To be competitive as a brand, it’s essential to constantly offer value to your customers. 

Customer value is what makes the wheels of commerce go around. It’s what makes your customers buy from you, engage with you, follow your accounts, give you positive reviews, and recommend you to their friends.

If you’re familiar with our Customer Value Journey framework, you’ll already know a lot about how to create and curate customer value. In this article, we’ll zoom in on what customer value is and some ways you can deploy it in your Customer Value Journey.

What Do We Mean By “Create Customer Value?”

“Customer value” is anything that makes your product and/or brand more appealing to customers. By adding value to your brand, product, and customer experience, you bring more decision-swaying benefits to your customer’s journey.

“Value” is anything your customer wants, needs, or enjoys. The most obvious “value” is monetary—getting a quality item for a low price is something every bargain hunter enjoys—but it’s far from the only “value” available. 

Value for your customers can include:

• Great product quality
• Fantastic customer service
• A positive brand presence 
• Ongoing customer support
• Relevant and personalized marketing
• A rewarding loyalty program
• A positive customer experience
• A trustworthy brand reputation
• A caring brand community

Let’s say, for example, that you are a Canadian telecoms brand. You produce the best business phone system in Calgary, but people still buy from your competitors. How can you bring them to you?

Adding value is the best way to turn the tide of customers toward you. You can do things like improve your customer service, add 24/7 support options, tailor your marketing in ways your customers prefer, produce engaging and educational content, add loyalty rewards, and more.

Why Is It Important To Create Value For Your Customers?

Creating value for your customers is crucial because the more value you can offer, the more likely customers are to buy your product, subscribe to your brand, and ultimately become loyal members of your customer community.

Think of every purchase decision in terms of a pair of scales. For a potential customer to purchase your product, its value has to outweigh its drawbacks.

The most obvious element of the purchase decision is the monetary cost. But there’s a lot more to it than that. Things like time, negative experience, and risk also add to the perceived “cost” of your product or service. 

For example, if your website does not look safe and professional, your customer may avoid buying your product because they fear credit card scams—even if they would find your product useful and can afford it.

Similarly, if your buying process is too complicated and lengthy, or your customer service could be better, the purchase-decision scales could tip in favor of taking custom elsewhere.

By creating extra value for your customers, you weigh the scale towards the decision to buy. And the more value you add, the better the benefits get. 

As well as buying your product, customers who get value from you will return again and again. They will also engage with your content, recommend you to their friends, and boost your brand reputation in general.

All in all, creating customer value is well worth doing. So, how do you go about it?

How To Create Customer Value

Use our Customer Value Journey

Our Customer Value journey is a framework that helps you to understand where and how you can add value to help your customers along their journey to conversion and beyond.

It consists of eight steps: Awareness, Engagement, Subscribe, Convert, Excite, Ascend, Advocate, Promote.

You can find plenty about our CVJ framework, but here’s a (very!) brief rundown:

• Aware: Get your target audience’s attention with content that is relevant and valuable for them. 
• Engage: Communicate with your customers/prospects. Let them know that you care about them.
• Subscribe: Try and persuade your burgeoning customers to subscribe to your emails and follow you on social media.
• Convert: This is the point at which your prospect becomes a customer. You can use various value-adding tactics to nudge them through this stage.
• Excite: Build on the excitement of a purchase by throwing in added extras.
• Ascend: Keep up communication and keep adding value to make your one-time buyer a repeat customer.
• Advocate: Ask your happy customer to write you positive reviews, share your content, or recommend you to their friends.
• Promote: Keep encouraging your customer community to promote your brand, and reward them for doing so.

Provide Stellar Customer Service

The quality of your customer service can make or break your customer experience. Great customer service adds a huge amount of value to your CVJ.

What does good customer service look like? Well, it ranges from things as simple as sending emails saying “Thanks for your order,” to more complex efforts, such as having a fully equipped and responsive customer support center staffed with patient, helpful, and friendly operatives.

Another way of offering great value and customer service is by having a product that will offer unique benefits. For example, offering online business cards with a QR code that automatically captures their information so that you can use analytics and metrics to measure your networking efforts.

Build Community

You can easily add value for your customer by making them feel valued. One way to do this is to focus on building relationships and community with your customers.

You can strengthen your customer relationships through things like sending emails on their birthdays, personalizing your marketing content so that it’s relevant for each customer, and generally showing that you are listening to them and you care for them.

