Ways You Can Improve Your Email Personalization

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Email marketing is one of the time-tested marketing strategies used by many businesses. And while it’s popular, many business owners and marketers struggle to get their email marketing campaigns to deliver the desired results. For many, their emails often go unnoticed or ignored by their audience. If this is the case, you’re not alone. The vast amount of emails people send and receive daily means that it’s easy for your message to get lost in the shuffle. And that is where email personalization comes in.

By tailoring your emails to each recipient, you can ensure your message stands out and grabs their attention. In a recent McKinsey report, 71% of consumers expected businesses to offer personalized communication, and 76% said they would likely feel frustrated if this didn’t happen. So, let’s discuss email personalization and explore effective ways to implement it in your marketing strategy.

email personalization

What is Email Personalization?

Email personalization is a powerful marketing technique that allows businesses to connect personally with their customers. It involves using subscriber data to create tailored email content that speaks directly to each recipient. This can include anything from addressing the recipient by name to sending personalized recommendations based on their shopping preferences.

The goal is to make the email more relevant and engaging for the recipient, increasing the likelihood that they will open it, read it, and take action. Personalizing emails also means sending out relevant, timely, and irresistible content to the recipient. This helps businesses improve their relationship marketing strategies, deliver value and drive more sales.

Why Personalize Your Emails?

Email marketing is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes, but it doesn’t always yield the expected results. This is especially true if you fail to personalize the emails to connect with the audience more deeply. Here are some reasons you should consider personalizing your emails.

  • It increases email’s open rates. Personalizing your emails, especially the subject line, can significantly increase the open rates. Making your emails more personal will make a better first impression and encourage more people to open up and engage with your content.
  • It drives engagement. When you personalize your emails, you’re showing your subscribers that you value them as individuals. This can build trust and encourage engagement with your brand. By providing a personalized experience, you’re more likely to foster long-term customer relationships.
  • It boosts your revenue. One of the most compelling reasons to personalize your emails is that it can increase revenue. People are likely to spend money with businesses that appreciate them and provide a personalized experience.

Email Personalization Strategies 

Now that you know the benefits of personalizing your email marketing, let’s explore some common strategies you can implement. It’s worth noting that personalization is the future of digital marketing, and now is the time to rethink how you communicate and interact with prospects. Here’s how you can make email personalization work for you.

Use Segmentation 

Customer segmentation is the foundation of most personalized email marketing strategies. It involves grouping subscribers or prospects into segments based on shared characteristics, such as gender, location, or organizational role. Using the data collected to segment subscribers, you can make each email seem like it was written specifically for them.

segmentation

To collect segmentation data, you must create an email sign-up form that is quick and easy to fill out. You must also collect useful information such as demographics, email frequency preferences, psychographics, etc. Additionally, you can use interactive elements and surveys to collect more data and refine your messaging to contacts. Integrating your email marketing tools with your CRM can also offer timely insights. This can help you send targeted messages based on what your subscribers do online.

Use Triggered Emails 

Triggered emails fall into the category of behavioral marketing and are a great way to make subscribers feel like you know them. You can send these emails based on subscribers’ actions, such as abandoning a cart, registering for an event, or changing profile information.

To make the most out of triggered emails, you want to send them at important moments, such as when a customer engages with your product or reaches a personal goal. You can also add subscriber tags to segment and target subscribers based on their actions. This will help you send relevant messaging to your contacts as their interests and needs change.

Use Personalized Content 

When your emails feel like they’re coming from a friend, subscribers will be more likely to engage with your brand or content. To achieve this, you should make your email copy friendlier. You should also avoid jargon and use language that your customers will understand and relate to.

Another way to add personality to your emails is to use humor. Humor is an excellent icebreaker and can help to establish a rapport with your prospects. By injecting a little humor into your emails, you can create a relaxed and enjoyable experience for your customers.

But personalization goes beyond just being friendly and personable. It also means being relevant. You need to use the data you gather about your customers to craft content tailored to their interests and needs. By sending them relevant information, you show that you care about their needs and are committed to providing value.

Use Dynamic Content

Another way to take your email marketing to the next level is to use dynamic content. With dynamic content, you can personalize certain parts of your email to resonate with specific recipients. That means different people will see different content based on their interests or preferences.

The beauty of dynamic content is that it allows you to deliver the right message to the right subscriber at the right time. Remember, displaying the content your subscribers are interested in can improve engagement and drive more conversions.

Send Emails from a Person

If you want to make a real impact with your email marketing, it’s time to start sending emails from a person, not just a business. Research shows that people trust and engage more with emails from a real person than a faceless corporation.

Using a real person’s name and photo in the “From” field can add a personal touch to your emails that will help your business stand out from the competition. Several companies have tested this strategy, and it’s proven to work. It’s also a simple yet effective way to build trust and engagement with subscribers.

