Integrate content marketing into your sales process for business success in 2016

In a recent Forbes article on The Top 10 Business Trends that will drive success in 2016, one of the top trends was integrating content marketing into your sale process. I personally love this tip and I hope all my clients adopt this trend. But what does this actually mean and how can you implement it in your business in 2016.

Content marketing is a term bandied around in the online world all the time. Put simply content marketing is when you create a digital asset and use it to promote your product or service. The content needs to valuable, relevant, and consistent and is designed to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience, normally your target audience. The digital asset can be a blog article, how to guide, video training series, ebooks, checklist and more. There are lots of large companies that have been doing this well for a long time. In 2015 we saw more and more smaller businesses create great bits of content as lead magnets in their business.

The new trend is to continue to use content marketing as part of your inbound marketing strategy but also throughout your sales process. Not just at the beginning of the funnel. So ask yourself a quick question. Are you using content throughout the sales process? If you aren't using it - you might be missing out on sales. Here's how. Many consumers now spend time researching products either before or during the sales process. Customers value impartial good quality input and advice about products and services. If your not providing the content to help them make the decision someone else probably is and that someone could be your competitor. If they give them the answers they need - more than likely they will buy from them because they have become the trusted advisor.

So the hot tip for 2016 is to find ways to integrate valuable impartial content to support customer buying decisions. The key here is that it must be impartial - you need to expound what you good at but also acknowledge what you are not good at. Being honest and authentic is key here.

YOUR TURN --->

So how would you actually implement this is your business this year.

Task 1: Beef up content on your product or sales pages to keep customers there

  • Look at your product and sales pages afresh. These pages play an important role in supporting customer buying decisions. Ideally if you can provide all the information or content the customer needs to make the buying decision on your page, they won't leave and go somewhere else to get it. They will stay, add the item to the cart and checkout.

  • Assess whether you have included honest information about your products or services. Its important to list all the good points and sometimes to helps to include a list of what the product or service isn't good at or shouldn't be used for.

  • Make sure your product or sales pages include reviews and quotes from real customers. This builds trust and helps the customer to feel confident about the purchase. We don't really want them leaving to go to a product review site to set the information. Once they are there a review of a customers product might attract them and they never come back.

  • Also consider adding a link to a PDF guide about the product or service that includes valuable, easy to read information about the product or service. In this guide include a comparison chart between you and your competitors - be honest. Make it visually easy for a customer to know if your product is a good fit for them.

  • Add a "I need help" pop up box that allows the user to request assistance which triggers a guide, 'how to' or more info about the product to their email account. This guide may actually answer their question and get them to convert right then and there.

Task 2: Drip feed content over the course of the sales cycle using auto-responders in your onboarding workflow

  • Do you have a lead magnet to a product or sales page? Review this lead magnet to see if more information can be added to assist customer buying decisions. Once you have captured their email address look at your auto responder emails in your onboarding series that move customers through your funnel. Does the content in the series provide the customers with progressively more information, answer more typically asked questions etc? This is what we are aiming for - we want customers to have have everything they need to buy the product or service. If you don't provide product comparisons on the product or sales pages consider sending it as an email during the onboarding series.

If you need more help with content marketing then please contact us for a coaching session.

 

 

 

The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding has been one of the best things ever to happen to artists and entrepreneurs.

Every year since 2010 artists have received more funds from crowdfunding than they have from the National Endowment of Arts. Meanwhile, it’s propelled new businesses, like Oculus Rift, which raised $2.4 million dollars on Kickstarter before being acquired by Facebook for $2 billion; and Pebble, one of the early trendsetters in smartwatches.

This “pennies from many” model allows many more people to pursue their creative and entrepreneurial visions. For prospective entrepreneurs, crowdfunding is an exciting way to generate attention, validate an idea, and perhaps most importantly, raise capital without going into debt.

But running a successful campaign is no walk in the park. That’s why we’ve put an infographic that gives you an overview of the two major crowdfunding platforms and the characteristics of successful campaigns. You’ll find in these two pieces everything you need to know about the right sort of product to crowdfund and how to transition to an enduring campaign afterwards, with data-driven advice on optimizing your campaign page.

