Revised Standards for Mass Email

Organizations dispatching over 5,000 daily emails to Gmail addresses will now be mandated to observe precise guidelines. The foremost requirement is the authentication of emails using protocols such as SPF, DKIM, or DMARC. This authentication process serves to validate the sender’s identity and establish credibility.

Moreover, Gmail is now stipulating that high-volume email senders must furnish recipients with a straightforward, one-click unsubscribe option. Senders are obliged to promptly honor unsubscribe requests within two business days. This approach contributes to a healthy email ecosystem and empowers subscribers to manage their inboxes.

To avert the categorization of their emails as spam, bulk senders must also adhere to a defined spam threshold established by Google. Exceeding this threshold may result in emails being flagged as spam.

Preparing for the Deadline

While Google believes that most reputable companies are already adhering to sound email practices, it provides some guidance for businesses that may require assistance in implementing these new rules:

• Employ a trusted email-sending service: Collaborating with a reliable email service provider can ensure the secure delivery of messages to intended recipients.
• Maintain an updated email list: Regularly review your email list and eliminate inactive or unengaged subscribers. This practice enhances deliverability and engagement rates.
• Segment your email list: Dividing your email list into distinct segments allows for more tailored and pertinent messaging, resulting in heightened engagement and reduced instances of spam reports.
• Personalize your email content: Customizing email content to individual subscribers can enhance engagement and reduce the likelihood of them flagging messages as spam.
• Facilitate easy unsubscribing: Provide a clear and easily accessible option for recipients to unsubscribe from your emails. Promptly honoring unsubscribe requests is vital for maintaining a positive sender reputation.

While the new requirements pertain to companies with more than 5,000 subscribers on their email lists, smaller businesses can also benefit from adhering to these standards, as they can enhance overall email deliverability.

Looking Forward

Google’s novel email regulations are not a flawless solution, but the company believes that they will contribute to a reduction in spam and misuse. By adhering to these regulations, email marketers can continue to effectively reach their subscribers while preserving a favorable sender reputation.

It is imperative for businesses to remain updated on email best practices and adapt to evolving email regulations. By prioritizing the security and deliverability of their email campaigns, businesses can foster improved engagement and stronger relationships with their subscribers.

Remember, email marketing remains a potent tool for businesses to connect with their audience. By following Google’s email rules and implementing best practices, businesses can ensure that their email campaigns are effective, secure, and well-received by their subscribers

See first source: Search Engine Journal

FAQ

1. What are the new email regulations that Google is implementing?

Google is introducing fresh email regulations to enhance email security and combat spam. These regulations will apply to entities and groups that send substantial volumes of emails to Gmail accounts.

2. Who will be affected by these new regulations?

These regulations will impact organizations that send over 5,000 daily emails to Gmail addresses.

3. What is the primary requirement for high-volume email senders under these regulations?

High-volume email senders must authenticate their emails using protocols like SPF, DKIM, or DMARC. This authentication process validates the sender’s identity and establishes credibility.

4. What additional requirement does Gmail impose on high-volume email senders?

Gmail now mandates that high-volume email senders provide recipients with a straightforward, one-click unsubscribe option. Senders are expected to honor unsubscribe requests within two business days.

5. Why is providing an unsubscribe option important under these regulations?

Offering an easy unsubscribe option empowers subscribers to manage their inboxes and contributes to maintaining a healthy email ecosystem.

6. What should bulk senders do to avoid having their emails marked as spam?

To prevent their emails from being categorized as spam, bulk senders must stay below a defined spam threshold set by Google.

7. Are there any recommendations for businesses preparing to adhere to these new rules?

Yes, Google provides guidance for businesses:

• Employ a trusted email-sending service to ensure secure delivery.
• Keep email lists updated by removing inactive or unengaged subscribers.
• Segment email lists for more targeted messaging.
• Personalize email content for individual subscribers.
• Facilitate easy unsubscribing with a clear and accessible option.

8. Do these regulations only apply to larger companies with over 5,000 subscribers on their email lists?

While the new requirements pertain to companies with more than 5,000 subscribers, smaller businesses can also benefit from adhering to these standards, as they can enhance overall email deliverability.

9. What is the objective of Google’s new email regulations?

Google aims to reduce spam and misuse in email communications while preserving a positive sender reputation for email marketers.

10. What should businesses do to stay compliant with evolving email regulations in the future?

It’s crucial for businesses to stay updated on email best practices and adapt to changing regulations. Prioritizing the security and deliverability of email campaigns can lead to improved engagement and stronger relationships with subscribers.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Stephen Phillips – Hostreviews.co.uk; Unsplash – Thank you!

The post Don’t Forget About Google’s New Email Rules! appeared first on The Blog Herald.

What is Brand Bidding?

Brand bidding is a highly unethical practice of diverting competitors’ traffic by using their branded keywords in your own ads, websites, or platforms. It allows for easy traffic hijacking and disrupts brand-related purchase journeys, impacting marketing strategies, advertisement, and ultimately the ROI of campaigns.

For advertisers that employ brand bidding, it presents a great opportunity to harm competitors while at the same time winning over their prospects. For the target of such transgression, however, it can only mean losses in revenue, brand dilution, and ultimate destruction of a unique brand identity and position in the digital market.

There are multiple forms of brand bidding. Direct brand bidding, being the most obvious and audacious form of the tactic, is relatively unpopular, used by 1% of all bidders, since it is the easiest to detect and sue for. Promotional sites are used for brand bidding in about 5% of cases, while the most common form remains unauthorized brand use, that is using the name of a brand in advertising without consent. It spans over 80% of all brand bidding cases across all search engines on the Internet.

The Stats and Impact of Brand Bidding

The most comprehensive study on brand bidding post-2019, the Adthena study, reveals that up to one-third of all search queries experience brand bidding. According to Adthena, a staggering 50% of advertisers engaged in competitive bidding on branded keywords since 2019. This surge in brand bidding has led to a tenfold increase in the Cost Per Click (CPC) for branded keywords, as reported by The Search Monitor. Consequently, brands are estimated to lose approximately 12% of their overall traffic to competitors through brand bidding.

Although the decision by Google to lift its anti-bidding protections in June 2019 in many ways launched this problem, it is not the only reason for brand bidding to thrive. Trademark infringement lawsuits, even when directed at both offending companies and Google itself, have seen little success in recent years too, while the obscureness of some brand bidding practices left no window for appeal to the law in disputes.

The repercussions of unbridled brand bidding are felt especially keen in affiliate marketing. This sector is particularly dependent on trust and mutual cooperation for success, and it saw a drastic deterioration in quality on non-mediated partnerships. According to data, 25% of worldwide affiliates do not comply with anti-fraud legislation, further exacerbating the problem.

The situation led to brands seeking effective solutions for protection by themselves, often putting security above potential gains from collaborations.

Here, brand bidding detection solutions came forth. Mostly AI-driven, advanced technologies that employ complex systems of tracking, registering, and notifying brand owners about potential bidding cases on the web. These tools provided guarantees to clients and relieved marketing and analytics teams of the wearisome task of having to monitor brand bidding manually.

How to Counter Brand Bidding

Addressing brand bidding requires a multifaceted approach that combines vigilance, strategic monitoring, and the adoption of cutting-edge technology. Here are the key strategies to help protect your brand against brand bidding:

1. Monitor the Full Extent of Competitive Brand Bidding

To effectively counter brand bidding, brands must first understand the scale and extent of the problem. A comprehensive brand monitoring solution is crucial, providing insights not only across known brand keywords but also across the entire competitive search landscape. By quantifying the impact of brand bidding, advertisers can assess threats, identify opportunities, and safeguard their branded search share.

2. Focus Results Around Reduction of Brand CPCs and CPAs

The inflation of brand CPCs and CPAs is an inevitable consequence for brands affected by brand bidding. Implementing a brand protection solution aims to bring these metrics back in line, ultimately improving the Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) from search. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) technology can provide deeper analysis and data segmentation, allowing brands to identify specific, actionable insights for more effective protection measures.

3. Leverage AI Technology for Intelligent Solutions

The scale of brand infringement poses a constant challenge for brands operating in the digital landscape. AI technology offers intelligent solutions by providing automated anomaly detection and an integrated auto-takedown process for infringing ads. This not only saves time but also reduces the strain on available resources, allowing brands to efficiently scale their brand protection measures across the breadth of branded search campaigns.

4. Implement Robust Legal Strategies

In addition to technological solutions, brands should explore robust legal strategies to counter brand bidding effectively. This may involve sending cease and desist letters, threatening legal action, and pursuing genuine trademark infringement lawsuits against offending parties. Collaborating with legal experts who specialize in digital advertising and trademark law can enhance a brand’s ability to navigate the legal complexities associated with brand bidding.

5. Rely on brand bidding detection tools

In digital marketing, there is no better defense against brand bidding than the highly reputable brand bidding detection tools. Many of them, such as the recently unveiled BluePear, are highly advanced AI-driven analytical systems that allow brand owners to monitor branded keywords and mentions in real-time. They notify brand owners via email or a messenger as soon as they notice infringement and provide insights into search history for particular keys and violating platforms.

To conclude, brand bidding presents a real and significant threat to online brands and advertisers. It has the potential to inflict lasting damage on brand image, divert prospective customers, and run revenue streams dry. Digital marketing demands a proactive and technology-driven approach to counter brand bidding effectively. By adopting comprehensive brand monitoring solutions, leveraging AI-driven solutions, and relying on mediation by top affiliate networks, brands can prevent brand bidding from leaving a lasting impact and preserve their long-term integrity.

Featured image provided by fauxels; Pexele; Thanks!

The post Brand Bidding: Definition, Detection, Prevention appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The use of imprinted roll-up blankets, in particular, combines both functionality and branding opportunities, making them an ideal choice for businesses looking to make a lasting impact on their target audience. In this blog post, we will delve into the numerous benefits associated with using imprinted roll-up blankets as a strategic promotional item while also exploring other noteworthy options that can help propel your company toward greater success.

Imprinted Roll-Up Blankets: Versatile and Practical

Imprinted roll-up blankets are not just any promotional item – they are versatile must-haves that can enhance brand awareness in countless settings. From outdoor picnics and beach outings to cozy nights at home, these blankets offer both comfort and convenience.

By customizing them with your company’s logo or message, you can create a lasting impression on your customers while increasing brand visibility every time the blanket is used. Their portability and compactness make them an ideal choice among recipients, guaranteeing extended exposure for your brand wherever they go.

Remember, branding goes beyond mere brand awareness; it also serves as a powerful tool to promote anything carrying an identity, including imprinted roll-up blankets. So why miss out on this incredible opportunity to showcase your unique offerings? Invest in customized roll-up blankets today and watch how they become ambassadors of your brand excellence!

Custom Water Bottles: Hydration On-the-Go

Water bottles are not just practical; they’re also highly popular promotional items that present a multitude of opportunities for brand exposure. In our health-conscious society, promoting hydration has become crucial. By imprinting your logo on water bottles, you not only remind recipients to stay hydrated but also demonstrate your company’s dedication to fostering wellness. Select top-notch bottles that are user-friendly, long-lasting, and visually striking; this guarantees regular use by the recipients while maximizing the visibility of your brand in an effective manner.

Branded Tote Bags: Style Meets Functionality

Tote bags have undoubtedly become an essential and versatile accessory in today’s world. From running errands to going shopping, these eco-friendly alternatives to single-use plastic bags have gained significant popularity. By offering custom-branded tote bags, you not only provide individuals with a stylish and functional accessory but also establish a strong connection between them and your company’s brand. It is crucial to prioritize the use of premium materials and captivating designs when creating these tote bags. This way, you can ensure that they are used frequently by recipients, effectively increasing the visibility of your brand among a vast audience.

Personalized Power Banks: Always Stay Connected

In today’s digital age, power banks have become an indispensable accessory for keeping our devices charged on the go. Personalized power banks offer a remarkable branding opportunity, aligning your company with convenience and modern technology. Users will highly value this item, particularly during travel or outdoor activities. By investing in top-notch power banks, you not only guarantee customer satisfaction but also boost your brand’s visibility and reputation. With increasing brand awareness among consumers, your company will establish stronger connections and foster greater customer loyalty.

Customized Journals: Capturing Ideas and Thoughts

Journals are timeless and beloved writing tools that offer endless possibilities for customization. By providing personalized journals, you encourage recipients to record their thoughts, ideas, and daily experiences while showcasing your brand prominently. High-quality journals with unique design features, such as elastic closures or built-in bookmarks, will further enhance the user experience and keep your brand on top of their minds.

Conclusion

Promotional items play a significant role in increasing brand awareness and strengthening customer loyalty. Imprinted roll-up blankets, along with other notable options such as custom water bottles, branded tote bags, personalized power banks, and customized journals, offer businesses a perfect way to advertise their brand while providing practical and useful items to customers. By choosing promotional items that align with your company’s values and target audience, you can create a lasting impression and increase brand visibility for maximum impact.

Featured image provided by Matheus Bertelli; Pexels; Thanks!

The post Promotional Items That Make a Lasting Impression appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Today, we’re going to talk about the essential tactics for maximizing conversions on your legal website without breaking the bank.

Note that if you’re in a highly competitive sub-niche or in a market that’s saturated with many law firms or lawyers, then you might need the help of a specialist agency like Comrade digital marketing. They can use their expertise in the legal sector to fix any problems while using their advanced SEO tools to maximize your website’s performance and conversion rate.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about how to get new clients for law firm all on your own!

Streamlined User Experience

The user experience of your website should be your first priority. There should be as little unnecessary information, clutter, or friction as possible. It’s not hard to create web pages that are to the point and visually appealing without overwhelming the user. Ensuring an excellent user experience and streamlined content flow and navigation is very important, particularly for landing pages.

• The website’s navigation should be user-friendly. Visitors should be quickly able to find important pages and intuitively understand the flow and hierarchy of the content to arrive at the intended or relevant section.
• Make sure the user interface is 100% optimized for smaller screens such as mobile. Responsive design is an umbrella term that includes techniques used to optimize the experience on mobile as today, the majority of internet traffic for most websites comes from mobile.
• Elements like the navigation menu, buttons, forms, calls-to-action, etc. should focus on making the job of a visitor easier and faster. Avoid embellishments and decorations in your website’s design wherever possible.

Call-to-Action Optimization

One of the most ignored aspects of a website is the call-to-action (CTA) sections and buttons. These elements are pretty repeatable across websites and nobody seems to pay much attention to them. After all, it’s just a button, right?

Wrong.

A strong CTA section or button is crucial to guide visitors toward taking the desired action. It can compel people to click or read more. If the CTA fails, your conversion rate is hurt terribly.

