The Daily Carnage

The savvy marketer's hub for industry news, insights, resources, and culture.

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Your Brain on AI 🍳

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5 Underused Ways to Get Better Content Ideas

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who has the best content of them all?”

Perhaps this is everyone’s subconscious ask when scrolling through endless social feeds, scouring blogs, and opening emails. We all want great content. However, the real magic lies in knowing where to find the inspiration behind great content. Content Marketing Institute will get you started with 5 underused ways to get better content ideas.

Job descriptions. When it comes to delivering the right message to your target audience, the more you know about your audience, the better. If your buyer personas include job roles, then give those roles a search on job boards and see what the positions entail. If generating weekly reports is part of the description, then you can craft a message around how you can help create reports with ease.

Industry leaders on LinkedIn. Industry leaders know the latest and greatest of what’s happening. Stay tuned and discover what they’re talking about so you can address it with your own content. Take a look at comments under these industry leaders’ posts so you can see what questions and observations people have on the given topics.

Sales calls. Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you need to pick up the phone and start dialing. Just hop on a demo call with a member of your sales team. Pay special attention to the jargon the prospect uses, so you can tailor your messaging with the same language. If the prospect is willing to answer some of your questions directly, then ask how they found your tool and what pain they’re currently experiencing.
Customer service. Your customer service channel can deliver a world of insights. With the frequency of customer questions coming in, take it upon yourself to learn what they’re asking. If the same questions come up over and over, then perhaps there is a blind spot you need to address. If you’re running a customer service chatbot, setup customer questions to send right to your email so you don’t miss them.

Read on for the last content idea source.

9 Black Friday Marketing Strategies (That Work Like A Charm)

NOVEMBER 8, 2020

The excitement generated by Black Friday deals is comparable to the excitement kids feel when their parents pack them up in the car and tell them they’re going to Disneyland. Best Buy may not have the same charm as “the happiest place on Earth” when it’s packed like sardines – especially during a pandemic. But 2020’s shopping trends indicate Black Friday might look a lot like Cyber Monday.

To help you prepare for this shopping phenomenon, Sleeknote is sharing 9 Black Friday marketing strategies.

Build Your Black Friday Email List. Growing an email list is an ongoing goal. Black Friday makes for a great sign-up incentive. Create a popup on your site telling people to sign up for exclusive Black Friday deals. Or offer additional discounts to new subscribers that they can use on top of existing deals.

Schedule Your Popups. Popups are good for more than getting signups. Build up your popup arsenal centered around deal features, reducing cart abandonment, and delivery times. Schedule them and watch them get to work.

Experiment with Timing. Black Friday is only one day, but the excitement carries on to the days before and after. Announce early deals to your subscribers to attract buyers before it gets too competitive. Or offer more deals after the date has passed so people can jump on what they may have missed out on previously.
Make Your Sale Memorable. There are just too many dang deals out there to navigate. Make sure you’re not forgotten during the chaos by sending a reminder email illustrating your deal highlights and what people can expect from your sale. Offering a button to add the event to their calendar will give them a reminder just when they need it.

There are more strategies with examples than we could cover, so check them all out!

7 Expert Tips for Writing Killer Facebook Ad Copy

NOVEMBER 4, 2020

There’s no beating around the bush when it comes to Facebook Ad copy. Keep it short and to the point. You don’t have much time to capture someone’s interest, so you must get right to what you want to convey. In the ever-wise words of Kevin Malone, “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?” We couldn’t have said it better, Kevin.

But Tinuiti says it pretty well with 7 expert tips for writing killer Facebook Ad copy.

Create a Consistent Voice. Knowing your audience will help you find your voice. The way you address 20 year-olds on Instagram is probably different than how you address 50 year-olds on Facebook. It’s okay to tweak messaging for different platforms, but maintain your brand’s voice and tone so it continues to resonate with your audience.

Find Inspiration in External Sources. Take a look at how other brands are promoting their products and services. Determine from existing examples what works and what doesn’t. Facebook’s Ad Library will help you find great examples of Facebook Ad copy, so give it a look.

Write With Urgency. Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) is an effective decision driver. There are no rewards for vague copy. If you’re trying to drive a conversion now, tell your audience exactly why they should act now. It might be because of a limited promotion or because buying now will instantly improve their life.
Use Reviews to Your Advantage. People don’t want to make risky purchases. Some assurance that a product or service is worth buying is always welcome. Let your customers’ voices be heard via reviews. Still not convinced? Statistics from Qualtrics found reviews influenced purchase decisions for 93% of consumers. The proof is in the pudding. Start compiling your most compelling reviews and craft your message.

