Social media supports all marketing channels
Social media needs to be integrated with non-digital channels. The old school thinking that social media is just “a secondary tactic” doesn’t fit today.
Today, customer acquisition is the top priority for most brands. It should be a part of your company’s product marketing strategy. Targeted demand generation processes must also satisfy your customers’ needs.
To stay ahead at this game changing moment where new technologies are making everything easier than ever before—from finding information on Google Search pages or Instagram stories-to engaging directly one consumer who may purchase something online without having another advertisement interrupt their experience -you need every edge possible.
People often utilize social media as an additional tool in their demand generation investment strategy, but it is important to not neglect the power of organic content marketing.
if you want your campaigns and efforts on Facebook or Twitter be effective then they need integrate paid advertisements with this type digital outreach technique so that both forms can complement each other instead just being done separately like many companies do today .
I recently spoke to a VP of a billion-dollar brand who told me about his million-dollar TV/radio ad campaign that produced negative ROI. They’re now shifting more marketing budget to digital channels. CMOs often struggle with the conflicting priorities of brand marketing and measurable demand generation. Sometimes it must be either/or, but it can be both if well integrated.
Another proof point on the value of marketing campaign integration: A new Hootsuite study of 2,000 marketers shows that 78% feel social media improves the operational efficiency of their other digital and non-digital marketing channels. I don’t think that’s too surprising.
Using pixels and links in online content and hashtags in offline content can drive immediate improvement in reach, engagement, and feedback to maximize trackable ROI. Plus, scheduling timely messaging to highly tuned audiences through multiple channels can optimize conversion.
Video Marketing, Quality, Brand Image
In video marketing, quality should align with your brand image.
We have a client considering how to start using video in her marketing. Starting now is smart thinking, as about 85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
Of those businesses that don’t use video, 59% planned to start this year. In parallel to more video content, there’s also more demand than ever.
In 2021, people watched 100+ minutes of online video per day. “The amount of time people spend viewing online video has grown rapidly across the world, at an average rate of 32% a year between 2013 and 2018, boosted by improvements in display sizes and quality of mobile devices, faster mobile data connections, and the spread of connected TV sets” –Zenith
Benefits of Video
Video can be search optimized so it can help with a site’s ranking. Plus, including a video on a landing page can boost the conversion rate by up to 80%.
Video can also be repurposed for other media so it is a great foundation for a content marketing strategy. For example, one video podcast can turn into 5-10 unique social media posts. Videos can be transcribed and turned into long-form blog posts and so much more. With so many options afterward, your best choice is to start with making videos now.
The Competition
On the downside, there’s a ton of video content noise online so it will get harder to compete for views. So effort should go into producing quality content that is relevant and interesting to your target audience. Although consistent uploads can be helpful, high-quality content that encourages engagement and adds value will have a better ROI.
YouTube, Facebook, and IG are the default platforms for video, but TikTok is rapidly on the rise. With all these different platforms, it’s important to understand the psychology of each platform and research what style of content works best for each. Being able to get your message across on all of the platforms and consistently adding value is crucial in this dynamic technological environment.
Live video is fast-growing and accounted for 13% of traffic in 2021. For produced videos: keep them short. 68% of people watch the complete video if it’s less than 60 seconds. Video marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, but the quality should align with your brand image.
How email subject lines affect open rate
Email subject lines affect open rates. Getting people’s email opt-in permission is harder than ever – as it should be. Because so many spammers abused email over the years, the channel has been severely damaged for those who use it properly.
It’s easier than ever for an email recipient to report a message as spam or to simply opt-out – as it should be. But once that contact is off your opt-in list, they’re pretty much gone forever.
That’s why responsible brands and marketers today must be hyper-careful with their email construction and delivery.
Even the subject line must be scrutinized and A/B tested in a sample list before sending your message to a large list (but only half of marketers actually do this).
As many recipients open an email based on the subject line alone, it can potentially make or break your campaign.
69% of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line.
Best practices for email subject lines include:
-Keep it short/simple.
-Create curiosity and urgency, but don’t mislead or sensationalize.
-Personalize when possible.
