These days, many marketers are perfectly fine carrying out their tasks from home. The recent pandemic showed how people are capable of adapting to a new work environment. 

Sure, it helps to interact with coworkers and clients in person since it reduces potential miscommunication issues. However, that is something one can work on improving with experience, so miscommunication should not be an obstacle.

Since working remotely as a marketer is an option, the idea of pursuing such a career path is quite appealing. 

If you have some experience to back up your job search, you will have an easier time finding the desired position. On the other hand, there are plenty of opportunities to become an intern and slowly build your experience.

The first thing you need is to decide what kind of marketing job you would like to do. As you can guess, there are quite a few available options. And remember that if you struggle with your first attempt, you can take the experience with you to the next gig.

Having said all that, let’s take a look at some marketing jobs you can do from home.

SEO Specialist

Search engine optimization is one of the cornerstones of a successful brand trying to grow its presence online.

According to Higher Visibility, Google alone received over 80 billion queries in February 2023. BrightEdge published a study as well, indicating that roughly 53% of all website traffic comes from organic search.

The task of an SEO specialist is not just about creating a successful initial campaign. No, the reason why some businesses prioritize other marketing methods is because search engine optimization is a long-term task that requires constant investment to step up and develop new strategies.

Keeping up with the trends can be tricky. The strategy you work on for a long time could become obsolete overnight, which calls for a quick change to not fall behind the competition.

Other than spotting the trends and developing strategies, the work of an SEO specialist also involves link-building and working with the content team to ensure that the website has optimized content.

When starting, you might discover that there are blackhat and whitehat SEO tactics. As a rule of thumb, any self-respecting specialist should stay away from the former. After all, you do not want to suffer from a negative reputation, right?

Ultimately, while working as an SEO specialist is one of the most rewarding experiences, it is one of the hardest jobs in the marketing industry.

Content Marketer

Content marketing is another example of work you can do remotely. This position is about creating attractive and useful content targeted at a specific audience.

Take the tech industry, for example. If your website covers laptops, the potential for content ideas is more or less endless. You can focus on solving OS-related specific problems like fixing the blue screen of death or explaining what is kernel_task in activity monitor.

Producing laptop reviews, comparison guides, upcoming news, speculations, etc., is also a possibility. It is about what course the website takes.

As a content marketer and one who creates the pieces, you have to be:

• well-versed in the niche 
• have your sources; 
• know how to do research;

Checkmarking these three is an excellent indicator that you are on the right track to becoming a successful content marketer.

While articles are the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about content on the internet, it does not end there.

Other forms of content exist. Infographics, videos, newsletters, and virtually any other type of media you can find online.

As a single person, covering everything might be impossible, which is why it is common to see content teams with members who work on specific pieces.

You need to identify your strengths and weaknesses to determine what kind of content you can excel at as a creator. 

It will involve trial and error, and you are probably going to doubt yourself due to how many better content creators are out there. That is something you will have to overcome.

Social Media Manager

Social media involves a lot of different marketing strategies. If one person manages a single SM profile, their usual routine of tasks includes:

• Copywriting
• Customer service
• Graphic design
• Interacting with an audience
• Running PPC campaigns
• Keeping up with social media trends

Copywriting is part of social media content creation, as is graphic design. It varies from case to case basis, but many social media managers also involve themselves in content creation. 

If not directly, at the least, they collaborate and let the creative team know what content they should create.

Audience interactions involve responses to direct messages and comments. Social media engagement is an important indicator of the overall campaign success, and one way to build it is not to be active and not ignore your audience.

Social media trends come and go, so it is important to identify them and implement a trend. For instance, one of the most recent notable changes is how platforms are introducing direct commerce on social media, Facebook being the pioneer. 

To become a social media manager, you have two options. The first is to get in touch with various brands and offer your services. The second is to create and grow a social media page yourself.

Out of the two options, going with the second is the most common since you need to build experience if you want to take on already established accounts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media sites.

Managing multiple SM accounts is not the same as working as an influencer. No, think of it as someone who sits behind a brand. There is no need to reveal your face as you are working from the shadows, so to speak.

Outreach Specialist

Working as an outreach specialist has its perks, but the position is not for everyone. It involves direct interaction with people, the majority of which are usually cold leads.

Some companies ask their outreach workers to make cold phone calls, but the practice is not as prominent these days.

When we think about outreach marketing specialists, it usually involves social media and email marketing.

The goal is to reach as many relevant leads as possible, usually with a template that requires a small adjustment, such as a recipient or company name change. There are also massive outreach campaigns that involve an identical message for every single recipient.

Outreach marketing also involves networking. You build connections with people in the same field. Link building is a good example. If you work as a link builder and want to publish links on various websites, reaching out to SEO specialists or content marketers is a solid strategy.

Having experience as an outreach specialist is also beneficial for future endeavors. If you know how to persuade people to have them respond to a call to action, your skill set will be valued, and you should not have problems finding a marketing-related job.

Copywriter

Copywriting, similar to SEO, is a hard craft to learn but one that is quite rewarding. You can expect to make a decent amount of money from as little as a few sentences.

Good copywriters are hard to come by, which is why they get paid so much. If you have a knack for crafting words, then it should be the number one marketing job on your list.

Copywriting usually involves creating shorter content pieces. Writers who write articles are a separate entity from marketing copywriters, but collaborations between the two are not something unheard of.

The craft is about persuasiveness. Your goal is to persuade a reader to take action. Whether it is an email promoting a new deal or a social media PPC ad encouraging people to download a new e-book, the way a copywriter presents their words can be a difference-maker between succeeding and failing.

Some copywriters prefer a pressure-building technique. They mold the piece in a way that tries to trick the reader into believing that they will miss out if they do not take action. 

Unfortunately, the method is quite prominent because it works. If you want to avoid such an approach, then you need to prepare your words in a way that makes a reader believe you can help them.

PR Coordinator

Public relations coordinators might not seem like they are part of the digital marketing world, but the reality is different.

Some of the activities may involve presentations in live events, but as a remote coordinator, you focus on what is available on the internet.

Writing and issuing press releases, overviewing social media accounts, and even arranging public appearances are part of the job. Some treat it as an assistant more than a PR coordinator, but it depends on the exact duties the work entails.

It is also common to collect data about various opinions online by organizing polls or taking what is already available and processing the information. 

Affiliate Marketer

Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time, and it is arguably one of the easiest jobs to break into as a newcomer.

You can find multiple affiliate programs, but new affiliates usually go with Amazon due to how many different products are available to promote.

Start by creating a website and adding content. If you pick drones, for example, you can write articles reviewing various models and adding affiliate links. 

The goal is to persuade site visitors to click on the link, and once they are on a landing page with active cookies, you get a commission for each successful conversion.

Affiliate marketing goes beyond direct sales. Downloads, video views, and other forms of call to action open different opportunities. It is all about presenting the content and persuading your audience to take the initial action and finish the conversion.

Influencer

Influencer marketing is one of the most popular forms of promoting a brand. A regular person who spends their time on social media is not so keen to trust businesses themselves.

The same cannot be said about personalities, though. Half of the Millennials trust influencers for product and service recommendations, and more than 90 percent of marketers believe that influencer marketing is effective.

If the method was ineffective, influencer marketing would not exist in the first place. It is because various personalities on the internet gain traction and build an audience that such marketing exists in the first place.

Someone can call themselves an influencer even if they do not have that many followers. Even as little as 1 000 followers are enough so long as they engage with the content.

From a business perspective, it is much better to work with someone who has 1 000 active followers in the right demographic than someone who has 10 000 followers but sees very little or no engagement. 

Brands have to be smart and do their research so they do not end up working with someone who bought fake followers to create a profile for themselves.

Unlike other mentioned jobs, influencer marketing is not something you can just choose to pursue. 

There are certain elements, such as internet clout, personality, charisma, and originality, that determine your success or failure as an influencer.

In case you decide to give this idea a chance, remember that influencer marketing goes beyond social media. 

Twitch TV and YouTube are the other two platforms that let you make a name for yourself and monetize your audience.

Conclusion

To sum it all up, the availability of online marketing jobs and the convenience of working from your home make the idea of pursuing such a career quite attractive.

Experienced marketers know what jobs to go for because they know their strengths and weaknesses, as well as a resume to back it up.

For newcomers, though, it is a bit different. Identifying and researching a potential idea is part of a potentially long journey.

Use the job list in this article as a reference, and you are bound to find at least one idea that sparks your interest. And from there, it is all about how much effort you put into mastering your craft to become a successful marketer.

The post 8 Marketing Jobs You Can Do From Home appeared first on OmniKick.

Here are some of the best ways to make your sales process go more smoothly and convince your prospects to hand over their hard-earned cash.

Talking back at your potential client

By this, I don’t mean arguing. Before going into SaaS, I used to work in an agency where we would sell business automation software to a variety of clients from different industries. We would have a few meetings to assess their needs and after that, we would send a business proposal to get them hooked on the idea and convince them to sign. How you write these proposals and what you include makes all the difference.

During the meetings, we would make notes about the specific expressions the client was using. Say that a client wanted to spend more time with his daughter rather than fumbling around with accounting software. We would use these specific phrases in our business proposals and any subsequent meetings we had. The client would hear their own words when we talked about the product we were selling and that made them feel like we know what’s at the heart of their problem. This is a super effective and easy trick to use and it won’t cost you a dime.

Find out what the client actually wants

If you run an SEO agency and a potential client comes up asking to rank first on Google for “Sydney plumber”, you may just jump into it and offer them your standard SEO package. However, this is not how the best clients are won. A lot of times, you just need to scratch an itch beyond the surface to find out the client’s real need. In this case, they may have decent success with organic traffic but they could be struggling to convert that traffic into leads.

When you sit down for your client meetings before you send them out a business proposal, make sure to find out what the client actually needs. A lot of times, they could be convinced that they need one thing when the reality is completely different. Not only will you provide a lot more value this way, but you will also be much more likely to get that client to sign.

Back to the example mentioned above – we really had a client who wanted to automate a lot of his work because he couldn’t spend enough time with his daughter. This was in a software company that I worked for and we won that client. We didn’t tell him that we would build him an awesome app that would revolutionize his life, increase revenue or do something groundbreaking. We simply focused on one thing in the introduction to our business proposals – we’ll help you spend more time with your daughter, and here’s how. That’s how clients are won, so don’t talk about what you do or what you think the client needs – focus on listening to them carefully.

Integrate and automate everything you can

We’re in the business of selling proposal software that helps people sell. One thing I realized is that our customers use software to save time on things they don’t want to do manually. Instead of writing proposals for a few hours at a time, they use a proposal template and create one within 20 minutes. Now, that’s just one aspect of sales taken care of.

We did some research and found out that if our users integrate our software with their CRM, they create proposals 83.6% faster. The integration allows them to auto-fill client data directly from the CRM. This not only saves massive time but also reduces the possibility of error when manually typing client information.

If you have a chance to connect your sales software through integrations, use it. Not only will you save significant time for your sales team but you will also be far less likely to make any kind of human error.

Your CRM is just one example of what could be automated. In our case, we made a major breakthrough when we integrated our app with different payment processors such as credit card companies and Paypal. We removed one major obstacle from the payment process by allowing potential clients to sign the proposal and pay immediately after reading it instead of waiting for days for an invoice to come in. 

Price according to value

Pricing is one of the two most important things in every business proposal – this is something we learned a while ago. Sometime it depends on how much they spent on steps in product development. However, many small businesses and freelancers struggle with setting their prices. It’s hard to set a good balance and make the price attractive to the client and still lucrative to you as the person who does the work. After years of trying out different approaches, I found one that works best for selling – pricing according to value.

You can read more about it here in detail, but there are a few ways to price a service: 

• By the hour or day
• A fixed price with a markup
• Retainer package
• Commission-based
• By value

Starting out, many freelancers charge by the hour, which actually doesn’t make all that sense if you want to earn more. What does make sense is charging based on the value you provide. For example, if you’re redesigning an eCommerce website and you know that the redesign will make an extra $10,000 per month for the store, it makes perfect sense to ask $20,000 and more for the redesign. After all, the client will return their investment in as little as two months.

The bottom line is – the more value you provide to the client, the more you can charge. Of course, to get to this point, you need two things to happen.

First, you need to find out exactly what the client wants, what their situation is and how you can help them. Only when you have all the details can you know how much you can increase their bottom line. This is why you need to have detailed discovery sessions and client interviews.

Second and just as important, you really need to be great at what you do and have a proven track record with other clients. Once you have both of these dialed in, you’ll be getting the maximum revenue for each client without working yourself to the bone.

Offer a guarantee

I’m not trying to reinvent the wheel here, but guarantees work great as a way to convince your clients that you stand behind your work. Traditional guarantees have become very commonplace, but in the world of selling services, they’re not used as much. The experience we have from our own customers showed us that guarantees can be incredibly powerful method to move the client one step closer to purchasing.

There are traditional guarantees where you promise to return the money if the customer is not satisfied. These are all fine and dandy, but they won’t excite the client to sign. One of our regular customers builds websites in 24 hours and her guarantee is that if she doesn’t get it done, you don’t pay. Now that’s a crazy guarantee that anyone would be willing to test. You don’t have to do something similar but try to do something unusual to get potential clients even more excited about working with you.

Back up your claims with proof

There is one thing that all of our customers with great conversions have in common. They have a section in their proposals focusing on the proof. There is nothing more powerful to convince your clients to spend money with you than seeing your work in action. Add some testimonials from previous clients and you’re halfway to getting the client to reach for their credit card.

The proof can be anything that shows how you helped a previous client. From short quotes to full-blown testimonials, videos, portfolios – anything goes. Don’t tell the client to go and see examples of your work on your website. That’s lazy and will only backfire. Include relevant proof in your business proposals or even in the discovery meetings.

One part where you have to be careful is to make the proof relevant to the client you’re pitching to. For example, there’s no use showing a website you redesigned for a restaurant if you’re trying to win a redesign job for a law firm. The proof should be super specific if you want it to achieve the intended effect.

Don’t upsell where you don’t have to

Upselling is a key part of the sales game, along with cross-selling. It’s a good tactic to get a client who’s already interested to spend more than they initially intended. The problem is, it does not always work this way. With business proposals, the main aim is to get the client’s signature and wrap up the proposal.

You’re practically giving the client two choices – sign the proposal and hire you or not sign and walk away. You could include a few pricing options and packages with your offer, thinking it would be good to give the client different options. In reality, the more options there are, the more difficult it is to get the client to say yes to your offer. Instead of a simple “yes” or “no”, now they have at least several choices. Needless to say, business proposals that don’t have any upsells have higher conversions and sell for higher values.

Control the situation

Back in the days of normal when the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t ruling every aspect of our life, you would usually have meetings with clients before sending them your business proposals. Some people find these meetings tedious and a waste of time, but for me, it was a great chance to prepare my ground and increase my chances of getting the sale.

If you’re meeting with a client, avoid going to their office. That way, the client is in control, as they show you in, lead you to the person in charge and let you start the meeting. They control when you start and when it ends and in a lot of cases, they get interrupted by people calling or barging into the office.

Instead, choose a neutral ground. I suggest using cafes in the lobbies of fancy hotels because it doesn’t require a lot of effort to make you look great. Speaking of which, dress for the occasion as well. Arrive there 15 minutes early, settle in and grab a drink as you wait for the client. You control the situation and how the meeting will go. If you have your own office, that’s ideal. However, as I was starting out (and as many freelancers do), my company was just me offering design services. This was a simple trick to leave a superb first impression.

Conclusion

Depending on what you sell, there are millions of little tricks that you can use to improve your sales process. These are some of the very best that I picked up in my years of freelancing, working at an agency and running my own business as I help others get more sales. While these tricks are somewhat different, they have one thing in common – tap into your customers’ actual needs and desires instead of what they tell you they need. Do that right and you’ll have an offer that no one can refuse.

The post 8 Little-Known Ways To Make Your Sales Process Successful appeared first on OmniKick.

It’s no wonder why US businesses spent $6.8 billion on it in 2020. Partnering with the right affiliates can help brands reach a broader audience and increase their sales.

Despite its rising popularity, affiliate marketing remains a mystery for many people. It is often confused with referral marketing. There’s also the matter of understanding affiliate marketing terminology (like affiliate network) and the anatomy of an ideal affiliate marketer. 

If you’re serious about making money through affiliates, you need to clarify these basics. With that done, you can explore ways to build a resultful affiliate marketing program.

Want to know the best part?

You don’t have to search Google or read a dozen articles to get all of this information. I have covered all of these topics in this simple, jargon-free post. You’ll learn the fundamentals of affiliate marketing, plus proven optimization tips, real examples, and free tools/resources to help you in the task.

So, let’s get started.

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing where brands pay affiliates for each new customer/lead/website visitor they generate through their own efforts. Affiliate payout can be in cash or kind (discount, deals, free upgrades, etc.). Businesses use tools to track affiliate performance and calculate their commissions.

There is a common misconception that affiliate marketing is the same as referral marketing. 

However, these two marketing forms differ in two major ways:

• Referral marketing relies on word-of-mouth marketing to grow brand awareness and sales. Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, is more complex and technical. Affiliates leverage all types of channels and tactics to bring customers, including promotion on their blogs and social media pages.
• Typically, in referral marketing, existing customers work as marketers, promoting the brands they love to their families and friends. Conversely, affiliates may be existing customers or neutral entities, who are solely in the business of promoting brands to earn commissions. Moreover, their circle of influence is wider than just friends and families.

You might get the impression that referral marketers possess some kind of altruistic instincts. This is not entirely true. Nowadays, brands have proper loyalty programs, in which they reward customers who generate referrals for them. In this regard, referral marketing is somewhat similar to affiliate marketing.

With that out of the way, let’s take a look at a term that will get thrown around a lot in this post – affiliate networks.

What Are Affiliate Networks?

Affiliate networks are platforms where brands/advertisers go to look for affiliates, and where affiliates go to look for suitable brands/offers to promote.

In other words, affiliate networks help:

• Affiliates and merchants connect
• Protect affiliate interests
• Manage affiliate-merchant relationships

While the match-making capabilities of affiliate networks gets due recognition, you certainly can’t overlook their administrative features. They help brands and affiliates with tracking, payment processing, and reporting as well. 

