Sales funnel also known as a revenue funnel or sales process refers to the buying process that companies lead customers through when purchasing products. The definition also refers to the process through which a company finds, qualifies, and sells its products to buyers. Keep reading for more details.

In the digital marketing industry, the sales funnel is one of the core concepts which can take your business from the unknown to a multi-million-dollar marketing machine.

If you want to take your business from zero to hero in no time, you must learn what a sales funnel is and how it works.

Did you know some marketers have built a career around implementing this single marketing concept?

Simultaneously, many entrepreneurs, coaches, influencers, and even marketers find it hard to wrap their heads around this concept.

So, we decided to develop a comprehensive blog post, explaining the sales funnel, its importance, and how it works. We also added ways you can create and optimize your marketing funnel to make the maximum impact for your business.

Why Is Sales Funnel Important?

A sales funnel helps you understand what potential customers are thinking and doing at each stage of the purchasing journey.

These insights allow you to invest in the right marketing activities and channels, create the most relevant messaging during each stage, and turn more prospects into paying customers.

From the moment prospects hear about your product or service until the moment they make a purchase (or don’t), they pass through different stages of your sales funnel.

That journey through your funnel may change from one prospect to another, but in the end, they’ll evaluate it based on their interest level.

They’ll think about the problem they’re trying to solve and conduct competitive research to make sure your offering is the best solution.

Before you start building your sales funnel, it is essential to have a clear business vision, develop an e-commerce marketing strategy, and then define your target audience to work towards your business growth.

If, for example, you are looking at how to create an online clothing store, you need to follow specific steps to develop your business and stay successful.

Stages/Phases of a Sales Funnel

The typical sales funnel is divided into multiple steps, which differ depending on the particular sales model. One of the most common ways of dividing a sales funnel possesses seven phases including:

Stage 1: Discovery/Awareness Phase.

Stage 2: Interest Phase.

Stage 3: Decision Phase.

Stage 4: Action Phase.

Each funnel pushes qualified leads into the next stage and removes those that aren’t a good fit for your products or services. Let’s discuss the stages of a sales funnel to understand how sales funnel works:

Stage 1: Discovery/Awareness Phase

In the awareness stage, your ideal customer may realize they are going through a problem.

But they’re still struggling to identify their challenge. This person could have many questions about their problem and how your business can solve it. At this point, they need to seek resources that could educate them about the problem.

This is where having additional content will come in handy. You want to have content about your products or services that your potential client can find on the web or on social media.

If you’re a life coach, your prospects at this stage might be asking this question: what is the purpose and direction of my life?

Or, if you sell mattresses, your prospects at the awareness stage might be asking: why do I wake up with lower back pain?

So, at the top of the funnel, your audience needs information so they can articulate their problems and ask the right questions.

Your job at this point should be to create content that educates them on their challenges or problems. That’s the way you convert untouched prospects into leads and move them one step down the funnel.

Stage 2: Interest Phase

At this stage, your prospects understand their problem and know something about your business, but they want to learn more.

However, they’re not yet ready to buy or sign up for your products. They’re still looking for possible solutions.

People usually take into account all available solutions to solve their problems.

For example, they’re sure that they need to do something to fix their back pains, but they’re not quite sure whether or not your mattresses are the right product to buy.

In other words, they’re looking for types of solutions rather than evaluating solution providers.

This is where you need content that tells how your mattress can help them get rid of back pain and why they should buy them.

Stage 3: Decision Phase

This is where your potential clients are ready to buy. They might be considering you as well as your competitors. Now your potential customers are at the bottom of the funnel knowing everything about their problem and potential solutions.

And, most importantly, they’re ready to select the business to buy the solution. Their questions at this stage are vendor-driven. This is when you should be making your best offers.

Small factors like free shipping, a bonus product, or a discount can set your offers apart from your competitors.

Whatever you offer, make it so attractive that your website visitors or audience will rush to become your customers.

Stage 4: Action Phase

At the very bottom of the sales funnel, people take action. They buy your products or services and you finally convert a cold lead into a customer through a well-defined process. At this stage, you should be thinking about turning one purchase into five or ten.

If they decide not to do business with you, your efforts can still produce results. Create nurture campaigns to stay top of mind.

Also, make sure to create some remarketing audiences and lookalike audiences to get back in front of your ideal customers one last time.

You can further engage with your customers and encourage them to leave feedback. You can have another stage in your sales funnel that deals with customer retention.

Your story doesn’t end once someone buys your products. A customer can be turned into a repeat customer and brand advocate.

To keep your customers happy, you have to help them thoroughly with all aspects of their problem.

Do you have questions about the subject? Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us. Kindly share and subscribe to our content.

Sales Funnel Optimization is the process of fine-tuning a sales funnel and its stages for the highest acquisition, conversion, and retention of prospective customers. To optimize a sales funnel, strategies and tips need to be employed. Keep reading to know more.

Before you start building your sales funnel, it is essential to have a clear business vision, develop an e-commerce marketing strategy, and then define your target audience to work towards your business growth.

This is where understanding the intricacies of a sales funnel comes in. Such intricacies include;

• Upselling
• Downselling
• Tripwire Marketing
• Paid Media ads
• Sales page
• Retargeting
• Email marketing, and various other tips strategies one can employ. Let’s glance at some of these.

Upselling

Basically, a Sales Funnel Optimization technique where a seller invites the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons to generate more revenue.

