This article, titled "Thanks Social Media – Our Attention span is Now Shorter than a Goldfish", was published in 2014.

This myth was circulating the world at the time. Scientists had previously measured the attention span of people and found it to be 8 seconds. In 2000, this fell from 20 seconds to 20 seconds. The old myth had it that 9 second attention spans were common in goldfish. So it was assumed that our attention span was shorter than a fish because of social media, which was booming in the early naughts.

Marketing was about creating shorter content, more entertainment and more images. This meant that there would be more direct promotion. Since then, the assumption that our attention span is shorter than a goldfish was proven false.

The research actually showed that our ability to process information has actually risen despite all the distractions we are constantly facing. What does this mean for content and digital marketing? Focus on the things that work. Promotive content is still more popular and more effective than helpful content. Stories are better than snippets. Jokes are better than facts.

Continue reading to learn why it is important to avoid this "Social Media ruined attention spans and they now are shorter than a fish" myth.

Here are some quick tips:

• Nobody has ever measured the attention span of a goldfish.
• According to research, our ability and capacity to process information has increased as well as the distractions we receive from social media.
• Content marketing is still about helping people.

Personal Goldfish Story

On October 9, 1999, I married the love and life of my dreams. We were taken to Hawaii the next day for an unforgettable honeymoon that we still talk about 23 years later.

Two days into our trip I was filming the sunset. The date stamp on my old camcorder screen indicated that it was October 12 ^the.

What is October 12th? It's my birthday! Oh my God, I completely forgot it was mine!

This was 1999. This was before Facebook. Before Twitter. Before iPhones.

We have been distracted from the beginning.

Quick Professional Goldfish Story

This one example of content marketing that was truly focused on my industry has been something I have talked about for years. They were a great example of how content marketing can be used at SAP to reach and convert your target audience. They were a great example for my keynotes and workshops on content marketing strategy.

They called me a few months later, after I had started the company, to ask me to help them with their strategy. I couldn't contain my excitement. The editor then left. My main contact then left. Her replacement then left. (What was the matter?)

Finally, I called their Managing Editor. I was called the "VP of Thought Leadership". She said that they didn’t need me. They didn't really need the content that we strongly believe in. Expert content that balances quality and quantity. She doesn't believe in thought-leadership content. (Ummmm, your title is . .)

Her explanation was the most shocking: She said they had looked into analytics. They found that shorter content had more engagement. Her main KPI was engagement. The basis of her entire year's performance was increasing engagement.

They were going to make shorter posts, she concluded. Make the site more like a newsfeed with flashy and sexy content to drive engagement.

She should write single-word articles and upload videos of porn. Because it would increase engagement.

I was not invited back to work with this company. This shining example of OG Content Marketing is no more.

What does all this have to do the goldfish? This will never change. The desire to pursue shinier objects, shorter content and flashier visuals will continue. We will always have a myth, a statistic, or an influencer who will sell us the belief that content marketing takes too long, is too difficult, or costs too much. But all the evidence supports the contrary.

Origin of the Goldfish Myth

It is more common for goldfish to have short attention spans than urban legend. Because we think they are swimming in a bowl and darting around, we say that you have the "short" memory of a fish.

The attention span of a goldfish has never been measured. Recent research has shown that goldfish can retain information for as long as 5 months. This is quite impressive for such a small fish.

It all began when Statistic Brain reported (the original page is no longer available) on a study done by the "National Center for Biotechnology Information at the U.S. National Library of Medicine" (nothing on their site about it). The study stated that the average attention span of a human has decreased from 12 seconds in 2000, to 8 seconds in 2013. This is 1 second less than the attention span for a goldfish. OMG! Goldfish have a attention span of 9 seconds, which is 1 second longer than you and me.

According to the original source this was due to "external stimulation" for all of the content that we produce and distribute across all social media channels. According to the research, it is impossible to find it right now.

"Most psychologists and educators agree that focusing attention on one task is essential for achieving one's goals. As a result, attention spans have declined over the past decade due to increased external stimulation.

Bottom line: This was all just a bunch of crap!

This doesn't mean we're not distracted

There have been constant sirens yelling that there is too many information. Our heads will explode. It happened when the second person said the word. Cool. But what about the second? How many could there be?

This was true in the past with the invention of writing, printing presses, the internet and social media. It's still happening today with web 3.0, which is the beginning of practical AI applications. Human brains are learning more, seeing more, and consuming more. But, hey, I binge-watched the entire season of The Watcher as if it were nothing. You should seriously watch the trailer. Then, watch the show and then call me. Insane!

Wait. Okay, stay focused.

Yes, we are.

• Our phones are checked more than 200 times per hour
• Average office worker (poor schmuck), spends 3 hours a day distracted by activities other than work
• 25% of teens report that they have forgotten important information about their family and friends.
• 7% of people forget their birthdays every now and again (at least, I'm not the only one).
• The majority of people check their email at least 30 times per hour.

We are consuming more information today than ever before. Today's average person consumes more information per day than they did 500 years ago. This compares to the average person who consumed the same amount of information 50 years ago.

Information is consumed, which leads to progress, and then more information. Since the dawn of human evolution, this loop has been running.

The Content Marketing Imperative

What does this all mean for content marketing? Marketing? For business?

My very first speech was entitled The Battle for Customer Attention. Ironically, it featured an image of a fish. One that is not short on attention spans. One that stands out.

How can we stand out in a sea of marketing content?

1. Make the content that people want
2. Use stories to reach new buyers.
3. Instead of wasting your time with banner ads and promotion, use research and thought leadership.
4. You should publish as much content as possible, as it is helpful.
5. Share personal stories about your successes and failures, just like I did in my book mean People Suck.
6. The ROI of the best ideas can be measured and tested.
7. Be brave to do good work that you are proud of

Our SEO blog writing services will help you stand out and grow your business. You can also request a consultation with our team to get a free consultation!

Marketers are forced to survive in order to maintain their businesses. They turn to digital marketing trends and seek out untapped potential.

Today's most successful businesses are those that are flexible and willing to change quickly. They also have the ability to be creative. Many businesses are optimistic despite the chaos.

According to a Gartner survey, 73% of CMOs surveyed believe the pandemic will have limited impact on society.

Over half of respondents believe that their performance will return to normal in the next year. More than a third of respondents believe that the virus will have a positive effect on their business in the near future.

These predictions may prove to be correct, but no one can know for certain. We do know, however, that COVID-19 has prompted significant changes in marketing and business.

Digital is now the dominant force in marketing. Digital now represents around 80% of all marketing channel budgets. This number is expected to rise in 2023.

Companies are adapting rapidly to stay relevant. Those who don't adapt quickly will either fall behind future-focused competitors, or be kicked out completely.

As we move into 2023, we have compiled 11 key digital marketing trends that you can use to help your business.

Here are some quick tips:

• COVID-19 has compelled the world to take some significant steps.
• In 2023, every aspect of B2B marketing will be influenced by the need for personalization and connection.
• It is crucial to have a strong brand strategy and customer loyalty.
• Businesses need to be consistent, trustworthy and authentic.
• To build trust with their target audiences, companies should be thought leaders.

The Top Digital Marketing Trends of the Year

These b2b marketing strategies will help you outperform your competition, establish lasting relationships with customers and win more sales in 2023.

1. The Human Connection: An authentic human connection

In today's digital age, it is vital to connect with real people. COVID-19 makes it impossible to connect with people and allows us to remain at home. We are unable to spend quality time with our friends, family, or colleagues in person so we turn to technology to bridge this gap.

Global Marketing Trends by Deloitte shows that people are more interested in businesses that focus on human connection and will leave companies that do not value this. Over 70% of respondents said that digital innovations have helped them to build deeper relationships during the pandemic.

"Organizations design their digital future to maximize efficiency rather than human connection. This debt can lead to biased results, insufficient inclusion, and social isolation.

Marketers must seize the chance to build real relationships with their customers. Rethinking the mission and values of your company is a good place to start. Your value system is what drives your business. You'll build deeper relationships with your clients if your values are aligned with theirs.

Your business marketing efforts should include human values. This will allow you to effectively address consumer and client needs authentically. By:

• Your organization should be viewed as "a human entity".
• Identify your clients' core values
• These values should be reflected in your business

2. Personalization

Marketing's future will be dominated by personalization. Marketing and advertising campaigns that target individuals can have a huge impact on leads, conversions and sales.

• 92% of consumers believe that every interaction with a brand is important and that the customer experience should be exceptional.
• Personalized emails have higher open rates.
• Brand loyalty is built on customization
• Marketing personalization is attractive to 90% of U.S. customers.
• Email campaigns are the best way to personalize customer experiences.

3. Think Leadership

Many of us experienced trauma in 2020. It's difficult to find helpful advice, truth, direction, or empathy when so much of "normality" has spiraled beyond control.

People are still searching online for answers. They are looking for stable and healthy leaders that can guide them to the right places to purchase, partner or find a service.

This opens up the possibility for thought leaders. Trust and loyalty can be built by 1) being a trusted expert in your field and 2) meeting the emotional and social needs of your clients. Here are some suggestions:

• Empathize with your clients to show that you care about their needs. You will gain their trust so that you can guide them in the right direction.
• To gain authority and traction online, you can provide educational content via video marketing, pillar pages and podcasts.
• Keep your content current.
• Get to know your followers on an individual level.
• Ensure you are at the forefront of your industry to provide immense value.
• Respect your audience and show that you care about their best interests.
• Be flexible. Be flexible with your audience. As market conditions change, reframe your perspective.

When creating your content, follow Google's EA-T guidelines. This will ensure search engines that your information has been verified as authoritative and accurate to increase your ranking.

Podcasts are a great way to transform your C-suite into thought leaders. In 2022, 62% of Americans listened to podcasts. This is up from 57% in 2020. Podcasts don't require as much equipment and production as video. It's an easy way to engage with your target audience and have meaningful conversations.

4. Video Marketing and Sales

Every year, mobile video consumption rises by 100%. 78% of online video viewers watch videos every week, while 55% view them daily. 54% of people want more video content in the future.

91% of marketers claim they use video marketing and 88% say they want to spend more money on video campaigns in the near future. This is not surprising considering that 95% of messages sent via video are retained by viewers.

Video marketing is gaining popularity due to human connection. Video marketing can be more personal than other forms.

Video marketing and sales can help you reach more people by making targeted ads, sales videos, sharing presentations, inviting clients to make testimonial videos about your business, and many other things.

5. Optimizing for Search Intent

Alexa states that search intent is what drives a searcher to search engines. It is the searcher’s goal – what they are trying to achieve. People search online to find information, take action or find things.

In 2023, optimizing for search intent is an important part of content marketing and SEO strategies. You aim to solve problems with relevant content. You will be able to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Convert
• Keep customers
• Stay relevant to your target audience

There are four types of search intent.

• Informational: The user can enter a question and receive a quick answer.
• Navigational: Searchers search for "directions to a website" or a landing page.
• Commercial investigation: To make informed buying decisions, searchers do as much research as they can.
• Transactional: A user is attempting to purchase.

Give your customers what they want, when they want it.

6. Innovative Partnerships

Another way to improve customer service is to form innovative partnerships with other businesses. Your clients will be more satisfied if you partner with a company that offers a complimentary service.

Let's suppose you are an owner of an email marketing software business. Your clients are mostly small-business owners. Your offer can be made more appealing by partnering with a social marketing company to create a product that integrates email and social media.

You might agree to promote another company that will promote your business. Your customers will appreciate your honesty. They will trust you and be more likely to recommend you. They will trust you more. Cross-promoting can also help you get your brand out there and build your reputation.

7. Agile Marketing

Businesses must be agile if they want to succeed today. It is vital to invest in agile marketing strategies during pandemics and other events beyond our control.

Modern enterprises are primarily shifting to digital channels, rather than traditional recessions where businesses would have to retrench and wait for the storm. They have stepped up their online presence to replace their physical presence. They have had to change quickly to stay relevant and adapt to changing buyer requirements.

To keep your business agile, you need to understand your audience and anticipate future conversations. Here are some tips.

• To create personalized, holistic experiences that lead buyers through their journeys, you must have a complete view of your customers.
• Social media can be used to engage with your audience.
• Rapidly create and deploy new offerings
• To predict consumer behavior, you can integrate predictive technologies (machine-learning and AI).
• To share your insights and design channel strategies, you should bring in the C-suite team as soon as possible.

8. Snippets Featured

More people are referring to position zero than ever before. Content marketers used to be able to claim the SERP entry and the featured snippet in the past. Google has changed the rules. Position zero has become position #1. It is now considered one of the top 10 Google search results. It is no longer possible to double-dip.

Google may occasionally show a double-sequence snippet, but it is rare. Only eight of the traditional organic listings will be displayed on the page when it happens. However, you can still grab the featured snippet position on key terms that relate to your business to increase brand recognition and drive more traffic to your site.

9. Account-Based Marketing

B2B companies continue to be interested in account-based marketing. You can score large deals by targeting high-value accounts or individual decision-makers through highly personal campaigns. ABM is a high-stakes game. Your ROI potential is greater than any other marketing type.

Tell your prospects how you will solve a pressing departmental problem. Use strategic marketing techniques such as retargeting, programmatic displays and customized videos. If you are successful, you can land and expand your target accounts and build stronger relationships with your ideal clientele.

10. Email

Marketers can communicate with their customers via email, which is one of the most cost-effective and personal forms of communication.

Email marketing is a great way to grow your business.

• Establish relationships
• Nurture leads
• Lead contacts down the buyer’s journey
• Convert leads to customers
• Boost sales
• Expand your audience
• Segment lists can be used to target different demographics and provide customized messaging
• Get to know your customers, both current and future.
• To improve metrics, conduct various tests
• Create workflows and automate email

Over 60% of email messages are opened on mobile devices by recipients. Your emails should be responsive, just like your website.

Many businesses don't send enough emails to their segmented list. It is not a problem to email too often. Try different frequency and send times to find the best strategies for engaging your audience in 2023.

