It’s important that you take a look at your blogs so you know if they have a chance to rank in Search Engines. Or you may be curious to know if the company you hired is doing their job. Here’s the solution.
Keep marketing
Hey, what’s up guys? In this video we are going to go over the five things business owners should be asking their agency or the five things business owners, if they’re doing their own marketing, should know for a good marketing campaign. My name is Jace. I am with Red Digital. And if you’re wondering what happened to my face, I played a lot of basketball this morning, or yesterday morning. I got hit in the face with somebody’s head and I lost. So, got some stitches, got a nose thing. But that’s okay.
So first off, question number one, so how this video came about. Let me explain that first. So how this video came about was yesterday morning, actually the guy who was doing my stitches, we were discussing his marketing agency and he had a couple of questions and they ended up … A lot of agencies do this, is when the business owner starts to ask questions, one, they don’t have good answers or they start to scramble. So, this might’ve happened to you where they start scrambling and they come up with all of this stuff to say, “Oh, your words are climbing.” And they’ll use marketing jargon to try to confuse you to think, “Oh, that makes sense.” Or, “Okay, I guess they’re doing something.”
So, what I want to do is there are some numbers that you guys need to know if you want to have a successful marketing campaign. So, question that you should be asking them. Question number one is: What is your cost per lead? You need to know that. They need to know that. So, as an agency, it’s important to know your cost per lead. Now you may not have it exactly, that’s something where you could have organic stuff coming in. But if they’re running Facebook ads, if they’re running Google ads, you can even track direct mail, any of those types of things, you need to know what your cost per lead is. Whether it’s 10, 20, $30, everything is based off that cost per lead. Okay.
So, that’s question number one you should be asking them and they should know that number and you should know that number all the time. At the end of every week. What is my cost per lead on Facebook? $20. What is my cost per lead on Google ads? This much. So get to know that number.
Next number you need to know is how much you’re actually spending on ads. So, a lot of agencies will charge you a fee. They don’t give you access into your ads account, nor do you get to see what’s actually happening on your platform. That’s another video in and of itself. You should have access to anything. As a business owner, make sure when you hire a company that you own everything. You should own your own Ad Words account. You should own your own Facebook Ads account, or have admin access so you can look at any time.
A lot of times agencies make it proprietary or they say, “Oh, we have a proprietary system.” That’s a lot of B.S. Everyone goes through Google Ads, whether they tie into their API or not. So, just understand that, that need to have full access to everything so that you know how much is being spent on ads. If they are taking a $2,500 fee and they’re telling you we’re spending $500 on ads, there’s a disconnect there. We don’t operate that way. We normally do just a standard fee and then anything above that is ad spin so that you know the exact ad spin.
Next thing. You have to ask business owners, this is number three. Make sure that you have tracking in place. Ask them what kind of tracking do they have in place and do you have access to that tracking? Everyone should be using Google Analytics. You don’t need to go out there and use some other software. Just use the Google Analytics and make sure all your conversion codes are being or setup. When I say conversion is if somebody fills out a form and hits a thank you page, that counts as a conversion. If somebody calls, you have call tracking, that all needs to be put into place. And everyone should be using Google Analytics. It’s the best system. Anybody who has a proprietary one, they are tying into Google Analytics or the Facebook Analytics or you can have them create you something on data studio for free. Got it?
Number four. So, this is a big one and this is going to be a little harder to do for business owners, is does your agency practice what they preach?
Example, if an agency is out there telling you they know how to do SEO, if they’re like, “Yeah, we’ve done SEO. We know how to do it.” And SEO is search engine optimization, but if an agency is saying, we know how to do search engine optimization, what you do is you go look at their own site, see how well their own site is ranking.
Look, I’ve had a lot of people call me and they’re like, “Hey, will you take a look at our agency?” Because we do an agency audit. We’ll look at the agency and immediately we realize this agency has never written a good blog that will rank. They don’t rank anywhere. They don’t rank for keywords. So, you have a company saying, “Hey, we’re going to get you 1,000 views a month organically.” When they themselves are getting 30. There’s just a disconnect.
So, whatever your agency is pitching you, just make sure that they are doing it. Good example, we pitch create video. Well, what do you think I’m doing right now? I am creating a video and I do this for my own agency because I need to know what works for me in order for me to use it all my clients.
And lastly, this is a big one. Who is actually doing the work? You have to understand that marketing takes time, money, and expertise. If you have some intern who is working on your project, and this is how a lot of agencies operate, if you’re working with a big box agency with 50, 60 employees, not every one of them is that good. Very few of them. Okay? The top 5, 6% they’re either going to start their own industry or they’re going to go to some other job and get paid a lot of money.
So, you need to know who is actually doing the work on your account because your account is only as good as that person. If they know what they’re doing, you’re going to have good success. But the majority of these agencies do not have the staff. They do not have the expertise. They haven’t trained well enough for these guys to know what they need to do to make you successful. So if you’re dealing with an intern, somebody who’s been in marketing for six months, that’s a big problem because you’re just not going to see results. And how most of them operate is they have a gatekeeper who is your account manager and then that account manager has three or four other people, “Hey, you’re doing AdWords, you’re doing this.”
And the latest thing that I’ve seen pop up with agencies is they’re just outsourcing it all overseas. So, they’re not even marketing people themselves. What they’ve done is they’ve started an agency, they fooled business owners into signing up with them, and then they’re just going to outsource it all to somebody overseas and hope they can keep you as long as they can. I’m seeing that everywhere right now.
Just had, it was actually a good experience, we were just taking over an account and this account we called up to get access to the AdWords. Well, we found out another company was running their AdWords and then we found out another company who’d never done AdWords was running their analytics. Total mess. So, you need to know who is the one who is actually creating and doing the work on your account. If you are five steps removed, that tells you you’re dealing with an agency that they have one guy who knows AdWords that’s dealing with 150, 160 accounts.
