Psst … hey, Copyblogger is taking the week off between Christmas and New Year’s. At least, officially. I’m not supposed to be here at all. But, given that my schedule is always out of whack this time of year, I like to take advantage of the disruptions to think about what I want to make
Read More...
The post How to Build a Trusted Framework that Expands Your Content Creavity appeared first on Copyblogger.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve witnessed CMOs get bullied into adding “just one more thing” the customer experience during a boardroom meeting. It’s tough to say no. Everyone wants to move the needle and deliver an exceptional quarter, but sometimes the answer needs to be no, or a compromise needs to be made.
For example, I consulted for a startup last year that was in the perfect position to disrupt their industry. As the finishing touches were being put on the platform, the CEO asks if it’s possible to add video chat to the inbound customer communication options.
I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to do while browsing the internet in my pajamas is start a video chat with some random customer service rep. But, the CEO was convinced that delivering customer service via video conference would be a differentiator.
The CMO should have said no, or at least offered to look into it and circle back on it at a later date. Adding “just one more thing” to a platform towards the end of development causes two problems. First, it distracts a focused team from the original project specs. And second, it increases the load on the underlying technology – usually resulting in decreased responsiveness.
Loading Times Dramatically Impact AbandonmentIt’s a fact of life. The internet has given us the expectation that we can quickly and effortlessly find answers to questions, order products to be delivered to our front door and communicate with the people we care about.
If you add more and more to your platform in a way that sacrifices speed, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Almost half of your site’s visitors arrive with the expectation that the site will load in less than 2 seconds. If your site hangs past three seconds, 40% will leave and go elsewhere.
As the person in the c-suite with the responsibility of successfully delivering customers to your company’s online and physical presence, the last thing you need is to lose nearly half of your hard-earned leads to a slow site.
And if your site’s launch is hamstrung by last minute platform changes, where will you send the customers that you’re driving through your marketing channels?
Strategies for Effectively Saying “No!” to the C-Suite Pressure CookerYour best ally in the struggle to keep platform bloat at bay is your CTO. While you understand how speed and the customer experience impacts sales, they understand the value of efficient technical operations.
Legendary folk artist Pete Seeger once wrote: “Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.”
Take that folksy advice to heart. Try to sell your CEO on simplified, streamlined operations behind the scenes. If they don’t buy into the need to reduce workload and potential complications, proceed through the following tactics:
Explain, in detail, how the requested addition would add tremendous strain to your existing hardware and software configuration.
Request for 24 hours to research the additional cost in both dollars and time that the new feature would require. Then present this information in a way that highlights how the costs outweigh the benefits. You could also play possum after you do the research. Sometimes moments of inspiration in the boardroom fail to survive into the following day. But make sure you have the information at your fingertips in case you get pinged.
Commit to offering this additional feature in version 2.0 or 3.0. You could suggest a timeline, but I wouldn’t make a firm commitment. The goal at this stage is to find a solution that gives your executives what they want, without sacrificing the focus of your team and the loading time of the site.
It can be really challenging to communicate how something that sounds like a simple request can wreak havoc on an existing or soon-to-launch platform. Don’t be afraid to share your honest feedback, because if you just go along with something and it doesn’t work, you’ll own it.
Today’s CMO is tasked with many demands, made even more challenging with the ever-evolving digital domain. Download this report from Argyle Executive Forum to see how leading CMOs weigh in on other challenges, including how they can skillfully decipher, understand, and leverage the abundance of available data to engage with customers.
The content marketing landscape is constantly changing and evolving, and while more brands than ever are increasing their budgets, many fail to see the hoped-for results.
Simply publishing blog posts doesn’t cut it any longer, forcing brands to become extremely creative and diverse when building content marketing strategies. Here are four ways I see content marketing evolving in 2018:
1. More effort will be placed on promoting high-quality content assets
They say less is more, and this may be especially true with content marketing. Rather than publishing new blog posts daily, and hoping they gain traction, expect to see more brands focus on publishing high-quality pieces of content designed to help them reach specific campaign goals.
“Watch for more brands to focus on creating more elaborate pieces of content, such as motion graphics, animated explainer videos and long-form case studies. Rather than putting small efforts behind multiple pieces of content, more brands are now allocating larger paid pushes behind higher-quality content,” explains James Neal, Director of The Quad Group.
When you spend the time and money to create an epic piece of content, you want to make sure it accomplishes two things. First, it needs to educate and inform the consumer; second, it must include a very clear call-to-action. Do you want to convert the individual engaging with the content into a lead or a sale? Be specific, but remember to only give them one option because multiple options will greatly reduce your conversion rate. If you believe in the architecture of your funnel, trust it and move prospects along, one step at a time.
