7 Things That Might Be Effecting Your Facebook Reach And Engagment
1.) Content from apps
2.) Plagirized content
3.) short posts
4.) No links posts
5.) How vidoes are boosting the reach of posts
19 Benefits Of Hiring A Social Media Management Company
Advancement in technology has made it necessary for every business to have a social media presence. With the right social media strategy, your brand will have better exposure. Irrespective of what your business is offering, social media is a strategic marketing tool to strengthen your brand. People may think that having a social media strategy for your business is easy. But it is more difficult than you think. If you implement social media strategy the wrong way, it could become counterproductive. This is why every business needs to hire a social media management company. Social media agencies are professionals that help businesses to manage their social media platforms. With their expertise and skills, they can reach out to new customers and engage existing ones. They understand the power of creating sticky content that gets customers’ attention and entices them to take action. Here are 19 benefits of hiring experts to manage your brand’s social media presence..
The Benefits Of Hiring A Social Media Management Company For Startups
1. It Gives Your Brand Exposure
One of the reasons businesses are having social media presence is to expose their brand. However, when professionals manage your social media channels, your brand will be recognized in no time. They understand the best way to position your brand online. And make it a topic of discussion among influencers. Most social media agencies study trends and position your brand according to such trends. Since they are experts, they know exactly how to start your social media, the platforms to use, and the type of content to post. With this knowledge, they will always attract the right audience to your business. This will increase your brand awareness in the long run.
When your brand is exposed to more people, your product and services will sell better.
2. Helps To Drive Targeted Traffic To Your Business Website
Companies that render social media management services know how to drive targeted traffic to your website. Targeted traffic is a visitor who is likely to buy your product or services. About 60% of targeted traffic to business websites are likely to make a purchase. And those who couldn’t patronize your business the first time are likely to bookmark your website for future reference. This is a great opportunity that hiring a social media management company will present to you.
3. Helps You Understand Your Audience
Social media is an effective marketing tool because it enables brands to interact with their customer base. And you tend to understand your audience better when experts manage your social media brand. These experts can easily gain insights into your customer behavior by reading their statuses and tweets. This will enable them to know things like the products your customers are interested in, the websites they visit, their hobbies, and any other valuable information. With this information, you will be able to identify your customers’ pain points, improve sales conversion, and redefine your product strategy when necessary.
4. Hiring a Reputable Social Media Management Company Will Help To Build a Good Relationship With Your Audience
When you partner with a social media optimization company, you will have an active social media presence. This will help you build a good relationship with your audience. Engaging with your audience goes beyond giving them discount offer codes, new product announcements, and customer reviews.Most times, customers visit social media platforms to read educative, entertaining, and informative contents. But some businesses manage their social media platforms like a marketing machine. Outside product infomercial, they don’t have any other valuable thing to offer. But a social media management firm will help to engage with your audience in the most natural and authentic ways. They create educational and entertaining niche related contents to connect with your audience. This will help to transform your brand. The social media management services packages you get when you hire an agency are limitless. The firm will help your brand connect with industry leaders and influencers, provide compelling stories for reporters, and come up with interesting topics that experts can share with their following.
If this continues for a long time, your business will become more than just a brand. In fact, you will become part of a community. It doesn’t end there… You will have new leads which are likely to become followers, and ultimately customers. And if your services are as great as what your social media channels suggest, your customers will become dedicated brand promoters. This is one of the benefits of hiring a reputable company to manage your online presence.
5. Excellent Customer Service
When experts manage your presence online, they will be able to provide good customer service to your audience. They respond to every customer query within the shortest possible time. When customers complain online about any of your products or services, they respond almost immediately. This gives your online audience the impression that you are a customer-centric brand that cares about how your customers feel.
6. They Help To Complement Your PR Strategy
Social media agencies can help to perfect your press release strategy. Press Releases are important when you are launching a new product or your business is undergoing a major change. But most businesses aren’t distributing their press release the right way. They often spend huge amounts of money sending the Press Release out on PRweb. And sometimes, it may not be targeting the right audience or make the difference you want. However, if professionals are managing your social media, they will be able to present your PR to your audience better. In fact, they will do it in a more personal and conversational way. They will also be available to answer some of your customers’ queries immediately. This will make your press release message spread like wildfire…
7. Social Media Agency Brings More Sales
Hiring social media experts to manage your online presence will get you more sales. Most of your business customers are on social media and the right strategy will attract them to your brand. They understand the right way to influence your customers buying decisions. And this will bring in more sales in the long run.
8. Social Media Agencies Can Establish You As An Authority In Your Niche
Generally, social media gives you the opportunity to display your expertise. And when professionals manage your various channel, they can establish your brand as an authority in no time. They can establish your expertise by answering questions relating to your niche, giving helpful tips, and share regular information. This will not only establish your brand as an authority but also build trust and credibility. And when new leads are impressed with the tips and information you share, they are likely to visit your website and purchase your product.
9. Helps To Project Your Brand Value
A social media company has the skill to project and maintain the real value of your brand. They know the right way to promote the emotional, practical and other benefits of your business as well as the products and services you offer. So, a social media agency will always promote the positive image of your brand while maintaining its value. Also, they will create the right content that will enable your audience to discover your brand value easily, without appearing pushy.
10. Dealing With Competition
Hiring a social media management company will help you to be ahead of your competitors. They understand the best way to position your brand in a competitive environment online. A strong social media presence distinguish your brand online. It makes people see the professionalism in your brand as it will be visible to a wider audience. And a social media optimization company knows how to place your brand ahead of competitive brands. If not for any reason, this is why you should have social media experts in your team.
11. Social Media Management Companies Are Professionals
Social media management agencies are experts in handling social media for brands. They always have the most recent information when it comes to social media strategies. They know the best tools to manage your social media, the optimization strategies to use, how to reach a wider audience, how often changes occur across different platforms. Since social media management services providers under how social media work, they always stay on top of best practices. This will enable them to take advantage of opportunities for your brand and make it appear professional always. Also, bring social media professionals on board will enable your marketing team to focus on other areas.
12. They Are Dedicated
Dedication is an area where most startups get it wrong when it comes to social media. They always have great social media profile. But they aren’t consistent in creating content that will engage their audience. This could affect any brand’s online presence. However, social media management firms focus on making your brand visible online. They monitor your brand online, respond to every question, etc. When you have a team of dedicated social media managers, managing your brand online, things are a bit easier. They can easily manage any negative publicity that could tarnish your brand’s reputation.
13. Come Up With Creative Ideas
Creativity is one of the things a good social media management agency brings to the table. Creating professional, entertaining, educational, and witty contents for any brand requires creativity. And creativity is part of the social media management services package. Social media management agencies will introduce creative ideas that could have a great impact on your business. Ordinarily, you wouldn’t have been able to come up with such ideas if you were managing your social media in-house. Also, their creative ability enables them to identify new opportunities for your brand, proffer solution and increases the chance of your brand being in the right direction.
