Why Creating Great Content Is The Only Online Marketing Strategy You Need To Follow

When you hear the words "online marketing", what comes to your mind? Social Media? Facebook? Search engine optimization? Blogging? WordPress? Or maybe you think about online advertising, pay-per-clicks, and search engine marketing. I believe there is one word that everyone thinks about when they hear the term "online marketing", and that word is "difficult." Online marketing is difficult.

Have you ever talked to a marketing guru about online marketing? Don't they all give the same, vague, generalized advice when it comes to online marketing? First, they tell you to hire a SEO firm, then they tell you to blog, then they tell you to use social media, and after you've done all of this, they tell you that you'll start receiving traffic to your website. Every marketing guru says the exact same thing, and the advice is always vague. Even the in-depth advice about online marketing is vague. Have you ever read an article about online marketing? Try this when you have some free time. Research "online marketing strategies" on Google and click on and read some of the articles. You don't have to look past the first page on Google. Just read some of the top articles that Google returns. This is a compare and contrast exercise. Once you complete this, you'll realize that all these articles sound the same. The first paragraph gives you a brief overview of what online marketing is and why it is so important. Then the list starts. Now after you've completed this exercise, you probably realize that the titles of the article all have something in common; they're all formatted as a top-ten list. They all look like this: "7 Online Marketing Facebook Strategies to Increase your Fan Base." Now, this isn't problem. I like the top-ten list format. It makes the article more appealing to the reader. What I don't like about majority of these articles is that almost everyone's top-ten list is the same. They all give the same online marketing strategies and advice. I mean c'mon; these are the experts! These are professional writers, writing for some of the biggest companies in the world. Why do majority of the articles sound the same? Because again, online marketing is difficult! No one likes to be wrong or give bad advice. The writers are just writing the same vague, generalized advice that the marketing gurus say. I could go on-and-on, especially when it comes to online marketing workshops, but I'm not going to; I think you've gotten the point by now.

In this article, I'm going to attempt to do something that's rarely done. I'm going to attempt to give you original and effective advice about online marketing. I'm going to be completely honest. I will not give you outdated strategies that do not work just to make my article longer. These strategies will work. How do I know? Because, I run a company and they're currently working for me. I have experience in this area and I've made many mistakes in online marketing, so I know what works and what doesn't work. So, without further ado, here are my online marketing strategies that will definitely help your business gain more exposure online.

Online marketing is all about the kind of content you're creating. First of all, the best online marketing strategy is creating content. Hands down! Sure, Facebook likes, retweets and social media shares on other popular social media sites like Pinterest, Instagram, and Reddit are cool, but do they really increase profits for a business? Think about it, how many times do you patronize a business because you liked their Facebook post? Exactly. I believe social media is very powerful but only works if you have great content. Content can be anything. It can be from a very nicely written article to a fashionable t-shirt with a clever phrase on the front. Content can really be anything. I believe majority of the businesses out there think that just posting a catchy post on Facebook along-side an eye-catching photo will increase their consumer base and ultimately their profits. This just isn't true. If online marketing were that easy, everyone, including the average person would be an expert at online marketing. Anything in this world worth having takes hard work and time; the results from an effective online marketing campaign are no different. Creating great content isn't easy; however, when you do create great content, there are so many resources at your disposal that could potentially help that content become viral. Have you ever saw a video on Facebook or YouTube that has hundreds of shares and thousands of likes? The reason that video went viral is because of the content. The average person isn't a marketing guru and doesn't have a social media budget; all they have is their imagination. That's all you need to create great content.

So, now that we've established that creating great content is the best online marketing strategy, I'm going to show you how to create great content. As I stated earlier, creating great, viral worthy content isn't easy. However, there are so many resources to help that content go viral; creating the content is really the only hard part. Creating great content requires research. You have to think about what's trending in the world. Too many marketing gurus think that the only thing that can go viral is a funny YouTube video and that's just not true. If you're not funny, don't try to be funny. You don't have to be funny. Play to your strengths. You just have to be creative, persistent, and use your imagination. There are a lot of things that are trending in the world. Pick one. Create content about a subject that's important to you. The more important it is to you, more than likely, the better the content will be. The next step is to create the content using a media that's popular. There is a reason why videos are more likely to go viral than an article. A great article can go viral, but it will definitely take longer. People enjoy videos more; there's no reading involved in watching a video. Your video doesn't have to be aesthetically appealing and you don't have to be an expert in video editing; it just has to be interesting. And don't worry, you can always learn about video editing and special effects while making the video; it's not exactly rocket science, it just takes a little practice. The next step in creating great, viral worthy content is relating that content back to your business. This might be the hardest part, but, if done correctly, is a game-changer. The ultimate goal is conversions, however, why do you need to convert people through the content? That's the mistake that many marketing gurus make. Great content may not raise your profits right away, but it's not supposed to. The purpose of content marketing is to raise awareness of your business. The profit gains will come in the future, not immediately. As long as the content relates back to your business (in some kind of way), you're good. The next step in writing great content is your content has to solve a problem. Consumers have problems, even if that problem is ignorance, meaning, not knowing enough about a particular subject. Great content solves problems and enlightens consumers. That's why great content goes viral. Consumers share things that they've recently learned because everyone has the inner-urge to help someone else in need.