11. Brand Storytelling

Although brand storytelling is not new, it remains one the most important trends for your business's continued success. 33% of CMOs believe their brand strategy is the most important strategic capability. Every brand has a story.

Brand storytelling is a way to connect with people on a deeper level. This allows your personality to shine through. The more vulnerable and authentic you are, the better. Brand stories are a powerful way for businesses to connect with consumers and other companies.

These questions will help you develop your brand story.

• Who are you?
• Why are you here?
• Who can you help?
• What makes you unique?
• What is the secret to getting where you are today?
• What can you offer others?
• What is success?

Narration is one way to stir emotions. This allows people to express their imaginations. You can be creative in your marketing.

Your brand story will grab attention and leave a lasting impression. This will allow you to create long-lasting relationships, loyalty and stand out from your competitors and build a community.

Brand storytelling is a powerful way to communicate your message, distinguish your brand and generate new ideas. You must be a storyteller if you want success as an entrepreneur and leader.

– Richard Branson

Do you need help in implementing digital marketing tactics for your business?

Content marketing can help you drive qualified traffic to the website and engage new customers. For great success in 2019, build your brand story and online reputation. With consistent, quality content production, you can establish yourself as an expert and build trust with your customers.

MIG is a digital marketing agency. We are eager to help you succeed in growing your business by writing high-quality, keyword-rich articles that will help your company rise the SERPs as fast as possible.

Learn more about our Content Builder Services. We can help you make all the content that you need to win customers or increase sales.

Google's helpful content update is a great way to increase site traffic. It is important to understand the latest algorithm adjustments of Google's search engine. This will help you rank well and grow your online presence.

Google's goal is to optimize user experience by identifying websites with helpful and non-helpful content. Engagement content is given a higher ranking and non-relevant content is removed from the rankings.

To rank higher, increase site traffic and grow your reach, share content that is compatible with Google's preferences. This is what you need to know to keep up with Google's high-quality information.

The Key Takeaways

• 
  Google has over 92% of the search engine market share worldwide. Using their ranking tips will help you increase your site's visibility
  
• 
  Google seeks to reward quality content and reduce visibility of unsatisfying content
  
• 
  SEO strategies drive more site traffic than 50% and depend on your business's continued growth.
  
• 
  Increase your content portfolio with useful, high-quality content. Remove unhelpful
  

Use SEO best practices and align your content with Google's latest update to share quality information that engages your audience.

Google's Helpful Update 101

Google's latest search engine algorithm update (also known as Google's helpful contents update) is part of Google's efforts to improve searcher's quality of content.

This update brought a new signal to the site that helps to identify and measure the value and relevance of searchable material. Google users will be more likely to find trustworthy and high-quality information by doing this.

Google's goal to reward content that gives information visitors are searching for is helpful content. The most helpful content will rank higher and bring more traffic to your site.

Google wants to eliminate content that does not meet visitors' expectations. This is commonly called unhelpful. Unhelpful content will not rank well and result in less site traffic.

Google controls over 92% of the search engine market share worldwide. It is important to ensure that your content qualifies for helpful status in order to have visibility. We'll talk about what you can do to share high-quality content later.

Image Source: Mangools

Four Things You Must Know

Google's recent helpful content update sheds light on ways you can increase your chances of sharing content that ranks high. This is what you need to know in order to make your content shine in Google search results.

People First

Google stresses that people-first content is highly ranked. To ensure that your posts are helpful, you need to share educational and user-friendly content.

To ensure that visitors have a positive experience, you should share your firsthand experience. Enjoy the video below to better understand the importance of a people-first approach.

Video Source: Simon Sinek

The following questions will help you determine if your content is people-first:

• Is your target audience going to find your content helpful?
• Are your site's goals and focus clear?
• Is your content able to provide a coherent understanding of the information being discussed?
• Google's content updates can help you guide your posts.

You are likely on the right track to sharing useful content if you answered yes to these questions. It's not too late if you answered no. This post will discuss ways to get back on track.

Search Engines are not for you!

Google recommends that you avoid creating content specifically for search engines or with the sole purpose of ranking higher. Search engines that are saturated with content designed to rank higher can be frustrating for searchers, and make for a frustrating experience.

Instead, you should be focusing your attention on creating interesting content. Avoiding human consumption in your marketing strategy will confuse the search engine as well as your readers and result in unhelpful content.

If you have shared content that isn't:

• Uses extensive automation
• Without adding value, summarizes content from other websites
• Only focuses on the most current topics
• Readers are left unsatisfied
• Instead of educating visitors, it aims to increase search traffic

It's not a good marketing strategy to use data to manipulate the system into ranking your content higher. Instead, focus your efforts on creating content that is people-first to increase your chances of getting high-ranking results.

For additional value, use SEO best practices

To increase site traffic, it is possible and recommended to use a data-driven strategy. Google has confirmed that a people-first approach to SEO does not negate SEO best practices. For more information, they recommend that you consult their SEO guide.

A strategy that takes into account SEO as well as customer interests will add value to your content and keep your readers happy. Google will reward you for your efforts over time with higher-ranking content.

SEO covers both behind-the scenes and on-page factors that are relevant to your site’s growth. SEO best practices are constantly changing. This is why hiring SEO experts to help you maximize your SEO-driven strategy is so important.

Image Source: Seochatter

Alt-text: Infographic showing several factors that go into search engine optimization

SEO is not an easy task. However, it is crucial to achieve sustained success in Google search. SEO-friendly marketing strategies can drive more than 50% of site traffic, and have a significant impact on the growth of your company.

Removing unhelpful content

Google's sitewide signal is continually identifying relevant, valuable content that appears in searches. Google also seeks to minimize visibility of unhelpful, unneeded or unreliable content.

Unhelpful content will not rank well in search results, even if there is better content elsewhere. Google will not consider your site as valuable if you share both useful content and ineffective content.

Unhelpful content can be removed or updated from your website to improve its quality and show Google that you are dedicated to people-first.

You can prune your posts and weed out weak content. Give your useful content the attention it deserves. Google trusts you and will give your site a better evaluation, higher content value and higher rankings.

What does this mean for your site?

Google's site signal weight is weighted so your focus should be increasing the value of shared content. Sites that share mostly useful content will have a greater impact than sites with a majority of unhelpful content.

Update any posts that you have shared in the past with unhelpful content. This will minimize the negative effects that Google's new algorithm may have on your content's visibility. Don't repeat the same mistakes!

The bottom line is the more useful content the better. Here are some tips on sharing high-quality content that is people-first.

Image Source: No brainer

Make sure you share trustworthy information

Trust can be placed on most high-ranking content. High-ranking content is also trustworthy.

Original, informative content is what makes trustworthy content. So that readers feel confident leaving your site, create content that shows expertise.

You must verify your facts when sharing helpful content. Untrue information can lead to being labelled untrustworthy and causing you to fall in the rankings.

Post Well-Written Content

A lot of people don't trust articles with basic content, and so should you. Build your quality-content portfolio by:

• Communication of cohesive ideas
• In-depth explanations of topics
• Proofreading for grammatical mistakes
• Adherence to the optimal length

Keep it simple, be clear and specific. Stick to a word count that is representative of similar high-ranking articles. Don't include any information that isn't necessary to educate. Google will recognize your content as valuable contributions if you do this.

Reach Your Target Audience

Your dedication to publishing people-first content is demonstrated by directly reaching out to your target audience. Your target audience will feel valued and respected after visiting you by answering their questions and covering relevant topics.

This will build trust and an emotional connection between you and your readers. This increases the likelihood that readers will return to your site, and Google will judge your content as more quality.

Share helpful content today

Follow the Google helpful content update preferences to ensure your content is at the top of the list. Use an SEO marketing strategy for quality content to secure your place in the top.

It is difficult to create useful content consistently. Marketing Insider Group has the expertise to help you create quality content. Get a consultation or check out our SEO blog writing services!

Pop-ups are still worthwhile? Pop-ups can be annoying and outdated, but they could deliver a 150% ROI.

Avoid making mistakes that could cause Google to penalize your website and give visitors a reason to leave. Make a list of all pop-up ads. You are below average if you don't see CTR of at minimum 10%.

Keep reading to learn how to make your pop-up ads more successful.

The Key Takeaways:

• 
  Pop-up ads don't seem to be dead. They are very specific. They are specific!
  

• 
  It should be simple and meaningful with concise copy and compelling offers.
  

• 
  Visuals matter, both in the pop-up and its placement.
  

• 
  You should always test which pop-ups work best for your audience.
  

Is it worth your time to create a pop-up?

First, let's clarify what the purpose of pop-up ads is. Pop-up conversions won't be a success if you don't know what to look for.

Pop-ups should have a clear, concise and easy to use CTA. They must be done in a specific way, just like all aspects of marketing.

A pop-up's nature is disruptive, it's even in its name! Google has been penalizing ads that are "intrusive" for over a year. This may sound contradictory. This doesn't have be. Exit pop-ups are a great example. Exit pop-ups are only displayed when users are about to leave your site. This ensures that they don't interrupt their experience.

Pop-ups are a great way to convert if done properly and with care (aka not ruining the user's experience). Pop-up conversion rates average 11.09%. This is a remarkable number. In some cases, optimized pop-ups can convert up to 42% of website visitors.

How can you make your pop ups more successful? These are the top 5 things to avoid when creating a pop up ad.

Six Mistakes to Avoid

1. Offer is Weak

Pop-up success is directly affected by the offer you present. Simply put, if you offer a weak offer, your audience will not convert.

What does a weak offer look exactly? These questions can help you determine if your offer might be too weak.

• Are you sure your offer is worth the price you are asking? Companies and brands are often suspicious of the personal information that consumers give to them. Is your offer worth it? You're probably not promising anything more than email announcements and updates in return for your opt-in. If you want your website visitors to feel special, they must feel that they have exclusive access that only they will have if they subscribe.
• What do your competitors offer on their pop ups? Are you familiar with the websites of competitors? What offers do they offer website visitors? What are their offers? These questions will help to build more compelling pop up offers for your customers.
• Are your offers specific and pertinent enough? Is your offer compelling enough to appeal to your target audience? Are they going to feel compelled to sign up as soon as they see your pop-up? You have likely created a popup that converts. You must use the right language and images to make your offer relevant and specific. We'll get to that in a moment.
• Would you give your information in the popup? Think about your visitors. If you were given the pop-up that you have created, would it be something you would engage with? It might be worth revisiting if it doesn't work out.
• Is your offer stable over time? Are you testing multiple offers at once? A/B testing your pop-ups can help you increase conversions. It will also help you understand how to optimize your language and other components to make your website more appealing to prospects.

How to Fix

These 3 tips will help you create more offers.

• Tip #1 – Talk to your customers. Ask your most loyal customers to help you determine the most appealing offers for your visitors to your website. To discuss three options, send them emails one-on-one or call them. For their insight, offer them a discount or perk.
• Tip #2 Be specific. Your imagery and language should be consistent with your target audience. Make sure you are specific. Help your website visitors understand why they should interact with the CTA in your popup.
• Tip #3 – Test often. Pop-ups shouldn't be left unattended. Always test different language, buttons, colors, sizes, placements, and offers.

For inspiration, take a look at the top-converting pop-ups.

Image Source : OptiMonk

2. Too Much Copy

The amount of information in your pop-up could cause low conversions and engagement. If you include too much information in your popup, it could overwhelm people, especially if they're visiting your store for their first time. Too much copy can make your pop-up appear too loud, busy, or forceful.

How to Fix

These tips will help you improve the quality of your pop-up copy.

• Tip #1 – Cut the fat. First, go through the pop-up copy. Find out if you have any unnecessary words. You want to make your store visitors understand what your offer is in just a few seconds. Although it might seem like people will take action if you use clever or illustrative language, it is more likely to distract. To attract, inform, motivate, use as little language as you can. Instead, let your brand voice and style shine through on your product pages.
• Tip #2: Get user feedback. It's worth asking for feedback from others before you abandon your pop-up strategy. Ask your family, friends, and colleagues to review your pop-up. Ask them questions when they review the pop-up (ex. Are you able to understand the offer? Do you think it is an appealing offer? Are you clear on what to do next? Are you able to follow through on your actions? These questions will help you optimize your popup for future visitors.
• Tip #3 – Learn better writing. Your pop-up might not be converting as you expect. Perhaps your writing is not compelling enough. This helpful resource will help you to create conversion-driven copy.
• Tip #4 – See other examples. You can find examples of pop-ups on other ecommerce websites if you aren't sure how to design your pop-up or what language to use in order for your visitors to be motivated. Pop-ups are used by most ecommerce websites in one way or another. They can be used to build their email lists, announce new products, share exclusive offers, and so on. This article by Printful contains 40 examples of website pop-ups.

3. Poor Visuals

Visuals are essential in ecommerce. Visuals are everything. As I have written many times before, online shoppers won't buy if you don't provide them with effective visuals throughout your ecommerce store. Why? Why? Because brick-and-mortar shops are the preferred option for consumers. They can see and touch products in person. You can't offer the same shopping experience in ecommerce unless you are one of few brands that allows customers to try before they purchase (the Warby Parker shopping experience).

Visuals can help you bridge the gap. Visuals are a great way to build brand identity, distinguish yourself from your competitors, attract the right customer and sell more products. Poor visuals can make it difficult for your visitors to convert.

Your pop-up's visuals are crucial. Great visuals can inspire action, urgency, and excitement. Bad visuals can lead to uncertainty, hesitation, and lack of trust.

How to Fix

These tips will help you ensure your pop-ups use the most effective visuals.

• Tip #1 –Learn how to take amazing product photos. Spend time learning how to do great product photography.
• Tip #2 Take photos of people using your products. Do not just show your product, but also feature people using your products. This is a great way for you to quickly connect with people who have just landed on your site and are seeing your products.
• Tip #3 Keep things simple. Pop-ups should not contain complex backgrounds or images. You should be focusing on the product and who it would benefit.
• Tip #4: Avoid using low-res photos. Avoid blurry or low-quality photos. Hire a graphic designer to help you properly export and upload your photos.

