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Successful Viral Marketing Campaign Tactics

Content that goes viral is content that generates massive awareness in a short period of time. In viral marketing, it refers to an ad that is so effective it’s viewed and shared millions of times. In many cases, a viral ad will be so effective that it becomes part of the popular culture at the moment. Unfortunately, “going viral” is not something that you can just do. It requires a lot of luck, and you can never quite pinpoint exactly what kind of ad will appeal to a large audience. However, implementing a viral marketing strategy will allow you to put your ads in the best possible position to go viral. The following are five tactics that will help you create an effective viral marketing campaign:

1. Emphasize Emotion Over Exposure

Traditionally, the success of advertising has been linked to exposure. Many advertisers believe in the rule of seven, which states that an ad must be seen seven times before a viewer will act. Those advertisers will put much of their budget into getting their ads as much exposure as possible. However, it’s much more effective to create an ad that resonates with audience members on an emotional level. A customer doesn’t need to see an ad seven times to have an emotional connection, after all. If you’re able to elicit an emotional response, the viewer will be more likely to watch the ad again and to share it with friends and family. Eliciting emotions such as awe, laughter, amusement, joy, or anger, can all be effective in viral marketing.

2. Implement a Real-Time Marketing Strategyviral marketing2

Most marketing campaigns are planned and executed over a long period of time. While you can still create viral ads doing this, it often results in ads that aren’t in line with current trends. Real-time marketing involves creating ads that are relevant to what’s happening at the moment. Audiences will connect with ads that are addressing current trends and events more easily. For example, many businesses are implementing real-time marketing strategies to address the COVID-19 pandemic by focusing on the importance of social distancing or by highlighting essential workers.

3. Use Humor to Create Amusing Ads

A customer might like an ad that they see, and it may even resonate with them. However, it has to do more than that for them to feel like it’s worth sharing. Because of this, you should consider using humor if it’s appropriate for your brand. Not only do people love to laugh, but they also love making their friends and family laugh. This means that if an ad makes them laugh, they will be more likely to share the content with others in the hopes that it will make them laugh as well. It’s why so many of the ads that go viral are ads that are funny. For example, the Old Spice Man ads or the Most Interesting Man in the World Dos Equis ads.

Enjoy The Article: What We Can Learn From Viral Video Marketing & Examples of How It’s Been Useful 

4. Provide Value

Creating ads that are funny or that elicit an emotional response can be very effective; however, you need to make sure that your ads are providing value as well. Unless your only goal is to generate brand awareness, you will need to create ads that get people to take action. A good example of a viral ad that provides value is the Dollar Shave Club ad. It’s a hilarious ad that’s creatively made. Yet it also clearly conveys what the value of its product is.

5. Test Your Campaigns

The last thing that you want to do is to create an ad that goes viral for the wrong reasons. For example, you thought you were creating an ad that was delivering a positive message; however, a small part of your audience misinterprets that message. They interpret the meaning of your ad to be negative, resulting in controversy. Controversy is a good way to go viral, but a bad way to maintain your reputation. A good example of this is the Pepsi ad featuring Kendal Jenner released a few years ago. The ad featured a protest full of smiling models and ended with Jenner providing a Pepsi to a police officer as a sign of peace and unity, which the protesters cheered. Critics believed the ad to be insensitive due to the fact that there were many protests against police brutality happening at that time. To avoid a public relations disaster, make sure that you test your campaigns first.

One thing to note: these tactics aren’t just effective for viral marketing. They can incredibly useful for creating ads even if they don’t go viral. Although going viral is a goal you should have, the objective should be to successfully deliver your message in an engaging way to your target audience. Using these five viral marketing tactics will help you achieve this at the very least.

17 SEO MYTHS YOU SHOULD LEAVE BEHIND
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Marketing Automation And Trigger Words

When it comes to content marketing, quality is obviously the most important element. You need to write content that is helpful and relevant to your audience. On top of that, your content needs to be well written. This means making sure that there are no spelling or grammatical errors, and that it is easy to read and understand. While the quality of your content is critical to its success, there are other tactics you should employ as well. For example, the use of marketing automation and trigger words can help to improve the impact of your content.

