50 powerful call to action phrases

The Benefits of Inbound Marketing

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Inbound Marketing is all about empowering potential customers. It provides a shift in marketing tactics that can make a real difference in how consumers react to a company. Inbound strives to create marketing that people will love. The goal of inbound marketing is to give consumers content that will be helpful to them, rather than simply giving them a sales pitch. The following are some inbound marketing benefits.

inbound marketing

Benefits of Inbound Marketing

  • Long Lasting Relationships
  • The Buyer’s Journey
  • Brand Credibility

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4 Ways to Improve Your Brand’s Earned Media Strategy

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Earned media is coverage of your brand that you did not pay for. It can come in the form of reviews, mentions, and word of mouth just to name a few. While earned media can easily be confused with owned media and paid media, it is important to understand their differences. Paid media is coverage of your brand that you did pay for, like an advertisement. Owned media is coverage of your brand through means that you control, such as posts on your website or your social media accounts. Customers often view brand coverage that the brand did not produce or purchase for themselves as more trustworthy. Therefore, a good earned media strategy is crucial to a brand’s success. 

Here are 4 ways you can improve your brand’s earned media strategy:

1. Be on the First Page of Search Engine Results:

Your content can’t be shared if it can’t be found. If your content is buried in search engine results, it is much less visible to other websites, journalists, and bloggers. If they can’t see your content, they can’t share it with their audiences. Being on the first page of search engine results increases your discoverability, therefore increasing the chances that other websites, journalists, and bloggers will find your content and then share it. Increase your SEO to get on the first page of search engine results. Identify the words your target audience is searching for, and then integrate these keywords into your meta descriptions, headlines, subheadlines, and alt text for images.

2. Make Content:

You want people talking about your brand, but they can’t do that if there is nothing to talk about. In order to give people something to talk about, you have to create content. Creating content will also showcase your industry knowledge. Content can come in the form of videos, blog articles, podcast episodes, social media posts, and so much more. Once you have content to share, it’s important that you share it well. Don’t limit yourself to one method of distribution. Instead, share it using multiple social media platforms as well as via email. You can also establish content partnerships with other brands to create and share content. This will allow you to access their audience as well as your own. Additionally, you should share your earned media coverage on your social media accounts to increase its visibility. You can also share this earned media coverage on your website.

3. Encourage User-Generated Content:

User-generated content (UGC), like social media shoutouts and reviews, is content that is created by users. In this case, the users are your customers. UGC is authentic, and therefore great for your brand’s credibility. To encourage more of your customers to create UGC, feature already existing user-generated content on your website, marketing materials, or social media accounts. An additional way to display this content is to create a gallery of it on your website. Showcasing UGC shows your appreciation for the content your customer created, as well as the consumer themself. Another way you can encourage UGC is by offering customers the chance to win a prize if they post about your brand.

user-generated content

4. Use Trends:

Participating in trends is a great way to get more people to notice your brand. It also helps your brand become part of the conversation about the trend. Since trends reflect current interests, you show your audience that you are up-to-date when you participate in them. Participating in trends gives you the opportunity to go viral, meaning that your content will be widely shared and therefore reach a wide audience. Monitor social media platforms to identify emerging trends. Once you identify a trend, check to see if it aligns with your brand’s values. If the trend aligns with your brand’s values, you should start using or doing it as soon as you can, whether the trend is a hashtag, social media platform, or content style.

Research Hashtags to Use

By ensuring that you are on the first page of search engine results, making content that prompts conversation around your brand, encouraging user-generated content, and participating in trends, you can improve your brand’s earned media strategy. A good earned media strategy will increase your brand’s trustworthiness in the eyes of your audience, and increase your brand’s overall success.

website redesign process

20 Tips To Improve Your Website Redesign Process

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Your website is your audience’s first impression of your business and what you have to offer. Now more than ever, you only get one chance to make that first impression count. With the ever-growing competition and rapid advancements in technology, your website must stay up-to-date. The website redesign process ensures your site keeps pace with technological changes while delivering fresh, engaging content. An essential part of attraction marketing is drawing in your target consumer, and a modernized website plays a key role in achieving that.

Time For A Website Redesign website redesign

The website redesign process may seem like a daunting task; however, it doesn’t mean you have to completely overhaul your site. In fact, a redesign can simply involve changing graphics, rearranging page layouts, or making other small design adjustments.

