251.405.2543
Most of us have fond memories of watching grainy, embarrassing home movies on large VHS tapes in our childhood living rooms. Video has come a long way since then, but its impact on our lives has only grown. These days, videos are used as a powerful marketing strategy to help businesses increase their profits and connect with consumers. In fact, video content is the most powerful form of social media marketing and businesses that aren’t using it to their advantage are falling behind. To stay on top, hiring a professional videographer to handle your video content should be a key component in your social media strategy.
But do you really need a video content strategy? Here’s what social video content can do for your business:
Digital marketers agree - there is no medium more engaging to an online audience than video. To begin with, users are more inclined to actually watch videos than other types of content. According to a survey done by Animoto, 60% of users say that they watch branded videos on social media every day. And when it comes to sharing, video content is shared 1200% more than text or image content! In the numbers game, video content will always come out on top. So why are they so engaging? Videos are able to capture your audience more effectively using two things that always grab our attention: movement and sound. And once your audience is ensnared, video content can use things like facial expressions, tone of voice, and sounds to convey and evoke emotion. This is much harder to do in text content, which requires punction or visual cues to suggest tone. Emotion is a driving factor in purchasing decisions, so you want to hit your audience where they’ll feel it the most. And speaking of purchasing...
Have you ever seen a cool product online, but you weren’t sure how it worked? I bet you weren’t inclined to buy it to find out! One of the best uses of video content is showing a product in action, especially if the product is new. In today’s busy world, consumers don’t have time to read lengthy product descriptions. Videos are easily digestible and can make new concepts easier to understand. By showing how a product works, you can also show them how it will benefit them in a real-life way. A viewer is much more likely to visualize that product in their hands when they see it in someone else’s rather than in the pages of an advertisement. If your business relies on product sales to thrive, video content is something you can’t slack on. Animoto’s survey found that one in four consumers lose interest in a product if it doesn’t have video. That’s 25% of your audience!
Ask yourself: are you more likely to trust something pitched to you by a friend or by a hawker on the street? Video content is so effective because it helps build trust between your business and your customers. Though most of the world relies on digital technology, consumers remain more likely to invest in a business that they feel connected to. Videos are inherently personal, especially if the content is authentic, natural, and conversational. That’s why storytelling is such a crucial element in your video strategy - it makes your business feel like a trusted friend rather than an infomercial. When your video content is consistent, your audience will begin to seek out your page to experience your brand rather than just clicking on your videos in their feed. And that is exactly where you want to be.
Speaking of the personal nature of videos, it makes them the perfect tool to create and maintain your business’s brand. A brand is a complex concept, affected by everything from your word choices to your punctuation style. When your video content is consistent with your brand, it helps develop your company’s personality and connect to your audience. Quality video content can combine all of the things that make up your brand and deliver it in a ready-to-go package. One way to do this is by inserting appropriate text and graphic elements into your videos. People are strongly influenced by visuals, so creating a consistent look with your videos is one of the easiest ways to make your brand - and your business - recognizable.
Now that you’re convinced that you need strong video content for your social accounts, you may be wondering how to get it done. Many companies don’t believe they need to hire a professional videographer, and they often assign video content to existing members of their staff. But this isn’t always the best decision - and sometimes it’s a downright bad one. Here’s what a professional videographer can do for your video content strategy:
Our professional videography service can help you create a video content strategy that turns your social media accounts into marketing gold. Using professional equipment and the latest industry trends, we can deliver video content that is engaging, dynamic, and beneficial to your business. Ready to see your social media engagement skyrocket? Contact us for a consultation today!
Google and social media platforms (like Facebook) continue to change their algorithms, making it increasingly difficult for a company to reach its audience. Stellar Content marketing can help your company jump some of the hurdles. In fact, Google and Facebook often reward companies with great content. That’s why it’s critical for companies to provide valuable and informative content on their website and social media pages.
If you’re struggling to create killer content, follow these tips to help guide you in creating successful content for your company:
Engage with your followers. You’ve probably heard it many times: engagement is crucial for online marketing success. Here’s why:
Establish thought leadership. Position your company as a thought leader that provides valuable resources to its audience. Highlighting yourself as an expert in your industry will draw your audience to you. Instead of going straight to Google for information about your industry, people will start going to your website, blog, and following your social media pages to learn industry trends, tips and tricks, and more.
Keep it fresh. Keep your content fresh by incorporating new and a variety of content for your customers to read and engage with. Consider mixing up your weekly posts with a guest post or a live product/service demo. Be sure to post on special holidays and incorporate seasonal content into your posts. Use catchy images and high-quality graphics to keep your page looking fresh and not like spam. Incorporate monthly themes, where you focus on certain topics each month, educating your audience beyond their expectations about each topic (thought-leadership!).
