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How to Develop Your Brand Voice

APRIL 3, 2019

When you think of iconic brands, what comes to mind?

Nike, Apple, Ford, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, etc.

Sure, there’s a visual component to all of these brands, but what about the voice and tone?

These are two things that often get overlooked. But, not today.

We’re sharing 5 ways to develop your brand voice.

Before we do that, you need to know the difference between voice and tone.

Voice: How you convey your personality to your audience. This should remain consistent.

Tone: The expression/moods/attitudes conveyed by your messaging. This will change frequently.

Now that you know the difference, let’s talk about establishing your brand voice.

Look at your mission statement: Your mission statement (or whatever you refer to it as) is a great place to start when determining your brand voice. It’s all about connecting your marketing efforts to your values. Mailchimp does a bang-up job with its content and style guide. Check it out here.
What are you working with: If you’ve already produced content and copy, it’s time to take a look at your current assets. Are there consistent themes? Do those themes match your values? Also, take note of your best-performing content. This should indicate what resonated with your audience.
Audience survey: If you have an engaged audience, ask them how they view your brand. Keep the survey simple with 3 questions or less.
Research your audience: Heard that before, right? But, try this. Google the names of your top 5-10 customers and check out their social media channels. What do they like? What do they read? Get your creep on.
Put together a brand voice chart: Do this, but don’t do that. That’s what your voice chart will dictate. The folks at Co-Schedule put together a template here. Download it and make it your own.

The Content Graveyard

MARCH 26, 2019

Before you dive into publishing anything new today, take 2 minutes to read this…

There’s a good chance you have some subpar content on your site.

What can you do about it?

More than you think.

Step one is to make sure your stale content isn’t competing with other articles on your site. This will not only hurt your search rankings, but it can also confuse your audience.

Once you’ve checked to make sure your content isn’t competing, it’s time to dive into hitting the ‘refresh’ button. Let’s do this.

Consolidate current posts: Determine the most important topics to your audience and couple that information with keyword research. Your goal here is to identify opportunities to show up on search. When your research is complete, head over to your blog and locate existing content that touches on your topics and keywords. Begin to consolidate these posts into a strong, up-to-date piece (aka pillar content). Then, redirect your outdated posts with a 301 redirect to your new pillar post. Ok, now have a drink.
Optimize for lead generation: Are you challenging your readers to engage and/or convert? Are you featuring relevant CTAs throughout and at the end of your articles? If the answer is yes and you’re not getting leads, you may need a new offer. If your answer is no, take some time to analyze your existing content to make sure you’re pushing your audience to engage.

On-Site SEO Tips

MARCH 24, 2019

It’s SEO Monday!

That’s not really a thing, but we typically talk SEO on Monday, so here goes.

While not everyone agrees on best practices, we feel like the following on-site SEO tips can be generally agreed upon.

Content Relevance: 90% of content generates no traffic from Google. That’s pretty staggering. You need to optimize for the following:

-User-intent: understand what your audience is searching for and why.
-Analyze the SERP of those keywords and see what’s ranking.
Deep Content: A HubSpot study found that content between 2,250 and 2,500 words tended to receive the most organic traffic. Creating long-form content can be beneficial for SEO and will make you look like a bawse in your space.

-Optimize deep content by…researching top ranking pages for a target keyword and analyzing their content.
-Use Answer the Public to flesh out questions users may have about that topic.
Tags: It’s crucial that you’re inserting target keywords into title tags and page titles. Yoast is great for this. Also, make sure you’re inserting relevant keywords into your (H2, H3, and H4s).

Copy That Converts

MARCH 20, 2019

When it comes to email marketing, who doesn’t want to create copy that converts? That’s the goal.

Unfortunately, these things take time. We’re gonna walk you through a few ways to improve your email marketing copy.

Stick with us…(we’re gonna move fast)

Write a Killer Subject Line: Duh, right? Folks need to feel compelled to open your email. Make it funny, give them some value, present some FOMO, etc. The goal is to get an open. Do what you need to do!
Clear the Clutter: Here’s an easy one. Keep your paragraphs short and use bullets. People like to skim these days. Try to keep your emails as clutter free as possible.
Avoid CAPS and Spam Trigger Words: Please don’t use CAPS. Your deliverability will suffer and people don’t like ’em. Here’s a list of spam trigger words to avoid.
Know Your Audience: We say this a lot, but it’s really important. You need to speak to your audience. Take some time to build out buyer personas and write copy that speaks to them.
Keep it Conversational: Your email copy should sound like a real conversation. Don’t be afraid to shorten some words up and have fun with it. It takes time to build your brand voice. Be patient and more importantly, be bold.
Call to Action: What do you want folks to do as a by-product of engaging with your email? Make sure you include a strong CTA in every email.

Remarket Like a Boss

MARCH 19, 2019

Is remarketing in your marketing plan? Heck yes, it is.

Let’s spend a couple of minutes discussing how to maximize your remarketing returns.

