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How to Use Psychology to Convert More Leads

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As a marketer, your job is to get your target audience on your team. Competition is tough, and you need any edge you can get to turn prospects into better leads.

Marketing is a mind game, and you can (and should) use tenets of basic psychology in your content marketing to get ahead of the curve.

Here’s a video from London Real talking about the hows and whys of psychology in marketing:

Quick Takeaways:

  • Advertising effort and resources is proof of your product or service’s authenticity
  • The rules of marketing can be bent to your advantage
  • Sell whatever your version of a product or service is, define yourself by your own niche – not your competitor’s

In mind games, you need to be a mind reader. You need to understand why and how people think. Well, maybe not everyone, but you at least need to know your target audience.

It’s not enough that you know who they are and where you can find them—you need to know what makes them tick, what motivates them, what inspires them, and more. You need to understand them like the back of your hand.

By understanding the psychology of your ideal customer (customer persona), you become more capable of creating high-impact marketing initiatives in generating qualified leads with the highest potential for conversion.

How to Use Psychology in Lead Generation Efforts

Visualize an Outcome Your Customers Want

People have different reactions to offers, and this depends on whether they see the offer as something that will improve their way of life – or something that has no value. Say you have a product or service, instead of simply listing its amazing features, you can focus on how it adds value to people’s lives.

In other words, you need people to see what you see and help them visualize how your product or service can address their pain points and make their lives better. Walk them through an everyday story that applies to them – get personal.

Tap Their Egos

Everyone wants to feel like they’re special, and marketers have gone to great lengths to show just how valuable their customers are to them. Take it up a notch by focusing on exclusivity.

Asking a prospect to do something is a request, whereas providing them with an opportunity to become a part of an exclusive community is a gift – a privilege.

This can be achieved by offering an emotional experience to your customers through the use of your products or services, focusing on aspirations like success, love, family and relationships.

No one does this better than Apple. They’re not just selling tech gadgets; they’re offering customers the chance to be part of a certain lifestyle. When people get their hands on an Apple product, the ego is nursed, a great customer experience is delivered, and loyalty is secured.

Introduce Scarcity and Urgency

Source: Parallax Kaushish

This psychological marketing trick is so evident that many people, if not all, have experienced it at one point in their lives. We’ve seen brands lure their customers by adding taglines like “Limited Time Offer Only!” or “Only 3 Days Left For 50% Discount!”

Smith.ai offers this suggestion for your strategy:

A great tool to prompt this is a countdown timer. For example, on an email or landing page, you can set a timer to the exact second an offer will expire, pushing customers to buy. You can also limit an offer to a short period of time, even a single day, to drive customers to commit to the purchase.

We’ve seen them in retail stores and websites, and the reason companies do this is because scarcity is powerful. By introducing the concept of scarcity, people automatically associate your product or service with a higher value simply because of low supply.

This also explains why the last cookie in the cookie jar is the tastiest. This trick is simple, but effective.

Make Reciprocity Work for You

Source: Upland Software

It goes back to basic goodwill. If someone does you a favor, be it big or small, you feel inclined to return the good deed. In marketing campaigns, reciprocity can be in the form of free gated content, product samples or demos, exclusive gifts to loyal customers and more.

If you give something to customers for free, they feel inclined to give something back, and it can be in the form of word of mouth, good reviews, or spending more money on your brand. This is quite common in gyms where sales reps often offer you free training for a week or even a month in exchange for your friends’ contact numbers and eventually, your membership.

It’s great for lead generation tactics. Just make sure the freebies come first before you ask them to do something for you.

The Propinquity Effect

Source: Proximity Marketing

In class, your seatmate often becomes your new best friend. In the office, the ones who sit next to each other often become a close-knit group. Proximity has a huge effect on people, and you can use this in marketing too.

With marketing propinquity, strategically weaving contextually relevant communications into your customers’ lives increases their awareness of your brand. Think about a brand like HubSpot. Imagine how many customers they’ve attracted by producing content that’s relevant to their target market.

In essence, propinquity lies at the heart of all content marketing and lead nurturing activities.

Wrap Up

Through social media and content marketing, you can be part of your customers’ lives by engaging them in online conversations, delivering exceptional customer service, and inviting them to events.

