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2023 Social Media Trends Hootsuite's Report and What It Means for Marketers

In a crowded sea of digital marketing reports, it’s important to know which ones have quality insights and which just add to the overall noise. Take note: Hootsuite’s State of Social Media 2023 report is one to make a priority and use as a “how-to” guide for your digital marketing initiatives. 

Hootsuite surveyed 10,643 marketers in 109 countries and used the data to compile the top trends that are shaping social media marketing. Kosta Prodanovic, the lead writer and researcher for the report, joined Convince & Convert on our Social Pros podcast to discuss the biggest findings that are already changing the way brands conduct business. Read on for a high-level summary, or listen to the full episode here

Three social media trends that marketers need to know in 2023:

1. Small business have more opportunity than ever to tap into the power of influencers.

Video clip: “And the argument that we’re trying to make, and the thing that we’re seeing in our survey is that lots of smaller businesses are also struggling with really basic marketing challenges. Like, how do I create content? I don’t have time to do this. They’re also reducing headcounts. And so one of the assumptions that we’re making heading into 2023 is that small businesses are gonna see an opportunity to start competing for those smaller and mid-size creators who are being abandoned by larger businesses. So I think that’s a super exciting opportunity. I think for a lot of folks who didn’t see creators as either financially viable before or didn’t really know how to go about reaching out to creators I think we’re gonna start to see that more and more, more over the coming year as people try and maneuver a really precarious economy.” – Kosta Prodanovic, Hootsuite

As big brands shift the way they are investing in their overall marketing spend, smaller businesses can reap the rewards of less competition for securing partnerships with content creators. 

HootSuite Organizations that work with Influencers by size graphHootsuite’s research found that only 28% of small businesses (those with 100 employees or less) are working with influencers in any capacity. The most cited reason for this is because of the perceived cost. While cost is an important factor when evaluating the potential ROI of a partnership, it doesn’t have to be a hindrance. 

The most important factors for deciding if and how to work with creators include audience alignment, the quality of collaboration and content production, and the ability to track the success of your campaign. Small to midsize creators can still deliver great results for organizations with a tight budget. With less competition from enterprise brands, marketers at smaller businesses will have more opportunity to utilize influencers in new ways, and gain an advantage over those who have not yet tapped into this channel.


Only 28% of small businesses (those with 100 employees or less) are working with influencers in any capacity.
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Idea in action: How Hootsuite partnered with content creators for the promotion of their report

With millions of users worldwide, Hootsuite is far from being considered a small business. However, as a company run by social media experts, they know the value that a great partnership with creators can bring. 

In the case of the Social Media Trends 2023 report, they looked to the most popular platform known for being a trend-setter: TikTok. To bring the report data to life, Hootsuite created a social-first hero video featuring popular TikTok creators and played off each creator’s unique style. Hootsuite’s social and video team collaborated with the creators to develop the script, and leaned into their various specialties to add character and personality to each report finding. This partnership approach was one facet of a broader coordinated campaign that included utilizing digital events and organic and paid social channels.

2. Social search is on the rise as audiences look to TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook to answer their burning questions.

Video clip: “And I think that’s a really interesting development that isn’t necessarily new, but one of the biggest pieces of data that we found was that people ages 16 to 24 were more likely to be using social to search, were more likely to go to, to social, to search than they were search engines for the first time ever. So I think it was 51%. And I think marketers can expect that trend to continue. The question is then what do you do about it? One of the recommendations that we’ve given to in the report is that people can start using what we’re calling social search optimization.” – Kosta Prodanovic, Hootsuite

Another trend that social media marketers need to pay attention to is “social search” – the growing use of social media platforms as a search function. 

According to Hootsuite’s report, more young people are using social media to search for information than traditional search engines like Google. In fact, people aged 16 to 24 are more likely to use social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to search for things like vacation destinations, clothing, and coffee shops than they are to use search engines. 

TikTok even recently released an ad encouraging users to use their search functionality to find what they need. As a result, marketers can expect this trend to continue and should consider optimizing their social media content for search.

A must-have practice: Social Search Optimization

As more people turn to social media platforms for search, it is becoming increasingly important for businesses to optimize their content for social platforms. While social search optimization (SSO) is not as developed a field as search engine optimization (SEO), there are still several basic tactics that can help businesses improve their visibility on social media.

One of the most important SSO tactics is to use appropriate keywords and hashtags. By using relevant keywords and hashtags in social media posts, businesses can increase their chances of showing up in related search results. 

Another way to optimize for social search is to take advantage of features like geotagging and adding alt tags to photos. These elements make content more searchable, not just on the platforms themselves, but also by external search engines and screen readers. As a result, these optimizations can help businesses reach a wider audience and improve their accessibility for people with disabilities.


What are you doing for social search optimization?
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3. Successful marketers are taking greater responsibility in delivering customer service.

Video clip: “Branding is not just a logo or a color. It’s really a promise that you make to your customer, and the impression that you leave with each and every person…that’s where you see the real utility in social media, and how you can talk about the true ROI of it.” – Kosta Prodanovic, Hootsuite

In the wake of the pandemic, businesses had to quickly adapt to new ways of engaging with customers, and digital channels took center stage. As a result, customer service interactions increasingly shifted to social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and through business websites. Now, even as in-person shopping becomes more common again, consumers continue to expect digital customer service options for pre- and post-purchase engagement.

Organizations are responding by giving more responsibility to marketing teams to make this happen. Hootsuite found that less than 8% of organizations said their customer service team was exclusively responsible for providing customer service on social and messaging apps. Almost half (49%) of organizations said that social customer service was usually or exclusively the responsibility of the marketing team.

To stand out in 2023, marketers must prioritize social customer service as part of their broader strategy to remain competitive in an ever-evolving digital landscape. This includes developing closer relationships with customer service teams, and integrating social media platforms into the customer service experience. By providing high-quality, responsive social customer service, marketers can enhance the overall customer experience and improve brand loyalty.


Almost half (49%) of organizations said that social customer service was usually or exclusively the responsibility of the marketing team, according to HootSuite's 2023 Social Media Trends report.
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Take things a step further by developing a trustworthy social commerce experience 

Social commerce, the process of selling products or services directly through social media platforms, has gained a lot of attention in recent years, but it has failed to bring in the anticipated revenue for North American markets. The reason for this? A lack of trust in social commerce technology and customer service. 

Hootsuite’s research found that the majority of marketers, 37%, believed the biggest reason that customers don’t purchase directly on social platforms is because they are concerned about entering payment information on those platforms.

Overall, social commerce represents a significant opportunity for businesses to expand their reach and generate new revenue streams, although Prodanovic anticipates it will be a long horizon for the North American market. First, companies need to build the capacity to invest in the development of better social commerce tools. Then they need to prepare to build a trustworthy shopping experience that includes reliable fulfillment, purchase protection, and refunds.

Get a deeper dive  

By focusing on these key social trends and adapting to the ever-changing social media landscape, you will build stronger connections with your audiences and drive long-term success. 

Take some time to explore the resources below to up your game in 2023.

Download the full report here 

Listen to the Social Pros episode with Prodanovic 

Contact Convince & Convert to get expert help with your social media strategies.

The post 2023 Social Media Trends: Hootsuite’s Report and What It Means for Marketers appeared first on Convince & Convert.

people at a desk looking at b2b content marketing strategy

Do you feel like your B2B content marketing strategy has become stale and your methods don’t seem to be getting the results they used to?

In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, it’s vital to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and tactics if you want to stay relevant to your audience and avoid falling behind your competitors. If you haven’t changed up your content strategy in the last 12 months, it’s time to take stock, figure out what’s working, and consider what new tactics you can employ to make the most out of your content.

Quick Takeaways:

  • Brands can leverage AI to produce and promote content at optimal levels.
  • Personalized content improves your conversion rates and builds one-to-one brand-customer relationships.
  • Your employees can tell your brand story more convincingly than anyone else.
  • Live video demonstrates your authenticity and transparency to customers.
  • Data enables companies to continually improve and refine their strategies based on real insights.
  • Content marketing agencies help save costs and execute more scalable strategies.

AI-Powered Content Production and Distribution

The amount of data that websites, apps, and businesses are collecting about online behavior and customers is growing at an exponential rate. In fact, worldwide data consumption is expected to reach 174 zettabytes (that’s 21 zeros!) by 2024 — nearly double it’s 2021 rate.

Worldwide data consumption is expected to reach 174 zettabytes by 2024, nearly double its 2021 rate.

Image Source: Finances Online

While the sheer volume of this data means that it can be difficult for humans to process effectively and gain insights from, spotting patterns and trends in data is something that machines are very good at.

Artificial intelligence software can now assist in all stages of content marketing — from spotting upcoming topic trends in the research phase and optimizing headlines for maximum impact and click-through rate, to automatically determining the best social networks and best times to promote content.

Intelligent software can not only speed up the content production process and make it more efficient, but it can help you to make content that better serves the needs of your audience too.

Personalized Experiences

AI and increased data collection have also made it possible to deliver a highly personalized experience to each individual member of your audience.

When you have data about demographics, browsing behavior, and previous engagement with your brand, you can use this information to deliver “hyper personalized” content experiences to each user, custom-designed to be as useful and engaging as possible.

Salesforce reports that 84% of customers say being treated like a person, not a number (AKA receiving personalized attention) is very important to winning their business. This applies as much for B2C content marketing as it does in the B2B context.

Further, customers expect personalized conveniences like connected processes (think omnichannel communication), sellers who understand how they want/need to use products and services, and instant, on-demand engagement).

Salesforce research shows 84% of buyers say being treated like a person, not a number, is very important to winning their business.

Image Source: Salesforce UK

As anyone on the sales team knows, it’s making this human connection with someone that can make a sale. The same is true in content marketing. When your content is targeted in its delivery, prioritizes topics that your customers care about, and has responsive design for seamless consumption, you can expect your leads to stick around.

By personalizing your B2B content marketing strategy ,you not only streamline your sales funnel and improve your conversion rate, but also helps build relationships with the individuals making purchase decisions for their companies.

Employee Generated Content

Influencer marketing can certainly be effective, but it can also be challenging to carry out in a B2B setting.

The answer is to use your own employees as influencers — the people who work for you are the best advocates for your business. It’s for this reason that over 70% of marketers use their employees as influencers.

Employees who advocate for their companies (such as by sharing brand content!) also help drive significant growth — employee-shared posts reach a staggering 571% wider audiences, and the leads they generate are 7X more likely to convert to sales.

Statistics showing that employee advocacy drives company growth, including by reaching a 571% larger audience with shared posts, and generating leads that are 7X more likely to convert.

Image Source: Peer to Peer Marketing

Of course, for employee influencers to be engaging, genuine, and persuasive, it’s vital that they really believe in your brand and are passionate about the business succeeding.

Your internal influencers can tell the story of your brand in a way that nobody else can. But it’s essential that you nurture a positive culture of growth and support at work, and do whatever you can to make every individual employee feel as if they are an integral part of the company and the brand.

Each individual can give a unique viewpoint, and consumers tend to trust content with a human face more than generic bra. Each employee can also bring his or her unique ideas to your content plan to keep things fresh and ensure you’re never stuck for content ideas.

Your employees can be your most effective salespeople so make sure you invest in employee engagement as much as you do in your content marketing strategy.

Live Video

HubSpot’s most recent State of Video report highlights exactly why it’s more important than ever to make video part of your digital content strategy. Their survey found that 90% of marketers say video has increased leads for their company — up from 86% in 2022 and the highest rate ever reported since the survey has been conducted.

Graph showing finding from HubSpot's State of Video Report that 90% of marketers say video has increased leads for their business.

Image Source: HubSpot

Other must-know stats from the survey drive this point home even further:

  • 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, and 96% see it as a critical part of their strategy
  • 92% of marketers say video gives them a positive ROI (another all-time high)
  • 87% of marketers say video has a direct positive impact on sales
  • 96%  say it helps increase user understanding of their products and services
  • 96% of consumers say they watch videos to learn about products and services
  • 79% say video has directly convinced them to make a purchase

The takeaway — if you aren’t already using marketing in your content marketing strategy, the time to start is right now.

