What is CPM Advertising and Should You Use It?

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There are many KPIs that you can track in order to judge the performance of your ads. One of these metrics is CPM, or cost per mille, which translates into cost per thousand impressions. CPM indicates how much you’re paying for every thousand impressions the ad is earning. However, there are other KPIs that you can use as well, such as CPC and CPA. These KPIs indicate how much you’re paying for your ads. When implementing a new ad campaign, you’ll have to choose which KPI to use, meaning you’ll have to bid in either CPM or CPC. The question is, when should you be using CPM advertising? CPM Advertising

CPM Advertising vs CPC Advertising

If you’re running an ad campaign with the intention of driving brand awareness and brand engagement, then CPM is a good option to go with when bidding on ad space. This means that you will set a specific amount that you’ll pay for every thousand impressions that your ad receives. If you’re running your ad on Facebook, then using CPM makes more sense because your goal is to get your ad shown to as many people as possible. Of course, you’ll want to make sure that you target a specific audience when you do this. You don’t want to pay to have your ad shown to people who are not a part of your target audience as this will result in a waste of money. It’s also worth noting that CPM provides value in that consumers may be shown your ad more than once. Multiple impressions can help keep your brand at the top of a consumer’s mind.

Similar Article: Inside Adwords: Exploring The Differences Between Smart Display Campaigns & Custom Intent Campaigns

If you’re running search ads with the intention of driving conversions, then CPC is the way to go. This is because a search ad, such as a Google AdWords ad, is going to be shown to potentially millions of people. Using CPM, this could end up costing you a significant amount. If you’re trying to drive conversions, impressions won’t matter nearly as much as clicks. You want people who see the ad to click it — only then do you get value out of your ad. It’s why you should use CPC for search ads instead of CPM.

Using CPM Advertising

When it comes down to it, CPC or even CPA is the better option if the goal of your ad campaign is to increase conversions or acquisitions. However, that doesn’t mean CPM doesn’t have its place. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, then clicks don’t necessarily matter as much as impressions. If this is the case, then you’ll want to consider using CPM advertising.

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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How to Use Personal Selling During the Decision Making Stage

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The final article in this series, focuses on the final stage of the buyer’s journey: the decision making stage. Previously our view of inbound marketing was from a marketing heavy stance. Here, we’ll shift to sales and how to use personal selling during the decision making stage. Your prospective buyers have finally made it to the bottom of the funnel. All of your hard work with content, landing pages, social media and marketing has paid off.  Your leads are now ready for sales.

At the decision making stage, your buyer is already 60% of the way towards their decision and you can attribute that virtually all to marketing. You’ve heard the adage, “You can bring a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink,” and this couldn’t be any more true in inbound marketing. And in all likelihood, despite some cleverly crafted and personalized lead nurturing campaigns, the personal aspect of your buyer’s journey with your company’s sales team is just beginning.

Deliverable Content

A more traditional approach to getting buyers to make a decision was to draft bottom of the funnel content. This used a “Speak to Sales” or “Request a Consultation” button to get sales involved in the buying process. Many buyers roll their eyes at the prospect of speaking to a sales person, so the new approach deals more with deliverable, downloadable content.

While marketing does close to 60% of the work in getting your leads sales ready, content’s job isn’t quite done. Your buyers are looking for the final piece of your content puzzle to help them know that going with your brand is the best thing for them. Offering deliverable content with personal selling is an excellent way to optimize your brand’s efforts during the decision making stage.

Content at this stage of the buyer’s journey is generally geared towards giving the buyer added value. Offers can include case studies, free assessments, service comparison, or product literature. Of course, the content you tailor to your buyer all goes back to your buyer personas.

Personal Selling in the Decision Making Stage 

Once marketing has done their job, qualified their leads for sales, and your leads have shown the behaviors associated with sales readiness it’s time to bring in the sales team.

For your sales team, personal selling will deal  with getting inside your buyer’s head and asking questions they’re asking themselves. Some of the fundamental questions a buyer will likely be asking as they vet potential sellers are:

  1. What specifics of your product or service do the buyers typically evaluate?
  2. How do buyers evaluate those products or services?
  3. What sets your brand apart for buyers?
  4. Who is involved in the decision and how to their perspectives differ when making the decision?

