Using infographics through the purchase funnel [infographic]

An example of using an infographic to explain a proposition

We feature a lot of infographics which share insight or best practice related to digital marketing. We thought we'd share this one as a nice piece of content marketing, perhaps of interest and inspiration to B2B marketers.

If we think about the purpose of infographics in content marketing in the context of our Content Marketing Matrix, they can and most often are aimed at raising awareness at the top of the funnel where they encourage sharing through a viral effect (either emotional - top-left in the matrix) or rational (bottom-left).  But they can also be used further down the funnel (right-side) funnel to educate contacts about the benefits of a product category or service and explain a company's service. That's the purpose of this example which we received by email rather than social media (these type of infographics are a lot less likely to be shared).

The infographic works well when delivered as a reminder about the service to prospects as below. We also like the way it shows the options and educates about the risks.

 

See this article by Dan Bosomworth for more advice on using infographics for marketing.

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How Social Media supports Event marketing [Infographic]

The power of integrated social media for event promotion

This infographic summarising a survey of over 1,500 event organisers worldwide, reinforces how effective social media is for event management - 75% of respondents considering it to be an important element of their integrated marketing strategy.

For international promotion in particular, Facebook has been the prominent social media platform for 78% of event organisers, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn, to primarily increase awareness of the event and their brand for new followers.  We know this can vary, depending on whether you are attracting delegates/attendees from the B2b or B2c market and their social/demographic profile.

If you are looking to increase your 'bums on seats', then consider like most social media channels that they will not generate instant leads. Of those surveyed by Maximillion, 10% of event organisers have gained direct sales from social media.  For some companies promoting events on a small-scale, then these numbers can impact if the event runs or not so generating low event sales can be effective.

The findings from Maximillion goes on further to provide some digital marketing tips for promoting your event. This could be extended to how it can be used for post brand awareness to support future events, including tactics such as sharing event images, reviews, event discussions, FAQs,  blogs etc.

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Facebook announce personal assistant for messenger [@SmartInsights Alert]

‘M’ will sit inside of messenger and will be able to complete tasks for users

Importance: ★★★ For users of Facebook messenger and advertisers interested in future ad options.

Recommended link: Facebook launches M, its bold answer to Siri and Cortana 

Digital Personal assistants seem to be all the rage at the moment. Apple led the way with Siri, Microsoft caught up fast with Cortana and Goole is also making big advances in AI technology with Google now. Not to be outdone, Facebook have announced their offering, a personal assistant called ‘M’ which sits inside it’s messenger app. Facebook announced this two days ago, on Facebook (funnily enough!)

Two things make M extremely interesting; that it is not ‘pure AI’ but rather AI that is trained by people, and that it will be able to complete tasks for users, like purchasing items.

Supervised AI

‘M’ is attempting to outdo other personal assistant providers by using people and  AI in tandem. This was enabled by Facebook’s acquisition of Wit.ai at the start of this year. This means that human "trainers" will work with the AI to determine what needs to be done to answer your queries or accomplish the tasks you've set. A statement by Cade Metz from weird shows what this means in practice:

“The AI can do most of the work for simpler tasks, like telling a joke. It'll query an Internet joke API — a service that supplies jokes—and a trainer will approve the joke if it's funny. For more complicated tasks, such as making a driving test appointment at the DMV, the humans will do most of the heavy lifting. They'll actually place a call to the DMV”

This sounds like humans are currently actually providing a lot of the functionality, so it probably won’t be being rolled out to all messenger users any time soon. If Facebook let all 700 million of its messenger users have access it would need to hire a multitude of people to help answer queries! The success of M will hinge on the AI’s ability to learn from its human supervisors and thus allow Facebook to roll out the assistant without having to hire a prohibitively expensive number of people. It is interesting however that whilst Google and Apple were bogged down in the tricky task of creating pure artificial intelligence, Facebook has managed to bye-pass the issue and created an assistant that can do more with far less time spent in R&D. If it works it will have profound consequences.

Monetising messenger

Facebook has thus far avoided putting ads into its messenger platform, so right now it isn’t generating any video from its 700,000 million users. The fact that M will be able to make purchases for users opens the door to monetisation without having to introduce ads, which could drive users to other messenger aps. Facebook could partner with certain vendors, earning a cut whenever someone is referred to them by certain request. It could develop a system somewhat akin to Google ad words, where firms could pay to be more likely to come up in the assistant's answers. For example someone asking M where they should rent a car from in Austin, Texas, could be given the answer of a car rental firm, which is paying Facebook for the privilege.

That is just one way to monetise messenger, and Facebook may well opt for something different. It’s worth remembering that Facebook messenger could always run at a loss and still be a good investment, because it keeps users tied into the Facebook eco-system, and thus they will continue to return to the engine of Facebook’s revenue generation: the newsfeed.

Whichever way Facebook decide to take messenger, this latest announcement puts Facebook firmly in the saddle when it comes to instant messaging, and M may well help them to solidify their market dominance.

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Personalising the Omni-Channel Ecommerce Experience

The growth of omni-channel marketing will only make personalisation more important

It probably won’t come as huge surprise that many organisations whether B2C or B2B still don’t engage in even the most basic levels of personalisation in their engagement marketing activities. But as we move (some faster than others) from a multi-channel to an omni-channel ecommerce experience, personalisation triggered by the behaviour of the customer and not just their name has in many respects become the most important element in the optimisation of the customer journey.

How many emails do your receive claiming to be private and confidential but are addressed ‘Dear Occupier’ or ‘Dear Customer’. It does nothing to trigger the desire to act, other than to hit delete, as I know that the content is likely to be neither private confidential nor indeed relevant. Perhaps more troubling are communications that are all of these things, yet are not personalised. For example, mobiles.co.uk (part of the Carphone Warehouse) was recently the subject of a data breach. It burst in to action notifying its customers, explaining the situation and the necessary courses of action, but the email began with ‘Dear Customer’. The cynic in me thinks that a cybercriminal was able to gain access to personal and financial data, yet the organisation could not manage a personalised salutation!

Salutations!

The salutation is of course an important part of personalisation, after all you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, but it is just the tip of the iceberg, especially when the conversation is expanded from email to the web and beyond.

Personalisation done well is all about being able to identify a customer and demonstrate that you know them, not just by their name but by behaviour, the items they view and those they have purchased. It is understanding the demographic they fall into and suggesting to them ideas, information, products and services that others in the same group are showing interest in. It is also about knowing the journey your customers take with you (their preferred channels and devices), where they are on their particular journey and being able to proactively engage with them - ideally in real-time at the right time.

In essence, we are talking about injecting fresh relevance into your marketing communications and wider customer engagement, and relevance equals revenue. To put it bluntly – personalisation is profitable.

Think personalisation is too expensive? Think again

One of the reasons personalisation is still in many respects in its infancy for many organisations is the misguided perception that it is complex and costly to implement and manage. After all, integrating transaction information, web behaviour statistics and CRM data (the three vital elements for effective single, multi or omni-channel personalisation) implies an intricate drawn-out integration project with a large scope for error. But the truth that most vendors would prefer you not to know is that it is possible to deliver effective (and by effective I mean revenue generating) personalisation at relatively low cost.

Sam du Feu works in the IT and Marketing team at the online retailer, 7dayshop, an organisation that has grasped the power of personalisation and he recently commented that:

“Whether it is a returning customer that is logged in or a new visitor, they are presented with constantly changing range of products that are most likely to suit them, based on their personal preferences, or the very latest crowd-sourced information.”

Such is the extent to which 7dayshop uses personalisation, it is even applied through its website navigation, whereby each product range is accompanied by a drop down list of product types accompanied by ‘Recommended for you’ and ‘Best sellers’ options. Sam du Feu added: “We are making it easy for our customers to find what they want and giving them information and advice to help them make a more informed purchasing decision. It has been a really successful initiative.” In fact, the conversion rate from the 7dayshop homepage is reported as being more than double the overall website average.

Achieve high ROI

So perhaps we can dispel some of the myths of complexity and cost of omni-channel personalisation.

