Emotions drive our lives. Whether you recognize it or not, you feel a wide range of emotions on a daily basis. You might even be feeling some emotions right now as you're reading this. The word emotion is defined by an instinctive state of mind as a reflection of mood, circumstances, relationships, knowledge, or reasoning. Sometimes emotions can cause erratic behavior, depending on the circumstances. Other times, emotions can make people do great things. If someone is feeling inspired, they may create something that changes their life and the lives of people around them for the better. As a marketer, you need to find ways to put yourself into the minds of the consumer. You should be doing things like developing a customer persona to improve your conversion rates. Once you can understand how people think, you can use that information to your advantage. Marketers that know how to leverage the emotions of consumers will have greater success over extended periods of time. In fact, 43% of emotional advertisements had positive effects on businesses for three or more years. Ads that trigger above average emotions create a 23% increase in sales volume. That's right. If you can stimulate an emotional response from your customers with an advertisement, it will increase your sales volume today and potentially for years down the road. But where do you start? Which emotions work best? Depending on who you ask, humans have anywhere between 6, 27, or upward of 100 emotions. Honestly, the number doesn't really matter. As long as your strategies can trigger a response that impacts the way the consumer feels, you're getting the job done. I'll show you some of the best ways to generate sales by guiding consumer emotions. Build trustWould you give money to someone who you don't trust? I doubt it. So you can assume that consumers won't give money to brands that appear to be untrustworthy. That's why you need to take steps to build and establish trust with your customers. Take a look at the most trustworthy advertising channels based on a recent survey of consumers. As you can see, none of the top five responses are forms of digital content. Online advertising just isn't as trustworthy as the other types of advertising channels. People have the perception that they're going to get scammed online. They are afraid of getting their identities stolen or credit cards compromised. However, if they know that they're dealing with a trustworthy brand, they'll feel much safer. For example, would you hesitate to enter your personal information and credit card number to make a purchase from Apple? Probably not. That's because they're a well-known, established, and credible brand. But if you're browsing online and get a popup advertisement from a company that you've never heard of, are going to buy something without asking any questions? I hope not. If your business doesn't have a reputation established yet, you need to take the right steps to add credibility to your website. Showcase customer testimonials. Encourage your customers to review your products. Display your contact information. Make it easy for people to reach you with any questions, comments, or concerns. Secure the checkout process. Get rid of ads for other brands on your site. Promote your hassle-free return policy. If you do things like that, people will trust your business. Once they trust you, they'll be more willing to buy. Create FOMOFear is a powerful emotion. I'm not saying that you need to scare your customers, although that can be an effective strategy as well. For example, let's say your company sells home alarm systems. You could run a video ad showing the results of a robbery. The camera can show a missing TV that was ripped off the wall, furniture displaced and flipped over, a broken window, bedroom drawers pulled out of the dresser. Maybe the ad even shows a child's bedroom. As a result of this type of ad, people without an alarm system might be afraid that this could happen to them. So they buy an alarm from your company. However, this type of tactic isn't reasonable for every business. Let's say you sell clothing. It wouldn't make sense to run an ad about trying to scare people into buying a t-shirt. So instead, you can create FOMO or the fear of missing out. Here's an example of how Expedia uses this strategy to sell hotel reservations through their platform. They use this method all over this page. For the first hotel, they have a message stating that four other people booked a room at this hotel in the past 48 hours. Then there is a separate alert saying that the hotel is in high demand. There are only two rooms left at $135 per night. As a result, the consumer will be afraid that if they don't book the room now, the rate will go up, or the hotel will potentially sell out of rooms. Expedia doesn't stop there. When you click on a property to get more details, they continue applying the FOMO strategy. So they've already told you that there are only two rooms left. But now you find out that