Ways to Use Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is the use of certain software tools to automate repetitive tasks. Content marketing involves a lot of repetitive tasks that can be very time-consuming. By effectively leveraging marketing automation tools, you can save a significant amount of time. You can also improve the effectiveness of your content marketing in a variety of ways as well. The following are a few examples of how you can successfully use automation to improve your content marketing:

1. Automate Publishing Times

It’s important that you publish your content (specifically, your blog content) on the same days every week. This helps ensure that regular readers know when to visit your website for new content. However, manually publishing new content at specific times on specific days can be time-consuming. Not to mention that keeping such deadlines adds unneeded stress. Automation allows you to schedule when content will be published ahead of time. Then, when its scheduled publishing date comes around, your content will automatically be posted to your blog.

Enjoy The Article: How Professional Service Marketers Use Marketing Automation Strategies To Succeed

2. Deliver Content Based On Trigger Events

The success of a lot of your content depends on timing. For example, if someone makes a purchase on your e-commerce page, you may want to send them a thank you email. However, that email isn’t going to have much of an impact if it comes a week after the purchase was made. You can automate certain content to be delivered based on specific actions that your leads and customers take. For instance, if someone finalizes a purchase online, that action can trigger an automated welcome email to be sent to that customer immediately. Automating content delivery using trigger events will help to improve your customer experience significantly.

3. Segment Email ListMarketing Automation2

Not all of your content will be relevant to your entire audience. For example, if you run a pet food company, then an article about dog food isn’t going to be relevant for cat owners. If you’re constantly emailing your audience content that’s not relevant to them, they will be more likely to unsubscribe. You can use automation to segment your email list. Use the information you have from your opt-in forms to segment your list effectively. You can then send different emails to different segments of your email list to ensure that the content you’re sending is relevant.

How To Use Trigger Words

Attracting your audience is one thing, getting them to read your content is another. One of the most effective methods for pulling an audience in is by using trigger words. Trigger words are words or phrases that immediately establish an emotional connection and that provide a sense of urgency. They are particularly effective when used in titles and calls-to-action (CTAs). The following are a few examples of trigger words you might want to use:

  • New – People are always looking for the most up-to-date solution or product. This is because we live in a forward-thinking society. As a result, the word “new” tends to attract a lot of attention.
  • Free – Free is an incredibly effective trigger word. This is because a consumer is more willing to give something a chance if it’s at no additional cost. They know that if they decide against the solution, it won’t cost them anything.
  • Discover – Prospects who are searching for specific solutions will be drawn to the word “discover” as it hints that the content or offer may contain the solution they are looking for.
  • Easy – If someone is searching for a solution, the last thing they want is one that will be difficult to implement. The word “easy” will draw their eye right away since they will be searching for a painless solution.

A good content marketing strategy consists of many different elements. Two important tactics that you should be sure to leverage include the use of marketing automation and trigger words. Using automation can help you to deliver relevant content to your audience at the right time. Trigger words can help improve the chances that your audience will take the time to read your content. If you aren’t using automation or trigger words yet, then you should make it a point to implement both.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers
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Why Conducting A Content Audit Is Important For Your Company In Today’s Marketing Environment

As the years go by, your business’s content audit is going to evolve in a variety of different ways. Your audience may change, your products or services may change, your message may change, and your branding may change. These elements may not change much, but if your company is around for more than a few years, odds are that something will change in some way. In some cases, as we’re seeing today amidst a world that’s staying at home during a pandemic, the business environment changes.

All of this means that the content you’ve been generating may change as well. As a result, it’s important that you perform a content audit to make sure that existing content remains effective and that new content helps to address your goals.

Performing a Content Audit

A content audit is essentially a thorough evaluation of the existing content living on your website. You will want to make sure that all of your content aligns with your current brand identity and messaging. Not to mention that if your target audience changed, it means that some of your older content may no longer be relevant. It’s one of the main reasons you’ll want to develop your buyer personas if you haven’t already. You should also look for content that has outdated information. The last thing you want to do is provide content that’s backed by data that’s inaccurate because it’s outdated. In many cases, you can just update this content to ensure that it’s accurate.

In addition to removing content that is no longer relevant and updating content to ensure it’s accuracy, you should also identify gaps in your content library. For example, you may find that you have a significant amount of content that targets three of your four buyer personas; however, you have very little content targeting that fourth persona. You will want to fill in this gap by focusing your content creation on that fourth buyer persona. You may also find gaps in regards to the type of content you’re creating that you’ll want to address as well.

