How can you get started creating a content marketing strategy to maximize your marketing campaign? Content marketing is a vital digital asset that provides several growth opportunities for your business.

It helps you build awareness for your brand, build your online reputation and improve your bottom line.

But according to recent data by Content Marketing Institute, only 42% of marketers documented their content plan. And 60% of those who recorded their content marketing strategies were most successful.

It shows why your business needs a strategy for content marketing to complement your effort. But in another report, the biggest challenge facing 64% of B2B marketers is creating a content marketing strategy for their business.

Therefore, if you’re struggling to develop a plan for your business to strengthen your marketing mix, this article is for you. But what is a content marketing strategy?

What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy is a developed scheme or plan for using various marketing content to meet your business objectives. A results-driven content plan will help you fascinate your buyer persona at each stage of their journey.

So, it’s crucial to create a content strategy framework to help you engage your readers and prospects – and possibly convert them into customers.

Five Proven Ways to Create an Effective Content Marketing Strategy

Creating a strategy for content marketing lets you focus on reaching your business goals. It helps you allocate resources more efficiently and drive results. Here’s how to produce and implement a sustained content marketing plan.

1. Audit Your Existing Content Before Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

Before creating a content strategy for your business, you must audit existing blogs on your site. Conducting content audits is vital because it helps you see what’s performing best and those losing traction.

It shows you where there are content gaps and how to rectify them. Besides, with tons of content published daily on the web, users have an overwhelming mass of information at their disposal.

But auditing your existing blog content lets you gather valuable details to produce content that stands out from the pack. Therefore, use your preferred tool to analyze your blog to understand the state of your content marketing effort.

Google Analytics is one of the first that comes to mind. This software reveals how your target readers interact with your posts. It also shows you blog posts that bring the most traffic to your site. The data will help you make informed marketing decisions, identify gaps in content, and find new brilliant content ideas.

2. Define Your Content Marketing Goal

It’s essential to define your goals before planning how to meet them. This approach gives you plenty of time to decide what’s best for your content strategy plan. Thus, define your purpose of content creation and the reason for developing a content strategy framework.

A transparent strategy framework guarantees that each blog content aligns with your overall brand vision and mission statement. It helps you concentrate on creating the most important content for your blog.

Moreover, your content marketing objective lets you arrange content for publishing in a hierarchical manner that connects with other posts. As a result, your marketing content strategy will stay relevant for the longest.

And while setting long-term goals is a fantastic starting point, it would help if you start with short-term aspirations that lead to your long-term objectives. However, ensure that your goals relate to your overall brand vision.

Some standard marketing goals include:

• Increase SERPs ranking position
• Drive more organic traffic with effective marketing
• Increase brand and product awareness
• Reduce churn and improve consumer lifetime value
• Generate more sales and revenue

However, you may want to establish the traditional Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound (SMART) objectives, which is excellent. But note that the CLEAR goal process is more yielding.

SMART and CLEAR Goal-Setting Characteristics

According to Kreek Speak Solutions, the CLEAR goal-setting framework is your best consideration for establishing your aims. Why? Because it’s more flexible and has the primary elements for a realistic benchmark.

The CLEAR structure provides flexibility, a much-needed trait in the ever-evolving digital marketing niche. So, the CLEAR approach is ideal since it lets you assess your aims based on its primary features. You can read more about the CLEAR goal-setting structure and characteristics here.

3. Research to Understand Your Audience Persona

Why should you care about audience research? Researching your buyer persona helps you to know and serve them better. It means that to create a successful marketing plan, you must define who you want to attract to your business.

That way, you will know your audience’s primary challenge and provide solutions via content marketing. You will produce actionable blog content that is helpful to your readers—making you their go-to resource for valuable information.

Such marketing content can convert readers into leads and customers since it answers consumers’ questions. This step is vital for both newbie and seasoned marketers.
For instance, you need to find a group of people to sell your business if you’re a new marketer. For an experienced marketer, you already have a target market. But you may want to sell to a new consumer segment to increase revenue.

You need to conduct market research to find your target buyer in both cases. Thus, audience analysis enables you to answer a series of questions, such as:

• What are their interests?
• What content format excites them? (More on types of content below)
• Who or what influences your readers?
• What are their pressing problems?
• How do they feel about your brand and services?

Understanding your audience persona helps you develop a content marketing strategy that addresses those questions. To get insights about your audience, access Google Analytics and go to Audience >> Interests >> Overview. You will see your audience’s information.

4. Choose What Content Types to Produce

You have various content options to create, including written and visual materials. However, your content marketing strategy may or may not include all the most famous content assets.

But it must accommodate blog post writing and publishing. Why? Because according to recent blogging statistics, blog posts attract over 90% more inbound links than other content formats. Also, consistently creating blog articles around topics within your content strategy will build your online authority and blog popularity. However, your blog posts must be:

• Well-written and structured
• Helpful to the reader
• Optimized for SEO
• Shareable
• Actionable

So, based on the audience research conducted earlier, use the data to inform your content creation strategy. For example, if data shows a group of your readers love video content, repurpose your best-performing blog articles into video materials.

And if the insights reveal that a segment wants audio content, repurpose to podcasts or create new audio content. The idea is to give your target market what they demand from you to build trust and credibility.

Please, read this post to see some of the best-known content assets you can produce to move your readers through the buyer circle.

