The Ultimate Guide to. Marketing

Transcription

1 The Ultimate Guide to Marketing

2 The Ultimate Guide to Marketing is old school. That s true. But its evolution on the social web continues. marketing has become the secret of smart and successful marketers who not only see its value, but use it as a foundation of their marketing efforts to drive sales. Compared to other social media channels (YES, is a social channel!) has almost two times as many user accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined. (Currently at 2.1 billion users). There were 3.6 billion accounts in 2013! By 2016, the number will reach 4.3 billion. Source: Radicati A fact about The majority of business people do not check Facebook to have a one-on-one meaningful, private conversation. Entreprenuers, investors and other business people open their account to start the dialogue. 2

3 is personal Unlike the newest, trendy social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, allows marketers to have repeated contacts with their prospects when they want and not when Facebook s newsfeed algorithm allows. Posting something on the social networks is being the markets, where people pass by and scan the stalls, goods and tables. They may not even see it, whereas a new in their inbox will always attract their attention. Whether it is read is another thing. It s also permission based. When people subscribe, they re looking to receive an from their new content providers. It is a much stronger tie to a customer than a like on Facebook. Another important fact For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on marketing investment. Source: Experian 3

4 What about mobile? is the number-one activity for people on their phones. Studies show that 47% of is now opened on a mobile device. This means that making sure your and content are optimized for mobile is vital. Source: Litmus Analytics (April 2014) What we will cover I would recommend you read this e-book until the end because it will include a ton of actionable tactics. In it we will cover the following topics. Part 1 - Building your subscribers list like the smart marketers do The 3 steps to audience analysis How to capture those subscribers like a pro Part 2 - Nurturing your subscribers and leading the conversation Reinforcing the decision Measuring and improving Case studies Part 3 - Converting subscribers into customers For companies For bloggers and consultants 4

5 Part 1 Part 1: Building your subscribers list the smart way Before starting to build your list, ask yourself WHY are you doing it. What s the purpose of sending s? Is it just because everybody says it is useful, cheap and efficient? Or is it because you want to lead the dialogue and have a real conversation with your audience? Start with deciding on your objectives. This means finding the REASON, rather than thinking about WHAT to send and HOW to do it. The first thing to do when you decide to use marketing is to make sure you market your content to a highly qualified audience that will DEMAND the information that you provide by . So you might think A highly qualified audience, market your content...it s easy to use this fancy marketing terminology, but how does this help me? Here s a tip: Know who you are talking to. Here is how you can do that. 5

6 Part 1 The 3 steps to audience analysis You have various forms of getting feedback and information from your website s visitors. In order to add value to your content and communicational outputs, become the initiator, the one who LEADS THE DIALOGUE. By doing this, you are already assuming a position of POWER and INFLUENCE over the target audience. As I recall, smart marketers are the ones who manage to influence decisions and convince the target audience of the value of their service or product. So let s look at the 3 steps of getting to know who your target market is. Step 1: Start by setting up a survey on your website Choose the appropriate tool to run a survey and then start creating your questions. In order to help you with deciding the information that you need to know about the audience, we will provide you with the procedure that we ve used for Jeff Bullas, an digital and social media marketing blogger. Jeff has been ranked one of the Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers by Forbes in

7 Part 1 Here is how we managed to analyze the audience of his website. We created two surveys for two segments of traffic: 1. New visitors 2. Returning visitors. The new visitors had to ask questions regarding the following: Their interest (if they were bloggers or if they wanted to become one) How relevant the content they have just consumed was for them? Which was the biggest online struggle for them at the moment? What is the likelihood of recommending the website to others? The returning visitors, though, had to answer to different questions: Which topics are the most appealing to them Suggestions for improving the website How likely is that they recommend the website to others 7

8 Part 1 We collected enough answers to drive conclusions about the blog s audience, and we found out that people were interested in finding information about list building, marketing, exit opt-in tips & tools and converting visitors into customers. This was the beginning of our optimization plan for Jeff, and we strongly recommend you to allocate time to do research before starting to do anything on your website. 8

9 Part 1 Step 2: Define the PERSONAS PERSONA - Persona is a social role played by people in their lives. In online marketing, a persona is a figure that reunites all of the website s visitors with similar behaviour into one single entity. Therefore, it is easier for marketers to target personas than thousands of unknown visitors. Moreover, PERSONAS allow you to address human characteristics and personality and to become more personal in your communication. Facts about PERSONAS - There are usually 2-3 types of personas. If you identify more than 5, you should check out the segmentation conditions and the survey s answers; the key is to have the proper number of personas, to target your content while remaining efficient. 9

