Here’s a secret: Even the most seemingly effortless storytellers work for it – formal training, study of storytellers they admire, perfection through retelling, etc. Get their best advice to improve your brand’s storytelling. Continue reading
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Before the relatively recent explosion of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, celebrity advertising was considered to be the main path towards reaching and influencing potential customers.
If your brand or business was attempting to market sports apparel, for example, reaching out to certain NBA stars with an aggressive advertising campaign was probably the best way to influence your potential customers and convince them of the value of your product.
With the rise of social media, however, the world of influencer marketing has changed dramatically. Today, there are thousands of micro-influencers who successfully have used social media channels to build a solid group of followers and admirers.
So, if reaching out to Lebron James or Kevin Durant to give a shout out to your product or brand seems like a long shot, finding a micro-influencer active in the fitness industry might be a good alternative. There are dozens of self-professed fitness gurus with YouTube channels that have tens of thousands of followers. Not only will these types of influencers put you in contact with people who will naturally gravitate towards a sports or fitness related product or brand, but they will also most likely be much more affordable.
Micro influencers have emerged in almost every major industry, from fashion and makeup “experts” with massive numbers of Instagram accounts following every piece of advice they offer, to travel bloggers who offer detailed advice on the best places to travel on a budget.
While micro influencers certainly add another facet to the world of publicity and advertising, their emergence certainly does not mean that celebrity influencers are a thing of the past.
On the contrary, celebrity influencers have also taken advantage of the platforms offered by social media to diversify the types of products that they advertise. While micro influencers will usually have followers ranging from anywhere between 5,000 to 20,000 people, celebrity influencers will obviously garner much more attention.
Below, we take an in-depth look at the pros and cons of both micro influencers and celebrity influencers for entrepreneurs and businesses looking to launch a successful advertising campaign. We then offer a few guidelines on which type of campaign might be best for your own particular business or brand.
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
Like almost all aspects of running a successful business, choosing between micro influencers and celebrity influencers will largely depend on where your business is at, what your immediate and long term goals are, and the advertising budget your company or brand operates on.
If you feel like you have an absolutely fantastic and innovative product or brand that could capture a large share of the market with the right exposure, celebrity influencers might be the best option for you. They will position your brand or product in front of millions of people almost overnight and allow your brand to take off from the outset. To get the most out of your sizeable investment, do your homework to make sure that there is a good fit between the celebrity’s personality, ideals, etc. and your brand.
Obviously, you need to have the budget (and the bravery) to invest a sizeable chunk of change in a onetime advertising campaign. You will also need to have the organizational capability to capitalize on that sudden moment of market exposure. If your company or brand doesn’t have a solid plan for taking advantage of your moment in the limelight and pushing your product forward, the money spent on celebrity influencers could end up going to waste.
For brands or businesses who are focused on a slower, more measured and lengthier advertising campaign, micro influencers might be a better option as they will allow you to spread your budget over a longer period and more specifically target potential customers. Micro influencer advertising strategies will allow you to slowly but surely gain market exposure as you attempt to carve out a name for yourself in an otherwise competitive market.
Both celebrity and micro influencers are great resources to help any business or brand run a successful marketing campaign. Knowing the pros and cons of each type of influencer and clearly determining the goals and ambitions of your business or brand will help you choose which option is right for you.
The images for this post were sourced from https://www.pexels.com and https://pixabay.com.
Guest author: Billy Bones is the founder of Booking Agent Info and Moda Database. Booking Agent Info provides businesses with the contact info for the official agents, managers, and publicists of celebrities and influencers. Moda Database provides brands with data on celebrity stylists, including who they work with and their contact information.
The post Celebrity Influencers vs Micro-Influencers: Which Is Best For You? appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
To help you tackle the many challenges you face as a writer, we offer dozens and dozens of tips, tools, and examples. They’ll help you write content that stays on mission, wins readers over, and more. Continue reading
The post 57+ Tools, Tips, and Examples to Make Your Writing Better appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
The Colombian Government had a problem.
Throughout the long-running battle with revolutionary group FARC, hundreds of soldiers had been captured.
Some of these troops had been captive for years, and the Government was looking to get a message out not to give up or lose hope.
But how to pass a message directly to the soldiers without their captors knowing?
The not-so-obvious answer: a pop song.
Soldiers who’d been released or had escaped said one of the only freedoms prisoners enjoyed was the radio. If the Government could bury a Morse code message into a song that got regular airplay, the soldiers trained to decipher those codes would hear it while their ignorant guards would dismiss it as part of the tune.
So, one of Colombia’s top military communications experts, with the help of an enterprising ad executive and a music producer, created a song that ironically caught on in FARC-controlled regions of the country.
Importantly, the message was received loud and clear. The prisoners knew they hadn’t been forgotten, and spread the news with those who hadn’t heard it.
(If you want to find out the full fascinating story, you can read about it here.)
“Better Days” – the pop song that was a favorite of both revolutionary and hostage – was a very uncommon example of content.
It had a twin purpose: the obvious purpose of most music (i.e. entertainment and art) and a secret mission (i.e. to get the message to the soldiers).
Most content doesn’t have that.
Blog posts often get written just for SEO. eBooks and reports are mainstays of lead generation. Videos today are the “in thing” due to the engagement they get.
And yet, we don’t create this content for the likes, views, shares or “gosh, that was amazing” emails. Content ultimately comes back to one thing: helping customers find you, then trust you… so they can buy from you.