there are 14 other people viewing this property right now. This makes the consumer think that they need to act even faster to secure the advertised rate. You can apply this same tactic to your ecommerce website. Put up an alert that tells people there are a limited number of a certain product remaining. I'm not advocating that you should lie to your customers, but realistically, nobody will know if you actually have plenty left in stock. So do what you want with that information. Identify the desires of your customersDesire can stimulate emotions as well. Just like you and I, your customers have wants and needs. If you identify what they desire, you can use that to reach them through your marketing campaigns. Let me show you what I mean. Here's an example of a simple advertisement from Calvin Klein. What do men desire? Women. Look, I get it. It's 2018. I'm not here to get into a debate about sexual preferences or anything else like that. I'm just trying to show you how Calvin Klein's marketing team positioned this advertisement in a way to stimulate desire. The ad implies that if you use this cologne, beautiful women without clothes will be attracted to you. Obviously, that's outrageous. But subconsciously, people will see this ad and get an emotional reaction from it. Let me give you another example so you can look at this concept from a completely different perspective. We'll say that your company sells running shoes. What do competitive runners desire? Winning. So you can run an ad that shows someone winning a race while wearing your shoes. Focus on what your customers want. Then tailor your marketing strategy accordingly around that idea to stimulate their desires. Trigger envyEnvy and jealousy are not necessarily considered positive emotions. However, as a marketer, you can still use these ideas to your advantage. I'm sure you've seen ads like this before. There are commercials on TV all of the time about products like fertilizer that will help you grow a lawn that's greener than your neighbor's. Those ads are trying to trigger the envious emotion that people feel. You walk by your neighbor's house and see that their grass looks better than yours. Time to do something about it. So when you see an ad like that, it speaks to you. Here's an example of this strategy used by Zeus Beard. Zeus Beard sells a variety of beard grooming products and accessories. This blog post explains how people can grow a beard that's thicker and fuller than their friend's beard. So anyone who is envious of their friends or other bearded people will be inclined to read this content. After that, they'll be eager to buy products from this company. It sounds silly, but it's human nature to want to be better than people. Whether you want to admit it or not, I'm sure you're envious sometimes too. Don't be ashamed. You're not alone. Fortunately, your customers get envious too. So trigger that emotion to get them to make a purchase from your brand. Create content that's creative and humorousYou need to run ads that will get the attention of your current and prospective customers. So be creative and try to get some laughs out of people. Here's an example from the Old Spice Instagram page. What exactly is happening in this picture? It looks like this guy is skydiving with a lion on his back while putting mustard on corn dog that the lion is holding. Is that going to make people buy deodorant? Not necessarily. But it certainly grabs their attention. It may even make people laugh. As a result, it will show them the human side of your brand, and even establish trust with them. This is something that we discussed earlier. Laughter will improve the mood of the people viewing your ad. If someone is happy, they'll be more likely to buy whatever it is that you're selling. So have some fun and get creative with your next marketing campaign. Go for shock factorIs a lion going skydiving shocking? Yes, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about. Shock your audience with reality. Depending on your approach, this strategy can be used to stimulate fear, which we previously discussed. One of the best ways to shock people is by showing them an alarming statistic to back up whatever you're selling. Here's an example from the Action on Smoking and Health Organization. This company is trying to get people to stop smoking. So they ran this ad to inform people how tobacco products can cause diseases that lead to death. The idea here is that it's more common than people think. Someone may not realize the harm that they're doing to their bodies by consuming certain products. However, after seeing a shocking ad like this, they may reconsider their actions. As a result, they could reach out to the organization and seek whatever services they're offering to help them quit a bad habit. With that said, shock doesn't always have to be associated with fear. You can shock people with news that's exciting and encouraging as well. Inspire your customersSometimes you just need to give