10 Part 1 Be warned: personas are not the same with the market segments. Use a template Creating personas can be fun and useful in the same way. We recommend you to create a template that includes: Fictional name - Let s call her Jenna Major characteristics that define her Jenna is a web copywriter. She enjoys writing on her blog about health and personal development. She inspires people. For a living, she is selling copywriting services for companies, but she s working from home. She s having a child and she s enjoying reading, playing with her dog and painting. Lifecycle - Is Jenna aware of the fact that she needs to optimize her website in order to raise her awareness and to become a great candidate for companies searching for copywriting services? Content - Which content materials and topics appeal to her the most? 10

11 Part 1 Step 3. Marketing the content to the identified PERSONAS Create the best on-site content: Since you found out who you are talking to, shape your website s content according to your audience s answers. Be consistent: Keep posting valuable content according to a schedule. You can use the WordPress Editorial Calendar, Asana s Projects, Trello or other productivity tools to keep you focused on consistency. 11

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13 Part 1 So you re writing informative content on your website according to the audience preferences. Now you know WHO you are talking to and you are already delivering VALUE to the consumers according to their needs. Isn t everything clearer now? Do you have an overview of your target market? Do you know what they NEED? It s time to move on to the next phase in your attempt to build a healthy list of subscribers. How to capture those subscribers like a pro You should know that you ve already passed the research phase and moved onto the sales phase. If people don t given an incentive to act, they probably won t do anything about it but they will eventually check out your website again. But they won t if you don t tell them to do it. Think about the fact that companies like Coca-Cola, Apple or Adidas invest huge budgets in advertisements targeted to under 25 s. They do it because they know that if they influence them while they are growing up, they will influence their CORE BELIEFS, and then they ll have them LOYAL FOR LIFE. Because it takes lots and lots and lots of work to make someone fall in love with a brand. 13

14 Part 1 Therefore, you don t have THE TIME, nor Apple s budget to build this kind of relationship for now. So you have to do some growth hacks. Growth hack Here is one: Give away a FREE e-book or any digital paper to your readers. So you may ask, give it away for free... Just like that? Exactly! People are not ready to buy from you in this stage. They consider your website a source of information that deserves their attention, but they just don t want to buy now. They re not ready. At Marketizator, we used to think that once someone showed an interest in our ebooks, infographics and other educational content, they would be willing to try our product. Then, we realized that it takes more time and work to nurture our leads. So be patient and focus on building a relationship and planning and preparing for and preparing for the moment when your website s visitors are ready to buy. Giving away something for free that doesn t cost you too much will lead you possibly receiving a ten times higher reward when they make that buying decision. 14

15 Part 1 You will come to be their information provider, resource and their teacher. If you re not a sales person, don t worry. You only need a few persuasion principles and the right technology to help you capture those all important addresses. The answer to capturing s is a HOOK! The hook is that thing that triggers in the human s mind the intent to act. In our case, the hook is the free ebook that you provide to your audience. Therefore, use the visitor s journey to prompt pop-ups in the most strategic moments such as the exit to promote your ebook. Neil Patel is using this marketing tactic and he s one of the most influential people in the internet marketing area and a master in content marketing. Here is his advice on one of his favorite marketing tactics which is often ignored by marketers: Before someone tries to leave your website, why not pop up another window that collects your visitor s contact information? [...] with your exit pop up, offer your visitors something for free to entice people to give you their names and addresses. 15

16 Part 1 There are 2 major channels to market your ebook: a) Website and blog b) Other channels - This includes , social networks and referrals a) The website Her are the steps to capturing addresses with popups on your website: Create the pop up - Design and copywriting The marketing tool - Choose a high-quality service provider - such as Aweber Subscribers segmentation - Include your subscribers into lists, according to the sites content they ve just consumed 16

17 Part 1 b) Other channels: , social networks and referrals The landing page is the key to capturing addresses from people coming from all the other marketing channels. There is nothing more important than the Landing Page. Not even the ebook itself. The landing page is the place where people coming from all the marketing channels decide whether to become or not your subscriber. Therefore, make sure of the following: Follow best practices: Use testimonials, have clear call-to-action messages, emphasize the benefits of using a product or downloading an e-book instead of listing the product s characteristics or the e-book s contents. Create a landing page for each PERSONA - See why creating persona s is so useful? You can now target your content by creating 2 or 3 landing pages and that s all. Instead of creating a single landing page for all of your audience. You can now address your audience on a more personalized level. 17

