How Marketers Are Spending Their Money in 2023 (We Asked 8032 Marketers)

With the economy up in the air due to inflation kicking into high gear, war, interest rates rising, and other factors that we can’t control we decided it would be great to see how other marketers are reacting.

And we didn’t want to know how marketers were reacting just in the U.S., we wanted to know on a global scale what businesses of all sizes in all major industries (and for both B2B and B2C) are doing.

So, at my ad agency, NP Digital, we decided to leverage our traffic, email lists, and relationships to conduct a wide survey so not only could see what other marketers are doing but to also understand the “why” behind their decisions.

Here’s what we found out.

Earned Media

Let’s look closely at each earned media channel to see how budgets are being reallocated.

SEO

68% of companies surveyed said they are increasing their SEO budget. The number 1 response on why they are making this is shift is because they said it provides a higher ROI than paid advertising. Which is true… it just takes longer to see results.

11% said they would maintain their SEO budget going into 2023. The number 1 response on why is because there wasn’t much flexibility with their overall marketing spend due to economic reasons.

As for the 21% that said they were decreasing… it was a toss-up on why between two main responses.

The first was that SEO wasn’t producing results and the second was that the marketing team is having to make cuts to meet their reduced budget.

Organic Social Media

32% of companies are planning on increasing their organic social media budget. The primary response was because of the Apple IOS changes, and they aren’t able to spend as much as they want on paid social media.

26% said they would keep their budget as is with the main reason being that you have to be on the major platforms in order to communicate with customers and potential customers.

A whopping 42% said they would decrease due to organic reach continually declining and organic social media not providing as high of an ROI as it used to.

If you are facing a decline in organic reach, watch this:

Content

83% of companies are increasing their content production budget. The number 1 response on why was due to the need to create content in multiple formats including video and the cost associated with it.

8% said they would maintain their budget. The main reason why was the economic situation limiting their ability to spend more.

And 9% said they are decreasing their content creation budget due to AI tools helping them create content more affordably.

AI Tools

Speaking of AI tools… they are the talk of the town these days. From GTP-3 to Dall-E to ChatGPT… there are a lot of companies leveraging these APIs to create their own tools or to make their marketing more efficient. Especially with earned media.

A staggering 98% said they would invest in AI tools in 2023. The main reason why revolved around these 3 main points:

1. Save money by automating content creation
2. Reduce the amount of time spent on creating content
3. Ability to reduce headcount in the content department

2% said they would not test out AI tools, and the main reason was they felt that the quality of the AI tools isn’t up to their standards.

Email Marketing

56% of companies said they would increase their email marketing budget. It was a toss-up on why marketers said they would increase their budget…

1. Because their list size is growing so their costs for housing email addresses are going up
2. Due to privacy laws, companies are spending more to make sure they are compliant with personal data
3. Companies are investing more in marketing automation

38% of companies plan on maintaining their email marketing efforts. The main response why was they believed email is an important channel to use to communicate with existing and potential customers.

6% said they plan on decreasing their email marketing budget. There were 2 main responses on why marketers said they would decrease their budget… it was between

• Companies pruning their email list of inactive subscribers which would allow them to save money
• Companies are switching email marketing software providers to save money

Very few companies planned on reducing headcount related to email marketing efforts.

UX/Conversion Rate Optimization

61% of companies plan on increasing their overall UX/CRO budget. It was a toss-up on the main reason they wanted to increase their overall budget in this category. The reasons were:

• With the rising cost of ads, CRO helps provide a better ROI
• UX important part of the overall marketing experience

26% of companies plan on keeping their UX/CRO budget the same primarily for the same reasons as above.

And 13% plan on decreasing their budget due to economic reasons as the main driver.

Podcasting

Podcasting is one of those marketing channels that isn’t saturated yet. And the survey results show that marketers believe in it as a viable channel for the future.

92% of companies are planning to increase their podcasting budget in 2023. The main response was that they currently don’t have a podcast and are planning on creating one.

5% of companies are planning on maintaining their existing podcasting budget. The main response on why is they haven’t figured out how to drive meaningful revenue from their podcast so they don’t want to spend too much yet.

And 3% plan on decreasing their podcasting spend. The main reason was due to economic factors requiring marketing to make cuts.

Community-Building

84% of companies are increasing their spend on community building. The main reason was that marketers want to feel more in control of their destiny instead of being beholden to algorithms that they can’t control.

12% of companies plan to maintain their community building. The majority of the companies in this category felt it was important to increase their budget but they weren’t able to due to economic reasons.

And 4% plan on decreasing their community-building budget due to the economy.

Paid Ads

There are a lot of different paid ad channels, for this category we looked at the main leaders. So, let’s start off with search ads.

Search Ads

With Google and Bing ads, most companies (59% and 47% respectively) are looking to increase their budgets. Almost all of the responses on why were that it provided a clear ROI compared to other marketing channels.

Both channels had roughly the same percentage for maintaining the budget at 18% for Google and 19% for Bing. The main response for maintaining the budget was they haven’t figured out how to scale while maintaining profit margins.

And as for the decreases (23% for Google and 34% for Bing), the main responses were related to:

1. The average cost per click for their industry is getting cheaper
2. Fewer people were searching for the keywords they were bidding on so their overall spend is decreasing.

Social Ads

The percentages in the graph above are all over the place, but the story is consistent when you look at the responses.

With Facebook, Instagram, and Snap, the main responses for either maintaining or decreasing spend are related to the Apple IOS privacy changes. In other words, marketers aren’t able to generate the same ROI from Facebook as they used to be able to.

Some of the companies got lucky and were able to maintain their spend to generate a similar ROI and some had to decrease their spend in order to keep their ads profitable… again due to IOS privacy changes.