So, let's recap. The best online marketing strategy is creating great content. There are five steps to creating great content:

1. Pick a topic that's trending
2. Use a popular medium to create the content (i.e. WordPress)
3. Relate the content back to your business
4. Make sure the content solves a problem or enlightens consumers about a particular subject.
5. The last and easiest step in this process is to share the content, everywhere.

When sharing the content, use every avenue you can think of. Social Media, Blog, YouTube, PR, press releases, etc. Don't be stingy. Great content is meant to be shared with the world. See, I told you I'd give you advice that actually works. Stop worrying about all that other stuff, like building backlinks using automated software. Google hates that anyway, but that's another subject for another day. Take care!

Allen Screen

-Content Creator and Online Marketing Director for PayPanther.com

If you're looking for an all-in-one business solution, then you're looking for PayPanther. CRM, Project Management, Time Tracking, Invoicing, Billing, and Task Management for any professional in any industry.

http://www.paypanther.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8508953

Influencer Outreach 2020: How to Work With Social Media Influencers

The name of the marketing game in 2020 is going to be influencer marketing. Even if you’ve already seen the impact that someone with millions of followers can have, it can be intimidating to get started.

After all, working with influencers isn’t like being able to just create and execute a marketing strategy with the people on your team. You’ve got to reach out and partner with the right people for everything to work — otherwise, your hard work goes down the drain.

So how do you nail your influencer outreach and see a high ROI? Read on to learn how to perfect those outreach techniques in 2020.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

First, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. What is influencer marketing, anyway?

Influencer marketing is partnering with social media personalities with audiences who might overlap with yours. These are people who already have loyal, dedicated followings who listen to what they have to say — and will likely buy what they recommend.

There are influencers in every niche, from fitness to veganism. Brands are on track to spend more than $15 billion on these influencers by 2022, and they’ll see a lot of that money come back into their pockets.

How to Create an Influencer Marketing Strategy

The industry is growing fast and shows no signs of slowing down. How do you make sure that you get a piece of the success?

It all starts with making sure you have a good outreach strategy. Influencer marketing isn’t as easy as sending an Instagram DM to someone with three million followers and asking them to post a picture with your product.

Your outreach strategy has to be as planned as any other marketing campaign. Here’s how you can do influencer outreach the right way.

Do Your Research

First, make sure you’re doing your due diligence about who you want to work with. You’re going to need to think carefully about who you reach out to.

How do you do this? Take a look at who’s in your niche first. If you sell apparel geared at people who love video games, look to see who’s driving the conversation in that sphere.

Once you’ve identified some key people, look at their content. Does their personality fit with your brand? How engaged is their audience?

Tools like SocialBlade make it easy to see all of these stats in one place.

Don’t Count Out the Little Guys

When some businesses get started with influencer marketing, they might think that they have to go straight to the people with millions of followers. After all, that’s how you get more eyes on the advertisement, right?

Not necessarily. While sometimes people with large audiences will be a boost for your brand, micro-influencers (people with less than ten thousand followers) tend to have a more engaged audience.

Their followers feel like they know them and they’re more likely to buy something that they recommend. Plus, micro-influencers can be more cost-effective.

Set Your Budget

Speaking of cost-effective, you need to know your budget before you send a single message. They might come back with a number you’re not expecting, especially if you’re new to the influencer marketing game — people with high follower counts can charge thousands of dollars per post.

There’s not a set way to know how much people charge until you ask since there’s no standardized pay scale for influencers. It’s best to know how much you’re willing to pay before you reach out.