Before you begin your website redesign process, it’s crucial to come up with a strategy first. Without a well-thought-out plan, your redesign could end up costing more and include elements that are inconsistent with what your audience wants to see. Since your website is your most valuable marketing asset, spending time strategically planning the redesign is vital to your overall sales success. Therefore, start your redesign process with a thorough evaluation of your business KPIs and use this to elevate your site to the next level.

The Website Redesign Process- Why Content Comes First?

20 Website Redesign Tipswebsite design process

1. Start with user testing to see what elements work for your users and which don’t.

2. Define the top three things you want to accomplish with your site.

3. Sketch out the new layout.

4. Go though the sales funnel of your site to see if it’s easy for a user to navigate.

5. Keep your conversion funnel as simple as possible.

6. Implement multiple lead capturing opportunities to grab your visitor’s email as much as possible.

7. Implement social media buttons prominently.

8. Have contact information be the easiest information to find on the site.

9. Select a color theme and typography that flows well together and maintain consistency on every page.

10. Keep call to actions limited to one to two per page.

11. Utilize motion in terms of layout and videos or image carousels.

12. Build a prototype of the new layout and have user testings performed before going live.

13. Think outside of the box by using disruptive imagery or bold colors.

14. Double check spelling and grammar- actually triple check.

15. Test all links and make sure they point people where they want them to go to.

16. Test site and mobile speed.

17. Make sure mobile site is user friendly and design elements maintain aspect ratios.

18. Optimize all of your pages for SEO and implement target keywords in page title, meta description, meta keywords, and page content.

19. Include some extra or fun pages. Users are expecting the standard contact, about us, and product/services pages. Make your website stand out with some fun or unique pages such as an FAQ page, a quiz page to match users to products/services, or industry pages that are directly relevant to users.

20. Incorporate testimonials.

In conclusion, a website redesign is not just about aesthetics; it’s about ensuring your online presence reflects the current needs of your business and resonates with your target audience. By carefully planning and strategically implementing the redesign process, you can create a modern, engaging website that enhances user experience, strengthens your brand, and drives conversions. Whether you’re making small updates or significant changes, putting your audience first and aligning with your business goals will ensure long-term success. Remember, your website is a vital marketing tool—investing in its redesign is an investment in the future of your business.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales

Social Network Social Media People Meeting Communication Concept

Social Media Campaigns for Attracting Prospects and Generating Leads

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Becoming a part of the conversation in today’s evolving social world is not only a smart marketing tactic, it’s absolutely essential. It increases awareness of your brand, builds relationships, facilitates outside interaction, allows you to stay connected with your customers and leverage brand advocates, promotes your content online, and so much more. But how does it fit into an Inbound Marketing strategy? Read more

How to Improve Your Email Open Rate and Click-Through Rate

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An email’s open rate and click-through rate are two metrics that can tell you a lot about the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. Additionally, they can be indicators of a company’s overall success. Understanding these two metrics allows you to measure how effectively emails are driving engagement and resonating with your audience. If your company’s emails are suffering from low open rates or low click-through rates, read on to learn how to remedy the situation.

email envelope

Open Rate

An email’s open rate is the percentage of people who opened it out of the total number of people it was sent to. What is considered to be a good open rate varies from industry to industry. A high open rate typically means that your email’s subject line is relevant and compelling, therefore enticing its recipients to open the email. Conversely, a low open rate typically means that your subject line is not catching your audience’s attention. If your emails have a low open rate, there are a couple of actions you can take to increase it. 

1. Redo Your Subject Line:

An email’s subject line is often what makes a consumer decide whether or not they are going to open the email. Therefore, it needs to be descriptive, and draw your audience in. The email’s subject line needs to be short enough to be displayed in full. Do not let the end of it get cut off. You should personalize the subject line by including the recipient’s name. Additionally, you should utilize A/B testing to identify what resonates best with your audience.

2. Make Yourself Known:

Consumers don’t want to open an email if they don’t know who it is from. Ensure that your email clearly shows it was sent from you by setting the sender name to your company’s name, rather than your company’s email address. The sender name should appear the same way on every email you send so consumers can recognize it.

Click-Through Rate

An email’s click-through rate is the percentage of people who clicked on a link in the email out of the total number of people who opened the email. Although they sound similar, an email’s click-through rate is not the same thing as an email’s click rate. Do not confuse the two. An email’s click rate is the percentage of people who clicked a link in the email out of the total number of people the email was delivered to.

