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Companies that have other companies as customers are known as Business to Business or B2B companies. They create products or services for them just like other retail companies which means they need to be promoted like any other business.

If you’re part of a B2B company and are trying to find better ways to market your business, consider digital marketing techniques specifically designed for these unique companies. 

Approaching B2B Marketing

B2B marketing is usually done on a smaller scale and can sometimes be more complex for companies due to the difficulty of approaching their final clients. These aren’t usually the top executives but instead, are employees in charge of purchase decisions.

In order to sell your products or services, it’s essential for B2B companies to know how their customers will buy them. To do this, Google did a study tracing the process of buying a B2B company and it showed that it usually begins on the website. The study showed that 90 percent of B2B opportunity seekers do a search online first. Specifically, they make an average of 12 searches before they settle on a specific brand.

This search begins in a generic way 71 percent of the time. Little by little, it becomes more specific until it reaches one company. For example, if someone searches for a cleaning products provider, they’ll type that in the Google search engine. Clients don’t look for you as an enterprise at the beginning so paid generic searches can pay off.

Before a B2B buyer decides on a company, it’ll go through several pages of your competitors. You have to concentrate on making your site the best it can be for this reason.

“It’s not enough to just offer your brand’s products. Influence and decision-making are occurring earlier in the purchase route, even before the recognition of the brand”, the study says. “Identify where you can be part of the conversation from the beginning and during that search.”

Thus, a B2B company has to prepare to face a buyer who expects the same experiences that he expects as a consumer who would go through the same search process to find what they’re looking for. This information makes having a significant web presence important. It sounds logical, but some might be surprised to learn that a large number of companies—especially small ones—don’t have a website.

For example, in Spain, 47.6 percent of microenterprises lack a web page and, as curious as it may seem, the percentage of SMEs that don’t have one increases up to 88.1 percent, according to the National Telecommunications Observatory and Information Society.

In Spain, 32.1 percent of SMEs and large organizations make purchases through this medium, while 16.6 percent of micro-companies do so, according to data from the National Observatory of Telecommunications and the Information Society. Your website is basically the first point of contact for B2B companies, so a company of this type (and really any business) has to be present in the best possible way.

As you can see, knowing how to reach your targeted market is a critical step in increasing your bottom line. Here are four tips to help you do this and create the best digital marketing strategy for your company.

1. Optimize your page so that it appears in search engines

According to a survey conducted by Google a couple of years ago, the audience for B2B companies is online with 89 percent of B2B buyers looking for purchase information on the web. Things have changed and B2B customers today don’t expect to deal with a sales professional until they want to close the sale. Most importantly, they expect the same digital experiences they would find as customers, according to Google.

You need to position your page within the first results of Google so those B2B clients can find you when they do a search.

There are two ways in which websites are positioned in Google, the paid one (SEM, Search Engine Marketing) and the non-paid one (SEO, Search Engine Optimization). Each case is particular, but a very general recommendation is that a site should use both to position itself on search engines properly.

This is one of the most important recommendations when drawing up a digital marketing strategy. It’s very important to have good, quality content because this will grow your social channels, capture leads and transform them into sales in an organic way.

That being said, it’s not usually enough, so you need to consider a paid campaign for your most valuable content. Check your metrics and choose the content that has the best results. Improve it and then start a paid campaign.

2. Create a strategy and direct it correctly

Like all business actions, digital marketing ones must have a strategy. This strategy has to be directed to who is going to buy your products or services. In the case of a B2B company, this is not always easy to determine. First, draw the “customer journey”, the path that your customers travel throughout the purchase process. As a B2B company, your customers are other companies, but this doesn’t mean that it makes this process simple.

Google’s research knocked down several myths about B2B marketing and how it was believed that it had to be targeted to high-level executives. Their study showed that this simply isn’t the case as the people making purchase decisions aren’t those who run the organization.

This investigation showed that the strategies targeting these executives are not as effective as they were before. Those that influence the purchase search have changed and are now employees who are not the heads of the organizations. According to the study:

81 percent of a given company has a say in purchasing decisions while 64 percent of the final decision falls on senior managers

What will almost always resonate in this decision making are these employees’ voices. “Clearly, if you’re marketing only to the highest level, you’re overlooking the people who need to notice you”, Google explains.

One tip in doing this is to make sure you don’t neglect the mobile version of your site. According to Google’s study, 42 percent of B2B business customers use a mobile device when searching to buy and this is growing very fast. “They are comparing prices, reading about products and contacting companies”, the study says. “But they are also buying. The purchase rate through these devices grew 22 percent in the last two years”.

Today, more than ever, a company has to have a site that is completely responsive to any device so your strategy always has to include proper device optimization in order to offer your customers rich experiences. Remember, they seek the same quality of experiences as any consumer.

3. Use a blog

This is constantly being noted as one of if not the best way for any company to engage with your target audience. Specifically, it’s the preferred channel for a B2B company to communicate with its potential customers.

According to a Hubspot study,

Companies that have a blog have 55 percent more visitors to their websites.

This helps convert potential customers to actual customers thanks to the information on your website. This translates into more leads. 

Numbers from the same platform indicate that companies with a blog see their leads growing 126 percent more than those that don’t. So, those companies that take the time to blog get more than double the data of potential customers who are interested in the company and the information it generates.

Having a blog can help a company in many ways, including the fact that Google indexes much more (434 percent more, specifically) of its pages. The more indexed pages you have, the more opportunities you have for your site to be found by Google’s search engines and, consequently, the more likely it will appear organically among the first sites when someone does a related search.

Another benefit is that marketing specialists who prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to enjoy a positive return on investment in addition to being considered as a trusted source. According to Hubspot, blogs are the fifth most reliable source of truthful information on a given topic.

Publications in a corporate blog should be constant as this greatly increases the possibility of increasing traffic to the company’s site. B2B companies that published 11 times or more a month have more traffic than those that did not publish or did so only once a month.

4. Use LinkedIn and professional networks

LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world and the most recommended for companies in the B2B market. There are more than 500 million users on it, of which a large part are professionals or people who lead to or are part of organizations. It’s not by chance that it’s the favorite social platform for B2B’s content marketing specialists.

According to a Content Marketing Institute study, 97 percent used LinkedIn in their strategy. More so, among the three most effective networks (LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook), LinkedIn is in first place with 78 percent thinking it’s the most effective for content marketing purposes. LinkedIn is a way to drive traffic to your company’s site and generate sales. 

According to a LinkedIn guide on how to market on their platform, the first thing an entrepreneur has to do is to create their own profile. “Your LinkedIn profile and that of all the other members of the company are the peaks that come together to form the mountainous chain of your brand”, the guide states.

When people look for your name, you want them to find you and find something that makes you more attractive than your competitors. If you don’t already have one, make a LinkedIn profile. Here are some tips for you to do it well. 

• Add a photo (this increases the chances of connecting with someone nine times).

• Update it with your current position.

• Add your current location.

• Upload videos, images or any file so people can know you better. 

If you make a good profile, it will help convince the people who see you and who are interested in doing business with your company say yes when you approach them with your business proposition.

You’ll also need to make a business profile on LinkedIn. When making a LinkedIn page for your company, it needs to be complete. According to statistics from the same platform:

30 percent of companies that complete all of their profile information get more visits per week.

This information includes the description which should contain phrases and keywords that define the mission and purpose of your company. You’ll also need to have the company logo, web address, location, industry and the size of your organization. 

Now, you have to figure out whether you want to generate leads (potential clients that give you their contact data) or get brand awareness through your LinkedIn presence. As in any strategy, you need to be clear about your goals. This is the third marketing tip of the LinkedIn guide after making your own profile and that of your company. It has to do with what you want to achieve with the platform. 

Start by getting to know your audience. From there you can tailor the content for them. “For example, your company sells a productivity tool for social media specialists and you want to encourage them to try it. If they do, they’ll probably recommend it to their bosses”, the guide explains. In this case, your goal would most likely be to increase brand awareness. This calls back to the “customer journey”, that was discussed earlier. 

In this example, while companies are the final target for your product, the social media professionals within the company who make the purchasing decisions need to be the initial marketing target. This means your efforts should be focused on them trying out your product, entering into an exclusive deal with your brand and seeing that you are the best option to increase their productivity.

In addition to LinkedIn, you need to investigate other social platforms your targeted companies use. There are usually industries that have their own networks, too, so don’t forget to also use those.

These are four relatively simple things you can do to start marketing your B2B business on a digital platform. Go through each tip and use them to the best of your abilities. Consider hiring professionals for things like content development and SEO if you aren’t comfortable with these strategies. If done properly, you can expect a good return for all of your marketing efforts. 

The post 4 Digital Marketing Strategies for B2B Companies appeared first on Kolau Blog.

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Do you remember the scene in Alice in Wonderland where Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she ought to go?

“Well, that depends on where you want to get to,” the cat responds.
“Oh, it really doesn’t matter,” Alice replies.
“Then, it really doesn’t matter which way you go,” the cat concludes.

This passage teaches us a valuable lesson: Knowing where we want to go is important in order to get there. Therefore, knowing how to write a marketing plan allows you to draw your road map and discover what path to take to achieve your goals (to attract and retain customers).

A marketing plan doesn’t have to be extensive or complicated. Rather, the best marketing plans are short and simple. However, the key to writing an effective marketing plan lies in a great paradox: the difficulty of achieving simplicity.

In the words of Leonardo Da Vinci: 

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.  

Similarly, Steve Jobs discussed the idea when he said, “Simple can be more difficult than complex.” Even Albert Einstein himself said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” However, it might be aeronautical engineer Kelly Johnson who alluded to this concept the best using four simple letters: KISS—“Keep It Simple Stupid.” 

This guide will help you discover how to make a marketing plan in a simple way, based on the KISS concept and the extended model known as the “1 Page Marketing Plan.” This model has been defended by numerous marketing academics including Philip Kotler but was spread widely by entrepreneur Allan Dib through his best-seller of the same name. 

Is it Essential to Have a Marketing Plan?

Marketing plans are a tried and true method that are continuously used all over the world for companies big and small. However, in the SME universe, it seems that the concept or, at least its implementation, is not as widespread as it should be. 

According to a recent study carried out by Outbound Engine, 50 percent of SMEs don’t have an established marketing plan. The lack of this piece of the business puzzle can result in a stagnation or even a reduction of sales for a company.

While no one is sure why SMEs typically lack a sound marketing plan, it may be due to the fact that marketing plans—traditionally speaking—are perceived to be complex documents more than 100 pages in length. This is seen as a great waste of time and resources to most business owners who are more focused on meeting customer demands and staying within their set budgets. 

However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Marketing plans should always be simple. As Allan Dib says in his book, the 64/4 rule should always be applied to any marketing plan:

The 1 page marketing plan is 4% of the effort generated by 64% (or more) of the results in your business.  

So, it can be assumed that SMEs choose to shy away from marketing plans for their perceived complexity, but it doesn’t prove whether or not a marketing plan is essential for the long-term operation of a company.

Taking into account that a report by the Press and Communication agency found that 87 percent of SMEs that closed in 2018 didn’t have a professional marketing plan, it’s safe to say that marketing plans are essential for a business’s long-term success.

What is the Purpose of a Marketing Plan?

A marketing plan can help you organize your marketing strategies and focus on achieving your goals for your company. 

As defined by Sally Dibb and Lyndon Simkin in their book, Marketing: Concepts and Strategies, “marketing planning is a systematic process involving the assessment of marketing opportunities and resources, the determination of marketing objectives and the development of a plan for implementation and control.“

To give you a clearer idea, your one-page strategic marketing plan should allow you to organize your marketing strategies into three phases precisely related to your customers’ purchase cycle:

• Before your potential customer makes a purchase.

• During the purchase.

• After your potential customer has bought and officially become a customer.

At the same time, it should allow you to answer the following questions about your business:

• Who do you want to reach (your target audience)?

• What do you mean (your message for your target audience)?

• How are you going to reach  them (the means you will use to reach your target audience)?

• How are you going to capture their interest (your lead capture system)?

• How are you going to establish a relationship with them (your lead nurturing system)?

• How are you going to turn them into customers (your conversion strategy)?

• How will you do it to offer a world-class experience?

• How will you increase the value of your customers?

• How will you do it to be recommended (your referral program)?

These nine questions are the starting point and the backbone of everything your marketing plan should contain and this is how the one-page marketing plan proposed by Allan Dib is structured.

To build your own one-page marketing plan, follow this step-by-step guide based on the nine questions above.

Step 1: Find and analyze your target audience

The key to the success of any business often lies in what it knows about its potential customers. A business needs to know their clients perfectly including demographics, location and spending habits in order to offer them a product or service completely suited to their needs.

Today, mass marketing is no longer meaningful and directing your products or services to “everyone” for fear of losing potential customers is the main mistake many small businesses make. It is impossible to do something that suits everybody’s needs and, at the end of the day, you’ll have a better chance of getting noticed when addressing a smaller audience than you would trying to capture the attention of a large pool of customers.

You may be thinking that limiting your audience will limit the growth of your business, but this simply isn’t true. You can always create new products or services aimed at new “small pools” that together can exceed the size of the large pool you initially wanted to address.

Therefore, start by finding a market niche and dominating it by creating a product or service along with a well-written message that responds to the needs of this segmented group.

Think about it this way, when you break a bone, you’d rather see a specialist than a general practitioner. The same idea can be applied when choosing between similar businesses. By establishing yourself as a specialist and not a general practitioner, you can grow your business by attracting people who need your product or service instead of attracting people who just have an interest in what you’re offering.  

More so, mastering a niche allows you to set a higher price since those who need your product or service know that you are offering exactly what they are looking for and trust that the quality will be better due to the fact that you are a specialist in your field.

Analyzing your potential customers (either through surveys or through the definition of your ideal client), you will be able to figure out how to achieve your business goals by optimizing your resources and knowing what trends to look for.

In the era of 1-to-1 communication, you need to personalize your communications and your actions based on what you know about your potential customers. According to a Salesforce Research survey of more than 6,700 consumers worldwide, it is estimated that 75 percent of consumers will want to find a personalized shopping experience by 2020. 

For example, the website of the online fashion store Zalando shows a subscription form for its newsletter that asks its potential customers to indicate if they are interested in fashion for men or women.

This detail allows them to determine the person’s gender so they can personalize the emails they’ll send to them to show only what fits their interests. 

You can have more than one client profile, so analyze and define each profile to know exactly who your audience is, where you can find them and what message you want to deliver to them. 

To do this, you can rely on the popular 5W + 1H model widely used in journalism and research:

• Who is your client?: Are they a private individual, a company, a man, a woman, a child, a teenager? How old are they?

• What does our client want?: Are they looking for an expensive or cheap product? Do they prefer quality? Are they looking for personalized attention?

• When do they buy?: Do they do it frequently? Do they make planned purchases or are they more spontaneous?

• Where is our client?: Where do they live or stay? What sites do they visit (both in the real world and online)?

• Why do they buy?: What needs do they have and why would they want to buy your products or services? 

• How do they buy your product or service?: Do they buy in large quantities or individually? Do they do it online or do they prefer to go to a physical store? What payment methods do they use?

By answering these questions, you can develop multiple client profiles that will serve as the first step in your marketing plan. 

