What Startups Can Learn from ‘Tax Relief’ PPC Campaigns

Old-school industries don’t get the credit they deserve.

Every blog online focuses on the hot new startup.

People write case study after case study on the trendy new subscription box.

But no one ever talks about offline companies.

Even though, many times, there’s WAY more money at stake.

Take ‘tax relief,’ for example.

The latest IRS numbers show that people fail to pay $458 billion a year in taxes. That accounts for almost 69% of our annual deficit.

Obviously, people don’t get away with avoiding taxes for too long. Eventually, they’ll be caught.

And then they’ll need to pay back the IRS.

The problem, of course, is that they probably won’t have the money on hand.

So what will these desperate people do?

They’ll start looking for help from tax relief companies.

These companies specialize in helping people reduce or avoid certain debts.

What’s the problem?

This is a heavily commoditized market. Many of these providers are offering the same services, more or less.

If a ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ refers to uncontested markets, tax relief is a very, very, molten lava, red-hot, competitive market.

It’s among the most competitive in the world. You have massive companies all chasing the same few people who owe lots and lots of money.

You know what else that means?

There is no room for error.

These companies literally cannot afford to make a mistake.

They’re among the highest-priced PPC terms, for instance, reaching up to around $40-50 bucks a click.

And that’s just for a single visit!

They still have to try and convert those visitors. So the actual cost per lead is well into the hundreds of dollars, easy.

That’s why we should be studying these old school industries. They might not have the flashiest designs or most cutting-edge tech.

But they are slogging it out, day in and day out, with competitors who’re all spending a TON of money.

In this article, I’m going to show you strategies from the best in the tax relief business. At the very end, you’ll be able to take these tips and instantly increase your own PPC campaigns.

First, however, we need to start by getting a lay of the land.

How to research an industry you know nothing about

PPC is one of my favorite marketing tactics.

I love it because it produces results almost immediately. You can turn campaigns on and make adjustments on the fly.

Do it right and customers start flowing in within a few days.

I also love it because it’s consistent. You can predict what kind of results you’re going to get.

And you can predict them, because a simple competitive analysis will give you almost all the data you need.

For example, before this post, I knew nothing about tax relief. Thankfully!

My trick to uncovering the best marketing tips isn’t to watch what people say. It’s to watch what they do.

If you want to know more about ‘tax relief,’ let’s start by Googling the competition.

So far so good. The first four ad results show they know what they’re doing.

My search query was “tax relief Seattle.”

But all of them do a good job bringing up benefits of their service.

Why does that matter? Because just over a year ago, Google opened up the ‘expanded’ headline.

This way, you could hit the keyword in the first headline. And then add a secondary benefit to get people to click.

Here’s an awesome example:

“Take 60 seconds to cut taxes” helps the searcher hop over the first objection hurdle: It’s going to be too long or boring.

When this new expanded headline debuted, WordStream ran a study and found that adding an additional benefit like this can increase your click-through rate by 400%!

Just a few simple queries like this will help you quickly find a whole slew of companies.

Stick to big, popular queries at this point.

The reason? Keywords like “tax relief” will also be among the most expensive in the space.

Which means the companies you see advertising on them will have the big bucks.

They’ll be the most aggressive.

And you can use them as a benchmark.

For example, Precision Tax Relief had an excellent ad earlier. They used ad extensions like star ratings and reviews.

So you know they’re legit.

Now, I’m going to grab their URL and drop them into two tools.

First, let’s see what their site brings up in SpyFu:

Check that out.

Two seconds and you can see:

1. The number of keywords they’re bidding on
2. An estimate of clicks they’re receiving
3. Their total monthly budget

And then, you can even drill down into the individual keywords in their account.

Each one will show a cost per click, the total ad budget on each, and where they’re showing up for them.

SEMrush will show you similar data:

In this case, you’re able to sort the keywords they’re bidding on by search position.

See something interesting already?

Precision Tax Relief is paying for the #1 position of a competitor, Optima Tax Relief.

Judging by this traffic estimate, they’re also stealing a TON of their clicks, too.

Look further down the list and you see more of the same.

Why should we spend time looking up competitors?

Because these tools will uncover the strategies the best companies in the industry are using.

So far, we can see that Precision Tax is using a branded search strategy.

Instead of just dominating their own name, they’re actively bidding against the competition’s.

But that’s not the most important thing buried in here.

For starters, they’re giving us the 800LB gorilla in the tax relief space: Optima.