In addition to up-to-date and novel advice, this guide includes in-depth interviews with four entrepreneurs who got their start with successful campaigns. These include interviews with Canary Home Securities, which raised $2 million to become Indiegogo’s most-funded hardware project; and Catan Boards, which raised 1,400% of its funding goal.

Today, we present The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding, as well as Crowdfunding 101, an infographic with the data analysis of 400,000 campaigns. Take a look

Grow Your Social Media

Grow Your Social Media with these 5 Key Steps

Social media is enormous! So enormous in fact it accounts to 40% of all time spent online. Social media has created a new way for consumers to discover brands and for marketers to reach out further to potential customers. Incredibly 93% of marketers today say that they use social media for business growth. Last year (2013) saw a outpouring in popularity for platforms including Pinterest, Instagram and Vine. This year we’re expecting even more sites to pick up traction including Google’s own Google+ which is becoming an essential part of people’s daily lives.

However, to make the most of this incredible marketing channel, here are five essential steps you should adopt for successful social media marketing.

Plan your strategy
A clear digital strategy is essential for successfully driving sales and leads from social media. 25% of small businesses do not have any strategy in place for their social media marketing. Appreciate that each social network has its own audience demographic and that you should make your choice as to which platforms best suit your business based on their target customers.
Here are some demographic differences between some of the leading networks.

  • Facebook is the leading social media network, with 67% of people online using it.
  • 60% of these Facebook users are female.
  • A 28 years old female is the average user on Twitter.
  • 18–29 year olds tend to be the primary user of Instagram.
  • Pinterest is heavily used by the female gender, with 80% of users being female and those, which have higher education and higher earnings.

With these in mind, you need to take the time to research your customer. What is their personality type? What is their lifestyle? What value can you add for them online?

Having selected the appropriate channels, monitor what your competition is doing. What is working for them? Start creating a social content calendar, as this will help you to organize, plan ahead and remain consistent with a social content schedule.

Quality content is vital
There is no denying that audience engagement is vastly improved with quality content. This can make the difference between your content being shared across multiple platforms and helps to generate more interest in a brand. Quality content also makes a difference when it comes to your organic SEO.
So what exactly do we mean by quality content?

  • Informative
  • Sharable
  • Actionable
  • Relevance to your target audience

To write like a master you need to embrace humor but also promote authoritative knowledge of the subject, your industry and your audience. With content being so crucial to social success, you, as a social media marketer, should experiment to see what works best for you, even if they are successes or failures.

Visuals engage
A study by the University of Harvard shows that 70% of all Facebook activity revolves around the posting of images and that 44% of all users are more likely to interact with brands if they use pictures in their posts. On top of that 121% more shares were generated when using professional quality photos with an average of 90.64 shares per post.

Because of this love for visuals, social networks like Vine, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram are becoming increasingly more popular. You need to think ahead and create your strategy incorporating images at every opportunity.

Don’t forget, when scrolling down a Facebook newsfeed, it is the images, which secure the most feed space, increasing brand visibility, and decreasing the chances it is missed. This is especially true on mobile devices, as images greatly increase the visibility of a post. Furthermore, studies have shown that people are more likely to remember the contents of a post when accompanied with a striking image.

Don’t forget to be active and responsive
When your customers flock to your business’ social platforms to post comments, don’t forget, they are going to expect you to be social as well. Microsoft and Xbox are two excellent examples (among many businesses), which openly embrace Twitter for customer relations and support.
Boasting an impressive 1.3 million tweets, the Xbox support profile is one of the most active and responsive brand feeds on Twitter. It even goes so far as to call itself “the most responsive brand on Twitter”.

With an average of just 42 minutes per response to feed mentions, the Microsoft Support Twitter feed is lightening fast when compared to traditional customer service outlets.

With this in mind you need to remember that simply responding is not enough. If you are too automated with your responses it could get you into trouble through inappropriate responses. Responding with a generic reply could inadvertently promote negative attention and you could be seen to be uncaring. Public perception is a big deal when it comes to social media, as customers want to feel that they’re interacting with a human instead of an automated response robot.