Get Started Today 

In today’s digital marketing age, email communication is prevalent, and personalization is often the key to effectively connecting with consumers. Personalizing your emails increases open rates, drives engagement, and boosts revenue. The strategies we highlighted above can help you deliver value more effectively while establishing long-term customer relationships.

Omnichannel Personalization: Creating a Seamless Customer Experience

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As customers become more connected, their expectations for a seamless and personalized experience continue to change. Nowadays, customers use multiple channels to research, compare, and purchase different products, creating a complex web of touchpoints that businesses must navigate. That’s where omnichannel personalization comes in to help businesses deliver unique experiences to each customer, regardless of where they are in their customer journeys.

In the sections below, you’ll learn more about omnichannel marketing and personalization, including tips for creating a seamless customer experience that drives loyalty and revenue.

Understanding Omnichannel Personalization 

Omnichannel personalization is a customer-centric marketing approach that uses data and technology to create a more personalized and relevant shopping experience for customers. It involves collecting and analyzing data from multiple channels, including online and offline interactions, to gain insights into customer behavior and preferences.

This marketing approach enables businesses to create a consistent customer journey that meets varied and unique customer expectations. By providing a more personalized experience, businesses can increase customer loyalty, reduce churn, and drive more revenue.

What Makes Up Omnichannel Marketing and Personalization 

Over the years, disruptive technologies such as Machine Learning, big data, and data science have given rise to hyper-personalization. Here, businesses are expected to deliver cross-channel experiences tailored to the customers’ needs, behaviors, and preferences. Below are the key factors you should implement if you are looking to provide the best possible customer experience.

1. Marketing Automation 

Marketing automation involves using software to automate repetitive tasks such as social media posting and email marketing. It saves time and helps provide a more personalized experience for customers. Benefits of marketing automation include increased sales productivity and a reduction in marketing overhead.

Companies using marketing automation to nurture prospects see a significant increase in qualified leads, which results in larger purchases. A survey by Annuitas Group found that businesses that use marketing automation see up to a 451% increase in qualified leads. These leads also make purchases that are 47% larger than the non-nurtured leads.

2. Customer Data Collection 

Collecting relevant customer data is crucial to refining your marketing strategy and improving the customer experience. This data can be quantitative, like website bounce rates, or qualitative, like customer reviews. With the right analytics tools, you can gather information about demographics, customer behavior, and brand sentiment.customer data collection

Customer data collection helps retailers better understand their customers and provide an omnichannel experience. To do this effectively, you need a robust customer data platform to gather, store, and analyze the available data.

3. Optimized Website Design

When optimizing your website design, you should create web pages that work well on mobile devices, tablets, and desktops. If your website isn’t responsive, it won’t display properly on smaller screens. Always ensure that your website provides a consistent experience to every customer, regardless of which device they use to view it. You should also prioritize website navigation design to ensure users can easily browse your website, find what they’re looking for, and easily make purchases.

4. Social Media Integration

As the name suggests, social media integration extends your marketing efforts by directing your social media followers to your website or app. It’s also a way of making your social platforms more accessible to your target audience and customers. Brands must integrate all their customers’ social media networks into their omnichannel setup.

Ecommerce brands, for instance, can use social media integration tools to import and display user-generated content on their ecommerce sites automatically. This can help build trust with potential customers and drive conversions.

5. Multichannel Analytics

Multichannel analytics is a process that merges data from different sources into a single location. This makes it easier for businesses to monitor sales across multiple channels. For instance, if a business owner owns three online stores, they can aggregate the data from each store into one location with the help of multichannel analytic tools.

By doing so, they can understand their customers and their behavior on the website, which can help them plan effective promotion campaigns that are more likely to convert. Multichannel analytics also allows businesses to track the effectiveness of their omnichannel marketing strategy, so they can optimize performance while reducing cost.

 

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Benefits of Omnichannel Personalization 

Personalizing customer experiences and prioritizing their needs and expectations can greatly impact your business. Below are some of the key benefits of embracing a customer-centric marketing approach.

1. Enhanced Customer Experience 

Omnichannel marketing enables businesses to offer customers personalized experiences tailored to their preferences and behaviors. By leveraging data from multiple touchpoints, brands can send customized messages, showcase relevant products, and provide exceptional customer service. A seamless and personalized experience boosts customer satisfaction and improves loyalty.

2. Increased Sales and Conversions  

Personalized customer experiences increase the likelihood of converting prospects by providing relevant and timely interactions. By catering to each customer’s unique preferences, businesses can improve the customer journey and encourage purchases. Omnichannel marketing and personalization have been shown to increase annual sales and customer lifetime value, directly boosting business growth.

3. Lower Customer Acquisition Costs

Creating a personalized omnichannel experience helps retain customers and reduces customer acquisition costs. By providing relevant interactions, businesses can increase customer loyalty and target their advertising spending more efficiently. This approach helps companies optimize their marketing budget and reduce the cost of acquiring new customers.

