What’s Trending In Marketing For August 2018

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This week in inbound marketing we look at Amazon’s incredible success on Prime Day that made history in all categories. Read more on the changes and trends happening in marketing this past month.

Noteworthy Marketing News

Facebook To Begin Testing New ‘Highlights’ Feature That Lets Users Save Stories

Taking a page out of Snapchat’s playbook and making it their own, Facebook has begun testing a new “Highlights” feature that will give users the option to save Stories to their profiles. Unlike Snapchat, Facebook’s feature will allow users to save their Stories beyond the standard 24-hour period a Story exists. Your saved Stories will appear as a horizontal bar on the user’s profile and display view counts as well. Facebook believes this feature will not only give users the opportunity to hold on to their favorite content, but will also “make it easier to express who you are through memories.”

 

social media

Instagram Testing Open-Ended Questions In Stories To Make Content More Interactive

In an attempt to make content more interactive on their app, Instagram is testing a new feature in which users can add open-ended questions in stories according to a recent write-up on Marketing Land. Instagram currently allows users to post polls with multiple-choice answers, but with this new feature, Instagram is hoping to increase engagement between users, while giving brands the opportunity to have more public conversations with followers.

 

Snapchat Partners With 4 News Discovery Platforms To Help Push Content Beyond The App

According to an article on Marketing Land, Snapchat has decided to partner with four news discovery platforms (NewsWhip, Tagboard, SAM Desk, and Storyful) used by media organizations to spread their news-related content on a wider scale and basis outside the app. The partnership will allow the four platforms to use Snapchat’s Story Kit Integrations to access and deliver news content posted within the app to thousands of storytellers and newsrooms. Along with Snapchat, the platforms will also be able to access content that is present on the app’s Discovery channels like NBC News and BuzzFeed to name a few.

Improving Your Marketing Program

20 Tips To Improve Your Website Redesign Process

Whether you like it or not, your website is often the first impression your audience gets of your business and your offering, so keeping your website up to date with today’s technological changes in mind is crucial if you want to draw in your target consumer. Our own Nicole Wagner offers an abundance of tips to help you improve your website redesign process.

 

8 Tips On Social Media Best Practices For Your Business

Today, the majority of marketers and brands recognize the value of implementing a social media strategy when it comes to engaging and connecting with their audience. In an article she wrote, Nicole Wagner presents the best social media practices to get the most out of those popular platforms.

 

What Is Digital Storytelling: How To Improve Your Effortsdigital storytelling

Storytelling plays an important role when it comes to presenting your products or services as a solution, while also helping consumers relate to your business on a deeper level. Similar to storytelling, digital storytelling involves using strategies across all online platforms to communicate your message to your audience. Dan Gartlan offers strategies for how to improve your digital storytelling efforts to build strong relationships with consumers.

 

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Even With All The Glitches, Prime Day 2018 Proves To Be Amazon’s Biggest Sales Day Ever

Amazon has done it again. According to a recent post on Marketing Land, Amazon reported that this year’s Prime Day was the biggest sales day ever surpassing last year’s sales as well as its Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales. Despite the glitches it faced, the company sold over 100 million products, and in the first nine hours gained more Prime members than any other day of the year in Amazon’s history. The products that sold the most worldwide were all Amazon devices—Alexa Voice Remote, the Echo Dot, and the Amazon Fire Stick.

Discover how to improve your brand marketing strategy using Amazon Alexa

multipurpose video campaignHow Overstock.com Created A Multipurpose Video Campaign

The digital era we are living in today has made it difficult to distinguish between brand and performance campaigns. For brands with dual goals, a multipurpose campaign might be the answer. In an article published on Think With Google, Overstock.com, the online home goods and furniture retailer, decided to experiment with mixing direct-response strategies with regular brand creative. Interestingly enough, the return on ad spending for the campaign was 3X its other campaigns—the result was enough to make them reconsider how they would normally approach digital video.

