Content Marketing

How Brands can Benefit From Creating Ephemeral Content

August 9, 2018 By Sophorn Chhay Leave a Comment

At first glance, the notion of ephemeral marketing doesn’t make much sense from a business perspective. After all, why would you spend precious resources on producing a piece of promotional content that’s only going to be available for a short amount time? And yet, ephemeral content is currently one of the hottest digital marketing trends. So what’s the story behind this discrepancy?

Part of the answer can be uncovered by taking a look at how such content is being distributed online. The top three platforms for sharing ephemeral content are Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. Instagram Stories alone is sitting at 400 million daily active users, which is more than Facebook Stories and Snapchat have combined (150m and 190m respectively). Tapping into such a large pool of users can be a lucrative prospect, provided you can deliver a constant stream of content updates.

To find out more about the ways brands are benefiting from ephemeral content, check out our short guide on the topic in the text below.

Keep Them Asking For More

A common mistake that people make is to think that being ephemeral is inherently a disadvantage when content is concerned. In reality, short-lived content can actually be far more effective at eliciting a reaction from the audience. If you create a piece of content that your audience enjoys, but which will become unavailable soon after, their only means of finding something similar is to keep waiting until you produce more of it. Scarcity is a powerful driving force, and ephemeral content is one of the best ways to leverage for improving audience engagement.

1. Fear of Missing Out

Another psychological principle that underpins ephemeral content is called FOMO, or fear of missing out. FOMO is characterized by a sense of anxiety that arises out of a perception that others are having worthwhile experiences without us. It arises as a result of a desire to keep in touch with what others are doing at all times. Ephemeral content is inherently geared towards eliciting feelings of this sort. After all, it is quite likely that you will miss out on content, if it has an expiration date. And the best way to alleviate FOMO is to pay more attention to ephemeral content updates.

1. Let Bygones be Bygones

So far we have talked about how being ephemeral can actually amplify the effectiveness of content for producing a positive audience reaction. But ephemeral content is also well suited for managing negative feedback. Not every content update you publish will be of the same standard of quality. Some might be met with criticism, and other will fail to generate a response at all. If such content remains permanently available, it will continue to generate a negative response. But if it stuck around only for a short while, there would be nothing left to keep reminding your audience of the negative experiences they had.

1. An Authentic Experience

We have been using the word “ephemeral” to denote content that is available for a limited time. But in another sense, ephemeral content also alludes to the fact that it was created in the spur of the moment, without much forethought. This gives it an aura of authenticity, which is something internet users have grown to appreciate now that standardized, corporate content has become the norm online. Brands that offer ephemeral content are therefore perceived as being more in touch with “the little guy”. In other words, ephemeral can be used to give brands a human face, which is a feat that some of the top digital agencies have managed to achieve.

1. Outsourcing Content Creation

Part of the reason why ephemeral content is so popular is the fact that practically anyone can make it. All you need is a smartphone and some time on your hands, and you can create something that actually has a shot at becoming a viral sensation. This makes ephemeral content creation a perfect fit for crowdsourcing. By incentivizing your audience to produce content in your stead, you can drastically reduce the costs of your content marketing strategy. In exchange for exposure and a few perks, you can gain access to large pool of talented content creators, which is a deal that few companies would be willing to pass up.

1. Recruiting Gen Z

Over time, each content marketing strategy develops its own preferred audience. In the case of ephemeral content marketing, the audience in question is Generation Z. This demographic cohort consists of people born after 1995. These individuals grew up fully immersed in the online world, and they are have wholeheartedly embraced social media as means of everyday communication. They are used to consuming ephemeral content on a daily basis, which makes them prime targets for ephemeral content marketing. While their spending power is still less than their millennial counterparts, in the coming years Gen Z is set to become the audience of choice for businesses world-wide.

1. Get on the Ephemeral Bandwagon

The impact that ephemeral content has had on the world of marketing stands in stark contrast to its shelf-life. And as content creation tools and platforms become more widely available, we are likely to see an even greater emphasis on it in the future. We hope that our guide can help you to capitalize on this emerging trend.