Integration of transaction, web behaviour and CRM need not be a back-office nightmare. With the right knowhow it can be accomplished with ‘light’ front-end integration. Ease-of-use is also a concern but once you have defined and set-up the rules (according to how you would like to engage with you customers) then it is very much an automated process. One particular proof point of this is in area of automated personalised cart and browse abandonment emails, where earlier this year the travel company cottages4you recorded an astonishing 957% return on investment, meaning every £1 invested has returned £9.57.

As the success 7dayshop clearly demonstrates, creating a personalised browsing experience delivers compelling returns. Even greater rewards can be had when this level of intimacy is replicated in an omni-channel context, so whether it is a cart or browse abandonment email, or a scheduled e-newsletter the content is highly tailored to the recipient. A personalised marketing communication means little if the products you are recommending are not available at the time of opening. It is here that the daily deal website Manillo.dk is making waves in the retail world with its use of real-time content, as company Director, Frederik Boysen, explains: “Whenever the customer opens an email they will only ever presented with deals that are available at that moment. He adds: “We are able to ensure that our customers never receive a message from us regarding an expired deal.”  Manillo.dk can be sure that regarding of the engagement channel the customer only ever sees products that are available to them. With this approach they are achieving omni-channel pertinence as well as personalisation.

Summary

 Omni-channel personalisation is achievable and affordable. Light integration and automation results in low capital expenditure, small operating costs, less work and more impactful relevant customer engagement marketing. What is more, because of the quality of reporting it easy to measure success through sales and quantify the return-on-investment.

Thanks to Mike Austin for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Mike is is a serial entrepreneur and technologist. He has been building software companies for over 20 years. During the 1990s Mike provided IT security consultancy to the UK financial sector and created some of the first PC mapping software. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

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Key Mobile & Smartphone statistics [Infographic]

The UK has the highest percentage of e-commerce purchases via Smartphone in the EU

Smartphones have become a key component of how we browse the web, entertain ourselves and consume media content. 85% of 18-24-year-olds have Smartphone's, and the rate of uptake barely decreases with age; 84% of 25-34-year-olds have Smartphones and 81% of 35-44-year-olds do.

E-commerce from mobile devices is growing fast, and the  UK is ahead of the curve. 32% of people surveyed in the UK had made a purchase on their Smartphone in the past month, the highest rate in the EU.

Digital marketers need to keep up with the rapid trend towards mobile, and it certainly moves fast. In just the past four years Smartphone use has rocketed by 43%. Use this infographic to see some of the latest stats regarding mobile use and uptake.

This infographic is courtesy of the research team at VoucherBin; Featuring over 20,000+ voucher codes arranged categorically, VoucherBin strives to bring the latest discount offers for top brands in the UK.

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How important are digital communications in 2015?

The latest free report on digital media and technology use

Importance: ★★★★★ For students, researchers and marketers who need to convince others of the importance of digital media

Recommended link: Ofcom 2015 digital communications statistics report

Every year in August Ofcom publish what is probably the single best source of statistics on digital communications in the UK.

The latest update for the UK has just been published and we have tried to boil down the key stats from the 431 pages of the report by answering 7 questions which capture the current state of digital communications in the UK.

Question 1. How many people have access to the Internet and digital media in 2014?

85% of British households now have access to the Internet, an increase of 3% on last year. Internet on mobile devices (i.e Smartphones) also continues to rise, making up 61% of households, a threefold leap since 2009. Among those households that have internet access, 95% have Wi-Fi routers and access their internet via Wi-Fi. This means 95% of those with access to the internet can access it via tablets or Smartphone if they have them, rather than requiring a PC.

Question 2. How much time is spent online?

Last year we were surprised to see that page browsing time on desktop actually fell by 14.7% and the difference was not made up by the 2.5% growth in mobile Internet browsing. We speculated that this was probably offset by people using Apps which do not count as page browsing but fundamentally are about being online- e.g WhatsApp. This chart on total time spent online seems to justify our speculation, as total time spent online for 2015 standing at nearly 90 hours a month compared to the 2014 stat of 33 hours a month browsing pages. This shows both that spending time online is more popular than ever and that increasingly being online does not have to involve looking at pages in a web browser.

 

Question 3. Which digital devices are used to access the Internet?

The Ofcom research has a lot of detail on the type of device used to access the Internet in each household. As you will know multi-screening and multiple digital device use is commonplace. This data shows that there are now multiple laptops, tablets and smartphones in each household.

Mobile continues its meteoric rise, with Smartphones and tablets overtaking laptops and desktops respectively as the device people consider most important for accessing the internet.
Thirty-three per cent of internet users say their smartphone is the most important device for getting online, compared to 30% who cite their laptop. This a reverse on the position in 2014, when 23% cited their phone and 40% preferred their laptop.

Question 4. Which activities is the Internet used for?

These stats haven't changed markedly since 2014, but now it’s interesting how frequent these activities are in the last week showing really active use:

• 44% have used a social network in a last week
• 46% have banked online in the last week
• 32% made an online purchase in the last week

Question 5. Which search platforms are used?

Google leads the pack of search engines by audience size by a considerable margin as we would imagine, but this chart is useful to remind us that other search engines still matter. Bing and Yahoo combined actually rival Google in size, so they should not be overlooked.

 

We see mobile searches on Google have grown considerably since 2014, when just 12% Google's audience was mobile only.

Question 6. How many people in different age group use social networks?

 

More than seven in ten adult internet users (72%) have a social media profile, (a big jump up on 2014) and social media use is correlated to age. A majority of internet users aged 16-24 (93%), 25-34 (90%), 35-44 (80%) and 45-54 (68%) have a social media profile, such as a Facebook or Twitter account. This compares to half of 55-64s (49%) and three in ten aged 65+ (28%).

This chart provides a bit of an interesting and quirky stat- 41% of 16-24-year-olds would sell confess to being 'hooked' on social media. This represents a decent chunk of the population!

Question 7. What is the expenditure on digital media?

UK digital advertising rose spend by 15% to £7.2bn in 2014 and accounted for 39% of estimated UK advertising expenditure. Key drivers of this growth were increases in mobile advertising, broadcaster VoD advertising and national and regional digital print advertising. Unfortunately, OfComdon't have 2015 stats on this topic, but they have published the  2014 stats in this report, which give you a good idea of the current landscape.

Digital is now the leading medium went it comes to advertising, but with TV, press and direct mail still significant.

Digital ad spend is made up in large part by paid for search ads, but all sectors are growing strongly. Expect that other section to grow strongly in the coming years as advertisers manage to think out of the box and attract views/clicks/conversions which new types of ads that are made possible by digital but we haven't even thought of yet!

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Before Going Native: 18 Things Publishers Can Do To Improve Banner Ad Performance

AdTech is a trendy industry but not all trends are worth following

“Hey look over here...we have what you need” illustrates the two main challenges advertisers face and have always faced. First, how to capture the audience’s attention. Second, once we have their attention, how do we sell them something.

The reason these two edicts are so challenging is because the advertising highway, leading from initial attention to closing a sale, has several exits. The advertiser is willing to concede that not everyone will digest the message, and even fewer will then continue to make a purchase based on that message.

As long as a certain percentage of people follow this (leaky) funnel and complete a sale, everyone is happy. Well, maybe not everyone. Despite heavy efforts by all of the leading AdTech companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and more, it is still not possible to deliver ads only to interested individuals who are ready to convert.

Over time, the percentage of the audience who provides advertisers with their attention and hard earned dollars declines and advertisers need to come up with new ways to generate revenue.

In an industry that’s constantly asking for attention, it should come as no surprise that advertisers are hungry for new innovations. One such innovation in advertising is “native advertising”. Native ads have evolved in response to “banner blindness”. Over time, the brain learns to spot banner ads intuitively by their common characteristics and tunes them out. Banner blindness results in decreased revenues not just for publishers but also for ad networks and advertisers who rely on banner ads as a source of traffic and revenue.

Native ads are ads that look like content and not like regular banner ads so the eye does not know to ignore them intuitively (yet). Combine banner blindness with the rising popularity of ad blockers and you have growing numbers of publishers ready for a new solution that will put them back in the saddle.

Since web visitors have learned to tune out banner ads and focus on the content they came to find, native ads try to resemble content as closely as possible by location and design making them more likely to be noticed (first challenge of advertising, as per above) and then clicked on (second challenge). However, it’s only a matter of time before the stealthy nature of native ads will be their downfall. Once this happens, a new innovation will be ushered in.