people a little bit of motivation to accomplish something. By triggering emotions that inspire consumers, you can entice them to make a purchase. Here's a great example from the Nike website. Just do it. We all know this as the Nike slogan. But what does it really mean? This powerful image on their website shows exactly what their slogan looks like in real life. Football is a difficult sport for anyone to play. So for someone with only one good arm, it may seem like just a crazy dream. Nike explains that it's only a crazy dream until you do it, and they have proof to back it up. Are they displaying this content to tell people across the globe that they can play football with one arm? No. They're doing this to inspire people. No matter what you think is holding you back, you can accomplish it. Do you think you're too overweight to go to the gym? Are you too old to run a marathon? Whatever it is that you need to overcome, a promotion like this can inspire you to accomplish your goals. Once people feel inspired, they'll need to buy the right products to help them reach their potential. Build anticipationAnticipation can drive you crazy. We've all been there. Waiting by the phone for a certain call. Sitting in front of the TV anticipating a new episode of your favorite show to start. Waiting to hear back the results of a test. Once anticipation gets built, you can get your customers to buy something. Here's an example from the Apple website. Apple is notorious for their keynote events. During these events, they announce the launch of new products and software. In the past, some of these announcements have been groundbreaking to the industry. So by promoting the event with not much information besides the date, location, and time, it builds anticipation. If they told people exactly what they were going to announce at the event, it would defeat the purpose. This is a great example of how to build hype for a new product launch. Once they announce the new products, they still aren't available right away. However, Apple gives their customers the opportunity to pre-order items. First, they build hype by promoting the event. Next, they continue to build anticipation by announcing a new product without launching it. By the time the product hits the shelves, people are lined up around the corner ready to hand their money over. Entice kindnessDespite what you might think, people are actually kind. I know some of you who live in certain places may not agree with that, but just bear with me for a minute here. If people believe in a certain cause or want to help other people, their kind nature will be brought out. Take a look at how Box Lunch incorporates this strategy with their overall brand mission. For everyone $10 spent, this company helps provides meals to people in need. It's a great pitch to consumers. Buy from this brand, and you'll help feed the hungry. If your company supports charitable organizations, don't be afraid to share that with your customers. Use that to help stimulate an emotional response. This will help you generate more sales. Promote joy and happinessLots of times people associate certain emotional responses with negative feelings. Someone may do something stupid if they're mad or angry. But on the flip side, people who are happy and joyful can have an emotional response as well. Nobody who is in a bad mood buys coffee for a stranger. But someone who is having a great day might pay it forward to the car behind them when they're going through a restaurant drive-thru. If someone is feeling down or depressed, they probably won't be as open to spending money. However, if you can find a way to bring joy to the lives of your customers, they'll be more likely to buy what you're selling. Here's an example from Tropicfeel. This startup company sells sneakers for both men and women. They posted this image on Instagram to show two people having a great time while wearing Tropicfeel sneakers. Just look at their faces. As a consumer, you almost can't help but smile while looking at how happy these people are. Sure, they're models working for this company. But that doesn't change the fact that this picture can make you happy. This relates back to one of our previous talking points about identifying desires. People have the desire to be happy. If you're able to explain through your ads how your brand can make this possible, it will increase your chances of getting people to convert. ConclusionCertain actions and behaviors happen as the result of an emotional response. Marketers need to recognize this concept, and learn how to leverage consumer emotions into sales. Build trust with your customers. Identify their desires. Stimulate fear, envy, shock, creativity, and humor. Be inspiring. Build anticipation. Entice kindness. Find ways to make your customers feel joyful and happy. If you can stimulate these emotions properly, consumers will respond by making purchases. How is your company driving sales by leveraging the emotions of your customers?
