Then, you need to build a strong presence online and engage your audience through the channels they frequent.

Don’t worry. I’ll help you improve your digital presence – including your brand’s online visibility, credibility, and reputation.

How? By helping you optimize:

• The actions you take and the online interactions you make
• The content you create and publish online
• Where you stand in the search results and social media feeds of your ideal buyers
• How consumers perceive and talk about your business

You’ll also discover the tips and tools that can help you along the way. So, let’s start.

Why Do You Need a Strong Online Presence for Your Business?

You need to build a strong online presence because that’s where your consumers are.

The number of digital buyers has increased by 40% in the past five years. By 2024, global ecommerce sales will likely surpass $7 trillion in value as well.

Even shoppers who purchase through brick-and-mortar stores often research products online.

So, improving your digital presence can help you:

• Get discovered by a wider audience.
• Market your business 24/7 and increase awareness about your products and services.
• Earn Google’s trust by optimizing your content for search engine algorithms.
• Improve customer engagement by using multiple channels such as email, social media, and the web.
• Establish your brand as an authority in your industry.
• Leverage data to learn which marketing strategies, content pieces, and channels are driving results for your brand.
• Build trust with your customers.
• Drive more traffic to your website.
• Increase sales.

How to Improve Your Online Presence: A Step-by-Step Guide

With a stronger online presence, you can attract more customers, sales, and revenue. Just follow the steps below to expand yours.

1. Assess Your Current Digital Presence

Before improving anything, it’s important to assess your current positioning. This is true for your brand’s online presence as well.

To start:

Analyze Your Website and Content

Your website is often the first point of contact between your business and potential customers. Make sure it is well-designed, easy to navigate, and contains all the information your customers need.

Just in case, you haven’t created one yet, build your business website now.

For those who already have a website, perform a thorough audit to analyze:

• Is it secure?
• Is it responsive?
• Does it allow users to navigate easily?
• Does it include all the information your buyers need?
• Are all visuals attractive and of high quality?
• Does it load fast?
• What about your website’s SEO health?

You can use Semrush’s Site Audit tool to identify technical issues on your website and fix them.

It also helps you identify issues related to your content such as duplicate content or less text as compared to other pages on similar topics.

You can also use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to analyze the page loading time of your website. It will also suggest speed improvement measures.

Analyze Your Social Media Accounts

Next, analyze your profiles on different social media platforms and ensure that your information is consistent across platforms.

Leverage social media analytics to figure out:

• How are people interacting with your content?
• What’s the sentiment around your brand conversations?
• How many brand mentions do you get each month?
• Which type of content generates maximum engagement?
• What’s your share of voice in your industry?
• When is your audience most active on each social platform?

You can use social media monitoring tools like Brand24, Buffer, and Sprout Social to track key metrics like your social reach, engagement, top-performing posts, and brand mentions.

Monitor Your Online Reputation

You should monitor how and what people and publications say about your business, not just on social media but online (in general).

Setting up Google Alerts for your business name, your name, and your popular products can be a good way to start monitoring your online reputation. You’ll get alerts every time you’re mentioned on any website, directly in your inbox.

2. Develop a Strategy to Improve Your Brand Recognition

Brand recognition plays a significant role in building trust and credibility with your target audience. To make your brand more recognizable to potential customers, you need a clear and effective strategy.

Set Your Goals Right

Get the basics right. Ensure that you have a memorable business name and logo. Clearly define what your brand stands for and how you want people to perceive your brand.

Next, set specific goals that you can track and measure. For example:

• I want to grow my monthly website traffic to 100K in six months.
• I want to establish my authority in the SEO niche by contributing to publications like Semrush, Moz, and Backlinko by the end of this year.
• I want to generate 50 leads in the next three months for my SEO services.

Identify Your Target Audience

Who do you want to reach online? Your answer to this question will guide all of your marketing and brand-building efforts.

So, think carefully about:

• Who are your ideal buyers?
• What age group do they belong to?
• Which regions do they come from?
• Home much do they earn annually?
• What are their pain points or the key challenges they face?
• Who do they follow, interact with, and trust online?
• What type of content do they prefer to consume?
• How do they interact with brands similar to yours?
• Who is not your audience?

You can find your target audience using advanced data tracking. Understanding your audience and what they care about will help you create content that resonates with them and helps improve brand recognition.

Create a Content Strategy

You should create and share content regularly to reach your target audience and stay on the top of their minds.

Earlier in the post, I asked you to conduct a content audit. It must have helped you:

• Take account of the content you already have.
• Assess the effectiveness of your current content in improving brand recognition.
• Identify any gaps or opportunities for improvement.

Based on your existing content and your goals and audience insights, you should create a plan that includes:

• The types of content you will create
• The topics you will cover
• The channels you will use to distribute your content
• The existing content pieces you will update with the latest information, statistics, and examples
• The frequency of publishing your blog posts, infographics, guest posts, and other content

Establish a Consistent Tone of Voice for Your Brand

Make sure your content sounds the same across platforms. For this, it’s essential to define your brand’s voice, values, and messaging.

You should:

• Decide how you want to represent your brand. Should it sound fun, inspiring, playful, or authoritative?
• Define your brand’s core values. Are you someone who vouches for sustainability or women's empowerment?
• Develop a tone of voice that resonates with your target audience. Learn about their interests.
• Create a style guide that outlines the key elements of your brand’s tone of voice. It could include elements such as your take on using humor, the words and phrases you want to use, those you want to avoid, etc.
• Also, finalize 2-3 fonts and colors that you want to use for your branded text and visuals.

3. Improve Your Website’s Search Performance and User Experience

Your website is an essential part of your online presence. Ensuring that it is optimized for search results pages and user experience will help you attract and retain more visitors (your potential customers).

Ensure That Your Website Has an Attractive Design and Layout

The look and feel of your website mark the first impression of your brand in the minds of your potential customers. So, it has to be attractive and engaging.

Here are a few tips that can help you improve your website’s design:

• Choose from a pre-designed simple yet attractive theme.
• Keep enough negative space to let your web design elements breathe.
• Avoid basic web design mistakes that can harm your SEO.
• Improve page loading speed.
• Build a seamless checkout experience for your ecommerce website.
• Use colors that stand out for your call-to-action buttons.

Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

75% of people will never go beyond the first page of Google when researching information or products. The best way to ensure that your target audience finds your website is by optimizing it for relevant search queries.

Here are a few basic steps for search engine optimization:

• Research your competitors’ SEO strategy and search engine positioning.
• Create quality content that aligns with the search intent of their targeted keyword.
• Improve your Core Web Vitals to improve page performance.
• Use the right URL structure for your web pages and blog posts.
• Practice mobile-first indexing.
• Leverage schema markups to get featured in Google’s rich snippets.
• Invest in local SEO.
• Optimize your website for crucial on-page SEO factors like heading tags and page loading speed.

I’ll cover all the essential steps to follow to improve your website’s SEO below.

In your SEO process, tools like Semrush can be very helpful. It has helped many marketers like Gaby rank higher, outsmart competitors, and still have me-time. You can read the success story of this marketer on a mission.

Conduct Thorough Keyword Research

SEO starts with finalizing the keywords you want to target and rank for.

• First, identify the keywords and phrases that your target audience is using to search for content related to your business. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner or Semrush’s Topic Research tool to do so.

• Assess the search volume, competition, and keyword difficulty score for all relevant keywords. You can also segregate keywords to form topic clusters.

• Use Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool to find keywords that your competitors are ranking for but you are missing out on.

• Filter keywords with a comparatively lower keyword difficulty because they will be easier to rank for. However, the search volume mustn’t be too low.

I’ve also created another detailed guide on how to do keyword research. You may want to check it out to learn about this process in detail.

Create Content That Adds Value to Your Audience’s Lives

Consumers don’t want another article that contains the same information as ten other posts. You need to create value-added content that they would like to read and share.

I recommend that you follow these tips to create high-quality content:

• Understand the intent of your target keyword. What information does the searcher want?
• Research the topic well, leverage data, and share actionable tips from your expertise and experiences to create engaging and memorable content.
• Give practical advice that your audience can implement right away.
• Share tools that can help and show how to use them effectively. For this, you can create screenshots and screen recordings of you doing it.
• Include quotes from subject matter experts.
• Leverage different content formats to engage different user segments.
• Make your content easily readable and accessible.

Incorporate Multimedia Elements

Multimedia elements can help boost engagement, encourage shares, and improve your online presence.

Here are a few multimedia elements you can add to your website and content:

• Graphics
• Polls
• Quizzes
• Infographics
• Screenshots
• Screen recordings
• Explainer videos
• Animation

4. Build a Strong Social Media Presence

Using social media can help improve your digital presence and social signals can also be good for your SEO.

Identify the Social Media Platforms You Should Target

Don’t try to build your presence on too many social platforms. It’s best to pick 2-3 relevant ones that your audience frequents.

For example, if you run a B2B business, you may want to build a strong presence on LinkedIn. On the other hand, B2C brands can easily reach their audiences through Instagram and TikTok.

Social Media Platforms You Can Consider

Data Source

Create a Social Media Content Calendar

Managing multiple social media accounts can be challenging and time consuming. You may struggle to find new content ideas and create content that engages your audience.

That’s why I recommend creating a social media content calendar in advance to post consistently without fail.

What to include in your social media content calendar:

• Social media accounts
• The date and time when each post will be published
• Your post copy including captions, hashtags, and mentions
• Media including images, videos, or GIFs

Sounds like too much work?

You can reduce the number of posts you want to do each week, depending on your team’s bandwidth. I suggest batch-creating content.

You can plan your social media content on Google Sheets, ClickUp, or use a social media content planner like Later.

Engage with Your Audience

Don’t just post content and then forget about it. Take time to engage with your audience, respond to their comments, and interact with other accounts in your niche.

Here are some social media engagement tips that can help:

• Respond to users’ comments on your posts and Reels.
• Respond to DMs.
• Go Live to interact with your audience. You can introduce a new product to them or educate them about something relevant to your niche.
• Use Questions Stickers on your Instagram Stories to start conversations and encourage interactions.

• Start a poll on your Stories to engage with your audience.

• Host a giveaway contest to receive participation from your target consumers.
• Launch hashtag campaigns to create user-generated content (UGC) and feature the best ones on your official accounts.

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Monitor Your Social Media Growth and Engagement

Monitoring your social media growth and engagement is important for understanding how well your social media strategy is performing.

Some of the key metrics you should track related to your social media performance are:

• Your follower growth rate
• Engagement rate
• Post views and impressions
• Post reach
• Number of saves
• Top-performing posts and Stories
• Story reactions and replies
• Click-through rate
• The amount of web traffic driven through social media platforms

By tracking these metrics, you can see how well your content is resonating with your followers and make changes to improve your social media presence.

To track this data, you can use the analytics features of social networks or third-party social media tools like:

• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• Sprout Social

5. Leverage Paid Advertising to Expand Your Audience

Leveraging paid advertising can be an effective way to reach new customers and enhance the online presence of your business.

You can place ads on popular websites, social media platforms, and search engines. Most paid advertising platforms allow you to target specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. They also provide measurable yet quick results.

Let me walk you through some of the most popular paid ad options.

Search Ads

Investing in search ads can help you land at the top of the SERPs and reach your target audience at the right time.

With search ads, you get measurable results, allowing you to track the performance of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions.

The best part is that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This makes it a cost-effective way to reach leads with the intent to buy your product or service.

Social Ads

Social media ads have higher reach and engagement rates than organic posts. But social media users often have less intent to buy when compared to searchers.

You can run ads on various social platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and TikTok. You can even run Facebook Messenger ads.

An additional advantage of using social ads is that you can create engaging video ads to attract customers.

Display Ads

Display ads are the advertisements you see on websites, apps, and social media platforms. When you run display ads, they will be shown to custom audiences based on their interests, recent searches, and behaviors, and the websites they’ve visited.

Many websites allow publishers to run display ads within their body content or in their sidebar. Here’s one example from my own website:

There are different types of display ads, including:

• Banners
• Images
• Videos
• Rich media

They can help you increase your online visibility instantly.

Retargeting Ads

While all of the above types of ads were about attracting new audiences, retargeting ads help you re-engage users. It targets people who have visited your website or shown interest in your product. They could have also previously interacted with one of your paid ads.

These ads help you mark your presence in your prospect’s mind even after they leave your website.

Google Local Service Ads

Google’s local service ads help you connect with people who search for services you offer and are from your neighborhood.

If you apply for local service ads, Google will show a “Google Guaranteed” badge under your business name.

Currently, these local service ads are available in certain areas and for certain service providers only. These include the United States, United Kingdom, Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, and a few more.

6. Gain Visibility As a Local Business

The best way to attract customers from your neighborhood is to invest in local SEO.

Before I tell you how to do it, I’d like to share a case study of a family-owned bakery. They used Semrush’s digital marketing tools to rank #1 on Google and sell over 1 million macarons!

Isn’t that huge?

You just need to follow simple steps to generate similar traction to your local store.

Keep Accurate & Consistent NAP Data

NAP refers to the name, address, and phone number of your business. You should keep this data consistent across all business listings, local directories, your website, and social media accounts.

Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Formerly known as Google My Business (GMB) listing, your Google Business Profile is a significant listing. It helps you show up in the local search results when people look for “florists near me” or “florists in [your location].”

You should fill out all details carefully, including:

• Your business name
• Address
• Contact number
• Operational/working hours
• Types of services you offer (For example, “Dine in” and “Takeaway” for restaurants)
• Photos and videos of your store, products, etc.

Include important keywords related to your business.

Ask your customers to give you a review and rating on Google. It will be displayed alongside your business listing and act as social proof.

Create and Optimize Your Local Business Listings

Other than Google Business listing, list your business in local directories such as:

• Yelp
• Apple Maps
• Bing Places for Business
• LinkedIn Company Directory
• InsiderPages

7. Regularly Monitor and Manage Your Online Reputation

Regularly monitor the performance of your content and social media strategies to see how your efforts are resonating with your audience. Use consumer feedback and data to refine your approach and make data-driven decisions to build a stronger presence online.

• Respond to customer feedback and reviews.
• Share positive reviews and stories from your satisfied customers on social media and on your website to showcase social proof.
• Manage negative comments and reviews by politely addressing the user’s concerns. Give your best shot at solving their issues and turning them into happy customers.
• Answer online inquiries and messages at the earliest. You can consider deploying a chatbot on your website to answer repetitive and frequently asked questions.
• Provide 24/7 support to your customers and prospects.
• Include answers to frequently asked questions on your blog and in your help center.

Are You Ready to Improve the Online Presence of Your Business?

Improving your digital presence is crucial for attracting and retaining customers in today’s digital age.

To do this, you should follow the steps outlined in this post, such as:

• Auditing your online presence
• Understanding your audience’s needs and interests
• Optimizing your website for search engines and users
• Engaging your audience on social media
• Creating valuable content
• Leveraging paid advertising on search engines, social media, and other websites
• Improving local SEO

This will help you establish a strong and effective digital presence that can make it easier for you to achieve your business goals. However, remember to regularly monitor and refine your approach to ensure that you’re always providing the best possible experience for your audience.

Get started now!

While Semrush is an external service that helps you study any website (including yours and your competitors), Google Analytics is an internal service that gives you useful insights about the website you own or operate.

Google Analytics traffic and user engagement data has greater accuracy than Semrush. However, the latter gives you the ability to track data for your competitors’ websites as well.

It also helps you with competitive research, SEO, keyword research, link building, PPC, and content marketing.

Comparing their features is crucial but it’s also important to highlight where Semrush and Google Analytics overlap. In this article, I’ll do just that and help you understand why you shouldn’t choose one over the other.

For me, these two analytics platforms are better companions than competitors. That’s why, I’ll also show you how to integrate them to use both to your maximum advantage.

Let’s start with a quick overview of both tools.

What is Semrush?

Semrush is an all-in-one suite of digital marketing tools that helps you with SEO, content marketing, market research, competitive intelligence, advertising, social media marketing, and more.

With Semrush, you get access to useful data, including but not limited to:

• Traffic analytics: Traffic sources, web and mobile traffic share, top pages that drive traffic
• Competitive research: Organic and paid search traffic, number of backlinks, competitors’ best keywords, new competitors, domains’ position changes
• Keyword research: Search volume, keyword difficulty, search intent, SERP analysis, position tracking
• Link building: New backlinks, lost backlinks, referring domains, untapped backlink opportunities, link quality audit, broken links
• SEO audit: Crawled pages, technical issues, content optimization issues
• Content marketing: Topic research, SEO recommendations, post performance tracking, content analysis, poor-performing posts
• PPC: paid search traffic, competitors’ keywords and ad copy, position tracking
• Social analytics: Audience growth, engagement

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is the premier analytics platform for tracking your website or app performance. It gives you a complete picture of how your website traffic and user interactions.

It helps you track and analyze:

• Who is visiting your website?
• Where are these visitors (your audience) coming from?
• Which pages do they visit?
• How much time do they spend on your website and specific web pages?
• What are your top-performing posts or pages?
• Which countries send you minimum or maximum traffic?
• Which keywords do people search for to find your website?

Google Analytics helps you understand your customers and improve your website, free of charge. This makes it a must-have analytics tool in your arsenal.

Semrush vs. Google Analytics – The Comparison Summary

Semrush helps you identify keywords and topics that can help generate more website traffic. It also lets you spy on your competitors’ SEO and content strategies.

And, you can get a domain overview and traffic analytics of any website using Semrush.

However, the traffic analytics data is not as accurate as Google Analytics, which directly mines data from a tracking code added to your website. But again, you can only get Google Analytics data for a website you own or manage.

Another major difference between the two platforms is that Google Analytics helps you understand user behavior on your website.

Here’s a quick comparison of Semrush vs. Google Analytics – features and use cases:

	Semrush	Google Analytics
Pricing	Plans start from $119.95/month (Save up to 17% if you pay annually.)	Free plan
Data offered	SEO performance	Website performance and user information
Real-time traffic
Website traffic
Traffic sources
Traffic comparison between time periods
Visitor demographics, engagement, and interests
User behavior or interaction on your website
Keyword research
Keyword ranking and position tracking
Competitor research
Backlinks tracking
Link-building opportunity hunt
Technical SEO audit of your website
Content marketing tools and SEO writing assistant
Historical performance data of your website
Platforms supported	Desktop Web	Desktop Web iOS Android
Customer support	Knowledgebase Videos Email and live chat support	Knowledgebase Community forum

Semrush: Reviewing Its Use Cases, Features, and Data

Semrush is a feature-rich tool, used by over 10 million marketing professionals across the globe. It offers 55+ tools and reports, which are enough to power up your search and marketing performance.

I use it almost every day to do all sorts of things, from finalizing topic ideas to picking up which posts to update each month, and fixing broken links to my website.

Let’s take a look at what Semrush can help you do.

1. Analyze Website Traffic

As I am comparing Semrush with Google Analytics, let me first show you what insights Semrush gives about the traffic of any website. This website could be your own domain or that of your competitors or partners.

The key website traffic metrics Semrush helps you track include:

• The total number of visits
• The number of unique visitors
• The number of pages viewed per visit
• Average session duration
• Bounce rate
• Traffic sources – direct, referral, search, social, paid
• The devices used to browse your website – desktop vs. mobile
• The top pages visited by users
• Top destinations where users go after their visit
• Traffic distribution by country

You can also compare the website traffic of two or more websites and see whether their performance is going up or down over time.

Semrush’s Traffic Analytics data is not as accurate as the data offered by Google Analytics but it’s closest to what any third-party tool can tell about your website.

But the good part is that:

Semrush discloses the accuracy level of all data they provide you with.

Analyzing my website and content performance using Semrush helped me grow my website traffic from 50K to 90K within six months.

2. Conduct Competitive Research

Semrush allows you to check the overall performance of any domain. You can use it to get instant insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, partners, or customers.

With Semrush, you can get insights about:

• Domain authority score
• Organic and paid search traffic the website receives
• The distribution of traffic by country
• The total number of backlinks pointing to the website
• The number of keywords the website has SERP positions for
• Keywords that generate maximum organic traffic for the website
• Keyword position tracking over time

You can compare the numbers between your website and your competitors’ websites.

Semrush also helps you find keyword gaps and capitalize on missed or untapped opportunities to improve your website’s search performance.

Similarly, you can tap into the missed backlink opportunities by using Semrush to track where your competitors are gaining their backlinks from.

Overall, it has everything you need for competitive analysis.

3. Conduct Keyword Research

Semrush is the tool I use to conduct research for my website’s content. From analyzing which keywords to target to researching the best content types to rank for those keywords, Semrush helps me with it all.

With Semrush’s Keyword Research tool, you can see:

• Average monthly search volume of any keyword
• Keyword difficulty score, which defines how challenging it could be to rank for a particular keyword
• Search intent behind the user’s search for a specific keyword
• Average cost-per-click (CPC) of any keyword
• Keyword variations of your seed keyword
• Related keywords and questions for your seed keyword
• Top posts/pages ranking for the keyword
• Keyword research filters

You can also get insights into the top keywords your website or your competitor’s website is ranking for. Extensive keyword research is the first step to creating profitable content for your website.

Semrush also helps you do SERP position tracking to constantly monitor your site’s SEO performance.

4. Build and Audit Your Link Profile

Another thing I have been using Semrush for is backlink building and link quality analysis. It helps me discover all incoming links and referring domains and also helps me analyze whether or not the link adds value to my website authority.

You can also use Semrush’s Backlink Checker to:

• Spot new backlinks to any domain.
• Get notified about lost backlinks.
• Identify the authority of the linking domain and the true value of the backlink.
• Research your competitors’ backlink strategy and analyze their link profiles.
• Discover your competitors’ most authoritative linking domains.
• Identify suspicious or toxic backlinks that could be harming your website’s search performance.
• Analyze backlink types by anchor type, link type, and link attributes.
• Find link-building opportunities.

It can help empower your link building strategy and establish your authority in your niche. While you can also use other backlink analysis tools, I find Semrush to be a complete package for all SEO professionals.

5. Check Your Website for On-Page and Technical SEO Factors

This one is my favorite.

Semrush is the best tool in the market when it comes to on-page and technical SEO.

It gives you detailed analytics about your website – where it is lacking and what you can improve to increase your chances of ranking higher in search results.

Here are the key optimization metrics you can get data about:

• The total number of crawled pages on your website and their status
  • Healthy
  • Broken
  • Have issues
• Top issues found on your website such as
  • Duplicate H1 and title tags
  • Broken external and internal links
  • Missing meta descriptions
  • Unstructured URLs
  • Low word count on a page
  • Duplicate content issues
  • Use of non-descriptive anchor text
  • Missing canonical tags
• Top pages to optimize and ideas for improvement

To learn more about its features, read my full review of Semrush.

Google Analytics: Reviewing Its Use Cases, Features, and Data

For a free tool, Google Analytics provides you with a wealth of data about your website’s traffic, audience, and user behavior.

Knowing exactly how my visitors find and use my website is extremely crucial to me, and it impacts my future content and website optimization strategy.

This is what I mostly use Google Analytics for.

1. Track and Analyze Website Traffic

Google Analytics helps you track how much traffic your website is getting each day, month, or year. You can compare your traffic growth over a period of time and also get insights about the traffic sources.

