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September 27, 2016
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How To Leverage Marketing Automation For Holiday Email Marketing

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E-Marketing

It’s time to start rockin’ around the email tree. With the holidays fast approaching, businesses should start thinking about using marketing automation to get registers ringing.

This year, make the process easier with email marketing and automation. Rather than creating and sending emails during the thick of the holiday season, use marketing automation features to create relevant campaigns to arrive in subscribers’ inboxes at exactly the right time, all season long.

For most businesses, the last two months of sales account for forty percent of the total revenue earned throughout the year. With so much riding on the holiday season, using marketing automation is a decision even the Grinch wouldn’t disagree with.

To help businesses get their marketing automation groove on, we’ll give you a list of holiday emails that you can send and provide tips to get the most out of your marketing automation during this critical time of year.

Light up inboxes with these 4 automated emails

Wondering what emails you can automate this holiday season? Here’s a list of four emails that will light up inboxes:

1. A welcome email or series
2. Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals
3. An inspiring gift guide
4. Helpful holiday hints

Read more: How To Leverage Marketing Automation For Holiday Email Marketing

June 16, 2016
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Should you Pay for Social Media Marketing?

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Social Media Marketing

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and the many other social media sites have changed the face of the internet. They started out with just free ways to allow businesses to market and drive traffic to their websites. However, many of the social sites now offer paid marketing options, which allows businesses to gain massive exposure to a very highly targeted market.

Paid social media advertising can be very powerful when used correctly. When you choose major platforms and you target the right segment of users, you may find that you gain a ton of great exposure. Each platform will be a bit different, but every business can benefit from paid social media marketing.

Benefits of Paid Social Media Marketing
There are several key benefits businesses of all sizes gain when they pay for social media marketing. Whether you’re running a small, local business or a large worldwide corporation, there are plenty of benefits. Some of the key benefits include:

Read more: Should you Pay for Social Media Marketing?

June 14, 2016
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Why Email Marketing Must Be a Priority for Real Estate Agents

Email concept with laptop ang girl hands
E-Marketing

Email is easily the most ubiquitous digital communication technology. Ninety-five percent of online consumers have at least one email address and most check their email every day. If you are not incorporating this valuable tool into your real estate marketing, you are missing out on valuable leads. Here are a few items that make email so important and ways you can leverage it for marketing success.

Emails transmit information that a phone call can’t. When you contact prospects by email, you can immediately send them photos of homes, information about the size and price of a property, and important information for the sale. Letting the home speak for itself can be far more persuasive than trying to verbally describe a listing that your client or prospect just has to see.

Most consumers prefer email. In surveys, consumers indicate that email is their preferred method of contact for commercial communications — and, it makes sense. Email can be scanned, allowing people to gather the gist of a marketing message in just a few seconds. Unlike phone calls, email is not time bound. You can send your messages and consumers can peruse them at a time that is convenient for them. Email provides a record. If your prospects want to review the stats on a property, it’s right there in their inbox when they want it.

Email provides a great return on your marketing investment. The average email marketing campaign provides a 4,300 percent return on investment. Email allows you to reach as many or as few prospects as you would like at a very low cost. By using this method regularly, you can significantly drop your customer acquisition costs and increase your real estate business net profits.

Read more: Why Email Marketing Must Be a Priority for Real Estate Agents 

June 9, 2016
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How to Use Email Marketing to Strengthen Business Relationships

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E-Marketing

If you want to grow your business, you have to consider the role of email marketing in your promotional mix. It’s still one of the less expensive marketing vehicles to employ, and by following a few simple rules you can change your customers’ perceptions of your email (and your company), drive sales, and foster better relationships in the process. To get started, this column will talk about advanced opt-in options, newsletter dos and don’ts, and pairing your email with other marketing vehicles. Our next column continues the discussion by exploring educational offerings, email and online survey best practices, and how to engage your customers via email using loyalty programs and rewards.

Can You Go Beyond Simple Opt-In?
Most reputable companies ask for customer buy-in when they collect email addresses. Granted, to maximize opt-ins, your website might auto-check the box that says “Contact me about promotions and offers.” Hey, at least you’re giving customers a choice.

