Digital Marketing Freelancers Need to Ditch Their Proposal Process Now

Ever wonder why your digital marketing proposals are getting rejected? Yeepp… I've been there, and I wondered the same thing.

Quick heads up, this article is geared towards freelancers. Onboarding clients in the agency world is a lot different, luckily I have an article on that here.

I'm qualified to own the projects that I'm bidding for. I price my work realistically for the market I'm in, the benefit it provides, and the level of expertise I have to offer.

"So what's the deal?!" I asked myself while I was clsoing fewer and fewer proposals.

It took some time for me to center in on a strategy that really worked. I actually almost just gave up completely, but then I read Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time and realized that being able to show actual process was worth more than a detailed proposal of work ever could be.

Maybe this concept would help me win more proposals.

Alright, Time to Throw Out Your Current Proposal Process

This is especially true if you've been following the same process for a few years now. I was in this boat myself.

So for me the process would be something like this. I would get referred to by someone, or they would find me through my website, B2C or Inbound.org. Then, they would reach out to me looking for a solution to a problem, and chances are they would spend a lot of time talking about their company and current situation.

Historically, I would pair their problems with my solutions and present a proposal outlining the work I could do and how it would help. As I mentioned earlier, the success I once had with this began to diminish.

Here was the problem with my approach.

It's the same process used by the vast majority of freelancers. They have a discovery call with a prospect, listen to their problems, and send a proposal with a list of services they recommend.

Why's this a problem though? It seems like the most logical way to offer services.

It only takes one bad experience for a prospect to demand a new approach. If everyone is using the same approach, then the chances of that approach being tainted with a bad experience skyrockets.

I'm sure there are other reasons, but at the end of the day, it doesn't work that well anymore. The market has shifted and it demands a new process.

An Example of a Proposal Process That Works

Learn as much as you can. Talk about their goals and problems. Try to nail them down as many of these items as possible. Obviously, this is easier with some prospects than others.

Once you have a firm idea of the entirety of their problems and goals you should have enough information to end the call.

Don't wait to start working, also don't make any promises. In fact, when you end the discovery call you might say "Well, I don't know what I would recommend we do, let me do some homework and let's connect in a week."

They might push you for a proposal and I'd recommend pushing back, you just don't know enough yet to help them solve their problems.

Then send a follow-up email scheduling the next call.

In the meantime, learn as much as you can, identify if you can even help them solve their problems. If you're doing digital strategy work, like me, you should be able to find a lot of room for improvement on their part. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't be talking to you.

The goal of your research is to form a bulleted list of actual things you would fix. Avoid wishy-washy phrase like "On Page SEO – 10 hours pre month". Instead, you could export their website data and identify missing elements, headers or meta descriptions that are too long, too short, or are duplicates of each other.

Recommended for You

Webcast, July 6th: Advanced SEO Site Auditing

Recommending exactly what elements you would fix helps you avoid wishy-washy line items on your proposal. They also show that you took initiative to the details of what needs to be done.

Quick sidenote about this kind of research

It's really easy for professionals to execute. If you're truly good at what you do, giving away this kind of work for free shouldn't be a big deal. You're locating missing or incorrectly implemented on page elements. Big deal.

The high-value work will come after you've earned their trust.

One of my favorite YouTube channels, FLUX, has a video about trust, and I agree with most of what he says.

I'm not convinced that there has to be a referral system. Not that they don't work, they absolutely do. However, giving away some work for free gives you an opportunity to let the client get to know you, talk about work, gain exposure to your expertise, and do so without them having anything to lose.

Why Would This Work Better?

An approach like this is more likely to work for a few reasons.

You'll stand out from your competition

It proves that you know how to identify and solve problems

Increased value in your work – more equity, less debt

Earlier I mentioned to just start doing work, don't wait until the proposal has been signed. This isn't coercion, this is starting a working relationship off building equity. As you might remember I'm all about building equity, both as a freelancer and as a brand. Blamo.

The traditional proposal process requires that your clients pay something up front. Essentially, this working relationship is starting with you in debt to your clients. What if something goes wrong? Or the relationship sours?

If you don't ever think about concepts like this you should probably start. Your prospects think about this all the time.

Building value off the bat will ease their nerves and while it might be a little bit of work up front, that's all it is. A little bit of work up front.

Good luck out there, and happy prospecting!

Author: John Hodge

Lead generation marketer passionate about internet advertising, search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization, marketing automation, remarketing, database segmentation, dynamic or smart content, omnichannel marketing, closed-loop reporting, and aligning efforts with sales insights to drive high qualified leads to sales.  … View full profile ›

Source: Digital Marketing Freelancers Need to Ditch Their Proposal Process Now

How to Use PR to Boost Your Content Marketing Program

Your company has a new product to launch. Your start-up has some of the best and brightest thought leaders in the industry. Your organization has in-depth knowledge to offer on industry topics that IT purchasers, potential users, current customers, and the media need to know. Now what? Your company writes a blog. Delivers a webinar. Creates an e-book and shares it on social media, the company website and through the customer database. Your organization watches for engagement and the sales team waits for the pipeline to fill. Yet, one component is missing in the mix: public relations.

Many organizations make the mistake of thinking that a content marketing program fits into the same bucket as public relations, they assume that they are interchangeable and that, "If we publish, they will come." Maybe, but there is more opportunity out there. That's where PR comes in. Both public relations and content marketing deliver communication to a targeted audience; however, the outcome and the delivery are very different. Here are three ways to use public relations to get the biggest bang out of your content marketing program:

1. Pass It On

You have such great ideas packaged in the form of blog posts, e-books, or even informative content through videos. Your team has spent time and resources developing the messages that you want to deliver. Why does it have to stop there? After all, most of the work is already done, except one thing: PR. Review the headlines of your content, determine what would be a topic fit for a mainstream audience and what would be a fit for trade publications, and pass it on. Why let it stop on your website or as a tweet? Let the media know that it exists. Using the media's built-in audience will allow your content to build traction and, being that PR is about relationships, the more you pass along, the more they will know you are truly an expert within the industry.

2. Tweak It

Recommended for You

Webcast, July 6th: Advanced SEO Site Auditing

Why not double down on your efforts? Aside from letting the media know that the content exists, the next step would be to let them know that your author can write a bylined piece for their outlet on the topic. Just tweak what already exists. Use the content marketing piece to show your expertise and subject matter know-how. This will be minimal effort for your organization, since the content was already written, but will allow you to author a unique piece with the same flavor. Using existing content to pitch a byline is an effortless way to get front and center with your target audience. Just remember to keep the self-promotion at bay.

3. Become an Expert

Your company has so much content, within so many areas—from technology to marketing to leadership. The media is always looking for experts who can be quoted and who can offer their opinions for articles in their pipeline. Become their expert. Take some time to figure out what the writer covers and then send a to-the-point email that discusses how your subject is relevant to current business trends and how you can lend expertise to in-the-news topics. Your pitch should be short, while lending a clear angle for a story. Link your content marketing efforts that will point to what you are proposing to the media. It shows proof points of expertise and gives the media an additional place to obtain quotes.

An effective content marketing program is an imperative storytelling tool, yet there is nothing like third-party validation. The credibility gained from being part of something that was not self-published should not be overlooked, as it can be a major win for visibility efforts, and should be part of every company strategy, no matter the size.

