Google Helpful Content Update: What it Means and What to Know Posted on November 24, 2022November 17, 2022 by Natalie Slyman Google dominates the search engine market with more than 90% of the market share as of June 2022. Every core update from Google sends shockwaves across the content marketing world. The latest Google Helpful Content update is tipped to cause seismic shifts in the way we create content. When the Helpful Content update first rolled out, it had content marketers running for cover. If the reactions on social media are anything to go by, there’s no doubt the update scared creators and SEO specialists. Many lamented the drop in YOY traffic and couldn’t resist the panic over the future of their content marketing strategy. If the update has you concerned about your traffic growth, don’t worry. In this guide, we’ll discuss what this update means for SEO and how to adjust your content marketing strategies to stay on the right path. What is Google’s Helpful Content Update? If you look at Google’s updates over the past years, one thing will come out clearly: the search engine giant has always focused majorly on user experience. Google has been rolling updates aimed at sunsetting manipulative tactics such as keyword stuffing in favor of value-driven content. The Helpful Content update is a huge step towards compelling websites to publish helpful, educational content. The update was rolled out between August 25 and September 9 of 2022, and it seeks to reward helpful content – or content that gives users a satisfying experience. According to Chris Nelson, Google’s Senior Staff Analyst, the update seeks to ensure users find “more original, more helpful content written by people and for the people.” The update impacts English searches globally at the moment but will be rolled out to other languages in the future. Google claims the system will scan your site, pinpointing content that its classifiers deem to have “little value, low-value-added, or is otherwise not particularly helpful.” Since this is a site-wide algorithm, it doesn’t just impact the low-value, individual URLs. Instead, if a higher number of published articles are deemed unhelpful, the entire domain is less likely to rank low. How You Can Prepare for Helpful Content Update If the content you’ve been creating is thoughtful and helpful, there’s no cause for alarm. The Google Helpful Content update is only going to eliminate unhealthy competition — or sites that have been using unscrupulous means to outrank you. However, when announcing the new update, Google raised some pertinent questions. We’ll look at these questions and discuss how you should adapt your content strategy to check the right boxes. 1. Defining Your Target Audience Google question: “Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?” Defining your target audience ought to be a standard SEO practice. If you haven’t been creating content with a target audience in mind, Google has put you on notice. Remember: Google wants you to create helpful content. For your content to be helpful, it must resonate with your target audience. That means to create helpful content, the type that Google sees fit for a place atop the SERPs, you must first define your target audience. Know who your target audience is, what their needs are, and the problems they face. What questions are they likely to type into Google when looking for a solution? From that, you can now devise a content strategy to solve the problems the cohort face. 2. Knowing Your Value Proposition Google question: “Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?” Hundreds to even thousands of websites have the same target audience in mind as yours. So, what makes your website stand out from the crowd? What could make a user consume content on your site without ever turning to other sources? Google wants you to clearly define your value proposition. Your website can’t be all things to all users. You have to build it around one subject area and focus on developing content that addresses users’ intent in that niche. 3. Leveraging the Concept of Information to Gain Scores Google question: “After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?” This is inarguably the crux of the Helpful Content update. Google wants every website to give users a satisfying experience. In other words, each article you put out should demonstrate a high information gain score. According to Bill Slawski, an information gain score depicts the value attached to an article for providing additional information not present in other articles on the same topic. With Google’s Helpful Content update, there’s no doubt that pages with a higher information gain score will rank higher than those with a lower score. There’s no place for copycat content. To snag a spot atop the Google SERPs, you have to give readers fresh perspectives and ideas in each article or page. Pull unique data and add never-before-seen expert quotes to back your ideas. In addition, create custom screenshots and images that no other page has published. 4. Demonstrating First-Hand Expertise Google question: “Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product/service or visiting a place)?” It’s important to understand the meaning of “helpful content.” According to Google, helpful content is unique and original. It’s written by people with real subject matter expertise. For example, let’s say you’re writing about a hotel guide in the Maldives. You could gather details about hotels in the Maldives and whip up a lengthy piece with loyalty-free images. However, Google isn’t in favor of this approach because, even though your content might be original and unique, it doesn’t showcase first-hand experience. To showcase first-hand expertise, it will benefit you if you’ve toured these hotels physically. You should have an authoritative understanding of the hotel landscape in the Maldives from the first-person point of view. Google doesn’t want you to write about something you haven’t personally experienced. If you’re reviewing software, you ought to have used the software to have a depth of knowledge about it. 5. Optimizing Content for SEO While Google is advising content creators to avoid creating content for search engines, it doesn’t seek to invalidate SEO best practices. Google advises that “SEO is vitally helpful when it’s applied to people-first content.” Your content can be satisfying, but if your target audience can’t find it, then it will be of no benefit. This means even as you create content that ticks all the Helpful Content Update boxes, you must adhere to SEO best practices. Navigate the Helpful Content Update With Ease If your website has taken a swift hit in the wake of the Google Helpful Content update, don’t panic. This update is “helpful,” and if you adhere to the guidelines we offered above, your website will rise again and claim back its position on Google SERPs. How long it will take for the site to do better is still an open question. According to Google, your site could spend months languishing on lower pages. However, once you prune all the unhelpful content and add new value-packed content, it won’t be long before Google rewards you for the effort.
