Motorcoach Marketing Fall 2016

MOTORCOACH

ISSUE 01/ DEC 2016

MARKETING Marketing and Sales Information Designed for the Motorcoach Industry

How to Use Google Alerts to

Monitor Your Brand and Track Interests

How Web Design Evolved In 2016: Simplify Or Perish 8 Effective Email Marketing Strategies, Backed by Science Do small businesses need marketing automation to keep up with the competition?

Why Businesses Must Add LinkedIn to Their Marketing Strategy

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A 2017 MCI J4500 WILL BE THE STAR OF THE UMA EXPO GOMOTORCOACH AUCTION AT UMA EXPO/ DO SMALL BUSINESSES NEED MARKETING AUTOMATION TO KEEP UP WITH THE COMPETITION?/

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HOW TO USE GOOGLE ALERTS TO MONITOR YOUR BRAND AND TRACK INTERESTS/

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8 EFFECTIVE EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGIES, BACKED BY SCIENCE/

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HOWTO COMBINE PRINT AND DIGITAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS/

HOW TO CRUSH IT ON THE TOP 4 SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS/

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REPLAY OUR LATEST CONFERENCE PRESENTATION/

10 VITAL MARKETING TASKS TO INCREASE SALES/

WHY BUSINESSES MUST ADD LINKEDIN TO THEIR MARKETING STRATEGY/

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9 TIPS FOR DEVELOPING YOUR 2017 SALES AND MARKETING STRATEGY/

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LANDING PAGES ARE THE MISSING LINK IN YOUR ONLINE MARKETING STRATEGY/

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HOW WEB DESIGN EVOLVED IN 2016: SIMPLIFY OR PERISH/

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WHY IS CONTENT MARKETING TODAY’S MARKETING?/

PRODUCTION Production deliverabilities layout&design: Phone: 360.468.3699

Email: info@deliverabilites.com www.deliverabilities.com

ADVERTISING Motorcoach Marketing Council opportunities: Phone: 360.840.0779

Email: chris@gomotorcoach. org motorcoachmarketing.org

GoMotorcoach

win big put your brand on the block 2017 GOMOTORCOACH AUCTION AT UMA EXPO

DONATE NOW

support the council. grow your business.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUPPORT THE MISSION OF THE MOTORCOACH MARKETING COUNCIL? DO YOU WANT TO HAVE YOUR PRODUCT OR SERVICE INCLUDED IN THIS YEAR’S AUCTION? DO YOU WANT HUNDREDS OF OPERATORS TO SEE YOUR BRAND AND BID ON YOUR PRODUCT? DO YOU BELIEVE THAT, AS AN INDUSTRY, WE NEED TO SELL MORE CHARTERS, TO MORE PEOPLE, FOR MORE MONEY?

CLICK HERE TO DONATE NOW

YOU’RE HEADED FOR SUCCESS. WE’RE FAMILIAR WITH THE ROUTE.

Prevost coaches do more than transport your passengers in style and safety. They move your business forward by giving you the best in dependability, fuel efficiency and support. Our high deck H-Series Coach offers state-of-the-art amenities that elevate every passenger’s experience. Our longer-wheelbase X3-45 Coach combines the smoothest possible ride with a wider entry and 80" high interior passenger space. All Prevost coaches deliver exceptional performance with lower operating costs. Which means they’re as perfect for your business as they are for your passengers.

Please contact your Prevost Regional Sales Manager for more information.

USA 1-877-773-8678

CANADA 418-883-3391

www.prevostcar.com

T h e u l t i m a t e c l a s s.

The Motorcoach Marketing Council/ From the president.

This magazine represents a major leap forward for the Motorcoach Marketing Council. For years, we have looked for meaningful ways to deliver important, timely, and relevant information to the operators we serve. This magazine is designed to do just that.

reservation that they work. Not sometimes, not maybe; they work every time we do them.

The future of the motorcoach industry is in our hands every day we go to work. Not only is the safety of our passengers and the depth of our driver pools important, but it’s also crucial to create a culture in this industry which focuses on the marketing and sales of our service.

As an operator myself, I am constantly amazed at the rate things in the world of sales and marketing change. It seems that by the time I get around to making good on my to do list, half of the things I am proud to be a part of the Motorcoach Marketthat I need to do have changed because the tech- ing Council, and thrilled that we are able to bring nology or equipment has changed as well. you this important publication.

This publication is designed to get to the heart of the matter and deliver what we, as operators, want and need. But we are also excited because it hasn’t only been designed to help us; it has also been designed to give members of our staff what they need to be more effective in their role as well.

-Jeff Rogers

All of us have some level of the same constraints on our time. Running a motorcoach business presents us with operational challenges that demand our attention. This often means that we simply don’t have the time or inclination to comb the internet for things that we need to do when it comes to marketing.

We hope that we will be able to help distill the ocean of content into a single publication that will keep your focus on what may be the most important of the things we don’t seem to get to...sales and marketing.

The Motorcoach Marketing Council has worked very hard over the last few years to reinvent the way that we, as an industry, sell our products and services to our consumers. From the development of new marketing tools to our traveling education series, we are working to help operators big and small sell more charters, to more people, for more money.

I know that, in my business, we have implemented these tools and techniques, and I can say without

Jeff Rogers

MMC President.

Owner First Class Tours Houston, TX

PRESS RELEASE

A 2017 MCI J4500 will be the star of the UMA EXPO GoMotorcoach Auction at UMA EXPO/ The best selling MCI J4500 offeres premium curb appeal, exellent fuel economy and low total cost of operation.

Opportunity knocks!

The Motorcoach Marketing Council will auction a fully featured 2017 MCI J4500 coach at United Motorcoach Association’s UMA Motorcoach Expo, Feb. 26 – March 2 in St. Louis.

will participate.

And it will be quite a debut.

The brand new MCI J4500 coach, to be auctioned live on Monday, February 27, 1:00 p.m. at the Motorcoach Council booth No. 101, This will be the third year the will be the first 45-foot coach ever Motorcoach Marketing Council offered on behalf of GoMotorcoach, has partnered with an industry an operator-supported marketing equipment supplier to raise coalition working to advance motor campaign funds through an coach travel. auction -- but the first time MCI “We are thrilled that MCI has

partnered with us on this year’s auction,” said Christian Riddell, Executive Director of the Motorcoach Marketing Council.

“MCI has always been a leader in the coach manufacturing business, and we couldn’t be more excited to offer UMA members the chance to bid on a J4500, MCI’s flagship, in our upcoming auction.”

“MCI has been at the table since the inception of the Motorcoach Marketing Council, and has supported it throughout its history,” said Brent Maitland, MCI Vice President of Marketing and Product Planning, and member of the Council’s Steering Committee.

“The Council has tools and services many operators in the industry are using to win new business. We are proud to once again offer our support by making an MCI J4500 available for this important fundraising event. The MCI J4500 is the industry leader and a vehicle any winner would be proud to have in their fleet.”

The best-selling MCI J4500 offers premium curb appeal, excellent fuel economy and lowtotal cost of operation. In addition to its BMW DesignworksUSA-designed good looks, the J4500 turning radius stands at 41 feet, 9 inches with the standard passive rear tag — tight enough to maneuver more easily

The Motorcoach Marketing Council relies on this major donation for its annual operating budget.

on congested city streets and parking lots.

From the model’s best-in-class, 16,000-pound payload capacity to the new 150-amp Denso alternators, REI entertainment systems and easier access to electrical components, the J4500 proves its leadership. And with MCI’s excellent residual value, the J4500 coach will reward the GoMotorcoach auction winner with exceptional performance for years to come.

The Motorcoach Marketing Council relies on this major donation for its annual operating budget. “We work very hard to make our budget go as far as we possibly can. Our mission to help coach operators sell more charters, to more people, for more money, is a big task. When the industry partners with us on our auction, it goes a long way in helping us accomplish such a big undertaking,” said Riddell.

UMA represents over 1,000 motorcoach owners and industry suppliers throughout North America with a mission to serve and protect the interests and needs of the small motorcoach owner/operator and the industry as a whole.

STRATEGY

We live in an age of technology that has enabled more entrepreneurship, better business management, and more consumer options than ever before....

