Tag Archives for " product "

6 Ways to Integrate SEO Across Teams

When I started in digital marketing, I splattered meta-data and keywords into content like Pollock. I am not proud of this because not only does this date me, but it is also horrifically against best practices as we see them today. If you ever read anything along the lines of “California vacation lovers and those who love California vacations? For the best California vacation, look no further than these California vacations,” I send my deepest apologies.

Fast forward 20 years, I’m now happy to say that organic SEO best practices have dramatically improved, both for the marketer and the end-user. As we move into 2022, it’s more important than ever to remember search does not take place in a silo. It should be a thoughtful, integrated strategy running across the complete customer experience.

 

6 Keyways to Integrate SEO Across Your Organization

Not sure how to integrate SEO? We have six key ways to de-silo your search integration across your organization when it comes to working with search engine optimization teams, agencies, or practitioners.

 

#1. Search Meets Research, Personas, and the Audience Journey

Search traffic provides a treasure trove of qualitative and quantitative information about your audiences’ needs, vernacular, attitudes, and more.

• Do people talk about your travel product by saying “vacation” or “trip”?
• Do high school students looking for information about their college of the chosen search for “ASU”, “Arizona State”, or “Arizona State University”?
• When searching for enterprise software, do your customers say “platform,” “tool,” or “technology”?

Using search data helps you discern what will resonate best with your audience. Couple this with surveys, stakeholder interviews, and digital data and you have a solid (and quantifiable) foundation for your personas and audience journeys.

When search teams share high-level keyword information across the organization, it can help support everything from media relations to product development to recruitment and beyond.

 

#2. Integrate SEO and UX

According to “SEO For Everyone” authors Rebekah Baggs & Chris Corak, search and user experience teams shouldn’t be kept on separate tasks (or quite frequently within separate silos).  These practitioners or teams often have some of the same goals in mind: ensure the site is easy to find, navigate, use, and enjoy. Although, they may approach the process of getting to the end goal differently.

Don’t let the idea of The One Perfect Keyword create tunnel vision—you want to be looking at the bigger, more nuanced picture. An improved user experience means people stay on the page longer, interacting further with your site, not clicking the back button, revisiting the site anew, and sharing your content—all boons for SEO. The better the overall site experience (think UX, load times, mobile navigation, et al.), the more likely you’ll reach the coveted top ten in SERP.

– Baggs & Corak

 

#3. Search and….. the Offsite Experience?

During my Britney-and-Justin-era SEO days, I didn’t anticipate I’d be planning for SEO even before the site experience began.

Today Google wants you to stay on Google.

Don’t let the idea of The One Perfect Keyword create tunnel vision—you want to be looking at the bigger, more nuanced picture. Click To Tweet

It is now critical that search marketers consider how their content is presented, consumed, and shared even before the user gets to their site. Examples of this include maps, movie listings, local listings, and product descriptions.

As top search results provide answers via the SERP itself, search marketers and content creators need to button up content, images, and calls to action even before a user steps foot on your site.

 

#4. Search and Social

One of my favorite mash-ups over the years has been searching and social. It’s interesting to find how to search keywords and activities on your site overlap with social engagement conversions and customer care. This isn’t revealed through a pretty Venn diagram.

This typically looks like a psychologist blot experiment with various overlaps in bizarre and unpredictable ways.

As the great resignation continues and teams have more and more to do (with fewer resources, patience, and stamina), one way to offset that workload is figuring out ways to collaborate, leverage each other’s expertise, and do more together, outside of the SEO silo.

Top social sites for search engine optimization (and content distribution, amplification, and atomization too!) include LinkedIn, Pinterest, Medium, Twitter, and Meta (the artist formerly known as Facebook).

According to Pinterest, 444 million people globally come to Pinterest every month to get inspired.  Last year, 88% of Pinterest users purchased a product as a result of their New Year’s Resolutions.

 

#5. SEO, Meet Creative and Content

Content marketers and writers need to ensure content is not just “me me me” or “product product product” copy.

What questions does your audience need answering? In what cadence? Where? Why?  How (video vs text vs app, for example)? I can promise with 99% accuracy it’s not, “why are these SaaS tool features so yummy?”

Creativity is critical too.  According to Google’s John Mueller:

Sometimes those small differences do play a role in regards to how people perceive your website. If, for example, you have something that is on a financial topic and people come to you and say, “well, your information is okay but it’s presented in a way that looks very amateurish,” – then that could reflect how your website is perceived. And in the long run could reflect something that is visible in search as well.

Poor design can lead to high bounce rates and short time on site, adversely impacting ratings.  Search marketers working on their 2022 goal or to-do list might consider adding “meet with the creative team”  (over coffee or cocktails works!)

For a goldmine of additional insights from Google’s John Mueller Bookmark This: 57 SEO Insights 

 

#6. SEO and Video

With YouTube continuing to dominate as a primary search engine, optimizing videos for SEO should be on your radar as well. Videos should mirror your search keywords, be thoughtfully optimized, and mirror the sophistication of your brand, both from a creative and UX perspective.

Keep your eye on:

• Channel trailer, featured video, and channel sections
• Channel name, description, and site links
• Profile picture, banner image, and video watermark
• SRT Files,Tags, & Hashtags
• Titles and headlines for thumbnails

 

Now’s The Time To Integrate SEO

To help phase your efforts, begin by learning what terms and topics your audience is searching for, build content focusing on those phrases and issues, and use the research to understand the highest interest levels.  Focus your content initiatives on those first.

In addition, tools like TubeBuddy, Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and YouTube Search Predictions will help you learn what is working – and what’s not as you integrate SEO.

 

The post 6 Ways to Integrate SEO Across Teams appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

How to Use Sales Demos to Strengthen Your Online Reputation

Digitalization has had a huge impact on everyone’s life. In most aspects it has influenced businesses in a good way: They can now go global, discover new marketing channels and broaden their customer base.

But there’s one negative to being online as well: A fragile reputation.

In a world where anyone can complain about any business failure in a public manner, any business is vulnerable. A reputation crisis is always around the corner.

