Is Google AMP Worth It for Your Email Marketing?
The world is fast-paced. Due to busy schedules, people are requesting more and less patient. The perfect example of it is mobile page load times. Approximately, more than half of people will leave a page in the event that it requires over three seconds to load. In consequence of the instant gratification attitude, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) was introduced by Google back in 2015 which offer comparatively faster load times as compared to standard HTML5 documents and an additional edge is that the data usage is less. These are essentially the stripped-down HTML copies of existing webpage content and you can easily recognize the AMP due to the lightning bolt icon next to the domain name. Websites can serve AMP pages by implementing the rel=amphtml tag into their HTML. Since 2016, more than 1.5 billion AMP pages have been published.
The underlying accomplishment of AMP brought about an update that empowers quick loading and allows for intuitively interactive email options that emulate mail-empowered microsites thus allowing your subscribers with this innovative technology to interact with an email without the need to visit the website or landing page. AMP emails not only allow you to fill out a form, answer a survey but also check out to complete a product/service purchase via the email itself. AMP email does not just add to a superior subscriber experience, but it is known to also bring more conversions and quicker business developmental transformation. Although it involves some technical programming, the most fruitful results occur in cases where most of the email subscribers are under the Gmail umbrella. Being a tech-sensitive innovation, you need to be slow and take a phased roll-out to reap the benefits of AMP in email. A smart approach is to fragment the subscribers into different segments and then send them to Gmail recipients at the beginning.
Google not only favors AMP articles but also prioritizes their positioning on Search Engine Result’s Page (SERPs). You can think of them as the paid ads, that too without the need of spending any money on keywords. Just like with recent changes to the Gmail promotions tab, AMP gives Google even more control over what digital marketers must do to be successful in their campaigns. Although there is a variety of newer communication channels available, despite the growing popularity of social media, email will continue to dominate the field. All over the world, there are more than 3.9 billion email users and it is expected to rise to 4.3 billion by 2022. It is said that around 269 billion emails are sent every day and this communication channel is said to be 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers as compared to Facebook or Twitter.
AMP for Email is a set of open standards created by Google for “dynamic emails, it is totally a game-changer in the email world by making it more engaging, relevant, and actionable which allows marketers to bring functionality that’s common on the web into their email designs. Now, let us delve into how technological innovation like AMP’s expertise can be utilized in your brand’s emails.
● Bookings via clicking through emails
The subscribers are given the opportunity to check the particular availability via email and book a ticket directly without opening the website. You can save users from frustration by letting them scroll through the offers and complete the booking procedure without redirecting them to the website landing page or mobile app. An example of AMP implemented technology in promotional emails is Booking.com where the recipients get to manage their subscriptions as well via emails thus making it a great idea to incorporate AMP into your email.
● Email enabled shopping
Via the promotional emails, AMP allows the subscriber to directly add the products to their cart and checkout without ever having to visit the website. For instance, if the buyer doesn’t check out and completes a purchase after adding the products to the cart, AMP plays its part again by helping you generate an email having the link to the cart checkout page to notify the subscribers about their cart abandonment and reminds them to complete the purchase faster.
The concept of mini apps within the emails
AMP technology makes it convenient for businesses to send an email that simulates their mobile app. For instance, without the need of opening the website or application, the user can save Pinterest’s pin and can view the original image with the help of AMP. Dating Apps can make a huge deal out of this AMP technology by using it for their email marketing which can speed up the process of speed dating by enabling the user to swipe through the profiles within the email.
● A solution to the prolonged emails
In case the monthly newsletter is content-wise lengthy then it may lead the subscriber to ignore the content and scroll down to the very end of the email. In such cases, AMP comes to the rescue by allowing you to send an AMP email accompanied with a registration form, a slider, and a contact form in addition to an accordion which is used to convey more in a limited space.
● Invitation to participate in polls, and quizzes on social media through emails
With the integration of AMP technology, the subscribers are able to directly reply to invitation emails. The simplicity of invitation email should lead the subscribers to sign up for the event faster. Although the AMP is a promising application, even today marketers still give priority to getting registrations in an old-fashioned way via the landing pages instead of the emails. With the help of the extended AMP functionality you can catch the eyes of your audience by inviting them to participate in polls, surveys, and quizzes on social media directly through emails. After the subscriber chooses his answer, on opening the email again he will get the updated response percentages, therefore, AMP keeps on updating the audience as well.
● Integration of calculators for monitoring purposes
The calculator integration in emails is also enabled via the AMP innovation. Its integration is useful for marketers in the sector of banking and finance that allows the audience to use monthly income (EMI) calculators just by entering the loan amount and term to view the EMI. AMP also allows the subscribers to monitor the status of the recipient’s package.
Many brands are reluctant to use AMP as its programming is quite complicated and its execution is time-consuming. But once you invest in the intricacies of encoding and time-consuming execution along with the flawless rendering, it promises brand development on a consistent basis.
What are the 5 Proven Ways To Convert Paid Ad Leads
The rising demand for organic traffic and reach is becoming challenging with each passing day, therefore in order to increase the reach, many marketers are seeking refuge in paid ads involving the users who see your content via one or several paid campaigns. The absence of novelty in this monetary model has already proven it to be a crowded space for these ads. Every marketer wants to ensure their money’s worth which they are dedicating to pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
Although you might have written scintillating paid ad copy that connects your brand to the audience’s pain points and speaks directly to them or you might have drafted a perfect and balanced graphic in terms of branding and intriguing or set your budget and ad parameters but this is just the tip of the iceberg as the real challenge lies in getting those paid ad leads to actually convert which is the biggest challenge in the paid marketing world. You can get everything to work on point but not unless you have a clear direction for your target audience that can lead them to further interact with your paid ads.
In order to pursue your purpose of converting the target audience and make the most from your paid ad dollars, let’s dive deep into the world of paid ad marketing tactics that can surely help you convert the paid ad leads.
1. By Routing Leads to a Chatbot or Messenger
The strategies for lead conversion must evolve with the evolving technological capabilities especially with the advancement in Artificial Intelligence (AI) which has led to increasing opportunities for chatbots to arise. As per an estimate, in the near future, chatbots will be managing 85 percent of customer interactions. Many websites have already embarked upon the AI journey by integrating chatbots. Upon visiting any website, you’ll be greeted by a bot via an automatically generated message inquiring about the reason for your visit, the things you want to search for, and how the bot can offer you any help.
Not only this but bots are also being used to enhance the quality of user interaction and to improve the site visiting experience by communicating with the customers. Due to the addition of customizable bots, the marketing strategy has drastically improved, and through the increased personalized customer experience via the interactive platform, the conversion rate has also increased. You can easily incorporate the chatbots into your paid ad strategy by directing the individual who clicks on your paid ads to the chatbot, instead of sending them a classic web form. Just by directing them to the bot, the audience has the opportunity to engage in a personalized, targeted conversation that can lead them to convert which is your main aim. Writing a good copy for the bot will be the cherry on the top which will make a good strategy great. For successful chatbot copywriting, the top three tips are:
● Sound Conversational instead of flexing the vocabulary. Simple and clear language is the key as it is said to receive 36 percent more responses.