Drug Treatment Marketing: You Have Traffic, Now What? CTA’s and Conversions

July 12, 2018 By Sophorn Chhay Leave a Comment

The biggest shift in this modern age is how the digital world has become such a huge part of everyone’s life. Everybody is online almost 24/7 so it is no wonder why businesses have followed this trend in order to reach the consumers.

But reaching out to the target audience is only half of what is being done as companies also look into individual’s behavioral pattern particularly on what people like, where they spend most of their time, and how often do they visit the sites.

For drug rehab facilities where the battleground is almost always online (also taking into account the underlying question patients’ ask “can you have a cell phone in rehab,” your call-to-action (CTA) messaging is crucial to conversions. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, there are more than 14,500 drug rehab centers in the United States, so the competition is definitely stiff.

In digital marketing, CTAs are most often overlooked. But statistics reveal that it’s almost as important are your headline as 9 in 10 of your visitors arrive at a decision after reading your CTA. In fact, just putting a CTA on your drug rehab Facebook page will boost conversion by as much as 2.85%.

But it’s not just as easy as asking your visitors to “sign up now!” or “register online today!” If your CTA is too weak, you fail to convince potential clients. Too strong, and you risk turning them off. Below are some of the quick tips in order to tweak your CTAs to boost your conversion.

Add Value to Your Text

Your CTA is the topping for your cake. Or to make another analogy, the uppercut that will finish off the fight. If your visitors managed to read the whole text, then you have already a captive audience. You got them hooked, now you need to reel them in. The customers should still feel that their needs are being met when they read the CTA. In this sense, the call-to-action text or button will feel like the next logical step, a guide to what they will do next.

Your CTAs Should Stand Out

There are many strategies that drug rehab centers adopt for their CTAs. A quick browse of your competitors’ sites should give you an idea of how they do it. Some use sound to draw attention to the CTA button. Others will employ contrasting colors so the button will stand out.

To achieve this, you should:

Avoid too much noise around your CTA button
Make your text on the button distinct (e.g. “Does your loved one need help?”)
The CTA button should be surrounded by white space so it “floats”

Create a Sense of Urgency

This strategy is no different from the “SALE” or “75% off” promo on shopping malls. Mallgoers, even if they had no intention of buying, will find the huge discount too tempting to resist. You are going to appeal to people’s basic sense of instinct and trigger an emotional response. Putting in the words “now” or “today” is just one example of creating a sense of urgency. You may have noticed that they are still being used by most websites. The simple explanation is that they still work, just like the red label tag on shopping malls signifying a sale.

Make sure that your CTA is:

Clear
Relevant
Provide value
Not confusing

Positioning Matters

The eye-tracking study by the Nielsen Norman Group revealed that online readers follow the F-shape pattern. This means that they spend too much time on the left side of your page as well as the top. This is why your first paragraph is crucial if you want your readers to continue reading. The F-shape pattern also gives you an idea of where to place your call-to-action button. It should be at the top to the right side of the window where your readers will naturally see it even if they don’t finish the whole page.

Make Sure Your CTA is Aligned With Your Landing Page

A bad landing page is the fastest way to lose your customers. You just did all that work for nothing. The landing page should fulfill or add value to what you are promising in your CTA.

You are only going to confuse your visitors if the landing page is very different from the CTA. They are going to leave immediately thinking that they hadn’t arrived at the right place. Another way to stand out in the drug rehab industry is not to put any CTA button on your website.

Admittedly, this is a risky proposition, but it’s been proven to work in countless cases. If you can’t convince your visitors of getting your services after they browse through the page, you have no fallback plan. However, you need the help of an experienced digital marketing company to make this work because your value-proposition is contained in your main message, whether it’s video, audio or text.

7 Rules of Content Marketing

May 24, 2018 By Sophorn Chhay Leave a Comment

Content marketing has become the number one tool in the process of promoting products and brands on the Internet market. It came to replace the intrusive, ubiquitous direct advertising, the effectiveness of which is rapidly falling.

