B2B brands need to use a marketing strategy different from that of B2C brands. Some of you may operate as a B2B and B2C company. In this case, you may have already implemented some of the most effective ways to generate leads for your business on the B2C side. However, not all of these strategies will work if you're targeting other businesses. Whether your business is run as a B2B operation exclusively or as a blend of B2B and B2C, you can use PPC campaigns to scale lead generation. If you don't know this tactic, PPC stands for “pay-per-click.” This term is also referred to as CPC, or cost per click. The concept of PPC is very simple. Advertisers pay a publisher or search engine when their advertisements are clicked. Publishers typically charge a fixed amount per click for ads placed on their websites. With search engines, brands bid on relevant keywords and phrases so their ads appear when prospective customers search for those keywords. If you're not currently using PPC campaigns to generate new leads for your B2B brand, I highly recommend trying it out. There is a good chance your competitors are using this tactic already. In fact, 54% of B2B companies say paid search campaigns generate leads for their businesses: This compares to just 37% of B2B companies that are using display advertising. But PPC campaigns can add up quickly. It's important to make sure you're getting the best results for your money. Implementing an efficient PPC strategy can help you generate new leads without spending a fortune. If you have never done this before, I'll explain what you need to do to be successful. Even if you're currently running PPC campaigns as part of your B2B marketing strategy, there is always room for improvement. Let this guide steer you in the right direction. Set up UTM parametersYour business is generating new leads. That's great. But where are those leads coming from? You can't measure the success of your PPC campaigns and distinguish them from your other lead generation strategies if you're not tracking the sources. That's why you need to learn how to track your leads with UTM parameters. Just because you see a spike in traffic, you can't assume it's coming from your PPC campaigns. It's possible you're wasting money on keywords that aren't driving traffic to your website and generating leads. In this case, you'll want to treat those as negative keywords, but we'll discuss that concept in greater detail later. According to research, 63% of marketers say that generating traffic and leads is their biggest challenge. Setting up UTM parameters will help you track your results. Here's a look at what the campaign URL builder looks like on Google Analytics: The idea here is to create a custom URL for all your campaigns. If you're running PPC ads on multiple websites, you'll be able to see which ones are generating the most traffic. Furthermore, if you're paying for keywords, you can enter them into a specific form field for each campaign. Once you fill out the form, a customized URL will be generated for you. The great part about setting up your UTM parameters with Google Analytics is that the platform makes it easy for you to track and measure the results. You need to use UTM parameters to help you stay organized and efficient. Make the necessary adjustments based on the results. Stop paying publishers that aren't generating leads, and change keywords that aren't working for you. Plus, this strategy can be used for more than just your PPC campaigns. You can generate unique links for your social media promotions or email newsletters as well, even if you're not paying for them. Segment your PPC campaignsYour competitors may be running PPC campaigns with similar keywords, but you can gain an advantage over them by segmenting your campaigns. This strategy is especially important for B2B retailers. That's because specific keywords might be relevant only during certain times of the year, and you would want to change the bidding values accordingly. For example, let's say you manufacture clothing and sell your products to other businesses that add their logos or other design elements to make the clothing unique to their brands. One of the search terms you might be paying for could be “women's clothes.” Creating just one ad group with all your women's clothing ads won't yield the best performance. Instead, you can segment your products as in the example above, using shorts, blouses, and jumpers as subcampaigns. But you can take this strategy one step further. You can place a bid for each specific product, separating them by color. Let's say you know blue shorts sell more than yellow jumpers. You can adjust your bids accordingly based on which colors and items are your top sellers. This relates back to what I said earlier about making sure that your PPC campaigns are profitable and yield a high ROI. Don't waste money on keywords that aren't driving leads. Schedule your ads based on performanceB2B companies need to take advantage of ad scheduling for their PPC campaigns. AdWords has a feature that allows you to manage your keyword schedules. Even if you're running PPC ads on publisher sites, you should still be able to control what times these ads are run. Make sure that's in your agreement with the publishers. Why is this so important? Allow me to explain. A standard B2C ecommerce site may run ads 24/7. That's because consumers can be browsing for products at any time, any day of the week, from anywhere in the world. That's not the same for B2B companies. It's highly unlikely that a prospective lead will be browsing for search terms related to your products or services on a Saturday night. You want to make sure your ads are run during your business hours and the business hours of your target market. Plus, you want to make sure that someone in your office is available to pick up the phone and answer any questions if a new lead calls. Running ads 24/7 is an inefficient use of your funds. Make sure your keywords are relevantNow you understand the concept behind bidding on keywords and segmenting your campaigns. Next, you need to make sure the keywords