Back to Basics: The 'Why' in Creating Valuable Content

When it comes to producing valuable content, countless marketing and business professionals will tell you that you 'should,' but not many delve into the 'why.'

"You need content to bring customers to your website!"
"You need content to keep up with the digital age!"
"You need content because that's what your customers seek!"

These responses are the 'reasons' most often given for spending time creating content for websites and marketing materials.

In truth, creating valuable content will help you grow your business and improve your bottom line. Here are two key ways it accomplishes this:

1. It helps you build trust with your customers.
People don't accept advertisements at face value. They choose brands based on how well those brands meet their needs.

When customers go online, they want to find answers to their questions. They want a brand to understand the problems they face, offer solutions, and explain why their products are the best at meeting those needs. When a prospect finds a company that answers their questions again and again while also providing them with a service that comes with good reviews, the decision to buy becomes a no-brainer.

Valuable content builds a reputation of authority and leadership in the minds of customers. They come to see you as someone who really knows your industry and feel confident knowing they can turn to you whenever they have questions. This increases loyalty and the potential for future sales.

2. It's more likely to be shared, increasing your brand's reach.

Customers today live on social media. Just about everyone has a Facebook or Twitter account. People use these profiles to share things that interest them and offer value they think others might appreciate. When you provide your customers with repeated value, you enhance the odds your material might be shared on these social sites. When content is shared, it automatically increases your reach, while also building credibility in the minds of all those who see the share. Customers tend to trust referrals more than standard advertising.

How to develop content that can work this way

The potential for quality content is incredible. Your task is to learn how to capitalize on it. Here are six steps to get you started:

1. Research and identify the 'ideal customers' you want to reach.


2. Learn as much as possible about these ideal customers.


3. Determine the common questions and problems that face these customers.


4. Develop content that addresses these questions and problems in an informative and helpful way.


5. Share the content on blogs, social media, emails, newsletters, and other places to draw attention to it.


6. Repeat the process regularly to stay current.

When you take the time to develop valuable content for your customers, you're investing in helping your business grow. Take the time to create content your customers will appreciate, and watch the impact it can have on your brand.

Bill

President - www.inkimages.com

What a Symphony Orchestra Can Teach Us About Harmony and Marketing

We all have some type of music we find pleasing to the ear. For some, it's classical. Others prefer rock, hip hop, pop, or jazz. But no matter what type of music we enjoy, there's something about a symphony orchestra that seems to draw admirers from a wide variety of musical backgrounds and tastes.

An orchestra brings harmony to life. Its beauty comes from the different sections -- woodwinds, percussion, strings, and brass -- working together to create something spectacular. If just one person or one section is out of tune or out of line, the entire piece can fall flat. The same is true in your marketing.

The importance of harmony in marketing

Just like an orchestra, marketing works best when every member of the team works together to perfectly complement the others. In today's busy world, countless platforms vie for your audience's attention. Print media, inbound marketing, social media, PPC ads, retargeting ads, radio advertising, and more all seek at least some portion of the metaphoric pie.

Too often, we try to meet these demands by randomly throwing content at all of these different platforms. We see each platform as a checklist of requirements, rather than a resource to be leveraged. By finding harmony in the platforms we use to carry out our plans, we stand a far greater chance for success from our marketing efforts. The key to creating this harmony is five-fold:

1. Develop the central message for the new marketing campaign.


2. Identify the key characteristics of buyers the marketing campaign will target, including where those people will be found.


3. Use these characteristics to prioritize your advertising platforms and decide which ones will receive a greater share of the budget.


4. Develop the campaign with all of the platforms pointing toward a common goal, such as leading buyers to a particular promotional webpage.


5. Use common colors, language, and themes across the different platforms to create a unified brand.

Take the time to learn how different platforms complement each other, such as how social media can drive people toward the inbound content on your website. This will enhance your efforts and your reach. Marketing works best when different platforms are used in unison to create a common message for prospective customers. When marketing is performed well, it can make people sit up and pay attention.

Finding the right rhythm in your marketing requires careful analysis and planning. When you can accomplish this, you'll see far better results from your marketing campaigns. If you're interested in developing a successful new marketing campaign, contact us today. We'd be happy to help you get started.

The Role of Gamification in Marketing

For many of us, increasing visitor engagement is an important goal for the new year. Marketing today revolves around building relationships with prospective customers. When a prospective client sees you as an authority, they're far more likely to convert and buy from you.

Improving visitor engagement on your website, through social media, and in person can help boost brand loyalty and build relationships that lead to sales. Gamification is a growing trend in making that happen. The process works by encouraging prospects to interact with your brand through various games and competitions.