And it is even more challenging in a B2B industry where buying journeys are longer and past failures are harder to erase. B2B customers are good at researching their options, comparing businesses, and making informed decisions. Any past reputation crisis may be standing in your way to success for years to come.

Were you looking for ways to solidify your B2B business online reputation? The solution may be in adjusting your sales demonstrations.

 

Why Are Sales Demos So Important for Online Reputation?

Let’s face it: When it comes to B2B, sales demos are often the only way to close a sale. It is the only way to demonstrate how your product is solving your prospects’ pain points and prove that your platform is worth investing in.

Product demos are central to any software sales process.

But what does it have to do with reputation?

• Product demos can turn a prospect into a customer, a customer into a believer and brand advocate, and who can better protect your reputation than your brand advocate?
• Professional product demos can rank for your brand name and set positive expectations about your brand. Using your product demo on your landing pages makes you look like a serious and reputable company.
• Making your demo easy to access (without the need to register an account, schedule a call, etc.) will shorten your customers’ buying journeys which means fewer people will compare you to competitors and research your reputation.
• Public demos will add some positive context to your brand and help you control its online sentiment. If done correctly, your sales demo lets you highlight your software’s most important features showing it in a most favorable way. The more demos you market, the more of the context contributes to the whole picture.

 

So How to Use Demos to Strengthen Your Online Reputation?

Publish Your Product Demos

This is easy: You may have a ton of recorded demos by now. It will likely be easy for you to find some you can publicize for others to see.

If you use Walnut, this process will even be easier.

The tool allows you to use their code-free platform to create various demos, instantly targeting different personas and use cases. This is a great way to create a ton of original content to make public and use on top of your sales funnel.

You can even embed your demos on various landing pages allowing your site visitors and prospects to use interactive features to try some features and get to know your product better.

Demonstrating your product demo on your website/landing pages makes you look like a serious and reputable company. This is especially helpful to smaller businesses, as you enable product-lead-Growth (PLG) with your prospects which in turn, makes you appear to be a bigger brand.

You can then use Walnut’s built-in analytics to understand which parts of your demo seemed to appeal better to your prospects. This gives you lots of insights to create better demos in the future.

 

Treat Your Demos as Content Assets

Using your demos for reputation management means turning them into top-of-the-funnel content assets. So instead of treating your demos as private assets, start looking at them as your branded digital media.

In other words, you want your demos to rank on Google and get shared around by your prospective customers.

• Research your (or your competitors’) branded keywords
• Break them into groups by search intent, personas, and decision-makers that may be using each keyword (CEO, marketing manager, IT manager, etc.)
• Create landing pages targeting those keyword groups and add your custom demos to each one. The idea is that anyone researching your brand and your products should be able to find answers on your site by watching your demo instead of having to go elsewhere

Obviously, it is a good idea to get your sales team involved in the process as they will likely offer a great deal of insight into your probable decision-makers and buyer personas behind each search query. Collaboration is key to success here.

Note: There’s a cool quiz by Nextiva allowing you to determine whether your company is prepared for collaborations and unified communication. Take it!

 

Monitor Each of Your Sales Funnels

Obviously, each of those landing pages will become your strong sales funnels, so you want to keep a close eye on those.  Again, Walnut will give you lots of insights into how your site visitors are engaging with your demos.

Additionally, you may also keep an eye on traffic channels and buying journeys that started on those landing pages. Finteza will help you build, monitor, and compare those individual conversion channels:

Obviously, Google Analytics can be used for that as well (especially in combination with Search Console that provides keyword data), but it will be somewhat harder to set up and figure out.

 

Conclusion

Innovating your sales demos comes with lots of benefits including a happier sales team and more sales. It may come as a surprise but sales demos can also boost your brand and solidify your reputation as a reliable niche solution. Good luck!

The post How to Use Sales Demos to Strengthen Your Online Reputation appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

How to Use Social Listening for Lead Generation

Would you like your social media marketing strategy to bring in more leads?

Hardly any business would say “no” to that.

One of the best ways to generate leads from social media (apart from investing in social media advertising) is to use social media listening.

At this point, just about any business uses social media monitoring to help their customers and prevent a social media crisis.

These days anyone can message their favorite brand on Facebook and get help immediately. Anyone can tweet to a business on Twitter and hear back within a day.

Social media support has become a norm rather than a competitive advantage.

Yet, not many businesses realize that social media listening can also be used to acquire customers, not just help existing clients.

How to turn your social media strategy into a lead generation powerhouse?

Let’s see!

1. Treat Social Media Listening as a Project

The first step is to create a well-defined process.

More often than not, social media listening is mostly owned by your social media team (or a single social media manager).

They log in to a dashboard (or an individual platform like Facebook or Twitter), go through private messages, and post standard replies (like “Send your order number here to get help”).

Then they scroll through updates where the brand was tagged to see if there is anything else that needs a reply.

This is a bare minimum effort that a social media listening strategy usually entails.

Yet, this strategy fails to capture important opportunities, like winning a new customer or fixing a fundamental product or website error. To make more of your social listening strategy, make sure to:

 

1.1. Monitor more than your tagged mentions or DMs

If your brand is more or less known in the industry, consumers will be discussing it without ever tagging your social media profile. You want to know what they are saying, so:

• Monitor different variations of your brand name (one word, separate words, etc.).  For example, in my case, that would be both “seosmarty” and “seo smarty”.
• Monitor the names of your CEO / founder or any other public representative. I would also want to keep an eye on the mentions of “ann smarty”
• Exclude tagged (linked) mentions because you will be notified of those by a social media platform and you are likely already monitoring them anyway. Creating a separate feed for your untagged brand mentions will help you catch those more effectively instead of losing them in the clutter.

Most social media listening platforms allow you to create one unified feed monitoring keyword mentions. Here’s what it may look like using native Twitter search:

 

For local businesses, monitoring your location feed on Instagram is also a very good idea.

 

1.2. Include other team members into your monitoring routine

Social media messages are all different. Some people ask for immediate help, others simply share their feedback on a product or website usability.

