Creating a unique mobile app nowadays is challenging. With so many similar apps out there, it becomes hard to stand out and differentiate yourself from others. You not only have to make sure your app is functional, but it must also be relevant to a particular audience. Otherwise, who’s going to use it? Picture this: You’ve spent so much time developing your app, constantly refining and testing it, and you’ve finally reached a version that satisfies your vision. Great, now you can finally sit back and relax while you watch the number of downloads shoot through the roof. Those daydreams of rolling around in piles of cash seem a bit more tangible now, right?
Well, apologies for busting your bubble, but you’re missing a crucial piece of the puzzle that’ll make your daydream a reality: marketing. Your mobile app isn’t just going to get up and sell itself; you need to have a strong mobile marketing plan in place. If you’re just starting out, you might want to check out these crucial app design tips to keep in mind to promote your product. However, if you already have an existing marketing strategy in place, you might be wondering what more you can do to market your app. This is where you might consider content syndication.
What is Content Syndication?
Simply put, content syndication can include repurposing content or creating content for the sole purpose of external publication. This is an important strategy to implement into your mobile marketing plan because you’ll be able to spread your content to a wider audience – an audience who might have never heard of your product otherwise. In this way, you’ll be able to increase engagement around your product as well as increase brand awareness. After all, the more content that is available, the more likely it is for your product to be found! Even though only 14% of companies use content syndication as a distribution method, it actually ranks third in effectiveness at 45%, following SEM and promoted posts.
So what exactly are the best ways to syndicate your content? Here are 10 tips that will help you market your mobile app:
1: Know Your Goal
Similar to creating your app, you have to have a clear, focused point of view and know what you want to accomplish. Are you trying to drive traffic through SEO? Increase your customer base? Just building product awareness? Discovering the answers to these questions should be the first step you take in establishing a syndication strategy. With content syndication, you can either syndicate full articles or just a headline, description, and a link back to the original piece of work. Just make sure you know exactly what your goal is so that you can determine for yourself which form of syndication may be best. Keep in mind that this may not depend on you though, as some websites have strict guidelines that they follow.
2: Choose Your Partners Carefully
Before you go out and ask others to publish your content, you have to do a little research. Again, the whole point is to capture more leads based off of their existing customer base. Make sure that your syndicated content will do more than just reach this new audience; make sure to intrigue and induce them to check out your product or site as well.
You might want to consider the following: Are these websites relevant to your industry? How do they distribute their content? Who is viewing their content? Know what type of content is posted and which receive the most engagement; the more relevant your content is to their audience, the better the opportunity for lead generation. Ideally, these other sites would have a higher authority than yours, affirming you as a credible author and thereby improving your website ranking. Just keep in mind that outcomes vary amongst different partner sites, no matter how high their authority may be.
3: Tailor Your Content for Your Target Audience
Image Source: Aumcore
You need to know your audience (and your partner site’s audience) in order to know what content to present to them. Are they technically savvy? Are they an older generation? Do they respond more to videos rather than articles? Whenever a range of age groups utilizes the same service, it’s best to optimize for each so that everyone can comfortably interact with it, increasing your chances of conversions. If creating graphic content, note that older generations prefer muted colors and larger text as opposed to younger generations who respond well to bright colors.
According to the digital marketing agency, Aumcore, “Part of knowing your audience involves analyzing the apps you’ll be competing with, both directly and indirectly.” You need to be aware of what’s relevant to your target audience, and when posting on a third-party site, be sure to keep their audiences in mind as well. Whatever you do, remember to tailor your content. You don’t want to waste your time publishing things that are irrelevant!
4: Syndicate Third-Party Content
With permission from a third-party website of your choice, you can feature their content on your blog. Although this may not be original, incorporating others’ relevant work will help diversify your content and keep ideas fresh. Not only that, but you may also be able to leverage their strengths in order to fill a possible content void in yours.
Similarly, you can have your content published onto another’s website as a guest post. The goal here is to “capitalize on their established audience,” as mentioned by Lead Forensics. In this case, your partner site asks you to tailor something that is more suitable for their site and audience. For instance, you may be asked to change the angle of your content to make it more relevant, or even just make smaller adjustments like tweaking the word count or headline.