Google Analytics helps you track key metrics related to your website traffic.

• The number of unique visitors on your website
  • On a specific day
  • Over a period of time (You can visualize your website traffic growth YoY for 10 years straight. This is what I love about Google Analytics.)
• Traffic sources
  • Direct traffic (when a user specifically types in your domain name)
  • Organic search traffic (from Google and other search engines)
  • Referral traffic (from links to your website placed on third-party websites) 
  • Social media traffic
  • Ads
• Daily sessions
  • A steady growth in daily sessions helps me ensure that my website is going the right way. Whereas, if the daily sessions are down, it’s a red flag that conveys there is something I need to fix on my website.

2. Understand the Audience Better

Google Analytics gives you detailed information about your website’s audience, including their demographic information, interests, and location.

• Users: See how many new and returning visitors you have, how much time they spend on your website, and how many pages they visit before bouncing off from your website.
• Audience demographics: Learn about the age group your visitors belong to and whether they are mostly men or women.
• Interests: Discover the main interests of your audience. Do they like to travel, read, or shop, or are they technology geeks?
• Location: See the geolocation of your website visitors. You can view their countries and cities.
• Devices: Get details about the devices they use to browse through your website. You can see your web and mobile traffic share.

This data will help you understand who your target audience is, where they come from, and how you can tailor your content and marketing strategy to better reach and engage them.

3. Get Insights Into Content Performance and User Engagement

With Google Analytics, you can analyze how your website is performing and how users interact with your site and content.

It gives you insights about:

• The total number of pageviews
• Average time spent on each page
• Bounce rate (people leaving your website)
• Page loading speed
• The total number of unique searches on your website and popular search terms
• AdSense page impressions and revenue

With these insights, you can optimize your SEO content strategy to increase your website’s traffic and user experience. Providing valuable content will also help you retain your customers and increase loyalty over time, which often results in higher revenue.

4. Track Conversions

You can also use Google Analytics to track your website conversions. Identify how many visitors are taking actions you want them to take.

These conversions could be anything, varying from:

• Signing up for your newsletter
• Clicking on an affiliate link on your website
• Sharing your post on social media
• Buying your product

You can use these insights to optimize your website for conversions.

Semrush vs. Google Analytics: Data Collection

I use both Semrush and Google Analytics to run my website and support my clients’ businesses. There is no comparison between the data both tools offer to help improve my website and content performance.

Let me brief you on how these web analytics tools gather data.

How Does Semrush Gather Analytics Data?

Semrush gathers its analytics data by:

• Using its own machine learning algorithms
• Collecting data from multiple trusted third-party data providers and sources

For website traffic analytics data, Semrush combines data from the user behavior of over 200 million real internet users in 190 countries and regions.

To ensure accuracy, they run their Neural Network algorithm, which recognizes patterns in the collected data and provides you with a realistic estimation after sampling and error testing.

Semrush’s Backlink Crawler crawls over 25 billion web pages every day to identify and add new links to its database.

How Does Google Analytics Gather Data?

Google Analytics, on the other hand, gathers data directly from your website. It asks you to add a custom JavaScript tracking code within the code of the website you own or manage.

Every time a user visits your website, this code sends information to Google Analytics about how the user interacted with your web pages and content.

Semrush vs. Google Analytics: Pricing Plans

Semrush offers three pricing plans:

• Pro plan: $119.95/month
• Guru plan: $229.95/month
• Business plan: $449.95/month

You can save up to 17% if you pay annually.

Semrush offers a full refund if you decide to cancel your subscription or downgrade your plan within the first seven days.

You can try Semrush for free for 14 days (only with my link). But during free trials, the platform limits the amount of data you can pull every day.

Google Analytics offers all of this critical data, free of charge.

However, if your website receives millions of sessions per month, you may need to upgrade to Google Analytics 360. This can cost you millions of dollars but it will offer:

• Unlimited data
• Access to advanced reports
• Faster data updates

Google offers multiple free tools that can be extremely helpful for marketers and developers.

Semrush vs. Google Analytics: Are These Tools Competitors or Partners?

Semrush and Google Analytics are both essential analytics tools for website and business owners. They have different strengths.

As an avid user of both platforms, I can say that:

You can improve your website and content performance using Semrush and Google Analytics to your advantage. Here’s how I do it:

• Use Semrush for keyword research and filtering based on search volume and lower competition.
• Write the content and publish it on my website. Use Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant to identify readability, SEO, and originality issues within the content. This helps me improve content quality and increase the chances of making it rank.
• Monitor my blog’s traffic using both Google Analytics and Semrush. Identify top pages and see how my recent posts are performing.
• Add the targeted keyword to Semrush’s position tracking to see improvement in the search performance of every published content piece.
• Use Google Analytics to see how users are interacting with my website – the pages they visit and which external links they click on.
• Regularly monitor GA daily sessions to evaluate if my website is going in the right direction. I’ve integrated Google Analytics sessions into Slack to receive notifications about daily sessions’ growth and decline.

I recommend that you integrate Google Analytics and Semrush to enhance data and reports, and, thereby, improve your marketing ROI.

How to Connect Google Analytics to Semrush

You can connect your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts to Semrush. This will help you analyze all of your website’s data in one place and enhance accuracy.

However, to connect a Google Analytics account to Semrush, you need to have at least “viewer” access.

Also, you’ll need to individually link Google Analytics to the following Semrush’s features:

• Position tracking
• Site audit
• Social media ads

You can integrate the following Semrush features with both Google Analytics and Google Search Console (GSC):

• On-page SEO checker
• Backlink audit
• Organic traffic insights
• Content analyzer
• SEO dashboard

To connect GSC to Semrush, you’ll need to have “owner or full user” access to the Google Search Console account.

Here’s how to integrate traffic analytics of both platforms:

You can refer to Semrush’s knowledge base to learn how to integrate GA and GSC with each of the features I mentioned above.

Semrush vs. Google Analytics: Which Tool Should You Choose?

I’ve said this multiple times throughout the article and I’ll repeat myself – you shouldn’t choose one above the other.

Both Semrush and Google Analytics are equally important web analytics tools for any website owner. I recommend that you make the most of both platforms to:

• Analyze your website traffic.
• Understand your audience and how they interact with your website.
• Identify keywords to target.
• Track SERP positions for multiple keywords.
• Identify and capitalize on link-building opportunities.
• Improve your website’s search performance and user experience.

I consider myself a pro user of both Semrush and Google Analytics and will continue to be so.

FAQs

As an entrepreneur, I understand it could be difficult to track and manage multiple projects and tasks. I have been there – struggling to manage tasks, streamline processes, and track the progress of different projects.

My team and I used different solutions, including Teamline, Clockify, and Trello. But we found it challenging to keep things organized and see the bigger picture in one view.

That’s when one of my team members recommended that we try ClickUp, and it changed the way our organization functioned. I’ll tell you how – in my ClickUp review.

Having tested and used ClickUp for over two years now, I can say that it is an all-in-one project management platform every team needs. You can see progress boards like Trello, assign and manage tasks like on Teamline, and track time spent on different tasks and projects like on Clockify.

Though onboarding took a while, and we are still learning how to use its customization and automation options, ClickUp has made our work processes more efficient.

Read on to learn more about my experiences with this platform. My review of ClickUp will help you decide whether or not it will be the right fit for your organization.

What is ClickUp?

ClickUp is a cloud-based collaboration and project management platform that helps you manage all of your work in one place. This includes organizing and assigning tasks, managing workflow, documents, communication, goals, and reporting.

Though my team and I primarily use ClickUp for project management and collaboration, it also offers solutions designed for product development, sales, marketing, finance, and HR teams.

In this ClickUp review, we’ll mainly discuss its project management features.

What is ClickUp Used For?

ClickUp is a project management tool that can help you streamline your workflow, improve collaboration and communication, and increase the overall efficiency of your team.

Some of the most common uses of ClickUp include:

• Improved organization: This project management software can help you keep track of all projects, tasks, deadlines, and responsibilities in one place, making it easier to stay organized.
• Streamlined task management: ClickUp allows you to create, assign, and track the progress of your tasks and projects. You can also automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks.
• Efficient project management: With features like dashboards, Gantt charts, calendar views, calculation widgets, progress bars, and reports, ClickUp helps teams stay on track and manage projects effectively.
• Real-time tracking: Keep track of the time each member spends on different tasks and projects. Set due dates to ensure everything is on schedule.
• Effortless team collaboration and communication: Work together with your team in real time, regardless of your location. Communicate through comments and mentions within task cards to minimize confusion and keep everyone on the same page.
• Efficient remote team working: ClickUp’s mobile app and collaboration features make it a great tool for remote teams.
• Personal productivity checks: ClickUp allows team members to manage their to-do lists. You can assign tasks and comments to individual team members, increasing their accountability and ensuring everyone meets their respective deadlines.
  
  This is also helpful during performance reviews and appraisals.
• Improved decision-making: This platform provides real-time data and insights to help you make informed decisions about the performance of your team members, the progress of tasks, and the efficacy of your work processes. You can use this data to improve project outcomes and reduce costs.

Overall, ClickUp is a versatile tool. Whether you’re a freelancer who wants to manage client work or you run a small business with multiple departments, it can help you manage work effectively.

What Are the Pros and Cons of ClickUp?

ClickUp strikes a balance between providing the right number of features and keeping it affordable for individuals and small businesses. Learning to use ClickUp to the best of its capabilities can be tough and require your time and effort, at least, initially.

Let me help you analyze its advantages and disadvantages in detail.

ClickUp’s Pros

Let’s start with discussing things that ClickUp is good at – such as its freemium features, customization capabilities, “Everything” view, and real-time reporting.

1. An Impressive Free Forever Plan

We are using ClickUp’s Business plan but I must say, they have a genuinely impressive Free Forever plan.

Unlike many other SaaS products, ClickUp’s free version doesn't restrict the number of users and the number of tasks you can create. You can access most of its features with the freemium version.

ClickUp’s Free Forever plan features include:

• Unlimited team members
• Unlimited tasks
• Everything view
• List, Board, Calendar, Table views
• Collaborative Docs
• Time tracking
• Custom Statuses
• 3 Whiteboards
• 100 Custom fields
• 100 Mind Maps
• 100 Gantt Charts
• 100 automation/month
• Multiple assignees
• Task checklists
• Dependencies
• Priorities
• Assign comments
• 50+ native integrations
• Two-factor authentication

It offers one of the most feature-rich free plan we tested. It locks very few features for its expensive plans. You get all views, including Gantt Charts and Spreadsheets with the free plan. Their team offers 24/7 support with every plan.

2. Multiple Views of Your Tasks and Projects

ClickUp lets you track work from any angle by offering 20+ real-time views. You can create views for your projects, tasks, and workflows in the way that works best for your organization.

The most commonly-used views on ClickUp include Lists, Boards, Tables, Sheets, Teams, and Gantt Charts.

Here’s a quick overview of each of these views:

As we’re more of a content-focused team, we prefer Tables and Lists over other views. Having used Trello before, we also use ClickUp Boards to see the overall progress of different projects.

The best way to track meetings and time offs is to use the Calendar view, which is also the default view for our “Time Off” space.

I’ll discuss these views in detail when we talk about the key features of this project management software. So, keep reading.

3. Advanced Customization Options

ClickUp is a fully customizable solution that lets you adjust and customize everything based on your project needs, workflow and processes, and other personal preferences.

Its customization options include templates, themes, and the ability to create custom dashboards.

You can create custom “Dashboards” to give an overview of your work or the progress update of a particular project. The platform offers over 50 widget variations, including custom charts, workload graphs, tables, time tracking, task lists, and more.

Here’s a quick view of one such Dashboard:

In the video, you can also see how to add widgets to your Dashboard and customize its data using different filters.

Our team maintains separate Dashboards for tasks related to different members, groups, and departments. For example, we have a separate “Content Team Dashboard” for all content-related projects and tasks.

Another example of ClickUp’s customization options is its “Custom fields” feature.

You can use it to add all kinds of information you may need. This feature has helped us replace many spreadsheets we used earlier to track topic names, Doc links, word counts, and writer details for every post.

Bottomline: ClickUp is one of the most flexible workplace solutions I’ve tested. It fits and suffices the customization needs of most companies and teams.

4. Enhanced Collaboration Features

ClickUp includes features like comments, task assignments, and real-time notifications to enhance team collaboration and communication. There is also a built-in chat feature.

You can rely on ClickUp project management software to stay connected with your team from anywhere and at any time. This applies to teams working both from the office and remotely.

Team members can also collaborate on ClickUp Docs and Whiteboards for brainstorming ideas and editing content.

5. Multi-Platform Support

ClickUp is available on desktop, mobile, and web platforms, making it accessible from any device. You don’t have to use a specific operating system, browser, or device to use this project management software.

It is both a cloud-based and web-based online solution. You can also download its application for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems and Android and iOS devices.

ClickUp’s Cons

ClickUp had its set of disadvantages when we migrated from Clockify and Teamline to ClickUp. My team and I tested it for a month before fully making the switch.

Now that I’ve already shared a few benefits of ClickUp based on my testing, let me share the challenges we faced.

1. ClickUp’s Customization Options Can Be Overwhelming

You heard me right.

I love ClickUp’s user interface, features, and top-notch customization capabilities. But most new users may find the features and options overwhelming at first, leading to a steep learning curve.

You’ll need a thorough onboarding, which is lengthy and complex, to start using this project management software to the best of its capabilities. That’s because this platform has many different features and ways to customize and organize tasks.

Even after two years of using the platform, my team is discovering and trying out new options. We still reach out to their support team to learn how to set up new-style dashboards, get better views of the overall project progress, track individual performances, and more.

But it’s important to tell here that the ClickUp team provides smooth and hassle-free support at every step of the way. They are ready to help you throughout the onboarding process and beyond.

You should check out their knowledge base and demo videos to get started on the right foot.

2. Performance Issues

I haven’t had any major issues using the platform but some users reported performance issues with ClickUp on review websites like Capterra and G2. These include occasional slow load times and updates, which can impact productivity.

These kinds of user reviews should not stop you from using its Free Forever plan. Even with the paid plans, ClickUp offers great support for quick resolution and a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.

3. For Advanced Time Tracking, You Need to Opt for Business or Higher-Priced Plans

As a business owner, you might want to mark time spent on certain tasks as billable. This is something you can do only with their Business, Business Plus, and Enterprise plans.

With free and starter plans, you can’t add labels and descriptions to the time tracked.

Freelancers and small teams may not need to differentiate between billable and non-billable hours. If you do, Clockify could be a better alternative for tracking billable and non-billable hours for free.

ClickUp’s Key Features and Use Cases

ClickUp offers hundreds of project management and collaboration features – with more added each week. And, you can customize each one of these based on your organizational needs and personal preferences.

1. Define Your ClickUp Workspace Hierarchy

ClickUp’s unique Hierarchy helps teams break projects and plans into manageable and actionable sections and tasks.

Source

Workspaces are the highest level of the ClickUp Hierarchy. It represents your entire company, organization, or business.You can create or be part of as many Workspaces as you want and switch between them using the avatar menu at the lower-left corner.

Under ClickUp Workspaces, you’ll find:

• Spaces: You can use them to divide your organization into different departments, teams, project groups, or anything you want to group on a higher level. You can create up to 5 Spaces with ClickUp’s free plan and unlimited Spaces with all paid plans.
  You can set permissions for members and restrict some people from accessing specific Spaces.
• Folders: Spaces can have different folders to organize tasks related to different projects, campaigns, or databases. 
• Lists: Lists help you club smaller activities like backlinking tasks, content requirements for the website, other writing tasks, and so on. You can set views, custom fields, and statuses for each of your task lists.
• Tasks: You can also create subtasks, nested subtasks, and checklist items under each task.

2. Create, Assign, and Manage Tasks

Once you’ve defined the basic Hierarchy of your ClickUp Workspace, creating tasks is easy. Just click on the “Task” button at the lower-right corner of your screen.

You’ll see a pop-up window that lets you fill out all details of the task. This includes:

• Task name
• The location of the task
• Assignees
• Task description
• Custom fields
• Subtasks
• Checklists
• Start date
• Due date
• Tags

You can also create tasks using pre-defined templates and define dependencies to increase user accountability for each part of the task’s progress.

Set recurring due dates for regular tasks. For example, we have our content team meeting every week.

For each task card, you can add custom fields for all information you need. This may include brief Docs, progress bar, writer’s name, total word count, and so on if it’s a content creation task.

Add more fields or edit the existing ones from the highlighted anchor text in the above image.

Similarly, it’s easy to add subtasks and checklist items to each task card and assign them to specific team members.

Another useful feature that makes our job easy is the “Status” feature for each task card. You can see the current status of each task at a glance, and talk to the person accountable for that step of the process.

For example, if I want to know the status of all content scheduled for this website, ShaneBarker.com, I just need to go to the “Content for Shane Barker” list and group tasks by “Status.”

You can get all data in one place, without browsing through different spreadsheets. You can also filter this data by week, month, or specific date range.

3. Track Time Spent on Different Tasks and Projects

ClickUp project management tool lets you do solid up-to-the-minute time tracking and reporting. You can use it to log hours spent on different tasks and projects, and track progress in real time.

Here’s how to track time using ClickUp:

Go to any task and start the timer using the green-colored play button below “Time Tracked.” The timer will start counting up, and you can stop it whenever you want.

If you forget to start the timer or need to log time for a task that you didn't track in real time, you can log hours by clicking on the “Time Tracked” tab. Select “Manual” and add hours manually. Save your logged hours.

You can track the total number of hours logged by each person on any task.

If you want to edit any logged session timings, just click on that particular entry and tap the edit icon. Enter the desired timings and click on “Save Changes.”

4. Collaborate and Communicate with Your Team

ClickUp offers enough collaboration options so that your team can stay on one platform for all task and project-related communications.

You can add comments on individual task cards, tag multiple team members, assign those comments to specific people, and even reply in nested threads.

Along with comment threads, you can also see the details of every activity on the task card, ranging from Status changes to document updates and assignee additions.

5. Track Project Progress

ClickUp provides a clear and comprehensive view of your project progress. This way, it’s easier to identify and resolve issues before they become more significant problems.

Select individual Folders and Lists from the left sidebar to check the progress of all tasks under them. Select “Group by Status” in the top-right corner.

When it comes to progress tracking, ClickUp’s “Everything” view is my go-to place.

You can group tasks by Status, and add filters like specific date range of the tasks and completed/active tasks. Select team members to whom the tasks have been assigned.

It’s also easy to search for tasks related to one particular list.

You can view the same data in different views that we discussed earlier. For example, here’s the Board view, which can be a good choice if you’re used to managing projects on Trello.

6. Create Custom Workflows to Automate Repetitive Tasks

ClickUp automation options help you create consistent processes for repetitive tasks and workflows so you can concentrate on improving other areas.

Use ClickUp’s pre-built automation recipes to automate regular tasks, Status changes, List changes, and so on. Or, set custom Statuses and fields to a task and then save the task card as a template.

For this, you just need to click on the “Save as Template” option (right below “Browse Templates”). This will save your changes to the task card as a fresh template.

You can reuse these saved templates to create tasks with similar functionality, custom fields, and dependencies in the future.

7. Integrate Seamlessly with Other Business Tools

ClickUp allows you to connect your favorite tools and apps to your workflow. This includes a hassle-free integration with:

• Communication and collaboration platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Loom, and Zoom
• Marketing tools like HubSpot
• File management solutions like Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox
• CRM solutions like Salesforce
• Writing tools like Grammarly
• Calendar tools like Google Calendar

You can automatically import your data from project management solutions like Asana, Monday, Trello, Basecamp, Jira, and Wrike in just a few clicks.

ClickUp’s Customer Support

ClickUp’s team values customers the most. They provide 24/7 live chat support throughout the onboarding process and even beyond that.

Based on my experience, they are quick to respond to queries about features, automation, Dashboards, and almost everything you may be finding challenging.

Other than live chat support, ClickUp also has an in-depth knowledge base, full of guides, demo videos, and help Docs. Plus, you can learn how to master ClickUp and maximize your productivity by signing up for ClickUp courses here.

ClickUp’s Pricing Plans and Inclusions

ClickUp offers several pricing plans to cater to the needs of freelancers, small and medium-sized businesses, and large corporations.

You can start using ClickUp for free with its Free Forever plan. The plan offers access to all essential features of this project management software.

The best part is that it doesn’t limit the number of users or tasks.

Most small teams opt for ClickUp’s Unlimited or Business plans, which offer features like:

• Unlimited storage
• Unlimited integrations
• Unlimited Dashboards
• Unlimited Custom fields
• Guests with permissions
• Column calculations
• Advanced automation features
• Advanced time tracking
• Workload management
• Gantt charts

ClickUp’s Unlimited plan is best for small teams and $7 per member per month (billed annually). For its Business plan, you need to pay $12 per member per month (billed annually).

You won’t need to upgrade to their Business Plus or Enterprise plan until you’re collaborating with multiple teams from different companies. These plans are mainly for teams that want to define custom roles and permissions for different members.

Enterprises may also opt for these higher-value plans for the advanced security features and 1000+ integrations that come with them. For this plan’s pricing details, you need to connect with their sales team.

If you opt to pay per month, ClickUp plans will cost you as follows:

ClickUp’s new add-on: You can add ClickUp AI to any paid plan for $5 per member per month to leverage the power of artificial intelligence to increase the efficiency of your business processes.

Comparing ClickUp with Other Project Management Software Solutions

This was all about what ClickUp is and how it can help you streamline work and improve your task force’s efficiency. Now, let’s see where it stands against project management platforms like Monday, Trello, Asana, and Jira.

	ClickUp	Monday	Asana	Jira	Trello
Free plan
Paid plans (billed annually)	Start from $7 per user per month	Start from $8 per user per month	Start from $10.99 per user per month	Start from $7.75 per user per month	Start from $5 per user per month
Workspaces
Everything view
Tasks
Subtasks
Nested subtasks
Checklists
Time tracking
Multiple assignees
Dependencies
Custom statuses
Activity view
Embedded email
Automations

My Verdict

ClickUp is totally worth purchasing. You don’t have to trust my words. You can start with its Free Forever plan and test its features for yourself. Then, switch to a paid plan.

They also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with their service. Based on my experience of using it, you won’t need a cashback.

For small teams, ClickUp’s Unlimited plan is sufficient, which costs $7 per member per month. If you want to use advanced automation to make complex task processes easier, you can consider subscribing to their Business plan at $12 per member per month.

I am currently using their Business plan for project management, task assignment, progress/status tracking, communication, file management, performance assessment of team members, and reporting.

Though I’ve not tested their higher-value plans, companies like Samsung and IBM are using their Enterprise plan for increased productivity and world-class security.ClickUp integrates well with your existing business tools and CRM systems, which is another plus point.

FAQs

And they’re important questions for anyone who wants to grow their business online. After all, finding leads is a necessity for all businesses. But, it is also a major challenge that every single marketer faces today.

I have been there myself – struggling hard to get leads while I was just starting my entrepreneurial journey. But over the years, I’ve found what works, and today I want to share it with you.

Even if you are starting out into digital marketing, this post will help you understand what a lead is and how to generate more leads to grow your business. 

What is a Lead?

