February 15, 2018
5 Incredibly Effective Digital Marketing Strategies That Most Marketers Are Too Afraid To Try
What are you doing to embrace and tackle marketing industry changes? Are you afraid to try new things? Or are you fearless?
One of the reasons I am so passionate about the marketing industry is the anticipation of changes, and ability to experiment with new marketing tactics and efforts.
Taking chances is often what separates top marketing professionals from novices. But how can you separate fads from educated risks? Take a look at the top strategies I’ve identified that most marketers might deem risky, may not be aware of, or not fully understand.
These are risks, yes, but they are risks that are worth taking.
1. Switch from outbound to content marketing
In the past, it was enough to highlight your product or service and the hundreds of fantastic features and capabilities. These days, you have to add value to your brand and product/service with content that teaches and establishes you as a thought leader and an expert. Why should your customers believe in what you’re selling?
It might scare you to switch to an inbound format that teaches and nurtures your prospects. How will they know what you offer, you ask? How will we sell and generate leads without pushing our product? Content marketing can be scary to adopt because it relies on your expertise and puts the ball in your prospects court.
In contrast, content marketing is shown to drive more traffic and leads than outbound marketing. According to Demandmetric content marketing generates as many as three times more leads than outbound marketing.
2. Interactive content
As content marketing rises in popularity, pushing through the clutter is becoming more and more difficult for all of us. But even though we know we must differentiate ourselves from the pack, we can be hesitant to make our basic content more interactive and exciting.
Interactive content can draw more attention to your messaging while increasing your engagement on powerful social media sites. Quizzes, ROI calculators and interactive infographics can help you convey your brand’s story in a more dynamic fashion.
As a bonus, eye-catching, interactive, fun content can draw the attention or industry publications in addition to attracting prospects. As a result, you can extend your reach and continue driving traffic and high quality links to your site and blog.
3. Embrace up-and-coming social media channels
While there remains a place for LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, new social media channels will allow you to reach consumers in new and exciting ways. Additionally, new channels allow you to explore more creative methods of telling your stories and conveying who you are.
Snapchat, Instant Articles on Facebook, and Instagram Stories provide companies and even professionals a channel to experiment and target specific groups and audiences. As a bonus, new and exciting social media channels are often a great place to promote the interactive contentdiscussed above.
4. Developing content for real people, not algorithms
As a marketer, you may have gotten in the habit of developing and creating content that will highlight your company, blog, business or ideas at the top of the search engines.
These days you’ve got to step out of your box and think about your content in the context of your reader’s desires, fears, worries and needs.
Creating content that is displayed in front of thousands of sets of eyes is no longer enough to set you apart. Instead, readers expect real ideas that are well written and display complex and interesting ideas and thoughts.
While SEO is still very important, don’t be afraid to put your audience and their needs and wants first and consider your page rank secondarily.
Instead of using keywords to draw more traffic from search engines and their algorithms, use keywords to highlight your points and draw readers in by providing information that is valuable to your audience.
5. Reuse and repurpose your top content
Even your loyal readers may not see your content initially. It could take several touches and multiple channels to get through to them. Try reposting your top blog posts with refreshed titles or new visuals.
Utilize that content in a digest newsletter format to drive traffic to content that your audience’s peers have enjoyed (it can be tough to resist content that we know our peers and colleagues have enjoyed).
Want more traffic? Automate that refreshed and repurposed content for periods when it’s relevant or for different days or times to attract new readers who may not have engaged the first time around.
According to Curata, only 29% of marketers are reusing/repurposing content, which means many marketers are only putting their messaging in front of their audiences one time: they’re missing out on valuable clicks, impressions and engagement.
Conclusion
We’re often afraid of the uncertain. We get stuck doing the same marketing activities over and over again in an effort to remain comfortable. We know our metrics for what we’ve been doing. We have goals for those efforts. We know what to expect.
Getting over our fears is as simple as widening our expectations and being ok with not knowing exactly what to expect from our marketing efforts. Try something new. By taking small steps and measuring your efforts very closely, you might find that your strategies are not enough.
You might try something that doesn’t work or isn’t right for your audience. But more importantly, you might find something that is a clear win and helps you change the course of your marketing efforts, your business and messaging.