Opt-ins are good, but consider giving your customers a few specific options rather than one vague choice. You’ll want to keep your list of options short. After all, if you make customers think too much or take too much time, most will get bored and abandon the task. That said, I’m not recommending you include all of these; the list below is to get you thinking. Depending on the type of product or service you offer, not all will apply to you. For example, you can give customers the option to:

Read more: How to Use Email Marketing to Strengthen Business Relationships 

June 7, 2016
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3 Ways to Optimize Your Website for Social Media Marketing

Social Media
Social Media Marketing ,

Social media marketing is as important as SEO in this day and age. A third of millennials say they prefer to communicate with businesses via social media. So you need to optimize your website for social media marketing. The first mistake you should never make is viewing your website and your social media channels as mutually exclusive parts.

Yes, social media can help you meet your B2B sales quota, but this only happens when you combine your SEO efforts with your social media efforts. And that involves optimizing your website. This guide is going to show you some of the things you have to do in order to get ready for social media marketing.

Connecting with Social Media

In order to generate B2B business leads through LinkedIn, you can’t just operate on LinkedIn. You must form a clear path between this social media network and your website. Including your website in the bio of your profile is relatively simple, but not a lot of companies use their website to link back to their social media accounts.

Such a simple change can make a huge difference.

Display these links prominently and don’t just install a sharing bar at the bottom of your page. This may require some additional add-ons or some more coding, but it’s well worth the effort in the long-term. There are plenty of tools that will allow you to do the same thing.

For example, WordPress comes with a range of third-party add-ons that will do this for you automatically. You want it to be easy for users to get from social media to your website and your website to social media. You also want to make it easy for them to share content from your site to their social media feeds.

Read more: 3 Ways to Optimize Your Website for Social Media Marketing 

May 12, 2016
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75% of marketers say social media marketing is paying off

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Social Media Marketing

Social media is generating better returns on investments this year than it did last year, according to Salesforce’s new “2016 State of Marketing Report.”

The report finds that 75% of retailers and other marketers say that social media delivers either a “strong” or “some” return on their investment. That’s a 46-percentage point increase from the 29% who said so a year earlier.

“Social media marketing is a core piece of a lot of retailers’ businesses,” says Vala Afshar, Salesforce’s chief digital evangelist.

That’s despite the fact that social media led directly to relatively few sales over the most recent holiday season. Only 1.8% of online retail sales over the holidays stemmed from shoppers clicking directly from social networks to retail sites, according to marketing platform vendor Custora, which examined online shoppers’ visits to more than 200 online retail websites.

In part, social media has become a more effective marketing tool because marketers are increasingly developing holistic, cross-channel marketing campaigns rather than developing their social media marketing campaigns in a silo, Afshar says. The report finds that 63% of self-declared “high-performing” marketers integrate social media into their overall marketing strategy, far more than the 28% of marketers who say they are “moderate-performing” and 20% who say they are “low-performing.”

Read more: 75% of marketers say social media marketing is paying off

May 5, 2016
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Email Marketing Can Give Small Businesses a Boost

E-Marketing

Small businesses that are just getting off the ground likely won’t have large marketing budgets. Advertising campaigns and billboards are probably well down the road. But email marketing can be an effective and inexpensive way for small business owners to spread the word about what they have to offer. Here’s a look at some of the benefits.

Consider the Pros and Cons

There are positive and negative elements to email marketing. It’s more cost-effective than direct mail, for example, which can be significant in saving money on postage costs. It also gives small business owners a better idea of how their message is being received, as Chad Brooks writes for Business News Daily: “… Businesses can see which emails were received, which ones went to addresses that were no longer active, which ones were opened, which ones were deleted before they were read and which ones enticed clients to click through to the website and make a purchase.”

But there is a common complaint when it comes to email marketing, and it involves the dreaded word “spam.” As Brooks explains, “… Some consumers may consider the emails to be spam and hold it against a brand’s reputation. If customers feel they are being bombarded by unwanted emails from a business, they will be less likely to become new or repeat customers.”

Explore the Different Methods

There are several ways that a business can engage in email marketing. Newsletters, for example, are a way to reach customers on a regular basis. Emails can promote an upcoming sale, as Brooks writes, or be posed as an invitation for customers to attend an event. And “lead-nurturing” emails can “keep brands at the top of mind for prospective clients,” he says. “These emails are sent out regularly until a potential customer is converted into a paying customer.”

