5 Reasons Why Your Website Needs a Blog
Many business owners, don’t see the value of a blog on their company website. You may think that your website is doing just fine without one. You may even believe that blogs are only for personal websites or for people writing about hobbies and entertainment. This could not be further from the truth. While not essential, a blog with well-crafted, consistent posts can do a lot of good for your business website.
Here are the top 5 reasons why your website needs a blog.
It gives your website a voice
A blog gives you the opportunity to express yourself and share the unique stories behind your products and services. With a blog, you can build relationships with potential customers by providing valuable content that helps them understand why your business is different from the competition.
Provide an SEO boost
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to improve its visibility in search engine results. Adding a blog to your website helps you establish yourself as an authority in your industry and rank higher on Google searches, allowing more people to find you.
Boosts lead generation efforts
Every blog post you write is another opportunity for a potential customer to find you. By including relevant keywords in your posts, optimizing for SEO, and sharing your blog on social media, you can attract new visitors who may become loyal customers.
Blogs keep people coming back
Fresh content keeps people engaged with your website - or better yet, returning often. Updating your blog with new posts on a regular basis not only attracts more visitors but also encourages existing customers to stay up to date with what’s going on in your business.
Blogs are essential for content marketing
Content marketing is an increasingly popular way to access potential customers through the creation of valuable content, such as blog posts. Content marketing is a great way to show off your expertise and position yourself as a thought leader in your industry, helping you build credibility and attract new customers.
Conclusion
These are some of the reasons for why business owners should consider hosting a blog on their website. You could write the content yourself including industry tips and relatable storytelling or hire a professional who understands SEO to provide relevant posts. Consistent posting on the blog will help your business get discovered more easily and generate more leads.
How to Market Multiple Products with Clarity
A common challenge marketers face is how to present multiple, similar products without confusing customers. When you are working with them up close every day and thinking about their specific use cases, it is easy to see what makes each product different. You may think these differences are as obvious to your clients as they are to your team who creates and sells them. Unfortunately, what makes your business’ products distinct from one another is not always easily understood by your audience.
When it comes to successful marketing, clarity is key. You want your target audience to understand exactly what it is you're selling and why they should buy it. Trying to market multiple products can be tricky, but with a plan and clear vision of your own, it can be done with more ease.
Start with value
Before you begin promoting anything, it is important to understand the value of all your company creates and what your products can do for your clients first. Considering how customer experience will vary between products, and how they’re all connected to one another from the inside is great but this can result in being so close to the details, you’re unable to clearly see how they’re being perceived externally. Start with overall value and let that be at the root of your messaging. Allow for the key differences in your products to be the second priority–this may feel counter intuitive when you are working with the differences closely but remember your clients aren’t. Focus on communicating what your products can do for your clients and how they’re different from your competitors’ offerings rather than what they are individually and how they are different from each other. Framing it this way can help your clarify your marketing strategy quickly.
Identify and speak to your target audience
Who is your ideal customer and what do they ultimately want? What are their specific goals and how can your products help your target audience to achieve them? Identify your target audience and speak to them. This may not be easy but it is that simple. Everyone in your audience has at least one thing in common that can be understood. Once it is understood, you can package your solution in the form of ads and salescopy. As unique as people are and as distinct as your products may be, they’re your clients for the same reasons and likely have similar long-term goals for their use.
You can explain your products uses and differences as salescopy but this probably isn’t going to hook your audience. People are much more interested in results and more specifically in the results they can expect.
Create an umbrella message
So you’ve done the research to identify your audience. You’ve clarified the value your products bring for your customers. Now you can get started with branding and initial outreach efforts to concisely present your multiple products. To avoid confusing your customers, start with an umbrella message. This is the message that emcompasses everything your business provides and it applies across all your offerings. Once you have an established umbrella, then you can focus on the details of each individual product your business offers to achieve the goals of your target audience. Those more granular specifics can come later in product descriptions or become inspiration for blog posts and social media captions. This goes back to starting with value and what your products can provide rather than focusing specifically on what they are.
A simple way to create the umbrella message is to focus on the core benefits of each product first and note the commonalities. Then, tailor your messaging to include it all. By doing this, you will be able to create a cohesive marketing message that will resonate with your target audience better than if you were only focusing on one product at a time and not intentionally connecting it across your product line.