Written by: ,
Marius Masalar - Unsplash
After reading "Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster and Starman Leave Earth Forever in This Final Photo" article by Space.com (View Article Here), I wanted to share this other article I came across about previous marketing moves Elon Musk has made in the past that are also brilliant.
I should also add I'm sort of obsessed with Elon Musk.
Some of the most successful marketing tactics that Tesla used to build its following seemed completely insane at first. Here's how to apply them to your own brand.
Not many brands are as fascinating as Tesla.
When Elon Musk built his brand, it wasn't the first automotive manufacturer. It wasn't even the first to bring an electric vehicle to market. So how did he grab our attention?
The fact is, Tesla is a fascinating concept to begin with. But on top of building personal vehicles that drove like race cars, Musk used some marketing tactics that may have seemed counterintuitive.
Rather than focusing on what to TELL his customers and prospects, he focused on how the world saw his brand for what he DID. And the world was fascinated by the Tesla brand.
Any company, in any industry, can fascinate by applying these innovative marketing tactics.
1. Cult-like charging stations
Imagine driving up to a charging station. Every other car there is a Tesla. And every other driver is a Tesla owner. No Mercedes, no Lexus, no Porsche. Now that's an exclusive form of service.
It's almost like a fan base club house. Tesla owners talk to other Tesla owners. It's a love fest.
When people feel that they're part of the select few, they're more committed. And they make people on the outside want to get inside to see what all the fuss is about, building a sort of exclusivity.
Are there exclusive offers that you can extend to your own customer base? Think about hosting a luxurious customer event so that you can organically build a network of raving fans.
2. Encouraging consumers to "hold the puppy"
If you have kids, you might be familiar with this phrase: "I don't want to buy the puppy. I just want to hold the puppy." Of course, once you've held the puppy, you've already bonded with it.
Musk built a sales process all around holding the puppy (or in this case, the car).
Tesla car brand showrooms are "galleries" where consumers are allowed to look, but not buy. All orders are taken online. This might seem like a pain (and it kind of is) but here's the genius: It means that the salesperson drives the car to your home.
Once you've seen that car parked in your own driveway, it's really easy to project a future that includes your driveway and that car. And just like that, you've held the puppy.
Are there products that you can deliver in person to your customers' homes? Can you offer a service on a trial basis to ensure that your customers experience complete satisfaction?
3. The required NDA
Tesla retains ultra-confidentiality by requiring all visitors to sign a contractual NDA. All visitors. Even if they are just visiting the company's corporate offices, and not its research and design facilities.
The chosen few who do get through that confidentiality gauntlet feel like celebrities. They got access to something so rare and insider that few ever will. It says "There's something incredibly rare happening here, and we think you're one of the few who deserve to see it."
What if you made every client sign an NDA before receiving your product or services?
I tried this once, in a little experiment. Before prospects could see the plan for my new entrepreneurial course, they had to sign an NDA that they would not disclose any information about the course material. As a result, people perceived the course as proprietary, scarce, and intensely valuable. That grew sales more than I could have imagined.
4. Under-the-radar PR
Most CEOs seek high-profile forms of media to build awareness of their brand, endlessly grinding in the message with TV budgets. Musk, on the other hand, reinvents his PR in the same way that he reinvented the electric car. To share some of his most PR-worthy messages, he choses an unassuming platform: via a single tweet on Twitter.
In October, following the devastation of hurricanes Irma and Maria, Musk tweeted that he could rebuild Puerto Rico's devastated electrical grid by applying Tesla's existing solar energy or battery storage technology. Puerto Rico's governor Rick Rossello responded without missing a beat.
In March, in response to Australia's energy crisis, Musk pledged that he could solve the problem by building the world's largest battery farm... in 100 days... or else it will be free. (Yeah, you read that right. It's freakin' free.)
With your own business, find an opportunity to do a significant charitable deed or give away an awesome gift. The public's response may be all the PR you need. Suddenly, your brand is newsworthy.
5. Unexpected way to brand the car
Elon Musk says that Tesla is a battery company first, and a automobile manufacturer second. In so doing, not only has he opened up the scope of his brand for other markets, but he has identified the element that is often viewed as the weakest link in other electric vehicles. By placing his focus on his competitors point of weakness, he creates the illusion of superior quality.
Are there components of your business that will allow you to expand in unexpected ways?
A kitchen appliance manufacturer, for instance, can comment on the latest trends in kitchen design. A realtor can hold seminars on neighborhood safety or outdoor fitness. A financial planner can give clear direction and organize panel discussions on compliance with new tax laws.