Step 2: Build your marketing message

Once you determine your target audience and create client profiles based on that audience, it’s time to create a message to get their attention. This has to be done properly since it can be the difference between reaching your audience and talking to a wall.

A message with a purpose

Every marketing message you add to your plan needs to exist to achieve a single goal. This can be anything from your potential customers contacting you, visiting your physical store, filling out a form, remembering your brand or buying a specific product or service. 

In the same way that you have selected a specific target audience to focus all your efforts on, you must also select a specific goal for your message and focus on it.

Base your message on a unique sales proposition

A Unique Sales Proposition (USP), is a concept that is used to refer to the factor that differentiates your product from that of your competition when it comes to selling it. 

To define your unique sales proposition, you must be clear about why your business exists (your mission) and why people should buy from you and not from your competition. For example, the mission of Microsoft, as the company itself explains on its website, is “to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more.”

As you can see, its purpose is not only to sell operating systems, programs or devices like any other software company. Microsoft sells “productivity” just as Coca-Cola sells “happiness.” What are you selling? 

Do an experiment. Do you think that if you remove the logo and name of your company from your website, your customers could still recognize you? If yes, it means that you have defined your unique sales proposition well. If not, and your website looks like that of any other company in the sector, you need to work on it. 

Keep in mind that selling “quality” or a “good service” will not allow you to stand out, since it is something that your audience already expects from you.

Create your unique sales proposition based on what your potential customers want to achieve. People don’t want your product or service, they want what your product or service will allow them to achieve. Think about it.

Keep the medium in mind when creating the message

In his book Kotler on Marketing, Philip Kotler, with good reason, states:

The decision on the design of the message interacts with the decision of the medium [through which it will be transmitted]. 

Your message and its purpose must be defined with the characteristics of the medium you choose to transmit it in order for the message to be effective. 

For example, imagine that you own a sushi restaurant and your goal is to get your potential customers to make a reservation through your ad. You are considering creating ads on Instagram and buying a space in a local magazine. The nature of these two platforms is very different so your message should be presented in different ways.

The magazine’s ad format is more limited consisting of text and an image. The most effective option will probably be to focus your message on getting the potential customer to call your business. Therefore, highlighting, above all, your phone number is one of the most important factors.

Instead, on Instagram you can use photos or videos, add emojis in the text to get attention and direct your potential customers directly to your website to make an online reservation.

In this example, the goal is the same and the message is the same but the way the message is delivered varies based on where the advertisement is placed. 

Don’t talk only about your company and your product

Obviously, you have to present your product or service to the public to sell it, but don’t fall into the mistake of talking only about its characteristics and how good your company is. Focus on talking about the benefits it provides and how it can offer a solution to a problem or concern your potential customers face.

For example, Domino’s Pizza launched an effective marketing message with an excellent single sale proposal highlighting a benefit that differentiated themselves from their competitors. The message read: “Receive a hot and fresh pizza at your door in 30 minutes or less or it’s free.”

If they had only highlighted that they offered “Pizzas delivered to your home,” no matter how good their pizza was, they would not have stood out among the competition. Therefore, it is important to find something different and remarkable that makes you stand out to beat your competition.

Step 3: Select the media or channels you will use to reach your potential customers

Based on the objectives you have defined above and the information you have gathered about your customers, including their location and behavior, choose the marketing channels that you think will best allow you to reach them. Take into account your resources and then define the strategies and actions that you will use in each channel. 

For this, you must also take into account the 4Ps of the marketing mix – price, product, place (distribution) and promotion Philip Kotler created the theory and defines it as “the mix of controllable marketing variables that the company uses to achieve the desired level of sales in the target market.”

For example, suppose your company is dedicated to the sale of top-brand appliances nationwide sold through an online store with a goal to increase the sales of high-end LG smart TVs. Since you’re selling an expensive product,  you can invest more into promoting the devices with less risk of a negative return. 

In this same example, you know that your potential customers tend to search for your products through Google so you define Google Ads as one of your marketing channels. Here, you create Google search ads to promote this product nationwide.

To define the channels and strategies to use in your marketing plan, you can classify them as follows:

Online marketing channels and strategies

According to the 2019 Small Business Marketing Trends Report carried out by Keap, the three online channels and tactics that more SMEs plan to use this year are social networks (48 percent), digital advertising (23 percent) and email marketing (23 percent). Here are the main channels and tactics to consider:

• Blog: Content marketing

• Search engines: SEO and search engine advertising

• Other websites and apps: Display marketing, affiliate marketing

• E-mail: E-mail marketing

• Social media: Content marketing and social media advertising

Offline marketing channels and strategies

Another survey carried out by OutboundEngine reveals that for 11.67 percent of SMEs the most successful marketing channel has been traditional advertising while 13.61 percent of SMEs say their success came from events. Here are the main offline channels and tactics to consider:

• Traditional media: Advertising or press, television and local radio appearances

• Stationery: Creation of flyers, brochures, guides and other publications

• Traditional advertising supports: Billboards, etc.

• Fairs and events: Participation in fairs and organization of events 

Defining your marketing budget

It’s time to make one of the most difficult decisions, especially for SMEs: setting your marketing budget. Among small businesses, there is a general tendency to see marketing as an expense instead of an investment and this is why, according to the aforementioned OutboundEngine study, more than half of SMEs tend to spend less than 5% of their total budget on marketing. 

If you look at the data provided by the OutboundEngine study, there is no doubt that investing more in marketing usually means gaining more. Specifically, 81 percent of SMEs that invested between 5 percent and 10 percent of their annual budget on marketing actions during 2018, saw their sales increase. On the other hand, those that invested less than 5 percent of their budget, experienced a decrease in their sales.

Try to find out the advertising cost of each channel you want to use to advertise your products or services and the cost of the staff you need to carry out the strategy. Then, distribute your budget based on the cost and your marketing objectives.

Once you launch your campaigns, you will know if the return you get is positive and if it would be profitable to invest more money in the channel. At this point, you may see that you’re spending more than you earn which means you must stop using that specific marketing channel. 

You can find free budget templates to make this task easier on Smartsheet:

Step 4: Define your lead capture system

A lead is a potential customer that has shown interest in your product or service.

Getting a lead’s contact details and storing them in a database is key to generating more sales. Why? As an analysis by Kissmetrics demonstrates, 96 percent of visitors who come to your website are not ready to buy immediately. They may be ready in a month or a year, but if they never hear from you again, you lose them.

If you have a direct communication channel with them, you can continue sending them messages and cultivate a relationship that will eventually end up in a sale. For this reason, Allan Dib argues that you should not try to sell something directly through your ads. Instead, you should create a direct contact road with your potential customers.

To do this, you have to legally get your leads’ contact information. This is done through a lead magnet (a hook to attract potential customers). 

Imagine that you are the owner of a real estate agency that sells residential houses. Your target audience is young couples looking for their first home. Instead of creating an ad that says, “buy your first home,” you decide to offer an eBook on your website with useful information about everything you need to consider before buying your first home. Your potential clients can download it for free if, in exchange, they fill out a form with their name and email.

This eBook acts as a hook and will allow you to continue communicating through email with potential clients who you know are interested in buying their first home.

There are many types of lead magnets that you can use to gather contact details from potential customers. Other examples to choose from are: 

• Free trials for a limited time in the case of software or applications 

• Free advice or a consultation for a service 

• Participation in surveys to generate individual reports 

• eBooks, guides, or video series 

• Coupons and/or discounts 

• Opportunities for social media contests

Be sure to pick the incentive that will work best for your type of business and resources.

Step 5: Define your lead nurturing system

Once you have a database with your leads and their contact information, you have to supply them with valuable content in order to build a relationship with them that will grow into sales. 

Lead nurturing is the process of ensuring that people who are vaguely interested in your product or service end up wanting it and willing to buy it. 

That doesn’t mean presenting your product and asking or demanding them to buy it. If you do this, chances are your leads run out and your emails go straight to the trash or spam folder. 

Send them relevant information about your industry, information on how to get the most out of what you offer or a discounted offer from time to time. Whatever you do, don’t make the traditional sales pitch.

For example, Trello, a company that designed an application to facilitate the administration and organization of projects for companies, sends its subscribers a newsletter with links to blog posts with valuable content related to their business.

In this case, Trello invites its subscribers to discover a Japanese routine to increase productivity. This shows that they know their potential customers and that they take into account their needs and concerns in order to provide them with valuable information that doesn’t turn into a sales pitch. In this way, they can cultivate their relationship with their potential customers until they are ready to purchase their service naturally. 

To have greater control of your lead nurturing system and manage it easily, it’s best to use a marketing automation software called a CRM (Client Relationship Manager). This will let you know which potential customers have taken action after reading your messages and which have not, and will automate communication with them. 

There are several tools you can use to feed your leads from a blog, a newsletter, SMS and email auto responders, your social channels and sending free reports to podcasts, online videos, direct mail sequences or even handwritten notes. Each one has its advantages, so choose the ones you think best fit your customer profile.

Step 6: Define your conversion strategy

While maintaining a relationship with potential customers through valuable content is important, you have to turn to converting those potential customers into actual buyers. You can do this by building trust and showing them that your company brings them enough value to be worth buying from you and not the competition.

This is made easier by setting up a good lead nurturing system since that can help establish trust and show your value as a company. These two characteristics of a business is what helps people decide to buy a product or service from one company instead of their competition. The perception of your online business plays an important role; if this is not favorable, the conversions will not take place.

Here are some tips for you to build a credible image and an environment suitable for conversion: 

• Buy a domain for your website: Do not use free domains for your website or for your email. Otherwise, your company won’t present a professional image and you will lose credibility.

• Add your company’s contact information on your website: Your phone, email and the address of your office or store must be included on your website even if you don’t sell or offer services in a physical way. Otherwise, your potential customers won’t be able to contact you or they may think that your company is fictitious or does not offer customer support.

• Avoid showing too many options or pricing plans: Two pricing plans (standard and premium) are enough, since, as a famous study by Professor Iyengar of Columbia University demonstrates, offering too many options causes a mental block in the consumer preventing them from making a purchase decision easily.

• Offer a specific guarantee to avoid uncertainty: Do not limit yourself by adding vague phrases like “guaranteed satisfaction” or “quality service” in your messages. Explain it precisely to convey more confidence. For example, “Our certified technicians with more than 10 years of experience will effectively solve any type of breakdown in your appliance and will call you back in 15 minutes. If we don’t fulfill any of these promises, we will refund twice the billable amount of the consultation.”

• Offer your customers a free trial: By doing this, you can break the sales barrier and show your potential customers that buying your product or hiring your service is worth it. This is a strategy that can dramatically increase your conversion rate. According to a study conducted by Zendesk, this can increase your conversion rate up to 30 percent.

Step 7: Define how you’ll offer a top-notch experience

Already entering the third phase (“after the purchase”) and having successfully converted potential customers into actual buyers, you have to make sure that your customers become fans of your brand so they become loyal customers who will return to buy more products or use your service again (or continuously).

Look at Apple, one of the benchmarks in this type of marketing. When they launch a new product or a simple variation of a product, their tribe of fans flood the streets to line up in front of their nearest Apple Stores to get the latest product.

So, what has Apple done and what can you do to make this phenomenon happen? The key is in selling what your customers need and being innovative.

Sell what your customers want but also what they need

You can offer the strongest anti-theft backpack in the world, but your clients also need it to be beautiful and easy to open and close. Your clients may want the most complete online software to create web pages but they need it to be easy to use or come with an effective and accessible support service.

Come up with an innovative way you sell your product or service

Innovation does not always have to be in the product or service itself. You can sell an ordinary product but come up with an innovative way to set its price, distribute it, package it or promote it.

For example, Ikea launched their Catalog application in 2013. This not only allows its customers to see the furniture catalog (ordinary product) but they can also see how each piece would fit in their domestic spaces thanks to augmented reality (innovation).

Step 8: Define how to increase the lifetime value of your customers

A marketing guide from Custora University defines the customer’s lifetime value (CLV) as a prediction of all the value that a business will obtain throughout a relationship with a consumer. 

If you apply the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, to this concept you could say that 80 percent of your income comes from 20 percent of your customers. Although these percentages are not exactly like that, it is about identifying the customers that bring more value to your business either because they are willing to pay more, buy more frequently, recommend your services, contribute ideas or consume less resources. Once you identify them, you have to figure out how to increase their value. 

There are several tactics you can use to “filter” your customers and identify which ones are the most valuable in order to increase their value.  

Increase your prices

How long has it been since you increased the prices of your products or services? As previously stated, if you are able to offer a value to your customers that goes beyond the price, increasing it slightly shouldn’t be a problem for many of your customers, provided you give them a valid reason for doing so.

Explain to them the benefits they’ll get with your products or services and how this price increase will allow them to enjoy your future innovations. Inevitably, some of your clients will leave, but those who remain will be the most valuable and you will have managed to increase their value even more by raising the prices.

Use upselling strategies

Upselling is a sales technique that involves inducing a consumer to buy a more expensive item. Many times it also involves promoting more advantageous services, product packs or offers when buying complementary products.

Surely more than once you’ve gone to a fast food restaurant and they have asked you if you wanted to add fries or a larger drink to your meal for an additional charge. Better yet, if you use Spotify to listen to music, you have encountered this type of message when you signed up for the free plan:

These are nothing more than upselling techniques. You can apply upselling to your business to increase the lifetime value of your customers. A formula that usually works (and one that you have surely seen on Amazon) is to add a section to your website that says: “Users who bought (X) also bought (Y).” 

Give your customers a reason to come back

Increasing how often your customers usually buy from you is also a solid marketing strategy that you can apply to increase value. Offering them a subscription option so that each month they can receive your products or services at a more advantageous price is one way to do this. 

There are several types of business that, by nature, already lend themselves to a subscription service. Utility contracts come to mind first but it is also possible to apply it to other types of business or products that involve a recurring purchase.

Look at Harry’s or The Dollar Shave Club, for example. These brands of razors have created a subscription service for recurring products thus eliminating the need to make an individual purchase decision whenever a customer needs to purchase new blades, foam or shaving lotions.

Another way to get your customers back is through a reactivation campaign. To do this, check your database to find old customers who have not made a purchase for a long time and send them a message in which you tell them that you miss them. Include a tempting offer like a coupon or a gratuity to persuade them to make another purchase.

Measure the performance of your strategies

A marketing plan is not a static document; you have to leave room for change and adapt it constantly. From all the strategies and channels you define, there will be some that will work better and others that will work worse so it’s important to know how to measure the success of your actions to identify which ones you should keep, improve or eliminate in order to get more valuable customers. 

The key performance indicators that you should look at (and analyze periodically, either monthly or weekly) are mainly the following:

• The number of leads

• Your conversion rate

• The average transaction value

• Your break-even point

Step 9: Define your referral program

Word of mouth marketing is one of the most powerful strategies to improve the positioning of a business and increase sales exponentially. According to a study by Nielsen, 92 percent of consumers believe more in the recommendations of friends and family than in advertising. 

However, many entrepreneurs are waiting for this phenomenon to happen naturally as a result of the great quality of their product or service. The fact is that if you wait for positive reviews to come in on their own, it can take a long time to get results, so it’s better to take action.