And while all types of video will continue to grow in popularity in 2023, live video, in particular, is one strategy that is certainly worth considering integrating into your content strategy.

Live video is becoming an increasingly important part of several social networks. 80% of consumers would rather watch a live video than read a blog post. And Facebook has said that users spend 3 times longer watching live videos than standard videos.

As live video is unedited, it’s a great way to demonstrate authenticity and transparency, and build trust in your brand. Live video can also be interactive and is effective at engaging your audience.

As well as being a popular content format, live content converts extremely well. One survey found that 67% of people watching a livestream would go on to make a purchase.

67% of livestream viewers purchase a ticket to a similar event.

Image Source: Livestream

Data-Driven Content Strategy

Content marketing is no longer an optional part of your marketing strategy, but a must-have in today’s digital age. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a business or brand that didn’t engage in some form of content marketing.

Today, successful B2B content marketers have increasingly sophisticated, data-driven content strategies with measurable goals and insights-based optimization that delivers higher ROI.

Consider this — while 94% of businesses use content marketing in some capacity, only 9% say their strategy is very successful. Many don’t even know if their strategy is successful or not. For those companies, I’d strongly venture to guess a missing piece to their puzzle is lack of data insights. Further, an overwhelming majority of marketers — 87% — say data is their most underutilized asset.

Those businesses that are serious about content marketing will use insights from available data to construct their B2B content marketing strategy and plan, then analyze the results to ensure success. They’ll look for ways to refine and continually improve their strategy to find, engage, and convert the right audiences.

Along with this increasing sophistication in content marketing will come more reliance on tools and technology to deal with the data and manage strategy. The number of martech solutions is continuing to grow rapidly year on year, and there are definitely some exciting developments to watch out for in the future.

Hiring an Agency

You may not think of hiring a content strategy agency as a way to improve your own B2B content marketing strategy, but it’s  fast becoming one of the top ways companies level up their execution. Here’s why — content marketing requires many moving parts and frequent, high-quality, high-volume content publishing. When you are running a business and focusing on serving your customers, content inevitably takes a back seat sometimes.

The problem is that your strategy then loses momentum, and you then lose potential customers to your competitors.

When you hire an agency, you have a dedicated, full-time team focused on your content. You can count on optimized content, reliable delivery, frequent publishing, and a data-driven approach. While it may mean a financial investment up front to hire your new agency, outsourcing content marketing ultimately saves companies up to 90% compared to what they’d pay to hire, equip, and manage an internal content team.

Boost Results from Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy Today

Content marketing offers too many benefits to ignore, but not everyone has the time or resources to be able to write and produce their own content in-house. Hiring a writer or the services of a content marketing agency like ours help you to produce higher quality content, save you time and money, and put you in a better position to achieve your business goals.

If you’re interested in getting more traffic and leads for your website, or documenting your content marketing strategy, check out our Blog Writing Service. Setup a brief consultation and I’ll send you a free PDF version of my books!

The post The Top B2B Content Marketing Strategy Ideas to Consider Using Today appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

10 colored pencil tips to represent digital marketing tips

There is no doubt that digital marketing is crucial when it comes to the success of any business no matter what industry you are in. So what are the best digital marketing tips and tricks that we can apply from bigger (better funded) brands?

The pandemic has pushed many businesses to see the value in digital marketing to attract new customers. According to eMarketer, digital marketing takes up 54% of marketing budgets and has grown by 36% since 2020!

Why? Because digital marketing is rthe best way to reach new customers. And the best part, is that digital insights allow us to directly see what customers want. With the increase in digital marketing data, tools, analytics and digital marketing software, it is far easier to see actual online customer behavior… and cater to it! Digital marketing has enabled businesses to gain treasured insights into customers’ minds.

When implemented in the right way, digital marketing will enable your business to target and reach its customers, qualify new ones, increase sales, and experience lasting growth.

These digital marketing approaches will make your business visible to your existing customers online and connect you with new ones. Let’s dive in to understand the 10 best digital marketing tricks you can use today to grow your business.

What is Digital Marketing Today?

Digital marketing is the use of the internet, social media platforms, websites, emails and all our electronic devices to get your business found by new customers.

Digital marketing is trending upwards as more people use the internet and social platforms to get work done and play.

google search volume trend for digital marketing keyword
Source: Google Trends for “Digital Marketing” from 2004 to present

It today’s digital world, marketing is about connecting with your prospective customers in the right place and at the right time, earning their trust, educating them on the latest trends and then positioning your business as a solution to their needs.

Digital marketing strategy encompasses a range of marketing activities such as content marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, mobile marketing and more.

Digital Marketing includes:

  • Search Engine Marketing (often referring to as Paid Search or PPC for Pay-per-Click)
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Content Marketing
  • Audio and Video Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Digital Display Advertising (Banner ads)
  • Native Advertising
  • Influencer Marketing / Advocacy Marketing
  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Pay-per-Lead (PPL) sometimes referred to as Content Syndication

Need a Better Marketing Strategy? Use a Digital Strategy Template - Marketing Insider Group

Why You Need Digital Marketing Today

Digital marketing is about getting found by your target audience based on the search terms they are using, the content they are consuming on the digital channels where they spend their time.

This chart shows the dramatic decline of traditional media consumption and the amazing increase in time we are all spending on digital channels from 2011 to the present.

chart of time spent on traditional vs digital media
Source: Statista

That’s why the future of marketing is digital. Brands need digital marketing in order to achieve their marketing goals in a digital world. Those marketing goals may include awareness and reach, lead or revenue conversion, customer loyalty and retention.

Tp help you see the benefits of Digital Marketing, we’ve compiled this list of the best digital marketing tricks used by the best brands but that can be applies to any size company or budget.

10 Best Digital Marketing Tips From Top Brands

  1. Combine SEO and Content Marketing
  2. Have a Visible Presence on Relevant Social Media Platforms
  3. Optimize Your Website for Mobile-First Browsing
  4. Use the Right Digital Marketing Tools
  5. Be Awesome at Design
  6. Create and Grow an Email List
  7. Spend Wisely on Digital Advertising
  8. Visual Content
  9. Closely Watch Your Analytics
  10. Integrate Strategies and Campaigns Across Channels

1. Combine SEO and Content Marketing

SEO is certainly nothing new. For a long time, SEO was a function of keywords and coding. Then Google got smarter. Google learned that SEO is about rewarding brands with helpful content.

That’s why combining SEO (what questions do our customers ask) and Content Marketing (what answers do we provide) is one of the most effective of the marketing trends we’re going to see in the future of marketing.

Why SEO + Content venn diagram
Source: MIG Weekly Content Service Overview

Today, most of the metrics included in Google’s algorithm have to do with content (even Google admits this) and the engagement you win through the distribution of great content. Using various types of content (visual, text, video, infographics, audio, etc) does much better than using a single type of content.

More content – As more businesses embrace content marketing, competition continues to get tougher. Everything you do online is drowned in noise and information overload. In order to get ahead, every business needs to publish better and more content.

According to HubSpot data, publishing at least once a week is critical for ROI and ROI drops pretty precipitously when you publish less frequently. However, it’s not about quantity vs. quality, but an ideal mix of both.

Valuable content Content should be entertaining, informative, and empathetic. Valuable content answers the search intent or the question asked of the search engine, but it also is structured in a way to encourages engagement such as subscriptions to your email, sharing, comments, and other actions that contribute to ROI.

Original content – Content can be audio, video or text but when you decide to use one or all of these digital content, ensure it is good and original. If you can’t create unique, compelling and good content by yourself, you can hire an expert to create content for your website and social media platforms. This is where you will need a powerful content marketing plan like never before.

Appropriate content – As you can see from this infographic from Occam’s Razor, you need to produce content that’s right for each stage in the conversion process (and your metrics need to match your goal with each piece of content).

digital analytics
Image courtesy of Occam’s Razor

Knowing where a visitor is in the conversion process isn’t always easy, but, if you’ve done a good job of coding content (applying tracking codes so you know what type of content drove them to visit your site) and use tools that let you track where visitors have been before, you can make an educated guess as to what content they need.

By delivering the right content at the right time, you’re more likely to convert visitors to buyers.

Reach is important. The more visitors you bring to your site, all things being equal, the higher your ROI. This is one of the reasons it’s important to have several social platforms and have links on your content so visitors can easily share your content. You should share your content once it’s published and here’s a schedule we recommend:

2. Have a Visible Presence on Relevant Social Media Platforms

Being seen online is the key to success for every business, especially in today’s world where almost all businesses have gone digital. It is one of the ways to stand out from the crowd.

For this reason, you need to build your online presence on social media networks of relevance. Note that there are plenty of social networks available but you need to identify where your customers spend most of their time and target them there. Pick those that are relevant to your business and prospects and build your online presence there.

wheel of digital marketing

As my daughter will tell you: share more than once on Instagram and she’ll unfollow you! In addition to sharing your own content, you should share content created by other great companies/ experts. Many experts recommend you promote or sell in no more than 20% of your content. At least 80% of your social shares should be valuable content in your industry.

And keep in mind that social media is not the place to be pitching your products (unless you’re last name is Kardashian). Social media is for sharing and engaging. While social networks are a great way to understand what content resonates with your audience, social media is not the best digital marketing channel to demonstrate business growth.

3. Optimize Your Website for Mobile-First Browsing

Many consumers in the US and around the world only access the internet from their mobile phone. So you need a website that loads quickly, works across all types of mobile devices, and looks amazing in the process.

You also need to make sure your content is mobile friendly, and that your website and social media networks are accessible on desktops as well as mobile devices. One thing we are always looking to improve is the reader experience. We are constantly testing which fonts, colors, and font sizes, for example, are best for reading on a variety of small mobile screens. We are also always optimizing for page load times.

So, it is crucial to make your website and content accessible to users on all screen sizes. Update your website design using the latest trends and color schemes.

4. Use the Right Digital Marketing Tools

Digital marketing is an amalgamation of different strategies aimed at a plethora of channels, like SEO, PPC, social media, and so on.

In order to ensure that you have an integrated marketing mix, you need the right digital marketing tools to help you run effective campaigns. You also need to develop expertise in using them and applying the insights in the right context.

For example, you need a CMS to power the content on your website (we use WordPress just as 60% of all websites do). You also need email marketing tools to distribute your content (we use Mailchimp). You might use a social media management platform to manage the social distribution (we use Hootsuite). You should also consider lead generation, marketing automation and CRM. Many smaller companies use Hubspot for all of these functions. Larger companies often use Adobe / Marketo for these functions.

We use a landing page service called ConvertFlow for lead generation and I track leads using a sophisticated google sheet. Works fine for us! You’ll also want to use an analytics tool like Google Analytics to understand your website details. And of course there’s a whole world of Marketing Technology (MarTech) that larger companies are using.

5. Be Awesome at Design

Design underpins much of what makes digital marketing success. Whether you’re designing a website, a landing page or creating an image for your website, ad, or infographic, you need to have good design skills. Not all of us are whiz kids when it comes to design, but there are some tools to help.

Canva – is a great tool for creating social media images whether you need them for your profile or as images to include in posts. One aspect of Canva I really like is the templates that help design great looking images even if you know nothing about layout or what fonts go together. They’re constantly adding new images and tools, such as infographic templates, to help you out.

Photoshop – granted it’s expensive, but Photoshop is a great design tool.

6. Create and Grow an Email List

Email is still an effective driver of digital marketing ROI. In fact, email delivers about $36 in ROI for every dollar spent! But you gotta do it right.

Make sure your website includes an email newsletter sign up form. Deliver valuable content to your subscribers not just promotion. Tell stories. We use our email lists to mainly share our content. We also do email nurturing to our leads and convert quite a bit through this process.

The trick is to balance content, stories and calls to action. For example, our first nurture email just tells you a little something personal about me (“I have 4 kids and they ask lots of questions. Do you have any questions for me?)