And on face value, us folk in the marketing world generally agree about that. We know a blog post isn’t going to get the cash register ringing, but it’s an important step to attracting an audience down the funnel, into the flywheel or whatever customer journey model you subscribe to.
But when it comes to thinking about that content with the end in mind (i.e. buying from you), two things typically happen:
It doesn’t – and shouldn’t – have to be that way.
Just like the pop song, we can sow seeds of persuasive messaging into our content without being manipulative or “scammy”.
This is because that while content and sales copy may seem like opposites, they’re actually opposite sides of the same coin. That means many of the principles of a fantastic sales page can be used to good effect with all of your content.
Note: when we “sell” with content, we don’t mean persuading people to part with their cash. A conversion in terms of content might be as simple as a social share or email opt-in.
Way too many reports, guides, blogs, and videos seem to be written as not-so-subtle sales pitches or “product comparisons”.
A sales page might get away with this to some extent (though a good sales page goes to the effort of making selling less obvious). Content is a different beast. When selling is the main element in a blog post, video or podcast, it turns readers off, never to return.
This doesn’t mean you have to throw selling in the bin. It just means you have to remember why people consume your content and cater to that BEFORE you try to make the sale.
And those reasons are generally:
If you can educate or entertain, you’ve delivered value, and more importantly, primed readers to be receptive when you ask for the opt-in, share or next step.
Take Robbie Richard’s blog post on getting to “Position #0” in search results. Sure, he might “break the rules” by making a short mention of his SEO course at the very beginning, but he’s careful to separate that from the actual blog, and then goes on to deliver a veritable truckload of educational value.
Action 1: Never just sell in your content. Make sure your first priorities are to educate and/or entertain readers.
Action 2: When you do sell, be up-front about it. Don’t sneak it in or hide it amongst the content. Your readers will spot it every time.
It’s a golden copywriting rule that applies in emails, sales pages, blog posts, videos, social media.
Boringness kills conversions.
It doesn’t matter where it happens. If your sales page is a tedious read, you’re not going to sell much with it. If your blog is a snooze-fest, people stop reading and disregard you as someone to engage, follow and build a relationship with.
The pop song the Colombian government used was no masterpiece, but it was catchy and entertaining enough to listen to, so soldiers had more chance of hearing it. If it had been a bore, it might have been switched off sooner and the whole enterprise a dismal failure.
“Not being boring” doesn’t mean you have to write in a zany tone or include unicorns shooting rainbow poop out of their rear (though it doesn’t hurt). There are plenty of less unconventional ways to make content more than a dry lesson:
Sean D’Souza of Psychotactics is a great example of making blog posts both educational AND entertaining. His unique twist: using cartoon illustrations he draws himself and some fantastic storytelling.
Action: Find a way to make your content more than just a “lesson of the day” type affair.
A good sales page is an immersive experience. It can’t afford to have people land on the page, flick through for 30 seconds, then wander off.
A good sales page also has to cover a lot of ground:
You can’t do all of that (and keep people hooked) in 500 words or so.
It’s the same with content. If you really want to explore a topic properly and demonstrate you know what you’re talking about, a 500-word blog or 45-second video isn’t going to cut it.
Generally, long-form content creates two reactions:
(Note: Reaction 1 is completely fine because they may not be the right audience for you OR may not be at a stage where they’re ready to consume that much from you. You can always include a mix of shorter-form, simpler material in your content plan to cater to crowds not ready to “fully invest” in you.)
The great thing is, there’s a huge crowd of #2 readers out there. What’s more, they won’t just read: they’ll share your content (which in turn attracts a bigger audience).
Backlinko’s Brian Dean posted a content study that found the most shared blog posts were between 1000-2000 words, followed by 2000-3000 words.
(Interestingly enough, Brian’s blog was a “deep dive” into the subject that ran over 2800 words.)
Action: Where possible, explore your subject as much as is feasible. Give your audience a lot to chew on.
When it comes to your best material, you don’t want to be a “content scrooge”.
So do the exact opposite: give it away.
Discuss your best ideas in blog posts. Talk about them in videos. Create guides, checklists, quizzes and other content from your A-grade stuff. Use material direct from your courses, training or personal processes you use.
And while there are a host of reasons to do this, let’s pick two big ones (and stomp a common objection to dishing out for free).
“Strut Your Stuff”
As the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression. Holding back your best ideas, principles, and material means people finding you for the first time get left-over, warmed-up pap.
It’s not a recipe for success.
Your audience is looking for an expert figure: someone from whom they can learn, trust and (hopefully for you) buy from.
When they check out your content, they decide whether you’re that person or not.
Create customers (or at least Leads)
The whole point of publishing content is to create an audience, some of which will tumble into your funnel to become leads, and then ultimately customers.
When you publish “B-grade” material, you actively sabotage this lead generation process (and by extension, your own business).
Get those readers onto your radar and into your world with el primo content.
(There’s also the somewhat cynical benefit: when you publish fantastic content, you’ll have people thinking that if this what you give away, then your paid products or services must be off the wall.)
There’s little risk
At first glance, attracting people with free stuff might seem like you’re luring the wrong crowd. And when you mix “free” with “quality”, you’re bound to get freebie seekers who will eagerly consume your content, then vanish into the night for their next feed (kind of like “content mosquitos”).
Here’s the thing: you were never going to get a dollar from them. There’s little risk because there’s little reward from this group.
It’s the people who DO buy from experts like yourself that you want to target, and when you use your best content, you’re actually reducing the risk of them being turned away.
