Tag: marketing

Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses

You know that today’s market demands every advantage you can get for your organization to succeed.

So what can you do to gain an edge?

Dive into the world of influencer marketing.

Influencer marketing for small business is one of the most powerful marketing methods available for small companies. With more than 4.26 billion social media users across the world in 2021, it’s no wonder that influencers are used by small and large businesses alike to promote their products.

But what is influencer marketing, and how can it actually help your business?

Goal Setting for Small Business Influencer Campaigns

Influencer marketing is the process of working with well-known social media personalities to promote your business. Before you get started with an influencer, first ask yourself: what are my goals?

When it comes to influencer marketing, the biggest mistake you can make is to have an unclear campaign goal.

Think about it: if you post without a plan, you’ll have a hard time explaining to an influencer what you want to accomplish, let alone analyzing your campaign’s success afterward.

That’s why it’s a good idea to understand the purpose of your campaign. What are your marketing goals? If your purpose is to increase followers, the strategy will look different than if you want to boost engagement or generate leads.

Physical goals, like higher sales or increased traffic to your business, should be included in your campaign plan. Remember, the whole point of influencer marketing is to help you make more money.

Once you have clear campaign goals, it’s time to connect with influencers.

Influencers: Not Just for Big Businesses

You don’t have to own a giant corporation to benefit from using influencers in a marketing campaign. In fact, influencer marketing can be a huge boost to your small business campaign!

Build awareness around your brand by allowing influencers to use their voices to spread your message. Through their own pages, each influencer has cultivated audiences with similar interests. With 10k-100k followers, even a micro-influencer can help grow your base at a reasonable price.

By working with influencers, you also gain access to new audiences at a fraction of the price of traditional marketing banners.

How much more effective is influencer marketing? On average, brands earn over $5 for every $1 spent on an influencer marketing campaign. That’s 11x the ROI of using traditional banner advertisements!

Finding the Right Influencers for your Business

So you’ve got your campaign goals set. Now what?

The next step is to find the influencer that fits best with your campaign. When researching influencers, the best influencer marketing platform for small businesses is Instagram, with 79% of brands considering it the most important platform for them. However, Tik Tok is a rising star in the social media world and could eventually become the next top dog. As of January 2022, Tik Tok has 1 billion monthly active users who spend an average of 850 minutes on the app each month!

With so many influencers online, it can appear overwhelming to find one to work with. Don’t let that hold you back, though! There are a few easy ways to narrow down your search.

Search your own social media pages:

  • People who are already interested in your brand will be more passionate about collaboration.
  • It will also have a more natural feel when a collaboration is announced.
  • Look for people who consistently comment on your posts.
  • Check and see if your account is tagged in posts. Anyone who regularly engages with your brand is a potential candidate.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask your audience.
  • Framed in the right way, like with a question sticker or poll, you can find an influencer and increase follower engagement at the same time.

Search hashtags related to your business:

  • Don’t have a big following? That’s okay! Influencers in your niche are already broadcasting their interest in products similar to yours.

Peek at the competition:

  • Work smarter, not harder! If you have competition, look through their social media accounts for influencers.

Review Your Influencer Options

By now, you’ve combed through your account, searched hashtags, and even took a peek at the audiences of the competition to find influencers. Are you ready to reach out? Not quite yet.

Before contacting your list of influencers, you take some time to inspect their accounts on a deeper level. Also known as influencer targeting, being selective with who you choose to work with is key to any successful influencer marketing campaign.

Make sure that the influencer’s audience is similar to yours. What is their geographic location? What is their age? Do they speak the same language as your market demographic? The goal here is to discover where your audiences overlap with each other.

Next, confirm that your potential influencers are legit. This is one of the few instances where the phrase ‘fake it till you make it’ is counterintuitive. Currently, followers can be bought to artificially inflate audience numbers. Thankfully, there are a few ways to detect “fake” followers:

Demographics. Look at where an influencer’s followers are located. Overall, are they in the same place as the influencer?

  • Check how many of their followers have profile photos. How many followers have names that consist solely of random numbers and letters? These are all indicators of a phony following.

Engagement. In addition to the size of an influencer’s audience, you need to pay close attention to engagement rates.

  • A huge following is useless unless that audience is engaged. High engagement rates mean followers are tuning in and taking action.
  • To calculate an engagement rate, take the number of likes or comments on an influencer’s posts, divide it by their number of followers and then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
  • In general, you want to see at least 2-3% engagement for a worthwhile influencer. 5% engagement is considered great, while anything above 10% is viral and likely some stellar content creation.

Content. The last thing you want to double-check is the content style and quality of the influencers on your list.

  • Do they align with your brand?
  • Which influencers deliver high-quality content?
  • What are their videos like?
  • Are they high-end videos, or do they look like they were put together by an amateur?
  • Ask questions like these when considering using influencer marketing for your small business.

Influencer Marketing Platforms for Small Businesses

As influencer marketing grows in popularity and scale, it can be difficult for small businesses to navigate these waters alone. That’s why so many companies are turning to influencer marketing platforms for small businesses

These platforms are designed to take the legwork out of the influencer review process.

Right now, the best influencer marketing platform for small business is Upfluence. Upfluence has tons of information on influencers and their relevant statistics. Users can search for influencers easily with their followers, interests, and engagement all available in one spot.

Don’t worry if Upfluence isn’t for you: there’s more than one influencer marketing platform for small business: in fact, there are quite a few! Sparktoro is a great audience research tool. Brandbassador is another influencer marketing platform for small e-commerce businesses, connecting them to potential influencers that can serve as brand ambassadors for their product, increasing their reach.

Another potential option is influencer engagement marketplaces, where businesses can post the type of needs they have and influencers can reach out if they think they can be a good fit.

Don’t want to deal with the hassle at all? I don’t blame you. Thankfully, there are full service influencer marketing agencies for small businesses as well!

An influencer marketing agency for small business works at all levels of the influencer collaboration process, including:

  • Set the target audience for your campaign.
  • Locate the right influencer for the job.
  • Build a relationship with the influencer
  • Set ideal campaign goal strategies
  • Help influencers to create better content
  • Monitor the campaign

Whether you go with an influencer marketing platform or agency, or if you decide to work in-house, you’ll still benefit from knowing how to reach out and work with influencers.

How to Start Working with Influencers

Now that you or your agency has found influencers to work with, it’s time to reach out.

A good rule of thumb is to check their account or webpage for an email contact. Make sure you introduce yourself personally so that they feel like they know who they’re talking to. This should make them more comfortable and willing to ask questions about your project.

Most professional influencers have a media kit of some kind. Asking for one is a great way to see if you are working with a serious influencer.

Once you’ve made introductions, talk about your campaign. Explain the direction of the campaign and be as transparent as possible about the timeline for the project, important dates, and rates.

Instagram direct messaging

What to Avoid When Reaching Out

As with any endeavor, there are certain practices that should be avoided when pursuing influencer marketing for a small business. For example, never use a bot to contact influencers. They come off as impersonal at best and spam at worst, pushing away potential collaborations. Instagram also penalizes bot behavior, which is why it’s best to avoid this practice.

Never reach out via a comment on a post. It’s unprofessional, so instead, stick to email or direct messages.

Another thing to do is never copy and paste the exact same message to every influencer. Again, it comes off as spammy and unprofessional. A better way to approach outreach is to add a few personal touches to your introductory message for each influencer.

Want to go that extra mile? Add some details about their page or their work. To get influencers to work with you, emphasize how they personally would be a great asset to your campaign. Trust me, it goes a long way.

The last thing to avoid is unrelated influencers. What good does talking to a cooking influencer do if you are running a campaign about 3D printing?

Examples of Instagram captions.

When it comes to the world of influencer marketing for small business, unrelated influencers are a waste of time! Confirm that potential collaborators fit your brand.

Best Practices for Small Business Influencer Campaigns

By now you’ve set up your campaign, found an influencer and are ready to start collaborating. Here are a few tips to help your campaign flourish.

  • As you enter into negotiations, you’ll want to remain as open and transparent as possible. While rates vary, clear expectations of the influencer should always be made.
  • How much you will pay, tasks and deadlines are mapped out ahead of time to avoid confusion down the road.
  • Especially with larger projects, think about creating a formal contract for your influencer that outlines the requirements of the project.
  • Share your resources! The easier you make it for influencers, the better results you’ll get. If you have a brand style guide that contains your logo, brand colors and taglines, influencers can use that to hit the ground running.
  • Communicate your campaign goals, as well as any frequently asked questions about your campaign to streamline things.
  • Track campaign metrics to ensure your project is reaching the goals you set out to achieve.

Once your campaign is complete, share the results with your influencers. This not only strengthens professional co-working relationships but can also get influencers to work with you in the future. In addition, you might also get insightful feedback from your influencer team. Used wisely, this can consistently improve future campaigns!

You should note that the FTC requires disclosures of endorsed relationships with businesses any time there is a material connection. This includes payments and gifts. When developing campaigns, make sure you are compliant with all laws and regulations.

FAQs

What are the types of influencers?

Influencers can be broken into groups by follower size. Nano-influencers have 1k-10k followers. Micro-influencers have a 10k-100k audience size, while macro-influencers are followed by 100k-1M people. The largest type is a mega-influencer, which is a person with over 1 million followers.

Can I pay an influencer with products if I don’t have a big budget?

That’s not a problem at all! Gifting products through ambassadorships or referral programs is pretty common among smaller brands. Brandbassador is a prime example of an influencer marketing platform for small business that helps manage ambassadors for your brand.

What is the benefit of using an influencer for my small business?

Working with an influencer can boost your campaigns, increase brand awareness, give you access to new audiences and expand your base. 

What should I be cautious of when working with influencers?

When it comes to using influencers for your brand, do your research! Make sure you are working with an influencer who has a real following, aligns with your brand, and has the skills needed to reach your campaign goals.

What can the expected ROI be when working with influencers? 

On average, brands earn over $5 for every $1 spent on an influencer marketing campaign. That’s 11x the ROI of traditional banner ads!

Conclusion

Adding influencers to your marketing campaigns can be the next big game changer for your business. However, with so many moving parts, it can be tough to even get influencers to work with you.

Let our agency know if you want help with your next influencer marketing campaign and we’ll be your guide.

Which influencers in your audience fit your brand?

What Is Search Engine Marketing?

What if I told you there’s a simple way to get noticed online that anyone can use?

Have you guessed what I’m talking about yet? It’s search engine marketing.

Although it’s sometimes confused with SEO, SEM marketing relates to your paid advertising efforts like Google Ads to improve the visibility of a website or product in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and helps establish brand recognition. 

Search engine marketing takes the form of responsive, Google shopping, and service ads. You also see them as text ads, like this one:

Google search results for the keyword "leonardo london city hotel"

However, it’s not quite as simple as paying for an ad and hoping for the best. As an advertiser, you need to have:

  • A targeted strategy behind your paid advertising campaigns
  • An understanding of your competitors
  • A method for carefully selecting your keywords and phrases that appear in the ads
  • An effective ad campaign

Since SEM marketing is open to everyone, provided their budget permits, vast numbers of agencies use this method to get results, and they’re happy to spend large amounts of money on it. Research from the State of PPC 2022 shows that agencies surveyed pay anything from $5,000 to over $20 million monthly on PPC.

The Fundamentals of Search Engine Marketing

Just like most other forms of online promotion, SEM marketing works best when you get the fundamentals right. Where do you start, and what do you need to consider? Hold on while I cover some of the basics:

  • Do your research: Your ads are only as effective as your keyword research. Without this, you can’t target your ideal customers, and you’ve little chance of converting click-throughs into customers. There are numerous free and paid-for tools you can use for finding keywords. Start with Ubersuggest for strong keyword ideas. Alternatively, you can use Google Trends to find out what’s hot.
The google trends overview page.
  • Set a budget: Next, you want to think about the cost. It’s easy to burn through your PPC budget if you’re not careful. However, by focusing on your Quality Score and concentrating on keyword relevance, you can keep your costs down.
  • Use keywords in other online content. For consistency, make sure you use relevant keywords on your website or landing page, too.
  • Target your ads: Who are your ideal customers and how can you reach them? Consider aspects like locations, timezones, devices they use, where you’re likely to find them online, etc.