You can expand on this by providing space for your customers to communicate with you and one another. Loyalty clubs, social media pages, events for loyal customers, and so on can all help to build a rewarding community that will add value for your customers.

Focus On Quality Over Price

It’s a common misconception that making an item cheaper adds value for the customer. While price is certainly an important consideration in purchase decisions, quality often trumps it.

However low your prices are, your customers won’t be impressed if your product is low quality. Most customers are happy to pay a bit more for a product that works well, looks good, and will last.

Most customers understand that true quality costs more. So, if you drop your prices too low, customers will automatically assume that your product is low quality.

The old “quality vs. quantity” debate is, to an extent, false—but it is still important that your customers have a good experience with your product. And that means creating something of acceptable quality.

So, we recommend focusing on the quality of your product first and foremost, and deciding the price once you are aware of your profit margins. A quality product that costs a little more will gain you more repeat customers than a poor-quality product at a low price.

Play To Your Strengths

Your strengths are where your true value lies. Maybe you have an excellent customer service team, the best quality product on the market, or a fantastic social media following. Whatever it is that you do best, play to it.

Your strengths form your USP (or, at least, part of it). Your strengths are where your value exceeds that of your competitors. So, make the most of them!

Educate, Entertain, & Engage

Producing great content is a quick and easy way to add a lot of value and boost your brand’s presence and reputation.

Blog posts, videos, newsletters, social media posts, competitions, games, and webinars—all of these are great for entertaining, educating, and engaging your customers.

Anything you can put out there that your customers will enjoy or find interesting adds value to your product, no matter what your product is.

Let’s say, for example, that you provide online fax services in Canada. On the face of it, this may not seem like a promising topic, but the right content can bring a huge amount of interest to your brand.

You could produce how-to videos, talk about the history of faxing, run case studies, and more. All of it will add value for your audience and bring in new customers.

Reward Loyalty

A loyalty scheme adds value for your customer and directly encourages repeat purchases. 

You can use your loyalty scheme to add value in a variety of ways. Many retail businesses use point schemes, in which customers get a certain number of points per purchase which they can then use to offset the cost of later purchases.

Other examples of loyalty rewards can include:

• Exclusive content
• Free gifts
• First looks at new product lines
• Discounts
• Privileged access to events, products, and services
• Enhanced customer service

Boost Your Business & Add Customer Value with A Customer Value Journey

By designing a Customer Value Journey, you will give yourself a head start when adding value.

A Customer Value Journey will show you exactly where in your customer journey to add value and the form it should take.

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For example, a speedy and safe website adds value at the point of sale. It encourages people to convert quickly and with confidence.

After a sale, a loyalty scheme and follow-up emails reinforce your customer’s positive experience and help strengthen your brand/customer relationships.

At all points, a positive brand presence, rewarding content, and a quality product are brilliant for adding value for your customers.

So, to give your customers the value that they deserve, sit down and plot your Customer Value Journey.

The post How to Effortlessly Create Customer Value appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Today, consumers have an increasing number of options for how to interact with your brand. These include virtual channels like social media and influencer marketing.

While it’s great that technology has provided us with plenty of new methods and marketing tactics, it also means you need to up your game. As a result, customers are placing a higher value on the overall shopping experience than ever before. 

The way your brand presents itself at various touch points is a major factor in conversions. Customer journey optimization works to raise overall customer satisfaction (CSAT) and promotes growth in your business. 

What is customer journey optimization?

Optimizing the customer journey involves mapping out and analyzing every touchpoint in the buying process. You can then improve the buyer’s journey by eliminating friction at each of these.

This encompasses all available touchpoints, including digital advertising, content and social media marketing. Customer journey optimization improves processes behind the camera, so to speak, so your brand, team, and products can be the stars of the show. 

Benefits of customer journey optimization

When you optimize the customer journey, you stand to gain several benefits.

Save money

Mapping out the customer journey paints a clear picture of your current marketing and sales strategies. You can easily identify redundancies and remove these by analyzing them from an outside viewpoint. Long story short is that you’ll save money on operational costs and labor. 

For example, simple customer actions like order tracking might be better and more efficiently managed by a virtual receptionist, freeing your team up to work on tasks that are more obviously profitable, such as sales.  

Increase productivity

Customer journey optimization helps you cut out the fat. A well-trimmed buying process is much more efficient when it comes to how your team members’ time is used. By focusing their efforts on the most valuable touchpoints and prospect interactions, they’ll be able to generate more leads and conversions in less time. 

