digitalradar

The Case For Content Personalization And Brand Alignment

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Personalization will create the momentum.

It shouldn't be a surprise that nearly 50% of US consumers recently surveyed said they won’t spend time with branded content if it’s not relevant to their interests. Here are two more stats for you… 88% of consumers say that personally relevant content improves how they feel about a brand . And 78% say that personally relevant content increases their purchase intent for a brand’s products and services. What this means is marketing professionals cannot afford to ignore the importance of investing in hyper-personalized content marketing.

If you are spending the majority of your marketing budgets on campaigns with promotional messages, and not on creating hyper-relevant content focused on experiences, you are missing out on an opportunity for your content to not only get the visibility it deserves but also the opportunity to convert.

Regardless if you sell direct to consumer, wholesale, or through distribution channels, getting your branded content marketing strategy aligned with your specific audiences is critical. Here’s the scary part… a recent survey of marketing professionals revealed that only 38% of companies had a content marketing strategy. Now let’s dive into an overview on how you can get your content marketing generating powerful results.

AUDIENCE FIRST, BRAND SECOND.

All content, messaging etc. should be aligned to your brand. Your brand is what everything is built off of… but it’s important to make a critical distinction that few brands do right. Content Marketing is not an opportunity for your brand to be narcissistic.

For any content marketing strategy to work it must include the following six elements:

Quality content
Audience Focused (Relevant)
Informative/Educational
On the right channel
Not too much or too little -- just the right amount of content
Aesthetic - No one wants to look at ugly content

QUALITY

Spray and pray content marketing methods don’t work… meaning, garbage content that is clickbait, poorly written, and “mass” produced (content written to appeal to everyone) will only damage your brand, not help it.

As marketers should expect, customers have grown accustomed to personalized digital experiences. Largely in part to the companies they do business with. Yet, there’s only a handful that are really doing it well. Companies like Amazon use their discrete social media marketing strategy and AI to pull consumers back into the funnel with hyper-personalized content - which has a strong user-generated component to it.

The unintended consequences of innovations like Netflix, Amazon, and others trickles down to marketers across industries, sizes and sophistications to provide a similarly hyper-personalized experience. In other words, if you’re a B2B Industrial Automation company selling to wholesalers, guess what - they want the same personalized experience.

RELEVANT

We know the majority of consumers are less interested in a brand’s products or services if the brand offers content that’s not personally relevant. In fact, most consumers don’t read more than the headline if the content is not immediately relevant to them. Remember that statistic in the opening paragraph - 88% percent of consumers say that personally relevant branded content positively influences how they feel about the brand.

The concept of content segmentation to increase its relevance is, again, true across all industries and businesses. If you’re not already selling to a hyper-focused niche audience, then consider this... If you calculate the return on investment (ROI) on non-personalized content marketing and then quantify the impact the content is or is not having in your business you’ll immediately notice a large amount of direct and indirect waste. Wasted time, energy, effort, salaries… the list goes on. Shockingly, 72% of consumers say that when a brand does a great job of delivering personally relevant content, they see the brand itself as relevant. That’s a nice lift…

Curious how to know your audience and what matters most to them? Start here . In this blog post we discuss how audiences are not static... they change and your understanding of these changes are critical to a successful social media and broader marketing strategy.

“First and foremost, if your brand already has an online presence you're in good shape. Understanding your audience should start by analyzing your web traffic on Google Analytics.

Google Analytics allows you to better understand your existing audience composition in terms of gender, age, and interests. This allows you to understand the kinds of creative content you need to develop, the kinds of media buys you should make, and the kinds of audiences you need to develop for marketing and remarketing campaigns. This happens through Google's Affinity Audiences... Affinity targeting analyzes someone’s overall interests, passions, and lifestyle to get a better sense of their overall identity.”

EDUCATE AND INFORM

Research confirms consumers place the highest value on content that informs and educates them. Over 70% of your content marketing should fall into this category. Yeah, that means your self-promoting content should take a backseat. Moreover, consumers place greater value on content that enriches the brain versus just stimulating it.

While that squirrel video eating an eggroll in NYC might have 1.4 million views, it’s a not comparable to content marketing -- That goes to you, executive big shot, asking why your post on thermal coupling doesn’t have 5 billion views. You see, content that enriches the brain stimulates the cognitive functions of the individual engaging with it - thus helping position the brand with authority. Creating a “How-To” video while incorporating your brand into the mix informs, and positions your brand as the source to solve the dilemma - even if that dilemma is how to braid your daughters hair.

Previously, I mentioned in the “ how to utilize content marketing ” blog - When you provide high quality, relevant and valuable content, you inform and provide value . Content should inform your audience. It should express a perspective or opinion that elicits an emotion tied back to your brand.

To do this right, start with quantifiably understanding the audience segment you want to inform. As an example, we've compiled some questions for you to think through when working to understand how to develop your content audience strategy:

What are the psychographics and demographics of the group?
What are their daily pressures?
What keeps them awake at night?
Why do they or why would they do business with us?
What are the decision points? And why?

RIGHT CHANNEL

Not all channels are created equal… you might have heard this before, but it’s true. Part of knowing your audience means knowing where they spend their time online… consuming content. Which devices--mobile or desktop? The rabbit hole is endless. However, knowing the core aspects is always a good place to start.

While you may have mixed feelings about a certain channel, or belief that one social platform is better than another, we can all agree on one thing. The best place to reach your audience on social (as an example) is... it depends. It depends on who your audience is. While Facebook may not be the right primary channel for our audience, it may be for yours.

From a recent survey of 1,500 consumers, they were asked to choose the top three channels where they come across branded content . 50% of respondents cited Facebook, with a significant margin over the other sources. Email and online search were cited by 29% each, with YouTube following closely behind at 26%. Advertising and advertorial/native placements earn 21% and 20% respectively, followed by a long tail of less frequently cited sources. These numbers change dramatically when you start accounting for different audience segments, like millennials.

No matter who your audience is, the important thing is to be where they are and share personalized content with them where they expect to see it.

NOT TOO MUCH… OR TOO LITTLE.

How much is enough? Determining the length of your content can seem a little subjective; however, there is research that sheds light on this topic. Steve Rayson and the cool kids at Buzzsumo recently published an interesting article on this very topic.

“There has been much debate about the length of content and what performs well in terms of SEO, engagement and social sharing. Readers want short, snappy content, ideally under 140 characters or at most a list, right? Well, actually, wrong. The evidence of 7 recent studies is that long form content is alive, thriving and driving high levels of content performance.”

SERPIQ undertook an analysis of the top 10 search results for over than 20,000 keywords. They found that the length of content had a direct correlation to the ranking or position in the search results.

Short story - if you want your personalized, relevant, quality content to show up on the right channel, it needs to have an authoritative word count over 2400 characters -- Which also needs to look good.

AESTHETIC

We humans are naturally wired to be drawn to things that we find attractive. People, cars, burritos, etc. Albeit, taste is relative, there are still strong design elements to consider when creating your content. Colors, graphics and photography all play a role in creating the notion of appeal. Put it like this… Over the next few days, take consensus about what articles you read. Document, why you read them. Was it the image that drew you in? Or the copy headline? Likewise, document the articles you skipped - at first glance, why did you skip them?

Undoubtedly, you’ll begin to notice a reoccuring theme.

More times than not, marketers let their own personal biases formulate a dogmatic view of what the “creative” should look like or be. Data and art play a role here. Take in consideration the perspective of Gregory Ciotti, a writer at Entrepreneur magazine:

“...but the truth of the matter is that color is too dependent on personal experiences to be universally translated to specific feelings. But there are broader messaging patterns to be found in color perceptions. For instance, colors play a fairly substantial role in purchases and branding.”

HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW WHAT RESONATES WITH YOUR AUDIENCE?

Get a complimentary consultation from our digital marketing team and get your content on the right track.

Step Four Of The Inbound Marketing Methodology: Delight

Wed, 19 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

THE MAIN OBJECTIVE OF THIS STEP IS TO CREATE RELATIONSHIPS THAT LAST.

f you’ve been tuning in to the previous blog posts, or are at all familiar with the inbound marketing methodology , you understand that the purpose is to provide value at every stage of your customer’s journey. You want your customers to be advocates for your brand, so in order to do that you need to continue engaging with them even after they’ve made a purchase.

Customers stick around if they’ve had a good experience. Sounds easy enough to provide, but how exactly do we translate that into business practices?

1.SURVEYS

There’s no better way to find out what your customers think of you than to straight up ask them.

There are multiple ways you can discover this information. You can use market surveys or questionnaires sent directly to previous buyers on your email list, or you could use an exit intent popup directly on your website. Exit intent detection tracks mouse movements so when your customer appears to be ready to leave your page they will be given a popup that gives an additional offer or asks a question.

When crafting a survey there are a few best practices to keep in mind.

Ask open ended questions. There is no better way to reach an audience than to speak to them in their exact words. I could write an entire post about this one (stay tuned, I probably will…), but it comes down to making your audience feel heard.
Be meticulous when you craft your questions. You need to be careful not to present leading questions that predicts their answers or sets up a particular response, because that may skew your data. For example, asking “how good was your experience?” leads a reader to automatically respond with “good”. Try something more objective like, “how did you feel about your experience?”.
Keep it short. As a rule of thumb, 40 questions max is optimal--anything past that, the amount of people who will answer dramatically drops.

Surveys not only let you know how your customers feel about you, but can also provide valuable insight into specific pain points that you may not have known they had. So moving forward you can leverage that information to continue providing value.

2. Content

Now that you better understand your customer’s needs, you can design your content in a way that attracts more qualified prospects and builds brand loyalty and credibility for your business. Using the data and feedback you’ve received you can optimize your service in a way that reflects what you’ve learned. You can use direct quotes from the responses in your open ended questions to hone in on the fact that you truly understand what your customers need and what they desire, and you can create blog posts based on specific topics that your audience wants. Providing value to customers long after they have first become a customer is beneficial to everyone involved. It’s a win-win situation!

Winning!

3. Listen

The process of providing value never really ends, it is a well tuned machine that you need to continue updating based on feedback and data. Long after your audience has already become a customer, you will want to continue nurturing that relationship. We all know that it costs less to retain a customer than it does to get a new one. Continue listening to what your audience says--about you and your competition--that way you can always continue to improve. Using social media, and google analytics you can view trends in the marketplace and develop a strategy that will continue to grow alongside you.

Thanks for reading the series on the inbound marketing methodology. If you have any additional questions. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask! Or if you need additional help on how to integrate the inbound methodology into your own business, reach out to our team of experts . We are here to help.

5 Social Media Marketing Tips To Try In 2019

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

The New Year is just around the corner…

AND HOPEFULLY SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL MARKETING IS ON YOUR LIST OF NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS. WE KNOW MOST RESOLUTIONS ARE TOSSED ASIDE BY FEBRUARY BUT WE URGE YOU TO STAY DEDICATED TO THIS ONE…

Social media marketing is an excellent way to reach your target audience anytime, anywhere, and on their terms. At Digital Radar we want you to succeed, so we are sharing our best tips to make the most of your social media marketing efforts in the coming year.

1. COMPELLING VISUALS

According to online marketing expert Marcus Sheridan, 80% of what we consume online will be video content , by 2019.

Compelling visuals can come in the from of photos or videos. People these days (insert grumpy old man voice) don’t have the longest attention spans, so using these forms of content can draw in your audience quickly and keep them hooked to get to the good stuff… the copy. Show consumers something eye catching and lure them into reading more. We believe images and video should be a huge part of your social media marketing strategy in 2019.

2. ANALYTICS

Understanding customer interactions across all touch points is the #1 challenge for marketers.

If you aren't already using some form of analytics, the new year is the perfect time to start. Every platform has their own version and if you use a publishing tool, they should offer some form as well. Now is the perfect time to reflect on the previous year, and compile important data to inform the upcoming year's social strategy. After all, if you don't know how your content is performing how can you know what you should continue to do, and what your page could live without? We believe using data is the best way to measure success and know if you are reaching the right consumers.

3. LIVE STREAMING - ‘IN-THE-MOMENT’ CONSUMPTION

81% of Internet and mobile audiences watched more live video in 2016 than in 2015.