Source: How to Use PR to Boost Your Content Marketing Program

Marketing Strategies That Will Help Increase Sales

The object of marketing is to increase awareness and sales for your product. Pretty simple, right? Well the problem is that marketing without a clear cut strategy is like fishing without bait. You might catch something, but the results are iffy at best.

To effectively market your product or service, you need to clearly define a strategy. This includes answering questions like "who is your target market? What are their pain points or issues they are trying to solve? How can you product or service meet their needs? And where do you find them in the real world and online?

For any strategy to be effective, you need to align marketing and sales. In an inbound marketing context, this can include how you nurture your prospect through your lead funnel and when to turn a prospect over from marketing to your sales team.

As you develop your marketing strategy, it's important to keep several elements of your approach in mind. Let's take a look at some tips that can help you to better define your marketing strategy, align your sales and marketing team, and ultimately drive sales growth in a cost effective way.

First, Understand Your Customer

The first step towards developing any marketing strategy is understanding your buyer. Who they are, why your product is the perfect solution for their problem or pain point and where do they go to seek the information they need to address their problem. Here are some ideas to help you to better identify your ideal customer.

1. Understand That People Buy Benefits

Customer's don't buy products, they buy solutions. Start developing your marketing strategy by first defining your product or service from their perspective. Make a list of the benefits your customer will receive by purchasing your product or hiring your firm.

2. Create Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are fictional archetypes you create based on your actual customer data. They are your ideal customer, the person most likely to buy your product. Be specific. How old are they? Male or female? Where do they live? What is their job title? Where do they search for information?. This will help you to better target your marketing.

3. Clearly Identify Their Problem 

What problem does your potential customer have that you can solve? If you've identified your ideal customer correctly, they will pay you to solve their problem! Sometimes their problems are obvious, sometimes they are unclear. Dig deeply!

The more closely you can identify your ideal customer, the easier it is to target your message, your delivery channel, and your solution for their problem. Understanding your customer and their needs can increase sales.

Defining Your Competitive Advantage and Delivering Your Message

Why is your product better for you customers than your competitor's product? This is your competitive advantage. It can be price, customer service, delivery or ease of use. Define your competitive advantage clearly. This is a major part of your messaging. What are the specific benefits, results or outcomes that a potential customer will receive by purchasing your product or service that they would not receive from your competitor. Focus on the benefits!

Today you have more delivery channels than ever before. While newspaper and radio advertising are in decline, they may still be viable options for delivering your message. But more likely, content or inbound marketing will be a more powerful option. By understanding your customer and where they seek information you can target your message and deliver it through the channel where they are most likely to see it and act on it.

Marketing has shifted from a sales oriented medium, to an information sharing one. Customer purchases today begin online. To increase sales today is less about the hard sell, and more about building relationships and trust through social engagement and information sharing. Nurturing a client from discovery through a sale requires a process. If you understand your market (buyer personas) and define your product, social media engagement is the perfect delivery method. Content marketing gives you better access to qualified leads, more channels to sell your product and a lower cost to acquire customers.

By engaging with potential customers on sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest you can drive potential customers to your website where your blog can provide information that will answer their questions, address their pain points, and offer solutions while building trust and building relationships that result in more sales.

Today, increasing sales requires personalizing your approach. When building your marketing strategies, start by defining your customers, understanding your product from their perspective, crafting your message to emphasize your competitive advantage and delivering that message through content on social media websites and your blog. By focusing your strategies on your customer's needs and delivering value you can increase sales and develop relationships that will last a lifetime.

Source: Marketing Strategies That Will Help Increase Sales

The Best Tools for Web Marketing

No ratings yet.

Email marketing, social media marketing, and your website are great ways to build your brand. They help reach your target audience, especially when you promote your message to a specific audience.

With organizational, analytical, graphic design tools to name a few, you can be sure to maximize your output with these useful platforms. All things work together when you use all to your advantage. And not to mention, some are free to use.

With these online tools, they will help create an easier way to market your startup brand or help in an established company.

Trello

Trello is a management tool that helps you organize your projects and share with coworkers or anyone involved.

Trello allows you to keep projects on task, share ideas, manage assignments, and increase productivity.

With a tutorial to help you navigate through the interface, you can use what they call "boards" for projects and "cards" for the project's details. The drag and drop feature helps organize digital marketing projects when email becomes too stressful to maintain.

Collaboration is an important part of online marketing strategy. All departments come together when building a project. Keep things organized with Trello and keep your workload at ease.

Trello business class lets you share information securely.

Buzzsumo

The best way to reach your audience is to figure out what they are asking. What do they need?

Buzzsumo lets you know.

Through trending topics, you can see what people/users are asking about a particular topic or things buzzing in your brand and find out what people are sharing.

Buzzsumo is used by many popular brands such as National Geographic, Yahoo!, and IBM.

Find out about trending topics, what competitors are talking about, and filter out results by year, day, or hour.

You can view how many shares a particular topic has or any backlinks from your website. Through content analysis, see what content works best whether it's blog posts, how-to articles, listicles and more.

Mailchimp

Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach out to qualified audiences. You can promote your product or services, tell your audience a story, and connect with a new audience. Mailchimp is the best email marketing tool that most big businesses use to market to their audience.

Mailchimp allows automated emails to be sent to your subscribers and keeps them interested in your brand. Sending good content (even freebies) builds their trust and keeps them wanting more from you.

Mailchimp has helpful guides to help along the way for your marketing automation tools. It lets you know if you're targeting the right audience and lets you pace your emails so your users don't get overloaded with tons of email from you.

Canva

Saving time is so important in building a marketing strategy and visual representation comes with marketing.

With Canva, templates are made to assist in giving you the flexibility to create designs with ease. Use their templates for social media, presentations, brochures, infographics, letterheads, menus, and more. Add photos for brand fulfillment and consistency.

Their premium feature has more flexibility in creation, but the free version should do for a new business.

Create beautiful graphics with the easy editing and downloading. Create teams for collaborating on projects and focus on your brand fonts and color palettes. You can upload your logos and create designs and graphics with your own taste.

Coschedule

Headlines make a user click on an article. For a content marketing strategy, Coschedule makes sure your headline is polished so it makes users want to click on the article or email.

Their headline analyzer helps drive traffic, shares, and backlinks. The analyzer knows what headlines convert and get shared.

Word balance is important when writing a headline for social media, blog posts, or emails. The four common types of words Coschedule analyzes are:

   Common

   Uncommon

   Emotional

   Power

All four are useful when captivating an audience to click on a link.

Spredfast

With many social media management tools around, Spredfast is a leader in robust analytics, scheduling, and collaboration between team members.

Spredfast can give you real-time analytics, team collaboration, social campaign management, and social listening and scheduling.

Social media is one of the best ways to market to your customers. Listen to what they're saying, schedule posts in the future with Spredfast's robust platform. They live up to their name as they allow your voice to be heard amongst the top competitors in your industry. Find out what competitors are doing on social, build your social platform content, view analytics on all social media platforms.

Google Analytics

Google makes it easy to set up and find out how your website is doing. Data automation lets you gain new insight on who's visiting your website, audience demographic, predictive analytics, and real-time reporting.

It doesn't matter what type of website you have, Google Analytics helps you understand your website and its visitor's actions.

The platform can create insights to help grow your business and data for analyzing what's working and what isn't.

Google Analytics on WordPress allows you to stay up to date with your website.