14. It Saves Money
It actually costs less to hire a social media management company. Integrating social media into the duties of your marketing team will only cost more in the long run. And you will end up achieving less. But when you bring a social media agency on board, you will benefit from the effort of the entire agency. Since they specialize in social media management, you will achieve more and spend less. They don’t only respond to your customer queries, but also select your channels, optimize your contents, and build your audience.
15. They Are Experienced In Your Niche
The experience most social media agencies have can help to grow your business. There are different software and tools available to manage and monitor your social media channels. But some of these tools are very complicated; it requires experience to use them. However, social media firms understand this software. They will be able to work with any tool that best fits your business goal. In other words, social media firms manage your social media channel in accordance with your business goals. Also, the social media agency you are hiring must have worked with other clients in your niche. This indicates that they know your competitors and understand how the industry works. With this knowledge, they can come up with a good strategy that will place your brand among others in the same niche.
16. Achieving Goals In Less Time
Social media agencies enable brands to achieve their goals in less time. They will help you promote your brand across different channels within a short time. When an agency is managing your social media, you and your team can focus on other areas of the business. With this, you can achieve your goals in less time. This will help to save your business time and money while achieving better results.
17. Protects Your Reputation Online
When you have a social media agency on board, they will always be for any negative publicity that will discredit your brand online. They understand that your social media channels represent your brand. And they know the right way to conduct themselves professionally. Hiring professional to manage your social media channel is a great strategy every startup should look into. They can easily mitigate and solve an issue within seconds. This would ordinarily have escalated if an inexperienced person is handling such channel. Most social media management firms always have a contingency plan in place to tackle any social media crises. The way a social media management company handles your online presence, can either help to solve an existing problem for your customer or make your brand more credible online.
18. They Help To Improve Productivity
Outsourcing your social media channels to an agency to handle will improve the productivity of your marketing effort. You can decide to be less involved in what the agency is doing. This will give them creative control over what they are doing. But you can request for an update with the monthly meeting. This approach will enable you to focus on other areas of your business and bring about improved productivity.
19. Reporting and Tracking Result
A social media management company can make your brand agile online. The agency will always provide reports on its activities and track results. From the report, you can ascertain their performance and identify areas that need improvement. Reports also enable social media agencies to measure the performance of their strategy. If it underperforms, they will come up with more creative ideas to make it perform better…
And the reports from your social media management professionals always take the following format;
- What strategy was executed for the month
- How did it perform compared to previous months
- What actions to be taken to make the strategy perform better the next month…
Generally, hiring a social media management agency can be very challenging. There are tons of them out there. And if you hire the wrong firm, it may be counterproductive. It is recommended that you consider the following factors when hiring a social media management firm; Determine your needs before hiring a social media professional. This will enable the agency you are hiring to have a focus. Pose the right question to the agency. This is important as it will give you an idea of the agency’s experience level. Do your homework about the agency. Since this agency will be creating witty and entertaining content for your audience, they should have the same type of contents on their website and platforms.
So, read blog posts on the agency’s website and check their social media channels. With this, you can decide if their strategy and tone align with what you are looking for. Lastly, ask for referrals. Before you hire any social media firm, ask for the contacts of some of the clients they have consulted for.
Conclusion
The right social media strategy can help you slay your competition. But you can’t get it right if you don’t have a team of experts to handle your channels. This is why you need to outsource your social media activities to a reputable agency. Some of these agencies’ social media management services cost nothing, compared to what your brand will benefit. The affordability and flexibility of hiring a social media agency make it a good strategy for startups to embrace. It is a good way to expose their brand to a wide audience and gain brand recognition.
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15 Strategies – How Interactive Posts for Facebook Can Boost Audience Engagement Overnight
The ever-growing popularity on Facebook has made it one of the most reliable online platforms for business promotions. Posting content your fans love is proven way to attract new customers while at the same time increasing the overall audience engagement. Here are 15 proven strategies about how interactive posts for Facebook will help increase your brand’s Facebook page audience engagement overnight.
1. Get Influencers to Join Your Brand’s Facebook Page
There are many good social media influencers, and linking with the perfect ones will positively affect the audience engagement on your Brand’s page. With their large fan base, influencers can easily share interactive posts for Facebook that would help triple the number of page followers. It is, however, important to note that different influencers have different audiences. You should, therefore, pick the one that has an audience that matches your Brand’s specifications. Alternatively, you can tag them in your interactive Facebook posts so that they can share them with their fans. It all depends on your pre-discussed agreements. If you are lucky enough, you might convince them to join your Facebook group – which would be a big bonus for your brand. Learn more in this article.
Partner with influencers
2. Upload Viral Posts
Still stuck on how to liven up your Brand’s page? Try sharing viral posts on your brand’s pages. Finding or creating viral posts should not be that difficult, all you have to do is know what your target audience is talking about. For instance, you can try posting sharable unique and funny memes on your Facebook page. You can add interesting Facebook posts on the captions so that they can be easily traced back to your Brand once they go viral. You can also try other engaging content such as funny photos, quotes and much more! Keep in mind that even while seeking the ‘viral’ effect for your brand, you should make sure that your posts remain public friendly. Remember, business pages receive more scrutiny compared to personal profiles.
3. Make Creative Descriptions for your Brand’s posts
Mastering the art of creating unique descriptions for your Brand should help increase overall Audience Engagement on your Facebook page. Create a list of actionable ideas for your Facebook brand that will spark your fans’ attention and leave them in heated discussions. Your posts should be grammatically error-free, engaging, and most importantly accurate. Use interactive headlines that will draw your fans’ attention and entice them to be active on your page. If you are not very good at that, you might consider getting help in order to come up with new fresh ideas for your posts.
4. Post Exciting and Shareable Videos
Here’s an interesting fact and tip to create interactive posts for Facebook; over 8 billion videos get to be watched on Facebook daily! Why not give it a try? There are different types of Facebook posts and exciting videos have proven to have their way with fans. It doesn’t have to be that complex, a simple video will do the trick.
Some things your brand video can entail of include;
- A simple hello
- You and your team
- Your business behind the scenes
- Your brand’s fun side
- Tutorials on how to use the products you offer,
And much more!
All you need is to blend in a little creativity. Keep your videos short, catchy and most importantly – informative. Give your audience something to talk about by including a theme that relates to your business in your videos. You can also try the Live Facebook videos and interact with your fans at a more personal level.
5. Involve your Fans in your Business Decisions
Engaging your fans in your business decisions gives them the feeling that they are part of it. You can create interactive posts for Facebook that encourage your audience to voice their opinions. For instance, if you are introducing a new logo to your brand/business, you can share it with your fans and ask them of their opinion. Who knows, you might even end up with a better version from your fans’ suggestions.