5. Choose the Best Channels for Content Distribution

Now that you have started publishing blog content, you need to distribute the materials to the proper channels for optimal ROIs. So, pick the best content distribution channels where your audience hangs out.

This process requires a bit of research. Instead of guesswork, analyze your followers to know the platforms where they’re interacting with your posts. One of the best ways to be sure is via BuzzSumo. Go to BuzzSumo and enter your domain name.

It will show you social sites where your content gets the most shares. Alternatively, you can go back and use Google Analytics. The web analytics tool has several valuable pieces of data to explore.

So, on Google Analytics, navigate to Acquisition, >> scroll down to Social, and click >> Overview. The report shows you the primary social media channels where users share your posts.

Establish your presence on those networking sites with more social interactions and start posting. But ensure to post relevant content only.

How to Create a #ContentMarketing Strategy by @MosClement via @RocksDigital
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Are You Ready to Create a Content Marketing Strategy to Help Grow Your Business?

While we could not cover every part of the content marketing strategy processes, the above steps will drive results for your business. Also, don’t forget to create an editorial content plan, set measurable KPIs – and evaluate your content marketing performance.

Developing a sustained content strategy for your marketing mix is not rocket science. Apply the steps above and comment below about how they work!

The post How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on Rocks Digital.

Driving more web traffic to your blog or landing page can result in more conversions, sales and a higher Google ranking. But how can you drive more organic traffic with the stiff competition? The best way is to improve or augment your SEO strategy.

If you rely on online consumers to discover your blog or product page via searches, you must prioritize augmenting your SEO tactics. Why? According to BrightEdge Research, 68% of internet engagements begin through online search. Besides, Google’s first page receives the most clicks and 75% of users won’t click further than page-one results. So, in this article, I’m sharing the importance of amplifying your SEO techniques and showing you practical SEO tips that will boost your ranking position.

Why Should You Care About Improving Your SEO Strategy?

Several reasons come to mind when considering why you should improve your search engine optimization strategy. One of them is that it helps you stay relevant in the competitive SEO market. And, without a durable SEO strategy, no one will find you online. For instance, when I was writing this blog post, internet users had already performed more than 5.6 billion searches on Google alone. At the same time, bloggers published 5.4 million blog articles and counting.

Source graphic: Worldometer

The numbers show that search engines serve billions of people daily. These are people who are searching for answers or solutions to their problems. Do you see why augmenting your SEO strategy to conform with trends in search is so vital? It allows your audience to find you online.

How to Improve Your SEO Strategy to Boost Google Search Ranking

The main reason for SEO optimization in marketing is to improve your ranking position and drive targeted organic traffic. Thus, the SEO tips below are proven to work, so consider them carefully.

1. Develop a User Intent-Focused Keyword Strategy

Yes, you need to pay attention to user-search intent starting now! Why? Because Google has a strong focus on creating content relevance. I mentioned briefly above that Google’s primary goal is to improve user experience, and one way to make the search engine giant happy is to create content pieces based on user intent.

Search intent or user intent represents the motive or objective of the user performing a search. Therefore, it is essential for powering your SEO strategy since matching a user’s intention for searching online helps you drive quality organic traffic. However, to develop a solid keyword plan with search intent in mind, examine your competitors to see what they do to gain traction on search engine results pages (SERPs).

First, define whether your topic is thriving on search results and if it matches your readers’ search intent. The idea is to figure out what topics and keyword phrases your audience is typing on Google to find relevant content.

2. Revamp Your SEO Techniques With Topic Clusters

A topic cluster is a prominent blogging tip for SEO’s best performance. And intelligent marketers use this SEO trend to gain website traction and rank on SERPs. Applying topic cluster SEO tactics correctly can differentiate between a boring website and a high-conversion site.

What Are Topic Clusters?

Topic clusters imply a category of related web pages that centers around pillar content. Otherwise stated, it is a group of interlinked blog pages built on primary content that points to a broad topic. This type of content provides several opportunities for internal links and helps keep readers engaged longer on your page, thereby increasing time on-page and SEO ranking. Remember that these indicators help Google to better rank your site.

Note that topic clusters start with powerful pillar content and include relevant internal links to topic cluster pages. This SEO technique is vital because it enables more pages on your site to rank on searches by providing informative content to users’ queries. Therefore, to rank better on search engines, topic clusters are some of the best solutions. Why? Because they provide answers to the new search queries, such as the “what, why and how” of a search.

How to Create Topic Clusters

To create topic clusters, select a subject for your target keyword and develop subtopics related to your pillar content. Then, link those pages to your pillar content to establish your authority. This SEO content-creation technique is one of the best ways to show up in searches and improve your rankings.

3. Examine Competitors’ Content Structure

Another vital area of competitor research is to study your competitors’ content or page structure. It lets you see why their blog posts are generating traction and driving web traffic, how they structure their content and how you can make yours better.

But where do you begin? Start by evaluating the top pages of your topic on Google. Accordingly, enter your search terms on Google to see what pages are ranking for the keywords. Also, look at:

• Featured snippets
• Google answer box
• People also asked
• Searches related to

Then select the most relevant web pages and click the URLs to see how they structure their blog articles. Your content evaluation gives you an edge over your competition. How? You will have more insight on:

• Content length
• Article structure
• Blog format
• And more

It allows you to create better content than your competitors. This step is essential because a healthy page structure and in-depth content improve the user experience (UX). Also, it lets Google correctly index your pages. These activities help increase click-through rates and search rankings.

