Month: October 2019

Categories
Outreach

Direct Mail & Digital Outreach: How They Work Together

In today’s fast-paced, hyper-connected world, it seems everyone is on social media. On the surface, it makes digital marketing appear to be the ultimate medium for marketers. The issue with that assumption is that digital advertising fulfills consumer demand that has already been created by another source.

With traditional forms of media such as direct mail, advertisers can get in front of the consumer well before any interest to purchase has been created. With this approach, you essentially create demand that did not exist before, and as a result, gain access to a new audience.

Direct mail marketing today is more critical to have as part of your marketing mix than ever. The largest digital companies in the world, such as Amazon and Google, rely on direct mail as part of their customer acquisition strategy.

There is a specific place for both types of marketing and for the highest chance of reaching your marketing goals, you must use both in your strategy.

Why Direct Mail?

Consumers are spending more time of their day online than ever before. From video streaming to social media, marketers are always looking for new ways to increase reach and engagement between their brands and consumers.

The constant desire to stay on the cutting edge of trends and move on to the next big thing in marketing often leads to abandoning reliable tactics like direct mail. Direct mail can target and personalize its audience, which provides an incredible return on investment.

Think customers are ignoring direct mail? Think again. A lot of companies are relying on digital marketing as their only engagement tool. Consumers on the receiving end are inundated with clutter. An estimated 1 in 4 people use ad-blocking software. Those that do not are so used to being flooded with digital advertising that they have become ad-blind, learning to ignore content that resembles ads.

Brands can engage with consumers on platforms outside of digital marketing and experience positive ROI. Direct mail still proves to be a robust marketing tool that keeps customers actively involved with a brand’s products and services during a moment where the reader’s mindset is more attentive to your message.

According to a recent case study, 93% of people said they use coupons from the mail in 2018, up from 88% in 2017. Reports by Digital Marketing Analytics have shown that direct mailed coupons continue to remain a viable approach because they have a high average response rate of 5.1%. Though it doesn’t sound like much, this is nearly three times the average response rate of paid search, email, online display, and social media combined.

Direct mail marketing is a wonderful engagement tool. Still, to realize its full potential, it is best used as a supplement to other marketing campaigns, whether it is digital, traditional, or social. Direct mail marketing capabilities can enhance any of your engagement campaigns targeting customers that may have otherwise ignored the marketing strategy.

More than half (57%) of Millennials have made purchases based on direct mail offers, and using the two channels together provide up to a 35% lift compared to a single channel.

Not only this, but data shows people spend more time with physical advertising than digital. People have a stronger emotional response to physical ads and remember them better because they are tactile. The tactile factor also makes it harder to ignore.

How to Use Direct Mail in Your Strategy

Connect with Non-Digital Responders

Regardless of how clever your digital marketing campaigns are, there will be people who ignore or block your messages. Keep a list of the people who are not responding and create a direct mail marketing campaign to target those individuals. You may be surprised at how many of those original non-responders you thought you’d lost respond to the direct mail approach.

Create a Single Hub for Digital and Direct Mail Offers

Look for a solution that provides direct mail and digital marketing services under one roof. A service like this can make it easier to create both digital and direct mail campaigns with cohesiveness to boost your return on investment. Working with us here at Sachs Marketing Group, we can integrate direct mail into your strategy to make everything easier for you to manage.

Combine Personalized Websites with QR Codes

Though QR codes haven’t been able to sustain a marketing campaign by themselves, using personalized URLs with these campaigns allows marketers to gain actionable insights into who their customers are and where they’re engaging with your print materials.

Here’s a suggested campaign to help you get started:

During the first week, send 1 to 3 email introductions. Flag the targets need or pain point and introduce your company product or service as the answer, perhaps including an offer. During week 2, send a postcard or a letter package that starts with the prospects made and introduce your company’s solution with an offer.

During week 3, send one to two emails, recapping your message. Recap the earlier message and introduce new support points. During week 4, send one to two emails with social proof to reference the fact that others like the target have already responded. Recap your offer.

