Tuesday, 31 July 2018
China blames Apple for gambling and porn texts as trade war escalates
Growing economic tensions between the United States and China have begun to impact Apple, the Wall Street Journal reports today, as Chinese government agencies and state-controlled media have initiated a new campaign to block “prohibited content” from Apple devices. If Apple refuses to cooperate, authorities could shut down services tha…Read More
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Facebook suspends 32 more suspicious accounts and pages ahead of U.S. midterm elections
As Facebook is determined to prove that it can proactively stop election meddling on its platform, the company announced today that it has suspended a group of pages and accounts involved in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” In total, it removed 32 pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram this morning. The company didn’t sa…Read More
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How to Make a Professional eCommerce Website with WordPress (Video Guide)
Creating your own online eCommerce shop can be hugely profitable — and if you’ve already decided to use WordPress to do it*, well done: you’ve chosen an excellent platform! But how best to get started? Where do you begin? Where and how should you buy a domain name and hosting? Which theme should you choose?... View Article
The post How to Make a Professional eCommerce Website with WordPress (Video Guide) appeared first on WinningWP.
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Developers report Facebook’s revised app review is slow and confusing
When news broke in March that data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly used tens of millions of users’ data for ad targeting, it quickly became clear that Facebook would have to make significant changes to its developer platform. The company quickly shut down its app review process, as well as a number of API endpoints. Two mont…Read More
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July 2018 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts
What follows are the most popular articles that we published in July 2018. Articles published earlier in the month are more likely to make the list than later ones.
58 Leading ...
The post July 2018 Top 10: Our Most Popular Posts appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.
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Low-cost Content Marketing for Fashion Merchants
Compelling marketing content delivers information in a friendly, trustworthy, non-selling manner. It informs a reader while also making her interested in your products.
Content is an essential part of an overall ...
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Envato Expands into North America with Placeit Acquisition
Envato has grown its presence in North America, with the acquisition of one of the web’s fastest-growing digital mockup and templates tools, Placeit.
Purchased for an undisclosed amount, the Mexico-based company adds to Envato’s globally renowned creative community, providing a series of responsive mockups, smart design templates and maker tools for designers of all skill levels.
Headquartered in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city and the country’s well regarded tech hub, Placeit has grown rapidly since its inception in 2012, with more than seven million templates sold and doubling in size in the last 12 months.
The company’s most recently recorded Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) was over $3M USD. Envato’s current subscription business Envato Elements has an ARR of $21M, and grew over 100% in the last year.
Placeit counts companies such as Google, Facebook and Oracle as among its more than 55,000 regular paying customers, with more than 87% of these customers coming from outside Mexico each month, reflecting the global footprint it has.
The platform currently allows users with no previous design experience to make everything from on-trend logos and branding kits for everything from restaurants to sporting clubs, through to t-shirt design templates, social media videos, high-resolution iPhone and apparel mockups and more.
Users can do all of this very simply from their browser, without the need to purchase and learn how to use specialist design and creative software.
Envato founder and CEO Collis Ta’eed said that the acquisition of Placeit was an exciting one.
“Placeit extends the Envato offering in a big way. We’ve made our mark in the world helping creative professionals get inspired, work faster, and level up what they do for clients.”“With Placeit we’re opening up Envato’s creative magic to absolutely anyone. Whether it’s an entrepreneur just getting started, a marketer working on their own, or just a pro user who doesn’t want the hassle of opening Photoshop - Placeit is just plain fun and simple to use.”
“My ‘aha’ moment with Placeit was sitting down with my kids to make a logo for their basketball team. Watching a seven year old make something that I, as a professional designer, liked was pretty special, and really solidified to me what an opportunity Placeit has to connect with a whole different design audience. Seeing something come to life that simply was not possible before is why I love working in the tech industry.” concluded Mr Ta’eed.
Placeit founder Navid Safabakhsh said he looking forward to the company becoming an integral part of Envato’s global creative community.
“The origin story for Placeit is very similar to the one Envato has; we came up with an online, smart solution to a very particular set of problems that many digital creatives face around the world today, anchored by hard-working local tech talent.”
“In building a series of easy-to-use and on-trend maker tools, we’ve seen first hand just how much we’ve been able to empower creatives of all skill levels around the globe to complete their projects faster, and with better outcomes. We think it’s a perfect match for Envato, one that builds on the strengths of both companies.”
The upgraded Placeit by Envato platform officially went live last week.
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Using behavioral design to reduce bounce rate
It comes as no surprise that humans have terribly short attention spans. In fact, a study by Microsoft put a number on it: 8 seconds – less than the attention span of a goldfish. The implications for online marketing are huge. In a noisy and highly competitive online space, you either grab a visitor’s attention the moment they land on your website or lose them – possibly forever.
Bounce rate is an important metric for measuring how users engage with a website. It indicates the percentage of visitors who navigate away from your site after viewing only one page.
Think of the times when, as a web user, you visited a website and immediately headed for the back button. While the decision to exit the page may have been made unconsciously, the reality is that certain ‘unappealing’ elements on the website influenced that decision. This is the basis of behavioral design. The rationale is that if certain elements of a web page can drive users away, then there must be other characteristics that can make them stay.
Leading behavior scientist, BJ Fogg, has extensively studied how technological solutions influence behavior and outlines a three-step method for using design to change behavior. These are:
- Getting specific about the desired behavior
- Making it easy for users to reach that outcome
- Using triggers to prompt the behavior.
If we apply this method to bounce rates, then the first step is clear. The goal is to get your site visitor to click another link. But how do you fulfill the other two obligations? How do you create an environment that encourages users to perform this action? Here are three strategies to implement.
Improve branding
Fogg, along with other researchers, studied 2500 web users to understand how they assess a website’s credibility. They found that the average consumer paid far more attention to the visual design of a site than to its content.
Almost half (46.1%) of the participants judged a website’s credibility based on the ‘design look’. This includes the overall appeal of the visual design, the layout, typography and color schemes.
What does this mean for bounce rates? If users don’t perceive your website as credible, you’ll have a hard time getting them to stick around, let alone click on anything else on your site. Uniform and visually-appealing branding immediately catches the attention of a site visitor, especially if you’re a new brand.
Therefore, it’s important to have a brand identity with uniform branding – not just for your web pages (copy and color), but your entire web presence (including social media and landing pages).
Technological advances grant businesses of all sizes the ability to create their brand’s identity based on data. Tailor Logo, for instance, is a tool for generating logos/branding kits using dedicated machine learning algorithms that enable businesses to stay consistent in all the touch points where users may come across your brand.