While it usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, it can be simply exposing the customer to other options that were perhaps not considered.

Upselling is focused on upgrading or enhancing the product the customer is already buying.

For example, a housekeeping service might upsell a customer buying a weekly cleaning package by offering a package with more rooms, and cross-sell by also offering a carpet deep cleaning service.

Downselling

A downsell is the reverse of what is happening in an upsell, rather than selling a higher-priced product, you offer a similar lower-priced product.

These lower-priced products also help to increase the average order of the customer and bring more profit into the business.

Downselling is a sales technique where you offer an alternative to the primary upsell by offering a more budget-friendly or more convenient buying option to your customers after they must have rejected or declined the upsell.

To some, seeing a reduction in price or a slight change of offer to suit the atmosphere causes a negative impression about a brand or doubt in the authenticity of a product.

While that could be true in some cases.

It’s your call as a business owner to study your audience and present the right downsells to people you think aren’t fit at the moment for your core offer.

Tripwire Marketing

Tripwire marketing is the Sales Funnel Optimization practice of offering leads a low-cost product with the intention of selling them more expensive products later. Tripwire marketing is a common practice intended to increase first customer acquisition.

The term tripwire marketing might sound a little shady like you’re trying to get one over on your customer. That’s not the case at all.

Marketing and advertising experts have been using tripwire marketing for decades in one form or another, and it works just as well online as it does in brick-and-mortar stores. In fact, it’s even more effective because you can more easily stay in touch with the customer.

Let’s say you run a subscription service for which you charge $30 per month. Customer A has been a loyal subscriber for six months, then suddenly cancels his membership.

That’s a tripwire.

You can then use email marketing to reel in Customer A. Reach out via email to ask what went wrong or if you can improve your subscription service in any way.

Then you offer a can’t-miss deal, such as one month for $5 instead of the standard $30 — with the option to cancel at any time, of course.

Paid Media Advertising

Paid media is defined as the purchase of ad inventory on a media channel or publisher site to broadcast your brand message and reach your target audiences. It is a form of digital advertising that includes sponsored content to promote a brand’s products or services.

It is all about paid promotions on other sites to display your marketing message and influence audiences you could never reach before. This can be done on social media, websites, blogs, publications, etc.

An essential component of a digital strategy for brand awareness and revenue growth is media. Media acts as the channel and real estate that carries the brand message and promotes the brand or the brand message.

Sales Page

Not to be confused with a business website or blog, a sales page is a standalone page created with one specific purpose in mind, to secure sales for your product.

The product or service you’re selling on your page can differ depending on your industry or niche. However, the purpose of your sales page remains constant – getting visitors to convert into customers.

A sales page is a great opportunity to explain your products and services to visitors and make them want to buy. It needs to be attention-grabbing, informative, and persuasive, all at the same time.

And if it’s not optimized for conversions, you’re losing money. That means any marketing and advertising budget you’re spending to promote your products will be wasted.

Retargeting

Also known as remarketing, is a form of online advertising that can help you keep your brand in front of bounced traffic after they leave your website.

For most websites, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit. Retargeting is a tool designed to help companies reach 98% of users who don’t convert right away.

Retargeting is a cookie-based technology that uses simple Javascript code to anonymously ‘follow’ your audience all over the Web.

Here’s how it works: you place a small, unobtrusive piece of code on your website (this code is sometimes referred to as a pixel).

The code, or pixel, is unnoticeable to your site visitors and won’t affect your site’s performance. Every time a new visitor comes to your site, the code drops an anonymous browser cookie.

Later, when your cookied visitors browse the Web, the cookie will let your retargeting provider know when to serve ads, ensuring that your ads are served only to people who have previously visited your site.

Retargeting is a powerful branding and conversion optimization tool, but it works best if it’s part of a larger digital strategy.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.

It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations. We have created a concise article on email marketing. You should read it here.

Sales Funnel optimization is the process of fine-tuning a sales funnel and its stages for the highest acquisition, conversion, and retention of prospective customers.

While no sales funnel is perfect, there’s nothing to say that you can’t influence the purchase decision of potential buyers and improve your sales funnel conversion rate. Sales funnel optimization works best if it’s part of a larger digital strategy.

We hope this was useful to You. Do you have questions about the subject? Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us. Kindly share and subscribe to our content.

Paid media advertising is that part of marketing and advertising that requires the purchase of ad space to promote a brand to larger audiences. Brands pay for content promotion to spread their message to audiences, at scale. Paid media advertising is part of a brand’s strategy to increase traffic, sales, and conversions through clicks, and ultimately increase revenue. Continue reading for details.

Paid media is marketing that you pay for. Paid media includes TV ads, print advertising, sponsorships, and other types of media.

In digital marketing, paid media includes pay-per-click (PPC) ads, paid social media ads, and search engine marketing (SEM).

Why is Paid Media Advertising Important?

Paid media is considered to be essential in a complete digital marketing strategy. Different from inbound marketing, paid media allows you to instantly get in front of your target audience and engage them where they are already spending their time.

Paid media is when a small business pays for placement on a platform such as a website, a search engine, social media, video ads, website pop-ups, newsletters, etc.

By using paid media, you can reach audiences that may never have discovered you on their own. Examples include; Paid search results, Facebook and other social media ads, Newsletter sponsorships, Influencer marketing, etc.

