Top 10+ Ways to Maximize Your Inbound Marketing Strategy

Improve PPC Success With These 7 PPC Optimization Strategies

April 21, 2020/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Nicole Wagner

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

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

1. Perform Keyword Research

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

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

2. Identify Negative Keywords

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

3. Know Your Audience

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

Enjoy the Article: A Guide to Successful Marketing Optimization

4. Create Effective, Relevant Copy

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

5. Create Effective Landing Pages

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

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

6. Optimize Your Ad Groups

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

7. Test Your Ads

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

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

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

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

March 12, 2020/in Articles, Direct Marketing, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Terry Becker

Email marketing was one of the earliest forms of inbound marketing — and it’s continued to be one of the most widely used due to how cost-efficient and effective the strategy is. If you’re implementing an email marketing campaign, then it’s important that you keep track of certain email marketing metrics so that you can judge how your campaign is performing and identify what is and isn’t working so that you can make strategic adjustments as necessary. The following are some of the most important email marketing metrics that you should be following:

Click Through Rate

Click throughs refer to how many recipients are clicking the links in your email. The higher your click-through rate is, the more enticing your content was to your recipients. A poor click-through rate means that you’re not connecting with your readers. A/B tests, which help find new ways to get more clicks in your emails, also make use of CTR’s.

Unique Opens

Unique opens refers to how many people open your emails. If you don’t have many unique opens, it means that your subject lines need work — or you may not be timing your emails properly and they’re getting buried in the inboxes of your recipients so that they don’t see them.

Forward Rate

Forward rates weigh the percentages of recipients who share your posts. A high forward rate is a good sign that you’re doing something right. It means you’re providing content that recipients believe is helpful and informative. As a result they then forward it to friends, family members, or coworkers.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate measures how many subscriber email addresses didn’t receive your email. A soft bounce means that the email address is valid; but the inbox was full or the server was down. A hard bounce means that the email wasn’t valid. To avoid a high bounce rate, periodically update your email list and remove old addresses.

Similar Article:Exploring The Differences Between B2C and B2B Email Marketing

Deliverability Rate

The deliverability rate refers to the percentage of emails that reach your recipients’ inboxes. Factors that may prevent your emails from being sent include email addresses that don’t exist or no longer exist or emails that are spam.

Clicks Per Link

Click-through-rates only refers to how many times your links were clicked. However, Clicks per link is a more detailed metric. It shows which links get more clicks on your campaign; not counting how many times each recipient has clicked on the link .

Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate, will assess how many people click on the link and then complete a specific action. A low conversion rate means that your content isn’t connecting or your calls-to-action aren’t effective. Similarly, conversion rates give unique insight into your return investment. When you know how much you have spent, and how many subscribers have converted, it easier to determine whether or not the money you put in has paid off.

Unsubscribes

The higher your unsubscribe rate is, the more likely it is that there’s something wrong with your email campaign. There are two potential causes for this — you may be sending out too many emails to the point where your recipients are unsubscribing because you’re filling up their inbox or the content of your emails isn’t relevant to your recipients.

Once you’ve launched your email campaign, it’s important that you track how it does. You can make adjustments to your email marketing efforts throughout the campaign, after all. If things aren’t working, you won’t want to just let it fail — you’ll want to right the ship. To track how your campaign is going, be sure to keep these email marketing metrics in mind.

Whats Trending in Marketing For February 2020

March 2, 2020/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Trending /by Nicole Wagner

Being informed about current and recent marketing trends, is an excellent tool for advertisers to have. That way, you can evaluate past strategies and find new ways to stay ahead of the competition. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult. As a result, the following articles come from popular marketing blogs and highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Top 10 Marketing Trends to Watch for in 2020

Right now, voice searches are used for simple queries like an address, calendar reminders, or song title. But as user needs expand and grow more complex, so must voice search features, and so must optimization. Exceptional customer experience is leading the way in marketing, shifting focus onto inbound strategies for serving and retaining existing customers. When customers share their enjoyable experience or outstanding service, their reviews are more likely than ads to impact new buyer behavior and marketing trends.