You can also negotiate — some influencers are willing to lower their rates a little for a business or cause they’re really passionate about.

Plan Your Pitch

You’ll also want to plan out your pitch. Once you know the influencers you want to reach out to, check their websites or profiles to see if they have any guidelines on how they want to be contacted.

Some will have business emails or specific information that they want you to include in that initial message. Make sure you read those guidelines closely — they might be using them to see who actually wants to work with them and who BCC’d one hundred different people at once.

It’s also smart to engage with them before you send an email. Like their content, or share it on your own page. It will help them remember your name when it pops up in your inbox.

Decide on Scope

As you plan your pitch, you should also decide on the scope of the partnership. Are you just asking for one Instagram post? An ongoing partnership? A giveaway?

You’ll need to know right away what you want the scope of the partnership to be, especially since this will affect the initial price that they quote you. If this is the first time you’re working with someone, it might be smart to start out small to see what your ROI is.

If you see a great response, you can look into building longer relationships.

Remember to Interact

Finally, once you’ve sent over your pitch and decided on a deal, don’t forget to keep interacting with the influencer! It’s not enough for them to promote you to their audience — it’s also important for the audience to see you interacting online.

This looks different depending on the platform the influencer works in. If they run a popular blog, share it to your Facebook page. If they’re an Instagram influencer, like and comment on their posts. Their promotion of you is public — some of your interactions should be, too.

Increase Your Influencer Outreach

Working with influencers doesn’t have to be intimidating. In fact, they might be more eager to work with you than you think. With this guide, you can perfect and improve your influencer outreach in no time.

There’s a lot that goes into social media marketing, and sometimes even the best teams need a little help. We get it. That’s why we’re here.

Want to give your marketing strategy a boost? Schedule a meeting with us to see how we can make your goals a reality.Article Source

5 Winning Ways to Get Useful Customer Feedback With Email Marketing

Email has come a long way in its nearly 50-year history. In its journey from technical marvel to an essential part of daily life, it’s become a critical component of any successful business strategy.

With the sheer volume of emails a person receives, it can be a serious challenge to get useful feedback from your customers. Challenging but not impossible.

In truth, getting useful customer feedback is just a matter of knowing how to approach the problem. Here are 5 tips on how to get meaningful customer feedback.

1. Know Your Goals

If you’re selling a good or service, your goal might be to see if customers are pleased with the product they’re getting or the service you’re rendering. On the other hand, you might be more interested in knowing what features they’d like to see added.

You can also use customer feedback as part of your CRM efforts. If you just asked yourself, “what is CRM?” it’s customer relationship management. Basically, it’s collecting data that allows you to better manage your relationship with your customers and understand your demographic.

Understanding your demographic is always going to result in better results for your business and a happier customer.

2. Ask Goal-Relevant Questions

Now that you understand your goals, you need to ask questions that will yield the answers you want. Making your questions open-ended leaves too much room for interpretation, and therefore might not get you any useful information.

When asking for feedback, you need to lead your customers in the right direction. If you’re following up on a recent purchase, ask questions that produce direct results about that. For example, try asking, “How likely would you be to recommend our product/service to others?”

Keep your goals at the front of your mind when crafting your questions, and you’ll get the feedback you want.

3. Make it Personal

The last thing your customer once is to feel like another anonymous nobody in an email chain. They want to feel valued and acknowledged, which is why your questions need to feel more personal.

In a way, this is an extension of asking goal-relevant questions. Only this time, you’re asking questions specific to the individuals.

Segment your email lists in such a way that people are getting questions that are actually relevant to them and you’ll get better results.

4. Give Them a Break

This one is simple. You don’t want to bombard your customers with constant emails. That’s a surefire way to make sure they never interact with you.

While you definitely want to consistently ask for feedback, it needs to feel natural. If customers feel like they’re being pestered, they’re more likely to either not give feedback or to give negative feedback.

5. Go Mobile

People use their smartphones for just about everything. This includes email.

With more and more people reading email on their phones, you need to make sure you’re optimizing your emails for that format. This means making sure your emails automatically reformat to fit themselves to any screen. 

Customers can’t interact if they can’t even read your emails, so don’t skip this step.

Customer Feedback You Can Use

If you follow these tips, you’re sure to get customer feedback that’s actually meaningful. Knowing what your customers need can make or break a business, so don’t underestimate the power of listening.