Be authentic. With the growth of the Internet and social media platforms, it has become increasingly important to be authentic. Advertising your product, service, or company falsely will always come to light through reviews and comments from customers. Your audience is far more informed than you think, and they will call out a scam without hesitation. One of the top influencers on the web, Neil Patel, put it best when he said, “Authentic businesses inspire and prosper”. Neil Patel advises people to be authentic by:
Engage with your followers. Establish thought leadership. Keep it fresh. Be authentic. Each of these tips will help you create a better content marketing strategy to help your company grow. In combination, these tips will help your company soar! So, give it a try, and if you’re still struggling, give us a call! We’re here to help you create content and manage your digital marketing in a way that will capture the attention of your audience.
RELATED:
Should You Outsource Your Business Blogging?
Phillip Long - CISSP, CEO of BIS Technology Group, along with his team of marketing and information technology experts, will walk you through an overview of what your business should be doing to protect your data and plan your digital marketing strategies.
About BIS Technology Group
BIS Technology Group is the technology leader on the Gulf Coast and is comprised of four divisions: Information Technology, Web Design & Digital Marketing, Office Equipment and Business Consulting. Together these divisions help local businesses exceed expectations and allow them to group to their full potential while minimizing risks. To learn more about BIS Technology Group, visit bistechnologygroup.com.
You may reach out to us at: Phone: 251-405-2527 Email: plong@askbis.com
With over 1 billion monthly users, Instagram is the largest and fastest growing social media platform for sharing videos and photos. 60% of users learn about new products directly through Instagram, 70% of users look up a brand on Instagram, more than 200 million users visit a business profile at least once a day, and if you don’t have an active Instagram account, you might be missing out on a lot of business.
According to Forrester, companies that are on Instagram have a 4.21% engagement rate, which is 10x higher than Facebook and 84x higher than Twitter. Whoa! That’s a lot of engagement, and it’s pretty remarkable for something launched only 9 years ago to be growing so quickly.
The importance of having, and maintaining, and Instagram account to reach more customers can no longer be ignored. But, how do you get started? How can your company break through the millions of content being posted to Instagram every day and increase your business? Here are some helpful tips to start implementing today:
1. Start with a Strategy - You have goals for your business, and you should have goals for everything you do in support of your business, including social media. A social media strategy defines how your company will use social media to achieve its communication goals. At the very least, it can be a simple statement of intent, outlining the goals, measurable objectives for using the platform, and the target outcomes you wish to accomplish. It’s critical to start with an Instagram strategy; otherwise you’ll waste precious time and money posting with no end goal in mind, nothing to measure your success, and nothing to improve upon.
2. Upgrade your Instagram account to a business profile – If you don’t already have a business profile for Instagram, it’s pretty easy to set up. First, sign up with a business email so your Instagram profile isn’t linked to your personal Facebook account. Next, follow the prompted instructions on Instagram to enter your account details. After you have completed your account set up, switch to a business profile. Just go to Settings -> Account -> Switch to Business Profile. It will then have you confirm your Facebook business page and update your Instagram account for you.
Upgrading your Instagram account from a personal to a business profile will give you insights into your audience that will help you reach them more effectively. You will be able to see how many people you reach on average, what posts are the post popular, what time of day your followers are most likely to be on Instagram and see your posts, and more. This is very important to guide you in adjusting your strategy for the best results.
3. Know how often and what type of content to post (quality over quantity) – This section could be the most important to your Instagram account success. Knowing how often and what type of content to post can be tricky. However, if followed well, these tips should help your Instagram improve.
The purpose of Instagram is to create visual inspiration for your followers. Therefore, following the rule “Quality over Quantity” is extremely important. It may seem like it’s better to post 3x per day for more engagement and followers. However, if you are posting poor content with low-quality images or videos, you might as well forget it. Utilize your Instagram account to tell the story of your brand in an ascetically pleasing way, even if you only post 2x per week. It’s far better to post less often and have high-quality images and videos than to post more often with low-quality work that will make your company look cheap and turn people off.
The amount of posts you make per week should also be taken into consideration when you are creating a strategy for your social media. You should never approach a week with no plan for your posts, or with a plan in mind to “just post what comes to you” because often times, you’ll get busy and forget to post. Planning monthly and creating a content calendar can help take the stress off of you.
It may surprise you to know, major brands post on Instagram on average 1.5 times per day. You should aim to post 1-3 times per day. An extremely important tip is to utilize your business profile to its full extend by digging into your insights and figuring out when your followers are on Instagram. You can adjust your strategy to post on the days and during the times your followers are most active. For example, if you find most of your followers are extremely active on Wednesdays at 7 AM and 9 PM, you should aim to post every Wednesday at 7 AM and 9 PM to reach the most people.
4. Post User-Generated Content – One of the easiest ways to keep posts running on your Instagram account, or even on your Instagram story, is to post user-generated content (UGC). In fact, 86% of Millennials say that USC is a good indicator of the quality of a brand, and 68% of social media users between the ages of 18 and 14 take into account UGC shared on social media while considering following a brand.