Finally, there are no tricks or shortcuts. The SINGLE best practice for brands is to build trust with your audience over time by providing relevant, useful, timely #content.
Direct mail and mobile marketing lead business investments in local media advertising
Direct mail and mobile marketing lead business investments in local media advertising. This some encouraging news for North American print and direct mail service providers: In 2022, US local ad revenue is forecast to surpass the previously impressive rebound of 2021, with direct mail leading to capture more than a 20% piece of the pie. BIA Advisory Services forecasts overall local ad revenue to grow 10.1% year-over-year in 2022.
This will be the second consecutive period of year-over-year growth, considering that US direct mail ad revenue has declined -5.1% annually between 2015 and 2020 (source: IBIS World).
US non-political advertising mail volumes were down in 2020 as retail, leisure, beverage, and travel services paused or reduced their direct mail campaigns in the face of the pandemic.
Counterbalancing that commercial decline, 2020 was a record year in election campaign ad spending that included high volumes of political direct mail. Political mailings helped printers stem some of the lost commercial ad mail revenue in 2020. With minimal local elections in 2021, commercial mailings made up for the massive void left from 2020 political mailings.
Despite the numerous issues facing the USPS, there are still millions of local and regional brands confidently relying on printed mail’s higher response rates and lower customer acquisition costs.
marketing research, data, and facts
Research, data, and facts should guide your marketing decisions. Do you know someone making marketing decisions using their MBA? I don’t mean a master’s degree, but rather what I call Marketing By Anecdote.
What is Marketing by Anecdote?
An anecdote is a story, usually about one’s personal experience or account of an incident. Anecdotal evidence is a deduction from that story that isn’t necessarily true because it isn’t necessarily based on facts.
When a conclusion is made solely based on personal opinion and experience, the reality can be skewed. Facts and research will always be more reliable and consistent when making decisions and evaluating situations. Take action based on what you can trust, not based on how you feel.
Some examples
A business owner told me about his current marketing program, with $5k/month (most of his budget) on billboard ads: “I think the ads are working because two or three people per month say they saw my ad!” His anecdotal evidence tells him his marketing strategy, message, audience, budget, and CTA are fully optimized. No measurement, no analysis needed. Just evidence from an anecdote. Marketing By Anecdote.
Another business manager told me, “I don’t use social media for marketing because I personally don’t use Facebook for business and I don’t think my customers do either.” This is also a form of anecdotal evidence because he thinks his #customers behave as he does. Faulty logic. Would you really want to throw away your digital marketing budget based on personal bias? Consumers convert through a wide variety of platforms and eliminating one of them based on your own usage is just ignorant.
Facts don’t care about your feelings
Marketing decisions shouldn’t be based on anecdotes, hearsay, or what you surmise. Apply your personal opinion or belief on what to do, but add it on top of research, measurable data, and facts. Facts can make you money, while emotions can lead to a missed opportunity.
Facts don’t care about your feelings.
Content Marketing – Attract, Engage, and retain an Audience
The value of content marketing is underestimated. Most people don’t know how it directly affects a website’s Google search rankings, which in turn drives new visitors to your landing page.
Great content…
- Gets read, shared, liked, and linked. More links from trusted websites to your landing page gives you SEO authority (and higher rankings).
- Content that gets the most shares/linkes is typically deep, detailed, and research-based. Long-form articles with over 2000 words get more top ten positions in Google search engine rankings.
- Takes time and effort: The average blog post takes 3.5 hours to write. It is optimized for keywords and internal links and is easy to consume.
- Can go beyond the format of a blog post. It can be a video, podcast, infographic, ebook, or an “ultimate good to ___.”
- Is leverageable. A 45-minute webinar or 25-slide presentation could be segmented into sub-topics and serve as the base for potentially a half-dozen short-form blog posts.
70% of marketers say they prioritize content quality over quantity. Whether this actually happens can make a huge difference in a brand’s organic search ranking.
Read our article about Content marketing strategy – Get content rich
Does your business use video as a marketing tool?
We have a client considering how to start using video in her marketing. Starting now is smart thinking, as about 85% of businesses use video as a marketing tool.