Despite the Buggles’ claim, video did not kill the radio star and native ads will not kill banner ads. Instead, I would like to suggest that we break the cycle and attempt to see if we can’t bring back banner ads to their former glory. In fact, many publishers don’t realize that they can optimize their banner ads to fight banner blindness, increase their click-through-rates and improve their revenue. So before you go native, try these banner optimization tactics that will help you increase your ad revenue and delight your readers with improved user experience.

Many of the following suggestions are directly concerned with Google AdSense since, combined with Google AdWords, it is by far the largest Ad Exchange in the world.

1. Above the fold (ATF) vs. Below the fold (BTF)

“Obviously, above the fold ads work better than below the fold ones...” You might be saying. Not true. At AdNgin, we help websites serve millions of ad impressions a day and what we’ve learned is that in certain cases, BTF ads can perform better than ATF ads. The key factors that affect banner performance are:

• proximity to content
• size
• Ad unit design
• Page content and advertising setup

It has been our experience that when combining certain factors, BTF ads can perform better. So instead of stacking your above-the-fold real estate with as many ads as possible, consider that this will not always provide increased ad revenue and will most likely disturb your visitors’ user experience.

2. Exclude certain pages

Certain pages should not display any advertising. Some are obvious, like 404 pages. Some are not. If you’re trying to attract advertisers from a high paying niche but your content does not match the keywords they would likely target, exclude the irrelevant pages from displaying ads.

Over time, you will see your average cost per click (CPC) rise. However, this tactic should only be used if you have a marginal number of pages to the niche you’re trying to target. You are more likely to experience a loss in overall revenue than a gain if that is the case.

3. Optimize for Mobile

If you’re not yet optimizing to create different ad setups for mobile traffic then you’re missing out on substantial earnings. Google AdSense offers various ad sizes that are optimized for mobile traffic and AdSense mobile anchor ads that have proven their efficiency.

4. Optimize your Color Palette

Many publishers consider it the responsibility of advertisers to make banner ads clickable. This may be true when it comes to display banners but text ads served through Google AdSense can be customized on the seller side. Similarly to native ads, text ads have the potential of blending in with content and providing a less obtrusive user experience.

5. Right vs. Left side

One of the publishers that uses AdNgin to optimize their AdSense is L’express, one of the largest publishers in Africa. They ran several experiments on their banner ads (you can access the full case study here). In one of those experiments, they created a variation of their homepage. The control had 2 ad units on the left-hand column and one on the right. The variation was the opposite with 1 ad unit on the left side and 2 on the right. The variation demonstrated a lift of 49% in click-through-rates (CTR) compared to the control.

But, don’t hurry to change your setup just yet. First, test and see what works best for you.

6. Mimicry

I can’t stress this one enough. Don’t copy what your competitors are doing! Don’t listen to every piece of advice blindly, even if it’s from a so called expert (except me, of course, listen to me :)). Do, understand why certain optimization tactics work for others. Do, leverage that and put it in context with your website and traffic.

7. Video

This is another one of those recent advertising trends. But this is one bandwagon you need to jump on. It’s a fairly simple process to add AdSense videos to your website and it’s explained here.

8. Data research

Sure, everybody collects data but are you using that data correctly or, at all? Scientific experiments usually start with a hypothesis. Then, an experiment is conducted to prove or disprove the hypothesis. Finally, an article is written about the experiment in order to learn from it and develop a discourse. That maybe enough for academia but in the business world experiments need to deliver actionable tactics. These tactics are then tested again to produce data-drive and  continuous optimization.

9. Exclude Advertisers

Be selective. This may seem as counter-intuitive advice. Why would I want to exclude advertisers? The more advertisers compete for my ad inventory, the higher cost-per-click (CPC) they pay, right? It’s not that simple. As an AdSense publisher, you want Google to easily understand what your website is about and then direct relevant advertisers to you. Google ranks AdSense publishers similarly to the way they rank search engine results. From our research we’ve observed that, if your AdSense average CTR is high, then Google perceives that you are more likely to help advertisers convert users, which will have a positive effect on Smart Pricing, which, in turn, will increase your average CPC over time.

10. But, look at more than CTR

Don’t look at your AdSense revenues through a keyhole. You ad units are an integral part of your website. Follow user experience metrics like bounce rate to observe long-term trends.

11. Improve load speed

This tip is usually a popular one with SEOs. So if you’re a website monetization professional or a conversion expert, this one is win win for everyone. You should aim at having your ads and content load at the same time.

12. Stay up to date

The online world ir rapidly changing and if we focus our lens even further on The AdTech industry, we can observe that it is leading the way for innovation. Some of these innovations can significantly improve the efficiency of your monetization tactics, which makes it imperative that you stay connected with innovations in the field. Follow AdTech startups on Twitter and check out Crunchbase to stay informed on the latest innovation that could help you increase your banner ad revenue.

13. Advertise

If you want to attract advertisers you need to think like an advertiser. Open an account with AdWords, AppNexus, etc. and understand how the targeting system works on the other end. This tactic will allow you to understand how advertisers target their ad campaigns. Then you can optimize your content and inventory to attract the type of advertiser you want.

14. Be contextual

Contextual targeting is targeting based on keyword matching. Most targeting methods are contextual so make an effort to find the keywords that have high CPCs and create content to match. Make use of modern SEO best practices to locate your keywords on the page.

15. Page setup

Many modern websites opt to use ready-made templates for their websites. The obvious advantages are fast rollout and lower costs. However, if you require substantial customizations, templates may not be the best solution for you. Whatever you choose, make sure that either your template or your custom web design is compatible with the most common banner ad sizes and that you are able to easily place ads without being too disruptive of the user experience.

16. Don’t max out

Find your balance. It can be very tempting to approach monetization completely focused on revenue without considering its side effects. But, the law of diminishing returns teaches us that over time our marginal income will decrease if we use this tactic. For example, adding highly visible ad units will increase your ad revenue in the short term but it is likely to have a negative effect in the long run.

For increased ad revenue over time, it’s necessary to find a balance between ad revenue and user experience. If you’re seeking to take a strategic stance on advertising then you should consider your monetization as part of the greater scheme that makes up your website.

17. Have a number in mind

Don’t over optimize. Have a goal in mind for all your performance metrics. If you find that it’s too low or too high then change it but do so from a strategic and data-driven perspective not a pie in the sky figure.

18. Diversify your ad networks

Don’t be a one-trick pony. As mentioned, Google AdSense is the largest Ad Exchange is the world bringing together millions of advertisers and publishers. However, if we’re going to get sophisticated with our monetization we should consider other ad exchanges and ad networks as well. Some of the smaller ad networks have developed their own specialization. ePom, for example, are great at selling unsold inventory while others are more banding focused. in order to properly optimize you need to have enough options to choose from.

Bonus:

19. Opt-in to AdSense placement targeting

One of the ways ads are targeted to AdSense publisher websites is through placement targeting. AdWords advertisers find ad placements in several ways, including by listing websites where they'd like to advertise or by searching for placements that match the themes and topics they'd like to target. If your site is part of the AdSense network, it should automatically be visible to advertisers as an available ad placement when they search for themes or topics related to the content of your site.

The AdTech industry includes some of the largest and most innovative companies in the world, like Google and Facebook. You can rest assured that companies of this magnitude will find new and improved ways of generating advertising revenue.  But just because a new innovation is relaesed and and hyped up does not meam that tried and true solutions do not work any more. All it takes is a little bit of research and optimization and you will have your old banner ads humming like a well tuned engine.

Thanks to Eyal Katz for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Eyal Katz is Marketing Manager of AdNgin You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

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5 Website Personalization Myths

Are the myths about deploying web personalisation tools holding you back?

Personalization has been causing major ripples in the digital ocean for many years. Most notably, Amazon pioneered and leveraged the technique in their successful quest for retail domination. Now, they enjoy 30% of their revenue alone through their skilful use of personalized product recommendations. Similarly, whether choosing a movie on Netflix, or flicking through your social media news feed, you'll find personalized content served at every turn.

The benefits are indisputable. Research by Forrester found personalization to be the top priority for 55% of retailers. Similarly, it was found to be this year's top digital priority for B2C marketers. An effective personalization strategy is now widely recognised as essential to reaching the top global levels of conversion.

