Developing the Perfect Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy

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The buyer’s journey has changed a lot over the years. This is a result of the consumer’s ability to explore multiple channels online and to engage in multiple ways. There is no distinct path that takes them from point A to point B in order to make a purchase. While one customer might begin doing research through a search engine like Google, another might ask their followers questions on social media to identify solutions to their problems, while yet another might stumble on an ad for one of your products in a magazine. Basically, every buyer’s journey is unique.

As such, it’s important that you have a presence on multiple channels and that you integrate all of your channels, processes, and strategies so that you can help meet the needs and nurture your leads at any stage of their buyer’s journey no matter where they are. This is known as omni-channel marketing. The following are a number of tips that you should consider implementing that will help you strengthen your omni-channel marketing strategy:

Be Consistent With Your Marketing Efforts

Consistency is incredibly important when it comes to omni-channel marketing. This is because your leads are likely jumping from one channel to another. A lead may see a commercial on TV, then visit your Facebook page, then go to your website. If your branding is different (for example, if your message is different, your tone is different, or even the overall aesthetic of your marketing is different), you’re going to confuse consumers and you’re likely going to lose leads.

 Remove Siloed Organizational Structure

Because consumers may be at different stages of the buyer’s journey while exploring different channels, it’s important that your sales, marketing, PR, and customer service departments a

ren’t siloed. You need to make sure everyone has access to customer and prospect data at every stage and on every channel. This ensures that everyone is on the same page when it comes to identifying leads, engaging with them, nurturing them, and closing them.

Create Content For Every Channel

The more content you make available on different channels, the more successfully you’ll be able to reach consumers wherever they are. For example, if you only have a website, then you’re missing out on a lot of leads who use social media to find product or service recommendations. Make sure that you create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey and that you post it on a variety of platforms, including your website as well as social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and whatever other platforms your customers use.

Similar Article: How To Create Content For Each Sale Funnel Stage

Optimize Everything For Mobile Use

All of your online content needs to be optimized for mobile use. This is because many consumers may explore your website while on their smartphone or tablet. This is especially true if they are engaging on social media and follow a link back to your site, or they see one of your commercials on TV and decide to do a search for your company (more and more consumers use their mobile devices while watching TV these days). If your online content isn’t properly optimized for mobile use, then it may not load properly or be displayed properly.

 Put Together The Proper Marketing Stack

Because you’ll be collecting data on leads and customers from a variety of different platforms, you’ll want to make sure that you have the tools needed to organize the data and to put it to good use. To do this, you’ll want to build a marketing stack using tools such as CRM (customer relationship management) software, CMS (content management system, analytics and data visualization tools, and marketing automation.

Omni-channel marketing is essential if you want to attract and nurture modern day consumers through their unique buyer’s journeys. These omnichannel marketing tips will help make it easier to reach consumers at every point of their buyer’s journey no matter where they are.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales
Awareness Stage

A Guide to the Awareness Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

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When it comes to addressing the buyer’s journey, making sure that you have content available that addresses the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey is vital if you expect to draw in potential customers. If you try to skip this stage, you will end up losing a substantial number of potential leads.  These leads are still looking for basic information and aren’t ready to make a purchase yet.

What Is The Awareness Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey?

Before you can start presenting one of your products or services as a solution, the consumer needs to know what their problem is. Otherwise, they’ll have no need for your solution. During the awareness stage, consumers know they have a problem but they don’t necessarily understand. They will likely be doing very general searches on Google and other search engines. They are attempt ing to learn more about the problem that they are dealing with.

For example, a consumer might notice that their current computer isn’t running properly or is having obvious problems. They are likely going to begin doing some basic research. For example, maybe their computer keeps freezing up. They may look up things like:

  • Why is my computer freezing?
  • Image result for awareness stageDoes my computer need repairs?
  • How to fix my computer?
  • Do I need to replace my computer?

[Read about how to use the buyer’s journey to create great content]

They’ll explore content online that addresses such questions. This is so they can figure out exactly what their problem is by reading about examples of their problem. This can also help identify the cause of their problem. Only once they have gotten through the awareness stage and have managed to become more informed about their problem will they begin seeking out potential solutions.