A “lead” is someone who has shown interest in your product or service. For example, if you're a company that sells software, a lead might be someone who requests information about your product or signs up for a free trial.

Leads are people who might be interested in doing business with you but haven't made a commitment yet.

Think of it this way: You have a car dealership. If someone came up to you and said they were interested in buying a new car, they'd be a lead. But if they actually went to the dealership and bought the car, they'd be a customer.

Why Do You Need Leads?

Now you know what leads are, let’s try to understand why exactly businesses cannot thrive without leads? 

Having a steady stream of leads helps ensure that there is always a pool of prospective buyers that can be pursued. When you nurture them effectively, they can turn into paying customers. You need leads to keep your sales pipeline growing.

Leads also help you to stay ahead of  competitors. By actively cultivating leads, you are able to reach out to potential customers before your competition does. This gives you a better chance of securing those customers and building relationships with them.

In addition, leads provide businesses with invaluable insights into the market they operate in. Through lead generation, businesses can better understand demands and trends in their industry. This helps them to develop more effective marketing campaigns that target the right audience.

Finally, leads are essential for measuring the success of marketing efforts. By tracking conversions from lead to customer, businesses can gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns and adjust accordingly. With this data, they can refine their sales and marketing strategies to meet the needs of their target audience better.

What is Lead Generation in Digital Marketing?

Lead generation in digital marketing is the process of attracting and converting scrollers into prospects and customers by using various online channels.

The goal of lead generation is to build relationships with potential customers, nurture them through the sales process, and ultimately convert them into paying customers. 

In order to do this effectively, it is important to have a comprehensive understanding of your target audience, their needs, and how they interact with digital channels.

Most digital marketers use one or more of these five methods:

1. Content marketing
2. Search engine optimization (SEO)
3. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
4. Social media marketing
5. Email marketing

By leveraging the power of these online channels, your business can gain more visibility online. Through the use of engaging content, you can capture leads and create an effective sales funnel that converts prospects into long-term customers and advocates.

Now that you understand lead generation, let’s take a closer look at why it is important. 

Why Do You Need Lead Generation For Businesses?

Ah, marketing leads! They are the holy grail of any business’s success.  After all, without leads, how would you ever find new customers?

Sure, you could try cold-calling, but that method is pretty outdated and not very effective. Not to mention, it is also incredibly time-consuming.

That's where lead generation comes in. 

If you relate to any of the scenarios discussed below, you should definitely consider lead generation for your business:

1. You're sick of spending money on marketing that doesn't work.
2. You're tired of cold calling and door-to-door sales.
3. You want to target your ideal customer.
4. You want to increase your sales.
5. You want to improve your conversion rate.
6. You want to save time and money.
7. You want to scale your business.
8. You want to be more efficient.
9. You want to increase your ROI.
10. You want to stay ahead of your competition.

Relatable? If you’re still on the fence about whether or not you need to invest your resources in lead generation specifically, consider all of the benefits. 

Here are some of the main advantages of lead generation:

1. Helps businesses grow their customer base

Lead generation involves identifying potential customers, collecting their contact information, and using those leads to build relationships with them. This process helps you find the right people who are interested in your business and can help you reach more potential customers.

2. Increases sales and revenue

By generating leads, businesses can convert more prospects into customers. This can lead to an increase in sales and revenue for the business.

With strategies that target specific customer profiles, companies can ensure that their message resonates with the right people at the right time.

An effective way to generate leads is by using pop-up forms. Pop-ups are small visual prompts that pop up on the screen when someone visits your website or clicks a link. 

They offer visitors an incentive such as a discount, coupon, or free trial in exchange for signing up for your mailing list or newsletter. Pop-ups allow you to capture potential contacts and turn them into paying customers by nurturing them through marketing campaigns.

Additionally, lead generation can be used to identify new opportunities for business growth and expansion. By connecting with potential leads through various channels, companies can gain valuable insights into market trends that could help inform future marketing strategies.

3. Helps businesses save time and money

Lead generation also helps businesses better understand what types of activities will interest potential customers, so they can target them more effectively. 

By understanding which services or products have the best chance of drawing in prospective buyers, a company can focus its marketing efforts on those particular items or services and make sure that it’s offering something that’s going to be attractive to consumers.

By generating the right kind of leads, businesses can focus their time and resources on converting prospects into customers. This can help businesses save time and money that would otherwise be spent on marketing and advertising.

4. Helps businesses create a competitive advantage

By generating leads, businesses can create a competitive advantage by reaching new markets and creating a larger customer base. This can help businesses maintain their success rate and scale up faster.

B2B Lead Generation vs B2C Lead Generation

When marketing a product or service to a customer, it is important to understand the difference between B2B and B2C customers.

B2B stands for “business-to-business” and describes when one business sells its products or services to another business. On the other hand, B2C stands for “business-to-consumer” and describes when a business sells its products or services directly to consumers.

The main difference between B2B and B2C customers lies in their priorities. Businesses often prioritize efficiency and cost savings over customer experience, whereas consumers are more focused on convenience, quality, and personalization. 

They are looking for different things at each stage of the funnel. Here is an infographic that shows the key difference between B2C and B2B leads:

That brings us to the point: How does it impact lead generation? From the approach you take to the lead generation tactics that you focus on will vary for both B2B and B2C businesses. 

Let’s understand these differences in detail.

1. Focus And Approach

The focus and approach taken to lead generation differ between B2B and B2C due to the different nature of the customers being targeted. 

B2B businesses typically purchase products or services for long-term use, meaning that their decisions are more complex and involve a greater number of stakeholders. 

B2B sales cycles include numerous steps such as research, negotiation and consultation. Additionally, since B2B businesses make larger purchases, they’re more likely to do extensive vetting of potential vendors. This requires them to dedicate greater resources and time into decision-making. 

All of them add to the amount of time it takes for a sale to be complete. 

When it comes to B2B lead generation strategies, the focus is mostly on educating potential buyers about the product or service. Through white papers, webinars, case studies, blog posts, and other such content marketing strategies, you want to win their trust.  

Whereas in B2C, it's all about the fast lane! You don't have time for extended conversations; you need to grab attention quickly and show prospects how they can benefit from your product or service. It's a case of winning them over with great offers and slick marketing!

2. Context

If you’re generating leads for a business-to-business (B2B) model, you need to make sure your content appeals to the analytical minds of C-level executives. You need to be able to back up what you say with data and show measurable results.

Conversely, when targeting consumers, you need to offer solutions that appeal to their emotions and address their problems directly 

The bottom line is – don’t expect a CEO to be swayed by a discount code! 

B2B lead generation targeting is more specific while B2C lead generation can be wide-reaching .

So, if you want your lead generation strategy to really hit the mark in either B2B or B2C contexts, take the time to understand your target audience and tailor your content accordingly. 

3. Sales Cycle

In B2B, the sales cycle can last weeks, or months. You need to build trust with potential customers and create a tailored solution that fits their needs before they’ll buy from you. It takes patience, tenacity, data and a lot of numbers. 

On the other hand, B2C sales cycles can be a lot shorter. A customer may only need to make one purchase decision before they buy from you – no long-term commitment needed! Once they make a purchase, you can offer incentives that encourage them to make repeat purchases.

4. Tactics

When it comes to creative tactics for generating leads, B2B often relies on traditional methods like webinars, white papers, and email campaigns. These are often the best channels to get access to B2B professionals and get their attention. 

Meanwhile, B2C may involve more trending approaches like influencer marketing, viral videos, and guerilla campaigns.

How to Generate Marketing Leads: 5 Best Strategies

But how do you go about generating more leads without overselling? Well, luckily for you my friend, there are plenty of strategies that work well when it comes to finding those hotshot marketing leads.

1. Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Did you know that, on an average, a person spends approximately 2 hours and 29 minutes every day on social media? Your target prospects are active users of these platforms these platforms. If you can capture their attention, offer them value, you can begin generating leads right there.

In fact, a report shows that social media is the top marketing channel to generate more leads.

Now that we know about the unquestionable importance of social media, let's talk about utilizing it's full potential in generating leads and growing your business. Here are some ways in which you can leverage social media to get more leads for your business:

A. Utilize Targeted Ads

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn offer targeted advertising options that allow businesses to target users with specific interests or demographics. 

This helps ensure that ads are seen by people who are more likely to be interested in the product or service being offered, increasing the chances of lead generation success.

B. Host Contests and Giveaways

Contests and giveaways are popular among social media users, so businesses should take advantage of this by offering these events to their followers. Doing so encourages people to visit the business’s page, learn more about its offerings, and potentially become a lead.

C. Create Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are an effective way to entice people to opt into a business’s email list in exchange for something valuable, such as an ebook or free download. This strategy can be used on social media or on your website to encourage followers to sign up.

D. Start a Conversation

Social media is all about interacting with others, so you should make an effort to engage with your followers. Doing so helps build relationships and trust, which can eventually lead to more people becoming leads.

For example, Benefit Cosmetics started an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on their Instagram page with their team. When a user asked a question on promoting eyebrow growth, their team organically promoted their BROWVO Conditioning Primer. 

E. Humanize Your Brand

People connect better when there’s personal touch in brand communication. Storytelling, sharing This can be done through storytelling, sharing content related to the company’s values, or engaging with followers on a personal level. 

2. Get Creative with Content Marketing

An effective content marketing strategy for lead generation needs to be targeted and deliberate. This requires creating content that is specifically designed to move prospects through the sales funnel, from brand awareness to sales close.

To optimize your lead generation efforts, it's essential to create content tailored to each stage of the funnel. 

Here are some examples of how you can use content marketing strategies for lead generation based on the funnel stage:

A. Create a Blog Series

Use your blog to discuss topics related to your product or service in-depth, with each post being part of an ongoing series. This will provide valuable information while helping you establish yourself as an expert in the field. 

This content is for those prospects who are at the top of the funnel and are just getting introduced to your product or services.

B. Host Webinars

Webinars allow you to engage with potential customers in real time, while also providing valuable content. You can use webinars to answer customer questions and demonstrate how your product or service works.

C. Produce Educational Videos

Create short tutorials, explainer videos, and other educational videos that will help potential customers learn more about what you offer. These can be uploaded to YouTube or embedded into blog posts for maximum visibility.

D. Share Case Studies

Showcase how your product or service has been successful by sharing detailed case studies with potential customers. This will help them understand the value of your offering and encourage them to take action.

E. Reach Out to Influencers

Having a big name in your corner can be invaluable when it comes to generating leads and boosting sales. They can help you win audience trust and get more sales. Identify influencers who have an audience similar to yours, and work with them to promote your products or services.

F. Leverage Existing Relationships

Don’t forget the power of referrals and word of mouth! Reach out to existing customers and ask them to spread the word about your business. You could also showcase their testimonials via social media videos or posts.

G. Create an Optimized Website

Once you have the essential elements of your website in place, it's time to start optimizing for lead generation. The key to successful lead generation is driving organic traffic to your website and making sure your content resonates with potential customers. 

Here are a few tips for optimizing your website for maximum lead generation:

Optimize Your Content – Creating content that covers topics related to your product or services is a great way to draw potential customers to your website. 

From blog posts to whitepapers, ensure that all of your content is high-quality and relevant. Additionally, be sure to include keywords within the content you create so it can be easily found through search engine optimization (SEO).

Utilize Landing Pages – Creating landing pages specifically geared towards lead generation is a great way to capture potential leads.

Include forms where visitors can sign up for newsletters, and get reports, discounts, or other offers. This way they are more likely to want to take an action.

I’ve also written a detailed post on what it takes to create high-converting landing pages. Check it out for more information on how to get leads via landing pages.

Use Different Types of Media – Including videos, infographics and other visuals on your website can be a great way to engage visitors. Visuals help keep visitors on the page longer and are more likely to be shared.

Share Published Posts on Social Media – Leveraging social media is an effective way to reach potential leads and increase traffic to your site. Make sure you have active accounts on the most popular social media platforms and post regularly.

By following these tips, you can create an optimized website for lead generation and drive organic traffic to your website. With time and effort, you can generate more leads and grow your business.

H. Offer Opt-in Forms

Placing opt-in forms on your website or blog can help capture leads who are interested in learning more about what you have to offer. You could offer free downloads or an email newsletter subscription in exchange for their contact info.

I. Use Retargeting Ads

Retargeting ads (or “remarketing” ads) allow you to show relevant ads to prospects after they've interacted with your website or content. This helps keep your brand top-of-mind and increases the likelihood of them converting into customers.

3. Work on SEO

Once you’ve written great content, it deserves to be seen! Investing in SEO is the equivalent of having an awesome billboard on a major highway – people can see your content from miles and be drawn to it. 

Sure, you could get by without investing in SEO, but then you’d just be the tiny store tucked away in a back alley somewhere. Don’t let your content be forgotten! 

With proper on-page SEO tactics, you can make sure that your content has a greater chance of being shared and clicked on. 

Search engine algorithms consider factors like keyword density and backlinks when deciding which content should be displayed at the top of search results. 

In fact, when you look for a keyword on Google, you’ll see the phrase and its variations in bold in the search results. Check it out:

This shows just how important it is to use the right phrases.

By optimizing your content for relevant keywords, you can make sure it appears in more searches and increases your visibility. 

But remember, SEO isn’t something you can just turn on and off. 

It requires consistent work to make sure your content stays relevant and highly ranked. Investing in SEO now will pay off for years as long as you keep up with the algorithm updates and SEO best practices.

If you want an expert’s insights on using SEO for lead generation, check out my podcast interview with Jeff Baker, the CMO of Brafton. 

4. Invest in Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing campaigns are a great way to increase lead generation and build relationships with potential customers. By using email campaigns, you can easily target specific groups of people who may be interested in your products or services. 

Additionally, email campaigns allow you to easily segment audiences based on different criteria such as demographics, location, purchase history, and more. This can be extremely helpful for targeted marketing efforts and personalizing your messages. 

If you want to learn more about email segmentation, check out this video below:

You can efficiently nurture leads with personalized emails and automated follow-ups until they convert into paying customers. You can also use email campaigns to re-engage inactive customers and keep them up to date on new offers. 

Email marketing campaigns are also a cost-effective way to increase your reach since they don’t require much upfront investment, and you can easily track their success with built-in analytics tools. 

With these powerful tools at your disposal, you can maximize lead generation and streamline the customer journey from start to finish. 

5. Leverage PPC Advertising

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click, and it could be what your business needs to get leads in the door. 

No more waiting around hoping people come across your website; with PPC, you can actively target potential customers and have them coming to you! Plus, it's easy – all you have to do is choose the right keywords, set a budget, and get started. 

You'll be able to target potential customers with ads tailored specifically for them, helping increase brand awareness, generating more leads and ultimately closing more sales. For lead generation, you can even set up lead form extensions.

Not only that, but you'll have full control over your budget allowing you to set limits on what you're willing to spend per click or per day. If there was ever an easy way to get the results you want without breaking the bank, PPC is it! 

If you want to get started with PPC advertising, you can check out the best PPC tools here.

What Are the Best Tools For Lead Generation?

Using specialized tools for lead generation can help you maximize your reach and convert more leads. Lead generation tools are designed specifically to provide data-driven insights that help you make informed decisions.You can learn exactly who, when, and how you should target. 

Additionally, specialized lead generation tools allow you to track key metrics such as open and click-through rates, conversion rates, and return on investment. 

By utilizing these tools, you can identify areas for improvement and optimize your campaigns for higher conversion rates. In a nutshell, lead generation tools can accelerate your sales funnel. 

Based on my experience, here are the top lead generation tools that you should check out:

1. Salespanel – For Lead Generation and Lead Nurturing

Salespanel.io is an all-in-one sales and marketing tool used to create, manage and optimize lead generation campaigns. It can help you nurture leads, score them according to their sales potential, and convert them into customers.

2. Agorapulse – For Social Media Lead Generation

Agorapulse is great for managing multiple social media accounts in one place. Plus, its analytics capabilities make it one of the top options for finding leads on social media.

3. GetResponse – For Email Marketing

GetResponse is one of the go-to tools when it comes to email marketing – and with good reason. Its intuitive interface makes it easy to craft targeted emails and track their effectiveness.

If you want to learn more about how to use this platform effectively, check out my post on using GetResponse as a lead generation tool. 

4. Semrush – For SEO

Semrush is one of the best tools out there for optimizing content, one of the key components in any lead generation strategy. With one click you can have your content optimized for search engines and ready to draw in leads.

For more specialized tools, you can check out my post on the best lead generation platforms out there. It has details of key features, pricing, and more for 21 platforms!

Understanding Lead Generation Marketing With Examples

In this section, we'll be going over some of the most popular lead-generation strategies in use today. From webinars and ebooks to surveys, these tactics are all effective ways to generate leads for your business.

To get more leads and turn them into loyal customers, you need to learn how to use these different tactics. 

Here is an infographic that shows how different strategies can work for lead generation and nurturing:

Now that you know how to make the best use of lead generation strategies, let’s take a look at some examples:

1. Webinars

Webinars have become a popular choice in recent years, as they provide an interactive way to share content with potential customers in real time. This lead generation strategy is generally used by B2B companies.

Webinars can also be used to build relationships with prospects and showcase all that you have to offer. This allows companies to gain insights into customer interests that can be used in crafting future campaigns.

2. Ebooks

Ebooks are another great option for lead generation campaigns, as they provide valuable information in exchange for contact information from potential customers. 

This form of content marketing is particularly well-suited for businesses in the tech sector, as it allows them to demonstrate their expertise in a specific area and capture leads in the process.

Here is an example from my website:

3. Surveys

Surveys are also an effective tool for lead generation, as they provide valuable insights into customer preferences that can inform future campaigns. 

Companies can use surveys to ask questions about topics related to their industry in order to understand customers better. This data can be used to craft better targeted campaigns in the future.

4. Quizzes

Quizzes can be used as a fun element for your content marketing strategy. 

You can add quizzes where people answer questions to find out which products are best for them, or learn more about a brand. 

The best part is that quizzes are easy to create and can be shared via multiple channels. You can add them to your emails, website, or even share them on social media channels.

5. Giveaways

These campaigns often attract interested users who are willing to submit contact information in exchange for a chance to win some type of prize or reward. 

Giveaways can be used as incentives to encourage people to sign up for an email list, follow a brand on social media, or take part in a survey. 

They can also be used as part of an engagement campaign with the potential to drive more website traffic and help create brand awareness.

Why is it Important to Get Quality Leads?

When it comes to leads, quality matters – a lot! After all, you don't want to spend time and money on leads that won't get you results. Poor quality leads can not only be expensive but they can also take away valuable resources that could have been used elsewhere. 

That's why it is so important to invest in high-quality leads; they will help increase your ROI and ensure that every dollar spent is well worth it. So if you are looking to see success with your lead generation efforts, make sure you put your trust in leads of the highest caliber. Quality is key!

Understanding Different Types of Leads

Leads can be broadly classified into four types: Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), Product Qualified Lead (PQL), and Service Qualified Lead (SQI).

1. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

An MQL is a prospect that has expressed interest in buying a product or service based on your marketing efforts or via other channels.

Marketing teams typically use marketing automation tools to track and monitor the effectiveness of different campaigns and identify potential customers who show the most promise. Once these leads are identified, they are passed on to sales representatives for further qualification.

2. Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

An SQL is a lead who is considered viable enough to enter the sales process. Generally speaking, this means that they have been qualified by marketing and found to meet the criteria set forth by the sales team. 

In the hierarchy of the sales funnel, SQLs come after MQLs. They are typically considered to be warmer leads. Here is a visual representation of them in the funnel:

Sales representatives will then use their own assessment of a prospect’s needs and wants to determine if they are an appropriate fit for the business.

3. Product Qualified Lead (PQL)

A PQL is a lead that has an active interest in the products or services offered by your business after having used the product or services in some form.

This usually means that they have already engaged with your product or service in some way, such as signing up for a trial, making a purchase, or providing feedback on features. 

In order to identify these leads and maximize their potential value, companies can utilize customer relationship management (CRM) software and analytics tools to track customer interactions over time.

4. Service Qualified Lead (SQL)

A Service Qualified Lead (SQL) is a lead who has expressed an interest in conversion through customer service or support. 

These leads typically come from customer surveys, contact forms, chatbots, and other feedback mechanisms. Basically, it can be any channel that allows customers to provide information about their needs and issues with the product or service. 

You can use this information to create more targeted customer service initiatives, such as creating automated chatbots or offering personalized content that meets the specific needs of each customer.

No matter what type of lead your company pursues, it is important to have a strategy in place for nurturing those leads into paying customers. 

By taking the time to qualify and nurture leads appropriately, companies can ensure they are investing their resources in prospects that are most likely to convert.

How to Qualify a Lead

Once you've found a lead, the next step is to qualify them. This means finding out if they're genuinely interested and able to make a purchase.

How do you get the answers you need? Simple! All it takes is a few tough questions, some follow-up emails, and maybe – just maybe – a dab of detective work.

And don't worry if you can't tell right away if a lead is hot or cold; that's why we created this guide to help you find out for sure. 

Ready to find out who your next customer will be? Let's get started!

1. Ask Qualifier Questions

First, you'll need to know what questions to ask. These should include basic information like their name, company size, and contact details. 

But don't forget to dig a little deeper; try asking them about their current situation and whether they're looking for a solution like yours. That way you'll have a better sense of how likely it is that they'll become a customer.

At this stage, you want to identify who the decision-maker is. This could be a person or group of people who are responsible for making final decisions related to your product or service.

2. Follow Up to Assess Needs

It's also important to follow up with leads after your initial conversation. Check in every few days or weeks (depending on the nature of their inquiry) to see if anything has changed. 

Assess if any new needs have arisen. You may even want to suggest a product or service that matches their needs and see if they're interested in learning more.

3. Look Up Your Leads Online

Finally, don't forget to do a bit of detective work. See what you can find out about your leads online. Look for things like any past purchases they may have made or comments they've left on other websites. 

Doing this will help you better understand their buying behavior and determine whether they’re likely to make a purchase from you.

At the end of the day, qualifying a lead is all about gathering enough information so that you can make an informed decision about whether or not to pursue them as a customer. 

With these tips in mind, we guarantee you'll be able to easily distinguish between hot leads and cold ones – no Sherlock Holmes required!

Why Should You Not Buy Leads?

Regarding buying leads, I've got one piece of advice for you: Don’t do it. 

Buying a list of potential customers may seem like a surefire way to quickly find people interested in your product or service. That's true – but the leads you buy might not be legitimate or accurate. 

Plus, the quality of purchased leads is often low which means many of them will never become actual customers. You could end up spending money on bad data, getting poor returns on your investment, and damaging your reputation in the process. 

What’s more, there are so many laws about personal data and privacy out there now. Buying lists containing information about potential clients may break one or several of those laws (which could come with hefty fines). 

So, it's probably better to avoid buying leads altogether. It's far more effective and less risky to build a solid marketing strategy. 

You should focus on targeting potential customers who already have an interest in your product or service than wasting time and money on purchasing unknown leads.

Ready to Start Lead Generation?

Alright, let's do this! Now you know the answer to the question of what is lead generation in digital marketing. And you are clear with the basics, you need to put your knowledge into action. It’s time to start creating content that will help attract leads. 

Make sure you're leveraging social media, SEO strategies, email marketing, and other methods of outreach so you can get your message in front of as many people as possible. 