During week 5, send a last-chance postcard designed to drive urgency and include a more attractive offer. During week 6, send a last-chance email, further promoting the urgency and perhaps including an even more attractive offer.

As your prospects convert, move them out of the flow. After week 6, the remaining prospects should be rested and set aside for a future effort.

Best Practices

Use the 40/40/20 rule. 40% of your mailer success will come from the list, which involves targeting the right prospects at the right time. 40% of it will come from the offer, which needs to be both compelling and relevant. 20% will come from the creative. The copy and artwork need to be motivating and attention-grabbing.

Use eye-magnet words such as free, now, new, announcing, and introducing. They have been scientifically proven to attract above-average readership. The words easy, improved, and quick have been shown to lift product sales, so you need to use them.

Use social proof. The principle states that when people aren’t sure about what action to take, they do what they see others like them doing. Highlight customer testimonials and indicate the number of satisfied customers as social proof will increase direct mail response rate.

Use what you know about your customers, including their preferences and past behaviors, to inform your subsequent communications and frame new sales opportunities. Take a programmatic approach instead of a series of unrelated one-offs.

Use the principle of consistency. Research has shown that once someone makes a decision, they will want to act on it in ways that are consistent with the decision. Remind customers that they have already made the decision to buy from you, and doing so will increase the likelihood they will buy from you again.

Don’t try to sell another service or a product. Instead, focus on selling a solution to a problem because that is what people buy.

Use the power of exclusivity. Offer customer-only discounts and sales that are not available to the general public. Having preferred access increases loyalty and spurs additional purchases.

Communicate with your customers regularly. Reinforce their smart decision to purchase your product. Keep them up-to-date with product enhancements and news before you inform the general public.

Capitalize on surprise and delight by providing unexpected offers or services such as sending a birthday message or percentage off coupon. Show and tell your customers that you appreciate their business.

Though the internet plays a significant role in the day-to-day life of consumers, brands need to remember that marketing can depend on so much more. For successful campaigns, marketers have to think about the variety of mediums they can use to interact with their customers.

Categories
Outreach

The Pre-Outreach Strategy

When you ask marketers what their biggest challenges are, it’s no surprise to hear that many of them say “content promotion.” Getting links and social media shares is becoming more of a struggle for even the most popular blogs.

So, what can you do to promote your content more effectively?  That’s where a pre-outreach strategy comes into play.

Pre-outreach is great if you have established relationships with influencers, and industry experts you team up with on a regular basis to promote content.  Pre-outreach is useful to linking various fields together which can allow you to get a decent traffic boost that won’t die down, but only continues to bring additional users everyday.

Before I dig deep into the strategy, it is important to note that this approach may not be the best option for companies that don’t yet have visibility. If you are one of these companies, it makes more sense to invest resources into increasing brand visibility across your industry first. Once you have achieved a stronger brand visibility, you can come back to using a pre-outreach content promotion plan.

Check Your Network

Start your campaigns by putting together a list of people you regularly work with on content promotion. Using CRM systems or at least keeping a spreadsheet with names and contact information can make this step a bit easier. Pitchbox is a good option because it serves as an influencer outreach and link building platform.

It’s also a good idea to review your current list of social media followers and email subscribers. There’s a good chance that you’ll be able to find some people who are interested in sharing your content.

At this point, separate the contacts of the two lists. The first list should be people that you asked to show some love and endorsement for your content across their social media channels. The second list of people is who you should reach out to about linking back to the content.

In both situations, you must remember you are asking for a favor and you need to make sure it’s easy and beneficial for them to help you out. Take time to ask whether they want you to promote anything in return.

There are people out there who believe the best way to get links is to email blast people you might not even know. I don’t recommend that course of action. Recent studies show that cold outreach emails have an 8.5% open rate and through personal experience, I can confirm that number.  A better use of your time is to only ask people whether they could refer to your content if you know them and they have previously worked with you on link building.