Google Ads enable bids simulator for target ROAS, budget simulator for Maximize clicks, conversions

Google is extending the availability of bid and budget simulators to more smart bidding strategies. The bid simulator has only been available for manual and Target CPA bidding. It’s now available for Target ROAS campaign. The simulators can be helpful directional indicators of the potential performance impact from making bid or budget adjustments. As always, keep in mind the projections are based on historical data and actual future performance can (and often does) vary from these projections.

Facebook Introduces 3 New Ad Reporting Tools

Facebook is making it easier for advertisers to measure ad performance across accounts, channels, and publishers. With this data, advertisers can better understand how ads are performing, which demographics they’re reaching, and where the most conversions are coming from. Cross-Account Reporting, Custom Metrics, and Conversion Path Reporting are all viable options that are explored in depth as Facebook continues to evolve its measurement solutions to address the priorities of potential marketers.

Similar Article: What’s Trending in Marketing For April 2019

Improving Your Marketing Program

6 Social Media Trends To Follow in 2020

At this point in time, every business with an inbound marketing strategy should have a social media presence of some sort. Social media is one of the most effective ways to build relationships with your target audience. You can engage directly with them and learn more about what their wants and needs are. However, social media is constantly evolving. Which means that you need to keep up with all the latest social media trends, so that you don’t fall behind the competition.

6 Reasons Why Your Business Needs B2B Inbound Marketing

There are many B2B companies that continue to advertise using more traditional methods, such as TV commercials, magazine ads, cold calls, and more. While traditional marketing can be effective, it’s a good idea to implement a variety of different marketing strategies. This includes inbound marketing.

The Advantages of Using Public Relations in Your Marketing Strategy

As most know, when it comes to marketing strategy, public relations plays a key role in getting the word out.PR helps maintain your reputation through winning audience approval. It can educate all possible consumers and sway them to your point of view. It even helps to provide the target market with more detailed information than they would normally receive from other forms of marketing. Simply put, these public relations advantages should be on the forefront of every marketer’s agenda

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Vast majority of Amazon advertisers plan to spend more on ads again this year

According to a Marketing Land survey of digital advertisers, 81% of current advertisers plan to increase their ad spend on the platform in the coming year. Of those planning to increase their Amazon ad budgets 41% said they plan to spend as much as 25% more than the previous six to 12 months. 22% plan increases of 25 to 50%, and 10% expect Amazon budgets to increase by 50% or more.

B2B buyers consume an average of 13 content pieces before deciding on a vendor

We know that content is incredibly important for ranking in search. It’s also critical for sales support. But this report makes clear there are broad ranges of first and third party content types that are highly influential to B2B buyers. It also shows how critical the vendor website is in the buying process. Indeed, the report basically outlines a content strategy for the entire B2B buyer’s journey.

Marketers struggle to stay ahead of technology advancements

When asked how difficult it will be over the coming year to stay ahead of new technological advancements, remain competent across multiple programs and avoid long-term experience debt, 88% of CMO consultants surveyed by executive service firm Chief Outsiders said it would be difficult — with 10% claiming it will be “very” difficult.

The survey included a relatively small pool of CMO consultants. However it underscores a primary challenge faced by marketing leaders; CMOs are taking on more responsibilities while playing catch-up with the technology available to propel growth.

5 Easy & Efficient Real Estate Marketing Strategies

February 25, 2020/in Articles, Directors, Homebuilder Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Mark Beebe

People are constantly looking to build their own homes, which justifies the constant need for home builders. However, as a home builder, you can’t afford to just wait for potential clients to come to you. There are many home builders out there all competing with each other in an attempt to attract new clients. Attracting new clients is especially important in the home construction industry. After all, for the most part, you cannot depend on repeat customers. With that in mind, the following are five real estate marketing strategies that will help you increase awareness of your home construction company and help attract more buyers to work with.

1. Create A Website

It can’t be overstated just how important a website is. By setting up a website, you create a presence online that allows people to find you. Without a website, potential clients will be more likely to stumble upon the websites of your competitors. By setting up a website, you’ll have the opportunity to educate clients about their needs. Additionally, you can help offer the solutions to their needs. You’ll also be able to provide information about the area you serve and the home building industry in general. Not to mention that a website gives you a place to provide your contact information. Which makes it easier for potential clients to find your phone number and email address.