But then in later emails I share some of our top stories, explain what we sell, and ask people to contact me.

7. Spend Wisely on Digital Advertising

Now listen, lots of people are spending on digital ads. Very few are able to show any ROI at all. (If you are, please let me know. I’d love to tell your story!)

Digital advertising, including PPC (pay per click) Google Ads, YouTube Ads, social media advertising on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, Snapchat, Tiktok are all things you could test in order to deliver digital marketing success.

We’ve tried it all. The one approach we have found that brings in relevant traffic, engaged visitors, and converting leads is what we call contextual content promotion. We find your target audience wherever they are on the web and we serve them an ad. But not an ad for your product. And ad for your content.

Then we gather that audience into a re-targeting pool. And we hit them with offers like e-books, webinars, free guides. This allows us to deliver CPCs that are 80% less than average and CTRs that are 4-5 times higher than average.

8. Add Visual Content To Your Digital Strategy

A picture is literally worth a thousand words, and people will share them more often than text-based content. We love infographics because they can be attractive, engaging and display lots of information. Our brains can process pictures much quicker than text. periodic table digital marketing cheat sheet

Here are some examples of the best content infographics that awesome marketers have created and used to resonate with their audience. I also created these digital marketing cheat sheets. All of these are examples of visual content in digital marketing.

Some other examples include Social media graphics, Videos, Webinars, even the title image of our blog posts is designed and branded in order to set us apart from just any old thing you might read on the web.

9. Closely Watch Your Analytics

Almost the other end of the spectrum from creativity is analytics, but that’s exactly the combination you need for digital marketing success. Google Analytics is perfect for understanding critical elements of your website and how visitors navigate through it. If you’re trying to learn how to gain insights from Google Analytics, you can use the Google Data Studio to give it a test drive using data from Google’s e-commerce site.

For analytics outside of Google Analytics, a number of great tools exist. You can use individual analytics from each social network (ie. Facebook, Pinterest, etc), you can bring them all to one place by using a dashboard programs, or you can pay for more powerful tools to gain more insights.

10. Integrate Strategies and Campaigns Across Channels

Integrating across these tactics can be really challenging, especially in a larger firm where different teams may manage different platforms or where different ad agencies handle different aspects of marketing, such as content marketing, paid, and social. But, integrate you must to achieve true digital marketing success.

Let’s talk about how you go about integrating across these tactics that contribute to digital marketing strategy success.

Source: On Top Visibility

Strategic planning

The first step in integration is to have a strategic plan. Don’t have one, here’s a link to creating a digital marketing plan.

Coordination comes from strategic elements such as messaging, but even elements such as mission and goals help integrate efforts by creating an umbrella under which teams create posts, infographics, and the metrics used to assess them.

Start by simply identifying your digital marketing goals, what gaps you need to fill and who can help to fill them,

Content Council

Bringing everyone together is important. Everyone should have time to share elements they’re working on and get input from the group about ways to extend a particular effort across multiple platforms and creative efforts.

The main goal is to help brainstorm ways to fill your content gaps. Once you align on your strategy, getting everyone on board can go a long way to bringing everyone together.

A Master Plan

There needs to be a point person in charge of digital marketing success and that person is key to coordinating efforts across teams. Some organizations have an approval process where the top person must approve everything before it goes live. I’m not a big fan of this approach because it can slow the process down and, unlike traditional advertising, digital media is dynamic and data-driven.

A better strategy is to use a digital master content calendar to allow everyone to post what they’re working on, the assets they plan to use, and when the creative effort will go live. But, it’s not enough to post plans. You can use your content council to review these plans and make adjustments.

For instance, reusing a graphic created by another team not only saves time and money, it creates a visual that helps consumers (customers and potential customers) associate the two efforts–and increases frequency.

Your Turn

Digital marketing is a must for your business success, and we hope our list of tricks will keep you headed in the right direction. These tricks are tried and tested and when you implement them effectively, you can get ahead of your competition.

If you want your business to succeed online in today’s digital world, then these digital marketing tricks will come in handy. What tips would you add to this list? Tell us in the comments below!

Looking to implement the best digital marketing tips for your business. We can bring more traffic and leads to your website with weekly blog articles, a full year content plan, and monthly reporting? Set up a quick call, so we can get started today.

The post 10 Digital Marketing Tips From Top Brands appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

The Future of Digital Marketing: Predictions for 2023 and Beyond

Evolving tools, trends and technology make way for capitalizing on new opportunities in the future of digital marketing. Although, keeping up with frequent improvements can be an overwhelming task for site owners.

Get ahead of the game and expect the unexpected by reading up on predictions about the future of digital marketing. Here’s what we expect to see as the biggest content marketing trends for 2023 and beyond.

Key Takeaways

  • 50% of marketers will increase their content marketing budgets in 2023, with 1 in 5 increased by double digits
  • Social Media currently makes up 33% of all digital ad spending and is projected to increase in 2023
  • 45% of small businesses already have a paid search strategy in place and numbers will continue to rise as the need for high-quality content increases
  • 61% of customers prefer to shop are more likely to purchase items with businesses that have augmented reality services

Make the most of improved technology and grow your business with the biggest digital marketing trends for 2023.

2023 Marketing Predictions

There are 3 major trends in the future of digital marketing that everyone will be talking about. The first is the resurgence of Content Marketing as the first thing businesses are doing in marketing. Before the pandemic, startup founders and B2B SaaS marketers would first consider buying social media ads in order to grow their business.

Now, they are doubling down on content marketing. Why? Because Google told us content marketing is the best way to rank for buyer search. Research from the Content Marketing Institute states that 50% of marketers will increase their content marketing budgets in 2023, with 1 in 5 increased by double digits.

pie chart showing how B2B content marketing budgets will change in 2023

Image Source: Content Marketing Institute

The second big trend is AI-generated content. We will begin to realize the opportunity of an AI-driven content marketing strategy. If 60-70% of the content we create goes unused, AI will begin to force us to reconsider what we create and why.

Publications like the Washington Post and others have been using AI to generate templated content (think sports scores and highlights, or crime reports) for more than 2 years.

We’ve tested a few of these services and haven’t found any that can produce quality blog content or long form articles to anywhere near the level of quality required to rank for search or answer technical or professional thought leadership requirements. But that future may not be far off.

The third biggest trend is employee activation. AI will tell us what to create, but our best storytellers are our existing employees from across the business. Every company needs a strategy to activate these employees as both creators and as the most effective distribution channel to share that content.

This is what we love to call The Paradox of AI: The more the robots tell us what to do, the more we will need marketing experts to create and share that content.

There are a few things we’re pretty clear about. Content marketing isn’t going to go anywhere for a while for sure. But what other future digital marketing trends might we see as we head towards 2023?

Voice-powered Everything

Smart speakers and “assistants” have been around for a while but they really started to take off in 2017 and 2018 as people have lost the self-consciousness of talking to their phones and a range of new consumer devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home have appeared on the market.

There’s no reason for the trend in mobile to stop growing, and this hands-free technology will become an increasingly standard way that users choose to interact with their devices. It’s estimated that over half of all search queries are powered by voice search.

With this growth in voice search powered smart devices will come more opportunities to market to the people that own them. Amazon already spotted this opportunity when it started offering cheaper Kindle devices in exchange for agreeing to receive marketing communications. Targeted Alexa ads are already in the pipeline and the other devices will be sure to follow.

AI-Powered Marketing and Support Technology

Artificial intelligence has been expanding what’s possible in the future of digital marketing for quite a while now, but we’re going to see exponential leaps in what this technology is capable of over the next few years.

Chatbots will become a customer service standard and start replacing live agents more and more frequently as machine learning algorithms grow more complex and are able to emulate human beings with almost spooky accuracy.

Marketing is becoming more conversational and personalized and chatbots enable you to take advantage of this trend without additional strain on your manpower and resources.

AI is also being used in advertising. While it hasn’t quite achieved human levels of creativity, Google is already running ads powered by AI to optimize campaigns by identifying the best-performing ad designs and copy and automatically adjusting based on user engagement.

The Future of Social Media

You may think social media is already pervasive, but it still has room to grow. Social Media currently makes up 33% of all digital ad spending and is projected to increase in 2023. While the future of social media might come in the form of something, well, more social, the growth of these platforms is not likely to subside any time soon.

circle graph showing that social media makes up 33% of all digital marketing spending

Image Source: Hootsuite

Social media will continue to make its presence known in every area of our lives and become truly integrated with both on and offline services.

In an episode of the dystopian Netflix series Black Mirror, social media has spilled out of the screen and into the real world as individuals rate their interactions with others and are awarded better housing, jobs, and social status based on their overall rating.

Science fiction? Maybe for now, but the future probably isn’t so far away. Most of the apps on your phone are probably already sharing data with your social media networks and it’s now common for employers and recruiters to screen social media profiles before interviews.

What does this mean for marketers? A deeper understanding of each customer as an individual and the opportunity to offer highly targeted offers and services, as the AI algorithms used in social media grow increasingly sophisticated.

The Rise of Micro-influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has already grown huge in recent years with top influencers on platforms like Instagram and YouTube attracting millions of followers and making a six-figure income from their deals with brands.

However influencer marketing is still in its infancy and while it offers great ROI compared to more traditional advertising channels, there are some issues to be ironed out.

Fake followers are currently a problem that’s still being resolved, and there have been some notable occurrences when brand/influencer relationships have backfired in a bad way.

Big name influencers are also starting to lose their power as they take on more and more sponsored posts, reducing the authenticity and impact of their recommendations.

As consumers continue to value individual recommendations over being marketed at, it’s going to make sense to invest more in “micro-influencers” – those social media users who have a much smaller but dedicated following and can deliver truly authentic marketing messages to a trusting audience.

Influencers’ power will be measured not by the sheer number of followers they boast, but their personal relationships with each individual follower.

Augmented Reality Becomes Commonplace

Remember the Pokémon Go craze of 2016? The mobile game was not only a great example of how augmented reality can be used in video games, but also a marketing opportunity, as businesses jumped on the chance to sell to customers trying to catch a Pokémon or two on their doorstep.

Augmented reality is not just a fun gimmick for gamers. It’s being used more and more as a tool for brands to reach customers. In fact, 61% of customers prefer to shop are more likely to purchase items with businesses that have augmented reality services.

circle graphs depicting high likelihood of customer engagement due to augmented reality services

Image Source: CyberGear

Ikea now offers a virtual reality catalog where you can place pieces of furniture in your own home, and fashion brands are starting to use augmented reality to allow their customers to try on outfits virtually in the comfort of their own homes.

Expect to see more brands jumping on the augmented reality bandwagon, and the technology slowly becoming a more common occurrence with serious marketing goals, rather than a cute trick.

Video Overtaking All Other Digital Channels

Savvy marketers have recognized the power of online video for years – back in 2015; The Washington Post predicted that video would account for 80% of all online content by 2020.

We’re not quite there yet, but video is already proving itself as a powerful medium, and we’ve seen a massive rise in live streaming video in particular over the last year or so.

Video marketing can be incredibly effective at boosting engagement levels and the consumer appetite for video shows no sign of slowing down – YouTube is already overtaking Facebook as the second-most visited site (Google is number one, naturally).

If you’ve not fully embraced video in your brand marketing, you’re already lagging behind, but it’s not too late to jump in. With the combination of live video and augmented reality, exciting things are becoming possible and original and creative videos are sure to be the big content channel winner as we head into 2019.

Going Back to Basics with Employee Activation

Of course all these advances in technology are very exciting, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the basic principles that make for a great marketing strategy, and a great company.

Employee activation will enable your organization to get the best out of every employee, who will act as ambassadors for your brand and grow sales and conversions in a genuine and authentic way that’s more effective than any advertising campaign could ever be.

We think this is the biggest B2B Marketing Trend right now!

Referring back to the trend of micro-influencer marketing, when your employees are engaged they will themselves act as micro-influencers for your company. If you are successful in employing individuals who align with your brand values and help their passion for what you’re trying to grow, they will act as your most dedicated cheerleaders.

