marketing dashboard for social media

5 Examples for Great Social Media Branding

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Large brands such as Coca-Cola and McDonalds have the necessary budgets to invest in A-list influencers and over-the-top Super Bowl commercials. The same cannot be said for startups and small-business struggling to make ends meet. This, however, won’t stop a smart marketer from taking a note or few from the best. Whether it’s a clever use of shape and color, or a catchy slogan, here are some of the best examples of what branding is supposed to look like.

1. Social media branding done right: Airbnb

Most major brands invest heavily in large creative design teams to manage their social media branding efforts. Yet, Airbnb has managed to do a lot more than just share beautiful content to solidify their brand image. With Airbnb, the customers are the brand, both guests and hosts. The company doesn’t manage nor does it own any of the properties hosted on its website and social media accounts. In fact, it only provides a forum where customers can promote and ultimately book some of the most breathtaking properties in the world.

Businesses often rely on telling their brand story to sell products and services, but Airbnb lets the customers to tell their own stories. The travelers are using their platform and Airbnb regularly hosts them on its website and social media accounts. Going through the company’s Instagram account and you’ll quickly feel exactly what it’s like to be in the customer’s shoes. The company understands the importance of social media engagement and also provides links to each and every location displayed in their content. That way they are providing their followers with the opportunity to experience what their feed is offering using a single click.

2. Brand-driven storytelling: Nike

Nike is one of the few companies that have understood and successfully leveraged great storytelling for the last 20 years as a means of developing a brand soul. One of their most successful branding campaigns was led in 1999. That year the company released a minute-long commercial commemorating the fruitful career of none other than Michael Jordan.

What made the commercial such a wild success is the fact that Nike as a brand was not mentioned at all until the very last second of the film. In the last second we saw the logo and now iconic words “Just Do It” were superimposed over Jordan’s high school photo. The entire minute-long commercial was dedicated to the great basketball player. That was something that was previously unheard of in the marketing industry.

Instead of trying to sell its products and push the brand down the throats of its consumers, Nike wanted to make an impression! The one that lasted and cemented their brand with an authentic, heartfelt story. Now, their logo and slogan can be found literally anywhere. From their clothing lines and twitter commercials to a viral video of Shia LaBeouf screaming “Just Do It” into the camera for a solid minute. Go figure!

But on a serious note, brand development requires a number of important steps, including logo design, color and font choice. All that play a major role in developing a brand voice and maintaining consistency. Finding the right agency using Google and similar search engines might be a stretch. You can find help using dedicated resources such as Design Rush which allows users to search and filter through leading branding experts based on budget, location, and their expertise.

Visual Storytelling Trends That Will Shape The Future For Marketers

3. Clever brand slogan: Dollar Shave Club

The team behind the Dollar Shave Club knows exactly what they’re doing. Their “Shave Time. Shave Money.” slogan is arguably the pinnacle of marketing related puns. Dollar Shave Club offers a shaving equipment and accessories as a cheap subscription service. It includes flexible shipment without the use of contracts and tricks involving fine prints. The company has cleverly incorporated two of the largest benefits offered by its service: convenience and cost.

Its campaign is on point, quite funny and adequately defines its brand tone, voice and a pun-related sense of humor. Today, Dollar Shave Club is often being cited as a sponsor to various YouTube personalities and celebrities. That  only increases their reach and solidifies the company’s brand authority.

4. Embracing new technologies: Domino’s

Most brands fail to incorporate new technologies fast enough, but Domino’s pizza has not only managed to do just that but also stay ahead of the curve by constantly innovating their mobile ordering experience. The company has incorporated Twitter into its ordering process by offering a “tweet-to-order” option and has recently introduced its very own messenger chatbot “DOM The Pizza Bot”.

Their approach to social media branding is refreshing, to say the least.  They also pushed forward a campaign where users could visit their website, make their own pizza and share the design on different social media channels.

5. Customer experience is the best marketing: Slack

A collaboration tool used by teams to communicate and share files more effectively, Slack currently has over 2 million active daily users. What even more amazing is that the company didn’t really launch a massive marketing campaign. In fact, its success can only be attributed to the outstanding customer experience. Slack not only receives but also responds to more than 10,000 Tweets per month. Their Twitter Feed is home to “Slack Wall of Love”, a place dedicated to showcasing all the love Slack has been receiving from its users.