Of those businesses that don’t use video, 59% plan to start this year. In parallel to more video content, there’s also more demand than ever.
In 2021, people will watch 100+ minutes of online video per day.
Video can be search optimized so it can help with a site’s ranking. Plus, including a video in a landing page can boost the conversion rate by up to 80%.
Video can also be repurposed for other media so it is a great foundation for a content marketing strategy.
On the downside, there’s a ton of video content noise online so it will get harder to compete for views. So effort should go into producing quality content that is relevant and interesting to your target audience.
For many reasons, we don’t recommend TikTok or Snapchat video as a marketing too. Despite the crowdedness, YouTube, Facebook, and IG are the default platforms for video.
Live video is fast-growing and will account for 13 % of traffic in 2021. For produced videos: keep them short. 68% of people watch the complete video if it’s less than 60 seconds.
Video marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, but the quality should align with your brand image.
White hat SEO
SEO is so mystified and so misunderstood. Getting your website organically ranked by search engines is one of the toughest digital marketing challenges companies face. Two main factors contribute to your site’s SEO ranking: Relevance. Authority.
Relevance comes creating content on your site that matches keywords your target audience searches for. Authority comes from white hat link building.
White hat link building involves getting a lot of inbound links (backlinks) from other high-authority sites to a particular page on your site. Google considers high-authority backlinks as votes of trust for your site. Higher traffic sites have higher authority (think NYTimes, CNN).
The more quality backlinks you get, they higher your organic search ranking. To get quality links, you must produce quality content that quality sites want to link to. Create relevant, useful, educational, shareable content. Use techniques like article submissions, guest posting, and blog commenting. Look for your competitors’ backlinks and try to get links from those sites. Actively submit your site to web directories.
A solid digital marketing expert will help you produce relevant content and get you high-authority backlinks. It doesn’t happen over time, but the process works for the patient and determined.
Customer referrals the most powerful selling and marketing tools.
65% of the average company’s revenue comes from current customers. Yet most companies don’t have structured customer referral or reference programs. This is a miss.
This summer, my wife and I bought a new house. Nice buying experience with our real estate agent. This week (5 months later), the agent called to say hi. She had a fresh-baked pie she wanted to deliver to our home to show her thanks. By the way, could she video the event of bringing the pie to our front door? With our permission, could she share the video on her social channels? Sure, why not, we said. Happy to help.
Three things happened here:
- She reconnected with us. (A reminder of our positive experience/relationship. Maybe a trigger to refer to her if we know someone in the market).
- She gave us a gift to show her gratitude. (Very thoughtful).
- She shot and posted a public video of us happily receiving the gift. (Viewers of this video can see that she creates lasting relationships with her customers).
Total investment in this simple appreciation initiative for each of her customers? Maybe $20 and an hour each? Immediate ROI: unknown. Longer-term ROI: no-brainer.
Does your company actively encourage customer references and referrals? If not, why not? Too Expensive?
Read our article Do you know your Customer Lifetime Value?
Strategy Brand Position
Put your horse before your cart. Your brand is your horse and your marketing campaign is your cart. The harness connecting the two is your marketing strategy.
Too often, a company executes a campaign to attract new customers, but its brand marketing strategy hasn’t been assembled or connected. The horse just gets old and the cart doesn’t move.
Before our team starts to execute a client’s marketing campaign, we typically ask questions about your brand and marketing strategy. This extra pre-work saves you time, money, and frustration.
We ask to dig into the essence of your brand: What’s your purpose? (Why your brand matters in your customers’ lives.) What’s your company’s vision, mission, and values? (Where you want to go in the future, how you add value today, what you believe in.)
Next, we look at brand positioning: How your brand is positioned in a distinctive place in the mind of a customer in your target market. How your brand identity reflects your strengths.
What’s your unique selling proposition (USP)? What’s your ideal customer profile? What’re your competitors doing? What market factors affect your goals?
We then build a marketing strategy with goals, tactics, and measurable KPIs. With a strong horse and a well-connected harness, your cart moves faster and farther.