4. Apply Image SEO for Better Results

Visuals are incredible content marketing elements that make your site and content materials more appealing. But it would help if you optimized the visuals you use on your blog and website for SEO purposes. That way, you make it easier for search engines to find you online.

Image SEO refers to optimizing photos and other visuals for SEO to allow Google bots to read and understand the purpose of the image. This process is ideal as it improves content visibility and increases SEO ranking.

For proper optimizations, look at the image size and file format. Large photos reduce website speed, which is not suitable for SEO. So, reduce or compress images where necessary.

More Ways to Optimize Images for SEO

To maximize content marketing ROIs, optimize your photos for humans and search engines. The following image optimization tips will help improve your SEO effort.

• Produce original link-able image assets.
• Optimize image alt text, titles and captions.
• Use the correct image format.
• Create SEO-friendly image file names.
• Use lazy loading for images.
• Add your photos to the site map.
• Ensure all images are mobile-friendly.

Consequently, before uploading and publishing image content, be sure to apply the image SEO tips above. Check that the images and alt texts correspond with the content so that you strengthen your SEO techniques and drive results.

5. Vary Your Backlink Profile

An outstanding element of SEO is inbound links, but the incoming links should come from reputable high-authority websites. It means considering two useful sources when building your inbound link profile.

Sources to Consider

• The kind of backlinks to your site: are they dofollow or nofollow links? Yes, both link types matter for SEO, but a dofollow has more weight.
• Examine the authority of the websites where you’re getting inbound links.

Why Is Diversifying Your Link Profile Important for SEO?

Varying backlink profiles are crucial for three tangible reasons. It tells search engines that:

• Your content is valuable.
• Incoming links are natural.
• Your website is credible.

It is a fantastic way of telling search engine bots that you are performing white hat SEO techniques, in contrast to black hat SEO tactics.

How to Vary Your Backlink Profile

1. Create different anchor text, and avoid exact match anchor text.
2. Select websites with diverse PageRank to balance your link portfolio.
3. Develop content worth sharing across social media.
4. Produce data-driven blog articles and reach out to publishers who may feature the content in new media platforms with links back to your site.
5. Create links on multiple web pages.
6. Accept nofollow backlinks since they provide helpful referral web traffic.

It’s Time to Improve Your SEO Strategy

The primary objective of amplifying your SEO effort is to attract more organic web traffic, boost leads and improve Google search ranking. Understanding what works is only part of the process, but enforcing the tips is the only way to get results.

Ways to Augment Your #SEO Strategy to Boost Visibility by @MosClement via @RocksDigital
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Given this, implement the pointers as outlined above. Then test your SEO performance to determine what’s working, what’s not and make adjustments where necessary. Do you have more hacks for improving SEO results? Please, tell us in the comments below!

The post 5 Productive Ways to Augment Your SEO Strategy to Boost Website Visibility appeared first on Rocks Digital.

Are you wondering how a geofencing marketing strategy can help you increase leads and sales? Do you want to know why geofencing marketing is perfect for your local business?

Why Your Local Business Needs a Geofencing Strategy

There are various grounds for using geofencing marketing strategies for local business growth. One such reason is that mobile marketing has become commonplace among marketers, regardless of industry.

Based on a recent report, mobile gadgets account for almost 55% (over half) of global web traffic in Q1 of 2021. Furthermore, consumers spend the bulk of their time online through the use of mobile applications.

Experts predict that the time users spend on mobile apps daily will reach 227 minutes per day in 2022. That’s reasonable enough to note that geofencing marketing is an essential marketing strategy your business should be using.

The Benefits of Geofencing Marketing

Although there are more than enough benefits to using this digital marketing tool, I’m highlighting only a few of them.

Customized Customer Offers

Geofencing marketing is remarkable because it allows you to gather consumers’ data and use the information to serve them better. How? The data you collect enables you to personalize your marketing message and product or service offers according to buyers’ needs.

It gives you data about your customers and details about products or services that interest them. Thus, by putting all that information together, you will address their issues and provide enticing offers to boost your ROIs.

Increase Foot Traffic and Sales

Much as Google My Business (GMB) can improve local SEO rankings, a Geofencing strategy can increase your local search visibility. Why? That’s because this business model is a location-based marketing tactic that lets you target buyers in a defined location using push notification.

As a result, it lets you send notifications of:

• New product arrivals
• Special offers
• Coupons
• Discount goods, and more

These marketing undertakings help draw in more customers and prospects to your business and increase leads and sales.

Better Customer Targeting

Geofencing is also beneficial because it helps you target customers in particular locations with relevant marketing messages and offers at the best times. The software also gives you the option to filter your targets with special targeting features. Moreover, it allows you to send your marketing content, offers and ad campaigns only to your target market.

Other advantages of geofencing growth hacking include:

• Better data collection
• Personalized customer experience
• Disburse efficiently

How to Use a Geofencing Strategy to Increase Retail Sales

As you can see, geofencing marketing techniques can help you connect with your target customers, increase foot traffic – and build customer loyalty.

By customizing your offers and targeting consumers according to customer information, you will grow your business significantly. That said, let’s consider how to leverage geofencing marketing to increase ROIs.

1. Target Buyers in Your Business’ Perimeter With Geofencing

Using geofencing to target shoppers in your area is an efficient way to increase brand awareness, drive consumer traffic and sales. Therefore, use the tool to target potential customers who live and work within your geofencing boundary.