With consistency and efforts in the right direction, you should start seeing some serious ROI from your lead-generation activities soon enough! Good luck!

Do you have any questions about lead generation in digital marketing? Please feel free to mention them in the comments section below. 

If so, then Gong is the solution for you. Not convinced? Read my full Gong review below.

Gong is a comprehensive revenue intelligence platform that helps capture customer interactions across phone, email, web conferencing, and other channels. It then uncovers what’s said in those conversations to give you insights that help you better understand your customers and unlock more sales opportunities.

Not sure if this platform is worth your money?

In this article, I'll review the Gong software to answer any questions you may have before investing. I'll discuss what Gong is, what it has to offer, and how it can benefit your business.

Let's get started!

What is Gong?

Gong is the leading revenue intelligence platform that helps sales teams unlock their full potential by revealing customer reality.

The Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform is unique because it captures and analyzes every customer interaction. With this data, your sales and revenue teams can make decisions based on evidence instead of hunches.

This helps companies like yours improve conversion rates, increase deal sizes, and accelerate employee efficacy.

With Gong’s conversation intelligence, you can figure out what’s going on with your customers and team, and use those insights to adapt, upskill, and hit your targets.

Want to learn more about how Gong works?

Which Platforms Does Gong Work On?

Gong’s reality platform has over 100 integrations, which means that it works well with almost any customer interaction platform. You can integrate and use Gong with your existing business toolkit, ranging from:

• CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce
• Automation and workflow solutions like Zapier
• Communication platforms like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Outreach, Aircall, etc.
• Web conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Meet, etc.
• Customer success platforms like Zendesk
• And more

Gong also offers special customer promotions on selected platforms such as Apollo.io, Cognism, and LeadIQ, so you can save on your subscription.

Gong Review: Discussing Its Pros and Cons

Gong has a lot of features and benefits, but it’s important to consider the pros and cons before investing in any software. So, let's take a look at what Gong has to offer.

Gong’s Pros

• Easy to use for sales representatives and revenue teams
• Comprehensive customer insights
• Helps increase conversion rates
• Collaboration and notes system
• Integration with different vendors for audio calls
• Helps improve your style of interacting with customers by offering tips and advice on engagement, talk ratio, words we used too much, etc.
• Integrates with your existing business toolkit
• Special customer promotions on select platforms
• Reliable customer service, capable of resolving issues quickly

Gong’s Cons

• Can be expensive for some businesses
• Can be overwhelming for beginners
• Some call coaching and analytics capabilities are unavailable in the mobile app

Gong Review: What Are the Key Features of Gong?

Gong is packed with features that make it easier for you to understand customer conversations and use them to your advantage. Let's take a look at some of the key features that make Gong so powerful.

1. Sales Forecasting Software

Gong gives you total visibility and transparency into your entire sales pipeline, so you can forecast with confidence and improve your team’s performance. It captures every buyer interaction and helps you foresee potential problems and opportunities.

Here are a few things that make Gong the best forecasting software:

• Accurate sales forecasts. Gong's sales forecasting software not only collects data from each point of contact with customers but also analyzes where you stand in relation to the competition.
• Total visibility into your sales pipeline. You can get information about where each deal in your pipeline stands, including the next steps and decision-maker engagement level.
• Identify and respond to risks in your deals early. Using powerful AI, Gong lets you identify potential issues, like no one talking about the budget, in your deals earlier and helps you react quickly and prevent them from turning into big problems.
• Review your sales pipeline at a glance. With Gong, you don't have to be part of every deal. You'll be able to get a bird's eye view of your sales pipeline with deal boards and spot any issues early.
• A reality-based view, analyzing all your customer interactions across phone, email, instant messages, web conferencing, contracts, and more.
• Alignment across teams, including your sales, revenue, finance, analytics, and customer success teams.

In all, you can expect to get insights about your market and customers, learn what your top-performing sales representatives are doing right, and discover risks hiding in your sales pipeline.

This will help you optimize sales operations and drive more successful customer conversations. If you’re ready to forecast which opportunities could lead to sales, you should start using Gong today.

You may also want to check out this list of tools for building a profitable sales funnel.

2. Conversation Intelligence Software

Gong's conversation intelligence software takes conversation intelligence to a whole new level. You can use it to gain deep insights into all your customer interactions across various touchpoints and see how they're impacting your sales.

Gong’s conversation intelligence is powered by AI, which analyzes your customer conversations to give you insights into topics like:

• What are your customers saying?
• What's resonating with your customers and what's not?
• What trends are emerging in customer conversations?
• What strategies are successful in closing deals?
• What types of objections or questions do your customers ask most often?

For example, you can get recommendations like which words or topics you should cover less or emphasize more.

You’ll also be able to discover the strategies or topics that are helping your top-performing sales representatives drive sales. This can be a good way to train your sales team.

With this kind of data, you can optimize your customer conversations, increase customer satisfaction levels, and close more deals.

3. Call Recording Software

Gong's call recording software captures your team's customer calls via the phone and web conferencing so you can use them to replicate successful conversations with future prospects.

With this call recording software, you get:

• A complete picture of all customer interactions on web conferencing, VOIP system, phone, in-person meetings, email, etc. for easy review later on
• Easy access to call recordings, transcripts, and notes
• The ability to review all customer interactions and find improvement opportunities
• Coaching opportunities in your representatives' calls
• The ability to identify issues and take corrective action quickly
• Faster onboarding and training for new representatives using real customer conversations

Gong's integration with Salesforce and other CRM systems further helps you track customer interactions and follow up on leads.

You can easily stay on top of customer conversations, maximize sales potential, and improve the overall customer experience with Gong.

4. Automation

Gong’s automation feature helps you streamline your sales process, so you can focus on the most important tasks. It helps you automate daily tasks like creating customer emails and updating CRM data, and ensures that you never miss a follow up.

With Gong, your sales representatives can get a list of prioritized actions so they can engage buyers at the right times and move deals forward.

You'll be able to quickly identify deals that need attention and take the necessary action.

Gong’s automation features will help you reduce errors and increase the efficiency of your sales process. You’ll be able to quickly close deals and grow revenue faster.

5. Customer Success Software

Closing more deals faster is not enough. Gong also provides one of the best customer success software solutions. With this customer success software, you can track customer engagement to ensure that your customers are getting the best experience and they are able to hit their objectives.

This will help you:

• Provide customer value from onboarding.
• Help customers reach their objectives to increase retention rate.
• Identify growth and expansion opportunities for your business.
• Help new hires learn from the best of the best with call libraries.

Also check out the best customer engagement tactics that can help you grow your business.

How Much Does Gong Cost? Pricing and Plans

Gong’s pricing model depends on a few factors specific to your team and the type of licenses you choose for your team. There is also a platform fee that depends on the number of users supported.

To get accurate Gong pricing information, you need to get in touch with their team. You can start by filling out a simple form on their pricing page.

They'll give you customized pricing information for licenses with the features that are most relevant to your team's needs.

The good part is that you get to enjoy their full stack of tech integrations with all of the pricing plans so you can make the most out of your customer conversations. No matter the plan, they also offer reliable support to help you get the most out of their platform.

Gong’s Customer Support

Gong offers 24/7 customer support via email, as well as access to its knowledge base – Gong's Help Center. It has ample resources that can help you get started, understand the different features of the software, and troubleshoot problems.

You can also access guides to using Gong to the best of its potential and tutorial videos to understand how the features work. Plus, you can reach out to their support team if you have any more questions or need help.

According to customer reviews, Gong’s support team is quite reliable and helps solve issues quickly.

Who is Gong For?

With its comprehensive sales forecasting and conversation intelligence software, Gong is the perfect choice for sales, marketing, and customer service teams. The software is suitable for small, medium, and large businesses alike.

It can help teams close more deals, increase customer satisfaction, and optimize their customer conversations for higher success rates. That's why companies like LinkedIn, Shopify, Sprout Social, and Paychex use Gong to power their customer reality.

FAQs

Gong Review: Should You Invest in This Revenue Intelligence Platform?

Gong is a comprehensive sales forecasting and conversation intelligence software that can help teams close more deals, increase customer satisfaction levels, and optimize their customer conversations for higher success rates.

It's suitable for small, medium, and large businesses alike and integrates with a variety of CRM systems and business tools. According to customer reviews, Gong's support team is reliable and helps solve issues quickly.

Using Gong software will help you gain an edge in your industry by getting actionable insights into customer sentiment, market trends, and sales predictions. In other words, Gong is a great choice for teams looking to power their customer conversations and unlock more sales opportunities. It's definitely worth investing in this revenue intelligence platform.

Do you have questions about Gong? Feel free to contact their customer support team for more information.

I use my mobile phone extensively, almost like it’s my mini computer. From keeping tabs on social media activity to reading the news, and checking work emails – I use it for everything. And I know that’s true for almost everyone today.

There’s no doubt you can use this handy device to execute an effortless marketing strategy for your business.

Let’s look at the mobile marketing definition and then learn, in detail, about the different types, examples, and ways you can start your campaign.

Here’s your guide to what is mobile marketing and everything encompassing this topic.

What Is Mobile Marketing?

Mobile marketing is the process of promoting a product or service through mobile devices, such as cell phones or tablets. Mobile marketing can be used for a variety of purposes, including increasing brand awareness, generating leads, and boosting sales.

If you use a phone, you’ve already had an experience with mobile marketing.

For example, imagine you are scrolling through a mobile app such as Instagram and come across an ad. This is an example of mobile marketing. These ads are personalized so you get only relevant information about the product or service.

That’s just one example of mobile marketing. It’s a broad area that also includes:

• Mobile app marketing
• Push notifications
• SMS marketing
• QR code marketing
• Mobile games

… and more.

In this post, we’ll explore all these mobile marketing channels along with mobile marketing best practices.

Why Should You Consider Mobile Marketing?

If you're like most business owners, you're always looking for new ways to reach your target audience. And with nearly everyone owning a smartphone these days, mobile marketing is an obvious choice.

Here are just a few reasons why your business should consider going mobile:

• The expected revenue generated in the app market is expected to reach $430.90 billion US Dollars by the end of 2022.
• With over 6.6 billion smartphone users worldwide and the number of users is projected to increase to 7.7 billion by 2027.

• On average, an individual spends 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phones every day.

If you check the latest mobile usage trends, it's clear that the era we live in is ruled by mobile phones. Even if you look around, you’ll find many people on the street tapping away on their devices.

A seamless mobile marketing strategy can help your business flourish.

How Does Mobile Marketing Work?

Imagine you get a message about a discount from your favorite clothing website or about a season-end sale from ecommerce giants such as Amazon.

These multimedia texts, SMS, or emails regarding promotional messages about products are how the whole process of mobile marketing works.

More than demographic details, mobile marketing uses consumer behavior to market a product or service.

Other factors that play a major role in mobile marketing include the device used, operating system, location, internet accessibility, and more.

One great example of how mobile marketing campaigns work is when Chipotle gave away $1 million worth of free burritos to promote the close of the NBA season in 2019.

Mobile users had to text unique codes shared by their Twitter handle of Chipotle each time the word “free” was mentioned on-air.

Chipotle was not working for the NBA for promotions officially. In doing so, they cleverly leveraged the excitement of basketball fans without having to pay for any sponsorships.

Mobile Vs Traditional Marketing: A Quick Comparison

Compared to traditional marketing, mobile marketing is more specific to an individual.

This is because proximity and location-based services enable the chance of getting promotions, sales, discounts, and more to a store that is close by. An example could be coupons for a clothing brand when someone is in the vicinity of a clothing store.

Mobile marketing is more omnipresent in that it can reach a consumer anywhere and anytime no matter if they are at home, at work, or somewhere else. Thus, where traditional marketing is limited in its reach, mobile marketing can leverage this advantage regardless of location.

Pros And Cons Of Mobile Marketing

Just like any of its counterparts, mobile marketing has its own set of pros and cons. With technology boosting the mobile marketing strategy, it seems promising but certain trivialities can cause issues.

Pros

• Mobile marketing is convenient. People are always carrying their phones with them, which means they’re always connected. This gives businesses a great opportunity to reach their target audience at any time and place.
• Mobile marketing is personal. Unlike other traditional forms of marketing, mobile messages can be customized to target specific demographics, interests, and even locations. This makes the ads more relevant to the recipients.
• Mobile devices are interactive. This allows businesses to include things like QR codes and click-to-call buttons in their ads, which makes it easy for customers to take action.
• Mobile marketing can be cost-effective. Because it’s so targeted, businesses don’t have to waste money on ads that aren’t relevant to their audience.
• Mobile phone usage is growing. With more and more people using smartphones and tablets, there’s a lot of potential for businesses to reach new customers.

Cons

• There is limited space: There’s only so much real estate on a mobile device, so brands have to be judicious about the content they include in their mobile marketing messages.
• There are constant interruptions: Mobile devices are constantly buzzing with notifications, which can make it difficult for brands to break through the noise.
• Users have short attention spans: People are used to consuming bite-sized pieces of content on their mobile devices. So brands need to make sure their messages are brief and to the point.
• Measuring impact is not easy: It can be difficult for brands to measure the return on investment of their mobile marketing campaigns.
• Mobile marketing may seem intrusive: If you overwhelm users with too many messages on their mobile devices, they are likely to get annoyed and unsubscribe or opt out.

All in all, a perfect mobile marketing strategy should be well thought out to reap the advantages and limit the disadvantages as much as possible.

Types Of Mobile Marketing Strategies

There are several types of mobile marketing strategies that businesses can use to reach their target audiences. Each of these strategies has its own benefits and drawbacks, so it's important to choose the right one for your business.

To help you make the best choice, we've put together a list of the most popular mobile marketing strategies out there.

1. App-Based Marketing

To put it simply, app-based marketing is using mobile apps as a way to market your products or services. This can be done in a number of ways, such as through in-app advertising, providing exclusive deals and offers through mobile apps, or even displaying your ads in an app.

Over 88% of the time one spends on their mobile is spent on apps. In the same survey, it was estimated that users spent almost four hours every day on different mobile apps. This gives you a massive potential audience to reach out to.

Additionally, app-based marketing can be extremely targeted. When you advertise through a mobile app, you can target your ads specifically to users of that app. This means that you’re much more likely to reach people who are actually interested in what you have to offer.

Wondering how to go about app-based advertising? Different services such as Google AdMob allow advertisers to integrate their ads into third-party applications.

2. In-Game Marketing

You’re probably familiar with different ads popping up at an interval when you’re playing some mobile game. Sometimes, they even offer rewards for watching a complete ad.

In-game marketing targets mobile game players and will often appear as banners, in the game world similar to ads we see in real life, pop-up ads, or videos that play once you move from one level to the next.

3. SMS Marketing

SMS marketing involves using a user’s number to send them personalized texts about upcoming offers or discounts. This is not a new mobile marketing channel but one that has existed for a while.

4. QR Codes

Easily and cost-effectively, QR codes take users to specific website pages when they scan that code. Moreover, you can integrate a variety of things here – from sending them to a landing page of your website, directing them to social media account, or helping them call a given number.

5. Location-Based Marketing

These ads trigger specifically when a user is in the proximity of a specific store. They’ll get notifications based on different offers or discounts related to your business.

6. Mobile Search Ads

Mobile search ads are a type of advertising that appears on mobile devices when people are searching for information online. These ads can be targeted based on specific demographics, locations, and even a user’s search history.

These simple Google search ads often have extensions, add-ons, maps, or click-to-call functions that are built specifically for mobile devices. .

7. Mobile Image Ads

These are creative visuals that appear on mobile phones and can encourage users to interact with them. They drive users to contact, subscribe, or perform similar functions.

In many cases, these ads are clickable, which means that people can click on them to learn more about the product or service being advertised.

8. Push Notifications

By sending timely and relevant information directly to people's notification centers, you can make sure that they never miss a beat – and that your message is always at the top.

You can use this mobile marketing strategy to alert users to a special discount, offer, or newly published content. If you run an ecommerce business, you can also use push notifications to update users about the status of their orders.

Now that we know about the different types of mobile marketing strategies, let’s take a look at what it takes to run a successful mobile marketing campaign.

How Much Does Mobile Marketing Cost?

The cost of mobile marketing can vary depending on the approach you take. For example, if you choose to create a responsive website, the cost will be lower than if you develop a separate mobile app.

Additionally, the cost of running ads on mobile devices can also vary depending on the platform you use and your targeting options.

Generally speaking, however, the cost of mobile marketing is relatively low compared to other marketing channels. This makes it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes.

The cost of mobile marketing depends on the following factors:

• Industry or niche
• Channel of ad delivery
• Chosen ad format
• Location
• Device
• Mobile OS
• Time

Components Of Mobile Marketing

Now that you know a little bit more about mobile marketing, let's take a look at some of the key components that you need to consider when creating your own strategy.

1. Text Messages

A quick and easy way to promote new offers and send customers to specific landing pages is through text messages. SMS and MMS are two important channels and can be creatively used to connect with a customer directly.

2. In-App Messages

Different mobile marketing platforms use in-app messaging to allow consumers to interact with the brand even more to increase engagement.

These include information about the buying process or other promotions. They receive these messages once they log in to the device.

3. Push Notifications

Similar to how a normal text message alerts you when you receive a text, push notifications for different apps work the same. They appear on the lock screen or in your notification bar and often revolve around limited-time or exclusive offers, new product launches, and reminders.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is not specific to mobile marketing platforms but can be designed to be mobile-friendly. The content is usually formatted for mobile devices and is often interactive, urging consumers to engage with the marketing campaign. Newsletters are one such example.

5. Social Media

Social media is another essential component of any mobile marketing strategy. With social media, you can connect with your customers on a more personal level. Plus, social media is a great way to promote your latest deals and offers.

6. Mobile Apps

If you really want to get creative with your mobile marketing, you can create your own app. Apps are a great way to promote your brand and give users a convenient way to access your content. Plus, they can be a lot of fun for users and help you stand out from the competition. Of course, you’ll need to invest resources into promoting your mobile app as well.

By using a combination of these components, you can be sure that you're reaching your customers where they are most likely to see your message.

Start Using Mobile Marketing For Your Business: 5 Tips to Help You Out

Are you looking to start using mobile marketing for your business, but not sure where to begin? Don't worry – we've got you covered. In this section, we'll give you a crash course on everything you need to know to get started with mobile marketing.

1. Set Up A Responsive Website

The first step to getting started with mobile marketing is to ensure that your website is responsive. This means that it will automatically adjust to fit the screen size of the device it's being viewed on.

If your website is not responsive, there is a chance that your design might not appear properly on smartphone screens. It may be too squeezed or too stretched out, giving a poor user experience.

So how do you set up a responsive website? Several website builders offer responsive templates to build mobile-ready websites. If you’d like a customized design, you can hire a website designer.

2. Set Your Business On Location-Based Platforms

When you want to reach a wide range of consumers, then setting up your business on a location-based platform like Facebook Places or Foursquare is a good way to kick-start your mobile marketing campaign.

These platforms run promotions offering discounts after consumers reach a certain number of check-ins on the apps. It’s a great way to increase your customer base while just doing the bare minimum.

3. Dig Deep Into the Mobile Marketing Arena

If you're like most people, you probably have a go-to app for everything. Whether you're ordering food, hailing a ride, or checking the weather, there's an app for that. But have you ever stopped to think about how brands use them to market their products to you?

If you really want to understand mobile marketing, you need to spend some time on research. Exploring and testing out the mobile marketing arena will help you gauge the user experience well. You’ll get an understanding from a consumer-centric point of view and how they use their devices.

By using a variety of apps, you can get a feel for what works and what doesn't in the world of mobile marketing. Plus, trying new things is always fun!

So go ahead and download a few new apps, and see what mobile marketing has to offer. You might be surprised at how much you can learn.

4. Run Your Own Mobile Campaign

After you have understood how mobile marketing truly works and set up your website, you’re ready to begin your campaign.

For example, let’s say you have your own bookstore. You’d want to ensure people get ads about your store when they search for “bookstores near me” when they are in your vicinity. You have options like cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand to help pay for your marketing campaign.

Google, Apple, and similar platforms are among the popular ones for mobile advertising and they have helpful services that will guide you throughout.

5. Use QR Codes

If you're looking for a way to take your mobile marketing strategy up a notch, you should consider using QR codes.

QR codes are those little black and white squares that look like barcodes. They contain information related to a page. These QR codes can be used to provide your customers with quick-and-easy access to your website or other digital content.

QR codes can be used for a variety of marketing purposes, such as directing people to your website, sharing coupon codes, or providing directions to your store.

You can place them on flyers, business cards, or even in store windows and watch as people scan them to see what you have to offer.

How to Launch a Mobile Marketing Campaign

To get the best of mobile marketing best practices, you need to ensure that you think about your mobile marketing campaign strategy thoroughly.

Here’s what you need to do to ensure a smooth launch:

• Know your target audience. Make sure you know whether the majority of your website visitors are mobile device users or not. Do they frequently visit via mobile phones? What devices do they use? What type of content do they prefer? Understanding your audience is the first step.
• Set goals. No marketing strategy works well without a realistic goal. Think of your main objective such as what type of campaign you want to start with. Determine what platform you want to use for marketing and optimize your content for mobile-friendly designs based on that platform.
• Test your campaign. No plan is foolproof until you run a pilot study. This will help you figure out the nitty-gritty, such as what works, errors, or glitches, what needs to be enhanced, and more.

Take your frequent customers and run a small test phase to gain feedback on your marketing campaign. Ensuring mobile marketing best practices will help you develop a sound marketing strategy and a lot of customer engagement.

What Are the Top Mobile Marketing Apps?

Now that you know the answers to what is mobile marketing and how to do mobile marketing, you must be wondering what mobile marketing tools are out there to help you with your mobile marketing campaigns.

The best mobile marketing apps include.

1. Google AdMob

This is a great tool to create engaging in-app ads with easy-to-use tools that are easy to set up. It also offers actionable insights that allow you to analyze and improve customer experience by understanding how users interact with your ads.

2. App Annie

Marketing needs insights so you know how to regulate and improve user experience. App Annie gives you insights that help you engage your users and grow your base. It allows you to access in-depth data based on interests, usage patterns, and more to maximize the ROI of your campaign.

3. Branch

Branch is great for increasing mobile revenue through its enterprise-grade links that work across multiple platforms and send your customers to the right landing pages.

Examples of Mobile Marketing Campaigns

There are a few things that you should keep in mind when you’re creating a mobile marketing campaign. First of all, you need to make sure that your content is mobile-friendly. This means that it should be easy to read and navigate on a small screen.

You also need to keep your messages short and to the point. Customers are more likely to engage with a message that is brief and direct.

Finally, you need to make sure that your mobile marketing campaign is interactive. Customers should be able to respond to your messages and engage with your brand in a meaningful way.

Here are a few examples of brands that have done an excellent job with their mobile marketing campaigns:

1. Ponds

Ponds developed a creative mobile marketing strategy in partnership with InMobi while relaunching their product that targeted acne-related issues. Their target audience was young working female commuters.

They leveraged the front camera cleverly by educating them about acne-prone zones and based on location data would update them on the pollution levels. They were then urged to blow in the ad unit which would then clear out the dust and soot present.

