The post Link Building – Why Is It Important, and How Can It Make Your Website Rank Higher first appeared on Publir.
]]>Under a larger SEO umbrella, link-building has quite an important role to play. With tight marketing budgets putting a cap on the amount you can spend on advertising, you need organic traffic via search engines, especially in competitive industries. Together with other SEO good practices like good on-page SEO, stellar content, and a lovely user experience, link-building can help drive organic traffic to your site, making your site rank higher.
The internet is flooded or rather saturated with good content. Quality, relevant and authentic sites are the need of the hour. Let’s say, for instance, you had a friend who wasn’t very good at math. You would not refer him to your boss, for a vacant position as a financial advisor in your office now, would you? Similarly, if your site is not good enough, why should others link back to you?
In order to be attractive, here are some strategies you can employ.
When it comes to content, good quality and consistency is the only secret to success. Only then will you have people wanting to visit, and publishers wanting to link to your website. Publish industry-relevant content, so your readers feel encouraged to share it. Who knows, they might even link it to their own website if they have one.
You can’t be an expert at everything. There might be another industry contemporary, a rival even, who might know something better than you. Share their content. Link it. This might sound counterintuitive, but mutual help can be gained. A blog is a social tool, and you can use it to link to others, in a useful way so they return the favor. If you are a new market entrant and manage to find a voice with an industry leader, they might share or link back to your content, working out in your favor.
Always invite and entertain guest bloggers, by first writing a good blog post, and then sending it to others. If one accepts, they might give you an inbound link. Guest blogging helps promote expertise. A lot of media outlets seek submissions from people on pertinent topics. Start with your industry and its core areas. For example, if you are dealing with interior decorations, talk strictly about home decor only.
A resource list can be anything, dealing with email previewing tools, to learning new brainstorming techniques. Such lists help other bloggers link it to their own posts, instead of creating that content themselves. For example, if your blog is a digital marketing blog, you can put out a list of ways to calculate engagement rate, to be relevant among other bloggers in the digital marketing space.
Always keep an eye out for trending news. And, use that to your advantage. Termed ‘newsjacking’, it is a technique of capitalizing on the virality of a news story, to amplify your own marketing efforts. For example, bloggers who are the first to comment on news events, rise to the top of Google’s SERP rankings, attracting others to link your content too.
If you want legit backlinks from authoritative sources, try seeking expert roundups from influencers. Try reaching out to them again sometime later, soliciting a guest post, thanking them first for their previous role on your website.
If you make your clients look good, they will link back to your site. If you are working with companies that have proven themselves, then create a good case study with the right questions, so others can find this information useful. Alternatively, you can also be part of a case study, to get a backlink once it gets published.
Infographics are an interesting way to spread information. Share your design with your sources, and ensure your infographic embed code can be accessed easily. A professional-looking infographic can be made with free templates and free photo editing tools like Canva. People also love charts, graphs, and other forms of visual content. These are time-consuming and people would rather use your content than make their own if they have the choice.
Live interactions with interesting presentations are always welcomed. For those who miss it, they can access it if you convert your PPT into a SlideShare presentation, and embed that into a blog post, you can further embed that into the webinar’s landing page. Team up with brands and influencers and invite them to your webinar to widen your audience.
You can create a free tool to attract audiences to link to your site. A keyword analyzer or any industry-relevant and useful tool might help. For example, if you are an eCommerce company making glasses, you can create an imaging tool that will allow customers to view different frames on their faces before finally choosing one. Free shareable templates are also a great way to be popular. Any bookmarkable content attracts inbound links.
Modify your existing PR strategy to an inbound one, by writing a great press release and pushing it to a big publishing house. If your project involves another company, send out a joint press release. By gaining press attention, you can build your brand visibility, boost credibility and get useful backlinks. A dedicated page for publications or journalists to see your content is a great way to keep the information updated in one place for ease of access.
Corporate channel partners always link to each other’s content. A partner can send traffic to your site, something you can verify using Alexa to calculate their bounce rate, keywords, traffic, etc. Perform co-marketing by jointly promoting a piece of content and sharing those results. Leveraging that relationship will help you get more links. Marketing doesn’t always have to be an expensive affair.
If you have launched a new product, always solicit reviews and feedback. This can help strengthen relationships with vendors and buyers. Read our blog on how to get reviews to learn how to do this effectively.
As your website gets updated over time, some links may be old or broken. You can still update them. Use tools like Dead Link Checker, and Screaming Frog to check for broken links on other websites.
Always include a ‘tweet this’ button next to your content for greater search engine, Twitter stream, and news feed visibility. Your data can also be referenced in other people’s content.
Use other social sharing buttons across your marketing content so more people see, share and link it to their website.
In addition to the above strategies, you could also conduct product sneak-peaks to make customers feel important. Link building can increase quality traffic and tell search engines your website is a leading subject matter expert in a certain field, hopefully thereby boosting the number of buyers.
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]]>The post The 10 Best Examples of B2B Marketing Content first appeared on Publir.
]]>Today people are spending more time researching options before making a purchase. The perfect mix of intriguing and informative content is what is required to draw these potential consumers in. And to do this well, businesses need to have an effective content marketing strategy. Here are 10 great examples to use as inspiration.