Plus, as studies around free trials show, people initially attracted by freebies can actually be more open to marketing, which means an opportunity for you to build that relationship.
(However, if your best free stuff has a cheesecake component, you may need police supervision.)
AdEspresso sells a bundle of automated tools to help businesses get more from their paid advertising. But their collection of free materials, from blogs to webinars to eBooks, is an educational cornucopia for people learning how PPC advertising works. This virtual “Academy” is a great way of advertising AdEspresso’s paid services and an incredibly effective lead generation tool.
Action: Use this simple litmus test on your content: if you’re underwhelmed by what your free content’s talking about, consider your audience might be thinking the same.
The message relayed to those captive soldiers was intended to boost morale: “don’t give up, we’re coming for you”.
There wasn’t anything actionable about it.
Your content can’t afford to be like that. It has to do more than just send a message.
To illustrate the point: think of content like a door.
If someone visits your video or blog post and likes what they see, they’ll happily open the door in search of more.
And while a sales page’s “door” is simple and singular (i.e. “buy my product!”), you’ve got many more options with content. Stepping through the door could mean:
Any of these next steps can help you build a relationship and send them deeper into your funnel. People always eagerly consume quality content, but if you haven’t hung signposts to show them where to go next, they’ll follow their own path, not yours.
To wander into “meta territory”, this blog is a fantastic example of having the next step. On the sidebar, you have the chance to download a free eBook on blogging mastery.
But that’s not the only next step you’re presented with. When you reach the end of the blog, you can take advantage of a Fiverr discount…
…or a super-inexpensive web hosting offer from Bluehost…
Action: Don’t publish content that’s a dead end. Always give your audience the next step to engage with you.
Just like the Colombian Government’s pop hit, your content can be catchy while carrying a hidden “conversion-centric” message. Follow these guidelines, and your audience will happily consume your content while getting the signals to move them closer to your brand or business.
Guest author: Dean Mackenzie is a copywriter helping businesses do more with their copy, especially around sales and landing pages, emails and funnels. He also enjoys a good cup of tea and speaking about himself in the third person.
The post 5 Conversion Copywriting Tactics That Turn Your Content Into a “Selling Machine” appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
If you like to scan content to pick up some helpful tips, this article and infographic are for you. Make your way through the alphabet for 26 nuggets to improve your headline-writing chops. Continue reading
The post The Easy A-to-Z Guide to Writing Great Headlines [Infographic] appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
The world is becoming more and more mobile.
Customers don’t just search for products, services or businesses; they want to get these results at arm’s length.
Users want Google to use their location every time they search for something, even if they don’t add location modifiers like “near me,” addresses, etc. According to Google, these searchers have grown by 150 percent.
Keeping in mind this statistic, it makes sense for businesses to rely on hyperlocal marketing.
Hyperlocal marketing is a new marketing approach that focuses on a smaller number of shoppers in a very specific area. In other words, it specifically targets people in highly localized and address-specific regions that want to purchase products or services locally.
Hyperlocal marketing is a super targeted form of niche marketing. Businesses don’t need to spend money on national campaigns to generate inbound traffic. Hyperlocal marketing can be focused on one block and build the foundation for an authentic one-to-one relationship with customers in a specific area. It seems less overwhelming but in reality a really tough goal to achieve.
The main goal of hyperlocal marketing is to increase foot traffic to retail stores and rely on near-me searches that have high commercial intent. When people do hyperlocal searches, they search with the intent to purchase.
For example, if you want to find a new bestselling book, you will probably type “bookstores near me that have this book.” By doing that, you want this book and know where to buy it now. You know that 78% of local mobile searches result in offline purchases. This is huge!
Taking into consideration these numbers and statistics, online and offline businesses are in a strong position to take advantage of hyperlocal marketing. Here are seven powerful ways to use a hyperlocal marketing strategy to grow your business.
For small business owners that have physical locations, it is essential to optimize their Google My Business pages. Google My Business is the backbone of hyperlocal marketing.
Did you know that 33% of all searches on Google are related to location? You should focus on that and provide highly detailed information about your business.
Here are some essential things you need to include in your Google My Business listing:
Represent your business name in a proper way. That will help users easily find you online. Many companies are making a mistake when using the legal business name on Google My Business. This may harm your sales and rankings.
People usually use Latent semantic indexing keywords (LSI) to find your site. Add these keywords, and you get ranking #1 in the Google Maps Rankings. Here is a good example from Injury Trial Lawyers, APC that we changed on GMB listing:
Small businesses that are interested in leveraging the local community want to participate in discourse communities in order to foster strong relationships and generate revenue. Developing local content can increase rankings and arouse people’s interest in a particular local area. First of all, you need to focus on what customers want to consume, but not what you want to create.
You can create different types of content, such as blog posts, videos, images, infographics, or academic articles. The perfect way to engage and entertain customers is to create online quizzes. You can use Survey Anyplace to make engaging quizzes quickly.
Analyze your content and produce the type of content that will resonate with your customers the most. Sometimes it can be difficult to reach an audience in a specified local area. You can try to hire local talents because they better know the interests and needs of a local area you are interested in.
You can also capitalize on specific events, landmarks, festivals or other points of interest on a hyperlocal level that might interest people when looking for in particular geographical area. Ensure to share your local content on your Google My Business pages, Linkedin, Facebook, and other social networks.
Adding any contact information on your website makes it easier for a potential customer to contact you. It also makes your brand more open, contactable and tangible – which, in turn, can lead to more sales and conversions, and produce more customer satisfaction.