CTA sections can lead visitors to a variety of pages or touchpoints such as contacting the firm, scheduling a consultation, putting in a phone number, or filling up a contact form. These should be placed in the first fold of landing pages and the first 50% of other pages, including the webpage.

Don’t take too long to bring up the CTA.

Also, make sure that your CTA follows your branding (including the form fields, which should not look too different) but at the same time, is bold and stands out. The best way to do it is by creating a color contrast. Most likely, your website has a light, if not white, base. Your CTA section should be a flat wrapper that’s a dark color and the button within it should then again be white. This creates ample contrast, making the CTA magnetic.

The communication in your CTA also matters. You can’t sound too desperate for business and you can’t promise the world. At the same time, you can’t be too casual as if you don’t want the visitor’s business in the first place.

Say just enough and keep it crisp. Persuasive CTAs can go a long way in maximizing conversion rates of your website.

Compelling Content that Engages

Your content should be highly engaging, relevant, and resonate with a potential client. As there are many types of legal specializations, there is no cookie-cutter approach when it comes to creating textual or visual content. But you should always prioritize providing as much value in as little time as possible to a potential client over everything else.

You might also need a full content marketing strategy to crack open tougher niches. For example, comprehensive keyword research can help you understand how to get more personal injury clients in a particular region. You can then refine your content to be the #1 result for queries related to personal injury in the region—Increasing your traffic and conversion rate significantly.

In many cases, high-quality and relevant content is the very cornerstone of a successful legal website. Well-crafted content in various forms, such as guides, infographics, tips, and blog posts, helps educate the audience while improving your website’s SEO for organic traffic.

It’s also important to establish your website’s domain expertise, authority, and trustworthiness—Collectively canned E-A-T which Google pays a lot of attention to.

In Conclusion

A well-optimized legal website has the potential to be a powerful lead-generation tool, converting clicks into valuable clients.

Remember, conversions are not just about numbers; they represent the connection between the law firm and individuals seeking legal services. Maximizing conversion tactics will not only drive business growth but also nurture lasting professional relationships with clients.

Everything from social media marketing to pay per click for lawyers needs a specialized approach that balances professionalism and helpfulness with a differentiating factor that sets you apart. With time and experimentation, you will arrive at the right online marketing strategy as well as a high-converting website in no time.

The post From Clicks to Clients: Maximizing Conversions on Your Legal Website appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Over the past nine months, X (formerly Twitter) has prioritized the introduction of new brand safety features in an effort to create a more profitable environment for advertisers. These additions are made so that marketers can tailor their campaigns to the specific sensibilities of their brands.

X is increasing its Adjacency Controls, a solution used by over 1,900 advertisers around the world, to show its dedication to brand safety. An important step forward in the development of brand safety instruments, this extension makes use of extended adjacency protection.

Advertisers can now take advantage of X’s robust platform while maintaining tighter control over the surrounding content of their ads thanks to the enhancements made to Adjacency Controls. This helps them fine-tune their campaigns and target the right audiences with their advertisements.

X has partnered exclusively with Integral Ad Sciences (IAS), a major brand safety partner, to further strengthen its brand safety initiatives. This collaboration is geared toward providing advertisers with more pre-bid brand safety and suitability solutions.

With IAS, advertisers can fine-tune the contextual relevance of their digital ads to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their campaigns without increasing their budgets. IAS improves content classification and context understanding through the use of NLP and ML, allowing for more relevant and efficient advertising.

With the goal of expanding internationally, X and IAS have formed an exclusive partnership to provide premium inventory to advertisers in the United States under the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) Safety & Suitability Framework. The GARM framework unites marketers, media agencies, platforms, and trade groups to limit access to inappropriate material in digital media.

X is introducing Sensitivity Settings, an automated solution that makes use of machine learning, in addition to the current safeguards. Advertisers can tailor their messages to the specific needs of X users by adjusting these settings.

To ensure that ads represent the advertiser’s brand in a positive light, the Sensitivity Settings allow for fine-grained control over where those ads appear. This enables marketers to reach their audiences while protecting their brands and reputations.

To prevent ads from being displayed in the “for you” or “following” timelines next to potentially harmful keywords, X has implemented a blocklist based on industry best practices. Advertising on the platform can now be more precisely targeted and transparent thanks to this new innovation.

As a result of X’s implementation of blocklists for unsafe keywords, advertisers are protected from associating their brands with potentially offensive or damaging material. This function improves brand security and gives advertisers more assurance in where their ads will appear.

X’s new brand safety features are a big step toward making the platform conform to accepted norms for user privacy and brand integrity. Now, advertisers can more easily find their way around the site, improving the efficiency of their campaigns and ensuring that their ads appear only in relevant environments.

Advertisers can protect their brands and their reputations on X with the help of features like the enhanced Adjacency Controls, the exclusive partnership with IAS, the Sensitivity Settings, and the blocklists for unsafe keywords.

X’s action may sway some defunct Twitter advertisers to reconsider their withdrawal. X is demonstrating its dedication to creating a more profitable and advertiser-friendly environment with a renewed focus on brand safety and the introduction of these new features.

See first source: Search Engine Land

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is X focusing on in the past nine months?

X has been introducing new brand safety features to create a more profitable environment for advertisers while ensuring brand safety and suitability.

2. What is the purpose of X’s expanded Adjacency Controls?

The expanded Adjacency Controls allow advertisers to have greater control over the context in which their ads appear, ensuring that their campaigns are optimized and aligned with their brand sensitivities.

3. What is X’s partnership with Integral Ad Sciences (IAS) about?

X has entered into an exclusive partnership with IAS to provide additional pre-bid brand safety and suitability solutions, utilizing IAS’s technology for more precise content classification and contextual understanding.

4. How does X’s partnership with IAS benefit advertisers?

The partnership offers customizable control over ad contextual relevance, helping advertisers maximize impact and cost efficiency through better-targeted advertising.

5. What is the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) Safety & Suitability Framework?

GARM is an industry initiative that aims to create a safer digital media environment by reducing the availability of harmful content online. X and IAS offer premium inventory under this framework.

6. What are Sensitivity Settings introduced by X?

Sensitivity Settings are an automated solution that allows advertisers to align their messaging with content on X based on their specific needs, providing granular control over ad placement.

7. How does X’s industry-standard blocklist work?

X introduced an industry-standard blocklist to protect advertisers from appearing near unsafe keywords in specific timelines, offering more targeted control and transparency.

8. How do these brand safety features benefit advertisers on X?

These features empower advertisers to maintain brand safety, reputational integrity, and alignment with their brand values while optimizing campaigns and effectively reaching their target audience.

9. How might these brand safety initiatives impact advertisers’ confidence in using X?

The introduction of these brand safety initiatives showcases X’s commitment to providing a more profitable and advertiser-friendly environment, potentially encouraging advertisers to return to the platform.

10. How does X’s renewed focus on brand safety contribute to its overall goals?

X’s renewed focus on brand safety demonstrates its commitment to industry standards and creating an environment where advertisers can confidently navigate the platform, fostering a more profitable and sustainable ecosystem.

Featured Image Credit: Bolivia Inteligente; Unsplash; Thank you!

The post X Protects Brands From Ad Disasters appeared first on The Blog Herald.

In fact, we’re confident that AI is rewriting the marketing playbook on how to plan, execute, and optimize winning campaigns. In hopes of adapting to these new technologies, today we’re exploring five practical ways you can immediately start to leverage free AI tools to elevate your marketing.

AI Prompting: Best Practices

Before we dive in, it’s important to understand how to prompt modern AI tools effectively. These large language models (LLMs) tend to respond better to certain prompt structures and phrasing. Here’s the rundown on prompt engineering.

Use [hard brackets] to separate instructions from context

When prompting an LLM with context, use hard brackets to clearly show the model where instructional input ends and contextual material starts. This can dramatically improve model outputs, so always inject this nuance into your prompts.

Be as descriptive as possible

While the prompts we use throughout this piece may not be uber-detailed, that is only in the interest of time. LLM tools typically output higher-quality responses when prompted with more details. Give the AI a background expert background, use adjectives generously, and be clear with your instructions.

Specify your desired output format and traits

Do you want the AI to output a tweet? Should its response be less than 140 characters? Maybe you want it to be at least 1,000 words? All of these characteristics, and more, should be included in your prompts to maximize the model’s odds of success.

1. Keyword Research: Unlocking Hidden Opportunities

Keyword research underpins any successful SEO strategy. By gauging what topics users in your target audience are searching for, you can get there first and capture value. That’s why most marketing teams try to optimize every piece of content for search engines. While this is typically a tedious process of brainstorming and research, AI-powered tools can supercharge the workflow by 10x — let’s find out how.

Open up your favorite LLM — some popular options are ChatGPT (OpenAI), Bing (Microsoft), and Bard (Google), all of which are free to use. Now, let’s get to prompting. Feel free to play around with our inputs to produce better responses for your use case.

Start by asking: “What are the most popular sub-topics related to [your niche]?” This should lead to roughly four to six relevant topics, and you can re-prompt to widen your scope. After compiling a list of broad ideas, let’s take it a step further; we don’t just want to know about adjacent topics but about high-value keywords within those topics. So, we’ll prompt the AI twice more to generate 10-15 short-tail and long-tail keywords for each of our sub-topics.

Boom! We’ve now created a 100+ keyword list, tailored to your niche and audience. You can prompt the LLM to curate a different subset of keywords (low cost, low-volume, etc.) to improve your targeting odds or revise your topic selection to better capture your goals.

Pro tip: After constructing your list of keywords in ChatGPT, you can ask it to output an Excel table of the keywords; this will enable you to quickly copy and paste it into Excel for future use.

2. Optimize Your Email Marketing

Email marketing is another powerful channel for modern marketers. It boasts a healthy 3,600% ROI, or $36 for every $1 spent on an email campaign, making it a prime avenue for us to optimize with AI. We’ll do that by dramatically expediting the process of crafting personalized emails.

Typically, this is a mentally taxing and time-consuming game; you have to first segment your audience into strategic profiles, then build email copy around each one to cater to their unique needs, all while selling your offer. Over time, this can grow to become tiring — let’s use AI to streamline the entire workflow.

There are countless ways to approach this, and it’ll take time for you to find your optimal prompt. However, here’s a short example that worked for us, that you can apply immediately apply to your brand and audience: “You are a 10+ year veteran email copywriter who has driven millions in revenue from your emails. Let’s write an email selling [your offering] to [your demographic].” You can even ask the LLM to utilize certain copywriting frameworks, such as AIDA, to maximize your email’s chances of converting. From here, you can export the system’s output and start tweaking it to your liking.

While the initial response may not be perfect, it’ll certainly go a long way in speeding up your writing process. Another pro tip: Tell the AI system you’ll also provide successful examples for it to imitate. Feed it your best-performing emails and watch the magic happen. Since LLMs are great at imitation, they’ll output uncanny emails that mimic your own successful drafts.

3. Streamline Your Topic Ideation

Our next AI application is simple yet straightforward: Brainstorming. It’s a foundational part of developing content and must be done time and time again at a high level to ensure quality ideas make it through. While we won’t be outsourcing the entire ideation process to AI, we can certainly help it guide our own efforts.

Start by feeding the AI all titles in your content library—all of it. Our goal is to familiarize the system with the style and nature of your topics. Here’s a sample prompt you can enter yourself: “Study the following titles from my content library for their style and nature, and respond ‘DONE’ when finished.”

After the LLM has analyzed your content, it’s ready to ideate on its own. Now, just ask: “Brainstorm 10 ideas similar to the content you studied.” This should result in a bulleted list of ideas that you can start crafting right away.

4. Repurposing Content: Maximizing Reach and Impact

Creating high-quality content for several channels is demanding — it takes significant time and resources to operate an omnichannel presence effectively. However, content marketing across multiple channels brings a myriad of benefits, too. With the power of modern LLM tools, you can start repurposing existing content to maximize its reach and impact. AI-powered tools can efficiently reframe your material for external channels, letting you focus on what matters most: Generating valuable ideas.

Navigate to your LLM of choice and input the following prompt to contextualize the model: “You’re a seasoned copywriter with 10+ years of experience writing for Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and Facebook. Let’s repurpose the following blog into a post for each of those channels: [Your blog].”

Just like that, the AI system should output marketing collateral that you can deploy across various channels, all based on the input text you provided. Of course, you should always proofread and refine AI-generated content to ensure it reflects your brand authentically. Nevertheless, this simple workflow can 10x your output and expedite the process of maintaining an omnichannel presence.

5. Perform an SEO Audit

Our final method of leveraging AI to improve your marketing deals with SEO. It’s a game we’re all playing, and it’s necessary for any brand to flourish in today’s digital age. However, what if we could utilize AI to optimize SEO? That’s precisely what we’ll accomplish with the help of free LLM tools.

While there are several ways you could implement AI to boost your SEO, we’re going to start with enhancing keyword surface area. Remember that list we compiled in Step 1? It’s time to put it to use. We’ll revise your entire existing content library by having AI scatter those keywords throughout it.

The prompt is simple. Tell your LLM: “You’re an expert content strategist with dozens of years optimizing content for search engines. Optimize the following blog post with these keywords: [Your keywords]; [your blog].” Verify the AI’s work, then rinse and repeat. In no time, your content library will exert a much higher search authority thanks to this keyword boost.

You can further leverage AI to improve your formatting for SEO, too. You’ll ask it a similar prompt, except slightly tweaked: “You’re an expert content strategist with dozens of years optimizing content for search engines. Optimize the following blog post’s formatting using SEO best practices.”

Finally, you can have your LLM create an SEO audit checklist. Instruct the model: “Draft a checklist of SEO items I should verify before posting a blog.” Once it outputs the checklist, simply crosscheck your content with all the items to maximize your SERP potential.

Wrapping Up

That’s all we’ve got on leveraging AI to elevate your marketing. The landscape is shifting now, making it the best time for you to start adapting to new technologies and get ahead of the competition.

From keyword research to email marketing and SEO, modern LLM tools are capable of assisting marketers in a wide variety of use cases. It’s up to us to learn how these tools can add value to marketing initiatives, and then make it happen.

The post Adapting Digitally: 5 Ways to Elevate Your Marketing with AI appeared first on The Blog Herald.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Whenever you read something and question to yourself how someone can sustain a business without selling you anything, you’ve probably come across affiliate marketing. Essentially it boils down to a mutually beneficial relationship between a blogger and a business hoping to get more eyeballs on their brand. 

A company will look for an online personality, often a blog, that fits with their style. The company then pays the personality to bring attention to a product, service, or brand. This can occur in different ways depending on the degree of relationship that the blog has with what they’re promoting.

