3 SECRETS TO SUCCEEDING IN A SATURATED MARKET

Mindset maneuvers when the market isn’t moving. There’s no such thing as an oversaturated market, simply unrecognized audiences.  In a business or any industry, there are subsections of customers and clients that are underserved and underrepresented. Finding those areas of opportunities to beat an oversaturated market.

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How Multiplying Your Purpose Multiplies Your People & Profits

Purpose plus people produces profit. But how? Many companies are wondering if this process is true. Isn’t the first goal to profit, so they stay in business? If that is your main question, you’re on the right page. We’ll answer what it means to become a purpose-driven business and how it increases your bottom line. 

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5 Ways to Use Email Marketing

How many of you hate spam? I know I do. Now another question, does email marketing even work anymore? With an ROI of 4400%, I’d say the answer is yes. And it’s expected to grow within the coming years.

Now the most crucial question I are you effectively using email marketing. To be quite frank, most businesses aren’t. If you don’t want your messages to end up in the folder marked spam, you need to keep reading and be ready to make some changes.

What is email marketing?

All email marketing is a way to send promotional messages to prospective clients to generate sales or leads. 

Why should I use email marketing?

If the 4400% ROI isn’t answer enough, I’m not sure how else to convenience you.

Different email marketing types

There are many different types of email marketing. If you type how many types of email marketing are right now in a search engine, you’ll likely come up with thousands of results, all gibing you different answers. Here are a few of the ones most frequently used.

  • Transactional or thank you emails.

These are the emails you send once a transaction has been completed. This is just a way to say thank you, you appreciated their business and give them a receipt. Customers interact with this type of email more than others because it contains valuable information, such as receipts, tracking information, and order confirmations.

  • Newsletters

This is one of the most common and popular types of email marketing. Generally, on your website, it gives you the option to sign up for newsletters. If your customer does, it means they are interested in learning more about your company and your products. When creating newsletters, you want to make sure that your topics are relevant, engaging, and informative.

  • Promotional emails

This is an excellent way to entice past customers and drive sales up. Promotional emails are used to reward past customers with exclusive offers, introduce new products, and inform them about other money-saving opportunities. 

  • Re-engagement emails

This is for past inactive customers. It’s a way to remind them of your business and re-establish a connection. It’s much easier to turn a past customer into an active customer than find a new customer—one thing to remember is do not send too many emails that will cause them to unsubscribe.

1. Get an email list

Email marketing only works if you have people who are interested in your product or services. There are so many ways you can get email lists that we could write a book, so we’re going to briefly touch on a couple of proven ways you can do this.

  • Create an email signup form on your website – When people visit your website and are interested in your products and want to know more about your products or services.
  • If you have a brick-and-mortar store, have an email signup sheet or ask them for it when they’re checking out.
  • If you have a large following on social media, add email signup to your page and on your blogs.
  • Use a lead magnet – This is basically a bribe. You give away something for free in exchange for their email address. These things are either free or cost very little. Focus on things you can create yourself, such as.
    • eBooks
    • A webinar
    • Free trials or samples
    • Free quotes or consultations
    • Quizzes or self-assessment
    • Coupons

2. Create your marketing plan

Now that you know what email marketing is, the different email types, and how to get your email list, it’s time to create a marketing plan. Below you will find the steps on how to do this below.

  • Find your target audience – you do this by asking yourself who would want to buy your product or services. This is important because you can send them targeted emails to build a relationship.
  • What are your goals – when writing an email, you need to have a specific purpose.  A few of these are listed below.
    • Increase sales
    • Brand awareness
    • Customer engagement
    • Promoting a new product
    • Offering discounts
    • Weed out people who are no longer interested in receiving emails
  •  Determine what you’ll write – determine what you want to say and how you want to say it. The main thing to remember is that people are busy and don’t want to read paragraph after paragraph. They want to skim the email and see if anything appeals to them. There are a few ways to ensure your emails capture the readers’ attention. 
    • Create attention-grabbing subjects
    • Use short sentences and paragraphs – avoid wordiness and fluff
    • Use bullet points
    • Use psychological triggers such as
      • Fear of missing out
      • Colors that invoke emotion
      • Social proof
  • Determine how often you’ll send emails – this can be tricky. You want to send them often enough to keep readers informed but not so frequently that people ignore them or unsubscribe. The easiest way to determine this is to have frequency choices on your signup page. If you don’t have this option, choose your frequency and check the unsubscribe rate until you find the sweet spot. 
  • Create your schedule – This is the best way to ensure that you’re meeting your frequency target. You can use a calendar to do this or use an automated program that does it for you.

3.  Design your emails

When designing your emails, you want to keep it simple start with the most critical information first. Make sure it’s well structured, with a font that’s not too big or small, keep it clean, only use images if it serves a purpose, and only add three at the most. 

4. Test your emails

People use their phones to look at emails more often than any other device. So you’re going to want to make sure that your email is smartphone-friendly. Send out test emails to friends or coworkers before sending them to the people on your email list.