On top of that, they help brands access a wider pool of affiliates and eliminate logistical hassles from affiliate marketing. On the flip side, affiliate networks charge brands (and sometimes affiliates) for services rendered, which can end up cutting into profit margins.

Anatomy of an Affiliate Marketer

So, who exactly are these affiliates? What do they look like?

According to Affstat’s Affiliate Marketing Benchmark Report, here are the locations, interests, and demographics of affiliates:

• Out of all the affiliates surveyed, 57.4% live in the US and 9.7% in Canada.
• In the US, 13.5% of affiliates stay in California, 12.7% in Florida, 11.1% in New York, 10.2% in Texas, and 8.9% in Nevada.
• 54.2% of affiliates are males, 43% females, and 2.8% didn’t specify their gender.
• 31.9% of affiliates fall in the 35-44 years age bracket and 27.6% in the 25-34 years bracket.
• 55.3% of affiliates are married, 62.4% have kids, and 54.3% work from home.
• Most affiliates (81.4%) work in the B2C space.

Boost Your Affiliate Marketing in 6 Simple Ways

When we talk about optimizing affiliate marketing, there are two things that matter – the quality of affiliate-led traffic and conversion rates of your offers/landing pages. Plus, you need to monitor affiliate fraud and costs during your campaigns and beyond. 

Now, let’s take a look at ways to turbo-charge your affiliate marketing.

1. Analyze Your Revenue and Customer Data

Before you get started with affiliate marketing, you need to take a deep look at your business data and answer questions like:

• What is the value of a new customer?
• What is the value of a repeat customer?
• Do you know your customers’ lifetime value?
• What is your profit margin on different types of sales?
• Have you determined your cost of customer acquisition on various channels?

But business data can be complex and scattered. To make sense of it, you can use data cleansing tools. With clean, accurate data, your decision making and analytics are more precise.

Once your data is consolidated and assimilated properly, you will have a bird’s eye view of your business. You can identify resultful channels and high-potential customers. You will also be able to structure your affiliate payouts in a better way.

One more thing…

Affiliate programs for B2B and B2C differ widely. While B2Cs pay affiliates on low individual purchases, B2Bs typically have recurring payment structures and higher pay slabs. While structuring your affiliate programs, ensure that affiliate compensation is commensurate with the lifetime value of the customers they bring in. 

2. Analyze Your Traffic Sources

You can do loads of optimization on the traffic front, and it’s fairly easy to do. 

How, you ask?

First things first. Compare traffic from different sources so that you know which yields the best quality traffic. Then, you can look into what each traffic source allows in terms of affiliate optimization.

For instance, some traffic sources allow you to purchase traffic from specific devices (mobile, desktop, etc.). Others may let you halt or block traffic types so that you can focus on leads that matter and get an accurate picture of your affiliate’s performance. 

You can even pass custom variables that fetch customer data relevant for your affiliate programs. For example, you can construct variables that tell you about the placement type of your traffic. Using such insights, you can fine-tune your marketing efforts and maximize your ROI.

3. Pick the Right Affiliates

Selecting the right affiliates is perhaps the most critical part of your marketing. But it’s easier said than done.

Considering that 42.2% of affiliates don’t promote more than ten brands at a time, good affiliates are a sought after commodity.

Image via AffStat

Recruiting affiliates is not a one-time task. You should always be looking for better affiliates. Onboarding and activating affiliates should be given due attention, with special emphasis on helping them gain traction.

While vetting affiliates, here are some questions that you need to answer:

• Has the affiliate endorsed products in your industry?
• Which other brands are they promoting?
• Do they have experience working with your audience demographic?
• What promotion methods do they leverage?
• Do they have websites, blogs, and other marketing properties?

After you find well-matched affiliates, it’s time to onboard them. 

Familiarize them with your value proposition, products, and brand voice to get them off to a flying start. Share customer research and competition analysis with them. Don’t forget to share your marketing fails with them. That way, they won’t waste time with methods that don’t give returns and they’ll start delivering value from get-go.

Even experienced affiliates need time to score their first sales so don’t expect overnight success with your new affiliates. If possible, assign dedicated affiliate managers to guide your new brand partners. They can be the single point of contact between you and your affiliates. 

4. Stay Connected with Your Affiliates

You need to drill a sense of ownership in your affiliates. If they feel connected to your brand, they will work twice as hard to promote it.

Affiliate managers can bridge the gap between brand and affiliates efficiently. The Benchmark report cited earlier states that often affiliates decide to join, grow, and leave brands based on their relationships with their affiliate managers.

Maintaining open channels of communication with affiliates not only helps them, but brands as well.

How?

• Affiliates are better equipped to promote products from brands they know closely.
• Affiliates are less likely to leave brands with supportive affiliate managers.
• Affiliates can arm you with resources and insights they have gathered and that you can utilize to train your future affiliates and in-house staff. 

Apart from keeping existing affiliates in the loop, it’s also essential to activate latent affiliates. Research proves that only 7%-10% of affiliates are actively driving traffic to brands. This means the remaining 90% of resources have the potential to sell, but are under-utilized. 

Latent influencers can be broken down into three categories:

New affiliates who haven’t sold anything since they joined (~3 months). Try pushing them into action with higher commissions or a bonus on their first milestones.

Old affiliates who have no activity since they registered to your program. Catch up with them informally and ask what they’ve been up to. Keep them informed about upcoming offers and rewards.

Affiliates who were resultful before but are inactive now. Ask them what challenges they are facing. Appoint new affiliate managers for them, if needed.

5. Regulate Affiliate Methods

Affiliates rely on many tactics to drive traffic, including:

• SEO
• Blogging
• Social media marketing
• PPC
• Email marketing

Image via AffStat

You need to regulate and restrict your affiliate methods so that they are not counterproductive to your efforts. 

For instance, if you use SEO to draw organic traffic and your affiliates also use the same technique, you might end up pulling down each other’s rankings. 

That’s why most affiliate networks have method restrictions. They allow you to search for affiliates by their primary promotion method, which can be:

• Deal/coupon
• Email marketing
• Rewards
• Sub-affiliate
• Mobile app
• Price comparison
• Search
• Software
• Social shopping
• Software
• Content
• Services

You also want to watch out for shady practices. If an affiliate just promotes coupon codes and relies on branded searches to be discovered, they aren’t adding much value to your program. Other red flags include using weighted URLs, stuffing unrelated code snippets in URLs, and using plug-ins and adware.

6. Test Your Landing Pages

You can create custom landing pages on your website for your affiliates to promote, or they can create one for themselves. Be sure to A/B test your landing page elements and calculate the page’s conversion rates. That way, you can figure out when an affiliate is performing below par.

Apart from optimizing your landing pages, provide assistance to your affiliates when they are designing their own pages. After all, you’re both working towards the same goal. Currently, less than 25% of affiliates receive creative help from brands they promote, according to the Benchmark report.

Your affiliate managers can extend help in the form of marketing collaterals and creatives. Plus, they should share testing insights from their own pages. Earning the first conversions is always hard for any affiliate, and you should leave no stone unturned to get the ball rolling.

Ready to Accelerate Your Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is more complex than just adding an affiliate page to your website. It involves analyzing your customer data, business data, and traffic sources. Moreover, you need to select the right affiliates and keep communicating with them while regulating their marketing methods. Last but not least, you should follow landing page best practices and test your pages often. 

Do you have any questions about affiliate marketing? Leave them in the comments. I’ll be happy to answer.

The post 6 Effective Tips to Optimize Your Affiliate Marketing Campaigns appeared first on OmniKick.

To help you start fostering those relationships online, we’ve put together 10 strategies for building a community that your clients and customers want to be a part of.

Let’s dive in!

1. Use Social Listening

The first idea is to pay attention to what your audience is saying online about your industry and what their problems are. This is called social listening, and it’s the perfect way to be proactive about what your audience wants from businesses like yours.

Take advantage of social listening tools to help you track certain keywords, topics and users. Tools like Mention are the perfect solution for watching conversations online.

Keep an eye on the online interactions surrounding each of the items you decide to track in order to learn more about what your clients are interested in and what they might want to learn more of from your business.

Then, solve those problems and address those interests any way you can. This doesn’t just have to be through your services. In fact, you can offer a resolution through your giveaways, content marketing, add-ons and more.

2. Create Community Groups

One great way to create genuine and authentic connections with your clients is to launch online community groups.

There are several online spaces that are perfect for hosting a community for clients and other interested parties to join, like Facebook or LinkedIn groups, Slack communities and more online community building platforms.

Brands like Visme host online communities for their users, providing informational content and product insights, as well as giving them a chance to discuss projects with each other.

Create and promote a community for both clients and potential clients to join. Start discussion threads, share valuable information and build an online group/networking area.

Not only is this a great way to build stronger connections with your clients, it’s also a great way to strengthen your personal branding as well as improve brand awareness.

It also enables your brand to create a word-of-mouth funnel for generating new leads. People will refer people to your community and they will want to work with you after seeing the value you already offer.

3. Promote an Open Feedback Channel

Create a way to get honest, anonymous client feedback. Put together a forum, web page, email account or whatever is best for your workflow exclusively for accepting feedback. You can also consider using chatbots to collect instant feedback on your website.

Moreover, make sure to pay attention to the feedback you receive and implement any necessary changes to better serve your clients.

There are many different ways you can create open feedback channels and welcome client concerns.

First, make sure to be open from the get go with your clientele so they feel comfortable leaving feedback and information in these channels.

Second, consider your target audience and the way they prefer to communicate. You want your feedback area to cater to your audience and be easy for them to use.

If they prefer email, send out anonymous surveys or provide a contact email specifically for this type of communication. If they’re tech savvy, you could create an open forum or embed a form on a web page. You could also create polls to share with your clients.

Be sure that you let all of your clients know about this channel for expressing concerns anonymously as well so that the chances they take you up on it are much higher.

4. Showcase Clients in Social Media Content

Talking about client success stories and your biggest clients is a great B2B marketing strategy. There are a number of different ways to do this.

First, consider creating case studies to showcase clients who have seen major results due to your work. These are effective selling tools and allow you to highlight your clients and get them more exposure as well.

You can also share client social media posts onto your own feed or simply promote their products and services, like we see in this example below.

For B2B and tech industry clients, using Twitter marketing tools. For more visually-oriented clients, sharing photos on Instagram can be a great way to lead your audience directly to your clients’ websites and social profiles.

If you hop on this strategy, you can measure engagement and clicks on those posts as one of your social media KPIs, and even let your clients know how each one has performed. They’ll definitely appreciate the added gesture and exposure.

Consider creating social media ads and PPC campaigns as well for even further exposure.

5. Create a Loyalty Program

Have you had a handful of clients for a longer period of time? Show them you’re grateful for their loyalty and continued business by creating a loyalty program.

This is a great way to reward return clients each time they sign up for services, when they reach major milestones or when they refer new clients your way.

There are many different types of loyalty programs and rewards you could offer, from discounts to cash bonuses, as well as simply asking long-term clients how they would prefer to be rewarded.

Another option could be to create an affiliate marketing program to give clients who refer to work your way a portion of the profits.

6. Check In With Clients

The best way to build a great rapport with your clients is to be incredibly communicative and upfront. There are a few different ways you can go about this.

For instance, create regular update meetings or emails to let clients know about your progress while you work on a project. Another idea is to be fully transparent about any clauses you may have in your contract.

Also, if any obstacles come up, be clear and communicative with clients from the get go. They’ll be much more appreciative to hear about delays beforehand, rather than after the deadline.

And if you’re waiting on a client for something, don’t be afraid to send a follow up email or two in order to help move the process along smoothly.

7. Put Together a Regular Newsletter

A fun strategy for both strengthening your existing client base and opening up an opportunity to gain new ones organically is by starting a newsletter that you send out to your email list.

Sending newsletters with valuable content can help your clients feel even better about working with you because you obviously know your stuff. Come up with a topic or structure for your newsletter that you can easily update with new information each time you send it out.

You also want to make your newsletter easily shareable so your clients can send it to others who might be interested, generating new leads for your list.

Also, be sure to promote your newsletter across your own online channels, like your website or social media profiles, in order to reach an even wider audience, just like this freelancer did on Twitter.

8. Offer Exclusive Discounts/Sales

One way to make return clients feel valued is by offering exclusive discounts or sales every now and then.

While you never want to sell yourself or your business short, occasionally hosting a flash sale or placing a discount code on a random web page can be a fun Easter egg for your clients.

Choose different outlets each time you decide to do this, like a blog post, a web page, a social media post, a newsletter, or even at the end of a webinar. Disappearing posts, like Instagram and Facebook Stories or Twitter Fleets are also the perfect platforms for announcing a limited-time only sale or a discount code.

9. Create Valuable Content

Content marketing is huge for creating connections – as long as you’re consistently creating valuable content for every step of the customer journey.

Not only that, but content marketing is also a great way to reach an even wider audience, both through social shares of your blog content and the organic traffic that your SEO content can generate.

Valuable content isn’t just limited to your blog, though. Creating video content, podcast episodes, infographics, SlideShares and other types of unique content are great ways to expand your network as well as share your knowledge.

You can further engage your audience through enticing YouTube intros, interactive content and the like.

10. Show Your Brand Personality

Being genuine and authentic in all of your communications, both with clients directly and in your online content, is a great way to build relationships and community foundations.

Social media marketing is all about building connections and being your authentic self, and you want to show your followers who you really are and what you really stand for.

Part of ensuring you show off the brand personality you want to convey is putting together a brand voice. This should embody your company mission, the traits you want your brand to emulate and the reason you do what you do.

Here’s an example from TOPOL.io where they showcase their brand personality through emoji and friendly, relatable messaging.

Look for ways you can convey the same fun, energetic voice in your own copy and online content so you can let your own brand personality shine.

Strengthen Your Own Client Relationships

Building stronger connections is key to long lasting client relationships, so it’s time to start putting a few of these strategies in place. Determine which ones make the most sense for you and your business, whether you’re a freelancer or solopreneur, or you’re representing an entire company.

The post Best Ways to Connect With Your Clients to Build a Strong Community appeared first on OmniKick.

Digital voice (and video) transmission tech dates back to 1995, but since the internet wasn’t as powerful as it is today, VoIP wasn’t a feasible communication channel. The sound quality was dreadful, the connection unstable and the calls cut off all the time.

Eight years later, Skype released the beta version. It was the first globally known, audio-only VoIP service that in the following years expanded to video calling, file sharing and more. 

We could argue that VoIP tech started developing much earlier, with AT&T’s Bell Labs and Picturephone in the sixties, but it wasn’t until the 2010s that VoIP went mainstream.

The internet connection quality rapidly went up, and VoIPs followed. In 2019, the U.S. VoIP industry has reached $14 billion — and with the current global health situation, we expect these stats to skyrocket by the end of 2020. 

Now, why do these stats matter and what does VoIP have to do with marketing strategy anyway?

We plan to reveal that in today’s blog! 

For now, here are some spoilers:

• It saves tons of money
• Traditional phones’ features cannot compare
• VoIP brings local flair to across-the-globe communication
• Office presence is not required
• You’ll have an insight into precious data and the ability to act on it instantly
• Customers are happy and so is the customer support team — feed two birds with one scone (no stones here, birds are cool)

Sounds good? Thought so — let’s dive in, so you can learn how to build the best marketing strategy yet with the business telephone system your enterprise deserves.

While Running Costs Go Down… 

Introducing VoIP into your business enables you to cut the costs in multiple ways, and is one of the main reasons to adopt this model of communication.

Installation costs. First of all, there is no need to install a special office phone line or any new hardware. VoIP uses the existing equipment and infrastructure you own and only requires an initial 15-minute installation. The only thing you need for your VoIP to work is an internet connection. It is much more expensive to set up the traditional telephone system — and it lasts longer.

Call pricing. Remember when you accidentally called an international number as a kid and had a “fun” conversation with your parents when the phone bill came in?

No?

Well, some of us do — and while it wasn’t really a fun conversation, the call surely was expensive.

Anyway, the cost of international calls with traditional phone systems didn’t change much. The costs are based on duration and distance from your base, and there are no freebies. 

VoIP providers offer cost-effective plans at lower prices, and many of them even include this feature for free or provide free minutes.

Service maintenance and overhead costs. Maintenance costs are also higher, while the only running cost of a VoIP comes from the data usage. Additionally, it’s much cheaper and easier to add or remove extra phone numbers than it is with POTS (plain old telephone service). 

Updates. When it comes to scalability, VoIP wins again. The software and bandwidth updates are faster and easier than POTS updates, as VoIP requires no additional hardware installations. 

Features. Finally, the features such as Call Transfer, Call Forwarding or adding remote extensions are included in the basic VoIP packages. With POTS, each additional feature needs to be implemented separately, and it adds up to a hefty bill. Most of them are only available with cloud technology in the first place.

In the end — this saves you plenty of money when it comes to telecommunication costs!

…Conversion Goes Up!

Saving lots of money is already great news, but on top of that — using VoIP increases the conversion rate as well!

By using this type of cloud service, you have an opportunity to expand your marketing strategy through other channels besides online ones. In addition to email, ads, social media and others, VoIP will enable you to reach out to your customers and speak directly to them.

There are multiple scenarios in which issues cannot be solved the other way. Some of these include:

• Explaining something complicated
• Having to answer plenty of questions
• When it’s urgent, important and/ or personal

Although cold calling does have a bad reputation for being intrusive, it’s not what it used to be (and even when it was, back in 2010, it still had a better success rate than email). Reps have many tools at their disposal to “preheat” the call and contact people who are a good fit, and cloud tech that VoIP resides on is one of them.

Now we’re diving into the customer satisfaction area! In the following chapter, we’ll explain how VoIP technology helps you warm up what was once named “cold call” and converts leads to long-term customers.

Maximize Customer Satisfaction — Dynamic And Effective Communication

Handling the impatient customers’ requests fast is a must if you want to stay ahead of the competition. Keep them on hold just a bit longer, and you’ll lose the happy customer; with that, you may miss a bunch of referrals from them, as well as a future purchase.