Those companies that have already implemented this tool at home, actively blog, develop communities in social networks, make regular email-mailing. However, not all content marketing “shoots”. Filling out a blog with articles, recording hundreds of videos and casting subscribers with letters is not enough for a good result.

Therefore, many are concerned with the question: what should be done to make content marketing bring money? How to attract real customers and increase sales with the help of content? We’ll discuss the ways to make your content marketing effective.

What is content marketing, and why is it necessary for your business?

First of all, we should understand what content marketing is, and what functions it performs in the business system.

Content marketing is a special tool for attracting, warming up and retaining the target audience, increasing recognition and sales. This content: articles, posts, letters, video, audio, photos, infographics, the content of which is interesting and useful to your client.

If the task of direct advertising is a one-time sale, then the task of content marketing is to build trust relationships with customers and sell them again and again. It is not necessary to explain that keeping an existing customer is much cheaper than attracting a new one. In addition, the banal “banner blindness”, which arose among users against the background of constant information noise, significantly reduces the effectiveness of such a touch. Therefore, it is obvious that content marketing wins in opposition to direct advertising.

Now let’s consider what tasks content marketing solves in the framework of promoting products and business. So, this tool performs 4 important functions.

Attraction of traffic to the company’s website

First, useful content is a magnet for the audience itself. The amount of informational waste makes people appreciate really high-quality materials that meet their needs and solve problems.

Secondly, regularly updated, relevant and seo-optimized content in the blog helps to improve the company’s position in search results and, accordingly, to increase the flow of real traffic to the site.

In addition, social channels (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.) quickly and fairly easily distribute useful content, thereby increasing the reach of the audience and gaining additional traffic and, as a result, new potential customers.

Audience retention

People come to the Internet for information. Moreover, they are looking for serious, educational, and entertaining content. Everything depends on their goals. In addition, quality content marketing not only involves the user, it keeps him on the site, not letting go. The concept of “audience retention” has two facets: keeping the visitor on the site for a certain time and keeping the client in the stage of activity.

For example, we have an article. Let’s suppose you took it from the search engine, exploring the issue of content marketing. In this material, you find references to other publications on the topic that interests you. You go to the next article, then watch the video on the channel, then you go to the social network – and so on. That is, instead of reading the material and leaving, you continue to get acquainted with the content of the company for some time.

From the other point of view – content marketing helps to keep customers and convert them into a re-purchase. With the help of a series of letters, articles, posts, videos and other types of content, you train customers to properly consume the product and get the maximum result, support their interest in the company.

Closing of objections of clients

Too expensive or vice versa – suspiciously cheap. Can you trust to an unknown company? Will you get the result? Almost any objection of the client regarding the purchase of a particular product can be “overtaken” and worked out in its own content.

Target audience is being scared off by the high price? Write an article on the blog explaining why your product costs so much, what are its differences and benefits, what benefits the client will receive by making a purchase from you.

What if people do not understand how to use the product correctly? Create a vivid video with a demonstration of all the features of the product in practice.

That is, competent content marketing can turn a doubting potential client into a motivated buyer.

Formation of loyalty of target audience

As already mentioned above, content marketing equally takes into account both the company’s business goals and the needs of customers. Useful, interesting and relevant content that meets the specific needs of the audience, builds trust and loyalty to the brand.

With the help of social networks and blogs, you can tell your story to the target audience, communicate values and views, show expertise in any field, answer user questions, engage in dialogue, give advice, train, etc. Thus, you build relationships with potential customers, warm them up and lead to a decision about buying.

However, in order for content marketing to successfully perform these tasks, you need to understand that the content generated by you must be selling.

Content and content marketing. What is the difference?

Content and selling content are two different things. Content, as such, is simply information, a set of words and pixels. The man consumed it and went on.