By answering those basic questions for your buyer before a sales call is even made will make a huge difference for how well prepared your sales team is. Also, it’s critical for marketing to communicate with sales and pinpoint exactly what your buyer’s journey look like. This way, sales and marketing are on the same page and your buyer isn’t left with redundancy during their personal interactions.

How do you  drive website conversions throughout the buyer’s journey? Find out by clicking here. 

Tailoring Sales to the Buyer

Finally, let’s focus on tailoring a sales presentation to your buyer. Inbound salespeople are tasked with advising a prospective buyer on how your brand’s unique position fits the context of the buyer’s need, but that is the bottom of the four step inbound sales process. The four step inbound sales process includes identifying the buyers problem, connecting with prospective buyers, and exploring solutions. Smarketing helps align those stages of the buyer’s journey to the inbound sales processes.

The presentation your sales team give to a sales-ready lead should be 100% tailored to your buyer. Hopefully, you’re already leveraging every possible avenue to identify your buyer on a personal level and create a sales presentation that hits home. Those types of presentations may include consultations, demos, or guided case studies where sales takes a buyer through the information.

Just the Beginning of Smarketing

The decision making stage is only the beginning of your sales and marketing efforts for your brand and personal selling is the cornerstone to your sales-marketing marriage. Hopefully through this series of articles, you’ve been able to see with your own eyes the value of smarketing. Inbound is only the beginning of how your sales and marketing come together. The fruits sales and marketing produce will be immeasurable over time.

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

 

 

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What is Digital Storytelling: How To Improve Your Efforts

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When you’re marketing your brand, you’re telling consumers a story. In that story, they are the protagonists. Their problem or need is the inciting incident of that story, and the solution you present is the climax to that story. Effective storytelling is important in not only helping consumers identify what their problems and needs are and presenting your products or services as a solution, but in helping them to relate to your business on a personal level.

What is digital storytelling? It’s the use of strategies across all online platforms to help convey your message to your audience, whether it’s through videos, blog posts, images or tweets, to name a few methods. The following are a few tips that will help make your digital storytelling efforts more effective:

Align Yourself With Your Audience long form video1

Your audience doesn’t want to have their views or opinions challenged or changed. That’s not what your goal should be. The most effective stories are those that agree with the values of your audience. Here it allows them to feel smart and secure, thereby making it easier for them to see themselves as the protagonist of the story you’re telling, which, in turn, makes it easier for them to relate to the narrative overall. This means that you need to know who your audience is in order to be an effective storyteller.

Use Real Stories

The one thing consumers relate to the most is other consumers. Use your previous customers to tell your story. For example, banks often produce video content focusing on small business owners who became successful as a result of their small business loans, which makes their brand more relatable and empathetic.

More Tips On Digital Marketing? Free Digital Marketing Tools To Cope With COVID-19

Tell Smaller Stories

You don’t want your digital storytelling to become too complicated or the message will get lost. Keep it simple and to the point. One way to do this is to focus on smaller stories. For example, instead of showing how one of your products has dozens of benefits or uses, showcase how one customer was able to solve one specific issue using your product.

Smaller stories take less time to tell, which means your audience is more likely to read through your content or watch your videos all the way through — and it also makes your content more shareable.

Avoid Being Too Promotional

Telling your audience to buy your product because it’s cheap and it works well isn’t storytelling. There’s no way that a consumer can connect with that message on a personal level, considering that the average consumer is attacked with extra promotional advertisements daily, it’s the last thing they’re going to want to see. The trick to avoiding being excessively promotional is to focus on your audience, what they want, and not on you and what you want.

Storytelling is the most effective strategy for relaying your message to your audience. These tips will strengthen your digital storytelling efforts to help build stronger relationships with your audience.