While it is possible to use automated email outreach funnels like Mailshake, it’s always a good idea to handle your free outreach manually so that you can double-check that you are sending it to the right person and taking the time to add the appropriate amount of personalization to each email.

If you don’t have a very large network, you may want to consider launching a podcast or your own event to help you build relationships with industry leaders. If you have any close ties with companies that send out mass emails to their subscribers, it could be a gold mine for you. If you ask to be featured in their mass emails and  in return mention their posts to your email marketing campaign, you could see quite a burst of traffic.

Expanding Your Horizons to Build Links

If you want to build enough links, you will have to reach out to people outside of your network of contacts. This is a great time to use your pre-outreach to warm people up and start building relationships with them.

The key here is to provide any one you’re reaching out to with benefits and value first so they start to feel like they owe you. If you’re not familiar with your industry experts, it may become time-consuming for you. To maximize your time, do this:

Find Experts that Regularly Publish Guest Posts

To gather a list of contributors, you could start with checking sites that accept guest post opportunities. If you have access to Buzzsumo, you can run a report with the top authors tool where you can search using any keyword related to your pre-outreach content.

From there, take a look at the list of authors and find contributors that write across several blogs. Chose one or more writers to write on several blogs that are fully relevant to your search.

Create a Strong Value Proposition

The majority of us are not as popular as big names in our industry so it is crucial to create a powerful value proposition. Ways you can do this include:

  • Ask them to add their quotes if they are interested and have the time available
  • Sharing your final draft and seeing if they have a post they’d like to refer to in your piece.

Both of these options provide value to them and help you establish a mutually beneficial relationship. if you want to work with people you don’t know well, you’ll have a much better shot at getting what you want if you can provide them with value first.

Though it may seem easier to send cold mass emails, it’s better to invest your time and energy into building relationships with experts because they will absolutely pay and you may even become link building partners.

Get it Done!

That’s all there is to it. It’s a fairly simple idea but it is complex. You want to think long-term and try to find the best way to approach every person you reach out to. Remember you are asking them for a favor so you must take time to see what you can help them with in return. This not only ensures links, but a growing network of connections which we all know is the key to success in digital marketing.

Categories
SEO

New Snippet Settings Make Controlling Listings Easier

Google has added new snippet settings that allow webmasters to control how Google search displays their listings. The settings work either through a set of robots meta tags or an HTML attribute.

New Meta Tags to Settings Snippets

“Nosnippet” –  This old option has not changed. It allows webmasters to specify that they do not want any textual snippets shown for the page.

“Max-snippet:[number]”  -This new meta tag lets webmasters specify the maximum text length in the number of characters for the snippet of a page.

“Max video preview:[number]” –  This meta tag allows webmasters to specify a maximum duration in seconds of an animated video preview.

“Max image preview:[setting]” – This is a new meta tag that allows webmaster specify a maximum size of an image preview to be shown for the images on the page. You can set it to none, standard, or large.

It is possible to combine the meta tags if you want to control both the max length of the text and the video.

Here is an example:

<meta name=”robots”  content=”max-snippet:50, max-image-preview:large”>

HTML Attributes

If you’d rather, you can use these as HTML attributes rather than meta tags. This allows you to prevent that part of an HTML page from being shown within the text snippet on the page.

Here’s an example:

<p><span data-nosnippet>Text</span> additional text….</p>

Other Search Engines

As of right now, Bing and other search engines don’t currently support these new snippet settings. Because they are so new, even to Google, it could be awhile before we see them supported in other search engines, if at all.

Google is Using These as Directives

Google says these are directives the search engine bots will follow, rather than hints that it will consider, but possibly ignore.

Can You Preview the New Snippets?

Unfortunately not. Right now, there isn’t a way to preview how the snippet settings will work in live search. The only thing to do is to implement them and wait for Google to show them. Use the URL inspection tool to speed up crawling, and once Google has crawled your site, you should be able to see the new snippet in the search results.

This will be live in mid-to late October, and will take time to fully roll out. It could take over a week before everyone gets it.