 

SLIF Attendees Share What Excites & Concerns Them About The Future

Senior living industry leaders attended the Senior Living Innovation Forum, a conference that takes place every June to discuss a variety of topics centered on the senior housing industry. Several attendees shared their insights and concerns about the future of the industry, and recognized that in order to fit in with the current times, companies and investors need to shift their attitudes and accept a new business model if they aspire to create larger market opportunities and increase innovation as well.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales

content marketing

Content Marketing Trends to Track in 2018

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Content marketing is a long-term strategy. As such, you need to make sure that you track your content’s performance and regularly adjust your strategy. This is especially true as new content marketing trends emerge every year that could be beneficial to your brand’s marketing efforts. The following are nine content marketing trends that you should seriously consider adopting:

  1. Live video content is becoming more popular– Streaming live content provides audiences with a feeling of exclusivity since they have to tune in during the live stream or miss out. This can be a very powerful draw. Additionally, live content gives you the opportunity to show your authenticity and to build stronger connections with your audience.
  2. Content is going beyond social – While social media remains one of the most effective ways to engage with consumers, you should find ways to interact and build relationships beyond social, such as via in-person events, email marketing, membership sites, and more.
  3. Original content is becoming more important – Traditional advertisements, branded emails and sponsored posts have their place, but they are no longer as effective as they once were. This is because consumers have caught on and are in search of content that is unique and relevant to them. Producing original content will give you a competitive advantage.
  4. Content is becoming more interactive– Engagement is extremely important when it comes to content, which is why more brands are creating content that is interactive through the use of augmented reality and virtual reality. For example, both can be leveraged to demonstrate services and products in stores or at trade booths.
  5. Vertical content– When creating video content, the natural impulse is to shoot horizontally. However, because more consumers are using their smartphones to browse the Internet (more than 50 percent of Internet users are browsing on their smartphones), creating vertical content allows them to view your videos more conveniently.
  6. Formats for consumption are changing– Simply posting content to your blog on a weekly basis will no longer cut it. You need a comprehensive content marketing strategy that implements everything from copywriting to graphic design to video production across all platforms.
  7. Content is expanding beyond the screen– The Internet has already expanded beyond the screen in the form of the IoT (Internet of Things). Content creation for IoT platforms, such as Alexa, Siri and the like, isn’t far behind.
  8. Content is shifting to converged media – Content is shifting away from being solely owned media to becoming a combination of owned, paid and earned media, to the point where you can no longer tell the difference between the three. This is a result of social media’s role in content consumption.
  9. Content will become important at every stage of the buyer’s journey– Instead of focusing on content for the first stage of the buyer’s journey, you should be creating content for every stage, especially the middle-end. For example, the first stage (the awareness stage) should have content identifying the needs and problems of the customer and information on the causes behind them. The second stage (the consideration stage) should have content that addresses how the problem can be solved or how the need can be fulfilled. The last stage is the decision stage, in which your content should present your product or service as the solution. Having content that addresses each stage will make it easier to nurture your customers through the buyer’s journey.

Looking for more trends? Click here.

It’s important that you stay up to date with the latest content marketing trends so that you can adopt new strategies and adjust old ones to ensure that your content marketing is successful over the long term.

Download Our White Paper Guide To Learn How To Perfect Buyer Personas For Your Business

competitive advantage

4 Competitive Advantage Examples That Could Improve Your Marketing Efforts

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One of the goals of any good marketing campaign is to set yourself apart from the competition. This is done by showcasing a unique selling proposition, which tells consumers exactly what makes the product or service that you’re offering unique. However, you can’t just stop there. At this point, every competently run business is going to have their own unique selling proposition.

To truly stand out, you’re going to have to figure out what your competitive advantages are as a brand and leverage them in order to enhance your marketing efforts and boost your brand reputation. The following are a few competitive advantage examples:

1. Pricing

If you’re able to provide value at a lower price than your competitors, then that is a big advantage in itself. Many businesses will find ways to cut down on their operational costs so that they can lower the price of their products or services to the point where their competitors can’t afford to match. This kind of cost leadership is advertised by many businesses whenever they have it. Think of McDonald’s dollar menu or the “every day low prices” that Walmart advertises. These are companies that have successfully leveraged their cost leadership in their advertising.

2. Product Or Service Differentiation

Product or service differentiation refers to the ability to provide better benefits than your competitors. For example, being able to deliver a product to consumers faster than anyone else via same day shipping is a form of differentiation. Differentiation is typically achieved through product or service innovation, the quality of customer service that’s provided, or by the quality of their products or services. Another example would be a roofing contractor offering a longer warranty on their repair work than any of their competitors.

