Category: Sales & Marketing

Article Contributed by Anurag Gupta

If you’ve valuable, relevant and rewarding content on your website, it must reach the targeted beneficiaries. And what better than email as a channel to draw in the audience and subtly drop them to the doorsteps of what piques their interest. These days, the email marketing rules are fast adapting to complement content marketing campaigns and trends.

Traditional email marketing, which focused heavily on sales pitch, has evolved to a subtler variant that pays greater attention towards engaging the audience and building a relationship by taking them to value added content. It is a permission-based communication with subscribers that have already shown interest in what you offer.

Here’s a rundown of actionable tips on how you can use email campaigns to improve your content marketing.

Choose Relevant Content to Promote

Here’s a path – your subscriber opens the email, gives a cursory look to your message and then decides whether to pull back or head to the content you are offering. All this happens virtually in a flash, so you have just a second or two to give a compelling, direct reason why they should go to the content. If you handpick and promote valuable, relevant and rewarding content in your email, chances are strong you would be helping your content marketing immensely.

Engage in Dialogue with Email Campaigns

Bombarding the audience with a batch of emails, an approach widely adopted by marketers, is flawed. Although, your email lands the inbox it barely initiates a dialogue. Design your email campaigns to launch a conversation and draw in the prospects to “talk it out” with you. Encourage them to participate and include social share tabs in your emails, prompting the audience to build up the dialogue on social networks.

Plant Crisp & Inviting Call to Actions in Email Newsletters

Once you have figured out the content to be promoted and the manner in which it will be done, you need to find inviting ways of including links to pages on your site. This can be achieved by planting crisp, appealing and strategic calls to action. Keep the language simple and straightforward with an aesthetically appealing design to draw in the audience to the target page.  For example, a clearly identifiable “Read More” call to action, directing subscribers to a weekly roundup of popular articles, could be a good way to drive traffic to content.

Let Stats Tailor Your Email

As part of your content marketing strategy, you might be creating dozens of articles, blog updates, social media feeds and other sharable content. But not all of it fits the bill for your subscriber list. Instead of serving whatever you create, focus on key statistics such as where on website prospects spent most of their time, how many visits a particular genre of content received, degree of engagement, etc. This insight is vital for subscriber segmentation and eventually tailoring of emails to propel them towards the content.

Segment Your Audience

If you combine the prospects’ behavioral data with traditional segmentation, you can customize the emails and offers to fit their needs. For example, knowledge of who opened the email, what they downloaded on the site, etc. provides you with a clear line about what kind of content you should drive them to. This specificity boosts your content marketing efforts.

Employ “Mix & Match” Strategy

If you have a high frequency of email campaigns, you run the risk of getting monotonous in styles and methods. To avoid putting off the prospects with recurrent patterns, maintain a big basket of email components such as content angles, surveys, offers, delivery days and others, and mix and match them as need be. The novelty factor makes it easier to keep your audience engaged.

Tap the Potential of Automated Emails                  

Automated emails such as welcome messages, invoice, notifications and receipts often go without any glimpse to your content. Sticking to the context of the communication, you can slip in links to your best posts or other useful content in these emails. It will be a handy addition particularly for new subscribers while you can expect higher traffic.

Set Up an RSS Email Feed

By setting up an RSS email feed, you can send automated updates to blog visitors whenever a new piece of content is published. This is no-effort method to drive traffic to your latest content. To the advantage of your prospects, they only need to check their inbox to stay abreast with your content offerings.

The above-mentioned steps lay down a roadmap for integrating your email and content marketing efforts. When someone is signing up for your email, make sure you reach out to them from time to time, informing them how your new content could be a good read. If you stick to the tips discussed here, you can expect more visitors, more leads and more new customers.

Author Bio

Anurag Gupta is a budding entrepreneur with stakes in WeblinkIndia.net an acclaimed Web Designing & Development Company, headquartered in India. He also happens to be a keen writer, sharing insights, tips, and tutorials on subjects related to the ever evolving landscape of Web Designing and Development.

Article Contributed by Usman Raza

Reaching potential customers is very important if you want your product or set of services to be successful. For effective and successful marketing, it is highly important that you have a high standard marketing plan in place. Along with that, it is also important that you have a well-defined budget to promote your services.  A lot of companies go over their budget and do not realize it. Here are 11 of the countless tips which can be used to reduce your marketing plan budget.

1. Have a clearly defined budget

A marketing plan comprises of several tasks and each one of them needs to have a clear financial limit. Do not be hasty with spending money. Every product requires time to create an impression in the mind of the potential customer. Thus, spending more money than your financial range for promotional purposes and expecting the product to be an instant thinking is not the correct way to go about it. If you have a financial limit for each marketing activity, the chances of overspending are quite less

1. Rely more on social media marketing

There is no doubt that social media is the best form of marketing in the technology dominated time. Although the conventional marketing methods including above the line marketing (ATL) below the line marketing (BTL) marketing are still used but social media marketing certainly has a stronger impact. A high percentage of people all around the world use free social media marketing platforms including Facebook and Instagram. Thus, you can use them to promote your product or services.