Ponds didn’t just use an everyday problem faced by young females and used cutting-edge technology while using a mobile marketing channel that they would encounter every day.

2. Taco Bell

Taco Bell’s SMS marketing campaign is an excellent example of enmeshing traditional marketing strategy with a mobile marketing channel. They sparked awareness using traditional marketing platforms like television and radio, encouraging customers to text TBIC to 30364.

Eventually, they would receive a promotional offer where they’d get a Frutista Freeze with the purchase of any food item. In order to drive customers to perform immediate action, they rolled out expiration dates for the offer between three to five days.

The result? They received 13,000 subscribers by the end of the five-week campaign! (With 93% still being subscribed by the end of the campaign).

3. IKEA

The Swedish retailer's Back Back campaign encourages customers to return mistakenly purchased items through the use of QR codes. The Ikea Buy-Back system makes it easy for customers to return items they no longer want or need. In exchange for the returned item, customers receive an in-store gift card that can be used on their next purchase at Ikea.

In order to return a product, customers must follow certain terms and conditions. Users can use confirmation QR codes to get referral numbers from the physical stores of IKEA. This way, returning products is easier with the use of QR codes.

This mobile marketing campaign is an example of how you can use the strategy to even elevate the overall customer experience.

FAQs

Now You Know What Is Mobile Marketing: Ready to Get Started?

With the increase in mobile usage, mobile marketing is a great tool to help your business thrive. There are numerous strategies, platforms, and channels to use, and utilizing them the right way can ensure your customer base grows.

It’s simple and easy to monitor with no prior knowledge needed. So, explore and see what works for you the best to create a positive user experience.

Now that you know what is mobile marketing and how to make the most of it, it’s time to get started with it. If you have any questions related to mobile marketing, please feel free to mention them in the comments section below.

And that’s exactly where Tidio comes in.

One look at their website, and you’ll know that it is very promising.

But is Tidio the right fit for your business? 

This detailed review post of Tidio will help you decide. In this Tidio chat review, I talk about Tidio’s user interface, live chat features, and new AI chatbot – Lyro. Read it till the end to figure out the pros and cons of this conversational customer service platform.

What is Tidio?

Tidio is a customer service software solution that helps you communicate with your website visitors in real time. It can help you increase sales, user engagement, and customer satisfaction.

With Tidio’s conversational AI, live chat, and helpdesk, you can provide excellent customer service and support to your customers.

This brings us to the question: Who should use Tidio?

Any business that wants to reduce the number of customer service issues, increase sales, and improve customer satisfaction should use Tidio.

I tested the platform and it does have amazing features related to:

• Live chat
• AI chatbot 一 Lyro
• Helpdesk
• Multichannel communication
• Customer service team performance analytics
• And more

In this Tidio chat review, I will try to cover all aspects of this customer service platform well.

What Are the Pros and Cons of the Tidio App?

I know a lot of you want an overview of what’s awesome and what’s not so great about the platform. So, I came up with a few key points that I think are important to consider when deciding if Tidio is right for you.

Pros

• It's very user-friendly and easy to set up.
• Tidio offers a free trial so you can try it out before committing to a paid plan.
• It offers 50 free Lyro conversations. The AI can answer multiple questions during a customer interaction and those would be counted as 1 conversation credit.
• It is compatible with multiple operating systems 一 Windows, Linux, mac. You can also use its web version.
• It is mobile-friendly.
• Tidio offers multiple customization options.

Cons

• Tidio can be a bit pricey for some people. Though it offers a free plan, its premium plans start from $29/month.
• With Tidio’s free plan, you only get email support.

Tidio: Reviewing Its Pricing Plans, Fee, and Payments

Tidio has a few different pricing options, all of which are very affordable.

The most basic plan is absolutely Free and includes all of the essential features you need to get started with live chat and Lyro conversations.

If you need more features, like analytics and chatbot templates, then you can upgrade to one of the higher-priced plans. The best part is that you don’t need a credit card to try their premium plans.

Plus, a 7-day free trial is available so that you can get an idea of what the platform offers before you decide to subscribe to the paid plans.

Here is a quick overview of all the pricing options available for Tidio:

• Free plan: $0/month
  • This plan is great for freelancers or micro-companies who want basic functionality.
  • You get 50 free Lyro conversations and 100 chatbot triggers with this plan.
  • Support only over email with this plan.
• Starter plan: $29/month
  • You get 100 live chat conversations and 500 chatbot triggers with this plan.
• Communicator plan: $25/month per seat
  • This plan is great for small companies or ecommerce businesses who want Shopify integration, unlimited conversations with the live chat feature, and customer team performance analytics.
• Chatbots plan: $29/month
  • This plan is great for businesses that want access to a visual chatbot editor, readymade chatbot templates, and the option to add 2K-40K chatbot triggers.
• Lyro addon: Starting from $39/month
• Tidio+ plan: Starting from $394/month
  • This plan is perfect for large-cap businesses or enterprises that need multi-website support, email marketing, and custom integrations.
  • With this plan, you get chatbot-building assistance and a dedicated customer success manager.

Special note: You can start a free trial and get 20% off for any subscription plan on Tidio with the coupon code, “SHANEBARKER.”

Tidio Live Chat and AI Chatbot Features

In this section, I will cover all the main features of Tidio live chat and chatbot, and discuss its user interface, integrations, and customer support based on my personal testing of the platform.

I want to give you a comprehensive overview of the tool so that you can understand what Tidio is all about.

For this Tidio chat review, I set up a free trial account. Since it’s a fresh account, you’ll see 0 leads and no analytics. But you’ll get a good idea about what Tidio has to offer in this review post. 

User Interface

Tidio has a clean, modern interface that's very user-friendly. 

When you sign up for a free account, Tidio asks you to enter some basic information – your name, email address, and company details. 

In the next step, they recommend the best chatbots based on your industry. You can even customize the message that you want to send your visitors.

In the last step for setup, you can even choose to install the Tidio code on your website.

It’s a quick and easy setup – won’t take you more than five minutes.

After you sign up for Tidio, you are taken to a neat dashboard. The dashboard is divided into tabs for different areas of the app, and you can easily switch between them.

As you can see in the screenshot below, it shows you your acquired leads, monthly chatbot limit, and number of visitors on your page.

Apart from the dashboard, the black panel on the left has five other options: Inbox, Chatbots, Vistors, Contacts, and Analytics.  

Visitors Tab

Whenever a visitor sends you a message, you’ll be notified in the Visitor’s Tab in the Unassigned section.

Here, you’ll see a uniquely generated visitor ID along with their email address and their name. 

Next to the name of the visitor, Tidio shows the name of the operator handling that particular conversation.

If it doesn’t appear, that means no one is handling that conversation. It’s your cue to assign someone to handle it or do it yourself!

You’ll also see a flag that indicates the country that your visitor’s IP address is from. In addition to this, you’ll be able to check the browser and the URL that they are viewing.

Automated Lyro Conversations

Lyro is the first conversational AI chatbot for small and medium businesses. It represents a major leap forward in customer service and will be able to solve up to 70% of customer problems automatically.

You can use Lyro conversations starter pack to offer personalized assistance to your website visitors.

Here are the key points you need to know about Lyro:

• This new conversational AI chatbot from Tidio learns from your FAQs within seconds and formulates complex answers to solve your customers’ problems.
• The AI stays within the boundaries of your knowledge base and you can update its information at any time.
• Lyro is easy to implement and doesn’t require training.
• You can use a playground environment to see how Lyro will respond to your customer questions and adapt your FAQs accordingly.
• You can activate the AI in under 3 minutes.
• It supports your customers 24/7.
• You and your audience can try this out with 50 free AI-driven conversations. Lyro can answer multiple questions during a customer interaction, and it will account for just 1 conversation credit.

Chatbot Elements

If you want to see the chatbot elements that Tidio offers, you can click on the “Chatbot option” from the black panel on the left. 

The platform offers templates of four different types: Strategies, Increase Sales, Generate Leads, and Solve Problems.

Let’s see what each of these categories has to offer. Let’s start with “Strategies.”

As you can see there are three templates each to increase sales and solve problems. What I like about these templates is that each one is designed to help you achieve a specific goal.

Increase Sales

This option has twelve different templates. Whether you are an ecommerce owner looking to show a new discount to your visitors or provide product recommendations, there is a template for you.

Generate Leads

For lead generation, Tidio has templates through which you can send the latest news updates or collect user information via subscriber forms. 

What’s surprising is that they have a special bot for real estate websites. Using this bot, you can create qualified leads and prepare a personalized offer specifically for your customers.

Solve Problems

If you want to answer customer FAQs, then this category of chatbot templates from Tidio is for you. It has special templates for restaurants and online stores.

You can also use Tidio’s AI chatbot, Lyro to solve a majority of your customer problems. It will pick info from your FAQs to answer queries in less than 15 seconds.

If you don’t find any chatbot template that suits your needs from the list above, you can also create chatbots from scratch.

You can click on any of the three categories under the “My Chatbots” option and select the “Create from Scratch” option. Let’s see the “Generate Leads” option.

Next, you can choose how your visitors can engage with your bots. From the given options, I am selecting the first one – “First visit on site.”

This takes us to the drag-and-drop chatbot builder wherein you can see three main columns: Actions, Triggers, and Conditions.

These are all categories of nodes – which are considered building blocks of chatbots. When connected in a logical manner, they program the chatbot to take action at a particular time. 

Check out the screenshot below to understand what Actions, Triggers, and Conditions are all about.

By using different permutations and combinations of these, you can create a fully functional chatbot in this drag-and-drop chatbot builder. 

A complete Tidio chatbot design will look something like this:

While it does have great customization options, keep in mind that you can’t send videos, audio, or attachments through the Tidio chatbot.

Users

What if you want to take a look at all the users who have interacted with your Tidio chatbot? From your dashboard, you can click on “Go to Contact List.”

When you do that, you should see a list of all users. Since I don’t have any yet, this section is empty. 

But you can there is an option to export the data or even delete specific contacts. You can even add filters based on location, campaign status, channel, and other parameters. 

This is a great way to create a list of contacts for targeted campaigns.

Messages

With Tidio, you can’t send broadcast messages or sequences. However, you can use conditions in your bot flow to tailor your messages to specific audiences. 

What’s more, Tidio has multi-language settings. So, you can create chatbots in different languages, including Danish, Dutch, German, French, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, and others.

To use a different chatbot language, you can follow this path: Settings > Translations > Select Language

AI & NLP

For absolute beginners in the chatbot industry, here is some context:

Natural language processing is one of the types of artificial intelligence that attempts to recognize and comprehend natural language spoken by people on a daily basis. 

With NLP, chatbots can answer inquiries submitted in reply to phrases entered by users.

Without NLP, chatbots have to rely only on pre-made decision flow charts. It may not provide accurate information. So, obviously, you want a good chatbot that provides reliable information. 

How can you add an NLP trigger to your Tidio bot?

For this, you can use the “Visitor says” node.

Once you add this node to your chatbot flow, you can add the appropriate conversation language and topic. If you don’t find the relevant topic listed, you can opt for “Custom.”

Lastly, you can add trigger words and phrases that trigger this bot. If you want this trigger to work efficiently, you should add as many phrases as possible.

The more you feed their NLP engine, the better the chance of getting the required response.

Multi-Channel Communications

By now, you already know that Tidio enables you to add bots to your website. But that’s not all. It also has Instagram and Facebook Messenger integration. So, you can create chatbots for these social media platforms as well. 

This means you can directly send product integration to FB Messenger or IG users’ DMs.

Tidio Integrations

Tidio integrates with some of the best tools out there, including:

• Shopify
• WordPress
• Squarespace
• Magento
• Wix
• BigCommerce
• WooCommerce
• PrestaShop
• Joomla
• Google Analytics
• Mailchimp
• And others

Marketing

As I discussed in the previous section, you can use Tidio for Instagram marketing and Facebook marketing. With chatbots on these two platforms, you can boost your leads and get more conversions.

Analytics

The analytics feature is only available in the higher-tier plans for Tidio. 

The platform provides insights into the following:

• The total number of conversations
• Conversation trends
• Busiest hours
• Response time 
• Satisfaction ratings
• Customer team operator’s performance

I like how easy it is to check the number of conversations on a daily or monthly basis. Here is a sample graph for daily conversations on Tidio:

If you want a more detailed conversation report, Tidio also provides an hour-to-hour breakdown. 

In this Tidio review, this feature gets extra brownie points because you can use it to plan your operator’s schedule once you see a specific pattern emerge.

And if you want to keep a tab on user experience, you can take a quick look at the response time. It tells you how long a customer has to wait before they receive a reply from an operator.

If you give users the option to provide ratings after their interactions, you can also check the Satisfaction Ratings.

If you find that there are a lot of negative ratings, you can check each of these conversations to see what went wrong. 

Alternatively, you can check positive ratings to see what your visitors are happy with. 

In addition to this, you can get an analysis of each operator’s performance based on the response rate and satisfaction ratings on Tidio. 

Ecommerce

For ecommerce businesses, Tidio provides integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and PrestaShop.

Tidio also offers specific chatbot templates that can help you upsell products or services and reduce cart abandonment.

Chatbot Templates and Cloning

As we discussed in the previous sections, Tidio has over 25 chatbot templates that make it easy for users to create bots in minutes. Even if you are creating a chatbot from scratch, it is possible to duplicate chatbot elements on Tidio for quicker creation of new chatbots.

Chatbot Performance Optimization

If you want to optimize your chatbot performance, A/B testing is the way to go. At a quick glance, it might seem like Tidio doesn’t offer this feature. However, there is an option that enables you to do it.

You can set up A/B testing on your Tidio chatbots with the “Randomize” node.

When you use this node before a message, half users will get response A while the other half will get response B. 

By comparing the click-through rate, you can optimize your chatbot.

Tidio Support

Tidio’s customer support team is available 24/5. You can reach them via the following channels:

• Tidio panel
• Tidio homepage live chat support
• Email at support@tidio.net

There is no phone support available but they are pretty quick to respond via the live widget. If you email them, you can expect a response within 24 hours on weekdays.

Tidio vs. Zendesk: Which Customer Service Platform is Better?

If you're researching live chat software for your business, chances are you've come across both Tidio and Zendesk. Both are great options with their own unique features, but which one is the best for your needs?

To help you decide, let's take a look at Tidio vs Zendesk.

Tidio Overview

We have already discussed that Tidio’s live chat and new AI chatbot allow you to communicate with your website visitors in real time. It's easy to use and set up, and it has a number of features that make it a great option for businesses of all sizes.

Small businesses that are on a tight budget can really benefit from their Free plan. You can leverage multiple chatbot templates with different use cases to start the conversations. Or, you can also let their new AI chatbot 一 Lyro send the initial responses.

According to stats provided by Tidio, Lyro responds to queries faster than a human can, and it only forwards 30% of questions to human agents.

Also, Tidio’s advanced paid plans have ecommerce integrations with Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce, making it a great option for ecommerce businesses.

Using this platform, you can focus on getting leads from Instagram and Facebook as well.

And the best part?

You can now get 20% off on all of their paid plans by signing up with my link.

Zendesk Overview

On the other hand, Zendesk is a live chat tool with rich functionality. But all of it comes with a hefty price tag. This Tidio chat alternative does not have a free plan but their paid plans start from $55 per agent per month. 

While they have limited features for ecommerce businesses, they provide a ton of integrations with the top business apps. 

Using their platform, you can get leads from WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, Facebook Messenger, and other platforms. 

So, which one is better: Tidio or Zendesk?

It depends on your budget and needs. For bigger businesses that have a huge budget and need advanced features, Zendesk is the way to go. Otherwise, you should consider using a Zendesk alternative.

For freelancers and small to mid-sized businesses, Tidio offers more value for money. Even for larger enterprises, Tidio can help build reliable chatbots and provide great live chat customer service.

Tidio’s new conversational AI chatbot 一 Lyro is a huge advantage as well. It can help you attend multiple customer queries even during peak seasons, without extra hiring.

Tidio Chat Review: What’s the Final Verdict?

Overall, I am extremely happy with Tidio. The interface is clean and user-friendly, the features are robust and cover all my needs, and the customer service has been responsive and helpful. I hope that this Tidio chat review was helpful in understanding what the tool has to offer. 

I think it's a great choice for small businesses and entrepreneurs who are looking for an affordable, all-in-one solution to help them communicate with their customers.

Their new AI chatbot allows you to handle peak-season customer questions without hiring more people in the customer service team.

If you have any questions based on this Tidio chat review, please feel free to mention them in the comments section. I’ll be happy to answer them for you. 

P.S. You can start a free trial and get 20% off for any subscription plan on Tidio with the coupon code, “SHANEBARKER.”

FAQs

But getting that feedback can be difficult. You can't just go up to people on the street and ask them their thoughts on your latest product. And even if you could, would they be honest with you?

That's where online survey tools come in. By using these tools, you can get the honest feedback you need to make your business even better. Plus, they provide an efficient and cost-effective way to collect this information.

In this post, we’ll discuss the main features you should look for when selecting an online survey tool that is suitable for your business. Additionally, we’ll also talk about the key features and pricing plans of the best online survey tools in the market.

What are Online Surveys and Why Should You Use Them?

An online survey is a method of collecting data via the internet. Surveys are typically used to collect customer feedback or to gather information about a target market. Online surveys have become increasingly popular in recent years, as they offer a convenient and cost-effective way to collect data.

There are a number of advantages to conducting online surveys for any type of business. Let’s take a look at some of the most common benefits of conducting online surveys:

1. They Are Convenient

Online surveys are convenient for both you and your customers. Customers can take the survey at their convenience, and you don't have to worry about scheduling interviews or sending out reminders.

2. They Are Relatively Inexpensive

One of the main reasons online surveys are relatively inexpensive is that they can be easily automated. This means that once a survey has been created, it can be sent out to a large number of people with very little effort. Additionally, online surveys do not require any paper or postage, which further reduces costs.

3. They Can Help You Understand Your Customers

If you're looking to get to know your customers better, online surveys are a great way to do it. By asking questions and getting feedback, you can learn a lot about what your customers want and how they feel about your business. Plus, online surveys are a great way to collect data that can be used to improve your marketing and product development efforts.

4. They Help You Build Customer Relationships

If you're looking to build better customer relationships, online surveys can be a great way to gather feedback and learn more about your target audience. By asking questions and collecting data, you can gain valuable insights into your customers' needs and preferences. 

This information can help you tailor your products or services to better meet their needs, resulting in happier customers and stronger relationships.

5. They Help You Improve Your Products or Services

By conducting surveys with customers and other stakeholders, businesses can get valuable feedback that can help them fine-tune their products or services. Surveys can also provide insights into what people like or don't like about a particular offering, which can be extremely helpful in making improvements.

Still not sure how? Once you collect the results of your online survey, you can analyze them and see what they're telling you. This analysis can help you determine what changes need to be made in order to improve your products or services.

6. They Help You Make Informed Decisions About Your Business

When it comes to making decisions about your business, there's no substitute for good old-fashioned market research. Online surveys are a lot more convenient than traditional paper surveys. You can send them out to as many people as you want, and you don't have to worry about collecting the responses yourself.

Surveys can provide you with data that can be used to make decisions about your business. For example, if you're considering launching a new product, you can use survey data to assess customer interest and needs.

And if you're worried about getting honest feedback, don't be. Online surveys are completely anonymous, so people will feel free to tell you what they really think.

What Are the Main Components of an Online Survey?

Next, let’s take a look at the main components of online surveys.

How to Create Online Surveys

Now you know that online surveys are a great tool to understand your customers and improve your products and services. But how can you create online surveys? 

There are a few different ways of conducting online surveys. You can either use a web-based platform for online surveys like Google Forms, or you can use a more specialized survey tool like SurveySparrow or SurveyMonkey.

Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, so it's important to choose the right tool for your needs.

Web-Based Forms

Web-based forms are generally easier to use and don't require any special software or skills. They're also usually less expensive than more specialized tools. However, they may not have all the features you need, and they may not be as reliable.

Specialized Online Survey Platforms

Specialized tools are often more reliable compared to web-based forms and offer more features. They offer customizable workflows, the ability to trigger surveys based on touch points, integration with CRM system and other apps, and more. These specialized platforms may also be better suited for complex surveys.

Why Should You Use Online Survey Tools?

If you're serious about getting feedback and improving your products and services, you should opt for a specialized online survey tool. After all, there are many other benefits to using these tools. 

Here are just a few reasons why you should consider using online survey tools for your next project:

1. You'll Save Time

With online survey tools, you can collect data quickly and easily. There's no need to spend hours conducting interviews or sending out questionnaires. Most online tools have ready templates that you can use to create your surveys. You can expect to create a basic survey in less than 10 minutes!

2. You'll Get More Accurate Results

When you use online survey tools, you'll be able to reach a larger audience and collect more accurate data. This is because people are more likely to respond truthfully to questions when they're anonymous.

3. You'll Be Able to Collect More Detailed Data

With online survey tools, you can ask more detailed questions and get more specific results. This is because people are more likely to provide detailed answers when they're not being interviewed in person.

4. You'll Have More Flexibility

With online survey tools, you can conduct surveys at any time and from anywhere. This means that you can reach people who are in different time zones or who have busy schedules.

5. You'll Be Able to Use Advanced Features

Many online survey tools offer advanced features, such as the ability to skip questions or to randomize responses. This means that you can tailor your surveys to fit your needs and get the most accurate results possible.

So, there you have it! 

These are just a few of the many reasons why you should consider using online survey tools for your next project. With all of these benefits, it's no wonder that more and more people are using these tools to collect data. 

So why not give them a try? You may be surprised at how helpful they can be.

9 Factors You Should Keep In Mind While Selecting an Online Survey Tool

When it comes to conducting online surveys, there are a ton of different tools out there to choose from. But with so many options, it can be tough to decide which one is right for you and your business.

To help you make the best decision, we've put together a list of nine factors you should keep in mind while selecting an online survey tool:

1. Ease of Use

You want to be able to create your surveys quickly and easily, without having to struggle with the interface. Otherwise, you'll just get frustrated and give up on the whole idea. 

Take a look at the interface itself. Is it intuitive and easy to navigate, or does it look confusing? If it's the latter, you'll probably want to steer clear. Plus, if you don’t want to spend too much time designing your surveys, look for a tool that has multiple template options.

2. Features

Different tools offer different ways of conducting surveys, and you want to make sure that the tool you choose is the best fit for your needs.

For example, some survey tools allow you to create custom questions, while others only provide pre-written questions. If you need to be able to ask your own questions, then you'll want to make sure that the tool you choose offers this feature.

Another important consideration is how the survey tool collects responses. Some tools require respondents to register before taking the survey, while others do not. 

If you're looking for a tool that allows anyone to take your survey without having to register first, then you'll want to make sure that the tool you choose offers this feature.

3. Cost

You can't just select an online survey tool based on its features alone. You also need to consider pricing before making a decision. Otherwise, you might end up paying way more than you need to.

There are a few different pricing models for online survey tools. Some tools charge per month, while others charge per survey response. There are also some that charge a combination of both.

4. Survey Design

The tool you choose should allow you to easily design surveys that are visually appealing and easy to understand.

One way to evaluate online survey tools is to look at their design features. This includes things like question types, response options, and skip logic. Survey design can be a complex process, so having a tool that makes it easy to create well-designed surveys is important.