UGC is defined as any type of content that has been created and put out there by unpaid contributors or followers. This refers to images, videos, testimonials, tweets, blog posts, etc… where your followers promote your brand. Followers like UGC because it puts the customer front and center and makes your brand more about them. Just be sure to ask permission from the original poster before reposting.
5. Always add a compelling CTA - CTAs (Call-To-Action) direct people into what they should do after seeing your post. The key is to be as creative as you can in order to make people take action. A few CTAs to consider in your next post: ask people to tag a friend, make a comment, give your company a call, repost your post, fill out forms to get exclusive discounts, etc.
These tips should help your Instagram account improve. But, remember… gaining followers and seeing a ROI takes time. If you need help, the team at BIS Design’s is always here for you! Just give us a call to discuss your needs.
Algorithms: How Each Platform Keeps You Engaged
You may have noticed the blog trend that is ruling the cyber world from Google to social media. Whether it is fashion influencers or tech gurus and travel enthusiasts, blogging is a trend that continues to grow each year.
How does this relate to your business? Blogging is a way to share your expertise and knowledge with your target audience. In doing so, you are 1) helping to provide information needed by your potential customer and 2) demonstrating your expertise on the subject which in turn keeps the customer coming back to you for further assistance. You are building trust with your potential customers/clients and this results in more leads for your business. Having well-written and updated blog content on your website also strengthens your relationship with Google which boosts your rankings in search results.
Now that you know why you need a business blog, let’s talk about how you’ll find the time to add this task to your agenda.
It is common for small and medium sized businesses to outsource business functions like payroll, human resources, accounting and more to keep the organization lean and flexible. Outsourcing blog writing? This might seem more challenging – after all, your blog is the voice of your business and a critical part of your content marketing strategy.
It is definitely possible to outsource blog posts, and do it well. Below are two of the most common questions we get here at BIS Designs about blogging:
Writing is personal and every business feels like they have a unique tone or style they’re looking to capture in their blog. The very concept of outsourcing might feel like it will cause you to lose some of your business’s personality.
Solution: Take time to educate your writer. We’ve all heard it, “you get what you put in”, and in this case, it is definitely true. A good writer will research and educate themselves as much as possible but to keep your business personality/style/tone the same, you’ll need to give some details on what makes your business stand out from your competitor.
If you give your writer nothing to work with, you get nothing in return worth reading. It’s that simple. You are the subject matter expert for your business. A good outsourced writer will bring your expertise to light in a readable way. If you’ll provide more information and direction, you’ll get more of what you expect from your writer and overall blog content strategy.
Solution: Make a list of topics. Whether you do this once a month or once a quarter – take the time to send a few topics to your writer. Once your blog writer has a list of topics, he/she can now get started on the time-consuming part of the project - creating engaging content. The few minutes that you spend concentrating on topics will help to keep your business personality/tone/style alive on your website.
A big perk of outsourcing your business blog writing is that your new writer will bring fresh ideas to the table. This simply adds new insights that can make your blog better.
Fun Fact: The average blog post takes 3 hours 20 minutes to write and the most engaged blog content on the web now has 41% more words than it did 3 years ago.
If you have a blog on your website that you simply don’t have time to keep up or you would like to add a blog to your website but aren’t sure where to start, give us a call! Outsourcing to a local company who can meet with you face-to-face to discuss your marketing goals is a great way to start the new season.
5 Benefits of Business Blogging
Whether you’ve noticed or not, organic traffic on Facebook has dropped – and it’s likely impacting your company in a big way.
There are a few reasons that you need a Facebook advertising strategy and budget. Let’s start with the basics – because Facebook’s algorithm does not make it easy for business pages to succeed on Facebook.
What does the term “Facebook algorithm” actually mean? And how does it work?
Facebook’s algorithm controls who sees the content that you share. It’s not as simple as you posting a status update then Facebook pushing it out to all of your followers. That’s a thing of the past. Not everyone who follows your page will see your posts. Facebook is way more intelligent now. And, there’s a reason for that, but we’ll get into that later.
Adam Mosseri (VP, News Feed at Facebook) puts Facebook’s algorithm in layman’s terms for us. He says he thinks about it like he would when ordering his wife something to eat at a restaurant.
The Facebook algorithm process goes like this:
This process happens on millions of devices countless times each day. And, it’s also the reason why your Facebook business page’s posts aren’t getting as many views as it used to.
This makes a lot of sense when you think about it from a business perspective. The reality is that Facebook is a business. And how does a business like Facebook make money? You guessed it – paid advertising.
So why isn’t your Facebook business page making you money? Because the only way for company pages to succeed on Facebook is through Facebook paid advertising. Facebook’s only real concern is to find ways for more business pages to spend more money. You can’t blame them. Any CEO would do the same thing.
The truth is that social media doesn’t work the way it did in the past.
