D2C companies, by definition, take out the middleman and sell their products “direct to consumers.”
In many ways, this seems like an obvious choice. You sell your product straight to them and cut out any fees required with wholesale and other sales platforms. Plus, you don’t have to charge markup fees to cover those additional costs, so you can keep the prices low for your customers.
The hiccup comes with marketing. Stores you could be selling wholesale to have the advantages of customer loyalty, brand recognition, a diverse inventory, and convenient locations.
With D2C, you have to find those customers and convince them to buy directly from you, rather than grabbing that item the next time they are out shopping.
It can be a challenge, but when done right, it can be worth it.
Examples of D2C Brands
We live in a world of disrupters. As a result, many of the most popular D2C brands tend to have a rebellious or revolutionary angle to their product or service.
Dollar Shave Club is the epitome of D2C brands because their product is often a last-minute purchase. Razors for shaving aren’t often something you search the internet for.
Dollar Shave Club found a way to directly sell in a way that also helps their customers avoid the inevitable: Forgetting to add it to their shopping list or not realizing they need it until it’s too late.
Warby Parker isn’t the first D2C eyeglasses company, but they are one of the first to make it cool.
Eyeglasses are often sold wholesale in doctors’ offices after appointments. Offices have captive audiences, and eyeglass sellers can connect with and supply them with the latest styles.
The problem for consumers comes when the office doesn’t have a style they like or when all options are too pricey for them. They may feel pressured to settle for something so they have a pair in their new prescription.
Warby Parker took a D2C approach to bring some very stylish brands and let customers try them out. As a result, customers don’t have to feel that pressure to just choose something.
Through Warby Parker, customers can use an app to see how they look in lots of “rental” pairs of glasses. Between this and having time to show the styles off to their friends, they can take a few for a sort of test drive, then purchase the one(s) they love.
Warby Parker can offer competitive prices by selling directly and avoiding markups at the doctor’s office.
Most of us grab our coffee at the grocery store—sometimes only because we realize we’ve already run out. We don’t often think to buy directly from the coffee maker unless we are talking about a local coffee shop that brews their own.
Peet’s brought these concepts together with their coffee subscription service. As a result, the same products you would usually get at the store are now available in an exclusive-feeling monthly delivery.
Nearly all the brands that use a specialty D2C subscription option in addition to their retail locations allow consumers to feel closer to the headquarters of these coffee producers. That is, the brand is best known in a particular part of the country, and they market their subscriptions to those who lived there and have moved away.
7 Strategies for D2C Brands
D2C, by definition, means you need to be able to reach your target audience. However, before you can reach them, you need to know who they are. The more you can learn about them, the better your chances of not only finding them with your message but of them converting to your brand.
1. Make Good Use of Reviews and Testimonials
Word of mouth is powerful for any brand, but D2C relies heavily on loyal customers spreading the word. Leverage this power by collecting reviews and testimonials and sharing them in your ads, social media, landing pages, product pages, and other relevant locations.
Unearth stories from your customers that speak to your key differentiators and use feedback that tells the story of the impact you made in their lives. For example, what was different about what you sell? How did it finally provide the solution they’ve been looking for?
Those reviews and testimonials sound like talking with a friend and help potential customers feel heard.
2. Be There When They’re Looking For You
Using SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay-per-click) ads can place your brand before your potential audience where they look for you. By researching them well, you can learn the keywords and phrases they use to find what you’re selling.
Start with on-page SEO, capitalizing on keywords your target market is looking for and ensuring your website uses those keywords effectively. Weave those keywords into headlines, product descriptions and tags, page titles, and more.
Then create ads that leverage those keywords. You can place them on Google to show up when people are searching. Make sure your ads paint a clear picture of the solution you are providing.
Stay at the forefront of your customers’ minds by using retargeting ads that will pop up when they are scrolling other sites later. After a while, your brand should begin to feel familiar, and you may enter your potential customers’ subconsciouses.
3. Get Creative With Ad Placement
You can take the approach to another level by showing up in other places where you know your target audience is. You might use keywords your competitors would be using or are slightly off-topic but still related, keywords your target audience is searching for. It’s a disruptor approach that can work very well for D2C brands when done creatively and intuitively.
Although not D2C, you can see this a lot with software and technology brands. Here’s an example.
You need to know your audience to make this work: What are they looking for? What sense of humor do they have? What makes them unique?
4. Offer Something Different
This is a crucial step for D2C brands. If you are going to sell a product directly to clients, you’ve got to give them a reason to buy.
Sometimes a lower price or a unique brand personality can help them choose you over Amazon, the mall, the drug store, or Target.
However, to get traction with a D2C brand and build enough momentum to make it long-term, you need to come to the market in a fundamentally different way.
For many D2C brands, this may mean a monthly subscription, like the coffee mentioned above. You can bring the convenience of not forgetting or running out of a needed product.
You could also offer a unique approach to your consumers. For example, how are items in your industry typically packaged, sold, and delivered? How can you make the experience better? How can you provide more?
5. Referrals and Word of Mouth
As you build up your D2C brand, your customers will be your best marketers. When they love what you’re doing, they can help others get excited. In addition, they can probably talk about your product or service better than you can, so let them talk!
Dial up your referral program by offering incentives to those who refer others to your brand and even better kickbacks to those who put the work in and bring in a lot of referrals.
Make it easy for your audience by providing unique URLs they can share with others. You can also drop postcards and little treats into your shipments to help your customers spread the word.
6. Set Up a Chatbot
Successful D2C companies build relationships with their customers from the start. Those relationships start with first interactions, and you can add a chatbot to those first interactions on your website.
A chatbot allows people to immediately start “talking” with someone to get their questions answered. Although those initial interactions will be automated, you can and should follow up with customers who interact with your chatbot to find out how you can help more.
Bring some humanity to your brand, and you can stand out from the corporate competition.
7. Turn Customers into Product Developers
What do your customers want from you? Just ask!
Among the most significant benefits of D2C is that you have access to your customers. You can communicate with them, so do it.
Ask questions and listen to your customers: the happy ones and the unhappy ones. They are going to be your best research and development department.
They can tell you about what’s working well and what needs improvement, as well as what other products or services they would like to see in the future.
Not only does this help you bring products to the market that people will like, but it also builds rapport with your customers. People want to feel heard, and you can stand out as a brand that listens.
Additional Resources for New D2C Brands
If you’re thinking of starting a D2C business or want to offer some products direct-to-consumers, you may want to learn more about the advantages and challenges of this approach and some strategies for success.
You may have noticed some overlap in the millennial market and the uptick in D2C brands. Fundera explains more about how to leverage that connection in this article.
If learning by podcast is more your style, here is an excellent roundup of podcasts, episodes, and themes that you might find interesting as you explore this opportunity.
As we’ve discussed, building a loyal customer base is not only a necessity of the D2C approach, but it’s also an advantage of setting up your brand this way. Learn more from the team at Shippo about how you can use various tools and resources to win customers.
Direct to Consumer (D2C) Frequently Asked Questions
What does D2C mean in retail?
D2C means “direct to consumer” and refers to maintaining inventory and selling products directly to your customers.
Is Amazon a D2C company?
Mostly no; D2C companies sell own products directly to customers. Amazon does have some branded products, but most items are owned by other companies using Amazon as a sales platform.
What brands are going to D2C?
Brands from every industry have begun to try this method of reaching and interacting with customers.
Can you make a lot of money with D2C companies?
Success with D2C depends on whether you can connect with your target audience and provide them directly with a product or service they can’t get elsewhere or in a better way. This trend is growing and many companies are seeing success with it.
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7 Strategies for D2C Companies Conclusion
D2C companies are growing in popularity as e-commerce marketing technology makes it easier to connect with your audience and build sales processes in-house.
If you’re looking to overcome standard wholesale or dropshipping models, or if you just want to dabble in new methods, you may want to try direct to consumer. It can give you a closer relationship to your customers and provide new opportunities.
Retargeting is one of the best ways to close sales that didn’t happen.
On top of that, retargeting efforts are pretty cheap compared to most types of advertising.
How do you do it? What retargeting efforts do you need to try?
Here are three examples of retargeting that actually work, how to copy them, and what you need to know about the future of retargeting.
1. Retarget Specific URL Visits
There are a lot of ways to go wrong with retargeting.
Some marketers fire up Facebook or Google Ads and run a retargeting campaign based on website visits in the past 90 days.
Although that can work, it’s not really that effective. As you probably know, I’m all about working smarter, not harder.
I love to spend as little time on a task as I can, but get the same benefits as someone who spends hours and hours on the same task.
I used to run Facebook retargeting campaigns in their Business Manager feature (now referred to as the Facebook Business Suite).
I’d simply retarget everyone who landed on my site.
That didn’t really work. My conversion rates were the same as my website: low.
People weren’t ready to buy yet. Why? I cast too wide of a net.
You can’t reasonably expect a 50 percent conversion rate on an audience of millions.
For example, let’s say that visitor X came to your website and read a single blog post and bounced.
Now let’s say visitor Y came to your site, read that same blog post, but then also filled out a lead-magnet form and even checked out your product and pricing page.
What’s your general website visitor retargeting offer going to be now?
If you offer a lead magnet, that won’t make sense to visitor Y. If you offer a free trial, that won’t apply to visitor X yet.
You risk sending the wrong offer to the wrong person at the wrong stage of their buyer’s journey.
So what do I recommend? Targeting users by specific actions taken on your site.
For example, check out this retargeting ad I got:
Notice how hyper-focused that targeting, messaging, and content are?
The ad is literally about a single product they offer.
I viewed their products, and they noticed I spent large amounts of time and frequency on their pie crust page. After all, who doesn’t love pie?
Then they used that data to target me with an ad focused on how to use their pie crusts.
They gave me an example of how their product could provide value inmy life.
That’s one of the best methods of retargeting I’ve ever seen.
Why? Because people who don’t convert on your products usually experience two things:
They don’t want to pay you money yet.
They don’t know how your product can help them.
Jasper’s Market effectively touched on the second point in a strong way.
They communicated exactly how I could find value in the product I was already looking at.
Here’s another example of retargeting ad:
Again, notice how tailored the targeting is in this ad.
It was delivered to everyone who landed on a specific web page URL, rather than retargeting all site visitors.
This allowed the company to target their ad to a group of interested, potential buyers and get them back to their site.
I visited their webinar-training landing page and was immediately retargeted after not converting.
Or, how about this example from Marketo:
I visited their content marketing e-book page to learn about cheap content creation methods.
Just a few days later, after not revisiting or converting, they reeled me in with a specific, CTA-oriented, retargeting ad based on the exact page I visited.
So the point is:
Retargeting based on specific URL visits works. It’s one of the best retargeting methods I’ve seen.
For this example, we can use Facebook since it’s one of the most popular ways to run retargeting ads.
Plus, I find much greater success on Facebook over display ads on GoogleAds.
But to each their own.
To get started, open the Facebook Business Suite and create a new, custom audience. You’ll click “More Tools” then “Ad Manager” currently, but they do update their platform regularly.
Create a new ad campaign, then add your info until you get to the audience. Select “create a new custom audience.”
Custom audiences on Facebook should be your top retargeting strategy.
They allow for some of the most diverse customization options marketers can use.
You can create a new custom audience from the drop-down menu.
From the menu of custom audience options, we want to select website traffic as our marketing goal.
This audience type will allow you to create lists of people who visited specific URLs.
For the next step, be sure to select “People who visited specific web pages.”
From here, you can get as detailed as you want.
Are you prepping for a webinar? Do you have a landing page you’re driving traffic to for a specific goal?
Do you notice that tons of people read about your product but don’t convert?
This is your time to get them back.
Remember that Jasper’s Market example? They saw that I frequently visited a specific product on their site but didn’t buy.
You can do that by adding URL pages that include that specific word.
You can further refine your Facebook retargeting ads by:
device used
frequency
Doing this will tell you one major thing:
The people visiting this product with high-frequency need a small push to convert.
Use an ad that shows them how to use that product. Show them the value or benefit of buying it.
Since they’ve viewed the product multiple times, you know they’re probably almost ready to buy.
Using this type of retargeting is one of the most effective ways to convert visitors.
2. Retargeting Existing Customers
You may ask, “Neil, why on Earth would I want to retarget existing customers?”
I’ll give you one simple reason: to resurrect unresponsive email subscribers who haven’t purchased in a while.
One big problem with email lists is that most of your subscribers become unresponsive at some point.
The list will experience “churn,” where new visitors join and old ones become unresponsive.
This means your email upsells aren’t even reaching your intended user.
So what do you do? Start retargeting your existing customers.
I like this strategy because it’s incredibly cheap because the ads are so relevant, which means your CTR will be high.
I’m already a customer, and they wanted me to convert by getting another credit card with them.
Are you seeing a pattern with these examples?
They focus on retargeting visitors who have previously converted or are existing customers.
Here’s one of my favorite retargeting examples of this method from ModCloth.
We miss you like crazy!
The targeting premise of this advertisement is pretty obvious.
They’re retargeting old customers who haven’t made a purchase in a while.
This kind of thing works.
Why? Because people have already converted on your products and services, meaning you risk nothing by asking them to come back.
It’s incredibly easy to set up, too.
Again, you can do this on either AdWords or Facebook, and it only takes a few minutes to set up.
To get started, head to Facebook’s Ads Manager and navigate to the audience section, then click Create an Audience.
From here, create another Custom Audience, and select Customer List.
