Conversions

6 Indispensable Factors For Attractive And Strong Content Marketing In 2017

August 10, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

This is a guest contribution from Junaid Ali Qureshi

As digital marketing and new social media platforms take over the internet, the need for establishing a strong and attractive content marketing arises. The content posted by a business brand offers an insight of the brand to the audience. It conveys the personal message of the brand and gives away information regarding the latest products and services.

If your content marketing is attractive and strong, it means it is able to direct a large number of people to the online brand stores. It also helps in increasing the sales of your product. The effectiveness and success rate of the content marketing shows how important it is for a business to succeed. Thus, to make your content marketing strategy strong, here are few factors that you need to keep in mind.

#1: Increased dependence on visual content

Image source: http://www.jeffbullas.com

Since the content plays such an important role in increasing the return on investment of a brand, it is necessary that you consider the type of content that is achieving great success in the recent times. In this regard, the social media company Dubai managed to share its statistics with us. They suggest that short videos are taking over the written content marketing strategy.

Visual content has become a necessity and every content marketer must consider this fact and give it its due importance. After inquiring more from the media company, we came to know that the infographics, high-quality images, videos, comics, graphics and slideshows are the types of visual content that are doing well on the internet. As far as the videos are concerned, here are few tips that you need to consider to generate unique videos:

Invest in interactive and informative videos
Make high-quality videos with good audio and understanding
Use latest tricks like 360-degree view and live streaming videos
Explain what you are doing in the videos.
Give a view of the behind the stage scenes to the viewers
Make sure the video target the right audience

#2: Is your content interactive?

Image source: https://www.slideshare.net/

When we double check the content, we need to make sure that the content showcase an interactive platform. Including interactive stages in the content has now become an essential factor of content marketing.

The consumers now like to play a major part in the industry by contributing their opinions and sharing their ideas. Presently, the interactive content is used less but it is expected to become dominant soon. As this style of content is not common yet, it gives you the edge of doing something different and unique.

Make use of this opportunity, make your content interactive and engage as many people as you can. Moreover, also ensure the looming presence of your interactive content. Whether it is a quiz, an image or a contest which engage the audience, it must be easily visible to the viewers. The viewer/ potential customer-to-be, by all means, must be able to clearly view and understand your content.

#3: Quality of the existing and new content

Image source: https://www.bluefountainmedia.com/

Whatever you do, compromising the quality of the content is out of the question. A poorly written content leads a business to nowhere. It fails to attract the traffic flow and reflects a bad impression of the brand on the audience. This is why, while making your content strategy, you need to ensure that the content that you post is high-quality content.

You need to use a unique style, whether it is a story telling style or a simple documentation style, the content must be great. It must engage the viewers so that the content is able to generate leads. This leads to increase in the sales and the return on investment.

Thus, make sure your content is grammar mistake and spelling-error free. It must be readable, easy to understand and well-written. The new content creation and blogging have become an essential part of inbound marketing as well. Presently, according to HubSpot research, 53% of the marketers consider content creation their top priority in inbound marketing. (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/)

Another thing that you can do is repurpose your present content as well. The content curation and syndication regulations allow you to republish the interesting content that brings benefits to the business. Producing new, original, evergreen and attractive content is outstanding but if you are facing problem in doing so, why not repurpose the already present content for a while?

#4: Promotion of the content to the right audience

Image source: http://bootcampdigital.com

The next factor that largely affects the strength of a content marketing strategy is the targeted promotion of the content. Generating high-quality and authentic content is not enough. The marketers need to make sure that it is directed to the right audience as well.

You can pick the right audience by collecting data on the geographic, demographics and on the behavior of the audience. And once you have collected the data, find out the most common issue and the problem that are prevailing among the audience. This data is sufficient to find out about the type of audience you are dealing with. You can then tally the feature of your product that benefits them the most and market accordingly.

