Today, we’re outlining all the right and wrong digital marketing strategies you might be using. Based on reliable data and proven results, knowing what to do and what not to do is about to get a whole lot easier. And you have plenty of time to make the necessary changes to your existing plans now, so you’re positioned for BIG marketing results in 2024.

Website Presence

Your online window to the world and storefront is your website and, within it, your subsequent landing pages. But they won’t generate leads for your business if you’re not routinely updating and improving your web game. Having a website and having an effective, lead-generating website are two entirely different concepts.

What You’re Doing Right

• If you’re copywriting and sharing original content, you’re doing your messaging right.
• If you’re mindful of SEO, with strong keywords and linking strategies throughout your site, Google searches will find you.
• If you’re leveraging great graphics with user-friendly designs, your site visitors will stay longer.
• If you’re continuously using site metrics to analyze your website’s efficacy, you’re doing it right.

What You’re Doing Wrong

• If your website feels too spammy for salesy, it will be a turnoff to new visitors.
• If you’re not keeping up with website design trends and user experience preferences, you’re losing visitors.
• If your website takes too long to load or doesn’t appear well on mobile, you’re losing engagement.
• If you’re trying to manage the upkeep and visibility of your website without outside help, you’re likely missing out on improvement opportunities.

Landing Pages

Dedicated landing pages are great funnel tools. Here, information lives that outlines precise offers or announcements. And these landing pages can live embedded in your website but are only visible to those who click the landing page link. That’s why they’re incredible for email campaigns and clickfunnels. See what you’re doing right and not-so-right with your landing pages.

What You’re Doing Right:

• If you’re using landing pages as part of your sales funnels, click funnels, and email campaigns, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re using amazing headings and graphics for your landing pages, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re keeping your landing page content simple and easy to follow, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re creating new landing pages for each specific offer, you’re doing it right.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• If you’re not optimizing your landing pages for mobile devices, you’re losing your audiences.
• If you’re using links on your dedicated landing pages that take visitors away from your page, you’re losing engagement.
• If your landing pages are too complicated or make the users feel like you’re asking too much of them, they’ll stop engaging.
• If your landing pages are missing CTAs, your audience won’t take the next steps.

Content Marketing

All of your online marketing strategies and efforts have one thing in common – content. What you say to your audience and the message you send them should enlighten, entertain, educate, empower, and engage. And because there is so much content bombarding your target audience, you’ll need a dedicated strategy behind your content to break through the noise and make an impact.

What You’re Doing Right:

• If you’re engaging your target audience with relevant and valuable content regularly, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re keeping up with a consistent blog or newsletter, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re sharing industry news, company fun, behind-the-scenes content, and purchasing advice, you’re doing it right.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• If you don’t have a content strategy or road map, posting and uploading random content, you’re not building momentum or engaging your audience.
• If your content sells too hard, asks too much, or manipulates, your audience is going to venture elsewhere.
• If you’re approaching your content marketing with a one-size-fits-all method, you’re doing it wrong.

Email Marketing

Another online marketing strategy you should be using is email. And today’s email campaigns are far more sophisticated than ever before. Before you go buying all the software solutions and platform applications to start sending mass email campaigns, there are a few things you should know.

What You’re Doing Right:

• If you’re using sign-up forms and opt-ins to grow your email list, you’re doing it right.
• You’re using poignant, brief subject lines that grab the attention of the recipient without overselling.
• You’re segmenting your email lists and sending sequences of emails that speak to each of those segments.
• You’re customizing your email campaigns to conversationally connect with each recipient.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• If you’re buying email lists, you’re risking poor bounce rates, spam folders, and non-target audiences.
• Don’t send the same cookie-cutter email message to all your recipients without personalization.
• Don’t send any emails without first polishing your content for broken links, grammar, and spelling.
• If you’re using the same graphics, content, and subject lines without A/B testing and customizing, you’re burning through your email lists without engaging.

Paid Ads and PPC

There’s a misconception that if you spend money on digital marketing advertising methods, like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, and Pay Per Click, you’re going to see results. Unfortunately, with so many vying for visibility and positioning, there’s no guarantee your ads are going to turn into clicks, purchases, or leads. If you want to invest in online marketing ads, there’s a right and wrong way to develop your strategy, especially if you want conversions.

What You’re Doing Right:

• Do target your paid ads to a specific target audience.
• If you’re including brief and transparent calls to action, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re using quality graphics and mobile-friendly content with your paid ads, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re following a consistent approach and strategic messaging with your paid ads, you’re doing it right.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• Don’t blow your budget on paid ads with expectations of instantaneous results.
• Don’t blindly pay for digital marketing ads without monitoring the metrics and analytics.
• If you’re over-cramming content into your paid ads, they won’t have the same impact as brief, precise content.
• If you’re paying for online ads without testing concepts first, you’re likely overspending in the wrong direction.

Social Media Marketing

There’s social media for your personal circles, and then there’s social media for business. And that’s just half the battle. Then you have to decide if you need a presence on Facebook, X (Twitter,) Instagram, or TikTok. Stop chasing the hottest “do this” and “be here” advice. Instead, stick with the pillar do’s and don’ts of social media marketing.

What You’re Doing Right:

• If you’re routinely updating your social media business profiles, you’re doing it right and demonstrating an active presence.
• If you’re sticking to a social media strategy that includes a regular posting/sharing schedule, you’re building visibility, momentum, and trust with your audience.
• If you’re engaging, responding, and following your audience quickly and responsibly, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re using your social media platforms to provide value, fun, and informative content, you’re delivering precisely what your audience wants.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• If you’re trying to be on all the social media platforms without narrowing your focus on those channels that work best, you’re spreading yourself too thin.
• If you’re not setting social media goals and following engagement metrics, you’re flying blind.
• If you’re spamming your followers online or in their DMs, you’re turning buyers away.
• If you’re overusing hashtags, it’s working against you.

Search Engine Optimization

How visible your brand is online, especially when potential clients browse for things you offer, depends on your ability to master search engine optimization. If you’re struggling to know what you need to know about keyword strategies, local SEO, and Google’s latest algorithm changes, keep reading. Here’s what your business SEO strategy needs and doesn’t need.

What You’re Doing Right:

• You’re conducting keyword research for your specific niche business and including those keywords throughout your website.
• You’re crafting impactful meta descriptions that represent the page content well.
• You’re tying in local city/region information with your keywords to improve local SEO.
• You’re linking to other pages and blogs within your site as well as to reputable external sites, anchoring specific keywords.

What You’re Doing Wrong:

• If you’re over-stuffing your content with keywords, fitting them in where they don’t naturally fit, it can backfire in SEO.
• If you’re constantly changing your SEO strategy to chase trends, the inconsistency could harm your site’s performance.
• If you’re ignoring the search intent or motivations of your target audience, you’re not boosting keywords and SEO properly.
• If you’re not prioritizing mobile formats and responsive design, you’re missing out on Google’s favor.

Video Marketing

Video marketing isn’t just reserved for social media. A brilliant video can cut through the content noise wherever you’re engaging your target audience. From YouTube followings and influencer marketing to boosted engagement with email campaigns and social, video marketing deserves its own strategy. And there are do’s and don’ts to consider to ensure your video campaigns and efforts are driving results.

What You’re Doing Right

• If you’re planning a video content calendar with a strategy, you’re doing it right and will be primed to engage your audience well.
• If you’re sampling various video marketing platforms and channels testing for the best-fit channels for the message, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re keeping your videos short and value-packed with educational, inspirational, and valuable information, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re creating attractive and appealing thumbnails for your videos, you’re doing it right.

What You’re Doing Wrong

• Don’t use your video content as an infomercial, overselling your brand or offerings all the time.
• Don’t make videos with the goal of going viral only since they will lose their efficacy among your target audience.
• If you’re making lengthy intro statements for your video, viewers will tune out quickly.
• If you’re rushing video content without spending time on editing, aesthetics, and branding, your audience will recognize the careless delivery and not follow.

Hashtag Marketing

What used to be a simplistic pound sign has since turned into a wildly popular digital marketing method. Clicking on a hashtag (on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others) will take you to a feed of posts and content related to that hashtag. And there are brilliant ways businesses can boost awareness and visibility with a well-planned hashtag strategy. Consider these do’s and don’ts to make sure your hashtag marketing strategy is working for your brand and not against it.

What You’re Doing Right

• If you’re being creative and strategic with choosing what hashtag phrases you’re using, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re aligning your content with relevant, existing hashtag communities, you’re doing it right.
• If you’re verifying that your social accounts are public, your hashtags will be available and visible to non-followers.
• If you’re including the same few key hashtags with each of your posts, you’ll be building a growing community of posts associated with your brand and business.

What You’re Doing Wrong

• If you’re using too many hashtags within your posts, it can count against you in the visibility algorithms.
• Don’t string too many words together because they won’t be easily remembered or found by those who encounter them.
• Don’t forget to include a brand-specific, event-specific, or sale-specific hashtag to showcase your core message.
• If you’re only using single-word, popular hashtags, your message will get lost in the noisy space and hashtag community.

Keep this online marketing roster of do’s and don’ts handy as you evaluate which channels, strategies, and tactics are best for your business model. And when you’re ready to make a BIG impact with your content marketing, from email campaigns to ongoing blog series, let the copywriting masters at Ghost Blog Writers be your go-to team!

The post What You’re Doing Right (And Wrong) with Your Online Marketing appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

How’s your marketing? How are your sales?

If you’re assuming both are the same question, they’re not. In fact, there are clear distinctions between marketing and sales. And if you’re still chasing down best practices for both without separating them and setting proper results expectations, you probably feel like you’re spinning your wheels. And you’re certainly not seeing results.

When business leaders treat marketing and sales the same, they’re missing valuable opportunities to capitalize on unique differences in strategies and resources. And these leaders are usually overspending on ads that aren’t producing and wrist-slapping their sales teams too frequently.

So, separate marketing strategies from sales strategies – they are NOT the same. And ultimately, since your big-picture goal is to increase sales conversions, keep reading. We’ll show you how to tap into marketing and sales independently to achieve those boosted bottom-line results you want.

1. Marketing and Sales, Defined

Forbes says that “marketing establishes a brand’s reputation,” while sales “ensures the brand endures financially by generating revenue.” Similarly, HubSpot defines marketing as a way to “inform and attract leads and prospects,” whereas sales “works with prospects to convert them into customers.”