5: Syndicate on Social Media
It’s no secret that social media platforms are some of the best ways to share your content. In the United States alone, 79% of people use Facebook, and 128 million have registered for accounts on LinkedIn. If you didn’t already know, posting an article on LinkedIn sends each of your connections a notification; this makes content distribution a breeze. If using Instagram, make sure you focus on the visual appeal of your content. Stay consistent with the images you post on your feed; a crisp and clean display of high-quality images on your Instagram account does wonder for your brand image, whereas the opposite could severely harm it. While sharing your content on sites like LinkedIn or Instagram can provide a free way to mass share your content, you can also opt to pay for services such as Taboola or Zemanta that can make your content available to a range of sites. However, if you want to implement a low-cost content syndication strategy into your marketing plan, engaging regularly with your audiences through your social media accounts can result in high organic distribution through reposts.
6: Choose Your Content Wisely
The content you choose to syndicate should be the very best you have to offer. According to Position², “unlike advertising, the purpose of syndication is not to get audiences to click through to buy, but to click through out of interest.” The goal is to have content that is so engaging that visitors want to learn or view more about your app. We’re not just talking about blogs or articles here either; think about all the other types of content out there! If the goal of your content syndication is to gain more customers, then you should really consider where your visitors might be in their research process. Perhaps they have already been comparing other products when they discovered your campaign. Maybe your content is the first that they see. Either way, you need to be strategic in choosing the content that you share so that it aligns to the audience’s needs as closely as possible.
7: Make a Promo Video
Nothing makes consumers more excited about a new release than an awesome teaser video. After all, videos get 4x more traction than articles or blog posts and generate 1200% more shares on social media. Facebook specifically is a great place to put promo videos because you can follow up with ads that convert people into actual consumers. Videos are a pretty powerful marketing medium because once you are able to effectively tap into the emotions of your audience, they are more likely to remember your brand because the story that your video depicted actually means something to them. Eliciting some type of reaction from your audience (e.g., making them think), making them laugh, or influencing them to take some sort of action will not only increase your chances of being remembered, but also your chances of going viral. Since 92% of mobile video consumers share videos with others, why not market your mobile app on a medium that most mobile users utilize?
8: Don’t just Republish…Repurpose
Don’t just think sharing the same link on every digital media outlet out there will help you gain a bigger following. Excessive sharing of the same thing is boring! I know you’re thinking, I already wrote a piece on digital marketing, what’s the point of putting the same content in a video? While repurposing your content into another form can be a little annoying, changing up your angle or media type can work in your favor. For instance, repurposing an article into a video or displaying statistics in an infographic are terrific ways to target various audiences. After all, not everyone uses Facebook, and not everyone has a LinkedIn or Pinterest account. So having a link posted on a platform such as Twitter that links to an infographic on Pinterest that links back to your site can immensely aid in increasing the likelihood of brand discovery. That’s three forms of content on three different forms of online media platforms. Imagine the possibilities! So definitely don’t solely rely on one form of content. Switch things up and get creative!
9: Monitor Your Leads
Don’t leave your leads unattended! New prospects aren’t guaranteed customers. They may have found your product on your site, yes, but conversions will definitely not be immediate. Be sure to nurture the relationship so that they end up as loyal customers. Monitoring the journey from start to finish will help you figure out what marketing strategy is most effective and will allow you to determine what works and what doesn’t.
10: Always Analyze and Adjust Your Strategy
As the idiom goes, you never know until you try. When it comes to figuring out the best way to engage and attract audiences, don’t be fearful of new strategies. What might have worked last year may not be as effective today. If you don’t constantly monitor and tweak your strategies, your business risks being surpassed by others, and your product will be forgotten. By analyzing your marketing plans regularly, you will be able to learn more about your customers and improve your offers. Always remember to measure your results, not matter how successful your syndicated content has become.
A Refresher
Syndicate your content if you’re looking for a different approach to drive traffic back to your site. Just note that you can’t solely rely on this method to market your products. Here’s a quick refresher of what we covered:
Know Your Goal
Choose Your Partners Carefully
Tailor Your Content for Your Target Audience
Syndicate Third-Party Content
Syndicate on Social Media
Choose Your Content Wisely
Make a Promo Video
Don’t Just Republish…Repurpose
Monitor Your Leads
Always Analyze and Adjust Your Strategy
So if you find yourself wanting to switch up your marketing strategy, give syndication a shot. However, you must remember to do more than just duplicate your content, but repurpose it in different forms to allow for an increased amount of user engagement. Really understanding the behaviors and needs of your users is vital in making sure that any marketing campaign you employ is successful. Once you’re able to establish meaningful connections with your audience, you’re one step closer to achieving your marketing goals!
About the Author: Bianca is a digital designer at Aumcore, offering 360° marketing solutions from mobile SEO to app store optimization. She has a background in video production and web design, and enjoys making animated videos.