4 Shifts Your Small Business Needs to Prepare for This Holiday Season Posted on November 23, 2022November 23, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick We’re quickly approaching the most wonderful time of the year – the holiday season. While typically this time of year has been busy with increased consumer engagement and sales for many small businesses, this year may look a little different. With talks of a recession and the market continuously taking a hit, a lot of small businesses aren’t exactly sure what to expect this holiday season. Many are simply planning as they have in the past, and prepping their businesses for an influx of foot and website traffic. While I don’t advise against doing that, there are things small business owners need to be doing differently to make sure they’re prepared, and that includes planning for less-than-ideal situations in the next couple of months. To ensure you’re as prepared as possible, below are four of the most crucial shifts currently happening that will ultimately shape holiday business. But don’t fret, I’ve also included how your company can prepare for these shifts to ensure you end the year as successful as possible. 1. Inflation Will Affect Consumer Spending Everything seems to cost more, from the cost of living to gas prices and grocery bills. Modern-day necessities just aren’t as cheap as they were last year, so consumers will be curbing their spending in other places to ensure they’re managing their budgets. This means that the sales numbers you hit last holiday season may not be as predictable this year. You need to prepare for how inflation may impact your sales, or even impact your typical buyer. You might attract a different type of consumer based on your price point as consumers rethink their holiday budget. You may also want to engage in some price testing. Increasing prices may be able to help make up for a decrease in demand. On the flip side, offering discounts might help to drive more buyers. The flexibility to test pricing now can help drive results as you wrap up the year. For retail businesses, balancing inventory will be key to a successful season. For instance, if your numbers are showing a decrease in demand, you may not want to bulk up your inventory. Instead, you might start the season off with enough supplies and see where that gets you. If you need to order later, you can, or you can offer other products that you have in stock, which will help balance your inventory and showcase other items. Taking inventory of your employees is crucial as well. If you’re accustomed to a seasonal hiring spree, you’ll want to be extra prudent about hiring the right talent. You don’t want to overwork your staff, but you also don’t want extra people on the payroll if they aren’t contributing to activities that drive revenue. Automating processes in your business can help you to run lean during the holiday season and beyond. 2. Social Media Will Play a Big Role in Influencing Buying Decisions While you may be tempted to scale back your marketing in anticipation of fewer sales this holiday, that would be one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Your competitors will still be advertising, and if you scale back you won’t even be considered an option by consumers. In times of economic uncertainty, people turn to distractions, and one of the biggest distractions today is social media. Your audience is active on social media sites, scrolling through content, which makes it a perfect avenue to showcase your products and holiday promos. If you’re going to make some room in your budget by not ordering as much inventory or hiring as many people as you would have in the past, it’s not a bad idea to put that spend towards social media advertising. It’s a great way to get your product and brand in front of the right people as well as expand your reach beyond the expected foot traffic (if you have a storefront). A more cost-efficient way to utilize social media is to build out a social media calendar and fill it with a strategic holiday promotion push. Make sure your existing network is aware of the great deals you’re offering and direct them to purchase pages or lead magnets with each post. Or, you can double down on your social ads by filling your profile with additional resources and information, which can help encourage on-the-fence buyers to seal the deal. 3. Labor Shortages Will Mean Relying on Marketing Automation As previously mentioned, you may be scaling back on hiring additional holiday staff this year. Now, that may be a choice, or finding reliable staff may simply be difficult right now. Ever since The Great Resignation, there’s been an uptick in unemployment despite there being an increase in available positions. Either way, if you need some additional help this year, utilizing marketing automation is a great way to keep your team lean while still adding a few extra sets of working “hands.” You can use your marketing automation tool to send out your holiday campaigns to prospects, which can increase conversions and sales while you’re busy prepping for in-person customers or other holiday sales-related tasks. 4. Delivery May Take Time, Yet Again Labor shortages are nationwide and span almost every industry, so it’s safe to say that delivery and shipping times may be extended due to low staff. What’s more, online shopping has increased exponentially due to the pandemic, and the online buying trend will only continue for the holidays. Typically with online purchases, people can be a bit flexible with turnaround times, however, if they’re buying gifts for the holidays, that flexibility goes out the window. If you’re in the eCommerce industry, make sure you’re prepared for delayed shipping times, otherwise, you’ll have some angry customers on your hands. You may be wondering what you can do since you’re at the mercy of logistics companies. A solution could be to offer in-store pick-ups and curbside orders. Or, you can take a note from Target, which is promising curbside pick-ups that will be ready same-day, as well as utilizing Shipt for fast delivery to their customers. This holiday season may not look like it did in years past, but that doesn’t mean you should panic. There are things you can do to prepare in advance for impressive sales and happy customers no matter what economic challenges pop up as we round out the year. Good luck this holiday season!
The Forgotten Content Distribution Tactic: Content Syndication Posted on November 17, 2022November 10, 2022 by Natalie Slyman Ross Simmonds, CEO at Foundation Inc, narrated how a well-thought distribution strategy led to 26,282 pageviews in the first seven days after publishing. The results sound unbelievable, but brands that espouse proper content distribution are hitting tremendous numbers in terms of organic traffic. Simmonds advises brands to create content once but distribute it forever. He advocates for the most common distribution channels like the ones discussed in our content distribution checklist. However, while some strategies are pretty common, some of these distribution tactics may have fallen through the cracks. One such strategy is content syndication. In this guide, we’ll get in the weeds about content syndication and discuss what it is, its pros and drawbacks, and how you can use it to benefit your brand. What is Content Syndication? Content syndication is the process of republishing the same piece of content on a different website, preferably a more popular one. In content syndication, you don’t create new content. Instead, you take existing content and publish it word-for-word on a different website. If you’ve ever opened an article and found a note like “This article originally