2. Begin A Blog

Once you’ve set up a website, you’ll want to create a blog. A blog allows you to publish content to your website on a regular basis that’s relevant to the needs of your target audience and that’s informative or helpful in some way. There are several reasons why it’s well worth the time and effort to begin and maintain a blog. First of all, if properly optimized, your blog can help to boost organic traffic from Google. Secondly, your blog will help keep visitors to your website engaged. Finally, a blog can help build your brand authority, which helps improve your reputation and increase trust amongst your audience.

Setting up a page on various social channels, such as Facebook, will help to expand your presence on the web. Social media also happens to be a great way to engage directly with your audience, which means that you can answer questions, address concerns, and much more. You can use social media to post content, which followers can then share with their social circles (which means they’re basically advertising on your behalf). Being on social media also makes it easier for past customers to recommend you to friends and family who may be looking for home builders in the area.

Similar Article: Creative Real Estate Marketing Ideas for Homebuilders

4. Optimize For Local SEO

Because many people will be looking for a home builder to build a new house in a specific area, you will want to optimize your content for local SEO. This helps increase the chances that you’re found when potential clients perform local searches in your area. In order to improve your local SEO, you should do the following:

Submit NAP – Besides posting your NAP (name, address, and phone number) on every webpage and social media page you have, you should also submit it to local directories, such as Yelp or Angie’s List.
Use local keywords – Whenever it’s appropriate, optimize your content using local keywords (such as the names of towns or neighborhoods).
Create local content – Posting content to your blog that focuses on specific neighborhoods or events happening in your city can help bolster your local presence.
Create a Google My Business account – Claim or create your My Business account on Google to improve the odds of being listed on Google’s SERP for relevant queries.
Optimize for mobile use – People use their mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, to perform local searches on a regular basis. Make sure that your website is optimized for mobile use to ensure that it will be displayed properly on all screen sizes.

5. Use PPC Ads

PPC (pay-per-click) ads are incredibly effective real estate marketing strategies. They increase exposure and attract prospects who are ready to engage with a home builder. What makes them particularly effective is that you can choose local keywords to ensure that they are displayed for local searches that are relevant to your business. Additionally, not only will your advertisements be more targeted, but you’ll only pay for the actual click-throughs that your ad gets, not for the impressions it gets.

These are five real estate marketing strategies that have been proven to be effective if properly implemented. Marketing your home construction business is critical to your ability to attract new clients and to your ability to compete with other home builders in your area.

7 Tactics to Implement in Your Senior Living Marketing Strategy in 2020

February 17, 2020/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Senior Living Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Although there is a great need for high-quality senior living facilities that can cater to a growing senior population, there are many different facilities who are competing against one another for the attention of potential residents. As such, an effective senior living marketing strategy is an absolute must. A good senior living marketing strategy will allow you to generate more awareness of your facility and more interest in it. If you don’t employ a number of marketing tactics, you’ll find it challenging to compete for residents, which, in turn, will make it difficult to succeed. With that in mind, the following are a few marketing ideas that can help you improve your senior living marketing strategy in 2020:

1. Improve your web design

Your website is the main hub of your online presence. All of your inbound marketing efforts will direct prospects to your website. However, if your website design is poor, you will likely lose a lot of the prospects that you worked so hard to attract. Make sure that your website uses a simple and easy-to-read layout that’s not cluttered. Every webpage should be easy to scan so that visitors can find what they’re looking for. Your website should also be easy to navigate. Implement a menu bar that’s not overcrowded with links and that includes links to the main pages. A search function can also be very helpful. Finally, it’s vital that your website loads quickly. Visitors will abandon any page that takes longer than two to three seconds to load. They may even leave your website as a result of the wait.

2. Publish helpful content

Create content that is relevant, helpful, and informative to publish throughout your website. Every page should have good content on it. You should also have a blog on which you can routinely publish new content to keep the interest of your prospects. While written content can be effective, make sure that you create a variety of different types of content to keep visitors engaged. For example, images, infographics, video content, and podcasts can all increase engagement.