for each campaign are relevant to your business and your marketing goals. For example, let's say a prospective customer types something like “size 12 shoes sale” into a search engine. Your company sells shoes at wholesale rates, so you've bid on a variety of keywords that could match this search query. However, some of the keywords aren't relevant to the prospective consumer's intent of the search. If you're paying for keywords that appear when people search for something not related to what you're offering, you are wasting money. Google has a system that explains how keywords are selected for ad campaigns. First, they prioritize keywords that have identical matches to the search query, even if you have other keywords in the ad group related to the search. Google also gives preference to ads with exact matches. If you have keywords matching the search terms, your exact match result will be shown ahead of broad matches. Next, the keywords with the highest ad ranking will be triggered. This means that if you have multiple keywords in the same ad group, the ones with a higher ranking will be displayed. Here is the point I'm trying to make. If you have many keywords and ad groups, it's possible that irrelevant ones will be triggered ahead of ones that generate B2B leads based on Google's algorithm. It's extremely important you bid on only the most relevant keywords. You can use a tool such as Ubersuggest to help you identify the best keywords for your B2B strategy. This will increase your chances of getting identical and exact matches, and relevant keywords with a higher ranking will be prioritized for each PPC campaign. Build custom landing pagesPPC advertising has downsides as well. I'm not saying this to discourage you, but I want you to be aware of it so that you can plan accordingly. Once someone clicks on an ad, you've paid for it. It doesn't matter whether they convert or not. This can drive your customer acquisition costs through the roof if you're not getting conversions. You need to implement cost-effective customer acquisition strategies. To maximize the conversion rates of your PPC campaigns and get a high ROI, you need to build custom landing pages. You can build specific landing pages based on where the lead came from, highlighting the importance of setting up custom UTM parameters, discussed above. These landing pages need to be simple. Landing pages with simple designs have higher conversion rates. You should have big and bold CTAs that speak to your B2B audience. Just look at the top priorities for B2B marketers over the last two years: The majority of these businesses want to generate more leads and convert leads into customers. One of the best ways to make sure your landing pages are designed for optimal results is to regularly run A/B tests on different elements. Review your search terms reportYour Google search terms report will give you valuable information about your PPC campaigns. It's important you review this report on a regular basis to see whether your keywords are generating leads. The report will show you new terms with a high potential of benefiting your campaigns based on your existing keywords. The report also explains how your search term matches are determined. By using all the data in the report, you'll be able to effectively manage your keywords. As I explained earlier, you want to make sure you're bidding only on relevant keywords. You can add negative keywords to your campaign to exclude specific search terms from your results. As you can see in this example, the search terms with a red “X” have been flagged as negative keywords. This strategy is especially important for B2B brands. You want to eliminate keywords and search terms that regular consumers are browsing for. It's a waste of your money if your ads are coming up in search results for those people. You're trying to target only other businesses, and this tool will help you achieve that. Pre-qualify leads with a detailed ad copyIn addition to adding negative search terms to your campaign, you can also include more specific terms that only other businesses would be searching for. Don't be too broad, or you'll end up getting irrelevant clicks and traffic. You can apply the same strategy when running ads on publishers' websites as well. For example, let's say your B2B business offers a subscription service. A regular consumer doesn't have the same budget as a big business. You can pre-qualify your leads with an ad copy that says something like “plans starting at $5,000 per month.” This is another scenario where A/B testing your ad copy would be an effective way to see what generates the most qualified leads. Take a look at a traditional B2B lead funnel: As you can see, making sure the lead is both qualified for marketing and qualified for sales is a major component of the B2B buying process. Pre-qualifying your leads ahead of time increases the chances that a higher percentage of those leads will make it to the opportunity and revenue stages of that conversion funnel. ConclusionB2B businesses won't generate leads the same way as B2C brands. When it comes to PPC campaigns, there are certain things that you need to do to set yourself up for success. First, you need to set up UTM parameters. This will help you track the source of your leads and measure the success of each ad. Your PPC campaigns should be segmented. Use only relevant keywords to maximize your results. Make sure you schedule them accordingly. Unlike with a B2C marketing strategy, you want your ads to run during regular business hours. Create custom landing pages based on the source of your new leads. This will help you achieve higher conversion rates. Take advantage of all the tools at your disposal, such as your search terms report. Add negative search terms to your campaigns as well. By writing a detailed ad copy, you can pre-qualify your leads and increase your chances of getting more conversions. If you follow the tips I've outlined in this guide, your B2B company will be able to generate leads with PPC campaigns. How is your B2B brand using PPC campaigns to get new leads?