As our reliance on technology grows, more and more organizations are also realizing they need to be more “human” and must activate the storytelling and organic sharing power of employees – this is the “paradox of AI” as we learn to take our place alongside machines in this brave new world of opportunities.

Outsourcing to Digital Marketing Agencies

Whether you’re a small business or a big one, you can generate more content by outsourcing to a digital marketing agency. Creating enough high-quality content with in-house resources is challenging and can hold you back from taking advantage of growth opportunities.

As the best way to rank on Google, digital marketing is significant to success. So why not outsource the help of marketing experts? 45% of small businesses already have a paid search strategy in place and numbers are expected to rise in 2023.

Help from educated professionals is often the difference between making little progress and seeing significant, continuous improvement in traffic and sales. Sit back, relax and watch your business grow this year by outsourcing to digital marketing agencies.

Where Do You Think Marketing is Going?

There’s lots of room for evolution when it comes to the future of digital marketing. Share your digital marketing predictions for 2023 in the comments below and on social media.

Get ahead of your content marketing strategy for 2023 and secure success with marketing experts today. Consistently share quality content and drive traffic to your website by checking out our Content Builder Service now.

The post The Future of Digital Marketing: Predictions for 2023 and Beyond appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

digital marketing trends

Marketers have been forced into survival mode to keep their businesses afloat, leaning into digital marketing trends and seeking other untapped potential.

The businesses finding the most success today, despite the turbulence, are the ones willing to remain flexible, make change rapidly and get creative. Despite the turmoil, many businesses remain optimistic.

73% of CMOs interviewed in a recent Gartner study predict the pandemic’s negative ramifications on our society will be short-lived.

More than half expect that performance will get back to normal within the next year. Over a third believe the virus will have a significant positive impact on their businesses in the future.

Over 1/3 of marketing leaders believe the pandemic will have a significant positive impact on their businesses in the future.
Source

No one knows for sure whether these predictions are correct. However, we know that COVID-19 has forced the world to make significant shifts in business and marketing.

Digital has become the supreme leader in the marketing world. It now accounts for about 80% of all marketing channel budgets. We expect that number will only increase in 2023.

Businesses are adapting quickly to remain relevant. Those that don’t will soon fall behind their future-focused competitors or get kicked out of the game completely.

We’ve compiled 11 crucial digital marketing trends for your businesses to follow as we step into 2023.

Quick Takeaways:

  • COVID-19 has forced the world to make some major shifts.
  • The need for connection, personalization, and outstanding customer experiences will play into every facet of B2B and B2C marketing in 2023.
  • Brand strategy, customer loyalty, and innovative technology are paramount.
  • Businesses must prove themselves consistent, trustworthy, empathetic, authentic, and courageous.
  • Companies should position themselves as thought leaders to build trust and loyalty with target audiences.

Top Digital Marketing Trends for This Year

If you can successfully execute the following b2b marketing strategies, you’ll outshine your competitors, build lasting connections with customers, and win more leads and sales in 2023.

1. Authentic Human Connection

Connecting with real humans is essential in today’s digital world. As COVID-19 forces us to stay home and keep social distance, we crave human interaction. Unable to spend quality time with friends, family, and colleagues in person, we’re turning to technology to bridge the gap.

According to Deloitte’s Global Marketing Trends report, people seek more human-centric businesses and leave the companies that don’t value authentic connection. More than 70% of those surveyed said they appreciate digital innovations that have deepened their relationships with others during the pandemic.

“When organizations design their digital future for efficiency, rather than human connection, a debt accrues, and this debt can manifest in biased results, lack of inclusivity, and feelings of social isolation.”

Marketers should capitalize on the opportunity to develop real relationships with customers. You can start by rethinking your company values, mission, and operations. Start with your value system, which drives your business. When your values align with your clients’ – connecting with their emotions and aligning with their actions – you’ll form deeper connections.

A chart that shows a customer's connection to a brand directly increases brand loyalty, referrals and repeat business.

Bringing human values to the forefront of your business marketing efforts will equip you to address client and consumer needs effectively and authentically. You can build powerful connections and profound loyalty by:

  • Viewing your organization as a “human entity”
  • Identifying your clients’ core values
  • Mirroring those values in your businesses

2. Personalization

Personalization will arguably be the most crucial trend in the future of marketing. Building marketing and advertising campaigns that target individuals rather than the masses can hugely impact your leads, conversions, and sales.

  • 92% of consumers agree that every interaction with a brand matters and the entire customer experience should be excellent.
  • Personalized emails get much higher open rates.
  • Customization produces brand loyalty.
  • 90% of U.S. consumers find marketing personalization appealing.
  • The top way to personalize customer experiences is through email campaigns.

Connectedness to a brand is key in many consumer decisions - trust, brand alignment and understanding should all be considered in your digital marketing strategy.

3. Thought Leadership

2020 was traumatic in various ways for many of us. So much “normality” has spiraled out of control that it’s challenging to know where to turn for helpful advice, truth, direction, and empathy.

Nevertheless, people are searching for answers – primarily online. They’re looking for healthy and stable leaders they can trust to point them in the right direction to make a purchase, form a partnership or find a service.

This creates an opportunity for thought leaders. By 1) proving yourself as a credible expert in your industry and 2) fitting the emotional and societal needs of your clients, you can build trust and loyalty. Here are some ideas:

  • Prove you understand your clients’ needs by empathizing with them. They will learn to trust you so you can show them the best way forward.
  • Provide educational content through video marketing, pillar pages, podcasts, and blogging to gain traction and build authority online.
  • Keep content current.
  • Connect with followers on a personal level.
  • Provide enormous value by staying on the cutting edge in your industry.
  • Show respect and prove you’re looking out for your audience’s best interests at all times.
  • Remain adaptable. Evolve with your audience. Reframe your point of view as market conditions change.

Follow Google’s E-A-T criteria as you create your content. Doing so will assure search engines that your information is correct, reliable, and authoritative to improve your rankings.

Follow Google’s E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) criteria as you create your content and expand on digital marketing trends.
Source

One of the most effective ways to turn your C-suite members into thought leaders is to start a podcast. 62% of U.S. consumers listened to podcasts in 2022, up from 57% in 2021. It doesn’t require as much equipment or production as video, and it’s a way to have meaningful conversations and share your knowledge with your target audience.

4. Video Marketing and Sales

Mobile video consumption increases by 100% every year. 78% of people watch online videos weekly, and 55% watch daily. 54% want more video content moving forward.

A chart showing that the importance of a strong video marketing strategy continues to rise as the years pass

99% of marketers say they already use video marketing, and 88% want to devote more money to video campaigns in the future. That’s no surprise considering that viewers retain 95% of a message communicated via video.

Again, human connection plays a role in video marketing’s surging popularity. Video can help you connect with customers in a more personal way than other forms of content marketing.

Whether you’re creating targeted ads or sales videos, sharing a presentation, or inviting clients to create testimonial videos for your business, you can reach people in a more humanized way with video marketing and sales.

5. Optimizing for Search Intent

According to Alexa, “Search intent is the reason behind a searcher’s query on search engines.” It’s the searcher’s objective – what they’re trying to accomplish. Most people search online to learn about something, take action, or find something.

Optimizing for search intent will be an essential content marketing and SEO strategy in 2023. Your goal is to provide solutions to problems through relevant content. As a result, you will:

  • Boost brand awareness
  • Drive conversions
  • Retain customers
  • Remain relevant to your target audience

There are four primary types of search intent:

  • Informational: Users enter a query and expect a straightforward answer fast.
  • Navigational: Searchers look for “directions” to a website or landing page.
  • Commercial investigation: Searchers conduct as much research as possible to make highly informed purchasing decisions.
  • Transactional: The user intends to make a purchase.

Satisfy your users by giving them what they want, when and where they want it.

6. Innovative Partnerships

Forming innovative partnerships with other businesses is another way to amplify the customer experience. By partnering with a company that performs a complimentary service, you’ll offer more value to your clients.

Let’s say you own an email marketing software company. Your clients are primarily small business owners. Partnering with a social media marketing business to create a new product that integrates social media and email services can make your offer more attractive.

Maybe you agree to promote another business that agrees to promote your business in return. Your customers will appreciate your openness. If you’re already respected, they’ll trust your recommendation and appreciate the help. You’ll build more trust with them. Cross promoting will also get your brand in front of more people and build your reputation.

7. Agile Marketing

For businesses to remain successful today, agility isn’t optional. Investing in agile marketing strategies during a worldwide pandemic and other events outside of our control is crucial.

Unlike past recessions, where businesses would retrench and wait out the storm, modern enterprises have shifted primarily to digital channels. They’ve upped their online game to replace their physical presence. They’ve had to pivot rapidly to remain relevant and adapt to changing buyer needs.

For your business to remain agile, you must understand your audience’s current needs and anticipate future conversations. Here are some tips:

  • Develop a unified view of your customers to create holistic, personalized experiences to lead each individual through the buyer’s journey.
  • Leverage social media to personally engage your audience.
  • Swiftly develop and deploy new offers.
  • Integrate predictive technologies (machine learning and AI) to anticipate consumer behaviors.
  • Bring in the C-suite team early to share insights before designing channel strategies.

8. Featured Snippets

Position zero is gaining more traction now than ever. In the past, content marketers could claim both the featured snippet and a SERP entry. Now, Google’s changed the game. Position zero has become position #1. In other words, it counts as one of the 10 Google search results. You can no longer double-dip.

Search results for "what is a featured snippet?" show the value of including content marketing in your digital marketing mix in order to rank for #1 on Google.

Rarely (but sometimes), Google will turn up a double snippet. When it does, only eight traditional organic listings will remain on the page. Still, grabbing the featured snippet position for key terms related to your business can increase your brand recognition and send more traffic to your website.

9. Account-Based Marketing

Account-based marketing remains a hot trend for B2B companies. By targeting high-value accounts and individual decision-makers with highly personalized campaigns, you can land large deals. With ABM, the stakes are high. But your ROI potential is higher than any other type of marketing.

Tell your prospects exactly how you plan to solve an impending departmental problem. Consider using strategic marketing tactics like retargeting campaigns, programmatic displays, customized videos, and social media. If you’re successful, you could land and expand target accounts and develop stronger relationships and loyalty with your ideal clients.

A chart showing 4 types of ABM in a digital marketing mix - 1:1 ABM, ABM Lite, Programmatic ABM and Bolt-on ABM

10. Email

Email is one of the most personal and inexpensive forms of communication available for marketers.

Effective email marketing will help your business:

  • Build relationships
  • Nurture leads
  • Lead contacts down the buyer’s journey
  • Convert leads into customers
  • Boost sales
  • Expand your audience
  • Segment lists to target different demographics with customized messaging
  • Engage current and potential customers
  • Conduct various tests to improve metrics
  • Set up workflows and email automation

Recipients open over 60% of emails on mobile devices. Make sure your emails are responsive – just like your website.

Most businesses don’t email their segmented lists enough. Emailing too much is rarely the problem. Experiment with different send times, frequency, and list segments to learn what strategies best engage your audience in 2023.

11. Brand Storytelling

Brand storytelling is nothing new, but it remains one of the most crucial trends to your business’s ongoing success. 33% of CMOs say their brand strategy is their most important strategic capability. Every brand has a story to tell.

Chart showing that 33% of marketing leaders find that brand strategy is the most important factor of their digital marketing strategy.
Source

Brand storytelling allows you to connect with others on a deeper level. It lets your personality shine. The more authentic and vulnerable you can be, the better. Brand stories help businesses connect powerfully with other companies and consumers.

To develop your brand story, ask the following questions:

  • Who are you?
  • Why do you exist?
  • Who are you here to help?
  • What makes you different?
  • How did you get where you are today?
  • What do you provide others?
  • How do you define success?

Narration is one of the best ways to evoke raw emotions in people. It allows people to use their imaginations. It enables you to get creative with your marketing.

Capture your audience’s attention and leave them with something unforgettable when you tell your brand story. It will empower you to build real relationships and long-term loyalty, stand out from competitors, and build an engaged community.