In addition, the tool helps users develop the perfect typography for their branding through a series of carefully designed questions that provide insights into the brand’s identity and objective. Typography is critical for improving a visual design; a Nielsen study found that small font sizes and low-contrast are the number one complaint for web users as it relates to reading online.
Reduce cognitive load
Cognitive load refers to the total amount of mental effort required to complete a task that involves processing of information. In practical terms, this is the amount of mental resources users have to dedicate to be able to understand/process the information on your website.
Since the recent GDPR implementation, I’ve lost count of the number of sites where I’m bombarded with two or three pop-ups as soon as I land on the page.
This leaves site visitors with too much choice and too many tasks to perform. What should they do first? Accept privacy policies, read content, subscribe to your newsletter, or pay attention to the flashing ebook download? It’s not difficult to see why users will choose the easiest option – a quick exit.
What you should do is consider every page as a single entity and give some thought to what a user who visits a specific page might want to do. If it’s a blog post, then getting the information they need is likely the user’s main intent. So, do away with unhelpful pop-ups and focus on giving the user a seamless reading experience. Embedding the links to your lead magnets within the content could be far more effective in this context. If you must use a triggered opt-in form, have it come up only when the user attempts to exit the page.
Perfect your triggers
Revisiting Fogg’s three-step model, the last step is to provide a trigger for the desired behavior. In this case, you want users to follow a link on your web page. This could be a glaring CTA button or a subtler link embedded within a blog post. But how do you make it easy for users to act on these cues?
Make the triggers relevant. Suppose a user reads an interesting blog post on how to write web copy and is interested in learning more techniques, but the suggested content and lead magnet on the blog post page are about data mining. What would be the logical next step for this user? Contrast that with a page with links to relevant copywriting content. It’s clear how this user will respond differently.
Place triggers in the right places. Understanding how users interact with spaces is important. If you haven’t heard of the F-pattern yet, then you should. The Nielsen group conducted an eye-tracking research, which revealed that people scan web pages and phone screens in the shape of the letter F.
The key takeaway is that for any piece of content, users pay the most attention to the first few paragraphs, then somewhere down the middle and finally take a few glances at the end. In other words, they scan – not read – information.
If you are hiding vital information in between large blocks of text, then that’s bad news. Readers won’t see it. Your content should be easy to scan so that readers can quickly find the information they need. This includes links to more relevant content, offers or contact information.
Conclusions
A good bounce rate is important for online success. By using insights from online user behavior to improve your website design, you can increase engagement, reduce bounce rates and ultimately improve conversion.
Pius Boachie is the founder of DigitiMatic, an inbound marketing agency.
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Twitter Enlists Academic Researchers to Reduce Offensive Tweets
Twitter recently announced that it will enlist academic research groups to help in its project on conversation health. The researchers will study the behavior of Twitter users to find ways to assess how healthy the discussions are and help rid the platform of racists and trolls.
The social networking site continues to take steps to tamp down offensive tweets after facing much criticism for not doing enough to curb cyberbullying and online harassment on its platform. The study on conversation health is part of Twitter head Jack Dorsey's plan to stop users' bad behavior and to develop metrics that can be used to check the “health” of discussions on Twitter.
The company revealed on Monday that it has chosen two groups of researchers to spearhead their project. The selection process commenced in March, with Twitter receiving over 230 proposals on metrics that could be utilized to evaluate and improve the social networking platform.
The first group of academic researchers hail from universities in Italy, the Netherlands, and the US and will be headed by Dr. Rebekah Tromble, an expert on politics in social media at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her team will focus on the issues of impolite discourse and “echo chambers,” a practice where people only look for and listen to information that suits their beliefs.
They'll look into ways to assess how much users interact with the various point of views shared on the platform. They're also tasked to design algorithms that will differentiate between “incivility” or rude conversations and “intolerant discourse,” which includes racist terms and language.
Twitter to measure the "health" of public conversation to make the social networking site less toxic; researchers from @UniLeiden will handle echo chambers & uncivil discourse, while @UvA_Amsterdam & @UniofOxford will research prejudice & discrimination: https://t.co/MCpWiAE7Rb.
— Amsterdam Univ Press (@AmsterdamUPress) July 31, 2018
Meanwhile, the second group of academics from the University of Amsterdam and Oxford University will research how exposing users to people who come from different backgrounds and hold other perspectives can lessen discrimination and prejudice. The theory is that if people are exposed to a wider range of viewpoints, there will be fewer insults or threatening comments posted.
Twitter has shown that it's very serious about improving the conversations held on its platform. It has even deleted millions of fake accounts in a bout of house cleaning. The company's health conversation project could potentially make a difference, although its long-term effects still have to be determined.
[Featured image via Pixabay]The post Twitter Enlists Academic Researchers to Reduce Offensive Tweets appeared first on WebProNews.
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5 Psychological Insights to Improve Your Content Marketing
Marketers have used psychology to influence the behavior of customers for years – often with great success.
Being aware of psychological principles is helpful whether you’re building a website, composing a tweet, or writing a blog post. Psychology indicates what colors are most likely to draw the attention of prospects or how long someone is likely to maintain interest in your message. The more you know about how the mind works, the more you can make informed decisions.
Using psychology to inform your content marketing isn’t sneaky trickery. Instead, these psychological insights can improve the user experience and help keep prospects long enough to convert.
The challenge lies in translating often complex psychological concepts into actionable steps that can drive real-world decisions. Here are five psychological principles that can help you create more effective marketing material.
It’s unlikely that you’ll need to apply each insight to every project but having these models in mind is likely to be useful when you want to create content that converts.
1. Cognitive fluency
The number of micro decisions made throughout our day is staggering. A 2012 study showed that visitors judge a website in 0.05 seconds – faster than the blink of an eye. While a 2013 study by Microsoft noted people’s attention span has narrowed to eight seconds at the max.
As a result, humans prefer to consume simplistic content and unconsciously avoid information that appears complicated. This is cognitive fluency.
That’s why people love emojis – they communicate emotion in a simple, extremely fast way. This goes for everything from tweets to blog posts – the easier your content is to understand, the more likely it is to hook your audience and keep them engaged. At the first sign of complexity, they’ll run.
Cognitive fluency explains why people like emojis – simple, fast way to communicate, says @LouisaMcGrath.
Click To Tweet
What does this mean for content marketers?
- If your product is complex, explain it in basic terms.
- Make your social posts as short as possible.
- Create clear and concise calls to action.
- Focus on one topic per blog post, video, or web page.
- Use eye-catching graphics that quickly communicate your message.
- Use keywords in branded links so people know at a glance what the link will address.
- Use infographics and videos to communicate complex ideas quickly and simply.