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE MOBILE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

social media tips for business

Covid-19 Social Media Tips For Businesses

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COVID-19 has resulted in an uncertain situation that nobody has experience with. As such, many companies are stumbling around in the dark trying to figure out how to proceed. Some businesses are even cutting back on their marketing budgets due to a decrease in sales. In fact, marketing your business is more critical than it’s ever been. It’s your marketing strategy that will help get your business through the pandemic and allow it to emerge on the other side — whenever that may be. One particular marketing strategy you should focus on is social media. However, your success depends on how effective your social media strategy is during this time. Here are a few Covid-19 social media tips for businesses to continue to reach a broader audience and to build stronger relationships to set yourself up for future success.

social media tips for business Social Media In The Time Of Covid-19

It would be understandable to assume that social media usage is up at this point in time. Unemployment is sky-high and a significant amount of people who are still employed are now working remotely. With that in mind, you would think that more people would be on social media in search of connection than ever before. While there is a 70 percent increase in social media app usage, engagement rates have actually gone down. The following are a few potential reasons for this:

  • People are using social differently – People are more isolated than they’ve ever been, especially in areas with stay-at-home orders or if they’re under quarantine. As a result, they are on social media a lot. They’re just not engaging with brands. This is because they’re using social to connect to their friends and family, not necessarily to do research into products and services.
  • Businesses aren’t leveraging social correctly – Sporadically posting content on your social channels without any kind of plan won’t do you any good. There needs to be a reason behind your social media actions. Simply trying to engage followers for the sake of engaging them won’t help you or them. In order to see results, you need to establish goals, which requires you to create a social media strategy.

Like this article? Also read 8 Tips on Social Media Best Practices For Your Business

Social Media Tips For Businesses During The Pandemic

Despite a lack of social media engagement, you should not ignore the opportunity to use social as a marketing tool. Social media can be a very effective way to reach your audience and to build stronger relationships throughout the pandemic. With that in mind, the following are a few social media tips for businesses:

1. Provide Useful Content

If you want your audience to engage, you need to provide them with something of value. What are they looking for? Odds are, they’re not looking for advertisements. Create content that you know will be useful to them.  If your current content marketing strategy is stale or isn’t having the impact you desire, consider trying new things. For instance, begin creating video content to post to your social channels.

2. Don’t Avoid The Topic, But Don’t Be Too Opportunistic

Providing useful content on COVID-19 can help your audience. People are desperate for all kinds of information related to the pandemic, whether it’s concerning their personal health or their financial health. As such, don’t just pretend like nothing’s happening. Address the topic. However, it’s important that you don’t come across as opportunistic. For instance, you may not want to begin selling masks with your logo on it. It will come across as if you’re taking advantage of the pandemic.

3. Stay Up To Date With Social Media Trends

The world has never been like this before, which means it’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen. Because of this, you need to keep an eye on both marketing trends as well as social media trends in general. For instance, people have begun to depend more heavily on e-commerce, even if they don’t have stay-at-home orders in their area. If you offer e-commerce, then informing your audience (especially offline customers) and encouraging them to use it via social media is a good idea.

4. Listen To Your Audience

Your audience’s wants, needs, desires, and fears may be changing during this time. Be sure to listen to what they have to say. You can do this by using various social media listening tools to track conversations about your brand, your industry, and the pandemic in general.

5. Invest In Influencer Marketing

Despite the fact that social media engagement is down, influencer marketing is as strong as ever. Influencers have a deep connection with their audience, which means that they are an excellent way to reach them. In fact, influencers may be a better option than traditional marketing tactics at the moment, such as TV commercials or radio ads, to name a few.

Leverage Your Social Media Channels During The Pandemic

Use these social media tips for businesses to continue to reach a broader audience and to build stronger relationships. By using social media during COVID-19 effectively, you can set yourself up for future success.

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Five Tips for Effective Inbound Marketing for Healthcare

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Quality healthcare has always been important, but it’s even more important during the pandemic. More people are searching for health-related information than ever before. As such, it’s critical that your healthcare business is in a position to be found. To achieve this, you need to implement a strong, long-term inbound marketing strategy. A good inbound marketing strategy can help drive awareness of your business and help generate more leads. It’s why you should work with a reputable healthcare marketing agency. With that in mind, the following are five essential inbound marketing tips for healthcare businesses:

1. Add Educational Content To Your Website

One of the most important goals you should have is to build trust with your audience. Trust is essential to any healthcare business; after all, your customers are often putting their lives in your hands. With that in mind, you should add educational content to your website. This content shouldn’t promote your services or products. Instead, it should educate your audience. The more informed they are, the more confident they will be in making a purchasing decision. Not to mention that it helps build your brand authority, which directly increases trust.