And the good thing about Google Analytics is its certification is FREE!

Quicksprout

The great thing about Quicksprout is it connects to Google Analytics so you get the best of the best of analytics.

Grow your website traffic to increase engagement, followers, subscribers and optimize our content.

Quicksprout helps you generate new leads, sends personalized alerts to fit your website needs and improve all website aspects. With it's easy to use interface, Quicksprout's platform helps you understand what's needed, how to fix it, what you're doing well and how to continue growing your online content.

Quicksprout stands by always being free. What a great way to market your business without any investment!

Conclusion

The best way to make the most of your online business needs is to use the tools that will help you succeed in all aspects of online. From organization to analytics to content, practicing good methods leads you in the right direction to get ahead of your competitors.

What tools are you using for your business?

Don't forget to check out WordPress business themes released recently.

Rate this post

Source: The Best Tools for Web Marketing

Which Analytics Stats Really Matter to Your Blog and Marketing Campaign?

With the help of tools like Google Analytics, it's now possible to monitor the analytics of any website and marketing campaign thoroughly. Many webmasters around the world believe unique visitors is the only statistic worth considering, however, other important metrics need considering, too.

If you are looking to take your blog to the next level, it's important these metrics are monitored closely so you know how much more effort you need to put in to get there. The following stats are deemed to be some of the most important when it comes to traffic, customer conversion and sales.

Traffic

The key to success for any website is to have regular, unique visitors. While new visitors are the primary target because they are more likely to click on advertisements, returning visitors are also beneficial because it means your content is worth reading and your blog offers something of interest.

Monitoring direct visitors and organic visitors is an effective way to see how much more work you need to do with the search engines. Webmasters always try to target organic visitors because they are the visitors that offer the best results, and that's something you should also consider.

Bounce Rate

Many web developers turn their noses up at the bounce rate, but it's very important for the long-term success of any site. The bounce rate is there so you can see how many visitors are visiting your homepage and then leaving without viewing any other pages or content.

If you have a high bounce rate, it means visitors are looking at your homepage and then leaving before they read any content. If you have a low bounce rate, it means your content is worth reading and you should carry on doing what you're doing.

In general, a website with a bounce rate of between 26-40% is excellent, 41-55% is average, 56-70% is below average, and anything higher than 70% is poor. Always monitor your bounce rate and ask yourself why so many people are leaving your site before getting to know it.

Pages Per Session

Along with the bounce rate, it's also wise to pay attention to the pages per session stat. This statistic will tell you how many pages your visitors are looking at for the duration of their session. As a rule of thumb, you want this to be at least two pages or more, otherwise, your visitors aren't engaged.

If your site offers engaging content you can be sure this stat will be higher than two pages per session because your visitors are intrigued by what else you have on offer. It's a statistic that's often overlooked but it's one that can reveal a lot about your blog or website.

Average Session Duration

What's important when it comes to a user's session is that they are spending time reading your content, and you'll be able to find out how long they are on your website for thanks to the average session duration stat.This statistic isn't necessarily accurate, though, because people can leave a site if they don't have time to read the content. It's still a stat worth monitoring because it will give you an average and let you know whether your content needs to offer more or not.

Conversions

Conversions will give you an idea of how effective your content is. If your content isn't effective or the experience of navigating proves to be hard for some visitors, you will have a poor conversion rate. If you have a blog that relies on the likes of Google Ads to survive, it's key that you have a higher conversion rate to give you more clicks. Just how important is the conversion rate? It's extremely important. Having thousands of visitors every month is great, but they are going to be pointless if they aren't clicking the ads or buying the products on your site.

It's important to also track the conversion rates on your social media feeds. You only have to take a look at the Twitter feeds of some of the most successful entrepreneurs for further proof of this. For example, take a look at Sam Ovens Twitter feed. Sam shares a lot of articles related to analytics and explains how tracking metrics have helped him and his clients to achieve success. "Each social media post has the potential to bring you a new customer" said Ovens. So, don't neglect to track these and see which ones are converting into website clicks and sales best. By tracking both your blog and marketing conversions, you can alter your approach accordingly.

While you need to attract targeted visitors to earn any profit from a blog, you're not going to be able to target other demographics if you don't know what's working or isn't working. The above metrics will help ensure that you know how your site is performing in many different ways.

Author: Blogherald Blogger

Source: Which Analytics Stats Really Matter to Your Blog and Marketing Campaign?

The 6 Marketing Channels You Should Be Personalizing

It isn't enough to master your marketing communications through one channel if your current or prospective customers engage with you in many different channels. And for most companies, it is pretty safe to assume that they are. The typical digital consumer now owns 3.64 connected devices. Forrester predicts that by 2021, 40% of in-store sales will be influenced by the internet. And even in financial services, 47% of bank customers engaged in at least one cross-channel interaction in the past 90 days.

At Evergage, when we talk about cross-channel marketing, we don't mean mass communication across channels. We mean personalized communication. Why? Consumers expect personalized experiences. Forrester found that 77% of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides a personalized service or experience. And Infosys uncovered that 74% of customers feel frustrated when website content is not personalized.

And when we talk about cross-channel personalization, we mean the ability to provide a consistent and relevant experience across website, web app, mobile app, search, email and human channels. In this blog post, let's briefly explore each of these areas.

1. Website

Many digital marketers view their website as their most important channel. Whether your goal is to drive online sales, generate leads or maximize page views, there is typically some action you want a visitor to take while on your site. As a result, many of your online marketing activities are focused on driving traffic there. Given its importance, it's critical to show each person exactly what they are looking for on your site to drive those conversions or page views. Personalization – whether using rule-based targeting to segments or machine-learning algorithms at the one-to-one level – allows you to do that.

Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows personalizes its main homepage experience to several of its main customer segments, such as visitors from target cities, families and season pass holders. By showing each group of visitors something relevant to them, these experiences have improved conversions and revenue per user.

This example just scratches the surface of website personalization. For some other easy to deploy ideas, check out this blog post.

2. Web App

For subscription-based businesses like SaaS, financial services, publishers and many retailers, the logged-in environment (also called web applications) is often the primary interface for engaging with customers. There is a huge opportunity to personalize the logged-in environment to identify when users need help and direct them to most relevant resources, drive users to leverage features that can help them get the most value out of the product, identify churn risks and upsell opportunities, and more.

Endurance International Group (EIG) leverages in-app personalization to communicate and engage with its customers "in the moment" at different stages of their lifecycles. For instance, while providing web hosting services to customers, EIG saw an upsell opportunity to offer a premium website creation tool to specific audiences. Leveraging in-app personalization to target users with an upsell CTA at the right time, the company saw conversion rates 4-5 times better than their traditional promotional email campaigns.

3. Mobile App

Mobile apps have become a vital means of engaging and interacting with increasingly mobile audiences. In fact, more than a third of consumers say they expect their mobile apps and websites to be more personalized over the next three years. Yet our recent study with Researchscape International found that mobile apps are the least personalized channel — only 18% of marketers using personalization are using it for their mobile apps.

Personalization on mobile devices is much like website and web app personalization — helping users find the most relevant content. You can similarly target different segments and individuals with rules and machine-learning algorithms.