Why Is Search Engine Marketing Important?

There are many reasons why SEM marketing is at the heart of many companies’ marketing plans. Its key advantages include:

  • It’s a great way to target potential customers who are already interested in your offer. You can specify the keywords you want your ads to target, so you only pay for clicks from people who are actually interested in what you’re selling.
  • SEM allows you to track your results closely. By using targeted keywords and analyzing the data collected by sites like Google Analytics, you can see which ads are working best and adjust your budget accordingly.
  • SEM marketing can help improve your website’s visibility and ranking on search engines quickly,This means more people see your website when they search for relevant terms.

Overall, search engine marketing is an effective and affordable way to reach more potential customers and grow your business.

However, perhaps you still need another reason to consider using this technique? Okay, so here it is:

Research shows there are at least 8.5 billion Google searches every day. If you want prospects to find you, SEM marketing gives you a pretty good chance of getting your ad in front of your ideal customers. 

How Does SEM Complement SEO?

SEM and SEO are two different aspects of online marketing, but they can work together to create a successful campaign.

SEO is the process of optimizing a website for search engines. This includes improving the website’s content, structure, and on-page elements like titles, metatags, and anchor text. Obviously, keywords and competitor research are a huge part of your digital marketing campaigns, too.

While SEO helps businesses attract more organic traffic from search engines, you’re playing the long game. Often, SEO takes time, and you can’t expect to get results overnight. However, if you’re patient and using an effective strategy, you should start to see an increase in traffic.

In contrast, SEM can provide immediate visibility for new or updated content, as well as by targeting specific keywords and phrases that you aren’t targeting through organic SEO. Additionally, you can use SEM to remarket/retarget previous website visitors, increasing the chances of them returning to your site and converting.

Search engine marketing can be a powerful tool in your online marketing arsenal and should be considered an important part of any comprehensive online marketing strategy.

You can get a better idea of how the two compare in terms of conversions, etc., from the image below:

A chart explaining the difference in conversion rate between SEO and SEM.

However, neither approach works well without a detailed plan, so ensure you get the basics right first.

How Does an Ad Auction Work?

You now know that search engine marketing involves paying for PPC ads through Google Ads, or similar. However, what about pricing?

Basically, an ad auction determines the price you pay for your advert. Let me explain some more.

In its simplest form, an ad auction is a process where advertisers compete against each other to place ads on web pages like Facebook or Google. The auction system determines how much each advertiser pays for their ad placement or the ‘ad rank’. Then, the search engine or site displays the highest bidders ad.

To participate in an ad auction, you must first create an account with a search engine marketing (SEM) provider, like Google, Bing. or Facebook.

With your account set up, you must create a campaign and add funds to your account. The next step is to create your ad, which involves writing text that describes your product/service, integrating keywords, and creating graphics.

Below is Google’s step-by-step guide explaining how it displays ads:

  • When a person searches, Google’s Ad system identifies ads with keywords matching the search.
  • Google’s system ignores ineligible ads. For example, if an ad targets a different location than the ones you’ve selected.
  • Next, Google displays ads with a high enough Ad Rank. This depends on ad quality, search context, bid price, budget, and keyword competition, along with other factors.

Google also states that highly relevant keywords and ads may still secure a higher position even if others have higher bids. 

Additionally, Google explains that each auction may have different results, and your ad position may fluctuate or may not show at all.

 How To Build A Strong Search Engine Marketing Strategy

There are many different components of a successful search engine marketing strategy, but following these key steps gives you a strong foundation you can adapt as you go:

1. First, identify your target audience, their demographics, and your goals. Who is your ideal customer? What do you want to achieve with your marketing campaign? Knowing this helps you determine which keywords to target and create relevant ads.

2. Next, create a budget and set realistic expectations. Although it’s often worthwhile, a search engine marketing campaign can cost you a lot of money. Make sure you have the resources to support it long-term.

3. Use keyword research to determine relevant keywords for your business. This targets your ads and optimizes your website for search engines. It’s a great idea to analyze your competitors’ keywords and the backlinks they’re creating, too.

4. Now, craft your adverts. Ensure you focus your adverts on your customers, highlight the features and benefits of your product/service, and include your chosen keywords.

5. Think beyond your ads. Your search engine marketing efforts don’t end with adverts. Ensure your ads lead to a high-quality, aesthetically pleasing website, which is consistent with your ads in tone and appearance.

6. Finally, track your SEM marketing efforts. This helps you can measure their effectiveness and make necessary adjustments. Use web analytics tools to track website visitors, clicks, conversions, and other key metrics.

Now let’s get into some of the finer points.

Best Practices for SEM

What are some best practices for search engine marketing? Begin by thinking of it as part of your entire marketing/business growth strategy, not as a separate entity. Think about how it fits in with everything else you’re doing and how SEM fits in overall. Then:

  • Align your SEM with your business goals: For example, do you want to increase click-throughs? Enhance conversions? Secure long-term customers? Once you know that, you can create your strategy around it.
  • Narrow down your audience: For instance, if you want customers in a certain location, geo-targeting is the way to go. By narrowing your ads’ targeting to a specific area, you can ensure that you’re hitting your desired demographic with your marketing efforts. This can be especially useful for small businesses focusing on a particular region or city.
  • Consider keyword intent: What is keyword intent? In a nutshell, it’s why someone is typing a particular keyword into a search engine.

Let me elaborate on this for a moment:

When it comes to SEM marketing, understanding keyword intent is core to your results. Without it, you’ve got less chance of succeeding because you don’t know what your customer wants. 

I know what you’re thinking, ‘How can I determine keyword intent?’ It’s OK, you don’t need to become a mind reader! Just do the following:

  • Look at the search results. What type of content is ranking for your chosen keyword? Is it a blog post, a product page, or something else entirely?
  • Analyze which keywords people use to discover your website; any good analytics program should tell you this. What words are they typing into Google? What do these searches tell you? Are they looking for information, or are they ready to buy? Understanding keyword intent enables you to choose the right keywords to target and create content that meets the needs of your audience.
  • Finally, I can’t say this enough: track your search engine marketing results. Use analytics to determine which ads and keywords are most effective, and make changes to ensure that you’re reaching your target audience.

In addition, keep in mind that a successful SEM campaign requires ongoing optimization.

Common SEM Marketing Mistakes

Unfortunately, many businesses make common mistakes that can hurt their campaign results. I’m going to start with some of the most frequent search engine marketing errors. Here goes:

1. Not targeting the right keywords. One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is not targeting the right keywords. They may choose keywords that are too competitive or that don’t accurately reflect their business. Another common error is failing to consider keyword intent or the funnel stage.

2. Focusing on short-term results. Another common mistake is focusing on short-term results instead of long-term goals. SEM should be part of your entire marketing strategy, not a standalone tactic.

3. Creating poor quality, dull content. Badly written adverts that don’t engage potential customers damage your brand and may affect your ad rank.

4. Writing conflicting/confusing content. For example, your ad content may conflict with your website or landing page content. For instance, there may be conflicting tones or styles between the two. Keep to one style, tone, and language to create cohesiveness and enhance your branding.

5. Failing to A/B test. Could a change in one element boost your click-throughs or conversions? You don’t know unless you test.

Then there’s the more technical side. Not using all the tools available to you makes your job harder than it needs to be.

It’s vital that you understand that you don’t have to guess at it! Google has tools to help bolster and target your campaigns, such as conversion tracking, keyword tools, exact match modifiers, and campaign experiments for control group testing.

For instance, the Google Ads Editor is an important tool for search engine marketing (SEM). The editor helps manage ads, keywords, and campaigns. It’s easy to use and makes managing ads a breeze. The editor also makes it easy to make changes and track results.

Finally, don’t overlook your quality score. I’ve already mentioned it briefly, but it’s worth repeating. Ignore this, and it doesn’t matter how good your product/service is. 

Quality score is important for two reasons: it helps you save money on advertising costs, and it helps you get better ad placement. If you’re looking to improve your Google Ads campaigns, focus on improving your quality score.

There are a few things you can do to improve it:

  • Make sure you’re using relevant keywords in your ads
  • Write interesting and engaging ads
  • Target the right audience

FAQs

What is the Difference Between SEM and SEO?

Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are two different things, but they both work to improve your site’s visibility on search engines. 

SEM coves paid search advertising, such as Google Ads, while SEO is the practice of optimizing your website content and structure so that your site appears higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

What Are the Benefits of Search Engine Marketing?

The most obvious benefits are increased visibility, which can equal more leads, conversions, and customers.

Search engine marketing is a great way to reach out to new customers and attract them to your business. When you use search engine marketing techniques, you can target potential customers who are already interested in what you have to offer.

Conclusion

SEM marketing is a great way to improve your website’s visibility and increase traffic. It can help you reach your target audience more effectively and boost your online presence. By using SEM, you can grow your business and generate more leads.

It works well alongside other proven techniques, like SEO. However, it delivers some of the benefits that a search engine optimization campaign can’t, such as quicker visibility.

Whether you go with search engine marketing or SEO, it’s imperative that you have a strong strategy, avoid common mistakes, and track your results.

Does SEM marketing work well for you?

7 Marketing Lessons Learned from Billion Dollar Companies You’ve Never Heard Of

You’ve heard of Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and even Amazon. It doesn’t matter where you live in the world, the chances are you have heard of those companies.

But have you ever heard of Danaher, Fortive, AmerisourceBergen, Centene, or Archer Daniels Midland?

I bet you haven’t heard of any of those companies.

These companies aren’t small either. Here’s how much revenue each of them generates a year:

  • Danaher – $29.45 billion
  • Fortive – $5.25 billion
  • AmerisourceBergen – $213 billion
  • Centene – $118 billion
  • Archer Daniels Midland – $85.25 billion

Now that’s a lot of revenue. These companies didn’t get to where they are by accident either. And although they might not be as “sexy” as Nike or Apple, they still generate a lot of cash.

We don’t work with all the brands that I mentioned above at my ad agency, but we do work with some of them as well as dozens of other billion-dollar companies you have never heard of.

And although our primary objective is to help our clients (which we do, hence we were awarded agency of the year and the 21st fastest growing company by Inc Magazine), we also learn a lot by consulting with over a hundred publicly traded companies.

Here are some of the marketing insights that you aren’t thinking about that billion-dollar companies leverage on a regular basis.

Lesson #1: The riches are not in the niches

Marketers always talk about finding a niche and how it is easier to market in a niche.

That is totally wrong. It’s not easier to market in a niche.

Think of it this way… what’s easier to do… rank number 1 for the term “credit cards” or “heatmap analytics tool”.

It of course is easier to rank for terms like “heatmap analytics tool”, which funny enough is what one of my former companies does.

But what happens if very few people ever search for terms like heatmap analytics? Sure you’ll get high rankings so you could claim it is easier to do marketing for that product, but if you barely get any traffic and sales from that term does it really matter?

See, rankings don’t mean much. All that really matters is are your marketing efforts paying off.

To keep it simple, are your marketing efforts driving you revenue profitably?

And although niche industries aren’t as competitive, it is harder to generate sales or even traffic. But if you go broad and you go after industries that are applicable to everyone, such as health insurance, it’s much easier to get traffic.

Sure you probably won’t get anywhere near the amount of traffic as the competition, but even if you get 1/100th of the traffic you can still build a big business.

That’s why I don’t go after niches. I go after massive TAMs (Total Addressable Market).

And yes health insurance isn’t sexy but United Health Care, a company most people don’t think about, generates $287 billion dollars a year in revenue.

The bigger the market, the more customers, and the easier it is to make some money. Now, it will be harder for you to win and be the top dog within that industry but hey you don’t have to win in order to generate enough income to be happy.

A prime example of this is one of my friends used to have a best man speech website where he sold speeches to people. He ranked at the top of Google, was the most popular site within the space and he couldn’t figure out how to generate more than $200,000 a year.

Good income nonetheless, but when he put the same effort into the education space, he was nowhere near the most popular site, heck people took him for granted… but he was generating millions a year in profit with the same effort.