But I think I like the US Chamber of Commerce’s definition the best: “Marketing builds awareness of your organization,” while “sales turns that viewership into profit.”

The point to takeaway here is that marketing and sales each serve two unique purposes. And without understanding the distinctions, you could be building your strategies all wrong. You might even be one of the many businesses out there, frustrated because all your “marketing” efforts aren’t translating to sales. Do any of these real-life situations sound familiar in your business right now?

• You’re wondering why you’re spending ad budgets on campaigns that are only generating followers and likes, but no sales.
• Your marketing is handled by an admin or salesperson.
• You can’t figure out why Facebook isn’t bringing in customers.
• You only send email campaigns that feature “buy now” CTAs.
• Nowhere in your current strategies do you have a plan for “nurturing.”
• Your teams can’t distinguish between a lead and a prospect.
• Your current content strategy is really just a series of sales pitches.

Don’t worry. If these sound familiar, you’re not alone. And it just means you need a bit of marketing and sales strategy realignment.

Why separating the two continues to be a challenge

If you’ve been in business long enough, you remember the days of conducting business without the internet and mobile devices. Back then, your “open” sign was your marketing tool. And if you had a budget for it, legacy advertising would help boost sales.

The marketplace and economy are vastly different now. Businesses are getting in front of their audiences long before their audiences even know they want to buy. And it’s the understanding of that “journey” a potential buyer takes that requires a marketing strategy. The traditional methods for sales conversions are still relationship-based and intended to generate revenue. But business leaders still struggle to recognize that it takes a separate strategy to get their target audiences to the point of becoming an interested prospect before they try to sell.

Trying to leverage sales techniques using marketing strategies isn’t going to be effective. It would be like asking a random person on the street to come into your store and buy something. Sure, you might convince a few people to come in, but most will feel pressured and become disinterested. Only, when you come at your audience online with a hard sales pitch, they won’t just keep scrolling. They’ll never look back.

And if any of this is resonating with you and your current marketing and sales strategies, it’s time for a reset. Recognize the two are different and explore these insights for realigning your efforts.

2. What Marketing Strategies Do Best

Let’s start with marketing, the methods and strategies you use to tell the world, “Hey, we’re over here… selling something.”

Marketing your brand can invite your target audience to take a closer look at your business and offerings. But it has to resonate with what they want, prefer, need, and are curious about in the first place. This is why you always talk about building out buyer personas for your marketing. Once you have personas prepared, you can look to build a strategy to achieve the following primary goals.

Introduce your brand and offerings

Your marketing strategy will need to reach people who’ve never heard of you and introduce your brand. These messages will look and feel like introductions, not hard sales with intense calls to action. Just like when you meet someone new, you expect that engagement to be friendly, informative, and impressionable.

Attract leads

Your marketing strategy will also need to reach those who are familiar with your brand but maybe haven’t expressed any interest beyond the general awareness. You’ve introduced yourself to them. Now your marketing content and efforts should start to entice and attract them. Attracting leads still isn’t selling. So, you’re not hitting them with a big sales offer just yet. Instead, nurture those who are aware into becoming comfortably familiar and potentially interested.

Turn leads into prospects

Lastly, use your marketing strategy to create a path for leads to become prospects who have a genuine interest in what you sell. These messages and campaigns will use incentives to encourage leads to take the next step. It might be a click funnel campaign or a series of emails asking for a next step. But this leg of the marketing race should be preparing for a hand-off to sales.

Tools and strategies

When developing your marketing strategies, assemble the tools that help you do all of the above. And don’t feel pressured to use them all at once. In fact, you’ll have the best results when you focus and dominate with a select few. Here are the top marketing strategies to consider:

• Social Media Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Internet Marketing
• Blog or Content Marketing (Ahem, GBW can help here.)
• Print Marketing
• Video Marketing
• Email Marketing

3. What Sales Strategies Do Best

With marketing squared away, we can now look at sales, the methods, and strategies you use to tell your captive prospects, “Hey, let’s process that payment for you.”

If your marketing strategies are effective, you’ll assemble an ongoing flow of leads-turned-prospects who are ready to take the next step toward conversion. And it’s here that your sales strategies take over to continue nurturing and “selling” those prospects on making a purchase. These are the intended outcomes your sales strategies should look to achieve.

Recognize the sales cycle

When your sales team is handed a prospect, the sales strategy should first identify where the prospect is in the sales cycle. They’re interested, yes. But are they ready to buy right now, or will they need additional engagement before making a decision?

Solve their problems, now

To drive home the “buy now” result, your sales strategy should offer a solution to the prospect’s problems now. It’s not the time for gentle introductions. Now’s the time for precise calls to action and tactics that directly ask for the sale. If the prospect objects to buying now, the prospect returns to the sales cycle for additional nurturing.

Follow up on satisfaction

Your sales strategies aren’t done once a prospect buys and officially becomes a customer. In fact, existing customers are all interested prospects who could still buy from you ongoing. They’re also great resources for referral business and testimonials. So, make sure your sales strategy outlines a process for following up after the sale, ensuring customer satisfaction, and continued nurturing for repeat business.

Tools and strategies

When developing your sales strategies, like marketing, you’ll need to assemble the best tools to help facilitate sales and empower your sales teams to drive conversions. Depending on what you sell, products and services will require different sales techniques. Explore some of these sales methods to find your best-fit combination of efforts:

• Solution Selling
• Inbound Selling
• Concept Selling
• SPIN Selling (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need)
• NEAT Selling (Need, Economic, Access, Timeline)
• SNAP Selling (Simple, ‘Nvaluable, Aligned, Prioritize)
• Challenger Selling

4. Develop Them Separately, then Combine for Blockbuster Results

While you’re encouraged to develop your marketing and sales strategies separately and with separate expectations for results, the sweet spot is when you can achieve marketing and sales alignment. In other words, develop those strategies in a way that they cohesively support each other. And when you can find that magic wand, you’re going to need to buckle in for serious growth.

Align goals and objectives

When you develop your marketing and sales strategies, make sure to start both with goals and objectives that align. If both segments seek to achieve aligned results, you can successfully build them together.

It’s kind of like being a parent to more than one child. You love them all equally but recognize learning and parenting techniques might be different. Your marketing and sales strategies should aim for the same result but may get there differently.

Keep sales and marketing collaborative

Avoid trying to separate your company into “sales” and “marketing” teams who work independently of each other. Each relies on feedback from the other. And they need to be collaborative in understanding their respective roles and goals within the overall process of attracting and closing new customers.

Track and measure everything

Marketing best practices change. Sales techniques change. Your market changes. And the only way you can keep up with all these potential shifts is with data. With every marketing and sales strategy you implement, make sure you’re also tracking progress, effectiveness, and results. It’s the metrics and ongoing audits to review that will alert you to changes. And from there, you can make adjustments precisely where they’re needed.

Without metrics and data at each campaign or effort, here’s what happens. You see that you’re not closing sales, but you can’t pinpoint where the problem is. So, you impose strict sales quotas and demand more from your sales team. Only, because you don’t have data, you don’t realize the breakdown is occurring in the marketing aspect of your process, and you’re not attracting the right prospects. Your salespeople aren’t the problem; it’s the marketing that is no longer effective.

Stay flexible and dynamic as a company by staying on top of the analytics that demonstrate how well each marketing and sales strategy is working. Here are just a few key metrics to consider tracking for your strategies:

Marketing Data

• Conversion Rates
• Bounce Rates
• Click-Through Rates
• Website Traffic
• Social Media Engagement
• Cost Per Lead
• Lead to Customer Ratio
• Organic Traffic

Sales Data

• Total Revenue
• ARPA (Average Revenue Per Account)
• New vs. Existing Revenue
• Win Rates
• YTY Growth
• NPS (Net Promoter Score)
• Quotas Achieved
• LTV (Lifetime Value)

5. Strategies Aren’t Concrete

Remember, as you develop or review your marketing and sales strategies with these insights in mind, nothing has to be concrete. The beauty of strategies is that they can be adapted and changed. Realign your goals and separate your expectations for marketing and sales. Then, keep track of your results and get feedback from your teams. Test new channels, sample new campaigns, and get creative with how you attract, engage, and close. The winning combination for you can only be discovered by testing and innovating.

If during your strategy reassessment, you decide you need a better method and partner for content marketing, remember we’re here to help! The talented team of wordsmiths and copywriters at Ghost Blog Writers can take the guesswork out of any content-related marketing project you have. And we certainly know a thing or two about marketing and sales alignment, too. So, you know we can elevate your content game in the right direction and in alignment with your big-picture goals.

The post Marketing & Sales Are Not the Same: 5 Things to Know to Improve Conversions appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

But let’s be honest. The market is flooded with “leadership noise” from a whole bunch of people who really have no businesses offering advice, too. So, how can you get selective about which resources to follow?

Ta-da! We’ve done all the heavy lifting for you. We perused the internet and scoured all the “best of” lists of podcasts, thought leaders, and leadership influencers. Scroll through this list of leadership and business motivators and see if you can find your new favorites!

How to Find the Right Podcasts

It seems like everyone with a following or a title is taking to the podcasting arena. And what once was reserved for top professionals has now become a flooded space of advice, insights, and best practices. And it makes sense. Podcasts are great venues for marketing and audience engagement.

It doesn’t mean you can’t still find the right-fit podcasts to help you along your leadership journey, though. In fact, there are plenty of great podcast hosts out there dishing out just what you need to hear, wherever you are on your leadership or business journey. You just need to know how to find them and develop a method for tuning into those conversations that apply to your situation.

Keep these tips in mind as you curate your best roster of leadership and business podcasts.

• Don’t judge a podcast on one episode alone.
• Look for reviews and rankings from other professionals.
• Know what content you value most, preferably topics that always keep you learning.
• Ask around. Chances are, those in similar professional growth stages as you will have some of their own favorite podcasts and influencers.
• It’s ok to have more than one favorite and to change your mind as your leadership goals shift and change, as well.

1. BizTok for TikTok

Businesses are still trying to wrangle results out of TikTok. And BizTok, with Kyle Kaplannis, is a great podcast worth tuning into for all the TikTok for biz tips you need. Weekly, Kyle interviews fellow entrepreneurs and marketers to discuss the latest trends and brilliant methods for marketing success on the widely engaging platform. And if you’re not always available for a listen, you can subscribe to the newsletter for trends and insights right to your inbox.