According to research this number will continue to grow at an accelerated rate. Consumers want to feel like brands are real people, not just corporations, and live video is a great way to convey that feeling. The use of live video streaming within platforms such as Facebook and Instagram make your brand appear more relatable, and ultimately available to their customers. There are lots of ways to utilize live streaming, such as behind the scenes footage, office or workplace tours, and product tutorials. It is important to remember while implementing this strategy, though, to have strong video quality and to keep in mind your surroundings when filming. Sorry to burst your bubble, but no one wants to watch you mumble about your product/service in front of the clutter in your garage. As a rule, you should know what you are going to say before you go live.

According to Entrepreneur , 200 million Instagram users use Instagram Stories each month.

Utilizing the story feature on Instagram and Facebook is another way to provide in-the-moment content, if you aren’t quite ready for live video. Stories can even be scheduled in advance provided you have the right publishing tool at your disposal. We believe in-the-moment content will be incredibly important in the new year.

4. TRANSPARENCY

58% of adults don’t trust a brand until they have seen ‘real world proof’ that it has kept its promises.

Trust and transparency go hand in hand. Transparency is something we try to provide throughout all aspects of our marketing and we encourage businesses large and small to do the same. Consumers want to purchase things from brands they can trust, like within a healthy relationship, trust should be the foundation. Being transparent also makes your audience feel included and taps into the human need to be heard. No one wants to interact with companies shrouded in mystery, that appears to be hiding things from consumers.

5. MESSENGER AND CHATBOTS

As of 2018, 15 percent of American adults (per a recent survey) say they have used a chatbot to interact with a company in the prior 12 months.

Let’s face it, consumers aren’t always chock full of patience, when they have questions and concerns they don’t want to wait very long for an answer. The use of chatbots and messenger gives your customers the ability to communicate with you anytime and from anywhere, which also adds to that transparency thing we were talking about. Using these tools can also ease the strain of your workload by setting up automated responses to ensure your clients/customers know their being listened to.

If you're feeling overwhelmed with your social media responsibilities and aren’t sure how to implement these tips we've shared with you for 2019, reach out! We would love to talk with you and form a relationship based on transparency and quantifiable results.

Step Three Of The Inbound Marketing Methodology: Close

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

The main objective of this step is turn your leads into customers.

Now that you’ve attracted visitors to your site, and converted those visitors into leads-- it’s now time to learn how turn those leads into a sale using the third step of the inbound marketing methodology; close.

Moving forward, you need to keep in mind that the entire purpose of the inbound methodology is to provide value to your customers. That being said, not every lead will make a purchase immediately. And that’s ok--continue to nurture those relationships and keep track of connections so that you can determine which of them are qualified leads, and which you will need to continue reaching out to.

So how can you do this?

1. CRM

Using pipeline management software, or a customer relationship management tool (CRM), you have the ability to track potential sales data to better determine which are qualified leads. The software houses all of the information on your leads and helps you organize customers by how likely they are to make a purchase. For example, you can look at the context in which they’ve used your site. If a lead sent you a message directly through your contact form, it is more likely that they are ready to make a purchase-- so connecting them directly to a salesperson may be a good next move. However, if their only activity was downloading a free e-book that you’ve offered, maybe they aren’t quite ready to make a purchase, so your best bet will be to continue providing value to them by keeping them informed on your offers and industry insights.

(Salesforce)

2. EMAILS

Email marketing is an inexpensive, yet powerful way to reach your ideal audience. A study done by Forrester , found that 85% of marketers consider email to be one of the most effective customer acquisition tactics.

But in the close stage, your goal shouldn’t be to continue to blast out newsletters. You need to develop a strategy using your CRM to determine where each lead is at in the customer life cycle so you know how to optimize your messaging.

Develop an automated email workflow based on specific actions that your leads have taken--these flows are typically built off of an “IF-THEN” strategy. For example, IF a customer downloads your ebook, THEN they will receive messaging on how they can use your product alongside that ebook to increase their ROI. Or IF a customer opts in to your blog notifications, THEN they will get a thank you email. Doing this will increase your own conversion rates, and provide a better and more personalized experience for your users.

For those leads that aren’t quite ready to make a purchase, continuing to send emails is a proven method to garner trust and increase interest. And when they are ready to talk about a solution (your product or service), your brand will be top of mind.

We understand that there are a lot of things to keep in mind, and not every business has the time or energy to develop and manage emails (wink, wink) --so reach out and let us help you create a strategy that will increase conversions and blow your competition out of the water!

Step Two Of The Inbound Marketing Methodology: Convert

Tue, 20 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

The main objective of this step is to turn visitors into leads.

Welcome back to step two of the lesson: convert. Since something has attracted you to this page, Step One of the inbound methodology must be working it’s magic.

Your time is valuable, so let’s get into the meat of why you’re here--How to convert those visitors into leads.

You’ve taken the lessons from step one of the methodology and attracted strangers by providing something valuable to them through blogs and social media posts, and made yourself easily found through integrating on page SEO throughout your posts and website.

The main objective of step two is to take those visitors, move them along the buyer’s journey, and convert them into leads. They are already interested in what you have to offer, so how do you get them to reach out to learn more?

1. LANDING PAGES

A landing page is a stand alone web page that customers are led to after clicking on a specific link. Depending on your main objective, a landing page can be a much better tool in converting customers than sending them to your home page. The reason why landing pages can have a much higher conversion, is that it eliminates the clutter of a homepage and can be created to match the specific query that a customer is interested in.

For example, we recently ran a campaign for Halloween where customers could download marketing monster coloring pages that we created, color them and enter to win an item from our shop. We included “horror” stories of marketing campaigns gone wrong for big brands, and marketed on social media that the competition was on. When a potential customer clicked the link that we provided on social media, they were sent to a separate landing page that was built specifically for the campaign. By doing this we were able to take away the extra distractions of additional content that is on a homepage and match the message that was advertised to the reader- providing them with the exact information that they came to see.

According to a study done by Microsoft, people’s attention span in 2018 is down to 8 seconds. That’s less than a goldfish! So making sure that your content is succinct, engaging and provides value to your specific audience is incredibly important.

If your content can hold the attention of this guy, you’re golden!

2. CALL TO ACTION

People don’t have the attention span to sort through the clutter to find what they are looking for, so you’ll need to make sure that you include a clear call to action.

A call to action (CTA) is used to tell the reader what action to take in order to move forward with your business. It can be anything from listing a phone number to call, an address they can visit to buy your item, an opt in for a weekly newsletter, or a contact form.

CLICK THIS BUTTON TO RECEIVE A FREE ANALYSIS

*example of a clear CTA*

3. CONTACT FORMS

A contact form is a section on a website that allows the reader to get in touch with the business. It typically includes a space for name, email address, phone number, and reason for inquiry. Here is an example of Digital Radar’s:

But you can change fields to whatever you would like, depending on what works best for your business and customers, and use a clear CTA to let readers know where they can go to contact you.

Next week we will explain how to turn those leads into buying customers.

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Step One Of Inbound Marketing Methodology: Attract

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

The main objective of this step is to turn strangers into visitors.

Welcome back to the next set of the inbound marketing methodology lesson. Last time we talked about the general outline of what inbound marketing is, and how you can utilize the four steps to market your business more successfully in the digital age. This week we will dive deeper into each step of the methodology, and talk about how you can use it to attract customers to your site.

The sole purpose of the ATTRACT phase is to turn strangers into visitors; essentially, you want to get your business on the map. The key to the inbound methodology is meeting the customers where they are, and that means that unlike outbound marketing, we need to speak to and craft a plan around a select target audience. This target audience is called your buyer persona, and understanding your buyer persona is vital in the attract phase. If for instance your ideal customer is a career woman named Jenny, in her mid 20’s that enjoys caramel frappuccinos, cats, pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to market to Carl, a man in his 60’s who has recently retired and spends his days playing golf and watching the news. I know, duh, right? That may seem obvious, but it’s imperative to understand, because the words you use and the content you create will be vastly different depending on who your target is.

Find out more about buyer personas and how to find your brand’s audience.

Once we have our goals in place and a deep understanding of our buyer persona, what do we do to get them to our site?

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

First, it is important to understand that just because you have made a website, it doesn’t mean that search engines like Google and Bing have indexed your site as existent. Even if you have an address, if you aren’t on the map, strangers won’t be able to find you. To check if you have been put on the map, go to a search bar and type in “site:” followed by your domain name-- For example, “site:digitalradar.agency”. The results show all of the pages on your site that have been indexed, and if your pages all show then you are off to a good start. If they aren’t then you can submit your site through Google Search Console to be crawled and indexed.

Google and Bing are rather ‘hush hush’ about the exact algorithms used to determine ranking, but lucky for you and I, there have been others before us that have done the research and compiled a list of top ranking factors for onsite SEO that Google looks for. There are over 200 factors, and different verticals may require that you put your efforts into different areas to rank. So how do you know which one to focus on first?

Well, you could ask an expert for help! I mean, no olympic gold medal winner did it without help, right?

Or you could also follow this basic rule of thumb: The number one way to achieve a higher ranking and to increase visibility is to acquire many high quality backlinks. With more backlinks from other quality sites, you have proven yourself as a dependable source and authority in your field, and Google wants to reward that by putting you on page one. So you may ask, how do you get these backlinks? Well you could pay for them, but be careful to not use blackhat tactics that try and cheat the system. That may work initially, but in the long run it will hurt your business much more than if you had taken them time to acquire the links organically. The best way to achieve this is through a purpose driven content like a blog.

2. BLOGS

Backlinks are queen, and content is king.

Long before the invention of the internet, before books, and possibly even before cave drawings, humans would pass on information and the history of their culture to one another through stories. The power of storytelling is ingrained in us, and we are biologically wired to relate a story to our life and transform it into an idea or experience that is our own. That’s why, if done well, a blog can be a powerful tool in harnessing attraction. Not only can a relevant blog on a topic in your niche set you apart from the crowd and make you an authority, it can garner the attention of others that may be interested in sharing what you have to say. By making shareable content, you are meeting the customers where they are and offering something useful to them. The entire purpose of the inbound methodology is to no longer look at your customer as just a paycheck, but as a a partner and friend; and by sharing your expertise with them, you are building a relationship and trust between you and your audience.

But remember, if you aren’t tailoring your content and keywords to your target audience, then the backlinks and response that you get won’t be relevant or worth the time, money, and effort you’ve put in. So make sure that you are taking the time to do market research and identifying your audience clearly. Once your content is created, you need a way to let your new friends know that it exists, and social media is an excellent platform to use to share your content with the world.

Have any more questions on blogs or content creation? Don’t be afraid to ask!

3.SOCIAL MEDIA

According to Forbes , 53% of the world’s population is online, and of that, 42% is on social media. That is 3.2 billion sets of eyeballs that could potentially see your content! And where the eyeballs are, money follows.

We all know that the most efficient form of marketing is from word of mouth, because people tend to trust the opinion of their friends over the opinion of a brand. Since the advent of the internet, consumers have become much more educated on their buying choices, and trust for corporations has gone way down. So the way to leverage that information is to talk to them like they are a friend. Make content on social media that will be useful to your audience, and make sure that your posts are adding positively to their experience online, as if you were a friend or family member showing up on their feed.

Every buyer persona has its own unique way of moving through social media. They use different platforms, at different times, with different hashtags. For example, LinkedIn may be better suited to reach your career woman Jenny, while Facebook may be a better outlet to reach Carl. Make sure that you transform the data you’ve collected into a strong strategy that incorporates how to effectively market on social media using the analytics you’ve collected.

Have us handle your social media growth so you can solely focus on your business.

Now that you know a little more about how to attract visitors to your site, the next step is to turn those visitors into leads. Next week we will go more in depth on step two; how to convert.

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What's Branding?

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

What is branding and what makes a brand?

These are among some of the most commonly asked questions for any marketing agency. The way these questions are answered can often be the difference between failure and success. So, let’s get into some base definitions for branding before tackling this any further.

The process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumer’s mind, mainly-through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme.

Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.

— BussinessDictionary.com

Branding is all the ways you establish an image of your company in your customer’s eyes.

— Shopify.com

The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products.

