Looking back at the last year, we can definitely say that it has been huge for the world of PPC. There has been a lot of change due to all the Google AdWords updates, which were met with mixed reviews from users. We’ve got new audience targeting, as well as a variety of features that can boost the workflow and make your PPC campaign have a greater effect. Now that 2017 is over and we have stepped into the new year, people are wondering what to expect. In this article, we are going to discuss some of the trends that you should watch out for.
Tips and Tools You Need to Market Your Startup
Turning a startup into a success story is never easy.However, you will find it’s much easier if you are able to put your startup in front of your market, positioning it as the solution to their problems. To help you with this, we have some proven advice about the mindset it takes and the tools you need to connect with customers.
Top Quick Wins for your Content Marketing
Content marketing is a marathon rather than a sprint. Almost everything you do is about long-term results that fuel the growth of your business.
However, this doesn’t mean that quick wins are inapplicable here. In fact, there’s actually a lot one can do to create some momentum immediately.
In this article, we’ll talk about top quick wins that you can use for your content marketing strategy and obtain appreciable results right away.
1. Use Pop-ups to Drive Immediate Results
The most important goal of any marketer is to convert more leads into customers. Unfortunately, most people are hit-and-run visitors. For example, they find your website, read something there, and leave quickly. They don’t interact with the content and don’t provide any contact information.
This problem should be fixed. You can install a popup plugin like SumoMe which makes it easier for visitors to share your content and join your email list.
2. Grab New Content Ideas
Struggling to get new ideas for your content? Not enough time to research industry news and trends? No worries, you can find new ideas by using the following tools:
- Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator. Fill in three fields with nouns you’d like to write about, and the tool generates relevant titles for articles.
- Portent’s Content Idea Generator. Another great title maker that requires only a subject of potential articles.
- HARO. Provides a database of sources for upcoming stories and daily opportunities for sources.
3. Reduce Size of Your Images to Improve Website Speed
Website performance is a critical SEO and user experience factor. Even an insignificant delay in a couple of seconds can cause visitors to lose patience and leave. “Imagine a customer having an urgent request,” says Cameron Suarez, a B2C marketer. “I had one customer requesting “write my essay!” in the middle of the night because he had to turn it in the next day… Do you think that customer had time to sit around and wait for websites to load?”
Let’s test your website by using awesome performance tool called Page Weight by imgIX.
If the tool says that your website could lose some weight to improve performance, you can do the following to resolve this concern:
- Convert images to JPG with Free Online Images Converter. It uses a combination of the best optimization and compression algorithms to reduce the size of images (keep your largest images around 2000 pixels)
- Read Optimization tips for Images from Google
- Use image optimizer Kraken.io.
4. Avoid Stock Photography
Regardless whether you’re doing business in photo industry or not, you should go for real, unique photos taken or bought by you. Why? Because stock photos are everywhere on the Internet; they’re free and many websites use them. If a visitor sees the same image he or she saw on seven other websites, it is very likely that the trust to you will be undermined.
So, hire a professional photographer or buy unique photos to increase trust of visitors.
5. Test Page Load Times to Improve User Experience
Customers do not like to wait not even an extra second. Yes, even though one can binge-watch an entire season of TV show at a moment’s notice, one gets really frustrated to wait for five seconds in order for a website to load.
As you can see, every second counts. So, it’s a good idea to test the speed of your website and see if the visitors get a pleasant experience browsing it.
PageSpeed tools. These are the tools developed by Google, so they’re probably your best bet.
Pingdom Website Speed Test. Cost-effective and reliable uptime and performance monitoring tool.
6. Focus on the Right Content Type
There are a number of different content types you can use in your content marketing strategy, including infographics, how-to articles, lists, videos, and others. Are some of them more popular than others?
Yes, according to data provided by Odork and Buzzsumo.
As you can see from the graph, internet users prefer infographics and list-based articles. That’s why you should design the content which is popular at the moment. For example, you can use Infographic Maker by Canva or Vengage to produce beautiful infographics your visitors will love.