For example, a travel app can share a specific deal only with users who have booked a flight within the past month. Or an e-commerce app can deliver personalized recommendations that boost brand and price affinities to help shoppers find products they will be interested in, quickly and easily. An effective personalization solution can even allow you to build, test and implement various messaging campaigns in your app, without involving developers or waiting for an app store release. Learn more about how that works in this blog post.

Recommended for You

Webcast, July 6th: Advanced SEO Site Auditing

4. Email

Email undoubtedly remains a critical communication channel – one used by nearly all businesses today. Many marketers already leverage personalization in their emails to some degree. In fact, we found in a recent study with Researchscape International that email is the most personalized channel. Typically, marketers leverage their email solution's broad segmentation capabilities to personalize email campaigns. Yet, half of the respondents to a Retail Touchpoints survey say that they have received emails from retailers with irrelevant information.

In order to ensure the content of your emails is relevant to an individual, you need to consider all you know about that person across channels, particularly in terms of individual behavior, history and preferences. But what is relevant to a person at one moment may be out of date to that same person later. The key is to be relevant at open time, rather than at send time.

For example, let's say that an e-retailer sends an email containing three product recommendations to a regular customer. Between when the email is sent and when he opens the email, he purchased Product 1 via the mobile app, Product 2 went out of stock, and Product 3 dropped in price. If the retailer personalizes the email at open time, when he opens the email, Products 1 and 2 would be substituted with different (but still relevant) product recommendations, and Product 3's price would be reflected accurately.

5. Search

The search function on any website is incredibly important, as it is a key channel for helping customers find and discover products and content. The visitors that use the search function state exactly what they are looking for, and in many cases are more ready to convert than other visitors that don't use search. Yet search is a traditionally underused channel, and search results are notoriously ineffective across industries.

To make the most use of your on-site search, you should show visitors the most relevant products or content with as little effort (and as few clicks) as possible. That means that the search results you show should be selected and sorted in a way that is unique for each person, based on the visitor's intent and affinities.

For example, Zumiez leverages in-depth behavioral data to assess the interests and preferences of each visitor to its site, so that it can help them find the most relevant products in the search bar. In the image below, note that the recommended shoes are in the shopper's preferred gender (women's) and brand (Vans) based on her previous behavior on the site.

Essentially, search results that consider each person's preferences and intent will provide products and content that are maximally relevant to the individual, not to the search term.

6. Human

The human channel is in some ways the most obvious form of personalization, because it's very easy to provide a personalized experience to a customer when in a one-on-one conversation with him. But at the same time it can be the least obvious form of personalization, as many marketers do not realize that they can use the same principles and the same valuable information that they collect in all of the previously mentioned channels to pass on to call center, customer success and sales personnel to enable more relevant customer engagement.

For example, a B2B salesperson prospecting into an account can provide a personalized experience too. When preparing for a sales call, she can look into the activity of all visitors associated with the account – including an account's activity history, preferred solutions, categories and content — to steer the conversation in a relevant direction even before asking any discovery questions.

Final Thoughts

In today's multichannel world, cross-channel personalization is increasingly worth the effort to get right. Of course, achieving successful cross-channel personalization requires the right data and the right technology. For more information about the components you need for cross-channel personalization, check out this blog post.

Hopefully this article has illuminated some channels you may not yet have considered within your personalization strategy. To talk to someone about how Evergage can help you establish and execute your own cross-channel personalization strategy, request a 15-minute consultation today.

Author: Katie Sweet

Katie Sweet is the content manager at Evergage, the Real-Time Personalization Platform. With a background in product and content marketing, she spends her days planning, writing, editing, launching, and generally thinking about content. She loves everything about digital consumer behavior and is always interested in learning more about how consumers spend… View full profile ›

Source: The 6 Marketing Channels You Should Be Personalizing

55 Proven Ways Content Marketing Strategy can Benefit your E-Commerce

Made sense to you? Share it now!

Content marketing is one of the best and most cost effective ways for companies to market their brand. Creating the content is only one part of the marketing process, once a company has the content, it then needs to be promoted and distributed to reach the target audience and the people who will interested in reading and seeing it.

Email Marketing: The Best ROI in the Game

Email is one of the easiest and most commonplace methods, with 93% of marketers claiming that emails are the most important channel for distributing content. Currently it is the most popular way to share content, with a staggering 204 million messages sent every single minute around the world, and this is a number that is showing no signs of slowing down.

This method if distribution is 40 times more effective at acquiring to customers than popular social media channels such as a Facebook and Twitter as people tend to take information sent through email more seriously. 72% of consumers prefer to receive promotional content through email as this is where they would expect it.

Once companies understand that email is one of the most effective ways to share content, there are tips and tricks that can be used to make it even more likely that a potential customer will open the content. What you put in the email's subject line could be the difference between someone even opening the email or not. Using the word 'video' in the subject line can boost open rates by 19% and click through rates by 65%.

Not shareable enough? READ  More ways to get more pins and repins on Pinterest Social Media: Your Megaphone to the World

Another way to distribute content, a method that is steadily growing, is through social media. Studies show that over a third of the world uses some form of social media regularly, this automatically opens up a huge population that companies can target. Many companies have already accepted this fact, and now 79% of all companies use social media for content marketing.

Business have to be very careful about how they are selecting what they put on social media with video consistently being the best performing content type, followed only marginally by images and then offers and promotions. The four most popular social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, all of which are still steadily increasing in popularity. The fact that 500 million people watch a Facebook video every day is proof itself that social media is a successful method to use.

Blogs: How to Capitalize on SEO and Influence through Written Content

Both of these are examples of how companies use their owned assets in over to promote their content marketing, other examples of this include using a static website or a series of microsites and blogs.

Another route that companies could choose to go down is by paid media. This is a topic of much debate as people feel that the content marketing should be doing itself, yet sometimes it does need a little boost. Nothing markets itself, therefore sometimes strategies such as paid searches are necessary along with promoted social media posts, targeted ads and various other methods.

Not shareable enough? READ  Supercharge Your Staff! 7 Hacks That Put Productivity Into Overdrive Earned Media: The Holy Grail of Word of Mouth Content

Earned media is the most valuable of them all, yet is often the hardest to acquire. This can take several forms including social sharing from individual accounts, pick-ups in traditional or trade media, bloggers and other influential people writing about your content, placements on aggregator sites such as Reddit and various others.

There are many different ways that a company may choose to promote the content that they produce. If this can be done for free then this is great, but often it may need a little boost into the big wide world of the web before it can start doing the job that it was designed for.

Check out the full infographic by Skilled.co

View Source

Made sense to you? Share it now!
Source: 55 Proven Ways Content Marketing Strategy can Benefit your E-Commerce

5 Rules Of The Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Published June 23rd, 2017 by alisa

Today, most Internet users know that e-mail marketing is one of the cheapest and most effective methods of advertising. And it is true. The only trouble is that the bulk of people formulate their opinion about e-mail newsletters on inconsistent data, rumors, gossips and superstitions. Therefore, very often the most effective weapon of advertising starts to work against the owner…

We will reveal the main rules for the competent management of your E-mail Marketing Campaign and the effective achievement of any goals you set.

Rule 1: Own will

The recipient of your newsletter has only one way to appear in your mailing list – exclusively by his own consent and will! He must subscribe to your mailing list and, importantly, CONFIRM this subscription himself. These two actions in the mind of the subscriber leave a sufficient trace, so that later he will not be unpleasantly surprised. You can enter his data into your subscription list only if he personally and distinctly agreed on such action preliminary, about which you informed him in advance. But he must only confirm his subscription with his own hand.

