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Customer Engagement: An Easy-to-Understand Guide for Business Owners

APRIL 21, 2020

We’re diving straight in today with our friends from the Motley Fool. First, let’s consider the following elements when evaluating customer engagement.

How much do you really know about your target audience?
Have you tested different marketing methods to see how your audience reacts?
Is your offer highly relevant and worthwhile to your audience?
Does your content type resonate with your audience?

Notice how all four points involve your audience? If you’re after customer engagement, then giving your customer a positive experience needs to be priority number one. Not revenue.

Bring on the marketing strategies to boost customer engagement:

Recommendations. This is all about making things easy and relevant to the customer. Motley Fool reported, “Online sales at Amazon increased by 29% when the site began integrating recommendations into almost every part of its customers’ purchasing process.”

Tip: Recommendations need to be data-driven. Base it on previous purchases, products the customer has already looked into, products they’ve shared, etc.

Gamification. Add gaming qualities for an exciting customer experience. An example could be offering site discounts and freebies as prizes to your games like Stylesbysoma did with a roulette wheel on its website. Plus, you can make it a lead magnet by asking visitors for their email address before playing.

Tip: Your game should focus on ease of play, plus offer thoughtful prizes that would be useful to the customer.

Interactive videos. It’s a way to entice fans with real conversation. By publishing unique content you can help your brand stand out from competitors and leave a lasting impression with your fans.

Tip: Encourage replays to better absorb your content and be super sure your videos works across multiple devices.

We only uncovered the tip of the iceberg, so click through for more advice and strategies.

Pausing Your PPC Campaigns Due to Coronavirus?

APRIL 20, 2020

Wondering how to move forward with PPC campaigns? Well fam, you’re not alone. As it’s been said, this is all uncharted territory. With the help of SEMRush, we’re gonna figure out this PPC dilemma together.

Here are few adjustments to make to your PPC campaign that can reduce CPA.

Adjust your ad schedule to show up during the best performing times. Head to the Overview section of your Google Ad dashboard, and take note of the Day/Hour data at the bottom. Consider excluding or reducing spend on the days/hours that aren’t producing the highest conversion count.
Look at the device-level performance data to cut out waste. While you’re on the Overview tab, mossie over to the Devices chart. Same deal as before. Take note of what device is getting the most conversions and focus your budget there.
Deep dive into your keyword and position level data to find quick wins. Continuously evaluate how much you pay per click. Regularly monitor CPC data and reduce it incrementally to potentially stay within the top 2-4 results while paying as little as possible for those positions.
Refer to your auction insights data. How are your ads performing compared to others? Auction Insights gives ya the scoop. Ready for a mind-blowing tip: Stop aiming for the #1 position. That #1 spot typically pays 3-4 times more than positions 2-4. Experiment with reducing your CPCs until you are showing up just ahead of your competition.
Adjust your keyword mix based on their performance. What keywords are bringing in lower-cost conversions and which are costing you more? Pause the keywords that result in expensive CPA, and use the available budget for the keywords that are costing the least to deliver.

Smash the button to get all the details!

The 31 Best Homepage Design Examples and Ideas for Your Website

APRIL 19, 2020

A homepage… It’s the digital storefront. It’s your best salesman. It’s the not so secret weapon that deserves maximum effort. We’re learning from CrazyEgg with a mini checklist to make sure your homepage is doing its job.

Write a strong and clear headline. Put your customer shoes on to understand what would connect with them to take action. Then use emotive or power words to support the main point of your headline.
- Ex. CopyBlogger’s headline reads, “Build Your Online Authority With Powerfully Effective Content Marketing.”
- Ex. Uber’s headline reads, “Get There — Your Day Belongs to You”
Don’t confuse your readers with conflicting CTAs. When a homepage has too much going on, the user is left flustered, unsure of what to do next, and will most likely say sayonara. Keep things simple!
- Differentiate the main CTA from the page so that the user understands it’s the next step they should take.
- Any secondary CTA’s, if needed, can be smaller and less obvious.
Use contrasting colors. First of all, be daring and create contrast with bold and neutral color combos. Pay close attention to how your colors react digitally. Electric blue might make it hard to read any text.
- Does it pass the night test? Imagine a customer laying in their bed surfing the web before going to sleep. The room is dark. Will your page be a welcoming sight or will it be the equivalent of dropping their brick-like phone on their face.
Keep the offer or unique selling proposition above the fold. Here’s marketing’s honest truth, your website visitors might never scroll beyond the fold.

This is one of those times where we wonder if we should start adding photos ’cause CrazyEgg has examples with fantastic homepages. There’s a ton more to learn, fam.

