Do businesses email their customers too often? According to a recent article on Business Insider, the answer is yes. But not for the reason you may think.

It’s not because customers loathe getting emails from companies. Or because frequent emails are considered spam. It’s actually because most brands nowadays email like this:

They use discounts as their main strategy to persuade customers to buy. But what happens when your customer’s whole inbox looks like the picture above? The inevitable: they stop paying attention to your emails.

Because here’s the thing.

Why would they open your emails if they can already predict the content inside? Why would they buy now when they can clearly see you’ve got discounts all the time? And, most importantly, why would they pick your brand over your competitors?

If you want to stand out in someone’s crowded inbox, you need to do the one thing that everybody else avoids doing: building strong relationships with your email subscribers. Here’s how:

How Storytelling Helps Your Brand Shine Bright in a Crowded Inbox

Storytelling is the most effective way to communicate. That’s not me saying it. It’s the countless studies (such as this one, this one, and this one) that prove it, time and time again. Why?

Because storytelling helps you form positive emotional associations with you and your brand. The emotions you evoke with your stories go a long way in defining how people perceive you, creating a stronger connection in your audience’s mind between you and the problem you solve for them. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. 

The truth is, writing story-based emails makes you more than just a brand that sells a solution to their pain: it makes you an entertainer, too. And as a marketer, being able to entertain while selling is like having a superpower. People hate being sold to. But they love being entertained (ever binge-watched a Netflix show? I know I have). 

Plus, with story-based emails, you can easily add more variability to your email calendar. As a result, customers will no longer be able to predict what your next email will be about: a fun story? A new product? Maybe even a discount? Curiosity translates to increased engagement. And increased engagement translates to stronger relationships with your customers. 

So by choosing the right stories to tell in your emails (which we’ll discuss in a bit) and by writing them in an engaging way, you’re guaranteed to keep your audience hooked and excited to read your next email. As opposed to adding yet another sales email to their already crowded inbox.

Here’s How to Supercharge Your Email Strategy with Stories That Sell:

1. Pick the Right Story 

The storytelling approach will give you little to no results if the stories you’re telling are flat to begin with. No matter how engaging your writing is. 

So the first thing you need to do is to make sure you select story ideas with potential. Okay, but where do you find these ideas? And what does a good story idea look like?

If you’re anything like me, your life isn’t that exciting or eventful. And yet, you may still have a funny conversation with your next-door neighbor. Or your team may geek out about wild adaptogen mushrooms at a team-building event. Or your spouse may accidentally spill coffee on your laptop (true story!). 

Any of these can be turned into fun story-based emails that tell your audience a little bit more about who you (or your team) are as a person. Most business owners assume their customers don’t want to know what goes on in their personal and business life. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. 

In fact, customers want to know there are real people behind brand names. According to this report from Sprout Social, 70% of consumers report feeling more connected to a brand when its CEO is active on social media. 

And depending on how much you’re willing to share about your life, you can then select the types of personal stories to write about. When in doubt, think about what you’d want to tell your friends/family at the dinner table. More often than not, that’d make a great story for your email list too.

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2. Write a Strong Hook

Let’s face it. 

Nowadays, attention spans are short. And no matter how good your story is, if how you write it isn’t engaging enough, your email subscribers aren’t going to read it. 

So the very first thing you want to do is to make sure the first three sentences of your story hook the reader into the action. Once someone reads that much into a story, it’s incredibly difficult for them to stop. 

So how do you do it? Any of these hooks have proven to work again and again whenever I write stories for myself or my clients:

• Start in the middle of the action (and explain the context later). For example:

“RUN!”, the police officer yelled at me.

“Okay, thank you!”, I yelled back, running out of Paddington Station and trying to find a cab.

Except, it was 4 in the morning. And I had no idea where to look for one.”

• Start with ‘x time ago’. Recalling a past event hooks people instantly into your story. For example:

“A few months ago, Joanna Wiebe (the original conversion copywriter) slid into my DMs on Slack completely out of nowhere…”

3. Segue to Your Sales Pitch Seamlessly

By the time you get to this part, your readers are entertained and primed to purchase your solution to their problems. Your brand is no longer just another brand in their busy inbox. It’s someone they now know, trust, and like. And so, buying from you feels just right.

But you can’t just end your story abruptly so you can sell your products/services. That’d feel intrusive. In the same way that, when you’re engaged in a YouTube video, an annoying ad interrupts your stream.

So you must find a way to tie your story to your product or service so seamlessly that your readers won’t even notice they’re now reading a sales pitch. Sounds difficult. But you’ll see how easy it actually is. In fact, what most people get wrong about this part is that they try to find the moral of the story and tie that to their sales pitch. 

For example, let’s say your story is about how your team went to a team-building event and someone accidentally broke a bunch of glasses. And if you’re selling a service, you might be able to spin that incident into saying something like: when you hire our software developers, your app stops breaking.

But that’s a predictable way to transition from your story to your sales pitch. Plus, not all stories will end with a moral. Most stories will be fragments of conversations you have with someone or something ridiculous that happened throughout the day (like forgetting your keys at the office). There’s no moral in that and there’s no need for one.

What you can do instead is to look back at your entire story and find one or a few phrases/words that could help you build that segway. Here’s an example of a full story-based email. Pay special attention to the part where the story ends and the sale begins.

Example of a Full Story-Based Email

“SUBJ: Hacker threatens to destroy my reputation in 72 hours straight

This morning, I was at my laptop reading my emails when suddenly, I came across an unread email from… 

Me.