Ensure to include localized items like monuments, local landmarks, famous attractions, public streets and other local points of interest that allow people to easily reach you online and connect with your business. For example, in New York people might search for “cafes near the Empire State Building.” Including location-based keywords will make your business more visible to those looking around a particular area.
For local businesses, it seems obvious to add your contact information to each page of your website in the header and the footer. Let customers contact you right on your website with a click-to-call feature. You can also embed a live Google Map on your site. Here is a good example from Law Offices of John Rapillo:
When focusing on hyperlocal marketing, it is essential to categorize your business as local. Including structured data markup related to your business on your website pages will help Google find out as much information as possible about your business.
List different business attributes, such as address, business hours, phone number, social links, site logo, and an official name. If implemented properly, it makes it easier for your business to appear in relevant geographic search results. Make sure to incorporate the appropriate markup for each location to help people find your business easier.
To improve your search results with schema markup, use the Structured Data Testing tool. The tool helps detect possible issues and reduce the number of errors and warnings in your Structured Data tags.
While creating a website, each local business has two main goals: get found easily online by searching for their services or products, and convert website visitors into customers. It’s not enough to optimize your site for SEO. Local businesses must look beyond traditional ranking factors and keywords.
Your website needs to look professional on all levels. Everything needs to be high-quality. Do you know that it takes less than one second for users to define whether they like your site or not? Ensure that your site is easy to navigate. Don’t use a lot of navigation buttons. Lead people down a path to solve their problems and convince them to purchase your services.
If you want to improve your local ranking, you need to improve your demand generation strategy. It is important to analyze and optimize your on-page demand generation in order of importance.
Your URLs are the first thing users and Google will see. Google takes this into account when ranking content. Conduct keyword research and include the relevant terms in the URL. For example, if you help victims injured in car accidents in Los Angeles, you need to create a specific page to increase your hyperlocal rankings like “website.com/car-accidents-los-angeles.”
If you manage different pages that broadly resolve the same topic, group your keywords together to estimate the search volume for specific topics. The SE Ranking Keyword Grouper provides a nice solution for proper clustering.
They need to be persuasive enough to make people click on them.
Having the proper linking structure in your posts helps Google better understand what you are associated with locally and helps you rank better organically. Each web page should link to other pages on your website. If you have a navigation link titled “Practice Areas” with a drop-down menu with a list of practice areas like “rideshare accidents,” “bicycle accidents” and “truck accidents,” each of these pages should lead to the main “Practice Areas” page.
Location-based keywords are anything that describes your location. You can use city names, famous streets, historical buildings, monuments, and other well-known attractions. Include these keywords in product descriptions, company profiles, headlines and text of your web pages.
If you manage different locations, it is important for local businesses to have specific landing pages for hyperlocal purposes. It will help boost your appearance in search and increase local rankings. Make sure to develop personalized content for each location. Include location-based keywords within your content and optimize your landing pages for these search terms.
Without local landing pages, you can’t improve your business’ local rankings. In case you run your business from 100 multiple locations, you don’t need to design 100 separate landing pages. Try to pick up those regions you wish to target in the first place. For example, Citywide Law Group made the section “Areas We Serve” with a drop-down menu of each location they serve where these landing pages lead to their homepage.
If you want to get more sales and higher advertising ROI, you can unite location-tracking features and geo-fencing. The last one helps you target someone in a very specific location based on users’ GPS. These sort of paid ads are very effective and can generate tons of qualified leads. Here are four smart ways to run your hyperlocal ads that will guide people to your store:
When getting started with your hyperlocal strategy, it is important to know how well you are doing on a local level. This means monitoring user behavior on your website and analyzing traffic quality from multiple sources, such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Instagram Stories, etc.
Finteza holds true for that. The tool provides insight into your local search experience, traffic sources that result in desired conversions, and show how well your local landing page is converting based on completed goals. The more detailed and accurate information you will get, the more effective your hyperlocal strategy will be.
Focusing on a particular area can be challenging but is greatly productive when everything is done properly. Hyperlocal marketing is a way to take your business to the next level and get new potential clients. Implementing the strategies listed above will make your business a staple in the local community.
Which hyperlocal strategies have helped grow your business? Let me know in the comments below.
Guest author: Irina Weber is a blogger and marketing manager of SE Ranking. She creates and develops new marketing campaigns, writes articles about online marketing, social media, conversion optimization on popular websites like Jeff Bullas, WordTracker, Onblastblog and other authoritative websites. If you have any questions, you can reach her on Twitter.
The post 7 Creative Hyperlocal Marketing Strategies for Growth appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Your sales team finds four legit leads from 500 white paper downloads. What happened? Your audience wanted the info, it wasn’t interested in a transaction. Before you create and evaluate your content, think about audience intent. Continue reading
The post Get to Your Audience’s Core: Know Their Content Intent appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
Freelance writing sounds like a dream job. If you have a keyboard and a computer, and maybe an internet connection, you can sit down pretty much anywhere and start making money. But is it really feasible to make a full-time income by writing articles online? Or is it just a pipe dream?
Let’s take a look at the possibilities.
What It Takes to Be Successful
First, you should know that pursuing a freelance writing career is demanding. While it may seem easy to an outsider, writing a solid piece requires copious amounts of research and the ability to structure paragraphs and sentences in a way that your audience can understand. You’ll also be responsible for finding new clients and opportunities, meeting strict deadlines, and occasionally working long hours.