Joe Pulizzi, the founder of the Content Marketing Institute stated that there has been a shift between the content creation and promotion. Five years ago, 80% of efforts were focused on creation and 20% were focused on the promotion. But with the passage of time, and as the internet has become dense with content, the percentages flip-flopped.

This means that the present year and those that are yet to come are all going to be about promotion of the content. And every content marketer must look forward to new ideas to do so.

#5: Influencer Marketing

Image source: http://visual.ly

An influencer marketer is a person who is popular in different social circles and has a list of fans and followers. This individual can help a lot in content marketing. As people like to accept what the third-party recommends, using influencer marketing techniques will greatly enhance the business advertisement.

Data collected from different agencies that offer social media services Dubai shows that social media platforms are presently flooding with influencer marketers. This marketing trend is among the latest ones but it must be considered by the content marketers if they will to succeed in the competition.

Elephantation, a renowned digital marketing company, considers influencer marketing an essential factor and today they are succeeding at a great pace.

Do you want to slip some great tips regarding running the influencer marketing campaign down your sleeves? Here is your chance to do so:

Build good relations with the influencer so that you know he is on your side. This helps in ensuring the good quality of the content
The content must have an engaging and interactive story
Don’t forget to add a call to action in between
Make sure you are achieving your goals through the content
Do show empathy to the influencer’s schedule

Follow these tips and you’ll do great with the influencer marketing strategy.

#6: Consistency in delivering the content

Image source: http://blogpros.com

The stats from content marketing institute suggest that 85% of the top performers deliver content consistently. But it is because of the consistency in the job that the respective brand is able to make its position in the global market. The audience reviews one article and soon afterward they forget it.

Consistency in posting content, whether written or visual, keeps the brand in front of their eyes until they actually know it by name, product variety, and quality. Thus, on whichever platform you are posting your content, make sure you do it regularly.

Now, when we say regularly, how often should you post content on the website or the social media platforms? Well, the content posting schedule depends on the marketing team of the brand. But if you ask us, if you are running an active marketing strategy and your brand is a new one, you should post new content weekly. If in case you have a popular business brand at hand, monthly content posting would do.

Also, don’t forget to take feedback from your viewers. This helps in finding out whether your content is good enough and doing its respected job of attracting the viewers or not. You can also find this by conducting an analytic program. It gives you the data regarding the performance of your website/ social media and how well the content is doing there.

Taking these 6 factors into account for a successful content marketing strategy is enough. Even a startup can succeed by making sure they have focused on these factors. The content marketing institute shares the base points of a good content marketing strategy. It includes having one content type, one main platform, consistent delivery and a long period of time to make sure it flourishes. So make sure you do everything in your power to make your strategy succeed and give it enough time to flourish.

About The Author:

Junaid Ali Qureshi is a digital marketing specialist who has helped several businesses gain traffic, outperform competition and generate profitable leads. His current ventures include Elephantation, eLabelz, Smart Leads.ae, Progos Tech and others.

Improve Your Content Marketing Strategy Using the Buyer’s Journey

July 25, 2017 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

This is a guest contribution from Nicole Stelmar

A consumer goes through three different stages before making a purchase: awareness, consideration, and decision. These three stages make up the buyer’s journey.

Why does this matter to content marketers? Each stage of the buyer’s journey presents an opportunity to reach potential customers and lead them down the path to making a purchase.

Unfortunately, many marketers overlook the first two stages and focus only on content for buyers in the decision phase.

In order to reach prospects in each stage of the buyer journey, it is important to understand what content resonates most with consumers in that stage. Here are some tips and examples on how to create effective content for each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Awareness Stage

The awareness stage is the first stage of the buyer’s journey—also known as the top of the funnel. In the awareness stage, the buyer encounters a problem that they need solved. The prospect is seeking information about a product or service without the intent of buying. They desire to find free, high quality educational content that will lead them to a conclusion.

Prospects will browse a wealth of information before they find what they need. At this point, their value as a lead is low because they may not notice you. However, if they find that your content is helpful and interesting, they are one step closer to buying.

