Even though we’ve eased back into a pre-pandemic world, consumer behaviors and wants have changed. 2022 gave marketers a run for their money as consumers tightened their belts and re-evaluated their spending. 2023 will likely see similar changes in spending habits as the use of apps to track spending has increased by 9% this year.

Before sounding the alarm bells, this doesn’t mean your profits are doomed. It means that businesses that are paying attention to the marketing lessons learned in 2022 will have a much easier time reaching their goals.

The top-performing companies know that they can adapt to these changing needs through their content marketing. Keep reading to dive into the content lessons marketers are taking into 2023.

6 Content Marketing Lessons to take into 2023

Lesson 1: Re-evaluate your content marketing budget

With almost 43% of internet users reporting that they use ad blockers, making a shift in your offerings and adjusting your marketing language may not be enough. Today’s consumers are looking for connection, beyond engagement, they want companies that understand their needs vs being treated as one in the crowd.

Consumers know that ads are not a one-to-one personalized experience and they are happy to ignore mass marketing messages. The top companies know that more ads aren’t going to save them but investing in a strong inbound marketing strategy can.

Like with most things in life, you get what you pay for with content and the companies that aren’t investing in this important tool are not seeing the return for a reason. To attract new business the content needs to be engaging or educational. Each piece of content should add value to the consumer, otherwise, it has no marketing power.

The next year should see many teams moving budgets from clicks to videographers and content creators. If you invest in being the go-to source for information in your niche, you’ll establish yourself as a leader in that space.

Lesson 2: Plan to incorporate interactive content

Yes, we know that attention spans are getting shorter, but that’s not why interactive content is so effective. Human beings are similar but unique and everyone processes information differently. Some people are readers so traditional blogs and articles will pull them in while other people prefer hearing the information which means they would be on the lookout for videos or podcasts.

Interactive content goes beyond your traditional blog or video because it requires the user to actively engage in order to get the content. This can include:

• Games
• Quizzes
• Personality tests & assessments
• Polls
• Assessments
• Cost or ROI calculators
• Interactive webinars
• Interactive eBooks

Interactive content can also give you ways to make your content work harder as many of these can be created from an existing article or video.

Lesson 3: The shift to video and virtual is real

It takes much longer for businesses to come around to digital trends than individuals, but if you’re not already mastering video and dabbling in virtual worlds you’re going to fall behind.

The popularity of apps like TikTok and Instagram’s Reels has made it clear that brands need to start embracing video fully if they want to stay relevant in today’s marketing landscape. A great video marketing strategy for next year will ensure that valuable marketing dollars aren’t being spent on content that doesn’t convert!

While we’re still a little ways away from a true “metaverse” that doesn’t mean that brands haven’t already started figuring out where marketing opportunities lie in these digital universes.

Even if it seems like your company is lightyears away from participating in VR marketing, the rest of the world isn’t.

Lesson 4: Create a better content experience

Content strategies shouldn’t be something that you set and forget. Consumer behaviors, preferences, and familiarity with your brand change over time which means the same campaign won’t be as effective forever. It’s important to go back and re-evaluate key pieces of content and ask if this flow still helps move customers along their journey.

The goal of content marketing isn’t to produce as much content as possible, it’s to create tools that are helpful for your customers so that you start building a long-lasting relationship with them. When building out a content strategy it’s important to ask how each piece adds value to the customer. If it doesn’t, then that campaign should be brought back to the drawing board.

Put yourself in the shoes of your consumer. Is the content they are receiving educational, helpful, or entertaining?

The brand is just a passing thought for most consumers. You have to stand out by bringing value. Expect to see top-performing companies executing new personalization and hyper-personalization strategies.

Lesson 5: Lean into SEO

Creating all the best-quality content in the world won’t help drive business if no one can find it. This is why SEO and content marketing have always gone hand-in-hand. Doubling down on a content strategy means that there will need to be an SEO element as well. It just might not look like what you’re used to.

For the year ahead, expect to see less emphasis on keywords and page ranking and more focus on trend hunting. SEO will still be crucial to get important content and kay pages indexed, but SEO teams who aren’t already watching for search trends will want to incorporate that into their plans.

When done well, SEO can hugely help inform your content marketing strategy by alerting the content team when there is a shift in the popularity of a certain phrase. Trend insights can also be used to plan editorial calendars where specific seasonal or yearly trends can be planned for in advance.

Lesson 6: Leverage empathetic content strategies

More and more consumers are holding companies accountable for their environmental and social impact. Today’s customers are picky about who and where they purchase from because they want to support brands that align with their values.

Surveys have shown that consumers want brands to have a moral compass. Almost 38% of consumers said they want companies to be socially responsible and reduce their environmental impact.

This is why so many brands have been focusing on being more human and that won’t be going away soon. H&M, for example, has recycling boxes in stores across the globe where consumers can drop off a bag of old or unwanted clothes in exchange for a thank-you coupon toward their next purchase. Nespresso offers a recycling program for their aluminum coffee pods. These initiatives acknowledge the companies’ impact in these industries and publicly show what they are doing to lessen it.

Companies looking to leverage empathetic content must come from a place that’s true to the brand or customers will be quick to call it out as a performance. This type of marketing will only be effective if the company is really willing to take a stance.

Looking Ahead

Content marketing is changing to match consumer behaviors and consumers have been pretty clear about what they want (and don’t want) to see from brands. The companies that are listening will dominate in the next year.

The post 6 Content Marketing Lessons to Use in 2023 appeared first on SharpSpring.

According to an older Nielsen Norman Group, users typically decide whether to explore a website or leave within their first 10 seconds of browsing. If you’re utilizing copywriting best practices and your copy holds their attention for that long, you have another 20 seconds to convince them to want to learn more. And if they linger for more than 30 seconds, there’s a good chance that they’ll still be there after two more minutes—and two minutes is a big commitment for web users.

It is very likely that things have got even more challenging for marketers, with the initial bounce decision having shrunk to 6 seconds.

So how do you hold a reader’s attention?

It’s the combination of many things (like load time, design, page usability). But it is also about the copy.

When written well, a web copy invites visitors to keep reading and explore a site further—and ultimately convert. On the other hand, poor copywriting discourages users from sticking around. It’s only through text that your brand voice becomes clear after all.

So, to convince today’s prospects to stick around and become buyers, pay attention to these 9 copywriting best practices.

1. Find the right tone for your audience

You want your copy to sound professional and authoritative, but you also don’t want it to come across as unapproachable. It’s a delicate but necessary balance for driving more conversions from your target audience.

To nail the right tone for your readers:

• Imagine that you’re talking to a client face to face. Listen to the script in your head and write it out. It’ll help you “write like you speak” without letting your copy become too casual.
• Avoid using jargon and terminology that the average reader wouldn’t know, unless you’re targeting a highly educated audience. Users generally want an easy reading experience, not a flashback to studying for the SAT.
• Address your users directly by writing in second person. Using “you” and “your” makes your writing more conversational and personal, while writing in third person generally feels distant and standoffish.

Text Optimizer is a powerful tool allowing you to discover terms and concepts that your audience is discussing. It helps you find the words and terminology that is associated with your niche and hence create a highly relevant copy that appeals to your target users:

2. Showcase numbers for impact

When possible, include precise numbers in your copy to reinforce major points. Quantitative information levels up your messaging, making it more tangible and precise.

Without numbers, your writing comes off as vague and flowery. Consider the difference between these two examples:

1. Our solar-powered flashlight’s beams travel impressive distances.
2. Our solar-powered flashlight throws light up to an impressive 700 feet.

See how the phrase “700 feet” in the latter statement provides more detail to readers? In this way, exact figures and statistics not only provide more support to your claims; they also lend your brand more credibility.

For a real-life example of copywriting that harnesses the power of numbers, take a look “Examining Inequality” report from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that features one of the most incredible copywriting out there, that is also empowered by data:

The result: visitors to the page can see the tangible difference the company is making in reducing inequality worldwide. Including these numbers showcases the foundation’s commitment to its mission, and it’s far more effective than if they simply wrote, “We make a difference!”