Test your umbrella message
You may ask yourself: Does this messaging make sense to our target audience?
As we’ve covered, when you’re working closely with your products, what obvious to you is not always clear to your potential clients. This is how messaging gets muddled and doesn’t come across clearly to your clients. And they’re likely not going to tell you if they don’t understand. They’ll close the email or keep scrolling. It is not your customers’ job to tell you they don’t understand what your products do, either.
It is the task of the marketing team to concisely and clearly represent the available products in the best light possible. You can do your own umbrella message testing by experimenting with variations in different trackable arenas or you may opt to hire an agency to do the testing for you so you can focus on creating quality products.
4 Tips for Successfully Rebranding Your Business
Rebranding a business can be a daunting task. It's important to make sure that you go about it the right way, or you could end up doing more harm than good. In this article, we will cover 10 tips for rebranding your business. Following these tips will help take out some of the guesswork and ensure a smooth and successful rebranding process.
Do your research
It seems like this is always step one, isn’t it? Well, to properly rebrand you’ll need to go through the process of identifying your audience again. Who your products were for when you started your business may not be your target anymore. Learn who you’re attempting to sell to now and what their needs are.
You'll want to take a look at your competitors, what sets you apart from them, and the current trends in your industry. This will help you get an idea of how to make your business stand out while staying true to its core values.
Set realistic goals
Next, you'll want to make a plan for the rebranding process. Identify key objectives, set realistic goals that are achievable within the desired timeline, and create a strategy for achieving those goals. Make sure you also communicate this plan clearly with stakeholders who may be involved in the process.
Be prepared to make changes
If goals are not met as planned then it may be time to adjust expectations or find new solutions that can help get things back on track. Be patient during this process! Rebranding doesn't happen overnight. It takes time for these changes to take effect in the marketplace, so don't get discouraged if results are not immediately evident.
Evaluate and adjust
Part of rebranding includes testing. Seeing how your new branding lands for clients is essential in its success. Don’t skip this part, as tempting as it may be. You will likely find that certain elements of the new designs don't work as anticipated, or that the market shifts suddenly and requires adjustments to be made quickly. Don’t be afraid to change what doesn’t work–that is the whole point in rebranding. Don’t settle for good enough when you’ve invested the time and energy to make it great.
Conclusion
The process of rebranding can feel overwhelming, especially if you have a small team. The good news is there are myriad examples of companies successful rebranding efforts to learn from and you aren’t stuck with your first attempt.
How to Identify When It’s Time to Rebrand Your Business
Branding is an essential element of a successful business. It helps you stand out from your competition and concisely communicate with your customers. Like all aspects of your business, it needs to be updated and refreshed from time to time. So how can you tell when it’s time to rebrand?
Here are some signs you may notice that indicate it is time to invest in revamping your brand identity.
Your audience has changed
One important sign that it’s time for a rebrand is if your target audience has changed. If you've been targeting the same demographic for years but have recently noticed an influx of younger, tech-savvy customers, then it might be time to update your branding message so that it resonates better with this new, digital-first crowd. This could include changing up the design elements like the colors, fonts, and imagery used in your marketing materials or investing in more modern digital channels such as social media, SEO, and content marketing.
Your values have evolved
As your company grows and evolves over time, your values likely will too. If you find yourself feeling disconnected from the mission statement or core message of your company—or if these things no longer reflect what you stand for—then a rebrand might be necessary. This could involve updating certain elements of your existing branding design or creating an entirely new logo, website design, and messaging approach from scratch.
You’re losing market share
If you’ve noticed a significant drop in sales over the past few months or years—especially compared to other companies offering similar services—then it may be time to rethink your branding strategy as well. A rebrand can help breathe new life into an outdated product or service by presenting it in a different light and making it more appealing to potential customers. It can also help differentiate you from your competition by highlighting something unique about your offerings that sets them apart.
Conclusion
Identifying when it's time to rebrand doesn’t have to be a difficult process. Changes often bring uncertainty and redesigning something you’ve already invested time and money in may feel like a daunting task. However a rebrand can turn a decline in sales around by rekindling excitement and clarifying your message to your potential clients. Accepting that it is time for a change is the first step to successfully rebranding. No matter what reasons necessitate the change, done correctly, a rebrand can provide the spark of energy needed to keep your business moving forward.