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Whether you love them or hate them, emojis have become part of our lives and our digital culture. The first emoji was created nearly 20 years ago in Japan. But today, the use of these tiny, animated faces and characters has drastically evolved. They have become so popular that July 17th has been officially named World Emoji Day. It's a fitting date. Apple users may recognize July 17th from the calendar emoji. Origins and history aside, the fact remains that emojis have become a dominating mobile trend. As marketers, we need to understand this trend and apply it in our businesses. People have full conversations using emojis. Some emojis are even used as a type of slang. Depending on the country you're in, some emojis are used to imply things other than what the creators intended. For example, some innocent pieces of food are commonly used to represent parts of the human anatomy. There is even a middle finger emoji. Even if you're not using emojis for business, I'm willing to bet that you and your friends send them to each other when you're texting. Or maybe you use one in the occasional social media caption. The odds are in my favor. That's because 92% of the online population uses emojis. Furthermore, it's worth noting that women use emojis more than men. In fact, 70% of women are frequent users, while just 50% of men fall into that category. With all of this in mind, now it's time for you to start using emojis to improve your business and not just your texting. I'll explain how you can implement an emoji strategy that helps you improve your click-through rates and ultimately drive conversions. Here's what you need to know. Make your email subject lines stand outYou need to learn how to increase your open rates with different subject lines. If people don't open your messages, your campaigns won't be successful. One of the best ways to use emojis to increase clicks is by adding them to your email subject lines. I know how much time and effort you put into your content. Don't slack off when it comes to crafting a subject line. Research shows that 56% of brands saw an increase in their open rates when they added an emoji to their subject lines. They experienced higher click-through rates as well. Recipients were more engaged with the content. These are the most frequently used emojis for email subject lines: That doesn't mean they were the most successful. You'll have to see which ones work best for you depending on your brand, industry, and purpose of the message. For example, using the gift emoji or airplane emoji in a subject line would be irrelevant if you're a restaurant informing your subscribers of your new dinner menu. Adding emojis to your subject line is a winning strategy because it helps you stand out from the crowd. Your subscribers get their inboxes flooded with promotional content on a daily basis. Anything you can do to be different will help your cause. Look at how Grubhub used an emoji in this subject line: It stands out from the others because it's the only one with an emoji. Plus, it's relevant to the subject line. They used the smiling face with sunglasses for a subject line that's related to the sun being out. Add an emoji to your ad headlinesIf you're using sponsored ads to market your business, you should definitely consider adding an emoji to your headlines. I know it may sound simple, but you'd be surprised at the results you'll see. Take a look at this example of a promoted Facebook advertisement from Scoro: At first glance, the two ads are seemingly identical. But the ad on the right has a simple red flag emoji added to the headline. Nothing major, right? Well, Scoro A/B tested these two headlines, and the results were astonishing. The headline with the emoji had 241% more clicks than the one without an emoji. It's worth finding out whether your company can have the same success. Start running A/B tests on your upcoming ad headlines. Use them in your push notificationsIf you have a mobile app for your business, you have an advantage over all of your competitors who don't. Having the app is a great start, but you need to make sure you're getting the most out of the tools at your disposal. You need to learn how to target your mobile customers with push notifications. These messages get sent directly to the devices of your app users. It's a great way to contact them with various promotions. But just like with your email subject lines, the campaigns are useless if nobody clicks on them. Studies suggest that adding emojis to push notifications can increase open rates by 85%. The open rates are 135% higher on Android devices than on iOS devices. That's an enormous difference. Here's an example of how Postmates used this strategy with one of its push notifications: It's a simple and effective way to promote its membership. Since push notifications have a limited character count, it's important to grab the attention of your app users with just a sentence or two at most. The arrow emoji reflects the swiping motion. And the side smirking face implies there is some type of secret or information worth reading. Here's another example, from Yelp: Again, it's very simple. It's using a flame emoji to enhance the phrase “hot new business.” It's not rocket science. You don't need to create your entire push notification strategy around emojis. Just write what you were planning to say in the first place. Then add an emoji or two that fit the description, and you're all set. Program your chatbots to use emojisHow are you communicating with your customers? You can provide better customer service by implementing live chat. Now your customers can reach you when it's convenient for them, without having to make a phone call or send an email. But it's not always easy to have a customer service