- Use emojis if they suit your brand voice.
- Use hashtags on social media to highlight the topic of your content.
2. Social proof
Think about your personal online shopping patterns. Do you rely strictly on a retailer’s website for information? Or do you ask friends and family for recommendations? Or read a bunch of reviews before making a purchase? Do you check social media for opinions or ratings?
If you go beyond the retailer’s site, then you’re like 69% of the American population, according to Mintel’s American Lifestyles research. More than two-thirds of consumers trust the word of friends, family, and even strangers over any marketing content from a brand. This is because of the psychological principle of social proof, which essentially means people are more likely to act when they see others have done so. Whether it’s reading a post or making a purchase, people prefer to follow in the footsteps of others like them.
That is why Facebook ads can be effective.
Social proof is becoming more important as consumers’ access to online-based data and information about companies grows. Think about how you can show the thoughts of people through your content marketing.
What does this mean for content marketers?
- Establish trust so customers are comfortable talking about your brand.
- Use real-life case studies in your content.
- Gather and promote testimonials.
- Encourage your customers to leave reviews.
- Display view and share numbers – if your content marketing is successful.
- Collaborate with authentic influencers.
- Encourage user-generated content and expert social proof.
- Promote earned media in your content.
3. Perceptual set theory
Humans are creatures of habit, and the perceptual set theory can help leverage that fact for your content marketing.
If you’ve subconsciously looked for a button to click on a landing page, you’ve experienced the perceptual set theory. You expect to see something, so you’re on the lookout for it. Your curiosity often drives you to continue down a path until you achieve resolution and satisfy your curiosity.
If you subconsciously look for a button to click, you’ve experienced perpetual set theory. @LouisaMcGrath
Click To Tweet
People’s expectations are shaped by past experiences. We select what we pay attention to, infer how it works based on experience, and combine current circumstances with past knowledge to interpret what to do.
This theory is why those clever drawings attract interest – we interpret an image based on our experience.
For marketers, keep in mind when creating content how the mind perceives situations. While it can be tempting to try something new and be off the wall, going too far beyond a prospect’s expectations may be off-putting.
Don’t worry about coming across as promotional, people have come to expect some sort of CTA in company content. If they reach the end of your content and want to continue engaging but aren’t guided to the next step, they’ll be confused.
If readers want to continue engaging but aren’t guided to the next step, they’ll be confused. @LouisaMcGrath
Click To Tweet
What does this mean for content marketers?
- Create a logical flow through your landing page to drive curiosity and fulfill expectations.
- Include an obvious call to action every time.
- Don’t overexplain. People intuitively know what a CTA is.
4. Models of persuasion
While there are many different psychological models of persuasion, Fogg Behavior Model is particularly useful when planning content.
Dr. BJ Fogg of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University was a specialist on behavior design. His model of persuasion provides a system for driving desired behavior – he believed motivation, ability, and a trigger should coincide for users to carry out an action.
To persuade people to convert, you need motivation, understanding, & a trigger, says @LouisaMcGrath.
Click To Tweet
Motivation and ability are two major influences for buyers and are key to creating effective content. To motivate people, your content needs to contain strong, relevant messages. The messages also need to be easily understood – this links to the principles of cognitive fluency and perceptual set theory.
But in the Fogg Behavior Model, you also need a trigger if you want prospects to carry out an action.
What does this mean for content marketers?
- Increase motivation by providing messages relevant to your audience.
- Make messages simple.
- Include a compelling trigger or CTA to encourage an action.
- Make sure each piece of content includes motivation, ability, and a trigger.
Robert Cialdini’s principle of persuasion says that in a world of information overload, people take shortcuts when making buying decisions. Fear of missing out, social proof, and simply continuing to buy what they always have are purchasing influence factors.
The Yale model of persuasion demonstrates to marketers the importance of building a trusted brand as trust, sincerity, and authenticity affect behavior.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
5. Psychology of color
If you ask five people what their favorite color is, what is the likelihood they’ll say the same one? Miniscule. But that doesn’t mean that leveraging color in consistent ways isn’t useful in marketing.
Recent studies suggest that people judge a new product within 90 seconds of seeing it – up to 90% of that assessment is based on color. Color is an important consideration for content marketers when designing web pages, choosing banner images, and planning videos.
People judge a new product within 90 seconds of seeing it – up to 90% is based on color via @ReelColor.
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Shades of blue can help build trust and loyalty with your audience. This interpretation transcends geography. Red communicates energy and passion, while yellow can communicate both warnings and cheery optimism.
If you want your brand to evoke respect for nature, stick with shades of green, while orange gives an impression of fun, excitement, and urgency.
What does this mean for content marketers?
- Consider what color can help you evoke the desired emotion from your content.
- Consistently present your brand colors in your content.
- Consider red, orange, and yellow for CTA buttons to foster a sense of urgency.
- Ensure that CTA buttons are contrasting colors so they stand out. (Here’s a color calculator to help.)
Conclusion
Applying these concepts to your projects will take time and consideration in the beginning. But before you know it, these principles will become a natural part of your content planning. Chances are you already engage in at least one of these principles in your content marketing even if it’s not a conscious choice.
Going forward, consider how you can make use of these principles to give prospects a smooth experience and move them more quickly through the sales funnel.
How many of these five psychological principles can you spot in the hundreds of presentations at Content Marketing World? You won’t know unless you’re there. Register today using code BLOG100 to save $100 on the Sept. 4-7 event.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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Why Walmart's Employee Package Delivery Plan Failed
In June of 2017, Walmart announced that it wanted to tap its massive workforce of over 2 million people to bring online orders directly to the front doors of its customers. The retail giant planned to have employees make the deliveries on their way home after ending their usual work shifts. According to Marc Lore, head of Walmart’s eCommerce operations, the strategy would make the company's deliveries more efficient, a move that would help it fend off rival Amazon. But before launching the employee "last-mile" delivery service nationwide, it was first tested in New Jersey and Arkansas. Walmart reeled employees into the program by offering additional compensation to cover labor and fuel expenses, but the experiment flopped. As it turned out, the last-mile program had more drawbacks than benefits for its workers.
In January of this year, Walmart quietly shut down the pilot program and is now testing employee deliveries on a smaller scale.
But exactly why did its last-mile delivery fail? Employees who participated in the program spoke to Reuters about their experience and explained some of the issues they had with it.
Read the full story at the Reuters website.
[Featured image via Walmart newsroom]The post Why Walmart's Employee Package Delivery Plan Failed appeared first on WebProNews.