6. How you Post on your Brand’s Page Matters
Do not upload any random picture that you come across. Remember, this is your business and quality matters. You might be surprised as to how bad Facebook posts can negatively impact the overall engagement of the audience on your Facebook page. Make sure that your images fit well within your Facebook pages to enhance top visibility and proper display. Facebook offers Ads Guide that provides image tips based on the purpose of your posts. For instance, an ideal picture should be in the range of 1200×628 pixels. If you are uploading pictures in the .png format, they should not exceed 1MB file size. Ideal interactive posts for Facebook with quality pictures are eye-catching and in most cases compel your audience to like, comment, or share your posts.
7. Know the Best Time to Post
The best time to post on your Facebook page varies depending on the industry you are in and its demographics. You have probably heard that the best time to post online is 12 PM, 3 PM, and 7 PM – mainly because it is the time most people are online. You should, however, note that posting during the busiest times of the day exposes you to a lot of competition. This is because most businesses fight to appear online at those times, making your posts easy to miss. You might consider experimenting by posting during non-peak hours to determine whether you can reach your fans. After all, your posts will still be available when the peak hours set in.
8. Posting Selfies
Selfies are no doubt the most popular posts on Facebook, and if done right, they could have a big impact on your overall audience engagement. Post selfies of you and your co-workers and see the reaction it will generate from your Facebook fans. With selfies, your audience realizes that they are working with real people – and not bots.
9. Share Random Interactive Posts for Facebook on your Page
Break the monotony of your posts once in a while by sharing whatever comes to your mind – and see how your fans respond to it. Such posts make some of the most awesome Facebook posts mainly because they are an easy way to start discussions. It is a great way to know what your fans are thinking about. Don’t worry if your thoughts don’t draw the expected attention, different posts attract different reactions.
10. Know How Often You Should Post
You can’t post once or twice in a week and still, expect the same results as your competitors who post daily. The more you post, the more likely that your fans will have something to talk about. Let your posts range in a variety such as videos, thoughts, selfies, funny posts, quotes and much more. Different people have different personalities – and a variety of posts should capture most of their attention.
11. Upload Posts with your Brand’s Logo and Colors – Branded Personalized Graphics
Branding your Facebook posts with your business logo and colors is a great way to ensure that your posts stand out. They make some of the most effective Facebook posts because they are also a great display of professionalism. You should stick with the same color for your brand so your audience can easily recognize your content while scrolling through the feeds. This also helps with creating a strong brand image and thus boosting brand awareness.
12. Maintain Consistency
Do not post content on Facebook and then disappear, especially if you are looking to promote your brand! Keep reminding your fans of your online presence by regularly appearing in their news feed. The only way you can be guaranteed of audience engagement on your Facebook pages is maintaining consistency. It is also the key to a successful online empire. Consistency not only maintains your brand name among your existing audience but also helps in attracting more traffic to our business.
13. Post Interactive Content
Your branded page should have interactive posts for Facebook that lead new fans back to your site. Avoid a string of links that lead potential followers back to administrators’ articles and websites. Instead, come up with your own interactive content that will satisfy your audience, while at the same time attracting new fans. You can try posting original and informative videos, latest industry polls, and trending topics – as long as they are all related to your business.
14. Create a Facebook Group – and Promote it
Create a Facebook group for your business and generate useful content such as customer support, general tips, and advice. The admin feature in Facebook groups ensures that you are able to offer value-added content in the context of your business. You can easily filter content that appears on your group by approving or discarding content from other members. While maintaining the context of the business, you are able to discard content that would have been otherwise inappropriate to your Facebook audience. You can hire a reliable social media manager to help you in content creation and coming up with ideas for your Facebook group. With their help, you can constantly increase your overall audience and improve their engagement on your Facebook page.
15. Spotlight your Fans and Customers
Create posts in which you spotlight your loyal fans and customers and reward them with the give-away prizes on your page. Customers who see their names featured in your Facebook page remain loyal to your business. You are also able to attract new customers and fans because they can be guaranteed of your credibility and trust.
If you are looking to increase your business recognition and boost sales, you might consider using interactive posts for Facebook. Research has revealed that the most engaging posts on Facebook contain viral photos and videos which attract abundant likes, comments, and shares. Being able to incorporate that into your posts is a proven way to increase your overall audience engagement. Whereas some people may advice you to buy ads or purchase likes and following, posting content that your fans love is the best way to boost your fans’ engagement. Interesting Facebook posts will automate the process and probably give your business more exposure. With its new features and technology, Facebook has become one of the most thriving marketing platforms – mainly because you can connect and engage with your preferred audience. With these 15 examples, you can be able to create content strategies that will boost your brand’s following and at the same time help you stay engaged with your loyal fans and customers.
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A Short Guide To SEO Keyword Ranking Best Practices
Traffic is one means of measuring the success of a website or blog. If you have a new website that you want to drive traffic to, you have to use the right practices. You need to measure and analyze the ranking of your target keywords so you can have as many visitors as possible. Let’s go ahead and read about best practices for SEO keyword ranking.
Definition
The phrase SEO keyword ranking helps you measure the ranking of your targeted keyword on a search engine, in addition, to analyze the ups and downs in the ranking with the passage of time. This quintessential KPI shows how effectively your website is getting traffic and getting ranked on the search engine giant Google. The first 3 domains for a certain keyword get most of the traffic, which is a fact. So, you have to strive for the top position.
Challenges
The ranking KPI helps you know the positive and negative effect of SEO campaigns, but you can’t use it to find out why. So, it’s of paramount importance that you monitor this KPI as well as other KPIs and SEO metrics in order to understand your keywords better.
Improving SEO Keyword Ranking
You can use a number of strategies for this purpose. Your first step should be to track the right keywords. Ideally, you may want to target long-tail keywords first. These less common keywords offer several advantages. For instance, they are less competitive and more targeted.
For higher ranking, it’s a good idea to make an organized list of your keywords. Also, you may not want to track all your efforts at once. For performance tracking, it’s better to have your keywords organized in the best way.
Lastly, it’s important that you use the keywords in your articles and blog posts. Meta keywords are of great importance but they are not enough for higher ranking. It’s also important that your content is interesting and valuable so that the readers would love to share it with others.
SEO Keyword Ranking Best Practices
As far as keyword ranking goes, it’s very important that you track your rankings on a regular basis. This will help you know and fix problems as soon as possible. If your ranking has been dropping for many weeks, it may indicate a problem with your backlinks. Your backlinks may have been removed or devalued. Given below are some more tips for keyword ranking:
- It’s better if your site is old with a lot of backlinks from authority websites. It’s also important that your site adheres to the best SEO practices. If you have no idea what it means, we suggest that you check out Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
- If you want to rank for a keyword in short order, it’s better to have an inbuilt network where you could share your content, such as Facebook and Twitter.
- Before you choose a keyword, make sure you do your research. In the beginning, it’s better to choose long-tail keywords with low competition.
- Make sure you know your competition level. It will help you differentiate yourself.
- Make sure your keyword is in the first paragraph of your content as well as in the last one.
- It’s not a good idea to link to another post on your blog or website that has been losing its ranking.
Monitor your Ranking in Real-time
Make sure you use the Keyword Ranking KPI with other web metrics to get a better view of your performance. In other words, you should monitor your click-through rates, ROI and link-building metrics as well.