4. Bad timing or placement

You need to ensure that pop-ups are displayed at the right times and in the right places to maximize your ROI. Poorly placed or timed pop-ups can make a bad first impression and prevent potential customers from making the purchase they want to make. Or worse, it could drive them away from your store and website.

Pop-ups can be formatted in a variety of ways. It is important to identify your audience before you decide which format will be most effective. Consider the content that your pop-up will be featured on. A welcome mat popup may be the best option if it is your homepage. Pop-ups on your blog pages should not be distracting as your visitor is there to read your content and not to see an ad.

Image Source: HubSpot

How to Fix

These tips will help you make sure that pop-ups are displayed at the right place and time.

• Tip #1 – Allow your homepage to display a welcome popup for at least 5-7 seconds. Allow visitors to take a look at your homepage and get familiar with it before you bombard them with offers.
• Tip #2 Do not show pop-ups often. Pop-up software allows you to control how often pop-ups are shown to the same person. You shouldn't show the same popup to different people each time they visit your homepage. You should stop a popup from being displayed to the same visitor for more than a specified number of days.
• Tip 3: Do not show pop-ups in shopping carts or checkout pages. Your pop-ups should not be displayed on pages that direct customers through the purchasing process. This will reduce friction. It should be as simple as possible for customers to complete the purchase process.
• Tip #4 – Avoid pop-ups when shopping on mobile. Pop-ups can impede your mobile shopping experience. Google can penalize pop-ups that are too extensive in covering website content for mobile devices.

5. Too Salesy

You can't sell products to win in ecommerce. Selling products is not enough. You must sell experiences. Customers online don't want their experiences sold to them. They want to have meaningful interactions with brands that help them create memories and experiences. They want to work with companies that help them reach their goals (travel, eating better, exercising more, etc.

Pop-ups that don't convert well might be due to being a bit too salesy. Pop-ups are already forceful and most people will not be able to resist them. As an ecommerce marketer, your job is to communicate with them in a way that isn't aggressive or forceful.

How to Fix

These tips will help you ensure your pop-ups don't seem pushy or salesy.

• Tip #1: Know your audience. Know your audience and how they prefer to be communicated with. When building your popup or writing your copy, use the language they are most familiar with.
• Tip #2: Don't use gimmicky language. It doesn't matter if you've seen a phrase elsewhere. Avoid using sales language that is too slick and convert-driven words that cause eyes to roll.
• Tip 3: Make a legitimate offer. This is the same principle as in the beginning: if you want to give a pop-up to visitors to your website, make sure it's a good one. You'll only make your visitors feel as though you only care about how fast you can get their money. Your goal is to create relationships and to sell the idea of a unique experience to those who visit your website.
• Tip #4 – Make it easy for people to opt out. Pop-up opt-out shouldn't be difficult. If your visitors don't wish to interact with the pop-up, make it simple for them to dismiss it or collapse it.

6. Tests not enough to optimize the product

If your pop-ups don't convert and you aren't taking the time to create different versions for your website visitors, you are missing a great opportunity to learn more about your audience and what motivates them to take action.

How to Fix

This is the simplest: Use pop-up software to launch A/B testing of your popups. Then, take the time to actually build and launch your tests. To increase conversions, you can review the results and gather insights.

More to you

Compare these errors to see how your pop-ups compare. It's never too late for you to make changes! It is important to test different versions of your pop ups until you find one that works for your audience.

We offer a free consultation if you are interested in starting a blog to promote your website. For more information, visit our SEO Blog Writing Services.

You're likely to have heard of "growth hacking" in marketing blogs. This is the concept that focusing your marketing strategy on growth is the best way to achieve success.

Growth hacking is a term that refers to the way online services and tech startups gain new clients. However, an effective growth hacking mindset can be applied to ecommerce. Focusing on growth will result in more effective testing, campaigns, and marketing materials.

These growth hacking strategies will help you scale your e-commerce store. You can drive traffic and increase visibility by crafting your marketing strategies with purpose.

The Key Takeaways

• 
  Increase buyer trust and improve search engine credibility by including visual trust badges on your e-commerce website
  
• 
  Create a personalized user experience and show empathy for your target audience
  
• 
  Use testimonials and customer reviews to encourage new customers to invest in your business
  
• 
  Open communication is key to providing exceptional customer service and building buyer confidence in your brand
  

Simple growth hacking strategies are a great way to grow your business and increase sales.

1. Highlight what customers think

No matter how stunning your brand story and ads are, they won't convince as convincing as the recommendations of customers.

Because buyers trust social proof (evaluations, testimonials) to help them make informed decisions, word-of-mouth messaging is very effective. Before making a purchase, customers love to hear from others about their experiences with the product. Since they cannot physically inspect the product, it makes them feel more confident in their purchase decision.

Here are some ways you can start to showcase the opinions of your buyers:

• Your online store can have more customer reviews. You don't have to place reviews on product pages. Customers can also leave ratings on your Homepage or About page. This will show potential buyers how satisfied they are with your brand.

• Highlight testimonials. Testimonials are a bit more personal than ratings and allow buyers to share their positive experiences with your brand. In your online shop, in your email newsletters, or in your ads, you can highlight testimonials.

Image Source by Away

This content needs to be showcased. Yotpo is a tool that allows you to add testimonials and reviews to your online shop.

2. Write guest posts

Writing guest posts for blogs outside your company blog can help you reach new customers if your blog is only reaching loyal buyers.

You can reach many new customers by writing guest posts on blogs with similar audiences. You can make a list of blogs that are similar to your products and then reach out to blog managers to inquire about guest posting.

Want to know how to create a guest post outreach email? Mention has a blog post on this topic.

These tips will help you write a post that attracts new customers once you have secured a guest slot.

• Don't make your blog post promotional. To those who read your guest post, it feels unprofessional to write a post about your product. Your writing should be industry-related and relevant to your reader. Bai, a drink company, teamed up to guest post on Refinery29 about a watermelon margarita recipe.

Image Source: Refinery29

Instead of writing an article on why people should drink Bai products the company demonstrated to Refinery 29 that their product is great — it’s a delicious margarita ingredient!

• In your guest post, link back to your blog. You can set up traffic tracking for your blog to see if backlinks have led people to it. If you need assistance setting this up, refer to our Google Analytics guide.

Write guest posts instead of writing content for your company's blog. This will allow you to reach new audiences and expand your reach.

3. Send thank you cards

Buyers will remember when you go the extra mile to make shopping memorable, whether it's a gift for free or a generous return.

It is easy to delight customers by sending handwritten thank you cards to potential customers. This small gesture is a great way to show appreciation in a world of robotic, automated support. Buyers will feel appreciated and be more likely to buy again from you in the future.

These are some tips to get new customers excited about you business by using thank-you cards.

• Include a social media promotion in your card. Incentivize your new buyer to share your brand's message on social media. Send a personal note and offer a coupon or promo code.
• Thankbot is a service that makes it easy to send thank you cards. Although the service is technically automated every card is still handwritten by an actual person. This is a great way to get new customers for your company, even if you have limited time.

Your thank-you cards have two benefits: You keep your customers happy and you attract more customers by including a way for them to spread the word about it.

4. A/B Test your Product Pages

One of the most popular growth hacks is running A/B tests. You can quickly determine what is working for your business by using trial and error.

You should A/B test product pages to increase sales as an ecommerce seller. To see which changes make the most impact on your sales, you can experiment with small changes to your pages' design, text, or images. These are some ideas to get you started with your testing.

• Photos of the product size
• Include or exclude a trust badge
• Indicate when your supply is low
• Your "Add to Cart” button's color

Optimizely has more ideas in this blog post. If your online store offers an app, you can also see these mobile testing ideas by Taplytics.

After you have a few ideas for testing, start to build a process. You'll be able run consistent tests and improve your product pages with a repeatable experimentation process.

5. Use Exit-Intent pop-ups

You spend a lot of your time as an online seller thinking about how to get more customers to your store. But what do you do to capture them before they leave?

Exit-intent popups are the key to capturing web visitors who leave your site without purchasing. You want to convince them to reconsider by offering discounts on your products or by capturing their email address to help you nurture them through your sales funnel.

Image Source: BeHappy

These are some tips for setting up and crafting your first exit-intent popup.

• As they are trying to leave, think about which offers your customers would find most appealing. A special discount that is instantly applicable to all products in your online shop would be a great place to start for e-commerce.
• Choose a tool to quickly and easily add exit-intent popups to your site. SumoMe and Bounce Exchange are some of the most popular choices for creating exit-intent popups.

6. Send Order Confirmations to Request Shares

Your job in e-commerce is not over once you have made the first sale. It's only the beginning. Once someone converts and makes a purchase on your site, you can leverage that relationship to connect to more potential customers.

It is important to encourage your customers to spread the word about you business. This can be done by including a message in order confirmation emails and emails encouraging buyers to share their purchase via Facebook or Twitter.

Image Source: Amazon

These are some strategies to get your buyers to share your business and encourage them to tell others about it.

• Share purchase information as easy as possible. Click to Tweet is a great tool that allows you to create a message for customers to share with their followers. Customers won't hesitate sharing the message if it is already written. A message example might look like this:

Just bought my brand-new [Your product] at @[Your store]! I can't wait for it to arrive in the mail! Get yours now [link to shop]

• Incentivize buyers to share an offer. Many buyers won't feel motivated to share their shopping experiences unless they are particularly active on social media. Offer a discount to customers who share their orders via social media.

Your brand will become more visible to potential buyers by having more customers share their purchases.

7. Ask for Social Engagement Cards

Each company uses digital messaging to request social media share requests. This is because buyers have become used to this method of communication — pop-ups, emails — almost every day. These requests are more common for buyers to become accustomed to, so they will be less likely to respond.

You can spark social engagement with your customers by sending printed cards in customer order packages. These are intended to encourage sharing.

Customers are happy and excited when their packages arrive. This is the perfect time to encourage customers to take a picture and tag your business on Facebook and Twitter.

These are some strategies to send social engagement cards that encourage buyers to share.

• You can either hire an external designer or use your own designer to design the engagement card. Do not give this design task to your intern. Buyers will disregard the card's message and won’t share it on social media if it doesn't look polished and professional.
• Incentivize your customers to share their requests on the card. Your customers will be told that they will receive a coupon or a free gift for sharing their social-media updates. A reward can motivate customers to engage on social media with your brand.

Buyers find it more exciting to receive a social media engagement card than receiving an email from a company. To encourage buyers to share your card, take advantage of this opportunity.

8. Send an "Buy Again!" Email

Your returning customers are more valuable than new customers. Remaining customers are twice as likely as new customers to purchase an item, have lower bounce rates and convert twice as often as returning customers. This value is why it's important to do everything you can to keep customers shopping.

Sending buyers an email inviting them to "buy again" is a great way to retain customers. Send the buyer an email inviting them for another purchase within 10 to 15 business days of their purchase. You can send the customer an email with a link to their last purchase or other related products.

Image Source: Amazon

These are some simple tips to send persuasive emails encouraging customers to buy again.

• Email marketing software lets you manage and design your messages. Campaign Monitor makes it easy to automate email campaigns by setting up drip channels with specific triggers such as "Send E-mail 15 Days after Subscription."
• Incentivize another purchase. Offer something in return for purchasing again.

9. The Personalized Homepage

Shoppers are becoming more tech-savvy and their expectations for shopping have increased. They are more tech-savvy than ever and want more than an online store. They want their sellers to create a shopping experience that is tailored to their needs.

A personalization of your online store's homepage can be a great way for buyers to have a personalized shopping experience. Your online store can tailor its content to each customer by tracking user behavior. You can promote a product that a buyer viewed but did not purchase on their previous visit to your website. Your homepage can be used to show buyers what they are interested in and drive them to purchase.

Image Source: Amazon

We have a few strategies to tackle this hack for technical growth:

• Do your research. It takes some technical knowledge to personalize your website.
• You can create a customized online store by using a tool.

A personalized homepage allows you to target customers and increase conversion rates.

10. Establish a Referral Program

A referral system is an older but still very effective growth tool.

Image Source Harry's

Two benefits can be derived from a program that rewards customers who send new business.

• To connect with potential customers, you will be given contact information.
• Referring customers to get discounts or shopping rewards encourages them make more purchases.

This tactic can be started by setting up an account in a referral program software such as Ambassador, Sweet Tooth or Forewards. These tools can help you create a customized referral program without any programming skills.

11. Cross-Sell and upsell

A buyer may be only looking for one product when they visit your online store. However, that doesn't mean they can't be pushed to purchase more.

Instead of accepting a single order, increase sales by using two sales methods.

• Cross-selling: Getting customers to buy additional items
• Upselling: Getting buyers to upgrade their purchases.

Your ready-to-buy buyers are already interested at the order stage in your brand and product. This is the ideal time to upsell or cross-sell their order. Excited customers will be more inclined to purchase more expensive products if they see how they can increase their order's value.

Do not be afraid to guide buyers' orders. Cross-selling and upselling will give your customers more value and increase your sales.

12. Show how customers shop

Social proof is more than testimonials and reviews. It can also be a way to motivate buyers to shop online. Showing other customers' online shopping habits can help you drive more shoppers to your online store.

Image Source: Bizzy

These live interactions will give your business credibility. You're showing online buyers proof that your business is helpful and successful by displaying live notifications regarding customer service assistance and purchases.

Fomo is a great tool to get you started. Fomo allows you to easily add customer interaction notifications to your online store. You can measure the return on investment of customer interactions by integrating Fomo and Google Analytics.

13. Set up Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads, like exit-intent popups can be used to capture visitors who haven't purchased from your site. This growth hack involves tracking visitors to your online store, and then showing ads for your products on other websites they visit.

Retargeting ads can be extremely powerful as they highlight items buyers are interested. Buyers feel more motivated to return to your store to complete their purchase when they see exactly what they are looking for.