Ask your customers to recommend your product or service in exchange for an incentive. For example, an upgrade in their current service plan or a discount on future purchases. 

One of the most famous recommendation programs has undoubtedly been that of Dropbox, the popular cloud storage company. Dropbox offered more free space (specifically, 500 MB) for both the new customer and the recommender. This simple strategy allowed them to increase the number of registered users by 60 percent.

Now you know how to make a strategic marketing plan for your company and how to optimize the efforts and resources you allocate to marketing to grow your business. Remember that your marketing plan must continually adapt to the market and that your success can multiply if you optimize and renew your strategies based on the results of your key performance indicators.

The post How to Write a Marketing Plan in 9 Steps appeared first on Kolau Blog.

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As a good 21st century entrepreneur, you have probably dedicated part of your marketing efforts addressing the main digital channels. As such, your company has probably done everything to create a strong presence in social media while also developing quality content to keep followers engaged and interested in your business. 

With contemporary digital marketing practices, companies have the opportunity to reach their potential customers with greater control and at a lower cost using strategies that break the barriers of space and time. Still, none of those strategies allow you to be face-to-face with your target audience. It’s not that we feel nostalgic, that’s what the data says.

According to a recent study, a large majority of top-level marketing professionals affirm that live events are still the most effective marketing channel and 80 percent of merchants attribute the success of their companies to these organized events. This proves that you can’t neglect this tried and true marketing technique.

If you’re a new company and lack the experience necessary to organize these events, these five effective strategies on doing so can help you regardless of the type of company you have or the type of event you’re organizing. More so, you can see how the digital marketing tools and strategies you’ve already been implementing will work toward your event planning efforts.

#1 Find the Purpose of your Event

According to Kevin Nguyen of ThreeSixtyEight, 2019 is the year in which businesses will organize all kinds of events as a marketing strategy since, through human experiences, companies will be able to differentiate themselves from their competitors. The first key to hosting a successful event is identifying its purpose and connecting its attendees on a more personal level.

Long before you start organizing and planning an event, you must be very clear about its purpose. To do this, think about what you want to achieve through your event and clearly define it based on that goal. You can follow a simple but effective concept to help define your event’s purpose: SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely).

SMART objectives can guide your project to a clear and realistic goal to plan and implement the event. You can have more than one goal in mind, as long as you keep them in mind when you start planning the event. 

A good example of a corporate event with clear objectives is the networking event conducted by The Mice Blog. After realizing that their weekly Twitter discussions got quite a bit of participation from users, they decided to plan a live event that proved to be successful. 

When they were asked about its objectives, it was more than clear: share the best practices in the industry, collaborate among users, network with professionals and extend the life cycle of the event.

Its objectives are specific, calculable, achievable and relevant. As you can see in this example, it is also important to define your target audience (for whom you are planning the event). Regardless of the type of event you hold, this is one of the points that you should be completely aware of. 

There are many different types of corporate events, but whatever you choose to do, do it with clear purposes and for the right audience. Your guests will be happy to attend and it will be more likely that they share their experience with others. In fact, 74 percent of event attendees say they have a more positive opinion about the company in question after attending an in-person event. 

# 2 Create Attractive Content and Mark your Calendars

You have decided to hold an event and you already have your purposes clear, you also know what audience you want to address; great! Now, you have to generate interest in your event, strengthen the perception of your brand and increase the rapport with your target audience.

Create a professional website

One of the best ways to promote your event and generate interest from your target audience is to create a web page to announce your event. One of the things to keep in mind when creating a web page is the user experience. It must be memorable to increase the probability of people registering and attending the event. 

This is a great example of a website exclusively promoting an event. As you can see, it’s simple but concrete. It informs the user of when it is, where it is, and—through a striking graphic—it shows a countdown for the event to generate anticipation. If you want to create an effective web page for your event, check out this guide on how to create an effective landing page.

But not everything is about the aesthetics of the website. Optimizing content will help you earn the top positions in Google. By doing this, you can ensure that your web page will be within the first page of results whenever someone searches for information related to the event.

To achieve better long-term results, you can improve the organic positioning of your website on Google through SEO strategies. For that, you must create useful and valuable content to reach your target audience and optimize it so that users can find your web page on Google. 

But to achieve immediate visibility and ensure your position among the top results on Google, you can create campaigns through Google Ads. If you want to know how to do it, don’t miss this article on how to create Google Ads Campaigns. 

Optimizing Google Ads campaigns is essential to get the best possible results and get the best possible return on investment (ROI). Kolau offers one of the most powerful automatic optimization engines and is the only one that offers a free plan.

It’s important that Google users click on your result to have a pleasant experience and are satisfied with what they see. If they decide to leave immediately because the content is superficial or irrelevant, Google will detect it and penalize the page with a lower position within the organic zone (the free zone) of the results pages.

Reach your audience through email marketing

According to a recent Hubspot study, 40 percent of merchants say that the best way to promote an event is through emails.  

After creating an effective website to invite users to take action by registering for the event, the next step is to start spreading the word. With a tool as efficient as email, you can reach your current customers and their contacts by making a newsletter full of compelling content to let them know in advance why they should accept the invitation and attend the event.

This invitation from Campaign Monitor is an excellent example of how to approach your customer base with relevant and accurate content. Not only does it explain to the user what event it is and what they will learn if they attend, but it also gives them the option of interacting with their social media profiles and forwarding the email to whomever they think may be interested in it.

With such a high percentage of high-level marketing executives affirming that the best way to create interest in an event is through an email campaign aimed at your current and potential client base, there is no doubt that it will be an effective tool for your event to succeed.

Create an event on Facebook

As we saw in the previous example, it is important to add links to share the event on social media when you send the invitations to your customer base via email.  

Facebook offers a great tool in its platform to promote an event early and complement your other promotional efforts.   

The option to create Events on Facebook is a great way to generate interest with users and keep them informed about when it will be. This is because the event is automatically saved in their smartphones once they accept the invitations.

But reminding the guests about the date of the event is not the only feature offered by this Facebook function. According to a Hubspot study, a lot of users will not take the Facebook event seriously unless you use the platform to generate interesting content related to the event.

Months may pass between the first invitation publication and the event itself, so it is important to keep guests interested by posting relevant and quality content on the Facebook event page. This will help them remember the event and also keep their excitement regarding the event high.

Events on Facebook allow you to strengthen the relationship with users while posing as a great communication channel to create links to your other promotional efforts like your website. As you’ll see in the next point, social media platforms are a key tool to generate interest in the event. 

#3 Promote your Event on Social Media

Did you know that most current consumers are Millennials? A study by EventBrite reveals that 73 percent of millennials attend events as a form of expression and use online interactions as inspiration and a path to participation in real life.  

Social media is a key tool that Millennials use to express themselves, but they aren’t the only ones using the platforms. Facebook has 2.32 billion users and Instagram has 1 billion that span all age groups. This makes social media that much more important when it comes to marketing experiences like live events. 

According to EventBrite, 48 percent of millennials say they attend events to have something to share on their social media profiles. With this in mind, you have to make sure that your event is an experience worthy of sharing. Generate interest using social networks before, during and after your event so you can increase the odds of attendees not only showing up and enjoying themselves but continuing to talk about the event well after the fact.

Create a memorable hashtag

Instagram and Twitter are two great platforms to promote your event early and create an online community focused on it. To achieve this, your best tool is creativity.

Think of a memorable and unique hashtag that allows you to unify the users across different social media platforms. Use it on the event website and the Facebook event page. This is a great way to encourage visitors and potential attendees to engage with your social media profiles.

This is not only an excellent way to foster interest and conversation around your business and event, but it also allows you to analyze and track engagement and interactions early. According to Neal Schaffer, CEO & Principal Social Media Strategy Consultant in Maximize Your Social:

“Making people aware of the event’s hashtag in advance is an incredible promotional tool. When people start to see tweets and retweets and posts that have a particular hashtag, even if they do not know what it’s about, that hashtag will get people interested in it and encourage them to go to the event.”

Hashtags are also a great way for attendees to interact with each other and share their experience during the event. You can then use that as a marketing tool in the future.

Turn your audience into a promoter

Think of a highly popular brand with a large audience on social media. Today, these brands rely on their influencer followers to continue growing. It’s like word-of-mouth marketing, but in this case, influencers promote brands through visual and entertaining content.

In this example, you can see how @HideMyCoat naturally promotes this event using its memorable and unique hashtag while adding the location and time so that it can reach a larger audience. 

This is a great strategy to achieve greater visibility and reach your target audience.

Get closer to the users who have already accepted the invitation to the event and offer them incentives to promote it in their social media accounts. You can, for example, offer discounts or exclusive promotions in exchange for three or four publications that get your followers to take an interest in the event and register.

According to Luria Petrucci, Co-Founder of Live Streaming Pros:

One of the best ways to promote your event is to involve your audience in the process so that they are totally committed and feel that it is both your project and their project.  

Create strong online communities

Remember that the purpose of promoting your event using different social networks is to create a sense of identity with a message that resonates with your audience. These are the tools your guests will use to share their experience so it’s important to establish your presence in these spaces early on. 

Even before the event begins, it is important to create a community that unites your customers and guests. For that, you can use everything from Twitter to LinkedIn groups to connect your customers through mutual interests. This will allow them to feel like they are a part of something special and exclusive while also creating both professional and personal networks.

According to a ToneDen study, 9 out of 10 Millennials have attended at least one live event in the last year. They not only value experience over material things (75 percent do), but also use the opportunity to personally connect with other attendees and create professional networks.

A corporate event will allow you to be a channel of trust among your clients to create vibrant and loyal communities around your business, brand or person. Everything starts on social media so don’t neglect that when promoting your event.

#4 Organize your Event Live and Online

Let’s say you’ve been planning an educational event about the new trends in Google Ads, with two recognized and respected speakers in the area. It sounds very interesting and at least 60 people have already confirmed attendance. But more people have told you that they’d like to attend but they can’t because they will not be in the city. The solution: broadcast the event live.

One of the biggest current trends we see during live events is the desire to create an opportunity to accommodate those who can’t attend through a live broadcast. It’s a great way to involve your entire audience and offer them fascinating ways to connect with each other.

Events with a corresponding live broadcast will allow you to interact with current and potential customers in the room while extending the reach of your message to those who can’t attend. This may sound like an expensive and complicated endeavor, but you can do this easily and affordably.

• Transmission on YouTube: To start, create a YouTube channel for your event or use your business channel if you already have one. Once you have your YouTube channel, you must enable the live streaming option. Then, you can program it for the date of the event and it will broadcast everything automatically.

• Broadcast on Facebook Live: Facebook Live is a popular feature that allows you to share live videos with your followers. When you are broadcasting live, the video will appear in the newsfeeds of those who have accepted the invitation and also in those of your followers increasing the audience reach. Once the transmission is finished, the videos will be saved in the Videos section of your page.

To generate interest among your objective audience in advance and get the most people to subscribe to the live broadcast of your event, create a countdown on your event website. 

In this case, you’re not promoting the physical event, you’re promoting the live transmission. This will help people remember when the event is so they won’t miss it. 

This function is offered by both YouTube and Facebook and basically allows you to embed a video player on your event’s web page beforehand. It’s a simple and easy-to-use function, but it will guarantee you generate interest in your audience and get as many people as possible to your event, physically and online.

#5 Partner with Local Businesses

They say that two heads think better than one. In the case of creating a successful marketing plan for your event, partnering with another relevant local business to create an event can have a significantly greater impact than if you organized it alone.

As already stated, live events are a great opportunity for your clients not only to get to know more about your brand but also for attendees to relate and create links between each other.

The same happens when two or more businesses are associated with the same cause. As Helen Moon, founder and director of EWL Club UK, says:

The live events are perfect to strengthen existing relationships and establish new ones.  

These collaborations will allow you to reach an audience that is already loyal to the other company and vice versa. Work together using the aforementioned marketing strategies to create a successful live event. The important thing is that you share the same purpose behind the event in order to strengthen relationships and create a healthy and profitable competition. 

For example, a hotel that seeks to attract a more family-centered audience could link up with a local toy store to organize a picnic in order to raise funds for a children’s organization in the area. Not only would they be working for a good cause, but they would also be unifying two different audiences and putting both names in their minds. 

In this example, the invitation to an event organized by two companies that have little in common can still create a great impression. The purpose of the event is clear: raise funds to help residents who can’t afford lenses to wear glasses.

The brewery even said that a percentage of the profits generated by the event will go towards the purchase of high-quality lenses. It is a great example of how a good cause can unite two local businesses, promote exclusive products (in this case their craft beers), and create a positive impression on the public.

Organizing events is a great strategy to give your brand a physical identity and associate it with your online presence. It is key to position yourself in the market and offer your clients tangible and memorable experiences in this digital age. The best part? You can use the opportunity to build stronger face-to-face relationships and reach larger audiences.

Now, you know how to promote an event and make it memorable. Following these marketing strategies, you will be able to organize successful events to promote your business and create a better relationship with your clients.

The post 5 Marketing Strategies for Events appeared first on Kolau Blog.

Wondering how to use Instagram for businesses effectively? Instagram is one of the most popular social media companies in today’s world. Users turn to it to interact with their favorite celebrities, companies, and influencers.

In fact, data shows that 80 percent of Instagram’s users follow a company in order to feel a connection to them. Thanks to this, people feel they’re a part of the organization. 

A study on Instagram made in the middle of 2018 says that within a given month 120 million interactions were recorded. Now more than ever, the number of people who visit websites, get contact information and get in touch with companies continues to increase. There’s no better time for companies to use this channel to interact with their customers.

Why You Can’t Ignore Social Media

If you are reluctant or think that social networks are not essential, you’re not alone. Entrepreneurs usually show some resistance to the incorporation of social media into their strategy or they include them but don’t integrate them into their marketing strategy. 

A study entitled “Entrepreneurship and Social Media Marketing: Evidence from French Small Business” showed that the use of social media among entrepreneurs of small and medium enterprises is poorly planned and improvised.

The study found that any social media use by these businesses was more of a reaction than a strategy. In other words, when these entrepreneurs hear that they should have a social media presence they create one without implementing any kind of plan for actually using it to better their business.

However, the proper use of social media is very important for companies of any size. This study argues that “marketing (where social networks are placed) is considered one of the keys to the survival, development and success of small and/or new companies.” The challenge is to do it well and with a sound strategy.

Instagram is one of the social networks that every business should consider. For that, it’s important to know more about this platform and what its users look for when visiting it. This will make it easier to attract them and give them what they want.

“People turn to Instagram for inspiration and with the aim of discovering interesting content, including brands and companies,” explains the platform. They are eager for news and willing to find things that inspire them day by day. This is an opportunity that companies shouldn’t miss as

60 percent of people say they discover new products
through Instagram.  

That means six out of 10 users find inspiring things to buy while browsing their Instagram feed. More than 200 million users visit the platform every day and view a company profile. More so, one of every three Instagram stories belongs to a company.

Now that you can see how important it is to have a quality Instagram profile for your company, you need to start one. To help you do this, consider these four keys to using Instagram for your business.