This is why this process should involve more teams within your company.

This is where social media listening should be treated as a project where one central role (in this case, a social media manager), distributes messages around the company and even sets deadlines to make sure these messages are adequately acted upon.

Agorapulse is social management and monitoring platform that gets it: Every social media update you get through their monitoring solution can be assigned to a different team member with a comment.

Including various teams (design, product development, etc.) into your social media listening process helps everyone be on the same page and answer important questions:

• Are customers liking our product? How can we improve it?
• Is our website easy to navigate? How can we make it better?
• Are our customers satisfied with our customer support? How can we improve it?
• Are there unhappy customers and how can we win them back?
• And finally, what has prevented any person from becoming our customer and how can we still convert them?

This is the fundamental step in understanding your target audience and creating a better lead generation and conversion strategy.

 

2. Monitor Your Competitor’s (Unhappy) Customers

Your social media listening can not only help you understand your customers. It can also help you understand (and even win) your competitors’ customers.

This is why monitoring your competitor’s brand name is as important as monitoring your own.

Lots of customers will publicly share their dissatisfaction with various aspects of your competitors’ operations, so it is a good idea to create a separate feed for monitoring those complaints:

It is a great idea to treat these mentions as your own, i.e. assign these messages to your website and product developers, as well as involve your sales team for them to reach out to some of these people to try and get them to try your product (that doesn’t have these problems).

Additionally, use this trick when planning and developing your product to define your value proposition and identify your competitive advantage.

 

3. Seek Lead Generating Links

Finally, links can bring leads both directly (from people clicking on those links) and indirectly (by improving rankings of your site). And links can be acquired through social media listening.

Create a separate feed to monitor the following hashtags that journalists are using to find sources and opinions:

• #PRrequest
• #journorequest
• #asktwitter

Include your local and/or niche journalists into that monitoring feed to listen to what they have to say, what they are writing about and what they are asking.

In many cases, you will be able to suggest angles they may be interested in writing about based on what they are tweeting. Buzzsumo is a  great way to find those journalists on Twitter:

Once you set this feed up, your social media manager will go through that daily and assign selected tweets to your outreach team.

From there, to be able to evaluate these efforts, make sure to create well-organized link monitoring links. For example, Ahrefs alerts notify you via email when your domain gains (or loses) backlinks.

And Link Checker will help you organize those links for you to be able to clearly see which links were acquired through social media and assign important metrics to them (like nofollow / nofollow links, indexation status, redirects, etc.)

Additionally, Finteza will help you evaluate your traffic-driving links and analyze whether those clicks result in leads:

 

Conclusion

Social media listening can help you on many levels – from converting your potential customers to better understanding their needs. All of that can boost your lead generation efforts and help your conversion optimization strategy.

The post How to Use Social Listening for Lead Generation appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

How to Start a Business

Anyone can start up a business. No college degree, huge bank balance, or corporate experience is necessary. All you need is a great idea, the right systems, and the drive to see it through.

Since you’re already searching for ways to learn about how to start a business, odds are you already have an idea and the drive. What you need to know is how to start building your future empire.

In this article, I’m going to discuss the exact steps to start a business so that you can put the right systems in place.

 

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

 

Your 2-Minute Cheat Sheet

I’ll walk through each step in much greater detail below. Here, I want to give you the bare-bones cheat sheet for how to start a business now.

First, refine your idea based on the needs and demands of your target customers, along with your preferences.

Next, you’ll create a business plan. This is a crucial part of the whole process, so you have to get this right.

After sketching out your business’s entire framework, do market research, and collect feedback from friends, mentors, and family.

Then you need to tackle the legal side of things. Get started early in case there are any snags. This includes deciding your business structure, registering your business, getting the necessary license and permits, and setting up bank accounts.

At this point, you have your idea and a plan to make it come to life. You can then use it to arrange for the required capital to launch your product or service. Follow this up by building your team and finding a location if you’re opening a physical store.

Finally, focus your efforts on generating more sales and growing your business, which is also what you’ll find yourself doing for most of your career.

That’s a few years of business distilled into a couple of paragraphs. Let’s take a closer look at each step. Of course, you should feel free to skip steps if you have already locked down the basics.

Step 1: Come Up With a Business Idea

Every business begins with an idea. If you already have one, congratulations! You can proceed to the next step. If not, you need to start brainstorming.

Here are a few tips to come up with a great business idea (I made a list of over 25 home-based businesses as well):

Think of ways to get ahead of the curve. Think of how your product or service can change the business landscape, especially with the constant technological advancements.

• Solve a problem you identify. After all, your customers would prefer more of a good thing and less of a bad thing.
• Try to bring a fresh perspective that helps you gain a competitive edge over your competitors.
• Think of ways to make your approach better, cheaper, and faster if your business idea isn’t new.

At this stage, you can also conduct surveys and collect perspectives by meeting people and asking for advice. Researching ideas online is another excellent way to come up with business ideas.

 

Step 2: Conduct Market Research

The whole point of conducting market research is to understand typical consumer behavior, pain points, and relevant market trends in your chosen niche. This is a sure way to determine how your potential startup might fit into the existing industry landscape.

Try to find the answers to the following questions while doing market research:

• What product or service is currently in demand in your given market?
• What is the market size, or how many clients make up your target audience?
• How many competitors share a similar concept to your business idea?
• What is the price that customers are willing to pay for products and services in your market?
• What’s the typical consumer engagement in your market? Did your competitors move online during the pandemic? Can you replicate their sales process or do it better?

One of the best ways to gain genuine insights is to speak with consumers directly. Take surveys, make questionnaires, and do one-on-one interviews.

Another free resource you should absolutely use is Google. Say you are starting a business that sells shampoo to men. I’d search “shampoo for men”, “men’s hair care”, along with other terms and phrases in the space.

Then I’d take a hard look at the first page of results for each keyword.

What are the top websites (not paid ads) doing? Who are they speaking to? How do they position their products and services?