And it's not just the marketers who agree. Another interesting survey revealed that 83% of consumers themselves want to receive a personalized cross-channel experience.

Yet, despite all of this, a third of marketers don't personalize their websites at all. And of those that do, only a very small percentage are going beyond the very basic techniques.

There's a reason for this; most people simply don't know where to start.

Access resource – Web Personalisation guide

Our E-learning topic will show you
the options for delivering more persuasive, relevant dynamic web content at relevant points in the onsite customer journey for B2B and B2C sites. As well as the techniques and tools available for personalisation based on audience characteristics and behaviour.

Access the Web Personalization Guide

Demystifying Personalization

This is the first of a series of articles in which I will address the thorny issue of why an effective personalization strategy eludes many marketers, and, more importantly, how it can start to work for you.

Below, I will go through some common misconceptions which cause marketers to remain in the personalization slow lane. For each of these I'll provide accompanying suggestions on how to get started - before you get left behind.

1. Myth 1: "Personalization is too time-consuming / expensive"

   This is one of the most common myths surrounding personalization. Sure, if you were to build your own visitor profiling tools and content delivery system then you'd unlikely have much time or money for anything else. But today, there is an abundance of real-time personalization tools on the market to help. These apps are simple to use and require minimal effort, yet they will see your conversions rise and your customers return more frequently.

   Additionally, many areas of personalization can be automated. Product recommendations engines, for example, are based purely on algorithms, and don't require any maintenance at all, yet can have a huge impact on your sales.

   Other features, such as cart abandonment emails can also be automated. 70% of carts are abandoned on retail sites, representing a huge loss in potential revenue. An automated abandoned cart recovery email system however can entice those customers to return to the site to complete their order.

   All this automation means your conversions can rise without draining your most precious resource - time.

   
   LateRooms.com have an excellent abandoned cart recovery email, supporting a picture of the abandoned product, engaging text, and a prominent call to action.

2. Myth 2: "Personalization sounds complicated - I don't know where to begin"

   Again, a good personalization app will do the hard work for you. As soon as you plug one in, a plethora of invaluable data will be collected on your customers. This would likely include data such as their geographical location, gender and browsing device. E-commerce sites will normally also capture buying history, the content of their cart and product interests, etc.

   With all this information at your fingertips, you can then easily segment your visitors based on relevant attributes - for example 'when a visitor is male and expresses an interest in clothing: show men's clothing products'. A few simple segments is all that's needed to get results to begin with, based on characteristics that are meaningful to your business.

   Next, you have to decide how to target these visitors. Perhaps an individualised offer? A recent survey of marketers found personalized offers to be the single most effective means of increasing conversions. I will explore other methods in my next article in this series.

3. Myth 3: "I don't have enough content for personalization"

   Another myth. Think of the content you already have on your site. Does every customer need to see all of it? Of course not - some parts will be relevant to some customers, others not. In many cases personalization is simply about targeting your existing content more effectively, not creating new material from scratch.

   
   John Lewis show personalized content frequently. The homepage banner I saw on my first visit showed products for women. But after returning from the men's clothing section... hey presto!

   Customers are less patient than ever - according to HubSpot, three quarters of online consumers stated they felt frustrated when encountering content irrelevant to their interests online. Customers more than ever are likely to bounce when they struggle to find what they want.

   By segmenting your visitors, you can show products, blogs, ads, or offers that are already on your site to match a customer's preferences and tastes. And what does that mean? Increased engagement and conversions, longer average sessions, happier customers.

4. Myth 4: "Personalization is only for the big players like Amazon"

   This is a damaging misconception that ultimately results in smaller companies getting left behind.

   I have continuously said that personalization should be available to all businesses - not just the behemoths like Amazon. But now, with personalisation services like our own Bunting to help you get started, there is no reason why any marketer, regardless of budget, can't enjoy the benefits of personalization.

To conclude, for the digital marketer, personalization is becoming increasingly more significant. And, with automated tools becoming more available, it is easier than ever to get started with it. For many marketers, personalization is still a nut to be cracked, and this is not helped by common misconceptions. However, by taking steps to implement a suitable tool and start experimenting, the benefits of personalization can be enjoyed without forceful demands on time and budget.

In the next article in this series I will delve deeper into how marketers can take practical steps to implement personalization and reap the rewards it brings.

 

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Latest Research shows 2015 Social Media Trends

Pew Research centre releases latest research on the social media activity of 1,907 US adults

In digital marketing, we see a lot of surveys that help to illuminate recent trends. Because surveys via email, website or social media are generally easier or cheaper to conduct, they are usually the medium by which the data in gathered. This data is highly useful, but collecting it via a digital platform gives a certain bias and may not always give a fully accurate picture of the true trends.

This survey from Pew Research centre, published last week, was conducted via phone interviews with 1907 adults in the US, across all fifty states and via both landline and mobile. The results offer an interesting insight into the latest social media trends.

A strong majority are Smartphone users

The research found that 67% of US adults are Smartphone users; a strong majority which will increase rapidly the in the coming years. We have already passed the mobile tipping point, as the survey showed that 85% of the population were internet users, meaning that approximately 80% of internet users were also Smartphone users (making the safe assumption that those with Smartphones are internet users). This has serious marketing implications when it comes to the need for responsive sites and considering mobile ad placements.

Pinterest and Instagram are the fastest growing

Since 2012 growth has plateaued for some of the more established social networks, whilst Pinterest and Instagram have boomed. Facebook continued to grow slightly, whilst LinkedIn actually saw a slight dip on 2015. It is important to note this only represents the US market, and user numbers for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter globally continue to increase considerably thanks to growth in emerging markets.

In terms of marketing implications, it is clear that if you want to use Social Media to reach your target audience then investment in Pinterest and Instagram could be more effective than Twitter. This is particularly true if your target audience is young adults, as the results show that 55% of 18-29-year-olds use Instagram.

User Engagement is up

Although in the US user numbers for some of the big social networks have plateaued, engagement is still on the increase, which is good news for digital marketers, the proportion of Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn users who use site daily has increased significantly since September 2014. 59% of Instagram users, 27% of Pinterest users and 22% of LinkedIn users visit these platforms daily. Facebook still comes top for engagement, with 70% of users reporting that they log in daily.

Facebook remains the king of Social

72% of all online adults in the US use Facebook, which is considerably ahead of any other social media platform, in-fact it's double the next largest! In addition as we previously mentioned it also scores highest for engagement from its user base, so for anyone considering a social media marketing campaign Facebook should probably be the first port of call. 82% of 18-29-year-olds use the platform, but the impressive segmentation options mean it is good for targeting all age groups. 64% of 50-64-year-olds use it and even among the 65+ cohort very close to half do (48%).

For more stats on 2015 US social media trends see the full report from Pew Research Centre

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Why a digital strategy is a customer strategy

It is critical that your design your digital strategy around your customer

While customer experience is a key business driver for any company, few have yet to understand that, in the digital age, when customers can instantly access swathes of information about a company and its competitors, it has become fundamental to obtaining a real, sustainable, competitive advantage in a rapidly changing marketplace. With clients’ expectations becoming much more demanding, it is essential for any business to think with the customer at the centre when making any business decision.

Plenty of corporate strategies talk about the benefits of being customer-centric, but so far, few are realising its potential. This can only be reached by placing the customer at the heart of every stage of your digital strategy, and that ultimately means changing how you do business through the following six steps:

Define the target audience

A digital strategy should start off with a clear understanding of who the audience is. Building personas and segments into the programme ensures your content will be relevant to the customer. Your digital strategy needs to be informed by a shared understanding of who your customers are, how they perceive the interactions they’re having with your company today, and what they want and need from your company in the future.

Learn

This is all about getting customer feedback on your company as they experience it now, and what they want and need in the future. Listening to the customer allows you to develop the content and process accordingly.

Align

Teams must be aligned to give the customer a consistently high standard across all departments, from marketing to sales and customer management. This is known as a “single customer view” and is especially important in the digital age with numerous channels of communication available.

Map

To achieve a single customer view, it is vital to use the tools now available to map each customer journey throughout the customer lifecycle. This will allow you to understand how to best guide each customer through the process of interacting with your brand online.

Transform

It is essential that your strategy is actual a company-wide strategy, and not simply a silo in marketing. A conscious culture shift needs to take place at every level, to reach a point where the customer is central to all aspects of the business.