Types Of Paid Media Advertising

The concept of paid media has evolved to become the structured, multifaceted operation it is today. In this section, we’re digging into the various ways you can promote your brand through paid media. Here are the top five types of paid media.

Paid Social Media

Probably the most popular of the lot, paid social media needs no introduction. We see it in our everyday lives while scrolling through social media platforms.

Almost every social platform now offers paid options, where you can pay to publish ads for platform users to see, depending on their interests, behavior, demographics, location, etc.

Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest are the top-performing channels for paid social ads.

Each offers a business account that lets you create ads, or boost existing posts. Some even let you prompt users to message you, like your page, and help you get more leads and site visitors.

Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat are also known for influencer marketing where an influential user is approached to promote brands/products to their loyal followers and fans in the brand’s niche.

Influencers are paid a negotiated amount or a percent of the sales, or some even accept gifts and goodies in return for a post about the brand.

Search Engine Ads

These include Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Pay Per Impression (PPI) ads. PPC are those ads that appear on a publisher’s/media owner’s site but the advertiser is charged only when a user clicks on it.

These ads appear on search engine results pages almost like a native ad at the top, with an indication that it is an ad.

They also appear on websites and blogs on the top, left, or right panel – or even at intervals within the content itself.

To effectively use PPC, you will first need to identify the relevant keywords and ensure the bid amount is reasonable enough not to impact your return on investments negatively. Executed correctly, your PPC ad can guarantee you pay for high-value customers with a good chance of converting.

PPI ads are charged each time your ad is displayed on a site, irrespective of interaction or being clicked upon.

They are usually charged per thousand impressions, also known as CPM, as mentioned above. PPI ads can be cost-effective if your ad gets clicked on in addition to simply receiving an impression when compared to CPC ad prices.

Banner Ads

Banner ads, also known as display ads and web ads, are usually visual, image-based ads that show up on websites for a limited period and leads the user to the advertiser’s site or a specific landing page. This type of ad is embedded into the publisher’s website in the form of an image or gif.

The performance of the ad is recorded by its click-through ratio, that is, the number of clicks that come through to the targeted landing page from the publisher’s site divided by the number of ad impressions.

Native Ads

Native ads are those visual or text ads that match the design, typeface and look of the website they are on.

They show up on publisher websites as In-Feed, Sponsored/Recommended Content, Search & Promoted Listings, Promoted Stories, and so on. This type of ad also includes advertorials that inform and influence conversions.

According to Outbrain, native ads get 53% more attention than display ads. This is because ad fatigue doesn’t set in, and the ad doesn’t stand out as a purely commercial piece of content. Native ads are popular across social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

OOH and DOOH

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising and digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising reach users while they are outdoor and in public spaces.

OOH has been a part of traditional advertising to reach users while they commute, shop, etc. via billboards, posters, bus shelters, benches, cinemas, etc. This channel of advertising had no digital or programmatic involvement.

DOOH has taken OOH to the digital realm with in-store kiosks, digital billboards, digital signage, display screens, etc.

The DOOH ad process is becoming more valuable today owing to increasing capabilities and effectiveness.

The ads are no longer a printed banner but a neon board with fully functional screens that can even be interactive. DOOH is also programmatic, making it easier to use and measure.

Paid search enables brands to connect with consumers at the exact moment they are actively searching for information related to their products and services.

Paid media advertising can be leveraged to increase the effectiveness of content marketing, boost your online presence, and drive business performance.

We hope this was useful to You. Do you have questions about the subject? Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us. Kindly share and subscribe to our content.

Social media management is the process of analyzing social media audiences and developing a strategy that’s tailored to them, creating and distributing content for social media profiles, monitoring online conversations, collaborating with influencers, providing community service, and monitoring, measuring, and reporting on social media performance and ROI. Continue reading for more details.

All tasks, which were once marginalized by businesses, have now stepped into the limelight of companies’ marketing strategies.

Why? Because social media provides great money-making opportunities – on the condition you manage your social channels in an organized, efficient way.

What Is Social Media Management?

Social media management is the process of creating, publishing, promoting, and managing content across social media channels.

Social media management goes beyond just posting updates to your company’s social media profiles.

It also includes engaging with your audience and looking for new opportunities to increase reach and visibility.

Why Practice Social Media Management?

SM management offers several benefits, including:

Cost: No matter your marketing budget, social media is a cost-effective initiative. It’s free to join social media networks, post content, respond to user comments, and more.

Even advertising offers a profitable channel for reaching your audience and building an online following.

Reach: Social media networks, from Facebook to LinkedIn, can connect you with users across the world. You can also use social media platforms, like Pinterest, to reach niche audiences.

Traditional marketing and advertising can’t match the reach — or price — or social. That’s why social media management is a must for businesses.

Users: Incorporating social media into your marketing strategy allows you to align your marketing initiatives with user behavior.

For example, 74% of people now use social media when making purchase decisions. Not to mention, 80% of people get advice about a purchase through social media.

Performance: Marketers and business owners alike agree on the performance of social media marketing and advertising.

Via social, companies can build their brand and even generate leads and sales. Almost 45% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers, for instance, have earned a client through Facebook.

With social media’s multiple advantages, it’s worth considering your marketing strategy.

Basic Social Media Management Strategy

Developing a social media strategy is an important part of making sure that each of your campaigns is helping you get closer to meeting your marketing goals.