18 Part 1 A/B test the hell out of your landing page: Even if you were right about the impact of an idea on your metrics, you won t be next time. Creative ideas are the key to achieve your dreams, but online marketing involves data driven decisions. Pick up a tool and test your landing pages to find out where you can improve and increase the conversion rate. Once you start collecting hundreds of addresses, you ll start observing more returning visitors to your website. The paradigm has changed and now you have to adapt your efforts to start selling - either your product (software) or your content (e-books, a magazine or a newsletter). 18

19 Part 2 Part 2: Nurturing your subscribers and leading the conversation Your ultimate goal is to acquire customers or to convince your subscribers to pay for your service - in case you re a freelance consultant or blogger. As we ve established in the previous chapter of this guide, people are not ready to buy straight away. You re in the process of educating them, showing them that you re a trustworthy information provider that helps them to become better in their area of expertise. Think about how you choose your information providers: Do you enjoy receiving hard selling offers in your inbox right after you subscribed to their list? Do you go straight to the unsubscribe link (like I do) when you see that they just want something from you? Think smart and take control over the conversation with the first . Reinforcing the decision Assuming that you ve included your subscribers in different lists according to the action they performed, you can start sending them pieces of content. Segmentation is vital, because it s your first ally when it comes to preventing sending the same piece of content to your subscribers. 19

20 Part 2 Golden rules of writing the first Golden Rule #1: Master your copywriting Remember that you re building a relationship when you re writing the s body. Personalize as much as you can, based on the information that you already have: name, area of expertise, interests, the content they have consumed. The first is a one time shot, so be grateful and recommend another piece of content that you offer for free. Golden Rule #2: Keep it simple Edit the content as much as you can to make sure the message is distilled, simple and clear. Finished? Not quite. Then you need to create a simple . The easier it is for the subscribers to make a decision the more effective you will be. 20

21 Part 2 Golden Rule #3: Landing Page-ing again If your subscribers enjoyed the first piece of content, they ll want more. They will accept the invitation to download more free content. Use this opportunity to get more information about them and to move them further in the sales funnel by requesting information such as company, their role in the company and other information that is relevant. And then continue. Measure and improve Continue to add value to website or blog by creating more content. Some subscribers will then keep coming to you even if you don t send them pieces of content on . Don t stop doing something that is working. Results will come, and the efforts invested into creating a relationship with your audience will be rewarded with loyal subscribers and customers. But in order to know what to improve, you should know where to act, right? 21

22 Part 2 There are several ways to find out how to get the most out of your marketing efforts. We recommend you to consider all of these three sources to generate insights: Here are the 3 sources for capturing insights #1. Ask for feedback Invite subscribers by to answer to a satisfaction survey. #2. Measure the right metrics This is the boring part, but you d better do it, otherwise you won t achieve your end goal. Clickthrough Rate: This is the number of clicks on a specific link from the total number of opens. It reveals how many subscribers are engaging with your content and their level of interest into reading more about a topic or your brand. Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of s that could not be delivered to the subscriber s inbox. Conversion Rate: The conversion rate is a goal related metric that reveals if you succeeded to convince people to download your paper on the landing page or to try a demo of your product. 22

23 Part 2 List Growth Rate: Your goal is to reach to as many people as possible that fit in your target market. Keep an eye on this rate to observe anomalies. Shares per / Forwarding Rate: This metric shows the likelihood that you will get recommendations from your subscribers to their friends or colleagues. This is another tactic to get new contacts for your list. #3. Always keep testing The third way to improve your outcomes is testing. Always keep testing. Behavior is changing with evolution of the web progress, so you don t want to take the risk of losing potential customers because you don t keep optimizing and adapting to changing human behaviour. This includes the following: A/B testing your subject line, layout, with or without images, sending hours, call-to-action buttons. We ve asked our friends from WhichTestWon to help us with a few examples to show you how useful it is to test your s. So, here are two award-winning case studies that can be easily replicated by any marketer. 23

24 Part 2 Case study 1 This case study lifted the open rate by A/B testing the time of sending. Hyland Software, Inc, is an enterprise content management software provider. They ve conducted this test with in-house resources using Marketo. The testing team split their prospect list 50/50 in each region on the sending day, and sent half of s at 9 am and the other half at 1 pm at each region s local time. This is the guilty Version A, the sent at 9 am local time at four U.S. time zones increased lifts in all time zones: EST 12.5% lift in opens CST 100% lift in opens MDT 35% lift in opens PST 4,090% STUNNING lift in opens 24