How to Build a Personal Brand After a Job Loss

APRIL 16, 2020

A recent article from Content Marketing Institute features a personal account on developing a reputation. And without further ado, here’s how you can kick start your personal brand and be on your way to your next great opportunity.

Launching a blog. (We’d like to expand this to podcasting or video platforms as well.) Embrace a medium that will help you share your knowledge and gain credibility. When a hiring manager asks, “What are your strengths?” You can confidently say, “x, y, z are my bread and butter. Here are select articles I wrote that showcase my expertise.”
- Use Grammarly to prepare your written draft and a simple WordPress site to show the world.
- Be consistent with publishing. Whether it’s once a week, bi-weekly, or monthly.
- Featured other industry experts in your content

Taking to social media. Finding a community of like-minded individuals will be your goldmine as you dive into personal branding. Follow others, start conversations, and again, share your expertise.
- Though you may be tempted to hit up LinkedIn, focus on a platform you feel most comfortable with whether that’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook Groups.
- We’ll say it again, dive into the conversation and engage with other users! Take advantage of Twitter Chats, for example.
- Focused less on sharing links to content
- Obsessed less over the sequence of tweets in my profile
Starting a marketing meetup. CMI talks about specifically setting up a B@B Bloggers meet up in San Mateo using Meetup.com. A chance to learn from peers and expanding your network, sign us up every time! CMI’s go-to meet up advice:
- Ask for help
- Ask presenters to promote the meetup to their networks
- Experiment more with paid advertising
- Gain more financial flexibility by selling more sponsorships

Read the full article to get the author’s personal experience in building a personal brand.

How to Set & Achieve Marketing Objectives in 2020

APRIL 14, 2020

So y’all want to learn more about setting goals? Well, you came to the right place.

Goals are kinda tricky. It’s meant to keep you focused, but more often than not, it sets us down a numbers path. After all, “solely focusing on the results doesn’t actually produce results. Focusing on serving your customers is what produces results.”

We’re learning from our friends at Hubspot today. Let’s start with a quick clarification on an objective vs. a goal. A marketing objective is a specific action that helps you achieve the overall goal or broader vision.

There are 3 essential items your overall vision needs: the Why, the How, and the What.

The Why – What is the driving force behind what you want to achieve?
The How – How does the end vision solve that problem?
The What – What steps must be taken for that aspiration to come to fruition?

When your vision is in place, use the SMART framework to add realistic, quantifiable, and focused targets and level up on your goal setting.

Specific – Choose one or two key metrics to improve. The amount of data we have available is genuinely mind-blowing. Focusing too many can create chaos when trying to make a decision.
Measurable – Gauge your progress by quantifying your goals. Ex. – reaching an X percentage increase in visitors.
Attainable – Learn to base goals from your own analytics, not industry benchmarks.
Relevant – Relate your marketing goals with that of the company’s overall vision as well as consider the current trends in your industry.
Time-bound – Define deadlines to encourage your team to accomplish goals. This helps make consistent and significant progress in the long-term too. After all, procrastinating is the slimy mud pit that terrorizes your growth rate.

Read on folks, read on. Hubspot offers several goal-setting examples and explanations and it’s too good to pass up.

4 Landing Page Elements That Will Make or Break Your Page

APRIL 12, 2020

Let’s start this week off by perfecting our landing pages. DigitalMarketer is teaching us four elements that will help improve page conversion performance.

Your offer should be made up of these four critical points: clarity, scent, relevance, and visualization. Let’s define what these points actually mean.
- Clearly articulate the offer and what’s in it for your target audience.
- Keep all design aspects consistent from start to finish by matching landing page copy and visuals to ads.
- Your offer needs to be relevant to your target audience
- Don’t just rely on copy alone – visualize the product, the features, and most importantly, the benefits.
The ask or what-to-do-next step. Your lead gen form and CTA should allow your landing page to work for you.
- The length of your form should be consistent with the value of your offer. For example, with a newsletter, ask for an email (and maybe name). If it’s a demo form, ask for more!
- Make the form or CTA highly visible and reiterated on longer landing pages.
People buy from brands they can trust so make it a point to win that trust. Step one, invest in a professionally designed page. This doesn’t mean expensive. It means functional for user experience.
- If you ask for personal info, include a privacy policy.
- If you ask for billing info, share guarantees or utilize security seals.
- Optimize your landing page with authentic customer testimonials.
Consider implementing a visual hierarchy with message sequencings and visual cues. DigitalMarketer stresses “Elements on a page are meant to articulate a message… However, you can’t just plop them on a page with no plan…”
- Use elements like underline, bullets, and images
- Highlight key info by putting the most important content in the lightest section
- Make sure the page fits a singular theme
- Create your page to function well on all devices

Smash the button to get the full details!