After you have decided which channels you plan to use, you’ll need to consider how often you plan to post and what types of content you will post.

Start by considering what you know about your audience.

What type of content do they like best?

Develop content that’s engaging but also speaks to their needs and challenges. If you need help getting started, check out these social media marketing ideas.

You should also consider how you plan to make engagement and response a consistent part of your social media management.

Do you plan to reach out to fans and followers and start a conversation? How often will you respond to questions and concerns posted on your page?

Do you plan to use contests to engage your audience? All of this should be somewhere in your social media strategy. You should summarily practice these:

1. Creating a Social Media Schedule
2. Creating and Posting Content to Social Profiles
3. Responding to Fans and Followers
4. Engaging with Others on Social Platforms
5. Creating Social Media Advertising Campaigns
6. Managing Contests and Giveaways
7. Tracking Performance Over Time

Hire A Social Media Management Company

Knowing what the subject is and why it’s important is only half the battle.

Now, you have to put that knowledge to use and start making decisions about your company’s social media management.

For many small businesses, there just isn’t enough time or resources to dedicate to effective social media management.

Posting quality content consistently takes a lot of time and effort that some small business marketing teams just don’t have.

Not to mention, you may not have anyone on your team with the expertise or skills needed to implement effective campaigns.

This is where a social media management company comes in.

A social media management company like CHROMITE SOLUTIONS  helps supplement your digital marketing efforts by providing expert social media marketing services.

Not only do we have the time to dedicate to implementing your campaigns, but we also have the skills and knowledge needed to ensure that your social media efforts are a success.

By this point, there should no longer be a question about what is social media management.

Outsource Your Social Media Management

A lot of businesses try to launch and maintain social campaigns, including your competitors. Get ahead of your competition and use social to its full advantage by exploring and investing in social media management services.

The business potential of social networks is immense. Brands can leverage social media platforms to successfully drive their objectives across the marketing funnel, from raising brand awareness to increasing store visits.

But to be able to accomplish this, they need efficient social media teams.

The more goals you want to achieve through social media marketing, the more people dedicated to this channel you’re going to need. This demand will eventually lead to building complex social media team structures.

If you’re a large brand, you might even have multiple teams in different offices and regions of the world, leveraging different strategies to meet different targets.

We hope this was useful to You. Do you have questions about the subject? Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us. Kindly share and subscribe to our content.

Email marketing is basically the use of email to promote products or services while developing relationships with potential customers or clients. It is essentially direct mail done electronically instead of through the postal service. Learn about the perks of email marketing, methods do it right, and how it compares to some other forms of marketing. Keep reading for more information.

Did you know there are 3x more email accounts than Facebook & Twitter accounts combined? Or that you are 6x more likely to get a click-through from email than on Twitter?

As a savvy marketer, you’ve likely seen the reports that show email has the highest ROI of any marketing channel available. We bet you’re keen to start using email to drive sales and revenue for your business.

How Email Marketing Works

It’s easy to set up and track an email marketing campaign, which makes it accessible for small businesses.

You can add a newsletter sign-up option to your website, for instance. As people sign up, you can send newsletters to a growing audience. You can also direct customers to the newsletter from your social media profiles.

A regular newsletter is a simple and effective way to send updates about your company, upcoming events, and special offers.

Email software also makes it easy to schedule automated promotional emails for customers who haven’t purchased recently.

Email marketing allows you to target particular groups of customers or even specific individuals. Offering individual customers special birthday deals on merchandise or services is one way to do this.

A restaurant, for instance, might send an email to customers on their birthdays offering 50% off an entree.

This kind of personalization helps a business develop and maintain a relationship with a customer—and that can lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.

Basics and Beginner Strategies in Email Marketing

From conversations with small businesses, we’ve learned that figuring out how to get started with email marketing is often the hardest part. How exactly do I get started? What are the steps I need to take? How do I build a list? Here we go

• Choose An Email Marketing Service Provider

If you’re serious about email marketing, you need to work with an email marketing service provider.

Working with a provider is the only way your business can leverage email marketing automation to effectively deliver messages to large groups of contacts or subscribers.

You’ll also benefit from professional email templates, tools to help you grow and manage your email list, and tracking features that show you who is opening and engaging with your campaigns and messages.

• Gather Contacts For Your Email Marketing List

Most businesses will have some existing contacts to start an email list. Think of the customers and people you already have a relationship with.

Maybe it’s the business contacts you email with on a regular basis; maybe you just start with a few supportive friends and family members.

Even if you’re building an email list completely from scratch, don’t get discouraged.

Start by putting a paper sign-up sheet near your register, adding an online sign-up form to your website, and encouraging your social media followers and loyal customers to sign up.

• Add Your Contacts Into Your Email Marketing Account

Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to purchase an email list.

Email marketing is all about building and nurturing relationships; connecting with a smaller list of quality contacts will be more impactful than blasting out messages to contacts that don’t even know your business.

• Practice Writing Persuasive Messages.

This tends to be one of the scariest steps for business owners. I get it — writer’s block happens to the best of us.

What usually snaps me out of it is pretending I’m having a face-to-face conversation with someone and writing down exactly what I’d like to say to them.

It also helps to follow a repeatable process and break your message down into three important sections:

What are you offering? — Headline

How will it help the reader? — Message body

What should they do next? — Call to action

• Track your results

Don’t be deceived — email marketing doesn’t end with a send. You will want to track your open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rates, etc., and work to improve over time.