Key #1 to Using Instagram for Businesses: Create a Strategy

Social media should be part of an integrated digital marketing strategy, so the recommendation in this regard is to first sit down and think about what you want your Instagram account to achieve. You probably want to promote your products or your services, but Instagram allows that and more, so it’s necessary to make a list of everything you would like to communicate to your audience first.

The possibilities for a business are enormous. Not only is it about publishing pictures of your product, but also revealing “behind the scenes” moments of its creation process. Content worth publishing are:

• Photos employees took related to the company (office parties, team outings, etc.)

• Images featuring raw materials used in your products (fresh foods for restaurants or bakeries)

• Inspirational quotes 

• Success stories from clients or pictures of satisfied customers

• Industry-related photos of timely news 

There are also Instagram stories, which also offer a great opportunity to connect with your customers in a more intimate and quick way.

This platform is about images, so you need to post high-quality visual content so that you can achieve the desired effect. In order for the content to be linked, it’s necessary to take advantage of all these different formats and the variety of resources available to share your images or videos. Try using templates to help you. Canva and Adobe have templates that can help you, according to an Iconosquare guide.

From here, you need to decide what kind of content you mainly want to share on your Instagram page. These are known as “content pillars” according to a guide on designing a successful marketing strategy by Buffer.     

This guide uses the popular sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live’s account as an example. This page focuses on two pillars: Telling the fans what happens behind the scenes of the show and sharing exclusive clips from the series. Another example is the FedEx Instagram account. Their content pillar is photographs related to their delivery vehicles (vans, airplanes etc.) inserted in a beautiful natural environment.

Just like these accounts chose their content pillars, you have to choose yours based on what you want to share with your audience and what you hope to achieve by doing so.

After identifying your content pillars you have to figure out the frequency of your Instagram posts. It’s best to have a scheduled time for your posts so your followers can always know when to expect new content.

For example, you can post a new photograph every day at 12 noon or you can post new Instagram stories every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5 p.m. It doesn’t matter when you post, but it’s important to keep to a schedule to ensure your posts are seen. Soon, your followers will be anticipating your posts and seeking out your page on their own instead of just seeing them while scrolling through their feed.     

If you’re running your business’s Instagram page yourself, consider planning out your posts on a weekly basis. For example, if you decide to make daily posts, take time before the beginning of the week to gather content that you’ll use throughout the next seven days so you have the photographs ready to go. If you don’t have the content, you should take the time to create it during these planning sessions.  

You can still make spontaneous posts of breaking news or timely photos like those from office parties or similar special events. The general idea behind scheduled posts is mainly to ensure that you have new posts on a regular basis.

Key #2 to Using Instagram for Businesses: Preserve the Good Quality of the Content

With Instagram being a visual platform, having high-quality content is essential.

Hootsuite created a guide to help people take quality pictures for their Instagram account. Here are some tips from that guide:

• Use natural light: This is the most important rule when taking a picture. Try to take pictures outdoors for the best light, but if you can’t do that, take them near windows where there is natural light. If you take pictures at night, use street lamps if outdoors or some other source of light and avoid using the flash.

• Don’t overexpose the photo: If the image is too dark, you can fix it with editing tools. Simply adjust the light exposure on your mobile and save the photo when you’re done editing it.

• Follow the rule of three: This has to do with the composition of the photo and refers to a very simple method to balance the image. Divide the image into three sections and align the objects accordingly. Your phone may have this function but if it doesn’t simply visualize the photo divided into three parts and line up your shot that way.

• Take advantage of your angle: Every photo doesn’t have to be taken at eye level. Play with different angles like taking pictures from above, below, or skewed in some way. This can create more dynamic and appealing shots that your audience will like. 

If you aren’t confident enough in your own photography skills, you can hire a professional or enlist someone else in your company who is more capable to handle this. You can also use stock images from free spaces like Pexels, Gratisography and Pixabay in some instances. However, stock images aren’t as personal as images created specifically for your business. 

Key #3 to Using Instagram for Businesses: Measure Your Results

In digital marketing, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it so it’s necessary to be aware of how your numbers are behaving on this platform. Likes, comments, shares, the number of followers you have and how those increase from one post to the next are all trackable data that can tell you how well you’re engaging with your audience.

These numbers will tell you what posts, stories, contests, and other content was a success and what wasn’t. A digital marketing strategy is in constant movement and transformation based on this ever-changing data. It’s also based on trial and error so don’t forget to check how you’re progressing in this social network.

With an Instagram business account, you can check these statistics easily. You can obtain results in real time to check the performance of your Instagram stories and normal posts for the day to have data about your followers and how they interact with your content. This can also help you figure out the hours when your followers are the most active and who they are by demographic (sex, age, location etc.).

There are several other analysis tools besides Instagram’s data that can help you track your data. However, most of them aren’t free. The information you get will depend on whether you use a third-party tool or stay with the basic one that Instagram offers.

The more you use this social platform the more detailed metrics you’ll need. Hootsuite, Iconosquare, Union Metrics, Crowdfire, Squarelovin and Plann are just a few tools you can use here.

When it comes to what data you should track, at least keep a record of impressions, reach, engagement, engagement rate and your number of followers. A Hubspot guide explains each one and says that there are two aspects that must be taken into account: the metrics of each publication and those of the account in general.

“The individual metrics reflect the performance of each publication and the ones in the account combine all the statistics of each post and track the success of your Instagram account over time,” explains the guide.

Some of the main metrics to be addressed are defined as follows:

Impressions

An impression is the total number of times a publication was seen on Instagram. These reveal how effectively you are promoting your content, explains the Hootsuite guide. It’s the number of times that the content appeared in your followers’ timelines. When reading this metric, take into account that the same user may have seen your content more than once.

To improve your impressions use hashtags. These will allow you to reach people who are looking for the type of content that you’re publishing. A hashtag is a word or a set of words preceded by the sign “#”. If you add it to your content your post will show up in the results when people search for that hashtag.

You can add multiple hashtags to your posts but you can’t use more than 30 per publication. Besides letters, you can use numerical numbers in your hashtags, but they don’t support special characters.

Reach

Unlike impressions, reach refers to unique users who see the content you share, either in each post or in your stories. This is more precise since it won’t record every time the same person sees your content.  

One of the ways to improve this metric is to understand Instagram’s algorithm as it’s explained in Buffer’s guide to Instagram marketing. This can seem complicated since understanding the specific algorithms of any social network can be extremely complex. 

Simply put, there are three main factors that determine what people see in their timeline: interest, opportunity and relationship. Instagram uses these factors to try and predict what the user wants to see based on if it’s recent and if it’s a part of an account that they’d normally relate to. By understanding their algorithm on some level, you can approve your reach and increase your followers.  

Hootsuite’s guide explains that Instagram feeds no longer show content in chronological order, but you can still take advantage of the publication hours to generate engagement as soon as your content is published. The best advice is to review your statistics and see what hours your followers are active so you can schedule your posts during those times.

Another aspect that can help you improve the reach is posting videos since they generate twice as many comments as photos according to a NewsWhip research study cited by Buffer. Remember, your goal is to generate consistent interactions with your followers.

Buffer’s guide explains that it’s not clear if Instagram’s algorithm values likes and comments equally or if it values one more than others, but since commenting requires more effort than just liking a post, it’s possible to assume that the algorithm values comments more than likes. 

You can improve interactions by holding contests. These can prompt your followers to comment on your posts, like your posts, share them out to their friends and to follow your page if they haven’t done it yet. Once they do this, your posts will appear on their timeline more regularly.

Holding contests can also improve the chances of people voluntarily going to your Instagram page especially if they have to keep an eye out for specific posts in order to take part in the contest.

If you create and curate your own content, you can use all of these metrics to figure out what your audience likes and what they don’t respond to. You’ll then be able to tailor your content to their likes so they’re more likely to interact with your posts and take more of an interest in your business.

Instagram stories are also helpful for positioning yourself in your followers’ timelines. If you publish them often and your followers usually watch what you post, you will be placed higher in their story feed. The same happens with your live broadcasts if you choose to do them.

Key #4 to Using Instagram for Businesses: Combine Your Content Strategy with a Paid Strategy

The quality of the content is very important since a high-quality profile will generate more organic traffic. However, this is usually not enough for companies looking to market themselves through Instagram. Use your content strategy and combine it with a paid marketing campaign.

To do this, start a promotional campaign on Instagram by paying advertising fees to promote the content you want to make sure your target audience sees. Here, it’s better to take advantage of existing content that’s already proven to be valuable instead of launching new, untested content.

You can determine this by reviewing the metrics for your existing content and then select a successful post and pay the advertising fee to use it as a promotional publication. Buffer’s guide explains that creating good content that your followers click on and continue to see will improve your organic growth because it gives you a better position on their feed.

By promoting existing content and selecting an appropriate target audience, you can generate more engagement and help it achieve a better rank. This paid reach can eventually help boost your organic reach to a point where you won’t have to rely on it as much.

All of this has hopefully explained everything a successful Instagram marketing strategy can do for your business. These four tips are great starting points for launching your own Instagram business account and increasing your customer base.

Remember, if you have the resources, you can consider hiring outside help for everything from analyzing your metrics to creating your content; you don’t have to be a social media expert to reap the benefits of Instagram. 

The post 4 Keys to Using Instagram for Businesses  appeared first on Kolau Blog.

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Some believe the death of SMS (Short Message Service) is imminent. In some regions, it might sound reasonable since statistics show fewer and fewer messages being sent. For example, according to the National Commission of Markets and Competition, 58.2 percent of mobile phone users in Spain never send an SMS anymore.

However, when it comes to SMS Marketing, life has only just begun. According to an exercise by Juniper Research, a UK-based analysis company, the volume of A2P messages (Application to Person) is expected to grow by 20 percent, to reach 2.1 billion by 2020.

A2P can be defined as the sending of automated SMS from a company to a user. Its growth is driven mainly by automated marketing, payments and authentication processes which are increasingly carried out through this medium.

Although people may send fewer SMS, companies are finding more and more uses for this communication channel.

Caption: Although larger companies are the ones that have more widespread use, SMS are also used by small companies to communicate with their customers. This is an SMS sent by a small pharmacy in Spain to communicate that the order is ready at their branch.

This coincides with a study by Telefónica that argues that despite the enormous popularity of P2P (Person to Person) apps such as WhatsApp, the size and scale of opportunities in the SMS market have cemented its position as a valuable and attractive market for business. This was further evidenced by the growth of the market in previous years: between 2014 and 2015, it increased by 22 percent globally.

But according to these predictions—in tune with those of Juniper Research—growth will be continuous at least until 2026 thanks to its great penetration skills. Research shows that 99.99 percent of mobile devices can be reached by this type of messaging and they have a reading rate of 90 percent within a few minutes. “This makes it perfect for businesses to reach consumers beyond their geography and demographics,” says Telefónica.

According to the study “Digital in 2018” study conducted by Hootsuite and We Are Social, in 2017, more than 200 million people had their first mobile device and now two-thirds of the world’s population (7.6 billion inhabitants) has a mobile phone. The numbers will continue to grow and more and more people will have a mobile phone in their hands as time goes on.

More to explore on SMS Marketing

According to a survey carried out by the editors of Internet Retailer magazine, companies—particularly online retailers—are underutilizing SMS marketing as an effective tool to generate relationships with their consumers – just like social media. Entrepreneurs say that while there are cases in which they could use them, “for now it’s not a priority.” This is reflected in the numbers.

Text messages are the least used channel with only 29 percent of respondents using them to communicate with their consumers. Meanwhile, the most used is email (97 percent) followed by social networks (82 percent) and phone calls (66 percent).

So, why aren’t companies using SMS marketing if it’s so beneficial? The figures could be as they are because businessmen don’t understand the benefits of SMS. “They do not fully understand its value because, in part, they do not understand their return on investment,” says Jay Emmet, general manager of Open Market who conducted the study.

On the other hand, globally, according to the measurements of Esendex, a company that offers SMS to SMEs:

Messages are opened 94 percent of the time.

“The benefits of SMS are reflected in the final result and in the long-term satisfaction of its customers,” says Emmet. The difficult millennials, oddly enough, use this type of communication. According to Open Market, 75 percent prefer SMS for notifications of deliveries, payments, promotions, and surveys.

According to an analysis carried out by SMSAPI, a global provider of text messages, SMS marketing has several advantages including faster communication with customers through a direct channel, building trust and loyalty towards the brand through personalized messages and directing clients to your web platform.

More and more customers trust SMS

In addition to all this, consumers increasingly rely on digital advertising especially ads on their mobile phones. According to Nielsen‘s most recent study of the subject entitled “Global Trust in Advertising and Brand Messages,” 45 percent think that the ads that are displayed on their mobile phones are credible. This gives SMS marketing a distinct advantage in the industry.

Specifically, 37 percent trust the messages sent to their phones. If it sounds small, just see the difference with the previous survey where only 18 percent trusted those same messages. In one year, confidence grew by 19 percent.  When compared to other ads, it was the one that increased the most.

This exercise showed that trust and consumers’ actions are directly related. This is particularly important because it’s something that brings the customer a little closer to making a purchase. Although there’s still room for improvement in the format of the ads in terms of their ability to engage with the client, according to Nielsen, 45 percent of respondents sometimes think about taking actions based on commercial text messages.

Not only SMS marketing but online advertising, in general, is driving more users to take action. Customers are responding. Randall Beard, global director of solutions for advertisers at Nielsen, reported half of the survey respondents took actions based on online ads.

To further this, research published in the Journal of Management Sciences showed that not only do consumers have a positive attitude toward SMS advertising but also defined SMS aspects that make consumers more likely to take action.

The first one is the participation or the degree of involvement that the client has with the product. This aspect refers to how consumers feel about a certain brand or product. The greater they identify with the product, the greater the chance that they will take in the information and possibly buy the product. If your brand is already positioned in the market, an SMS marketing campaign would most likely be very effective in terms of consumer response.

Here, a negative reaction from consumers is very unlikely, so there’s no need to worry.

The study stated: “Insignificant nature of irritation showed that consumers do not get annoyed from SMS advertising and this is quite possible that they get involved in the advertisement if companies make more appealing and entertaining advertisements.”

The appearance and entertainment aspect (say a sense of humor or games and other instruments to connect with the customer) of a campaign raise the chances of success.

Now, how do you do it? There are companies that are dedicated to offering this service. Search for those services in your country and find the one that suits your needs best.

Keys to Succeed with an SMS Marketing Campaign

#1 Build a valuable database

One of the keys to success is your database. “Collecting data about your current or potential customers is a great start to creating an efficient SMS campaign because the quality of potential customers decides success,” explains the SMSAPI study. When compared, the efficiency between a personally developed database and a purchased or rented database can be over 10 percent better, since the correct audience is being targeted.

In addition, while being time-consuming, building this database will be cheaper. You will also be building a permanent tool that you can use in the future. Remember that SMS allows multiple possibilities. Two common uses are to notify the client about the status of an order or to inform them about your latest offers.

Caption: Your clients need to perceive a value so they will give you their data.

More so, buying databases increase the likelihood that your messages will be perceived as spam. You also don’t know if the accounts in the database are up to date. In summary, buying databases can likely affect your credibility as a company and thwart your marketing efforts.