Which means we can now go research them to see what’s making them so successful.

Let’s start with reverse-engineering their keyword strategy.

Analyze the best in the business to see what works

There’s a trick I use to shortcut keyword research for SEO.

Instead of wasting tons of time on inaccurate tools like the Google Keyword Planner, I do the same thing every time I get a new site:

Fire up an AdWords campaign.

The reason? It saves me a ton of time.

The hardest part about optimizing a brand new website is that you don’t know the ‘money’ keywords.

You have no idea which keywords will deliver the best bang for your buck. Or hours.

AdWords can help you solve that.

You can add a bunch of keywords from five minutes of research. Set up a decent daily budget.

Then, the AdWords Search Terms report will tell you exactly which keywords are worth focusing on.

That’s what we want to replicate in this case, too.

Right now, we still have no idea which keywords perform best.

Sure, we saw that some companies are going after the competition hard.

But you often can’t rely only on competitive brand queries.

Instead, let’s look up the top keywords for Optima Tax Relief. They were one of the biggest in the space.

So they probably have a pretty good keyword strategy already in place.

Here’s what that looks like in SEMrush:

Notice what they’re doing?

They’re employing a location-based keyword strategy.

A lot of the estimate monthly volume is really low, too. ~200-300 monthly queries is nothing.

“Tax relief,” by comparison, gets over ~8,000 monthly searches alone. It’s also expensive, with CPC’s that can range up to ~$40 a click:

Instead of going after just those big keywords, Optima is going after a ton of long-tail keywords.

That’s good and bad news.

It’s good news because long-tail keywords should offer better conversions and cost less per lead.

But it’s bad news because there’s often not enough of them to go around.

In other words, you have to piece them all together to get the end results you’re looking for.

You can’t grow a business off one or two conversions each month. Instead, you need to stack those like bricks.

You need thousands to really take off.

Clicking on those individual keywords they’re running will also show you the different ad creatives they’re using.

And you’ll get to see the other similar search terms their ads are appearing on.

For example, here’s what it looks like when you click on “tax attorney nyc”:

Now, you’re seeing all of those little long-tail variations that go together.

And you’re looking at the exact ad copy they’re using to drive clicks.

See how this works?

With about ten minutes of research, you can start piecing together a winning campaign.

Even in an industry where you have no prior experience.

Of course, this is just a start.

There’s actually a whole lot more involved in a successful ad campaign.

We’re only scratching the surface right now.

Keywords and ads get people to click. But they’re not why people convert.

Most of the time, that happens when people start interacting with your site.

Your site’s landing pages not only determine conversions, though. They also can end up determining how much you’re going to pay for each click.

Here’s how.

Mimic the customer’s process to understand their experience

Back in the day, when I first started out, AdWords didn’t have a Quality Score.

That meant anyone could advertise on any keywords and there was no penalty.

As long as you had the money to spend, it was fine.

That created a problem for users, though. The results were often irrelevant.

Google’s Quality Score changed all that.

It factors in a bunch of different variables, like ad relevance or expected click-through rate, to determine which ads are best.

Generally speaking, the better the score and your Ad Rank, the less you often end up paying.

In this video, I give 5 tips for increasing your Quality Score:

So while AdWords is an auction, you can sometimes pay less than the people showing up below you. If your scores are better.

Years ago, Larry Kim analyzed millions in ad spend and found a 16% cost difference based on Quality Score. A point higher and you paid less. A point lower and you paid more.

Jacob Baadsgaard repeated this experiment a few years later and found a 13% correlation.

In other words, your Quality Score can often directly influence your costs.

Now, here’s the kicker:

A huge component of your Quality Score comes down to message match.

Here’s what that means:

1. How well does your keyword selection represent someone’s search intent?
2. How well does your ad text match the keyword you’re bidding on?
3. And how well does your landing page match both the ad text and keyword?

Those three elements should be in perfect harmony.

The more they’re aligned, the better the message match, the higher the Quality Score, and the lower cost you pay.

Still with me so far?

Let’s go back to our original example from Precision Tax Relief.

Here’s what their ad looked like again:

Notice how the headline is: “Best Tax Relief Seattle”?

The ad copy below also uses “attorneys,” among other keywords.

Compare that ad to the landing page people see when they click:

Not bad, right?

Technically speaking, the headline on this page (“Best Seattle Tax Attorney”) is a little off. Ideally, you’d make them the exact same as the ad and keyword.