— Entrepreneur.com

Now, after reading through those definitions you might think, “branding is visual”, and it is, but it isn’t just design. Branding and graphic design do work together, almost as perfectly as peanut butter and jelly, but there is distinct difference between the two-- and that separation is very important. Branding is a name, symbol or design that is easily identifiable as belonging to a company. This helps to categorize products and services from other products and services. Branding is significant because it is your first impression with a consumer. Not only is it in the first impression business, but it’s the constant spokesman. This is the most effective way to distinguish yourself from other competitors and clarify what it is that you offer. Your brand is built to be a true representation of your company, and it encompasses how you want to be seen by your audience. If you want to be seen a certain way, you have to show them the way you want to be seen.

There are many areas that are used to develop a brand. Some of these include advertising, customer service, promotional merchandise, reputation and logo. All of these elements work together to create a unique and attentive brand. This is where things like brand promise and brand statements come into play. This is also how you get everyone on the same page.

With that being said, the branding process is the design process that comes before the actual design process. It’s the psychology and the personality of a business, and it begins way before a logo is ever hypothesized. In fact, it is this process that creates the logos, the graphics and the trademarks. The research of the given target audience is what determines the graphics, the typography and the color. Essentially, it’s the what, the how and the why of your company.

In simple terms, branding is the heart and soul of an entire company. It’s what you see, it’s what you don’t see, it’s why you use this color instead of that color, why you say this instead of that and so on and so forth. This is executed through logo’s, tagline, email signatures and trademarks. Most companies stop there, but the successful ones realize that the branding process goes much deeper. It has to integrate into your company, it’s not just your consumers who need to understand, it’s your employees too. If they don’t know who you are and what message you are trying to get across, then they can’t provide that to the customer.

Branding has to do with unison-- a collective consciousness that sets you apart. It’s the things that make you... you , that are important. This is how you stay unique and fresh. This is this how you stand out. This is how people know who you are, and it creates value by giving the company more leverage. Which in turn, makes it more appealing to investors, because it’s already established in the marketplace.

All of this is important to define and consider before you build out your site, or make collateral, or sell any products. If you don’t know who you are, or you are unable to define yourself, how could you expect your audience or employees to know who you are or what you do? The great Simon Sinek said it himself, “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”.

Overall, a branding is what people say or don’t say about you when you are not around. That is why branding should be a priority. Branding can change the way people perceive you, it can also drive new business, and isn’t that the ultimate goal?

Mini Blog: The Power Of Inbound Marketing

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

A revolution is taking place…

We are now exposed to 5,000 brand messages a day, as opposed to 500 in the 1970s; that’s a 900% increase. With that much exposure, it’s understandable that consumers are beginning to be turned off by the interruptive nature of outbound marketing. And I get it, my two-year old can identify more brand logos than she can shapes.

But a revolution is taking place—a digital revolution! We have gone from junk mail, to spam mail, and print ads to banner ads. Because of this massive shift and the fluid change of trends in the marketplace, consumers are overwhelmed by choice and have a greater ability than ever to be able to ‘unsubscribe’ from the advertisements. This transformation is leaving a lot of businesses in fear of coming off like the mall kiosk sales people; the kind that pounce at a passerby that so much as glance in their direction.

But here’s where I disagree… I think that people want to be sold to, they want some direction on things that can make their lives easier, they just don’t want to be interrupted by it. And with Google on their side, consumers are educating themselves on their buying choices, and thus the old tactics no longer carry as much weight in the marketplace. So, what can we do as marketers?

The whole purpose of inbound marketing is to meet the customers where they are. We are no longer the stage five clinger of the sales world.

It is our job as marketers to no longer be the slimy salesman, but the trusted friend. And we can do that by providing guidance toward making specific buying decisions, while building trust as thought leaders in our industry.

DON’T BE THIS MARKETER…

I AM HERE TO HELP YOU BREAK DOWN THE FOUR SIMPLE STEPS TO UNDERSTAND INBOUND MARKETING.

1. ATTRACT NEW PEOPLE TO YOUR BUSINESS.

You want to turn strangers into visitors. You can do this by using blogs , social media , and SEO . 53% of marketers say blogs are their top inbound marketing priority and 88% of businesses are using social media to interact with consumers.

(Find out more about how to get the most out of your social media here )

2. CONVERT THOSE NEW VISITORS INTO LEADS.

Once you’ve captivated the visitor with your knowledge, bravado, and generosity, send them to a landing page where they can learn more; guide the reader down a path through your site. Set up a clear call to action that lets your new friend know what the next step is to purchase your product. Or let the customer just drop in and say hi or find out more on their own time through a contact form . But remember, if they are generous enough to give you their information, that means they want to hear more from you, so reciprocate that generosity and provide unique answers and information that they can’t find online.

3. CLOSE THE SALE.

For a lot of salespeople, this step can seem like the most intimidating part. And maybe it was before inbound marketing came along, but if you’ve been following these steps, closing the sale will come naturally. You’ve already proven yourself to be a trustworthy companion, and your followers look to you for solutions. You’ve been sending out emails to continue engaging with your contacts, and tracking data through your CRM database, so you are ready!

(To ease the concern of the closing process further-check out this guide)

4. AND FINALLY, CONTINUE TO DELIGHT THE CUSTOMER.

Send out surveys to ask them what they think about your product or service, and if they have any suggestions; make them a part of the process rather than just a paycheck. Continue to deliver trustworthy and useful content and continue to listen to what people are saying about your brand and your competitor’s brand online and on social media.

With these four simple steps in your back pocket, you will be able to rocket your business into the digital age. So, go forth, and create something meaningful.

We have also created a four-part series that will deep dive into each step of the process in order to craft you into an inbound marketing superhero. Tune in to find out more about past trends, future trends, and how to maximize each step in your business. Sign up to get email reminders of all the juicy info we have for you!

2018 B2B Holiday Marketing

Tue, 09 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

B2B marketing can drive an impact this holiday season.

Whether you love it or despise it (#grinch), the holiday shopping season is right around the corner… This is the big game for most marketers. I can already hear you saying to yourself “I’m in B2B, how does this even apply?”.

Most often, B2B marketers generally believe the holiday shopping season is primarily beneficial to B2C companies. While there is some merit to this, B2B marketers can and should play a role in two primary marketing goals every holiday season.

Delight, entertain and reinforce your relationship with existing customers.
Attract new customers through authentic brand building campaigns.

As any good marketing campaign strategy goes, knowing your audience intimately is the foundation - everything else is secondary. Right after knowing your audience comes knowing what strategy and tactics are going to make the largest impact for your brand. Translation - having a formal, written marketing plan is key to ensuring a successful campaign launch.

Related Blog Post: How to Find & Know Your Brand’s Audience

While many of us don’t expect to see a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) under the Christmas tree, we can still fondly remember the wonder of the holidays that play so strongly to the inner child in all of us. I believe there are authentic ways to engage your B2B audience this holiday season. This starts with solidifying three main objectives:

What do you want your audience to think when they encounter your campaign?
What do you want your audience to feel when they see your campaign. What emotions, memory flashbacks, etc. are you hoping to elicit?
What do you want your audience to do once they’ve seen it?

Every year, right when the seasons started to change, I would begin circling images in catalogs and keeping an inventory of the cool new toys to tell my parents about, so they knew exactly what was on my wish list. I’d bet most of us wrote them out and gave them to our parents when we were kids - mine typically include a box of my favorite cereal (to ensure I didn’t have to share it with my sister). Fast-forward to my professional career, and I still keep a mental “wish list” of tools, software, conferences etc., that I want.

PLAY TO THE INNER CHILD IN ALL OF US

Imagine curating a “toy catalog” for your engineering audience. Undoubtedly, any audience has nostalgic memories of looking through catalogs, making lists and hoping their gifts arrive on Christmas morning. If “catalogs” are today’s websites, how is your “catalog” standing out and appealing to the inner child in all of us?

I for one, believe the holidays are a great time to let your brand show a softer, more human side. Think about it, if the average B2B sales cycle runs about 4 - 6 months, the holidays could be a great time to accelerate the process through on-brand, on-point messaging that gets personal. According to a recent Statista study, most holiday advertising begins in October; with the majority of decision makers researching two to three sites prior to making a purchase… what’s going to make your site memorable - if it even get’s see at all?

Related: Ask our experts how your site & visibility stacks up against your competition:

CLAIM MY FREE VISIBILITY ANALYSIS

United States; B2B E-Commerce World (B2BecNews); Q1 2018; 110 respondents; B2B buyers

Clearly, there’s no better time for B2C marketing than the holidays and it’s time for B2B marketers to be comfortable inserting themselves into the mix. Your potential customers have been ‘circling products in their catalog’ for most of the year and it’s time to capitalize on that.

Professionally, I’d bet we’ve been acting in a very similar way – researching and budgeting for products, tools and services we plan or want to implement in the upcoming year. Or, in my experience, thinking of creative ways to convince the boss, that yes, we do need that expensive cappuccino machine - it’ll boost my productivity, I promise.

For most B2B companies, their purchases are large investments that take careful time and consideration. If a business that’s familiar with your offering, has been hesitant to purchase your product or service during the regular season, the holidays can lead to an increase in converted sales. Many strategic purchases are decided on in the fourth quarter and carried out in the New Year.

Here’s 3 ideas to kick start your holiday marketing planning:

Exit intent - Create an exit intent strategy. Make it playful and cheerful as a way to keep your visitors on your site, or turn them into leads by providing a special offer through a lead capture. (Pro tip - it’s okay to have a little fun a.k.a. humor in your offer.)

Even if your site doesn’t have an e-commerce option - use the offer to provide value in a form your audience would see exciting. Hell, maybe it’s a chance to have a call with your lead innovation guru or product development expert to influence an upcoming product name.

Direct mail - Create, print and direct mail a “toy catalog” of your products and deals with a detachable wishlist. This could be a fun way to engage your audience, showing them you know how to have fun and play to the inner child in all of us. Undoubtedly, it’ll get them talking.

Imagine a Toys R Us catalog… but with your company’s products, shown and displayed with all the holiday nostalgia one could dream of.

Lastly… one simple change has the potential to instill life into your brand…

Ditch the stiff - Uptight videos, cards and traditional safe messaging blends in… it’s not memorable, or at least not in a good way. Ditch the drab, and show images of your CEO having fun in the office; be lighthearted and showcase your company’s culture by humanizing yourself and your brand.

The time to implement is now. With these simple guidelines you can ensure that both your company and your audience will have a very merry holiday, and even happier new year.

Placing Your Customers At The Front Of Your Business Design

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Customer Journey Mapping and Business Benefits

Whether you’re a small-to-medium sized company (SMB) or a large enterprise, you need to understand your customers’ journey. Regular Customer Journey Mapping allows business owners to actively “course-correct” and address process inefficiencies. It also provides an opportunity to evaluate and address customer needs and preferences.

It’s important to take Customer Journey Mapping best practices into account, and there are classes available. Time spent understanding and implementing this process is definitely time well spent. However, try not to get bogged down in all the details.

BENEFITS OF CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPPING

The Customer Journey Mapping process can uncover the “buying process” frustrations. Frustrated prospects may find alternative solutions. Mapping experts call these Moments of Truth (MOTs) . Negative MOTs are bad for business. The sooner you uncover them, the sooner you can stop prospects and customers from falling out of the buying funnel.
This exercise explores the various possible avenues to your products/services. Not every prospective customer will take the same journey. For example, customers who use a website chat feature to engage with your company may behave differently than those who pick up the phone. You’ll want to design your intake processes to accommodate contact variations and avoid sending a chat lead down the same sales processes as a phone lead. A prospect more comfortable with chat might dislike contact via phone. This user generally expects quicker resolution and full documentation of their interaction with your staff. Forcing subsequent phone conversations may negatively impact their intent to purchase.
Understanding the variations in your prospects’ background, needs, and expectations help you better understand your customers. The Mapping process can help you create Buying Personas, another critical tool to understand and properly address your customer. Addressing particular Personas creates a better Customer Experience (CX), which establishes overall customer satisfaction.

o What moments in the process are enjoyable to the customer, and how can you leverage those?

o What moments cause friction or frustration and how can you reduce those?

o Are there situations where where faster is not better, and vice versa?