4. Cost Optimization

By analyzing customer behavior data, brands can identify the most effective channels to reach their target audience. With this knowledge, businesses can optimize their marketing stack, streamline processes, and reduce costs associated with operating multiple channels. Omnichannel personalization helps to optimize resources, reduce waste, and ensure efficient use of budgets while delivering a seamless customer experience.

Getting Started With Omnichannel Personalization 

Implementing an omnichannel marketing strategy is a complex process requiring technological and organizational alignment. To get started, you need to get buy-in from top management, set measurable goals, and build a strategy around those goals. You should also conduct a data inventory to understand the available data and how to use it to achieve your objectives. Additionally, it’s important to establish an internal governance model for executing your omnichannel strategy before creating a roadmap.

To simplify the implementation process, you can start small by focusing on the most valuable use cases and existing touchpoints. This approach is more practical and essential as the boundaries between the digital and physical worlds continue to merge. By taking small, manageable steps towards omnichannel personalization, you can gain a competitive edge and improve customer experience across all touchpoints.

 

 

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OTT Marketing 1

8 Reasons to Invest in OTT Marketing

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OTT marketing is a form of marketing in which ads play during the streaming of content provided via high-speed Internet connections. Because it’s so important to stay on top of the latest trends in order to avoid falling behind your competition, OTT marketing is something every business should explore. As new technologies emerge, new marketing opportunities tend to present themselves. For example, the rapid adoption of streaming services, from Netflix to Hulu, over the past few years has led to the growth or OTT marketing (over-the-top marketing). Of course, that’s not the sole reason why you should consider implementing an OTT marketing strategy. The following are some of the major benefits of investing in OTT advertising:

1. Reach A Huge Audience
2. Target Your Audience More Effectively
3. People Will See Your Ads
4. Improve Engagement
5. Obtain Better Data
6. OTT Campaigns Are Flexible
7. You Can Test Your Campaigns
8. OTT Ads Are Cost-Effective

1. Reach A Huge Audience

It’s estimated that there will be close to 200 million streaming viewers within the next few years. This means that you’ll likely be able to reach a huge part of your target audience via OTT advertising. Not only are streaming channels, incredibly popular, but more streaming platforms are launching every year; both Disney and Google recently launched their own channels. Additionally, users have the ability to stream content on these platforms from almost any device, including TVs, computers, smartphones, and tablets.

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

2. Target Your Audience More Effectively

OTT advertising essentially combines the effectiveness of TV ads with the ability to target specific audiences that digital marketing tends to provide. For example, OTT marketing allows you to target viewers in specific areas using GPS data. You can also leverage behavioral data based on the platform viewers are using as well as the content they are streaming. Additionally, you can also target viewers based on demographics.

3. People Will See Your Ads

OTT Marketing2

Whereas people often change the channel when watching something on cable whenever there is a commercial break. people who are streaming content rarely do this. This is because they can’t just flip back to the stream they were watching after the commercials have ended. Switching streams is inconvenient and most people are too engaged with the content that they are streaming to constantly switch back and forth. Because of this, people who are streaming content are more likely to watch the entirety of the ads that are shown. In fact, it’s estimated that roughly 98 percent of OTT viewers watch the entire ad that’s shown to them. This means that your OTT efforts are more likely to have an impact on their intended audience.

4. Improve Engagement

Many streaming platforms allow their viewers to choose between OTT ads during content breaks. This helps to personalize their experience; however, it also means that they will likely be more engaged with the ads that play since they chose to view them. As such, OTT ads are a good way to get your message across more successfully.

5. Obtain Better Data

When it comes to traditional TV advertising, viewing data is based on larger sample sizes. OTT marketing provides much more helpful data in terms of who is watching your OTT content. Some of the data that you’ll have access to includes what demographics were watching your content, what it was that they were watching, exactly when they were watching it, and from what device they were streaming on. All of this data is invaluable in regards to adjusting your OTT campaigns for better results.

Also Read Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

6. OTT Campaigns Are Flexible

You’re not locked in when you pay for OTT advertising. Many platforms allow you to start, stop, and resume your OTT campaigns at any point in time. This means you can manage your campaign settings and the commercials you’re running in real-time to obtain better results. As a result, you can leverage the data that you’re collecting on your OTT campaign to make improvements.

7. You Can Test Your Campaigns

Because OTT campaigns are often flexible, you can test your campaigns by targeting different audiences and ads to see what works best. Think of it as a form of A/B testing except for OTT marketing.

8. OTT Ads Are Cost-Effective

Instead of paying for the placement of your ads, you’re paying for actual ad views. Because you’re also able to target specific audiences more effectively, your ads will also likely result in a higher ROI. As a result, OTT ads are actually very cost-effective, especially when you take into account the fact that OTT ads engage viewers and can be adjusted throughout the campaign as well.

These are some of the main benefits of investing in OTT marketing. Although traditional TV advertising can still be effective, OTT marketing is an excellent way to reach your target audience and to complement your existing and future inbound marketing efforts.

