to a certain topic is most popular so that you can gain insight as to how people are talking about that topic. It also helps you track what your competitors are doing on social media so you can compare statistics against them.

Triberr

Twitter is a great place to find like-minded people. Triberr does exactly that; you can find “tribes” of people with the same interests or in the same industry as you.

HootSuite

If you are in charge of managing multiple social media accounts, HootSuite is the tool for you. This handy program allows you to simultaneously look at and manage several different accounts at the same time even if those accounts are on the same platform. Its clean interface makes it easy to use and allows you to compare posts side-by-side.

These are just a few of many useful Twitter tools that can help gain you followers and boost brand engagement. Simply find out which ones work best for you, make an account, and have fun.

All of these apps are easy to use, so feel free to experiment and test out different techniques to find out which marketing strategy works best for you.  And, if you’d like more access to invaluable online marketing strategies, check out my done-for-you service.