What in the world…?

Out of confusion, I open it without reading the subject line. 

And once I go past the first sentence, it becomes pretty clear:

I’m being hacked.

“You may have noticed we are using your company’s servers to send you this email: we have hacked into your website, kaleidocopy[dot]com.”

Oh.

Okay… They did send this email from my email address. 

Still, I can’t help but wonder… could this be a hoax?

“This is not a hoax.”

Ah! Well, that settles it then.

“We are willing to forget about destroying the reputation of your site and company for a small fee. The current fee is at $2500 in bitcoin.”

I mean… at least they are nice about it, you know? Their willingness to forgive and forget says a lot about a person’s character.

In the following lines, they take me through exactly what they’re going to do to ruin my company and reputation, step by step.

Then they teach me how to buy Bitcoin (I already know how, but I appreciate their thoughtfulness!).

And finally, they assure me that my Bitcoin payment will be anonymous and that no one will know that I complied with their master plan.

Mmmmkay. 

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Now that is a bit suspicious, Mr. Hackerman (or Ms. Hackerwoman — it’s 2022, what the heck.)

I’m willing to bet the $2500 on the fact that I’m not the only person they sent this to.

So if the payment is anonymous, how will they know it was ME who sent it? It just doesn’t make sense, y’know? 

Jokes aside, I’ve got to admit: seeing that the email came from my address made me panic a bit. 

But then I checked my Sent folder and the email wasn’t there.

I also checked to see if there were any alerts or logins from different devices on my Google account. There were none.

I also checked with my hosting provider, who reassured me no one has broken into anything. 

Soooo… hoax? Hopefully, lol. 

But if it isn’t, it means you’ve got 72 hours left to get Email Story Alchemy, my mini-course on turning boring day-to-day events from your life into story-based emails that build your fandom and help you stand out. 

After that, my business will supposedly disappear from the face of the Earth. And you’ll no longer be able to buy it. Everrr.”

Conclusion

Story is a structure, not a tale. Which means that you can apply it to anything, including email. And when you do it right, amazing things happen. 

Like building strong relationships with your customers. And turning a casual customer into a die-hard fan who wants to buy from you because they just can’t get enough of your brand.

Sure, discounts work too. But they work when used strategically and in moderation. So if you’re ever unsure about what to email your customers next, consider story-based emails. They’ll make your brand shine bright in anyone’s crowded inbox.

The post Storytelling: The Secret Sauce to Making More Sales With Email Marketing appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

If you feel lonely as a digital marketer, you are not alone.

According to an ongoing survey conducted by CareerExplorer, marketing managers rate their career happiness at 3.1 out of 5 stars, which puts them at the bottom 40% of careers.

Why would a job that involves the most entertaining and fun aspects of business, that being growth, change, and interaction between business and customer, lead to such an unsatisfactory rating?

Further, how could a job that is perfectly suited for remote working still rate so low?

Why Marketers Are Unhappy

There are lots of reasons why someone could be unhappy with their job, but for now, let’s focus on the five core factors that generated a 3.1 star rating for marketing management. We’ll expand it a bit to accommodate soloprenuers/consultants and marketing agency owners as well:

• Compensation & Revenue
• Meaningfulness
• Personality Fit
• Work Environment
• Skill Utilization

Marketing Compensation & Revenue

Marketing Managers aren’t happy with their salary, even though they rate very high according to CareerExplorer’s survey. With an average of $135,000, marketing managers are the highest among similar careers like management consultants, investment fund managers, online merchants, operation managers, advertising managers, human resource managers, and project managers.

On the marketing business side, marketing agency revenue has continued to increase as well. According to Statista, digital advertising agency revenue grew from $5.69 billion in 2012 to $30.6 billion in 2022, an increase of 437% over 20 years (22% average annual increase).

Even so, they’re not happy!

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Meaningfulness

Do marketing managers find their work meaningful? Most of them don’t according to the survey. They ranked meaningfulness at 2.7 out of 5 stars.

Personality Fit

How about the personality fit of people who are marketing managers? According to the survey, marketing managers rank fit as 3.8 out of 5 stars. Not bad considering! Still not great.

Work Environment

What about the work environment of marketing managers? That’s not bad as well, with a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars. Even so, it could be better.

Skill Utilization

Finally, let’s talk about skill utilization. Do marketing managers feel that they’re using their skills to an adequate degree? They have skill utilization a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Again, not bad but not great either.

Overall, marketing professionals are missing on a lot of the key factors that lead to job and life satisfaction. Could there be a root cause for the disconnection?

Why the Marketing Profession is Awesome

We now have some insights into why the marketing profession may not be ideal, now let’s examine why it’s a really, really good job for some people. Let’s use those same survey factors to discuss.

Marketing Compensation & Revenue

Marketers make GOOD money. The survey by CareerExplorer said $135,000 average, which sounded high to me, however, Salary.com confirmed the range with the median being $113,582. No matter how you look at it, that is a great paycheck.

Meaningfulness

This is an abstract measure, but I think marketers have a huge opportunity to find meaning in marketing. Your job directly impacts the success of businesses. Businesses provide goods and services for their customers, while also providing paychecks for 47.5% of the population of the USA. What’s more meaningful than helping 58.9 million people to get paychecks?

Personality Fit

The marketing profession is perfect for people who like networking, extroverts that like building relationships, number-heads who love analytics, creatives who like constantly creating new media, attention-seekers who love interacting with audiences, and business people who like money. If your personality fits into any of those groups, you can find a good fit with marketing.