It’s high time you integrate geofencing into your business. It’s proven to get you more sales, engagement, and loyal customers.
Geofencing is a location-based service that businesses use to engage their audience by sending relevant messages to smartphone users who enter a pre-defined location or geographic area.
There are smart companies that send product offers or specific promotions to consumers’ smartphones when they trigger a search in a particular geographic location, enter a mall, neighborhood, or store.
Do you desire to improve your customer experience? I’m sure you are, considering that 90% of customer experience decision-makers have agreed that a good customer experience is critical for their success.
And with customers being the major source of revenue for every business, delivering high-quality service through geofencing is important. If you’re into any form of digital marketing, you need to take this seriously as it’d help you acquire new customers and convert them into paying customers.
A Study by Bain & Company shows that a little increase of 5% in customer retention, can lead to a profit increase of 25% to 95%. Trust me, these numbers are worth paying attention to!
Since customer retention is too challenging, knowing how to interact with your potential leads in a more personalized manner will definitely help.
A research report by Experian shows that personalized emails sent to consumers have a great effect on open rate, triggered open rate, promotional click rates, and triggered click rates.
So, the earlier you start reaching out to potential and loyal consumers at the most relevant time, with the relevant product/service, the better the results you’re likely to get.
So how do you achieve it?
Simple: Integrate “geofencing” into your marketing strategy and you’d be amazed at the consistent results that you’ll get. Creating geofencing campaigns can truly transform every facet of your business.
Does it work? Well, Papa John’s is renowned for their Super Bowl ads, but they ran a mobile ad triggered by Geofencing solutions from ThumbVista, to promote their Papa Loyalty Programs.
At the end of the campaign, the brand recorded over 68K impressions with 469 actions taken resulting with a .69% CTR. They also gained a brand awareness with the rewards program in a new market area.
You might have heard of it, or this could be your very first time to hear it — and I guess you’re now wondering what it’s all about.
Having been introduced to geofencing and how it can help with customer service, let’s consider a few definitions.
What is Geofencing?
According toTechopedia, geofencing is described as:
“A technology that defines a virtual boundary around a real-world geographical area.”
Geofencing is a technique of serving smartphone users with ads that are relevant to them, by creating a virtual perimeter or boundary around your business location which notifies users as soon as they enter the boundary.
In other words, geofencing can be regarded as a mobile marketing optimization strategy. So far, you could see the bright side of your business as you leverage on mobile ads that are targeted to your customers within a geographic location.
People are always ‘on the go,’ but they always have their smartphones with them — which they use to research products and services before buying them.
A report by the Office for National Statistics revealed that 58% of internet use ‘on the go’ is on mobile phones or smartphones.
For this reason, you’re no longer at a crossroad on whether you should start building geofencing campaigns or ignore it. Right now, it’s an important aspect of your marketing strategy.
Is Geofencing Right For Your Business?
Why is geofencing so important today?
You may not fully be aware, but let’s review some of the reasons that will make you kick yourself in the butt for not leveraging it:
i) Easy customer reach: When it comes to reaching out to your customers, geofencing is an option you shouldn’t neglect — because it notifies your customer about your product/services whenever they’re close to your business location through their mobile phone. That’s cool, isn’t it?
ii) Instant consideration: Can you call the attention of your customers instantly when they walk by your store without shouting at the top of your voice?
I doubt.
Through geofencing, you’re able to trigger instant messages that pique a customer’s interest and nudges them to come check out the latest deals in your store. Remember that 90% of SMS are read within 3 minutes — so, geofencing campaigns help consumers make informed and instant decisions.
iii) Grows brand awareness: The mobile marketing strategy that leverages on geofencing provides local and multi-channel businesses, the chance to communicate with their potential consumers who are close by and ready to purchase through mobile phones.
These messages serve as a reminder to your consumers to choose your brand out of the thousands of other similar businesses around a particular location.
iv) Reduction in cost of marketing: With the high cost of creating ads campaign, using geofencing is sure to cut down the cost and still produce a great result — since it only focuses on local consumers and these consumers are likely to buy from you.
Geofencing is more like an extension of your restaurant, store or shop. And with geofencing you don’t need to stand in front of your store to call anybody that passes by, because you’ve already known your potential consumers.
You’re also provided with the opportunity to offer your products/services to your customers at the right time when they’re in need of it.
With the availability of GPS on virtually all smartphones and tablets, efficient tracking is now easier for both marketers and consumers.
This new development has also given rise to new marketing opportunities for online entrepreneurs, because they can now locate their potential consumers right on the go.