This all-in-one SEO toolkit finds mention in a lot of digital marketing forums, and for good reason. Including a site auditor, keyword and content explorer, a site explorer, and a rank tracker, Ahrefs can make a page rank higher. Ahrefs marketing content strategy consists primarily of two blogs focusing on SEO and tech, an academy, and a help center. The company is also present across social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube with different kinds of content going through varied distribution channels. Ahrefs is proficient in distributing content through each of the aforementioned channels, with their YouTube channel having a large following. Ahrefs also repurposes its content regularly and has several featured channels about other video marketing content, SaaS marketing, and more. On Twitter and Facebook, they push different kinds of content. Their versatility and consistency make them a great example of B2B marketing content.
One look at Wistia’s Instagram page will tell you that they’ve nailed the concept of including the very important human element in B2B marketing content. Companies should use social media channels to bring their audiences closer to the people who manufacture the products and services the audience loves. Wistia, a video hosting platform, shares visual content on Instagram boosting views. Their content, aligned with the core of their product or service, is great and Wistia is a great example of how to use your unique selling point to your advantage, to reach out to your audience.
A business management solutions provider based in Australia and New Zealand, MYOB helps organizations handle their finances, putting them in touch with bookkeepers and people working in financial services. There are small businesses just starting out, or established organizations that want a good insight into their own operations. The reason MYOB is a great example of B2B marketing content is that it has a strategy for each of these businesses. MYOB understands that a lot of firms are still in the process of making accounting and financial decisions while growing. MYOB’s positioning as an authority to help these businesses develop and grow has helped create a curious audience. MYOB understands this audience’s needs and tries to deliver accordingly.
You wouldn’t expect a social media network to make this list, much less a quiet one like LinkedIn, composed mostly of professionals and corporates who take their roles very seriously. Well, this seriousness is what attracts a lot of talent from fresh college graduates to junior and mid-level executives looking for a job change. The content on LinkedIn is a little more serious but informative and is great for building your career on a digital platform. The platform knows how to promote its own marketing content efforts, with its ‘Secret Sauce’ campaign being an example. On YouTube, they’ve got employees giving talks on content promotion and narrating personal experiences. This brings a little relatable human emotion into the corporate world. With its subtle but powerful messaging, LinkedIn is a great example of B2B marketing content.
This consultancy and financial services company that has its fingers in tech, auditing, and more, is spread out wide. Working with everyone from government agencies to firms in the scientific fields, Deloitte’s credibility is its vast and deep knowledge base. Via Deloitte Insights, it is adept at creating useful, informative content for individual, special audiences, and has positioned itself as an indispensable resource for those who want what it knows. Deloitte also curates content across a variety of formats, like blog posts, podcasts, and webcasts. It has some interesting content for everyone. Creating a wide-scale content strategy to make everyone happy is difficult. Microsites could help in this regard. Establishing themselves as a go-to resource, a content hub, and a knowledge center makes Deloitte Insights a great example of B2B marketing content.
NextView Ventures does things slightly differently. It decided to cash in on the popularity and niche audience of Medium, and through its publication Better Everyway, it focuses on stories, analysis, and resources that seed-stage founders could really use. This is a smart move by NextView, to create off-site content, i.e material that you own but that doesn’t inhibit your website. Couple that with the popularity of Medium, and you have a good boost in discoverability for publishers. Via Better Everyway, NextView experiments with a variety of content, and as a result, the work published is interesting, diverse, and shareable.
One of the largest insurance brokers in the United Kingdom, Simply Business has a smart content strategy that involves giving business owners advice about a variety of issues ranging from email productivity to WordPress, business blogging, social media, AdWords, and more. As a result, their organic traffic increased because of nicely-placed thoughtful keywords, and pertinent topics the audience was interested in.
Another firm that is nailing the offsite content concept is Zendesk, through its Medium publication. As an expert in solutions provided by its core product, i.e software, Zendesk has opened up its consumers to a whole new world: The world of highly skilled experts, the brains behind the software. Realizing that there are people who want insights and have technical questions about the product, Zendesk decided to make their product interesting by providing an insight into what goes into it.
This isn’t just another digital agency. Focusing on tech startups, Single Grain wanted to attract big players like Uber and Amazon. So, they used content designed to convert site visitors into subscribers. Their holistic content marketing strategy included a highly detailed blog on online marketing, a podcast featuring their CEO and market thought leader Neil Patel, and an online resource center stocked with guides, webinars, courses, and infographics. Being one of the few firms to go down the podcast route has paid off because their episodes are highly sought after. Their blogs garner a lot of shares and their website traffic and business awareness among their target consumers have increased as a result.
An initiative by Mattermark, Raise The Bar is a great example of curated content. Marketers with their plates full don’t want to keep scouring the internet for news and trends. Raise The Bar saves them the trouble by compiling a daily newsletter of sorts, with posts on sales, growth engineering, and marketing. Their aim is to help people who ‘grow’ companies. They have played the ‘problem solver’ card, turning into a voice of authority. That makes for great relevant content for their audience, in an easily accessible package.