COVID-19 Content

An example of educational content might be a page dedicated to COVID-19. This page could explain what the symptoms are, what patients should do if they exhibit symptoms, and how they should seek help if needed. Not only are you providing valuable information that can save lives, but you’re also providing relevant information that can build trust.

2. Build A Compelling Website

Your website is the foundation of your inbound marketing efforts. It doesn’t matter how good your content is if your website is poor. The following are just a few important elements of a compelling website:

  • No technical issues – Broken links and slow loading pages can hinder the user experience. Few visitors will stay on your site for more than a few seconds if they’re encountering technical problems.
  • Visually pleasing layout – Your website should be visually pleasing. A poorly designed website that looks outdated will give visitors reservations about your healthcare company’s quality.
  • Easy navigation – Your site should be easy to navigate. Make it easy for your visitors to jump from one section to another and to find what they’re looking for.  Besides a solid navigation menu, you should also use internal links to help guide your visitors to related content and pages.
  • Ability to contact you – Whether visitors have questions or want to schedule appointments, it’s vital that you make it easy for them to contact you. Your contact information should be on every page. However, you should also have a page dedicated to your contact information where visitors can fill out a form. You should also think about incorporating a live chat or chatbot feature to provide basic information and guidance.

3. Maximize Your Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing has been an incredibly cost-effective marketing strategy since the beginning of online marketing. Healthcare companies, in particular, can benefit from email marketing. For example, you can create an email newsletter that leads and customers alike can sign up for. You can use this newsletter to educate your audience and to build trust in your brand. You can achieve this by using your newsletter to provide new health information,  healthcare tips, and office updates. A good email marketing strategy can allow you to nurture more leads and encourage more appointments.

4. Use Social Media

Social media is one of the best ways to engage directly with your target audience. Many people turn to social media in order to seek healthcare-related advice. In fact, it’s estimated that 40 percent of people say that they use information they found on social media to make health-related decisions. If you establish a regular presence on your social media channels, you’ll be able to offer professional advice to potential patients. As a result of such engagement, you can build trust. Not to mention that any interactions you have will be public, which will help to generate more brand awareness.

5. Create A Blog

While you should have educational content throughout your website, a blog can be particularly helpful. A blog allows you to publish new content on a regular basis. It also allows you to publish content that may be relevant to a specific time. For instance, a post on health-care-related laws passed during the pandemic would be a great blog post. However, you can use your blog to post about all kinds of general disease information.

An effective healthcare inbound marketing strategy is essential to your company’s success, especially at this point in time. Although these marketing tips are incredibly effective, they do require time, experience, and expertise to implement successfully. As such, you should strongly consider working with a professional healthcare marketing agency.

digital marketing for manufacturers

How Marketing Helps Critical Manufacturers During Covid-19

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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all businesses, both big and small, in some way. For most businesses, the impact has unfortunately been negative. This is especially true for manufacturers. It’s estimated that around 89 percent of all manufacturing companies have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. However, there are things that you can do to maintain your business despite COVID-19. For instance, effectively marketing your manufacturing brand can not only help get you through the pandemic, but it can also set you up for future success.

Why is Digital Marketing for Manufacturers so Important?

This isn’t the first time we have experienced a serious economic depression. The Great Depression hurt businesses throughout the country almost a century ago. What we learned from that depression is that companies that survived or even thrived didn’t wait for public demand for their products or services to increase. They advertised their brand aggressively and paid attention to consumer behavior.

Digital Marketing

A significant number of people are working from home. Many of your prospects and existing clients may not even be working. Whether they’re working or not, you can still reach them via digital marketing. In fact, digital marketing may be more effective than ever since your audience has more time on their hands to engage. As such, you have the opportunity to build stronger relationships that can pay off in the future.

