Archives for April 2017
Email Marketing Benchmarks Your Company Has to Meet
Typically, youâre only competing against yourself. But not when it comes to email marketing. Then itâs crucial to meet specific Email Marketing Benchmarks. Itâs the only way youâll know if the tactics youâre currently using are reaching your customers effectively. If theyâre not, then it might be time to mix things up and find new ways to reach potential clients.
MailChimp has analyzed its 15 million users and found click rates and conversion rates for a variety of industry types and sizes. Typically, B2B companies have a slightly higher click rate and conversion rate than B2Cs. If youâre seeing substantially lower numbers compared to your competitors, itâs time to change tactics. Here are some ideas for how to better approach email marketing and hit those benchmarks.
Avoid the spam filter
This oneâs obvious but critical. Spam filters are better than ever at spotting ads. However, there are a number of things that tip off the spam filter that your message is advertising. Avoid salesy language and personalize the message. Donât include too many images. In other words, make your promotion mimic a normal email as much as possible to skip the spam filter.
Track your customer reach
Itâs important to keep track of hard and soft bounces. Hard bounces are when an email address simply doesnât exist anymore. This is obviously not a good use of your marketing resources. Soft bounces are when an email box exists but cannot receive your message â for example, if the message box is full or the user is on vacation. Limiting both of these is crucial to maintain strong click and conversion rates.
Make the subject line direct
In 2017, people are used to scams. Theyâre expecting that youâre hounding them with something theyâre not interested in. Theyâre exhausted with the constant stream of clickbait nonsense cluttering up their Facebook feed and manipulating them with silly promises. So donât sell whatâs inside â simply tell them whatâs inside. If youâve got a great sale coming up or an exciting new product, get right to it in the subject line. You donât have any room to âteaseâ customers when it comes to email marketing.
Know where your customers are
Everyone knows that being mobile-friendly is crucial in digital marketing now. Apple iPhone was the number one way users opened email in 2016 with Gmail in a distant second. Apple iPad and Google Android followed third and fourth, respectively. Ensure your email marketing message looks sharp no matter what device itâs viewed on.
Constantly tweaking your email marketing strategy to better reach customers is critical to maintaining a strong online presence. Monitoring stats on the success of your campaigns is the first step.
Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions
Queen of the Machine for Viral Solutions LLC
“If a brand genuinely wants to make a social contribution, it should start with who they are, not what they do. For only when a brand has defined itself and its core values can it identify causes or social responsibility initiatives that are in alignment with its authentic brand story.” ~ Simon Mainwaring
Branding Series: 4 Signs Youâre Getting Bad Branding Advice
Welcome back to our ongoing branding series. Today we are going to diverge a bit from the practical advice we have been providing to discuss how you can tell if the branding advice you are receiving is not helpful for your company.
Many small businesses like to hire branding consultants to help them develop a brand image and strategy. This can be an especially great idea for entrepreneurs working on their first startup, or who do not have much experience or knowledge in the areas of branding or marketing.
When you bring in a consultant to work with your company, you need to be sure you are actually getting advice that benefits you and your business.
Here are some signs that the consultant you are working with is not giving you worthwhile advice:
Overgeneralization of demographics
Whenever you work on establishing a brand image, you want to get rather specific with the characteristics your brand should embody and the profiles of your ideal customers. To that end, extremely broad generalizations of customer demographics will only get you so far.
A common red flag in todayâs branding world is when consultants focus on helping business owners reach âmillennials.â Letâs just get this out of the way now: there is no single foolproof way to market to millennials. That demographic is so large and varied, with so many factors to take into account other than their age. The clichĂ©s used by people to describe millennials as a whole segment are unreliable and fail segmentation tests. But business owners often do not second-guess the âmillennial-friendly brandâ approach, because theyâve likely been told over and over again that they need to cater to that generation.
Lack of data usage
You should always beware of consultants who either do not ask for a significant amount of data, or who do not seem to use the data you provide them. In todayâs world, a great deal of data analysis is necessary to perform market research and create accurate customer profiles. This data will help you develop advertising campaigns, design your packaging, determine your pricing and set your store layout. A good consultant will avoid making any major decisions without first doing some in-depth data analysis.