As Rich Barton (founder of Expedia and Zillow) once said, it takes the same effort to swing a home run as it does to hit a single or a double. So might as well swing for the fences every time.

Lesson #2: Easier to market multiple products

Similar to lesson number 1, your market size keeps expanding as you continually introduce more products.

The familiar big brands that you know of have many products.

Amazon has ecommerce, streaming, cloud computing, grocery stores, etc.

Google has search, android, self-driving cars, Nest, etc

Apple has phones, laptops, iPads, computers, headphones, etc.

But it isn’t just the well-known brands that have multiple products.

Look at how many business units Danaher has. Same with Fortive, they have tons of business units.

I can’t think of one multi-billion dollar company that I know that doesn’t have multiple products or services.

And if you can think of one, I bet they will have multiple product offers, it is just a question of when. It’s how successful companies continually grow. You have no choice but to expand.

So if you want to grow your traffic or sales, think about what other products you can start offering that your current customers would want.

You can then cross-sell, which should help on the revenue end. But you can also expand your marketing. Just think about all the new paid media or SEO campaigns you can kick off the moment you have more products to sell.

It’s one of the simplest ways to scale your growth.

Lesson #3: The best marketing is word-of-mouth marketing

I first started out in marketing learning SEO and become good at it (or at least I think I am decent at it).

I then got into social media marketing with Digg, which doesn’t really exist in its old form, but it used to drive 20,000 plus visitors to your site in a day if you got on the homepage.

Then I started to learn conversion optimization, email marketing, paid ads, and pretty much all forms of online marketing.

I always thought that you build big business through marketing. And to do well with that you have to take an omnichannel approach.

And although it helps it’s not how you grow into a billion-dollar business.

Luckily from working with some of these unknown multi-billion dollar companies, I’ve gotten to know many CMOs as well as CEOs of some of these companies.

When I ask them what’s their number one marketing channel, do you know what they all tell me?

It’s word-of-mouth marketing or variations of it. In essence, other people telling others about your company, your product, your service… it is how you win.

So then I went on to ask these people, how do you generate more word-of-mouth marketing? When I took all of their responses and aggregated the data, here is what people said were the top 3 ways of getting more word of mouth:

  1. Be in business for a long time – no matter what you are selling and no matter how great it is, word-of-mouth marketing doesn’t happen overnight. People need to be patient and give it 10 plus years for it to fully kick in.
  2. Have an amazing product or service – if your product is great you will have more word-of-mouth marketing. And if it is terrible you will either have little to no word-of-mouth marketing or even worse, you will have it but it will be people talking negatively about you.
  3. Build a big organization – having thousands of people work for you is marketing. Whether it is people listing your company on their LinkedIn or your employees telling other people about your company, having a big labor force working for you is a great way to spread your brand out to the masses.

Lesson #4: Ugly is sexy

Do you need a new pair of shoes? It would be nice to have the latest Jordan shoes, but do you really need them?

Do you need the new iPhone? Again it would be nice to have it, but I bet your old iPhone lets you order food, send text messages, make calls or even check your emails well enough.

Maybe the camera isn’t as good as the new phones, but I bet you don’t use your phone for high-end photography and more so just use it to take selfies… so the new camera isn’t really needed.

But what about industries like payroll? Do you think a business can just stop using its payroll provider?

Well if they do stop, their employees won’t be paid and they won’t have a business.

That’s why companies like Ceridian are so popular. Again, you probably haven’t heard of them but they generate $1.02 billion a year.

Why?

Because they provide payroll services. Businesses can’t just stop using them unless they want to have their employee go unpaid and be pissed at them.

And even if you choose not to use Ceridian for payroll, the chances are whoever you use, pays them for their tax infrastructure as they are one of two companies who help calculate tax information for payroll in the United States.

And building a system that helps calculate payroll tax payments in the United States is complicated. If you get it wrong there are penalties, which is a big liability for any company.

When building that system, you have to think about each state within the United States as well as each county and city as they all have their own tax rules which also constantly change.

In other words, there is a lot of money in building ugly businesses that people need.

You don’t see kids growing up talking about building software to help with payroll taxes. Instead, they talk about creating a new fashion brand or getting paid to be an influencer.

Lesson #5: the United States is not the center of the world

I live in the United States and love this country.

Yes, it has issues, but all countries have problems…

But the United States is by no means the center of the world. The majority of the 7.7 billion people in this world don’t live in the United States. They actually live in other countries.

At my ad agency NP Digital we have people who work with us all over the world. And we have offices in places like India, Brazil, Canada, Australia… and the list goes on and on.

We don’t have these offices for outsourcing as many people would assume. We have these offices to help people out with their marketing within those regions.

For example, why would companies like Cisco want to market to people in India? It’s a booming market.

Even my CEO, he was the president of a division within a publicly traded company. That division had over 4000 employees. And can you guess what percentage of their revenue came from the United States?

Roughly 26%. That means roughly 3/4 of their revenue was coming from regions outside of the United States.

Going global makes it easier for you to get more traffic because there is a bigger pool of people for you to target and in many cases, it is less competitive.

That was one of the instrumental strategies for our fast growth at NP Digital, in which we expanded globally (and we are still adding more regions).

We did this using this strategy. As it helped us get leads and traffic from countries all around the world.

Lesson #6: Your marketing is only as good as your team

Years ago I created a startup called KISSmetrics that failed.

It was a web analytics company that raised $16.4 million from investors.

I had an investor who sat on our board named Phil Black from True Ventures. Overall awesome guy and I loved him as a board member.

I remember him continually giving one piece of advice…

As an entrepreneur you don’t have to figure everything out or do everything on your own, instead you need to hire amazing people. People who have done what you are looking to accomplish and have done it before in your exact industry.

In other words, Phil kept pushing us to hire amazing people for every role.

For example, if you are an ad agency and you need to do better with sales, hire the head of sales from one of your competitors who you know is crushing it. It may cost you a lot of money, but there is a higher chance that they will know exactly what you need to do in order to succeed.

Versus just hiring a head of sales from a random industry because they won’t know your industry and what they need to do in order to succeed.

I wish I understood the power of what Phil was trying to teach to me when we founded the company in 2008. Because if I truly understood it, I would be much further along in my career.

With NP Digital we took that advice to the extreme. Our CEO was the President of iProspect, the largest performance marketing agency (aka a competitor).

Our head of client services came from there as well.

Our COO was in charge of all performance marketing fulfillment at Dentsu, which meant she was in charge of over $1 billion in revenue.

My co-founder and I continually look for the best people. As that is the way to really grow fast.

That’s what large corporations do.

You need to also do that with your marketing. From the person running your marketing division to each individual player such as your SEO or paid media manager.

Do they have industry experience? If not, they may not perform that well.

Did they continually get promotions at their previous jobs? If they didn’t then they may not be as great as they claim to be. It doesn’t matter how good people claim to be, if they didn’t continually get promotions at their previous jobs it means that others didn’t find them as valuable as they claim to be.

These are 2 things to consider when hiring marketers or any role for that matter of the fact. Yes, you want people who are a cultural fit, but you also want people who worked for competitors and continually got promotions and raises in the past because it usually means they did a good job.

Lesson #7: You have to build a brand to do well in the long run

What do you think the most popular search term is on Google within the United States?

Common, take a guess…

It’s actually the term “Facebook”.

Guess what the second most popular search term is?

It’s the term “YouTube”.

The 3rd most popular search term is Amazon. The 5th is Google, 6th is Walmart, and the 7th is Gmail.

Notice a trend here?

The most popular search terms, not just in the United States, but globally tended to be brands.

Just look at the brand Nike. In the United States, it is searched 6 million times a month. And the term shoes is only searched 1.2 million times a month. In other words, Nike gets more searches for the brand each month than the whole category of shoes.

Now, what do you think my most popular search term is that drives traffic to my business?

It’s actually not Neil Patel, it’s Ubersuggest.

Our second most popular term is another brand that we own… Answer the Public.

And the third most popular search term for us is my personal brand, Neil Patel.

To build a big business you need to build a brand.

SEO will only get you so far. Paid ads will only get you so far. To win people must love your product or service if you expect your brand to be big and do well.

If you are struggling to build a brand keep in mind that it just takes time. Don’t expect the world of results in the first 3 years. You’ll have to give it 5 plus years for your brand to start taking off.

Here is an article that I wrote that can help you build a brand and here is a video that can also help you out.

Conclusion

Learning from brands like Apple is great. They are an amazing company. Heck, I’m writing this blog post on a Macbook.

But it’s hard for people to replicate the magic Apple has with their business and even marketing.

On the flip side, it’s much easier for you to replicate the marketing strategies that these unknown multi-billion companies are leveraging because they work for all business types and they aren’t tough strategies to implement.

So, what other strategies have you learned from companies that many of us aren’t familiar with?

Omnichannel Marketing: How You Can Use it to Reach More People Than Ever Before

Marketing used to be a lot less complicated. Today, users interact with brands on multiple devices and separate platforms—often simultaneously. Even in-person and online shopping, which used to be distinct events, are no longer completely separate due to the rise of trends like buy-online-pick-up-in-person. Consumer expectations are shifting as well. Today’s customers expect to receive … Continue reading Omnichannel Marketing: How You Can Use it to Reach More People Than Ever Before

Omnichannel Marketing: How You Can Use it to Reach More People Than Ever Before

Marketing used to be a lot less complicated.

Today, users interact with brands on multiple devices and separate platforms—often simultaneously. Even in-person and online shopping, which used to be distinct events, are no longer completely separate due to the rise of trends like buy-online-pick-up-in-person.

Consumer expectations are shifting as well.

Today’s customers expect to receive the same service and brand experience whether they’re scrolling Facebook, reading their email, or shopping in a store.

How do you give your customers what they want and deliver a better experience? With omnichannel marketing.

What Is Omnichannel Marketing?

Omnichannel marketing provides users with a seamless marketing experience across all platforms, channels, and devices throughout the marketing funnel. The core goal of omnichannel marketing is to place the customer at the center of all marketing strategies and provide a consistent, seamless experience.

Omnichannel marketing is growing in popularity, with 67 percent of e-commerce companies saying omnichannel is “very” or “quite” important to their business.

While implementation of an omnichannel strategy can vary between businesses, it can be identified by key goals, including:

  • personalized content and ads informed by past interactions with specific users
  • consistent branding, tone, and vision across all platforms
  • allowing users to continue their purchase path seamlessly, even if they switch platforms or devices

Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing

When implemented correctly, omnichannel marketing offers a host of benefits for both brands and their customers. According to Invesp, companies using omnichannel strategies retain 89 percent of their customers, while brands that don’t keep just 33 percent of their customers.

Several other benefits include:

  • Improved user experience: Omnichannel marketing centers the customer experience, providing a better experience for customers no matter where they interact with your brand.
  • Better brand awareness: Creating a consistent experience across platforms (including in-store) makes it easier for customers to recognize your brand.
  • Improved business data: Omnichannel tracks interactions across platforms, channels, and even in-person sales. This highlights which campaigns (and channels) are most effective at driving leads and sales.
  • Increased sales and revenue: Marketers that use three or more channels in one campaign see a 287 percent higher purchase rate. Omnichannel campaigns also have a higher order rate.
A bar graph showing the difference in order rate between omnichannel and single-channel marketing campaigns.

Examples of Omnichannel Marketing

Today, most brands realize customers engage with them on multiple channels. However, implementing an omnichannel strategy can feel overwhelming. Let’s look at a few brands that are getting it right.

Starbucks

Starbucks is more than just an in-person coffee shop and remote working haven.

They also offer online ordering through their mobile rewards app. Customers can upload money to the app, place curb-side orders, and even claim rewards.

An image of the Starbucks app's homepage.
An example of effective omnichannel marketing from Starbucks.

How do they improve omnichannel with their app?

First, Starbucks offers rewards to app users, which encourages them to use the app. The app regularly pushes special rewards, such as earning extra points for ordering in the next two days or trying a new drink.

When customers use the app, it allows Starbucks to track in-store behavior—data they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. The app then offers recommendations and promotes seasonal drinks to drive sales.