appeared in [link to the original publication]” or “This article appeared in [original publication] and has been published here with permission,” that’s syndicated content. Check out these examples of syndicated content: Pay attention to me: how marketers can avoid losing the younger generation by Katy Keim Liquid expectations by Baiju Shah Web Monetization with Angular by Radoslaw Fabisiak Why Not(e)? By Slite How Does Content Syndication Strategy Work? Content syndication has come a long way, and its methodologies have evolved over the years. Today, you can syndicate any type of content, including blogs, articles, infographics, white papers, ebooks, videos, and podcasts. The process itself can happen in many ways. You can choose to syndicate an entire piece of content and use canonical tags to ensure the syndicated piece doesn’t compete with the original content. Alternatively, you can republish a condensed version or an excerpt of the original piece. Given the specifics of content syndication, most marketers are skeptical about it because, as you probably know, Google frowns upon duplicate content. Does syndicating content amount to duplication? The answer is no. Google rubber stamps syndicated content and won’t penalize you provided you follow the fundamental content syndication guidelines. Google requires you to make it obvious to the reader, and the search engine, that what they’re reading is a syndicated post. You can do that by adding the note “This article originally appeared in [original publication and link],” linking back to the original piece. From there, the publication you’re publishing the syndicated content to should add a canonical link. What Are the Benefits of Content Syndication? Like other content distribution tactics, content syndication can benefit your content marketing strategy. Some of the notable benefits include: 1. Increase in Organic Traffic When starting out, it can be difficult to reach your target audience. Syndication lets you stand on the shoulders of a reputable site to gather momentum. A short article on an authoritative website can get hundreds and even thousands of more eyeballs on the article than just publishing it on your website alone. When readers deem your content helpful, they may decide to check out the original source, which can result in a steady flow of organic traffic to your site or social media pages. Readers could turn into leads and eventually customers. It’s important that you optimize your site so you can capitalize on any increased traffic. For example, if you’re struggling to grow your email list, add newsletter sign-ups to your homepage or pages of content that is getting syndicated to help grow your list. Such is the impact of content syndication. The results you get could vary depending on where the content is syndicated. 2. More High-Quality Backlinks As mentioned earlier, Google requires that you add a link to the original source when you syndicate content. This counts as a backlink, and if it’s from an authoritative site, it will improve SEO performance for your site. High-quality backlinks give your site more credibility than your competitors. When your site’s trust and authority grow, your search engine ranking will improve. 3. Increase Website Authority Google’s search engine views backlinks as a seal of approval from reputable sources vouching that your website prioritizes helpful content. Getting high-quality backlinks can improve your domain authority (DA), which is a vital piece of the puzzle when it comes to growing organic traffic. Founder of The Parent Portfolio, Jonathan Sanchez, says he scales up his backlinks with just one or two syndicated blogs. He claims one syndicated article earned his site 83 backlinks, and after persistent syndication efforts, the website DA went from 9 to 54. 4. Cost Effectiveness Content syndication isn’t guest blogging or content curation, and that means you don’t need to create fresh content. You’re taking an old piece of content and publishing it on a reputable third-party website. This saves you the cost of having to create new content. In addition, syndicating a simple infographic on authoritative websites can result in hundreds of backlinks for free as opposed to paying for backlinks. 5. Increase in Revenue When you do content syndication in a way that increases website authority and organic traffic, there’s no doubt it will boost lead generation. It’s even better if the content is published where your audience already is, resulting in qualified leads heading to your site. With an uptick in site traffic from leads that fit your ideal audience profile, you’re able to more easily appeal to their interests and needs, and be seen as a viable solution. This means you can not only introduce them into your marketing funnel, but given their qualified status, it’s more likely they’ll become customers and increase your revenue. What Are The Drawbacks of Content Syndication? Content syndication has its benefits when done well. However, if you miss a step, it could derail your content marketing strategy. Here are some of the drawbacks of content syndication when done wrong: Spammy links could ruin your reputation. As mentioned earlier, quality backlinks signal to Google that your website is trustworthy and helpful. The opposite is also true. If your content is syndicated on “spammy” websites, it ruins your online reputation and waters down your content marketing effort. It doesn’t always result in quality leads. The readers seeing your content in a third-party article may not have experienced much of your brand. In some cases, it might be harder to convert these readers into customers. You have to come up with a proper nurturing strategy driven by a higher-level offer to continue engaging them. Syndicated content could negatively impact SEO. If the syndicated content doesn’t feature a canonical link, it competes with the original content. If the content is published on an authoritative website, it could outrank the original piece in the SERPs and negatively impact traffic. How to Get Your Content Syndicated There are two ways to get your content syndicated: free or paid. 1. Free Content Syndication In this case, your content is syndicated for free. All you have to do is reach out to websites that accept content syndication and prove to the owners/editors why they should publish your content on their platform. It’s a time-consuming process but if you find the right platforms, the effort will be well worth it. When looking for ideal partners, go for websites with a larger audience than yours and ensure they target the same audience as you do. Some of the best ways to find partners include: Directly approaching publications, influencers, and bloggers Looking for potential partners in social media groups If you don’t want to rely on a third-party, you can also self-syndicate your content on platforms such as Medium and LinkedIn. 2. Paid Content Syndication If you dread the back-and-forth with editors and bloggers to negotiate the rules of engagement, you can use paid content syndication. Certain paid platforms can handle the content syndication process on your behalf. These sites charge you per click, but we advise you to tread this path with caution. Some unscrupulous syndication sites rely on clickbait content and could end up earning you spammy backlinks. Reap the Benefits of Content Syndication Content syndication is a cost-effective distribution strategy that can help your business. However, to reap its benefits and sidestep the negatives, you have to come up with a solid plan. Vet the available partners and only pick those that you deem fit. In addition, produce high-quality content focusing on relevance, authority, and depth.
