There are marketing campaigns… and then there are marketing campaigns that inspire, that aren’t forgotten easily. They are campaigns that take a risk and break barriers. These mostly revolve around a social cause that touches a nerve of a wide segment of the population. The cleverness lies in the fact that the brand happens to be incidental to the whole thing. We love to talk about strength and perseverance that manages to win in the face of adversity. We like to challenge norms in the society. We like to see that someone like us has managed to break the shackle and set themselves free… even if it is momentary. The possibilities inspire us, challenge us and threaten to change us. Taking all the above qualities and fitting it with a brand’s belief without making it look fake or corny is quite an art – an art that some brands have taught us well this year. There has been quite a few this year that had several people join them. The #MeToo campaign (though not a marketing one) is such reminder. It shook the world, brought the truth out of the closet and allowed many struggling women (and men) break free. Not all brands who tried to do the ‘inspired / courageous’ marketing got it right. Even then, here are three brands that did an outstanding job that left us inspired. 1. Vicks – #TouchOfCare How would you connect a product for a runny nose with transgender rights? India has been fighting many battles on the sexual identity front. From Section 377 (which dates back to 1861) to rights for transgenders, there are many voices rising against the notion that not everyone needs to fit into a fixed category of ‘men’ or ‘women’ and should have the freedom to choose their partner. Does this section work in today’s times when the idea of a family is being redefined in today’s contemporary society? As a brand, Vicks has stood for extending a caring touch to a loved one during their sickness. Especially, that of a mother, whose loving touch would soothe and heal. But does this love come only from a biological mother? Does it come only from a woman? Showcasing the true story of a transgender woman Gauri Sawant and her struggles in raising an orphaned girl Gayatri. The ad beautifully brings to life their story and tells us that love goes beyond gender identity and we should think before we compartmentalize people into their preset boxes. 2. Burger King: Bullying Jr. Bullying is a real problem that people of all races, religions, and castes face. The victim’s helplessness and torment become the bully’s fodder. We’ve seen it, heard about it, sometimes been victims ourselves – and maybe sometimes perpetrators of the crime too. Which is why this ad hits you on all fronts. The nice part about the ad is how Burger King weaves it all together with its brand. The act of bullying happens in a Burger King outlet in full public view. A young black boy is being bullied by a group of white boys. He is hit, teased and abused. Many don’t budge an inch, let alone interfere. The same people, when presented with a ‘mashed’ burger where then asked a question if they had a problem if their burger was ‘bullied’. It drives home a point that people are willing to stand up for bad food but not to bullies because it wasn’t ‘their’ problem. But what if it was. What if one day you were the victim and no one stood up for you? Standing up against bullies and deflating the pleasure they derive out of the victim’s torment is a responsibility that weighs in on our collective consciousness. 95% people stood up to their ‘Whopper Jr.’ being bullied. Only 12% checked upon the boy who was being bullied. What does that tell you? 3. #Always “Ha ha! You throw like a girl!” Many boys have heard that before, taken it as a straight insult that equates to being weak and fluttery and gone on to show their ‘hard, manly’ throw. This ad takes an everyday term that we are quite used to hearing #LikeAGirl and understand what this really means. Young girls don’t really understand it or let it bother them but by the time they reach puberty, #LikeAGirl feels like a humiliation. What does it mean to run like a girl, hit like a girl, swim like a girl or kick like a girl? Somewhere, somebody needs to take a stance. And Always, a brand for menstrual pads is being that voice. Girls and women are often put into pre-defined molds of the society that declares what they can and cannot do. This ad brings back a positive meaning to an everyday term encouraging women to embrace themselves for who they are. Why does running like a race not mean winning it? It’s time we changed our viewpoint. There were many other contenders for our Top 3 list. Others like the Fearless Girl, Heineken’s ‘Worlds Apart’ campaign, Nike’s Breaking 2, 84 Lumber’s “The Journey Begins”, New York Time’s ‘The truth is’ campaign, P & G’s ‘The Talk’ are all wonderful campaigns that we’ve loved too. It is campaigns like these that reaffirm our faith in advertising in going above and beyond their motive to sell and do a world of good. Check these campaign too. Fearless Girl Heineken’s ‘Worlds Apart’ Nike’s Breaking2 84 Lumber’s “The Journey Begins” New York Time’s ‘The truth is’ P&G’s ‘The Talk’ Which one is your favorite campaign, tell us in the comment.
