When was the last time you updated your website? If you have to stop and think for a minute to answer that question, you may have a problem. Your website needs to be monitored and updated on a regular basis. However, you don't want to make changes without any rhyme or reason. That's why you can use A/B testing as a tool to help guide your website updates. But before you start A/B testing, you need to understand how it works. It's not just a one-time thing. Some of you may have tried these tests in the past and seen an improvement. So why did you stop? For those of you who have never tried A/B testing, it can be difficult to know where to start. Regardless of your situation and experience with A/B testing, I can help you. Continuous A/B testing will make your website more efficient. I'll explain how you can use this strategy to improve your business and help you boost your conversion rates. How A/B testing worksA/B testing isn't difficult to understand. You start by creating a hypothesis about a certain element and then run a test to see if your theory was right. To do this, you create two different versions of your website. Half of your site traffic will get sent to one version, and the other half will get directed to the variation. Here's a visual representation to give you a better understanding of what I'm talking about: Once you set up the test, you wait to see which variation has higher conversion rates. Then you draw conclusions and update your website with the version that converts the most. What's tricky about A/B testing is deciding how long to test things and what elements need to be tested. Honestly, there's not one right answer to those questions. But I'll give you some guidance to help you run these tests efficiently. Test your CTA buttonsWhen you're trying to get higher conversions, it's best to start with the button that gets people to convert. Obviously, these buttons are different for each company in every industry. It depends on your goal on a specific landing page as well. Some of you may be trying to drive a sale, while others may be trying to get site visitors to opt in to their email subscription lists. The key here is picking one element to start. You don't want to test two theories at once. Testing multiple hypotheses doesn't give you conclusive results because you won't know which variation impacted the results. That's why you should be running tests continuously to maximize the efficiency. Start with something subtle and easy such as the size, color, or placement of your CTA button. For example, you could hypothesize that a larger CTA button will have higher conversions. You can also test the actual text written on your CTA button. Try testing power words against action words. Here are some of the power words that convert the most: Are any of these words used in your call to action? Here are some more statistics about the conversion success of words that prompt an action: Based on the numbers in these graphics, you could hypothesize that a call to action that says “Sign up for free” will have higher conversion rates than one that says “Download now.” But there's only one way to find out. Test it. After you test one of these and are satisfied with the results, move on to another test. If you started with the size of your CTA button, move on to the color. After that, you can test the text or placement of the button. Test all the CTAs this way on each page of your website. Fewer than half of websites have a CTA button that can be spotted in less than 3 seconds. Putting so much effort into testing your CTA will definitely give you an edge over your competitors. Evaluate your headingsAfter you're satisfied with your CTA button analysis, move on to other components of your website that stand out the most. Your headlines and subheadings definitely jump off the page, so it makes sense to test those next. If your headlines aren't worded properly, visitors may not even read all the content on the page. While testing the CTA may seem more important, visitors could miss out on your entire value proposition if the headers don't keep them engaged. In addition to conversions, you should be looking at analytics that show for how long each visitor stays on the page. If one headline causes the average page viewing time to be significantly longer than the variation, it will definitely increase the chances that the visitors will convert. Here's an example of an A/B test of a website's headline: As you can see, the two pages are identical, except for the headlines. The variation has different words for the main heading and subhead. The test yielded conclusive results. Website visitors who saw version A filled out the form at a 27.76% higher rate than the ones who saw version B. If your tests are only within 5% or so of each other, you may not be able to say that one is definitely better. To find out for sure, you can run an A/A test before your A/B test to see what your standard deviation is between the same versions of a web page. Improve your checkout processFor those of you with an ecommerce website, you need to find ways to minimize shopping cart abandonment. Using A/B tests on the layout of your checkout process can really help you maximize conversions. You'll be able to tell which elements are working and which ones can be tossed away. I'll give you some ideas of what you can start testing. Are you accepting coupon codes? If you have an option for visitors to input a coupon code during the checkout process, it could send them searching for a code. But if these codes aren't always readily available and they're just something you offer to a disgruntled customer, it shouldn't be a primary element of your checkout process. Test it out to see what kind of results you get. You could also test a guest checkout vs. login to checkout conversion rates. I'm assuming you're offering a secure checkout, so use A/B tests to see if the size and placement of your security badges have an impact on conversions. Test every element on the page. Something small could make a huge difference. Here's a great example of something subtle that iHerb used when A/B testing their checkout process: Take a look at the left side of the screen. They have a shipping cost calculator. All the customer has to do is input their zip code to get an estimate on their shipping costs. But the Heavy Duty Bag promotion draws lots of attention away from the calculator. Here's another version of the page: As you can see, the image was removed and the “Calculate” button was placed much closer to the “Proceed to Checkout” CTA. OK. So technically they changed two elements of this page, which I know I said you shouldn't do. But this was subtle enough to be effective. I'm a big advocate for removing clutter from your pages, so I think it was a smart decision to get rid of the image in addition to moving the placement of the calculator. Find out which images convertYou definitely want to use images to help you improve your website. It's just a matter of deciding what images to use and where to place them. If you're on the fence about a decision, or you have some images already on your website, run A/B tests to see which ones have the highest conversion rates. For example, you could test an image of a man vs. a woman to see if they yield different results. Or you could test an image of the same model but with different facial expressions, such as smiling vs. a serious face. Is it better to have one big image as the background for your website? Or will a white background with the image in the forefront have higher conversions? The only way to find out for sure is to test your theory. You should also consider the size and position of your images in relationship to other elements on your website. Continuously run these tests to maximize your conversion rates. For example, let's say you find out that a photo of a man converts higher than a photo of a woman. Now you've got to find the most optimal position of that photo on the page, so your tests will continue. Test different color schemesColors can make a huge impact on how people see your website. That's because different colors impact us differently. We're programmed to associate certain colors with certain events. For example, what color does everyone wear to a funeral (at least in the West)? I'm not trying to sound grim, but that's one of the reasons why we automatically associate the color black with death. Test colors for every component of your website, such as the color of the text, the menu icons, and CTA buttons. Here's an example that tests the colors of the call to action on this website: The pages are identical, including the text. The only thing that's been changed is the color. Refer back to what I said earlier about our minds automatically associating certain colors with things. Well, we're programmed to go on green and stop on red. So a valid hypothesis for this A/B test would be that a green CTA button will have higher conversions than the red one. You'll have to run a test to find out if that's true for your website. Use A/B tests to improve your emailsEverything we've discussed so far is related to your website. But that's not the only platform you use to get conversions. A/B testing is not limited to your website. You can also test factors within your email marketing campaigns. Here too, you can focus on your CTA, colors, images, headings, and text. But you can test other factors as well. For example, use A/B testing on your email subject lines. The content of your message can be the same, but see if you have a significant difference in open rates and conversions based on the subject. Test the word count of your marketing emails. Recent studies suggest that emails between 50 and 125 words have the highest conversion rates. Think outside the box when you're running these A/B tests. Don't assume you're only allowed to test elements of your website. Email campaigns are another viable option. Revisit your early testsA/B tests don't just last a day or two. Typically, you'll want to run each test for at least a few weeks to make sure you've got a large enough sample size to yield conclusive results. Let's say you run 4 or 5 different tests on your CTA button. That alone could take 3 months. Then you test your headlines, images, colors, and checkout process. By the time you get through all these tests, a year or two could have passed since your initial test. Well, don't stop now. Go back and see if your CTA is still as efficient as possible. ConclusionA/B testing is one of the best ways to increase your conversion rates. But you don't just run one test and call it a day. This process needs to be a continuous part of your marketing strategy. Always strive to make improvements to your website. Test things like your CTA buttons, headlines, and checkout process. You can also test visual elements such as your images and color schemes on your pages. A/B testing isn't just restricted to your website. You can apply this strategy to your email marketing campaigns as well. Once you finish testing something, move on to the next element. After you've tested everything, start back at the beginning. What elements of your website are you testing first to improve your conversion rates?
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E-commerce is growing at a meteoric pace, and there is no doubt about it. According to a recent study by Statista, retail e-commerce sales worldwide reached $2.4 trillion in 2017 and are expected to reach 4.9 trillion in 2021. Interestingly, this growth pattern is not solely a retail B2C phenomenon. In fact, B2B e-commerce worldwide sales in 2017 peaked at $7.7 trillion, which is 235% higher than B2C. Sounds pretty impressive, right? And these figures do tell us a lot about major changes in consumer behavior that will continue to evolve in 2018. The shopper is more technologically advanced than ever before and is empowered to drive disruptive changes in traditional retail business. So if consumers increasingly prefer e-commerce to brick-and-mortar shopping, why do we still need physical stores? Why do businesses still want that foot traffic? There are a number of reasons why, but let's just start with another very simple, yet very loud statistic. In-store sales accounted for 91% of all retail sales in the US in 2017. This means that brick-and-mortar is still the most popular way to shop for most Americans. And it comes as no surprise. The in-store shopping experience is incomparable to browsing items on a desktop or mobile screen. The ability to see, touch and try products before purchase remains the biggest motivator for consumers to shop offline. And that's not the only thing stopping consumers from buying online. According to 2017 BigCommerce study, 58% of US consumers hate paying for shipping, and 34% think product return process is difficult when shopping online. All of these are e-commerce pain points that can actually serve as huge growth opportunities for brick-and-mortar retailers. But ultimately from a business perspective, you want to provide seamless and consistent customer experience across all sales channels and reach that omnichannel zen. You have probably heard the term omnichannel before. Google defines it as: “ensuring retailer marketing strategies are geared toward enabling customers to convert on any channel.” Sounds too sophisticated. But the main idea behind omnichannel retail marketing is to simply provide shoppers what they want, whenever and wherever they want. That said, there are many ways you can use local e-commerce insights and marketing tactics to drive foot traffic to your store, and I will show you exactly how you can do this. But before we dive into the realm of local e-commerce marketing tactics, you might want to check out Neil Patel's 4 Local SEO Marketing Strategies to Build Your Brick And Mortar Business. 1. Buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS)Since customers hate to pay for shipping, the first thing you can do to ease their pain is to offer an in-store pickup option, also known as BOPIS. This is a very popular service offered by almost every major retailer, and it is something you can easily implement for your customers as well. In fact, according to the Great Omnichannel Expectations 2016-2017 Shopper Survey Report by iVend, 57% of US shoppers say that they use the “buy online, pick up in store” option. And 65.3% of those consumers say they do so to avoid delivery costs. Another thing you can offer to drive foot traffic is the ability to reserve the product online and collect it in-store. This options works best for new product releases and can help build excitement. Think new Apple product launches. Usually, they are sold out even before official sales date. Although BOPIS is an attractive alternative for most shoppers, it still makes sense to provide some extra incentives, like faster shipping or even an in-store redeemable coupon. An important thing to consider when implementing buy online pick up in store service is to make sure the whole experience is as smooth and convenient as possible. How?