Take a cue from Elon Musk, and the success of your brand will accelerate.
Article by: Sally Hogshead, Founder and CEO, How to Fascinate
February 5, 2018
Will Google's New Page Speed Criteria Affect Your Site?
If you visit your website on a mobile device right now, how long does it take to load? If you don’t know the answer, you might want to take the time to run an analysis. Desktop-based Google search has always considered page speed as a ranking factor, but only recently has Google announced that page speed would be a factor on mobile devices.
So what are the ramifications of this announcement? How will the new ranking criteria affect your site?
The Change in a Nutshell
Google formally announced the coming change on January 17, on the Webmaster Central Blog. Calling it the “Speed Update,” the plan is to slowly roll out the new ranking factor starting in July 2018—which gives you plenty of time to make changes as you see fit.
According to Google, the update is only going to affect the slowest sites on the web, and is only going to come into play for a small percentage of queries. In other words, the new criteria is only designed to weed out slow sites, rather than rewarding fast sites.
There’s no way to tell exactly what criteria Google is using here; for example, it’s not like all pages that take more than three seconds to load are going to be affected. In fact, on the Webmaster Central Blog, Google encourages webmasters to “think broadly about how performance affects a user’s experience of their page and to consider a variety of user experience metrics,” rather than spending too much time thinking about speed alone.
Will You Be Affected?
According to research from 2017, about 70 percent of sites take roughly 7 seconds to load on mobile devices. As a mobile device user, you likely know, intuitively, that 7 seconds is a long time. You reasonably expect your content to load within 2 or 3 seconds, and anything longer than that is frustrating.
While we don’t have an exact metric to work with, we do know that Google is insisting that only a handful of sites and queries will be affected. In fact, because relevance is still so important, a highly relevant piece of content can still achieve top rankings—even if it loads slower than average.
So will your site be affected? The simplest answer is “probably not,” since only the worst-offending sites are going to see the negative ranking factor.
If you’re concerned about your site’s performance, you can use Google’s own PageSpeed Insights tool to check the load times and speed of your individual web pages. While you’re at it, you can use the Chrome User Experience Report to look up other user engagement metrics for your site.
Why Page Speed Is Still Important
Even though your site probably won’t be affected by the new update, this is a good time to analyze—and improve—your site speed. Even if your efforts don’t result in a higher search ranking, there are many benefits to having a faster site, including:
- Visitor retention. Today’s users are demanding. They generally expect a site to load within 2 seconds, and may abandon your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Cutting your load time by even a fraction of a second increases the likelihood that a user will stay on your site after clicking a link.
- Actions and subsequent page visits. A quick-loading site is an inviting site. When users discover that your pages load quickly, with little delay, they’ll be more inclined to visit other pages on your site, and more likely to purchase with you.
- Brand reputation. If a user decides to stick around, despite an unsatisfactory loading time, they may think less of your brand when engaging with your site. This may negatively affect your consumer relationships.
Improving Your Speed
Let’s say you want to improve your site’s loading time—what can you do?
- Make sure you’re optimized for mobile. First and foremost, make sure your site is optimized for mobile. Use a responsive design, and ensure that all your content loads quickly and efficiently on mobile devices.
- Streamline on-page components. For every component of your site, including images, stylesheets, and scripts, there will be an HTTP request. The more requests there are, the longer it will take for your site to load. Try to streamline these components as much as possible to reduce the number of necessary requests.
- Get a good caching plugin. Get a caching plugin, and don’t play around with the settings unless you know what you’re doing. This will make the site load faster on subsequent visits.
- Minimize your image and video sizes. Images and video are the heaviest file types you’ll have on your site, so try to minimize them as much as you can without sacrificing quality.
- Cut unnecessary files. If there are files on your site (like images), or on the backend (like old blog drafts) that aren’t necessary, eliminate them. The smaller and more efficient your website is, the faster it will load.
Google’s Speed Update isn’t going to spark an SEO revolution—especially considering that page speed has been a desktop ranking factor for many years, and that the update is only going to affect the bottom tier of webpages.
Still, this is a good opportunity to review your site’s loading speed on mobile devices, analyze your key user experience metrics, and make tweaks to improve your site’s mobile performance.
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Photo by: Thought Catalog- Unsplash
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