If you don’t have video incorporated into your digital marketing strategy by now, then you should really start thinking about it. A great place to start, and this might seem obvious, is YouTube! However, you might be surprised to hear that eighty-six percent (86%) of small businesses that advertise on social media use Facebook – at least one-third more than those that advertise on YouTube (51%), Instagram (47%), or Twitter (41%). (Hootsuite) The social media giant has more than 2 billion monthly users and ranks as the second most popular site ON THE WEB after Google (Alexa). People are consuming 50% more content on the platform year over year because it offers the type of content they crave the most.

Hence, YouTube presents a huge opportunity for small business owners and marketers to get in front of the target audience. Let’s take a look at some more reasons to advertise on YouTube:

Reasons To Advertise on YouTube

Digital Marketing & Massive Reach

The most tempting feature of YouTube is the potential reach of the platform. It’s the 2nd most popular search engine after Google, and the 3rd most visited platform after Google and Facebook. Every minute, 300 hours of video are uploaded on this platform.

Serving as a social media network and a search engine, YouTube is programmed to reach an incredibly wide range of users, mostly belonging to the 18-49 age groups.

Thus, if you’re looking to maximize your audience reach within those demographics, YouTube is an ideal platform to incorporate into your video strategy.

Tremendous Targeting Capabilities

To be effective and drive conversions, your brand message must reach your core target market. That’s why targeting is more important than overall reach. From demographic targeting to contextual placements and keyword targeting, YouTube possesses extensive targeting capabilities that help you reach the exact audience.

You can target your ads by gender, age, and parental status. Contextual placements allow you to broadcast your ads on websites, channels, and videos with high-conversion potential and attract audiences. You can place your ad right on your competitors’ videos and obtain customers from there.

If you want the right users to see your ads, you can also target by interest, keywords, topics, and remarketing. In other words, YouTube allows you to target high-intent users at various stages of the customer life-cycle.

Valuable Ad Metrics

Evaluating your advertising strategy is extremely important to measure the success of your campaign, regardless of the platform you use. YouTube offers up-to-date and easy to track ad metrics. Google AdWords provides information about costs, budget, and views, while the Analytics tab on your YouTube account gives more comprehensive insights into viewers.

Depending on the pricing and format you select for your ad, you get access to valuable data such as reach, views, engagements, clicks, and frequency. In addition, quartile reporting allows you to track video viewership. For instance, it helps you track the number of views that reach certain points in the video, such as 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%.

Using these metrics, you can adjust your advertising strategy, such as where to place your ads and refining the content to meet your advertising goals.

Incredibly Low Pricing

YouTube advertising is very affordable. You pay $0 to create your YouTube channel, and ads are also quite cheap. TrueView ads, for instance, only charge you when a user watches at least 30 seconds or the entire ad, whichever comes first. This means you don’t pay for every impression–you only pay for those that keep the users watching.

Considering YouTube’s affordability, massive reach, and extraordinary targeting, there is no doubt that this is an incredible marketing platform as compared to other channels. For instance, if you consider TV ads, you’ll need to spend tons of money, get limited reach, and have no significant targeting.

However, you need to remember that while some ads cost you not more than a few dollars, you will need to spend money to make your campaign a real success.

Viewers with High Buying Intent

Among the most tempting reasons to advertise on YouTube is the high-buying intent of users. Video content generates conversion rates higher than any other type of content. This is because animation naturally attracts the human eye and a large number of viewers come with a buying intent.

An Animoto study highlighted that three types of videos are the most popular among customers: product or service videos, instructional videos, and humorous videos. Amazingly, 96% of consumers feel that videos influence their buying decisions, while 84% of Amazon customers demand more tutorials, installation videos, and product usage videos.

YouTube presents your ads to users with high-buying intent in an unprecedented way. Given that you target the viewers well, you should be able to generate qualified leads from people in the final stages of the buyer journey.

Now that you’re aware of the reasons to advertise on YouTube, let’s take a look at the different types of YouTube ads that you can use:

Broadly speaking, there are two types of YouTube Ads, namely skippable and non-skippable ads. Let’s discuss them separately:

Skippable Ads

Also known as TrueView ads, skippable ads are those that won’t force viewers to watch the ad videos. Having no limit on how long your ad can be, TrueView video content ads are further categorized into in-display and in-stream ads.

In-Stream Ads

These are pre-roll ads that are delivered at the beginning of a YouTube video. If you’re a YouTube user, you must be aware of how common these are. You can use in-stream ads to send traffic to your website as well as boost your YouTube subscribers. A large number of subscribers means you have a loyal audience that will consistently engage with your YouTube ads. Let’s take an example to examine the effectiveness of in-stream ads.

A supplier of screen protectors called Zagg used a YouTube in-stream ad campaign to improve the conversions of its product pages by 65% to 70%. On its product-specific YouTube channel, the organization also managed to generate 13 million views.

What produced these extraordinary results was their on-spot targeting. They knew the target audience inside out so their campaigns were focused on certain demographics and specific geographical locations. To achieve similar results, you’ll need to develop a clear understanding of your customers. Create a buyer persona for your brand and use it to choose your targeting options when creating a YouTube ad.

Besides product videos, Zagg’s campaign also focused on indirect selling. Since iPhone users are particularly concerned about scratches on the device screen, such as when it’s in a purse, they created a video showing a key scratching an iPhone. They created more similar videos, conveying how effectively their items can address the common customer pain points. With this tactic, viewers immediately found the value of items the company offered. The next steps were simple: click on the link to the product page and complete the purchase.

Hence, the key is to target your ads well and make sure that your videos convey value as clearly as possible. When your ads connect well with the target audience, your in-stream ads will drive conversions.

In-Display Ads

These are ads shown as video overlays, in search listings, or in the related videos section. There’s also an option called ‘On partner websites’ but it’s not open to those advertising only on YouTube. In-display ads aren’t as popular as in-stream ads but since the platform is the 2nd largest search engine after Google, it can still generate results for your campaign.

Unlike Google, YouTube is not too expensive when it comes to advertising on search listings. You’ll end up paying considerably lower for each view and this isn’t going to be junk traffic. You should be able to generate a decent view-through rate, which is the proportion of users who watched the entire video of the total number of users who clicked on the video. A great strategy to optimize your in-display ads is to create the ads specifically for relevant keywords.

Your keyword selection plays a critical role here. For instance, if you sell ties and there a lot of searches for ‘how to tie a tie knot’ and you have no video ad that matches this keyword, create one at your earliest. Using this video as an in-display ad means that whenever someone enters that query in the YouTube search engine, this video will appear in the search results.

While relevance is important for all types of YouTube ads, in-display ads appear to be the most relevant as their titles match the searched keywords and they appear at the top of the search listings. Given their high relevance, if users find the ads in listings, they will prefer the ad over the actual video content they searched for.

These viewers are highly likely to subscribe to your channel and eventually become your customers. The simplest way to run a keyword search is to use the YouTube search engine itself. Enter the keywords most relevant to your business and check the suggested keywords in the dropdown before hitting ‘enter’. Picking a high-search term related to your offering can’t be easier than this.

In-display ads can also be used to build a following for your YouTube channel. However, you’ll need to add a lot of engaging content for that. When viewers like your in-display ad, they’ll want to check out other content you’ve posted before following your channel. The more videos they watch on your channel, the more deeply engaged they will become with your brand.