2. TubeTalk

Are you looking for YouTube advice and video marketing tips? Check out TubeTalk, the weekly podcast that provides all the answers businesses and brands need to succeed with their official channels. Learn how to elevate your YouTube game and drive results. See what the latest YouTube updates are all about and how they might impact your content. And if you’re not into YouTube advice, someone else within your organization might be.

3. The Influencer Podcast

Literal millions tune in to listen to Julie Solomon on The Influencer Podcast. Featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and People, Julie is a monumental powerhouse influencer and coach. If you need a boost in mindset, productivity, leadership, and self-care, this is a podcast you’ll love to tune into every week.

4. The Mel Robbins Podcast

Here’s another must-listen gem to add to your playlist – The Mel Robbins Podcast. Mel Robbins is the most sought-after female motivational speaker in the world, and she’s a 5x NYT bestselling author. Her fun, energetic, and no-nonsense approach to life, business, and change is revolutionary to so many. Whether you’re growing or coping, Mel delivers the kick-in-the-pants motivation you need.

5. Creators on Air

Are you a creator of some kind? If you’re in marketing, the arts, or the creator economy, Creators on Air is a podcast must-listen. Discover advice about monetizing your audience, landing more sponsorships, or creating super-engaging content from actual creators who know. This is a great place to also stay up-to-date with the very latest in creator concepts.

6. The Dynamic Leader Podcast

If you’re a leader, owner, or manager of any kind, tune into The Dynamic Leader Podcast with Shelley Flett. Listen to interviews with other revolutionary business leaders and influencers to uncover how to improve communication, build strategic partnerships, grow your own influence, lead by example, and transform how you engage as a leader. It’s a great podcast for those new to leadership as well as those who are aspiring to grow into more prominent leadership roles.

7. The GaryVee Audio Experience

Unless you’ve been completely isolated from the business or leadership space, you know the legendary Gary Vaynerchuk. Also known as Gary Vee, Gary is a global entrepreneur, CEO, investor, content-creating master, and recognized public speaker. He might drop an occasional profanity, which for many leaders is just another reason to love him. His advice on marketing, business development, growth, and entrepreneurship is worth its weight in gold! Add The GaryVee Audio Experience to your podcast list!

8. Time for a Reset

Paul Frampton’s Time for a Reset podcast almost always finds its way to the “best of” lists for a reason. He interviews top business professionals and marketing savants to uncover and share secrets behind marketing in today’s ever-changing economic environment. Sustainability, marketing, profit vs. purpose, and organizational transformation are just a select few of the most recent episode topics to explore.

9. Coaching for Leaders

If you subscribe to the idea that “leaders aren’t born; they’re made,” you definitely should tune into Coaching for Leaders with host Dave Stachowiak. If you’re looking for more inspirational nuggets of wisdom, rooted in relevant conversations, Dave delivers. These are the cutting-edge leadership episodes you’ll end up listening to more than once, too.

10. How I Built This with Guy Raz

The interview roster on the How I Build This with Guy Raz podcast is downright stunning. We’re talking about the best-known business leaders and entrepreneurs from around the world. And Guy sits down with these CEOs, founders, and brand leaders for in-depth and profound advice. Learn about overcoming leadership fears and failures. Peel back the onion and discover what it really takes to succeed today.

11. Scale or Die

Dave Rogenmoser, the host of the Scale or Die podcast, believes if you’re not planning to scale, you’re planning to fail. In today’s high-tech world, strategies for scaling your business are key. Innovations and technology drive how today’s businesses engage, sell, and grow. If you believe your business could use some tech enhancements, Dave will show you how. And you can learn all about the best when you tune into this incredible, tech-forward podcast.

12. The Blogging Millionaire

If you’re more interested in staying on top of the latest Google SEO tactics, bounce rate reduction, and niche content strategies, check out The Blogging Millionaire podcast. Focused on improving online traffic through blogs and content, these insights are must-haves in your planning efforts. So much is changing with online engagement strategies. And this podcast always highlights the most pressing issues and challenges.

13. The Business Leader Podcast

Hear some of the best business and leadership advice from global experts and entrepreneurs on The Business Leader Podcast. Cover topics that range from goal setting and media to scaling and high-growth business applications. This is a UK-based podcast with plenty of relevant and insightful advice for US businesses and beyond.

14. Becker’s Women’s Leadership

Powered by Becker’s Healthcare, Becker’s Women’s Leadership Podcast seeks to elevate and explore conversations that lead to the empowerment of women in business and advanced opportunities. If you’re in a healthcare or wellness-related segment, these are incredible interviews with dynamic women in leadership. But even those not in a healthcare space can find value in these women-centric conversations and topics.

15. The Authority Hacker

Dive in with hosts Gael Breton and Mark Webster as the two veteran marketers share all the insights and real-life applications needed to successfully market, grow, and scale your business. See what marketing pros are saying about AI in today’s strategies. Listen to interviews with top leaders who share their secrets of marketing success. And they’re always sharing additional resources to help you improve your content and methods. Give The Authority Hacker a listen!

16. The EntreLeadership Podcasts

The EntreLeadership Podcast is the legendary Dave Ramsey’s podcast, with ALL the best practices and advice you need to achieve financial success. He’s a coach, CEO, bestselling author, and business leader mentor. And he takes calls and discusses real-life, real-time topics that everyone can find valuable in today’s world. Making the hard decisions, scaling your business, taking ownership of your own potential, and tackling business nightmares are just a few of Dave’s recent topics.

17. Dare to Lead

Some leaders look for more psychological motivations behind purchasing decisions, customer behavior, and team management. If that’s you, check out the Dare to Lead podcast. Brené Brown takes listeners through insightful conversations with thought leaders like Simon Sinek, known for his TED Talk with more than 60 million views. Brown helps leaders explore the deeper motivations and behaviors that contribute to business experiences.

18. A Bit of Optimism

Speaking of the legendary Simon Sinek, did you know he hosts A Bit of Optimism? This podcast delivers precisely what the name implies. It’s a spoonful of motivational wisdom and uplifting stories. But it’s not fluff – after all, it’s Simon Sinek. So, you know that it’s potentially going to be life-changing. Join Simon and his guests as he dives into leadership, business, life, love, and more.

19. The Leadership Habit

The Crestcom Leadership Institute offers The Leadership Habit podcast, a great resource for new and aspiring leaders. Topics cover all matters of business, from being an effective and strong leader to developing resilience through tough times. Learn about ethics in leadership and how to forge your own leadership career path from this team of experts.

20. The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcasts

The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast is hosted by none other than the renowned Carey Nieuwhof. Carey is a lawyer turned pastor and is the founder of Connexus Church. His podcast discussions dive into the nuances of leadership, including team management, time management, work-life balance, and personal growth. If you’re looking for action steps to take in improving your leadership style and methods, this podcast is certainly worth a listen.

21. Confessions of a B2B Marketer

This eye-opening podcast explores the complex nature of B2B marketing and seeks to uncover why some businesses achieve success, and others don’t. Host Tom Hunt takes a truth-seeking approach to better understand B2B marketing, demand generation, techniques, strategies, and more. Check out Confessions of a B2B Marketer for yourself and see which camp you fall into – and more importantly, identify the tips to ensure you become and stay successful with every marketing endeavor.

22. WorkLife with Adam Grant

This TED Audio Collective podcast features Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist, and his guests, who are some of the planet’s most intriguing minds. These conversations delve into discovering the work-life balance secrets every business leader wants to know. Tune in to WorkLife with Adam Grant and see what new techniques and strategies you can leverage in your own life.

Start Finding Your Best Podcasts and Influencers

Start exploring podcasts wherever you prefer to tune in and find your way to an improved leadership, professional, and personal life! This list of podcast suggestions is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s available in the leadership space. And once you dive in, you’ll likely start finding all kinds of great leaders to start following regularly.

And when you’re ready to apply all that knowledge and start sharing your own advice as a thought leader, let Ghost Blog Writers help capture your voice! Our team of wordsmiths is ready to help you launch a blog series or any other content-related projects. Reach out when you’re ready to get started!

The post 22 Podcasts, Influencers & Thought Leaders You Should Be Following for Improving Leadership appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

More importantly, business leaders should think about what they want their social media to do for their bottom line. Branding is necessary but harder to measure than marketing. Marketing is measurable but doesn’t always result in sales. And the yardsticks you use to measure all your efforts can be deceiving.

So, what social media strategies actually work in today’s market for driving sales? And which techniques and trends aren’t going to generate bottom-line results?

Keep reading. We’ll shed some valuable social media strategy light on what works and what doesn’t.

Choosing the Right Social Channels and Strategies

Before you make any changes to your current strategy, take a look at what social channels you’re using. There are slews of options, and you may be tempted to try and represent your business across all of them. But you don’t have to use them all. And you don’t want to try and manage five social pages and profiles when you can achieve the same results and more with two.

In order to determine which social media channels your business should be using, consider your ideal customer. Use your buyer personas to help you determine what your core audience looks like, how they behave, and what they prefer. You can then decide which social media channels they use most to make purchasing decisions and communicate. Those are the social platforms you should focus on using and leveraging. And when you can precisely select the social media tools that speak to your best audience, you can then begin to carve out strategies for each that, upon execution, drive results.

The ‘What Do You Think’ Strategy

It doesn’t matter what social media platform you’re using, from Facebook and Instagram to TikTok and LinkedIn; when you ask your audience what they think, people will respond. When you’re able to scratch a topic that resonates with people, they’re going to tell you what they think. And it’s a great strategy to incorporate into your social marketing plans.

Here’s what HubSpot suggests as examples of the “what do you think” strategy:

• Ask for an opinion on something, probing their personalities.
• Play the irresistible “test your knowledge” type of game with your posts.
• Publish a poll or a survey about something easy yet meaningful.
• Just ask whatever questions seem fun, relevant, and engaging.