Asking simple questions like these can give you a ton of insight into the market. You can also plug keywords into tools like Ubersuggest to find out how many people are searching for these terms each month.

Researching your market is an ongoing process. What you find out today may change tomorrow.

I put this as ‘Step 2’ because you want to get started early, but you should be constantly trying to understand the trends in your space.

 

Step 3: Lock Down the Legal Stuff

I always make sure to get the legal stuff out of the way early. This way, I don’t have to worry about anybody else taking my big idea, ending up in a bad partnership, or getting sued because of misinformation.

Determine your business structure first, as it’ll dictate the legal and tax requirements you will have to meet. Your options include sole proprietorship, partnership, limited liability company (LLC), and corporation.

Enlist a tax professional’s services, as every structure has its own set of tax requirements, or use an online business formation service.

At this stage, you’ll also have to choose a business name and register your business. Find out whether your chosen name is available for registration in your state and within the digital space. You want availability as a:

• Business name in your state
• Domain name
• Social media platform usernames

If a specific name isn’t available, you can always consider permutations of the name. Make sure your domain name and business name aren’t impinging on any registered trademarks.

There is a quick checklist of other things that you’ll need:

• Federal tax ID
• State tax ID
• Permits and licenses (as needed)
• Business bank accounts
• Trademarks, patents, and copyrights (as needed)

It’s best to consult a lawyer to cover everything you need. You can always work out things on your own, but sometimes it’s best to ask an expert.

 

Step 4: Write Your Business Plan

Many people question the purpose of creating a business plan. After all, if you already have a vision for your business, why write it down?

When you create a business plan, you describe every aspect of your business in a formal document. You put everything into words.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “There never was a good knife made of bad steel.”

It’s precisely why a business plan is such a crucial part of any business. It defines your thoughts and research and exactly what you need to do to make a business a success.

This helps put things into perspective and allows you to identify areas to streamline future processes.

Let me clarify: Your business plan doesn’t need to be 100 pages long. It only needs to be readable and include the main components. Such as:

• Pain points your business solves
• An elevator pitch about what your business does
• A list of your target audiences
• An idea list of how you’ll promote your business (your marketing strategy)
• The financial plan of how you’ll raise money to pay and how your business will make money
• Financial documents

Do a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) of your business, too, to gain insights and identify ways to achieve your goals.

As the industry and market are always changing, you’ll find yourself revising your plan frequently. Periodic revisions and refinement of your business plan ensure that your business remains competitive in the long run.

 

Step 5: Raise Capital for Your Business

There are many ways you can get the resources to start your business. Below, I’ve discussed some of the best ways I found raising capital is easy and effective. You can choose one or more that work best for you.

Start at Home

Bootstrapping your business is a long process, but it gives you full control over your business. You can also leverage personal relationships by asking friends and family for a loan or to invest in your business.

Online Crowdfunding

There’s no disputing the power in numbers, especially when it comes to raising capital. Crowdfunding gives you direct access to small investments that can add up to something massive.

Check out Kickstarter or Indiegogo, or Google a list of the most popular crowdfunding websites. Crowdfunding is more for a physical product than a service.

Reach Out to Venture Capital Investors or Local Angel Investors

Venture capitalist investors look for proven teams that require a capital investment of $1 million or more, which is why you need some traction before approaching them.

If you feel you don’t have such traction right now, you can instead apply to online platforms like AngelList and Gust to find potential investors who would be interested in your project.

Apply for a Small Business Grant

Grants.gov is an online directory of more than 1000 federal grant programs that can supply you with the capital to kickstart your project. Although the process is long, you don’t have to give away any equity.

Get a Bank Loan or a Line of Credit

Applying for a bank loan is easy, but you should do so only if you really need a bank loan and if you’re eligible. You can head over to the Small Business Administration to look for loan opportunities.

 

Step 6: Develop Your Product or Service

Nothing feels better than seeing your idea come to life. The only problem is creating a product takes a village–if not a city.

You’ll have a different set of requirements based on your product or service. For instance, if you want to develop an app, you want someone with the technical know-how, whereas if you’re going to mass-produce an item, you’ll need a manufacturer.

Product simplicity and quality should be your top priority. Rather than creating the cheapest product, focus on developing something that catches someone’s attention. You can further streamline the process by keeping in mind the following tips:

1. Avoid handing over product development to someone else or another firm, and if you do, make sure you supervise constantly.
2. Implement regular checks and balances to reduce the level of risk involved. For example, if you decide to hire freelancers, hire multiple people so that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
3. Enlist specialists instead of generalists. A jack-of-all-trades isn’t what you need right now.
4. Always operate within your budget.

For service-focused entrepreneurs, the game is slightly different.

Your primary focus should be to have the necessary certificates and educational requirements. Search online job portals and freelance working platforms to find opportunities. Upwork and ProBlogger could be great places to start.

 

Step 7: Build a Reliable and Responsible Team

What’s the best way to scale your business and achieve all your organizational goals?

Have a good team.

One of the critical aspects of a growing business is delegating responsibilities to other people, whether a partner, employee or freelancer. Here are a few tips to help you find the right team members:

State Your Goals Clearly

When your team members understand your vision and their role in helping you achieve it, they’ll make fewer errors.

If you are just starting out, you’ll probably be interested in some of the really great free project management software out there. These aren’t free trials, and you’ll be able to make sure everyone is on the same page–no extra cost to you.

Establish and Follow Hiring Protocols

Welcoming people to your team involves several processes, ranging from screening people, carrying out interviews, and having proper forms. This will help you create a more competent team.

Create a Strong Company Culture

Great company culture is all about respecting and empowering employees through training and mentorship.

You don’t need futuristic decor or ping-pong tables (if you can afford that, that’s great!) but you do need a positive atmosphere where everybody feels welcomed and appreciated.

 

Step 8: Find a Business Location

One in four businesses that starts within the next 12 months will have a 100% remote workforce. But if you decide to open a brick-and-mortar retail business, you need to focus on getting the right location.