To create a personal database you have to collect your customers’ information. This can be done through social networks or your own site. For example, you can simply ask your customers for their details after they make a purchase through your site. This will add them to your database. Offering a discount coupon or a similar incentive like a free eBook will help increase the likelihood that they’ll give you their information.

#2 Let them give you their permission

By requesting authorization to send messages, they won’t feel intrusive making your customers more receptive to the information.

The study “How to use SMS to carry out marketing campaigns” done by Esendex says, “The fact that SMS marketing campaigns are focused on people who have given their permission to receive messages makes them very well received. They are not perceived as intrusive, because the client has the possibility to unsubscribe at any time.”  

If your potential clients give you permission and you always give them the option to cancel the subscription, you’ll be able to build trust.

Caption: Give your clients the option to stop receiving your messages

#3 Target and customize your messages

When it comes to making an SMS marketing campaign effective it’s essential to target the recipients properly. By doing so, you will ensure that your message reaches people who will be interested in your products or services. Over time, a relationship of loyalty can be generated. 

Personalizing SMS as much as possible helps to create a long-term relationship with the client, as they feel that the company takes into account its particularities to suggest the most appropriate offers, explains the Esendex study. As it is in almost any marketing action, you need to know what each customer segment wants.

Remember that this is not something that remains static or is only composed of one thing. People can want several things that can change over time. In addition to the target group, it’s important that you personalize the messages in some way (even if you send them in bulk).

Caption: Personalize messages so they have a greater possibility of being opened.

Knowing what you want to achieve with the campaign is essential. Do you want to promote a new product? Do you want to attract more customers? To promote a new branch? Be clear about what you want so you can plan accordingly.

#4 Appearances matter

The better the appearance of the SMS, both the rational part (the benefits and details of the product) and the emotional part (what connects to the customer’s wishes, dreams, and desires) the more likely the customer will react positively, according to the study published in the Journal of Management Sciences.

SMS marketing is not only about sending texts but about the possibility of making this type of communication more effective by using videos, images, and links to redirect a consumer to your website. Once they’re there, you need something to try and close in on a sale or subscription.

To increase the effectiveness of any marketing activities, it is important to include a “call to action”. This is a request for information, an offer to purchase a good or service, or a request for the customer to contact you in some way.

Caption: Use images and graphic elements that make the message attractive, but do not forget the content

Caption: Don’t forget to include a call to action.

#5 Generate loyalty through interaction

The same analysis by the Journal of Management Sciences indicates that entertainment is the third aspect that is considered by customers when it comes to being more or less receptive to a text message. Encourage participation in contests, promotions, and games. These are elements that can attract a customer’s attention, build loyalty and add value.

Caption: Making contests and giving away prizes generates loyalty. Just make sure you’re completely transparent and state clear rules.

Hopefully, this information has given you a better idea of what SMS marketing is and what it can do for you. If you’ve been on the fence about using it, consider starting a small SMS campaign to see how it fits your business and target audience.

The post 5 Keys to Master SMS Marketing appeared first on Kolau Blog.

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So, you’ve created an ad and people are clicking on it. It’s working… Until they get to your landing page. For some reason, the clicks aren’t converting. Maybe you haven’t spent enough time on creating an effective landing page. Maybe you’re not linking to a landing page at all. Maybe you included as much information as you could, thinking the more the better.

In fact, it’s better to keep things simple. Simplicity is one of the most important things to focus on while creating an effective landing page. Keeping it simple and straightforward (KISS), especially for landing pages, is the best road to success.

It’s easy to make mistakes when it comes to designing your landing page and it’s hard to have a solid marketing strategy without a landing page at all. After someone clicks on your ad, you still have to convince them to take action.

A landing page is the best way to do that as its only purpose is to convince visitors to convert. Because of this, you should create a marketing strategy specifically for your landing page. You’ll find your visitors will convert better once you do.

What is a Landing Page?

Landing pages have, not unexpectedly, changed a lot in the past decade. In the early 2000s, landing pages were only barely beginning to surface and they certainly didn’t look like the ones we have today.

Landing pages once looked like what you would imagine an old-fashioned homepage looked like–full of small text with few or no pictures. As time went on, landing pages began to use bigger text and put more focus on pictures and videos. It wasn’t until around 2012 or 2013 that webpages (including landing pages) began to look more like the visually pleasing pages we know today.

Just take a look at what Netflix’s homepage in 2010 looked like.

And now look at Netflix’s homepage just three years later.

Netflix in 2013 looks much more like a landing page from now than the 2010 version. It was around this time that businesses began utilizing the benefits of landing pages, namely by using a sparse amount of links and focusing on giving a consumer something for their benefit.

For Netflix, their call to action (and the benefit they offered) involved an offer of a one-month free trial. It was and still is about getting people to click that blue “Start Your Free Month” button (or your business’s version of it).

There are two kinds of landing pages to be aware of: lead generation and click-through landing pages. The main difference between them is in how they convert leads. Still, both types of landing pages are different than homepages.

Though they’re often mixed up and overlapped, a landing page is not the same thing as a homepage. They can be quite similar except for some notable differences, one of them being the purpose.

A landing page is created specifically to convert those people who clicked on your ad (for example, your Google or Facebook ad). On the other hand, homepages are often meant to hold information about your business and provide a starting place for someone browsing your website. Homepages tend to be clicked on organically.

Landing pages are much more compact, containing ideally only one call-to-action button and often a template prompting visitors to provide their contact information. Homepages can have as many links as needed since the main goal is to give people who click on it the information they need about the business they’re looking into.

So while a homepage looks like this:

A landing page looks like this:

Notice how Urban Airship’s homepage and landing page look completely different. It has a menu at the top right and several links to other pages. There’s no form to fill out or any one call-to-action button.

Their landing page, on the other hand, has only one link (the call-to-action) and a form to fill out. It attempts to build our trust through listing brands that use them at the bottom (known as social proof). The page is short, no scrolling needed.

Landing pages should be used for marketing campaigns as part of, as mentioned earlier, a pay-per-click campaign. When someone clicks on your ad, they’ll be taken to the landing page where you’ll have to do the last sprint in convincing them to convert. Landing pages are useful for email campaigns when promoting a new product or an event, or to bring attention to special deals.

Lead Generation vs Click-Through Landing Pages

Let’s talk a bit more about the difference between lead generation and click-through landing pages. So far, we’ve mostly covered lead generation pages (as in the example above). Lead generation pages are good for businesses that want to build an email list or something similar. Click-through landing pages are mostly meant for businesses with a product to sell.

The main difference between lead generation and click-through landing pages is the purpose. Many of the other elements remain the same. Lead generation pages, however, are trying to convert leads by collecting their information (for example, collecting email addresses for an email campaign). Typically, how it goes is you offer them something (a service, discount, or content) in exchange for their information.

Cordial’s landing page is a good example of a lead generation page. Its main purpose is to collect information. It promises a free demo and a conversation.

Click-through landing pages work well for e-commerce businesses. They are meant to soften a visitor towards your product. It’s about convincing your visitor to buy before you lead them to a new page to check out for the product.

Below is a good example of a click-through page. The goal is not to collect information. Instead, it’s meant to warn you about the incoming request to purchase an “ipsy” subscription. If you press the “Get Started” call-to-action button, it’ll take you to another webpage to begin creating a personalized beauty profile.

Tips on How to Build an Effective Landing Page

So now that we’ve cleared up what exactly landing pages are, let’s talk about some techniques for building one.

#1: Keep it Simple

As mentioned earlier, simplicity is key when it comes to designing a landing page. In actuality, KISS (keep it simple and straightforward) is a good concept to keep in mind for marketing in general. Overwhelming your consumer is never a good way to go. Too much information or too many choices can cause consumers to forget their intent to purchase entirely.

Unbounce’s 2018 study on landing pages found that 68.2% of landing pages contained five or more links. The same study found that having only one link was the most effective with a 13.5% conversion rate. In fact, the more links there were on a landing page the more the conversion rate decreased. Landing pages with five or more links had a conversion rate of 10.5%.

Too many links on a landing page are distracting and overwhelming. Psychologist Barry Schwartz wrote a book titled The Paradox of Choice, in which he suggests that too many choices lead to indecision, regret, and dissatisfaction. So, it’s no wonder too much information or too many choices lead to losing a sale. In a world full of endless decision-making, try to make this one as easy and straightforward as possible.

You want to have one call-to-action link and you want to make it very easy to find. Make it stand out. Make sure it doesn’t blend into the background and that the words you’re using aren’t bland or cliched.

Specificity is key for call-to-action buttons. Make it as particular to your business or product as possible. Creating a sense of urgency when the attempt is to sell something (instead of gathering customer information) is effective too.

For example, using words like “Sale – limited time” grabs attention. FOMO (fear of missing out) is a psychological phenomenon most people are familiar with. It’s the feeling you get when you’re forced to stay home while your friends go out and have fun or the feeling of watching your Facebook friends travel the world or go to parties. Creating a sense of urgency utilizes this fear of missing out.

Comcast’s landing page promises a phone deal and emphasizes “Act Fast! Offer Ends 1/21/19” in order to encourage visitors to decide quickly lest they lose their chance. If someone is already considering signing up (and chances are, if they clicked on your ad, they are), the sense of urgency may help them make up their mind faster.

Not only do you want your call-to-action link to be obvious, but you also want to make sure your page is clean and simple. Comcast’s page is a little busy. A better example of a clean page would be Urban Airship’s landing page, mentioned earlier.

If it’s too busy, you’ll distract from your call-to-action link or frustrate your visitor. Remember: the purpose of a landing page is not to provide as much information as you can. It’s to provide just enough information to make your visitor interested. Don’t be afraid of white space.

Instead, think of it as your friend. Don’t make your page look bare but a good amount of white space is a step in the right direction. In their study about hotel landing page optimization, Renata Bitkulova from Saima University of Applied Sciences says,

The more whitespace is around the element, the more noticeable it becomes

Utilizing white space in fonts is also a good idea. Bitkulova claims that increasing font size and space between lines can “dramatically increase website conversion rate.” Make your page as easy to understand and navigate as possible. If a visitor can’t read your text, they aren’t going to stay on your website long. If they can’t easily find your call-to-action link, they won’t click on it. So a clean, uncluttered page is a must.

Too many words can also negatively impact your conversion rate. Bitkulova says a page should not have more than 200 words. More than that and you risk visitors losing interest and clicking out. Don’t use difficult words or terms either. It’s important your visitors can absorb and remember what information you do include on your landing page.

You should also try to keep your page somewhat short. A study called “When Less Is More: Empirical Study of the Relation Between Consumer Behavior and Information Provision On Commercial Landing Pages” discusses how shorter web pages nationally (in the U.S) have a higher conversion rate than longer ones. This data reflects the importance of making your landing pages simple. There’s no need for an excess of information.

Another thing to keep in mind is the resolution of your images. You want them to be good quality but you don’t want them to be big enough to slow down the loading speed of your website. Page load time can have a huge impact on conversion rate. If the loading time exceeds three seconds, visitors will likely give up and leave. The same is true for mobile traffic.

Also, don’t forget to consider what your page will look like on the most popular desktop display resolutions. According to StatCounter, the most popular sizes are 1366 x 768 and 1920 x 1080.

Consider the “fold area.” The fold refers to the area viewable when you first click onto a page without scrolling. There are some important things that should be kept above the fold regardless of display resolution size.

The call-to-action button should be visible above the fold as well as any important information and the template visitors would use to input their name and email. If your page does require scrolling, you can include another call-to-action button at the bottom but your only call-to-action button should not be at the bottom.

#2: The More Landing Pages the Better

To make your marketing campaign as effective as possible, you need to have several (more than 10) landing pages on your website. A report done by Hubspot found that when businesses increase their number of landing pages from ten to fifteen, their amount of leads increase by 55%. Any less than that didn’t have much effect.

You want to create more opportunities by targeting more people and increasing your number of landing pages helps achieve that. With more landing pages, there’s a higher chance of someone coming across one that is particular to their needs. You can provide more offers without cluttering one landing page. If one landing page doesn’t have an offer your visitor is interested in, chances are another one will.

When targeting, you should try to be specific. Don’t think about what a group of people might want but what one person might want. If you go too broad, you’ll lose the unique thing you have to offer and miss people who might have been interested in it. That doesn’t mean you can only target one kind of individual. Another landing page can be tweaked to target another kind of individual.

#3: Simple, Honest Headlines

As you probably guessed, it’s important to make your headlines stand out. Using bigger font and/or a different color (than the rest of your text) is a good way of achieving this.

This headline stands out because of its size and color. Not only that, the usage of numbers catches our attention.

Always make sure the headline on your landing page matches the description and headline the ad or email link the click came from. It reassures your visitor they are in the right place and that you’re being honest about what you offered in the ad. If a visitor feels tricked, they won’t stay on the page. According to Bitkulova’s study, 8 out of 10 visitors only read the headline before deciding whether to stay or leave.

Though you don’t want your headline to be too general, using simple, easy-to-understand words will make your page more approachable. Bitkulova refers to another study that found headlines with eight words increase click-through rate and using (odd) numbers, the word “how”, offering information, and punctuation like colons, hyphens or exclamations make for a better headline.

You also need to make clear what you have to offer right off the bat. Writing a question that relates to a need your visitor might have or a promise of solving a problem of theirs is the best way to go. You want to emphasize what you can give them.

#4: Focus on what you have to offer

Every part of your messaging, not just your headline, should be about what you can offer them. Don’t assume the description of your product or service will be enough to convince them they need you. Instead, explicitly but concisely explain what problem you’ll solve or benefits you’ll give them.

If you want them to give you their contact information, you have to make it worth it on their end. What will they gain if they download your ebook? Are you offering them a discount for signing up with you? Or maybe a free trial? Is your service a solution to a problem? Well then, you need to tell them the solution you offer and a hint to why it works. It’s all about the potential client and their needs.

If you’re unclear about what they’ll get or if you withhold too much information about what you’re offering, your visitor will have no inclination to stay, let alone sign up. Make this an easy choice for them.

Knowing your audience is important when it comes to deciding how to market your business on your landing page. As I mentioned earlier, it’s good to have multiple landing pages to increase your chances and reach, but nonetheless, targeting works best when you’re envisioning a particular person’s needs instead of thinking of archetypes or groups of people.

#5: Hero Images and Videos

A hero shot, in the words of Bitkulova, is an image or video demonstrating how a product is used. It’s meant to trigger an emotional response and/or help the visitor imagine themselves using the product.

In their paper, Bitkulova lists various types of “hero shots,” including what’s called the happy user, the product shot, and the explanation video. The happy user shot is probably exactly what you imagine it to be. It’s a photo of someone happily using your product or service.

This image of a happy family is a good example of a happy user(s). They’re smiling and the image is interesting though not busy enough to distract us from the blue “Find an Agent Near Me” button next to them. Picking a family image is a good choice for a real estate marketing strategy, especially if they’re targeting families. The more relevant the imagery, the more realistic it’ll feel for your business. https://www.kolau.com/marketing/real-estate-marketing

A product shot is used to emphasize what the visitor will receive if they convert. The image is just a photo of what the product looks like and is usually accompanied by a description of the product and how it works.