2. Provide local inventory availability informationThere is a common myth that consumers who search online will only visit online shops. That is not entirely true. In fact, three out of four consumers are more likely to visit physical stores if they find local information in search results helpful. So why not give your consumers what they look for? First of all, make sure your store locator is up and running. Let your shoppers easily find their local store and make sure to provide all details, like phone numbers, email, and address. Then go one step further and provide local inventory availability information for each item and each local store. You might be wondering why customers even need this if they can buy products online and pick up them in the store? Well, it turns out that a lot of shoppers do not want to pay upfront, especially for specific products, like personal hygiene and care items, that are more difficult to return and get a refund for. So informing your website visitors about the stock availability at your local store can be a great foot traffic driver for undecided customers. Ikea is one of the biggest retailers to have successfully implemented this on their website. It offers website visitors to choose the local store and see the inventory of a particular product in that store. This information can be especially helpful if your customers tend to buy items in bulk. 3. Buy in store and walk out hands-freeThis is a relatively new approach to retail marketing and comes as a result of shopper behavior changes as well. It serves as a good way to respond to consumer “showrooming.” What is showrooming and why does it matter? Showrooming has become a common way of shopping for a lot of deal hunters and simply shoppers who like to compare prices or try out products before purchasing. Customers now can come into your store, get all information they need about the product, see and touch it, but then buy it online from another web store. How sad, isn't it? 25% of Americans even admitted purchasing while standing in a brick-and-mortar store. The good news is you do not need to fight this behavior. You can embrace it. What if your customers could try products in your store and then have them delivered straight to their preferred address? It's an entirely new approach to retail, and a few brands have already implemented it. For instance, Bonobos, have opened “guideshops” across the US, where you can find the perfect fit and style with the help of a professional guide. When you're done shopping, your orders are delivered to your home or work free of charge. You can do this too. 4. Offer in-store redeemable mobile promotionsDid you know mobile users spend more than 4 hours a day on their phones? Just look at this graph from Statista. In 2017 mobile accounted for more than half of worldwide website traffic and is projected to grow even more this year. Consumers rely more on their mobile devices to research even the smallest decisions on the go. But they also are more susceptible to mobile communication than, for instance, email. Research shows that text message open rate in the US is 82%, which is a mind-boggling number if we compare it to email open rate, hovering at around 24%. This once again proves that SMS marketing is not only alive but thriving. You should really consider implementing mobile marketing solutions, including phone number collection program. If you want to speed things up a little bit, you can go for Facebook Lead Ads to collect phone numbers fast by offering something enticing in return. Here's how it works. Open your Facebook Ad manager and choose your marketing objective to be “Lead Generation.” Next, fill in all your targeting, budget, placement and scheduling details and head straight over to building the ad. Scroll down a little bit until you see the “Create Form” section of your ad builder. Create a new form and describe the special something your customers will receive when they sign up. Then click the “More options” in Questions section of the form creation menu and tick “Phone number.” It's a good idea to have essential information fields to improve the conversion rate of your form. So keep it short and attractive. When you're done, your form will look something like this: There you have it. This will allow you to legally grow and maintain a list of your customer phone numbers to fuel your mobile marketing initiatives. Once you have your first batch, you can start sending coupons and gift codes to your list via SMS and encourage customers to visit your brick-and-mortar store and redeem them. Another great way to collect customer phone numbers is to incentivize them upon check out on your website, by offering free shipping or even the in-store redeemable coupon itself. 5. Optimize for near-me searchesFollowing the explosive growth of mobile, consumers now expect to receive specifically tailored and personalized search results whenever and wherever, using near-me queries. So what are those near-me searches anyway? Near-me searches are location specific search queries, usually aimed at getting quick results nearby. This is what they look like. Near-me searches have been growing steadily in past five years and are only taking off. The tricky part is that it's not enough to be geographically near the searcher to rank high in search results. You need to really tap into local search optimization to get a piece of the “near-me pie.” Here are some quick local SEO tips to get you started.
Shortlist your happiest customers who use Gmail and reach out to them with a quick link to review your business on Google. 6. Offer in-store exchanges and returnsDid you know that 30% of all e-commerce purchases are returned versus 8.89% of brick-and-mortar purchases? Sounds like a lot. But it is not surprising. Despite all technological advancements, online shoppers still do not have the opportunity to see, touch and try products before purchase. Hence the high return rates. There is little you can do to minimize order returns, but if you want to drive foot traffic to your store and also improve customer experience, you can offer in-store returns and exchanges. A recent study by Invesp Conversion Rate Optimization Company reveals that 9 out of 10 consumers will buy something again if returns are easy and hassle-free. And 62% of shoppers are more likely to purchase online if there is an option to return items in-store. This means that having a great in-store return and exchange experience will not only drive your customers from the web to your store, but it will also give them another reason to shop with you next time. And this is true not only for North American shoppers but Europeans as well. The 2017 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper study shows that almost half of consumers would prefer to return items to a brick-and-mortar store. And 49% of them would prefer to work with an in-store associate to process returns. 7. Organize in-store events and workshopsHaving a physical store has some advantages for an e-commerce retailer, and it would be a wasted opportunity not to make use of those. One of the best things you can do to drive foot traffic and as a result, in-store sales, is to organize various events, like new product launches, runway shows, shopping festivals, etc. The reason why this is important and why it works so well is because consumers still view shopping as entertainment. Having the right atmosphere and mood in your physical store can work wonders. According to that 2017 Mood Media study, music is a crucial element for a great in-store shopping experience. In fact, 81% of shoppers globally agreed that shopping experience is more enjoyable if a store is playing music. This figure rockets to 90% among those 18-24. The same study suggests that consumers love in-store events, especially brick-and-mortar store openings of online-only brands. So why not organize a shopping night with live music and cocktails? Power these events with heavy promotion on your website and social media and your store will be jam-packed. 8. Localize your digital adsDigital advertising is a big part of your marketing budget, and you want to make sure you utilize it properly and with maximum ROI. Luckily, there are many local advertising solutions on most ad networks and particularly on Google. On average shoppers search and purchase via multiple channels almost 40% of the time and the majority of these shoppers go to a search engine to start their research. So it really is important to target and convert these consumers at the early consideration stage. Here's how you can do it using local advertising on Google. If you already have active search ads, go ahead and set up location extensions in your Adwords account. This will allow you to show local search ads with your address, a map to your location, or the distance to your store. While these ads will help increase foot traffic, there is an even more powerful ad type that is specifically designed to bring online searchers straight to your local store. I am talking about Local Inventory Ads. These ads show the stock availability of an item at your local store along with the typical product information that shows up in a regular Google shopping ad. When you click on a Local Inventory Ad, it takes you to a digital storefront with your local store information, including stock availability, address, phone number, email, and hours. 9. Create unique and compelling in-store experiencesThe power of in-store experiences is incomparable to online shopping in any way. It is the top reason for consumers around the world to choose brick-and-mortar over e-commerce. Let's look at both sides of the coin. What motivates consumers to buy online instead of going to a local store? What really drives this huge shift to online? The 2017 KPMG Global Online Consumer Report shows that the main advantages of online shopping are 24/7 availability, easy price comparison, and better deals. Now let's see how physical stores beat these powerful facts. As expected, more than half of consumers globally still prefer to see the product with their own eyes, 55% want to try it on before purchase, and 22% simply enjoy the experience of going to the shops. So how can you make your in-store experience a blast? Easy. Start with eliminating the main consumer pain points. Did you know that waiting in line is the number one in-store frustration for 60% of shoppers around the world? Leverage the advantages of having (more) mobile POS devices to cut the lines at cash registers and accept card payments on the spot. This will serve you particularly well during in-store sales. Another thing you can do to ease the hectic atmosphere in your store is create an immersive brand experience with uplifting background music, proper lighting, and smell. Yes, the smell is actually even more powerful than you think. Scent travels to your brain immediately and is closely linked to memory. That is why it is widely used by major retailers to influence consumer behavior in-store. It turns out there is even research on which scents are more likely to drive sales. It suggests that people tend to spend more when they smell warm scents, such as vanilla and cinnamon. Whichever scent you choose, keep it very light and ambient so that it adds up to the overall in-store experience and not vice versa. ConclusionE-commerce is on the rise and will continue to grow remarkably in the near future. It changes the way consumers shop and influences offline sales as well. However, traditional brick-and-mortar retail is far from dead and is going through an exciting yet transformative change. This change will require an omnichannel approach to marketing and a sound web-to-store strategy, focusing on the following key aspects. Bring online and offline together by combining the major advantages of these two channels. Provide your customers with the convenience to pick up their order at your local store. Let them see your stock availability and then shop offline. Allow shoppers to enjoy the experience of seeing, touching, trying your products before purchase, checking out and walking out of the store hands-free. Be there when your customer needs you. Optimize your web presence for near-me searches. Experiment with local search ads and Google Inventory Ads to gain visibility and drive more in-store traffic. Consider investing in mobile marketing solutions to accurately and legally collect customer phone numbers and send deals and special offers at the right time. Create an unmatched in-store experience. This is the biggest strength of your brick-and-mortar store. Build excitement around real-life shopping experience by organizing one-of-a-kind fun events that every shopper would love to attend. Take advantage of the latest tech solutions to provide exceptional customer service and encourage brand loyalty. What e-commerce marketing tactics have you seen drive foot traffic to your store? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. When was the last time you updated your website? If you have to stop and think for a minute to answer that question, you may have a problem. Your website needs to be monitored and updated on a regular basis. However, you don't want to make changes without any rhyme or reason. That's why you can use A/B testing as a tool to help guide your website updates. But before you start A/B testing, you need to understand how it works. It's not just a one-time thing. Some of you may have tried these tests in the past and seen an improvement. So why did you stop? For those of you who have never tried A/B testing, it can be difficult to know where to get started. Regardless of your situation and experience with A/B testing, I can help you out. Continuous A/B testing will make your website more efficient. I'll explain how you can use this strategy to improve your business and help you boost your conversion rates. How A/B testing worksA/B testing isn't really that difficult of a concept to understand. You start by creating a hypothesis about a certain element and then run a test to see if your theory was right. To do this, you create two different versions of your website. Then half of your site traffic will get sent to one version, and the other half gets directed to the variation. Here's a visual representation to give you a better understanding of what I'm talking about. Once you set up the test, you wait and see which variation has higher conversion rates. Then you draw conclusions and update your website with the version that converts the most. What's tricky about A/B testing is deciding how long to test things and what elements need to be tested. Honestly, there's not one right answer to those questions. But I'll give you some guidance to help you run these tests efficiently. Test your CTA buttonsWhen you're trying to get higher conversions, it's best to start with the button that gets people to convert. Obviously, these buttons are different for each company in every industry. It depends on your goal on a specific landing page as well. Some of you may be trying to drive a sale while others may be trying to get site visitors opt-in to their email subscription list. The key here is just picking one element to start. You don't want to test two theories at once. Testing multiple hypotheses doesn't give you conclusive results because you won't know which variation impacted the results. That's why you should be running tests continuously to maximize the efficiency. Start with something subtle and easy such as the size, color, or placement of your CTA button. For example, you could hypothesize that a