Unattached Affiliation

This level of affiliate marketing is the least connected to the employed personality. This means that the blog might not have much to do with the sort of product they’re promoting. This also puts less burden on the affiliate as they have more distance from the product and therefore aren’t an authority to endorse it, which absolves them of any necessity to recommend it outright.

Related Affiliation

The next degree of removal finds the affiliate closer to the brand than at the unattached level. This is the stage where you can discern a clear through line between the blog and the product, think a golf blog mentioning a new club. The relationship between the affiliate and their niche is employed more heavily at this level, and it’s this relationship that builds trust for the affiliate as an authority on the product they’re promoting. The audience that the blog has cultivated is more likely related to the brand being mentioned and therefore is more likely to flow traffic toward it. 

Involved Affiliation

As the name implies, this is the most connected an affiliate would find themselves to a product. This is more often than not a direct endorsement, which needs support from personal experience with the brand. This tethers the affiliate with the product, and any positive or negative attributes of each party will be related together. The personal connection to the brand will serve as a complete authority of, and support towards, the product. This is the most impactful form of affiliate marketing, but blogs could receive backlash from negative customer experiences with the promotion. 

How is it Monetizable?

In most cases, and especially for bloggers, the money isn’t simply a payment for mentions. Rather, companies will pay the affiliate based on actual delivered sales. This is often tracked through affiliate links. Affiliate links are specific hyperlinks located somewhere in the blog’s promotion, no matter the degree of relation. These links will take you to a landing page for the promoted brand, often directly to the products mentioned. Affiliates will then get a portion of profits from the company they’re promoting. Sometimes it’s based on the number of people who clicked the affiliate link to the landing page, but more often it’s based on the amount of sales made from people who navigated there from the link. 

The return on these can often be higher than you might think. How big the slice an affiliate receives will vary depending on your deal, but it will often be anywhere between 20-50% of the profits, with some reporting as high as 70% commission. It’s important to remember that only sales made directly from the links apply to these numbers.

This number can get so high because the value the affiliate brings to the company is directly trackable. The business will know how many people came to their landing page as a result of the blog. This also incentivizes bloggers to create better promotions for the company to receive more commission. It’s a win-win. 

One of the best details about deals like these is that the affiliate link will do most of the work for you after posting. This can turn into a lucrative a potentially lucrative source of passive income for any blog. However, in some cases, deals will have a date at which the cookies that track purchases made after clicking the affiliate will expire. This could make your link more time sensitive to maximize profits in the short term. This method is most often reserved for seasonal or limited-time promotion, but it’s important to check the fine print either way.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a great source of revenue for any existing or future blog endeavors. Affiliate links offer a results-based, trackable way to determine the value of blog promotion. The potential to make money through blogs can be quite high depending on your audience and traffic, but in most cases, this is one of the most mutually beneficial ways to make money for both the blogger and the company that hires them.

The post How Bloggers are Making Money with Affiliate Links appeared first on The Blog Herald.

It not only adds a professional touch but also serves as a branding element. When designing a Lower Third, it’s essential to use appropriate fonts and colors that fit the tone of the video and reflect the brand’s personality. A well-designed one can enhance the viewer’s experience and increase their engagement with the content. Want to learn more about the lower third and how it can change the quality of your video? Read on!

What is the Lower Third?

Let’s start with the definition. Basically, the lower third is the on-screen graphic you notice at the bottom of the video frame. It contains details about the content you are watching. At times, it’s used for branding purposes too.

At times, they can be distracting. So, the key is to strike a balance between visibility and subtlety so as not to distract the viewer from the main content. But how to do that? Well, there are plenty of strategies that can help you out, but before we talk about them, let’s elaborate on everything the lower third entails first.

Lower Thirds are definitely an essential component of video production and broadcasting. They serve to add context and information to a presentation without taking away from the main content.

So, when should you use them? They’re particularly useful in documentary-style programs or interviews where keeping track of individuals can get confusing. However, it’s crucial that the Lower Third design is on-brand with the tone and visual aesthetic of the production.

All of the elements should work together to add value to the visuals without distracting from the main content – striking this balance is key to creating effective Lower Thirds.

When to Use Them

If you are working on a video for the first time, naturally, you would want your audience to take you seriously. Credibility is important, and lower thirds can help you with that.

You can use lower thirds to form a connection with your audience. They can present a visual to your viewers, which will ensure that they see or hear your message more quickly.

You can also use them to add extra information to the video. Or you can use them for background.

Elements and Strategies

By now, you are pretty familiar with the concept. So it’s time to move on to actually using it in your videos. What are the elements that you have to consider? And how can you ensure that each component serves the purpose perfectly and does not overpower your content? This is the secret we are about to unravel.

Typography

Naturally, you have to figure out the font of your lower third content. This is where you need to be cautious. The font style should be according to the tone of your video. Of course, it should be readable, but you have to make it less distracting too. Additionally, keep the content short and concise. Lengthy texts will never work with lower thirds.

Shapes and Logos

If the video is for a brand or organization, you will probably have style guides that you have to follow. There isn’t much you will be able to do with the logo. However, while using the shapes, you can select ones that highlight the logo and typography.

Color

This is among the most crucial aspects of lower thirds. Unfortunately, this is also where most people falter. It’s easy to get carried away while using an array of colors. The result? The message of your lower third gets lost.

So here’s what you should keep in mind. Do not use excessive colors. And the ones you do use shouldn’t be distracting. It’s best to go with the color scheme of your logo and limit yourself to a couple of colors.

Furthermore, when you select a particular color, ensure that it complements the background of your video well. Of course, it should attract attention, but at the same time, the content shouldn’t lose its limelight.

You can also use contrasting colors between the typography and background elements. This will help your text content stand out. Finally, always make it a point to use colors that go well together.

Size and Position

Keep in mind that the text or graphic you want to include in your video does not always have to be in the lower third. You can alter the size and position as per your preference. But it’s highly recommended to consider symmetry during this. Make sure that your text does not block something that the viewer might want to see.

Animation

It can be tricky to decide when you should include further animation in your video. Of course, you have to keep it subtle, but this does not imply that animations are a complete no. You can definitely use animations for texts, logos, or words if they don’t serve as a distraction to your content.

Tips to Make Effective and Attractive Lower Thirds

Remember, you want the lower thirds to look great on the screen. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done. However, there are some tips that can make the process smoother for you. Take a look at them,

• Keep the content of your lower thirds concise and to the point
• Keep the font consistent in all lower thirds
• Avoid using too big or too small text.
• Go creative with the colors, shapes, and other design elements, and make your lower third interesting while keeping it subtle.
• Simplicity works best with lower thirds. Don’t try to cram too much information in it or get carried away with its design.

If you use lower thirds smarty, they can definitely elevate the quality of your video and make them more professional looking. All you have to do is understand how to capture your audience’s interest without taking too much away from the main message.

The post What is a Lower Third? Definition and Design Strategies appeared first on The Blog Herald.

What Is Ghost Commerce?

Ghost commerce is an up-and-coming trend in the world of online marketing. It involves using the internet to promote products and services without taking ownership of them. Essentially, this type of shop is a form of affiliate marketing, content marketing, and internet marketing all rolled into one. The platforms that enable ghost commerce make it easy for businesses to promote their brands and products online by offering features such as online stores or social media ads. Through ghost commerce, businesses can reach a wider audience and increase their visibility online without actually having to be active in their industry, making it an attractive option for businesses looking to expand their reach.

Benefits of Ghost Commerce:

As previously mentioned, ghost commerce offers several benefits for businesses. Some of these include:

1) Ghost Commerce as a Passive Income Stream:

This method, also known as dropshipping, has become a popular business model for those seeking a passive income stream. Unlike traditional retail businesses, owners of these stores do not need to hold inventory or manage shipping logistics. By partnering with suppliers, they are able to sell products online without the overhead and startup costs associated with a typical retail business. This allows owners to focus on marketing and drive website traffic, resulting in higher profit margins. With the rise of e-commerce, ghost commerce presents a lucrative opportunity for entrepreneurs looking to supplement their income without the hassle of managing inventory and logistics.

2) Easy and Fast Cash:

Unlike other forms of online marketing, ghost commerce offers an easier and faster way to generate cash. Setting up a store is relatively simple and takes very little time. Once your store is set up, you can start promoting products almost immediately. Additionally, the profits generated through ghost commerce are usually much quicker than traditional businesses and more likely to be sustainable in the long run.

3) Ghost Commerce is Low Risk:

Due to the low overhead, ghost commerce presents a relatively low risk for entrepreneurs. You need to purchase inventory or manage physical shipments to focus on marketing and driving traffic to your online store without worrying about losses due to product returns or other unforeseen costs. Additionally, since there is no need to purchase inventory, you can quickly pivot if certain products do not perform as expected.

4) Marketing without Responsibility:

Ghost commerce allows you to promote products and services without the responsibility of owning them. This can be especially advantageous for small companies needing more resources or funds to purchase the inventory they promote. Furthermore, since you aren’t responsible for providing customer service or managing returns, it takes away a lot of pressure from owners who may otherwise not have the time or resources to handle such matters.

5) Time Management:

One of the major advantages of ghost commerce is its ability to save time. Since you don’t need to manage inventory, ship products, and provide customer service, this allows you to focus on marketing your store and driving traffic without having to worry about the time-consuming tasks associated with traditional retail businesses.

6) Accessibility:

Ghost commerce is accessible to everyone regardless of the size of their business. This makes it an attractive option for those who are just starting a business or have limited resources. Additionally, since you don’t need to purchase inventory or manage physical shipments, it eliminates many financial risks associated with traditional retail businesses.

Challenges and Solutions in Ghost Commerce

Diving into ghost commerce is an adventure, but like any venture, it comes with its own set of challenges. Let’s explore these hurdles in detail and discover how to overcome them:

Challenge 1: Dependency on Suppliers

Your entire business hinges on your suppliers. If they slip up, it’s your reputation on the line, not theirs.

Solution: Research is key. Spend time finding suppliers with stellar reputations and consistent service records. Treat this like forming a sports team – you want reliable players who won’t let you down during the big game. Also, have a backup plan. Working with multiple suppliers can save the day if one falls through.

Challenge 2: Market Saturation

The online marketplace is crowded, with many vendors selling similar or identical products. Standing out can seem like finding a needle in a haystack.

Solution: Carve out your niche. Focus on products that reflect your unique perspective or cater to a specific demographic. Think about what makes you different and use that to your advantage. Also, excellent customer service and engaging marketing can set you apart from the crowd.

Challenge 3: Building Customer Trust

Without a physical store, customers rely heavily on your online presence and reputation. Building trust without face-to-face interaction can be daunting.

Solution: Transparency is your best friend. Provide detailed descriptions, honest customer reviews, and clear return policies. Consider adding a personal touch, like a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at your process, to build a stronger connection with your audience.

Challenge 4: Effective Marketing

The digital world is noisy, making it hard for your message to be heard. Effective marketing requires strategy and creativity.

Solution: Identify your target audience and tailor your marketing efforts to suit their preferences. Utilize social media platforms, email marketing, and SEO to reach potential customers. Don’t just speak – engage. Create content that adds value, answers questions, and sparks conversations.

Challenge 5: Time Management

Running a ghost commerce business involves juggling multiple tasks, from selecting products to marketing them. Managing all these responsibilities can feel like spinning plates.

Solution: Organization is crucial. Use tools like calendars, task lists, and project management software to keep track of your responsibilities. Set clear priorities and give yourself realistic deadlines. Remember, it’s okay to delegate tasks or seek help when needed.

Challenge 6: Accessibility and Entry Barriers

Many assume that starting a ghost commerce business requires significant upfront investment and technical know-how.

Solution: Start small and scale up. Many platforms offer free or low-cost entry points to set up your online store. Utilize free resources and tutorials available online to build your knowledge base. Remember, every expert was once a beginner.

Facing these challenges head-on can turn obstacles into stepping stones. Think of each challenge as a level in a video game – mastering one leads you to the next, bringing you closer to victory. With the right strategies, you can navigate the world of ghost commerce successfully and build a thriving online business.

Tools and Resources for Ghost Commerce Entrepreneurs

Navigating the world of ghost commerce can be much easier with the right set of tools and resources. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale your business, these essentials can help streamline your operations, enhance your marketing, and manage your virtual storefront effectively.

E-commerce Platforms

1. Shopify: An all-in-one commerce platform to start, run, and grow a business, offering easy setup and management of your online store.
2. WooCommerce: A customizable, open-source eCommerce platform built on WordPress for those who already have or prefer a WordPress website.
3. BigCommerce: A scalable, all-in-one e-commerce platform suitable for businesses at any stage, offering various integrations and customization options.

Marketing and SEO Tools

1. Google Analytics: Track and report website traffic to understand your customers’ behavior and improve your marketing strategies.
2. SEMRush: An all-in-one tool suite for improving online visibility and discovering marketing insights, perfect for keyword research and SEO.
3. Mailchimp: An all-in-one marketing platform that helps manage and talk to your clients, customers, and other interested parties.

Product Sourcing and Management

1. AliExpress Dropshipping: A popular platform for sourcing products and easily adding them to your store, perfect for dropshipping businesses.
2. Oberlo: An app designed to easily import dropshipped products into your e-commerce store and ship them directly to your customers.
3. Spocket: Connects retailers to thousands of suppliers, mainly located in the US and EU, ideal for entrepreneurs looking to sell high-quality products.

Customer Service and Engagement

1. Zendesk: Offers a suite of tools for customer service, providing businesses with a powerful and flexible customer engagement platform.
2. Intercom: A conversational relationship platform that helps businesses build better customer relationships through personalized, messenger-based experiences.
3. Tidio: Combines live chat and chatbot tools to help you provide excellent customer service and automate responses to common inquiries.

Design and Branding

1. Canva: A user-friendly graphic design tool perfect for creating your brand’s visual elements, from logos to social media posts.
2. Adobe Spark: Offers a variety of design tools for creating graphics, web pages, and short videos to enhance your brand presence.
3. Figma: A collaborative interface design tool, excellent for designing and prototyping your online store’s layout and user experience.

Learning and Development

1. Coursera: Offers courses on digital marketing, e-commerce, and business strategies taught by university professors and industry experts.
2. Udemy: Find courses on virtually any topic, including e-commerce, marketing strategies, and web development, to enhance your skills.
3. Shopify Academy: Provides free training and tutorials specifically for e-commerce and running an online business.