Author: meenaxi.badola@justwords.in
Content marketing for heavy industries – how you can make it work
Some people feel that the whole content marketing hype isn’t for everybody. After all who will want to read ‘boring’ content about heavy industries, their functioning, and machinery when the most common articles lapped up on the internet are about celebrities and cats! Beyond the shallow and quick reads that often comes on our Facebook feed, there is a world of professionals who value content that is crafted with knowledge and experience. To them, the content isn’t boring but valuable and the person/company creating becomes an interesting catalyst who can become a seller or partner. As someone working in the heavy industry, your aim will be to market to professionals in other companies – in short – Business to Business or B2B marketing. Here are a few statistics that put the industry, in general, into perspective according to the most recent trends published on Hubspot Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got about 4.5X more leads than companies that published 0-4 monthly posts. 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep B2B researchers do 12 searches on average prior to engaging on a specific brand’s site. 72% of marketers say relevant content creation was the most effective SEO tactic Even if you are skeptical about content marketing services, these statistics will make you curious to try it out to see if it’ll generate the leads. And that’ll bring you to the next question on where to start and how to go about it. Can you do it yourself or will you need an agency to do it? The thought of an editorial calendar giving you sleepless nights? Before you get on those topics, here are a few details about how content marketing can help your business. 1. Content could be the first building block of your professional relationship Most people who continue to bat for offline say that there is nothing like a personal meeting and a handshake that the client will remember. Even then, considering the conversion rate and possibilities that professional social networks like a Linkedin offer, it makes a very compelling case that a virtual handshake is not only possible but can lead to effective next steps in the lead gen ladder. The proof is in the pudding. 80% of B2B marketing leads from social media come through LinkedIn 92% of B2B marketers use the platform over all others 46% of social media traffic to your company site comes from LinkedIn Check out the full infographic here. It will make you sign into your Linkedin account right away and stir things around. We’ve personally sent out emails to CXOs on LinkedIn and got a response 3 out of 4 times to land a direct meeting with them!* 2. Content widens your pool of opportunities If you want to gain insights into your potential customer’s behavior and preferences, there is no better place than Google to get started. Obvious too, since more than 90% online searches begin with Google. Create your AdWords account and start using the Keyword research tool to see what terms in your industry have a high search volume. This will give you an idea of general trends and what competitors and clients could be looking for. Next, check out what type of content comes up with keywords that are important to you. Now all you need to do is create authoritative content that can rank close to the No. 1 spot for those key terms and you’ll have targeted organic visitors come to the website. Creating content that is being searched for is a way to step up and grab a low hanging fruit for any B2B marketer. Now that you are ready to take on this new beast, here are tips from pros that can help you get started: a. ‘Boring’ heavy industries actually have a lot of opportunities Have you seen the number of articles that discuss tips for weight loss on the internet? It is almost like they are solving an epidemic. You may have also read several lists of the 13, 17. 21 or 56 places you should see before you die. You see, these topics are interesting. But these are also simple. Which is why you have half the world writing such topics. On the other hand, it isn’t easy to write about heavy industries without the proper knowledge or expertise and also a passion for writing. These combination of skills are hard to come by which is why you may see very little well-written content out here. And therein lies an opportunity for you to step up quickly and fill the gap. You’ll get to rank for a lot of your most important keywords which may generate better leads. b. Solve client problems by writing content on specific topics You are an industry expert so you must be well aware of the problems that professionals in your industry face. The key here is to ask what are the top problems faced by your clients. How do they connect typically find you? Where do they engage online in conversations? Once you have a map of these things, you can chart out specific content, especially like listicles that your clients can discover during their online search and by that extension, discover you. Here’s an interesting example. FarmIndustryNews put together an article titled 10 biggest causes of machinery breakdowns (and how to prevent them). A targeted article like this isn’t for skim reading. It will be read by both farmers and machinery manufacturers. Farmers are more likely to subscribe to such targeted content. The database collected by FarmIndustryNews becomes a potent ground for potential leads for any farm machine manufacturer. Imagine such articles written by industry experts – from your company. Won’t that be a great way to build your brand? c. Aim for targeted traffic and not just traffic Though we know that Google is now smarter, the internet still has many sites that promise you
This is how you can get a flourishing fan base for your beauty blog