larger CTA button will have higher conversions. You can also test the actual text written on your CTA button. Try testing power words against action words. Here are some of the power words that convert the most. Are any of these words currently used in your call-to-action? Here are some more statistics about the conversion success of words that entice an action. Based on the numbers in these graphics, you could hypothesize that a call to action that says, “Sign up for free” will have higher conversion rates than one that says, “Download now.” But there's only one way to find out. Test it. After you test one of these and you're satisfied with the results, move on to another. So if you started with the size of your CTA button, then move on to the color. After that, you can test the text or placement. Test all of the CTAs this way on each page of your website. Less than half of websites have a CTA button that can be spotted in less than 3 seconds. So putting so much effort into testing your CTA will definitely give you an edge over your competitors. Evaluate your headingsAfter you're satisfied with your CTA button analysis, move on to other components of your website that stand out the most. Your headlines and subheadings definitely jump off of the page at visitors, so it makes sense to test those next. If your headlines aren't worded properly, visitors may not even read all of the content on the page. So while testing the CTA may seem more important, visitors could miss out on your entire value proposition if the headers don't keep them engaged. In addition to conversions, you should be looking at analytics that shows how long each visitor stays on the page for. If one headline causes the average page viewing time to be significantly longer than the variation, it will definitely increase the chances that the visitors will convert. Here's an example of an A/B test on a website's headline. As you can see, the two pages are identical, except for the headlines. The variation has different words for the main heading and subhead. The test yielded conclusive results. Website visitors who saw version A filled out the form at a 27.76% higher rate than the ones who saw version B. If your tests are only within 5% or so if each other, you may not be able to say that one is definitely better. To find out for sure, you can run an A/A test before your A/B test to see what your standard deviation is between the same version of a web page. Improve your checkout processFor those of you with an ecommerce website, you need to find ways to minimize shopping cart abandonment. Using A/B tests on the layout of your checkout process can really help you maximize conversions. You'll be able to tell which elements are working and which ones can be tossed away. I'll give you some ideas of what you can start testing. Are you accepting coupon codes? If you have an option for visitors to input a coupon code during the checkout process, it could cause them to go searching for a code. But if these codes aren't always readily available and they're just something you use to offer a disgruntled customer, it shouldn't be a primary element of your checkout process. Test it out to see what kind of results you get. You could also test a guest checkout vs. login to checkout conversion rates. I'm assuming you're offering a secure checkout, so use A/B tests to see if the size and placement of your security badges have an impact on conversions. Test every element on the page. You'd be surprised at how something small could make a huge difference. Here's a great example of something subtle that iHerb used to when A/B testing their checkout process. Take a look at the left side of the screen. They have a shipping cost calculator. All the customer has to do is input their zip code and they'll get an estimate on their shipping costs. But the heavy-duty bag promotion draws lots of attention away from the calculator. Here's another version of that same page. As you can see, the image was removed and the “Calculate” button was placed much closer to the “Proceed to Checkout” CTA. OK. So technically they changed two elements of this page, which I know I said you shouldn't do. But this was subtle enough to be effective. I'm a big advocate for removing clutter from your pages, so I think it was a smart decision to get rid of the image in addition to moving the placement of the calculator. Find out which images convertYou definitely want to use images to help you improve your website. But it's just a matter of what images to use and where to place them. If you're on the fence about a decision, or you have some images already in place on your website, run A/B tests to see which ones have the highest conversion rates. For example, you could test an image of a man vs. an image of a woman to see if one yields different results. Or you could test an image of the same model, but with different facial expressions, such as smiling vs. a serious face. Is it better to have one big image as the background of your website? Or will a white background with the image in the forefront have higher conversions? The only way to find out for sure is by testing your theory. You should also consider the size and position of your images in relationship to other elements of your website. Continuously run these tests to maximize your conversion rates. For example, let's say you find out that a photo of a man converts higher than a photo of a woman. Now you've got to find the most optimal position of that photo on the page, so your tests will continue. Test different color schemesColors can make a huge impact on how people see your website. That's because certain colors have a psychological impact on our mind. We're programmed to associate certain colors with things. For example, but what color does everyone wear to a funeral? I'm not trying to sound grim, but that's one of the reasons why we automatically associate the color black with death. Test colors for every component of your website, such as the color of the text, the menu icons, and CTA buttons. Here's an example that tests the colors of the call-to-action on this website. The pages are identical, including the text. The only thing that's been changed is the color. Refer back to what I said earlier about our minds automatically associating certain colors with things. Well, we're programmed to go on green and stop on red. So a valid hypothesis for this A/B test would be that a green CTA button will have higher conversions than the red one. Use A/B tests to improve your emailsEverything we've discussed so far is based around your website. But that's not the only platform that you use to get conversions. A/B testing is not limited to your website. You can also test factors from your email marketing campaigns. Test things similar to what we've already talked about. Focus on your CTA, colors, images, headings, and text. But with email, you can test other factors as well. For example, use A/B testing on your email subject lines. The content of your message can be the same, but see if you have a significant difference in open rates and conversions based on the subject. Test the word count of your marketing emails. Recent studies suggest that emails between 50 and 125 words have the highest conversion rates. So think outside of the box when you're running these A/B tests. Don't assume that you're only allowed to test elements of your website. Email campaigns are another viable option. Revisit your early testsA/B tests don't just last for a day or two. Typically, you'll want to run each test for at least a few weeks or so to make sure that you've got a large enough sample size to yield conclusive results. So let's say you run 4 or 5 different tests on your CTA button. That alone could take 3 months. Then you move on to test your headlines, images, colors, and checkout process. By the time you get through all of these tests, a year or two could have passed since your initial test. Well, don't stop now. Go back and see if your CTA is still as efficient as possible. ConclusionA/B testing is one of the best ways to increase your conversion rates. But you don't just run one test and call it a day. This process needs to be a continuous part of your marketing strategy. Always strive to make improvements to your website. Test things like your CTA buttons, headlines, and checkout process. You can also test visual elements such as your images and color schemes on your pages. A/B testing isn't just restricted to your website. You can apply this strategy to your email marketing campaigns as well. Once you finish testing something, move on to the next element. After you've tested everything, start back at the beginning. What elements of your website are you testing first to improve your conversion rates? A/B testing is one of the most polarizing marketing tactics ever invented. It seems like everyone has an opinion on whether it works or not. So, where do I stand on the issue? Well, if you do it wrong, I think it is a giant waste of your time. But if you do it right, A/B testing can make a major impact on your conversions. Only 28% of marketers are satisfied with their conversion rates. That's a sad statistic. The good news is that A/B testing is an easy way to improve those conversion rates if you know how to do it effectively. But the problem is that many marketers aren't sure how long they should run their A/B tests for or even how to set them up to ensure accurate results. Thankfully, you don't have the blaze the trail. Many have already benefited from A/B testing, and we can learn from their success. Plus, there are tools available do much of the hard work for you. I'm going to show you how long you should run your A/B test for and give you a few simple rules that will help you get accurate results every time. Does A/B testing really boost conversion rates?Let's start at the beginning. What are A/B tests, anyway? An A/B test is simply a way to compare two variations of the same concept to see which performs better. Here's an example of a simple A/B test from Optimizely. A/B tests let you ask the right questions about specific changes to your site, your app, or any other content source you'd like to improve. More importantly, it allows your audience to provide the answers. It isn't a new concept, either. In fact, A/B testing has actually been around for almost 100 years. It got its start in agriculture with farmers attempting to test how much fertilizer to use on their fields. Then, it made its way into medicine in the form of clinical trials. So, what's the benefit for you? For one thing, A/B testing provides data to support a hypothesis so that you aren't acting on a wild guess. I doubt that your finance department is very fond of wild guesses when it comes to setting and meeting budgets. You shouldn't be, either. Look at this example of how conversions improved by 11.5% for Kiva.org by simply adding FAQs, a few statistics, and some social proof. That's a healthy return on a small investment of effort. Even President Obama's campaign used A/B testing. His team split tested their campaign website, they were able to collect 2.8 million more email addresses. That translates into a lot of campaign funding (to the tune of $60 million). And when Election Day was finally over, their campaign yielded great success. So, if it works, then why don't more marketers do it? In many cases, marketers simply don't make it a priority. Despite the fact that websites see an average lift in responses of 13.2% from A/B split testing, 61% of marketers do not test subject lines. Of the ones who do, 74% spend less than an hour on their subject line tests. They wrongly assume that a change will only provide insignificant results because they aren't measuring the right things to begin with. In reality, studies show that A/B testing creates up to 40% more leads for B2B sites and 25% more leads for e-commerce sites. But there's also a good reason that some businesses don't A/B test: they know that they aren't ready to do it. The reality is that some businesses simply aren't yet at a place where A/B testing would be helpful. So, how can you determine whether you're ready or not? If your conversion volume is less than 1,000 per month, you aren't ready. Your results will not be statistically significant. Wait until your conversions ramp up over 1,000, and then you can start A/B testing with confidence that your results will mean something. We'll dive into that later on in this article. If you've been testing for a while, but you don't feel like you're getting a good return on your efforts, take a look at the main reasons why A/B tests fail:
Here's how to stop these four saboteurs to make sure your A/B tests aren't a waste of time. Do your researchBefore you do anything else, you need to decide what to test. Every good experiment begins with an educated hypothesis. A/B tests are no different. Unfortunately, many site owners run their test on “gut feelings” instead of on data and thoughtful hypotheses. This pie chart from 2014 shows the ways that e-commerce companies were choosing to implement new changes. There is simply no excuse for this anymore. As you'll see throughout the rest of this post, case studies have proven the power of A/B testing. It's up to you to run accurate tests and implement changes based on the data. First, you have to take a look at what isn't going right for your company. Is it a lack of conversions? Are you lacking new email sign-ups? Now, translate that shortfall into an achievable goal. Make it specific and measurable. Next, take a look at your buyer personas. If you haven't looked at them in a while, it's time to get them out and dust them off. If you haven't created buyer personas yet, don't panic. HubSpot offers a simple template to help you get started with your persona library. Using the information you know about your audience, take a long, hard look at how you're letting them down when it comes to customer experience. It's not easy to go on a faultfinding mission with the content you've worked so hard to create, but this step is very important. Try running a 5-second test with a portion of your audience to shine a light on problem areas. Once you have a better idea of how you can improve, it's time to write your hypothesis. Narrow your focus to something that you can realistically change and resist the temptation to ask leading questions. Wishpond recommends using these three steps: Maybe forming a hypothesis isn't your issue. Maybe it's narrowing your focus to the highest-priority issues so you know what to test first. Conversion XL has a great prioritization worksheet to help you decide where to focus your energy first. Now that you have your hypothesis, it's time to put it to the test. Statistical significance is keyStatistical significance reflects the level of risk involved with the variation you are measuring. It's your level of confidence in the outcome that you select. According to Optimizely, “statistical significance is a way of mathematically proving that a certain statistic is reliable. When you make decisions based on the results of experiments that you're running, you will want to make sure a relationship actually exists.” For meaningful results from meaningful data relationships, don't stop running your test until you reach a statistical significance of 95%-99%, which simply means that you are 95%-99% confident that your outcome is valid. Look at this example from ConversionXL. As you can see from the data, Variation 1 seemed like a losing proposition at the outset. But by waiting for statistical significance of 95%, the