Get your ruler out and measure those metrics
Although there are hundreds of millions of social media interactions every day and the majority of businesses embrace the power of social media marketing, incredibly 25% have no strategy in place to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns.
I can bet that through the time and money you spend on social media marketing, you’ll want to see a return on your investment. Measuring metrics is one the best ways to measure activity and to see where it can be improved.
A few metrics which you should definitely keep track of are:

  • Click through rates from posts onto your business profile
  • The number of shares you receive across various networks
  • Conversion rates
  • Website traffic generated from social channels. (You may even find activity coming from platforms you don’t even use)

As with traditional marketing, one of the main goals of social media marketing is to increase sales. On the same hand maintaining brand awareness is just as important. By monitoring these key metrics you can adjust your social media tactics to increase efficiency and return on investment. Which let’s be honest, is the bottom line for determining whether any marketing strategy is effective.

Conclusion
Social media must be employed if you want to be successful in business. By failing to plan and measure results, you’re setting yourself up for a fall. Listen to what your audience is saying and engage at every opportunity.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and gained some insights into making the most out of your social presence.

Source: www.pinterest.com
 

Evolution of Facebook Audience Targeting

Facebook is revolutionizing digital ad targeting through what they are coining “Audiences” as the umbrella term with a variety of technical ways to target people, not cookies based on digital behaviors. The “move fast, break things” culture that Facebook embodies could not be more true in terms of the advancements made to the array of targeting features introduced to their ad platform this year.

This Infographic by Opnia, a social advertising and mobile app dev agency,provides a detailed overview of the evolution of Facebook audience targeting. As you can see the targeting opportunities to splice and dice your messages to a highly relevant audience are endless. And now with Facebook’s improved analytics tool “audience insights” advertisers can upload email data to garner social insights about their customers. This tool can be used in a variety of ways for research and content marketing, but main focus is to improve targeting through Facebook advertising.

Using RSS Feeds to Automate Social Media

Using RSS feeds to push your blog posts and/or other content to your social media pages can be a useful way to ensure that your followers learn about your latest posts. However, using RSS feeds in this manner isn’t without argument. Below are a few of the pros and cons, to keep in mind

The Pros of Using RSS Feeds
First, let’s look at the advantages:

  • Automation – Setting up RSS feeds so that your blog posts are automatically broadcast on your social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook saves you time and effort. If you would normally post manual links each time you publish a blog post, using an RSS feed to automate the process allows you to focus on other tasks such as co-operating with other social media users or even writing your next post.
  • Set it and forget it – Once set up, everything happens automatically. You’ll never forget to mention your latest blog post again.
  • Focus – You can also set up your RSS feeds so that only those in a specific category or those tagged with a specific word are fed to your profiles. For example, if you blog about cars in general and run a Facebook page focused on Honda cars, you could set up your RSS feed so that only those blog posts tagged with the word “BMW” appear on your Facebook page. You could also use RSS feeds from others (such as news from car manufacturer) and adopt a similar strategy.

The Cons of Using RSS Feeds
Now let’s look at the downside of using RSS feeds:

  • Automation - Too much automation can backfire. Social media users want to follow real people, not robots that aggregate information. Make sure to use RSS feeds sparingly. While you’re at it, adjust the publication settings so that a maximum of one or two posts can be published in a single day. This way, your social media sites won’t get bombarded with post after post after post.
  • Duplication – If you have followers that follow you on Facebook and Twitter and you automatically send your blog posts to both social media profiles, those followers will see your blog post twice. They may feel that there’s no point in following you on both profiles. To avoid this problem, use tags or categories to divert some posts to Twitter and others to Facebook.
  • You may not be online and ready to respond once posted – If your Facebook or Twitter account posts a link to your blog and your followers have immediate questions or comments, you really need to be available to interact — that’s the whole point, right? To avoid this potential problem, make sure to set up your automatic RSS feed to occur at a specific time of day when you’re more likely going to be able to respond.