Unfortunately, many businesses tend to overlook this part of the process. They don’t see it as a worthwhile investment because it may not guarantee a lead. However, neglecting the awareness stage is a mistake.

This is an opportunity to gain a connection and trust with your audience through quality content. Think of this stage as a first impression. A prospect will quickly sift through information to solve their problem as quickly as possible. You want your content to be intriguing and helpful so that you stand out among the crowd.

The types of content that interests prospects at this stage are blog posts, social content, and ebooks. Diversify your content with research reports, editorial content, whitepapers, and statistical reports that educate the buyer.

Let’s look at some examples of content for your customers in the awareness stage. First up is a research report from TransUnion’s SmartMove division. By providing its potential customer base with its own research, SmartMove is establishing itself as a trustworthy and authoritative figure within their industry. This will attract customers in the awareness phase as they are looking for more information on their newly identified problem.

The second example comes from right here at MarcGuberti.com. By offering potential customers free access to 27 Ways to Get More Retweets on Twitter, Marc is giving users in depth knowledge of Twitter best practices. He is also establishing himself as an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship.

Consideration Stage

Once your prospect is informed, you must convince them that your product solves their problem. This is known as the consideration stage.

The goal in this stage is to help the buyer identify exactly what they need to solve the problem that first brought them to the awareness stage. The second goal is to convince the buyer that your product or service fits their particular needs. In addition, you need to show them why your product or service is superior to that of the competition.

As the funnel narrows in the consideration phase, so too must your focus. Buyers in the middle of your sales funnel begin to trust you as an authority in your subject. Your goal is to show them that you are an expert in your field or industry.

And you can optimize for this advantage through the use of expert guides, webinars, live interactions, and white papers that compare your features and benefits with those of your competitors.

Odoo, a provider of management software, published this white paper, which compares its services to three competitor services. This allows Odoo to clearly demonstrate why its software is superior to competitors’, making a potential customer’s consideration phase much easier.

Another example comes from Source Capital Funding, Inc., a finance company and money lender. Source Capital Funding, Inc. provides its customers with a how-to guide for securing a hard money loan.

After their customers have identified their need (the awareness stage), they want more information on how to solve their problem (the consideration stage), which is exactly what this guide addresses.

Decision Stage

The decision stage is the most critical point of the buying process. Thus far, you have presented yourself as an expert and intrigued consumers with relevant information. You have also persuaded them that your product fits their needs and solves their problems.

In the final phase, you have brought the prospect to the tipping point where they are making their purchase decision. If you have done your job in the previous two phases, all you need to do now is close the deal.

At this point, they know they want to buy the product, but you need to convince them to buy the product from you. This decision requires content that will connect with them and help them to make their final decision.

The content you provide to close the deal will greatly depend on your industry or field. Many companies flood the market with flashy calls to action, newsletter sign-ups, and other attention-grabbing features.

However, these are services that are meant to benefit you, instead of the buyer. The strongest content that reins buyers in is that which that gives them real incentive. Features like trials, webinars, free downloads, demos, and case studies will compel your audience.

For example, Community Tax, an accounting firm, offers its potential customers a free consultation. This is a great way to attract customers in the decision phase who are just about to make their purchase decision by giving them one more reason to try out Community Tax. Free trials and consultations help make the purchase decision that much easier for the buyer.

This example from DotMailer, an email marketing platform, not only gives potential customers a two week trial, but customers can also choose to sign up for a free demo as well. The hope with this type of trial is that customers will like the service so much that they will be quick to purchase after the two week trial period.

Post-Purchase

You have successfully led your buyer through each stage of the buyer’s journey, and he has purchased your product. Now what? It’s time to nurture the relationship you have developed with your buyer. Don’t make the mistake of only focusing your content on customers who haven’t purchased yet. In that case, you would be missing out on a large group of potential repeat customers.