But think through what that means, now.

Earlier, we saw how Optima tax relief was using a bunch of different long-tail keywords, sorted by location.

That means you’d have to create unique landing pages for almost every one!

You’d probably want to keep the same overall design to make your life a little easier.

However, you’d want to at least customize the text to better reflect what sent people here in the first place.

That means you might have one example for attorneys, specifically:

And then you’d have another targeting physicians and dentists:

There are a few ways you can pull this off.

You could have designers and developers help create custom pages for you.

But not everyone has that luxury.

Instead, I also like using dynamic text replacement wherever possible.

I’m all about ROI. The best solution is often the one that scales the best.

Landing page tools like Unbounce have features that will automatically replace text on a page, depending on where they came from.

That means you can create just one single landing page template.

Then, you can simply switch up the words.

Here’s a location-based example, just like those keywords from earlier.

This landing page says “Caribbean” right now.

You can highlight the location-based text, then click the “Dynamic Text” button on the right-hand side of Unbounce.

Now, we can customize the text based on the location or “destination”:

Now, repeat this process for all of the different keywords you’re bidding on.

You’ll get a simple, customized URL to copy and place in your ad campaigns.

That way, when someone clicks on the ad for “California” beach getaways, they’re going to land on a page with “California” all over it.

And you never had to create more than a single landing page.

Let’s go back to tax relief.

Because I came across a landing page that uses another advanced feature. You have to see it.

Here’s how Optima tax relief uses qualifying questions to convert more users.

Qualify and lead new customers to your doorstep

Clicking on an Optima Tax ad will bring you to the following landing page:

Here’s what it looks like if you want to play along at home.

Notice what you don’t see here?

You don’t see a Name field. You also don’t see Email or Phone.

They’re not asking you any personal information just yet.

Instead, they’re starting with “How much tax debt do you have”?

Weird, right?!

Except, it’s not so weird when you dig below the surface.

Right off the bat, they’re qualifying new visitors.

They’re trying to see how much you owe, between 0 – $50,000+.

If you owe less than $10,000 for example, and there’s probably not enough they can help you with.

They won’t stand to gain a whole lot.

Owe over $50,000 and their hands might also be tied. They’re not miracle workers, after all.

So they’re segmenting potential visitors to customize the kind of response you’ll get.

They can automate most of the disqualifying, gently letting people know they can’t help that much.

While they can also fast-track people who do fit right in their wheelhouse.

Only then do they ask for your personal information:

Virtu did two similar tactics to skyrocket conversions.

They asked qualifying questions to figure out how to treat individual leads:

And then they add Calendly to the Thank You page for good leads to remove any remaining friction.

Their rate of leads scheduling phone calls jumped from 20% to over 60% in just the first month.

There’s another reason this inverted process works, though.

Think about it from a customer’s perspective.

They probably don’t feel great. They’re embarrassed or hesitant about reaching out.

So landing on a page that immediately asks for a bunch of personal information is a little off-putting.

Counterintuitively, asking easy questions first can increase conversions later. It lowers the barrier to entry.

KlientBoost calls this the ‘Breadcrumb Technique.’

It’s based off research from Scott Fraser and Jonathan Freedman that showed how starting with a small ‘ask’ can make it easier to get a “yes” to the big ‘ask’ after.

By as much as 76% vs. 20%!

KlientBoost tested both approaches on a mortgage landing page:

And here were the incredible results:

• The Cost Per Acquisition fell from $800+ to $35
• Total conversions went from 6 to 135 a month
• The conversion rate jumped from 1% to nearly 20%

Pretty remarkable, right?

But we’re not even done yet.

There’s still a big difference between people that apply for tax relief help, from those that go through with the service.

We still need to see how people get over that last sales hump, then.

Here’s how you can use automation to largely set-and-forget this process.

Lastly, automate and fine-tune your intake process

After submitting your personal information, Optima Tax follows up with an automate email.

That’s pretty typical, though.

You’d expect that.

What’s not so expected is the text message you’ll receive at the very same time.

It will read something like this:

• “$NAME Thanks for your interest in OptimaTaxRelief.com, we’ll be calling you soon.”

I know, because I ran through this process and received one myself. ;)

Soon after, you will receive that call, too.

So far they’ve followed up in all three primary channels:

1. Phone
2. Email
3. Text

If you don’t pick up that phone call, you’ll receive another text message with something like:

• “We were unable to reach you. Click 800-481-3615 to call a tax relief”

Fail to respond, and they’ll continue calling you throughout the next few days.