Always strive to focus on content tactics that drive your brand’s growth.

3. Incorporate “power” words into your copy

Power words are sensory, emotional, and action words that have strong associations for readers and trigger action. You’ve probably seen examples all over the internet, especially in headlines and calls to action:

• Free
• New
• Exclusive
• Instant
• Lucky
• Guaranteed
• Foolproof
• Little-known

They work because they’re strong, definite, and inspire trust. Any time you want to use a wishy-washy word like “maybe” or “some,” replace it with a power word.

Use Visualping to closely monitor your competitors’ calls-to-actions and how they are changing them. This will give you quite a few ideas on how to improve yours!

4. Appeal to readers’ emotions and logic

Data speaks to your audience’s rational brain, but emotions have a more powerful pull on the human decision-making process. As logical as we think we are, we tend to make decisions with our hearts first and then back ourselves up with facts.

Use that order of operations as a copywriter: emotions first, then facts. Lead by appealing to the prospect’s emotions—for instance, by addressing an issue they might have. Then present a solution.

In case you don’t find your product or service particularly stirring, know that emotion doesn’t mean inserting melodrama into your copy. Strong feelings like anger and love aren’t the only ways to reach potential customers.

5. Provide relevant social proof

Nothing quite sells like social proof—that is, the power of social influence. Applied to marketing, social proof explains why someone is more likely to buy a product if two or three million other people have already happily bought it.

So use this psychological principle in your own copy. Whether it’s customer testimonials, case studies, or something else, find a way to incorporate social proof into your copy and landing pages. This tactic can win over users who are hesitant about trying your product or service.

Here’s a detailed guide on where to place your testimonials on the site and how to best showcase your customers’ reviews.

6. Remember to sell your results

When you’re explaining how your product or service meets a need, don’t stop at simply describing its features. Call readers’ attention to how their lives or jobs will be easier if they buy from you.

For instance:

• If you run a home cleaning service, highlight how great it is to spend your weekends hiking or hosting dinner parties instead of cleaning your house.
• If you sell medical records software to health care providers, brag about how your program can help them serve patients more efficiently.

Paint a picture of what you can do for your users even if it’s outside the realm of your product’s offering.

7. Write eye-catching headlines

Remember how users generally decide whether to stick around a website or leave within the first few seconds?

Oftentimes the first thing they’ll see is your web page’s headline—which means it’s crucial to make it a great one. After all, titles are the entry point for your users, and whether they decide to click and continue reading depends on whether yours is compelling enough.

To create an eye-catching title, try one of the following:

1. Ask a question.
2. Drop a shocking fact.
3. Address an emotionally charged topic.
4. Include numbers for specificity.
5. Take a controversial stance.

8. Address users’ fears and concerns

Beyond selling a product or service, effective copywriting assures readers by clearing any uncertainties or fears before these feelings can drive them away. Oftentimes, these worries stem from fear of financial loss or invasion of privacy, so it’s worth investing in consumer protection. Making sure your site has an SSL certificate is the first step.

From there, make these features clear by including them in your copy. For instance, include language like:

• 100% Satisfaction guaranteed
• No-hassle returns
• Secure checkout

Giving customers peace of mind doesn’t have to fit a cookie-cutter mold, by the way—try getting creative with it.

Alternatively, if your customers are concerned about their security, consider getting a trust badge for your site. The most effective, as measured by the percentage of people who trust them, include:

1. Norton Secured
2. McAfee Tested
3. BBB Accredited Business

At its core, copywriting strives to persuade readers of a certain view or perspective. It’s all about minimizing bad feelings—fear, uncertainty, disinterest—and increasing good feelings like confidence, pride, and excitement.

9. Structure your content for readability

The formatting of your content matters. Long blocks of text are visually overwhelming, regardless of whether you’re reading on a desktop or a mobile device.

With that in mind:

• Use line breaks generously. Two to three sentences per paragraph usually do the trick, but don’t be afraid to let one sentence stand on its own.
• Give structure to your content by writing informative but concise headings.
• Break up long paragraphs with bullet points and numbered lists.
• Bold, underline, or italicize any info you want your readers to see. This emphasis helps to catch readers’ eyes even if they’re skimming—just don’t overdo it.
• Use images to let people’s eyes get a rest from text and re-focus

SE Ranking on-page SEO checker will let you analyze your page for performance and readability.

Conclusion

Take a look at your website—how many of these copywriting strategies do you currently use?

If the answer’s none, don’t be surprised to find that your website has lackluster conversion rates.

After all, copywriting is fundamental to branding.

Copywriting goes a long way in getting users to stay on your website and more importantly, convert. This is because it functions as your voice and means of persuasion. If your copy is weak, then what would compel readers to act?

Turn things around by incorporating the above best practices into your content strategy. The better your copywriting, the more users you’ll see staying on your website and converting.

The post 9 Copywriting Best Practices for Converting More Users appeared first on SharpSpring.

Not at all. TikTok is projected to reach more than 1.8 billion monthly users worldwide in 2022, which is remarkable since its launch just 6 years ago. Contrary to public belief, those users aren’t only from younger generations. As TikTok has evolved into a highly community-driven video platform, it’s become a source for entertainment and education.

Therefore, it’s is a great marketing channel for almost any business, no matter their industry. Whether you’re creating content on behalf of your clients or want to freshen up your brand, TikTok is worth your consideration. The reason TikTok has exploded in growth is that it includes much more than crazy cats and virtual dance-offs! It’s a versatile, dynamic platform that makes it easy to provide value to your target audience.

Who Can Businesses Reach On TikTok?

TikTok may skew younger, but older generations have eagerly joined the platform. While 63% of TikTok users are under the age of 29, more than 34% are millennials or Gen X. TikTok often appeals to older digital natives who now find typical social networks boring, as well as those who prefer highly visual content.

Most of TikTok’s users are women (or nonbinary) and POC, which sets it apart from the other top social platforms that skew male and/or white. Indeed, TikTok appeals to women and POC: about one-quarter of U.S. women and one-third of Black or Hispanic adults use TikTok, compared to just 17% of men and 18% of white Americans.

So, TikTok is an excellent opportunity to diversify your or your clients’ following. Plus, you can build a strong community, especially if your target personas comprise women and/or POC. This social channel is a bit of an equalizer. Content is truly king, as anything that doesn’t resonate with your ideal audience on TikTok quickly fades into the feed.

Don’t be alarmed, though. While other agencies rely on traditional social channels and their oft-artificial posts, TikTok lets you take a more authentic, meaningful approach.

How Can Agencies Reach Their Ideal Audience on TikTok

Even with a potentially broad user base, marketers should work within TikTok’s quirky, fast-paced tone. While people may be serious about their interests and pain points, they hop on TikTok when they want to learn or laugh. Even brands’ most earnest social media posts may not fly if they don’t keep it light.

That doesn’t mean your business must sell Halloween costumes or soy sauce to do well on TikTok. The key is to prioritize your brand’s community rather than your offerings.

Consider the experiences that your target audience has — or would like to have! What do they want to learn? What makes them laugh? How can you translate your (or your client’s) key differentiators into unique, engaging social content?

Agencies are quintessentially B2B, which means a lot of typical “social experience” content falls short. It’s all about making your audience feel like VIPs. So, strive to cultivate an “insider” community with your TikTok. Each post should make your target clients think, “Wow, that is so me.”

How to Develop Your TikTok Marketing Strategy

TikTok’s organic nature and rapid pace can make it challenging to plan a marketing strategy. You likely won’t realize which content will perform well until you spend some time engaging with your brand’s community. Thus, the best way to get started is simply to start.

TikToks are entirely distinct from Facebook posts, tweets, LinkedIn updates, and other social content. The closest social post format would be Instagram’s Reels. However, TikToks demonstrate a sort of quirky roughness that flies in the face of content marketing convention.

