Three Ways to Build a Better Email Strategy

Posted on May 10, 2013 by admin

10675851_mWhen it comes to allocating money for the marketing budget, it’s easy for a company’s email strategy to get overlooked or pushed to the backburner. This is because newer forms of engagement through Twitter and Facebook have consumed a lot of marketers’ thoughts. When properly executed, however, email is still a low-cost and effective way to connect with people.

To have a successful email strategy, there are a few things to keep in mind. A recent blog from Tech & Science offers some pointers to those wishing to build an effective campaign.

  • Be precise with your goal
    What is it you hope to achieve with your email strategy? Are you trying to increase awareness around a certain product or service or the brand in general, or are you hoping to grow sales? It’s important to set clear objectives as these will impact all the decisions that follow.

  • Avoid blanket emails
    If you send out 1,000 emails and it’s not to the right people, your message will fall on deaf ears. For an email strategy that works, first identify members of your target audience, those who will be the most receptive to your product or service offerings. Prior to the campaign, do some in-depth research to truly dissect and understand their needs and how your product or service satisfies them. This will help with positioning. Don’t forget to track the results of your campaign including click-through rates, leads, and sales.

  • Tailor your message
    The same email is not going catch everyone’s attention. You have a better chance of being relevant and received if you personalize your message a bit. This shouldn’t be too hard as you should have already uncovered some basic personal information in the needs discovery process. A generic message is more likely to be deleted or ignored.


Have some tips you’d like to share about how to construct an effective email strategy? Struggling to find your way? Whichever end of the spectrum you’re on, we’re all ears.

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Creating Content that Stands out From the Crowd

Posted on May 9, 2013 by admin

18027752_mWhen it comes to creating content, really the sky’s the limit. With dozens of fun ways to engage viewers with meaningful information, you’re only held back by your own creativity. Content is a great way to connect with followers and provide them with resources they will find both interesting and informative. It can boost search engine rankings, establish you as an expert in your field, and ensure a steady stream of traffic continues to flow your way. 

This blog from Social Media Today provides insight as to how you can continue your quest for creating content which captures your audience’s attention.

Google Trends. This tool provides great information regarding the search history of people within a specified location. So, if in the process of creating content you want to know what keywords will put you in front of your target audience – Google Trends is the place to look. And, it’s free!

Google Alerts. When you want to be alerted regarding trends surrounding a particular search topic, or if you’re curious to see what your competition is up to, this program is a gem. Once you subscribe, you will be notified when new blogs, articles, and other news topics containing a preferred search word or phrase post to Google.

Google Keyword Suggestions. After performing a search inquiry, at the bottom of each page is a list of terms related to the specific search topic. Google does all the work for you! These are the most popular search terms used by the public on the subject at hand and make creating content that much easier.

Video Content. Browsing through sites like You Tube or Vimeo, you’ll find everything from How To videos to expert tips and tricks, which can provide great inspiration for written content. Incorporating videos into your written content can also help drive traffic, especially if the video is highly sharable.

Pinterest. Because of its visual appeal and organizational capabilities, Pinterest has become a household name in the world of social media and continues to gain momentum. The site is a great place to scope for trends and get fresh ideas to breathe life into your content marketing.

Have some fresh ideas for creating content? Unique content creation is our specialty.

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LinkedIn is a Great Tool to Increase Customer Engagement

Posted on May 8, 2013 by admin

15662076_mDespite the hustle and bustle of everyday life, most people still want that personal touch when making their purchases. In fact, when it comes to followers on LinkedIn, nearly half of them said they prefer to do business with a company they interact with.

For your company, this means keeping an active presence on LinkedIn. This is an easy social media marketing tool to elevate your business. Let’s look at  five easy steps to boosting your customer engagement on LinkedIn . For starters, leverage your groups on LinkedIn to research appropriate content for those who are following your business.

Most companies spend countless hours studying their competitors. What are they doing? Who are they marketing to? Instead, spend more time studying your customers.