That doesn’t work, so I hope that makes sense. You have to drill down who is the person you are dealing with that can make the changes. Now what we’ve done, just to give you an example of what you can look for. I’m not telling you you have to hire us. I’m not telling you to come to us. But we spend a lot of time in training. It takes a year for you to really know what you’re doing. But we have one person that controls the account and they’re doing AdWords. They’re doing Facebook Ads, they want to know your messaging. So, they operate more as a Chief Marketing Officer so that they understand everything about your business.
So, that’s what we found that model works. Now is it scalable? No. We’re really tapped out. It’s hard for us to take on like low budget clients just because we don’t have the manpower to do it because it takes so much work to get people to where they need to be.
So, that just gives you some ideas. So, if you have questions, let us know. But I hope that helped. Those are five questions every agency should be asking, every business should be asking their marketing agency, or those are some of the five questions you should be asking yourself if you are running a marketing campaign. If you have questions, just let us know. We’d be happy to help. Check out our YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe if this is on YouTube. Go Facebook, LinkedIn, we’re all around. And at the end of the day, we just want to help businesses grow. So, keep marketing. Good luck. Peace.
Writing compelling Facebook ads will help you generate more traffic to your website, help you acquire more targeted leads, and boost your sales.
Social media, in general, must be an essential component of your digital marketing strategy.
Funny enough, companies that neglected Facebook and Twitter in the past, are making a comeback — and this time, they’re investing heavily in it.
Although some say Facebook’s reach has declined, it’s clear that online users prefer this social network.
Over 70% of Facebook users in the U.S. logging into Facebook every day, compared to 59% for Instagram, 38% for Twitter, 27% on Pinterest, and 22% on LinkedIn, according to statistics from Pew Research Center.
All of these users have tremendous potential for marketers, and Facebook has become one of the best advertising platforms for B2B and B2C companies.
In recent years, when the organic reach on Facebook has shrunk, savvy marketers have been advertising on Facebook to get results.
Many things need to be put together to make a successful Facebook ad — you need the right targeting, good images or videos, and irresistible copy.
If you’ve been looking for the best guide for creating winning Facebook ads, this is the perfect post for you.
There are many Facebook users, but sending blank ads does not produce many conversions. The key to Facebook advertising is targeting. Facebook has the best ad targeting you can ever think of.
This targeting allows you to determine precisely which audience your ads are reaching.
If you sell garden hoses, for example, you can reach people who are interested in vegetable gardens and home improvements.
If you sell a SaaS (Software as a Service) tool, you can target those who have visited your website’s landing page.
Custom Audience: This targeting option allows you to reach existing prospects or customers.
Location: You can target users based on their locations (city, state, country)
Gender: It allows you to target by gender (male or female).
Interests: It enables you to focus on benefits (such as fitness, entrepreneurship, fashion, literature).
Behavior: When you use the “Behavior” option in your Facebook ads, it means you’re targeting users based on their previous interaction with your website or landing page.
Link: It allows you to target people who already like your site or have a connection of some sort.
If you plan to advertise on Facebook, you can think of the big picture. Images are essential in Facebook ads but don’t neglect written elements as well.
When you spend money on Facebook ads, you want to make sure your ads will improve your bottom line. A good ad copy can direct the right users to click-through to your website or specific landing page.
A compelling copy can be convincing, passionate, and entertaining.
It builds connections, cuts off excess information, and nails your brand story. Effective copywriting is an integral part of successful Facebook advertising.
When it comes to online ads, it’s tempting to write on the conference floor. But if you want to be efficient, you have to write in a conversational tone, as if you’re writing to one person at a time — and only for one person.
That’s what zeroing in on your audience means. You can even target Facebook users based on their educational level, income status, etc.
For example, in this GoPro Facebook ad, the company targeted photographers and people who are interested in new gear for hiking and skiing.
As an effective salesperson, you must devote all your attention to that person and their needs.
You should write a copy on your website that addresses all potential customers, and you might have several different people. However, you can reach a well-defined audience on Facebook if you utilize the targeting options properly.
For example, you can target ads for women over the age of 30 who live in the US and are interested in fitness and well-being. You can then write targeted ads aimed at reaching this specific audience.
If you’re a business person who wants to reach businesses that are investing in social media marketing, then targeting readers of a particular social media blog could be helpful. For example, targeting “Social Media Examiner’s” readers.
This is in line with the idea of targeting. Your customers turn to you for various reasons. So why the blanket? The strength of Facebook lies in orientation. So don’t create your ad like a billboard.
For instance, imagine you are a clothing retailer that sells men and women’s clothing as well as shoes, accessories, sportswear, underwear, and even bath and body products.
Several customers will be interested in some of your offers, but many will be most interested in one area. Women will be interested in the offers you have for women. So you have to keep this in mind when writing your ads.
If you have a diversified audience you want to reach, then you should create different ad campaigns to better appeal to a specific group of audience.
For example, in the ad below, Soylent could target vegans or people who like to keep fit or even new moms who want to get back in shape after giving birth. Or the Soylent team could create different ads to target each of these groups of people.
Many smaller companies — and even bigger ones, especially in the B2B sector — don’t have many visualizations. When the ad is displayed, encoding is done to ensure that the image is attached.
This can cause images to be inconsistent with copies that represent a confusing experience for Facebook users.
If an ad copy and pictures are not ordered, potential customers will be confused as to what the ad is actually about. They may not click on your ads or even bother to consider what’s in it for them.
The best Facebook ads have clear objectives. Are you trying to expand your brand popularity or sell a product?
When writing your Facebook ad copy, be ultra-specific. Use CTA that’s relevant and persuasive. It must tell the user exactly what they’ll get when they click.
A good example is OAS, where the CTA says “Download” because there’s a free eBook for the user.
Whatever the case, your ad must contain a clear call-to-action. Without this option, Facebook users will see your ad, but they will not know where and what to click.
You pay for advertising, so it’s tempting to attempt to add all of the information about your offer in your ad copy. But don’t do that!