So, following these SEO keyword ranking best practices will help you improve the ranking of your website or blog on Google and other search engines.
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30 Smart And Creative Restaurant Marketing Ideas To Gain More Customers
The emergence of digital technology dramatically revolutionized the restaurant marketing landscape. Restaurant proprietors no longer rely on the conventional outlet marketing ideas like word of mouth for marketing. A look at social media and internet proves the above claim as more and restaurant owners take up digital media to market their brands. While some restaurants seem to have got their restaurant marketing strategies spot on, a good number have yet to hit the ground running. Taking into account the cut-throat nature of the restaurant business and roughly 6 out of 10 eateries fail, the need to get your marketing plan right couldn’t be stressed enough. However, quite often outlets offering average dishes succeed where much better restaurants come up short. This post will highlight why success in running an eatery goes beyond offering savory dishes.
A blog presents an excellent way to build a fan base and interact with your clients. Moreover, blogs allow trying out your joint’s voice and persona. Share your recipes, amusing stories, struggles, successes and anything that might captivate your followers. A blog is a potentially massive undertaking, but this doesn’t apply across the board. Your blog can be as elaborate or simple as you’d want. Secondly, you need not post regularly – quality over quantity. However, it’s convenient to have the blog ready for times you’ve got significant news or announcement to share.
Give your patrons the option of making reservations via an online tool. Customers love when you make their lives a lot easier. Some of these online reservation tools include; Resy, Open Table and Reserve.
Let’s take a look at the 30 restaurant marketing ideas to win more customers.
1. Flaunt Your Staff To Complement Social Media Restaurant Marketing Efforts
In times of robotic support staff and forthcoming self-driving autos, the human component is markedly lacking. Flaunt your team as they work. The sight of joyous, beaming employees does a world of good for your standing, as people long service from cheery workers. Flaunting your happy employees boosts your reputation – happy employees say good things about an enterprise and people take notice.
2. Start a Blog
A blog presents an excellent way to build a fan base and interact with your clients. Moreover, blogs allow trying out your joint’s voice and persona. Share your recipes, amusing stories, struggles, successes and anything that might captivate your followers. A blog is a potentially massive undertaking, but this doesn’t apply across the board. Your blog can be as elaborate or simple as you’d want. Secondly, you need not post regularly – quality over quantity. However, it’s convenient to have the blog ready for times you’ve got significant news or announcement to share.
3. Foster User-Generated Content
Labeled UGC; user-generated content is an excellent strategy to cultivate personal and friendly engagement with users. You may host a photo competition by requesting clients to state their preferred meal at your outlet and share the submissions on a dedicated page(s). In addition, consider rewarding random lucky entrants with a free starter or alternative prize.4. Food Blogger or Influencer Outreach
Supposing you’re a new joint, generating a buzz and reviews may prove arduous. Inviting food bloggers or influencers to your establishment to get a taste of what you’ve got on offer is one of many under-utilized restaurant marketing strategies. Courteously appeal to the bloggers to try out your outlet and give an account of their experience on their social media platforms. You can’t directly request for an approving review as its downright unethical, nonetheless, it’s acceptable to seek for an unbiased restaurant review. Some influencers might reject your overture, but the more you request, the higher your likelihood of garnering positive response and provoke engagement.
5. Online Reservation Tools
Give your patrons the option of making reservations via an online tool. Customers love when you make their lives a lot easier. Some of these online reservation tools include; Resy, Open Table and Reserve.
6. Source Local Ingredients
Clients love to eat local and using local ingredients increases your fan base and your standing in the community. Consider this option mainly if it’s within your budget.7. Keep Track and React to Online Reviews
Quite often, small restaurant owners skip or respond unprofessionally to customer reviews on Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Google. Reviews impact profoundly on your business; one negative review may put off new or returning clients. For instance, start by setting up a Google alert to help you track what’s mentioned about your outlet. In the case, you get a negative review, respond promptly and in a warm tone. Responding with bitterness worsens the situation. You may express regret for the unfavorable experience or request the reviewer to get in touch with your restaurant at their earliest convenience so give you try and salvage the situation. However, a mindful rejoinder may turn a detractor into an ardent fan as it shows the sort of customer care we hope to run into when dining out.8. Make Your Site User-Friendly and Sharp
A high number of people look up outlets online before trying them out, and this merely proves the importance of a website. Many restaurant owners forget the reasons clients check up their site; customers check on the phone number, address, hours and menu. As intriguing as your Chinese-inspired course may be, it’s less critical. A user-friendly site contains relevant material presented clearly.9. Mobile App
Gradually, mobile applications are becoming cheaper for small businesses. Established brands like Dominos have developed mobile solutions that are key to their success strategy. The onset of mobile apps builders affords eateries to design mobile resolutions without breaking the bank. Above all, it enables customers to place orders straight from their handsets lowers operating costs.10. Check your Online Listings
When potential customers look up for an eatery, you want your name to appear among the first names. Thus, you must ensure your business name appears in many directories to boost its visibility.11. Look Forward Partake in Local Events and Get Involved
Present residents and visitors alike a reason to pick your outlet over their preferred chains. Are residents taking part in a 10k race? Offer a discount to participants who present their finisher’s medal. In the case of a poll, you can afford cuts to persons who take and share a snapshot of themselves within the precincts of their polling stations. Less established businesses need the backing of locals and visitors too.12. Send Email Newsletters
Keep in mind, your restaurant email marketing strategy should in no way be geared towards flooding users’ inbox on a daily or weekly basis. A monthly newsletter should suffice.13. Share Positive Press
When you get positive publicity in a magazine or news outlet, display the publicity via social media and your website. Fans will be quick to share the word, giving you a significant chance of attracting newcomers resulting from the increased trust.14. Develop and Nurture Your Outlet’s Brand Identity
Building an identity can potentially have a significant effect on the performance of social media marketing for restaurants. Build your brand personality around the target customers. Do your dishes target patrons with a preference for healthy eating? Or does your eatery have more of a beer and wings vibe? Take the time to understand your target clientele and shape your brand to fit their interests. Reflect these interests on your website and social media platforms.15. Get your Tweets’ Timing Right
Using Twitter for social media marketing for restaurants is a treasure when you get it right. Aim to post your tweets at the most appropriate time as it put you in good stead to impact on empty stomachs. Craft and schedule tweets suitable for a particular time of days like breakfast, lunch, and dinner.16. Have a Chic, Functional Online Menu
Some customers embark on online research before placing orders. Don’t make visitors struggle to locate your menu – issue a high-quality, up-to-date and straightforward menu. In addition, if you don’t get your online menu spot on and ready for clients, you’ll render your other restaurant marketing strategies useless. Nowadays, customers must access an online menu, or they’ll look for an alternative joint.17. Seek to Partner With a Delivery Service