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I'm a marketer. I know more about traffic generation than most others, and I surely know more about marketing than developers. But what if I told you that developers can generate you more traffic than an SEO or any other type of marketer? And no, it's not because the developer implements changes to your site… they are just able to produce more traffic. What's crazy about this is that it's cheaper in the long run than paying marketers. Most of you know that I have an ad agency, Neil Patel Digital. And although I always want more big companies to pay us, typically a developer can generate you more traffic than I (or any other ad agency) can drive. It sounds bad, but it's true. Here's what I mean… My traffic growthI've shown you my traffic over time. You already know I get a lot of traffic, but, in case you forget, here's my latest traffic numbers: In the last 31 days, you've helped me generate 1,864,246 unique visitors and 4,764,739 pageviews. That's not too shabby! Even at my level, I still haven't tapped out as only 25.1% of my traffic is repeat visitors. Now, can you guess how much traffic I had during the beginning of the year? 808,747 unique visitors. So how have I grown from 808,747 to 1,864,246 in 10 or so months? Well, one thing that helped was the purchase of the KISSmetrics blog. By combining both of the blogs together, I instantly increased my traffic. It helped me generate an extra 510,442 visitors per month. But that's not what I am talking about when I say developers can drive you more traffic with SEO. There was another thing I did this year which really helped my traffic grow… more than the KISSmetrics blog purchase. Can you guess what it is? How much traffic does Ubersuggest generate?I bought Ubersuggest back in early 2017, and I ended up merging the tool into NeilPatel.com in February 2018. The moment I merged the tool into NeilPatel.com, here's what happened to my traffic (keep in mind the last month is on a partial month): My traffic went from 808,747 to a bit more than 1,176,243 visitors a month between February and March. The original Ubersuggest (version 1.0) doesn't look anything like what it looks today. It looked more like this: And… The original tool cost $120,000 to acquire and $15,000 on development to clean up the code, add some simple features, and merge it into NeilPatel.com. In addition to that, I had API expenses that cost me around $2,000 a month. That alone got me Ubersuggest 1.0. Now I didn't have to buy the tool, I could have created something from scratch like my SEO Analyzer, which I am currently redoing and merging into Ubersuggest. The first version of the SEO Analyzer cost me around $30,000 and since then I have continually spent more to improve it. As you can see from the graph, the SEO Analyzer has driven me 435,115 unique visitors so far this year. And those visitors generated 3,143,220 pageviews. The best part about the SEO Analyzer is that it is easier to maintain than my blog. It only costs $1,173 a month for hosting. All in all, tools have generated me more consistent traffic than anything else. I don't have to worry about social media algorithms or Google updates… people just keep using them even when you stop putting effort into them. How hard is to generate traffic through tools?At this point, you are probably wondering how hard it is to market these tools. Because if you pay a developer, they probably won't just get instantly popular. And you are right, they won't. But it isn't rocket science. If you build something that is somewhat decent, it will naturally gain popularity. All you have to do is write a blog post or two about your tool and just be patient. If you can get others to blog about your tool, it will, of course, help even more. Just look at Ubersuggest. It has continually grown even though I haven't done much marketing for it till the last 30 days. As you can see during the earlier months it kept growing in popularity just because I kept it up and running. If you don't have an audience as I do, what I've found is people will mention your tool if you just email them. I know link building is tough, but not when you are giving away free tools. You can search Google for list-based posts within your industry. Some of these lists will focus on or include other tools. Just email out people and see if they will mention your tool.
You've done a great job of finding new ways to drive more traffic to your website. But if that traffic isn't translating into conversions, you've still got plenty of work to do. I see this common misconception in my consulting work all the time. Businesses spend much time and effort trying to improve their organic SEO while simultaneously running PPC campaigns to get more website visitors. There's nothing wrong with this strategy, but increasing site traffic isn't the only metric that matters. You also need to focus on how visitors behave after landing on your pages. Are they converting? If not, that traffic isn't translating to dollars. That's why you need to learn how to use continuous A/B testing to increase conversions. These experiments will help give you a better understanding of how to optimize certain design elements of your website. Subtle changes can make a major impact on getting your traffic to convert. To those of you who have never run these tests before, I recommend reviewing my guide on everything you need to know before you start A/B testing. However, if you already know how to run A/B tests but just don't know what you should be testing, this list is perfect for you. In reality, the number of things you could test on your website is seemingly endless. That said, I narrowed down the top 13 elements you should start with. You can continue to tweak these and run several tests for each component on this list. I'll even give you some examples and real-life data to explain how other websites improved conversions by testing specific elements. 