In conclusion, just because a firm is in the B2B space doesn’t mean its content cannot be dynamic. In fact, for companies in this space, it is an even bigger challenge to make their products/services appear appealing and attractive to potential consumers. There’s a lot of great B2B content floating about the digital space and a world of content opportunities for B2B content marketers. Read our blog about how to set and achieve marketing objectives, to help your firm reach its marketing goals.
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]]>The post Market Research in the Digital Age: A Guide and Template first appeared on Publir.
]]>Market research is a process that lets businesses know more about the end-user of the products and services it offers. It allows a brand to create the profile or persona of its user using tools to collect useful customer information.
There are two types of market research; primary and secondary research. Both serve a purpose depending on the overall goals of your research.
Primary research helps you to get to know more about how your product performs in the market, who your target audience is, and the geographical region in which you sell your products and services.
You can conduct phone or email surveys, conduct polls on your social media platforms, or engage a professional agency to prepare questionnaires to collect information, based on the size of your audience and the type of information you need.
Doing the back-end legwork allows you to approach the research with a specific set of questions to explore measurable consumer behavior and to identify potential challenges to reach them and will try to overcome those challenges.
What types of primary research should you use?
Close-ended multiple-choice surveys are generally used to elicit the basic demographic information of your target groups, such as age, gender, income, education, and professional background.
Multivariate, exploratory surveys use exploratory questions to dig into details beyond basic information, including customers’ opinions on your product, likes and dislikes in varying degrees and scales from 1-10, and trace customer expectations along with suggestions to improve it further. YouTube, for example, asks its viewers constantly what they would like to watch on the channel using an exploratory survey. The findings will be helpful to enhance the user experience.
In-depth studies are conducted over an extended period, covering huge sample data for a detailed orientation. It collects qualitative information from users. For example, Mozilla did an in-depth study spanning 10 months, speaking to millions of YouTube users. It revealed detailed information on how the channel violates its algorithm.
Observatory studies are participatory research where the researcher participates in the buying and consumption process and remains as a neutral, participant-observer to collect unbiased, first-hand knowledge on your customer. If Netflix wants to measure the consumption pattern of its existing customer, the researcher should participate in person with families to try to understand how they watch. Is it collective or individual viewing? Who controls the TV remote? Do children influence parents in picking the movies/programs? Does the viewer allow ads to run or bypass them? Participatory observation studies provide rich qualitative information on the user.
While you commission primary research to map the performance of your product, secondary research is information available for you in the public domain as open-source or beyond the paywalls. You can bank on secondary research for information on your industry, including your competitors, public policies, and the latest trends emerging in your specific market. Major organizations and government bodies regularly conduct research at a massive scale and publish it for citizens on budget allocations, changes in the labor market, and the changing demographic composition within different provinces, states, and countries. This information can help support project funding requests.
The U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor & Statistics, both offer nationwide statistics and analysis on the industries and job market and most of these sources do not charge you to access information.
Private sector entities, including major business houses and research organizations that take up sponsored research projects, publish vital business trends for free as well as for a subscription. Research agencies like Pew, Gartner, or Forrester provide authentic research information.
The internet offers several avenues for researchers and businesses alike. While open-access sites provide free information for all, paid sources offer restricted additional information that you’re unlikely to find for free.
The data-driven modern-day business collects metrics on customer behavior using integrated automated tools like CRMs that pump in ample insights on your existing customers, such as their purchasing patterns, spending power, customer expectations, average revenue per sale, and customer retention rates, among other things.
Interviews, focus-group discussions, and observation are the major research tools used to collect customer information.
Interviews conducted in person or through virtual mode enable face-to-face interaction with the end-user. A well-structured, open-ended questionnaire helps the researcher to collect detailed customer information. You can use interviews to collect exclusive, individual opinions on your products or services that you do not want to share in public, yet use it to improve your product quality or customer experience.
If you are keen on introducing a new product or service to a new audience, you need to get multiple perspectives from the group. You should identify your prospective customer by taking their age, gender, linguistic and cultural traits into account, and then invite a diverse mix of the group for a brainstorming session or discussion, using a structured, open-ended questionnaire in hand. Record the entire session and sum up to draw insights from the discussion.
Participatory observation involves fieldwork, interviews, observation, and interaction with customers in the environment where they consume your product. It traces elements like the socioeconomic and cultural background of the customer to understand their media consumption behavior, purchasing habits, and usage.
Having understood the basic research methods and techniques, you can now jump into action and conduct market research. But how do you go about it?
What do you want to explore out of this research? This is your research objective. You may want to know the music preferences of Hispanic youth, aged 18-24. You should frame your objective as “Music Preferences of Hispanic Youth Aged 18-24 in said state or province.” You may need to narrow down your study to a specific geographical area by identifying the region that is predominantly Spanish. You can apply the findings to the larger population, as research studies are time-bound and focus on representative samples.
It’s important to answer a few questions before you begin creating marketing materials for a specific project. Answer these basic questions before you begin, as they relate to your business. Not every piece of demographic information may be important for your purposes.
You need to know your audience’s persona and behaviors before you get into action.
Amazon is aiming at expanding into health care technologies. It has FCC permission to test a device that monitors the sleeping habits of people using radars, as the intention is to develop a contactless sleep tracking device.