That’s where you can upload your audience list. If a green check mark shows up, then you are good to go. If you see a yellow exclamation point, you might need to update some identifiers manually.
This will allow us to import contacts directly from MailChimp or upload an exported list of current or old customers.
The key here is to sort your customer file or email list by how old or unresponsive customers are.
If you have customers that are consistently buying from you, don’t waste money advertising to them.
Focus your efforts on customers that haven’t converted in a while or who haven’t responded to marketing emails.
This will give you another great shot at bringing them back to your products.
3. Lead-gen Ads Based on Page Engagement
If you aren’t finding success with website-based retargeting efforts, this might be your best bet.
Facebook has a powerful lead generation tool called “Lead Ads.”
These are essentially form-based ads that offer lead magnets in exchange for customer information like email address and job type.
It’s the same idea as running an e-book lead magnet on a landing page on your website, just on Facebook.
They are one of the most intuitive, natural-looking forms you can create.
When I click on the ad, I’m taken directly to a lead-gen form within Facebook.
This is incredibly effective in getting people to convert because it doesn’t force them to leave Facebook.
People don’t browse Facebook every day to see ads.
They browse it to interact with friends and family or read news articles.
So taking someone offsite is a big risk that can waste your ad spend and lower conversions.
That’s why lead ads are so successful. They don’t interrupt the process or habit of a typical Facebook user, yet they still allow them to get the lead magnet.
I’ve used these types of ads before.
They’re great for providing a clear-cut CTA that gets people to convert.
So why should you retarget people based on Facebook page engagement?
Because you know these users are active on Facebook, which means your retargeting efforts are going to be much more successful.
These hyper-aware users are likely always checking out new brands on social media.
It only makes sense to target them with Facebook Ads.
To get started with a lead-generation ad, we first need to create an audience based on page engagement.
Create a custom audience, then choose “Facebook Page” from the list of sources:
From here, you have a bunch of options to choose from depending on how specific you want to be in your retargeting.
For example, you can retarget anyone who engaged with a post or ad, someone who previously clicked on a CTA, or someone who saved your page or post.
Once you’ve selected a retargeting metric, you can save this audience and head to the Facebook Ads Manager to create a new lead-gen ad.
Select “Lead generation” as your marketing objective.
Next, select your ad format.
For this, I recommend using a single image, single video, or slideshow.
Carousels are often too complex for a simple lead-generation-focused ad.
Next, you need to edit the content and lead magnet on the ad.
This is the section where you start to create an offer or incentive for these retargeted customers to give you their email address.
For example, are you going to offer an e-book, white paper, coupon, or something else?
You need to give them a reason to fill out your form and click on the call to action.
Be sure to edit your form fields and optimize them to your needs based on that audience.
Be sure to limit your form questions in the next step to only grab the most important information.
You don’t want to overwhelm visitors or take up too much of their time.
The goal here is to collect leads in an easy, painless way.
Facebook’s page-based retargeting is one of my favorite ways to drive users back to my site or convert on lead magnets and products.
They’re often very engaged audiences who use Facebook differently than most users.
Instead of mainly using it to interact with family or friends, they actively seek out businesses on the platform.
Use this as an opportunity to convert visitors that wouldn’t convert on your site, or showed interest in your pages.
Frequently Asked Questions About Retargeting Strategies
What are some of the top retargeting strategies?
Retarget specific URL visits; retarget existing customers; and retarget leads based on-page engagement.
What is an example of retargeting?
Showing Facebook ads to someone who previously visited your website on their mobile browser.
Is remarketing worth it?
Yes, remarketing is worth the effort if you are able to execute a successful campaign. Targeting those who have interacted with your brand and come close to purchasing gives you a better chance of making a sale than by targeting an audience who has never heard of or interacted with your brand before.
Basically, you’re interacting with your leads at a later stage in the conversion funnel.
Can you run marketing and remarketing campaigns at the same time?
Yes, you can run concurrent campaigns.
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Retargeting Strategies Conclusion
Most of your website traffic simply won’t convert on the first visit. They don’t know who you are, what you do, or even how you could help them.
So they just aren’t ready, or willing, to buy your product or service yet.
Are you struggling to get more clients for your accounting business?
You’re not alone.
A study by Hinge Marketing found accounting and financial service firms were the slowest growing of all professions studied.
While the tech sector grows at an 18 percent median rate, accounting business slogs behind with a growth rate of 9.3 percent.
However, this doesn’t mean your accounting firm is doomed.
The difference between low-growth and high-growth businesses in any sector is marketing.
How so?
Marketing is what develops the all-important know, like, and trust factor. Clients can find you through social media or blog posts, learn more about you, and decide you’re the best accountant for the job.
In short, the better you get at marketing your services to the right people, the more you can squash industry-standard growth rates and boost your profitability.
Why Should Certified Public Accountants Advertise Their Services?
Shopping online isn’t only for eCommerce businesses.
Fifty-three percent of consumers conduct online research before making a purchasing decision. If you don’t have a digital presence, you’re leaving money on the table and creating a barrier between you and your potential clients.
With 2.14 billion digital buyers, there’s a huge pool of people you could tap into by having a digital presence for your CPA business.
Besides the earning potential, advertising your services online has other benefits like:
Instilling trust: You set yourself up as an authority and expert by having a professional website with sales pages and blog posts.
Brand awareness: Almost 92 percent of people use Google to answer their most pressing questions. By investing in SEO and getting your CPA business on the first page of search results, you can grow your brand awareness without a huge paid ad budget.
First impressions count: In the digital age, your website is your first impression to potential clients. If it’s slow, outdated, or uninspiring, your site visitors will leave, and you’ll lose the sale.
6 Marketing Tips for CPAs
Ready to take your CPA marketing to the next level? Here are some of the best ways to grow your brand awareness, attract the right customers, and scale your accounting business.
1. Create an SEO-Friendly Website With a Strong CTA
Because so many buyers turn to Google to conduct online research before purchasing, a website is no longer a “nice to have.”
It’s a must.
An SEO-optimized website does three things:
Search Engines Send Organic, Qualified Traffic
Sick of cold emailing tactics or leads who have no intent on opting in for your services?
By going all-in on SEO and targeting keywords your potential clients are using, you can attract the right customers (who are ready to sign a contract) straight to your website.
Not sure what SEO is or how to do keyword research? Check out my ultimate SEO guide, which takes you through absolutely everything you need to know to get your CPA business on the front page of Google.
Turns Visitors Into Leads
When someone is knee-deep in research mode, a professional-looking website goes a long way in the decision-making process.
With a strong call-to-action (CTA) on your homepage, you can stop people from leaving your site without scheduling a call, or filling out a form to find out more.
Here’s a good example:
Notice the “Get Started” button. It’s above the fold (meaning you don’t have to scroll to see it), and it encourages visitors to take action.
If you scroll to the bottom, you’ll see another CTA to schedule a call.
Want help setting up a CTA? Use one of my eight foolproof CTA tactics.
It Sets You Up as the Go-To Expert
Once your website ranks for the right keywords on Google (i.e., words and phrases your customers are using), it tells the user you’re an expert and creates brand awareness.
When someone sees you as an industry thought leader, it establishes trust. This sets up one of the natural laws of business: People do business with those they know, like, and trust.
2. Create a Blog for Your Website
When it comes to marketing for CPAs, creating a blog is an incredibly effective tactic.
Why?
Your blog posts will rank on search results.
When you’re ranking on the first page of Google, you get more visibility, website traffic, and qualified leads. For your customers, blogging is beneficial because it answers their questions, gives them quick wins, and helps them find solutions to their problems.
It’s a win/win for everyone.
How do you start writing blog posts that end up on the first page of search results?
First, you need to do keyword research to understand what problems your audience is trying to solve.
Take the keyword “hiring an accountant for taxes.” Here are some blog posts from CPA firms on the first page of Google.
By using blogging like these CPA firms, you can identify the challenges your clients are facing and create blog posts that add value and convert visitors into clients.
Next, you need to write your blog post and optimize it for search.
What does this mean?
According to a user’s query, there is a formula search engines use to understand the content and decide where it should show up in the results. By following basic on-page SEO principles, you can make sure your blogs are optimized for ranking on the first page of Google.
Out of the 774 million working professionals using the platform, you probably fall into two camps:
Yes, you’ve created a profile, but it pretty much collects dust.
No, and you don’t want to add another social network to your plate.
However, LinkedIn is more than a social media network. It’s one of the best places to connect with your potential clients and land work.
Eighty percent of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is the best place to find leads.
Follow these steps to spruce up your LinkedIn profile and start attracting paying clients to your CPA business.
Update Your Profile for SEO
Yup, SEO extends beyond search engines.
You want to make sure your profile is optimized with keywords your potential clients use to find you.
The better your LinkedIn SEO, the higher up you’ll appear on search results.
Post on LinkedIn
Whether it’s status updates, sharing business news, or writing thought pieces, creating content on LinkedIn is a powerful lead generation tool.
You can tag your posts with hashtags to boost your reach, and the more engagement it gets, the more the algorithm will push your content out to a wider audience.
By increasing the number of eyes on your posts, you increase your chances of leads finding your profile and reaching out.
Then create a content marketing strategy around YouTube. With over 2 billion monthly users, people come to the platform to learn, get inspired, or have fun. What makes YouTube such a lucrative platform is this: The content is searchable on Google.
To see success on the platform, you need to use the same keywords your audience uses to search for you. Consider using keywords in these places:
your speech (YouTube scans your words)
video title
video description
tags
These views turn into leads and are an excellent way to grow your brand awareness and establish trust with your audience.
Bonus: Once you hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, you can sign up for the YouTube partner program and start earning money from your uploads.
Google My Business can help your CPA business gain more visibility in local search results. According to a study by BrightLocal, 84 percent of searches are discovery.
That’s a lot of opportunities for your next client to find you. Let’s say someone searches “CPA in New York.” If you’ve set up your Google My Business page correctly, it will show up in search results like this:
These cards make it easy for people in your area to find you, contact you, and become your next customer.
All you need to set up your profile is a business name, location, and category. Once Google authorizes it, you’ll start showing up on local search and Google Maps.
Your customers will be able to leave reviews, add photos, ask questions, save your listing, and see important information like your contact details.
In the above example, Miller & Company has put “CPA of NYC” in their title and made their description “accountant in New York City.”
Again, this is SEO. These keywords help Google understand your listing and show it for the correct search results.
To learn how to set up your Google My Business account, optimize it for local SEO, and what mistakes to avoid, check out these resources:
Create a lead magnet and use it to entice your website visitors to subscribe. Your lead magnet should focus on a problem your audience wants to overcome and present a quick win.
For example, if you help freelancers with their tax you could make a checklist for how to prepare for tax season. At the end of your lead magnet, include a call-to-action to hire you for those that want to skip the admin and let someone else handle it.
Other types of lead magnet ideas include:
toolkits
reports
whitepapers
ebooks
case studies
cheat sheets
Once you have people on your email list, you can nurture the relationship and promote your offers and tips via a weekly or monthly newsletter.
Marketing for CPAs Frequently Asked Questions
What's the best way to promote my accounting business?
The best way to market your CPA business is with digital marketing. It’s cheaper than traditional marketing and helps you attract your ideal clients with ease.
Should I hire a marketing firm to promote my accounting business?
If you don’t have the time to manage your marketing, yes. A marketing firm can help save time and tweak your marketing efforts to improve ROI.
Should I invest in digital marketing for my CPA business?
Yes! With most people turning to Google to answer their questions and find companies to solve their problems, a digital presence is necessary.
How much should I spend on marketing for my accounting business?
It depends on the size of your firm, location, and how much money you can allocate towards your marketing, as well as what platforms you want to use and the results you want to achieve. You can do it yourself and spend very little, or invest thousands (which may generate thousands more in revenue.)
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Marketing for Accountants: Conclusion
As you can see, digital marketing is no longer a “nice to have” for accounting firms.
The digital world is more important than ever before. Approximately 6 billion people have smartphones, which means your next customer will most likely come from Google rather than a traditional ad in the newspaper.
Follow these marketing tips for accountants, and you’ll learn how to create content that attracts your ideal client, creates value in their lives, and sets your firm up as the go-to expert.
Which of these accounting marketing tips are you going to implement in your business?
Lead generation is the process of creating consumer interest in your products or services. With lead generation, you can attract leads (your potential customer) into a marketing software system with the hope of nurturing them through the buying process.
Once a lead is generated, you can then instruct them about your offerings and begin converting them into a customer.
Without leads, your business will most assuredly fail, so today, I want to show you proven hacks that will grow your leads by 113 percent.
Ready? Here are my top lead generation tips.
What Is Lead Generation?
A lead is a person who indicates an interest in your product or service.
Lead generation is the process by which you generate this interest, and place people in your sales funnel. In inbound lead generation, this is most likely to happen by someone filling out a form and giving you their contact details.
Marketers, particularly B2C marketers, rely on several channels to drive leads to their businesses and boost their conversion rate:
SEO
paid ads
social media
email
landing pages
Often, these channels don’t yield results marketers can bank on though. If you’ve spent a lot of time creating content, hoping to attract the right leads, but you still aren’t getting results, it can be discouraging. Hear this: you’re not alone.
At one time in my content marketing career, I struggled to acquire leads.
With a renewed focus on lead generation, I was able to turn this around, and you can follow these tips to do the same thing.
Why Is Lead Generation Important for Businesses?