Using RSS feeds to share your blog posts can be a good strategy as it allows you to set it and forget it while keeping your social media page updated with current, relevant information. But it can backfire, too, if you overdo it. Use sparingly, respond promptly to comments, and keep your followers engaged.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Once considered “new media,” social media has been around for over a decade. In fact, Facebook recently turned 10. No longer “new,” social media marketing appears to be here to stay. After all, users continue to flock to social networks, and so do marketers. What’s in it for your business? Check out these benefits of Social Media Marketing

  • Traffic and exposure - Social media marketing allows you to reach a much wider potential audience as your followers interact with your social profiles. In addition, many businesses periodically and strategically link to their blogs, websites, and landing pages from their social media pages which further drives traffic. In addition, you can keep the majority of your status updates social and informative and then encourage users to opt into an email campaign where you have the opportunity to guide them toward a buying decision.
  • Loyal fans and brand advocates - Engaging users on social networks breeds loyalty. In addition, many of your most satisfied customers will share their enthusiasm for your products and services with their own networks.
  • Leads, leads, and more leads - You can also use social media to generate leads. For example, you might offer a special report, ebook, or whitepaper on your blog or Facebook page in exchange for an email address.
  • Marketplace insights - Some social networking sites such as Facebook also provide you with detailed analytics. For example, you can quickly see the demographic makeup of your Facebook followers. In addition, you can target specific demographics through Facebook ads.
  • Improved rankings in search engines - Search engines want to serve up relevant results to their users. Having an active social presence with a great deal of engagement, likes, shares, and comments can signal to search engines that your website is highly topical and authoritative.
  • Increased sales - Who doesn’t want to increase sales? Social media with its ability to deliver additional traffic, loyal fans, and leads can positively impact your bottom line by driving sales.
  • Lower marketing costs - Social media marketing is not free, but it’s also not overly expensive. For example, you can sign up for Facebook and Twitter for free and then interact with followers without any upfront costs. That said, your time has value, so don’t forget to factor that in. In addition, you’ll need someone to write quality content for your blog, email newsletters, content marketing campaigns, and so on, and you may want to invest in targeted ads to attract the right following. According to HubSpot, inbound leads cost 61 percent less than outbound ones (social media is a form of inbound marketing).
  • Business partnership opportunities - Finally, social media is a fantastic place to network with other business professionals in your industry as well as potential partners. Start by joining LinkedIn or Facebook groups and becoming an active contributor.


These are but a few of the many benefits you can expect from social media marketing. Your customers, prospects, and potential business partners are using social media. This means that you should, too!

Source: www.grosocial.com

LinkedIn Tags

LinkedIn Tags- A Tool You May Not Know About

Did you know that LinkedIn: World's Largest Professional Network allows you to group your contacts using custom tags? This little-known feature is a useful tool that allows you to filter your LinkedIn contacts based on your own criteria. Better yet, once filtered, you can send messages to 25 tagged contacts at a time. Here’s what you need to know about tagging and filtering contacts on LinkedIn brought to you from the Boutique Business consulting

Create Meaningful Tags
LinkedIn provides you with some default tags such as Friends, Colleagues, Classmates, and Group_Members. While useful, it’s even more powerful to segment your contact using your own custom tags. For example, you could segment your list based on the types of products and services your prospects and customers are interested in or their business types, job roles, or even favorite sports team.

Before you get started, think about your tagging structure so that you don’t inadvertently create redundant tags such as “salesperson” and “sales consultant.” In addition, keep in mind that you can use multiple tags for each contact. Thus, you could tag someone as a “customer,” “car enthusiast,” “CEO,” and “Dodgers fan.”

In order to create a tag, you will need to go to your Contact list in LinkedIn. Do this by going to Network > Contacts. Hover your mouse over a contact from your list and then click on the Tag button that appears. Click the Add a New Tag link in the submenu. Give it a name and click Save. This will both create the tag as well as tag that person with the tag you just created.

Once created, you can then tag other contacts with that same tag (or create new tags as applicable). To tag another contact with the tag you just created, find that person in your Contacts list, hover with your mouse, click Tag, and then choose the tag in the drop down list. Repeat as needed to tag your other contacts.