This is because posts were served in reverse chronological order. In 2009, Facebook changed the algorithm to be based on popularity.
As you might’ve guessed, the Facebook algorithm is changing more frequently than ever. Simply posting on your page every day without a Facebook advertising strategy or budget is a waste of time.
Here’s what you should be using Facebook for –
Facebook Paid Advertising
The new reality is that businesses on Facebook are unlikely to succeed without putting a budget toward Facebook paid advertising. In turn, this requires a Facebook advertising strategy similar to how you would strategize for billboard, radio or TV ads.
When creating a Facebook ad campaign, there are a few key things that you need to consider – like your goals, target audience and the content of your ad. Unfortunately, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. Facebook ad campaigns can get incredibly detailed and complicated, and the platform itself isn’t exactly user-friendly. We’d love to dive into the specific best practices for executing a Facebook advertising strategy, but that’s a whole other blog.
Its Database
What you’re really doing when you create a Facebook ad campaign, is using Facebook for its extremely extensive database. In other words, you’re using Facebook paid advertising to buy an audience.
Think about all of the millions of people that use Facebook. In fact, Facebook has more than 2 billion monthly active users according to the company’s website. That’s a lot of people – a lot of people that may be interested in your product or service.
Think about Facebook’s database as an untapped market. You may not have their email or mailing address but you have their Facebook profile.
When you use Facebook paid advertising, you are purchasing access to advertise to millions of people that you otherwise would have had no access to. Even better, you can segment your audience to the specifics of your ideal customer by choosing preferred age, gender, interests, etc. to give you an incredibly high customer value.
Organic Posting 2-5 Times a Week
Just because you realize that Facebook paid advertising is more lucrative than simple sharing updates on your company’s page (otherwise known as organic posting), doesn’t mean that you can give up organic posting altogether.
There’s a huge difference between social marketing and social selling. Social selling is where you can really see the return on your investment, and it includes your Facebook paid advertising strategy that we talked about in this blog post. However, social marketing is also essential.
Other than running Facebook ad campaigns, it’s still very critical to be active on your company page.
Think about this scenario – a highly qualified lead that saw your Facebook ad in their newsfeed now visits your company’s Facebook business page to learn more about you. But, you haven’t posted an update in months because you focused all of your efforts on your Facebook advertising strategy. That scenario isn’t exactly ideal because the customer doesn’t get any added value, in turn stopping their customer journey.
This is why it’s extremely important to pay attention to your Facebook advertising strategy as well as organic posting. It may seem like a lot to balance, which is why marketing companies like us (BIS Designs) are here to ease you into the process.
Fun Fact: Did you know that the average person will spend over five years of their life on social media. WOW! That’s a lot of time spent on Facebook!
Author: Stephanie May
The most common question from marketing clients is “How do I get more leads for my business?”
There are plenty of practical methods for generating quality leads. Blogging. Sharing and caring on social Media. Strategic landing pages. Event marketing. Email. Most marketers are using all of these channels and more. So why aren’t the majority of brands drowning in qualified leads?
Research shows that 65% of marketers are still struggling to figure out which content is effective. 60 percent are unable to produce engaging content. Only 23 percent of B2B marketers have moved to a customer-centric organizational structure. A lot of marketers are still missing the mark, using content to appeal to customers, rather than to provide value to customers.
If you want to get more quality leads, you need to do better quality marketing. The trick to doing that is to first step back, in order to move forward. Go back and refine your buyer personas. How can you better meet their preferences and expectations? Look at where you can improve your blog, email and social media content to better serve your audience.
No more bull running in a china shop approach and generating mediocre content and tossing it at your audience. No more throwing dollars at Facebook ads and waiting for the leads to roll in. Here are the hacks that will help you refine and improve your marketing and truly excel at lead generation.
UP YOUR CONTENT GAME
You should always be on the quest to enhance the type of content you are using. Content marketing goes far beyond blog posts. Consider investing more so you can deliver a premium level of content.
Your content should be engaging and “pretty”. All photos should be of great quality, captions should be short but interesting. Ever notice how television commercials use a short amount of time to catch your attention? The attention span of the average human is not very long, so you need to catch their attention with your graphics, photos and captions on social media within a glance. Blogs and email campaigns need to have clear and concise titles or subject lines.
SIMPLIFY YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN
Dynamic isn’t always a good thing when it comes to trying to get across a message. With website design, the more complex, the bigger disaster you may have on your hands.
Keep your website design clear and to the point. That doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. It does mean avoid excess text, confusing visuals and too many concepts. What you do what is a clear message and navigation bar. Lots of white space. Use website real estate for the essentials for getting leads, like forms and contact info.
You don’t want your design to scream when a prospect lands on your site.
BETTER PERSONALIZE YOUR EMAILS
How are your email open-rates? Small businesses get around a 2 to 3 percent open-rate percentage, and larger companies get closer to 10 percent or even more. Overall, the average hovers around 4 percent.