What’s happening here?

Optima Tax knows that this space is tough.

You, the customer, could have lost interest. Or you could be on the phone with the competition, comparing rates.

So they’re persistently aggressive to get ahold of you.

If and when you do get on the phone, they’ll ask you the same basic questions:

• Why are you calling us today?
• How much do you owe?
• What do you do for a living?
• Have you filed a tax return?
• Have you filed an extension?
• How did you hear about them?

And on and on.

They will also use an interview to figure out if you own any other assets, have insurance, what your household income looks like, and if you have any dependents.

The entire thing is scripted. They’re sizing you up, determining if they can win your case and how much you can afford to pay them.

They want to close you right there on the initial phone call, with costs ranging from $995 – $2995 depending on how much you owe.

Decline their first invitation to sign up, and they’ll continue sending you messages:

All of this can be choreographed ahead of time.

Based on the answers people give you, they can receive different messages.

Based on the way they act or don’t act, they can receive more, different messages.

Best of all, you can create these sequences in a matter of days with options like Drip, Infusionsoft, or Autopilot.

There are text message apps like TextMagic that can help you customize messaging based on responses or behavior, too.

The best tax relief companies have a masterful conversion funnel.

It’s no different than signing up for a new SaaS app.

You go through the trial period. Receive a bunch of emails. Then, you’ll get upgrade notices before your information is cancelled.

The same can and should apply to all businesses. You need a well-oiled funnel like this to convert the most people.

Remember: These leads and clicks are expensive!

These companies can’t afford to spend $40,000+ on ads each month and not see a significant return.

So each step of this funnel is fine-tuned, scripted, and automated. That way, they can easily isolate and tweak the parts that aren’t working.

Conclusion

“Boring” industries don’t always get the credit they deserve.

They don’t get any major press. And they don’t land on the front page of TechCrunch.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll see that the best are well-oiled machines.

While they might not get a lot of attention, what they do get is a whole lot of money.

They’ve been around the block. They’re not distracted by trends or other shiny hacks.

They’re just really good at routinely turning strangers into customers.

I almost learn more from watching these old school examples than new apps.

Because they just quietly go about building a huge business.

What’s the best example of a ‘boring,’ yet highly profitable company you’ve seen?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

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The Art and Science of Storytelling — And How to Use Both to Reach Your Audience

Marketers are a lot like those realtors on HGTV’s “House Hunters.” The same way they’re trying to find a bungalow with beach access that also has a downtown industrial-loft feel (and stays within a $50,000 budget …), we’re constantly striving to create content that accomplishes many things.

We need to create content that’s thoughtful and well-crafted — content that speaks to our audiences, deeply engages them, thoroughly answers their questions, and helps them do their jobs better. And we also have to ensure our content is effective, that it ranks in search for the right terms and phrases, and that it drives results both within and beyond the marketing department. We need the quaint-modern-beachfront-cottage-mansion in the best school district. Achieving all of this can be quite difficult, which is why we’re holding a webinar on February 8th on how to get it done.

The list of things your content can accomplish could seriously go on and on. And on. I think Celine Dion sang a song about it.

via GIPHY

Creating content that meets your audiences’ needs as well as meets your monthly KPIs can be a #struggle — especially if you aren’t applying the right insights to your content creation process. Or if marketing is asking for a fenced-in backyard and sales wants a high-rise.

The best way to create that kind of content is to uncover the answers to a couple of key questions and use those insights to guide your content process.

Question 1: What do your audiences want?
Answer: An authentic story and original, valuable content they can connect with.

Question 2: What do search engines want?
Answer: Unique, long-form content that addresses searcher intent and substantiates claims with relevant data.

Enter: Qualitative and Quantitative Insights

Creating thought leadership content that shares expert insights through a compelling story and also delivers measurable results is all about looking at both sides of the coin: qualitative and quantitative insights.

In other words, it’s about bringing together art and science for the perfect content formula.

This means applying basic storytelling ideas to your content by putting your readers in the protagonist’s seat, speaking to their needs, and giving each piece an arc that they want to follow through to the end.

It also means applying hard numbers, facts, and data to each piece of content and to your strategy overall to make it more powerful.