In the present-day online-obsessed environment, the ease of use takes center stage. The majority of online delivery services simplify the ordering process, which loyal patrons love to capitalize on. Think about partnering with services such as:- Foodler
- Eat24
- Seamless
- GrubHub
- com
- UberEats
18. Use Mobile Ads
It’s forecasted that 2018 will have nearly half of Google’s paid clicks come from mobile. Eating joints are front-runners for mobile ads owing to how often users on the move seek nearby dining outlets. Mobile ads are cheaper compared to desktop ads. Interestingly, mobile ads boast excellent conversion rates. Adwords allows for targeting options and mobile optimization that help you derive maximum benefit from your bids. For instance, you can raise your bids at lunch hour or dinner time when users are most possibly to be on the lookout for a diner. Boosting your bids at the appropriate times raises the likelihood of appearing in a particular query. Your ad may appear first in a “pepperoni pizza” query when pizza-hungry users are hinting for a slice. Restaurant marketers can’t miss out on mobile ads. Discover more about restaurant marketing ideas pertaining to mobile ads in this article.19. Geo-Targeted Ads
Most people prefer to dine close to their residence, and you’ll derive value from gearing your marketing efforts by investing in mainly geo-targeted ads. By ensuring you target customers within a specified radius, geo-targeted as help in saving money by reducing non-relevant clicks. Twitter, Facebook, and Google Adwords offer geo-targeting ad series at zero extra costs. Capitalize on these helpful features to get ads to the most relevant customers. Learn more about restaurant marketing ideas related to mobile ads in this link.20. Offer Discounts and Offer Coupons
Offering discounts and coupons is almost a guaranteed way to bring in more customers. Offer a free meal to persons in your restaurant email marketing subscribers list. Alternately, you can advertise through Living Social or Groupon to accrue immense publicity, but you’ll pay a pretty penny from your sales to the website, bear that in mind. Learn more about restaurant marketing ideas related to discounts and coupons in this link.21. Acquire a Food Truck
Obtaining a food truck takes guts and hinging on the type of vehicle you wish to acquire, it’s potentially expensive. Nonetheless, a food truck allows you to reach out to persons you might not usually meet. Such a move may extend your reach, increase your fan base and build positive press such that you might have a good number of people become loyal customers. Learn more about restaurant marketing ideas in this link.22. Survey your Social Media Demeanor
One of the best and most effective restaurant marketing ideas are Social media marketing and advertising on major social media platforms. Delivery menus and pamphlets no longer work. Usually, outlets with a notable social media presence fare best in the aggressive food industry, overlooking social media is suicidal. Create social media pages on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to share exclusive coupons, discounts, promote news honors and snapshots of new dishes. Setting up accounts is merely half the job – keeping up with daily activities on your social platforms is equally essential. There are numerous free and premium social media management tools you can utilize to this effect like Buffer and Hootsuite. Learn more about restaurant marketing ideas related to social media marketing in this link.23. Loyalty Programs
Partnering with apps spurs visitors to look up your restaurant through customer loyalty programs and gamification which offer users discounts of a free purchase for visiting a specified number of times. Popular foodie apps include:- LevelUp
- Loyal Blocks
- Belly
- Perka
24. Look for Like-Minded Businesses for Cross-Promotions
Like-minded could mean an enterprise with a similar audience or a nearby restaurant. An outlet may work attract customer by offering discounts to clients of a nearby bike store. The bike shop may reciprocate by providing discounts to persons who dine at the friendly restaurant.25. Engage a Digital Marketer
Look to employ the services of a professional digital marketer preferably one with a Facebook badge. A digital marketer will offer content creation, advertising drives, social media campaigns, and monitoring and management of social media accounts. A full-service solutions provider will also offer digital listings management, display advertising, search engine marketing, email marketing, website design and optimization to boost your online presence.26. Deliver Exceptional Customer Experiences
Social media engagement coupled with word of mouth make formidable marketing strategies. Diners tend to share remarkable experiences at an outlet with others. When patrons get a subpar experience, they’re even more inclined to share it. An ambitious restaurant must acknowledge and embody this reality to gear their efforts towards creating a memorable customer experience, through quality dishes and services.27. Add Elegant, Functional Digital Signage
Whether it’s adjusting your static menu, updating social accounts or digital list; you can never go wrong with digital signage. Signage grabs your clients’ attention and creates a robust and engaging experience for them.28. Foodie Photos
Instagram users understand the existence of food porn. Possibly the best way to boost your joint’s online presence, using high-quality and hunger-inducing images. The demand for visual content is at an all-time high, and captivating photos across your social media accounts and website are crucial to luring hungry eyes. Hire a professional photographer to take quality snapshots or in the case of budgetary constraints you could use your smartphone. A word of caution – taking great food photos is a lot arduous than it seems, as lighting plays a vital role.29. Yelp
Yelp boasts of remarkable power in the restaurant business and having positive Yelp reviews does wonder for your outlet. Owners need to understand that their restaurants are reviewed even in the absence of a Yelp account. Therefore, for this reason restaurant owners must spruce up their Yelp account for it to work for them rather than against them. Sprucing up means adding as many details as possible like:- Location
- Store hours
- Tons of photos
- Price range
- Menu
- Outdoor seating/ Parking/Wi-Fi etc.
30. Go live on YouTube
YouTube and video marketing stands as one of the yet to be fully exploited restaurant marketing ideas despite the perks on offer. Google bots rank sites with video content higher than those without. Video also provides an opportunity for viewers to see the chefs in action which earns the joint the trust of the public. In Conclusion.. Now you’re well equipped with a few restaurant marketing tips to get word of your establishment to the world. However, you must remember a few points: Performance determines the prosperity of your marketing plan; thus get all your offline activities spot on. In other words, avoid DIY internet marketing for your restaurant. In addition, engage an expert to stay relevant. We hope you enjoyed reading our restaurant marketing ideas.Are You Looking For Affordable, Personalized & Premium Social Media Management Services For Your Business? Contact Viral Content Lab Team Today!
Beginners Guide to a Successful Email Marketing Campaign for a White Label Business
In its simplest form, white labeling involves providing a product or a service while allowing someone else to place their brand name on your product or service. This business model is very popular in the retail business, electronic business and digital marketing. So company A makes the product, company B buys it and brands it as theirs. All these happen with the prior agreement of company A. White label business model is a bit different from the mainstream business model. Therefore, this little difference has to be taken into cognisance when creating an email marketing campaign.
Email marketing involves using emails as a means of convincing someone to make a purchase, or as a way to make a customer take a particular action. The actions vary from subscribing from newsletters to participating in polls.
However, before we delve deeper, we have to learn some e-mail marketing lingo. This is very important so that you don’t go running to Google after every line or two. After this we will take a plunge.
1.1 Getting Started With Email Marketing, Terms and Terminology
Every profession has its esoteric language; the jargons they sometime use to appear ultra smart. These are some of the words you’ll encounter most in email marketing. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it is a good place to start from. At least when next you are conversing with an email marketer you won’t feel like all the words are flying over your head. Below are some of them.