How to Boost Your Freelance Marketing Career After Being Laid Off Posted on November 16, 2022November 15, 2022 by Jess Lunk Things are really tough in tech this quarter, and while the looming recession indicated that layoffs were imminent, it’s really starting to hit home as employees lose their jobs just weeks before the holiday season. We all saw the news and clatter on social media. Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter and promptly fired tons of employees, and he isn’t stopping there. He just gave the axe to 80% of contractors and the majority of Twitter’s India staff. And it seems like other big tech giants are following this pattern: Meta laid off 11,000 employees Amazon plans to trim 10,000 corporate jobs Apple is instilling a hiring freeze Snap Inc. will say goodbye to 20% of employees Microsoft cut 1,000 jobs in October (and they may not be finished) Intel layoffs are reportedly “around the corner” When the vast majority of people hear about these tech layoffs, they typically think only engineers are being affected. But, as any seasoned marketer knows, when the time comes to make cuts, marketing is usually the first budget to be affected. While marketers are a resourceful bunch, determined to land on their feet, it doesn’t make the situation feel any better. So where does that leave marketing professionals who find themselves unmoored from their employer? Just as seasons turn, so will the job market, and companies will be hiring again before we know it. But in the meantime, turning to freelance work is a great way for marketers to keep their skills up and the money rolling in. To help, we’re sharing tips for how to start your freelance marketing career and the tools necessary for your freelance marketing stack. Let’s get started! Steps for Starting Your Freelance Marketing Career 1. Prepare to Change Your Mindset Do you live to work, or do you work to live? When working for a big corporate tech conglomerate, you’re essentially at the whim of your CEO. Their rules/how they want their company ran is instilled in the management team, which trickles down to the rest of the company. There’s typically a certain time you need to clock in, and most times, you can’t log off until certain tasks are completed. In exchange, you receive a steady paycheck, maybe some benefits, and “security.” However, if these layoffs are showing us anything, it’s that security can be an illusion. But something that isn’t an illusion is believing in and investing in yourself. Freelance work allows you to set your own terms and rules. You’re essentially working for yourself, so you have a bigger role to play in how you do business. This is a far cry away from the mentality you may have had when working for a larger company. When embarking on a freelance career, shifting your mindset is step number one. You may find that moving to a team of one is daunting, so give yourself some time to get in the right space mentally so you can take ownership of your new responsibilities and make sure you see yourself as your boss. What You’ll Need: A notebook – To write your thoughts and organize your plan of action Coffee, lots of coffee Meditation – If that’s your thing, download apps like Headspace or Aura 2. Zero in on Your Skillset What is it that you plan to offer in your freelance endeavor? What did you provide your previous employer, and what professional skills have you worked hard to sharpen these past few years? For this step, it’s crucial that you have an honest conversation with yourself about what you’re capable of providing to potential clients. It’s not just enough to offer services; you want to make sure that the services you offer are good enough to maintain steady, repeat clients. Once you’ve listed out a few services you can offer, put together a blurb that explains exactly what you do. Be specific and concise so you can entice and be transparent with potential clients. This blurb will serve as the foundation of your personal branding efforts. What You’ll Need: A marketing plan – This will help you put together everything you need to take your skillset and translate it into something sellable. Download our free Marketing Planner Workbook to get started. Webinars or eCourses – It’s not a bad idea to sharpen your skills by taking an educational course of some kind. Digital Marketing Institute offers regular marketing webinars on a variety of topics. 3. Establish Your Audience Who do you want to appeal to? Who do you think your services would benefit most? Narrowing down your target audience is one of the biggest steps you can take as a freelancer. While it may be tempting, you don’t want to accept work from just anyone. You want to make sure that you can deliver on specific needs and that you completely understand what it is your potential client is looking for. When you understand your audience, you understand how to deliver on their expectations, which will set you up for a successful relationship that could mean more business down the line. What You’ll Need: Audience personas – These will help you refine and pinpoint the exact kind of person you should be targeting. Download our free Buyer Persona Workbook to establish and keep track of your target audience. 4. Get Started Building Your Personal Brand Social media is a huge part of our lives. What started out as a fun way to share our day-to-day is now a big part of how people make their income and how brands reach their audience. When becoming a freelancer, building a social media presence will help you boost a personal brand and get you in front of more people who may need your services. You probably already have social media accounts, but consider creating new ones solely dedicated to your freelancing and target platforms that you feel make the most sense based on what you offer and where your audience may be. You’ll also want to give your LinkedIn account a refresh so that it better represents where you currently are in your professional career. Make sure it highlights your freelance services and skills, and consider asking colleagues for endorsements for an added boost. Also, consider creating a website for your freelance work. This can be a place where potential clients can go to learn more about what you offer and reach out to you for a quote or proposal. It’s also a great place to showcase your work or previous projects. What You’ll Need: A social media calendar – Staying consistent on social media and regularly posting will help boost your credibility and ensure you’re putting your personal brand out there. If you need help, download our free Social Media Calendar Template. Social media photo and video editing apps – You’ll want to make sure the photos you videos you publish on social media look aesthetically pleasing and high-quality. Download apps like VSCO or Adobe Premiere Rush. A website builder – You don’t need to know code in order to build a beautiful website easily. Check out tools like Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly. A CRM – You’ll want an intuitive, easy-to-use way to keep track of each customer you accumulate from your freelance business. BenchmarkONE’s CRM for small business offers you insight into your customers and prospects, as well as the marketing tools you need to nurture them. Request a free account today! 5. Look Into Freelance Websites It may feel like you’re shouting into the abyss when it comes to putting yourself out there as a freelancer. If you’re having trouble getting work or building your client base, make sure you look into freelance websites and platforms out there for some additional help. Sites like MarketerHire, Fiverr, Upwork, or Freelancer.com are great because they give freelancers a platform to showcase their expertise. They bring the work to you by making you available to their vast network of users, all looking for various needs within the professional sphere. What You’ll Need: A headshot – An app like Headshop can help you create a professional headshot in seconds. You can use this for your website and add it to your profile on any freelance site you join. A list of freelance websites – The more sites you’re on, the more exposure for your freelance brand and the more client possibilities you can experience. Make a list of potential sites and then fill out profiles on each. Just make sure you are prepared for the amount of work that may come your way. Keep Freelance in Your Back Pocket Freelance work may not be a permanent solution for you. Perhaps you’re only doing it until you can find another job. If you eventually decide to venture out of the world of self-employment, don’t totally abandon your freelance gig. Instead, turn it into a side hustle. It’s never a bad idea to have a second source of income. You never know; circumstances may change again, and having a side gig may come in handy. We know that times seem a bit bleak right now, especially for those experiencing the latest big tech layoffs first-hand. We hope this guide offers you a viable solution for getting your freelance career off the ground so you can take back control and feel confident heading into the new year. Good luck!