Therefore, before advertising with the in-display ad format, consider posting video content on your YouTube channel. One great way to get started is to post a welcome video that serves a teaser or trailer for subsequent content. The welcome video should immediately play on the channel when someone clicks on your channel link.

It’s obvious that anyone who visits your channel wants to know more about your brand and offerings. Thus, your welcome video can play a significant role in letting the visitors know what your brand is all about. Without more video content on your channel and a welcoming video, visitors may decide not to subscribe to your channel. You may get a video view, like, and even a share of a video but nothing on future content just because your channel had no more engaging content.

When you make your welcoming video, keep it short, perhaps not more than a minute. Besides introducing your brand, use your welcome video to give reasons to people to follow your channel and share the benefits of using the channel to satisfy their content needs. Be sure to tell them exactly what you want them to do, such as hit the subscribe button and share the channel on other social media platforms.

Use the description section to share important business information, including links to your website and your business profile on other social media platforms. Include a clear CTA in the description too just as you did in the video.

To confirm to visitors that they’ve arrived at the right place, brand your YouTube channel. Think of it as a landing page of your website that people visit after consuming your content elsewhere. Branding and populating your YouTube channel and including a welcome video will accelerate subscriber growth and help you make the most of your ad spend.

Non-Skippable Ads

These are ads that force people to view the content. Like in-stream ads, these are pre-roll ad campaigns, but they cannot be longer than 15 to 20 seconds. Users are required to watch these ads to access the video they’re trying to watch. Given the forceful nature of these ads, they do have a bad reputation and prompt users to abandon the video.

However, if you target your non-skippable ads well and genuinely deliver value through the ad content, they can get better engagement.

Final Word

To sum up, YouTube ads offer a new opportunity to get your brand in front of your target audience. After going through the top reasons to advertise on YouTube, you must be excited to broadcast your first ad campaign on the platform! However, here is something that you should remember–when you are advertising on the platform, make sure your ads are relevant and useful. After all, the purpose of all ads is to add value!

Contact the Fully Accountable team or for immediate assistance, schedule a 30-minute strategy call with our eCommerce accounting experts.

The post How to Use Video In Your Digital Marketing Strategy appeared first on Fully Accountable.

We’d like to share a moment, in celebration of innovation, and give our gratitude to this network of entrepreneurial leaders, as we accept this prestigious editorial award. It is not every day that we receive such a token of reassurance, a true semblance of the passionate people that put in the hard work for us everyday to make us one of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

This year, for the second year in a row, we made the INC. 5000 list!  We ranked 3292 with a growth rate of 115.8%.

Fully Accountable was founded in 2014 by Vinnie Fisher and Chris Giorgio, with a mission to help business owners manage cash flow, and double their profit margins. 

Today, the company is run by the COO, Rachel Scava, and provides the most efficient back-office solutions to eCommerce business owners on the market.

Utilizing cutting-edge technology, we’ve developed our own proprietary software that manages the back offices of hundreds of eCommerce businesses worldwide. Owners trust us to help them navigate through the marketplace with our Fractional CFO Services, and the transparency we provide with our eCommerce Accounting solutions gives key insights to our clients with clear, concise, and easy to understand reports. If they have questions, we have answers on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, depending on their package selection.

Sometimes you don’t realize how far you’ve come until you take a moment to reflect. Looking back, we’ve truly experienced incredible growth. When Rachel took over as COO, the company was on track to do $250k. With her expertise in sales, operational processes, and leadership, Fully Accountable ended up doing $800k in its first full year of business. Each year since then, the company has had growth of 100% and more! It is with great pleasure that we humbly acknowledge this award for our exponential growth.

Contact the Fully Accountable team or for immediate assistance, or schedule a 30-minute strategy call.

The post Fully Accountable Makes 2020 Inc. 5000 List appeared first on Fully Accountable.

Read on to find out why…

Amazon is a marketplace. Shopify is your own branded independent store.

Many shoppers who browse for products on Amazon are not concerned about which store, or seller,  they are purchasing from. Is it possible to make a branded store with your seller account on Amazon? Sure. However, it’s safe to say that even if you take all the opportunities offered to insert your brand into your Amazon store, Amazon’s brand will prevail, and you are there more as an option, and less as a “destination” for shoppers to visit.

A Shopify store, on the other hand, gives you a more unique opportunity to personalize your online presence and truly brand yourself independently of any other platform. Shopify even allows you to totally conceal that you are indeed a Shopify store to the naked-eye of most consumers, and you can do this by uniquely customizing your template, URL, and thus, storefront. 

What is Amazon?

One could think of it this way, Amazon is like a shopping mall, where you have lots of different sellers competing for the attention of prospective buyers who could very well be there just for you, or simply passing by and browsing. It’s your job to stand out and get found here amongst the plethora of other sellers competing against you to get the sales. There are several ways to improve your seller ranking, like having solid sales across states, positive customer reviews, and of course, you can become a sponsored product or brand and purchase Amazon display ads and video ads. These are conveniently plugged into the platform, but can be visible both on and off Amazon,  and are purchased and managed alongside your Amazon seller account.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is more like the “brick and mortar” version of an online business, and the presence speaks to being your own unique and individual brand and entity. You build your own customer experience and have lots of creative control over what your storefront will look like, and how it functions and operates. You, of course, do not have as much control over functions like this in Amazon. 

So what’s the biggest difference?

There are truly several major differences between these platforms, but perhaps their biggest difference, and the one that gets most people’s attention, is their fees. Let’s just say it like it is, Amazon has a fee for, quite literally, everything. After adding it all up, you’ll pay Amazon roughly 15% of your revenue in fees, and that’s before any costs associated with using them for fulfillment. With FBA, you’re looking at closer to 25% of your total revenue in fees. Oh, and don’t forget, if you want to really stand out, or even be found, you’ll also need to spend additional funds on purchasing their sponsored advertising. 

So, it’s pretty clear that when it comes to affordability, if you are just starting up, you might want to stick with Shopify and its low hosting fee of $39/month. This will actually get you an online store to start-up and begin to sell with, but of course, this is the bare minimum you can spend. Add-ons like customized design templates (you get some for free included in the hosting package, but might desire more), fulfillment services, sales tax calculators, complex CRM, and etc, are all additional costs and can grow as you scale. What’s nice here is they don’t even have to exist if you don’t scale, because you pay for what you need, when you need it. That’s why we really like them, the fees scale as you grow, and not beforehand.

 Now, if we’re talking higher volume business, their Shopify Plus version will get you started at $2,000+/month, or a variable fee, which may apply for really high volume businesses, and this you’d have to discuss with Shopify Plus directly as it truly varies on your volume and eCommerce business structure. Another option worth mentioning is to sell your products on Shopify, so you can curate your brand and customer experience, but fulfill with Amazon. Of course, you already know there are fees associated with that, but it might be worth streamlining your overhead and operations, depending on your business structure.

Next, let’s talk about CRM’s...

How can I access my customer lists, manage them, and ultimately, build customer loyalty?

We have some surprising news for many of you here: Amazon considers your customers, their customers, and they DO NOT SHARE details of your customer information with you, at all. Not surprisingly, this drives sellers into a competition war over purchasing sponsored ads, because if you want to market to your customers directly, you have no choice but to pay Amazon more money to appear in front of them. Kind of a bummer, we know.

But there is still good news for those Shopify users, you get complete control of your customer information and built-in tools to help manage and market to them. Everything you need to create sales, deals, and special offers are right in there, with super easy to integrate third-party opportunities for sales funnels, email marketing, online advertising on all the major platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Google, and more!,) This is another obvious reason we definitely recommend having both of these channels active.