Disney

Disney is a pioneer in omnichannel marketing. The brand has expertly navigated combining in-person, online, and television marketing for decades.

The brand’s omnichannel marketing really stands out in its My Disney Experience platform for visiting their park. Users can access the tool via app or browser and buy tickets, book hotels, reserve restaurants, schedule activities, coordinate with other users, and even store photos they take at the park.

Once users arrive at the park, the built-in GPS helps them find locations in the park, see real-time wait times at rides, and access the Disney MagicPass, a contactless version of the MagicBand. The app also promotes discounts, like 25 percent off hotel stays for Disney+ subscribers.

Providing a seamless experience from online to in-person helps make customers’ Disney adventure even more magical.

Warby Parker

Warby Parker, a well-known eye-glass company, was originally only available online. In recent years, they began to leverage omnichannel marketing. In addition to allowing customers to order up to five pairs of glasses to try on at home (one of their most popular offers,) they now have many brick-and-mortar stores.

An image of Warby Parker's homepage showing some glasses.
An example of effective omnichannel marketing from Warby Parker.

However, they didn’t just create stores to sell more glasses—they’re committed to combining data from in-person interactions and online interactions. Warby Parker co-founder Dave Gilboa shared:

“We really focused on providing a great online experience but an offline as well. We have 70 stores and we’ll have 90 by the end of the year. We can see a clear path to several hundred stores in addition to a thriving ecommerce business.”

How does it work? Customers can favorite frames on the app, which in-store associates can then access to help them complete the purchase in person.

Shoppers can also try on glasses in the store and take a photo, which is converted into a link and sent to their email to complete the purchase online.

Omnichannel Marketing Strategies

Omnichannel marketing allows businesses to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right moment, driving sales, increasing customer loyalty, and providing a better customer experience.

Getting it right is no easy task. Here are five steps to building a better omnichannel strategy.

Map the Customer Journey

Omnichannel marketing creates a seamless customer journey. To do that, you need to understand the path your customers take when making a purchase.

Creating a customer journey map helps you better understand where customers interact with your brand, provides insights into their pain points, and makes it easier to create an effective omnichannel marketing strategy.

Here’s how to create your map:

  1. Identify your customers: Identity who your customers are, where they live, and other demographic information. Look in your CRM or use a current buyer persona.
  2. Understand their pain points: What drives your customers to make a purchase? What challenges do they want to solve?
  3. Find out where they hang out: What platforms do your customers use during the purchase process?
  4. Track the path of conversion: How do most of your customers convert? Keep in mind their path is unlikely to be straight. They might visit your in-store and then convert online, or view your Instagram reels and then visit your store. Aim to define the most common paths.

Once you’ve created your customer journey map, look at your conversion tracking data to find areas where customers are dropping off. Depending on how you track, this might be in Google Analytics or your sales platform. Customer satisfaction surveys may also provide insights.

Create a Consistent Brand Presence

Creating a consistent brand presence is a small part of omnichannel marketing, but it is crucial. Make sure all platforms use similar branding, tone, colors, and marketing messages.

Next, look at customer surveys (or create one!) and reviews to find out where customers aren’t happy. For example, you might find your website is too hard to use or your app is glitchy. Users might open every email you send but never engage on social media.

Once you see where your message doesn’t resonate, make plans to improve it. Does your audience prefer a different format, or more helpful content?

Remember, the goal is to be consistent, not identical. For example, your website might offer live chat—that doesn’t mean your social media channels need it, too. Instead, make sure the information, including things like what is in stock, is consistent where it is available. You don’t want a customer to see something is in-stock online and then show up to the store to find it is sold out.

Use Omnichannel to Increase Personalization

A report by Segment found that 71 percent of consumers feel frustrated when their shopping experience is impersonal. Even more striking, 91 percent of customers are more likely to shop with brands that deliver personally relevant offers and recommendations.

You can’t ignore personalization—it’s increasingly popular and customers expect it. Luckily, omnichannel marketing can help you leverage the strategy more effectively.

Personalization is the key to a successful omnichannel strategy, but it’s about a lot more than using the name tag in your email marketing. Rather, omnichannel marketing leverages data about customers to deliver ultra-relevant marketing messages at just the right time.

What does omnichannel personalization look like? While it can vary by brand and industry, here are a few examples:

  • A customer adds an item to their cart, but they don’t check out. Later, you send an email with a link to their cart, a discount, and a reminder to complete their purchase.
  • Using segmentation, you email different product recommendations to customers who purchase children’s clothing versus adult workout clothing.
  • A customer tells an e-commerce chatbot what types of cleaning products they are interested in. Later, a customized popup promotes a special on the products that the customer is interested in.

Omnichannel personalization takes personalization to the next level by delivering relevant messages across platforms.

Leverage Technology to Automation Omnichannel

Omnichannel marketing requires gathering and leveraging data—and developing different funnel paths for different types of customers. The problem is most marketing teams don’t have the time to manage this process manually.

Omnichannel marketing tools make it easier to gather and leverage data to build a better user experience. Your stack will vary by channel, industry, and the size of your company, but there are a few key platforms to consider.

  • Data collection: Omnichannel marketing uses data to understand customers’ paths and deliver a better experience. If you don’t have Google Analytics 4 set up, now is the time. Consider using a BI tool like Power BI or Google Data Studio to analyze data and create reports.
  • Marketing automation: Whether you want to engage more on social media, send scheduled emails, or move users through the conversion process, you need marketing automation tools to build an effective omnichannel marketing strategy. Many tools you already use, like email marketing, CRMs, and social media management, have built-in automation features. I also recommend a tool like Zapier to build custom triggers.
  • Chatbot automation: Want to be there for your customers even in the middle of the night? A well-designed chatbot script can answer questions, deliver resources, and qualify leads while you sleep.
  • Segmentation platform: One of the key benefits of omnichannel marketing is the ability to offer a more personalized experience. To do that, you have to segment your audience. Depending on your industry, this might mean using dynamic landing pages or a tool like Omnisend to send more personalized emails, pop-ups, and even push notifications.

Test and Optimize Your Omnichannel Campaigns

Building an omnichannel strategy isn’t a one-time endeavor. To be effective, you must constantly test, retest, and tweak your strategy. Over time consumer behaviors change, and you need to be ready.

The segmentation tools I mentioned in the previous section often offer testing features, or you can use Google’s Optimize or Optimizely to test audiences, content, landing pages, and even button color changes.

If you’re new to testing, this guide to A/B testing will get you started. It can feel overwhelming at first, but I think you’ll uncover really interesting data if you stick with it. Testing and optimizing drive ROI, so you’ll build a better campaign.

Omnichannel Marketing Frequently Asked Questions

What are the benefits of an omnichannel marketing strategy?

Omnichannel marketing provides a better user experience, increases retention rates, improves data collection, and makes connecting online and offline experiences easier. Together, all those benefits drive sales and ROI.

What is the difference between multichannel marketing and omnichannel marketing?

The biggest difference is that omnichannel marketing focuses on improving the customer experience, while multichannel marketing focuses on increasing customer engagement. Omnichannel also recognizes that customers may use multiple channels simultaneously.

What are the best omnichannel marketing tools?

The main tools you’ll need to implement omnichannel marketing are tools for all the channels your users engage on, like email, SMS, or social media. Automation tools, including chatbots, are also highly effective for omnichannel marketing. Finally, you need a robust analytics program, like Google Analytics 4, to track user interactions on both the web and apps.

What is an example of omnichannel marketing?

One of the best examples of omnichannel marketing is Starbucks’ reward app, which allows them to track in-person interactions, send personalized recommendations, and increase customer engagement.

Omnichannel Marketing Conclusion

The future of marketing is connected. Unlike multichannel marketing, which seeks to push out similar messages on multiple channels, omnichannel marketing focuses on bringing experiences together into a seamless experience that customers love.

Before you get started, make sure you understand who your customers are and look for marketing automation tools that will help you build a stronger omnichannel campaign.

Are you using omnichannel marketing? What challenges are you facing?

How to Do an Effective SWOT Analysis for Your Marketing Campaigns

How do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns? Do you track ROI? A/B test ads to improve performance? Maybe you use a fancy Google Data Studio dashboard to generate slick reports.

There’s still a good chance you are wasting money, and that’s because most businesses measure the impact of marketing after the fact. While knowing the cost per click of your search or social ads is essential, understanding the overall impact of your marketing campaigns can provide deeper insights into your business.

This is where SWOT analysis comes in handy. SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis for marketing campaigns allows you to see the big picture and face challenges head-on.

What Is a SWOT Analysis?

A SWOT analysis is a framework for analyzing and identifying key challenges affecting your business by considering your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

The goal of SWOT analysis is not just to track metrics or see which ads perform better but rather to get a high-level view of the impact of your marketing so you can improve it.

The framework of what a SWOT analysis is.

What Are the Benefits of SWOT Analysis in Marketing?

If you’ve run a Google Ad campaign or boosted a Facebook post, you already understand how to track the impact of your campaigns. A SWOT analysis looks beyond the standard metrics like ROI, CPC, and CAC to uncover the most crucial factors impacting your marketing—whether that is customer satisfaction, competitors squeezing you out of the market, or failure to promote your assets effectively.

That data can be powerful, especially if it’s available when you need it the most. According to Airtable, 46 percent of marketers say lack of timely data holds their team back. A SWOT analysis can help.

A few other benefits of SWOT for marketing include:

  • a better understanding of which marketing channels to focus on
  • helps you address weaknesses in your ads or marketing assets
  • makes it easier to see threats to your campaigns before they impact your bottom line
  • enables you to leverage the assets and strengths you already have
  • improves long-term goal setting for your marketing

The average business spends around 12 percent of its overall budget on marketing—a SWOT analysis ensures your budget is put to good use.

What Are the Drawbacks of SWOT in Marketing?

As much as I like SWOT analysis in marketing, it has some limitations. For starters, if you aren’t honest about your true shortcomings, a SWOT analysis won’t provide useful insights. This type of analysis requires self-reflection and honesty to be useful.

It can also be difficult to analyze very complex factors that could be either a weakness or a strength. For example, running ads on TikTok might have the highest cost and drive higher quality leads, which could be both a strength and a potential weakness.

A few other limitations to keep in mind:

  • SWOT analyses can be time-intensive. Make sure you have the personnel and the time to invest before getting started.
  • You might generate too many ideas on how to improve your marketing and get overwhelmed.
  • It can generate a lot of data but doesn’t tell you how to use that data.

Understanding the limitations of a SWOT analysis can help marketers and business owners better prepare and improve their chances of success. Now that you know its limitations, how do you perform a SWOT analysis?

How to Perform a SWOT Analysis for Marketing Campaigns

The first step in performing a SWOT analysis for marketing is determining the scope. Do you want to look at your marketing as a whole or a specific part of your overall marketing strategy? For example, you might want to focus only on your content strategy, SEO, or a specific ad campaign. Defining the parameters of your analysis helps keep you focused.

Keep in mind, there’s no one right way to perform a SWOT analysis, and that’s because every business has a different marketing strategy and faces different threats.

This guide can help you get started, but feel free to skip questions that don’t make sense for your business and add questions that provide a more thorough view of your marketing campaigns.

1. Analyze Your Marketing Strengths

What do you do well? If you’re looking at a specific campaign, think about what elements of the campaign are really working. For example, does your landing page convert at a higher rate, or are ads with people more likely to earn clicks?

Start by asking these questions and documenting the answers. Adjust the questions as needed to focus on a campaign or your entire marketing strategy.

  1. What does your company (or your campaign) do better than others in your industry?
  2. What do your customers love most about your company/product/services?
  3. What positive attributes do customers associate with your brand?
  4. What is your unique selling proposition? Is it effective?
  5. What resources do you have that competitors don’t? This includes people, financial resources, and expertise.
  6. What campaigns are most successful? Consider not just conversions but also lifetime value and cost per acquisition.

Remember, your answers and the questions you ask might vary depending on whether you are analyzing a specific campaign or your marketing strategy as a whole.