1. Avoid the provision of too much information

Providing lengthy descriptions or too much information about the product simply creates a negative impression instead of a positive one. Various companies market their products through commercials where there are lengthy descriptions delivered in such a rush that people even fail to understand them. This practice simply creates a cluttered impression in front of the customer. Thus, to market your product in the most effective manner, ensure that the presented information is short, crisp and to the point.

1. Correct Search Engine Optimization techniques

There is no doubt that search engine optimization is a very productive and cost effective marketing method if it is followed with the correct guidelines. By using few easy techniques, you can get your website among the top online search results. One of these techniques is content marketing. For quality SEO content, it is important that the most result oriented keywords are used in the correct density. There are various SEO plugs as well which help you in optimizing your content including Word press. These plugs provide suitable suggestions for meta descriptions and headings so that the pages can be ranked highly. As compared to conventional marketing methods including television and print media, SEO costs a much smaller sum.

1. Getting an expert opinion

If you are new to marketing methods and product promotion planning, it is very important to get a professional advice from an expert. Marketing experts can help you in cutting down on your budget and choosing product specific promotion methods. Thus, before you make a marketing plan, sit down with an expert and share your thoughts. Certain marketing experts do not charge anything for a piece of advice. Having a professional opinion can help you in starting positively.

1. Hiring an expert is better than the “Do It Yourself” option

There is nothing bad about doing the marketing work yourself particularly if you want to work with a higher level of creativity. However, on a comparative scale, an expert would produce faster and better results because product marketing would be his domain. On the other, you as a business owner would have to go through a lengthy learning process. Marketing your own product is not only about reading books and digging deep into theoretical principles. Hence, if you want your product or set of services to start on a flying note, there is nothing bad about spending money on a marketing expert.

1. Cut down on the number of pages

There is no point in turning your website into a thesis paper because this practice does not work. Today, most visitors do not even go beyond the home page. Hence, try to keep the number of website pages to a minimum. This would help the customer in grasping the presented information in a better way.

1. Do not initiate multiple campaigns together

As a business owner, if you are running multiple campaigns at a time or focusing on more than one product, there is every chance that things would get messed up. Thus, plan the marketing activities and ensure that you are using techniques that would help the product grow and get recognized. These days, it is not necessary to spend large sums of money to get your product known. Through social media, you can use the correct techniques and get your product known in an easy manner.

1. Initial planning and risk management

Starting a marketing campaign without any prior planning can be a big problem. In other words, there is every chance that you would lose your investment without any results. Before you invest any money, ensure that you have done your homework. Distribute your marketing strategy into smaller tasks and identify the potential risks that each one of them has. You can also get a free expert advice and see where you are going wrong.

1. Get involved

You can never achieve the best results from your marketing campaign until you are heavily involved. Whether you are doing things yourself or hiring a professional consultant, you should be sure about each stage of the marketing process. Leaving everything on the marketing consultant without getting involved can result in not achieving any positive results after spending your hard earned money.

1. Consider in-house professionals for product marketing

There is no doubt that outsourcing the entire marketing campaign and getting the plan developed by an expert saves a lot of time and energy. On the other hand, this also expands your financial budget. Thus, it is better to accomplish the tasks yourself and hire an in house team for this purpose.

Author bio: Usman Raza is a marketing specialist at Zen Sleep and Keeva Organics. Aside from doing digital marketing and helping clients get new customers, when not working there is a 95% chance he is praying with his family. Follow him on Facebook @usmanraza40 and Twitter @usmanintrotech

Brochures are one of the most commonly used materials of various businesses to advertise or market their products to potential clients aside from pull up banners and roller banners. There are different types of brochures available. It’s important that companies are aware of these and that they understand their functions to ensure that they serve their purpose. Here are six of the most popular types of brochures to use in your business.

1. Respond to Queries

This type of brochure is used for potential customers who already know about your business. They may have learned about it through a marketing campaign, advertisement, social media, etc. These people already know about your company and they are interested in the products or services that you offer. The content of respond to queries brochures must talk about all the reasons or facts that would encourage people to do business with you. This is where all your sales strategy must be included.

1. Leave Behinds

If you have a personal meeting with prospective customers, this is the type of brochure that you will give them, as the term suggests. Since you most probably already explained to them everything they need to know about your business and what you offer, the brochure must contain a summary of what you have explained. Include information or details that may be hard to remember so they have a reference. This is also where you can add a comparison between you and other competitors to show why they should choose you.

1. Handouts

If you don’t have a physical place where people can get your brochures or you are giving it to people who you didn’t have a meeting with, this type of brochure is one of your options. Handouts must catch the attention of people and they should be inviting enough to make people read them from cover to cover, thus making them know about you. Everything should be well thought out, from the images and text to the paper to use for the brochure printing. The quality of the paper and ink used for brochure printing must stand out. The same is true when printing other marketing materials like leaflet printing, flyer printing, and business card printing.