Lead generation is a key goal for most businesses because, without leads, there are no sales, and consequently, no revenue.
Sure, a firm may have several important goals, but a large percentage of organizational goals focus on lead generation. When done well, lead generation can nurture qualified prospects from tentative interest all the way to the customers and ambassadors your brand relies on.
Lead generation is important because it asks the fundamental question, “what does your potential customer want?”
Once you’re able to answer that question and tie it to a high-converting landing page, you’ll consistently generate leads. You’ve still got to turn the lead into a customer, but it’s the starting point, and once you’ve got a sales pipeline full of leads, it’s much easier to tweak your sales strategies.
6 Proven Lead Generation Hacks
Hack #1: Lead generation starts at home—review your homepage messaging
For most marketers, their homepage receives the most visits. Tandberg (since acquired by Cisco), a leader in the field of teleconferencing,increased its lead generation by 50% from a simple homepage CTA that blended with other elements such as the headline, subtitle, and images.
If you’ve been actively promoting your site, your homepage will begetting visitors from referring sites, social media sites, search engines and other sources.
Stuart J. Davidson shared how he reached140,753 page views within twelve months, since re-launching his blog. Since the homepage receives a tremendous amount of traffic, don’t you think that reviewing andadjusting your homepage messaging might help you generate more leads?
I’m confident that it works; that it is, in fact, one of the best lead generation tips for you to absorb. For example, Alex Chris, founder of Digital Marketing Pro, said that one of the areas he tweaked, which led to over 400,000 visitors per month to his site, was the homepage. This also led to several thousand leads!
He showcased five sticky posts, together with a list of the latest posts. He also added a must-read section on his sidebar, which is important if you want people to find your best content the moment that they arrive at your blog homepage. This is how Chris’ homepage looks as I write this article:
Although the sidebar usually shows up on every page on most WordPress themes by default, you can permanently set it for your homepage only.
On the flip side, if you have an offer (e.g. an e-book, a report, software) on your landing page, you’ve got to ensure that your messaging (copy) and offer are in sync.
The two should synch, so that visitors will not be confused when they get to your homepage.
Hack #2: Link to your webinars directly in your content
One of the best lead generation tips you should take away from this post is how a webinar can work brilliantly in your favor.
A webinar is a relatively low-cost way to get your useful message in front of a targeted audience who actually asked for it when they registered.
A small consulting firm used webinars to generate over 100 new, qualified leads and resulted in six opportunity-based meetings. This, in turn, led to $50,000 in services being discussed.
If you can host a webinar and link to it directly in your content, your leads will take you more seriously, because you’ve provided value before asking them to register.
This is quite different from a webinar landing page that doesn’t offer much value to the user.
For example, the screenshot below shows how Quality Matters links to its webinar registration page from within its success stories (a blog post).
The challenge that most people face, when they host webinars, is getting enough people to register. But, you can drive webinar registration by linking directly to it. Uberflipknows how to invite blog readers to register for upcoming webinars right from a post. Here’s an example:
When people are engaged, magical things can happen, right on the spot.
Engagement is the sole purpose of hosting a webinar. Stay time (duration) is influenced by the ease of entering into the webinar, the topic, and whether or not attendees stick around during the Q&A.
If you want to take your lead generation to the next level, you should consider hosting a webinar. Successful internet marketers know the power behind a well-planned webinar.
You can generate leads, nurture them and build a thriving business, solely with webinars. According to a survey conducted by ReadyTalk, 30%–40% of webinar attendees are turned into leads.
There’s no doubt that bringing the right people together in a virtual platform increases trust, leads, and sales. No matter what your industry may be, you have to recognize that people want to belong.
People want to learn from the experts.
And, you don’t have to be an influencer to successfully host a webinar.
The most important factor in increasing user engagement is how useful your webinar is.
In fact,38% of attendees will stick around if your topic is hot and what you’re sharing with them will yield significant results in their business and life.
If you’re a B2B marketer, one of the most effective ways to generate qualified leads, apart from word-of-mouth referrals, is webinars. When you bring people together for the sole purpose of educating them, you’ll generate hot leads.
However, you need to make your webinar a part of your content. Naturally, your blog readers, email subscribers, and customers might have developed an emotional connection with your content. When they’re reading your post, they have a mindset that you’re only interested in solving their problems.
Blogging is a great way to build trust. If you want more people to register, reserve their slot and attend your webinar, then you have to establish a level of trust with them. That’s when blogging comes into play.
The role of webinars in the sales process can’t be ignored, because most companies have experienced higher sales when they hosted a webinar.
The more useful and interesting your blog posts are, the better. Consequently, when you link to your webinar from within your content, it’s a sign that you want to offer more value to your readers without giving them the idea that you’re out to make some quick bucks.
When you have the attention and trust of your attendees, you can recommend a product or service that’ll help them. You have a responsibility to qualify your leads and map your leads’ buying journey. Every stage of the customer buying process is important during the webinar.
Yes, you can sell, but there is a smart way to do it, especially when you’re mindful of your brand and reputation. You don’t want anything that will hurt it or separate you and your audience.
Here’s exactly how to sell during the webinar:
Welcome questions: For each webinar that we host, we usually leave up to 30 minutes for questions.
Without a doubt, this is a sure way to tell attendees that we care about them and not their money. It created a stronger bond that led to more qualified sales and customers in the long run.
Give value before asking for anything: Whether you’re hosting a webinar,writing a blog post, orspeaking at an event, you have to offer tangible help before asking for the sale or any other thing that would require the attendee to move out of their comfort zone (e.g., purchase your product). This how to draw in your potential customer – and, hopefully, keep them.
Educate them. Use interesting storytelling methodology to engage them. Address the questions that are occupying their minds. You can then pitch your offer because you truly believe that it can help them move forward.
Launch a poll: Polls can foster engagement and improve customer satisfaction. Polls are simple survey questionnaires that look like this:
For example, through a poll, Tomoson found that nearly 60% of marketers plan to boost influencer marketing budgets.
Similarly, you can use polls during your webinar.
Make them an irresistible offer: If you want to make more sales or acquire better leads, you have to offer your attendees what they can’t resist. If your offer is great and timely you’ll see an increased sales conversion that ranges from 5%–60%. Remember that when you sell or recommend an offer during the webinar, you need to brand your slides. In other words, your company logo, colors, and icons should be used prominently in the presentation design.
When you do that, your brand will always stay fresh in attendees’ minds. This is a priceless and efficient way to get the sale the moment that you ask for it.
Premium content: Another proven way to sell during the webinar is to offer premium content. It could be your new training videos that you haven’t released on YouTube or a few chapters of your upcoming book.
To grow your business and nurture a passionate audience and customers that will stand the test of time, you’ve got to feed them with premium content.
This is the type of content that offers tremendous value and scarcity.
A webinar is quite different from a blog post, video or podcast. According toAscend 2,
When you compare all of the lead generation tactics, webinars are the second most effectivedelivery mechanismof premium content for digital marketers.
Yes, you have to have adedicated webinar page on your site, but always link to both your old and your new webinars within your content. Our dedicated page now accounts for over 20% of our webinar leads per month.
Don’t forget the purpose of this section. It’s not about hosting a webinar, but rather link to your past and future webinars from within your content because you want to establish contact with first-time visitors to your blog and also cement the relationship that you’ve got with your customers.
If you want more people to register for your webinar, you’ve got to partner up with influential bloggers and leverage your homepage (which always attracts the most views).
You’ve also got to blog about your webinar and link to the landing page from your blog posts. Also, don’t forget to market your webinar through social media. And, don’t be afraid of paid media or promoting your webinar through keynote speakers.
Linking to or citing a high-value webinar within your content will position you as a go-to expert in your industry who cares about people. Several marketers who applied this technique have succeeded wildly at lead generation.
Hack #3: Use Google as your login
You should use Google as your login because you canpersonalize your efforts. Effective marketing can be efficiently deployed when you see and address your customers not as a group, but as individuals. That’s why SugarCRM and Trello believe in connecting with individuals.
Most digital companies have not been using this hack to get more leads. The truth is that Google is popular, and most bloggers, content marketers, and online entrepreneurs have a Google account.
The social world has brought us convenience across the web. Our full names, residential addresses, phone numbers, and more are now stored on trusted sites such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter. This has made it possible for marketers to create a flexible and simple sign-up flow.
You can acquire more customers to your business by limiting the amount of information that they need to input in the forms. That’s how successful companies are built. It can work for you, too.
These days, you don’t need to request much information from your prospects before they can become qualified leads. Better yet, you don’t need them to fill a long-form before you can keep in touch with them.
Since they’ve got all of their personal details on trusted sites like Facebook and Google, you can just ask users to sign up using those sites. For example, you can sign up with Facebook if you want to join Pinterest.
Since Pinterest started using this strategy, they’ve increased their users. Pinterest now has over 50 billion pins and millions of active, loyal users.
Hack #4: Specialize: Separate your lead generation team from your sales team
If you want to convert the visitors that come to your landing pages and take your lead gen to the next level, you’ve got to continually test out your landing page elements, including the headline, subtitles, bullet points, call-to-actions, and more. Consider this a prime piece of real estate in your marketing strategy. In other words, take advantage of what is to offer and experiment with what drives the best results.
You’ve got to keep testing before you can get it right. A/B testing is not negotiable.
But, there’s an aspect of your content marketing strategy that you have to set limits on. It’s about who’s in charge of generating leads and who manages the sales process.
To grow your leads by 113% or more, you have to “specialize.”
In his classic book, Is It Wise To Specialize?, author John O’Sullivan shares the powerful influence of specialization on a child, and how early sports specialization can have an effect on a child’s athletic performance.
O’Sullivan recognized that we’re always tempted to do more. Life itself will push us beyond our limits, but we must learn to specialize. Niche down and identify areas where your strengths are.
When it comes to lead nurturing, which is an all-important aspect of running a successful online business, you’ve got to separate your lead generation team from your sales team.
According to Marketo, lead generation describes the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing [a] sales pipeline.
On the other hand, the sales team is primarily concerned with the exchange of goods and services for money; it’s the action of selling something.
As you can see from the two definitions, lead generation isn’t about selling. Sales also don’t dwell so much on stimulating interest, because that aspect is being coordinated by the team in charge of lead generation.
After selling to a customer, the sales team also has the responsibility of initiating a great customer experience that leads to a high rate of customer retention.
Retaining the customer is important if the business wants to thrive.
Each marketing practice requires a different mindset. For example, the team in charge of lead generation creates awareness for a product.
They also inspire, educate and persuade prospects to take action. But, the sales team is responsible for increasing the revenue of the organization.
Remember that the objective of having separate teams that will handle lead generation and sales is to improve your customer satisfaction.
That’s truly where the profit lies.
Hack #5: Use strong verbs to write powerful headlines that draw attention
A verb is a “doing” word. Or, better yet, it’s an “action” word.
If you want to create a lasting impression in your writing, you have to draw attention with verbs. But first, answer this question:
Isn’t it the structure, keywords used, length, topic, and, most importantly, the action word (verb) that appear in a given headline? Each of these can and should evoke curiosity and persuade people to click.
If you can give adequate attention to crafting your headline, you’ll not only generate targeted leads, but there’s a possibility that your search rankings will improve tremendously because of a lower bounce rate and the additional time that your visitors are spending on your page.
Copywriters all over the world know the power behind a well-crafted headline. It’s the same reason why Ted Nicholas believes that 73% of buying decisions are made at the point of the headline. And, eight out of ten people will click your headline if it catches their attention. So, what are you going to do about your headlines?
No matter the platform — your blog, social media networks, other blogs (when you write a guest post), or when you create any type of content that will drive leads — you’ve got to make sure that your headline contains strong verbs. According to Wikieducator, you’ve got toput muscle in your writing.
A strong verb is a specific, descriptive verb used in writing. Strong verbs are used to convey a direct message. You’ve always got to have it in the back of your mind that we live in a fast-paced world.
Think about it. We’re all about fast Internet, fast websites, fast food; we want everything now. There is no time to wait. Now, imagine how impatient your target audience will be if your writing isn’t straight to the point or doesn’t offer any immediate reward.
When you use strong verbs in your headline, it’ll make you a better writer. Your writing will be concise and descriptive. This is exactly what your prospects want.
Here’s an example of a weak verb in this sentence:
She is going to school
Though the sentence is correct, it’s weak. We can omit the “is going” and replace it with a strong verb. The question that you need to ask yourself is, how does she go to school? Does she crawl, skip, walk, run, ride a bicycle, etc.?
Let’s make the sentence better by including a strong verb:
She walks to school
She rides to school
She skips to school
In the same vein, instead of using weak verbs in your headlines, you should replace themwith a strong verb. That way, you’ll convey your message or idea in a more concise and captivating manner.
Examples of strong verbs are:
Nurture
Terminate
Improve
Increase
Revive
Change
Expand
Boost
Attack
Focus
Write
Drive
Engage
I’m not the only one who understands the power behind strong verbs. Authority content marketers, like Brian Clark and the entire Copyblogger Media team, use strong verbs to craft headlines that you can’t ignore. Take a look:
Seth Godin, the renowned author of over fifteen bestselling books, also uses strong verbs to write his captivating blog posts. Take a look:
Note: Strong verbs in your headline will not grow your leads 113% all by themselves. But, they can add flavor, meaning, conviction and clarity to your headline, so that your readers and potential customers will relate to your message.