Digital Advertising Trends!

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Regardless of its niche or size, every business must position itself in the market to become profitable. And with digital advertising trends coming up every now and then, it takes considerable effort, time, and resources to design an ideal marketing strategy that will work for your unique business.

As a marketer or business owner, digital advertising is crucial to the continuous growth of your products or business. But many do not know that keeping up with the most recent digital marketing trends often means spending your resources to update processes, upskill employees and acquire new systems and inventories. This explains why marketing takes a significant portion of the budget in most companies.

If you are considering updating or revamping your digital advertising strategy this holiday season, there’s a lot you stand to gain. Besides staying ahead of the competition, you also have the potential to reach new customers while building brand awareness. Here are some digital advertising trends you can implement in your business.

Personalization is Key

Before advertising any product or reserve, you must know who you target and why. Most businesses often run their digital advertising campaigns in silos without a keen understanding of their business, customers, and marketing goals.

For instance, if you advertise some digital products, you must first highlight the goals you want to accomplish. These goals should complement your overall marketing goals and be detailed enough to show who you want to target, when, and how often.

To streamline your digital advertising campaigns, you should have a personalization plan. Personalizing your digital ads means giving your prospects what they want when they want it. This helps optimize your campaigns and increase the chances that your prospects will take the desired action.

But how can you incorporate personalization into your digital advertising? Here are a few tips to consider:

  • Create in-depth customer profiles. Before you can target any of your prospects, you should group them accordingly. You can use AI technology to implement lead scoring and effectively segment your target market for proper personalization.
  • Leverage user data. A lot is nested in the user data collected in the various prospects’ touchpoints. A simple site visit, for example, can give many clues and insights into how the prospects interacted with the website and what needs improvement. You can then use these clues to create a winning video advertising campaign.
  • Use dynamic retargeting to re-engage your audience. Modern personalization techniques allow marketers to show certain ads to certain visitors, increasing the accuracy and effectiveness of digital advertising.

Video Ads are On the Rise

Video ads don’t particularly fall into the category of digital advertising trends since it’s been on the market for quite some time. However, this isn’t to say that video advertising is no longer relevant. In fact, recent statistics from Wyzowl show that 91% of businesses will use video as a marketing tool in 2023, up from 86% in 2022.

If you are wondering why the numbers favor video ads, you must first note that videos have a higher engagement than any other piece of content. Most people love visuals, and marketers are rethinking their digital advertising strategies to reflect this trend.

It’s worth noting that video advertising isn’t simple and often involves lots of creativity and expertise if it’s to make a huge impact. Here are some video advertising tips you can deploy to take your marketing to the next level.

  • Ensure the videos are relevant. You can have the best video ads in the world, but if they are irrelevant they will not convert. Relevancy in the digital advertising niche means different things to different people. But you can simply put it – the videos should speak to your prospects’ problems in a relatable, timely, and persuasive way.
  • Use user-generated video ads. Incorporating user-generated videos into your ads may seem impractical, but it’s easier than you think. All you need to do is ensure the video is edited for length and relevancy.
  • Use first-person experience videos. As the name suggests, first-person videos do away with voiceovers and spokespeople, centering the experience on the customers, business owners, founders, etc. The goal is to showcase some sense of presence, ownership, and authenticity of the brand.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is one of the digital advertising trends of 2023 that’s proving quite effective in the content marketing niche. With more people using their smartphones to access the internet, it’s becoming increasingly necessary for marketers to adapt their techniques to reflect this trend.

The other reason why a mobile-first marketing strategy is crucial is that new technologies such as AR and VR are predominantly app-based, making smartphones and mobile experiences the absolute winner.

By optimizing content for mobile, marketers and business owners can increase the visibility of their products and brands, helping drive the conversation. Using video content as an example, here are a few mobile optimization techniques you can implement:

  • Use square and vertical videos. Most videos with an aspect ratio of 4:5 are ideal for smartphone users and would work best for social media channels like Facebook and Instagram. For YouTube videos, an aspect ratio of 16:9 is ideal.
  • Keep the videos short. The video ads should be short and engaging.
  • Feature the brand or product message early. Since the video is short, ensure you feature the brand early enough. This ensures prospects know what you are promoting as soon as the ad plays.

Make Digital Advertising a Breeze

Digital marketing is one of the highly dynamic fields, and as a digital marketer, you need to stay up to date with the latest digital advertising trends. The three tips we highlighted above are just a few of the many, so feel free to research and try different techniques before picking the best.

Besides being on the lookout for new digital marketing trends, it’s crucial to constantly review your digital marketing strategies to know whether they are effective. You can seek expert help when monitoring your digital marketing strategies to ensure you have the upper hand.

 

Dan Gartlan helps companies of all kinds drive their business initiatives and achieve their goals. He does this with strategic marketing programs that deliver results. As President of Stevens & Tate Marketing, he has over 20 years of experience across various industries. He continues to share and build brands nationwide.