With a tool such as AdRoll, Criteo or Criteo, you can start creating retargeting ads to your online store sign up. These tools enable you to create retargeting ads for your online store and track their performance.

14. To fuel sales, create urgency

Invoking FOMO (fear of missing out) is the best way to increase sales in buyer psychology. You can encourage buyers to buy more by playing into their desire to be included.

A sense of urgency on product pages is a great way to capitalize on buyer FOMO. Highlighting on your product pages will make your buyers feel urgency to purchase.

• How much inventory remains
• Temporary store deals: Time left
• Temporary free shipping is still available

All these urgent statements make buyers feel like they are about to miss an opportunity to shop. The buyer is driven to make their purchase once FOMO kicks in.

You can use A/B testing to determine which products are most urgent. Try different urgent statements to see which one converts the most. Taplytics is an experimentation tool that allows you to set up and track your product page A/B testing.

15. Offer Content Upgrades

Blog on your online shop, but don't stop there. You can also offer content upgrades to increase sales and build buyer relationships.

Content upgrades are extra resources such as ebooks within a blog article. In exchange for their email address, you offer the reader the resource. This contact information can be used to add the reader into your email campaigns, nurture them through sales funnels, and ultimately convert them into customers.

Image Source Interana

These are some strategies to offer content updates on your blog.

• Repurpose your most popular blog posts and make a content upgrade. You can easily turn posts with high conversion rates and views into a checklist, ebook or worksheet to increase sales.
• Create an email drip campaign to notify users when content upgrades are available. A link to the resource should be included in the first email of the drip series. Additional content and promotions for your online store could be included in any subsequent emails.

You can build relationships with your buyers by offering content upgrades. To make them long-term clients, you offer value and nurture them through your sales funnel.

16. Start Seasonal Campaigns

Black Friday and Christmas are great ecommerce holidays. Buyers are willing to spend a lot so be ready to promote seasonal shopping. You need to be ready to capitalize on the seasonal opportunities that these seasons offer to your business.

Although most campaigns revolve around seasonal promotions, there are many other ways that your store could attract seasonal customers. For example, you might get holiday-themed packaging to inspire buyers or a new line for holiday products.

Once you have a solid idea of your seasonal theme, it is time to launch your campaign and promote it. These are some tips to get you started.

• A clear timeline should be established for your seasonal campaign. You should allow at least five weeks to prepare for the launch, coordination, and marketing of your campaign.
• Use user-generated content to promote your campaign. To promote the seasonal celebration at your store, create an Instagram hashtag and launch UGC campaigns. Starbucks had an Instagram #RedCupContest for their holiday drinks.

Image Source: taradawnart

17. Show Trust Badges

You can't underestimate the importance of building trust with your buyers as an online seller. You can't meet your customers face-to-face so you need to establish credibility online so they feel at ease making a purchase.

Visual trust badges are a great way to increase trust in your ecommerce website. You can make your buyers feel more comfortable sending payment information and other sensitive information to your site by displaying the logos of secure software.

Try out different placements for trust badges such as:

• Your website footer
• Your product pages
• Checkout pages

Taplytics is an A/B testing tool that can help you determine which trust badge placements will increase your sales.

18. Incentivize Your Checkout Page

The reality of cart abandonment is very real. According to the Baymard Institute research, 70% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts before completing their purchase. The majority of users abandon their carts at the checkout page. This is why it is important to encourage buyers to continue the checkout process.

Coupon codes can be used to encourage customers to complete checkout. Having already been motivated by the discount, it makes it more likely that buyers will complete their order by forcing them to go to the last checkout page before they enter their code.

These are some tips to help you create coupon codes that increase sales.

• Special offers should be made widely available. Promo emails, social media ads and other methods can be used to distribute discount codes to a lot of customers. You can get more people to the checkout page if you distribute more codes.
• Every sale that you make, assign a discount code. You can attach a code to any promotion, even if it is a general sale. This will ensure that customers are motivated to go to the checkout page.

Coupon codes allow you to reward customers with lower prices, and your business with higher checkout completions.

19. Reduce input fields

We're all familiar with the frustration that comes with an extended online checkout. Although you are excited about the products in your shopping cart, and ready to make your purchase, you will need to provide so many details — your mobile number, optimal delivery times, etc. — in order to complete checkout. Many buyers prefer to abandon their carts than complete all the information.

You can increase your sales by making checkout easier and requiring fewer input fields. You should only ask for the essential information. Then, try to keep all input fields on one checkout page. You can also show buyers the steps involved in the checkout before they are complete. This makes it easier for them to understand.

Image Source: J.Crew

They will be more likely to close their purchase if they have less work.

20. Embrace Conversational Commerce

Online stores may not be as popular as offline ones, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t available for customers to contact. Customers will be more satisfied with their experience with your company if they can communicate easily with you.

Conversational commerce, where buyers and sellers connect through messaging apps, is key to easy communication. Your buyers have access to round-the-clock communication tools that allow them to resolve any problems they may encounter with your company.

There are many conversational commerce tools that you can use. Drift is a popular conversational marketing platform that allows customers to chat directly with businesses from their website. Chatbots are also used by companies to communicate with customers via platforms such as Facebook Messenger or Kik.

Image Source: Sephora

Learn more about how to implement this technology in our Everything You Need To Know About Chatbots In Ecommerce guide.

Learn more about Growth Hacking to see what works

A successful growth hacker does not require a single strategy. It's the opposite. You can use the same strategies that work for one company but fail well for another. This is why you need to try different approaches to increase your sales.

It is important to be agile and constantly iterating. You shouldn't try every growth hacking strategy you see. Instead, think about the reasons your previous approach failed and then use that information to help you choose the next one. You can quickly identify the best growth hacking strategies to increase sales and scale your business.

Digital marketing experts make it easy to generate leads and grow your business. Visit Marketing Insider Group's weekly blog to engage and convert customers.

You're likely to have two main priorities as a founder of a startup: optimizing costs and driving revenue growth. It sounds great, except that we have been hearing about a recession in the near future and the economy has been on a rollercoaster ride for over two years.

It's likely irresponsible to consider outsourcing content creation and other marketing activities given the current circumstances. . . right?

Actually, wrong! It is false to believe that outsourcing is a poor financial investment in uncertain times. In times like these, you will need the expertise and consistency that a content agency can provide.

Research has proven that outsourcing content can have a higher ROI than doing it yourself. It leads to lower costs, faster growth, more leads, conversions and sales.

As a founder, partnering with a content agency such as ours can be one of the best and most cost-effective choices you make. It can help keep your company stable in uncertain market conditions. Great content is especially important for startups. It can give your marketing strategy an emotional beat, establish your online presence, and connect you with buyers who are looking for your solutions.

We'll be discussing the benefits of partnering with a content company in these times. We'll cover:

• The future of B2B content outsourcing: 2022
• How content strategies can drive business growth
• Outsourcing to a content agency can have a positive impact on your ROI
• How content agencies can provide stability during difficult times

Quick Take-Aways

• Nearly 90% of companies have reduced their costs by outsourcing this year.
• Bundled services offered by content agencies include what you would pay for in full time salaries (and other costly line items) when you hire an internal content team.
• A content strategy that is effective requires publishing between 4-16X per calendar month, which is equivalent to 60+ hours of writing.
• A content agency can provide a broad range of skills, including writing, editing, and graphic design.
• Regular performance reporting by content agencies is a way to prove their worth. This will give you clear insight into your strategy's ROI and help you improve.

The State of B2B Content Offsourcing

Before we get started, let's consider this: Despite the rollercoaster markets that we have dealt with over these years, 81% companies outsource writing. This is more than any other marketing-related business activity.

Other related activities, such as search engine optimization (SEO), and content marketing strategy, are often outsourced frequently. Content agencies often bundle them together into one seamless service.

Image Source: Statista

In 2022, however, content marketing will continue to be a critical component for startups. B2B buyers spend most of their research online before contacting potential providers. Nearly three quarters of them (72%) consume at least 3+ pieces before making a decision.

This means that your company will likely be invisible to customers if you don't publish consistent, high-quality content online. This is a mistake that growing startups cannot afford to make, and one that a content agency can help prevent.

What makes a content marketing strategy exceptional?

A comprehensive, consistent and well-planned content marketing strategy can take as many hours as multiple full-time jobs. If you publish at the pace you should, writing can take up to 15 hours per week. This doesn't include planning, SEO research and proofreading.

Full-time salaries, benefits and equipment for a team that works in house are all part of the cost of hiring a team. It's not practical to try it in-house with just one person or a small group. This can also lead to a loss of revenue if content isn't up to your standards.

One sentence sums up the ROI of outsourcing content marketing agencies. They deliver a complete, end-to–end strategy and all the resources, time, expertise, and human capital required. All for a one-time bundled fee. Let's dive deeper into the components of a great content marketing strategy to understand how this works.

We create content that has organic reach and social share so you can add TRAFFIC and promote your products and celebrate your customers.

Customer-focused planning

Content marketing's core purpose is to reach the people who are most interested in what you have to offer. This means that every step in the content marketing process, including the creation of buyer personas and topic pillars, choosing the right content types and tone, and deciding on the best brand voice and tone, should be centered around the customer's needs.

This is why founders often worry about whether a content agency can capture their brand in a way that they are capable of.

MIG and any content marketing agency will agree that the client/agency relationship is more like a partnership. The first order of business is to get to know you, your target audience.

You can expect a content agency to guide you through a thorough briefing process. This will usually include a document resource (MIG's is shown below) that will help you to create content that resonates with your customers.

Source: Marketing Insider Group

SEO research

Without an SEO strategy, publishing content is like trying to throw spaghetti at the wall and hoping it works. SEO is the key to ensuring your content ranks well on search engines. The ranking factors Google uses for evaluating content are continually evolving and changing. There are many contributing factors to this algorithm.

SEO effectiveness today is more than just putting keywords in blog articles. This requires extensive, detailed research. It includes an audit of your content, a knowledge of the competition, the development and use of the right titles and publishing calendars to maximize results.

Calendar building

The content calendar is sacred to MIG, and we believe any agency. This includes keywords and your SEO titles. It also contains links to published content and articles.

To stay focused, we plan our content for a whole year. We allow our clients to make changes as we go. The content calendar, as you can see in the template below is a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know regarding where your strategy stands from a execution standpoint. Mismanaging this type of document can result in poor performance.

MIG is a company that provides access to the document. However, it's not your responsibility to maintain it. Our team handles all of that.

Image source: Marketing Insider Group

Writing

Research shows that publishing frequently (4-16X per year) is more profitable than publishing less often. When you consider that a blog article takes on average 3-4 hours to write, it's equivalent to 60+ hours of writing time per month.

You don't have the time or resources to write at such a high volume if you are managing a business. Working with an agency means you have access to a full time writer (or more) who can create content that meets both the quantity and quality standards required by your strategy.

Multichannel publishing

Today's customers can easily interact with brands via multiple channels, including search engines, email, social media and email. Customers use at least three channels to make purchases and/or resolve questions and concerns.

Brands have to ensure seamless content across channels. On multiple devices, including voice and traditional search. This can be automated and streamlined by a content agency so that you can implement a multichannel strategy with minimal time and effort.

Outsourcing to a Content Agency: The Return on Investment

Save time and money

Outsourcing is a costly decision that can be a barrier to brands. However, industry research has shown that outsourcing can actually reduce costs. 88% of the companies that were surveyed by Deloitte in its Services and Outsourcing Survey said that outsourcing had helped them to lower their costs.

This makes sense if you think about it. A CMO average earns six figures and requires executional support. To get your content strategy up and running, or to level it up to the required level to make an impact, expect to earn at least 3-5 salary.

A content marketing agency can help you scale up or down as you need (which is something you cannot do with just a few full-time employees).

Expertise

The content agency teams can draw on a variety of skills to execute a great content strategy, including SEO research, writing and editing, graphic design, project management and reporting.

You don't have to worry about whether the people contributing to your strategy will be able to meet your expectations when you outsource to a content agency. The best agencies make sure that every member of your team has the knowledge and experience necessary to make your strategy stand out.

Bundled services

The best content agencies are more than just content creators. They guide and help you execute every aspect of your strategy from SEO research to calendar design to content creation to publishing and reporting.

A content agency will help you put together a comprehensive strategy. You get it all, at one price, and with no gaps in execution.

Performance reporting

This is how content agencies show their clients the value they bring to clients through performance reporting. This means that when you outsource, expect regular and high-quality reports to show you how your efforts have paid off (and what you can do to improve).

Many agencies report results on a monthly, quarterly and/or annual basis. KPI-focused reports provide key insights that will help you improve your strategy and get buy-in from senior executives to expand your efforts.

Semrush Visibility tracking is used to show our clients the results of our content strategy. Here's an example we sent to one our clients.

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It's pretty amazing, right?

Business growth

Every content strategy aims to increase company growth. After more than a decade in research, it has been proven that content marketing drives 6X as many leads and 3X as many conversions than other digital marketing strategies.

Content marketing is also aligned with buyer behavior. They are more likely to conduct research on brands and then engage with relevant content that will help them make the right buying decision.

Although the results may not be immediately apparent, once you have established an online presence and continue to provide high-quality content, the effects are long-lasting. You will be able to overcome temporary setbacks and challenges that are beyond your control (like recessions).

Why?

Your content is valuable even if there's no purchase. It shows your target audience you are an expert in your field and can provide real value.

Traffic grows by 10% per month on average for our clients, with leads soon to follow.

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Level Up Your Content Strategy Today

Startup founders and small business owners are not strangers to difficulties. MIG can help you implement a content strategy that will drive growth, even in times of economic turmoil. MIG's SEO Blog Writing Service delivers optimized, customer-focused content every week that is ready to be published. This results in real growth.