Do small businesses need marketing automation to keep up with the competition?/ BY: Larry Alton

We live in an age of technology that has enabled more entrepreneurship, better business management, and more consumer options than ever before. However, not all businesses have entered the technological arena, refraining from adopting new software for financial, cultural, or even personal reasons; in fact, according to Wasp Barcode, 48 percent of small businesses still aren’t tracking inventory using modern technology.

they’d otherwise have against larger companies:

With large businesses able to freely invest in custom technology and high-profile marketing campaigns, do small businesses “need” to turn to automation in order to stand a chance in competition?

Reduced human resource demands.

Accomplishing more tasks means having more people on hand to perform those tasks — unless a software program is handling the tasks for you. If you can replace even one part-time role with automation software, you can save your business tens of thousands of dollars a year (in exchange for what is probably a few hundred to a few thousand dollars in subscription fees).

What Is marketing automation?

First, let’s work on defining marketing automation. Hubspot does a great job with this, defining marketing automation as any technological system that helps marketers execute “repetitive tasks such as emails, social media, and other website actions.” In practice, this can refer to simple systems, like software that allows you to schedule social media posts ahead of time, or more complex systems, like those that automatically generate content on the topic of your choice.

It will be tough to speak in absolutes throughout this article because of the broad nature of this definition, but we’ll do our best.

How automation addresses small business disadvantages In theory, marketing automation can help businesses overcome a serious number of disadvantages

Leveling the playing field. Automation technology is available at the same rate to everyone (for the most part).

For the same monthly rate, small businesses can gain access to the same sophisticated features that large corporations have. This levels the playing field, enabling small businesses to pursue the same types of strategies for the same cost.

Education and ideation. Accessing automated systems generally puts you face-to-face with the experts who created them. Merely seeing the functionality and the way the system works can help educate you about the best way to execute a strategy. It can also help you brainstorm new ways to promote your company. Either way, you’ll have access to a new realm of expertise without having to pay for a qualified expert in the industry.

Scalability. One of the biggest challenges for small businesses is scaling; doing so generally requires an investment of more money (such as placing ads on more billboards) and prohibits small business owners from moving forward. But since most automation platforms exist exclusively

first, let’s work on defining marketing automation. hubspot does a great job with this.

STRATEGY

in the digital realm, you can execute more tasks for the same initial investment, making it easier for small businesses to compete with rapidly scaling corporations.

The dangers of automation However, there are some drawbacks to using marketing automation software:

Overall, automation has its pros and cons, but it’s a beneficial acquisition for most marketingrelated tasks.

Overuse.

When you start automating your messaging, you run the risk of spamming your target audience. For example, you might be tempted to set up multiple email blasts a day when it only takes you a few seconds to do so; this approach could alienate your audience rather than attracting them.

Creative stifling. Relying on automated software can also stifle your creativity, which is important when it comes to planning and brainstorming new marketing campaigns. If you’re going to use software, use it as a way to complement and enhance your strategies, not to produce them exclusively.

The appearance of automation.

Automating messaging like social media posts or emails can eventually give users the impression that these messages are automated, making your brand seem robotic and distant. Remember to personalize and humanize your brand as much as possible to keep your customers engaged.

The bottom line Overall, automation has its pros and cons, but it’s a beneficial acquisition for most marketing-related tasks.

Small businesses can use marketing automation to compensate for some of their competitive weaknesses and build campaigns that rival the power of those that bigger corporations wield.

You’ll never be able to close that gap completely, but it can get you a step closer. However, there are other ways small businesses can compete with major players, such as with niche targeting and locally-focused optimization. Ultimately, if used properly, marketing automation is beneficial, but unnecessary for small businesses in online marketing. 

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

SOCIAL

How to Crush It on theTop 4 Social Media Platforms/ BY: Jeff Charles

If you’re using social media just to deliver annoying sales pitches your doing it wrong.

You’ve heard it a million times.

Entrepreneurs and solopreneurs need to use social media to grow their audience and interact with prospects and clients.

It’s true. Social media is one of the most effective ways to get in front of the people you want to serve.

But so many entrepreneurs are doing it wrong.If you’re not succeeding at social media, chances are…

1:You’re not using the right social media platforms.

2:You’re not effectively using each social media platforms.

3:You’re using social media just to deliver annoying sales pitches.

Of course, there could be other

reasons, but these are some of the most common. That’s why you have to make sure you’re making the best use of each social media platform you work with.

It’s also great if you plan to market to other entrepreneurs.

Here’s some tips on using Twitter to grow your business:

This post is going to discuss some of the best ways to use the most popular social media platforms. When you put these tips into action, you will notice how much easier it will be to grow your audience.

Find the Right Frequency

How Businesses Use Social Media to Crush It

Twitter

With over 313 million active monthly users, Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms for business. As a matter of fact, 29 percent of Twitter users have tweeted about a brand. It’s a great way to connect with customers and promote your brand.

It’s a great social media platform to use if your target audience is younger people.

how a business can use social media to crush it

There’s no magic number for the amount of tweets you should post in a day. But unlike other social media platforms, Twitter’s timeline flows pretty quickly.

The average life of a tweet is 2 hours. If you only post once or twice per day, then you’re not going to get the amount of exposure you want.

The average Twitter user tweets 22 times per day. I’ve seen many people recommend 4-5 tweets per day. If this works for you, then have at it!

For my business, I’ve tried a slightly different strategy. Since I saw how quickly a tweet disappears into oblivion, I decided to up my number of tweets. I probably tweet between 15-20 times per day.

Yes, I know. Sounds kinda crazy, right?

But it helped! When I started doing it that way, I started gaining more and more followers. I also noticed that I was getting more engagement on my content.

Also, don’t be afraid to tweet the same tweet more than once.

Again, since each tweet has a shorter life, you can afford to repeat sometimes.

The key here is to figure out the amount of tweets that work best for your business. You want to find your sweet spot and then stay with it.

Use Twitter as a Listening Tool You shouldn’t spend all your time sending out tweets. It’s a good idea to look at what others are tweeting as well. If you see a certain topic trending, you might want to contribute to the conversation.

if you are going to gain more of an audience, you need to know what type of content resonates most with your readers.

Following hashtags is a great way to do this. Find out what the most relevant hashtags are for your industry and join in. Marketing expert Neil Patel recommends using hashtags to gain more exposure for your brand.

Here’s what he has to say: “About a million to two million tweets include hash tags… meaning your tweets are more likely to be seen if you include a hashtag, thus generating more retweets.”

Hashtags are a great way to stay ahead of the trends in your

industry.

Give Influencers Some Love Want to get retweeted? Of course you do. You want more exposure.

One of the most effective ways to get retweeted is to draw some attention to the influencers who create the content you’re sharing.

When you read a piece of content that you want to share, don’t just tweet it out. Include the influencer’s Twitter handle in the tweet. In many cases, the influencer will retweet the post to their followers.

Also, if you’re creating content — and you should be — try mentioning some insights from influencers you follow. After you publish the piece of content, send a quick tweet to the influencer letting them know that you mentioned them in your article.

Want an example? Remember when I quoted Neil Patel when I mentioned hashtags? Well, after this article posts, I’m going to let him know that I gave him some love on my post.

Not all influencers will retweet your post, but even if you’re able to get some of them to share it, it will still benefit your brand.

Facebook

As you already know, Facebook is the most popular social media platform. With over 1.71 billion monthly active users, it is one of the best places to gain exposure for your brand. 41% of businesses use

Facebook for marketing purposes.

audience.

If you understand how to leverage Facebook for your business, you can build a stronger audience and earn more clients.

“We produce content that helps our readers learn more about training and physical fitness. We promote this content on Facebook and it’s enabled us to engage more with our audience. Also, our current customers use Facebook to talk about the benefit we have provided them with.”

Here’s some tips on using Facebook to grow your audience: Use Facebook Ads If it’s in your budget, taking advantage of Facebook’s paid advertising can help you get in front of more people. If you adopt a viable Facebook ad strategy, it can help you drive more traffic to your website, get more subscribers and earn more customers.