If you want to see real results from your email marketing, you need a strong understanding of how each email performs so you can make improvements and learn more about your customers and subscribers.

Spending a few minutes in your email reports will tell you valuable information like who opened your email, who clicked on specific links, and what information was the most interesting to your readers.

While it’s important to know how engaging your campaign messages are, make sure you’re tracking actions that happen beyond your emails.

How many clicks to your donation page are translating into real donations? What is the total amount of funds raised from a single email?

Studies by marketing analysts with the company Litmus have consistently found that just under half of all emails are opened on mobile devices.

That means, if your email doesn’t display correctly on mobile platforms, half of your audience is going to think you don’t know how to properly craft an email.

We hope this was useful to You. Do you have questions about the subject? Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us. Kindly share and subscribe to our content.

Social Media Influencers have become sure client and customer magnets. There are more than 500,000 social media influencers on Instagram alone. That means you have many potential opportunities for influencer collaboration. It also means you have to put in the work to find the right influencer. Despite its apparent advantages, influencer marketing is a wasted investment if you are not working with the right ones.  Keep reading for more details.

Marketers’ confidence in their ability to find the right social media influencers vary widely by country. In China, 81% of marketing professionals are confident they can find impactful social media influencers. In the United States, only 39% of marketers feel the same way.

While it’s tempting to use single-metric definitions like unique visitors or Twitter followers as a measure of influence, it’s important to look deeper.

The answer to the question “how influential is someone online?” is “it depends.” Here are things to look for when identifying online influencers for your brand.

• Relevance
• Reach
• Resonance

Relevance Of The Influencer

Just because a blogger posts recipes don’t necessarily mean they are a match for an organic brand, and a tech-savvy sports fan doesn’t make them a guaranteed match for your gaming app.

Are you looking for budget travelers, fashionistas, permissive moms, or coffee drinkers? Is profanity or provocativeness part of your brand personality? These are important things to look for in the content and audience of an influencer and are far more important than traffic.

Before you look at unique visitors and other static metrics, it’s important to look at how aligned a blogger’s content is with your messaging. Read through that blogger’s archived posts to get a sense of what kind of consumer they are.

A relevant influencer shares content relevant to your business and industry. They need to have an audience that aligns with their target market.

For example, Intrepid Travel worked with a group of vegan influencers to launch its new vegan tours. The influencers’ had a highly relevant audience that the company gained access to in an engaging and authentic way.

Erin Ireland is a passionate vegan advocate. Her Instagram post about how the tour opened up travel for her in India as a vegan gained more than 5,700 likes.

Reach Of The Influencer

While not the most important metric, reach is certainly a valid consideration. However, marketers should resist the urge to only look at unique visitors as a measure of reach. Traffic and followers are only meaningful to the extent that the influencer is reaching your brand’s target audience.

For instance, if you are a hotel chain or car seat manufacturer, a travel blogger with a small reach is more influential than a food blogger with 100,000 unique monthly visitors.

It is also important to consider what other social platforms your customers visit. If you are a food or fashion brand, someone with a large following on Pinterest or Instagram might be more valuable than someone on Facebook with a large fan base.

For many verticals, there is a direct correlation between how often blogger post and their traffic and the rate of return visitors. As with marketing any website, it often takes multiple exposures to get a visitor to click and check out your site, and you want to make sure they come back.

Social Media Influencer Resonance

This is the potential level of engagement social media influencers can create with an audience relevant to your brand.

This may sound counter-intuitive, but bloggers who have a smaller ratio of sponsored content tend to be more trusted and appear more authentic.

Personal stories that include genuine use or mention of a product, service, or brand are more trusted than straight product reviews.

Compelling, engaging stories also tend to get more shares and comments than deals and product reviews.

While it’s tempting to ask publishers to write a nice long review of your product (which readers don’t really pay much attention to), a health brand could engage social media influencers to write a post about things on their bucket list and how that list is motivation to stay healthy and live a long, active life.

That type of content is highly engaging for readers, authentic for the blogger, and connects that health brand sponsor to a very sincere health-related conversation among a large audience.

Whatever your niche, you can engage with bloggers to create the quality, authentic content their audience expects while associating your brand with that content.

And remember that influencers are more than just bloggers—they include those with loyal audiences on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, and other social networks.

Miscellaneous Ways To Influence

As you map out your influencer marketing plans, also consider what type of campaign will best help you connect with the type of social media influencers you want to work with.

Different types of influencer campaigns include:

Gifting: giving influencers gifts in exchange for mentions, posts, etc.

Guest posting: getting an influencer to allow you to write for their blog

Sponsored content: paying an influencer to share your content or create content that is tied to your brand

Contests and giveaways: using contests as an incentive to get influencers to mention your brand or share your content

Influencer takeover: letting an influencer take over your social media account for a set amount of time

Affiliates: sharing affiliate codes with influencers so that they earn money each time someone that came through their funnel purchases from your brand

Discount codes: allowing influencers to give discount codes for your offerings to their fans and followers

Brand ambassadors: partnering with an influencer who regularly promotes your brand in exchange for discounts and perks from your brand

Do you have questions about the subject? Don’t hesitate to reach out and ask us. Kindly share and subscribe to our content.