Paying attention to trends within your industry can help you capitalize on them. For instance, local sourcing has increased and people are shopping online more frequently during the pandemic. As far as manufacturing goes, there has been an increased demand for steel, packaging, plastic bags, hand sanitizers, and more. Many manufacturing brands have temporarily switched over to the production of these in-demand items to keep their businesses afloat. Those companies that do this need to be able to market the fact that they are doing this.

Tips For Marketing Your Manufacturing Company During COVID-19

It’s critical that you stay up to date with current trends and that you embrace digital marketing during the pandemic. With that in mind, the following are a few tips to effectively market your manufacturing company during COVID-19:

  • Host Webinars – Because webinars are on the longer side and are initially streamed live, you don’t always get the biggest audience. Now that everyone has time on their hands, you’re likely going to have more viewers tuning in to watch any webinars that you host. Webinars are a great way to showcase brand authority, educate viewers, and generate leads. You can also record them and publish them later as new video content.
  • Engage On Social Media – Because people are on lockdown and often self-isolating, they are going to spend more time on social media. People are desperate for social connections during these difficult times. This means that there are more opportunities for you to engage with followers on social media in a meaningful way. As a result, you’ll build stronger relationships and boost your brand’s reputation and awareness.
  • Upload Speciality Presentations – Now is the time to nurture prospects as well as continue nurturing existing customers. Specialty presentations can be incredibly effective at boosting your credibility and your brand authority.
  • Implement Marketing Automation – If business has slowed down, then you’ll want to ensure that your marketing efforts are as cost-effective as possible. Marketing automation tools can help you automate repetitive tasks, thereby saving you time and money. Not to mention that automation can help improve your reach and engagement, thereby resulting in a potentially higher ROI.

COVID-19 Resources For Manufacturers

As a manufacturer, odds are you need all the help you can get during the pandemic. We understand this, which is why we would like to share the following resources that can help your brand continue to prosper despite economic uncertainty:

  • Digital Health Check – Now is an excellent time to identify how your digital marketing efforts are performing and how cost-effective they are. Perform a Digital Health Check for a free report on your digital marketing practices.
  • Defense Production Act – Find out what you need to know about the Defense Production Act and how it can affect your manufacturing business.
  • Free Digital Marketing Tools – Consider using these free marketing tools to help enhance your existing digital marketing efforts.

Embrace Digital Marketing for Manufacturing Companies Today

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make during the pandemic is to wait for things to get back to normal. You need to be proactive, which means that you should follow current trends and use digital marketing for manufacturing companies to increase your reach. Not only can this help you stay afloat during the pandemic, but it can also help you foster future success.

b2b marketing trends 2020

Guide to B2B Marketing During Covid-19

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Companies around the country are affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic. However, even if business is slower than normal, it does not mean that you should stop your marketing efforts. While you may not see short-term results during this pandemic, your marketing strategy can put you in the position to see results over the long-term. This is especially true once things get back to normal. With that in mind, the following are the steps you should take to improve your B2B digital marketing efforts during COVID-19.

1. Use The Time You Have To Your Advantage

One of the everyday challenges in business is to reach potential clients at the right time. During the pandemic, prospects and clients alike are going to have more free time on their hands. They may have had to shut up shop temporarily and are just waiting to open back up. Others may be working from home, which means that they may be working sporadically throughout the day. You can take advantage of the time your audience has by hosting webinars or producing more long-form content.

2. Re-Evaluate Your Audience’s Perception Of Value

As you know, the pandemic has changed the way we look at a lot of things. Many companies are re-evaluating what is important to them. They are also re-evaluating their budgets and their perception of value. You need to make sure that you stay on the same page as your prospects and clients. This means that you should re-evaluate what your audience’s perception of value is.

Identifying your customers’ current needs

Understanding that customers may not be purchasing products or services from you in the short-term doesn’t mean that you can’t offer value. Put yourself in their shoes. What kind of content will they find helpful during this time? How can you help them? Of course, not all of your clients’ companies may be suffering. Some may be thriving at the moment. Identifying these businesses is essential as you may be able to target them more effectively.