By utilizing these tools and resources, ghost commerce entrepreneurs can streamline their operations, enhance their marketing efforts, and provide better customer service, all of which are crucial for growing a successful online business. Remember, the right tools can make a significant difference in managing your workload and scaling your operations efficiently.

How to Choose Products and Suppliers for Your Ghost Commerce Business

When diving into the world of ghost commerce, one of the first steps is selecting the right products and finding reliable suppliers. This part of the process is like laying the foundation for a house – it needs to be solid for everything else to stand strong. Here’s how you can make smart choices that set your business up for success.

Choosing the Right Products

1. Know Your Audience: Understand who you are selling to. What do they like? What problems do they need to solve? When you know your audience well, you can pick products they are likely to buy. Think of it as picking a gift for a friend – the better you know them, the easier it is to find something they’ll love.
2. Research Market Trends: Stay updated with what’s popular and what’s not. Use tools like Google Trends or social media platforms to see what people are talking about. It’s like being a detective; you’re on the lookout for clues on what the next big hit might be.
3. Assess Profit Margins: Look for products that will give you a good return. It’s not just about selling; it’s about earning too. Think of this like shopping for groceries – you want the best value for your money.
4. Consider Shipping: Think about how easy it is to ship the product. Is it fragile? Does it need special packaging? Remember, the easier it is to send, the happier your customers will be.

Finding Reliable Suppliers

1. Check Their Reputation: Do some digging on your potential suppliers. Read reviews and check their ratings. You want to partner with companies that are known for being reliable and honest. It’s like choosing a teammate; you want someone you can count on.
2. Evaluate Their Products: Test their products to check the quality. You want your customers to be happy with what they receive. Think of it as taste-testing a recipe before serving it to guests.
3. Understand Their Policies: Make sure you know their return policies, shipping times, and any other important rules. It’s like knowing the rules of a game before you play – it just makes everything smoother.
4. Communicate Clearly: Talk to your suppliers. Ask questions and express your expectations. Good communication is key to a strong partnership. It’s like building a bridge – both sides need to meet in the middle.

By choosing the right products and finding reliable suppliers, you’re setting your ghost commerce business up for success. Think of these steps as the ingredients in a recipe – each one is important to make the final dish a hit. With the right approach, you can build a business that’s profitable, sustainable, and loved by your customers.

Future Outlook: Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Ghost Commerce

As we look toward the future, the landscape of ghost commerce is poised for significant changes, driven by evolving technology, consumer behavior, and market dynamics. Understanding these potential shifts can help entrepreneurs and businesses adapt and thrive in the ever-changing e-commerce world.

Technological Advancements: The future of ghost commerce will be heavily influenced by technological advancements. Innovations like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are expected to transform the online shopping experience, allowing customers to interact with products in a more immersive way. Additionally, the continued rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning will enable more personalized shopping experiences, predictive analytics, and automated customer service. Entrepreneurs in the ghost commerce space should stay abreast of these technologies and consider how they can be integrated into their business models.

Consumer Expectations: As technology evolves, so do consumer expectations. Customers are increasingly seeking convenience, speed, and personalization in their online shopping experiences. They want to feel connected to the brands they purchase from and expect seamless interactions across multiple channels. Ghost commerce businesses will need to prioritize customer experience, focusing on fast and reliable shipping, easy returns, and personalized marketing to meet these growing demands.

Sustainability and Ethical Practices: Sustainability and ethical business practices are becoming more important to consumers. This trend is likely to continue, with shoppers favoring brands that demonstrate environmental responsibility, ethical sourcing, and transparency. Ghost commerce entrepreneurs should consider the sustainability of their products and supply chains and communicate their ethical practices to consumers to build trust and loyalty.

Globalization and Market Expansion: The internet has made it easier than ever to reach customers around the world. The future of ghost commerce includes a more global approach, with businesses selling to and sourcing from international markets. However, this also means increased competition and the need to navigate different regulations, cultures, and consumer preferences. Entrepreneurs should consider the global potential of their products and strategies for international expansion.

Regulatory Changes: As e-commerce continues to grow, so does regulatory scrutiny. Future regulations may address issues such as data privacy, consumer protection, and taxation. Staying informed about legal changes and ensuring compliance will be crucial for ghost commerce businesses to avoid potential fines and maintain customer trust.

Collaborations and Partnerships: Collaborations between brands, influencers, and creators are becoming increasingly popular and beneficial. These partnerships can help ghost commerce businesses reach new audiences, create unique content, and build credibility. Looking forward, we can expect more strategic collaborations that leverage the strengths of each partner to create mutually beneficial outcomes.

In conclusion, the future of ghost commerce is bright but requires adaptability and foresight. Entrepreneurs and businesses that stay informed about technological trends, prioritize customer experience, embrace sustainability, consider global expansion, comply with regulations, and foster collaborations will be well-positioned to succeed in the dynamic landscape of ghost commerce. The journey ahead is filled with opportunities for those ready to embrace change and innovate in their approach to online selling.

Conclusion

Ghost commerce represents a revolutionary shift in the e-commerce landscape, providing a unique blend of opportunities for small business owners and entrepreneurs alike. As we’ve explored, this model offers a pathway to extend market reach, streamline operations, and achieve financial growth with minimal upfront investment. Its low-risk nature, combined with the potential for passive income, makes ghost commerce an appealing strategy for those looking to dive into the digital marketplace.

However, success in ghost commerce isn’t just about setting up a store and waiting for the profits to roll in. It requires strategic planning, market research, and ongoing engagement with your target audience. Entrepreneurs must stay ahead of market trends, understand consumer behavior, and leverage the latest technologies to create engaging, personalized shopping experiences.

Furthermore, ghost commerce allows for unprecedented flexibility in how businesses operate. Entrepreneurs can test different products and markets without significant financial risk, adapting and evolving their strategies based on real-world feedback and performance. This agility is crucial in today’s fast-paced market environment, where consumer preferences and trends can change rapidly.

Yet, it’s important to approach ghost commerce with a clear understanding of its challenges. Navigating supplier relationships, maintaining product quality, and ensuring customer satisfaction are all critical components of a successful ghost commerce operation. Entrepreneurs should invest in building strong partnerships and prioritize excellent customer service to build trust and loyalty among their consumer base.

In addition, as ghost commerce continues to grow, it will likely face increased regulation and scrutiny. Entrepreneurs should stay informed about legal requirements and ethical considerations, ensuring their business practices are transparent and compliant. This not only safeguards the business but also reinforces its credibility and reputation in the marketplace.

Looking ahead, the potential for ghost commerce is vast, with new platforms, tools, and strategies emerging to support its growth. Entrepreneurs willing to embrace innovation, commit to continuous learning, and respond dynamically to market changes will find ghost commerce a powerful vehicle for business growth.

In conclusion, ghost commerce offers a gateway to the world of e-commerce that is accessible, flexible, and full of potential. By understanding its benefits and challenges, staying adaptable, and maintaining a customer-focused approach, entrepreneurs can harness the power of ghost commerce to build successful, sustainable businesses. As the digital landscape evolves, so too will the opportunities for those ready to explore the uncharted territories of ghost commerce.

FAQ: Understanding Ghost Commerce

What is an example of ghost commerce?

An example of ghost commerce is a virtual storefront that sells fitness equipment without holding any inventory. The store owner promotes products through their website and social media. When a customer makes a purchase, the order is fulfilled and shipped directly by the supplier, not the storefront owner.

Can you make money with Ghost Commerce?

Yes, you can make money with ghost commerce. By setting up an online store and partnering with suppliers, you can earn profits on the difference between the wholesale and retail prices without handling the products yourself.

What is a ghost commerce job?

A ghost commerce job involves managing an online business that sells products or services without owning or stocking them. Responsibilities might include setting up the online store, marketing products, coordinating with suppliers, and handling customer inquiries.

What’s the difference between ghost commerce and affiliate marketing?

Ghost commerce involves selling products directly to customers without owning inventory, often through a third-party supplier. Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, involves promoting someone else’s products and earning a commission for referrals or sales made through your unique affiliate link.

How do I start ghost commerce?

To start ghost commerce, identify a niche market, choose products to sell, find reliable suppliers, set up an online store, and market your products to potential customers. Focus on building strong supplier relationships and effective marketing strategies to drive traffic and sales.

Is Ghost commerce legit?

Yes, ghost commerce is a legitimate business model, similar to dropshipping. It allows entrepreneurs to sell products online without owning inventory. However, success depends on choosing the right products, suppliers, and marketing strategies.

How does Ghost commerce make money?

Ghost commerce makes money by selling products at a markup. The business owner purchases items from a supplier at a wholesale price and sells them at a retail price. The difference between these prices, minus any expenses, constitutes the profit.

Is Ghost commerce the same as dropshipping?

Ghost commerce is similar to dropshipping in that both models allow you to sell products without owning inventory. However, ghost commerce can extend beyond physical products to include services or digital products, whereas dropshipping typically involves physical goods.

Is there a downside to affiliate marketing?

Yes, there are downsides to affiliate marketing, including dependency on the affiliate program’s rules and commissions, potential competition with other affiliates, and the need for significant traffic to generate substantial income. Additionally, your reputation could be impacted by the quality of the products or services you promote.

The post What is Ghost Commerce: A Quick Overview appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Take, for instance, apps with less than user-friendly designs. Chances are, people won’t use them for long. The product’s image will suffer, sales will slump, and the company’s traction will stall. But an app with features that pull people in can have the opposite effect. Let’s look at four ways product design can impact brand growth.

1. It Shapes Brand Positioning

One of the challenges with selling commodities is that there’s low differentiation. One company’s offer isn’t much different than a competitor’s. From a consumer’s perspective, they’re getting the same thing regardless of who they buy from. So they’ll usually reach for the offering with the lowest price.

As market competitiveness increases, it’s not unusual for products to become like commodities in people’s eyes. Product designs, including those for apps, can differentiate brands based on user experiences and perceptions of quality. For example, the Uber design system elevates Uber Eats’ app and food delivery service experiences over its competitors’. Universal templates and intuitive order flows help accomplish this.

In the same way, Target’s app leverages the brand’s red color and bullseye logo. There’s no question you’re shopping with the discount retailer known for providing a higher-quality experience than its main competitor. Good app design helps extend brand positioning to consumers’ mobile interactions. Whether a company’s identity is neighborhood service, superior value, or an elevated experience, an app’s design communicates what it is.

2. It Engages Consumers

Brand engagement consists of consumers’ emotional and mental connection with a company’s offerings. Businesses with high customer engagement tend to have loyal fan followings, eager to try the latest product release. Apple is a prime example. The company’s simple yet visually attractive designs play a significant role in driving community engagement.

This concept isn’t lost on the apps the tech giant creates. Not only are the products easy to use, but they’re also good at getting people talking. With product design, the brand executes what McKinsey & Company calls the community flywheel. This flywheel is about knowing your brand’s community, creating a buzzworthy story, and making the narrative sharable. Simultaneously, it’s about highlighting powerful products and facilitating seamless sales.

App designs that focus on your users stand a better chance of engaging them. If your target community doesn’t understand how to navigate your software, you should find out why. What features and menus would make more sense to them? More importantly, does the app design support your market’s needs and drive brand enthusiasm? Make interactions simple, whether they’re motivated by a need for support or community connection.

3. It Encourages Sales

Say you pull up an app for one of your go-to stores. The software takes over 10 seconds to load, and you can’t see the pictures well. They look slightly blurry, plus there’s no way to get a 360-degree virtual view of each product. In addition, the prices don’t add up when you put items in your cart, and you can’t edit your selections.

Are you likely to go through with the sale? Probably not. When apps don’t perform as expected, it can annoy consumers. Design problems, including poor organization and non-functioning features, can contribute to user frustration. Consumers will turn elsewhere if buying is too difficult.

People flocking toward competitors because of undesirable experiences can spell trouble for a brand. Companies avoid this by recognizing an app’s design is often a substitute for an in-store experience. It may be the only means of interaction someone has with a brand. Clear and secure checkout processes ensure users feel comfortable making mobile purchases. Instant follow-ups, such as order confirmations, also encourage repeat business by meeting service expectations.

4. It Boosts Credibility

A shoddy design can hurt your brand’s credibility because it lowers trust. If an app’s layout doesn’t meet your target market’s needs, those consumers won’t think you’re willing to listen. It’s like putting out an employee engagement survey but failing to take any visible action. Eventually, your staff will lose faith in your intentions, and commitment to the organization will drop.

In contrast, an attractive, updated look will build trust by showing your brand is attentive to current market demands and trends. Additional signs of trustworthiness can include personalized recommendations, loyalty program integrations, and account security features. If someone wants to use biometrics to secure the information they store in the app, they can. Another person who prefers not to store sensitive data like credit cards could bypass the option.

App designs must make users feel seen and heard. Without trust, brand growth is hard because consumers perceive too much risk is at stake. Apps with questionable and outdated designs can make people wonder about a company’s competency. Everything from product quality to behind-the-scenes ethics might be up for debate. And once people form an unfavorable perception of a brand’s reputation, it can take years to fix.

Why Product Design Determines Brand Growth

A product’s design shapes what people experience when they interact with a brand. Mobile apps, in particular, can become the consumer’s interface for product delivery, service, and communication. Sales will suffer when app designs diminish a brand’s integrity and make connections challenging. But those that engage users can build the trust and loyalty necessary for growth.

The post 4 Ways Product Design Can Influence Your Brand’s Growth appeared first on The Blog Herald.

But the proliferation of technology doesn’t mean that relationships don’t matter. In fact, relationship management is one of the best things you can do to differentiate your company from others.

When many organizations focus on only the numbers, ignoring the human side of the relationship, you know better. Technology advances are a complement to the humans on both sides of the sales funnel. But to be successful when blending tech with free will and independent thought, understanding what tools are available is essential.

1. Show up where your customers are.

You’d never load your bow and release your arrow blind. So why do so many organizations mimic this practice with their tech?

In reality, many companies operate off of a template of assumptions, which leads to misguided pitches and wasted resources. They may have a target, but they’re using the wrong approach to get there.

However, attentive leaders drive results by learning more about their customers’ habits and how to naturally integrate with their lives.

Essential business tools, like WiFi, can unlock key customer data that can drive marketing efforts to the next level. Tools like Plume Workpass serve as an integrated workforce solution that can deliver customer insights that fuel business growth.

On-site WiFi connects you to customer behaviors across browsing habits, app use, and in-store time. Through a simple opt-in, customers agree to share information in exchange for complimentary connectivity.

You can then use your analytics report to understand your customers’ habits to improve their experience. Review their most commonly used apps to focus your efforts on both social media engagement and advertising.

