Kayla’s 484 Blog

For this weeks blog post I want to focus on the best ways to manage your brand image, and your marketing strategy. Managing your brand’s online reputation, and content is a key way to build a successful online presence, and keep it that way!

Focus on Conversation

This doesn’t mean you know each follower’s life story or how their day has been, but what this does mean is that you are engaging with leads who want to engage with you, whether it be sharing information, a funny reply to a tweet, or commenting on posts that you are tagged in, engaging with followers is an important way to set the tone for your brand and manage what is coming into your social channels. For example, say a customer mentions you with a concern on Twitter, they may be having a negative experience at the moment, but you can spin that into a win for your brand by replying with helpful tips and information, or even humor where appropriate. This is just one of many ways that you can use social media to create a positive tone around your brand!

Customer Service is KEY

This builds on my point about creating conversation, and the example I just gave, however, that is just exactly how important customer care is! Having a customer care team that is scanning for complaints or concerns is the key to creating lasting relationships and maintaining your brand position through managing social channels.

One way you can easily do this is through a social monitoring and management program like Hootsuite or Sprinklr. These programs allow you to have a dashboard tailored to your brand and specific keywords that pertain to your brand’s identity and ability to manage incoming comments, concerns, or positive feedback. Using a tool like this puts you ahead of the competition and makes it easier to address each comment or concern where need be, and leaves little room for a social blunder.

We Messed Up: Now What?

In the event of a social media fiasco or a PR crisis, be proactive rather than reactive. In other words, be sure to plan and prepare your responses. This is a step most marketers miss, because they want to respond fast and clear the fire. Creating a plan helps you to have steps to follow throughout the process.

However, this doesn’t mean to hesitate on an apology. Things will not die down until you admit to the mistake and give them something positive to talk about, you may not be able to go back in time and change the scenario, but what you can do is make it better and restore faith in your brand! Show people that one blunder is not the complete culture of your company, and give them a reason to stay with you. People want to feel good about companies they work with or buy from and one mistake does not mean you have completely lost their business, it just means you have to do some work to earn it back!

Sources Cited:

“5 Ways to Improve Your Digital Marketing Strategy.” Emarsys, 20 Aug. 2019, www.emarsys.com/resources/blog/5-ways-to-improve-your-digital-marketing-strategy/.

Schrieberg, Ethan. “Social Media PR Crisis: What to Do If Your Brand Goes Viral for the Wrong Reasons.” Marketing, VitalBriefing, 16 July 2019, marketing.toolbox.com/article/social-media-pr-crisis-what-to-do-if-your-brand-goes-viral-for-the-wrong-reasons.

If you’re reading this and wondering, “What is a persona?”, fear not! It’s pretty simple, and we’re gonna dive right in and see how personas connect to successful email marketing campaigns!

What is a Persona? A Simple Definition.

To put it simply, a persona is a charecter who represents a user who may be interested in using your product, service, website, or any other offering.

Personas are extremely valuable to the marketing field because it helps to remove yourself and focus on human centered design and the variety of people who you are designing your product, content, etc., for.

One of the main things a persona does is brings data and statistics to life by putting a name and a face to the numbers. For example, when researching who is going to be your target market for your new product, the FitGYM, a home gym that provides a variety of exercise equipment, you find that your target market includes men and women between the ages of 20-45 who are busy professionals, but also women aged 55-70 who are retired. Giving them names and professions, along with personality traits makes the creative process much easier. Instead of statistics, you now have Alyssa, Kevin, and Karen, making it easier to visualize your target customer!

How Do Personas Relate to Email Marketing?

Email marketing, while it can be effective, is a tricky territory and the goal is always to steer clear of the spam folder. Would you believe me if I said personas could be an excellent way to achieve that goal? Well, here is why you should…

Like I have previously said, creating a buyer persona is a key way to better understand your target customer. Understanding your target customer is a key way to create email content that will capture their attention and create content that is relevant to them, while providing a solution to their problem.

People are looking for value, and having a clear persona can help you to understand how to best provide them with examples of the value you can bring them.

The simple answer to why personas matter in email marketing is this: Personas help you create more effective email marketing campaigns. Why? Because the more targeted an email is the more opens, clicks, and engagement that email receives. Targeted emails create stronger leads, which result in higher conversion rates, which are typically the goal!

The Next Big Step

So you’ve created your buyer personas, and you’re ready for a great email marketing campaign, what’s next? Segmenting your email list!

Segmenting your email list is a great way to put those personas to good use and will also make a huge difference in the success of your email campaigns. Once you segment your email list, sending out a targeted campaign is easy, and you are on your way to a highly successful email campaign!

Once you have segmented your email list you can send out targeted emails that are suited to each particular list, and buyer. One way you can target buyers by using email copy that is suited to them, more specifically by using different words and phrases. For example, if you are targeting a millennial buyer slang phrases could be acceptable, but if your target buyer is older you may want to use different tone and language. You can also target different buyers with different kinds of offers based on what is most important to them. Let’s think back to the home gym example I gave, Alyssa and Kevin, working professionals may be more concerned about time and convenience, where Karen may be more concerned about price, but also convenience.

All in all, personas are of key importance to a successful marketing campaign, but especially a successful email marketing! Now that you know, go create some great personas!

Sources Used:

Dam, Rikke, and Teo Siang. “Personas – A Simple Introduction.” The Interaction Design Foundation, www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/personas-why-and-how-you-should-use-them.

McCarter, Andrea. “Using Buyer Personas in Email Marketing Campaigns.” Mojo Marketing – Cloud, IT, & Telecom Marketing, 7 Mar. 2019, gimmemojo.com/2018/01/15/using-buyer-personas-email-marketing-campaigns/.