Rule 2: Frequency

Many website owners assume that it is obligatory to notify their subscribers on a daily basis. But with this approach, sooner or later, all your e-mail campaign will turn into spam, and you definitely will not increase sales, but, most likely, only get negative feedback from customers and unsubscribe notifications.

You need to issue the newsletter with the stated frequency. The less often you release the newsletter – more likely the interest of subscribers gets cooler. On the other hand, it is not necessary to release a newsletter very often, because subscribers need time to master and digest every issue of your previous newsletter. Few issues are bad, many issues are bad. You need to find a happy medium that suits you and your subscribers.

Rule 3: Interest

You create and publish the newsletter first of all not for yourself, but for future subscribers, therefore the information in the mailing list should be oriented not to the company needs, but primarily to meet the needs of your subscribers in quality advice, useful and free information on the topic. Of course, you should not forget about yourself, starting from the sphere of your interests, abilities and creativity, but all this should be sharpened to solve real problems and meet the needs of subscribers. This is the only way you will be appreciated and trusted.

Rule 4: No advertisements

The e-mail marketing is not for advertising products and services. Yes, there can be advertisements, and, of course, there is a place for advertising and mutually beneficial exchange in the e-mail campaign… But to send pure advertisement to your subscribers is the shortest way to lose them quickly and cause a wave of discontent. Today few people subscribe on advertising. People are tired of advertising, so give them 80% of useful and free material and no more than 20% of advertisements.

Rule 5: Well-written content

A Guide to Writing Newsletters has listed these 8 important keys for a well-written newsletter. By following them, you will create a great content, and subscribers will always open your e-mail.

Well, congratulations! Now you know the main rules for effective e-mail campaign. If you follow them rigorously, we are absolutely sure that you will achieve a high response to your offers, strong trust, respect from your subscribers and as a result – HIGH PROFIT. You do not need to invent anything here – just use these rules and quickly solve your problems!

Source: 5 Rules Of The Successful Email Marketing Campaign

Staying Relevant in a Connected World: Marketing in the Internet of Things

Staying Relevant in a Connected World: Marketing in the Internet of Things

As the world becomes more digitally connected, relevant touchpoints on the path to purchase are sprouting up in new places on a daily basis. From widely used smartwatches that track your fitness activity to medicine containers that remind you when to refill a prescription, we live in a truly connected world.

And it's largely thanks to what is known as the Internet of Things.

What is the Internet of Things?Even if you're not in the marketing industry, you've probably heard the term. The Internet of Things (IoT) essentially refers to the connection of everyday, physical objects to the Internet. Taking a step beyond computers and smartphones, IoT expands the concept of digital connection to include virtually any object you can imagine.

Cars can map traffic in real time and track your location.

Electric toothbrushes automatically reorder brush heads and share brushing habits with dentists.

Home appliances are gaining some serious traction.

Countless other activities, from watering plants to monitoring your heart rate, are being controlled through apps and devices.

What does this mean? The world is becoming digital, and the Internet is - quite literally - everywhere.

How is IoT Affecting Consumer Behavior?People are much more comfortable with new technology when it fits into their everyday lives. Wearable devices are estimated to grow by nearly 25% this year, reaching nearly 39.5 million people in the U.S., according to eMarketer. These devices, such as fitness bands and smartwatches, are increasingly affordable to the average consumer, but more importantly, they make people's lives easier.

One of our key industry categories at hfa is Home & Living, which is a significant growth area for IoT. People want to make their home lives easier, too, and don't want to go out of their way to make something work. While consumer adoption of smart home assistants is relatively slow (as most still see it as a novelty), products like voice assistants and other home systems such as Amazon Echo and Google Home are on the rise. Security is also a major consideration. People want to feel safe in their homes and have the ability to monitor things while they're away, which is why smart home cameras are gaining popularity.

Streamlining the Buying CycleIoT is changing the way people approach purchasing products in general. In the span of a few years, we've moved from buying online to buying with our smartphones to automatically ordering products. Someday in the not-too-distant future, this will be the norm.

What Are the Opportunities for Marketers?While consumers are starting to evolve into a more connected life, resistance to fully adopting IoT still exists mainly due to issues such as cost, privacy concerns and installation difficulty.

How does this mean we should start thinking about IoT from a marketing perspective? Here are three things to consider:

Insights. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of IoT is the information and insight we can gain from all these 'things&lrquo; being digitally connected. We can vastly improve marketing strategies by uncovering new information about what consumers' interests are, where they go, what they enjoy and what they purchase.

Utility. When I think about IoT marketing opportunities, I'm not necessarily interested in placing an ad on a smart fridge screen (although it's not an unrealistic option for some brands - think consumer packaged goods). It's more advantageous to naturally integrate into connected items that match a brand's utility. It will develop a higher likelihood for trust and eventually - purchase.

Experience. Make it contextual. Become part of the experience instead of trying to push your message on the consumer. Keep people interested in your products by offering new ways to make their lives easier. These types of messages can also be much more relevant when connecting with people in real time (for example, knowing when they're near a purchase versus just researching).

So Now What?Approaching IoT for marketing is not unlike the way we approach any other touchpoint. We simply ask ourselves: what's the connection that reaches our audience at the right time with the right message? Get in touch with hfa to hear how we're helping brands answer this question and stay relevant in the ever-evolving world of IoT marketing.

Source: Staying Relevant in a Connected World: Marketing in the Internet of Things

5 Innovative Examples of Video on Your B2B Website

While video certainly isn't a new concept in marketing, it is a practice that has evolved over the years, so much so that it can hardly be considered the same practice it was in 1941 when the first television ad aired. With the explosion of the internet and the emergence of social media platforms—such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram—dedicated to sharing digital content, TV spots are no longer the only way to use video in your marketing strategy. However, while video has grown significantly in recent years, it has long been considered a trend geared toward B2C businesses. In reality, video content is one of the best tools marketers can use on their B2B websites. Here are 5 examples of how you should be using video:

1. Create a Cutting-Edge Website

Using video on your homepage can be a powerful web design tactic when executed appropriately. This design can make your website visually appealing and help visitors to stay on your website longer. It can also highlight a key call to action on your homepage, so as eyes are drawn to the moving video they also focus in on a button such as "contact us" or "request a demo." Additionally, the longer time spent watching your video can give you an SEO boost as dwell time is a contributing factor to your overall rank. Be careful when using video in web design, as slow load times and websites that aren't optimized for mobile can negatively impact your business.

2. Showcase Your Products

In the B2B market, it can be difficult to get your message across in a short period of time—especially if your product or service is more technical or complicated. While technical readouts and product manuals are always an option, they might not be the most engaging way to market your solutions. In fact, people are more likely to watch a short video than they are to read product descriptions. Using an explainer video on your B2B website can help deliver your message in an engaging format and has the added bonus of being easily shareable.

Recommended for You

Webcast, July 6th: Advanced SEO Site Auditing

3. Build Trust Around Your Brand

You might have the best product in the world, but if no one trusts your brand then your sales will suffer. Using video customer testimonials to support your claims will build trust around your brand and encourage leads to eventually make the sale. Study after study has shown the power of social proof when it comes to making purchase decisions; if your B2B website isn't already showcasing customer testimonials, it might be time to start filming some.