1. CTA sizeAs you read through this guide, you'll notice that CTA buttons will appear several times in the discussion. This makes sense since it's the most important feature in terms of driving conversions. Start off with the size of your CTA button. For the most part, this button needs to be big and bold. That way, it's obvious and jumps off the screen. The last thing you want is for someone to be unable to find your CTA button. How big should it be for optimal conversions? The only way to know is by experimenting with different sizes. Here's an example to show you what I mean: As you can see, these two CTA buttons are identical. They have the same font, color, and placement on the page. The only difference is the size. But bigger isn't always better. In fact, after running this experiment, it was found that the larger CTA actually had 10% fewer conversions. There could be a number of different reasons for this, but we don't need to get into that right now. The important thing is that this would have never been discovered without running the A/B test. Don't assume that your giant CTA button is ideal for conversions. Test the size so you can be sure. 2. Headline wordingYour landing pages will have different headlines. These headlines will tell your visitors exactly what they'll find on the page. Depending on your goals, the wording can also prompt people to take a certain action. Plus, you want your headlines to be SEO-friendly as well. Obviously, lots of thought should go into crafting these words. That's why you need to learn how to increase clicks by mastering your headlines. To do this effectively, you'll need to run A/B tests to find out which phrasing yields the highest conversion rates. Check out this example from the Movexa website: At first glance, the two pages look the same. The only difference between the control and variation is the headline. As you can see, the difference is minor. All they did was add one word. Movexa increased sales by 89% after adding the word “supplement” to the headline on this landing page. So don't assume your headline is perfect until you test different variations. You may be surprised with the results. 3. Free shipping informationThis one is more specific to ecommerce sites. But it's an important feature that shouldn't be overlooked. First of all, you shouldn't be charging your customers for shipping. If this expense is coming out of your pocket, just include it in the base cost of each item as opposed to charging separately for it. This added charge is the top reason for shopping cart abandonment. But simply not charging for shipping isn't enough. You need to display this information proudly on your website. This way your customers won't have to get to the checkout page to know that shipping is free. But where do you tell them? That's for you to find out through A/B testing. Try different locations on the banner of your website. Maybe include it in the headline. After you experiment with the placement, you can continue to run tests on the size, font, and color of this text as well. Try using all capital letters, or add an exclamation point to see if these variations change your results. 4. CTA phrasingLet's get back to discussing the CTA button. Now that you know the optimal size of this button from a test I talked about earlier, you can start to experiment with the phrasing. Obviously, the phrasing will depend on your goal. For example, a “buy now” CTA won't make sense if you're trying to get website visitors to subscribe to your email list. Here's an example from a landing page that targets visitors who need a loan: The team tested “apply now” against “submit.” Everything else about the pages was exactly the same. The hypothesis here was that the word “apply” implied that the visitor could be rejected from a loan, which would discourage them from converting. On the flip side, the “submit” button makes it seem like anyone can be approved simply by filling out the form field above. I highly recommend experimenting with CTA button phrasing on each landing page of your website. This button is too important for you to overlook. 5. Pricing displaySome websites don't display their prices on their landing pages. Do you? Depending on the type of business you have, your branding strategy, and the industry you're in, you may not think this is necessary. However, it's possible that displaying your prices could help increase conversions. Check out this example below: Adding the price to this landing page increased its conversions by 100%. After adding the price, you can also run other tests to make sure it's optimized on the page. Change the location, color, font, and size to ensure you're getting the maximum number of conversions. 6. Promotional contentPromotional content on your landing pages gives your website visitors an incentive to buy whatever you're selling. In theory, these elements will drive conversions. But don't make assumptions without testing them. Look at the example from this case study on the SimCity website: The original landing page had promotional information at the top of the screen, below the menu bar. It's simple. Pre-order the game, and you'll get $20 off your next purchase. An incentive like this must be good enough to get people to convert, right? Not so fast. By eliminating this promotional content from the landing page, they saw a 43% increase in checkouts. Websites with simple designs have higher conversion rates. Adding too much promotional content to your pages can make it difficult for the visitor to focus on your CTA buttons. Removing unnecessary text can actually be beneficial. I'm not saying you need to completely trash all of your promotional content. I'm just trying to show you that you have to run experiments to see if it's worth including. 