Highly stylized or heavily branded messaging is easily overlooked on TikTok. Users want to see clever, creative, and interactive content.

With all that in mind, follow these steps to build a winning TikTok strategy for your agency.

1. Decide Which Type of Account You Need

On most social networks, you can have either a personal or business profile. TikTok is similar, although it calls the former “Creator accounts.” Here’s the catch, though: many companies prefer to keep their Creator accounts rather than switch to Business.

On Instagram, Pinterest, etc., Business accounts typically offer more analytics and advertising features. Facebook expressly forbids businesses from using individual accounts. TikTok, however, offers helpful marketing features for both account types.

Here’s a quick rundown of the differences:

TikTok Creator Accounts:

• access to full music and sound library, including copyrighted songs
• Duets: record side-by-side videos with other users
• Stitch: add your videos and sounds onto existing TikToks
• Promote: push posts out to a wider audience
• DMs with friends only (which limits your ability to do outreach)
• Q&A: aggregate text comments and response videos for questions you’ve asked and answered
• 1k followers required to get a website link

TikTok Business Accounts:

• access to commercial sounds and royalty-free music
• Duets and Stitch (but only with other videos using RF sounds)
• Promote
• DMs with all users, plus automated responses
• TikTok Shop
• website link with new accounts upon registering your business with TikTok

As you see, there are clear pros and cons for each account type. If you’re planning to use TikTok to chat with prospects or receive inquiries, choose a Business account. If you’d like greater freedom in curating, remixing, and responding to content, stick with the Creator account.

2. Determine Your Core Topics

As with any sort of content marketing, identify your core topics that will attract and nurture leads. Typically, you’d work backward from your target personas. For TikTok, though, you’ll need to focus on their interests instead of creating content to push them along a buying journey. In other words, speak to their motivators rather than hitting their pain points.

Depending on your persona model, you may have listed:

• Their favorite hobbies
• Their worldview and philosophy
• Most pressing desires and goals
• What makes them happy
• Who they want to spend time with
• Public figures and celebrities they admire

Consider which topics would affirm those interests. Explore TikTok hashtags with similar content. Then, start brainstorming how to translate your agency’s value into engaging videos — whether educational, entertaining, or both!

For example, your agency’s ideal client avatar may be a millennial purpose-driven entrepreneur who founded an online eco-friendly business. They take a sustainable approach to their business and need help optimizing their ROI on paid media campaigns. When they hop on TikTok, they’re not always searching for “PPC tips.”

Overall, they’d like to see:

• inspirational stories about young entrepreneurs
• marketing wins and fails for eco-eCommerce businesses
• funny #EntrepreneurLife moments
• videos about greenwashing and its harmful effects
• hustle culture tips (or caveats)

By creating content around these topics, you can start building a meaningful relationship with your target audience. And even if not all your TikTok followers are qualified leads, remember that “a rising tide floats all boats.” The better your profile performs, the more likely you are to reach your ideal prospects.

3. Plan Out Your Content

TikTok is a rapid-paced platform, but you don’t need to post every day. Plan to engage first, publish second. Map out the topics you’ll address in each piece of content.

Unfortunately, TikTok does not offer a way to add links to posts. Keep your user journey in mind and remember that most people won’t want to leave TikTok. If you’re asking users to visit your site, direct them to your bio link.

You can also go live, as on other social platforms. Going live creates a sense of urgency about your brand. You’re sharing something exclusive and valuable, so users get excited.

4. Create a Networking Plan

As with any form of B2B marketing, networking is critical to your success. You must engage with prospective clients (and potential collaborators!) on every channel. TikTok is no exception!

Believe it or not, this social platform is an excellent place to expand your professional network. People log on to learn as well as laugh, which means you can have some great conversations.

Start by identifying popular hashtags among your target audience. These show you relevant posts and accounts.

Next, invite other TikTok users to ask you questions. If your agency is using a Creator account, the platform detects questions in comments. Once you respond, the comment thread appears under Q&A in your profile. This handy feature lets you quickly and easily demonstrate your expertise.

5. Curate and Remix Relevant Posts

One of TikTok’s biggest features is the ability to “stitch” other content into yours. Essentially, you can repurpose videos and sounds into your own TikToks. This shows that your agency is a conscientious participant in your industry. Curating content also helps forge new connections and prove your expertise. (Plus, it’s perfect if someone is already talking about your brand on TikTok!)

You can also make your “Liked” videos public (they’re private by default) and other users can see those videos on your profile. This is a good way to curate relevant content, similar to how you’d share links on Facebook or LinkedIn or retweet on Twitter. (Just be sure to only like videos you want to appear on your profile!)

6. Publish and Organize Your Content

No one likes an endless feed! Show your users exactly what you have to offer by organizing your TikToks.

First, pin the most relevant posts to the top of your feed. These should be videos that best express your brand and/or drive users to take action.

You can add published TikToks to a playlist that appears on your profile. Give each list a short and catchy name such as “Marketing Tips” or “Agency Life.” People who visit your page can easily see what your agency is all about.

Wrapping Up: Your Key to TikTok Success

TikTok has a lot of potential for businesses, especially B2B enterprises that need to forge strong relationships. Focus on what would most excite and entertain your target audience. Don’t be afraid to loosen your necktie and have a bit of fun! TikTok is all about authenticity, which builds trust … and thus, brand loyalty.

The post Why Agencies Should Join TikTok appeared first on SharpSpring.

After all, large sales numbers don’t necessarily translate to higher profit. You may be spending a lot to get those sales. And if you focus on lead generation instead of customer loyalty, you’ll eventually dry up your pipeline.

Thus, you must assess your business’s ability to deliver customer success and satisfaction and nurture leads more sustainably. You just might find that your marketing and sales strategies could benefit from a new approach. Plus, once you know how your business performs with customers, it’s easier to set attainable goals for lasting success.

Here are 7 customer success metrics you should be tracking — and how to help your marketing and sales teams leverage them.

Customer Spending Metrics to Watch

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

How much revenue has your business generated to date? That’s probably an easy metric to find. But how much revenue do you earn from each customer on average?

Your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the revenue generated by each customer over the course of their engagement with you. If most of your customers regularly purchase from you for 1 year, the CLV is how much they spend in that year on average.

This metric helps you see the long-term potential of each conversion. Instead of relying entirely on new leads, you treat every new customer as an investment.

It’s less expensive to recapture a previous customer than to convert a new one. Aim to keep every customer coming back, and you can often reduce your top-of-funnel advertising costs. CLV is a good indicator of how well you continually recapture and re-nurture previous leads.

Customer loyalty not only increases your CLV but also creates “ambassadors” who will refer your business to their friends and family. In the inbound marketing flywheel, your loyal customers regularly return to the purchase cycle, thereby giving your business momentum.

Of course, this can be a little tricky to measure, especially if you don’t have a way to track all your customers (such as in retail). In some industries, customers come and go due to the nature of the product.

A comprehensive marketing and CRM platform can help solve this problem. By gathering multiple touchpoints and lead behavioral data, you gain a complete picture of each customer’s profile, so you can improve your CLV’s accuracy — and nurture customer loyalty!

Putting CLV Into Action

To best leverage CLV to improve your customer success strategy, put it into context with these key marketing metrics.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is just what it sounds like. It’s often calculated as the sales/marketing cost per customer for a given time period. The formula is typically:

[cost of total marketing and sales efforts]/[number of customers gained]

However, your precise CAC formula depends on your team structure, overhead costs, paid advertising strategy, and many other factors. It’s up to you. Just be sure to calculate it consistently for each audience segment.

After you calculate your CAC, compare it to your CLV to assess how well your marketing and sales budget is building a strong customer base.

CLV-to-CAC Ratio

Measure CAC and CLV in tandem to better assess your business’s profitability. Ideally, your CLV-to-CAC ratio is at least 3:1. At 2:1, you’re only slightly profiting, and at 1:1 or less, you’re breaking even or losing money.