Influencer marketing is now an established form of online marketing. It has been a buzzword for a while now, and the mainstream media regularly refers to it. Yet, there are still people who don’t really understand what influencer marketing is all about. Indeed, some people come across the phrase for the first time and instantly ponder, “What is influencer marketing?” Read for more details.

A decade ago, the influencer marketing arena was limited only to celebrities and a few dedicated bloggers. Now, it seems like we’ve seen social media influencers rise, saturate the market, and even get caught up in fraud.

If you’ve started research on influencer marketing before, you may have found conflicting information, with recommendations that range from you should absolutely be using social influencers or that they’re not necessary for growth.

Influencer marketing strategies are more difficult to navigate than ever as a brand, but we’re here with a guide to making sense of it all.

What Is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a form of collaboration. A business collaborates with an influential person to promote something. It could be a product, service, or campaign.

Celebrity endorsements were the original form of influencer marketing.

But in today’s digital world, social content creators with niche audiences can often offer more value to brands.

These people have dedicated and engaged groups of followers on social media. They are known simply as “social media influencers.”

More than two-thirds of North American retailers use some form of influencer marketing. And almost half of US and UK digital marketers spend at least 10% of their marketing communication budget on influencer marketing.

Who/What are Influencers?

Influencer Marketing is a hybrid of old and new marketing tools. It takes the idea of celebrity endorsement and places it into a modern-day content-driven marketing campaign.

The main differentiator in the case of influencer marketing is that the results of the campaign are collaborations between brands and influencers.

But influencer marketing doesn’t just involve celebrities. Instead, it revolves around influencers, many of whom would never consider themselves famous in an offline setting.

In our article, What is an Influencer we defined an influencer as being someone who has:

the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his or her audience.

a following in a distinct niche, with whom he or she actively engages. The size of the following depends on the size of his/her topic of the niche.

One of the biggest mistakes that traditional media makes is a failure to see the difference between celebrities and online influencers.

It is also important to realize that it is the influencers who have built a keen and enthusiastic audience. It is not accidental that these people follow influencers, not the brand.

In reality, the audience doesn’t care less about your brand. They only care about the opinions of the influencers.

Don’t try and foist rules and business practices onto an influencer. The audience is theirs, and they can simply walk away, taking their followers with them.

The Role of Social Media Influencers?

Quite simply, an influencer is someone who can influence others.

A social media influencer is someone who wields that influence through social media. The form of influence can vary and no two influencers are the same.

The right influencer can reach your target audience, build trust, and drive engagement. They create original, engaging content. They won’t be keen to follow a template advertising style provided by your brand.

So, it’s critical to work only with social media influencers whose vision aligns with your own.

Influencers can have millions of followers. Perhaps the world’s best-known influencer is Kendall Jenner. She has 108 million followers on Instagram and regularly gets millions of likes on her branded posts.

How To Find The Right Social Media Influencer

There are more than 500,000 active influencers on Instagram alone. That means you have many potential opportunities for influencer collaboration. It also means you have to put in the work to find the right influencer.

Marketers’ confidence in their ability to find the right influencer varies widely by country. In China, 81% of marketing professionals are confident they can find impactful influencers. In the United States, only 39% of marketers feel the same way.

Consider the three Rs of influence

Influence is made up of three components:

• Relevance
• Reach
• Resonance

Relevance

A relevant influencer shares content relevant to your business and industry. They need to have an audience that aligns with your target market.

For example, Intrepid Travel worked with a group of vegan influencers to launch its new vegan tours. The influencers’ had a highly relevant audience that the company gained access to in an engaging and authentic way.

Erin Ireland is a passionate vegan advocate. Her Instagram post about how the tour opened up travel for her in India as a vegan gained more than 5,700 likes.

Reach

Reach is the number of people you could potentially reach through the influencer’s follower base.

Resonance

This is the potential level of engagement the influencer can create with an audience relevant to your brand.

Bigger isn’t always better. A huge follower count is meaningless if those followers aren’t interested in your offer. And a smaller follower count can be very powerful if it’s a niche area. Niche influencers can have very dedicated and engaged followers.

‘Tapinfluence’ found that engagement rates are often higher for “micro-influencers.” Micro-influencers have 5,000 to 25,000 followers. Thirty percent of North American retailers now work with micro-influencers.

The latest development is the emergence of nano-influencers. These influencers can have as few as 1,000 followers, but their word is gold to their dedicated fans.

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Both marketers and consumers begin their web services on mobile marketing platforms and devices. Digital marketers, in particular, are excited to run mobile campaigns, because they know that mobile users are motivated buyers. According to Salesforce, “68% of companies have integrated mobile marketing into their overall marketing strategy.” Let’s go into the details.

What is Mobile Marketing?

Are you reading this post from a mobile device? I’m certain, considering that 80% of internet users own a smartphone.

Mobile marketing is a multi-channel, digital marketing strategy aimed at reaching a target audience on their smartphones, tablets, and/or other mobile devices, via websites, email, SMS and MMS, social media, and apps.

Mobile marketing is a way to promote products or services through mobile devices. With this strategy, target consumers access location and time-sensitive customized content that promotes certain products, services, or ideas.