Get Your Social Media Audience Talking About You

Another social media marketing strategy that works well across all channels involves encouraging your audience to talk about you. In addition to the aforementioned methods of talking with you, look to post content that inspires your audience to share your posts or media with others in their circles. When you get people buzzing about your brand, you can gain some viral traction with your posts. Here are a few examples of this:

• Hashtags connect like-minded people and trending conversations. Use them!
• Use social media contests or queries that prompt your audience to upload pics or videos.
• Rally up some reviews by sharing and asking others to share positive engagements.
• Post employee or customer spotlights, promoting great experiences.
• Company announcements, new products/services, and news are always shareable.

Incentives, Competitions, and Gamification Work

If you really want to get your brand rally going on social media, tap into games. People love to play games, and they especially love to win things. You can use that to your advantage by creating trivia or contests. And with each winner, even the smallest rewards can give you brand mileage with additional shares, likes, and retweets. Additionally, some of the best contests are those that involve giving back to the community or supporting a local charity. So, get your audience involved and give back, all while promoting your business. It’s a win, win, win!

Social Media Is Perfect for Special Offers

Don’t over-stimulate your social media channels. Your clients will burn out from too many games, and incentives can lose their luster if you saturate with them. So, add another type of post to your social strategy specifically to promote special offers. These are short, vibrant posts that ask your audience to do something, usually clicking a link or buying. Here are some offers that make for great social media content:

• Instant discounts or coupons
• Seasonal or holiday-related promotions
• Memberships or subscription deals
• Free shipping or value-adds

Here’s the other thing. Try not to promote the same special too often. A “special” that happens all the time no longer remains “special.” Change things up and experiment with various perks and deals to see which generates more social media engagement. Remember to follow these tips when creating your offers, too:

• Make your discounts valuable (free or 20% off are great)
• Choose an engaging image or video asset to go with your offer
• Put a timeframe on your offer (FOMO)

Social Media as a Lead Magnet

When you dangle the carrot, you can lead the horse to water without force. The same principle applies to your prospects on social media. You don’t have to come at them with a hard-sale offer. And while you can get conversions on social, these platforms are better used as lead magnets. Promote content that sparks attention, inspires interest, and moves potential prospects further down your sales funnel.

Instead of direct conversion efforts, use your social media as a channel for dangling carrots that lead your prospects to take one step closer to a sale. Making your engagements useful to them, for example, with a guide or a free tool or valuable information, they’ll consume it. And they’ll be positioned in a more favorable decision to take the next step, which might be signing up for your newsletter. From there, they’re two steps closer to becoming a customer and buying.

The top two reasons anyone will ever take the carrot are:

1. You’re educating them
2. You’re authentically engaging them

So, use other marketing tools in your arsenal, including blog posts, videos, tutorials, behind-the-scenes, infographics, webinars, and downloadable assets on your social media channels as valuable content. And then track the metrics for these lead magnets to see which are more effective at engaging and moving prospects further toward purchasing.

Social Media Mistakes to Avoid (These Are NOT Working for Your Business)

Now that you have some fresh ideas for what you should be doing with social media, it’s important to address some of the social mistakes you might be making. There are obvious mistakes, like posting with poor grammar, sharing overly-politicized content, or losing your cool in a post. However, you can also make yourself a “not to do” list, including these other mistakes, to use as a guide before you implement any new strategies.

Being Post-Happy Isn’t Going to Cut It

Being an aggressive poster on social media isn’t going to make you land clients faster. And always talking about your business isn’t going to cut it either. In fact, it can drive the opposite effect. So, find a consistent frequency you can stick to and make every post in your schedule count. And remember to incorporate content that is relevant to them, not just your brand or offer. Once per day works effectively for LinkedIn. With Twitter, you can do two to five tweets daily. Facebook can be daily, with no more than three posts every day. And Instagram is just fine with a weekly posting schedule. Whatever you decide, channel or frequency-wise, stick to it. And as long as you keep the content dynamic, interesting, and varied, you can increase frequency as you see fit.

Trying to Sell to Everyone

Remember, your social media channels are intended to connect your brand to your target audience. And while everyone’s on social media these days, not everyone is going to be in your wheelhouse. Don’t put lofty expectations of results on social, especially through the lens of trying to sell to everyone. Not everyone out there scrolling is going to be interested in what your brand has to offer, say, or sell. Be specific about defining the targets for each social platform you use. And when you do engage, speak to those captive personas about their unique problems. You can use your content to educate, convince, and convert those within those buyers’ markets. For example, if your business sells windows, you aren’t going to win any sales among people who rent. In this instance, all your posts should address and cater to homeowners.

Ignoring Conversations or Mentions

Another mistake you might be making is avoidance. When you do finally connect with your audience, and they take the time to mention your brand or connect with you directly, you should respond. That’s the point of engagement – engaging. Make sure you have a process in place, whether it’s you or someone on your marketing team, to manage responses to questions, tags, and mentions. If you ignore your comments, you’ll be setting the expectation with them and everyone else watching that you don’t care enough to respond.

Negative comments deserve attention, too. Ignoring them will only hurt your brand. Responding unprofessionally will only hurt your brand even worse. Consider creating a response plan for how you will respond to critical remarks or disparaging comments. Keep it light, polite, and friendly every time.

Monitor your threads, too. What you start as an innocent or benign post could get derailed if others begin bickering amongst each other. Have moderators keep an eye out for unsavory directions your people might take the conversation. Bad publicity on your post or page, even if it’s not you, can make your company look bad.

Automating Too Much

Automation is amazing for business, especially when it comes to posting and managing your social strategies. But, like with anything, too much of a good thing can be bad. And if you’re relying on automation or AI too much, your audience will sense it and disconnect. There still needs to be a personalization element to your engagement strategy. There needs to be thought before you can offer thought leadership. And finding that healthy balance between automation and customization that will allow your social media results to be great.

Treating All Your Social Media Channels the Same

Each social media platform has its own superpower of engagement. You’ll be making a mistake if you’re posting the same exact content on all your platforms all the time. Learn the “language” and purpose of each platform you’re using so you can maximize its reach and engagement superpower.

Here’s a helpful breakdown:

Facebook: Great for engaging conversation and rolling out updates.

• Example: “I like cheese.”

Twitter: Great for news and customer-facing questions. The fastest outlet for real-time engagement.

• Example: “I’m eating cheese right now.”

Pinterest: The third largest networking social site, perfect for spreading visual assets and content.

• Example: “See how beautifully arranged my cheese is.”

LinkedIn: Great for networking in a more professional arena. Discuss trends and promote thought-leadership content here.

• Example: “My skills include quality cheese-eating.”

YouTube: Great for tutorials, behind-the-scenes, and FAQ video engagement.

• Example: “Watch me make, present, and eat cheese.”

Instagram: Photo and video dominant, great for engaging visual content conversions and brand awareness.

• Example: “Look at my cheese.”

TikTok: Get in on the latest trends using hashtags and authentically created video content that supports your image.

• Example: “I’m going to party over here, eating my cheese that’s bringing me joy.”

Conclusion

Because every business is different, every social media marketing plan will be different. However, if you’re able to tap into these few strategies that work well, along with avoiding the common mistakes that don’t work, you can set yourself up for engagement success.

And remember, whenever you need brilliant content for any of your social media platforms, the team of wordsmiths at Ghost Blog Writers is standing by, ready to create messaging that resonates! Contact us and share your social strategies. We’ll help you devise a plan that drives results across every channel!

The post Social Media Engagement Strategies That Work (And plenty that don’t) appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

Newsletter campaigns are an effective method for reaching both new and loyal audiences. They’re great for sharing news and special offers. They’re great for nurturing prospects through your funnel and converting. But they do require some effort in design, content, and strategy. Today, we’ll share everything (and we mean everything) you need to know about developing a newsletter marketing strategy.

Debunking a Few Newsletter Myths, First

If you have reservations about curating a newsletter campaign for your business, maybe because you don’t believe they’re entirely effective, you’re not entirely wrong. Most newsletters DO fail. But it’s not because of what you might think. Newsletters done wrong or haphazardly without certain elements will end up in the “junk” folder. However, if you follow results-driven methods for choosing a channel, design, content, and engagement, you can see sales and conversions almost immediately.

Here are a few other newsletter myths to avoid subscribing to as you consider implementing one for your marketing strategy:

I don’t read newsletters I get; why would customers read one I send?

Don’t base any marketing strategy on your personal preferences. You’re not your target audience. And newsletters are incredible for generating buzz, engaging prospects, nurturing leads, and building brand loyalty if executed correctly.

I need a team of designers and content writers to put together a newsletter every week or month.

Today’s newsletter and email platforms are delightfully user-friendly in formatting and design. Solopreneurs use them all the time. As for content, you’re likely already creating great content for your website, your company blog, or your thought-leadership initiatives, all of which make for great newsletter content.

People won’t subscribe to my newsletter.

When promoted the right way, your newsletter can gain traction among broad ranges of target audiences. And a few social media posts and some web effort can have customers subscribing in no time. PS: If your newsletter is exciting, offering something relevant and innovative, they’ll even pay for a newsletter.

Why So Many Brands Are Turning to Newsletter Campaigns

Ok, so maybe newsletters are worth considering. But if you’re still not convinced, here are some stats that might blow your mind. Brands globally are turning to newsletters as a core mechanism for sales, outreach, and loyalty.

• 77% of consumers PREFER to receive permission-based promotional messaging in their inbox, making it higher than any other channel.
• 90% of SMBs reported email marketing to be the biggest driver of both customer acquisition and retention.
• The average ROI for emailed campaigns is roughly $40 for every $1 invested (that’s 4,000%!)

Newsletters allow you to reach your prospects’ inboxes with weekly, monthly, or quarterly frequency. Because they’re permission-based, you won’t contend with spam. And over time, you can build a valuable database of customers who WANT to hear from you. Imagine the possibilities!

There Are Two Pillar Types of Newsletters

Yes, there are infinite design and layout possibilities for any newsletter. But cutting to the chase, there are only two pillar formats that work well.

• Curated, Shorter Newsletters: Compress tons of info into digestible bites and helpful details.
• Thought-Leadership, Long-Form Newsletters: Explore innovative topics in a dense format offering insights, analysis, and unique perspectives.

Any other “type” of newsletter is really just going to be hit-or-miss, as a “hey, subscribe and see what I send you every month!” The most effective newsletters, and we’re talking about those with hundreds and thousands of loyal subscribers, don’t feel like newsletters. Instead, they feel and are received as “niche news outlets,” offering the latest information and solving today’s problems.