Journey Mapping can also help evaluate the automated and manual parts of your customer intake and overall buying process. Over-automation can negatively impact the CX, and you might finds reasons to reintroduce a “human factor”. For example, DirecTV’s streaming service is almost 100% automated. Customers have little opportunity to interact with service personnel, which has resulted in a very negative reputation. AT&T is heavily investing in Customer Journey Mapping ( https://www.marketforce.com/tags/customer-journey-mapping ) to address the issue.
Customer Journey Mapping provides a clear understanding of your company’s MOTs, allows for a deeper understanding of your overall CX, and helps your staff build comprehensive and actionable Buying Personas. This process will help your business efficiently and effectively utilize precious resources and ultimately lay a foundation for a more profitable and successful company.

GUEST BLOG AUTHOR: RUTHANN SWAIN

Sales and Marketing Business Process professional with a focus on nurturing customer relationships and improving the interface between customers and employees. Social Media Specialist and Strategist. Communicating and Listening to customer's is my passion. Whether it be Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer or User Experience, they all put the customer first, which is where I like to make a difference.

Degree in Psychology from University of Santa Barbara, California, and MBA with a focus in Marketing from Bradford University, Bradford, England.

Career started in retail and progressed into the technology industry.

I enjoy being both creative and technical, creating a campaign or pulling together the analysis of that campaign both make me equally happy. Creating a process, implementing a tool, collaborating with customer's, pulling together an event, all these things bring me joy and bring value to a business.

Connect with Ruthann on LinkedIn .

Social Media And Analytics: They're Better Together

Tue, 21 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

97% OF ADULTS BETWEEN THE AGES 16-64 SAY THEY LOGGED ON TO AT LEAST ONE SOCIAL NETWORK IN THE LAST MONTH.

Chances are you’re using social media, whether it’s for business or personal use, you probably have an account somewhere. If you are a company though, you should definitely be utilizing social media as a way to boost your marketing efforts. Why wouldn't you want to connect with more customers and build brand awareness? If you’re sleeping on this resource… it's time to wake up.

Don’t think your companies audience is on social media sites? 68% of US adults between the ages of 18-29 are on Facebook. 35% of Instagram users check Instagram multiple times a day and 51% open the app daily. 81% of millennials view their Twitter account daily and there are more than 450 million LinkedIn user accounts.

IT PAYS TO BE SOCIAL

WHY USE SOCIAL MEDIA...

I won’t bore you with endless statistics but you see my point. There are unending benefits of having a social media presence and a dedicated following. The data shows that successful businesses are having frequent social interactions with their customers. There are lots of ways to connect with your current customers and potential customers as well. You can ask for user opinions, do a giveaway, or take a poll involving your brand. These are great ways to interact with your audience. Asking customers to do things like participate in a poll not only gets them to interact with your brand but gives your business valuable information to use in the future. Burberry, for example, ran a marketing campaign where they asked customers to post pictures of themselves in their Burberry coats. Their customers got really into it because seeing other real people wearing the coats humanized the brand and it’s following, and was a form of peer-to-peer marketing. What’s peer-to-peer marketing? It’s communicating person to person (or customer to customer) instead of business to customer. There are lots of ways you can relate to customers and make them feel valued, while also adding value to your brand. This can all happen through the correct use of social media.

“Twitter is not a technology. It’s a conversation and it’s happening with or without you.
-Charlene Li

Social media interactions humanize your brand and make it appear more approachable, so think of how your brand would talk and act if it were a living breathing person. Who would you want to buy something from, the person who seems knowledgeable, helpful, and approachable? Or the person who never responds to your questions and doesn’t seem to care if you are happy with their products or services? Social media is also a great way to connect with mobile users-- I know when I’m looking for a product or service I’m much more likely to look it up on my phone before I head to my computer. If there isn't a functional and easy to navigate mobile site, or they don’t have an Instagram or Facebook, I probably won’t make it to the desktop version at all.

“Users spend on average 69% of their media time on smartphones.”

LET'S TALK DATA

But how do you know that what you’re posting, and the time you’re posting it, is having the desired effect? Are you talking to a silent room, or are people excited by your content and want to learn more? This is where analytics comes in. Wouldn’t it be great if you could track how your content is performing over time, on every social site you use? You totally can! Through understanding the social analytics, Google Analytics, and other similar tools, you can truly see if what you’re doing is working. In the beginning, it may seem overwhelming to figure out what metrics are important to track. These less important metrics are often referred to as Vanity Metrics and although they are valuable, they are likely not as important when it comes to gaining customers and making conversions.

UNDERSTANDING VANITY VS ACTIONABLE

Some examples of vanity metrics include things such as follower count, site visitors, or the number of likes. Let's talk about follower count. If you have a large follower count but they aren’t the right kind of followers, and they are not leading to conversions, it’s not really that helpful. It’s always better to have a smaller more dedicated following, rather than a large number of followers that don’t really appreciate what you have to offer. On the flip side of that, let's look at metrics that are important to keep an eye on. Some actionable metrics to monitor are things like click-through rate, engagement rate, and conversion rate. These are the stats that lead to sales, new customers, and building your brand. When it comes to reach vs engagement rate, engagement is what you are really looking for. Engagement rate is the rate at which people are interacting with your content. Interactions lead to conversions and conversions lead to new business.

TAKE IT SLOW

So we’ve touched on Google Analytics, but the social platforms you use have their own versions of analytics as well. Facebook, for example, uses a tool called Facebook Insights. Through the use of this tool, you can see how many people your content is reaching, and what your top performing piece of content is, as well as your lowest performing piece of content. With this information, you can be aware of the type of content you should continue to post, and the subject areas you should stay away from. Now keep in mind, things like the best time of day to post will vary and change over time, so it's incredibly important to continually run tests, and change things up now and then. Analytics is also a really cool way to get to know your audience. Through analytics, you can see the times of day your customers are most active, what region your customers live in, and what type of device they are viewing your content on. Those of you that are extremely private people are probably running for the hills at this point, but we promise we’re not stalkers. We just truly care about improving the customer experience. Whether you are using Google Analytics, Twitter analytics, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram, what really matters is that you are tracking your content performance and optimizing your content over time. The landscape of digital marketing is constantly evolving, don't get left behind.

Social Stalking

Not as creepy as it sounds...

THAT'S A WRAP

All in all the takeaway should be that data is incredibly important when using social media to promote your brand. Trusting your gut is great, but making guesses about what people want to see is often a waste of time and money. Stop putting out content based on feelings, or based on what someone else did. Not that other companies aren’t posting great content, but what works for them may not work for you. Watch what others in your industry are doing, but always be true to your own brand. Create a social media strategy that best represents your business. When you know what is working and what isn’t, and are making the right optimizations, you can better serve your customer. In the end isn’t that really what matters?

How To Find And Know Your Brand's Audience

Wed, 08 Aug 2018 00:00:00 GMT

A COMPREHENSIVE, NO BULLSHIT APPROACH, TO UNDERSTANDING AND EXECUTING AUDIENCE STRATEGIES THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR MARKETING FOREVER.

Every Brand Has Something In Common...

Regardless of the size of a business that currently uses or wants to utilize social media, everyone has one quest in common… How to find and better understand their audience(s).

The truth is, audiences are not static ... they change and your understanding of these changes are critical to a successful social media and broader marketing strategy.

Source: Marketo | 2017 Survey

More and more marketers want to know, concretely, the audience they're reaching and engaging with. Rightfully so. Look, if you're not actively trying to tailor your content to the people who matter most to you then you're wasting your time and effort. This is like trying to drive across country with no map - you'll get there (maybe) but everyone else who had the map will beat you, and with a lot less wasted time, money and energy. A professor once told me:

"The shortest distance to get to your destination is a straight line... the same is true in marketing." (Click to tweet)

There are over 81 million search results for "how to find my social media audience"... Clearly, there's a deep desire and need to understand the "who". I've heard it over and over again, you've been in the industry for 15 years and you know the audience. Maybe... but more than likely you have a strong misconception of what matters most to your audience and where/how they spend their time.

SO... WHERE DO YOU START?

First and foremost, if your brand already has an online presence you're in good shape. Understanding your audience should start by analyzing your web traffic on Google Analytics.

Google Analytics allows you to better understand your existing audience composition in terms of gender, age, and interests. This allows you to understand the kinds of creative content you need to develop, the kinds of media buys you should make, and the kinds of audiences you need to develop for marketing and remarketing campaigns. This happens through Google's Affinity Audiences... Affinity targeting analyzes someone’s overall interests, passions, and lifestyle to get a better sense of their overall identity.

To get started, open Google Analytics and begin with the Demographics Overview report to start with:

Select Audience > Demographics or Audience > Interests .
Select the date range preferably to Year-To-Date or at least 6 months worth of data.

You should end up with a report snapshot like this:

This is a high-level view of your audience (male vs. female and age brackets). From here we can drill down into more marketing audience insights.

As you can see, more females (64%) and 25 - 34 year-olds (35%) visit our site more than other demographics. While this is great information, there's still a lot more we can gleam.

Right now we have the "Sessions" key metric selected-- Which is important to see where the strongest stream of traffic is coming from; however, what about the bounce rate? Does that change the data?

Navigate to Key Metric in the top left of the snapshot :
Change from " Sessions " > " Bounce Rate ".

You should end up with a report snapshot like this:

Now compare and contrast the first report to the new bounce rate report. Our top two audience age ranges from 25 - 44. With a bounce rate in the 50th percentile, not only is this age bracket driving the most sessions, but they are also taking the most actions on the site/consuming content etc.

How do you see what audience is spending the most time on your site? Change the key metric again to see Avg. Session Duration. Your snapshot will change again.

You should end up with a report snapshot like this:

Three different metrics validate that females between 25 -55 are driving the most traffic, taking the most actions and consuming the most content on our site. Great... Let's go even further... These snapshots are only high-level insights. There's even more to drill down into.

Drill down to each of the age brackets to see data for the Other Category dimension. In this example, drilling in to each of the top two age brackets, shows “Arts & Entertainment, Celebrities & Entertainment News” as the top interest for both age brackets (25 -34 & 35 - 44).

Below is an overview of what the Google "Arts & Entertainment" affinity group consist of:

Identifying the demographics of your audience is useful for targeting campaigns and building audiences for remarketing. For an e-commerce site, identifying users with the highest conversion rate or revenue can really hone in your marketing efforts and increase your ROMI.

What's ROMI? ROMI is Return On Marketing Investment and this is how it's calculated:

[($ in additional sales made minus $ invested in the campaign) ÷ $ invested in the campaign] * 100 = ROMI.

You can use this strategy and analysis to find "low-value audiences" that you used to find your high-value audiences: rather than look for high revenue and conversion rates, you simply look for the opposite. This allows you to focus and concentrate your efforts on the audiences that matter most to your brand.

Now we know the age brackets, gender and affinity group(s) that matter most to our brand... But that only gets us so far in terms of understanding our audience. The next step is to understand where these audience segments geographically are concentrated. To do this, follow these steps:

In the left-side panel, click Audience > Geo
Then click location
Make sure your time range (top right) is set to at least 6 months of data. For me, I prefer doing Year-To-Date (YTD) view

You should see a map of the world with shades of blue. Scrolling down past the map you'll see a list of countries that your site has received traffic from. For our brand, we're focused on the US. Click on the country you want to drill down into and now you should get a country traffic density map:

Now, we can see where our traffic from our audience is coming from. While this is insightful, believe it or not, we can go even deeper to understanding where our traffic is coming from and the people that matter most to us.

The table below shows us our top 5 states, and key metrics for us to explore. It's important to see the whole picture. But don't focus on sessions alone, look at bounce rate, and session duration as well. As you can see, three of the five states have higher bounce rates and lower session durations than what we would like (California, Michigan and Florida). However, the states that standout are Ohio and Arizona. Coincidentally, this is also where we have locations for our business.

What's a good bounce rate? Depends on industry and a number of variables, however, GoRocketFuel 's research states "Most websites will see bounce rates fall somewhere between 26% and 70% .".

If we change the primary dimension from "region" to "city" we get an even more granular view:

Now we have a pretty good view of things... As an example, if one of our strategic goals was to expand the California market, we know the makeup of the audience and can hyper focus our collective go to market approach to be extremely relevant and effective.

Using California as an example, we can use additional tools to further explore and understand our audience in that region. For instance, if we wanted to tap specifically into Los Angeles, we can deep dive into the psychographics and community tapestry. This is an additional layer Digital Radar uses to increase our effective reach and relevance.