1. Sales Support Tool

Sales people use this brochure as a support when making their pitch. Key elements that correspond with what the sales person is explaining are included in this brochure. It doesn’t have to be detailed or too complex, as the sales person will talk about the information that needs to be given to the customers. This brochure will serve as a guide for them to make it easier to follow what the sales person is discussing.

1. Direct Mail

Like handouts, the people to whom you will be sending this brochure do not have the initial interest in getting your products or services. These are called cold prospects. Instead of handing them out personally, this brochure is sent via direct mail. The content and presentation must also be carefully thought out, to make the recipient feel interested in reading what’s inside and learning what you have to offer.

1. Point of Sale

This type of brochure is placed somewhere that can be easily spotted by people. These brochures are common in banks, and various commercial establishments. They give a preview of the products or services offered by the company but they do not contain all the information. Potential clients will then get more information from the company’s representatives or customer support to learn more about their business.

These are the most common types of brochures used in businesses. Determine which of them best fits the purpose in your own case – to ensure that you will benefit from it.

Pop up banners are extremely useful when it comes to advertising. Potential buyers can come forward and have a closer look at information about your company and products. If the information presented in the banner is not enough, they can call the company or visit the website, if the contact details are also presented in the banner.

Writing information on a banner is not enough. It has to stand out. When placed next to the banners made by other companies, people have to make a choice. They won’t have enough time to look at every single available banner. Therefore, a banner that stands out right from the get go will most likely get more attention.

1. Banner size

Choosing a size that is different from traditional orientations will provide a surprise. It will be noticed easily, and people will be curious about what is written on it. A slightly bigger banner or one that has a unique shape will surely catch attention.

1. Have a call to action

The goal is, that after seeing the banner, people will be tempted to call the company for more information, or visit the website. Therefore, it helps to have a call to action on the banner. The most often used phrase is “Call us”. Avoid using it since people will most likely feel bored with it. Be original. Play with words.

1. Colour choice

Whether you are using pull up banners or pop up banners, colour plays an important role. Using too many colours is not a good idea since it can be very distracting. Focus on the message. If anything, the colour has to highlight the message and not distract people’s attention.

1. Animation

This might be an extra expense, but it could be worth it. You might have seen banners where there is fake confetti falling. Others have moving characters that are totally inviting. If used the right way, animation could be the oomph factor that you are looking for to convince more people to buy your products.

It takes time to think about the content of Pop up Banners. It is important that you come up with something interesting. Competition in advertising is a lot tougher these days, so try to be creative when using a pop up banner or roller banner, or people will find it boring.

The goal is to at least get their attention and let them know more about your company. Once they understand your brand, it will be easier to retain their loyalty, encourage them to purchase your products or services, and build strong and long-lasting customer relationships which are mutually beneficial.

I have two good size dogs (both greater than 50 pounds.) I installed an invisible fence to give them some room to run without hurting themselves.

An invisible fence shocks (via the collar) the dogs when they get too close to the fence. It is not  a harmful shock, just enough to let them know the boundaries.

Yesterday, I wanted to take the dogs for a walk and removed their collars so they could leave the yard. Neither dog wanted to leave the yard for fear of shock. I had to carry both of them across the fence line. One on the other side both had a great time.

How does this apply to marketing?

When to comes marketing many of us wear our marketing collar. When our marketing does not work, the shock we experience is lack of results, spending money, and wasting time. The collar limits what we might try; we say to ourselves, “after all I tried that and it didn’t work” or “what if it doesn’t work and I waste all this money (time)?”

I once had a roofing client and we were planning some marketing tactics. Every  tactic I suggest his response was the same, “I tried that and it didn’t work!” After the 10^th suggestion I finally said, “these tactics have worked for thousands of companies but they don’t work for you, what is the one thing they have in common?”

He thought for a moment and said, “me!”

This gentleman was never trained is marketing and he made several fundamental mistakes that, if corrected, could have a big impact on his business. But his invisible fence would not allow him to try something different. His yard was pretty small and his company was suffering.

What is your invisible fence? Is it spending money on marketing or on marketing coaching? Is it trying something you never tried before? Is it fear of failing or not knowing who to trust? What is the shock you feel: shame for failing, embarrassment for not knowing, fear of being taken advantage of or not being in control?

Marketing can be easy and fun when you know what you are doing. And it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money because you can do it yourself. It is not that hard.

Let’s remove your collar or at least provide you the opportunity to remove the collar and learn a proven  marketing system that works to generate more leads, convert more leads to customers, get customer to buy more, sell value – not price, make more money, learn how to build a website that generates leads, learn dozens of up sell, down sell and cross sell strategies that your competition does not know or use, learn how to put your follow-up on auto pilot and so much more – all at your own pace.