Ideally, your tool should offer a variety of question types, such as multiple-choice, open-ended, Likert scale, etc.

5. Reporting Capabilities

The right reporting features will let you slice and dice your data in all sorts of ways, so you can get the insights you need to improve your business. And trust me, you'll want to be able to do that! Otherwise, all those survey responses will just be gathering dust on your hard drive.

So when you're evaluating survey tools, be sure to take a close look at their reporting features. It'll be worth your while in the long run!

6. Customer Support

Customer support can make or break your experience with a survey tool. If you run into any problems or have any questions, you'll want to be able to get help from a knowledgeable and friendly customer support team. 

A good customer support team will be responsive and helpful, making sure that your experience with the survey tool is as positive as possible.

7. Integrations

If you're using other software programs (such as Salesforce or Mailchimp), you'll want to make sure the survey tool you choose can integrate with them. 

Integrations make it easy to share survey data with other people or systems. This is important if you need to collaborate on survey results or use the data for further analysis. With the right integrations, sharing survey data is a breeze.

8. Mobile-Friendliness

With more and more people using their phones and tablets to access the internet, it's crucial that your survey tool is optimized for mobile devices. 

Otherwise, you risk losing potential respondents who may get frustrated with a survey that isn't easy to use on their smaller screens. Ideally, you want a tool that has a responsive design, meaning the survey will automatically adjust to fit any screen size.

9. Free Trial

Finally, before you commit to a paid plan, make sure the tool offers a free trial so you can test it out and see if it meets your needs. It also allows you to get a feel for how the tool works and how user-friendly it is. 

By keeping these factors in mind, you're sure to find an online survey tool that's a perfect fit for your business.

Which Are the Best Online Survey Tools Out There?

Now that you know how to evaluate an online survey tool, let’s take a look at the best options available out there. Take a look at their key features and pricing plans to see how each one fares up. Pick one that is most suitable for your needs and budget.

Online Survey Tool #1: SurveySparrow

This omnichannel platform is designed so that you can provide a unified brand experience across different channels. It comes with an executive dashboard to plot journey mapping easily. 
Using this online survey software solution, you can create surveys for three different purposes: To gauge customer experience, to get feedback on employee experience, and to learn more about the product experience. Plus, these surveys can be designed in multiple languages as well. It has special reputation management features to turn your customers into advocates.

Key Features

• Host white-label surveys via your company domain.
• Create an exclusive dashboard to visualize survey data
• Customize survey design with custom CSS.
• Receive automated reports at a scheduled time.
• Export results in SPSS format for in-depth analysis.
• Compare survey responses based on specific criteria.
• Collect data securely with custom SSL.
• Workflows for closing the loop once you get a response

Pros

• Dedicated customer success manager assigned to all users.
• Add multiple users to a single account.
• SMS/text surveys to reach customers and prospects via mobile
• Manage all sub-accounts under a parent account.
• Integrations are available with popular apps like Zapier, HubSpot, Mailchimp, and others.
• 14-day free trial available.

Cons

• Limited question types.

Pricing Details

• Free Personal Plan: Free [Up to 100 responses]
• Basic Personal Plan: $19/month [Up to 500 responses]
• Premium Personal Plan: $29/month [Up to 2,000 responses]
• Business Plan: $99/month [Up to 10,000 responses]
• Enterprise Plan: $499/month [Up to 50,000 responses]
• Elite Plan: Please get in touch with their sales team

Online Survey Tool #2: SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a popular online survey tool that helps you collect feedback from customers, employees, or anyone else you need to reach. With SurveyMonkey, you can create surveys, send them out to people, and then collect and analyze the results.

Key Features

• Custom branding options are available.
• SPSS integration for better analysis.
• Custom reporting capabilities.
• Consolidated account management.
• Cross-tabbing features for better comparison of responses.

Pros

• Quick setup process.
• Hundreds of survey templates are available.
• Multiple integrations are available.
• Free plan available.

Cons

• Skip logic and collector logic features may take a while to understand.

Pricing Details

• Basic Plan: Free 
• Individual Advantage Plan: $43/month [approx]
• Individual Standard Plan: $47/month [approx]
• Individual Premier Plan: $119.8/month [approx]
• Team Advantage Plan: $36/user/month [approx] [Starts at 3 users]
• Team Premier Plan: $90/user/month [approx] [Starts at 3 users]

Online Survey Tool #3: Typeform

Typeform is a great tool for anyone who wants to collect data from their customers or clients in a more efficient and effective way. With its powerful features and easy-to-use platform, Typeform makes it simple to gather the information you need to make better decisions for your business.

Key Features

• Built-in video and photo library. 
• Custom themes and layouts.
• Conditional logic for designing surveys.
• Custom branding options.
• SSL Security.
• Detailed reports available.

Pros

• Aesthetic template designs.
• Multiple categories of survey templates.
• Multiple integrations available.

Cons

• Doesn’t have integration with HubSpot or Airtable.

Pricing Details

• Free Plan
• Basic Plan: $25/month
• Plus Plan: $50/month
• Business Plan: $85/month
• Custom Plan: Get in touch with their sales team

How to Create Surveys With SurveySparrow

To give you a better understanding of creating your own surveys, let’s take a quick look at all the steps you need to follow with one of the tools mentioned above, SurveySparrow. 
Step 1: Select what kind of survey you want to design. For this example, I’ve chosen “Customer Feedback.” You can create a survey with “Add new survey” in the top right corner.

Step 2: Here I can see a lot of different template options for customer feedback surveys. I am going to pick the first option. But if you want to create your survey from scratch, there is another option for that too – “New Blank Survey.”

Step 3: As you can see in the screenshot below, there are lots of options available for customization. From background colors to button styles and fonts, you can change it all according to your taste. 

For this example, I am only making minor changes to the given template.

Step 4: Next, we can choose questions for the survey and edit them. It’s pretty straightforward.

Step 5: You can also add integrations if you want to use your survey with other apps.

Step 6: You also have the option to share your survey via multiple channels.

Step 7: Once you start getting results, SurveySparrow records them and creates reports accordingly. 

You can also compare responses, spot patterns, and check trends through SurveySparrow’s Executive dashboard. The insightful reports can help you track performance and take better business decisions.

Simple, right? Even if you have no prior knowledge of designing surveys, it’s going to be a breeze, I promise!

Get started right away!

FAQs

Which Online Survey Tool is Best?

Are you ready to start creating more survey forms to improve your services or products? We’ve given you all the information that you need about the top three survey tools out there. 

Which one is best? That depends on your specific needs. 

Each of these tools has its own strengths and weaknesses, so be sure to read through the features to find the one that best fits your needs. Don’t forget to check out some online reviews before you commit to a plan! 

Happy surveying!

Do you have any questions about any of the online survey tools mentioned here? Please feel free to mention them in the comments section.

So, what are advertising agency services? And how do you choose the perfect one for your business? In this blog post, I will answer those questions and more.

We'll discuss what an advertising agency is, the different types of services they offer, how to determine if an advertising agency is right for your business, and how to choose the perfect one for your needs.

Advertising by the Numbers

Advertising remains to be one of the most essential tools for businesses to promote their products and services to target audiences. It helps them reach out to potential customers and create awareness about their brands.

However, the world of advertising keeps evolving with the ever-changing technology and media landscape. Businesses need to keep up with the latest trends to stay ahead of the competition.

Right now, digital marketing tactics are taking over the majority of advertising activities by businesses all around the world. According to a report by eMarketer, 2/3rd of the global ad spend will go to digital this year.

Social media advertising, video ads, and interactive formats like playable and shoppable ads are some of the most popular advertising trends today, according to Smaato’s 2022 Global Digital Advertising Trends Report.

Another report by eMarketer shows that TV ad spending will rise to $68.35 billion this year (2022) but then, it will also decline over the coming years.

What’s more?

Paid advertising is an important part of the overall marketing strategy of most businesses, as per 68% of marketers.

Social media, email, and website/blog are the top marketing channels for both B2B and B2C businesses. Other than these three channels, B2B businesses see great results from content marketing, while B2C businesses use influencer marketing to drive more leads and sales.

The graphs below represent the same:

Another important marketing channel that generates high conversion rates for businesses today is the search engines like Google. You need to optimize not only your website/blog, but also your Google My Business (GMB) listing, YouTube channel, and even your podcast episodes to get more visibility and traffic.

Now that we have seen the trends and advertising channels that are working well for businesses, let’s look at the advertising agency services that can help you make the most of these channels.

What is an Advertising Agency?

An advertising agency is a company that creates, plans, and manages advertising for businesses. The services an advertising agency provides can vary, but most agencies offer a full suite of services that includes advertising strategy, creative development, media planning and buying, and more.

As a business owner, you might be wondering if hiring an advertising agency is right for you. Here are a few things to consider:

• Do you have the time to manage your advertising? Advertising can be time-consuming. If you don't have the time to dedicate to creating and managing your advertising, an agency can help.
• Do you have the budget to hire an advertising agency? Advertising agencies typically charge a fee for their services. The cost will vary depending on the size of your business, your advertising budget, and the services you need.
• Do you need help with advertising strategy? If you're not sure where to start or what kind of advertising will work best for your business, an agency can help. They can provide insights and recommendations based on their experience and expertise.

Now that we've answered the question, “what is an advertising agency?” let's move on to discussing the different types of services they offer.

Types of Advertising Agency Services

As we mentioned before, advertising agencies offer a variety of services. The type of service you need will depend on your business goals and needs.

Here are some of the most common advertising agency services:

Advertising strategy: An advertising agency can help you develop an advertising strategy that aligns with your business goals. They can also provide recommendations on the type of advertising that will work best for your business.

Media planning and buying: An advertising agency can help you plan and purchase advertising space in print, online, and broadcast media. They will negotiate rates on your behalf and ensure that your advertising reaches your target audience.

Creative development: An advertising agency can help you develop creatives for your advertising campaigns. This can include developing advertising copy, designing print ads, and creating digital advertising assets.

Account management: An advertising agency will manage your account and be your point of contact for all things related to your advertising. They will make sure that your campaigns are on track and that you're happy with the results.

Campaign tracking and optimization: An advertising agency will track your advertising campaigns and provide you with reports on the results. This can help you measure the effectiveness of your advertising and make changes as needed.

Advertising agency services can help you reach your advertising goals. If you're not sure if hiring an agency is right for you, consider the factors we listed above.

And if you decide to go with an agency, be sure to ask about the services they offer and how they can help you reach your advertising goals.

What Are the Different Types of Advertising Agencies?

Now that we've discussed advertising agency services, let's talk about the different types of advertising agencies. There are four main types of advertising agencies:

Traditional Marketing Ad Agency

This type of advertising agency provides clients with offline marketing services such as print advertising, TV commercials, and radio ads. They also often handle public relations tasks like organizing events and handling media relations.

But these days, most people loof for full-service digital marketing agencies that can help take their business online and reach a wider audience without any geographical restrictions.

This is where digital marketing agencies come into the picture and play a pivotal role in advertising and marketing for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Digital Marketing Ad Agency

A digital agency is an advertising agency that specializes in online or digital marketing. They can help you with tasks such as:

• Planning a digital marketing strategy
• Developing website content
• Creating and managing your social media accounts
• Developing and running digital advertising campaigns
• Running email marketing campaigns
• Handling search engine optimization (SEO) tasks like keyword research and link building

Most digital marketing agencies have the ability to offer a wide range of services because they have a team of experts in different areas. 

From a team of designers to web developers and copywriters, a lot of people work together to create effective online advertising campaigns for businesses.

Some of the services a digital ad agency offers are:

• Market research
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Social media marketing (SMM)
• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Influencer marketing
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

But what separates the best digital advertising agencies from the rest is their ability to integrate all these channels and create a results-driven marketing ecosystem that can take your business to the next level.

Creative Ad Agency

A creative advertising agency focuses on the development of advertising campaigns. This type of advertising agency works with clients to create a unique selling proposition, target market, and overall ad strategy.

They are responsible for coming up with the big idea or angle that will sell your product or service. This might include coming up with a tagline, designing an ad campaign, or creating a social media strategy.

What makes a creative ad agency different is its focus on the creative aspects of advertising. They are often involved in the early stages of advertising, such as market research and target market analysis.

When you think of creative ad agencies, some names that come to mind are HUb, Wieden+Kennedy, and McCann. They have created amazing advertising campaigns for some of the top brands worldwide including Mastercard and won numerous awards.

You can reach out to creative agencies for everything from cinematography to branding, animation, out-of-the-box marketing videos, brand positioning, and more.

Social Media Ad Agency

A social media ad agency will help you to create advertising campaigns specifically for social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They will also be able to advise you on the best times to post your ads and how often you should be advertising on social media.

You should choose to work with a social media ad agency if you are looking to specifically target your advertising to social media users. But, you don't have the time or knowledge to do it yourself.

The top services offered by a social media marketing agency are:

• Social media accounts creation
• Designing ad creatives and videos
• Social ads creation and targeting
• Managing posting schedule
• Campaign management and tracking
• Social listening and monitoring

Also, check out my list of the Top 24+ Influencer Marketing Agencies

Media Buying Ad Agency

A media buying advertising agency is one that specializes in negotiating advertising rates and placement on behalf of its clients. This type of advertising agency will work with both traditional media outlets (television, radio, print) as well as digital media (banner ads, directories, pay-per-click advertising).

Some good examples of media buying agencies are Publicis Groupe, Mindshare, and WPP.

When selecting a media buying ad agency for your business, you should:

• Consider the size of the ad agency. You want an advertising agency that is large enough to have clout with media outlets, but not so large that they will charge you more for their services.
• Look at the agency's client list. Make sure the advertising agency has experience working with businesses in your industry.
• Check out the ad agency's case studies to get a good idea of their creative capabilities as well as their successes.

Full-Service Ad Agency

As the name suggests, a full-service advertising agency provides a wide range of services to their clients, from media buying and placement to creative development and even public relations.

This type of advertising agency is often the best choice for large companies that need an all-in-one solution.

You can find full-service marketing agencies of all sizes, but they often have a large team of experts to handle everything from strategy to implementation. However, they may cost more than other advertising agency types.

So as a small business owner, you'll need to decide if the benefits of a full-service advertising agency are worth the cost. It might be better to opt for specialized advertising agencies that can focus on specific aspects of your marketing needs (be it social media ads or SEO).

The Benefits of Leveraging Advertising Agency Services

Advertising is a process of calling public attention to something. It is usually done through paid announcements in print media, television, radio, or the internet.

Whether you want to build awareness for your brand, create interest for a new product, or drive sales for a special promotion, advertising can help.

And to do it right, the best way is to hire an advertising agency that has all the expertise, resources, and connections to get your advertising campaign up and running quickly and effectively.

Here are a few advantages that an advertising agency brings to the table:

• An objective opinion on your advertising campaigns and ideas
• A team of experts with a wealth of experience and knowledge in advertising
• The ability to negotiate better advertising rates with media outlets
• Access to the latest market research and advertising trends
• A network of industry contacts that can help get your advertising campaign off the ground quickly

If you're looking to get the most out of your advertising budget, then working with an advertising agency is the way to go.

How to Choose the Perfect Advertising Agency for Your Business

When it comes to choosing an advertising agency, there are a few things you should keep in mind.

• Define your goals. What are you hoping to achieve with your advertising campaign? Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or do something else entirely? Once you know what your goals are, you can start to narrow down your list of potential agencies.
• Research the ad agencies. Once you have a list of advertising agencies that you're interested in, it's time to start doing your homework. Read reviews, look at their portfolios, and see what other clients have said about their work.
• Get a proposal. Once you've narrowed down your list to a few agencies, it's time to get a proposal from each one. This will give you a chance to see what they're thinking for your campaign and how much it will cost.
• Ask the right questions. You should ask them to tell you the number of leads they’ll send your way, what their creative process looks like, and how they determine what constitutes a successful advertising campaign.

Choosing the perfect advertising agency for your business can seem like a daunting task, but if you keep these things in mind, you'll be well on your way to finding the right fit.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing an Advertising Agency

Now that you know what you should do to pick a good full-service ad agency for your business, let's take a look at a few common mistakes that you can avoid to save money, time, and headaches.

• Don't set unrealistic expectations for what an advertising agency can do for your business. Remember that an advertising agency is a business, too, and that they are in the business of making money. They are not your personal marketing department and they are not miracle workers.
• Do your homework before you meet with advertising agencies. Know what you want, what you need, and what you can afford. Have a list of questions ready to ask each advertising agency that you meet with.
• Don't just go with the first advertising agency you find. It's important to do your research and compare a few different options before making a final decision.
• Don't base your decision solely on price. While it's important to find an advertising agency that fits within your budget, you also want to make sure you're getting quality services.
• Don't be afraid to ask for referrals. If you know someone who has used an advertising agency before, see if they have any recommendations.

Advertising agency services can be a great asset to any business, as long as you take the time to find the right one. So take your time in your decision-making process and you're sure to find the perfect agency for your needs.If you're looking for full-service digital advertising agencies, be sure to check out my services. We offer everything from SEO to email marketing and influencer marketing to landing page optimization.

The Must-Have Marketing Software Solutions for 2022

Advertising agencies will do their job but here are some marketing software solutions that you can use to help make your advertising more effective and also track results.

• Google Analytics to track website traffic, page views, and conversions
• AdRoll for advertising on popular sites and social media platforms
• Semrush for managing your SEO
• Surfer for effective content marketing
• HubSpot to power your customer support, sales, and marketing
• Zoho Social or Sprout Social for managing your social media accounts
• Mailchimp or Constant Contact for email marketing
• Brand24 for media monitoring and your brand's reputation management

FAQs

Ready to Find the Perfect Advertising Agency Services for Your Business?

Advertising agency services can be extremely helpful when you need to create or improve your marketing strategy to reach more customers and grow your business. So don't hesitate to use them to your advantage.

However, there are a few things to keep in mind when you're looking for advertising agency services. First, you need to make sure that the agency has experience in your industry. This way, they'll be able to understand your business and customers better and create an advertising campaign that targets the right people.

Another important factor to consider is your budget. Advertising agency services can be expensive, so you need to make sure you have the funds to cover them.

Finally, you should also consider the agency's reputation. Make sure they have a good track record and that they're known for creating successful advertising campaigns.

If you keep these factors in mind, you'll be able to find an advertising agency that can help you reach your business goals.

It is especially important within business contexts because successful advertising can drive leads into a large customer base, which, in turn, will help you generate more sales and revenue.

While marketing is deeply rooted in the business culture, digital marketing is a comparatively new approach. As technology boomed, businesses started exploring new advertising methods to attract customers. This is how digital marketing began to take root.

Want to learn what digital marketing is all about, why it matters, and how you can use it to your advantage? Then, read on!

What is Digital Marketing?

Digital marketing is the process of promoting your business, products, and services using digital channels to reach and engage customers and encourage sales. There are many aspects to this, including email marketing, social media advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), mobile marketing, and more.

In practice, digital marketing typically refers to marketing campaigns that appear on a computer, mobile phone, tablet, or other electronic devices.

Social media posts, video ads, display advertisements, podcasts, and Google ads are some of the many methods you can use to digitally market your business.

Digital Marketing vs. Online Marketing

Though most people confuse digital marketing with online marketing, these two terms are not the same.

Online marketing is simply using the internet to promote or sell your products or services. It includes social media marketing, search engine optimization, content marketing, and more.

Digital marketing, on the other hand, is an umbrella term that encompasses all online as well as offline activities involved in promoting products and services using digital channels.

This includes marketing through search engines, mobile devices, social media, email, television, digital billboards, and any digital channel that may be introduced in the future.

In all, you can say that online marketing is a subset of digital marketing.

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Why Does Digital Marketing Matter?

How many of us read newspapers today? Or, how much time do we spend looking at the print ads and billboards on our way?

Not as much as we spend time browsing stuff on electronic devices such as mobile phones and tablets, right?

If you refer to statistics, people now spend an average of 482 minutes every day with digital media in the United States. At the same time, print advertising is declining.

With more people using digital channels to consume information, digital marketing provides businesses with a unique opportunity to connect with their target audiences in a way that is both convenient and personal.

In addition, it’s easy to track the impact of all of your digital marketing efforts, unlike traditional marketing. You can track user behavior, engagement, and other key metrics to better understand your customers and the ways they like to interact with your brand.

Analyzing what works for them and what doesn’t will help you optimize your digital marketing strategy from time to time to improve your customer service and create a more positive customer experience.

These are a few of the many reasons why digital marketing matters for every business that wants to continue engaging customers and generating sales.

It's important to remember, though, that not everyone is using the same channels, so you'll need to tailor your digital marketing approach accordingly.

For example, if most of your target market is on Facebook, then you'll want to focus on using Facebook Ads. But if your audience is more likely to be performing searches on Google, then it will make more sense for you to invest in SEO.

7 Benefits of Digital Marketing

There are many benefits to using digital marketing for your business. Here are a few of the most important ones:

• Reach a larger audience: With so many people using the internet and social media, it's easier than ever to reach a much wider audience through digital channels than you could through traditional methods.Digital marketing provides you with a greater opportunity to connect with your target audience and generate more leads and sales.
• Build a brand: Leveraging different digital marketing channels such as websites, social media, and SEO make it easy for businesses to define what their brand is all about. It also helps you attract a targeted consumer base that is likely to be interested in your content and products/services.
• Personalize your messaging: Digital marketing allows you to personalize your messages by using data collected about customers. This information can help you target your advertising strategy and content more effectively, which is likely to result in higher returns on investment (ROI).
• Track your results: It is easy to track the results of your digital marketing campaigns, so you can determine what's working and what isn't. You can also use this data to improve your future campaigns.With digital marketing, you get access to instant feedback, which allows you to adjust your campaigns as needed to prevent any further monetary or reputation losses.

Cost-effective: Digital marketing is often more cost-effective than traditional marketing techniques, such as print advertising.

• Easier access to information: The internet has made it easier than ever for people to access information. This has led to an increase in the use of digital marketing, as businesses can now easily reach out to a large number of potential customers who spend lots of time with their electronic gadgets every day.
• Flexibility: With digital marketing, you can easily change your marketing messages and strategies in response to customer feedback and changing market conditions. In addition, the content you create can be tailored to meet the needs of your audience, which wasn’t possible with traditional marketing tactics.

However, leveraging digital marketing requires continuous learning. That's because the field of digital marketing is constantly evolving as new technologies and platforms become available.

It is important for businesses and marketers to keep up with these changes and stay up-to-date with the latest techniques, technologies, and tools to stay relevant, effective, and always ahead of the competition.

For example, the use of chatbots is becoming more widespread recently. As a marketer, you need to be aware of how chatbots can be used to drive engagement, sales, and customer loyalty for your business.

Most successful brands are using chatbots across all touchpoints in the customer journey, which is resulting in increased sales, positive customer experiences, and great branding.

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Want to use digital marketing to your advantage in the business world?

I’ve got a pro tip for you: Keep reading, keep learning, and keep experimenting with the latest digital marketing strategies and tools to see what works best for you!

Also read: Digital marketing strategies for startups

11 Types of Digital Marketing (Digital Marketing Channels)

Now that you know the advantages of using digital marketing, let's take a look at the different types of digital marketing channels:

Website and/or Blog

The first step to taking your business online is to set up a website or a blog. Whether you want to create an online presence for your company or you want to provide information about your products or services, building a website is your best bet.