Similarly to an email’s open rate, what is considered to be a good click-through rate varies from industry to industry. A high click-through rate typically means that your email is successful in persuading readers to take the desired action. The desired action can be making a purchase, downloading an eBook, signing up to attend a webinar, etc. Conversely, a low click-through rate likely means that your email’s call-to-action isn’t compelling, or that the email itself is not engaging. If your email has a low click-through rate, here are some ways you can increase it:

1. Make Your Email Visually Appealing:

Consumers often find cluttered emails to be overwhelming. Keeping your emails simple makes them visually appealing. Additionally, it makes your email more readable, and makes your call-to-action easier to find. Another aspect of making sure that your emails are visually appealing is making sure that your emails are mobile-friendly, since more and more people are accessing their email accounts on their mobile devices in this day and age.

2. Make Your Call-To-Action Clear:

Your call-to-action’s existence and purpose should both be clear. Visually, your call-to-action should be easy to find in your email. You can achieve a prominent call-to-action by using bold fonts and contrasting colors. In addition to being easy to find, your call-to-action needs to tell readers what to do. It should use action words like “watch,” “subscribe,” “read,” or “download” to guide readers on what they should do next. Using this kind of language consequently creates a sense of importance and urgency that motivates the email’s recipients to immediately engage and click on the call-to-action.

email marketing

Tracking, reviewing, and analyzing your email’s open rate and click-through rate are all essential to the improvement of your email marketing campaigns and therefore your overall company success. Use the 4 tips given above to increase your emails’ open rates and click-through rates.

3 ways to enhance your landing pages

3 Ways To Enhance Your Landing Pages

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Landing pages are a great way to provide website visitors with helpful content, collect important customer information, and begin to build a relationship. They can be a great tool for generating leads for your business. But in order to convert visitors into leads, you must offer them something of value, and do so in a way that is easily navigable.

How To Improving Landing Page Performance

Here are a few easy ways to enhance your landing page performance.

Viewers should have a quick and clear understanding of the offer

People have very short attention spans, so in order to keep them on your landing page, it needs to be easily digestible within the first few seconds of viewing. Your message to your website visitors should be as clear and concise as possible. The headline should tell your visitors exactly what it is that you want them to do, and how to do it.

Using visuals to help communicate your offer can be helpful as well. Images should correlate well with the content offer, so viewers can quickly understand what it is they are accessing. For example, if you are offering an ebook, create a picture of the ebook or upload the ebook cover photo to the landing page. Good, descriptive images will make your offer more reliable, and will ultimately help convert more of your visitors into leads.

Also consider the value of your offer in what information you decide to collect. The higher the value, the more willing your visitors will be to provide information to you. This can help your company better understand your target audience.

Eliminate distractions on the page

People tend to be easily distracted, so you’ll want to make sure that there is nothing on your landing page that will deter them from providing their information and downloading your offer. It is important to remove the navigation bars and links from landing pages. While those are necessary on the home page, they can be detrimental to the success of your landing pages. At this point in the conversion process, you don’t want your visitors clicking back to a different part of your website and ignoring your offer.

Your landing page should have a strong focal point in order to enhance the clarity of the offer. Perhaps the focal point is your CTA that tells your visitors to download a white paper. Make sure that submit button attracts attention and is easy to click on.

Read More: 3 Helpful Tips To Improve Your CTAs To Generate More Leads

Include social sharing

Perhaps the only place you want your visitors to be able to navigate to from your landing page are your social media sites. Include social sharing icons so that your viewers can not only follow your social media accounts, but also so that they can share this offer to their own followers. Continuing your relationship with your visitors on social media is helpful to both your company and to them.

The success of your landing page performance depends on if they are formatted in a way that makes it simple for your visitors to digest and retrieve your offer. These tips will help convert your website visitors into leads, and further your Inbound Marketing efforts.

Are your landing pages ready to go? If so, find out how to continue guiding your leads through the Buyer’s Journey.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers
b2b branding

Using Your Brand Story To Reach Millennials In Business

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Millennials are the largest generation in the workforce today and they’re taking on important leadership and decision-making roles. In fact, nearly half of all B2B researchers are Millennials.

As a group, Millennials change jobs much more frequently than previous generations. So every six months, you may find yourself having to reintroduce your brand to a whole new group of buyers.

How do you convey your brand’s core values and competitive advantages in the best light to reach this younger generation of buyers?

In order to connect your brand with today’s prospects and customers, make storytelling a part of your content creation and messaging. Effective storytelling not only captivates Millennials but also strengthens Brand Development by conveying your brand’s values in a compelling and meaningful manner.