The goal should be to improve your email rates to help get more leads. How to do it? A simple trick is to use more personalized messaging. With the style and tone expectations of your target audience in mind, see if your emails make more of an impact with a more conversational tone. Try adding an image in the closing signature – a staff member whose name is on the emails. Use names and first person tone of voice in the subject line, greetings, and closings. Segment your emails with your marketing software to ensure the right people are getting the right messaging depending on where they are in the sales funnel.
Research has shown that personalization leads to six times higher email transaction rates. Worth a shot!
KEEP REFINING
You don’t necessarily need to revolutionize your marketing strategy to get more leads. You may see the results you’re after simply by making a few changes or trying new techniques. Try these hacks. Measure their impact. Then keep making them better. You’ll get more leads as long as you continually prime your marketing for the people you’re trying to reach. For more tips and to hire a team of marketing professionals to handle this part of your business for you – contact our office.
12 Reasons Why Your Business Needs A Content Marketing Strategy
These days, having a company website is no longer enough to stand out among the thousands of competitors you compete with in the digital space. Blogging isn’t just a place to host your company press releases, it’s about providing valuable content to your future customers.
What is business blogging? Blogging is a marketing tactic that uses articles to get your business more online visibility. A business blog is a marketing channel (just like social media, email campaigns, etc.) that helps support business growth.
No matter what kind of business you have, whether you’re a local mom and pop shop, or giant corporation, there are some serious benefits are seemingly endless.
Here are 5 benefits of business blogging:
1. Creates Brand Authority
Consistently updating an active blog for your business allows you to personify your business by giving it a voice. Your blog is a space to discuss industry related topics, market trends and upcoming products. Focusing on these topics actively builds brand-trust. Trust generates leads. Leads grow sales. Can you see where this is all going?
When you utilize your blog effectively, you are creating a two-way conversion between you and your customers, prospects and other industry professionals which can be very helpful for gathering insights for future business development.
Having an active blog helps you stay ahead of the curve when it comes to industry news and competitors. By staying ahead of the curve, you are positioning your company as a leader as opposed to a follower. Your blog also serves the purpose of having a place to share your brand story, although it should be noted that it’s not advised that you blog only about yourself as a company.
2. Business Blogging Fuels Your SEO
There are some pretty obvious SEO benefits blogs can offer, such as viewers spending longer amounts of time on your website, increasing page views and lowering bounce rates. However, it’s also important to mention that search engines love valuable content and reward it with higher search result placements.
As more people are putting out content to capture the attention of search engines, the algorithms are getting smarter. Your business blogging content should focus on having frequent high-quality content as opposed to having constant poor-quality content. Opt for longer blog posts because Google actually favors in-depth blog articles but a regularly updated blog, no matter the length of the articles, ranks higher in search engines than websites with no blog at all.
3. Supports Your Social Media Advertising Efforts
Using blog articles as part of your content strategy on both Facebook and LinkedIn platforms has been proven to be very effective. Depending on the nature of the industry, boosted blog posts typically generate more engagements as opposed to generic click campaigns. This increased engagement impacts your overall organic reach for the post, which essentially means you are getting more viewers and spending less money as you’re running your ad campaigns.
Aside from using blog content for your ads, leveraging your blog posts throughout your social media content also increases the chances of gaining extra exposure. When you can write a blog article that is so interesting that others will want to share it, you are ultimately gaining free exposure.
4. Generates a Great ROI
Business blogs are cost-effective marketing investments. Many business owners choose to outsource their blogging efforts entirely because it can be a time-consuming task when you are already wearing multiple hats for your business. According to Hubspot research, B2B marketers who use blogs as part of their content marketing mix get 67% more leads than those who don’t.
5. Blogs Serve as a Lead Generation Tool
Blogging is an integral part of your digital sales funnel. In addition to driving traffic to your website, business blogging offers a great opportunity for capturing leads. By using non-intrusive lead capturing tools such as lead capture forms and call-to-action buttons, you can gather valuable data on the quality of the leads your blog posts are generating.
How many times have you read a blog post and downloaded a free e-book because you were interested in gaining more insightful information about the topic you were reading? If you recall a moment where you have personally done this, congratulations! You were successfully moved from the inbound marketing stage of attraction to the stage of conversion.
Each blog post you create is an additional page that can be indexed by Google, which can be used with a combination of lead generating call-to-action buttons such as free webinars, fact sheets and e-books. Asking for emails isn’t an easy task but when you offer valuable data in exchange for emails, you can leverage it for better prospecting.
Although it can be difficult to find the time to keep up a business blog, you don’t want to neglect the benefits blogging has to offer. By utilizing a local outsourced marketing company, like BIS Designs, your blogs can serve as a central piece for all your other marketing efforts which can include social media, SEO, email marketing and much more.