2. Anticipate customer needs with smart solutions and service.

Guessing what your customers want and need is one of the most coveted skills of any business leader. While you can’t acquire the ability to read minds, you can tap into the data that many tech tools provide.

Review your call center reports for the most frequent call reasons and use that information to anticipate customer needs. Deploy chatbots to respond to common questions and you’ll be able to provide a quick resolution to frequent inquiries.

Follow this practice across your social platforms, as many now offer chat features. Instead of shouldering your social media managers with the task, build out a robust bank of responses.

Do more than just answer Yes or No. Strive to improve overall customer care with dynamic responses and additional information. Use links, educational videos, and other assets to provide a rich response with contact information if it’s needed.

The less friction you create between you and your customer, the more valuable your relationship will be.

Assess your sales data to determine if some choices are being made more than others. Skipping over certain offerings could indicate product confusion, disinterest, or lack of need.

In restaurants, too many choices can lead to decision paralysis for customers. Trim your menu options to the highest sellers and fan favorites to boost sales and decrease waste.

3. Use data to do more than sell.

Data can often be self-serving for the companies that acquire and track it. But, when used with compassion, data can expose opportunities to connect with customers individually.

It’s tempting to group customers into personas, identifying key threads between individuals. While this practice is an engagement best practice, it shouldn’t be used exclusively. In fact, close observation of customer data and a willingness to act on it quickly can create a lasting impression.

For example, McDonald’s recently displayed this through a customer experience that used data to not only connect but to care. A customer placed an order for delivery to a hospital room.

While the data element of a delivery location is an essential piece of information, the interpretation is what matters. McDonald’s understood that a hospital room delivery could indicate an illness or life event deserving of compassion. The note offered well wishes for the recipient, while not making assumptions about their condition, and gave them the order for free.

While it’s not always possible to give away meals, goods, or services in exchange for loyalty, the tactic has value. Acknowledging customer data, repeat order milestones, or new product purchases offer chances to connect authentically. These rich experiences build loyalty and offer context for happy customers to share with others.

Use technology to create relationships.

Relationships are the foundation of the most important parts of life.

At work, at home, and during free time, relationships drive customer choice and repeat behaviors. Deploy the right technology to connect your customers with the right information and opportunities, and you’ll increase customer loyalty.

Present sales opportunities to target existing customers based on their engagement, using data to nurture relationships. Moreover, your attention to presenting your target and existing customers with the right pitch will resonate and boost conversions. No one likes to receive misguided sales pitches.

Your mindful use of technology can narrow your focus in a productive way. Data, the right tools, and your mindfulness can help you create authentic relationships that deliver results.

The post How to Connect With Customers Through Better Tech appeared first on The Blog Herald.

What is a Niche Website? Most sites that people visit are niche sites. They denote specificity by narrowing their site focus on a topic and its diverse subtopics forming a part of a larger business. Often, niche businesses require bloggers and content creators to take care of their online presence. And, as an indie blogger running a niche site, you will also want to grow your operation.

For example, SlideModel is one of the premier sites to offer eye-catching presentation templates functioning within a larger business industry. Expanding your niche website is imperative once you have achieved the task of creating it successfully. You know it is profitable when it pours great ROI and brings traffic growth. But how to escalate your niche website and reach its growth potential? Let us find out with this blog post.

Here are eleven steps on how to grow your Niche Website like a pro:

Blogging to Keep a Consistent Visitor Flow

Blogging is a strategy for marketers to promote their brand and disseminate critical information to users. Established niche websites involved in active blogging increase their chances of getting enormous site traffic. Consistent blogging will also help you to escalate your SEO game and achieve higher ranks in the SERPs. Create a blog content strategy to write and execute blogs systematically. SlideModel publishes some of the best blogs on how to level up your PowerPoint presentation game and much more. 

In-Depth Analysis on What’s Working and What’s Not

Remember to conduct a thorough analysis to figure out which posts on your niche website can garner an audience and which cannot. It will assist you in publishing content on your website accordingly. But keep in mind that this analysis is possible only after your website establishes a robust footing. Avoid basing your decisions on fewer visitors. Determine which type of posts attract more audience and go in that direction. 

Optimize User Experience

The accomplishment of your niche website depends on how much your audience likes it. Prioritize user experience and render your site as user-friendly as you can. Boost the page-loading speed if you feel your site is not running fast. Offer easy navigation, faceted searches, interactive features, gamification, and much more. Strengthen your site’s infrastructure by catering your site to mobile optimization. 

Boost SEO Strategies

It all comes down to the best SEO practices for businesses to harness thriving digital marketing. Keep your site up-to-date with the latest SEO techniques to remain in the top searches. Identify your organic and inorganic target keywords instead of mindlessly stuffing them. Also, link-building is a vital component of ranking that plays a vast role in the website’s success in the long-run. Provide authentic backlinks and fix broken links for maximum visibility. 

Expand Email Marketing

Every great niche website builds an Email list. Emails are powerful tools to promote your website and sell products. Chances exist that you have already invested in email marketing. What you need to do is upgrade it. You must test various methods to collect emails on your site like call-to-action options or pop-ups for a content upgrade on the home-page. A pro tip here is to avoid cramming a hundred pop-ups on your site to get a few subscribers as it annoys the users. 

Repurpose Website Content

How to create a go-to market strategy for keeping your niche website in the limelight? A sure-shot way to stay in the SERP mainstream is practicing consistent repurposing of the website content. Repurposing website content means utilizing methods to recycle content like blogs and using them somewhere else. For example, arranging blogs into presentations or designing stunning infographics to integrate on your website. This way you can feed your audience with fresh content by taking assistance from your existing content. 

Attract Site Traffic via Social Media Channels

It is never too late to turn to social media for advertising your website or its content. With more than half the world spending time on social media, it becomes a profound platform to pull your target audience through it. Leverage platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Quora. Polish your content according to the channel. For example, Facebook is good for micro-videos and Instagram for hosting live Q&A sessions. 

Outsource Content Creation

The first step to niche website marketing consists of taking smart steps. Outsourcing your content creation is way cheaper than hiring a full-time company writer. You get more time to focus on ideation, strategy, marketing, and experimentation while outsourcing content creation. It also helps you to grab a higher content marketing ROI. Outsourcing content creation for your website can prove to be quite a cost-effective way for producing quality-content.

Grow with Monetization

It is always good to invest money in your niche website to make it more popular rendering you with a stellar ROI. It helps with the exposure, SEO, and revenue. However, you must be careful while choosing to invest your money in the content. Track metrics to see which posts are performing better and can attract more site visitors. Which articles are getting the most traffic or earning revenue? Finance such posts with Pay-per-click campaigns and accelerate your visibility in the Google search engine. 

Include Call-To-Action

Many niche websites commit the mistake of leaving their visitors without any CTA or Call-To-Action button. Give a purpose to the visitors by providing them with subscriber notifications or offers they cannot miss. Your blog posts must serve as a CTA to gain customer information and boost touchpoints. Lure them with words like ‘Discover’, ‘Shop’, ‘Explore’, and ‘Try. Remember to be extremely specific while picking the action words and the directions that follow them.

Study Your Competition

It always proves effective to check out your niche competitors once your site has acquired an industry-ranking. You can garner ideas and analyze which of their posts are most favored by your target audience. It does not necessitate you to copy them blatantly. You can pick up ideas and recreate them in a creative style. Conduct extensive research for the topics that your competitors are choosing to include in their niche websites and revitalize them. Further, brainstorm ideas with your team to come up with imaginative and intuitive content. 

Summing Up

There! You have it. These eleven steps can take your niche website from performing well to the best. Even though you own an established niche website you must have a lifelong focus on getting maximum site traffic and optimizing conversions. Your niche website can flourish in no time with these above-mentioned steps. Keep experimenting with techniques and stick to what’s working best for it.

Related Post: Content Creation Versus Content Sharing

The post How to Grow Your Established Niche Website appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Compared to years ago, when blog posts were still at their peak, you’d notice that good marketing ideas are now done with the help of videos. Some of the best growth marketing agencies are now using video pretty consistently in their campaigns for organic SEO, PR, and thought leadership. Since it’s pretty easy to create one, marketers have taken advantage of video marketing to help them improve their campaigns better.

People can learn a lot from watching videos, which is why many of them find video content helpful these days. This makes sense because a study had previously predicted that videos will make up over 82% of the internet traffic this year. If you’re a marketer trying to promote new products rather easily, make sure to use video marketing in your campaign efforts.

6 Video Marketing Checklist You Shouldn’t Miss Out

Now, if you want to create marketing videos, it’s essential to understand what should have been done in the first place. Remember that preparation is key when you want to start a campaign in any type of media. The more thorough your preparation process is, the better results you will get from it. Here is the quick video marketing checklist to help you prepare a winning video campaign for your business.

1. Scripting

Your script should describe all the main points that you want to talk about in the videos. Usually, you need to write a conversational copy.

To make things easier for yourself, create a list made up of 3 to 4 bullet points for every how-to topic that you would like to make a video about. Your script should always cover all these topics and include whatever details necessary so viewers can understand properly.

2. Video Outline

After creating a rough draft of your scripting, next is making the outline for your content. Now, make a list of all the items you want to include and arrange them in a logical order. Make sure to watch your script beforehand, following up with the video outline properly.

3. Recording

After preparing your video out and the scripting step, it’s time to create an actual recording. Use whatever equipment is necessary for recordings, such as webcams, microphones, or even smartphones with good cameras. 

Also, keep in mind that lightning will highly affect your recorded videos, so try to find the best spot possible with adequate lighting available for you. After everything is set up and ready for recording, start doing some sessions related to your topic until you get enough footage for it. If at any time during the process you feel like deleting some of the video clips, you are more than free to do so.

4. Post-production

Since there are so many videos nowadays that need to be edited on a daily basis, this process is just as important as the film itself. Editing is part of your preparation phase because it’s where you will have the chance to fix any errors done on the previous steps if necessary. You can also add some effects or introduce title slides for your project here.

5. Distribution

After finishing everything above, now is time to distribute your work out there. Some marketers often choose platforms like YouTube first before anything else. But, others still use their own website or blog if they have one already available since most internet users go there instead. It’s important to know that every video platform is different, so it would be wise to try all of them out one by one.

6. Monitoring

Lastly, monitor your video marketing campaigns on social media and other similar websites. After all, these are the places where your target market is present, so it’s important to know how they feel about what you made for them. You can use web analytics tools like Google Analytics or even Facebook Insights for this step if necessary.

Wrapping Up

After creating a video marketing checklist for yourself, all that’s left to do now is to try it out. Try following through with your preparation process until the end, then check your results afterward. If everything went nicely, continue doing what you are doing until you get better at it.

If not, make some changes on your own and start over again. There is nothing wrong with doing some trial and error steps, so don’t be afraid to do so. Just remember that there are always improvements for everything in the world, so keep that in mind on your own.

Copy and paste this code for a free infographic.

Author

Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order). 

Twitter: @breadnbeyond

Email: andre@breadnbeyond.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreoentoro/

The post Video Marketing Checklist: What Every Marketer Should Know appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The following guide will help freelance specialists develop a brand efficiently, but they might very well want to apply some of these tricks to marketing them or their blog. Individuals who want to look into applying these for themselves will want to think just like they were managing their own business that essentially consisted of their own selves.

Freelancers usually aren’t used to thinking of themselves as businesses or brands, but in a manner of speaking, they are. While you may not represent an organization of any real size, you do represent yourself and your own brand reflects this. Take a few moments to figure out what your purpose is.

Know the Purpose

One important step when developing a killer brand is understanding your business purpose. This is probably something you’ve already started working on in your business plan, which is good. If you haven’t done this, then devote enough time to this. Knowing your company’s purpose makes it easier to see what your brand needs to say.

This sounds a little philosophical because it is. A business without a clearly defined identity will find it hard to create good brand representation. In essence, you want to find out what issues or problems your business is going to solve for its customers. Chances are that you’re going to say something such as you want to help other people, which is fine, but that’s built like a new baseball manager saying that the team is going to do better this year because it’ll win more games.

Explain why you want to help people and how you’re going to do it. There’s a strong possibility that you’ve become a freelancer for a certain reason. Time is a big causation effect for most people. Quite a few individuals often can’t handle the so-called 9-5 grind, which has gotten to the point where it’s more like a 24-hour grind. If that’s the case, then you could consider spelling this out on your profile in no uncertain terms.

On top of this, you might see many people in your chosen industry segment who kind of remind you of yourself. They might be struggling with their own businesses, which are probably larger than any freelancing work you do but you can still empathize with their pain.

Focus on this and figure out new ways that you could help these people better build their own companies. As you do so, you may notice that your own personal sense of identity starts to grow exponentially. The same would go for anyone attempting to frame a firm that they’re doing contract work for.

Designing Your Blog’s Look

The blog’s overall design is another big step you need to take. The good thing is you don’t have to take this step alone. If you’ve defined your value and your goals, then you can outsource some of this to your fellow freelancers. In essence, you’re going to be hiring artists who can take your ideas and turn them into something digestible like a brand logo and much more. This is important according to the folks at DesignBro. The good thing about hiring a professional is that you’ll be able to find your brand’s look faster than you would otherwise. Remember that you’re hiring these professionals, so if you don’t feel like they’ve developed something that feels right, then continue asking for modifications until you see your company’s spirit reflected in the brand’s look.

Narrow the Audience

You want to pull the weeds out so to speak when you begin developing this strategy. Most freelancers start with a vague idea of who their clients are going to be. That’s the worst place to be. You don’t want a vague idea of who your audience is. The clearer these customers are, the easier it’ll be to target them. If you tried to start a blog without knowing who your audience was, then chances are good that you’d end up never attracting one. Your brand strategy has a higher chance of reaching and creating the right response if you know who you’re reaching first.

You should do some target client group research, and you want to do this a few times until you’ve discovered which group of people seem to respond to your posts more. Many freelancers are surprised to see who responds to their services or products at times. Depending on the type of content you write or post, you might attract people you’d never think you would. That’s precisely how old blogging sites were able to grow so fast.

Understanding the Market Ecosystem

Another important step to take to develop a great brand strategy is to dive into your market ecosystem. Each individual is going into a certain environment, and you need to understand what yours is all about. This step isn’t going to be easy, but you’ll see the value in it once you’re done. What you have to do is figure out who your competitors are.

You’ll want to pay attention to competitors both in terms of actual content as well as keywords you’re trying to rank for. Some are going to be obvious, but this is not always so clear. Once you’ve done this step, you can start to see what your competitors are doing, especially their marketing and branding strategies. These folks are trying to reach the same folks you are, and they’ve been doing so successfully for some time. Use that knowledge in your favor while adding a few of your ideas. This is one of the benefits of being a smaller business, so don’t overlook this.