Technology has provided us with more ways to be constantly connected to people (through social media especially), which is perfect for both generating and nurturing leads.

Understanding how your customers operate gives you a steady advantage in the marketing mind game. It’s all about telling and giving them what they want, exactly how and when they need it.

You have to be a constant voice in their ear, which in turn makes them feel that you are part of their lives. Psychology and marketing often intertwine, and when fused properly can give you a great advantage when it comes to building awareness, trust, and authority with your clients.

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 Use Psychology to Convert More Leads appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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Stop Wasting Money on Ads and Start Attracting Audiences with Content Marketing

Advertisements are pricey. While they are a “necessary evil” for any marketing strategy, ads can burn through your entire budget faster than you can say “help!” Enter: content marketing.

Content marketing is a cost efficient way to get your name in front of prospects most likely to convert.  By creating and publishing your own content using proper SEO practices, you can cut down your advertising costs for good.

SearchEngineJournal.com says:

Organizations now have content teams with specific people and resources focusing exclusively on creating content, using it to engage specific audiences and drive business.

Having a designated team doesn’t fix all of your problems though. Over 54% of the companies surveyed claimed their biggest content marketing challenge is creating content that generates leads.

Here’s a quick brush-up on content marketing from Ahrefs to get your creative juices flowing:

Quick Takeaways:

  • Companies spend A LOT (even too much) on advertising
  • Content marketing is an effective tool to reduce spending and increase traffic on your site
  • Providing content people want to read is the most important part of the puzzle

So is content marketing that difficult? Well, it can be – but it is worth the effort. Content marketing is sustainable and gives the benefit of offering exponential growth to your brand.

There are some rules and guidelines you should follow to give yourself the best chance for optimal SEO rankings:

How To Effectively Use Content Marketing

Create must-see quality content

At the end of the day, content marketing is a business opportunity. How can you publish pieces that get the most out of this opportunity? You have to be relevant, credible, and aware of your prospects’ thinking processes.

Think about what your target audience is asking themselves on a daily basis. If your business was in power tools, your prospective clients might be researching DIY how-to projects around the house.

Publishing content like “10 ways to modernize your bathroom” or “Tools you should go buy TODAY” is a great way to build a portal directly to your site for an ideal prospect that you couldn’t get from a traditional ad.

These prospects are more likely to convert than say, someone who is not in the market for a drill seeing your advertisement on a banner ad. Creating organic interest in your product drives up your credibility, and thus your brand authenticity with a prospect.

Follow a distribution plan

Source: Ingram Content Group

Creating content is all well and good, but ultimately means less if you aren’t sharing it everywhere you can. A good first step is a social media audit. Where is your company plugged in – more importantly, where do you have a voice?

By keeping up on your social media presence, you are also opening an avenue to get your content in front of your customer’s eyes. Posting your new content across different platforms gives you a variety of outlets to send the same message to different people.

Not to mention, an open comment section is a place for your community to discuss ideas and connect with each other. This organic engagement is important to the viewership of your content and the overall value of your brand.

You don’t just have to use social media! Content marketing automation has made it easy to send out newsletters across different platforms quickly and easily. Places like Mailchimp and Constant Contact can keep your reader lists organized, not to mention provide excellent metrics for analysis.

Measure your efforts

Source: E-Commerce Germany News

What’s the point of putting in all this effort if you can’t tell what’s working? When creating your content marketing process, you have to define your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Examples of KPIs include:

  • Measuring how a content marketing campaign impacts your sales team’s productivity
  • Understanding the percentage of customers that were marketing-generated and what business was earned from content marketing
  • Measuring hours of work put into content marketing vs money put into ad spending

After you define your relevant KPIs, you tackle key these metrics to support your conclusions:

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 where exactly your views are coming from. This will show you where your efforts are succeeding and where there’s room for improvement.

Conversions:

Views are great, but what happens after the initial click? Conversion rate shows how many prospects are becoming customers. This metric is the real meat and potatoes of your content! Converting prospects should be your number one goal with content marketing.

SEO:

Seeing how your organic search rankings are performing is crucial to a healthy content marketing strategy. Keywords drive your content, because the higher you rank with keywords, the higher you are on Google’s search results. Be honest, when was the last time you clicked the seventh link down?