A lot of brands have recorded success through their geofencing campaigns — especially those with highly classified data that need utmost security.
Here are some of the business models or organisations that can make use geofencing application:
i) Asset management: The application will notify a network administrator when a company asset, meant to be used within the firm goes out. And from there, they can track the location and also lock it from being accessed.
ii) Fleet management: In this field, geofencing is used to notify a dispatcher when their vehicle goes out from its route.
iii) Human resource management: Here geofencing is used to restrict staff from having access to some spaces within the firm, without a second authentication.
iv) Drone management: It’s used to create a temporary restricted area for drones, during a sporting event.
v) Marketing: A brand can use geofencing to notify their customers of their coupons, new product, or ongoing promo when the consumer enters a specified geographical region with their mobile phone.
vi) Law enforcement: In this instance, geofencing can help the security authority when a person under house arrest goes out from the building.
How Does Geofencing Work?
So far, we’ve covered a lot about geofencing and what it can do for your business. Do you know how it works?
It’s simple though. Geofencing helps you to keep in control of your business by notifying you when a potential consumer is passing by your store, by a competitor’s, or entering into a predefined area.
To get it working, you need to use a mapping product like Google Map to map out the regions you want to geofence. This region can be in a circular or polygon shape in most cases.
Once your desired region is mapped out for geofencing, you can then target your consumers via their mobile phone’s GPS.
Then, you can monitor your geofence through the day for potential prospects or customers who might be interested in your offer. It keeps to track them until that parameter is breached — either they’re trying to enter or to go out.
In fact, for a successful geofencing to be attained, you also need to incorporate a definite customer targeting, and personalized messages.
Solely depending on technology is not effective.
Benefits Of Geofencing
The need to leverage on geofencing cannot be overemphasized. Though it’s still a new practice, but the rate of success achieved with it is immeasurable.
That said, here are some benefits you wouldn’t like to miss:
i) It serves as an ads portal: This is obtained when potential consumers are close to your store and you’re notified of their presence. Sending your new products to them, free giveaways and discounts, will definitely get them to consider your store.
ii) It targets your potential consumers: Social media has a bigger marketing opportunity since it’s populated with a lot of consumers that are ready to read your messages and stick to your brand.
But with the help of geofencing, you can focus your campaign to the user that are more likely to convert — especially those local consumers.
Interestingly, these are the consumers that will be excited to walk into your store and make a purchase after seeing your ads.
iii) It links your offline business to your online presence: With geofencing, you can notify passersby to look you up on social media for better customer engagement.
In fact, it serves as your gateway to your social media and internet identity.
iv) It provides real-time analytics: No doubt, a good marketing requires a to-and-fro conversation between the customers and the marketers.
Geofencing makes it a lot easier and more effective.
Because it notifies you as soon as a consumer enters your marketing region so that you can properly prepare to receive them in your store.
v) It offers a service: Since the mobile use rate is high and users are highly interested when they’re online, offering a free WiFi in your Restaurant, Bar, and Hospital will definitely improve customer experience.
This can be achieved by simply sending messages to passersby via geofencing, and notifying them of the free WiFi they can enjoy while in your place.
vi) It secures your products: Since you can keep track of people’s location with geofencing, it can also be used for tracking your employees and products.
With this technology, you get notified when an employee leaves his/her duty post or when a product is illegally removed.
Case Studies From Companies Using Geofencing
The use of geofencing is gradually becoming popular, though it’s a new marketing practice. Good news is, businesses have recorded lots of success with it. Let’s see:
i) Elle Magazine successfully increased sales with ‘shop now!’ mobile pop-up to connect potential buyers to selected stores, using the location-based offer. All thanks to geofencing.
ii) Uber Car Hiring Service also used geofencing at LAX to notify people around that they can get a cab to wherever they’re going within a minute, just with a click.
iii) Wal-Mart is another brand making it real big with geofencing. Their app comes with a store mode that picks up signals when a buyer is within the store, and delivers coupons and e-receipts.
Geofencing Tools
Getting appropriate marketing tools will help you get things done on time and more efficiently. Below are some of the best tools you can use:
i) xAd: This tool eliminates every form of assumption in marketing, because it serves messages based on your potential consumer’s location.
xAd has a proprietary platform that automatically creates boundaries around places often visited by a consumer. For example, a Restaurant, Shopping mall.
It’s with these insights that marketers can target ads to their customers when they’re within those locations.
ii) Koupon Media: This tool prompts a targeted offer to shoppers when they’re within the store.