When it comes to Facebook ads, you must keep it short and ensure that you’re giving value.
Did you notice how ZipRecruiter used a simple and clean Facebook ad full of white space to engage the users? You should do the same thing even if you have a lot to say — keep it simple!
What does someone do with your product? What are the benefits for you? This is an area that you need to focus on in your copy, and you need to understand the points clearly and precisely.
The only way to improve your ads on Facebook is to run a test. Facebook makes it easy for you to test a campaign out before investing heavily in it.
After all, testing is the only reliable way to know the best-performing Facebook ads. St. ROIL ran a test on its Facebook ads.
In the end, they were able to make an informed decision based on performances from these ad copies.
Try showing two different ads — each with the same image but a separate copy. This would help you to determine which ad is best for your audience, which version is the most preferred, and which one will help you maximize your ROI.
The best Facebook ads ultimately increase sales.
As an advertiser and marketer, you must ensure that you incorporate persuasive elements into your Facebook ad copy. Persuasive copywriting is an essential part of winning Facebook advertising campaigns.
Since writing a winning Facebook ad copy is essential, you also need the right funnel to convert clicks into buyers. So shall we discuss it?
You shouldn’t expect a lot of conversions to happen right off the bat. When you run Facebook ads, you need to think long-term and make your decisions based on the data you’re collecting about the audience.
People may see your ad and even click on it but do nothing. That’s why you need to expose your ads to many clients on more than one occasion.
Most people need to see your ad several times before they convert. That’s why setting up an ad funnel is essential.
Ad funnels are important because they guide users each step of the way. The different stages of the buying process can be complex, so a funnel makes it easy to follow.
This funnel makes your offer appealing to users based on how much interaction and actions they’ve with your business.
Here’s a Facebook ad example from Almond Cow:
As you can see, it’s targeted at cold Facebook users, telling them exactly what the product can do for them.
Here’s another Facebook ad from the same brand:
The second ad, as you can see, showcases all the favorite Almond Cow recipes and walks the user through the process of getting an eBook. So the brand uses a lead magnet to capture the user’s interest and send them into the funnel.
The second ad doesn’t show anything about the product or how it works, that’s why the brand is utilizing retargeting to reach a warmer audience on Facebook.
Ad funnels can come in different forms, but we’ll stick to the simple form. In the end, it all boils down to navigating the users through the different phases of the sales process — using relevant messaging and retargeting.
The major stages in the customer journey include:
Or it can be as simple as:
When a user sees your ad and clicks it, they’ll be redirected to a landing page where they can sign-up to your email list to download a white paper, an eBook, a video course, software, etc.
Once they’ve signed up, they’re instantly added to your funnel. This funnel system is being managed by an email autoresponder service, such as ConvertKit or MailChimp.
The user (who’s now a lead) will start getting follow-up emails from your business. As you begin to build relationships and re-engage with them, they’ll get to trust your brand more and will be more willing to buy from you.
If your offer is subscription-based, you might want to use free trials to engage with users in the funnel. You then start to educate them on the need to continue using your software long after the trial period.
A simple funnel may look similar to this one from NGOA Buyers Club:
The company is giving away a free survival can opener to Facebook users. Those who click on the ad to claim the item are added into a funnel. The video shows how to use the can opener, and why it’s required for camping or survival quests.
Here’s another Facebook video ad that offers 50% off everything you purchase from Threadless.
The ad showcases $12 tees and also offers huge discounts to encourage the brand’s primary audience to take action. New users can also take advantage of it.
This is also a dynamic ad that shows a different ad in the newsfeed based on user interaction on the website.
Offering discounts right on the Facebook ad copy is a great way to get more interested buyers. If these people are already on your funnel, then you can follow up multiple times to re-engage with and convert them into buyers.
Your funnel is everything. If you’re not intentional about it, you’ll likely waste your Facebook ad spend instead of maximizing ROI.
More so, you need multiple ads running at the same time. There’s no way a single ad can drive significant conversions, even if it’s the best out there.
You should master the art of retargeting — because it’ll help you bring users back to your website through retargeted ads.
There’s no denying the fact that retargeting is one of the best strategies for getting results with your Facebook ad campaigns.
Once your Facebook ad campaigns are running, what’s next?
There are no assumptions in online advertising. So you need to get to work on figuring out how your Facebook ads are performing. Rather than guessing or predicting results, it’s time to start measuring your Facebook ads data.
To get more accurate results, your ads must have been active for at least 3 weeks. Savvy Facebook advertisers will take the time to understand what’s been happening and what’s not working as they had expected.
So start with Facebook itself. You don’t have to rely on tiny data you get at an early stage of your ad, but don’t underestimate them.
At this point, you may want to dig into your Google Analytics to keep track of the user’s journey in the funnel.
Data Studio and some other third-party tools can help you visualize the user data. You need all of the information you can get to make decisions.
That said, keep these tips in mind when measuring Facebook advertising data:
i). Measure actionable metrics: Focus on the right metrics and measure your performance across the board. You may not need the big data at the early stages. You’ll eventually, just focus on the basic data that you already have about the user.
ii). Accept what’s possible: Some things are no longer possible on the Facebook advertising platform, for example, hyper-precise targeting is a thing of the past — since Facebook got rid of over 5,000 targeting options.
That’s why some marketers are concerned as they’re seeing clicks from little or no qualified users. Just accept the targeting options that are available to you and move on.
iii). Measure soft metrics: You should consider measuring soft metrics especially if it’ll drive hard conversions in the future. I’m not saying you should place your bet on reach, likes, clicks, or impressions.
If you’re in the B2B space, no CEO or top-level manager wants to see those. What they may be interested in are the new metrics: quality ranking, engagement rate ranking, and conversion rate ranking.
Some businesses are still stuck in media buying. I once met a founder who bought ads on Page 83 of Vogue Magazine. This guy still has a budget set aside for billboard advertising and outdoor media.