7. Make Your CTAs More Effective
If you’re looking to increase the effectiveness of CTA buttons of your website, there are some techniques you can choose:
- Use a button in a contrasting color
- Address the viewer’s fear of commitment by including text like “no credit card required,” “no commitment,” or “no loopholes” near CTAs.
- Use clear language without an element of burden: “download here,” “subscribe to get,” and “check out.”
In Conclusion
The full implementation of these quick wins takes minutes but it can go a long way in improving the overall performance of your content marketing.
About Tom Jager
Tom Jager is professional blogger. He works at Awriter. He has degree in Law and English literature. Tom has written numerous articles/online journals. You can reach him at G+ or Facebook.
48 Marketing Predictions to Look Out for in 2018
How to Run a Social Media Strategy and Avoid Potential Legal Trouble
Why You Shouldn’t Just Focus on Getting High Authority Backlinks
Recently, I had the privilege of chatting with marketing and outreach guru, Mark Samms.
Mark and his Ninja Outreach team provide their customers with a truly awesome product – an all-in-one lead prospecting and outreach software.
When Mark talked with me, we discussed something that has confused quite a few marketers: how to get great backlinks.
Paul Kortman Breaks Down Small Business Digital Marketing
Grow Your Business with Smart Automation Tactics
To entrepreneurs and their marketing and sales teams, the concept of automation is a fascinating one.
Just imagine – robots doing what people used to do.
This technology cuts way down on the “busy work” of content marketing that many marketing and sales teams have had to do, taking them away from other important tasks.
Content marketing takes a lot of time and effort. And the amount of time and effort a company invests has increased over the past few years because the internet has become so saturated with content.
So when automated systems were introduced, a lot of companies jumped on the bandwagon.
Some had great success. Many, though, haven’t.
What has contributed to their automation failure? And what tactics can your marketing and sales teams implement that will actually see results?
That’s what I discussed with marketing expert and award-winning blogger, Matt Heinz.
Why Automation Isn’t Working for So Many Companies
In working with big companies (like Amazon and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) is that budgets for content marketing have been on the rise. This is great because content marketing is one of the best ways to reach out to clients and prospects.
However, Matt’s noticed a worrying trend – the spending increases and content proliferates, but the companies aren’t seen a commensurate tie between that content and their business results.
His theory is that companies are putting out a ton of “crappy” blog posts that make the companies feel good because they’re getting clicks and web traffic. However, that content and traffic aren’t actively translating into business value.
To Matt, marketing automation is the means of creating consistency and repeatability of certain actions that connect the right content to the right prospect at the right time.
But a lot of companies tend to look at automation as “set it and forget it.”
Good marketing and sales technology mean automating something that robots can do better and more efficiently than humans. The robot can be on the lookout for and track your prospects activities.
They can even take care of some of the follow-up work, like sending the next email in your drip campaign when a client takes a certain action, like downloading a white paper or signing up for your newsletters.
But robots aren’t going to (and shouldn’t!) replace what Matt calls “the human touch.”
Prospects don’t want to communicate with robots – they want to communicate with people.
Therefore, the idea that a robot can take care of complex sales needs is a fallacy.
Yet, many companies think that once they purchase their automation software that’s all there is to it. The robot will take care of everything.
There’s so much more to it, though, if a company is to be truly successful, see growth, and garner repeat customers.
Automation Tactics That Will Help Your Business Grow
How can we take advantage of automation technology without losing the human touch?
The first thing we need to do is slow down and come up with a strategy.
To do that, ask yourself these questions.
What does success look like? What is my ultimate goal? (This is usually a sales or revenue number.)
Who is my ideal customer?
What are the issues they care about?
What type of content will you create to fit each stage of the purchasing journey to engage prospects?
Matt made a really good point: before you can sell to someone, you have to have their attention. What are you going to do to earn and keep their attention?
At this stage, it’s best to forget about technology altogether. Right now, the focus is on the client – their needs, their concerns, what they’re trying to accomplish in their life and/or business.
If you address that in your content, you’re more likely to get their attention and get them interested in a particular topic.
The next step is to consider what else you can share with them that is relative to their topic of interest.
Once you’ve figured out what is going to interest your customers at different stages of the sales process – then you can create something that is scalable and repeatable that marketing automation can now help with.