Put it all together (get help if you need it!)

You CAN and SHOULD use these tips to improve your content marketing. By creating quality sustainability, you can increase traffic to your site and awareness of your brand.

If you have a small operation, or simply don’t have the time to put into a content marketing campaign, hiring help could be the option for you. Hiring quality blog writers to work for you can be an important addition to your marketing team.

That’s not your only route though! You can also hire a marketing agency to create and curate content for your website. Many companies have experience with a wide array of clients, providing valuable insight you might not get from just hiring one or two writers.

Regardless of which way you go, content marketing is here to stay. If you’re only pouring money into advertisements, you’re missing out on free engagement with the most important people to your business – your customers.

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.  If you’re ready to boost your revenue and cut down on ad spending, let’s talk. Get started today and generate more traffic and leads for your business!

The post Stop Wasting Money on Ads and Start Attracting Audiences with Content Marketing appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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How To Pick The Best Growth Marketing Agency And The Ones You Should Check Out

sprouting tree representing growth marketing agencies

Most business owners agree that marketing is a great tool to help grow your business. Growth marketing is a subset of the many tools marketing provides that can be particularly effective in growing your business.

Growth marketing mainly relies on two strategies to help grow your business. First, growth marketing focuses on building customer relationships. Second, it fosters customer loyalty to ensure you keep customers coming back.

While it is a long-term strategy, growth marketing can pay dividends if you stick to it. But where do you start? While there are steps you can take on your own, typically the best results come from engaging experts. These top growth marketing agencies can help guide any business owner to maximize success in their business trajectory.

What makes a great growth marketing agency? How do you choose the right one?

Growth marketing is a complex subject, causing many who seek it out to become confused and frustrated when trying to navigate the process. A growth marketing agency is supposed to be your partner when trying to grow your business. You can allow them to do the heavy lifting in regards to executing your approach while you can focus on other aspects of your business.

But how do you know which agency is right for you? A good growth marketing agency should:

  • Be open and transparent with their approach and how they can become an asset to your team.
  • Understand that in growth marketing, the customer comes first.
  • Get to know you as a client and build a reliable customer relationship.
  • Line out their strategy with proven examples or data supporting their proposed methods

Here are the best growth marketing agencies out there:

  1. Relevance – One of the top choices for leading your industry through PR, SEO, and Thought Leadership – Best Overall Growth Marketing Agency
  2. PreApps – Known for strong results in mobile app marketing and adoption – Best Mobile App Agency
  3. Swidia – Offers personalized media strategies to support your business credibility as you scale quickly – Best Media Strategies Agency
  4. EmberTribe – From social media assistance to email marketing, EmberTribe offers services that can comprehensively build out your sales funnel – Best Paid Advertising Agency
  5. Tuff Marketing – From initial strategy to crafting original content, Tuff Marketing can help you achieve both fast results and long-term success – Best Data-Driven Agency
  6. Ladder.io – Offers strong expertise in global growth marketing endeavors – Best Global Agency
  7. Marketing Insider Group – Tied for highest-rated content marketing agency on G2 with more than 20 customer reviews and an average 4.9 rating, we hope you chose us for your SEO-driven blog writing needs – Best Content Marketing Agency

Methodology For Assessing An Incredible Growth Marketing Agency

There are a lot of components to consider when selecting the best agencies out there. Reviewing each agency’s website can give a lot of information about the services. You can also look at online reviews, but those are potentially subject to manipulation. There are numerous full service agencies. To make our list, we required the agency to focus on growth marketing; we also reviewed specific tactics they use.

We’ve identified three main ingredients that combine to make a highly rated growth marketing agency. These qualities are essential in driving the results and speed of business in 2022 and beyond.

Innovative Strategy

Innovation within growth advertising involves creating customized strategies based on a business’s individual needs. What’s important to your company? Significant organic growth or paid growth?

Once you lay out your goals, your growth marketing agency should be able to craft a comprehensive plan to get you there. Building long-term brand loyalty will have different processes and timelines as opposed to support of a product launch. Identify how you want to grow and seek an agency capable of using a savvy combination of techniques to get you there.