5. Determine the best day to send your email

Depending on what area your client base lives in, this will vary depending on your list. The one day you want to avoid is Friday. Most of the time, people are getting ready for the weekend and will likely ignore your email, and then by Monday, it’ll be buried under a ton of other emails. Avoid end-of-day emails because, like Friday emails, they probably won’t get read until the following business day, which they will be buried under a ton of email. Otherwise, it’s trial and error. Find what works best and stick to it.

6.  Measure and optimize your email campaign

Your email marketing strategies should be easy to determine so you know if it’s giving you a good ROI and which marketing campaign is working the best. This is why tracking your conversion rates and user behavior is so important. Your email service provider should have various reporting tools such as.

  • How many people are opening your emails?
  • The number of people who are clicking on the links
  • Number of people subscribing from your list
  • Revenue generated from the emails

Summary:

There are a few main things that are essential when starting an email marketing campaign. The first is to get the right subscribers. Without them, your entire campaign will be useless and end up with wasted time and money. Once you have the right audience, it’s time to create a marketing plan that will grab your reader’s interest so that they are more likely to purchase from you instead of another company.

Essential tip: always add a call of action at the end of every email.

How to Make Your Brand Identity Attractive To Millenials and Gen X?

Trying to draw millennials’ and Gen Z’s attention for the long term is challenging. These two generations were born between 1986-2010 and have been the only generations to grow up during the internet age. Gen Z’s has pretty much been raised with (or sometimes by) technology. With these changes, it only makes sense that the way we present our company brands has to change.

Previous generations have viewed companies as being honest and authoritative and meant to be respected, while millennials don’t. For Millenials and Gen Z, you have to earn their business by having values that they respect and have a reason to buy from you. One of the main things that attract Gen Z is small businesses, and they are willing to pay extra to buy from them.

But is gaining their respect and business really all that difficult? No, all you have to do is understand what they want and what draws them to a company’s brand. To help you solve this problem, we’ve created a list to help you do just this.

What is a brand identity?

​​More than likely, if you’re reading this, you already know what brand identity is, so we will keep this short. Brand identity is how consumers feel when they see your company or when they hear your company name. This is the main driving force between attracting customers or losing them.

So now let’s get to the entire reason you’re reading this article – How can you attract the new generations!

Tell your brand’s story.

You want to tell your brand story in a way that will resonate with your target audience. Tell them why your company is a better choice than your competitors. This is probably going to take some introspection on your part. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to assist you with this.

  • What is important to you
  • Why did you start your company – what problem do you want to solve
  • Make it personal
  • Keep it simple

Embrace social responsibility

There has never been a generation that’s been as passionate about social responsibility as these generations. If you want to attract them, then find out what your passion is and then show them you’re being authentic. Social responsibility isn’t limited to philanthropy. It can be a variety of things. Some businesses are passionate about going green and using more sustainable products, and reducing their carbon footprint. Your company may also be focused on ethical labor practices, volunteering, or many others. Whatever it is, share it with your customers.

Have a solid online presence

Remember back in the 80s. You could put ads on television and radio to attract customers? Most people now don’t watch commercials, thanks to various streaming services. Now everyone is scrolling through social media, using search engines, and looking at websites. If you want to stay at the forefront of potential customer’s minds, you will have to be where they are.

Utilize social media

Individuals spend roughly 5-6 hours a day scrolling through social media sites. You can personalize your brand by connecting with customers online through your page. Today’s consumers like to form relationships with companies they purchase from. Connect with them, post things to draw people’s attention, and interact with them. Love her or hate her, Chrissy Teigen has a solid social media presence, especially on Twitter. Because of this, she has been able to make it through some things other people couldn’t.

Connect with an influencer

Don’t underestimate the power of an influencer. This is someone who has gained a considerable following on social and traditional media who can influence people to make purchases through certain companies. Many companies collaborate with them because this has become a crucial part of brand awareness.

Have high-quality products

Your brand will have some type of reputation, and a big part of that will depend on your products’ quality. If your company gets the reputation of selling sub-par products or services, Millennials and Gen Zs isn’t going to waste their time or money on your products. They rely upon one online review, company information, and complaints against the company before choosing who to buy from, especially if it’s a higher-end product.

Be original

Don’t use what worked in the past because it won’t work now. People want something new that grabs their attention. Think about the commercials that you see that, in the end, you have no idea what they were trying to market.

An example of this is perfume commercials. Someone diving in the pool half-naked, swimming around, then getting out, putting on a towel, and then flashing you a perfume bottle. This leaves people scratching their heads, wondering what they just watched and why they should buy their product.  Instead, current generations want to know why they should purchase your product.

Blogs matter

You may be wondering why blogs are important. You already have an online presence; you’re interacting with your customers, so why should you blog? A blog allows you to share stories and information with people in an entirely new way. It is also a way you can engage with people in a new way. You can provide them with relevant information, educate them, and answer the questions that people want to know. While the blog doesn’t have to focus entirely on your company, you want it to be about something related to your company.

A few other reasons you should have a blog are.