3. Make it easy for leads to engage

If your leads have questions or simply want to get into contact with you, you need to make it easy for them to do so. Have your contact information available on every webpage and social media page that you have so that prospects can contact you through phone or email. Having a social media presence will also give them the option of messaging through your social channel as well. If you want to go the extra mile, implementing a live chat or a chatbot feature can also be quite effective.

Similar Article: 4 Senior Living Video Marketing Ideas That Will Improve Engagement

4. Encourage leads to take action

It’s not enough to just nurture and educate your leads. The last thing you want is for someone to be interested in your facility as a result of exploring your website, only to decide that they will contact you later. Because you run the risk of them forgetting to do so. Use CTAs (calls-to-action) to encourage leads to take action right away. Whether it’s contacting you or filling out a form to sign up to an email list or to redeem an offer (such as a downloadable ebook).

5. Use PPC ads to attract better prospects

PPC (pay-per-click) ads are effective because they allow you to target specific prospects using keywords. When someone does a search for that keyword, your ad has a chance of showing up. Not only can this help you spread awareness of your facility through Google, but it’s a cost-effective tactic as well. Because you’re only paying for the actual clicks that your ads get.

6. Use local SEO to find residents in your area

Many decision-makers who are looking for senior living facilities for their loved ones will want to keep them close to home. As a result, you should implement a local SEO strategy that makes it easier for people to find your facility while performing local searches. There are several tactics that you can employ to boost your local SEO. You can submit your NAP (name, address, and phone number) to online directories, such as Yelp, you can use local keywords throughout your content whenever appropriate, and you can add or claim your Google My Business to strengthen your local presence on Google.

7. Establish a presence on social media

A social media presence not only makes it easier to interact directly with your audience to answer questions and address concerns, but it’s also a great way to spread awareness of your facility. When you engage with people, their followers may see the interaction, which is an excellent way to boost your reputation. You can also post content to social media, which if it’s shared, liked, or commented on, can help increase exposure.

The success of your senior living facility is going to depend on your ability to generate awareness of your facility. As well as, being able to engage and entice decision-makers to reach out to you. These are seven tactics that you should implement in your senior living marketing strategy in 2020 that will do just that.

5 Key Healthcare Marketing Strategies to Implement in 2020

February 4, 2020/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Mark Beebe

As a healthcare organization, you may know that you have a product or service that fulfills a pressing need; however, that doesn’t mean that patients will simply find you. You will still need to market your healthcare business effectively; in order to spread awareness of your organization and what it is that you have to offer. Because there are so many healthcare options out there for patients to choose from, your marketing strategy is even more important to your success. With that in mind, the following are five key healthcare marketing strategies that you should implement this year:

1. Focus On Local SEO

A lot of people will search for the closest healthcare practice to them if they have a pressing medical need. Even if they have some time to find several different healthcare practices and to compare them, they will often choose the one that is closest to them. You’ll want to make sure that your healthcare business can be found by such patients, which is why you should focus on local SEO. Optimizing for local SEO means that it will be easier for potential customers in your area to find you via search. To strengthen your local SEO, you should do the following:

Submit your NAP – Make sure that you submit your NAP (name, address, and phone number) to numerous local directories. Yelp or Zocdoc, would be good examples of where to start.
Set up Google My Business account – A My Business account on Google will allow you to submit your NAP along with other business information, such as a description of your services, a link to your website, photographs and more.
Encourage reviews – Encourage your patients to leave positive online reviews. When researching nearby healthcare practices or facilities, people will often check online reviews before making a decision.
Optimize for mobile use – Because most local searches are performed on mobile devices while users are out and about, it’s important that your website is properly optimized for mobile use.
Create local-based content – Create content for your blog that’s relevant to your area and use local keywords wherever appropriate (such as the name of the town or neighborhood you’re located in).