representative available to respond to these messages 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That's where chatbots come into play. You can set up a chatbox to automatically appear in the corner when someone lands on your website. Take a look at how Air Tailor uses this strategy on its homepage: For a business that promotes affordable clothing alterations, effective customer communication is definitely important. Everyone has unique requests and needs when it comes to getting their clothes tailored. So getting welcomed by a chatbot is a great feature. According to a recent study from Wise Merchant, adding emojis to the chatbot feature has helped Air Tailor grow by 100% each year. This strategy worked for them, and it can work for your business as well. An emoji from a chatbot adds a human element to the conversation, even though the communication is with a robot. Include emojis in your meta titlesWhile you may not think of it, people are using emojis in search queries. Adding an emoji to your meta titles can help improve your SEO strategy. The increase in clicks will drive more traffic to your website. Here's an example of what happens when you add the birthday cake emoji to your Google search: Look at the top two results on the page. They both have a birthday cake emoji in the meta title. The top two ranked pages of search results control roughly 50% of all clicks. Adding an emoji to your meta titles and even meta descriptions can increase your chances of getting ranked higher. Add emojis within the text of your marketing emailsEarlier I discussed how you can use emojis in email subject lines to increase your open rates. But that's only half of the battle. Now you need the email recipients to consume the content, click, and convert. Increasing click-through rates is a top email marketing objective according to a survey of business owners and marketers. That's because there is a direct correlation between clicks and conversions. Getting more clicks can ultimately help your business make more money. Depending on the goal of your campaigns, these clicks can directly drive sales. A recent study reported that some businesses enjoyed a 93% increase in click-through rates after adding emojis to their email content. Use emojis in the subject line to generate opens. Then continue using them within the body of the message to increase click-throughs. Enhance your Instagram captionsYou can't have an effective emoji strategy without changing the way you do things on social media. Adding an emoji to your Instagram captions is a great way to increase engagement with your followers. Here's a look at the top ten most used emojis on Instagram last year: Furthermore, posts with emojis increase interactions by 47.7%, which means users are more engaged with the posts. It's no surprise that the camera emoji was at the top of the list. I see this one used all the time. People commonly use the camera emoji to give credit to another user who took the photo. If your brand is encouraging user-generated content and sharing photos submitted by your followers, you can use this emoji instead of typing “photo credit.” Gain an advantage over your competitionIf you start using emojis in your marketing strategy, it will help you stand out among your competitors. While emojis are popular for personal use, businesses are still adapting to this trend. It's not a strategy that's being implemented by everyone just yet. These are the top industries using emojis: As I said earlier, emojis bring a human element to your marketing strategy. Consumers don't feel comfortable interacting with giant corporations. If you take yourself too seriously, you won't appeal to your customers. You can use emojis while still remaining professional. When consumers see emojis in your marketing campaigns, they will feel as though they're getting a message from one of their friends. Jump on the emoji bandwagon before your competitors have a chance to catch up with these trends. Get creative on TwitterWhile Twitter may not be your primary marketing channel, you should still have an active account and post content on a regular basis. Emojis are a great way to drive engagement on your posts and generate clicks. This is especially true if you're sharing a video. Pairing an emoji in a tweet containing a video generates six times higher interest and emotional connection among your followers. Even if you're not sharing a video, you can still get creative with emojis to improve your tweets. Look at this example from Domino's Pizza: Sure, it may be a bit corny, but it's definitely creative. Just look at the engagement on this post. It has more retweets than favorites, which means it's being exposed to a wide audience. As a result, the page will be seen by more users, even if they don't follow the brand. This increase in exposure will translate to more traffic to the company's profile and website and ultimately yield more clicks. ConclusionIt doesn't look like the emoji trend is going away in the foreseeable future. You need to recognize this and start promoting your content accordingly. Add emojis to your email subject lines to increase your open rates. Then continue using them within the body of your emails to generate click-throughs. A/B test emojis in your ad headlines. Use emojis to enhance your push notifications. Add a human element to your live chat feature by programming your chatbots to use emojis. Use emojis in your meta titles to improve your SEO ranking. This will help give you an advantage over your competition. Emojis will increase your engagement metrics on Instagram and Twitter as well. You don't need to apply all of these strategies right away. Pick a few and see how they work out for your brand. Which emojis are you using to increase click-through rates for your marketing campaigns?
