by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 19, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
B2B software company Text Request took 4 steps to grow organic traffic, a key component of any content marketing strategy.
We content marketers are always keeping an eye on organic traffic. It’s an indicator of success (though by no means the only one). Basically it lets you know how many of your website’s visitors found you by using a search engine. If you’re consistently publishing quality content that has value to your prospective customers, you should see a steady rise in organic traffic to your website.
But many B2B companies struggle with generating organic traffic to their websites. In fact, 61% of companies list generating traffic as their biggest marketing challenge in the 2017 State of Inbound Report. Over half (55%) list growing traffic to their website as a top priority in the next 12 months.
So how did Text Request, a B2B texting software company, grow organic traffic by 120% in 5 months? Marketing Director Kenneth Burke outlines the four simple steps the team took to drive this growth.
4 steps to growing organic traffic
1. Start with simple changes.
Text Request started with very basic steps to begin driving more traffic to its website. These changes included technical updates to their website, increased site speed, and a new content strategy. The updates to their website made the site more appealing to viewers, and the increased site speed led to a lower bounce rate. Of course, a documented content strategy should be a priority for any company hoping to grow its digital footprint.
2. Create 10x content.
The term ‘10x content’ was coined by Moz founder Rand Fishkin. Essentially, you create content that is ten times better than that which appears in the top search results for that subject. Sounds overwhelming. But think about it in terms of three specific audiences:
- Me: If you wouldn’t consider the content you’re creating valuable, then it most likely won’t add value for others.
- Targets: In order to add value and answer questions and/or inform prospects on a topic, understand what your target audience is lacking and fill that need.
- Competitors: By creating content that is better than the competition, you validate yourself as an industry leader.
3. Revamp existing content.
Content published months or even years ago doesn’t have to fade out. Updating older content gives these posts a renewed value. This is an important part of our content strategy here at Fronetics.
As part of his mission to increase organic traffic, Burke dug through older content to find posts he could revamp, updating as many as 60 posts in 5 months. That may seem like a lot. But, oftentimes, updating older content is easier than starting from scratch — especially if the topics are still relevant and just need updated statistics and research. By revising outdated material, Burke is “confident that they made a huge impact on our organic search traffic.”
4. Strive for backlinks.
Backlinks are incoming links to pages on your website from other websites. If the websites linking to your content are of high quality, search engines will start to consider your website more valuable — otherwise, why would these quality sites link to you? Thus, backlinks are an important component of a search engine optimization strategy.
Understanding their importance in driving organic traffic, Burke worked to improve the amount of backlinks to Text Request’s website. “From December to May, we grew our total number of backlinks by about 60%, which, in addition to driving referral traffic, boosted our standing with search engines.”
Most of the backlinks came from three specific places: HARO, guest posts, and earned links. Most important to earning backlinks was the research Text Request published in its content, which other companies found valuable — valuable enough to cite and link to in their content. These links were validation that the 10x content strategy was paying off for Text Request.
Results
With these four simple steps, Text Request saw a 120% growth in organic traffic to its website. The company more than doubled traffic in five months. More traffic = increased brand awareness = more prospective customers and leads = more sales.
While Burke was able to get pretty dramatic results very quickly, it’s important to note that improvements to your website’s search engine optimization do, most often, take some time to unfold. But, over time, results of your work will continue to amplify
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by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 18, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing
Use these 6 tips for more mobile-friendly emails to improve recipient engagement rates and to promote profitable customer action.
I feel like my mornings probably mimic most of your mornings: My alarm goes off. I reach for my cell phone and check my email. I will check my email again while I’m eating breakfast — and possibly a third time while I’m in the drive-through waiting for my coffee.
With the explosion of smartphones, more and more people are taking to their phones over their computers to check email. It’s not hard to understand why; our phones are with us all day long. In fact, 54% of emails are now being read on a mobile device, a 40% increase in the last five years.
When a majority of your audience is reading your marketing emails on their mobile devices, it’s imperative that you’re creating emails that are optimized for mobile viewing.
Here are 6 essential tips for creating mobile-friendly email campaigns.