Building your reputation is key to attracting more long-term customers. Establishing and maintaining a presence on social media is a great way to do that. Social media allows you to engage directly with your target audience, whether it’s by posting links to helpful healthcare-related content (including your own), answering questions that followers have about your services or products, asking followers for feedback, and more. As you continue to engage with people through social media, you will build trust and awareness. If done effectively, people will begin automatically looking for your healthcare practice or business when they’re in need of healthcare products or services instead of doing basic Google searches.

3. Keep Patients Engaged With Email Updates

Staying on the top of mind, is important. If your existing patients forget about you, you could lose them to a competing practice. Not to mention that some patients may not stay up to date when it comes to scheduling routine appointments. Email is one of the best ways to keep your current patients up-to-date and to remind them about scheduling appointments if it’s time to do so. You can also use email marketing to inform customers about new healthcare services or products that you’re offering.

4. Attract More Patients Using PPC Advertising

PPC ads are a great way to attract new customers. The way they work is simple. You bid on a keyword. When somebody performs a search using that keyword, there’s a good chance your ad will show up on their SERP (search engine results page). You will then only pay for the ad if that person clicks on the ad. Using relevant keywords (such as keywords that are location-based and describe specific services or products), you can make sure that your ads are attracting potential customers in your area. You can use your PPC ads to promote new products and services. Making PPC advertising one of the most flexible healthcare marketing strategies available.

5. Create And Publish Relevant Content

Create content centered around healthcare-related topics that are relevant to your business. Afterward, publish that content on a website blog regularly. Not only is this a great way to attract organic traffic via Google, but it will engage readers and help to build your brand authority. The greater your authority becomes, the more your reputation within your industry will grow, thereby helping to increase brand trust.

Knowing how to market your healthcare organization is critical to attracting more patients and growing your business. These are some of the healthcare marketing strategies that will help you to attract more patients and that will help put you in the best position to compete with other healthcare businesses in your area.

10 Best Digital Marketing Podcasts in 2020

January 16, 2020/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Nicole Wagner

Marketing strategies constantly change and evolve every year. Therefore, it’s important that you stay up to date on all of the best digital marketing podcasts, and latest marketing trends. Doing so can give you good ideas on how to improve your marketing strategy. So that it doesn’t grow stale. While keeping up with the latest marketing trends may seem like a challenge, it can be easier if you know where to look — or listen. Podcasts are becoming an incredible resource for all kinds of information, especially when it comes to online marketing. The following are ten of the best digital marketing podcasts that you should be sure to check out:

1. Duct Tape Marketing

Duct Tape Marketing is a podcast that has been around for the better part of a decade. The podcast covers a number of digital marketing topics. From organic SEO to word-of-mouth marketing and more. Likewise, host John Jantsch, brings well-known guests onto his podcast. Including the likes of John Lee Dumas and Neil Patel. As a result, these conversations contain helpful advice for interested listeners. Moreover, Duct Tape Marketing is particularly useful for beginner and medium level marketers.

2. Marketing School

The Marketing School podcast is unique in that it’s a daily podcast that’s only ten minutes long. Easy to consume and a great way of obtaining helpful advice. Considering that the hosts are well known for their marketing acumen (it’s hosted by Neil Patel and Eric Siu), Marketing School is well worth tuning into eve Best Digital Marketing Podcast 1 ry day.

3. The #AskGaryVee Show

Gary Vee is a New York Times bestselling author, motivational speaker, and entrepreneur who gained popularity with his YouTube series. Consequently, his podcast, the #AskGaryVee Show, is a spin-off of that series. Going over lots of marketing tips as well as diving into emerging marketing trends. Gary Vee also answers questions that his listeners submit. As a result of using the #AskGaryVee hashtag on every podcast.

4. Marketing Scoop by SEMrush

SEMrush is known for their knowledge of digital marketing. As a result, they launched their podcast to help share this knowledge in an easy-to-digest way. The first season focuses mostly on SEO and PPC. Their second season covers news, trends, and discussions with industry leaders. All of which focusing on content marketing, SEO, and more. Some of the guests in the past have included Jim Banks, Barry Schwartz, and Larry Kim.