How to Find Strength Data

Don’t answer the questions above off the top of your head. Instead, use data to inform your answers. Depending on your business, that might include the following steps:

  • Perform a customer satisfaction survey, like a net promoter score, to understand how customers view your business.
An image of a 1 to 10 rating system asking how likely you are to recommend a company to a friend.
An example a net promoter score, which is a useful tool when finding strength data.
  • Pull campaign data from separate tools into one dashboard, like Power BI or Google Data Studio to better understand the most effective campaigns.
  • Poll your employees to better understand your resources and how your team views your company.

2. Look for Your Marketing Weaknesses

This is often the most challenging part of a SWOT analysis. That’s because you have to be honest with yourself, and it can be hard to admit where campaigns have fallen short.

Start by asking questions. Again, feel free to adjust the wording to fit your campaign or overall strategy.

  1. What do your customers most dislike about your company or offering?
  2. What complaints are often mentioned in negative reviews?
  3. Why do customers churn?
  4. If you sell products, why don’t customers come back?
  5. What could your campaigns do more effectively?
  6. What are the biggest challenges in your current marketing funnel?
  7. Where in your funnel do you lose the most customers?
  8. Where do your competitors win? (This could be specific strategies or platforms they are doing well with.)
  9. What resources are you lacking?

Nearly 40 percent of marketers report having no documented marketing strategy at all, and that can hold you back. Looking at your weaknesses is the first step toward creating or improving your marketing strategy.

Where to Get Weakness Data

As you look for strengths (through customer and employee surveys, for example), also keep an eye out for weaknesses. Other places to locate weaknesses might include:

  • Customer reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, etc.
  • In support tickets. If you constantly get complaints about the same topic, that may need to be addressed.
  • In a competitive analysis.
  • Exit interview data, for customers or employees.
  • Analyze your exit pages in Google Analytics. Why are customers leaving those pages?
  • Assess time-on-page. Do customers spend less time on crucial pages in your marketing funnel?

3. Find Opportunities

This is my favorite part of SWOT—looking for areas to grow and build on your past successes. Where can you make changes and see the biggest impact? This step will help you figure it out. Begin by asking these questions:

  1. How can you improve your marketing funnel or UX?
  2. What kind of marketing messaging resonates with your customers? Can you leverage that on more platforms?
  3. Who are your most vocal brand advocates? How can you use them more effectively?
  4. Are your budget, tools, and human resources being utilized to their full potential?
  5. Which marketing channels exceeded expectations, and why?

Where to Find Opportunities Data

By now, you should’ve come across a few opportunities already. While reading customer reviews, looking at support tickets, and digging into GA data, you’ve likely already noted a few areas where you could improve.

Take a step back and try to look at the data with an open mind. What areas, platforms, or strategies are most likely to drive the best results? Make a list. You can also look at:

Sometimes the best way to see new opportunities is to introduce a fresh perspective. If you’d like help considering your options, reach out to my team. We’re happy to offer our thoughts and help you build an effective strategy.

4. Locate Threats

Over the years, I’ve noticed one thing the most successful brands have in common: the ability to see threats coming and adjust before they become a major issue.

For example, many websites were devastated when Google rolled out its Panda update, which targeted thin and spammy content. Those who saw it coming had already made changes and weren’t nearly as impacted. That should be your goal—to see threats on the horizon and take action.

Here are a few questions to consider:

  1. Economic trends: What economic trends can or might impact your industry? For example, rising costs, increases in gas prices, a move to remote work, and so forth.
  2. Marketing trends: How are marketing trends changing? For example, Google is getting rid of third-party cookies—how will that impact your marketing campaigns?
  3. Technology trends: What technological changes are coming? Automation is gaining popularity, but could that go wrong?
  4. Relationships: What relationships do you rely on, such as brand ambassadors, vendors, manufacturers, and contractors? How would your business recover if those relationships ended? Can you work to mitigate the impact now?
  5. Intuition: What is everyone else doing that just feels wrong to you for some reason? Try to get to the bottom of why it feels off to you and whether that may become a threat in the future.
  6. Audience: Think about your target audience—are they aging out of your market? Is the market shrinking or shifting?

Where to Find Threat Data

The reports and surveys you’ve already done may have highlighted threats. Look back over those results and look for threats you might not have noticed. Other places to look for threats include:

  • Technology blogs or publications.
  • Competitive analysis reports. What changes are your competitors making and why?
  • Newsletters and blogs of industry experts. What are they worried about?
  • Have a brainstorming session with your team. Write down all of the possible threats you can come up with, no matter how unlikely. You can review it later to determine whether action needs to be taken.

Frequently Asked Questions About SWOT for Marketing

How can a SWOT analysis help my marketing ROI?

It provides a high-level view of your marketing campaigns so you can better prepare for the shifting marketing landscape.

What does SWOT stand for?

Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

How often should I perform a SWOT for marketing?

Ideally, you should perform a SWOT analysis every 6 to 12 months or whenever you notice changes in your campaign ROI.

Can I use SWOT for marketing at my small business?

Yes, SWOT can be used to analyze the effectiveness of marketing for any sized business. It’s particularly helpful for small businesses to find ways to stand out from their competitors.

Conclusion: SWOT Helps Marketers Make Smarter Decisions

Once you’ve performed your SWOT analysis for marketing, it’s time to put that information to work.

How can you improve your current strengths? What steps can you take to reduce the impact of your weaknesses? What changes can you make to take advantage of the marketing opportunities you uncovered? Finally, how can you prepare for the threats you face?

Whether you use SWOT to analyze your overall marketing strategy or focus on specific campaigns like your content marketing, this approach provides the information you need to launch more effective marketing campaigns.

Have you performed a SWOT analysis before? What is holding you back?

6 Product Marketing Strategies That Will Get You More Sales

According to the Harvard Business School, the greatest problem faced by companies when launching a new product is a total lack of preparation.

Because of this, up to 30,000 new products are launched every year—and at least 95 percent end in failure.

While products can fail for many reasons, a solid product marketing strategy can help to mitigate many risk factors and boost your success.

What Is Product Marketing?

Product marketing is the entire process of bringing a new product to market, from the research and development to the launch and beyond.

It’s used by companies of all sizes with the ultimate goal of understanding and filling customers’ product needs.

Whether you’re launching your first product or your fiftieth, a solid product marketing plan can be the thing you need to push your success over the edge.

Benefits of Product Marketing

The main benefit of product marketing is to increase sales. However, an effective product marketing strategy can have more benefits than “just” profit.

First and foremost, product marketing can help you to position your product in the market for successful targeting and less advert waste.

A proper strategy would answer questions like “what product gap needs to be filled?” and “how does my product stand out from the competition?”

With product marketing, you also gain a deeper understanding of your customer base.

  • Who is your audience?
  • What are they buying?
  • What is their main reason for making a purchase?

By creating such buyer personas, you can increase your value proposition by up to 82 percent.

Then, to top it all off, you’ll get to unlock new insights about your competitors. While this isn’t often a huge concern for smaller businesses, up to 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies practice “competitive intelligence”—which has to say something for its value. If you want to grow, get ahead of your competitors while you still can.

Examples of Product Marketing

Before we get into our own strategies, let’s look at two brands with successful product marketing campaigns.

1. Poo Pourri

Poo Pourri is a great example of a brand that executed product marketing for an otherwise embarrassing and taboo subject (a toilet spray that eliminates the unpleasant odors associated with the bathroom.) It does so with humor and relatability because, after all, everybody poops.

They positioned their product perfectly.

Their first-ever video advertisement not only ranked as the number five most-watched video on the platform in 2013, but it also gained the brand a cult following that has continued to grow over the years.

An example of effective product marketing from Poo-Pourri.

How can other brands, even those with less taboo products, learn from Poo Pourri’s success?

First and foremost, find your platform and go hard. Poo Pourri used video advertising in its early years to continue to grow its following. This included television and online advertising where the brand was able to push the envelope with humor.

The brand also used customer personas to its advantage. It’s true, everybody poops. However, not everyone feels the need for a toilet spray.

Instead, their advertisements targeted certain markets and situations to really drive their point home.

2. Tesla

When you think of Tesla, what comes to mind? Electric cars. Clean energy. Solar power.

Your mental alignment of Tesla with these keywords and others in the clean energy space is for one simple reason: they built their entire identity, including each product marketing strategy, around their brand statement.

Just a snippet of Tesla’s brand statement is as follows:

“Tesla builds not only all-electric vehicles but also infinitely scalable clean energy generation and storage products. Tesla believes the faster the world stops relying on fossil fuels and moves towards a zero-emission future, the better.”

An example of product marketing from Tesla, showing a red car driving on the road.
An example of effective product marketing from Tesla.

Tesla effectively cornered the electric vehicle market. It knew it had a target audience in the space, of course, but it never swayed from its brand statement when developing electric vehicles and other clean energy products.

What has that success looked like? Tesla currently boasts about 75 percent of the electric car market share with its Model 3 being the best-selling vehicle worldwide in 2021.

6 Product Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business

If you’re excited to be a success story like the examples above, then consider these six product marketing strategies.

1. Pair With Robust Content Marketing

Did you ever think your product was too “boring” for content marketing to have an impact? Think again!

Blendtec, a seller of residential and commercial blenders, launched a series of videos aimed at making their boring product fun. The series was called “Will It Blend?,” and it’s just what it sounds like.

The company would test blend various inedible items in their blenders as a way to inject curiosity and humor into their product line.

An ad from Blendtec showing a man behind a blender on a table.
An example of robust content marketing from Blendtec.

The result? A 700 percent increase in sales over its first three years.

While your content marketing strategy doesn’t have to be quite so outlandish, it can be just as successful. There are plenty of content types to include in your strategy, including:

  • blog posts
  • videos
  • podcasts
  • infographics
  • white papers
  • downloadable guides

You just need to ensure your content marketing is compelling.

  1. First, understand what your customers need.
  2. Second, push on their pain points.
  3. Agitate that pain through storytelling.
  4. Offer to solve their problem.

As long as you touch those four points, your content marketing strategy will be off to a strong start.

2. Develop a Product Launch Plan

Product launches don’t always go as planned.

According to Gartner, 45 percent of product launches are delayed by at least one month. This can lead to a domino effect of poor results.

While this is a bitter pill to swallow, it’s also one that should give you sufficient motivation to invest time in a clear and detailed product marketing plan.

It needs to be effective, on time, and successful, and consider these three stages:

  1. Pre-launch.
  2. Launch.
  3. Post-launch.

Pre-launch is heavily focused on research and development. Consider what your industry is like, who your customers are, and what your product can offer that nothing else can.

This stage will also require heavy involvement with beta testing and finessing your messaging to the target audience.

  • What unexpected pain points come up during beta?
  • What is the feedback like?
  • What can you improve in your product or messaging?

Launch is all about getting the message out to the right audience. This means choosing the best channels to reach your target market and even hosting multiple online and in-person events to generate a buzz.

Finally, post-launch requires you to evaluate your targets versus actuals. Did you perform as well as you hoped? If not, why?

A poor initial launch isn’t a loss. It’s important not to lose momentum during post-launch and, eventually, shift your focus to retaining the customers you do have.

3. Retarget Your Existing Customers

Why?

Your existing customers will be your greatest source of revenue. With just a 5 percent increase in customer retention, you can increase company revenue by 25 percent to 95 percent.

While customer service plays a huge role in retention rates, there’s also the important step of retargeting your existing customers. That is, marketing directly to them to address their needs and invoke feelings of brand loyalty.

What does this look like?

A few ways to retarget existing customers include:

  • Create custom ad campaigns for previous and existing customers. These should focus heavily on brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. What is it that keeps customers coming back? Capitalize on it.
  • Build a retargeting email campaign for customers who haven’t purchased over various timeframes. Using segmentation, create different campaigns for customers who haven’t purchased over various periods of time (e.g., within the last 3 months, within the last 6 months, etc.)
  • Bid more aggressively on retargeting campaigns. Consider that customers who previously converted are more likely to convert than new customers. This means you can afford to have a higher Cost Per Conversion (CPC) for retargeting campaigns.

Ultimately, the goal of your retargeting strategy is to remind customers why they purchased from you in the first place. Place heavy emphasis on their initial experience and the value your product offers.