Ok, now you have some audience insights... you want to get started. The best place to test your content-- social media.

THE TWO BIGGEST MISTAKES IN FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE...

I see it all the time... a lot of B2B clients, want to organically reach a specific group of job titles on their social media channels - everyone else is a "waste" and "doesn't add value"... Or, they believe/have misconceptions as to who is on what platform... "bio chemists aren't on Facebook, so let's pass that channel and only utilize LinkedIn". This is a huge mistake, for many reasons.

According a Pew Research Center report, "Facebook remains the primary platform for most Americans. Roughly two-thirds of U.S. adults (68%) now report that they are Facebook users, and roughly three-quarters of those users access Facebook on a daily basis. With the exception of those 65 and older, a majority of Americans across a wide range of demographic groups now use Facebook."

Which leads me to the two biggest mistakes anyone can make in trying to find and reach their target social media audience.

1) Assume.

Believe it or not, most companies do not have recent, data-driven research to understand their audience. Most companies are going through the motions, day after day, organically trying to reach their audience based upon what they knew to be true... this is like posting your content on a littered community board at your local coffee shop. You cannot control how many people see it or who sees it, and when they see your content. It's a gamble and the odds are not forever in your future.

More than ever before, marketers and brands must be hyper-strategic about their content and how it will resonate with their audiences. This is only possible with intense, data backed persona research.

Confused Where To Get Started?

The New Era Of Video Sharing

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Video is revolutionizing marketing... here's what you need to know.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN...

In 2005 when Jawed Karim, Steve Chen, and Chad Hurley all worked at PayPal, they realized that there was yet to be a designated location where videos could be shared. This was the fundamental idea that shaped the YouTube we know and love today. Inspired by the infamous Janet Jackson incident and the tsunami in December of that year, the YouTube.com domain was purchased and the first video was uploaded. Before YouTube, users resorted to sharing video content directly through methods such as chain emails. Finding a website to host a video for free was a task in itself. The evolution of YouTube has changed the game.

By the summer of 2006, YouTube had already become one of the fastest growing sites on the web. Google, being the powerhouse that it is, didn’t hesitate when they heard of this revolutionary idea. They made their second largest acquisition by purchasing YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. At this time the site was still relatively small, and had not reached the UK or many other countries. However by 2007, it was estimated that YouTube had already seen as much bandwidth as the entire internet had in the year 2000. The full launch of HD videos rolled out next, which led to YouTube experiencing it’s first one billion video views in a single day. This was to be the first of many...

Only one year after YouTube launched, Time Magazine featured a YouTube screen with a large mirror as its annual ‘Person Of The Year’.

Time Magazine Person Of The Year: You December 25, 2006

“For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, Time's Person of the Year for 2006 is you,” the magazine's Lev Grossman wrote.

FLASH FORWARD TO TODAY...

YouTube has taken over! There are approximately 5 billion videos watched on YouTube every day, with over 300 hours of video content uploaded every minute. Not to mention, there are more 18-49 year olds watching YouTube than any cable network in the U.S. It has even been predicted that by 2025, more than half of viewers under the age of 32 will not be paying for any tv services at all. This renders commercials less and less desirable, but how does this play to the advantage of the business owner? The Google Ads platform (formerly known as Google AdWords) allows you to advertise across YouTube. This feature gives your business the opportunity to get in front of the right audience in a way like never before.

GROWING YOUR BUSINESS.

We already know that YouTube has been one of the largest video destinations in the world for some time now. Users are watching billions of hours of content to be entertained, learn new things, and stay up to date on current trends. However, now more than ever, people are increasingly turning to YouTube to inspire and inform purchase decisions both big and small. For marketers and small business owners, this creates an opportunity to get in front of a target audience. To start attracting new customers, they need to know who you are. You are able to Introduce your business and share your story with video ads on YouTube. While a potential customer is looking for a product comparison or a how-to-video, you are able to be present in these intent rich moments. By having a presence in these purchase driven moments, you are able to gain new customers, maximize sales, and increase awareness of your brand.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

With YouTube advertising, you can decide who sees your ads with targeting based on location, age, interest, and more. Setting up a video campaign targeted toward users who show that they are interested in your business can increase conversions. Location targeting is set up on your video campaign to ensure your advertising is serving to users that are in the right area. You are able to break this down by country, state, city, or even zip codes. You can also exclude any areas that you know you do not want to appear for. With demographic targeting, you can choose the age, gender, parental status, or household income of the audience you want to reach. Interest targeting is one of my favorite targeting features available across YouTube. The targeting method allows you to pick from available audience categories to reach people interested in certain topics, even when they may be visiting pages about other topics. Here is an example of how they break down this targeting option:

Interest Targeting, YouTube Support

Lastly, there is video remarketing. This is the same as regular remarketing across the Google Search Network. You are able to reach viewers based on their past interactions with your videos, TrueView ads or YouTube channel. Another great way to remain present to potential customers.

ACHIEVING YOUR MARKETING GOALS

From quick six second ads, to minute long videos, there are options to get your message in front of the right audience. YouTube’s growing popularity in today’s world, has made it clear that it can serve as much more than just a way to share adorable puppy videos. In fact, it has become a immensely effective platform for accessing a wide range of audiences through online advertising. Depending on your end goal, you are able to use video ads to drive users to your website where they can contact you, or purchase items online, or be directed to your YouTube channel to increase views and subscribers.

FORMATS:

With the proper campaign setup, marketing research, and video format, YouTube is able to get your business seen.

The highlight of using video ads on YouTube, is that you only pay when a potential customer actually sees your ad. If your ad is watched for at least 30 seconds or someone interacts with it in someway, such as clicking on an overlay call to action, a card, or a companion banner, that is when you are charged. You don’t need to be a professional videographer to get an ad for your business started. YouTube has published a helpful guide to get businesses started and help them to feel confident while creating a video showcasing their company. You can check out these recommendations here: How to Make A Video Ad That Fits Your Marketing Strategy

SO WHAT’S NEW?

Last week Google announced some changes that will be rolling out to the YouTube platform. These upgrades are designed to increase effectiveness for advertisers. While YouTube was already extremely affordable and powerful, there are now three new ad options to achieve your goals.

TrueView For Reach

With this format, you are seeing YouTube’s primary TrueView format that has been brought together with the simplicity of impression based buying. This format is ideal for a business looking to raise brand awareness or increase traffic all within YouTube.

TrueView For Action

This format is optimized to drive conversions on your site. Your ad shows up during the video and is shown with a clear call-to-action that stays even after your ad is complete. This branded banner can also be targeted for a specific goal such as “book now”, “call us today”, or learn more. It was also announced that later this year, there will be additional formats for TrueView for Action to increase lead generation directly from your videos.

Maximize Lift Bidding

Many advertisers turn to YouTube not only to drive conversions but also to increase brand consideration. This bidding strategy has been designed for this purpose. By using Google’s Machine Learning, you are able to reach people who are more likely to consider your brand after seeing your ad.

These new enhancements help you to get the most out of your YouTube advertising. At Digital Radar, we are experts at our craft. Creating quality marketing to elevate businesses to the next level is what we pride ourselves on. To learn more about video marketing and what it can do for your business, reach out to one of our experts today.

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Why PPC Marketing Rocks

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

As I aimlessly scroll through my Facebook feed laughing at funny fail videos and awing at cute dogs, I see a really cool piece of art that I absolutely adore. I click to visit their webpage and see it's a canvas print, and it's a style I love. I am an impulse buyer and I think that would make the perfect addition to my wall art collection, so I add it to my cart and buy it right then and there.

This form of advertising is called pay per click . The advertiser was charged when I clicked on the ad and went to the website. When I bought that super cool piece of art after clicking the ad, that was marked as a sale, or a conversion. This is why PPC is such a powerful way to market in the digital world that we live in.

So What Is PPC?

PUMPKIN PIE CASSEROLE?

Pumpkin Pie Casserole? Maybe it's a new type of fusion where the pumpkin is cooked in a square instead of your typical circular pie style. Okay as much as that does sound delicious, we know PPC stands for pay per click. This means every time a consumer clicks on your ad you will be charged. Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bing, Instagram, Snapchat, and many more platforms have their own ad networks where advertisers can utilize their services with this PPC model. This works like an auction. Every time an ad enters into the auction it is competing with bids for a certain position. This is why targeting is important.

Reaching The Right Person.

Depending on which ad network we are using, targeting options may vary. Some things we need to take into consideration for an effective PPC strategy are:

Location
Device Type
Time Of Day
Day Of The Week
Keywords
Age
Gender
Household Income
Career
Interests
Behaviors
Website Content

The varied targeting methods that we layer will create a venn diagram where certain criteria must be met before our ad will be visible. This allows us to be highly effective and compete where it counts.

Is Advertising Really Worth It?

IS ICE CREAM DELICIOUS?

All the cool kids are doing it. To be relevant in business today you must have an online presence. We are at a point where most people are aware of this. If I want to succeed as a new business, first I need a website. Once I have my site I will create a few social media channels and begin posting content. Next, I will acquire business cards and then I am ready to network. Maybe I'm getting a few hits here and there from my efforts, but this isn't really sustainable. I've also wasted some money sending out mailers that got no responses. If only there was a way to spend money effectively to attain real leads for my business.

My Personal Favorite Is AdWords

Google Ads is by far the most powerful ad network that exists. It utilizes a complex algorithm that gives favoritism to consumer based marketing. What that means is ads that are more relevant to what the person is searching for will place higher in the rank, and on Google Search. This is where I believe PPC beats every other form of advertising. It allows us not only to craft something that we can guarantee the consumer is actually interested in, but make educated, well informed decisions based on quantifiable facts as well.

Pay The Best Price For Leads.

Sales, purchases, sign ups, phone calls, store visits, and downloads are what we really want. High engagement rates and impressions are metrics not to be disregarded entirely, because they do tell us part of the story. What we really want is for our website visitors to take certain actions that are valuable to our business. We create custom landing pages in theme with our ad copy, that gives us higher quality scores. When we have the foundations set, our next step would be to optimize towards lower cost per acquisitions. What we are doing with PPC is next to impossible to do anywhere else. We are able to study the data and use it to get more leads at better prices.

Do What Works.

It's easy to look at a successful business model and take inspiration from that. You can go online right now and search for almost any service or product within policy boundaries and see a Google, Bing, Facebook ad, etc. This is because it's a proven model that works to scale a new business quickly, affordably, and effectively. Your competition is likely advertising, but chances are they may not be using best practices. Advertising with a PPC ad network is a good use of your new advertising budget, but it is important to use an expert who knows how to make your advertising efforts flourish. In the long run this will help by saving you money, using that spend effectively, meticulously, and with intention. With these tools you may become a force to be reckoned with.

Turning Lead Generation Upside Down

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Account Based Marketing (ABM) - Flipping the funnel for customer acquisition

ABM IS AN ALTERNATIVE TO CLASSIC LEAD GENERATION

FLIPPING THE FUNNEL

So, what does flipping the funnel have to do with ABM? ABM is predicated on treating each account like its own market. In doing so, we then drive interest and credibility across stakeholders within a given account. This due diligence leads to increasing the propensity to close a sale and accelerating the time to close. In leveraging a coordinated communication strategy across a broad audience to influence the decision-making process we are able to accomplish this.

Some key advantages of deploying an ABM strategy are that it better aligns marketing and sales, leading to a more synergistic approach to communication. In addition, it's a more cost effective approach to marketing rather than spending tons of money to generate leads from wherever possible. You reduce the need to qualify those leads for your sales organization. Lastly, as we mentioned above, this strategy shortens the time it takes to close an account, by getting key messaging in front of multiple stakeholders to generate more awareness and accelerate buy-in.

PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING AN ABM STRATEGY

THE NEXT STEPS...

Pulling any existing information on current contacts within your CRM database. If no customer information exists, you can use a business intelligence tool, such a discover.org , for contact list population. This supplemental exercise, in addition to continued penetration to expand reach inside of an account, is crucial to increase awareness, influence, and to accelerate the account's path to purchase.

Segment your targeted accounts by common variables such as industry verticals, common organization structure and decision making processes. At this point in the process it is critical to have sales and marketing aligned. Tapping into the sales organization for knowledge related to the decision making structure, as well as key influencers in the various types of organizations, is a critical piece to determine how best to communicate to each type of account.