25 Part 2 This test won the gold ribbon for B2B Timing Tests in WhichTestWon s & Mobile Testing Awards. The judges liked this test because the test is clean, segmented their users by region, and it is a very easy test to replicate for your organization. The judges were also incredibly surprised by the enormous lift in opens in the Pacific time zone of 4,090% The case study firstly appeared on WhictTestWon website. Case study 2 This looked at the subject line. They discovered that personalization increased opens and sales in the double digits. Version A Version B 25

26 Part 2 WhichTestWon s Analysis: Version B revealed that the from line that included a person s name, increased opens & sales in the double digits (unfortunately they couldn t provide with the exact results). This test won a gold badge for from line tests in the & Mobile Testing Awards. C-Date, an international dating site, conducted this test with the help of insparx GmBH using Experian Mail Solution. This test included all registered male website users from all traffic channels across 14 countries including Europe, South America and Australia. The From Name was different depending on the recipient s country. This was a very simple test that can be easily replicated. The judges also loved this test because the fr om line is often overlooked, and based on your niche can be extremely effective. If you are going to try a subject line test, remember there are other variables to consider when testing. Obviously various industries will have varying results, but your results will also vary on when in the funnel you introduce a from line from an individual at your organization. In this case, the industry vertical could have played a major factor. 26

27 Part 3 Think about it, you are on a dating site and get an from Jessica ; we bet you are going to open that ! The case study firstly appeared on WhictTestWon website. Part 3 - Converting subscribers into customers Content has become king on the web. It s working for many companies and bloggers such as the following and much more. Companies: This includes Software as a Service businesses (SaaS) that needs to market its product and who prefer inbound marketing tactics rather than advertising. This also includes E-commerce and online stores. Bloggers & Consultants: They want to raise their personal awareness throughout a community and use content to sell services or just to sell e-books. Therefore, becomes not an end itself, but a protocol between the content provider and its audience. 27

28 Part 3 Companies Once you start collecting hundreds of addresses you may want to do something with them: to close the cycle, to convert leads into customers. If you ve managed to arrive at this point, don t panic - you don t have to change your approach. Don t try to change what is already working by forcing people to buy your product. The same informative and educational approach will work. Here are 6 examples of how to influence people to try and buy your product: 1. Include a demo link in your ebooks - Either you include it in the footer or you create a dedicated page. Use the ebook s content to make subscribers aware of the need to use your product. 2. Add a Call-to-action in your - Suggest subscribers to try a demo, to test your product for free or to attend a webinar. 3. Organize webinars - This is the best place to have a live demo of your product in front of highly qualified leads, the ones you have nurtured. Choose an appealing topic for your list subscribers and use the last 15 minutes to show them how to use your product to achieve their goals. 28

29 Part 3 4. Follow up - Once you have placed the desire to buy, insist on being present in your subscriber s inbox. Send them the recording and include a link to a landing page or to another webinar. 5. Send during the trial period - Even if your subscribers are trying your product, this is the moment when you can ruin everything you did well by now. Keep on doing the good work and send to your subscribers examples of what others have done with your product. A case study is a proof that your product is working and that it provides results. 6. Ask for feedback when nearing the end of the free trial period - Maybe your subscribers are not ready yet to buy even if they have tested your product and enjoyed it. By asking them personally if, you can help them with anything to help them take the right decision, they ll remember you when they re ready to purchase. Bloggers and consultants Unlike the employees who work for a company and use content and to sell products, you may want to earn some money from the web for yourself. Some alternatives to monetize your writing efforts would be: Selling e-books Creating a newsletter or magazine Content curation platforms or a news site 29

30 Part 3 And you can complete this list with as many opportunities as the web offers. Some tips on how to sell e-books Tip 1: Don t get scared of the sell part. You don t have to do anything but to influence subscribers to want to get your ebook. You must find those persuasion tactics that suits your personality and start applying them within your copywriting. Tip 2: We strongly recommend you to read Cialdini, Kawasaki and other authors who have dedicated time to study persuasion and influence. Tip 3: Create sales pages in which you emphasize aspects such as: The price is lower only because you are my subscriber - reciprocity This is a limited offer - scarcity Testimonials - raising trust Multiple call-to-action buttons - consistency 30

31 Part 3 Wrapping it up We hope that you enjoyed reading this guide and that it helps with building a high-quality list of subscribers to build trust credibility and revenue. In summary, we covered: Why such a powerful tool for marketers Growing your subscribers list the smart way Tips on audience analysis and list building Persuasion and other tricks to lead the conversation Measuring the effectiveness of marketing Using landing pages and testing them to collect more leads Nurturing leads Converting subscribers into customers 31

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