● Using a cohesive tone with the right voice for your chatbot, as it affects the tone of your business.
● If you want the visitors to interact with your bot then use a catching and compelling hook.
2. By Directing Leads to a Landing Page
Directing leads to the landing page is not at all a bad thing unless they are not optimized properly. In case your landing page is lackluster, the conversion rates will be much lower even though you might have compelling paid ads on the web. Some of the tips that will help in optimizing your landing pages are:
● Get insights into user behavior by researching how they interact with your page. You can do this with the help of heat maps by using free tools that tailor the user layout and map their movements on your page.
● Create the copy after identifying the audience’s pain points and emotionally connect with them by providing a clear, simple solution.
● The landing page must provide value to your audience without failure. It can be in the form of a whitepaper or a video, a podcast, or a webinar, making sure to provide valuable content.
● A/B test: Test everything and track the performance of everything. The more the data, the more you’ll have insights about the performance of specific elements on your page and you’ll also get close to the ideal set of on-page elements that lead to conversion.
● Include the minimal and to the point content and remove all distractions. For paid ads, be selective in what you include. Overburdening the page with the content will leave your audience confused.
3. By Directing the Leads to Forms on Social Media
In order to increase the conversion rate from your paid ads leads, drive direct leads to forms on social media. As there is a plethora of paid ads on social platforms you can stand out and actually convert by building forms into your paid ads which will not disturb the users’ scrolling as they won’t have to navigate away just to sign up for your newsletter. The best practices for incentivizing for driving even more conversions via forms on social media are:
● By offering the target audience a discount code in return for the desired action. In this way, you’ll not only be converting but also building goodwill with your audience.
● By hosting a competition in case offering a discount code on a product doesn’t work.
4. By Routing Customers to a Purchase Page
In order to increase the conversion rate from paid ads, follow a simple yet highly effective strategy of driving the customers to a purchase page. This will considerably shorten the buyer’s journey, eliminating certain steps the user has to take till conversion, and you’ll be able to dramatically increase the likelihood of the conversion via your paid ads.
5. By Directing Leads to Your Blog
Blogging plays an important role in your content marketing strategy as it outranks emails, books, and whitepapers. One way to get the desired conversion is by directing the leads to your blog as it acts as a hub of content that talks about the pain point and conveys knowledge to the audience. In case your conversions are focused on asset downloads, you must drive traffic from paid ads directly to relevant components on your blog.
Driving consumers to the right location to convert plays a vital role in paid ad marketing. In case you are confused about which step might be right for you, no worries, we’ve got your back. Understand the core aim of your ad campaign and then determine the conversion goals. Decide where you need to direct your users when they click your ad. After this, go for the final decision of which strategy to choose from the above-mentioned and the test the method. Here’s to you successfully converting paid ad leads today.
How to Create Backlinks for your Website
Backlinks, reverse image search, and your company all have something in common. Your bottom line is that you can choose to blog and wait until your site has hundreds of posts, but that takes a lot of time. Do you want to wait? Most likely not. This is when a link-building approach (backlinks) comes into play. It can not only help you increase your Domain Authority, but it may also expose your company to a whole new audience who may be interested in buying from you given the fact that you are capable of targeting the right sites.
What method do you use to locate these websites? Image search in reverse is the right answer. You can use it to snoop on your competition and find backlinks that will enhance their Domain Authority and earnings if done right. Here’s how to replicate their backlink success.
A reverse image search replaces a text-based query with a picture. All you have to do is upload an image to a search engine and you’ll be presented with a list of results. Typically, these particulars include:
● Image Size
● File Type Of The Image
● Original Image’s Source
● Different Sizes Of The Same Image
● Websites Using the Images
● Related Images
A reverse image search is a powerful tool in the hands of a skilled digital marketer. While many individuals use it to see whether someone is copying their content, it’s also a potent weapon in the hands of a savvy digital marketer. It’s capable of far more than just locating unclaimed backlinks. It can provide you an advantage over your competition while also increasing your authority if done correctly. One of the best link-building methods that people overlook is using reverse image search on your competition. More than 90% of websites do not receive visitors from Google because they lack backlinks. You can identify where a competitor’s inbound links are coming from just by uploading a photo of their headshot or company logo and start constructing a list of backlink prospects.
Backlinks are an important ranking element for Google. Links from other websites are used by the search engine as a vote of confidence. According to a Backlinko analysis, the site that ranks first on Google has 3.8x more backlinks than those in positions two through 10. You may figure out which sites are helping your competitors increase their authority and take a piece of the pie for yourself by looking at where they obtain links. Obtaining those backlinks could help you increase your traffic, increase your authority, and possibly outperform your competition. Are you ready to find the hidden link-building chances lurking behind your competitor’s images? Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started.
● Locate a Photograph
What photo should you use to track your competition using reverse image search? A headshot of the individual who will be acknowledged as the author is a good idea. Make use of their LinkedIn profile photo. They’ll almost certainly use the same headshot as for their guest blogging bylines. In addition, look out for a competitor’s headshot or the brand’s logo if your opponent doesn’t have a “face” attached to it.
● Utilize Reverse Image Search
On the regular Google homepage, you can’t post a photo. To use the reverse image search feature, go to images.google.com or click on “Images” in the upper right-hand corner. Then, select the camera icon. Click the blue “Upload an Image” link to select the headshot or logo you obtained in step 1. After that, Google will show you a results page.
Start Looking for Opportunities
Don’t forget to look up your competitor’s logo in reverse image search. It can assist you in locating resources sites or niche directories where you might grasp the opportunity to get listed.
After you’ve completed the reverse image search and competitor research, look for guest post ideas. You should now have a master list of websites your competition utilizes for backlinks after completing your reverse image search. So, what’s next? It’s time to brainstorm guest post ideas, start pitching, and offer appealing material to bring traffic back to your website once a site agrees to your guest post. If you have a few blog post ideas, your pitch will be much stronger.
- Read Their Blogs
You don’t want to propose a blog article that is currently on your target’s website or won’t provide value to their audience. Editors receive an average of 10 pitches every day, and 20% of them don’t read 90% of them because they can tell right away whether or not they’re worth their time. Make sure yours is among the 10% of submissions that editors examine. After reading their blogs and the site’s content thoroughly you must recognize:
● The Audience and Their Level
● The Type of the Content Being Posted
● The Gaps in the Content
● The Topics that do the Best
2. Keyword Research
Once you’ve come up with a few topic ideas, do some keyword research to connect everything together. Presenting a unique guest post idea backed by a strong long-tail keyword demonstrates that you understand how visitors arrive at the site and, as a result, can write for them. You also want people to read your article. Choosing a keyword with a reasonable amount of traffic means that you’ll be creating a blog that your target audience will find and read. Find high-traffic, low-competition keywords with the help of tools. Remember to check the DA of the site you’ve picked so you can focus on the relevant keywords.
