7-Step Checklist to Ensure Your Inbound Strategy Will Sail Through 2016
Feb 06, 2016
10 min read
To meet up with the demand of the global market and your business’s set aside goals, there is always a need for inventiveness. The year 2015 came with almost a quite challenging deal, there were a good number of innovations and ideas, even so, the industry boomed beyond imagination. However, in order to make 2016 a more favorable marketable year, every business must recognize the hidden talisman within it. Business revolution is forevernot expected to be the same, this why it is called a “revolutionary trend” which must change with regard to timing. If your business must continue in its steady growth or, in any case needs a new touch, mapping out your checklist in such a way that it incorporates new ideas with regard to latest happening in the industry is relevant.
Email Strategy A/B Test
Your winnings through email marketing is obvious, but don’t you think that improvement in this area can assist? Let’s get down to the deal; Performing A/B testing can help produce actionable result within a very short period of time and hence improve your marketing endeavors.
Try Re-Engagement
Not every person on your mailing list is an interested engaged subscriber, and continuously blasting email to this set of people automatically hurts your sender reputation. This is one sure reason why you need a re-engagement campaign setup. By the end of the month, you may be surprised to realize a fresh stupendous engagement.
Longtail is better than Short tail
The ability to recognize long tail keywords in every inbound marketing content is a recipe that should not be neglected at any point in time. Long tail keywords may be around three words or more, should you have fuss recognizing them. The benefit is it does not only help you content to get found (because of the specificity of the words), but is also less competitive to the short tail keywords.
Incorporate Newsjacking formula
If you’re not familiar with newsjacking, you may find it difficult to cope in it. Nevertheless, one or two lessons can help you. Newsjacking is a unique way to tell carry news around in your traditional system. Staying updated with news perhaps in your own dialect, local community and around the world. this strategy works like “surefire”, and pretty darn immediate.
Regurgitate your social Media Campaign
Remember that there are also social media algorithmic changes, and these changes update as often as possible. Buckle up your shoes and get going, invest some good money in your social media campaign for all platforms and see how best you can take your competitors by the horn.
Free tools are Gold Mines
With the heavy frustrating competition in inbound marketing nowadays, do you hope to get something out of nothing? Free tools are gold mines, building one or two of it will surprisingly alter your marketing success. Help you to draw customers and potential prospects closer, once they’re sure that something great lays in for them.
Incorporate the use of Tracking tokens
If you are a professional marketer (be you an inbound or outbound marketer), I certainly believe you now use tracking tokens to monitor your contents and campaigns. If not, you definitely might be missing out on the goodies others are enjoying. Tracking tokens is a piece of hocus pocus you may slap at the end of any URL to engage analytics into that page. This aids easy tracking and monitorization of such content and the activities of the users on it and propels you into making optimum changes.
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Why A Buyer's Journey Holds The Key To Your Digital Marketing Success
The methodology mentioned above is referred as Inbound Marketing that includes attracting strangers on the internet, converting them into leads, and eventually into delighted customers. But the real question is how do you attract these strangers and earn their trust in order to form a long-term customer relationship? The answer is content. Great content will always attract information seekers who are lurking over the internet to find information about a product or service and make a decision. Before creating the great content, it is important to understand and define exactly who you’re creating it for. Now this is termed as Buyer Persona- the people who are your target audience and you want to sell your products or services to them. Once you understand who your buyers are, you’re ready to create steps for buyer’s journey. What Is The Buyer’s Journey? Not all people think alike. Same will be the case with your different types of buyer persona, and the next step that you’ll want to take is to map each persona with the buyer’s journey. HubSpot defines the buyer’s journey as a detailed research process potential customers go through before reaching or leading up to the purchase decision. In layman’s term, what questions, problems or opportunities do your potential customers have that could be answered or solved by using your product or service? The content you create will be designed according to various stages defined in your buyer’s journey. If you don’t know about the important lifecycles of a buyer’s journey, how will you create content to mould the decision of buyers in various stages of the journey in your favour? There are three common and important lifecycles of any business: 1. Awareness Stage Prospect’s realize about their needs or encounter some problems that needs to be resolved. They start researching(on the internet) to more deeply understand and define their problem. They also look for solutions online. 2. Consideration Stage Prospects have clearly understood their need or problem and now are juggling through options of products or services that best suits their needs. They are committed to researching and understanding to reach to a conclusion. 