A smaller percentage on these 3 platforms were able to increase their budgets. The main response to increasing is that their campaigns are profitable so they plan on scaling.

As for YouTube and Pinterest, (28% and 35% respectively) said they planned on increasing their budgets. The main response was their ads are profitable and they want to scale them.

33% (YouTube) and 29% (Pinterest) plan to maintain their ad spend because their ads are profitable. The second most popular response for maintaining was they can’t scale due to it making the ads unprofitable.

As for the decrease in YouTube and Pinterest ad spend, the main response was related to the economy impacting their business and budget cuts in marketing.

With Tiktok, the majority of marketers, at a whopping 84%, said they plan to increase their overall spend on this platform because they see it as an untapped opportunity.

And with LinkedIn, the majority of the companies who responded about their LinkedIn ad spend were in the B2B category. 57% plan on increasing their budget with the number 1 response being that they feel it is the best platform to target their ideal customer.

35% plan on maintaining their LinkedIn ad spend with the main reason being that it is working but they aren’t able to scale due to a lack of inventory for their target demographic.

And 8% plan on decreasing their LinkedIn ad spend with the primary response being due to their company slowing down for economic reasons.

Now I wanted to save the most interesting one for last, which is Twitter. I didn’t actually expect these results… and you’ll see why…

28% of companies plan on increasing their Twitter ad spend. The number one response on why was they feel there is an opportunity to acquire customers for less on the platform due to companies pulling out after Elon bought them.

And 34% plan on decreasing their ad spend. When asked why the main response was they don’t agree with how Elon Musk is running the platform and the changes he has been making.

Other Online Ad Buys

Let’s dive into each of the channels as the responses were interesting.

With podcast ads, 78% plan on increasing their ad spend. The top reason was they plan on buying ads to promote their own podcast in order to make it more popular. 18% plan on maintaining their ad spend with the responses primarily discussing how it produces a positive ROI or that companies felt it was great for branding and cheaper than radio.

With the 4% of respondents saying they are decreasing their ad spend, the primary reason was that they are seeing a decrease in ROI from their podcast ad spend.

For banner ads, 34% plan on increasing their ad spend with the main response being it’s profitable and they want to scale it. 52% plan on maintaining their spend with the main reason being around it being profitable. And 14% of companies plan on decreasing their ad spend due to mainly not being as profitable as they would like.

As for remarketing spend, 94% plan to increase their ad budget as they see it as one of their most profitable marketing channels. 5% plan on maintaining it as it is profitable. And 1% plan on decreasing their remarketing ad spend with the main reason being around lack of conversions.

Now for OTT/CTV… if you aren’t familiar with these terms, it’s related to streaming TV.

52% of companies plan on increasing their ad spend for OTT/CTV with the main reason being it provides more transparency and trackability than traditional TV ads. 35% plan on maintaining their spend for this category with the main responses being related to it providing great branding and or profitability.

As for the 13% that plan on decreasing their spend, the main reason was shifting the budget to Google ads and other channels that are more profitable.

Now looking at influencer marketing, which is mainly used by eCommerce companies, 41% plan on increasing their spend with the main reason being is it provides a better ROI than other marketing channels that they are using.

17% plan on maintaining their spend with the main response being that it is profitable and cutting it would cause the company to lose money.

And funny enough 42% plan on decreasing their influencer marketing ad spend with the main response being that they aren’t able to produce a positive ROI.

If you look at the percentages you can clearly see influence marketing is either working for companies or isn’t. Roughly 58% of the companies that use this tactic are able to do so profitably.

Traditional Ads

With traditional ads, there was a big trend. In almost all channels companies responded with their plan to decrease traditional ad spend.

It was a toss-up with a few reasons. The main ones being:

• Lack of ability to track return on investment
• Economy causing marketing budget cuts
• A shift toward moving ad spend to performance marketing due to better results.

A lot of companies are still maintaining their budgets and when we dug through the responses very few companies are stopping their traditional ad spend all together as they still believe it is an important channel to reach their customers.

Overall Marketing Budget

As you saw from all the graphs above there are a lot of budgets shifting around.

But we wanted to also know what companies are doing with their overall marketing budget. Are they increasing… decreasing?

I assumed with the economy a lot of companies would be decreasing their spend, but overall more companies are increasing them in both B2C and B2B than decreasing.

26% of B2C companies plan on increasing their spend, 51% plan on maintaining their spend, and only 23% plan on decreasing their spend.

The main responses for increasing or maintaining their spend revolved around their marketing either being profitable or just overall working.

As for the decreases, most of the reasoning was around the economy and how it is already impacting their business.

As for B2B, a lot of the companies in this category have recurring revenue and much more predictability into future quarters when it comes to financial performance.

34% of them plan on increasing budgets with the primary reasoning being their marketing is profitable or at least when looked at from a lifetime value perspective. 45% plan to maintain with the above reasoning being the primary driver as well.

And 21% of B2B companies plan on decreasing their overall marketing spend due to the economy impacting the company’s overall health.

Conclusion

Even though most marketers are worried about the economy and are making changes to their marketing, the majority of them are increasing their spend or maintaining versus reducing.

From an earned media perspective most companies are looking to increase their budget due to it providing a higher ROI, other than organic social with the primary reason being organic reach is continually declining.

And with AI tools becoming the latest craze, most marketers are at least trying them out.

From a paid ads perspective, most companies are planning on increasing or maintaining their search ads. But with social ads, many companies are planning to decrease. Not because of choice, but due to IOS privacy changes impacting the performance of their ads and companies not being able to scale their social ads as profitably as they use to.