This segmentation will provide the ability to craft personas for each account so that your content can be tailored and personalized to each contact within a given account. This customization will let your prospective customers know you understand his or her business, while being able to provide a solution for problems or anticipate the needs he or she may have. This understanding builds essential credibility with the audience across a targeted account.

As we move to engage our audience at specific targets, we want to be sure that we are leveraging the optimal channels for our audience, coupled with tailored messages. This communication will be a two pronged approach. The first task is driving awareness with an increasing engagement and interaction with our existing contacts. The next task is to increase reach within each account. This can be done by targeting communications specifically within an account. How can you do that? Well, IP targeting is one of the best ways to serve display advertising to employees connected to a target accounts network. There are other approaches such as encouraging sharing and referral of employees via social sharing gamification, as well as geo-fencing banner ads. The advantage to IP targeting is that you can add in job titles as an overlay to further precision-tune your deployment.

As new stakeholders are added to the mix and dialogue continues with contacts at our targeted accounts, the objective is to encourage them to get familiar with and become advocates of your company and it's product(s), service(s), and offerings.

Channel planning and consistent messaging will be included in this phase, as McKinsey consulting points out in B2B marketing. The typical customer uses at least 6 different channels during the purchase process, with 65% getting frustrated by inconsistent brand experiences across channels.

ASSESS AND OPTIMIZE

The term always be testing is a common moniker we all hear in the realm of digital marketing. This concept rings true with ABM. In our implementation, we need to be sure to consistently monitor our analytics to assess performance, and optimize our campaign efforts. This ensures maximum impact and return on your marketing investment.

MEASURING PERFORMANCE IS DIFFERENT FROM STANDARD LEAD GENERATION

CLICK THROUGH RATES AND ON-SITE CONVERSIONS ARE KEY METRICS FOR ABM?

FALSE!

It is a common misnomer to apply standard lead generation KPIs to account based marketing (ABM). The primary metrics are much different to quantify the performance of this marketing activity. Standard lead generation metrics are "nice to have" and do provide context around performance, however they are secondary in nature.

Typical Lead Management KPIs

Email click-through rates
Cost per click
On-site conversions
- i.e., form submissions
Session to lead conversion rate
Interaction Event tracking
Individual engagement agnostic of organization

ABM KPIs

Pipeline acceleration - increase in time to close
Expanding reach within a targeted account
ROI
Account level scoring
Sales call performance
Aggregate engagement across contacts at the account

If you want to discover more about Account Based Marketing (ABM) or would be interested in a FREE consultation, fill out the form below.

Business Development Is Changing In The Digital Age

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Create a seamless online customer experience

At Digital Radar we pride ourselves on being AdWords certified gurus and we stay current on everything that may impact the customer experience, for our clients. Key moments throughout a consumers day-to-day activities are redefining purchase intents. These micro-moments mean business development efforts as marketers need to evolve! Consumers want immediate results that are frictionless.

Things have changed...

Remember when we would plug our internet modem into the telephone line and wait behind a dial tone before connecting to the internet? Today users no longer “go” online, it’s where they live. Day in and day out, from the second we wake up and check our emails to when our alarms are set at night, we are constantly connected. This has caused the purchasing process to change.

Tip: Google studies have shown that a user is 18% less likely to trust a business if they do not have an impressive online presence. Ask us how your digital ecosystem stacks up here .

To start growing your business..

You must be online. By having your company online, you are able to reach and be found by your ideal customers, display your products and services, meet customer needs and overall grow your business like never before. In order to achieve this, you need to meet customer demands by having a high quality and top performing website. This is why having a reputable online presence is one of the most important investments you can make for your business. Your company's website is the new store front - it’s always on and open for business. Which means your website’s content is key. This needs to be kept in mind. Your site should have updated and fresh content to keep users engaged and coming back for more. Along with content, having a clear path to navigate through the site so users can find what they want, when they want it is critical to eliminate friction.

Tip: Google studies have shown that a user is willing to wait 3 seconds for a page to load. Can you keep up? Test your website’s page load speed here .

What does this mean for business owners?

Our customers can be met where they live and can be marketed to more effectively. There are a plethora of avenues to attract new clients and share our products. Capturing our ideal audience as they are actively searching for our products is a reality. We can spike interest in our services through videos and text ads. Or use animated display ads to lure customers to purchase more. We can even remind our previous customers what they love so much about working with us through remarketing and encourage they come back. The possibilities are endless.

Make a lasting impact.

Brand loyalty is a thing of the past. Users care more about simplicity that meet their immediate needs. Our focus needs to be to engage with our customers in the moments that truly matter. The moments when we turn to our smartphones for help making the right decision or completing a task. Google refers to these as micro-moments, and they have created an opportunity to connect with consumers in new and exciting ways. In these moments, customers are more likely to respond to relevant advertising. There are many ways a user can connect with a brand, and Google has different ad platforms that help that along, with the exception of messaging... until now. As of last year, over half of the trillions of searches made on Google happen on smartphones. We can now use click-to-message ads on Google AdWords to expand our reach, influence and bring consumers back into the purchasing journey.

Tying it all together.

Online marketing is crucial for businesses because it directly affects the way consumers make purchasing decisions. On Google alone there are trillions of searches made every year. That’s an endless amount of potential customers looking for businesses just like yours. This makes for an excellent opportunity to deploy a new marketing strategy. We no longer need to waste money on yellow page ads that get used as paper weights to thousands of people who aren’t interested! And these traditional methods are not quantifiable... Instead, by running online ads we can capture the right audience while they are actively looking for your service, gain invaluable insight and use that data to optimize our advertising strategy. When running campaigns on Google AdWords, we are able to reach our audience directly and more effectively than ever before.

Ready to get started?

News: Digital Radar And Desert Class Marketing Merge

Tue, 15 May 2018 00:00:00 GMT

- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -

DIGITAL RADAR & DESERT CLASS MARKETING MERGE

This combining of forces sets to strengthen Digital Radar's core capabilities in Search Engine Marketing.

May 15, 2018

Dayton, Ohio - Digital Radar announced today that the company has entered into an agreement to merge with Desert Class Marketing - a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) niche firm in Phoenix, Arizona. This merger will bring the Desert Class Marketing team into the Digital Radar family. The new addition to Digital Radar will remain in the Arizona location to serve a broader set of clients.

This combining of forces is a phenomenal win for our clients. In a noisy and very competitive world, we're focused on acquiring the right talent to bring an even stronger set of skills and expertise to Digital Radar. - Nate Meadows , Co-Founder, Digital Radar.

The Arizona based, former, Desert Class Marketing team of former Google employees specializing in Search Engine Marketing will remain in Arizona. Beginning this week the team will start integrating with the Digital Radar leadership.

Joining the Digital Radar leadership team will be Danielle Petty and Steve Neigut. Danielle Petty was a Co-Founder of Desert Class Marketing, an SEM heavy marketing agency. Danielle's several years of experience at Google and managing client relations and sales make her well positioned to lead Digital Radar's client management efforts. Steven Neigut, a prior Co-Founder of Desert Class Marketing, will also be joining the Digital Radar leadership team. Steve has played an invaluable role during his tenure at Google and at Desert Class Marketing. Steve's depth of experience as an SEM subject matter expert has allowed serving many obscure businesses and industries with tailored strategies built off of an ROI foundation. Steve will now lead the Search Engine Marketing component of Digital Radar.

We couldn’t be more excited to join the Digital Radar family! This merge with Digital Radar and our niche expertise will allow us to offer a broader range of digital marketing services that will exceed our clients' expectations. - Danielle Petty

Digital Radar is a marketing agency that uses quantifiable analyses to strategically accomplish our clients' goals. Born in Ohio, with employees and clients across the United States in all industries. Refusing to conform to safe and traditional marketing strategies and tactics, Digital Radar is quickly becoming a go-to digital marketing agency.

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How To Use Content Marketing

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Content Marketing Is Good For Your Bottomline.

What is content marketing?

According to our friends at Content Marketing Institute , content marketing is - A strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. This includes material like videos, blogs, and social media posts) which do not explicitly promote a brand but are intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.

Take this example from Neil Patel -

Content marketing is all about storytelling , and humans have told stories for as long as they could speak. Our attention will always go to those who tell great stories.

Neil is right, good storytelling in any business will absolutely attract eyeballs. This applies to any company and brand...

B2B and B2C content marketing.

Whether you're in the B2B space of selling air conditioning compressors or in a B2C retail space selling clothing. Look at the table below comparing how marketing professions in B2B and B2C see content marketing. You'll notice they're rather equal:

There are some slight differences in what B2B and B2C marketers utilize content marketing for. In the B2B world, the number one goal of content marketing is lead generation. While in B2C, the main goal of content marketing is sales. However, both also focus their content marketing strategies heavily on brand awareness.

Content marketing is a precision marketing strategy.

Content is not about you or your brand – it’s about the audience . The best and most ideal content marketing strategy delivers value to that audience first and the brand second. In other words, provide value to an audience segment first... think of information that will help your audience do their jobs better or live their lives better.

When you provide high quality, relevant and valuable content, you inform and provide value. Content should inform your audience. It should express a perspective or opinion.

Quantifiably understanding the audience segment you want to inform is a critical first step in launching a content strategy. As an example, we've compiled some questions for you to think through when working to understand how to develop your content audience strategy:

What are the psychographics and demographics of the group?
What are their daily pressures?
What keeps them awake at night?
Why do they or why would they do business with us?
What are the decision points? And why?

Example - Chief Marketing Officer (CMO):

Demographics:

Age: 35-54 - (51%)
Gender: Male - (64%)
Member of the exec team
Reports to CEO most often
Short tenure (28 months on average)
Wants to be seen as a driver of innovation and creativity
Highly career-focused sees the success of the company as their own
Leads by example, inspiring others with their passion

Pressures:

Grow revenue
Improve the experience of our customers
Address rising customer expectations

Stressors:

Return on marketing investment
Integration, deployment, and execution of existing systems
Integrating best practices

Complexity:
Responsibilities and requirements shaped by the complexity and diversity of today’s market landscape.

Customer engagement:
Utilizing data and technology to keep customers engaged and interested in an era of short attention spans.

Drive growth:
Delivering higher returns on lower budgets and continuing to achieve growth in a saturated market.

Strategy in tactical:
Short-term planning is taking over their time, but they need to be able to keep sight of the big picture.

The "what".

If you hear someone say you can just repurpose your sales materials as consumable content - that is typically not true. Remember, content marketing is a value first, sale second, or third or fourth strategy. Content helps you build a relationship and establish authority as a credible source.

So, what the hell do you write about? Even if your business isn't sexy, there still a plethora of content you can write about and sources to pull from. A few examples are:

Customer successes
Frequent questions your company receives
Industry news - adding your company's perspective or SME's (Subject Matter Expert) perspective

How to measure content marketing ROI.

Content marketing has a ton of organic traffic and SEO value. Like all your marketing efforts, you should be asking "how is this strategy and the tactics working for me?". Here's a simple way to measure the ROI of your content marketing:

Step1: Go to Google Analytics (GA) and look at your organic traffic from content marketing. You do this by building all your links that point to your site, blog post etc. with UTM codes. Not sure what that is or how to do it? Check this free resource from Google out.

Here's how to locate it:

Within GA, on the lefthand navigation, choose "Acquisition"
Next, choose "Campaigns"
Then choose "All Campaigns"

You should see a screen like the below example. Click on campaign as the primary dimension and you'll see your campaigns as to how you setup your UTM parameters.

Blackout is to protect client privacy.

Calculate how much it would cost to pay for that same amount of traffic. Using this method... we’ve seen clients recover the cost of their content marketing in less than a year and even double their organic traffic in just a few years.

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Brands, Stop Focusing On What Matters To You

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

If you don't deeply and factually know what matters most to your audience... stop everything you're doing and read this.

We see this all the time... Companies big and small have some common "opportunities". One of the most common mistakes companies make in their marketing is being self-centered in their marketing approach. Meaning, the internal opinions, beliefs etc. are the foundation for their marketing and branding with no real quantifiable research. Tell us... How well do you know your audience?