Your number one priority should always be building brand awareness. Regardless of whether you’re working in business-to-consumer or business to business fields. Why? Because people would not be investing in your products and services unless they know and trust your brand. Social media branding is an effective tool for maintaining a consistent brand image in order to build authority, increase customer engagement, boost loyalty and make your brand memorable.

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

Factors That Influence Consumer Purchasing Decisions

Using Lead Scoring to Identify Your Best Prospects

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Although one of your main goals should be to capture as many potential leads as possible, it’s worth mentioning that not all leads are the same. Some leads are more qualified than others–and the last thing you’ll want to do is waste time trying to nurture low-quality leads when there may be other prospects that are ready to advance through the sales funnel. The way to ensure that you’re dedicating your resources to the best leads that are available is through the use of lead scoring.

What Is Lead Scoring?media mix

Lead scoring helps you to separate your leads in terms of how far along they are in the sales funnel and what needs to be done to nurture them. By using a scoring system, you can more easily identify which leads have more interest in your products or services. By simply looking at the scores you’ve automatically assigned to your leads, you’ll be able to tell if:

  • They need more marketing content
  • They’re ready to engage with a sales rep
  • They’ve already made a purchase and need additional direction

With proper lead scoring, you won’t waste time trying to convert a sale with a lead who still needs to read or view more content to make a more informed decision about your brand. Doing this not only wastes resources, but it also risks alienating the lead by putting too much pressure on them. On top of that, it allows you to ignore low scoring leads that aren’t likely to convert in favor of those that are.

5 Types of Landing Pages To Increase Your Lead Conversion Rate

How To Score Your Leads

At its basic core, lead scoring involves assigning points to each lead based on certain criteria. The more points the lead has, the more qualified they are. The following are a few of the criteria that you should use to assign points to your leads:

Lead demographics

The closer they are to your buyer persona, the stronger a lead they become. Some of the information that can help you score a lead based on their demographic includes the industry they belong to, their company, where they are located, their age, their gender, their education level, their job title, and more. The closer they are to your ideal customer, the more likely they are to become a customer.

The biggest challenge in scoring your leads based on their demographics is collecting the information you need to determine what their demographics are. You’ll want to ask certain questions in your online forms so that when they sign up for your email, you’ll immediately have enough information to score them based on their demographics.

However, you’ll want to be careful about asking too much or asking questions that may be deemed to personal as this can scare leads away from submitting the form. What you can do is ask some basic questions on your initial form, then send out occasional surveys to help you gather more information.

Lead behaviors

In addition to scoring your leads based on who they are, you’ll also want to score them based on what they do. The way they navigate your site and engage with your brand online can tell you a lot about how ready they are to convert. The following are a few metrics you can use to score your leads based on their behaviour:

  • Page views – The more pages that a lead has been to on your site, the more interested they likely are in your brand. A lead that has explored your site is a much stronger prospect than one who has only been to one or two pages.attraction marketing
  • Website visits – The more a lead visits your site, the more interested they are likely to be. It’s important to understand that a lead isn’t always going to be interested on their first visit.
  • Specific pages seen – What pages the lead has been to matters. For example, a lead that has read through your product pages and that has visited your e-commerce page is much stronger than a lead who has only been to a few pages on your blog.
  • Offers converted – Leads that have signed up for your email newsletter or who have downloaded free offers (such as eBooks or whitepapers) have likely developed a certain level of trust in your brand.
  • Email engagement – Even if a lead has signed up to your email, it doesn’t mean that they are necessarily strong prospects. If they’ve never opened your email, it means that they may have just been taking advantage of one of your offers and aren’t actually interested in your brand. However, a lead that has opened multiple emails is more than likely interested.
  • Social engagement – Leads that engage on social media with your brand, such as sharing, liking, or commenting on content, are likely to be strong prospects.

These are some of the metrics you’ll want to use to score your leads. Keep in mind that you can give leads negative scores for certain demographic information you gather about them or certain behaviours (such as not opening your emails). This will allow you to identify both good leads and poor leads.

Search Engine Optimization Techniques

Which Is Best For Me?: Growth Driven Design vs. Traditional Web Design

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Both growth-driven design and traditional web design can be successful if you implement them effectively. The biggest difference between them is that a traditional website is built all at once, while growth driven design evolves. This makes a growth driven design more adaptable to the changing needs of your business, your customers, and technology. A traditional web design will often require a complete redesign to adapt to major changes–but that doesn’t mean that a traditional web design can’t be effective as well.