Enjoy The Article: The Importance of Lead Generation and Content Marketing Agencies 

Adjusting Your Strategy During COVID-19Content Audit 2

The marketing environment has changed drastically. For example, you can no longer attend trade shows or in-person events in order to generate awareness about your brand. The production of new video content is limited as well. However, online marketing remains effective. In fact, if you adjust your content strategy accordingly, you may be able to reach even more potential leads. This is because more people are at home than ever before. As a result, many of these people have more time to explore your content. With that in mind, the following are a few types of content you should focus on creating for your audience during COVID-19:

  • Blog content

If you’re not regularly producing and promoting new blog content, then you should focus on doing so. Begin publishing content more often since your audience is going to have more time on their hands. Don’t shy away from tying your content in with current events (specifically, COVID-19) either. The more helpful your content is, the better.

  • Use chat more

Since your website will become a much more prominent part of your marketing strategy than ever before, invest in live chat and chatbot features. Online chat features are a great way to keep audiences engaged. They also help provide important information that can guide your leads through their website experience.

  • Webinars

Webinars are a great way to educate your audience about various topics. They also tend to be more engaging than other types of content. Webinars don’t require any production value — any of your company’s leadership can film a webinar out of the comfort of their own home. The success of a webinar is mostly dependent on the information provided. Additionally, viewers can ask questions during live webinars, making them all the more engaging.

  • Virtual events:

Virtual events can be similar to webinars; however, webinars don’t necessarily have to be live. By hosting a live virtual event that requires registration, you can generate more interest. People are more likely to tune in if there’s a chance of missing out, after all. There’s also a good chance that you’ll draw a larger audience in today’s environment since more people will be available to attend. There are a lot of different types of virtual events you can hold, such as Q and A sessions with industry influencers or CEOs.

There are still opportunities for effective marketing during COVID-19. First of all, make sure that you perform a thorough content audit. Doing so will ensure that all existing content supports your current marketing goals. You will also be able to identify any gaps in your content marketing efforts that need to be addressed. While some of your marketing efforts will be limited, you can use this opportunity to focus on creating content that will be effective at increasing engagement during COVID-19. For example, by producing more blog content, virtual events, and webinars.

MAXIMIZING YOUR MARKETING BUDGET
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Effective Advertising Requires Authenticity and Humanizing Ads

Many businesses assume that effective advertising is achieved when your marketing efforts lead to more leads and more sales. Unfortunately, many companies become overly promotional as a result. Advertising isn’t just about promoting products and services. It’s also about providing value to your customers in other ways. Trying to convince a customer why they should buy your product is rarely an effective advertising technique. Instead, you should be less promotional. For example, creating humanizing ads can make your brand more relatable to your audience. Such ads also show your audience that the bottom line isn’t the only thing you care about. Doing so also helps build a more authentic brand identity.

Providing Value To Your Audience

One of the common mistakes businesses make is to focus too much on showcasing their products and services. Before you can try to demonstrate the value of your products and services, you need to demonstrate the value of your brand. Creating an authentic brand identity is crucial to being able to sell your products and services.

To demonstrate the value of your brand, you will need to add value in a non-promotional way Achieving this requires that you understand who your audience is and what their needs are. For example, many small businesses aren’t going to be investing in new products or services as a result of the COVID-19 situation. This is especially true for small businesses that aren’t considered essential. Trying to convince small business owners to purchase your products or services isn’t going to be effective right now. However, content that can help educate small business owners during COVID-19 is going to be very useful to them. For example, content about the recent small business stimulus program that explains how to go about obtaining funds.

Creating such content provides immediate value to your target audience. Additionally, it shows your audience that you understand what their needs are. The ability to demonstrate this understanding will help increase your brand authority, resulting in more trust. As a direct result, your audience will be more likely to believe that the products and services that you offer will help them address their needs once they are capable of making new purchases.

Enjoy the article: Visual Storytelling Techniques That Will Take You To The Next Level

Creating Soft-Selling Ads

In addition to creating content that offers value to your audience, you should also create soft-selling ads. Soft-selling ads help to advertise your brand without doing so explicitly. Traditional ads are known for being more aggressive. They will often end with a clear call-to-action to buy a product or invest in a service. For example, a traditional cereal commercial might show a person enjoying a bowl of cereal. It might also list all of the healthy benefits. A soft-selling ad does not focus on the product or service that you’re trying to sell.