The great thing about LinkedIn is the format. Separating users into groups makes it easier to market your targeted audience. Once you find the groups most apt to be customers, engage them. Knowing everything there is to know about your competitor is only one half of the coin. The other side is much more profitable.

Once established, look to see which articles are getting the most attention from your customers. Look at the “likes” and “comments” on particular manager’s choice writings. Take the time to read these articles and get familiar with the content that is creating the most customer engagement.

This is a great way to discover new topics and ideas your company can cover. You can take it a step further and start logging topics, challenges and questions customers are talking about. Remember to post your status updates regularly. You want to establish your company as a regular source of customer engagement. Posting in the morning hours is shown to be the most engaging but don’t forget to add visibility to scheduled posts through the rest of your day, too.

When it comes to posts, don’t forget that content is more than just words. Customer engagement can mean contests, pictures and questions. If you think about it, what better way for you and your customers to interact than to get them active in your posts.

Advertising your LinkedIn posts on your business’ site is crucial as well as taking advantage of the social networking’s recommended ads. Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions can help you address customer engagement by bringing your LinkedIn followers back to your website. So start getting engaged.

 

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Monday Morning Coffee with Media Services: A Membership Tale

Posted on May 6, 2013 by admin

DSC_0011 (2)Have you used the membership concept lately in your outreach efforts or the story about your brand? This might be a good time to rethink it.

Membership programs, campaigns and benefit programs can be creatively suited to almost any business. We encourage you this morning to think beyond the punch card, the membership decal and the 10 percent discount off of services.

Let’s get creative. You could, for example, offer members a chance to purge all their old confidential papers into a shred party. Or ask them to bring those old tower computers, monitors, inkjet printers and even big ‘ol TVs for a recycling event – exclusive to members, of course.
media

In northwest Missouri, many businesses belong to the St. Joseph Metro Chamber of Commerce, with a continual list of perks. Recently the Chamber partnered with a new member, Media Services, to offer members a chance to unload their unwanted and unused electronics into an on-site event, complete with a truck, food and fun. Within an hour, the truck had hit its full limit. People lingered a while anyway, bringing papers for shredding and enjoying fellowship and fun despite rainy weather.

Obviously this type of membership perk was a big hit. Media Services also got a nice promo for their new presence in town, made especially nice and memorable because they had something happening in real-time and were there in person to chat about their services as a sponsor for the membership event. They do much more than shredding and recycling (like data backup and record storage), but they realized these services offered truck-side would serve as a great gateway to the others.

Now, maybe your organization doesn’t have a fun truck or vehicle that is capable of hauling off hundreds of pounds of electronic waste. Consider borrowing/renting an ice cream truck in the name of your business because you’re just, well … cool. Consider partnering with a business that meets a real need – evidenced here in the very quick fill-up point of electronics recycling – and tell guests they have to become a Facebook fan to participate. Let them sign up on-site.  Play it up further with real-time pics and updates on Twitter and Facebook as the event is taking place. These are all key pieces of your overall content marketing strategy.

The moral of this Monday membership tale:  Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions reminds you to give customers a way to become part of your product or service “family” right where they are, especially by utilizing a clever partnering event that is both useful and fun.

 

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What’s your SEO Marketing Strategy?

Posted on May 3, 2013 by admin

12058056_mEveryone wants it, but not everyone can have it – a top spot in the search engine rankings. Many factors affect SEO, and as analytics and rules for positioning are regularly updated, it’s not uncommon to see fluctuations from day-to-day. Because of this, marketers may feel that they are grasping at straws when it comes to determining a successful marketing strategy for SEO. 

A blog featured at SocialMedia Today reminds us to celebrate the small victories. It’s often the small SEO wins that deliver the biggest impact and provide the motivation to carry forward and know that your marketing strategy is having an impact. A few SEO points to keep in mind include:

Google Analytics don’t always provide the full picture. Public search habits can shift. Don’t throw your marketing strategy out the door solely based on poor organic traffic. Look at numbers for others in your industry; it may be that figures are down across the board.