Here are a few things you should keep in mind:

• Demographics: Think about your customers and how they interact with your location. Does your target clientele frequent the potential location? Does your location reflect the image you’re trying to project?
• Foot Traffic: Monitor the foot traffic outside a potential location throughout the day. Do you see a couple of passers-by throughout the day? Or is it away from the public eye? Is there parking available?
• Business Community: The business community refers to the other businesses nearby that can bring you foot traffic. Is there a mall nearby? Are there restaurants where customers can go after shopping at your store?
• Competition: Contrary to popular belief, having competitors nearby isn’t always bad. Whatever your stand, you should be aware of whether or not you have competitors nearby before deciding on a location.

Research the history of the location as well. If other businesses have tried and failed in space, find out why.

And of course, always keep the cost in mind. Expenses like rent, cleaning services, insurance, and parking fees need to be considered.

 

Step 9: Work On Generating Sales

Start by listening to your potential customers to know their wants, needs, likes, and dislikes. Next, learn the art of asking for a commitment without being too pushy.

In other words, don’t force your customers into buying goods from you, or they won’t return.

Moreover, you have to prepare yourself for hearing “NO“ too. Sad, I know.

People listen to your elevator pitch despite having no intention to buy simply because they’re polite. If they don’t end up buying from you, don’t get disheartened.

Grow your customer base and put out advertisements to find an audience to fit your business.

At this point, you’ll also have to figure out the right sales funnel and strategy to generate leads and convert them into paying customers.

Sales and marketing are critical to building a successful business. Check out some of these free customer relationship management tools that help you stay organized as you grow your contact list.

 

Step 10: Expand Your Business

You must have a growth plan if you want to earn and scale your business. Luckily, there are about a million ways to grow your company.

I’d highly recommend utilizing the power of social media through an organic, influencer, and paid campaigns. Email marketing works equally well to create and nurture a dedicated customer base.

One of the key aspects of long-term growth is to have a dedicated customer base and reduce customer churn.

All the efforts you put into nurturing your existing customers can be useful in the long run when they act as your repeat customers, ensuring revenue in the long run.

 

Conclusion

We’ve covered everything you need to know to start a business. Now you can prepare for the exciting adventure in front of you.

Taking the first step can feel a bit scary, but don’t fear. Take the plunge and launch your business–it’s a lot of fun!

Of course, you’ll find challenges and roadblocks along the way, but as long as you remain dedicated and driven, you can learn from your mistakes and climb higher up the ladder.

Don’t wait any longer!

Source: neilpatel.com

7 Tips to Highlight Product Features on Your Website

Whether your customers are shopping for tennis shoes or a marketing automation tool, they care about your product’s features. Features (along with price and design) are one of the main factors people consider when comparing products.

 

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

Would you buy a computer without knowing how much storage it has?

Or a pair of yoga pants without knowing whether they stretch?

Despite their importance, many brands fail to make their product’s features clear on their websites—and that could cause revenue to drop.

Your product’s features are massive selling points, so they need to be clear and compelling.

Here’s how to get your product features right.

 

What Is a Product Feature?

A product feature is a characteristic of your product that differentiates it from other products in the market.

It could be how it looks (a design feature), how you can use it (a functional feature) or what it comes with (an added-value feature).

Let’s take running shoes as an example.

The material of the shoe is a feature, so is the technology in the shoe.

Both are highlighted in this example by Nike.

 

What about a software product?

Features typically center on the product’s functionality (what you can do with it), but they can also include integrations or data security.

Slack’s feature page below highlights these types of features:

Features don’t have to be unique to your product, though.

As design, technology, and manufacturing processes evolve, some features become standard.

You’d be hard-pressed to buy a smartphone without a touchscreen, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a feature brands can talk about.

Whether your product comes with ten features or two, you need to be talking about them across your website including your product descriptions, landing page, and even your homepage.

Make your product features clear so customers can easily compare you to your competitors.

It’s even more important if your product boasts the best features in the industry.

The more you shout about them, the more likely consumers are to take notice—and maybe make a purchase.

 

7 Strategies for Highlighting Product Features

You know what features are, and you know why they’re important to include on your site.

Now let’s look at seven ways e-commerce stores and SaaS tools can effectively leverage them.

 

Include Social Proof

Talking about how great your features are is nice, but every other company does the same thing.

Even if your product features are superior, customers may not believe you.

After all, only one-third of customers trust the brands they buy from.

You need social proof to convince them your product delivers.

Add quotes and testimonials from your customers or trusted third parties that mention your product features to relevant pages. Better yet, include images and videos of them using your product.

Featuring real people showing off your product’s features instantly makes them more credible and makes it much more likely consumers will trust your brand.

UK maternity brand Isabella Oliver does a great job of this, including a quote from Vogue in the product description of a maternity tank dress.

 

Speak to Your Target Audience

You need to understand your target audience to write about your product features effectively.

If you have buyer personas, make sure to refer to them while writing.

This will help you prioritize which features your customers care about most.

Start by looking at reviews for your product and those of your competitors—G2 is a great place to start for software companies and Amazon for e-commerce brands.

Identify the top features customers talk about and prioritize them.

Be wary of trying to target everyone.

This is particularly important for SaaS products that can have a dozen different use cases.

Each target customer should have a dedicated landing page where you speak exclusively about relevant product features.

If you try to speak to everyone on one landing page, you’ll end up not targeting any audience well.

Everlane is an example of a brand who knows their target audience and what they care about.

Each product description includes a link to the factory it’s made in and other information related to sustainability.

 

Focus on the Benefits

Consumers only care so much about what makes your product special.

What they really care about is how it benefits them.

Talk about a benefit whenever you mention a feature.

Writing about benefits requires a bit more effort and creativity.

Your product’s features are fairly obvious, especially to you.

What isn’t so obvious is how the user benefits from them.

Think about your customer personas and spend some time reading product reviews.

These will help you get into your customers’ minds and focus on the benefits they care about.

If you really want to do a good job, interview your customers to find out exactly how they benefit from your product.

It takes a little more effort, but this is hands-down the best way to tease out the benefits of your product.