In other words, your CAC should be one-fifth to one-third of your LTV.

However, be sure to give these metrics a time frame. If you’re making a big push to grow your customer base, your CAC will naturally be higher. Measure at both the beginning and end of your growth campaign for clearer insights. Consider the costs of holiday marketing or other seasonal factors as well.

A common culprit for a high CAC is paid advertising and cold email marketing. When you rely heavily on “spray and pray” strategies, you burn through your lead lists without making meaningful connections. Worse, you end up paying for a lot of unqualified leads. You could be investing in customer loyalty instead!

That’s not to say you shouldn’t use PPC or email campaigns. Rather, leverage marketing automation to make each touchpoint relevant and meaningful. Score your leads and remove unqualified ones from your pipeline as soon as possible.

Profit Per Customer

In addition to comparing your CLV to your CAC, determine your profit per customer. You can calculate this with a simple formula:

[Customer Lifetime Value / Customer Acquisition Cost = Profit Per Customer]

This metric gives you a good idea of how many loyal customers you’re gaining with your marketing efforts. Ideally, you’re not spending money on leads who make one minimal purchase. Your Customer Lifetime Value may sound decent until you consider how much you’re spending to get those conversions. Your Profit Per Customer reflects the true value of your customer base.

These metrics help you understand how your marketing and sales efforts generate revenue, so you can set appropriate goals and benchmarks. Next, you’ll analyze the other piece of the puzzle: how happy your customers are and how likely they are to become loyal.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

Monthly Recurring Revenue is just what it sounds like. If your company sells products or services on a subscription or retainer basis, you can measure how much revenue you know you’ll get every month. Your MRR doesn’t have to be a precise tally of each customer’s actual monthly spending. It’s generally calculated as such:

[# of monthly active customers] x [average revenue per customer]

Putting MRR Into Action

Monthly Recurring Revenue is technically a measure of your business’s income, but it doubles as a customer success metric. A solid subscriber/client base is a clear sign of a trustworthy brand. The better your overall customer experience, the stronger your base. Pay attention to fluctuations in your MRR as they could indicate a shift in your target audience’s needs or satisfaction.

Expansion MRR

You can modify the MRR formula to see how your customers’ satisfaction is encouraging further spending. This metric is called expansion MRR, and it’s a good indicator of your business’s growth. Here’s how to calculate it:

[# of monthly active customers] x [average revenue per customer] + [monthly average revenue from non-recurring purchases]

Non-recurring purchases include upsells and cross-sells, add-on purchases, and so on. Expansion MRR indicates a highly engaged customer base who are willing to spend even more with your company.

MRR also helps you assess your customers’ overall satisfaction because higher spending signals their trust in your company. Let’s review some other key measures of satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction Metrics to Watch

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score is a simple assessment of your brand reputation. As you know, word-of-mouth is the best kind of advertising. The NPS® asks how likely your customer is to recommend your business to someone else. The higher your score, the stronger your network of loyal customers.

The inbound marketing model encourages referrals as part of its emphasis on attracting and recapturing leads. A solid base of happy customers creates momentum that reduces your dependence on lead generation. Plus, referred leads are more likely to convert — and their CLV is 16% higher on average (PDF).

NPS is an excellent predictor of this momentum. It’s usually measured with a simple question, “How likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to others?” Customers respond on a scale of 1 to 10. Those who give a 9 or 10 are your “promoters.” Those who rank you 6 and below are “detractors.” Your Net Promoter Score is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. If your NPS is negative, you have more detractors than promoters.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSS)

Like the Net Promoter Score, you can measure your Customer Satisfaction Score (CSS) with a single question. The customer rates your company on a scale of 1 to 10, usually after a purchase, support request, or other interaction. Ideally, they have the option to leave a comment explaining their rating. (Tip: Use automation features, such as chatbots, to immediately engage customers after an interaction.)

Once you’ve collected feedback for a given time period, calculate your Customer Satisfaction Score with this formula:

[# of positive scores (6 and above) / [# of total scores] x 100

You can collect ratings for any aspect of your business, from ordering to onboarding. Track your Customer Satisfaction Scores separately: don’t compare apples to oranges. Discrepancies may point to a gap in your customer experience. For example, if your CSS is high for your product but low post-checkout, see if your checkout process could be more user-friendly.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

One of marketing’s golden rules is to send leads down the path of least resistance. People don’t want to jump through hoops. So, the harder it is to purchase something, the less likely they are to do so.

Your Customer Effort Score (CES) indicates how hard or easy it is for people to complete an action or solve a problem with your company. Of course, you want everything to be as easy as possible, especially for your checkout process!

Like CSS and NPS, CES is usually measured with a one-question survey after a customer interaction. It asks people to rate their agreement with a statement, e.g. “It was easy to place an order/resolve my issue.” The lower the average rating, the lower your CES.

CES is a helpful proxy for overall satisfaction. In fact, it’s a better predictor of loyalty than satisfaction itself. Your CES points to ways you can optimize your customer experience and avoid creating resistance that could hurt your conversions.

Churn Rate

Customers come and go — that’s the inevitable reality of any business. But of course, you want to keep around as many customers as possible. It’s less expensive to re-engage previous customers, and they’re more likely to become promoters.

Your churn rate measures how many customers you lose within a specific timeframe. It’s most often used by service-based or SaaS companies that collect revenue from customers’ subscriptions or retainers. However, you can identify recurring customers with a well-configured CRM, then assess how many of them stop purchasing from your company. The same tool can help you re-engage (and hopefully re-convert) these lost customers.

The churn rate formula is quite simple. For any given timeframe (month, quarter, year), calculate:

[# of lost customers by end of timeframe] / [# of current customers at start of timeframe] x 100

Note: Don’t include newly acquired customers as part of your current count. For example, if you have 100 customers at the start of Q2, lose 5, and gain 10, your churn rate would be 5/100, or 5%, not 5/110.

A bit of churn is normal. Some customers will stop purchasing from your company due to their business or financial situations or simply because their needs change. But if your churn rate is higher than you’d like, it could be a sign of a less-than-ideal customer experience or a lack of re-engagement. Learn how marketing automation with SharpSpring can help you reduce churn.

Wrapping Up

These metrics give you critical insights into the strength of your brand’s reputation, how well your marketing and sales strategy align with your target audience, and the overall quality of your customer experience.

None of these measures should be made in a vacuum; they all interact to give you a complete picture. Then, you can set benchmarks and advise your marketing and sales teams accordingly.

The easiest way to consistently measure and implement your customer success metrics is with marketing automation. A dual analytical and CRM platform such as SharpSpring lets you survey customers, optimize their experience, and implement their feedback. At the end of the day, it comes down to personalization: how well you can meet your customers’ needs with a great experience — every time.

The post 10 Customer Success Metrics to Keep Your Team Motivated and Customers Loyal appeared first on SharpSpring.

And this is why many business blogs never deliver any noticeable results: They rank for random keywords that never bring any sales or leads. They have no engagement and no community.

Moreover, a business blog is usually an island: Someone is writing content for them and publishing it randomly when they have time. No other team members know what is going on with the blog or why.

If you are planning to add blogging to your digital marketing strategy, do it right from the very start.

Here’s the checklist:

1. Know Your Why

Clearly understand your primary reason for starting a business blog in the first place. Write it down, keep it visible, share it with your marketing team and refer to it often.

This goal clarity will provide the motivation your team needs to keep working on your blog consistently.

Action item: 

Write down why you are setting up a blog. For any marketing project, whether it’s online or not, I believe in starting with the big picture.

Your why is highly likely to affect your success. For example, if you are blogging for SEO and to increase leads or sales, you need to plan your content around your target audience’s struggles. If you are starting a blog to get cited and build connections with journalists, you need to keep your niche content amplifiers in mind: What is it that can peak their curiosity and encourage them to write about your business.

Clearly define whether the main purpose of your blog will be to educate, entertain, and/or inspire.