outcome was totally different. In the end, Variation 1 won out by over 25%. If they had cut off the test early, they would have skewed the results, and the test would have been pointless. Here's another example from BaseKit, an online website building company. Since most of their traffic is paid, they could safely assume that their audience had a distinct interest in their product. It makes sense, then, that they focused their test on their pricing page. They reached statistical significance of 95% within 24 hours and saw an overall conversion boost of 25% just by redesigning their pricing page. Tools like this one take the hard work out of determining statistical significance. If at some point you want to run more than just a split test (comparing only two variables), this tool will allow you to add as many variations as you'd like to analyze significance on each of them. Simply enter the number of visitors and the number of overall conversions of your variants, and the tool compares the two conversion rates and tells you if your test is statistically significant. If your significance is not 95% or higher, then keep testing. I can't stress this enough: don't quit once you reach what you think is an adequate level of statistical significance. Never stop before you reach 95%, and aim for statistical significance of 99%. Anything else is a wild guess. Reaching statistical significance isn't the only ingredient for a successful A/B test. Your sample size also makes a huge difference on the results. Size mattersIf your sample size or conversion pool is too small, your margin of error will increase. That makes sense, right? Think of it this way. Let's say that I have a bag of 100 jellybeans, and I want to run a test to see the likelihood of pulling different flavors out of the bag. So, let's say that I randomly pull three jellybeans out of the bag, and all three of them are licorice-flavored. If I only use those three jellybeans to gauge my likelihood of pulling out another licorice jellybean, I'm unlikely to get an accurate result from my test. It's possible that there are only four or five licorice jellybeans in the entire bag, and I just happened to pick three of them right away. Or perhaps half of them are licorice and the other half is a cherry. Whatever the case may be, if I only use those three jellybeans to determine my odds of drawing more licorice ones, I'll assume that my odds are far higher than they actually are. Or, if I only pull out three jellybeans and none of them are licorice, I may wrongly assume that I'll never pull a licorice jellybean from the bag. Those are two different assumptions, but both are wrong because the sample size of the test was too small to draw sound conclusions from. So what is that magic number of conversions or subjects you'll need for your test? Obviously, it varies a bit depending on your overall number of visits and conversions. But, a solid guide is to have at least 1,000 subjects (or conversions, customers, visitors, etc.) in your experiment for the test to overcome sample pollution and work correctly. Some marketing experts even recommend sample sizes of up to 5,000 people. Remember that if you're running an A/B test (two variants), you automatically split that sample in half and show one variant to each half. When you think of it that way, you wouldn't want to drop below 500 samples, right? Another consideration that you can easily overlook in A/B testing is making sure that your sample audience actually represents everyone in your conversion universe. If you aren't careful, you could receive inaccurate results due to sample pollution. Here's a common example of sample pollution: Many of your visitors access content on their desktops, tablets, laptops, and even televisions. They are accessing your website and content from a bunch of different devices. If you include each of those visits in your data (as if they are a unique visitor), you're a victim of device pollution. You've essentially counted the same visitors several times. There are other factors to consider, such as multiple users using the same device, publicly-accessed machines, and so on. The point is that you have to cover your bases when it comes to the evils of sample pollution and think ahead. How do you do that? One way is to run A/B tests separately for specific devices and browsers. Sure, it will take longer to arrive at a healthy sample size. But you can rest well knowing that your sample sizes will be far more accurate. If you're still not sure how large of a sample you should aim for, Optimizely has an easy calculator you can use to help determine your ideal sample size. Plus, it even takes statistical significance into account! Now, let's get to the heart of A/B testing, and the million-dollar question that every marketer asks at some point. How long should I run the test? Patience is a virtueMarketers often make the mistake of ending their A/B tests too soon because they think they already know the answer. If you jump to conclusions about which variation will “win,” you'll skew the results, and the test won't work. Think about it. Why would you run the test in the first place if you know the answer? If you're running an honest test, you have to let the process play out. Remember our discussion about statistical significance? I can't say it too many times: always, always, always stick to the 95%+ rule and do not pull your test before you reach that level of significance or higher. Use a tool to help you see where your statistical significance is at, and wait it out. Now that I've drilled that point home, let's talk about timing. To keep your data honest, you ideally want to run your tests for at least two weeks. Why? Conversions and web traffic vary wildly depending on a few key variables. Look at this data from Conversion XL. The conversion rates are much higher on Thursdays than they are on the weekend. In this case, testing for less than a full week would heavily skew the results. As a rule, you should test for a minimum of seven days, make sure you've reached statistical significance, and then test for another seven days if you haven't. When it comes to data, more is almost always better than not enough. Factor testing time into your A/B plan at the start, and you won't feel rushed or tempted to cut it short too early. Can you run a test for longer than two weeks? Of course! Look at this example from TruckersReport. This was their original landing page: At first glance, it doesn't appear that anything is wrong. But they weren't seeing the response they wanted, and conversions were topping out at about 12%. Now compare that to their revised design: With this new layout, they jumped to a 79.3% conversion rate. How did they do it? They didn't look at their A/B test as a “one-and-done.” They ran a total of six iterative tests over the course of six months. They made sure that they not only had statistical significance above 95% but that they were also capturing every distinct traffic pattern, regardless of the devices truck drivers were using to find them. Here's another example where waiting paid off. Copy Hackers ran an A/B test on their homepage. After the first couple of days, their results were inconclusive. But after the sixth day, they a reached statistical significance of 95%. Would you have stopped? They didn't. They ran the test for another day since it hadn't yet been a full week. And after waiting one extra day, they achieved a completely different result that created almost 24% more conversions. By waiting that extra day, their significance level rose from 95% to 99.6%. Patience gets results. But what do you do if time is dragging on (and I'm talking about months here, not days) and your variants are running neck and neck? When you've followed all of the steps, and there is no clear winner, sometimes you need to walk away and start again with a new set of variants. And that's okay. Convert has a great A/B testing duration calculator to help you determine how long to run your test to preserve the integrity of your data. It not only considers your existing conversion rate, but it also gives you the opportunity to test directly against that smart, measurable hypothesis you spent so much time building. ConclusionEven though you'll find vastly different opinions about A/B testing in the marketing world, it's hard to dispute the results that the organizations I've highlighted in this post have achieved. Some organizations ignore A/B testing completely. Companies usually decide to go this route after running a couple of faulty tests that seemed like a waste of time. But don't let that be you. Don't miss out on the conversion lift and data you can get from a solid A/B test because of a few naysayers in your organization. If you've never given A/B testing a try, it's time to dip your toe in the water. You're not in it alone. Those who have gone before you have done much of the legwork and early experimentation. And with all of the calculators available to help you add the right ingredients in the right amounts, your A/B test is virtually guaranteed to give your conversions a lift. Just remember the “Big Three” factors of A/B testing and keep them intact from start to finish in your testing process:
If I had to sum up my best advice in four words based on my real-life experience with A/B testing, I would say this: be precise and be patient. Which A/B testing tips have given you the biggest lift in conversions? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. Writing your first e-book is exciting. But once it's finally written, you've got to find a way to get it in the hands of your audience. After all that hard work, long nights, and endless research, it would be a shame if your book went unread. For those of you who have recently written an e-book, are in the process of writing one, or planning to write one in the near future, you've got to start thinking about your distribution methods. You could be the best writer on the planet, but if you don't know how to market yourself, nobody is going to know it. That's how you need to approach your e-book distribution strategy. Think like a marketer. Not everyone with great writing skills is a marketing expert. So for those of you that need some guidance on getting tons of downloads for your newest e-book, you're in luck. I'll walk you through everything you need to know to create a waterfall of downloads. Here's how you do it. Start taking pre-ordersDon't wait until you're done writing the e-book to promote it. Taking pre-orders in the early stages is a great way to build hype for your e-book and brand. If people know that they can get it in advance, it might make it seem even more appealing. Lysa TerKeurst used this strategy to promote her e-book, Uninvited. This approach is great because it gives people a reason to pre-order it. Anyone who pre-ordered this copy will be able to download the first five chapters right away. They're also promoting some limited free gifts, which were undisclosed. Both of these promotions can definitely peak the interest of potential readers. Getting to download chapters in advance gives people a feeling of exclusivity. They have something that not everyone else has access too. Plus, if they enjoy the first chapters they could even start promoting the book themselves. Come up with other ways to give people an incentive to pre-order your e-book before it gets released. If you're charging for downloads, you can offer a discounted rate for anyone who pre-orders it. Even if people don't order it in advance, just putting it out there acts a promotional method and creates a buzz around your e-book for when it officially releases. Record an audio versionYou've got to understand that not everyone prefers reading e-books. So recording an audio version can make your book more enticing to a wider audience. According to the Pew Research Center, print books are still more popular than e-books and audio books. E-books are more popular than audio books, but as you can see from the data, there are still people who prefer listening to audio books. But how does releasing an audio book increase downloads for your e-book? You've got to pair the two together. Say your e-book downloads comes with a free audio version as well. Pitch this any way that you want. You could even upcharge for copies of the audio book and offer the e-book as a free download. If you continue to release different formats of your e-book, it will appeal to a wider audience and increase the chances of you getting as many downloads as possible. Create blog posts out of each chapterFor those of you fortunate enough to have an active blog, you need to take advantage of that channel as a marketing resource. You've already got an audience that's familiar with your voice and visits your website to read your blog. Those are the people that you need to target first. It's going to be much easier to get downloads from your blog audience than from people who don't know who you are and have never heard of you before. Rather than just blogging about your e-book once or twice, you can generate lots of blog content by writing a post about each chapter. There are so many benefits to this marketing strategy. First of all, it gives you a way to add fresh new content to your website. This is great for SEO purposes and improving your Google ranking, which can drive traffic to your website. But blogging is great because it gives you an excuse to promote your new content with your other marketing channels. For the past four years, bloggers have been using social media as the primary method of driving traffic to their posts. So each time you blog about a new chapter, you've also got an excuse to post on your social media accounts. Another reason why you should employ this strategy is because these blogs are going to be super easy for you to write. You've already done all the heavy lifting with your e-book. These blogs are just going to be quick summaries of the chapters, which you already know like the back of your hand. So it's not like it's going to take you lots of time and effort to write this content. If you can keep your readers engaged with these blog posts, it can lead to e-book downloads. Just make sure you don't give it all away in the blog. Otherwise, they won't have a reason to download. Tease your audience just enough to keep them interested, but make them download the e-book to get the full effect. Place a download link on multiple places on your websiteObviously, you need to be promoting your e-book on your website. But don't restrict that promotion to just one landing page. Put the download link all over your website. Just make sure that it's not overwhelming or appear as spam. Websites with simple designs have higher conversion rates. So for example, put a CTA button on your home page, side bar, and slider menu. If someone navigates to another page on your website, have a pop-up window appear with a download link. Doing all of this will make it obvious that your e-book is available for download. Right now, marketing experts are not properly utilizing CTA buttons. Less than half of websites have a CTA button that can be spotted in less than three seconds. That's far too long. More than 70% of businesses don't have their CTA on the interior pages of their website. Don't be one of those people who are making this mistake. You should also start A/B testing your CTA button placement, size, wording, and color. These tests will help you make sure that your efficiency is maximized and you're getting the most amount of exposure as possible. Try to get downloads from