Is it Quality Traffic? In with the good, out with the bad. If you’re not getting quality traffic to your site or content, your remarketing campaigns won’t be successful. It’s that simple.Take a look at the following in your site analytics…Sources, Landing pages, Ad Campaigns, Keywords, etc. Keep an eye out for any glaring data. It could be a simple targeting tweak.
Analyze and Segment: Now that you’re checking out your site analytics, let’s start to break it down and segment target audiences.Here are a couple of ways to do it…-Segment folks that show intent through page visits. Ie: pricing, items added to cart, etc.-Segment from content specific pages. Are you targeting business owners on LinkedIn with a particular piece of content? Retarget them with something similar.
Think Big: Don’t confine your thought process to display remarketing only. There are plenty of channels to expand your remarketing efforts to; YouTube, paid social, shopping, paid search, etc. When you think bigger, you’ll be able to bid more aggressively and hopefully drive more action.

4 Ways to Use FB Messenger

MARCH 13, 2019

Love it or hate it, Facebook Messenger works.

Stats from MobileMonkey show some jaw-dropping results:

80% open rates and 60% clickthrough rates. Sign us up, right?

Here are 4 Facebook Messenger features you can implement today.

Comment Guard: This is a bot set up on organic Facebook posts. If someone comments on said post, they’ll automatically receive a message from you. Why we like ’em? They’re free and a great way to capture leads.
Chat Blasting: Anyone need a new band name? Chat blasting is simple; it sends a message to everyone on your list. To get started with chat blasting, head over to your FB page settings -> Messenger Platform -> Advanced Messaging -> Request. It may take some time to get approved, so be patient. There’s one caveat with Chat Blasting; you can’t use it to send promotional content.
Click to Messenger Ad: If you’re looking for a cheaper way to get leads, use ‘Click to Messenger Ads.’ In theory, they convert at 100% for leads because the potential lead has to send a message. Crazy, right?
Chat Widget: A chat widget lives on your website and prompts visitors to start a chat through a popup. If you need ‘around the clock’ customer service and don’t have the human bandwidth, consider implementing a chat widget.

Alright, alright. You got some work to do!

No “I” in PPC

MARCH 12, 2019

So, you just fired up a new PPC campaign and you’re starting to get clicks. Cool, right? Kind of.

It’s certainly a step in the right direction, but what happens after the click is equally important. One of the most neglected factors of a PPC campaign is actually website performance.

Users clicking on your ad need to have a great experience or your PPC campaign will suffer.

Let’s do a quick audit on your website performance:

Responsiveness: It’s a mobile world, we’re just living in it. Fact: more consumers are managing everyday life on their phones. But, when B2B businesses are seeing more mobile visitors, look out! Make sure your site is fully optimized for responsiveness.
Speed: 50% of your website visitors are leaving if they have to wait longer than 3 seconds. You may have a beautiful website, but if it doesn’t load fast, you’re failing.
CTAs: When’s the last time you logged some hours on your own website? As businesses grow and change, so do their objectives. The last thing you want is conflicting messages with your website and your PPC campaign. Make sure your CTAs are consistent throughout your entire site.

Like any good relationship, communication is key. So, we’re gonna float this out there…

Sometimes it pays to have someone else audit your website because the truth can hurt. If you want the honest truth, let’s talk.

It’s All in the Reviews

MARCH 11, 2019

Most of us have no problem talking up our product or service. But, can you back it up?

How about letting your customers do the heavy lifting? When it comes to effectiveness, research shows that testimonials take the cake for content marketing.

Here are some other interesting stats:

-78% of people trust reviews as much as recommendations from acquaintances.

-30% of folks suspect some #Fake~~News~~Reviews.

-3-5 testimonials appear to be the sweet spot.

Types of Testimonials:

Quotes: These should be pretty easy to get. Keep them short and sweet. Try to include as much information from the reviewer as possible to show trustworthiness.
Case studies: If you’re a B2B company, you’ve likely been asked for a case study (or a hundred). To create a killer case study, address the problem your client was facing, why they chose you, and what impact you had.
Videos: We’re becoming increasingly visual, so when it comes to believable and impactful testimonials, videos may be your new best friend. Videos allow for potential customers to connect with you in a different way.

Now that you have 3 types of testimonials, it’s time to collect.

Surveys are a great place to start, but you may have to offer some type of incentive to get people engaged.

Or you could simply ask people what they think about your product or service. Alright, free Daily Carnage stickers to the first 10 people who send us some love!

Your Marketing Roadmap

MARCH 7, 2019

There’s a good chance when you’re driving somewhere new, you open up Google Maps or Waze. No disrespect MapQuest.

The app of your choice conveniently tells you where to go and voila.

Do you know where you’re going with your marketing plan? Do you have a roadmap?

If you don’t, you’re about to. If you do, maybe you’ll find a nugget in the following exercise. 3-2-1-GO.

Step 1: How will your product move the market? Start with 2 boxes and answer the following questions; Where is the market today? Where do you want the market to be?

Step 2: Who are your target personas? Write them out. For example, Director of Marketing, Content Manager, etc.

Step 3: Map out your company narrative to each persona by noting various pain points. Our Director of Marketing persona may read like this: “Am I actually seeing ROI on these Facebook Ads? Does our content make a difference on the bottom line?

Step 4: Lead your persona on a journey. After you draw out pain points, it’s time to educate on how your product or service can help. Break it down into stages; Awareness, Consideration, Purchase.

For our Director of Marketing persona, the awareness stage might consist of an article on what a paid strategy looks like in terms of ROI.

The consideration stage could be a case study of a similar company having success with Facebook ads.

The purchase stage might be a demo or day in the life guide of your product or service.

Ok, that was longer than usual. Sry. But, hopefully, it steers you in the right direction.

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