How can you make sure that your online campaigns are achieving their highest potential when there are so many factors responsible for their success or failure?
Are you split testing your content marketing, email marketing and social media marketing campaigns?
And with U.S. digital ad spending reaching $72.09 billion in 2016 according to e-marketers, why waste money on campaigns that are under performing?
Split Testing Provides Results You Are Likely Missing Now
Split testing, or A/B testing, is a method of experimentation that places two variables against each other to measure success rates.
Split testing landing page shows big improvement in conversions (recent leadpages testing results for a marketing offer after just 3 weeks)
The basic premise of split testing involves keeping one variable constant, while changing the second variable to see if it makes the campaign perform better. As a result, marketers are left with the best way to use each variable in a campaign.
With a variety of different online marketing campaigns, from email to social media, there are a number of approaches to split testing and the variables you can test to optimize performance.
Check out these suggestions for just a few of the main online campaigns.
Split Testing Content Marketing Campaigns
As split testing is working with variables, remember that only one variable should be changed at a time. Otherwise you won’t be able to tell the cause of performance changes.
As with other online marketing campaigns, content marketing involves a number of steps to consider:
style and subject of article
type of writer
length of article
image use or not
what publisher will post the article
position on the webpage
will be a call to action and what specifically
Each of these can be considered a variable during split testing, and will need to be tested individually to see what works best for you.
For example, as a beauty brand you might test different publishers by placing the same article on a fashion website and an online travel magazine.
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From there, you can test the variable by keeping track of the number of comments, page views, how many times it’s been shared and whether the viewer scrolled to the bottom of the page to find out which publisher results in more audience engagement.
Split Testing Email Marketing Campaigns
As emails are sent directly to each individual customer, it is important to approach it in a manner that is both relatable and applicable to your target market.
Otherwise, audiences can often feel annoyed or like their privacy has been invaded. A great approach to split testing is to see what has worked in the past.
If you’ve noticed anything that definitely did not work, make sure to look into that particular variable.
Variables may include:
subject headings
in-text banners
the type of call to action
…all of these can be tracked and can have an impact on open and click-through rates.
It may be a good idea to use tools to manage the success of each variable.
InboxGuru used in tandem with Infor CRM is a great tool for implementing, managing and enhancing email campaigns.
This method, alongside split testing, can be an efficient way to maximize performance.
Split Testing Social Media Marketing Campaigns
A great social media post often means targeting a specific audience with the right image and the right copy, posted at the perfect time.
Here are important considerations for social media post testing for performance:
Images and videos use
Style and tone of copy
Subject of the post
Time of day when posted
Frequency of distribution
Networks
These are just some of the variables that should be considered in your split testing process. In order to really get the best outcome from split testing, it is important to keep an open mind and maintain an all-encompassing approach so that you get the best combination of features in your campaign.
For example, try looking at your outdoor campaigns for social campaign inspiration.
Maybe a billboard you did performed well and the same image could be used on a social post?
Try being creative and don’t be afraid to test out different things.
Making a few adjustments to your online campaigns can ensure that your time, effort and money pay off.
Try split testing your online marketing campaigns in order to figure out what works best for your brand, and to ensure it’s performing the best that it can.
Content marketing has quickly become a buzzword in the world of Internet.
The problem here is; most people are getting it wrong.
First of all, lets make it clear with the definition to the content marketing. Why not ask somebody who knows it all?
Wikipedia says:
Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. The type of content businesses share is closely related to what they sell. However, the content’s main focus is on the needs of the prospect. This information is consistently delivered and can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, blogs etc.
In fact it means that content marketing should be useful, conquer the audience, and attract potential customers, rather than subtly promote a product or a service.
Everyone’s doing content marketing today. But there’s a problem. It appears that “content marketing” is more a buzzword rather than a long-term strategy for the company.
So before you decide whether this promotional channel works for your business, ask yourself the following question:
“Is it really content marketing you are doing here?”