61% of Twitter users and 51% of Facebook users said that they were more likely to buy from the brands they follow. Building a community and fan following is often viewed with scepticism by marketers who don’t know how to attribute ROI to the money spent on this activity. With influencer marketing gaining popularity, we can now see live examples of the benefits that brands and individuals enjoy when they have a community (of a few thousands/millions) backing them. Successful beauty blogs have a unique proposition. They have an active following for 2 main reasons The blogger provides tips that can be easily used by the masses. The style and tips don’t feel out of reach and don’t break the bank either The followers feel a personal connection with the blogger – like the blogger is one among them. And yet, the blogger holds an aspirational value where the followers are inspired to follow their style while being encouraged to find their own personalized style statements. When you have many people following your business, the relationship fosters loyalty and this, in turn, has a huge potential to bring in revenue. What is an evening if it’s not for a bit of pampering every now and then? I’ve been enjoying using the new @thebodyshop Japanese Matcha Tea Pollution Clearing face mask recently as it feels SO refreshing & leaves my skin feeling clean & zingy before bed (honestly, you need to try it, it’s crazy – it’s the same feeling you get when you have your hair washed at the hairdressers but on your face haha) They’ve kindly given me a discount code for you to use to get 20% off the entire range of the Expert Facial Masks from the 24th-26th August by using the code “ZOELLA” online at thebodyshop.co.uk or just showing this Instagram photo in UK stores #daretomask #ad Take the case of Zoe ‘Zoella’ Sugg . With a subscriber base of 11.6 Million, she is among the world’s YouTube Millionaires. What makes her stand apart? Her girl next door looks and bubbly effervescence plays a part but the USP comes from being ‘one of us’. Despite her following, she doesn’t claim to be an ‘expert’. She may just recommend a $4 moisturizer from a local drug store as much as she would try out a $40 cream from a reputed brand. She eventually started a second YouTube channel MoreZoella which is a curated chronicle of her daily life. With 4.5M subscribers, here’s where here loyalty base lies. Here’s the next interesting lesson that we learn from Zoella. She didn’t stop with just making money from her YouTube videos. While she collaborated online with brands like most influencers, she also wrote a novel ‘Girl Online’ in 2014 which broke records to become a NYTimes bestseller. She followed it up with sequels in 2015 and 2016. She did not shy away from discussing the other side of beauty where she shared details about her anxiety disorder and panic attacks with her fans. It brought out the ‘human’ element in her connect showing that she wasn’t this ‘perfectly happy and rich’ person but had problems like the rest of us. She has amassed her millions and she couldn’t have done this without her community of loyal subscribers. So what do the numbers really look like? Instagram’s wealthiest influencer Huda Kattan has 20.5 million followers that allow her to rake a whopping $18000 per post. There’s a lot of learning that comes from the way Kattan treats here Instragram account, which is different from how you would look at Zoella. Kattan doesn’t do a lot of sponsored posts because she always puts here community first and shares things that she believes is good for her followers. Besides this, what makes here truly stand apart is her content quality. She is also honest about her fillers and botox – that actually helps people see her are real with flaws that can be corrected with the right treatment choices. There are quite a few stories out there like Kattans and Zoella. And there are hundreds of other beauty bloggers who are looking to reach that level of elusive followership and fame. You can see from examples that this requires a considerable investment of time, a passion for what you do, a genuine concern for what your followers want and also digital skills that need to be upgraded from time to time. That’s where we can help. If you are a beauty blogger/vlogger and are looking to find your million dollar jackpot, here are a few things you can try out: 1. Define your target market While this looks like an easy task, this is something you need to think about before you put out every piece of content. Beauty blogs of course target people – women – interested in tips, tutorials and inspiration. Does that mean all women in the world are your target audience? Probably not. Also, what type of tips you provide and which age it suits goes a long way in defining your target group. If you dress like them and speak their language, they will have an instant connect. But if you are a 50-year-old giving makeup tips for teenage girls, you won’t have much of a connect. Research about the most common problems your target group is facing and look to address them. Research about the products they are buying, their spending ability. Last but not the least, be the touch point for their inspiration. Let them aspire to be ‘someone like you’. 2. Don’t blog to sell Well… bloggers don’t exactly survive on love and fresh air. And you know that by now. We know that you want to grab the first opportunity that comes your way that can put some money in the bank. But take a step back and give a long hard look. Is the product really worth being associated with. As a beauty blogger, everything you do hinges
SEO: What works for big enterprises and small businesses
SEO is an art and not all art is made equal, but all art is equally difficult. Optimizers face different levels of difficulty whether they have a small 5-page WordPress website or a full-fledged 2000+ page eCommerce website. On the surface, it looks like bigger sites have a huge advantage in SERPs because of their sheer size and content. Sometimes this was true too. Over the last couple of years, the way we searched and the way Google presented results have been undergoing a change too. People increasingly include specific location information in their searches. Seeing this Google is now prioritizing websites that are better equipped to give out local information. This is giving global websites comparatively lesser advantages. The fact remains that the basic rules of SEO apply to both types of websites. Before we get on to the differentiators between the SEO for large and small sites, lets get aligned on their similarities. Research All optimization begins with research. From in-depth research about the client, their goals, industry, online and local competitors, you’ll also have to do a site content audit before you get started. For both large sites and small, this process can be done using a tool like SEOprofiler giving great insights and saving time. Tools, in a way, become a leveler here. You have neatly stacked up audit reports that get ready (mostly) in a day, showing the exact sections that need your attention. UX Another place where tools become a leveler is the UX for the website. Most large websites have standard templates for a lot of their pages. This makes it easy to create oprimized plug and play design. It does take a little extra time to run a check if everything is in place but design-wise things become easy when all you need to do is replicate. Beyond this, things begin to change in terms of how you do SEO for enterprise and small businesses. The differences come in terms of efforts, time, skill sets and money. Yes, money does play a