Koupon Media has features that study the behavioral attribute of buyers within the geofenced locations, and uses it to present the buyer with offers they can’t resist while they are shopping. iii) NinthDecimal: This helps marketers to target consumers near their own stores or competitor’s locations, with tangible media ads through phone calls, appointment requests, and couponing.
It also has a walking and driving map to easily lead your customers to your nearest sales point.
In Conclusion
“In today’s modern world, people are either asleep or connected.”
– Janice H. Reinold said.
Your customers are attached to their mobile phones all the time. It’s your responsibility to engage these customers when they’re not asleep.
Success in business breaks down into two simple things:
Can you supply something that people want at a price they’re willing to pay?
Can you get your offer in front of those people?
Nine times out of ten, people start a business because they are capable, competent, or even brilliant at that first part. They know their industry and they are able to supply what people want.
The second part is where things get tricky. How do you get your offer in front of the right people? Or in other words, how do you promote your business?
Today, we’re going to be looking at # incredibly simple yet highly effective ways to promote your business. You can implement all of these quickly without needing special expertise or significant investment.
If you’ve been looking for new ways to reach your target audience, you’re in the right place.
1. Insert Calls To Action In Your Team’s Email Signatures
The average office worker sends a receives 122 emails per day. For a business with ten staff, that adds up to around 600 outgoing emails per day.
These emails are actually a tremendous promotion opportunity, but not using traditional email signatures. Nobody is going to take notice of your employees’ job titles or websites. Nobody cares about your favorite quote.
What CAN get attention is a big obvious Call To Action button.
Notice how well this CTA stands out and attracts attention.
When you view email signatures as a marketing tool, they become dynamic ways of introducing your products or services to potential customers.
For a single email, you can simply set something like this up via your email client, but if you are interested in rolling it out across your entire team (most beneficial), you’ll want to use an app like Sigstr, which will let you manage signatures and rollout campaigns across your entire team at once.
The best way to take advantage of email CTAs is to offer some sort of lead magnet or freely available offer that will interest your target audience and push them forward in your funnel.
Your local business is listed on Google maps and search.
It’s good for search engine optimization, so that your business gets found easier by the people who are looking for the services or products you provide.
It’s good for when your customers start adding reviews of your business; these reviews help Google display your business in their “3-pack”, which gives you free advertising at no cost.
Google My Business Reviews have earned these companies the top spots in Google search results.
Your GMB listing is the baseline for all your online citations and listing, and it’s important that every listing matches your GMB listing, particularly when it comes to your three primary pieces of information, known as NAP (Name Address Phone Number).
3. Audit Your Online NAPs
NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone number, also often referred to as citations.
Out of Moz’ top 6 “Foundational Ranking Factors”, (for search engine ranking), 3 are related to NAP quantity, quality, and consistency, and out of the top 13 “Competitive Difference Makers,” 6 are about NAP quantity, quality, and consistency.
If you’ve listed your company on Google My Business, you need to make sure the details there are the same for all your online listings.
If any of the details elsewhere are not the same as it is listed in Google My Business, then you might not be “rewarded” by search engines and it could also damage your search ranking.
A suggestion is to keep an Excel spreadsheet of all your listings, to make it easy to keep them consistent.
Moz offers in-depth information about NAP audits and how to do them.
4. Set Up A Joint Venture
As I mentioned earlier, promoting your business is all about getting your offer in front of the right people. One of the easiest ways to do this is to find existing audiences filled with the “right” people and simply place your offer in front of them.
In some instances, that can be done via advertising, but an even better option in the short term is to partner with non-competing businesses marketing to the same people as you are.
Joint ventures are a brilliant way of getting more customers fast. Take Teachable, which was started in 2014 by Ankur Nagpal. He says that 6 months into starting the business, they had less than 20 active customers making money from courses. In 2015, they created a joint venture which gave them more customers fast.
Nagpal lists a few examples of joint ventures they’ve since used in their marketing strategies, one of them being a simple affiliate partnership with marketer Melyssa Griffin. Teachable gave Melyssa a unique promotional tracking link plus 50% commission on every sale.
Melyssa Griffin, affiliate marketer and joint venture partner with Teachable.
Find out more about joint venture examples from the founder of Teachable, which now boasts a monthly growth rate of more than 20% in 2016, increasing its revenue tenfold in one year, with more than 1 million students.
5. Create An Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing is the cornerstone of online marketing.
From a technology standpoint, email has withstood the test of time as a communication channel. From a marketing standpoint, email converts at a higher rate than nearly any other channel.
As recently as 2016, email marketing was the leading marketing expense among global business leaders.