Send them notifications of any new products, special offers, and more. As a result, you will boost leads and sales.

2. Use Push Notifications to Share Brand Story and Build Trust

Another effective way to drive foot traffic and increase sales to your local store is to share your brand story. Brand storytelling helps you connect better with local customers and build trust. Stories give consumers an inside look into your company’s culture, which helps to establish credibility.

Moreover, you can send push notifications of blog content to help potential customers understand more about your business operations. Some local business owners overlook this strategy because they believe that a local brand does not need a blog.

On the contrary, combining blogs and push will scale your business faster than you can imagine. This approach is vital because not all consumers will buy on the first visit. Thus, it would help if you nurtured them to qualify as leads.

You can meet this goal by regularly sending updates of your latest blog articles. It could be content about new products or services, upcoming events, or special offers. However, whatever content you share from your blog should harmonize with your brand goal.

Also, the articles must be informative and compelling enough to move readers to action. For this, you may need to perform subsidiary research to establish facts and build your credibility. So, use marketing content to nurture and help them qualify as leads and paying customers.

3. Feed on Competitors’ Customers With Geofencing Strategy

As stated earlier, geofencing enables you to position your virtual fence around competitors’ businesses and dispatch marketing campaigns accordingly. The ad campaigns you send help you draw competitors’ customers to your local business.

This digital marketing tool will assist you in meeting this goal by targeting customers of your direct competitors. That is, shoppers who buy the same products you sell from other shop owners.

With geofencing marketing, you can send special offers and other advertising campaign notifications to entice consumers to your local brand. It helps you increase sales dramatically.

4. Use Geofencing to Attract Shoppers Who Visit Other Businesses

This step is similar to the above technique. But in this case, you’re not looking to entice the buyers of your direct competition. Instead, you’re targeting customers of your indirect competitors. What do I mean?

Let’s say you operate a car wash or auto wash service center, and you have several auto mechanics around your locale specializing in auto repairs. They are your indirect competitors. It is highly likely that after auto repairs, the customers may want to clean/wash their cars before going home.

Otherwise stated, let’s assume that you’re dealing in footwear, and there are retailers in your area who’re selling dress wear. These are your indirect competitors. Consumers who frequently update their wardrobes are likely to get some new footwear to go along with the clothes. Thus, you can use geofencing to bring them to your local business.

Top Geofencing Platforms

Many digital platforms provide remarkable geofencing services. You can employ their services to scale your local business quickly. Thus, here are some of the best geofencing platforms for your consideration:

• Propellant Media
• PushMaze
• ReachLocal
• Fencer.io
• Dealer Strong
• Phunware

How Does Geofencing Work?

Geofencing may seem complicated, but it is a straightforward marketing technique with fantastic ROIs. It lets you stand out and outperform the competition. So, how does it work?

Here’s how geofencing works:

To illustrate, you have a physical store with local competitors all around you. In this case, you have intense competition, and you need to outsmart them to boost sales. But how? That is where geofencing marketing plays a crucial role.

You can use a geofencing strategy to manage consumers in your territory. How? You can conveniently meet this goal by creating a virtual fence in those locations.

Once set up, anyone with an intelligent device who lives or enters your defined territory of virtual fencing will automatically get added to your email list. Hence, email subscribers will receive regular marketing messages and offers via ad notifications in the coming 30 days.

This marketing hack gives you an edge over your competitors. That’s because you can set up your geofencing marketing tool near or around their spot and draw their customers to your shop.

The process also allows you to set a time when your notifications will show up on consumers’ mobile apps and web pages. That way, you will drive leads and increase sales.

Why Local Businesses Should Use #Geofencing #Marketing by @MosClement #RocksDigital
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Are You Ready to Start Using Geofencing?

According to consumers’ insights, geofencing can help you build your local presence and grow your business quickly with data-driven ad campaigns.

The tool will help you:

• Establish brand awareness
• Drive more local traffic
• Increase leads
• Optimize sales

Therefore, use a geofencing system to build a virtual fence and market to potential customers within your virtual boundary. Comment below and let us hear about your experiences with geofencing.

The post Why Your Local Business Should Use Geofencing Marketing (and How to Use it) to Boost Sales appeared first on Rocks Digital.

Do you want to generate marketing buzz for your new product or service? Are you launching a new product, or have an existing offer and wish to use buzz marketing to increase adoption and sales?

This article will discuss the definition of buzz marketing, its importance – and the best growth hacks for creating efficient buzz marketing campaigns. Nonetheless, buzz marketing occurs when people talk about your new offer, an event, plus other activities that include a celebrity.

For instance, when Google rolled out the Google Caffeine update in 2010 as its new indexing system, SEO professionals, developers and marketing experts began talking about it on all platforms.

Source graphic: Google

It was a huge update that generated so much buzz. Hence, the search engine giant offered several months of “Developer Preview.” In other words, they gave developers and SEO experts early-bird access for their feedback ─ to inform Google of any issues they may encounter.

Yes, Google is a mega-brand, and you don’t have to be a big company to create buzz for your offerings. With the right marketing strategies and applications, you can make buzz marketing work for your business.

What Is Buzz Marketing?

Buzz marketing is a marketing strategy used to grab consumers, influencers and expert marketers’ attention to intensify your brand message so much that it creates a buzz, becomes newsworthy – and meets your business goal.