CTR
Click Through Rate, this lets you know how many people clicked on an advert, an image, call to action or in an email. This is very useful for knowing how well your strategies are producing results. Aim for a CTR of at least 20%, anything below that you’d have to go back to the drawing board. Your ESP (Email Service Provider) can help you with such information.
CPM
Cost Per Thousand, a lot of times when e-mail marketers solicit your emails, you see stuff like “we will not sell your e-mails. Apparently, some email marketers buy e-mails from “email ad vendors”. Cost per thousand, refers to how much it will cost to buy a thousand emails addresses.
E-mail Blacklist
When you black list a certain email address or IP number is simply means that their messages will not be delivered to you.
Email White List
The exact opposite of Black list, when you white list an email address, you’ll always get their messages in your inbox. One way to white list an email ad, is just by adding the e-mail to your address book.
Landing Page
This is the page that your visitors are directed to once they click on your call to action; the page usually contains more info about the product or services talked about on the CTA page. It can also be the page where your customers perform the action, which you want them to. Such as fill a form, buy a product and so on.
Clicks Per Open
This is a measurement of the number of e-mails that were opened after the recipient had received them.
CTA
Call to action: when marketing emails are sent, the marketer hopes that the receiver of the email will take an action. Perhaps subscribe for a newsletter, or make a purchase. The words or the means through which email sender tells the prospective customer to take action is the “Call to Action”. For example “subscribe for our newsletter to get more awesome content”, now this is a call to action. They come in various forms, and the purpose is to make the reader take a particular action.
Conversion Rate
This is one way to measure your campaign success. It is a percentage or proportion of those who respond favourably to your CTA.
ROI
Return on Investment. This is the amount of profit in monetary terms or in terms of lead one gets after putting in time and money.
1.2 How to Push and Grow Your Business through Email Marketing
In this age and time when social media has invaded everyone’s privacy, email marketing is now as important as ever. With e-mail marketing you can create personalized and relevant emails for each of your customers. So you can deliver personalized content to them thereby increasing your conversions and ROI. By following the outlined steps below, you can get the most out of your email marketing campaign.
Get Their Email Address
The first step here obviously is to get them to give you there email address. There are many ways to do that, but one way that works for me is to give out incentives. Not just freebies, but something they would perceive to be of value. For example, whenever I get on Copyblogger, they promise an e-book with great content on email marketing and copywriting. Now if you are an email marketer or a writer you’d be interested in their content. You’d consider taking out sometime to fill out their form, just a little sacrifice in exchange for great content. So there, they have my attention. However, when I try to register, I am just unable to, for reasons unknown to me.
Now this brings me to my next point.
Make Subscriptions Very Easy
Make it very easy for people to subscribe to your newsletter. They should be able to find your subscription button very easily and make sure your landing page is working. Copybloggers subscription landing page is not working so no matter how much I want to subscribe, I just can’t; you get the gist right?
Optimize You Site for Mobile
The world is always on the go, and majority of the people access the internet now on their mobile devices. If your site is not mobile friendly, you will be losing at least 60% of your prospective customers. Need I say more on that?
Get Whitelisted
Get your subscribers to white list you. One easy way to do this is to get them to add you to their contacts. Some email marketers go as far as giving instructions on how to do this. Yeah it is that important, you don’t want to be flagged as spam, intentionally or unintentionally. It really is bad for business. If this is done, you have a much better chance of your messages being delivered to their inbox.
On the issue of spam, you want to make sure you make it very easy for your recipients to unsubscribe if they so desire. When people find it difficult to unsubscribe from a certain newsletter, they just spam the email address. You don’t want to have more than 1 spam per 1000 emails or your email could be labelled as spam across the web.
Maintain a Schedule and Keep In Touch
Humans are a creature of habit. Therefore, it’s great if your prospective customers receive your emails at scheduled time. So they’d learn to expect it, and if it is something that they are particularly interested in, or you have great content, they’ll make the time for it. It doesn’t feel so good when you just send email to your customers whenever it is time to “milk” the relationship. Many of us email marketers are guilty of this. This is where automation comes in; your ESP can provide you with this.
Keep Your Word
If you promise a 20pg e-book, make sure your deliver a 20pg e-book. If you promise great content make sure you deliver on your promises. Remember you are not the only one competing for their attention, so you always want to be in their good books. If you don’t deliver on your promises, you really look your ability to influence your customers.
Provide Great Content
For me great content is everything! Your content should not only be well written, but they should also contain great information. You want to be an authority on whatever subject you talk to them about. This will also increase your chances for your article to be shared. More shares and referrals mean more subscription.
Clear and Strong Call to Action
We shall use Copyblogger again as a case study. The call to action on their page is; “Get our free, in-depth eBook, Email Marketing: How to Push Send and Grow Your Business, when you register for My.Copyblogger.com below. Discover how to push send and grow your business: it’s free”. This call to action is very precise and strong, and what you’ll also get is clear. Register on our site, in other words give us your email address and we will give you this very valuable e-book.
Personalize Your Emails
Using someone’s first name in a newsletter has been known to increase conversion by as much as twenty percent. So you have to tailor your content to a person’s preferences, gender, style, occupation e.t.c. The more personalized you can get, the better your chances of conversion. This will take some time though, that’s why you need an ESP that will always give you various kinds of metric. Over time you’ll be able to create personalised emails for your subscribers.
1.3. 8 Best Examples of Successful Email Marketing For White Label Business
We dealt with some of the most common words you’ll see in email marketing and also steps to take when starting an email campaign. Here are some of the most important kinds of emails you’ll need for you white label business. In no particular order, they are outlined below.
Case Study Email
If you’re thinking of a tool that can be used in communicating to your clients what value your services or product can add to their business. A case study would be a great tool to use in communicating this to your clients. Your communication here should be clear, whether it is in helping them increase sales or better customer experience or far reaching advert, be very clear. In addition, it would be more relevant if your case study is carried out on a similar company, (similar to your client’s company) that probably faces the same challenges your customer might be likely facing. The results of the case study should be included in the email you’d send to your clients.
Welcome Email
This seems like a no brainer, or rather not very important. However, it is a way of showing your face once again to your customer; and of course appreciating them for taking the time and trusting you enough to give out their email. This in a way shows that you do care about them. Moreover, you can use this opportunity to reiterate what they should be expecting from you.
Curated Content
The popular blogger, Tim Ferris does this very well. Every Friday he delivers a certain post, which he calls Five-Bullet –Friday. It contains the coolest and most helpful things he came across that week. It includes gadgets, quotes, apps, content and many others.
You can do exact same things with your subscriber list. Make a list of the best content or most helpful things you came across during a certain period. It may be industry related or not. The choice is yours. It’s like saying to your subscribers I saw these cool stuffs and I think you should see them too.
Announcements
Customers like to be kept abreast of happenings within a company. Imagine walking into your client’s a certain day only to hear that their company has been acquired by another company. You might feel as though it has negatively affected their ability to deliver optimum services that’s why they kept it to themselves. Of course it doesn’t always have to be about acquisition and mergers. Relocation, Award received anniversaries and all of that. This makes your clients feel closer to you. And this closeness could create loyalty, since they know all that’s happening at the company.