Email marketing allows you to nurture relationships with potential buyers over time. It allows to place visitors who aren’t ready to buy into a funnel that keeps them connected with your business instead of having them forget about you.
To begin taking advantage of email marketing, you’ll need to create something valuable that can be given away for free in exchange for a visitor’s email address. Digital info products are often best for this purpose.
Next, you’ll want to create a series of emails designed to introduce the new lead to your offer, establish your authority in the industry, and deliver educational value on related topics of interest.
In a similar vein to the lead magnets we just talked about, offering something free or at a discount is a great way to draw in new customers. Depending on your business model, it can even be effective to take a loss on this in order to pull in market share.
There are many iterations of this that can be used to drive leads, sales, referrals, etc. Ecommerce stores in particular have had amazing success with introductory discounts.
Here’s an example from lingerie e-retailer Yandy.com:
Other possibilities include free software apps or free trials. For example, BuildFire allows prospective customers to create an app for free, allowing them to experience the actual product before being required to pay anything.
7. Give A Presentation or Webinar
This strategy can be equally effective online and offline. By offering a webinar or workshop, you can attract your target audience and collect their contact information for future followup.
First locate where your target audience hangs out, then set up meetings. For instance, AwaiOnline recommends “Lunch ‘n Learn” sessions of one hour. Organize lunch and do some advertising to the right people, and then teach them something in one hour, over lunch. Try hosting it at your local Chamber of Commerce or other business networking groups.
Copywriter freelancer Steve Slaunwhite used online “Lunch ‘n Learn” sessions to promote his copywriting services to his target audience and said, “The Virtual Lunch ‘n Learns would get me in front of my target audience and position me as an expert at what I do. Of those who attended the teleconferences, some would decide to give my services a try. These were small numbers of prospects, but they were high quality. I got several leads and referrals and some very good clients by doing these sessions.” (Source)
Mary-Ann Shearer, health guru, whose vegan restaurant is located in an area known for its affinity for meat, educates people by holding talks for groups at gyms, running clubs, churches, etc. When she does, she gets email addresses from people that are already “sold out” to her, because within minutes, she is able to prove herself as an authority on her subject. When her presentation is over, she has collected well qualified leads; people who are sure to start buying products from her online store.
Mary-Ann Shearer conducting a group talk about natural health at a local gym.
If you don’t want to go the offline route, you could instead host a webinar or podcast interview (I recommend using PodMatch.com to quickly get booked on podcasts), or do a joint venture with a partner who hosts a webinar, as a way to collect email addresses.
Jeff Rose hosted a webinar on “How to Protect Your Investment Portfolio”.
8. Ask for Reviews
54% of people visit a website after reading positive reviews about the business, and 84% trust reviews as much as they trust a personal recommendation. (Source)
Reviews build trust and credibility for your business, and they carry a lot of weight. You can also use them on your website, specifically your home and about page. But that’s not the only thing reviews are good for. They also increase your search engine ranking, which results in increased website traffic. Why? Because search engines recognize the value of customer reviews.
Bella Luna Toys, an ecommerce company, started using reviews on their website, and since doing so, their conversion rates shot up by 15%. They’ve also generated more than 4500 genuine customer reviews. (Source)
Bella Luna Toys have increased conversions by 15% since incorporating reviews onto their website.
To collect reviews, simply setup your Google My Business listing and other citations that take reviews, and then send the links to your customers with the request that they leave a review. Alternatively, you can use an app like Yotpo to collect written reviews or VocalReferances to collect video reviews as an automated part of your checkout system.
9. Comment on Blogs In Your Niche
Leaving a comment on other related blogs can help rank your content on search engines faster, because:
Adding a link to your site from a comment on another site, gets Google and other search engines to pick it up, and if the website you’ve left a comment on, is reputable, search engines are likely to index your content with a higher ranking, because of your association to the website through the link left in your comment.
If your comment adds value, it may get attention from a future customer who is so impressed by what you’ve written, that they click back to your website.
Adding value-add comments on other blogs helps build relationships with bloggers and others in your niche, which may very well open doors to joint ventures.
Example of comments that are well written and add value to anyone reading them.
The image below is taken from a data analytics page and shows how backlinks from comments are counted, even if they are no-follow links.
10. Do “It” Better Than Your Competitors
Business are often started as an attempt to do something better than the existing marketplace. The same mentality is true for promotion.
When it comes to any marketing channel, usually the top marketer or two in that channel will captivate 90% of the competition. Instead of being middle of the road on multiple channels, it’s best to identify a channel where you can “do it the best” and pursue that channel.