You can tell a lot about a business by how it sets its prices. Psychologically, consumers are programmed to behave a certain way when they see the price of a product or service. Your pricing strategy can control the entire perception of your brand. It's similar to the way different color schemes can impact sales on your website. Whether you realize it or not, I'm sure you think the same way when you're shopping. If you see the same item listed for $5 at one store and $50 at another, which option would you say has higher quality? The more expensive one. However, even though one store is selling products at a higher price point, it doesn't mean their quality is superior to that of the products from the store with bargain prices. It's all about perception. Don't blindly price your items. You need to have a reason and a strategy behind your pricing decisions. Just look at how popular car brands are perceived by consumers based on their prices: Ironically, the majority of your business efforts will cost you money. But your prices will ultimately be the determining factor in whether or not you'll make a sale. I see this problem all the time in my consulting work. Many business owners don't have any rhyme or reason behind their pricing strategies. As a result, their sales numbers aren't where they should be. I'll explain how you can generate higher profits by putting more focus on your pricing strategy. Depending on your brand, some of these strategies will work for you better than others. Review this guide, and decide which ones you want to use in your business. Avoid similar pricesWhen brands set their prices, they might be tempted to price certain items the same. On the surface, this makes sense. If you're selling the same shirt with different patterns, they should have the same price, right? Believe it or not, research suggests that similarly priced items hurt conversions. In an experiment, researchers studied behavior when customers were presented with two different packs of gum, both priced at $0.63. In this case, 46% of people bought a pack of gum. That's not a terrible conversion rate, but it could be better. When the prices were changed, with one pack of gum priced at $0.62 and the other at $0.64, the conversions increased. As a result, 77% of consumers purchased a pack of gum. Setting different prices increases the chances of your customers making a purchase. As you can see from the experiment, the differences in the prices don't need to be drastic. Even a slight adjustment can boost your conversions. Take a look at the prices in your stores and on your website. If you notice that the majority of similar items have the same prices, make an adjustment and see if that helps you drive more sales. Understand the psychology of anchoringSome of you may have heard of anchoring, but you may not be sure how to use it. Before you can implement an anchor pricing strategy, you need to understand how the mind works. Focalism is a psychological term, more commonly referred to as anchoring or anchor pricing in the marketing world. Anchoring impacts the way humans make decisions. We depend heavily on one piece of information, which is the metaphorical anchor. Once the anchor is set, our minds are trained to use that information when making a decision. That information biases our decision-making. For example, think about what goes through your mind when you're buying a car. If it's a used car, the first questions you might ask are:
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That's the bias you use to determine the value even though it would be more reasonable to ask whether the engine and transmission have been properly maintained. Now let's get back to your pricing strategy. How do you sell a watch for $1,500? Put it next to a watch that costs $8,000. The consumer's mind will use the more expensive watch to create an anchor bias, which makes the $1,500 watch seem like a great deal. Take a look at this example from Best Buy: These three TVs are very similar. Just look at the common features they have:
The only major difference is the size and brand. Plus, the sizes aren't even that drastically different. Seeing a $1,400 TV next to similar TVs for $700 and $380, the consumer will use the higher-priced product as an anchor. For half the price, they can get a TV that's just five inches smaller. This is still a great deal. Budget-conscious consumers can buy the $380 model without thinking twice about it. They are getting a great value for the price. We'll discuss value and segmenting prices for different types of customers in greater detail shortly. Offer incentives to spend moreYour prices can determine how much each customer spends per transaction. Obviously, you want to set these prices so that your customers spend as much money as possible. You need to give the consumer a reason to spend more money. How can you accomplish this? Let's look at a great example from SAXX: This page has four different products for sale. As you can see, it also uses the anchor pricing strategy. Customers aren't really getting a better deal per piece if they buy a 3-pack for $86 or a 2-pack for $57. It's still about $28 per pair of underwear. But if they buy the 2-pack that's on sale, they'll get each pair for $23. This is a better deal. However, they'll have to pay for shipping if they buy the sale package because it doesn't meet the $50 threshold. So what does the customer do? They consider buying two of the sale items. This gives them a better value per piece, and they'll meet the free shipping requirement. Mack Weldon uses a similar strategy on its ecommerce site: Orders over $50 will be shipped free, but the site offers more: 10% off orders over $100 and 20% off orders over $200. This strategy gives the company's customers a reason to keep