Website Redesign

Top 5 Critical Website Redesign Analytics Tools

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Your website is the most important marketing tool you have—so it’s no surprise that its design is essential to your success. However, both technology and user behavior are constantly evolving. As such, you need to update your website to stay ahead of the curve. If your website is more than a few years old, it may be time for a website redesign.

The Benefits of Redesigning Your Website

Unless your website is completely broken, you may wonder if it’s worth it to invest money and resources into a website redesign. This is especially true if it seems like your website is performing just fine. The following are a few major reasons why you need to redesign your website:

1. Improve The User Experience

If your website is outdated or difficult to use (due to poor technical SEO or poor design), it can cause a poor user experience. As a result, visitors may not stay on your site for very long. A redesign can make your site more user-friendly and easy to navigate. As a result, it will keep visitors on your site longer and encourage them to come back.

2. Increase Web Traffic

If your website is outdated or not optimized for search engines (such as through SEO or mobile optimization), you won’t get as much traffic as you could. A redesign can help improve your site’s ranking and make it more visible to potential visitors. The more visitors you get, the better a chance you have of generating more leads.

3. Enhance Branding

If your current website does not reflect your brand well, a redesign can help to better align your website with your brand. This is especially important if your business recently underwent rebranding. It’s critical that your website reflects your branding in terms of both the look (such as the logos, colors, and fonts) and the messaging. If it doesn’t, it can confuse visitors, thereby hurting your brand identity and your ability to convert leads.

Website Redesign Analytic Tools You Should Use

If it’s been a while since you built or redesigned your website, then you should do a comprehensive audit to determine if your site need work. The following are five analytic tools that can help guide your website redesign:

1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool that provides a wealth of data about your website visitors. This data includes how visitors found your site, what they did, and whether or not they converted. This data can help you understand what you need to improve. For example, you can use Google Analytics to see which pages on your site are the most popular and which ones have the highest bounce rate.

2. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a heat mapping tool. It lets you see how users interact with your website. This includes where they click, how far they scroll, and where they abandon your site. This data can help you understand what users are looking for on your site and where they are getting stuck. It can also help you to determine what parts of your website you need to redesign to improve the user experience.

 

Website Redesign Process

Read About “The Website Redesign Process- Why Content Comes First?”

3. Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is a tool that crawls websites and shows you how search engines see your website. It can help you identify technical SEO issues, such as broken links and duplicate content. It can also help you evaluate your website’s structure and identify issues that are causing problems with search engine crawlers.

4. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test is a tool that allows you to see how well your website is optimized for mobile devices. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, then you’re losing potential visitors because your site isn’t loading properly on smaller screens. This data can be extremely helpful in understanding what needs to be fixed to make your site more mobile-friendly.

5. Semrush

Semrush is a tool that allows you to see how well your website is performing in search engines. This includes understanding your organic traffic, the keywords you’re ranking for, and your backlink profile. This data can be extremely helpful for identifying what you need to do to improve your visibility in search engines. You can also use Semrush to see which keywords you’re not ranking for that you should be, and which competitors are outranking you.

These are just a few of the many different analytic tools that you can use to assess your website’s performance. By taking the time to understand what’s working and what isn’t, you can improve your website’s design, functionality, and performance.

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The Power of an Influencer Marketing Strategy: How and Why It Works

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We’ve all been through it—you’re scrolling through your social media feed when suddenly you come across an individual passionately endorsing a product or service. What’s more? They have a massive following. You notice this is different from the typical celebrity endorsements. That is because the individual you are seeing is a social media influencer, which makes the premise of an influencer marketing strategy so much more unique.

As a true millennial who’s seen its effects, I can attest to how important it is to be leveraging social media to enhance your marketing efforts. The following is an outline of everything you need to know about Influencer Marketing. This includes how much it costs to hire an influencer, the top social media platforms to run an influencer campaign, how to measure the success of this marketing strategy, and examples of how it’s been done successfully.

What is an Influencer?

An influencer is somebody who has the ability to “influence” potential buyers by endorsing the offerings on social media. There are several factors that indicate whether or not someone is an influencer. However, the most telling one could be that the individual’s followers fit into a particular niche, and there is active engagement between them and the actual influencer.

Rather than just being “marketing tools”, influencers are assets to a company’s social relationships with whom they can collaborate to accomplish their Marketing goals. This is what makes a social media influencer entirely different from a celebrity endorsement, and perhaps, more successful.

In celebrity product endorsements, there is less of an emphasis on engagement and more on capitalizing on the person’s fame and name recognition to benefit a brand. In short, the objective is to capture the attention of a broader audience, unlike the niche audience of the influencer.