Just because everyone is doing content marketing does not mean that they are winning at content marketing, or even if they are doing the right thing.
So why isn’t the strategy and content marketing working for you?
Here are a few of the common signs you may be doing it wrong. See if you can identify with any of these.
#1: You Have No Idea What Content Marketing Is About
The first sign that you have gone astray is advertising your products or services in a content marketing strategy directly.
Do not get me wrong, there is some product advertising here.
But if it takes more than 30% of your publications, this is not content marketing.
When you release a selling promo video of your product, or publish an article which points to why the prospect should buy the product you offer, you shouldn’t expect your readers go nuts and give your publications numerous likes, comments and re-shares.
The most effective content marketing is built primarily on the needs of your audience, and not on the need of increasing your sales (at first).
First, build a trust-based customer relationship, and then only you can move on to the sales stage.
#2: Your Content Isn’t Optimized
If you want your target consumer to spend his time and/or money on your business, you have to make your content simple to find.
SEO goes beyond blog posts as it’s equally important to optimize your content marketing efforts, whether it’s an article, press release, status update and so on.
Using industry or niche specific keywords in the content assists the bots in identifying topics your website covers and index the pages and relevancy, to better to rank in search results.
These keywords are the words that customers are most likely to enter into a search engine to find the products or services you offer.
The battle online for your audience’s time is vicious, and if you don’t implement a content marketing strategy to fight off your competitors and boost organic traffic to your site, then you’re doing this online marketing thing wrong.
Adding keywords is not going to take longer than 5 minutes, but it will get you customers. (Note: keywords research for an in-depth content strategy can take several days with follow-up meetings and final selections, as they are built into a content calendar and an overall promotional strategy).
Hence, identify and shortlist the keywords you want your business to rank for — opting for long tail keywords (3+ words) is wise too. Keep all your content creation and syndication efforts around these keywords to increase the exposure and relevance of your website in the industry as well as the market.
Instead of creating the kind of content that works for themselves and their niche, some companies are turning their websites into content farms.
They are over-optimizing their keywords, they are making titles that make no sense, and worst of all; they have forgotten about the user.
That is pretty much the reason why all you see around you is ordinary content that adds value to no one.
While excessively entertaining content may attract the wrong target audience, boring your readers to sleep will also do harm to your brand.
Both facts and statistics are important and interesting to readers.
But at the same time, if your content is nothing else, it is going to be too difficult to perceive.
It is not an easy deal to add humor and personalize content in the initial stage of the funnel, when the visitor first comes to your site and knows nothing about you.
But neither it is the reason to be discouraged at this stage.
We all love positive human attitudes and a good sense of humor. Use common words. Add some humor.
Make your content look more like a personal story rather than a review article containing only the facts.
Content marketing appeared because “the world of technology” gave its grounds to the world of “Handshake Networking”, where you need to be on friendly terms with customers, and customer service is the number one factor to get people to buy your stuff.
By engaging in conversations with your prospects and customers, you can better adapt your marketing and business services to meet their needs.
Basically, you’re going to invest in building relationships online. Your network is perhaps your most valuable professional asset.
#4: You’re Writing For Yourself
Quite frankly, people do not want to know about you or the product – they want to learn about something unknown and exciting, and find information, tools and insider access that solves a particular problem.
It is important to combine all of these elements into something of value, but make sure you are listening to the needs of your readers, rather than polishing your own ego or overselling.
“If you want your company get results from content marketing, the first thing you need to do is to find out what customers want, what they are interested in, and how you can give that to them. In other words, your content should be a separate product rather than being a part of your marketing or advertising.” – Robert Rose, CSO Institute Content Marketing
Marketing experts usually start with identifying the needs of their audience, and then they switch to meeting these needs and delivering the valuable content.
If you think that you do not have any spare time to visit theme-specific forums, comment on blog posts, read articles dedicated to your subject matter, or communicate with customers through social networks, then you are going to fail building the appropriate customer relationship.