5. Everyone Hates Marketers

Everyone Hates Marketers was launched by Louis Grenier, the Content Lead at Hotjar, back in 2017. His goal was creating a podcast, that would help inform listeners on how to market the right way. Similarly, encouraging them to avoid manipulative tactics. Which included, interviewing successful marketers who avoid using “buzzwords” and focus on telling the truth.

Similar Article: Types of Digital Marketing Strategies Your Business Should Use

6. The Mad Marketing Podcast

The Mad Marketing podcast is hosted by Marcus Sheridan, one of the partners of HubSpot, and the founder of River Pools and Spas. The podcast focuses mostly on SEO and content marketing and is a great resource on those topics. It’s an easy listen as Sheridan is a entertaining host. Incorporating personal stories from his career into his podcasts.

7. Marketing Over Coffee

Marketing Over Coffee, hosted by Christopher S. Penn and John Wall, focuses on the latest digital marketing tactics and techniques. As a result, this weekly podcast is an excellent way to stay up to date. Conversations ranging from social media marketing and email marketing to copywriting and SEO marketing.

8. Seeking Wisdom

Seeking Wisdom is a podcast created by Drift. Featuring conversations, between David Cancel, the CEO of Drift, and Dave Gerhardt, the host. Each podcast spending about 20 minutes on a conversation between the two men over coffee. Leadership principles and the process of building Drift, are among some of the discussed topics of the podcast.

9. Growth Marketing Toolbox

The Growth Marketing Toolbox is a podcast hosted by Nicholas Scalice from Earnworthy. Focusing on exploring the newest marketing tools and technology being used within the marketing industry. Similarly, Scalice himself is an expert in landing page design, conversion optimization, and A/B testing. In short, this a podcast is worth listening to.

10. The Marketing Companion

The Marketing Companion is hosted by Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster, combining over 50 years of shared marketing experience and expertise. It’s an on-demand podcast that is incredibly entertaining. Having seven years worth of podcasts currently available, there’ll be plenty to listen to.

In conclusion, these are some of the best digital marketing podcasts available. Retaining insightful and invaluable information when it comes to finding ways to improve your own marketing strategy.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales

7 Market Research Strategies You Should Implement

January 9, 2020/in Articles, Consumer Marketing, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

When it comes to market research strategies, the more you know about your target audience, the more effective they will be. The biggest mistake you can make is assuming you know who your audience is and that you understand what their needs are without doing the proper market research. Not only could you be mistaken, but audiences evolve over time. This means that even if you do have a firm grasp of who your audience is at the moment, this can change in the future. It’s why you need to continuously do market research so that you can keep up with who your audience is. With that in mind, the following are seven market research strategies that you should use to better understand your audience and what their needs are:

1. Send Out Customer Surveys

One of the easiest ways to collect information about your target audience is to send out surveys to your customers. Basic NPS surveys can give you a good idea of what they think about your products and services and give you more detail about what they liked and didn’t like. This will give you a better understanding of whether you’re meeting the needs of your audience or not.

Of course, NPS surveys aren’t the only type of surveys you can use. They are certainly helpful and easy to complete, but you might want to consider sending out surveys through the mail, asking website visitors to do more in-depth surveys on your website, or even performing telephone surveys.

2. Perform Customer Interviews

Contact customers and request personal interviews. These can be in person or over the phone. When performing a personal interview, make sure that your questions are unstructured and open-ended questions. When you first contact a customer, do so with the intention of scheduling an interview in the future and not performing one on the spot as they are more unlikely to do this. Incentivizing a customer to take the time to do an interview may be a good idea as well, just make sure that by doing so, you’re not affecting how they answer your questions.

3. Hold A Focus Group

A focus group can be an excellent way to find out what customers think about your brand. During a focus group, a moderator will ask a series of scripted questions to a group of customers at a neutral location. The conversations that take place are videotaped so that you can review them and learn about what your customers think.

4. Observe Your Customers

It’s worth noting that customers may give answers in focus groups, interviews, and surveys that conflict with their actual behavior. It’s why you should consider observing customers in action. You can do this by recording customers in your store to see how they behave. Also, try inviting customers to try out products or services and record them (with their permission of course) so that you can see how they interact with your product in person.