role in your SEO choices too. It affects who you choose to get the work done, the skills they bring to the table, the timeline for execution and the overall results. Leveling the playing field with Plugins In a way, plugins are a big leveller for SEO for both big and small sites. Extending similar functionalities to both types of websites, plugins are huge on saving time, money and efforts. With over 50,000+ plugins out there, it is likely that someone has already created a plugin for a problem you haven’t thought out yet. Here are some of our favourite plugins that both small business and enterprise websites can use. Yoast / All in One SEO Yoast is considered to be the best ever SEO plugin for wordpress sites. It allows you to optimize each page individually for a focus keyword ensuring that your entire site is optimized without overlaps. The help analysis is simply amazing and it is one plugin you simply can’t do without. While the basic plugin can work well for small sites, enterprise sites need the paid version of the plugin to get full advantage of its mass customization features. If you are wondering how it’ll work, you can try out the All in One SEO plugin for free which will again allow you to optimized several pages in a single go. The best part is that both plugins do not require any coding knowledge and everything can be done easily by tweaking the settings and content in the dashboard. GA for Wordpress There may be several paid tools for analytics but GA remains to be the best free one available. By installing GA for WordPress, you get insights and analytics right in your WordPress dashboard giving you a great view on your content metrics. Wptouch If there was one plugin that we would highly recommend, it is WPTouch. Converting a ‘regular’ site into its mobile-friendly avatar, this plugin gives you the edge you need to be on Google’s good books. Mobile friendliness is one of the key factors to improve visibility in search as the number of mobile/smartphone searches overtakes the desktop. Broken link checker / Redirection The Redirection plugin is a super useful one. Allowing you to set up redirects within minutes, it also allows you to view all the work you’ve done with the plugin in a central repository. The broken link checker works to pull out broken links. This is especially great for large websites which have multiple people working on it. Akismet Akismet is a great leveller for comment spam. You get to catch all the spam quickly and easily and curate the valid comments too. Here are the ways that SEO differs for large enterprise v/s small business websites. Here, we are taking a general assumption that a large enterprise site is one that has over a thousand pages while a small business site is one that has the 30 odd standard pages along with a few blogs. 1. Keyword SEO Keywords have been the driving and decisive factor in SEO. The choice of keywords has been instrumental in driving the right organic traffic to your website. Though things aren’t the same as before and there is a lot of improvisation happening on how keywords are chosen, they still happen to be a trackable metric in SEO. For small business websites, keywords are generally selected via a carefully curated manual process based on search volume, competitiveness, and relevance. These are then placed on the site to optimize entire pieces of content surrounding the keyword. The above exercise is quite difficult and time-consuming to execute for a large enterprise website as sites with over a thousand pages will be arduous to optimize manually. There are nifty workarounds that can be created for such sites. For example, for a non-WordPress website, a simple PHP code can be written to pick out ‘product
Content marketing stories that caught our attention (updated)
It’s that time of the year folks. Introspection happen. Predictions begin. We are nearing the end of another year of surviving algorithm updates, new tools and changing strategies. As we look forward to the holidays, it isn’t coincidental that everyone around is either writing on learnings from 2017 or predicting trends for 2018. Both of these are of great importance to us as marketers so we decided to stock of the views out there and present you with the crème on each topic. 1. Content Marketing In 2018: Trends And Tools For Success The latest report on content marketing says that 89% of B2B marketers and 86% of B2C marketers are using content marketing. That means your competition is using it and probably your next door neighbor too. The Forbes article brings in a new perspective on content including writing content that doesn’t sell and instead just keeps your readers happy. 2. 5 Content trends to try out in 2018 Image Source: PracticaleCommerce PracticalEcommerce brings a useful note on things that you can try right away and not wait until 2018. From joining the club of YouTube marketers to optimizing for voice, there are interesting experiments you can plan for 2018. 3. Top predictions for digital marketing in 2018 The market is getting savvier by the day. There is more demand to reach the exact target audience and stop using the spray and pray approach. There are new ways being devised every day to measure beyond the last click and connect offline to online behavior. These are the demands we are going to be facing as ‘goals’ for our content marketing campaigns too. 4. What advertisers want from online videos in 2018 Over 80% online advertisers want to spend more on video in 2018. But not everyone has a grip on how this can be done right. There are a lot of stats in this article showing where the spends are happening and how it tends to plan out in the next 12 months. We all have our pain points with video – too many ads getting skipped, others not turning out to be as viral as we want them. Do check out the white paper from innovid on video strategy. 5. Email marketing trends to watch out in 2018 Did you know that around 65% American consumers have bought something online due to promotional emails? It isn’t too far when email marketing will be backed by artificial intelligence and you’ll have to think harder about how to move out of the promotional folder in Gmail to the primary inbox. If you aren’t using the cheapest form of content marketing, then you need to start doing so right away. 6. Rise of the (PPC) machines in 2018 Remember the Terminator movies where control was taken away from humans and given to machines? This is the reality for PPC marketers. Have you kept up with the changes that Google has automated in AdWords? Sometime back Google announced that there would be automated flexibility with daily budgets. It also removed the bidding thresholds for enhanced CPC campaigns. If you are a PPC marketer wondering if you’ll have a job left in 2018, this is a must-read. 7. Cybersecurity trends in 2018 McAfee released its McAfee Labs 2018 Threats Predictions Report, which identifies five key trends to watch in 2018. Ransomware evolved in 2017. Remember how hackers hacked HBO to get their hands on the unreleased Game of Thrones episodes and held the channel to ransom with the arsenal of content. Or how hackers got access to millions of Uber accounts and used data to threaten the company into paying millions. That’s the power of data and content being used in ransomware. 