your email subscribersAs I said earlier when we discussed blogging, you've got to try to get as many downloads as possible from people who are already familiar with your brand. Targeting your email subscribers is perfect for this. These people are interested enough in your brand and voice that they signed up to hear from you on a regular basis. It's much easier than trying to find downloads out of thin air. Check out how Help Scout uses this technique in their email newsletter. It's direct and straight to the point. They aren't trying to promote anything else except for this new e-book. The message ends with a clear call-to-action button that's a link for their subscribers to download the e-book. For those of you charging people for an e-book download, you can try to entice your email subscribers by offering them a discounted rate. Publish infographics with research from your e-bookPeople love visuals. Infographics are great because they help drive more traffic to your website. Here's why. If you start publishing high quality infographics then other websites will use your visuals to improve their own content. As a result, you'll get a referral link. This will increase the chances of your book getting exposed to a wider audience. You can even add a logo or some other identifying mark to all of your infographics that has the title of your book. The headline of each infographic could include the title of the chapter you were referencing. For those of you who have never made an infographic before, don't be intimidated. It's actually quite easy. There are plenty of online tools and resources available that let you create customized infographics for free. Check out Canva if you are looking for a place to get started. Don't turn down guest posting opportunitiesRefer back to what I said earlier about how blogging on your own website can benefit downloads. Well, you can also get more e-book downloads by writing guest posts. Guest posts expose your e-book to a new audience. People who read other blogs may not be familiar with your brand and voice. But once they see your guest post, you can get their attention. Just like with infographics, you'll be able to get referral links for your guest posts too. You can even have these referrals go straight to the download link. I see way too many people turn down guest posting opportunities. In fact, more than 40% of bloggers don't write guest posts at all. This is a complete missed opportunity. Anytime someone offers you a guest post you should jump on it. Just make sure that their website has the same core values as your brand. You don't want to be associated with anyone that contradicts your morals. If nobody is offering you guest posting opportunities, go out and find them on your own. Websites will be thrilled to offer guest blogs because they get to publish new content without having to do any of the work. This is a win-win scenario for everyone. Read sections on a live video broadcastLive videos made the list of my top marketing trends to look for in 2018. This is a great opportunity for you to reach and engage with your audience on social media platforms. I'd recommend starting with platforms like:
Use whichever platform has the largest social media following. If you've got lots of followers on all of these networks, then that's great. Host live video broadcasts on all of them. Just make sure that your live stream isn't boring. You definitely want to read some passages to give people an idea of what they can expect from your book, but that's not all you should do. Marketing experts say that live video is a great way to create engagement and attain a deeper interaction with your followers. So answer questions in real time about your writing process, research, and inspiration for writing the e-book. You could even give away some free copies to people watching the live stream. Leverage social media platformsYou want to make sure that you exhaust all of your marketing distribution channels to promote your e-book. We've already discussed your website, blog, and email subscription list. In addition to using social media to broadcast live videos, you'll also want to take advantage of the other features on these platforms. Post pictures and videos to get the word out to your followers. Encourage shares on Facebook and retweets on Twitter. Add a download link to your Instagram bio. Think about all of the followers that you have on these platforms. Target them before the release. Promote the release day hard. Even after the book is written, keep up your social media marketing strategy to get more downloads. You can try to work with social media influencers on these platforms as well. Promote your personal brandWhy should anyone read your e-book? You need to start promoting your personal brand. Position yourself as an expert on the subject. Let people know if you have a degree in a specific field or any personal success stories that are relevant to the content of your book. Answer these questions to help you define your personal brand. What makes you qualified to write an e-book? If you can brand yourself properly, it will add credibility to your book. As a result, more people will be interested in hearing what you have to say. This will lead to more downloads. ConclusionJust writing an e-book alone isn't enough to get downloads. You've got to be proactive and take the proper steps to make sure that people download your e-book. Start taking pre-orders to build hype and gain exposure before the book is released. Record an audio version to make the book more appealing to people who prefer listening to books. Blog about it. Use each chapter of your e-book as inspiration for a blog post. You can even take advantage of guest posting opportunities. Create infographics to drive more traffic to your website. Make sure that your site has a clear CTA on every page with a download link. Target people who already know who you are. Use social media as a distribution channel and stream live videos to create an authentic interaction with your audience. Always promote your personal brand so people know that you're an expert on the topic and qualified to write this book. If you follow these tips, you won't have a problem getting tons of downloads for your latest e-book. What strategies are you using to get more downloads for your new e-book? The marketing world loves to talk about branding. Take a look at just about any marketing company in the world, and you'll find the word “brand” on at least one page. Startups and small companies frequently look for ways to get mentions online so they can start building their brands. And big companies often preach branding, too. You'll see blog posts on “improving your brand” or something similar. And you'll often read news stories about how a particular brand is “valued” at a certain figure. A recent example of this would be the digital communication giant Slack. Some have recently valued Slack as a $5 billion brand. But when you get down to the brass tacks, does branding really have anything to do with, well, anything? More specifically, does a brand actually correlate to sales, especially for B2B players? This is a question that companies all over the world are discussing that needs an answer. I want to show you what the data says about branding, sales, and how it affects you. To get started, you first have to understand how brand loyalty and value have changed. Then, I'll show you ways to dig deeper into each. The basics of brand biasBranding is, in effect, a method of creating an image around your company, product, or service. You're probably familiar with many multi-billion dollar brands that have anchored themselves in your life. You do everything you can to establish your brand, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But is there data to back up this information? And if so, what elements of branding are the most important to consider for B2B players who want to wisely join the trend? Branding is considered conventional wisdom so these questions are often taken for granted. I think that trend should change, so I've compiled a list of some of the vital elements of branding. This will help us determine whether you actually can prove ROI with them. But before we get to those, you have to know a bit about the details of brand bias. You'll also hear marketers call it brand loyalty. The terms are pretty much synonymous. Brand loyalty goes way back in our history. Without a doubt, you could ask your grandparents about the brands they were loyal to in their youth, and they could give you an extensive list with ease. These relationships had the staying power many companies only dream about today. But how has brand loyalty progressed to modern times? Despite claims that brand loyalty is dead, the truth is that the bias is still overpowering in B2C arenas. In fact, 82% of adults in the US claim loyalty to a product brand. And the translation to B2B here is only natural. Those same brand-loyal people are likely to be amongst the decision-makers of your clientele in the B2B world. They want to find a brand to be loyal to. It's a mental shorthand that looks to make decisions easier and faster. So the biggest overall change in loyalty isn't that it's dying. It's that buyers are in the driver's seat instead of brands. They now have the power to research brands carefully. But while the information available to your clients has grown, most industries show a relatively slow rate of growth in revenue compared to the astronomical rise of website traffic. This trend might be eerily familiar to you. It's likely that you're seeing indications that the clients you're trying to win are probing your brand and going elsewhere. And you can bet that your target audience is doing extensive research on your brand before coming to a decision. So at the very least, it's clear that loyalty has changed. And this makes sense. When you change your customer's reality, you have to change the marketing reality with it. The traditional brand elements like name recognition and being “top of mind” don't pack the same punch anymore. The result is that we need to turn more toward metrics like sales, ROI, and conversions to find an accurate measure of brand bias. So let's address this issue of “brand value.” What does that mean? This is another concept that people worldwide throw around, but the lines have become hazy. As you would expect, because of the evolution we've seen in brand bias, there is an ongoing discussion of whether brand value is a monetary assessment of the company or a softer assessment of value delivered to your audience. The former approach treats all marketing efforts as “branding” and calculates ROI based on this value. Thus, a simple revenue-to-cost analysis provides ROI. And unfortunately, the later causes many businesses to ignore their brand value altogether because it makes value hard to measure and puts it in a constant state of change. The overriding principle that both tend to miss, however, is that a strong brand or “high brand value” can solve many common problems before they occur. Therefore, linking brand value to ROI is a matter of showing a causal relationship between strong branding and the elimination of issues that can impact sales. This requires us to look at the hard measurements that data gives us and tap into what we know of human behavior. So now that you see the dilemma that faces marketers seeking to prove branding ROI, let's take a look at how various sales-related data points link back to branding. We'll start, of course, with your biggest client. Your brand may be the only thing keeping your biggest clientThis is a pretty frightening claim, and you should be a little scared of it if you're a B2B company. Recently, Gallup found that 71% of B2B customers are actively considering taking their business to a different company. That's a staggering statistic. But how could that be? B2B companies should be best equipped to meet their audience's needs, which makes a statistic like this seem out of place. But think about the reality of the situation. B2B companies frequently make enormous promises to their clients. Even if they're equipped to follow through, they set the bar high from the beginning. And your problems compound when you remember the fact that bigger client companies have greater bargaining power. You begin to ask, “what happens if we delay one deadline?” Suddenly, money starts to tighten in negotiations. Tack on the ever-looming fact that poor economic growth mixed with other factors can slow success and force brands to adjust post-contract, and you have a recipe for disaster. Even more pessimistically, only about half of B2B customers believe their vendor is delivering on their promises or feel proud to associate with that brand. Those are pretty dismal numbers when you think about it. And this is given greater context by the fact that 81% of consumers are satisfied with the service of B2C companies. What are B2B companies missing? For one, B2B companies have been slow to respond from the traditional PR-dominated branding to a now marketing-dominated branding. The best practice used to be leaving your image in the hands of your PR team. But with the rise in consumer research we talked about earlier, this trend is now damaging companies that are still opting for the old school. The room for growth is astronomical, and B2B companies that fail to focus on their brand and market it effectively are essentially neglecting their future and their clients. Your name, reputation, or brand could be the only factors preventing your clientele from leaving you. Or worse, it could be what's driving them to look for other options. Brand loyalty improves engagement and customer acquisitionOne of the biggest data points that links branding to B2B sales is customer acquisition. If it's possible to use your brand as a tool to help you gain clients, then it's a logical conclusion that focusing on your brand can improve your marketing ROI. And from the data I've compiled, there's a compelling case that branding can indeed help improve customer acquisition. Let's start with the bad news. Engagement levels for B2B customers are abysmal according to Gallup, coming in at only 29%. This might be a curious statistic to start off with, but there's good reason for it. The main reason I share this fact is because fully-engaged customers share more and are better brand advocates. In other words, brand bias and customer engagement are directly correlated. And it's a basic marketing principle that loyal customers refer business. More than half of consumers who have a good experience with a brand will recommend it to people that they know. And many of those referrals turn into loyal customers themselves. So, that 29% of engaged B2B clients isn't making a very big ripple when it comes to referral business. When you consider that the remaining 71% of your clients could be referring you and aren't, you start to see how important these numbers are. And this picture gets a little grimmer when you take into account that two-thirds of touchpoints when a client is actively considering to do business with you come in the form of word-of-mouth or online reviews. That means your leads, audience, and potential clients are neglecting your trained sales team to see what others have to say about your brand. And in 2016, 62% of B2B buyers were relying more on peer recommendations than on their own research. In the technology industry alone, 60% of buyers look for peer-to-peer reviews to aid their decision-making process. And the majority of your clients don't care enough to share simply because they aren't engaged with your brand. Imagine what could happen if you increase your customer engagement. You'd see much more growth. And this concept is backed by data too. 49% of B2B companies report higher ROI by investing in relationships instead of acquisition marketing. That translates well based on all of the other data we've been looking at. By improving their current level of engagement with existing customers, their ROI increases. And that is branding – pure and simple. Branding motivates actionThere's another question we want to answer: Does content (and ultimately branding) truly push your digital audience to take actions that lead to sales? First, I think it's worth showing you how actions, content, and branding share an inherent relationship. One way to look at branding is in relation to the actions that your leads, customers, or website visitors take. These actions are ultimately intended to culminate in a sale. Marketers usually call this entire action-oriented process the buyer's journey. And as you can see, the B2B buyer's journey is fraught with complexity. Branding gives definition to your buyer's journey primarily through the content you create and share. The general consensus among marketers is that content motivates action among your audience. By moving through this process of fixing pain points, offering value, building a relationship, and earning trust, your content is reportedly building your brand and promoting further action. That means that the role of content marketing is social brand building. So, by providing the right content, the strategy is to push leads to an action and create a custom buyer's journey that increases sales. That means that a logical place to start for a data-driven relationship is tracking the ROI of your content marketing efforts. You're in luck, then. According to the Content Marketing Institute, you can not only track ROI, but you can also attribute ROI to the various phases of your sales funnel. This is helpful in a conversation about branding, as it lets you narrow in how effective certain parts of your campaign are at motivating action throughout the sales cycle. That means that you have a direct window to how content affects your branding at every stage. What's more, the overall lean toward content marketing is very favorable. 