More often than not, individuals tend to choose imagery, color schemes, messaging, campaigns, and overall content strategies based on what appeals to them personally and not their audience. Shane Snow (Founder at Contently) said in a recent Fast Company article :

"The companies that win friends and influence fans are the ones that give us content we want and unique experiences focused on us. For free. And those that do it well make a killing in business... Great content transforms advertisers from interruption to destination."

A lot of executives and marketing leaders alike will talk about the customer, however, their actions are all about the brand. This "brand-first" mentality permeates throughout the organization - regardless of size. Listen, if you like the color red and you want that all over your website... you have to understand the impact it will have on your audience. Maybe it works... maybe it doesn't. The point is, how do you know?

What we're saying here is, the entire experience someone gets from seeing or engaging with your brand should reinforce Digital Radar's branding best practice of the RARE Branding method.

Here's a high-level example of what our RARE Brand methodology is:

Relevant - Your brand should speak to your audience in a way that it immediately tells them you are who and what they're looking for. In other words, it should scream, we're the solution to (fill in the blank). Relevancy ties into everything from your email campaigns, social, web copy and information architecture, and so much more. Again, think conversion not interruption.
Alignment - Your brand, its messaging, creative etc. should have continuity across all your properties and collateral. Users shouldn't expect a different experience going from social to web. More than continuity, your brand needs to be aligned in the sense of it's core values and the relationship those values have on your audiences.
Reinforcement - Those values, story pillars, noble causes etc. (whatever you prefer to call them) all should come back to the core of your audiences pain points and how your organization fills those needs or gaps. Everything your audience sees, reads, engages with should emphatically reinforce your brand promise and position.
Emotion - At the root of everything, emotion is key. Your brand, messaging etc. should be appealing to the human elements of eliciting an emotion. This emotion aspect is true for any industry, any business and of course, of size.

Conduct a free brand audit on to see where your gaps are using our free RARE Brand worksheet:

What is Discrete Social Media Marketing?

Wed, 28 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT

The strategy marketers are employing to influence consumers’ buying decisions are changing.

At Digital Radar, we eat, breathe and dream about social media marketing (and tacos). Over the last few months, we have started noticing a trend. We’re officially dubbing this trend “discrete social media marketing”. So what is discrete social media marketing? Great question…

Discrete Social Media Marketing is the strategy and practice of engaging consumers through hyper-personalized content in non-traditional social networks in an effort to influence thought, consumer behavior and purchasing decisions.

In the beginning…

Historically, brands were at the mercy of social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as an example, to reach their audience. As savvy as marketers have become, engaging their respective audiences in timely and hyper-personalized conversations has been a challenge. Why? One word… community. One-to-one interactions are limiting the message and conversation potential. While many marketers have worked to build a community, and some have had success, it’s come at a hefty price. Time, money, and resources are commodities that most marketers are losing and not gaining.

It’s getting crowded in here!

In 2010, there were slightly less than 1 billion users active on social media. In 2018, there are over 2.5 billion, and by 2021 there will be over 3 billion active users on social media… That’s tripling the social media adoption rate in 10 years. People… that’s a shit-ton of eyeballs. Here’s the thing, companies like Amazon have been competing for consumers’ attention in a crowded space… Social media real estate is crowded. With the average social media user consuming more than 3,000 pieces of branded content a day, the solution at the time has been heavy social ad spending.

What’s a marketer to do?

Social media platforms like Facebook are increasingly becoming a pay-to-play space, these platforms are crowded with content, reach is declining, etc. etc. The headwinds are strong, no doubt. The turbulent changes in the social media marketing space have had many marketers asking “what do I do now?”.

It's not a secret that companies like Amazon analyze and use data it collects when a consumer is using their app or searching online - like browsing and purchase history. For example, it's how a consumer sees ads for products on Facebook related to products or items they were just looking at on Amazon. This all happens via retargeting strategies.

This is where the game changer of discrete social media marketing comes into play. Here's a real notification our team received recently from Amazon. As you can tell, the algorithm believes this individual may be interested in Home & Garden related topics.

This notification from Amazon’s native shopping app is a discrete way to move consumers back into the purchasing funnel. At first glance, it’s not apparent that Amazon is trying to sell from notifications like this. The path to re-engage the consumer and put them back in the purchasing funnel is disguised as a community of posts related to topics the consumer may be interested in. This community is called Spark, by Amazon. Here’s the beauty… there’s no real signing-up, or intensive process to undergo to be a part of this ‘community’. A user is simply there… in the space of what Amazon thinks a particular user may be interested in. Users will see real content from real people posting about their favorite tricks of the trade, product reviews, questions and answers, and oh yeah… the opportunity to purchase products.

Why is this so important?

When a consumer sees content related to their purchasing behavior in Amazon’s Spark community and they’re connecting with other individuals and at the same time being influenced to make a purchase - again, keyword here is “discretely” Amazon is reaping the rewards. They’re controlling the eyeballs, and where the eyeballs are the money follows.

To discretely infiltrate a consumer's subconscious and influence purchasing behaviors is the new gold rush… it’s a goldmine in an #inception type of way… Think about it, Amazon is not having to compete with other brands and distractions on traditional social media platforms.

We here at Digital Radar think a consumer's personal space is becoming increasingly less private and at the same time more personal. Here’s what we mean. Less private in the terms of nearly everything a consumer does digitally is tracked, quantified. More personal in terms of using machine learning to optimize hyper-personalized content automatically.

With companies like Amazon pushing out content and notifications based on a users shopping habits and interest, plus the personalization of connecting someone to what other shoppers are buying or interested in is a discrete way to get an audience to open the app, browse, read, and learn. With the goal to potentially, make a purchase or influence a friend who may be interested in the content/product they are looking at.

Just like Amazon's Spark community, Apple's paid music subscription also shows the music taste/habits of other people you are connected with. Companies are taking notice that to really influence a person, their closest friends are a great place to start due to the authenticity and trust already established within that group.

If you're at all skeptical... take a look at this insight from Stackla - they recently published research which indicated an overwhelming majority of consumers (81%) say that they're influenced by their friend's social media post!

Not only are consumer's influenced to make purchase decisions from their closest friends, but even a stranger’s social content rates as more authentic than branded content! If your mind isn't blown away right now... check. your. pulse, make sure you're still breathing. This concept is at the very core of what discrete social media marketing is.

Let's bring it all together...

When companies like Amazon use their native apps and platforms, consumer data, and build a community off of it, you have the recipe to gain and retain a lion share of the eyeballs (and of course... their wallets).

Ready to learn more? Watch our webinar where we take a deeper dive into exploring, what is discrete social media marketing. And sign up for our upcoming webinars to learn more.

Paid Search Terms Analysis

Sun, 11 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Finding the right keywords to power your paid search marketing

Paid search campaigns help build traffic to a site, and are most important in the early phases of a website. By increasing traffic through paid campaigns, domain authority is established and organic SERP rankings increase as a result.

OUR OBJECTIVE IS TO TAILOR YOUR CAMPAIGN TO MATCH THE OBJECTIVES YOU HAVE SET (I.E. AWARENESS, CONVERSION ETC.)

KEY COMPONENTS TO YOUR APPROACH TO PAID SEARCH:

Keyword research
Keyword clusters and landing pages
Scenario planning
Measuring and quantifying performance

KEYWORD ANALYSIS AND PLANNING

Look at the digital landscape to determine what terms you should consider. A key element to this process is to look at not only terms related to your brand, but unbranded terms as well.

Key steps in your keyword research once you have identified search terms:

Review search volume and additional opportunities for broad phrase matching and additional terms
Assess the competition's bidding activity
Investigate search term interest by location for possible geo-targeting opportunities

AD SEGMENTATION BY KEYWORD GROUPINGS AND CONNECTION TO LANDING PAGES

Once keyword terms are clustered, variations need to be explored to determine the number and content of the various ads. At this point, it's essential to think about the pull through from the ad copy, call-to-action (CTA) and website destination. Ensuring there is contextual continuity is critical to avoid losing the user and increasing bounce rates from the paid search landing page.

The reason for grouping keywords is to create tight, relevant clusters of terms that ladder up to broader categories or topics that users are searching. This grouping will allow you to serve more actionable and purposeful content to users that can deep link them to specific destinations on your website or drive them to specific landing pages to elicit a desired action.

Landing pages are a critical component to your paid search strategy, as they are the destination for the user and can impact your Quality Score on Google. And It's good to keep in mind that things like bounce rate and page load time affect your quality score. Your quality score is used in conjunction with your bid amount to determine if your ad gets displayed and in which position (ranking 1-4).

PERFORMANCE AND BUDGET PLANNING WITH SIMULATION

Leverage known data to estimate cost and performance of keywords and campaign:

Inputs

Share of voice target thresholds
Search volume by term
Suggested bid
Competitor bid activity

Outputs

Estimated campaign cost and CPC
Projected Impressions
Estimated clicks and click-through rate

Using these data inputs provides outputs to estimate campaign budget and set baseline performance expectations.

QUANTIFY YOUR PAID SEARCH RESULTS

How often do you need to examine your analytics and what types of metrics should you be seeking?

Share of voice reports run bi-weekly

- Show impression share on all keyword terms vs. competition

Monthly search term reports (Aggregate campaign and individual terms)

- Impression and impression share (Google only)

- # of clicks and click-thru rate (CTR)

- Average position (rank 1-4)

- Costs and average cost per click (CPC)

Utilize tracking codes across all ads and paid search accounts to monitor site engagement from traffic acquisition

At Digital Radar we focus on quantifying your marketing performance, so our approach to analytics focuses not just on the campaign but on pulling our analysis through to how your acquired traffic performs once it reaches the online destination.

6 Tips to Optimize Your Social Media Strategy in 2018

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Facebook algorithm changes are not the only thing you need to be worrying about right now.

2018 is going to be a challenging year for social marketers... no doubt. From the death of organic reach on Facebook to forking over more money to play in the social sandbox - we've got you covered with some quick tips to think about as you begin to combat a year of significant social marketing challenges.

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The Rise of Social Media Marketing

Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

If "Social Media" Were a Company, We'd Be Rich

The role and importance of social marketing are at an all-time high. Actually, let us be more clear... social media is and will remain an undeniable force that dominates the marketing world for the foreseeable future. Social is both an art and a science, and to ignore it would be foolish... well unless you're comfortable with being mediocre. Even businesses with that mindset are on a short time horizon to accepting the reality of needing a social media marketing strategy. The more likely scenario - it'll be too late for most who "wait and see". Waiting for some magical unicorn to dispel their fears of something they're unfamiliar with.

In this blog post, "The Rise of Social Media", I don't go into a timeline of events that have lead us to where we are today. Instead, I focus on comparing, at a high-level, the rise of social and decline in traditional Marketing communication activities - like, public relations.

In fact, if "social media" were a company and we had invested in "it" back in 2008, we'd be billionaires. Or, perhaps zillionaires. Data from Google shows the interest and search volume of social media marketing is at its highest levels. Imagine the below chart is a stock ticker...

There's no doubt social media marketing has become more interesting, empowering and insightful. The ability for businesses, brands and everyday people to share their message, instantly (and for free) with their audience is mind-blowingly amazing.

What's equally, if not more amazing, are the tools marketers have to target their message to their respective audiences. And, deeply understand their audiences to better connect their content with them.

Realize, today, that people can access a near-infinite amount of content anywhere, and anytime, across almost every screen - so your social content needs to be timely and relevant.

SIDE NOTE: IF YOUR BUSINESS OR BRAND ISN'T ON SOCIAL... YOUR COMPETITION SAYS THANK YOU!

Yet many businesses and their marketing teams still rely on traditional marketing methods, like PR. Take a look at the chart below. Similarly to the rise of social media marketing chart, the below chart shows the significant decline and interest in public relations, as an example:

If you or your leadership team (boss) is still skeptical about the "value" or "ROI" of social media, let me ask you this... Where else can you talk to your ideal audience in a timely, quantifiable and most of all conversational way? Here's another question, where else can your marketing content provide you with micro insights into your audiences lifestyle, behaviors and demographics?

Facebook has some great audience insights that marketers can use to effectively deploy their content strategy. Take a look at the graphic below. On the left, it shows Facebook's audience (globally) and a short list of the top lifestyle clusters associated with their audience base. On the right, is a very small sample of the deeper insights gained from understanding your audience's lifestyle cluster. From their financial habits, where they live and what a day-in-the-life is like for that lifestyle cluster.