To learn more about my services, or to schedule a consultation with me for a free consultation, click here. You can also send sunscreen to see how I look after a week at beach. ):

When it comes to organizing their content function, brands face many challenges. Brands must deal with content proliferation, inconsistent and uncoordinated creation of content; lack of strategic direction during the content insights process; and the difficulty that prospects, customers, and consumers have to find timely and relevant content.

B2B SaaS founders and startups often don't know where to start with marketing.

It's easy for people to get overwhelmed when the economic climate is difficult. We must focus on growth. That's why measuring the ROI is always the greatest content marketing challenge.

Content marketing is not an easy journey. It's actually quite difficult. Many marketing professionals we know are unhappy. They fight each day to achieve work they are proud of. Marketing that works!

We asked our clients what their biggest content marketing challenges were. We help them to solve those problems.

These insights are a combination of what we hear from clients and the community of content marketers, as well as our own perspective. Our goal is to help you see the way through these problems. We are open to all levels of cooperation.

These themes include linking content marketing efforts to business value and limiting resources, as well as internal tensions that can hinder content production. Let's look closer at the most pressing issues that marketers face.

1. How to determine the content marketing ROI

Many marketers struggle to prove the ROI of their content marketing campaigns. For example, agency marketers shared with us that their clients want to know how many conversions could be attributed to one piece of content or to a particular channel. These are often brands that cannot be tracked or analysed digitally.

Marketers use a purchase intention model to combat this. This model assigns different weights customer interactions with content pieces. However, they acknowledge that it is not perfect.

Other marketers face the greatest challenge of linking content to conversions, and delineating relevant metrics to evaluate and measure the impact of their content marketing programs on their business' bottom line.

Content ROI is subjective. It is driven by the business objectives or mission of the content marketing program. A holistic approach to measuring yields a story, rather than simply tracking activity metrics.

A methodical approach is required to define your value story.

1. Define KPIs that align with your business mission.
2. To tell a value story, identify the metrics that will work.
3. You can identify the source of these metrics and then pull them into a dashboard by connecting connectors.
4. An algorithm should be created that weighs each metric according to their importance in the "story."
5. Performer and non-performing KPI metrics should be analyzed on a regular basis. This will allow you to calibrate your approach.

This video is from a recent keynote speech on marketing where I discuss this dilemma.

You can find more information at 10 examples to prove content marketing ROI to your CEO

2. Video Content Marketing Viality

My friend Todd Wheatland once stated that the only way to make viral videos is to STFU! His Australian accent is a pity, so please excuse his sloppy mouth. It's true, but you have to admit it. It's not enough to "create" viral videos. Anyone can make quality videos that reach, engage, and convert.

How can we ensure that these videos are seen by our intended audience? How can we ensure that the message in the video is seen? It is becoming more difficult to ensure that messages are seen. The industry must be ready for this increase in cost.

Others marketers face time and resource limitations when producing quality videos. Others struggle to create a video content strategy that will produce videos that are sustainable and can be used in multiple markets.

Learn more: Video content marketing can help you grow your audience

3. How to feed the content beast

Too many brands worry about creating the perfect piece. They worry about creating the right content for their sales team, bosses, or product managers (see point 1). It is important to consistently map content to the buyer journey.

Every day, buyers search online for their needs. Their search patterns show the need for basic education. This is exactly the content you should be afraid to publish. You don't realize the number of people your target audience must buy your products.

You need to publish your content frequently, according to the buyer's journey, and to keywords that are relevant to your business. Our clients choose to outsource content creation because we create content that is relevant to their business and meets buyer requirements.

Consistent publishing in content marketing is not easy. This could be because of a lack in resources, ideas, organization, or any other reason.

Organizations' number one goal in content marketing is to increase quality leads. This was also their greatest challenge.

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It is easy to produce a lot content. This is difficult to achieve at scale and maintain high quality. Even with a lot of resources, it's still difficult to achieve high throughput without a lot of effort.

According to research on blog frequency, 11 posts per month is the "magic number". Can you create that much content yourself? This is not all the content you will be creating. You'll also be creating video, social posts and infographics. Are you able to do this with a "machine?" How confident do you feel about its quality?

These are the two major questions content leaders must ask. Even the largest organizations will struggle with consistency and frequency. We have a framework that allows for us to deliver.

We have already conducted keyword and topic research before you get in touch with us. The content strategy informs voice, tone, and takes into account audience profiles. We then execute it using our own subject matter experts (SME writers), SEO optimization best practices and buyer's funnel goals.

You could certainly hire freelancers from platforms, but you will likely be disappointed. Most likely, the quality of the work won't meet your expectations, and it won't be relevant to your audience.

We write for many software-as-a-service (SaaS), companies. SaaS topics require industry experience, technical skills, and an ability to understand the customers' use of the platform. This is not something you can find for $10 an hour.

Here are some ways to make your content resonate at the point where people discover it.

1. An insights process provides insight, fresh perspective, and a sharp vision of what will resonate with a particular need. Our experience shows that there is plenty of background information available to help with story ideation and roadmap development. However, information is often scattered across the organization without a systematic way to capture, analyze, and apply it.
2. To create a COE method for content insights, model the process and then use the results. This involves overlaying inputs such as SEO reports and listening scans, CRM data, CMS & CMS data, conference reports. Sales insights, customer insight, research reports, and sales reports. To determine the most relevant topics for brand differentiation and market resonance, overlay inputs and create a topic “Venn diagram”.
3. You can use the results to build a content plan. To identify gaps and create new content, audit existing content.

Continue reading: The Ultimate List Of Blog Post Ideas For Content Marketers

4. Proving Authority and Credibility

Many marketers struggle to find and establish a credible voice for their brands and cut through the noise to attract their target audience. It is difficult for brands to stand apart in the financial space. There are many experts offering insight and advice to consumers.

Marketers want to create a content strategy that allows them to preserve the brand's identity, boost marketing ROI, and improve their brand's authority in the space.

This is where thought leadership can be effective. Your people's passions and expertise are used to share your knowledge with your target audience. What is the result? Trust and credibility are the results.

Continue reading:

How to increase your authority with evergreen content

How can you build authority?

5. Establish your Content Marketing Budget

Marketers still face the greatest challenge when justifying their investment in content marketing programs.

Senior leaders desire immediate results. It takes time for content marketing to demonstrate ROI. It doesn't have to be difficult to find the budget for content marketing. Look at the ROI of your campaigns. Most of them won't have one.

How much are you paying for paid search when you don't rank organically in the search results? This budget can be shifted to content marketing.

Yes, content investment is increasing as more companies realize its value. HubSpot reports that 70% of marketers do so.

Companies often face difficulties when it comes to content marketing. They may be aware of the importance and want to invest in it. Their budget may limit their ability to add people to their team.

These limitations could have been more problematic during the pandemic. They may also have the majority allocated to paid channels for content boost, but not on producing the content.

B2B companies still spent money on content marketing despite being confronted with COVID-19.

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Companies said that they will invest most in content creation going forward. It can be difficult to figure out how to allocate resources well, especially when you have to do it in multiple buckets (writers, SEO strategists etc.

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The solution: Spend less, get more

We have a number. $8,000 per month is the minimum budget to reach your content marketing goals. What are you getting for that amount? There are many, including:

• Content marketing strategy
• One year of content ideas
• SEO: A keyword strategy audit and building external links
• Conversion funnel development
• Paid Promotion

We see a 7x return on every dollar we spend, which is $56K per month. These results will not happen overnight, or even after 30 to 60 days. Content marketing takes time and must be done consistently.

Brands who invest in us to help them with their content marketing will reap the benefits. You will see tangible metrics like increased traffic, conversions and revenue. Content is an important tool for attracting, engaging, nurturing, and retaining customers. It's far more valuable than converting these dollars into paid ads. These ads return only when they are running. Content is only available for as long it's still live.

Learn more: What budget do you need for content marketing?

6. Approval processes

The agency side of the marketer spectrum shared the same sentiment about the length of the client approval process. Stakeholders want to be involved in every stage of the content creation process. This causes bottlenecks and delays in production.

The content produced by different organizations and teams within a company can be used to support multiple programs and channels. This creates issues with consistency and quality. Marketers want to make sure that all content is consistent, compelling, and effective for their target audience.

Both agency and non-agency marketing professionals face the greatest challenge of staying relevant and on top of the lengthy approval process they have to go through when creating content.

Continue reading: Five Ways to Improve Review & Approval Process and Provide Better Feedback

7. Branding

Content marketing presents marketers with many branding challenges. As brands grow their internal teams and outsource content creation and management to partners and external agencies, some marketers struggle to maintain their brand voice.

Others have trouble maintaining their brand identities under one umbrella brand. Content marketing and branding are about telling your brand story.

Continue reading: This is the Best Example of Storytelling's Value You Will Ever See

8. Maintaining Volume, Quality, Speed

Marketers share a common challenge: how to create engaging and compelling content at a speed that doesn't compromise on quality or quantity. Many marketers find it difficult to remain agile and nimble in large corporate structures.

Marketing a startup is difficult because of the lack of resources and time. Many startup founders recognize the importance of regular content publishing, but don't have time.

Always start with the company blog. What are your publishing habits? Are you getting more visitors? Do your keyword rankings keep improving? What is the publishing frequency of your competition? Are they long enough? Is their content good enough?

Next, we continue this process:

1. Begin by looking at the keywords that your audience uses in the buying process. Next, look at keywords where you could win vs. the competition.
2. Make a list of content headlines that you think will appeal to this audience. We ask them to make a list of topics they are most interested in writing about. This helps writers connect with their clients and audience.
3. We ask clients to give us feedback and rate what they would like to see published.

We then create a weekly content calendar for the whole year.

Continue reading: How the Weekly Blog Content Solves the Top Challenges

9. Content Management

Accenture conducted a study of more than 1,000 marketing executives in 17 countries and 14 industry sectors. It found that 73% spend more than $50,000,000 annually on content.

Marketing leaders who were surveyed agreed that content is essential to the success and growth of their businesses. However, many companies are facing content overload.

• 92% of respondents said that the volume of content produced by their organizations is greater than it was two year ago. 83% believe the volume will continue to rise over the next two-years.
• Half of respondents said that they have more content than they are able to manage. Individual teams create messaging and coordinate content distribution, leading to internal silos and inefficiencies.
• Only half of respondents said they feel fully equipped to manage the content that they have right now. Marketing leaders attribute their ineptness to a lack of skills, technology and clarity in content management.

Every marketing plan must include a content calendar.

10. Strategic Business Alignment

Many brands have a problem with digital strategy alignment and messaging across platforms. This can negatively impact customer experience and content marketing results. Cross-team collaboration can be a challenge for marketers if individuals and teams work in silos towards different goals and visions.

Accenture surveyed 78% of leaders and found that they needed better alignment between IT and Marketing teams in order to increase content marketing success. Marketing is now more digital and requires more technology than ever. Marketers can also use new technologies to innovate and experiment with their marketing practices. Marketers need to be more aligned with IT and marketing because technology plays an integral role in helping them deliver an engaging customer experience that converts, retains, and reaches customers.

Content is often created in dispersed structures by organizations. This can lead to multiple pieces of content being created in different areas of the company without knowing that other content objects exist or are in production. A common problem is that there is no central editorial calendar to guide the content creation and amplification. Without a chief content officer and a well-defined governance process, there is no central authority that can direct and lead the content creation process.

Accenture's survey found that only 19% of respondents felt their organizations have clearly defined objectives when creating content assets. Nearly half the respondents said they don't believe their organization has a content strategy that is effective and meets their future needs. 53% of respondents said that they spend more time managing content than strategically aligning their marketing efforts with a larger picture. This shows that not all brands have developed effective content marketing strategies, or invested in the right resources to realize their full potential.

According to a Semrush survey, 77 percent of organizations had a content strategy. Only 9 percent said it was excellent. The survey average score was 3.5 out 5 It's not enough to have a strategy. A content marketing strategy is essential. It is essential to follow through with it and adapt it as necessary.

Why is this so difficult? There are many reasons why this is so difficult.

Both the data and reality are true to what we see in the field every day. It comes down to budget, consistency/frequency, and strategy. These are the challenges that we have solved for our clients.

We create content marketing strategies for our clients that are detailed. It is not a document of fluff, it is one that focuses on action. It defines:

• What content marketing can do for your brand
• You'll use these tactics to promote and develop content
• Workflows and frequency of content production
• Your audience: Demographics, motivations and challenges, objections, etc.
• Content clusters are the topics that all the topics will be rolled up to.
• Distribution methods
• What should I measure?

A well-defined and actionable strategy is essential to achieve content marketing ROI. Strategy is your guiding light. You're lost without a strategy. Without one, it's dark. With an ineffective one, the light is very dim. Strategy is the key to success.

These are the five essential things brands need to do to ensure that their content organization is organized and effective.

1. The enterprise should map the current nodes in the content eco-system. This requires authority to create a cross functional view of how content is produced.
2. Analyze the map and determine if there is an logical flow. Also, look for interdependencies among groups that could impact efficiency and approvals.
3. Analyze the difference between the current and future states and develop a step-by-step strategy to break down silos and work cross functionally.
4. Establish a content governance structure to align with the future state.
5. A center of excellence approach that is inclusive and dynamic should be adopted

Learn more: Aligning your Content with the Buyer Journey

11. Continuous Learning

Marketers must be open to learning new things and adapting to the ever-changing marketing environment. Or risk their extinction. Many marketers face a challenge in training their staff on the most recent marketing techniques. They are also trying to learn the ropes themselves.

12. Promotion of content marketing

Marketers face another challenge when trying to identify influencers that will help them amplify content.

It is no longer enough to create great content. Customers must be able to find your content through a content promotion strategy.

Continue reading: 18 Content Promotion Tools to Help Every Strategy.

13. The biggest challenge in content marketing: Developing a customer-centric mindset

Although this may seem surprising to some marketers, convincing brands to place customers first is still a major challenge for many marketers when creating content. They must help brands to change their perspective on the value of content marketing and realize that it is not the same thing as advertising. Content marketing is all about providing value to customers by being helpful.