But email isn’t even half the battle. You need a well-rounded strategy. Read on for invaluable tips on how to succeed.Article source

How to Run an Instagram Story Ad Effectively

What if your business had the greatest story to tell and no one actually paid attention?

Social media is a great way to market your business to a wide variety of customers. And an Instagram story ad lets you tell your story in an intimate and engaging way.

However, most companies don’t know how to run an Instagram story in an effective way. They end up spending a ton on marketing without having much to show for it.

If you’d like to get an amazing ROI from your next Instagram story ad, keep reading to learn the secrets!

Primary Goal

Your first job sounds deceptively simple: you must determine your main goal for your Instagram story ads. However, doing so may be more difficult than you imagined.

Instagram actually asks you to pick from several possible objectives. These include audience engagement, app installations, lead generation, customer messages, or video views.

The objective you choose should sync up well with your current KPIs and overall marketing plan. For example, video views is a great metric if you are focusing on brand awareness, but lead generation is better if you are focused more on short-term sales.

The Right Ad Format

Next up, you must figure out what format your ad will be in. This mostly comes down to picking between a photo-centric ad and a video-centric ad.

On the one hand, video ads can be more expensive. They require actors, professional editing, lots of complex equipment, and so on.

On the other hand, video is insanely popular for your audience. Thanks to the ability to stream video on everything from Youtube to Netflix, your audience expects video when it comes to entertainment.

You must make the choice that is best for you and your budget (more on this in a little bit). But if you have the money, you’re likely to get a better ROI from a video Instagram story.

Making the Seconds Count

If you decide to do a video ad, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that there is no universally-successful way of creating a video ad.

The good news is that this means you can be really creative. Consumers reward risk, and doing something bold or unique in your video is likely to drive up clicks and engagement.

Whatever you do, though, make those first few seconds of video amazing. In an online world saturated with video, customers are likely to move on to something else if they aren’t instantly captivated by your ad.

Audience-Centric

Whether you do a video ad or a photo ad, there is one thing you’ll need to focus on: your very specific audience.

Instagram allows you to customize who your ads target. And you can do multi-platform targeting by using tools such as Facebook Ad Manager.

However, the ability to target specific consumers is useless if you don’t know who your dream demographic is. That’s why it’s important to gather as much demographic data as possible well before you start running Instagram stories ads.

Remember, the audience drives everything about a good ad. If you don’t know who wants to buy your products, then you won’t know how to market to this group.

Pay Attention to the Rules

No one likes to hear this, but it’s the truth: sometimes, you need to really follow the rules. And that’s especially true with Instagram story ads.

Instagram has very specific guidelines for images. They must be in JPG or PNG format, must be at least 600 x 1067, and can’t be larger than 30 MB.

You’ll need to experiment further to find what works best for your own images. For example, we prefer to use 1080 x 1920 for images: you get a crisp image on any device, and it makes everything in the image really pop out at customers.

The Budget Game

As with any kind of marketing, it’s important to figure out what your budget is. And Instagram offers a few ways of making this easier for you.

Your primary option involves setting a daily or lifetime budget. With a daily budget, Instagram will spend up to a fixed amount on your ad each day and then stop. With a lifetime budget, Instagram will selectively deploy your ad at different points through your campaign timeline.

Next, you must choose between standard and accelerated delivery. With standard delivery, your ads will be spread out over a fixed time period. With accelerated delivery, Instagram will try to get them out as soon as possible.

The final choice is “Budget Optimization.” If you select this option, Instagram will try to balance your budget against your objectives and determine how much you should spend to accomplish your goals.

Keep in mind you will still need to bid to run ads, and this will also affect your overall budget and strategy.

Don’t Forget the CTA

The call to action is a very elemental form of marketing. We expect to see these at the end of blog posts, e-mail marketing, and so on.

However, a CTA is also important for your Instagram story ads. It’s not enough to get the customers’ attention–they need to know what you want them to do!

This, too, can be tied to your overall objective. Ads that are weird and humorous may have a less explicit CTA, but that works to simply build brand awareness. If you’re trying to boost sales, of course, the CTA must be much more explicit.

Brief and to the Point

Whether you use photo or video ads for your story, space for text is limited. That means you must be short and to the point on messaging.

Try to distill your message to something direct and simple. Bonus points if it involves something that can easily be used as a hashtag!Article Source

How to Easily Create Landing Pages in WordPress: No Developer or Paid Subscription Required

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYjXRjPuKxo

7 Sweet Landing Page Tools to Generate Leads

Sometimes we focus so much on boosting traffic that some digital marketing experts can miss the boat entirely. Focusing on traffic without factoring in landing page experience is a mistake.