At a minimum, you’ll need:
An entrepreneurial mindset. Freelance writing is a business, first and foremost. While you’ll have some degree of control over which assignments you take on and how you find new work, your income will also depend on your work ethic and adaptability. If you’re not a driven person, or if you’re overly picky about your clients, you’ll be unlikely to find success. You need an entrepreneurial mindset in addition to your core writing skills.
Experience. You’ll also need to have experience, and a way to prove that experience. No company is going to hire a writer based on their own assertion that they’re a competent writer. Ideally, you’ll have some past credentials, like previously published works or relevant education.
Attention to detail. One or two submissions with errors or sloppy work could be enough to damage your reputation. You’ll need to think critically about every assignment you complete, and proofread multiple times over to make sure you’ve gotten everything correct.
A field of specialty. Finally, you’ll need some way to differentiate your brand. Usually, that means having some area of specialty. For example, are you especially skilled at writing articles for search engine optimization (SEO)? Or do you specialize in writing short articles for a specific industry?
Two Distinct Approaches
There are two possible approaches to being a freelance writer. The first is more straightforward: you’ll recruit clients who need articles written (often for their onsite blog or offsite reputation building campaign), then charge a fixed rate per article or a blanket rate for ongoing services. For this, you’ll need to build a brand that naturally attracts more clients (or a strong sales strategy), as well as an invoicing strategy that allows you to collect revenue regularly. This method is approachable because it allows you to do a wide variety of work; if you lose a client, you can always get a new one. However, you’ll often be at the mercy of an external authority’s stipulations and deadlines.
You could also take writing into your own hands by creating and running an ongoing blog. Over time, if you build up enough popularity, you’ll be able to attract advertising on your blog, or use affiliate links to generate revenue. The problem here is it takes a ton of visitors to attract enough advertisers to generate a sustainable income; to do that, you’ll need to start with a truly unique idea and spend many hours fleshing it out to become something popular.
Variety in Income Levels
While there are plenty of freelance writing opportunities available to aspiring writers, those opportunities aren’t all equal. If you’re just getting started and you don’t have much experience under your belt, you might find it hard to get new assignments, or you might be forced to take a lower rate for your work. On the other end of the spectrum, highly experienced writers can make a very comfortable living—but getting to that point takes many years and a level of commitment that most people aren’t willing to invest.
Consistency
As with any freelance opportunity, you’ll also need to think about consistency. Chances are, demand for your writing isn’t going to remain steady indefinitely; instead, you’ll see bursts of demand that force you to work long hours and dry spells where income is sparse. You’ll need to have proactive budgeting measures and a solid emergency fund if you’re going to survive on the income you get—or a side gig that helps you supplement your income during the down periods.
So is it possible to make a full-time income from freelance writing? The short answer is yes, but it’s not as straightforward as it seems, nor is the job as glamorous as it seems. If you’re prepared for the realities of the job and you have a way to build experience and an area of specialty, you should be able to work your way toward a viable full-time career.
Original post: Is It Possible to Make a Full-Time Income Freelance Writing?
In today’s highly competitive world of online communication, every email you send not only competes against hundreds of other email messages at any given time but also with the dwindling attention span of subscribers. As a result, any email you send, including your marketing emails, should aim to grab a subscriber’s attention in their crowded inbox.
Most of your email recipients are now Skyping, Twittering, Facebooking, or simply scrolling through their Instagram feed, while they are jumping between a couple of active browser tabs.
If your subject line is not interesting enough to catch their attention in a fraction of a second, you might not have a second chance of getting your message across. Besides, if you regularly practice email marketing, ineffective subject lines can noticeably harm your open rates, and consequently your potential revenue.
On the surface, crafting subject lines seems to be a trivial task and unfortunately, many marketers prefer to start writing an email draft and then think of a suitable subject line to go along with it – a mistake that often leads to lower open rates.
35% of customers open an email based on the subject line. Therefore, your subject lines deserve special attention if you want to increase your email campaign open rate.
Let’s understand the art of summarizing the contents of an email into the little subject line and making it work…
The very first email that your subscribers receive is the welcome email. Make sure its subject line is enough to pique curiosity and tempt the subscriber to open the email.
For example: Ellevest Digital sends an interesting email with the subject line: You got Ellevested! Here’s what’s next.
The recipients will instantly understand that the email is from Ellevest and intends to talk about the next steps they can take. It is professional, simple and reflects the brand personality.
The purpose of your subject line should not be to sell. Its purpose should be to deliver value to the reader and get them to open your email. An email subject line binds the sender to a commitment and therefore, it is incumbent upon them to stand true to the promise. Once your subscribers open the email, they should find it valuable and not regret their decision of trusting you.
Your subscribers are using diverse email clients and browsers to access their emails, which influences the ideal length of your subject line. Here’s a chart showing the number of characters that get displayed across the commonly used email clients.
While it is convenient to think that less is more, subject lines tend to get read when they are around 61-70 characters long.
Take a look at a few examples of long subject lines.
Nonetheless, most of the subject lines I receive in my inbox are around 41 to 50 characters or even shorter. What I have learned from my seven years of experience is that you should assess your subscriber list; if most subscribers on your list are using mobile phones to check their emails, shorter subject lines are the safest bet for you. Just make sure that the subject line is impactful for the reader even with few characters or words.
If you are not able to convey the entire context through the subject line, you can make use of the preview text. It works as a short summary of the email that follows the subject line. To make sure that your preheader works, you ought to write a good subject line that would make sense for those who are unable to see the preheader.