One of Hootsuite’s most popular features is the ability to track social media mentions on their dashboard–but that’s not how the brand sells the feature to its users.

Instead, they focus on the benefit: finding out what customers really think.

They even follow this up with another user-generated benefit of the feature.

 

Draw Attention to the Important Details

There are some features you’ll want customers to take note of more than others.

That’s why it’s important to create a hierarchy of features and look for ways to draw attention to the features consumers care most about.

To do this, break your page into sections and devote each section to a specific feature.

Use a bold heading to grab your reader’s attention and back this up with short, sharp copy and eye-catching imagery.

Google takes this to the extreme by letting each feature take up all of the screen’s real estate.

There’s no way to miss them:

Another is to remove the navigation menu from your landing page.

With no way to move away from the page, users are forced to focus on your sales copy and read about your product’s features.

Don’t get carried away using this tactic, however.

Most customers won’t be happy with you removing the navigation bar, especially if you’re an e-commerce site.

 

Make Information Scannable

Your customers are busy, and most aren’t going to read every word on your page.

Instead, they’re going to scan it for key bits of information.

It’s your job to make your product features as scannable as possible while still getting across the core message.

Bullet points are an excellent tool because huge chunks of text are a massive turn-off for readers—especially if you want to share a lot of information.

Target includes a bullet list of each product’s features on their listing page, so you don’t even have to click them individually to get the need-to-know information.

 

Use Video and Images

Words aren’t the only way to get across your product features.

Images and videos are usually a much better way to get across exactly what your product can do.

Images are an easy way to show customers how key features look and work.

They are particularly powerful for design-focused features and most e-commerce products in general.

Bonus points if you include user-generated photos in your descriptions.

UK furniture brand Made did a great job of including user-generated images in their product listings.

Potential customers can see exactly what each sofa will look like in a range of settings.

Videos take a little more work, but they can be even more effective.

For example, you could create an explainer video that highlights your product’s core features, or a separate video for each feature.

Your feature-led videos can also be used as part of your onboarding process and by your sales team during client calls.

They can even boost your search rankings, especially if you host them on YouTube.

 

Write Blog Posts and Emails

If you have a SaaS product, blog posts, emails, and other forms of content marketing are one of the best ways to highlight your product features—particularly if those features come in the form of new software releases.

Make sure your blog posts talk about the benefits that users can gain from the new features and don’t just talk about the features alone.

Plenty of screenshots are also a good idea, so is a video if you can create one.

Unlike other forms of content marketing, there’s no need to post these articles regularly.

Writing them when you have a new feature to describe is enough.

Email updates should also be sent sparingly.

Only email when you have a new feature to announce and keep your email succinct.

Only include the key details in the email and link to a more in-depth blog post if necessary.

Existing users will learn about the new features when using the software, so it may be wise to only send an email about features that may re-engage lost customers.

Asana’s blog is filled with feature-focused blog posts.

Note that many don’t focus on individual features. Rather they cluster feature releases around a particular topic and write about that instead.

 

3 Examples of Product Feature Highlights

If the examples above weren’t enough for you, I’ve got three more examples of brands that do a great job highlighting their product features.

 

Apple

Few companies are better than Apple at creating buzz about their products.

There aren’t many better at highlighting their product’s benefits, either.

Apple makes a point of creating a new banner for every feature, pairs each with a user benefit, and includes high-quality images and graphics.

Even if you already have an iPhone, reading their product pages makes you want to upgrade.

 

Amazon

Amazon is famous for its in-depth product listings, but those listings are also great at highlighting each product’s most important features.

The clear layout makes it easy for customers to skim the product description, and bullet points highlight the most important features.

There’s even a video showcasing the product in detail.

 

Tesla

Tesla combines several of the tactics mentioned above to highlight the key features of the Model 3.

Each feature is given a hierarchy—security is first—and takes up the entire page.

They also use graphics to illustrate points and annotations to draw attention to specific features.

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Product Features

 

What are product features?

Your product features are any characteristic of your product that makes it stand out and separates it from your competitors.

It can include the look and design of the product, how it’s made, or what you can do with it.

 

What are examples of product features?

For an e-commerce product, the material the product is made with can be a feature—if it’s made from recycled plastic, for example.

For SaaS products, features include the functionality of the product.

The ability to instantly message colleagues is a feature of Slack, for instance.

 

What’s the difference between a product feature and a benefit?

A feature is a characteristic of your product.

A benefit is how a customer can use that characteristic to overcome a pain point.

 

How can I highlight the features of my SaaS product?

A sales page is an excellent way to highlight all of the features of your SaaS products.

Blog posts, videos, and demos are also great ways to highlight SaaS features.

 

How can I highlight the features of my e-commerce product?

Your product description is the best place to highlight the features of your e-commerce product.

Make sure they are easy to read and stand out from the rest of your copy.

 

The Conclusion of My Product Features Guide

Showcasing your product features is a hugely underrated tactic.

Marketers and salespeople will tell you to focus on the benefits of your product rather than the features.

While benefits are important, they rely on explaining your features clearly first.

Features are also one of the most common ways potential customers compare your product with your competitors.

Take time to determine which features are most important and get opinions from current customers if you can.

Then use the seven tactics I’ve listed above to make them as clear as possible on your site.

Which features of your product are you most proud of?

Source: neilpatel.com

How to Create a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign Using Webinars

Webinars are an invaluable content marketing product designed to bring in high-quality leads for your sales team.

For most Convince & Convert readers, it is almost common knowledge that webinars are an invaluable content marketing product designed to bring in high-quality leads for your sales team.

However, there’s a certain mystique surrounding webinars:

• Should they be high-end in terms of production value to convey equivalence in professionalism to the product itself?
• Should they be low-fi recordings with off-the-cuff experts to provide a behind-the-scenes look on how to truly win with the product?
• Should they be pre-recorded and scripted?
• Should they be a question-and-answer free-for-all?

 

How should a company go about creating an effective webinar?

Like all mediums, webinars are complex, and the right answer depends heavily on the product and team using them.