What custom features are available & how many stores can I have?

In this category, Shopify takes the lead by leaps and bounds. To put it frankly, as a seller on Amazon, Amazon owns you when it comes to adhering to their Terms and Conditions 100%. They also strictly limit your ability to customize anything unique in your store, other than the product descriptions, and even these are governed by a lengthy list of rules and regulations. If you violate any of these, you could risk the termination of your selling ability. Oh, and Amazon sellers can open a second store, but only with permission, and that request has to be granted by Amazon first. 

Shopify, on the other hand, is your baby. You can do practically anything you want with your store, and you can make your brand shine in as many creative ways as possible. Also, if you want to open multiple stores, go for it, there is virtually no limit to how many stores you can open on Shopify.

So what are the risks associated with selling on either of these platforms?

We’ve covered a few risks associated with selling on Amazon already, but wait… there’s more! (Insert sigh of dread here). You have probably heard the nightmare tales of when an Amazon seller wakes up and logs on just to find out their account has been shut down, quite literally, overnight. To add to this dismay, once their account has been suspended, that seller only gets one shot at pleading their case to Amazon to reopen their store.  That’s right, Amazon is a one and done kinda deal when it comes to shutting down stores overnight without cause (Okay, they will say they had a cause, but even if you dispute it, and they don’t agree, that’s the end of the road for you.)

Meanwhile, there’s virtually very little risk at all when it comes to Shopify. The platform is solid and growing steadily, with a close second in popularity to our pal Amazon. Being that there is no limit to how many stores a seller can open or brands, many of our very own clients have multiple Shopify stores that we help them manage on the back end financially. That brings us to our final key point to cover when it comes to chatting risks, and that is the problem of Sales Tax.

What is E-Commerce Sales

How Do I Know How To Calculate Tax Nexus?

In the United States, sales tax is governed at the state level. There is no “national” sales tax law in the U.S. Thus, many online sellers find themselves dealing with quite different sales tax laws and rules across multiple states.

As an online business, if you are responsible for sales tax in a state, it is your responsibility to charge your buyers the correct amount of sale tax and remit the taxes you collected back to the state.

The basic rule for online sellers when collecting sales tax is:

• Your business has sales tax nexus in the same state as your customer. 
• You’ll always have sales tax nexus in your home state. (*Certain business activities create sales tax nexus in other states, too.)

If you’d like to explore these concepts a bit more in-depth, book a call with one of our e-commerce accountants now.

We truly hope this article helped clear up some of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to assessing which of these two platforms best suits your needs, and why you would ultimately benefit from having both Amazon and Shopify.

The post Amazon vs. Shopify- Why You Need Both! appeared first on Fully Accountable.

Sounds great right? Well, we all know that it isn’t so easy.

Don’t worry, we’ve got your back! The Fully Accountable eCommerce and digital finance experts collaborated to bring you our TOP eCommerce Marketing Tips that will help you grow your business.

eCommerce Marketing Tips

Work on SEO

When you manage a store online, you just can’t neglect SEO. You want the maximum amount of relevant traffic on your website to increase your sales, and for that, you need to master both on-page SEO and off-page SEO so that your website ranks high on Google and other search engines.

On-Page SEO

While there are numerous things you can do to improve your website’s SEO performance, a critical on-page task is to optimize your eCommerce website to ensure more visits. Since Google keeps on introducing changes to its search engine algorithm, you need to stay informed of the updates so that you can do things right.

For instance, while the traditional technique of stuffing keywords into website content was once useful, it’s no longer helpful today. Nowadays, you need to include keywords that you want your website to rank on Google.

So, start by conducting keyword selection. Choosing the right keyword is extremely important: If your website ranks for a wrong or irrelevant keyword, you will struggle to convert the online traffic into sales.

This is because you’ll be driving irrelevant traffic to your website, with visitors who were never interested in your products in the first place. The result is a high bounce rate and low CTR, both of which will in turn hurt your SEO performance.

To identify relevant keywords, consider using tools such as Ahrefs, Google, or even Amazon search. Once you have identified the right keywords, incorporate them into the titles, headings, descriptions, and content so that they fit in naturally.

If your eCommerce website was designed on WordPress, the best approach is to use the SEO Yoast plugin, which allows you to optimize all these elements, helps you identify and resolve any issues on your website, and even create an XML sitemap, which is critical if you want to be detected by Google’s search engine crawlers that rank your website.

The content you post on your website, such as product descriptions, blog posts, etc., should all be fresh and original. Using simple wordings and phrases with relevant keywords allows Google to quickly recognize answers to specific queries. Be sure to keep users’ search intent in mind, and provide clear answers to what your target audience might ask on Google. Also, in the URLs, include the keywords for the respective web pages.

Seek technical help from web developers to optimize the page-loading speeds and mobile-friendliness of your eCommerce website. Since these are important aspects of user experience, Google attaches significant importance to each of these when ranking websites. Thus, do not neglect them.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO, on the other hand, is all about link-building. This entails having links to your website on other web pages. Whether you create backlinks on your own or ask other website owners to add your website links on their site, there are a few things to keep in mind:

Firstly, your link-building task should only focus on high-authority websites that are high-ranking, reliable websites and attract a lot of traffic, such as government or state websites. Based on the latest Google algorithm updates, your website rank can actually drop if your website links are present on low-ranking, unreliable websites.

Also, consider using relevant words for anchor text, which is the text for the links you create. Furthermore, be sure to link to the right landing pages on your website. The websites you link to must contain clear CTAs, and other elements that are sure to drive conversions.

Finally, don’t forget to track and monitor the SEO performance of your website using Google Analytics. In its Channels report of the Acquisition section, you should be able to discover keywords that drive the highest traffic, and generate the most sales.

Leverage Social Media

When it comes to marketing online, no channel is more powerful than social media. As opposed to traditional media, social media allows for a tremendous level of targeting so you can market to a specific audience and relevant markets. On top of that, social media offers two-way interaction with your target audience.

You interact with them with content, and they engage with your content in different ways, such as likes, comments, shares, retweets, etc., that help you analyze the success of your marketing efforts. Based on how your audience reacts to your posts, you can refine and tailor the content to meet their needs.

You’ll be amazed to know that users that engage with your brand on social media and visit your website from there not only have a higher chance to convert, but they are also three times more likely to recommend your brand to others than the rest of the visitors!

All the views, recommendations, and shares, however, will only drive traffic to your website if your content is engaging enough. Consider using images, videos, GIFs, and similar graphic content with interactive captions that include links to your website.

Follow these tips about the content you share on social media:

• When sharing blog posts on social media feeds, make sure they have engaging headings and striking images.
• Share blog posts that are between 2,000 and 2,500 words in length since articles of this length are more often shared than others.
• When sharing promotional content, such as that related to an upcoming sale or advertising your product, be sure to add clear CTR buttons, such as “Shop Now”, “Register Now”, “Buy Now”, etc., that will take visitors to your website.
• While short advertising videos tend to work well, those that last 4 minutes or 4 minutes 20 seconds foster the highest number of shares.
• When adding website links in your posts, such as your tweets, shorten the links using link cutters to eliminate clutter.
• Use Live videos such as Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Instagram Live, Twitter, Periscope, Snapchat, depending on where your target market is present as live streaming has taken the world by storm these days.

No matter which social media platforms you use, make sure you utilize their respective analytics tools to track and monitor the effectiveness of your social media marketing performance.