Measure

Data can be used to ensure that everything from the customer’s first click, through to becoming a loyal customer, is carefully and usefully analysed, with all the necessary tools, measures and people in place to monitor and ultimately improve performance.

Changing the way you do business to make your digital strategy truly customer-centric is no simple task, requiring a shift in priorities and careful planning. But it will undoubtedly pay off, giving you that competitive edge to reap dividends many times over for the foreseeable future.

Running a strategy workshop is an excellent way to take the initial practical steps in building a customer-centric digital strategy. First, find out how to plan your digital marketing strategy to engage with your audience throughout the customer lifecycle by attending our planning webinar.

Thanks to Mark Donkin for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Mark is Managing Director at of Success Flow You can follow Success Flow on Twitter or connect with Mark on LinkedIn.

 

 

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15 Website Personalization and Recommendations Software Tools

A listing of personalised production recommendation services to increase conversion and Average Order Value

These website personalisation tools enable you to segment visitors and then deliver personalised messages within containers as with the classic Amazon personalized recommendations – read their published methodology from this fascinating whitepaper from back in 2003. I originally wrote this post in 2010 when there were fewer options. I have updated annually since with the help added by commenters - thanks!

Access resource – Web Personalisation guide

Our E-learning topic will show you
the options for delivering more persuasive, relevant dynamic web content at relevant points in the onsite customer journey for B2B and B2C sites. As well as the techniques and tools available for personalisation based on audience characteristics and behaviour.

Access the Web Personalization Guide

Personalization integrated with web analytics

• Coremetrics Intelligent Offer IBM Coremetrics is widely used by retailers for analytics – and increasingly personalization for cross and up-selling.
• Adobe Test and Target One of the best established personalization engines evolving from the original Touch Clarity back in 2004.
• BT Buckets Lower cost option that integrates with Google Analytics.

Personalization Software as Service (SaaS) for Ecommerce

The second category we review here is specifically for E-Commerce merchandising giving automated product placements using aggregated behavioral data (those that viewed this, also viewed that) and personal recommendations (you previously bought this and might like that).

I’m indebted to an anonymous contributor who has recently reviewed and recommended these for he original article.  He says: “The following offer enterprise level SaaS solutions to deliver increased sales and a better customer experience“.

• Barilliance - Saas Personalisation for Ecommerce
• Bunting Website Personalisation
• Magiq dynamic personalization software
• Avail Intelligence
• Monetate Personalisation Software
• Rich Relevance 
• ChoiceStream 
• Personyze
• Apptus 

Personalisation features available as part of CMS or Commerce management systems

This category wasn’t mentioned in the original post since personalisation features were limited when the post was originally written in 2010, but I have updated in line with a suggestion in the comments.

According to the comment from Damien of Digicon, both Sitecore and Kentico have built in tools to personalise content based on various rules, such as geo-location, search terms, referrers, lead scores and also provide more advanced personalisation based on user behaviour and profiles.

Magento also has personalisation extensions available such as Product Personalisation, Commerce Stack.

B2B and publisher personalisation tools

Evergage is recommended as a tool that fits best in this category that has a wide range of options for serving personalisation in different locations.

Of course, Recommendations aren’t limited to websites only, as you will know from Amazons’ newsletters. To learn more, I recommend this article explaining the inner workings of email marketing recommendation engines which reportedly boost click rates with 50-400%. It shows what to look for when finding the right tool to serve the recommendations inside your newsletter.

Thanks for all the comments sharing options in the post so far, please share others you recommend to build this list.

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The future of advertising on Instagram

All you need to know about the upcoming advertising possibilities on the fastest growing social network.

August update:

Instagram officially switched on its ads API earlier this month. This constitutes a big leap, as marketers can buy ads on Instagram in an automated fashion for the first time. Before to buy ads on Instagram you had to contact an Instagram sales rep directly, and this was only available in certain locations and for companies with large budgets. The release of this API by Instagram has serious ramifications for marketers.

Until the API realise it was very hard to track the effectiveness of Instagram ads. But now  brands will gain the ability to track their Instagram marketing activity. Interaction and the effectives of the posts can now be measured from desktops via 3^rd party applications plugging into the API.

The release of the ads API will open up a huge array of opportunities and allow Instagram to grow rapidly now that it has generated a highly successful revenue stream. Analysis at Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicted it's revenues could increase almost tenfold over the next two years, to reach near $1 billion in 2017, and continue to skyrocket, to over $3.8 billion by 2020. This is huge growth that would see Instagram over taking Twitter and rivalling Google for mobile ad revenue.

Looking to the future

Instagram overtook Twitter late last year for number of monthly active users, within the next few years it will almost certainly overtake it in revenue. It is particularly popular with the millennial generation; over half of 18-29 year olds in the US use the platform, and is slightly more popular with women than men. It’s success with younger people means it is likely to grow in popularity and importance as an ad platform as its user base ages and starts to want to purchase cars, houses and all the trappings of modern life. The release of an API for ads by Instagram is, therefore, a big moment for advertisers everywhere. Anyone looking to advertise to a youngish demographic should certainly give Instagram ads a serious thought.

Instagram is among the fastest growing social networks in the world, and for the US market it is the single fastest growing network by total number of new users.

For those wanting to target a younger audience, marketing on Instagram offers a huge opportunity. 53 percent of 18-29-year-olds in the US use the platform.

It is thus clear that especially for B2C brands, Instagram represents a key growth market for attracting customers, and those who fail to use it effectively risk missing out to competitors using the platform well.

Advertising on Instagram

In its infancy, there was no ability to advertise on Instagram, so the best brands could do was set up their own pages and try to build a following organically. However, the platform started allowing certain advertisers to use the platform a year and a half ago. These were major brands that created high-quality ads, and the results were pretty impressive. Ad recall from the sponsored Instagram posts was almost three times higher than the norm for online advertising. However, this should be taken with a pinch of salt as the platform has previously been ad-free, so it is not clear if these engagement rates will continue

A study by Instagram itself into the effectiveness of its ads (so do be a little sceptical, they’d want to make their ads seem effective after all) showed that of 4 campaigns reviewed there was a 32-point incremental lift in ad recall per campaign compared to a control group. There also was a 10 percent lift in brand message awareness. Statistics on ROI are not available because the campaigns were delivering board reach advertising to increase awareness. There was no option to click through to buy products or learn more.

New features for advertisers

Instagram announced a month ago that it would be increasing its ad offering to give advertisers more options. The different ad formats include letting people sign up, buy a product or download an app directly from an ad. Instagram has been relatively vague on the details, but these will be revealed in the coming months as the features are released.

Enhanced ad targeting

Instagram knows that it users won’t want to be bombarded with irrelevant ads. It also knows that advertisers want to only pay to put ads in front of people that are going to be interested in their products or services, so as to be able to get the best possible ROI.

Offering advertisers better-targeting options is a win-win scenario for all involved. The critical component to be able to target effectively is data. Does Instagram have the relevant data on age, gender, interests, location etc. that facilitates this kind of targeting? No. But it does know someone who does. As Facebook bought Instagram in 2012, it has access to the wealth of data that Facebook has on its users.

Instagram says this will mean advertisers will be able to target via demographics and interests data that has been gathered by Facebook.

How will Instagram ads be purchased?

Instagram's newly released Ads API means they can be bought through 3rd parties using the API. However so as to make it easier for businesses large and small to purchase ads on the platform, Instagram says that it wants to ‘leverage the best of Facebook’s infrastructure for buying, managing and measuring the success of ads on Instagram’. So expect changes coming soon, possibly allowing Instagram ads to be purchased through Power Editor.

Can I advertise on Instagram now?

Yes! The ads API is now released, so you can buy ads on Instagram through 3rd parties using the API.

Download Expert Member Resource – Smarter Instagram marketing guide

Our 48 page Smarter Instagram marketing guide will help you tap into the consumer activity on Instagram to use it to grow your business. It is broken down into 7 sections packed with checklists and examples to inspire you.

Access the Smarter Instagram marketing guide

 

 

 

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The marketing advantages of mobile payments

Mobile payments are a huge opportunity for marketers. Here is why:

Mobile payments aren’t just a way to process credit and debit card payments; they can offer an inexpensive means to help you reach a wider customer base, and cultivate lasting relationships. Here are a few of the marketing advantages mobile transfers and communications can offer.