By using VoIP, you’ll have instant access to all the info you can need! Cloud technology stores and updates the data in real-time, making access fast and intuitive. This makes the conversation effective and most importantly — short. 

The following features will help the reps handle the calls at all times:

• Call History — access the list of calls made earlier to keep track 
• Call Recording — listen to the previous conversations with a certain client and stay up to date with their situation
• Call Comments — leave useful notes for future reference, or access them to learn more when taking over the customer from another rep
• Shared Call Inbox — allows multiple sales reps to participate in call and help if necessary

Still, customers and clients can reach out to you in more ways than one. Email, Chat or Phone Support — everything goes, so even the customers that shy away from speaking over the phone have a way to ask for help or info.

Website Call Widget is another thing that makes it easier for customers to reach out. They can use it to make a call without leaving the website. Customer support reps can assist them at the moment of speaking, and guide them through the problem-solving process. Email exchange could take days — this way, everything can be resolved in a matter of minutes.

In addition to the features described above, VoIP has a way of handling the calls even before the reps pick up the phone. Queue management with IVR menus, auto-attendants — all of these direct the customers to the right department instantly, eliminating the need for transferring the call and without wasting their (and reps’) time.

What’s also amazing about VoIP is that you can do all of this outside the office!

VoIP Increases Your Availability — No More Office-Bound Work

If you opt for VoIP instead of a landline, you can work from anywhere, provided that you have a stable internet connection and your device is not showing technical troubles. Just the same, you can use any smartphone or laptop — from the office, home, coffee shop or any other location you pick.  This can be especially powerful for digital nomad solopreneurs who create educational resources like online courses and want to offer consulting on the side.

It’s possible to assign the same business number to multiple devices, so you’re never caught off guard (or with an empty phone battery without a charger in sight).

This option became crucial in 2020. for the obvious reasons. However, being able to answer the call this way would still matter if the current situation didn’t have the dystopian elements. 

For some businesses, being available outside the typical office hours is a prerequisite. 

Then, there are different time zones you want to cover if you strive for a global presence. In the end, for huge customers in the crucial stages of the sales funnel, not answering the call is not an option! This way, you can speak to them whenever they want, and provide them with an exceptional customer experience. 

Also — did we mention that VoIP opens the doors for the markets far away, but makes it look like you’re right there?

Global Reach With Local Appeal — With Geographical Number Targeting

Need to reach the customers located across the continent? 

VoIP allows you to pick a phone number that matches any geographical location you wish. This also means that you can use multiple phone numbers, a different one for each area.

With this feature, your small business can have the appearance of a bigger enterprise, with HQs established in multiple cities, or even countries. Local numbers also help with customer segmentation — their needs may vary depending on the location, so you can easily group them and present them with offers relevant to their location and cultural preferences.

As it strengthens your company image, it also appeals to local customers. They will see a familiar area code, and won’t think that you’re far away, or that the call will cost them a fortune. And it really won’t — VoIP packages include toll-free numbers as well!

Geographical number targeting is also a great way to track the ad campaigns, and then analyze and compare their success. Find out how to do it below!

Measuring Your Campaign’s Success — See What Works Well And Improve Instantly

Continuing with local numbers and ads success — there’s a “trick” that will show you what ad converts the best. 

When you’re putting the special, local ads together, include the local phone numbers so your customers can use them to contact you. VoIP can provide you with a fair amount of those numbers. Then, you can take a look at the stats, and see what number brings the most calls and sales! This way, you can pinpoint which ad worked the best and make a direct connection between the ads and the sales.

You can also apply this strategy when determining which web pages on your website have the best CTAs. Create and place a special number on each page (or place the Website Call Widget there), and you can estimate the success by noting down which number got the most calls.

However, VoIP has more useful functionalities that help you build marketing campaigns with high conversion rates. Integrate it with your existing CRM and sales tools and you’ll get an interactive dashboard, with all the data right where you need it.

Help Your Customer Service Team — Improving Performance With Little Effort

Including VoIP in your sales and customer service teams’ tech stack will make them work efficiently and alleviate the everyday stress that comes from working in a fast-paced environment. 

The features are devised with teamwork in mind. Assign the Call Owner, and you’ll leave no place for confusion, as everybody knows their tasks and who to turn to in case they need extra info or help. Dedicated Account Manager is in charge of key customers with a long track record of high-priced purchases — eliminating the need for multiple reps to juggle several accounts and mix them up.

The Call Recording feature we mentioned also helps with onboarding new team members: go through the notable calls with them, and you won’t need to schedule special onboarding sessions. Practical, real-life examples are the best learning material!

A Shared dashboard brings the whole team together; no matter where in the world your reps are located, they can access the data in real-time and communicate with coworkers.

Summary

For every well-made marketing strategy, it’s important to go where your customers are. Using VoIP, next to live chat or emails, provides yet another channel for you to do so. 

It’s a cloud service that seamlessly integrates into your existing tools, and ties them together into a powerful kit that makes your teamwork fast and effective. Not only will your team appreciate it, but the customer satisfaction levels will notably grow. Installation and maintenance are cheap and easy, and it pays off on so many levels!

The post How To Build An Effective Marketing Strategy Using VoIP appeared first on OmniKick.

These customers often come to the website and then get converted into buyers since that’s the primary source of business information. This makes website traffic the first thing every business desires.

From strategizing SEO to PPC campaigns, increasing website traffic is a goal for every brand irrespective of their domain. They spend loads of time trying to hire the right person or frame the right strategy to drive more visitors.

Another step brands are taking to create awareness and communicate with the audience is to maintain a social media presence – a means to represent the brand as more than just a product or service provider.

But we were talking about website traffic. Why are we suddenly shifting to social media?

It’s because social media can drive up to 200% more traffic to your website, and we will help you do it!

71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are more likely to recommend the brand to family and friends.

With everyone spending time on their phones all day long, scrolling through social media, and consuming so much content, it’s easy to interrupt and divert their attention to your website. However, to achieve the desired results, you need to follow a systematic approach.

Let’s see how you can do it following this step-by-step guide to increase your scale graph for website traffic using social media.

Content table

Step 1: Link your social media to Google Analytics

Step 2: Identify the right social media channels for your brand

Step 3: Optimize your social media profiles

Step 4: Keep an eye on your competitors

Step 5: Create share-worthy content 

Step 6: Up your content distribution and promotion game

Step 7: Offer free resources and deals

Step 8: Engage with your audience directly

Step 9: Connect with influencers

Step 10: Analyze your efforts

Step 1: Link your social media to Google Analytics

Before you begin optimizing your social media profiles for driving traffic to your website, you need to set an analyzing system in place. This is important because, without this, you won’t be able to distinguish the traffic redirected to your website through social media channels and that from other sources.

Here’s what you can analyze after setting up an analytics system in place:

• Which social media platforms are sending you the most traffic and which ones you need to pay more attention to.
• The time spent on the website by your social media visitors will tell you how engaged they are if you’re targeting the right audience and if they like your content.
• You can compare new visitors and returning visitors to see if your social media visitors are coming back to the website. If not, you can revise your social media strategy to boost its effectiveness.

So, how can you set this up?

1. Log in to your Google Analytics page.
2. Open admin and click on goals.
3. Click on ‘+new goal.’ 
4. Go to ‘goal setup’ and add a template, preferably the ‘custom template.’
5. Under ‘goal description,’ add your social media goal, such as to get email sign-ups.
6. Under ‘goal details,’ select the landing page for which you want to record this data. Here, you need to fill in the URL of your landing page without the domain name.

And voila!

Now, whichever way you use your social media strategy to direct traffic to your website, it will start analyzing it for the landing page you selected and the goal you chose.

Now, let’s begin with our social media game!

Step 2: Identify the right social media channels for your brand

Now that you have an analyzing system in place tracking every parameter, you need to work your social media game. However, before doing that, you need to ensure you’re leveraging the right channels.

There are many social media platforms, but what’s best for you is determined by your brand objectives and goals.

If you’re a consumer- or product-based company, a B2C, business-to-consumer channel like Instagram and Facebook might be right for you. On the other hand, if you serve businesses and address a professional audience, then, a B2B, business-to-business channel like LinkedIn would be more suitable.

Now, if your brand needs to maintain a visual presence, then platforms like YouTube and Pinterest may be a good fit for you.

In this infographic, Remic points out the main features and demographics of some popular social media channels. These are generic findings and can be looked at to take an idea about the platforms most suitable for your brand.

But why do you need to choose your social media channels?

Because focusing on all the channels together or on the wrong one for your brand may cause more harm than good because you won’t be serving your target audience.

You need to target someone and not everyone. And to do this, you need to identify the right platform, so your efforts are backed by results,  in this case, increased traffic to your website.

Here are some things to consider while choosing your social media platforms:

1. Who is your target audience?

Research says that if you have a preconceived and general understanding of the demographic and marketing you’re catering to, it provides extra leverage in establishing a relationship with them.

To sufficiently understand your audience, do a detailed analysis. See what they do, where they live, the demographics, their buying capacity, how much time they spend on their phones, and more. You can even use a tool to understand your website visitors. The best way to understand your audience is by looking at the ones visiting your website.

After doing this research, create a buyer persona.

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer derived from your target audience research. With this, you will understand your audience much better and take the necessary steps accordingly.

You can use Hubspot buyer persona templates to draft one for your brand and let that guide your strategy.

2. Which platforms do they use the most?

Your target audience is most likely to use one or two platforms more than the others. Those one or two platforms they use and visit every day are your go-to platforms. Why?

Because that’s where your target audience hangs out, and this is where you can attract them with your content and social media campaigns to make them want to visit the website and eventually convert into paying customers.

3. What kind of content are you trying to produce?

Content is the center of all social media activities. To meet your goal of increasing website traffic, you need to create stellar content that adds value to the target audience.

But before you can create content, you need to decide what kind of content you’re planning and if it is suitable for the platform you’re choosing.

For example, visual content works better on Instagram, but text content works well on Facebook.

Your content goals also need to align with your social media goals.

4. What is your brand’s story?

How do you wish to tell your brand’s story? Through videos, or written content or images? These aspects also need to be considered while choosing a social media platform for yourself.

Your brand story matters a lot because it humanizes your brand and aims to start a conversation with your target audience to engage with them. So, framing your brand’s story and deciding how you will communicate also plays a significant role.

5. How will social media support and grow your website?

Even though you have a social media plan in mind, you need to have an idea about what you expect from social media and how it can contribute to growing your website.

Is it through giveaways, content creation, gated content, collaborations, or interviews?

This will help you decide which platform matches best with your overall goals.

These questions can be answered by conducting market research of your target audience and understanding their behavior. This is because, ultimately, your audience will visit the website.

The social media platform you decide as a part of this objective should align with your brand’s personality and reflect what you uphold.

Once you have your social media channels in place, you can start taking steps towards the ultimate objective of increasing website traffic.

Step 3: Optimize your social media profiles

Optimizing your social media profiles is as important as optimizing your website’s SEO.

Social media is a great brand building and recognition tool, but it will only reap good results if you genuinely invest time, making it the absolute best.

On social media, many other brands/individuals are doing the same thing as you, so how do you stand out? By turning your business into a brand and focusing on branding.

Here’s a checklist for you to keep in mind while optimizing your social media profiles:

1. Profile and cover picture

You don’t have a cover picture on Instagram, but on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, you do. And to keep the branding consistent, you must have the same profile and cover picture across your social media profiles.

Here, Mad Over Marketing (M.O.M), an advertising and marketing agency, has the same profile and cover picture on both LinkedIn and Twitter.

Why? Because this helps your customers and audience recognize your brand and its posts the minute they come across it.

Ensure both of these reflect the brand’s personality because they create a first impression on the user, which cannot be missed!

2. Complete your profile bio and contact details

Your social media bio needs to define what you do and why you do it. It’s best if it conveys the message in a tagline, followed by a call-to-action.

Since we aim to drive traffic to the website, the CTA should be the website URL along with a text which says,

‘Need help with XYZ? Visit our website,’ or anything which goes along your brand guidelines.

Make sure the website URL is visible on all your social media profiles.

Since you can’t write a hefty article on yourself in the bio, keep it short and crisp with only the necessary information. Don’t forget to add your main keywords in the bio, which helps in better SEO ranking.

The contact details can include your location and email address.

On Twitter, Buy me a Coffee has a crisp bio that tells the users what they do and the next step they should take, ‘create a page,’ they further go on to say, it only takes 2 minutes to enroll a bit of humor too.

3. Choose themes and a color palette for your feed

One thing contributing to your presence on social media is having a branded feed made along with your brand’s personality.

This includes choosing a color palette as per your brand’s logo and using that to guide your posts’ design on the platform.

Remember, great content hooks the audience, but great design compels them to keep visiting your profile and reading your posts. This is especially true now more than ever when visual content rules!

The idea of a branded feed is to condition your audience to your colors, such that whenever they see a post, story, video, or ad which has a palette and design unique to you, they will be able to recognize you without seeing the brand name. A consistent feed aesthetic helps to define your brand voice and reputation better. That’s how vital branding is.

On Instagram, SquareAcademy maintains a joyful theme of pink and contrasting colors keeping everything consistent from the design layout to the font in every post that perfectly defines their brand.

Once you have successfully optimized and completed your social media profiles, it’s time to research.

Step 4: Keep an eye on your competitors

A great marketing strategy also consists of keeping an eye on your competitors and monitoring their success. You can use several social media tools for analyzing your competitor’s social traffic and top posts.

You don’t have to hire a detective to keep an eye on them, but a simple analysis and notes here and there might save you time researching your target audience and contemplating how you can keep them engaged enough to visit your website.

The idea is not to replicate their strategy but to take inspiration from it and create your strategy. If you have the same target audience as your competitor, you’ll get an idea about:

• The type of content they create
• How they engage with their audience
• How the audience responds to their content
• How they divert traffic to their website

This competitor analysis template by Popsters is an excellent example of how you can analyze your social media competition. Or consider making a template along the same lines by tweaking elements as per your requirement.

This can help you in many ways, including not making the mistakes they make and identifying the gaps and filling them with your strategy.

Everyone wants to be the best option for the solution they provide, but there is always a gap, a new and innovative idea that your competitor is not doing but can make a world of difference for your brand.

You need to observe, analyze, and understand their strategy to draft your own by filling in their gaps.

Step 5: Create and post share-worthy content

If you want to drive traffic to your website through social media, you need users to visit your profile, because that’s where the website link is right?

But would they visit your website if you’re just promoting your website content to gain more visitors? No, they won’t.

Let’s be real; every person is on social media to hang out. They want to be up to date with trends and participate in it by sharing their pictures and content. This means that the key to getting people to your profile is to create share-worthy content that adds value to your audience.

Here are some things you should consider while creating and posting content:

1. Type of content

Ideally, visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared than any other piece of content but with the continually evolving social media features, let’s explore our options:

• Carousels

Carousels perform well on social media if they provide valuable information on a particular topic given the headline is strong and enticing. An idea here could be to repurpose your blogs into carousels and redirect the audience to the blog for more information by sharing the link.

However, this can be done for selective blogs and not for each one, since you don’t want to promote your website blatantly.

Rest, base your carousels on your target audience’s pain points for the best response.

• Videos

Long-form videos for Youtube and short-form videos for Instagram work because they are easier to consume and significantly divert attention.

Here again, your blogs can be converted into videos or vlogs to garner more reach.

Tips and tricks, tutorials, how-to videos, and personal experiences are examples of putting video content in front of the audience to establish a one-to-one connection.

Influencer Gary Vaynerchuk creates IGTV videos to educate the audience about relevant topics and snippets from his speaking gigs, which are widely loved and appreciated.

• Infographic

Infographics present valuable information supported by visuals to keep the user engaged.

They can be used as an outline for a blog post embedded in the blog and shared on social media. This can further be linked to the blog post, thus providing even more value to the audience.

Humour is a great way to keep your audience engaged, and if you’re making memes about topics surrounding your brand, the users may want to re-share it thus garnering more people on your profile, and eventually the website.

You can also use stories on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to offer sneak peeks into your upcoming blogs or link to an interview hosted on your website.

The more valuable content you share, the more likely are people to be curious about what you do, and when they do, they will visit your website. So, focus on creating share-worthy and valuable content that clicks with the audience while redirecting them to your website in a not so obvious manner.

Netflix made a meme about one of their shows relating it to the current situation of 2020. Since the audience could relate to it, the post was widely shared.

2.Posting time

Once you’ve created excellent content, you need to post it. But posting it randomly at any time in the week is not going to cut it, you need to see when your audience is most active- time and days both!

The posting time differs for every platform, for example, according to Hootsuite, the best time to post on Facebook is 12 pm-3 pm on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday while 12 pm-1 pm on Saturday and Sunday.

Even though these are generic calculations, you can always experiment and see which posts garner more engagement at what time to work out a posting schedule.

Instagram’s in-built analytics tell you when your audience is most active, so you can even follow those.

It’s important to post when your audience is active because they’re free, scrolling through social media, and are ready to be interrupted by your content. So, you can steal their attention, make them curious, and entice them to visit your website- all through quality content and active posting time.

3. Social media content calendar

Now that you have a content creation process in place, and the posting time, it’s time to create a content calendar.

Why is this important?

You can’t just randomly post whenever you want because, with social media, consistency is vital. If you’re posting 3 times a week, it’s much efficient if you have a schedule and system that keeps the content prepared well in advance while maintaining the agility to tweak a few changes.

You can make a Trello board or a Google sheet with the following categories:

• Content topic
• Content format
• Writer
• Designer
• Platform to be published on
• Day and time of publishing
• Status (to do, pending, in review, published)

This will give your team a heads up of the schedule and make the process swift.

You can make a similar board for free using Monday to make your calendar. Ensure that you make the calendar in a place where it’s easy to collaborate with your team members so all of them can work on it together.

4. Hashtag strategy

Hashtags are an essential part of social media because they segment the content as per their keywords. People often search for content using relevant hashtags, so it’s essential to use hashtags pertinent to your content to increase its reach.

Many tools like Later and Hashtagify tell you the relevant hashtags as per your content or industry, so you use only those that cater to your target audience and avoid spammy/blocked hashtags.