John G. Mullen, founder and head personal trainer at TrainingCor has found Facebook to be a great resource for connecting with his

Facebook Ads allows you to make sure you’re targeting the right people with your content. This is important because you don’t want to be reaching out to people who aren’t interested in what you’re offering.

with your readers. You can do this by paying attention to Facebook Insight. It’s a tool that allows you to see how people are interacting with your content.

Using Facebook Insight, you can see which posts are performance the best and which are not. This gives you a better idea of the type of content you should be creating and sharing. It’s a valuable tool that will help you create content that is the most relevant to your readers.

Google Plus

Okay, I get it. You’ve probably heard it said that Google Plus is basically dead. Many people scoff at Google’s social media platform.

Monitor Your Engagement

It’s understandable.

If you’re going to gain more of an audience, you need to know what type of content resonates most

They don’t have as many active users as the other social media platforms. But this doesn’t mean

Google Hangouts. It’s a great way to record video content for your audience. that Google Plus is a waste of time.

As a matter of fact, Business Insider says that Google Plus is starting to increase the number of its active users. Google Plus can still be a valuable social media platform if you know how to use it.

In an article entitled “Why You Should Stop Asking Is Google Plus Dead,” Sprout Social’s Jennifer Beese says this: “Instead of dismissing the platform and asking is Google Plus dead, let’s not forget that you always want to think in terms of quality and not quantity when it comes to successful social media marketing.

So whether there are 22 million or 343 million people posting consistently on Google+, there are still millions of opportunities to engage.”

It’s true. Google Plus is great for connecting with others and forming relationships. It’s helped me form some great relationships with people I wouldn’t have connected with otherwise.

with shared interests.

You can join as many communities as you like, although some might need to approve your membership in their community. What I really like about communities is that people are very interactive.

It’s easy to connect with the types of people you want to connect with. I’ve learned quite a bit from the connections I’ve made on Google Plus’ communities. It’s led to some wonderful opportunities for me. I’d highly recommend that you try it out.

Use Hangouts for More Than Just Chatting!

If you’re like most people, you only use Google Hangouts for chatting with friends, right? But that’s not all this tool can do. Google Hangouts.

It’s a great way to record video content for your audience.

Engage Your Community

Maybe you want to record a short instructional video on how to achieve an objective. Or maybe you just want to say “hi” to your audience. Whatever your purpose is, Hangouts will allow you to record your video and upload it to YouTube. It’s quick and easy!

This is probably my favorite thing about Google Plus. There are various communities that you can join. There are several different types of communities for people

If you leverage Google Plus’ features the right way, you will be able to develop relationships that can help you move your business forward.

Here’s some tips on using Google Plus:

Instagram

Instagram is a great social media platform for those who create a large amount of visual content. It currently has about 77 million active users and is expected to surpass 100 million by 2019. If your business targets teens and younger millennials, you should be using Instagram.

Like Google Plus, Instagram is a great way to form relationships with others.

It’s also a great way to get more exposure for your brand.

Here’s some tips on using Instagram for your business: Build a Tribe The key to succeeding on Instagram is to build a tribe. You want to earn followers and develop relationships with them. This will take some time, but when you have a relationship with your audience, you will have evangelists who are willing to share your content with their connections.

Over time, more people will see and share your content. When you invest time in building a thriving community around your brand, it will be much easier to turn your prospects into paying customers.

Connect With Influencers Just like Twitter, Instagram is a great way to connect with those who already have a strong following. It’s a good idea to

start interacting with influencers by commenting on their posts, sharing their posts, and mentioning them in the content you create.

When influencers see that you’re mentioning them often, they will be more likely to interact with you.

You also want to connect with these influencers on Twitter because people who use Instagram typically use Twitter as well.

Conclusion

As you already know, social media is essential to the success of your brand.

When you use social media the right way, it makes it easier to grow your audience and generate more leads.

If you’re using the social media platforms discussed in this article — and you should be — start implementing these tips. It will help you engage with your audience and earn more business.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

MARKETING

GoMotorcoach

Have you seen the new site/ The Motorcoach Marketing Council Recently r e-released their website making it much easier to use and access their tools and trainings. If you have not been in a while or you would like to access their tools including the free trainings, social library, or webinars or if you would like to sign up for their monthly subscription to the online document builder click below and see just how easy this new site is to use.

SEE THE NEW SITE CLICK HERE

In CaseYou Missed It/ Important Articles Written Exclusively for the Motorcoach Industry.

Overcoming Phone Phobia

Uber Proofing

I am often asked what is the fastest way to grow my motorcoach business? While this question warms me to my core because it represents a genuine interest in...

Uber Proof Your Business. I get asked a lot of questions about Uber. Things like “What are we going to do about uber?” or “Is Uber going to be the end of the...

READ IT NOW

READ IT NOW

Using Gratitude to Grow

The role of a marketing council

Even though it may seem crazy, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. If tradition holds true, we will gather together to eat, drink, be merry, and take some...

It has been said that to educate is easy, but to actually implement change is quite a bit more difficult. For the past 3 years I have been attending local, regional, and...

READ IT NOW

READ IT NOW

Sales Process

Operationally Unimportant

There are very few ways to make a group of salespeople more uncomfortable than to start a sales meeting with these words: “Today we are going to discuss your sales...

Imagine for a moment that you don’t work in the transportation business. Instead, your life has lead you to be a salesman for General Motors. You’ve had a very...

READ IT NOW

READ IT NOW

MARKETING

Replay our latest Here is a big promise!

Do these 5 thinks and we guarantee you will sell more charters to more people, for more money.

Now before you click off thinking it is probably something you don’t have time for or you can’t afford let me tell you this... most of it is free and none of them will take you weeks or months to accomplish.

Exponential growth with little or no investment... this is a must watch!

t conference presentation/ Originally presented at the Northwest Motorcoach Association meeting October 2016

STRATEGY

Without good Marketing, is there enough support for Sales to win with your prospects?

In some rare cases, maybe Sales can win on its own. But the right marketing activities are key to give Sales optimal success for your organization.

As a sales management consultant, I’ve seen the gamut of marketing: from no marketing to some marketing to great marketing. There are

so many possible activities when it comes to marketing, many leaders may simply be overwhelmed about what to do.

10 Vital Marketing Tasks to Improve Sales Here is a brief outline of the 10 most critical marketing activities to increase sales — from a Sales perspective: 1. Generate awareness It takes a tremendous amount of activity to generate

10 Vital Marketing Tasks to Increase Sales/

BY Elisa Ciarametaro

WITHOUT GOOD MARKETING, IS THERE ENOUGH SUPPORT FOR SALES TO WIN WITH YOUR PROSPECTS? awareness of your company. Your prospects and customers need to know you, and like what you can do for them. Got a marketing strategy to do this?

2. Develop necessary marketing material needed for sales Marketing teams are usually best positioned to work with the customer’s point of view and incorporate it into the company’s message.

Marketing, not Sales should develop materials

such as a media kit, white papers, benefit statements and FAQ documents.

3. Develop your target market Marketing and Sales need to develop the target market as a team. Yet this is often not the case. Coordinating on the size and scope of this market is vital, so that hiring activities are scaled appropriately.

4. Develop inbound leads First, both inbound and outbound leads are needed for successful lead generation. However, I believe inbound lead generation falls under Marketing, while outbound can fall under Sales or Marketing.

8. Identify and organize conferences, events, and user conferences These can be excellent opportunities to meet with prospects, customers, partners, industry analysts, and media, as well as learn about your competitors.

5. Define your ideal customer profile, lead definitions, and prospect buyer personas Agreement on these definitions can bridge the gap between Sales and Marketing by helping both groups become aware of who the company’s best prospects are.

9. Provide valid lists It is very common for SDRs to put together their own call lists. However, too often this is a time consuming, unproductive task. If your goal is to introduce a new service, for example, Marketing be the best group to generate your list.

6. Use social media Generating awareness through social media is no longer done casually, as you would on your personal time. You have to develop a strategy with clearly defined goals and measurable results.

10. Monitor return on investment (ROI) Marketing metrics are key to tracking the progress of your marketing programs and determining what is and isn’t working.