Connect the purpose of the email with the call-to-action to think of an effective combination of subject line and preheader. The main aim should be to inform the email recipients and prompt them to take the next action. Make the right choice of words and place them correctly so that it creates the same effect, regardless of the device and email client it is viewed on.
Here are two examples to inspire you – Formaggio Kitchen and Airbnb. The subject line and preheader text work together to entice the subscriber to open the email.
Never write subject lines in all caps or use too many punctuation marks and avoid using too many exclamation marks. Such subject lines instantly trigger the spam filters and, in the end, hamper the open rates. It may be tempting to use ‘Re’ or ‘Fwd’ in the subject lines to get instant open rates but spam filters will weed out these misleading emails and your email marketing will go down the drain.
No matter how compelling your subject line is, it will not work if your copy and subject line do not match. Your email copy should elaborate on the subject line and be a continuation of that message.
Have a look at this subject line and email sent by Urban Outfitters.
Humans have the innate “fear of missing out”. Your subject lines should tap into this instinct and create a sense of urgency so that the recipient opens the email and takes action. This tactic works wonders during the most lucrative holiday season when your prospects are ready to splurge, and you can drive higher conversions.
Tough Mudder presents a nice subject line example that would encourage a subscriber to immediately open the email.
Subject lines work the best when they provide an offer to the subscriber. I have impulsively made so many purchases just because the subject line said something like: “Congratulations! You have earned 200 points in your XYZ wallet” or “Here’s your 25$ off coupon code”.
I have ordered food just because I received their email with a similar subject line and got tempted to gorge on junk food. At times, I have just read the subject line and skipped to their mobile app to make the order. I am sure you would also have such subscribers who make spontaneous decisions and BUY.
Last but not least, you should always test your subject lines to see what is working for your brand and industry – be it the length of the subject lines or kind of offers promoted. Monitor the metrics and iterate based on the results you get. This will give you a clear idea about how your target audience is connecting with your subject lines and give you better ideas.
Email marketing has changed over the years and so have subject lines. I still remember the boring subject lines we used to draft a few years ago. Things have changed for the good. Subject lines have evolved to get more customer-centric. That said, let me share what the future of subject lines looks like and what kind of trends can be anticipated in the days to come.
Emojis make subject lines more human and at the same time, convey your message as effectively as words. Use of emojis will be a fad among marketers to grab a subscriber’s attention. They not only increase the email campaign open rates but also connect with a subscriber on an emotional level.
Emojis bring 56% higher open rates when compared to plain subject lines. The good part is that even millennials have extended their strong support to this growing trend.
See how brands are using various emojis in their subject lines to improve their email open rates.
First name personalization will be used in email subject lines and it has almost become an email marketing best practice. Every second email in my inbox addresses me by “Hey Chintan” and honestly, it feels good to be called by my name. That’s exactly how your subscribers would be feeling when they receive an email addressed with their name and they are more likely to open it.
Suppose a subscriber has searched for a red tunic top on your apparel store app. How about sending them an email with the subject line: “25% off on red tunic tops you were looking for”?
If that sounds good to you, artificial intelligence can help you out. You can set up email automation and send out triggered emails with more relevant subject lines. It will keep your subscribers hooked to your brand and bring more conversions for you.
Put your thinking cap on and come up with a creative idea for your subject lines. Your subscribers must have received enough emails with subject lines such as “50% off on your next order”. It is time you try out something new to woo your subscribers and get them to open your emails.
See how Chubbies does it.
Here, “we bribed the post office” is the subject line and “you hang up first” is the from name.
This will arouse the subscriber’s curiosity but make sure that you give more weight to clarity over innovation without getting over the top.
You can even ask intriguing questions and make the use of numbers in subject lines to drive more opens.
As more and more emails are being checked on mobile phones, marketers will create more mobile-friendly emails, using the principle of 2-2-2 where the first two represents the first two seconds that will determine if your email will be opened, the second two means that the first two words of your subject line must convey the most important message and the third two refers to 2day. It should inform the subscribers that the email is important for that day and they should open it at that very moment.
Just like the headline of a newspaper article determines how many people will read through it, your subject line decides how many people will open your email. Rather than keeping it pending as an afterthought once you are finished writing the email copy, think about it right from the beginning and give it the attention it deserves.
Guest author: Chintan is Head of Operations at InboxArmy LLC. He has been into email marketing domain from last 7 years. Chintan is connected to InboxArmy, an email marketing agency that specializes in providing advanced email marketing services from email production to deployment. Chintan’s track record of email marketing success covers building email programs from scratch and using data-driven strategies to turn around underperforming accounts.
The post 9 Expert Tips For Perfecting Email Open Rates (Plus Some 2019 Trends) appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
In the social media sphere, navigational challenges abound for content marketers. How can you be sure which paths will lead you to achieving your goals? Consult the new edition of our social media survival guide for answers. Continue reading
The post How to Avoid Getting Stranded on the Road to Social Success [Examples] appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
Today I was doing some cleanup on the blog and I discovered that many of the older comments had what could be considered spam links inside the body of the comment itself.
Instead of manually going through each one, which would take a lot of time, I decided to create a small PHP script to do this task automatically for me. Below you will find the script and an explanation of what it does.