Having strong verbs in your landing page headline, blog post headlines, and more will increase your conversions, especially when you testthem out.
For example, at a time, CityCliq, a company that provides low-cost, search engine optimized webpages for businesses, ran an A/B test. They used VWO software to test four different versions of their landing page headline:
Businesses grow faster online!
Online advertising that works!
Get found faster!
Create a webpage for your business
At the end of the A/B test, the fourth headline version, which sends a direct, more descriptive, more relevant, more concise and clear headline, outperformed the others. It generated a 90% increase in conversion rate.
In addition to using strong verbs in your headlines, you also have to focus on length. Headlines that are too long tend to be easily forgotten or ignored.
According to areport by the Guardian, an international news agency that’s been creating headlines for decades, headlines with just eight words generateda 21% higher click-through rate than longer headlines.
If you can’t come up with headlines of exactly eight words, a study by Nielsen Norman Group revealed that headlines between five and nine words seem to garner higher click-through rates, too. So, the next time you write a headline, make sure that you integrate strong verbs.
Hack #6: Create an irresistible offer and syndicate across blog communities
Ultimately, you want to get people to say “yes” to your offer. As marketers, that’s exactly what we want.
It all boils down to creating a top-notch and high-value offer. This simple formula explains it better:
High value offer + persuasion = irresistible
If you have difficulty growing your leads, it could be that your offer isn’t compelling. It’s not irresistible.
How do you recognizean irresistible offer? Chris Guillebeau shared a unique perspective on it:
A compelling offer is like a slice of orange at mile 18. It’s a marriage proposal from the guy or girl you’ve been waiting for your whole life. An offer you can’t refuse is like the $20,000 Bonderman Fellowship offered every year to graduating seniors at the University of Washington.
You want them to say yes to download your latest e-book, yes to your email forms, yes to your webinar or yes to your premium physical product on Amazon.
An irresistible offer will help youattract clients and retain them. To do that, follow the irresistible offer rules, as laid down by Jonathan Mead, founder of Paid to Exist.
Remember that when your offer is scarce, relevant, in high demand and exclusive, it becomes desirable.
People will naturally want to get their hands on it.
For example, in 2004, when Google launched a private beta of their free email service (Gmail), only 1,000 leaders were invited to share their honest opinions. These leaders were also allowed to invite their fans, friends, and family to test out the free email service.
Guess what happened during the initial beta phase of Gmail? Demand was high because it was exclusive to a group of people — not to the whole world.
At a point, Google started selling Gmail service. In fact, its eBay invitations were sold at $150 and other specific accounts sold for thousands of dollars.
Isn’t it funny that a free email service can be sold for $150 or more, just because it was exclusive, robust, and praised by thought leaders? That’s the power of an irresistible offer. When you offerone, your prospects and customers will see the gap between their problems and your solutions.
If you’re looking for an idea to create an irresistible offer for your audience, let me give you an example. Let’s assume that you created a report that will help people save on money on plane tickets.
People read, apply your tips and share their success stories on how they saved $200, $380, or $350. Many others can testify of the ease of securing their tickets at a reduced cost.
As you can see, the report is compelling and offers some practical advice that works. In this case, the length of the report doesn’t matter. Even if it’s only two pages, it’s an irresistible offer, because anyone who wants to save on airplane tickets will be attracted to the report.
Domino’s Pizza had an irresistible offer. Tom Monaghan was on the verge of bankruptcy when he strategized on how to take his company to the next level. It was a risk, but a single promotional idea changed everything:30 minutes or less… or it’s free.
Most people ordered Domino’s Pizza just because of the terms. (They’ve since dropped the guarantee.)
BlueHost also delivers irresistible offers—their web hosting plan starts at $3.49 per month, whereas other competitors such as A Small Orange, Godaddy and Hostgator start at $4.00 per month.
The difference may not be clear to you, but to a total beginner who just started out with a site, this is compelling because they can save some money.Your compelling offer has to be something that people want to buy.
In the same vein, if you want to get more email subscribers, your lead magnet has to be highly valuable, free to download and exclusive. A typical example is Michael Hyatt’s:
In order to be sure what offers will be irresistible or weak, you’ve gotto test it out. In his book, How to Create Irresistible Offers, author Robert W. Bly says that it’s possible to improve the response rate to your promotions anywhere from 10%-90%, just by creating and testing different offers.
Derek Halpern uses a powerful lead magnet to persuade people to join his email list. Though a lot of people don’t like pop-ups since the majority of them annoyingly disrupt reading, his offer (headline) makes a bold promise, so people tend to respond to it, especially first-time visitors.
In all, the way people perceive your offer will go a long way in persuading them to become leads or to drive them away. Perceived value can be applied to your lead magnets for building a list. You couldpresent the retail value of the offer that you’re giving away for free.
There are lots of different ways to generate leads. A convenient distinction in lead generation is outbound versus inbound, although there will be a crossover between the two.
Different businesses will use different lead generation tactics, so it’s about tweaking the type of lead generation you do until you find what works best.
Inbound Lead Generation
Inbound lead generation is when the prospect initiates the interaction with your business. Most often, this is done through content marketing.
A potential customer will find your content through the search engines or a social media link, love your article, and fill in a form with their contact details. From here, you can use your email marketing to progress the lead through the sales funnel, building the relationship until the prospect is ready to buy.
Seventy percent of marketers are actively investing in content marketing as a lead generation strategy, and it’s something that businesses have focused on a lot more in recent years.
The main types of inbound lead generation are:
videos
blogs
guides and e-books
pillar pages and content clusters
social media posts
infographics
newsletters
press releases
These are all content types that are strategically placed so people discover them organically.
Outbound Lead Generation
Outbound lead generation is when you initiate the interaction with the prospect. This may be done through a paid advert on Google or social media, cold email outreach, direct mail, or many other channels.
While inbound lead generation has become very popular in recent years, outbound marketing is still very important. Most businesses will find the best strategy is a mix of both inbound and outbound marketing to achieve their lead generation goals.
Some outbound marketing options include:
paid search ads
social media ads
radio ads
TV ads
direct mail
cold email
cold calls
print ads
Each option has its benefits and drawbacks, so it’s important to consider your budget and find out what will work best for you.
Lead Generation and SEO
A basic requisite for lead generation is to have people interacting with your business.
In the modern world, this is most likely to happen online, which means you’ve got two options: organic traffic or paid traffic.
When you’re looking for an answer to a question, what’s the first thing you do? The vast majority of people will type a query in a search engine. Google processes more than 3.5 billion searches every day, and the businesses that appear at the top of these search results are benefiting.
Search engine optimization is the perfect tactic because you reach people at the exact moment they’re looking for the information you have. You know they’re engaged, and they’re ripe to be converted into a lead.
The other big benefit of SEO is that you’re not paying for each click.
You’re building assets through your content, and if you practice good SEO, that page will be able to keep converting leads year after year.
Lead Generation and Paid Ads
The problem with SEO and inbound marketing, in general, is that it can be a slow process.
When you create a blog, you’re aiming for it to rank at best a few months down the line. If you need immediate results, then paid ads can be a much better option.
By investing in paid search ads or social media ads, you can get your brand in front of a very targeted audience. This is great for your visibility and allows you to drive a high volume of traffic to your landing pages.
Unlike with SEO though, you’re paying for each click, so it’s vitally important that everything you do is optimized. From your headlines to your landing pages, everything has to be geared towards turning visitors into solid leads.
Running paid ads is something of an art, and it can take time, but with these essential paid marketing steps, it can become a big part of your lead generation.
Here are some of the most important parts of your lead generation and the tools I recommend to help make your processes more efficient.
CRM – Zoho CRM
It’s one thing getting leads, but you’ve also got to be able to organize them.
Once someone gives you their contact details, what happens to them? Ideally, you want to put them into your CRM, from where you can organize your sales funnels.
In my list of the best CRMs, I found that Zoho CRM was the best option. It’s a great all-in-one platform that makes it easy to track your leads from prospect to repeat customer.
Email Finder – Voila Norbert
For outbound marketing, one of the most important things is being able to find new prospects to add to your sales funnel.
Many people use LinkedIn to research potential customers and find contact emails. People don’t love getting cold emails though, so as you might imagine, they don’t advertise their contact details too easily.
This is where a lead generation tool like Voila Norbert comes in. Once you’ve found a potential customer, it will find relevant email addresses so you know you’re reaching the right people with your email outreach.
Form Generator – Gravity Forms
Getting contact details is just as important for inbound marketing, and your forms play a big part in this.
It’s easy to think a form is just a form, but an optimized form will result in a lot more leads. Luckily, it’s easy to generate highly optimized forms using simple plugins.
For WordPress websites, I found that Gravity Forms is a great option, allowing you to quickly generate lead-generating forms.
Landing pages are an essential part of lead generation. Small changes to your landing pages can make a big difference to your conversion rate, and you want it to be as easy as possible to optimize this process.
Leadpages offers tons of features with lots of highly optimized templates to choose from, simple A/B testing, and an intuitive layout, it’s a perfect platform to build successful landing pages.
Email Marketing Services – Sendinblue
Email marketing plays a massive part in nurturing leads.
Most leads are going to end up in your sales funnel because they’ve given you their email address, so you need the right email marketing service to help you with the process. In my article on the best email marketing services, Sendinblue was one of my top options because it’s so easy to use.
Sometimes it’s best to keep things nice and simple, and that’s exactly what Sendinblue helps you to do.
4 Amazing Lead Generation Examples
Lead generation is an art, and there’s always room for optimization. Here are some examples of companies that have had great success with different lead generation campaigns.
You’ll notice that many of these campaigns have similarities, and one, in particular, is the omnichannel approach. This is a great way to ensure you’re maximizing your reach and bringing as many leads into your sales funnel as possible.
Here are four amazing lead generation examples to check out:
Ramaley Group refreshes its web presence and builds smarter sales funnels.
These case studies can give you some good ideas on how to improve your lead generation, but the most important thing is finding out what works for you. It’s important to pay close attention to your analytics and keep A/B testing your approach.
It’s all in the optimization, so make sure you’re testing everything out to get the best possible conversion rate.
Conclusion
Don’t get fooled by every fancy lead generation tool out there. Use tools for the right purpose—automation.
Building any real, successful business takes time. Nurturing your social network presence, crafting a solid email marketing campaign, diligently working on creating and producing quality content–all of these tasks require a significant amount of time and focus. You’ll expend energy, but you have to move out of your comfort zone to achieve results – particularly when it comes to building your lead generation campaign.
You may not grow your leads by 113% in a week, but, with consistency, you’ll likely surpass that milestone.
“Hacks” are not some magical push-button tactics that don’t have a strong foundation. On the contrary, they’ve been proven to work and many successful brands and industry leaders still use them to acquire new leads and convert them into customers.
Real satisfaction comes from what you learn in the process of applying these proven lead generation tips.
It’s the same with increasing sales. You have to make up your mind to learn along the way because your customers believe in you—and you can’t afford to let them down with outdated advice.
What other lead generation hacks have worked for you? Share your case studies, questions, or opinions.
It might feel like you’ve already done the hard work.
You’ve spent hours with a keyboard or notebook in your hands, writing away. You’ve edited, edited, and edited some more—and may have even struggled through the complicated process of self-publishing.
Now you have to go to the next step: marketing your book.
This entails getting your book “out there,” earning an audience, and generating sales. You just need to understand how to market a book.
With the right marketing tactics, there’s nothing stopping you from selling your book around the world and building the fanbase of your dreams—well, nothing but time and effort.
How to Market a Book
No matter how good a book is, no one will read it if it doesn’t have the right marketing.
International self-publishing websites like Amazon have brutal algorithms that punish the unaware. In order to get yourself that “best selling” tag, your best bet is to look away from the shops and start focusing on your audience.
In many ways, having a book is like having a website. It can be absolutely brilliant, but if it’s not presented to the right people, it won’t take off.
Luckily, with the help of modern technology, finding readers doesn’t have to be an impossible journey.
For this reason, marketing shouldn’t just be an afterthought. It needs to be a part of your process from the very conception of your book.
If you fail in your market research, then you may find you’re writing a book that nobody wants to read. In some cases, this might not be a problem (such as you are writing for passion), but if you want to make sales and know how to market a book, then your writing has to be informed by your research.
Fanbase
I always talk about the importance of targeted content. No matter what you’re writing, it’s impossible to accommodate everyone.
Instead, you have to focus on the people who are most likely to enjoy your book.
This is where it’s helpful to create a reader profile. Ask yourself questions about what your ideal reader looks like and build a picture of their character. Understand the following about them:
Demographics.
How often do they read?
How many books do they read?
How fast do they read?
What information are they looking for?
How do they consume content?
Yes, your writing comes from you and is an expression of yourself, but it’s always important to keep your readers in mind. This will help you with the writing process, but it’s also going to help your marketing, and, eventually generating reviews.
Genre
If you tell someone you love reading, then what’s the next question they’re likely to ask?
Understanding what works and what doesn’t in your genre is important information for your market research. For example, the blurb on a non-fiction book is going to be very different from the blurb on a romance novel.
The more information you have about your genre, the easier it is to understand how to market a book.
Competitors
Consider this: who are you competing with?
Are you competing with that out-of-reach New York Times bestseller, or are you competing with something a little more niche?
In an ideal world, there would be no competition. Your book should stand proud, and alone. Only, in the real world… that’s not the case.
Competition exists.
For example, if you’ve written a children’s book, you need to look at similar authors.