8. Brand marketing trends for 2018 If brand loyalty and engagement metrics form a part of your daily bread butter and a little jam on the side, brand marketing trends are something you need to watch out for. Earlier it was a single and focused communication from the brands. Now, your customers are speaking to you via multiple channels and will feel left out if you don’t respond. Their insights are based on 100,000 consumer psychological assessments that help identify future trends with uncanny accuracy. 9. Top eCommerce trends for 2018 eCommerce is all set to cross the $400B mark by end 2017. Do you feel equipped enough to grab your share of the pie in 2018? Are you planning to add a video to your product description page which can increase the purchase intent by 97%? Will you be using augmented reality on mobile devices to engage better with your consumer? Because your competition will be doing all this and more. Read on. 10. 51 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Predictions For 2018 Your car is talking to your air conditioner. Your fridge is talking to your smartphone. Google seems to know the answer to your question before you ask. Brands will know your shopping behavior better than your spouse. AI is set to take the world by storm and it has big implications for your profession too. On that note, we would like to end it with Nostradamus predictions for 2018. There’s plenty in there to make you think if the world will be a better or worse place by the end of next year. For now, we are ready to focus on the holidays, the accompanying sweet treats and merry cheer in the air. So long! Want to read more check the curated list below. 11 essential questions about content marketing answered The recipe of a good food blog 10 Content Marketers You Need to Follow Today and Why 10 amazingly creative Instagramming brands [Infographics] 11 SEO copywriting tricks you must understand if you want your content to work
Avoid these useless 5 mistakes from your copy and hit the target on the head
There are two interesting phrases that come to mind when we talk about Copywriting and how good it needs to be. Both come from David Ogilvy. “It’s not creative unless it sells” “The consumer isn’t a moron, she’s your wife” Keep these two phrases in front of you while writing and it becomes clear on how you need to stop using convoluted language, mindless chatter and wrong CTAs (Call to Actions) in your copy. Content marketing is at an all-time high with millions of blogs being published every day. It has made a wordsmith of almost every marketer. And there lies the problem. We are in the busy rat race of content, writing as much fancy copy as possible that can attract reader attention. In the bargain, the art of writing quality copy is diminishing. Let’s have a look at 5 things we can remove from our copy to make it better with replacements that aren’t jarring to the reader. 1. Going fancy with adjectives and adverbs via GIPHY “The most daringly adventurous scene in the movie is the thrilling ride on the fast-moving locomotive where the two dare-devil heroes make an unbelievable jump over a great chasm”. Let’s not count the adjectives there. There is a chance you’ll forget the beginning of the sentence by the time you get to the end of it. Another example: “An innovative solution to the great problem of multiplying your profits while keeping expenses low” We’ve all read the word ‘innovative’ before numerous times only to end up wondering what’s new about the solution in the article that hasn’t been said a million times before. We shouldn’t dismiss adjectives and adverbs entirely. They work well in creating bait headlines that draw the reader in. But the incorrect or unclear use of it ruins the copy. Can the problem be described as ‘great’ or is there a better word for it? Is the solution truly innovative or are you just adding it to the title for the sake of it? What to do with adjectives and adverbs Add an adjective only if it is adding meaning to the sentence. Else remove it. ‘Fiery Chasm’ would make more sense than ‘great chasm’ Remove ‘very’. Instead, use a better adjective. For example, replace ‘very happy’ with ‘joyful’ or ‘very big’ with ‘gigantic’, ‘very bad’ with terrible or very smelly with ‘stinky’. Replace generic descriptors with industry-specific descriptors Instead of ‘high-quality shirts’, you can say ‘stain-proof shirts’ or instead of ‘top-notch mascara’, you can say ‘no smudge mascara’. 2. Selling features and not benefits Image Source: helpscout We all would like to write the saga of how cool our product is and all the things it can do. But your customer is here asking a different question – ‘What can it do for me specifically?’ If you over-do the ‘I’m the best’ routine in your copy, it’s likely that your consumer won’t find an answer to their question and go elsewhere. Count the ‘we’ against the ‘your’ in your copy. ‘Your’ should definitely get more weight. It allows the whole story narration from a customer perspective and gets you both better ranking and engagement. “Our toys come with anti-break feature and are also created with soft rounded edges. Our toys are the best’ Those are the features. Here are the benefits: “No matter how much your child tugs and throws, this toy is designed with well-rounded edges so that it doesn’t break or hurt your child. These toys are perfect for toddlers who have just started exploring the world around them” The second copy would appeal more to a parent as it is talking to them about their child’s safety as a benefit of toy’s features. Saying ‘Our toys are the best’ doesn’t add anything to the copy. Instead mentioning who the toy is a way to let parents know the product-target audience fit. 3. A confusing Call To Action (CTA) A CTA is the most important part of your copy. It gives direct instruction to the reader on what to do next once they have assimilated the information on the page. Do they order the product, give you their contact information or sign up for your newsletter. If you don’t tell them exactly what to do, they’ll meander around the website and drop off. Have you seen a button called ‘Submit’? How does it feel