5. Call-to-action buttons

Social media is a communication and engagement platform more than a content creation platform, and so, it’s important to tell your audience what to do next.

These CTAs should be placed in your stories, videos, carousels, bio, comments, or posts.

Here are a few examples of CTAs which will expand your social media reach and website traffic:

• Read more, link in bio
• Tag a friend who might find this useful
• What are your views on this? Comment below
• Do you have more to add? Best comment gets pinned
• Share this, tag us in your stories for a prize
• Visit our blog to read similar content
• Follow our hashtag to stay updated

Monk Entertainment asks its audience to check out their brand work, a great CTA, to redirect the audience to another brand page.

These calls to actions are essential because, without them, you’ll lose your audience.

Step 6: Up your content distribution and promotion game

Creating great content alone is not enough to generate traffic to the website and get visitors to engage with you. It requires multiple touchpoints before the user finally takes action. For this, a good content distribution and promotion strategy work best.

Research says that the 1st one hour of posting any content on your social media is crucial because it determines if your content will break through the noise of excessive content online or saturate like the others.

Let’s see how you can do this:

1. Share your posts more than once

You should share your content multiple times because some of your followers may be in different time zones, and if you re-share, say, after a week of first posting it, you may have garnered more followers.

Re-sharing expands the scope of reach and introduces it to new followers, thus increasing the traffic.

2. Cross-promote

If you’re using 2 platforms, say Facebook and Instagram, consider linking your posts across platforms to divert the audience, make them curious, and increase your follower base.

If you have a post on Instagram, share it on Facebook, with the link of the original post on Instagram. This way, whenever they visit your social media profile, they will be able to access and visit the link in bio, your website.

You can even target your website visitors to present them offers on social media.

3. Share your posts in community groups

There are many community groups about your industry on every social media platform. You need to find the right one with active users who lie in your target audience.

Posting here introduces your content to more people, and since such groups have constant member additions, you can wrap more and more people in your funnel.

4. Ask your friends, family and employees/colleagues to share the posts

If your post has to garner good engagement in the 1st one hour of posting, it needs to be shared, more so by your 1st connection.

Ask them to share it on their social media profiles and among groups. Research suggests social media content shared by employees gets 8x more engagement than from brand accounts. This may be the push your posts need to get more followers and, thus, more website visitors.

5. Repurpose your content

Repurposing means changing the format of your content to increase its reach. You can convert your blog posts into carousels, videos, live sessions, infographics, cheatsheets, email newsletters, etc.

You can link the repurposed content back to the original one so that it gets promoted indirectly, and the users are visiting your website.

This blog post repurposing workflow by Social Champ broadly explains how you can break a single piece of content into different formats for maximum reach.

Step 7: Offer free resources and deals

Our heart skips a beat the minute we hear the word ‘FREE’ or ‘DISCOUNT.’ So, why can’t we use this to convert our audience and increase our website traffic?

When you give your audience something more than just products and services, they feel compelled to check it out, especially if it means that either they won’t have to spend money or will be able to save on it.

Let’s see how you can do this:

1. Special promotions and deals

Deals on festivals, or after reaching a particular milestone, give people a push. Whenever we set out to buy something, the first thing we do is ask if it’s on sale or search for a promotional code to get a discount.

What if you post your discount code and offer on social media to redirect them to your website?

This will not only give them something to check out your product but also build curiosity about your brand and products. The end action here will be to visit the website to avail the code or check out the deal.

2. Free resources

Offering your audience free and valuable resources like eBooks, buying guides, cheatsheets, checklists, and templates can contribute extensively to becoming a thought leader in the industry. These can be made in a downloadable format, available on your website, and promoted on your social media profiles.

These resources work the charm because it helps the audience solve their problems or increase their efficiency; thus, taking a step towards building faith in you as a brand.

To download the resource or avail the deal/discount code, they visit the website, and it’s a win-win situation.

Hubspot promoting its playbook on Twitter is an excellent example of a free resource.

Step 8: Engage with your audience directly

Brands and individuals often tend to overlook the social aspect of social media. Yes, social media platforms are great for content creation, but they’re also great for other important aspect-brand communication.

Research says that only 11% of customers get replies from online brands, and if you want to be in the top 1% in your industry, then engaging with your audience is the key.

Social media, a 2-way communication channel, allows you to engage with your audience directly. This increases brand recall value and their chances of visiting a brand’s website, which directly relates to them. Be a brand your customer loves because that’s one thing they will never forget. Focus on that, and provide value to your audience.

Imagine if you tweet about a brand, and they retweet it along with a comment, wouldn’t you feel special and maybe check out their page, website or even buy from them?

Let’s see how you can do this:

1. Reply to tweets, comments, and DMs

While you may not be active or available all the time to reply to your audience, hiring a social media manager can help the case. If a person messages or tweets about your brand, rather than no reply or worse, a bot reply will harm.

Here, a social media manager representing the brand and communicating with the audience will make them feel special and remind them that they responded to them.

You can even create conversational chatbots on platforms like Facebook to directly answer your customer’s questions and engage with them.

It would be best if you humanize your brand for people to start relating to you. You can occasionally respond to the best comments, maybe pin them on your post, retweet, or reply to their messages.

This will not only make them feel special, but your brand will earn a special place in their hearts. And, if they visit your profile, a clickable link to the website will call out to them, thus doing the trick.

Netflix is doing a great job of replying to comments on their Instagram posts!

2. Host giveaways, quizzes, and polls

Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter have come up with a new feature for polls. You can directly question your audience for something fun or related to your brand and record their responses.

You can do this to know about their pain points, struggles in your niche, or if they like the content, you’re creating.

Giveaways are a great way to attract more people to your profile. You could ask them to comment on your post, tag a friend or share it on their story, and in return, they could get a shoutout on your page, a product sample, or maybe some other deal.

These bring in many people, thus increasing your profile’s reach and engagement, and eventually, the number of people visiting your website.

This giveaway by Buy me a Coffee is a Monday ritual, and the audience loves it!

3. Participate in conversations and trends

Memes and moment marketing are gaining momentum and for all the right reasons. Here, brands participate in an ongoing trend popular among the general audience with a post related to the trend and their brand.

This is humorous, witty, and a great way to engage the audience. You’re creating relatable content that will start a conversation, thus, contributing to your brand recall value.

4. Participate in public forums

Public forums like Reddit and Quora are great ways of engaging with your audience and answering questions where they lie. You can simply search for your niche keywords and answer relevant questions.

On Quora, you can include your website link once in every 3-4 answers and to your profile bio, so that people can visit it. This way, giving valuable answers to questions may garner more website visitors.

BuzzSumo co-founder answers questions relevant to his brand on Quora to engage with the audience.

You can also participate in conversations on Reddit and comment on your website link on subreddits that allow.

However, focus on value and not just linking your website because doing so may block your profile. The way to your consumer’s heart is through value.

Engagement and communication is an integral part of social media. If you want to increase your followers and profile visits, engaging with your audience and providing value are vital factors.

Step 9: Connect with Influencers

People who already have a significant follower base similar to your target audience can contribute to spreading the word, be it about your product, giveaway, deal, services, or simply, for brand awareness.

Since these people already have your target audience as followers and are popular among them, it’s easy to divert them. However, the difficult task is choosing the right influencer with the right set of audiences to endorse your brand and, in the process, build a relationship.

Here are some things you should keep in mind while selecting the right influencer:

1. Genre of content

Every influencer has a separate genre of content they create on their social media profiles and so, finding the one that fits with your brand’s personality and work is essential.

2. Location and audience

Social media is a diverse space, and your target audience and the influencer’s followers must be close in location, age, and language to ensure your efforts yield results.

3. Authentic reach

The influencers need to have a good follower base, yes, but it’s equally crucial that those followers are authentic. Today, it’s effortless to buy followers, and so, if you tie up with an influencer who doesn’t have an authentic reach, then your collaboration won’t be able to drive the desired results.

The larger the follower base, the more extensive reach your brand will get.

4. Engagement analytics

If your influencer has a good follower base but not-so-good engagement, it won’t work. You can assess this by seeing if their posts are getting likes, comments and if people are genuinely engaging with their posts.

If their content is engaging and gets a good response, your brand may also get returns.

5. Quality and value

Just choosing the right influencer is not enough, you’ll also have to see what type of posts they put out for collaborations and how innovative they are.

To do this, you can look at their partnership posts and get an idea. This will determine how much value the influencer can bring to the table and how you can benefit from it.

These stats by Omniconvert clearly suggest how vital influencer marketing is on social media platforms.

It is a great way to get the word out, but it all comes down to choosing the right one and drafting the right strategy, including the type of content they’ll put out, how, on which platform, and how frequently.

All this done with the right mindset and strategy will result in increased profile views and website traffic.

Step 10: Analyze your efforts

Now that you have taken significant measures towards achieving your goal of driving traffic to your website, it’s time to measure the results and assess the strategy.

There are 2 ways to do this:

1. Google Analytics

In the first step, we linked Google Analytics and your social media channels. Go back to it and assess the performance to see the difference in traffic from social media now and before you started.

You should also see the platform from which most traffic comes because you need to pay attention to this channel.

The idea here is to identify the gaps, analyze them, and tweak your strategy using these free courses to get an even better result.

2. Platform analytics

Analyzing how your profile performs on different platforms is vital to assess your efforts and the audience’s reaction to it.

However, not all social media platforms have in-built analytics except Instagram, which gives you an insight into your audience, top-performing posts, and reach.

Alternatively, you can use social media tools like Buffer and Hootsuite to check your performance.

Wrapping it up

Social media is a buzzing place to be, but you can leverage it to do more than just content creation and communication through the right set of actions. 

Driving traffic to your website through social media can work on many levels if you work out a strategy with a step-by-step approach. At every step of the way, analyze how you can do it better, and work on it.

‘’A brand is no longer what we tell the customer it is- it is what customers tell each other’’- Scott Cook

Be a brand. Do it at your own pace, start small, but start right because the initial foundations are fundamental, and you can create a first impression only once. And on social media, first impressions by brands matter a lot.

But if you think that you’ll have to invest a lot of time on social media and maybe you don’t have that time, then think again because this is where your audience is, and investing time once to drive results and keep the process going by keeping a team in place can yield great results.

You can even use team collaboration tools to keep the process efficient and consistent.

Social media is a gold mine to drive visitors to your website, organically. Leverage and maximize its potential to skyrocket your website traffic.

Good luck!

The post The Complete Guide To Achieving Up To 200% More Traffic to Your Website With Social Media (Organically) appeared first on OmniKick.

For a long time, this was thought to be elusive, as managing business-oriented tasks take a heavy toll.

But with the advent of something called the -Internet- in the 90s, things have changed drastically.  

Moving through a time of Internet advancement 

After almost two decades of the internet, we have access to plenty of online and offline tools that make business management work easier.

In colloquial and in general terms, these tools are called task management tools that can make each hour more productive for businesses.

Why choose Task Management Tools for better productivity?

The pricing dilemma 

However, these software or tools are supposed to carry a hefty price tag, which is not always the case.

Various tools are available for free, and when we say free, then it means no strings are attached.

Lack of awareness 

It is quite unfortunate that this message has not percolated deeper, despite having varied means of circulating information.

Some businesses work on paid tools, while others continue to struggle due to the pricing chaos.

The reason why we say it is unfortunate is the fact that businesses can benefit quite a lot with the proper usage of free tools.

Business tools play an essential role in deciding your team’s productivity.

Having said that, you need to choose the right tool so that you can accomplish the desired goal. 

Choosing the right tool

A simple google search will land you hundreds of results to choose the right tool.

But we have zeroed in on the important tools only so that you do not have to toil to pick the right tool.

A gentle reminder, all these tools are available for free online.

Some of the Free Project Task Management Tools are:

Here, we have curated a list of best task management tools for businesses in different industries, so pay heed.

1. ProProfs Project

The world of modern project management tools has become highly crowded, but ProProfs Project still holds its place among top task management tools.

It is an effective tool that makes project management easier than one would’ve thought of.

The tool comes with an intuitive and user-friendly interface, which makes project tracking painless.

Plus, you get access to features like an intuitive dashboard for managing multiple tasks, Gantt charts to monitor the progress of each task, task priorities to handle project-related urgency aptly, task dependencies for seamless team collaboration, etc.,

and that ensures your project management journey stays smooth as much as possible.

All in all, this tool acts as a helping hand when it comes to handling project tasks effectively, so it’s certainly worth your shot.

2. Nimble

Nimble is an exciting tool to get access to, as it keeps project-related obstacles at bay thanks to its outstanding features.

By means of Nimble, you enjoy the perks of an organized workflow.

It makes the task management journey smooth, isn’t it?

You can easily keep a tab on activities your team is working on.

Besides securing proper task management, you lower down the possibilities of overdue work to a large extent.

This tool enables you to be prepared for anything by letting you manage your team’s calendars, so no tasks get missed or delayed.

3. Proofhub

Proofhub is one of those task management tools that promise immersive user experience, as it makes complex project-related work so easier for you.

One of the most effective features is, ‘Discussions’.

By means of this feature, you can create discussion topics so that all concerned individuals can exchange words with respect to project progress easily.

Another benefit of using this feature is you can avoid lengthy and messy email threads for good.

Besides this, features like task assignment, task priorities, timely notifications, etc. are there to give delightful experience.

All things considered, this tool is worth a shot!

4. Monday.com

Monday.com is a collaboration software that is useful for SMBs.

It is the best project management software that concentrates on the way teams work by handling workloads and enhancing communication.

This software aids in managing schedules and plans through a visual timeline.

In this way, team members can easily view the plans at a single glance.

Thus, it forms the best example of a team task management tool.

5. Avaza

Avaza is one of the promising free task management tools for a small yet client-focused business.

It comes with all the expected PM features, such as list views, time tracking, resource allocation, and much more.

All these features are available under the free plan.

This work task management tool is beneficial for all client-based businesses because of its broader functionality and features like expense tracking, quoting, and invoicing.

Under the free plan, you get access to one timesheet, one admin along with one scheduling user, and five in-use projects.

Moreover, 10 clients, five invoices per month, regular emailing, and chat support with an online knowledgebase

6. Trello

Trello is also good PM software that provides you a common perspective on any project.

This platform is available free of cost, so new companies can pick this tool to improve their business productivity.

The tool is even good for freelancers.

It has an eye-appealing dashboard, where you can see all the important tasks on the screen.

Trello empowers you with the option of creating boards.

You can categorize each board by different names like ‘to do,’ ‘doing,’ and ‘done’ for work simplification.

This is a simple yet effective PM tool that you must have as a part of your business up-gradation.

7. Airtable

If you love the basic layout to avert any sort of messiness, Airtable is a tool that you should have. This tool comes with a clean and orderly appearance.

It is in the form of a spreadsheet with more power.

You can manage your projects through this flexible spreadsheet type database application.

It also helps you in calendar management.

You need to create bases for managing Airtable projects, which is quite easy.

Premade templates make it easier to create a base.

You can also try to create it from scratch.

But choosing the premade templates will be a better option, as they are organized according to the project type.

Every element of this tool is rightly organized and easy to work with, which forms the basis of a reliable work task management tool.

The lone factor that deters its utility quotient is the limitation of file storage capacity, which is just 2GB and needs some memory boost.

8. ClickUp

If you are looking for cloud-based project task management tools, ClickUp is for you.

This tool comes up with several interesting features like a dashboard for viewing tasks, Gantt charts for monitoring task progress, and an option of drag & drop for task reordering.

The free plan of this tool permits unlimited users and tasks.

You are also allowed to create sub-tasks and connect in real-time by maintaining timesheets.

9. Zoho Projects

Zoho project is deemed as a unique tool as there are only a few tools that simplify the process of working with multiple projects.

Generally, working on multiple projects at the same time can be quite draining due to complexity related to scheduling and time tracking.

It has an upper hand in handling multiple projects as compared to its peers because it lets its users divide projects into smaller units along with deadlines.

Bug tracking feature of this tool is also one of its USPs.

On a side note, it also has a handy invoice generating function, which is in sync with the time tracking mechanism.

10. Taskworld

There are plenty of business management tools available in the market, but not all of them serve a dual purpose.

The dual-purpose tools are those which can be effective in the same fashion for both small and large scale businesses.

There is a considerable level of disparity in the way both small and large businesses operate.

Thus, it is a challenge to serve both sides of the coin with the same efficiency.

One of the important aspects of this tool is that it is completely cloud-based.

Thus, the hassles of data storage are not going to annoy you.

It also comes with advanced security features, so there is no compromise with the data stored in the cloud.

Taskworld does a great job of communicating information through data and graphs, which otherwise gets lost in the chain of command.

Thereby the employee productivity is enhanced.

The Bottom Line

But first, you need to understand your company’s structure and define which problems are you trying to solve with each tool. For example, a tool such as a corporate wiki can centralize and enhance collaboration around your company’s knowledge; or a project management tool such as Trello can organize your projects into boards.

Having said that, you need to choose the right tool so that you can accomplish the desired goal.

In a nutshell, it all comes down to the fact that- how aware you are with recent technological trends as more tools have arrived on the scene.

They may even be better and with rapid development in AI and IoT, it is more than just a possibility.

The post Best 10 Free task management tools For SMBs appeared first on OmniKick.

Local marketing means targeting a city or state.

Hyperlocal means being more specific, targeting people in their homes, at work, at local stores that are a few blocks or streets away.

Have you ever wanted to find a local store or office when you were out?

If your answer is yes, then you’ve conducted a hyperlocal search.

Customers want to buy from businesses near them. According to a survey, 82% of smartphone shoppers conduct “near me” searches.

Google also revealed that there was a 500% increase in growth in “near me” mobile searches that contain phrases like “can I buy” or “to buy” between 2015 and 2017.

Start doing hyperlocal marketing if you want to grow your local business. In this article, you’ll learn 13 ways to gain new customers with hyperlocal marketing.

1. Optimize your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is a free tool that allows businesses and organizations to manage their online presence across Google.

For example, if you search for “elder law Maryland attorney” on Google, you’ll see a few firms from Maps on the first page of search results.

In the screenshot below, Elville and Associates, P.C. is the first result.