Funny enough with it comes to Twitter it’s a bit polarizing as 28% of companies are planning on increasing ad spend because 34% of companies are planning on decreasing or stopping their ads due to their views on Elon Musk and the decisions he has made.

As for traditional ad buys, in all channels, the majority of companies are planning on decreasing their ad spend and shifting a lot of the money to performance channels like Google Ads or SEO which is more trackable.

So now that you know what others are doing, real question is, what are you doing with your marketing budgets in 2023?

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Does Rich Media on Product Pages Help Boost Revenue?

Rich media – including videos, gifs, audio recordings, and infographics – is a popular tool used to convert users on landing pages and in digital advertisements.

Does it have the same impact on conversion rates and revenue on product pages? That’s the million-dollar question for many e-commerce website owners and marketers looking to increase the conversion rate of their own product pages.

So if you’re asking yourself, “should I make room for rich media on my product pages?”, you’ll find your answer to that question and more below.

Why Is Rich Media Important?

Rich media is any feature or website element that encourages users to interact with it. This type of content is often used on landing pages, in digital advertisements, and on product pages.

The most widely used example of rich media on product pages is video.

So, why is rich media important?

In e-commerce, rich media enables the viewer to interact with the product before they convert. This includes visualizing product installation, seeing the product in use, and even learning tips and tricks for best product usage.

This isn’t a new trend. YouTube videos for e-commerce have been around for years. However, the importance of rich media in product selling only seems to grow.

Beyond engagement, product videos and other forms of rich media can build trust with potential customers. After all, to see is to believe. Product videos may help to ease users’ concerns or even highlight features that get potential customers more excited over the product. This essentially means you can sell more with your videos.

Perhaps most importantly, especially as it relates to the topic at hand, is that Google is increasingly prioritizing webpages with video content. In fact, Google may even turn webpages with video content into rich snippets. With an average conversion rate of 58% as compared to 41% for non-rich results, it’s easy to see how your website may benefit from more video content.

Common Product Page Conversion Methods

The use of rich media on product pages isn’t the only conversion method that website owners may use.

A few other methods include:

• Trust badges, like an icon from the Better Business Bureau
• Compelling product copy
• Customer ratings and reviews
• Customer-generated content (e.g., product images, product videos)
• Frequently asked questions
• Estimated delivery dates
• Low inventory messaging (e.g., “Only 3 left!”)

There are plenty of ways to boost conversion rates on your product page. We recommend split testing to truly determine how effective each of the above methods is with your audience.

Rich Media: Does It Boost Revenue For Product Pages?

We know there are many benefits, as outlined above, to including rich media on product pages. We also know that rich media advertisements tend to see higher conversion rates and revenue than their non-rich media counterparts. In fact, rich media ads have been shown to outperform standard ads by up to 267%!

To truly understand whether rich media has an impact on product page performance, though, we need to perform analysis across multiple websites.

What Our Data Shows Us

For our analysis, we selected six top name-brand websites from the baby sleep sack industry. Of these six websites, we chose the top-performing pages from each as of August 19th, 2022. The goal of this analysis was to determine if videos helped boost estimated traffic revenue, among other related metrics.

In addition to rich media, we’ve also included other factors that may impact the web page’s performance.

Rich Media, Product Schema and Quality Information: Kyte Baby

On the Kyte Baby product page for the Sleep Sack in Sage 1.0, a video is available.

The website ranks for 310 organic keywords with 2.4 thousand organic traffic visits per month. As for organic traffic value, or the revenue attributed to organic traffic visits, this page nets $21 per month.

Let’s consider what else the product page might do well.

First and foremost, Kyte Baby does have product schema implemented. Product schema, or product structured data, enables Google to display product listings in a richer way. With product schema, Google can enhance both product snippets in rich results and merchant listing experiences.

This includes displaying price, availability, and even ratings and reviews:

In addition, the Kyte Baby product page also contains a high word count (1,284 words on the page, NOT including the 6,524 reviews for the product). This offers ample opportunity to optimize the listing for search engines while providing all necessary information to customers.

Product Reviews Add Over 1000 words to Love to Dream’s Product Pages

The second product page on our list, Love to Dream, also featured a video on the product description page during the time of our analysis. The video appears to have been removed more recently, though our analysis only focuses on the time when the video was present.

The URL ranks for 579 organic keywords, it draws in 3,000 in average monthly traffic, and it has an organic traffic revenue of $977.

Similar to Kyte Baby, Love to Dream does have product schema implemented. The Love to Dream product page has a fairly low word count (653 words), though product reviews are also found on the page which adds an additional 1,134 words to the listing.

Aden + Anais: How A Small Product Image Gallery and Low Word Count Hurt Performance

The first on our list not to include a video on the product description page, the Aden + Anais Boutique Cotton Muslin Light Sleep Sack features a minimal gallery with just two images.

The product page ranks for 98 organic keywords with an average monthly organic traffic of 122. The estimated net dollars in organic traffic revenue is $39, which means this product page is the second lowest performer on our list.

Aside from the minimal image gallery, the page contains a minimal word count (346 words) which doesn’t include the word count from the 63 reviews.

One thing to note here is that the reviews average 3.1 stars which may account for the poor performance we’re seeing. A low average review count is likely negatively impacting conversion. After all, 93% of consumers say online reviews impact their buying decision. On top of that, most won’t engage with a business or product rating below 3.3 stars.

Sleeping Baby: The Unseen Factors That Impact SERPs

Sleeping Baby’s The Classic Heather Zipadee-Zip Swaddle Transition® product description page has a modest gallery (just five images including a size guide) with no video or other rich content available.