The 6 Types of Marketing Funnels You Need to Know Posted on November 10, 2022November 3, 2022 by Natalie Slyman A marketing funnel is a visual representation of your customer’s journey from the moment they come in contact with your brand till they become a paying customer. Other marketers also refer to marketing funnels as purchase, conversion, and lead funnels, among others. We’ve already discussed marketing and sales funnels, the differences, and the various marketing funnel types. However, in this article, we’re taking a closer look at the marketing funnels so you can get a better idea of how to start using them in your marketing and sales strategies. Why Do You Need A Marketing Funnel? Having a marketing funnel is essential for every business, especially now since so much shopping and research is done online. Your marketing funnel is essentially the act of generating leads on your website, identifying the needs of those leads at each stage of their journey, and mapping out the best ways to engage them and encourage them to take action, be it downloading your content or making a purchase. A marketing funnel allows you to optimize your marketing efforts to influence your customers and get them to take actions beneficial to your business. However, it’s crucial to note that your marketing funnel is powered by marketing automation software. By using an all-in-one marketing automation tool, like BenchmarkONE, you’re able to generate leads and keep track of them in your CRM. You can tag your leads based on certain qualifiers, which make it easy for you to determine where they are in their buyer’s journey, and you can set up automatic nurture campaigns to go out to your leads based on actions they take. These efforts help you not only engage your leads but push them through the funnel closer to a sale. 6 Types of Marketing Funnels You Need to Know About There are different types of marketing funnels. The one you choose for your brand will depend on several factors, including your audience, your goal, and your product or service. Also, you are not limited to one funnel; you can create different funnel types to push different CTAs to achieve your marketing goals. Here are some of the most used funnels by marketers: 1. Email Funnel The email marketing funnel is a marketing funnel that involves the conversion of a prospect to a paying customer using promotional and educational emails. Creating an email funnel typically involves: Collecting prospects’ contact details, including name and email address. Offering education to prospects on your brand and product via nurturing email campaigns. Including offer-based promotions and conversion-focused CTAs in order to convert prospects into customers. Examples of email funnels are: The free consultation funnel. This email funnel is a series of emails that nudge a prospect towards signing up for a free consultation. The cross-sell funnel. The goal of this email funnel is to get a customer to purchase another product or service. The upsell funnel. This email funnel leads a customer to select a product or service that has a higher price point than the one they’ve already purchased. The product launch funnel. When you launch a new product, you can create an email funnel that is focused on educating prospects and customers about that new product. 2. Video Funnel The video marketing funnel is designed to convert prospects to customers through videos. To do this successfully, you have to create videos that will attract, educate, engage, and convert your leads at every stage of their journey. People love video content because it’s entertaining and simple. In fact, Facebook gets about eight billion video views daily. If you’re looking to increase your content engagement, you should consider adding videos to your rotation. However, for video funnels to be successful, you have to do the following: Identify the traffic source for the top-of-the-funnel content. Lots of marketers turn to social media and Youtube. Map the buyer’s journey and fill the funnel with video content that’s relevant to each stage. Include a strong CTA and links to supporting content, and brand your videos with custom intros and outros. Use video in your paid ads, as this will get more top-of-the-funnel traction. 3. Webinar Funnel The webinar funnel is a marketing funnel that attracts visitors by way of webinar promotion and registration, converts them to leads, and finally turns them into paying customers. A typical webinar funnel starts with generating traffic to your webinar landing page and ends when they purchase your product or service. With webinar funnels, the registration point is where you collect details of prospects interested in your webinar. You can include emails in this, as you’ll need to send reminders to registered participants before the webinar event itself. When creating a webinar funnel, make sure to do the following: Include a form on your webinar’s landing page that asks for names and email addresses, and include key details that will be covered on the webinar to entice more registrants. Have your marketing automation tool add a tag to each webinar registrant, identifying them as someone who signed up for your webinar. This will be indicated in your CRM and help you understand their needs more. It will also indicate who is in your webinar funnel. Set up a confirmation or thank you page after registration. Send out an email to each registrant that includes how they’ll log on to the webinar the day of the broadcast. Promote your webinar. At the end of the webinar, promote a special offer for registrants to redeem. Send a follow-up email after the webinar that includes the slides, recording, and special promo to boost conversions. 4. Lead Magnet Funnel The lead magnet funnel involves offering your website visitors a valuable resource in exchange for their contact information. This resource can be in any format – video, case study, eBook, template, white paper, or product trial. The beauty of the lead magnet funnel is that it attracts high-quality leads interested in the content you are giving them. Furthermore, the lead magnet funnel will help to establish your brand as an authority, making you top of mind when the prospects require a service or product you offer. With lead magnets, make sure you Begin with an incentive that your potential customers will find valuable. Design your landing page and your follow-up email series for lead nurturing. Promote your lead magnet and use social media marketing and PPC campaigns to send high-quality traffic to the page. Watch your list grow, and analyze your campaign performance. 5. Live Demo Funnel The live demo funnel is often used in SaaS and product-based businesses. It’s an effective marketing funnel because it involves hosting a live demonstration of your product so leads can see first-hand how it works. One of the benefits of the live demo funnel is that it gives your brand a chance to answer your audience’s questions directly. As a result, you can remove all their friction and doubts about your product, convincing them to make a purchase. Furthermore, using the live demo funnel will help you establish a relationship with your customers and begin the journey toward ensuring their lifelong loyalty. For a live demo funnel, you’ll want to establish the following: An on-site CTA for visitors to sign up for a live demo. Create an email series aimed at encouraging leads to schedule a live demo. An email series to deploy after a lead has sat through a live demo. Since demos are typically experienced when a lead is closer to making a decision, this email series should offer them additional bottom-of-the-funnel resources, such as case studies or testimonials, to help them make the decision to buy. 6. Home Page/Landing Page Funnel The landing page is the page on your website where visitors arrive after clicking on an ad. The purpose of this page is to persuade website visitors to take action. This can be anything from signing up for a webinar or downloading a resource to buying your product or service. Typically, the landing page funnel works with other funnel types for maximum results. Therefore, it’s recommended that you have a clear CTA on your homepage to serve as a catch-all. Keep in mind, however, that not everyone who enters this funnel is qualified. Therefore, you’ll want to ensure this funnel is focused on offering education and allows you to mark leads as qualified once they perform a specific action that takes them further down the funnel. Marketing funnels are valuable marketing tools that allow you to build relationships with your customers through the buyer’s journey from awareness to action. They consider various scenarios, allowing you to offer your leads more personalized nurture to address their specific needs. Use a combination of the marketing funnels listed above to drive engagement and boost conversions for your business.