Stories Are Memorable

A good story creates lasting impressions of your brand. Stories distinguish your brand from the competition, and consumers are going to remember emotion, characters, and conflict from a story longer than they will remember facts about your product or service.

To put it simply, if you tell a good story that emphasizes who your brand is and what your brand believes in, people will remember it.

Stories Are Easy To Understand

Brand stories are effective, because they inform in a format that readers already know and understand. Stories are made up of three basic components: beginning, middle and end. When developing a brand story, think about those components in terms of the past, present and the future. The past highlights the challenge or the problem that your brand set out to solve. The present showcases how you solve that challenge. And the future demonstrates your success and suggests continuation of that success moving forward.

Click here to learn what brand development is and how it works.

Stories Create Trust

Millennials are more likely to connect with a brand when they believe in that brand’s core values. When Millennials are researching a purchase, they are looking at dozens of different companies, each time wondering, “Why should I buy from you?” If you engage those buyers, and answer that question with a story that is built around your core values, then you’ve built an emotional connection and the trust of that customer. 

Stories Show Your Brand’s Personality

Is your brand fun and quirky? Serious? Hip? Thought provoking? Innovative? Intellectual? Dedicated? Whatever it is, your story should reflect that.

Your story should highlight your personality and showcase what is different and unique about your brand. It should demonstrate your values and what motivates and inspires you. This will bring your brand to life and create a human element that allows customers to develop an emotional connection to your brand through effective Brand Communication.

Stories Are Sharable

Strong brand stories will spread through social media. Enhancing your story with visuals and videos will expand the reach of your story and make it even easier for others to share.

Current research shows that 62 percent of Millennials are more likely to buy if a brand engages them online. Sharing your brand story will help build relationships between your brand and the growing group of Millennial buyers.

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color psychology

How to Use Color Psychology in Marketing

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When it comes to building your brand, don’t underestimate the importance of color. The colors you choose are crucial to your brand identity. Just think about some of the most famous brands out there and the colors associated with them, such as Nike and black, Starbucks and green, and Target and red, just to name a few. The colors you choose will always be associated with your brand, which is why you need to choose them carefully (and why they need to remain consistent across all of your branding efforts). One of the most important things to keep in mind is that color isn’t just an aesthetic choice, it’s a psychological one too.

The Power of Color: How to Use Psychology in Marketing

Using Color Intentionally

There are two primary ways to use color in your marketing efforts. The first is to make certain marketing elements stand out. For instance, adding a colored call-to-action button at the end of a blog post instead of using regular anchor text. If the button stands out from the background, it will immediately draw the eye of the reader so that they don’t miss out on your CTA.

The colors you choose for your website’s background and text is crucial as well. Not only does it impact the overall aesthetic of your website (which is important as it reflects on your company’s professionalism), but it also affects the ease of use. If you use two colors that are too similar (such as yellow text on an orange background) it becomes incredibly difficult for visitors to navigate your site. Your color choices should provide enough contrast so that foreground elements stand out from the background.

Finally, don’t overuse color. For example, choosing to use five different colors throughout your home page will create visual clutter that will overwhelm visitors. It works better if you choose no more than two colors that combine to create visual balance.

What Every Creative Advertising Agency Needs To Know To Endure The Digital Transformation

Using Color Psychology

Different colors elicit different feelings. By using certain colors, you can engage your audience by making them subconsciously feel a different way. Most successful brands choose their colors based on this idea. Take for example McDonald’s. As everyone knows, they use two colors: red and yellow. They complement one another aesthetically and are chosen for their psychological meaning. Red is often associated with friendliness, while yellow is associated with happiness, both of which are emotions McDonald’s embraced as a major part of their brand voice. Red also happens to be a very stimulating color that’s meant to trigger feelings of hunger. Combined, they attract attention from hungry customers.