The global task of content marketing is to sell. Therefore, the selling content, in turn, requires the user to perform a response. In addition, here it is important to understand that in this case “sale” is any target audience action in relation to business. It can be like: comment, repost, go to the link to the landing page, subscribe, add a review in the product card, participate in the contest and, of course, purchase your product.

That is, the task of selling content is to stimulate a person to perform a specific targeted action. Accordingly, any information unit, whether it be a post in Facebook or a video on YouTube, should urge the target audience to respond to you.

The selling content must be:

relevant – that is, to reveal the client’s pain, to correspond to his interests, desires, requests;
useful – to solve a problem;
unique – contain new information for the audience;
and most importantly – motivating to commit you need a targeted action (like, comment, transition, purchase, etc.).

However, in order for the content marketing to produce the desired results, in addition to making high quality marketing content, it is necessary to follow certain important rules.

The rules of content marketing

Many companies have their own groups in social networks, channels on YouTube, blogs, etc. Some of them are quite successful and regularly generate new clients for the business. However, let’s be frank, most communities / blogs / channels exist for a tick. They are inactive or completely “dead,” intuitive, and filled with irrelevant content. Such actions have nothing to do with content marketing, which we are talking about.

Effective content marketing should be well organized and systematic. Therefore, we recommend that you follow the rules to “squeeze” out a maximum of this tool.

Rule # 1. Build content marketing around the “Big Idea” of your company.

Big Idea is a key message that the company broadcasts to audiences in all its marketing activities: advertising, packaging and product design, articles, posts on social networks, videos, etc. It combines content into a single whole, makes it logical and memorable.

Without Big Idea, your content marketing will look like an exploded puzzle – there is information, but there is no obvious connection between it and the company. It will be much more difficult to form a correct idea about your business.

Therefore, before implementing content marketing, you need to develop the Big Idea of your business. This idea needs to be systematically broadcast in all its content, so that in the minds of potential customers, step by step a correct picture of your brand is created.

Take, for example, the Volvo company. What associations do you have with this brand of cars? Certainly “security”, “reliability”, “protection”, etc. This is how millions of people around the world think. Why? It’s all just in the Big Idea of Volvo brand. For many years, the entire marketing of the company revolves around one idea – “a feeling of complete security”. Each video on TV, banner on the Internet, poster in the magazine, every advertising campaign of any model of the Volvo car carries this message.

Due to such large-scale implementation of Big Idea in marketing communications, the necessary association has firmly established in the minds of people that Volvo is the most reliable and safe car in the world.

Rule # 2. Describe the goals and strategy of content marketing.

Content marketing should be a continuation of the company’s key marketing strategy. For example, you need to improve brand awareness, increase customer loyalty, increase sales by X percent for Y days, rebuild from competitors, return lost customers, etc.

That is, on the basis of the company’s overall marketing strategy, you need to set goals for content marketing – what results should it ultimately bring in the business? Then, considering these goals, you need to formulate a strategy for your content marketing – how you will achieve these goals.

Rule # 3. Examine the needs and desires of your target audience.

Without a perfect understanding of your audience, you create useless content that will not bring the expected result. The essence of content marketing is the generation of information that is sufficient, useful and interesting to a specific target audience. Remember this.

Rule # 4. Do not try to reach the entire audience at once.

Addressing the content directly to the entire audience, you generalize the problems of Central Asia and, in the end, do not give it a concrete solution. In addition, this means that interest in content is reduced to zero.

For example, all people are concerned about the crisis in their own way. For some, it is important to find out in which currency it is more profitable to keep bank deposits, for others – how to find a decent job, and for the third – whether it is worth taking an apartment in a mortgage now. Each segment has its own pain. Your task is to “get” into this pain and give a concrete solution.

Separate your CA and work with its individual groups, appealing specifically to their pains, desires, interests. Focus on the segments. This will help create more accurate, meaningful and valuable content.

Rule # 5. Make a clear content plan.

Effective content marketing is impossible without an approved exit plan for publications. Without it, your actions will be inaccurate. In other words, you will not understand what exactly is to give the audience, where and when it is more preferable to post your material in order to get the maximum result.