Read more: Email Marketing Can Give Small Businesses a Boost

May 3, 2016
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How To Successfully Outsource A Web Development Project in Five Simple Steps

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Website Design Practices

Victoria Elizabeth is a content executive for Expert Market, a B2B marketplace for office products and services.

Whether you’re a budget conscious small business owner, or a corporate manager who’s strapped for time, you’ve probably thought about outsourcing more than once since starting your business.

More small businesses are relying on outsourcing today for a host of different activities, and marketplaces for finding designers and agencies are hardly in short supply. One of the most daunting tasks you may consider outsourcing is web design and development work, since hiring someone in house, or bringing in extra hands for the project, may prove too expensive and time-consuming.

But while outsourcing may be a quicker and less expensive option than hiring, planning is still essential and requires dedicating time and effort to manage expectations along the way.

Here are some tips to keep in mind if you’re thinking of having an outside agency design or redesign your site:

#1 Know What Your Website is Going to Do
#2 Cement Your Measurement Tactics
#3 Compare Yourself to the Competition
#4 Explain the Limitations of Your Project
#5 Wrap All This Information Up Into a Brief

Read more: How To Successfully Outsource A Web Development Project in Five Simple Steps

April 7, 2016
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Small-Business Marketing Budgets Continue to Rise

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Marketing

According to the 2016 Local Pulse Report from Thrive Analytics, 42% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are increasing their marketing budgets this year. This is an increase from 35% at the same time last year. The study reported that top growth areas among the more than 1,100 SMB owners who responded include mobile marketing at 49% (an increase of 15% from last year) and online display and paid search at 44% (both up 11%).

Just six out of 10 respondents to the study have a website, but 80% use social media platforms, including Facebook (70%), Twitter (32%) and LinkedIn (26%). Seven of 10 owners expect social media to generate leads, while more than half (57%) use it to build awareness and another 57% utilize it to engage their customers. Only 19% of respondents report paying for advertising on social media.

“Digital media continues to be SMBs’ main focus when it comes to marketing, especially with newer businesses,” said Jason Peaslee, managing partner of Thrive Analytics. “However, older and more established businesses continue to see value in traditional forms of marketing too. As SMBs view local advertising as a more strategic source of leads and essential for keeping up with competition, more dollars are being invested across a growing number of channels.”

Almost half (49%) of all respondents stated that mobile is their top growth area in terms of marketing, but approximately the same number state that their websites are not mobile-optimized. In fact, the majority of respondents reported they do not have a solid mobile marketing strategy.

The Local Pulse Report is a comprehensive bi-annual study that examines social media use, ratings and reviews, mobile marketing, marketing budgets and technology adoption.

Read more: Small-Business Marketing Budgets Continue to Rise

April 5, 2016
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How to Attract B2B Buyers to Ecommerce

Authoritative Content
Ecommerce

Today’s B2B buyers have fewer constraints than those of 10 years ago. To decrease costs, even enterprise companies are streamlining their purchasing processes, including increased online purchasing without the traditional purchase order or invoice.

In “B2B Ecommerce Growing; Becoming More Like B2C,” I explained that B2B buyers are looking for an ecommerce experience that is comparable to buying consumer goods. That expectation will grow in 2016. B2B buyers often make purchases on B2C websites when products are available, so the opportunity to sell to businesses exists for B2C online merchants. Interestingly, 82 percent of B2B buyers have made B2B purchases on Amazon’s consumer site, versus on Amazon Business, according to research firm Forrester.

The Statistics

In a recent survey of enterprise buyers, Forrester found that 32 percent of respondents made half or more of their work purchases online. Fifty-three percent expect more than half of their business purchases to be made online in 2018. The rate of online business purchasing is likely even higher among smaller companies that don’t have rigid purchasing rules.

Reasons for switching to online purchasing include the convenience of being able to purchase 24 hours a day and the speed of completing the transaction. Even if purchases are not made online, business buyers use websites extensively for product research. Sixty-three percent of respondents researched at least half of their work purchases online. While 70 percent of respondents start their research on a search engine rather than a manufacturer or distributor website, the majority make their purchase on an industry distributor website (30 percent) or a manufacturer site (26 percent).

Read more: How to Attract B2B Buyers to Ecommerce

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