When business blogging is done properly, it creates an opportunity that will have lifelong benefits to boosting your business marketing efforts.
Research by the Content Marketing Institute has reported that B2B marketers who have a documented strategy and an individual to oversee the strategy, are the most effective group of content marketers out there. Whether you are just now starting your digital marketing process or you have made sure your brand has a recognizable presence on the web, you’re missing out if you aren’t using a content marketing strategy.
There is a lot more to it than running a few social media accounts and publishing a blog for your brand. Even with great, well-driven content, if you don’t have the SEO skills to drive organic traffic to your website, the landing pages to capture leads and the email marketing, white papers, dynamic offering of webinars, infographics, event marketing and more to convince your customers that your brand is an industry leader and has long-term value to offer, then your content lacks dimension.
You need a system for gathering and analyzing your customer metrics, and using this data to constantly update your strategy. Without this system, you’re failing to offer what customers expect today from marketers. Your content may slip through the cracks, going unnoticed as your competitors are appealing to your market with a direct approach at content that touches every point. Stringing everything together to create something that matters is the ultimate goal.
Richard Pattinson, CEO of Brafton, says “The intention behind content can be good, but the scaffolding is missing, weak or flawed.” Pattinson sees this as a major flaw for businesses.
With a documented strategy, there is a place and purpose for each piece of content. Everything flows into the next. A case study, vlog or email subject line sets up other aspects of your strategy and holds the entire plan together. A good flow will allow your entire strategy to be flexible enough to evolve along the way as your make an effort to continually work towards creating that simple, clear and yet remarkably complex brand environment that is the most effective way to attract your market and build long-term customer relationships at the same time.
A good content marketing strategy is:
The better your strategy, the more potential you give each piece of content created.
WHY YOU NEED A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY
1. A better content marketing ROI – as you refine which tactics are the most appealing to high-quality leads and which are the most motivating, you’ll be able to invest in the content that works and either reduce or eliminate what isn’t working.
2. You’ll actually know what your content ROI is – only with a documented strategy are you going to have the metrics to give you an idea of how effective your content marketing is.
3. Repurposed content – with a dynamic strategy, you can plan ahead how you repurpose your in-person events into eBooks and podcasts, your video interviews into blog posts, and your white papers into infographics.
4. Better customer segmentation – with a content management system, you’ll be able to personalize your content for different segments, the key to boosting your conversion and retention rates.
5. More accurate buyer personas – you’ll also be able to create smarter campaigns with better buyer personas as you use your gathered customer data to continually evolve your ideal buyer personas.
6. Less churn – when you have a better idea of what your customers want because you’re using a strategy, you’ll be able to reduce your churn rates and boost your long-term revenue numbers.
7. Ability to leverage more marketing tactics – with a short and long-term plan, you’ll be able to see ten steps ahead, planning for that mega branding conference in five years and pulling off your brilliant influencer marketing campaign six months from now.
8. Optimized social media channels – when your social media posts are integrated with the rest of your content marketing strategy, your customers grow used to the value that comes out of following and engaging with your social platforms and are more likely to stay engaged. Rather than random posts, they’ll know there will be a consistent flow of value coming out of your Twitter feed and Facebook pages – industry news or tips, special deals, links to informative blog posts, early bird event registration they don’t want to miss.
9. Boosted brand reputation – with your comprehensive brand presence both online and off, you’ll do wonders for your brand reputation as you’ll have a larger social following, contact list, and more activity on your website such as blog comments, online reviews, and forum posts (depending on what channels are relevant for your business).
10. Improve lead generation – when you flow your social media posts and email marketing into your blog posts and to your landing pages and CTAs, you’ll attract more visitors to your website and invite more qualified leads down your sales funnel.
11. Higher customer acquisition rates – as you get to know your market better, you’ll be able to turn more leads into customers.
12. You’ll become a better marketer. The more love you put into your strategy, the more you’ll learn about just how much content marketing is capable of.
Getting the results you want from your content marketing all boils down to strategy. Even if your strategy is limited to a blog, a modest website and social media – make each piece work together and that strategy will do more than a disconnected collection of components ever could.
BIS Designs offer these services and more. As a business owner, having a team to handle the content marketing for you can be a better option than spending the time to do it yourself. We’re happy to discuss ideas with you. Give us a call!
Create a Winning Content Marketing Strategy in 5 Simple Steps
Emerging Digital Marketing Trends
The year is flying by quickly and before we know it, 2018 will be here. Top companies have a habit of starting to plan for the next year by Q2 of the year, so many businesses are already looking at trends coming up in the new year. If you have initiated planning your marketing strategy and budget for 2018, be prepared to face questions regarding tactics you are opting to use that would go best with most of your customers. And most importantly, which tactics can result in the most efficient conversion.
To plan a top-notch marketing strategy for your business in 2018, go through the seven trends explained here and incorporate them in your planning process. From personalized elements and mastering micro-moments to moving visual and analyzing the authentic data, we will go through all the best strategies for acquiring leads, conversions and engagement.