Work Environment

Marketers to work pretty much anywhere, PLUS there are tons of networking groups, expos, masterminds, courses, and other events to attend all year long all over the planet. You can work from home, work at an office, travel to clients’ locations, or take your laptop to the beach. A marketer can create their own work environment if they want to!

Skill Utilization

Few professions utilize a more dynamic list of skills than marketing. From technical to analytical to creative to relational, marketing requires the utilization of vast, complex, and evolving skillsets. You will never get bored with a marketing career because you never know what you’re going to need to know next. Better yet, you have the opportunity to create entirely new skillsets that no one has even considered before!

Loneliness is Bad for Productivity

With all that said, why are marketers still unhappy? I believe that the majority of marketers are more socially-minded than your average person. They crave connection between people. That could be connection with other marketers, connection between companies and their customers, and connection between owners and marketing professionals.

Problem is that since marketers can work anywhere, they often default to working remotely. As of mid-2022, Linkedin reported that jobs offering “remote work” increased 457% year over year. Remote working for marketing roles working remotely increased 177% in just the first half of 2022.

What do you get when you have primarily “social” people working remotely? You get lonely, and loneliness hurts productivity, creativity, and health.

Research by Dr. Vivek Murthy showed that loneliness and depression cost employers $44 billion a year. A study of remote workers found that one in five said “loneliness” was their biggest struggle.

So, while marketers are generally well paid and provided with challenging work that engages their personalities, they are faced with loneliness which greatly impairs work satisfaction. How do we fix the issue?

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How to Fix Lonely Marketer Syndrome

The fix may seem obvious, but it is usually missed or approached too casually in most cases. Marketers need to become part of marketing communities. Not just any communities however, the ones that will truly impact their business and mindset will have the following characteristics:

#1: Formal Education Systems

Ideally, your community should have a proven set of frameworks that other marketers (preferably hundreds or even thousands) have used to succeed.

#2: In-Person & Online Events

Online events are great, but if there is no planned in-person event, you’re going to be missing an important part of connecting with others: seeing them “for real.” Your new community should have plans for in-person meeting opportunities, even if it’s just once a year.

#3: Broad & Narrow Specialty Groups

If you can find a network with a significant amount of people in your specific marketing niche, great! Just note that they should also be connected to broader topics so that you can learn more about interacting with entire marketing teams, not just people do the exact same work as you do.

#4: An Established History

Brand new groups are great, but there’s nothing worse than committing to a brand and having it disappear on you. Ideally, look for marketer communities that have been around for at least 5 years, but preferably longer.

#5: A Hierarchy for Ascension

The best communities provide opportunities for their members to grow and contribute, with the possibility of becoming a thought-leader, teacher, or contributor to the knowledge contained within an organization. Look for groups that have positions, awards, and prizes for top community members.

Where to Find the Right Marketer Community

Lucky for you, you’re already on the right website! DigitalMarketer has been growing their marketer community since 2008. With over 120,000 marketers completing courses, thousands of contributors, and over 1 million email subscribers, DigitalMarketer is the community of choice for marketers in over 60 different countries.

Whether you’re a beginner looking for your first certification with a Lab Membership, an agency owner looking to scale with our Certified Partner network, or a successful business owner looking to scale with the M3 Mastermind, DigitalMarketer is the place to be.

Beat Lonely Marketer Syndrome and join us today!

The post How to Cure “Lonely Marketer Syndrome” appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Digital marketing is a powerful way to connect with more people who are interested in what you have to offer. Growing your business through digital marketing can help you reach your ultimate goal: more revenue.

In fact, a study by StrategyR revealed that the compound annual growth rate of digital marketing from 2020-2026 is projected at 13.9%. This means more businesses will be embracing digital marketing and reaping its benefits.

Do you really want to be left behind?

A digital marketing strategy directs your focus to certain targets, priorities, resources, and actions, usually over the long haul. These strategies enable you to achieve your primary objectives and aim for next-level growth.

Read on and learn the five strategies that will help you in growing your business through digital marketing.

5 Strategies for Growing Your Business Through Digital Marketing

Here are the top five digital marketing strategies you can use to build your business.

1. Maintain an Active Social Presence

If you want to grow your business using digital marketing, it’s important to establish a solid online presence on social media and search engines. And an active one at that.

According to recent estimates by Statista, more than 4.26 billion people used social media in 2021, which is expected to rise to nearly six billion by 2027.

When you maintain an active online presence on social media, you’ll be able to attract attention to your company without making a huge financial investment.

Sharing valuable engaging content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn is a great way to gain more online exposure.

Here are a few other ways to maintain an active online presence:

• Keep up with the latest trends on social media
• Regularly update your website’s blog and share it on social media
• Create and share product demo videos

You can also put up captivating infographics that exhibit distinctive ways of establishing the relevance of your business and brand.

However, it’s important not to spread yourself too thin by joining every social media platform out there.

Stick to the channels where your target customers are most likely to be active. In doing so, you’ll be able to maximize the impact of your digital marketing efforts.

2. Recognize and Respond to all Consumer Feedback and Reviews

According to BrightLocal, more consumers are reading online reviews than ever before. In 2021, 77% of them always or regularly read them when browsing for local businesses (up from 60% in 2020).

Customer feedback and reviews are great as they can help with customer experience management. You can easily figure out what they need from their reviews and make the required improvements.