As with the three stages in the buyer’s journey, there are certain types of content that work best for customers post-purchase. Content in this stage can have various purposes: to engage with the customer, to make them feel heard, to gather feedback, to turn them into a repeat buyer, and/or to encourage them to be advocates for your product/brand.

So post-purchase content should also serve as a way of:

Reducing returns
Reducing customer service questions
Minimizing service costs
Diminishing potential bad word of mouth (or bad online reviews)
Retaining future sales

In order to achieve each of these, it’s important that you vary your post-purchase content as no piece of content will cover all of those goals. Focus on post-purchase follow-up emails, feedback surveys, extensive user guides, and suggestions of similar products specific to that buyer. This allows you to engage with your buyer in ways that make them feel appreciated and more likely to purchase again.

For example, check out Nordstrom’s post-purchase email. In this example, Nordstrom nurtures the relationship with the customer by giving them three opportunities to share their thoughts on the product and speak with customer service (“Write a review”, “order satisfaction survey”, and “Live Chat”). By making the customer feel like their voice is heard, he or she is more likely to purchase again after receiving such excellent customer service.

This final example from theSkimm could fall under the post-purchase email category (as it is an email sent post-purchase), but instead of looking for feedback, theSkimm is hoping to convert users into brand ambassadors. This tactic goes beyond encouraging repeat buyers and instead focuses on creating advocates who acquire new customers for you.

In Conclusion

The process of creating content that resonates with consumers is an art. And each stage of the buyer’s journey requires unique content in order to effectively move your potential customer along to the point of purchase. By tailoring your content to customers within a particular stage, you will succeed in converting more leads into customers. Just let the buyer’s journey be your guide!

About The Author

Nicole Stelmar is a Managing Editor at 365 Business Tips, a website focused on providing business owners all the information they need to successfully start and run their business. Nicole specializes in helping clients improve their digital presence through SEO and content marketing.

How To Stop Your Landing Page From Leaking Conversions

June 17, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

This is a guest contribution from Deepasha Kakkar

Landing pages are designed to increase conversions. They are dedicated pages that direct and guide a visitor to specific places. But simply making a landing page isn’t the end of your battle to secure conversions.

Distractions are everywhere, and 55% users spend less than 15 seconds on a page. You simply can’t afford to lose sales because of distractions, especially from those on your landing pages.

Indeed, your goal should be to keep visitors on your landing page only long enough to commit to a sale. So how do you plug the leaks? Here are 10 ways to increase conversions:

1. Low Page Load Times = Low Conversion Leaks

Your ideal landing page load times should be under three seconds. In fact, a delay of as little as 2 seconds can increase your landing page bounce rate by 103%.

For example, Mozilla was able to cut 2.2 seconds off page load time, which led to 15.4% higher conversions.

Even the Obama Fundraising Campaign managed to raise $34 million additional funds just by decreasing the page speed from five seconds to two seconds.

Source

Remove the graphical elements that slow up load times, and avoid background autoplay GIFs and videos. They take a long time to load and can slow down the rest of the page, deterring and annoying visitors with frozen frames or black backgrounds.

Use as few elements as you can manage. Be minimalistic. The less you use, the faster your landing page loads.

Visitors are more likely to visit your website if your landing page loads in a flash; no delays, no fuss, and you deliver them straight to where you want them to be.

A hassle free experience goes a long way in crediting you with a good public image. Give your visitors an effortless and memorable experience.

2. Keep Your Audience Engrossed: Remove Possible Page Exits

The worst thing you can do with your landing page is to fill it with links that lead visitors away from the page. Keeping visitors in one place until they perform a particular action is the point of a landing page. If there are too many things screaming at them for attention, you won’t be able to keep their minds on any one thing.

Remove any navigational panels, links, flashy pop-ups, and perhaps even social share options that adorn the top or side of our landing pages. Your landing page has to be neat and amply populated, not overpopulated.