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WhatsApp rolls out group calls for up to 4 people
WhatsApp is finally rolling out group video- and voice-calls to its 1.5 billion users around the world. The new feature was first teased by its parent company, Facebook, at its annual F8 developers conference in May, but now it’s ready for prime time. Above: WhatsApp: Group Video Call Facebook first introduced group audio calls to its own Mes…Read More
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Monday, 30 July 2018
How I maintain a strong belief in my creative work
Isn’t there enough art in the world already?
Why would I need to create yet more content?
How can I stay motivated if there are thousands of people out there who make amazing art; who provide a brilliant service; who have outstanding products?
I’ve seen so little ‘success,’ and I’ve lost motivation to make more. People don’t seem to like what I do.
Why bother?
I have asked myself such questions, and overwhelmed myself with doubt by many more, over the last decade or more.
I’ve compared myself to others (and still do) and felt shit having done so.
I’ve blocked myself from starting new things because of these concerns.
Whether it’s from doubt, failure, confusion, or laziness, I’ve often held back from creating, promoting, sharing and talking about what I do with enthusiasm.
And yet, I have managed to maintain a steady flow of creative output, writing, and content over the last twelve years.
I’ve been able to stay afloat as a solo creative professional and earn (up and down) a good living from my craft.
I’ve spoken about it at workshops, interviews and conferences. I’ve written hundreds of articles. I’ve made thousands of drawings and illustrations.
I’ve sold a range of books and products. I’ve earned good money from commissions from companies like the BBC, Saatchi & Saatchi, Sony, and Google.
I’ve done this because, for the most part, I’ve maintained my belief in myself and my work.
But how to maintain self-belief when it can all seem so futile?
Belief comes from understanding your value.
You must believe in your work and your product. If you don’t, you won’t have the enthusiasm to create; to share, and to sell with gusto.
And in this crazy world, full of creative stuff — sardine-packed with productive and talented people — enthusiasm you MUST have.
We need to put our blinders on, and continuously reassure ourselves of our worth.
We need to know that what we do is helpful for others, but also for ourselves.
I need to remind myself of my value regularly.
For example, if I have a book or portfolio that I’ve stopped sharing and promoting, it helps to remind myself of why it’s any good, even if it’s not perfect.
When I’m clear on its value, I can be more confident about getting it into the hands of people who need it, but it also boosts my creativity in further projects.
You might be asking: what if my work actually does suck?
It might. You may be in the early stages of your journey. You may still have some way to go yet.
We’re all at different points on our own, unique line.
This is why we need to see ourselves as a work in progress.
You will get from mediocre to great if you continue to have faith in what you are capable of through hard work and staying on your line.
The questions below will clarify your belief, not only in your current work but also in the work that is yet to come.
And that is motivating.
Read on*:
*It will help to write down your answers, and stick them on the wall…
Q. What are the good things I gain personally through working on my craft/making what I do?
- Why is this important to me?
Remind yourself of all the benefits YOU gain from doing what you do.
—
Q. What’s my one big idea? I.e. What is the most significant benefit that others gain from what I do?
Figuring out that one ‘hook’ or selling point will fire you up.
The more unique you make this, the better, but most of the ‘uniqueness’ will come only from the fact that it is coming from you.
When I figured out that my ‘one big idea’ for Red Lemon Club is:
to bring creative people to life by helping them be more productive,
…I feel a certain pride, and I’m charged up to work on it some more, and spread the word (like through writing this article 
).
—
Q. Can my work help one single person I can think of? If so, is it worth spreading the word of it so that additional people are also helped?
I.e. If your work can help, inspire, entertain just one person — it WILL do the same for a great number more.
—
Q. What are three other ways my product/service/content is helping people?
- Why are these important?
- If they are not, what can I do to increase the benefits people take from what I do?
—
Q. Who have I helped in the past, and did they benefit from what I gave them?
- Would similar people or groups gain from what I share today and in the future?
—
Q. Why must I do what I do, no matter what?
- Why does that matter to you?
—
Q. Will I be proud of myself, looking back at my deathbed, for what I’m doing now?
- If not, what can I do to move a step closer to being in a position where I can be?
—
Q. Can I define my work in one sentence?
Knowing your work in a sentence will give you clarity. Belief springs from being able to define what we do clearly, and the value it creates.
—
Hope that helps.
Alex
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Twitter is partnering with academics to curb hate speech, polarized discourse
Twitter is providing support to two groups of academics looking to study the prevalence of some of the social platform’s most problematic content — as well as how Twitter can make people more open to different viewpoints. In March, Twitter put out a request for proposals, asking academics what kind of metrics the company should use to d…Read More
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Why You Should Use Multiple Channels to Maximize Your Customer Acquisition
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” sums up why you should use multiple channels in order to maximize your opportunities to acquire customers.
After some rounds of testing, you will discover which ones work best so that you can really go after those channels that are producing new business for you and your company. When you focus on just one way of marketing, you miss out on so many other opportunities to grab your target audience’s attention.
Managing multiple channels to acquire customers is your best bet at covering all grounds in order to reach your audience. Today, many business owners focus their attention on social media marketing. Yes, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook all have a large number of users, but that doesn’t mean that your customers are using those sites. In the end, you could be pushing out messages that fall on deaf ears and as a small business owner, you don’t have that kind of time to waste.
We cover all grounds when marketing our business by using multi-channel customer acquisition. Over the years, we’ve tested what works and what doesn’t. These are the three channels that we see the highest rate of return on.
1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the way a website is indexed and the rank it appears in a search engine results pages (SERPs). In order to increase your ranking in the search engines, you need to research how people are finding your business.
For example, if a potential customer is looking for your service, you have to think about which keywords they would actually type in to Google or Bing to find the service that your business supplies. To ensure that they find you and not your competitor, you would use SEO tactics such as including popular keywords related to your industry on your website or contributing guest posts to other blogs and creating backlinks.
This is by far the number one way that businesses acquire customers.
Natural Language Keyword Strategy
You should always be researching and using keywords for your website and guest posts, but keep in mind that the way people search for items on the Internet has changed. Now they are searching via natural language (long-tail keywords use natural language).
Search Engine Watch explains:
“Natural language search is search carried out in everyday language, phrasing questions as you would ask them if you were talking to someone. These queries can be typed into a search engine, spoken aloud with voice search, or posed as a question to a digital assistant like Siri or Cortana.”
Moz found that websites that use natural language can yield higher search volumes over time:
Guest Posts
Another way to use natural language is to create quality guest posts on other companies’ blogs, which is is a great way to gain new customers.
Contributor to Search Engine Journal Brian Liang shares what he’s learned from his most successful guest posts:
“By ensuring that the article was of higher quality than competing articles and continuing to promote it, I was able to get the article ranked on the first page of Google.”