Some companies are focusing on spreading awareness for important information about COVID-19 using soft-selling ads, such as emphasizing the importance of social distancing. Budweiser has focused many of its new ads on highlighting the heroic work being done on the frontlines by everyone from healthcare workers to grocery store workers. These ads are effective because they aren’t shoving their products in the faces of viewers. However, their efforts to deliver valuable information to everyone showcases their authenticity.

Another great example is Jack Daniels. They produced an ad showing people socializing over video chat from the comforts of their own home. This ad highlights the importance of staying at home during the pandemic. It is also accompanied by a great slogan: Dear humanity, cheers to making social distancing, social. With love, Jack.” This ad is humanizing without every attempting to sell a product. As a result, it helps to lend the brand authenticity. If they had ended the commercial trying to sell their whiskey, it wouldn’t have been nearly as impactful.

Authenticity Matters

One thing to keep in mind when creating content for your audience is that you need to be authentic. You can’t come across as pandering or as taking advantage of a situation. The audience will always know. The only way to avoid such a pitfall is to truly have your target audience in mind when you create your content. Focus on your buyer personas and think about what their needs, problems, wants, and fears are, both in general and in the world today. Doing so is the only way to ensure effective advertising.

Learn The StoryBranding Process
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Leveraging Video Marketing During COVID-19

When it comes to creating content for your marketing strategy, arguably the most effective type of content is video content. In fact, the success of video marketing when compared to other types of content marketing has been proven time and time again. For example, the viewing of video content accounts for roughly one-third of all online activity. Additionally, 64 percent of consumers will purchase a product or service after watching a branded social video.

If that wasn’t enough, video content generates 12 times more shares on social media than text and image-based content combined. With these video content statistics in mind, you should make an effort to focus on video marketing. This still holds true in today’s current stay-at-home environment.

Why Do Audiences Love Video Content?

The main reason why audiences love video marketing is because people are visual creatures. It’s much easier for the typical person to absorb and retain information that they got from a video than from an article. In fact, the human brain processes visual information roughly 60,000 faster than it can process text. Movement tends to attract the human eye as well. Video content provides such movement, whereas text-based content does not. But these are not the only reasons why video content is more effective than text-based content.

Video content allows you to display a personality. By having someone onscreen, you give your audience someone to relate to and to connect to on an emotional level. It doesn’t matter how much personality you write with, text-based content simply cannot stack up to video’s ability to do this.

Enjoy this article: Video Marketing Ideas: Using Storytelling In Social Media

How Can You Leverage Video Content During COVID-19?video marketing 2

Considering that the majority of the country is staying at home, there are more opportunities to reach your target audience via video marketing. Many people are out of work. Those who aren’t may not have as much work to do and are likely working remotely from home, which means that they have much more time on their hands.

While they might have more time to read text-based content while stuck at home, they will likely be even more drawn to video content. Video content gives people the chance to watch somebody speak on screen. In some cases, such as through the use of video messaging software, they can even engage with the speaker directly. As a result, viewers will be able to connect with a real human, which is something that’s a bit of a rarity during these times of social isolation. With that in mind, the following are a few examples of how you can leverage video marketing during this pandemic:

  • Pre-produced video content

Because of COVID-19, you can’t exactly go out and produce new video content. However, you can promote the existing video content on your website. It’s a great way to get more views and to generate more brand exposure. Post links to older videos that are still relevant to your social pages. You can also get your company’s leaders to produce simple video messages for your audience as well.

  • Webinars

Arguably the best way to provide your target audience with new video content is to hold webinars. They can be hosted by a variety of people, from company leaders to industry influencers. Webinars are convenient since they can be hosted from home. All you have to do is to schedule a live stream through one of your social channels. Viewers can then tune in from the comfort of their own homes at a specific time. You can encourage participation by making your webinars question and answer based. This will help to improve engagement with your audience. Following the webinar, you can post the video of it to your website so people can view it at their own convenience.

  • Virtual tours

Companies that provide essential services can create behind-the-scenes video content of their place of work. They can also film virtual tours of your place of business. For example, if you have a factory that manufactures an essential product, you can showcase how you’re keeping your employees safe. For example by demonstrating social distancing in the workplace, allowing employees to speak about your safety standards, and more.