Quality trumps quantity when it comes to followers. In other words, a loss of social media fans is not always a bad thing. It’s more about attracting the right kind of  people and making them loyal followers than it is having 500 fans who aren’t really interested or who are there for spam reasons.

Stick to enduring content. Making evergreen content, or content that is always relevant, a key part of your marketing strategy is important because it means your viewers will always have something with which they can relate and connect. Evergreen content usually generates fresh monthly traffic, but that may not be evident if you’re only concentrating on the large figures affecting analytics.

Don’t underestimate the impact of guest articles for authoritative sites. While everyone wants backlinks that originate from many different and unique sources, being featured on an authoritative blog can also generate traffic. Even if you already have a backlink derived from that site, it can still create visibility and enhance SEO.

Your SEO will only be as good as the marketing strategy behind it. Need help with yours? Give us a call.

 

 

 

 

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Even Among Expert Marketers, Content Marketing Strategy is Overlooked

Posted on May 2, 2013 by admin

12175514_mEvery good business has to have a game plan. When it comes to content marketing, having a strategy can really bring in new business – starting with blogging.

Most companies have seen the success others have had with blogs, so they add it into their list of must haves. The problem is just that, they throw something together and don’t get creative with it nor do they nurture it the way it should be.

In order to leave a lasting impression, businesses need to write strong blogs, with solid content and regular postings. They should be engaging and entertaining. It’s important to interact with your customers and if a blog is the only way to do this, you need to make it count.

A successful content marketing strategy includes a multitude of mediums when blogging. For example, your video postings should be executed well. They need to be more than just an employee speaking to customers in some corner office with a gray wall behind them. Take the extra steps with good lighting, a well-written script, and some editing.

Consider adding galleries that offer case studies and photographs that give customers a glimpse into your business and the story behind it. If possible, add a fresh perspective on editorial pieces that are unique and not coming from the same place others have touched on.

Blogging can get a bit overwhelming. That’s why it is so important to have a content marketing strategy. This article talks about some things you need to consider when planning your strategy:

  • How many blogs are you willing to post in a month? If it’s more than you can do alone, decide which staff could contribute. Establishing this first will set the tone.
  • Don’t be afraid to look at what others in your industry are blogging about. Take the topic and put your own spin on it.
  • Schedule time for your blogs. If you don’t set up an allotted time to blog, you won’t do it. There needs to be a commit to blogging like any other aspect of your business.
  • Connect your blogs to your social media feeds and watch the readership take off. 

Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions can help with your content marketing strategy.  Give us a call and we can help you get started.

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The Lure of Creative Content Creation: Fishing for Marketing Success

Posted on May 1, 2013 by admin

11375645_mImagine that the world out there is one giant lake, full of potential clients.  Your business wants to catch those clients.  What’s the best way to reel them in?

If you talk to other businesses fishing on the same lake, they may lean in and whisper confidentially that marketing via social media is the only bait you need to land clients.  While they may have success as they cast out, they are missing out on catching the big one because they aren’t using one vital lure: content creation.

By frequently creating original, relevant content through business blogging, it not only keeps your website fresh, but it also enables your business to attract more traffic and gain more leads.  In a recent article, the importance of content creation is highlighted with the facts showing that businesses that publish 20 fresh blog posts each month draw five times more website traffic than businesses that crank out fewer than four posts per month.  These 20+ posts also produce four times the leads that non-blogging businesses are attracting.

If you’re not hooked yet on the importance of content creation, consider this fact from HubSpot: businesses with active blogs see 55 percent more website visitors than businesses without blogs.  These are bites of interest that no business wants to miss.  But what if you don’t have the time to create your own content, and essentially, do your own fishing?

To maintain interest in your blog through high-value content creation, consider hiring a marketing agency that employs talented writers who know all of the best fishing spots for your content.  This would include sharing it with social networks, current social bookmarking sites and applicable syndications.

By investing in content creation, your business will effectively put its most attractive lure in its marketing tackle box.  Reeling in prospective clients will never be easier.  And that’s a fisherman’s secret worth keeping.