Creating Content For The Awareness Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

You will want to make sure you create a range of content that addresses the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey. This content should be optimized for SEO using keywords that your audience will use in their searches during the awareness stage. Keep in mind that during this stage of the buyer’s journey, you’re not attempting to sell anything. Rather, you are merely trying to attract potential customers. You can do so by providing content that is helpful, informative, and relevant to their needs. By providing content that helps your audience to identify what their problem is, you’ll be in a better position to recommend a solution.

Short-form blog content that’s highly focused on identifying the problem will be particularly helpful since it will be easy for consumers to scan. For example, if you were to create content addressing a consumer’s issue with a freezing computer, you might publish blog articles such as:

  • 5 Reasons Your Computer is Freezing
  • How to Prevent Your Computer From Freezing
  • 5 Signs Your Computer Needs Repairs
  • 5 Signs You Need to Replace Your Computer

Video content works well too, especially for mobile users. In the case of this example, it would be particularly beneficial for mobile users since their computers are on the fritz. In addition to short-form content, you’ll want to offer long-form content. This includes eBooks and white papers, which goes into greater detail that consumers can download in return for joining your email list. If your content is good enough, they’ll be more trusting of your brand and will continue doing research on your site.

The awareness stage of the buyer’s journey is where you attract new leads to your brand and provide helpful content.  This content can help inform them about their pain points. It’s only once you’ve addressed the awareness stage that you can begin to present potential solutions to your audience, which is where the consideration stage comes in.

Learn To Use Social Media To Find New Leads
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What’s Trending in Marketing

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Keeping up with what’s trending in marketing is an important way to ensure that your marketing efforts remain up to date. Not to mention that they can provide insight into how you can adjust your marketing strategies in order to improve your results. The only problem is that keeping up with what’s trending in marketing can be quite a challenge seeing as how the online marketing landscape seems to always be shifting.

The following are a collection of articles that we have curated from some of the most notable marketing blogs on the web highlighting recent marketing trends that we think you should be aware of:

1. Noteworthy Marketing News and Trends

The power of podcasting: How to boost your reputation and search engine rankings

Podcasts have exploded in popularity over the past five years, taking on the position that radio once had in our lives. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of opportunity for marketing using podcasts as a result. A recent article about podcasts published on Search Engine Land recommends establishing yourself as an authority within your field through the creation of webinars, video content, a social media presence and more. This helps build credibility so that you’ll have a better chance at being invited onto a podcast. Once you’ve built a name for yourself, you’ll want to pitch podcast ideas that can benefit your SEO efforts to podcast hosts that are relevant to your business.

YouTube’s new TrueView for Reach option makes bumper assets skippable

According to an article by Ginny Marvin on Marketing Land, YouTube recently introduced a skippable option for short-form ads that are called TrueView for Reach, which can be skipped after five seconds; however, advertisers only pay if the viewers watch 30 seconds, the viewer interacts with the ad or the video ends. YouTube has implemented this new option in response to requests for ways to optimize TruView buys based on the different campaign objectives that customers have. One of the beta testers of the TrueView for Reach option, Samsung, revealed that it reached over 50 percent more people at half the CPM (cost per thousand) using the new feature.

Google Switches to Infinite Scrolling Mobile Search Results

Google has switched from having to click from page to page on their mobile SERP (search engine results page) to being able to scroll down infinitely by clicking on a “more results” button. This could potentially change what it means to rank on the first page of SERP according to a recent write up on the new infinite scrolling feature on Search Engine Journal. However, it’s currently in a test phase, which Google will only make permanent based on user feedback.

What other trends are there? Check out these ten ways to use Google Trends to Increase SEO!

2. Growing Your Inbound Marketing

Do You Need to Redesign Your Website?

Your website plays a huge role in your ability to market effectively. If it’s been a while since you updated your website, it may be in need of a redesign. Our own Nicole Wagner did a write up recently sharing some of the signs that a website needs to be redesigned. These signs include poor web rankings, a change in branding, a lackluster conversion rate, an outdated look and a subpar user experience.

Your Company’s Core Values Play a Role in Developing Your Brand Story

Storytelling is one of the most important aspects of marketing. Without it, you’ll have trouble engaging with your audience and connecting with them. We recently published a blog post on developing your brand story detailing how important it is to employ storytelling in order to share what your company’s core values and beliefs are and how that will evoke stronger emotions and build stronger bonds with your audience.

3. Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Pinterest reports 50% gain YoY in SMB advertisers

The Pinterest Propel ad program has been around for a whole year now and it recently reported a 50 percent jump in small and medium-sized business advertisers since it first went live. Pinterest has made a concerted effort to position their platform as an effective tool for advertisers and also revealed that businesses who are using Pinterest Propel are earning three times as many clicks than those who are not — and are even experiencing an average of 15 percent lower cost-per-clicks within the first 90 days.

Snapchat looks to offer new e-commerce options for Discover Publishers

According to a recent post on Marketing Land, Snapchat is currently testing a new e-commerce option on some of its Discover publisher channels. The new feature will allow users to swipe on products within the Discover platform in order to buy them from the Snap Store. Although they are just testing the waters, the company seems to have great ambition for its store’s future potential. Several publishers have revealed that they have tested the new feature and that currently, Snapchat is not taking a revenue share from any of the products being sold so far during the testing stage.

Facebook & Cambridge Analytica: What we know, what they knew & where that leaves us

Facebook has been all over the news as of late due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Considering the fact that many businesses leverage the use of Facebook for their marketing efforts, you’ll want to know where the future of Facebook lies. A recent article on Marketing Land goes into detail about the scandal as well as Mark Zuckerberg’s recent testimony in front of Congress addressing the issue of Facebook’s privacy settings and user consent.

The future of retail is Generation Z-dependent — and martech is the way to reach them

A new generation (Generation Z) is coming of age, and like every generation before them, their buying habits are different. Rohit Gupta explains how important it is for businesses to begin adjusting their marketing efforts to better target this upcoming generation by providing numerous tips. These tips include customizing the purchase journey, connecting through social media, preparing for the use of voice recognition technology, and focusing on convenient shipping options.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

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Essential Website Optimization Techniques To Increase Visitors

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Does it seem like the number of page views on your company website just won’t increase? A simple and efficient solution to this problem is to optimize the blogs on your website. Essentially, optimization means making your resources as efficient and accessible as possible. Even the best quality content that is posted regularly will not be read by internet users if you don’t use website optimization techniques. Stop wasting time waiting for users to come to you and cater to their needs instead. Website optimization is a part of attraction marketing.

Keywords are key

The strategic sharing of the blogs on your website is just as important as the content they contain. Optimization requires that you include keywords and long-tail keywords, or phrases, in your blog. Keywords are topics and phrases of significance that users type into the search engine when seeking solutions to their problems. For example, I might type the key words “best Chicago summer wines” into Google to find answers on the Internet.

Popularity contest

Another aspect of keywords is that they are widely searched, yet specific at the same time. For instance, the words “wine” or “best wines” would not be optimal keywords since they are too general. By contrast, “best Chicago summer wines” are much better long-tail keyword because they specific, including details like region and season.

In order to determine the popularity of certain keywords, check your website’s keyword analytics. If the visits are too high, you should write about something more specific. If the visits are too low, you may not decide not use that keyword. However, if you’re feeling determined, you can write content containing that keyword with hopes of boosting the page views associated with it. Another technique you can use to find popular keywords if by typing certain words into search engines such as Google or Yahoo and seeing how many results come up. Be sure to base your keyword searches off of your buyer personas and they language they might use.

[Read here to learn about essential website optimization techniques to increase visitors]

The more the merrier

As much as the presence of the keywords is important, so is the strategic placement of keywords in your content. If you insert too many uses of the keywords, you are likely to be flagged as spam. On the other hand, if you don’t insert enough keywords, users may have a harder time discovering your content through given search engines.

The two most crucial places to insert your keywords are in the page and post title. An example of a title for the keywords “best Chicago summer wines” could be “Top 5 Summer Wines to Buy in Chicago This Summer.” Other important places to put your keywords are the blog’s URL, image alt-text, headers, and external links in the article. I also encourage you to include 1-2 uses of long-tail keywords in the body of the blog post, but making sure they don’t seem forced. The key to the insertion of key words is to make them seem natural, because bombarding a reader with them will seem like a marketing ploy.