How to Create a Shoppable Holiday Gift Guide on Instagram
If you use Instagram to advertise your products then you know that the holiday season is a crucial time for sales through the app. You may use shop capabilities already but Instagram’s guides are an underutilized feature many businesses don’t take advantage of. Shoppable guides are a great way to attract attention from potential customers and increase sales with a set-it-and-forget-it approach. Allowing customers to shop through the Instagram app instead of having to click through to make their purchase increases their likelihood of checking out with the cart they may fill up while scrolling.
The first step to creating a shoppable gift guide is to create eye-catching images of your products. This is something you may already have done for your website so you’re already in a good position to create your guide.
Once you've got your product images ready to go, open the Instagram app and click the plus sign in the top right corner–where you already create your posts from. Scroll down to the “Guide” button and select the icon that looks like an open newspaper. Then you’ll be asked to choose the type of guide you want to make. Click on the “products” button.
If you already have a shop on Instagram, you can add them here and write the content for your guide recommending your products and filling in any details you want customers’ to know about as they browse. If you do not have your Instagram shop set up yet, this must be done first to make your holiday gift guide shoppable. You must have a business account to create a shop and once you do, the process is as simple as adding tags that show the price. To add shopping tags, you'll need to link your Instagram account to a store, such as Shopify or BigCommerce. The shopping tags allow customers to click directly on an item in your posts and be taken to the product page.
Finally, it's time to promote your shoppable gift guide. Post about it on all of your social media channels, not just Instagram, to encourage followers to share it with their friends. You can also reach out to influencers and ask them to feature your guide on their own accounts or collaborate with other businesses to create guides that feature complimentary products. Collaboration will increase your reach and hopefully result in more sales.
Creating a gift guide on Instagram is a great way to interact with your customers and increase sales during the holiday season–or any time you want to mix up the type of content you’re sharing and make shopping easier. With the right promotion strategy, you can create an eye-catching gift guide that will drive more customers to your Instagram shop.
3 Ways to Increase Engagement for Your Newsletter
Despite all the available avenues marketers have for selling, newsletters are still the best channel for speaking directly to your customers. The benefits of email campaigns are clear. You don't have to worry about platform limitations or appeasing algorithms to stay visible enough to reach your potential clients as you do on social media. Email marketing is the most profitable portal for selling that you can use to reach out to customers for free. The hard part is getting people to open and read them at all.
Let's face it, we are all ignoring tens if not hundreds of emails per day. Our inboxes are stuffed and our attention spans are limited. People don’t have the time to read every email they receive and even if they did, many are not worth reading. The question we seek to answer now is how to encourage engagement despite these obvious challenges?
Choose better headlines
Think of your newsletter headline as a snapshot of the content inside. It is the thing people see first and you have about 2 seconds to make an impression. You could fill the headline with emojis and exclamations points to grab their attention but this looks spammy and may lead to your emails being send to the folder of no return. A better idea is to consider your readers, who they are and their interests, create your newsletter with the intention of speaking directly to them, and the headline becomes easier to craft.
Add value
If you are sending multiple emails only to share product information that is easily found on your website or repackaged versions of your ads, people won’t engage. They might even get annoyed receiving them and choose not to open future emails. They know most newsletters are meant specifically for selling and yet you still have to add something more to make readers stay long enough to engage with them. Once you have a great, unique headline you need to back it up with excellent content that adds something new to your readers’ understanding of themselves, your products, or our shared reality. The best newsletter content does all three.
Keep the design simple and copy concise
Avoid getting your newsletter tossed into spam and your business being filed away into your customers’ mental junk drawer. Keep your newsletter content short and concise. It doesn’t need to as long as a blog post. If what you’re writing becomes too long for your newsletter, only share the first few paragraphs (make sure they’re amazing) and the full piece on your website’s blog. If it's too long, readers lose focus. If they are interested and click on your blog, great. This is one way your newsletter can generate traffic to your site. The layout and design should also be simple. Too much going on makes it harder to stick around for the content. No matter how interesting the copy is, no one wants to stare at a wall of text and sort through unnecessary images to see it.
Conclusion
While there are challenges with email marketing, it is still one of the most effective channels for communicating with your customers and generating the most leads. Investing in your newsletter is an important element of maintaining a healthy relationship with your customers. Remember who your audience is and write to them. The more you center their interests in your newsletters, the more they’ll engage. More engagement is key is more getting more leads through your email campaigns.