To know which newsletter format is best for your brand and a complement to your existing marketing strategy, let’s dive into the benefits of each.

Curated, Shorter Newsletters Look Like This

These newsletter types are all about saving time – yours and your subscribers’. Think fast-moving, newsy topics or a rundown of “tips and tricks” or “five-minute insights.” If you’re in a financial advisory niche, for example, you might create a short newsletter that summarizes the latest Wall Street Journal news and stock market news into brief bullet points your subscribers can skim through quickly. You could save them the time and hassle of scrolling through their feeds for an hour or two every week by capturing the relevant details in an easy-to-read and graphically stimulating newsletter in their inbox.

Consider your industry and look to offer all kinds of helpful newsy tidbits, including:

• Politics
• Sports
• Pop Culture
• Trends
• Things to Do
• Community Announcements

Essentially, this type of newsletter says, subscribe now, and we’ll save you the time and trouble of researching the “latest news” yourself. These shorter newsletters are typically free to subscribers, too, since you’re essentially re-purposing existing information elsewhere. But you can still monetize these with ads or affiliates. And these shorter, curated emails are great for promoting sales and discounts using links to other areas of your online presence.

Thought-Leadership, Long-Form Newsletters Look Like This

These newsletters, while longer in format, tend to be very niche specific. When you’re offering thought leadership, it’s best to avoid broad topics or generalities and stick to one core category or topic. From there, you can offer more in-depth perspectives and insights, positioning yourself as a master of that space and leader in that conversation. These newsletters should inspire subscribers to want to spend quality time with them. They won’t want to skim this one because there’s likely going to be a big idea or ah-ha moment embedded in there. You’ll have to spend some time curating these since they require original thinking. The goal is to attract “smart” readers who want to walk away from your newsletter having learned something entirely new. As an example, let’s say you’re in the business of remodeling bathrooms. Your thought-leadership newsletter could bring all the innovative new fixtures, anticipated design trends, and uniquely specific details about toilets, tubs, and sinks.

Consider potential niche exploration in your industry and look for:

• Analysis
• History
• Psychology
• Trends and Predictions
• Innovation
• Technology
• Strategies

These newsletter types often get printed out and saved for review later or used as references and resources. Your audience will subscribe because there will always be detailed explanations and relevant insights they want to read.

Newsletter Groundwork: Strategy and Schedule

Once you’ve landed on the newsletter type you want to launch, the next step involves two prongs – content creation and platform distribution. Each are separate operations, but you’ll need to develop both at the same time. Don’t you dare try and launch a newsletter with a traditional email platform like Gmail. You’ll need to explore the newsletter-sending platforms and choose software that best suits your needs and budget.

Consider these elements of any newsletter service:

• Look for a drag-and-drop ease of use
• Look for sign-up form options
• Look for automations you’ll actually use
• Look for real-time analytics (open and read rates)

Choose your subject matter and make sure it’s interesting to your target audience of potential subscribers. From there, you can explore frequency. How often you send your newsletter means deciphering how often you can create compelling content they’ll find useful. Avoid sending too often as well as too infrequently. Choose a schedule you can stick to, and that will be that “sweet spot” for recipients. And then stick to that installment schedule religiously.

Content and Design Matters

When it comes to assembling an aesthetically pleasing newsletter with graphics and engaging content, don’t be afraid to start with templates. You can customize colors and logos, taglines, and layouts, so your newsletter feels like an authentic extension of your brand. Many of the platform software providers include helpful tutorials for creating base templates to use. Just beware that everything about your newsletter design should be in line with your existing brand voice, your proven marketing strategy, and your chosen newsletter type. Consistency is key here, just as it is with every other aspect of your marketing.

The content you share might be written specifically for each newsletter section. Or you might include links to existing (and recently posted) blogs. If you have case studies to share or other company news, they make for great newsletter topics, as well. For best results, invest the time you need to carve out a content calendar and brief with guidelines for writing and sharing. Work ahead of schedule, so you have content banked. Don’t get in the habit of writing or building your newsletter every week it’s intended to be sent. Instead, give yourself a head start and have two or more weeks of newsletters put together in advance. You can always do last-minute updates to certain topics, should your news or industry topic require.

Here are some other tips for newsletter content and design:

• Be mindful and leverage holidays for appropriately themed newsletters.
• Avoid over-salesy content unless you’re retail-based promoting deals and sales.
• Make sure any images you use are free use or appropriately cited.
• Every newsletter should be useful, timely, newsworthy, and customized.
• Great subject lines are paramount.
• Hooks and CTAs are also essential.
• Make sure your newsletter is mobile-friendly.

Attracting New Subscribers

Building a substantial subscriber list might take some time. And don’t ever buy email lists online. They’re ineffective, often non-vetted, and result in spam distinctions that could hinder your ability to send newsletters. Instead, start by using all your available marketing channels to promote the launch of your newsletter, providing quick and easy links for subscribers to opt in effortlessly. Create a marketing “newsletter launch” campaign with prominent “subscribe now” CTAs using:

• Your company website
• Company social media channels
• Internal teams
• Existing client emails
• Company vendor emails

You can also explore using incentives and contests to generate excitement about becoming a subscriber. Just remember to make it easy for anyone to subscribe.

While you create opt-in opportunities, don’t forget to add regulatory opt-out options, as well. It’s mission-critical that you understand the laws regarding CAN-SPAM, regulated globally. Getting consent from subscribers is required. And you could face steep fines and email privilege revocation if you don’t provide an “unsubscribe” option with every newsletter. The good news is your chosen email platform will likely have built-in tools to ensure you meet these requirements before hitting send.

Testing and Optimizing

The final leg in the newsletter launch race involves testing and optimizing. What you develop as your initial strategy, including content, sending frequency, and design might require changing over time. The only way to know how effective your newsletter is will require ongoing testing and improvement.

A/B Testing: 

Change up your subject lines across a few weeks of newsletter issues to compare open and read rates. But you can also change other minor details, like images, emoji use, topic formatting, and content types. Find the equation of elements that drives the most results and rework your templates accordingly.

Reviewing the Analytics:

Create a workflow that includes consistent review of the metrics and analytics. Certain topics might generate better results than others, guiding you to know what content to create more often.

Preview Before Sending:

Before sending any email, preview, and test-send to yourself or your staff. Make sure all content is free of grammatical errors, and the newsletter displays well on mobile devices.

Email Subscriber List Maintenance:

Take care of your subscriber list and make time to review your recipients. Email addresses change all the time, and you can clean up your list.

Armed with everything you need to develop and launch a company newsletter in 2023, you can be confident in getting started. Keep this guide handy as you work through your newsletter strategy. And remember, Ghost Blog Writers is here to help you with all the content you might need, from tips and tricks to more in-depth, thought-leadership pieces that resonate with your prospects. Contact our team, and we’ll help ensure you get results with every newsletter you send next year!

The post The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Newsletter for Your Marketing Strategy appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

Music and digital marketing. They are two completely different worlds, aren’t they?

Well, the association may not be an immediate one. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some valuable digital marketing lessons hidden in the discipline of learning an instrument.

Here’s what learning an instrument can teach you about digital marketing.

You Must Persevere & Have a Long-Term Mindset

While the pros make it look easy, learning to play an instrument well is a long-term prospect. Many don’t stick with it long enough to get anywhere with it.

You might be able to learn a few simple scales and melodies (e.g., “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”) within a short amount of time of starting lessons, but if you ever hope to be able to trade licks with the best, you’ve got to stick to the daily discipline of three- to 12-hour practice sessions.

In blogging, the widely held opinion (validated through stats) is that it takes at least six to 12 months to see any kind of traction or make any kind of money.

You can name just about any organic marketing channel, and the outlook is similar. You must commit to showing up, posting, and interacting with influencers and audiences, to see any kind of traction. And it usually takes months or years.

You Must Adopt Good Habits / Correct Bad Habits

Whether it’s the guitar or the trombone, good technique makes a world of difference. If you practice with bad technique, you will get better at playing the instrument the “wrong” way, which usually means having to correct bad habits later.

On a rare occasion, a genius picks up an instrument, plays it in an unusual way, and gets away with it. For instance, former Megadeth guitarist Marty Friedman’s picking technique is quite unusual – he bends his wrist inwards to avoid muting strings. Most guitarists find this a very difficult way to play, especially with any kind of accuracy or speed.

In digital marketing, the best habit to get into is to “keep the winners” and “ditch the losers.” This means doubling down on what’s working and eliminating the tasks or channels that aren’t delivering results. This frees up time and resources you can reallocate to testing other channels.

You Must Set Goals & Measure Progress

While practicing daily will make you a better instrumentalist, you will progress faster in the direction you want to go if you’re clear on what you want to achieve.

Let’s say, for example, you want to deconstruct the playing style of legendary American saxophonist Charlie Parker. You’d have far more to gain from studying the musicians he was influenced by than idly practicing scales or chords.

Digital marketing is the same way. While showing up to do the work daily will help you get results, if you’re clear on the metrics that matter to you most (likes, shares, conversions, etc.), you’re far more likely to do the things that will lead to meaningful results.

Conclusion

We’ve only scratched the surface of the valuable lessons learning an instrument can teach you about digital marketing. If you’ve ever thought about picking up the guitar, piano, drums, or otherwise, there is no time like the present to begin.

The post What Learning an Instrument Can Teach You About Digital Marketing appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

What you’ll do instead is paddle out to the middle of the lake and make smart use of your bait and tackle to attract and reel in those monster bass. And if you’re really interested in harvesting fish, like the ocean fishing professionals, you’ll have rigs with massive nets designed to scoop up entire schools of fish in one hoist.

Now, let’s pivot to look at your business model. Is your company fishing the right way? Are you waiting for new clients and leads to “jump in your boat” on their own accord? Are you dangling the shiny lure or lively worm from a pole to catch the big bass? Or are you harvesting en masse, like the ocean fisherman do, with pulley systems and acres-wide nets?

If you’re not sure which strategy your business is actually leveraging right now for growth and new leads, then you can benefit from this complete review of inbound and outbound strategies.