  • You’ll show up higher in search engines
  • Blogs are company-owned
  • Blogging is a cost-effective way to keep your brand relevant.
  • You’ll have a permanent online presence.
  • If you make your blogs sharable, you get free advertising.

Be inclusive

Both Millennials and Gen Zs are passionate about inclusivity, equality, diversity, and acceptance. You’ve probably noticed that large companies are now very outspoken about various issues they never talked about five years ago. You have to do more than just say it; you have to show how you market your company. You need to ensure that your visual content and the words you use reflect this inclusivity.

Design a memorable logo

McDonald is a perfect example of this. Everyone knows what those golden arches mean. You want your logo to do the same thing. Your logo will grab people’s attention and is the first impression they will have of your company. If you want to make a solid first impression, you need a logo that does the following.

  • Is noticeable
  • It makes a solid first impression
  • It is something people will remember
  • Encourages brand loyalty
  • Is unique
  • Builds trust

Be consistent

Once you establish your brand, you want to keep things consistent. If you start changing things up, you’ll probably end up losing part of your customers. Most businesses want to do the opposite. A couple of reasons why consistency is essential are.

  • Brand recognition
  • Increase revenue
  • Creates trust

Summary

Now that you know a few ways to attract new generations to your business now it’s time to get to work doing it. When implementing these changes, you want to make sure not to alienate your current customers like a few other brands have done. Being inclusive and socially responsible doesn’t mean you should exclude your existing customers.

How to Determine Your Target Market?

Are you having trouble figuring out who your target audience is? Don’t worry. Even the biggest corporations struggled with this when first starting. This essential step is often something businesses skip, and most of them realize their mistake sooner or later. Hopefully, you’re reading this sooner rather than later.

Not knowing who your target audience is is a waste of time, money, and resources. No matter how great you think your product is, there are others who won’t agree. This is why you have to find your target audience. Knowing this information helps to market your product in the most effective way.

So how do you figure out who your target audience is? Sometimes the answer is evident, while other times, it’s more complicated. Your target audience is the people who are going to be the ones that will purchase your products, use them, and then tell others about them.

If this sounds like something you’re struggling with, it’s a good thing you’re reading this article. Below, you will find a list of questions to ask yourself to identify the individuals you need to market to.

1.  What is your target demographic?

To determine your target market profile, you need to know their characteristics. You may be thinking, yeah, it sounds like a good first step, but how do I figure that out. Here are the questions you need to ask yourself to find out their demographics.

  • What is their age? You may wonder if their age matter. It does if there is a significant age difference, while a few years won’t matter as much. Someone in their late teens to early 20s probably isn’t worried about an anti-aging home or buying a home. You don’t have to do a specific age; instead, choose an age range.
  • Are they married or single? It makes sense the single people would be interested in products than those who are married wouldn’t.
  • Are they male or female? This is important when choosing your market audience for obvious reasons.
  • Determining where your target audience lives helps with knowing what type of language to use—knowing where the individual lives help to connect with them in ways they understand and accept. People who live in New York will want products vastly different from those who live in California. You may also want to do localized advertising or regional advertising, and you’ll need to determine if it’s worth the cost.

2.  Who did you initially make your product for?

Who did you make your product for?  Sometimes this may be the only question you need to answer. When you started thinking about making your product, you probably had an idea who would benefit from it.

3. Where do they work?

If you’re in the B2B market, then the industry will matter more than if you were targeting consumers on an individual level. By determining which businesses, you are going to sell to and then market it accordingly. A few questions you need to ask are.

  • What industry are they in? Are they large corporations or small businesses? Are they in the construction industry, or do they work in the tech industry?
  • How many employees do they have? Knowing how many employees they have will help you determine how successful they are the amount of revenue they bring in.
  • Are they brick and mortar or online stores? If it’s primarily online, you’ll have to get more creative since you won’t talk to them face-to-face.

4. How much do they earn?

I know most people aren’t fond of bringing the money factor into it, but it matters. If you’re selling a high-end item, you don’t want to market to people who will have trouble affording it. Think about it. What would happen if Tesla marketed to individuals who were on the low, middle-class end?Needless to say, they wouldn’t sell as many cars as they are right now. The reverse is true too.

5. What are their hobbies and interests?

You need to know the answer to this question to market to the right people effectively. If you’re selling hiking shoes, you want to market to people who enjoy the outdoors and probably not those who enjoy sewing.

This is especially important when using social media advertisements. They determine when and where to show ads based on the preferences you selected

6. What are their values, and what’s important to them?

Consumers are now buying more than ever from companies that have the same values as them. Many people no longer buy products from companies that they feel aren’t socially responsible and environmentally friendly. Another factor that developed in the last few years is that your political beliefs can cause you to gain or lose customers. It’s more important than ever to know your target audience’s values.

7. What type of items do they purchase?

What type of products and features is your target customer buying? Do they buy the same products, or do they switch back and forth between brands? If they did buy your product, would it be a continuing thing or a one-time purchase?