Very similar to the “ipsy” screenshot, CAUSEBOX’s landing page uses a picture of beauty products and accessories instead of pictures of people. Because both “ipsy” and CAUSEBOX are beauty subscription boxes, it makes sense to focus on the products a customer may receive as opposed to implying their satisfaction with a service (like with the real estate example).

Videos can be very effective. You can use videos to explain your product without having to take up extra space on your landing page. Videos shouldn’t be long (2.7 minutes or less, in fact, according to Bitkulova). Use video to tell your visitor how your product works or how it’ll benefit them or use it as a testimonial.

An essay by Robert Ejupi exploring social media trends found that videos and images create more engagement than text. 48% of Ejupi’s respondents preferred content that included video and/or images (the highest percentage of the study). 11% of respondents said they preferred content in plain text.  It would be to your benefit to include one or both as part of your landing page.

#6: Build Trust by Showing your Credibility

Matching your headline with your ad is one way to create trust between you and your visitor and social proof is another way. Looking at Unbounce’s study mentioned earlier, you can see the conversion rate for landing pages that include social proof, such as testimonials, case studies, press mentions or usage statistics is higher than pages without any social proof.

Including as much social proof as you can clutter your landing page a bit too much so it’s best to stick with a few things. Testimonials work great as long as you include photos of the person and full names. People are less inclined to believe someone is real with little information about them.

The testimonials should be specific as well. Broad praise like “good service” means almost nothing. It’s much more believable when the praise talks about the specific benefits or services the person received or the results your product achieved for them.

This screenshot is taken from HomeLight’s landing page. It does take a second to find the testimonials (ideally it should be more obvious), but the way the testimonials are written is well done.

Though we’re not told the women’s full names, we can see their location which makes them somewhat more believable. Their testimonials are detailed and use names and numbers. For example, Shari tells us she sold her home in ten days and Marilyn tells us she interviewed three top agents in her area.

Press mentions and trust seals make your page look more trustworthy as well. If you can prove media outlets are talking about you by showcasing your press mentions, you look legitimate and it makes your product or service look useful.

Underneath Taboola’s call-to-action links, they list the news platforms they have been featured in, making themselves look much more credible.

Remember that gaining trust is about being real. A stock image of a smiling person, even as your hero image, will not yield you the same results as if you used a photo of a real person with their real name.

Another thing that will build trust in your landing page, especially if you’re asking for contact information, is making sure you have the “secure connection” icon at the top left corner next to your webpage URL.

People want to know that their information won’t be stolen or misused if they hand it over.

Including a phone number somewhere obvious on the webpage also increases trust, according to Bitkulova. It reminds visitors there are real people on the other side.

#7: Make a Landing Page that’s Mobile-Friendly

People use their phones to scroll through the internet and find information more and more. Before October of 2018, mobile usage surpassed desktop usage. Though, as of November, the desktop has once again overtaken mobile usage, they’re constantly at a head to head. This is why it’s more and more important to make sure your landing page loads quickly on mobile and looks good.

What does someone who arrives on your page through phone see without having to scroll? What do the photos you chose look like?

Because mobile can require very different things than desktop, it makes sense to create a landing page just for mobile users. Make your headlines shorter so they fit on a mobile screen. Make sure your information-collecting template fits the screen without scrolling and make it easy to input. Things are smaller on a screen and if you have a long template, it’s not going to work well for you, especially on mobile.

If you remember what “ipsy’s” normal landing page looks like, you’ll notice how different their mobile landing page looks. Their call-to-action links remain above the fold and the picture is much smaller than the one for their desktop version.

One huge advantage of mobile landing pages is the ability to include a “tap to call” feature. Mobile makes it incredibly easy for visitors to give you a call. They won’t have to memorize or type your number. They can be immediately put in contact with you.

Don’t Forget to Test

A/B testing refers to when you compare a page against another page (or series of pages) with only one major difference. For example, you can put the information template on the right side in one version and on the left side in the other version. Or you might change a word in the headline. Testing these pages against each other helps you decide which one is working better.

Testing is the best way to see what is actually working.

If you’re interested in learning how to convince people to click on your ad in the first place, check out our article on How to Create Effective Google Display Ads. Better ads lead to more clicks and more people checking out your landing page!

The post 7 Tips on How to Create an Effective Landing Page appeared first on Kolau Blog.

With St. Valentine’s Day right around the corner, you may be preparing to begin your Valentine’s Day promotions and sales. Alternatively, perhaps you’re having trouble knowing where to start your marketing.

If you own a restaurant, flower shop, jewelry store or the like, Valentine’s Day is likely a big day for you and your business. Even if you don’t, you can utilize marketing strategies to increase your sales for the holiday. However, competition can be fierce between small companies and big corporations. How do you make yourself stand out?

Valentine’s Day is a special occasion for a lot of people. Specifically, according to the National Retail Federation, about 55% of Americans celebrate Valentine’s Day. Not only that, 11% of people who do not celebrate Valentine’s Day still plan on spending the day “treating themselves,” making it likely those people will put some time and money into buying themselves gifts and rewards.

U.S consumers are expected to spend, in total, $20 billion this coming Valentine’s Day. The number has climbed 6% from last year. People are spending more money every year on Valentine’s Day. This article will go over some strategies on how to make sure your business is a part of that Valentine’s Day rush.

Make Sure You’re Prepared

Holidays can be hectic and overwhelming if you’re not well prepared. Take a look at what happened to JetBlue in 2007 on Valentine’s Day (and the days following), during which only seventeen of 156 scheduled flights took off. Part of it was due to a snowstorm and part of it was due to poor planning, specifically with their computer reservation system which couldn’t take so many re-bookings at once.

Or just look at what happened to Amazon on “Prime Day,” July 16th of last year. The website crashed, unprepared for the amount of traffic that was coming in, and redirected customers to error pages with pictures of dogs.

Source: Think Marketing

Though the dogs are cute, this is not exactly what you want to see when you’re trying to buy something off a website.

What can you do to prevent anything like this from happening to you? For one, if you rely on a computer system, make sure you have a backup plan should it fail or crash. Though, if you’re a small business, it’s likely you’ll be physically running back and forth making sure everything is good and ready in your store.

Nonetheless, try to prepare for the worst possibilities, such as system crashes, being short-handed, or lack of enough stock and solve those problems before the day of the sale.

If you expect a surge in sales leading up to and on Valentine’s Day, hire extra help or keep on those seasonal employees through this upcoming holiday. Have employees trained and ready for possible issues. Make sure your inventory is right and you won’t run out of that popular item halfway through the day.

If you own a restaurant or are planning on providing a service that requires limited seating, such as a theatrical performance or a spa special, require reservations and try to keep to schedule to make sure your guests are getting helped efficiently and on time.

While this Facebook post by Noble Rot doesn’t say outright reservations are required, the emphasis on making a reservation now, lest all the time slots get filled, heavily implies the requirement. With a post like this, those who see it are unlikely to assume this restaurant will be able to offer walk-ins on Valentine’s Day.

Look at the marketing campaigns you’re running and see how well they’re doing. Evaluating those numbers can help you figure out what you need to prepare for on Valentine’s Day. A failed Valentine’s Day event will hurt your business much more than being a little over-prepared will.

So, what campaigns and marketing strategies should you be adopting for Valentine’s Day?

1 – Use Email Marketing the Days Leading Up to Valentine’s Day

Email marketing can be a very effective way to announce to your usual customers that you’re having a special holiday sale in honor of Valentine’s Day. Email is more easily trackable than other kinds of advertising, such as TV or print ads. According to an article by Harvard Business Review, when an email is opened, you’ll know who opened it and what links they clicked on within 24 hours.

This makes it much easier to target and tailor emails for certain customers. It’ll help you guess if the person is in a relationship, is married, or is planning to spend the day alone. For example, if you include a link in the email encouraging the consumer to purchase something as a gift and another link encouraging the consumer to “treat themselves,” the link they click on will help you determine if you should be targeting them as part of a couple or not.

Of course, you want to tailor to the couples on Valentine’s Day, but it’s also a good opportunity to target those people who plan to spend the day alone or with their family or friends with “treat yourself” or “Galentine” deals.

Source: GetResponse

This ad is more straightforward than a simple “Galentine” email ad but it saves itself from being too direct by saying “if you have a friend who was recently dumped” instead of directly assuming the recipient has been dumped and it mentioned that breakups are common on Valentine’s Day.

Nonetheless, ads such as this one are a great way to target, not only those people with significant others but also single people, especially those who may be struggling to enjoy Valentine’s day this year.

People also like to dress up for Valentine’s Day, which opens up another set of consumers you could target.

Source: emma

This ad is well done because it offers the option to dress up for both people with someone to celebrate and people who don’t have that person. “Dress for yourself this Valentine’s Day” also has a strong undercurrent of “reclaiming the day,” meaning it encourages those people without dates to enjoy the day despite it all. It’s subtly empowering.

So, here are a few tips for Valentine’s Day emails:

• Start early. You want to have enough time to send multiple emails and build slowly up to Valentine’s Day. Send your email list the first Valentine’s Day email late January or early February to remind them the holiday is coming and that you’re preparing for it as well.

• Send more emails in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day. This doesn’t mean send so many that your recipients begin deleting them without opening them. Send only a few reminders about the upcoming holiday with suggestions tailored specifically for the person receiving it. If someone’s already purchased a gift, send them an email suggesting similar products.

• If someone added a product to their digital cart but left without buying, send them an email reminding them to buy it. Emails reminding customers of abandoned carts save about 29% of lost sales. The same Harvard Business Review article says that sales are not only made online. In fact, 79% of customers buy in store rather than online, meaning emails are bringing people into your place of business.

• When the day comes, send one last email. Use it to assure them it’s not too late to get a last-minute present or grab some last minute dinner, as a few examples.

Ads like these are for that person that waited until the last minute to buy a Valentine’s Day gift. It quietly reassures the recipient that it’s not too late and offers them a solution to a problem they may be having.

Make sure to optimize your emails for smartphones as well. According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of U.S adults own smartphones. Many of those people read their email through their phone and not a desktop or laptop. Reading and/or writing emails is the third most popular activity to do on a smartphone. This is why it’s important to make sure the emails you send are optimized for mobile, on the significant chance the person you send it to will open it on their phone.

2 – Use Google’s Display Ads

For Google Ads in general, keeping up with the weather and incoming holidays is very important. You have to make sure you’re changing gears from your regular Google Ads marketing to your extra sweet Valentine’s Day Google Ads marketing when your customers begin to look for Valentine’s Day gifts.

For Google Display Ads, you can even start a little sooner. Like email marketing, display ads can help remind your potential customer that a holiday is approaching and they should start thinking about getting gifts for their loved ones.

Not to mention, display ads work well when used for retargeting those people who visited your site but did not buy anything. Remember that customer who added things to their digital cart and then never finished checking out? Or maybe this customer clicked on a product but never even added it to their cart.

Retargeting with display ads allows you to show them ads for the products they were interested in before, encouraging them one more time to come back and complete their purchase.

Display ads are all about the visuals. Making your call-to-action clear and easy to find, writing an interesting headline, and choosing an impactful image all influences the visual attractiveness of your ad. You want to stand out and make an impression, all while staying true to theme.

Thankfully, there are many examples of ways companies have creatively advertised on Google’s Display Network for Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is a great time to explore your creativity. For example, take a look at the ad below.

The choice to make the background a drawing makes the ad stand out, especially because it prioritizes the Valentine’s Day color scheme over realism. The candy itself is not a drawing but a picture, making it pop out in the ad, but it doesn’t look out of place. The ad is pleasing to look at and makes you think Valentine’s Day even before you read the headline.

The ad is simple and straightforward. The tagline “Valentine’s Gifts She’ll Adore” and the photo after it of a woman kissing the cheek of who we assume is her significant other tell us all we need to know. She is pleased with the presents she received from Pandora, meaning that if you buy your significant other something from Pandora, they will have the same reaction.

Strategically, since this is an ad for a jewelry store, some attention goes to her rings. The color scheme is to-theme and pleasing to the eye. The couple also matches with the color scheme, as they’re both wearing pink. Plus, the call-to-action is clear and easy to find: “Shop Now.”

3 – Use Google’s Search Ads

During the holidays, consumers begin searching for different kinds of terms in Google’s search engine. For Valentine’s Day, you can expect they’ll look for “valentine’s day gifts” or “places to go on valentine’s day.” Accordingly, you should create search campaigns that can help you find those consumers that might be looking for your business–in particular, because of this holiday.

When searching for Valentine’s Day gifts, ads such as the ones below will appear.

Because “for him” is included in the search, the ads are tailored towards gifts for men. Your ads should be tailored in the same way. You should create different ads for different keywords, even though they’re all meant for a Valentine’s Day campaign.

If you don’t happen to sell gifts for men, make sure your ad is not appearing for this search, even if that means making “for him” a negative keyword, meaning your ad will never appear with searches that use that phrase.

It’s important to consider what phrases people are actually searching that may relate to your business. Being broad won’t be especially helpful as many people are specific when they use a search. Often, if they’re looking to visit a place of business, they’ll look for local stores, adding to their searches “near me” or “in San Francisco.”

Speaking of location, make sure to localize your ads as needed. If you only do business in San Francisco, for example, optimize your Google ads campaigns so that they appear only when someone is searching in your area or looking to buy in your area.

For Google Ads, you have to pay for every click, whether that means your regular customers or someone on the other side of the country who cannot physically purchase from you clicks on your ad. Narrow down your targets and make sure you’re finding the people who are most likely to be interested in your business.

4 – Use Google’s Video Ads (on YouTube)

There have been many memorable YouTube Valentine’s Day ads. Valentine’s Day ads are often sappy, sad, and/or sometimes funny, using emotion as the primary way to reel watchers in. Videos are as visual as display ads, but they’re also reliant on audio, movement, and length.

According to a study on the effectiveness of YouTube advertising by Paula R. Rodriguez, certain cues such as music and length affected the level of effectiveness of a YoutTube ad. The more cues and the clearer the message–in other words, the better the communication–the more effective the ad will be.

Take the following video ad, for example. It’s clever, funny, and relatable to many people.

The video format makes it possible to communicate the situation and message without having to say anything, except “how to renovate your relationship.” We don’t even need to hear them say anything to each other. Their wordless actions tell us everything we need to know. This technique is something only videos can do this well.

Now take a look at the following ad. This ad takes the more romantic and heartwarming road.

The ad is trying to defy stereotypes and make itself stand out while still being about love. It does a good job of making a romantic ad without making it too alike other ads. It is heartwarming and clever enough to stand out from the rest.

The great thing about creating Valentine’s Day ad is that the topic of love is so popular, you’re more likely to find people who relate to it than people who don’t. Video ads are also memorable, especially when they make you feel something. Really effective holiday ads have a tendency of being remembered because of their emotional impact or clever execution.

5 – Use Guerrilla Marketing to Put a Spin on Traditional Marketing

Have you ever seen cars driving by painted crazy colors with company logos printed on its doors or windows? Or have you ever seen videos of companies setting up large art-like displays to catch the attention of random passerby? That’s what’s known as guerrilla marketing. It’s an innovative, eye-catching way of promoting your business and Valentine’s Day offers plenty of opportunities to use this kind of marketing.