The Results: Evergreen Content That Serves Various Departments

At Influence & Co., we’ve applied these qualitative and quantitative insights to our own content marketing, and we’ve seen great results. We create relevant content that helps us engage audiences, build our network, and generate and nurture leads. Outside these key marketing goals, we also put our content to use in our recruitment efforts and employee training, sales enablement, client service, and thought leader brand-building efforts. Basically, we’ve built the content marketing version of an open-concept kitchen that’s as functional as it is beautiful.

Want to dig deeper and learn how to use these insights, data, and storytelling to create content that fuels your business? Then join us for our webinar with Kissmetrics on Feb. 8 at 12 a.m. CST/10 a.m. PT.

Register today!

Author description: Brittni Kinney is a VP at Influence & Co. and loves discussing how content marketing can help any marketing strategy achieve its full potential. She likes her coffee black and her whiskey straight; she also enjoys traveling.

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Capitalize on Success with Change

When is the best time to improve an existing product or service? When customers are complaining about it? When sales wane? When it has become so predictable it blends into the background of the industry? When analysts start writing off your company as yesterday’s news?

Let’s think about this from a different angle.

La Maison Troisgros is the most celebrated Michelin Three Star restaurant in the world, having held that distinction for an uninterrupted 50 years. Established in 1930 and located just northwest of the French gatonomic capital, Lyon, its signature dish, the Salmon And Sorrel, is often credited for its swift rise to fame. The dish relies on accurate execution of steps in astonishingly precise increments. Fifteen seconds of searing, kitchen to customer service within twelve seconds, customer plate arrival to first bite within six to seven seconds. If one aspect of the process is delayed it jeopardizes the quality of the entire dish. Culinary mastery at its finest. However, with mastery often comes ego and that can stealthily stunt innovation. In 1995 Michael Troisgros, the head chef and owner of Maison, removed the dish from the menu; stunning customers, critics and competitors alike. Many considered it a foolhardy mistake, potentially catastrophic to the business and a pall on the legacy his father had worked so doggedly to create.

Troisgros argued that we can only innovate with knowledge and it is knowledge that fuels movement towards the future. Knowledge can be throttled when we become dependent on mastering one thing and, he believed, it is knowledge that offers the path to survival and growth. Twenty-three years and three Michlen Stars later, Troisgros stands by his decsision.

Best time to improve a service is when it is publicly perceived as being at the top of its game:

While there is no rarified rating system in the technology services industry, those of us who are knee deep in it are nevertheless proud of the hardworking technical services consultants that populate software and hardware vendor teams across the customer landscape. They just keep doing their thing. Quietly. Professionally. Precisely. Successfully. Time after time.

At the moment, customers are thrilled that they are able to measurably prove positive results from the service engagement and the services and product teams operate in harmony. Maybe then, like Troisgros, the world of technical services should embrace success when it’s most apparent by choosing to make it even better. Which is exactly what the Expert Services arm of Oracle Marketing Cloud has done.

Technology reaches its potential through the people using it

When you’re in a position of goodwill with customers, it affords you the opportunity to examine what’s going well and what can be improved. Where are there gaps? What’s on the horizon that could pose a significant challenge for our customers? We are able to enhance our popular service, because we can get ahead of the need we expect our customers to increasingly face as they grapple with the rapidly changing dimensions of impact that come with deploying top-shelf technology in a disruptive business world.

As we (admittedly, a little drily) put it in our literature, our service “provides digital transformation consulting for the Oracle Marketing Cloud technologies you’ve invested in and for the implications and changes associated with the people and processes that manage and support them.” In other words, technology offers many wonders, but as anyone who has been at this game for a while can attest, it’s not the complete story. Simply stated, we believe that technology solutions are only as powerful as the brains that utilize them.

As a corollary to that, we also believe that innovation can only happen when superior technology is governed by superior intellect. If you are a service provider, you want to help your customers create the right environment in which to design optimal processes that leverage the most appropriate features of the invested technology. For example, at Oracle Marketing Cloud, we’re already leaders in delivering to market the best marketing automation technology. Now, we want to make sure we couple that with the best guidance for customers using that technology to equip, structure, and position themselves to leverage the platform to the fullest potential

Think of it this way, we can help our customers understand how they can heighten the value proposition of content marketing, for example, by ensuring they: hire right, focus on messaging that supports and advances the corporate vision, arm the team with the right data elements, and integrate their strategy with the larger marketing organization. This is the holistic approach we adopt when working with clients.