7. CTA placementNo, you're still not done testing your CTA button. Now that size and phrasing are taken care of, it's time for you to find the best location on the page for this button. You'll need to run lots of experiments with this. Typically, your CTA should always be above the fold. Make sure it's clearly visible at all times. But test different locations on the page. Try the middle, left side, right side, or even slightly off-center to the right. Try every location. Experiment with two CTA buttons. Keep running these tests until you find a winner. 8. Image subjectYour website shouldn't always have a plain white background with no images. You need to use visual elements to improve your marketing strategy. But don't just pull a picture out of thin air and assume it will make your website better. Use A/B tests to find out which images convert the best. Here's an example of how Highrise experimented with images on its website: Michael had nearly 5% more conversions than Jocelyn. This may seem marginal, but depending on the amount of traffic to a website, it could be the difference in tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a year. 9. Navigation menuHow do website visitors find what they're looking for on your pages? Typically, navigation menus are the best way for them to jump from page to page. However, if these menus are too complex, it can hurt your conversions. Remember, keeping things simple is always your best bet. Take a look at what happened when Yuppiecheif removed the navigation menu from its homepage: As a result of this design change, Yuppiechef was able to increase conversions by 100%. If it worked for them, it could work for you as well. Even if you don't want to remove your menu completely, you can experiment with other elements of it. Change the color, size, placement. Consider removing some of the options to keep people focused on converting. 10. Value propositionEarlier we talked about the importance of free shipping. But you can test other elements of your value proposition as well. Here's a look some of the other key phrases that give consumers an incentive to shop online. By highlighting these other benefits on your pages in the form of a value proposition, you'll be able to drive more conversions. Refer to my guide on how to create a highly effective value proposition if you want to learn more about this concept. 11. CTA colorAs I said before, your CTA needs to stand out and be obvious in order for it to be effective. That's why the color of this button is so important. Sure, you want the color scheme of your website to be visually appealing, but that doesn't mean your CTA button should blend in with everything else. A blue CTA button on a blue background will get lost in the shuffle. And a color like bright yellow will be difficult to read. So what colors work the best? Run tests to find out. Here's an example testing green and red CTA buttons: Usually, we associate green with go and red with stop. So you could assume that the green CTA button would outperform the red one. But the results of this test were surprising, which is why we shouldn't make assumptions. The red CTA button got 21% more clicks than the green one. 12. Product page layoutOn an ecommerce website, the design of your product pages will have a major impact on conversions. Since these conversions will ultimately translate to dollars, you need to prioritize these A/B tests because a mistake here could be costing you money. Here's an example from Smartwool socks: At first, they tried to highlight certain items on their product page. But after transitioning to a uniform grid system with an A/B test, they saw a 17% increase in the average revenue per visitor. Try this as well. Experiment with the number of products you display on the screen at once. If you have a grid, test rows of three compared to rows of five. Or maybe two columns instead of three columns. Test the size of your product icons. After running numerous tests, you'll be comfortable knowing you have the optimal design for the most important pages on your website. 13. Length of form fieldsTest the length of form fields on your landing pages. For the most part, shorter form fields have higher conversion rates. But as you can see from this graphic, that's not the same across the board. Right now, if you have six form fields and you can get that down to four, you could assume your conversions will increase based on this graph. However, some of you may need to have longer form fields if you need to collect lots of information from your customers. If you look at the data above, it implies that a form with 28 fields won't perform as well as a form with 40 fields. So there are certain instances when shorter isn't always better. Run an A/B test on these forms until you get this figured out. ConclusionWhen it comes to the design elements of your website, you should never make assumptions. Instead, create a hypothesis, and run A/B tests to test it. As you can see from the list I've created, the CTA button has a huge impact on your conversions. But there are other elements that should be tested as well. Don't stop after one test. You should always be taking steps to improve your design, drive conversions, and ultimately increase your profits. What elements of your website are you trying to improve with A/B tests?