Read on for 3 more expert tips.

5 Incredibly Effective Backlink Strategies

NOVEMBER 3, 2020

How many of y’all were Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts back in the day? We’re throwing you a big scout salute for all those knots you mastered and the delicious coveted cookies we hoard every year (Tagalongs are where it’s at, tbh.)

Scouts earn many badges as they serve their communities and learn new skills. These badges are like backlinks for their uniforms. They show the world their prowess in a particular area and help establish authority.

Let’s launch right in with 5 incredibly effective backlink strategies from Kelly Campbell.

Testimonials. Leaving a testimonial on another authority’s site can be mutually beneficial. You’re giving them an honest take on your experience with a product or service. In turn, they may link your testimonial back to your site as a means of verifying your credibility. Keep your testimonial concise and authentic. Make sure it’s worth featuring on their testimonials page.

Link Roundup. Just like in an art gallery, link roundups have artists and curators. The artist creates the content, and the curator puts it all together on display. People are constantly putting together roundups of the best content in XYZ category. Search the web and Twitter for roundups, and send your own links to creators when your own content matches what they’re looking for.

Reclaim Links. Blogs will often mention your business without providing any links. It’s great they mentioned you, but a link is even better. Reach out and thank them for including you in their article, and ask if they might include a link to your site within their mention. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Guest Posts. If you can personally find a place on another site, it’s a great way to drive visitors back to your site. Finding guest posts opportunities is no easy feat though. Not everyone is open to guest posts or has a place for your topic. Give “guest post” a search on Twitter and see where you might be of service.

Keep reading for number 5.

5 Steps to Creating a Growth Strategy that Actually Works

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

Growing a business and maintaining a business are two very different challenges. Sometimes maintenance can feel like bailing water out of a sinking boat, while growth can feel like trying to make that same boat fly. At the end of the day, having a plan and a strategy is your saving grace.

To help you get your own boat airborne, WordStream has 5 steps to creating a growth strategy that actually works.

A growth strategy isn’t the same as a marketing plan, but it’s an important part. Your growth strategy will encompass all facets of your business and everybody will work toward a common goal.

Step #1: Set your high-level goals. Determine your end goal and work backward. You need a vision you can work toward. Be ambitious with your goals, but make sure they’re realistically attainable.

Step #2: Identify your inputs and outputs. Define your most valuable KPI moving forward. This “North Star” metric is the ultimate gauge of your performance. When you’ve established your North Star metric, assess where you currently stand on this metric and think about how much the metric must increase to see the growth you’re planning for.

Step #3: Run growth experiments. Avoid waterfalling when creating projects centered around growth. Waterfalling is when project requirements add up to a point where the time needed to implement the project grows too great. Break your projects into smaller tests you can easily achieve in the span of one or two weeks.

Step #4: Validate your growth experiments. Once your experiments have run their course, determine whether or not increasing its scale will result in the growth you’re looking to achieve for your business. Similar to the startup mantra “fail fast, fail cheap”, these tests will guide you toward your most effective strategies.

Keep reading for step #5: foster extreme accountability.

We Love Instagram Stories. Here are 20 Tricks and Features.

NOVEMBER 1, 2020

Y’all, who doesn’t love a good story? We’re immediately drawn into fictional tales of adventure and inspiring true recollections. It doesn’t matter if it’s around the campfire, within the pages of a book, or on-screen. A great story captivates us.

Anyone can be a storyteller. And building your audience has never been easier. It’s no wonder so many social media channels have dedicated “Stories” features within them. Kicking off this week is Hootsuite with Instagram Story hacks: 20 tricks and features you should know.

Fill the background with a solid color. Everything has its defaults. From our choice of breakfast foods to the standard gradient on Instagram Stories. Hit that draw icon and color the screen any way you’d like. Change it up and add some variety to your Stories.
Create a “revealing” story series. The magic is in the reveal. Color over the image you wish to share. Then erase a little bit of the paint, revealing part of the image underneath. Save the image to your camera roll. Keep erasing portions and saving the increasingly-revealed image. Then post the reveal sequence to your Story.

Hide hashtags and @mentions. Sometimes you just don’t want any clutter, but you still need the mentions. Start your story with hashtags and mentions. Then hit the sticker button. Find your camera roll in the sticker viewer and select the image you want to share. Enlarge the image so it obscures your #s and @s. Voila!
Express yourself with even more fonts. More fonts are available than you may realize if you know where to look. Paste in fonts from Instagram Font Generator (check out our Tools section for more info), or design your Story in Photoshop and enjoy a vast font collection. However, our design team says, “don’t go crazy there, chief.”