7. Update the website So, you have a website. But the question is‌ does it attract and convert viewers into buyers? Is it upto-date? What story does it tell your prospects or buyers?

What About the Details?

This is a very brief overview of 10 essential Marketing activities to enable Sales to close more often with your customers.

You may be asking: What does it mean to perform each activity well enough?

Why should Marketing generate your white papers, or product and service overviews, and not Sales?

Why should Sales and Marketing define the target market TOGETHER? Get the details in the new best practice ebook: The Marketing Guide to Increasing Sales, for a Sales perspective on Marketing’s most critical tasks.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

WEB

How to Use Google Alerts to Track Interests/

By Colin Newcomer

o Monitor Your Brand and You may have noticed that there’s a lot of content bouncing around online.

There’s all the news from traditional media companies. And then in case that’s not enough, there are millions of new blog posts getting published every single day.

So if you’re a freelancer, solopreneur, or small team trying to keep tabs on your niche, it can be a real struggle to stay up-to-date in this noisy digital world.

Doing it manually may work for a short time, but it’s not a long-term solution by any means.

Don’t worry, though. You can actually automate this entire listening process by using a handy tool called Google Alerts. And in this post, I’ll show you everything you need to get your alerts set up and working.

Why It’s Important to Set Up Google Alerts Google Alerts can help you monitor all types of content relevant to your niche.

Here are the main ways you’ll benefit from setting up alerts: Brand monitoring – alerts will let you stay up-to-date with what your customers or clients are saying about you. Monitoring your reputation is essential – you’ll instantly know both the good and bad things that are being said, so you can incorporate positive

To get started, head on over to Google Alerts. The interface is fairly simple to work with, but I’ll take you through each step.

First, you need to enter the term you want to monitor. feedback or put out fires before they grow.

Competitor monitoring – it’s just as important to stay knowledgeable about your competitors as it is for your own brand. You can quickly learn if they release a new feature or get any positive/negative press.

Industry monitoring – number three in the trifecta! Alerts can also help you stay up-to-date on general industry trends. Get alerted to events, attitude shifts, or new entrants as soon as they happen.

Whether you’re a freelancer or a small business, these insights will help you keep tabs on your industry and hone your business strategy.

How to Set Up Google Alerts to Track Mentions To get started, head on over to Google Alerts.

The interface is fairly simple to work with, but I’ll take you through each step. First, you need to enter the term you want to monitor: If you’re not sure which terms to monitor beyond your own business name, here a couple questions to help you figure that out: Which individuals or companies do you frequently find yourself competing for business against?

What are the significant terms used

in your industry? You’ll want to focus most on those terms which are likely to experience change.

What are your customers likely to be searching for? If your customers are frequently searching for a term, you’ll probably want to keep an eye on it.

To get some real data on how often people are searching for specific phrases, you can always turn to Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends.

A nifty advanced tip for Google Alerts is that you can enter all the same search strings you use in regular Google search. Here are a few examples: site:elegantthemes.com Google Alerts – only get alerts for content on Elegant Themes that includes the term Google Alerts “Divi 3.0 review” – only get alerts for content which includes the exact phrase “Divi 3.0 review” “Guest post” + WordPress – only get alerts for content that includes the exact phrase “guest post” plus any variation of WordPress Divi Review -builder – only get alerts for content that includes Divi Review without the term builder

Setting Up Alert Options Once you’ve figured out which terms you want to monitor, you can set up alerts (one at a time). Enter your first alert in the box. If you’re already signed into a Google Account, alerts will automatically get sent to your

Gmail account. If you’re not signed in, you’ll need to enter your email.

Don’t create your alert yet, though.

Google Alerts is one of the quickest and easiest tools you can use to track mentions and alerts.

It’s also 100% free, which is another reason it’s a great first stop.

First, you should click the Show options dropdown to configure your alert: A set of options should slide down:

Here’s everything you can configure: How often – you can get alerts immediately, once per day, or once per week. For really important terms (like your own brand) you should choose immediately or once per day. For less important terms, you’ll want to set it to once per week so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Sources – here you can choose which sources you want to monitor.

If you want the broadest spectrum of mentions, you should leave it as automatic. But you can also limit the alerts to official news sources, blogs, general web content, and others.

Language

–

self-explanatory

–

choose the language for the content you want to monitor.

Region – if you only want to monitor content from a specific country, you can choose that here. You can combine this with language settings to really narrow down your alerts.

How many – you can choose whether you want Google to only alert you for what they deem the best results, or for all results. Again, for your brand, you’ll probably want to use all results so you don’t miss anything. But for less important terms, you can stick with Only the best results.

Previewing Your Alert Once you’ve filled out all the options, Google Alerts will give you a preview of the type of content you’ll get alerts for according to the settings you chose: If you’re happy with the type of content in the preview results, all you need to do is click the Create

Alert button and you’re done!

Social media.

Google will start sending you alerts according to the schedule you chose.

To monitor additional terms, all you need to do is repeat the process for those terms.

A huge number of relevant conversations are also happening on social media. So if you want a full picture of your brand and industry, you really need to monitor both. I won’t get into the specifics in this post, but you can read Ariel’s post for some of the best social media monitoring tools.

Editing or Deleting Existing Google Alerts If you ever want to change or delete an alert at a later date, all you need to do is go to the same Google Alerts page. After you’ve added some alerts, Google will display a list of all your active alerts on that page: To edit the options for your alert, you just need to click the pencil icon to open the same options list as before.

And if you want to completely delete the alert, you just need to click the trashcan icon.

Taking it Further – Social Listening The only real downside of Google Alerts is that it almost completely misses one very important content channel:

Wrapping Things Up Google Alerts is one of the quickest and easiest tools you can use to track mentions and alerts. It’s also 100% free, which is another reason it’s a great first stop.

If you want a totally comprehensive view of mentions, you’ll need to find a way to incorporate social listening, too.

But for basic monitoring, you won’t find a simpler tool.

Just make sure you don’t overwhelm yourself with alerts. Too much information can be just as bad as no information. If you find yourself skipping alerts because you don’t have enough time, it may be time to pare down your keywords.

Google Alerts are like eavesdropping on the entire world’s conversations about topics that you care about.

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EMAIL

8 Effective Email Marketing Strategies, Backed by Science/

By Kevan Lee

The cutthroat inbox of your standard consumer roils with marketing messages, competitive subject lines, and scores of attention-seeking emails. With over 144 billion emails sent each and every day, email marketing remains one of the elite channels for business communication. So how does the signal separate itself from the noise?

To be sure, finding the key to a stand-out message is critical to your bottom line— whether that bottom line is cold, hard cash or community engagement or anything in

between. What follows are eight inbox-tested email marketing strategies that successful senders have used to get their emails clicked.

1. Personalize your email without using the recipient’s name No more “Dear [INSERT NAME HERE]”.

The practice of personalized email greetings is not nearly as effective as it may seem.

In fact, research by Temple’s Fox School of Business suggests that this particular kind of personalization could be harmful.

Given the high level of cyber security concerns about phishing, identity theft, and credit card fraud, many consumers would be wary of emails, particularly those with personal greetings.

personalization comes across as skeevy. Intimacy is earned in real life, and it would appear to be the same way with email. Take this example from my inbox; no one has called me lowercase kevan l lee in years.

A significant element of email marketing is relationship. Does a recipient trust you? Does a recipient even know who you are?

When an email jumps the gun by forcing familiarity too soon, the

Faking familiarity with the subscriber turns many wary email readers off.

But this isn’t to say that all forms of personalization are off-limits. In fact, a particular brand of personalization can pay off big time: Sending email

Faking familiarity with the subscriber turns many wary email readers off.

EMAIL

that acknowledges a subscriber’s individuality (e.g., purchase history or demographic).

(The study) also found that product personalization, in which customers are directed to products that their past purchasing patterns suggest they will like, triggered positive responses in 98 percent of customers.

The takeaway here is that if you are to use personalization as an email strategy, do so in a meaningful way. It takes little knowledge or relationship to

place someone’s name in your greeting. It shows far greater care to send personalized email that is specific to a recipient’s needs and history. Again, an example from my inbox, this email from Rdio dispenses with the formalities and simply provides an update on music I actually listen to.