“Brand storytelling is a great way to get your point across, differentiate your brand, and work out new ideas. Today, if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur or leader, you also have to be a storyteller.”
– Richard Branson

Does Your Business Need Help in Implementing Digital Marketing Tactics?

With content marketing, you can drive qualified traffic to your website and engage new visitors. Build your brand story and online presence for tremendous success in the new year. Establish yourself as a thought leader and build trust with customers with quality, consistent content production.

MIG is a digital marketing agency and a thought leader. We’d love to help you grow your business successfully by developing superbly written, keyword-rich articles to help your company climb the SERPs as quickly as possible.

Learn about our Content Builder Services. We’ll help you create all the content you need to win customers and boost sales.

The post 11 Digital Marketing Trends to Grow Your Business Today appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=3552

woman doing keyword research tool

One of the most fundamental parts of effective content marketing is solid keyword research. Keyword research allows you to bring the voice of your customer into your content marketing strategy. It also provides a measurable way to show the value of your content in a relatively short period of time.  All digital marketing starts and ends with keyword research.

Keywords drive your content, because the higher you rank with keywords, the higher you are on Google’s search results. Seeing how your organic search rankings are performing is crucial to a healthy content marketing strategy.

Getting views on the content you publish for your website isn’t exactly the easiest thing to accomplish. It’s easy to throw money at paid advertising to up your impressions on your content marketing efforts, even if it does hurt to see a chunk of your marketing budget disappear.

But believe it or not, organic search rankings can help out your website traffic even more than paid advertising! Not to mention, it’s a cheaper way of going about marketing your site. Fueling the SEO machine is an important part of getting your content in front of your prospects’ eyes.

The distinction between promoted and organic is important, as they both accomplish different goals, but both are driven by good keyword research.

Quick Takeaways:

  • Search engine optimization for your content and overall website is crucial to building your organic search rankings
  • Keyword research is how you determine what’s being searched for in relation to your product or service
  • Creating your content with SEO practices in mind will boost your overall engagements online

Here’s the only 5 keyword research tools you’ll ever need to nail your SEO strategy and how to use them long-term:

  1. Semrush

This is the main keyword research tool we use for ourselves and all of our clients (not a paid endorsement). Semrush allows us to research our client, their competition, run competitive gaps, dive deep into keyword research. It also allows for research into paid keywords, site audits, and more.

Once we identify our client’s focus keywords, we send them off to our editorial team to brainstorm content ideas and actual article headlines. We also upload them into Semrush to create a client Visibility Tracking Report. These reports are sent monthly to all of our clients showing them:

  • Average visibility in search for all the keywords we are tracking
  • An estimate of their organic search traffic (take this with some measure of caution)
  • Average rank position
  • How many keywords they have in the top 3, top 10, top 20 and top 100 and how many have improved or declined

My favorite part of the report is the competitive review that shows client visibility vs the competition which is a direct reflection of the keyword research powering our content strategy:

Whether you’re interested in keyword and website research for you, your competition or your industry, Semrush is a powerful keyword research tool.

  1. Ahrefs

Ahrefs has provided excellent service for marketers and SEO specialists all over the world for over a decade. They offer a good trial plan and fantastic keyword research analysis on the top performing articles and websites.

Additionally, they offer a free service for website owners called Webmaster Tools, and my favorite is their free Keyword Generator which provides 150 keyword ideas from any main keyword.

  1. Keywordtool.io

Keyword.io boasts a 99.9% success rate for its free keyword research service. So free in fact, that you don’t even need an account to use its comprehensive database. As per their site:

Keyword Tool helps you employ Google Suggest for keyword research. It extracts Google keyword suggestions and presents it to you in an easy-to-understand interface.

  1. Google Keyword Finder

Surely you might’ve guessed we’d get right to one of the biggest sources of keyword research in Google’s keyword finder. Google is the dominant force in the keyword research industry, as sooner or later your content will be on their browser search results.

While it isn’t as intuitive as some of the other tools, it is free and has all of the data you need to see to make good decisions in your SEO practices.

  1. Moz

Kwe new screenshot

Moz is the first keyword research tool I ever used. It’s great for analyzing your website and specific keywords as well. Moz can help you understand how people are finding your website and how to make the most of keyword opportunities.

Some other Keyword Research Tools to Consider

  • Google Trends provides not just the relative volume of multiple keywords but also the trend data so you can see what is hot and what is not
  • QuestionDB uses related queries and reddit for identifying question-based keywords
  • Jaaxy provides keywords, topic and idea suggestions for any keyword or website
  • Keyword Sheeter uses Google autofill to populate thousands of ideas from any focus keyword you enter
  • Answer the Public also uses Google autofill and “People Also Ask” to populate search phrases with all the who, what, why, when, and how version of any search query
  • Keyworddit pulls data from reddit and offers an interesting take on topics to explore for any keyword
  • Bulk Keyword Generator is a good research tool for local SEO
  • Soovle uses search data from google, youtube and Amazon
  • SECockpit is the tool SEO experts swear by because it provides lots of depth
  • Keyword Snatcher provides up to 2,000 keyword suggestions for any “seed” keyword (as the SEOs call them)
  • KWFinder allows you to search by keyword difficulty
  • Serpstat is another tool that allows you to go deep and is beloved by many SEO experts

New to keyword research?

We start by asking our clients for a few simple things:

  1. 5-10 keywords they wished they ranked for
  2. The categories, themes or topics they think are important in their industry
  3. Their top 4-5 competitors
  4. 2-4 industry or trade publication their audience reads

From there, we are able to expand the keyword list. We group those keywords into structured categories or themes. Then we identify the most important or “focus” keywords by looking at whether they are long-tail, or short-tail, have clear buyer intent, and if they represent an opportunity based on a competitive gap.

My favorite trick is use CPC data to identify those keywords other people are spending money against. The assumption here is that people wouldn’t pay more to advertise against a keyword unless it had lots of value.

BONUS: Check out this and more of my keyword research tips and tools in my latest webinar 10 tips for optimizing your content marketing.

If you’re looking for more of a basic training on keyword research check out this video:

Conversion rates from your keyword research

Views are great, but what happens after the initial click? Is the reader just leafing through your website? Are they sharing it? Are they actually purchasing your product or scheduling your services?

Conversion rate shows how many prospects are becoming customers. This metric is the real shining gem of your content marketing efforts! Converting prospects should be your number one goal with content marketing.

Oftentimes the places where you are producing and publishing media give you excellent analytics tools to help assess what ads or content is producing the best conversion rate.

By figuring out what content does the best across what platforms, you can make better, more informed decisions on what media to spend the most time on.

Retaining your conversions as long-term customers

Source: Marketing Charts

Customer Retention is the measure of the percentage of customers who continue to use your product over time (you know, the ones you just pulled with good keyword research!). Some companies measure the opposite of retention: churn rate. Or the percentage of customers who leave in a given time period.

Ultimately, the only way a company can be successful is if the cost to acquire and retain a customer is largely outweighed by the monetization that customer will return to your business (about 3-5x that cost).

So how do you know if you’re retaining customers acquired through your digital media efforts? There’s a few ways!

Analytics – Often websites will show you on the backend how many customers you have are repeat customers. Diving deep into the extra layer to see how many came from your digital media efforts is a good step in hitting your KPIs.

You can ask – Using surveys through your email marketing efforts can help you figure out just who has been using your product or service over a longer period of time. This also builds brand trust because people want to feel like your business cares about them.

Look at the voices on your social media channels – Seeing individual voices in your business’ community discuss your business, service, or content can give you a good read on how many newer customers you are attracting and if there are any older clients steering the overall conversation online.

Wrap Up

Whichever site you use, keyword research is a necessity for creating reliable search traffic for your business. Without keeping good SEO practices in mind in your writing and meta description, you’re throwing away easy traffic that makes you money.

You have the knowhow, it’s time to hop on board with one of these keyword research tools and see which is right for you!

Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? Marketing Insider Group has a team of 35+ experienced writers ready to produce content for YOUR business. Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation.

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Email marketing almost feels like a retro form of digital marketing nowadays. With the development of social media and general content marketing, sometimes your email efforts might hit the backburner. Resist this urge! Email marketing is important to your efforts, and needs time and attention to maximize its output.

We all know that email marketing isn’t dead – but before sending a single email, businesses need to understand the importance of segmenting email contact lists. Yes, segmentation can be tedious but consider this,  77% of email marketing ROI came from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns. Not to mention with sites like Constant Contact it’s never been easier to read your metrics.

Furthermore, MailChimp reports that email opens and unique opens of segmented campaigns were 14.31% higher than non-segmented campaigns. Clicks from segmented campaigns were also more than 100% higher compared to non-segmented campaigns. Finally, when emails are segmented, there are 9.37% fewer un-subscribers.

Most businesses are already implementing some form of segmentation when it comes to marketing communication, but it’s usually only based on demographic information. The truth is, the more you’re able to personalize messages, the higher your chances of engagement and conversion.

Here’s a quick brush up on email segmentation from Max von Collenburg:

Quick Takeaways:

  • Email marketing is still alive and well in today’s digital marketing space
  • Segmenting your email list can lead to better leads and conversions
  • By utilizing effective segmentation you can maximize your overall content marketing strategy

Here are a few ways to effectively segment your contact list and make the most out of your email marketing campaigns:

Segmentation by Demographics

Source: Marketing Charts

The most basic way to start segmenting your contacts is to use demographic data such as location, age, industry, and job level. Demographics can tell a lot about what a prospect might want or need, so the more info you can get during a prospect’s signup, the more options you’ll have for segmentation. That being said, you should only be asking for as much detail as your sales team needs to qualify the lead. Anything more will overburden your audience and potentially send them packing.

Here are some common ways to segment by demographic:

  • Geography: Retail companies and location-based apps that make email offers based on location are particularly effective, but B2B and global organizations can also take advantage of geographical information. For instance, businesses can alter their messaging for US and UK audiences to address how some words are spelled differently in both countries.
  • Age: Are you targeting Millennials or Gen Xers? Segmenting by age will help you send the right message to the right people. Make lifelong customers by considering that their needs today may be different from their needs 10 years from now.
  • Occupation/Industry: If your product appeals to a wide range of audiences, it’s important to remember that they may come from different fields. A marketer and developer may both appreciate your automation tool, but the former will want to know how to use it and the latter how to integrate it into the current system.
  • Job Title: Similar to segmentation by industry, a company CEO will usually have different priorities than someone in a more technical role, even if they’re in the same company. Technical workers might want to know more about the actual usage of a product whereas upper management might only care about the bottom line.

Segmentation by Behavior

Demographics are a solid starting point when it comes to segmentation, as they answer the ‘who’ and ‘what’ to guide your email marketing strategies. Behavioral segmentation, on the other, hand digs deeper, as it answers the ‘why’ and ‘how,’ allowing you to gain insights into buying intent.

Here are a few ways marketers can segment their emails by customer behavior:

  • Last Website Activity: Keep track of your browsing behavior to determine interests. What pages they’ve opened, how long they stayed, what icons they clicked, what videos they watched, etc. and start the conversation based on those metrics.
  • Past Purchase: Using purchase history is an excellent driver for personalized communications. Offer discounts on products that could be complementary to the last item they bought. Recommend upgrades when new product lines are released. The options are endless.
  • Amount Spent: If your products have a wide range of prices, spending can be an effective segmentation strategy. Send out targeted emails featuring products that are priced within the customer’s purchase or product browsing history.
  • Buying Frequency: Does your customer buy weekly, monthly, or annually? Are they purchasing the same products on a regular basis? Segment your list based on customers’ buying frequency and purchase history and send them a message during their time of need.

Segmentation by Customer Lifecycle Stage

Source: Hubspot

Lifecycle stage is about identifying which stage of the sales cycle your contacts are in. Interactions with contacts should vary according to what stage they are in; after all, you won’t want to send emails for a free 7-day trial offer to users who are already paying customers.