There’s more to the story, so keep reading for more tricks and detailed how-tos.

5 Ideas You Can Use When Pitching Email Marketing to Your Clients

OCTOBER 28, 2020

Just as a painter knows where to put a splotch of orange or splatter of blue on a canvas, marketers tend to know where they can fill a gap in a business’s marketing efforts. A little bit of blog SEO here, a touch of Facebook Ads there. Soon you’ll have the whole marketing landscape represented – complete with a few happy little accidents, of course.

When it comes to the marketing landscape, email is prime real estate. Here at Carney, we know a thing or two about email marketing if you catch our drift.

Today, Campaign Monitor is giving us 5 ideas you can use when pitching email marketing to your clients.

Offer statistics to prove that email marketing works. On average, email marketing turns every $1 you spend into a $42 return. That’s a pretty hefty ROI. Let your clients know it’s super scalable too. Email easily keeps up with a growing list of subscribers so you can build an enormous list.
Track the results from email marketing to connect results to specific campaigns. Show your client some email marketing reports to demonstrate just how granular the data is. Help them understand what it means and how it informs which tweaks should be made. Furthermore, talk about A/B testing and other tests you’ll use to keep iterating and improving for better results.
Manage email marketing with ease. There are plenty of excellent platforms to run email campaigns. There are some clunky ones too. Nothing is perfect, but finding the right platform will do wonders. Show your client how certain actions can be automated so they can spend more time on other important tasks.
Emphasize the flexibility of email marketing. Teach your clients just how granular you can get with segmentation. Want to send a promo to a frequent buyer? Targeting this segment is simple. Email marketing has all they’ll need to get the right message to the right people.

Keep reading for idea #5.

How to Convert Free Opt-in Trial Users into Paying Customers

OCTOBER 27, 2020

There’s nothing quite like shopping at Costco. It’s not because of the enormous inventory offering you way more than you’ll never need. And it’s not because the hotdog & drink combo has cost only $1.50 since 1985. It’s because of all those free samples.

People love free things. And just as people will jump on a free ravioli sample at Costo, they’ll discover what your product is all about with a free trial. It’s one step closer to new acquisition. Today, Convince & Convert is covering how to convert free opt-in trial users into paying customers.

Shorten the trial period. People opt-in to free trials because they have a need to fill. They’ll determine pretty quickly whether or not your product or service will indeed fill this need. They’ll know before 30 days in, so try a 14 day trial period. You can always test different lengths.
Send trial ending notices. We’re all in need of reminders here and there. People likely won’t mark their calendars to indicate when their free trial will lapse. Send them an email and direct their attention to where they can enter payment details and maintain access.
Create an exhaustive knowledge base. Y’all know just how important customer experience is. A free trial is, in a sense, a simulation of the customer experience. Make it count. The more resources you provide, the better. Ensure people get the most out of your product by helping them understand your product with tutorials, videos, and FAQs. Collect user questions and provide thorough answers.
Run (seasonal) special offers. A free trial is a special offer in and of itself, but throw in a promo for a discounted price upon payment. Build a sense of urgency with an expiration date for your special offer so people will act faster.

Read on for more ways to convert your free opt-in trial users.

Copywriting 101: 6 Traits of Excellent Copy Readers Will Remember

OCTOBER 26, 2020

You know great copy when you see it. Consumers may not delve as deep into the science of good copy as marketers will, but they understand some messages just resonate better. So when you see it, don’t ignore it. Bookmark it, follow it, and let it influence the way you write.

To lay down some foundations of great copy, Hubspot is coming in hot with 6 traits of excellent copy readers will remember.

It tilts your perspective. Much like the famous “impossible staircase” illusion, Excellent copy changes your thinking. When you write about a topic, think about why the topic matters. When you’ve answered why the topic matters, take your answer a step further. You’ll challenge your own perspective and more easily shift the perspectives of others.

It finds connections. If you’re selling bicycles, you can write about the number of gears or the comfort of the seat. These are features people will be interested in, but they’re much more interested in the feeling of gliding down the road and feeling the sun and breeze on a nice summer day. Draw emotional connections people can follow.

It has a stunning lead. Your headline must turn heads. People have way too much to read, so make an effort to entice them. If each line you write effectively draws readers to the next, then you’ve succeeded. It all starts with the first line.
It is born out of listening. You must understand your audience for your copy to resonate with them. You’re talking to them, so talk in their language. Determine what your customers want and what they don’t want, then deliver your message accordingly.

You’ll find the last two of these traits along with some killer examples in the full article, so give it a read.