2. The long and short of subject lines When it comes to deciding how to craft that perfect subject line, there appears to be really only one area to avoid: the subject line of 60 to 70 characters. Marketers

When it comes to deciding how to craft that perfect subject line, there appears to be really only one area to avoid: the subject line of 60 to 70 characters.

refer to this as the “dead zone” of subject length. According to research by Adestra, which tracked over 900 million emails for its report, there is no increase in either open rate or clickthroughs at this 60-to-70 character length of subject line.

for 2012’s fourth quarter, Experian Marketing Services found that the time of day that received the best open rate was 8:00 p.m. to midnight.

This block not only performed better for open rate (a respectable 22 percent) but also for clickthrough and sales.

Conversely, subject lines 70 characters and up tested to be most beneficial to engage readers in clicking through to the content, and subject lines 49 characters and below tested well with open rate.

In fact, Adestra found that subject lines fewer than 10 characters long had an open rate of 58%.

The chart above shows that the 8:00 to midnight window is also the least used—a key factor in helping those late night emails outperform the rest. From Experian:

Short subjects came in vogue with the success of President Barack Obama’s email fundraising. He saw incredible engagement with subjects like “Hey” and “Wow.” So the question becomes: Do you want to boost clicks (response) or opens (awareness)? Go long for clickthroughs; keep it short for opens.

Either way, a helpful email strategy is to squeeze out more words or cut back just a bit to avoid that 60 to 70 character dead zone.

3. 8:00 p.m. to midnight is the prime time to send your email While many a quality email may be built during business hours, the ones with the best open rates aren’t being sent from 9 to 5. The top email strategy is to send at night.

In their quarterly email report

Optimal mailing time often depends upon your customers’ behaviors, inbox crowding, and the deployment times of other marketers.

Inbox crowding and the deployment times of other marketers go handin-hand; if your email goes out when few others do, it stands a greater chance of getting noticed (so quick, start sending between 8:00 and midnight before everyone else catches on).

Optimal mailing for your customers’ needs will be up to you. Test, test, and test some more to find out how your customer ticks and when he/ she opens email.

4. The best content is free content: Give something away Consumers love a free lunch—or a free template.

In a study on their email list of 6,300 subscribers, Bluewire Media tested various types of content to see what led to the highest rates for opens and clicks. The winner was templates and tools, just the kind of freebies that email readers want.

5. Mobile opens accounts for 47 percent of all email opens Mobile opens accounted for 47 percent of all email opens in June, according to numbers provided by email marketing firm Litmus. If your email list accounts for $100,000 in sales each month, could you afford to wave bye-bye to $44,000 just because your email looks funky on a mobile phone?

Design responsively to ensure that your email looks great no matter where it’s read. Here are some quick mobile design tips: Convert your email to a one column template for an easy mobile fix.

Bump up the font size for improved readability on smart phones.Follow the iOS guideline of buttons at least 44 pixels wide by 44 pixels tall.Make the call-to-action obvious and easy to tap. Above the fold is preferable.

Consider ergonomics. Many users tap and scroll with their thumb, so keep important tappable elements in the middle of the screen.

6. Email still reigns over Facebook and Twitter Social media may be the young whippersnapper nipping at email’s heels, but the content king of the inbox still holds sway in social influence, according to a study

by SocialTwist. Over an 18-month period, SocialTwist monitored 119 referral campaigns from leading brands and companies. The results showed a significant advantage to email’s ability to convert new customers compared to Facebook and Twitter.

Of the 300,000 referrals who became new customers, 50.8 percent were reached by email, compared to 26.8 percent for Twitter and 22 percent for Facebook.

Email ruled supreme, by almost double.

7. Send email on the weekends While not as overwhelming a winner as the 8:00 p.m. to midnight time of day, Saturday and Sunday did outperform their weekday counterparts in Experian’s study of day-of-week performance.

Again, the volume of email sent on the weekends is low, just like the volume for evening emails, which could help those messages stand out more. The margins for clickthrough, open, and sales rates were not substantial, but in email marketing, every little bit counts.

a list is 63 percent, meaning that once someone joins they are less likely to ever follow-up with your followup emails. Email marketing firm Listrak goes so far as to identify the first 90 days as the window for turning a sign-up into a devotee (and they lay out a plan for doing so).

What’s to become of that inactive 63 percent? Reengagement campaigns are an excellent place to start.

Recently, a re-engagement campaign from Digg wound up in my inbox. The subject was catchy (“This Is Not An Email From 2006”), and the content helpfully explained what the email was all about.

As with everything that we call science, it’s all about doing experiments. Very likely, if you are doing your own experiments, you might actually have found different results. What are your best email strategies and email marketing tips?

8. Re-engage an inactive group of subscribers Your list is huge. Great! The only problem is that two-thirds of it may be inactive.

Research has found that the average inactivity for

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DIRECT MAIL

HowTo Combine Print And Digital Marketing Campaigns/

By Chris Holloway To the digitally devoted, the idea of print marketing might seem like something from a bygone era.

But rest assured – print is not dead.

Inevitably, the medium has had to move over to make room for the explosive rise of digital, but it’s far from becoming a niche format.

Some traditionally digital based companies have even started to see the benefits of producing printed magazines or content rich brochures to market their brand (more about that later).

As Content Marketing Institute founder Joe Pulizzi stated as far back as 2012, print may have become the new ‘non traditional’ marketing strategy; for content marketers at least.

In this article I want to explore how print should still have pride of place in any marketing drive2 and how it can actually work in unison with

digital platforms in the marketing mix through cross pollination.

We’ll begin though by looking at some rather revealing statistics.

Print marketing statistics According to the CMI’s annual report in 2015 the top three paid advertising methods in the B2B sphere in North America were Search Engine Marketing at 66%, Print or Other Offline Promotion at 57% and Traditional Online Banner Ads at 55%. This single stat alone should make it clear that the bottom has definitely not fallen out of print advertising in financial terms.

Of course this doesn’t say anything about print’s efficacy as a marketing medium when compared to digital.

There are a couple of interesting studies that do however.

The first is a survey conducted by Nielson in 2014 looking into the retail sector and how US consumers arrive at purchasing decisions.

The results were unequivocal in presenting the power of printed materials over digital in this area, with 56% of consumers surveyed citing mailed materials as the chief source of information used to make purchasing decisions (some 20% higher than the nearest digital influencer).

Print also has the power to influence B2B end-users, with 45% of those polled in a 2013 ABM survey stating their regular sources of information to obtain business information were magazines. When looking for info on new products or services this rose to

69%. In this second instance, print magazines were just 11% behind websites.

Creating print and digital cross pollination None of the surveys I’ve cited should be reason to abandon your digital marketing strategy of course; just as evidence showing the efficacy of digital shouldn’t be reason to reign in your print marketing budget. As I have made clear in the past, there are many reasons not to cut back on your print marketing budget, regardless of the attraction and scalability of digital.

Below are a few techniques to help you not only make the most of both approaches, but encourage cross pollination across media, driving and tracking consumers from print to digital and vice versa: Use QR codes and personalized URLs to track media crossover QR codes and personalised URLs are brilliant ways of building bridges between your printed marketing and owned media in the online space. With consumers scanning the codes or entering the URLs on their smartphones at the same time they are consuming the printed material, not only can you drive traffic to your online campaigns but you can track cross pollination and harvest some interesting data on your users, such as when and where they are interacting with your printed material. QR codes in particular allow you to get really creative as well and can be printed onto practically anything.

Explore the possibilities of variable printing Variable printing has actually been around for some time and is a technology that allows you to personalize graphics and images as you print them, without slowing down the print process. This is perfect for direct marketing drives where you have data on your intended recipients. An effective use of variable printing could be using it in conjunction with a social media campaign in which you encourage subscribers to sign up for free goodies and, on occasion, marketing materials. You can then target your printed marketing around certain interest groups by harvesting data from Facebook or Twitter. This goes far beyond targeting basic demographics like gender and age.

Leverage social media Social media remains the single most effective digital tool for reaching a lot of people in a short period of time. If you’ve cultivated your followings then social media can act as the perfect jump board for launching your printed marketing campaigns. As mentioned, this can be perfect for traffic flowing from print to digital but it can also be used to push traffic the other way.