The content plan should contain a clear schedule of publications, headings, topics and channels for promotion. Due to this, it ensures regularity and systematic content marketing.

Rule # 6. Engage in SEO.

Do not forget about the possibility of attracting additional organic traffic. Be sure to write seo-articles to the blog, but not a set of phrases for search robots, and quality, useful materials for your target audience, using relevant keywords. Also, optimize your videos on YouTube to see more users, post tags to posts.

Remember that high-quality content is a must have, and optimized quality content will provide an increase in organic to your sites.

Rule # 7. Learn the analytics.

Analytics is necessary in order to correct the strategy in time, to strengthen the content plan and get the maximum ROI. Ignoring the data, you are blind and waste resources.

Analyze the activity of consumers of your content. At what time they are more inclined to open letters, watch videos and keep up their positions? Based on the data obtained, develop an improvement strategy and test it.

How effective your content strategy is and what results it brings, you can measure by 3 key metrics:

social inclusion – coverage, number of likes, comments, reposts, graph of the greatest activity of users;
traffic growth – the number of unique visitors on the landing pages, the sources of the transitions;
Conversion of traffic into a targeted action.

It’s important to keep a firm grip on the pulse and keep track of which types of content work best with your audience, conduct surveys, get maximum feedback from subscribers, analyze the data received and flexibly respond to changes in content marketing.

About the author: One of the most amazing modern writers Melisa Marzett will impress you with her style of writing. Check http://findwritingservice.com/ and enjoy!

Online Lead Generation for B2C Companies

May 22, 2018 By Sophorn Chhay Leave a Comment

The world of online lead generation has changed. If we look at what the bigger companies are doing, it is no longer about hitting consumers with the hard sell but building rapport and making them to want to find you. Once they make contact, the ball is then in your court and you need to build on and nurture the relationship between you so that they don’t want to go elsewhere, enabling you to generate leads.

Let’s take a look at how you can do this if you are a B2C company looking to build your business and produce leads online:

Content marketing – Every business needs leads and by taking the time to get your content spot-on, interesting and relevant, your target audience will be attracted and engaged. It needs to be valuable and powerful enough to encourage them to visit your website, provide contact information and hopefully save your site to their ‘favorites’ tab. This is the first step on the ladder towards building a relationship between the two of you. Remember the quote, “If you build it, he will come”? Well the same applies to content – if you make it relevant and appropriate, your customers will follow. And this doesn’t only apply to blogs – whilst blogs work well, you can also create content via free e-books to be downloaded, videos, podcasts and the very popular social media posts. Don’t limit yourself; use them all. And when it comes to social sharing, encourage it, letting your content do all of the hard work for you.

Take the time to define your target audience demographics (maybe create your own customer avatar). Look at what they value, what they are looking for in terms of information, what inspires them and where they spend most of their time looking at. If you focus on creating interest and relationships rather than selling, your audience will come to you.

Company B2C website – Every B2C company needs a website and from it, plenty of web leads. This is a vital lead generation tool and if your website is created correctly and professionally, it will work hard for you. When you post content online, make sure it directs people to your site. Your SEO strategies need to be taken care of effectively with traffic coming from organic or paid searches. If you have a web designer in Birmingham building or revamping your site, they will ensure that it does all of the following and generating leads online:

Ranks well in SEO results, pushing traffic in your direction
Grabs attention as soon as visitors hit the landing page
Has contact forms that are simply and easy to complete
Contains valuable downloads, blogs or other such content
Engages with great visuals
Provides a top source of information
Has calls to action that really engage and persuade viewers to click on buttons

On top of all of this, your company website needs to be incredibly appealing and easy to navigate. Your landing pages should connect with viewers very quickly and be for a specific purpose. They should never be over-complicated and should always show your logo and company name. Showing Privacy Policies on your website will also help to create an air of trust and security.