The Rough Draft

The next thing you want to do is develop a rough draft of your strategy. At this point, you have an idea of what you want yourself to communicate. You’ve done the work and know what your blog should achieve now and in the future. With all of this information, you can start to develop a plan that involves your own mission and values.

The same concept could be just as easily applied to a firm you were doing work on behalf of. You want to work on creating a specific language that’ll help ensure your message communicates clearly. Be sure to be as specific as you can at this stage. Try to come up with marketing tactics that you believe will help your business reach its goals. Even if your ideas at this stage are a little rough, it won’t matter. You’re going to have to work on this plan a few times to refine it.

Individuals who are freelancers or run their own independent blog are likely going to find that they have to occasionally promote someone else or make some company’s brand image appear more focused than it is. This is where the concept of narrowing an audience really comes into play. If you’ve already developed a profile to market yourself and your own blog’s brand or your image on social media, then there’s a high possibility that you already understand this concept and can apply it to those you work with or for.

Imagine taking on a gig work job where you were supposed to start discussing the merits of another individual. Building a client’s brand in this way is difficult if you don’t share their same vision. However, by working from a common frame of reference you should be able to help others build their brands. Eventually, they may even help you by sharing your contact details with others in the marketing industry who need a couple of links from a trusted blog.

If you’ve built up a degree of authority in terms of search results, then chances are high that people would relish a mention of their companies on your own blog. Keep in mind that many other firms will also want to build their brand strategies over time, and that means you might be able to find more work for yourself by reaching out to those who currently lack an image and need your assistance with developing one.

Planning for Updates

You must plan to continue developing your brand. Yes, you might have come up with a great brand strategy that you believe in and know will work. You’re probably right, too, but you have to revisit your brand strategy as often as possible.

A lot of people overlook this step and let time pass them by without them revisiting their strategy. This is a dangerous thing because times change, and what might have worked great before might not work so well later. If you make it a point to plan when you’ll revisit your strategy, then you’ll reduce the chances of becoming stagnant or outdated. That’s one of the worst things you could do as a growing webmaster.

Hopefully, this guide makes it easy for individual writers and content creators to develop a killer strategy. It may take some time, but the more time you spend developing this, the better your chances.

The post Developing a Killer Brand Strategy as a Blogger appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Are you implementing what you discover?

Your business decisions should be guided by what your audience wants, not what your competitors are doing. However, competitor research can be a quick way to create lists of podcasts to pitch to, websites to guest post on, keyphrases to target, and more.

Let’s explore 5 really simple ways to research your competitors and turn that into actionable next steps.

1. Competitor press coverage for pitching research

Are you failing to get your business covered in the media? Maybe you’re not sure what publications and journalists you should pitch your business too.

An easy way to find relevant outlets and journalist contacts is to search your competitors in Google News.

If you have a blog about blogging, for example, you might want to see what outlets Create and Go is getting covered in. You can search the name of the blog, as well as the founder of the blog so that you make sure to pull up as much of the company’s press coverage as possible.

Then create your list of relevant publications and journalists, and pitch yourself as a contributor or source.

2. Competitor blog monetization

How do your competitors monetize their blog?

When you know what products and services they’re selling, and how they include these in their content, then you can learn a lot for your own marketing.

Take a look at the blogs of your top competitors to discover…

• How and where they link to paid products in posts
• What affiliate links they include in content
• How they use their blog to get more options to their email list
• What they include in the sidebar
• How they use author bios to sell paid products

For example, Elna Cain of Freelancer FAQs uses her author bio to divert traffic to her paid course, while the rest of the blog is kept very clean and sparse with no other visible links to paid products.

Discovering how other bloggers are sending traffic to their paid products can inspire you to maximize the profit from your own blog.

3. Competitor podcast interviews for podcast research

The great thing about being a guest on podcasts is that you can access your target audience without having to worry about building up media relations with journalists who get hundreds of pitches in their email inbox every day.

Maybe you want to get featured on podcasts but aren’t sure where to start.

The easiest and fastest way to find the perfect podcasts to be a guest on is to discover what your competitors have been featured on.

While there are so many great tools for competitor analysis, one of the best tools at your fingertips is definitely Google.

Consider what freelancers, marketers, or bloggers offer a similar service to you. Some of these people might even be your collaborators, referral partners, or friends.

Do a Google search for “[name] + podcast interview.” In the search results, you’ll find what podcasts they’ve been a guest on. You can click through to see if the podcast is relevant to your business.

4. Competitor content for PR pitch ideas and blog headlines

Are you struggling to come up with ideas for headlines?

Whether you need headline ideas for your guest post pitches or for your own blog, sometimes you feel tapped out and don’t know what to write next.

Take a look at your competitors’ blogs and see what inspires you.

Of course, you don’t want to copy the headline word for word, but you can see what topics and headline structures they are using, and then turn these into your own ideas.

Add the best ideas to your content calendar for your own blog, or put your unique spin on a topic and pitch it as a guest post to an online publication like The Blog Herald or StartupNation.

5. Competitor keyphrase rankings

Millo.co is a popular blog to learn how to start and grow your freelance business. If you want to start a blog about freelancing, you’ll of course want to SEO optimize your posts so you can get search traffic to your content.

But it’s hard to know what keyphrases to actually target.

To find out, use an SEO tool like Ahrefs or similar and search your competitors’ domain names.

You’ll pull up a list of every keyphrase that the website is currently ranking for.

Search through the list of keyphrases for search queries with a low keyphrase difficulty. These might represent a great opportunity to get search traffic.

Rinse and repeat this method for all of your top competitors, and you’ll easily pull together a list of great keyphrases to target with your own content.

As marketers, it’s easy to get stuck in the comparison game. Don’t let competitor research make you feel bad about what you haven’t achieved in your business. Instead, turn competitor research into clear action items for your marketing and PR campaigns.

Author Bio

Dayana Mayfield is the founder of Pitch & Profit, a digital PR training program that helps small businesses set up the perfect team process for online publicity.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pitchandprofit

The post 5‌ ‌Ways‌ ‌to‌ ‌Utilize‌ ‌Competitor‌ ‌Research‌ ‌in‌ ‌Your‌ Marketing‌ ‌and‌ ‌PR appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Newsletters are among the best marketing strategies any blog can have. Marketing via email newsletters are significantly more effective than social media marketing in the past. Although things may be different now, email newsletters are still effective in keeping your readers updated about your blog.

Keeping a newsletter has multiple benefits, if it is written well. Here are some tips on how to write the best email newsletter:

1. Don’t make it ‘Spammy’

Keeping your readers up-to-date with the latest post or content is essential to drive traffic into your blog. However, make sure to remind them only every so often. Usually, a few blog posts are needed daily for any blog. Readers don’t want to get notifications multiple times, everyday. This will definitely mark your blog as a spam.

To deal with this, choose a ‘highlight’ topic or theme every week that tackles the themes of your new posts. Then update your readers that this is your theme for the week. At least, avid readers will get excited about new posts each time and won’t find the email newsletter annoying.

2. Keep the designs engaging

Keeping a general theme or design is good but it would be fun to change it up once in a while. Maybe changing up the color palette or font can create a drastic and upbeat change to an overused newsletter template.

Old school newlsetters are tough to beat also. However, there are new trends of interactive email newsletters now. There are free interactive newsletter templates available online. Keep your designs engaging and fun to read, it could be a refreshing break from typical newsletters we receive from school, work, or the bank.

3. Don’t forget your call to action buttons

The main point of an email newsletter is to drive traffic towards a blog or a website. If you forget your call to action  buttons, the purpose of an email newsletter is defeated entirely. Make sure that the readers know what to do after they read the newsletter, and make sure it will drive them to your blog or website.

4. Keep information concise and easy to read

Newsletters are some of the first or last things anyone opens whenever they log on to their emails. And we know why people open their emails – to work. Newsletters are there for short mental breaks we take during work. If newsletters are long and would take too much time to read, many people might actually not bother to check it out at all.

Maybe the use of infographics are a great way to reduce the wordiness of a newsletter. Keep important information in bullet form, a chart, or a graph. Just keep it easy to read, engaging, and concise.

5. Make it clear what the newsletter is for

Why are the readers getting a newsletter? Is it for a content update? Did they receive a newsletter for an upcoming sale or promotion? Is it an advertisement? Or, was the newsletter an announcement for some changes in the blog? Make sure the readers know why they are receiving the newsletter before they even read through it. If readers don’t see the point or importance of any of your blog’s newsletters, they might mark you as a spam in the future. We don’t want to go directly to the spam folder.

The best way to do this is to put it in the email subject or as the title of the newsletter.

6. Learn how to measure how effective the newsletter is

Newsletters are written and given out not just to update readers but also to boost the rates of blogs and websites. This, albeit not difficult to measure, can be tough to analyze and interpret. There are many free tools available online that helps bloggers measure the effectiveness of their newsletters. These tools could measure click-throughs, conversion rates, and more.

Also, keep a log of the different designs and styles you have written in the past, group them together, and track which styles and designs perform better. Also, keep in mind which kinds of newsletters are opened more often by subscribers.

The list goes on but these are the most important

Learning how to write the best email newsletter is essential in growing a website or a blog. Keeping in touch with subscribers is a good enough way to establish a brand following. This could eventually lead to brand loyalty. For any blog, this loyalty and following is essential to keep the blog exciting and active.

Also read:The Benefits of Making Your Blog an LLC

The post How to Write the Best Email Newsletter appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Here are some well-established, and trusted content syndication platforms to help bloggers reach a wider audience:

Here are some content syndication platforms that offer their services for free:

Quora

Basically, Quora is known as a knowledge-sharing platform. It is a community where users can answer other users’ questions. But, Quora also has a feature where they allow their users to publish blog posts on their platform. This blog-posting feature of the website was officially launched in 2013.

This is a great plat to re-publish articles because there are so many communities within the platform. Also, there are many interesting and trending topics within the website where bloggers could share their knowledge and expertise.

LinkedIn

This website hosts blogs that they believe are highly useful for their clientele. The benefit of republishing work on LinkedIn is bloggers could get known well and wide for their expertise. When sharing knowledge with the LinkedIn community, it is sure to gain impressions from many professional networks all over the world. Whenever any work is “liked” by a person, their network will be able to see the article or blog post on their feeds.

Medium

This platform has one of the largest writer-base on the internet. The website is highly ranked and it is surely a great way to republish a blog-post. If bloggers want their content shared on an “SEO-optimized” platform, Medium is probably one of the best places to do so.

Since the platform has many users, it is quite easy to build a network and a stable following. It is also easy to re-direct traffic to the original blog site. Not only is the website free, but Medium also pays its writers well. The platform also allows its users to build an email list. This will surely allow bloggers to have internet reach.

Mix

This platform is one of the many ways bloggers can build up traffic on their websites. When the content sharing website known as StumbleUpon was closed down, they moved most of their data and content to the Mix website. This means that this platform is well established and is a great SEO-optimized place for bloggers to post their work.

Unlike other websites, Mix is known as a “content discovery platform”. Readers go to this site to find great content about interesting topics. There are many ways to get internet traffic from using Mix. Simply, it is about creating a “Mix” or a group of blog posts about a certain topic. The concept is to group together personal work with other sources.

Here are some paid content syndication platforms:

Outbrain

Almost 400 big-named companies like CNN use Outbrain for their content. Mainly, the purpose of Outbrain is to create a wider reach for blog posts and brands. It is more of a marketing website than a content sharing platform.

Websites could republish their content on the platform. Bloggers are also allowed to post ads of their blogs or content on Outbrain. The original host shall pay Outbrain for every click and interaction users make with the content on the platform.

The great thing about Outbrain is that it allows its users to set a daily limit or budget they are willing to spend each day. This way bloggers will not get surprised with their bill.

Taboola

This is absolutely similar to Outbrain. One of the main differences is that Taboola allows setting a monthly budget that could be broken down daily. The platform advertises itself as a “discovery platform” that creates a feed for its users based on their interests. Users could log-in to simply follow content or they could also use the platform to post content. Users could create landing pages with links leading to an original blog post. Bloggers could make money from using Taboola because it is sure to drive traffic towards an original blog post.

Scoop.it

This platform also advertises itself as a social network. Users are allowed to create boards, similar to Pinterest, that they could share with their followers and friends. Any user could connect with other users with the same interests. Bloggers could use this platform to publish their personal work and reach a wider reach because of the boards. Content could be discovered through search engines. Content from Scoop.it could also be shared on other social networking sites for more followers. Users can join the platform for free but they can only create one topic page. A professional subscription is only $14.99 per month.

Also Read: 11 New Instagram Tools and Updates to Improve Your Content

The post 7 Content Syndication Platforms to Reach a Wider Audience appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Social Media Posts

It’s the 21^st century, and every business needs to be on social media in one form or another. Even just having a Facebook page provides customers with another point of contact and it can speed up communications between your customer service representatives and clients. You should also be using this space to push out new content about what they can expect as customers of your brand. It is an opportunity too good to miss.

However, you need to make sure that your social media marketing has some sort of strategy. One of the worst things you can do is just post what you like when you feel like it. You need to make sure that there is some sort of purpose behind each post. Create a content calendar and make sure you follow it. By analyzing the data collected from your social media profiles, you should be able to see upwards trends and dips in engagement. From there, you can make changes as you need them to secure a more concrete rise.

Email Marketing

Too few people nowadays do not realize the value of email marketing. Every big brand tries to do it. It is an easy thing to set up, and it is easy for customers to opt in and out of as they choose.

So much useful information can be conveyed through email marketing, so it is imperative that you get it right as soon as you implement it. Concentrate on delivering high-quality copy and images that people want to engage with. You could use your email marketing as a sort of newsletter catch-up, or you could think about pushing out new product releases. Usually, blogging platforms will allow you to add plugins that create email lists.

To get to grips with what your customers might want through email marketing, you should learn more about how to use quiz funnels. These are handy tools that can give you a lot of insight into how your customers think. By posing a series of questions to them, you will easily be able to sort them into different categories. You can then come up with some unique content that will appeal to their demographic in the best possible way.

Improve Your Visual Content

What is the visual content of your blog currently like? Do you use videos and graphics to create a dynamic place for customers to explore? You need to make sure that you are striking the right tone with any and all of the content you are publishing on your site.

First and foremost, are your images relevant? You cannot just post arbitrary images that have no relevance to your business. It will confuse the customer and could detract from the message you are trying to send.