Campaigns
Late 2015 Jermaine Griggs’ of HearandPlay.com sent me an email. It read something along the lines of “52 weeks to a better piano player”. By the New Year, for the whole one year, once a week I was entitled to getting one weekly video on improving my music skills. Now we all love freebies, don’t we? Well your clients are no different. Such campaigns help improve interaction, improve traffic and even generate more leads. When you start planning this let your customers know, so that they can get prepared. Of course when the campaign kicks off they should also be reminded. This is a great way to get new subscribers based especially on referrals.
New Article Email
Charles Chu of MarketMeditations does this very well. Whenever there’s new content I get an email from him telling me my content is ready. Contained in the email is the heading and a few lines of each of the articles. Clicking on any of the articles takes me to his blog where I can read the full article if I desire. So whenever you have new content or info to share with your customers an email can be very helpful. You can either include the links to the content or just paste it in the email. The choice is yours.
Product Update Email
The services you render are supposed to improve with time. Your products will also get better. Or you could add more service to your portfolio. Whatever it is you should make sure your subscribers are aware. Addition of new products to your product line has a way of convincing certain customers to check out your services, especially if it was in a section that was previously uncovered.
Activation
According to some industry research close to half of your subscribers are inactive. This email should be an attempt at getting them to start reading your content again or them taking themselves off your subscriber list. However, the former will be preferable.
Get your subscribers who have not opened your emails in the last 6-12months. Reintroduce yourself to them; let them know what you do. And intimate them, of course on what they’ve been missing since they stopped reading your newsletter. You could add freebies to this email as a way to pull them back in. If you don’t see any changes, resend and then finally take them off your subscriber list. Let them also know before you take them of the list.
2.1 Automating Email Marketing in 6 Steps
One particular ad has the description; “email marketing is dead, try marketing automation”. While I agree that you should try automation, I disagree that email marketing is dead. Otherwise, you won’t be reading this article. Email marketing is a very profitable business model. According to statistics, email marketing typically brings back about $4 for every $1 spent.
Prior to now, about 10, or 15 years ago, automation was a buzzword for those in the manufacturing sector. Remember Henry Ford, he laid ground plans for this kind of manufacturing. Today however automation is a buzzword most associated with email marketing.
Automated email marketing actually makes the job of an email marketer way easier. You know how you send your email, you decide whom, and you type the message and the click the send button. However for automating marketing, you schedule your emails ahead of time. Thus whenever your customer performs a certain action he automatically gets a predefined email or set of emails. For example if someone subscribes for your newsletter. The person gets a welcome email first, and then a series of other email introducing the person to what you do. Automatic emails are personalized and well timed, and can be tailored for a certain customer. Therefore, they help build a good relationship and loyalty between you and your customers.
In this chapter, I’ll be showing you how to automate your email marketing. The biggest email marketers do it. I don’t see why you shouldn’t.
Build a prospective list of subscribers
What you do here is to get the emails of your prospective customers and any other info you’d need from them. Do not ask for information you’ll not be needing. This will help save your time and the time of others. Name, gender, personal email and work designation will be useful at the beginning. We receive all kinds of emails from marketers, everyday. And majority of them are not worth reading, in the end one just feels swarmed with emails. Therefore, people are more wary with giving out their emails now. You might have to use freebies to attract them in, and then a promise of great content. Make sure you fulfil your promises though. Of course, before you decide this, you’ll need to get an ESP (email service provider). As time goes on and you are sure you have gained the loyalty of your subscribers then you can ask for more information. This will further enable you tailor your content to suit your subscribers.
Define your Content and Create your Campaign
Your objective will determine the kind of content you’ll create. Are you looking to create a comic series, so you need popularity. On the other hand, are you looking to turn your subscribers into customers? We know what we are. And as a white label company we are looking to pull other company into hiring us for our services. So this factor will define the kind of content we shall be creating.
I remember reading on a certain site, sometime ago that until your content is so good that you begin to think that you are giving too much away for free, your content is not actually good enough. You want to display a mastery of the field in which you offer services. Therefore, well researched content that answer a lot of general questions and even more will be very fine.
Analyzing Customer Habits
Your ESP should come with analytical tools to help with profiling of customers, knowing their likes, dislikes, and purchasing habits. With these tools, you should be able to tell who is reading your newsletters and who is not. Who is visiting your homepage or clicking on the hyperlinks. This will help your refine your communication with your subscribers. These analysis and tests will help you determine the effectiveness of your emails. You test, you refine and you reschedule.
Divide your subscribers/customers into groups
This segmentation will help your automation more. At this point, you have gathered data, and you have seen to a certain extent the likes and preferences of your prospects. Now segment them into groups based on this knowledge you now have. And create a schedule for each of the groups. As you get more data you keep on segmenting until your marketing becomes pinpoint and accurate.
Grow Your Leads
Now you have content and you have prospects / customers at various points of conversion. Therefore, your job here will be to determine which of your content is suitable for a section of your prospects. After you have done this, your ESP will send the messages accordingly.
Analyse, Analyse and Analyse.
Analyse everything, from those who did not open your emails to those who visited your sites. Get to know how long it took for your prospects to move along in the conversion process. From being newbies, to be marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads. Check how long it took for that process to be completed and think of ways to reduce the time. Know which of your groups were most responsive and least responsive to your newsletters.
There are so many other indicators to mention, but these are good for starters.
So measure, refine and reschedule until you have hit optimum, if that will ever happen though. The idea however is to get more sales leads in as shortest time as possible.
2.2 Essential Tools to Assist Your Marketing Campaign
We all want our email marketing to be easier, faster and more effective at securing leads. These tools below will be of immense help. Some are free, some are paid, you should make your choice based on your marketing needs. These tools perform functions from scheduling, to testing, analytics and a whole many others. Below are some of them
GetResponse
In the previous section, we talked about tracking customers’ behaviour. Well GetResponse is a lord at that, and it does it for a token price of $15/month/1000 emails. It helps monitor purchasing habits of your prospects. It also shows you how much of your emails are being opened.
Rebump
Rebump is an email scheduling and productivity tool. With it you can schedule and send follow-up emails to customers or prospects after they perform a certain activity. It also has a veritable tool that customizes the emails sent out, making them look as though humans and not bots sent them.
Litmus
Did you do chemistry? This name must have come from there. Litmus helps you know what your email design will look like in a certain email client. Yahoomail, Gmail , Aol are all email clients and they have different interfaces. Therefore, your emails may not always look the way you’d expect them to look in your client’s inbox. This could lead to your emails be flagged as spam, with this tool however you can make the necessary tweaks.
TouchStone
Have you ever heard of A/B test? This tool does one of those A/B tests well. Creating attractive, email opening subject lines for your newsletters can be an uphill task. This is where TouchStone comes in. It tests your subject line against over 20billion other options, ultra cool right? It lets you know the likeliness of that email to be opened, rate of delivery and all of that.