How to Pitch Your Guest Post after Conducting a Reverse Image Search of Your Competitors for Backlink Opportunities? Here are some of the pitching basics to follow:
- Read and Follow the Guidelines Strictly
Always double-check the site’s guest posting policies. If they do, make sure you follow their instructions to avoid having your article denied. According to Point Visable’s study, 22% of guest articles are rejected because they do not fulfill the requirements.
- Personalize the Email to Look More Professional
Find the particular person you need to email by going to LinkedIn or reading the “About” page. You’ll have a better chance of success if you can address the blog owner by name rather than starting an email with “Dear Sir.”
- Better Start with Introducing Yourself in the Email
Include your experience in the industry, awards, and a link to other sites where you’ve been published. You want the other individual to realize you aren’t a generalist. You’re an expert with something to contribute.
On a concluding note, a powerful and valuable backlink tool is reverse image search. It can assist you in identifying the finest of the websites to target for backlinks and pursue the websites that generate results for your competition. However, finding an image is merely the beginning. Once you’ve compiled a list of websites, do your homework and propose blog post ideas to promote your company as the go-to authority. Only compelling blog entries will generate the backlinks you need to improve your search engine rankings and attract the proper individuals to your website and sales funnel. Now enjoy the rewards of great backlinks.
How to Build Your Brand Identity With Purpose
In the world of today’s business, purpose is paramount. Purpose answers each and every important question, “For what purpose or reason does our organization exist?” and the answer has the capability to act as a guiding light for all organizational decision-making. As a house is incomplete without a foundation so is a business without purpose. To an organization, having a defined and clear purpose is crucial, much like what a canvas is to an artist’s masterpiece and a conductor is to an orchestra. Being an organization’s spirit and character, purpose serves as both a foundation and a mirror, reflecting the existence of the organization in the world.
Purpose clearly articulates the reason for the existence of an organization, the problems that it is going to solve, and what difference it wants to make in society through its work. It is not the new trend of defining a purpose for an organization; it has long been rooted in the business history of many organizations. The current trend in business is how businesses are utilizing the sense of their purpose to develop deeper bonds with consumers, to contribute significantly more to the welfare of the communities in which they operate, attract and retain new talent, and while focusing on this, businesses are clearly making a difference in terms of revenue while achieving greater results and impact.
Few out of numerous organizations view purpose as comprehensively ideal. The purpose is not something to be used as a mere tool for the advertisement purposes of your brand in order to apprehend a bigger market share. On the one hand, we recognize that many successful companies in the market are connected with this philosophy, and on the other hand, our research shows that longevity and authenticity are the two main factors that separate purpose-driven businesses from the rest of the pack. Companies that have their foundation laid on purpose and make sure to lead with purpose have the ability to easily accomplish continued loyalty, relevance, and consistency in the consumers’ life. People are likely to expect more in the long run, thus companies that fail to understand and coherently articulate their purpose will fail in the long run, even if they survive in the short term.
Companies that authentically lead with purpose not only observe increased gains in the market share and are also reported on average to grow 3x faster as compared to their competitors, while accomplishing increased customer and staff satisfaction. Today’s consumers regularly relate to a brand’s motivation, trying to interface at a more profound level even as the brand correspondingly lines up with what their identity is and who they need to be. Many consumers increasingly make decisions on the basis of how companies treat their employees, the environment, and in what ways they make sure to work towards the betterment of the communities in which they operate. At a point where companies align their purpose with doing something great, they can fabricate further deep associations with their stakeholders and, in turn, intensify the organization’s pertinence in the lives of their stakeholders. In a progressive manner, organizations are recognizing the value and potential of aligning their goals with society goals for a greater cause.
As a result, societal effect, rather than financial performance or customer and employee happiness, might be ranked first in terms of how firms measure annual performance. Many businesses recognize the importance of purpose-driven business and have learned to successfully incorporate it into their operations for the following three reasons:
1. The Purpose is a core differentiator
It is highly acknowledged that purpose-driven organizations have elevated productivity rates with a purpose-driven and more gruntled workforce who feels motivated to stay in the company for a longer time. As per research, purpose-oriented companies have a 30% greater rate of innovation and a 40% higher rate of employee retention as compared to their rivals. While the purchasing behavior might be dominated by traditional trends, new chances to interact with clients come solely as a result of purpose. While price and quality may continue to be the most important considerations in customer decisions, many customers believe firms now have a larger duty to take actions on issues that might be linked with their purpose. Those that fail to do so invite the risk of being displaced by purpose-driven disruptors.
2. Everyone has a different interpretation of what it means to be purposeful
Employee behavior has changed immensely over time as people feel motivated to work for and support a firm whose mission is to benefit society as a whole. Moreover, employees now look forward to sharing their values, and want to be a part of the greater good.
Looking at the other side of the coin, brands have the ability to create meaningful connections given that they share a genuine relationship with all of its stakeholders, allowing them to recognize and feel responsible for the brand’s purpose. This strategy is utilized in order to strengthen as the new generation around the world has grown up with a stronger sense of purpose than prior generations. The new generation seeks out products that promote awareness on the issues that they care about, either directly or indirectly.
3. Purpose is why you exist and who you are
Purpose-oriented organizations make a lasting impression on people’s lives by truly embedding purpose in every action and strategy. On a progressive note, customers like to engage with those organizations whose purpose aligns with their goals and also helps them to achieve those goals. Leading businesses authentically on the basis of purpose not only helps companies to direct their activities toward achieving outcomes that people care about, but also consequently deliver shareholder value.
Besides being purpose-driven, organizations must establish and employ different strategies to guarantee that they are authentic in whatever they do. Here’s how you can do this:
● Authenticity must be rooted in an organization’s commitment to sharing the story and making it impactful.
● In each step that an authentic purpose-driven business takes they are transparent and accountable. With transparency and data at their fingertips, consumers may finally understand the underlying truths of how a company develops and markets its products. This is how companies win the trust of their consumers, workforce, and partners, paving the way for new opportunities to make new connections while also enhancing its revenue and development.
● Purpose-driven enterprises frequently have a vital position in everyone’s hearts and minds; consequently, the emotions cause consumers to act and make purchase decisions.
● Purpose-driven companies must continue to evolve their purpose and bond with their people as the purpose requires continuous nurturing and revisiting therefore continue redefining your consumer engagement tactics, nurture a purpose culture, define and refine your global identity. Start today.
SCENARIOS WHERE TARGETING LOW SEARCH VOLUME KEYWORDS IS BENEFICIAL
One of the most common pieces of advice in the landscape of SEO is opting for low-hanging fruit. A standard belief, in the world of SEO is that ranking for low search volume keywords in return will assist you in ranking for high search keywords later. There is so much more to the fact that whether you have a new website or it’s long in the tooth one, targeting the low search volume keywords is crucial in terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Many people spend a huge amount of time battling to make it to the first page by aiming for mid‐to‐high volume keywords, which is a tradition in any SEO campaign. Opting for the traditional keyword strategy is not only expensive and time taking but sometimes you get zero results out of it due to the level of difficulty involved.
The smarter approach to the choice of keywords by ignoring the metrics like search volume, CPC, competitiveness, etc. your competitors are using to select their keywords.