Types of Mobile Marketing

There is a variety of mobile marketing techniques to try for a business. Factors like your budget, specific industry, and customer segment determine the success of the strategy. That said, below are some mobile marketing options:

• Mobile app marketing. Mobile apps allow businesses to include ads in specific mobile application designs. Facebook is an excellent example of ads in an app.
• In-game advertisements. This approach refers to all advertisements on mobile devices that pop up when certain games are opened or in progress. These ads can appear as full-image ads, banner pop-ups, or video ads that show up during loading screens.
• Quick-response barcode (QR codes). These barcodes are scanned using the camera of a phone, and then the customers are redirected to the linked site from where they can see more information regarding a particular brand.
• Mobile banner ads. These banners are pretty much the same as the ones on the desktop, only that they are adequately smaller to fit on the screens of mobile devices.
• Proximity or Bluetooth marketing. With this approach, consumers get location-specific ads enabled from the Bluetooth on their devices.
• Voice marketing. This is when businesses use computer-produced and automated calls to promote their goods or services. It is up to the customer to decide whether to hang up or listen to the phone call.
• SMS marketing. This method of mobile marketing is, by far, the most common. Marketers use this medium to reach out to customers with offers and other relevant information via their mobile gadgets.

Why Is Mobile Marketing Important?

Mobile users spend 89% of their time on mobile apps, making mobile devices dominate communication.

The overall view and amount of content on mobile devices are simplified due to their smaller size. As mobile devices are smaller and lighter than computers, users can easily carry them everywhere and make purchases at any time they want.

Mobile hastens the time to purchase by 20 percent.

Compared to a year ago, 50 percent of smartphone users expect to buy something immediately while using their devices.

Ninety-one percent of smartphone users plan purchases or buy individual items after seeing relevant ads.

2/3 of customers who use smartphones are likely to purchase from businesses that have apps or mobile websites with content customized to their location.

Forty percent of online transactions occur on mobile devices.

Benefits of Mobile Marketing

Compared to other forms of marketing, mobile marketing has several significant benefits.

Text messaging is easy and comparatively cheap. If we take traditional advertising methods such as TV ads or printing ads into account, SMS is obviously cheaper. Like ad formats such as PPC or email marketing campaigns, text messages are pretty easy to send and they require no technical skills.

• SMS has a high CTR. Since people consider communicating via their mobile devices more private than email, for example, they check their phones more often and never ignore messages. Users only share their phone numbers with their favorite companies, so they are already waiting for your promotions.
• Especially useful for local businesses. Local companies can easily tell their loyal customers about hot deals, the latest arrivals, and special offers via SMS. Clients won’t miss this chance to drop in to check out your offers.

Here Are Some Basic Guides

• Research your target customers. A marketer should conduct thorough research on their consumer demographic to gather useful information such as what they like, the sites they visit, the apps they use, and so forth. This information enables the marketer to create effective ads.

• Leverage opportunities on social media. To effectively push a brand, marketers should create great ads that appeal to large numbers of social media users.
• Set goals. Measuring the results and progress of a particular mobile marketing strategy is only possible if the purposes of the campaign are set beforehand.
• Create mobile-friendly campaigns. Since the aim is to push a brand via mobile devices, it makes sense to create content, apps, or websites that are fit for mobile usage.
• Perform location-based marketing. One of the most effective ways of minimizing the bounce rate is by providing ads that are relevant to the target audience. Use tools such as Google Trends, GPS, and apps like Google Local inventory to send out campaigns that resonate with the target demographic.
• Consider the unique features of mobile devices. Create ads that can be manipulated by different mobile device features to make the user’s experience quite memorable.

For instance, rather than creating video ads that cannot be paused, one can put up an advertisement that can be paused, rewound, forwarded, and so forth to enable customers to get a clearer picture regarding a product.

Offer incentives. Providing some rewards or offers will encourage prospective customers to take action.

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I bet that when you hear “content marketing,” you think about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and viral YouTube videos. But content marketing has been around far longer than the Internet. Because content marketing is all about storytelling, and humans have told stories for as long as they could speak. Our attention will always go to those who tell great stories. Continue reading for more details.

Content marketing is the process of creating and sharing valuable free content to attract prospects and convert them into customers. The goal is to educate, entertain and inspire people to earn their trust and build brand awareness.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.

It is often used by businesses in order to achieve the following goals: attract attention and generate a lead, expand their customer base, generate or increase online sales, increase brand awareness or credibility, and engage an online community of users.

Content marketing attracts new customers by creating and sharing valuable free related information. It helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty, provides valuable information to consumers, and creates a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.

Why Is This Important?

Content marketing as a marketing strategy can be valuable to educate your target audience and help them get excited about your business. It’s also a good way to stay in touch with and re-engage existing customers.

To understand why it can work as a strategy, think about the buyer’s journey. For many companies, it may look something like this:
• Awareness phase: this is where the potential customer is seeking information on a topic. They may be looking for a solution to a problem they experience or are simply looking for information on a topic they’re researching.
• Consideration phase: the potential customer is learning more about the options available that solve their problem, including your product or service.
• Purchase phase: the potential customer is looking for information on how to make a purchase.
It is a scalable way to bring in customers and potential customers to your site via each of these stages.

You can create content that targets those in the awareness, consideration, or purchase phase.

As long as the content is optimized and provides what the audience is looking for, it has the potential to continue to bring in potential customers long after it’s been created.

What are the best ways to accomplish content marketing?