How are you managing the reputation of your company? If you are struggling to find an answer to this question, you may need to re-evaluate your strategy moving forward. There are certain aspects of your brand's reputation you have control over, e.g., the way you distribute content through your marketing channels and use website elements to add credibility to your website. But a news story or a review of your product on a third-party site can be out of your hands. Your public relations strategy encompasses all these scenarios. Public relations, or PR, can help expose your business to new audiences. Simply put, public relations is how businesses communicate with people. There's a common misconception about PR. Many business owners I work with don't have a PR strategy. They believe it's only for companies that made a mistake, needing to run PR campaigns to issue apologies or make their businesses look better in the public eye. While that would fall under the public relations category, that's not the only reason why you would implement a PR strategy. Your PR efforts will manage how you spread information. It's part of your overall branding strategy, except it focuses more on your reputation and communication as opposed to things like your company slogan and logo. In a digital era, information gets spread faster than ever. That's why every business needs to have a public relations strategy in 2018. It doesn't matter how new or old your business is. Even if you're trying to create an effective marketing strategy for your startup company, it's not complete without PR. I'll explain everything you need to know about the basic concepts of PR and how it can help your brand gain more exposure. Differences between PR and marketingFor starters, it's important for you to be able to separate your PR strategy from your marketing strategy. Don't get me wrong: public relations and marketing are very similar. However, there are differences in the goals of these two departments. For example, some goals of your marketing campaigns would be to drive more traffic to your website, get new email subscribers, or drive sales. While you ultimately want your PR strategy to result in revenue, the primary goal of these efforts will differ from that of your marketing strategy efforts. There isn't necessarily a measurable impact on sales from public relations. It's more of a big-picture strategy. The goal of your PR efforts would be to improve the reputation of your business. You may already be doing this with things such as:
However, these campaigns would be marketing-oriented. To improve your reputation through PR, you'll focus on things such as press releases and guest-speaking engagements at industry events. These are indirect strategies to promote your brand. With a marketing campaign, you'd run a promotion on one of your distribution channels. Do you see the difference? Ultimately, your PR efforts will still support sales. People don't always buy products. They buy brands. That's why PR is so important. If a consumer buys your products as a result of one of your marketing campaigns, that person has already established a connection with your brand through your PR efforts. Understand the different types of mediaTo keep things simple, public relations can be segmented into three main categories:
All three of these will help establish and build your brand reputation. This will help you get one step closer to achieving your goals. I'll go into greater detail about each one of these categories to give you a better understanding of how they work. Owned mediaOwned media is any piece of content your company has control over. Although we are grouping owned media as a function of PR, it's similar to your marketing strategy. I'm referring to things such as your blog posts, social media content, and website copy. For example, if you're learning how to enhance your content by building infographics, this type of media is owned by you. You control how it gets created. You control when and where it gets distributed. Owned media will help improve your overall PR strategy. When someone hears about your brand from another source, you want to make sure the content you own is informative and drives them to convert. Paid mediaTo improve the visibility of your marketing campaigns, you may consider using a paid media strategy. Just as the name implies, this is when you pay someone to display your content. Social media ads and PPC campaigns both fall into this category. But for a PR strategy, you may want to consider using social influencers to increase your product credibility. Influencer marketing has become increasingly popular in 2018. Incorporating a paid media strategy will help expose your business to a more specific group of people who fit within your target market. This is more effective than content that's distributed to everyone and anyone who just happens to turn on a local news station. Earned mediaEarned media is out of your control, at least to some extent. Your actions, behavior, and the quality of your products and services are all within your control. If you can get those things right, your earned media should be positive. However, you don't have control over what's said about your brand with earned media. That's the biggest difference between paid media and earned media. For example, let's say your brand or one of your products is reviewed on a third-party website. That's an example of earned media. Customers saying positive things about you on social media is earned media as well. But earned media can also be negative. Let's say you did something wrong. In this case, you probably won't be bragging on your website about your mistakes. That's not something you'd highlight in your owned media content. But if a news channel picks up that story and writes an article about your company on its website, it could give people a negative perception of your business. That said, there's an old saying I'm sure you've heard before:
I can't say I agree with that statement 100%, but don't let one mistake discourage you too much. Your other PR efforts can still improve your reputation and increase your brand exposure. Inbound public relationsI'm sure you're familiar with inbound marketing. This helps you reach customers through campaigns related to SEO, branding, social media, and content marketing. But what about inbound PR? You may have heard of it although you may not be very familiar with it. The concept and application of this term are actually quite simple. With inbound marketing, you're targeting customers. That's not always the case with inbound PR. Inbound public relations focus on media outlets. Here's a visual aid to explain the inbound PR methodology: As you can see, strategies targeting consumers and media outlets involve many of the same marketing channels and types of content. In the past, I've explained how to develop a customer persona that improves conversion rates. You can apply the same concepts to creating a media persona. Now, you just need to tweak a few things based on whom you're targeting. For example, let's say you're a local business owner. To help give back to your community, you make a donation to sponsor an event at a nearby high school. You're doing this to be charitable, but you also want some recognition for your donation. In addition to sharing this information on your website, you could make the announcement at an event where you know a local news station would be present. This increases the chances of getting the story picked up, which will give you positive PR. Instead of focusing on repeat customers, as you would with inbound marketing, you want to focus on repeat publishers. This makes things much easier for you. These are the media outlets that will continue running positive stories about your business. Measuring PR goalsAs I said earlier, it's tough to see the result of your PR efforts with metrics such as sales. But you can still use attainable goals to see if your public relations campaigns are working. One of the first things you should do is track your brand mentions. A brand mention occurs whenever someone talks about your business. This is a form of earned media. Just because someone mentions your company doesn't mean they'll provide a link to your site. You do want that if the mention is positive. Consider using a tool such as Mention to help you keep track of your brand mentions. In addition to helping you see what people are saying about your brand, products, or services, Mention can also connect you with potential influencers. This tool is used by PR agencies, but it also has options for business owners. You can manage your PR efforts in-house instead of outsourcing them. A mention of your brand may not be a good thing. You need to take the time to review what people are saying. Sort out the positives, and use this to your advantage. Reach out to certain websites talking about your brand to help you consistently build backlinks to your website. With these backlinks, the earned media audience will be able to navigate directly to your site. The combination of more traffic and backlinks will improve your SEO ranking. You also need to measure your website traffic. Track new customers. All these metrics will help you determine whether your PR strategy is working or whether you need to go back to the drawing board. Responsibilities of a PR managerWhether you're looking to hire someone new or promote an employee from within, you need to know what a PR manager does on a daily basis. For starters, a good public relations manager needs to have outstanding communication skills. That's because they will be the voice and face of your company at times. It's common for the PR manager to be the one who speaks at events. You should also find someone who has great writing skills. This person will write content, e.g., press releases of news related to your company. It's possible for you to use this person to write blog posts and other website content as well. Find someone creative. And PR managers need to have strong research skills. They'll use tools, as I previously discussed, to find out what people are saying about your business. Then they'll leverage that feedback to benefit your company. The majority of businesses believe it's hard to find new employees with the skills required to build and protect the reputation and credibility of their companies. Even if your new hire has an MBA, it doesn't necessarily qualify them to do the job of a PR manager. We know 93% of business leaders say PR is just as important to their companies as every other type of communication method. Whether you take on these responsibilities, hire someone, or delegate tasks to an employee, these are some of the things a PR manager would be responsible for:
Make sure you find the right person to handle this job. Otherwise, your PR efforts won't be effective. ConclusionLearning how to manage your public relations strategy properly can help improve your brand exposure. While PR and marketing have many similarities, the two departments are not the same. It's important for you to know the differences between these two strategies. Understand how owned media, paid media, and earned media all have an impact on your brand reputation. Use inbound PR tactics to target media outlets as opposed to consumers. Track metrics that relate to your PR goals. Part of having an effective public relations strategy means putting someone in charge of those efforts. You need to make sure that role is clearly defined in your company. If your company is new to public relations, use this guide as a reference to help you build brand exposure. How is your company leveraging owned media, paid media, and earned media to improve your PR strategy? |
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