There’s nothing wrong with these if you have money to throw down the drain. Because traditional advertising is massively overpriced. Worse, no one cares about TV commercials or billboards.
I can’t even recall the last time I read a magazine. Maybe I did, but it was just for fun, not to look for or pay attention to advertising.
That’s why social media advertising is important. Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are three social media giants that are priced reasonably. The good thing is that they drive positive ROI.
And you can start your first Facebook ads with as little as $10. Of course, that may not get you anywhere but it’s a good place to start. Once you start hitting momentum, you can scale from there.
Your Facebook ad copy is everything. Follow the tips and strategies in this insider’s guide to writing winning ads that will generate clicks, drive traffic to your website, and grow your revenue.
Blogging is hard work, so you must make your efforts count.
If you want to use your blog to connect with prospects and customers, I wrote this post with you in mind.
It takes time and effort to complete an editorial calendar. But with a well-planned blog schedule, you can not only make it easy but also maintain it in the long run.
This article will show you how to organize your blog’s editorial calendar to grow traffic in 6 months. We’ll also cover the best practices and “strategy” to help you build a blog that will grow your sales and revenue.
Take these steps to plan your blog schedule in 6 months if you want traffic:
Before you open a spreadsheet and save ideas for your calendar, you need to consider your goals.
First, consider your overall business goals. Think about what you want to achieve this year to strengthen your brand.
More brand awareness? More commitment from fans? Build trust and loyalty? Generate more customers, conversions, and customers?
Your blogging goals will help you achieve this business goal. Use the S.M.A.R.T. Goal Setting Template to set realistic and achievable blogging goals.
Here are examples:
After setting goals, you can focus on creating and publishing the right content to achieve them. You also need to reach out to other blogs to speed up traffic generation.
To improve your blog content, you need to know your audience and what their interests and needs are.
Use this information to create more targeted content that leads to results (clicks and clicks, downloads, conversions, shares, etc.).
Think about the different people you’re targeting and create a persona for each audience. Although everyone is different, there are similarities between groups of readers.
When gathering information from an audience, imagine a clear picture of the person who will read your content. In this way, you can create content based on their needs and interests.
You have goals and know who you’re targeting. You can now create your schedule.
First, open a blank spreadsheet template in Google Sheets or Excel. Use the first worksheet (or first part) to plan your editorial calendar as a whole. Start with content or author if you plan on having multiple contributors.
Here’s an example from the Content Marketing Institute:
To keep content interesting for your audience, it’s an excellent strategy to mix the types of content you create, not only thematically, but also in terms of content. After all, creating a variety of content is a great way to add ‘interaction’ to your blogging career.
Here are the main types of content you can create for your blog:
Interactive content: quizzes, surveys, interactive maps, personality tests, etc.
Depending on your niche, you might want to add other types of content, such as Slide presentations, memes, social media posts, and so on.
After creating a framework for your calendar, you need to think of blog post ideas. Along with dozens of interesting topics and other content takes time and effort, but it will save a lot of time in the long-run.
Remember to always keep an eye on your personal goals and audience. This is crucial if you want your content to be strategic and goal-driven.
The first step is to look for popular content that’s been shared by your target audience.
Look at your niche more closely to find out what type of content is shared and which content will produce the best results.
Start with tools like Feedly and Flipboard to track the latest content in your industry. You can subscribe to the best posts in your niche and relevant topics in your industry.
Also, use a tool like BuzzSumo to find the most searched content based on your keywords. With BuzzSumo, you can filter results by date, content type, number of words, and more. You can also order it with the number of social media shares or share it on your favorite social networks.
This information will help you understand what type of content leads to social media sharing (which usually leads to more readers and more traffic to your blog).
Once you’ve found the right ideas and topics, it’s time to add them to your editorial content calendar.
With previous tips and methods, you should be able to generate dozens of blog post ideas, maybe throughout the year. It’s time to add the ideas to your calendar.
Create your calendar of blog content by topic and at this point, set a deadline for the project and determine who should write it so that the author knows in advance and plan accordingly.
Be strategic when you include these titles in your calendar:
Create a mix of different types of content to serve readers based on the best way they like to consume content online.
If you have a food blog, for example, you can make a mixture of recipes weekly on Mondays and Wednesdays, restaurant reviews on Tuesday, instructions on Thursday posts, and more.
Here’s an editorial content calendar that HubSpot uses:
Publish your best blog posts on optimal days. For example, usage costs usually generate more traffic and engagement in some industries.
CoSchedule conducted research to determine the days to publish blog posts and get maximum page views.
The best day turns out to be Tuesday and Thursdays based on how many shares the post garnered on social media platforms.
Case studies and pillar content tend to generate more reads and engagement in the small business space.
So post on the days where your audience is most active (or encourage them). Do the same with all other content that adds value to your audience.
Have you seen news headlines before? They’re bold, big, and irresistible!
When users find your content in search results or RSS feeds, the title of your article appears first.
The memorable blog post title stands out and gets more clicks, while dull and boring titles are ignored, and users may skip them.
You must learn how to write better titles for blog posts that grab the user’s attention and get more clicks. According to Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger Media, “8 in 10 people will read your title.”
Fortunately, some successful bloggers and research labs have been studying headlines for a long time, and you can benefit from the results.
Several studies have shown that the essential building block of compelling titles/headline is emotional triggers such as excitement, surprise, surprise, curiosity, fear, confusion, greed, and so on.
When planning a blog schedule, you also need to have a solid strategy in place. Your blogging strategy will be driven by best practices that successful businesses and industry bloggers have used to grow their blogs and revenue in record time.
It’s time to discover some amazing things you can do to improve your chances of succeeding with a blog.
Once you’ve defined your blogging goal for the next 6 months, you have to get started with list building. Yes, you need a contact list of your target audience so that you can keep in touch with them.
That’s why a landing page, which is separate from your main blog is necessary. This landing page will be the gateway to your marketing funnel.