3. Decision Stage In the final lap of making a decision. But before doing that they need to be doubly sure about whether they are making the right decision or not. Hence, they look for second, third or ‘n’ number of opinions of other people who have witnessed the products or services by a company. 4. Mistakes most Digital Marketers make Most companies and their marketers concentrate their effort or the bulk of their online content on the decision stage( Buy Now, Join our club and get one membership free!, etc.). What most marketer leave behind is the focus on other stages of the customer lifecycle, that mostly answer the customer’s question-why? Inbound Marketing(a type of digital marketing) does encourage the marketers to create content for each stage of the buyer’s journey because it’s critical for long term success. It helps build trust and frames your company as the industry leader in the product/service segment that your company caters to. A Dummy Example Using Content for Buyer’s Journey Client: Video Production Company Startup Persona: Marketing Head Awareness Stage: In this stage a business owner is trying to find various marketing solutions available but wants to find a unique one- one that resonates with his potential customers. Question: What type of online marketing solutions will move my company forward? Content that could be helpful: Checklists, whitepapers, and ebooks on different ways businesses or other startups could benefit from Introduction Videos, Brand idents, etc. For example: tips for startups for creating engaging content for their social media channels. Consideration Stage: Now the business owner knows a bit more about engaging content through video and wants to know more about other options. Question: Video could be a great solution for telling our company story. What type of other video options are there? What is the video process? Content that could be useful: Case studies featuring client success, webinars, and infographics. For example: The Video and Production Process explained. Decision Stage: The owner is ready to make a decision that he’ll move forward with a video production company that would brand his company. The content will be produced to showcase his company better than all the rest. Before doing that he looks for online reviews and ask some direct questions from the video production company. Questions: Why you do video best? Are you right for me? Content provided by the video company: Culture-focused blog posts by internal employees. Video demos, feature checklists etc. For example: How to prepare for a video shoot checklist. Understanding the questions asked by your various buyer personas helps you better map out the content for each stage. Hence, it is very important to understand the buyer’s journey for your digital marketing success. ...
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How to Break The Ice by Promoting Content Through LinkedIn
Beyond all doubts, LinkedIn has emerged as the top professional social platform over the years. With more than 364 million members in over 200 countries and territories, LinkedIn is eventually evolving to be an excellent breeding spot for all business houses to grow their contacts. With LinkedIn, you have a strategic advantage because most of the users are professionals, and so you get a fairly relevant estimate about who your target audience is. Along with that, there are fewer chances of forged- identities, so you are more likely to get a quality audience to your LinkedIn page. Analyzing your LinkedIn page on a regular basis will help you recognize the areas of improvement, and that is how you can formulate the actions required to promote your page (and business) towards a better traffic volume. When your business community page is optimized, you will be able to offer a better engagement with your visitors. That will bring more opportunities to draw valuable traffic and will help you establish trust between your targeted audience. Why Should a Content Marketer Care About LinkedIn? One of every three businesses on Earth is placed on LinkedIn. Individuals like to interact with organizations (and people associated with it) and emphasize on exchanging information and ideas with each other. And these interactions are not merely for fun or recreational joy. Time invested on LinkedIn can bring your business considerable growth. Since all the users have an aspirational mindset here, your timed and well-placed contents, advertising, job posts, etc. reach to sincere minds. LinkedIn's users are great receptors of anything that can benefit their professional growth and help them become more successful. A research shows that more than half of the customers are more likely to buy a product from the company they interact on LinkedIn. You can exploit this opportunity to cultivate your brand worth all over the world. Generating leads and driving traffic from this overcrowded platform can become a child play for you, provided you place your cards at the right time. As a B2B marketer, you can utilize LinkedIn to distribute your content to the most sincere audience worldwide. And not just that, your content distribution can drive traffic to your sites (and blogs) to a great extent. Data reveals that more than 90% of online traffic is driven by Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, the last contributing more than 50% of total share. According to Investis IQ Audience Insight Report , LinkedIn directs 64% of visits from all social media sites. Convert Your Leads on LinkedIn Whether you are a real estate firm or some hardware-retail company, you will need a social forum that can fuel your marketing endeavors and thus trigger the sales conversion process. Channelize your efforts here on LinkedIn and you will see a seamless inflow of online