Team, SalesHandy. “The Significance of Buyer Persona in Email Marketing.” SalesHandy, 3 Sept. 2019, www.saleshandy.com/blog/buyer-persona-in-email-marketing/.

Check your keywords

Keywords are an important piece of SEO rankings, and it is important to make sure that your keyword is placed in the title tag, description tag and H1 tag, so Google sees that your keyword is relevant to the search. It is also important that your keyword is used with the correct frequency, because that is also important when Google determines your site’s relevance to the search.

Links: Keys to Success

Links are important to your SEO score! It is important that you have outbound and/or internal links on your webpage, as well as links to your pages from other sites. Google wants to ensure quality content, so think of links like you would think of a reference on a job application. Quality references give you a better chance of landing the job, so quality references to your webpage serve the same function when increasing your ranking!

Be sure to maintain your links though, broken links on unmaintained sites can really negatively impact your SEO ranking.

Content: Keep it Fresh and Fast

It is important when you are trying to boost your site’s SEO ranking that you are producing a good quantity of quality content. However it is important to realize that it isn’t just about updating or creating new content quickly, because posting mass amounts of subpar content can in fact lower your ranking. Make sure that the content you are posting is relevant and quality, it will not only help you out with SEO but drive more traffic to your site from current users.

The length and type of content you are producing can also impact your SEO ranking, Google loves when content is long and in-depth. Users are also looking for a variety of content, so adding things like videos, images, or other multimedia content can help to raise your ranking!

Use Alt Text

Using alt-tags is a great way to boost your SEO rating, as well as make your website friendly to individuals who use screen readers or text only browsers. These tags are helpful because they allow search engines, like Google, to find your page, while also helping others navigate it!

Long Wait? Big Problem.

Page loading speed is of huge importance when ranking your SEO score. Users don’t want to wait, and Google wants to give them the best search experience possible, which means that if your page loads slower than the average, it is going to have a negative impact on your rankings. Test your loading speeds, and take action to avoid unnecessary wait times!

Think Outside the Box

Google, and other search engines like when content is original and unique. Be sure that the information you are delivering is original, and targeted to users. It all ties back around to creating great content that is worth being seen. Improving your website’s ranking is important, but so is sharing quality information that users want to see. Improving your content will not only help you to improve your ranking, but will help you in the long run with whatever the goal of your site is!

Sources Cited:

“15 Reasons Google Doesn’t Rank Your Site (And How To Fix It).” BuildFire, 28 Mar. 2018, buildfire.com/reasons-google-doesnt-rank-site-and-fix-it/.

Coyle, Jeff. “Why Your Website Doesn’t Rank Well.” Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute, www.marketingaiinstitute.com/blog/why-your-website-doesnt-rank-well.

“Five Ways to Improve Your Site’s Ranking (SEO).” Michigan Technological University, www.mtu.edu/umc/services/digital/seo/.

Having an excellent landing page is the gateway to successful conversion, which as a marketer, should be your main goal. The big bummer? Landing page conversion is typically low. These five simple ways to increase your landing page conversions should give you a head start to creating a successful landing page!

Step One: The Acronyms, The Foundation

NSAMCWADLP! You may be thinking “What in the heck is NSAMCWADLP?” Never start a marketing campaign without a dedicated landing page, which ironically is our first step to increasing conversion rates. You have to have a landing page to get a great conversion rate! But to do so you have to follow NBALPWACG, which stands for, never build a landing page without a campaign goal. These two acronyms are the foundation to creating a successful landing page with great conversion! You want to have a clear campaign goal in mind when creating your landing page so that you are set up for success in your campaign.

Step Two: Page Formatting

Page formatting is a key way to increase your landing page conversion rate by setting the page up using attention driven design to apply focus to your conversion goal! The key to page formatting? Attention and intention. The important thing to note here is the attention ratio, your attention ratio is the number of things you can do on a page versus the number of things you should be doing. As your attention ratio goes down, your conversion rates go up, and that’s why you’re here right?

Step Three: Be Fast

Another way to improve your conversion rate is loading speed. A slow landing page is one of the easiest ways to wreck your conversion rate, so be sure that the elements of your landing page aren’t slowing you down!

Step Four: Consistency is Key

Consistency is key in a variety of aspects of your landing page! Be sure that the offer, copy, and visuals are consistent with your advertisement. There is nothing more discouraging to a consumer than an inconsistent landing page. A consumers experience after clicking on your ad should be a seamless transition! If your consumer has an easy time understanding your landing page and call to action from your advertisement, your conversion will rise.

Step Five: Testing, Testing 123

Once you have built your landing page test it out! Your first page may not be your most successful, but A/B testing can help you to decipher what elements of your landing page are great and which need improvement to increase your conversion. Testing will let you know what is working with your audience, so you can create the best version of your landing page, appeal to your audience, and increase your conversion rate. This way everybody wins!

Sources Cited:

“The 7 Principles of Conversion-Centered Design with Oli Gardner of Unbounce.” Oli Gardner, Stukent, www.stukent.com/expert-sessions/the-7-principles-of-conversion-centered-design/.

Dane, Johnathan. “Landing Page Optimization: How to Improve Conversion Rates.” ShipBob, 3 Sept. 2019, www.shipbob.com/blog/landing-page-optimization/.

“Landing Page Optimization: Best Practices, Tips, Tools (2018).” The Daily Egg, 1 May 2019, www.crazyegg.com/blog/landing-page-optimization/.