Next, you need to make sure that any content you do create is of the highest quality possible. There is no excuse for creating low-end content as it won’t appeal to anyone and it can make even the highest calibre of websites look more than a little shoddy. You need to spend time creating high-end, original content that contributes to your brand. Whether you take your own pictures or you commission a photographer to create a set of stock photos, there are many ways you can get a great set of images that you can then use for your company.

Analyze Everything

When you are using marketing to improve your business, you need to make sure that you are tracking any and all growth your company goes through at this time. As a result, you need to make sure that you are keeping an eye on engagement and trends and analyzing them to the best of your knowledge. If necessary, you could even reach out to a marketing consultant to see if there are any new trends you could take advantage of.

You need to remember that marketing is ever-shifting and changing. As a business owner, you need to work out which techniques will appeal to your customers the most. This will allow you to then shift other aspects of your business so you can be certain that you are doing your all. Not everyone within your customer base is going to think and act the same way. Make sure to take on board these tips to improve your blog and generate more income over time.

The post How to Improve the Marketing for Your Online Business appeared first on The Blog Herald.

If you are one of these people, ready to try something new, we have a few tips for you to help you succeed in this unique business environment.

1. Pick the Right Industry

You’ve definitely got to be careful creating a startup in today’s volatile market. Many industries are changing for good so make sure you aren’t simply duplicating another’s a failed business. Look at things in a new light and ask yourself how the world has been changed in the recent months by the pandemic. What can you do to address the specific needs of consumers?

It’s helpful to know that while many people aren’t spending in large amounts right now, they will be eventually! In fact, Americans’ savings accounts are becoming more full than ever! Think about what your neighbors are going to be buying with their savings. What are folks using their stimulus money for? Those are the industries you might want to target! Home improvement, for example, has soared during quarantine periods. Stay clear of industries that you and your friends have gone without during the pandemic.

2. Choosing a Product or Service

In addition to choosing the right industry, it is equally important to choose the right product or service within that industry.

If your skillset leads you to the service industry, get familiar with how services are being changed. Read through this guide to understand how a person-to-person business has changed.

If you’re wondering how to create a successful product read this to make sure you’re bringing a product into the market that can work for those you are trying to serve. Also, consider e-commerce as an option that will allow you to sell your product without a physical retail location.

3. Go Contactless

Convenience is no longer the only concern driving consumers to contactless delivery options. Ecommerce already allows for this and is a great option. If your business startup idea doesn’t allow for contactless delivery, make sure you do what you can to make your business as contactless as possible.

4. Sanitize and Wear Masks

If you can’t avoid having people interact face to face, make sure to show your customers that you do care about their well-being. Sanitize everything regularly and wear a mask. Although many of your clients or customers will not choose to wear one, it is important for you as the owner to show that you will do anything necessary to protect those that purchase from you.

5. Utilize Social Media

Social media usage has skyrocketed during the pandemic as people are at home more. Additionally, social media companies are making it easier to use their platforms to sell directly to consumers. Use these new techniques and post often on social media. You can increase sales and overall brand awareness as you build your new startup.

6. Select the Right Funding Options

Make sure you know and understand your funding options. While the pandemic may scare you into thinking that you need to hide away your savings under your mattress, don’t wait too long to make your move in starting up your business. In the not-so-distant future, the market may become packed with fresh startups and difficult competition.

To help you navigate through these times, find a CRM finance tool to manage your money and understand the relationship you have with customers. Profile clients and prioritize loyal customers while targeting promising ones.

Also, read more about what kinds of loans, grants, and other financing options you may have in 2020.

You may be surprised how quickly you can get started on your dream of self-employment! Don’t let the pandemic stop you from making a difference in your industry!

The post 6 Tips For Starting a Business During a Pandemic appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The procedure of using software to automate marketing activities is known as marketing automation. Marketing automation tools automate activities such as email marketing, social media postings, and ad campaigns.

Marketing automation tools can simplify some of the most strenuous marketing activities by automating them through software. These tools can automate the lead qualification process, nurture prospects into clients, simplify the email marketing process, make personalized offers for prospects, etc.

Here are the elements of marketing automation:

Lead scoring

This is the process of scoring your leads based on their chances of converting into a customer. This process is important to differentiate between leads who are simply browsing your website and those who are most likely to buy.

The scoring method tracks numbers and BANT credits. Based on this, your marketing team only nurtures those leads who are most likely to convert into qualified leads. The leads that are qualified are passed to the sales team. Not only does it filter your leads better, but it also saves a lot of your sales reps’energy.

Content management

Buyers want knowledgeable content that helps them through the stages of the marketing funnel, i.e., from awareness to purchase stage. Your content should answer their challenges rather than talk about your product, and it uses.

For example, if you’re a skincare brand and deal with acne-related problems. Your lead is interested in the solution for oily skin. If at this point, your content is focused more on how to get rid of acne rather than what your product is, your leads are more likely to reach the purchase stage. And this is what marketing funnel will do for you. Using automation tools, you can shoot the right content for your clients at every stage.

Segmentation

Marketing automation is only possible when you segment your leads. Segments can be formed on the basis of – the mode through which they became leads, demographic data, product, willingness to buy, spending patterns, or service line.

Listing helps you nurture leads the way they should be treated, thus, building a long-lasting relationship with them. Automation techniques are different for different segments. This would help your nurture different leads in different ways as you also save your time.

Inbound capture

Inbound marketing is a new technique that targets specifically on the prospects, i.e., the audience that already has a desire for your product. Understand your prospects – what they want from your brand, who are they, what are their problems, what can be the solution to their challenges.

80% of online researches is made by people who are seeking solutions to their problems. By providing highly educational and informative content, you are engaging your prospects, getting their attention, while also building a relationship with them, and increasing your business revenue.

Triggers

Triggers are personalized messages that are sent in real-time. Triggers are increasingly growing and are good for measurable ROI.

For example, triggers are used to indicate the probable time when the software should send the leads a product demo or product testimonials.

When a customer signs up for a newsletter on your website, the software gets the trigger to send them a confirmation email. When a lead has moved all the way from being a lead to becoming a sales qualified lead but hasn’t yet made a purchase, triggers are sent to the software to send content that may lure them in such as beginner’s discount coupons or free demo.

Marketing automation supplies your company with so many opportunities to step up your sales and revenue generation, while also saving your team’s resources and time. Marketers can use this time to think of creative strategies for new campaigns. There are various famous marketing automation tools you can choose from, like HubSpot.

The best marketing tools will provide you with the following benefits:

Reduces your staffing cost

Marketing automation is using software for the benefit of the company. Once you have invested your time & energy on a marketing automation campaign, the software can send thousands of personalized emails every day automatically. Regular marketing activities are performed by the marketing automation software; therefore, the need to employ more staff is reduced.

Less repetition, more creative

This is natural that when a repetitive task is being assigned to software, your team members save more time. This free time can actually be used by your marketing crew to get some new ideas for the brand.

The employees can strategically plan new activities for the brand, which are creative and bring a high ROI to the marketers. Marketing automation saves up to 74% of a marketer’s time. Automated mails lead to timely replies, also making customer engagement increase by 68%.

Accountability of sales and marketing team

Automated tools regularly monitor hundreds of leads and their behavior towards your brand. They will also inform the sales and marketing team when a lead is not being nurtured into a sales qualified lead.

These emails give the teams a heads up on the lead conversion situation. Detailed reports help you know if the marketing activities are helping the sales funnel or not. Once you have these reports, you can devise your next strategies carefully and make sure that your marketing team works in sync with your sales team.

Efficient and effective

Efficiency is as important as effectiveness. Businesses can make maximum use of their time by using marketing automation. 63% of the companies using marketing automation are outperforming their competitors. This clearly hints that not only is marketing automation effective, but it brings efficiency also. However, you must get it right for it to not backfire. There are agencies, such as Uplers, which can help you get your marketing automation right.

Upsell and cross-sell

Upselling and cross-selling happen when you attempt to sell a higher-priced offering to an existing customer in line with increasing your revenue. With marketing automation, you can send out emails informing your leads about your products as per what they are more likely to buy, which can be easily found using a tool and reports on their likes and preferences.

We hope this has been a comprehensive guide on why marketing automation tools are a must-invest for not just a small business, but for any business!

Sheryl Jones is the Sr. Marketing Specialist at Uplers who has a great experience in designing well-defined user journeys across the digital marketing domain. She leverages her digital marketing expertise to help businesses draw significant ROIs.

The post Understanding Marketing Automation & Its Perks for Your Business appeared first on The Blog Herald.

I get it; just because social media is so pervasive doesn’t actually mean it’s easy to reach your audience and market on the platform.

At least not yet – the 7 tips listed below will help you give your social media marketing strategy an instant boost. Provided you take action and implement them! Ready? Let’s dive in.

Tip #1: Take Another Look at Your Ideal Customer

If your social media marketing efforts aren’t landing then you probably have a problem with how you’re going about using the platform.

The problem with social media marketing is that it can be a completely different beast to other forms – if you have content marketing on your blog down, you won’t necessarily have the same success on your social media pages. (Not yet, at least – more on that in a moment.)

Instead, sit down and do a deep analysis of who your current customers are (ideally the best ones, not the crummy ones you don’t really want) and then look at the profiles of who follows you.

Do you see a correlation?

If not, you likely aren’t producing the type of content your ideal customer is interested in. Before you make any changes, sit down and redefine exactly who you’re talking to.

You can do this by creating a Buyer Persona. If you don’t know what that is, here’s How to Find the Buyer Persona for Your Blog.

It will make every other tip in this list exponentially more effective.

Tip #2: Follow Your Success

I know I just said you won’t necessarily see success across the board, you can replicate it.

Let me explain; if you have a wildly successful blog for your B2C (business to customer) business selling hiking backpacks, but you’re making a huge push on LinkedIn, you may not be able to replicate the same results.

Why?

Because while your ideal customer and readers may be on LinkedIn, they’re there to make business connections, not think about purchasing a new backpack.

But, if you have a huge following on your website’s blog and you use lots of beautiful hiking imagery and include great tips, that will likely transfer over to Instagram, where your ideal customers go to look for new hiking locations and challenges.

If you share your beautiful images and portions of your content over there, you’ll likely see traction.

If you’re having success in one area ask your audience where they’d like to see more from you. Go where your customers are and you’ll see an instant boost in your marketing efforts.

Tip #3: Analyze

Are you taking full advantage of any analytics tools you have access to on your social media profiles?

If not, it’s time to start looking at them.

Sometimes, you’ll see that you got the most responses to X type of post, or by posting at a certain time of day, and it’s well worth trying to replicate that exact post with a new similar one to see if you have the same success.

If you find it, do it again.

Repeat successful strategies until they stop working. Too many people marketing on social media have one post that does well and think that it is the sign of an upward trend, not a specific trend for that type of post or timing.

Start analyzing your actions and test out new – or the same – strategies.

Tip #4: Up Your Interaction

When you get a comment on a post, are you responding to it?

If not, why not?

Replying or even just reacting to your audience’s comments and interactions on your posts will make them feel noticed and special (which – in case you hadn’t noticed, is the reason most of us are on social media at all) and will want to come back and comment again.

Even if all they wrote was “love it!” react with a heart emoji or simply like their comment. Start conversations with your audience and answer every question you get.

Even the biggest social media accounts have managers replying to comments, so follow their lead.

Tip #5: Share Share Share

Are you sharing your blog posts, videos, or podcasts with your audience? Do you share something of value regularly? Do you ever share a customer’s post with your audience?

It’s time to remember that loyal customers are worth their weight in gold, so make them feel special and try to help them out, too.

Share your content that offers them something of value (yes, tips and information count), share any posts they make about you with your audience, and don’t be afraid to pair up with other brands and businesses you have a crossover audience with.

Even if you don’t do any other content marketing, the odd “as a thank you for following us, here’s a 10% discount code you can use for 48hrs” will make them feel seen, special, and up your sales in the process.

Tip #6: Post Often

How often are you posting? I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but many social media experts are seeing results with social media accounts that post 2+ times a day.

Yes, that’s a lot to manage, but the more you post the more opportunity you have to get in front of your audience.

The only caveat to this rule is on what you’re posting. If it’s basically just spam, and of no interest to your ideal customer, it won’t help them or you.

This is where a great scheduling tool will come in handy.

And this also goes for blogging. You want to be consistent and post often. In fact, we’ve written a guide on How Often You Should Post.

Tip #7: Embrace Video

If there’s one major trend in social media marketing for 2020, it’s that you need to embrace video.

Throughout 2019, we saw social media platforms push video to their userbase and organically push video posts (whether a post or a story – it doesn’t matter) to audiences.

While it’s getting harder to be seen with traditional posts, if you can jump in front of your phone camera a couple of times a day to share what you’re doing or to share a helpful tip, you’ll get a boost from the platform itself, which is pretty much unheard of in our current pay-to-play social media world.

Your videos don’t need to be high quality and you don’t need to be camera-ready – in fact, some brands saw that engagement go down when they got “too professional” and so returned to using their phones for their video content to maintain a better connection with customers.

Here are 7 Elements of a Perfect Social Media Video if you don’t know how to create one.

Ready to implement these tips?

Once you’ve put these tips into practice, you’ll see an instant boost in your social media marketing efforts.

Regardless of your industry, always make sure to analyze, follow your customers, and listen to what they tell you.

Once you’ve got even a handful of loyal customers they will lead you where you need to go.

The post 7 Tips to Instantly Improve Your Social Media Marketing appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Focus on the Benefits 

Many companies make the mistake of focusing their marketing strategies on focusing on why they are better than the competition. This is a mistake because marketing should be showcasing exactly why your product is worthwhile, such as how CBD blood pressure tablets contain all-natural ingredients or how CBD products benefit one’s health. Focusing on the negative aspects of another company makes you miss your chance on what could be top-quality marketing. Instead of throwing your competitor under the bus by wasting your resources picking apart their mistakes, use that time to focus on the benefits. You know you have something good to offer customers, so you need to think outside of the box when it comes to getting individuals interested in what you have to offer. 

Use Professional Quality Photos

You should always have photos of the products you’re selling. These photos should be on every platform you use, including your main website and your social marketing pages. You can have good-looking photos by taking them on your own, but if you have the money to spend, you should use professional photos whenever possible. Professional photos will grab the attention of your customers more than low-quality photos. It’s also a good idea to have photos of every angle of your product. If a customer cannot see the product in person, then being able to look all over the product can help them make an informed decision about the purchase. 

Use Different Platforms for Marketing

When it comes to marketing, you want to prioritize your official website. This is where your customers will go to learn more about the product and make the purchase. You should have multiple platforms for marketing, though, for the best results. It’s a good idea to use every kind of social media platform to get the word out, especially Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This makes it easier to target your audience. 