Also Read: The Strategic Difference Between Branding and Marketing and How They Work Together

Color Breakdowns

All colors have some sort of effect on the psychology of consumers. With that in mind, the following are a few of the different colors you could use in your branding and the psychological meaning behind them:

  • Orange – Orange is associated with physical comfort, motivation, and positivity. Payless Shoes and Home Depot use orange as their primary color for these reasons.
  • Green – Green represents harmony, peace, health, and growth. Financial institutions use green to promote growth (of wealth), while many health products and stores use green to promote health (such as Whole Foods).
  • Blue – Blue is closely linked to trust and dependability. Many technology companies use blue to promote the idea that their products are dependable, such as Dell, GM, and Honda. Companies like Facebook and All-State also use blue to promote trust.website design

 

  • Brown – Brown is used to create feelings of trust and security. It’s why UPS prominently uses the color for everything, including their uniforms and trucks.
  • Purple – Purple is associated with luxury and royalty, which is why brands that promote their products as luxurious use purple, such as Cadbury, Hallmark, and Louis Vuitton.
  • Pink – Pink represents compassion, love, and empathy. Pepto-Bismol and Victoria’s Secret both use pink to this effect for different reasons.

Choose Your Colors Wisely To Improve Your Marketing Efforts

As you can see, the use of color is incredibly important to your marketing efforts. Not only do your color choices affect the aesthetic of your website (as well as its ease of use), they are also vital to defining your visual identity. As such, be sure to choose your colors carefully as they will have a psychological impact on your audience.

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optimize your social media

5 Ways To Optimize Your Social Media

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Social media is constantly changing and evolving, so it is crucial for even the most successful brands to reevaluate their strategy from time to time to keep up. Social media helps with attraction marketing. Use these strategies to optimize your social media and to make sure that your brand is constantly staying on top.

Top 5 Ways for Social Media Optimization

1. Tailor to your audience

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What’s Trending in Marketing for August 2024

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Welcome to our August 2024 edition of “What’s Trending,” where we bring you the most relevant marketing trends and insights. Stay informed and ahead of the game with our curated collection of marketing trends and reports in summer 2024.

Increase in Subscriptions

Subscription-based services have been becoming more and more common lately, and are expected to continue to grow in popularity. These services provide companies with recurring revenue. Subscription-based services also increase customer value, and can be used to incentivize higher engagement. Consumers especially value subscription offers that are tailored to customer preferences. Read more.

Lowe’s is Rebranding

Lowe’s is rebranding. The home improvement retailer is now calling its retail media network “Lowe’s Media Network.” They will be launching four new channels this year: direct mail for install services, in-store audio, paid search, and email. Lowe’s will also be expanding placements on their app. Read more.

Skin Care Pop-Up Event (With A Bus)

Neutrogena is hosting a Boost Bus pop-up event on August 31st and September 1st in Toronto. People will have the opportunity to talk with skincare experts to learn about skin vitality, protecting the skin, and hydration. The event will have games and prizes in addition to product samples. Read more.

Improving Your Marketing Program

6 Tips for Improving Brand Communication 

Brand communication is how your company communicates with their current and future customers. Good brand communication builds and maintains brand loyalty among customers in addition to setting your company apart from the competition. It is a core aspect of a company’s strategy and is important to the company’s success. Click here to learn six tips for improving your company’s brand communication.

5 Ways to Improve Your Display Ads 

Display advertising is a kind of online advertising that uses copy, images, and other visual elements. They come in many different formats like banner ads, video ads, interactive ads, and more. The benefits of display ads include brand awareness, visual appeal, performance tracking, and targeting capabilities. Click here to learn five ways to improve your display ads.

The Website Redesign Process- Why Content Comes First?

Redesigning a website is a time to boost the brand image, refresh the look and content of the website, and update all the product listings and sales offers. Learn why copy should be refreshed on your new and improved website, and how to do it. Read more.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Say Goodbye to Third-Party Cookies

Due to their users’ concerns about data privacy and protection, Google is currently phasing out third-party cookies. This will be finished in 2025. Being able to use third-party cookies to track user behavior across sites has allowed for audience segmentation and the use of targeted ads. To keep gathering consumer data without third-party cookies, offer rewards to users who give you their information and keep utilizing first-party cookies. Read more.

User-Generated Content

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Consumers’ desire for authenticity on social media platforms has given rise to user-generated content. Many customers do not trust advertisements, but they trust content made by real people. In the past five years, search engine interest for “user generated content” has increased by 200%. Read more.

Ethics and Sustainability

Your product or service alone is no longer enough. Today’s consumers care about the values of the brand selling that product or service, particularly the values that pertain to social and environmental responsibilities. This has prompted brands to partake in and showcase ethical and sustainable practices. Read more.

Extreme Personalization

The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) is allowing marketers to tailor digital experiences to individual consumers better than ever before. This personalization through AI will allow marketers to give consumers inclusive experiences. AI can also assist marketers in understanding their audiences and delivering content to consumers in local languages. Read more.