3. Engage Your Audience In A More Personal Way

Most businesses aren’t doing exceptionally well at the moment. Not to mention that people are, in general, somewhat on edge. There are countless reasons for this. People are worried about their companies. They are worried about their health. They are stuck at home under stay-at-home orders. With that in mind, generic sales pitches aren’t exactly going to win them over. Instead, you should focus on hyper-personalization across all channels.

Using hyper-personalization

Hyper-personalization is the use of behavioral and real-time data across multiple channels to personalize the prospect’s or customer’s experience. It’s different than traditional personalization in that you also use purchasing, browsing, and other real-time data. The result? First of all, you’ll get to know what your audience’s current needs are better. Secondly, you’ll create a unique experience tailored to those needs. Such an experience helps you build longer-lasting relationships.

4. Have A Plan For The Future

If COVID-19 has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t predict the future. Anything can happen, which is why you should make sure that you’re prepared. This means that you should have a plan in place in the event that it lasts longer than you expect. On the other hand, you should also plan for the end of the pandemic. When it does end, you will likely need to make more adjustments to your marketing strategy. Just keep in mind that an effective marketing strategy is one that can adapt to various situations. Using this guide should help you do just that.

Follow these steps to make sure that your digital marketing strategy is effective during the pandemic. It might not be apparent right away, but there are still marketing opportunities that you can take advantage of despite COVID-19.

 

user generated content

Sourcing User Generated Content

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One source of content generation you may not have tapped into yet is user-generated content. Content marketing is a critical component of any successful marketing strategy. However, it can take a lot of resources to produce your own content on a regular basis. Even if you’ve managed to regularly generate high-quality content, you should look for other ways to create new content for variety’s sake, such as high quality user generated content.

What Is User-Generated Content?

User-generated content refers to content created by consumers and not brands. Such content includes videos, pictures, reviews, articles, and more. For instance, if a consumer takes a picture of themselves using your product and posts it on Instagram, that’s user-generated content. The following are just a few of the benefits of user-generated content:

  • Free publicity

Your audience is essentially promoting your brand on your behalf. As a result, user-generated content can help increase brand awareness.

  • Free content

Creating your own content requires a lot of resources. User-generated content requires none — your audience is creating the content for you. While you don’t own it, you can share it and reap the benefits of it.

  • Positive word of mouth

Customers trust other customers more than they trust brands. Positive user-generated content can, therefore, help to boost your brand reputation by creating trust.

How To Source Usable Generated-Content

Considering how beneficial this free content can be, you’ll want to do everything you can to encourage it. However, the biggest challenge lies in the lack of control you have over the content. You can’t control the message, format, or quality, after all. But there are a few ways that you can guide your audience to create the content that will benefit you most. The following are a few tips on how to source high-quality user-generated content:

  • Encourage 

Don’t just wait for your audience to create content relevant to your brand. You need to encourage it. For instance, hold a contest on social media in which users vote on the best submission. You can then give the winner a prize. There are many ways that you can encourage content generation.

Utilize Marketing Audiences on Pinterest Today

  • Provide clear guidelines

If you’re looking for a specific type of content, then you need to provide guidelines. For example, if you want user reviews, consider providing a basic review format. Such a format could list three broad questions that users can answer in order to generate a review.

  • Provide content creation tips

Your audience does not consist of professional content creators. As such, provide tips that they can use to create higher quality content. For instance, if you’re holding a video creation contest on YouTube or on Instagram, provide your users with a list of basic filming tips. Such tips can help cut down on the amount of poor quality content that you might receive.

  • Offer an example

If you’re looking for a specific type of content, then provide an example. When users see what you’re looking for, it will help them create the kind of content you want. For instance, if you’re hosting a picture taking contest, upload a few pictures of your own that would be considered exceptional examples. By providing an example, you also make sure that users understand your instructions more clearly.

  • Identify the channel

Make sure that your audience knows where to send it. The last thing you want is users posting their content on different platforms or sending it to you via different channels. If you’re promoting a contest, specify what platform they should post to or what hashtag they should use. Provide detailed instructions on how to submit content. By making it clear what channel you’re using, it will be easier for you to track and organize user-generated content.