With 23 organic keyword rankings, 11 in average monthly organic traffic, and an estimated $3 in organic traffic revenue, Sleeping Baby is the poorest-performing product description page in our analysis.

This is an anomaly among our analyzed pages as product schema is implemented, the page has a decent word count (401 not including product reviews), and it has over 2,400 reviews. All other things being equal, you might expect better performance results. As we know, though, Google is likely considering dozens of unseen factors.

Magic Merlin: How Few Reviews and Sparse Product Descriptions Directly Affect Product Page Rankings

The product description page for Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuit in Cream has a gallery of varied images, including those with text-to-outline key product features. The page does not include a video or other forms of rich content. The product description page does have product schema implemented.

With 63 organic keywords, 90 average monthly traffic visits, and a traffic value of just $6, Magic Merlin is our second-to-worst performing product page in our analysis.

When considering other factors that may play a role in poor performance, consider that there are only 112 words on the page and there are no reviews of the product.

Of the six listings we’ve analyzed, Magic Merlin is the only one to receive a passing score for Core Web Vitals. These are a set of factors that Google considers when evaluating the page’s overall user experience. Specifically, Core Web Vitals measures:

• Largest contentful paint: How long it takes for the main content of a web page to load.
• First input delay: The delay in time from when a visitor first interacts with the page (e.g. clicks a link, scrolls through a carousel) to when the browser is able to react.
• Cumulative layout shift: A measurement of the shifting of website elements (e.g. font, buttons, images) while the page is still loading. This can disorient visitors.

So while Magic Merlin performs well in user experience, we can see that other factors (e.g., no rich content, low word count, no reviews) may play a larger role.

Dreamland Baby Co.: Rich Media and Product Schema are Necessary For Product Pages

Last on our list is Dreamland Baby Co.’s product page for the Dream Weighted Sleep Sack.

The product page has a gallery of 15+ images, but no product video is included. The product page ranks for 538 organic keywords with 3.8 thousand in average monthly organic traffic and an estimated net of $640 in traffic revenue.

Dreamland Baby Co. seems to turn the previous results on their head, as it outperforms the two listings with videos present when it comes to organic keyword rankings and monthly organic traffic.

To stir further intrigue, Dreamland Baby Co. does not have product schema implemented so it’s not benefiting from any enhanced Google search results listings. It does contain a decent word count on the page (1,029 words, not including the word count from the 3,000+ reviews).

Insights on Rich Media and Product Pages

If rich media was the be-all-end-all for product page conversion, you would expect to see sites like Kyte Baby and Love to Dream outperform the other ones on our list. That’s not the case, however.

Kyte Baby and Love to Dream were the third and second best-performing web pages, respectively. Dreamland Baby Co., a web page without a video and even without established product schema, performed the best among all six websites analyzed when looking at overall organic keyword universe.

Why might that be?

With a whopping 3,000 reviews, Dreamland Baby Co. obviously has high engagement and high customer satisfaction. These likely play a factor in its success within the organic search results.

So, can videos increase conversions?

While video can be a useful conversion tool to build revenue, they are best used on pages that are already well-constructed and functional. A video cannot make up for a failing Core Web Vitals score or poor SEO practices such as lack of product schema. Shift your focus to your web page’s structure first and foremost before adding extraneous content such as videos.

FAQs

Do you still have questions about rich media on product pages? Here are some answers to frequently asked questions.

Where should I include rich media or videos on my product pages?

When it comes to displaying rich media and other videos on your product pages, the best place is in the image gallery or carousel. This will ensure the content is above the fold and in a place where customers may think to look for them first.

What is rich product content?

Rich product content includes any descriptions, images, or video that is used to help both search engines and individual readers get a better understanding of the product and its uses.

What is e-commerce rich content?

E-commerce rich content is an umbrella term that includes any sort of rich media for an e-commerce page. This can range from your basic product images to more complex offerings like video and augmented reality.

What are the benefits of rich media in content?

Rich media has a variety of uses in content. As a start, it can provide a valuable graphical supplement to any points you want to make in your copy. Some content is better illustrated in rich media form than it is in text. In addition, having rich media allows your piece to have a broader appeal than if the piece was just text.

Do product videos help boost conversions?

Product videos are elements that may help boost conversions if all other factors are already implemented, such as product schema and a passing Core Web Vitals score.

How long should my videos be?

A good rule of thumb is to keep the video under two minutes in length. This will ensure the viewer’s attention doesn’t stray.

Do I need to optimize my videos or rich media?

There are a few general video optimization rules to follow. These include using a video streaming service for quality and speed and only loading your video once all other content elements on the page have loaded.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that rich media, especially videos, can elevate your product pages. That assumes, however, that all other important elements and factors of a product page have been implemented and considered.

For the best results, you should add videos to product pages that have already been optimized for user experience and SEO. This includes considering your score on Core Web Vitals and whether you have product schema set up for search engine optimization.

Have you seen growth in conversions since adding rich media to your product pages?

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Getting Started with Behavioral Email Marketing

When sending out automated emails to your list, how personalized are they?

I’m not talking about things like $firstname, or order by $date for free shipping – but actual personalization based on their behavioral triggers.

Let’s dig a little bit into the numbers behind this. According to the latest Blueshift Report, trigger-based marketing emails outperform batch and blast emails by 497%. Along with that, automated emails delivered 29% of all email marketing purchases with fewer than 2% of email sends.

Recently, behavioral email marketing showed high promise of sales. Think of this as something that’s bringing the above benefits together, helping companies increase ecommerce sales by simply using behavioral triggers via email, sometimes with automation. Built off the concept of behavioral marketing, this method helps get a pulse of your audience so you can interact with them in a way that makes sense.