Social Media Marketing – Don’t make the mistake of trying to use social media to promote your products/services; you must only use it to tell stories, create trust and interest and encourage the creation of relationships. My making your content highly shareable, readers will love it, particularly if it is funny, inspirational or gives them some sort of value. Your website designer can add Google Analytics to your site so that you can see how popular your posts are and how much traffic they are generating in term of real leads. You will also receive details about your lead conversion rates.

Google Lead Services – If you are thinking of hiring a professional company to look after your B2C lead generation via paid or organic Google searches, don’t fall into the trap of signing up for ‘Google Lead Services’. The site that you will land on has nothing to do with Google and is crammed with ads. If you do decide to sign up using PayPal, you will receive nothing more than a few banner ads on websites that are completely unknown. If you are looking for real bona fide lead generation services from reputable online lead generation companies, use one that you know and trust and who comes with recommendations and testimonials. They will also be able to provide you with some lead generation website examples.

So as you can see, generating leads online for your B2C company is not difficult but you do need to provide high quality content and make sure that your website and online lead production is taken care of by experts who know what they are doing.

That way, you should receive only good quality leads, enabling you to grow your B2C company in a safe and reliable way.

Marketing Budget: Social Media, Blogging, and Email

April 6, 2018 By Chin Rath Leave a Comment

Social media marketing, blogging with search engine optimization (SEO) best practices and email marketing are three of the most common forms of content marketing businesses rely on. But before you jump into managing your company’s Facebook page or sending out an e-newsletter, you need to have your marketing budget in place.

Last week I shared an overview of how to create one and important considerations for your social media advertising campaign. Today I’ll focus on organic social media management, blogging for SEO and email marketing.

What are your goals for these tactics? Which ones will draw more of your focus? How much do you plan to spend on them? Before you can answer the question of the dollar amount to place on social media marketing, blogging or email marketing, it’s important you have a clear overview of all the different variables involved.

Marketing Budget Consideration: Organic Social Media Management

How much of your marketing budget should allocate to social media?

Unlike social media advertising, organic social media management focuses on your non-paid presence. Although social networks are increasingly playing to their advertisers, it’s still important for your brand to have an unpaid presence. As explained in this post about why organic social media is still important:

It’s Cost-Effective
It Provides Authenticity
It Compliments Advertising
It Fosters Your Creative Voice
It Provides a Forum for Customer Care
It Builds Engaged Communities More Effectively
It Helps Search Engine Optimization

Although organic social media marketing is cost effective, it’s important to remember it’s not free. No, you don’t need to pay Facebook or Twitter to publish updates on your page, but it does take time and resources to develop a strategy, carefully craft your updates, publish them on the page and monitor for engagement. Whether you take it on in-house or outsource to a social media firm, it will cost your business dollars and cents.

As you determine how much of your marketing budget to spend on organic social media management, consider the following questions.

1. Which Platforms Will You Focus On?

While you don’t need to be on every social media channel, you do need to have an active, well-managed presence on a few. As CEO Erika Montgomery recommends below, focus your efforts on a couple of networks.

Consider which social platforms your target audiences uses. For example, if you’re trying to target millennial women, you probably want to invest in Facebook and Instagram. However, if your target is millennial men, Twitter and YouTube would be better sites to focus on. Or, if you’re a B2B company trying to reach older decision-makers, you may want to spend more of your marketing budget on LinkedIn, and then secondarily invest in Facebook. Check out this infographic about the demographics of social media for helpful insight.

2. How Often Will You Post?

Once you’ve determined which social media platforms you’ll focus on, you need to think about how often you’ll post new updates. There’s a big difference between basic page maintenance (posting one or two times a week) and a robust presence (two to three updates going live a day).

As you think about how often you’ll post on each platform, remember to factor in the amount of time it will take to create the updates. What types of content will you publish? Are you sharing posts from your blog, articles from other websites that are related to your industry, videos you create, inspiring images or insightful infographics?