Constantly seek feedback One of the problems with the crossover from print to digital is in getting useful analytics. Despite some of the methods discussed here, this will always be a problem (it can often be a problem with 100% digital campaigns). The simplest strategies can sometimes be the best strategies though and so actively asking consumers what prompted them to visit your website, social media page or even pick up the phone by constantly seeking feedback is always a good start. If you find people are not willing to give up thirty seconds of their time to tick a box then try incentivising them by offering deals, competitions or access to exclusive content.

magazines are being seen by some digitally based companies as the perfect medium for content marketing, despite the increased costs associated with production.

Use CTAs to drive traffic from print to digital A lot of printed marketing material is passive and designed primarily to spread a product or offer or raise awareness of a brand.

By incorporating CTAs into your printed materials that encourage consumers to visit your social media page or website for more info or maybe the prospect of exclusive offers, you can use your printed materials to drive more traffic online. You could also include special promotional codes to incentivise more traffic, whilst harvesting reliable data on cross pollination.

Coordinate strategies and departments One of the main challenges of creating joined up marketing campaigns across platforms and media is internal coordination. It’s important to allow the sharing of data across teams and departments so a complete picture can be seen and your strategy adjusted accordingly at a meta level.

Digital brands leveraging print As I’ve mentioned, magazines are being seen by some digitally based companies as the perfect medium for content marketing, despite the increased costs associated with production.

Whilst magazines are far from the only option when it comes to creating offline content, they do offer some very interesting

case studies with some very prominent digital companies deciding to use them. Below are some examples: Air BnB released its quarterly travel magazine Pineapple, sending 18,000 copies of the first issue to its registered hosts worldwide.

Net-a-Porter launched its bi-monthly fashion magazine Porter in 2014.

CNET launched its quarterly print magazine of the same name in 2014, which will regularly include exclusive content that won’t feature in its digital publication until a later date.

Clearly these companies aren’t abandoning the digital marketing model, given that they are digitally based companies, but are instead utilizing the power of glossy high quality print magazines to promote their brand and encourage greater takeup of their core online offering.

The payoff from print and digital approaches might at first seem mutually exclusive due to their fundamental difference as mediums of communication.

And compared to running two digital strategies alongside each other, the potential for analytical convergence and cross pollination will inherently be more limited.

But, as we’ve seen, there are a number of techniques that allow print and digital to work together and produce joined up marketing that is greater than the sum of its parts.

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SOCIAL

Why Businesses Must Add LinkedIn to Their Marketing Strategy/

By Laura Donovan

Think LinkedIn is just to market business-to-business or to search for a new career opportunity? Think again, LinkedIn has some pretty terrific marketing potential for just about any business, B2B or B2C. 90% of LinkedIn Users make household decisions. 41% of users in the United States earn $75,000 or more per year.

The estimated “value” of each user is $84. This provides a good resource for your business to tap into a new market.

Businesses should be using LinkedIn to showcase their products and services, share industry information and should be posting their blogs and updates at least 20 times per month. Posting at least 20 times per month will reach 60% of your audience, one post only reaches 20% of your audience. Most of the top LinkedIn users post at least 3 to 4 times per day.

Studies show that posting between 8 am and 6 pm is best to reach LinkedIn users. A few other important stats to note: Only 4% of LinkedIn users share their blog posts.

There are 4 times more visitors to your homepage on LinkedIn than on Facebook or Twitter.

There is a 2.74% visitor-to-lead conversion rate on LinkedIn, versus 0.77% on Facebook and only 0.69% on Twitter.

Only 13% of LinkedIn users do not use Facebook (so you need to be there too!)

LinkedIn has 450 million total users, 128 million in the U.S. and 106 million

90% of LinkedIn Users make household decisions. 41% of users in the United States earn $75,000 or more per year. The estimated “value” of each user is $84. This provides a good resource for your business to tap into a new market.

visit every month.

LinkedIn marketing is no different than any other Social Media Marketing, provide quality information, establish branding and visibility to improve brand awareness, engage with followers and keep it consistent.

Basic Roadmap for LinkedIn Marketing Ensure your profile is well-written and complete.

Build an awesome company page and keep it active, establish other employees as managers and get them to post frequently as well. Just keep it interesting and active.

Join groups and participate as an industry leader. Share valuable content with other group members and participate in conversations.

Post quality content, make sure it is useful, interesting and valuable to your audience.

Post content at least once per day, more would definitely provide better benefits and results.

Avoid the direct sell, LinkedIn users want to connect, network and learn; don’t ambush them with nothing but sales messages.

Social Media Marketing isn’t going anywhere, it is expanding. Companies are going to have to start focusing their efforts on the Social Platforms if they want to stay relevant and be successful. LinkedIn is just one piece of the puzzle.

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STRATEGY

9 Tips for Developing Your 2017 Sales and Marketing S

By Marisa Smith

Strategy/ You want a strong start to 2017.

Awesome! But if you want to see greater marketing results next year, you’ll need to use the remaining time in 2016 to set the stage for January 1st.

The best way to start the year off right is to gather your sales and marketing team together for a series of planning sessions to get everyone aligned and headed in the same direction. Follow these steps to learn from the past, dream big, and put together a sensible plan for achieving your goals in 2017!

How to Develop Your 2017 Sales and Marketing Strategy 1) Budget for Success in 2017 Make sure you’ve allocated enough resources (people and money) to accomplish your company’s goals for the year. The size of your marketing budget will also depend on how much you have available to invest, and how quickly you want to see results. If you have caviar dreams and a tuna fish budget, you’ll be disappointed by your lack of results, and your team will be frustrated by their inability to meet your expectations.

We’ve just completed a detailed series on developing a successful marketing budget. Use those articles as a starting point for establishing your budget for 2017.

Make sure you’re clear on what makes you different from your competitors. Talk to some of your customers and find out why they chose to buy from you...

2) Review and Update Your Ideal Customer Profile and Personas Look back at your best customers and identify the characteristics that make them profitable and enjoyable to work with. Make sure your ideal customer profile and buyer personas are accurate and update them as necessary to reflect the kinds of customers who will help you reach your growth goals.

3) Document Your Buyer’s Journey Once your personas are updated, document the journey each persona will take toward becoming a customer. Your contacts take lots of tiny steps along the way to becoming a buyer. Plot out every interaction point your personas will have with your content or your company. This is your buyer’s journey— and each persona has their own.

Start at the end—what will they do immediately before signing a contract with you? What’s the step before that?

The one before that? At each point along the way, identify the persona’s main questions, motivations, and potential objections. Then identify the kinds of content you’ll need to create to meet them at each point along the buyer’s journey.

Don’t forget about the influencers in the process. Feed your main contact the content they need to help educate and sell you internally.

You should also determine what CTAs to include in order to lead them to the next step.

4) Confirm Your Differentiators Make sure you’re clear on what makes you different from your competitors.

Talk to some of your customers and find out why they chose to buy from you— and what could make them switch teams and buy from your competitors instead.

5) Review and Organize Your Marketing Collateral Make sure that your printed and digital marketing materials are written and designed to attract your ideal customers and communicate your company’s unique qualities to prospects and customers. Verify that copyright dates are updated, that your style guidelines are being followed, and that everyone on your sales team is using the right version!

6) Review Your Website and Online Marketing Take a look at your website and social media channels to make sure they’re designed to attract and educate your personas. Is your branding and messaging consistent? Are you engaging with the right target audience? Is your content compelling and educational?

TIP: HubSpot’s Marketing Grader can give you a quick snapshot of what you’re doing right, and where you could improve.

7) Review and Docu Process

Is your sales proces the quality and quan you need to reach growth goals? Does sales team follow the qualifying and nurtu your process docume (customer relationsh system set up to sup efficiently and effec be using any automa your process more effi

Document any issu while you’re reviewin processes, and tem “dark pools”—areas where prospects or c

ument Your Sales

ss set up to close ntity of customers h your company’s everyone on your e same process for uring prospects? Is ented? Is your CRM hip management) pport your process ctively? Could you ated tools to make fficient?

ues you uncover ng your collateral, mplates. Look for of your process customers get lost

or ignored due to lack of time/energy/ resources.