4. Generate Leads

Ultimately, the goal of any B2B website is to generate more leads—and you can use video content to do just that. While the simplest method of generating leads from video is by gating your content behind a landing page, there are numerous other ways you can use video content to boost your lead-gen initiatives. Using products such as Wistia's Turnstile can help draw your viewers in and then ask them for contact information to continue watching the video. This will ensure your viewers know the content is high-quality and make them more willing to divulge their personal details. Additionally, videos are incredibly shareable: 54% of senior executives share work-related videos with colleagues weekly—meaning that your video has the power to gather leads as it is shared from person to person.

5. Share Your Knowledge

Creating video content such as webinars can generate leads, but it can also demonstrate your trustworthiness and build brand awareness. While not every visitor who lands on your B2B website will be willing or able to purchase your product, you can influence later sales by convincing them of your industry knowledge. Creating useful webinars that solve problems, discuss hot topics, and branch outside your niche can boost your sales later down the pipeline as it introduces you to more leads who had possibly never heard of you. While they might not be ready to invest in your services immediately after watching your webinars, it gives you a foot in the door that hadn't existed previously.

Not Using Video? It's Time to Start

While marketing trends are in a constant state of flux, video content is here to stay. By investing in video marketing you'll be able to spice up your website, converting more leads and building better brand awareness as you go. With platforms like YouTube and Wistia making video content more accessible than ever, there's no reason B2B businesses shouldn't be using video content on their websites.

Source: 5 Innovative Examples of Video on Your B2B Website

SEO/online marketing

SEO is the search engine optimisation operation that makes it easy for one to have their pages indexed and surface on search engine result pages when internet users do searches online using some keywords related to their activity. Search engine optimisation is the ultimate source of providing the most interesting return on investment over the longest period of time, as compared to other traffic sources like affiliate and ads programs. When it comes to online marketing and SEO makes sure that your website doesn't just offer some great content to internet users, but also something that is as easy to understand and is as eye-catching as possible.

If you are looking to appear on the first page and as the top option in search results options, you'll need to have the commitment and hard work to get you to a point of attracting new clients. It is not just about having keywords or stunts that attract attention. Rather, it requires long-term solutions to ensure that the page lives up to its original and real potential and not just another fish in the ocean.

SEO incorporates both the technical and creative elements that are required to improve rankings, driving traffic and increasing awareness on a particular product or piece in search engines.

SEO marketing

SEO marketing, on the other hand, is an internet marketing strategy that usually involves the promotion of websites by helping them have their visibility increased in search engines results pages. This is primarily done through paid advertising. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) may incorporate some websites which then adjusts and rewrites website content and the site's architecture. This goes a long way in ensuring a higher ranking in different search engines' search result pages, thereby enhancing the pay-per-click listings.

Online marketing is one essential part of driving traffic and potential clients to your online business. Having your business or online market kept on top requires vital o nline marketing strategies and should also include search engine optimisation, pay-per-click and social media advertising. Pay-per-click advertising is a type of inbound marketing that is used to promote businesses through adverts that are displayed alongside organic search results on search engines' results pages, for example, Google. Each of the ads is triggered by the search for a particular keyword that is related to what the advert is promoting. The advertiser only pays when a user clicks on the ad and visits the clients' websites. This gives birth to the "pay-per-click" name.

Search engine optimisation

The search engine optimisation, on the other hand, aims at increasing traffic's visibility to a particular website by realising higher rankings in search engine results. The process of optimisation aims at improving your website and making it as attractive and eye-catching as possible. The more search engine-friendly a website is, the more likely it is for it to appe ar higher in the organic search results when one searches for related keywords.

SEM, in full, search engine marketing, is the general term that is used to describe search engine optimisation and pay-per-click as a single marketing approach. Most companies go for both strategies to get immediate results and a long-term method. This is ultimately considered as a complete search marketing campaign that will ensure any business booms if the best steps are followed.

Different regions have different search engines focusing on them, with each of them having different signals. Having a local firm advertising on would be the best way to understand the specificities of each search engine. For instance, to enter the Chinese market, it is important to understand how Google Hong Kong and Baidu work to make the websites compliant to these particular search engines. Different companies can help you to get higher rankings such as Get Clicks which provides services such SEO and online ma rketing in Hong Kong.

By making sure that you are using the different channels to communicate with you targets as well as using the right search engines to reach them will ensure you better online performances.

Source: SEO/online marketing

Brand managers: Avoid these crucial marketing mistakes

When you're running a startup, you have difficult choices to make about marketing.

On one hand, marketing is the lifeblood of an organization. Good marketing attracts customers and investors alike.

On the other hand, you can't spend too much time, effort and resources on marketing. It can distract from other major concerns such as product development, sales and support.

Avoid these pitfalls in your quest for effective marketing:

1. Overspending

Overspending on marketing is a classic mistake. Online marketing lets you see results coming in immediately, and you might be tempted to respond by increasing your budget for AdWords, banner ads and whatever other campaigns you run.

This is dangerous for a few reasons.

First, you are putting too many eggs in one basket. By pouring more money into marketing, you leave less for your actual product and everything that surrounds it. All the marketing in the world can't make up for a bad product or missing features. You want it all to succeed and grow. That means you have to be smart about determining when your rate of return is leveling off and realize it's time to concentrate on other things.

Second, although you can fuel some short-term growth with a marketing binge, this growth isn't sustainable because it won't generate high-quality leads. You may get a few quarters or even a few years of growth, but it will eventually collapse because customers have no true commitment to your brand.

[RELATED: Join us for the Brand Storytelling and Content Marketing Conference at The Coca-Cola Company.]

2. Ignoring conversions

In the world of online marketing, one can easily get fixated on site visits, bounce rates, click-thrus and other stats. Many startup marketers treat all of these things with equal regard. However, only one is a meaningful measure of success: conversion to sales.

All the visitors, ad-driven interaction and social media engagement mean nothing if they don't generate revenue in some way.

This is similar to the mistake above: By spending a ton of money on ads, you can boost your visits, but without efficient targeting and well-crafted design, you won't succeed in converting those visits to sales. Furthermore, a bad product will undermine the numbers because people won't come back for repeat business.

Don't lose track of the fact that your bottom line matters. Try looking up some of the biggest and most headline-grabbing startups and see how many of them are deeply unprofitable.

3. Not using automation

Automated tools represent the potential for significant savings of time and attention in marketing. They enable you to carry out critical marketing tasks with minimal investment of oversight and resources.

For example, look into automated email services. They can manage personalized template messages you can send to different subscribers based on demographics, specific actions that the subscribers take, and almost anything else you want. Create a message to remind people about items left in their cart or offer a free eBook they can download. Once they buy a product, follow up with later emails offering discounts on related items or refills.

Send extra offers to those who haven't engaged in a while. The possibilities are endless, and they're effortless to execute. PR pros for start ups must spend their time on other important tasks, so using automation can add up to a big advantage.

4. Forgetting mobile users

This is a key issue, especially if your website is your most important point of sale. Never forget that the majority of all internet traffic is now coming from mobile devices, and the share is growing.

Mobile use is everywhere. It's the home of the impulse buy and social media integration. If your site isn't fast, light and easy to navigate on modern smartphones and mobile browsers, you risk alienating a huge potential audience. You simply cannot afford to have your site design fall behind in functionality on mobile.