During these initial strategy stages, both the sales and marketing teams need to be involved. They have a good idea of what kind of persona you want to market to and how you’re going to accomplish this.
Then, have your teams figure out when and what the marketing teams should put in front of prospects, as well as when and how the sales team should engage with customers.
Your Key to Success: Everything Should Be Client-Centric
When it comes to marketing, a lot of companies get really caught up in everything they need to get done – their ever-growing To Do list. What they forget to think about is why they’re doing what they’re doing and for whom.
Matt repeatedly told me (and this is something I’m hearing from a lot of marketing experts these days) that we need to make sure we stay client-centric.
One-size does not fit all when it comes to sales and marketing.
Different people want different things for different reasons and at different times.
The goal of a marketing campaign is to get the right information to the right people at the right time.
Always think about your ideal customer – the customer you want to sell to, the customer who really needs your product, and the customer that you want coming back again and again.
Remembering that your clients are people with needs and desires just like you can make that easier. Think about how your product will serve a person or company. Now think about what other ways you can help them once they have your product.
Start with this and you will start to see successful automated marketing campaigns, as well as the business growth you’ve been wanting.
Would you like to learn more from my award-winning guest, Matt Heinz? Be sure to subscribe to his blog and follow him on Twitter. You won’t be sorry
ABOUT MATT HEINZ
Prolific author and nationally recognized, award-winning blogger, Matt Heinz is President and Founder of Heinz Marketing with 15 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations and industries. Matt’s career focuses on consistently delivering measurable results with greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty. Matt is a repeat winner of Top 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management and Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers.
Seven Marketing Concepts You Need to Know About
A Strategy to Move Content – Just as Important as Creating Content
Mark Schaefer is one of the most influential marketing gurus around right now, and recently he joined me during my podcast to talk about a topic that he’s made famous.
Our topic was centered around content shock, a term coined by Mark over three years ago. People thought he was crazy when he first started talking about it, but they’re running en masse to buy up his books on the topic these days.
Tired of Doing Marketing the Old Way?
How to Build Trust for Online Advertising Success
How to Close More Sales Without Getting Pushy
Ryan Stewman is a five-time bestselling author, sales trainer, and entrepreneur. He's also a regular contributor to Forbes, Entrepreneur, and other major publications.
Ryan is known throughout the sales marketing industry as the "hardcore closer."
He didn't pick this name himself, but he accepts it with pride.
Today, Ryan talks about how you can get everything you need to know about your initial sales call and close more sales without getting pushy.
Spend More Time Preparing and Less Time Calling
Most companies recommend calling leads within the first five minutes, but not Ryan.
In fact, his team doesn't schedule calls for about four or five days out.
Why not? This gives them ample time to prepare for the call. The goal is to find out as much as they can about the person.
Another mistake companies make? They call every. single. lead.
Ryan recommends opting for quality over quantity. Why waste your time chasing down bad leads and facing ultimate rejection? Sales is emotional and stressful: you're constantly berated, rejected, and turned down so morale can deteriorate pretty quickly.
No one likes hearing the word "no." You can avoid lots of rejection simply by getting to know your leads before making the call.
Gather Information
When Ryan's team receives a lead, the first thing they do is determine how they can get more information.
Ryan suggests utilizing an automated email system that sends out surveys and forms to your leads. He uses a roughly ten-question survey to find out where they live, where they work, what kind of problems they're having, and what kind of business they're in.
This helps to get an overall sense of who they are and build your familiarity.
Social Reconnaissance
Ryan recommends checking out your lead's social media profiles.
Most people share posts with a public audience because they want others to see these things. No one pays attention to anyone anymore, so Ryan says people really appreciate this effort.
The goal is to get a sense for their personality.
This can also help avoid unnecessary rejection. Notice a lead chronically complaining or making up excuses in their Facebook posts? Then don't pursue that lead. Why waste your time with ultimate rejection?
On-The-Call Strategy
Ryan's strategy for phone calls is pretty simple: he barely says anything.
If you can get folks to open their mouths, they're more likely to open their wallets.
This means that you don't need to be a good sales person if you're already a good listener.