It should appeal to your audience and have an opt-in form so that potential customers can fill out the form to start getting follow up emails from you.
Here’s an example of a landing page that’s attached to the Bloggingwizard blog. Here, the author gives away “The Serious Blogger’s Toolkit” for free.
So how does it work?
Well, if you plan on creating an eBook on “How to Lose 20 Pounds in 30 Days,” the first step in the process isn’t to sell the product but to set up a mailing list to caters to people who want to lose weight.
To attract the right people to your email list, you can offer a 3-part free email series, you can call it “3 Secrets to Shedding Excess Fats.”
This will be the first product funnel for building your email list. Use one of the popular email service providers to set up an automatic email — such that when people fill out the form on your landing page, they’ll automatically receive the first email.
This is a free gift that acts as ‘thank you’ for subscribing.
Your landing page will highlight the benefits of the 3-part email course.
Your landing page shouldn’t try to sell the main product but to get the word out about your free course. The visitors who subscribe have indicated an interest in the product.
For your landing page to be effective, keep these tips in mind:
i). Highlight the benefits, not features: There’s no need to explain what the email course entails, just tell users what they will get out of it.
Velaro highlights the key benefits of its offer but gives away a free guide to show the user how the software works.
ii). Show the process: How does your email list work. Let subscribers know they’ll get emails from you. You don’t want to surprise them.
iii). Show social proof: If you have endorsements, testimonials, and success stories from your customers, make sure to use them on your landing page. Your potential subscribers will be confident in the fact that you’re legitimate.
As an example, Nutrisystem shows a success story on how Melissa lost 51 lbs with its diet plan.
Even if you have comments or tweets from people, those can be used as a form of social proof on your landing page.
iv). Be easily accessible: The best thing you can do to 10X your blogging success is to make your landing pages, products, and important pages discoverable on your blog.
When it comes to your opt-in form, you can use an exit-intent popup to capture users who’re about leaving your page.
The objective of this is to capture as many leads as possible. These potential customers will be on the waiting list to buy your online course, eBook, or software once it’s finally launched.
With that out of the way, it’s time to get traffic to your blog.
So your landing page is helping you capture the email addresses of potential customers already, that’s awesome. It’s time to get some traffic to your blog.
But this time, we’re focused on the right traffic that will make a difference.
This is where most bloggers struggle. Generating the right traffic is hard. You could pay $10 to get 10,000 clicks to your blog, but are these clicks relevant?
Not all traffic sources are created equal. Go after blog visitors that will help improve your bottom line.
If you have a software that will help doctors and nurses, then you don’t have to attract real estate brokers to your landing page. This should be obvious — unfortunately, most bloggers are making this mistake.
I once came across a blogger who offers consulting services to business. During our discussion, he complained that he’s struggling to attract clients. I was concerned because some consultants I know are very successful.
Interestingly, when I checked his blog I noticed that 87% of his content was aimed at consultants and what they can do to get clients. Isn’t it funny that someone who’s in the same boat is advising others on the same issue?
He should have focused his content to attract business owners and marketers who need a consultant. Period!
If you’re going to use paid advertising, for example, think of users who will be coming from paid sources. Google Ads can be good, but you need to narrow down your audience.
If it’s referral traffic you’re most concerned about, then make sure it’s from people who truly are interested in your offer.
With your landing page offer in mind, you need to start pitching content to other bloggers in your industry.
There are top and high-traffic blogs in every industry. You need to find and get published there with links back to your landing page. You can listen to Sergey Grybniak to learn more.
To find these blogs that need guest posts, just enter these search operators in Google:
Keyword + submit a guest post
Keyword + contribute
Keyword + write for us
Note: Replace the ‘keyword’ with your main topic.
For example, parenting + write for us
You’ll find a list of blogs to pitch relevant and useful topics to. Once approved, you can write the article and it’ll be published.
You not only get traffic to your landing page and blogs, but you’ll also get link juice that will improve your organic search rankings and website authority.
Remember that all success comes from other people. Effective guest blogging strategy boils down to building strategic connections and relationships with people. You need the right people to mention, support, and link to your website.
Remember that it’s harder to get the attention of successful bloggers. They’re already killing it, so they don’t need you.
However, you can get their attention by mentioning them in your guest posts. You can give them a shout out on someone else’s blog. This will get them excited because every mention online is vital to their long-term success.
When using guest blogging as a traffic strategy, make sure you point people to your landing page where they can opt-in to your email course or download your free eBook.
Don’t send people to your blog post — it’s a waste of effort because even if they read it, they’ll leave and never return.
An important aspect of your blogging schedule is outreach. Getting the word out is more important than publishing new posts on your blog — especially at the early stages of your blog.
If you must create content on your blog, it must be resourceful so that influencers and industry leaders will be excited to share on Facebook, tweet it, recommend it to your audience, and link it to their posts.
Growing a blog in 6 months is going to involve a lot of creating content. I’d recommend the 80/20 rule.
That is, 20% of the time should be spent creating content for your blog while 80% of your efforts should be spent promoting your blog and content on other sites, social media, paid advertising channels, etc.
Above all, stick to one main topic in the first 6 months. If your blog is about gardening, you can focus on indoor gardening and establish your Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E.A.T) in that space.
People will trust you because you’re sharing so much knowledge on one topic — indoor gardening.
In recent years, influencer marketing has emerged as one of the most powerful marketing strategies for driving a high Return On Investment (ROI).
According to Linqia, about 63% of marketers work with at least 10 influencers on every campaign.
Did you know the reason for this exponential growth in influencer marketing? The reason is simple!
Influencers are trusted by a large target audience. Yes! The opinions, knowledge, and authenticity of influencers can convert the target people – mostly trusted peers and fans – into loyal customers.
More so, influencer marketing has grown to become one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. That is why business owners who understand the potency of effective influencer marketing are getting impressive returns.