Mobile payments and promotions reach customers via the tools they use most often — cellphones and tablets.

When businesses send a letter via direct mail, or advertise in local media, there are a host of unknowns: Will the marketing piece reach the intended recipient? Will it be read? If it does get noticed, will it arrive when the customer wants to purchase what you’re promoting? Most importantly, will the prospect remember your business once he/she is ready to buy?

These variables can be a costly gamble, since they are virtually impossible to control. Mobile marketing campaigns, on the other hand, deliver messages right to the tools that customers have in tow, helping to prevent most of the aforementioned problems.

More than half of all Americans own a Smartphone (latest research shows 67%), and Bloomberg reports that people now spend more time looking at their cellphones than watching television. For many customers, a smartphone or tablet is the last thing they see before drifting to sleep, and the first thing they check in the morning. Mobile marketing messages empower businesses to target clients on the medium with which they’re already engaged.

Mobile campaigns increase the likelihood of message relevance

 Direct marketing campaigns and printed advertisements and billboards require a marketer to invest in media space, creative development and production. There’s no guarantee, however, that the message will reach an interested audience.

By contrast, mobile marketing messages are inexpensive to develop, and can be highly targeted based on your inventory and sales goals, along with a customer’s past mobile purchase behavior. Prospects are less likely to receive irrelevant offers, which gives your business flexibility to tweak messaging or promotional campaigns as needed. With maximum cost efficiency, merchants can test and refine offers to determine which elements best drive results.

Increased exposure to new audiences

Customers often rely on friends and family — and even social media contacts they’ve never met — to help them make business decisions. Many mobile payment provider apps let merchants engage with customers on social media to reward them for sharing positive posts, or tagging the business location. This helps increase awareness of (and interest in) your brand.

Streamlined loyalty programs.

A study by IDC Financial Insights found that rewards programs are a primary factor that customers consider when choosing how to pay. Many mobile payment providers work in tandem with loyalty rewards programs so customers can automatically earn and redeem perks when they make a purchase.

Level the playing field with larger merchants

Small businesses aren’t just competing against one another for the customer’s attention; they’re competing against online retailers, and large, well-established brands. Regardless of what you sell or from where, mobile payments provide the same customer conveniences as larger merchants, including the ability to check out quickly with a debit or credit card, and — in some cases — a mobile wallet.

Businesses that accept mobile payments will optimize marketing expenses, and deepen long-term customer relationships.

Thanks to Kristen Gramigna for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Kristen is Chief Marketing Officer for BluePay, a credit card processing firm. Follow her on Twitter at @BluePay_CMO.

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Why responsive web design is important [Infographic]

These Statistics prove you need a responsive site

Mobile now accounts for more than half of all web visits and this rate is only going to increase in the coming years. Google’s ‘Mobilegeddon or mobile friendly’ update earlier this year meant non-mobile friendly sites are penalised for not being mobile friendly in search rankings. That means it has never been more important to have a mobile responsive site. If you need help convincing your CFO to release the budget to get a mobile responsive site, or if you are a manager who isn’t sure if they need to go responsive or not, take a look at this infographic which gives you some helpful stats to demonstrate the important of responsive web design.

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5 scientific reasons why content personalization is so effective

How does personalisation increase conversion rates?

In our experience, effective content personalization increases conversion rates, boosts lead generation and cuts cost per lead. It might be intuitive to believe a personalized message is more effective than a one-size-fits-all message, but intuition isn’t the driving force here – what does the data show?

We have now served millions of personal content recommendations, and the evidence now shows an increase of 20%-30% in conversion rates, across all on existing traffic and content. Behind these numbers, there are several cool scientific reasons why this works so effectively.

 

 

Access resource – Web Personalisation guide

Our E-learning topic will show you the options for delivering more persuasive, relevant dynamic web content at relevant points in the onsite customer journey for B2B and B2C sites. As well as the techniques and tools available for personalisation based on audience characteristics and behaviour.

Access the Web Personalization Guide

 

5 ways personalisation enables you to generate more return from your content strategy

Here are five reasons why personalisation is effective, the first from the perspective of the marketer and four from the point-of-view of the online visitor:

1.  Take the economically-efficient choice and go after the low hanging fruit

If you are in marketing today you probably noticed that you are faced with a wide array of opportunities where to invest the marketing budget. Indeed, you are already frequently working with more than a hundred software programs. And you are already paying so much to get the visitors to your website - you spend on content planning and production and SEO and then on media, and now, if you’re successful, you have an audience at your virtual door and you are confronted with three major problems:

• 1. The user has already made up her mind - according to CEB, 57% of the customer purchase decision is complete before a customer ever contacts the business.
• 2. 98% of visitors will remain anonymous, making it very difficult to decide where they fit in within your array of desired personas.
• 3. And then there’s this: combine the median business site load time of 3 seconds with the fact that the majority of visitors leaving after 15 seconds - and you have only 12 seconds to engage with these anonymous visitors who already know what they want.

By converting the visitors who are already at your website – the low hanging fruit – you can generate leads of the same quality at a cost of 3 to 6 US Dollars, according to BrightInfo’s data. From the economic standpoint of measuring alternatives, that is very efficient.

2. Cut through the paradox of choice

With so much content, a visible real-time offering counteracts this phenomenon, described so eloquently in this TED video. In short, in terms of customer satisfaction, it is true that some choice is better than no choice. But it is not true that infinite choice leads to greater satisfaction than limited choice. Having a large and diversified arsenal of content is usually a smart strategy, as it helps to cater to bigger crowds. But each visitor is at risk of getting lost by trying to compare different offers that compete for his limited attention span.

3. Reduce a related effect – Analysis paralysis

Analysis paralysis is an anti-pattern, a state of over-thinking a situation so that a decision is never eventually taken. This happens when a decision is considered as over-complicated, with too many detailed options, so that a choice is never made, rather than try something and change if a major problem arises.

Even worse, when people start to look for that optimal or perfect solution, they not only fear making any imperfect decision, but they start imagining that there is an ideal solution.

Once they don’t find it in those 15 to 30 seconds they spend on your website, their image of your product or service may remain negative for a very long time. In addition, anything that they do actually try out or buy will most likely be compared to that imagined solution – and reality often fails to meet imaginary expectations.

4. Cut the rate of horrible decisions: Extinct by instinct.

Ironically, extinct by instinct is the opposite effect of analysis paralysis, and is also true on your website: No single website can overcome the overall information overflow. Your website is part of a vast amount of information every qualified lead has to go through and process each day, and some of them will make their decision based on hasty judgement or a gut-reaction.

With more and more of the decision-making process happening BEFORE the visitor ever gets to your website, you want to make sure that his decision-making is as accurate as possible as soon as he shows up on your radar.

Content personalization can limit the amount of fatal decisions based on hasty judgement or a gut-reaction that result in unsatisfied customers. With so many competitors out there, having unsatisfied customers is not a thought you want to entertain.

5. Prevent users disorientation

Another closely related phenomenon, disorientation, can be tackled by shortening the funnels – the track a consumer takes through your website. This is especially important in websites that offer numerous products, services, and content, and experience high bounce rates.

Plenty of our clients place a lot of emphasis on page-views, often thinking the more the merrier. But, as we just as often reply, there is also some danger there – that is, to show the wrong pages.

You never ever want a visitor to think, 'wait, why am I even seeing this?' Instead, focus on leading visitors in the right path, by highlighting the way through their personal interests.

Image credit: Freepik

Thanks to Boaz Grinvald for sharing his thoughts and opiniions in this post. Boaz is the Founder and CEO of BrightInfo and contributes to Smart Insights on web personalization. He is an industry expert in the fields of inbound marketing technologies, conversion optimization and marketing automation, and founded BrightInfo as a tool to convert content into business goals. He is hell bent on web personalization and frequently speaks on the subject and how to improve conversion rates by offering the right content at the right time - to each individual visitor. Connect with Boaz via LinkedIn or Twitter.

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7 ways you could be screwing up your sales funnel

Avoid these 7 mistakes at all costs when building and managing your sales funnel

Your sales funnel is the core of your marketing plan. It's the map of a customer's journey, right from the first interaction with your brand all the way to the final sale. Every piece of content you create and every marketing strategy you implement is built around your sales funnel.