So now, even if our customers aren’t yet thinking about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Blockchain, we are and we’re evolving our practice to incorporate appropriate guidance around those more modern concepts for our customers. See this piece by Mark Hurd, Oracle’s CEO, in which he discusses how he and the company think about those technologies.

While the Michlen level fine dining scene continues to evolve, so do worlds of commerce and government. Customer needs and desires can change with very little warning; what was once a perfect fit for them might not seem quite right. It is crucial to anticipate the needs of your customers, where they want to go and what they will need in order to get there. That’s what we’ll be doing.

Check out how Oracle Marketing Cloud Expert Services could supplement and weild your technology stack for the best results!

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The ‘Old School’ Factors that Lead to 21st-Century Sales

When I first started out as a business owner, marketing my freelance copywriting services, I was very aware of my biggest constraint: I was a lousy salesperson. When I was a kid, I had a hard time selling raffle tickets to my own grandmother. And all the books I was reading said that I had
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The post The ‘Old School’ Factors that Lead to 21st-Century Sales appeared first on Copyblogger.

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How To Use CRM Data Mining For Smarter Content Marketing

Content marketing isn't easy to do. There's no doubt that it's effective, but it's very hard to do it well. It's a little like publishing a book blindly. You have no clue if anyone will be interested enough to read it - and want another. Despite this, content marketing is still an important part of any marketing plan - so how can we overcome this problem?

One strategy is to write your content so that it is targeted to a specific type of individual. This isn't a new concept in marketing. Buyer personas are a core concept but most buyer personas are an educated guess. The buyer persona you're targeting may not be the type of person you're actually attracting with your content.

If your company does have a number of customers already and wants to really leverage the power of content marketing, then a more refined understanding of who is actually participating with the company is necessary. When you know your audience you can write to them. That's where data mining can come into play.

Data Mining your CRM

Data mining is a set of processes for analyzing a large dataset to find statistically significant information. Most data mining for content marketing purposes uses sophisticated engines to crawl through the net to find signals related to particular keywords or topics. From this analysis, predictions are made to learn more about what type of person reads what, and what readers of one topic might be interested in reading next.

But this can be turned around the other way. Instead of looking at the wider net, you can use data mining techniques on your own customer database to see which visitor behaviors correlate with particular pieces of content.

You might be asking isn't that what analytics is for? True, analytics can help but data mining takes it one step further. Analytics by its nature only looks at surface behavior, and for a small to medium-sized business this might be all that is necessary. A simple examination of which articles performed the best is a pretty good indicator of what your audience is interested in. However, if you have a large number of visitors there may be deeper patterns that cannot be so easily discerned. By leveraging these patterns via your content marketing it can become more effective.

Examples

Here are some of the questions data mining can answer when done right from a content marketing perspective:

• Which articles or keywords did your customers read before, during, and after a purchase? What are the correlations between these?
• Is there a shift in content consumed when moving from one product purchase to another?
• Why did a particular post go viral? Was it an outlier, or did you tap into something deeper?
• Which combinations of article reads are most likely to signal that a customer is close to making a purchase?
• What are the common characteristics between the people who follow your content channels all the way to a purchase, and what might be different in the ones that fall away?
• Are repeat customers even reading your content at all?

Let's take an example from Sink Law, a large personal injury firm, and their blog. How do they know if they're getting a good ROI from their blog? They can compare their website analytics to the consultations they get, whether those consultations begin as calls, online chats, texts or email.  The firm could compare the blog topic, length of topic to the magnitude of response, to help determine which types of content generate the best return on investment. Data mining techniques could pull all of this information together and look for patterns about which combinations of client statistics and content marketing engagements lead to a call. Perhaps a post on a recall of child safety seats resonates very strongly with young mothers compared to other articles on child safety. Done correctly, data mining will help reveal what works and why people took action, so it can be replicated in the future.

This is just the start of a much longer topic, but one that is clear. Content marketers are looking for any way they can get an edge to build up their audiences. Leveraging existing customer information to build up more refined buyer personas through data mining is a matter of when, not if.

Content marketing is challenging for many organizations. Oracle’s Content Marketing has solutions to simplify the process of creating, distributing and promoting your content. Visit our website for more information. If you are in the market for new content marketing solutions that works for you, read the Buyer’s Guide: Evaluating Content Marketing Solutions for an easy way to access your solution requirements and options.