Be sure when you sit down to write content (or your hired writer who does it for you) that you start by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes.
The blog posts, landing pages, and web content is NOT for you.
It’s for your target market.
Spend a lot of time thinking about what they need and what they want to know.
#5: You Are Being a Lone Hero
Content marketing is not something you should be doing it all by yourself.
Creating and promoting content, especially for a new site, is essentially a full-time job.
Engage your staff in content creation. Show them that their participation in a content marketing strategy would bring them career advancement and dividends.
Use third-party content and case studies. There is nothing wrong in placing the content created by other companies in your blog. What is more important, is that you should add your thoughts, statistics or facts to it, and don’t forget to indicate the source.
Engage your subscribers on the social media in content creation. This is an excellent way to attain loyalty, identify the needs and learn how to listen to your customers.
Outsource big projects. Order several major studies, articles or video content from professional companies. You will not only get a high-quality content from the market experts, but will also receive a fair outside perspective onto your niche and business. If you’re in a tough niche, there’s no magic key that will produce instant success in your content marketing.You’ve simply got to strategize regarding the most effective form of content, and keep at it.
#6: You Lack Focus On Your Business
Ask yourself these 2 pivotal questions:
What are you trying to make your customer do after having read your articles or e-books?
Does your content lead your customer do this?
If you create content only because it’s easy, you aren’t likely to enjoy the outcome.
The effective content marketing should consist of these two things:
Storytelling
Focus on making this storytelling coincide with your business goals
None can survive without the other, otherwise you will not get the desired outcome.
There’s one more thing to remember.
“The quickest way to kill your content marketing is to do nothing after you create your content.”
If no one can see your content piece, what was the point of writing it in the first place?
The important thing to remember about content marketing is that half the work is creation, the other half is promotion.
At the end of the day, it’s still marketing, but your task is to make people forget that it actually is one.
People don’t want to be convinced to buy something – they want to think that they made the decision themselves, and when you’re pushing content in their faces which sounds too salesy, they’ll see right through it and leave.
What happens once a potential customer left you his contacts for to obtain valuable content?
Does he receive an email or the call from the manager? Or his contact info is merely dusting in your client database?
You may not be targeting your visitors at all points of the sales funnel. If you don’t have any clear plan for carrying your customers throughout the sales funnel, then your content marketing is worthless.
“An integral part of the problem could be that your sales crew know nothing about your content-marketing strategy.”
They do their best to close the deal, while not being aware of what it all is about. If your crew don’t know your business goals and plans, the sales are going to be affected correspondingly.
To address this problem, it is necessary to put together all of your sales department, and lead them throughout the funnel, from visiting the the website and obtaining the client’s contacts prior to the first sale.
This will help maximum efficiency to transform website visitors into buying customers.
SUMMARY
Here’s the TL;DR for you…
Your Content Marketing Sucks because:
#1 – You Have No Idea What Content Marketing Is About
#2 – Your Content Isn’t Optimized
#3 – Your Content Is Boring as Hell
#4 – You’re Writing For Yourself
#5 – You Are Being a Lone Hero
#6 – You Lack Focus On Your Business (Building)
#7 – You Are Stuck In a Sales Funnel
The content popularity promptly grows in an online business, therefore content marketing is increasing in value.
Becoming successful in this field becomes more and more complex, and your rivals will always beat your heels.
But better late than never.
So if you still have not have launched a marketing content for your business, now is just the right time to do it.
Good luck!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THIS POST:
Kristina Smile – is a CMO at TriggMine, an email marketing automation service.
She is great at email marketing tips & increasing conversions. During the past 2 years she successfully launched more than 50 email campaigns for e-commerce websites.
She’s also the voice of TriggMine. Kristina has performed as a speaker at 100+ events in Europe & Asia. She believes that email marketing rules and data is king.
Email marketing is an online business strategy that involves sending a series of specific messages (emails) to a list of existing subscribers (a segment) or potential customers. You may be informing them of new products or services available for them to try/buy, or build a relationship with them to create interest.