Instead, your focus must be on keywords that can help:
● Obstruct the customer while he is making a purchase decision
● Piggyback on the authority of an established competitor in your specified niche
● Offer a better solution to a problem posed by an established competitor in your specified niche
Ultimately you’ll still use the metrics you were ignoring, but not as selection criteria rather you’ll be using them as qualifying criteria. The smarter approach works due to:
1. Low competition in the SERPs as you’ll be targeting low‐traffic and unconventional keywords that can often help you to rank without even building any backlinks.
2. The specific keywords will bring in only the targeted traffic resulting in high conversions according to your specific niche.
3. The business‐focused keywords that often yield more targeted traffic because it addresses core concerns and issues shown by customers about your product and the product that your competitor is offering.
The combination of laser-focused content involving highly targeted keywords having extremely low search volume can successfully make it to the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Though it can not be achieved in a single shot, as you scale it surely adds up over time that too without investing in expensive campaigns. We’ll try to decrypt the exact approach to content creation, and conversions followed by the keyword research tactics. Some of the scenarios where you can use the keywords having low search volume are:
● In Cases where User Intent is High
Many Keyword research tools automatically sort the keywords by the search volume. Ever so often, these purely informational keywords have very little to no buying intent associated with them. The reason why someone is searching for some specific words or phrases in the search engine is referred to as User intent. The user intent varies with the choice of words and the search results are dramatically different. Some keywords are searched just for the sake of information which means the person who is searching is interested in some product or service of yours but has not yet made a final decision. Some keywords show the clear buying intent of the user based on the choice of words or phrases that the searcher is using, thus we can use a term ‘transactional intent’.
● In Cases where Search Difficulty Is Low
Search difficulty is described as the level of difficulty that you face for a specific keyword while you try to rank against it. One of the motivations behind targeting low keywords is the level of ease involved in ranking quickly without involving much effort. One of the standard practices in the landscape of SEO is finding as many low-competition keywords and using them naturally in the content you create or curate. This might help you expand over many different low competition keywords which in turn will help you in ranking quickly, getting more niche-specific traffic, and increase your domain authority to begin to target more competitive keywords.
● In cases where it is a Long Tail Keyword having High Search Volume
Long-tail keywords usually have more than four words with the possibility of the presence of a high search volume keyword in the middle. If you find a long-tail keyword with high search volume you must position an entire piece of content around them as they provide context to your content and eventually provide better conversion rates. Moreover, long-tail keywords help you rank for single or short-tail keywords as well. Thus if you have a new website or an older one you should target long-tail keywords that contain the high search volume keyword. In this way, you will get both without having to go for the highly competitive phrase only. The same is the case for low competition keywords with high search volume.
● In cases where the Niche Topic is being Covered
The niche-specific topic will be highly interesting for the audience who are concerned about it, even though it might be small. Therefore, it is in your better interest to go after low search volume keywords as search engines, especially Google emphasizes the website’s comprehensiveness and rewarding the websites which cover topics explicitly using low search volume keywords even if they don’t bring about a lot of traffic. Google rejects the idea of thin content which means the information that doesn’t compliment the product or service the website promotes. Targeting low search volume keywords isn’t always about the traffic factor but the topic mastery and expertise. Therefore, you can rank only on the basis of best keyword research unless you cover well-researched topics extensively using low search volume keywords that bring forth for the audience a well-rounded piece of content.
In cases where Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is Low
In Google Ads, the CPC is an average toll an advertiser needs to pay to get someone to click on their ad. In case the CPC associated with some low search volume keywords is also low then in order to beat out the competition, you surely need to target them as it would make it easy for you to get to the top of the SERP. Therefore, the cost of getting someone to click your website ad is lower if you chase low search volume keywords, which also presents less competition. Conversely, being more competitive, the keywords having a higher CPC will cost you more to get one person to click on your ad.
● For Link-Building Purposes
The SEO puzzle is incomplete without the most important piece known as link building. If you expect your website to rank then another crucial task is to acquire numerous high-quality backlinks which is possible through manual outreach. For acquiring backlinks it is highly important to have a great piece of content with traffic, only then the website owners, whom you reach out to for backlinks, in your niche might be interested in either including on their site a link to your content or fixing a broken link by replacing it with your exclusively great piece of content. In order to achieve a backlink successfully, target a bunch of niche-specific low search volume keywords that might not be the most competitive.
Alternate Topics:
When Is It Beneficial To Target Low Search Volume Keywords
Targeting The Low Search Volume Keywords
Targeting Low Search Volume Keywords: Why And How
HOW TO USE THE POWER OF LUCRATIVE KEYWORDS IN QUESTIONING FORMAT TO ANSWER USER’S QUERIES
If you want to get immediate organic traffic without having to wait for your content to rank, better focus on answering users’ queries. Firstly, start-off with targeting the complex question queries instead of simple queries that Wikipedia or Google itself can provide answers for is a smart way to lure people who are out there looking for answers to your website. Usually, google shows the answers to easy questions in a snippet format or even sometimes while you are typing your question, therefore, you just don’t need to click on the website as you get answers quickly. Therefore, if you are looking to get the website traffic by answering questions then better go for more difficult questions and answer them smartly as compared to others on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). In this way, you get to win the trust of your visitors, causing them to convert and not only get positive feedback from them and also raise the engagement level which leads you to an expert position with increased chances for your content to rank higher on google.
8% of search queries are phrased as questions. Moreover, 15% of queries in Google have never been asked before, therefore, it’s about time to focus on answering user’s queries to generate organic traffic. The breakdown of the numbers shows that 28,0000,000 searches are questions as Google processes a whooping count of 3.5 billion searches per day, which is significant. 29% of keywords, trigger the featured snippet which is an SEO goldmine, due to the involvement of question-based wordings like “why” or “can”, and this snippet information helps the viewers to better decide if your content is worth their time and can quickly visit your website. Thus, a featured snippet can help you rank higher in case the users get the best answer through your content. Just by combining it with the ingredient of lucrative keywords, you might have a chance to draft a winning recipe to not only beat your competitors, while growing traffic on your site but also to successfully increase the conversion rate. Hubspot research, recently discovered that content with a featured snippet (also called the Answer Box) has dramatically higher click-through rates.
To increase your potential, keyword strategy to answer users’ queries, and how it can play an effective role in positioning your brand as the reliable and trustworthy brand, and also find phrases that have a high-level purchase intent. Google and other search engines use semantic search to understand the context of searches in order to reduce spam and personalize the user experience by providing the most relevant answer. Semantic search, is a data searching technique that aims at delivering high-quality exclusive content that perfectly matches the intent of a user after understanding the meaning of words in context. As a result, the search engine is able to deliver the most relevant results and present the correct answer to a user’s query in a featured snippet. It has added a new layer of complexity to SEO, which consequently has made it mandatory to approach tasks like content optimization and keyword research in new ways.
Before producing the content you understand how people use search engines to ask their queries. With the growing trend in the utilization of voice search, users are searching their queries in a more conversational form using long-tail keywords by shifting away from words or phrases that are short-tailed. Google and other Search engines continuously update their algorithms with a change in trend, therefore, this tilt in search has caused Google to create new and valuable opportunities regarding SEO by changing the way it displays answers.