Like video marketing, guerrilla marketing needs to be engaging and evoke emotion, not only in the consumers participating in it but also in those who may end up watching the experience. The book Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing by Michael Serazio notes that guerrilla marketing

like that of word-of-mouth… depends upon a kind of promotional crowd-sourcing–one that is both enabled technologically… and advantageous culturally.

So, guerrilla marketing relies on technology to spread the word but it’s also more small-scale than other kinds of marketing.

For example, let’s look at this guerrilla marketing campaign by the Flower Council of Holland.

The placement of the boxes throughout the city is, specifically, the part of this ad that is guerrilla marketing, known specifically as ambient marketing. This kind of marketing works because it’s surprising and it grabs people’s attention. If done well, it gets your audience involved and often it’s shared by users on social media–an example of how this kind of marketing is also, to a degree, dependent on technology. The use of video makes this ad a video ad as well as a form of guerrilla marketing.

Valentine’s Day would also be a great time to start a “viral challenge.” Viral marketing, such as the famous Ice Bucket Challenge, is another form of guerrilla marketing and with the right combination of engagement, uniqueness and emotional response, as mentioned in our Guerrilla Marketing article, it can be very effective.

For example, in 2013, CNN challenged its viewers to make a six-second video on Vine (before its untimely demise) as a love letter to their loved ones.

It was simple and fun to participate in and heartwarming for others to watch–the perfect combination for Valentine’s Day.

Conclusion

As you can see, Valentine’s Day is the perfect holiday to make creative ads, take risks such as trying out guerrilla marketing, and use the universal theme of “love” to improve your sales and to take part in the Valentine’s Day fun.

The post 5 Marketing Strategies for St. Valentine’s Day appeared first on Kolau Blog.

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If you have decided to set up your own real estate agency and haven’t yet found a way to give your business a boost, consider implementing these four real estate marketing strategies that will help you attract more potential customers and increase sales opportunities.

As a real estate agent, you have to plan properly in order to get your important tasks done without becoming a slave to your work or getting distracted by unimportant details. Implementing a marketing strategy takes the same type of planning. In order to plan a marketing strategy properly, you need to understand your industry and the competition so you can detect opportunities. To do this, start by analyzing the real estate sector.

It seems incredible that a decade has passed since the housing market collapsed plunging the economy into a serious crisis. Housing prices fell by 12.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 alone recording the biggest year-on-year decline since the National Association of Realtors started registering them in 1979. However, in 2017, the market recovered a large part of what was lost thanks to an 11.4 percent increase in housing prices compared to 2008.

According to a Grand View Research report, factors such as rapid urbanization due to migration in search of better facilities, the growing demand for residential real estate space and economic growth in developing regions in countries such as India, China, and many African countries have improved income levels and helped the real estate market.

It’s a good time to take advantage of this market recovery and apply effective marketing strategies to improve your business. A good marketing plan will help you gain loyal customers and increase your real estate sales.

#1 Offer virtual tours of your properties

Your potential clients don’t want to waste time and will appreciate knowing as many details as possible before visiting one of your properties in person. Virtual tours are the best way to offer a complete and detailed view of the properties in order to help potential clients get a real idea about the home in question.

In this way, you don’t only gain an advantage over your competitors who only use photographs to show their properties, you can also optimize your resources and your time. In-person visits with your clients will be much more profitable since they’ll know the property in advance and will likely be more interested and willing to make an offer when they decide to schedule a visit.

There are many ways to create virtual or immersive tours. Here are some options that you can choose from in order to find something that best suits your needs, preferences, and budget.

• Create 360º photos or videos: This is basically the same technology used in the Street View of Google Maps. These are interactive images that allow you to move the camera frame 360º to see everything in the environment from a fixed point. You can create a video by linking recordings of your property to 360º from different points and upload it to YouTube and then embed it on your website or even share it on Facebook. 

• Create immersive virtual tours from 360º photos with specific software: While the 360 videos that you can upload to YouTube or Facebook are sequences of images linked one after the other, there are some tools like 3DVista or NockNock that add bonus interactivity allowing your potential customers to move around the different points of the space at will and navigate your property using the floor plan of the house, among other functions. Here is an example:

• Record a virtual tour with a drone: Another way to create a virtual tour is to make a video recording using a small drone. Although this format is not interactive, recording with a drone allows you to capture images of the surroundings with smooth movements and obtain a much more complete vision of the space than a simple photograph would provide. For this, you can hire a specialist in video recording who works with drones. Here is an example of the result:

# 2 Organize a webinar to generate leads

Surely you’ve heard of webinars, the free online video conferences in which an expert offers valuable information about a specific topic in exchange for a name and an email address.

Webinars are one of the key techniques of inbound marketing. This is the type of marketing that happens when a potential client is actively seeking a solution to a problem through a product or service and comes to your business willingly. This is different from outbound marketing which is when you pursue clients who may not be actively looking for your services (think print advertisements, billboards and the like).

For example, Ascend 2 affirms that among the lead generation tactics available webinars are the second most effective type of premium content for marketers. According to a survey ReadyTalk made of their clients:

Between 20% and 40% of webinar attendees turned into qualified leads

Generating qualified leads refers to getting the users who are really interested in what you offer to leave their contact information, generally, their name and email.

In addition, webinars work very well in B2B companies so it can be an effective marketing strategy for real estate if you dedicate yourself to the sale of commercial or industrial properties. According to a Content Marketing Institute survey, more than 60 percent of B2B marketers use webinars as part of their content strategy.

Below you can see an example of a webinar offered by Sente Mortgage in which information is given on the most important steps to buying your first home. As you can see, the company has created a specific landing page for it with the right text so that the user understands what to expect from this webinar along with a simple form:

A webinar can be used for different purposes from attracting potential customers to interact with your brand and demonstrating products to keep your customers up to date. It will take time and energy, but those who come to your webinar will know you and you’ll manage to establish a relationship with them. This relationship will make up for the effort when said prospects are prepared to buy a property.

Tips for creating an effective webinar

• Find a theme that appeals to your target audience: You must know your potential clients very well and think about topics that may be of great interest to you and that, at the same time, allow you to fulfill your objectives. For example, someone who wants to buy a new house won’t have the same concerns as someone who has just bought one. Neither will a young couple making their first purchase compared to an investor who wants to acquire a new property. For example, a webinar titled “10 Things You Should Check Before Buying a New House” could be effective for those searching for a property.

• Promote the webinar during the weeks prior to posting it: In an investigation by BrightTALK, it’s proven that webinars are more successful when they are promoted in advance, generally during the three or four weeks before and during the day of the event.

• Use email and social networks to promote your webinars: According to a survey carried out by ReadyTalk, on a scale of one to five, email was rated at a 4.46 being the main promotion tool. Social networks came in at 2.77 out of five as the second most used tool to promote webinars. Below, you can see an example of a Facebook promotion of a webinar by the real estate agency Tilt Property Group:

• Do not overdo the duration of your webinar: Although most webinars are 45 to 60 minutes, a report from BrightTALK reveals that the average viewing time of a webinar is 22 minutes. So consider making shorter webinars when making yours.

• Reserve a time for questions at the end of your webinar: The great advantage offered by a live webinar—and what sets it apart from recorded videos—is the possibility for interaction between the public and the expert. To take advantage of this, save some time in the end to answer questions and doubts from the attendees.

• Once complete, publish the webinar on YouTube: A webinar doesn’t have to be throwaway content. You can record the screen of your computer while you shoot the webinar and then upload it to YouTube or any other platform that allows you to host videos. Then, embed it on your website and make it accessible to your customers. This way your content will get even more exposure. You can also send the video link by email to users who registered for the webinar but weren’t able to attend. That’s a good way to renew the relationship with them, too.

# 3 Email marketing, your weapon for customer loyalty

Email marketing is the main driver of customer retention for 80 percent of marketers, according to a study by eMarketer. Therefore, one of the main objectives of any content marketing strategy is the generation of leads.

It’s a channel that grants direct and personalized communication with users, which allows you to stay in your customers’ minds and continue to cultivate the relationship you established with them. As Katherine Barchetti, an expert in sales and customer service, says. “Make a customer, not a sale.” Don’t focus only on selling through the content of your emails but on earning the trust of your subscribers.

Keep in mind that manually sending emails is unsustainable once your database grows. Marketing automation tools, like MailChimp, can help you automate the process of sending basic emails, organize and segment your subscriber lists, create attractive emails in a few minutes and easily send bulk emails.

To do this, connect the subscription forms of your website with the platform you choose. To give you a clearer idea, below you can see the MailChimp interface and some of the automation options offered:

When developing an email marketing campaign for real estate it’s not only important to strategically plan the content that your emails will include, but it’s also essential to invest a portion of your time in determining when and how often emails will be sent to the clients.

If you want to know more about how to design your email marketing campaigns and what kind of emails you can send to your leads, check out this post about Email Marketing for SMEs.

# 4 Make sure you have a presence in the main real estate portals

The real estate portals invest heavily in digital marketing and often invade the first page of Google when someone searches, for example, “buy a house in X” or “flats for rent in X” and often are the main points of contact between buyers and sellers. As proof of this, recent research in the United Kingdom showed that 47 percent of the population had used a real estate portal during the last 12 months.

The bad part is that people usually don’t browse past the first page of a Google search result. In fact, the stats show that the first page takes at least 75 percent of the clicks with the first position taking 33 percent of the clicks. The good part is that you can join the enemy and take advantage of their positioning to gain more visibility within their platform.

Thus, real estate portals can be an excellent tool for any real estate agency or professional in the industry since they provide visibility to your brand and allow you to display your property catalog beyond your website.

According to Simon Baker, CEO of REA Group and an investor in the industry for more than 16 years, there are currently between 8,000 and 10,000 real estate portals around the world. These can be national, international or specialized.

If you operate in the United States, Simon Baker recommends the portal Trulia and if you’re in the UK you should not underestimate Rightmove. It is about investigating which ones are the most advantageous portals for you in your country:

• Find out about the number of visits their pages receive and the number of properties they host. You can research the company through publications in the media or use SimilarWeb to obtain data about their web traffic.

• Discover if your target uses them. If it’s a portal dedicated mainly to renting student apartments and your real estate business is dedicated to the sale of commercial properties, publishing an advertisement in it will be time lost.

• Analyze your conditions, services, and commissions. Decide which are the ones that best suit your needs and will help your bottom line.

These real estate marketing strategies are all viable options that can help you attract and retain clients to help your business grow.

The post 4 Ways To Increase Real Estate Sales appeared first on Kolau Blog.

Nowadays, a professional photographer must also deal with the unstoppable democratization of photography. According to InfoTrends, reflex cameras have become more affordable, the Internet has made some professional photographic techniques available to everyone and smartphones with high-performance cameras help everyone take great quality photos. In fact, 85 percent of all photographs taken in 2017 were captured with smartphones.

In an industry dominated by amateurs in which competition is increasingly high and the demand for professional photographers increasingly low, the profitability of your business will depend mainly on four factors: your location, your potential customers, your charisma and your marketing skills. In this post, you will find five marketing ideas for photographers that will help you achieve that fourth factor.

#1 Focus on a Niche Market and Become an Expert

Although the idea of ​​limiting your market seems like a risky decision, specialization can help you reduce your competition, increase your reputation, show potential clients you’re an expert in your field and prove that you’re an authority in your area of expertise. You can also reduce costs, find adequate customers, design a marketing strategy focused on a specific target and establish higher prices to increase profitability.

“81% of consumers will pay a premium for industry experience and industry-specific solutions. “ (ITSMA)

Taking on a niche doesn’t mean you should become an expert photographer in weddings, advertising photography or portraits—these fields are too generic to be considered a niche. For example, instead of wedding photography, you can specialize in gay weddings. Similarly, you can specialize in industrial aerial photography or portraits of people with pets, as is the case DY Rafaeli Photography.

It’s about focusing on a specific audience within your specialization and designing your communication and marketing strategy around the needs of that target audience. According to a survey carried out by ITSMA, 48 percent of consumers would rather consider a provider who personalizes their marketing when looking for someone to address their specific business needs.

Steps to Define a Niche Marketing Strategy

• Investigate to find the most profitable niche: While the criteria to choose your niche would first be your own preferences as a photographer (what you are most passionate about), analyzing the market and being up to date on the latest trends will allow you to discover which types of photography are the most in demand and if the option you are considering is going to be profitable or not.

• Define your buyer persona: According to Tony Zambito, creator of the term buyer persona and founder of the Center For Buyer Insights, buyer personas are archetypal representations based on the investigation of who the buyers are, what they are trying to achieve, what goals determine their behavior, how they think, how they buy, why they make purchasing decisions, where they buy and when they decide to buy. To obtain this information you can carry out interviews, either individually or in groups, with your clients. If you do not have clients yet, use logic and try to put yourself in their shoes to answer the questions mentioned. Below you can see an example of the buyer persona definition:

Image credit: Brightspark Consulting

• Redefine your business plan: Put your ideal customer at the center of everything you are going to do. Refine your marketing message to suit the tone and language of your ideal buyers and think about how your content can respond to their concerns or needs and help them solve their problem. Finally, try to offer the customer an experience that best suits them. For example, if you target elderly people, they will probably prefer to contact you by phone rather than email or chat.

#2 Optimize Your Website and Make it the Center of Your Strategy

Your website should be the central element of your marketing campaign. It should serve as a link between all the online communication channels that you use: social networks, online advertising, emails, etc. In addition, according to the AMIC, the weight of the information found on the website of a company or organization in the purchase decision process corresponds to 76 percent of their business.

Given this relevance, a marketing plan for photographers should include creating a responsive website that adapts to mobile devices (Google started penalizing websites that are not responsive in 2015). Your website should be well-structured, optimized and focused on conversion, sales and loyalty. The following are some tips for you to successfully build and position a website:

• Your website is your portfolio, so use a visual design: Since photography is purely visual, the appearance of your website should be the same. A client who wants to hire you will want to see what you can do with your camera not read about what you can do, so try to highlight your photographs. For this, it’s best to use a portfolio type premium template when designing your website with WordPress. There, the images are usually the focal point of the website. A homepage with a full-screen slider where your best photos are displayed like a slideshow or as a mosaic showcasing your most eye-catching works will capture the attention of your visitors and help them decide if they like your style or if what you offer doesn’t fit what they are looking for.

• Choose the right keywords to attract relevant traffic: Think of the words that describe your services that your ideal clients would search for on Google in order to find you. To find ideas, you can use Google’s suggestions and the related searches that appear at the bottom of the results pages. Make sure that they have high search volumes and low competition. Tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner, which you can use for free if you create an AdWords account, Moz or SEMrush will allow you to see how often users are searching for your keywords and what level of competition they have while discovering other related keywords, too.

• Optimize your website for SEO: Place your keywords in the title and subtitles of the main page. If your website has several pages, do not repeat exactly the same words on all the pages. This is considered “keyword cannibalization” and will affect your positioning on Google. You should also place keywords in your meta tags—the summary that appears on Google search result pages when your website is shown—and in the titles and “Alt” labels of all the images that you upload.

• Link your website to all your marketing channels and make it easy to access: Put it as a link in the signature of your emails, share it on your social media profiles and in your publications to generate inbound links. This will also help the positioning of your website. Add it to your business card with a QR code, too.