The tactics involve using word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing to strengthen your product launch or services and to incite consumers and marketers to start discussing your offers – and sharing them across marketing channels. For some marketers, driving sales may be their top objective, which requires time and effort to convince customers to buy.

However, buzz marketing gets people excited about your business, thereby:

• Creating buzz for your brand
• Building brand awareness
• Generating leads
• Increasing product adoption and
• Maximizing sales

However, you may not see these results immediately. But buzz marketing has long-term benefits. Note that it is notviral marketing, where a single campaign can go viral overnight. Instead, buzz marketing generates hype and discussion around your products or services, or whatever your undertaking might be.

Why Does Buzz Marketing Matter to Your Business?

It would help if you cared about buzz marketing because it gets people chatting about your brand, and lets them choose whether to purchase your products or pay for the services you offer. More importantly, the buzz you create makes consumers more interested in your business.

Here are three reasons why buzz marketing should be part of your marketing toolbox:

• Multipurpose content: While some marketing tactics concentrate on a single marketing channel for business growth, buzz marketing can leverage a piece of content to drive results from several platforms.
• Frequency illusion or Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: After noticing something new (a product or service), the excitement makes your brain adjust to it and you start seeing it everywhere. The more you encounter the brand, the more interactions may occur – and you embed it further into your mind. Thus, it makes you believe that the merchandise is a high-rated commodity that’s worth buying.
• Fear of missing out (FOMO): As more people talk about your offer, buzz marketing exploits or uses your fear of missing out and brings you into the conversation. Usually, people like to be part of a conversation that is generating buzz. Therefore, when consumers talk about your new offer, it creates buzz across platforms. As a result, customers’ FOMO kicks in ─ stimulating their urge to buy.

How to Create Successful Buzz Marketing Campaigns

As mentioned earlier, I’m sharing the best buzz marketing strategies to growth-hack your business quickly.

1. Build Anticipation to Create Buzz for Your Product or Service

If you want to launch a new product, the best way to get people talking about it is to build anticipation for the material. But how can you create a buzz? Give consumers a basis for interacting with your digital product.

It means that the content you post on all platforms must provide value to the reader. That way, you stimulate consumers’ desire to learn more about your offerings, share the content with their friends – and eventually convert into leads and paying customers.

So ask yourself, why do people pay for a service? Because they want it for a need. It helps them solve their problems. Therefore, since you already know your target market, let them see that your offer is the solution to their needs.

Then provide discounts for early adopters (more on that in a moment). You can also offer to give free products to anyone who shares the material. As a result, you will build awareness and expectations for the product launch.

2. Encourage Early Adopters

How can you encourage early adopters for your launch? By making consumers feel special. How? Give potential customers early access to try out your new or upgraded product or service before rolling it out into the market. That’s how you make them feel unique.

Humans have the character to enjoy feeling special, and when you give them first-time access, they become so excited that they start telling others about it. Consequently, leverage your community; grant fellow bloggers and content marketers early access to encouraging adoption. Also, provide early adopter access to influencers in your niche to urge them to support your campaign. They will be happy to write reviews and create other content types to promote your brand across marketing channels. In the end, you will receive excellent exposure.

3. Partner With Marketing Influencers

Why should you work with influencers? Because they have the marketing persona that will pay for your products or services, and they will help you reach a wider audience faster. Moreover, as the name suggests, influencers can influence consumers’ buying decisions.

Did you know? Influencer marketing is one of the best digital marketing assets for generating ROIs. Research shows that companies make almost $6 ($5.78) ROIs for every one dollar spent on influencer marketing. Given this, over 90% of marketers say that influencer marketing (IM) is the best marketing type.

However, remember that you can use about a dozen types of influencers to create buzz for your campaign. But you need to find the right match for the task.

Hence, I’m sharing the four primary types of influencers based on follower counts:

1. Nano-influencers: 1,000─10,000 followers
2. Micro-influencers: 10,000─100,000 followers
3. Macro-influencers: 100k─one million followers
4. Mega-influencers: One million+ followers

Therefore, depending on your marketing budget, you may want to start with Nano- or Micro-influencers. These categories have the most engaged audience and are more relatable with their followers. Thus, if you’re a small business owner, I suggest you work with either of these influencers to produce buzz for your marketing campaign.

Reach out to them with special offers (free or discount) and conclude deals in return for your desired objective. Don’t forget to work with influential bloggers, as they have more credibility with their readers.

4. Email Subscribers to Create a Marketing Buzz

I’m sure you have a list of email subscribers consisting of loyal customers. Please email them to grow their interest in your new project. But before you send out your message, examine your list and segment active users. These are consumers who are most likely to read your email and tell others about your project.

In the message, ensure to offer them discounts, free trials, or coupons. Use call-to-action (CTA) in your email to encourage recipients to become advocates by forwarding the message to friends and other people who may find it exciting. That’s how to create buzz marketing with email newsletters.

5. Create Buzz Marketing With Automated Text Messages

Why should you care about automated text messages that have been around for ages? Because they’re cost-effective and have the potential to generate huge ROIs. A study reveals that automated text messages generate a 98% open rate and 30% engagement rate, more than any other marketing strategy.

But what are automated text messages? Similar to email campaigns, automated text messages, also known as scheduled text messages, are pre-written text materials prepared to go out automatically at specific times. Again, the automated SMS can go out to your target market when triggered by the user’s behavior or an event.