3. Processes

The processes employed by your business can be a huge competitive advantage. For example, if you have sole access to technology and partnerships that allow you to manufacture your product and get it shipped out quickly in a cost-efficient manner, then you may not only have a competitive advantage, you may have on that is sustainable as well. Other processes may work as competitive advantages as well, such as the ability to provide 24/7 customer service.

4. Authority

Authority is something that can only be built over time and which is often done by providing consumers with valuable content that helps to establish your authority and by extending your reach by regularly engaging with your audience. As an authority, you’ll become an influencer of sorts within your industry. When you lay out the benefits of your products or services, people will be more willing to take you at your word as a result.

 

These are just a few competitive advantage examples; however, these competitive advantage examples may not be your brand’s advantages. To identify your competitive advantages, you need to do a thorough evaluation of your company’s strengths. Once you’ve identified these advantages, you can begin to leverage them in your marketing efforts.

30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips

visual storytelling

Visual Storytelling Techniques That Will Take You To The Next Level

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Not only has video content become incredibly easy to consume due to the quality of smartphones and tablets, but it’s become much easier — and affordable — to produce as well. Considering the fact that 72 percent of consumers would prefer to learn about products or services via video and that the average consumer watches around 1.5 hours of video a day, your marketing campaign needs to have a video content marketing strategy.

However, your video content will only be effective if it’s of high quality. The following are ten visual storytelling techniques and promotion tips that you should keep in mind:

For more Storytelling techniques, read more here.

  1. Maintain a single POV– Make sure that your video focuses on a single idea or message and that you don’t stray off topic or else you’ll lose the attention of your viewers.
  2. Be human– Use emotion to connect with your audience. A video full of dry facts with no personal point of view isn’t going to be very engaging. Additionally, showcase actual people in your videos so that your viewers have someone to relate to.
  3. Be memorable– If there’s nothing memorable about your video, then it will fail to impress. Viewers are less likely to share video content that hasn’t made much of an impact on them as well, so strive to make content that is memorable in some way.
  4. Be more visual than verbal– Video is a visual medium, so instead of just showing a talking head explaining your message, tell your message in a visual manner. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.
  5. Start with what’s real – It can be easy to get wrapped up in the visual style of your content, but substance will always trump style. Begin with what’s real and use that as the foundation for your video. The video’s style should be the unique way in which you convey that message to your viewers.
  6. Make it compelling– Remember who your target audience is in order to create video content that they will find relevant and interesting. If you aren’t targeting the right audience, your video content won’t end up being compelling, no matter how well produced it is.
  7. Optimize your videos– Don’t forget to optimize your videos by using strong keywords and links in your titles and descriptions.
  8. Use strong CTAs – Just like written content, video content should have calls-to-action at the end to encourage your viewers to do what you want them to do.
  9. Use YouTube– YouTube has over 1.8 billion monthly users. You can’t ignore an audience that big, so be sure to post your videos on YouTube.
  10. Share your videos – Promote your videos by sharing them on all of your social channels to help attract more viewers.

Using visual storytelling techniques will help audiences connect with your video content and make them more likely to engage. Just remember that all the visual storytelling techniques in the world won’t work if your videos aren’t being watched, which is why promoting your video content is important as well.

Download Our White Paper Guide To Learn How To Perfect Buyer Personas For Your Business

marketing trends

What’s Trending In Marketing For July 2018

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This week in inbound marketing we look at the new AdWords tools Google introduced that will transform how YouTube advertisers use the platform. Read more on the changes and trends happening in marketing today.

Noteworthy Marketing News

Instagram’s New Shopping Bag Icon Adds E-Commerce Element To Advertisers’ Stories

With hundreds of millions of users watching Instagram Stories daily, it would be crazy for brands not to take advantage of this popular platform. Luckily, Instagram has made it easier for brands to do so by recently introducing its new shopping bag icon that will appear on select advertiser’s Instagram Stories according to a recent write up on Marketing Land. Tapping the icon will allows users to view more details like images and pricing information on products from their favorite brands, transforming the way customers engage with brands.