6 tips for creating mobile-friendly emails
1) Short and sweet
When writing copy for email, your content should be to the point. But this is especially true for mobile-friendly emails. Small screen size and increased likelihood the user is multi-tasking are just two reasons why efficiency is key.
Create messages that are easy for the eye to scan. Use bullet points or short paragraphs to keep the reader engaged. Strip out anything that’s not totally necessary, and drive recipients to landing pages for more information.
2) Less is more
Not all mobile devices include your images. Andriod users will find their email images are off by default unless they change their settings. It’s also important to remember that large image files take longer to download. And nothing drives people away like slow load times.
What does this mean for mobile-friendly emails? Your content needs to be front and center, with less reliance on images.
3) Get to the point
A typical desktop inbox displays about 60 characters of a subject line, while mobile devices show just 25-30 characters. Mobile-friendly emails place the offer or call-to-action at the beginning of the subject line where it’s more likely to be seen.
4) Get responsive
We’ve all opened an email or webpage on a mobile device and had to squint to read it. Web content designed for desktop screens are barely legible when shrunk down to this size.
Try using a responsive template to ensure that readers are viewing your email the way you intended. Responsive emails use fluid tables and images to make content flow across different screen sizes.
5) Button it up
I know it’s not just me and my fat fingers: Links are difficult to click on mobile devices! Instead try using buttons for your call-to-action.
Make sure any CTA buttons are toward the top of your email, so readers know what you want them to do right away. Also, buttons should be large in size and surrounded by plenty of white space so readers don’t accidentally click on something else.
6) Pop-up quiz
After making your email as mobile-friendly as possible, don’t forget the most important step: testing. Send out test emails to your coworkers that use different devices to ensure that your emails look exactly like you want. With 98.4% of users reading email on Andriod and iOS, those operating systems should be your main focus.
Don’t lose readers before they’ve had a chance to open, read, and engage with your emails. Use these 6 tips for more mobile-friendly emails to help improve engagement rates and profitable customer action.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 13, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Marketing can help sales close deals by providing targeted content that demonstrates the business value of the product or solution.
Sales and marketing often exist in separate corners. The marketing team works to create lead opportunities through content, and the sales team tags in to turn those leads into deals.
But a new survey report shows how this missed connection is having a real effect on businesses’ bottom lines. In fact, 49% of respondents cited a lack of communication as their biggest misalignment between sales and marketing.
But simply sharing marketing content with your sales team isn’t enough. Another new study shows that one of the 3 biggest mistakes salespeople make is not clearly explaining how their solution helps the buyer’s business.
“Buyers amass information that helps them justify their strategic decisions,” says author and University of Southern California Marshall School of Business instructor Steve W. Martin. “In other words, a product’s strategic value comprises the reasons and arguments that buyers provide to senior management and others in the company about why they should purchase a product.”
Let them have content
Strong communication between sales and marketing can help achieve big-picture goals, including:
- mutual understanding of the buyer’s journey
- updated prospect insights that can affect future marketing content
- brainstorming solutions to bottlenecks in the sales funnel
When your company begins to view sales and marketing as a joint unit, you’ll see a wave of data and resources flowing in both directions. While sales can provide deeper insights into audience relationships, marketing can use that data to provide sales with a wealth of targeted content.
Leverage sales reps as industry leaders
Studies continue to show that sales reps are most successful when they are viewed as experts in their field. A 2016 sales optimization report found that 92% percent of buyers engage if the rep is a known industry thought leader.
As thought leaders, members of your sales team should actively engage in discussions on social channels like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with guidance from your marketing team. Rather than trying to sell, they can use those social spaces to share expert information and to be genuinely helpful.
Arm a sales rep with targeted content to share with prospects during specific moments in the purchase process, and it will advance his or her reputation as a source of knowledge. That can be the key to getting a foot in the door, advancing through the final stages of a purchasers’ decision, or closing the deal.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 11, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
Social prospecting can help logistics and supply chain companies identify and engage with leads on social media in a genuine — and highly effective — way.
Social media should be an integral part of your marketing strategy. You know it helps build brand awareness, gather market intelligence, discover customer problems, and influence purchasing decisions. But your lead generation efforts should also include the use of social platforms. It’s a practice called social prospecting, which can be highly effective in identifying new prospects.
