The Daily Carnage

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Statistics and Tips for Utilizing User-Generated Content

NOVEMBER 6, 2022

The best thing you can do to market yourself as a brand is to let your customers speak for you. That’s where user-generated content (UGC) comes to play.

Hypetrain recently made a LinkedIn post that lists the latest stats on UGC in marketing. Here are some of the takeaways:

56% of consumers say UGC photos and videos are the content they most want to see from brands.
Engagement increases by 28% when consumers can view a mixture of UGC and branded content.
Ads with UGC generate 5x greater click-through-rates.

These stats support the trust in this type of content, but UGC also has the benefit of being the most up-to-date form of content. So how can you use it for yourself? Hypetrain also provided a list of the top trending UGC types:

Testimonials. Testimonials are one of the most valuable forms of UGC on the planet. Client testimonials can demonstrate to your target audience that you have a thorough understanding of their problems and pain points.
Quizzes. Sharing results of a brand’s available quizzes or questionnaires has been a growing trend for short-term video UGC. This is especially true for D2C brands that have products users can sample.
Commentary. If you content has discussions and comments, they can be turned into sharable content.

Check out the full post on Hypetrain’s LinkedIn.

Your Little Black Book for Black Friday Email Strategies

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

It’s not too late to jump on your holiday campaigns…but like…you better get on that. Here are some little-known strategies to look out for this season and possibly use yourself:

Build Your Black Friday Email List. Keep your email lists growing by incentivizing new signups with additional discounts, free shipping, or a gift, depending on your budget.
Schedule Your Pop-ups. Shoppers have too many options and little patience. If you’re using pop-ups, make sure sure they count by only conveying your most important messages at the right time in a user’s browsing.
Experiment with Timing. There are a million other distractors launching BF campaigns. Act early, act late, or go completely rogue with timing.
Make Your Sale Memorable. We’re not talking about an eye-catching ad or clever subject line. We’re saying to literally make it as easy as possible for customers to remember a sale or event with calendar invites, reminders, SMS opt-in, etc.
Use the Element of Surprise. Don’t leave it all in the subject line. Tease them to receive a discount found in the content.
Offer More Benefits. It’s not all about discounts, people. This is your chance to see how beefy your rewards program is to offer more value. If not, maybe it’s time to get one.
Make Your Subject Line Stand Out. Find ways of sticking out of a sea of “Black Friday Deal” subject lines. AND even if you’re not running a Black Friday sale, you can still capitalize on Black Friday attention.
Redefine Black Friday for Your Brand. How can you make it a holiday that your brand was born to celebrate?
Tease Your Next Campaign. Like we said, it’s not too late to act on these strategies. But maybe you’re better off teasing your next big move.

Check out all the details and a whole lot of visuals from Drips blog post.

8 Steps to Start Strategic Marketing Planning for 2023

OCTOBER 31, 2022

Are you ready for 2023 already? Good for all those who can say “yes” to that. For everyone else, don’t sweat! Here are some starting points:

Review Where You’ve Been. Let’s start from the top and review your old plans before you make new ones. Did you reach previous goals? What tactics did you try this year? What worked? What didn’t work? What resources would help the most?
Set New Goals. Now that you know your older goals, reflect on changes. Set one or two primary goals and a few secondary goals.
Conduct an Audit. Audit the marketing elements and assets you have and see if you need to update or add new items. Do you have all essential digital and print marketing materials (such as brochures, web pages, business cards, signage, etc.)? Do you have profiles and accounts on all relevant marketing channels? Do you have the right system for collecting customer data?
Conduct Market Research. You have to know what others in your industry are doing with their marketing, too. Who are your competitors? What are they doing well? What are they not doing well?
Assign KPIs to Goals. Make your goals crystal clear. Add key performance indicators (KPIs) to all of your goals so you can measure your performance, divide, and conquer.
Set a Budget. Your marketing research should help reveal how much others in your industry are spending. Consider what budget you will need to reach assigned KPIs.
Choose Strategies & Set a Schedule. Choose the type of marketing strategies you believe will help you reach your goals, and begin to lay them out on a calendar. Set dates for campaigns and set up campaigns to try and test.
Develop a Plan to Measure Your Success. You will need to be able to look back and assess your efforts. Set dates and deadlines to check in and review your work. Share report data with key stakeholders as you go.