Continue Focusing on Video Marketing During The COVID-19 Pandemic

Video marketing has always been one of the most effective content marketing strategies that you can implement. This is because video content tends to engage audiences more than any other type of content. During this COVID-19 pandemic, much of your audience will be staying at home and will have more time on their hands than usual. With that in mind, video marketing can be a great way to engage them. Use older video content, virtual tours, and webinars to effectively leverage video marketing during this particularly strange moment in time.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES
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Communication Tips for Senior Living Homes

Millions of people have been stressed out and worried about their families every day during this COVID-19 pandemic. This is especially true for people with family members who are living in senior living homes. If you are running senior living homes, then odds are you’re doing everything you can to keep residents safe and comfortable. However, you should also be doing everything you can to alleviate the worries and fears of their families. To do this, you will need to be able to communicate clearly and regularly. The following are a few tips that will help you communicate more effectively during this time of crisis:

Know Your Audience

Not only do you need to know who you should get your message across to, but you need to know how you’ll get that message across. This requires that you know who your audience is. Your audience should include not just the family members of residents, but also employees, board members, and more. It’s because your audience is so varied that you should develop buyer personas. It will become much easier to meet the needs of your audience if you are able to target each one of your buyer personas. It also ensures that you don’t forget to address certain parts of your audience. For example, you might be so focused on alleviating the worries of the family members of your residents that you forget to address your employees. You need to keep communicating with your staff as well. Additionally, your staff will have family members who may be worried too.

Finally, the creation of buyer personas will help you determine which marketing channels to use for each part of your audience. For example, if your staff is on the younger side, it may be easier to communicate with them via Twitter. However, older residents are less likely to use Twitter. To deliver information to them and their families, Facebook might be a better option.

Use Your Marketing ChannelsSenior Living Homes 2

Businesses of all types tend to slash their marketing budgets first when times are tough. You should avoid doing this. Instead, refocus your marketing efforts to communicate with your audience. For example, you can create content for your blog to deliver information about what precautions you’re taking at your senior living home. Such content can help assure people that you’re taking good care of their family members. You can also provide information on how they can keep in touch with residents since in-person visits may no longer be possible. Consider creating content focusing on the caregivers of your senior living home. Such content allows you to spotlight your frontline workers while also inspiring confidence in your audience about your staff.

Besides continuing to create and publish content, you should also continue using social media. Social media is an excellent way to keep in touch with families. Use your social media channels to answer questions and concerns your audience has on a daily basis. Post updates to your social channels on a regular basis as well. The last thing you want to do is make your audience feel like they are being kept in the dark. The more often you provide updates, the less worried they will feel.

Use A Dedicated Spokesperson

Publishing new content on your blog and posting updates on your social channels is a good start. However, you should also have a dedicated spokesperson to deliver important messages to your audience. Posting videos or hosting webinars using this spokesperson can be very effective. With a spokesperson, your audience will have an easier time connecting with your message. It’s also easier to build trust when there’s an actual person delivering a message. The more trust you build, the less worried your audience will be.

You don’t necessarily have to create video content spotlighting your spokesperson either. For example, your spokesperson can deliver a message that’s posted on social media or in blog form as well. Simply having a name that people recognize attached to your message will help build trust. Your spokesperson will essentially represent your company’s leadership. This means that they should probably be an executive-level representative. Because we are living in uncertain times, it’s a good idea to name a dedicated spokesperson as well as a backup spokesperson.

These tips can help senior living homes communicate much more effectively. As a result, you can help to alleviate the worries and stress of your residents’ families. These communication tactics can be leveraged during any type of crisis, including this current COVID-19 pandemic. However, they are also essential to senior living marketing strategies even when there is no crisis to speak of.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

What’s Trending in Marketing For April 2020

It is important to be informed about what is going on in the marketing industry. Doing so is a great way to stay up to date and tweak your marketing strategies so you can stay ahead of the competition. The following articles are from popular marketing blogs and highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

How the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing brands to connect digitally

Because of COVID-19 and the nationwide stay-at-home orders, retailers are quickly switching up their marketing strategies by putting an emphasis on mobile technology and virtual appointments to keep their businesses operating. Doctors are conducting virtual consultations for their clients. Retailers are connecting with their customers online by hosting virtual lunches, happy hours, and outfit try-on sessions. Alex Fitzgerald, Manager of Consumer Practice, believes this will be an acceleration towards digital.

How working from home has thrown a wrench in campaign targeting

Working remotely has been helping businesses stay in operation as the world is going through this time of uncertainty. But for some businesses, it can be hard to make sense of data that may not be as reliable due to the shift in work environments. Working from home has made analytics and cookie data less reliable.