Understand why the customers choose what products to purchase. Is it an impulse buy or something they know they need or something they have to save for? What can you do to convince consumers to buy your product instead of your competitors?

8. Who Chooses What Products to Buy

If you have determined that your target audience had a significant other or children, find out who makes the buying decisions. It also may depend on your product too. Perhaps the wife makes day-to-day purchase decisions while the husband makes the decisions about higher-priced items. However, it works make find that out and then gear your marketing technique towards them.

9. What are your current customers buying?

Do your current customers like one product over the others? If so, find out what product it is and then target people in a similar demographic as your existing customers. An example of this is if you noticed current customers are buying a lot of pumpkin spice candles, pay attention to their age, gender, and other specifics to broaden your customer base. Another easy marketing technique, if you have a brick-and-mortar store, is to create a window or sidewalk display of your best-selling items.

10. What’s the best way to get their attention?

9 times out of 10, this answer will be online and, more specifically, social media pages. Social media pages have become a marketer’s dream. People spend more than 5 hours a day on various social media platforms and frequently click on ads and never have to leave the site to make their purchase. Another thing people like about social media because they can connect with companies and learn more about them and their brand.

Summary:

Figuring out who your target audience is is the best thing you can do for your business. This helps you know what direction you should take with your marketing and how you should market. If you create an entire campaign around the wrong audience, it will be a lot of wasted money with very little return.  Just asking yourself a few simple questions can make a huge difference between your business succeeding or failing.

Secrets on How to Connect with Your Target Audience

It doesn’t matter if your company is well-established or just starting. You have to know who your target audience is. Knowing who you’re marketing to will differentiate between obtaining more customers or possibly losing current customers. When done correctly even, small companies can compete with large ones.

So how can you find your target audience and keep them interested in your products? There are a few different ways you can do this, which we’ll get to in a few minutes. The thing you have to remember is that the buying power is in the hands of the customer. They are the ones that will make or break your business. It’s all about drawing the right way to grab someone’s attention through marketing, messaging, and timing. Now let’s look at the ways you can find exactly who is your target audience.

What is a target audience?

A target audience is a group of individuals who are likely to buy your product or services. To find your target audience, you’ll need to figure out what type of people purchase your product based on product, service, or brand. You’ll do this by finding out what similar demographic traits your target audience shares, such as.

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Professional
  • Education level
  • Marital status
  • Socioeconomic status

What do you know?

It’s likely you already know the type of people your product may interset, especially if you’ve been in business for a few years. If you run an athletic store, you know that you’ll attract individuals into fitness and sports. There are a few questions you can ask yourself about your current customers.

  • Where do they live?
  • What age group does your product attract?
  • Is being socially conscious vital to them?
  • What attracts them to certain brands?

After spending time brainstorming on these questions, you can move on to the next step.

How can I solve my customers’ main problem?

Figure out the reason people are currently purchasing your products. What problem are you solving for them? If you are just starting your business, ask yourself the following questions.

  • How can I provide a solution to a problem?
  • What is my target audience’s primary goal?

Although these appear to be simple problems frequently, you’ll find they fall under a few different categories.

  • Financial – This occurs when people look to cut back their spending and feel that what they are currently purchasing is too expensive. A few examples of pain points are as follow.
    • Low-quality products you have to purchase frequently
    • Excessive fees
    • Unexpected fees for products
    • Prices that go up after promotion ends
    • High subscription plans
  • Productivity – this simply means making your buying process simple. If you provide convenience, they are more likely to choose your product. Here are a few ways you can improve your productivity.
    • Tell your customers how they can increase productivity when they use your product.
    • Increase their comfort. Think of newer models of office chairs. People who sit in their chairs for hours are more comfortable. Other examples are ergonomically correct gaming mouse pads and improved mouse structure.
  • Process pain points – customers want the buying process to be straightforward. You may also need to find out from your customers, such as reading reviews or having them feel out satisfaction surveys. Some areas you want to look into are.
    • How easy it is to find product information on your website
    • If you have frequent popup ads
    • Limited hours of phone support
    • Long wait times
    • Unhelpful or rude customer service agents.
  • Delivery issues – customers want to know when their product has been shipped and when to expect it to arrive. If customers are not provided with this information, many people will cancel their order and not order from your company again. To avoid this issue, make sure you let your customer know when their product shipped and when they can expect it. 

Conduct customer surveys

When conducting a survey, make sure you ask questions that help you to learn more about your customers and what they want. Customer satisfaction matters. Surveys let you know what you’re doing good at and where you need improvement. A few tips on how to

  • Keep it short – people won’t want to take a long time to fill out a lengthy survey. Shorter surveys will help you get more people to complete it.
  • Only ask the crucial questions – you want to know how they felt about your company if the services you offered met their expectations. What you did well and areas you need to improve. Don’t ask useless questions.
  • Ask questions that are mainly scaled but add queries either at the top or bottom that asks their options.
  • Ask one question at a time – sometimes surveys ask multiple questions at once, which can cause confusion.
  • Avoid making assumptions – make sure your questions are specific, keep the wording simple, and avoid cliche’s or acronyms.
  • Offer gift cards or a coupon for people who respond to the survey.