You can see when the firm closes, the link to its website and another link to view directions to get there.

Below is another screenshot of how the business appears on Google Maps.

Clicking on the business allows you to see more information. You can view the company’s address, busiest times of the day, photos, links to their social media accounts, and reviews.

For searchers to see this kind of organized information about your company on Google, you need to optimize your Google My Business page. Fill out all the information Google asks.

Even if you don’t have a store or office in a location, Google still allows you to list your company as a “service area business.”

Using Google My Business is easy. If you haven’t added your business yet, visit this link to do that.

2. Create content that targets local keywords

Instead of creating content that competes globally or nationwide, why not produce content that appeals to people in your locality?

For example, if you own an SEO company in Kansas City, you should include keywords of the city in your content.

Write an article like “The Best SEO firms in Kansas City.” You would have a better chance of ranking for that keyword when people are looking for the best SEO company in your city than when targeting the whole United States or the world.

Searchers in Kansas City would find your content helpful and are more likely to contact you than a random individual in another continent or state.

But if your company serves customers from everywhere in the country, then it’s okay if you don’t include local keywords in your content.

For example, the car hauling automation startup, Super Dispatch doesn’t need to use local keywords in their articles.

Their blog posts cater to everyone within the country who needs their service. The blog post in the below screenshot is a perfect example.

Still, I believe that any business would massively benefit from targeting local keywords in their content.

It’s easy to unearth some nice local keywords. All you need to do is find some broad keywords. Then add the location you want to target.

For example, the keyword “the best SEO agency” becomes “the best SEO agency in Kansas.” And that’s it!

3. Add your contact information to your website and make it visible

People who are ready to buy your products and services want to contact you. But if they can’t find your contact information, they would leave.

One of the things people want to see on your site is your phone number and address. If you can’t add a contact form to your home page, there should be a clear link that leads people to your contact page.

If your business has multiple locations, add all the locations, including their contact information to your footer. But if you only have one location, the header is the best place to put your phone number.

For example, On Your 6 Designs is a family-owned and operated company that sells handmade Kydex holsters. The company is based in San Antonio. They ensure that their contact information is visible in the header of the site.

In case you can’t put the full address of your business in the header, ensure that it’s in the footer. Visitors who have scrolled to the bottom of your site would have the chance to see your contact information again.

4. Create a consistent experience for both online and offline

According to a study, 97% of consumers learn more about a local company online than anywhere else.

People search for your local business online before deciding to visit it later offline. Because of this reason, the experience of your brand should be consistent everywhere.

Consumers shouldn’t feel confused before and when they visit your location.

I once visited a business location and was surprised to see that the logo I saw on the website is different from the one at the address. I thought I was in the wrong place.

Your logo should be the same across all marketing channels. The logo people see on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram shouldn’t be different from the one on your website.

And the logo you have online should be the exact logo offline.

Consumers love consistency when dealing with local businesses.

Another way to create consistency is by using the same tone for your copy, both offline and online.

For example, if you use positive words on your website and social media, you should continue that offline.

What you’re doing online shouldn’t be different from what customers get offline. If you’re struggling with consistency, I recommend you hire a brand expert.

5. Create authentic, great local content

Local content would help you get the attention of customers. But your content needs to be authentic and great.

Don’t publish mediocre content and expect people to visit your business location.

Big brands do have the money and team to dominate local search results with high-quality content. They often don’t invest in local-specific content because their goal is to dominate the entire country and world with their content.

Your local content is like David’s slingshot to Goliath’s plate of armor.

To compete with the big brands, you don’t have to write often. You only have to write quality local content that would rank for years to come.

6. Get online reviews

According to a study, 92% of consumers rely on reviews when making a local buying decision.

Reviews are one of the most important ranking factors on local search directories like Google and Yelp.

According to a Local Consumer Review Survey conducted by BrightLocal, about 50% of consumers interviewed in 2018 said they would visit the website of a business after reading a positive review.

Ask your local customers to drop a positive review of your business on platforms like Google, Yelp, Bing Local, and Facebook.

The more positive reviews you have, the better it is for your local business.

And please don’t ask all customers for reviews at once. That would be unnatural. A local business owner once told me that they would ask all their 500+ clients to drop positive reviews on their business on Google. I asked them not to do that.

Maverick Texas Brasserie, a French restaurant in San Antonio has received over 500 reviews on Google and enjoys 4.5 average stars from customers.

Gain your reviews gradually. Getting five positive reviews per week won’t hurt.

7. Use location-based advertising

What is location-based advertising?

Top platforms like Google, Facebook, and Bing know where your customers are. Consumers share their location data through the mobile phones they carry around.

For example, Google could tell the difference between someone that lives in a particular location and the person traveling.

With the huge location data these companies have, they allow you to target consumers who are close to your store.

For example, if you want to attract travelers to your store, you target them with ads. You can also target someone who’s around your competitors’ store or office.

Location-based advertising is a form of hyperlocal marketing you should start using today if you want to compete.

Location-based advertising could even be more effective if you do other things outlined on this page.

For example, if you have an active Google My Business listing, and you’re creating great local content, some locals would have been already familiar with your business. So, getting them to visit your store or office when they see it in ads won’t be difficult at all.

8. Add local schema markup to your website

Schema markup can help search engines understand more about your business and what it does. The more information you give search engines, the better they would present your website to searchers.

If searchers see a nice listing that tells them a lot before they even visit your website, it increases your chances of converting them into customers.

For example, here’s a schema markup for an organization.

As you can see, there are details like the company’s customer’s support phone numbers, headquarters location, subsidiaries, and more. And there’s also an option to search Oracle directly on Google.

For example, Earth Class Mail receives your paper documents through a virtual address and scan it for you to view online. They use schema markup.

You could see the year Earth Class Mail was founded on Google.

Using schema markup would help your local business stand out in search results pages.

9. Make your website mobile-friendly

Google revealed that 61% of its users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing, and 40% would visit a competitor’s site instead.

A mobile-friendly site is easy to use. A ten-year-old should be able to navigate the site without issues.

More and more people start their purchase on their mobile devices. For example, Target saw that 98% of its guests shopping digitally, and 75% were starting on mobile.

Before consumers visit your store, they would have checked out your site on their mobile devices. That’s why you need to make your site so mobile-friendly so that people would be able to find the information they’re looking for very quickly.

10. Team up with non-competing local businesses

There are lots of businesses in your area that are not competitors.

What if you partner together to send customers to each other? That would be a win-win for both businesses.

While it’s true that you can’t partner with every business out there, some businesses would benefit from partnering with you, and vice versa.

Two heads are better than one. In some cases, two companies are better than one, especially when you combine resources and share expertise.

The partnership doesn’t have to be a big deal. It could be sharing marketing efforts, offering referrals with or without commission, or sharing information and advice.

11. Partner with local charities

Charitable giving helps you humanize your brand, build positive change in the community, and cultivate compassion with customers and the public. Some local companies are now supporting important causes by developing charitable partnerships.

Partnering with local charities could create more awareness for your business, but that shouldn’t be your primary aim.

If you don’t want your company to have a strong social or environmental commitment, don’t partner with local charities. It wouldn’t be authentic.

But if you believe that supporting a social or environmental cause is the right thing to do, then you should. It would have a huge positive impact on your business.

For example, Boston-based advertising agency Connelly Partners asks their employees to teach high school students the basics of marketing. They invite more students of color into the marketing world by employing them and paying off their students’ loans.

Godfrey Hotel Boston encourages its employees to volunteer at a shelter or food bank. The hotel pays employees for the time they’re volunteering.

12. Provide an exquisite in-store or office experience

By providing customers with an enjoyable shopping experience, you’ll get to turn them into repeat customers.

Consumers would return to a store where they were welcomed and treasured the last time.

As a local business, you need to value your present customers. Keeping them happy puts your business in a better position to retain future customers.

And one of the best ways to keep current customers happy is to “WOW” them.

If you have a store where customers visit to buy, you need to give them the best experience while they’re there. And if you have an office where clients visit, you need to treat them well while delivering the best service.

Offer customers an extraordinary, unique experience they won’t get elsewhere.

For example, Morning Lavender is a chick café in Tuskin, CA. They sell delicious coffee and tea drinks. The business has flowers on its walls to encourage customers to take photos while they’re in-store.

Customers put those pictures on social media, and that generates more awareness for Morning Lavender.

The point is that customers are more likely to return. And maybe with their friends next time.

Start with your employees. To make your customers feel great at your business location, employees have to be happy. They can’t deliver when they’re not happy.

If customers normally bring kids to your store or office, it means you also have to cater to those little ones. Make your store kid-friendly. Having happy kids at your store or office means the parents would return.

13. Create a landing page for each location

If your business has multiple stores or offices, this is for you.

Each location should have its landing page.

For example, if your local business has two offices in California, you should have a landing page for each one.

And if your local business has offices in multiple states, each should have its landing page too.

Why?

Because as a local business, visitors aren’t from the same place. Your business is more likely to rank in Google when you have separate landing pages for different locations than if you have just one.

CIRCA Jewels is a perfect example. You can sell your jewelry to them at their locations in various parts of the United States, Europe, and Asia.

The company created local landing pages for their locations in Maryland, California, Chicago, Barcelona, Madrid, and Hong Kong.

Each local landing page you create should have:

• Local-focused content
• Customer testimonials
• Address and map of the location
• Local contact information like phone numbers and opening times

Circle Surrogacy, one of the top egg donation agencies in the United States, is another perfect example of a company that has offices in multiple states. Each of their locations has its own standalone landing page.

Conclusion

Instead of focusing on drawing visitors from all over the country, you should target people who only live in the area where your business is and understand their user intent. This is helpful when you are starting a business.

Now you know what to do to dominate those areas and make customers choose you over your competitors.

Don’t just drive visitors to your site. Keep them and make them become customers. Use OmniKick.

OmniKick makes it easy for you to collect the emails of visitors with ease. Sign up for free to start using OmniKick today.

The post Hyperlocal Marketing: How to Make Customers Choose You appeared first on OmniKick.

While that moment should be the primary goal of your funnel, the fact is, there’re are lots of moments leading to that.

Get those small moments wrong, and you won’t have many people buying your product. But when you take care of those little moments, you’ll be able to convert lots of prospects.

These small moments that are often ignored by digital marketers are called micro conversions.

What is a Micro Conversion?

A micro conversion is an action that brings prospects closer to your main conversion goal (or macro conversion).

If your main conversion goal is to sell your product or service, a micro conversion would be any action leading up to that. That could be when a prospect signs up for your email list, shared your blog post on social media, or even commented on your blog post.

For example, Amazon is the biggest ecommerce store in the world. Searching for “DSLR cameras” is a micro conversion. It’s a small step towards Amazon’s primary conversion goal.

Searching for products I’m interested in buying is a good sign. It’s better than doing nothing on the site. My searches take me closer to buying.

Micro conversions are important. They tell you that, at least, you’re getting some things right.

Daniel Ndukwu, CoFounder of UsefulPDF explains “many brands try to go for the big win immediately but that’s not how people usually buy. They take it step-by-step. They click on your links, sign up for your mailing list, read a resource, and then finally buy. Each one of those steps is a micro conversion so when you optimize for them as well, you increase your chance of getting a macro conversion.”

What about macro conversion?

It’s your primary conversion goal. That could be when a prospect becomes a customer. For Geekdom, a coworking space in San Antonio, the primary goal is to get a prospect to book a tour of their facility.

Turning a prospect into a customer sounds great. However, you should focus on micro conversions first because that’s how you can get to a macro conversion.

After reading this article, you’ll become an expert in getting lots of micro conversions. And you’ll be able to turn all those micro conversions into macro conversions.

Why You Need Micro Conversions and How to Get Them

The reason why many businesses don’t get enough sales online to justify their investments is that they neglect micro conversions. If you can improve your micro conversions by a lot of percentages, you’ll  increase sales.

Digital marketing is all about reaching, entertaining, educating, and engaging with real people who need your products and services. Get that right, and you’ll win lots of customers.

People rarely buy the first time they learn about a brand or visit its website. It takes time and effort to convert prospects. There are lots of small activities before someone decides to buy.

For example, Airbnb shares pictures of beautiful places daily on Instagram.

If you follow Airbnb on Instagram and travel a lot, you’re closer to using their service than people who don’t follow the brand on the image-sharing site.

That means, viewing Airbnb’s Instagram feed is a micro conversion for them.

Instagram likes and comments are micro conversions. If their Instagram updates are receiving a lot of likes and comments, and views, it’s a sign that they are doing Instagram marketing right.

So, how can you increase your micro conversions?

Here are the key things you should do:

1. Understand your customers’ behaviors
2. Recognize vital conversion areas
3. Increase and nurture your leads
4. Evaluate the performance of each marketing channel
5. Build the right conversion funnels

Let’s delve deeper into each one.

1. Understand your customers’ behaviors

Selling online is a relationship business. You need to know your customers’ behaviors to build strong relationships with them.

Learn customers’ behaviors on your website and social channels.

If customers aren’t Retweeting or liking a Twitter update you shared a few hours ago, it could be that the topic doesn’t interest them. You may want to stop writing about the topic.

It’s true that a topic won’t interest everyone who follows your business on social media. But if many of them are interested, it’s a sign that it’s a winning topic.

The goal is to get the majority of your customers’ excited. So, micro conversions like social media shares and likes are another way you can learn what customers admire.

I used Airbnb Instagram account as an example earlier. Airbnb may realize that their Instagram followers like images of places that have water and mountains. If their followers are liking and commenting on those kinds of places, it means it’s what they want to see.

That’s a micro conversion that tells Airbnb about their users’ behaviors. So, how do they use this information?

They may put an image of a place with mountains on their home page. Since they know their followers love this kind of image, it can help them convert more site’s visitors into users. And that’s exactly what they did on their site.

(Note: The above screenshot of Airbnb.com was taken at the time of writing).

For me, social media is the best place to learn customers’ behaviors quickly. Most social platforms allow you to engage with your audience and vice versa.

Email, your website and chatbot, and live chat are other channels that are great too. But social media is my favorite.

Micro conversions occur on all these channels.

In email marketing, micro conversions are opens, and link clicks. If an email campaign gets a lot of opens and link clicks, it’s a sign that your subscribers like the message. You may use this information to improve your conversions.

You can use heatmap tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg on your site to see what visitors are clicking.

And you’ll learn more from analyzing customers’ chats on chatbots and live chat software.

You can learn from every small action on any marketing channel.

2. Recognize vital conversion areas

Depending on how big your business is and how many products and services you sell, your micro conversions could be over 100. That would be too much.

You shouldn’t focus on every micro conversion, of course. That would be impossible. And to be honest, it wouldn’t make business sense.

Let’s use a big e-commerce site like Amazon as an example again. They probably have hundreds to a thousand micro conversions they can track. But they don’t focus on every micro conversion. Instead, they invest their resources into micro conversions that are vital to their business.

For e-commerce stores, these few could be their vital micro conversions:

• New customer reviews
• Products searches
• Easy site’s navigation
• Easy checkout process
• Customers clicking on related products
• Customers adding new products to carts from the related product section

For an e-commerce store like Nike, the essential micro conversion is a popup that collects visitors’ details on the home page.

Nike asks for the visitor’s email address, date of birth, and gender. For Nike, if a visitor completes this form, it’s a micro conversion win that leads to the primary conversion.

The marketing team knows that if they can get lots of visitors to complete this popup form, they can increase Nike’s overall sales.

Popups are a powerful tool for micro conversions. Increasing your sign-ups numbers through popups should be a vital goal for your business. You can use OmniKick to create high converting popups.

So, recognize the most critical micro conversions that can boost sales and focus on them.

3. Increase and nurture your leads

Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with potential buyers across every stage of your sales funnel.

It’s the essential part of a digital marketing campaign. When you nurture your leads, you automatically increase your micro conversions.

How do you increase and nurture your leads?

Invest heavily in content.

I mean invest in quality content for your blog, social channels, email – every channel your business has a presence.

If lead nurturing is the door to getting more micro conversions, content marketing is the key to that door.

What do you see on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email, and search engines?

It’s content, of course. Content is everything. Without content, it’s impossible to increase and nurture your leads.

Let me give you an example.

David Heinemeier Hansson (commonly known as DHH) is the creator of Ruby on Rails, and founder and CTO of Basecamp. DHH shares amazing content on Twitter and Signal v. Noise, the main blog of Basecamp.

He invests heavily in content on these channels. While he isn’t on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, he ensures that the content he shares are high-quality enough to spread to those social channels.

Right now, DHH has over 300k followers on Twitter, and he engages a lot with his followers on the platform.

Following DHH on Twitter convinced me to become a Basecamp customer.

Twitter isn’t the only place to share content. Don’t forget email. Email remains one of the best channels to nurture leads.

The busiest people in the world use emails. According to a study by McKinsey, the average worker spends 28% of their workweek on email. That’s more than 11 hours per week!

Email is nearly 50 years old, and it remains an effective channel for developing strong relationships with prospects.

The more you invest in email, the more you get out of it.

Ensure that each content you publish on any channel is high quality. Do that, and you’ll continue to keep people interested in your products and services.

4. Evaluate the performance of each marketing channel

There are different marketing channels today. Each one has its unique purposes and expectations.

Facebook is where people connect with their friends and family.

Twitter is where people get trending topics in their fields and the world. It’s where people follow and connect with thought leaders in their industries.

Instagram is completely different from those two. It’s a place where people share photos and videos from their lives.

When you track micro conversions, you’ll realize that some channels aren’t effective for your target audience.

Spend more time on channels that give you the most micro conversions and leads.

Facebook may be the biggest social media platform in the world, but if your audience isn’t engaging with your content there, you shouldn’t maintain a presence on Facebook.

Your time could be better spent on LinkedIn, or Twitter, or Instagram.

That’s why you need to track micro conversions. They tell you when to get off a social media platform.

For example, String Nguyen is a video marketing consultant with over 30,000 followers on LinkedIn. A lot of people engage with her posts on LinkedIn.

Nguyen also maintains a presence on Twitter, but she barely receives any engagement there.