when you are about to click it? Is someone asking you to Submit? Does it sound domineering, legal or impersonal? Instead of the cliched ‘Click here’ or ‘Buy now’, you can try the ‘Download White paper’ or ‘Try the Demo’ button. Here too, a personalized button addressing the user directly works better. ‘Get My Free Whitepaper’, or ‘I want this’ or ‘See my results” can get a better click rate than generic buttons. Adding too many CTAs on the page too can be a downer as people won’t be able to make up their mind and go for the least risky option. If you have ‘Read more’, ‘Get Started Now’ and ‘Download my white paper’ on the same page, the user is more likely to click on the ‘Read more’ button as it isn’t cornering them to take action but escape with a click. Pro tip: Add a meaningful description of a few words under the Call to Action button which can prod users to make up their mind. Here are some examples: “30-Day Money Back Guarantee. No questions asked” “Get 40% discount on your first order” “Get your free site audit report in 5 minutes” 4. Avoid ambiguity We’ve all landed on some web pages and bounced off completely confused on what you are doing there. Some of the best examples of such web pages are the “Make millions online with this one sure shot strategy” or “Lose 5 kilos every week with this foolproof strategy”. There is nothing else on the webpage other than more adjectives about the amazing product/service. Instead, there
Content marketing not showing results? Here are 4 things that will help fix it
If content were a living breathing entity it would probably require its own planet. That’s because the amount of content created is astounding – over 2M blogs a day when we were the last counting. Yet, everyone hopes that their piece of content will be the one thing that’ll shake the internet and send traffic by the troves to their website. And not just traffic but leads, conversions and the elusive proof of ROI too. Have you too been hoping that one day a cornerstone piece will magically send traffic your way? If the abra-ca-dabra of a 2000 word authoritative content, regular blog posts, and a social media strategy hasn’t worked yet then your content marketing probably needs some fixes. The fixes aren’t magic (unfortunately). They are nuggets of wisdom that we’ve gathered from our experience and that of industry experts. But it does allow you to look beyond your editorial calendar to see what you can do to create better content. Also, we’ll be sharing a bonus tip towards the end which can help you string together your content marketing from strategy to execution. 1. Do a triple-take on the topic you choose As content marketers, most people have two ways of choosing a topic – the first is to pick an already viral, ranking and popular content and present an original spin off. This allows you to bank on the fact that the topic is already popular and hence may drive traffic. The downside is that it isn’t fully original and someone else is already trending on the popularity. So you may receive only a fraction of the traffic that this topic generates as a whole. The second way is to rack some grey cells and come up with fully original content for your blog. Here are 7 ways to do it (link to JW blog). This method gives you authoritative content but you’ll have limited ways to gauge how much interest the topic will generate. Take a step back into your drawing board to do a content gap analysis. Have you created the best possible FAQs content for your product/service and industry as a whole. If you haven’t then you have a content gap right in front of your eyes. Take at least 3 to 4 customer personas and identify 3 to 4 questions they’ll have through each stage of the purchase funnel (awareness, opinion, consideration, preference, purchase). That’s a good 80 questions that require original content and you’ll have to ensure that you are covering that as a bare minimum. The layer that will encompass these is stories are the ones about your brand, company culture, insider stories and thought leadership. Also, you can’t play the I-me-myself game which will make your content look like an extended company brochure. You’ll have to be real about the topics that affect your customers in general and show them the humane side of your brand too. If you plug the content gaps successfully, you’ll have a traffic generating mechanism set on an autopilot. 2. Fix your content dissemination strategy You now have a hang of what your topic is and who you’ll be creating it for. But how on earth are they going to get to read it? Most people post their content on their company’s social channels and expect that the world will know about it. Or even worse, they’ll expect it to rank on top within a few days and start driving organic traffic. Truth is that both these media have their limitations. Ranking on the search engine may take a few days depending on when your page gets indexed. Social has an incredible amount of noise and only a fraction of people get to see what you post, even if they already follow / like you. It is quite tempting to hit the ‘boost post’ button, do a rough target audience setting and wait for the magic to happen. But paid marketing allows the reach and traffic to sustain only until you throw in money into the campaign. Unless that money is translating into ROI somewhere down the line (and you have a way to connect the dots), this isn’t a good idea. Instead, let’s look at other organic ways to boost your content. Start with your employees: Your employees are your best brand ambassadors. According to lifewire, an average office worker receives 121 emails and sends out 40 emails per day. Let’s say that you have 10 employees. That’s 400 opportunities per day for you to begin circulating your content among a high core target audience who are already aware of your product/services. You can ask employees to not only use a new blog post in their email signature but also share via their personal social handles to amplify the reach. Share with your current customers/subscribers: If you have built up an email list and also have records of all your current customers, you can create a monthly newsletter covering the most interesting topics and news for the month and share it with them. Of course, your content too can be a part of it. Share with potential customers: This works great in the B2B industry where you often have a lot of people in the potential customer pipeline and your sales team is working hard to get them on board. You can share your content with these prospects giving them more confidence in your brand and execution capabilities. Share it with future customers: Then there is a subset of the rest of the universe who aren’t aware of your brand but can listen to you when asked. These are the people who may move in and move out of your sales funnel. You can speak to them with #tags and influencer marketing on social channels. 3. Fix your content marketing format The ways content is consumed has changed over the years. Video has taken over the content marketing world with just YouTube boasting one billion unique visitors a month or one-third