Five Tips for Growing Your Network on Linkedin
Do you want to expand your business network? LinkedIn is a great place to start. Linkedin is the professional networking site where you can connect with others in your industry. If you start with zero connections, it is easy to get lost and go unnoticed on the platform. Here are five simple tips to get you started so you may begin making contact and leaving a positive impression on your new connections.
Customize your profile: Outline your professional experience and present yourself in the best possible light. Include a good headshot, relevant skills, and accomplishments that will help make your profile stand out from the rest. People are unlikely to trust a blank profile with no image. Put forth your best self in your profile first.
Reach out to relevant contacts: Utilize LinkedIn's search tool to find people you already know and new contacts who you think may help you reach your goals. Make sure to include a personalized message when sending a connection request. Remember, they’re likely a busy professional with little time for direct messages. Keep your communication concise and kind.
Participate in groups: Join groups that are related to your industry and start participating in the conversations. This is an excellent way to make connections, build relationships and gain visibility for yourself. You might also learn something new that helps you in your career.
Follow influencers: Follow influencers in your industry and engage with their posts. It is a great way to get noticed and start building relationships. You should also interact with people who don’t have large followings. They’re more likely to respond and engage with your posts.
Hit publish: Make sure to post regularly on LinkedIn, whether it be articles you've written, or interesting content from other sources that are related to your industry. This will help increase your visibility and help you build your network. While you want to keep it professional, don’t over think your posts. You have thousands of interesting thoughts per day. Don’t assume everyone know what you know. They don’t! Create and share consistent posts that show your knowledge and leave them wanting more.
Linkedin, like every other social media platform, uses algorithms to keep people scrolling. While it is different in that your activity there can get you hired or find your next star employee, you can approach it with a similar attitude. Keep your enthusiasm and wit, just make your posts and interactions in line with your work ethic and values.
You’ll be expanding your network in no time.
And don't forget to connect with us while you're there!
Accurate Append company profile on LinkedIn
Three Quick Tips for Success with Your Instagram Strategy
If you’ve been on this popular app since it was introduced more than a decade ago, you’ve watched it rapidly change over the years. The most recent shifts since becoming a Meta platform are also perhaps the most challenging for social media marketers to contend with. These tips will help you better utilize Instagram’s features for success.
Reels are the #1 way to get discovered organically
This tip may or may not lead to more followers instantly but reels, short video content similar to Tiktoks, are what is most likely to go viral on Instagram these days. So, if you want people who have never heard of your brand to discover it, make use of reels. The shorter the reel, the more likely users will watch the whole clip. And don’t worry about “likes” when it comes to reels. Pay closer attention to the number of views they get as a metric for visibility.
While you can use trending audios for your reels, the drawback to this is two-fold: the algorithm doesn’t register this as original content and sometimes popular audios get taken down. This means your reel you spent valuable time to create may have no sound and won’t be prioritized by the algorithm. So keep this in mind when using an audio that you don’t own–it's okay in moderation but it is important to create original audio tracks for the majority of the reels you post.
Here is the most important thing to know about reels: do not delete a reel for under-performing. If a reel no longer fits your niche or you realize you need to upgrade the messaging–sure. You can delete a reel in those cases but generally reels take time to get views and interaction as they are being pushed to users who have never seen your account before. A reel may go viral days or weeks after it is posted so don’t delete it because that could happen long after you’ve moved on to posting new content.
Engage strategically
You know you need to interact with your audience. Replying to user feedback doesn’t have to happen instantly but if you reply to comments and create conversations under your posts this tells the algorithm it is a worthwhile piece of content. It will then be pushed onto more users’ feeds.
Asking open-ended questions in the body of your captions or your reels invites users to type answers longer than a word or an emoji. Longer comments are more of a priority for the algorithm and create more vibrant discussion among your followers.
The strategic tip you maybe haven’t considered is to respond or simply “like” the comments in your comment sections right after posting something new. This will send notifications to everyone who left comments and while they’re on your page, they are more likely to see and engage with your new post.
Accessibility is key
Don’t skip on alt text descriptions for photos and captioning your reels. Not only does this help potential customers who are deaf or hard of hearing–which needs to be a priority–it also means the people viewing your video content with the sound off can read along. Many users will simply swipe within seconds if this is not done and it only takes creators a minute to add to posts.