4. Address Customer Pain Points

Consider that 63 percent of B2C consumers and 76 percent of B2B customers expect businesses to anticipate and address their needs. This is the true value of understanding your customers’ pain points and addressing them with your products and services.

Pain is an important part of any marketing strategy, but one that can often be overlooked in e-commerce. Here’s why pain is so important:

  • Pain can help move a customer to action.
  • Pain can create a sense of relief in a customer.
  • Pain can tighten the conversion funnel.
  • Pain can improve conversion rates.

As mentioned in the content marketing section, the key to a successful product marketing strategy is to identify your customer’s pain, remind them of the pain, and then show them the solution to their pain.

These insights come from a robust market research strategy which includes keyword research, competitor reviews analysis, and customer surveys.

Take Qdoba, for example. They know that additional charges for popular add-ons, like guacamole or queso, are a pain point for their customer base. So, they don’t charge extra:

An ad from Qdoba showing a man eating food.
An example of addressing consumer pain points from Qdoba.

Pain points don’t stop with the purchase of your product, though. You should also have a plan in place for when your customers experience pain as part of the usual customer service journey. For example, an issue with the product.

This includes monitoring customer reviews, offering live chats with customer service agents, and reading through the results of customer surveys.

5. Reevaluate and Improve Product Positioning

Just because you’ve launched your product, it doesn’t mean you need to stick with previously chosen markets and marketing tactics. In fact, launch may have shown you a new possible market for your product or even a unique value proposition.

Pre-launch, you and your product team would have answered the following questions:

  • Why was this product made?
  • Who is this product made for?
  • What challenges does this product resolve?
  • What makes this product unique?

Post-launch, it’s time to consider whether the answers you and your team came up with held true. If not, what do the new answers look like and how do they differ from the original plan?

That difference can give you a whole new idea for repositioning your product in the ever-changing market.

When you reposition and how you do so is highly dependent on the product and costs involved. A few examples of repositioning a non-profiting product include repackaging, remarketing it to a different audience, or even adding new features.

Fortunately, you have the value of customer insights and their feedback—which wouldn’t have been available to you during the initial product launch. Use this to implement a full product positioning strategy.

6. Consider a Change to Your Pricing Structure

Another way to reposition your product is to consider a change to your pricing structure. This is helpful if you’re seeing less-than-profitable returns on your product.

A change to your pricing can be as simple as lowering (or increasing) your price or running exclusive promotions.

You can also follow the likes of Peloton and hundreds of other companies who successfully implemented the “good-better-best” approach to pricing.

In short, the good-better-best pricing strategy involves three tiers of the same product with increasing value. This enables you to make your product more accessible to new customers while also increasing spending for those customers who want more.

An ad from Peloton showcasing two different exercise bikes.
An example of pricing structure from Peloton.

To continue with the Peloton example, there are four options to choose from:

  1. The Peloton Bike (starting at $1,195).
  2. The Peloton Bike+ (starting at $1,995).
  3. The Peloton Tread (starting at $2,345).
  4. The Peloton Tread+ (starting at $4,295).

While the Peloton Bike and the Peloton Tread are unique products, they still offer one experience for the customer: a home workout device.

By offering your product at various price points, you open the product up to more customers. This can be a good step for companies hoping to break into more markets.

Product Marketing Frequently Asked Questions

What are the four types of products?

There are four product classifications, all of which can benefit from product marketing. They are convenience goods, shopping goods, specialty goods, and unsought goods.

What companies can benefit from product marketing?

If you think your business can’t benefit from product marketing, you’d be wrong. Companies of any size and configuration can benefit from a planned approach to product launch and sales.

What are the types of product marketing?

There are over 20 marketing activities that can fall under product marketing. These include advertising, branding, product management, product development, sales, and promotion.

What is the difference between marketing and product marketing?

Product marketing is a subset of marketing. Marketing is a broader term encompassing activities like marketing communications, operations, and project management.

Product Marketing Strategies: Conclusion

From product development to customer analysis to launch, a product marketing strategy can ensure you hit all the milestones in a set timeline.

In turn, you can launch your product on time and increase your odds of success.

As long as you have a solid product marketing plan in place (one that mitigates risks and anticipates customer needs), you’ll be off to a better start than most companies.

Which product marketing strategy do you think will be most effective for your up-and-coming product launch?

Marketing Analytics: Everything You Need to Know To Start Leveraging it Today

When’s the last time you attempted to make a recipe in the dark? I’d venture to guess you’ve never done so. It’s unnecessary and reckless. Would you be surprised to learn, then, that more than 60 percent of companies have ignored marketing analytics data when making marketing campaign decisions?

Just like making a recipe in the dark is unnecessary and reckless, so too is ignoring the invaluable marketing data when making expensive and time-consuming decisions for your business.

In this post, we’ll introduce marketing analytics and its benefits. We’ll cover the types of marketing data and how to create your own report. Finally, we’ll highlight three examples of companies that used digital marketing analytics to their advantage.

What Is Marketing Analytics?

Marketing analytics is the use of data to evaluate the performance of a marketing activity or collective marketing efforts.

From 2012 to 2020, the share of projects where marketing analytics were used to make a decision has ranged from 29 percent to 43.5 percent. While this number seems low, it does go to show that using marketing analytics to drive your own business’s campaigns will give you an edge against the competition.

Why Is Marketing Analytics Important?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, it helps to understand why marketing analytics is so important. While some companies may argue that analytics data isn’t crucial to their business, others will stake their success solely on their ability to follow the data.

Perhaps the greatest benefit to digital marketing analytics is the ability for businesses to understand big-picture marketing trends and forecast future results.

On a micro level, marketing analytics can help a business to understand the ROI of their individual programs. This can help them to determine which programs to cut and which programs to invest in. It will also teach them what they need to know for future projects.

Finally, consider that sophisticated marketers (those who utilize 5 or more analytics tools) are 39 percent more likely to see an overall performance improvement in their marketing programs. Just imagine what that growth could look like across your portfolio!

Types of Marketing Analytics Data

When it comes to marketing analytics data, there are three categories it can fall into. Here’s a description of each, as well as examples of the metrics used.

Descriptive Analytics

Descriptive analytics provide insights into the current state of your business. They answer the question, “what is happening now?”

The types of metrics you’ll see here are surface level. They provide a quick snapshot of the business as it is today but without any analysis or reasoning behind it. These metrics include page views, revenue, units sold, average unit price, and conversion rate.

Diagnostic Analytics

Diagnostic analytics provide a root cause as to the descriptive analytics. That is, they answer the question, “why is this happening?”

When you have questions about your descriptive metrics mentioned above, you’ll dig into the diagnostic metrics. These dig deeper to find the cause of the diagnostic metrics by looking at things such as traffic sources, bounce rates, exit rates, and last touch channels.

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics provide a look into the future of your business. They answer the question, “what’s likely to happen in the future based on past and current trends?”

As you can imagine, predictive analytics requires more sophisticated input. While you can pull descriptive and diagnostic analytics and make connections, you cannot do so easily with predictive analytics. Instead, you’ll typically need the help of a predictive modeling tool or a data analyst.

How to Create a Marketing Analytics Report

If you’ve been tasked with creating a digital marketing analytics report for your business, the steps below will help to get you started.

1. Pull the Raw Data

Where does it all begin? With the raw data.

How you pull your data will depend on the tools and platforms you use. There are many free and paid options available and you may find yourself using more than one to get a fuller picture.

Step one of creating a marketing analytics report.

Google Analytics is a free tool that provides you with in-depth website analytics. If you’re using an e-commerce platform like Shopify, you may also have access to free analytics within your account. Paid options include HubSpot, Domo, and Tableau.

2. Understand Your Audience

There are two important questions to answer before you compile your data. They are:

  1. What’s the purpose of your marketing report?
  2. Who’s the audience for your marketing report?

To answer those questions, you’ll want to dig deeper by answering the following:

Are you pulling the data just to get a snapshot of the business, or is there something more specific in mind? Are you delivering the report to top-level executives or a direct manager? How will this data be used? How often will this data report need to be compiled?

A weekly report on the state of the business to your direct manager will look completely different than an analysis of a business unit to the CFO of the company.

3. Highlight the KPIs That Matter

You have the data and you know the purpose and audience for your report. Now it’s time to ensure you’re highlighting the right data in your report. This will come down to understanding the type of data analytics you’ll need to answer to your audience (e.g., descriptive, diagnostic, predictive).

Let’s say you’re tasked with reporting on the launch of your company’s newest product. It hit the virtual shelves two weeks ago and it’s time to evaluate its initial success. What does this look like?

Here you’ll be pulling descriptive analytics. This includes metrics like product page views, add to carts, revenue, and conversion rate.

It doesn’t end there, though, because your audience will likely want to know whythe above metrics are what they are. Whether they’re below or above the target goals, it’s good to understand what happened to get you where you are.

This means you’ll also be pulling diagnostic metrics like last touch channel and traffic source. You can also dig into the customer demographics and behaviors.

A screenshot of a variety of metrics in Google Analytics.
Step three of creating a marketing analytics report.

With this data, your report will begin to shape itself into more of a story than just a bunch of KPIs and graphs.

4. Use Visuals to Break Down the Data

You have the data, you know your audience, and you have your story. Now it’s time to consider the best way to tell your story to make sense to your entire audience. Visuals are a crucial way of doing so.

Visuals include graphs, charts, maps, funnels, and Venn diagrams. They are a great way to help you see your data in a new light andtell your story more effectively.

The good news is most analytics tools offer a suite of visualization tools so you don’t have to find yourself reinventing the wheel. However, programs like Microsoft Excel also make it incredibly easy to turn raw data into visualizations.

Examples of Marketing Analytics

It can be inspiring to see how other businesses are using marketing analytics to inform their decisions. Here are three examples for you to consider.

Marketing Analytics Example #1: Costa Rican Vacations

Averages are used frequently when evaluating marketing analytics. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but as we’ll see below, it can be good to look at those outliers to determine the true efficacy of the average.

Looking beyond the average customer for Costa Rican Vacations has resulted in a 40 percent increase in website conversion.

According to Casey Halloran, the Co-Founder and CEO of Costa Rican Vacations, their team frequently looks to averages to inform their decisions: average spend, the average length of stay, and the average number of travelers.

Upon taking a deeper dive into the data, they realized the average number was so far off the actual customers’ metrics due to the extremes of the outliers. That is, the majority of their customers were on one end of the spectrum or the other with very few actually falling into the middle.

With this information, Costa Rican Vacations made a shift in its product offering. One way they did so was by adjusting the total budget slider on their homepage to go up to $20,000.

An image of the Costa Rican Vacations booking page.
An example of marketing analytics from Costa Rican Vacations.

By doing so, they opened up their offering to a new, higher spending customer base and increase website conversions by 40 percent.

Other businesses, too, can benefit from this example. After all, how often do we look at averages and medians without considering the impact of our marketing decisions on the outliers? With this in mind, take time to truly understand how average your average customer really is, or whether they’re simply a product of extremes on either end.

Marketing Analytics Example #2: Allrecipes

Allrecipes is the world’s largest digital food brand. It boasts 18 websites in 23 countries and more than 85 million users. No matter how large your brand, there’s always the competition to consider. To maintain their competitive advantage, Allrecipes worked with Tableau to better understand every stage of the customer journey.

The brand had several primary objectives, including to:

  • improve user experience
  • increase video engagement
  • drive mobile engagement
  • inform product strategy
  • expand user base
  • grow advertising revenue

Allrecipes leveraged Tableau, a business intelligence platform to visualize data all in one place. With custom dashboards and organizational collaboration, the brand was able to achieve numerous goals. In particular, let’s look at how Tableau’s device-level analytics enabled them to drive mobile engagement.

According to Esmee Williams, the VP of Consumer and Brand Strategy, mobile usage had increased from 8 percent to three-fourths of all visits in recent years.

The goal was to increase mobile usage while also providing a continuous experience across devices. They performed an A/B test which showed the mobile site on all devices as a way to learn more about how users interacted with mobile site elements.

An image of an Allrecipes page with various foods.
An example of A/B testing in marketing analytics from Allrecipes.