After all, marketing is always much easier when you know what the competition is doing. When you can see what they do well and what they don’t do so well, then it can give you ideas for your own marketing. You can look at what they’ve written, what the blurb is, what social media pages they run, and even do a deep dive into their website.
Strategy #2: Develop an Online Presence and Following
Sadly, books won’t just sell themselves. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could?
You can put them on Amazon, and in bookstores, but getting people to pick them up and buy them is a whole other thing.
To market a book, you’ve got to establish an online presence and be able to create a buzz about your work. It takes time to build this authority, so the earlier you set up an author website and build out your social media profiles, the better.
A big part of marketing is reaching people where they are and in modern times, we’re virtually all online.
We live in a world where we have instant access to information. When someone sees your book, they’re not just going to say “let’s give it a go,” they’re going to look online to learn more about it.
If there’s no information online about you or your book, then it’s not going to fill them with confidence.
There are lots of ways you can build your online presence:
Create an author website.
Engage with readers on social media.
Offer extra content.
Show “the person” behind the books through blogs or videos.
Your online presence is a fundamental part of marketing a book today. People want to feel a personal connection with authors, their books, and the characters in them, and your online presence is the way to give it to them.
As Paperback Kingdom says, “when you’re a writer, you’re a writer. But when you’re an author, you become a whole lot more than just a writer—you become a brand.”
Take, for example, YA author C.G Drews:
Drews runs a popular blog, Paperfury, and has an Instagram account with thousands of followers. When her first book, “A Thousand Perfect Notes” was released in June 2018, it became an instant hit, with support from her friends, followers, and blog readers.
This just goes to show how vital an established online presence can be in understanding how to market a book.
Strategy #3: Create a Blurb and Press Kit
How much did a pirate pay for his hook? An arm and a leg.
That’s how much authors feel like they have to sacrifice when trying to become marketing experts. Sure, it’s difficult, but make no mistake: it’s not impossible.
Like with any great story, you need a hook for your marketing—something that will grab people’s attention and draw them into reading more.
In marketing, we use them all the time (just take a look at my first paragraph).
The equivalent to a hook when you market a book is a blurb. Think about the steps someone takes when they’re considering your book:
Look at the cover page and title.
Read the blurb.
Look at the index to see chapter titles.
Research online.
All in all, with worldwide shortening attention spans, you don’t have a huge amount of time to grab someone’s attention before they click onto the next page.
You need to combine your great writing ability and newfound marketing skills to create the perfect blurb. You can even trial different versions and see which resonates with your audience the most (this would be called A/B testing.)
Blurbs should draw people in, inspire their imagination, and demand that they read on.
Remember that a good buyer’s journey should finish with the delight stage. They should fall in love from the first sentence of your blurb, right to the end of your novel.
Powerful synopses are how you convince people to take a chance on an unrecognized author and build your brand evangelists for future organic marketing. When someone loves your work, (whether that be a newspaper columnist, blog owner, or casual reader) you want to provide them with all the tools they need to help you market your book.
This is when your press kit should come in (also known as a media kit). The more shareable images, videos, and other items you can put in your press kit, the easier it is for your fans to help market your book.
Writers Edit suggests that you should have the following on hand:
Author bio, contact details, and a photo.
Information about your book(s).
Media release information.
Ideas for interview questions or discussion topics.
Strategy #4: Design an Eye-Catching Book Cover
How many times have you been told not to judge a book by its cover?
The funny thing is, we all do it!
We’re naturally drawn to certain elements (such as human faces or different color combinations).
When it comes to marketing a book, this means your cover is going to be vitally important.
Take a look at the cover of Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi, a bestselling YA dystopian novel. The color combinations, the typography, and the artwork are all cleverly designed to draw our attention. The light gradient as you move up the cover allows the main feature to stand out.
For the most part, book cover design is an area where market research can come in handy.
What do some of the most successful books in your genre have in common when it comes to the cover? Are they like Shatter Me, with one main piece of artwork as the focus? Or, like in non-fiction, do bold-colored, imageless covers with large text dominate the leaderboard?
Consider how you can incorporate the details you are noticing on multiple bestsellers. Walk the thin line between going with what works, and finding a way to add your own, refreshing twist to the market.
Remember that your book cover isn’t just for your physical book, it’s also going to play an important part in online stores like Amazon.
Unless you’re a writer and a high-quality artist, this is probably something you will want to outsource, but your input will still drive the project. Knowledge and feedback will influence some important decisions that can help your book succeed.
Strategy #5: Run Targeted Ads on Social Media
There are nearly four billion active social media users across the world. When you think the population of the world is just under eight billion, this figure is staggering.
When you run social media adverts, you have the ability to get your book in front of this massive audience.
The best part about it?
Social media ads allow you to be unbelievably targeted. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn have so much information on their users, and you can use this to make sure you’re reaching the right people with your ads.
use your market research to narrow in on your target audience
utilize video to boost engagement
build specific landing pages that reflect your ad copy
explore different platforms
keep an eye on your analytics and find ways to optimize
It’s much easier to advertise a book to people when you understand their interests, and, luckily that’s exactly what social media helps you to do.
Strategy #6: Create a Mailing List to Market Your Book
No matter what you’re selling, it often takes more than just one touchpoint for someone to make a purchase. People tend to research products, then go away, before coming back and making a purchase at a later date.
Books are often considered “lower value items,” with prices running from $12-$24 on average. This means that customers are more likely to make impulse purchases when in the decision buying process, but, often, there will still be some back-and-forth before clicking the buy button.
No matter how good your marketing approach or book cover, people are going to visit your website, look at your socials, view your book online, and, sometimes, simply leave without making a purchase (no matter how successful you are, this will still happen.)
Once someone leaves, you have no way of reaching them. However, if you’re focusing your efforts on building a mailing list, then you’ve got a way of creating more touchpoints.
Email marketing can be one of your best strategies for marketing your book. By engaging with your subscribers, offering valuable content, and building the relationship, you’re going to boost your sales.
If you use email to market your book, make sure to:
respecting people’s privacy
using segmentation to personalize your outreach
offering value
not just focusing on the sale
driving people to your website
A good mailing list is a valuable commodity and it’s a perfect way to build interest in your future releases.
Strategy #7: Network With Other Authors in Your Niche
People often underestimate the power of networking. Modern technology allows us to reach our target audience so easily that we forget about building relationships.
There are lots of other authors going through the exact same thing as you, and they have lots of insights to share. They’ve also spent time growing their websites, mailing lists, and social media profiles just as you’re doing.
A great way to maximize your reach is by reaching out to other authors and seeing if they will help market your book. They can quickly shoot a message to their mailing list, and you could even pitch it as extra content they can use to share their own work. Perhaps you could organize a joint interview or review the other author’s book to share with your mailing list.
You will find you can build reciprocal relationships, and friendships, where you support each other through the process of marketing your books.
There is a strong writing community out there, and it can pay to get involved in it.
Similarly, you can build up a reputation for your key insight into the industry. Reviewing other books in your genre allows you to tag authors and get your name on their feed. It’s a way to become more visible.
Always be constructive, though, and never tag author’s in negative reviews. You can still post your honest thoughts and feelings online, but it can be hurtful to share critiques directly with them.
Your goal is to make connections with authors, not ruin them.
How to Market a Book: 3 Examples of Successful Book Marketing
Different authors will go about marketing their books in slightly different ways. You may find certain techniques work better than others, but it’s worth exploring every avenue.
Here are some examples of authors who have done an amazing job with their marketing.
Author Website
Chloe Gong is an NYT bestselling author who has only recently published her first book. As part of her marketing efforts, she set herself up on TikTok, where she has millions of views and likes from talking about books. She also has an up-to-date website with great copy, and even a meme page to appeal to her YA audience.
The website helps keep Chloe’s fans updated, whilst also allowing people to get to know the person behind the books. With regular updates, she keeps people coming back and has built a brilliant platform to market her upcoming book, Foul Lady Fortune.
Social Media
Reddit isn’t a social media platform that gets talked about a whole lot, but it can be an amazing platform to start discussions about books.
There are an endless number of Reddit threads on virtually every subject in the world, and often the people taking part are very passionate. This goes for the subject of books as well.
Some authors have found that hosting question and answer sessions on Reddit have been a great way to market their book. People are generally interested in getting to know authors and understand the work they do, and Reddit provides a good platform for this.
Mailing List
Don’t be afraid to do something a little bit different with your email communication. This email from Tansey Morgan is a great example of how you can create engagement with your subscribers.
Not only are the Amazon reviews very helpful for Morgan’s marketing, but the email also makes the recipient feel involved in the process.
There are lots of little ways you can do this, with sneak peeks at content, a behind-the-scenes view of the writing process, and other fun benefits for your subscribers.
How to Market a Book: Frequently Asked Questions
How do I self-market my book?
To self-market a book it’s important to start with market research. From there, you can build your online presence and reach your target audience.
How do I get my book noticed?
Your book cover is one of the best ways to get your book noticed. Look at other books in your niche to find out what they do well, and incorporate this into your book cover.
Can a self-published book become a bestseller?
There’s nothing stopping your self-published book from taking off. Great marketing can create a viral effect, taking you all the way to a bestseller (think 50 Shades of Grey).
How do I market my book on social media?
Targeted social media ads are a great way to reach your target audience and market your book.
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How to Market a Book: Conclusion
There’s nothing stopping you from successfully marketing your book.
The online world has made it much easier to reach your target audience, and there are lots of ways to take advantage of this. By creating an author website, building out your social profiles, and engaging with the community, you can soon build momentum behind your book.
Lots of independently published books have had great success, but one of the key things is they’ve had good marketing behind them. If you can nail this part of the process, then it can make a huge difference to your book sales.
That’s a ton of people sharing and engaging with content on a daily basis.
On top of a huge user base, the engagement levels are off the charts. People open the app 30 times a day on average, over 75 percent of 13 to 34-year-olds in the U.S. use the app, and over 5 billion Snaps are created every day.
It’s no question Snapchat has potential in numbers and engagement, so why don’t you see results with the platform?
Below, you’ll find some of my top Snapchat ad strategies, tips, and resources to help you run successful campaigns.
However, before we dive in, we need to establish if Snapchat ads are actually worth your time and money.
Why Should You Advertise on Snapchat?
If your brand appeals to Gen Z and millennials, you should look at Snapchat as a way to increase user acquisition, brand awareness, and sales.
Why?
Snapchat has over $1 trillion in direct spending power between these two generations. With one-third of users more likely to make purchases on their phones, it’s a platform that’s worth a second look.
Spinnaker Nordic tried Snapchat ads for three days and had incredible results. With $759.04 ad spend, the company achieved:
+300,000 ad views
+1,300 Swipe Ups
+24,000 site visitors
52 phone calls
What if you don’t have $700 to blow on ads? No problem. You can advertise on Snapchat for as little as $5. With such a low daily minimum spend, you can test, learn, and optimize your ads on any budget.
Not enough to convince you?
Snapchat also has a partnership with Amazon. If a user sees a product they like, all they need to do is point their cameras at the barcode or product and long press on the camera screen.
Snapchat will then show a card with a link to the item on Amazon. The app has created one of the fastest ways to shop online and is one of the frontrunners for augmented reality e-commerce.
10 Snapchat Ad Strategies and Resources
If there is anything we can learn about finding success on Snapchat, we can learn it from experience.
Here are some of the best Snapchat ad strategies and resources to help you mimic their success and grow your business.
1. Add Polls to Your Snapchat Ads
Why should you care about poll ads?
Well, it can increase your engagement and views.
On Instagram, polling stickers in Story Ads increased the number of three-second video views in 9 out of 10 campaigns.
The insights you gain from your audience can also strengthen your ads, help you stand out from the competition, and potentially increase your sales.
The only downside? Snapchat doesn’t have a built-in polling feature like Instagram.
However, by using an app called Polly, you can mimic Instagram’s polling success on Snapchat. Polly lets you create polls and share them to Snapchat, where your audience can answer anonymously.
How to Use Polls in Your Snapchat Ads Strategy
Brand announcements: Ask your audience to vote on your newest flavors, colors, or product varieties. You can use social media trends like Selena Gomez versus. Miley Cyrus battle and pit your products against one another.
Trivia questions: Who doesn’t love a good quiz night at the pub? Put your audience’s wits to the test, and add some game show flair to your Snapchat ads. You can also redirect people to your website to see the answer.
Audience insights: Need to know what makes your audience tick? Poll them! It’s a great way to see what content resonates or what people want to see from you next.
2. Link Your Snapchat Ads to the Correct Landing Page
Once you have your audience’s attention, you need to direct them to the next step, i.e., your landing page. You don’t want users to watch your ad and move on. You want to instigate an action that will get users into your sales funnel and create conversions.
What is a landing page?
It’s a stand-alone webpage created for an advertising or marketing campaign.
The page usually has a goal like:
sales
email list sign-ups
white paper downloads
For example, if you’re an app developer, you would redirect people to your Google Play or App Store download page. If you’re an e-commerce brand, your landing page could link to sign up for a newsletter and get a 15-percent discount code.
On Snap Ads, there are three different types of ad links you can use:
Web view attachments: This is a great option to drive online sales. Users swipe up, and your landing page will instantly load.
App install attachments: Use the “Install Now” or “Download” buttons as your CTA and redirect users to your app install page.
Deep link attachments: This option helps you to re-engage users who have your app. If an existing user swipes up on your ad, you can direct them to a location in your app, e.g., the latest collection or an exclusive sale.