The better the quality of the article, the more shares and visitors to your site.
Further Reading:
- The Power of Guest Blogging (And How to Get Started!)
- The 10 Most Powerful SEO Tactics for 2018
- How We Doubled Our Traffic (Without Writing Any New Blog Posts!)
- How to Implement a Cost-Effective SEO Strategy in 4 Steps
A) How to Find Places to Guest Post
The biggest question people have about guest posting is where to find blogs that are accepting posts. There are hundreds of blogging communities out there where thousands are asking for others to contribute to their blog. A Google search will yield plenty of results:
Other ways to find guest post opportunities is to visit Writers in Charge which breaks down sites that allow guest posts by category.
B) Reach Out to Bloggers to Guest Post
Once you’ve found a handful of places that accept guest bloggers, you need to reach out to the site owner or editor and see if they are accepting guest posts at this time. A polite email does the trick and most likely they will accept your offer to contribute an article.
Kissmetrics explains that guest blogging shouldn’t be a form of advertising:
“Occasional mentions, stories, or examples are OK to illustrate a point, but the majority of the post should be focused on something other than your business.”
Also, it is important to respect the blog you plan to contribute to by reading any guidelines they may have before you pitch an idea to them. Nothing will get your email into the trash folder faster than completing ignoring their guidelines.
C) Sign Up for a Service like Influence & Co
If you want to skip the searching and asking to post step, you can sign up with Influence & Co or a similar service that will get you into the publications with which they are partnered. It’s important to note that becoming a member costs a yearly or monthly fee, but it is something to consider when thinking about tactics to acquire new customers.
D) What Type of Posts to Write
So as long as it is within the site owner’s guidelines, a recent survey from Moz reports that the types of posts that people share most are lists or videos:
The main reason why is because of smartphones: more people are visiting the web via a mobile device and find these types of material easy to navigate and share.
Not much of a blogger? There are other ways to contribute to someone’s site, like writing a review or testimonial which is becoming key when searching for local businesses. In fact, 68% of people need to read at least four testimonials before feeling that they can trust a business.
Take advantage of guest posting and (if all goes well!) you could be a repeat author, increasing your opportunities to bring customer awareness to your business.
Further Reading:
- How to Use Dux Soup & LinkedIn to Scale Your Sales and Recruiting Efforts
- 10 Ways to Generate Topics and Write High-Ranking Blog Posts
- One Simple Hack That’ll 10X Your LinkedIn Views [podcast]
- Build Backlinks – and Website Traffic – with Blogger Outreach
E) Get Those Backlinks
When one website links to another it creates an inbound or incoming link, better known as a backlink. Getting bad backlinks or abusing them can do more harm than good: Google can tell if you are building links too quickly and will flag your site, hurting your chance at ranking high in search results.
Research from EarnedLinks revealed the importance of using backlinks:
F) Research, Research, Research!
There are tools out there that will help you identify what types of backlinks your competitors are using and how the ones you’ve created measure up to them. It’s best to review your backlink strategy using the following tools:
- Check My Links – a Chrome extension that crawls your webpage and looks for broken links.
- Google Alerts – a content notification service that emails you any time your brand (or anything you want) is mentioned on the web.
- Fanpage Karma – a service that keeps track of your social media channels and analyzes engagement (for your brand as well as your competitors).
- Monitor Backlinks – a monitoring tool for backlinks and keywords.
G) How to Build Good Backlinks
Now that you know more about your backlinks, as well as your competitors’, it’s time to build a stronger funnel. To do so, first look at what matters the most to Google and focus your efforts there. The number one thing that Google cares about? Whether your site is trustworthy and not abusing backlinks.
Backlink guru Brian Dean has had great success with backlinks. He knows from experience that building them takes time, but pays off. As he writes: “To date, my SEO tools list has been shared on social media over 18,000 times.”
As previously discussed, guest posting is one way to achieve this. There are other ways that still abide by Google’s algorithms and help your site rather than hurt it. The various types of backlinks you build will help you to become seen as an expert in your industry, and Business.com shares the top ways of building backlinks:
- Conduct surveys. If you have a legitimate and valuable survey, others in your industry can link to it.
- List your site in business directories. Find business directory sites and make sure you are in them. If you are, check that your listing is up to date.
- Create data-driven reports. People want to keep up with the direction their industry is going in. When others stumble upon your reports, they are more likely to share any up-to-date data that you have to offer.
- Build internal links. Don’t forget about your own site! Building links internally is a way to keep people on your site and show Google that you have other content that people should know about.
SEO, guest posts and backlinks are a triple threat when it comes to acquiring more customers. Together they create a well-diversified marketing strategy that increases the visibility of your business on the web.
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2) LinkedIn
Facebook, step aside! It’s time to connect with people you’ve never met before or only briefly met. Despite what the Internet says about connecting with strangers, the popular business social media site LinkedIn is a sure way to do so safely.
At Transcription Outsourcing, we use LinkedIn to connect with current clients as well as those in the legal, law enforcement, academic, business, and healthcare industries. We like to send a polite message to see if they are in need of our transcription services. Do it incorrectly and you’ll push people away and get a bad reputation. Do it properly with a custom email, and you can gain new clientele.
First Thing First – Your Profile
Before sending out any invites to connect, or any InMail messages for that matter, you need to look the part. Choose a nice professional profile photo of yourself or your company and add a banner that represents who you are.
Time Magazine reports that those with a profile picture get more views and more messages than those without. They also suggest having fun with your headline:
“If you’re actively looking for a new gig, think about how you can use this space to grab a recruiter’s attention. There are a million ‘Marketing Director’ profiles; something like ‘Master of Digital Pharmaceutical Marketing’ will get way more eyeballs.”
Make your profile complete by adding as many details about your background and education. Those who include their education appear 17 more times in searches than those who don’t. Same goes for your location: adding this will make you appear in up to 23 times more searches.
Send an Invite to Connect
When you send an invite to connect with someone, it is best if you do so with the personal message option. You have 300 characters to introduce yourself and say why you want to connect. Make each character count and get straight to the point about why you feel they should add you to their network.
Messaging a Connection with InMail
Personalized messages have a higher rate of being opened. The one thing that you don’t want to do when using InMail is write a generic message and send it to all your contacts. HubSpot lists nine components to a good InMail marketing message:
- Have a clear and specific subject line.
- Address the person by their first name.
- Identify who you are.
- State your commonality (this could be a group, connection, interest, or industry).
- Comment on their recent activity.
- Offer your service or product.
- Ask a question to get a conversation going about why they should consider your service or product.
- Show your interest as to why you want to help them resolve their situation.