77% of B2B marketers feel that their content marketing is successful. That's a pretty impressive cohort of marketing professionals who feel their content marketing is leading to actions. And there's a good amount of data to back up those feelings too. Again according to the Content Marketing Institute, 75% of B2B companies can show that content marketing has increased engagement over time. More engagement combined with precise ROI tracking makes for a strong case in terms of the branding/content/action relationship. And when you tack on the fact that 94% of B2B buyers are going to be researching you online, these statistics only look better. By providing actionable, curated content, you can boost conversions in your sales funnel and ultimately increase your business's sales. Branding often negatively affects internal productivityYou don't often hear about your employees in terms of branding and ROI, but there's an abundance of data that suggests a correlation between your brand and the degree to which individual employees are profitable. In a parallel move to marketers, HR professionals have started focusing on what they call employer branding. This is a concerted effort by companies to not only portray themselves favorably to external forces but also to align themselves with an internal brand. And when you consider that engaged employees are 21% more profitable than their peers with lesser engagement, you begin to understand why. What's more, that same Gallup poll found that sales professionals are 20% more productive when actively engaged in their company's brand. So the correlation here is clear as day. But what are the factors driving employee engagement? Without diving too deeply into HR, there is one main element called the employer value proposition, or EVP. EVP works much like a traditional branding campaign, but you're focusing on your brand image in regard to current and future employees. You want to appear credible, reliable, and attractive to your employees in the same way you would a client. The more you think about this, the more it makes sense. Employees are the frontline of customer experience and the final link between you and your clients. In essence, they're ambassadors for your brand. If they don't buy in, sales will suffer no matter how strong or weak your digital presence is. Not only that, but a transparent and consistent brand will attract top talent at a higher rate. That means that your brand can start bringing in high-performing professionals who will boost sales even more. So while old-school elements like employee alignment are still big, branding is taking center stage with employee engagement and productivity. Emotionally-charged branding efforts boost profitFinally, I want to discuss the emotional side of your B2B brand and how it relates to your overall sales performance. Brand loyalty always carries emotion with it. Thankfully, brand connection is usually positive. But that doesn't mean you can just gloss over this point. Tapping into the raw emotion of your brand can be a good way to see improvements in your sales. For example, 64% of consumers report that their relationship with a brand is tied to shared values. Values are, strictly speaking, not necessarily a metrics-based type of measurement. Humans often determine their values based on how they feel about certain subjects. Whether that value stirs up controversy or elicits much response, it's simply part of a business's branding. And under the microscope, it becomes much clearer just how important emotions are to branding. By understanding your audience and delivering an emotional message, the evidence suggests that you will ultimately amplify your sales. So it follows that emotional campaigns are more successful than rational campaigns. Interestingly enough, emotional branding efforts are even more effective than a hybrid rational-emotional mix. That's why branding is so powerful. It's the emotional core of your business. But there's more to consider when it comes to building an emotional brand. We can also see how even certain words and phrases you use in branding can evoke emotional responses that drive sales. While all of these might not be applicable to your particular B2B niche, there's an undeniable emotional draw in each of these words and phrases. And as long as you don't cheapen your brand, proper emotional wording can improve your conversions. The overall goal of emotion in branding is to create brand immersion. This, in turn, creates loyalty and boosts sales. So, by providing an emotional connection and going beyond a bare-bones service, you can see incremental boosts in sales. That seems like a pretty compelling reason on its own to emphasize branding for your company. Hyper-focused branding can improve ROIAs we've learned more about what works in digital marketing, our methods have evolved to match our capabilities. One of the more noteworthy evolutions is account-based marketing, or ABM. This hyper-focused version of marketing allows brands to cater their message to individual businesses instead of a general audience. As a B2B-specific tactic, it's a battle-proven method that can help you leverage your brand as the solution to your audience of one. Strikingly, almost all B2B businesses that have attempted ABM have had a higher ROI on their marketing efforts. And more importantly to branding, those same businesses saw a significant benefit from focusing on expanding their existing client relationships through ABM. By focusing on the relationship and boosting engagement, these brands are seeing a higher degree of revenue for their services. Imagine what it could do to your business then, right? And perhaps even more telling are these statistics from ITSMA: What other methods could you use to increase your reputation, relationships, and revenue across the board? I'm not aware of any others. And all of this rises and falls on branding. ABM is all about presenting all of what you do as a solution. It's just relationships and engagement. ConclusionThe branding message can get old for B2B companies, but it's not going away anytime soon. You've seen the data, and you've hopefully read the signs. Your brand could be your only lifeline, or it could be pushing your biggest clients out the door. You largely determine which scenario is the case for you. Overall, branding improves engagement and keeps your sales funnel full of potential customers. By positioning yourself strategically throughout your buyer's journey with actionable content, you encourage your leads to convert and take action. Focusing on your internal brand can boost employee loyalty and sales significantly. And creating an emotional, well-rounded brand can position you as a reliable source in your niche and improve your sales efforts. Finally, using a hyper-focused method like account-based marketing can revolutionize your branding efforts and draw a direct line to increased revenue. Across the board, branding serves an important purpose toward your bottom line. In what ways have you noticed your brand making a difference in your sales? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. Ad media buying for SaaS products can feel like a rabbit hole of complexity. Best practices, capabilities and tactics will change depending on what you're trying to accomplish, what platform you're on and whose advice you take. But once you do understand that layer, there's even more differences and challenges depending on the audience you're trying to appeal to, and other factors specific to your situation. As daunting as it might be to master, digital advertising is an unavoidable growth channel for most SaaS companies. So the sooner you get started figuring it all out, the better. Not that experimenting necessarily leads to success, but it's definitely a prerequisite. The era of social media as an unpaid marketing free-for-all is ending, with organic reach continuously declining. And all the while, competition with other SaaS companies for search rankings and audience attention is becoming fiercer. Two years ago, Cisco tallied over 150,000 distinct SaaS products in the wild, representing 30 times more volume than just two years prior. Now more than ever, paid acquisition is a key piece of the puzzle. Most marketers are taking this challenge to heart. According to the latest Gartner CMO Spend Survey, 67% of CMOs plan to increase their spending in digital ads this year. And the latest annual Private SaaS Company Survey found once again that spending a higher percentage of revenues on sales and marketing correlates with faster growth. If your product is among the SaaS companies emphasizing advertising this year, I'm sure you're feeling pressure to ensure your budget isn't going to waste on simple mistakes. Here are eight tips to make sure you avoid some of the most common SaaS ad buying pitfalls. 1. Taking an 'Everything, Everywhere' ApproachThe first and easiest mistake to make is thinking of digital advertising as one large platform that you can take a “one size fits all” approach to. Plenty of marketers simply try to run the same campaign, the same way, on multiple channels and end up shocked that it's not working. Context matters more than you think. It's true in most situations, but especially in the case of SaaS products. When you're advertising a technology product, the pain point that your product aims to solve should ideally be at least somewhat aligned with the activities being performed when your audience sees your ads. For example, targeting mobile users with ads for your web-only app might not be the best idea. The overall experience just wouldn't make sense. Instead, adjust your campaigns for each platform so they take viewers on a natural and friction-free journey of discovery. For a web tool, that might mean promoting pieces of content, instead of your product itself, and nurturing and converting via a different channel later. For example, Ahrefs includes content offers that can be consumed anywhere as part of its advertising strategy on Facebook, whereas they might offer their product directly on AdWords or display campaigns. 2. Assuming Only Humans ClickIt's easy to look around your own environment and see the positive impression tech can make on your target customers, but don't forget how often it's used for nefarious purposes, like click fraud used to tank advertising campaigns. Pixalate's data found that desktop click fraud rose to 25% and is on the rise in all forms, meaning the metrics on your campaigns might not represent its true reach and impact. In addition to the obvious drain on resources and ad spend that click fraud represents, it can also skew your metrics and interpretation of your overall campaigns and make your digital marketing strategy harder to figure out in general. Be sure to protect your marketing budget and campaign itself by being proactive against click fraud. Click-fraud prevention tools like ClickCease can detect and block fraudulent clicks on your Google and Bing ads before they deplete your budget. By using sophisticated AI, the engine picks up on suspicious behavior patterns, auto-bans offending IPs and even submits refund requests to the ad networks on your behalf. 3. Underestimating Brand AwarenessIn competitive SaaS landscapes, measurable growth in sales conversions is often favored over brand awareness, which is trickier from an attribution standpoint. However, given the importance of familiarity in such a competitive landscape, building awareness is underrated. A user likely won't sign up for your tool the first time they hear about it. Instead, advertising and retargeting can “plant the seed” and build brand awareness strategically. This is the power of the “familiarity bias.” We're more likely to do business with brands we recognize than those we don't. For example, Delighted uses simple display ads with noticeable imagery that's in line with their app's use case itself. Use brand awareness campaigns to build further relationships and familiarity over time with people getting to know your product. People are still generally loyal to the software they use, so you'll need a long-term strategy to alter that relationship and win them over. Take your time wowing them with awareness-focused content around educational topics. These people are still too high up in the funnel to respond well to sales pitch messaging, especially if they're currently happy using your competitor's product. But even if they have what's called “inertia loyalty” to your competitor, meaning that they're sticking around simply because they don't want to deal with the nuisance of switching, you're still going to need to win them over before you can effectively pitch. 