Check out the full My Area Network blog post to get more details for each step.

19 A/B Tests You Should Run on Your Website

OCTOBER 30, 2022

Sometimes it’s not the most obvious A/B tests that drive the most growth. But you won’t know until you start testing things out. So what should you test? Here are some ideas to help you out:

Typography

Serif vs. sans serif
Colors
Font size
Type faces

Calls to Action

Position
Color
Text

Pricing Schemes

Freemium vs. free trial vs. money back guarantees
Free trial length
Pricing each plan

Landing Page Copy

Short-form copy vs. long-form copy
Video vs. text sales pages
Actual text

A/B Tests for Your Website

Number of columns
Background images and patterns
Navigation links
Link colors
Contact form fields

Check out all the deets for all 19 tests in Neil Patel’s post!

How to Fix the 14 Most Common Content Strategy Mistakes

OCTOBER 26, 2022

If your content isn’t moving you toward your goal, your content strategy isn’t working. But what can ya do? Well, Go Visually put together a list of counter-strategies to some of the most common mistakes marketers make. Let’s get into it by listing our top favorites from the list:

1) Not Documenting Your Strategy: Often times, teams are operating content creation without a true process. The fix: Physically map out a content strategy with assign tasks, goals, and approvals.

2) Working without audience analysis: If you’re don’t know who you’re trying to reach, or assuming (gasp) that you know your audience, your content probably won’t connect. The fix: Talk to your potential customers, ask questions about what they care about, and get inside their minds to understand your ideal audience.

3) Lacking Consistent Content: Be sure your content isn’t created and published inconsistently. One-off pieces are cool from time to time, but a cohesive content plan is better. The fix: Break your strategy down into “content campaigns” that also ensure you’re tailoring content for each audience.

4) No Goals? No Way: Posting to post doesn’t help anyone out. To be truly effective, every piece of content should be mapped to a goal. The fix: Simply ask yourself: “why?” and “what?”

5) Swerving Market Trends: Marketers can struggle to stay up to date not just with popular market trends, but the latest competitors’ movements as well. The fix: Sometimes a coincidental event can turn into an opportunity for you to expand your content. When you have your core strategy in place, being flexible to tackle new trends becomes a lot more manageable.

Check out the other 9 common mistakes and a whole bunch of content ideas on Go Visually’s blog!

7 Marketing Tips to Effectively Explain a Complex Service

OCTOBER 25, 2022

How to make a stand-out brand:

Step 1: Have a unique service, product, or process.

Step 2: Let ’em know why you’re different.

But Step 2 can give marketers trouble if a service is highly complex or technical. So how can you reach people on all terms?

Start with the audience’s goals. You’ll know your messaging is working if your buyers can instantly find out the answers to these questions:
- Who is this product for?
- What does this product do?
- Why should customers want to use it?
- Why do customers need it now?
- How is this product different from what else is out there?
Try to simplify your buyer’s journey into 3-4 steps. Making it simple for people to understand how they can become a client is one of the best ways to gain more business.
Get inside the mind of your audience. To reach your audience, you have to think like your audience. Always ask questions potential customers might be asking while learning about your services.
Get direct feedback. If you’re not sure what people think about your product or service, ask them! Potential and current customer surveys are direct ways to see how your users are using your services (or if they are aware of other services you offer).
Leverage storytelling when you can. People respond the most to stories. Integrate storytelling into your marketing efforts through case studies, explainer videos, or personal testimonials.
The numbers never lie. Analyze the numbers across all tactics to discover what is working, what isn’t, and where there are untapped opportunities for making your messaging more effective.
Determine what channels to use. Effectively explaining a complex product or service means meeting customers in the format that they prefer.

Check out the full Business Journal article for more!

5 Content Marketing Trends to Know Right Now

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Don’t sleep on your content marketing goals. 97% of marketers said content marketing is critical to their strategy. Is it a priority in yours? Well if it isn’t, maybe it’s time to check out these trends and see how you can build better content.