Use Content Marketing

When you talk about eCommerce marketing tips, you can’t ignore content marketing. One of the most recent trends in digital marketing is content marketing, which is as simple as creating and uploading content in different formats on your eCommerce website. These might include written blog posts, infographics, and tutorial videos that prove valuable for your target audience.

While the content is more informational than promotional, the ultimate goal remains the same– to generate more leads and maximize conversions. For instance, keep providing valuable industry-related information to your target audience so that you can establish your expertise in the field and your customers come to trust you. Like us writing this blog post about eCommerce marketing right now. (wink)

However, given the tough competition nowadays, its more challenging than ever to stand out from the rest of the players. Posting a 500-word article on a topic your followers are interested in won’t be very effective. Yet, it’s possible to outplay your competition in a difficult industry in a short period.

Let’s take the example of a recent blog on ‘How to Start a Blog’ by Ryan Robinson, a content marketer, and blogger. Despite having millions of competitors and billions of search results on the same topic, his blog was able to rank on the first page in only a few months. This happened because he was able to provide more valuable content than other pages.

Consisting of more than 20,000 words, his post comprised of interviews, infographics, tutorial videos, screenshots of processes and results, templates, and more resources to help readers learn more about building a blog. In other words, he focused on providing content that’s more in-depth and valuable than any other free article written on the same topic.

However, it’s not just length that matters. Your free content should immediately help the readers solve their problems so that when the time comes to finally make a purchase, they are much more confident to choose you and make an investment.

To offer valuable content to your target audience, you must identify their pain points and most pressing issues and challenges, and then address them through high-quality, transformational content. Simply interview your target audience, asking them about the challenge they face. You may also look into what questions your competitors might be answering through their content. If you’ve been in the industry for a while now, you should have possessed unique insights and experiences to share. Share those experiences with your followers and fans.

You should not just upload content on your website’s blog section, but as discussed earlier, you should also post their links on social media platforms that your target audience spends the most time on, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube. This should ensure that your content is not just posted but also sufficiently consumed.

Market Via Email

Have you ever come across a subscription form that pops up when you are about to leave a visited webpage? Even though the pop up may seem annoying to you, it can help an ecommerce business. These pop us help gather information, like your email address, so that companies can send emails to you afterward.

Your visit to the website is enough to convey that you’re interested in buying a product or service, making you a potential target customer. Once they have your email, companies can forward special deals and promotions to you, keeping you engaged all the time.

Email marketing remains one of the top eCommerce marketing tips. It has proven to be highly effective in generating and converting leads for small, growing eCommerce businesses. Just because you never subscribe to marketing emails doesn’t mean that others don’t.

It’s true that a majority of users don’t share their email addresses, but out of millions of people who visit your site, a few thousand do subscribe. When you send out emails to those thousands, a hundred might convert. That’s a good number considering that it cost you zero dollars to market to them.

Of course, you don’t send emails one by one. Many email marketing software and CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) solutions are available that help automate the email marketing process. Some of the best CRMs or email marketing software include MailChimp, Zoho Campaigns, SendPulse, etc. They offer numerous templates and incredible features such as A/B testing to send out the best marketing emails to your target audiences.

But what about the content of your emails? Email marketing is not about spamming your recipients’ inbox with promotional emails. You need to view it as a buyer journey and segment your prospects, depending on where they stand in the buyer journey. Based on that, you can send emails to each segment.

For instance, if someone actually viewed product pages on your website, added a product to the shopping cart but left without making a purchase, then you can send them a discount for the product (with the item image) in the email.

However, to your returning or loyal customers, you can send reminders about the upcoming sale because they’re already fans of your brand and would love to know about upcoming deals.

The results you obtain by tracking recipients’ interactions with emails through available tools should help you understand which campaigns drive traffic and which don’t. Use these insights to refine your email campaigns and improve your email marketing practices.

Final Word

Marketing an eCommerce business can be pretty exciting if you’re aware of the best, result-driven practices. Since you have to focus on SEO, social media marketing, content marketing and email marketing, eCommerce marketing may appear intimidating. However, when you see positive results, such as more lead generation and higher conversions, you’ll be motivated to invest more time and effort.

While there are countless things that go into marketing your business online, the above-explained eCommerce marketing tipshappen to be the most effective ones trending across the eCommerce industry these days. We truly hope that these techniques will take your business to the next level.

The post Top eCommerce Marketing Tips appeared first on Fully Accountable.

Before the onset of the holiday season, businesses often drain their resources to maximize their sales. However, once the festive season is over, a slow period dawns upon companies. Marketing is all about managing the slow periods well and then maximizing the profits when the traffic increases.

However, the problem lies in the fact that these “slow” periods last during most of the year. With a large chunk of their marketing funds depleted, businesses are left with limited options of making a recovery post-holiday.

As you say goodbye to the year 2019 and get ready for 2020, you cannot repeat the mistakes you made during the year. It is essential to analyze the slow period, assess the trends during this period, and take measures to mitigate your losses.

It is imperative to organize yourself before the year comes to an end. Your sales and employees are affected the most during the slowdown period. In addition to ensuring the two factors are not affected by the period of low sales, you also need to take steps to mitigate the consequences of reduced sales.

Here is an insight into the steps that you can take to mitigate the risks attached to a period of low sales after the holiday season.

1. Check the Inventory

The first thing that you need to do is to come to grips with the inventory you have at your disposal.

For all businesses, inventory management is the focal part of the strategy they take for the next year. As the shift in sales takes place, it is imperative to adjust the inventory levels accordingly.

The adjustments to the inventory should match the demand of the consumer. It should also account for the surplus inventory you have in store. You should rely on cash sales on the days or weeks that follow the holiday. The spending does not cease after December 25^th as many customers make the dash to the stores before the New Year to make returns or to purchase new items. Therefore, you should adjust the inventory while keeping in mind the methods you need to take to push products that appeal to the customer.

Inventory is not all about the stock on shelves. It is about managing the purchases and making decisions at the perfect time so that they are in harmony with seasonal trends. Businesses may see the implications of this act differently: some may decrease the quantity of their purchases, while the others may ramp up their purchase orders for the next season.

2. Review the Data

Once you are done managing the inventory and the numbers behind the stock, it is time to review your performance during the holiday season. It is time to dig deep into the metrics and analyze your performance. This will help you determine the keys to success and give you essential takeaways for the next season.

In addition to reviewing the data and statistics, it is imperative to make a list of the best and worst-performing products. You can also analyze the promotions by comparing the numbers of each promotion you offered. You can also compare your performance with your competitors to get a clear idea.

Another aspect of data review that many business owners undermine is the expenses during the holiday season. Don’t forget to record the expenses during this season. Not only will this help you during budgeting, but it will also help you in finding areas where you can make deductions for the next year.

3. Adjust the Pricing Strategy

Businesses change their pricing strategies to account for the holiday season and maximize their revenue. Holidays, according to many retailers, are all about discounts as they are meant to attract sales.

However, similar efforts during the post-holiday season may not provide you with the same benefits. This is why it is imperative to reconsider the pricing strategy when you begin the next year. Some businesses deliberately keep the margins up to make up for the slowdown that comes post-holiday.

Other businesses change the prices strategically and move the surplus inventory to leverage the number of sales.

Factoring a revenue or inventory target is the best way to adjust for the demand, and you can look back at the sales of the preceding year to set an achievable target.