6 Ways to Get More From Your Webinars Posted on November 9, 2022November 3, 2022 by Natalie Slyman Webinars enable you to engage one-on-one with potential and existing customers. Whether you want to boost brand awareness, educate customers, or generate and nurture leads, webinars will get you there because they reach a wider audience. However, when you host a webinar, not all your existing customers or followers will attend. Plus, out of those who attend, only 40% pay attention from start to finish. As a result, some attendees are bound to miss crucial details that are being covered. Given an opportunity, these customers would love to consume the content in different formats. And by using that webinar content to create different forms of content, you’re able to engage even more people. In this article, we’ll show you the various different ways you can repurpose your webinar content and use it to engage and educate more prospects. 1. Transcribe Your Webinar If you want your webinar to rank better in search results, you have to optimize your video for SEO. One of the best ways to do so is to transcribe your webinar. First, create a blog teaser that includes the keywords and search phrases you want this content to rank for. Second, publish the teaser on your website together with the webinar video and transcription. Chances are good that the webinar will rank better on Google SERPs, resulting in increased traffic and leads. The transcription will come in handy when sharing your webinar video on sites like YouTube and Wistia. Remember, while YouTube automatically generates a transcript for every video, they include a few misspelled words here and there — so it’s still best to create one yourself. 2. Write a Blog or Series Post-Webinar During a live webinar, you have less than one hour to put across the concepts. That time might not be enough for the speakers to share the nitty-gritty details of the topic of discussion. Writing a blog post or a series allows you to share a more in-depth version of the webinar. Ask the guest speaker to write a blog expounding on what they discussed or share the details they didn’t get time to discuss during the webinar. Publish the blog as a guest post on your website and include links to your applicable content, as well as other content from the contributor. Doing so gives the guest speaker more incentive to share the article out, getting it more exposure and making it reach a wider audience. Alternatively, if the guest speaker is unable to write the blog, do it yourself. Using the webinar transcription, draw out tips that are tangential to the webinar theme. Create a blog around the topics, publish it, and share it on social media. Make sure to tie the webinar in your social post and tag the webinar speaker so they can easily reshare. 3. Create Slides and Upload Them to SlideShare This study shows that 29.8% of your customers want webinars served as a mixture of video, audio, and slides. You’ve given them the webinar in video and audio format. Sharing the webinar in slide format is the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle. One of the best platforms to share webinar decks is SlideShare. The service is unique in that it reaches a new audience outside the channels you use for inbound marketing. Repurpose your webinar into slides, making sure to insert the right keywords into the text. SlideShare automatically creates a text version of the slides and puts it on the page, so if the slides feature the right keywords and phrases, they will appear more on SlideShare searches. Moreover, while it’s standard practice to focus on the main points when creating the slide, it’s wise to add a lot of text to each slide. SlideShare works well for self-explanatory slides – those that are less graphical and more text-based. 4. Repurpose The Webinar into an eBook This method won’t work for some webinars, but if your webinar discusses a topic that merits a deeper explanation, it might lend itself well to the creation of an eBook. One mistake people make when repurposing a webinar into an eBook is converting the slides or transcription directly into written format. Rather, use the slides and transcription to build a solid outline for the eBook. Use the webinar as an expert interview or background research. Draw out quotes and data to add credibility to your content, then flesh out the outline with unique and fresh content. You can offer the eBook for free on your website or share it as gated content to generate leads for your business. 5. Turn Visuals, Quotes, and Key Takeaways into Social Posts While social media is an effective channel to market your webinars, it requires smart tactics to get the most out of it. The most important thing is to determine where your target audience hangs out and to share your content there. Pull out the most interesting, insightful, and fun facts and quotes from your webinar recording. Keep in mind different types of content work best for different social platforms. For that reason, repurpose these quotes, facts, and stats to suit each channel. For example, create a five-minute highlight reel showing the key takeaways of your webinar on TikTok. Alternatively, you could create a Twitter thread out of the key takeaways or post stunning graphics of the most insightful quotes on Instagram. 6. Gate the Webinar on Your Website Webinars are wonderful for lead generation. However, not everyone who may be interested in tuning into your webinar hears about it in the initial promotion. Make sure you record your webinar broadcast; that way, you can put it up on your website’s resource page and make it available to site visitors. Gate it so you can generate new leads from it long after it’s aired. Once your broadcast is over, make sure you get as much out of your webinar recording as possible. Doing so will help you expand your reach and generate more leads, as well as provide different formats of content to further engage your audience.
5 Video Marketing Trends for 2023 and How Small Businesses Can Use Them Posted on November 3, 2022October 26, 2022 by Natalie Slyman Video has been one of the fastest-growing marketing trends in recent years. The number of people who watched digital videos increased by 3.2% to 244.4 million in 2020. Small business owners can use video as a marketing tool to effectively reach their target audience. With four in ten online users watching videos from brands they are thinking of buying from, now is the time to get in front of your buyers with video marketing. In this article, we’ll outline the top video marketing trends for 2023 and how small businesses can use them to reach their target audience. Benefits of Video Marketing According to marketers who participated in a Wyzowl survey, businesses who embrace video marketing: Increase their brand awareness Improve their lead generation game Improve sales Reduce support calls Generate more traffic Increase their users’ understanding of their products and services 86% of businesses recognize these benefits and incorporate video marketing into their marketing strategies. Is it time for your business to be one of them? Video Marketing Trends For 2023 Video marketing is a fun and creative way to get in front of your potential buyers. Here are the top trends for 2023 to incorporate video marketing into your overall marketing efforts. 1. Live Video Facebook users spend more time on live videos and have a higher engagement rate than pre-recorded videos. Major social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Tiktok now offer businesses the opportunity to engage with their target audience in real time with live videos. Businesses can use live videos to: Share live events with followers Show your audience the journey behind a product or service Host interviews with key thought leaders and industry experts Share behind the scenes of some of the business operations Educate the audience on how to use specific products and services Conduct a Q&A session to address pressing questions followers may have With live videos, brands can build and strengthen their customer relationships. The exclusive nature (only those who attended the live video can participate) makes it unique from other video marketing formats. 2. Behind-The-Scenes Videos Another video marketing trend for 2023 is behind-the-scenes (BTS) videos. These videos give audiences a sneak peek into how your brand operates. There are so many things you can do with a BTS video, including: Give your followers a sneak peek into business activities that happen around you daily Interview team members at different times Share the planning process of projects and even production Tell your brand story Showcase some of the challenges the business experiences Some marketers fear that BTS will make your business appear unprofessional, but the opposite is true. Consumers love authenticity, and showing your audience the people and process behind the brand can make your brand more approachable, friendly, and appealing. 