When you compare the micro conversions she receives on LinkedIn with Twitter, it’s clear that the latter isn’t worth it. LinkedIn is more important for her business than Twitter.

If your audience is big on Instagram and you rarely post there, you’re losing valuable customers. It’s time to focus your effort on platforms you get likes, shares, and comments.

For example, CIRCA Jewels is a place where you can sell jewelry for the right price without issues. The company maintains presence on top platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. All these platforms are great places to create awareness, but CIRCA Jewels get more engagement on Instagram than other social platforms.

5. Build the right conversion funnels

Everything you’ve read so far is about micro conversions.

Yes, micro conversions are important. Getting them consistently is a sign that you have the right marketing strategy.

Out of all the five actions I outlined, this final action is the most important. So, continue reading carefully.

As I noted earlier, micro conversions are those little actions that lead to macro conversions (sales). However, not all micro conversions lead to macro conversions.

After doing number one to four, you should now focus on those little small steps that only lead to macro conversions.

List out 5 – 7 micro conversions (or steps) that lead to a sale.

For some SaaS businesses, their most critical micro conversions could appear in this order:

1. A prospect visits your website
2. The prospect reads a blog post
3. The prospect signs up for your email list
4. The prospect reads 3 – 4 emails from you
5. The prospect signs up for a free trial of your service
6. The prospect continues to use your service
7. The free trial period ends, and the prospect becomes a customer

Those micro conversions are what make up their conversion funnels.

I recommend Google Analytics for tracking how prospects move along in a conversion funnel like this.

Also, pay attention to your email marketing metrics. Your email marketing software should tell you how many subscribers open your email message.

The more people are reading your emails, the better it is for your conversion funnel.

Conclusion

And that’s it!

Instead of worrying about making sales, you should focus on improving your micro conversions across the board. Track everything and see which metrics are improving.

For me, the crucial micro conversion is when a visitor gives me their email address. When you have the email address of a visitor, you can reach them any time in their inbox.

OmniKick is a powerful tool for creating popups that collect emails. Make sure you sign up today. You have 14 days to try out the tool for free.

Thanks for reading. And please share this article with your friends on social media.

The post Why You Need Micro Conversions and How to Get Them appeared first on OmniKick.

This means that as a senior marketer or business leader, it makes sense to build your personal brand.

One key channel for building this personal brand is through paid and organic social media.

Many blog posts talk about how you can maximise engagement and generate leads through your company pages, but this misses a huge opportunity.

Business is built on personal relationships and genuine connections – and this is arguably even more important in the B2B sphere.

In this article, I will outline ways to use your personal social media profile to build connections and generate B2B leads.

My focus will be on adding long-term value, as opposed to seeking quick sales.

In order to generate B2B leads via social media, you need to build an audience who trusts what you say and values your expertise and insights.

This requires the consistent publication of high-quality content that taps into the pain points of stakeholders in your industry.

In truth, content is everything. If you are hiding in the background (otherwise known as lurking), you can’t expect to use social media to generate leads.

You need to contribute to the community, be active in sharing, commenting, and challenging – and you need to demonstrate solid knowledge in your niche.

Here are three of the ingredients that I think you need:

1. Having great real-world experience
2. Having a knowledge of broader industry trends
3. Having an ability to be open and honest

With the above ingredients, you can craft meaningful stories that get the attention of your audience.

The real-world experience gives you tangible material to work with, and the knowledge of broader industry trends gives you the context for framing your stories.

And if you’re open and honest, you can admit your failures and tell a story that doesn’t simply champion your successes.

Sayed Shahnur’s article about how to make people love you through content marketing does a great job of explaining more about the background to content marketing, plus the tactics that work best.

I would add that for personal and business branding alike, the key part that many marketers get wrong is that they don’t focus on distribution.

When you’re trying to generate leads through social media, just producing content isn’t enough.

You need to create a solid promotion framework to generate engagement from the right people, with the right pain point, in the right need state.

This promotion framework needs to be optimised carefully for each individual social media channel.

How to Generate B2B Leads on Social Media

Lead Generation for B2B: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the bread-and-butter social media platform for B2B lead generation. Users on this platform are very much in the “work and career” mindframe, which presents a great opportunity to target them with content that helps them optimise their work life – a key function of B2B products and services.

Once you’ve finished building everything up on your profile, it’s time to do the following…

#1. LinkedIn blogging: Think about the LinkedIn blogging platform as a distribution channel for your other blog content – whether it’s already been published on-site, on Medium, or elsewhere. The chance to directly reach your network of professional connections is not to be missed.

#2. Embrace video: LinkedIn is looking to push the popularity of its native video platform. This means that you’re almost guaranteed to get significant reach within your network by using it. Video marketing is a must-do for thought-leaders in today’s B2B world, and LinkedIn provides the ideal opportunity. This article by String Nguyen will give you some tips to get started.

#3. Don’t battle the algorithms: To generate leads on LinkedIn, you need to obtain credibility. This is achieved by building a network of people who engage with your posts and updates. Whether the leads come from within that network, or whether they’re driven to approach your business due to your reputation, engagement is key. To create engagement, you need to play the algorithms game. These change regularly, so it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest LinkedIn news and trends.

For a really deep look at how to get more leads on LinkedIn, check out Jabed Hasan’s article about LinkedIn marketing strategies, in which he outlines 19 ways to get more leads.

Lead Generation for B2B: Facebook

Naturally, you won’t want to connect with people in the same way on Facebook as on LinkedIn, and that’s understandable for both parties. To take the same approach would be, frankly weird. Facebook is a very private thing for most of the users, and many entrepreneurs don’t like to do business on Facebook. Reaching out through Facebook messaging may mark you as a spammer to the recipient.

#1. Create a personal brand page: This is the perfect middle ground, allowing you to build a personal brand without having to connect with people using a personal Facebook profile. Essentially, it’s a business page with your photo rather than a logo. As we know, people connect more easily with a person than with an abstract business, so this gives you the best of both worlds.

#2. Use the Facebook Pixel: If you use the Facebook Pixel on your website, you can push content out through Facebook Ads, pique interest by tapping into pain points, and drop a cookie for the users who engage with the post. Thereafter, you are able to retarget them in the Facebook Newsfeed with follow-up content. These sequences can match their needs and their stage of the buying funnel.

#3. Join groups: To build a network of potential B2B prospects, you need to contribute value to the industry community. This will require a personal profile, of course. But you can always set one up which doesn’t have all of your personal details and photos on it – for the purpose of commenting and connecting with like-minded professionals.

Extra tip: Consider where you can fill a gap for associated industries. For example, if your business provides SEO services, liaise with the web design community. This could open opportunities for partnerships and referrals – if you demonstrate expertise and add value to the group’s conversations.

Lead Generation for B2B: Twitter

Twitter is the most “open” platform in this list of social media channels. The beauty of Twitter is that often there’s no gatekeeper between you and your prospect.

#1. Automate, track, and reach out: Your B2B product or service will ease a specific pain point. How do you find people with this particular pain point? Well, Twitter is a famous complaint factory. All over the world, users are exclaiming their dissatisfaction with A, B, and C. Using a social media listening tool like BuzzSumo or HootSuite, you can follow specific pain-based keywords or competitor keywords. If your solution is more effective, affordable, or reliable – reach out in the open feed or in their DMs with a comparison blog post. Don’t be pushy, but offer food for thought instead.

#2. Request interviews: Due to its open nature, Twitter is a great channel for requesting interviews with industry influencers and thought-leaders. This is a solid way to build your network – and it gives your written, visual, or audio content more credibility. You could even target potential prospects who are high-level decision-makers, using a content collaboration project as a win-win icebreaker.

#3. Use Twitter Ads: Twitter Ads aren’t just for business profiles – they should be used to increase the reach of your personal tweets (in the professional context). The targeting options are improving every year, meaning you can reach a highly specific audience with personalised content.

B2B lead generation: Final takeaways

To generate B2B leads on your personal social media profiles, you need to add value and demonstrate expertise as a professional, but without sacrificing your unique character and perspective. You also need to be careful about the most common mistakes of B2B lead generation.

The quality of your content is paramount because it will feed your personal brand-building activities. Overall, it is the successful development of this personal brand which will truly drive B2B lead generation. Combined with the activities of your business itself, paid and organic social media can be a very influential part of your marketing engine. You can also use different software to fule up your lead generation campaign without solely depending on any lead generation specialist.

The post How to Use Your Social Media Profile for B2B Lead Generation appeared first on OmniKick.

It’s a phrase often used by web designers and digital marketers. But the phrase has been around way before the internet.

Newspapers put their most compelling headlines at the top of their front pages. When newspapers vendors fold the paper, “the above the fold content” would remain visible for readers to see.

If readers don’t like what they see above the fold, the newspaper won’t make many sales that day. That’s why you see that front-page headlines in newspapers are always captivating.

Websites have “above the fold content” too. It’s what you see once the website has finished loading. The first thing you see on a site must get your attention. You may not scroll down if it doesn’t.

If you want to get prospects into your conversion funnel and sell more, you’ll learn a lot from these examples:

1. Airbnb

Airbnb has over 150 million users today. The service is an excellent alternative to hotels.

When you visit the site, the form you see above the fold will get you to search and book a place immediately.

As you can see in the above screenshot, there’s a picture in the background that looks cool. It’s an image of a nice kitchen.

You can learn from Airbnb. Use powerful images that help visitors imagine what they will get. And include a form that gets them started right away.

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is one of the most successful companies in the digital marketing space. The content they have above the fold is superb.

The first thing you see is about helping your business grow. They included a call-to-action button that asks you to “Get HubSpot free.”

Who wouldn’t want to get a tool that’ll help them grow their business for free?

3. Snack Nation

Snack Nation is a B2B snack membership service that brings healthy snacks to businesses.

The content above the fold tells you everything you need to know. You don’t even need to scroll.

If you’re interested in having healthy snacks delivered to your office every day, you’ll click the “Try It Free” button.

4. Webflow

Webflow is a tool that lets you design your site visually without ever touching code. You don’t have to worry about things like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP.

The site has one of the best above the fold content. The first impression was excellent. I couldn’t resist trying the tool for free.

Webflow summarized what their tool does in three words: design, build and launch. And they show you a call to action button asking you to get started for free.

Inside the above the fold content, they added a button that tells you the site itself was built with Webflow. Very few startups could explain a complex solution in such a simple way with little words.

5. Grammarly

I’m a big fan of Grammarly. Most writers I know use it.

Grammarly ensures that I don’t miss any embarrassing grammar mistake before hitting the “publish” button. The tool gives writers confidence in their work.

Grammarly has been improving the effectiveness and efficiency of its tool over the past years.

The above the fold of the site would get any writer to start using the tool immediately.

You see what the tool does. There’s a link to download their extension for Chrome because I’m currently using the browser. There’s also a GIF that shows how the tool works.

6. Buffer

Social media marketers use Buffer to plan, collaborate, and share content on social media. The tool allows you to share insightful content with your followers even when you’re busy with other things.

Buffer has an exquisite above the fold content that’ll make you scroll down on their home page.

I like the way they combine colors. They also have an illustration that depicts the kind of results their users expect to see.

7. Wistia

Wistia is one of the most creative brands in the marketing technology industry. Wistia’s above the fold content would enchant anyone.

You’ll see a video of a woman dancing around and smiling with a pink video camera in her hand.

Just by staying in the above the fold area alone, you would have learned everything you need to know about Wistia.

8. Shopify

Shopify is one of the biggest e-commerce platforms today. It currently powers 800,000 online stores.

The first things you see on the site are a video and some images that make you want to use the platform.

Smart companies like Shopify are turning to visuals to appeal to users.

So, use visuals in your above the fold area. Visuals can help you grab attention in many ways you can’t do with text.

9. Drift

Drift is a chat software and conversational marketing platform. Both B2B and B2C companies use Drift to start conversations with their customers.

Drift has a simple yet powerful above the fold content. Their focus is to make you start using the tool immediately you land on their site.

The company uses social proof on its page. They wrote that Drift is “the #1 rated sales and marketing chatbot software.”

10. InVision

Even though I’m not a designer, I’ve been hearing a lot about InVision in the past year.

When I decided to visit their site, the above the fold content alone blew my mind.

There’s a video playing in the background with no sound. And there’s a link to watch that video.

Above the “Watch Video” button, there’s a form that asks for my email address that would lead me to sign up for free.

11. Mint

Mint’s super simple above the fold content will attract anyone who’s meticulous about money.

Upon landing on the home page, you’ll see an image of their app in action.

The image is a monthly expense statement of a sample user. Mint presented it in a nice-looking pie chart that’s easy to understand.

12. Moz

Moz sells SEO tools. In the above the fold, they promise what you should expect when you use their tool for SEO: traffic, rankings, and visibility.

Let’s assume that you have doubts about Moz fulfilling this promise. All you have to do is look down a bit without scrolling, and you’ll see popular companies that are already using their tools.

If startups like Zillow, 99designs, and Razorfish are using Moz, it’s a sign that their tool delivers.

Visitors to your page shouldn’t have to scroll down before they can trust your product or service. Make them trust you, right there in the above fold.

13. Skype

Skype has been around for some time. I use it to stay in touch with family and friends.

Skype’s above the fold content is simple and straightforward. You learn what Skype does pretty quickly.

They used three words to summarize Skype: Talk, chat, and collaborate.

I’ve been using the tool for over eight years, and those are the three things I use it to do.

You can do the same thing when creating the above the fold content for your site. Summarize what you do in a few words, and include an image that describes it.

14. DoorDash

DoorDash is a food delivery service that lets you order breakfast, lunch, and dinner from your favorite restaurants and they deliver to your doorstep.

Their website is simple and easy to use.

There’s no long, boring introduction in the above the fold content. If you’re hungry when visiting the site, you probably don’t want to read much. You want to order food immediately. The site lets you do that.

Just enter your address and DoorDash will return some nearby restaurants.

15. Ahrefs

Ahrefs sells an SEO tool, just like Moz. It’s amazing to see that both companies use the same tactics for creating and designing the above the fold content area. Ahrefs went a little bit further in using more social proof.

Ahrefs offers you a promise of what to expect from using their tool. Moz did the same thing.

Ahrefs shows you the companies that are using their tool. Moz did the exact thing, though Ahrefs have more big names like Facebook, Adobe, eBay, and Shopify.

Ahrefs went further by showing how many people started using their service in the past seven days. In the screenshot of the site below, 2,301 started using Ahrefs in the last week.

Ahrefs also went further by offering seven days of free trial for $7. Moz didn’t do that in their above the fold content.

Near the bottom of the fold, you’ll see a screenshot of the Ahrefs app in action. Ahrefs uses this to encourage visitors to scroll down and see more.

16. Kayako

My heart melted when I visited Kayako’s site, a help desk software. Just by looking at the above the fold content, you’ll feel loved. You’ll want to learn more about their software.

And right there on the above the fold, they have a call to action button that says, “Start your free trial.” If your business needs a help desk software, you don’t have to scroll to want to try.

The illustration on the page is unique. They depict a customer care representative hugging a client. And there’s a hot tea on the table.

Upon landing on the home page, it’s clear that Kayako only wants you to take one action. That action is to start a free trial.

17. Xero

Xero’s keeps it simple. The first thing you see is what their software does and who they serve. It’s clear that Xero is accounting software, and it’s made for small businesses.

So, if you’re a small business owner, you feel that Xero is for you.

Then there are screenshots of how their app looks like on desktop, smartphone, and Apple Watch.

Xero has two main buttons. The first one asks you to “try Xero for free,” and the second one asks you to “buy now.”

Xero is a known brand in the online accounting software niche. The “buy now” button is for people who already trust the brand and want to start paying for it immediately.

18. Squarespace

Squarespace is one of the most popular website builders today.

Squarespace’s above the fold content is a bit complex, but exceptional. They used animation to delight and educate visitors about their software.

Squarespace uses animation to show that it’s possible to use its website builder to sell products like wristwatches and sneakers, and services like photography and woodworking.

You can start a free trial with no credit card required. They make this clear and visible when you land on the site.

19. Square

When you sell one product or service, it’s easy to use your above the fold content to promote that one thing. But when you offer a wide range of services and products?

One great company that sells different products and services is Square. You’ll want to sign up with them when you land on the website.

Even though Square offers a wide range of services and products, they still managed to keep their design simple.

Square quickly tell you that you can grow your business with their tools.

Their focus is to get you to sign up or start a conversation with their sales representative.

If you offer many services or products, you can use this technique when designing your website. You don’t have to list every service or product you sell on your home page.

Instead, focus on getting your customers details. Educate them about your products and services later.

20. Trello

Trello’s design is simple and straightforward. They know the importance of above the fold.

Trello use above the fold to tell you what their tool does, and what you can achieve with it. Then they ask you to sign up for free with your email address.

When a site is this simple, it’s hard to resist the urge to sign up. Trello is so easy to understand when you land on the site. The illustration on the right side is superb too.

21. Airtable

Airtable is one of my favorite apps today. I use the tool every day.

Their website is fun to look at. The content they have above the fold makes you laugh and think.

They did a great job of conveying the message that you can use their tool however you like. Such a sense of freedom is likely to help them gain more users.

Make people feel positive when they land on your site as Airtable does.

22. Geekdom

Geekdom, a coworking space in San Antonio, uses the above the fold to showcase their office. That’s one of the first things visitors would be interested in seeing upon landing on the site.

Conclusion

I visited hundreds of sites. I saw lots of great content above the fold. But none of them beats the examples you saw above.

Ensure that your above the fold content is nothing but excellent. Put a lot of work and time into it. When you do that, a lot of prospects will take your business more seriously.

Note that you need a powerful tool to collect emails on your site. And OmniKick is that tool you need. Sign up and install OmniKick on your website today, and watch your email subscribers grow as a result.

The post Above the Fold Content: How Smart Companies Use It to Capture Your Attention appeared first on OmniKick.

Many bloggers and website-owners wonder whether a Coming Soon page will annoy or turn away their visitors. Marketing research suggests that it’s exactly the opposite, which is why some of the biggest brands and companies in the world decide for the Coming Soon approach when launching a new product or entering a new market.