How Intent Driven Campaigns Generates Top of The Funnel Leads?

APRIL 8, 2020

Where are my B2B, folks? We got quite the lesson for you today. UnboundB2B has the scoop on intent-driven marketing campaigns and why you should be paying more attention to this strategy. Let’s get started!

You might be thinking intent-driven, whaaat? We’ll let UnBoundB2B explain – “Intent data points directly at what consumers want. It is behavior data that gives out signals on where prospective customers are in their buying journey.”

Friends, intent-data gives you the chance to personalize the sales approach and messaging. Aka, it’s time to take the guesswork out of B2B marketing.

What Types of Intent-Data are Important

Individual Activity or the unique data collected based on website interaction.
- Are viewers new or repeating?
- Which page does the visitor view?
- Which campaign or channel brought them to the page?
Behavioral Data or insight into a prospect’s different engagement actions.
- Ex. The metric Time Spent on Page can determine interest in offerings.
Use Context to understand the nature of viewer interest. It can help limit misreading a person’s online behavior signals for intent to buy.
- Is a search being done with an active interest or being conducted out of curiosity?
Surge Data or a sudden interest around a specific topic.
- Are there multiple people from your target account visiting a topic continuously?

How to Use Intent-Data in Content Marketing

Optimize your inbound campaign content that can lead to more reliable intent signals.
Lead forms should collect info that helps you build an informative context profile.
Take an omni-channel approach to promote your content. And vary language in a way that will attract prospects with the most intent to buy.
Utilize video content if your message is best conveyed through a demonstration.

UnboundB2B has more advice and tips to give regarding intent-data. Click through and learn!

Time Blocking 101 & Taking Ownership of Your Time

APRIL 7, 2020

We are wildly distracted right now. How can we focus on metrics and content when pets, kids, chores, and the beautiful outdoors are calling our name. Shifting to remote work is tough.

Woven is teaching us to better manage our day by time blocking. Here’s the starter guide on how to take control of your time.

Make Your Priorities. Take control of your day before someone else does. The core piece to time blocking is to set aside the things that matter most to you. Then proactively make time for them in your schedule the week beforehand.

Use Templates for Everything. Need to block out time to focus on content? What about an hour of fitness? Make a list of priorities then use smart templates to maximize your day. Plus, Woven has templates available to add complex information to your priorities quickly.

Protect Your Time with Public Link Availability Settings. Once you’ve prioritized your own time, you can start carving out times of your day to share with other people. Just because you’re free, doesn’t mean you’re free for anyone. If you set up and customize your availability based on the type of meetings, you can better show up for those events.
Review Your Time. One of the critical components of time blocking is regularly reviewing your time to make sure you’re spending it in the way that you want to.

Click through for specific time blocking tips from our favorite scheduling expert. Plus, continuing scrolling down for a peek at Woven’s new tool suite that will make you a time master!

How to move a brick and mortar shop to WordPress with WooCommerce

APRIL 6, 2020

It’s more important than ever to ensure that your own or your client’s brick and mortar store has an online presence. It’s crucial if they wish to scale their business.

We’re looking to Flywheel about why WooCommerce is such a valuable eCommerce platform that deserves your attention.

Firstly, it’s a WordPress plugin that already powers 28% of eCommerce sites. It’s free, customizable, and offers fantastic support. The only costs you’ll encounter are those required to get a WordPress site up and running (since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin). And WooCommerce is open-source like WordPress, so there’s no limit to your customization!

Did we convince you yet, cause we moving on with the How-Tos:

Step 1 for any eCommerce site is to get set up with a domain (check out Hover) and host, such as Flywheel to take care of site security, speed, and be your support.
Step 2 is to pick a theme that matches your existing brand. WordPress has a bunch of options, but you’ll want to keep an eye out for themes that are compatible with WooCommerce. When in doubt, check the WooCommerce Storefront.
Step 3 is to install the WooCommerce plugin and run through the setup wizard. In this step, you’ll pick your payment processor.

Pro-tip: When it’s all set up, take one last look using WooCommerce settings through wp-admin

Step 4 is to add products! It’s recommended that you create product categories to keep organized. Do this by going to Products > Categories in your dashboard. Give the category a name, a slug for the URL, and an image if necessary.
Step five is to launch your new eCommerce site. Woohoo!

We were only able to cover the high-level direction. Click through for further detail, visuals, and more tips to make an online shop stand out from the rest.