Additionally, responding to positive and negative reviews can also help you manage the perception of your business.

And that’s why you should prioritize learning how to respond to both good and negative customer feedback.

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When responding to feedback, you should:

• Respond quickly
• Thank the customer for their feedback
• Acknowledge the problem that the customer experienced
• Explain how you plan to solve the problem
• Take the discussion away from social media
• Follow up with the customer after you’ve implemented the solution

A great way of collecting customer feedback before they write reviews is by using AI-powered chatbots. They can reach out to your audience and ask them for their feedback so that you can improve your chances of retaining customers and attracting new ones.
Here’s an example of a good customer review and a reply from the owner.

Reviews are also important because they give prospects the social proof they require to make a purchase.
But it can take a lot of time and tedious manual effort to solicit, compile and track all of this feedback. That is where review tools such as piHappiness, SurveySparrow, Typeform, AskNicely and SurveyMonkey come in.
You can use these tools to collect consumer feedback and reviews through online surveys.

3. Leverage Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is another effective way of growing your business through digital marketing.
Partnering with influencers can help drive your brand awareness, lead generation, and even sales. You can leverage this strategy by partnering with social media personalities who are right for your brand (have similar ideals, similar audience, etc.).

For example, FabFitFun partnered with Ayesha Curry, a well-known chef, as part of their influencer marketing strategy on Facebook.

To further drive the growth of your sales using influencer marketing, you can combine it with affiliate marketing where you can give a commission to your influencers for every sale they drive. This makes it a win-win situation for both parties as their revenues increase.

4. Organize Online Marketing Events/Virtual Events

Organizing online marketing events is a great way to gain exposure for your business and create interest in your products or services.

An online event is one in which people interact with others in an online setting on the web rather than meeting in person.

But there’s a catch here.

You need to identify your target audience for the events.

By targeting the right audience and at the right time, you can communicate with your prospects at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Webinars are good examples of virtual events that are becoming increasingly popular since they make learning about a product or service easier.

A study by ON24 shows that the average webinar attendee conversion rate is 61%.

What’s more, since online events are digital, they offer a unique opportunity to collect first-party data through registrations and attendee engagement in-event and via social media. This helps you tailor your marketing messaging for them too.

Some platforms provide granular analytics into attendee engagement and experience, allowing organizers to tweak and improve experiences.

You can easily see metrics such as views, likes, clicks, impressions, and comments on the dashboard of the tools in use.

If you’re a business owner, this is yet another effective way of growing your business through digital marketing.

5. Find Out How Your Competitors are Positioning Themselves in the Market

Understanding how your competitors are positioned in the market allows you to fine-tune your business plan to counter competitive challenges and strengthen your position.

Conduct research to find out what your competitors are doing online. You can use tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, SpyFu, BuzzSumo, or Searchmetrics to track your competitor’s digital marketing campaigns.

For instance, see how this Semrush review shows how the tool gives you a glance into your competitors’ strategy or conduct competitor research.

You can also look at their website design, social media presence, and blog to understand their strategies better.

By understanding your competition and catering to your customers’ needs, you can position yourself as a leader in your industry.

Conclusion

To recap, we’ve looked at five proven strategies for growing your business through digital marketing.

From maintaining an active social media presence to seeing and responding to reviews, there’s a lot that you need to do to give your brand the much-needed boost. Partnering with influencers and organizing online events are great tactics too.

By implementing these strategies, you’ll soon see a boost in your sales and customer interaction with you and your brand.

Have any questions about these strategies? Ask them in the comments and I’ll answer them.

The post 5 Strategies for Growing Your Business Through Digital Marketing appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Ever more businesses changed their attention from traditional marketing to digital marketing in 2022, and that’s why having a thorough digital marketing strategy is more important than ever.

The Objectives of Digital Marketing Strategies

Marketers may accomplish the following objectives with a digital marketing strategy:

• Increase brand exposure and authority by engaging users.

• Understanding your target audience.

• Save both time and money.

• Create fresh leads and potential customers.

• Tracks performance.

• Increase the potential of ROI.

• Staying ahead of your rivals.

• Define your advantages, disadvantages, opportunities, and dangers.

6 Effective Digital Marketing Strategies

Let’s look at some proven and effective digital marketing strategies that can help you in planning an efficient digital marketing campaign.

#1: Content Marketing

To begin, keep one thing in mind, content should not be an afterthought! Make it a point to provide high-value content in order to get the appropriate engagement and so establish trust.

A digital marketing strategy that lacks the right mix of effective content is doomed to fail. However, simply generating content may not help you reach your objectives! Create content that supports your marketing objectives.

Create content to deliver solutions by understanding what people require. Conducting online Q&A sessions is one of the popular content marketing tactics.

If you’re still asking, “Does content marketing matter in the digital marketing strategy?” No doubt, the simple answer is YES!

Consumers are shown through content how your products and services will enhance their quality of life. This is how content marketing increases the number of quality visitors to your website, resulting in increased exposure, quality leads, and sales.

The Most Effective Content Types

If we agree on the content marketing strategy’s effectiveness, let’s talk about which types of content to focus on and which gives us an advantage in being successful in marketing.

These are the most important content types for 2023.

Video

A video is an excellent tool for showing a brand’s culture and purpose, as well as inspiring consumers to purchase products or services. Furthermore, a recent Statista analysis predicts that digital video viewership will reach 3.48 billion by 2023.