There are many benefits to starting a WordPress blog with a Coming Soon page. In this overview, we’re listing some of the most important ones. If you decide this is something you’d like to incorporate in your website, you can have a Coming Soon page in a matter of minutes using WordPress plugins!

Create Hype and Brand Awareness

Have you ever seen a store, cafe or club opening up without any type of previous promotion? Well, pre-opening marketing is just as important as your advertising strategies after the opening. Creating hype is especially important when you’re promoting products or services – especially if you’re launching a disruptive service like an innovative app or a kickstarter campaign.

Remember, your Coming Soon page will be one of the encounters of your brand and your audience. Make sure it’s in line with your brand message, voice and design, so that visitors know exactly what to expect in the future.

In the real world, before a store opens you can see a decorated shopwindow which screams: we’re opening soon, get ready! Your Coming Soon page is the virtual version of this eye-catching and hype-creating shopwindow. That’s why it’s very important to get it right and get your future customers excited and interested. 

Build an email list with a coming soon page

Even though we’re bombarded with social media marketing, new promotional channels and innovative advertisment methods, many marketers agree that e-mail is still one of the most fruitful digital marketing channels.

According to many experts, a potential, new or returning customer’s email address will always be worth much more than a Facebook share, Instagram like or a retweet. Emails give you a chance to approach your customer individually and give them a more meaningful and powerful message.

It’s clear that having 100,000 emails in your list is a gold mine – but how do you actually get there? Well, collecting email addresses on your Coming Soon page is a great way to do that. 

When a visitor sees your Coming Soon page and puts in their contact info, you have a priceless email address. Not only will you be able to reach out to the visitors who knew your website before it was cool, but you’re also sure that the visitor is highly interested in what you have to offer.  

Search engine visibility

Yes, it’s possible to score some points with old Google even when your page is under construction! As crazy as it may seem, Coming Soon pages can be SEO-optimized well enough so that the biggest search engines can index them and show it in their search results.

This is one of the perks of the Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode plugin for WordPress: along with the technical and design setup, the plugin allows you to set up your site for SEO success as well. In the plugin, you will get access to a simple and user-friendly interface for search engine optimization. There, you can find guidelines, checklists and a built-in tester which will launch your SEO through the roof!

If you’re planning on a longer development process or your launch date has moved further down the road, you can still attract organic traffic using these little tricks. This is also a great solution for bloggers and website owners who want to promote their sites with a low budget. 

Also, if you rank well on Google and Bing, it can get you valuable emails and visits. According to some marketers, organic traffic is more valuable than social media traffic, especially if you’re doing SM marketing wrong. Anyone who finds your Coming Soon page through a keyword is a visitor who is already interested in your topic!

Pre-sale opportunities with coming soon page

If you are selling a physical or digital product, a Coming Soon page is a great opportunity to set up a pre-sale. Here, you can offer your product at a reduced price for customers who have already found their way to your web. 

If you manage to get a lot of traffic through SEO and other marketing channels, it’s a real shame to miss out on all potential customers you might reach with a pre-sale Coming Soon page.

A Coming Soon page is a great way to offer some of your flagship products. For example, if you’re selling on Etsy, you can redirect your visitors from your Coming Soon page to your Etsy product page with an attractive banner presenting the product. You can do this with many sales channels, such as Amazon, Amazon Kindle (for e-Books), eBay, or whichever platform you sell your products. After you launch, your customers can easily recognize your flagship product from your Coming Soon page and find it on your new website.

Next to the awesome pre-launch direct sale, you will also have another precious email of a recent customer on your list. 

Test the audience response with coming soon page

It’s never too early to start playing around with analytics and getting some insights into the behavior of your future visitors. Understanding your audience is of crucial importance, and you can start noticing audience behavior even through your Coming Soon page.

With a Coming Soon page, you can easily switch between different templates and test the audience response using your analytics tools. In the UnderConstructionPage WP plugin, you can choose from more than 170 different templates and observe how your visitors react. Some brands and companies even switch coming soon pages with different color schemes, user experience and copy to test which ones gets the best response.

When it comes to email list building, for example, you can do A/B testing of two different Coming Soon templates and see which one gets you more emails. It’s an easy way to do some micro-rebranding and adapting to the visitors’ wishes without actually having to alter your website and brand.

Feel free to play around and figure out what works best for you, even in this initial stage.

Social media promotion with coming soon page

Different niches and products use social media in different ways and degrees, so before you start, you will have to set up a social media plan and decide what exactly are your priorities.

Certain products absolutely depend on social and it’s impossible to promote them on a grand scale using only a website. For example, a dropshipping product which is re-sold on the US market has to go viral in order to sell. The only way to do that is social media.

If you have this type of a product, your Coming Soon page is a great way to promote your other social media channels. If you get a visitor interested, they can easily redirect to your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or YouTube and connect with you there. 

Plugins like UnderConstructionPage and ComingSoonWP offer easy installation of social media widgets and themes. You can also use different templates which will set your website apart from the rest.

Show that You’re Serious About the Launch

Let’s face it: there are many lousy websites out there and you can see when someone put in 20 minutes into building a website. When the website is poorly built, you can also consciously or subconsciously perceive that the brand is low-quality and not that well put-together.

So, showing your customers and visitors that you’re serious about your brand and mission is the first step of them being serious about it too. One of the ways to do that is to build an Under Construction WordPress page. This shows the visitor that your team is diligently working on making the best possible website for your business or blog. When someone puts in that kind of preparation and effort into their own site, the customer knows that they can expect the same treatment as well. 

It’s not difficult!

Finally, one of the reasons many users decide not to have a Coming Soon page is that they think the set up will be time-consuming. This is true if you’re not using a plugin: if you want your coming soon page to be attractive and cool, creating it manually can be quite a hassle.

Luckily, there are many blogging tools and resources out there that do the job for you. Just like WordPress themes, Coming Soon pages come with all kinds of templates, color schemes and functions. With a plugin like UnderConstructionPage WordPress, you can easily adapt your coming soon site to suit your needs and purpose. So starting a blog is not difficult at all.

Given all the benefits that we’ve talked about above, forget about the It’s hard excuse, download one of the Coming Soon WordPress plugins and reap the benefits of successful pre-launch marketing!

The post Why is it important to start a blog with a coming soon page appeared first on OmniKick.

A sales funnel is the journey your website visitors go through on their way to buying your product or service. The journey consists of different stages.

Here are the four main stages:

1. Awareness: This is when a web user becomes aware of your product, service, or business.
2. Interest: This is when a web user expresses an interest in what you sell.
3. Desire: This is when a web user knows your product or service is what they need.
4. Action: This is when a web user buys your product or service, becoming a customer.

So, how do you build a sales funnel that turns lots of random web users into loyal customers?

Consistency is the key

Awareness is the first stage of the sales funnel. It’s the moment customers learn about your business, product, and service.

For example, if you run a digital marketing agency, this is when prospects know your company. They know what you do.

Maybe you only offer PPC or SEO services. Or, perhaps you do web development. This is when they realize all that.

Get a lot of people into this first stage daily, weekly, or monthly.

If you got 1,000 people to be aware of your business last month, make sure you maintain that number this month. Or do even better.

For example, Hector Quintanilla is an active Quora user. He answers many questions and engages with other users on the platform. His answers received over 2 million views on Quora in the last 30 days alone.

Quintanilla uses Quora to drive traffic to his website, where he sells entrepreneurship courses.

Hector answers a lot of questions every week. And he has been consistent with that for some time.

Let’s assume that you do cold emailing as a way of creating awareness for your business. You sent 1,000 cold emails last month. Then you decided to send 100 cold emails this month. Your sales funnel would lack consistency.

You need consistent effort if you’re serious about building a sales funnel that work.

A sales funnel can never be perfect when it’s first built. It’s through consistent effort and input that will enable you to fine-tune the funnel and make it work harder for your business.

Prospects must continue to be aware of your business. Most of them won’t be ready to move on to the next stage of your sales funnel until they had seen your business repeatedly.

Use content marketing to compete on various awareness platforms

There are several marketing platforms available today. Below are some of my favorites:

1. Google organic search
2. Facebook
3. Instagram
4. Twitter
5. Medium
6. Quora
7. LinkedIn
8. YouTube

You can reach prospects on all these platforms.

This video Nike shared on Twitter was viewed over 105k times at the time of writing this article.

Those viewers might become interested in buying Nike’s products soon.

We spend time on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and LinkedIn almost every day. Yes, we use these platforms here at OmniKick to generate awareness for our service.

What can you do to compete on all these platforms without spreading yourself too thin?

Invest in content marketing. For example, Super Dispatch is a platform that makes it faster for carriers, brokers, and shippers to move cars. They publish content on various social channels on a regular basis.

These platforms want content. I’m talking about high-quality content that makess prospects engage with your brand.

Ahrefs rank for lots of keywords related to their business on Google organic search engine. Their blog traffic grew exponentially over the last four years. That enabled them to beat out most of their competitors.

I come across Ahrefs a lot on Twitter and Medium. By publishing exceptional content, Ahrefs can compete on various awareness platforms at the same time.

Content marketing helped increase awareness for their service. As a result, their annual recurring revenue (ARR) has grown over the past years too.

Content marketing lets you compete everywhere. Post the same video on YouTube, Facebook, and your blog.

Post excerpts of your article on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Reuse one content over and over again. For example, respected Maryland car accident attorney, Nicholas Parr maintains an active presence on major social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Content marketing let you fill the top of your sales funnel with lots of prospects.

Spend most of your time in the awareness stage

Think about it. The awareness stage is the first stage in the sales funnel.

If you don’t get enough people into this first stage, it would be difficult to get enough prospects to move to other stages of your sales funnel.

So, you need to spend most of your time investing in this first stage.

For example, Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of Vayner Media, publishes a lot of content on LinkedIn several times daily. There’s no doubt that his team invests a lot of time and resources on the platform.

When your prospects see interesting content from you frequently, they like you more.

For instance, if LinkedIn is the channel your customers spend most of their time, get on LinkedIn. Engage with people on the platform. Share interesting updates LinkedIn users want to read.

The more interesting content you share, the more LinkedIn users would learn about your business. That’s awareness. That’s the top of the funnel.

LinkedIn is just an example. There are other awareness platforms too. Get on them and spend enough time to get people’s attention.

Build landing pages to generate leads

Prospects could just put your website address into the browser and land on your home page. Visitors from search engines could also choose to go to your home page.

But, if you’re building a sales funnel, where you want to track everything and measure specific metrics that tell you how well you’re doing, you need landing pages.

I’m a big fan of landing pages. With so many incredible tools available today, it’s easy for anyone to build a landing page. You don’t have to be a website developer to create one.

When you’re building a sales funnel, you’re always trying new things. Landing pages give you a lot of freedom to do things you can’t do on your home page.

For example, you may offer a free e-book on your landing page in order to get prospects to give you their email address. That’s something you may not want to do that on your home page.

For example, Shopify creates a landing for each of its free course.

Below is a screenshot of a course by Shopify titled “Facebook Ads for Beginners: Retention and Loyalty.” This course has its own landing page, and you must sign up with your email before you can have access to it.

A visitor becomes a lead after registering for this course.

You may also create an interesting video to promote a specific feature of your product. You may not be able to do that on your home page. But with landing pages, you can do that.

You can try different mouth-watering offers to see which one lures people into the second stage of your sales funnel. It’s nearly impossible to build a better sales funnel without landing pages.

After getting prospects into the awareness stage, you need them to move to the second stage of the funnel, which is the interest phase.

It’s hard to get people to buy your product when they haven’t shown strong interest in it. You can build strong interest in your products or services on your landing pages.

The goal of your landing page is to collect prospects’ email addresses.

Offer visitors something interesting they wouldn’t want to miss and ask them to give you their email addresses so you can send it to them.

Use a powerful lead generating tool like OmniKick on your landing pages. OmniKick helps you create highly converting forms.

When visitors give you their email addresses, they become leads. Now, they are in the second phase of your sales funnel. When you have their emails, you can make them see the reason why they need your product or service. You can also show them why you’re better than the competition.

It’s inside email you make them move to the next stages of the funnel. Don’t worry. I’ll tell you how to do that.

Big Sun Solar sells solar panels that lowers energy bills. When you visit their landing page, they ask for your details which lets them contact you later.

Drive traffic to your landing pages

Without traffic, your landing pages are useless. You need to drive traffic to your landing pages before you can get emails.

How do you drive traffic to your landing pages?

There’re a lot of ways to drive traffic on the web. But I’ll tell you a few very quickly in this article.

My number one way of driving traffic to a landing page is through internal linking. Internal linking means creating a link to your landing page in one of your blog posts.

This method will only work for you if you create lots of blog posts per week or month. Don’t bother using this method if you only publish a blog post occasionally.

For example, HubSpot publishes a lot of posts per week. And they also have lots of landing pages. They link to their landing pages in all their blog posts. They even put a banner on a blog post that addresses a topic related to the landing page.

The below screenshot was taken on a blog post about how to create a sales plan. HubSpot has a banner that links to a landing page to download a sales plan template.

My number two way of driving traffic to a landing is through YouTube videos. If you publish videos regularly and you’ve got a decent number of subscribers, you can include a link to your landing page in the description of a relevant video.

The more views your YouTube videos get, the more the prospects that will see your link in the description and click it.

For example, Billy Wilson created a video on how to create Facebook ads. Inside the description of the video, he added a link to a landing where visitors can drop their emails to access his free Facebook ads agency training.

My number three way is to include a link to the landing page on my social media profile.

For example, if you’re active on Twitter, a lot of people will visit your profile. You can include a link to your landing page on your Twitter profile. Prospects who visit your profile may click on the link.

Advertising is another way to drive traffic to your landing pages.

Platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn allow you to advertise to their users. You can create ads that target your prospects and ask them to visit the landing page.

LinkedIn is the ideal platform for companies that sell to businesses. For example, Shoeboxed helps freelancers, startups and businesses physical receipts into data. They scan and organize receipts and help you create expenses reports and more. Lots of their customers are on LinkedIn.

Once they’re there, offer them something they can’t resist in exchange for their emails. If your offer is truly valuable, prospects won’t hesitate to give you their email addresses.

Send a welcome email series

I like companies that send me a welcome email series when I join their email list.

A welcome email series give me the chance to learn more about the company, the people behind it, and what they do.

It makes the whole experience much more human.

You should give your subscribers the opportunity to learn more about your company. And you should also be open to learning about your subscribers too. Ask them to email you and ask any questions they may have which you can help answer.

Give subscribers the offer you promised when they signed up.

For example, Pipedrive sends you a welcome email message after signing up for a free trial.

The open rates for welcome emails are 69% higher than “business as usual” emails according to a study.

I can’t count how many times I’ve received the sign-up offer, only for the company to email me 3 weeks later, introducing me to their new product. That’s not the right way to market online.

The first email you send to subscribers after signing up should be a welcome email. Ensure that you also give them the offer you promised in this first email.

You may even tell them when to expect the next email. If subscribers are already expecting your second email, it means you’re winning their attention. Web users receive a lot of emails per day.

If your second email makes them curious and wantss to learn more about your company, product, service, or anything that helps them, they’ll expect your third email.

Your welcome email series could be spread over 14 days, and they could be five emails in total. Each email you send should take the prospect to the next stage of your sales funnel.

The more complex and expensive your product or service is, the more emails should be in the welcome series. The purpose of sending a welcome emails series is to build up a strong interest in your products or services.

Use email automation

Using email automation will make your sales funnel 100% more effective.

It’s possible that some of your subscribers won’t read all the emails in your welcome series.

Let’s say that you have 10 emails spread over 3 weeks in your email series. Some subscribers may not read email 3, 4, and 5.

For these subscribers, they may not understand email 6 when they open it. That’s because they’ve missed some emails in the series.

So, with email automation, you know when someone misses an email in the series. Instead of sending them the next email and hoping they buy, you can send a different email (or email series), that shows clearly that they missed an email.

Email automation also lets you recognize paying and non-paying customers.

Send an email to a prospect who failed to pay for your service after the end of their free trial. Send them a survey or ask why they chose not to pay to continue using your service.

BigCommerce does this. They send emails to customers who didn’t renew after completing their free trial.

With email automation, you can create series and sub-series and even more sub-series based on specific actions or events.

If a subscriber opens your emails and clicks on some links, that’s a strong sign of buying interest. A subscriber who doesn’t open your emails is probably not ready to buy.

Email automation enables you to focus on converting subscribers with strong buying interest.

It also lets you recognize those subscribers who aren’t showing much interest. Take these subscribers’ emails and retarget them on platforms like Facebook and Google. You can also send them interesting emails to reignite their interest again.

Always track and improve your unique open and click rates

Unique open rate is the percentage of people that opened your email message. For example, if you send an email message to 1,000 subscribers, and 100 opened it, that means you have a unique open rate of 10%.

Click rate is the percentage of people that clicked on links in your email message. For example, if you send an email message to 1,000 subscribers, and 50 people clicked on a link in the message, it means you have a click rate of 5%.

Track and improve your unique open and click rates always. Doing that helps you improve the results you get from your sales funnel.

Don’t just create a message in your email welcome series and leave it. Test that message against other variations. Test the subject line, the email copy, the call-to-action button, the format, etc. Test everything.

I recommend a/b testing each message in the series. Testing a single email message in the series could increase your sales.

You can increase your sales from 100 per day to 200 by a/b testing an email message in your campaign. A/B testing makes your sales funnel work harder for your business.

Conclusion

Yes, it’s possible to double or even triple your revenue within a short period of time when you build a better sales funnel. In this article, I’ve laid out all the key things you need to know to build a powerful sales funnel that will grow your business.

In the comment section below, tell me the mistakes you’ve made trying to build a sales funnel? And if you haven’t built a sales funnel before, tell me how you intend to use it to increase your sales.

Thanks for reading. Please, share this article with your friends on social media.

The post How to Build a Better Sales Funnel appeared first on OmniKick.

• A mere 5% increase in customer retention correlates with at least a 25% increase in profits.
• Emotionally connected and loyal customers annually spend about $699 with a company as compared to satisfied customers who spend only $275.
• A 2% increase in customer retention can lower costs by 10%.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. For instance, the probability of selling to an existing customer can be up to 14 times than that of acquiring new ones.