Use social media

There are various ways you can use social media to find your target audience. Add buttons to your website where they can follow you on various social media sites. Current and potential clients want to engage in brands that they use. Once you’ve identified pertinent information about your target audience, you can better create targeted ads. A lot of people are now using these platforms to purchase items. Another way to target the right people you can search pages that are similar to yours and groups.

Once you start creating ads on Facebook, use campaign monitoring tools to see how effective the ads are. Once you know what ads work and further narrow it to fit the right individuals. Pay attention to how many people are reading and sharing your blogs and the number of people reading, commenting, and sharing your posts. One important thing about social media is that it helps create brand awareness.

Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great way to gather information about people who visits your sites. It will tell you demographic details about your customers as well as their interests. Once you have collected this information, you can use it for various purposes.

  • Create personas for blogging content – once you know the type of individuals is reading your blog, you know who to write for. Another benefit of discovering the kind of people who are reading your blog will be like your target audience.
  • When do you get the most consumer engagement – when do people most frequently engage in your content? Are blogs what draws their attention? Is it funny memes, or do they like the personal interaction? Each social media platform engages customers in different ways, for example.
    • Facebook has an older audience, and they are most interested in forming relationships. On this platform, focus on blog content and creating posts on your page, maybe asking a question, or making a poll.
    • Twitter is geared towards younger audiences, and content is short and has minimum words that can capture the readers’ attention quickly.
    • Instagram is all about pictures. You want to use great photos to encourage viewers to leave comments, click on your brand, and visit your page.

Conclusion

Now that you know how to find and connect with your target audience, get busy attracting new customers and ensuring your current ones are satisfied with your business.

Tips for Effectively Analyzing Your Target Audience

In today’s world, everyone is trying to reach out to as many potential clients as possible. Whether you are an e-commerce business selling products or a business providing services you will need a regular flow of customers to survive in the business world. Although the buying decision is up to the customers itself, as a marketer it is very important to have in-depth knowledge of who you are offering your product or service, and who actually needs them. You can’t sell female shoes to a male audience.

Every year, billions of dollars are wasted on ads. The reason for failure is simple. The marketer is unable to identify the target audience of that specific product. That results in low engagement on the ads and the money is wasted.

Now the question arises, why is it important to know about your audience? As a marketer, it is the most vital step. It helps you define your marketing strategy and the action plan. Targeting a larger audience with less engagement is never an option. It’s better to target the right people to get the most out of your ad campaign. This not only increases your campaign ROI but also builds a loyal customer base for your product. Today’s research shows that customers are more likely to do business with brands whose ads are more personalized and targeted to their needs.

The target audience can be based on many different factors. They can be location-based or interest based. Interest can define your target audience. Different people have different interests. You can’t sell hockey sticks to football players. To sell your hockey sticks your audience will be people having an interest in hockey.

Ways to Determine Your Target Audience

Before we jump into ways to determine your target audience it is important to know that there can be two roles your target audience can play. The first is a group of people we call The Decision Maker. The Decision Makers are the ones that have the authority to make decisions on whether or not to purchase a product or service. The second group is called The Supporter. They don’t have the direct authority to make the purchase but their interest can encourage The Decision Maker to make the purchase. So, while determining the target audience it is important to keep these two groups in mind.

Now, moving on to how you can determine the target audience for your brand. There are seven rules and if you follow them properly not only your ad campaign will be successful, your business will see an increase in sales as well.

1.      Analyze Your Customer Base

The best way to know your target audience is by analyzing your current customers. Look at who is buying your products. Note down every key point about them. Note their purchase behavior. Another optimal way to know your target audience is to provide surveys with questions in order to familiarize yourself with your clients, therefore helping you determine your target audience.

2.      Market Research

Everything you want to know about your perfect audience is out there in the market. All you need to do is invest some time and effort in research.  Doing market research will give you an idea about how the products similar to yours are already performing, who is buying them, and where there may be any gaps in the market that your product can fill. People love a new product. So if you are selling a product with a change there is a higher probability you will attract a large number of buyers.

3.      Competitor Analysis

Another way for you to determine your target audience is by doing competitor analysis. Unless you are launching a completely new product, you will have many competitors selling the same product as yours. So, the best practice is to see who your competitors are targeting. Make a list. Take notes and then decide on who you are going to target. Competitor analysis will make your work easy if done correctly.

4.      Create your Buyer Persona

Creating buyer personas can play a very vital role in your business. The persona can be built on many different factors starting from the demographics. Search for the regions your product will be best suitable and narrow down your audience. After determining the demographics the other factors that you can look into are age, gender, location, hobbies, income, profession, and marital status. All these parameters may look very simple and orthodox but they can define your target audience and can save you time and money.

5.      Define who is not your Audience

Defining your audience is important but on the other hand, defining who isn’t your audience, is equally as important. One can be greedy and target everyone but that brings trouble. Less ROI and more time and money wasted. Thus it is imperative to define boundaries for the most optimal audience.