Whether your blog will raise awareness, solve a problem, or address a desire, knowing the site’s purpose will guide the content creation and design process in order to best highlight your topic.

2. Choose a Niche Within Your Niche

Unless your niche isn’t very competitive and you know a lot about it, then don’t ever dive head first into trying to cover everything. I made this mistake a few too many times with my own projects.

Trying to target every aspect of an industry is very hard when it’s just you, and without a multi-thousand dollar budget for content writers each month, you aren’t going to be able to cater to all the news and your blog will be deemed as quantity over quality.

Most likely, you are about to blog about stuff that other people are already blogging about. And those other people do it much better. They have community and you don’t. They are known and you are not. There is a ton of great content about everything. Why would someone want to read your blog? What makes it special? What is different? Unless you bring something unique and valuable to the Internet, you’ll most likely be unnoticed.

Target a smaller niche within your niche that your blog can specialize in, and you’ll be able to build up a proper name for yourself from there.

Action item: 

Write down what you want your blog to be about. This step is closely related to your mission statement: what you want your blog to do. It might be obvious and it might seem like you don’t need to write it down, but this is important to help establish direction and help build the larger picture.

Keyword research will be a great help in this process as it is a great way to discover angles that are not yet covered to death but are in demand from your audience. SE Ranking provides all kinds of keyword research tools that will help you with that task.

Some of those tools will be pretty familiar to you, e.g. filtering keyword lists by “keyword difficulty” (i.e. organic competition). But other tools are absolutely unique. These include keyword grouping, keyword mind maps, and a content idea finder.

SE tanking integrates with SharpSpring, so you may already have access to those tools!

3. Have Your First Article Written

This is a big step. This will help you find the right person to create your blog’s content.

From my own experience, and from talking to others, it seems that the largest barrier to blogging is the creation of the initial post.

You may already have a lot of talent within your current team but these people are too shy to volunteer. Talented writers tend to be introverts.

Encourage cross-team submissions of articles on your chosen blog topic. Make it clear that blog writers will have a clear authorship on the blog, so their effort will be recognized.

You will always have a chance to hire a writer if you cannot find a good one in-house. But keep in mind that your existing team knows your existing customers best, so they will relate to their needs and align their content to their personas much easier than anyone from outside.

Plus including your company into your business blogging plan will get them more motivated and excited. Working on a common goal will unite your team, remove any existing organization silos and foster employee advocacy.

Start with your existing team: You’ll be surprised how much writing talent you already have.

Action item

Google Docs is a great way to manage your content submissions. Simply instruct your employees to write content in Google Docs and send you links when it is ready. It is free and looks exactly like Word, so your team members will not have any problem with figuring it out.

It helps if you create a list of resources on how to create compelling content, how to stand out and how to brainstorm more content topics. You can keep adding resources to that knowledge base for you team to improve their writing skills.

4. Setup Your Blog CMS

This is hopefully something you will be able to outsource for. WordPress is the default option here, and while there are quite a few WordPress alternatives out there, I’d still stick with WordPress.

I may lack experience in using other CMSs, so I am biased. Talk to your developers: They may have some arguments for using other platforms. I like WordPress because it is easy and has lots of documentation allowing businesses to solve any problems even if they don’t have budgets to hire in-house developers.

You can start with the default WordPress theme and you can worry about changing it later. At this point you are just setting things up: Launching your project is a different topic.

Action item

Set-up your Google Analytics, Search Console, and essential WordPress plugins. All of these are one-time tasks.

5. Create Your Lead Generation Channels

Taking this step is important because you need to keep your conversion in mind when planning your blogging strategy. Failing to set up sitewide and contextual CTAs is one of the most common blogging mistakes.

Each of your articles should clearly take your audience through your sales channel, in a most non-intrusive and non-promotional way.

Action item

Place an email “opt-in” on your site so you can start building your subscriber base from day one.

You can get creative as well! Set up surveys, booking forms, download forms, etc. to diversify your CTAs from page to page. WP Forms can help you set up all kinds of web forms.

Email subscribers are far more likely to purchase products than any other individual forms of connection. Some people have created lucrative businesses with an email list alone!

Promote!

Get involved with your social network and let people know you are starting a blog. This is useful for creating an initial readership base. Most likely, your friends will assist you in seeding your content into their respective communities. Word of mouth is key.

Make sure you let people know when you have new content. Encourage people to sign up for your email list, subscribe via RSS feed, and follow you on the respective social media channels.

Action item

I recommend you sign up for Viral Content Bee, a blogging community where you leverage the network of influential bloggers to co-promote your content and the content of others within “tribes”.

It’s a great community and can really help augment your blogging efforts, especially when first starting out.

5. Start Building Relationships with Other Bloggers

Opt in to their mailing list, and comment/share their posts. If something they write sparks a post of your own, cite their article and link back to it in your post.

These relationships will be a source of motivation and insight, help you reach a wider audience, and increase your overall chance of becoming a successful blogger.

Something that I wish I’d done more when I was first starting out, was interacting with communities. Building out a persona and reputation within forums and places like Reddit, can create a whole new source of traffic and following.

I highly suggest working just as hard to post on discussion boards and sharing communities as you do for your blog – You’ll quickly see your referral traffic spike.

BONUS TIP: Persevere

For a time, it may feel like all your efforts are leading nowhere. It’s also seriously disheartening to publish an epic post and never receive any indication that anyone even read it.

When you feel like giving up, stick with it for at least another month. Successful bloggers often report that their turning point happened right around the time they were preparing to shut down their blog.

Blogging is an important part of an SEO strategy for businesses of all sizes, thanks to its ability to drive traffic through search queries with informational intent. Expect gradual growth, so have patience and don’t give up!

Takeaways:

1. Identify your target micro-market or niche. You cannot be all things to all people, but you can be a Godsend to a few. These people will come to love you and your brand.
2. Understand the readers you are writing for: Understand them intimately, their motivations, what upsets them and what excites them
3. Have your CTAs set up. This is a great way to capture the email addresses of people who visit
4. Have your sign-up incentive ready to roll. This is the reason people will give you their email addresses, so it had better be good, this step includes a sign up page/box.

Have a series of free, super-value products available to grow your readers’ love for you. You need to earn your readers’ love; you need to dispense favors before your readers will come to trust you enough to start paying you money to provide them with services or favors.

The post Starting a Blog for Your Business: Checklist appeared first on SharpSpring.

Would you be surprised if I told you that nothing about social media is a one-size-fits-all approach? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

So, you’re probably wondering, “What makes a successful social media strategy?”

We’ve got a few key points that we include in our social media clients’ strategies to make sure their social media marketing efforts are top notch.

Social Media Strategy Goals

A social media presence is the direct representation of a business in the virtual world. So, find out what the business goals (sales, marketing, overall, etc.) are for the business that is being represented via social media. Then, you’ll want to learn more about the user.

• Who uses the product/service offered by the business? Why?
• How often are they returning?
• What does that audience member look like socially?

These are all great questions to ask (and answer through research) to determine social media strategy goals. Next, write out goals that abide by the 3R’s: Reachable, Realistic, Relevant.

It’s important to note in this section that the number of goals listed on a social media strategy will vary based on the client, business goals, as well as the number, and type, of social media networks being used.

Social Media Strategy Objectives

This is where the actual strategy part of a social media strategy happens. Take each of those goals and formulate how to best approach achieving them. For example, if you have a goal of “Increase visits to xyz.com via social referral” then your objectives to obtain that goal may include:

• Curating content for social media that encourages traffic to be directed back to xyz.com;
• Amplifying blogging efforts that are shared socially;
• Utilizing SEO best practices to make website content relevant to the user.

The key to a successful social media strategy on an objective level is to be as descriptive as possible. It’s better to list approaches and tasks that will help you overachieve the goal than to be too vague and not achieve it.