Range of Clients

You want your agency to have small growth companies and also larger companies. You also want them familiar with different industries as well. Specialization has its advantages, but there are major benefits to flexibility.

Agencies that service a range of clients tend to be more adaptable to changes in growth techniques. Something that works in one field can potentially be tweaked and applied to another industry. Specialists might be unaware of opportunities outside of their specific niche. The best growth marketing agencies will be well rounded and adaptable.

Ability To Execute

Do they have deliverables in their service fee or are retainers due regardless of corresponding content or placements? Make sure expectations are clear in this regard. If you are under the impression that your monthly fees guarantee deliverables, check that you are receiving them. And if so, are your deliverables arriving by expected deadlines?

Another component to ask about is what results they’re striving for. It’s important to know how to gauge the effectiveness of a growth marketing agency’s efforts. Are you looking to improve a certain number of places in keyword rankings? Alternatively, are they tying their results directly to increased revenue?

The bottom line regarding execution is whether or not they have the ability to deliver the results they promise. If an agency cannot meet deadlines or achieve results in line with price points, you should look elsewhere for service.

The Best Growth Marketing Agency Reviewed

Now that you understand the criteria and know how we’ve broken down the best agencies, here is a detailed list of why you will — or won’t — love these marketing agencies.

Relevance – Relevance helps clients achieve the goal of owning their respective industry. They position themselves as a premium growth marketing agency that focuses on earning industry ownership through aligning a content strategy, digital PR, and custom SEO. Growth marketing can be a confusing area and Relevance has strategists that can identify how to get realistic results. This is a great agency to check out if you want to work with partners who are honest and have proven results to help you own your industry.

PreApps – If you are looking for help to launch an app, PreApps is the agency for you. PreApps provides an avenue for clients to successfully launch an app. On their site, they have an app analysis report that they will offer clients. They provide both paid and organic ads, as well as app promo videos to maximize success. You can also find resources including a blog and podcast to inform you of everything you need to know about the App Industry.

Swidia – While growth marketing can be a slow and steady process, Swidia provides clients an accelerated avenue. They provide a user acquisition team, creative studio, and growth advisory to assist clients with generating new leads. With clients including Cameo and Hennessey, you are guaranteed to achieve success with this agency.

EmberTribe – EmberTribe provides everything a client needs in regards to paid advertising. They have a proprietary method that they lay out here on their site. This agency is ideal for ecommerce brands, especially those who need help growing their business. If you are in the market for paid search, paid social media, email, or conversion rate optimization, this is a great place to start.

Tuff Marketing – Tuff Marketing values data transparency and adjusts their strategies to adapt to tactic successes and failures. Rather than a “set it and forget it” attitude, you’ll be sure to get frequent updates on how your traffic and keywords are performing. For both quick bursts and sustainable improvement, Tuff Marketing can create and execute a customized plan for your business.

Ladder.io – Ladder.io is truly a global marketing agency with strategists located all over the world. They are well-rounded in their service lines and work with both startups and Fortune 500 companies. They take pride in staying up to date with the most current growth marketing trends and offer full-funnel support. If you’re looking for an agency that will adjust strategies throughout your business’s growth, Ladder.io is a good choice.

Marketing Insider Group – MIG works by utilizing three tools to achieve success for its clients. Technical SEO, content strategy, and weekly SEO blog writing that all work in sync to increase organic search rankings with the right audiences. MIG works with large companies, B2B SaaS leaders and startups where buyers are searching for information online. Our clients see an average of 138% YoY growth and 7x ROI. Check out a few of our case studies including a large technology brand, a SaaS business, a Services growth brand, and even a case study we did on ourselves.

best content marketing growth agency

Picking The Best Growth Marketing Agency

If you’re still not sure which growth marketing agency to go for, we understand. All these companies have unique skills, awesome clients, and tremendous growth themselves.

We have an idea to help you get started: reach out to us and we’ll objectively listen to what you need, explain the pros and cons of different approaches, and recommend the best partner for you. We only work with companies who get what we do. And happily refer clients to growth marketing agencies like Relevance when it makes sense. So give us a shout and we’ll set you on the right path to growth.

The post How To Pick The Best Growth Marketing Agency And The Ones You Should Check Out appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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