The Cost of Influence

As you may assume, influencers can be costly and there is no set rate for incorporating them into your campaign. It’s a common practice for digital marketers to follow the “one cent per follower rule”. Some marketers know this as the $100 per 10,000 followers rule. Factors to consider include engagement rate, client budget, and campaign lengths. However, according to Instagram Influencer, Matt Crump (who has composed his own rates), creative mandates, production costs, timeline, and rights affect the cost of hiring him for your campaign. Crump explained that the price range per sponsored post varies based on the number of followers he has during that time period. The price can be as low as $100-$500 for 5-10k followers, and as high as $10,000 for over 1,000,000 followers.

Top Social Media Platforms

It’s important for marketers to identify which platform will bring the greatest Return on Investment for their influencer marketing campaign. According to Linqia, over 68% of marketers recognize Instagram as the most effective social network for an influencer strategy in 2019. Coming in second was Facebook with 51% with YouTube, Blogs, Pinterest, Twitter, and Snapchat following behind. The takeaway is simple: If you’re considering an Influencer Marketing strategy, Instagram is the place to start!

Similar Article: How To Use Social Media To Drive B2B Sales

How to Measure Success

Although over 60% of marketers are primarily focused on driving brand awareness, engagement, and impressions (Linqia), it’s still important to track sales generation from such campaigns as well as conversions, audience sentiment, and clicks. Since influencer marketing is an ever-evolving industry. Marketers need to consistently evaluate their measurement practices to ensure they’re held to the same standards as other media investments.

Similar Article: How To Assess Your Inbound Marketing Plan

3 Examples of Successful Influencer Marketing

Now that you have an understanding of what an influencer is, how much they cost, the top social media platforms to use for your influencer marketing campaign, and how to measure its success, it’s time to take a look at influencer marketing strategies in action. The following are four examples of successful influencer marketing:

Naked Juice –

When seeking to raise their brand awareness, even more, Naked Juice decided to collaborate with Instagram influencers, Beth Norton and Kate La Vie, through sponsored Instagram posts. Kate La Vie features images of her outfits and beauty essentials. This made it easy for the brand to strategically collaborate with her snapshots. The campaign saw much success. According to Social Bond, within 24 hours the Instagram post generated more than 2,000 likes and comments combined. Additionally, this campaign enabled Naked Juice to position itself as more of a “premium juice” brand. Following the success of the campaign, the company made $57.4 million in revenue by the end of 2017.

Sperry Boat Shoes –At the end of 2016, the popular boat shoe brand, “Sperry” collaborated with more than 100 Instagram “micro-influencers”. The key influencers here were “Sperry Enthusiasts”. To create engaging content with its audience, Sperry identified fans on Instagram who were already sharing pictures of their shoes. Subsequently, the brand invited these users to develop content for its Instagram account. The strategy worked. According to Curalate, Sperry’s most engaged photo of 2016 got 8,278 likes. How did they do this? The photo was taken by influencer Slava Daniliuk who had 4,500 Instagram followers at the time. Additionally, Daniliuk posted with the brand’s trademark hashtag, #OdysseysAwait which increased engagement even more.     

Walmart –

As proven by a successful retail company, influencer marketing can also be highly effective when promoting philanthropic incentives as well. Walmart took a “Cause Marketing” approach when embarking on its “Feeding America” mission with several influencers on Instagram. The strategy was simple: For each like, #FightHunger comment, or post share, 0.90 cents would be donated to the organization. Logan Paul’s most-liked post from the campaign generated over one million likes. Due to the success of these influencers in the #FightHunger campaign, Walmart raised close to $1.65 million in addition to boosting positive sentiment for their brand.

Similar Article: Social Media Campaigns for Attracting Prospects and Generating Leads

With the numerous advantages that influencer marketing provides, it’s no secret why so many brands are going with this strategy. As soon as you scroll through your social media feed once again, you’ll come across one of these campaigns. However, you’ll now have a better understanding of what an influencer marketer is and all of the marketing elements involved. 

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Why You Should Consider Using YouTube Videos For Senior Living Marketing

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When it comes to choosing what platforms to leverage in order to reach senior living audiences, you may have skipped over YouTube assuming that this particular platform is aimed at younger audiences. However, this is actually not true. You may want to give YouTube another look as it turns out YouTube videos are an excellent way to reach older audiences. The following are just a few of the reasons why you should incorporate YouTube videos into your senior living content marketing strategy:

1. Seniors Use YouTube Frequentlydigital marketing tactics

The idea that YouTube is for younger generations is a misconception that simply isn’t true. In fact, YouTube is the number one video platform of choice for the Baby Boomer generation. According to YouTube’s Trends Dashboard, more than 60 million Baby Boomers over the age of 55 view content on YouTube every month. In fact, four times as many Baby Boomers visit YouTube than people under the age of 18. This means that creating YouTube videos is actually an excellent way to reach your target demographics.