How does Amazon get into action to pilot test its utilities, once the device is ready? It may choose to study the working population that operates in night shifts and their sleeping patterns in New York City’s Manhattan area. American Community Survey estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that in 2005-2009, 1.1% of Manhattan workers arrived at work between 12:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. These were “night-shift” workers.
By handpicking a few companies with night shifts, the researcher can draw a sample of 10 each from 10 such companies to collect data on how the new device acts and tracks sleeping patterns, by linking these sensor-based devices to a monitor.
Depending on your research objectives, you can decide whether you need qualitative data or quantitative information. Observatory studies, group discussions, and interviews are qualitative research methods. Surveys gather quantitative data. Your research needs such as pre-testing a product before launching it are different from studying its impact once it is released in the market. This would equally determine the type of data you are supposed to collect from your informants.
Be it a phone interview or an online survey, you should approach your informants with a predetermined questionnaire, which may be close-ended with limited options to pick from answers or open-ended questions, that let the informant provide their own narrative response, which may be purely personal and may vary, based on the diversity of the representatives included in the study. Close-ended questions are suitable for surveys and exit polls. In-depth studies use multiple options from 1-5 to pick. All qualitative studies employ open-ended questionnaires for data collection
Finally, include questions that do not consume more than 10 minutes, leading to purchasing decisions such as;
The size of the survey or questionnaire should not be too lengthy for an interview, focus group discussion, and observation-oriented studies. You can conduct an exploratory survey with a well-structured questionnaire to collect data from 2000 customers.
For exploratory studies, you must use multi-variant answers to your questions.
For example, you are studying a viewer’s opinions on an ad campaign that promotes ‘Microsoft Edge Kids Mode’ as a safer place for children to explore the web
You can arrange questions eliciting parents’ opinions such as;
Web browsing for children is safe with regulatory measures of law-making bodies
Parents can allow children aged 8-11 to view YouTube videos
A researcher can seek answers to a set of general questions before getting deeper into the product-oriented questions like product quality, user experience, and how quickly it loads.
Topics like online gaming and children’s behavior can be explored posing questions for a small group of parents for a focus group discussion. The researcher can explore aspects like: Whether online gaming leads to;
The researcher can take professional help in preparing a questionnaire or search the internet for more information.
Surveying in a friendly environment yields you the best research outcome, So, it’s important to watch the body language and responses of your interview subject. Allow some concluding remarks to end your interaction with a happy note and acknowledge the time and effort of the informant with a thank you email or mention them as sources in your research repoHow and Where Do You Apply Primary Market Research Findings?
Technology offers solutions for market researchers in understanding various triggers that swing consumer behavior, and technology makes it easier than ever to reach target audiencesBorderless Access is taking behavioral and emotional research to the next level by studying social media, chat apps, and behavioral data, using machine learning algorithms to understand a respondent’s thoughts, ideas, and emotions by taking inputs from videos, images, text, and sound.
Data, technology, and new analytical approaches hold the key for the brands over the next five years and marketers are expected to spend $66 billion annually on them for conversions, which is up from $27 billion in 2021. Market research is imperative to understand future market trends and your customer’s ever-evolving behavior. Well-designed market research will answer all your sensitive and complex market-related questions. Agencies and technologies are out here with tailor-made solutions to meet your market research expectations.
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]]>The post Exploring Unique Features of Podcasting for Marketing and Brand Building first appeared on Publir.
]]>This relatively young and new medium is luring marketers for obvious reasons like low production cost, higher levels of reaching the targets, and the uniqueness of spoken word in a personalized manner. Let’s talk about what it can do for you and your business.
Podcast listening and viewing have been on the rise across the globe. As of today, there are an estimated 54 million podcast episodes and 800,000 active podcasts around the globe. Its popularity is on rising in the U.S., as 70% of the population is familiar with it. Marketers can reach this otherwise mobile population only through innovative communication channels like podcasts.
Podcasts serve as a potential mouthpiece of the organizations in projecting organizational image, character, values, and commitment to society and customers. Brands can select the intended content to project the organizational personality as skits, dialogue, and inspirational lectures, through influencers as podcast hosts, instead of commercial ads. Sponsorships are also a good tool to use in podcasts as consumers consider the influencer’s advice seriously because they maintain an intimate relationship with the audience. Unlike TV or radio commercials, podcasts do not push brand-related information on the audience. They rather try to persuade consumers indirectly through inspirational stories and informational interviews and conversations.
Brand building is a continuous, long-term process and brands try to establish customer loyalty by engaging them in meaningful ways. They follow different methods to make a difference in the already cluttered market that is overcrowded with brand names, as a brand’s trustworthiness matters for customer brand adoption. When Dell and EMC Corporation merged in 2016 to form Dell Technologies, Dell banked on the Trailblazers Podcast through a collection of inspirational stories. McAfee, a company that emphasizes Cybersecurity was successful in reaching its audience through its engaging podcast called Hackable that combines humor, entertainment, and educational content.
As the popularity grows, more ad dollars started following podcasts. It is evident from the substantial increase in ad spending on this novice medium. According to IAB Pricewaterhouse Coopers estimations, podcast ad spend was $800 million in 2020, and it will be more than double to reach $1.7 billion by 2024, registering an annual growth of 20%.