2. Content will be created with social media promotion in mind
Social media gives brands the largest platform to not only broadcast their content but to also have their content discovered by new prospects and potential customers. There are a few types of content that perform very well on social media:
Micro-video content: The attention span on social media is small, requiring you to deliver your message in mere seconds. Little 15-second creative clips can perform exceptionally well, helping you build brand awareness and drive the audience to a specific call-to-action.
Viral images: Consumers love to share social media content, and one of the easiest ways to get traction in terms of sharing and engagement is to post images with viral elements. Brands need to experiment to find out what resonates with target audiences, but once they identify that, it can lead to exponential exposure.
Live video: Facebook and Instagram give the option to broadcast live video, which allows brands to provide a unique peek and showcase products or even company culture. Consumers love live video content, so it’s wise to learn how to leverage this quickly.
3. Video will continue to outperform every other format
In my opinion, there isn’t a more effective piece of content than video. If you aren’t currently producing video content you are missing out. Video can be used to demonstrate products and services, or just give the potential customer a deeper view of all aspects of a brand. It allows companies to build trust, which translates into higher sales and more brand advocates.
While YouTube has long been the favorite platform to create a channel and host video content—with Facebook also being an option—Amazon is now taking aim by allowing creators to migrate over to its platform. The most attractive aspect of Facebook is that it has the largest user base, at over 2 billion. Essentially, every potential customer a brand could want to target has a Facebook account.
4. More e-commerce brands will leverage the power of visual content
Many e-commerce brands are now discovering the power of visual content to attract customers. The competition of paid advertisements on Facebook and AdWords is driving customer acquisition costs through the roof, which is causing many brands to create content assets and push them across content discovery channels to attract customers.
Long-form blog posts can also be leveraged, as can infographics, like the example here, that provide information in an easy-to-digest format. This approach is less in-your-face than traditional e-commerce ads, and it can do a great job of educating and informing potential customers about the benefits of a specific product or service.
By including an enticing call-to-action, you can drive consumers that are interested in the offer to a dedicated product page where they can make an impulse purchase. Some of the more popular content discovery platforms to consider are Taboola and Outbrain, both of which offer self-serve options.
A picture paints a thousand words. Video runs at 30 ‘pictures’ per second. You do the math. 2018 is the time to take advantage of this information-packed, entertaining and informative format.
Oracle’s Content Marketing has solutions to simplify the process of creating, distributing and promoting your content. Visit our website for more information. You can also download Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Content Marketing for a 5-step process to prove value and grow your business by creating measurable goals and define your sales and marketing funnels and associated content.
Featured Image Source: Pixabay
Editor’s Note: Today’s blog post comes courtesy of Albert Lee. Albert is a Senior Product Manager at Oracle Responsys, who previously worked as a Product Consultant for the Tech Services team and the Email Marketing Manager for StubHub.
In early 2015, Oracle Responsys introduced our first Send Time Optimization (STO) feature. STO gave marketers the ability to send an email at the most optimal time to each individual customer within their target audience. Early adopters of STO saw promising results with higher open rates due to the emails appearing closer to the top of customer inboxes when they are the most engaged.
Since its debut, Responsys has continued to improve on our STO offering. This year, we introduced a new Send Time Optimization stage in Program that simplified the use of the feature. The adoption of STO grew and marketers continued to see great results.
For example, in October, a large department store chain saw an 80% increase in unique open rates with an email they sent using STO compared to those who were sent the same email at a default send time. This was accompanied by a 34% decrease in bounces, which was a byproduct of the email being sent to the ISPs in smaller batches. In short, more emails got into the inboxes and more customers are responding to them.
With its ease of deployment and effective outcome, STO should definitely be part of your arsenal of marketing tactics to help improve responses to your emails.
For more information about the Oracle Marketing Cloud and our distributed marketing offerings visit our website or request a demo!
As social platforms have grown in popularity, so too has the importance of building an effective social media strategy. With one click of a button, companies have direct lines of communication to millions of consumers and potential consumers. While it’s now functionally easier than ever to reach people from all corners of the globe, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to connect with those people; it’s an important difference that many fail to grasp.
Just because Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram have a combined audience of nearly 2.85 billion users, that doesn’t mean all of them are eager to hear your message. In fact, most of them don’t even know your brand. This is why it’s essential to come up with a social media plan of attack, and commit to executing it well.
To have a successful social media strategy, it’s essential to plan meticulously, and stick to your message, even if it doesn’t seem to take hold at first. One of the worst mistakes you can make is to spend countless hours coming up with a plan, and abandon it within a few days of launching it.
To help with the process, below are four steps you can take to build a sound social media strategy.
