Spaghetti is More than Sauce and Noodles: Personas for Your Marketing Strategy

This weekend, you’ve got a fantastic meal planned for some friends: you’re making your grandmother’s world-famous spaghetti. You’re at the market, and you’ve grabbed all the ingredients to make her sauce. Next is the pasta. With the basket about full, you grab just a few more things, then head to check out and work your way back home.  Continue…

Marketing & Advertising: Can You Name the Difference?

Although advertising and marketing are often used interchangeably, the two terms represent different aspects of the business process. While marketing encompasses the entire process of selling a product or service to a certain audience, advertising focuses on a particular facet of this process.  Continue…

Why Apple’s New Ad Is Absolutely Genius

This week Apple released a new ad that is, quite frankly, as unlike Apple as can be. While Apple has for years been acclaimed for its eloquent, clean, inspiring, and rather calculated advertisements featuring its products, this week’s ad featured products in a much more realistic setting. Though the popularity of products from iPhones to AirPods is so prevalent that Apple no longer has to reiterate its slogan of “think different,” Apple has always been rooted to this famous catchphrase. Continue…

Why Your Business Needs a Marketing Strategy

There are many complex components that make up a well-developed marketing strategy, and without direction, these components will have no connection to one another, and thus lose purpose. Your business’ marketing efforts can get lost in the shuffle of aimless ads and marketing tactics all too easily if your strategy is not well devised. A marketing strategy’s purpose is to bind each component seamlessly; to connect the dots of your objectives, audience, and methods all in a cohesive manner.  

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How Influencers Have Impacted Marketing

Influencer marketing seems to be taking the lead as this year’s most “influential” marketing approach. Have you ever noticed someone you follow on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat mention different products from time to time? I hate to break it to you, but that influencer you follow was more than likely paid to mention that product on their personal feed. This approach gives companies access to thousands, if not millions, of people they would not have otherwise been able to reach.

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Five Tips for Branding on Social Media

Brand strategy as a concept can often be bit murky or esoteric. Whether you’re an established business or an individual searching for a more prominent way to self-brand, it can be difficult to identify a starting point and select a course of action. Social media offers endless opportunity for engagement, so maintaining a cohesive presence across platforms can be daunting. It’s important to remember that your strategy is your anchor, and keeps your team in sync with how your brand interacts with the world.

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Identifying Your Target Market

Identifying your target market isn’t easy, and it takes time. Once you’ve identified your target market, you need to get in front of them, grab their attention and give them a relatable reason for why they should choose your product or service. This is where it gets tricky–it is up to you to also give your customer something in return for their attention. In other words, you had better know your audience.

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Sports Score on Social Media

To some, sports is a religion. Strangers band together to celebrate wins, or to reck havoc when teams lose.

Before the introduction of social media, sports were only available live either on the TV or radio. Of course there were post game updates on networks like ESPN or articles posted on major internet news sites, but ultimately, there were no live updates a decade ago. Now, social media is playing a huge role in how we view sports. Continue…

Building Your Business With Lead Nurturing

Building Your Business With Lead NurturingIn nature, “nurturing” anti inflammatory supplements always implies a particular relationship between the nurturer and the nuturee: the party with more knowledge/experience/information/power shares those qualities with the party possessing less, with the goal of bringing about positive change. Appropriately, “lead nurturing” in the email marketing world refers to the educational relationship you create with subscribers, with the goal of persuading them to act. When you get it right, you’ll not only get more customers to say yes, you’ll also build a core of loyal clients who throw their business your way again and again.

Basics of Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing isn’t just sending emails once a week. It involves providing relevant, useful information to the subscriber about the offer you want him to accept. And it requires planning.

  • Create a target audience persona. Your email list includes a variety of personality and customer types, but in order to create the most effective email campaign, you’ll need to choose one target persona to focus on. Create each email with that personality in mind. What motivates them? What information do they need? What questions do they want answered? Focus on building a relationship with your target audience in order to earn their loyalty.
  • Determine a consistent email frequency and sequence. Every new lead on your list should receive the same emails in the same order and at the same frequency. Each new message should have a specific goal and call to action. Frequency should be no less than once a week; every five to six days works well in most cases.
  • Create content. Each email should contain helpful, actionable, and educational content. Be creative. Try videos, FAQs, surveys, special reports and other formats to get the most important information about your company and your offer into the hands of your subscribers. Emails should build on each other, creating forward momentum and culminating with your ultimate call to action.
  • Use offer-based opt-ins. Provide an incentive for opting in to your email list that is related to your ultimate offer. If you’re selling a weight loss e-book, for instance, your opt-in offer could be a free report detailing seven secrets to reducing the risk of Type II diabetes.
  • Use autorepsonders. Autoresponders ensure that each new lead gets the same emails at the same frequency. It’s the smartest way to keep your email campaign ducks in a row.

Securing Action With Lead Nurturing

Once your campaign is up and running, keep a close eye on your analytics and your banner stands. Monitor which links are being clicked, how many subscribers convert, how many new leads you get, and where those leads are coming from. Tweak your campaign based on subscriber behavior.

Persuading your target audience to say yes begins with a strong lead nurturing campaign designed to educate and build relationships. Strong content, effective planning, and a solid approach to email creation and distribution will create a loyal audience that wants what you have to offer.