If you are a brand that is looking to establish a digital presence on the internet, then using video marketing will yield the required results. It will also help in the spreading of your brand to customers across various niches.

Blog

People have traditionally used blogging to express their ideas on certain topics, but in recent years it has grown as a key communication platform for businesses as well.

Blogs are a powerful sort of long-form content that is ideal for businesses that deal with niche topics. If people are looking for info about what you do, a blog is a perfect way to provide what they need, as a result also building confidence in your brand.

Financial and professional services such as home improvement, automotive, and software are examples of businesses that might benefit greatly from blogging.

The two content types that I mentioned above are very important to implement for the coming year. However, there is a ton of content types, I listed some of them here:

1. Email Newsletters
2. Webinars
3. Podcasts
4. eBooks
5. Downloadable Guides
6. Tools and more.

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#2: SEO/Search Engine Marketing

SEO serves as the basis for all of your marketing strategies and serves as the central point for integrating all aspects of your marketing campaign.

When SEO is the driving force behind your marketing plan, all of your efforts will be directed toward the same objectives. An SEO campaign’s aims frequently involve increasing the usability of your website in order to create a favorable user experience, generate leads, and boost conversion rates.

Users are more likely to visit your website than your rivals’ if your SEO approach effectively places your website at the top of the search engine result page (SERP) since people trust search engine suggestions.

To put it simply, SEO successfully helps your company by doing the following:

• Boosting website traffic.

• Developing authority and credibility.

• Increasing visibility for a wide audience and more.

Types of SEO

SEO is not an easy task, it needs a lot of learning and experience to master it. Here are the types of SEO that you need to focus on specifically.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO refers to internal site practices that help improve ranking and visibility. Keep the following crucial things in mind while improving On-Page SEO: keyword research, pictures, meta description, title tags, and so on.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO, also known as external practice, takes effort outside of your website to improve search engine results pages (SERPs). Build backlinks from other websites to inform search engines that your website is of higher quality and more important in off-page SEO.

Technical SEO

The last kind is Technical SEO which may help you optimize your site’s indexing, crawl pages, site performance, security, interpretation, website layout, and so on. It takes the most important role in improving the visibility of the site.

#3: Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has made several things easier for digital marketers, namely, it gives them the opportunity to attract the ideal clients, identify their wants and needs, and finally satisfy their desires with targeted solutions. Social media platforms are crucial for information sharing and reputation development.

Before making a purchase decision, 54% of customers use social media to gather information about your brand’s products and services. So it’s better if you don’t lose out on the free promotions and advertising that come with having social media profiles.

Furthermore, When using social media marketing, you need to be careful to share the right content with the targeted audience.

Ideal Social Media Platforms for Digital Marketers

When developing your marketing strategy, it’s important for you as a digital marketer to think about which social media platforms will be most effective.

The platforms we believe are the most useful for digital marketers are listed below. It is clear that all of these platforms are extremely powerful, yet some are somewhat superior to others.

1. Facebook

Facebook is the most popular platform for building brand communities, with 2.96 billion monthly active users.

2. YouTube

YouTube has almost 2.1 billion users, making it the second most active social platform. YouTube is used by around 79% of internet users.

3. Instagram

Instagram is a good platform for marketers to develop a brand. Instagram, which is based on visuals, is a platform that may help you establish your brand’s identity. To be successful on Instagram you need to be consistent. You can use the Instagram scheduler to automate your posting.

4. TikTok

TikTok has already surpassed Instagram as the fastest-growing social media platform in the last year. The app is favored by the younger generation, and with older viewers increasing month after month. TikTok is the go-to platform for digital marketers seeking to maximize organic reach within a short period of time.

5. Twitter

Twitter is known as a “Micro-Blogging Site.” Twitter is a powerful tool for proper interaction and brand growth. Twitter is used in the marketing strategy of 65% of marketers.

#4: Email Marketing

According to Campaign Monitor, 57% of small businesses use email marketing as their primary marketing strategy, and email may help all businesses. When it comes to digital marketing, email is one of the first places that all small businesses should start, whether it’s to share business news, follow up on purchases, or create a newsletter.

Email marketing is the use of emails to build a strong relationship between your business and customers. To properly sell your brand, you must first create an email list. This should include all clients to whom you want to send newsletters.

A sign-up form on a company’s website is the most effective approach for them to acquire contacts. People will offer you their email addresses in exchange for something they value. This might include tips, a discount code, information, or guides.

#5: Podcasting

Creating a podcast may provide several benefits to your business in unexpected ways, making it an excellent investment. According to 2022 statistics, there will be around 424.2 million podcast listeners worldwide, which means 20.3% of internet users listen to podcasts. That is a massive number, which indicates the public’s familiarity and trust in them.

An excellent podcast will provide clients with useful information. They will return to your website for more content, or they will subscribe to your podcast on a podcasting platform.

Listeners are more inclined to purchase your offers if you consistently provide engaging and entertaining information. Not only that but the more people that come to your podcast’s website, the more traffic your website will receive.

In another way, podcasts provide great and diversified opportunities for digital marketers to advertise brands, products, or services. Compared to leads from conventional website traffic, leads from podcast advertising have a conversion rate that is seven times greater.

#6: AI-Powered Marketing

Nowadays, as we have seen, AI (artificial intelligence) is constantly changing the world of digital marketing. The use of AI-powered tools and platforms to simplify multiple marketing tasks like producing lead generation content and identifying targeted clients has grown in recent years.