<?php
$db = mysqli_connect('localhost','database_user','password','database_name')
or die('Error connecting to MySQL server.');
$query = "SELECT comment_ID,comment_content FROM wp_comments";
$result = mysqli_query($db,$query)
or die('Error querying database.');
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)){
$id = $row[0];
$content =strip_tags($row[1]);
$regex = "@(https?://([-w.]+[-w])+(:d+)?(/([w/_.#-]*(?S+)?[^.s])?).*$)@";
$content = preg_replace($regex, ' ', $content);
//echo $content. "<br>";
$stmt = mysqli_prepare($db,"UPDATE wp_comments SET comment_content=? WHERE comment_ID = ?");
mysqli_stmt_bind_param($stmt,"si",$content, $id);
mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt);
mysqli_stmt_close($stmt);
}
?>
How to use the script above:
1. Copy and paste the script into a text file and save it with the PHP extension, for example you can call with comments.php
2. Update the database connection with your user and database credentials
3. Upload the file to your website
4. Run the file by accessing it using your browser
That’s it. The script will run through all your comments removing all links (but preserving the text of the links).
Original post: PHP script to remove links from WordPress comments
Both clients and content marketing agencies must appreciate that success requires at least a year. A client and an agency share what you should do to get off on the right foot and set yourself up for a productive long-term partnership. Continue reading
The post Client and Content Agency Share Insider Tips to Successful Relationship appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.
Pinterest is a great source of traffic for eCommerce merchants because of the platform’s focus on visuals. Users can find pins on almost anything they want and most times these people are already in a buying mood.
If you’re not tapping into Pinterest traffic potential as an eCommerce merchant, then you’re already missing a lot.
Pinterest stats show that the platform has over 250 million users while 84% of these people use it when they’re trying to decide what to buy. Even more impressive is that 98% has bought something new they found on Pinterest.
With these high conversion rates, it is obvious that you’ve missed so much by not utilizing the “board and pins” platform.
In this article, we reveal five tips you can employ to grow your eCommerce business in 2019 and beyond through Pinterest.
First things first, you need to set up a business account on Pinterest, and the good news is that it is totally free to create one or upgrade from a regular account to one designed solely for business owners. Doing this will give you access to more functionalities which are not available in the normal account.
If you don’t have a Pinterest account, click here to create a business account. But if you already have a regular Pinterest account, use the upgrade button to move to a business account as shown in the image below.
Once you have successfully created a business account or upgrade to one, the next step is to claim your website. This is one of the most important steps in optimizing your business profile on Pinterest.
Claiming your site offers many benefits such as improving the search ranking of your website within the Pinterest platform, seeing the performance of your pins, adding your store logo or a profile image to your pins, and accessing new tools.
Navigate to settings on your Pinterest business account and scroll down to “Claim.”
Enter your website address without adding “www” and click on “Claim.” Next, select “Add HTML tag” from the options, and copy the whole tag as shown below. Click on next and then submit.
Now go to the admin dashboard of your store and navigate to the code editor, then paste what you copied into the <head> tag and click on save.
The next step is to activate “Rich Pins Validator” on your Pinterest account. This is also important because once you enable it, you will be able to add data to your pins such as price and seller details.
Merchants using Shopify will mostly benefit from this feature because the eCommerce platform supports Rich Pins automatically.
The first thing you need to do is to copy a product URL and paste it into the Rich Pins Validator on Pinterest. Then add “.oembed” without the quotation marks to the end of the URL and click on Validate. It usually takes up to 24 hours before the Rich Pins will become active.
Congratulations! You have done the hardest part; your Pinterest business account is now ready for use. However, if you’re unable to claim your account or validate the Rich Pins after 24 hours, then you probably skipped one step. Ensure you follow every step correctly.
Pinterest currently supports four types of Rich Pins – app, article, product, and recipe. You’ll mostly use the rich article and product pins on your Pinterest business account.
Now that you have upgraded to a business account and claimed your website, you can start advertising your products on Pinterest.
“Promote Your Pins” is an option that lets you run an ad campaign for your products to help increase engagements.
All you have to do is to click on “promote” on the pin you wish to promote and then complete the traffic campaign form that pops up. You will also need to set a budget and how many days you want the ads to run just like in the case of running a Facebook campaign.
Discount codes work like magic. It increases your engagements and conversion rate. Customers will happily buy your products when they see that they would be paying less. You can add discount codes as a text overlay or as part of the description of your product.
Segmenting your products on Pinterest makes it easy for buyers to search for and follow up with a specific type of product on your store.
You can do this by creating different boards for different categories of products. For example, if you sell weightlifting products, you can create a board for female gym systems. This board will contain all female gym products on your store.
Another instance is creating seasonal boards for special items such as Valentine’s Day, Christmas, or New Year products.
Owning a Pinterest business account gives you access to the analytics dashboard, where you can review the performance of all your pins.
Occasionally reviewing your analytics will help you make a better decision on how to market your products. The analytics area usually includes the organic performance of each pin, the performance of paid promotion, and buyable pins interaction.
You can create up to 4 versions of the pin that is not performing well. Make sure to use different product images and descriptions for each of the pins.
Now test each version of the pins to determine the ones with the best campaign and organic performance.
The version of the pin that performs best with paid promotion should receive more ads spending. You should also promote the one with the best organic performance as a buyable pin.
With buyable pins, users can buy your products without actually leaving Pinterest. However, this option is only available to American users.
Just as you’ve taken so much time to develop your e-commerce store, the same amount of effort should go into promoting your business on Pinterest. In the end, you will have steady traffic from a reliable source and possibly rake in more sales for your business.