In short, your funnel is a critical component that decides your online success. And unfortunately, you could be screwing it up.

In this post, we'll explore 7 of the most common mistakes that plague sales funnels, plus strategies you can apply to overcome each error.

1. You're not tracking enough data

A lot of marketers focus only on the big-picture metrics like page views, visitor-to-customer conversion rate, and bounce rate. Whereas, metrics with smaller scopes—like return visitors, exit pages, and scroll patterns—remain totally ignored.

This is a fatal mistake. Even though big-picture metrics are doubtless important to your sales funnel, the smaller metrics frequently provide much more actionable insight into how you can improve your sales funnel.

For instance, say that your overall traffic conversion rate currently sits at 1%. This is the big picture: 1 out of every 100 of your visitors eventually becomes a customer. Although this metric does give you a broad view of what's happening on your site, it doesn't show you specific areas of your marketing strategy that need improvement.

Now let's say that you go back over your sales funnel armed with a fine-tooth comb. You discover that out of every 100 visitors, 5 end up as email subscribers (5% visitor-to-subscriber conversion rate). However, out of those email subscribers, only 10% regularly open the emails you send.

This low open rate definitely needs work. According to MailChimp, open rates are typically >20% across the board in most industries.

Thanks to this relatively small metric, you now know a specific area in your marketing strategy that needs improvement. If you had focused only on the big-picture metrics, then it's possible that you might have never noticed this loss.

How to fix this

Make sure that you're focusing as much on small-picture metrics as you are on the broader ones. If your current analytics platform doesn't allow you to drill down into the metrics behind each step of your sales funnel, then consider changing over to one that does.

2. You're not testing multiple payment gateways

One of the trickiest parts of building a sales funnel is choosing the right type of payment gateways. The ideal payment methods in the real estate industry, for example, are often very different to those that work best in the Ecommerce industry.

Another problem you have to deal with is selecting the right number of permitted payment gateways. Too few and your sales funnel won't be able to accommodate a part of your audience. Too many, and you could end up scaring away some leads because of the excess choice.

How to fix this

The solution is continual testing. Test various combinations of different types and numbers of payment gateways until you find one that works well for your target audience. Here's a short list of some of the most popular e-payment gateways to get you started:

• PayPal
• Stripe
• Authorize.net
• WePay
• Braintree
• Google Wallet

3. You're not prioritizing lead nurturing

Another common mistake in sales funnels is too much focus on lead generation, and too little on lead nurturing.

When lead generation is the sole focus, then a low lead-to-customer conversion rate is guaranteed to follow. You might have a lot of new leads entering the top of your funnel, but only a very small portion of them will ever make it all the way through and become customers.

How to fix this

Use marketing automation tools like content segmentation to ensure that all of your new leads are drip-fed content personalized to their demographics and tastes. Also, consider using lead scoring to evaluate the contacts that are most ready for the sale and move them along the pipeline accordingly.

4. Your copy sells features, not solutions

I recently came across an excellent quote from copywriter Konrad Sanders.

This tip could be the best one I've ever read on copywriting. When selling a product, the worst possible thing to do is to try to sell it to your audience by the merits of its features. Your customers don't want to know about features: they want to know about solutions. The copy's focus, then, should instead be on the problem your product solves for customers.

How to fix this

Every customer who's ever bought your product did so in order to solve a problem. Survey your current customer base to understand exactly what that problem is. Identify the most common pain points of your customer's experience, then write your copy around that information.

5. You haven't removed buyer inhibitions

Simply put, buyer inhibitions are the things that stop a lead from becoming a customer. Inhibitions are the fears that every customer has about buying a new product or hiring a new service.

Here are a few examples of common fears:

• How do I know I can trust this company to deliver on its promises?
• How do I know this product is the right fit for my specific needs?
• Does this company have a proven track record of success?

If you don't take away these fears, then a large percentage of your leads will never make it through your sales cycle.

How to fix this

Information is key here. If you haven't noticed, a common trend among the fears I just listed is when the lead doesn't know something. Take the first fear, for instance: "how do I know I can trust this company to deliver on its promises?"

This fear deals with trust. Leads who have this inhibition aren't sure whether they can trust your business with your money and they have been provided no information to alleviate this psychological block.

One common way to solve this fear is to use trust symbols and social proof. A trust symbol is a visual signal that communicates trust to viewers, such as a McAfee "secured" badge.

Baymard Institute recently did a survey to discover which trust symbols are preferred by consumers. Norton and McAfee logos came out on top.

Trust symbols aren't the only way to remove buyer inhibitions. Client logos are widely used to build social proof and relieve buyer anxiety. In addition, case studies that show leads exactly how your past customers have benefited from your business can also work to increase conversion rates.

6. You're using the wrong CRM

One prevalent mistake marketers make when maintaining a sales funnel is choosing the wrong CRM to manage their contacts. It's important that you choose carefully. To achieve the right results with your sales funnel, you need to make sure you're using the right technology.

Too often, though, I've seen marketers directly go in for whatever tool is the hottest on the market, or whatever tool they've already heard about from friends or from the blogs they frequent. Once they go in for a CRM without researching all of the available tools in detail, the inevitable result is a waste of time and resources as they endeavor to adapt their sales funnel to their CRM (it should be the other way around).

How to fix this

If your CRM isn't working out for your marketing strategy, then it might be time to change. Here are a few important factors to keep in mind when choosing the right CRM.

Price creep: A majority of CRM tools will charge you according to the number of contacts in your system. While the beginning plan may not be expensive, down the road you might find yourself in a position where you'll have a much larger number of leads in your system. Make sure that your budget will be able to accommodate the higher prices if/when that happens.

Flexibility: Different CRM solutions come packaged with different functions. The CRM you choose should have the flexibility to fulfill all the functions your sales funnel will require.

Data tracking: If you're not interested in using a third-party analytics platform, then make sure you find a CRM that offers built-in tracking so you're aware of all vital metrics.

Onboarding: Consider how much time it will take you to get used to your new CRM. Also think about the onboarding process and how the tool provider works with new customers to ensure they're making the most out of the platform. Some tools levy a mandatory kickstart fee (Infusionsoft, for example, charges $1499 to new accounts).

7. Your marketing and sales departments aren't working together

The biggest screw-ups in sales funnels often result from marketing and sales departments that aren't working together as they should.

Here's what typically happens: marketing focuses on generating as many leads as it can to hand off to the sales department. Sales complains that marketing focuses on lead quantity, not quality, and refuses to work with what they deem to be low-quality leads. Marketing protests this, saying that sales isn't doing their job, and sales responds in kind.

The whole process results in a lot of needless friction between the two departments that engenders revenue loss. This is a very unfortunate problem, especially when you consider that both marketing and sales have the exact same end goal: more revenue.

How to fix this

The best way to resolve interdepartmental disputes starts with discussion. Sit marketing and sales down together, and start talking things over.

The first thing you'll want to do is to agree on a common definition of a quality lead. Let both your marketing and your sales guys come up with a set of guidelines/criteria that each lead must meet. That way, marketing knows exactly the type of lead sales needs to produce conversions, and can plan accordingly.

Next, discuss strategies to generate and nurture these leads. Only when everyone is on the same page strategy-wise can marketing and sales truly be aligned and working in tandem.

Wrapping Up

While it may take you both time and resources to work out all the kinks in your sales funnel, the end result is definitely worth it in the long run. A solid, well-organized sales funnel is the core of every online business: a vital cog without which all marketing strategy is doomed to failure.

Thanks to Jonathan John for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Jonathan is a freelance writer and a digital marketing enthusiast, helping businesses leverage the power of content marketing to increase website traffic and boost brand authority. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

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Beginners guide to SMS marketing [Infographic]

Use this infographic to get started with SMS marketing

The digital and mobile marketing space offers tons of affordable options for small business owners. As a marketing professional, you may find it difficult to prioritize, and discover which methods are the most effective for your business. SMS marketing is one of the most immediate and cost-effective mobile communication tactics. This detailed and easy to follow infographic from SMS marketing provider, Slicktext.com, lays out the basics of this mobile solution. With SMS marketing, small business owners can fire out exclusive offers to a loyal and qualified subscriber base. In turn, this kind of consistent exclusivity helps business owners increase brand loyalty, strengthen customer relationships, and increase offer redemption.