What is social prospecting?
With more than 2 billion monthly active users on Facebook and over 328 million monthly active users on Twitter, smart marketers know there’s more potential than ever to use social platforms to get their name out there, spread their content, and draw more people to their site. Hey, it’s your job to make people aware of what your company can offer, right? Right.
That’s where social prospecting comes in. It involves scouring the social web, identifying potential prospects for your business, engaging them with content, and getting those potential prospects to your sales team. “Social prospecting is the art of listening to people, not mentions or keywords,” writes Maggie Hibma for HubSpot.
Social media isn’t just for recreational purposes anymore. More than half (53%) of B2B buyers report using social media to research purchases, in fact. Social prospecting allows you to be proactive in finding all of the considerable number of social-media-using prospects who are looking for you, too.
But as with any initiative, social prospecting requires commitment. In order to find new leads, social prospecting needs to become a part of your daily routine. The end results will be quality leads that are already committed to your brand because of the connection you have created through social channels.
Creating positive impressions
The secret behind successful social prospecting is creating and distributing content that shows that you and your company genuinely care about your clients and prospects. It’s about ditching the ‘sales’ game and working to establish your brand as an industry leader that has a connection to your community and a lot of valuable insight to share.
Make your content about your target consumers: What do they need to know, struggle with, or want to learn more about? By distributing this content across social channels to foster sharing, conversation and engagement, you’ll gain influence with your audience (and their networks) and make a positive impression.
Prospecting vs. spamming
The definition of spam is “indiscriminately.” It means “in a random manner” or “in a way that does not show care or judgment.” This is the opposite of how social prospecting should work. The connection that you create with your prospects should be anything but random.
Think about the number of possible prospects on social media right now. Facebook just topped 2 billion active users monthly, and Instagram is pulling in over 250 million daily active users. These massive numbers scream opportunity — but only if you are putting your time and effort into the right people, on the right channels, at the right time.
Sounds complicated? It doesn’t have to be. If you already have a social media presence, that’s step one.
Fronetics’ recently updated Social Prospecting Workbook guides you through using social listening to generate new leads for your business. We’ve identified the quickest way to find potential customers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. Every worksheet includes:
- Short preparatory work to make the actual prospecting easy
- Visual instructions on how and where to find prospects
- Pro tips that will help you get the best results
- Prescriptions (Marketing Rx) for success
- Take-home exercises for follow-up prospecting
Download it now, and let us know what you think!
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by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 7, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Social Media
When you are posting on social media could be as important as what you’re posting, and this CoSchedule study attempts to determine the best time to post.
Timing is everything. And that statement especially holds true when it comes to posting content to social media.
There’s no point in putting in the time and effort to create informative blog posts, inspirational tweets, or captivating Facebook posts if you’re not getting the most exposure you can out of your social media outlets.
That being said, there is ample data out there on the best times to post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Earlier this year, CoSchedule looked at a combination of its own original data and more than a dozen studies on this very topic, from sources like Buffer and Quintly, and compiled the results to take the guess work out of when to post.
Here’s a breakdown of their results.
Best times to post on social media by network
Facebook
Most people are using Facebook around the clock, on their desktop and mobile devices. Unlike other sites that attract more attention during the work week, Facebook users are checking in at work and at home.
- The most optimal time to post is 1-4 p.m. Thursday through Sunday, specifically on Saturdays and Sundays between 12-1 p.m.
- Posts during the week had the highest clickthrough rate on Wednesdays at 3 p.m.
- Avoid weekends before 8 a.m. and after 8 p.m., when user numbers are significantly lower
Twitter
Much like Facebook, Twitter users are active on their mobile devices as well as their desktop computers. But they tend to treat Twitter like a revolving newsfeed, so downtime breaks — like during commuting hours and lunch — tend to see higher usage.
- Between 12-3 p.m. and 5-6 p.m. is the optimal time to tweet for the most exposure, which correlates with lunch and the evening commute.
- Weekday tweets have a higher chance of being retweeted with higher clickthrough numbers
- B2B tweets saw a 16% better performance during work hours, while B2C tweets saw a 17% better performance on weekends.