Definitions and Basics of Inbound and Outbound Marketing

Let’s start with the basics. Inbound marketing strategies involve methods for attracting customers with the use of engaging content through unobtrusive techniques. Inbound is passive, whereby you try to attract new customers without directly soliciting them for their business. These are the strategies you’ll use to generate and build brand awareness and loyalty. It’s designed to help people find their own way to your business through distinct message channels that help them along their buying process.

Alternatively, outbound marketing refers to the strategies and methods for attracting customers with a more direct approach. These efforts involve “out” reach with active sales initiatives. These strategies also involve content, but the channels are more assertive, like sales calls, email marketing, paid ads, and targeted landing pages intended to grab a customer’s attention and inspire them to take immediate action.

Key Differences and Expectations for Results

So, the marketing gurus have varied opinions on what percentage of inbound versus outbound is considered to be the best at producing results. Your business model, core offering, and buyer’s cycle will help you determine which makes the most sense to lean into further. But it can be helpful to first understand the key differences to manage your results expectations. For example, writing and posting a few social media posts isn’t going to open the floodgates of leads. And sending sales emails only works when you have a targeted audience list of recipients, not helping to do much for general brand awareness to new customers.

Engagement Differences:

Inbound marketing is passive, meaning you seek to engage only those leads you want. Outbound marketing is active, meaning you’re going after the leads you want right now.

Communication Differences:

Inbound marketing messages are customized, usually to segmented audiences, based on buyer personas you’ve created that represent a target market. Outbound marketing messages are individually personalized, intended to further the one-on-one conversation leading to a conversion.

Timeline for Success Differences:

Inbound marketing, because of its passive nature, can take several months or years to generate the momentum needed for sustained results. Outbound marketing has more of an acute timeline, whereby your direct sales efforts can take effect within a few moments of the conversation’s inception up to a few weeks to achieve sustained results.

ROI Differences:

Inbound marketing is practically impossible to measure with analytics. Because you’re casting a net of awareness and unable to individually track engagement prior to a customer reaching out, it’s hard to quantify ROI. Outbound marketing, however, is analytics-driven, with measurable data you can collect and review in real-time.

In the end, both strategies are effective. And both can be developed and executed for the best results. Just know what goals to assign to each campaign, and be prepared to manage your expectations accordingly.

Start with Your Primary Goals

Don’t be rigid with either inbound or outbound marketing strategies. Position your marketing and sales effort in a way that allows for dynamic shifting between one or the other, or both. Maybe there are busy or peak seasons in your industry that dictate when you engage heavier in outbound versus inbound. Or it could be you’re growing into a new market segment altogether and need a robust inbound strategy to build a lead generation funnel and brand awareness to a new audience. The key to knowing what you should be doing now lies in addressing your “now” goals and then your “later” goals.

• If you need sales now, go outbound.
• If you’re launching a new product, heavy inbound.
• If your competitors just maneuvered ahead of you, bolster both inbound and outbound.

Outbound Will Always Be Effective If…

What you don’t want to do is subscribe to the line of thinking that only one of these marketing strategies is effective. A business without an outbound strategy will soon fall behind. Here’s an example.

ABC Carpet Cleaning relies heavily on inbound marketing strategies, and whatever leads come in from Angi’s List, the website contact us forms, or from past cleaning customers. But their competitor, XYZ Cleaning Company, is actively surging outbound marketing and sales campaigns with paid ads, email blasts featuring cleaning specials, and EDDM coupons. Soon, everyone in town is trying out the other guys, leaving ABC Carpet Cleaning wondering why their phones stopped ringing.

The moral of this carpet cleaning story is to never become complacent with one or just a few select strategies. You’ll want to always have your foot on the gas, with direct engagement and outbound efforts, to continuously generate buzz and immediate leads for your business.

Inbound Will Always Be Effective If…

There’s another scenario whereby putting all your eggs into the outbound marketing strategy basket isn’t always the best way forward either. Here’s the scenario.

ABC Construction has a robust sales team in-house, with rigorous cold call benchmarks and monthly quotas. But their competitor, XYZ Contractors, has been diligently building an inbound strategy of blogs, newsletters, and passive campaigns that are starting to position them as the leader in the industry. Soon, ABC Construction’s sales reps are running dry on conversions, and the brand is earning the reputation of “high-pressure sales tactics.”

The moral of this construction company story is that direct sales won’t generate the brand awareness, strategic brand positioning, and loyalty that inbound marketing will. And it’s a reminder that the best marketing and sales efforts require a healthy combination of both to remain competitive and successful.

Know Your Tools and Choose Wisely

Here’s a short list of inbound and outbound marketing channels you can explore. Remember to keep your audiences in mind and use your buyer personas to guide your messaging. Keep your content consistent regardless of the strategy you use, and any new campaign should support your company mission and brand voice.

Inbound Channels

• Website
• Landing Pages
• SEO
• Social Media Marketing
• Press Releases
• Blogging & Guest Blogging

Outbound Channels

• Email Campaigns
• Sales Calls & Cold Calls
• Direct Messaging Campaigns on Social Media
• Landing Pages
• Advertising (TV, Digital, Print, EDDM, Billboards, etc.)

Don’t Cut Either Out Altogether

For many businesses, when budgets get tight, it’s the marketing spending that often takes the hit. But even in your most financially dire moments, it’s marketing and sales that will keep you afloat. If anything, it’s the most important investment you should be making. Just know that when the concerns are immediate, it’s the outbound strategy, with measurable and precision-driven results, that will produce revenue today. And it’s the inbound strategies that often cost less to establish and keep up that will ensure you have prospects to close tomorrow. But cutting out both will be like closing your doors altogether and will result in total stagnation.

Don’t Try to Cheat the System

Here’s the other caveat. There are plenty of influential marketers out there touting what you should be doing to rank for SEO, beat the algorithms, and drive more leads. But if you focus on beating the system, you’ll lose sight of what really attracts your customers – your ability to solve their problems.

Stay focused on being that problem solver, whatever your niche or offering. As your customers’ problems change, you can change your solutions with them. And messaging across both inbound and outbound strategies will ensure you continue to be in a prime position as the leader in your space.

Don’t write blogs, for example, with keywords and awkward phrases that you think Google will pick up on and favor. You’re not trying to sell to Google. You’re trying to engage a client.

Here, you’ll notice that we write like we talk. We’re having a conversation right now, and I’m legitimately trying to offer solutions to your problems. If you’re reading this, then we hopefully brought something to you of value. And that’s the approach you should take with any inbound or outbound strategy. Be authentic to your brand voice with every statement, sales call, online ad, blog, or newsletter that bears your logo.

The HubSpot Model for Inbound Marketing

Most business owners have a strong grasp of the ideal sales pitch for their products or services. So, crafting an outbound strategy with calls to action, strategic buy-in points, and persuasive language can be easier to develop. But it’s the inbound strategy that continues to be the stumper, with its impossibility to guess or measure. And that makes it even harder to invest in, considering you can’t always track the ROI or measure A/B testing. But HubSpot offers a pretty sound theory about developing inbound that makes sense for any business model.

To really get your audiences to find you online naturally, with social media, blogging, and search engine prompts, consider the “attract, engage, delight” wheel.

Attract new and future customers first, with smart use of:

• Ads
• Video
• Blogs
• Social
• Content

Engage those you attract second, with smart use of:

• Lead generation tools
• Email marketing
• Marketing automations
• Chatbots and customer service
• Lead management and opt-in funnels

Delight them finally, with smart use of:

• Thought-leadership content
• Email marketing
• Conversations
• Attribution reporting
• Marketing automations

Outbound Solves Immediate Needs

If your business has immediate needs for sales, lead generation, and conversions, developing your outbound strategy and leading with it will be your best bet.

Same-Day Conversions

The beauty of outbound, especially if it’s well-developed and in the hands of effective salespeople, is that it has the ability to generate leads and convert new customers immediately.

Incredible Audience Targeting

Outbound marketing and sales tactics will position you directly in front of potential customers and prospects, even if they don’t know they need you yet. It’s like cherry-picking your best prospects and then going after them with your offer, where you maintain control over the entire engagement process.

See Quick Results

Inbound marketing is your long-game strategy, meaning outbound marketing is your “right now” strategy. If you need results and more sales right now, outbound sales efforts will boost those transactions.

So, let’s go back to the fishing boat.

If you’re in that boat, starving because you haven’t eaten in three days, you’ll probably need to dress the lure, get the line in the water, and grab the net. You’ll use whatever resources you have on board to land a fish or two right now.

But you can also be setting fish traps underwater. These methods will allow you to attract fish to the boat, making them easier to catch. And you might even catch enough in your traps to eat for the next few days.

Marketing works much the same way. Yes, you’ll need strategies for attracting customers, and closing leads now. But you’ll also need to be laying the groundwork for future customers, new to you customers who don’t know they need you yet and funneling them right to your call to action.

With a healthy mix of both inbound and outbound messaging across all your relevant channels, you’ll continue to grow your business and scale successfully. Consider these differences between the two methods, and hopefully, you found inspiration into developing the right strategy your business needs right now. And if you need more help with developing your inbound efforts with messaging, newsletters, or blog strategies, let Ghost Blog Writers be your guide!

The post Inbound vs. Outbound: What Today’s Leaders Need to Know to Drive Both appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

It’s information overload and a downright jungle out there when it comes to digital marketing. And if you remotely keyword search for anything related to online advertising or

marketing best practices, you’ll feel the world pointing at you with every search engine results page (SERP.)

Do SEO this way. Don’t keyword stuff. Make sure you’re leveraging social media. Don’t pay for Facebook Ads. Blah, blah, blah.

How can you know what advice to really follow? Everyone’s an expert. And yet, no one’s helping you figure it out for your business.

Not to state the obvious, but digital marketing can be confusing. It’s complex and requires more time, money, and strategy than most small businesses can afford without some guidance. If you’re in this camp, frustrated with finding the best way forward, stay tuned. Here’s what everyone’s really thinking about online marketing and what you really need to know to find your way.

What Do We Really Need to Know About Digital Marketing?

All buzz words aside, digital marketing and online strategies are relevant. Actually, if you’re not online, you’re soon to be extinct. And by online, we don’t just mean having a website. Having a beautiful website won’t increase your bottom line if you’re not doing anything to promote it. It’s the digital marketing strategy that will attract visitors to your site and, ultimately, your products or services. Without it, you’ll be obsolete, especially in today’s commerce.