When your Google My Business listing becomes your lifeline

During COVID-19, Google My Business can turn into a business’s lifeline during this time of uncertainty and disruption. People normally use GMB to get info about store hours and customer reviews to learn about a business. During this pandemic, consumers are searching different topics such as “Are you open while we shelter in place?” and “Do you offer curbside delivery?” It is important during these times to keep your GMB up to date and provide useful, relevant information for consumers.

Enjoy this article: What’s Trending In Marketing For March 2020

Improving Your Marketing Program

7 Tips For Success When Working Remotely

If you are working remotely for the first time, making the adjustment can be challenging. It can be helpful to get tips and tricks on how to stay motivated and focused.  Other factors such as establishing a routine and maintaining a regular schedule are discussed. Check out the article for more advice on how to be as productive as possible.

8 Ways That You Can Improve Your SEO

It is important that you stay up to date with your SEO strategy. It is helpful to continually do keyword research to identify what keywords your target audience is using. This will also help give you a good rank. Other strategies such as updating your old content, monitoring backlinks, and tracking performance are all important factors that can help improve your SEO.

How Healthcare Content Marketing Companies Can Step Up In 2020

With the COVID-19 pandemic spreading across the nation, healthcare content marketing is more valued than ever before. It is important for healthcare companies to take advantage of their increased website traffic. The content they post should be reliable. It is helpful to create specific landing pages to route people to the right resources.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and TrendsMobile Marketing Strategy 1

30 Marketing Statistics to Consider for 2020

Keep up with what new research is telling us about the marketing industry. Learn the most recent statistics and what your company needs to know to stay updated with their social media, advertising, search marketing, and more.

Local ad revenue forecast contracts 10.6% due to coronavirus, study says

Local advertising revenue in the U.S. is expected to total $144.3 billion in 2020, which is a 10.6% decrease from the $161.3 billion previously forecasted. The new estimate shows a 3.6% decline from 2019 activity even with political advertising revenue of $7.1 billion expected this election year.

NFL Draft scores 55M viewers, breaking ratings records despite shift to virtual format

This year’s NFL Draft saw ratings up 16% year-on-year despite the shift to a virtual format due to the coronavirus pandemic. The draft broke ratings records as the number of viewers increased each day.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES
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7 Tips For Success When Working Remotely

More and more employees are working remotely these days, in part due to the major strides made in technology. Not only do most workers have access to a home computer, but they also have access to countless software solutions that allow them to communicate and collaborate with coworkers and managers from home. It’s estimated that between 2005 and 2017, the number of people in the U.S. that worked remotely increased 159 percent. In early 2020, roughly 4.7 million people worked remotely. As of April of this year, those numbers have likely increased substantially.

If you are working remotely for the first time, making the adjustment can be challenging. This is especially true if you’ve gone into work your entire life. You’ll quickly find that working remotely provides you with much more freedom and flexibility, but that it will require much more discipline in order to stay motivated and be productive as well. With that in mind, the following are a few tips on working remotely:

1. Establish A Routine

When you went to work, odds are you had a morning routine before you left as well as an evening routine right when you got back. Such routines are helpful because they allow you to mentally prepare yourself for when to start and stop working. Without clear routines, it can be difficult to get started, which can hurt your productivity. The last thing you want is to keep putting off work to the point where you don’t get started until 3:00 PM and then end up working all night long.

Establish a routine, such as getting up at a certain time, taking a shower, eating breakfast while you watch the news, and then get started by checking your email. Don’t forget to have a routine for when you stop working as well, such as taking your dog for a walk at 6:00 PM.

2. Set Up An Office SpaceWorking Remotely2

If you don’t have a dedicated office space, it will be a challenge to stay organized and to get yourself into the right mindset to be productive. Working from your couch in the living room is also not a great idea since you’ll have to fight off various distractions. If you have a spare bedroom, such as a guest room, consider turning it into your office space. If you don’t have an extra room, try to find a quiet space in your home where you can permanently set up — even if it’s just a table in your kitchen or a desk in your bedroom.

3. Maintain A Regular Schedule

A regular schedule is important for your productivity. Otherwise, you may end up working a few hours one day and 12 hours the next, which isn’t going to be great for your work-life balance. Without a regular schedule, it might be difficult to stay productive as well. Not to mention that coworkers, managers, business partners, and clients may find it difficult to reach you if they don’t know when you’re working.