- Have a clear call to action.
Even if they aren’t interested in your resources, you’ve at least gained a connection. Plus, they’ll appreciate your note and be more inclined to pass along your information to someone who does need it.
3) Marketing Agency
Is your head spinning with all the research and work that multi-channel customer acquisition requires? Do you have too much going on as a business owner to suddenly become a marketing expert? That’s when you take a step back and let someone else take the reigns.
A digital marketing agency can do all this for you. They are experts in Facebook advertising, paid search, email marketing campaigns, and optimizing websites and landing pages. Advertising isn’t cheap and having an expert who can track how your campaigns are doing means that your money will be well spent.
Most businesses agree that the benefits of outsourcing their marketing to an agency gets them ahead of their competitors and stay ahead (I made this pie chart based on CapitalOne stats):
Why Not Hire an In-House Employee or Intern?
John White, founder and CMO of Social Marketing Solutions, recommends what to look for when hiring a marketer:
“It has been my experience that the best social media marketers have a background in something related to marketing or business development. People without it have a harder time understanding ROI. They may not have the analytical skills needed to monitor the metrics that directly affect the company’s bottom line.”
With a marketing agency, you get a team of experts that have previous experience working on marketing campaigns in a range of industries and are most likely familiar with the one you are in.
Further Reading:
- The Skyscraper Technique: How to Build High-Quality Backlinks to Your Content
- How to Create Quality Blog Posts that Convert Customers
- 4 Bullet-Proof Ways to Increase Customer Retention (and Increase Sales!)
- 6 SEO Tactics for Maximum Customer Acquisition
What to Look For in a Digital Marketing Agency
When you decide to hire a marketing agency, don’t go in blindly. Forbes explains that there are a few items to think about when hiring the right marketing agency for your business. Before we hired our marketing agency, we took the following steps to ensure that we would get the most out of our investment:
A) Visit Their Website
Before you go around emailing and calling marketing agencies, visit their website and see what types of marketing campaigns they do.
Bernard May of National Positions says:
“Clients should understand how the team is made up, how the different specialties work together, and how they understand success in the context of the client’s business.”
Many times you will find their expertise prominently displayed on their site. Right off the bat, you will be able to eliminate some agencies versus talking to multiple salespeople.
B) Will They Focus on Your Needs?
What works for one business, doesn’t always work for another. A marketing agency should listen to you and focus on what will help your specific business.
Michelle Taylor of BETAH Associates, Inc. says:
“It’s only with those agencies that fully listen, hear and then respond to what a client expresses as their desired goals and outcomes, that true information sharing, brainstorming and solutions will flow.”
Interview your top three picks to see which one will dedicate their time to creating a marketing strategy that is original and unique to your business.
C) Check Their References
Before hiring an agency, be sure to ask for references, past and present, that you can speak to. Heidi Nazarudin of Marque Media says that this is one of the most important steps to take when hiring a marketing agency:
“It will save you a lot of heartache and money. Any good agency will be able to provide you with scores of great references.”
You should treat hiring a marketing agency as you would hiring an employee. An experienced marketing mind can make all the difference when it comes to multi-channel customer acquisition. It’s critical to work with a team that structures their work so that it is in tune with your company’s needs.
Final Thoughts
Multi-channel customer acquisition has helped us grow our business to where it is now. It doesn’t have to be a tedious process and the ROI is worth all the effort. More channels continue to become popular as the Internet grows so there will always be a channel that suits your business, making this the marketing tactic to use.
The post Why You Should Use Multiple Channels to Maximize Your Customer Acquisition appeared first on Single Grain.
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These 6 Online Habits Are Common, But They're Killing Your Brand's Credibility
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Google Analytics: Dissecting Bounce Rates for Ecommerce
There are many metrics in Google Analytics. The bounce rate is among the most prominent, but it’s also among the most misunderstood. In this post, I will address the bounce ...
The post Google Analytics: Dissecting Bounce Rates for Ecommerce appeared first on Practical Ecommerce.
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How Alexa and Siri are changing SEO: AI and voice search
The Internet changes rapidly, which means marketers and business leaders must hurry to change with it. While most Internet searches were once done on laptops and desktops, people are now using their smartphones with similar devices to conduct searches for information, local businesses, products, and services.
That shift was closely followed by another somewhat more distinctive shift called artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted voice search.
In the past, a smartphone user would need to type a question or phrase into Google or another search engine to get a set of results to sift through. Now, AIs like Siri and Alexa – which reside in smart speakers and on smartphones, tablets, and laptops – have changed the way users are searching for the information, products, and services they need.
You can conduct searches with nothing more than the sound of your voice. And that’s rapidly changing the SEO landscape.
How voice-assisted search is changing searches
Most people have smartphones these days, and the vast majority of smartphones have voice-assisted search capabilities. According to 2017 data from the Pew Research Center, 77% of Americans now own smartphones. Among 18–29-year-olds, that same figure is 92%.
This means an enormous share of the general public is able to use voice-assisted AI search. When users of smartphones and smart speakers ask those devices for an answer to a query, that leaves the job of searching to certain AI like Siri and Alexa.
While Amazon’s Alexa will not deliver the answer to a voice search query unless it has been proven accurate, Google Voice Search tech (Google Home and Android devices) reports top results from Google. It doesn’t report results lower down on the search engine results page (SERP) or on subsequent results pages.
This makes being at the top of Google’s results more important than ever.
The language of voice search
As voice search through AI becomes more prevalent, the language of search changes.
When typing a phrase or question into Google, a searcher might use a non-sentence, such as “Indian restaurant Houston”, but when conducting a voice search through Alexa or Siri, the searcher will likely use full sentences and grammatically correct language:
“Siri, where is a good Indian restaurant in Houston?”
AI platforms try to respond to such queries in a human way, and they use the text of pages in search results to do so. Content should be optimized for conversational language with clear, grammatically correct answers to specific questions, such as who, what, where, when, and why.
Location and navigation searches
Thanks to voice search, mobile-friendly sites are becoming more important than ever. That’s because many people who use voice-assisted search do so on their smartphones.
Owing to the mobile nature of smartphone use, a large portion of voice requests through Alexa, Siri, and similar AI technologies deal with navigation and location. Integration with Google Maps means an opportunity for greater traffic for businesses with a local search presence.
For instance, a person may conduct a voice search for a “dentist near me” rather than doing a typed general search for top-rated dentists.
AIs process the spoken search query while keeping the user’s location in mind. This places further importance on business integration with Google Maps and creating optimized landing pages with location references.
To put it simply, voice requests lead to a SERP, where local businesses will want to rank. Claiming and maintaining Google My Business listings will become more important as voice search gains popularity.