What you should know about gamification

Gamification is quickly gaining steam among some of the largest brands in the world. Of the largest 2,000 companies in the world, more than 70 percent had used at least one form of gamification by the end of 2014. Fifty one percent of American adults also say that when competition is added to their everyday activities, they become more likely to pay attention to their behavior in those areas.

The vendors of various gamification programs claim that companies can see a 100 percent to 150 percent improvement in engagement on their websites simply by including gasification in their marketing.

Customers have begun to expect companies to work on developing relationships with them. Gamification is an easy way to build these kinds of relationships while also providing some fun and a reason to return. Even more appealing is that many games can also be used to encourage players to tell their friends about their progress on the game. This can be a wonderful form of advertising.

How gamification works

Gamification can take a number of different forms. Think, for example, about the popular McDonald's Monopoly game. Consumers receive game pieces with various meals, increasing their odds of winning some awesome prizes.

Not all gamification efforts include glamorous prizes, but they still encourage customers to participate. For example, producers of the TV show Psych created Club Psych, an online arcade that allowed users to play different games and complete challenges based on the television show. Users could earn points and challenge their friends. The effort led to a 30 percent increase in traffic, a 50 percent increase in sales, a 130 percent increase in page views, and an overall reach of more than 40 million people.

Nike + was also an immense success. People could use the company's app to track their physical fitness and share it with others on social media. The app tracks fitness data to help people see their personal improvements or compete with others from anywhere in the world.

Gamification keeps people involved and uses their desire for challenge, competition, and fun to bring them back over and over again. Best of all, it doesn't have to be extravagant or over the top. Offering prizes to people who collect all four of a particular month's direct mail fliers or having a search for clues on a website to qualify for a coupon can help boost engagement without much cost.

Gamification helps turn marketing and attracting attention into a game. It boosts loyalty and conversions. If you're interested in learning more about how to start a marketing campaign to maximize customer engagement, contact us today. We'd be happy to help you get started.

Have a great week,

Bill

www.inkimages.com

5 Ways to Increase Visitor Engagement in 2015

As you prepare your marketing plans for the year, one of your chief priorities should be website visitor engagement. As engagement increases, so do brand loyalty and conversions. Engagement helps page visitors begin to build a relationship with your brand. This in turn helps to increase their trust in what you have to say and makes them more likely to end up buying from you. Here are a handful of changes you can make to greatly enhance your visitor engagement and see measurable changes in 2015.

Make content easily shareable

Encourage page visitors to interact with your brand by sharing your content. You can accomplish this by making your content interesting and easy to broadcast across various social channels. Enable social share buttons on every piece of content you produce, and share the content yourself on a variety of social networks. If your content provides high value and is timely, readers will be more likely to want to share that information with their connections.

Use gamification and promotions

Use fun contests and games to encourage page visitors to remain on your website and tell others about your brand. There are a number of different types of games and promotions you can use. For example, have customers solve puzzles to earn coupons. Encourage them to share your brand with friends to earn points. Run contests on your social media pages that invite people to tell stories about their successes with your brand. Use these opportunities to encourage communication and build a relationship between page visitors and your company.

Encourage feedback

When customers know their opinions are valued, they're more likely to feel loyal to your brand. Customers appreciate companies that go the extra mile to help them and make their experiences memorable. Encourage this level of engagement by letting customers vote on different topics they'd like to have featured on your website, leave reviews of your products and services for others to see, and offer opinions and feedback about your brand and their experience with it. Your page visitors will enjoy having their voices heard, and you'll gain better insight on your customers, which can help you improve your marketing and customer service efforts.

Remember customers

Work with your website developers to create a website that will remember customers and their preferences when they return. Simple things, such as automatically filling out forms or remembering products that the customer looked at the last time they visited, can be excellent for boosting engagement. Such conveniences will make it easier for customers to convert, while at the same time helping them feel as though the services they're receiving from you are personalized to their specific needs.

Make recommendations

In addition to remembering customers when they return to your website, add functionality that provides solid recommendations based on past purchases, too. Consider websites such as Amazon that offer recommendations based on the buying habits of others who have bought similar products in the past. These services encourage people to dive deeper into the website, increasing their interaction and improving the odds they will convert. Similarly, make sure your calls-to-action always fit well with the topic and intended audience of the content you're presenting.

Increasing visitor engagement on your website can help your brand take its marketing efforts to new levels for 2015. Keep the above tips in mind, and see how you start building stronger company loyalty in the new year. If you're ready to start developing a new marketing campaign, contact us today to get started.