Using Tableau’s digital marketing analytics collection and visualization tools, Allrecipes used the data they collected to improve the mobile site. This included optimizing content and encouraging photo uploads with an easy-to-use interface.

While you don’t need to perform a cross-device A/B test to get these same results, your business too should evaluate mobile device engagement to understand customer behavior. Only then can you implement changes that have a measurable impact on customer engagement metrics.

Marketing Analytics Example #3: Netflix

Let’s end our examples with a titan of industry, Netflix.

Netflix has a customer retention rate of 90 percent which is far above Amazon Prime’s 75 percent and Hulu’s 64 percent. What is it that drives Netflix’s success? According to Netflix, its success is largely due to the collection and use of customer behavior analytics.

What kinds of data does Netflix collect and feed to their algorithm? Here are a few examples:

  • What time and date did a user watch a show?
  • What device was used to watch the show?
  • If the user pauses the show, do they resume watching?
  • Does the user binge-watch an entire season of a TV show?
  • If they do, how much time does it take to binge-watch it?

Of course, Netflix also looks to interactions the customer has with their shows and movies. If a user selects a show based on the 96 percent recommended rate by Netflix, does the customer finish the series? Do they rate the series well?

An image of the Netflix homepage.
An example of Netflix using marketing analytics to improve their customer experience.

With more than 150 million subscribers, Netflix has a large data pool from which to gather insights. This is critical to their success considering 80 percent of viewer activity is triggered by algorithmic personalized recommendations.

Marketing Analytics Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about marketing analytics.

Are there additional types of marketing analytics data?

In addition to the three marketing analytics data types listed above (descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive), there are also said to be prescriptive analytics and cognitive analytics.

What are the three main components of a marketing analytics campaign?

Your digital marketing analytics campaign should be scalable, sustainable, and affordable.

What are the best marketing analytics tools on the market?

The needs of your business will largely inform your decision on marketing analytics tools. However, a few tools to consider are Tableau, Power BI, and Adobe Reporting.

Does my business need a data analyst to decipher our marketing analytics?

A data analyst can certainly offer important insights for your business. For small and medium-sized businesses, though, they likely aren’t necessary.

Marketing Analytics Conclusion

Marketing analytics is more than just a collection of data. It provides invaluable insights that could have otherwise gone unnoticed.

After all, when you’re making big decisions regarding your business’s marketing campaigns and programs, you need to evaluate all of the data available to you. Only with a proper analysis of previous data and current trends can you ensure you’re making the best decisions for your company’s bottom line.

What percent of your business’s marketing decisions are made using analytics?

Create an Integrated Marketing Communications Plan That Highlights the Best of Your Brand

When a customer interacts with your brand on your website, on social media channels, or in person, they should have a cohesive experience.

From brand voice to visual identity, everything should be aligned with your company’s mission, values, and goals.

This approach is called integrated marketing communications (IMC).

As more and more customers use three or more channels to research a brand, integrated marketing communications are becoming more and more important.

WSo what are integrated marketing communications, and why do they work so well? In this blog post, we’ll answer those questions and give you some tips on how to create your own integrated marketing communications plan.

What Are Integrated Marketing Communications?

The goal of integrated marketing communications is to create a consistent message and brand identity that customers will recognize across all channels.

This requires a coordinated effort that includes all aspects of marketing, from advertising and public relations to sales and customer service.

For example, if a customer sees an ad for your product on TV, hears about it on the radio, and then visits your website, they should have the same experience.

Your message should be consistent across all channels, and each channel should work together to support the others.

Why is this important?

Well, in a world where 77 percent of B2B buyers spend time researching purchases online and purchase frequency is 250 percent higher on omnichannel vs. single-channel shopping, you need to make sure your message is getting through, loud and clear.

An integrated marketing communications plan will help you do just that by bringing all of your marketing efforts together into one cohesive strategy.

The difference between single channel and omnichannel order rates.

Why Integrated Marketing Campaigns Work

Integrated marketing communications campaigns work because they provide a consistent message across all channels that are reinforced with each interaction.

This type of marketing allows you to control the conversation about your brand and ensure that your target audience is seeing the same message no matter where they encounter your brand—–whether it’s through paid advertising, social media, or even in person.

Plus, integrated marketing communications campaigns are often more cost-effective than single-channel campaigns because you can leverage existing content and assets across multiple channels.

Key benefits of an integrated marketing communications plan:

  • Rreach a wider audience than single-channel experiences
  • Kkeep your brand top of mind across all channels
  • Bbuild audience trust with consistent messaging and campaigns
  • Ssave budget by reusing content and assets

If that’s not enough, research from the Harvard Business Review found that customers who use omnichannel shopping spend 10 percent % more online and four4 percent % more in-store than single-channel customers.

Integrated Marketing Communications Examples

Looking for your next great integrated marketing communications campaign? Check out these examples for inspiration.

Budweisers’ “Whassup?” Campaign

The “Whassup?” campaign by Budweiser first aired during Monday Night Football in 1999. The campaign featured characters answering the phone saying, “Whassup?” in a comical, slurred way.

While the internet was still in its infancy, Budweiser became a pioneer by directing viewers to its website.

On the website, visitors could learn how to say “Whassup” in over 30 different languages! With this new marketing campaign, only one phrase increased visitors to Budweiser’s website and sealed the integrated marketing communications campaign’s efficacy.

The campaign was a success and won the Cannes Grand Prix award as well as the Grand Clio award. The catchphrase was also featured in pop-culture hits such as Scary Movie (2000), Friends (2003), The Simpsons (2002, 2005), and Ant-Man and the Wasp (2008).

For the 2020 Super BowlSuperbowl, Budweiser brought this campaign back in a pandemic-themed re-make titled, “Whassup again?”

Domino’s “AnyWare” Campaign

Another integrated marketing communications campaign example success story comes from Domino’s Pizza.

ToIn order to increase digital orders, Domino’s created AnyWare, which allows customers to order pizza through various platforms such as a tweet, text, Ford Sync, Smart TVs, and smartwatches.

Each new way to order was introduced with its own press release and driven to the DominosAnyWare.com website.

In 2015, Dominos also launched a national TV ad campaign featuring celebrities arguing that their way of ordering was the best.

To date, the AnyWare campaign has generated 2 billion earned media impressions including spots on The Ellen Show, Jimmy Fallon, and The Today Show. The TV campaigns generated 10.5 percent year-over-year growth for the brand.

An image of an Apple Watch with a Domino's pizza tracker on the screen.
Dominos “Anywhere” Campaign.

The Martian Movie

To promote the theatertheatre release of 20th Century Fox and Ridley Scott’s, “The Martian” in 2015, a prologue campaign was created to increase awareness and excitement.

The goal of the “The Martian” prologue campaign was to build box office hype around the new film.

An integrated marketing communications strategy was built to be consumed on a variety of channels including, but not limited to: social media, video, celebrity endorsements, and traditional PR and marketing efforts.

The campaigns included a mock episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk from the year 2035, an Under Armour campaign showing “The Martian”‘s main character, Mark Watney, as a superathlete of the future, and mock-declassified NASA footage showing each character going through psychological testing before heading out into space.

The Martian opened number one at the box offices and had the second-highest fall opening of all time. It was also the number one movie in the U.S. for four4 weeks.

How to Create an Integrated Marketing Communications Plan

If you want to create an integrated marketing communications plan that highlights the best of your brand, here are a few key steps you need to take.

1. Get to Know Your Audience

Before you start developing your communications plan, you must takeit’s important that you take the time to get to know your audience.

Consider demographic factors, such as education level, gender, income, age, race, and geographic location. Then, think about behavioral and psychological traits, including things like interests, hobbies, and values.

Take demographic factors like education level, income, age, race, gender, and geographic location into consideration. Don’t forget about psychological and behavioral traits like values, hobbies, and interests.

Creating a customer profile that is specifically tailored to your ideal customer will help you make better decisions about your marketing campaign.

In some cases, you may have more than one customer profile for a given campaign. Sometimes, you may have multiple customer profiles for one campaign. In that case, it’s important to segment your audience so that you can tailor your message to each group.

For example, if you’re marketing a new line of environmentally-friendly cleaning products, you might have one customer profile that is interested in saving money and another that is interested in saving the planet.

Tailoring your message to each group will help you create an integrated marketing communications plan that highlights the best of your brand.

2. Set a Budget

Let’s face it, you might not be in a position to hire Neil deGrasse Tyson, NASA, and Under Armour in your first integrated marketing communications campaign.

But tThat doesn’t mean you can’t create a strong, compelling message.

The key is to set a realistic budget and then allocate your resources accordingly.

If you have a limited budget, focus on creating high-quality content that can be distributed across multiple channels.

If you have a larger budget, look for high-profile partnerships, influencer marketing, and other paid media opportunities.

In either case, make sure you have a clear plan for how you will spend your money and what your limits are.

3. Outline Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

One of the most important parts of creating an integrated marketing communications plan is understanding what makes your brand unique.

  • What do you offer that no one else does?
  • What can you do better than anyone else?

Answering these questions will help you develop a strong unique selling proposition (USP), which will be a key component of your communications strategy.

Once you have your USP, make sure it is front and center in all of your marketing materials.

It should be the through-line that ties together your various communications channels and provides a consistent message to your target audience.

For example, if you are a luxury car brand like Audi, your USP might be “Luxurious and comfortable cars delivering excellent engine performance.”

Make sure this message is clear in your advertising, social media posts, website content, and any other marketing collateral.

If you’re selling running shoes like Nike, your USP might be “The best shoes for athletes and fitness.”

Again, this should be a consistent message across all of your communications channels.

Your USP will be the foundation of your integrated marketing communications strategy, so take the time to develop it thoughtfully.

A venn diagram depicting the difference between what your customers want and what your business does well.
Use your unique selling proposition to create an effective integrated marketing communication campaign.

4. Decide Which Platforms You’ll Use

Once you know who you’re speaking to and what you want to say, you need to decide which channels you’ll use to reach your target audience.

This will be different for every business, but some common options include:

  • Eemail marketing
  • Ssocial media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn)
  • Aadvertising (digital and traditional)
  • Ccontent marketing (blog posts, infographics, eBooks)
  • Eevents and tradeshows
  • PR and media relations

Once you decide on overarching channels, you’ll also need to determine which specific tactics you’ll use on each platform.

For example, if you’re using Facebook to reach your target audience, will you primarily rely on organic posts or paid ads? If you’re using email marketing, what sort of content will you include in your newsletters?

Asking yourself these types of questions will help you create a more comprehensive and effective IMC strategy.

5. Messaging Style

While your brand voice needs to be consistent across all channels, the way you actually communicate with your audience will vary depending on the platform you’re using.

For example, the messaging you use in a Facebook ad will be different from than the messaging you use in an email newsletter.

Your tone might also change depending on whether you’re trying to build awareness, generate leads or drive sales.

Keep this in mind as you create your content calendar and start to populate it with messaging that’s in line with your brand voice and the goals of each individual piece.

Here are two examples from sneaker company No Bull, which uses different messaging styles on Facebook ads versus Twitter posts.

An IPhone screen showing a Facebook ad of sneakers.
A Facebook ad example from No Bull.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>About to take on the week like…<br>Congrats on a great finish in Dubai, Tola!<a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/IAMNOBULL?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#IAMNOBULL</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/JustTheHorns?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#JustTheHorns</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/BehindTheHorns?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#BehindTheHorns</a> <a href=”https://t.co/RqlABILona”>pic.twitter.com/RqlABILona</a></p>&mdash; NOBULL (@justthehorns) <a href=”https://twitter.com/justthehorns/status/1206646654989783047?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>December 16, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

6. Set Your Targets and Goals

You’re almost ready to start putting your IMC plan into action, but first, you need to set some targets and goals. Consider the following:

  • What do you want are you looking to achieve with your integrated marketing communications strategy?
  • Are you trying to improve your external reach?
  • What about internal communications?
  • Is there a particular target audience you’re looking to engage?

Attaching numbers to your objectives is a good way to measure progress. For example, if one of your goals is to increase brand awareness, you could measure this by tracking the number of mentions your brand receives online.

Or, if you’re looking to improve customer satisfaction, you could survey your customers after they’ve made a purchase.