Filtering Contacts by Tags
Once your contacts are tagged, you can filter your list based on the tags you just created. Why? It makes your list more manageable. For example, if you need to refer an IT project to an IT consultant but aren’t sure where to start, you could start by filtering your contact list based on those who you have tagged as IT consultants. Instead of wading through a large list of contacts from all kinds of backgrounds, you would then have a small, highly relevant list.

Using Tags to Send Mass Messages via LinkedIn
Another reason to use tags to filter your list is to send targeted mass messages. For example, let’s say that you want to reach out to all of the IT consultants on your list about a new product your company is preparing to release. While you could use tag filtering as discussed to send messages to them individually, LinkedIn allows you to send the same message to up to 25 tagged contacts at once. This can save you a great deal of time and ensure that your message goes out only to those who meet your specific tagged criteria.

To do this, filter your list by tag as described above. Next, click Select All. Now, click on Message. Enter a subject line and message. Before you click the Send Message button, decide whether or not you want your recipients to see who else the message is going out to. By default, names and email addresses will be shown to all contacts. If you’d like to override this, remove the check in the box next to “Allow recipients to see each other’s names and email addresses.”

If you have more than 25 tagged contacts, you will need to send your message in batches and repeat. This means that if you have 250 contacts to send messages to, you’ll need to do this process 10 times. Though tedious, it’s far less tedious than having to do it 250 times.

LinkedIn’s tagging feature is a nifty tool that you may not know about. Start using tags to segment your contact list as needed.

 

Why are social networks working so well?

That's an easy one!

The answer is that we are all still CAVEMEN and are longing for a TRIBE!

I explain why in about 2 minutes using a couple of cartoons.
Cavemen do have some very basic needs.

Our needs have evolved with time but are still basically the same!

Humans found out that life is difficult (extremely sometimes!).

Being member of a tribe makes life easier!

Being member of a tribe learns you new stuff!

You can also find your mate!

That's why social networks are working so well!

After all ... we are still the same ...

CAVEMEN, and we love belonging to a TRIBE!
Hope you liked this post.

 

What is Content Marketing?

What is Content Marketing?

For starters, content marketing is not exclusive to the web, it can be any marketing platform. It’s includes the creation and sharing of media or publishing content whose purpose is to acquire more customers or conversions. There are many different ways you can display content, including text, photos, videos, e-books, case studies, white papers, infographics and more. While this is the general definition, something you also need to consider is the character your content carries. With Google’s algorithms changing constantly content has evolved greatly. People are searching more, asking more questions, what you need to ask yourself is, “Am I answering their questions?” Companies in every industry and size have various content strategies. From Fortune 500 companies to startups the proof is in the content, not the pudding. While there are many different ways to market, you'll definitely be able to find a way to use it to your advantage and boost your online presence.

Starting off as a copywriter and working my way up to Head of Content I understand just how important a good content marketing strategy really is for your overall business. With websites carrying such an expensive price tag (for a good, quality one at least...) you want to make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck. The last thing you want is to pay thousands of dollars for a site that is just filled with generic content lacking any sustenance or personality. Whether you are about to dive into a new web development project or you are just looking for new ways to improve your site’s traffic and conversions, rethinking your current content marketing strategy can help greatly. Here you’ll find tips on what to look out for, how to position your content and what to make sure you include in your site.

Why is it so important?
Let me put it this way, your content will definitely be one of the major determining factors in whether or not they convert, return, or even recommend your site to others. Keeping your target audience and visitors happy and engaged is your ultimate goal. Supplying them with the answers to their gnawing questions will be how you win them over.

What is it's purpose?
Though the main purpose is to gain new customers and conversions, you are  also providing your customers with a direct connection. The best way to do this while you increase conversions, traffic and boost your reputation is to fulfill a need. Your website needs more than just an overwhelming amount of focus keywords crammed in each section. Become your community’s go to resource, answer their questions and keep them engaged, all with a strong strategy..

How has it changed in few years?
In the last few years as Google updated their algorithms, content creation has changed greatly. Rather than it just being the vehicle to cram SEO keywords and pitching your products you now have the opportunity to establish a connection with your consumers. Instead of just taking up space on the web, use it wisely and surprise yourself with how much your traffic and conversions improve.