You'll see that most companies have excellent websites and marketing content. They do a great job telling you all information about the company as well as all information about their products. They don't always answer all the questions that their customers may have. They make the biggest marketing error and focus on themselves, not the customer.

Almost a decade ago, C.C. C.C. Chapman (@cc_chapman), predicted that companies would become more adept at this when he asked for "more brands interfacing in real-time with their customers."

Barbra Gago (@BarbraGago), suggests that marketers should stop trying to "reinvent the wheel" with all content and instead help prospective buyers find the right information, which will aid them in their purchase decision.

Alison Bolen (@alisonbolen), wrote in an article about CMI that the biggest challenge in content marketing was "understanding your customer well enough to create content that is useful, relevant and helpful for them."

Marcus Sheridan (@TheSalesLion), makes the same point and asks content marketers "to write and communicate at the level their audience requires, not the level required by the industry professional."

How can we address this problem?

Ardath Albee (@ardath421) says we should "Take a Customer Field Trip" to see our marketing and content from a customer's perspective.

I answered a major marketing challenge for small businesses: How to Create Killer Content: Talk To A Customer. I explain how to use customer stories as a way of telling your story. It is important to tell the story using customers' words, and showing how you solve real customer problems.

25 Signs that your business is not ready for content marketing

One question I am frequently asked is "How is content-marketing right for our company?" The right question for business owners is "How can we tell if our business is ready to embrace content marketing?"

This blog attempts to answer this question frequently. Culture and brand publishing are topics we discuss and I try to show examples of great content whenever possible.

Sometimes, however, it is better to identify the signs that indicate you aren't ready to change.

This is what I am doing with these 25 signs that your business isn't ready for content marketing. There are many more. These are the ones I just flung off the top my head.

1. A corporate blog is not necessary.
2. If you have a corporate blog, but it only posts company news,
3. Your marketing strategy should not be driven by social listening or share of (search) voices.
4. Your social media channels can only be used to promote and push webinars, whitepapers and other events.
5. Your content speaks more about your products.
6. You may be asking "How can we make a viral video?"
7. You haven’t yet mapped your future or existing content to buyer stages.
8. There is no thought leadership content for the early stage or thought leadership.
9. Your next step, or call to action, has not been defined.
10. Content marketing seems expensive to you.
11. It is possible to hire a group of journalists to help you.
12. You are always trying to recreate your viral Tiktok moments.
13. It is not possible to track the amount of content that you have used, and which ones are most popular.
14. You can't see what your competitors are writing.
15. It is impossible to know which keywords are being used by your customers.
16. Content marketing is often viewed as a campaign.
17. You lack the resources to regularly publish.
18. There are no dedicated resources to test your landing pages and content development.
19. There is no defined editorial workflow.
20. You can't teach your employees effective storytelling skills if you don't have a business.
21. You are resentful of "giving away" content (without registration).
22. Your content's "shareability" is not something you should be considering. You get less than 5% traffic from social media.
23. You don't create visual content (videos, slide decks, infographics).
24. It is easy to create content and not think about how to share it.
25. Content marketing is something you do because someone has told you.

More to you

Are you or your agency facing any of these challenges in content marketing? What are your solutions? Please share your ideas below.

Are you interested in engaging new customers through content? Let's chat and discuss how we can work together.

Below is a photo of the entire challenge board.

We're content marketing challenge solvers. Let's discuss how we can help you move from reactive mode to a proactive content strategy. Our Content Builder Service can help you get more visitors to your website by publishing quality content consistently.

The internet is, as we all know, a highly interactive and creative space. Marketers have a double-edged sword when it comes to the internet.

This interconnectedness allows content to be delivered in many different ways, including social media, blogging and audio. Let's not forget about email.

It also allows your competitors to do the same. You need to ensure that your emails and content rise above the noise.

Email marketing is still very relevant. Email marketing has stood the test of time, and is still a powerful force in lead generation and customer engagement. According to Oberlo statistics:

• There will be 4.6 billion users of email by 2025. This is more than half of the world's population.
• Every day, more than 330 million emails are sent.
• You can expect a $42 return on investment for every $1 you spend on email marketing.
• Email marketing is used by 90% of marketers as part of their marketing strategy.
• 81% of SMBs rely on email marketing to acquire customers.
• Emails with personal subject lines get 50% more open rates
• Video can help increase your open rates by 30%

This is your warning not to reduce your email marketing efforts. It is a crucial part of the online world. It's up to you to find ways to be more than others. It is not as difficult as it seems. Continue reading for useful tips and tricks that you can use to impress your boss and increase your CTR.

The key takeaways from

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  Personalize emails with segmentation and well-tailored content
  

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  Automation is key to optimizing time and effort when marketing
  

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  Create emails that are memorable for your customers by emphasizing content that educates and connects with them or improves their jobs
  

Email Marketing Personalized

Generic or generic-style emails are not appreciated by anyone, that's certain. Your company should be more than just another sales pitch. You must be personal in order to stand out amongst the clutter of other brands' email boxes and to retain customers.

You need to go beyond just pushing your content if you want prospects to pay attention to your message. Personalizing your emails will allow you to get to know your subscribers and what they are looking for. You should be ready to share it with them at the right moment and through the right channel.

These are some tips to help you maximize your personal email strategies

Segmentation is a good practice in email marketing

Email segmentation is the process of grouping leads based on their browsing history, demographic information, purchase history, and browsing behavior. These data can be used to personalize your emails, making them more relevant for a particular group of contacts.

You can draw different conclusions when you segment your email lists by watching leads activity in each category. This information can be used to influence the customer personas. The next step should be to create relevant content that is valuable to each individual group.

Image Source: GetResponse

There are several ways to segment your email. You can send content-specific emails by tracking which section your leads visit on your website. You might send them emails about the amazing cupcakes you offer if you sell baked goods. Let's say they watched a video about your baking class. Send them information about the class, and how to enroll.

You can also use the time and address information of your customers to tailor your emails. Did you know that emails arrive in your inbox at 9-10 in the morning? It is the ideal time for businesses to send marketing emails. (P.S. You can think outside the box by sending emails at other times than a rounded hour like 8:19 or 09:42.

It is obvious that content must be relevant to prospects' needs. This brings us to the next step in email marketing personalization.

Provide well-tailored content

Marketers face the greatest challenge of creating creative content that is both useful and effective. However, you can start to make progress once you have segmented your email list. It's now time to create content that is specific to each group.

Next, ask as many questions and as many people as possible. The right questions will give you valuable insight into your customers' priorities.

It is important to find out why a customer visited your site.

If you are an event organizer and someone checks out your Party page, it's likely they'd like to have you organize their party. To get a better understanding of your lead's needs, there are many other questions that you should ask.

For example, an anniversary party might be a good opportunity to find out if the milestones that are most important to you, such as a silver anniversary or a golden anniversary. This information can be used to send a targeted email with details on suggested themes and motifs that would be most appropriate for the occasion.

You can also use personal emails to direct customers to landing pages on your website. These landing pages should look the same as your emails, and include CTAs. It is important to identify customer segments and create custom emails for them. Then, you can develop landing pages for each segment. This strategy will help your leads recognize that you offer a personalized, integrated email experience, and encourage them to become customers.

Automate your email marketing

Marketers are expected to manage and nurture leads. Email marketing automation tools are a great tool to help you do this.

These tools aren't just meant to make your life easier, but they will also help you scale up your personalized email department. Many automation tools include segmentation to make optimization even easier.

Automating can allow you to take new steps that were not possible before. You've probably heard of abandoned cart messages if you are an online shop addict like me. Say you sell jewelry. Your customer adds some earring options to his cart, but then leaves the page. They forgot to make their purchase or they decided not to. Email automation allows you to remind the customer of their order and offer a discount code so they can get back on track.

Image Source: Oberlo

These emails can be used to greet subscribers, up-sell or cross-sell, and to provide updates on their accounts.

Use Marketing Automation

Marketers don’t have the luxury of a million hours to generate business. Marketing automation is both a challenge as well as an integral part of modern businesses. Marketing automation allows you to analyze a lot of data and get to know your customers to provide useful marketing content.

Image Source: Medium

Automation is marketing technology at work. It allows you to track your leads' digital footprints, make insights about customers' sales journeys, and create better content to help prospects make a decision.

Automated marketing is not without its difficulties. These are the main obstacles that marketers face and how they can help their brands overcome them.

• Marketing automation is not a panacea. It takes buy-in from all stakeholders, including sales and marketing. Marketers must understand their automation goals, the metrics they should track, and how to analyse data to gain valuable insights. Marketers also need to understand which data is most important, such as behavioral data used to identify influencers and buyers to personalize content and create personas.
• Marketing automation doesn't mean hands-off marketing. Based on the observations made above, you must constantly update and test automation tools. Your messages will quickly become stale if you allow automation to go.

• Marketers need to know where their ROI comes from. This is why it is important to have a CRM system or model that can help them identify which campaigns are successful and which ones are not. To help marketers predict the best leads, they should be able to understand how the CRM and marketing automation systems work.

• Companies may have to put automated marketing on the back burner due to budget constraints. It is important to remember that many marketing automation platforms can score leads and show which leads are the best. This saves marketers tons of effort and time. They also focus on prospects more likely to convert, thus making them more profitable in the long-term.

Marketing automation allows you to scale without losing the ability to segment or personalize. This video contains 10 examples of successful email marketing campaigns.

The Best Emails to Nurture Leads

Marketers need email to stay connected. Email marketing is generating a 3800% ROI for brands!

Marketing emails can be annoying for some people because of the amount of spam being sent and it can be difficult to sort through all of them to find relevant information.

Knowing which emails resonate with customers can help you improve your email campaigns. The best email types are those that:

Educate

What serves them most matters to people. Your email should be able to tell your prospects about their problems or explain how your products and services can help them. This is a powerful marketing tool.

You are demonstrating your expertise and value by creating educational content. This will help you establish yourself as a trusted brand people can trust. Although it may take time and effort to maintain this email distribution, it is the gradual, step-by-step process of educating customers and earning their trust that makes it special.

Establish Connections

Email marketing campaigns should aim to create meaningful conversations and open dialogue between brands and their audience. You can expect more engagement if you are able to get closer to your customer.

Your customers should have the opportunity to connect with you via other means. You can offer your customers the option to sign up for your newsletter, connect on social media or receive updates about product development. No matter what channel, let prospects choose the one that is most convenient for them.

Offer something relevant

Although it may sound great to send prospects product offers, you must make sure they are getting more than that. For example, if someone registers on your website, it is likely that they are interested in your content. You should therefore give them what they want.

Instead of offering them a free trial for your product, it might be a good idea to find out which pages and topics they are most interested in, then send them additional content that might be of value. You can use the trust you have built to send them more content-centric content and drive them towards purchasing.

Help someone improve

Keep in mind that nurturing leads is part of your goal to improve their lives. Your brand's theme should be the focus of your content. If you sell vitamins, and your target audience is mostly health-conscious, you might create content that explains how certain vitamins can reduce the risk of developing specific diseases.

Emails should be similar in tone and design.

Recreate Opportunities

Your email marketing efforts will not always go according to plan. You will encounter subscribers who aren't responsive to your emails or don't click through.

You could ask your subscribers for feedback on the frequency and content of your emails. You can still use the insights you get to address any issues, regardless of whether you get the feedback you hoped for.

A personal appeal is key

This is a common theme in email marketing, as it helps to build a personal connection between your brand's audience and your business. Personal touch is especially helpful if you are trying to overcome barriers during the sales process. Customers will appreciate your extra effort.

You can add a personal touch to your customer by checking in, thanking them, remembering special events and planning ahead. Birthdays are a great way to do this. Send a simple message to show your appreciation by finding out the birthday of a subscriber who signs up on your website.

Last Thoughts

All signs point to the fact that email will not be left out of the marketing mix. We continue to see email grow as a primary communication channel for people.

A less serious note: Here are some stats about how often people check their email (via Inc).

• 70% of people check email while watching TV.
• 60% of people check email at night while they are asleep
• Half of vacationers check their email when they are away
• 42% of people check email while they are on the toilet.
• 18% of people check email while driving (which is something we don't condone)

People check their emails everywhere. Don't be afraid of increasing your email marketing efforts for lead nurturing. You'll likely be very happy with the ROI if it's done right.

Are you struggling with content creation in email marketing? It might be time for you to increase your content marketing strategy if you have more material to send to your subscribers. We can help.

Take a look at our SEO blog services and schedule a consultation with us now!

Influence is not something you can achieve overnight. Like any authority figure, an influencer is someone who can influence audiences. This comes from being respected in the industry.

You can become an influencer by putting in the effort, passion, and demonstrating excellent management skills. It's also important to have a charming or likable personality.

Influencer marketing is a method of distributing content that you create by key people in their industry. A partnership with an influencer can often mean that you are gaining a large new audience. You can reach their influence by having them promote your content. This increases your brand's visibility.

It is a smart idea to monitor not only how many followers they have but also how active and engaged are their followers. A person who is influential is only as strong as the people they influence. Engagement is a good indicator of whether an influencer is worth following.

A Tomoson study found that influencer marketing results in 51% more customers. Influencers are more likely than customers to spend more and be loyal to your brand, as well as being more likely for them advocate for it.

Influencer marketing offers a strong return-on-investment (ROI) in line with this. This strategy is a great channel for brands to increase awareness, reach more people, and convert more customers.

Learn with Shopify to get a quick overview of influencer marketing:

Quick Takeaways

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  Influencer Marketing is the modern-day testimonial of your product or service
  
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  This practice allows you to target your niche or audience with credible influence
  
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  To maximize ROI, it is important to implement a strategic plan.
  

These are the top tips to help you influence this marketing strategy without becoming a nuisance.

1. Establish Your Goals

It is important to define key objectives for influencer marketing campaigns, just like with any other marketing strategy. This will help you to plan the campaign and enable you to monitor and maintain your campaigns' performance.