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Get the customer insights you need | Introducing Surveys

VerticalResponse is dedicated to developing tools that enable our users to create and send higher-performing email campaigns. From our updated email editor to the more recent Test Kit release, it’s our mission to help business owners reach their email campaign goals, and ultimately their larger business goals. With that in mind, we’re excited to announce the latest addition to our product lineup: Surveys. Now you can use VerticalResponse to engage your customers and get the feedback you need to improve your company.

Why use Surveys?

To achieve long-term success, a business must consistently meet its customers’ needs. But before you can meet those needs, you have to identify them. What better way to learn what your customers care about and what they’d like to see from your company than by asking them directly?

Customer surveys provide your business with invaluable insights into what people think about your products or services. The feedback you collect can then be used to improve customer service, hone your marketing strategy and shine a light on the types of projects or business initiatives you should be focusing time and money on.

VerticalResponse’s survey creator makes it easy to collect those insights. With this simple but powerful tool, you can build and distribute mobile-friendly surveys in just a few clicks — no coding or design experience necessary.

Send unlimited surveys

There’s no cap on the number of surveys you can create, so design and send as many as it takes to find out what your customers think, want or need from your business. Then, use the feedback to make updates that will boost customer satisfaction.

Increase your credibility

Consumers appreciate the opportunity to share their thoughts with companies. Let them know you care about what they want by asking for their opinions.

Create surveys that work for your business

When designing your survey, you can add your business logo and edit the colors and layout to match your brand. And because you’ll only need a few minutes to create a survey with our easy-to-use tool, you can conduct your market research in less time than with other tools.

Design surveys that look good everywhere

Distributing your survey is simple. Email the survey’s URL to your subscribers, add it to your website or a landing page, or share it on social media. Surveys are mobile-responsive and will display properly on any device, so you can reach your customers anywhere.

Get results in real time

The results of your survey will be delivered to you in real time, so you can start acting on the information you collect right away.

No need for outside help

There’s no need to hire an outside agency or consultant to poll your customers for you. You can easily produce and distribute surveys from start to finish, in your company’s voice and branding.  

Question types

Surveys are extremely customizable. Choose from 11 different question formats:

• Text field: Respondents can enter a single line of text as an answer.
• Multiple choice: Respondents can select from a variety of answers that you create. When selecting the layout, you can choose from four different style options. Questions can appear as one long column, can be split up into two or three columns, or be displayed horizontally. 
• Drop-down: All possible answers will appear in a drop-down list.
• Comment field: Questions are open-ended, and customers will be able to enter multiple lines of text when they respond. 
• Star rating: Respondents can select a rating based on a scale of your choosing. There are four style options: star, thumb, heart and smiley.
• Matrix rating: Select answers from columns and rows.
• Multiple text fields: Allows for text entry on multiple lines.
• Contact info: If you’d like to collect customer data, you can use this question type to learn the name, email, phone number, address, city, ZIP code and state of recipients. 
• Text content: Allows for descriptive text without a question, which works well for survey introduction copy.
• Image content: Add an image to your survey or use this content type to customize your design by adding your logo. 
• Text/Image content: Add an image with descriptive text.

How Surveys work

After signing into your VerticalResponse account, go to the Surveys tab in the top navigation bar. Click the New Survey button to begin. 

Once you’re in the survey creator, content elements and question types will appear in the left column. Click a question type to add it to your survey. Edit the questions and layout as you go by clicking the respective tabs.

Make questions required or optional

If you’re looking for specific information, you can designate certain questions as required, and respondents won’t be able to proceed without answering.

Add multiple pages

Multiple pages eliminate your readers’ need to scroll through questions, which can be especially useful for longer surveys.

Randomize questions and add skip logic

Minimize order bias by randomizing questions and add skip logic, which directs respondents to specific questions based on previous answers. (Surveys are free to all VerticalResponse users; however advanced features such as skip logic and question randomization are only available through paid Survey plans.)

Once you’ve finished building your survey, click the publish button in the top right corner of the app.

 

This will generate a link that you can share with your customers.

View results by navigating back to the Surveys tab.

The app’s reporting function gives a breakdown of all of the answers you have received. 

Listening to your customers is a critical part of running a business. The feedback that you receive can help your organization grow. Start creating and sending surveys today, and get the insights you need to improve your business’s performance.

Spend less time reaching more customers Try VerticalResponse today (It’s free!)

 

© 2018, Amber Humphrey. All rights reserved.

The post Get the customer insights you need | Introducing Surveys appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.

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