Image credit: Daylen González

#3 Create an eBook or an Educational Guide as a Lead Magnet

According to HubSpot, approximately 96 percent of your website’s visitors are not yet ready to buy—a shocking number, really.

To avoid your website becoming nothing more than a portfolio with a contact form that your visitors forget once they leave, offer them something in exchange for their name and email. This is called a lead magnet. Leads are users who have decided to give you their contact information. As you collect leads you can build a database of potential customers who, if you can establish a good relationship with, may end up requesting your services.

For example, if you are a photographer specializing in baby portraits, your main target will inevitably be new mothers who want to immortalize the first stages of their child with high-quality photographs. Focusing on this target, you could create a downloadable eBook like “Basic Digital Photography for Moms” in which you offer valuable educational content in exchange for their email address.

Magazine Mama offers several resources and templates that can be useful to get ideas to design your own lead magnet.

#4 Collaborate with Non-profit Organizations

Donating photo sessions to non-profit organizations that have a good online presence and whose activity is related to your photographic specialty can be a good way to get more visibility, place relevant inbound links that improve the positioning of your website and add value to your brand by contributing to a social cause.

For example, Furry Photos, founded by the Singaporean photographer Nicholas Lee, specializes in pet photography and collaborates with several animal shelters offering free photo sessions. Lee added a section on his website where he shows his work and links to the organizations with who he collaborates. Through simple but emotional text and a picture of a tender kitten in the header, he manages to convey his vision and the value that this practice brings. His photographs help abandoned animals find a new home quicker, too.

It is about reaching an agreement with the organization(s) in which you offer them your services free of charge or at a very low cost in exchange for them mentioning you and linking your website and/or your social profiles whenever they publish your photographs. If possible, always add a watermark to your photographs with your logo to ensure that your brand is always present.

#5 Take Advantage of Social Media

According to Social Media Examiner’s report on the social media marketing industry, 89 percent of marketers say that their activity on social media has generated more exposure for their businesses. Social platforms are a perfect channel for the acquisition and retention of customers while also offering you the chance to create a community of followers for your brand. Once established, they will be continuously exposed to your messages and business.

A marketing strategy for photographers on social media shouldn’t ignore the most visual platforms: Instagram and Pinterest. Convert your social media profiled on those platforms so they become your portfolio. Like this, they will be an additional way to spread your work. Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, are perfect for creating links to your website and viral, shareable content. You should keep in mind that the second has a strong immediacy component as the content disappears quickly when it loses relevance.

Here are some ideas you can apply to your social media strategy:

• Give away a free photo session on your social media: Contests and draws are a good way to increase your number of followers and get leads. You can raffle off a free photo session among all users who comment on a photo, write a post through a specific hashtag or even register to through a form leaving their name and email.

• Send low-resolution images to your clients: If your customers post your photos on their social media and mention you, your work will reach a wider fan base and gain more visibility.

• Convert your Instagram profile to your portfolio and use popular hashtags to give your photos visibility: You can publish your best work, photos depicting the making of your photo sessions or even photos or videos of yourself on Instagram so your followers can put a face to your name and be able to connect more with you on a personal level. When you publish your photos, mention your clients. This is especially beneficial if they are companies because they will love that you’re sharing their brand. Also, look for the most relevant and popular hashtags about photography and try to use the ones your target audience participates in so your photos gain visibility. Tools like Hashtagify, RiteTag or Keyhole can help you find the best hashtags as they provide you with information about their popularity and their audience. They also suggest ideas for new hashtags.

• Link photos from your website to Pinterest and group them in several boards according to the theme: If you “pin” the photos that you uploaded to your website and categorize them into boards, they can be repinned creating more possibilities for users to visit your website. You can also create boards with third-party content that your followers and potential customers will find valuable. For example, infographics about photography, ideas for clothing or costumes for photo shoots, places or spaces to take photos, etc. are all shareable content that will help you attract potential customers.

• Ask your satisfied customers to leave a review on your Facebook page: According to Marketing Land, 90 percent of consumers say that positive reviews influenced their final purchase decision. Facebook is the second place (after Google) where users usually read reviews so make sure that your satisfied customers leave a review on your fan page with a rating of four or five stars. This way your brand will exude more confidence and help your potential clients decide whether or not to get in touch with you.

• Give a gift to your customers in exchange for sharing your posts and page on social media: For example, you can give them a free printed photo from their last session in exchange for sharing, retweeting or repinning your images on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.

Do you think these marketing strategies for photographers sound useful? If you still want more, you can also take a look at Email Marketing for SMEs to find a guide to convert your leads and retain your customers through sending emails.

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Kolau is the easiest way to rank your small business on the first page of Google. Start owning your small business online presence today! No marketing knowledge needed. No agencies required. Now you know, now you can.

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The post Marketing for Photographers: 5 Ideas to Boost Your Business appeared first on Kolau Blog.

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Let us guess. You’ve decided to set up your own psychology office, and you’re looking forward to having more patients enter through the door and, most importantly, to return. Everything is possible if you decide to do it and if you apply the 4 strategies of marketing for psychologists that we propose in this post, but before we start, let’s analyze the sector a bit.

The rise of awareness about mental health problems has helped to increase the number of patients in the sector and the demand for psychology services has remained high in recent years, which means that there is an opportunity to boost and grow your business – according to an IBISWorld report, the annual growth of psychology services in the US has been 4.7% between 2013 and 2018.


A survey by the American Psychological Association reveals that about half of psychologists are self-employed, which means that they must find their own patients, pay a monthly fee to the State and live without knowing what will happen tomorrow.

By applying the appropriate marketing strategies, you can reduce this uncertainty and get someone every day to ask you for a psychotherapy session. Do you want to know what marketing strategies for psychologists are the most effective? Open your mind and don’t miss what comes next.

#1 Marketing Strategy for Psychologists: Use content marketing to gain visibility and attract customers

If your psychology office or center still doesn’t have a website, it’s about time you hire a developer to help you build your online presence, and we don’t say it just because – according to a  GoDaddy survey, 83% of SMEs that have a website feel that they have a competitive advantage over those that don’t have a website. It’s a powerful channel to give visibility to your activity, which will also act as a base for you to develop a complete digital marketing strategy. We delve deeper in another article into what it takes to rank on the first page on Google.

Did you know that, according to an Ascend2 survey, 72% of marketers say that the creation of relevant content was the most effective SEO tactic? Here are some ideas for you to create a content strategy concerning your website to improve your SEO positioning, attract relevant visitors y capture leads – the leads are contact data of users interested in your activity.

• Integrate a blog on your corporate website and publish valuable content for your patients. When we say valuable content, we refer to non-commercial content, which focuses on satisfying the interests and concerns of your customers. Each post on your blog will be a new page that search engines can index, which is a factor that contributes to improving the SEO positioning of your website. Why? Because according to Business2Community, the companies that blog receive 97% more links pointing to their website. If your content is of quality and provides information of great value, it will be more likely to be shared by others. Also, each time an authoritative website adds a link pointing to your blog or any of your pages, the SEO of your website will improve – and your potential customers will find you more easily in Google.

• Choose the right keywords for your content. The keywords are those words that your potential customers use to find you when they perform a search on Google and one of the main factors that determine the positioning of your website for a specific search. It’s about you putting yourself in the shoes of your ideal client and thinking about what he’d write in Google to find your services or information about psychology. Among the keywords that you can think of, choose those that have lower competition and a higher volume of searches – you can obtain this data with tools such as, Moz, SEMrush or the Keyword planner of Google AdWords, as you can see below.
  

• Situate your keywords strategically in the content of your website and in the posts of your blog. For Google to show your web page when someone searches with the keywords you’ve chosen, you must make sure they are present especially in the titles, the subtitles, in the first paragraph of your page or post, in the snippets of the URLs – the text that precedes your domain in the URL and that generally matches the page title – in the “alt” tags of the images and in the meta description – the summary that is shown when your web appears on a page of Google results. You can see an example of it in the following post by psychologist Alicia H. Clark, in which we see how she repeats the keyword “use anxiety to improve performance” in strategic places and achieves the first position in Google for this word.
  

• Create posts on your blog of 2000 words minimum. According to QuickSprout, the first 10 results that appear on Google, for any keyword, are long articles (at least 2000 words.) This shows that long posts tend to get better positions and that, therefore, the length of your posts is a factor that influences the SEO.

• Offer to write posts on popular blogs about psychology. This is another way to get quality links that point to your website and, therefore, help you improve your positioning. First, it’s about finding blogs or webs about psychology or health that accept collaborations. To do so, you can search Google using the following formulas: “psychology blog collaborator,” “collaborate in psychology blog,” “psychology collaborate with us” or “the keyword you choose + the previous formulas.” When you have compiled a list of potential blogs, dedicate yourself to sharing your posts on your social media platforms mentioning them and leaving comments in their posts so they look at you. Then, write a post according to their topic – making sure you include a link to your website – and proceed to send them an email to make them the proposal. After sending the email, keep sharing your posts and leaving comments on their blog to stay in their mind and get them to finish publishing your post. For example, Jamison Monroe, Jr., founder of the mental health center for adolescents, Newport Academy, achieves this purpose by collaborating in the magazine Psychology Today.
  

• Use social media to spread the content you post on your blog. Your blog can also be a source of relevant content for your social media platforms, and it’s also a good way to generate more links and traffic to your website, thanks to its viralization potential – your followers can share or retweet your publications. Among the social media platforms in which you are present, keep in mind that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ are the most appropriate to share your posts, as they allow add actionable links.

• Use video marketing. According to Hubspot, 81% of people have decided to buy a product or hire a service watching the video of a brand. Besides, 76% of marketers say that the video helped them increase sales. If you feel comfortable speaking in front of a camera, we challenge you to record yourself by offering self-help videos and general advice about the problems you deal with in your psychology office – you will only need a camera, a tripod and a simple video editor. You can host your videos on platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo and share them on your social media platforms and your website. In this way, you’ll be able to connect much more with your audience and your potential patients will feel more confident when requesting your services, since, if they’ve seen you through the screen, they’ll be able to get an idea of ​​how you are and what you can offer them. You can be inspired by the videos offered by Jodi Aman, a psychotherapist who is betting heavily on this format. Here we give you an example.

#2 Marketing Strategy for Psychologists: Offer online consultations to your clients

Multiple platforms offer a free video call service, such as Skype, Appear.in, Google Hangouts or Whatsapp, among others. The online video calls allow you to break the barriers of space and time and get in touch with your patients, wherever they are. Therefore, your location will no longer be a decisive factor for your potential customers to hire your services.

A study of the University of Zurich shows that Psychotherapy through the internet is as or more effective than conventional face-to-face therapy. In this way, patients are less intimidated and more receptive than in face-to-face sessions, which allows them to be more honest and the psychotherapist can provide better treatment.

For example, Betterhelp is an entirely online psychology consultation. It only offers consultations through its own video call system and provides a completely personalized service – the person who wishes to request an appointment must answer a previous questionnaire and, depending on his/her answers, he/she is assigned a psychologist specialized in his/her profile.

However, if you offer video calls to your customers through any of the free platforms we have mentioned, you take the risks that your patients won’t go to the cashier and won’t pay for the visit. To avoid this, you must make the operation of your online consultations very clear. Communicate on a specific page on your website and/or directly to the applicant if he or she contacts you by phone, and don’t offer a video call to a patient before he/she has paid for the visit.

For example, the London psychology center Harley Therapy offers online consultations via Skype and has added a visible section on its website in which it indicates how they work.

Benefits of offering online consultations

• The possibility of expanding your activity radius to other geographical places and even cover remote or difficult-to-access regions.
• More comfort for your customers, since they won’t have to move.

• The possibility of expanding your audience. You can reach those reluctant people who want to maintain discretion, such as adolescents, to go through the consultation of a psychologist; and those who may have difficulties to attend the appointments in regular business hours.

• Your patients will be able to access your consultations in a more usual way. A study of the American Psychological Association shows that the number of non-attendances to online sessions is much lower than to face-to-face sessions.
  

#3 Marketing Strategy for Psychologists: Use email marketing to build customer loyalty

According to an eMarketer study, 80% of marketers consider that email marketing is their main driving force of customer retention. It’s a channel that allows you to communicate directly and in a personalized way with your customers, with what you can easily keep in their mind. For this reason, one of the main objectives of any content marketing strategy is to generate leads – get the contact information, usually the name and email address, of users who are interested in the content or activity of a company.

An excellent way to achieve this is to create a lead magnet, that is, offering a piece of content – be it a guide, an ebook, a podcast or an exclusive video – that is very useful for your potential clients and that they can only obtain in exchange for filling out your form, leaving their name and email address. For example, the psychotherapist Jodi Aman offers through her website a free mp3 training to learn to “let go,” in exchange for the user to subscribe to her newsletter.


To streamline the process and avoid sending emails manually – something unsustainable when the database increases – you must connect the forms of your website with a marketing automation platform, such as, for example, Mailchimp. Once you’ve got your first leads, you must strategically plan not only the content of the emails that you’ll send to your potential customers but also the time and frequency with which you’ll send your messages.

If you want to know more details about how to design your email marketing strategy and what kind of emails you should send to your leads, in our other post about Email Marketing for SMEs, you will find everything you need.

#4 Marketing Strategy for Psychologists: Ask for reviews from your clients

Surely, more than once you’ve decided to buy an online product and you’ve found a score based on stars and comments with user reviews, or the typical testimonials on the web pages of services. The by word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools in the digital environment, as it has a significant influence on the decision making of consumers.

According to a survey carried out by BrightLocal, 33% of users read reviews when hiring a professional in the health sector – it’s the third industry in which reviews are more critical when choosing a doctor or a psychologist, as you can see in the following graph.

Although it may seem a risky strategy – yes, it’s true that an avalanche of negative opinions can severely damage your image – if you manage to accumulate positive reviews, they can spectacularly grow your number of clients. A study of the Harvard Business School showed that every increase of a star in a review on Yelp meant an increase in revenue of between 5% and 9%.

Keep in mind that if your potential customers don’t know you, they’ll barely hear you when you tell them about the wonders of your psychology services. On the other hand, if someone who says wonders about you is a client who’s already come to your consultation, they’ll be all ears. Why? Because the information that this person will provide will no longer bear the “advertising” label and will be perceived as truthful since your potential customers know that there’s no commercial purpose in the authentic reviews.

Yelp and Facebook are the two most trusted review platforms, according to the BrightLocal survey. If you’ve a fan page of Facebook and a Yelp profile, ask your most satisfied customers – in person or via email – to write reviews on these platforms. You can offer them some incentive in return to make sure you get the reviews, such as a discount on the price of the next psychotherapy session or even a free visit.

What do you think of these marketing strategies for psychologists? If you want to know more, you can also take a look at the interview we made to the founder of Acupuncture by Devon, one of the leading acupuncture clinics in San Diego (California), and discover which marketing strategies she’s employed to achieve success.

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Kolau is the easiest way to rank your small business on the first page of Google. Start owning your small business online presence today! No marketing knowledge needed. No agencies required. Now you know, now you can.

Be sure to subscribe to our blog for more articles like this!

The post Marketing for Psychologists: 4 Strategies that Work appeared first on Kolau Blog.