  • Open a line of communication

Provide a channel through which your audience can contact you. This channel should be specifically for users who are creating content. You can do this by providing a specific support email address, a phone number, or a page they can DM on social media.

  • Monitor performance

Track how the content users create for your brand is performing. By doing so, you can identify what types are the most effective. You can then adjust your guidelines and instructions to encourage the creation of that type of content.

Enhance your Strategy Today

User-generated content can go a long way towards boosting brand trust. Not to mention that it’s a great way to expand your content marketing strategy. As such, make sure that you encourage the creation of high-quality user content. You can do this by providing your audience with general guidance and encouragement to drive effective user-generated content creation.

25 Website Must Haves
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How to Use Pinterest for Your Content Marketing Strategy

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Pinterest is a very useful marketing tool to promote your brand using creative content. 88% of weekly “Pinners” have made a purchase based on content they saw from brands on Pinterest, yet only 28% of marketers are already using Pinterest.  This platform remains relevant in popularity and is used as a resource for craft and decorations, home building (hyperlink to first Pinterest blog) shopping, and more. Developing content that is useful and creative on this platform can help generate brand awareness and creatively attract customers to your product.

Starting up your Pinterest Account

When starting up your Pinterest marketing account, ensure that you sign up as a business account. Organize your content into multiple boards for various target segments or topics of interest relating to your brand. Pinterest is a visual platform, so it is vital to keep in mind the following factors in content creation:

  1. Use high quality, soft, and original images when possible
  2. Images without faces perform 23% higher on this platform
  3. Present information in creative and well-presented infographics
  4. Be sure to size your images correctly
  5. Simple is key

30 Ways to Boost Instagram Engagement and Following 

Increasing Pins and Reshares

Gaining a following on social media is a timely process, but there are some key tips to be successful on building your Pinterest account:

  1. Pin regularly.
  2. Use keywords for SEO
  3. Use promoted pins.
  4. Use Rich Pins to offer more detail than standard pins.
  5. Link your content to other boards and websites
  6. Include hovering pin buttonson your website.
  7. Post during Pinterest’s peak hours, which is between 2:00-4:00pm and 8:00-11:00pm.
  8. Invite other companies to collaborate on a board.

8 Ways That You Can Improve Your SEO

Pinterest Marketing Campaign Launch and Beyond

  1. Build a strategy that takes consumers from awareness to purchase in the buyer’s journey by taking advantage of Pinterest ad formats such as Promoted Video for awareness and Promoted Carousel for consideration.
  2. Because pinners are more likely to purchase new products at the beginning of their lifecycle, “heavy up” on media at the start of the campaign.
  3. Use Pinterest’s Audience Targeting feature to gain repeat purchases.

Whether your goal is to generate leads or increase brand awareness, Pinterest is a fun, creative, and effective tool for business marketing.

Click here to learn more about social media from our FREE Social Prospecting Workbook

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Marketing Trends 2

What’s Trending in Marketing for August 2020

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Staying current on marketing trends is especially important to assess whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with today’s evolving world. We know the difficulty of keeping up with these trends given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles highlight current August 2020 marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Hulu Launches Beta for Self-Serve Advertising Platform

In effort to combat the negative economic backlash of Covid-19, Hulu has created an opportunity for small businesses to use its platform. Hulu has recently launched a self-service advertisement program eligible for any company with a minimum ad budget as low as $500. The process is simple: a company creates and submits a 15-30 second creative video along with details on budget, date range, and an area to upload the ad to Hulu Ad Manager. Hulu approves or denies within 3 days. Brands also have the option to specify their target market by age, gender, genre and location. Hulu provides approved brands with a simple walk-through of set-up and launch. For this program, Hulu permits a maximum of one version of a creative video per campaign.