How do you create blogs that are completely original
There are over 2 million blog posts being produced every day. What a number! We all are pretty sure that not all of these are original content. Some are copied outright. Others are ‘refurbished’ versions of popular blogs so that they can ride the popularity wave and get ranking on Google. One fact remains is that writing completely original content from scratch is a super tough job. Sometimes it is a Catch 22 of sorts. You need to write something unique about a popular topic but also see that no one else is writing something similar. Sounds a bit difficult but it isn’t impossible. Here are tips to keep in mind before you start filling your editorial calendar with unique topic ideas 1. Google (Re)Search At the risk of stating the obvious, it is a super common practice to take a blog idea, type it into Google for your research. It gives you an idea of who has already written about the topic, the angles they have used and how many other people have written about similar topics. The one thing that helps here is sorting articles according to the time they were published. This will show you who was the first to write about it, how long the topic has been trending and who is the latest to join the race for the topic. The next tool that Google has is the ability to search by country. This allows you to see how the topic has been adapted to country-specific problems. This will allow you to do a deeper research on local implications of the topic and also if the main topic results include local nuances. When you pick up a topic like ‘7 phrases you shouldn’t use in your writing’ this may differ from country to country depending on the nuances of English language native to the country. This gives you an angle to piggyback on a popular topic and yet write unique and original content. 2. Aim to create cornerstone content Cornerstone is the latest buzz in SEO. As long it is buzzing, you better put on your thinking cap to come up with 4-5 pages of content on a topic for it to rank well. To do this you’ll need to have (or gather) all perspectives on the topic to give a well-rounded view. This can’t be a 1500 word article ballooned into 2000 words but a 2500 word article that is cut down to 2000 with crisp editing. Creating cornerstone content isn’t too hard if you already have a grasp on the topic. If not you’ll have to not only assimilate from all the topics you read online but club it with an interesting point of view that can make it stand out from the clutter. Let’s say you are writing about the impact of IoT on our future. If you pick up the most recent examples for IoT (some of which may not be covered elsewhere), you’ll be able to create an authoritative article on the topic. 3. Unique photos Photos have taken up a big space on the internet. They are growing bigger in our Facebook feeds and better with Instagram to create a more visually engaging experience. Using unique photos to tell a story can definitely be eye-catching for your users – if your photos are of good quality. Most businesses get stuck on sourcing photos though. Where on earth can you keep getting good quality photos on an ongoing basis that make your Instagram account drool-worth? The answer is not very far. Have a look at the new list of websites that offer absolutely free high-quality photos. This is a great place to start. The photos might just end up giving you more ideas for your posts too. For others who have customers walk in (restaurants/gyms), even your customer photos can be a great source of photos. You’ll need to ask for permission and give the right attribution but it’s still a great tool to use. The other option is to have a professional do your business portfolio for a professional shoot. You’ll end up with a ton of photographs that can last a while. The fourth way is to share your own photos that give the ‘insider’ view of your business. It could be your team, your products or ‘in-the-making’ / behind the scenes photos that showcase the ‘human’ aspect of your brand. 4. Lessons you’ve learned These truly make a unique article/blog. Things that come out of your own experience – both success and failure can be a great topic for your blog. These days, failures and lessons learned from them are celebrated as much as success stories. It shows that you have the ability to accept your mistakes and make the better of them. We’ve read stories about companies learning from their hiring processes in order to be able to find the right candidate. Other times, a new campaign strategy that did not work becomes the core of a story. Whether you have successes or failures, these come from your own unique experience. You can ask team members to document their learnings from a specific campaign and then convert it into a blog. 5. Case study A case study provides an in-depth view of what the problem was, how you identified it, how you got the solution, how things were executed and finally, concluding notes as takeaways. Case studies are one of the best lead magnets your website can have. Because this comes fully from your own experience, it is a topic that has never been written before in the way you are writing. For example, a lot of companies may have written about how they use SEO to improve their client’s visibility and ranking. But if you can tie up SEO activities with brand awareness and show exactly how things are done, you have an interesting and unique piece of content. Read this case study of how we increased our client’s
Artificial Intelligence in Marketing: Why You cannot Ignore It Anymore