The one you choose depends on your landing page goals and the types of products you’re selling on the app.
If you need help creating a high conversion landing page, use these resources below:
great visuals (no blurry, pixelated images or videos)
a short, snappy, message (i.e., what is the purpose of the ad)
enticing call-to-action (CTA)
With the short attention spans of Gen Z and millennials, Snapchat recommends writing copy that’s easy to understand, is localized for your audience, and has an offer message within the first two seconds of the ad.
Subway used this approach to announce its new cheesy garlic bread. The ad is only five seconds long and uses two short sentences to get its message across.
4. Use Split Testing on Snapchat to Create Higher Performing Ad Content
Spit testing or A/B testing is crucial to improving your conversion rates. It helps you hone in on what’s working and get rid of what isn’t. Most importantly, it helps save you money.
Gone are days of blowing your entire ad budget on a campaign with lackluster results. With split testing, you can combine your more effective elements to boost ROI, lower the risk of failure, and create a winning ad strategy.
How does spit testing work with Snapchat ads?
Inside your advertiser’s dashboard, you can test different variables such as:
creative
audience
placement
goal
For example, let’s say you want to test an audience. Maybe you’re not too sure if you should target 18 to 25 or 30 to 35-year-olds for your next campaign. Your creative, placement, and delivery will be the same with the split-testing feature, but each ad set will target the different audiences you’ve created.
The winning test is the one that achieves the lowest cost per goal. A goal can be:
swipe-ups
app installs
shares
story opens
When you’re done, create a campaign with the winning variable, and start getting better results from your ad spend.
You can choose from three shoppable AR categories:
Website: Comes with a “Buy Now” button. It has the option to link to a product page and works best for e-commerce brands.
Video: This option has a “Watch” button and is great for promoting content like movie trailers.
Install: The “Install Now” button takes users to the Google Play or App Store to download an app.
What are the benefits of creating a Snapchat ad strategy around AR lenses?
Brand awareness: Lenses from their Creator Community have over 2 trillion views, and 2 million lenses have been created with their Lens Studio.
Increase in sales and a decrease in returns: Users who engage with AR are twice as likely to make a purchase and are 30 percent less likely to return a product.
Snapchat’s Audience Insights is a powerful tool for marketers. It provides a wealth of information about your audience and can help you tweak your campaigns to improve your conversion rate.
Inside the dashboard, you can compare and create new audience segments. The data, a mixture of demographics, Snap Lifestyle Categories and external third-party partners, tells you more about your current audience and helps you discover new segments for your brand.
By using the Audience Insights dashboard, you might discover that 70 percent of your audience is also interested in rock climbing. You can use this interest to optimize and create more relevant ads that appeal to your audience.
Pretty nifty, right?
Well, Snapchat’s wealth of data doesn’t end there.
One of the best features on the dashboard is purchase intent. You can see at a glance what is the likelihood of your audience purchasing your service or product.
You can also compare the purchase intent across different audiences and use the information to adjust your Snapchat Ad bids.
If you’re not incorporating UGC into your Snapchat ads strategy, you’re missing opportunities to convert your audience into paying customers.
There’s plenty of data that shows it’s an effective marketing strategy.
A study by Stackla reveals 79 percent of users said UGC impacts their purchasing decisions and find UGC 9.8 times more impactful than influencer content.
Thirty-one percent of consumers agree that UGC content is more memorable than traditional ads.
When analyzing watching habits, YouTube found Gen Z and Millennials are more likely to watch UGC than older generations.
According to Snapchat, not only is it more likely to get viewed in full, but your ad will feel more authentic and less over-produced.
If you don’t have any UGC yet, create ads with a similar look and feel. Use Snapchat’s features, have someone speak directly to the camera, and keep your ads five to six seconds long. It will appear more organic and come across as an extension of other Snaps rather than an intrusive ad.
8. Choose the Right Ad Format to Match Your Snapchat Ad Goals
If you’re using the wrong ad format, you’re not going to see results with your Snapchat ad strategy.
Each format is designed to help you achieve specific business goals, such as:
brand awareness
increase conversions
drive sales
increase app downloads
Here’s a brief guide to what each format can help you achieve:
Dynamic ads: These include collection ads, story ads, and single image or video ads. Dynamic ads are great for driving sales and increasing sign-ups.
App install attachments: If you’re promoting an app, this ad format is made specifically for you. It adds an Install Card at the bottom of story ads, single image or video ads, and lens AR experiences.
Retargeting: Want to target users who didn’t convert or have engaged with your brand in the past? Story Ads is an excellent ad format to re-engage, boost brand awareness and increase customer loyalty.
This advice might seem odd, especially when there are statistics like 69 percent of people watch videos without sound.
Shouldn’t your Snapchat ad strategy follow suit and design for no sound?
Nope.
According to Snapchat, 64 percent of ads are watched with sound on.
This isn’t surprising.
As I mentioned earlier, the best Snapchat ads are the ones that fit natively within a user’s feed and don’t disrupt the experience. Most Snapchatters are watching their friends’ Snaps with sound, so your ads should do the same.
Create ads with your customers talking to the camera giving a testimonial.
Use sound to get more information across (remember you only have about six seconds).
The final Snapchat ad strategy you need to implement is goal-based bidding.
What is goal-based bidding?
It’s a feature that allows you to optimize your ad spend toward a specific action you want a Snapchatter to take e.g., downloading your app or making a purchase.
By setting this cost-per-action, Snapchat will deliver your ads in the most efficient way possible to achieve the desired outcome.
The result?
Your ads will go out to people most likely to complete the action, and you’ll see higher conversions.
There are six different ad types on Snapchat: Single image of video ads, filters, lenses, story ads, product catalog ads, and commercials.
How do I know which type of Snapchat ad is right for my business?
It depends on your campaign objectives. For example, filters help you create a branded conversion, lenses create interactive moments, the product catalog showcases a series of products, and commercials are great for driving brand awareness.
How much do Snapchat ads cost?
Snapchat Ads have a minimum daily spend of $5.
Why should I advertise on Snapchat?
If your audience is Gen Z and millennials, Snapchat is one of the best social media networks to engage with them and drive sales. The app reaches 75 percent of Gen Z and millennials in the U.S., has 293 million daily users, and on average, people spend 30 minutes on the app each day.
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}
Snapchat Ad Strategies and Resources: Conclusion
With almost 300 million people using the platform, Snapchat is not a dead social media network. It still carries weight, especially with the younger generation.
If your brand appeals to its user base, it’s worth investing in Snapchat ads. With such an affordable minimum daily spend, almost everyone can afford to roll out successful Snapchat ad strategies.
Get creative with AR technology to create unique campaigns and build hype around your products. Use split testing to figure out what works for your business and what needs to go, and you will see your acquisition cost go down with more conversions.
The above tips and resources will make sure you create ads that resonate, engage, and drive action with your audience.
How do you get the most out of your Snapchat Ad investment?
Are you missing out on traffic because people aren’t searching the way you think they are?
If your website isn’t optimized for voice search, then this could be the case. These six timely SEO strategies and resources for voice search will not only help you get more traffic from people using Siri and Alexa, but they will also become important pillars of your entire SEO strategy.
What Is Voice Search?
Voice search is a way of searching the internet through speech. Using artificial intelligence, a device can recognize your voice and put the query into a search engine.
Voice recognition has been around for a long time (since the early 1950s), but it wasn’t until 2011 when IBM’s Watson (you may remember it beating contestants on Jeopardy!) came out that it had practical real-world significance.
If you look in your pocket or on your desk right now (perhaps even on your hand), there’s a good chance you’ll find a voice search device. One reason voice search is so popular is because the technology is in almost every device we use, making it super easy to access.
Here are some of the most popular voice search devices and the search engines they use:
Google Home: Google
Amazon Echo/Alexa: Bing
Google Assistant: Google
iPhone/Siri: Safari
Android phones and devices: Google
Microsoft Cortana: Bing
This means whether it’s your phone, TV, portable speaker, or any other device, it’s got the ability to search the internet through speech.
How Does Voice Search Affect SEO?
When you type a query into Google, what do you want it to do?
First, it’s got to understand what you mean by your query (helping it to understand the type of results you want to see), and then show you the best results that match your search query.
The way we type queries into Google is quite different from the way we talk to our voice assistants. For example, if you’re looking for a local restaurant to dine in, your searches might look a little like this:
typed: “Restaurants near me”
voice: “What are some good restaurants in my local area?”
When we type, we tend to use very keyword-based searches, but when we use voice search, our searches become much more conversational. This means search engines have had to become very good at semantics: understanding the meaning behind words.
The way we use language is complicated, and it’s not easy for machines to understand the meaning behind words (just think how many words have multiple meanings). Voice search has forced search engines to get much better at this though, and Google has led the way with key updates like Hummingbird.
This update and other previous ones have changed SEO, taking the focus away from keywords (in the early days, people would simply stuff keywords into their articles) and much more toward user experience.
Voice search has played a part in this shift, and it continues today, with a consistent focus on experience, rather than just keywords.
6 Ways to Optimize for Voice Search
Voice search is here to stay. Everywhere you look, there are voice search-enabled devices, and the percentage of voice searches as a share of total searches continues to grow (usage grew by eight percent between September 2018 and early 2019).
The good news is you don’t have to tear up your current SEO strategy to optimize for voice search. Voice search plays into the overall trend of matching user intent and providing the best possible user experience, so the tactics you use to optimize for voice search will benefit your SEO in general.
1. Optimize for Local Search
Many voice searches are for local information; they are three times more likely to be local searches than text-based ones.
If you think about it, this makes sense. When you’re out and about, and want a quick answer to your question, it’s easy to get out your mobile device and ask a question. This means it’s important you focus on the local element of your SEO.
For many businesses, local SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing anyway. Local searches make up around 46 percent of total searches, and these are extremely engaged buyers. Local people are the people who will drop into your store and make a purchase there and then, and this means showing up in the local search pack is essential, especially if you’re a brick and mortar business.
Local SEO follows the same principles as regular SEO, and the key thing (that many websites neglect) is consistently telling people you’re a local business. Make sure you’re creating content that’s relevant to your local area and integrating local keywords into your copy.
Check out Ubersuggest to get local keyword ideas and make sure you’re answering the questions local people have:
phrases people use to describe the neighborhood around your location
“near me” in your title tags, meta description, internal links, and anchor text
landmarks around your business location
the titles of local institutions that are relevant to your business
The days of stuffing your content with keywords simply to please crawlers are long gone. To be successful with SEO, you’ve got to be authentic, use language naturally, and offer valuable content.
Essentially, you have to be human (we all are, so this shouldn’t be a problem).
Voice search typifies this because when people search through speech, they tend to talk in a more natural way than they do when they’re typing a query into the search engines. Your content should match the conversational way people ask questions to their voice assistants, but not just for voice search reasons.
Today’s rankings are user-experienced-focused. The pages that answer people’s questions in the best way while sharing the best experience, will rise to the top of the rankings.
To do this, you’ve got to give people quick access to the information they need (being concise) and do it in an enjoyable way (natural, conversational language). When you’re doing this, you’re not just matching the language people have used in their voice search (user intent), but you’re also driving engagement through your authentic brand voice.
3. Use Structured Data
Ask your voice-controlled device this question: “Who was the first President of the United States of America?”
What happens?
Chances are your device will start reading out an answer about George Washington.
This information is taken from a long page about George Washington though, so how does it know which bit of text to read? The answer probably lies in structured data.
Search engines look at a bunch of factors besides content to determine a page’s relevance and position in their search results. Professional SEOs leverage these additional factors to further optimize their content for search engines.
Schema markup, also known as structured data, is one such factor. It does not affect the rankings directly, but it can give you an edge over your competitors, particularly when it comes to voice search.
Essentially, it is metadata: data about the information on your site. It goes into your site’s source code. The visitors don’t see it, but microdata helps search engines to organize and classify your content. It is an underutilized strategy because it requires work.
Do you want an example?
The following markup classifies your contact details page as containing contact information.
Now, let me guess your next question: How is microdata relevant to voice search?
When users search for local businesses, they often look for operational hours, contact information, address, directions from highways, and the like.
You can use microdata to ensure that search engines classify this information.
Let’s search for the population of Dubai.
Google quickly retrieved the figure because of a markup.
Need another reason to work on your structured data?
A study found that over 40 percent of voice results were pulled from the featured snippet. Just like with voice search, featured snippets need to pull the exact information you’re looking for, so it’s likely they look at structured data to decide what information should be shown.
Your Google My Business Listing is an essential part of local SEO and voice search.
Because voice searches are often used to find out important details about your business, such as contact number, address, and opening hours, Google must have accurate information on these details.
Your website and structured data go a long way in making sure Google has the right information about your business, but Google wants to be super accurate, and the way it does this is by looking at your Google My Business listing.
This will give Google all the information it needs to understand what your business does, who it’s for, when it opens, where it is, and much more. This is the exact information voice searches are asking for, so it’s a quick way to get accurate results to people’s questions.
5. Be Mobile Friendly
How are most voice searches made?
You want to show up in results through mobile devices, and you’ve got to offer a good mobile experience. This is a key part of Google’s algorithms, but there are still websites out there that aren’t optimized for mobile.
If this is the case with your website, people are going to click on your site and leave immediately because the page doesn’t work properly on their device. This is a big sign for Google that your page isn’t worthy of ranking, and it’s going to hurt you for both voice search and traditional queries.