As a result, you’re able to reach consumers at the best times with your message and get results. Besides, SMS automation allows you to send personalized notifications that prompt immediate response and increased exposure. It is an underused marketing tactic that lets you create buzz around your business.

6. Take Advantage of Referral Programs

Referral marketing programs are useful since they help you pinpoint your ideal customer (people who are loyal to your business). Since they regularly interact with your brand, reward them for their loyalty. How? Offer them points, discounts, or other incentives.

Promise more incentives if they refer their friends and more consumers to your business.

With the incentives in mind, they feel special and will gladly share your content on social media, tell people about your product – and write reviews and testimonials to create a buzz about your brand.

It helps you reach more people faster and increase awareness for your brand. But ensure that your offer is appealing enough to entice people to join your referral program. Nonetheless, to help you make gains with referral marketing, I advise you to use the best referral marketing tools to ease the workload. Hence, Shane Barker published the top 13 software tools for referral marketing recently.

7. Leverage Facebook Ads and PPC Campaigns

Facebook advertising is one of the most lucrative digital marketing assets around. Why? Because it has the most targeted form of digital advertising that gives you the ability to reach your target market. If done right, your Facebook ad campaigns will engage your audience and turn them into brand ambassadors and loyal clients.

Did you know that Facebook advertising is the most cost-effective compared to other advertising platforms? You can invest $5 in FB ads and reach 1,000 people within a targeted audience. Nevertheless, just like FB ads, PPC campaigns also enable you to scale your reach quickly. However, the number of people you reach will depend on your marketing budget.

The beauty of these marketing channels is that you can reach an audience that has never heard of you and convert them. Thus, use these platforms to create buzz and improve your business growth.

Building Up a Buzz Is Critical for Marketing Today

Marketing your business is fantastic, but creating buzz for your brand can be challenging, particularly if you don’t know where to start. You need people talking about your new product or service to build awareness and attract the right customers.

So consumers may be waiting for your product, but they might not see it without you taking it to them. Promoting your business through various channels, including giving out special offers, are remarkable ways to get people talking and create buzz for your business.

What Is Buzz #Marketing? And How to Actually Create It by @MosClement #RocksDigital
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Also, don’t forget to create blog posts and other types of content around your product or services. Blogging is one of the best ways to drive awareness and get others to share your content on all channels, including social media. And tell us what we missed. We would like to hear your thoughts!

The post What Is Buzz Marketing? And How to Actually Create It appeared first on Rocks Digital.

What are the two biggest challenges that customer success teams are facing? It is to multiply consumer profiles and increase customer lifetime value (CLTV, CLV, or LTV). Indeed, for many marketers, expanding CLTV is their number-one priority since it helps build long-term relationships and boost revenue.

When you think about it, how do you foster stable consumer loyalty? It is by prioritizing buyer relationships above all else to increase CLTV and retention for your business growth. Thus, an expanded customer lifetime value is essential for your brand success. According to research, 98% of marketers believe that monitoring customer lifetime value is vital to their marketing strategy.

Source material: Criteo

Also, over 80% of respondents say that tracking CLTV helps them to increase sales. However, almost 70% of marketers said they need to do better in monitoring customer accounts. But why are these marketers concerned about tracking customer lifetime value? Because it helps them identify areas of improvement for increasing CLTV.

However, the big questions are:

1. What is CLTV?
2. Why is CLTV important to your business?
3. How can you improve CLTV for more ROI?

This article will address those in a moment. So let’s move forward, shall we?

What Is Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)?

Customer lifetime value definition: It is the entire worth of a customer to your business throughout his or her relationship with your brand. In other words, CLTV is the net profit or monetary value your organization makes from a customer over time.

It considers the following metrics:

• The ratio of consumer spending
• The rate of order occurrences
• Marketing costs
• Sales subtraction, and other measurables while serving customers

Understanding these metrics and tracking them is vital to help you define your most valued clients to generate more revenue. For example, I have a monthly G-suite plan with Google for my business email that has run for a year and a half.

Now, if you calculate a $5 monthly subscription, for instance, and you multiply that by 24 months, it equates to $120. That’s the amount of time I’ve been on the Google G-suite subscription – but that would increase over time as I make more payments.

Why Is Increasing Customer Lifetime Value So Important?

There are several justifications for why increasing your CLTV is vital to your business. One reason is that it costs much less to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. Indeed, 70% of surveyed marketers agreed to this fact. That is, according to Invesp.

Source graphic: Invesp

Also, increasing CLTV is crucial because it is more profitable to sell to an existing buyer than a new client. The percentage differs significantly, with a 60%–70% profitability for selling to a current buyer. In contrast, you may have a mere 5%–20% return for marketing to a new customer.

Besides the above, the study also revealed some exciting findings. It points out that current customers are 50% more likely to try new products, and they would spend over 30% more money. That is in stark contrast to new consumers.

Source image: Invesp.

So, increasing CLV is so critical as it enables you to retain existing customers. Given this, be sure to create a marketing plan that includes a strategy for increasing CLTV. If it means putting money into this marketing strategy by allocating part of your marketing budget, it will help you retain current buyers.

5 Ways How to Increase Customer Lifetime Value

Now that you know what CLTV represents and why it is essential for your business growth, we will look at the top marketing growth hacks for increasing your CLTV. Below are the top five ways that help you extend CLV and increase your ROI.