Unless you are stubborn and not willing to admit it, you cannot deny the power of the insights afforded to marketers through social media. Social media has become an "insights powerhouse".

f you are questioning where to start or even looking to take your established social media marketing program to the next level - let's talk...

One trend we believe will come to life in 2018 is shown through brands like Apple, and how they are using their platform and products to evolve into what we're calling " Discrete Social Networking ". Check out our post on how to dive deeper on discrete social media marketing, and how you can leverage this information to grow your business.

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Got a question? Leave us a comment below, or just tell us "hi".

Seduce Your Audience With Influencer Marketing

Wed, 20 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Finding Authoritative Voices to Drive Desired Consumer Behaviors

Moz.com defines influencer marketing as-- the process of developing relationships with influential people that can lead to their assisting you in creating visibility for your product or service.

ARE INFLUENCERS PART OF YOUR CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY?

Here's why they should be:

From 2014 to 2015 the number of global ad blockers being used grew 94% on mobile and 16% on desktop ( KPCB.com )
Another study showed that in June 2016, 26.3% of users block ads (emarketer)
90% of social media users were influenced to make a purchase after seeing relevant social content (geometry global)
92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from others, even people they don’t know, over branded content.

The purpose of influencer marketing is to influence the behavior of your target audience by a well known authority promoting or endorsing your brand in a way that reaches your audience. An influencer can be a trusting and authentic voice that serves to build a relationship between your customers and your brand in a way that traditional marketing cannot.

Speaking of being different from standard offline and online marketing, influencer marketing is unique in that it delivers a branded message from an outside party that is a trusted authority. A major misconception with influencer marketing is that you need to find an influencer with a big audience, when in reality you should seek to find someone with the best fit and relation to the brand audience.

There is a perception that influencers exist in a hierarchy, whereby the larger the celebrity status or social following the more a brand should pay attention. While that can sometimes be the case depending on your budget and situation, it does not always hold true. In a study performed by Markerly, of 5 million Instagram unpaid posts, they found that as an influencer's followers increase, the corresponding rate of engagement decreases.

Influencer marketing messages are best delivered via social channels. This method of dissemination does not disrupt the users consumption of content, but rather it is part of it. However, the type of campaign you are running and your audience's consumption habits will play a large role in determining the best channels for disseminating content. Social listening can play a large role in determining how and where your audience consumes the most content.

From an influencer perspective, the blog is the #1 medium to disseminate content with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter closely following (Altimeter).

Marketers view Facebook as the #1 source for influencer campaign content followed by Twitter, Youtube and Instagram (Altimeter).

At the end of the day channel selection is a critical element to your strategy. Selecting your channels is dependent on both the influencer you have selected and your target audience behaviors. We can see from the above, that while there is some overlap, you will need to research the best combination with matching your audience to the right influencer.

Social listening can play a major role in identifying and mapping influencers for your brand. This mapping also enables tracking and campaign analysis to be completed. Furthermore, listening informs content consumption patterns. Read more about how to find your brands audience, here .

FOUR KEY WAYS TO ENTICE INFLUENCERS TO SPEAK ABOUT YOUR BRAND:

Send an influencer a free product or service to test and use
Pay for sponsored content - i.e., highlight your product or service in a blog post or video
Create a guest post
Contests to win your product or service

In an Altimeter survey it shows that sometimes (35.1%) and never (12.8%) do brands request a disclaimer to be shown.

In closing, the number one take-away for all influencer marketing campaigns is to be transparent and disclose the relationship the brand or company has with this individual or group.

The FTC has been keeping an eye on influencers with endorsements and whether or not proper disclosure has occurred. By not disclosing payment, the FTC views this as deceptive advertising .

Lord & Taylor is one of several cases where the FTC filed a complaint for failure to disclose that influencers posting on Instagram promoting a product did not tell viewers they were being compensated.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HEAR MORE ABOUT HOW INFLUENCER MARKETING COULD HELP GROW YOUR BUSINESS FILL OUT THE FORM BELOW TO GET IN TOUCH WITH US.

Online Lead Generation: How to Use Google Analytics to Measure Website Goals

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Google Analytics 101: Setting Up Website Goals

Analytics is like the cool guy that everyone knows about, but no one has had the guts to approach, extend their hand, and actually meet and hang out with. In fact, in my experience working with traditional marketers, many run for the hills when it comes time to talk about anything that has to do with quantifiable measurement of marketing results.

There are several tools out there marketers and business owners are using to collect analytics on their website. Lucky for you, the most popular tool also has an incredibly robust and widely utilized FREE version. Drum roll please... Introducing Google Analytics . Fun fact: there are more than 30 million websites currently using the tool.

If you don’t have Google Analytics already installed on your website, the process is fairly straightforward . But if you still have questions, feel free to reach out to us – we’d be glad to help!

We’re going to focus on the creation of GOALS in Google Analytics, because Goal Completions are the metrics used to calculate your website’s Conversion Rate . Your conversion rate is a simple calculation--it measures how many people came to your website, divided by how many people completed those Goals while on your site.

There are certain key behaviors that are more important to your business than others. For instance, the completion of a “Request a Quote” form is more valuable than a PDF download, since that's how you gain strong leads. You should be tracking both, but for those activities deemed “conversions”, you’ll want to use Goals. For everything else, you’ll want to utilize Google Analytics Event Tracking.

You need to know how many people are completing GOALS on your site. Here is how to do it:

Step 1: Decide What website behavior you want to track

Let’s start with something simple: Contact Us form submissions. Since we’re keeping this post at a “beginner” level, we aren’t going to mention how to track these behaviors with events. We’ll save that for another post down the line.

Step 2: Create a Goal in Google Analytics

Within the Google Analytics tool, navigate to Admin> Goals. See screenshot below:

You’ll want to determine what type of goal you’re wanting to create. You can select to either create a custom goal or a template goal . In previous iterations of the interface, the “Template” option provided you with a laundry list of goal templates to choose from, but as of the date this article was written (12/3/2017), you’ll be given the same four choices for Goal Type regardless if you select custom or template (let’s use template so we’re all on the same page):

1. Destination

o This goal’s behavior requirements are fulfilled when someone visits a particular page. For instance, if you have a form that takes people to a “Thank You Page” after it’s submitted, the URL of that Thank You Page would be the destination.

2. Duration

o This engagement goal is most often utilized on sites that rely on ad revenue for support. Duration measures how long someone was on your site. If you need to show advertisers that your site keeps users engaged for an average minimum of five minutes, you can set this goal to five minutes, and each time someone stays on your site for five minutes or longer in a single session, a goal will be recorded.

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3. Pages/Screens per session

o Once again, a goal that is typically used by sites that rely on ad revenue, the Pages/Screens per session give website managers the ability to measure very specific levels of engagement on a website. If you need to show advertisers that on average, people that come to your site visit 10 pages, you would use this goal to set that up.

4. Event

o And here we are at goals that are configurable by events. It is possible to record every single interaction with your site in Google Analytics using events (ideally through Tag Manager). However, not all of those events are worth of being called a “Goal” and therefore used to determine your site’s conversion rate. But for those that are – for instance, if you’re using events to measure Contact Us form submissions – you’ll want to use this type of goal to capture that behavior.

We’re going to select “Destination” as our goal, and we are going to input our destination URL:

Unless you know how much money each form submission is worth in terms of dollars, leave “Value” set to “Off” (and call us to help you figure it out!). If there are no other steps required for someone to complete that form, also leave “Funnel” set to “Off” as well.

Click the “Verify this Goal” link at the bottom of the page, and Google Analytics will tell you whether or not, based on historical activity, your new goal was completed within the past seven days. If it was, congratulations, you’ve just set up your first Google Analytics goal! If your goal didn’t verify, it could be an issue with people actually not completing the goal, low traffic volume, and a goal that was configured incorrectly.

If you need help setting up analytics goals, need help with analytics strategy, or help with your general digital marketing strategy, give us a call! In the meantime, be sure to claim your free $1500 marketing consultation below!

5 Reasons Your Social Campaign Isn't Performing

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Spoiler: it’s all about social relevance

Whether you're a small business or managing a big brand - there's a chance you have boosted a social media post and likely been somewhat disappointed with the results. Maybe you're not familiar with how to interpret the results, or maybe you are just unsure where to start with a social media campaign. Regardless of your situation, brand, size and familiarity with social, the following five reasons describe why your social media campaign isn't performing.

Reason number 1: You don’t have clear campaign objectives

Chances are you’ve heard the saying, "you cannot manage what you cannot measure". Well, luckily for us social media is highly quantifiable, if you know what metrics are valuable to you/your organization. Before you begin any social media campaign, no matter how simple or complex, you must absolutely have clear objectives so you know what success is and isn’t.

Here’s a quick example of a technique I use to really hone-in the root of what our objective is… or at least why we are launching a campaign. With every campaign, ask “why” five times to understand the root of your objective(s) - Why are we creating X campaign? Now after each answer, ask why until you hit approximately 5 whys... A little awkward, yes, but you'll thank me later for it. This process will set you and your campaign up for success and make choosing the right objective in a social platform like Facebook (example below), a lot easier.

REASON NUMBER 2: YOUR AUDIENCE TARGETING ISN'T WELL DEFINED

Too hot, too cold, too broad, too narrow... sounds a lot like a bedtime story. Targeting your audience on social media is a science. Careful calibration, planning and research are necessary to make sure your story gets seen by the people that matter most to you. Remember, on social media, your competition is everyone and anyone distracting your target audience from seeing/engaging with your content or campaign.

We hear our clients say things like "we want to reach homeowners". And the key to any successful campaign is to drill down the audience segments that really matter to them. As an example, if you want to reach homeowners, you have to understand that the needs, wants and pain-points of a homeowner wildly vary across geographies, consumer behaviors and psychographics or demographics.

There are nearly infinite ways to target people on social - let us take your campaign to the next level.

REASON NUMBER 3: YOUR SOCIAL CAMPAIGN BUDGET ISN'T OPTIMIZED

According to a recent blog post by Hootsuite , ad spend on social media will likely grow past $35 billion this year (2017). That's a lot of ads... and a lot of people trying to get their audience's attention. There's a lot to consider in setting a budget for a campaign - which is why having your audience well defined will help set your budget. We know every marketing dollar is a critical resource... and the good news is, social media is the most affordable medium to get in front of your target audience(s) - if you're setting it up right. Research shows that businesses that earn more than $25 million in annual revenue spend an average of 9 percent of that revenue on marketing. Those that earn less than $25 million generally spend an average of 11 percent of revenue on marketing.

Our goal is to always get the right eyeballs on our clients content. Remember, there's a lot that goes into the reach, and effectiveness of your campaign - and budget isn't always the problem or solution. So how much of your marketing dollars should go to social as a whole, and your campaign? On average, the daily social media campaign spend is $350. A point to keep in mind is that with so many variables, two campaigns with the same ad spend will undoubtedly will yield different results.

REASON NUMBER 4: YOUR CREATIVE ISN’T "RIGHT"

A picture is worth more than a thousand words, it's what your audience immediately notices. If it's not relevant to them, or the story you're telling is just completely uninteresting, then your campaign is in trouble... There's a a lot of psychology behind the colors, placement, text, imagery, icons etc., therefore, your social media creative should not be an afterthought. Your creative should elicit an emotion or invoke a response that compels your audience to want to engage... i.e. to click-through.

One area where we have seen some of our clients struggle is there is a belief that what the organization leadership team or HIPPO (highest paid persons opinion) finds interesting, their audience will too. Not always the case. An audience-centric mindset should lead every aspect of your social strategy. Not anecdotal beliefs.

REASON NUMBER 5: YOUR CAMPAIGN ISN'T RELEVANT

When you run a social campaign, on Facebook for example, the first 500 impressions of your ad will immediately determine the velocity of your content. If within those first set of impressions your campaign gets little to no engagement... well it's going to be a tougher and more expensive road to get your content in front of your target audience.

On the other hand, if your first 500 impressions deliver serious engagement, well then... strap on your seatbelt it's about to gain some serious speed (visibility). Not only will your campaign be seen by more of your target audience, it will actually cost lest to run this ad. In other words, social media relevance determines the visibility, cost and ROI of your campaign.

Facebook scores your social media relevance on a scale from 1 - 10. The higher, the better.

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