Hubspot saw significant conversion rate improvements on their landing pages after they removed links and navigation panels.

Source

Yuppiechef had a 100% increase in sign-up rates by removing their top fold navigation bar on the landing page.

Reserve your homepage for navigation menus. Remember, your landing page needs to distraction free. Although you might want to experiment with minimalistic social share options to see if your page fares better with or without them.

A good landing page is a beautifully orchestrated film that directs the audience’s attention where it wants to. Navigation menus and outbound links get in the way of that subtle art.

3. Use Landing Page Explainer Videos

Attention spans have been reduced to eight seconds, but the average video watch times are 2.7 minutes. So short explainer videos of 1-2 minutes in length are the way to go..

A simple animated explainer video can explain your complex business idea quickly, connect with your target audience, and influence buying decisions.

Studies say that companies using explainer videos on their homepage or landing page above the fold can increase conversions by up to 20%. Success stories include DropBox, which used an explainer video to generate 10% increase in conversion rate. It may sound like a small number, but when you do the math, that’s 10 million users and around $48,000,000 a year.

Crazy Egg saw similar success with their landing page explainer video, generating 64% more conversions in the form of $21,000 a month.

Explainer videos engage the viewer for at least 2 minutes, which means that your landing page gets two more minutes of traffic. Not only is that enough time to get people interested in your site and product, it also means that Google values your site more because of increased traffic and time spent on the site.

4. Use Custom Marketing Images & Graphics With One Clear CTA

If you can’t pull off a custom video, you can likely produce custom made graphics and images or even GIFs to engage and nurture customers.

Create images that are tailored to suit your copy and graphics needs. Custom images can improve your conversions by 40% and tailoring them to your target audience is well worth the time and effort.

Source

For the love of all things dear to you, do not use stock images. They are someone else’s vision that you are forcing onto your audience.

Stock images are insipid and make your audience think that you aren’t willing to put any effort into making an experience worthwhile. Don’t let that be a deterrent for visiting your landing page.

5. Have Only One Call To Action

Your landing page should have one purpose. You can try to get visitors to buy a product, sign up for emails, or connect on social media. Don’t include them all on one page.

Too many CTAs means that nothing really stands out. This is as anti-landing-page as you can get.

Whirlpool’s CTR shot up by 42% when they used only one CTA in their emails rather than the four they had been using before the change.

Having one CTA means that viewers have nothing else to focus on. You can lead your visitors to where you want them to go by giving the right cues.

You can also have arrows pointing where you want the viewer to look, or have subtle backgrounds that direct the focus of the viewer like this:

Source

6. Use Testimonials: Maintain Social-Professional Credibility

You have to create and maintain value and credibility amongst your user base and visitors. The best way to do that is by including positive reviews by authority figures, Twitter cards from users of your product, quotes, case studies, achievements, awards, statistics, client testimonials and logos, etc.

It creates a big impact to see someone or something well-known accrediting your product with trust and reliability. It can be the difference between a solid set of conversions and people leaving your landing page without doing anything.

Consumer reviews are one of the strongest sources of building brand trust, with 70% of global consumers saying that they trust reviews more than any other form of advertising. A whopping 92% consumers around the globe trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and family, according to this report.

You can even list the number of your current users and subscribers, current online viewers, or have badges of affirmation from known brands. Dishonored, a video game, features on its page appreciation from the top notch community critics.

It creates a solid standing for your product to show positive reviews from authoritative and known figures.

7. Make Your Purpose Noticed: Use A Bold Heading

The point of a landing page is to grab the attention of the visitor, and your page heading is the best way to do it. It isn’t enough to simply put a heading there. It has to stand out.

Use bold text, block letters, and use a clout theme that makes the heading stand out against the background and all other elements on the page. You have to pay close attention to the copy, too.

Don’t make your heading copy vague and undirected. It is one of the first and best tools that you have to direct people’s attention to the place you want.