So how do you determine which type of web design will best suit the needs of your brand? The following is a more in-depth look into the differences between the two types of web design to help you decide which will best suit your needs.

The Optimization Of A Website

With a traditional website, you have to make use of the data you have to make the best possible design choices. In most cases, you may not have a lot of data yet since your website isn’t up and running. This means that you’re going to have to make a lot of guesses about your audience and your strategy.

With a growth driven design, you start off with a launchpad site that helps to collect data. You can then use that data to build your website over time. The more data you collect, the more you can add to or adjust your site. This way, your website can better reflect the information you have about your audience. This lets you continuously improve your site based on the desired path of your customers.

The Cost Of Designing A Website

A lot of brands invest a significant amount of money into their traditional web design because they understand that their website is going to have a huge impact on the success of their online marketing strategy. It’s not uncommon for a medium-sized business to put anywhere between $15,000 and $100,000 into their website. A launch pad website will costs less to build then a full blown website.

Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

However, this is only when comparing the initial costs. A growth driven design doesn’t require a lot for the launchpad site, but it will require a budget to continuously collect data and add to the website month after month. A traditional website’s budget is mostly spent on the initial launch, unless you decide on a website redesign later.

When comparing the costs, understand that a traditional web design will be more expensive in the short-term. However, consider the overall budget. Factoring in the long-term costs of growth driven design, there’s not a huge overall difference between the two designs. Keep in mind that the trial-and-error nature of a growth driven design can help offset continuous costs.

The Time Spent On Your Website

A growth driven design requires constant analysis of your website’s data in order to continually update your website throughout the year instead of just during the web development phase. This is done periodically; for example, every month or every six weeks (However, you’ll usually be billed monthly). Although a traditional website design does still require constant content creation as well as the need to track certain metrics in order to make strategic adjustments to your marketing strategies, the website itself will essentially be set in stone, which means not nearly as many resources need to be dedicated to your website.

These are some of the differences between implementing a traditional web design and a growth driven design. The main difference is that with a growth driven design, you’ll need to continue building your site over the long term, whereas once you launch a traditional website, you’re done until you decide to do a redesign. Yes, a growth driven design needs your continuous attention, but you may get more out of it as a result.

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What’s Trending in Marketing For November 2018

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Businesses that stay up to date with all the latest marketing trends and news are more likely to see success due to the ability to adjust their marketing strategies accordingly as a result. As such, we like to highlight marketing news and trends every month as well as provide a bit of insight on how you can improve your marketing. The following are the latest marketing trends, news, and tips that we think are worth noting this November.

Noteworthy Marketing News

Google Launches AdLingo

Google recently launched its conversational marketing platform “AdLingo.” AdLingo provides the first conversational ad format outside of messaging apps, allowing advertisers to deliver ads that query users as well as respond to them. Read up on the ins and outs of the new AdLingo feature and why it matters to marketers at Marketing Land.

Pinterest Updates Ads Manager And Adds Product Pins Features

Ahead of the holiday season, Pinterest has improved its Ads Manager tool by allowing advertisers to choose business goals, select pins they want to promote, and to select an audience. They have also rebuilt their Product Pins system by adding stock information and dynamic pricing. Find out more about the changes made to their Ads Manager and Product Pins features by reading Marketing Land’s write-up.

Facebook Working On Connected TV Device

Facebook appears to be expanding its reach even further as they are rumored to be working on a connected TV device that will work in a similar fashion to Amazon’s Fire Stick or Roku. The Facebook TV rumor is explored in more detail in Marketing Land’s article, which also goes into the impact it could have on marketers.

Pandora Announces Ad Distribution Agreement With SoundCloud

Pandora has been busy making moves to become a major platform for advertisers. Not only has Pandora finally launched its own analytics tool, they also announced a new partnership with SoundCloud. According to Pandora, the partnership will make them the biggest digital audio advertising marketplace in the U.S. and will expand their addressable audience to 100 million. Marketing Land’s article goes into more detail about Pandora’s recent developments.

8 Tips on Social Media Best Practices For Your Business

Improving Your Marketing Program

Learn About The Differences Between Smart Display And Custom Intent Campaigns

AdWords continues to be a valuable marketing tool, which is why we recently explored two of their newest PPC options, Smart Display Campaigns and Custom Intent Campaigns. Check out our article to find out what the differences between the two features are and how they can benefit you.