As laid out in the infographic below, always keep these important tips in mind when taking advantage of SMS marketing.

• Choose a textword that is unique to your business.
• Respect your stated campaign frequency.
• Always measure and review opt in rate, churn rate, and offer redemption.
• Only send out exclusive and limited time offers.
• Don’t forget to promote. If customers don’t know about your mobile rewards program, your list simply won’t grow.

With SMS marketing, your results are only as good as your efforts. Spend time combing through educational resources, such as the one below, and you’ll soon become an SMS marketing pro. Never rely on one marketing method to save the day. Partner SMS marketing with other options to increase your user reach and engagement.

 

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Top 5 Tips for B2B Facebook Advertising

Facebook advertising is traditionally best for B2C marketers, but now B2B marketers can get in on the action.

Move over B2C marketers, the B2B crowd is coming to Facebook advertising, and they’re ready to play hardball!

Traditionally, Facebook advertising has been somewhat useless to B2B marketers. It’s a great tool for B2C marketers, who can offer discounts, promote sales and retarget buyers who have left items in their carts through adverts on Facebook, but these tactics don’t always work for the B2B crowd.

When it comes to advertising, B2C and B2B marketers have different goals in the back of their minds. B2B marketers are out to:

• Create a strong brand recognition.

• Generate increased knowledge and awareness of a product or service. You can create buyer personas to help you better understand who you’re targeting.

• Reach out to company advisors, decision makers and others involved in a company’s buying process.

• Take down contact information for each lead.

• Nurture leads through the sales funnel.

• Pass strong leads on to sales.

All six of these goals can be done with Facebook alone, but few B2B marketers understand just how valuable a strong Facebook advertising strategy can be to them.

So for those still wondering, “Does Facebook advertising work for B2B marketers?”, here are our top five tips for B2B Facebook advertising.

1. Reach Past Your Facebook Page’s Audience

Having a Facebook page for your company is a great start for any B2B marketer. The page allows you to connect with all your followers at once and share your own content, other content you find on the web, interesting articles and relevant news updates.

The problem with your page though is that you’re limited to the people following you. If you’re posting to an audience of 500 people, then that’s it. Few people outside of this audience will see your content. Sure, someone might share your post, but that’s not always guaranteed.

With Facebook advertising, you can target all sorts of prospects. You don’t have to have any prior connection to them, and with over 1.41 billion monthly users on Facebook, you can be certain your audience is there. Your ads can appear alongside their newsfeed or as sponsored content, depending on what you paid.

Facebook advertising is a lot like Google Adwords. Your ads will appear to those meeting certain qualifications (we’ll get to some of these later), and they serve as a great casual introduction. If you’re trying to land new clients in a specific area, you can set your ads to appear to those with a certain state or city listed in their profile.

You already know the people who are interested in what you’re selling. Facebook advertising will help you build a bridge to them and make it easier to cross into your sales funnel.

2. Use Custom Audiences

Though you may be active on Facebook already, there’s a good chance that not everyone in your database has liked you on Facebook. That’s okay. They don’t have to. You can still target them with Facebook advertising.

Most people use one email address for all their social media accounts to make it easier to log in. Chances are, that same email address is sitting in your database right now. Facebook advertising will let you upload these email addresses and then target the users attached to them.

To find Custom Audiences, go to Campaigns. Audiences will be listed under Campaigns at the bottom. Once you click on the tab, select Custom Audiences and select Customer List. This will allow you to upload your own list of email addresses.

You can also cross-match this list with your own list of existing customers who have already liked your Facebook page. Depending on how you’re marketing to Facebook followers, you may want to only advertise to those not already in contact through Facebook. In fact, if you want to attract new Facebook followers with Facebook advertising, make sure you cross-match this list so you don’t waste time advertising to a current follower.

Now you can further segment your database into certain demographics to target even further. If you’re promoting two free trials of two different services, then you can split your database so one half receives one offer and the other have received the other offer. Rather than blasting a generic advertisement, you can tailor your messages to better meet the needs of your audience.

3. Target B2B Work Categories

You know that you can target ads at people within your geographical location, age and gender, but did you know you can go after other profile features? Facebook advertising also allows you to target prospects based on the job they have listed or a major life event. This can be extremely useful for reaching out to entirely new prospects and introducing them to your company.

When you’re creating your ad, go down to the More Demographics button. A menu will pop up with many other great demographic-defining choices that will help you make the most of your ads.

Employer

If you already know which specific companies you want to target, then this is a great tool to target employees of these companies. Choose the right company you want to target form the drop down list. Previously, this feature was called “workplaces,” so remember that these are the same feature.

This feature will also let your target broader categories and locations. You can send out your ads to people working in a specific industry or work in more unique settings, such as a home office.

Job Title

Some B2B marketers target specific job titles because they are the ones who usually control the the purse strings of the company. If this is your line of work, target those same job titles on Facebook. Most people display their job title proudly so you’re sure to get  good pull for each ad.

Marketers who work with people from multiple departments will find it easy to create tailored ads for each group. You can target broad groups, such as entrepreneurs, to more specific job titles, such as project managers.

New Job

This is a life event category combines the Job Title category with a sense of urgency. When people get new jobs, they want to show that they are innovative and forward-thinking. At this stage, they’re also open to making new changes to the way the company functions, so they’ll be willing to meet with sales representatives to consider possible change-ups.

The New Job field creates and AND situation for better targeting. Rather than targeting people with new jobs and a specific job title separately, target them together to maximise your potential reach.

4. Focus on Offering Incentives and Lead Generation

B2C marketers like to offer incentives to convince people to click to buy a certain product, and now B2B marketers can generate leads using a similar tactic with Facebook advertising.

Rather than getting a lead to buy a product or service (which they might not be ready to do yet), you can get them to visit your website and hand over their carefully-guarded email addresses. If you offer a service or product, create an ad that promotes a free trial offer of your product.

This can also be used to promote gated content, such as an ebook or an upcoming webinar, to help build your emailing list. By targeting users based on the criteria mentioned in Tip #3, you can entice viewers to come to your website and get access to your great content. All that they need to do is give you their email addresses, and you’re on your way to growing a full database.

Don’t forget to up sell! If you go back to Custom Audience, you can create a list of consumers who bought a specific product or service from you and advertise an upsell. Think of it like creating a “People Who Bought This Also Bought This” ad, similar to the ones your see on Amazon.

5. Retarget Your Lost Prospects

We’ve talked a lot about reaching out to new consumers and generating leads, but Facebook advertising has another purpose: retargeting lost consumers. A consumer who looks at your product or service, but doesn’t buy anything doesn’t have to be a lost cause. Facebook advertising can help you encourage that consumer back to your site.

Using the Custom Audience feature once more, you can target visitors who previously visited a specific URL. It doesn’t have to be a page on your website; it can also be a landing page. If a consumer didn’t follow the CTA on your landing page, your ad on Facebook can retarget them.

To take advantage of this feature, you need to be sure that you already have a Facebook website custom audience in creation and ready to go. In case you need a refresher, you will need to:

• Go to Facebook Ads Manager.

• Go down to Audience.

• Choose the Create Custom Audience.

• Go to the Under Website Traffic and choose People Visiting Specific Pages.

• Go down to the Visited page and customise the URL elements to match what you want to target.

• Hit the Create button.

Then you will need to put in a special bit of coding in from Facebook - called an offsite pixel - into the codings on the pages you want to track. When someone visits that page, they will be added to the Custom Audience list in the Facebook Ads Manager and Facebook will be able to show ads to them, based on the type of ad that you already created.

With Facebook advertising, the possibilities are endless. There are so many different ways B2B marketers can target new leads and retarget lost leads through facebook. By exploring the extensive Custom Audiences feature, you’ll find new opportunities to stay connected with your fans and reach out to new consumers to better grow your business.

Which one of these tips will you try first?

Thanks to Mike Bird for sharing their advice and opinions in this post. Mike Bird is an influencer in the social media marketing & Facebook advertising space and contributes to Social Media Examiner, Social Media Today, Yahoo! Business Advisor and most importantly, the Social Garden blog. You can follow him on Twitter.

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