In comparison to short-tail keywords, lucrative Keywords are words or phrases that are long-tail having higher ROI which is linked with making a purchasing decision by taking into consideration the factors of high search volume, low difficulty, and high intent. Some examples that can help you find lucrative keywords, uncover the audience’s search queries in Google, and format your pages to snag top organic result positions to boost your conversion rate are below.
1. Look out for Lucrative Long-Tail Keyword Queries using Google Suggest
You can find the lucrative long-tail keywords queries using Google Suggest or any other paid or free tool, but make sure they posses the following characteristics:
● The long-tail keywords must have four words or more as search keywords with ten words are known to trigger the position 0 or featured snippet 55% of the time.
● Choose keywords with high Cost Per Click (CPC) because the expensive keywords are more valuable.
● The SEO competition must be lower as it will make it easy for you to rank on the first page.
● Focus on getting keywords having high click-through from search results as your goal is to focus on queries that get clicks.
2. Using Different Tools To Find Additionally Supplemented Audience’s Queries to Answer
Never rely on one tool or website to find the questions based on user queries. Get all the information from as many tools as possible and try to find queries that have all the question words like who, what, when, where, which, why, how, can, is, are, etc.
3. Integrate Keywords Regarding User’s Question-Based Queries as Headers
After collecting a list of queries based on the lucrative keywords, kick-off by using them as headers and answer these queries straightforwardly in the first paragraph in brief form or bulleted form as Google prefers short paras or bullets to show in the featured snippet. Moreover, the answer in the first para helps Google in understanding your content and tag it at position #0.
4. Answer Users’ Queries Via a List of FAQs
In order to gain SEO benefits, it is recommended to answer the audience’s queries using either the separate dedicated page for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) or integrating an FAQ section on landing, blog, and services/product pages. Moreover, integrating links to your FAQ section in your answering content has the ability to increase the chances of converting a visitor to a cunsumer as Google scans the content better and shows it on the top of SERP.
5. Optimize Your Content Formatting
The featured snippet has 4 types of content formats: Paragraphs, List, Tables, and videos. Therefore, you need to optimize your content according to these. While creating the content keep in mind to answer the queries by using the specified formatting including words and characters. In order to land a featured snippet use an average of:
● 42 words in Paragraphs and 249 characters
● 5 rows and 2 columns in Tables
● 6 items of 44 words in Lists
● 6 min video duration
6. Continuously Update Your Content and Date it
Adding the date to your content and continuously updating the older information with new ones is one way to land you in position #0. Spring cleaning the outdated content with updated facts and statistics and optimizing it for question-based queries will help you in boosting views on the page without the need of creating a new blog post or page.
On a concluding note, lucrative question-based keywords not only help your audience but it additionally facilitates you to grow your business. You have the chance to and go straight to position #0 by skipping some positions in SERP, but you’re more likely to earn clicks from users with high purchasing intent.
Alternate Topics:
How to use question-based queries to rank higher on google?
Role of Lucrative keywords and user queries in ranking of your website?
How to get Position zero by using lucrative keywords to answer audience queries?
WHY YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON PODCASTING FOR YOUR MARKETING STRATEGY
A variety of marketing tools are available in the market but one underutilized tool is podcasting which can be a highly effective tool in the world of marketing today. As per research, this underutilized tool can assist brands to reach a niche targeted audience and give a decent Return on Investment (ROI). Being informative and educational, podcasts provide a huge deal of value to the listeners. Moreover, due to the explosive new podcast programming, the global pandemic, and increasing consumer adoption of “smart speakers” like Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, there is a surge in awareness and listening to Podcast trends.
As indicated by Forbes, iTunes is a rank-one website. Consequently, podcasts can play a crucial role in boosting up page rankings as any founder who is featured on a podcast with a description adds to the SEO appraisals of the brand as every podcast episode is usually linked back to both the show’s website and the guest’s website. The audience landscape is expanding for podcast channels and in 2021, 116 million people listened to a podcast monthly which is approximately 41% of the population. Smart speaker ownership overall increased by 22% between 2020 and 2021. The increasing trend in smart speaker ownership is giving owners more opportunities to listen to podcasts at home. Podcasting has been a mainstream marketing strategy for quite a long while. As of 2021, 56% of all Americans, 12-34, listen to at least one podcast per month. Any digital advertising campaign can extract a lot of benefits from its minimal expense, straightforwardness, and simplicity but before taking a plunge, it’s essential to draw out your podcasting strategy.
Due to the global proliferation of mobile phones, the expense of podcast advertising is expected to double through 2021 therefore, podcast advertising may attract many business owners looking forward to advertise their businesses. As compared to the other social media platforms, the podcast space offers a lower rivalry level, this fact is backed by the statistical analysis showing around 80 million Facebook business pages and just 70,000 digital broadcasts. It is simpler to track down an undiscovered niche in podcasts and market to the audience. Podcasts likewise require less attention in light of the fact that they just should be heard. Particularly during the pandemic, people have been attempting to decrease their screen time. Consequently, tuning in to a podcast is a decent break from screens. Therefore, in case your brand is looking for a boost to reach a new audience, now is the perfect time to add a podcast to your content marketing mix.
You can use podcasting as a content marketing strategy as there is genuine worth in podcasts since it isn’t only a marketing tool, it makes an incentive for the audience out there. The audience develops a feeling of connection and gets attached ultimately, gets familiar with their inclinations, and becomes a part of the podcast community through engagement in the discussion. Podcasts turn out to be best for pulling in and connecting phases of the client/customer venture. You can utilize your podcast to construct brand awareness and set up thought leadership in your industry.
Smart, significant content can help your brand image protrude from the competitor’s brand, and urge the audience to forge a relationship with the brand. Generally, the best B2B podcasts are in the Q&A or panel discussion style. Hosts can invite new guests every week to share their insights. This kind of arrangement is ideal for influencer advertising which can help you boost your internal subject matter experts, structure associations with influencers in the business, and even feature your potential prospects. Podcasts are much more than just a mere marketing tool for increasing reach. Being informational, they pull in more target audiences due to the knowledge-based discussions.
Podcasts are a great source to build and cultivate a community of loyal audiences via meaningful dialogue and these audiences help grow your audience landscape by sharing the content within their social circle. Most brands focus on creating content that contributes towards user-generated marketing. There are various podcasts that strike with a niche and are shared widely within that niche. The niche factor helps brands target specific groups and tap customers.
YouTube and Instagram are unable to substitute podcasts as they cannot cover complexities like podcasts as some people do not prefer video content. The challenging task is the choice of platform to build a presence, though there is a lot of presence on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook and brands are trying to amplify this online presence, they are missing out on the niche that can be built on Spotify and iTunes. These platforms let you showcase your expertise in your niche but providing high-quality content at a steady pace is the requirement. In order to provide engaging and high-quality content, the best way is to collaborate with others in your niche whose expertise complements yours. A podcast permits you to invite guests and engage in discussions in which they share their insights while you likewise feature yours. In addition, Audiences tuning in to podcasts are more loyal and are 20% more likely to connect with the brand on other social media. Thus, podcasts can be an effective tool to channelize more traffic towards other social media channels that the brand has.