Here are some HubSpot stats to support the critical need for digital marketing:

• A website is the second most popular channel used in online marketing, with social media being the dominant channel for customer engagement.
• 69% of all marketers invested in SEO efforts in 2021
• 71% of all marketers indicated “strategic keywords” were the primary SEO factor in 2021
• 3.5% of eCommerce web visits using mobile devices converted into online purchases, while 3.9% converted using a desktop application.
• 52% of consumers using a “voice assistant” admit to using them daily, sometimes several times a day
• The average American consumer has more than ten “connected devices” in their homes as of 2021

So, yes, you really need to know about digital marketing. It’s where you’ll find and attract buyers. And now that you know you need to develop a strategy, you can take a look at your current positioning and online presence now to create a roadmap for improvements.

How Can I Tell What Advice Makes Sense for My Business?

Knowing you need online marketing is one thing. But what everyone’s really thinking is, how can I tell what digital marketing advice is right for my business?

The short answer is you’ll just have to do your own homework.

Yes, there are best practices out there that make sense for every business model. But there are also so-called experts out there advising marketers and business owners to buy ads, run campaigns, and invest in lofty strategies that may not necessarily be the right fit.

The only way to really know which advice is legitimate for your bottom line is by conducting your own analytics and metrics research. Based on your company’s efforts now, look to identify who your target buyers are, what methods you are using to generate leads, where customers find you the most, and what conversion rates you’re experiencing now. Use your precise data as a starting point for exploring solutions, improvements, and new ways to tap into digital marketing.

You’re likely more of an expert in your business than you are in digital marketing strategies. So, with your data in hand, it’s absolutely recommended that you find a partner to help you put together a roadmap and plan. Just make sure you work with a marketing partner that will listen intently to your ideas and who will understand what your company needs. Be thorough when vetting marketing partners so you don’t end up being “sold” a slew of expensive or unnecessary online marketing investments that won’t generate the results you need.

How Much Is This Digital Marketing Really Going to Cost Me?

Speaking of expensive, you’re now wondering how much is it really going to cost? Here’s the thing. It’s only a waste of money if it doesn’t work. Therefore, the key to understanding a fair investment is first identifying how much a lead or customer is worth to you. Customers have an immediate value as well as a lifetime value, too. Would it be worth it to spend $50 to get one new customer for a lifetime of purchases? What about $500? Or $5,000?

If you’re spending on campaigns that aren’t generating leads, then stop. If you’re investing in something that is generating leads, but you’re struggling to convert those leads, it’s another problem altogether. Whatever you do, don’t stop online marketing. That’s a must. You may instead just need to realign your investments with strategies that produce the results you’re needing to justify the investment.

Remember, if you had an unlimited budget, you could afford to do it all. But if you’re like most companies, budgets are tight. That’s why it’s even more critical that you be precise about where you allocate it.

I Can’t Afford to Guess My Way to Results

You don’t have to, nor want to, guess your way through digital marketing strategies if you make smart use of your metrics ongoing. What you don’t want to do, and no matter how much you feel like doing it, is throw up your hands and fling ideas to the wall to see what sticks. That’s a surefire way to waste money.

And you don’t want to be biting off more than you can chew either, meaning you don’t have to invest in every online channel, chase every shiny new digital marketing object, or be on every social platform to see success. Instead, sample a few channels or ideas at a time. Invest enough to make them worthwhile and work them diligently. Monitor the data to see what’s working. And much like you would approach changing your diet when your doctor says your cholesterol’s too high, add and subtract small changes at a time. See what works. See what fails. Explore new improvements. And when you find something that translates to more leads and conversions, dominate it!

Who Has Time for All This Digital Marketing?

That’s a lot of work. You’re running a business. Do you really have time to babysit social media posts, blogging schedules, or Google Ad campaign metrics? Don’t overextend yourself, risking burnout or oversights. Recognize that when you embark on a digital marketing journey, it’s likely time to get help managing your efforts.

Depending on your organization’s size and the nature of your industry, you might be best served by partnering with an outside strategist to help. But there should come a point when you need to hire internally to have a dedicated staff member responsible for posting, managing, and monitoring results. Once you start an online marketing plan, you can’t stop. And whether you’re failing or succeeding, you are going to need help to fix and scale your results.

How Do I Know I Need Help with My Digital Marketing?

If you’re confident you have a good handle on developing, implementing, managing, adjusting, and evaluating your entire digital marketing plan on your own, you’re on the verge of needing help. If you’re growing and scaling, your strategies will only need to grow and adapt with you. Get ahead and make sure you have the tools, resources, and staff in place to maintain that momentum.

On the flip side, if you’re struggling, you need help, too. Don’t take it personally. There’s so much to unpack and plenty of changing elements involved. Be smart and recognize when you need a hand, and take the steps to get the help you need. Your bottom line depends on it.

Here’s what everyone really thinks about online marketing. UX/UI Designs, AI, PPC, CPV, and what? There are too many acronyms to keep up with every trend, every tool, and every resource. The good news is, as a business owner, you don’t have to know and understand it all.

However, what does matter, is that you know what you don’t know and lean on the professionals who do know. If these acronyms are foreign territory for you, it’s time to bring in an expert to help.

Can’t I Just Stick with My Vehicle Wraps and Yard Signs?

Just because digital marketing is an essential pillar of your business doesn’t mean you have to abandon your non-digital marketing efforts. Look, if it works, keep doing it. And there are certain business models that absolutely rely on traditional channels like mailers, vehicle wraps, and signage. And trade shows are downright money makers for some companies.

With that being said, there are ways to use digital marketing to get more traction with those non-digital efforts. And, of course, if you’re not getting leads from your yard signs, they’re probably not helping much. So, if you have a really great offline marketing technique, consider boosting it with online marketing promotion. Share video and images of your stunningly wrapped service vans on social media. Use your online channels to help promote an upcoming mass mailer. But remember, non-digital efforts alone won’t likely sustain the results your business needs to grow.

Social Media Is Too Much Time, Effort, and Drama, Isn’t It?

You have a hard enough time keeping up with your personal social media profiles. How are you supposed to know what to do or have the time to do it with a company social media presence? And with the experts suggesting that you need to post regularly, do live videos, and boost ads, that’s more time than you have to dedicate. Never mind the dramatic nature of the social ecosystem, and you’ve heard horror stories of other small businesses struggling with trolls and terrible online reviews.

Wouldn’t it just be best to avoid social altogether? No.

You really do need it. And there is a right and a wrong way to do it effectively. Like all your other digital strategies, you don’t have to do every social channel to be successful, and you don’t want to overextend beyond what you can manage. Find out which social media channels are most popular for your target customers first. Then look to be engaging on one or two platforms by offering content in the form of posts, images, and videos that are less about asking for the sale and more about solving customer problems and aligning your brand in their minds.

Does Blogging Really Work?

With campaigns, online ads, messaging, social media, and metrics, the experts say you should also consider blogging. And you’re probably thinking, really?

No one is any more of an expert in your business than you are. And believe it or not, you have really important ideas worth sharing and solutions worth discussing. Your audience would love to hear more. But you don’t necessarily have time to sit down and reflect and write thoughtful essays. And for some, there’s some anxiety about writing anything for fear it won’t be well-received or put together.

Blogging and thought-leadership articles are huge assets in your online marketing toolbox. They can help position your brand as an authority in your space. And it provides you with a library of digital assets from which you can cross-promote and cross-post elsewhere online. You can repurpose old topics with fresh views. You can share unique ideas and new solutions. And while blogs and articles might not result in immediate lead generation, they will create a movement of awareness and brand identity that can certainly translate to better lead gen over time.

Like every other aspect of online marketing, you can’t blog part-time. It’s a snowball that will only make an impact if you’re able to keep it rolling. So, be prepared to commit to it once you begin and tag other leaders within your company who can be contributors, as well.

Don’t be mystified or intimidated by digital marketing and online marketing strategies. Your business needs them. And you don’t have to do it all to be successful. But you do have to do some of it really well to see results, which may just require finding a little help to guide your efforts. The best advice of all might be to find the right digital marketing partner to help you execute the right online strategy.

Don’t forget, too, that when you’re ready for a committed blogging schedule, newsletters, or thought-leadership content, let the Ghost Blog Writers team help you produce the most engaging content with your voice!

The post What Everyone Really Thinks About Online Marketing appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

LinkedIn marketing may not seem important at first glance. The platform has fewer than half the users of Facebook. And far fewer of LinkedIn users are active when compared to Facebook’s users, who post an excessive 350 million photos per day.

LinkedIn is decidedly austere when compared to its social media siblings. You won’t find wedding photos or birthday memes. And thanks to LinkedIn users’ professional restraint, you won’t find provocative political posts either.

Compared to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat, LinkedIn marketing can seem stuffy and basic. So why bother?

Because LinkedIn is a recruiting, marketing, and branding heavy hitter for small businesses that know how to use it.

LinkedIn Is Social Media for Professionals

Rather than trying to fill every social media niche and win by sheer numbers, LinkedIn does one thing and does it well. LinkedIn is a social media platform for professionals and their companies.

LinkedIn has about 800 million users, and just about half of them log in monthly. Half of LinkedIn users are college-educated and earn over $75,000 per year. About 10% of them have a significant amount of decision power in their organizations. At least 10 million LinkedIn users are corporate executives and they overwhelmingly trust content they find on LinkedIn.

If yours is a B2B company, LinkedIn offers the most effective social media marketing. More than half of social media traffic for B2B sites was thanks to LinkedIn. And once those users have engaged with you, they’re 50% more likely to make a purchase.

Tapping Into the Power of LinkedIn Marketing

Realizing all the benefits of LinkedIn marketing takes a strategy that utilizes the platform’s many tools.

Optimize Your Company’s LinkedIn Profile

• Include your logo as a profile picture.
• Choose a cover photo that enhances your brand.
• Include keywords throughout your company’s profile.

Create a LinkedIn Marketing Content Strategy

Your LinkedIn marketing content strategy raises your profile and establishes your company as a thought leader.

• Create your own content (long articles perform better).
• Mix it up with surveys and videos.
• Share events and company news.
• Share links relevant to your industry.

Highlight Your Company’s Culture with LinkedIn Marketing

Industry-related content establishes your company’s expertise. But you’ll need content that highlights your culture to make your company likable and approachable.