4. Ignoring Audience Intent SignalsThe importance of context matters in more ways than one. By ignoring the context and intent around which a user might be looking for a tool, you might end up paying to have the wrong messaging served up to the wrong audience members. This may lead to poor conversions right away, or you could make the longer-term mistake of winning customers who won't stick around long-term. For example, AdWords campaigns targeting anyone searching for free software can be a mistake that's costly in the long run. Many SaaS experts believe that someone prioritizing a free price over benefits or features likely won't be your demographic with the highest lifetime value. Instead, target users who emit signals indicating they're likely to become high-value customers. For example, Asana targets searchers of team collaboration software, but you likely won't see them going as aggressively after those looking for free to-do list tools. Intent signals come in many shapes and forms, ranging from spending a lot of time looking at sales-oriented resources on your website to using keywords in Google searches that speak to the types of considerations people make at the bottom of the funnel. Hubspot's free CRM is a good option to automatically log all interactions across channels and touchpoints, to track and nurture leads and manage your sales pipeline. This allows you to take sophisticated intent modeling into account when automating follow up and scoring leads to determine sales-readiness. 5. Writing off Branded Keywords“Why bid on the one term we can rank for organically?” is an understandable sentiment, but it's also one that will hold you back. Search terms using your brand name often signal high intent and readiness to close – a desirable audience you want to make sure you're in front of. Don't rely on an organic listing alone. For one, with “brand plus” terms (think: “Kissmetrics alternatives”), you may not be able to rank organically but want to capitalize on the name recognition. Plus, combining organic and paid listings can result in more clicks overall, driving more immediate results than SEO alone, and often improving your AdWords quality score. The more your brand dominates a given search result screen, the more likely you are to yield those clicks, one way or another. To easily manage multiple campaigns combining different types of keyword targeting, a management tool like WordStream will come in handy, especially in analyzing which ones are worth your budget. You can easily use it to segment ad impact, regardless of your campaign structures, to reveal the value that your bids on branded terms are delivering. Just make sure you don't get swept into a bidding war for your own brand name with a particularly brash competitor who's trying to poach your prospects. Keep your acquisition cost thresholds in mind when bidding on your own brand name, just like you do when bidding for any other keyword. 6. Overlooking UGC OpportunitiesUser-generated content (UGC) is among the most powerful wellsprings of persuasion known to mankind. Audience members find content posted by their peers to be far more relatable and trustworthy than content produced by professional marketers. Research from Reevoo found that approximately one-third of respondents rate brand content as “very influential,” whereas nearly two-thirds feel that way about UGC. Much of the power of UGC comes down to issues of trust. This is especially true when it comes to virtual products promoted in virtual spaces, where many buyers feel vulnerable. With so many scammers, hackers and trolls around, a little bit of social proof can go a long way. Using genuine product reviews in your ad creative helps people to feel safe. In this ad for SaneBox, an emotionally charged excerpt from a glowing customer review is rendered even more impactful thanks to the additional elements in the ad. A sparse, bold visual easily conveys the main benefit of the SaaS solution. Bright stars make the UGC rating pop out, and mentioning a free trial further helps alleviate people's worries that about risk. 7. Not Building Nurture FunnelsIn case you haven't noticed a theme with these mistakes, marketers often aren't thinking long-term enough. While the nature of SaaS does allow for a shorter sales cycle, you still won't convert tons of customers in one touch alone. Instead, build out ad funnels to nurture your prospects over time. Using sequences of connected content and CTAs, you can increase your marketing impact at each stage of the buyer's funnel and guide audiences over time from one step to the next. For example, Ryan Stewart has explained how you can use content to capture cold lookalike audiences on Facebook, and then use offers to retarget and take them to consideration, before showing testimonials and case studies and finally a hard sell. Ads guide users through every stage, rather than just dropping them into the sales funnel and letting them fall out at any time. People who heed the calls-to-action in each ad group merit to see the next round of ads. 8. Overlooking Current CustomersWhy pay money to advertise your product to its existing users? Because SaaS's success is in customer retention. You need to be working to keep your customers at all times, and it's an important enough priority to devote ad spend to. There are multiple ways advertising can fit into your customer retention strategy, from content and onboarding communication, to promoting new product features and announcements, to sharing new case studies and uses of your tool to unengaged users. The objective here is to keep people associating your product and brand with their most empowered selves. For example, Pardot's inspirational content can give current users ideas for improving their own campaigns and getting more out of the software. When you build out an ad-driven nurturing funnel, be sure to extend your strategy to include retaining current customers. Make Your Spend MatterWith so much changing in the online marketing space right now and increasing competition from new apps every month, a carefully planned paid media strategy can give you a head start on companies still not giving it the attention it's worth. While they're obsessing over ways to get their organic Facebook reach back or connect with SaaS users on Snapchat, you'll be reaching users with high intent on Google searches and through Facebook retargeting. And by avoiding the above mistakes, your competitive advantage only becomes greater. About the Author: Nadav is a veteran online marketer and the Founder & CEO of InboundJunction, an Israel-based content marketing company. Nadav helps well-known brands in boosting their online visibility through PR, SEO and Social Media. Staying active on social media is one of the best ways for you to create brand awareness and engage with your audience. But with so many different social platforms to manage on a daily basis, it can be overwhelming. Sometimes keeping up with all these networks at once can feel like a full-time job. You have enough on your plate when it comes to running your business. Sometimes, your social media campaigns get pushed toward the bottom of your to-do list. If you're not in a position to hire a full-time social media marketing manager, you can use a variety of marketing tools to help you streamline this process. Those of you who have a social media marketing manager can still take advantage of these tools to help make their job more efficient. I've used my fair share of social media marketing tools over the years. Some were great while others not so much. I want to help you avoid the ones that weren't efficient. I took the time to narrow down my favorite social media marketing tools that helped save me a ton of time. My hope is you'll have the same results using them. HootsuiteHootsuite is great because it has versatile plan options that can match the size of your business and its needs. If you're the only one using it and you've got no more than 10 social media profiles, it's only $20 per month to use this tool. But for larger teams and businesses, it has plans for up to 20 and up to 50 social media profiles that can be managed by multiple team members. Those plans go for $99 and $499 per month, respectively. Hootsuite helps you schedule all your social media posts across all your accounts. That way, you can schedule all your posts in one go on all your accounts as opposed to manually posting on all your profiles throughout the day. Hootsuite allows you to easily organize all of your content. Their content library dashboard is extremely clean and easy to navigate. Those of you who store your content on the cloud-based platforms, such as Drop Box, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or Box, can access those files directly from the Hootsuite dashboard. If you're using other apps to help manage your social media accounts, Hootsuite can work with those tools as well. That way, you can manage everything in one place. The schedule menu clearly displays all your pending content, so it's easy to monitor. You can view the schedule by day, week, month, or even as a list. If you have a large team using Hootsuite together, you can assign team leaders to have the final approval of content before it goes live. That way, you'll catch any mistakes and won't have to worry about posting unapproved content. One of the best parts about this social media marketing tool is the analytics reports. You won't have to use another third-party platform to measure the reach and engagement of your content. You'll see the metrics of each post per platform, which can even help determine your social ROI. Hootsuite also has tools that help monitor your team and keep everyone accountable. You can see which team members are resolving tasks the fastest and which ones need improvement. As a whole, Hootsuite is worth checking out. They offer a 30-day free trial, so it can't hurt. MeetEdgarIf you have problems coming up with new content to post on your social profiles, you may want to consider MeetEdgar as a solution. This software will recycle old posts when you run out of new ones to make sure your posting queue is never empty. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is a permanent solution and a strategy you should employ all the time. But with that said, there's nothing wrong with bringing old posts back to life. It's definitely better to recycle old content as opposed to posting nothing at all. If you've been slacking off with creating new content and your posting queue runs dry, you can set up MeetEdgar to share older posts with high engagement statistics. Even if you've got a content library full of new content but don't want to take the time to decide what order to post them in, the auto-scheduler can choose for you. Instead of having to download the software and open it every time you want to manage your social media accounts, MeetEdgar has a browser extension, allowing you to access its services from the web. If you operate a small business and have bigger tasks to worry about than micro-managing your social media accounts on a daily basis, I'd say you're an ideal candidate for MeetEdgar. It's $49 per month, and you'll get a free month if you enrol in an annual billing cycle. BufferLike most social media management tools, Buffer also allows you to schedule your social media posts from a single platform. But what separates Buffer from the crowd is its mobile application. I know what it's like to be constantly on the go. You don't always have the time to sit in front of your computer to manage your social media accounts. Even if you're just scheduling posts for the week, having the option to do this from a mobile app makes things easier and gives you lots of flexibility. You can access the Buffer app on your smartphone while you're on the train, bus, subway, or in the back of an Uber. If you've got downtime between meetings, it's much easier to pull out your phone than to grab your computer to do the work. Buffer provides you with visual reports and analytics that track engagement metrics such as:
This service also highlights your top performing posts. You can see which strategy is working the best and craft your future posts in a similar fashion. With the Buffer RSS feed, it's really easy for you to publish content from any of your favorite websites with just one click. The platform also supports video and GIF uploading, so you can share different types of content with your followers. Buffer also has its own image creator. This is a chance for you to let your creative juices flow and come up with original images that make your social posts stand out from the crowd. BuzzsumoBuzzsumo differs from the marketing tools we've analyzed so far. The software analyzes social media profiles and connects you with influencers to promote your brand. If you've read my top marketing trends of 2018, you know that micro influencers are on the rise this year. If you're looking for help in this space, Buzzsumo is a great place to start. Even if adding influencers to your marketing campaign isn't part of your marketing strategy right now, Buzzsumo still has lots of great tools to make your social media marketing strategy easier. It has brand monitoring tools that will alert you with mentions of your company as well as your competitors' plus any relevant keywords, backlinks, and other domains. This makes it easy for you to see how you stack up against your biggest competition. Buzzsumo also searches for relevant to your brand content across the Internet. The software filters information that resonates with your audience to help you stay up to date on the latest trends. You'll have access to reports about the content shared the most across all the different social media platforms. You can filter this information by the last 24 hours or other time intervals, going back to the past year. You can determine which type of content is popular short- and long-term. Buzzsumo lets you organize popular content by its type. You can look at videos or infographics in addition to images and written posts. If you're using some of the other tools I previously discussed, Buzzsumo can be a useful addition to your arsenal. You can choose from plans ranging from $99 to $300 per month. All plans come with a 7-day free trial, and you'll get 20% off if you sign up for yearly billing. Sprout SocialSprout Social is another top choice if you're looking for one place to manage all your social media profiles. This platform makes it really easy for you to draft, store, and queue all your social posts. You can see everything organized from the calendar, which serves a visual representation of your schedule. The dashboard also helps you monitor how your posts are doing. You'll get to view all the metrics by platform or post. If you've got several team members working together on your social media campaigns, Sprout Social is a great option for you. It's easy to delegate tasks and choose who gets to approve posts before they go live. Sprout Social also helps you respond to all of your messages from followers. You won't have to individually log in to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other profiles to see these messages. This will help you stay organized and respond to messages in the order they were received, as opposed to responding based on which platform you're logged in to at the time. Sprout Social has features that help you monitor hashtags and keywords. You can see the share of the volume of those specific keywords your company has. You'll also have access to features specifically designed for building and managing your customer relationships. Members of your team can make notes about different customers and their social media profiles based on your history and contact with them. If the same customer contacts you more than once using more than one platform, all their information will be neatly organized in one place. OktopostOktopost is different from the other tools I've discussed so far because it's specifically designed for B2B companies. B2B marketers don't use social media the same way B2C companies do. The type of engagement and response they're trying