Are you still on the fence about adding Artificial Intelligence to your marketing mix? About time you jump over and start experimenting because if you don’t, you’ll be one of ‘those’ people who are still living under the rock in the next five years. Too dramatic? It is because we need to grab your attention right now and tell you that AI is the biggest thing happening to marketing as we write this. It promises to change many facets of marketing that is in practice today. It’ll need you to improve your skill set in behavioral targeting, work with data and in the end, deliver a seamless experience to your customer – all of it without treading on their privacy. AI is no longer a part of sci-fi movies. It is moving into retail stores, e-commerce platforms, and your customer’s mobile phones. Here’s a quick fact Source: Hubspot That, in a way, is the beauty and wonder of AI. It is making human lives easy by intelligently and independently completing tasks for them without making them realize that there was a machine behind their action. Artificial Intelligence covers a huge ground including machine learning, image recognition, speech recognition, search, advertising, security, content and more. But how do marketers really use this on their own journey? Here is how AI is already being used by the best minds in the industry. 1) Website design How about a website that designs and builds itself? Does that sound threatening to the graphic designer and developer in your office? It isn’t yet, but it gives you a quick view of where the future is heading. Meet The Grid whose AI web designer ‘Molly’ who has apparently designed thousands of web pages including their own website. “She’s quirky, but will never ghost you, never charge more, never miss a deadline, never cower to your demands for a bigger logo”. Do those words sound like a summary of the problems you’ve been having with your ‘human’ designer? You may just want to give Gird a try to see if an AI designer can do better. Sacha is another AI web designer by Firedrop with similar functionality. The designs look functional and may be getting more intuitive with time too. Now, one of the biggest names in the design world – Adobe – is using Sensei, their AI and machine learning program to automate several of a designer’s task like cropping photos and designing web pages. The sheer reach of Adobe and its popularity can usher a new era in designing if all goes well. 2) Content Creation There goes another job that could be upended by AI? Almost… but not fully. AI is set to weed out content writers who write template content filled with keywords. While unfortunately, such meandering content may not disappear, it will now be written by AI bots quickly and easily. It won’t be Pulitzer Prize-winning content but it’ll be unique, it’ll make sense and it’ll do the job at almost no cost. NarrativeSicence is a Chicago based company that trains computers to write news stories. Quill is a rabbit they’ve pulled out of their magician’s hat. Powered by Advanced Natural Language Generation (Advanced NLG), Quill is an intent-driven system that automatically transforms data into Intelligent Narratives at scale, in conversational language anyone can understand. In fact, NarrativeScience’s cofounder Kristian Hammond predicts that over 90% stories that you’ll read in the next 15 years will be written by computers with artificial intelligence! Another prediction from Hammond is that it won’t take 20 years for a computer to win the Pulitzer – probably just 5! Does that mean you are about to lose your job? Not yet…. Take an example of NarrativeScience when it started tracking the women’s softball beat to give a detailed account. The software first focused only on the winners which made it write a downgrading account about the loser. When the software engineers were asked to tweak this, they found a way. They also found a way to skip the kids’ errors in the little league game as parents did not want to read about them. The thing with AI and machine learning is that they’ll learn on the go and won’t make the same mistake twice. Today several popular websites, even Forbes, use tools like Wordsmith and Quill to create more content in a timely manner. The future jobs for content writers will be less, and will definitely require more skills to Another disturbing factor came to light when a few scientists used AI and deep learning to churn out fake reviews which were not only good but perceived as written by humans. This created a huge uproar on how AI can falsely alter a brand’s perception in our minds. We wonder where things are headed next. 3) Content Curation Content curation has been using AI for a while now. That’s how you’ve been getting recommendations on YouTube once you finish watching a video. That’s also why you are able to binge watch videos on Amazon and Netflix. The software works to understand your video genre preferences and shows similar videos without any human having to make suggestions. If you eventually choose a different genre, the software learns that you now like both these genres and shows you options from both. Outbrain – a content discovery platform has been doing a great job for advertisers to create content that can generate traffic to your website. Even simple ‘Related articles’ plugin in WordPress is an example of presenting curated content to your readers as per their what they are currently reading. There are other interesting applications for AI in content curation. Take the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with uses an AI bot called ‘atbot’ that answers requests from people to see specific types of art. Curation with AI has automated the content discovery process to a good extent these days. It is only set to get better. 4) Search
[Free Case Study] Alliance Fintech – How we used content marketing to spike traffic by 149%
We often have clients asking us what a particular digital or content campaign can actually do for them? Linking a digital marketing activity to goals, execution and then matching the results with a tangible outcome is something we’ve been doing consistently. This digital map has often been created using the client’s long-term vision in mind – on what they want to gain from marketing overall and where digital fits in. In the following case study, you’ll see how we mapped our client’s goal of ‘brand awareness’ into a digital strategy. Words like these often get thrown into the marketing mix without anything tangible attached to it. It translates into ‘views’ for Facebook posts or sometimes even ‘reach’. But do these benefit the client in the end? We had to dig deep to set out metrics that mattered beyond these superficial words. It came down to how many people actually became aware enough of our client’s brand to search for them and their products and services. This is the power of digital laid out for you – it can build a brand and connect the ROI dots right before your eyes. In the duration of a year, we skyrocketed our client’s brand awareness by 149%. Belonging to the highly competitive finance sector, it took multiple strategies and channels to achieve this goal. But in the end, we had a happy client and a story to tell. This case study shares the learnings from the campaign and how you can use similar strategies via your own SEO and Social media campaigns. You are just a click away. Get the case study now! Alliance Fintech Case Study – How we used content marketing to spike traffic by 149% from Justwords Consultants