I mentioned modern SEO is all about user experience and with the majority of traffic (and virtually all voice traffic) coming from mobile devices, this is something you have to be on top of.
6. Create Content Answering Your Audience’s Frequently Asked Questions
People tend to use questions when making voice searches.
The great thing about this is Google gives you a great insight into the questions people are frequently asking.
Type a question that relates to your website, and take a look at the results. The chances are, you will see a box titled “people also ask.” The FAQ’s feature displays for many queries, and it shows you the questions your target audience is regularly asking.
With a clear picture of the questions people are using to search for information, you can start creating amazing content that answers those questions. As I’ve said throughout this article, it’s all about user experience, and the first thing you need if you’re going to give someone the right experience is valuable content.
Answer people’s questions, help solve their pain points and make it enjoyable. If you can do this better than all the other websites, then it’s going to give you an excellent chance of ranking.
Voice Search FAQ’s
What is voice search SEO?
Voice search SEO is the practice of optimizing your website to show up in search engine results pages for voice searches.
Does voice search impact SEO?
Voice search has had an impact on SEO. It’s all about understanding the meaning behind words, and this is a fundamental part of all SEO.
Why is voice search important for SEO?
Devices with voice search capabilities are everywhere. This has led to huge growth in voice searches. If you’re not optimizing, you might be missing out on a big chunk of your audience.
What percentage of searches are voice searches?
Google has suggested 27 percent of mobile searches are voice searches.
Voice Search Conclusion
If you want to grow your organic traffic, then you should be aiming to rank well for voice searches. Not only are there a huge number of voice searches happening every day, but the techniques you use to optimize for these queries are a fundamental part of modern SEO.
Voice search has changed the way people search for information, and search engines have responded with updates to their algorithms. You need to respond as well, and by matching searcher intent and providing the right user experience, you can make sure you’re getting more organic traffic through voice search.
Internal links are a crucial part of a successful SEO strategy.
Small but mighty, simple yet complex, internal links help navigate users through your digital content and give search engine crawlers information about how your website works.
Internal links are found on almost every page on the internet. You’re probably already using them, even if you don’t know it. (Hint: there’s a few included in this intro,)
If you want to optimize your content for SEO, you need to understand how internal links work, where to place them, and why they matter.
In this post, we’ll dive into internal linking and cover best practices.
What Is Internal Linking?
Internal links are links from one page to another within a single domain.
These are different from external links, which point to pages on a different website.
Every website with more than one page should be connected through internal linking.
Think of your website’s home page. In the top navigation, you likely have a menu that links to other internal pages. This could be your About, Shop, and Contact pages.
This internal linking structure is essential for SEO because it establishes a site architecture and improves your link equity.
Having multiple web pages attached to a singular domain improves your chances of being ranked by allowing search engine crawlers to index more content.
Internal linking is a simple issue of site design and architecture, and the search engines expect it. All websites have a design and architecture that keeps them structured logically, such as this common silo model.
But as long as you have a strong internal linking structure, your website will be crawled, indexed, and ranked by search engines.
Internal linking is also an important part of your user experience, as it allows users to uncover related information or find what they are looking for, which improves dwell time.
5 Reasons Internal Linking Is Good for SEO
Internal linking is one of SEO’s most valuable weapons.
As advanced as the algorithm is, there are still simple changes that will give you an immediate boost in SEO without gaming the search engines.
Internal linking is one of them. It’s not a trick or a gimmick, and it’s certainly not hard to do.
Here are some of the benefits.
1. Helps Google Index Your Site
Google’s crawler follows link paths throughout the internet to find and index websites.
If your website has strong internal linking, the Google crawler has an easier time finding new content you publish.
Google’s bots regularly crawl the web for fresh content. If your content is woven together with multiple internal links, crawling happens a lot faster.
As a result, your content will get indexed faster, too.
Improved crawling and indexing can boost your SEO.
2. Increases Backlink-Earning Potential of Deep Content Pages
Take a look at where most of your website’s backlinks are coming from. You’ll probably see a lot of links that send users to your homepage.
When you compare the homepage backlinks to deep page backlinks, this is what you usually see:
Unfortunately, too many home page backlinks are bad for SEO. We call this over-optimizing, and it should be avoided.
What you want to see is the pie chart reversed. The majority of your external links should point at deep internal pages, not your home page. That’s because the homepage doesn’t generally include the type of detailed information users search for.
When a website doesn’t actively publish and promote new content, its link profile looks like this:
Most of the links on the website go to social profiles or standard pages such as “About” or “Contact.”
This provides very little SEO value to the site.
If you create a strong internal linking structure, you can boost the link juice earning potential of the internal pages, by creating clear click paths and indexation throughout the website.
Why? Because you are increasing the overall crawl priority throughout the site with better distribution of your links.
3. Internal Linking Spreads the Strength of the Site to Internal Pages
When your website receives a link to the homepage, some of the link value is passed on to internal pages.
This is often referred to as “link juice.”
If Page 1 then links to Page 2, the “link juice” flows from Page 1 to Page 2, helping it rank higher in the search engine results page (SERP).
The more tightly-knit a website’s structure (through internal linking), the better the overall site will perform in search.
4. Internal Linking with Optimized Anchor Text Is Good for SEO
An internal link is a simple string of HTML that links one website page to another. It looks like this:
<A HREF = “http://www.example.com/internalpage“> an article on cat food </A>
When you create an internal link with anchor text, as opposed to with an image or navigational text, however, the value of the internal link goes up.
Anchor text improves the value of the link by adding keywords and content to the linking process. Google isn’t just looking at an A HREF tag. They are also looking at the anchor text that is part of that link.
The days of keyword stuffing anchor texts are long gone. But, there is value in optimizing your internal anchor text.
Anchor text that flows well with the overall content, versus over-optimized anchor text, is best.
5. It Provides Value to Your Users
This is the most important point of all. Internal linking is an SEO technique, yes. But, it’s more than that.
Ultimately, internal linking is useful for users.
Think about it this way: When you’re researching a topic, do you check one source or multiple?
Do you enjoy exploring other content that reinforces your understanding of the topic?
Maybe, you just like the writing style of the article you’re reading and want to read more work by the same author.
Internal linking on a site increases the value of each piece of content by backing up claims and leading the user to related information.
While it may not drive conversions directly, internal linking does have a place within the marketing funnel—carrying people to a target destination.
As an added bonus, you can help readers stay on your site longer and increase their trust in you by using internal linking.
SEO is about user optimization, not just technical tweaks and sneaky tricks.
Even if you don’t care about the technical value of internal linking, at least do it for your users.
Internal Linking Best Practices
Now, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty. How do you do internal linking? What’s the best method for creating the biggest value with links?
There are two things you need in place first:
Written content on the site: Even if you have a single article, that’s okay. That’s your starting place. If you don’t have any written content but want to create some, check out our The Ultimate Guide to Writing Epic Content.
Continually writing new content for the site: Getting into a regular publishing schedule is important for internal linking to be effective.
Okay, let’s get into it.
Link to and From Content-Heavy Pages
The best internal links are those that connect one article to another. This creates a strong internal linking structure deep within the site.
If you have good site architecture, you’ll have enough links to the site’s main pages, such as the homepage, About page, Contact page, etc.
You don’t need more links to these pages.
Obviously, if you’re trying to drive conversions using a squeeze page or sales page and the opportunity is right, link to it.
For the most part, I recommend creating links in and among long-form articles. This automatically spreads your internal linking naturally.
Create Text Links Using Anchor Text
What kind of internal links work best?
It’s simple: Links with descriptive anchor text.
What do we mean by descriptive anchor text?
You’re familiar with anchor text, right? An anchor text is the word or words that link to another page. They typically appear as blue text to the reader.
Each of those examples is associating the subject of the link with relevant phrases. The first anchor text contains “10 most important SEO techniques,” which is the subject matter of the article you’re linking to. The second anchor text has the phrase, “Google’s algorithm has been updated,” and the linked article contains information about Google, Hummingbird, algorithms, and updates.
Here are three things not to do with your internal linking:
Do not try to create an exact match between the anchor text and the link target. This technique, known as “exact match anchor text” has been associated with SEO penalties via the Penguin update. Today’s search engines are sensitive to the regular use of exact match anchor text because it wouldn’t frequently happen in regular content. It appears unnatural because it is.
Do not use phrases like “click here.” This adds no value. Anchor text needs to be related to the linked page in some way.
Do not link more than one sentence. An entire hyperlinked paragraph is unsightly and makes for a poor user experience. Just stick to a few words or a phrase when using anchor text to point to an internal link.
Add an Appropriate Number of Links Per Page
When you write a new piece of content, you should include five or more links to old articles. This is really important to your internal linking strategy and how the search engines review and rank your content.
Why?
Websites have a “freshness value” that Google detects and uses as part of its ranking algorithm.
Pinging old pages with a new link helps to boost its likelihood of increasing rank in the SERPs. In the eyes of the search engines, readers who follow your internal links are actually “refreshing” your older content by showing it’s still relevant.
However, be careful not to over-stuff your content with links.
According to Moz, search engine crawlers have a limit of 150 links per page. After that, they stop spidering.
Overstuffing your page with links could negatively impact your SEO.
Be sure to link, but don’t overdo it. This will help both the search crawlers and your user experience.
Update Old Articles With New Internal Links
You’ll get the most power from internal linking if you combine it with another SEO technique—updating old content.
When you update old content, Google’s crawler sees it again, indexes it again, and may increase its ranking in the SERPs.
We always recommend updating your old articles regularly. Here is a good process to follow on your old blog articles:
Add a new paragraph of content at the beginning, explaining your updates.
Add several new paragraphs throughout, adding additional or updated information.
Remove or replace outdated stats or information.
Add several new internal links to content you’ve recently created.
Add links in places where it’s logical and value-added.
Remember, internal linking isn’t only about linking new content to older content. It’s also about circling back to older content and creating internal links that connect to your newer work.
You’re accomplishing two things by doing this.
It updates old content, which improves its ranking value.
It creates an internal link between an old established page on the site and a new not-so-established page.
Add Links Where It Makes Sense
Now that you’ve learned so much about internal linking, you’re probably wondering where you should put your internal links?
It’s tempting to get lazy and throw them in at the end of an article: “For more awesome content, click here!”
Don’t do that, please. Or at least, don’t do just that.
Instead, look for areas in the content where the subject matter overlaps. These are logical points of connection to create an internal link. For example, you can add links to define complex terms or explain a related topic.
Think of internal links as a reference point that improves the experience of the reader.
Only Add Dofollow Links
Don’t add a nofollow tag to your internal links. Nofollow links do not have any impact on the search engine rankings of the destination site.
Some articles in our blog have super high conversion rates. The content is compelling, and the CTAs are so powerful that users convert in droves.
We always make sure to link internally to these pages.
This is where internal linking has more than just SEO value. It can have revenue value, too. The more visitors you can drive to a high-converting page, the more conversions you’ll have.
Take Site Navigation and Information Architecture Into Consideration
Site navigation and internal linking go hand in hand.
Internal links define site architecture and hierarchy by creating funnels that direct users through your website.
Ultimately, this is an important part of your UX/UI and will impact how long people stay on your web pages and how often they come back.
When building an internal linking strategy, consider the most important content on your site and how you’re promoting it.
If you have a piece of cornerstone content that you want more eyes on, point more internal links to it.
Create Lots of Content
The best way to have a healthy internal linking structure is to have lots of internal pages.
When you create lots of content, you’ll have lots of linkable content. The more links to the more places, the better your internal linking strategy will be.
Remember, simply having a lot of web pages doesn’t equal a robust internal linking strategy.
While internal links are essential to your website navigation, repeatedly linking to your homepage won’t move the needle on your SEO score.
Whatever your strategy, do it well and do it often.
Internal Linking Practices to Avoid
Now that you know how to use internal linking correctly, let’s review some of the practices to avoid.
Adding too many links to your content can be detrimental to your score. Remember, Google does not crawl pages that have more than 150 links. It’s also important to note that your header, footer, and menu links are included in your on-page link count.
Don’t overdo it!
Keyword stuffing in anchor text is another internal linking practice to avoid. This black hat tactic was popular in the past, as SEO’s thought it would improve their chances of ranking.
Using internal links in header text should also be avoided. Links in headers signal spam to Google crawlers and can negatively impact your SEO.
Finally, be sure to check all of your internal links before posting them. Broken links don’t spread any link juice and signal to Google that your website is low quality.
Internal Linking FAQs
How many internal links should I include per post?
There’s no set number, but 5-10 for every 2,000 words is a good best practice. Remember, Google won’t crawl pages with more than ~150 links, so be careful about overstuffing your content.
Should I add internal links to my pages with more or less traffic?
According to Databox, internal links can spread link juice from low-traffic web pages to high-traffic ones. That being said, it’s also important to point as many links as possible to your cornerstone content so it benefits from increased traffic.
What is an example of internal linking?
Internal linking is a link that points to another page within the same domain. Internal links show up as hyperlinks, like this: Tips for building better evergreen links.
Are internal links backlinks?
No, internal links stay within your website domain, they do not come from an external source. Backlinks are external links that point to your domain.
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Summary of Internal Linking Guide
Internal linking is a core part of a solid SEO strategy. When done right, it enhances the user experience and can help you rank higher in the SERPs.