A Magellan AI, study among the leading 400 podcasts found an increase in the average number of ads in 2020, which grew from 2.7 in April to 3.3 in September. The number of podcast advertisers grew from 603 to 855 for this period. Several “blue-chip” marketers like Amazon, Google, General Motors, Procter & Gamble, and Disney have started spending on podcast advertising. News/talk and comedy podcasts are highly demanding genres and there was a 1000% YoY increase in podcast ad spending in this category during the recent American presidential elections, registering a 72% YoY growth in Podcast advertising in 2020.
All this means that advertisers are increasingly willing to invest in podcasts in order to get the word out about their products. So any business that’s willing to form partnerships for sponsors or advertisers on their podcast won’t have far to look.
Many large brands are also starting their own podcast services. Prominent media and retail giants like Amazon, Apple, Spotify, and the New York Times have acquired podcast audio platforms in 2020. Spotify has spent $235 million in acquiring Megaphone, a podcast advertising and publishing platform in 2020. Spotify currently has 2.2 million podcasts on its platform and the time spent listening to podcasts on Spotify was more than double.
In July 2020, Amazon acquired Wondery and SiriusXM has acquired Stitcher from E. W. Scripps for $235 million. Stitcher owns 50 podcasts and runs an ad-supported free listening app as well as an ad-free premium version for $4.99 a month. In June 2020, SiriusXM had acquired Simplecast, a top podcast management platform that allows podcasters to publish, manage, and measure content. In July 2020, The New York Times has acquired a podcast studio from ‘Serial’ productions. The Times had generated $36 million in revenue from podcasts in 2020, compared to $29 million in 2019.
Podcast content from NPR, Cumulus Media/Westwood One, NBC News, WarnerMedia, Fox News, and Beasley Media Group were popular throughout 2020 and there is no end in the list of celebrities, political and media personalities joining this field as podcast hosts, adding more passion, color, charm, and popularity.
Podcasts are popular communications and marketing channels to reach a highly passionate and captive audience. If delivered at scale, marketers can reach a niche audience with their branding and marketing messages effectively.
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]]>The post 10 Simple Steps to Writing the Perfect Blog Post first appeared on Publir.
]]>Why do you need a Blog?
Blogs started as personal online logs or diaries where people could share information or their thoughts on a range of topics. The data was organized in reverse chronological order, with the most recent post appearing first.
Nowadays, a blog is a frequently updated website or web page used for personal or professional purposes. Blogs may help you establish an online presence, establish yourself as an industry expert, and attract more high-quality leads to all of your website’s pages.
If your company doesn’t have a blog, you should think about getting one: B2B marketers that utilize blogs get 67% more leads than those who don’t, and blogs are the fifth most trusted source for reliable internet information.
If you want to start a new blog or have one already, the next step is to decide what to write about. A content strategy is crucial to the success of a blog, whether it be for personal or business reasons. You should be aware that textual content is oversaturated on the internet and, as a result, you’ll need to put in a lot of work to generate outstanding content if you want yours to stand out. Americans spend an average of four hours browsing the net on their phones every day — a whole 30% more than 2019. Hence, innovative blog posts will give your business a boost with more viewers.
The first and most crucial step is to simply pick what you want to share on your blog. This is a step that should not be rushed. To make this approach work, you’ll need to put in some effort and come up with a topic that will resonate with your target audience. What do they come to you for? What information do they need from you? You want to make sure your material is interesting to your readers and, ideally, helpful to your SEO.
You should also conduct SEO research to ensure that visitors are looking for and interested in the subject matter you want to write about. Consider what your competitors are doing and then search for areas where you can fill in the gaps in their material.
Too many people feel that you need to write only on topics that have never been addressed before. That simply isn’t the case; sometimes you just have to think of a better way to phrase it. The fact that you’re still in business should be positive proof that you have something special to offer.
Consider what you want to say, then do some online searching to find out what others have already created around that topic. . Then think about what questions are still unresolved or how you might add your own perspective to the discussion.
Introductions that catch readers’ attention will entice them to continue reading, which should be the goal of any blog. You’ll want to establish the tone and narrative voice early in an essay, article, or blog post. Start with a quotation or a statistic to grab the reader’s attention. Keeping your reader engaged may be as simple as asking a question telling a story, or making a powerful remark.
The first few sentences of any written piece are referred to as an “attention-getter,” or “hook.” They are always written in the opening paragraph. It begins with an engaging beginning that is meant to arouse interest for your readers. It is critical to have an excellent attention getter for an essay.
A nut graph, also known as a nutshell paragraph, is a paragraph that provides the main context of the article. Following your introduction, this is the crucial paragraph in which you go directly to the subject. It establishes the reader’s expectations by informing them exactly what they will learn. It should also continue the subject from your introduction. Your topic may include a lot of information, but you must determine what makes your material unique.
Search engines love when you’re able to keep readers on your website by linking to some of your older content and to outside websites. Look for ways to link to service sites, prior blogs, or landing pages as you write. At least two internal links (links to content on your own website) should be included in each post. Include a link to the content you’re referencing when you cite another blogger or article in your blog post. It’s not just excellent blogging etiquette, but you could get lucky and get a link back as well. Any site that wants to rank better in search engine results pages needs high-quality links.