Thanks to this AI technology, as you may see in the 2020s, many digital marketing processes are facilitated or even entirely automated. Artificial intelligence obviously has a positive effect on digital marketing strategies.

Your marketing approach may be completely transformed, and you can get remarkable results. However, you need to put enough budget into it and use the right collection of AI marketing tools.

Different Use Cases of AI in Digital Marketing

Here I listed some common and trending AI use cases that most well-known companies use in their digital marketing process.

• AI for content creation (copywriting)

Digital marketers may use AI to develop cost-effective personalized content that meets the demands of their customers without placing too much load on their team. Yet, this does not imply that AI will entirely replace humans in the content creation process.

Copy AI was considered the best tool for copywriting until Chat GPT dominated this AI copywriting technology and became a trend.

It collaborates with writers and data science experts to deliver the last push that differentiates average from outstanding content. AI can entirely replace human writers only in simple and regular activities.

• AI for content personalization

Digital marketers are constantly struggling to provide the right message to the right consumer at the right moment, which is where AI language technology comes into play.

NLP (natural language processing) and NLG (natural language generation) are AI technologies that help digital marketers to personalize content and creative messages at scale and at the quick pace required in a digital marketing world.

AI writing tools like Jasper Al (the popular one) can help digital marketers in the content creation process to create personalized content that can engage followers or clients.

• AI for Creatives

In digital marketing, creatives are critical if you run a marketing campaign with the goal of engagement and lead generation. And there are many AI tools that can generate professional-looking social media and ad creatives for marketers.

Let me mention some interesting AI tools for creative use cases. AdCreative AI, it’s becoming a popular tool for generating professional-looking ad creatives and social media posts within a few minutes. And Runway is an AI-powered video editing tool that can make video creation easy especially for video marketers.

• AI for customer experience personalization

AI is being used to drive customers, understand consumers, simplify operations, and deliver a memorable experience. In a variety of ways, AI may help to improve the customer experience.

Communication is one of the key activities to achieving marketing goals and objectives. AI-powered chatbots can enhance the customer experience. Chatbots in marketing and customer service give 24×7 availability and support to customers. Dynamic Yield is considered one of the best AI-powered platforms for an end-to-end solution for all marketer’s personalization needs.

• AI for Dynamic Pricing

AI can make dynamic pricing simpler and more effective. It provides immediate prediction by allowing for real-time pivots for incidents. Some of these incidents can be predicted using previous data, but not all. With AI, you can analyze what’s going on a lot faster, and you can modify the pricing in minutes rather than quarterly.

With this form of analysis, humans are prone to making mistakes. Using AI for dynamic pricing may save people time, maximize income, and shorten market reaction time. AI-powered price monitoring platforms like AI-led can monitor and optimize prices based on data, these are more valuable for the eCommerce industry.

These are the common and most popular AI use cases. However, AI has plenty of other use cases in the digital marketing process, with all positive and negative impacts.

Final Words

Digital marketing is the most effective solution for business. You should work on several areas, so try not to become frustrated; remember that you can always outsource to marketing experts for some of your specific tasks.

The post The 6 Most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies to Try In 2023 [Updated] appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Have you been looking for ways to breathe a new life into your marketing strategy?

Have you been desperately trying to get your marketing strategy to deliver better results?

Here’s what you need to do: Get help from your whole company.

Why involve non-marketing employees into your marketing activities?

Depending on how this marketing collaboration is going to work for you, you are likely to discover many more ways it benefts your company. In my experience, it’s always these three:

Identify internal talent

When it comes to digital marketing, organizations tend to look for skills and talents from outside. This makes sense because those new hires bring their experience, so there’s no training required.

But think about this: Your current employees know your product best. Many of them have direct experience talking to your clients. Including them into your marketing means working with people who can relate to your client best, people who care because they love your company.

If there’s one thing in digital marketing that can win over big budgets, that’s customer centricity. If you want your promotion to work, focus on your customers. And no one can do that better than those people who genuinely care about your customers.

Motivate your team

Feeling included can do wonders to your employees’ morale. In fact, being able to exchange ideas, work on projects and see results will probably motivate your employees like nothing else.

Motivation fosters inspiration and creativity, and those will boost the performance of your digital campaigns, provided you are going to be open to (often crazy) ideas and experiments.

Get fresh insight: Foster trust and innovation

When it comes to new ideas and experimentation, those are key in our marketing industry because nothing is actually evolving at such a fast pace as digital marketing does.

Social media platforms come and go, yesterday’s popular SEO tasks can get your site in trouble today, there are new tools popping up monthly, and their old trusted tools losing relevance.

Digital marketing landscape fuctuates and unless you keep bringing in new tactics and technology, your today’s tactics may stop working tomorrow and you will have nothing to replace them.

New ideas are born in collaboration, and that’s how your digital marketing strategy will keep innovating.

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How to involve your employees in marketing activities?

When it comes to involving more people into any project, there’s always one problem to resolve: Time.

Your employees’ time is being paid by you, and once they start spending that paid time elsewhere, this is an additional expense.

On top of that, all people are different. Some of them can balance all kinds of different tasks and still get everything done. Others are always behind, so adding more tasks on their plates may get them too overwhelmed.

You don’t want your company to start struggling because every employee does nothing by marketing, but you cannot also leave certain people behind and invite those that are better at prioritizing and getting things done.

There are several effective ways to solve this puzzle, and it is essential to get this determined prior to inviting employees into your marketing strategy.