Getting Ready for the Update

Google has provided about a month’s heads up to allow webmasters to implement the changes on our sites now and then see how it impacts the listings in Google results when it goes live.

Keep in mind if you restrict Google from showing certain information, it may impact whether you show up for Featured Snippet results. It may also impact how your search results look. Features require snippets to have a certain minimum number of characters to be displayed and if you opt to show less than that minimum, it may mean your pages do not qualify for the featured snippet position.

Content in structured data is eligible to be displayed as rich results in search. These kinds of results don’t conform to the limits declared in the metal robot settings but rather can be addressed more specifically by limiting or modifying the contents in the structured data itself.  For instance, if a recipe is included in structured data, the contents of that structured data may be presented in a recipe carousel in the search results. If an event is marked up with structured data it may be presented as such within the search results. To limit that presentation, a publisher can limit the amount and type of content in the structured data.

Some of the special features on search depend on the availability of preview content so limiting your previews may prevent your content from appearing in these areas. Featured snippets require certain amount of characters to be displayed.

This number can vary by language which is why there is no exact max snippets length Google can provide to ensure appearing in this feature. If you do not want to have content appear as featured snippets, you can experiment with lower Max snippet lengths. Those who want a guaranteed way to opt-out of featured snippets should use “no snippet”

It’s worth noting that you can also use these tags to control what size your images are shown in your AMP results. Publishers who do not want Google to use larger thumbnail images for their AMP pages can you use the settings to specify the max image preview of standard or none.

While these changes will not impact your overall Google web search rankings, it may impact your listing showing up with certain rich results or your site showing up as a featured snippet. However, Google will still crawl index and rank your page has the same way it did before so it will not impact your overall ranking in Google search.

One of the larger request webmasters, site owners, and search engine optimizers have wanted was more control over what Google shows for their listings in the search results. These new settings provide more flexibility in terms of what you do and do not want to show in your search results snippet on Google.

Categories
Content Marketing

Content Marketing Hacks for a Better Customer Experience

When is the last time you had a wonderful experience as a customer? Chances are, it only took you a few minutes to come up with a story of a company that left you with a long-lasting impression. On the flip side, it probably wouldn’t take you long at all to think of your most recent poor customer experience and how it left you feeling angry and frustrated.

A few years ago, a friend of mine was stuck with one of the Samsung Note 7 devices on her T-Mobile account. She and her husband had recently separated. He took the phone and his line to another company and subsequently lost/gave away/sold the device. My friend was left paying a monthly fee on her bill for the device, and at first, T-Mobile was of little assistance.

Positive customer experience not only results in making your customers happy but also leads to additional revenue. The best marketing money can buy is a customer who will promote your business because they will refer their friends and family to you for free.

The way your company thinks about customer experience has a strong impact on how you look at your business as a whole. That’s one reason why focusing your efforts on developing a stellar customer experience is important. And if the customer experience you’ve developed isn’t great, you need to think about how to improve it and where to get started.

Here, I discuss what customer experience is and how you can adjust your content marketing strategy to improve your overall customer experience.

What is Customer Experience?

Customer experience refers to the impression you leave with your customers that affects how they think of your brand across the entire customer journey. Several touchpoints factor into the customer experience and these touchpoints happen on a cross-functional basis.

The two main touchpoints that create the customer experience are people and products.  When you make a purchase, are you satisfied with the performance of the product? When you reach out to customer service, are you happy with the attention of the support representative that helps you solve your problem? These are generalized examples of the factors that come into play when developing solid customer experience.

If you want to build and sustain business growth, positive customer experience is crucial. It helps build brand loyalty and creates brand ambassadors who promote your business for you. It helps with customer reviews that people used to determine if they want to conduct business with you. Recommendations from family and friends and online reviews have more power with consumers than any brand originated assets.

Don’t think you should focus on building a good customer experience? Research shows that by next year (2020) customer experience will be the key differentiator between businesses – not price. As such, you’ll be able to charge more for the products and services you offer as long as you go above and beyond to provide a quality experience.