2. Seniors Are Social

By 2013, there were already 39 million people 65 and older that were using Facebook, Twitter, and Skype. At the time, this made them the fastest growing age demographic for these social channels. Considering the fact that there are more senior citizens than ever, incorporating social into your content marketing strategy is a must–and YouTube is a social platform. When you create YouTube videos, you can post them to Facebook, after all. Seniors can then comment, like, and share your YouTube videos, helping to increase brand awareness amongst their social circles, which are likely to be filled with family members as well as friends in the senior citizen age range.

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3. Seniors Prefer Visual Storytelling

The best way to reach senior citizens is through the use of visual storytelling (according to multiple studies on the subject). There’s no more effective way to tell a story in a visual manner than through video. For example, you could use video to tell the story of a resident and their journey to find a home at your senior living facility. By making a resident the main character in your video, you would make your content more relatable to your audience.

4. YouTube Videos Allow Pre-Roll Ads

Pre-roll ads have become quite common on YouTube videos. They are the 5 to 30-second spots that run before the video and that usually can’t be skipped until 5 seconds in. While they can be a real annoyance for a lot of viewers, they can actually be very effective if they are relevant to your video content. This is especially true if you already have video content available on your site.

Read More Related Article: 4 Senior Living Video Marketing Ideas That Will Improve Engagement

You can create effective pre-roll ads by cutting short 15 or 30-second spots out of existing video testimonials or video tours of your senior living facility. This way, when someone watches one of your YouTube videos (especially those that are instructional or informative and not promotional), your pre-roll ads will showcase your senior living facility so that they know who you are.

5. YouTube Videos Can Drive Traffic

YouTube isn’t just a platform to host videos. It can be used to help drive viewers to your website for more information. Curate your YouTube page so that you have a lot of YouTube videos audiences can go through, but make sure that it’s obvious that it’s your senior living facility’s page and include a link from your YouTube channel to your website. You should also add links to your video descriptions and clickable links embedded within the videos themselves towards the end. Doing so can help drive a significant amount of traffic to your website.

YouTube videos can be extremely effective at reaching a senior living audience, which is why you should incorporate YouTube into your content marketing strategy. It’s also worth mentioning that YouTube is owned by Google, which means that properly optimized YouTube videos can help to boost your SEO as well, thereby increasing your page rankings and helping to drive more organic traffic to your YouTube channel as well as your main website.

 

30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips

Digital Marketing for Manufacturers

7 Reasons Why Digital Marketing for Manufacturers is Critical to Success

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Manufacturers often use traditional marketing to advertise their services and find new customers. Whether it’s TV commercials, direct mail, or even cold calls, traditional marketing can still be effective. However, it’s crucial that you also adopt a digital marketing strategy. The following are seven reasons why digital marketing for manufacturers is so essential:

1. Generate New Leads Over The Long-Term

Digital marketing allows manufacturers to generate new leads over the long term. While traditional marketing efforts help you garner immediate attention, they won’t generate new leads consistently over time. For example, TV commercials won’t have a lasting impact on lead generation. Once they stop running, they’ll stop reaching an audience.

Digital marketing strategies, such as content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), can help put your business in the position to be found online for years to come.

2. Reach Your Target Audience With Greater Success

One of the limitations of traditional marketing is that you don’t have much control over who your audience is. With digital marketing, you can specifically target your audience in various ways. For example, you can segment your target audience to reach specific types of leads. You can also optimize your content for SEO or using targeted advertising (such as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads).

3. Digital Marketing Is Cost-Effective digital marketing

The marketing landscape is constantly changing, making it difficult to know how to budget effectively. While traditional marketing efforts like TV ads or billboards can reach many people at one time, they are also expensive. Digital marketing is more cost-effective because you can target a specific audience and spend less on each impression.

Additionally, digital marketing tactics, such as blogging or SEO optimization, will continue to have a long-term impact. As a result, they will provide a greater return on investment (ROI) over the long run. For example, email marketing has an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent.

4. It’s Easier To Track And Adjust Digital Marketing Efforts

One of the biggest marketing challenges is knowing if your strategies are working. You can use various analytics tools to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) with digital marketing. This makes it easier to track the performance of your marketing efforts to determine what channels work and what tactics need to be adjusted.

5. Establish Your Business As A Brand Authority

Digital marketing for manufacturers is beneficial for increasing brand authority. One of the best ways to establish yourself as an authority is by regularly publishing content on subjects related to manufacturing services. Such content can include everything from blog posts to white papers.

As you build up your library of content, Google may recognize you as an authority on the subject.  As a result, people searching for manufacturers online will be more likely to find your company. The reputation you build due to that brand authority will increase brand trust, making it easier to close sales. It will also help you stand out from your competition.

6. Nurture Your Leads In A Pressure-Free Environment

When you create compelling content and invest in SEO, you’ll generate leads without putting pressure on potential customers. Outbound marketing (which includes a lot of traditional marketing strategies) is considered “interruption” marketing. This is because you’re forcing your message on an audience without their permission.