audience engagement that will build your credentials and create an unbeatable brand value in the market. Define Your Target Make a precise estimation of your customers’ behavior and preferences by using a proper web analytics tool. LinkedIn sponsored updates are also useful here since they provide you with much basic information such as age, location, gender, etc. Additionally, you can consider targeting on the basis of Job titles, industries (company name, size, etc. ), skills and schooling data and many more such classifications. Analyze the buyer persona to understand the user’s pain points and develop contents that address those areas with a substantial attempt to resolve the issues. The content should be short, to-the-point and should add value to the reader’s time. You can also consider writing completely customer-centric posts so that the reader can identify his interests and issues on a deeper level. Publish The Revised Drafts Once your contents are developed, you need to be careful in publishing them. The content should not just be fresh and informative, it should also add value to the reader. Make wise estimation about the context and relevance of your posts. If the market is saturated with unemployed workforce, you can post job offerings or tips and guidelines about how to get the most bankable employment opportunity. Conversely, when you have to launch your product, you can promote it on LinkedIn, in professional conducts and context. According to LinkedIn’s official reports, 20% of followers are typically reached with one status update. So, on a rough scale, you can consider posting some 20 updates per month. That way, you can expect to maximize your post’s reach to around 60% of your unique audience every month. Content publication empowers you to drive more leads and traffic to your website. With LinkedIn, it is more essential because your audience is more career/business oriented, and thus can become a valuable lead for your business. You have the moment to distribute your contents and push it via social sharing and providing backlinks to draw more user attention to your desired websites. When you are in the distribution phase on LInkedIn, you might also like to cultivate the user-engagement by replying and commenting on their response or taking proactive action to encourage their involvement. ...
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Importance of Social Media in DTC Marketing for Fashion brands
The advent of online shopping has overshadowed the traditional retail experiences. Especially in the wake of the pandemic, the convenience of shopping from the comfort of our homes has made us somewhat lazier and has us relying heavily on social media marketing employed by fashion brands to stay updated with the latest trends. In response, a new paradigm has emerged within the fashion industry. Alongside established brands like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Prada, emerging fashion labels have recognized the importance of establishing a social media presence to cultivate a target audience and foster engagement. Undoubtedly, a compelling social media marketing strategy is imperative for fashion brands seeking success in the vast realm of social platforms. The approach may vary based on the brand and its target audience, encompassing endeavors such as showcasing new season products online, live streaming fashion weeks, and much more. It is well-established that fashion brands require a well-tailored social media strategy to capture attention in the ever-expanding landscape of social platforms. However, understanding how to promote a clothing brand on social media effectively and implementing key tactics within digital marketing strategies can be overwhelming, given the multitude of available options. Fortunately, numerous social media platforms offer specific tools and recommendations catered to clothing brands. This allows for the implementation of distinct strategies on each platform, enabling effective connections with the intended target audience.While the choice of platforms to engage with is subjective, this article will provide detailed insights into the creation of suitable content for different platforms, tailored to the unique needs of your fashion brand. Continue reading to delve into a comprehensive exploration of the social media strategies employed by fashion brands, unveiling the intricacies of this ever-evolving landscape. Why Does Your Fashion Brand Need a Social Media Strategy? The emergence of new brands on a daily basis has heightened the importance of excelling in social media marketing like never before. Establishing a strong presence on social media platforms is no longer a luxury that only some can afford. It is now a necessity for businesses across various industries. By leveraging these networks, brands can achieve various objectives, including reaching their target audience, conducting competitor analysis, enhancing brand awareness, ensuring customer satisfaction, boosting sales, and fostering a vibrant community. Gone are the days when a fashion brand could afford to ignore social media. Nowadays, a brand's absence on these platforms can be equated to non-existence and irrelevance in this age of memes and trends. Window shopping has evolved from physically browsing malls to the virtual realm of social media, where fashion enthusiasts eagerly explore and engage with brands. Social media influencers have risen to prominence as key trendsetters, capturing the attention of followers who make purchases based on their recommendations. Platforms like Instagram and Pinterest serve as virtual fashion hubs, where users eagerly consume influencer content, save outfit ideas, and make informed buying decisions. The tremendous growth of the influencer marketing industry, witnessing a remarkable 