For instance, an online academic book and technology business in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, wanted to increase their website visitors. A consultant was brought in who compiled a report showing what the worldwide benchmark company was doing, and these are some of the findings:
The benchmark company had a whopping 7394962 Facebook likes, with a 100% response rate, while the other company had a mere 5839 Facebook likes, and a 0% response rate. In addition, the benchmark company had tons of content and their product descriptions were customized.
When analyzing the online activities of a worldwide benchmark company, it was found that their differentiating factor was lots of value-add content.
Next, they checked how their top local competitors were doing online, and found that if they were to implement a content strategy, they could whip all the others in their area.
What they took home from the analysis:
The need to start creating Facebook posts that would attract their target audience, and to start paying for Facebook ads to boost their Facebook page engagement rates.
The necessity of responding quickly to social media messages from their customers.
The need to start writing customized product descriptions.
The importance of website content.
11. Write A Bunch Of Guest Posts
Guest posting is one of the most effective ways to promote your brand online.
Guest posting is where you can write an article for another website that they then publish and promote to their audience.
While guest posting will rarely drive any significant amount of actual traffic, it can be very valuable for a number of reasons:
Establish yourself and your brand as an authority in the space
Get backlinks to your website from popular, high-ranking websites
Get your brand directly in front of your target market
Network with influencers in your niche (potential joint venture partners)
Link to people who will then link to you in their own guest posts
Silvio Porcellana is the CEO and founder ofMob.is.it. The company provides a tool which helps agencies and professionals build mobile websites and native apps.
When he realized that the website needed more organic search traffic (visitors brought in from search engine results), they decided to implement a guest blogging campaign.
Within 5 months, they published 44 guest posts on 41 different blogs. The result?
Here’s an illustration by Writers In Charge of why guest blogging is so effective:
12. Utilize Facebook Instant Articles
Facebook Instant Articles is a distribution platform where you can share content just like you would on your own website, or on Linkedin articles, but with interactive elements that enhance the mobile viewing experience. The content on Facebook Instant Articles is accessible to Facebook users on Android and iPhone devices.
It’s especially valuable if you want to build value, credibility and brand awareness. The benefits of using this function is:
Fast load time. Facebook reports that Instant Articles has 70% lower bounce rates and 30% higher share rates than most of the web articles accessed via mobile devices.
You can make money right from the platform with your own display and media rich ads and you also have the ability to display Facebook Audience Network ads if you so choose.
You have control over your own branding.
The platform allows integration with other measurement tools like Google Analytics.
Interaction for a better reader experience.
You can add content that’s already been published on your website, and there’s a plugin to make it all easier if you’re on Wordpress.
Gray Television integrated Instant Articles with local news.
13. Use Visual Media To Build Your Social Media Presence
There are 2.3 billion active social media users. Whatever your target audience looks like, you can find them on social media, and visual content is one of the best ways to expand your social presence.
Here’s a good place to start:
Create visual content that is relevant to your niche
Use high quality images or video
Get your customers involved
Tap into trending hashtags and current events
In the beginning, before you have an audience of your own, it’s important to engage with people directly and tap into your target niche. One of the easiest ways to find these individuals is hashtags.
These are images that were uploaded to Instagram, all hashtagged, “veganrecipes”:
If you wanted to get in front of people in the vegan niche, finding out what people are talking about and favoriting around #veganrecipes would be a great place to start.
For more insights into this strategy, read this case study about how Fusion Farm used hashtags to promote an event.
14. Create Content That Attracts Your Audience
Some of the tops blogs in the world make an average of $15,000 to $30,000 a day.
People love consuming blog content online, and it’s highly unlikely your niche is exempt. In order to tap into that demand, you simply need to create content that attracts the same audience you wish to sell to.
For example, Glen Allsop, founder of PluginID, was a complete newbie in his field when he first started blogging. Because of adding great content to his site, his subscription list grew to 26,000 subscribers, many of whom also became customers, helping his business take off.
Glen Allsop’s internet marketing blogging content grew his subscriber list to 26,000 in a short timespan.
And just like we are giving you ways to promote your business, you will also need ways to promote your blog content.
15. Promote Your Content
Promoting blog content is a great way to build authority in your niche will also directly promoting your business. In fact, it’s one of the few ways you can get away with shamelessly promoting yourself. You can share blog posts is a lot more locations than you can directly advertise a product or service.