Image : amazonaws

Focusing on retention increases the lifetime value of your customers, enabling you to realise more revenue from each account. In fact, it might be the only sure-shot strategy to keep your business afloat today.

“In the world of Internet Customer Service, it’s important to remember your competitor is only one mouse click away.” – Doug Warner

Best Customer Retention Strategies For Responsive Industry

The key to realising a customer retention strategy that works is spotting symptoms of churn early. Henceforth, it is about doing everything in your power to ensure that they stay. Churn is generally accompanied by a gradual loss in customer engagement.

Image: intercomassets

If constant customer churn has taken your business by storm, here are some strategies that will help you embed a culture of retention in your organisation:

1. Deliver Impeccable Customer Service

Delivering great customer service is vital to every customer retention strategy. Take a moment to step back and look at your business from the point of view of your customers and try to answer the following questions:

• How easy is it for your customers to reach out to you?
• What is the average resolution time of every raised ticket/query?
• How often do you upskill your customer support agents?
• Do your agents possess the critical skills that are required for customer service today?

Image: thebalancecareers

The answers to such questions will determine how satisfied your customers are with your support activities. Tracking the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in this regard will help you understand if your customers are excited about your prospects or unhappy. Here are some crucial customer support KPIs that you can begin tracking right away:

• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): Directly asking your customers to rate their satisfaction level with your business. CSAT is calculated by taking the average of all resulting responses.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measures how likely your customers are to recommend your business in their personal networks. Include rating you on a simple scale of 1-10.
• First Response Time: Measures the average time taken by support agents to respond to new customer queries.
• Employee Engagement: Measures employee engagement through quick internal surveys.

2. Leverage the Right Communication Channels

While customer service is important, the channels you use to deliver it can matter even more. Hyper-competition in the digital world along with dwindling attention spans of users is causing resolution time to matter more than ever before. Here are some of the leading communication channels that you can leverage in this regard:

• Live Chat: Instantly connects customers with support agents with a single click. It also allows customers to multi-task while agents solve their queries. In fact, this is the primary reason why 51% of the customers prefer Live Chat. Moreover, negligible wait time and instant query resolution make it one of the most widely used communication channels. Next-gen live chat tools, such as the one provided by Acquire, even allow customers to continue their previous chat by picking up right where they left off. Other primary features from the company include targeting customers behaviour and goals, the ability to invite multiple team members, and receiving hands-on customer ratings.
• Video and Voice Calls: These channels simplify customer communication by providing a cost-effective way to connect. They are perfect for situations where queries are too complex to be solved over chat sessions. Acting as a more direct means of communication, video and voice support boost agent productivity, lead to faster resolutions, and humanise customer support.
• Chatbots: Where live support agents can handle only 2-4 conversations at a time, chatbots help you scale without any apparent ceiling. They are perfect to take the load off of your customer support teams, especially if you are burning too many resources in backend operations.

For example, a surrogacy agency like Circle Surrogacy makes it possible for their customers to reach them via various channels.

3. Use Co-Browsing for Better Collaboration

Co-browsing from Acquire is a next-gen technology that is taking the world of customer support by storm. It allows customer support agents to be on the same page as their customers by enabling them to remotely take control of their customers’ browsers.

• You need to change this change and add ours

Image: Acquire

Here is how it can improve the experience of your digital customers:

• Protects the personal information of customers and gives them complete control over the amount of information they want to share with the agents.
• Customers do not need to download any external application. All they need is their browser.
• Allows customers to share only a single web page, eliminating the need to share the entire screen.
• Customers can continue browsing and can visit other websites during a live co-browsing session.
• Provides next-level customer support in a way that reduces cart abandonment rates and leads to higher ROI.

4. Map Out Consistent and Memorable Customer Experiences

Memorable customer experiences are all about meeting the expectations of customers. This starts with getting to know your customers and charting out their likes and dislikes. For instance, fast responses to queries, simple purchasing processes, and real-time order tracking remain as the leading elements of ideal customer experiences.

                                                                          Image: kinsta
While technologies such as live chat and co-browsing are crucial to facilitate quick responses to queries, intuitive website/mobile UX is key to making purchase processes simpler. It is important to look beyond visual appeal and facelifts and focus on improving other performance factors such as site/app navigation, load speed, and usability.

And while you do that, ensure that you extend consistent customer experiences across all channels. This would help the customers get relevant insights into what needs to be done and where. For instance, the Starbucks Rewards App provides customers with a free rewards card that they can use whenever they make a purchase. But what differentiates it from other loyalty programs is that Starbucks allows customers to check and reload their cards via phone, website, in-store, or through the app. Any resulting change to the card or customer profile gets updated in real-time across all channels.

Image: hubspot

Conclusion

Acquiring new customers should ideally be just a part of your growth strategy. Real and stable growth comes only with repeat customers who ultimately turn into your brand’s advocates. While focusing on retention may not seem like a viable short-term strategy, it is an effective long-term approach that can deliver results like none other.

Which of these retention strategies are you leveraging right now? Share your views in the comments section below.

The post Customer Retention: Getting It Right in the Responsive Industry appeared first on OmniKick.

1. Brainstorming Your Brand

2. Determine Your Target Audience

3. Branding

4. Branding Assets and Consistency

5. Social Media and Branded Images

6. Make a Website

7. Make a Business Card

8. Use Mockups

“Look like an expert right from the start”

If you already have a great idea to start a small business, first of all, take your time to thoroughly choose your niche. This will affect every bit of your product or service characteristics from its image to the pricing.

Give yourself a time schedule and stick to it, with deadlines and everything. Being on your own boss sometimes is twice as overwhelming as working an office schedule. So don’t get lazy you need to work harder to make you small business launch.

Pro tip: online businesses require less capital investment

So let’s get started…

1.Brainstorm your brand from A to Z

Small business branding requires a lot of brainstorming. Define your brand’s goal as a company, for your customers and for you. Don’t just consider your logo, think about your brand as a whole. Get inspired by other super companies you look up to. Look at their products, their services, their image, their strategies, you don’t have to be a genius to notice that Starbucks always calls their customers by their names so that they feel like they’re part of the brand. Take your time to really observe everything about your:

A) Future competitors and

B) The kind of business you would like to own

Dog Balancing an iPhone Business Branding Mockup

2.Determine Your Target Audience

You should be perfectly clear of your average costumer’s age, sex, town, likes, dreams, etc. This information is gold in order to adapt your small business branding to fit their needs and catch their attention. In this step, you should determine your competitive advantage.

Woman Holding a Business Branded  Shopping Bag Mockup

3.Time to Get Real and Brand Your Image

Your logo stands to represent everything your brand means. Scout your competitions’ logos and identify which are more eye-catching and which are more forgettable so that you can establish a pattern and make an informed decision on your logo design. This will help your design the  best logo for your brand . There are three kinds of logos you can choose:

Font based like IBM

Illustrative logos (which basically displays what the company does)

Finally abstract logos like Nike’s swoosh

Keep it clean and functional, even though Placeit’s logo maker does this for you, it is important that you have in mind that your logo is supposed to look clean and clear if you decide to design with other tools or software. Your logo should look good on a business card, banners, on your website, anywhere! Also, you might want to make the negative version too, this means having a design that both looks good over light or dark backgrounds, or having a light version and a dark version to contrast in either situation.

Use your logo to suggest your customers benefit, for example, if you open a laundry service and you want to state that it is the fastest in the market, then you can use a time-like graphic, a lightning or a tornado, for an architecture firm you might gravitate towards homes or abstract shapes. Be creative! Get inspired and more tips from these logos for different types of businesses.

A logo should attempt to be timeless, so don’t get too much into trendy fashions. With time, you will be able to make little adjustments and new versions but your logo essence should always be the same. Earth Class Mail help businesses digitize their mails. The company has a simple and awesome logo.

How to Make a Business Logo

Want to make your logo yourself? Save time and money and try an online logo maker. No two companies are the same, that’s why Placeit created custom logo templates for many business niches. With Placeit you can create a restaurant logo, a, a bar logo, an travel, automotive logo, and many many others we have available for you like in the service area, a photography logo. Feel free to try several out and find the one that best suits your brand. Travel logo

Make A Business Logo

Define your brand’s personality in order to decide what type of assets you are going to make (with light colors, soft fonts, bold fonts, etc.) This is very helpful when keeping consistency between all your visual assets.

Take It Further with a Logo Animation Video

This is a great idea to make your presentation and logo reveal way more exciting than just display your brand new business logo as a static image. 

Make A Logo Animation

Is it really necessary? People get more attracted to animated content compared to traditional logos. It’s just… eye-catchy, it brings a plus to your logo, it’s fun and cheerful. Remember your logo plays an important role in your brand’s awareness so it just good sense to increase its level to get a more interested audience.

You can use it everywhere, on your social media, your brands presentation, a video, anything!

4.Create Core Branding Assets and Keep Them Consistent

For successful small business branding, every single visual material has to be consistent with your brand. Think of your logo, the fonts you use and your color palettes. Like I’ve said before, the difference between a successful brand and other less known ones has a lot to do with their branding consistency and their marketing efforts. So, the elements you use in your logo should also be present in your flyer designs, business cards, etc.

It takes a huge amount of marketing efforts and really good luck for a customer to even remember you over all the options in the market, you don’t want to make the mistake of giving him a piece a visual that doesn’t involve your brand’s identity.  Imagine what would happen to Coca-Cola if it suddenly decided to change their color to blue!

5.Social Media Branded Images

Choose at least two social media networks to work with. Which two? That depends on your business. If your work is very visual your best bet is to try a platform like Instagram, instead of a text-based one like Twitter.

To post, and basically make it as your own community manager make a schedule on any platform or program you want, and do some research on the peak hours to post.

Schedule weeks in advance using your social media image designs along with great copy, hashtags, locations anything that each post needs, and make a calendar. This way you are ensuring that you post consistently. I recommend you use a scheduling platform like Hootsuite to do this. Another thing to keep in mind is the size of the images you post. If you use the same exact image for all of your social platforms, you risk having images get cut off or simply look off. Avoid this by creating images at the ideal size for each social media site . Making social media images that fit your brand isn’t hard either, you just need the right tools .

Make A Social Media Image

6.Make a Website to Land Potential Customers

Create a website and/or social media pages. I recommend Squarespace, Wix, and Envato. Get to know these platforms to start building your online page. If you are not sure what you would even put in there, then be practical: make a landing page where you can say what you sell, put examples of it, your contact information and your social media. 

Squarespace

This platform is fairly simple to use to build striking sites, especially if you go for their templates, these are simply beautiful and offer more room for customization compared to the other sites. it supports multiple access levels: you can add multiple contributors including Administrators, Content Editors, Comment Moderators and other user types. It also allows the option to Import/export.

A great Squarespace feature is that it lets you to play with your code. It gives you access to the code version of your website so you can completely rebuild it in a professional way, keeping your site’s architecture clean, on the downside, it offers fewer app integrations.

WIX

Wix is super easy to use, the control panel of Wix is divided into Dashboard and Editor. The Dashboard lets you easily manage your sites’ settings, and the Editor gives you a total website creation experience, Wix is perhaps the most user-friendly platform for building a website.

If your goal is to build a website without writing any codes, then Wix might be right for you. It offers enough tools to build a variety of websites: blogs, corporate websites, eCommerce sites and more. The flipside of the incredible ease-of-use of Wix is the inability to access your site’s source code. There’s no way to check and clean up your code. Users can’t even re-write auto-generated URLs that aren’t human-readable, but they can easily set up 301-redirects into custom URLs to those pages.

Wix offers a great collection of templates but once you choose and make your website, you can’t change it, so keep this in mind when choosing a site builder.

ENVATO SITES

A landing page on Envato

With Envato Sites there is no need to start from scratch, hire or be a designer, each website comes with pre-designed blocks and if you need more, just add from the library. It’s a remarkably easy to use platform that will deliver beautiful results. Another great Envato Sites feature is it lets you add as many pages as you need to your website at no extra cost. All features are included for only $8 a month.

Envato’s professional templates look fantastic on all screen sizes and These designs integrate effortlessly with social media.

Whatever option you choose, keep in mind that great, high-quality images are a must. To create interesting images of your products, use print mockups that will highlight the quality of your work.

Looking for a cool banner?

You can also design amazing ad banners to put on your website for seasonal promotions, special offers and more!

Make An Online Banner Ad

7.Create a Dashing Business Card Design

Promote your new small business with personalized business cards. Giving your contact information by mail is very impersonal, there is a certain charm to having your own custom business cards. They are a great direct marketing strategy, it’s your customers first look at your brand and it shows that you are prepared. Placeit´s Business Card is super easy to use and gives you an instant high-quality image to download that will crush it on print too!

Make A Business Card

You can also think about flyers, posters, online banners, etc. Any visual asset that helps you to spread the message clean and clear!

Make A Branded Business Flyer

Small Business Branding Checklist

8.Mockups Are Very Helpful for Your Small Business Branding Too

Always consider your brand in every communication opportunity with your customer. Now, when starting a small business, you will have a tight budget, so at least for now, don’t spend a fortune on things that are not essential. For example, you don’t need to actually print branded packaging, you could simply make a mockup instead to have a branded package image to share online. Images online should have a great quality and be professional, if you don’t have these and you can’t hire a photographer just yet, think about using mockups. It’s a great way to save money.

Make A Packaging Mockup

Important Considerations

How quickly do you need money? This is a biggie, and something you can’t overlook. Products and services can take a while to be profitable so if you need a faster income, you might want to think about other income options in the meantime, freelancing, even a job while you get your own business going. As a freelancer, you’ll also have to develop your brand. For example, if you’re a writer you’ll need a writer persona, logo, etc.

Your pricing is a big deal too, research similar product price ranges, inform yourself on the pricing options you have, for example, if you’re offering a service, then two options are to charge by the hour or have a fixed salary. Also, think of what your customers can afford, but remember customers go out of their way to pay for the best.

Woman Wearing a Branded Apron Mockup at a Small Business

Sometimes it’s hard to understand priorities when starting a small business, so here are some tools you need to keep track of everything. Every task is actually very important and it takes time to develop something great! Don’t feel overwhelmed, get your checklist and go one step at a time. Branding your small business helps you connect with your targeted audience and being identified by them too, so yes, it’s worth it. You can check out this post here about what is branding to learn the basics.

“Any big brand that you’ve ever heard of could not have made it so big in absence of a well-thought-out branding strategy. Your brand could be the next, so what are you waiting for?”

Forbes.

The post 8 Tips to Brand Your Small Business like a Pro appeared first on OmniKick.

This is because videos account for around 75% of all online traffic, with almost a billion hours of videos watched on Youtube every single day. Video is becoming a progressively important aspect of online marketing strategy.

But many Marketers fail at being able to use a video effectively. Usually because, in order to implement a video marketing strategy in your marketing campaign, you should be aware of your target audience. And that’s what is a blind spot for many.

And interestingly in our surveys, we have found most Marketers work by gut-feel rather than hard numbers. In this post, we dive deep into the issue. Finding a way to build a comprehensive video marketing strategy that works.

Understanding the Video Marketing Funnel

A marketing funnel is the set of stages in a potential customer’s journey. It begins from the realization that there’s a problem to solve, leading to the first interaction with your brand, and moving towards the ultimate goal: conversion.

So, this is the only puzzle that we need to crack. A typical Marketing funnel consists of the following stages Awareness, Consideration, & finally Conversion.

While creating videos you need to ensure that each of the videos created fits somewhere in the hierarchy. And you can’t just randomly start creating videos. You will have to prioritize.

Best kind of videos for each stage of the funnel

Videos cannot be created randomly on the basis of gut feel. Even on the basis of what is trending or is viral, if you really want to achieve traction from them.

Digressing, generally, what I recommend is to learn digital marketing in totality. Analytics and Inbound would specifically help you in creating a perfect video marketing strategy.

Stage 1: AWARENESS

At this stage, your goal is to reach out to your potential audience who have a problem. You need to go to them with the solution to their problem.

The aim here is exposure. The greater the better. At this stage videos made for social media, or even SEO-driven videos for that matter can help you reach a large audience.

Video views would be a perfect metric to follow to understand the success of your videos in this stage.

Key tips would be to highlight the problem you’re helping your consumers solve and what makes you unique. A two-minute explainer video can help highlight how a product or service solves the problem in a clear and precise way. So, this would also be very helpful.

A point to note is that your initial relationship with your audience should begin with focusing more on your core values and objectives. Hence, videos should carry the essence of your values.

Make sure that you are highly effective to push the audience to find out more about your brand. So, focus on making your videos go viral.

Stage 2: CONSIDERATION

Consideration follows awareness. In this stage, your goal is to get your potential buyer to see you as the solution to their problem. According to Forbes, sixty-four percent of customers are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video about it.

Therefore, all you need to do is to keep reminding them why they should use your product or service over your competition.

As a matter of fact, 77% of people read online reviews before buying and 62 percent watch product review videos before buying. So, testimonial videos will be of great help in gaining heavyweight credibility for your brand.

You may even choose to use a product video at this stage. Be mindful that it should be a more in-depth explanation of how exactly your product or service works.

Stage 3: CONVERSION

The final stage of a Marketing funnel is the conversion stage. If your potential customer has made it this far, congratulations! You have successfully achieved to grab their attention.

Along with that, you have given them reasons to trust you and generated customer engagement.

Emotion is a strong factor in decision-making, so now is the time to trigger the emotions of your customers and increase brand loyalty.

Make use of tutorial videos to teach your soon-to-be customers exactly how to use your product. Once the user gets an idea of how easy the actual process is, they’ll be excited to give it a try. Moreover, a personalized video comprising of information from customers’ social media accounts, like a birthday coupon or bonus will help you connect to them even more.

Over to You

Knowing where in the journey your customers are can help you optimize your efforts, so marketing funnel is a crucial tool to use when planning video content. You will also need reliable video hosting services to win at video marketing. And in case you want your Video Marketing Strategy to work, you need to follow this simple but oft sidelined mechanism.

The post Simple yet Powerful Strategy to Win at Video Marketing appeared first on OmniKick.