8) Document Your Sales and Marketing Strategy Prioritize the issues you’ve identified and develop a phased approach to tackling them over the next four quarters.

Depending on the issues you’ve identified, you may need to develop tactical plans for content/inbound marketing, social media, lead generation, lead nurturing, or account development.

9) Track Your Progress and Evolve Your Tactics Make sure you have defined metrics for measuring success, and have

assigned individual team members to be accountable for solving each issue.

Set up regular meetings to review progress, identify and solve issues, and align activities across teams. Learn from your mistakes and victories, and evolve your tactics as needed to maintain your traction!

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WEBSITE

Landing Pages are the Missing Link in Your Online Marketing Strategy /

By Laura MacPherson

How’s your online marketing performing?

Are you getting the results you want? Are the people clicking on your ads or your email CTAs taking action when they land on your site?

Bottom line, are you getting the phone calls or form fills you need? If not, landing pages may be what’s missing in your strategy.

Here’s why.

Message Relevancy If you’ve created a good ad and targeted effectively, you’re probably getting qualified clicks. But getting prospects to click your ad isn’t your ultimate goal. You need people to make a purchase, or you need to capture those people’s contact info for lead nurturing or for Sales to follow up.

The more specifically you address the pain points of your prospects, the more likely you’ll capture their interest. But you can’t

stop with the messaging of your ad. You need to reiterate that same message that caught their initial attention in the copy on the page where they land after clicking. Why? Hundreds (probably thousands, but I haven’t read them all) of split tests show that ad-specific copy on landing pages outperforms more general copy. Just Google “message match on landing pages” or “ad specific landing page copy” to see a few.

Think about your own experience browsing the web. Which scenario would you be more likely to take action in: You click on an ad for “The project management tool for visual thinkers” and you get taken to the home page of a company that makes several different software solutions. You see the message “Software tools for growing companies: grow your revenue, grow your ROI. Learn

Think about your own experience browsing the web.

Which scenario would you be more likely to take action in.

more»”. You click the “learn more” link and get taken to a products page that lists all their products.

You find the one that looks like the project management tool you’re interested in, and click another “learn more” link to (hopefully) find out how you can test out the tool and see if it’s the answer to your project management frustrations. You arrive on a page detailing the benefits of the tool that was advertised. Finally. Now you start searching for a “demo” button or “free trial”. If you haven’t gotten distracted by your phone, email, social media, HipChat or Slack notifications, or a coworker stopping by your office by now, you may actually fill out a form to get a demo or a free trial.

You click on an ad for “the project management tool for visual thinkers” and you get taken to a special landing page with the message “Lists of to-dos just not working for you? You need a project management tool for visual thinkers.” You read a brief bullet-pointed summary of benefits, a couple of testimonials, and see a form headlined “Get a free 15-day trial. No credit card required.” You fill the form.

Bam. You can now test out the software, and the company can now follow up with a series of lead nurturing emails.

No Distractions Landing pages allow you to minimize distractions. Yes, you want prospects to learn about your company, what makes you unique, and check out your case studies — AFTER they’ve given you their contact details so you can nurture them towards becoming a customer. You don’t

want to leave anything to chance.

When you use landing pages, you can leave out social icons, in-copy links, and even your main navigation menu. After the prospect fills your form, you can show a “thank you” page that has all these elements, so he or she can explore.

SEO Rankings When you’re using a landing page that focuses on a specific issue or specific service/product type, you have a much better chance of getting that page ranking in search results, for a couple of reasons.

One, search algorithms want to show relevant results. If someone searches “visual project management tool” they’re not going to see a homepage talking about “software tools for growing companies” in the results.

Second, engagement is a key factor that search engines use to determine ranking placements. If your page has a high bounce rate, or if people aren’t doing anything on your site, it won’t rank as high as a similar page where people are spending time reading it and filling out forms.

How Landing Pages Fit Into Your Online Marketing Strategies Landing Pages and Segmentation — If you serve different verticals or different markets, you can use landing pages to speak a relevant message to each group.

More relevant messages = more conversions.

Landing Pages and SEO — As we just mentioned, landing pages can help your search rankings.

But they also result in higher conversions when a visitor arrives on the page and is able to quickly and easily complete the action he or she came to do.

Landing Pages and PPC (such as AdWords) or Social Media Ads — With landing pages, you can make your ad message and page message match exactly. You can focus on the issue that captured the prospect’s interest — the one you know is a winner because he or she cared enough to click on the ad.

Landing Pages and Email Marketing — You can use landing pages to identify what topics your prospects are interested in and what issues resonate with them.

For example, if someone fills out a form to attend a webinar on “3 Key Performance Indicators Every Startup Should Be Measuring”, then you know that if you send emails about KPIs and metrics to this person, he or she is likely to engage with them.

If you’re not using landing pages in your online marketing strategy, you’re missing out on conversions you could be getting. Well-crafted landing pages are essential for any successful online marketing campaign.

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WEBSITE

How Web Design Evolved In 2016: Simplify Or Perish/ Even five years ago, businesses and marketers were advised to avoid motion and movement on websites because the coding tended to cripple site loading time and cause a poor user experience.

BY: Kara Jensen

One of the more obvious evolutions in web design we’ve seen this year is the shortening and tightening up of messaging on websites.

Trends, preferences, and technology change and evolve over time. As we start to think about wrapping up 2016, our B2B web design team sat down to take stock of what we’ve seen over the past several months and analyze how web design has really evolved over the year.

White Space & Clean Designs White space and bold, clean designs are in high demand as more and more brands are interested in seeing cleaner, less cluttered designs. Rather than considering white space or negative space as “empty,” the web design community is seeing how valuable these spaces are in helping break up content and making it more digestible for the user.

This trend is closely linked to the widespread acceptance and usage of mobile devices for accessing websites. B2C and B2B websites that utilize negative space and clean designs tend to render better on mobile and a variety of devices.

Embrace Motion and Movement Even five years ago, businesses and marketers were advised to avoid motion and movement on websites because the coding tended to cripple site loading time and cause a poor user experience. In 2016, this is no longer the case and motion is becoming a well-received trend in web design. Even a subtle motion added to the design via JQuery or HTML5 can add interest to a website and make it more engaging. This will likely gain popularity as businesses see how seamlessly it can be integrated into web design, without

negative side effects.

Check out a few examples of cool, subtle motion on the Zendesk website and the Adept Source website.

The Gradient Is Back & Better Than Ever We’ve seen the gradient come and go and it’s definitely back, in new and exciting ways. Now that a gradient can be achieved in web design through CSS, it’s gaining ground as a popular element of the overall design. Adding the gradient via CSS enables web designers to find surprisingly cool ways to include it in the overall layout and design of a website.

Shortened Messaging One of the more obvious evolutions in web design we’ve seen this year is the shortening and tightening up of messaging on websites. Particularly for B2B businesses, marketers are discovering that they don’t need a whole lot of copy to explain their unique value proposition. This has led to a broad effort in web design to capture people’s attention quickly with shorter messaging. Rather than focusing on long, drawn out explanations and benefits statements, companies are distilling their value proposition to a few words and making that the centerpiece of their web design.

Usability Over SEO Many progressive SEO managers will tell you that usability and SEO are essentially the same, but SEO still relies heavily on written content as a foundation. Since the end of 2015, we’ve seen a shift in which companies are consciously sacrificing SEO for

white space and bold, clean designs are in high demand as more and more brands are interested in seeing cleaner, less cluttered designds.

If there isn’t a budget for custom photography or it doesn’t make sense for the industry, we manipulate stock photography to ensure all the images are consistent or have a common element that ties them all together in the web design.

usability. Rather than prioritizing rising in the search engine rankings, marketers are becoming obsessed with the user experience on the website. We have found they don’t want a lot of content and are looking to make their copy more succinct. In many cases, however, they aren’t sacrificing inbound marketing altogether, as they instead focus on paid search to drive traffic to their website.

A Trend We Love We always recommend that our clients use custom photography and video whenever possible to set themselves apart from their competitors. In 2016, we’ve seen quite a bit of buy-in concerning custom photography and video and we couldn’t be more pleased.