Let those numbers sink in a minute.

The potential for making the most of behavioral email marketing is wide open, and yet, according to Econsultancy, only 20% of marketers are using behavioral targeting.

Why is that? Let’s take a closer look at the core issues and learn how to get started with behavioral email marketing.

Send Emails Based On Customer Actions

Now, not all of these points will be email “action-worthy,” so it’s up to you to figure out what actions the user takes (or doesn’t take) that are worth sending an email. You may have even seen this kind of behavioral targeting email marketing at work when you sign up for a service, but don’t complete your profile or verify your email address. If the company is smart, they’ll send you an automated email reminding you to do so.

But re-targeting the user in this way isn’t the only way to leverage behavioral targeted emails. You can also send out targeted messages, for example, when a customer:

• Submits a form to download your white paper, video, case study or other free item.
• Views certain content on your web page. If they spent some time browsing the FAQ, you can set up a behaviorally targeted email to check in and see if they have any specific questions.
• Leaves an item in their cart without checking out. You could send them a reminder email with a small discount, remind them of limited stock (or that their cart will expire) and so on.

Remember, with behavioral email marketing, it’s the customer at the wheel — not you. They’re making choices while interacting with your content. Behavioral marketing is designed to act on those choices with the kind of engagement that increases conversion rates, grows profits, and vastly improves customer retention.

Discovering Behavioral Email Marketing Trigger Opportunities

Once you start collecting and analyzing the information that you gather on your customers, new opportunities for behaviorally targeted emails will percolate to the surface. You’ll start getting all kinds of great ideas on how to guide users back into your service. To help get you started, here’s an overview of email marketing formats I consider some of my favorites:

The “Getting Started” Email

Also known as an “onboarding” email, this message is usually sent after you create an account or register for a service. It’s designed to get you clicking and interacting with the service as quickly and fluidly as possible. Here’s an awesome example from Stocksy, a stock photography site:

Notice how they’ve carefully curated images in emails on a specific theme – then encourage you to click through and check them out for more design inspiration. Here’s another example from Airbnb:

If you’ve been browsing trips to wine country, this targeted email can help make your tour much more palatable through the offer of discounts, local guides, special attractions, and more.

The Notification Email

The notification email is generally just a canned response from your account or user management software that tells people their username and password, and maybe has a link to some documentation to get started. That’s where most of the getting started automating of the process ends — which results in a lot of confused or frustrated users.

Instead, encourage them to take the first step toward trying out your product by offering more of a guided, hands-on tour. If you have a SaaS, walk them through using it by helping them to create their very first _____ — such as a website, playlist, or campaign. This sort of guided, pop-up tour will help them feel more at ease, and can also give you even more valuable data for your behavioral targeting email marketing goals.

The Icing on the Cake Email

These are the unexpected but highly welcomed emails that encourage better customer retention. Here’s a great example from Shopify that lets users extend their free trial of the service:

Another example comes from TurboTax, which is designed to pique the user’s curiosity about how much their tax refund could be, before they ever see a check in the mail:

It also promotes the benefits of using the TurboTax service, but without being overly “sales-y” or pushy. Rather, it shifts the focus onto the customer and their end goals – which revolve around getting the biggest refund possible at tax time.

The Reward Email

Everyone loves getting an unexpected reward — even if it’s a digital “good job!” Here’s an example of an email from Withings, which is a Fitbit-style product that helps inspire healthy habits by tracking your activity. Here, you can see a user has won a badge for taking 8,000 steps in a day, and unlocked the Marathon reward. They can also share their progress on Twitter or Facebook.

The Recommendation Email

Oftentimes, great customer service from a company is enough to get you to recommend them. But what if the brand sweetened the deal? Bombas, which sells socks online, provides free socks, with no limit, to people who tell their friends about them. Those friends get a discount on socks, and the referrer gets more socks. And we all know you can never have enough socks.

Transactional Emails

Did you know that transactional emails (receipts, shipping notifications, etc.) are opened up at 8x the rate of regular emails? With this in mind, it’s worth going through the ones your company sends and doing away with those dusty old “order confirmed” messages, to make every note you send one that not only thanks the customer for their order, but does so in a way that’s more akin to having a conversation than making a statement.

This Slack notification for the user to get involved with the app on mobile does just that by having a link to their blog in the footer:

It’s not invasive, but the user knows the brand has more in store. Those are the kinds of placements in your trigger emails that will keep leads engaged.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is behavioral email marketing?

Behavioral marketing refers to the response to each lead’s behavior with the kind of engagement that boosts conversion rates, revenues, and customer retention.

How can I create emails based on user behavior?

Think of this email in the formula of an “if-then” clause. For example, if a customer abandoned their cart, email them to remind them of the quality products they’re leaving behind. Try including a coupon, because that prompts leads to convert as well.

What is behavioral targeting in email marketing?

Behavioral targeting in the email marketing world is sending out specific emails to consumers based on their past behavior. For example, sending a different email to someone who brought a product from your online store versus someone who filled their cart, but never checked out.

What are the 4 types of marketing emails?

The 4 main types of marketing emails are as follows:

• Email newsletters, sharing company news and relevant product updates.
• Acquisition emails, designed to introduce customers to your sales funnel for products or services.
• Retention emails, designed to keep customers engaged in your sales funnel.
• Promotional emails, which highlight deals or other specific opportunities to purchase/engage with your brand.

What makes an email unprofessional?

Aside from standard issues like typos, broken images, or formatting issues, some things that may flag an email as unprofessional include:

• A bad template that is difficult to read.
• Using bait-and-switch headlines to trick people into reading.
• Having an overly long email before getting to your CTA.
• Sending too many emails in a short period of time. This may get your content marked as spam.