At Three Girls, we recommend sharing a variety of content by following the 80/20 rule. Aim for about 20 percent of your updates to be self-promotional and the remaining 80 percent to reinforce your expertise by being related to your industry, but not all about you and your business.

3. How Much Time Will You Spend Preparing Updates?

Remember it takes time to create social media updates! Account for it in your marketing budget.

How much time will it take you to look for and choose articles to share, design images to post or create a quick video? Some videos, like Facebook Live, won’t take much time as they’re so quick and easy, but if you’re planning to share videos that require scripts, editing and other post-production work, factor that time into your marketing budget.

4. What Tools Will You Use?

Will your social media strategy require that you invest in specific tools? Here are some you may want to factor into your marketing budget:

Stock Photos – if you’re going to be creating images to share, and you don’t have the time or ability to take photos to use in them, consider a subscription to a website like 123RF so you can rest assured you aren’t breaking any copyright infringement laws.
Photo or Video Editing Software – Are you planning to purchase a program like Adobe Photoshop to edit photos for your social media pages? If so, include it in your marketing budget. The good news is, depending on how much editing you plan on doing, there are some really great cost-effective or free graphic design options out there.
Third-Party Scheduling Software – In effective social media management, it’s important you post regularly. But you don’t want the headache of needing to log into each account every day, find the update you already wrote and cut/paste it in. While Facebook pages do have a scheduling option, you may want one central hub where you can upload all your updates for multiple social sites at once and see where and when each will go live. There are a wide variety of social media scheduling websites out there, but we recommend Hootsuite as it’s both cost-effective and relatively easy to use.

5. How Regularly Will You Monitor Your Pages?

Your answer to this should be very regularly – at least once a day, although a few times a day is better. While it doesn’t take a lot of time to log into Facebook or Instagram, check for interaction and respond as appropriate, it does add up. Spending 10-15 minutes a couple of times a day is approximately 15 hours a month. Make sure you factor this time into your marketing budget.

Marketing Budget Consideration: Blogging For SEO

How much of your marketing budget are you spending on blogging?

One of the best ways to increase online visibility for your brand is through blogging for SEO. This means you’re consistent and strategic with each post. While this is a long-term strategy, it’s worth allocating part of your marketing budget to it.

Here are a few statistics about the importance of blogging (via IMPACT):

47 percent of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.
B2B marketers that use blogs get 67 percent more leads than those that do not.
Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to achieve a positive ROI on their efforts.
SEO leads have a 14.6 percent close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7 percent close rate.
51 percent of business owners report that content management is “very important” or “absolutely critical” to creating a cohesive buyer journey.

So what questions do you need to answer as you determine how much of your marketing budget you’ll spend on blogging?

1. How Often Will You Publish New Posts?

It’s important you publish new articles on your blog regularly. Search engines will monitor websites for new content; the more frequently you update with fresh articles, the more often they’ll come back and index your posts, which can benefit your SEO.

In the ideal world, you’d publish a new post daily. However, that could be extremely expensive, especially if you focus on longer articles – many top performing posts on Google these days are 1,000 words or more. The good news is that even if you only publish once a week, if you’re uploading a well-written, strategic post on the same day of the week and the same time of day, it can greatly benefit your business’ online visibility.

2. How Much Will Blog Writing Cost?

If you write your blog posts yourself, how much of your valuable time will they take? Recent research shows the average blog posts takes professional writers 3 hours and 20 minutes to write. Do you have that much time to carve out of your schedule each week? Remember that your time is valuable too.

If you’re trying to put a dollar amount on it for the sake of your marketing budget (or if you’re considering outsourcing to a content marketing firm), remember how much you bill clients for your time.

Also, it’s worth noting that time estimate is for professional writers. Depending on how much experience you have researching a topic, typing it out into an article that makes sense and editing the post, you may want to account for more of your time.

Another factor to consider is your own knowledge regarding SEO, too. Are you familiar with best practices? It will take time to research them, and to stay up-to-date as search engines update their algorithms.