17 SEO MYTHS YOU SHOULD LEAVE BEHIND

social media marketing goals

How To Use ROI To Reach Your Social Media Marketing Goals

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Is the time and money you’re putting into your company’s social media marketing paying off? You might think you can only really guess as to the success of your social media accounts, but there are ways to measure how “worth it” your social media efforts really are. To accurately calculate your ROI, which stands for Return On Investment, you must take into account all resources. Measure efforts and interactions that go into your company’s attempts to reach their social media marketing goals. Return On Investment also helps when it comes to attraction marketing.

Resources

Resources include such factors as time, cost, and effort. In order to calculate how the total resources your company is funneling into your social media accounts, ask yourself the following questions: Approximately how many hours does your company spend working on social media per week? How much effort do your employees put into your social media accounts each week? How much money are you putting into each of your social media campaigns? Estimate the answers to these questions and put them in their own separate resource categories.

[Read our article about 8 tips on social media best practices for your business]

Values

Reach:

Now it’s time to calculate the value of your efforts in order to see how well your resources are paying off. The first factor you should take into account is reach, which is used to measure the size of your potential audience. Who are the people directly (and indirectly) in your social network? How many page views and click-throughs are you getting on your social media posts each week?

Engagement:

Next, to find your value, you need to consider is the engagement of your social media, or the number of interactions with your brand. For example, how many retweets are your company’s posts getting on Twitter each week? How many likes are your Instagram posts receiving? How many people are sharing your Facebook posts?

Audience Growth:

Finally, you must measure is your audience growth, or the number of new audience members that your social media accounts usually attract. Who follows you or is friends with you on your accounts, and by how much does this number increase each week? How many new visitors are visiting your website in a given week? How many visitors are subscribing to your email list? What is your lead-to-customer conversion rate?

Now you can calculate your Return on Investment by using this formula: ROI= (Value- Resources) / Resources.Is your ROI within the desired range, or does it fall short of the social media marketing goals you have for your company? Perhaps you should see which social media accounts are giving you the best results, and put concentrate your efforts towards these accounts. Maybe you need apply different strategies in order to ensure that your social media content is garnering enough attention. In conclusion, calculating our ROI will put you on the right track for improving your company’s social media presence.

social media marketing

facebook advertising strategy

8 Tips on Social Media Best Practices For Your Business

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Why are social media best practices important? Social media has become a staple in our lives and popularity rules in this environment. It has become such an addiction that teens spend over 9 hours a day going through their social media pages. Social media is a tool that both individuals and businesses can manipulate to get the audience for their causes. Social media is a great tool for attraction marketing. Most business owners nowadays practice strategies aimed at optimization of social media platforms. Content displayed on social media platforms measures the response you get from your target audience just by the likes or dislikes you get.

We want you to get the most out of your social media platforms by enforcing these social media best practices. You will learn the secrets behind engaging and maintaining a media presence with loyal followers.

Social Media Best Practices

1. Keep an active presence

We all know that if you are inactive in social media in this digital world, you are irrelevant. Be active! Engage your audience, tell them about your brand story and show them snippets of what the brand represents. Remember however, not to disclose irrelevant information about your brand. There have been cases where too much information has overwhelmed audiences. It is important to explore all the possible avenues to let the world know why your brand is cool.

2. Keep interest

Now that you have gained a loyal following, show interest in your fans! When they reach out to you, follow back and always give personal feedback. This creation of goodwill will serve only to increase your brand’s following, earn you some popularity ratings, and maybe add revenue to your purse. Remember to thank your fans for keeping up with your venture. A brand based on humility and an understanding nature is always appreciated.

3. Concise please

We all love a good post, but if it is too long we get bored in the middle. According to a statistical review conducted on the strategies of effective tweeting, shorter tweets received 17% more following than long tweets. Although other sites do not limit your word count, you should keep in mind to pass your message in the intent you aimed it for.

4. Maintain your tone

What is your preferred tone, are you more of the serious, focused kind or the more casual faithful one. What message are you trying to pass along? Who is your demographic and what tone do you need to engage in to make them pay attention? You need to make them feel like they are part of your brand and your journey. Think about it.

To learn more about messaging read Share Your Message With A New Brand Strategy.

5. Know when to evoke silence

Sometimes media related war comes your way. It is crucial to identify which battles to fight and which ones to fold. You do not have to engage in all conversations involving your brand. If it’s a controversial topic that may not reflect the brand values, do not engage. Reviews have taken down businesses. Always try acting like “the gentleman” when it comes to social media.