First 30 Seconds
At the very beginning of the call, Ryan says you'll want to accomplish two things: let the person know you already have successful results with someone just like them and get them to admit they've already made a decision with you involved.
It sounds hard but it's actually pretty simple.
Ryan starts out by asking for the person's geographical location. Then he lets them know that he has current clients in that same area with great results.
He doesn't lie: if Ryan doesn't have clients in the same city, he'll list the state or region.
After that, Ryan asks why the lead reached out to him. By answering this question, Ryan gets them to admit they've already made a decision that involves him.
Keep the Conversation Flowing
Ryan says the process of sales is very similar to what a doctor does: someone tells you their problems and you give them a solution.
When you enter a doctor's office, you usually go through the same protocol, right?
Ryan uses the same strategy for sales calls. He calls it the "prescription method."
Come up with six or seven open-ended questions to use on every sales call. This helps keep the conversation flowing and avoids dead-ends.
Once the lead feels like you thoroughly understand their situation and problems, they're more likely to trust you for a solution.
Answering Questions
Ryan says a lot of companies make big mistakes when it comes to answering questions on the initial phone call.
They forget what the lead wants to get out of the phone call. When someone calls a mortgage loan officer, it's because they want a house. They don't want to hear all the details about bond markets and interest rates.
Answering questions with too many details gets confusing quickly. We're conditioned to write and speak for experts, but fancy words and industry detail is just confusing to customers.
Tell them what they want to know in a way they can understand.
What about revealing prices?
Ryan prefers to list his price up-front on the website. He also likes to compare his price and product to another product with a similar price. He'll then explain that not only is his product superior, but it also costs less.
Closing the Sale without Getting Pushy
Ryan says the atmosphere has changed since the days of cold calls and newspaper ads.
You don't need to go through the hassle of changing someone's mind because you can find leads that prequalify for your product or service. Social media has made this strategy easier than ever.
Once you thoroughly understand someone's problems, you can prescribe them a beneficial solution. This is only possible by conducting efficient research through surveys and social reconnaissance.
Don't push for a one-call close!
Why risk jeopardizing the relationship? If a lead isn't quite ready to commit, ask when you can follow-up for an answer. Ryan also likes to send automated "thank you" emails.
The goal is to push for future contact. Clients feel comfortable when you give them this control.
How to Learn More from Ryan
You can find Ryan at Hardcore Closer where he's written over 700 blogs and published over 500 additional pages of content covering everything to do with sales marketing.
Ryan's bestselling book, Elevator to The Top, walks you through the sales funnel, upsells, and extra programs. You can score a free paperback copy here.
About Ryan Stewman
I’m a 4x best selling author
I contribute to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Addicted2Success, Good men Project, Lighter Side of Real Estate and Huffington Post.
I’ve got more Salesman of The Month plaques than I can count. It’s crazy to think of what all I’ve done from just taking action and working hard.
Hardcore Closer is an online learning resource for salespeople. We sell e-learning products in the advertising, marketing, funnel, sales and social media arenas, as well as do personal coaching and live events. My Break Free Academy program is our flagship program. It has everything you need in order to start marketing your business online and crushing your competitors.
I’m Ryan Stewman CEO of Hardcore Closer and it’s nice to meet you.
7 Strategies to Develop Content that Ranks Quickly in the SERPs
In March 2016, Google has confirmed that links and content represent the two most important factors which influence your website’s rankings. What could that mean for contemporary content marketers and website owners? I see it pretty simple. You build high-quality links and publish high-quality content on a regular basis, and Google will reward you. Really simple!
However, things get complicated when you need to start the actual work. Or you might have started it and the results might have been disappointing. Nevertheless, developing top-notch quality content is more like a combination of art and skill.
You need to have the proper knowledge and the genuine commitment to practice consistently. You can only become better at content development if you keep doing it constantly. As you go, optimize your process and learn new things as new experiences show up.
In today’s post, we’re going to explore several effective strategies for developing excellent content which will have a tremendously positive impact on your SEO marketing performance. In short, we’ll help you write the type of content that Google and all the other important search engines favor through their algorithms. Let’s begin:
1. Write Unique Content – All The Time
Let me share a simple yet very important rule: whenever you post content online, it should be 100% unique. That might confuse some of you, so let me put it another way. You can’t write content that has been previously posted online, so stay away from copy-pasting exact phrases. There’s a lot of software that detects duplicated content, and Google knows very well whether you wrote it by yourself or copied it from somewhere else.