It’s like investing in getting millions of visitors to your shopping mall every day only to have them see how bad your mall looks. Focusing on the experience your visitors have when they arrive is just as important as boosting SEO

Yes, we need content marketing to boost growth. But we also need the best landing page tools to ensure visitors have a great experience when they arrive.

Did you know that over half of the people who land on a page stay for less than 15 seconds? Getting landing pages right means more return visitors and an overall positive experience.

Don’t miss the boat! These page tools will generate leads and increase conversions.

They will also inform your marketing strategy across the board.

Here’s how:

Landing Page Tools and Content Strategy

Working on page tools will also inform your content marketing strategy. All of us have heard the staggering statistics of what an investment in content can do to your traffic.

One company was able to increase traffic by 3000 percent by investing in content. But by using the best landing tools, you can go one step further.

You will be crafting content around your landing pages to enhance the visitor experience. If you get less traffic but a higher conversion percentage your revenues will still soar.

These 7 landing page tools will have your visitors thanking you with increased time on site, more frequent returns, and higher conversions.

Take a look:

1. Instapage

Instapage boasts over 200 conversion tested templates for landing pages. That’s exactly what we need when building landings.

They are also easy to use and speak the language every digital marketer longs to hear.

At last count, they had over 131 million landing page visitors with a 22 percent conversion rate.

And that’s just in the last 30 days.

2. Strikingly

Want to get in on the ground floor when it comes to page design? Strikingly is a great way to start thinking about landing pages at the start of your website design.

In terms of page tools, this is a super easy and functional way to integrate landing page ideas into your overall strategy.

They claim to be “the world’s fastest site builder.” Their company seeks to make building a website as easy as creating a social media profile.

3. Lander

Easy and beautiful is what many of us need to hear when deciding which landing page tools to use. Lander goes one step further.

They beat us over the head with testimonials on conversion rates.

After all, what is beauty without substance when it comes to digital marketing?

One Lander client increased conversion rates by 19 to 34 percent by using their landing page tools.

With Dynamic Text Replacement, Facebook Tabs, an A/B Testing Tool, and an Easy To Use Editor, you’ll have your bases covered with Lander.

4. Get Response

Get Response integrates over 1000 free iStock images into their landing page design apps. With this level of easy customization, there’s no doubt you can use their landing page tools to stand out from the crowd.

They have the same great features as many other landing page tools. These include testing, editing, and analytics.

But we love the integration with social media apps and the focus on mobile technology. Get Response lives up to its name by focusing on the platforms and technology your visitors prefer.

5. Unbounce

We love Unbounce. They will give users a 30-day free trial.

You’ll be hooked if you give Unbounce a shot too.

The drag and drop technology makes it easy to use. And you can match your branding in a snap with Unbounce.

Plus, the proof is in the conversions. One banking client booked over $1 million in personal loans by using the tool.

6. UserTesting

Beyond just creating landing pages for digital marketing gurus the best landing page tools are rich with testing capabilities. We can’t emphasize the importance of immediate information and testing when it comes to adjusting any marketing campaign.

Too many businesses and too many marketing experts are stuck in the old ways. They measure success in SEO or dollar signs.

But with UserTesting, you can measure the success of every aspect of your landing page design as you go. With digital marketing, it’s too late to wait and see what works.

You have to know as you build. UserTesting offers input on photoreactions, your competition, longitudinal testing, and even games.

While most page tools have some level of analytics and testing built in, UserTesting will let you parse through every detail and adjust accordingly.

7. Crazy Egg

Any other 80s movie buffs out there in digital marketing land? If so, you may want to take a look at the features Crazy Egg has to offer when it comes to landing page tools.

Crazy Egg is next level. You can work on your landing pages and feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator at the same time.

The heat map technology allows digital marketers to see exactly where visitors click on a page. You’ll get expert insight into visitor behavior and increase conversions as a result.

Over 200,000 businesses use Crazy Egg to understand their visitors better and increase their overall experience.

Make Them Feel Welcome To Generate Leads

Your visitors will thank you if you welcome them with open arms when they arrive at your site.

Great landing page design is like handing out flowers at the airport, cueing the band, and saying welcome! We all know navigating the web can be as frustrating as air travel at this point.

Let your visitors know you are happy to see them. They made it!Article Source