Similar Article: Simple Ways that Small Businesses Can Use Data to Build Better Customer Relationships

5. Monitor Your Competition

You can learn a lot about your audience by reviewing what your direct competitors are doing. Routinely check out the content they’re posting on their website, their press kits, their advertisements, and their social media activity. Doing so can provide you insight into how they are positioning themselves and what kind of audience they are targeting and engaging with. This should also provide you with some useful information in the form of what their weaknesses and strengths are that you can apply to your own marketing efforts.

6. Monitor Discussions About Your Brand

Customers will often talk about your brand without you even realizing it. You can use a variety of tools to track mentions across social media channels. This allows you to identify when people are talking about your brand and what they’re saying about it. You could even join in on conversations to ask people follow-up questions to their comments.

7. Join A Trade Association

Joining a trade association can be quite useful. It provides you with access to information about your industry, making it easy to keep up with the latest trends and market shifts. Not to mention that you’ll have access to networking events and conferences. There, you can glean all kinds of information about both your industry and your audience.

By better understanding your audience, you will be able to keep up with their needs and improve your products and services to meet those needs. Use these seven market research strategies to stay up to date with who your audience is and how their needs are evolving.

Customer Experience vs User Experience: Understanding the Difference

December 23, 2019/in Articles, Consumer Marketing, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

When it comes to building your website and providing the best possible customer service, it’s all about creating a positive experience that will help increase conversions, retain customers, and improve your brand reputation. You may refer to this experience as the “customer experience” or the “user experience”. However, these two types of experience are not actually the same thing. Knowing the differences between the two is very important. This is because by knowing the differences between customer experience vs user experience, you will be able to improve both.

What Is User Experience?

The user experience refers to how people interact with your product or service and their experience with it. For example, how a visitor interacts with your website refers to their user experience. If your pages load slowly and they leave without visiting more pages, then they had a bad user experience. However, if they spend a long time exploring your site’s different pages and engage in several ways, such as by filling out a form and signing up to an email list, there’s a good chance that they had a positive user experience.

Improving The User Experience

To improve your user experience, you need to focus on the four user experience elements: value, usability, adoptability, and desirability. Consider these four elements in the context of a website and how they affect the user experience:

Value – Does your website provide value to the user? If it’s nothing but advertisements for your products and services, then it probably doesn’t. However, a website full of informative and helpful content that is relevant to your brand and the user’s needs does.
Usability – How easy is it to use your website? For example, is your content organized so that visitors can find it easily? Do you have links to the major pages of your site clearly marked on your home page? Is it easy to contact you through your website? If your website isn’t easy to use, visitors will become frustrated, resulting in a poor user experience.
Adoptability – How easy is it for visitors to start using your website? Do pages load quickly? Is your website optimized for mobile devices? If they can’t even begin to use your site, their impression of your business will turn negative.
Desirability – How engaging is your website? If you have content that’s relevant and informative but has poor presentation, it’s not going to be very engaging. You can improve desirability by creating a variety of different content, using images and using an engaging personality in your writing.

Although these four elements are described in reference to a website, they can be used for any product or service.

Check out these 4 Tips for Leaving Lasting Impressions on Customers

What Is Customer Experience?

Whereas user experience refers to the experience using a product or service, the customer experience refers to the experience interacting with your brand as a whole. For example, this could include exploring your website, signing up to an email newsletter, downloading several eBooks, speaking with a sales associate, making a purchase, then continuing to engage with your brand post-purchase. Basically, the user experience factors into the overall customer experience.

Improving The Customer Experience

The following are some major elements that make up the customer experience:

Your customer service – Customer service includes any direct interactions users have with your brand, such as through a live chat feature, email, phone, text or social media. Your customer service reps need to engage in a friendly and helpful way, whatever channel they’re on. Remember that customer service doesn’t stop after you make the sale.
The sales process – The sales process should be convenient and painless for the user. Any issues they have, whether it’s with checking out, trying to use a promotional coupon, pricing issues and more, can hurt the customer experience.
Your marketing efforts – How you market your products and services to a user affects their customer experience. If they find that your attempts to engage them are overly promotional or not relevant to their needs, they may become annoyed. That’s why it’s important to know who your audience is and only engage in a relevant manner.
The user experience – The user experience with your product or service has a big impact on their overall customer experience.