18.8% increase from $13.8 billion in 2021 to $16.4 billion in 2022, further solidifies the importance of a robust social media strategy for brands. Crafting a well-designed social media strategy has become paramount in our digital age. It is not only a means to connect with the target audience but also a powerful tool to drive revenue and elevate brand accounts. By strategically leveraging social media platforms, fashion brands can tap into the vast potential of these networks, effectively engaging with their audience and nurturing long-term brand loyalty. How to Market Your Brand in an Optimized Manner? Finalize Your Medium Facebook: Unleashing the Power of Local Promotion Facebook, the quintessential social networking site, has evolved to become business-friendly, catering to a wide range of commercial transactions.Its ability to effectively promote businesses in local communities sets it apart. By leveraging user data, Facebook delivers targeted ads based on users' preferences, liked posts, interactions, and comments. This offers a valuable opportunity for brands seeking to establish a deeper connection with their target audience and create a more comprehensive brand image. Twitter: The Realm of Word-of-Mouth Influence Twitter serves as a platform for live news, real-time updates, engaging discussions, and meme-sharing. Users flock to Twitter to discover random thoughts, insights from favorite writers, opinions of celebrities and public figures, and to connect with their social circles. In the fashion industry, commercials on Twitter are often concise, straightforward, and accompanied by visually appealing images that capture the essence of the brand. The "Twitter effect" has been observed, suggesting that microblogging word-of-mouth shared through platforms like Twitter influences consumers' post-purchase evaluations and early product adoption behaviors. Instagram: The Holy Grail of Fashion and Lifestyle When it comes to the world of fashion, Instagram reigns supreme. It has become an integral platform where fashion magic unfolds on a daily basis. Celebrities endorse renowned fashion brands through captivating posts, and viewers are enticed to explore further by expanding captions or tapping on enticing photos. Fashion brands use this opportunity to drive traffic to their Instagram pages or website landing pages, enticing visitors with discounts and attractive offers. Instagram provides diverse avenues for selling products, including single posts, sponsored ads, and engaging Instagram Stories. It is the social media platform where fashion-conscious individuals converge, scrolling through their feeds while savoring breakfast or indulging in a bit of social media exploration before bedtime. For fashion companies, Instagram represents the ideal realm for social media marketing, offering a global stage accessible anytime, anywhere. Influencer Marketing In the high fashion world, renowned brands are increasingly recognizing the profound impact of strategic PR campaigns. Far from being a mere expenditure, these campaigns serve as powerful tools to elevate branding, enhance visibility, and ultimately generate substantial financial gains. To amplify their reach and bolster sales, these esteemed fashion houses are turning to a coveted ally: influencers. Although some may raise an eyebrow, influencers have emerged as invaluable assets for fashion firms' social media marketing endeavors. Astonishingly, a staggering 49% of discerning consumers now place their trust in these influential figures for product recommendations. Through captivating video content, influencers possess the remarkable ability to sway their audience's purchasing power. From luxurious vacation escapades that exude effortless elegance, to step-by-step makeup tutorials that unveil the secrets of flawless beauty, these fashion mavens seamlessly blend styling recommendations and product evaluations. The result? A profound impact on consumer behavior, propelling fashion-forward individuals towards desired purchases and coveted fashion treasures. A truly groundbreaking example of influencer marketing brilliance unfolds when the pinnacle of luxury fashion, Prada, forges an extraordinary alliance with none other than Lil Miquela—an extraordinary American robotic persona. Conceived by the ingenious minds of Trevor McFedries and Sara DeCou in 2016, this captivating It-Girl has amassed a staggering 2.5 million devoted followers, attesting to her undeniable pull in the digital realm. In a momentous partnership, Lil Miquela assumes the reins of Prada's illustrious Instagram account, casting an enchanting spell over the virtual landscape as Milan Fashion Week unfurls its grand tapestry. Change Your Approach:Add Videos! If you wish to master the art of captivating an audience's attention, you have to understand that it rests in the seamless fusion of visual splendor and concise storytelling. The current culture of content consumption is based on mindless scrolling that plagues our social media feeds. Video reigns supreme as the medium that effortlessly captivates and enthralls. Unlike lengthy textual narratives, it possesses an inherent ease of absorption, allowing fashion brands to seize their audience's interest promptly within seconds. The key to triumph in the realm of social media lies in distilling information into bite-sized yet aesthetic snippets—sufficiently engaging to hold viewers spellbound. Relevancy is the sacred ingredient that must flavor your content. Through the power of video, your fashion brand acquires a resonant voice, empowering you to respond to the ever-evolving tapestry of breaking news, customer trends, and viral sensations. The most illustrious of brands master the art of real-time strategies, adroitly transforming themselves into a living social discourse. Elegantly intertwined