Branding: The Most Important Goal of a Social Media Strategy

Building brand awareness should always be a higher-level goal of social media marketing. When your target customers see your brand enough, they will start recognizing you, and that recognition comes with higher conversions and word-of-mouth marketing.

It takes at least 5 touchpoints (clicks, likes, emails, etc.) to build brand recognizability, and social media is a perfect tool for that. You can target and retarget your audience using social media ads and reinforce that with engaging content.

But with branding being the fundamental objective of anything you do on social media, it is also the hardest one to measure.

How do you measure gradual brand recognition?

Social listening is a good way to identify that gradual trend: With time, you are bound to notice more and more brand mentions.

Keeping an eye on your navigational queries (search queries containing your name) is another good way: Look for a gradual increase in your brand-driven search. Search Console allows you to filter your queries to branded ones, so it is a great free way to keep an eye on the rising interest in your branded search:

Other Elements of a Social Media Strategy

Some other key elements that you want to make sure are reflected in the objectives section of the strategy include social media engagement, content, share-ability, and measurement. A social media strategy is the main document a business is most likely to look at and measure your activity with. Many of these other elements will support, and overlap, each other for the ultimate social media marketing harmony.

Engagement

How will a social media audience engage with the content that you’re sending out via social media? How will it encourage them to click, share, or watch whatever you are putting in front of them?

Content

Content is one of the most important aspects of search engine marketing. Creating content that is sticky, relevant, a great representation of the business, and intriguing is like social media gold!

Shareability

So, I just mentioned content that is sticky – what I mean is: How sharable is that piece of content on social media? How will the content “stick”? In what ways will the content you are publishing on social media entice fans to share with their personal social media communities?

WebCEO offers some advanced social media analytics tools allowing you to keep an eye on Facebook and Pinterest shares and the social media traffic you are generating from those platforms:

Measurement

How will you be measuring your results? How often will the measurement be occurring? A social media strategy is a great way to provide an annual review of your social media marketing efforts. However, you’ll want to be checking your work more often than on a yearly basis. We suggest reviewing your strategy at least twice per year internally and annually with an outside source.

Social media is part of our everyday lives in today’s society. From a business perspective, it’s time to think about a social media marketing strategy that works for you.

Social media marketing varies  greatly and it can be difficult to know what strategies will build brand awareness, while remaining cost effective for your business.  How do you keep costs low and the end result high?  Start by asking yourself these five questions:

1. Who is my target audience?

It’s key to determine who your target audience is on social media. Focus your social media marketing efforts to reach those specific people. Even though Facebook, Twitter, and Are you targeting families? Facebook may be your best option. Looking to find job seekers or other professionals? LinkedIn is the best option to target those individuals. Does your target audience include younger generations? Try Snapchat!

It’s important to find the social network that works for your audience; what’s right for your brand won’t be right for another.

2. What will my message be?

Determine what your business goals are and how you can manipulate those goals to align with a social media marketing strategy. It’s important to figure out why your customers need your products, or services, and how you can craft your social media  messaging to line-up with those needs.

The best way to connect with your social media audience is to find an appropriate mix of marketing and engaging content. Use the common interest you share with your audience and run with it.

3. What is my competition doing?

You monitor your competition in other areas of your business, so do the same when it comes to social media marketing.

Monitor your competition’s presence on social media and see what they are doing and how their audience is reacting. Learn from their mistakes and benefit from their successes. These days there are quite a few smart tools for social media monitoring that will uncover many of your competitors’ tactics.

SharpSpring has some cool social features allowing you to set up competitive monitoring. Additionally, Visualping allows you to monitor your Instagram competitors.

4. Do I have time to dedicate to social media?

Whether you’ll be handling social media efforts, or another member of your marketing team will be, make sure that you have the time to dedicate to social media.

Do not list social media efforts as additional tasks on your list; make  it a priority. If you can’t, realistically, see  social media as a priority then it may be time to consider utilizing a marketing agency to handle your social media marketing.

5. What’s the ROI of social media? Are my efforts working?

This is a question that you may not be able to answer right away. Social media takes time, and results aren’t something that will appear overnight. To get started, think about a few goals that you can  set to measure your social media marketing.

In a world where there are over seven billion mobile users, being accessible is the key to your company’s marketing strategy. By developing a company profile on one, or multiple, social networking sites you are adding a personal, attainable face to your brand. However, there are far more benefits to having a presence on social media; such as:

• Engage your customers with creative, concise content that ranges from photos to videos and infographics.
• Use social media to generate leads by promoting your client booking form using Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook ads
• Social media puts you in direct contact with your target market.
• The content that you post allows you to establish credibility and become an authority in your industry.
• It’s a measurable marketing tactic.
• It allows your brand to have personal, relevant interactions and conversations with customers.
• It helps develop a more effective blogger outreach strategy by connecting to bloggers and journalists on social media
• Does your company have a website? What better way to drive traffic to it than with social media?
• You can use social media ads to test your content before turning it into lead magnets
• Conducting marketing research was never so easy; you can post polls and surveys to customers via your company Facebook page.
• Social media marketing is an extension of your company’s customer service department.

The benefits of social media marketing are endless. By encouraging current customers to trust and believe in your brand, you’re allowing them to share your content and get your products in front of a new audience.

The post What Makes a Successful Social Media Strategy? appeared first on SharpSpring.

Facebook, rebranded as Meta in 2021, is down approximately 57% this year. Meta’s business is changing rapidly and implementing a strategy to innovate and grow is critical to its success. Meta’s big play is to define and dominate the Metaverse.

But don’t write Meta off just yet. Meta has a strategy to redefine the web and become the infrastructure that the Metaverse is built on and if successful, Meta and Zuckerberg will reclaim their wealth and position as the leader of the pack.

Like Meta, a marketer’s job is to develop and execute strategies that keep you one step ahead of your competition. Sometimes that strategy needs to be bolder and more aggressive than other times, but regardless of your specific situation, you must be prepared to handle change.

So what steps should marketers take to stay ahead of the competition?

• Talk to your target audience. When was the last time you talked to 10 or 20 of your target audience? Don’t be so busy that you stop connecting with your audience, because if you do, most likely you will miss shifts in the market.
• Take time to build a strategy. Too many times marketers are so busy doing programs that they don’t take the time to build their strategy to make sure that everything works together in an efficient and effective manner. Don’t just create an amazing content piece without developing a strategy to promote and distribute that content in as many ways as possible. Without a plan in place, you will never maximize the value of your marketing.
• Have a vision and continually communicate that vision to your team. If you are taking a ‘big swing’ in your industry, like Meta is doing, be prepared for your team to have doubts about your strategy. Don’t run from negativity but instead continue to cast your vision and get others to help overcome the challenges you face.
• Use your data to make the best possible decisions. Be a data-driven company. Data-driven companies not only collect as much data as possible but they use that data to predict future events and make better decisions.
• Have a flexible technology stack to meet your current and future growth goals. To avoid a bad year you will need all your marketing and sales working together and that will require a powerful and flexible tech stack. Email marketing, content marketing, sales engagement, CRM, social media, advertising, tracking, and analytics need to all come together so you can make your plan a reality.

As a marketing professional, your ability to stay ahead of the competition is based on how you handle the next phase of digital transformation. To do that you will need your marketing technology, data, and programs all working together.

Adopting an all-in-one revenue growth platform is the next phase of digital transformation. A revenue growth platform aligns marketing and sales technology so you can optimize your entire funnel—with a holistic view of channels, campaigns, prospects, and customers. When you can optimize your entire funnel, you have the ability to implement, measure, and adjust your growth plan.

McKinsey calls it “full-funnel marketing” and says that one key benefit is “Linking KPIs between channels and stages of the funnel to actual business results, such as conversions or leads, allows companies to better understand the real impact of their marketing and then create messages that will elicit the best responses.”