Here are the ways you can segment your email contacts list by customer lifecycle stage:

  • Prospect: Prospects are contacts who know about you and have opted in to receive messages from you every now and then. These are the individuals who have signed up for the company newsletter and nothing else, so the goal is to send them communications that pique their interest and inform them about your product or service.
  • Lead: Leads are not mere subscribers, but individuals who have shown interest in your offering. Perhaps they’ve filled out a form to download an eBook or a whitepaper you’ve published. A good way to target leads is to use content that’s similar to what they’ve already consumed. The idea is to encourage brand engagement as much as possible.
  • Marketing Qualified Lead: Abbreviated to MQLs, these are individuals who have shown significant interest and engagement but are yet to become full-fledged sales opportunities. MQLs are indicators that these leads should be pursued by the marketing team with content that encourages sales conversions.
  • Sales Qualified Lead: These leads are those that your sales team may deem worthy of personal or direct sales follow-ups. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on these leads as they’re the ones who are closest to a purchase decision. It’s now on your sales team to close those leads like a boss.
  • Customer: Customers are pretty self-explanatory, but even though they’ve reached the ultimate goal, you should still make the effort to delight them and turn them into brand advocates.
  • Advocate: Advocates are contacts who love your brand and products enough to refer new customers without solicitation. They can bring in new business or help generate leads you could not have gotten yourself. Don’t just take them for granted, reward them for their efforts with discounts, freebies, and other exclusive offers.

Conclusion

These ideas are just a few of the countless ways you can effectively segment your contact list. The key is to remember that this strategy isn’t reserved for businesses with advanced automation software, it’s for anyone who cares about customer relationship management. The most important factor to consider is how to make segmentation work for your unique business and marketing objectives.

Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? Marketing Insider Group has a team of 35+ experienced writers ready to produce content for YOUR business. Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation.

The post How To Effectively Segment Your Email List appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=2464

Digital marketing is the keystone of any modern-day marketing campaign. With the emergence of SEO and social media, there’s never been a better time to be in the B2B space online.

As exciting as it may be, digital marketing seems to have taken over as the king from traditional offline marketing efforts. This isn’t a particularly bad or good development, but rather a natural evolution of the craft.

Heck, Biztech.com says:

A whopping 3.92 billion people use social media. The average millennials and Gen Z hop around about seven social media platforms per month.

With numbers like that, it’s easy to dismiss the “old ways” of marketing.

So this leads us to the natural question… is digital marketing the only form of marketing in 2023? That is, is it the only form of marketing worth a hoot in today’s market?

The short answer? No! There’s still plenty of ways you can use offline marketing to generate leads for your business. In fact, using digital marketing and offline marketing in tandem is the best way to maximize lead generation and conversion rates in your prospects.

Here’s a quick video about offline and online lead generation from Patrick Dang:

Quick Takeaways:

  • There are still many impactful ways to generate leads offline
  • You don’t have to focus your attention on just offline or online generation – they should work in tandem
  • While SEO is important for lead generation, physical copies of your content and messaging are another method of gaining attention from prospects

Let’s talk about why you should be using other forms of marketing.

Neglecting offline tactics can cause you to miss part of your target audience

Let’s face it, you can’t easily target every one of your customers with online tactics. Certain people who need your products/services may not spend much of their time using computers.

This is where newspaper ads, direct mail flyers, or industry events can complement your online efforts, reinforcing your brand with local prospects.

You can’t afford to not be reaching out with physical copies of your messaging and information.

This point is particularly dependent on your target audience and various buyer personas. If they make up a young, tech-savvy population that spends much of their time online, then digital efforts are likely to be more effective.

But it’s not likely that all of your buyer personas fall into this category, which is why you need to embrace alternative outreach techniques to target them effectively.

For B2B companies, offline lead generation yields more leads

There’s nothing quite like the experience of having a face-to-face interaction with potential clients. It’s still the best way to convey sincerity and personalized service, which is why offline lead generation is still important.

This is mostly attributed to the level of personalization you can impart when communicating with prospects offline, and we all know that a little marketing personalization goes a long way.

Source: Marketing Charts

In the B2B realm, offline lead generation reigns supreme. One study showed that 76% of B2B lead generation comes from offline sources compared to 18% generated via online methods.

Of course, this particular case is circumstantial, but over three-quarters of leads generated is a figure that simply cannot be ignored.

Here’s some offline marketing ideas for your business to implement alongside your digital marketing efforts:

  • Physical mailing lists / flyers
  • Cold calls 
  • Throwing company events
  • Utilizing publication media advertisements
  • Company swag giveaways
  • Giving tours
  • Poster campaigns in your town

Get creative! If done correctly and effectively, any of these suggestions can bring more eyes to your product or service.

Let’s talk about why digital marketing is still important too!

Your target audience is (probably) online a lot

In the United States alone, roughly 223 million (82% of Americans) have at least one, if not more social media accounts. This is driving more and more companies to take advantage of various social media platforms to network across them.

In summary, it’s a digital world. By using social media to place banner ads and links to your website you can generate tons of eyes to your business, not to mention increase your brand’s reputation within the community. An online presence builds credibility with your target audience.

Digital marketing makes it easy to analyze metrics

Measuring success is subjective to each content strategy, and key metrics can be extremely different from each other. Do you want to have more overall clicks than last quarter? What about what happens after the viewer clicks your article – are they converting to a new customer? How many are/aren’t?

These are all just examples. Brainstorm what success in a content marketing campaign looks like to YOU.

Here’s a few metrics to look at when measuring the success of your digital marketing campaign:

Traffic:

Traffic is about pageviews and users. Services like google analytics can give you an accurate read of this data. It also helps you see exactly where your views are coming from.

Conversions:

Views are great, but what happens after the initial click? Is the reader just clicking your ad then exiting the page? Are they sharing it? Are they actually purchasing your product or scheduling your services?

Conversion rate shows how many prospects are becoming customers. This metric is the real shining gem of your content marketing efforts! Converting prospects should be your number one goal with digital marketing.

SEO:

Source: WSI Proven Results

Seeing how your organic search rankings are performing is crucial to a healthy digital marketing strategy. Luckily – there’s some B2B tools designed to help you analyze your key metrics and strategy.

Wrap up

The best marketing strategies expertly combine both online and offline methods to suit their target audiences. It really depends on your audience’s demographics and preferences, as well as the nature of your business, product, or service offering.

Remember that offline brand recognition can lead to online traffic and conversions.

Continue to test a combination of marketing strategies until you find your lead generation sweet spot. Once you discover the perfect brew tailored for your business, build on it and watch as a steady stream of conversions result in a robust bottom line.

Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? What luck! Marketing Insider Group has a team of 35+ experienced writers ready to produce content for YOUR business. Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation. 

The post Is Digital Marketing the Only Form of Marketing in 2023? appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

How To Connect, Converse, And Convert Through Social Media Listening written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Brooke Sellas

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Brooke Sellas. Brooke is the CEO & Founder of B Squared Media, an award-winning digital marketing agency focusing on social media management, advertising, and social-led customer care. She teaches a Digital Marketing course (virtually) at the University of California in Irvine. She’s also the author of a new book — Conversations That Connect: How to Connect, Converse, and Convert Through Social Media Listening and Social-Led Customer Care.

Key Takeaway:

People aren’t starved for content on social media. They’re starved for connection. If you’re thinking about social media as the destination for your marketing campaigns, you’re already doing it wrong. In this episode, Brooke Sellas, Founder of B Squared Media and author, dives into why knowing how to listen, share feelings, and offer opinions is the key to effective social media management. Brooke shares her tips for having meaningful conversations that build relationships and connect with your audience on social media.

Questions I ask Brooke Sellas:

  • [1:41] How do you define social listening?
  • [2:36] What are some tools powered by machine learning and AI that are out there today to help with social listening?
  • [4:01] What is social penetration theory and how should we be using it?
  • [6:27] How do you balance that idea of being vulnerable and showing your core, but not sharing too much or sharing too soon?
  • [7:44] How do you engrain this idea of conversations not campaigns into your social media team members?
  • [9:46] What percentage of social media posts and content is total unmitigated crap?
  • [10:52] Is there a place for some of what many people may consider cliche posts?
  • [13:25] Would you agree that if you’re not getting some dissent, maybe you’re not pushing it enough?
  • [14:28] Is there a place for opinions under your brand umbrella?
  • [16:33] What should I be posting?
  • [18:29] What is social-led customer care?
  • [22:11] How could I use social to build more brand affinity so that when people walk into retailers they ask and look for my product?
  • [23:41]how do we get our customers to produce some really authentic user-generated content for us?
  • [26:14] Where can people learn more about your book and your work?

More About Brooke Sellas:

  • Her book — Conversations That Connect: How to Connect, Converse, and Convert Through Social Media Listening and Social-Led Customer Care
  • BSquared.media

Take The Marketing Assessment:

  • Marketingassessment.co

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

John Jantsch (00:02): Today’s episode of the duct tape marketing podcast is brought to you by blissful prospecting, hosted by Jason bay and brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network host Jason bay dives in with leading sales experts and top performing reps to share actionable tips and strategies to help you land more meetings with your ideal clients. Recently, they did a show on the four day work week. I’m a huge fan. I think everybody should be looking towards trying to create that, Hey, we get most of our work done in like two hours every day. Anyway, so let’s try out the four day work week. All right, listen to blissful prospecting, wherever you get your podcasts.

John Jantsch (00:48): Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Brooke Sellas. She’s the CEO and founder of B squared media and award-winning digital marketing agency focusing on social media management, advertising, and social led customer care. She teaches a digital marketing course at the university of California in Irvine, and is also the author of a new book. We’re gonna talk about today, conversations that connect how to connect, converse, and convert through social media, listening and social led customer care. So Brooke, welcome to the show.

Brooke Sellas (01:27): Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to chat with you today.

John Jantsch (01:32): So part of the, part of the subtitle, I guess, is actually there’s two terms in the subtitle I really wanna get into, but the first one is let’s just jump right into, you know, how do you define social listening?

Brooke Sellas (01:44): Oh, that’s a great question. So for me, social listening is using tools which essentially those tools then use artificial intelligence and machine learning to look for keywords, right? It’s really just that simple. You put in keywords about your brand, your industry, your competitors, your products, and the social listening tool goes out there into the worldwide web and on social media channels and listens for those terms that you’ve put in and then brings all of the information back to you on what’s being said about those terms. So it’s, you know, if we were to do it manually without the tools and without the artificial intelligence, it would be like trying to drink through a fire hose.

John Jantsch (02:30): Yeah. So, so the most basic tool, I mean, I’ve had a Google alert set up for my name, I don’t know, 20 years. Right. So what are some of the new what’s the, some of the new tool set you’ve mentioned, you know, machine learning AI. So what are some of the new tools?

Brooke Sellas (02:44): Yeah, so Google’s actually great. And I say that like, look, you could set up a Google alert, you put your, you know, your company name or your name into Google with quotations. It’s going to bring back, you know, instances of when that keyword is found. But we use at B square media, we use sprout social mm-hmm, which is a social media marketing tool. They provide a suite of different types of tools for social media marketing, but there’s a lot of them out there there’s mention.com. Yeah. Right. And mention, allows, I think for one free listener. So if you wanna dig, dip your toe in the water, check out, mention.com. They’ll let you set up one, but there’s other ones too. Talk walkers, another one, sprinkler. There’s a lot of different tools that now offer this service. My advice, if you’re just getting into social listening, know what you want to do first and then ask as you’re demoing these tools to be shown. Right. Show me, don’t just tell me how your tool can help me accomplish this thing that I’m trying to do.

John Jantsch (03:43): Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like a hard task. Know what I want to do first? Right? You introduce fairly early in the book, something you call social penetration theory and I’m have to tell you that that sounds painful actually

Brooke Sellas (03:56): Terrible name. I know, obviously not named by marketers

John Jantsch (03:59): so, so at the base, you know, what you’re talking about with this idea is that, you know, you think about, I think you use the analogy of the onion, you know, you get to the core. So I guess I’ll let you explain in your own words, you know, what is it and how do, how should we be thinking to use it?