For initial setup, the following guide on how to create a webinar is instructive in determining a rough format.

Once the rough format is decided on, a company can decide on how to ensure the webinar is effective by touching on the relevant psychological triggers necessary to induce the end purchase.

However, there are some gaps in the overall setup process, which this article hopes to augment.

Namely, a company needs to be cognizant of who is being targeted and how best to influence those people.

Then, how to make sure they are aware of the campaign in the first place.

Stay on target

When it comes to psychological triggers of purchase, you first need to have a much deeper understanding of who exactly you’re trying to influence.

Take into account the various cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors that might come into the purchasing decision, but also the decision to click the initial registration button and to show up.

Without delving too deep into this piece of the puzzle, consider where your target audience is located.

• Are they going to be available to join your webinar when it’s scheduled? If the product being sold is designed for their job, normal work hours make sense. If it is a side hustle, consider kicking it off after 5 pm or so.
• Are there language considerations? If the target audience is of a radically different socioeconomic status, consider the platform and minimum technical requirements for the webinar to make it as frictionless as possible.
• What’s the age range of the audience? Is the product geared towards an older audience? Younger? Hip, casual, conservative, professional?
• Why is the audience joining you? Is it to learn? Is it out of motivation to succeed, or even fear?

Once the various sociological and psychological profiling is complete to the point of having a more solid grasp of exactly who the target market is, a company can devote resources to find the ideal influencers to make it a success.

Enter influencers

To dispel the obvious myths, influencers are not just about Kim K and her sisters hawking the latest facial cream on Instagram.

While that is still an absurdly successful use case, every marketing medium and product combination can benefit from the right influencers.

It’s just a matter of choosing the right influencer type for the campaign.

The influencer type usefulness matrix from Intellifluence

Influencers can generally be bucketed into three main categories:

• Aspirational. For ease of definition, aspirational can be thought of as the Kim K celebrity example above.
• Authoritative. These influencers are key for webinars. Authoritative influencers are the trusted subject matter experts, even in a narrowly defined field.
• Peer. Peer influencers would be akin to your colleagues and industry peers, from the B2B perspective.

 

Why do we care so much about authoritative influencers for your webinar campaign?

Using the usefulness matrix above, we can determine what influence type is best suited for the sociological and psychological profiling work performed earlier on the target audience.

Reach matters.

Of course, but given the educational nature of webinars, the ability to inform in a trusted and relevant manner that is geared towards commerce is the winning combination.

Peer influencers also rate quite highly, which we can layer on in a later step.

For example, Jay Baer hosts webinars for Convince & Convert’s client, SharpSpring.

Jay is an authoritative influencer in marketing and marketing technology, and also helps drive registrations for virtual events through email, social, and word-of-mouth marketing.

Jay is an authoritative influencer who hosts and presents webinars for clients.

Jay also brings together additional authoritative influencers like Shama Hyder.

How to use authoritative influencers on your webinar

Pay them!

The article could have been as short as that previous sentence and still would not have been a waste of a company’s time.

If a company can pay a renowned expert in its field to host a webinar on how they have had success using YOUR product, you’ll make sales.

If you can’t get authorities, you can incentivize some walkthroughs from existing customers to prospective customers, aggregating the peer signal.

Host, co-host, or syndicate?

In the short example above, the recommendation is to pay the expert to host a webinar for his audience and followers regarding how to use your product as the expert sees fit, co-hosted with you for co-citation proximity (this is the leeching authority trick).

As a follow-up step, syndicate the webinar out to your prospective audience via email with the ability to participate in a follow-up company-hosted webinar series where your sales staff interact in more of a Q&A nature.

Since trust has already been established with tacit expert approval, the subsequent webinars can move deeper into the sales channel.

Bring on the wolf pack

In the penultimate stage of the process, the goal is to result in multiple prospective customer touches and funnel starts.

Use an on-going webinar series to keep people in the funnel

One simple way to do this is by recording an ongoing webinar series for those prospective customers, using your top product users as the weekly/monthly/quarterly experts.

This series is recorded and then syndicated through the following authoritative channels: YouTube and blogs.

As these peer-level users are already in love with your product, you can comp their usage of it as compensation in many cases.

Famed influence professor Cialdini would refer to this as unity: the desire to remain in the wolf pack.

Encourage peer influencers to promote your webinar

This can be as simple as pushing for peer influencers to share the webinar signup details over Twitter and Facebook, utilizing a series of relevant hashtags and a brief personal story of why they’ll be attending the webinar.

Make this easy for them by providing a standard promotional copy in a Google Doc.

Drive registrations with email

Another overlooked influencer syndication method is e-mail. Convince & Convert is great at email marketing with Jay’s personal updates that seamlessly interweave a narrative with a branded goal.

When a relevant email influencer is used to connect their audience with your upcoming webinar, wonderful things can happen, which is why companies like Intellifluence are willing to throw money at such influencers.

They can drive amazing signups!

Get some press

Finally, to tie the entire webinar campaign neatly with an influencer bow, consider running a targeted press relations campaign to extend your perceived authority on the subject and garner some additional eyeballs to your work.

The goal of this step is not to submit a generic PR Newswire report and hope for the best.

For the best results, target the journalists that have actively written on your industry and/or on webinar marketing in the past.

You are now doing something amazing, which their audience could benefit from knowing about.

Become the expert

If you’re just starting out in your content marketing journey and this entire process seems daunting, don’t despair.

You can become that authority yourself by taking the initial step and writing on the B2B subject matters you know about.

In due time, you’ll be the expert being paid to share your thoughts on a webinar.

The post How to Create a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign Using Webinars appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

Rethinking the 3 Ps of Business

If you own a business or have ever taken a basic business class, then you’re probably familiar with the 3 Ps.

People. Product. Process.

According to the guiding principle of the 3 Ps, managing these three most important factors of a business will help you find unchallenged success.

They are the building blocks that help construct a successful business. See, without the right people, a good product, and a proven selling process your business will fail.

But there are thousands of businesses that have all of those things and still find themselves struggling to get by. So what’s missing? Why don’t the 3 Ps alone take your business as far as it needs to go?