Why FAQ pages work for voice search
Frequently asked questions (FAQ) pages appear to serve voice search purposes well. Long-tail keywords formulated as complete and conversational questions, answers to those questions, or location (“near me”) searches are becoming more important because they often answer voice search queries.
While a text-based search may seek broad information, a voice search generally seeks key information that can be concisely communicated, such as hours of operation, location, and directions.
Creating landing pages with this key information in mind is likely to improve placement in SERPs for AI-assisted voice searches.
Smartphone search vs. smart speaker
Smartphones are everywhere, but smart speakers are gaining traction quickly. In fact, around 39 million Americans own one of these devices, according to a January 2018 poll from Edison Research and NPR. As smart speakers like Google Home and Amazon Echo become more popular and available, people are beginning to use them to conduct searches.
As smart speakers aren’t linked to a screen or display of any kind, users only receive a verbal response to voice searches. That response is often based on a single search result – chosen by the AI assistant in an unseen selection process that takes only a few seconds.
Developers of these devices and AIs want the single result delivered to the user to answer the question or query fully and concisely. A business that is not highly ranked is not likely to be included in the limited results delivered by AI-assisted voice search.
Looking forward
Whether they’re aware of it or not, AIs like Alexa and Siri are changing SEO, and it’s up to marketers and businesses to adapt. From opting for conversational content to fully integrating businesses with Google Maps, there are plenty of steps to take to capture the benefits of this new type of search.
While AI-assisted voice search brings new goals and challenges to the table, the ultimate goal of SEO remains the same, whether you’re involved in SEO for law firms, restaurants, doctors’ office, or any other business. To convince AIs to include your content in their very limited answers to voice searches, you still need to occupy the top of the SERPs.
A page two or even top five ranking isn’t what it used to be. As voice search gains traction, being number one becomes more important than ever.
This article was originally published on our sister site, ClickZ.
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Stripe is Now Making it Possible for Businesses to Issue Their Own Credit Cards
Stripe has just revealed that it will be offering businesses the capacity to make their own credit cards. The online payments company also announced that they will be using Mastercard and Visa as the operating networks for their new service, aptly called “Stripe Issuing.”
The company explained that the service is “an API for creating cards and new business models” and can be utilized to develop a variety of credit cards, both physical and virtual. For instance, Stripe Issuing can be used to create expense cards with customized credit limits for employees and can even be used by new banks to issue credit cards to their customers.
Since its launch in 2010, Stripe has experienced steady growth in the payments sector. Its system has made it easier for businesses like Lyft, Postmates, and Slack to process payments for ride-sharing, food delivery, and team collaboration services, respectively.
Stripe's Annual Transaction Volume Since 2015
Now Stripe's new service aims to fill another gap in payment processing. Lachy Groom, the head of Stripe Issuing, explained to Bloomberg that the company has “tackled many of the major problems on accepting payments” but that businesses still have difficulties in moving their money.
Analyst Jordan McKee expounded on the appeal this new service will have on enterprises. He said that developing a customized payment infrastructure is very complicated and expensive, which is why the majority of companies don't bother with it. However, Stripe offering a “simplicity value proposition” will definitely bring to light new cases that haven't been considered previously.
Stripe Issuing service may also generate a tidy sum. Not only will it receive a percentage from every payment made on a card, it could also grow its revenue by retaining customers who are looking for a one-stop source to issue and receive payments.
Dozens of companies have reportedly tested the product, although no names have yet been shared. Businesses who are interested in Stripe's new service can head over to the company site to request an invitation.
[Featured image via Stripe]The post Stripe is Now Making it Possible for Businesses to Issue Their Own Credit Cards appeared first on WebProNews.
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Something to hide? The rise of privacy-focused search engines
Many people are comfortable opening up their world to others, some are not. This can even extend to the use of the Internet; some feel uneasy at the thought of somebody watching and analyzing every move to build a profile. And ultimately, when users believe this to be the case, they self-censor and think twice about what they search for and how to word it.
In the past the usual question would have been, “what do I have to hide?”. Surprisingly for some (disappointingly for others), the answer is often quite straightforward and benign. For me, it’s simply because I prefer to keep myself to myself, which helps to eliminate a feeling of shyness and preserve the energy it would have otherwise consumed.
Times are changing
The major search engines have increasingly pushed the envelope on user privacy, often expanding their surveillance by stating it somewhere deep within the terms of service. Many, often non-technical, individuals may be completely unaware of the scope and scale of data mining happening on an individual’s behavior.
Still, the majority of people continue to sacrifice some of their privacy in order to use free services such as Google. This is understandable as Google remains top in search, but that is changing. A growing number of people are starting to wonder where to draw the line; what is acceptable and what is too invasive? At what point do they no longer feel comfortable with the level of intrusion that comes with using these ‘free’ services. More people are therefore seeking out alternatives that respect their privacy.
This has led to the rise of search engines such as DuckDuckGo, StartPage and others. These search engines not only provide ‘privacy as a service‘, but also burst ‘filter bubbles‘ that use online tracking to target and customize results and content. Without tracking, these bubbles are burst and you are shown content based on what you looked for and not your previous history. This helps to prevent confirmation bias.
Enough is enough
The Snowden leaks, Cambridge Analytica, advertising that follows you everywhere, filter bubbles, advertising/search companies bypassing your phone’s security to more thoroughly track you, personalized pricing based on a profile – where will it end?
It would appear these companies have no real intention to change their ways. If the past is anything to go by then these stories are only going to continue. It will only be stopped by regulation or people saying enough is enough, voting with their clicks, and choosing an alternative that sees and treats them as a customer, and not a product.
Perhaps we’ll reach a crunch point and there will be a max exodus from these companies, or maybe just enough people to allow healthy competition to flourish. Hopefully this will give rise to a whole new wave of companies that put the people who use them first, and their privacy at the forefront of everything they do.
And where better to start than with search – an activity everyone participates in and which is increasingly seen as the gateway (and unfortunately in some cases, the gatekeepers) to the Internet.
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You Must Win Every Moment of Trust to Win the Moment of Truth
May I have your attention?
Do I have your trust?
The answers often are not the same. And yet marketers often conflate them.
Grabbing a consumer’s attention for any length of time is seen as a proxy for “engagement.” And “time spent” is equated to the depth trust of the brand by a consumer. Of course, this is just not true.
In fact, researchers have found, as “trust increases, attention decreases (in proportion).”
Research shows as trust increases, attention decreases, says @Robert_Rose.