to get out of each post is different. B2B marketers put a strong emphasis on the quality of their lead-generation strategies. Depending on your business and industry, you may not need to expose your brand to hundreds of thousands of social media profiles. Sometimes, just a handful of new clients per year is enough for a business to be extremely profitable. Oktopost is great because it helps B2B businesses make sure they're using the right social platforms effectively to reach their audiences. You'll still get the same benefits of posting automation, scheduling, and management you receive with some of the other options I talked about, but you'll get the analytics geared toward a B2B business. ConclusionEffective social media management is imperative for all businesses in every industry. You just need to make sure you're using your time wisely while doing that. The tools I've outlined above are great because you can manage all your accounts on one platform. Instead of spending all your time posting, you can schedule your content to get posted automatically. I tried to include something for everyone here. If you're working on multiple social media profiles with a team, you may want to consider platforms such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social. For those of you who want to work primarily from a mobile application, Buffer is probably your best bet. Companies prioritizing social influencers and competitor analysis can use Buzzsumo for their social media marketing needs. Smaller businesses without a ton of new content should lean towards a tool such as MeetEdgar. I'd recommend Oktopost for B2B social media marketing management. Whichever platform you decide to choose, I'm sure it will help you save lots of time so you can be more productive. Which tools does your business use to save time managing your social media marketing campaigns? When it comes to e-commerce marketplace dominance, Amazon is at the top of the food chain. Over 44% of all product searches begin in Amazon's search bar, and Amazon owns almost half of all U.S. online retail sales. And if CEO Jeff Bezos has anything to say about it, that's just the beginning. Even some of the other biggest retail giants in the world have a tough time competing against Amazon. Companies like Walmart, Apple, Macy's, and Costo still can't stack up against the behemoth that is Amazon. So how can anyone else even compete? How do you stand a chance? Well, you don't. The simple truth of the matter is that you don't really stand a chance of competing. But the key is that you don't actually have to compete. You just have to learn how to co-exist. DON'T compete with AmazonThe bottom line is that you won't be able to invest the time and capital it takes to build anything close to what Amazon is offering. In terms of infrastructure, scale, and sheer sales numbers, they're killing it. They have a massive physical footprint as well, which is only growing with their recent launch of brick-and-mortar stores around the U.S. But you probably already know that you can't compete with their size. Some may tell you that even if you can't compete with their scale, you can compete in other ways, like offering competitive discounts and free shipping for your own customers. But in terms of product pricing, you still probably can't offer a better deal to your customers than the price they could find on Amazon. And yes, free shipping is cool. But Amazon has and will probably always have better shipping deals simply because they can afford to have better shipping deals. In these instances, you can't beat them. But there is one realm where you can live in the same relative sphere as Amazon: customer experience. Amazon has a lot of the same problems that most retailers have when dealing with customer service. They still deal with customer complaints with varying degrees of success, just like everyone else. And customer experience can play a big role in customer retention and loyalty. So while you might not have the means and motives of the largest retailer on the Internet, you can still offer something that customers want: Experience. Here are a few ways to offer a comparable customer experience to Amazon's without breaking the bank. 1. Create a solid product offering for your nicheAs Neil Irwin once pointed out, Amazon has a “winner-takes-all” approach to sales. They want to sell every product in every category. If you think about it, their “niche” is really a lack of a niche. They sell to everyone. But you can't do that. You simply can't appeal to the wide audience that Amazon does with their vast selection of products. So what can you do instead? Do just the opposite: sell within a niche. Just like you can't appeal to the wide audience that Amazon markets to, Amazon can't satisfy every need in every niche. That's where you have an opportunity to fill in the gaps. If you already have a decent product offering and audience, start with what you have. Look at your existing products and find a way to fit them into a narrower niche. This might mean that you focus on curating products that meet customer demands rather than trying to be ultra-competitive on product pricing. Studies show that after customer experience, the second biggest reason a customer will ditch your brand is dissatisfaction with the product itself. You can save yourself a few headaches by putting some extra effort into marketing and promoting your products and making sure they work for your audience. But don't be afraid to look for other smaller product categories and niches that might serve your audience, too. The other way that you can go about niching is by using Amazon's categories to find smaller, profitable niches that fit well with a current customer base and product line. If you go to Amazon, you can find hundreds of niche ideas on their site directory. Clicking on any product category will also give you a list of dozens more niche and category ideas. This will give you a better idea of the types of products your customers may want from your brand. When you can tailor the shopping experience to their specific tastes, you can “compete” with Amazon because you're giving them what they want in a one-stop shop: your site. 2. Use customer data to inform your businessAmazon collects data on every single customer of their 300 million customers. They collect information on all kinds of things: browsing details (IP addresses, operating system, etc.), search queries, wishlists, reviews and previous order history, and other datasets. They do this to inform a lot of their marketing strategies and determine how to best serve their customers in other ways. Some of the things they use customer data for include:
A former Amazon employee once said that Amazon “has the ability to track both what people are buying as well as what they search for and can't find.” This is part of what gives them the edge over competitors in a lot of ways. But you can also use customer and competitive data to help improve your offerings in the same way that Amazon does. One retailer, Spearmint LOVE, saw a year-over-year growth of 991% when they started using their customer data to create more targeted Facebook Ads, for example. They were also able to use dynamic product ads to retarget shoppers who had visited their site, improving their reach by simply using basic data you can easily gather from Google Analytics. According to research cited by McKinsey, companies that use customer data to inform their practices see 85% more sales and 25% more gross margins than those that ignore their data. You can use the behavioral data you already have in your database (customer profiles and shopping history, etc.) to improve key areas of customer acquisition and retention. Just because you can't shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire data like Amazon does, it doesn't mean you can't use the same strategies they use to propel your business forward. It's a matter of using the resources you do have to improve your offerings. 3. Consider adding subscription servicesConvenience is something Amazon offers in abundance. They do this by offering subscription services like Subscribe and Save, which offers customers the chance to receive specific products automatically every month. An Amazon Prime membership also comes with some convenience perks like free two-day shipping and unlimited streaming and use of Amazon's other services. They now also offer Amazon Payments, which gives customers the additional convenience of being able to purchase items from other retailers using an Amazon account. (Amazon also tracks these purchases to fuel their data even further, of course.) Adding something like a subscription service not only provides convenience for customers, but it also can help your own revenue. Research shows that businesses with subscriptions increase revenue twice as fast as their competitors and see 2x the overall growth. To take advantage of a subscription model like Amazon's and consider offering renewable subscriptions for certain products that are likely to be repeat purchases. Or, if few of your products lend themselves to repeat purchases, consider offering a curated box of specific items every month (the subscription box model) like Birchbox and Dollar Shave Club. Other ideas might include:
This not only sets you up for more sales in the long run, but it also gives customers a chance to get products from you without sacrificing their convenience. 4. Improve your shippingNow, you can't directly compete with Amazon when it comes to shipping. Technically, not even Amazon fulfillment can compete with Amazon. According to GeekWire, Amazon lost $7.2 billion from shipping in 2017 between what it cost them and what they charged. But they have more than enough revenue from other sources to make up for it. You probably don't. The goal isn't to compete, anyway. Your goal is to stay in the game. To do that, there are plenty of ways you can improve your shipping to provide additional convenience and customer service. First up, consider offering free or discounted shipping for a minimum threshold or for specific products. For example, REI offers free shipping on purchases over $50, but they include other caveats to the rule that allow them to maintain this offer without losing money. For example, the offer isn't valid for special orders or prior purchases. Studies show that 48% of shoppers on average will add items to their carts if it means that they can qualify for free shipping. So, while it might come with some initial costs for you, you're more likely to see a return in added purchases. If you have specific products that are lightweight (cost effective to ship, for example), you can offer free shipping on ground delivery orders. Most carriers have slower, low-cost shipping options. USPS parcel post, for instance, is typically cheaper than priority mail, so you'll spend less. Customers then have the option to pay to upgrade. But when they do they know it's a choice rather than a requirement, so they're less likely to be dissatisfied. If you're really in a bind financially but want to deliver products for no cost, you do have the option of including those shipping costs in the retail cost of the product. Of course, you will have to tread carefully with this idea, as your product might appear less favorable on price comparison sites due to the markup. Another option is to simply offer flat rates for your shipping. While it's not free, it still offers customers cheaper shipping for varying products and encourages them to purchase more. If they'll pay the same shipping price for one item as they would for ten items, then why not just get ten products, right? 5. Make an effort with customer serviceFinally, and perhaps most importantly, the best way you can stay on par with Amazon is by offering outstanding customer service. Amazon actually does fairly well at this. 67% of respondents to Amazon's customer service report last year indicated that they were “very satisfied.” But what exactly makes customer service satisfying for the majority of consumers? According to research by GetApp Lab, the most valuable component of good customer service is simply a real, knowledgeable human on the other end of the line. However, the study showed that it didn't really matter if the customer service was offered through email, a phone call, or a chat service. When the rep was perceived to be real (or the correspondence was personalized enough), customers were happier with the results. So what does this mean for your customer service? This means putting real people in charge of your customer service. If you already have a team of people who handle customer complaints, you can add automation to shorten response times. If you don't have a large team of people who handle customer service requests, you can always outsource the job using a customer service software or apps like LiveChat, Desk.com or Help Scout. While it is a bit of an extra cost (though some services are free depending on your usage and the size of your company), it's well worth it in terms of customer loyalty. There are plenty of other ways that you can make sure you have responsive service, however. You can set up automatic replies on social media or use notifications to alert you when customers ask questions over social media. If you're responsive enough, Facebook will actually tell customers how soon you typically reply to messages sent via Facebook Messenger. The more active you are, the more customers will tend to trust you. And automation cuts down on the time and energy for your customer service team. You can also include SMS text updates or responses for mobile customers. Whichever technology you choose, just make sure you're keeping the human element alive. Even when customer service reps can't resolve an issue, responsiveness and friendliness will still improve your customer service rating. Even when you can't compete with Amazon for things like competitive prices or shipping, you can always go above and beyond with customer service to set yourself up as a worthy alternative. Who knows? At the end of the day, customers might prefer your store over Amazon simply due to your outstanding customer service. That's the goal, anyway. ConclusionWhile it would be nice to say that any store can compete with Amazon, it's just not the case. Even the biggest brands out there have a hard time slowing down Jeff Bezos and his master plan to take over the e-commerce universe. But while we wait for that to happen, there's plenty that e-commerce stores can do to keep their customers just as happy as Amazon's customers. First, focus on having a great product offering that targets your niche. Or consider reaching out to new niches to find customers who might not even be on Amazon. (And remember that you can actually use Amazon to do this.) Next, use your data to your advantage. You have customer information sitting there. Find ways to offer product recommendations or improve your Facebook Ads using what you know. Then it's about finding ways to make customers happy. Offer subscription services on repeatable products, include free shipping in as many ways as you can (no, it doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg like it does Amazon), and, most importantly, make customers happy. If nothing else, you can have just as high of a satisfaction rate as Amazon by doing the little things that matter to customers. How can non-Amazon marketers compete in an Amazon world? About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital. |
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