Learn more about advertising approaches on 4 social media platforms

Advertisers Will Soon Have AdWords Tools To Test & Measure Creative Elements Of YouTube Video Ads

Google recently introduced new AdWords tools for YouTube advertisers that measure and test creative elements in their video ads. The YouTube creative suite will feature four new tool sets—Video Creative Analytics, YouTube Director Mix, Video Experiments, and Video Ad Sequencing. A recent post on Marketing Land goes into detail about how these tools will allow advertisers to do a variety of things that will transform their experience using AdWords. Advertisers will also be able to analyze and keep track of how the creative elements they choose to implement influence campaign performance.

Instagram Moves On YouTube With IGTV Launch, Opening Platform To Hour-Long Videos

According to an article by Amy Gesenhues on Marketing Land, Instagram is now making way for long-form video by introducing its new IGTV platform and IGTV standalone app. Both platforms will allow users to upload hour-long videos. Instagram has reached a remarkable 1 billion users and with more of them watching videos compared to other types of content, CEO Kevin Systrom believed it was time to open up a platform where videos are the focus. As for advertisers, Systrom recognized that the new platform would be a great place to offer more affordable advertising options in light of Facebook’s rising ad costs.

Improving Your Marketing Program

What Are The Benefits Of Using HubSpot Marketing Automation Tools?

If you want your long-term inbound marketing strategy to be effective, you must be able to tackle various tactics that range from creating high-quality content for your site to engaging with followers on your social media—managing all these task often requires a balancing act. Our own Nicole Wagner published an article that explains how HubSpot marketing automation tools can simplify your workload.

Tips To Consider When Developing Strong Email Subject Lines

Having an attractive email subject line can make all the difference when it comes to increasing your open email rate and overall exposure with your target audience. Debbie Szwast offers insightful tips on how to develop strong email subject lines that you’ll want to keep in mind the next time you send an email.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Facebook’s Removing Third-Party Targeting Data: What Marketers Need To Know

In a recent post about Facebook published on Marketing Land, Ginny Marvin highlights the changes Facebook is making to combat the scrutiny and regulatory pressure its facing, and informs marketers on how to navigate these changes. Facebook announced that they are removing access to third-party data brokers within their advertising system, both pubic and private. Several factors such as the GDRP that aims to protect people by ensuring they have control over their personal data have sparked the drastic changes. The phasing out of third-party data brokers will start in the EU.

The Future Of TV Advertising In Today’s Digital World

Despite what some critics might say about advertising being ineffective on TV, in a blog post published in MarTech, Chuck Moran explains why TV is still an important part of the media ecosystem and how it has evolved to become advanced TV. Advanced TV combines old-style linear TV with streaming video provided through OTT platforms or connected TVs. This transformed version of TV changes the way marketers target their audience as they can now optimize their reach by creating campaigns that sync with local events, receive real-time analytics of viewing habits, and determine which ads to deliver based on first-party data.

Tokenized Loyalty Platform Sweet Offers Sugar Tokens To Energize Fans

Life is sweeter with… sugar tokens? According to a recent post on MarTech, a startup called Sweet has become the first tokenized loyalty platform of its kind to hit the market. The company gives brands the opportunity to promote themselves by rewarding the fans that engage with their brand online with reward tokens called ‘Sugar.’ Fans can redeem their sugar tokens for amazing experiences and rewards in the Sweet Marketplace.

Download Our White Paper Guide To Learn How To Perfect Buyer Personas For Your Business

B2B Email Marketing

Email Design Trends of 2018

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Getting your leads to open your emails can be quite challenging as it is, which means that when they do open your emails, you’ll want to make sure that you make a good impression. This is where the visual design of your email comes in. High-quality email designs will leave a strong first impression, whereas poorly designed emails will reflect badly on your brand. If you can’t put the effort into crafting a nice looking email, your leads may assume that the effort you put into your products or services may be lacking as well.

Keeping that in mind, the following are a number of email design trends that you should consider implementing this year to help you make a better impression on your leads:

Interactive Emails

When it comes to standard email designs, interactivity is generally limited to scrolling up and down. However, more brands are beginning to focus on creating emails that are more interactive. Doing so helps to draw the attention of your readers to different elements of your email.

For example, image carousels or icons allow readers to click on different points or images to bring them to the forefront, which is more engaging than simply scrolling through a list of bullets. Even something as simple as allowing the reader to hover over an image to reveal product details can help increase engagement with your email content.