In order to summarize, let’s have a look at 10 reasons why podcasts can be the perfect addition to any existing content strategy.
1. Podcasts have a low competition marketing landscape
2. Engaging and equally convenient for listeners while they do their chores
3. Another addition in the mobile-friendly content option
4. The popularity trend of podcasts is growing
5. Podcast audiences are extremely loyal
6. Interactive options like calls and audience polls are available for the listeners
7. Scalable costs for the creators as good audio content can be created with relatively cheap equipment
8. Podcasts are a great source in establishing thought leadership via credible information
9. Podcast listeners are a high-value market segment as they have disposable income demographics
10. Consistency in the content publication does wonders for brand awareness
On a final note, A large part of marketing strategy is about celebrating a story and even highlighting struggles. Hence, businesses that may not have space or funds to create an effective marketing campaign can use podcasts as an effective tool. Podcasts carry plenty of advantages to a business’ posting strategy. Podcasts are an engaging way for B2B companies to share their stories and can help them more efficiently. A portion of these advantages, however, are dwindling, as these radio-like shows having online broadcasting become more mainstream. The competition for podcast audiences is soaring. On the off chance that you’ve at any point pondered starting to record a week after week, or even month to month, a digital radio-like broadcast for your client to tune in to, this is the ideal opportunity and time period to begin! You’ll have the option to set up that loyal audience base before your rivals enter the podcasting space.
HOW PURPOSE DRIVES COMPETITIVE DIFFERENTIATION AND EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
Purpose should impact every aspect of an organization and must be baked into the heart of the core strategy of the business. Purpose-driven organizations are meant to grow faster compared to companies whose purpose is to make money. The companies who focus on purpose in every aspect of business-related decisions outperform their competitors and lead to a greater and long-term profit due to customer loyalty and employee engagement. Moreover, as the spending power of millennials grows every day and they like to spend on social issues and purpose leading ventures, therefore, the companies generate greater revenues.
For lasting success, competitive differentiation and emotional engagement are of the utmost importance. Organizations that usually focus on their financial gains are unable to create a difference in terms of these two factors of competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. An inward approach due to overemphasis on profit eventually leads employees to focus on short-term gains, which in turn leads to little or no innovation, silos build, and mediocrity eventually prevails. The organizations with an outward focus approach involving the betterment of people who actually drive your business, customers eventually yield meaningful competitive differentiation.
The two important factors that spring from the purpose: competitive differentiation and emotional engagement are the linchpins for success. Employees at work, usually try to find meaning in their tasks, and when they find out that the North Star of your business is a customer-driven purpose, it becomes a galvanizing force for the entire organization. Organizations stand out if they successfully frame the purpose around the impact they make on customers. This helps them to actively engage customers and employees alike; they not only become coveted brands and destination employers but also successfully transcend their market to become more than a mere transaction.
The success of greater purpose-driven organizations is measured in terms of their qualitative actionable strategies which enhances the given quantitative results. The purpose being a buzzword is often mishandled and misunderstood, purpose is not just a word to be expressed as a slogan it is meant to be translated into actions to yield required results.
Using Purpose to Drive Competitive Differentiation
Each business organization strategizes to have a competitive edge. The absence of competitive differentiation results in persistent value concessions and diminishing client loyalty, over the long-run revenue and market share also disintegrate. Organizations that get themselves commoditized should take a gander at their sales narrative. By and large, the absence of differentiation is the aftereffect of an internal product pitching focus. Sales and marketing teams pitching features are having the wrong discussion. Differentiation is determined from the customer’s point of view, not the seller’s. On the other side of the coin, the difference can be seen if you infuse purpose in each aspect of business strategy including sales, marketing, and product development stages:
● Sales
A purpose-driven sales team will work towards winning you long-lasting customers for life while helping the clients in providing the best possible solution, not just getting them to buy your product or services, which ultimately buys your business customer’s loyalty. The inverse is additionally evident, spray and pray sellers, who pitch features and benefits get themselves rapidly commoditized. That is the reason sales representatives who accept their actual purpose is to add value to the customer, surpass and outsell salespeople who are focused on targets and quotas alone.
● Marketing
Infusing purpose in the marketing tactics develops a heart-to-heart connection with the customer on the grounds that it is about the customer’s wellbeing. Using the lens of purpose allows the marketers to go deeper, additionally, the messages themselves add value. Marketers, with the financial-earning purpose for simply trying to drive clicks and leads, keep searching for the next luring tagline and the next vehicle. Therefore, the messages begin to sound either benign or desperate.
● Product development
The clarity of purpose also imparts a huge impact on product development, as it prompts product developers to focus on customer impact. The absence of purpose-driven strategies in the product development phase leaves the product teams floundering, and often leads to no differentiation from the competitor’s products as teams simply follow the market trends. If you are a business that is trying to hatch a scheme to simply make money, then it’s worth nothing. Your business must involve the purpose and passion to drive improvement to someone’s life or business produces the best innovation.
Using Purpose to Drive Emotional Engagement
The absence of purpose ultimately leads to the downfall of morale, productivity, and increases turnover. The formula for developing strong engagement at work is “a clear purpose”. According to research, employees who derive meaning and significance from their work were 3 times more likely to stay with their organizations as compared to the workplaces aiming to get financial gains only. These employees were also reported to be 1.7 times satisfied with their purpose-driven jobs and were 1.4 times more engaged at work as compared to the jobs with a lack of purpose.It turns out that employees are vastly more satisfied and productive when four of their core needs are met:
● Physical
Employees need continuous opportunities to regularly renew and recharge at work.
● Emotional
Employees feel the need to be valued and appreciated for their contributions to actively work.
● Mental
Employees want the opportunities to focus in a fully-submerged way on their most important tasks and define their timeline and location to get their work done properly.
● Spiritual
Employees need spiritual content by doing more of what they do best and enjoy most, and by feeling connected to a higher purpose at work.
Purpose not only drives engagement but also satisfies the above-mentioned factors that help in increasing retention. Companies nowadays must acknowledge the increasing emphasis on purpose in today’s professional landscape in order to improve their ability to attract such employees and also their ability to retain them for longer periods of time. There are many tools available in the professional field for the improvement of performance and retention, yet purpose provides the highest gain with the lowest costs. Purpose-led business ventures also focus on emotional branding for customer engagement by forming a relationship between a consumer and a product or brand by provoking their emotions. Marketers create content that appeals to the consumer’s emotional state, ego, needs, and aspirations.
On a concluding note, the purpose being a new narrative in business enables you to deliver better results and become a leader of thought who is worth following. People want to make money mainly while making a difference. Your purpose-driven strategies enable you to do both at the same time. Once you derive your purpose, you need to focus on three areas to drive competitive differentiation and emotional engagement:
1. Activate the Purpose
The purpose being an end game must be a Northstar of every team in every department. Each employee at the job should have clarity about how they can strive in order to contribute to the purpose.