One thing to keep in mind — a customer might have a good user experience with your product, but that doesn’t mean they’ve had a positive customer experience. For example, they can like your product but dislike the quality of your customer service. Because of this, it’s important that you focus on providing both a positive user experience and overall customer experience.

Understanding the difference between the customer experience vs user experience will allow you to improve both. By thinking that they’re the same, one or both are likely to suffer. Although they differ, the two work together to improve the customer’s overall experience.

5 Ways to Update Your Internet Marketing Strategy in 2020

December 12, 2019/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Mark Beebe

The end of the year is quickly approaching. This means that you should take time to review the progress of your marketing efforts this year. You should also think about adjusting your internet marketing strategy and improving upon it. Even if your internet marketing strategy was successful this year, there are always ways you can improve. This is especially true when you consider how quickly internet marketing evolves and changes. With that in mind, the following are five ways that you should consider updating your internet marketing strategy for next year:

1. Update Your Web Design

Your web design has a big impact on whether visitors will stay on your website and continue to explore. The thing is, many businesses don’t update their web design for years. What might have been considered a cutting edge web design three or four years ago may be significantly outdated now. Your website should be easy to read and easy to navigate on both desktop and mobile. As a result, modern web designs tend to go with a cleaner, more minimalistic approach. Take a look at the websites from some of your competitors or from other businesses within your industry to see what they’re doing. If it’s been more than a year or two since you last updated your web design, there’s a good chance that it could do with a few improvements.

2. Personalize Your Email Marketing Efforts

Email marketing might be an old internet marketing strategy, but it’s certainly not an outdated one. Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to not only nurture your leads, but to continue building relationships with existing customers. Be sure to segment your email lists based on the personal data and user behavior data you have access to so that you can personalize your emails more effectively. The more personalized your emails are, the more relevant they’ll be.

Check out our article: Email Opening Lines That Actually Work

A lot of companies have social media pages, but they don’t do anything with them. Use your social pages to your advantage. Link new content to your social pages. Encourage conversations about your brand or your industry by asking your followers questions. Contribute to conversations that are relevant to your brand. By engaging with your followers, you build brand trust.

While using social media to engage with your followers should be a priority, there are other ways that you can take advantage of social media as well. For example, find influencers within your industry and connect with them. Building relationships with influencers can expose you to even bigger audiences and can help to boost your reputation.

4. Create New Content

New forms of content catch on quickly. Because of this, don’t limit yourself to just writing blog articles. While you should certainly continue with your existing content marketing tactics if they’re working for you, you should also look to vary your content. For example, if you haven’t started creating video content yet, then there’s a good chance you’re already falling behind the competition. If you don’t have the resources to create high-quality video content, consider recording podcasts.

Creating new content in a variety of formats will help to extend your reach and will go a long way towards building your brand authority. You may even want to source some of your content from your users. Consumers often connect more with user-generated content, after all. You can do this by holding contests on social media and awarding prizes to the best user-generated content (such as the best picture submitted on Instagram or the best video on YouTube).

5. Continue Finding Ways To Improve SEO

One of the most common online marketing mistakes people make is to assume that once they optimize their content for SEO, that they no longer have to worry about it. However, SEO optimization should be continuous. You should continue doing keyword research in order to optimize new content that you publish. You should monitor your page speed and improve it when it slows down. Also, work on off-page SEO, such as earning backlinks from respectable sources (such as by getting influencers to share links to your content). Remember that SEO isn’t just about optimizing your website. Your SEO strategy will only improve if you compliment it with your content marketing and social media strategies.

When it comes to your internet marketing strategy, it’s important to take note of what worked and what didn’t at the end of every year. Focus on improving marketing efforts that you feel fell short of expectations or of the goals you set. Even if you’re happy with how your marketing strategy performed, look for possibilities for improvement. As such, keep these five ways to improve your internet marketing strategy in mind for 2020.