Brooke Sellas (04:17): Yeah. So if we jump in our hot tub time machine and go back a few years, I was looking to complete an undergraduate thesis and I was really into Facebook at the time. I kind of saw that there was like a business case for Facebook. So what I did was I looked at this social penetration theory, also known as the onion theory, which says as human beings, the way we form relationships is through self disclosure. So if I like you and I meet you, Hey John, how’s it going? You know, that’s cliche, that’s number one. And I say, what do you do for a living? And you say, I’m a marketer. That’s a fact, right? That’s two, but we’re not really building a relationship with cliches and facts, right? It’s very surface level. It’s like the breath it’s going around the outside of the onion. We would appeal that onion back through the layers and get to the core of who someone is. So if we start to share opinions and feelings, those third and fourth level disclosures, that’s where we start to build trust, move the relationship forward, become loyal to someone. And what I looked at in my thesis is does this theory apply to social media? Can brands use this, you know, opinions and feelings type content to better connect, converse and convert their audiences? And what I found was yes, because humans are still humans. ,

John Jantsch (05:49): You know, and so much of what applies in social media where we’re not face to face, I think applies if you’re at a cocktail party, right. I mean, people use that analogy all the time. And I will say that, you know, if I’m at a networking event or something and somebody I’ve not met, uh, walks up to me and says something like, so what’s your favorite food to eat? You know? Or just something that like, sort of random, but too personal, you know, or just like really wants to like dive into, you know, what are you working on? That’s exciting for you today. I mean, you know, people do that kinda stuff. They’re just like, yeah. Ooh, I, I don’t know. We gotta get through like the fact stage or something. Right? Yeah. So how do you balance that idea of sure. Be vulnerable show, you know, show your core. I mean, that’s how people want to, but not do too soon.

Brooke Sellas (06:39): right. That’s a great point that you bring up and nobody’s brought this up yet. So I’m glad that you did. It’s always looking at breadth, you know, around the surface of the onion and depth at all times. Yeah. Because when we think about social media and specifically we’re constantly hopefully building our audience. So we’ve got people who may have been with us all 10 years. We’ve been in business who follow are followers of, of the page and engage with us. But we may have people who been with us a year or we may have people who joined us today. So we constantly have to get that media mix of our content. Right. And I think what’s so amazing is that if for the new people, if you already have that opinions and feelings, content, you’re already having those conversations with those people, who’ve been with you for a long time. It actually takes them less time to get to depth, right. It takes them a little less time to kind of jump in because they already see that you’re warm, you’re welcoming, you’re having these back and forth conversations and it just makes it easier for them to then supply their own opinions of feelings.

John Jantsch (07:42): One of the, this, you might actually say, this is the underlying story or plot for the entire book. Is this, I, this notion of thinking conversations, not campaigns. And particularly in this day and age, when everybody sees social as a channel, a marketing channel, and that they’re building teams that they’re giving tasks to do social media. I mean, how do you get that? I mean, it’s almost culture, right? Yeah. Ingrained as opposed to, you know, people thinking, no, I have a task. I, my task is to meet business objectives by using social media.

Brooke Sellas (08:15): Right. Yeah. And I think the big thing that I try to help marketers understand is if you are having these opinion and feelings, conversation, it’s so much easier for you to bring back home a voice of the customer data, which then helps you that much more easily meet those goals that you have, right? Those business goals that you’re trying to meet, right? Because everything that we do, if we’re gathering these really good opinions and feelings from our customers and would be customers can drive product packaging can drive sales messaging can drive more social content, can drive, you know, our advertising copy. So it really goes well beyond social media, even though we’re using that medium to collect this information.

John Jantsch (09:06): And now let’s hear from a sponsor, you know, everybody’s online today, but here’s the question. Are they finding your website? You can grab the online spotlight and your customer’s attention with Semrush from content and SEO to ads and social media. Semrush is your one stop shop for online marketing build, manage, and measure campaigns across all channels faster and easier. Are you ready to take your business to the next level, to get seen, get Semrush, visit Semrush.com that’s Semrush.com/go. And you could try it for seven days for free.

John Jantsch (09:46): in your opinion, or in your research. What percentage of social media posts, content, et cetera, is total unmitigated crap.

Brooke Sellas (09:57): 99.9, 9%. I’m sorry. I really feel badly letting people down, but yeah, I mean truly, and we know this, right. We can go take a look right now and we would find it most content lives in cliches and facts, which is not good.

John Jantsch (10:13): And don’t, let’s not forget the well worn quota host.

Brooke Sellas (10:17): Oh, we,

John Jantsch (10:18): Yes, I don’t. Where does that

Brooke Sellas (10:19): Fit? I cliche. I would, you know, I would probably label that as cliche. You know, it, here’s an interesting little homework assignment for anybody who’s listening and does use social listening start labeling your content. Be honest with yourself, start labeling your outbound, social media content with your social media listening tool as cliche fact opinion and feeling, and then you can start to collect data points for yourself. Oh my God. 99.9, 9% of our content is cliches in facts. We need to try to do more opinion and feeling type content.

John Jantsch (10:52): Is there a place for some of that that we’re kind of laughing about? Like sometimes I will be snarky about people posting quotes and then I’ll get a lot of people that go, no, I love those. You know, so, I mean, is there a place for like some amount of that?

Brooke Sellas (11:05): I think there is, but that’s, I would never be the decision maker on that. I would let the voice of the customer tell me. So if I, if we, you know, try those quote posts and we put those out and we label it as, you know, cliche, but we see that we’re getting the engagement and the conversation, right. Not just engagement. I want to converse mm-hmm because we have to connect. Then we can converse. Then hopefully we can convert, but just the smashing the like button, that’s not gonna do it for me. But if we see that people are commenting on those quotes and they’re like, oh my God, John, you’re amazing. I love when you post these, keep doing it, the customer’s telling you to do it. They’re telling you what you’re want, what they want and you give it to them. And that usually ends up pretty good.

John Jantsch (11:49): So this is not a very useful part of the segment of the show. I’m warning you right now, but let’s just, let’s just get the trolls out of the way right now.

Brooke Sellas (11:57): Ugh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it’s just a fact of being in social media, right? It used to be like, oh, well, if you have to deal with the troll, I think it has now shifted to well, when you have to deal with troll, right. And especially when we’re talking about being vulnerable and posting opinions and feelings as a brand, or, you know, trying to align your audience with your own brand values, there will be trolls

John Jantsch (12:25): And well, I guess in some ways you’re expressing opinions by doing that and that’s just gonna attract trolls. Right.

Brooke Sellas (12:30): Exactly right. And that’s okay. They’re dissent is allowed. That is part of the conversation. Dissolution is also allowed. We want to align more with the people who are, you know, like us similar to us and align with our brand values. So if someone doesn’t align and leaves, that’s fine. If someone gives dissent in a conversation, they’re sharing their opinions. That’s fine. Yeah. You have to decide with your troll policy. When does it cross from dissent into, you know, actual trolling and then what are your rules and regulations around dealing with those types of people? Because guess what, as I say in the book, some of those people are, you’re paying customers. So what do you do then? It’s not as easy as like, oh, just ban them, block them, delete what they said. It’s it. Doesn’t, it’s just not that easy. It’s much more nuanced than that.

John Jantsch (13:23): I mean, I think you’re, you would say, would you agree that it goes far as saying if you’re not getting some descent, maybe you’re not pushing it.

Brooke Sellas (13:31): yes. My real from the heart answer is yes. My marketing answer is I know how scary this is. You know, when we’ve, I’ve been talking about the book now for about a month and every person I’ve talked to is like, you’re what you’re telling us to do is so scary. Hmm. So I get how scary it is, but at the same time, it’s beautiful. I mean, think about your own personal relationships. I hope you have lots of different people in your life and they all have different backgrounds and different viewpoints and you learn from those things. And I think it’s no different with, you know, the brand to audience or community or customer relationship. We want to learn from all of those opinions as long as they’re constructive and not hurtful.

John Jantsch (14:20): So, because we’ve been talking a lot about opinions, there are a lot of very strong, personal opinions out there circulating in the world right now.

Brooke Sellas (14:27): Very,

John Jantsch (14:28): Is there a place for that under your brand umbrella? I mean, obviously you can make a case for be true to who you are, but you can also make a case for does anybody who is buying your product really care, what your personal opinion is on X?

Brooke Sellas (14:46): Yeah. I think that’s a great question. And I think, you know, more research is needed around that, right? We need more brands who are willing to take the risk, and then we need to study that because I’ve seen it both ways. I’ve seen brands post about black lives matter or pride, right. And have PE people in their community really latch on and appreciate that. I’ve also seen those same brands push people away because they’ve really stood their ground with a certain opinion. So, you know, I think one of the examples that I give that kind of falls along with this isn’t in the book is Nike. When they started working with Colin Kaepernick mm-hmm and people were out there burning their Nike shoes. That was the marketing story, right. That that’s the story that we all heard. But the true story is that, you know, the campaigns that they did with Kaepernick had millions upon millions of views, millions upon millions of positive comments and over, you know, the next few months after they partnered with Kaepernick, they, their stock prices, rose people bought more. So I think the people who moved away from Nike, and again, I understand this is a huge brand that can take these kinds of risks, but the people who moved away and decided to burn their shoes and never buy again by that’s okay. Because the people who, you know, aligned with that value and aligned with Nike’s opinions and feelings bought more, and we saw that in their stock prices.

John Jantsch (16:16): Yeah. Probably every one of those videos that got posted burning shoes sold about eight pairs. Right. I mean, they were probably like burn baby burn. Right. right.

Brooke Sellas (16:24): And also like, you know, from the other end of that, like, just from the consumerism point of that, Nike’s like, well, yeah, I already gave us your money. So do what you will with the

John Jantsch (16:33): Product. Good point. So I guess the, I guess I’ll ask you the really big, giant question that you probably get asked all the time. And I know there’s an, it depends answer as part of this, but what should I be posting?

Brooke Sellas (16:46): Ah, I, you know, I think more opinions and feelings, content, and it doesn’t have to be risky. It doesn’t have to be black lives matter or pride. It could literally be, you know, if I’m assuming a lot of marketers listen to this podcast, you know, how do you feel about Instagram’s latest update. We already know, right. We’ve seen it. The conversation been happening all around, but that’s a layup. That’s a layup question that allows you to get that voice of the customer data back opinions back. And then you could say, here’s how we feel. You know, you are gonna align with some of those people or, you know, maybe lose the others. And it, they could be little easy layups like that with the book I just published, I was using cover art all throughout publishing. And then as I’m writing, I’m like, oh, you know, I should probably ask my customers what cover they wanna see.

Brooke Sellas (17:39): So I created kind of two throwaway covers because I assumed the cover I was using was going to be the one they chose and they didn’t. So I actually went to print with the cover. Most people chose because that’s what voice of the customer does. It allows us to see what the customer wants, see what they align with. Right. And that was that there was nothing risky in that. I mean, I could have, if I really wanted to gone to print with the cover I wanted, but why would I would be going against my own advice at that point?

John Jantsch (18:09): Yeah. And I will say on that topic, because there is a picture of the post that you did, that you have a lot of great examples and pictures and that I think will, that are helpful to drive home some of your points. So let’s, I, I started the show by talking about the first idea in the subtitle of a, of social media listening. And I want to end really giving you a chance to unpack the second topic in that is, you know, explain what social led customer care is.

Brooke Sellas (18:40): Yes. So most people, I know brands won’t wanna hear that but most people don’t follow brands on social because they wanna see those like fun kitty and puppy memes or, you know, facts about the next product release. They actually, over 70% of people use and follow use social media to follow brands, to ask a support question. And customer care is actually a little bit deceiving, even though that’s the technical term for it, because it eludes that we’re just talking to customers. We’re just talking about support and retention. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So somebody’s already purchased and post-purchase, they come to us on social for a question or a complaint that does happen a lot. But I think what a lot of people miss about customer care is acquisition. And so I’ll give you this example too, if you’re using social listening, one of the very first labels or tags, you know, they call it labeling or tagging depending on your tool, I’d set up our acquisition and retention tags.