What are the 3 most important things for an email?

While the answer may vary here based on market and customer base, 3 things that are universal are:

1. Adding a personalization element to the emails whenever possible.
2. Be sure to sound human, not like a sales robot.
3. Having some form of CTA or CTAs to move the reader into the sales funnel.

Should I target every consumer with behavioral email marketing?

You’ll want to create a few samples to send that depend on the scenario and behavior of the lead. Having an email tailored towards a user’s experience will feel more genuine, guiding them to convert. 

Conclusion

The bottom line is getting more behavioral triggers in your marketing strategy is going to make it better. Trigger-based campaigns offer the appropriate material and messaging to the subscriber at the right time, matching where they are in the funnel.

At the core, trigger email marketing operates by nurturing subscribers depending on their interaction with your brand. 

You can keep your lead’s attention by sending timely, relevant emails. 

This can show more prospect engagement, more clickthroughs, increased customer purchases, retention, and an overall positive experience.

Marketers who aren’t getting on the behavioral email marketing train are missing out, so get started by following the best practices I recommend.

Get creative with your triggers and see how your tactics convert more leads.

Which behavioral triggers have you found to be the most effective in your marketing campaigns? Let me know in the comments!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

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How to Get More YouTube Views: 8 Steps with Examples

Marketers who use YouTube are usually keen to reach the widest audience possible. After all, the more YouTube views you get, the more exposure.

While they’re not the only metric that determines the success of your YouTube marketing, generating a decent number of views for your videos is something that you should definitely try to achieve. After all, there’s no point uploading a video if nobody is going to watch it, especially your target audience, right?

Perhaps you’ve got doubts about YouTube, and I understand that. I mean, who wants another platform to master creating content for? However, it makes absolute sense for your business to get on YouTube if you haven’t already.

YouTube attracts 2.6 billion global monthly users. Now, I can’t guarantee your success, but with such a vast audience from all walks of life, it’s likely that some of your target market will visit the platform. You might as well meet them there.

If you need some more convincing, what about this research? Google found that 40 percent of consumers bought a product they found on YouTube.

However, just posting content isn’t enough; if you’re not getting YouTube views, you’re wasting your time. Without views, you’re missing fresh opportunities to engage with your audience (incidentally, this article has some tips if you want some quick wins to increase engagement).

In this post, we’re going to take a look at tactics that you can use to get more views on YouTube.

We’ll cover some of the fundamentals to help you over the long term and some unique tactics that you can implement to generate quicker results with your target audience.

By the end of this post, you’ll have a high level of confidence in knowing what needs to be done to generate more YouTube views.

What Counts as YouTube Views?

Before moving on, there’s something I must clarify: what counts as a YouTube view?

Here’s what you need to know: YouTube views depend on someone watching a video for at least 30 seconds.

Another key note is that the viewer needs to have intentionally initiated the video viewing. For example, they’ve clicked through to it.

Rewatching a video also counts towards YouTube views, provided the video is watched for 30 seconds.

Now that you’re clear on that, let’s move on to some tips to start attracting viewers.

Great Video Content Gets More YouTube Views

It’s the golden rule on any platform, and applies here too. If you want more YouTube views, then you must publish great content.

Sure, you could just upload a video that doesn’t offer any major takeaways and press ‘publish’. That would get your content out there, but it wouldn’t be share-worthy, so why bother?

What makes excellent content?

• First, you need engaging and exciting visuals, like high-quality footage or creative animations. Whatever you choose, make sure it’s eye-catching and holds viewers’ attention. For help with creating professional-looking videos, there are plenty of tools available, like InVideo.
• Second, consider your audio quality. No one wants to listen to a video with muffled or distorted sound. Make sure your voice is clear and easy to understand and that any background noise is kept to a minimum.
• Finally, think about the overall story you’re trying to tell with your video. Is it informative? Entertaining? Inspiring? What do you want to convey? Whatever it is, make sure your video is well-organized and flows smoothly from beginning to end.

If you can do that, generating more views for your videos becomes a heck of a lot easier. For one thing, the better your videos are, the more likely people are to share your videos on social media.

Since I don’t know your business or your audience, I can’t tell you precisely what you should be doing to create amazing videos, and I can’t promise you thousands of YouTube views.

I can tell you this: awesome content provides exceptional levels of value.

It’s important that you don’t get caught up in the wrong things when looking to create great content to get more YouTube views.

People often worry about content length and production quality.

Sure, the content length might matter to a certain extent. However, are you really going to stop watching a 1-hour video if it’s providing immense value? Probably not.

In fact, it’s worth remembering that the average length of a YouTube session of 29 minutes and 37 seconds.

Value trumps everything for search results, especially high production quality, and if you offer quality, people keep watching. Here’s an example:

The video below ranks near the top in YouTube search results for ‘how to build a website,’ runs for over two hours and has attracted 2.5 million views and counting.

So remember, content length isn’t something that you should obsess over on this social network.

Step 1: YouTube Views Don’t Depend on Video Production

An increasing number of companies are investing in YouTube. Often, these businesses create highly produced, glossy videos, but you don’t necessarily have to take the approach.

You see, if you’re publishing quality content, YouTube is generally pretty forgiving: your videos don’t need to be perfect. When your videos start to get some traction, that’s the time to think about investing in fancy production and camera equipment to help you get more YouTube views.

However, to begin with, just make sure that you cover the basics. For example, if you’re creating a:

• ‘talking head’ video, ensure everything is well-lit and the audio is clear.
• screen capture video, ensure that the resolution is high and the audio is easy to hear.
• slideshow, create something simple and visually engaging. Use strong images and minimal text on your slides. You can use a tool, like Haiku Deck, for this. A custom thumbnail also helps people remember your brand.