Although it is obvious that leads and sales are the most important goal, it is also worth considering other goals, such as brand awareness, reaching new markets, or increasing your social media presence . No matter what your goal, it is important to clearly define it.

2. Creative Freedom

They probably know their communities better than you. They are able to identify which posts receive the most engagement and which ones don't.

While they may be working for your brand and should have the right to decide how to approach certain campaigns, it is important to give them freedom of movement (within reason). Unneeded guidelines can limit your campaign's creativity potential.

An influencer only needs a briefing and periodic reviews to make sure everything is going according to plan.

3. Make a Story

Successful marketing campaigns are built around storytelling. It is easier for people to understand and relate to your message if the ideas and thoughts are organized in a traditional narrative.

Your target market will be more trustful of you and the influencer if the story is authentic and humane. Your stories should stir emotions. They should appeal to their needs and desires.

A strong storyline can be created with a deep understanding of the benefits your product or service has on your customers' lives. It's all about the experience.

4. Get involved with the Influencer

Keep things open with influencers. They aren't there to click the "post" and "tweet” buttons. You should make sure they are informed about campaign decisions.

Source: Unbox social

When it comes to their suggestions, be open-minded. These influencers have worked with many brands and should be able to share their knowledge. When possible, involve them in the planning process. They might have a different perspective that could make your campaign more successful.

5. Do Your Research

Brand representation can also be known as influencer marketing. These people will represent your company's face, so it is important to learn everything you can about them. You might want to reconsider your options if you find red flags such as controversial opinions or views.

You'll also need to determine which channels influencers are most successful in. You'll need to align the channel that you want to maximize with an influencer on that platform.

Remember that the brand is responsible for selecting an influencer that doesn't support your goals. You, as a business, should remember that you are working with the influencers and not vice versa.

6. Take a look beyond the followers

It's important that you look beyond how many followers an influencer has. It is important that influencers have a healthy relationship to their audience. This requires both significant engagement from both sides as well as a community-like system for support and debate.

Take into account engagement rates and types of engagement these influencers get. Quality is also important. Your campaign's ability to convert will depend on the context in which they are placed.

7. Get in touch with micro-influencers

Allocate your marketing budget properly. You might get better results if you target micro-influencers with smaller followings than pseudo-celebrities. You will always find the most influential people in your industry, so it might be more difficult to reach these elite influencers.

Micro-influencers can be everyday consumers who have large social media followings. Although they may not have the same reach as macro-influencers, studies show that they get higher engagement and greater interaction.

They are also easier to work with. They are unlikely to be approached as influencers often, so there is no reason to expect unreasonable expectations.

8. Take care of your budget

Negotiate influencer pricing. It's fine to base everything on the rate cards, but it's a good idea to talk small about your campaign's costs.

Don't forget about what you already own. Influencers can also benefit from the product or service they are marketing. To make your influencer a brand ambassador, you need to find the right balance between monetary compensation as well as collateral materials.

9. It should look effortless

You should not make influencer marketing look like it is. To tap into new audiences, you need to make it appear as natural as possible. It's not a good idea to make it seem all business, or it will make your digital marketing campaign less authentic.

People connect with stories, so the influencer should speak about your brand based upon their own experiences. The influencer's opinion is what you want, and it should not be promotional.

10. Monitor Your Campaigns

It is crucial that you are able to identify the impact of your influencer marketing campaign. You should set up tracking codes and reports to determine your ROI.

To track your influencer marketing efforts, you can use tools such as the Google Analytics Suite. Don't let metrics distract you from the important things. Focus on the goals and objectives in your influencer marketing strategy.

Source Marketing Charts

Take a bow

A brand can find it difficult to set up and execute an influencer marketing campaign. It's much easier to implement if you have a solid foundation and you track your efforts.

When implementing an influencer marketing campaign, make sure you use the best tools and practices. Planning ahead will increase your chances of reaching new audiences. Get after it!

You want to implement some of the strategies shown on MIG's website but need advice or help? Marketing Insider Group is home to a group of 35+ writers who are ready to create content for your business. Get a consultation or check out our blog content.

I’ve been around the world, to marketing conferences, to large brand marketing team meetings, and I’ve spoken to hundreds of marketers who think marketing with content is the same thing as content marketing.

In this post, I’m going to give you the definition, the reason why many leading companies use it to drive 6x more ROI from their marketing while spending 62% less. And why you should start using it right away!

So what is content marketing really?

Content marketing is the process of consistently publishing relevant content that audiences want to consume in order to reach, engage, and convert new customers. It involves brands acting more like publishers and creating content on a destination you own (your website) that attracts visitors.

Content marketing is not the same thing as marketing with content. It is customer-focused, answering important customer questions and meeting their needs and challenges.

Content marketing creates a financial asset. It allows businesses to reach, engage, and convert customers they would have never seen by using the keywords customers use and creating the content they consume on your own website to answer those questions.

Content marketing represents the gap between what we produce as brands and what our audience is looking for. It leads to quantifiable business value.

Quick Takeaways:

• Content marketing is an opportunity to reach and convert new customers.
• Content marketing drives measurable results and ROI over more traditional marketing tactics.
• Content marketing allows you to build relationships that enhances brand trust.
• Content marketing focuses an organization on telling brand stories that resonate with customers.

[Do you need to start your own content marketing program? Check out our weekly blog service that includes an annual plan and monthly reporting!]

What Is Content Marketing Really?

Content marketing, when you peel away all the layers of techniques, trends, and possibilities, is a business opportunity. Because it’s a tool they can use for growth. As businesses struggle to achieve growth in a challenging business environment, we’re seeing more interest and budget shifting to content marketing as the best choice for marketing budgets.

That makes it really different than advertising (more on that in a bit).

What makes content marketing different than other types of marketing is in the ROI and business value it delivers over time.

Content marketing allows any business to increase their presence in organic search because it focuses on sharing thought leadership. By using SEO and content insights as critical components, content marketing is increasingly more and more aligned with customer needs.

However, for content marketing to work, it must be well-executed. That includes developing a content strategy.

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Successful content marketers align themselves to a content calendar – 12 months of content ideas based on data. Then that plan is executed and optimized on a regular basis

For many companies, content is randomly published based on requests from executives. These random acts of content do not support strategic goals and often produce little in the form of business results.

The Business Advantage of Good Content Marketing

Unlike other approaches, there is something special that makes content marketing stand out as the best of modern marketing methods: It’s sustainable.

When done well – with a strategy behind it and relevancy within each piece – it offers the benefit of exponential growth, building brand awareness and trust, winning over prospects and convincing leads, and endearing your customers, helping to build a loyal base of brand advocates.

Once you get your content marketing strategy going, it’s that positive snowball effect in action. Your brand presence gets bigger and more impactful. It becomes easier to achieve your marketing goals with future content because you already have a foundation in place – a vast content library of written, visual, and experiential content, all designed to resonate with your target buyers.

This is in contrast to traditional marketing. Advertising, even with today’s sophisticated digital ads, can create overexposure. Audiences become saturated with brand promotion that offers no genuine value to the people you’re trying to build customer relationships with.

Content Resonates, Advertising Saturates

A critical factor in your content marketing is relevance. What are your customer’s challenges, pain points, and needs? That’s what you should be writing about, not producing a commercial for your brand. Well-written, insightful content draws your audience in and sets you up as a thought leader.

On the contrary, advertising, even digital ads, leads to overexposure and saturation. You haven’t attempted to build a relationship with your audience. Instead, you’ve only captured a story about your brand as the star with no room for the real hero, your customer.

To sum it up, as I said a few years ago, the right content is “a vehicle that can deliver us from the throes of the ‘death by SPAM’ illness that still persists in many marketing organizations.”

The Impact of Content Marketing on Business

So, you may still be wondering, why content marketing? Isn’t it just throwing up a blog every now and then? How do you know content marketing has real ROI (return on investment)?

It’s normal to have apprehension about investing in something that seems hypothetical in nature. But the stats don’t lie. Consider these impressive numbers:

• Web traffic growth: Companies that blog have, on average, 434 percent more indexed pages than those that do not. More content equates to more traffic, and content marketers have seen 7.8 times higher year-over-year growth in unique site traffic. (Source: Aberdeen)
• Leaner budget but bigger results: Content marketing garners three times more leads than paid search advertising. Additionally, it costs 62 percent less to execute content marketing versus any other type of campaign. (Source: Demand Metric)
• Higher conversion rates: Brands that use content marketing can expect 6 times higher conversion rates. (Source: Aberdeen)
• More chances for your brand to get in front of the right eyes: 47 percent of internet users read blogs daily. (Source: Statista)
• Buyers crave content in the decision-making process: 80 percent of business owners and executives prefer to learn about brands through articles rather than ads. 41 percent of B2B buyers consume three to five pieces of content before talking to sales. (Source: Demand Gen Report)
• Thought leadership: Developing a credible library of content that signals your authority and expertise draws in decision-makers. In fact, 60 percent of buyers said thought leadership convinced them to purchase a product or service they had never considered previously. (Source: Edelman-LinkedIn)

The numbers don’t lie. This is but a short collection of what you can expect when you put momentum behind your content marketing. You can realize these benefits and more. However, you have to start with a strategy, discerning what content marketing means to your business and how you’ll go about being intentional with what you produce and disperse.

There are plenty of excellent content marketing examples from brands big and small across all industries. I’ve got one great example to share with you now, which is even more meaningful given the current environment.

Cleveland Clinic, one of the most respected healthcare brands, established a campaign around its value of putting “Patients First.” The objective was to have all its 40,000 employees, which they call “caregivers,” to engage with this value and live it every day.

To do this, they created a video, “Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care.” The powerful video was first used internally but was then posted publicly on social media and its blog, Health Essentials. The blog saw substantial growth, with 6 million visitors each month!

It was a huge win for their content marketing team, led by Amanda Todorovich. They understood their audience, both internally and externally, and created content that had a lasting impression. I talk more about Amanda’s well-thought-out strategy in my book Mean People Suck.

As I said a few years ago, “Content is the vehicle that can deliver us from the throes of the ‘death by SPAM’ illness that still persists in many marketing organizations.”

It’s the solution to the dwindling impact of traditional marketing techniques.

Take advantage of this business opportunity and you have a lot to gain.

What Content Marketing Isn’t

It’s important when using content marketing to understand what content marketing is, versus what it isn’t.

With this in mind, content marketing isn’t just pieces of content – randomly publishing blogs, social media posts, videos, landing pages, email, etc. and hoping something sticks.

It isn’t more “stuff”

Where a lot of brands go wrong with content is they fail to get the strategy part, unleashing content campaigns without the direction of where it should take the business to and an understanding for who the content is for.

Without strategy, you may end up with a promotional video, for example, that looks a lot more like a promo ad for your business than content. A promo video, as high-quality as the video production may be, isn’t a piece of useful video content designed to resonate with a target group at a specific stage of the buyer’s journey, and that is connected to the other content within your strategy.

A blog doesn’t constitute a content marketing strategy

Yes, blogging matters substantially in content marketing, but simply having a blog does not make you a content marketer.

It’s a part of the equation, but not the only aspect. Content marketing is about providing information, and that can happen in many formats and channels. The central theme of this information is that it is useful to its intended target.

Only when company blogs are structured like publishers – with 3-5 key themes and a consistent publishing schedule – can they be considered the key delivery mechanism of your content marketing.

Content goes far beyond blog posts. It also goes far beyond the digital world. Content is information, but it can be delivered through myriad channels (video, graphics, live events, apps, social media posts, emails). What differentiates this information as content is that it is designed for a specific audience, for a specific purpose.

It’s not a commercial

The mistake many companies make is that they think all they have to do is create content with no direction. In turn, they begin to develop things that revert back to the old ideas of advertising.

A video that should explain how you make a customer’s life easier turns into a commercial about features. That’s not the kind of content that will engage your audience.

It’s not about posting on social media

You don’t own Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn. And while these platforms can be helpful in sharing your content and distributing your thought leadership on the platforms they use, social posting in and of itself is not content marketing.

Social media’s value comes from bringing people back to your website. The social platforms decide what content is shown to which audiences. Unless you pay them to target specific people. That’s just advertising.

Consider social media an effective platform for distribution in your content marketing strategy.

It’s not pay for play

With content marketing, you own the distribution channels, from your website to your social media profiles to your email list.

You get to formulate how the story will go and build relationships with your intended markets.

Advertising, on the other hand, is pay for play. You don’t really control where it will appear or who will see it. You simply hand over money to a third party for rented space.

It’s not meaningless

Think about it. What problem does your Facebook ad solve? How has your company’s last AdWords campaign made a positive difference for your customers? Content is supposed to solve a problem. It’s this genuine intent to help your customers that offers the authenticity that consumers are so attracted to. Take this one step further, from providing value to your buyer to providing value to society, and you’ve landed on the future of content marketing – purpose driven brands.

It’s not rented space

Where content stands out is that a brand owns the distribution channels – the website, the in-person events, the social media profiles, the eBook series. Advertising, on the other hand, is rented space – you have to constantly purchase a media channel in order to market.

How the Experts Define Content Marketing

Joe Pulizzi’s Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as:

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Neil Patel takes this definition a little deeper:

“[It’s] a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them on a consistent basis.”

And one of my favorites, from Rebecca Lieb:

“It isn’t advertising. It isn’t push marketing, in which messages are sprayed out at groups of consumers. Rather, it’s a pull strategy – it’s the marketing of attraction. It’s being there when consumers need you and seek you out with relevant, educational, helpful, compelling, engaging, and sometimes entertaining information.”

And my definition:

Content marketing delivers the content your audience is seeking in all the places they are searching for it.

So, if you can weave together the endless list of possible content choices and channels, with the strategy that speaks to your audience in the voice of your brand, you know exactly what content marketing is and how to make it grow your business.

Why Content Marketing Matters (and Always Has)

You may be carefully rethinking your content right now. Big changes have disrupted basically every industry. Content marketing isn’t new. It’s been gaining prominence for the last decade, and its acceptance as a critical strategy is fortified. This is especially true when compared to the “failures” of traditional marketing, which is now ignored more than watched.