Make Your Message Stand Out 

When you’re showcasing your product, you want to focus on finding ways to make your message stand out. You’ll need to focus on the structure of what you’re writing and ask yourself if your writing gives enough information to the customer. You’ll want to come up with some catchy content to grab your reader’s attention. It’s also crucial to proofread and edit your writing before you publish it online. This goes for anything posted online, from your product descriptions to what blog you may want to post. 

Keep Up With Marketing Trends 

The only way to stay on top of your game is to study marketing trends. Scope out your competitors and see what’s working best for them. Don’t copy their ideas, but use that as an inspiration to come up with something even better for your business. 

Marketing can be tricky when you’re first starting out, and it’s okay if you make mistakes along the way. It can take some time to reach your target audience at the capacity you’re hoping for, but it’s important to stay positive. 

The post Best Blogging Advice for Marketing Your Product appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Nostalgia serves a useful purpose, according to The New York Times, “Nostalgia has been shown to counteract loneliness, boredom, and anxiety. It makes people more generous to strangers and more tolerant of outsiders. Couples feel closer and look happier when they’re sharing nostalgic memories.”

Most people feel nostalgic at least once a week, and consequently, marketers of every strand have sought to use this to their advantage. Even in our ‘modern’ popular culture, we’re being transported back into the past for a nostalgia trip.

In this blog, we’ll take a look at ways in which marketers, particularly eCommerce sites can use nostalgia to their advantage when it comes to promoting their products and services.

Use retro color schemes, fonts, and graphics in marketing visuals

In many respects, the aesthetics of your marketing will serve a more important purpose than the words you write, especially when it comes to nostalgia. Images, colors, and graphics are more likely to trigger those feelings of nostalgia.

This might be the easiest thing you can do in terms of eliciting those feelings, so just change up your visuals with new colors and old school graphics. Any good graphic designer will be able to draw on any retro inspiration when creating your marketing materials – 80’s ‘8-bit’ video game graphics have seen a resurgence in many places, but things like tacky 90’s trainers and TV shows can serve that nostalgia buzz.

Source: https://bit.ly/3fuL5dl

For your imagery to be successful, you’ll want to combine the style of the area you want to evoke and give it a fresh, modern twist. Think about the toys, films, books, and TV shows that you remember from your childhood – something about their design must have drawn you to them, so consider how their use of color, their fonts, or their shapes could be used to promote your organization.

A few themes to think about when it comes to design would be the use of monochrome, halftone patterns, the use of neon colors, and signage, and you can’t go wrong with minimalist designs either. Tools like Canva, Pixlr, Crello, Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay all have the ability to help you find some inspiration.

Create videos inspired by old ads or tv shows

Video is very popular, especially on social media, so if you have a budget, definitely create some nostalgia-inducing videos. This could be recreating an old advert from your childhood or using a now outdated piece of technology to remind your audience just how much your world has changed.

So many recent viral videos have played on nostalgia to generate that all-important social media engagement. A few companies have done this to great effect. Old Navy, for example, have had plenty of modern stars in their advertising, but in 2012, they promoted their range of skinny jeans in an advert that involved 90’s heartthrobs The Backstreet Boys appearing out of a giant boombox, so a double nostalgia hit there. Even high street bank Halifax had Top Cat star in their adverts.

Nostalgia for video games has become increasingly more common, with Pepsi creating a viral video based around popular ‘70s video game The Oregon Trail and turbo-boosted the nostalgia with a smorgasbord of ‘90s references like bad haircuts and Tamagotchis. This viral nostalgia trend isn’t just limited to companies selling products directly to us either. The Graham Norton Show’s most-watched viral clip was the reunification of the stars of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for a very ‘90s Will Smith rap.

Think about how your business can use the latest innovations in the rapidly-evolving world of online videos to your advantage.

Go #ThrowbackThursday and #FlashbackFriday crazy on social media

#ThrowbackThursday or #TBT is always a sure-fire way to drive social media engagement, but these can be done in a different way – reimagine some of your products or services as if they are indeed from a throwback photo or video.

TD Canada has used the Throwback Thursday hashtag to link back to the history of their company and demonstrate how far they’ve come, posting a picture of their old credit card and comparing it to the new one to show how far did they come. Similarly, the hashtag is something Starbucks Coffee use regularly to evoke feelings of the ‘good old days’, such as this old-timey photo of their first coffee shop opening in Seattle. So think back to the early days of your organization and find out what’s changed, as people love comparing ‘then and now’.

Bring back the print

What is more retro and old school than magazines and newspapers? Create your own, with a retro style in mind, and send it out with every order you make. Consider trawling Instagram, Etsy, and Pinterest for inspiration when it comes to recreating the classic styles of old papers and magazines.

ASOS, one of the biggest online fashion stores, create and sell ASOS magazine for a very acceptable price. In it, they are including fashion editorials with products from their shop as well as interviews with interesting people.

While viral videos are great ways of getting your message shared across the world, old media such as newspapers are more authentically traditional, so don’t underestimate the power of putting your marketing right in someone’s hands. The style of old-fashioned newspaper adverts could draw the eye a lot more than modern, glossy print adverts.

The Jeep ‘See what you want to see’ campaign worked particularly well in print, as customers could see the advert in a different way by turning the page upside down, so you don’t need to feel constrained by the limitations of this particular format.

Be nostalgic yourself

Don’t just market nostalgia, be nostalgic too. Create a campaign with some stories from your brand’s beginnings, how everything looked back then – perhaps your first products or your first website. It doesn’t have to be ancient history – something from 5 years ago can induce nostalgia as well.

This Internet Explorer advert is a ‘90s nostalgia overload and was a popular campaign because not only was it showing you things to be nostalgic about – toys, games, haircuts, fashion – it connected this nostalgia to the company’s own history. “You grew up, so did we” was a particularly powerful note to end on, and it deepens that emotional connection to the past. Similarly, a recent Gillette advert looked back to its past and made a powerful comment about how perceptions of masculinity have changed over the years.

Think about how many brands talk about their history in their marketing, telling us how long they’ve been around and how long they’ll be around in the future. That definitely works in establishing brand credibility, but don’t just tell us, show us as well.

Conclusion

Nostalgia is a great tool for marketing as it is designed to elicit a positive, strong, emotional reaction in people. When done effectively, it can cause a campaign to take off and make an impact possibly even well beyond your target audience.

Whether your campaign is on social media, in print, email, or whatever you choose, perhaps the most important thing to get right is the authenticity. If people don’t remember what you’re trying to refer to, your campaign will be over before it’s even begun. This is why design is so important. Use every tool at your disposal to best recreate that sense of history and identity. Even football shirts nowadays are alluding to past designs and the history of their clubs to help foster that connection with their fans.

Think about what you’re trying to say when you use nostalgia marketing, and try not to just use nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Every ‘80’s kid will remember the Rubik’s Cube, but why use it if your business’s history, products, or ethos can’t be associated with the popular toy?

Nostalgia works. We love harking back to the good times of yesteryear and it can be tremendously beneficial to have your product associated with those times. Did you know that Werther’s Originals were only really mass-marketed in the late 90s? Yet they played on nostalgia expertly in the marketing, so many people now think of the sweets as something that has been around for generations.

Nostalgia marketing can be tough to get right and very easy to get wrong, but you’ll notice some incredible results if done correctly. As brands, we want to positively associate ourselves with our customers’ fondness for their pasts, which is why organizations of every kind – from small businesses to Coca-Cola, use nostalgia when trying to promote themselves.

Anita Sambol

Anita Sambol is a content strategist and graphic designer at Point Visible, a marketing agency providing custom blogger outreach services. She has years of experience in designing graphics for web and running social media and content marketing campaigns. She loves cooking and football.

The post The Good Old Days – 5 Ways To Use Nostalgia Marketing In Ecommerce appeared first on The Blog Herald.

Overall First Impression

When you first arrive on your blog, how does it look? How quickly does it load? What is the first impression that you get? You can become accustomed to how the blog looks on your own computer and smartphone and never really think about the fact that your average customer might not have the hardware and internet speed that you have. 

Next, ask yourself, “What is this blog about?” Obviously, this isn’t going to give you the same level of feedback as a UX study will, but it’s a start. If you really want to take this up a level, borrow a person who has never been on your website and watch them interact with it. Take it further by doing that with several people.

Click Around

Sometimes you’ve just got to click around. Is that a song lyric? If not, maybe it should be.  As with the first step, you’re checking for responsiveness and page load times. If your website performs sluggishly on a slower connection, you’ve got a project to tackle. But that’s okay – at least you know about it now, and you’re going to do something about it.

What do the various pages look like on this different computer screen? This is important, as well. Does your blog design hold up?

Use Every Sign-Up Form and Contact Form

For this exercise, it’s helpful to create a throwaway email account or two. Sign up for every offer your website has, and fill out the contact form. Observe the flow of the experience on your blog itself, and then in your email. This could be confirmation emails, drip campaigns, and so on. This one may take a little time, especially in the case of drip campaigns. Continue to monitor them. 

Are you using an SMS marketing platform? This would be a great time to go through that process, although if you’re using a computer in a public library, you may want to mute your phone to avoid getting shushed by the librarians. 

Assemble Your Notes

The time to type up your notes into a cohesive list of potential issues with your website and marketing flow is right away. Do it right there at the library, while the experience is fresh in your mind. Don’t hold back; you can brainstorm. Be detailed and be emotional about it. You’ll set these notes aside once you’re done and return to them with a fresh perspective in a few days.

Make a Game Plan

A few days after you’ve assembled your notes and set them aside, revisit them. Your notes will probably be wordy and opinionated. From this brain dump, you’ll want to glean the root issues and compile a plan of attack. Is page load time an issue? How can you work to improve this? Some initial steps might be to check your hosting server’s speed and to examine methods to optimize how quickly your website loads. This might be as simple as a WordPress plugin or as complex as re-optimizing all of the images on your website.

Once you have an actionable list, you’re ready to begin making improvements. Once you’ve worked your way through the list, you should repeat the process. Go back to the library, get onto one of the computers, and see if the changes you’ve made have made a difference.

The post A Successful Marketing Chain Examined appeared first on The Blog Herald.

The beauty of marketing lies in the evolution of strategies and methods that adapt and change as the years go by, as more and more tools are introduced. First, it was Web 2.0 that marketers needed to adapt to, but fast forward a few more years, it’s now Web 3.0. 

While digital marketing has taken a huge portion of marketing tactics, budget and focus, however, experiential marketing goes hand-in-hand to extend and convert customers on a different playing field, and companies with tangible products and services need to pay attention. 

8 Best Affiliate Marketing Plugins For Your Blog

If you want to get ahead of the curve, here are ten principles of experiential marketing you need to enhance and pay attention to in your next campaign.

10 Principles of Experiential Marketing in 2020

1. Listening to Your Audience

One of the most important foundations of any marketing strategy, whether it is social media or experiential marketing techniques, is listening to your target market. How do you listen? Many social media platforms nowadays provide ‘Insights,’ which give you statistics of where they are from, their interests, who they are, what do they identify with, and so on. Once you have gathered these details, use this data to create experiential marketing content that is tailored to their interests and needs, and spark conversations that lead to sales. Digital data is not just for the digital playground. 

2. Focusing on specialized content

Too much fluff from any brand, and you’ll end up having people unfollow you or unsubscribe. The same is said for events, campaigns, and physical marketing efforts. Specialized content is what you need here because it builds a strong brand. So instead of saying things like ‘a one-stop solution for printing,’ craft your message with something like ‘exclusive purveyor of premium letterpress invitations and bespoke printing services.’ Sounds classy, doesn’t it?

3. You want quantity and quality

Let’s face it; if you have a marketing trailer at a tradeshow or event, you want to attract a crowd. So when it is a mobile marketing vehicle, a booth, or a marketing trailer, your main goal is to have content that attracts. But make sure you before they leave, you get a tie in- whether its a business card, signup form, contact detail, etc. as this can be generated into quality leads.

4. Patience is Virtue

It takes time to build an audience, especially at trade shows, where there are plenty of other brands vying for the same attention from the attendees. As such, having great content, a well-designed booth, trailer, or virtual environment alone is not enough. You also need engaging spokespeople and promoters to speak to the people coming in and walking by your booth. It’ll take a little effort at the beginning, but ones the crowds start coming in, there’s no stopping them. 

5. What’s Offline Will Go Online

Remember that whatever your target audience experiences at your experiential setup, it will go online through selfies, reposts, tweets, uploads, videos, and stories. When creating an experiential marketing campaign, keep in mind that your content will go online, so create an experience that encourages social media activity. Sharing and discussing your content on a user’s account enables you to reach new entry points and give potential customers more ways to find you. 

6. Social Media Influencers

Why limit the brand experience to just promoters? If you have identified social media influencers that champion your brand, why not associate yourself with them? They already have the quality audiences and leads, and they are most likely already interested in your product, business, or service. Connect with them- don’t shun them. Get them to collaborate with you to enhance the brand experience. Build relationships with your influencers- they will share your content with their followers, multiplying your reach, and making your brand more down-to-earth and accessible.

7. Adding Value to your Conversation

If all you do is promote and promote your products and services, talk about your flash sales, and how amazing your product is, people will stop listening. Part of experiential marketing is also sharing, liking, and being involved in topics related to your brand as well as jumping on the bandwagon of viral trends, political or social events that are happening in your country and in the world as well as corresponding to your audiences. You must add value to your conversations and activities because this will develop relationships with your audience. 

8. Acknowledging your audience

Knowing who your audience is extremely vital to any marketing campaign. Building online relationships is one of the surest ways of online and offline marketing success. Sure there is no point reaching out to every person that tags you or comments- you might just create a storm! But once in a while, where valid (and really use your discretion on this), it is proper to respond to your audience, especially when they’ve asked questions or have constructive suggestions. This is an extremely vital post-event when people are still talking about you. 

9. Be Accessible

One of your events is done and dusted, and you’re closed up your mobile marketing trailer for the day, the work must still go on and extend to your online space. Publishing your content on the first day of the week after an event and then not posting up anything for the next three months will not do you any favors. To be relevant and accessible, you need to post up content at a good pace. Be consistent, but do not over-share (this can also cause you to lose your fan base). If followers see too little or too much from you, they will not hesitate to unfollow you. It only takes one click. 

If you are looking to create a one-of-a-kind, unforgettable experiential marketing experience in need of professionals who can create mobile marketing vehicles, mobile museums, and anything else you’re envisioning for your next event, click here to find out more. It’s time your audience talked about you both online and offline. 

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