It can help you attract new customers and build relationships with existing customers. Additionally, you can use it to increase brand awareness, engagement, and your chances of generating sales and revenue.

However, before building a website or blog for your business, you should ask yourself:

• What are your goals for the site?
• What kind of information do you want to provide?
• Who is your target audience?
• What is your budget?
• How much time can you dedicate to creating your business website?

If you can answer these questions, you'll be in a better position to decide how to get started.

Here are some tips for creating a business website or blog:

• When building a website or blog, it’s important to choose the right platform and design. Most small businesses choose WordPress as it is easy to use and offers many useful themes, features, and plugins.You can use other popular website builders as well.
• Be sure to think about the overall design and layout when picking a website theme. It should be visually appealing and make it easy for users to navigate.
• Make sure the content is easy to read, relevant to your target audience, interesting, and easy to understand.
• Add social media buttons so people can easily share your content, products, and services with their friends and followers.
• Optimize your website for page loading speed, mobile responsiveness, search engines, and conversions to make the most out of this digital marketing platform.
• Use high-quality product images and videos on your website. Don’t forget to show your product from different angles and use multiple types of shots.

Other than design and optimization, it is also important to ensure that each of your web pages offers all of the information a visitor may need to take action.

For example, my Speaking page has all the information an event planner or company will need to know before hiring me as a speaker for their summit or conference.

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This page mentions my past experiences as a speaker, the topics I speak about, case studies to show my expertise in influencer marketing, SEO, and other areas, and much more.

You may think there is no need to invest in a website when you can promote your business on social media and through forums or email for free. But there are some drawbacks to channels that you don’t own.

What if you build a solid presence on Instagram but the platform shuts down one day, just like Orkut did?

All of your brand-building and digital marketing efforts invested on the platform will have been in vain and you’ll be back to square one. Whereas, your website or blog will be your own space in the digital world.

Once you build an audience that likes your content and offers, they’ll continue to come back to your website until you shut down your business yourself.

In addition to this, you can design and develop your website any way you want and will not be restricted to the features a specific platform provides. Just be sure to put in the time and effort to make it a useful and enjoyable space for visitors!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a process of optimizing a website to make it rank higher on search engines like Google and Bing. It includes optimizing on-page elements such as website content, structure, titles, metatags, and anchor text as well as off-page elements like your link profile and social media engagement.

You’ll also need to optimize your website for technical SEO factors such as page speed, image file size, and backend code.

Wondering why it is important for businesses to invest in SEO?

Well, 53% of U.S. shoppers research a product on a search engine before making a purchase. And, the majority of clicks are limited to page one of Google while the second page receives only 0.78% of all clicks.

If you want to order a cupcake, you are likely to search “cupcakes near me” and click on the bakeries listed in the top-ranking results to see what each of them has to offer.

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If the top results on search engines offer what you need and have received decent reviews from other customers, you’ll most likely order from them, there and then. This means that even if another bakery sells better quality cupcakes, it may not receive as many orders as the top-ranking ones.

Moreover, SEO is more cost-effective than other digital marketing tactics. It provides long-term results, which means you can continue to see returns on your investment over time.

Let’s take a look at some of the best SEO practices you should follow to make your business rank well in relevant search engine results.

• Choose the right keywords. When picking keywords for your business, think about what your customers would type into a search engine to find your business. Make sure to target long-tail keywords that are specific to your industry, services, and geo-location.
• Optimize your website for SEO by using the right keywords in page titles, meta descriptions, content, and URLs, and by following the best practices for website design and structure.
• Publish high-quality content on your website, including blog posts, product pages, ebooks, and landing pages. This content will help you to rank well in search engine results and it will also help establish your business as an authoritative source in your industry.
• Promote your content on social media and through email newsletters and other digital marketing channels to help it reach a wider audience.
• Monitor your results using the best analytics tools to see what’s working and what needs improvement.
• Make changes as needed. If you find that your website isn’t ranking well in search engine results, make changes to your SEO strategy as needed.

Following these best practices will help you improve your website’s visibility in search engine results and increase your website traffic.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is the process of bidding on keywords to get your ads displayed when people search for those keywords.

PPC is a great way to get immediate traffic to your website and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. It's one of the best techniques to target users who are already interested in the products or services you have to offer.

Though PPC can provide faster results, it is more expensive than other digital marketing methods. Therefore, you need to plan your PPC budget and campaign strategy cautiously.

Let’s take a look at a few tips that can help you run successful PPC campaigns.

• Know your target audience. What are their demographics? What are their interests? What keywords are they likely to use when searching for what you’re selling? Once you know this, you can focus your ads on targeting those specific users.
• Research your competition. What are their ads like? What keywords are they targeting? What’s the click-through rate (CTR) of their ads? By researching your competition, you can get a good idea of what works and what doesn’t, and then you can adjust your own ads accordingly.
• Have a clear goal in mind before you start your PPC campaign. Do you want to generate more leads? Increase website traffic? Sell more products? Only when you know what you want to achieve will you be able to better tailor your campaign to meet those goals.
• Determine your budget. One of the biggest mistakes people make when running a PPC campaign is not setting a budget. You need to set a limit on how much you’re willing to spend on each click, and then stick to it.If you don’t, you could quickly blow through your budget and end up with nothing.
• Add words or phrases that you don’t want your ads to be shown for to the negative keywords list. It can help you save a lot of money.For example, if you’re selling car wash services, you might add the keyword “free” to your negative keyword list, since you don’t want your ads to show up for people who are looking for free car washing services.
• Test and optimize your PPC campaigns for different keywords, ad copy, and bidding strategies to find out what works best for your industry and business. And be sure to regularly track your results so that you can make changes as needed.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is the process of creating and publishing content to promote a product or service and build awareness for the brand.

The goal here is not only to attract customers but also to retain them by providing valuable information in an entertaining way that ensures they will be coming back again when needed.

One common way to approach content marketing is to create content relevant to your industry and business in the form of blog posts, videos, infographics, or social media posts. This could also involve creating interactive posts, contests, or giveaways that encourage users to engage with the brand.

No matter what approach you use, it's important to make sure that the content is high quality and provides value for the target audience. If it's not interesting or helpful, then it's likely that people will not bother coming back.

You should be consistent when it comes to content publishing and you should also use keywords and hashtags to reach a wider audience.

When leveraging content marketing, you should also test different content formats and ideas to see what works best for your business.

Looking for a successful content marketing example for inspiration?

Here you go:

Blogger and entrepreneur, Adam Enfroy, started writing content to help other bloggers and businesses make money online. What started as just another blog on the internet has grown to be a million-dollar business for him, all through content marketing.

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The key to successful content marketing is creating quality content that actually helps your audience do something better or faster.

Here’s how to create and implement an effective content marketing strategy for your business:

• Determine what you want to achieve with your marketing efforts before you start creating content. Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic, or generate leads? Once you know your goals, you can create content that aligns with them.
• Create a content calendar to better plan and organize your content creation efforts. It can include the topics you want to cover, target dates for publishing, and even a rough outline of the content itself.This will help ensure that your content is published regularly and that it’s consistent with your overall digital marketing strategy.

• Produce high-quality content that’s relevant, valuable, and engaging for your audience. It also means using correct spelling and grammar, and ensuring that your content is high-quality from a design perspective.
• Promote your content. Content promotion is an essential part of getting it seen by the right people. You can promote your content through social media, email marketing, and paid advertising. You can also embed it on your website or blog and submit it to popular industry directories.
• Track the effectiveness of your content. Use analytics tools to measure how much traffic it’s generating, what types of people are engaging with it, and how it’s impacting your bottom line.

You can use this data to adjust your content marketing strategy as needed.

By following these steps, you can create a successful content marketing strategy for your business and get ahead of the competition.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is the process of sending marketing messages to your subscribers, prospects, and existing customers through email.

It is one of the most effective ways to reach out to consumers and promote your business. It allows you to stay in touch with your customers, keep them updated on new products or services, and build customer loyalty.

You can also use email marketing to build relationships with potential customers and encourage sales. When users visit your website as a result of an email campaign, they are more likely to buy something or sign up for your mailing list.

It's best to send emails regularly, but not too often, or you'll risk annoying your subscribers.

Here are a few dos and don’ts of running a successful email marketing campaign:

Dos of Email Marketing:

• Make sure that your email marketing content is relevant to your audience.
• Keep your messages brief and to the point, and write them in clear, concise language.
• Write catchy subject lines that will capture people’s attention and compel them to open your emails.
• Test different subject lines, content, and email designs to see what works best.
• Personalize your messages whenever possible.
• Use images and graphics to break up the text and make your emails more visually appealing. You can also use interactive elements to increase user engagement.
• Keep your email design simple and easy to read.
• Use clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons and links.
• Monitor your email marketing results and optimize your campaigns accordingly.

Don’ts of Email Marketing:

• Don’t use spammy tactics such as buying lists or sending unsolicited emails.
• Don’t bombard your subscribers with too many messages.
• Don’t use unprofessional or salesy language.
• Don’t use unrelated content or links.
• Don’t make it difficult for people to unsubscribe from your list.
• Don’t neglect to test your content and subject lines.
• Don’t use too much text without any images or graphics.
• Don’t use complex or hard-to-read fonts.
• Don’t make your CTA buttons difficult to find or confusing to use.
• Don’t forget to follow up with subscribers after they’ve clicked on your CTA.

Email marketing can be a great way to connect with your audience and promote your business, but it’s important to remember to follow these dos and don’ts to ensure success.

By keeping these tips in mind, you can create effective and engaging email marketing campaigns that will reach your target audience and help boost your business sales and revenue.

Many digital marketers use email not only to acquire new customers but also to encourage repeat orders from existing customers. One brand that excels at using email marketing throughout the customer lifecycle is Sephora.

From welcome emails to cart abandonment recovery messages, post-purchase emails, product replenishment reminders, and custom triggers, Sephora sends all types of emails to constantly engage their prospects and customers.

Here’s an example of Sephora trying to re-engage and win their customers back by offering them a time-bound discount:

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You can also create a similar customer lifecycle-centric email program using powerful email marketing automation tools and CRM solutions.

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is the process of using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to promote your products or services.

Consumers today are highly reliant on social media for product information and reviews. So it's important that your business has a strong social media presence to make sure your marketing messages reach these consumers.

You should post regularly, and you should also use hashtags to reach a wider audience. You can also use social media advertising or paid ads to boost the reach of your top-performing social media posts.

Looking for more tips to do social media marketing effectively? Here you go:

Use high-quality visuals. People are visual creatures, so including great visuals in your social media posts is a must. This could include photos, infographics, or videos.

Keep your posts short and sweet because most people won’t read long paragraphs on social media.

Make use of hashtags relevant to the topic of your post. Hashtags are a great way to reach a wider audience and to show up in relevant search results.

Include a strong call-to-action. Your social media posts should always include a call-to-action, whether it’s to visit your website, sign up for your email list, or buy your product or service.

Monitor your social media analytics to find out what's working and what's not. Making changes to your strategy as needed is the key to improving the returns of your marketing efforts.

There you have it! Some helpful tips for doing social media marketing effectively. For more tips and advice, be sure to check out my infographic on how to boost your social media campaign ROI.

Also, check out the social media marketing tools that can help you.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a process of partnering with other websites and/or people to promote your products or services. You can do this by placing a link or banner on their website, or by providing them with custom-made advertising materials.

When someone clicks on that link or banner, they are redirected to your website, where they can learn more about your products or services and potentially make a purchase.

Affiliate marketing is a cost-effective way to increase traffic to your website as you only pay your affiliate when they help you generate leads or sales.

In addition to partnering with affiliates to promote your products or services, you can also become an affiliate marketer and promote other businesses. It can be a very lucrative way to earn additional income.

There are many different affiliate marketing programs available, so it's important to research and choose the one that best suits your business.

There are a few things to keep in mind when choosing an affiliate marketing program:

• It should offer a commission rate that is competitive with other programs.
• It should have a wide range of products and services to choose from.
• It should be reliable and should offer support and training to help you succeed.

If you're looking for an affiliate marketing program that meets all of these criteria, I recommend the Amazon Associates Program. It's one of the largest and most reputable programs available, and it offers a commission rate of 10-15% depending on the product niches/industries you choose.

Some of the other popular affiliate networks that can help you discover profitable affiliate programs are:

• ShareASale
• CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction)
• Rakuten LinkShare (formerly LinkShare)
• ClickBank
• AvantLink
• Pepperjam
• Awin
• WEBGAINS

There are many different affiliate marketing programs to choose from, and it can be difficult to decide which one is right for you. That's why I've compiled a list of the three most important criteria to look for when choosing an affiliate marketing program.

• The first criterion is the size and reputation of the program. It's important to choose a program that is large and reputable so you can be confident that you're promoting a quality product.
• The second criterion is the commission rate. The commission rate is the percentage of the sale price that you will earn as a commission. Look for a program with a commission rate of at least 10-15%.
• The third criterion is the product niche/industry. It's important to choose a program that offers products in your niche or industry. This will ensure that you are promoting products that are relevant to your audience.

Pro tip: If you want to earn a good passive income as an affiliate marketer, always choose the quality of the product over the commission its brand is offering.

Why? Because your audience will only trust you if you offer valuable, high-quality content and recommendations to them. None of them will return to you after buying a cheap product you promoted.

I have been collaborating with many SaaS companies myself to promote their tool subscriptions but only when I’m satisfied with the tool’s features and efficiency. Some examples of powerful digital marketing platforms that I can vouch for at any time are Semrush, Surfer, and Constant Contact.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is the process of partnering with influential people to promote your products or services. You can do this by working with bloggers, social media stars, or other industry experts.

When you partner with an influencer, you get access to their audience. In addition, their audience is more likely to trust and heed recommendations from the influencer instead of ads from your brand.

Influencer marketing is, therefore, one of the easiest and quickest ways to build trust and credibility and get found by wider audiences who are likely to buy your products or services.

The key to making influencer marketing work in your favor is to find the right influencers to work with. Not everyone is a good fit for your brand, so you need to carefully select your influencers.

Here are a few things you can do to find the right partners:

• Use social media listening tools to track specific keywords and phrases, as well as the conversations happening around them. This can help you find people who are already talking about your brand or products.
• Check out industry blogs and forums as these places are filled with people who are passionate about certain topics.
• Use Google Search to find relevant bloggers and social media stars.
• Perform searches on social media platforms such as Instagram using your niche-specific hashtags such as “#fashion” or “#fitness” as well as for advertising-related hashtags such as “#ad” and “#sponsored.”

Once you've found a few potential partners, it's important to vet them thoroughly before working with them. You should look at their audience size, engagement levels, and the type of content they produce.

Also, make sure their values align with your own. You don't want to work with someone who promotes harmful or unethical practices.

Once you've selected your influencer, it's time to determine in which ways you want to partner with them. You can:

• Work with them to produce sponsored content.
• Run a joint contest or giveaway.
• Ask them to take over your brand’s official social media accounts for a day to attract their followers to your profile.
• Or, make them the face of your brand by signing a long-term partnership with them. Do this only when you’ve vetted and worked with them in the past and you absolutely trust them with your brand’s reputation.

No matter how you decide to work with an influencer, be sure to track the results of their marketing efforts so you can see how well they're performing. This information will help you decide whether or not to continue working with them in the future.

Here’s how much partnering with influencers will cost, in general.

Many brands also combine influencer marketing with affiliate commissions to encourage influencers to drive more sales to their businesses. When an influencer will also get a commission for every sale they generate, they are likely to give it their best.

Moreover, offering an affiliate discount code can also help the influencer provide more value to their audience along with generating more sales for your business.

One brand that excels at leveraging the perfect combination of influencer and affiliate marketing is Daniel Wellington.

Here's one such post in which an influencer offers a unique discount code for purchasing Daniel Wellington watches to her followers:

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Along with increasing sales, the brand also uses unique affiliate codes to track the performance of each of their affiliates.

The bottom line is that influencer marketing is an effective way to reach a wider audience, build trust and credibility, and drive sales. However, it can only be a successful strategy for your brand if you partner with the right influencers.

Also, check out:

• The latest influencer marketing trends
• Why influencer marketing is better than celebrity endorsements

Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is the process of using mobile devices like smartphones and tablets to promote your products or services.

It is the wave of the future. If you're not using mobile, your customers are likely leaving you behind. Moreover, customers are more likely to convert on a smartphone than they are on desktop browsers, and most of them spend at least a few hours per day browsing their phones!

Here are some tips to do mobile marketing right:

• Optimize your website for mobile viewing.
• Make sure your marketing materials are easy to read on a small screen and don't forget to include a call-to-action in all of them.
• Use geo-targeting to send personalized messages to customers in specific areas.
• Leverage push notifications to grab people's attention when they're not actively using their phones.
• And above all, test, test, test! Make sure you're constantly tweaking your mobile marketing campaigns to make sure they're as effective as possible.

There are many ways to use mobile devices for marketing purposes, and the best way to find out what works for you is to experiment. Try out some of these tips and see how your customers react. And most importantly, keep track of your results so you can learn and improve over time.

TV Advertising

TV advertising is the process of marketing a product or service by airing commercials on television. Television advertising has been around since the late 1940s, and it is now the most common form of advertising.

There are many different types of TV commercials, but most fall into one of four categories:

• Product promotion: This type of commercial promotes a specific product or service.
• Brand promotion: This type of commercial promotes a brand, rather than a specific product or service.
• Cause-related marketing: This type of commercial promotes a charity or social cause.
• Entertainment advertising: This type of commercial is designed to entertain viewers, rather than promote a product or service. It helps brands build awareness and stay on top of the minds of their prospective customers.

TV advertising can be a very effective way to reach consumers. However, it is important to make sure that your commercials are well-made and engaging, or you risk losing viewer attention.

Additionally, it is important to target your commercials correctly, so they reach the right audience. This can be done by using demographic targeting, which is when a company uses information like age, gender, and location to target their commercials to certain viewers.

Another way TV advertising can be targeted is by using behavioral targeting, which is when a company uses information like past website visits or purchase behavior to target their commercials.

TV advertising can be an expensive investment, but it is often worth the cost. The average American spends most of their time watching television, averaging about 3.1 hours per day, so there is a lot of potential for exposure. And, because TV advertising is so common, it can be very effective in getting your message across to potential customers.

There are many different ways to create TV commercials, and the process can be a bit daunting for first-timers. However, by following a few simple steps, you can create a commercial that is both effective and engaging.

• The first step is to come up with a good idea for your commercial. This can be difficult, but it is important to make sure that your commercial is interesting and relevant to viewers.
• The next step is to storyboard your commercial. This involves sketching out each scene of your commercial and writing down the dialogue and narration. This will help you visualize your commercial and make sure that it is properly planned out.
• Once you have your storyboard complete, it is time to start filming. This can be done with a simple video camera, and you can either shoot the footage yourself or hire a professional crew.
• Once you have your footage, it is time to put together your commercial. This involves editing the footage and adding music and graphics. You can do this yourself with some basic editing software, or you can hire a professional to do it for you.
• Finally, once your commercial is complete, it is time to air it on TV. This can be done by contacting local TV stations and negotiating a price.

By following the steps outlined above, you can create a commercial that is both effective and engaging. And, by targeting your commercial correctly, you can reach the right audience and get the most out of your investment.

Enhanced Billboards Advertising

What’s the difference between a billboard placed across a random road and a billboard in New York City’s Times Square?

All of the billboards in Times Square are electronic. The massive, LED-lit digital screens and billboards compete for attention with 360,000 pedestrians visiting each day.

No denying that it’s one of the most desirable ad spaces in the world and has seen some of the most creative digital advertising moments ever.

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Then, there are interactive electronic billboards that encourage interaction with your audience and help businesses boost user engagement.

For example:

To promote its “Have a Break” campaign, KitKat installed billboards in Colombia that would vibrate when people leaned against them, providing them with a relaxing massage.

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How to Do Digital Marketing Effectively

Digital marketing is one of the most efficient and effective ways to reach and connect with your target audience on a more personal level, which can result in more conversions and sales.

However, doing digital marketing effectively can be a little tricky. Here are some steps and tips you can follow to get started:

Define Your Goals

The first step in any effective digital marketing campaign is to define your goals. What do you want to achieve with your marketing efforts? Do you want more website traffic, more leads, more conversions, or something else?

Once you know what you want to achieve, you can better tailor your campaigns and strategies to reach those goals.

Identify and Understand Your Target Audience

The second step is to identify and understand your target audience. Who are you trying to reach with your digital marketing campaigns? What are their interests and needs?

Knowing your target audience is essential for creating effective content and marketing messages that will resonate with them. You can also use this information to better target your advertising and outreach efforts.

Leverage Multiple Digital Marketing Strategies (Free & Paid)

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital marketing, so it’s important to use a variety of strategies to reach your target audience.

Some of the most popular digital marketing strategies include:

• SEO
• Paid advertising
• Content marketing
• Social media marketing
• Email marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Influencer marketing
• TV advertising
• Enhanced billboards advertising

You can use any or all of these strategies to reach your target audience, depending on your goals and budget.

Create Relevant, Engaging Content for Your Customer Base

One of the most important things you can do to make the most out of your digital marketing efforts is to create useful, relevant, and engaging content. This content can be in the form of blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, etc.

The more useful and interesting your content is, the more likely people are to read it, share it, and take action on it.

Track Key Metrics to Measure Your Digital Marketing Performance

Digital marketing is a constantly evolving landscape, so it’s important to constantly test and measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts to see what’s working and what’s not.

This will help you fine-tune your campaigns and strategies by making necessary adjustments to get even better results.

Use analytics tools to track website traffic, leads, conversions, and other key metrics to measure your digital marketing performance.

Optimize Your Campaigns to Maximize Returns

Just tracking results is not enough. It's important to use the insights from various analytics tools to optimize your campaigns to get the most out of them.

This includes using the right channels, targeting the right people, and creating relevant and engaging content.

By following these steps, you can do digital marketing effectively and achieve better results for your business.

The Role of Digital Marketing in Building Brands

Digital marketing is one of the most efficient and effective ways to build a brand. It involves the use of electronic media and digital technologies to reach and engage customers.

It can be done through a variety of channels, including websites, social media, email, and mobile apps.

One of the biggest advantages of digital marketing is that it allows businesses to target a specific audience. With the help of analytics tools, businesses can track the success of their digital marketing campaigns and make necessary adjustments.

Digital marketing is also a cost-effective way to reach customers. It requires minimal investment in comparison to traditional marketing methods such as print advertising.

Overall, digital marketing has become an essential part of the marketing mix for most businesses as it provides businesses with the ability to target a specific audience, track campaign success, and save money.

What Does a Digital Marketer Do?

A digital marketer is responsible for promoting a company's products or services through a variety of digital channels. This includes the use of websites, social media, email, and mobile apps.

The main responsibility of a digital marketer is to create and implement effective marketing campaigns that reach a wide audience. They also track the success of these campaigns and make necessary adjustments to improve the campaign ROI.

Digital marketers must also be knowledgeable about the latest digital technologies and how they can be used to promote a business. They must also be able to use analytics tools to track the success of their campaigns.