1. Prioritize Product Quality

One of the top reasons that consumers stick to your brand is quality. And if you continue giving and adding to your product quality, you will surely increase your customers’ lifetime value. The reason I switched web hosting services is that I was not getting worth from the former. But since my new web hosting provider is giving me more value, I decided to extend my contract.

That is the power of quality in marketing. It applies to any products or services you are offering. So it is logical to say that if you prioritize product or service quality, it will reduce churn. Also, existing customers will stay with your brand and become advocates. They will help spread the word to attract more clients and increase their lifetime value.

2. Improve Consumer Onboarding Experience

An insightful onboarding system is the hallmark of an optimal user experience (UX). And you can achieve that if your product has an intelligent user interface. Concerning consumer success and lifetime extension, an improved user onboarding experience is a vital element that ensures continued business growth. Why? Because a flawed onboarding system increases customer churn.

Indeed, research shows that it is among the top three main causes of customer churn:

1. Poor onboarding experience
2. Weak or feeble relationship building (your business will thrive on relationship building)
3. Inadequate customer service

Note that it is at the user onboarding stage that you make the most positive impact. That’s because onboarding is where consumers interact with your products. Therefore, onboarding is a critical component of the consumer journey from the first touchpoint to conversion. Why is that so? Because your onboarding procedure enables first-time users to see your product or service’s value.

For instance, a report by Dan Wolchonok reveals the reasons why consumers fail to extend their lifetime value after week one of using your product.

Source graphic: HubSpot/SaaSFestPreso-Dan

The report shows that 30% of users stopped using your product because they didn’t understand it. But marketers who improved the user onboarding experience saw a 75% increase in customer retention in just the first week.

Hence, it is essential to improve the user onboarding experience to encourage existing users to stick with your products or services. Simultaneously, an improved onboarding process will compel new clients to come back – and extend their lifetime value with your brand.

3. Engage Customers With Value-Added Content

How do you encourage users to keep coming back, particularly when they’re not ready to buy? It’s by providing value through content. This is usually the case with first-time visitors – they visit your blog or website to satisfy an immediate need. In other words, they’re not prepared to purchase your offerings or commit to a long-term relationship.

Hence, you want to stimulate their desire to return to your site, stay longer, and possibly make a purchase. Therefore, creating relevant content types that entertain your audience and add value is one of the best ways to bring them back to your website.

For this, your posts will not be one-size-fits-all but would differ, such as:

• Product reviews
• Educational pieces (based on user needs)
• Product description
• Step-by-step guide
• Emotional decision materials
• Purchasing
• Onboarding content
• Loyalty focused content
• Advocacy content pieces and more

Moreover, when writing any of the above blog post types, ensure that you describe your product or service well, and be concise. Use illustrative materials to create more explanatory blog posts that are easy to understand, and that leave a lasting impression on the reader. In that way, you will compel him to return to your site. If you’re writing a product description for instance, it should provide readers with compelling details and features of your product or services.

Your content should also highlight user issues and how it will solve them, including other benefits of using your services. The more you nurture your audience with helpful content pieces, the more it helps attract new customers – while extending existing users’ lifetimes.

*Important* All users have varying needs. Consequently, create and distribute content in formats that align with their specific needs.

4. Reward Loyal Customers With an Upgrade

How do you make loyal customers happy? One way is to offer them an upgrade. Upgrading their services shows that you care about their interests and value your relationship with them. For example, if you provide a subscription service, upgrade your active customers to premium. Search for those who are actively engaging with your brand and offer them free premium service.

Yes, you’re not adding to your income, but the result is that those you upgraded will become advocates, using word of mouth (WOM) across marketing channels to tell others about your business. In this way, you increase your customer lifetime value and attract new leads – and convert them into paying customers.

5. Offer Outstanding Customer Service

Is customer service important to your business? Yes it is because the core factor to your business success is to draw clients to your enterprise and make them buy. The more people you drive in, the better your odds of increasing your income. But the challenge is how to get first-time buyers to make more purchases or orders.

One of the main drivers that bring first-time users back to make repeat purchases is excellent customer service. Given this, customer service, also known as client support and consumer service, should be part of your marketing mix since it enables you to make customers return for more purchases. Moreover, it is a marketing tool that allows you to build lasting brand/customer relationships through emotional connections. Besides, it provides a competitive advantage.

Please consider the following statistics to help inspire your marketing strategy:

• According to Trustpilot, 90% of US shoppers say customer service is their deciding factor for doing business with a brand.
• Research by HubSpot also revealed that more than 90% of buyers would make repeat purchases with a company that provides excellent customer service.
• Statistics by Groove indicate that US brands lost over $40 billion annually due to poor customer experience.
• Almost 90% of clients switched products because of poor customer care experience.
• 86% of customers will pay roughly 25% more for a better consumer service experience.

So the better your customer support service, the more you will increase CLTV. Clients will gladly engage with your brand and do business with you.

How to Increase Customer Lifetime Value in 5 Steps by @MosClement #Marketing #RocksDigital
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Wrap-Up

Increasing CLTV might seem challenging, but it is a rewarding marketing undertaking that will help you build your business on loyal customers. Like any other marketing asset, you must put in the effort to get results. Increasing your CLTV is not any different.

Therefore, apply the growth hacks above, test your strategy, and track results to see where to make improvements. Whatever tactics you’re using, ensure that you’re implementing best practices that signal your audience that you’re the best.