1. Content audits are essential. Updating and repurposing your existing content is ideal for many content marketers to have a relevant asset library in reach. But first, you need to audit your past valuable content and consider showcasing it in new formats or on different platforms.

2. Keep it human. Align insights with original, human-first narratives. Understand what your audience needs and find a personal approach to that content. Some of the most valued attributes of business-related content among the C-Suite are:

Technology insights
Trustworthy/independent sources
Access to experts or peers
Original research
Industry-specific approaches

3. A top KPI is clickthrough rates in search. Search rankings are cool, but clicks/clickthrough rates are where it’s at. For optimal clickthrough success, marketers should create memorable content in their areas of expertise with in-depth answers.

4. Short-form video is here to stay. Short-form videos allow content to reach the busy peeps who do not always have the time for longer-form content. Plus, video is highly shareable. Try FAQs, educational videos, customer challenges, company announcements, and customer/employee testimonials.

5. You better be cross-platform storytelling. This isn’t a new trick, but it remains effective and essential to your content strategy. Tell the best story to your audiences by reaching them across multiple channels. Be sure to make it as targeted as possible (something you’ll discover in your content audits).

Check out the full article by Forbes for personalization tips, more content stats, and advice for content partnerships.

What you need to know about Beneficial Purpose, EAT, and YMYL for Google’s Quality Standards

OCTOBER 23, 2022

Google released its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines and gave three golden keys of insight into how Google looks at web pages and differentiates high-quality content from low-quality. Those keys are Beneficial Purpose, E-A-T, and YMYL.

What Does E-A-T Mean?

E-A-T stands for “Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.” It’s one of the most important factors for determining Page Quality.

Expertise: Is the creator of the main content (MC) on the page an expert on the topic or credible?
Authoritativeness: For the MC creator, the content, and the website to have authoritativeness, people must know you, know your background, and accept you as a good source.
Trustworthiness: Being a trustworthy source means people can trust you to provide honest, true information that is accurate.

What is Beneficial Purpose?

Beneficial Purpose is essentially answering “What is the purpose of this page, and how does it help users?”

The page should fulfill its intended purpose and that purpose should also be user-centered.

Some common helpful page purposes:

To share information about a topic
To share personal or social information
To entertain 🙂
To sell products or services
To allow users to share files

What is YMYL Content?

YMYL stands for “Your Money or Your Life.” YMYL content is the type of information that could directly impact the reader’s happiness, health, safety, or financial stability. YMYL content should be supported by experts with relevant expertise.

YMYL content topics:

News and current events
Government, law, and civics-related topics
Financial advice on taxes, retirement, investments, loans, etc.
Shopping information, such as researching purchases
Medical advice, drugs, hospitals, emergencies, health, safety
Information on groups of people
There is also an “other” category including advice on fitness, colleges, job searches, and housing.

High-Quality Content = Expert, User-Focused Content

To be clear, E-A-T, YMYL, and purpose are not necessarily direct ranking factors. Instead, these are concepts to strive for in the eyes of Google. As always, a good rule of thumb is to think about what your users want, not just algorithms.

Check out the full summary of these concepts and released information from Google from SEMRush’s blog.

Good/Fast/Cheap Is Dumb

OCTOBER 18, 2022

Have you heard of this game of pick two? Good/Fast/Cheap.

If it’s good and fast, it’s going to be expensive.

If it’s good and cheap, it’s going to take time.

If it’s fast and cheap, it’s likely going to be junk.

And if you want all 3? It’s not possible.

But is this a uptopia we as marketers, business owners, and consultants made up on our own? Are we compromising when we don’t have to?

The Solution to the Good/Fast/Cheap ultimatum:

Fast will forever be part of the equation because that is the world we live in. Good is good, that has to stay. So that leaves cheap. It has to be replaced with a different concept…

GOOD/FAST/LOUD

You have to be loud out there.

Instead of picking two, this is the actual golden triangle you need to be thinking of when it comes to hiring and selling services. By “loud,” we mean it has to cut through the constant content against which every brand is competing. If it isn’t loud, no one out there’s going to hear (or care). And cheap won’t make up for that.

Check out more of this little philosophy switch from Warren Cockrel’s piece in Muse by Clio.