Now that you are aware of some pricing and finance decisions that you can make to manage the consequences of the slowdown, here are some methods that you can use to increase sales.

After going through the periods of high sales, a business realizes it’s potential. Most businesses make the mistake of slacking after the period of high sales. Waiting for things to happen is the last thing that you can do a business owner. Rather than being reactive in your attitude, it is imperative to be proactive and to take the challenge head-on.

Before you decide the policy or method to keep the sales numbers roaring, you need to remember the occasion. Post-Christmas is the most unpleasant time of the year. Wading through the snow to go back to their lives is something very few people find attractive.

4. Focus on Marketing

Rather than offering new promotions that you find challenging to balance; you need to look for other ways to increase sales. Reading the mindset of the customer and then giving them deals that fit the mentality is a strategy that some of the best businesses use.

New Year is the only time during a year when you see a stark difference in the attitude of the customers. Just before the final moments of the New Year, you can see customers enjoying and partying and having a good time. However, the mood changes entirely as soon as the calendar hits January 1^st.

Customers now transform and possess a high level of resolve and practice self-constraint over all the deals that you offer. This is the time that you can shine by shaping the business according to the needs of the business. Amazon is the finest example of a business that changes according to the different moods of the customer.

You will see loads of fitness tutorials and tax preparation software on the website that is meant to aid the customers in achieving the goals they have set for themselves.

Once the festivities are all over, people are not going to indulge in expensive habits. Neither are they going to buy junk foods, nor will they purchase expensive wardrobe items.

Items that will enhance their New Year’s resolution will be on top of the list. Therefore, you should look to promote and sell products that are meant to encourage organization and to enhance the health of the users.

5. Email Marketing

If you feel that your business is not designed to cater to a large market, you can always try a more personal and interactive method of marketing.

One of the best methods for maintaining sales following the holiday season is email marketing. Consider the best practices for e-commerce and create customize emails during the holidays. You can also use the target list of core customers. Once you have a list of the addresses that you can target, start offering the customers with discounts and promotional packages.

Don’t wait for too long. Like other things, email addresses too have an expiry date. Some customers will soon forget that they ever purchased anything from you. While the memories of purchase during the holiday season are still intact, contact them through email and promote the discount package you have to offer.

6. Don’t Stay Silent

Once the holiday season is over, the retailers, the customers, and to be honest, even you are tired and exhausted. While this might seem like an incentive to take a break, you cannot afford to remain inactive for too long.

The customers may be quiet, and the market may lack the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, but it is still listening. If you raise the voice when everyone is silent, you get an advantage you can only dream of having during the holiday season.

Not only should the business go on, but you should also aim to make the business better by setting targets that are above all your competitors.

Once you have your sales and management in order, you need to focus your attention on your employees. The holiday season might be a wonderful time of the year for the customers and the people visiting the business, but it is a stressful one for business owners and their employees. One of the complaints that owners have after the holiday season is that the employees lose their motivation once the holidays are over.

7. New Year Goals

Setting New Year goals for your employees is one way that you can motivate them and increase their productivity levels. The rewards and incentives of achieving a goal are some of the driving factors that convince workers to deliver their best performances.

Before leaving for holidays, the full focus of an employee is on achieving the deadlines and clearing the tables. However, the employees are being extremely short-sighted when they are looking to meet the last-minute deadlines.

Long term goals are a great motivating factor for workers; it gives them a clearer picture and allows them time to focus on the details of the project. You also need to ensure that the deadline you set for the employees is manageable and is not too taxing for the employee.

8. Prioritize Teamwork

Employees typically face an increase in the workload once they come back from holidays. One way that you can manage the workload for the employees is by dividing them into teams. Rather than making them stay long hours after work, assign teams to get done with the work assigned.

You need to ensure that the employees understand their responsibility and are willing to work together. You can review the performance of each employee after the break and remind them of the trust and accountability they have for each other’s work.

Find experts in the company who are willing to collaborate with the team. Also, look to improve communication in the workplace and ensure that all the employees are on the same page.

Getting back in the full swing once the holiday season is over is challenging for all businesses. However, transitioning between different phases of business is as important as preparing for the holiday season. You can use the steps mentioned above to monitor a smooth transition while keeping the sales intact and recovering your business from the holiday season boom.

The post How to Recover Your Business After the Holiday Season appeared first on Fully Accountable.

The massive influx of people and the rising demand are good signs for the industry and small businesses. However, this opportunity can convert into chaos and embarrassment very soon if your business is not prepared to deal with the rise in demand. 

As an entrepreneur approaching the holiday season, your main objective should be to stay ahead of the massive rise in demand and consumers that are going to visit your store or website. The second main objective should be to utilize the opportunity to increase revenue and profits for the business. 

Preparation is essential if you want to plan ahead. A robust plan and solid preparation will help you in minimizing the pressure on the back office while maintaining good customer service. The first part of planning for the holiday season includes keeping track of the inventory, because during the season you will need each unit for supply. You also need to develop a good understanding of what the customer is looking for. Given the expected demand and the type of shoppers that can visit you during the season, it is imperative to adjust your business to accommodate them. 

While the larger firms have the luxury of a finance staff and business intelligence software, small businesses are on their own. Given the limitations a small business has, the holiday season is a great way to test and challenge yourself over targets that you can achieve. 

To help you out, we have made a list of important tips that you should follow to prepare your business for the holiday season, and to ensure you achieve them successfully.

1. Minimize the Pressure on Back Office

Reducing the stress on the back office is one of the main ways to ensure that your customers are left satisfied with the performance of the business.

The high volume of sales and the extended hours are one of the main reasons why managers and owners are not able to take control of the back end of the business. The ‘customer first and everything else later’ approach prevents business owners from intervening in the back end problems in a timely manner.

This problem occurs because small businesses today are unwilling to accept and adapt to the technological changes taking place. While these changes may be expensive to acquire, they help in easing the burden of handling tasks like accounting and billing. The software are also used for collecting customer data while presenting and automating the transactions of the business. 

This automation provides the owner with the most valuable asset during a stressful period, and that is time. With the accounting software or outsourced individual managing the accounting of the business the owner can focus on the more important aspects. 

It is important for business owners to understand that adapting to and accepting change is the name of the game. Businesses that are unwilling to change over time find themselves in a whirlwind of chaos that is beyond their control. Technology and innovative solutions provides your business with flexibility and efficiency that are the key elements fueling growth.

2. Stay in Touch with Sales and Expenses

At this time of the year, things can get pretty hectic. The rate at which customers flock your place and demand for products can make it difficult for you to stay up to date with the business tasks. The only time you have to glance at the numbers is when you try to reconcile checks and balances.

The lack of knowledge of the financial position of the business prevents you from making on the spot decisions in case you run into a problem. This is where the need for automation joins the debate, an application will ease you business operations by updating you with all the sales and purchases made during the day. 

Connecting an application with the payments system is the best way to keep track of payments especially when sales and purchases are made with help of a card. It is essential for business owners to have the proper tools in place to aid the ongoing needs of the business. Slowing down operations just because business operation needs to tackle a problem is the last thing you need during the holiday season.

3. Develop a Marketing Strategy

As mentioned earlier, the key to surviving the holiday season unscathed depends on the kind of strategy you develop. Business that prepare for the worst are best equipped to deal with them, and this is because they develop an effective strategy to rescue them from hot troubled waters.

A marketing strategy is an essential element of good preparation. All businesses have the urge of standing out from the crowd of their competitors in the industry. To ensure that your business stands out and provides the best rate possible, it is imperative to follow an effective marketing strategy. 