The primary reason for writing an article is to increase the number of people who land on your website. One method to accomplish this is to use SEO to generate organic traffic. Learn how to research keywords, rank in search engines, and create an SEO plan if you want your blog–and your website–to be successful. Blog postings help you to rank for a range of keywords in search engines. Ideally, each page of your website and blog should contain a keyword that is different and unique, that will appear at the top of Google’s search results.
If you want to make a lasting impression on your reader, write a powerful closing paragraph for your blog articles. You want to end strong by tying up your message neatly and giving readers a solid call to action.
You want to make sure that your final words are well-crafted so that people remember something from what you’ve written. It should also demonstrate a grasp of your issue as a whole, as well as how all of the assertions you’ve made throughout your blog relate to your main point.
You’ll need a good feature image to make your blog stand out, both on your website and when you share the blog on social media. Because the title of your article will show over this image, avoid anything too busy. If you want to use a photo from another website, make sure it’s free and commercially available before using it. Don’t forget to credit those who deserve it. Next, find a few images to use within your article.
It’s also critical to size your images correctly. The dimensions will vary depending on your blog’s layout, but if they’re too big, they’ll slow down your page’s load time. Ideally, your image should be 72 dpi at the very least.
Once you’re certain your article is optimized for search, examine it to check for any formatting errors, such as font inconsistencies. Then get it proofread by someone else. This is an important step that you should not skip. You’ll lose credibility with readers if your content is littered with errors.
Finally, be proud of what you post and share it with the world. Don’t just send out a single Tweet and then forget about it. Share it on your other social networking sites, making sure to personalize your posts for each one. From now on, include it in your content lineup, swapping it in with newer pieces from time to time. When possible, include a link to it in other postings. After a few months, you can still go back to it and see whether it needs to be updated with fresh information.
Marketing and promoting your blog articles are the final aspects of blogging. Writing a blog article but having no one to read it won’t help your company or brand. That’s why you’ll need to promote your articles through various means. To reach existing and future consumers, you can utilize social media, SEO, your website, or your email newsletter. Your blog is frequently the first point of contact for a potential consumer. Make a good first impression and you’ll surely be rewarded.
Despite the fact that the time you spend writing your blog might feel insignificant in comparison to everything else you do, the best part about a blog is its longevity. The internet never forgets, which is unfortunate for some but fortunate for others. You’ve established a new indexed page for your website by creating your blog, which will continue to drive visitors for years after you’ve moved on to a new topic.
You’ve now learned the fundamentals and comprehended the steps of writing a blog post. The next step is to play around with your material. Your blog articles must stand out among the sea of information that is saturating the internet. Make an effort to stand out by approaching your topic from a novel, even controversial and perspective. Best of luck!
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]]>The post A Comprehensive Guide to Qualitative Forecasting first appeared on Publir.
]]>Qualitative forecasting can help executives make predictions about company finances, based on expert judgments. It is performed by analyzing past and future operations. This allows executives to predict how the company may perform in the future. The information they look at is collected from sources like staff polls or market research. Accounting for both sides of the forecasting process can help you set accurate targets and put plans in motion. Through qualitative forecasting, you can understand customer and market behavior in a deeper way, which is particularly helpful if your company is exploring new sales methods. As your company grows, qualitative forecasting will help you make sound decisions and reliably predict what your sales might be.
Need to decide how many new hires to make, or how much inventory to keep? Or how to adjust sales operations to be more efficient? Or maybe you’re curious about which feature of your company’s product or service works best in advertisements. Qualitative forecasting can help you find out that, and more. You can rely on sources apart from numerical data, and predict trends accurately. Here’s why you need it.
It’s the Other Side of the ‘Forecasting Coin’
In conjunction with quantitative forecasting, qualitative forecasting can give you a holistic perspective of both subjective and objective factors, before you make a business decision. This is very useful for bigger companies with reams of numerical data that can supplement it with market research and expertise. This helps the business put out comprehensive, accurate sales predictions.
There’s a saying that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Qualitative forecasting prevents just that by forcing business owners to take into account their firm’s past performance, and not dismissing any anomalies as a one-time thing. Qualitative forecasting allows you to use objective, quantifiable historical data to create sales projections, expense predictions, and revenue forecasts based on your firm’s history. This is a great way to prepare for worst-case scenarios if one ever occurs.
As mentioned earlier, bigger companies with huge bundles of data could benefit from qualitative forecasting; even smaller businesses that don’t have many numerical data could make use of qualitative forecasting to help them achieve their business goals and objectives. In the face of a lack of volume of data, other factors might help these firms make decisions.
Let’s face it. Hard numbers based on data will always make your pitches more attractive, whether you’re trying to find a loan, attract investors, secure a new line of credit, expand with a partner, or even sell your firm. Investors usually feel more secure when they see solid numbers that point toward a logical forecast. They may not be lured by vague ambiguous statements like “our past experience sells us.” They want you to back that statement up with data.
Computer programs have made it possible for us to whittle down to the most useful data to make accurate projections. For example, even a seemingly simple Excel sheet can help you find useful patterns like changes in sales over a year or more. You can segregate data by date, customer, vendor, or whatever parameters you want. You could predict production costs based on a pattern found over the last 5 years, or more. This can help you make sound business decisions.