Master Micro-Moments
Mobile gadgets have proved to be a major influence in customer interaction and engagement with brands across the globe. But the surprising thing for most people is the concept of “micro-moments”, which has powered the shift to mobile phones. From long-term goals such as planning to purchase a home, or something as small as acquiring a quick grocery from the nearest store or even locating the ingredients of a dish from your phone, etc., countless of these micro-moments stimulate the impulse to reach out for our mobile phone.
As per Think with Google, micro-moments are highly critical and evaluative touchpoints where customers expect brands to cater their needs with reliable information, regardless of the time and location.
Whenever a customer feels the need to inquire about something, an astounding 96% of users reach for their smartphones to conduct the required research at that very instant. Only successful brands have the tendency to correctly anticipate and address the exact micro-moment needs by providing the right information at the right time to customer in need.
A useful, quick and one-touch access to the needed information becomes the basis of acquiring customer trust and building long-lasting relationships.
Visualization Is More Important than Ever
For all the exciting and informative things found online, whether it is a couple of kittens playing, a baby laughing or a top commercial featuring a popular model, there is always an element of video. With a video, people tend to accept and attach on a much deeper level due to the usage of visually-rich and interactive elements depicting a proper message or story. And as a consequence, audience is tempted to take considerable action in terms of likes, sharing, etc.
With time, brands have been able to capitalize on the introduction of highly-engaging video features on different social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram.
For this trend, we are going to focus on video aspect only since businesses are seizing the opportunity to differentiate their brand in the competitive industry.
Mobile users are tending to spend more time than ever with their smartphones, with the excitement to watch videos online being proportionate as well. It is clear from the following stats that online video is growing rapidly in popularity.
YouTube registers more 18 and above years-old audience during peak TV hours than any cable TV network. Advertisers on prime time broadcasting TV could gain 56% more audience of 18 to 49 years-old through advertising on YouTube. Plainly from statistics, it does not come as a surprise that Facebook recently revealed the count of 1.65 billion active users (data from April 2016) watching about 8 billion videos each day.
Consumers are more tempted from videos because of the deeper attachment they experience from the visual on-screen elements. Realizing the need, the trend of promoting high-quality video content is very much likely to soar high in future.
The Best Visibility with Native Ads
To grab a plain sight exposure in front of the right audience, native advertising has become one of the most sought-after marketing methods. Most users find interruptive ads frustrating and irrelevant. For instance, browsing a website and instantly an out-of-context ad pops out of nowhere is a big no-no for the user.
This is a common concern, which is best catered by native ads. It facilitates brands to market their offerings in a quite non-disruptive way that blends in easily with the environment a user is most comfortable with.
Native ads blend in such a seamless manner, that customers may not even spot them when viewing let it be advertorial, instant content, search advertising, recommended content or sponsored listings form of native advertising. Rather than approving it as a deceiving aspect, the point is to put the right information in front of the viewer when they actually need it.
As per the data provided by Polar and BI intelligence, CTR rates for premium native ads on mobile gadgets were four times higher, than the count of non-native display ads. The data also stressed that native ads calls for better engagement rates on tablets and smartphones as compared to desktop systems.
To create a winning content marketing strategy, you must take a look at what you have done in the past and assess why you didn’t reach your goal. When we meet with business owners along the Gulf Coast, we provide them with a free digital marketing consultation. We look at what they are currently doing that is working, not working, where they are, and where they can improve. Our team of digital marketing specialist will analyze current market trends and determine where they can best dominate their industry.
There is more to just posting on social media and paying for boosted ads on Facebook. It isn’t so much about the amount you post on Facebook anymore. By delivering the right content at the right audience, your opportunities are endless. Stop beating yourself up over not getting much engagement, or what little engagement is from a friend, family member, or co-worker. We’ve all heard the saying. “Content is king,” but the truth is not all content is created equal.
In this blog post, we will discuss five simple steps for you to create a winning content marketing strategy.
People have very short attention spans. We live in an age of instant gratification. We have been taught that we can get any information we need at our finger tips in seconds thanks to smartphones. We are in an age of digital advancement that changes in a blink of an eye. How are your everyday business owners to keep up with these changes and appeal to the right audience?
It is said that marketing to everyone is marketing to no one. You must decide which specific market you are going to target to and stick with it. A retailer of women’s clothing may decide to target women of a certain age, income bracket, and geographical area of residence. It’s not enough to just run an ad targeted at these ladies. You must appeal to them with your message.
How do you captivate this audience to draw them into your business? Think like they do. Find out what they like to do and what they have in common other than just clothes. Maybe many of these women are soccer moms. What kind of car do they drive? Where do they like to eat out? Where do they hangout? By finding these commonalities, you can figure out how to speak to them and get their attention. Every clothing retailer is targeting them, but not everyone can target them the way you can. Dare to be different in order to be successful.