Step 2: For More YouTube Views, Focus on Value Above All Else

Remember, providing value should be your guiding principle when it comes to getting YouTube views.

If you want to learn how to provide value, you have to learn more about your audience and, more specifically, what they like. You may be wondering how you find the type of content that appeals to your target market. It’s simple: Just look at content in your niche.

There are a few approaches you can take.

The first is to take a look at blog posts that have done well in your niche. Then, create incredibly informative videos based on those blog post topics.

You can find such blog posts using Buzzsumo. Just enter your keyword, press search, and you’ll get a wealth of ideas.

Alternatively, you can look at other YouTube videos that have done well in your niche and create better videos. If your competitors have a YouTube channel, look at the type and frequency of content they are putting out.

If you’re an expert in your niche, then it shouldn’t be hard to create high-quality videos when using other videos as inspiration.

However, if you find yourself struggling, take a moment to assess what could have been done to improve the other video. For example:

• Did it ignore something that was actually important?
• Did the video fail to explain certain sections fully?
• Did the video fail to provide actual results/case study information?
• Was the pace too slow or too fast?
• Was there too much information on the screen, or not enough?
• Could diagrams have been used to illustrate a point better?
• Maybe you could’ve included some data?

Check out the comments section, too. Other viewers’ opinions are often extremely revealing, and they’ll say if they felt the video was lacking something and could have been better in some way.

Finally, why not use the YouTube Search engine to help you come up with content ideas?

Say I’m in the business of teaching people ‘how to build a pond’ or building it for them, and I’m looking to do some content marketing.

I can just type ‘how to build a pond’ into the ‘YouTube Search box,’ and let the YouTube algorithm and Autosuggest do the rest.

Not all of the ideas are relevant, so I might select the first option and see what else comes up as a result of ‘Autosuggest.’

If I go with the option of ‘how to build a pond in your backyard,’ I’m presented with some helpful ideas.

I can then repeat that process, using other keywords, if I want to come up with even more video ideas.

It might also be a good idea to cycle through the alphabet after having chosen a ‘base’ keyword.

This time, I type in ‘how to build a pond a’

As you can see, plenty of video ideas here look relevant. I can use those to create super niche video content that resonates with a certain demographic in the social media platform.

If you have an existing audience on YouTube, consider asking your audience what they’d like you to cover next.

More often than not, your audience provides you with ideas that you can use.

The great thing about these video ideas is that by acting on them, you can be sure that there is an audience for them.

If you have done a good job of creating great content that meets people’s needs, you’ll find that organic views will be easier to come by. This is because a recent change to YouTube’s algorithm means authoritative content, viewer satisfaction, personalization, and the video’s performance are all important ranking signals.

Therefore if your videos produce a great user experience, there’s a good chance that they perform better in the rankings, too.

Step 3: Optimize Your Videos to Get More YouTube Views

Optimizing your video can help ensure it appears when and where it should; this includes the search listings and the ‘related video’ suggestions.

If you want to optimize your video, there are four things that you must take care of.

• Title
• Tags
• Description
• Thumbnail

It’s easy to over-complicate this and over-analyze everything, but keep it simple and focus on the four areas above.

Step 4: Write Better YouTube Titles

For the title, it’s essential that you don’t use clickbait-style headings. Inevitably, if the content of the video doesn’t reflect the title, you’ll get a ton of disappointed viewers.

If you’ve created your video around a keyword, ensure that your title clearly explains that your video covers the subject in question.

For example, if I created a video based on the key phrase ‘how to bake a chocolate cake for beginners,’ my title might be…

How to Bake a Chocolate Cake for Beginners – Spent $5 and 5 Minutes cleanup

Note: If you want to write great titles, you might want to work out what your audience doesn’t like or its fears about the topic.

In the example above, people might worry that it costs a lot to bake a cake and that cleaning up is a pain. The video becomes much more enticing if I address that in the title.

Step 5: Use YouTube Tags

For the tags, provide some keywords related to your video’s topic. If we continue with the ‘chocolate cake’ example above, our YouTube tags might look something like this:

Try not to use more than 10-12 tags per video. You’ll lose your target audience and dilute search results data.

Picking the right tags helps your video appear in the ‘suggested videos’ section when someone is watching a related video.

Now, let’s take a look at the description.

Step 6: Create an Accurate, Optimized YouTube Description

When writing the description, it’s vital that you don’t try to ‘outsmart’ Google. In other words, don’t stuff keywords, and don’t rely on any ‘tricks,’ that you might come across.

You could end up over-optimizing your video, which can have the opposite effect.

Your aim with the description is to clearly detail what the video is about and what people learn from watching it.

If you look at the top results returned for a YouTube video search, you can see that there is a wide variation in terms of what the descriptions look like.

That’s because, as mentioned above, user experience also plays a big role in ranking the video; While your description is important, don’t get too stressed out about getting it ‘right.’

That being said, key areas to focus on include putting your link at the top of the video, getting a keyword in the first 25 words, including it 3-4 times, and trying to stick to that 250 word count range.

Here’s what an example description looks like.

However, as I said, the top-ranking videos all tend to have varying styles that they use for their description. You don’t necessarily have to follow what is above.

Just provide the story behind your video, what it covers, and what people will learn as a result of watching.

Note: If you want to do something that will improve user experience, consider providing ‘timestamps’ in your description so that people can quickly get to interesting sections of a video.

Step 7: YouTube Thumbnail Optimization

For the thumbnail, there are a number of approaches that you can take. I’ve covered how you can create engaging YouTube thumbnails in this post. A custom thumbnail becomes part of your media platform branding.