There are several methods of doing this. They include –
In this method, a panel of experts is individually questioned, soliciting their opinion one at a time. This is done to avoid any bias so business predictions aren’t affected by personal opinions. Other employees then study these responses, replying back with their own analyses and queries. The teams then settle on a prediction that is practical for the firm and move forward from there. This method is great because it involves questioning multiple people about sales forecasts separately, cleverly avoiding group thinking or off-hand and collaborative opinions. However, this method leads to a lack of consensus because many experts can offer widely different perspectives, making it tough to put together a sensible qualitative forecast.
The survey is the old tried and tested, and the highly accessible option of performing effective qualitative forecasting. You get your data from your consumers, and that firsthand insight can help you penetrate new markets or study your target audience’s behavior. There are so many ways of creating and distributing surveys, and most of these collect data about ‘experience.’ Emails, cold calls, or inviting clients to the office for personal interviews can help firms collect information, which they can use to make useful predictions about a company’s future, based on data from their existing customers.
Using market research, you can evaluate the success of your company’s products or services by introducing them to consumers and recording the reactions. Companies can either use their own employees or outside agencies and conduct market research in focus groups or blind product testing. Companies can study consumer reactions to decide what products or services to push forward and which ones to revise to better meet consumers’ needs. Market research is a great insight into what potential new consumers want from your organization.
Sometimes, the best thing to do is to leave qualitative forecasting to the experts, especially if you’re a start-up or a small business, with limited experience and without the means to put together reliable qualitative forecasts. Many companies outsource their qualitative forecasting responsibilities to consultancies that have a better insight into the industry, or markets.
Like all forecasting techniques, qualitative forecasting too has a few drawbacks.
Some of them are –
In conclusion, qualitative forecasting is indispensable for an organization. If you want your firm to move toward its goals, you need a proper forecast to set those goals, and break them down into milestones, etc. While analyzing numbers can help your firm to a certain extent, qualitative forecasting provides that three-dimensional insight that brings to the table varied experiences, and a tinge of the real world into strategy and decision-making so companies can prepare for any scenario.
Qualitative forecasting is used to help companies make sales and marketing decisions. Health care employees use it to find trends in public health, colleges rely on it to predict student trends. It finds use in construction, agriculture, and virtually every other industry with managers relying on it to reach business goals. Read our blog on how you can leverage social media to amplify your business, use the internet to your advantage, to make more sales.
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]]>The post Understanding Brand Salience In Marketing first appeared on Publir.
]]>How visible a brand is to a potential customer as they are making a decision about purchasing is known as brand salience. Brand salience is a psychological phenomenon that aids in a customer’s purchasing choice based on a perception formed in the brain over time. The number and quality of brand engagements determine brand salience.
But brand salience isn’t the same as brand recognition. Salience is considerably more potent, and it’s something you’ll want to master if you want to improve your brand and sales.
When consumers are making purchasing decisions, brand salience is a marketing indicator that informs you how well they identify, notice, or think about your brand. Brands achieve high brand salience by utilizing distinct brand assets that attract attention and leave a good impression on their target audience. This implies your marketing materials should encourage a narrative and give your brand a sense of purpose. This might include video, and at least 60% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, as they capture the attention of the customers easily.
When you communicate your principles, you set your brand apart from the competition and raise brand awareness. Consider the emotional effect of your assets when creating campaigns that can enhance brand salience. Your campaigns should be relevant, real, and reflect your company’s beliefs while also differentiating your organization from your competition.
All of this will assist the customers to form a connection with your brand and remember it when it’s time to buy something.
Brand salience ensures that customers consider your brand as the first answer to their needs and wants when making a buying choice.
Your audience doesn’t have to be interested in buying from you or even know what you have to offer to be aware of your brand (although ideally, both would be a goal later on).
When building brand awareness, you’re attempting to ensure that potential customers are aware of you. Although simply being aware of a brand’s existence may not appear to be significant, brand awareness is the cornerstone of all future marketing initiatives. Your audience will be unable to engage and learn more about what you have to offer until you first raise brand recognition.
Brand salience, on the other hand, ensures that your audience is not only aware of you but also views you as their solution. And though they’re not ready to buy from you yet, you remain visible to those potential customers again and again until they are ready to buy.
Building brand awareness before revenue is, in our opinion, the ultimate aim of marketing. It delves into the consumer’s mindset. In a nutshell, brand salience is the degree to which your brand is thought about or considered by a consumer while they are in the market to buy anything.
The unsung hero of hesitant shoppers worldwide is brand salience. Salience is a term used in cognitive psychology to describe what is most conspicuous or noticed. The phrase describes how strong stimuli such as bright lights, loud noises, vivid colors, and fast motion grab our attention. For marketers, salience refers to how much a consumer thinks about or notices your brand when they’re in the market to buy something.
In short, brand awareness is developed via repetition, whereas brand salience is developed through content. It is not enough to develop a slogan and sing it over and again on the radio and television. Yes, it will raise brand recognition, but it is continued, consistent content that will cause the customer to think about your brand when getting ready to make a purchase.
To create content, make sure your brand uses a variety of cues, that your advertisements have a meaningful message, that you tell a story that your audience can connect to, and that your brand has a concrete picture that can be recognized on the shelf.