6.      Revision

As you continue all of the above-mentioned steps your database of buyers will continue to increase, expanding your database. It is always advised that you keep optimizing that data for better results.

7.      Google Analytics

Lastly, keep a track of your campaigns. Running a campaign is not just the end goal. You can learn a lot from your campaigns itself. Once the campaign is successfully run, go to Google analytics and record everything. The analytics will show you who actually engaged with your campaign, and who didn’t. This will help you to figure out the changes for the next campaign.

Once all this is complete, you are ready to target your audience and grow your business. But let’s talk about how you are going to reach out to your audience. Use tools available in the market to do so. Make use of social media to your advantage. Social media caters to many different demographics. Utilize it to boost your business. Email marketing is one other way to target your audience. Emails are not dead. There are billions of email users in the world. Never overlook Email marketing while targeting your audience.

This was a brief overview of how you can efficiently narrow down the audience for you to target. Optimization takes time. Continue to persevere with different demographics and eventually you will find the most optimal target audience for your products or services. 

Tips to Master the Future of Paid Ads

With about 5.4 billion Google searches per day and almost 1.9 billion daily active users on Facebook; if you think that the future of online advertising is dark, think again!

Google and Facebook have become the top-most digital media channels that hold the most number of active users and quality consumers. In the social world today, there are a number of other channels that are becoming new marketing hubs as they’re nurturing billions of active users on a daily basis. These include YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram, and others. Due to the high-quality advertising infrastructure and consumer base, these platforms hold the ever-increasing authority to boost any business.

As more and more advertisers choose to market their products and services on such platforms, the competition between these advertisers to rank higher is tough. So to, are the criteria of these online platforms, resulting in increased efficiency of these marketing campaigns, better and renowned business brands, and the quality consumers that actually convert into sales. According to a source, one of the paid advertisement structures called Pay Per Click (PPC) converts 50% of the traffic reaching these ads into actual sales.

Online media advertising is a must if you’re looking to reach a new, targeted audience—fast. Due to the benefits that online media provides businesses, they present more of a challenge to reach their targeted audience organically. Paid media bridges the gap between brands and their potential customers quickly and more efficiently.

What are avenues that any business or individual can harness the multi-faceted benefits of paid ads?

1.         Understand your advertisement goal

It is essential to have a deep understanding of the specific goals you are aiming to achieve through your paid campaigns. You can divide your campaign goals into broader categories like:

•    Awareness: Build brand awareness or increase reach.

•    Consideration: Send traffic to your website or your social page, increase engagement, encourage app installs or video views, generate leads, or encourage people to communicate with you through your inbox.

•     Conversion: Increase purchases or leads via your site or app or drive traffic to offline stores.

2.         Understand your target audience

By having a deep knowledge of what your product/service is you can better understand your target audience. Understand whom you are catering to and how to reach them. If you’re looking to sell to women, you should look for an active community of female consumers that are already interested in a product/service similar to yours. Advertising to the community, age group, gender, or geographic region that doesn’t contain your ideal customer can prove to be a waste of capital, time, and resources.

3.         Identify the Social Platform Your Ideal Customer Uses

If you’re looking to target an adult community of people or professionals, Facebook might be your go-to host for such a community. Likewise, more professionals and B2B businesses are active on more professionally used platforms i.e. LinkedIn and Google.

Once you identify what platforms you’re going to advertise on, study the advertisement campaigns particular to that platform and ways to succeed through it.

4.         Types of Ads

Study different ads to determine which are the most optimal ones for your product. Having an in-depth knowledge of the types of ads and what’s performing well for your type of business is mandatory for the success of your paid campaign. It can be photo display ads, video ads, story ads, slideshow ads, playable ads, and much more depending on the platform you want to use.

5.         Allocate Your Paid Ads Campaign Budget

While opting for paid ads campaigns, allocate your budget according to your goals and the platform you’re going to advertise on.

6.         Organic Social Posts to Support the Ads Campaign

If you’re using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, or other social platforms to run paid ads, it is a healthy practice to use your organic posts in sync with what you’re advertising through paid ads. Let your organic posts inform you about your paid campaigns and discuss and brainstorm your advertising goals.

7.         Design Mobile-Friendly Ads

Design ads that are mobile-friendly. As of October 2020, there was an estimated 4.08 billion active mobile social media users worldwide. The number increases with every passing day, so the best practice is to show your best advertisements to mobile users.

8. Test Ads for Performance Optimization

Before running a full-fledged ads campaign, the best practice is to test run your ads. This practice provides many benefits at hand and in the long run.

•     You can identify any setbacks that may occur due to a number of factors and fix them while running a low-budget campaign.

•      You can also identify the target audience that works better for you.

•       You can A/B test with multiple ad sets and pick the one that performs better and exclude the ones with low-performance metrics.

9. Keep Track of Analytics

Professional marketers love analytics and like to keep track of numbers and performance. It’s a highly professional practice to keep track of numbers and analytics. It helps you adjust your ads campaigns while you move ahead with ads and can save you a lot of resources, time, and money.