Marketers use these emails to solicit sales, donations or even send ads to targeted audiences. The main purpose is to create brand awareness, build trust and loyalty among customers, as well as increase the customer base & purchase patterns.
An email list is however needed to make this marketing campaign a success and fruitful. In addition to this, the marketer needs to have a creative way of crafting the promotional emails to attract the target audience’s attention and get the message through.
Although it may seem like a simple marketing strategy, many factors have to be considered to make it a success.
It is for this reason one needs to be creative enough to make the most out of an email list.
Outlined below are a few tips and tricks on how to use email marketing to drive more traffic to your business to record higher sales and profits.
10 Ways On How to Drive More Traffic Using Email Marketing:
1. Encourage people to subscribe to promotional emails:
The first step in email marketing is collecting email addresses from interested potential customers. Collecting viable and credible email addresses to use in a marketing campaign is one of the toughest tasks marketers have to undertake. Discussed below are a few tips and trick on how to encourage prospects to subscribe to your promotional newsletters.
a. Use your Facebook accounts: Social media marketing is another powerful marketing strategy that every marketer should use. If you already have a Facebook page for your business, you can then use it to collect more viable emails from interested audiences and friends. Allowing your target audience to subscribe to newsletters while on Facebook can help you generate more leads than you anticipated. They can sign up directly, or via a landing page that you send them to.
b. Use blogs and forums: Blogs have a huge influence on the online market today – this is especially important for blogs offering informative content for the online community. Most people search for information on blogs and other informative sites they can find online. If you already have a blog linked to your business website, you can then use it to collect email addresses from visiting viewers and audiences. You however should make sure the blog contains informative content, and what the target audience wants, for them to feel obliged to provide an email address. Often you can capture this via a freemium, an offer that has value to them, in exchange for an email. We call this an ‘ethical bribe’.
c. Use promotional or explainer videos: Although most marketers are yet to realize this, you can collect tons of email addressing by uploading a promotional video – or an explainer or funny video clip with a call to action button on video hosting sites such as YouTube and Vimeo. YouTube has over a billion users and creates massive traffic every day from all corners of the world. You can therefore tap into its traffic and even collect email addresses from the same. As mentioned earlier, you need to give these subscribers a reason to subscribe to your newsletters and other promotional content for them to provide you with their personal email addresses.
2. Tell subscribers what to expect:
Most people focus too much on acquiring a potential customer’s email address without telling them what to expect from the process. One of the basic principles of email marketing is making it known to these subscribers why you need their email addresses. None one will just hand you their personal address without a good reason to.
Telling these subscribers what to expect from you gives them a peace of mind – this means they will most probably open the promotional email and read through the mail. You however need to be careful not to send too many emails, as some of the audience may be annoyed and hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button. You can easily manage this by watching your statistics. Their engagement (clicks, responses) will tell you when to break up the frequency of email messages.
3. Make the emails scannable:
Most people are too busy to read long lines of text, which is the reason why you should strive to keep your emails short and precise. Make sure the reader can scan through the email with one glimpse and get the idea behind the text without having to read through the text. (Note: this can obviously vary depending on the market. If you are an educational center for example, more detail may be ok.)
Including graphic images and including subheadings can greatly help how fast a reader can comprehend the mail hence saving his/her time. You also need to include a call to action link to help interested customers to click to make a purchase or order easily.
4. Use mobile-friendly emails:
Many people today use their smartphones, tablets, iPads, and other handheld devices to surf the internet and access their personal emails.
It is for this reason you should ensure all promotional emails send are mobile-friendly and easy to read in limited screen sizes. Many of these handheld devices use inbuilt emailing apps to deliver messages to the user, which is another reason you need to ensure the text is readable across multiple emailing platforms and apps.
If all your target audiences in your mailing list are able to open and read the emails with ease, you can then be assured that most of them will make orders or even log into your business website.