adding more items to their shopping carts. Research your competitorsWho are your biggest competitors? How do their prices compare to yours? If you don't know the answer to this question, it's a big problem. You can increase profits by analyzing your competition. You have to decide how you want to position your prices compared to theirs. Maybe you want to undercut their prices in an attempt to steal their customers. But as I discussed earlier, if your prices are lower, the value of your brand could be perceived differently. On the flip side, if you set your prices too high, you could lose customers to your competitors. This is always a tricky situation. There are lots of different factors at play when it comes to your pricing strategy in relation to your competitors. I can't tell you definitely what the right or wrong approach is. You may have to experiment with this one. But at the very least, you need to be aware of your competitors and their prices. Segment your pricesAs I briefly discussed earlier, you should segment your prices so that they appeal to a wide range of customers. This is slightly different from the previous tactic of altering your prices by just a few dollars or so. With price segmentation, each pricing point is aimed at targeting a specific type of customer. Take a look at the Macro Plate pricing plans: As a meal delivery service, the company needs to have something for everyone. That's because not every customer will have the same diet. It appeals to customers who want meals delivered five days a week as well as seven days a week. How many meals do its customers get each day? It depends on the plan they select. This ranges from two to five meals per day. Furthermore, the site has meal plans designed for different diets:
The meals target customers based on what type of food they need and what they can afford. There is a big difference between a customer on a traditional diet who wants two meals a day five days a week and a customer on a high protein diet who wants four meals a day seven days a week. Trunk Club uses a similar strategy on its website as well: Trunk Club is an online personal stylist. It sends you clothes on a regular basis. But to make its service more appealing to the general population, the company needs to segment its prices based on the type of clothing people want to wear. That's why it has this questionnaire in place. Asking customers what they normally spend on different types of clothes helps them decide what to send them based on quality and price. There is a big difference between the type of customer who spends $50 and a customer who spends more than $200 on shoes. Offer big discountsThis is one of the oldest pricing strategies in the book. Set your prices high, then offer promotions, sales, and discounts. Check out this example from the Lucky Brand homepage: This promotion has discounts up to 75% off. Buying a pair of jeans at the regular price will typically cost customers about $100. But if they can get that same pair for $25, the deal seems too good to pass up on. They could potentially get four products for the price of one. You need to be careful though when implementing this strategy. Running sales too often could hurt your conversion rates when you don't have any products discounted. If your customers get used to buying only when items are discounted, full price products may never get bought. That's OK if this is part of your anchor pricing strategy, discussed above. But if you want to drive conversions, it's always a good idea to discount your prices. Research shows that retailers with active discount codes are eight times more likely to drive sales. Know your marginsUnderstanding your margins is especially important if you're planning to offer discounts. You need to make sure you're still turning a profit. That profit needs to be enough to pay your bills, pay your employees, put money in your pocket, and invest back into your business. As I said before, you can't blindly set your prices. You need to know your profit margins before and after you offer discounts, put items on sale, or run other promotions. If your margins don't make sense, you could be generating tons of sales but losing money at the same time. You obviously need to avoid that. Bundle packagesAnother common pricing strategy is the bundling concept. Basically, you set your prices so that it's cheaper to buy items together than buying each one separately. Look at how Domino's does this on its website: Its mix and match deal makes buying two or more items less expensive. Dominos also has a combo for full meals, at a higher price point. This is an example of segmenting prices based on the needs of your customers, which I talked about above. How can you apply this concept in your business? It's a great opportunity to improve your upselling and cross-selling strategy. For example, let's say your brand makes and sells musical instruments. You sell guitars for $600 and guitar cases for $150. But if someone buys a guitar and case together, the total price gets discounted to $675. Create a sense of luxuryDepending on your brand image, you may never want to offer a discount. In this case, you would be trying to appeal to a certain type of customer. Some consumers don't want to buy products on sale. They believe higher prices translate to higher quality. These customers also want to buy from brands that convey prestige. Some consumers with deep pockets look for brands with higher prices because they know not everyone can afford their products or services. If this is the kind of pricing strategy you're trying to implement, don't worry about the customers looking for bargains. Instead, you'll probably get fewer conversions, but your profits will be much higher. Look at the Gucci website: Does anything on this website stand out to you? For starters, it's very simple. Websites with simple designs have higher conversion rates. But that's not all. Unlike on the majority of ecommerce sites, on the Gucci site the prices are not listed upfront. There's an old saying, which I'm sure you've heard before:
That's the idea here. The customers the brand is targeting don't care about the price. They'll buy the products regardless. To see the prices, you have to click on the items, like the $4,850 jacket above. Focus on qualityThere's nothing wrong with having higher prices, but you need to be able to justify your reason for having them. Just to be clear: I'm not referring to the luxury brands as in the example above. Those kinds of prices are in a league of their own. But if you charge $100 for a t-shirt, you need to give your customers some kind of explanation for that price. Why should they buy your shirt when they can buy it somewhere else for $5? Here's an example from the Lululemon website that focuses on quality: The brand's prices aren't outrageously high, but a seemingly simple pullover costs $120. This is more money than most people would spend on something like this, but the brand justifies the price by emphasizing the quality of its product. To reduce irritation, the company removed seams from the sides, which is a common construction for similar pullovers. The material is lightweight and made to stretch. It's also made with a fabric that fights bacteria that causes odor. This is the brand's justification for charging these prices. By focusing on quality, it's able to generate more profits. Put emphasis on valueWhat type of value are you offering your customers? You need to position your prices so that the customer feels they're getting a deal. Some of the previous strategies use this concept, such as bundling products and offering discounts. But there are other ways to do this as well. You want to make your prices seem as affordable as possible. It's all about how you deliver the information to your customers. For example, look at the pricing options from Harry's Razors: It delivers shaving supplies to its customers every two months with its subscription service. Look at its most expensive package: $16 per month sounds more appealing than $32 every two months, even though it's the same thing. It's also better than listing it as $192 per year. After all, $16 sounds much more reasonable and affordable. Plus, there is added value in the subscription. Customers are paying for the convenience of having products shipped to their doors on a regular basis instead of having to go to the store or to constantly re-order products online. ConclusionYour prices will directly impact your sales. Implementing the right pricing strategy will increase your profits. Don't set similar items at the same price. Apply the anchor pricing tactic. Encourage your customers to spend more money with each transaction. Bundle packages together. Offer big discounts. Segment your prices to appeal to a wider range of customers. Research your competition. Know your profit margins. If you want to appeal to a certain type of customer, create a luxury brand with high prices and never run a sale. Prioritize quality and value. No matter what type of business you have, I'm confident you'll find an appropriate pricing strategy in this guide. How will your brand generate higher profits with your updated pricing strategy? Facebook reach has continually declined over time. Nowadays everyone tells me there is no point in even sharing content on Facebook. But you know what? You can still generate traffic from Facebook. Yes, traffic has declined. Even so, in the last 31 days, I've generated 20,420 visits from Facebook. That's not too shabby considering I'm only publishing 4 articles a month. That's an average of 5,105 visitors per article from Facebook. And because I've been building the ultimate SEO tool, I've been gathering social sharing data on over 9 billion URLs. But a large portion of the URLs in our database aren't articles. So, for this analysis, we looked at 5,860,631,392 articles. Before I dive into what we have learned, there are few things you ought to know about the data:
Let's dive into the learnings. What type of content generates the most Facebook likes overtime?There's been countless articles published showing that list posts and infographics generate the most social shares. And that makes sense because who doesn't love a visual piece of content such as an infographic? But what if you want social shares over time? By looking at how many social shares each article generates on a monthly basis, we were able to see the growth rate and the types of article that generate the most social shares over time. Here's the share growth rate over time per article type: If you want a quick boost in Facebook traffic, consider creating infographics. But if you want more consistent Facebook traffic each and every month, focus on “how to” articles. They don't do as well right off the bat, but over time they produce more consistent Facebook traffic. The reason for this is that infographics are harder to rank on Google because they don't contain a lot of text. By creating content like “how to” articles that tend to get searched frequently, you can get consistent traffic to your articles which will cause more social shares. How long (or short) should your headlines be?Do Facebook users prefer short or long headlines? If you had to take a guess, what would you think? Most people think the shorter the better… Let's look at the data: Users prefer headlines that are roughly 7, 8 or 9 words. You can't really explain what an article is about in 4 words. By having your headline long enough, it will allow you to be more descriptive. Don't focus on making your headlines as short as possible, focus