Text must be clear and easy to read. Images should resize themselves appropriately. Links should be easy to tap with a finger. Everything has to fit on a small screen. There are a hundred little details that make a mobile site work well. Make sure you don't have any holes, or visitors will look elsewhere. Find a web design agency to help convert your site if you don't have the experience on hand.

5. Not building relationships

The early days of a startup can be a frenetic time. However, building strong relationships with customers has to be a top priority for your business. What this looks like depends on your organization and industry. In some cases you might only have a few customers and you will be able to cultivate personal relationships with each one individually. If you have a lot of customers, you'll have to rely on email and social media.

Whatever the case, you have to build those relationships so your customers come back to buy from you again and act as your brand ambassadors through word of mouth. It's a key investment in your own future. With a core of loyal customers, you get a dependable revenue base, sources of referrals and a better reputation.

Moving to the digital era has not obviated the need to build trust and warm feelings with customers. Set up a strong business phone service with VOIP to connect directly with customers, and be sure you have business internet to support your growth over time.

6. Lack of data integration

Information is becoming more widely available, and countless accessible suites of software can help you search it for it. Combine marketing campaign analytics with sales data, and add in records and outcomes from customer support calls. Use social media feedback if you can. These should all inform each other.

Sales data should show what people want in terms of features so developers can implement changes and improvements. Strategy has to be comprehensive, which means drawing on all data sources to build a big-picture approach.

What mistakes would you add to the list?

Eileen O'Shanassy is a freelance writer and blogger based out of Flagstaff, Arizona. Follow her on Twitter: @eileenoshanassy.

(Image via)

Source: Brand managers: Avoid these crucial marketing mistakes

Cool Content Marketing Ideas for Tech Firms

Whether your tech firm sells services software or products, you want your content marketing efforts to educate and engage your target audience. These efforts should result in a more educated buyer and hopefully position your firm as the best option.

As subject matter experts in your tech field, it's easy to come up with topics to educate your ideal client audience. However, it can be tough to come up with B2B content marketing ideas that are educational AND engaging. At Bop Design, we've worked with a slew of B2B firms in the tech field. Based on our experience and what we've seen in the tech space, here are some cool content marketing ideas to make pieces that educate, engage, and inspire.

Video Demos

It's very common to have a "request a demo" button on software websites or even some product sites. However, not every website visitor is ready to have a sales conversation yet. Rather than trying to force a demo on prospects who aren't ready, try creating videos that demonstrate certain parts of your software or the cool functionality of your products. Video demos are great B2B content marketing pieces to educate a prospective buyer and save your sales team time by nurturing leads in the early stages. If the website visitors want to learn more, they can request a live demo that can be catered to their specific needs.

Interactive Infographics

The tech world is full of complicated things. Try using infographics to explain complicated processes or functionality in a visual and interactive manner. Maybe you have a specific process on how you develop solutions for your clients. Rather than giving them a dull one sheet with this information, try creating an infographic that visually takes the user through the process and allows them to learn more about each stage by clicking on it. This type of content marketing piece is something you can use on your B2B website, landing pages and even repurpose for videos or print material.

Recommended for You

Webcast, June 21st: 5 Keys to Operational Excellence

Stat-Driven Case Studies

Don't be like all the other tech firms that write long-form (and sometimes boring) case studies. It makes your prospective buyer work too hard and takes up too much of their precious time! If you had to boil down what makes your service, software or product great to just a few measurable points – what would they be and how would you measure up? You can turn this info into statistics driven case studies that give your potential clients the info they need quickly. Remember, content marketing should be educational AND engaging (don't forget the engaging part!).

Industry Reports

Rather than a traditional white paper or guide, a yearly industry report is an extremely useful B2B content marketing piece for your user groups. This is something that requires more effort in developing, but something your audience can look forward to on a yearly basis. If you put in the effort and present the industry report in an engaging way, you can make your content marketing efforts highly anticipated in the industry, which not only establishes your firm as an authority in the field but makes you the go-to resource for clients and prospects.

Recap Blogs

Whatever sector your company operates in, innovations can happen pretty quickly. A great way to take part in the tech changes affecting your industry is to write recap blogs. If there is a large conference or industry announcement, have a knowledgeable member of your staff write up the highlights, how it affects your clients/prospects, and what they need to do to adapt/implement. By getting this timely information upon your blog and sharing it with your followers, you can become the go-to resource for your industry.

An Interactive Checklist

At first glance, a checklist doesn't seem that cool or innovative but think about all the times a checklist has come in handy for your job or personal life. When shopping for software or tech products, there is a heck of a lot of needs, requirements, and moving parts. For example, a prospect looking to purchase new software tool may have a slew of internal stakeholders who need particular functionality from the software. Write up a list of what to ask about software before purchasing to make it easy for prospects. They should be able to download the checklist and refer to it whenever they interview a software vendor. (The best part is your branding will be on the checklist and will be in front of them even as they talk to competitors).

Author: Kara Jensen

Kara Jensen is the Creative Principal of Bop Design, a B2B marketing and web design & development firm based in San Diego, CA. Dedicated to communicating each client's unique business value, Kara forges connections with target markets through strategic design and high-impact marketing concepts. Kara has 10 years of… View full profile ›

Source: Cool Content Marketing Ideas for Tech Firms

Snapchat Marketing Features, Facebook Video Covers, and Twitter Changes

Welcome to this week's edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media.

On this week's Social Media Marketing Talk Show with Michael Stelzner, we explore new Snapchat marketing features, Facebook page video covers, Twitter changes, and other breaking social media marketing news of the week!

Watch the Social Media Morning Talk Show

If you're new to the show, click on the green "Watch replay" button below and sign in or register to watch our latest episode from Friday, June 16, 2017.

For this week's top stories, you'll find timestamps below that allow you to fast-forward in the replay above.

Snapchat Introduces New Self-Serve Ad Manager Tool and Certified Partners Program: Snapchat rolled out the Snap Publisher tool for building vertical video creative. Snapchat also announced that its self-serve Ad Manager tool is now officially available and it's launching a Snapchat Certified Partners program "to connect advertisers to trained third-party ad tech tool providers." (6:26)

Facebook Expands Video Cover Images to More Pages: Facebook began testing the ability to upload videos as cover images on pages in April and is now expanding this feature to more pages. According to a pop-up notification, admins may use a 20- to 90-second video that's at least 820 x 312 pixels in place of a standard cover image. Adweek notes that "cover videos auto-play and auto-loop" and are automatically muted. An option to view the videos with sound can be found on the bottom right-hand corner of the video. (23:07)

Facebook expands the ability to upload videos as cover images to more pages.

Twitter Rolls Out a New Look Across the Mobile and Desktop Interfaces: Twitter introduced a new series of updates across its mobile apps and web interface that features a new, streamlined look; the ability to open links and other websites from within the platform; intuitive icons; and more. These changes are rolling out across twitter.com, Twitter for iOS, Twitter for Android, TweetDeck, and Twitter Lite "over the coming days and weeks." (36:50)

Twitter Powers Direct Messages With Smart New Action Buttons: Businesses can now attach smart new action buttons to Twitter messages that "make it easy for people to take actions outside of the Direct Message conversation – like composing a Tweet, following an account, or opening a website within the Twitter app." These new buttons are rolling out this week to Twitter iOS and Android apps and Twitter's desktop web clients. (41:12)

Twitter Tests Dedicated Module for What's "Happening Now": Twitter is testing a new way to showcase what other users on the service are talking about at the top of select users' timelines. The new feature includes a label that reads "happening now" and features a carousel of small Twitter cards, "each representing a different current event or conversation happening on Twitter." (43:22)

Facebook Rolls Out Two New Ad Campaign Tools for Marketers: Facebook introduced two new solutions "that can help grow your business." The first tool is called Valued Optimization, which "enables advertisers to optimize their ad campaigns based on purchase value data passed through the Facebook pixel." The second is value-based Lookalike Audiences, which allows marketers to reach new people who look like their highest-spending customers.