5. Use video email marketing:
Video email marketing is the newest marketing kid on the block. As mentioned earlier, most people lead busy lives and rarely get time to read long blocks of text in their emails.
Nonetheless, the reading time can be reduced to a few seconds by simply using a promotional, high quality and informative video clip as the main message.
You however should make sure the video quality is exceptionally good but lightweight to enable fast loading even on emailing programs. HTML5 video clips are mostly recommended as they load very fast even on slow networks. Showing a video player graphic with your smiling face on it, and a link to the actual video on a landing page is also best practice.
Audio visual content is more converting than written content in that, it is easier to comprehend – it only takes less than 15 seconds to deliver the intended message. The best thing about this is that, most smartphones, tablets and iPads support 3G and 4G networks, which means viewing these videos on these devices is a breeze and present a smooth viewing experience.
6. Send personalized emails:
Both loyal and potential customers will greatly appreciate if you send them personalized emails custom designed for their needs. This means you have to categorize your emailing list according to customer preferences and needs. This ensures the recipients get mails related to their needs and what may appear to them as “spammy” mails.
It would be more advantageous to inject personalized recommendations for your clients for an ultimate one-on-one communication. Although sending personalized emails may be time-consuming, your business or website should receive at least 25% higher conversions and even higher traffic from the same. The returns on investment on sending personalized emails are much higher than sending one message to thousands of recipients.
If you use dynamic responses to email clicks and events, you can make it work in this way.
7. Ensure the landing page is properly optimized:
Although investing in a promising and effective email marketing campaign is recommended, it would be advisable to ensure your business’ landing page is optimized properly. Most businesses lose potential high-value customers simply because their websites aren’t presentable or optimized (high value messaging, offers and speed of loading).
For more return visits (and for potential customers to refer their friends to your website) it would be wise to ensure your business website is optimized and designed properly. The website should be very easy to use and navigate. A presentable, informative, and easy to use website attracts more return visits than an unresponsive website. Tools like leadpages and unbounce can help get the process started.
8. Automate post-purchase messages:
A strong website, positive customer experience, and effective email marketing campaigns form a stable footing for your business and interactive marketing. You however shouldn’t take your customers, whether one-time or loyal customers, for granted.
Provide them with exclusive and attractive deals to encourage them to buy more, or even refer their friends to your website.
Taking some time to thank them after a purchase (through a personalized automated message) can be uplifting to them. This paves way for more return visits hence increased traffic and more sales. Psychologically, you are also “training” and preparing them for future interactions with you. The first email they get is the most important for establishing trust and good relationship from the outset.
9. Be friendly:
Although using a casual tone in promotional emails is recommended, it wouldn’t hurt to use an informal but friendly tone especially to loyal customers. It is by being friendly that you can break the ice with new audiences and customers.
This also creates a tighter relationship which makes potential customers want to try your services or products.
10. Respond to email replies:
Some of the potential customers (on your mailing list) may have questions/queries they need to be answered or cleared before they can make an order. Be sure to respond to their emails professionally by providing them with the answers they need to clear their doubts.
Do not be like any other marketer who uses a certain email address to mail potential leads and never checks emails or what the recipients hand to say.
Responding to a customer’s mail builds confidence and trust thus increasing their chances of visiting your official website, or better still, make an order.
In Summary:
Your business can benefit greatly from proper and well-executed email campaigns. As long as you do everything right, and aren’t too nagging or use a sales-pitchy tone in the emails, you should then expect some returns from the same. (Note: Certain times in the email sequence, it’s ok to be more direct. Don’t be shy about asking for the sale). Be sure to monitor the emailing address you use to contact the target audiences as you never know what they have to say, or what good it will do to your business.
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Email marketing is a great way to reach your target audience as personally and uniquely as possible. It is also cost-efficient because all you have to do is compose a weekly or monthly newsletter to attract their attention and convert them into loyal customers.