There are many, many ways to promote content, but here are some of the best ones I’ve tried:
Send the content to your email subscribers
Share it with your social followers
Share it on Reddit and other community sites
Use the best paid promotion channels you can find
Answer questions on Quora
Etc.
There are many different ways to promote content, and to know what will work for your business, at the end of the day, you’ll just have to experiment.
16. Implement Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization, mostly known as SEO for short, is a way to optimize a website for search engines and improve your search engine rankings.
The goal is that when people search via Google for phrases that are relevant to your product, your website shows up as quickly as possible.
Unlike most other promotion tactics, getting your site ranked for various keyphrases will result in increasing amounts of traffic over time, or at least for as long as people continue to use search engines.
You get traffic month and month after month, and outside of the expense to rank the site and maintain your ranking, the traffic is free.
By incorporating an SEO strategy, Candoni Wines experienced a 70% improvement in organic search traffic within 6 months. In addition, their site ranks for more than 1000 keywords, and as a byproduct, 20,026 Facebook page likes were added throughout the initial campaign.
By implementing an SEO strategy, this website experienced a 70% improvement in their organic search traffic within 6 months.
17. Participate in Community Events
We live in a predominantly digital world, but promoting your business at physical events is still a great way to grow.
As Digital Vidya discusses, both offline and online marketing are essential:
“As the marketing maxim goes, consumers do not make purchase decisions based on a single ad or message alone. The marketing‘rule of 7 ‘ states that consumers need to be exposed to a message seven times, on average, before purchase. Buyers gather bits of information from various channels and piece them together in making their decision. Data gathered, from multiple channels, through multiple stages of the buying process, are the building-blocks of sales. Integrated messages that build upon each other, make a compelling case for purchase. Consistency across channels, renders messages more impactful and increases the probability of conversion. As such, integration (of online and offline marketing) is not just about brand synergy – it is about improving ROI.”
Going back to a graphic we looked at earlier, we can see that offline events still make up a sizable percentage of investment for most business decision makers.
This chart shows that global business leaders are still investing in offline events in their marketing strategies.
Participate in those community events where your target audience are. For example, if you are targeting a national audience of retailers, being at a big trade show (see the next point) makes sense. Or to save costs, you could join another company in the same niche at the trade show.
If you depend on local business, local events can be a great way to get new customers, or at least add new people to your email list.
Another idea – if it’s relevant to your business – is to check online event sites for local events.
You just need to figure out what events will be most beneficial to you according to your target audience and goals.
18. Exhibit at Trade Shows
A whopping 99% of marketers say they find unique value from trade shows that they don’t get from other marketing mediums, probably because trade shows pull together a mass group of buyers and sellers in particular industries, who can be considered “hot leads”:
According toExhibit Surveys, Inc.,67% of attendees represent a new prospect for exhibiting companies.
According toCEIR, 81% of tradeshow attendees have buying authority, and 46% of them are in executive or higher management.
Trade shows can be costly to set up, so how do you know if you should take the gamble? Colleen Francis, an influential sales person, recommends participation only if you can make 10x the revenue back within 6 months of the show vs. what it costs you to be there.
Xeikon, a digital printing company, used a trade show as their one main marketing focus for the year, gearing up towards it and following up after it. They experienced these results:
If you can find some sort of group that requires money to get in AND caters to your target audience, you’ve just struck marketing gold. Joining some sort of paid membership is a perfect, if perhaps a bit sneaky, way to get in front of your target audience.
Paid memberships create an automatic level of trust. The monetary barrier ensures, at least theoretically, that everyone there is committed to being there and on the same page. It’s very easy to promote your products and services in a group you have paid to be in, provided you do so in a subtle way that seems helpful as opposed to spammy.
Examples of this could be local business groups, mastermind groups, paid clubs, course communities, etc.
20. Pay For Advertising
Many of the methods provided in this article help to build a customer base over time, but one of the most effective ways to get quick and consistent exposure is to pay for advertising.
Three of the current most popular advertising methods include:
PPC ads
Facebook ads
Television ads
In 2015, the Content Marketing Institute, conducted a survey of 3,714 worldwide marketers, and found that 76% of B2C marketers use paid advertising; 64% rated search engine ads as effective, and 59% reported that they found paid social ads to be effective:
Paid advertising requires some expertise to get right and some experimentation to find the right channel. This is one of the more common promotion activities that business outsource to agencies.
Conclusion: How To Promote Your Business
I hope this article has given you a better feel for how to promote your business. These relatively low investment methods will help you get the ball rolling.
Ultimately, there is no single guaranteed winning strategy for promoting a business. It’s a lot of trial and error, and this list should get you started.