LinkedIn
Also known as the social media site for professionals, LinkedIn saw 25% of its users during weekdays and specifically, during work hours. Not as popular as some of its competitors, more than half of LinkedIn users visit less than once a week, so your posts need to deliver a clear message in short, informative posts.
- Not surprisingly, the posts with the highest views and clickthrough rates were Tuesdays through Thursdays from 7-8 a.m., 12 p.m. and 5-6 p.m., in direct correlation with the start and end of the work day.
- Some companies have seen a higher performance on Tuesdays between 10-11 a.m.
Instagram
More than half of Instagram users log on daily, but tend to use the mobile app in their free time. Posts for this site are image-driven and are often more creative and less data-heavy than other sites.
- In general, the best times to post are on Mondays and Thursdays, in the evenings or early mornings.
- Some companies have reported success on Mondays between 8-9 a.m., correlating with the morning commute.
Many people still play a guessing game when it comes to deciding the best time to post their content for the most impact. And though there is no magic formula for the most retweets or reposts, there is data to help guide you. Posting the right content, at the right time, can make the difference between getting valuable comments, shares, and clicks on your links, which translate to valuable new leads.
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by Elizabeth Hines | Sep 6, 2017 | Blog, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy
Find the right marketing outsource partner for your business by asking specifically about strategy development, industry experience, and more.
More and more supply chain companies are choosing to outsource their marketing, giving them the flexibility to focus on their core business, while leaving marketing to trusted experts. But before you jump into a partnership, it’s important to remember that not all marketing firms are created equal.
To help you decide if a marketing firm is right for your business, here are 10 questions you should be asking potential marketing partners — and what to listen for in the answers.
10 questions to ask marketing outsource partners
1) How do you develop a strategy?
The word you should be listening for is: individualized. Your marketing partner should build a strategy specifically tailored to your business, based on data, analytics, and your company’s goals.
2) What would my account team look like?
When you outsource your marketing, look for a team of experts that work together to improve the various aspects of your marketing strategy. For example, the person running your social media presence should have specific social media expertise.
3) Do you know my industry?
It’s vitally important that your marketing partner has a deep understanding of your company, your industry, and your customers. Don’t be satisfied with a surface knowledge, or with a marketing firm that doesn’t have personnel that specializes in your industry.
4) How do you measure success?
Your marketing partner needs to have a plan in place to provide you regular and frequent reports showing designated metrics that match the goals of your strategy. For instance, if one of your business’ goals is to increase brand awareness, web traffic and social impressions are two metrics you should be getting reports on every month.
5) What other services do you offer (even if I don’t need them yet)?
Many of Fronetics’ clients start off wanting only one of our services (like social media management), but quickly realize a multi-channel digital strategy would better help them reach their goals. You want to know that, if you need to expand your scope of work to include more services (such as social advertising or video creation), your partner can handle those.
6) Do you offer training?
We’ve all heard the old adage about teaching a man to fish. While it can be hugely beneficial for your business to trust your marketing strategy to the experts, part of a well-rounded strategy includes educating key members of your staff, such as sales personnel, on how the rest of your business’ operations can dovetail with your marketing strategy. A partner who offers workshops or other types of training is a plus.
7) What is your philosophy for content creation?
Listen for a partner who listens to you. If you’re going to outsource content creation, your partner needs to be ready to learn every aspect of your business, its goals, and its philosophies — and to create content that reflects those things.
8) Do you have videography capability?
Even if you don’t think your business needs video content right now, chances are, this new wave content platform will be something you need at some point. You want to find a partner who can easily help you make strides in this area — whether the partner handles video production in house or will manage a third-party vendor for you.
9) What are your goals for my business?
You want a partner who shares your company’s vision. But it’s a bonus if you can find a partner who offers you goals you hadn’t even considered but that make sense for your business.
10) What’s the first thing you’re going to do when I hand over my business’ marketing strategy to your firm?
While it might be exciting to hear an answer like “revamp your entire web presence,” the savvier business listens for something a little different. A partner who assures that they will first seek to analyze, research, and understand every aspect of your unique business will ultimately be more likely to guide you to your goals. Once they know the ins and outs, then it’s time for the revamping!
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