The Importance of Social Media Engagementsocial media

One of the common mistakes advertisers make is to focus on their following instead of on engagement. Our recently published article highlights the importance of social media engagement and goes over several tips on how to improve your engagement on social media.

Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

Knowing the differences between traditional marketing and digital marketing will help to better inform your overall marketing campaign. We recently explored the differences between digital and traditional marketing, from the long-term and short-term impact to the costs and more.

Pew Reveals Relevant New Marketing Data

The Pew Research Center recently revealed new data that might surprise marketers. For example, broadband Internet penetration remains at only 65 percent amongst U.S. adults and that smartphone-only Internet usage has increased from 12 percent to 20 percent over two years. Head to Marketing Land for a more in-depth look into Pew’s recent marketing research.

Survey Reveals More Customers Plan To Use Amazon For Holiday ShoppingAmazon For Holiday Shopping

Amazon’s marketplace domination continues as a recent survey conducted by Survata revealed that the majority of holiday shoppers plan on using Amazon over any other online platform. In fact, the survey showed that online shoppers prefer Amazon 3-to-1 over Google. Check out what else the holiday shopping survey revealed at Marketing Land.

Marketers Focusing Primarily On Black Friday

A Nanigans study revealed that only five percent of retailers that responded are focusing any of their ad budget on late-season shoppers, while 25 percent of ad budgets will be spent on Black Friday weekend. Read Marketing Land’s article to find out more details about the holiday ad budget study.

Website Redesign Checklist
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What’s Trending in Marketing For October 2018

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There’s a lot going on this October in the marketing world, from the waves Nike has made with its new advertising campaign to the addition of new features to social channels such as Twitter and LinkedIn. Read on to find out more about this month’s marketing trends.

Noteworthy Marketing News

Nike’s controversial Colin Kaepernick ad proves to be a smart strategy

https://youtu.be/-hIc_epqfI0

Brands tend to shy away from taking controversial stances in fear of alienating part of their customer base. Nike showed no such fear when it ran its Kaepernick commercial with the tagline “Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything.” Although Nike took a lot of heat for its stance, upon closer look it’s obvious that it was a very carefully thought out strategy. USA Today examines the strategy in which Nike targets the up and coming Generation Z, a generation who will soon make up the biggest part of Nike’s target audience.

Vidyard Integration Provides HubSpot With On-Board Video Capability

HubSpot, the popular inbound marketing and sales platform, has recently introduced the ability to add videos, add interactive layers, and create video messaging within their dashboard with their new Vidyard business video platform. Learn more about these new video capabilities in Martech Today’s rundown of the new features.

Twitter Unveils Audio-Only Broadcasting Feature

Responding to the demand for audio-only broadcasts as well as the general popularity of podcasts, Twitter recently introduced a new audio-only broadcast feature to its channel and to Periscope. Read more about Twitter’s new feature at Marketing Land.

LinkedIn’s new Dynamic Ad product provides businesses with the ability to create, manage, and track their campaigns and includes new features, such as pre-built templates and auto-translation capabilities. Check out what else you can do with LinkedIn’s Dynamic Ad campaigns by reading the write-up on the new feature at Marketing Land.

Video Marketing Ideas: Using Storytelling In Social Media

Improving Your Marketing Program

What To Expect From the Future Of Email

Email marketing has been around for a long time, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t new ways to improve your email campaign. Learn about the new email marketing trends brands are employing to create innovative new email campaigns that will soon become the standard.

Taking An Omnichannel Approachomnichannel

In this day and age, there are countless ways to reach your target audience, whether it’sthrough TV commercials, blog posts, social media, or mobile, to name a few. By making sure that you establish a presence on multiple channels, you’ll have a much better chance at reaching your audience. This is known as an omnichannel approach. Be sure to learn about the best practices for taking an omnichannel approach in our article outlining the strategy.

How To Write For Search And For Brand

There’s a fine balance between writing content that’s effectively optimized to help bring in more organic traffic and writing for your brand. Find out how to strike this balance by reading our tips on writing for both search and brand.

Email Marketing Metrics You Should Keep In Mind & What They Mean

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

New Pew Survey Reveals Facebook User Engagement is Down

social media

A recent study by the Pew Research Center revealed that 42 percent of Facebook users have spent less time engaging on Facebook on a daily basis, while 26 percent have deleted the Facebook app from their phones. For more details about marketing trends relating to the decrease of Facebook user engagement, read the summary on Marketing Land.