4. Create Home Rules

If you’re not the only person at home, then you need to set some clear rules, whether you have roommates or a family. Let them know when your work schedule is and where you’ll be working so that they do not disturb you.

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5. Give Yourself Breaks

Just because you’re at home doesn’t mean you don’t get to take breaks. Take the same amount of breaks you would take if you were working at the office. Breaks are important as they will help keep you from wearing yourself out working. If you don’t take breaks, your work will begin to suffer.

6. Get Out Of The House

Now that you’re working from home, you’re going to find that you’re always at home. To keep yourself from getting cabin fever, be sure to get out of the house. For example, start your day with a run through the neighborhood, use one of your breaks to go for a brief walk, or end your day with a long walk.

7. Communicate Clearly

Because you’re not in the same space as your coworkers and managers, communication is key. Clearly communicate when you’re working, what you’re working on, what your needs are, and more. Regular communication throughout the day will help keep everybody on the same page. It will also help prevent miscommunication, which is something that does tend to occur when everyone is working remotely.

These are just a few tips that will help people adjust to working at home and allow them to work remotely with greater success. Here at Stevens & Tate, we understand the challenges of working from home and are currently one of the many companies that have transitioned to working remotely. We are still capable of providing all of our services, from digital marketing to media coordination, and we will continue to work closely with our clients via a variety of communication methods, including the use of web conferencing tools and more traditional methods, such as phone and email.

25 Website Must Haves
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Effective Lead Generation Strategies For Professional Services

As a lead generation professional services firm, your marketing efforts shouldn’t be focused on selling a specific product or solution. Instead, you should be focused on selling your expertise. This means that you should focus your marketing strategy on generating brand awareness as well as increasing your brand authority. Doing so will lead to greater success in generating new leads. With that in mind, you will need to implement various lead generation professional services strategies. The following are a few of the lead generation strategies that can be very effective for professional services firms:

1. Publish Informative And Relevant Blog Content

Setting up a blog on your website will allow you to regularly publish content in one place. If this content is relevant to your target audience and is of high quality, then it can be incredibly effective at generating leads. This is because high-quality content helps to build brand authority. The more brand authority you build, the more trust you build, making it easier to capture potential leads. Additionally, not only will good content help capture leads, if properly optimized for SEO (search engine optimization), you will be able to attract more potential leads to your website as well through organic search.

2. Create Case Studieslead generation professional services2

Case studies are an exceptionally effective form of content marketing for professional services. This is because case studies showcase exactly how your professional services are leveraged to the benefit of your customers. Leads will be able to discover exactly how your professional services have helped similar customers with their needs. Not only do case studies help increase awareness of your professional services, they boost your brand trust since they highlight the experience of past customers — and leads tend to trust what other customers have to say.

3. Use Relevant And Enticing Offers

Generating leads isn’t possible unless you’re capable of capturing leads. To capture leads, you will need to provide an offer that’s relevant to them. You need to encourage them to provide you with their name and email address, after all. Make offers based on the content of the page that the lead is on to ensure that they are relevant. One way to do this is to offer “content upgrades,” which are more in-depth pieces of content relevant to the page they’re on, such as eBooks or whitepapers. Free trials can be very effective offers for leads who are towards the end of the buyer’s journey.

Similar Article: A Brief Guide To Sales Lead Generation

4. Implement A Referral Program

One of the best ways to get highly qualified leads is through a referral program. A referral program encourages existing customers to refer your business to other customers. Typically, a referral program will provide existing customers with a reward for every referral they provide. However, they won’t just recommend you to any lead since they are staking their reputation on the referral. Because of this, the leads they refer will assume that your business is trustworthy, which means that they will be easier to convert. This also means that leads obtained through a referral program often have a shorter sales cycle.

5. Use Email Marketing

Email marketing can include not just nurturing the leads you’ve captured, but also to engage in email prospecting, which is essentially the email marketing form of cold calling. However, when engaging in email marketing, make sure that you segment your audience list. This will ensure that when you send emails that the content included (or linked to in the email) is relevant to the recipient. If it’s not relevant, you’re likely to lose that lead.

6. Leverage Social Media

Social media is an excellent way to engage with potential leads and spread brand awareness. Simply interacting with followers when they engage with you as well as using your social channels to post content can help to foster reputations and build brand trust. Additionally, you can find new prospects by engaging with industry influencers and by participating in community groups and discussions that are relevant to your business.