Inbound marketing (including many digital marketing efforts) allows you to attract leads and nurture them without engaging with them right away. Inbound is known as “permission” marketing because your leads are viewing your marketing materials on their own accord. They will engage with you when they are ready.

By not having to pressure your leads into sales, you can spend time building trust, which is more likely to result in a long-term relationship.

7. Build Relationships With Existing Customers build relationships

Digital marketing is more effective in building relationships with existing customers. For example, you can use email marketing to keep in touch, whether by sending your customers personalized email content or sending them cross-selling or up-selling opportunities. The ability to stay in touch and continue nurturing existing customers helps build long-term relationships, resulting in steady sales.

If you’re running a manufacturing business, you should strongly consider implementing digital marketing into your overall marketing strategy. Although traditional marketing may still suit you well, there are advantages to digital marketing that traditional marketing can’t offer. In this day and age, to be successful as a manufacturer, your marketing strategy should consist of a mix of traditional and digital marketing efforts.

30 Greatest Lead Generation Tips
tiktok engagement group

How to Use TikTok to Reach Your Engagement Group: An Insight Into the Algorithm

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Arguably the primary goal of social media marketing is to reach as many people in your engagement group as possible and to interact with them. As such, it’s important that you establish a presence on social channels on which this is possible. While almost all businesses use social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, there are a few others to consider as well; for example, TikTok.

What Is TikTok?

TikTok is a video-based social platform that has exploded in popularity over the last couple of years. What makes the platform so unique is that users can only upload videos that are 15 seconds long. There is, however, an option to edit together multiple 15-second clips into a minute long video. It gained traction among teens because they could upload videos of themselves lip-syncing, doing comedy bits, and dancing. At first, the marketing opportunities on the platform seemed limited. However, the size of the audience simply cannot be ignored:

  • There are over one billion monthly active users worldwide.
  • There have been over 2.6 billion downloads of TikTok since its creation.
  • In January 2021, there were 62 million downloads of TikTok alone.
  • Users spend an average of 52 minutes on TikTok every day.
  • 83 percent of users have posted videos to TikTok.

TikTok’s advertising strategies are becoming more common. Read more here.

Why Should You Market On TikTok?

Advertising on social media platforms can cause numerous issues for users. The user experience can often be disrupted for the sake of the ad. Users on those platforms are often less likely to engage when annoyed by a barrage of advertising. TikTok is different in that ads are almost no different than the regular content posted on the platform. They can’t be longer than 15 seconds and they’ll appear on user feeds just like regular videos do. The user experience is not hurt because of this, as they appear just like other videos.

Why Should You Consider Using TikTok for Your Engagement Group?

Many people do not even realize they’re watching ads (especially if the content created by the brand is of particularly high quality). With this in mind, the following are just a few other reasons to consider using TikTok:

  • Reach younger generations – Younger generations rarely want to follow in the footsteps of their parents, which is why you won’t find a lot of Generation Z users on Facebook or Twitter. Instead, you’ll find them on TikTok, which is where a lot of Millennials are fleeing to as well. If you’re looking for a younger audience, TikTok is where you’ll find them.
  • Multiple marketing options – Despite the platform’s limitations (which were by design), there are still a few ad types that you can choose from, including in-feed videos, branded augmented reality (such as custom filters, stickers, and more), TopView ads (which appear at the top of user feeds), branded hashtag challenges, and sponsored content.
  • Flexible CPM – The cost-per-thousand impressions becomes cheaper the broader your audience is. The more you target your audience, the more it will cost; however, the ads will be more effective at engaging users as a result.
  • A level playing field – TikTok’s algorithm is based on identifying content that’s based on each user’s location, preferences, and viewing patterns. That is why user-created content goes viral so often on TikTok and it is why marketing businesses have a better chance of going viral as well.
  • Better chances of engagement – Outside of the algorithm, TikTok also allows you to go live once you reach a thousand followers. What makes this option particularly effective is that you can see how many followers are currently active so that you can determine when the best time to go live is.

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Tips For Using TikTok To Reach Your Engagement Group

There are some serious benefits to using TikTok; however, your success depends on your ability to leverage the platform effectively. The following are a few basic tips for using TikTok:

  • Know your audience – Develop your buyer personas so that you can more effectively target users that will be more likely to engage.
  • Identify influencers – TikTok influencers often have millions of followers. You can get them to post sponsored content that their users will see.
  • Create challenges – TikTok users love challenges. Branded hashtag challenges are a great way to get people to engage with your brand without being overly promotional. It’s also a great way to generate user-made content.
  • Go live – Going live on TikTok at the right time can make it easier to engage with followers who will drop everything to view to ensure that they don’t miss out.

Leverage TikTok To Reach Your Engagement Group Today

TikTok has a massive audience and is growing significantly year-by-year. Due to the algorithm’s design, companies have a level playing field against other businesses that already leverage TikTok. Just keep in mind that if you focus on creating high-quality content that engages your target audience, the chances of success on TikTok will be much greater.

 

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