 

The Use Of Animation

Movement helps prevent email content from becoming too static, which can sometimes be a bit boring. To bring movement to their email content, many brands are using animated GIFs. Just be careful about their size since they can slow down the loading time a bit — especially on mobile devices.

The Use Of Infographics

If you need to convey a lot of information to your readers, then infographics are an excellent way to do so. Infographics are visually effective because they allow you to carefully organize your information in a manner that is easily digestible. Infographics are also much more pleasant to look at visually speaking than having to read through a list or table full of statistics.

An Emphasis On Color Use

Many brands use color in their emails, but don’t give a lot of thought into how they use it. Bold color choices can help you bring attention to different components of your email, whether it’s highlighting a product or emphasizing your call-to-action. The careful selection of color can also help you tie the entire aesthetic of your email together into a more cohesive design.

Click Here for More Email Marketing Tips.

The Use Of Monochrome

Monochrome email designs make use of greyscale in order to create a more sophisticated and elegant look. However, don’t be mistaken into thinking monochrome just means black and white. Black and white email designs look boring, whereas monochrome requires the careful consideration of various shades of gray along with black and white to create high contrast visual elements.

Minimalistic Designs

You don’t want an email design that’s too busy and cluttered or else it will overwhelm the reader. A more minimalistic design will not only make it easy for readers to scan your content, it creates a more elegant appearance when pulled off properly. Minimalistic designs often make strategic use of negative space to bring attention to headlines or images. It also tends to create a more professional impression of a brand.

Keeping up with the latest email design trends is a good way to ensure that your email designs don’t get stale. These are some of the current email design trends that you should consider adopting for your email marketing campaign this year.

social media marketing

4 Generation Z Marketing Strategies to Begin Using

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Marketing strategies have been focusing on millennial wants, needs and habits for years now — and for good reason. Millennials recently overtook baby boomers as the biggest generation. However, it won’t be long until the next generation — generation Z — comes to the forefront. As such, it’s important that you begin identifying effective generation Z marketing strategies that will help you continue to reach your target audience well into the future. The following are four generation Z marketing strategies you should begin implementing now:

1. Emphasize Mobile Marketing

Generation Z is the first generation to have grown up during the smartphone era. Most of them use the smartphone more than any other device. At this point, making sure all of your content is mobile-friendly should be a given. However, you should also begin designing marketing campaigns that specifically revolve around mobile marketing, such as through the use of mobile apps and mobile-based social platforms, such as Instagram.

2. Be Active On Social Media

Like smartphones, few members of generation Z will know what it was like before the age of social media. They use social media more than anything else in order to learn about brands and the products or services that they offer. In fact, more than 51 percent of Generation Z use social networks when researching brands and products, compared to 45 percent of millennials.

However, while you’ll still be able to find Generation Z on social networks like Facebook, they tend to prefer networks that their parents aren’t on, such as Snapchat, and often use more niche platforms as well. They’re also a bit more careful in how they engage having learned from the previous generation’s social media mishaps.

trends in social media

3. Create Video Content

Generation Z grew up on streaming video. They consume content on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo and more on a daily basis, which means that short-form video content is one of the best ways to reach them. Video content is also no longer as expensive to produce as it once was. As you adjust your content marketing strategy, you should begin emphasizing video content if you plan to attract audience members from generation Z.

Read More: How First Person Video Advertising Makes an Impact?

4. Personalize Your Interactions

Generation Z has spent a large part of their lives online, which means that the usual marketing gimmicks aren’t going to phase them. They are only going to engage with brands that they believe to be authentic. The best way to show authenticity and to stand out from the crowd is to personalize your interactions. This can be done by treating them like individuals instead of marketing stats, communicating directly with them via social media, communicating your message quickly and clearly, and providing helpful and informative content that’s also entertaining and personable.

Not only are these effective generation Z marketing strategies, they’re strong long-term strategies in general that you should begin implementing now. By using these generation Z marketing strategies, you will help position your brand for success even once generation Z eventually takes over as your largest audience.