Followup
I love this particular tool. It is very useful in knocking out email distractions. This web service knocks out your emails from your inbox, and lets them reappear when you need them. You need to set the schedule yourself though.
SumoMe
This is another cool tool, however you’ll have to get people to visit your site for this tool to work. This is how SumoMe works. At the moment someone is about to leave you site, it opens a pop-up requesting for the person’s email. You can customise this popup with freebies and other customer attractive stuff.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of email marketing tool. The tools are over a hundred, therefore they can’t all be covered be covered in this article. It’s already long enough as it were. However, these are some of the most important tools, voted by some of the best email marketers out there.
3.0 Three Essential Stages in Email Marketing
Email marketing has the potential to improve your marketing, however like everything in life there’s the right way and the wrong way to go about it. Following the three stages below and creating an email, marketing campaign will be easier for you.
3.1 Stage 1: Getting Permission
I once subscribed for “SaaS Weekly Newsletter”, someone had mentioned it to me and I had gotten interested. After subscribing, something caught my attention. I got an email telling me to click on a certain link if I really wanted to be getting their newsletters. Now I thought to myself, these guys want subscribers to their newsletter. So why place another measure or give people an opportunity to rethink their decision. However, after getting into email marketing, I started to understand the reason why. It is called getting permission.
We live in two worlds, the real world and the virtual world or the digital world. In the real world we don’t have much control over what happens in public spaces, like on our commute to and from work. That public space can be chaotic but our homes are a safe haven and we have very good control over those who come in. That’s how our email box is in the world of digital chaos. We are always been bugged on social media, Facebook, Instagram and all the rest of that. The email addresses are people’s safe haven. And a lot of time they are way stricter with whom they give out their email addresses to.
Part of getting permission is getting them to give you their email address. Before doing that, they’d like to know what they stand to gain from giving you their email. And it’s your job to convince them. So your call to action must be convincing and succinct.
People reading stuff online really have a short attention span. This is due to the distractions of the internet. Freebies and a promise of great content is one great way to get them to subscribe to your newsletters. There are many other ways to get people to give out their emails unfortunately; we can’t explore all those options today.
Soliciting for emails is not the only way to get emails though. Some fellows on the internet offer to sell email addresses to email marketers. However, we all know how we feel about unsolicited emails. If it’s something we are not interested in we spam it, if we can’t find the unsubscribe button. So getting permission actually ensures that we are email to the right crowd. Remember that here, we are dealing with other companies. They are even stricter on the case of unsolicited emails than individuals are. You don’t want to lose a potential customer because of issues
Have Them Whitelist You
After getting their permission there’s no way to be sure that your email send will get to your subscribers inbox. So you should have them whitelist you. This is as simple as having them add you to their address book. Some ESP give instructions for that, it is actually important you consider that.
3.2 Stage 2: Playing the Numbers Game
This has nothing to do with the amount of subscribers you have. It’s more to do with your content and the frequency at which you’ll be delivering it to your subscribers. There are no hard and fast rules to this, it all depends on business you run. However, you should let your subscribers be aware of a schedule otherwise they could forget you. If you promise to send your subscribers a newsletter once a month, make sure you stick to your schedule.
Having integrity is one way you can build loyalty in your customers. Take for example I subscribed to Charles Chu’s blog, and I expected to get some articles every Sunday. It was like that for a while, and then something happened and I didn’t get the blog posts for a while. The time, which I had created for that mentally, went into something else. I actually forgot about the blog until he came back. But something else had taken his space, I didn’t have time for it anymore. Humans are creatures of habit. This is something you can take advantage of.
Quality of Content
Now on the matter of content, good content is very subjective. The tailoring of your content depends on your niche amongst other things. For instance, a good content for sales update may not be good content for an educational blog. One way to judge good content is if it does exactly what is says it will do. If you promise to deliver timely updates on discounts and promo offers on certain products and your content doesn’t do that. Well then it is not good content.
Put yourself in the shoes of your customers, this is one very good way of tailoring your content. As I said in earlier chapters, it is been said that great content is until your newsletter is so packed that you think your are giving away too much for free. Of course, this is not applicable in every case. However, make sure you really do give out value. This will make them come back for more.
Maintaining a regular schedule will help you keep in touch with your subscribers. So that when you want them to buy something, they won’t feel as though you only care about their money. So having your content in a friendly tone and on a regular base will help with your sales ability. Automating your sales process here will be of great importance. Only you also can decide when and how often to pitch to your customers. Putting yourself in the shoes of your customers will help. This will bring us to the third stage in email marketing
3.3 Stage 3: Segmentation and Analytics
Ever heard the phrase “divide and conquer” well that’s what segmentation means. It means to divide, though the conquering part is not inclusive. You are not conquering anything here.
You should divide your customers into classes for easier management. This segmentation is also useful during automation.
You can segment them based on a host of data. Maybe gender or how long they have come on the sales process. That is, those who are freebies, those who are further along. Perhaps they are beginning to show interest by clicking on those hyperlinks, and customers who have actually bought. You could even differentiate on size of company, primary market they service and so on. This will help you target your newsletters appropriately. You can know those who are ready to buy and those who are not.
While segmenting, you should also have options on the type of content your customers would like to receive. Let’s assume you provide SEO, Web development and Graphic design services. You can segment you content into these three classes. So that your subscribers can choose, based on their choice of content you’ll be able to tell what service they will most likely require.
Analytics
There are a myriad of analytics one can check out for, but we will deal with just three for now.
Conversion Rate
This is the number of your subscribers who clicked on a link in your email, perhaps to fill a form or complete an action. If your conversion rate is low, it might mean your CTA is too weak, or your have too many links in your newsletter.
Open rate
If you don’t have a good open rate, this will mean a good number of people don’t bother to read your newsletter or they delete it on receipt. It could mean that you are talking to the wrong crowd or the quality of content is not as expected.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
A low click through rate means you need to improve quality of your copy.
There a lot of other analytics, they niche will determine exactly what you need. This is just a beginner guide, as you go further along in your email marketing, you’ll learn more and deciding on the tools to use will become easier.
Conclusion
Business to business marketing is all about creating value. And this is exactly what a white label business is. The majority of your clients are other businesses even if you communicate with a certain person within that organisation. Therefore the rules for email marketing here are definitely going to be a bit stricter. There’s lesser room for flouting of rules as businesses are not as forgiving as individuals.
However with the information in the previous pages you’ll not be at a loss on how to run an email marketing campaign within the stringent rules of B2B marketing. As earlier said this is a beginner’s guide there is much more information available on the beauty of email marketing and how to take advantage of it. This guide however will give you a good head start in the world of email marketing for white label businesses. It can also work for email marketing to individuals all you’ll need is a few tweaks here and there.
Email marketing has the ability to transform your business; it can increase your customer base by as much as 30%. You should not joke with it.