While internal links are part of any strong website design, it’s important to find ways to include internal links in your content to ensure you’re getting the most out of your content. Make sure to use optimized (but not over-optimized) anchor tags, and add internal links that provide users with more information about a topic they’re interested in.
What internal linking practices have you found to be the most effective?
In the past, link building focused on quantity, not quality.
Today? Link building is a different ball game.
If you’re building a link building strategy, it’s important to know that it won’t be instant. It’s a gradual process—at least, if you do it right.
The pages where you build links, specifically the quality and authority of those pages, play a key role in determining how high you’ll rank in search engine results.
This is where blogging comes in. You’ll get 434 percent more indexed pages when you blog consistently, and your inbound links will grow by 97 percent.
Beyond blogging, though, there are other proven ways to build the best links and raise your ranking in the SERPs.
This blog post will show you 13 fool-proof link building strategies you can put to work today. They’re especially helpful for busy marketers who have a lot on their plate and want to stay mindful of their standing with search engines.
Why Is Link Building so Important?
Link building is important for search engine optimization (SEO). It’s one of the major factors search engines use to determine rankings, meaning who gets the first-page search result.
When deciding how to rank your website, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines look at how many links lead to your site (and the quality of those links).
The more high-quality, trustworthy, and authoritative sites linking to you, the higher your blog posts and sales pages will appear on search result pages.
Beyond that, links to your website help users find your site and can increase traffic and trust. After all, users are more likely to trust you if other sites think you know what you are talking about.
13 Link Building Strategies for Marketers
So, how do you get high-quality links from other websites? By following my link building strategies.
These are the strategies I’ve used over the last ten years to build up Neil Patel Digital and become an authority in the digital marketing space.
Experiment and find a strategy or strategies that work best for you and your business.
The old way of mass guest blogging just for links is dead. You don’t want to post an article on a site that’s not relevant to your niche and has zero authority just to get a backlink.
That style of guest blogging won’t cut it. The search engines are smart and can see you’re not guest blogging to add value.
If you want to reap the rewards of guest blogging, you need to be strategic and authentic. Make sure you’re creating a unique piece of content for the other site (for example, a case study) and that the site is relevant, authoritative, and attracts your audience.
When you guest blog selectively, you’ll reap the rewards of higher rankings, increased traffic, and qualified leads.
The good thing about infographics is you’ll continually generate organic traffic to your blog and earn quality links without even asking for them.
I found that articles with infographics earn 178 percent more links. This makes creating infographics a link building tactic that you can’t afford to ignore.
If you’re ready to create and promote your infographic, see the links below:
Social media networks have revolutionized marketing and can be a huge boon for your link building plan and guest post efforts. If you’re not active on social media, then you’re doing your brand a disservice.
Become active by sharing new posts, images, and updates. Help your fans find what they want to see by sharing it in more places using social media.
When you get active on social media, you can easily boost engagement, even if you’re new to it. Consequently, you’ll expose your brand and site to more people who could share your best posts with their target audience.
This will improve your link profile and bolster your visibility overall.
It’s time to start using resource links from trusted sites. A resource is like a guide that you create or compile for your target audience.
Some authority sites and blogs like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Jeff Bullas, Social Media Examiner, and Copyblogger have resource pages that you could tap into as you’re creating yours.
If a leading site in your niche has compiled a list of blogs in your industry, their visitors can more easily find what they’re looking for.
If you can create an even bigger resource article than the one above, you’ll get more backlinks. You can expand yours to 25, 50, or more.
Here are some fresh headline ideas that you can model for your resource:
25 Copywriting Blogs That Will Make You More Money
50 Copywriting Blogs You Didn’t Know Existed
27 Copywriting and Content Marketing Blogs That Will Send You Free Traffic
This kind of resource can be a great tool for a marketing team. After it’s written, get links through email outreach. Send a simple email to all of the people whose blogs you included.
I once sent emails to 30 bloggers whom I referenced in my resource post. Twelve of them linked to my resource page within ten days, and I got lots of social love.
Email outreach tends to work better than the typical broken link or link request email because you’ve linked to them first.
You’ve established a certain level of trust, and you’ve shown some appreciation to them as well. They’ll be more inclined to reciprocate your generosity by linking to your web page.
5. Leverage the Broken Links Strategy
The broken link strategy may be the best way to go if you’re too busy to write content for your blog or a guest post.
As a busy marketer, I know you’ve got limited time to write content. That’s one reason why a large number of B2C content marketers struggle to create engaging content for their customers.
How does broken link building work?
This link building strategy is simple: Find pages on blogs with dead links (links that no longer work) and suggest replacing the broken link with a link to similar content on your own site.
If I linked to a particular web page from my Neil Patel blog and found the links to be dead, I could easily replace it with another relevant and high-value resource. If that high-value page belongs to you, that’s both search engine optimization juice and a valuable link.
There are several in-depth guides to help you understand the concept of broken link building and how to get it right the first time. You’ll find these resources really helpful:
One of the top link building strategies is growing your brand. Your brand evolves from your thoughts, then begins to express itself externally.
When it comes to link building that works, recognize that people will naturally link to you as your personal brand grows.
What do I mean by that? Let’s pause for a moment here.
While different definitions might circle through the marketing world, a natural link is a link that’s a) editorially earned, and b) organic in the context it appears.
It’s not part of a sponsorship or paid in any way. Often, a natural link gives credit where credit’s due, and it’s something every pro blogger should be after.
I’ve watched how powerful a natural link can be. Whenever I publish a new blog post, within 24 hours, I usually see new links from authority blogs.
Earning that comes back to the quality of your content and your brand. In a sense, your brand represents you. My definition of a brand is “your representative when you’re not there.”
I’ve been marketing online for over a decade. Throughout this time, one of the most effective strategies I used to grow my personal brand was consistent blogging. When you blog consistently, you get more attention.
If your competitors are ranking higher than you in the search engines, they may be on the right track. You can be there, too.
There’s nothing as powerful as spying on your competitors to know where their links are coming from.
Spying on your competitors helps you see what keywords they’re ranking for, where their best links are coming from, and what they’re currently doing that helps them succeed is called “competitive analysis.”
So how do you check your competitor’s backlinks?
Follow these steps:
Step 1: Go to Ubersuggest and type in your competitor’s domain into the search bar.
Step 2: On the results page, click on the backlinks box.
Step 3: Scroll down to see a list of sites linking to your competitor.
When you know which sites your competitors are generating their backlinks from, you’ve won half the battle—now you can focus on sites that are yielding results instead of reinventing the wheel.
8. Replicate Your Competitor’s Best Links
Now that you know where your competitors got their links, you need to answer the next question: How can you replicate their success?
For example, if you find several links are from related blogs, especially on the author profile, it’s obvious that guest blogging is working for them.
If their links are from corporate sites, your competitors are probably getting links through outreach and networking.
On the other hand, if their links are from high-value sites such as Entrepreneur, Forbes, CNN, Huffington Post, and the like, then you should know that a columnist or editor is likely involved, and this might be a paid placement.
Use Ubersuggest to help you focus on the links with a high domain and page authority. You want natural links from websites that Google (and the rest of your industry) already view as a thought leader.
9. Create Link Building Roundups
If you want the right links, you’ve got to give first. Don’t be selfish with your posts by linking to your internal pages only. Learn to link out to other useful blog posts.
Link roundups are a powerful method of networking and a great link building strategy. All you need to do is create a list of blog posts from other bloggers.
First, find blog posts that are relevant to your topic. For example, if you want to compile a list of 50 blogs that deal with headline writing, you’d simply go to Google and try this search string:
intitle: roundup “YOUR KEYWORD”
You also want to pay attention to your traffic and current link profile. More blogs in your industry may be linking to your posts. When writing your roundup posts, start with the blogs that have sent you traffic.
Remember when you do a roundup post, don’t link solely to your internal pages. Site owners may not be inspired to link back to you because you didn’t use the principle of reciprocity.
Link to their posts, and they’ll be more likely to reciprocate by linking to your resource page.
10. Keep Track of Your Backlinks
Most people spend time and money to get new links, but they don’t track their status.
If you don’t track your backlinks, how will you know whether to build more or pause? You may have over 800 links pointing to your web pages right now, but when you check it after 30 to 60 days, some of the links might be gone.
Why?
You don’t have control over the blogs and authority sites that link to you. The site owners can easily remove your link from their post or resource page without notifying you.
This is why it’s important to monitor your backlinks.
If you’re not sure of the number of backlinks your site currently has, here’s how to find out.
Step 1: Visit Ubersuggest, type in your site’s URL, and click on “search.”
Step 2: Click on the backlinks box.
Step 3: Scroll down, and you’ll see a graph detailing links you’ve gained and lost.
Besides seeing who is linking to you, the backlinks tool also shows each site’s anchor text, DA, and page authority.
There’s also a graph showing your backlinks over time. This is useful to see if your link building strategies are paying off or if it’s time to try something new.
11. Establish Content Pillars
If you want people to take your content seriously, then you’ve got to write things that make people think. Create useful content, content that actually helps them do something, and the links will follow.
Content is the lifeblood of your online business. Whether you’re selling information products, like e-books or software, or you’re into physical products, like digital cameras and hard copy books, you’ve got to give people a reason to publicize you.
How often should you publish new content for your target audience?
Constantly bombarding them with one blog post after another may not be helpful, as it generally leads to information overload.
The real challenge is when and how often you need to publish new content for your prospects and customers. Some customers don’t mind if you posted daily, but it seems like a boatload of work to others.
This leaves you with two options:
ask your customers questions
create pillar content once in a while
You’ll likely get different responses from your email subscribers, blog readers, prospects, and customers if you follow the first option. This ends up complicating things.
The second option is a lot better. Instead of regularly creating and publishing new content, you can save yourself the hassle and create pillar content regularly.
“A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice…This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight.”
When you start creating pillar content, you’ll no longer struggle to write and publish new posts every day of the week, yet your traffic will grow.
Instead, you’ll bring in traffic from users and other sites that are interested in the valuable content you’ve created.
If you want to increase conversion rate, generate organic and referral traffic and improve your search rankings, spend more time creating pillar content. It’s a great way to improve your link profile.
You could format your content pillar using the “how-to” style, as in this example from Yaro Starak:
Alternatively, you could make your post a top list, like this one from Wordtracker.com:
12. Reclaim Links Through Social Mentions
Link reclamation is a popular topic in search engine optimization and the social media world. You can reclaim broken 404 links and name drops that don’t link to your blog.
Check your Google Analytics for 404 pages that people link to, then point them to another active and relevant page while you fix the 404 pages.
Alternatively, you could just go ahead and fix your broken page to reclaim your links.
However, we’re particularly concerned about link reclamation through social mentions.
If you’ve been monitoring your brand and social media mentions using Google Alerts and not taking advantage of those mentions, then you’ve been making a mistake.
When you publish infographics with an attribution code below the graphic, your goal is to get people to embed the code on their blogs and link back to you.
How many of these people use your code or link back to the primary source?
I design and promote lots of helpful infographics. A lot of sites may decide to publish my infographics for their readers to enjoy.
They’re supposed to credit my blog, but what if they saved the graphic and just uploaded it to their blog post? How do I reclaim what rightfully belongs to me, the link?
Follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Use Google Images Search. Do a keyword search for the complete title of your infographic.
Step 2: Click your infographic and visit the page. Check whether your link is attributed correctly or not.
You can see that Tomer Harel linked to my infographic page on QuickSprout.
Beyond infographics, you may want to know who is mentioning your blog URL. You can ask for the link once you discover that your name or URL was mentioned but not linked to your web page.
13. Earn Editorial Links
Editorial links don’t happen by chance. You create them by providing value. This is what Google has been after since the first Google Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, and Mobile-geddon updates.
Editorial links are the most valuable and sought-after links because they’re freely given by sites that aren’t looking for anything in return.
The nature of editorial links is this: your content must be compelling before people link to it.
If all of your links are acquired or built manually, you’ll struggle to retain all of them, and Google may penalize you because you can’t be that careful all of the time. To avoid wasting time and effort, why not focus on producing great content?
Yes, I know that I’ve said it over 50 times in the past 30 days, but if it weren’t important, I’d have ignored it. I create high-quality content every day, and thousands of people link to it. My link profile thanks me for it.
To earn editorial links, you can start blogging with a strategy. Write content that will help people move from Point A to Point B. Create more tutorials and pillar content and make sure that you include accurate data in all of your content.
No. It’s changed from focusing on the number of backlinks to the quality of backlinks.
What is a link building strategy?
The practice of gaining links back to your website to improve your authority and search engine rankings. Common link building strategies include creating infographics and guest posting.
Do I need permission to backlink to another site?
No, you do not need permission to link to another site.
What’s the most common link building strategy?
Guest blogging is one of the most popular link building strategies. It’s all about creating quality content people want to link back to.
What’s the best way to find the authority of a website that gives you a backlink?
Use a tool like Ubersuggest to find the Domain Authority for websites that give you backlinks.
Link Building Strategies Conclusion
Your website’s link profile is one of the most crucial factors in ranking in search engine results. Remember, Google doesn’t care so much about how many links point to your pages, but rather about the experience you create for users.
Be smart and strategic about blogging, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and any other marketing techniques you use to build links.
Your real challenge isn’t link building, but earning quality, trusted, and natural links. That’s because it’s no longer about the number of links—it’s the quality that matters.
Follow these fool-proof link building strategies, and you’ll be on your way to building a successful blog that both users and Google will love.
Which of these link building best practices have you used?
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