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

Digital Marketing Strategies For Higher Education

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As a college or university, you have a lot to offer to your students in terms of obtaining a higher education that can help them pursue their dreams of a career. However, you’re not the only school around, which means you’ll need to implement effective marketing strategies for higher education in order to attract prospective students and to convince them to enroll. The following are a few digital marketing strategies for higher education that are proven to be effective if leveraged properly:

Using PPC advertising

PPC (pay-per-click) ads are an excellent way to reach the students in your target audience and to generate high-quality leads. Prospective students will perform a significant amount of searches when trying to find higher education options, which means that PPC ads are a great way to put your school in a position to be found. They’re also very cost-efficient since you are only paying for the clicks that your ad gets.

When using PPC ads, there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind. For example, you need to know who your audience is and what they are searching for in order to choose the right keywords and create effective ad copy. You will also need to take great care in deciding where to place your ads to best reach your audience.

Optimizing your site for SEO

To improve your page rankings and increase exposure to potential students, you’ll need to make sure that your website is properly optimized for SEO (search engine optimization). This includes paying attention to both on-page and technical SEO, using high-quality, relevant keywords, and earning high-quality external links. All of these elements are important in bringing in more organic traffic. Building up your external links will also help you bring in a bigger audience from other relevant websites and will go a long way towards expanding brand awareness and building a positive brand reputation for your school.

Check out our article: 7 Reasons Why Digital Marketing for Manufacturers is Critical to Success

Creating high-value content

Prospective students will do a substantial amount of research before making a decision. Not only do most students have to pay for a higher education, it requires them to commit a significant amount of their time to it as well. They’ll want to make sure they make the right choice, w

hich is why you will want to provide them with plenty of content on your site that is relevant and helpful to their interests.

Not only can good content help with your SEO efforts (thereby drawing in more organic traffic), it can help establish your school as an authority, which will make your programs more attractive to potential students.

Establish a regular social media presence

A regular social media presence will put you in a position to communicate directly with prospective students, allowing you to address questions and concerns, provide valuable information, and develop relationships with students, thereby building trust.

These are just a few of the marketing strategies for higher education that can help give your school an advantage in attracting prospective students for years to come.

30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips

marketing senior living

4 Tips for Marketing Senior Living Communities

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Marketing senior living communities can be a real challenge. You’re providing services for seniors; however, there are many people that are involved with the decision-making process. This means that one of the biggest challenges that you face is not only setting yourself apart from other senior living communities but fulfilling the needs of everyone in your audience. This is why how you market senior living communities is so important. Keeping this in mind, the following are a few tips for successfully marketing senior living communities:

1. Know Who Your Audience Is

Identifying your audience will help you target them more effectively when marketing senior living communities. However, since there are several types of people you’ll want to target, marketing a senior living can be tricky. Like previously mentioned, a lot of different people have a say when it comes to a senior moving into a senior living community, from the senior’s adult children to the medical professionals they work with.

Knowing who your audience is will be vital to your marketing efforts, especially when it comes to creating content. You have to write content for the person who is reading it, after all. If you attempt to create content that appeals to everyone, odds are it will end up appealing to no one. To avoid this, you’ll want to create a buyer persona. Creating buyer personas will allow you to more effectively target the needs of your audience when marketing senior living communities.

Buyer personas represent your ideal customers and provide insight that you can use to target them. For example, a standard buyer persona will include a person’s age range, their income levels, their goals, their needs, their challenges, their preferred method of communication, and more. This information can be attained from existing customers, from online surveys and from social media. Because different types of people have a say in the decision-making process, you’ll want to create several buyer personas.

2. Market Your Staff marketing senior living

While you’ll want to market the services, amenities and activities that your community offers, one of the most important elements of a senior living community is the staff. Families who are looking to move their loved ones into a senior living community will want to make sure that the staff is not only competent but that they will build meaningful relationships with the residents.

Because of this, you’ll want to make sure that you highlight your staff as friendly and caring. You should have a page on your site introducing visitors to your staff. Along with that, you should also create content highlighting their interactions with current residents. Video content is a great way to achieve this since it will help showcase their personalities and their connection to residents.

Check out our article: 5 Digital Marketing Tactics For Senior Living Communities

3. Promote Activity

One of the main things that both seniors and decision-makers care about is that residents will be able to live a fulfilling life once they’ve transitioned into a senior living community. Seniors want to maintain as much independence as possible, which means that they want to be able to live an active and social life.