 

 

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Developing a Content Marketing Plan for Success

Posted on April 30, 2013 by admin

14562569_mA successful content marketing plan includes employees, partners, and customer service to really establish the brand across multiple channels. There are three key objectives when tackling content marketing in 2013.

The first thing is that you need look past content marketing as a buzzword. Understand that it is more than a simple info graphic embedded on your blogs filling your site with back links and more than a real-time photo tweeted during the opening day of the Royals game.

A productive content marketing plan needs to be emotional and tell a story that will guide your customers to alter their behavior, attitudes and perceptions of your brand.

Your content is what connects you with your customers. It’s beyond search, blogs, and even your website. Your plan should include a brand narrative. It is crucial that you stick to this for your content marketing plan, whether that’s online or off. Content, blogs, status updates, videos, tweets, press releases, and photos are all important but the story you choose to tell via customers, partners, and employees is equally as important. Even paid media incentives are a factor in your narrative.

A brand narrative is different than your content narrative. The message you deliver in your brand doesn’t stick with people. In fact, they often reject it. This is the perfect opportunity to give your content narrative that personal touch that can relate to your consumers.

Your content narrative should include:

  • Issues that are important to the brand.
  • Focus on the brand’s pillars and positioning. This is the core of the brand narrative.
  • What is the media’s perception of your brand? Know what they are saying about the brand.
  • Besides your brand, what are your fans interested in? Find out those other interests.
  • Look at what the communities’ thoughts are of your brand?
  • Learn from the past. Content marketing plans won’t work if you don’t look at what basic performance data hasn’t worked before.
  • Compare your brand with others by looking at search behaviors. What are some similar products and services out there?
  • Customers can have a lot of gripes with customer support. Identifying support issues that concern your customers will be an opportunity to profit.

Once you’ve established your content marketing plan, start looking at how you can up level yourself as a media company. Every business should view itself this way. Consider these simple things when transitioning into the media company you are capable of being:

  • Establish an editorial team responsible for getting the message out and assign roles for each contributor.
  • Partner with a paid media team using a variety of models to manage your content.
  • Sway technology in your favor and invest well.
  • By adapting all of these key elements into your content marketing plan, you are on your way to success, whether that’s re-positioning yourself, selling more products and services, or changing customers’ behavior. 

You should have your content strategy in place before marketing it. If you’d like help developing it, contact Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions. We’d love to help get you started.

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Monday Morning Coffee with Frostbite Heating and Cooling

Posted on April 29, 2013 by admin

frostbite frostibte2In an industry where people generally start looking to make a call when things have gone wrong, Frostbite Heating and Cooling is making its mark.

The business offers a few elements others don’t, like special military discounts, and special discounts to Heartland Health employees. It also offers a focus on prevention – which not only saves homeowners on energy bills, it also saves them several headaches later when their system goes down because of unforeseen problems.

Frostbite also promotes something others may assume customers know:  the value they place on integrity and honesty in their work. Customer testimonials appear in several places on the website, and reflect this commitment as advocates. This approach on value is derived from the owner’s observations that many providers in the business may provide speedy, impersonal service instead of aiming to come alongside the homeowner as a year-round partner in quality, efficient service. Rather than just offering a service, Frostbite is offering a genuine customer experience.

In fact, potential customers can view specific steps of the process when a service call is needed, including discussing all options that are available and clear information about the benefits of each. Estimates are reviewed with the customer in detail, and next steps are followed when the customer gives the OK.

The name and logo itself is also a key element of the total Frostbite Heating and Cooling brand. The whimsical element and easy name recognition makes the company stand out even further in a niche of other competitors. New initiatives like an expanded social media presence and community sponsorships are also helping build brand strength.

SJC recognizes Frostbite Heating and Cooling as a smaller company with a big (and evident) commitment to true service and integrity. Regardless of the size of your customer base, these are principles worth careful pondering as you consider your outreach strategies and content marketing style.

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