Overly complex branding concepts
The actual implementation of a branding strategy may be complex, but the concepts you use should actually be quite simple. Beware of brand consultants that fail to keep it simple and try to get you to put your focus into a larger number of branding concepts.
Use of certain worrying buzzwords
Pay attention to the language a branding consultant wants to use to define your brand. Certain buzzwords are bound to set off red flags. The word âinnovative,â for example, is used by just about every wannabe branding guru youâll find in a google search. Today, being âinnovativeâ is no longer a way to differentiate your brand from the thousands of other companies that have chosen that as their buzzword.
The list of clichĂ©d buzzwords is extremely long. If you regularly find yourself thinking, âthis doesnât sound like us,â or âthis sounds like it could describe anybody,â then youâre probably getting bad advice and your consultant is probably relying too much on these types of buzzwords.
Bad brand consultants are a dime a dozen in todayâs business world, but fortunately there are plenty of success stories out there as well. As long as you know the signs that indicate youâre getting bad advice, the good advice shouldnât be difficult to find.
Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions LLC
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner and an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant.
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves, so business can be fun again.
Big Changes at AdWords Will Affect Digital Marketers
Google is responding to critics who have said the search engine giant has inadvertently promoted terrorist organizations and pornographic websites. In an effort to make their metrics more transparent and accurate, Google has announced major changes to its AdWords program.
Though not directly related to digital marketing, you can bet these changes will alter how companies craft their Google strategy. Google says these changes are intended to help users â and advertisers â have better data within reach.
Watch time metric
This is specifically for measuring the success of video ads. Knowing the number of people viewing the ad is nice, but it doesnât tell you that much about how effective the ad is. For example, you want to know how long they watched the video for. This is the kind of more advanced metric Google is now offering advertisers.
Changing exact phrase searches
Google is shifting how it approaches exact phrase searchesâor those in double quotes. From now on, theyâll include close variants to that phrase and trigger related ads regardless of word order or usage. Hereâs Googleâs reasoning for why this change makes sense:
âPeople arenât perfect spellers or typists. In fact, at least seven percent of Google searches contain a misspelling. And the longer the query, the greater the likelihood of a typo. But even if what theyâve typed isnât perfect, people still want to connect with the businesses, products, and services theyâre trying to find.â
Google has said that it is trying to reduce complexity and help advertisers better reach customers. This way, advertisers donât need to include common misspellings of search terms in order to find people looking for their products.
Unique reach metric
In Googleâs own words: âBy analyzing reach and frequency data for display and video campaigns, you can better understand how many people were shown your ads and how frequently the same people were shown them over a certain period of time.â
Basically, Google is attempting to offer advertisers a crystal clear picture of exactly how many people viewed their ad in a certain timeframe. This way advertisers can see the number of unique users and average impressions-per-user regardless of what device the user is on. Many thought that this change was a long time coming.
Tailoring your Google ads strategy is critical to raising your companyâs profile and engaging a wide variety of potential customers. Weâll keep you up to date as Google changes how its AdWords program works.
Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions LLC
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves – so business can be fun again.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner, an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant and a Google Partner – Certified in AdWords.
Branding Series: Elements of a Strong Branding Strategy
Last week in our Viral Solutions branding series we discussed how you can research your target audience to get a better idea of the kind of brand image that will resonate with them. Now itâs time to talk about the strategy itself.
How can you be sure the branding strategy you have developed will actually help your business achieve its goals?
Here are a few elements that are characteristic of a strong branding strategy.
A sense of purpose
Itâs not enough to have certain promises that your business makes to its customers â there must be a reason why you make these promises, and why you are focused on delivering a high level of service. This will help to differentiate you from other similar companies in your market.
Businesses tend to have a purpose that falls into one of two categories. A functional purpose focuses more on the evaluations of your success, such as the amount of money you are able to make. An intentional purpose is one that defines success as the ability to do good while making money.
Clearly, an intentional purpose is going to resonate better with your customers. People want to spend money at businesses that seem to have a purpose outside of making money. Without an intentional purpose, it is easier for people to view or portray your company as greedy or cold.
Consistently reinforced brand image
Every marketing step you take should either enhance or at least relate to your existing brand. On social media, for example, the photos or statuses you post should never feel irrelevant or inappropriate to your company.