You’ll want to position your senior living community as a place where this is possible. You can do this by highlighting and promoting different events and activities that your senior residents participate in. This can be done by writing blog posts about some of the daily or weekly activities that are available, posting pictures and videos of residents participating in various activities, or promoting upcoming events using social media.

4. Use Your Website As A Sales Tool

You should treat your website as a sales tool to help promote your community as a service. Publishing high-quality content that’s relevant to your target audience can help bring in traffic and will allow decision-makers (who are your customers) to educate themselves via the content you have provided. These are your leads. You’ll want to use your website to capture your leads and nurture them through the buyer’s journey.

5. Spread The Word Using Social Media

A social media presence can be incredibly helpful for a number of reasons. First of all, you’ll put your community in a position to directly address concerns and answer questions that decision-makers may have about your community. This can go a long way in building relationships and trust. Secondly, it allows you to keep family members up to date with any news or events concerning your community. This shows your audience that you care about your community and are regularly engaged in improving the quality of life of your residents. Using social media in such a manner can help to build your reputation and spread awareness as a result.

Marketing senior living communities is no easy task, but these tips will give you a good foundation on how to reach your target audience and to position your senior living community as a safe, comfortable and friendly place that will meet the needs of your residents and of those involved in the decision making process.

lead generation tips

What’s Trending in Marketing for June 2018

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Staying up-to-date on marketing trends is a great way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are in tune with what’s going on in today’s marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day.

The following articles come from popular marketing blogs and highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News and Trends

Instagram’s New Native Payment Feature For Users

According to an article by Josh Constine on TechCrunch, Instagram’s new native payment feature will allow individuals to buy services or book appointments without having to leave the application. Users can now register their credit or debit card as part of their profile and will not be forced to go to a separate website or re-enter their payment information when purchasing a service. For businesses, this exciting feature will lead to higher conversion rates, as people will feel less inclined to quit in the middle of the checkout process and will make Instagram an even more powerful player in commerce. The potential of this feature has also enticed businesses to want to increase spending on advertising their services on Instagram.

Facebook’s Expansion of Reporting Options For Advertisers

Facebook’s Ads Reporting platform will be updated over June and the new changes will allow advertisers to customize their reports to their liking according to a recent write up on Marketing Land. The platform will also make things a lot easier for advertisers as it will include a side panel so they can edit ads on the same screen as the campaign page without having to switch back and forth between tables. Along with the updated platform, a new “creative reporting” metric will also be introduced and will provide users with useful information on which of the implemented creative ad elements are performing best.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Improve Your Marketing Strategy By Asking These 4 Questions

What separates a successful business from the rest? For Dan Gartlan, it’s the constant improvement and updating of marketing strategy. Updating your business’s strategy will demonstrate to consumers and competitors that you are in tune with the changes in your competitor’s messaging, methods of communication, consumer concerns, and the overall marketplace. In this article, Gartlan challenges you to reevaluate aspects of your business in relation to your marketing strategy by asking four key questions.

6 Email Marketing Tips

Email marketing continues to be a popular form of marketing and given the abundance of emails people receive daily, it’s important to make sure that your email looks good and stands out. Our own Nicole Wagner published a blog posts that offers tips on how to make the best out of your email marketing.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Amazon, Homebuilders Unveil Smart Home ‘Amazon Experience Center’ in California

A new partnership between Amazon and Lennar, one of the largest homebuilders in the U.S., plans to shake things up with their efforts to create pre-wired, voice-activated smart homes that will change the future for homebuyers. A recent article on Security Info Watch explores how Lennar plans to integrate Amazon’s Alexa voice-assistant program into the design of the future homes they are going to construct. They have already constructed several models of these smart homes across the nation so people can experience what it would be like to live in one. Amazon and Lennar are convinced that this partnership and new creation will allow people to have greater control over their lives and could potentially make doing chores a thing of the past.

Influencer Marketing for B2B Brands in 2018

While you might believe that influencer marketing is solely for B2C brands, Michael Brito asks you to think again. Influencer marketing has proven to be efficient in increasing ROI and reaching audiences. According to Brito, the principles of influencer marketing can be also be applied to B2B markets and the implementation of it for these brands can be explained using the 1:9:90 model of influence, which has been used in the past to find, segment, and activate groups of people. By applying this model and understanding the differences between each group, you can then determine the best way to engage with influencers and encourage them to talk about your company.

social media marketing