Facebook Rolls Out New GIF Icon to All Users Worldwide: Facebook rolled out a new button that makes it simple and easy to search and attach GIFs directly in the comments box to all Facebook profiles. TechCrunch notes that the GIF button also displays the top "trending GIFs" just as it does in Messenger. Facebook began testing the new GIF comment button with content from services such as Giphy and Tenor in March 2017. This new feature is now available to "all people on Facebook globally." (47:14)

Facebook rolls out a new GIF icon to all users worldwide.

Facebook Adds Page Star Ratings to Business Ads: Facebook is running a test that allows certain business pages to include their four- and five-star rating results within their ads. Adweek reports that "only ratings of four stars and above will be shown in ads and pages that are part of the test group can easily opt out via their page settings."

Facebook Expands Monetization Opportunities on Instant Articles: Facebook started testing ad units in the related articles section at the bottom of Instant Articles in late March. This week, Facebook announced that it's "opening the test to all publishers on Instant Articles."

Facebook expands advertising opportunities on Instant Articles.

Facebook Shares "Highlights" for Personal Profiles: Facebook now provides select users with "Highlights From This Week" on their personal profiles. This new feature is found in Notifications and includes photos of the user's top commenters and the number of reactions, likes, and comments generated by their posts in the past week. This new alert also encourages users to "continue sharing with friends" by creating more posts on Facebook. There hasn't been an official announcement yet about this new feature from Facebook. (54:05)

Facebook shares user account "Highlights" for select personal profiles.

Facebook Allows Multiple Dates and Times for Recurring Events: Facebook makes it easier to schedule multiple dates and times within an event with a new Add More Dates and Times option. This was recently discovered in the event-creation process. This feature doesn't appear to be widely available to all page admins and event creators at this time.

Facebook now allows organizers to add multiple times and dates to Facebook events.

Facebook Tests Related Live Video Recommendations: Facebook is experimenting with a new feature that suggests related Live videos after a broadcast has ended. Like with mid-roll ads, the broadcaster doesn't appear to have any control over which videos are suggested nor the source from which they originate. (56:43)

Facebook appears to be experimenting with a new feature that suggests related Live videos after a broadcast has ended.

Instagram Releases Archive Feature to All Users: Instagram widely released Archive, a new feature that allows users to move posts that have been shared previously on the platform into a private folder visible only to them. Instagram Archive is available to all users as part of the latest version of the Instagram app on both iOS and Android.

Instagram widely released its new Archive feature to all users.

Instagram Makes Sponsored Content More Transparent: Instagram will start rolling out a new "Paid partnership with" tag that's intended to clearly identify sponsored posts and stories on the platform. This new feature is expected to be available to Instagram marketers in the "coming weeks." Instagram also plans to release an official policy and guidelines around paid partnerships on the site that are expected to be similar to Facebook's current practices.

Instagram makes sponsored content on the site more transparent.

Apple Rolls Out Analytics to Podcast App: A new version of Apple's podcast app will provide creators and advertisers with basic analytics such as when listeners played an individual episode, what part they listened to, and what parts they skipped or stopped listening to altogether. Recode notes that prior to this update, Apple had provided "almost no data about podcast listening behavior" and "almost no feedback" on podcast advertising.

.

Facebook Messenger's M Now Offers Suggestions in Both English and Spanish: Facebook announced that "M Suggestions will be available in both English and Spanish, to all Messenger users in the United States."

Facebook Messenger users can now receive suggestions from M in both English and Spanish.

New Google Technology Enables Any App to Have the Power of Object Recognition: Google now enables any app to have the power of object recognition with the release of MobileNets, "a set of machine vision neural networks designed to run directly on mobile devices."

Facebook Allows Verified Pages to Promote a Facebook Live Video During a Broadcast: Facebook rolled out the ability for verified pages to promote a Facebook Live video during the broadcast. Previously, it was only possible to promote a live video with ads after the broadcast ended. (1:02:46)

Facebook Gives Advertisers More Control Over Ad Placements: In addition to giving advertisers the ability to opt out of having their ad appear in certain placements and against specific types of content, Facebook announced that it will launch more ad controls and make existing ones even easier to use "over the next few months." These new tools will include Pre-Campaign Transparency, which entails "upfront, publisher-level transparency across the Audience Network, Instant Articles and in-stream ads on Facebook." Facebook also plans to make the block process even easier and "allow advertisers to specify the types of placements (e.g., in-stream or native and interstitial) they want their video campaigns to run in through a simple opt-out.

Apple Shares More Details About Business Chat: Last week, Apple introduced Business Chat, "a powerful new way for businesses to connect with customers directly from within iMessage." Marketing Land offers insights into the number of "innovative features" and advantages Apple Business Chat has over Facebook and Microsoft, which boast established chat services.

Apple introduced Business Chat, a powerful new way for businesses to connect with customers within iMessage.

Snap Inc. Reportedly Develops Second-Generation, AR-Enabled Spectacles: Snap Inc. is developing a second generation of Spectacles. TechCrunch reports that "it seems increasingly likely that Spectacles II will ship with augmented reality features built in.

Want to catch our next show live? Click here to subscribe or add our show to your calendar.

Source: Snapchat Marketing Features, Facebook Video Covers, and Twitter Changes

Oswego unveils new marketing logo

Oswego has launched a regional marketing and rebranding campaign to attract more visitors and accelerate economic development.

#GoOswego features a new regional marketing logo and website at www.GoOswego.org that will feature all of Oswego's special events, including those sponsored by the village and other community organizations, village officials said.

The #GoOswego initiative is part of the Village Board's efforts to develop a plan that would promote Oswego's amenities as a place to live as well as have a business, according to village officials.

The new logo has an eagle in flight above the village's name.

"The aim is to build Oswego's image across Chicagoland as a forward-thinking, business friendly regional entertainment destination where residents and visitors gather in an engaging natural environment," Oswego Community Relations Manager Michele Brown said in a statement.

Brown said the campaign will have a purpose beyond serving as a guide for upcoming events and attractions.

"The new marketing logo and website will also be aimed at attracting new residents and businesses to Oswego. Phase two of the website rollout will include more information on shopping, dining, attractions and overnight stays," Brown said.

Trustees in April 2016 directed staff to research the cost to develop a branding plan that would review the village's logo, marketing methods, tagline and the village's website content.

The Village Board in July awarded a contract to Evanston-based Business Districts Inc. that developed the plan over the past year. As part of its work, consultants met with community focus groups.

Brown said village staff and representatives of the Village Board worked with the consultants to determine Oswego's regional brand identity.

"The goal of the team was to set Oswego apart from our competitors and surrounding communities," Brown said.

Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News

Source: Oswego unveils new marketing logo