Now, the playing field is more level because a company doesn’t have to invest millions in ads to get noticed. They can use content marketing instead to build a community and deliver a refreshing new spin on old problems for their audience.

Content marketing matters because your customers say it does. Maybe not verbally, but the statistics and data about how much content buyers consume support this statement. Nobody wants to be sold to, no matter the makeup of the audience. They want to be informed and engaged. They react much more to a story that shows them how to overcome their challenges than a dry, disjointed approach that may play on fear.

Get this: Buyers are still craving valuable content.

No matter where most companies began 2020, they are in a unique, new place now. They may have the same problems, compounded by the pandemic, or new ones. Either way, they still need direction and help. Your brand can offer this with content that looks at your customers where they are right now and seeks to bring them solutions.

Content Strategy: Your Foundation for Everything Marketing

Back to the starting question of what is content marketing, it’s often called a strategy. It is and must be based on a strategy. It all comes down to purpose – the questions why, who, how, and where.

You’re probably already aware that it’s a must-have; otherwise, you don’t have a vision or any way to know if it’s working. What you can be sure of, now and in the future, is that your content strategy must be nimble.

If you are just now creating a strategy or revisiting it now due to the pandemic, follow these crucial steps.

• Define your mission, purpose, and goals: Who is your audience, what is your purpose in improving their lives, and what do you want to accomplish?
• Understand your audience: You need to flesh out your buyer personas so you know what challenges them and motivates them. It’s more than just demographics; it’s preferences and what matters to them. This is certainly an area to reconsider right now.
• Determine your priorities: In this step, you need to determine what content formats and channels should be a priority based on audience preferences. Remember, you need to publish content continuously, so these steps get you to a place where you’re establishing how you’ll do this.
• Work out the details: The previous steps set up parameters. Now it’s time to get a plan of action ready, defining the essentials like keywords, topic generation, social media usage, promotions related to big moments for your brand or industry (i.e., industry events or new product rollouts), and creating a publishing process.
• Start executing and creating content: With all the pieces in place, it’s now time to execute your strategy. If you’ve hammered out all the necessary parts of your strategy, you have the framework in order.

These steps aren’t rigid. You can go back to each one as needed, depending on what’s happening. In that time, you can also discover channels or areas where you can innovate.

Let’s take a closer look at some tips you can use to make your strategy stronger and able to adjust to new demands.

Content Marketing Tips You Can Use Right Now

In searching for what content marketing is and how to leverage it, it comes down to the execution of your strategy. Maybe you already have one, but it’s been derailed by the pandemic.

As noted, your content marketing strategy must be nimble, no matter what. Most disruptions aren’t foreseeable, but here are some things you can do now to use content marketing to continue to cultivate connections with your audience.

Use LinkedIn to Support Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy

LinkedIn has cemented its position as the social media site for B2B companies (although consumer brands have found success here, too). Its prominence is supported by the fact that 94 percent of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for content marketing.

But how can you more effectively use LinkedIn in your content marketing strategy?

LinkedIn has advantages over other social media sites. Those benefits are just as critical now as they were in 2019, including:

Better Targeting

What’s great about LinkedIn is it’s a place where you can find decision-makers at all levels of a company. You can target based on both job titles and demographics. Of its over 630 million users, LinkedIn even breaks down the levels of influence, enabling you to zero in on those who ultimately drive purchase decisions.

Why does this matter even more now? Because people are still heavily using the site to find answers to new problems – problems they didn’t consider until now. Think of the business that’s now having to transition to a remote workforce. They’ve got lots of concerns, and companies that can offer them technology can be the answer.

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Strategy Alignment

Before you begin to try something new on LinkedIn or start at all, you need to ensure that how you use it aligns with your content strategy.

• Why are you using it? Thought leadership, lead generation, building awareness?
• How are you using it to generate traffic? Where do you want them to go?
• How will you interact with customers, partners, and industry experts on the site? And how will this help you meet your content marketing goals?

Optimizing Content Marketing for Ecommerce

Ecommerce retailers are in a new boat now. Even if they had physical locations, the demand for online purchases is now the only channel for most. While it may seem like ecommerce and content marketing aren’t a great match, many online sellers are leveraging it. They’ve found that optimizing content for their ecommerce brand can drive success.

That’s true for B2B ecommerce as well. B2B ecommerce is expected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2022. Why the growth, which could actually outpace B2C ecommerce?

Much of it has to do with a changing B2B buyer (millennials now account for 73 percent of the B2B buyer group). They are digital natives and enjoy the convenience of buying online and look for content to support their buying decisions.

Additionally, given the improvement in logistics and delivery, it could take less time to get what they need online, instead of visiting a physical location. Now, it’s probably their only option, so it’s time to consider how you can optimize your ecommerce content.

Key things to do for optimization:

• Revisit keywords in your content.
• Emphasize user-generated content (UGC) to plug into your social media profiles to improve your credibility.
• Know your customer and what they expect and create content based on this.
• If it makes sense to adopt new channels and formats, then do so. For example, if the audience you want to engage with is on TikTok, investigate how you can connect with them here.

While it’s good to be experimental in ecommerce content marketing, you don’t want to alienate your audience by trying too hard to leverage new trends as opposed to focusing on the message.

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Content Marketing Metrics: What Defines High Performance?

Now that we’ve discussed what content marketing is, it’s time to talk about how you can measure its performance. Once you have a strategy that’s clicking and you’re rolling out high-quality, meaningful content, you should pay attention to these content performance metrics.

Defining Content Marketing KPIs

When defining your key performance indicators (KPIs) for content marketing efforts, it’s different from answering the question of ROI. KPIs focus on the operational side of content marketing. The most important aspect of KPIs is your “why.” Why do you do what you do? That’s what people buy – not what you do.

Some KPIs to consider include:

• Measuring how a content marketing campaign impacts your sales team’s productivity: Does your sales team understand the objectives of the campaign and why it would deliver leads to them? If you have a disconnect here, leads won’t blossom into conversions.
• Understanding the percentage of customers that were marketing-generated: Knowing what new business was won from content marketing shows its influence.
• Time to revenue: How long does a campaign need to generate interest? If the time seems long, you need context (i.e., is your solution’s buying cycle long, have you inserted urgency into your campaign?).
• Customer acquisition costs (CAC): Calculating the CAC for each campaign provides key insights on how to streamline operations to reduce it.

Metrics to Support KPIs and Give You the Real Picture on Performance

After defining KPIs, you should put your attention on these key metrics:

Traffic

Look at users, pageviews, and unique pageviews in Google Analytics.

Learn where your traffic is coming from and make changes based on this. For example, if referral traffic is coming from your Pinterest page, you should consider developing more content for the site.

Conversions

Is your content driving conversions? It’s a simple question, but not a linear answer. You can see from traffic that your content is getting more eyes, but what do they do next? Determine how you can link conversions, however you define them, to content to understand its sphere of influence.

Engagement

Traffic is great; engagement is better. Engagement happens when people spend more time on your site and how many pages they view in a visit. Those are all metrics you can find on Google Analytics.

Another element of engagement is what you’re doing on social media. Is your content being reacted to, shared, and commented on? The more this happens, the more it’s likely to drive more credible traffic.

SEO

Organic search rankings are vital to a healthy content marketing strategy. Keywords matter because that’s how your audience looks for answers. You should consistently monitor your keyword performance, including your current position for each keyword you’ve targeted.

Check this at least every 30 days. See where you’re rising and falling and find out why. It’s also imperative to optimize every piece of content, including having correct meta data, as well as a good ratio of keyword to content (how many times you use the keyword in your word count – 3 percent is ideal).

Authority

Authority isn’t easy to measure, compared to the other metrics described. The objective is for your website to have a strong domain authority (DA), which is a number between 1 and 100. The higher the score, the greater the authority.

Building authority improves SEO and conversions and is measured by Google. Google looks at things like backlinks from sites with good DA, as well as how much the content is shared, which Google would consider an illustration of the content’s quality.

Your Questions About Content Marketing Answered

In the course of working with brands across the business landscape, a few questions come up time and time again. What is content marketing? Why is it important? Who should care? What should they do about it.

It reminds me of the classic journalism approach of answering the who? what? when? where? why? and how? questions to get to the bottom of every good story.

So here is my attempt at answering those basic questions.

Why is content marketing important?

Content marketing is important because the world has changed dramatically since we started carrying around all the information on the internet. Add this to our the ability to connect with anyone in the world at any time, with social networks and our mobile phones.

Traditional marketing is broken. 86% of TV ads are skipped. 99.99% of banner ads are ignored. US Newspapers have lost $40 Billion in the last 10 years. Advertising isn’t working for publishers or brands because we have been taught to tune it out.

Brands need a new way to connect with their audience. The approach that is working is the continuous creation of content people want. That’s content marketing.

Who needs to worry about content marketing?

Strategic digital marketers all need to understand the importance of content marketing. They should be able to define it. They should be able to talk about why it’s important in today’s digital + social + mobile world. They should be able to point to good examples of it. They should be able to discuss how to get it done in their organizations.

This starts with the CMO and his or her role in building a culture of content that connects with the target audience. And it falls all the way down to the person building websites, creating social content and building editorial calendars.

What are the biggest mistake marketers make with content marketing?

The biggest mistake marketers make is thinking that this is just another tactic where you can promote yourself. We did that with social. As Linkedin and Facebook and Twitter emerged, brands started pushing out the same old ads they used on more traditional channels. But social networks are just the plumbing. It’s content that fuels social connections. Content that people want to consume and share.

So many marketers think in terms of campaigns and promotions. When their audience is looking for stories – entertainment that makes them smarter, makes them laugh or inspires them in some way. Effective brands are taking themselves out of the story. They make it all about the audience. They don’t talk about themselves or their product but they talk about what they do for their customers. They talk about how we can make the world a better place.

As the mother of content marketing Ann Handley likes to say, they make the customer the hero of the stories they tell.

How can a brand get started with content marketing?

Brands typically get started with because they are seeing their marketing efforts suffer and they are seeing their competitors take leadership positions as publishers in their markets.

Brands should begin by trying to understand who they are trying to reach and how their brand can help that target audience. You should then start to identify the questions your customers are asking, the content they consume and the places where they hang out online. Then, begin to craft a strategy to help the client meet those customers’ needs with content – delivered regularly, across many channels and types.

When should a brand get started with content marketing?

Every business, whatever its size or revenue, needs to get started yesterday. Or they risk losing market share as they lose mind share to their competitors. Or not building up any.

You can get going in as little as 30 days. (I’d be happy to help Within 90 days you could be a leader on certain topics. Within a year, you could begin to see a return on the investment. Or even sooner depending on how well you execute. Within 3-5 years, the content marketing efforts could become the largest source of value the marketing organization brings to the brand.

What are the common roadblocks to content marketing success?

The common roadblocks to success, besides the fear and lack of courage to change are leadership support from the top.

Content marketing needs to be a CMO-led initiative. He or she needs to put someone in charge and give them the budget and the resources to get it done.

The next thing is usually skills. Training and enablement are one of the key responsibilities of the content marketer because content is created all over the organization.

Finally, brands need the technology to manage the flow of content between their people, and all the channels they manage. This is the only way for content marketing to scale across the enterprise.

How do you overcome the roadblocks?

Strategies to help brands get unstuck include a competitive assessment or to do some social listening to determine if your brand is losing market share where it counts – on the digital, social and mobile web.

Additionally, brands should look at their content inventory and see if it is performing.

Finally, marketers need to shift investment away from the tactics that aren’t working. It’s not to say that advertising will ever go away, but we are seeing many brands shift investment away from their paid advertising and into content marketing.

What are some things that a company needs to do to be successful with content marketing?

The most important component of successful content marketing is a customer-centric culture that seeks to meet the needs of its customers. It is this “higher purpose” that resonates with customers. We are smart enough to see through brands who try to fake a desire to be helpful vs. promotional.

The second thing is the ability to create engaging content that answers your customers’ most important questions. The brands that are able to break through all the clutter and noise in our information-saturated society is not the one with the biggest budget, or the fanciest advertising agency. It is the brand that can create content that captures our attention, on a human level, that wins the hearts and minds of their desired audience.

The third thing is an entrepreneurial spirit. Effective content marketing is constantly iterating many ideas. That is why it must be continuous. Most of the things you try will fail. But every failure provides insights into what works. And this spirit is the foundation for creating break through content that reaches more people than you thought possible. Test. Learn. Optimize.

What does a CMO need to understand about content marketing?

CMOs need to focus on culture. Our CMO Jonathan Becher likes to repeat the line from Peter Drucker that “culture eats strategy for lunch.” Instilling a customer-centric culture is increasingly a matter of survival for firms in this age where consumers block out any messages they don’t want.

From a business case perspective, CMOs need to look across the company and identify all the content that gets created, at considerable cost, and that no one ever uses. Some content marketers have suggested as much as half of the content created inside a company, for customers, never gets viewed, even once. That is considerable cost and inefficiency. And this can support the idea for change.

So content marketing is not an additional expense. It can be funded by eliminating existing waste. And it’s an opportunity to make marketing more efficient overall.

Where will content marketing go from here?

Businesses need to plan for the future. In just a couple of years more, 90% of the web will be video and images. My kids have already resorted to using emojis more than words to communicate. So we need to be ready for entertaining, visual and fun content that can scale.

The future of content marketing is more human interaction. You will see brands tap into their employees to reach out, often through social networks, to customers. You will see brands hiring comedians. You will see more brands creating much more video content, and even sponsoring content more commonly created by entertainment companies.

To set themselves apart, many brands are beginning to build production houses to create entertaining — even funny — content. Imagine that for a B2B brand? But there are already examples at places like Cisco with my good friend Tim Washer, and GE and Red Bull and Netflix and Amazon.

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Editor’s Note: this post was updated with new stats and research on September 14, 2021.