Digital Marketing FAQs

1. What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is a marketing technique used by brands to reach potential customers through the use of the internet. It includes using channels such as websites, search engines, email, social media, and mobile.

2. How do I become a digital marketer?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the best way to become a digital marketer may vary depending on your skills, experience, and education.

However, here are some tips on how to become a digital marketer:

• Enroll yourself in a reputable digital marketing course. You can find some of them here.
• Gain experience in different streams of digital marketing by working as an intern in a digital marketing agency.
• Pick a digital marketing tactic that you are interested in and have gained knowledge of. It could be SEO, social media marketing, or email marketing.
• Build a portfolio of your work done for different projects and clients.
• Network with other digital marketers and learn from their experiences.
• Continuously learn and stay up-to-date with the latest changes in the digital marketing landscape.

The best way to become a successful digital marketer is by having a combination of skills, experience, and education. So if you are looking to make a career in digital marketing, start by doing research on the best courses and pursuing relevant internships.

Once you have some experience under your belt, focus on honing your skills in one specific area of digital marketing, and continue to learn and keep up-to-date with the latest changes.

By following these steps, you will be well on your way to becoming a successful digital marketer.

Digital Marketing in 2022 and Beyond

Thanks for reading! I hope this article gave you a good overview of what digital marketing is, why it matters, and some of the things you need to consider if you want to start using it.

Digital marketing, undoubtedly, offers a lot of opportunities for businesses of all sizes. There's no one-size-fits-all approach, so it's important to test and experiment until you find the right channels and strategies that will work best for your business.

In the latter sections of this article, you’ll also learn how to get started with digital marketing and which strategies to use to accelerate the growth of your business in 2022 and beyond.

If you have any questions about using digital marketing to your advantage, feel free to leave them in the comments section and I'll get back to you.

As attention spans dwindle, people don’t have the patience to read big blocks of text. Instead of reading lengthy articles, many people prefer watching videos.

Check out these findings from The State of Video Marketing 2020 report:

• 66% of people said they preferred to learn about a product or service through short videos.
• 84% of people said that they were convinced to buy a service or product after watching a branded video.

It’s the right time to dive into video marketing.

Pro Tip: Create explainer videos.

According to the previously cited study, they are the most commonly-created videos. Furthermore, 96% of consumers said they had watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.

But, what exactly are explainer videos?

Let’s find out…

What Are Explainer Videos?

Think of an explainer video as an introduction to a new company or brand. Using an explainer video, a company can explain the details of a specific product or service.

In addition to this, businesses can use explainer videos to communicate how they can help solve their audience’s pain points. Through explainer videos, organizations can also communicate their business values, mission, and goals.

Explainer videos can also be used for training, recruitment, internal communication, or for marketing purposes.

Typically, the main intent of an explainer video is to inform or to explain. You can also use explainer videos to spread awareness about a particular cause. Not only do great explainer videos engage the audience but they also simplify the chosen topic or theme.

For example, the World Health Organization created multiple explainer videos explaining the origin and symptoms of coronavirus.

You can see a screenshot of the video below:

In another explainer video, they focussed on the efforts undertaken by the WHO to combat coronavirus. It’s a creative way of showcasing your endeavors while keeping your audience engaged through visuals.

Why Should You Create Explainer Videos?

Explainer videos are super concise and visually appealing. They enable you to pack a lot of information into a short amount of time.

Still not convinced about the merits of explainer videos?

Hold on, check out all the benefits you can reap from them:

You Can Demonstrate Your Product

Explainer videos provide you with an opportunity to showcase your products first hand. In your videos, you can highlight the benefits of using your products or give your audience a walkthrough of your product.

You Can Showcase Your Brand Values and Personality

Through the tone, visuals, and script of your explainer videos, you can showcase your brand personality. What’s more, you can create videos that reflect your brand values and convey your mission. It’s a great platform to familiarize your audience with your brand.

You Can Illustrate How Your Brand Can Solve Customer Pain Points

In explainer videos, you can demonstrate how your products can solve multiple problems and solve a customer’s needs. It can help you boost your brand awareness as well as conversion rate.

Where Can You Feature Your Explainer Videos?

The best part about explainer videos is that you can feature them on multiple platforms. Plus, you can repurpose them into infographics as well.

Here are a few ways you can use explainer videos:

1. Social Media Channels

Social media is a great place to grab your audience’s attention. Subsequently, that makes it a great platform to feature your explainer videos.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest — you can publish videos on all social media platforms. Of course, you may have to trim them or repurpose your videos for each platform.

To amplify your reach, you can leverage the targeting and remarketing options on social media platforms. This strategy can help you reach out to people who may be interested in your products.

By answering their questions or introducing them to your brand values via explainer videos, you can move them along the sales funnel.

Pro Tip: Create multiple explainer videos for different buyer personas. That way, you can personalize the script for each video and solve all pain points.

2. Website

Explainer videos can make it easy for anyone visiting your website to know what your brand is all about. An introductory video can provide them with all the information they need and even work as an elevator pitch.

Ideally, you should place such videos on your homepage. That way, you can ensure that new website visitors don’t miss out on seeing it.

Looking for inspiration?

Check out Facebook marketing platform, MobileMonkey’s homepage. They have featured a short animated video that showcases how marketers can use their platform to generate more leads.

On the other hand, you can feature more specific videos about a particular product or service on landing pages. They can add to the content on the landing page. At the same time, they can help you drive more conversions.

3. Emails

Email marketing can help you find more leads. By adding explainer videos to your emails, you can make them more appealing. With this strategy, you can also redirect traffic to your landing page.

All you need to do is to embed your explainer video in the form of a clickable image. Just make sure that when users click on it, they are taken to your landing page.

To make sure you don’t have issues with email deliverability, you should embed a JPG image in your email. If a problem still persists, you can simply embed the link.

Pro Tip: Feature testimonials in your email videos to gain the trust of your target audience. Even if you send a cold email, you can build some credibility.

4. Events

Till now, we’ve only talked about online mediums that you can feature your explainer videos on. However, you can use them for your offline events as well.

Not sure how?

With explainer videos, you can introduce your brand at speaking engagements, seminars, conferences, trade shows, and other professional events.

Think of it as a prologue.

Explainer videos can set the tone for the rest of the session. Alternatively, you can also feature these videos on side screens at events. You can keep them playing on loop. That way, you can reach out to more people.

In such a case, there is one limitation.

The audio for your explainer videos may not be audible because of the ambient noise at events. Try to convey all the information using infographics and text or add subtitles/captions.

10 Tips to Create a Good Explainer Video

Want to make an awesome explainer video for your business?

Of course you do!

Here are some tips to guide with the video-making process:

1. Use the Right Tools

Before you begin making your video, it’s important to equip yourself with the right tools. It can make a world of difference.

With the help of video maker tools like mysimpleshow, Powtoon, Adobe Spark and others, you can create engaging explainer videos. Even if you are a newbie, these tools make it easy for you to create professional-looking videos quickly.

Want help from experts?

You can simply outsource the work by leveraging explainer video services like simpleshow. They can help you explain the most complex topics in a short, absorbing, and easy-to-understand manner.

2. Understand Your Target Audience

When making explainer videos, it's important to understand your target audience and what they want to learn. This will help you create a video that is both informative and engaging.

If you don't know who your target audience is, or what they want to learn, your video could be ineffective or even confusing. You don't want to waste time explaining things that they already know, and you don't want to leave out important information.

One way to determine your target audience is by conducting market research. This involves studying your potential customers and understanding their needs and wants. You can then use this information to create a video that speaks to them directly.

Another way to figure out your target audience is by looking at your analytics on social media and websites. This data can tell you which content is the most popular, and it can also give you an idea of who is visiting them.

3. Write a Short and Concise Script

When it comes to explainer videos, a well-written video script is the key to communicating your message. Keep in mind that the script for all your explainer videos needs to be short. Your goal is to explain a concept in a crisp manner.

Not sure about the length of your script?

Ideally, you need to write content that can fill up 90 seconds or less.

Convey your message with simple vocabulary in a conversational tone. If you use complex words or technical terms, you may not be able to keep your audience engaged.

So, what should you talk about in your video script?

There is a tried-and-tested formula you can use:

• Begin by introducing your product or company.
• Next, discuss a major pain point that your audience faces.
• Follow it up by showcasing how your product or business can solve that problem.
• End the video with a powerful call-to-action.

Pro Tip: Read your script aloud a couple of times after you’ve written it. Switch on the timer to make sure that you can cover all the content in the intended time frame.

4. Explore Different Explainer Video Types

When you're deciding which type of explainer video to create for your brand, it's important to think about what you want to achieve with the video.

Do you need to introduce a new product or service? Or are you looking to help customers understand how to use a product or service they're already familiar with?

Depending on your goals, there are several types of explainer videos that might be a good fit.

If you're looking to introduce a new product or service, a brand overview video may be the best option. This type of video gives an overview of who your company is and what you do. And can be a great way to hook viewers and persuade them to learn more about your brand.

If you want to help customers understand how to use a product or service, a tutorial video may be the right choice. Tutorials can walk customers through each step of using your product or service and can be especially helpful for complex products or services.

If you're looking to increase brand awareness or drive conversions, you may want to consider an animated explainer video.

Animated explainers are a great way to quickly introduce your brand and explain what you do. They're also very engaging, which can help keep viewers watching until the end.

5. Create a Mock Storyboard

When creating an explainer video, it’s important to create a mock storyboard first. This will help you visualize the flow of your video and make sure that it’s on message and easy to follow. It’s an important part of the explainer video production process.

Additionally, it will give you a chance to tweak the script and make sure that everything is in order before you start filming.

Having a well-constructed storyboard can also help keep costs down since it will give the production team a good idea of what’s involved in making the video.

Finally, it can be used as a guide for the animators, making sure that all the visuals are on track. By taking the time to create a mock storyboard, you’ll be ensuring that you have a fair idea of what you want the final video to look like.

6. Highlight the Benefits For Your Target Audience

In your video, don’t list the features of your product. Your audience can check them out on your product or website.

Instead, you need to focus on highlighting your USP. Tell your audience about how your product or service can make their lives easier.

Regardless of the industry you’re in, you’re likely to have many other competitors in the same space.

So, what is it about your product or business that makes you unique?

Why should customers choose you over your competitors?

These are the questions you should address in your explainer videos.

7. Focus on Good Audio

High-quality audio is a prerequisite for making a great explainer video. Make sure you add a professional voiceover to your video.

Additionally, ensure that the voice-over is recorded at a reasonable pace. If the talking is too fast, your audience may miss out on important information.

To set the right tone for your video, you can also add some background music. Just ensure that it doesn’t overpower the voiceover.

Pro Tip: For good audio quality, it’s recommended that you use professional microphones. If you can, record your voiceovers in a soundproof room.

8. Focus on Entertainment

Your explainer video is one of the most important pieces of marketing collateral you have. It's your opportunity to introduce your product or service to potential customers and explain what it is and how it works.

But simply putting together a video that provides information isn't enough – you also need to make sure that your video is engaging and entertaining.

Why is it important to entertain your audience? Because if they're bored, they're going to stop paying attention.

And if they stop paying attention, they're not going to learn anything about your product or service. So make sure that you keep them interested by using creative visuals, interesting animations, and catchy music.

Be humorous, bold, or even wacky — make your video elicit an emotional response from your audience. Shock them, surprise them, or make them laugh. Anything that can make a lasting impression is good for you.

9. Be Consistent With Branding

When it comes to branding, consistency is key. This is especially true for explainer videos. If your branding changes every time you release a new video, it can be confusing and frustrating for your viewers. Worse yet, it can make your brand seem unprofessional.

Keeping your branding consistent across all of your videos helps to create a strong overall identity for your company. It also makes it easier for viewers to remember who you are and what you do. In the competitive world of business, that’s a valuable advantage.

The typefaces, as well as the color palette all, contribute to ensuring a strong brand recall value. If you are hiring a professional video production agency, it's recommended that you provide them with your brand guidelines when you're pitching the idea.

10. Test Your Explainer Video

Once you’ve created your explainer video, it’s important to test it before you upload it. This will ensure that the video looks and sounds the way you want it to and that there are no errors.

Testing your video also allows you to get feedback from others. This feedback can help you improve your video and make sure that it’s effective in communicating your message.

While you could let your friends or family be the early watchers, you'll get more useful insights if you include actual users from your target audience or members from professionally directed focus groups.

After they have seen the explainer video, here are some questions that you should ask them:

• Did the video explain the concept clearly?
• Was anything confusing or difficult to understand?
• Did the video make you want to learn more about the topic?
• What did you like or not like about the video?
• Would you recommend this video to a friend?
• How does the explainer video affect brand perception?

Based on the feedback you get, make changes if needed. Your viewers can provide valuable insights that can help you improve your video.

If your messaging isn’t clear or your video doesn’t serve the intended purpose, you have a chance to correct it before publishing it.

Now you know all the ingredients that go into making an awesome explainer video.

What’s next?

Let’s take a look at some explainer video formats and examples to help you get inspired.

5 Explainer Video Types That You Can Explore + Examples

When it comes to explainer videos, you can get as creative as you want. There are a number of formats you can experiment with.

For instance, to boost your reputation, you can showcase video testimonials from your clients. Alternatively, you can highlight how you helped clients through infographics as well.

Want more inspiration on how to use explainer videos in your visual marketing strategy?

Let’s take a look at some of the different types of explainer videos:

1. Infographics Video

These types of explainer videos use animated objects and infographics to communicate their message. Microsoft used an infographic video to educate their audience about using AI at scale.

2. Cut-Out Animation Videos

As the name suggests, these videos use paper cut-outs in them. Margaret Scrinkl, an animator, made a video to spread awareness about donating blood with this video type.

3. Fully Animated Videos

These types of explainer videos leverage animation to connect with the audience. It could include 2D or 3D animation.

Airbnb made an animated explainer video highlighting the unique experiences that their guests can experience with them. In the video, they also explain how guests can familiarize themselves with the hosts and leave reviews.

4. Screencast Videos

If you want to give your audience a complete walkthrough, screencast videos are your best bet. It’s as if you are sharing your screen with them. These types of explainer videos are well-suited for software solutions and apps.

The folks at Slack use a screencast video to explain what their software program can do and how their audience can use it.

5. Live-Action Explainer Videos

Live-action videos are just like the advertisements or videos you see on TV. They involve people and real locations. If you are looking for a human touch, you should opt for live-action videos.

Dollar Shave Club, for example. Have an explainer video that explains their monthly subscription model.

Best Tools to Create Explainer Videos

When it comes to creating explainer videos, you have a few different options as to the tools you can use. In this section, we'll take a look at some of the best tools that you can use to create amazing explainer videos.

1. Powtoon

This software is great for creating animated videos and is really easy to use. You don't need any prior animation experience or skills to get started. Just choose from one of the many templates available and start adding your own content.

2. Adobe After Effects

This software is used by professional animators and filmmakers, so it's definitely on the more advanced end of the spectrum. But if you're willing to put in the time and learn how to use it, you can create some incredible videos with After Effects.

3. Camtasia

This is a more affordable option than Adobe After Effects, and it's great for creating screen recordings and short video tutorials. It's also really easy to use, so even beginner videographers can create professional-looking videos with Camtasia.

4. Visme

Visme allows you to create professional-quality videos with no prior video editing experience. You can start from scratch or use one of the many templates available. Visme also offers a wide range of animations and graphics that you can use to create a good explainer video.

5. Animaker

With Animaker, you can create videos of any length, in any style, and for any purpose. Whether you need an explainer video for your business or a product demo video, Animaker has the tools and templates you need.

6. Biteable

Biteable is a video creation platform that makes it easy to create explainer videos. You can choose from a library of animated templates, or create your own video from scratch. It also offers a wide range of customization options, so you can make your video look and feel exactly the way you want.

7. Toonly

Toonly is a platform that enables you to create explainer videos quickly and easily. You can choose from a range of templates, and then add your own text and images. Unlike other video making tools in this list, this is a desktop tool. So, you won’t be able to access your videos from a Cloud.

8. Animoto

Animoto is a video creation platform that allows users to create explainer videos quickly and easily. One of the great things about Animoto is that there are so many different styles to choose from. You can pick a style that matches your brand, or one that fits the topic of your video. Animoto also offers a range of templates and themes, so you can find the perfect look for your video.

9. Moovly

If you want to create whiteboard explainer videos, Moovly is a great option. Using this platform, you can add audio clips and images to your videos with ease. It also has multiple editing tools that make editing a breeze.

10. Wideo

Wideo is a cloud-based video editing software. It's perfect for filmmakers with some video editing and animation expertise who want to customize videos and add advanced animated effects.

FAQs

Ready to Create Your Own Explainer Video?

Explainer videos can help you reach out to potential customers and make them familiar with your products and services.

Not only are they great for improving your brand awareness, but they can also boost your online visibility. If you get them right, you can expect to get more high-quality leads. Go on, make your own explainer video now!

Do you have any questions related to explainer videos? Please add them in the comments section below.

LeadsBridge Review: Key Features

Who Should Use LeadsBridge?

And anyone who wants to:

How Did I Come Across LeadsBridge?

If you’re a marketer, you already know how annoying it can be to manually import or export lead data. I was looking for marketing technology that enables companies to make this process less tedious. That’s when I came across Lead Sync – one of the main product offerings from LeadsBridge.

I was intrigued because I could see that it works with LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, TikTok Lead Ads, Facebook Lead Ads, and Google Lead Ads. So, I went to their website to find out more about what LeadsBridge has to offer.

Here is a snippet from their homepage:

A quick glance tells you that it is a platform designed keeping in mind the needs of advertisers who want to make the most of business data. There are lots of integrations available, so I can tell that you can get a complete view of your sales funnel.

With their easy integrations, you can create your very own marketing ecosystem and get a bird’s-eye view of your sales funnel.

Detailed Review: How to Use LeadsBridge

If you’ve read my LeadsBridge review up to this point, you already know that LeadsBridge is a platform that connects marketing and advertising tools with CRMs and email marketing software to help fill the gaps.

Mind you, it’s not a lead generation software program. It only aids in the acquisition of customers as well as improves internal communication. But how does it do all of that?

Some of the key features of LeadsBridge include real-time sync, segmentation, filtering, lookalike audiences, custom integration, and more.

In this section of my LeadsBridge review, let’s take a detailed look at the platform and what it can do for you.

1. Lead Sync

Lead Sync is the soul of LeadsBridge. It is a real-time integration tool that allows you to sync your lead data in real time with your most used marketing tools.

With this tool, you can collect leads and move them through the pipeline seamlessly. As soon you get a lead, you can even start segmenting it from different lead sources, including:

What’s more, you can send your leads auto-responses and SMSes automatically. For a more efficient workflow, you can segment your leads and distribute them at your convenience. It also comes equipped with advanced data mapping and options for filtering leads easily.

In a nutshell, Lead Sync ensures that you can generate and nurture your leads effortlessly. Wondering how it works? Here’s a quick explanation:

Step 1: Use LeadsBridge to integrate Google Ads lead form extensions, Facebook Lead Ads, TikTok Lead Generation, and LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms with your CRM.

Step 2: When users interact with any of your ads on these platforms, LeadsBridge gathers and syncs all the data with your chosen CRM.

Step 3: Act on the lead data as soon as possible so you can get more conversions.

Sounds simple, right? When you sign up on the platform, all you need to do to set it up is add the source and the destination. Check it out here:

Next, you can choose to connect via a Simple Bridge or a Complex Bridge. If you want fast automation, a Simple Bridge is the way to go.

Once that is done, you can connect your apps, and set the automation up. It’s an easy setup that will hardly take five minutes.

Since we are discussing lead data, it’s important to know if your data stays safe. On their website, LeadsBridge claims that they do not store any data and that their platform is GDPR and CCPA compliant.

The platform is designed for ease, so it comes with a host of integrations that will help you get a 360-degree vision of your marketing funnel. Some of the marketing and CRM integrations that come with LeadsBridge include:

… and more

2. Audience Targeting

LeadsBridge’s main tools for Audience Targeting include:

This feature allows you to collect data from your existing customers that are entered in your CRM. By connecting segmented lists and combining different data sources, you can create accurate audiences.

To create a more targeted audience, you can use specific filters and formulas on the platform. Once you identify your evergreen audience, you can also retarget them or create lookalike audiences. This feature is especially useful if you are trying to upsell or cross-sell your products.

3. Online-to-Offline Tracking

While tracking marketing data online, you're only getting part of the story. Although you may still make offline sales, it's nearly impossible to determine which online campaigns are working and which aren't.

LeadsBridge solves that problem with this feature. It enables you to add Facebook Conversions API and Google Offline Conversions Tracking right away with the platform.

4. Platform-to-Platform

As we discussed before, LeadsBridge enables you to link your marketing stack to make teams more effective and eliminate data silos problems by automating the whole process with our platform-to-platform technology.

While the platform already offers multiple integrations, I love the fact that they offer an option to get custom integrations as well. A big thumbs up for that!

LeadsBridge FAQs

What Are Others Saying?

LeadsBridge Review: Case Studies

In this section of my review of LeadsBridge, let’s take a look at some case studies to understand the effectiveness of the platform.

Case Study #1: Truck Driving School Saw 300% Increase in Conversion Rate

The main challenge for Roadmaster Drivers School was to grow its search coverage and generate high-quality leads by matching students with the courses they might be interested in. They wanted to achieve a bigger volume of qualified leads at a lower CPA.

For this, the company started testing lead form extensions on their Search campaigns across key markets with LeadsBridge. In their ad, users could click on the “Apply Now” button and reach a pre-filled form to submit their inquiry.

Through this system, the company could streamline their conversion process and capture the overall demand for those interested in new opportunities.

After they started using LeadsBridge, the company saw the following results:

After they implemented these lead form extensions, Roadmaster generated the maximum leads from the Search campaign.

You can check out more about the case study on their website.

Case Study #2: Templafy Increased their ROI by Approximately 475% With LeadsBridge

One of the fastest-growing tech companies in Europe, Templafy used LeadsBridge to generate more leads. It is a cloud-based document asset management system. They wanted to leverage LinkedIn to get more paying customers.

For this, they used LeadsBridge for LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms. Here is the massive growth they saw because of the campaign:

To learn more about this case study, you can check out their blog post.

Case Study #3: Totalplay Saw an Increase of 20% More Leads After Using Google Ads Lead Form Extensions From LeadsBridge

Totalplay is one of the main telecommunication providers in Mexico that offers TV, telephone services, and high-speed internet across 20 main cities in the country. They were facing a tough time acquiring high-quality leads from their digital marketing campaigns.

To generate more leads, they decided to use Google Ads Lead Form Extensions from LeadsBridge. As a result, their sales closed at approximately a 20% higher rate.

LeadsBridge Review: What’s The Final Verdict?

LeadsBridge is here to make the lives of all marketers easier. It’s super helpful, saves your time, and makes the process of lead generation more efficient. Sure, the pricing may seem a bit high for smaller businesses but it does provide rich functionality to justify that price point.

Another bonus? LeadsBridge support – their team is responsive, friendly, and extremely patient. You can count on them to help you with bugs whenever you need them.

Plus, they have a free version if you don’t want to pay but use the features. If you are a business that uses a CRM and other digital marketing tools, you should at least give it a try.