There are many different ways to get started with the topic in question. A content strategy might include some or all of the following:
• Posting regularly to a blog. This can help you connect with customers and potential customers at any stage of the customer journey.
• Downloadable content (ebooks, templates). Gated downloadable content can work well to attract prospects at the top or middle of the funnel.
• Rich media (videos and podcasts). Rich media is a popular way to interact with your target audience and can be used across many marketing strategies, including SEO, social, and PPC strategies.
• Webinars. Webinars can help educate your target audience and form a deeper, more personal connection with customers.
• Interactive tools. Interactive tools can showcase what your product has to offer, or simply serve as a way to engage your target market.
• Emails. Emails help companies regularly re-engage their customers and prospects who have expressed interest in their content or business.
• Landing pages. Good landing page content can be crucial to helping site visitors understand your product or service, see the value, and want to learn more.

Specifically, there are three key reasons — and benefits — for enterprises that use content marketing; Increased sales, Cost savings, and better customers who have more loyalty.

Go back and read the definition one more time, but this time remove the relevant and valuable.
That’s the difference between content marketing and the other informational garbage you get from companies trying to sell you “stuff.”

How Does it Relate To Digital Marketing Branches?

Regardless of what type of marketing tactics you use, content marketing should be part of your process, not something separate. Quality content is part of all forms of marketing.

Social media marketing: Content marketing strategy comes before your social media strategy.
SEO: Search engines reward businesses that publish quality, consistent content.
PR: Successful PR strategies address issues readers care about, not their business.
PPC: For PPC to work, you need great content behind it.
Inbound marketing: Content is key to driving inbound traffic and leads.
Content strategy: Content strategy is part of most digital marketing strategies.

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Social media marketing platforms are based on building virtual communities that allow consumers to express their needs, wants and values, online. Social media marketing then connects these consumers and audiences to businesses that share the same needs, wants, and values. Through social networking sites, companies can keep in touch with individual followers. Keep reading for details.

Social media marketing uses social media networks to market a company’s products and services.

It allows companies to engage with existing customers and reach new ones as they promote their culture, mission, or tone. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are commonly used to execute marketing. But what exactly is Social Media Marketing and how does it work?

The term social media marketing (SMM) refers to the use of social media and social networks to market a company’s products and services.

Social media marketing provides companies with a way to engage with existing customers and reach new ones while allowing them to promote their desired culture, mission, or tone.

SMM has purpose-built data analytics tools that allow marketers to track the success of their efforts.

How Social Media Marketing (SMM) Works

Social networking websites allow individuals, businesses, and other organizations to interact with one another and build relationships and communities online. When companies join these social channels, consumers can interact with them directly.

That interaction can be more personal to users than traditional methods of outbound marketing and advertising.

Social networking sites act as word of mouth or more precisely, e-word of mouth. The Internet’s ability to reach billions across the globe has given online word of mouth a powerful voice and far reach.

SMM Platforms and Tools

Social media has changed the way we function as a society, including the way we connect with one another.

As platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram took off, businesses also took notice. They began to use these sites to further their interests through social media marketing. That’s because these sites are able to change consumer behavior.

Social media websites allow marketers to employ a broad range of tactics and strategies to promote content and have people engage with it.

Many social networks allow users to provide detailed geographical, demographic, and personal information, which enables marketers to tailor their messages to what is most likely to resonate with users.

Customer response rates or the number of times customers post about a company. A major strategy used in social media marketing is to develop messages and content that individual users will share with their family, friends, and coworkers.

This strategy relies on word-of-mouth and provides several benefits. First, it increases the message’s reach to networks and users that a social media manager may not have been able to access otherwise.

Second, shared content carries an implicit endorsement when sent by someone who the recipient knows and trusts.

Social media strategy involves the creation of content that is sticky. This means that it gets a user’s attention and increases the possibility that they will conduct a desired action, such as buying a product or sharing the content with others in their own network.

Marketers create viral content that’s designed to spread quickly between users.

Social media marketing should also encourage customers to create and share their own content, such as product reviews or comments. This is referred to in the marketing industry as earned media.

Key Pillars of Social Media Marketing

Strategy: This step involves determining goals, the social media channels to be used, and the type of content that will be shared.

Planning and Publishing: Businesses should draft plans of what their content will look like (i.e. will there be videos? Photos? How much script?) and decide when it will be put out on the platform.

Listening and Engagement: Monitoring what users, customers, and others are saying about the posts, brands, and any other business assets. This may require the adoption of a social media engagement tool.

Analytics and Reporting: Part of being on social media is knowing how far posts are going, so reports of engagement and reach are very important

Advertising: Purchasing ads on social media is a great way to promote and further develop a brand. 2

Because audiences can be better segmented than more traditional marketing channels, companies can ensure they focus their resources on the audience that they want to target using social media marketing.

Some of the metrics used to measure the success of social media marketing (which is also known as digital marketing and e-marketing) include: website reports, such as Google Analytics, and return on investment (ROI).

Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media marketing campaigns have the advantage of appealing to a broad audience at once. For example, a campaign may appeal to current and prospective customers, employees, bloggers, the media, the general public, and other stakeholders, such as third-party reviewers or trade groups.

But these campaigns can also create obstacles that companies may not have had to deal with otherwise. For example, a viral video claiming that a company’s product causes consumers to become ill must be addressed by the company, regardless of whether the claim is true or false.

Even if a company can set the message straight, consumers may be less likely to purchase from the company in the future.

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