Are you utilizing your content the right way?
How does your content look right now? Are all of your pages extremely dense with keywords and no real material? Even if you have a good pagerank now, that won’t last long. Google’s geniuses know all about the loopholes that slipped past the last algorithm, so what may have worked for you months ago may not continue to work. So what’s the solution? Understanding the importance of your content marketing strategies and putting some serious thought into it!

What are the benefits of content marketing?
By using content marketing the correct way and taking the right amount of time to strategically position your pages, services and it’s continuity you can benefit more than just gaining more conversions. Your content can help you narrow down your audience, show what strategies are working, what areas need improvement and more. With the right content marketing strategy you can become a credible resource in your industry while staying ahead of the curve instead of constantly playing catch up with every new update.

What can your content tell you?
There’s a reason I keep saying its so important. With the right positioning and strategies you can identify various important components of your online presence and business. With the right analytics programs your content marketing can find your target audiences and narrow it down to specific areas. Working with your analytics program, you will also be able to see what pages are driving the traffic and which ones have the highest bounce rates. You can then pivot your content marketing strategy to address these weak points by finding what made your strong pages so visible. Was it the information available? The formating? The images? It could have even been for a long-tail keyword you were unaware of. All of these questions can be answered with the collaboration between your analytics and your content.



Vine

Vine is an app owned and created by Twitter that allows you to create and share short video clips. Dubbed the Instagram of video, Vine encapsulates what twitter itself encourages, small, snappy moments or thoughts that appear to be spontaneously shared with the public. Yet unlike Twitter or Instagram, Vine has the novelty factor- people’s interest is piqued. Tweets and photo shares are old news, but 6 second videos? Well, the possibilities are endless! The influence of Twitter as the biggest and best form of social media marketing is by no means in question, yet Vine can undoubtedly support and emphasise Twitter marketing campaigns.

Vine shares more with the animated GIF than YouTube, and almost doesn’t feel like a video app at all. It is its own thing. It’s a code that unlocks creativity in six-second bursts, a powerful tool for real-time journalism, an entirely new art form.

And after spending a week with it, I’m influenced it’s going to be big. Genuinely, big !!!

One of the ideal marketing features of Vine is that the videos are on a continuous loop so that viewers actually see a clip at least a couple of times, making it the perfect tool for optimising product recognition and branding. If anything, the use of Vine at least shows that your company or business is up to date in the world of technology, something that is becoming increasingly recognisable as a necessity in the modern world. Though there is of course a challenge in making sure your videos are engaging rather than annoying, if the result is positive, Vine can definitely be considered an unbelievably influential tool in the world of social media marketing.

Vine lack some basic features, it need a better linking method, for example. People – discovery is a mess, especially since Facebook quickly blocked vine from using its social graph. You can’t edit titles or tags or comments once your video is posted. And you can’t go back later and export your videos on twitter or Facebook. Twitter is working on fixing all of these things. It already removed the ability to search for videos tags. A sharing fix should be impending.

Here are a few helpful tips we’ve put together to help you make the most of Vine:

  1. The use of humour in videos, if done correctly is always guaranteed to entertain rather than annoy possible clients or customers
  2. Use the app to advertise competitions, discounts, sales and promotions to increase coverage about your company or business
  3. Like Instagram, use Vine to show your company’s personal side. Take sneak-peaks of what goes on behind the scenes. Introduce yourselves as people rather than faceless businessmen and women. This can also be linked to the tip about humour- show you are human!
  4. Use the app to engage your followers in conversation- pose a question or a thought and invite people to respond
  5. Use to show off a new product- video allows you to provide more detail than a picture could
  6. Use the app to support your tweets and make them more interesting- people are more likely to watch a video than read a blog
  7. Be entertaining! As long as your video has some sort of link to your business or what you stand for- then it’s worth it!

Facebook Marketing Vs Google Adwords

Below is an interesting infographic from WeblineIndia that looks at the difference between Facebook Marketing and Google Adwords. It shows the similarities between the two and where they differ. It shows that they serve different purposes in your marketing strategy. From this I surmise that Google Adwords are still more effective despite the cost. What conclusions do you draw?