Recent research by the Influencer Marketing hub revealed that business owners who rely on influencers received a return of about $7 on every $1 spent on influencer marketing. The top 13% of the studied businesses received a return of close to $20 on every dollar spent.
Unlike the influencer campaigns of days past where major stars are used (though they can be used), modern marketing landscape enables businesses to also focus on influencers with smaller but more engaged audiences – audiences that are more precisely aligned to your business niche.
Aside from attracting more niche-aligned audiences and more effective, niche influencers charge far less than major stars.
However, the only major challenge is how to find the key niche influencers to work with.
A survey by Mediakix revealed that about 61% of marketers are faced with this challenge. This challenge has also led most businesses to turn to social media as a tool to find key influencers.
Luckily, unlike the TV and magazines, social platforms have no limits, there are as many influencers as the world requires on social media. These influencers can be of any social status and age and can work with any business.
To help you find key influencers in your niche using social media, I have created this comprehensive guide for you to help you identify and choose influencers who best suit your business.
Before I discuss the nine best ways to find key influencers in your niche using social media, let’s learn “what influencer marketing is,” “who influencers are,” “why your business needs influencers,” and “what makes influencers a good fit for your marketing strategy.”
Influencer marketing is the practice of leveraging key persons who have built the right audiences you want to reach in your business.
The essence of influencer marketing is to connect and collaborate with the influencer to leverage their audience so that you can generate leads, sales, and build massive brand awareness.
An influencer is a person who’s known and trusted by your target audiences. For example, Seth Godin is an influencer in the business environment while Kim Kardashian is an influencer in the showbiz and entertainment space.
Not all influencers are created equal. Funny enough, not all of them have the same level of influence on social media and the world.
According to Mark Schaefer, there are five types of influencers as shown below.
The point is that key influencers in your niche are farther down the spectrum and that’s where you should pay your attention.
If you are a social media pro, you would have realized that people who are highly relevant within smaller groups are more powerful advocates in word-of-mouth marketing.
So, what should you look for in your influencer? Consider these three criteria:
Now that you know who an influencer is and what influence marketing is, let’s dive deeper into how to find your key influencers.
You can decide to keep all the criteria I listed above in mind when choosing an influencer. But, how do you find the key influencers in your niche who merits those criteria? Here are the best ways:
Relevant hashtag searches are one of the best ways to find key influencers in your niche on social media platforms.
About 71% of marketers use social media searches to find key influencers and that’s because social media contain lots of contacts and information.
Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Blogs are the key channels that influencers have built huge and loyal followings on.
Using relevant hashtags enables you to tap into conversations in your niche and identify influencers who are talking about businesses, products, or services that are similar to yours.
Note that relevant hashtag searches are most effective on Twitter and Instagram. Instagram has a dedicated hashtag feed, which you can embed on your website.
To perform relevant hashtag searches on social media, you first need to identify hashtags that are very relevant for your industry.
For instance, if your business is within the hospitality industry, search for hashtags like #travelblogger, #vacationing, #holiday, #leisuretrip, #travellover, and #travel.
In this case, I will be using the hashtag #travel and the search returned about 422 million posts.
The next step involves going through all the posts manually to identify appropriate influencers whose posts/content you like and who would be able to promote your products, services, and brand.
Hint: Use more specific hashtags where appropriate. So, if you run a luxury hotel chain, use the hashtag “#luxurytravel” and not “#travel.” More so, if you wish to promote your brand in a specific region, use city-specific hashtags for your search.
For instance, if you run a restaurant chain you wish to promote in New York City, use hashtags like #nycrestaurants, #nycfoodgram, #nycfoodies, #nycblogger, or #streetsofnyc.
In this case, I used the hashtag #nycfoodies for the social search, which led me to the post by @brooklynbitess, an influential account managed by influencers Giuseppe Falanga and Sabrina Argiro.
Giuseppe Falanga and Sabrina Argiro are New York-based influencers with about 103K followers on Instagram.
Ad-specific hashtags searches are another way to find key influencers in your niche on social media.
FTC’s Endorsement Guidelines necessitate influencers to disclose brand collaborations. Hence, influencers usually use hashtags like #paidpartnership, #promotion, #sponsored, or #ad in their post captions.
You can search for these hashtags to find influencers who promote products, services, or brands similar to yours.
In this case, I searched using the ad-specific hashtag “#sponsored,” which led me to this post
In this post, Annie Tran endorsed the wedding dress by Blush Bridal Couture. Annie Tran is an influencer with 80.3K followers on Instagram. She specializes in endorsing beauty products and clothing lines.
If you are into fashion, wedding business, or beauty brand, you may consider Annie Tran as your influencer.
Sometimes finding influencers who are already mentioning your brand is an effective way to find key influencers in your niche.
So, try to find influencers in your follower list too. You are likely to find a few micro-influencers in your social media followers list waiting to be discovered.
Since these influencers have already shown interest in your brand, they can be great to work with These influencers are likely to endorse your brand more effectively.
Identifying these influencers is pretty easy. All you need to do is browse through your followers’ list and find any follower with large followings of their own. Any follower with decent and large followings may be a good choice for your brand collaboration.
An example of a brand that adopted this way is Airbnb. Airbnb has several travel influencers in its followers’ list on social profiles. Airbnb simply partnered with these influencers to promote its property listings.
An example of such influencers is Harry and Nikita, couple travel bloggers with the account name “@thevagabondstories.”
Sometimes, some people aren’t following you but are talking about your product, services, or brand and can be your key influencers.
So, tracking your brand or products’ social media mentions can be very useful when finding your niche influencers.
To make this process easier, there are some social media monitoring and listening tools you can use. These include Hootsuite, Mention, Statusbrew, or Google Alerts.
#4: Advanced Search Tools
Some social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook all have advanced search tools, which help users to dig faster and deeper.
In this case, I will use LinkedIn for my example.
Simply search for your specific keyword – niche or topic – I used “analytics” in my example. The search results page allows you to filter for influencers.