2. Enable the Purpose
On a practical level in each department, your policies, procedures and processes must align with your purpose.
3. Embed the Purpose
The purpose must be deep-rooted in your business that it derives emotional connection by winning the hearts and minds of your team which leads to winning the hearts and minds of your customers. Leaders keep their purpose alive in an emotionally engaging way by telling stories about making a difference to customers.
HOW TO USE PINTEREST FOR MARKETING PURPOSES
In the ever-growing landscape of social media apps, digital marketers fight tooth and nail to make an appearance on the customer’s feed. Amidst the memes, family, and friends’ posts, let alone the conversations, marketers even spend a lump sum amount to make an appearance in the feed. The go-to social media platforms for marketing purposes are usually Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, but Pinterest is often overlooked by many entrepreneurs in terms of marketing. Born back in 2010, Pinterest is a not-so-famous social media platform for sharing images, and videos. Pinterest certainly has its potential to connect with your target audience. As compared to the social media giant Facebook having 2.8 billion monthly active users, Pinterest has 478 million monthly active users charting quite an impressive user growth path. Less than a year ago, the 400 million monthly active users mark was crossed when the platform registered 416 million users in the second quarter of 2020. This implies that in just three quarters, Pinterest was able to grow its active user base by a whopping 19.5%. Much of 2021’s increase so far has come from an ascent in the quantity of worldwide Pinterest users, which grew by 37% year on year. This is more than 4x the percentage increase of US users which were marked at 9%.
Pinterest is a place for every brand. Approximately 79% of the searches carried out on Pinterest are unbranded which gives an edge to new e-commerce businesses. The high percentage of unbranded searches strongly indicates that Pinterest users are using the platform to seek inspiration and discover new ideas. So when it comes to marketing on Pinterest, your strategy must target buyers who are in the early stages of their purchase process. Displaying your product and brand on their feeds will be key here. As per the e-commerce platform Shopify, Pinterest is the 2nd biggest source of all referral traffic to their site, which implies that approximately 93% of users used it to plan their purchases, moreover, the average resulting order value was $50 which is higher than any other social media source. Therefore, it is a huge marketing opportunity for e-commerce startups.
Pinterest is a type of digital corkboard, mood board, or inspiration board that can be utilized as a digital planning platform for people to discover, share, and organize creative ideas digitally from around the World over the internet. Let’s discuss the cornerstone Pinterest marketing strategies for your business account with some secret tips to skyrocket your sales. Let’s dive right in!
1. Make Your Brand The Focal Point
Strategically, place your product or service front and center. Do not use abstract images or lifestyle imagery that doesn’t showcase your brand. Your pins should speak to the customers.
2. Include Your Logo
Keeping your pin board subtle, put a logo on every Pin that you make, except the lower-right corner because that spot gets covered up by Pinterest’s product icons.
3. Get the Pin Button
In order to make it easy and effortless for the browsers or potential customers to engage with you by pinning and sharing a link of your pins to their boards, get the pin/save button which will appear directly on your website’s product pages. By doing that you will be able to know who has pinned content from your website, thus providing you with an opportunity to directly engage with your potential customers.
4. Add the Follow Button
The follow button on your Pinterest profile not only informs people that you’re a Pinner but also redirects them to your profile, urging them to follow you. Incorporate this quick call to action button everywhere you connect with people: your website, newsletters, emails, blogs, or pop-ups.
5. Tell Stories to Grab the Attention
Narrating the stories helps in capturing the attention, creating an emotional connection, and changing how people perceive you. People purchase items based on emotion and telling a story including visuals can trigger emotions. Pinterest being a modern fairytale was made for storytelling. Create Boards that recount a story or create a lifestyle – don’t simply create product Boards for the sake of selling your products or services. As per the statistics, 72% of users said that the platform assists them with discovering new ideas for everyday life: Try to comprehend what stories appeal to your intended audience and utilize this knowledge to fuel your Board ideas, giving your followers the inspiration they’re after. Stay true to your brand, get creative, and have fun.
6. Imagery
The best pins are usually visually compelling as visuals are what make Pinterest. Images are what display the essence of your brand and tell the inside story. These images must be compelling enough that people feel the urge to share and pin them to their own beautifully curated Boards. Therefore, pick vertical high-quality images with the 2:3 aspect ratio that stands out in people’s feeds. Other ratios may cause your Pin to truncate, or may negatively impact performance. Contrast these vertical images with square images (600px x 600px) to make your board eye-catching on the discovery feed. Ensure that your images on the pinboard and the linked website are mobile-friendly as over 85% of Pinterest searches take place via the mobile app.
7. Use SEO Based Descriptions
Although Pinterest is all about images, words are equally important as they are playing their role especially with regards to SEO. For the Pinterest search function and for a good ranking on Google, Keywords are important as Google sees your Board titles, your image descriptions, how frequently you post, and your popularity. Preferably plan well-thought-out long-tail keywords for each Pin of yours while you make sure to include the:
● keywords in your Board/Pin titles, descriptions and images
● price in your descriptions
● a clear and strong call to action for each Pin
● URL
● Descriptions of manageable length, whilst setting the scene and engaging your readers as well
● Add a “#” so as to appear in the “#feed”
The above-mentioned points will not only help Google but also improve your SEO within the app itself.
8. Engage With Your Users
Engage with your customers if you want them to engage with you by:
● Responding to messages promptly
● Thanking people for pinning your content
● Following your followers and liking their Pins
● Following your competitors
The above-mentioned points will not only foster positive interactions with your customers, but also provide you with valuable insights into what their interests, likes, and dislikes are, and why they’re using your products. This information can further be used to fuel your Pinterest marketing strategy. You can also engage Pinterest users by inviting your followers to collaborate by allowing them to pin content on one of your boards.
9. Get More Pin Exposure with Pinterest Ads
Via Pinterest ads, 60% of users discover new brands or products and one out of two have made a purchase from a promoted Pin. In order to build awareness, drive engagement, and increase your sales all you have to do is to create targeted Pinterest ads through the Pinterest Ads Manager.
10. Details En-Riched Pins
Normal Pins with extra detail, such as real-time pricing, stock availability, and brand logo make it easier for users to find and recognize your brand and compel them to click.
11. Buyable Pins
Buyable pins are simple Pinterest Pins that allow users to buy the product without leaving the app or website by clicking on the blue buy button. All products automatically become Buyable Pins if these are pinned from your Shopify store. A seamless buying experience makes buying from you effortless.
12. Content Curation is the Key
As Pinterest is a collaborative platform, therefore you must build your boards by curating content from other brands and people. It not only adds variety but also enables you to pin more regularly, and makes users look upon you more favorably.
13. Play the pin-repin game
Pinterest sorts the most critical content through Repinning. The Pinterest algorithm works by shelving the most repinned pin as essential and useful. Therefore, repinning strategy is a must-do activity. You can find the most popular pins using Pinterest analytics and continue repinning them in short intervals.
14. Check your links
In case your Pin includes a link, make sure the link is active and loads quickly. Your Pinboard informs people what they are about to see if they click on the link to ensure the link directs them to the destination that matches the site’s topic and imagery.