You can try one or a combination of the following solutions:

• Position digital marketing as a reward to those employees who complete projects on time. This will encourage other employees to catch up.
• Provide a merit increase to reward those employees that find time to participate without leaving their priority tasks behind
• If your budget allows that, determine the amount of time everyone is allowed to spend on your digital marketing projects. It could be 10% or 20% of their work time, and it could work similarly to how Google implemented it. Tools like TeamSense can help you determine the best amount of time you can allocate for your employees to spend on side projects.

You will likely need some type of software to help your clients keep track of their time and get better organized, especially if you are managing a remote team. 

For distributed teams where some people can be overseas, you will need to come up with convenient and affordable methods of communication which can include a virtual phone line, a dedicated Slack channel and an instant messenger. You can also set up sharable schedules using Google Spreadsheets (which are free).

Finally, there’s a great collection of productivity tools to choose from, so just pick one to get yourself started.

Once you figure out your control-and-reward strategy, let’s see where your employees can help:

Which marketing tasks can benefit from cross-company efforts?

Content ideation

Brainstorming ideas for your content is the first obvious task your whole company can contribute to. This is not just about your blog content: Let them all brainstorm on your email marketing content and email subjects, come up with lead magnet ideas, knowledge base topics, etc. 

Make sure to collect some input from your customer support and/or sales team because they will inform your content team of common questions and struggles your current customers are dealing with. These should definitely be part of your content strategy.

Your brainstorming meetings can be in person, virtually, or even in typing. It’s best to have a good mix to make sure even your shiest employees have an opportunity to contribute.

Social media and viral ideas

Social media is one of those channels that require constant creativity and experimentation in order to grow organic following and engagement.

It often happens that a business social profile can go through the roof once a creative intern takes it over.

It is fun and can be gamified. You can set up some kind of a quick contest rewarding an employee whose social media update generated the most engagements. And it’s not just engagements, of course. At our company, we had all sorts of small bonuses to reward employees whose social media updates would:

• Send a lead
• Get re-shared by a celebrity
• Generated the most comments, etc.

Once you get a bit comfortable with those little contests, extend those to cold emailing tactics, for example, reward emails that bring a link or journalistic coverage/mention.

Mini-projects

Finally, those that do best at balancing their actual job with helping your marketing efforts can be rewarded even further: Give them freedom to come up, set up and promote their own little projects.

Giving people freedom to create something from scratch is the best way to empower your marketing strategy with innovation. Feeling your trust and responsibility, those people will do their best to create something useful and market that to their best ability. 

Those side projects could be single-page sites they can set up on their own, a separate “linkbait” project, a virtual event they can create, promote and hold.

Let them experiment with WordPress and alternatives, find new tools, experiment with new social media platforms, etc. The point of this exercise is to master new technology and try new ideas while creating something useful for the company.

Conclusion

Digital marketing is ever evolving. Without fresh insights and excited employees, your digital marketing strategy will quickly become stale, focusing on a single tactic that seems to be working, until it doesn’t. 

Opening up your marketing efforts to other people in your company and letting them help will innovate and diversify your tactics, as well as get your whole company united around one common goal, i.e. your marketing results.

The post How (and Why) Include Your Whole Company in Digital Marketing appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

“Email marketing is DEAD!”
“AI is taking over the inbox!”
“Why hire a copywriter when I can just use email templates?!”
“Who needs an email list when I have a large social following?”

Um….. stop right there and listen up, because I’m going to let you in on a little secret…

THREE little secrets to be exact. 

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of misconceptions floating around the cyberspace when it comes to email marketing. So in this blog, we’re going to talk about the three biggest Email Marketing Myths & Misconceptions… 

AND I’m going to fill you in on the SECRET WEAPON that’ll give you a massive advantage and leg-up over any competition. 

Alright, now let’s get started with myth-busting. 

Myth #1 – Email Marketing Is DEAD

This is a myth that I’ve been hearing ever since I got my start in the online marketing industry… over a decade ago! And guess what?

The rumours were wrong back then and they’re STILL wrong today. 

No matter what you heard at the latest online summit you attended… Email Marketing is STILL alive and well—and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon!

In fact, Email Marketing is the single best way to market your brand or business, increase your revenue, and cash in on more conversions.

That’s right. It’s better than ads, better than social media, and better than organic traffic…

I said it.

In fact, I did my FIRST launch back in 2020 and made almost 6-figures by sending just 8 emails to my list of 2300 subscribers. Yup.

But don’t just take my word for it, here are some stats to prove it. It is estimated that there are 4 BILLION active email users right now (and that number is projected to go up, btw).

Email marketing consistently delivers the highest ROI of all marketing channels – earning on average $42 for every dollar spent… and in case you don’t want to do the math on that…

That’s an ROI of 4200%!! I don’t know of a single brand or business that wouldn’t love to see numbers like that. 

And just in case gaining a massive ROI isn’t enough to convince you… this probably will:

According to MarketingSherpa, email is STILL the most preferred marketing channel that most consumers want businesses to communicate with them through. YES, even Millennials and gen-Z-ers prefer email to social media.

And not only is email your consumer’s favorite way of communicating… it should be your favourite too! And that’s because your list is YOURS. It belongs to YOU. Not Facebook, not Instagram. YOU. 

And when you use Email as your preferred method of communication, ALL you have to do to get your message heard is make sure your emails aren’t landing in the spam folder. You’re not held captive by the algorithm Gods, “platform rules,” or having to keep up with the latest trends to get your content seen.  