Therefore, even though you may get some inspiration from other blogs, you should present the information from a different perspective. Create an outline and follow it strictly.
2. Develop Content with Unique Value Inside
Unique value is different from unique content. Unique content means not copying someone else’s work, while unique value means showing a website visitor something else. Something out-of-the-box. Something they haven’t seen on any other website or brand. You see, this is an aspect that differentiates your brand from the rest. The unique value you provide is super important for a prosperous growth!
Here are some clues on how to make your content unique and valuable at the same time:
- Make it helpful – It has to deliver solutions to problems and needs.
- Make it relevant to your specific audience – write for your audience only. You can’t solve everyone’s problems so don’t even try to do so. Focus on being relevant to a specific audience only.
- Make it unique – Bring something unique from your own personality, or approach a topic from a different angle.
3. Make Your Website’s Pages High Quality
Content creation and distribution is your first step. Then, you need to make sure that your website visitors will have a great user experience, which means that they’ll be able to go through your website’s pages without problems. You cannot permit any errors and mistakes such as broken pages and broken links.
Moreover, you need to optimize your website’s loading speed. Your users want to find information quickly. If your pages are loading slowly, many visitors will just leave because they’ll be annoyed. That will affect your brand’s reputation and therefore your business performance.
4. Make Your Content “Shareable”
To make your content shareable means to make it likable to the public. In order for it to be so, it has to be very simple to grasp, usually short (but not always), and it should be extremely relevant to a specific audience. For example, if you are targeting individuals who need counseling, you need to make your content emotional so they can open themselves up.
Mara Hudson, SEO Professional at EduGeeksClub, suggests:
“When you manage to make your readers feel emotional, they’ll immediately want to share the piece of content which impressed them. Make your content remarkable. That means worth remarking, so you can’t come up with something that everyone’s talking about. Develop a unique angle and you’ll capture your audience’s attention!”
5. Publish Only Impeccable Content
Impeccable content is error-free. Google doesn’t really appreciate webmasters who neglect their content. To neglect your content means to neglect your business and your customers. Therefore, you’ll be penalized whenever search engine crawlers detect misspelling and misuse of words and sentences.
You can avoid this problem by allowing different tools and software to aid you in your content development process. For example, tools like Grammarly or ProWritingAid can make your life so much easier. You can adapt them to your Word Processor and check your grammar as you type.
6. Pay Attention to Keywords
Many bloggers and website owners are trying to be “perfect” in the eyes of Google. How do they do that? Well, they try to find the “perfect keyword density”, an aspect which is almost impossible to get right. Google always changes its algorithms, so agonizing over your keyword usage is going to get you stuck.
Google is very fair at judging a website’s content value. Here’s what you need to know: you need to optimize your content and you need to use the right keywords. But like with anything in life, exaggerating will do more harm than good. One of Google’s webmasters suggested that keywords overstuffing decreases your website’s rankings, so stay out of the danger zone!
7. Figure Out the User’s Intent
When people search something on Google, they are obviously looking for something. Let’s dig deeper. That “something” is probably the solution to a problem or the fulfillment of a need. You need to find information regarding a local place? That’s a need. You want to play a game? A need. You need to learn how to cook? That’s a solution to a problem (of not knowing how to make your own food).
You see, everyone’s looking for answers. Therefore, your content needs to be optimized for the user’s intent. You must know your audience very well, you must detect their needs and wants, and you must know their most common problems. If you are able to figure that out, you’ll have no problem with leading them towards the right solutions.
Google truly appreciates content that solves problems, and they see it through the reflection of your website’s high engagement and social performance.
Takeaways
Developing high-quality content comes with a price. You need to commit to a journey, a learning curve, and maybe many challenges. However, that shouldn’t scare you off. Every failure represents an opportunity to learn and do better next time. No one’s rushing you, so you can take your time learning how to expose your information better all the time. Good luck!