Let your social media post or email targeting campaign be a message directed at them as if you are talking directly to one person. Allow them to feel like you truly understand and get them in a way that makes them feel important, appreciated, and understood.
The way that you target the example audience in this step isn’t much different than you would approach anyone else. Just realize that some target audiences need more social proof, more or less words in order to create a winning content marketing strategy. Remember, to captivate an audience, you have to genuinely know them.
Images matter in all aspects to create a winning marketing strategy. Your images must be high-quality, high-resolution, captivating, and visually appealing. You want your images to portray the image and lifestyle that your brand offers. You want less of advertising, product images, sales pitches, and other gimmicks. Be more strategic with the authenticity and frequency of your advertising, but don’t limit yourself to the possibilities of lifestyle posts.
When it comes to the resolution of images, any photographs you take should be with a camera that has a minimum of 12 megapixels. The higher the megapixels the better quality of images you will have. Stock images can be a great source of imagery, but be selective in your choices. Many images are overused. Dig a little deeper when choosing images that are available for stock because anyone can access them.
When in doubt, hire a professional photographer. Choose a photographer that is experienced in the type of images you need. One who photographs people well may not be able to photograph product images for your e-commerce, and vice-versa. There are diamonds in the rough that can photograph anything.
Giving a clear and concise call-to-action is where many businesses miss the boat. They don’t want to come across as rude or bossy by limiting themselves on effective digital marketing. You want to tell you visitor what to do in the next step of the process so they don’t get lost along the way. You prompt them with buttons that say, “Buy Now”, “Request A Quote”, “Call Now”.
If you are familiar with a conversion funnel, you know that taking a customer from the wide part of the funnel to the small part can sometimes be tricky. If you have delivered a compelling and captivating message and successful brought the visitor to your website, then you have done half the work. The rest is easy, you just have to point them in the right direction.
CTA’s that give specific and short directions will get more traction than one that is vague or makes the user have to do more work. Try to avoid CTA’s like “learn more” or “read more” as they aren’t usually relevant to what your business does. These CTA’s work for bloggers and journalists, but not necessarily for a retailer or other services. You want your visitor to have the best user-friendly experience that entices them to return again and again. Feel at ease consulting with specialist to determine what you can do best to create a winning content marketing strategy for your business.
When speaking with most business owners, we find that not many are familiar with the digital marketing term ‘landing page’, the purpose of landing pages, and how they can drive more business. What is a landing page? Essentially, a landing page is a one page website that gives the visitor a specific message and strong call-to-action. This page is different from your traditional webpage or blog post. We are delivering one particular message in order to capture the users email address in exchange for information or other special items.
Even if the landing page does not generate a sale, you capture email addresses of those who expressed an interest in what you do. You can use an email marketing campaign to convert them later. For now, we will just focus on the landing page and how you can get it in front of your potential customers.
Use a paid ads strategy to direct traffic to your landing page such as: Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and Google AdWords. Go where your audience is and find out what they are searching for that is relevant to what you do. The best thing about paid digital ads is that you get to select who seems them. This is why it is imperative to really know who your audience is so that you can better serve them.
It’s going to take some time to adjust and create a winning content marketing strategy. You are going to need to continually test and adjust your strategies until you find one that works the best. Algorithms, rules, regulations, and requirements, are constantly changing. It can feel disappointing to not generate as much or any sales from your paid advertising.
We find that business owners get burned on paid social media ads because they don’t really understand them. They usually use to broad of an audience because the reach appears more enticing. In all honesty, you will get better results with a narrow audience reach of 1,000 people than 1,000,000. Otherwise, you end up wasting a lot of money on paid advertising to the wrong people. This is another reason why it is best to really get to know your customer base.
The end goal is to convert people from visitors to paying customers. You can have the best products and services in the world, but without a proper content marketing strategy, you miss out on full profit potential. Whether you want to appeal to your local geographic or worldwide, the sentiment of the content is the same, it’s just delivered on a different level.
Use these five steps when you being to analyze your digital marketing plan. Rinse and repeat. The digital world has an excess of potential that’s waiting for you to capitalize. If you are utterly confused on how to do this and would like a free digital marketing consultation, please call us today to book your appointment with our specialist.
Phillip Long, CEO of BIS Technology Group, along with his team of marketing and information technology experts, will walk you through an overview of what your business should be doing to protect your data and plan your digital marketing strategies.
About BIS Technology Group BIS Technology Group is the technology leader on the Gulf Coast and is comprised of four divisions: Information Technology, Web Design & Digital Marketing, Office Equipment and Business Consulting. Together these divisions help local businesses exceed expectations and allow them to group to their full potential while minimizing risks. To learn more about BIS Technology Group, visit bistechnologygroup.com. You may reach out to us at: Phone: 251-405-2555 Email: info@askbisdesigns.com