with recurring hashtags that beckon to diverse customer demographics, these campaigns effortlessly spark conversations, breathing life into the very fabric of social discourse. As a fashion luminary, your aim is to ignite fervent discussions, and there is no better way to achieve this than by expertly aligning your videos with the pulse of the present. Try Your Theories Out A/B testing is a valuable research method in the fashion industry to compare different versions of content and determine audience preferences. When it comes to leveraging social media for brand promotion, A/B testing proves highly beneficial. It helps fashion brands optimize their content strategy by experimenting with variations in copy, photos, videos, headlines, and other elements that may be uncertain. By conducting A/B tests, brands can uncover the types of content that spark meaningful discussions among followers and those that fail to engage. This valuable insight allows for fine-tuning of content to align with audience preferences, fostering genuine interaction and connection. A/B testing serves as a compass, guiding fashion brands toward captivating content that drives engagement and strengthens their presence on social media platforms. Embracing this enlightening approach, brands can unleash the power of data to craft compelling narratives, cultivate loyalty, and achieve unparalleled success in the ever-evolving digital landscape. Focus on Your Branding The quest to enhance brand awareness is a common aspiration among all marketers. However, devising effective strategies to achieve this goal can be daunting. To aid you in building a robust social media brand presence, consider these tactics, business examples, and actionable steps. Gone are the days when branding solely relied on logos and colors. Today, it encompasses a holistic approach that encompasses tone, imagery, and target audience. Measuring its impact can be challenging as the success of such branding efforts is more qualitative than quantitative. Nonetheless, by refining your social media branding, you can gauge results through key indicators like engagement, mentions, and share of voice. Fashion brands can further employ strategies such as regular audience surveys to assess their brand recognition, identify target demographics effectively reached, and ascertain if the perception of their brand aligns with their desired objectives. By diligently incorporating these insights into your social media endeavors, you can gradually amplify your brand's presence in the digital sphere. Remember, it's not merely about disseminating content but also crafting a cohesive and resonant brand narrative. Through strategic branding efforts and astute analysis of engagement metrics, fashion brands can forge deeper connections, foster brand loyalty, and solidify their position in the ever-evolving landscape of social media. Track Your Results Measuring the outcomes of your social media campaigns is crucial for fashion brands. They help you design your strategy for your future ventures. Utilizing the analytics tools provided by social media platforms allows you to assess the performance of your posts and videos. Additionally, leveraging tools like Google Analytics helps track website traffic from direct clicks on social media posts. By analyzing these metrics, you can gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns in driving engagement and increasing website visits. Furthermore, analytics provide insights into the popularity and effectiveness of different versions of ads or posts, enabling you to refine your strategies and focus on content that resonates with your audience, driving sales and brand growth. For fashion brands, investing in social media marketing is of great importance, as it serves as an ideal channel to amplify brand awareness among the target audience. While building a brand reputation on social media requires time and patience, employing the aforementioned tactics sets you on the right path toward developing a strong online brand presence. Remember, success in social media branding is an ongoing journey that requires continuous monitoring, analysis, and adaptation. By staying attuned to analytics and employing effective strategies, fashion brands can cultivate a compelling online brand identity and establish a lasting connection with their audience. In Conclusion The world of fashion and social media is that of vibrancy and superficiality. What you see is what you buy, hence, making what you portray yourself and your brand to be very significant in the consumer’s perception. It becomes imperative to measure the outcomes of social media campaigns, leveraging powerful analytics tools to gain invaluable insights. By delving into the wealth of data provided by social media platforms and tools like Google Analytics, you can unravel the performance of their posts, videos, and ads. This knowledge empowers them to refine their strategies, optimize content, and drive engagement while keeping a keen eye on the ultimate goal—increasing sales and brand growth. Remember, your social media journey is not limited to one campaign or one moment. It is an ongoing process of honing your brand identity, nurturing connections, and sparking conversations that resonate with your audience. With each step, you can craft an authentic and captivating brand narrative that stands out amidst the digital noise. As you begin to embrace newer possibilities, let Saffron Edge be your trusted partner on this exhilarating journey. Our team of experts is ready to guide you through the ever-changing social media landscape, ensuring your brand shines the brightest, and captures the hearts of your audience. If you are ready to take your fashion brand to new heights, contact us today. ...
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