on making them descriptive. How do images impact shares?You already know people love images. If they didn't, Facebook wouldn't be as popular. But the question is, how many images do you really need per article to get the maximum number of social shares? In general, the more images the better. The one thing to note is that a lot of the articles that had over 7 images weren't really articles per se. A lot of them were articles that have a clear objective of getting you to browse through an image gallery, such as someone showing off stunning images of the Milky Way or image galleries of silly cats. When writing content, consider including images to describe your message. The more the better. How long should your lists be?Based on our data, most people prefer writing list-based articles with the number 10. In other words, their lists only have 10 items. When we looked at the average share count based on list size, it was clear that lists that were 10 items long won. But there is a problem: the data is skewed because everyone focuses on smaller lists. When we started to look at the median share count per list size, the data got interesting. The more detailed the list, the better. If you ever decide to write a list-based post that is over 100 items, there is a good chance people will share it assuming it is super detailed. Shortlists have been beaten to death for years. That's why longer ones that leverage the skyscraper technique perform better these days. How long should your articles be?Should you write short articles or long ones? And how short or long should they be? This question has been asked and discussed in marketing circles for years. The data shows, the longer the better. If you were to write 10,000-word blog posts that are super actionable, you would generate more social shares than if you wrote 2,000-word blog posts. I know I've mentioned in the past that writing super long content is like throwing money out the window. And it is especially true when it comes to Google traffic. So for a nice balance, I would still stick with the advice I gave in that article, which is to write roughly 2,000-word blog posts. Then expand upon it over time. And every time you expand upon the article, you can share it again on Facebook. If you don't care about Google and you only want to focus on Facebook, then just go for that 10,000-word article. You'll also notice that 1,000-word articles generate more shares than 2,000-word articles. We were curious why this was so we dug into the data a bit more and found that articles that contained less than 1,000 words in many cases contained more images than 2,000-word articles. In addition to that, many of the shorter articles were also news based. And speaking of news… Is it better to write news-based content or evergreen content?Over time, evergreen content gets more traffic. It's not just because of Facebook, it's that they rank better in Google and get more consistent traffic over the years. No one is Googling about what happened in the news a year ago. None-the-less, let's look at the first hour of when an article is published. News based articles win in the short run. I already discussed above how “how to” articles will get you the most consistent search traffic over time, but if you want a quick hit, consider covering news related topics. Do emotions affect social sharing?I used to love writing articles that pushed fear because they generated a lot of traffic for me. But the issue with doing this is that I used to get emails from people asking me if I was depressed or needed help. I've always been fine, but many of you told me how you don't like when I push fear in my articles. So, I naturally stopped. And although fear is an effective way to generate more social shares, it isn't the most powerful emotion (at least when it comes to Facebook). People love content with laughter, awe, and joy. Or at least, that's what people prefer sharing, as opposed to fear. You can clearly see by the image above that people prefer laughter roughly 3 times more than they prefer fear. When should you post your content?Writing an amazing article isn't enough. If you write content on a bad day and release it during a time when no one is online, then you won't go viral on Facebook. People prefer sharing content on Tuesday over any other day. If you are going to write only one article a week, release it on Tuesday. If you are writing multiple articles a week, focus on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as they are the most popular days. And as for the time of day… You tend to share content between 11 am and 1 pm. That's right before you are about to leave for your lunch break and it's right when you come back. A lot of people get tired during the middle of the day and they need a break. That's why you will see many people within your office on Facebook during the afternoon. If you miss the 1 pm publishing window, you can always shoot for the 6 pm slot. The share count goes back up around the time people are finishing up with work. ConclusionYes, it is hard to get traffic from Facebook. They do limit your reach compared to 4 or 5 years ago because they don't want you driving people from Facebook off to your website. That and they want you to boost posts to increase your reach (and their revenue). The longer people stay on Facebook the more money they make. That's why they love video content. But that doesn't mean you still can't do well. If you follow the data above it will give you the best shot of getting the most traffic from Facebook. What do you think about the data and stats? Are you going to follow it? The post We Analyzed 5,860,631,392 Articles From 64 Countries. Here's What Facebook Loves! appeared first on Neil Patel. |
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