For the most part, you can experiment with the following.

1. Use images of people in your custom thumbnail
2. Edit your thumbnail to include text overlay using a keyword based on the topic your video covers
3. Include an image that reveals an interesting section of the video – for example, the end result of a ‘how-to video.’

You will tend to find that you’re able to generate the best results when you combine some of the above.

Here’s an example of how you can use an interesting image and relevant text overlay.

As you can see, the custom thumbnail isn’t overly dramatic. It includes some text, related to the video keyword and an image of an interesting section of the video.

Here’s an example of using the image of a person, with text overlay and even possibly the ‘end result’ that is to be achieved, too.

You’ll want to experiment here, of course. But those two examples and the tips provided should be enough to let you know what tends to work well.

Step 8: Experiment With Ads to Drive YouTube Views

Ads might sound like a little bit of a cop-out here. I get it; you might not want to pay to play the YouTube views game.

However, running YouTube Ads is one of the best ways to generate the right views for your videos.

YouTube Ads let you target your ideal audience and make sure they find out about your video.

It takes a lot of the guesswork out of the whole process on this social media platform.

Running ads allows you to get real-time feedback on how good your video is, speeding the process of working out whether or not you have an engaging video on your hands.

If you find that people are watching your video to the end and sharing it a lot, then you know you’re on the right track in terms of the strategy that you’re using to actually create videos.

Where to begin?

Note: I’ve covered, in detail here, how you can create YouTube Ads.

When it comes to YouTube, there are essentially two kinds of ads that you can run.

1. Ads that appear before or while people are watching YouTube videos, or ’Instream Ads.’
2. Ads that appear in the YouTube Search listings or Search Listing Ads.

I recommend that you experiment with both.

Using YouTube Search, find videos in your niche that are related to your specific video topic and jot down their URLs.

Then, target those videos using the placements option.

Let’s say that I was starting a business that taught people how to bake, and I’ve just created a video based on ‘how to bake a cake.’

I head over to YouTube and type in ‘how to bake a cake.’

I then note down the URLs of these videos in a Google doc.

I then enter these URLs when setting up the targeting for my ads.

Of course, not all of the videos listed have ‘monetization’ enabled, meaning that you can’t show ads on all of them.

However, if you start with a list of 10-15 videos, you should have good delivery to your target audience.

If you want to target within the YouTube Search listings, then you obviously need some keywords to target.

To find relevant keywords, use the YouTube search box, then:

• Enter a keyword that explains what your video covers. Then, write down other relevant keywords that are provided by ‘autosuggest.’
• As you can see below, if I enter ‘how to bake a cake,’ I’m presented with relevant keywords worth targeting.

I’ve highlighted some that are potentially worth my while.

Note: The assumption here is that I’m teaching people how to bake a simple cake. That is why I’ve chosen those somewhat basic keywords.

If I want even more relevant keywords to target, I just select one of the ideal keywords and then press the ‘spacebar.’

And I’m presented with even more keywords to target.

As I mentioned above, you can also cycle through the alphabet to find other relevant keywords.

Then, I just need to note these keywords in a Google Doc and input them when setting up my ad targeting.

Step 9: Promote Your YouTube Video Everywhere

Just because you’ve created a YouTube video doesn’t mean that you can now only promote it on YouTube.

Post links for your YouTube content to your other digital assets, including your email list, your Facebook page, and other social media sites.

If you know of some influencers who might find your video useful, you may even want to let them know via email that you’ve created something they might enjoy.

Consider posting a link or snippet in your Instagram stories.

Don’t be afraid to let the world know that you’ve got something new to offer.

Step 10: Increase YouTube Views By Building a Subscriber Base

You’ll also want to focus on building a subscriber base to get more YouTube views on future content.

If you can get subscribers, your videos will automatically get a good chunk of views as soon as you post them. If these views represent a good user experience, your video might also do a better job at ranking, too.

Here, I’ve covered how you can get more YouTube subscribers.

Aside from creating good content, there are some key steps that you can take to get more subscribers.

At the beginning and end of your video, mention that subscribing helps get the video out to more people in your social network.

By actually saying it, people may be more inclined to take action.

You can also make an effort to create content consistently.

Creating more videos will ensure there are more ways for your content to be found. This, of course, can help improve your subscriber count.

It also gives people a reason to become subscribers, as they’ll want to know when you publish new content.

Note: If you can create ‘Evergreen content,’ then the content you create will pay dividends for a long time, as it will still be relevant for people in the future.

This means that the video will drive YouTube views and subscribers, long after its creation.

FAQs

How Can I Get More Views on My YouTube videos?

The most essential parts are promoting your videos, building a subscriber list, and creating high-quality content. What makes high-quality content varies from niche to niche, so you need to know your audience needs before getting started on YouTube.

Can I Optimize My YouTube Videos?

Yes, and you absolutely should! To begin optimizing your videos, use descriptive and keyword-rich titles, include tags, optimize your thumbnail image and create transcripts of your videos.

What is YouTube SEO?

YouTube SEO is the process of optimizing your videos so that they rank higher in YouTube’s search results. Just like traditional SEO, several factors contribute to your ranking, like adding keywords to your titles and descriptions.

Conclusion

For many, getting more YouTube views sounds complex and obscure.

Hopefully, you now have a better sense of how to get more viewers to your videos.

There are many avenues that you can go down. The most important step is to create good quality content about topics important to your viewers.

If you can take care of that, everything else you do to get more YouTube views will be much more effective.

Do you have any tips when it comes to generating more YouTube views? Share what works for you in the comments section.

How do you promote your channel to get more YouTube views?

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