• Share employee news and recognition.
• Share “behind-the-scenes” photos and content.
• Share the ways your company is making a positive impact in your community.

Explore LinkedIn Like Marco Polo

Marco Polo wasn’t the first explorer to visit China, but he was the explorer who learned the most about China.

You, too, can understand how LinkedIn can help your company grow when you explore LinkedIn’s resources for small businesses. From recruiting to advertising to connecting directly with prospects, LinkedIn can help your business succeed.

Until now, your online marketing has probably focused on search engine results and standard social media marketing on busier platforms. But none of the other social media sites can zero-in on the key decision makers that purchase your products or services. LinkedIn can calibrate your marketing efforts for higher conversions.

In other words, take a page from LinkedIn’s success. By focusing its audience, LinkedIn earned $10 billion in revenue in 2021. And when you incorporate LinkedIn marketing into your company’s wider online marketing campaign, you can target decision makers and see your company grow.

The post How Well Are You Tapping Into LinkedIn? appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.

It could be the human element. It’s easy to lose yourself in the metrics and analytics. And those are still mission-critical and important to your marketing efforts. But if you forget about customer experience, like the authentic engagement perspective, especially on the human level, you could be losing engagement opportunities. If only you had a customer behavior predicting crystal ball or could read minds, right?

To help you reconnect with the people that represent your target audience, and based on relevant data representing today’s average consumer, here’s what your customers wished you knew about how to effectively engage them. These nuggets of advice might be the closest thing to a crystal ball. It represents consumer preference trends, pet peeves, and purchasing decision elements. And just maybe you’ll spot that missing link you need to plug back into your core audience.

They’ve Changed. You Haven’t.

A lot has happened to your ideal customer over the last two years. People lost jobs, changed jobs, and moved. They’ve had kids, got married, or divorced. Household incomes shifted, and so did affordability metrics. They maybe even experienced a health scare at a personal level that shifted their priorities in life. Right now, your customers wish you better understood how their priorities  have changed, especially when it comes to making purchasing decisions.

Because your customers have likely changed, it’s important for your engagement strategy to change with them. If you’re still using marketing strategies and campaigns from last year or two years ago, you might not be speaking their language anymore.

Restaurants are the perfect example. Customers realized the convenience of doorstep delivery and carry out service. Just because the pandemic lockdowns are no longer in effect doesn’t mean customers still don’t enjoy those convenient meal delivery options. Today’s restaurants continue to offer these services because dining customer preferences have changed.

Your Customers Value ‘Good’ more than ‘Fast’

Today’s consumers love super-quick, convenient options. But they wished you also recognized they still value good service first. If your business is promoting its unique differentiator as the “fastest” or the “quickest,” make sure you’re also promoting the quality you offer. No one will spend even the most discounted of rates for the fastest if the product or service can’t satisfy the need. Just look at Wish.com.

Customers Will Pay for Customization

Mass product and service providers still use personalization and customization to reach their customers. Don’t lose sight of that ideal. People want and insist on being treated as humans, not order numbers, policy files, or a funnel entry. And the best part about customizing a solution or a message, customers today are willing to pay a little more for that personal attention. So, make sure your email campaigns address recipients by their first names. Look for ways your sales teams can customize their pitches, proposals, and presentations, too. Every engagement should feel intended for the prospect, for best results.

They’ll Remember You If You Remember Them

This might align with the previous sentiment, but it’s a big one. Your customers absolutely hate it when you don’t remember them, their experience, or their details. Of course, most are reasonable in understanding that calling a customer service number isn’t going to put them in touch with a friend from high school. But man, do they despise having to retell their story over and over to various departments when they’re just trying to find a solution.

Companies today are realizing that the personalization effort needs to include a better way to profile existing and past customers. It’s why your insurance agent sends you a birthday card every year. It’s the same principle behind your doctor’s office sending you that colonoscopy reminder. Know and remember your customers using software, databases, and detailed notes. If you remember them, they’ll always remember your business.

Good Deeds Don’t Have to Be Big

Many of today’s biggest brands are making public changes to adapt to a more inclusive and diverse environment. People buy from brands they believe are inherently good. And they’ll be even more loyal to a brand that supports causes and positions that are of particular importance to them. But your customers wished you knew that adopting a “go big or go home” approach to good deeds, brand image, or sustainability isn’t necessary. Making small changes and supporting local communities can be just as important to your core audience. Don’t race to make big adjustments that don’t make sense to your business model right now. Having a simple company inclusion statement and volunteering at the local soup kitchen can have just as much impact.

Customers Love Loyalty Programs

If your target customer has to choose between a product with a loyalty program and one without, they’re going with the loyalty incentive option every single time. Customers wished you knew how much they appreciate member discounts, clubs to join, and loyalty extras. From traditional refer-a-friend kickbacks to punch cards for sub sandwiches, anytime there’s an opportunity to earn, save, and be rewarded, they’ll be more apt to take advantage of it.

Everyone Loves a Great Story

Do you really want to know what your customers are tired of seeing? The repetitive taglines from companies across all industries claiming “best in class,” “great customer service,” “quality,” and “professional” are no longer effective. These terms don’t carry the weight they once did because your customers have come to expect those qualities from their providers. Don’t try to tell them what they already expect you to have. What they want to hear about is your story, your company differentiators, and your unique value proposition. Instead of cramming “state-of-the-art” into your messaging, tell your origin story. Talk about the problems they’re facing and how you’re uniquely positioned to solve them. It will resonate more effectively, and, in the end, it’s all yours to tell!

They Are Happy to Share Their Experiences with You

No one has time for nagging sales calls and mindless surveys. But your customers wished they’d hear from you once in a while to check in and gauge their experience. You’ll find that when you reach out to past customers to inquire about their overall experiences, they’re happy to tell you about them. And if you incorporate follow-up strategies for every engagement, the feedback will be fundamental in how you improve your services and engagement ongoing. It’s like having a line into your target audience directly, telling you exactly what they want.

They Will Shop Competitors If You Disengage

Even if your client engagement strategy isn’t perfect, it’s still helping to connect your brand to your audience to some degree. When you stop trying to connect, however, is when you’ll run into trouble. Your customers wished you knew how much they appreciate your engagement effort, even if it’s not on point. When you stop putting out content, asking questions, or following up, you might as well just push them directly into the arms of your competition. And unfortunately, many companies assume that once a customer has purchased from them, no further engagement is required to keep them.

They Will Listen to What Other People Say About Your Brand

Another big mistake today’s companies make is assuming customers will come to them automatically. Sure, you can inspire an organic flow of customer inquiries. But not controlling your company narrative, meaning when other people dictate how your customers perceive your brand, can have devastating effects. The best way to control how the public perceives your business is by taking the reins for every public relations opportunity and managing online reviews.

People will listen to what others have to say, even if it’s wrong. The goal is to be the loudest voice, championing your brand online, and address every not-so-pleasant experience with a solution. There’s a reason customers hop on Facebook to get the attention of nationally recognized brands when they can’t get resolution via traditional customer service means. And you’ve likely witnessed a few online exchanges between businesses and disgruntled customers that left you thanking your lucky stars it wasn’t you.

Customers Expect Support When They Call Customer Support

You can have the best digital marketing strategy, the most incredible campaigns, and revolutionary products or services, but if your customer service department is terrible, you’re losing customers, guaranteed. Do a pulse check on your customer care department and see just how productive it is at providing swift solutions when your customers call. Consider offering more than one way to get help, too, so customers aren’t boxed in with one never-ending loop of automated nightmares.

Your Customers Want Frictionless Experiences

People are understanding about running into potential problems with a service or product from time to time. But they put an emphasis on doing business with those entities that offer frictionless experiences. Every step you ask a prospect to take should be easy, simple to predict, and understandable. Whether they’re opting in to receive a newsletter or moving forward with a purchase, they wished you knew how important frictionless engagements are to them. If it’s complex or requires too many steps, you might be losing them.

Today’s Consumers Want to Solve Their Own Problems

Customers today want a hybrid solution and engagement model. This means if they can solve their own problems and answer their own questions, they want to go that route. But they also want to know that when they call for help, there’s a customized solution and a human waiting on the other end. Chatbots and FAQ sections are in high demand these days. But don’t automate everything, especially when it comes to core audience engagement and problem-solving.

They Won’t Engage If Your Brand Isn’t Mobile Friendly

Consumers hate when sites take too long to load or have awkward layouts on their mobile devices. Whatever you do online, make sure it’s mobile-friendly since that’s where the majority of your customers spend their time. And if you do prioritize mobile-friendly designs, your next step needs to offer something that inspires them to stop scrolling. Make it mobile. Persuade them to pause. You’ll reach them every time.

Consumers Love Life-Hacks and Tips

As you create your content calendar, you often try to guess what your consumers want to see. You’ll use metrics to help you gauge where your targets’ interests are. You try to offer educational nuggets to help your customers make purchasing decisions. But if you ever get stuck, know that consumers, in general, love life-hacks, tips, and tricks for practically everything. Get creative about how you deliver these tidbits, using video, social media, blog content, or newsletters. And remember that you’ll almost never go wrong with a good, old-fashioned life-made-easier trick of the trade.

Customers Will Tell Others When They’re Dissatisfied

Here’s the other hard truth your customers want you to know. When they have a poor experience, they’re going to tell someone about it. It may not be you, especially if you don’t ask for feedback. But they’ll tell a friend, a co-worker, and their relatives about the encounter. Maybe not all at once either, as it could be a story shared over time. Businesses know they can’t please everyone. But not every bad experience should be a write-off. If you’re aware of a poor encounter, it will serve your brand and your customers’ interests to reach out and offer a remedy or solution. And when you fix their problem, they’ll be just as likely to share that story, too.

When you’re the customer and not the business owner, what are some things you wish your product and service providers knew? Adopting a fresh perspective from the position of your core audience can help you see areas of improvement for your company engagement strategy. Maybe some of these suggestions can help you streamline your efforts.

And as always, when you’re ready for a fresh approach to content, including blogs, articles, newsletters, and digital messaging campaigns, let Ghost Blog Writers help you craft the perfect engagement!

The post What Your Customers Wished You Knew About How to Engage Them appeared first on Ghost Blog Writers.