Check every box necessary (location, industry, etc.) and click “Apply” to start narrowing down the search.
The search results will possibly contain influencers you are not connected with yet. Send them a connection request with a personal note to start up a warm conversation.
This method is great for Twitter and luckily, Twitter provides a platform to find influencers easily. The Twitter Advanced Search Tool is good, but not without a hitch.
The search results can’t be sorted.
Nevertheless, you can join the clique of other business brands to use other Twitter search tools like FollowerWonk. I will be using FollowerWonk.
Click on the “Search Bios” tab, enter your topic (in this case “analytics”). Click on “more options.” Enter your industry or niche into the advanced search field. Be specific with your search term to dig deeper into your niche.
For instance, instead of searching for “cars” or “travel,” you can use “family cars” or “island travel.” To avoid overloading, input minimum followers of about 11,000 or 1,500 for specific niches. Click “Do it” to generate search results.
The results are likely influencers within the niche sorted according to the size of their followers.
Hint: More followers doesn’t translate into more influence. Getting a lot of followers is possible on twitter without influencing anyone. So, check the “Social Authority” column.
Influencers with low authority should be avoided because they are less likely to drive or engage traffic.
The five methods explained above do not require the use of any third-party app. However, the next four methods rely on the use of paid influencer marketing tools.
This tool is specifically built to search for influencers on Twitter. To use this tool, click on the “influencers” tab on the top of the page. Enter your search term and click on “search.” Check the filters only for “bloggers,” “influencers,” and “active influencers” and click “filter.”
The result will return a list of influencers in your niche with data about their followings, reply ratios, and retweet ratios. With this result, you can easily see who is likely to interact on social media at a glance.
Just like followerwonk, BuzzSumo also has domain authority data. A higher number indicates a bigger benefit to your search rankings if the blogger mentions your brand and links to your website from their blog.
You can also get quick access to the content they’re sharing from the report. Choose the influences you like best, contact them and collaborate with them.
This is a social media listening tool and capable of monitoring major social media platforms, such as Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Awario can also monitor forums, blogs, news, and the web in general for mentions of your products, services, brand or any other keyword.
Awario is a great tool for finding key influencers in your niche as well as brand advocates. Influencers are ranked based on the daily visits to their blogs, the number of followers they have, or their reach.
Klear is specially made for influencer marketing. This tool analyses influencers in 60,000 topic categories, their psychographics, and demographics.
Searching with Klear doesn’t take much time since the tool is essentially a database of influencers.
Influencers can also be filtered by social media platform, their demographics, the keywords they mention, their location, their skills, and the size of their audience.
More so, this tool measures the results of your influencer marketing campaigns to decide which ones work best.
Just like Klear, Traackr is solely an influencer marketing tool that conducts the influencer marketing process from start to finish.
For instance, the tool finds the key social media influencers in your niche and measures the results of their influence.
You can filter the social search on Traackr by brand affinities, gender, age, location, language, topic, and social media network. You can apply the same filters to the influencer’s followers.
Upfluence contains a database of about three million influencers. It analyses each influencer according to demographics, location, engagement, reaches, and niche.
Upfluence also reveals the type of content influencers post most as well as their habitual post times.
By now, you would have understood that working with key influencers in your niche can help your brand to effectively reach and engage its target audience.
But remember that influencer marketing doesn’t produce overnight results. It could happen if you have a fantastic product and the likes of Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber gives you a shoutout.
But if you’re in this to connect and build relationships with people for your business, you’ll need to be consistent.
You’ll see dramatic results if you embrace influencer marketing as another ‘strategy’ for connecting and helping your target audience. Don’t see it as a money-making avenue.
If you need a helping hand to launch your influencer marketing campaign, you can contact us today.
Google Analytics is a comprehensive tracking tool on the market.
This tool gives you robust information about visitors to your website and the actions they take on your web pages. After clicking on the email that you sent, you can see what people are doing on your site.
Nearly 61% of the first 1 million websites (Alexa ranking) use Google Analytics, according to SimilarTech.
If you use Google Analytics effectively, you can stop making blind assumptions and make data-based marketing decisions to increase profits.
One of the best things you can do with your website is to be in control. Even though content marketing is powerful enough to grow your traffic, you need to be updated on what’s currently happening on your website.
That’s the best way to do better research and come up with topics that will make for the most in-depth and useful content.
This will result in Personalization, whereby your content isn’t just a string of texts but there’s personality attached to it.
That’s exactly how Build.com increased conversions by 6% just by utilizing the audience insights in its content marketing processes.
Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that allows site owners to get a general picture of how users find and use their website or app.
Google Analytics is more than just counting clicks and simple page views.
It provides an excellent way to track visitor behavior, demographics, sales figures, traffic from other websites, and more.
All data you need is captured in real-time and divided into different areas (such as traffic sources, user behavior, etc.).
You will be shown on a dashboard with diagrams and pie charts to visualize the progress of your website.
Here’s an example of the Google Analytics dashboard:
If you want to improve your website, we will guide you through data-driven decisions with Google Analytics to increase traffic.
Before you can access data, you must ensure that Google Analytics is set up correctly on your website. Misused tracking distorts your tracking data and leads to the wrong decision.
To start using Google Analytics, all you need to do is create an account, link your website to Google Analytics, and add the tracking code snippet to the <head> section of your website.
If your website or blog is hosted on WordPress, you can use this simple guide to set up Google Analytics.
After setup, it might take several hours to collect data on your website. Let’s look at a few different aspects of using Google Analytics to improve your website.
To make the right decision, you need to stay focused on what you want your website to accomplish for your business and understand how to achieve them by setting Goals.
There are different types of goals you can set in Google Analytics. Some webmasters may prefer to set a goal to understand what happens on their “Thank-you” page.
That’s the page the visitors land on after filling out a form or subscribing to your email list.
Once a clear goal has been defined, it’s time to dig into your top pages. One way to view your content is to visit the Google Analytics Pages report.