While branding may appear to be an obscure notion, it is one of the most crucial aspects of any marketing plan. Consistently displaying a brand across all channels may boost revenue by up to 23%. Furthermore, brands that create and publish content consistently are 3.5 times more likely to have good brand exposure than companies that are inconsistently presented. In fact, 82% of investors say that brand awareness is a key influence in their investing selections. Consistent branding, on the other hand, leads to greater brand recognition, which may help you attract investors and generate income for your company. Needless to say, branding is critical to the success of your company.
A brand’s degree of awareness may increase from time to time as a result of promotional efforts or product news, but salience is generated via a constant supply of value.
The idea of brand salience is fairly abstract and isn’t a mathematical metric that can be simply calculated. So brands try a different approach to measure it, using surveys and focus groups. It’s important to ask your consumers what they think of you, what they identify with your brand if they recollect your brand when making a buying choice, and what difference they find in your product or service.
You can design a poll for customers to see if they remember or notice your brand in comparison to your competitors. Then, to discover how high your brand is thought of, you can ask whether it is merely thought about or desired after.
To determine brand salience, provide survey respondents a randomized set of visuals, messages, and qualities and ask them to identify the brands they connect with each. It might be anything as simple as “when promoting a video, I think of this social media” or “I know I can increase revenue from here.”
Kevin Keller, a professor of marketing at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, created a brand salience model that is now widely used in digital marketing. Keller outlines a pyramid of building areas to pay attention to while aiming to improve your brand’s salience in the graphic below.
The model above focuses on developing an identity that people remember in order to increase deep, broad brand recognition. Salience is at the base of the pyramid, which you can boost by clearly identifying your brand, connecting with your audience on a regular basis, and leveraging creative assets to create a story.
Then you give your brand a purpose and authenticity to set it apart from the competitors. Next, you utilize regular communications to elicit positive, approachable responses from your consumers. Eventually, you develop a relationship and an emotional connection with your audience to create loyalty.
You can raise brand awareness, boost income, and even attract investors using this strategy. Despite the fact that this isn’t the most straightforward measure to track, evidence shows that focusing on branding can help your brand become a household name among your customers.
Marketers face an essential but frequently overlooked challenge: brand salience. Brand recognition is something that companies strive for all the time. Brand salience, on the other hand, should be given just as much, if not more, attention in the quest for distinction.
What it all boils down to is emotion-driven purchase behavior. In fact, it’s no secret that humans are driven by feelings. And customers rely on mental shortcuts, making purchasing decisions based on what they have in their heads. As a result, they will select a more recognizable brand that has invoked strong feelings for them.
In short, it behooves you to think about brand salience instead of solely relying on brand awareness.
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]]>The post How To Set and Achieve Marketing Objectives first appeared on Publir.
]]>Any productive, efficient inbound marketing strategy must start with strategic and clear marketing objectives. Your marketing objectives are specific, measurable goals for your company and your efforts. Beyond that, you may use your marketing objectives to provide your team members clear guidance.
You must think about your marketing plan or strategy from all angles. These four key marketing objectives may help you in strategically planning your goals:
Once you know what kind of goals and objectives you need, it’s time to set those goals so you have something to aim for. It is important to ensure that the objectives to be set must be SMART, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. With this SMART approach, your organization can better monitor marketing operations and assess how effective new goals are.
S – Specific
Each goal should call out a specific metric you wish to measure, such as website visits, new customers gained, or sign-ups for an event. With a clearly stated end goal, your whole team knows the objective and why it’s essential.
M – Measurable
Each goal must be measurable. Without a way to measure it, you won’t know if you’re successful or not. For example, raising brand awareness is something to strive for, but there’s no way to measure how much awareness you’ve gained. You can, however, measure subscribers to your list or listeners to your podcast. When choosing an objective, you need to be able to quantify it.
A – Achievable
Is it possible to achieve your goal with your current team and resources? Set the bar high, but also keep in mind that if it’s unattainable your team may feel discouraged if they feel like it’s a lost cause. It is important to base your goals on your own data rather than on industry standards.
R – Realistic
Your objective must link to the overarching purpose of your firm, its mission, and vision, and reflect current industry trends. They must be realistically based on where your organization is and where the market is right now. Every marketing objective should help achieve a company’s overall goals.
T – Time-bound
Adding time limits to your objectives puts pressure on your team to achieve them and provides a good stopping point to check-in, review, and make changes to the goals. And in the long term, this will help you achieve substantial and consistent development.
Marketing is an integral part of every business plan and requires an understanding of goods, services, and the entirety of the company. A well-thought-out marketing plan helps give direction to the organization as a whole so long as the objectives and goals are strategic and well-written.
Following are the six steps required when writing objectives for a marketing plan.
Before writing your marketing plan or objectives, you’ll want to have a good handle on this information as it will drive all your other decisions.
The marketing objectives of a growth-minded organization should be top-of-mind consistently over the life of the business. Visibly stated goals provide your team with clear guidance as to how and what to achieve. These also function as motivators in the production of an achievable task for employees.
When you grasp the significance of vision, the identification of broad objectives, and the use of the SMART target framework to achieve specific marketing targets, it’s time to determine the gaps in your marketing and start out your goals. Once you have achieved these objectives, it is vital that you write down these and commit yourself to a sound action plan.
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