When you take just a moment to step back and look at the facts, it’s crystal clear.

While I still love and use other marketing channels…

My girl Email Marketing reigns supreme.

Myth #2 – Templates Work Better

This is another myth I’ve been hearing over and over again lately.

Why hire a copywriter when I can just use email templates?! 

Now for the sake of clarity, in this context, I’m referring to fancy and impersonal emails that are all show and no substance. You know those fancy-looking HTML emails you commonly see from e-commerce sites or big corporate businesses…

Listen – they work for brands like Sephora or Apple, well, because they are Seophora and Apple…

But as a personality-based brand (or as the real PERSON behind the brand), you don’t want to get too fancy in your emails. 

Why? Well, because facts: Extensive A/B testing has shown that the overwhelming majority of consumers prefer simple, text-based emails (you know, just like those emails you send to your friends and family).

Not only do consumers prefer plain jane text-only emails, but templates come with a whole list of other cons to consider.

Downsides of Email Templates

• They take a long time to load, depending on your consumer’s internet connection.
• Customization can be difficult and unreliable. You can spend hours finicking with a template, where your time would be better spent just writing and personal, empathetic email.
• HTML templates often get all funky on mobile if not coded correctly.
• They are WAY more likely to end up in the Spam or Promotions folder because of heavy images and design features
• These kinds of emails focus on imagery, not on brand voice or actually connecting with the audience.

On the other hand…. While copywriters might not be able to design a “pretty-looking email”…

They are specially trained to WRITE WORDS THAT WORK. They understand how to craft powerful subject lines that hook your reader and get them to open your email. They know how to open a loop with engaging content to get your consumers to keep reading…

And they know the psychological triggers that get people to CLICK and BUY your offer…

And when you’re a business that RELIES on having a strong, powerful, and intimate relationship with your consumers… 

These factors are absolutely essential to your Email Marketing success. 

Alright, now onto the last—and most controversial—myth on this list… 

Myth #3 – AI Is Taking Over

Look, we’ve all heard it… AI is replacing copywriters at the speed of light—and especially in the Email Marketing world. 

Because I mean, who needs to shell out a bunch of money for an experienced copywriter when they could just spend a quarter of the money on some fancy automation software that “does just as good”?

Right? NO!!! 

Listen, I know AI software and done-for-you templates are becoming more and more prevalent in the email marketing space – there’s no doubt about that. 

But with that said, there’s a whole lot more to the story than what the internet would have you believe…

I’ve said it before, and I say it again and again until the day I die…

A.I. is a tool, not a takeover. 

And as a TOOL—there are certain things A.I. CAN help us to optimize, streamline and improve…

Things like: research, ideation, email automation, personalization, and segmentation. You know, the left-brain, back-end, logistical stuff. The truth is that A.I. can actually make an Email Marketers job A LOT easier. 

But when it comes to replacing the CREATIVITY & EMPATHY that a human copywriter brings to the table…?

It’s just not going to happen anytime soon.

And while it’s true that there ARE going to be some brands and businesses that will choose to get by with A.I… Their emails will be mediocre, at best.

I mean it’s just like anything else that’s being “replaced” by technology…

If you want mediocre results, then sure – go with a plug-and-play tool. If you want exceptional results, hire an expert. 

Mediocre accountants are being replaced by do-it-yourself software like Freshbooks, Honeybook & Quickbooks… but that doesn’t mean we don’t pay a LEGIT PROFESSIONAL when it comes time to file taxes. 

Mediocre graphic designers are being replaced by tools like Canva… but that doesn’t mean we don’t pay a GREAT DESIGNER to design our websites.

And if you want to optimize your email list, increase your revenue, and cash in on more conversions… then you HIRE A COPYWRITER. 

It’s as simple as that. And it’s never going to change. 

So here’s my advice to the copywriters who are worried about A.I. takeover and the other Myths on this list… 

Don’t be mediocre. Position yourself as an expert. 

Do that, and you’ll be INVALUABLE to any brand or business that wants to optimize their Email Marketing strategies. 

THAT’S your secret weapon. 

THAT’S how you make yourself A.I. proof. 

THAT’S how you position yourself as an expert in the industry and get clients banging down the door for your talents and services. 

But now the question is… HOW?! HOW do you become a damned good copywriter and email marketer? One who understands the audience, knows the power of connection, and has mastered the art of conversion?

Well… you develop the skills, techniques, practical EXPERIENCE, and knowledge needed to make yourself an expert! 

And after months and months of listening to this community ask me question after question about email marketing… I decided it was time to do something about it. 

Now up until recently, I never really thought this was needed. Mostly because I already teach an entire module all about Email Marketing inside my 8-week Copywriting Coaching Program.

But the truth is, not everyone has the time, money, energy, or desire to invest in a two-month coaching course…

And that’s why I created a FREE email guide—to help you cut through the B.S. 

My Ultimate Email Marketing Cheatsheet will help you future-proof your biz from the throes of unpredictable algorithms and the never-ending threat of A.I. takeover by teaching how to master the art of impactful inbox messaging. 

• You’ll discover the 7 must-have emails to build and monetize your list (with real-life examples straight from the Posse’s private vault)…
• Discover the right way to build and monetize your email list, without relying on templates or standardized messaging. 
• Get the secret to sending engaging emails that won’t drive away subscribers or lose you any brand loyalty.

Until next time, I’m Alex. Ciao for now!

The post Is Email Marketing Dead? appeared first on DigitalMarketer.