Remember that during the holiday season, a customer has seen endless marketing gimmicks and promotions to entice them to purchase a good. In the end, the customers opt for products that fulfill their needs by providing them with the goods that they were looking for.

Small businesses don’t have the financial depth and stability to offer promotions and huge discounts to their customers. At a time when all businesses around them are offering users with exciting deals and discounts, small businesses struggle to find ways to attract the consumer. 

Rather than promising discounts and packages, the small business can focus on providing holiday promotions that are specific to their products and services. Once you have a special loyalty offer in place, you can test out ways to present them in front of potential customers. Here are a few options that you can try:

• Email marketing, to this day, proves to be one of the most effective ways to get the attention of the consumer. The method has the highest conversion rate as people impressed by your offer will be willing to try it out.
• Social media is an obvious first step in the right direction for most businesses. The platform provides you to setup an identity online giving your business a voice and the opportunity to interact with potential customers. Companies are also exploring their options on major search engines such as Bing and Google. An advertisement on the online web platform ensures that your product or promotional package reaches a wider audience
• Another method that you can try is gathering customer data to keep the customers aware of all the future promotions and offerings. Consider a promotion that provides the users with a discount in exchange for email address. This will help you in creating an email list and will enable you to create a repeat customer base.

4. Track Inventory

A lot of the success achieved during the holiday season depends on what you can offer to the consumers. This decision starts with the levels of inventory you have.

Owners can find out the products that were popular with their customers by gauging the sales that took place during the last month. The same information can be assessed to find out about products that didn’t go according to plan. A good businessman has the art of interpreting data and stats wisely. This interpretation will help you in deciding a strong policy for the future.

Not knowing or assessing the performance of a product can lead owners to placing incorrect orders that can put the financial position of the business under considerable strife. Do keep in mind though, that it is just as bad to order too much of a product as it to run out of a product that is in high demand. Having inventory that is not moving and is placed on the shelves of the store for long periods is a loss that all businesses should look to avoid.

Effective inventory management takes into consideration all these factors before defining a new policy. If for some reason you think that the sales from the previous season don’t provide much help in purchasing inventory, then you should look to plan ahead. Put a plan in place to monitor and track the performance of sales. The more well-informed you are regarding the activities of your business the better the decision making will be.

Ensuring the implementation of an effective monitoring strategy will not only put you in a good place for this holiday season but also for the coming seasons. 

5. Align the Reporting

When taking on business activities small business owners often undermine the value of identifying the required financial insights. These financial insights are important for making decisions that will help you in achieving your goals.

Information about your business can also provide you with a ground to compare your performance with the competitors in the industry. Regular comparisons with the industry benchmarks are a great way to assess how you are doing relative to their peers. Aligning your report in a scribble careless manner is not a great way to manage the reporting mechanism of the business.

Whether it is presenting it to potential lenders or assessing them yourself, the presentation of the report always matters. It is imperative that the financial report should present the reader with essential financial insights regarding the business. During the holiday season, you are bound to face a huge financial crunch- and in times of such a crunch it is only normal to prioritize the customers. This is why it is essential to outsource the reporting and the recording function.

6. Check Holiday Schedule and Decorate

During the start of the year it is important to mark all the holiday seasons and all holidays that come during the year. Marking the holiday will allow you to make specific strategies targeting the segment of the society celebrating a specific holiday. For example you can offer special deals for children during the summer vacations or make exclusive deals for families during the 4th of July. 

You can also decorate your store or place of business according to the holiday your customers are celebrating. Get your team involved in the decoration of the store; plan a late night or an early morning decoration party. Play festive music that suits the holiday settings and make your staff wear clothes according to the holiday.

It is essential that your whole staff is onboard the idea of celebrating a holiday. Each member should know of the significance of such activities and should be willing to work to get the holiday season going. Ensure that you get working together to transform your business in a matter of hours. Remember to see that each and every corner of the store is shining and radiating the holiday spirit. Clear the whole area and dust the fixtures so that the merchandise can shine.

The aforementioned tips can help you prepare effectively for the holiday season. You will miss a great opportunity by ignoring the need for picking up the pace to match the high demand during the holiday season.

Some of the tips mentioned above are useful even during the normal day to day activities. Therefore, small businesses must look to following these tips to compete with the large companies that offer lucrative discounts to their users. 

The post 6 Ways to Prepare Your Business for the Upcoming Holiday Season appeared first on Fully Accountable.

It’s good to focus on the optimization of your emails. However, don’t ignore the work that you need to do that will induce your target audience to open and read them. That is where you will get the results that you want. This is how important deliverability is in your marketing campaigns.

You need to know that email delivery and email deliverability are two different things. Let us define them in their simplest terms. Email delivery is when your emails are delivered to the server, while email deliverability is when your emails are placed inside the inboxes of your intended recipients.

How Deliverability Affects Your B2B Marketing

There are three ways that deliverability can affect your B2B marketing. 

1. It Will Help You Win the Inbox Competition

Email traffic has accelerated in unbelievable magnitude at the present time. Today’s business owners have received emails and spams that clutter their inboxes. This situation has caused providers to design strict technologies that will differentiate or separate spams from legitimate emails.  

The Radicati Group, a technology market research organization, projected in 2018 that there are about 3.8 billion email accounts around the world. These accounts generated 111.1 billion emails from consumers and 124.5 billion emails from businesses.

In February of the same year, Propeller.com, a social news aggregator, reported that there are about 14.5 billion spam messages sent each day around the world. You need to consider this situation if you want to get your emails inside the inboxes of your target audience.  

One way of accomplishing this is to provide your target market with fresh, engaging and relevant content. Then deliver your message at the right time and the right frequency. This will enable you to build long term relationships with your target audience. 

2. Your Email Marketing Campaign Will Succeed If You Improve Your Deliverability

Most online businesses focus their efforts on how they can create the most effective emails that will induce their target audience to respond positively. While this is a worthwhile endeavor, it will not produce the results if their emails are not delivered in their recipients’ inboxes.

Improve your email deliverability by deploying an email program that can optimize your email’s inbox delivery and open rates. This should be the foundation of all your email marketing campaigns. One way of doing this is to effectively manage your email list and email programs via email validation services.

3. Your Deliverability Will Improve If You Will Get the Viewpoint of Your Audience

You are competing with hundreds of other businesses that send emails to your customers. If you want to win a spot in your customers’ inboxes, you should approach your customers in their own viewpoints. Consider their preferences, the frequency by which you send your emails and make sure the contents of your emails are relevant to their needs. 

What Affects the Deliverability Rate?

Here are some of the more important things that can affect your deliverability rate:

Sending your email to businesses which are not engaged:

If you send your emails to businesses that are not engaged, your open rates will below. This will not escape the scrutinizing eyes of the ISPs. To them, this means you are sending it to non-engaged customers. That will affect the delivery of your future emails.

Not communicating with your customers:

If a company agrees to receive emails from your brand, but it does not receive an email from you after several months, they will likely forget why they signed up in the first place. By waiting too long to send your first email, you jeopardize your chances of building a good reputation. 

Using unclear subject lines:

An effective subject line will induce your customer to open your email. But if you use subject lines that are unclear and look like spam, your customers and the spam filters that the ISPs use will consider that your email is spam. Therefore, don’t use keywords that will make it appear that your email is spam.