Guest author: Ronak Meghani is a serial entrepreneur who has worked with small-medium-large companies. He has 8+ Years of expertise and is closely working with eCommerce ventures since 2009. He is Co-Founder of Magneto IT Solutions, a full-service eCommerce Development company in the USA, India, and Bahrain. He’s enthusiastic about fitness, start-ups, entrepreneurship, and all things marketing.
The post 5 Simple Pinterest Tips to Grow Your eCommerce Business in 2019 appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
Are the robots really taking over?
By robots, I mean artificially intelligent machine-based learning algorithms that mimic the workings of a human brain.
Except… they don’t really.
With all the buzz about Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning now you would think that the human brain and the way we think, act, make decisions, and operate in the world is on the way out.
In fact, the way the current technology operates – using neural networks – is somewhat incongruent to the workings of the human brain. At least according to the “father” of the growth in AI, Geoffrey Hinton:
“I don’t think it’s how the brain works. We clearly don’t need all the labeled data.”
To understand what I’m talking about, and why it matters, let’s take a step back…
At the core of AI research are these things called neural networks. Neural networks are a framework that enables machine learning algorithms to work together, process complex data, and perform tasks based on the information. They “learn” without human input of tasks or steps required in a process.
“Deep neural networks” are widely used in a process referred to as “deep learning” in fields such as image recognition, natural language processing, analysis of medical images, social network filtering, and other applications.
More and more people are recognizing that neural networks and deep learning have limitations. Deep Learning systems, contrary to their designation, don’t learn. They are trained using millions of samples and perform only the action for which they are trained. They are not intelligent. Trained systems can only respond, they can’t learn or adapt.
There are also major concerns with this form of artificial intelligence and machine learning due to the amount of power required to perform actions and the amount of training that is required. For the most part, the grunt work needs to be passed off to remote servers on the cloud which significantly increases the time in which the technology responds.
Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, is an example of cloud processing. The words are sent over the internet as digital data to a remote computer, the answer is processed and relayed back in the same way. The actual speech processing and search is performed on the remote computer. Which is fine for things like Siri, but not for autonomous vehicles and other time-critical situations.
For AI and machine learning to progress to the next level, a faster and more efficient way to process these computations needed to be discovered…
Edge processing is – in contrast to processing in “the cloud” – performed right on the device itself.
The leaders in this space are a company by the name of BrainChip. BrainChip has developed a revolutionary network called Akida that is small enough, fast enough and efficient enough to perform these machine learning and intelligent tasks on the device itself by learning autonomously. This is in comparison to passing on the work to remote servers – which may not be available everywhere. In critical devices, where human life can depend on AI, you don’t want to be dependent on a remote server that may or may not be reachable.
By handling these complex computations on the device itself, it significantly accelerates the process. For example, BrainChip’s object classification technology can process 1400 images per second at 92% accuracy compared to current technologies that only process up to 15 images per second at 82% accuracy! See a representation of this powerful technology in the video below:
A key success factor to the implementation of BrainChip’s technology at scale is the fact that it builds on the technology already available – whereby other proposed self-learning networks throw the baby out with the bath water.
Here’s a quote from BrainChip’s founder, Peter van der Made;
“Akida embodies a method of bridging the gap from deep learning to autonomous learning systems that goes beyond the current capabilities of AI. There is no need to throw it all away and start over. Akida can help to preserve a company’s current investment in AI and progress towards autonomous learning intelligent systems from there.”
It’s predicted that future Akida chips will incorporate even more characteristics of the brain, such as episodic memory – that is, remembering and anticipating things that happen in sequence, and predicting which leads to understanding.
It truly is the technology that will take AI to new and mysterious places, with it’s first release expected in the second half of 2019.
Of course, all this talk about robots, artificial intelligence, and human-like learning machines is interesting… but how will this technology be used in the “real world”?
BrainChip designed and tested the first version of its technology in 2015. It contained a relatively small network that was able to learn, without help and within seconds, to drive a simulated car around a track without running into the sides. The simulated car behaved like a mouse in a maze, “feeling” the boundaries of the track to learn to navigate it.
In parallel to the BrainChip powered car, another test car using common and currently available machine learning methods went around the track too. This car bumped into the sides and learned the boundary, then returned to the beginning and tried again, bumped again and learned some more. This is similar to the learning method that is used today in deep learning networks, where errors are repeatedly fed back to the network to change its behavior – rather than learning autonomously and changing in real-time as Akida does.
See this race car demonstration in the video below:
BrainChip Race Car Demonstration (Milestone 1) from Aziana Limited on Vimeo.
A real-world application of this technology includes cybersecurity, where an unbelievable 98% of threats can be detected in microseconds with just minutes of training. In contrast, a deep learning network would require many hours or days of training on a machine to detect only 97% of threats.
Akida can also be used for image and video processing to detect objects, hand gestures, and other moving elements. This has already started to revolutionize security camera monitoring, especially in casinos where cheating is a complex and costly problem. This technology can learn, detect, and alert casino staff of problems in real-time video footage.
The Akida technology created by BrainChip is at the forefront of technological change and the future of AI. It is an entirely new way of processing data based on the way the brain works and is suited to both deep learning networks as well as self-learning and autonomous networks – something we haven’t seen in mainstream society yet.
The cybersecurity, object classification and hand-gesture demonstrations developed so far are only scratching the surface of what is possible with this technology. It is the next generation of AI.
The post The Secret Technology That Is Taking Artificial Intelligence To New and Mysterious Places appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.