This article provides a brief overview of how professionals and individuals looking to run paid campaigns on online media can create effective ads campaigns that actually convert and bring in capital. By following the key practices discussed here, beneficial and engrossing ad campaigns can be run effectively.

How to Build your Content Marketing Strategy to Boost SEO

Content is the backbone of your digital presence. Without optimized content, all techniques are bound to fail. This is often one of the reasons that digital marketers lose focus on their content strategy. But studies show that still in 2021 almost 63% of businesses have yet to master content strategy and they are unaware of the opportunities they are missing as a result of this. Many believe that putting content out there on the internet with few keywords placed in it will do the job. This might work for a while, however, in the long run, that content will no longer be relevant. Now the point here is not that the keywords are not important. They are for sure, but they come later into the scene. There are plenty of steps before hand, that need to be taken care of to boost your content.

A preferred technique for your content is to focus on audience based content, rather than keyword based content. Starting with who your audience is and what their needs are and what they expect from you allows you to present them with the refined content that will counter their problems and convert the potential readers into potential clients and that is how your business will grow with the help of content marketing.

But many here are still confused on how to build a strategy for their content marketing that will actually convert. Worry not. In this blog, we will share with you step by step tips and tricks that will help you with your content marketing and help you boost your SEO score as well.

  1. Know Your Audience

A business thrives around it’s audience. No business can survive if they go out in the wild swinging in the dark without knowing who they should actually be targeting. Every expert will tell you to know your audience. You can’t sell running shoes to a toddler. Similarly, you can’t sell headphones to people with hearing disabilities, unless your headphones are specifically designed for them. In the same way, not everyone out there in the market will be willing to read your content. The more you determine your target audience, the better the chances of optimizing your business growth.

  1. Determine your goal

To determine your goals start from the end. Ask your self questions like what you want to achieve with this content. Do you want more people reading your content? Or do you want more sales coming in? List down all your goals. This will help you write your content and help you with the call-to-action as well. Once you have established your end goals it will help you write exactly what you want to deliver to your clients.

  1. Pain Points

No matter what industry you are working in, and no matter what your target audience is, they have some pain points. Things that are bothering them and they are willing to find someone who can help them overcome these obstacles. That’s where your content can be very relevant. Find out what your audience is struggling with and try to resolve it through your content. If the audience feels the connection, and if they feel you have the solution for their problem they will contact you.

  1. Brand Expertise

This is where you evaluate your brand. What makes your brand unique? What is there that has not been marketed by others? What will attract your readers? Find out what is that one service or product that you specialize in. There might not be millions of people searching for that but the ones searching for that will not miss your posts. Write for them. Write specifically for people who are in your target niche, and see how your brand will grow.

  1. The Unique Tilt

But you are not the only one following these techniques. There are plenty of other marketers out there following the same methods. All you have to do is dig deeper into points number 3 and 4 and try to figure out the unique tilt in your content that will help your content stand out.

  1. Make a List

By now you should be clear on what you are going to write, so now you start making a list. List of topics you are going to write on. This is not your final list. Note down every topic you can think of. Think from every aspect. Ask members of your team to help you with the topic list. Make sure they are aware of the unique tilt. You will end up with a long list of topics and that is what you should focus on.

  1. Keywords

Then comes the most awaited part – the keywords. Once you have your list of topics ready start searching for keywords. Make sure the keywords are related to your industry and are a perfect fit for your topics. Don’t just follow the stream. Invest time and energy. Use online available tools to search for the best keywords for your topics. Make a list. Make pointers on which keywords to use with which topic and don’t stuff every keyword in every topic.

  1. Make Content Calendar

Now that you have lists of topics and lists of keywords you need to have a proper content calendar for yourself.

9. Parameters of Success

Before moving on to writing content write down the parameter of success for each topic. List them down. List what you want to achieve with each topic and what would be the parameter of success for each topic. This will help you to write with a goal in mind. Let’s say you target lead generation than your content should be of such quality that forces your reader to give you the lead.

  1. Start Writing

After you have followed all the above points and steps you are ready to write your content. Start writing now you have everything you need to produce the perfect content. Don’t go hard on vocabulary. Keep the tone easy and relatable for your readers. Not only you will love writing but your readers will love reading your content as well.

This should help you build your content marketing strategy and boost your SEO. These techniques can be used for both on-page and off-page SEO.

Don’t forget to track the results of the content. If you are not getting the desired results, go back to the rules and reevaluate where there may some gaps. Practicing these strategies will eventually help your boost your SEO and content strategy.

How to Use The Reddit Platform for Digital Marketing of Your Business

You might have heard about the Reddit platform, even if you are not familiar with it. The fun fact is that it is high time to consider Reddit for tweaking and improving your digital media marketing strategy. In case if you still haven’t considered incorporating this platform into your marketing strategy you are surely missing out on an innovative way to get more eyes on your brand. Within a brief time period, with effort and ingenuity, you can easily harness the power of Reddit as a valuable digital advertising and marketing asset for your business.