Not using custom authentication:

If you will not authenticate your emails, the ISPs will think that they are not legitimate. Put in place verified DKIM and SPF settings. The receiving inboxes of your customers will have verifiable information that can be used to cross-reference with your email promotions. 

How to Improve the Email Marketing Campaign Deliverability Rate

It is not very difficult to improve your email deliverability rate if you will follow these tips:

Use subject lines that will engage your customers right away:

Get the gist of the information that you want to give your customers. Then put it in such a way that it will instantly hold the attention and arouse the curiosity of the reader. Compose your subject title in a creative and unique way. Spend time in crafting the words of your title so that it will be different from the titles used by your competitors.

Use a Different Provider to Test an Audience:

If your present ISP does not produce the results that you want, get another provider. This will show you if your present delivery is working or not. A new provider will reduce your bounce rates or the number of emails that were not actually delivered to the intended recipients.

Build Quality, Not Quantity:

Spend some time crafting crisp and engaging content. Don’t put too much information on your emails. Whatever information you include must be well-organized so that your audience will not be confused.

Personalize your content. Use short paragraphs and bullet points so that the reader will immediately understand what you want to say. Don’t forget about your CTA at the end of your email.

Test Your Message before Sending Your Email:

Use an email testing tool before sending your email out. This will show you how your message will fare in different corporate spam filters. It will also show you how your message will look on desktop, mobile and web email clients.  

Conclusion

It is crucial to focus on your email deliverability rate. It is an important phase in your email marketing process that influences the final result. Follow the tips given in this article if you want to improve your email deliverability rate.

The post How Email Deliverability Affects Your B2B Marketing Success Rate appeared first on Fully Accountable.

Modern forms of business today are lucky to have various options available to explore different spectrums. However, businesses guilty of not choosing the right channel of communications often don’t succeed in attracting customers. This is where the problem lies for fledgling businesses. In this article we will discuss 6 Marketing Tips that will help you and your business. 

Businesses focus on understanding the needs of the customers and the target audience. Doing so allows them to create content that will attract the customers’ attention, eventually fulfilling their needs. Producing and churning out mediocre content is the biggest let-down for all consumers.

In addition to attracting new customers, using creative content to pitch special offers also helps in avoiding the reduction in the current customer base. Good quality content marketing will help you in sustaining the success you have earned from a neighborhood. Therefore, the only way to maximize sales and ensure that there is no drop in the number is content marketing.

Given the nature of marketing, it is imperative to understand why the tool is an efficient way to outreach and improve the overall sales and profits in your business. The following are the two main ways for understanding the significance of the tool

1. Assistance over Force

A standard method employed by businesses is to provide customer’s benefits and praising your own product. Keeping in mind the modern trends and styles, the strategy is both flawed and outdated.

Customers today have your attention when you apply subtle means of persuasion. Offering discounts and lower prices will not work their magic on today’s customers. Rather than using this outdated method, it is better to create a need for the product. Creating content that emphasizes and highlights the common problems users face establishes the need for the product.  

Whether it is through blog posts, case studies, or podcasts, reliable content for the average customer is the need of the hour today.  

2. Multiple Media

With many interactive platforms available today, it is foolish for a business not to use them. Businesses that don’t invest in creating interactive content for potential buyers using these platforms are bound to fail.

Using different media channels to reach the customer is integral to the success of the business. When providing customers with important information about the business, don’t push too much content with basic functions of the business.

Since different demographics are present on major social media platforms, using compelling content marketing is the key to the success of your business. 

Now that you are aware of the significance of content marketing, the following are some of the methods you can use to generate more consumer interest using the tool.

3. Extensive Market Research

Like all other business decisions, the strategy of using content marketing should be backed by thorough research. Like all successful entrepreneurs, smart decisions are based on in-depth market analysis.

Finding commercial keywords is the result of conducting extensive market research. Market research lays the foundations for the success of your business.

With users looking for answers to their day-to-day problems on Google, the key to finding more leads is the use of search keywords. 

With the biggest search engine and the search priorities of many users at your disposal, you can find out the keywords that will assist you in attracting more customers.

Conducting extensive market research will allow you to create landing pages with high conversion rates. Before doing so, have a set purpose for your website and plan the information that you want to present. Creating a compelling headline and giving a strong, captivating opening are the few essentials required to keep the readers hooked to your landing page.

Conducting market research and making an effort to connect with the customer demands will allow you to create gripping content on your landing page.

Another factor that owes to market research is the pace of the landing page. If the load time of your landing page is slow, you are bound to lose readers.

4. Lead Bait

The next thing that you need to cater to is the creation of lead bait. For those who are not aware of the terminology yet, lead bait is the method used to draw unsuspecting buyers into giving up their contact information on the web form.

All settled businesses that are well aware of content marketing will vouch for the fact that emails trump social media marketing. Emailing the users of special discounts and packages is generally more successful because it gives users the notion of significance. 

Regardless of likes and dislikes, personalized emails and messages are bound to have an impact on the user. Let’s be honest here: at the end of the day, we all like to feel important.  Now emailing customers and using the medium of digital mail does not mean that you should completely ignore your social media presence. You should find the right balance and, more importantly, find a target audience that will bring lead generation.

The key to creating successful lead bait is being aware of your target audience’s preferences, behaviors, likes, and dislikes. Find out what is attractive to your target audience and focus on that in your promotional efforts. This means not just generating content that caters to the audience’s tastes but also promoting it on platforms that the audience prefers.

For example, let’s assume your target audience is truck drivers and importers. Creating videos and e-books for such an audience is a waste of time because the users are away from home, driving most of the time. This audience doesn’t have the time to sit back and read articles and blogs. Making podcasts or audiobooks is your best bet to get their attention.

Another key to ensuring that you get the lead bait is by writing more case studies. Writing uninspired blog posts will never get the response you want from the reader. On the contrary, writing about how the vision of your business and the skill of your employees helped a client in solving the problem they faced will help in generating more trust in the reader.

If case studies help in pulling the strings of the users, then they can be the sole factor for the improvement of sales and attracting more leads.

Another thing that is the talk of the town today is the use of interactive visual assets when creating a case study. Using photos, memes, videos, and gifs is a great way of keeping the audience interested in your case study.

Regardless of how successful the other ways you employ for lead generation are the hallmark of lead generation is an attraction. Developing an interest and an attraction results in the users clicking on the case study and consequently on the lead bait. This is where the whitepaper comes in handy.

Another term that you may not be aware of, whitepapers are documents used by sales and marketing with the object of enticing the user to purchase a particular product, service, technology, or methodology.

Ensure that the whitepaper is catchy, enticing, and audience-specific; this will attract the attention of the user. Make the pages of the whitepaper engaging because this is where you will gain the attention of the audience.

The key to making the whitepaper engaging is to sync and deliver the right message to the readers. You also need to be wary of not converting the whitepaper into a bald sales pitch. Educate the users while ensuring that the whitepaper is persuasive; this will hold the audience’s attention.

5. Content Creation

All of the hard work done before the main exercise will fall flat if the content you churn out is poor. All factors that lead the target audience to this point are part of content marketing. However, the content you create is the cornerstone of converting the target audience into loyal customers.

The market research conducted in the initial stages of content marketing will help you identify the content users want. 

After analyzing the results of market research, there are two ways to go about creating content. The first is to rely on intuition, and using the results of the market research to predict the kind of content that users will appreciate. The other route is to use existing data; this will help you to find out the content that the users are reading currently. A web page that attracts the most views is an indication of the interests of the customers.