Turns out, there is a fourth P that nobody mentioned. Until now.

As important as your people, product, and process are, your positioning is just as important. And especially for all you marketers out there, you know this better than anyone.

When it comes to your product and your process, positioning is an integral part of the equation. Think of positioning the same way as marketing—it’s figuring out how to frame and advertise your product in a way that makes it more appealing to your audience.

Positioning is something that Donald Miller, CEO of StoryBrand, talked about in our recent workshop. It’s an often-overlooked factor of your business that, according to Donald, will make or break you.

Deprioritizing positioning is a mistake that a lot of new business owners make. By not focusing on how you position, promote, and advertise your product/service, you’re putting a cap on your potential for growth.

So, we are taking a few tips from Donald Miller and breaking down this forgotten 4th P of business so you no longer wonder why you’re struggling even though you’re doing everything else right.

How Positioning Works

First, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

• How is your product actually positioned in the marketplace?
• How does that positioning help differentiate you and set you as a part of your industry?
• Can people figure out easily what you sell and what problem you solve?

All of these answers will help you create your core positioning message, which is something you want your customers to be extremely familiar with.

You want your customer to be able to recite your core messaging back to you. You want them to be able to give you a summary of the purpose of your business. You want them to memorize the problem that you solve.

If you create this kind of brand recognition, it demonstrates that you’ve done an effective job at bringing awareness to your brand, thereby increasing your business’s chance to be successful.

Why Positioning is Important

Remember how we said that positioning is just as important as the other 3 Ps?

Well, we lied.

Positioning is probably the most important aspect of building your business, even more, important than your product itself. That may sound like a stretch, but it’s true.

See, selling well and becoming an authority in your market aren’t just about having the best product or offering the best price. Those things certainly factor into the equation, and good products and low pricing will most certainly help you sell more.

But your messaging and positioning are ultimately the things that are going to help your ability to effectively position and market your product is more important than anything else.

If you’re wondering why that’s the case, it’s because of psychology.

People don’t inherently buy the best product or the flashiest product… they buy the product that they can understand the fastest. That’s because the less mental energy needed to understand the product and what it does, the more likely it is that they will want to buy it.

That’s because our brains are designed to ignore or forget things that don’t matter (we talk more about that in this blog post about how to market for your brain’s survival instinct).

We inherently put on blinders to things that don’t interest us, and at a very basic level, aren’t going to help us survive. Even in the context of buying a product, our ability to survive is subconsciously on our minds.

That’s why people will almost always buy a product with proper positioning; their brains actually want to pay attention.

If you can properly position what you want to sell, you are going to outsell your competitor every time. It doesn’t matter if a competitor’s product is better than yours—if your messaging is better, you will always be the winner.

The Rules of Positioning

Properly positioning your product isn’t rocket science—you already understand that good messaging and marketing are the factors that go into proper product positioning.

But the execution is really key.

And although prior marketing experience—which most of our readers have—is certainly helpful, it can also hurt you to an extent if you’re not careful. That’s because of the (very basic) first rule of positioning…

1. Be Clear

If you are in marketing, you’ve probably spent hours thinking of a neat, clever, and cool way to attract customers to your products and get your company’s message across. Sometimes, that method can be really effective in a niche, insider-oriented audience.

But when it comes to foundational product positioning, it’s not the best practice.

Again, people are drawn to products that they can understand the easiest. Not only that, but you only have about 8 to 10 seconds to get a person’s attention and have them decide if they’re going to listen to you or not.

For both of those reasons, clarity is key.

Marketers want to feel like they are smart, clever wordsmiths. And as much fun as it may be to come up with a fun, product-based pun that you and your marketing team think is hilarious, there’s a pretty decent chance your customer will be checking out before they ever hit the punchline.

And, at worst, they’re going to be totally confused. That is the absolute last thing you want.

That doesn’t mean your copy and salesmanship needs to be totally boring and dry. That’s not a good approach either. But when placed up against cute, clever, and emphasis on clarity is always the approach that will win.

The quicker you can get your audience to understand what you do, the more likely up to you will convert them into paying customers. Don’t make them guess… just tell them. If you do, then you, your customer, and your business will be much happier in the long run.

2. Utilize the power of narrative

Storytelling is an art form that humans have been perfecting since the beginning of time. It is truthfully one of the most effective and powerful tools humans have, which is why marketers and business owners need to learn how to properly utilize it.

People connect with stories: we have an emotional response to them, react to them, and, most importantly, we remember them.

And, if you remember from earlier, making your product memorable to your customer is the best thing you can do to get them to buy.

Using a story for positioning is really effective because it does 2 things:

It more engaging than a sales pitch that gets your customer involved

Your information will be way more memorable because your customer will pay a lot more attention. Traditional style, direct response sales pitches are essentially 5-minute college seminars that people often tune out.

And if people pay thousands of dollars to go to college and still don’t listen to seminars, what makes you think they’ll listen to your mini one?

Stories are engaging, and they’re especially engaging when you frame your customer as the hero of the story.

When you are positioning your product in the marketplace, it’s important to remember that customers will only care what your product will do for them.

They don’t usually care about the product itself. That’s why it makes sense to make them the main character of your story—you can create the narrative arc that has them accomplishing their goals using your product. They can be the winner, and you can be the one who made it possible.

So when you are setting up your positioning, try to get as much of a story in there as possible, and make sure your customer is the hero, not your product (and if you want to know more about this strategy, you can check out Donald Miller’s workshop on the StoryBrand method).

The main thing to remember when it comes to building your positioning: there needs to be a problem. Not only that, but you need to make sure your customer memorizes that problem and understand that what you have to offer fixes it.

The best-positioned products sell the best, and that’s something that your competitors may be undervaluing. So make sure that you are framing your product within a clear, concise story, and you’ll be making more sales than you can count.

And it won’t even take having the absolute best product on the market.

It’ll be because you’re a good storyteller.

The post Rethinking the 3 Ps of Business appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Source: digitalmarketer.com