Consistency is absolutely crucial for developing a recognizable brand, which in turn is critical for creating customer loyalty.
One great marketing strategy to use to help your business stay consistent with its branding is to develop an original style guide, which outlines every aspect of your marketing from the tone you take in your content to the color scheme youâll use in images and web pages.
Emotion-based marketing
A more distant, corporate tone might work with some types of businesses, but in general you want to be able to form an emotional connection with your customers. This sort of connection will reinforce your brand. All people are born with a natural desire to form relationships, and that is not limited to just relationships between people.
Therefore, you should find ways to connect with your customers on a more meaningful and emotional level. The strategies you use for this depend on your target audience and the brand image you have developed, but the ultimate goal is always the same: to foster a sense of community and belonging that appeals to your audienceâs emotions.
Outstanding flexibility
If brands are going to stay relevant for the long haul, their campaigns must be flexible.
This is not to say that you throw consistency out the window. You can still be flexible while being consistent. Consistency sets a high standard of quality and style for your brand, while flexibility allows you to remain nimble enough to make adjustments that continually maintain high levels of interest in your brand while separating you from the pack.
Customer loyalty
If you know there are people who are already loyal to your company and your brand, it is important that you regularly take action to reward them for their loyalty. A brand that is able to cultivate and enhance existing loyalty will get more returning customers and will find it easier to make profits.
Loyalty is an extremely important part of any branding strategy. You should always aim to highlight the positive relationships you have with your customers. This helps new customers get a better idea of what they can expect from working with you.
For more elements of a successful branding strategy, contact us today at Viral Solutions.
Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions LLC
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
Viral Solutions LLC is a Digital Marketer Certified Partner and an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant.
We help overwhelmed small business owners duplicate themselves, so business can be fun again.
How Dynamic Search Ads Are Changing
Itâs important for business leaders to keep up with the ever-evolving world of Googleâs AdWords. Itâs one of the major platforms that any business with a digital marketing plan needs to understand. Changes to Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) are the search engine giantâs latest way for businesses to reach more customers.
The idea behind DSAs  (Dynamic Search Ads) is that they fill in the gaps where your keywords might not have covered.
This can save advertisers time by allowing them not to fill in every keyword possibility. Automatically generated headlines will show how your product closely links to the userâs keyword search. DSAs are also intended to increase traffic by gaining users who are searching using different keywords. For example, maybe the user typed âdog grooming New Yorkâ and your âdog grooming NYCâ page comes up. Below we discuss three major ways Google is changing its popular program.
Page feeds
As always, Google is shifting how it does things. One way it's doing this is by introducing page feeds for advertisers using DSAs. This allows you to customize exactly which landing pages show up when customers search for a related keyword. If youâre introducing a new product, you can now more easily direct customers in that productâs direction by adding specific URLs to guide searchers to exactly where you want them to go.
Custom label feeds allow you to target customers looking for specific star ratings, availability, and promotions. Essentially, the new DSA system is intended to be more responsive to advertisers looking to attract customers in an evolving business environment.
This could save you a lot of time. By simply uploading screenshots of your web pages, AdWords will link your site to relevant keyword searches through the copy on your site. You may also attract more viewers with this method than by using the traditional method of loading up your site with keywords.
Expanded ads
In this push toward customization, Google will now let advertisers provide more information about their products. This new feature has a higher limit on the length of headlines and descriptions. By providing more information, the user will have a better idea of the adâs relevance. Of course, this could also annoy users who have to scroll for more time before reaching what theyâre looking for.
Better results
Google has also updated its criteria to only show the most relevant SERPs (search engine results pages). For example, AdWords will now take the userâs location into account when creating recommendations. The companyâs intention is to increase conversion rates, which would obviously be attractive to advertisers. Time will tell how much this updated criteria will actually help advertisers.
AdWords will continue to be a key part of any digital marketing campaign because itâs tied to the worldâs most-popular search engine. But simply setting up an advertising campaign and letting it ride isnât going to cut it. Successful businesses investigate new ways to reach customers all the timeâbecause they know their competitors will be doing the same.
Copyright 2017 Viral Solutions LLC