Tips to Improve Customer Experience with Content Marketing

Never Underestimate the Power of Visuals

Promoting evergreen content is one thing. But it is crucial not to forgo the importance of visuals. Yes, the content needs to be well-written, but it also has to be shareable and rewarding. Today’s consumers have higher expectations than ever and they likely will not excuse poor quality graphics and design issues.

Everything from the thumbnail images on your video marketing to your infographics, website and social media posts should be attractive. Failure to produce engaging imagery will reduce the number of shares and clicks you receive.

When people hear information, they’re likely to only remember 10% of it three days later. However, if that information is paired with a relevant image, they retain 65% of the information three days later.

Add Video Marketing

Video marketing is where you should be. Whether you’re doing YouTube videos, going “live” on social media platforms, or sharing videos across multiple platforms, what matters is you create quality content with subtitles that your audience can view even when muted.

Use Split-Testing

Split testing, also known as A/B testing, is one of the most useful hacks to help you improve customer experience. Your marketing team can test each component of the campaign and analyze its performance in terms of visitors and leads.

For instance, if you have designed two different landing pages with the same offer, split testing allows you to find out which one works best in terms of user experience so you can use it in your future strategy. Split testing works on a website in a similar way, showing you how visitors respond to changes on your website. You can test everything from the layout, colors, calls-to-action, photos, to even the offers themselves. The key is to test each element individually so that you have a clear idea of which change influenced the analytics. In theory, after testing each element of your website or landing page, you could create the perfect option for your target audience by combining all of the elements that had the highest conversion rate.

Build Thorough Consumer Guides and Free Resources

Today’s consumers are looking for product specific information to help them make a purchase decision. Because of insecurities, people are often afraid to spend their hard-earned money, especially when it comes to purchasing premium products or services.

Creating consumer guides is one of the best ways to market your products and services. Include tips to buy, pros and cons of the product, factors to consider and more. The more detail you include, the better. Use keyword research and social listening to determine the most frequently asked questions in regards to the products and services you offer. Make sure your guide answers all of those questions to ensure you’re providing the most benefit.

In addition to buying guides, focus on creating e-books and e-courses where appropriate. This could help you get more out of a potential customer. If you want to sell them what you’re offering, give them a resource first. A free e-book or online course is something newcomers will always find valuable for getting industry information. It doesn’t take long to create but provides continuous benefits for your company.

By providing these resources, you are sure to strengthen your brand voice as an authority in your niche and the loyalty of a customer who needs your product or service. If you need ideas of where to get started, do some competitive research to see what others are doing. Then, find ways to make yours better.

How is your current content strategy supporting your customer experience? Share your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!

Categories
Uncategorized

How to Market to Gen Z Without Social Media

For years, social media has been a critical communication channel. While many marketers believe they’d never see the day, the reality is that social media use is on the decline. Teens and young adults have been on social media since the advent of Facebook, the beginning of Twitter, and the invention of several other channels including Pinterest and Snapchat… so it stands to reason they’d stay there, right? Wrong.

The day has come. Social media usage is down.

What the Numbers Say

Convince & Convert recently analyzed findings from The Social Habit study which is a yearly report from Edison Research and Triton Digital. When you compare data from the 2017 study to data from the 2019 study, the findings are quite shocking.

The study found that Americans aged 12 to 34 have changed the way they’re using social media:

  • Facebook usage dropped from 79% to 62% between 2017 and 2019.
  • Twitter usage dropped from 36% to 29%
  • Pinterest usage dropped from 36% to 31%
  • LinkedIn usage dropped from 23% to 21%
  • Snapchat is the only social network with stable usage which neither grew and are declined between 2017 and 2019
  • Instagram is the only Social Network that has registered growth within the demographic. Usage has increased from 64% in 2017 to 66% in 2019

With social media usage falling among Millennials and Generation Z, marketers are faced with challenges.