As part of its recent Enabling Dishonest Behavior Policy, Google Ads is banning any advertising for “spyware and surveillance technology” in both search and shopping starting August 11. Examples of services include fake passports, fake degrees or diplomas, drug test aids, exam or paper writing services, invalid reviews and clicks, and fake social media endorsements. Examples of unauthorized access includes hacking, cable-stealing, radar jamming technology, traffic signal changers, and phone/wiretapping. Google explains that its list is not exhaustive and only mentioned for example. Google exemplifies spyware as GPS trackers, cameras/recorders marketed for spying purposes, and software that monitors someone else’s texts and phone calls, with the exception of parents tracking underage children. Violators on Google Ads will receive a 7-day warning.

Social Short: Twitter Ad Engagement Drops, Snap Minis Launch, more brands pause Facebook Ads

Twitter’s ad revenues have fallen in the past years though daily active user rates have increased. However, Twitter’s CFO Ned Segal is confident in the rebuilding process of Twitter’s ad server. He expresses optimism for the future of advertisements on Twitter through the advantage the platform has for live events.  Snapchat reports a 17% increase in revenues. Though its audience is largely younger, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel found that the average number of users on the Discover page are in their thirties. Additionally, the platform has benefited from the increasing Facebook ad withdrawals. Twitter has also taken action against QAnon content, suspending thousands of accounts for sharing or associating with any “conspiracy theory-ridden content”.

Improving your Marketing Program

Lessons Learned: Buyer Persona Gone Wrong

Before a company can establish a solid marketing plan, it must be aware of the specific target markets or customer profiles it has the best chance to attract to its product or service. Creating a buyer persona is essential to effective attraction marketing. In order to perfect your approach in buyer persona launch, here are some common mistakes to avoid.

30 Ways to Boost Instagram Engagement & Following

Looking for ways to boost your social media brand presence? Knowing how to increase brand engagement on Instagram, the latest and hippest social media platform app, is a great start. People are online all day due to working from home. Virtual shopping has risen due to restrictions and pandemic fears. As we have geared toward a more online world, your brand’s presence on the web is more important now than ever. According to Forbes, 80% of Instagram users follow at least one business or brand, and 200 million users on Instagram visit business profiles daily. 70% of users turn to Instagram to look up a brand, and 60% learn about new products using Instagram. Now is the time to catch up with the competition that is already using these trends to their advantage.

Istanbul, Turkey – December 15, 2018: Person holding a brand new Apple iPhone X with Instagram profile on the screen. Instagram is an online mobile social networking service, launched in October 2010.

5 Ways to Improve Your B2B Marketing Strategy

B2B marketing can be a challenging endeavor, especially if you don’t have a clear cut marketing strategy in place. To have any hope of running a successful B2B marketing campaign, you’ll need to establish what your goals are. Once you’ve done so, you should implement marketing strategies that will support those goals and help you achieve them. The following are five B2B marketing tips that you should use to help improve your marketing efforts.

Free Digital Marketing Tools To Cope With COVID-19

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

No in-person events until 2nd half of 2021, marketers say

According to a recent Marketing Land survey of 300 people, 3 out of 10 people responded that they anticipate attending in-person events in the first half of 2021. In another survey, 70% of respondents plan to attend solely online events until a Covid-19 vaccine emerges.

U.S. Mobile Ad Spending Update

In March, E Marketer’s Mobile Ad Spending Report forecasted that the pandemic would cause a 20% increase in mobile ad spending, but they have now updated this expectancy and reduced it to 4.8% growth. Among mobile advertising results, location-based advertising has suffered, and gaming and streaming video apps have done well. This year’s lost growth in mobile ad spending will affect overall spending through at least 2024.

COVID-19 Is the Asteroid That Struck American Small Business

Positive news regarding the virus is 78% of small businesses report being able to survive 7 to 12 months or more with existing cash on hand, and 57% could last over a year. Restaurants suffered primarily, as there were over 133,000 business closures total and of the 26,000 Yelp restaurants that have been closed since March, 60% were now permanently closed. A majority of 92% of businesses report pivoting strategy in at least one way form the pandemic. The most common change was a creation of delivery channel, and 96% of businesses reported planning to keep some new services and channels post-pandemic, while 43% will maintain all changes. Find out more on Search Engine Land.

 

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