6. Transparency helps

Honesty is the policy and the truth shall set you free. When it comes to social media, lies are a great faux pas. Remember that inclusion is important. Share live streams, create audios and videos that will help your followers stay in touch with brand your activities and updates.

7. Overshare faux pas

Please avoid being pushy or attending to the public’s frivolous whims. Remember that you cannot please everyone. Social media best practices call for precise, goal oriented messages. Posting too often mat look desperate and distracting.

8. Correct timing

Every social media platform has unspoken rules on when and how often to post. For Facebook, there is the famous, post twice a day rule depending on the number of followers. In Twitter, for maximum brand optimization, 1-5 tweets a day are efficient. If you are just looking for opinions, you can tweet till you fall. What usually matters in Instagram, is sticking to the consistency of the amounts you post. You cannot change from 10 posts a day to one in every two days and not see a drop in numbers.

All said and done, do have an interesting social media life and enjoy it to bits!

social media marketing

benefits of seo

Benefits of SEO: How Optimizing Your Website Will Lead To Greater Results in 2017

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By now, most marketers recognize that SEO is an important part of doing business online. To put it simply, if your website isn’t properly optimized, you are missing out. There are many reasons why you should start an SEO program if you haven’t already. SEO is a part of attraction marketing. Here are six of the top benefits of SEO.

More Website Traffic

Top positions in the search engines result pages lead to a lot more clicks, so ranking near the top can significantly increase the traffic coming to your website. According to research from Advanced Web Ranking, the top search result gets 30.1 percent of the clicks and over 50 percent of the clicks go to the top three results. Read more

storytelling_vs._storybranding

The Important Differences Between Storytelling and Storybranding

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People often think of business storytelling and storybranding as the same thing. Both can be found in the same story toolbox, but they are as different as a flat blade and a Phillips screwdriver. Both storytelling and storybranding are part of attraction marketing.

Storytelling is the more commonly used tool.

You may not be aware of it, but anytime you talk about events associated with how you or your company has had to deal with some problem, you are telling a story. If your story is well told, your audience will be able to visualize what happened and identify with the central problem as you describe it. And if you’ve captivated their interest, you might hear a “Wow!,” “Really?,” “Oh No!,” or get some other emotional reaction. Read more

The Connection Between Search Engine Marketing and Social Media: How They Go Hand-in-Hand to Enhance Results

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It may not be surprising that search engine marketing is the greatest way to drive traffic to your website. In fact, take a look at your website analytics right now and I can almost guarantee that search engines are among the top five producers of website traffic. Now consider this: social media—overall content, interactions, and links about your brand—plays a significant part in the search engines’ algorithms to determine search ranking results. So, even if you have questioned using social media as part of your attraction marketing strategy before, I urge to you to look more closely at the impact you could make to your brand by getting involved in social to help your search engine results.

Obviously, the goal of search engine marketing is to help make your brand show up in top rankings within the search engines when people conduct queries. There are a few key actions that you can take to help make this happen. This includes:

  1. Making sure the backend code of your website is properly optimized
  2. Enhancing your website with current, relevant content—this is a significant factor in rankings
  3. Refreshing and updating your website content frequently
  4. Including more links from outside, reputable sources that link back to your website
  5. How often your website is shared in social media
  6. How often people visit your website from social media

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5 Keys to Successful Social Media Marketing Campaigns

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There are no hard and fast rules for social media marketing campaigns. What works well for one company could fail magnificently for another. Searching for sure-fire techniques is like searching for Amelia Earhardt, answers are out there, but they’re just really hard to find. You want buzz. You want a unique message that says, “This is our brand. This is who we are.” You want visitors to become fans and fans to become customers. This is a great key to attraction marketing.

After analyzing some of the most notable social media marketing campaigns of 2012, we’ve come up with what we think are 5 keys to creating your own social media success story.

1. Have a Cause and Make it Fun

Some of the most successful campaigns of 2012 had a pay-it-forward vibe. Take for example the partnership between Levi’s and Water.org. Levi’s created a Facebook game to educate fans about water conservation. The better users were at the game and the more they shared it through other social media channels, the more liters of water were unlocked. Once the combined total reached the goal of 200 million liters, Levi’s would donate $250,000 to help Water.org

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