Did we miss anything? Your remarks are much appreciated!

The post How to Increase Customer Lifetime Value in 5 Steps appeared first on Rocks Digital.

Are you leveraging video content marketing to scale your digital marketing business? Are you interested in learning powerful tips you can apply today to improve your video marketing campaign and grow your business?

If you answered yes to the above questions, then please, make sure to read the entire article for the best tips that will help you boost your video marketing campaign!

The Whys and Wherefores of Video Content Marketing

But before we go further down this article, let’s find out why you really do need video content marketing to grow your business.

Why use video content marketing? There are fascinating benefits of using video marketing in your digital marketing campaigns. In fact, studies show that…

Visual content is a phenomenal way to share information, because the brain processes visual data 60,000 times faster than text content.

Video marketing is one of the visual content marketing strategies that engage users – and keep them coming back for more. But why?

It’s because videos increase your ability to retain information.

For example, after watching videos, three days later you can retain, on average, 65% of the information, as opposed to 10% of the same information that you only heard.

Videos offer your target market a background view of what’s happening behind the scenes with your brand, and help you better connect and build trust with that audience.

Email subject lines using the word video can increase the CTR (click-through rate) by 65%, with a 19% increase in the email open-rate.

5 Video Content Marketing Tips You’ll Want to Use Now

Now that you know why video marketing is important to your digital marketing campaign, let’s consider some amazing steps you can apply today to boost your video marketing strategy.

1. Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)

It’s a great idea for you to create videos (in-house videos) to communicate your brand message with your target audience, as it will help you create brand awareness, etc.

However, did you know that it’s even better for you to leverage user-generated content and create compelling videos?

Yes, it’s true! And that’s because the user-generated video has more force – it conveys authenticity.

Research shows that brands who created a blend of official brand videos and user-generated video content saw a 28% increase in engagement.

Furthermore, user-generated content videos perform better on YouTube, with 10X more views than other brand video content types!

The reason is that as people, we tend to trust recommendations from others. As a result, user-generated content (UGC) video offers you a platform to humanize your brand message and tell your story accordingly.

2. Optimize Your Videos for SEO

Optimizing your videos for SEO is amazing, in that it will help you improve the visibility of your video marketing campaign, and boost your search rankings as well.

Hence, it’s important that you make sure to create video content that’s relevant to your target market – videos that help and solve their problems – videos that add value for them.

Relevancy increases clicks, engagement, shares, and so on, and these factors will greatly enhance your SEO.

Consequently, try to find the best keywords for your video marketing campaign – keywords your competitors are using to rank high on SERPs.

Use your seed keyword in the title and description. Add tags and meta-tags to boost your chances of ranking high on SERPs.

3. Create Short Videos

The length of your video plays a crucial role in the success of your video marketing strategy. Gone are the days when longer videos won the battle on social media. Now, people have a lower attention span, which calls for the need to create shorter videos.

But understand there are still some brand messages that may require a lengthy video to be able to emphasize and convey the main points properly.

In this case, you can create a video series – part 1, part 2, and part 3, as the case may be. The point here is to make sure your video is very brief, approximately 60 seconds in length, or at least less than that.

However, there’s much controversy regarding the optimal length of videos – especially YouTube videos – to attract more clicks, engagement, and generate leads.

Please check out HubSpot’s report on the optimal length of videos for each major social media platform, including YouTube.

4. Promote Your Videos Across Channels

When you’re done creating your video, you must publish it on your blog or website. But is that the end of it? Not really – You need not let your video sit on your blog or website without proper promotion. You have to promote it sparingly across all marketing channels to increase visibility.

Promoting your video content across various marketing channels will help you:

• Drive more traffic
• Improve clicks
• Increase engagement
• Get more sales, etc.

Therefore, share your videos across channels such as these:

• All major social media sites
• Use them in your email marketing strategies
• Use them on your landing pages

For instance, a study shows that video content that’s added to a landing page can significantly boost conversion – by up to 80%.

As a result, make sure to promote your videos on all marketing channels to improve your video marketing campaign.

5. Create Interactive Videos

Just as user-generated video content can generate more views, increase shares, and so on, interactive video has the capability to boost website traffic and engagement as well.

As the name indicates, interactive videos offer your target audience the opportunity to respond to and leave feedback about your video content – which in many cases might be about your product and services.

With interactive videos, you offer your audience an avenue to interact and better connect with your brand.

The best way to create an interactive video for your video marketing campaign is to host the contest.

Contests can generate much engagement and leads, and when the contest is about your product and services where the best video will receive a prize, the response and engagement will definitely increase. This will surely help you improve your video marketing campaign.

Keep Up with the Competition – And Surpass It with Video Content Marketing

In a world of digital marketing where technology has taken over the landscape, the challenge to keep up with the competition has become even more intense. And with new challenges coming up, as a video marketer you must contend with these challenges in order to reap the benefits of your video marketing campaign.

Therefore, having a well-defined video marketing strategy (or framework) to work with will surely strengthen that video marketing campaign.

The steps in this article are simple, practical ways that will enable you to define your video marketing efforts and grow your business. From short videos to UGC, to using interactive videos and contests, make sure to apply these tips as you go forward in your video marketing strategy, then see where it takes your brand!

Making the Case for #Video #Content #Marketing by @MosClement #RocksDigital
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Still think video content marketing is lacking in payoff? Do share your “visual” thoughts in the comments!

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