While there can be a significant cost for custom photography and video, it often delivers a high ROI, particularly when the images help to convey their unique value proposition or tell a story about

their products or services.

If there isn’t a budget for custom photography or it doesn’t make sense for the industry, we manipulate stock photography to ensure all the images are consistent or have a common element that ties them all together in the web design.

Check out a great example of custom photography on the Melfred Borzall website and integration of custom video on the First Class packaging website.

Both of these examples utilize custom photography and video to tell the story behind the products and services they offer and truly differentiate these two firms from their competition.

Accommodate Cross-Device Traffic Another great evolution that we’ve seen fully develop over the past year is the accommodation of cross-device traffic. It’s not all

about mobile anymore, it’s about ALL devices, including mobile devices. Web design is evolving to understand and accommodate the trend of users to view and access websites on more than one device. It’s not uncommon for a user to complete a search on a mobile phone, then later access the same site on a tablet or laptop, then finally view the website on a desktop device.

In 2016, web designers are focusing on making the user experience across all devices seamless by incorporating responsive design elements, including more white space and less copy on each page. At Bop Design, we take it a step further and utilize a quality assurance tool that verifies websites are rendering well on all types of devices and browsers to ensure an optimal user experience.

Why Web Design Is Evolving So, what is driving these changes and trends in web design?

First, the market is completely saturated when it comes to websites. Most B2C and B2B firms know they must have a website in order to compete and are discovering that in order to compete AND be successful, they must find ways to differentiate themselves.

The second reason behind this evolution is related to how busy our lives have become. People don’t have the time to evaluate 3 – 4 potential partners or companies in depth. Rather, they have to make quick judgment calls on

firms in the span of a few seconds.

Removing all the clutter from a web design enables a potential client to get the facts they need in the least amount of time.

especially not on B2B websites that are looking to generate leads and build relationships.

Creating a strong connection in a short amount of time is the catalyst for many of these design trends and changes.

It used to be all the rage to have a slideshow featured as the hero image for both B2C and B2B websites. However, the hero image slideshow is becoming less and less popular as users have adapted to scrolling a website to get more information. With the trend moving away from slideshows in the hero image spot, web designers are replacing them with one strong image and just one to two lines of text. Simple. Clean. Direct.

Trends Fading in Popularity Since we’ve talked about how web design has evolved in 2016, we also need to address what it has left behind. Features and practices that were all the buzz last year can fade pretty quickly.

Here are a few web design trends that are fading out of popularity.

Content Dense Pages The critical aspect of SEO has been content and content dense pages. Websites that have a ton of content-dense pages are on the way out. This does not mean that websites are getting rid of written content, they are just shifting from pages that are 1,000 words to shorter, less cluttered pages.

Design for Design Only There are a handful of web designers that are obsessed with winning awards. While it’s great to win awards for your design work, it’s more important to meet the goals of the website. We can say that we are happy to see that needless design elements are starting to disappear from current web design. Design for design’s sake has no place on most websites,

Slideshow in the Hero Image

It should be noted that slideshows aren’t disappearing from web design altogether.

Rather, slideshows are finding a new place, further down the homepage or on internal pages. We’ve seen great uses of the slideshow for showcasing client testimonials or even a gallery of product images.

Conclusion: Simplify or Perish If there is one overarching trend we have seen in web design in 2016, it can be summed up as “simplification.” Simplifying messaging, imagery, navigation, layout and the user experience.

This is a bit of a simplification (get it?), but is definitely a significant driver in the web design industry right now.

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STRATEGY

You’ve probably heard that content marketing is the wave of the future.

But do you know why?

While it’s true that content marketing is massively effective for nearly every company and industry on the globe, many marketers don’t understand why.

Let’s shine a light on this puzzling (yet fascinating) state of affairs, with 10 statistics that will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that content marketing is today’s marketing.

1. 200 million people now use ad blockers

Paid advertisements were all the rage in online marketing. Today, however, consumers are increasingly savvy about opting out of the advertising they would rather not see. In August 2015, approximately 200 million people worldwide had installed ad-blocking software.

While it is great news for consumers, it’s terrible news for marketers who rely heavily on paid advertisements to spread their brand’s message.

Luckily, there’s a way to continue marketing efforts without being blocked by the people you’re trying to reach. The secret is content.

In addition to being impervious to ad-blocking software, good content is something consumers

Why is Content Marketing Today’s Marketing?

10 Stats That Prove It/

BY JULIA MCCOY

want to interact with, which makes it more effective and welcome on a foundational level.

2. Content marketing leaders experience 7.8 times more site traffic than non-leaders While high-quality content is difficult to pin down, it’s well worth it in the end. According to Neil Patel, people who succeed at becoming leaders in the world of content marketing — people who craft compelling, valuable content that gets to the heart of their readers — experience drastically more site growth than their competitors.

Take Search Engine Journal, for example. The content on this site is always high quality and,

as a result, it earns over 1 million unique visitors each and every month. This is no accident: People want valuable, informative material and Search Engine Journal knows how to create it.

3. Content produces brand recall, which increases engagement According to a 2015 IBM Digital Experience Survey, 56% of marketers believe that personalized content promotes higher engagement rates. Because personalized content helps consumers remember a brand, it also encourages them to engage more personally with the company in question, thus introducing a positive feedback loop that benefits both the customer and the company.

4. The median time people spend on articles is 37 seconds While skim-able content is highly valued, consumers are actually reading the articles marketers post.

According to a NewsCred Insights post, marketers who produce high-quality, relevant content enjoy audiences who spend significant time on their sites. Over time, this engagement helps produce higher levels of brand recognition, which boosts sales and encourages ongoing engagement.

5. While content marketing costs 62% less than outbound marketing, it generates more than three times as many leads While many inexperienced marketers assume that content marketing is expensive, the fact is that it’s often cheaper than traditional marketing methods. Because content marketing is effective, easy to begin, and popular with consumers, it can

drastically reduce the money marketers spend on advertising their brands. What’s more, it manages to do all of this while being more effective than traditional marketing.

6. The majority (88%) of B2B marketers use content marketing in their marketing strategies Most B2B marketers use content marketing as a foundational piece of their marketing strategy. In addition to making it easier to communicate with consumers, content marketing also produces more sustainable value and makes it easier for brands and customers to connect with one another.

7. Content marketing drives higher conversion rates When content marketing adopters and nonadopters are compared, the adopters have conversion rates that are nearly six times higher than their competitors. While content marketing requires an investment of time, money, and skill, it drives much higher conversion rates than its

tactics in any segment of business, B2B marketers are notorious for using dozens of content strategies. The reason for this is that while content marketing is effective, it’s much more effective when distribution channels are varied and diverse.

With this in mind, marketers will benefit from creating various content formats and using several different marketing platforms to push them through to consumers.

10. 73% of major organizations hire someone to manage their content marketing strategy Content marketing has become such a profitable marketing method that major companies around the globe are hiring people to manage the content creation and distribution process.

Adding this role helps the company ensure that it is allocating resources correctly and communicating with its customers in the most targeted and effective way possible. It also ensures that marketers are using content formats, various distribution platforms, and new technologies as effectively as possible. traditional marketing counterparts.

8. Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of content marketing When you analyze the impact of different content distribution channels side by side, it becomes clear that email offers the largest overall reach: For every $1 spent, email gives back a whopping $38 in ROI, and offers the broadest reach (CampaignMonitor).

Because email is personalized, targeted, and delivered directly to a customer’s inbox, it’s a wonderful (and inexpensive) way for marketers to gain an in to their customers.

Case for content marketing While many marketers are unsure about why content marketing is so popular these days, these 10 statistics prove that it is indeed the marketing of the future.

Less expensive, efficient, compelling, and highly customizable, content marketing caters to virtually all businesses and all industries.

From blog posts to infographics and everything in between, creating unique, consistent, and truly useful content is the No. 1 way to connect with your audience on the most effective level.

9. Most B2B marketers use at least 13 content marketing tactics More is more, right? When it comes to content marketing, that may be true.

While it’s not uncommon to use various marketing

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