You can make your heading enticing, curiosity inducing that makes the visitor read on or prompts them to click where you want them to. UpWork is a good example with their heading that prompts the user with a catchy result-based headline.

The bold heading gets your attention and you’re more likely to click to find out how Rob got more conversions for his Upwork clients. The subheading helps add context to the attention-grabbing headline.

Or you can be very specific and tell the visitors what exactly they are getting out of visiting your page like Moz does with its sign up page:

A neat heading that tells you exactly what you’re getting into.

In either case, both the pages present a strong case that catches the visitor’s attention and provides just enough details to guide the user along.

8. Be Smart: Use Few Words To Convey More

According to an Unbounce report, the higher the word count on your webpage, the lower your conversion rate.

Here’s a graph from their report which suggests that perhaps 20-30 words are your best bet to get more conversions. As you keep moving forward with your word count, the more steadily your conversion rate declines.

Keep your words simple. The simpler your message, the better people will understand what they are getting into. Don’t be fancy with your words, your landing page needn’t feel like a newspaper column or a critique.

Keep your language simple; easy enough for a 6th grader to understand. Once again, according to the Unbounce report, the further you move along the reading difficulty curve of the Flesch test, the less conversions you secure.

Nobody likes to be duped and vaguely told things in a fancy language. Be simple, be precise, and cut straight to the point. Your visitors will be grateful and you will see the difference.

9. One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Test Your Landing Page Variations

This one is more or less self-explanatory. There’s a lot of variety on the internet: customer types, their needs, products, as well as your own image and how it is perceived.

You cannot hinge your landing page conversions on something that has worked for someone else. Sure, it might be a good strategy to that yielded results, and it may for you too, but you have to get the best out of what you are doing to your landing page.

Test what you do, implement variations, then test again. See what works out best for you.

You might add more images to your landing page when what you really needed more was a better, bolder headline. Or you might be optimizing your form fields when what you need is a better color theme,

Make a variation of different elements and see how they impact conversions and the response to your landing pages.

Once you’re satisfied enough with the results, slip that variation in for long term use. When the variation has run its course, repeat the above strategy. It’s all about hit and miss, even if you have the best strategists and practices holding your landing pages in place. Internet trends and needs change very fast. You need to, too.

10. A Ton Of Landing Pages, A Ton Of Leads

Once you have mastered, implemented and tested these techniques, it’s time to build a whole network of landing pages that cater to different audiences coming from different sources. Why?

According to Hubspot, the more landing pages you have the more lead generation you’ll get.

Source

But it isn’t simply about making more landing pages. A dozen similar landing pages are no good. Make separate landing pages for separate consumers, arriving from different places around the internet.

You have to make the experience of the user unbroken when they come to your landing page from a website.

Maintain a theme. If a user clicked on an ad that offers free e-books, don’t give them a webpage that asks them to sign up. Give them a page that prompts them with the e-book. Of course, after that you can ask them to sign up to get the book.

Remember to update your landing pages as you update the theme and graphical feel of your website and ads. You’d be losing out on conversions if the visitor feels he has landed on a different website if the color themes of what they click on and what they land on are different.

Conclusion

This is by no means a definitive list, but the methods listed above are effective enough to kickstart your attempts to plug the holes in your landing pages to get you more conversions.

Most of it comes down to testing what works for you. Your industry and the sphere you work in governs a lot of what your traffic is like and prefers, and thus influences the way your landing pages should look.

Observe, learn, test, implement, and then rinse and repeat.

Of course, don’t just wait for traffic to pour onto your site; plan marketing strategies to actively promote the landing page.

Struck gold with some technique you used yourself? Let us know in the comments. A new technique you hooked your page up with? Share with the community. Sound off below.

About The Author

Deepasha is an Entrepreneur, Visual Marketer and the Founder of Crackitt. Crackitt helps startups and enterprises harness the power of visual marketing to generate leads and close sales through Explainer Videos and Infographics