10 WAYS TO INCORPORATE PURPOSE INTO YOUR CORE BUSINESS STRATEGY
Successful companies always incorporate their purpose into the core strategy of their business and that is how businesses are redefined. An organization’s purpose not only serves various stakeholders including shareholders and owners but also serves employees, customers, the environment, and society in general. For driving high growth in companies, the four important strategies are: Purpose, Creating new markets, Serving broader stakeholder needs, and Changing the rules of the game. Companies have for some time been urged to incorporate reason into what they do. Generally, it’s discussed as an add-on approach to make shared worth, improve employee morale and commitment, give back to the community, and help the environment. Successful companies incorporate the purpose into the core of the strategy, not just the periphery.
Business pioneers and organizations that have viably characterized corporate purpose commonly have done as such with one of two methodologies: retrospective or prospective.
The retrospective approach expands on a company’s current organization’s aspirational, human-first reason for being. It necessitates that you think back, systematize organizational, social, and cultural DNA, and make sense of the company’s past. The focal point of the disclosure cycle is based on an inward approach. What was the point of origin? How did we get here? What makes us remarkable to all stakeholders? Where does our DNA open up future opportunities we trust in? These are the sorts of inquiries pioneers need to ask.
Conversely, the prospective approach reshapes your organization’s aspirational, human-first reason for being. It expects you to look forward, check out the more extensive ecosystem in which you need to work and evaluate your potential to influence it. The idea is to figure out the future and afterward gear your organization for it. The focal point of the disclosure cycle is based on an outward approach, and pioneers need to make these inquiries: Where can we go? Which patterns influence our business? What new necessities, openings, and difficulties lie ahead? Which role can we play that will open up future opportunities for ourselves that we have faith in?
Try asking this question to yourself “Is Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy?” and then answer the following queries:
- Does purpose contribute to increasing your company’s growth and profitability today?
- Does purpose significantly influence your strategic decisions and investment choices?
- Does purpose shape your core value proposition?
- Does purpose affect how you build and manage your organizational capabilities?
- Is purpose on the agenda of your leadership team every time you meet?
If all the answer to the above-mentioned queries is YES then it means you have successfully incorporated Purpose into the core strategy of your business. Following are some of the ways that can help you to incorporate your Purpose into your core business strategy.
1. Make leadership buy-in a starting point, not a finish line
At every level in an organizational structure, Purpose must be real and engaging in every aspect for each employee. Make sure that leadership buy-in is a prerequisite for the organization’s aspiration; Purpose. Therefore, if a company is to truly live its purpose, employees at every level have to live it themselves.
2. Use purpose as a filter while making a decision
While making decisions related to your business, though Purpose is rarely the only reason to say “yes” but it should also be a reason to say “no” to something if in case the business opportunity doesn’t align with your values, but don’t automatically say “yes” just because it matches those values. The opportunity still must make sense from a financial perspective as the financials are not an end goal, but they are a natural outcome.”
3. Drive purpose beyond culture and into strategy
An authentic and effectively compelling purpose sits at the heart of long-term business strategy and goes beyond culture. Purpose-driven companies not just endeavor to instill their purpose at the core of how they do business yet in addition chart out their long-term trajectory. A comprehensive, innovative, and engaging employee culture is basically a critical part of that cycle, yet it’s not adequate all alone. Leading firms believe purpose goes beyond culture to strategy.
4. Don’t over-measure the Purpose
Doing the right thing and making the best choice is the whole point. Though metrics and objectives are significant, the over-measuring of purpose is risky as it conceals the core goal. If you are serious about your business living its purpose then make sure it is tracked and reported transparently, alongside other KPIs. Over-measuring purposes simply risk creating a different set of perverse incentives, instead of better ones.
5. Don’t confuse purpose with CSR
The purpose is certifiably not a side effort or an add-on. Nowadays most successful purpose-driven firms understand that purpose is not siloed into a single department, group, or individual. The purpose is not a task that is based on philanthropy or corporate social responsibility (CSR). The purpose is a scalable, core part of the business, and it doesn’t need to vie for a restricted time and assets any longer — or any less — than the remainder of the business does. Effective CSR efforts complement the foundational purpose that sits at the heart of organizational strategy.
6. Position purpose as a North Star, not a to-do list
Shared purpose empowers employees to align themselves and their efforts and work into what the company does. While purpose-driven organizations ensure that each employee has a connecting interface of their work to the company’s purpose, they don’t demand that purpose be lived or experienced identically by every individual. An effective purpose is adequately explicit to be applicable to what an organization really does, but broad enough that it encompasses the diverse roles and responsibilities that exist within the firm. The purpose is a “North Star,” at the end of the day, reflecting the fact that while the “means” may develop, the “end” stays constant.
7. Bring purpose to life with stories
Purpose-driven firms discover direction and motivation in the human experience. People speak with one another via stories, not statistics, so stories give a significant method to organizations to check their advancement towards their purpose. In some cases, these stories capture a company’s historical narrative and establish a legacy. In other cases, stories feature individual victories and vivid testimonials of stakeholders whose lives have been improved by the organization’s purpose. More than any number, these stories assist firms with rejuvenating their purpose to life.
8. Lean on purpose during good times, too
The purpose isn’t only for times when “all else falls flat.” During times of growth and success, Purpose helps in keeping firms focused. It’s not difficult to turn to purpose when a firm is striving or in crisis, or essentially confronting a difficult climate due to digital disruption, a competitive marketplace, or an external acquisition. In these circumstances, purpose keeps firms anchored, secured, and on target. Leading organizations likewise utilize their purpose to remain on track during seasons of development and achievement.
9. Accept that purpose is not always a win-win
The purpose is not a business panacea as sometimes doing the right thing means sacrificing short-term financial gain. Doing the right thing can not always be good for the bottom line. Most authentically purpose-driven firms today have positioned themselves to thrive over the long term to do more good and less harm which sometimes involves sacrificing profit and growth, especially in the short term.
10. Celebrate your successes — and acknowledge your shortcomings
Firms that are serious about their progress along the purpose led venture to commend their progress and recognize their deficiencies by being open and straightforward about your advancement towards your purpose will impart legitimacy and fabricate trust. Business pioneers may fear being candid about their mistakes, but transparency not only doesn’t harm a company rather it really assembles an invaluable repository of public trust.
On a concluding note, The above-mentioned approaches to incorporate the purpose into the core business strategy can’t be a one-off effort. Business pioneers need to constantly evaluate how purpose can complement strategy, and they should be flexible enough to be adjusted or reclassify this relationship as conditions change. That demands another sort of sustained focus, yet the benefits it can grant are legion. The real challenge for business organizations today isn’t why purpose matters but how it is being implemented at the core of business strategies and decision-making. Leading firms rejuvenate their purpose with stories. They perceive that purpose, which is a core of the business model, is distinct from CSR. They acknowledge that purpose isn’t a business panacea, therefore, some short-term sacrifices and compromises have to be made in order to make the best choice. In any case, in particular, purpose-driven businesses comprehend that they’re on an excursion as there is no single road to purpose.