How do marketers keep the attention of this major consumer group without using social media as a crutch? How do marketers continue to earn loyalty when more and more of them are pulling away from the major channels used for valuable interactions?

Keeping Loyalty from Young Customers Without Social Media

Ads are Irrelevant. Pushy Sales Pitches are Done

Imagine for a second that social media doesn’t exist at all. There are still plenty of ways to attract young consumers and engage them while pulling them into you are devoted audience. Sales isn’t one of them. Millennials are a tough crowd to entice with sale and if you push for a sale you’re likely not to get it because most Millennials are immune to ads and traditional sales.

A study from eMarketer shows that 66% of Millennials prefer shopping online compared to buying in store. The digital shopping experience is independent self-directed and much less straightforward than buying in store but both Millennials and Generation Z prefer it. Their preferred buying journey is wildly unpredictable. They ignore sales pitches and traditional ads and seek companies that authentic and actively engage with them.

So if you’re thinking of using a traditional marketing strategy with ads to get young consumers think again.

Keep it Mobile-Friendly

According to Think with Google, two-thirds of customers are more likely to make a purchase when visiting a mobile-friendly site. Considering 61% of them will leave a site if it’s not responsive, making sure your website is mobile-friendly is critical to keeping the younger generations’ attention.

If your site is not mobile friendly, you will automatically lose with the younger generation regardless of how great your content, offers, or products are. Help keep them engaged with a great user experience, design and mobile responsiveness as the base of your strategy.

Remain Transparent and Authentic

Millennials and Generation Z expect the brands they support to be transparent, honest, and authentic. A recent study found that authenticity is what matters most to Generation Z. Two-thirds of them said being true to their values and beliefs is what makes a brand or person stand out.

Building that trust and authenticity into your brand persona and reputation means you must create great content based on the human’s you hire and serve.

Focus on Building Trust and Loyalty

Offering stellar content is one thing but a one-off piece every so often isn’t enough to prove your worth. You must also tie that great content to user intent and produce a consistently. That’s the only way to build your reputation as trustworthy.

Answer the questions your buyer asks at every stage of the marketing lifecycle. Do it with expertise and excellence.

The marketing lifecycle is based on four stages. Each stage connect to different types of content that will help build trust and loyalty at that particular stage.

  1. Awareness is the first stage. It includes the informational search intent where the buyer is aware of their problem and searching for answers. at this stage, you need to focus on creating inbound SEO content and guides that are packed with information as well as leave magnets.
  2. The second stage is interest and intent. This is associated with  investigative search intent. At this point, the buyer understands the information and solution they need and they are looking for the right option. For this stage, you need a website with clear navigation and calls to actions, leave magnets that are centered on your core mission, ebooks that demonstrate your expertise, and case studies or white papers that show your client success stories.
  3. The third stage is where the customer makes their decision. This is transactional search intent where buyers know exactly what they want and are ready to commit. You need user or customer generated content in the stage in the form of testimonials and reviews. You may also need work samples or demonstration depending on your company.
  4. The final stage is loyalty. This is associated with mainly navigational search intense because the buyer knows you, likes you, and is looking for your brand online. But it can also be associated with other kinds of intent. At this stage, you need to create new product announcements, content with high informational value, and content than maintains your high standards.

Email Marketing is Still Effective

Despite the fact that we’ve been hearing for many years that email marketing is dead, it is very much alive and remains one of the most effective ways to reach your audience regardless of age. Millennials especially rely on email as a pillar for communication.

A recent study indicates that 73% of Millennials and 68% of Generation Z prefer to hear from brands through their email boxes. The key is to create engaging emails that are creative. make it authentic, fun, and upfront. Don’t rely on fancy and flashy designs so you can use them. Focus on your voice, style, and the information you offer.

Ultimately, it is the value you provide at all touch-points that determines whether or not you earn and keep your audience’s attention. As long as you are being real, staying mobile-friendly, and providing consistent value without falling into the pushy sales trap, you will be able to win over today’s Young Generation of customers with or without the use of social media.

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