From there, you can determine which blog posts and pages generate the most conversions.
Once you find the type of content that will give positive results, you can bring more content ideas to your blog and include them in your editorial calendar.
One of the most critical indicators you must remember is the bounce rate. The bounce rate is the number of visitors to each page on your website. It’s a range of 1-100.
Find out if your visitors keep using your website or bounce off after reading your post or reaching your homepage.
Essentially, the lower your bounce rate the better. But this isn’t always the right way to accurately measure the bounce rate. Because a visitor may land on your page, finds exactly what they’re looking for, and leaves.
This doesn’t mean your page is low-quality or poorly-written. On the contrary, it means that your page is useful and provides trusted answers to users’ questions.
Overall, you should work on your website to lower the bounce rate. The lower the bounce rate, the more attractive your website is, the better it is for your business.
Looking at it from another angle, if you notice that a lot of visitors leave your web page after viewing just one page, it could be an indication that your content isn’t useful and you need to optimize your content or use a better call-to-action to engage users.
You should always aim to improve your bounce rate. Although several plugins and tools promises to magically fix it, adhering to simple tweaks can help a lot.
Apart from tracking valuable website metrics with Google Analytics, you can also do a user flow analysis to understand how visitors explore your website and its pages.
You’ll see the behavior flow across your website — and this can be a goldmine for understanding how users interact and navigate your pages.
By examining your users’ behaviors, you can understand why visitors are leaving your website and how to retain them. You’ll also be able to create a better sales funnel that will drive sales and revenue for your business.
After you identify this area, you can take steps to reduce your bounce rate and improve every aspect of your business.
First, set up Google Analytics goals for conversion tracking. To track Revenue and Conversion, you must enable Google Analytics eCommerce tracking.
One of the main objectives of tracking your website analysis is to identify gaps and find ways to generate more traffic. In Google Analytics, you can monitor the SEO report on your landing pages.
But first, you must integrate your Google Analytics account into your Google Search Console account.
Once the two tools are synced, you can display the best SEO search queries for your website that provide the best search engine experience.
Use the Google Analytics SEO report to see the ranking of keywords, Clicks, and Impressions for your website.
Adjust your keyword list by the number of impressions and find the most relevant keywords.
These are the keywords that are most valuable to your business. Besides, you can improve the click-through rate (CTR) for these keywords to drive even more traffic.
Make sure that your page titles don’t exceed 55 characters and your meta description should be about 156 characters max.
These are important elements because Google is going to display them to users in the search engines. So write persuasive and keyword-rich metadata.
Understand the context in which people are searching for your important keywords, and then create content that is relevant to those people. Research and create content with user intents and focus on solving users’ questions.
As a website owner, you can use insights from the Google Analytics Keyword Report to increase traffic to your website. You can achieve this by effectively optimizing your page with the right keywords.
Simply navigate to the Traffic Sources tab to access this report.
While analyzing your traffic sources, don’t forget to consider the keywords that are bringing people to your website.
But you don’t have to use all the keywords, just concentrate on the top 10 keywords that get the most traffic to your website.
Here are some of the key areas you can use the top 10 keywords to drive more traffic to your web page.
Note: To avoid over-optimizing your anchor text (which Google frowns at), make sure that your keyword-based anchors also contain other natural words.
If you’re a web developer, for example, use “here are the best web design trends” as anchor text instead of using the web design trends as your primary anchor text.
You want to appear as natural as possible with your keywords, links, and anchor texts.
At the end of the day, traffic is what drives traffic to websites. You may want to utilize paid traffic initially, but as time goes by, you’ll want to drive organic traffic from search engines, social media, and other websites.
That’s why you need content.
To get started with content creation, you’ll need to know how your existing content pages are doing.
Is your content driving a decent amount of traffic? Are you satisfied with your unique visitors and page views?
Content Audit can produce dramatic results in terms of organic traffic and revenue. 1800DoorBell increased year-over-year transactions from Google organic traffic by 83% and revenue grew by over 96%.
When you invest in content marketing, you need to focus on several other metrics to determine your ROI from your marketing content. By calculating your ROI on content marketing, you can see whether your investment is paying off or not.
Not many webmasters like to conduct a content audit because it can be daunting and boring to work with Spreadsheets and numbers.
To simplify the process, you can use SEMrush’s Content Analyzer tool. Just enter your website URL and analyze it.
For most websites, the primary purpose of content marketing is to the right leads and turn them into customers.
However, you cannot expect every website visitor who lands on your website to become a customer.
This means that in addition to conversion, you also need to focus on other key metrics such as lead quality, traffic, and on-site engagement.
How often should you audit and review your website content?
Well, you can do so every 6 months or yearly. It all depends on what data you want to collect.
Here are some things you should consider:
For example, you can turn your best blog posts into Podcasts and share on iTunes and other podcast directories.
This will provide an additional way to reach a new audience who prefers to consume audio content. Don’t forget to create videos, Slideshare presentations, infographics, and other types of content.
Your business is going to change approach, focus, or products. As a result, you also need to reflect this with your new content.
To begin, you should get rid of content that no longer reflects the objectives and goals of your business, in its entirety.
In Google Search Console, you can even remove outdated content from Google’s index. That way, Google will no longer count them as your site asset. It helps to save time so that crawlers can focus on fresh, relevant, and useful pages on your site.
As you conduct a content audit, you may discover articles that are no longer useful or have become outdated.
There’s no need for allowing them to take up dust and cost you hosting fees, remove them or better yet, replace them with better content.
Google Analytics is a sophisticated web analytics tool that allows you to extract valuable data from your website traffic.
By using the various reports and statistics available in Google Analytics, you can identify any gaps in the design, content, and structure of your website and make adjustments as needed.
Knowing how to use this web analytics tool correctly can play a crucial role in generating targeted traffic to your website and landing pages, consumers to your product pages, and boost your overall income.
Yes, that’s how powerful Google Analytics can be if only you’d spend some time to master it.