“Most businesses struggle to align their marketing and sales teams to achieve their revenue potential but cobbling together a bunch of marketing tools doesn’t solve the problem,” says Eric Stockton, VP of Demand Generation, at Constant Contact. “As a comprehensive revenue growth platform, SharpSpring from Constant Contact is deeply integrated and works together to drive conversions throughout the customer lifecycle so businesses can optimize marketing and sales activities and generate real revenue growth.”

(Download the 18-page research report, The State of Martech.)

An all-in-one platform will open new opportunities for you to implement your strategy and maximize your growth potential.

Like Meta is finding out, it’s one thing to climb to the top and another thing to stay at the top. Regardless of where your company is compared to your competition, you must be continually innovating. Preparing now with a strategy and putting the technology in place is a critical step as you plan for 2023.

Be bold. Be strategic. Be first!

Learn more.

The post Bad Year: Zuckerberg’s Wealth Plummets $71B appeared first on SharpSpring.

Sound impressive? It is!

And a line from the Apple press release gives insight into the primary target of the iPhone 14. “Our customers count on their iPhone every day, and with iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, we’re delivering more advancements than any other iPhone.”

The primary target for Apple is current customers and customer retention.

Why customer retention? With U.S. smartphone sales declining 6% YoY in Q1 2022, focusing on current customers is critical to Apple’s sales (the iPhone accounted for more than half of Apple’s sales last year). The product launch can make or break a year for Apple and nobody does a product launch quite like Apple!

All companies can learn from Apple and how they approach customer retention. At the center of optimizing your customer retention rates is the alignment of product, marketing, and sales. A few keys to effective customer retention strategies are:

1. Provide customers with a smooth onboarding process (think marketing and sales alignment).
2. Create a customer feedback loop.
3. Keep your products and services top of mind and keep innovating (Apple knows how to do this better than anybody else).
4. Reward promoters and loyal customers.

The State of Marketing and Sales Alignment study, by the research firm Ascend2 and SharpSpring, found that the top KPI to gauge marketing and sales alignment is customer retention. Without a high level of marketing and sales alignment, it is impossible to optimize your customer retention rates.

Customer retention is critical because the cost of acquiring new customers is much higher than retaining existing customers. Retained customers are also more likely to engage in word-of-mouth marketing or become brand ambassadors.

While customer acquisition relies on your ability to reach and attract new audiences, customer retention is more about ongoing engagement, personalization, and value provided over time. Your martech stack is a vital tool that allows you to optimize your retention rates.

(Download the 24-page research report, The State of Marketing and Sales Alignment 2022.)

Many times marketers think about providing a great customer experience as part of the acquisition process but it is equally important (it not more important) as part of your customer retention strategy and It should be consistent across all channels (email, website, social, etc.) and departments (marketing, sales, customer service, finance, etc.).

For companies to improve customer retention, they must have the technology to support their strategy.

How SharpSpring Helps Improve Customer Retention

The SharpSpring all-in-one platform aligns your marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM to provide a seamless customer experience that you can track and optimize.

What are the benefits of an all-in-one platform? With an all-in-one platform, you can personalize each customer experience, improve product education and adoption, and provide feedback loops. No two users are the same and having the right technology in place allows you to automate processes and workflows.

Tools that are unified allow for a better customer experience. A few of the strategies that you will want to unify are:

• Email: Use email to deliver product updates, provide training materials, send evaluation surveys, follow-up messages, etc. Email is an excellent tactic to keep your brand top of mind with your customers.
• Marketing Automation: Use automation to create onboarding material, highlight new product features, and send targeted messages to customers.
• Landing Pages: Build landing pages and landing page funnels specifically for existing customers.
• CRM: Use your CRM to build a Customer Journey. Most of the time, we think of a Buyer’s Journey for customer acquisition, but you can also create a journey for existing customers with the goal of improving customer retention.

A centralized, holistic platform will open new opportunities for you to implement your customer retention strategy and maximize your retention rates.

Learn more.

The post Apple’s iPhone 14 Launch Focuses on Customer Retention appeared first on SharpSpring.

Whether it’s for lead generation or nurturing, or for influencer marketing and link building, reaching out to people via email is an integral part of any marketing strategy.

And yet, it can sometimes feel a bit discouraging.

Too many businesses give up on email outreach due to poor results from early attempts.

But keeping at your email outreach efforts is a smart business investment because you get to accumulate all those contacts (so you can build long-lasting relationships with them), learn from your success and failures and consequently adjust your marketing efforts to make it more effective.

So how to do email outreach strategy right?

Here are the steps to success.

1. Take Care of the Fundamentals

Before starting your first campaign, take your time to do your homework. You will need to:

• Establish your representatives’ branding
• Decide which email(s) you’re going to use
• Create communication guidelines for your reps to follow

Neither of these tasks should be taken lightly as people emailing on your behalf represent your brand: You need to ensure they do it professionally.

Establish your representatives’ branding

Each of your emails should openly and honestly represent your brand. This is important because authenticity is impossible to fake, so be transparent. Plus you want your prospects to remember your brand even if they never reply to your first email.

Your email outreach should contribute to building brand recognizability, while helping you to also achieve short-term goals.

Email signature generator by WiseStamp I am aware of that will help you build your outreach emails in the most effective way. You can add your company’s logo, link to your company’s  social media profiles, upload your rep’s photo, add your CTA etc. This way you will make the most of each email you send out.

Decide which email address you’re going to use

This task is much trickier than any outreach newbie would think. When it comes to cold emailing, you basically have two choices:

• Set up an email address on your own domain
• Use a free platform, like Yahoo! Or Gmail

Neither of these options is ideal.

Cold emailing carries an inevitable risk that someone might add your email to a spam box. If enough people do that, your email address (and main domain) could get under the radar of spam protection systems, so your future business emails will find themselves filtered more and more often.

On the other hand, if you go with the free email addresses, your emails just won’t be taken seriously (and also filtered out by corporate spam protection systems as well).

A better option is to set up an email address on an alternative email (possibly matching your brand identity as well). Namify is an easy and free tool to find a domain for those purposes.

Make sure that you do it a few weeks prior to starting your first outreach campaign because spam filters don’t handle emails coming from new domains too well. So make sure to set up your email address and use those emails for internal communication for a couple of weeks to establish it a bit.

Create communication guidelines for your reps to follow

Your outreach managers are going to talk to third-party companies and people on your brand’s behalf.

This is a big deal.

Many of those people are public figures. Make them angry, they will have no problem taking their outrage to social media networks, and then you are facing a reputation management crisis.

Make sure your outreach managers go through detailed training, know business correspondence ethics and have brand communication policies to follow.

Your brand’s communication policy should include:

• Topics to avoid (e.g. politics) discussing in emails or on social media channels
• Best ways to reply to criticism
• How to handle rude emails or respond to rude comments
• Where to escalate complex situations which may blow up

2. Continuously Work on Your Templates and Timing

The two big aspects of email outreach which are never perfect enough are:

• Email template (including, of course, its subject)
• Timing, i.e. when is the best time to do the outreach.

You need to continuously experiment with both.

Email template

The golden rule of any email template: The less boilerplate text, the better.

Yes, it sounds counterproductive and even diminishes the meaning of the word “template” but the more personal and authentic your email is, the better.

• Add your prospect’s name (take time to find real people behind emails)
• Add some personal details (e.g. their company’s or personal milestone, something you saw on their social media profiles)
• Come up with a personalized offer or CTA, for example, not all of the influencers may be up for a monetary reward but would agree for mutual promotional campaigns.

Timing

When is the best time to send your email? What if you want to time your outreach campaign to something, like Christmas?

Timing is everything in just about any marketing campaign, and it is never easy to decide what’s the best time to launch it.

Google Trends may help you get a clue: Just look for a date when an interest in a particular topic or holiday starts rising every year:

This is what I call a seasonal trend which is easier to predict.

Another trick is to monitor your competitor to learn how they are timing their campaigns and try to learn what’s working for them. Visualping offers a powerful competition monitoring feature which  alerts you when your competitor announces a new campaign, sets up a new web form or adds a new page. Those are all great cues of something going on:

3. Develop Those Relationships

Finally, this is a missed step in just about any outreach campaign. Your job doesn’t end with one sale, one backlink or one lead. You need to develop relationships with your outreach targets.