With the many changes to advertising and online marketing in the B2B markets, you must adapt the way you do your newsletters to the needs and accessibility of your audiences. Updating your approach as often as possible is the only way you can retain the interest, excitement, and quantity of your e-subscribers.
Here are seven ways you can improve your email marketing campaigns.
Lead with a Great Subject Line
It might be better to write your subject line after you’ve done the whole newsletter. This will help you have a better grasp on what your email is all about. Find subject lines that meet the average character limit and effectively portray what your newsletter is trying to say. The keywords that you think can pull people in must be near the beginning.
Your readers use desktop computers and mobile apps, which have different character limits. The simpler and shorter your subject line is, the better chances for your message to come across.
Get to Know Your Audience
Setting your newsletter to fit your target audience is one thing; learning about their surfing habits, interests, and online mindset is another.
The first step is to have a rough idea of the demographics you want to reach. Once you’ve sent a couple of emails, your analytics can begin to determine who are receiving and reading your emails.
Refer to these analytics regularly to see what devices people are using to read your newsletters and what links they click the most.
Balance Design and Content
A rule of thumb is to never use images in your newsletter, or at least minimize your usage. Some markets, for example – the financial services industries may require more (stock charts, analysis charts, etc). But, most of your recipients can’t see the images included in your email, meaning they can be a great waste of space. In that case, consider adding a special report or document (PDF) that contains all in one, neat format. Putting links on images is also a very bad idea. Instead, just use well-coded html instead of a heavy image design. Pay close attention to the font size, colors, and screen size of your email and test it first to ensure things go smoothly.
Load Your Email with Obvious Links
The main purpose of your newsletter is to drive traffic to your landing page, product page, and website. This can help your audience get familiar with your website and build brand loyalty in the long run. Make sure you put in at least one link per paragraph to get the most out of your newsletter.
Underline the links and color them differently. Use strong and authoritative calls to action. Capitalize on every moment where the user may feel compelled to click. Directing them to where you want them to go is the first step in marketing, so don’t fail on it.
Check Spam Rules
Avoid getting your email flagged as spam and removed from your recipients’ in boxes It is important to familiarize yourself with these rules at the very beginning of your email marketing campaign to start right. If your message is filled with links, your email provider may flag it as spam and filter it into a different section.
This is the worst thing to happen on an email marketing plan because your audience will not see your newsletter. It may be tempting to send a harder sales email, but it only takes one email that looks like its high spam to keep you out of the inbox for weeks, months, or even years afterwards.
Send During the Perfect Time
While email checking will vary from person to person, the best times to send an email is every afternoon during the working days Tuesdays to Thursdays.
People are busier with their personal lives during Fridays to Mondays because of weekend plans. These days, they tend to shy away from the daily grind. Keep in mind that sending your newsletter at the right time can make your recipients care more about its content. Do a little research on what times work best in your professional industry.
Set Realistic Goals
While email marketing is popular, bear in mind that its open rate and click-through doesn’t result into massive numbers immediately. It takes time, and even then – you must continue to test, and develop the relationship with good, quality info, news, tips and insights. People can be overwhelmed with new inbox arrivals, so your email can be ignored or they can just scan through the contents quickly. The results of your first attempts may underwhelm you. The secret is to build it up overtime by providing interesting and quality content.
Remember that your goal is to make people buy whatever you’re selling and build trust around your brand. Grab every opportunity to remind users that they won’t miss out on the valuable information you can send them if they add you to their email contact list. This way, you can increase the number of people receiving your newsletter and improve your open and click-through rates.
The evolution of mobile devices to smart phones has changed the marketing playing field.
How so?
Because smart phone users have a lot of options when it comes to giving their attention to something. Updating a Facebook status, Tweeting, Angry Birds, etc. When the user receives an email alter on their phone device, chances are they’re receiving a text message, getting a social media update or checking-in to a location.
The trick in the new mobile marketing platform is how to get a person to choose to read your email above other options.