The Reddit platform has massively developed into a huge avenue for online influence and engagement during the past 14 years. This self-proclaimed ‘Front Page of the Internet’ might seem like an alien land that is full of angry forum dwellers and weird subcultures to the outside world but in reality, just in 2018, this platform had a whopping amount of above 330 million monthly active users which made it to the 6th most visited site in the United States. Reddit users are not only active and engaged but also enjoy in-depth knowledgeable info about their interests. Not to mention the recent buzz involving the Robinhood investment app and the famous GameStop stock which has put the Reddit platform in the dazzling limelight and left many marketers in awe driving them to consider this platform for their digital marketing strategy.

Being a website platform for social sharing, Reddit has been developed for users to submit textual content and visual content like images and videos that enable users to vote in a poll based on their interests, hobbies, and passions, which ultimately sends popular content to the top of the chain (called “upvotes”) to get more views and pushes unpopular posts further down the chain so they get fewer views or none at all. Reddit being home to the most open and authentic conversations over the Internet claims to be “the front page of the Internet.” Through its Reddit Public Access Network, the platform has most recently added live stream content as well. The fact that Reddit is a free platform and fosters open sharing among users has contributed a lot towards its popularity. As the parameters are loose, therefore, you can see just about anything and everything on the site.

The two ways in which businesses can use Reddit are via advertisements and posts. On Reddit, Buying an ad is very easy, but the catch is that you can’t post anything that you feel like. In fact, before advertising, you need to read the guidelines for each Reddit community. Although this platform incorporates a massive sharing community, it’s not for the meek and the mild. The users can quickly spot marketers from quite a distance. The solution is to provide valuable and interesting content otherwise the consequence might add you to the banned list as users are quite brutal and they ensure not to see the content they don’t like.  In order to save you from this potential pitfall, let’s delve into the subjects that work for businesses and are extremely well received by Reddit users:

●     Share the content as per the interest and hobbies of users that catch their eyes.

●     Including the links in your posts is the key. You don’t necessarily need to post your own content, in fact, it’s best if you don’t. Just use the interesting, valuable, funny, or insightful posts you are sure about will catch the eyes of Reddit or subreddit users.

●     Convey personal stories that can create an emotional connection between you and users. Talk about your struggles and how you overcame them by beating the odds and survived the impossible, etc.

●     Share the facts that are amazingly unusual or obscure but relevant to your business niche. Reddit users are usually fond of learning little-known facts about a variety of topics, diseases, movements, products, or any other relevant niche topic having interesting facts.

●     As videos are known to generate the most upvotes on Reddit, therefore, try to post interesting visual content including videos, images, and artwork.

●     Engage users in an interesting topic like the US and Global Politics that you deem related to your business vertical.

●     Share the ways to use the technology in order to benefit your customers

●     Include general topics like music, science, comics, fitness, and food.

On this platform, the uniquely progressive content or simple eye-catching content tends to do an amazing job in terms of upvotes. Every social media platform has its own underlying feel and so does Reddit. In order to get favorable results, just try to tap into what that underlying feeling is on this platform and post the content based on that and you’ll be amazed to see the trends; Reddit users are known as the trendsetters. The great news for marketers is that Reddit features a unique quality of smaller communities which are known as “subreddits.” Each subreddit begins with “reddit.com/r” and acts as a dedicated board for a certain topic. For instance, reddit.com/r/entrepreneurship is most likely to put your posts in front of entrepreneurs’ audience on Reddit. Using subreddit you can not only do the content research and find new topics but also find the SEO-based keywords directly relevant to your target audience. You can easily collaborate with the industry professionals and stay up to date on everything including the marketing trends by nosing around various threads that are going on in the wonderful world of marketing.

Reddit has an integrated feature that not only enables you to reverse engineer your messaging but also gives you the opportunity to do a search for the specific subreddit group you’re trying to target and provides insightful statistics about the posts that have done well on Reddit. In order to help the new marketers, the Reddit platform shows all of the Reddit posts that were most successfully generating a lot of likes for any site by just typing in “Site: DomainName.com.” in Reddit’s search bar. This will show all the results for the specific site. Having a bit of a reputation as an ugly stepsister, many marketers avoid using it for marketing purposes. Reddit is the right platform to use if you are trying to target certain niche markets while having the ability to bear users’ potential criticism. Moreover, as many competitors might not be using Reddit for marketing purposes, therefore, your business can have the potential edge by using it and most brands overlook Reddit as a platform for promoted posts or for running ads. Therefore, using the sponsored content by means of Reddit advertising permits businesses to pinpoint subreddit groups and give assurance to you that viewers have direct relevance and pertinence to whatever is being promoted.

Reddit may not be the primary spot an entrepreneur thinks to utilize to develop their online reach. However, Reddit is staggeringly dynamic, having a plethora of information about practically almost every content topic or subject you’d prefer to investigate. It’s worth learning a little about and perceiving how it may assist you with developing your online impact and business.