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Think about it. As people feel more safe and secure in a situation, they need to pay less attention. The guard goes down and openness to anything new or unknown goes up. When your best friend suggests something new, you immediately say, “Yes, I trust you implicitly.” That’s the concept at work, which author Stephen Covey calls The Speed Of Trust in his book of the same name. As he says:
(N)othing is as fast as the speed of trust … In a high-trust relationship, you can say the wrong thing and people will still get your meaning. In a low-trust relationship, you can be very measured, even precise, and they’ll still misinterpret you.
Trust in moments of truth
You’ve probably heard of the moments of truth in the buying process. Made famous by P&G in the early 2000s, they are the key times when customers make an important determination:
- First moment of truth – when the customer is confronted with the choice of which product to purchase
- Second moment of truth – when the customer uses the product and has a good or bad experience
- Third moment of truth – when the customer makes the choice to provide feedback/reaction about the experience
And then there is the zero moment of truth made famous by Google – when a person grabs a laptop, mobile phone, or other wired device to start learning about a product or service they’re thinking about trying or buying.
But, the truth is no single “moment of truth” exists for any of those human decisions. Depending upon the context of the question the consumer is asking and the product or service desired, hundreds or thousands of cumulative moments of trust influence how (or if) there is a moment of truth at all.
There is no single moment of truth. There are hundreds or thousands of moments of trust, says @Robert_Rose
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To satisfy any moment of truth, marketers attempt to target messaging in earned, owned, and paid media to raise awareness of a provocative question (e.g., how do you get your shirts so clean?) or provide the answer to the consumer’s known question (e.g., I get my clothes clean by washing them in XYZ soap).
But the consumer’s level of acceptance – or skepticism – to the question and the answer depends on their level of trust of the brand. And trust is cumulative, not based in any one moment.
Bankable trust through content marketing
Trust is our goal as content marketers. Wherever the moment of truth falls on the customer journey, we want the fastest and deepest acceptance of our proposition as possible. Put simply, our job is to have to spend less on attention and receive more intuitive action.
Think about it. Why have we marketers historically advertised in one publication over another? The simple but incomplete answer is that’s where the target audience is. But the more important reason a marketer chooses one media brand over another is because of the trust their audience has in that media brand. We want that same halo around our brand.
We live in a world where we now can create that trust and where the bar of trust in media brands is low. Put simply – in varying degree – we no longer need the media to create that familiarity and trust for us.
We no longer need the media to create familiarity and trust for us, says @Robert_Rose.
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Every digital experience we create should not only reflect our focus on winning a moment of truth – where the customer is paying attention – but in deepening the trust gained (or regained) in every step that precedes or follows it.
How do we do that?
4 elements of trust in delivered content
We can look to the four elements in an approach to build this trust and familiarity with our audiences.
1. Risk appropriate
Trust is proportional to the risk taken. As marketers we should gauge what we ask in relation to the perceived risk the audience could have.
A classic example of this is the decision to gate white papers in a resource center. Attention is high (the visitor wants the asset), but trust is low (the visitor is unsure of what the source will do with his or her information). Because of the perceived risk the visitor provides bad data.
We worked with a software company that assessed the perceived risk and changed its white paper program. Abstracts of the white papers were made accessible to all. Then, the company implemented a progressive-profiling model to ask only for information when it was needed. And at each stage, the company explained why the information was needed and what would happen with it. Here’s the kicker. Conversions went down by 25%, but the quality and quantity of data within registrations went up by 50% – and the level of trust among its resource center subscribers was high.
Ungating #content led to 25% drop in conversions but increased data quality & quantity by 50%. @Robert_Rose
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2. Recurrence
One of the biggest attributes of building trust is creating consistently valuable experiences. In other words, it’s not only about developing extraordinary things that are valuable, but about the little things that frequently deliver reliably over time. We must be familiar to our targeted audience if we want its trust.
In psychology, this is known as the exposure effect. In experiments, the subjects were found to have more trust in people they saw walking down the street than those who they didn’t see.
Content marketing is a huge tool in the exposure effect. In one example, consumers read a piece of educational content provided by a brand. They were asked about their level of trust in the brand immediately after reading it and again one week later. Interestingly, the number of customers who identified the brand as “trustworthy” one week later jumped 14% (9 percentage points).
3. Personal
Being trustworthy is more than being appropriate or relevant. Trust is deepened as hidden, personal value is uncovered without having to ask for it. Our audiences feel like they are truly understood.
Personal is different than “personalized.” The value of being personal isn’t customizing a mailing label or email field to address a prospective customer by name. In fact, delivering personal value may not be personalized at all.
The value of being personal isn’t customizing an email field to address a prospect by name, says @Robert_Rose.
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A wonderful example of this is a large financial services company that we worked with. Like most institutional firms, they target high-level financial advisors. Also, like most firms, they have a quarterly and yearly outlook report to illustrate their thought leadership and point of view on the market. Many of their competitors distribute their reports to advisors through a personalized emailing featuring the recipient’s company name.
Our client did something different. It customized the front piece in each report. It created personal letters to each advisor, based on what it knew about the advisor, and (when appropriate) sent only the sections of the report most pertinent to the advisor’s business.
The key, of course, to delivering personal value is to know what it is. This means that the usual scraping of data or inferring conclusions based on interaction with digital content is going to be ripe with distrusted data. The best way to get data that can be trusted by your brand is to deliver that personal experience that encourages the audience to willingly and trustingly give its information to the marketer.
4. Cumulative
Understanding the ability to dazzle gradually means that we must look at trust as a cumulative investment of experiences that can be wiped out at a moment’s notice.
We must move from a touchpoint mindset to a journey mindset.
In a customer-touchpoint mindset the marketer seeks to ensure that an audience will be satisfied with each interaction with the brand’s content. While this may hold the customer’s attention, each touchpoint does little to deepen trust. To elicit a deeper trust, each experience must be able to adapt in the present to what happened before and what will happen after the interaction.
A classic B2B example of this is the handoff of leads from a thought leadership platform to the sales team. In many companies we’ve worked with, a salesperson has no idea which content a new inbound lead interacted with. Subsequently, the salesperson treats the prospect as new to the ideas the company puts forward. And, in fact, this can ruin both the relationship between the customer and the content, and between the prospective customer and the salesperson.
It’s like the Emily Dickinson poem Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
If this New England mystic had been a marketer in our day, she might have said, “Don’t hit customers with your content and your brand in one big, forced flash, or you’ll blind them.
“Make it easy for them. Be kind in your framing – in creating the context in which you deliver your content – to help your audience quickly appreciate your valuable content for what it is.”
Don’t miss Robert’s unique insight and fresh perspective at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today and use code BLOG100 to save $100.
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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