With captioning also comes the ability to highlight specific keywords which helps viewers retain the information from your reel and subtly draws attention to the most important elements of your script. Users are scrolling through hundreds of reels. Make yours catch their eye with highlighted keywords.
AI for Business: Now and to Come
With the rapid expansion of data, more businesses are looking for ways to quickly and efficiently comprehend how to use it strategically. In recent years, artificial intelligence has emerged as a powerful tool for extracting insights from data. By harnessing the power of machine learning, AI can quickly identify patterns and trends that would otherwise be difficult for humans to discern.
As consumer data continues to grow in size and complexity, AI will become increasingly important for making sense of it all. It will help businesses automate more tasks currently performed by human workers, such as data entry and complex analysis. As machine learning becomes more widespread, it will have a transformative impact on the way successful businesses operate.
What does this mean for businesses today?
There are now many AI-powered tools on the market specifically created for business operations that can assist with monotonous tasks, from customer service to marketing to accounting. AI has some clear advantages, including increased accuracy, efficiency, and ease in growth strategy. For example, AI can be used to automate customer service inquiries, product recommendations, and some sales processes. This can free up team members to focus on more valuable tasks like product development.
Businesses can currently use AI for effective marketing by targeting potential customers with personalized messages and offers. It can also monitor behavior and preferences, allowing businesses to quickly adapt their products and services to meet customer needs without the use of surveys or human outreach.
AI can automatically check data for accuracy, eliminating some of the need for human review–but errors can still happen. Businesses need humans to communicate with customers sometime because it instills trust that AI cannot provide.
AI presents problems for data security. As more businesses store data on AI-powered servers, there may be greater risk of it being hacked or stolen. As machine learning improves, human scammers also learn more methods for obtaining sensitive customer information. Data breaches often lead to losing customer confidence and a decline in sales as a result.
Another potential risk of integrating AI into your business operations is decreased customer trust when utilized for client-facing work. AI mistakes and human mistakes are different and detectable by consumers. A typo may easily be disregarded when a person is obviously on the other end of a customer service line.
Businesses have long relied on technology to gain an edge over competitors. More are now turning to AI for task automation, improving human decision-making, and complex data analysis. AI can already be effectively utilized in business when human employees are also checking for mistakes and overseeing operations.
Some amount of automation is expected by most customers but the human touch is still an invaluable asset for long-lasting, positive client relationships. AI can do the heavy lifting with large-scale data comprehension and internal insights while people need to fill in the gaps to ensure overall business health and strategy success.
How to Reframe Selling to Make It Instantly Easier
It seems like some people are just magically good at selling. They seem to present their products with ease and don’t come off as annoying or overly profit-motivated. It may appear that this is just a natural talent; some people have it and some people work hard to compete with these types of salesfolk who somehow don’t come off as sale-sy.
Sure, some people are naturally charming and personable but being a social butterfly doesn’t sell on its own. Ask any social media influencer with a large following: engagement doesn’t necessarily equate to more sales. And good salespeople aren’t necessarily winning popularity contests–some of them have tiny followings and small email lists. Numbers matter but we already know that. Some people have an edge despite not checking all the common boxes for successful selling. And they’re not born this way. Their “secret” is not so secret, often times they have simply reframed selling as storytelling and made their clients (their problems and solutions) the focus of the story they tell.
If you are only thinking about profits when you speak about your products or services, you will be missing the authenticity, the excitement, and most importantly the narrative flare that your audience unconsciously craves to feel in order to care about them. You need to believe in the efficacy of your products or at least present them in a way that their promised transformation is believable. Results are great but there is no narrative when all you can show is the results. Think about the side-by-side images in predatory weight loss ads and how boring those are to witness. Instead ask yourself: Why are these results exciting and special? How can your potential customers use your products to get similar? What is the over-arching story here?
Speaking too broadly is also part of what can muddle your messaging and make selling harder. Don’t speak to the entire world in your ads and social media copy. Identify and speak to your ideal client. The truth is, your branding and products will not resonate with everyone who sees it. You also don’t need it to. You need your sales copy to speak specifically to your ideal clients as if you’re talking to them 1:1 so they can trust you and get on board with your offerings.