7. Promote Your Content

In order for your content to have an impact on lead generation, you will need to promote it. You can do this in numerous ways. For example, you can promote your content by posting links to it on your social channels. You can post links to your content upgrades on social channels as well. You can also use PPC ads and social media ads to promote new blog content or content upgrades. Finally, you can promote new content to leads you’ve captured via email marketing.

When it comes to professional services firms, lead generation depends heavily on your ability to generate awareness and build brand authority. Using these lead generation professional services strategies, you should be able to put your company into a position to attract and convert more leads.

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Improve PPC Success With These 7 PPC Optimization Strategies

PPC (pay-per-click) optimization is an often underlooked marketing strategy that can be incredibly beneficial to your overall marketing efforts. One reason many businesses overlook it is because they think that it will cost too much to implement. However, PPC advertising is actually quite cost-effective. This is because PPC optimization works by allowing you to bid on specific keywords. You can bid however much you want. While the amount of your bid will affect how often the ad is displayed for that keyword, you will only pay for the ad if it’s clicked on.

Of course, the success of your PPC campaign will rely heavily on whether or not you get clicks and whether those clicks result in conversions. With that in mind, the following are seven PPC optimization tips to improve the success of your PPC ads:

1. Perform Keyword Research

Don’t assume that you know what keywords your target audience will use. Using keywords without performing the necessary research can result in inefficient use of your marketing budget. The last thing you want to do is bid for keywords that you can’t compete with or that expose your ads to the wrong audience (resulting in low click-through rates and low conversion rates).

When performing keyword research, identify keywords that are relevant to your business, to your ads, and to your audience. Find out what the search volume of each keyword to figure out whether they will be effective at exposing your ad as well as whether you’ll even be able to compete with them. Via keyword research, you’ll also be able to identify new keywords you may not have thought of before as well.

2. Identify Negative Keywords

When running ads, you can find out what keywords and search terms were used to trigger your ads to display. Some of these terms may not be relevant and can be considered “negative” keywords. You can add these to a negative keyword list to ensure your ad doesn’t show up for those terms. For example, if your clothing company only sells adult clothing, then the word “children” would be a negative keyword.

3. Know Your Audience

Knowing your audience is essential for identifying keywords that are relevant to their search queries. After all, if you target the wrong audience, your PPC ads won’t perform well. To figure out who your audience is, develop buyer personas based on your ideal customers. These will make it much easier to successfully target your ads, both in regards to the keywords you use and the copy you write.

Enjoy the Article: A Guide to Successful Marketing Optimization

4. Create Effective, Relevant Copyppc optimization2

If your keywords and your copy don’t match up, it’s going to affect your ability to generate clicks. After all, if someone performs a search and an ad is displayed that isn’t relevant to what they’re looking for, that person is not going to click on your ad. Your copy not only has to match the keyword, it also needs to be well-written and to the point. Make the copy easy to scan so that people know exactly what it is you’re promoting and what the benefits are of clicking on the ad. Additionally, keep in mind that a good title is essential to drawing attention. Without a good title, people will scroll right past your ads.

5. Create Effective Landing Pages

Getting clicks is going to be an enormous waste of money if nobody is converting. One of the most common obstacles to a highly converting PPC ad is the landing page. If your PPC landing page is poor, it won’t convert. In fact, some businesses don’t even have landing pages — they just direct the people who have clicked on their PPC ads to their homepage. If you do this, they’ll have no idea what they’re supposed to do.

Your landing pages should reiterate the offer of your ad. Make sure the page is clean and easy to scan. A cluttered landing page can be distracting and confusing. In addition to emphasizing the offer of your ad, make sure you use the same language — including the same keywords.

6. Optimize Your Ad Groups

Google recommends that you create three to four ads per ad group and to create different messages for each one in order to see which performs best. Your ads will rotate automatically to display the ads that perform best most often.

7. Test Your Ads

Make sure to test your ads so that you can identify what works and what doesn’t. For example, you can create an ad group with one control ad and one test ad. You can test ads using different keyword variations, titles, copy, and more. Monitor conversion rates, cost-per-conversion, and click-through-rate to identify what ads perform better and to optimize your ads more effectively.

The key to a successful PPC ad lies in how well you’ve managed to optimize that ad. These are seven PPC optimization strategies that you should implement to help boost the effectiveness of your PPC advertising strategy.

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