Other goals can include:

  • Email sign- ups
  • Social media follows and engagement
  • Website traffic
  • Sales or conversions
  • Phone calls
  • Event sign-ups and ticket sales

Once you have some goals and targets in mind, it’s time to start putting your integrated marketing communications plan into action!

7. Track and Optimize

Once your integrated marketing communications campaign is up and running, it’s important to track progress and optimize along the way.

Analytics are key in understanding what’s working and what’s not.

Be sure to keep an eye on your campaign goals and KPIs, and adjust as necessary. If you’re not seeing the results you want, don’t be afraid to change things up.

For example, let’s imagine you’re running an email campaign as part of your integrated marketing communications plan.

You might want to track metrics such as:

  • Oopen rates
  • Cclick-through rates
  • Uunsubscribe rates

If your open or click-through rates are low, you might want to consider changing up your subject lines or email content.

Or, if you’re seeing higher than average unsubscribe rates, that could be an indication that your content is not relevant to your audience.

It’s important to constantly test and measure the performance of your campaigns so that you can make necessary adjustments to ensure success. By doing so, you’ll be able to create an integrated marketing communications plan that highlights the best of your brand.

Frequently Asked Questions: Integrated Marketing Communication Plans

What does integrated marketing communication mean?

Integrated marketing communication is an approach to marketing that uses all aspects of a company’s communication channels to deliver a consistent message.

What are the benefits of using an integrated marketing communications plan?

The benefit of an integrated marketing communications plan is to ensure that all of a company’s marketing efforts are working together in harmony to deliver a consistent message.

What are the five forms of integrated marketing communications?

There are five main ways to market your product or service. They are advertising, direct marketing, internet marketing, sales promotion, and public relations. All of these methods can be used together to create a harmonious marketing plan.

Do integrated marketing communication plans help drive ROI?

Yes, integrated marketing communication plans can help drive ROI by ensuring that all marketing efforts are working together to deliver a consistent message. This will result in increased brand awareness and customer loyalty, which will lead to increased sales and profits.

Final Thoughts on Integrated Marketing Communications Plans

An integrated marketing communications plan is the key to success for any company.

By creating a plan that outlines the main ways to market your company and product, you can ensure that all of your marketing efforts are working together to deliver a consistent message.

This can result in increased brand awareness and customer loyalty, which can lead to increased sales and profits.

The end result? A more successful company that is better able to compete in today’s marketplace.

How have you found success with integrated marketing communications?

How to Generate More Leads Through Your Online Marketing Campaigns

Are you happy with the number of leads your marketing campaigns are generating? Or, do you wish they were a bit more effective?

If you’re serious about growing your business—whether it’s a B2B company, an e-commerce store, or a startup—increasing the number of leads should be a top priority. Setting up online campaigns is a good start, but it’s not enough. You need to optimize those marketing campaigns to squeeze every last lead from your funnel.

Are you ready to get to work? Here are seven strategies to generate leads like never before.

Why Are Leads so Crucial to Business Growth?

Two of marketers’ top priorities are generating leads and converting those leads to customers. Only increasing customer satisfaction comes close to the importance of getting new leads.

A bar graph of the top marketing priorities in the next 12 months.

It’s no surprise that lead generation is a top priority. Without a continuous flow of new leads, sales dry up. Without sales, there’s no revenue. And without revenue, your business folds.

What’s more, most people who land on your site won’t purchase right away. You need to constantly collect leads so you can nurture them and convert them into buyers in the future.

Not just any leads will do, however. Referrals, conferences, and cold calling are all great lead generation strategies, but they aren’t enough. You also need to learn how to generate more leads from your online campaigns.

Why are advertising leads better? Using targeting you can gather better leads faster and even automate parts of the process. How do you make sure your ads are driving quality leads?

How to Generate Leads Online: 7 Strategies to Drive More Leads

If you aren’t sure how to create a lead generation campaign, I have previous articles to walk you through the process. What I’m going to do is show you how to generate leads online by improving your existing ad campaigns.

Optimize Your Landing Page

Your landing page (or squeeze page) is one of the most important elements of your online lead generation campaign. The goal is to leave the visitor with no choice but to hand over information in exchange for something valuable.

Landing pages convert better than most other ads or offers. The average conversion rate is 2.35 percent, but some have conversion rates in excess of 10 percent. If your landing page’s conversion rate isn’t pushing double digits, you should look to optimize one or more elements ASAP.

I recommend looking at your page’s copy, including its headline, first. Make sure your copy is short, sharp, and engaging. Users need to understand exactly what your product is and how it helps them within a few seconds of landing on your site. Make sure you focus on the benefits of your product to the user, not its features.

Spend more time tweaking and testing your headline than anything else. This will be the first thing a user reads and one of the biggest deciding factors in whether they continue browsing the rest of the page.

You can speed up a user’s understanding of your product by including a video on your landing page. A good chunk of your audience would rather watch a video than read your copy, which is why 76 percent of sales teams say video is key to securing more deals.

Finally, remove all distractions from your page. The layout should be as simple as possible and there’s no need for a navigation bar or links to any other pages on your site. This leaves the user with two options: close their browser window or sign up.

ConvertKit’s Creator Pass is a fantastic example of how to create a great landing page. There’s no headline navigation, the headline copy offers a clear benefit, and there’s an enticing call to action right in front of you.

An example of an effective landing page by ConvertKit.
Generate more leads by optimizing your landing page.

Offer Real Value

Arguably the most important part of your landing page isn’t the copy, image, or CTA. It’s the piece of content, tool, or resource you offer in return for each lead’s email address.

For most brands, gated content takes the form of a PDF download, something like an ebook or a whitepaper. But it doesn’t have to be. Case studies, surveys, webinars and video series are all excellent types of gated content.

Whatever form your gated content takes, it must deliver tremendous value. Otherwise leads will leave your funnel as quickly as they entered. How do you deliver value? By solving a problem your leads have. What are their pain points? Where do they get stuck? What expertise can you leverage to make their lives a little bit easier?

Delivering value also means presenting gated content in the best way possible. Make it visually appealing, with images, videos, and other forms of multimedia content. The nicer it is for your leads to consume, the more they’ll engage with it.

Here’s an example of a non-ebook lead magnet from Leadpages:

An example of an effective landing page that offers value to the consumer from Leadpages.
Generate more leads by offering real value to the consumer.

They know their leads often struggle to create high converting pages, so they created a training course to solve that issue.

Use Automation to Nurture Leads

Collecting leads is just the first step of the process; you also need to nurture them. Only two percent of sales are made at first contact, yet most salespeople give up after the first attempt. If you automate the follow-up process, you don’t have to worry about a thing.

I recommend using email to nurture when possible. It is a great way to drip feed messages to your leads, it also generates massive ROI. According to research by the Direct Marketing Association, the ROI of email marketing is £42 for every £1 spent.

If you don’t have an email automation platform yet, check out my review of the best solutions. Then integrate your landing page’s form so every email is automatically added to your mailing list.

Next, create an automated series of emails that is sent out at regular intervals. Your goal is to take leads through each stage of the buying process—and that means providing them with the right educational content at the right time. Start by educating them about your wider industry and their general problems. A couple of emails later, you can start to focus on your product and service and how you can help.

The more emails you send, the more you can make your product the hero of the email, and the more direct you can be with the lead.

Use Chatbots to Turn Conversations Into High-Quality Leads

Your salespeople aren’t the only ones who can nurture leads. Chatbots can automate almost every part of the lead generation process. They’re incredibly effective at it, too. Over half of businesses that use AI-powered chatbots generate better quality leads.

Start by replacing forms on your landing page with a chat bot. Forms can be long-winded and rarely offer a great user experience. Chatbots make it easier for prospects to fill out their details. In some cases, users may not even be aware they’re filling out a lead form.

You can also use chatbots to respond to leads at lightning speed. Response time matters in lead generation. A study by Harvard Business Review shows businesses that respond to leads in under five minutes are 100 times more likely to convert them. With chatbots, you can automate the response process and send a message as soon as a lead fills out a form.

Finally, use chatbots to nurture and qualify leads. Chatbots can ask the same qualifying question as your salespeople to separate the wheat from the chaff. The best can be sent directly to sales, while everyone else is added to a nurturing sequence.

Drift’s chatbot is an excellent example of this. It asks a qualifying question as soon as someone lands on the site, putting them straight through to a sales rep if they’re ready.

A text conversation started by a chat bot about driving conversation on its website.
Generate more leads by utilizing chat bots.

Use Multi-Platform Campaigns

How many platforms are you using to advertise your landing page and gated content? You probably aren’t using enough.

Today’s customer journey is long. Most don’t convert to customers the first time they land on your site. The majority probably won’t sign up on your landing page, either. A recent Google study found it takes between 20 and 500 touchpoints to become a customer.

The solution is a multi-touch campaign, where your message is delivered in multiple formats across multiple channels.

Advertising on a range of channels maximizes the chances that potential customers will see and click your ad. It’s a numbers game at the end of the day. The more shots you take, the more chances you have to score.

Leverage Personalization

If you want an easy way to increase conversion rates at every stage of your online lead generation campaign, try personalization. In a survey of B2B sales and marketing professionals, over three-quarters (77 percent) said personalization made for better customer relationships, and over half (55 percent) said personalization led to higher sales conversions.

How can you add personalization into your funnels to generate leads?

Start by personalizing your ads. While Apple may have made creating hyper-personalized ads a lot harder, Google still makes it relatively easy to personalize paid search ads with dynamic ads.

Next, personalize your landing page, particularly the call to action. Research shows personalized CTAs achieve 202 percent better conversions. Marketing tools like HubSpot and Unbounce can help you create dynamic CTAs that change depending on who views them. But you could also go old school and create several different versions of your page for each ad group and personalize the copy accordingly.

Finally, build personalization into your email automation tool. Every major email marketing tool makes it easy to automatically insert the recipient’s name into the subject line and body copy, so there’s absolutely no excuse not to personalize your nurturing emails.

Target Your Ads Carefully

There’s no point wasting resources nurturing leads who will never buy your product. That’s why you need to target your lead generation ads carefully.

I’ve written extensively about how to find your target audience and identify target markets for paid campaigns, so I’m not going to cover old ground here.

I will say it’s important not to be too hasty when judging the performance of your landing page ads. When pruning and optimizing ad campaigns, don’t just judge performance based on how many people they send to your landing page that sign up. That’s a good measure, but it’s not as important as how many people actually convert into customers.

Think about it. One ad campaign could have a ridiculously high signup conversion rate of 20 percent. But if only a tiny fraction of those people make a purchase, it’s not a particularly effective ad. An ad campaign with a much lower signup conversion rate could be far more effective at generating high-quality leads.

Of course, this means you’re going to have to wait longer to collect relevant data. But the end result should be a much more targeted and effective ad campaign.

The best way to target ads effectively? Target keywords with higher buyer intent. These are search terms that indicate the user is closer to conversion.

Frequently Asked Questions About Generating More Leads

How do you build a lead generation campaign?

Start by having an objective and defining your target audience. Create a valuable piece of gated content and drive traffic to it using paid ads. Collect emails and then use email to nurture those leads.

What is an example of a lead generation marketing campaign?

A gated whitepaper is an example of a lead generation marketing campaign. Webinars can also be used as a lead generation marketing campaign to acquire leads and nurture them using video

How do I optimize my lead generation campaign?

There are several strategies to optimize lead generation campaigns. Improve your landing page copy, put your emails on autopilot, use chatbots to speed up response time, and personalize messaging.

Where should I advertise for my lead gen campaign?

Social media platforms are one of the most cost-effective places to advertise your lead generation campaign. But the important thing is to advertise wherever your target audience hangs out online.

Conclusion: Generate More Leads to Improve Marketing ROI

Improving your online marketing campaigns and optimizing how you generate leads are the keys to growing your business. But you don’t have to use all of the strategies I’ve listed all at once.

Optimizing your campaigns should be an ongoing endeavor, so pick one or two of these strategies to implement at a time. Pretty soon you’ll send your ROI skyrocketing.


Now you know how to generate leads online, which strategy will you start with first?