3. Search-Optimized Videos While video SEO (Search Engine Optimization) has been around for a while, it recently became more mainstream when more brands began to recognize the benefits of video marketing. Optimizing your videos for search engines can help them appear in the top spots of search engines and be found more easily by potential consumers. To get the best results for your optimized videos, you can follow these tips: Select the right hosting platform for your videos depending on your business goals Create exciting video content that adds value to your audience Publish consistently Use primary keywords in the video title, tags, and description Use high-quality images as video thumbnails and avoid generic thumbnail templates. Upload video transcripts for every video you create Use strong CTAs (calls to action) Avoid uploading the same video on different pages on your website; this affects SEO negatively Use social media to drive traffic to videos on your website or preferred hosting platform 4. Atomizing Videos Atomization will help you achieve more with your video content. It involves repurposing the same video content for different channels and platforms. For example, you created a long-form video for your brand’s YouTube channel. With atomization, you can extract parts of this video and post them on other platforms, like TikTok, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can turn your video content into: Audio and upload it as a podcast A blog post through transcribing and a bit of editing Short-form videos for Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook stories, and Instagram stories A carousel post highlighting key takeaways A teaser that directs viewers to the original video With video atomization, marketers can save money, time, and effort by making one video and using it to create other forms of content for different platforms instead of creating new content from scratch. 5. Educational Videos @drwhitneybowe #greenscreen One if the first things you will notice after just a few cycles of #skincycling is less irritation, less redness and smoother texture. Over time, you can see improvements in hyperpigmentation and firming lines. #thatboweglow ♬ Super Freaky Girl – Nicki Minaj Educational videos, sometimes called how-to and instructional videos, are an easy and fun way to interact with your audience. Educational videos help your audience, and potential customers understand how your products and services are used and how they can benefit. Videos help people retain information better than text by providing a visual experience that’s entertaining, engaging, and educational, with viewers retaining 95% of a video. Before recording your educational video, be sure to: Make a plan on the scope and what to share. Craft the script if you will be creating an animated how-to video. A live-action how-to can also benefit from the direction of a video script. Keep the video focused on a single product or service. Identify burning questions prospects have about the product/service and address them in your how-to video. How-to videos make you appear as the expert with the solution to your audience’s pain points, making your prospects feel valued. It’s a great way to build brand trust and loyalty by providing value to your viewers. If you are interested in generating more traffic, increasing brand awareness, and increasing sales, try incorporating these video marketing trends into your marketing strategy. They will help set your business up for success and get ahead of the competition.
How to Get Started with Your Holiday Marketing Posted on November 2, 2022November 2, 2022 by Jess Lunk The holiday season presents unique opportunities for both businesses and consumers. It’s a time when consumers happily purchase products for family, friends, and loved ones. For businesses, it’s a chance to increase sales, brand awareness, and engagement. Every year, the holidays are pretty promising for small businesses. Some even know that they’ll make the majority of their sales for the entire year in these couple of months. However, this year, with a looming recession, rising costs, and lingering uncertainty around supply chains, holiday sales may not soar to the same heights as in past years. If you want this season to be as impactful for your small business as possible, then you should start planning your holiday marketing now. We know that it can be hard to prioritize this in your marketing plan with all the other things that come with running your business. But we’ve got a list of steps for you to take that will ensure you’re ahead of the game. Why Should You Plan Your Holiday Marketing Campaign Now? You may think you’re jumping the gun a bit, but, as they say, the early bird gets the worm. Here are some reasons you should start planning your holiday marketing right now: Even if this year isn’t as busy as last year, you should still anticipate a rush in business, and nothing is worse than having an increase in online orders and foot traffic with limited products or resources. By starting your prep now, you can estimate the number of sales to expect and therefore prepare your inventory to match the demand. When you’re prepared, you can rest easy. Being prepared and setting up your marketing ahead of time will give you time to enjoy the holidays instead of worrying if you scheduled that Thanksgiving promotion email to go out. You can be more strategic in your approach because you aren’t scrambling to get a campaign together. By starting early, you’re giving yourself more time to come up with effective holiday promotions, the right amplification approach, and partners to join forces with. Plus, you’ll have more time to identify the most effective marketing channels to use to reach your audience. Step-By-Step Guide for Prioritize Your Holiday Marketing The reality is with every passing day; you’re losing the chance to make this year’s holiday campaign as profitable and successful as possible. We know you’re busy, but you don’t want to be kicking yourself when December comes, and your sales are behind last year’s numbers. Here’s a simple process that will help you get your holiday marketing going this year. 1. Begin With the End in Mind What is the purpose of your holiday campaign? What do you want to achieve at the end of the campaign? Whether it is to get at least 500 new customers or triple your current gross profit, defining your goals before you start will set the path for your campaign’s success. Make your holiday marketing goals SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely). Setting unrealistic expectations for yourself will only make you anxious and disappointed. 2. Remember Who You’re Selling To You should already know your target audience long before creating your holiday campaigns. However, sometimes the holidays open you up to a new audience or a specific subset of your current target group. Either way, zeroing in on who you want your holiday campaigns to reach will only make it easier for you to achieve your goals and ensure you get your promotions in front of the right people. Use identifiers like location, gender, age range, income level, and interests to help you better understand your target audience’s behavior and needs. Tap into the social media platforms they use, as that will tell you where they spend most of their time and where you can run paid ads that will reach them. The more you understand about your target audience, the better informed your decisions will be when creating campaign content, offers, and promotions. You may be wondering how you can access this kind of information. The best way is to use a small business CRM so you can capture as much lead data as possible. An all-in-one CRM, like BenchmarkONE, brings your sales and marketing efforts together, so you can not only tap into rich customer data but use that data to implement your holiday marketing campaign seamlessly. But more on that later. 