A crucial part of content creation is content headlines. Many existing successful online pages make great use of the headlines. Use Google for inspiration when writing headlines that can compete with other content on the internet.       

Headlines may get you clicks but for meaningful results, write and create in-depth content. This is one of the biggest challenges faced by businesses.

Regardless of the business type, it is necessary to have a clear outline for content creation that you can follow. It can be challenging to gain the interest of the user for a detailed article. However, given the fact that Google ranks specific and data-driven content higher, it is imperative to do so. 

To get the best results out of content marketing, many businesses today are investing heavily on a content team. It is very normal for a business to run out of ideas for quality content. This creates the risk of content drying out which consequently leads to a massive drop in sales.

This is where a business needs the assistance of a content team. The ability of these teams to explore different options will surprise you. You can create a team that comprises of freelancers, full-time employees, writers, designers, and filmmakers that will offer their expertise to the business in one way or another.

6. Consistency

Businesses often make the mistake of considering content marketing as a one-time strategy. Mere presence on social media is not enough to get the customers flowing.  Customers like consistency!

Like all other functions of business, consistency in decision-making is the key to ensuring success. Keep track of the traffic on your social media and blog posts daily. Content marketing is not an annual or monthly job; it is an engagement practice that needs daily attention and looking after. 

The trouble with long-term strategy is that businesses start feeling the pressure of investment. Yes! There will be times when it will feel that the investment is going to waste since it is not yielding enough clicks or views. However, it is at times like these that you need to stay true to your identity and remain confident of the potential that you and your team have.

Remember! Potential customers will only begin to accept the regularity of content once it is delivered by your business. Therefore, keep looking for new ideas and conducting market research with patience.

Starting a blog is simple; the challenging part, however, is building an audience that trusts you. With the information overload and noise on social media for generating more leads, you need to focus more on the needs of your target audience.

If implemented appropriately and consistently, these 4 steps will create leads for your business via relevant, meaningful content.

The post 6 Steps to Simulate Consumer Interest through Content Marketing appeared first on Fully Accountable.

Purpose

The first thing you need to do before you start anything is have a plan. This goes along with the concept of think before you speak. Starting on social media blind can be a very good way to destroy relationships and leads before you even get them. You must know the message you are trying to convey because if you don’t know what you are talking about how is your audience supposed to know what you are talking about. Another thing to be aware of in social media are shifting trends. For example companies are beginning to see change in how employees communicate in the workplace. Any change like when you have no strategy can be a quick way to lose direction. Purpose is the base of all effective social media campaigns and interactions.

Customer Avatar

As soon as you figure out your strategy you need to figure out your audience. A common saying is you have to find customers to sell to them. This means focus on your demographic and don’t only find the best customers to sell to, but also on which platform will be most effective to your company. Whether it’s on your website or through email gain as much traction as possible to have a strong following to begin with. Knowing your customer avatar is crucial to success in social media.

Lead Generation

Now it’s time to focus on your content and interaction. Begin with finding out what your customers are interested in. Nobody wants to read something they don’t care about. Also, stay relevant. Share current events, news, blogs, and articles you think your customer would appreciate. Next spark participation, polls, images, and videos are a good way to get interaction. Finally, participate and join the conversation. Don’t force your product or service on the customer, focus on good conversation and interaction with the customer, that in turn will make them take interest in your product or service. The reason this is so effective is because although it’s only a conversation with one person everyone can listen. At the end of the day the goal of good content is about driving traffic to your site, and getting people to want more information. That is why this such an important tool for lead gen.

Analytics

Once you have the first three steps figured out it’s time to track the results and find out if what you are doing is really working. There are two ways to do this. Reading, which consists of paying attention to the good and bad people are saying on social media, responding to them, and taking into consideration what they have to say. The other way is analyzing, this means tracking actual things like web traffic, clicks, likes, and shares. Neither of these are simple, you must compile a large amount of data to see how you can improve your strategy, or if you need to rethink your strategy.

Spending

A common misconception is that your ads are performing well and sales are coming, so you must be doing great! Actually, social media analytic tools only show you the clicks and sales, but do not consider refunds or chargebacks that could be costing you a ton of money. If you want to understand how the ads affect your bottom line, you can get a business audit that will reveal how your ads are truly performing.

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Content Marketing

Content Marketing is a good space to get creative by utilizing things like videos, graphics, and podcasts for example. The goal is to create appealing content by telling a story or writing copy that hits on emotional pain points.

Content that can stimulate an interest in the product or service your company is offering. The most effective way to do this is by coming up with a content plan that your company commits to. Also, a strategy for the platforms you wish to post on. Paid advertising can boost awareness, but there are effective ways to post organically on social media to gain that need brand recognition and building trust with your audience. The key to building this trust is to stick with it and not give up. Especially when traffic is slow at the beginning, be sure to continue to feed your audience.

Value Driven Marketing

Value Driven marketing is all about creating that differentiation so that you end up with customer loyalty. You must convey how you will benefit your customer. This way they will find value in what you’re offering and choose to stick with you long term. One of the best ways to do this is understanding your customer and their needs. This is not so much about pushing the product, but really connecting with the customer. This will help build trust in the brand, and in turn, the company will receive good feedback and referrals. This is crucial for future growth!

SEO

SEO or search engine optimization, although you can pay for it, it focuses on building organic traffic, which means traffic that is not being paid for. The first step to this is quality content, which will increase customer interaction. To give the customer a good experience with this, the website must be smooth, fast, and also incorporate technical and creative elements. Examples of this are using real images and same color code to keep things up to speed, using links or keywords to increase interaction, or focus on social media presence to boost website traffic. Search engine optimization is taken into great consideration when designing content and websites in marketing.

Virtual Reality

An interesting technology that is continuing to emerge and be utilized by certain companies is called virtual reality. This is an immersive three dimensional video that makes the video seem real. Although this is not being extensively used right now it will be in the future. Companies like Samsung are heading the way for this technology that is subject to change marketing drastically. It is an impactful source of content and makes user experience more memorable. This will be a good way for companies to demonstrate and promote their products.

Filmmaking and Photography

With apps like YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo, and VSCO, filmmaking and photography has become a very effective way to market a company’s product. Creating interesting content in these spaces is key when getting customers interested in their product. Video and image makes consumers more likely to click because it evokes emotion. Also, consumer’s attention span is short which means they are not always so willing to read. Therefore, providing image and video creates an advantage. This space can help boost SEO and organic traffic because of the many platforms and versatility of the space.

Data Analytics

More and more money is being spent on big data. With the increase in technology, the amount of data accessible is growing exponentially, and it is becoming easier for us to understand it. Data analytics is becoming one of the biggest influencers in companies, whether it’s creating business strategy, or improving operations, it can be utilized in all areas. Companies use the power of data to drive their social media platforms and provide them with valuable insights. These insights allow businesses to niche down on their target audience so they spend money on advertising that’s most likely to result in sales.

However, look out for ads that appear to be doing well and making you money! Why? Mainly because social media platforms cannot show you how those numbers are affecting the overall bottom line of your business. For example, if you make a lot of sales online, are you considering the refunds and chargebacks– how will that affect your account? Learn more about how to manage your marketing spend here.

Bottom line, you need to implement digital marketing in order for your brand to gain exposure and your business to last. Focusing on the newest ways to reach your ideal customer is important, but you also need a strategy on how you will interact with them once you get there. Building your brand by providing value to your target audience through content that creates a want and desire for your product or service is key!

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