Brooke Sellas (19:49): And we did this fun little project actually, while I was writing the book, we went to all of our customer care clients. And we said, how much of your social chatter, you know, coming into the brand, do you think is acquisition? And how much do you think is retention? And every single customer said, oh, acquisitions probably like zero to 5%, it’s all retention. So we started tagging all of these conversations as such. And what we found was that every single client had over 20% acquisition tags. And that means customers who aren’t yet customers coming in and

John Jantsch (20:26): Asking like presale questions. Yeah,

Brooke Sellas (20:27): Yeah, yeah. Three purchase questions. In the buying moment, we had one brand who literally has four product lines that month, over month have somewhere between 60 and 80% acquisition, mind blowing mm-hmm . So now we’re working with their sales team to create more, you know, nurture content for the types of questions that we’re getting were actually getting retail values put into the conversation amount. So I’ll give you an example, July, they had 70% acquisition on one of their product lines. We attributed the retail value of the products mentioned in that conversation to about 1.2 million in revenue. Now, imagine, which is, this is the next step we’re going to be doing with them. If they gave us links that were attributed to the social media team, and we were able to capture 20% of that 1.2 million. Now we’re talking about a $240, $240,000 in revenue attributed to organic social. And then what happens when that happens? The C-suite starts to say, oh, wait, social media is valuable. because I still don’t think they quite get that yet. Right. Because customer care again is, has this whole like myth around it that it’s only about the customer and it’s not

John Jantsch (21:47): All right. I’m gonna ask you a, a question that is a fairly specific use case. And it’s it’s because I want to know the answer to this myself. sorry, listeners. Hopefully this applies.

Brooke Sellas (21:58): No shoot. I love this. I love it. It’s exciting. It’s like a game

John Jantsch (22:01): exactly. So imagine I’m a brand who does not sell direct to consumer. So I have a channel of retailers or distributors or something. How could I use this to actually, I don’t know. Sometimes people use the term pull sales or push sales, you know, so push ’em into the dealers, you know, build more brand affinity so that when somebody walks into the dealer or Walmart or wherever they ask for my product,

Brooke Sellas (22:26): I love that question. And that’s a great, that’s a great segue into social listening beyond, you know, customer care because you can use, remember we talked about social listening, being keywords. So like, let’s just use, say you’re working with a company that doesn’t sell direct. It sells through retailers, but it’s printers, right? Let’s just pretend it’s printers Uhhuh. You could put the keyword into social listening best all in one printer. Right. That keyword phrase, as we go on with this example, and then again, the artificial intelligence is gonna bring you back. All the instances of people online, talking about best all in one printers. If you then could go into those conversations and make the recommendation for the dealer or the reseller or the retailer.

John Jantsch (23:16): Yeah.

Brooke Sellas (23:16): You could then still close that business. I mean, it’s the same kind of project. It’s just not warm. Right? It’s not inbound. It’s outbound. So it’s a little bit colder, social selling, but I still bet you would capture some percentage of that conversation towards revenue.

John Jantsch (23:34): All right. One last question. I’m going longer than I usually do sometimes, but I want to give people the chance, get this question all the time. How do I get first off and then use, you know, we used to call it user generated content. Certainly you could talk about it as customer care content and you know, how do we get our customers to produce? So some really authentic social content for us. And I’m not meaning like, how do we get them to just do the job? But it’s like, how do we get them enthusiastically wanting to participate in that way?

Brooke Sellas (24:05): It’s so interesting because I, this is the same answer I give when people talk about community, how do I know if I can build a community or if I have a community. And I always say community happens in the conversation, not in the, not with the content. It happens in the conversation. So does U GC are user generated content. If you’re having those opinion and feelings, content, and John says something spectacular about my product, I then say, and we’re conversing, right? So we’re already having this back and forth. So there’s a little bit of like trust there. Yeah. I could say to John, I cannot, like, I couldn’t have described our product better. Would you be willing to create a post? You know, that says that, or can I snip this conversation and use this in one of our own posts and more than likely, I mean, going off of experience here nine times outta 10. Sure. John says, yes.

John Jantsch (24:54): Yeah. Cuz I’m a fan. Why wouldn’t I? Yeah.

Brooke Sellas (24:56): Right. You know, you already have

John Jantsch (24:57): That. I did it voluntarily. Right. right.

Brooke Sellas (24:59): You already given us the information and we are kind of coming back to you and going, oh my gosh, you’re a rock. This is amazing. Can we use this? And John, because most of us are like, oh, give me the limelight. Yes, please. It’s going to say yes. And then other people might chime in and see that right. Community audience and see our conversation and say, well, I think you’re amazing too. It, we are built as human. Right? It’s all about psychology. We learn by mirroring one another. It’s all about reciprocity. All these same psych psychological concepts happen on social. It’s just a different medium.

John Jantsch (25:38): Well, and it circles very directly back to your social listening too. Right. Because I bet you that we’re missing those like golden moments that our customers are out there actually sharing because we’re not listening.

Brooke Sellas (25:49): Right? Yes. Yes. You’d be surprised, you know, people tag brands or mention brands just fine. But a lot of

John Jantsch (25:56): Times I do it all the time. You’re

Brooke Sellas (25:57): Not being mentioned. Yes.

John Jantsch (25:59): Well I do it and I tag them and I like never hear from ’em too. You know? So you man, in my

Brooke Sellas (26:04): Way, I wanna help those people.

John Jantsch (26:06): exactly. Yeah. Our awesome Brooke. Well, thanks so much for stopping by the duct tape marketing podcast. Uh, we’ve been talking about conversations that connect you and tell people where they can connect with you or, and certainly find out more about the book.

Brooke Sellas (26:19): Definitely. So if you visit our website, it’s just B squared.media. So it’s our business name B squared media. But with a.media, you can find out all about our services, the book me, or you can just literally Google Brook sells. I think I’m the only one so far and all of our sites will pop up. You can connect with me directly through social. Twitter’s my favorite platform. So if you wanna come talk with me there, happy to have a conversation with you.

John Jantsch (26:48): Awesome. Well, Brooke, again, thanks for taking the time out today. And hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days, soon out there on the road. Hey, and one final thing before you go, you know how I talk about marketing strategy strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the marketing strategy assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co not .com .co, check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

This Duct Tape Marketing Podcast episode is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network and Semrush.

 

HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals seeking the best education and inspiration to grow a business.

 

Everybody’s online, but are they finding your website? Grab the online spotlight and your customers’ attention with Semrush. From Content and SEO to ads and social media, Semrush is your one-stop shop for online marketing. Build, manage, and measure campaigns —across all channels — faster and easier. Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Get seen. Get Semrush. Visit semrush.com/go to try it free for 7 days.

 

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.sydneysocialmediaservices.com/?p=1859

The real estate industry is extremely competitive, and you have to be creative and forward-thinking to keep your company ahead of the curve. Enter: Digital Marketing.

For many, competitiveness attracts them to the industry. They thrive on the challenge it presents and on finding the best ways to promote their business.

According to Invideo, more than 93% of home buyers used an online resource to search for a new home. Utilizing your digital marketing is to your success.

Here’s some real estate digital marketing tips and tricks that will take your company to the next level:

5 Real Estate Agent Digital Marketing Tips

1. Harness the Power of Social Media

Source: TipRank

In the United States alone, roughly 223 million (82% of Americans) have at least one, if not more social media accounts. This is driving more and more companies to take advantage of various social media platforms to network across them.

Facebook

You can start your digital marketing campaign on Facebook with its’ over 1.47 billion active users. Set up your business page and utilize Facebook Insights to get a good understanding of your page’s fans.

This will allow you to target your messages precisely to meet your consumers and prospects needs and desires.

For example, if you’re selling homes in a family-oriented community, you can target your ads for young people who are searching by location.

Consider taking advantage of paid advertising on these platforms. Content marketing is everything, and paying for your content to appear in your target audience’s feeds is as direct as you can get. This will allow you to quickly promote your business and increase your reach to people who have similar interests or are members of the same demographic.

Instagram

Pictures sell, and this rings true for the real estate industry. People want to see photos of the property they’re interested in to help determine if it’s going to be a good match.

This lends opportunities for walkthroughs, open houses, agent showcases, listings, and more.

With over one billion active users, there are bound to be prospects in your area of service. Even if they aren’t in the market just yet, getting your name in front of their eyes beforehand is an edge on the competition.

Building a brand voice and a community within your platform will create a stronger relationship with customers and prospects.

YouTube

YouTube is another popular platform with high upside for real estate dealers. With over 2.24 billion users in countries all over the world. YouTube’s reach is enormous.

As opposed to Instagram, YouTube’s model allows for more in-depth, informative videos on your listings. This allows you to give as much info as possible to the prospects closest to converting.

Sharing testimonials is a great way to provide the human element of marketing. Asking previously satisfied customers for a review to publish on your site provides credibility to your company.

Testimonials are also a great way to showcase the hard work of your agents, providing a way for prospects to find their best fit.

Reviews are easy to fake, but the emotions that can come with these videos are genuine. This is a powerful tool that will give your subscribers real insight into why they should choose your company over your competitors.

2.  Use Local Images and Videos on Social Sharing

When you network, it’s important to include local images or videos in your digital marketing campaign. Many companies forget this vital aspect, and they share just text.

Images and videos are important. They increase your current and prospective customer’s engagement levels with your company. Not to mention, showing your work in your target community provides legitimacy to your brand.

Social platforms make it easy for companies to incorporate these key elements into all of their posts. Pro-tip, make sure your posts are public so your followers can share it with their followers too!

3. Create a Virtual Tour

Source: Kuula Blog

Is your company involved in community activities? Have you created a unique culture inside your business that you want to show? Perhaps your business has a pet or a beloved mascot that your customers rave about.

Create a virtual tour of your business for your website! If you don’t want to make it a long tour, break it up into several smaller segments and follow a different agent around once a month.

Videos and virtual tours that showcase the day-to-day operations and culture of your business will engage your customers and provide a quick-look into their future business.

People will be more likely to reach out and want to work with a company that they trust. An insider view generates a real feeling.

4. Use LinkedIn to Make Your Mark

Source: Vecteezy

LinkedIn has 830 million users. It’s a place where industry professionals can gather and network. It’s an excellent opportunity for your business to establish its professional reputation in an online format.

LinkedIn also gains your businesses exposure to investors, business owners, and banks in your immediate area – providing chances at partnerships beyond your residential clients!

Many potential clients ask for recommendations from the bank they’re getting a mortgage through, a real estate company, or an agent. You can get your company or agents involved in discussion posts, blogging, or direct messaging.

Instagram and Facebook are a bit more on the business-casual side. LinkedIn is where you can flex your professional muscles, casting a net to other businesses and higher-end clients you might not have reached.

5. Add Valuable Real Estate Blog Content to Your Site

Blogging is everything! Blogs offer valuable industry insight for your clients and get you natural web traffic on your website.

(Quick look: How to Turn Your Blog into a Lead Generating Machine)

Digital advertising is important, but long-term yield from quality content on your website can be an even more important tool.

You want your blog to show your company’s expertise. Optimizing your content for high SEO/SEM rankings to your prospective customers will lead them right to you.

Coming up with new ideas can be difficult, so try to put yourself in the shoes of a prospective homeowner. Keywords and topics like moving, home owner, mortgage, will bring them to your site during their research.

What would YOU want to know when purchasing a house? This will give you a platform to build your blog content.

Make sure to research what your competition is doing too. A quick google search will tell you what’s ranking highest in your industry. Look at what they’re doing right, and do it better.

These marketing tips for real estate agents will help you boost your company’s level of customer engagement and keep you ahead of the curve in your local real estate market.

With time, effort, and patience, you will start seeing positive impacts throughout your business.

Do you want to use some of the marketing strategies seen here on MIG’s site but need some help or advice? What luck! Marketing Insider Group has a team of 35+ experienced writers ready to produce content for YOUR business. Check out our weekly blog content service or schedule a free consultation. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business!

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