3. How Will You Publicize Your Blog Posts?

Just because you write the blog post, it doesn’t mean your target consumers will automatically find it. How will you publicize your post? In addition to creating a publicity plan, you’ll need to follow through. If you share the post via social media, how much time will it take you to write and schedule the updates? Are you going to run a social media ad around it? If so, that needs to be factored into your marketing budget as well.

This is why it’s good to physically write down each piece of your overall strategy to plan your marketing budget. Because the various tactics aren’t completely separate, you’ll need a clear picture of your overall approach to know how much to factor into social media ads or organic updates in regards to your blogging plans.

Marketing Budget Consideration: Email Marketing

Consider these email marketing elements as you put together your marketing budget.

The final piece of many standard content marketing campaigns is email marketing. While some people claim email is dead, research shows this isn’t true at all.

Statista reports there were 3.7 billion email users in 2017, and it’s projected to grow to 4.3 billion by 2022
According to eMarketer, email had a media ROI of 122 percent. This is four times higher than social media, direct mail and paid search marketing formats
Hubspot reports 86 percent of consumers would like to receive promotional emails from companies they do business with at least monthly

Here are some important considerations when factoring email into your marketing budget.

1. Which Email Marketing Platform Will You Use?

While some, like MailChimp, offer a free plan, once you reach a certain threshold you’ll need to subscribe to a paid account. As you research which email marketing platform to use, consider how many contacts you have and how often you plan to send out an e-newsletter. Some charge based on the number of distributions within a given period (such as a month).

2. Who Will Create Your Email Design?

Will you create one based on a template that’s provided, or will you hire someone to create a custom design for you? Many email marketing providers offer custom design services, but they come at a cost.

3. How Will You Create Emails?

It’s important to think about the amount of time you spend creating emails each month – your time is valuable. Will you write, upload and format it monthly? Bi-monthly? Weekly?

In addition to thinking about how many emails to allow for in your marketing budget, consider how long each one will be and how you’ll develop the content. Will you pull articles from your blog? Share news stories relevant to your industry? Write completely new content every time?

Remember to factor in potential additional costs, such as purchasing stock photos, designing accompanying graphics or creating videos you embed in the newsletter.

4. How Will You Manage Your List?

Remember managing your email marketing list as you put together your marketing budget.

Are you going to segment your list? Depending on the type of business you have and what types of emails you’re sending out, you may want to!

Hubspot reports segmented e-newsletters are responsible for 58 percent of all revenue. If you segment your list, though, how do you plan to manage it? Segmentation can be powerful, but it also requires keeping up on the various lists.

For example, if you have a list for current clients and then a customer leaves, you’ll want to move them to another list. It takes time and attention to detail to do this well, so make sure your marketing budget factors in time to do it yourself or to hire someone to manage it for you.

5. How Will You Grow Your List?

Spend time creating a strategy to increase your list. While we don’t recommend buying lists of email addresses, growing your list organically or through targeted advertising can be a highly effective way to populate your list with potential customers.

Here are specifics to look into and add to your marketing budget:

Will you add a plug-in to your website to prompt visitors to join your list? If so, is the one you want to use free or is there a fee involved? Is it a one-time fee or will you need to renew your subscription either monthly or annually?
Will you run an ad campaign to increase your subscribers? Facebook’s lead ads can be a powerful way to specifically grow your list, but the cost per lead rate is higher than some of their other ads; in addition to the creative you’ll need to create, factor the higher ad rate into your marketing budget.
Will you offer download incentives on your website? A lot of businesses have a page on their website that offers a white paper, report or guide in exchange for a name and email address. If you use this approach, what will you offer? How much will it cost to create? How often will you change to a new incentive?

More Marketing Budget Factors To Come!

Creating an effective marketing budget takes a lot of strategic planning, but it’s worth it! While organic social media marketing, blogging for SEO and email marketing are the most common content marketing tactics, there are more worth exploring. Stay tuned for next week’s post, which will share additional marketing approaches you may want to consider as you put together your marketing budget.