• Follow them across social media channels and interact with their updates
• Follow up via email or Twitter (Use email automation to create smart and well-timed follow ups)
• Invite them to your company’s initiatives
• Curate what they are saying online and turn it into content (generate more customer reviews this way as well)
• Give away freebies and demos, etc.

Focusing on connections will help you make the most of each email reply.

Conclusion

Email outreach is a long-term strategy that requires a lot of effort but it also has cumulative potential: It gets easier and more effective with time. So don’t expect to get great at it within a week or month. Don’t give up and you will start seeing results over time.

The post How to Create an Effective Email Outreach Strategy appeared first on SharpSpring.

Your site’s specific function will, of course, depend somewhat on your industry and marketing strategy. But in any case, to be a success, it must help you generate and convert leads.

That’s how we determine a website’s success. So, how can you make sure that your small business’s site is effective? Here are the key elements it should include. We’ve divided them into the two gold standards for successful websites: clear brand identity and ease of use.

Making Your Identity Crystal-Clear

A small business’s brand relies heavily on recognizability and trustworthiness. Your website is critical for establishing both. Even if you’re not directly selling products on your website, prospective customers use it to get a sense of your business. Any discrepancies between your name, social presence, and overall identity could give them pause.

To ensure that your small business’s website is clear and compelling, you need…

1. A relevant, recognizable domain name

The right domain allows you to promote your website on marketing materials and rank higher in search results. It also provides credibility; consumers will be wary of a business whose URL is wix.com/wix-site/brand-name.

Ideally, your domain name matches your business’s name, e.g. Apple.com. That may not always be possible if your business name is long or the domain is already taken. In that case, consider how you can abbreviate your business name in a way that still reads clearly. For example, Bob’s Landscaping and Lawn Repair could use bobslawns.com.

Another option, especially if YourBusinessName.com is unavailable, is to add a verb. This approach is great for small businesses with a proprietary product or service. If your flagship offering is a gadget called Wizzpop, your domain could be trywizzpop.com.

You might also consider changing the first-level domain (the .com, .org, etc.). A non-standard domain such as .biz or .co is often cheaper. However, keep in mind that most users will type .com by default. That may lead them to another website — potentially a competitor’s! Also, some first-level domains, such as .net, are considered dated. Do some market research before going down this road. If you do end up choosing a non-standard domain, be prepared to heavily promote your URL.

Some business owners use an SEO keyphrase as their domain. For example, if “All Clear Plumbing” is offering their services in Atlanta, they may register ATLplumber.com. This isn’t a bad idea, but it could dilute your brand identity as prospects see a different domain than your actual business name. To resolve this, redirect your SEO domain to your main business website.

2. Strong visual branding

Today’s enterprises often operate across channels — your website, social media, print marketing, and perhaps a brick-and-mortar shop. Especially in this omnichannel world, your brand identity should be visually consistent. This boosts recognizability and builds trust among your audience.

Your website should match your overall theme and tone. An incongruent digital presence leaves users wondering if they’re still dealing with the same business. Let’s say you send out a direct mailer that features a bold typeface, bright turquoise and gold hues, and custom illustrations. Recipients type in your URL only to find a generic black-and-white WordPress site with stock photos. That’s confusing — and therefore distracting from their buyer’s journey.

Make sure that your small business’s website has these key visual elements:

• A color palette and typography that matches your brand identity. Work with a web designer to find the appropriate HEX codes for your CMYK or Pantone colors, as well as web-friendly fonts.
• An enticing banner or “hero” graphic that users see when they land on your page.
• High-quality original photography or illustrations that express your business’s values and brand promise. If you must use stock images, choose ones that look natural and incorporate them in a unique way.

3. Verifiable business details

For every legitimate business website, there are a dozen scammy ones. Consumers have learned to be skeptical. So, make sure that your website proves your trustworthiness.

A clear brand identity helps, but you should also include some basic Internet “credentials”:

• About Us page(s) that include your mission, team members, and board of directors, if applicable.
• A postal address and phone number. Depending on your business’s and customers’ country of residence, you may be legally required* to post a geographic location, registration details, etc.
• Your business’s full name, if applicable, as registered with your state.
• Copyright and trademark details
• An SSL certificate. This is a legal requirement under various data privacy regulations and de facto for Google ranking.

There should be zero doubt in your prospects’ minds that your website belongs to you and that your business is credible.

*NOTE: The content in this section is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult your attorney to ensure that your website is compliant with all applicable laws and regulations.

Once you’ve clarified your site’s identity, it’s time to make sure it’s as accessible and user-friendly as possible.

Streamline Your Site’s User Interface (UI)

Remember the early years of Web 2.0, when web designers packed their sites with fancy Flash animations and dense grid layouts? So do we — and we’d rather not.

Especially now that most users are on mobile, cluttered website designs are outdated. If you want to drive conversions, you must make your site simple to navigate. A clean, engaging UI is vital to your success!

Here are the steps to take:

4. Align the site structure with the buyer’s journey

The first step toward streamlining your UI is to prioritize your visitors’ needs. Many small business websites begin with a “welcome” message, then present a brochure-like rundown of their offerings.

That can work, but consider how people are finding your site. If you’re primarily driving traffic from social media, does the homepage follow from the messages they see there?

Then, determine what their primary action should be. That’s usually not to read a lengthy description of your small business, so why put that at the top of our homepage? Instead, lead with your value proposition and show them where to go next. (Leverage that bold call-to-action button!)

One of your top website goals is likely to get qualified leads into your funnel. Capture them too soon, and you could end up with tire-kickers. Wait too long, and you’ll lose them. Structure your website to get their attention at the right moment, and make sure they understand what you offer before asking them to take action.

5. Use page layouts consistently

Except for the homepage and the blog page, if applicable, all your site’s pages should have a similar structure. This could be a header image, several blocks of text, and a sidebar, for example. Keep it as simple as possible: mobile users prefer one-column layouts, and that preference bleeds into desktop design as well.

Also, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. After years of web browsing, users expect websites to follow these conventions:

The F-pattern. Most people in the Western world read left to right, so they skim visual displays across the top, then down the left side. Place important website information in the top and left-hand sections. Your main menu should always be topmost.

White space around key elements. Because negative space draws attention to an object within, it helps identify important page elements. By the same token, users will expect headings or buttons with ample white space to be important.

Carets to expand or scroll through content. Anything that looks like an arrow connotes movement. Users will intuitively click on carets to navigate a page, so avoid using them for anything else.

Ensure that each page of your site has a consistent and efficient feel. This encourages visitors to stick around — which makes them more likely to convert!

6. Make everything easy and helpful

Consumers’ attention spans are shortening. Goldfish jokes aside, all you can do is capture their interest as quickly as possible. Thus, you should prioritize your website’s convenience.

What do your prospects want most from your site? To learn about your products? Place an order or check its status? All those pages should be in your main navigation menu.

Don’t be stingy with links to these critical pages. Weave them into your website copy. Add them to the footer menu as well.

Also, make sure it’s easy for your prospects and customers to get in touch. Include a contact form or email on every page. Ideally, your visitors always feel that help is just a click away! (Tip: Implement chatbots for even easier customer support that also saves your team precious time.)

Before launching your small business website, test it with a group of people outside your organization. They can tell you which elements stand out, where they experienced hiccups, and how easy they found your site to use.

Wrapping Up

With those six elements in place, you can clarify your brand identity and optimize your site’s user interface. Both are critical for achieving your website’s goals. An efficient website becomes a power tool in your overall marketing kit. It can be the 24/7 salesperson, a reliable source of leads, a lucrative eCommerce channel, or whatever else you need it to be!

The post 6 Things All SMB Websites Need to Succeed appeared first on SharpSpring.