1. Create a social media marketing plan before you startThis may sound obvious, but far too often, people jump into social media with the thought “I’ll see what works and what doesn’t as I go.”
Don’t do that.
Craft a detailed strategy, and put forth your full effort. The first step is to create a SMART goals list.
· Specific
· Measurable
· Attainable
· Relevant
· Time-bound
Creating a list like this will make it easy to track your progress, and allow you to easily see whether or not you need to alter your approach.
For example, if your chosen platform is on Twitter, a SMART goal could be to “increase our followers by five percent by the end of Q2.” In 11 words, you’ve communicated a specific goal, one that is measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. A SMART goals list doesn’t need to be an in-depth report, it just needs to convey the objective in a short sentence or two.
2. Choose the right platformThis is one of the most overlooked aspects of crafting an effective social media strategy. Given the sheer number of users on each platform, people don’t spend as much time as they should researching where their customer base is. The general line of thought is if there are 300+ million people on Twitter, then they’re bound to get some engagement from their target audience. While that’s not inherently wrong, it’s not the right approach.
The first step is to go back to your SMART goals, and examine exactly what you want to accomplish. Understand who you want to target, and what type of engagement you want to have with your target audience. Once you’ve answered those questions, you can utilize various search functions to determine what platform to embrace.
Twitter advanced search
Facebook search
Instagram search
LinkedInGroups
One of the easiest ways to confuse your user base is to have a number of different brand identities. Consumers need to be able to easily recognize your brand, even if your company’s name is absent from the image. Take Dropbox, for example.
“Although the illustrations are simple, it’s the consistent use of this hand-drawn style that makes Dropbox’s visual branding brilliant. Playful and bright, it lends a human touch to an otherwise cold software. It makes Dropbox seem more personal, user-friendly and approachable compared to competitors.”
While you might not need to create SMART goals for a visual identity, there needs to be a similar process in place. Whether that’s storyboarding, content brainstorming, or your own unique methods, that’s fine–there simply needs to be something in place to develop a plan that can be carried out.
4. Follow the Social Media Rule of ThirdsThis is important to follow in order to create a steady stream of incoming followers, and prevent those you’ve already captured from bolting. While the goal of any business is ultimately to make more money and drive revenue, that doesn’t mean you should only be posting content directly related to your brand.
This is where the Social Media Rule of Thirds comes into play.
· 1/3 of your social content promotes your business, converts readers, and generates profit.
· 1/3 of your social content should surface and share ideas and stories from thought leaders in your industry or like-minded business.
· 1/3 of your social content should be based on personal interaction and build your personal brand.
This strategy accomplishes a couple things. Firstly, by sharing content other than your own, you’re signaling that your social account isn’t just about inundating your followers with your own content. Just like in normal social relations, people generally don’t like interacting with others who can only talk about themselves; and the same is true with these platforms.
If all you promote is your own content, users aren’t going to be driven to your profile, and they won’t have a desire to interact with you. “To become a trusted advisor,” social accounts need to post “educational materials, [and] then drop in something on your company.”
Using these guidelines won’t guarantee your success, as it’s ultimately up to you to carry through with them, but they’ll undoubtedly get you off the ground. By creating SMART goals, conducting effective research on which social platforms to use, creating a unified visual identity, and following the social media rule of thirds, you’ll be able to connect and engage with your target audience.
*This article is originally published at Tenfold.
Looking for a tool to help you simplify social media marketing?
Learn here about Oracle Social Marketing’s powerful and comprehensive social tools to listen to social conversations, engage with customers, publish relevant content, and analyze social data to drive revenue, and align social messaging with other marketing programs.
If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution this year, try being proactive instead of reactive when it comes to your business’s email marketing.
Along with the big holidays — such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas — there are a lot of obscure, lighthearted or lesser-known occasions that you can use to promote your business all year long.
Dare to be different in 2018 with a year’s worth of inspiring and fun ideas for emails that will engage, entertain and motivate your subscribers.
Join 140,000 small business ownersGet expert tips and email inspiration biweekly. Subscribe today and download our FREE Guide to Email List Management eBook.
|
© 2017, Sonia Mansfield. All rights reserved.
The post 12 months of inspiration for engaging with your email subscribers appeared first on Vertical Response Blog.
Today, as the team gets ready to take a few days off for the holiday, we’ve put together a massive buffet of marketing, writing, and strategy advice for you. Monday’s post put the spotlight on our editorial team’s favorite writing, content, and marketing blogs. (As well as one that’s an example of a creator who’s
Read More...
The post 50 Things You’ll Enjoy Reading over Christmas Break appeared first on Copyblogger.