 

Why Retailers Need To Invest In Better Service And Faster Checkouts

GroundTruth published a survey-based report on marketing trends that provides insight into how physical retail stores can continue to compete in an era where online shopping is growing significantly. Learn how you can improve your physical retail location by checking out the results of the report on Marketing Land.

Connected TV Impressions Increase By 106 Percent Since 2016

Innovid recently published a new marketing trends report on the growth of Connected TV in a world where the audience for video content is as big and fragmented as its ever been. Find out how Connected TV could benefit your video content strategy by reading more about the study.

How Creativity and Data Driven Marketing Help Develop Marketing Campaigns

social media marketing

Mobile Marketing Trends To Keep Track Of In 2018

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Mobile marketing has taken its place over the past few years as one of the most important marketing strategies that you can implement. This should be no surprise, considering the fact that mobile devices accounted for almost 50 percent of the world’s web page views last year. Because of this, it’s important that you keep your eye on mobile marketing trends that could potentially improve the success of your mobile marketing strategy. The following are a number of mobile marketing trends that have caught on in 2018 worth taking note of:

  1. Playable Ads

    Playable ads help improve engagement since they allow users to interact with the ad. According to a recent survey, some 71 percent of advertisers who experimented with playable ads found them to be effective.

  2. Live Streaming

    Live streams, such as through Facebook Live or Periscope, give viewers a sense that they are part of something exclusive since they are viewing content that can’t be accessed if it’s missed. Many people will view live streams from their mobile phones because it allows them to partake no matter where they are.

  3. Progressive Web Apps

    Offering a progressive web app makes it easier for consumers to access your website, will make your website load quicker, and will greatly improve the user experience.

  4. Mobile First Indexing

    Mobile first indexing refers to your website’s mobile ranking. This is based on how mobile-friendly your website is and requires that your site load quickly, be displayed properly, and be user-friendly on mobile devices.

  5. Augmented Reality

    AR can help consumers interact with products or ads in real time using their smartphones. For example, using an app, you can take a picture of a food product. The app can then pull up a recipe that you can use that product in.

  6. Ephemeral Content

    Ephemeral content is content that lasts a short period of time before disappearing. SnapChat is a platform focused on ephemeral content. Ephemeral content can be effective because your audience won’t put off watching or reading it knowing that they could potentially miss out.

  7. Voice

    Voice is going to become more and more important as it replaces typing, especially on mobile devices and with the growing popularity of virtual assistants. As a result, voice search is something to keep in mind while implementing your SEO strategy.

  8. Quick Load Times

    Mobile users are often looking for specific things while on the move, which means that if your site doesn’t load quickly on mobile, your bounce rate is likely to be high. Quick load times are a must in the age of mobile use.

  9. Micro Moments

    Micro moments refer to the brief moments that consumers pull their phones out to look something up. Identifying your target audience’s micro moments will make it easier to target them effectively.

    Read our article: How First Person Experience Videos Can Make An Impact On Your Video Marketing Strategy

Keeping track of mobile marketing trends can help you discover new mobile marketing tactics that could benefit your marketing campaign. These are some of the mobile marketing strategies that are gaining steam in 2018 that are worth looking into.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

What’s Trending In Marketing For August 2018

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

Noteworthy Marketing News

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

Improving Your Marketing Program

20 Tips To Improve Your Website Redesign Process

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

 

8 Tips On Social Media Best Practices For Your Business

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

 

What Is Digital Storytelling: How To Improve Your Effortsdigital storytelling

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

 

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

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

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

Discover how to improve your brand marketing strategy using Amazon Alexa

multipurpose video campaignHow Overstock.com Created A Multipurpose Video Campaign

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

 

SLIF Attendees Share What Excites & Concerns Them About The Future

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

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content marketing

Content Marketing Trends to Track in 2018

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

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

Looking for more trends? Click here.

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

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

competitive advantage

4 Competitive Advantage Examples That Could Improve Your Marketing Efforts

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

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

1. Pricing

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

2. Product Or Service Differentiation

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

3. Processes

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

4. Authority

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

 

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

30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips

visual storytelling

Visual Storytelling Techniques That Will Take You To The Next Level

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

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

For more Storytelling techniques, read more here.

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

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

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