3. Create Optimized Offers and Landing Pages Once you have your goals and a solid picture of your ideal holiday buyers, the next step is to craft your offer (or offers) and a landing page that you’ll drive traffic to. This page will be where your audience can sign up to take advantage of your holiday promotion. Will you offer your customers discounts, free delivery, or something else you believe they’ll appreciate? If yours is a service-based business, what will you do differently for your customers that they will find valuable? Keep in mind that whatever you go with has to be compelling enough to encourage a quick purchase decision. Make sure you build a landing page that includes everything your audience needs to know about your holiday offer and how they can benefit from it. Include things like: An attention-grabbing headline Engaging copy that clearly highlights the benefits of your offer Captivating, branded visuals An opt-in form to track sign-ups 4. Promote Your Offer Now that your offer is ready, you need to get it in front of your target audience. You need to draw up your promotion plan and identify channels where you can reach your audiences through paid or organic efforts. Promotion channels you can use include: Email marketing – Gives you the opportunity to reach your audience directly with tailored, personalized messages. Social media ads – You can tap into each platform’s vast user base and narrow it down based on criteria and characteristics that align with your audience. List the assets you need for each platform ahead of time, such as images, copy, and social media ad spec size, which will help you get your ads running efficiently. Blogging – Create a promotional post and add your holiday promo CTA to it. You can also include the CTA in your top-performing blog posts. PPC Ads – It may be helpful to include your holiday promo in your pay-per-click advertising if that is part of your marketing strategy. Partner or influencer marketing – Reach out to influencers or brand partners to see if they’d be willing to share your promotion with their audience. Just make sure their audience aligns with your target audience for your holiday campaign. 5. Nurture and Build a Connection with Your Leads Once your holiday marketing offers and campaigns go live, how do you plan to convince prospects to become paying customers? What happens to leads after the holiday period ends? Encouraging repeat business from or retaining these new customers is just as important as acquiring them in the first place, and developing a lead nurture strategy is the most effective route. In step two, we emphasized the importance of knowing your audience. We touched on how BenchmakrONE is an all-in-one tool that allows you to tap into key customer data and use that data to implement marketing and sales strategies. By using BenchmarkONE, you can put together effective, personalized email nurture campaigns that provide your customers with content and education they need to make repeat buying decisions. The best part? These nurture campaigns can be automated based on triggers you set up based on specific customer actions and criteria. So, all those new leads you acquired from your holiday campaign can be automatically followed up with while you’re busy doing other important things for your business. 6. Identify Metrics for Reporting and Measuring Success You’ll want to know if your campaign was actually successful, so make sure you clearly define metrics and look back at your goals to make sure they were achieved. Things like conversion rate and the number of sales you generated will help you understand if your promo landed with your audience. Also, make sure you create tracking URLs for each promotional channel you push your campaign out on, as this will tell you which generated the most sales and leads. The holiday season is an opportunity for you to give back to your customers through exciting offers, discounts, and rewards. It’s also a time of your for your small business to increase sales and be as productive and successful as possible. This year, say no to ignoring your holiday marketing and last-minute campaigning. Start planning your campaigns now and enjoy the holidays while reaping the rewards!
How to Recession-Proof Your Agency Posted on October 27, 2022October 31, 2022 by Jonathan Herrick The global financial crisis and the burst of the U.S. housing bubble signaled the beginning of the Great Recession, which spanned from 2007 to 2009 and heralded the end for many small businesses. And while it is still just speculation that another recession may be looming around the corner, as an agency, you should always be prepared for its possibility. That means mapping out ways to ensure your business survives an economic downturn and staying a step ahead just in case a recession happens sooner rather than later. Strategies for Recession-Proofing Your Agency The better you plan, the better protected your agency will be, regardless of the economic outlook. With that in mind, here are some strategies to help you make sure your agency is as recession-proof as possible. Keep On Marketing Marketing is the lifeblood of any business. And for you and your clients, it’s important to keep up with all of your marketing activities and channels, so you’re in a good position to weather a financial storm. Most businesses pay less attention to marketing during an economic downturn. Gain a competitive edge ahead of (and during) a recession by doing the opposite, keeping your marketing efforts going strong and maintaining those ties with your audience. Similarly, advertising costs get lower as economic insecurity rises since businesses cut back on ad spending. Leave room in the budget to take advantage of low advertising competition and snag some high-value ads at a lower price than you’d get them otherwise. Budget Trims and Lean Teams Instead of laying off team members or cutting down on the number of people in your agency, take an overall assessment of your agency and its operations and look for other ways to streamline costs. Are there any of your processes that you can cut out without any negative impact on the agency’s operations? Then that’s where you’ll want to start. For example, do you offer incentives to your top-performing team members? Instead of immediate incentives, make a promise and add a time frame to it, giving your business enough time to wade through tough times without having to worry about incentive-related expenses. And if you work with freelancers, offer a retainer package instead of paying per project to reduce expenses incurred by your agency. You should also take inventory of all tools and applications you use and see which ones you can do without. The goal: make small but impactful changes, and you’ll leave more wiggle room for your agency to stay afloat through a downturn. Focus on Sales Sales are what keeps new clients coming in. Invest in skilling up your employees, and train them on sales and closing techniques. And while you’re at it, pay a lot of attention to your current clients with customer retention strategies that aim to keep existing clients satisfied. Existing clients can also help bring in new clients through referrals. Politely ask for referrals after the successful completion of projects. You can also ask for testimonials and use this as social proof for your marketing campaigns. Why Hire a Marketing Agency? Faced with economic uncertainty, some of your clients may consider looking for an in-house marketer instead of a marketing agency. Below are convincing reasons why working with you is better, especially during a downturn. Expertise and Creativity Agencies work with multiple brands and juggle a lot of creative needs and marketing directions. This makes them pros at innovation and ensures they always have lots of brilliant ideas for standing out from the pack. Diverse Marketing Whether it’s digital marketing, social media marketing, print ads, or pay-per-click ads, marketing agencies have the skills to bring ads to life while working on a tight budget and focusing on long-term goals. Up-to-Date Skills A marketing agency provides businesses with access to experts who are well-informed about the latest marketing trends, skills, and strategies – all of which get applied to marketing projects. In-house marketers may struggle to keep up, especially if they’re taking on other roles too. Cost-Effective In-house marketers are expensive, requiring a yearly salary and a large investment in training. Agencies, on the other hand, offer predictable pricing and ensure businesses don’t end up paying any more than they need to. Preparing for unforeseen circumstances as an agency does not make you a pessimist. Instead, it makes you a proactive small business owner who is toughening your business up for a potentially bumpy road. Follow the tips above to start recession-proofing, and make sure you’re ready for whatever might be ahead.