Part of this optimization might mean investing in software that gives the customer more control over their journey. For example, if you offer co-working spaces, you may wish to invest in coworking space management software that empowers users to book and pay for rooms without having to speak to a team member in person or over the phone. 

Better teamwork and collaboration

The results of the 2021 Statista survey shown above found that inter-departmental siloing is the biggest challenge when optimizing the customer journey. This is where customer journey mapping rises to the challenge.

With a big-picture view, those working at the top of the funnel will better understand where their prospects are heading, meaning they’re more able to prepare them for their next interaction. Likewise, salespeople working in the middle of the funnel can give feedback on the quality of leads and help prospecting teams adjust their strategies accordingly. 

How does optimization increase customer satisfaction?

Many business benefits arise from customer journey optimization. 

Reduces Friction

Customers may encounter friction at every step of their journey. We’re not talking about Newtonian physics that explain how your car grips a road; we’re talking about obstacles to conversion that are built into your buying processes.

Customer friction is something you must overcome for the consumer to take the next step. Common causes include:

• Lack of empowerment. Do customers have their preferred channels available to them e.g. live chat and self-service options?
• Unreasonable/uncertain duration. Are wait times reasonable, and are they communicated to the customer?
• Lack of identity. Is the customer known and recognized at each touchpoint, or do they have to repeat themselves along the way?
• Lack of transparency. Do customers know what step they’re at in the process?
• Lack of consistency. Does each interaction fit with your brand and provide a positive overall experience?

Let’s take friction caused by duration as an example. You could utilize a service that enables call forwarding or queue callbacks to help lower customer wait times. This would optimize the buyer journey and make it less arduous for the customer. 

An often overlooked tactic is to focus on the obstacle causing the friction rather than the nudge itself. For example, you can make conversions easier so your prospects can sprint their way down the sales funnel.

In the early part of the journey, this might include optimization by way of marketing and communication channels. If your target audience is Gen Z and Millenials, for example, forgo traditional channels and build brand awareness on the social media platforms they use instead. 

There are many eCommerce marketing strategies that can help you optimize interactions and reduce friction.

Focuses on pain points

An optimized customer journey gives consumers a more streamlined experience. Rather than being distracted by unnecessary steps, it ensures just the right amount of interactions and information. 

This type of focused effort from your sales and marketing team means you can spend more time singing the benefits of your products or services. More importantly, it ensures each experience focuses on the specific pain points of your buyer personas. 

Personalizes the customer experience

Part of the optimization process is building customary journey maps that achieve a high level of success. Each one should focus on a different buyer persona. These custom journeys are just one way that optimization personalizes the customer experience (CX).

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Building interactions for each segment’s preferred channels increases customer satisfaction. You can also use CRM solutions, customer journey management platforms, and marketing automation to hyper-personalize every interaction. This might range from having live agents and chatbots with access to customer account information to suggesting products your buyers will be interested in. 

How to optimize the customer journey map

1. Define your business goals

Optimizing the customer journey can help you achieve various objectives, but it’s best to set your sights on a few specific goals for your business. This will help to guide you.

The following are some examples of business goals:

• To stamp out weaknesses or redundancies in the customer journey
• To gain more insight through increased customer feedback
• To increase conversions at bottlenecks in the sales funnel

2. Define your buyer personas

Buyer personas help you segment your audience according to their attitudes, values, behaviors, and demographic information. The first step is to identify your best buyers and your least valuable customer types.

When building your customer avatars, you should find common factors or indicators to help with optimizing customer journeys and areas like lead qualification. 

3. Pick your target personas

To get started, pick the buyer persona that most closely fits your business goals. If this is your first time refreshing the customer journey, you’ll likely want to focus on the personas that represent the best lifetime value. 

4. Start drafting a customer journey map

Now you have a better understanding of who your customers are, it’s time to start visualizing the purchasing journey. You need to map out every customer touchpoint or interaction from beginning to end. 

This includes every channel that’s used to create brand awareness, from Instagram and Facebook marketing to email newsletters and word-of-mouth referrals. It also includes third-party channels like affiliate marketing and other partner programs.

From here, you can start optimizing and connecting actions to build a customer journey that’s robust and efficient. 

5. Start optimizing

With a rough draft of the customer journey in place, you can begin to make alterations and improvements. Eliminate redundant or friction-building interactions, and map out pathways that allow for a seamless transition from one touchpoint to another. Ensure these make sense for the buyer persona involved. 

For instance, when nudging Gen Zers from the brand awareness to the subscription stage, you could focus on social media only. This means eliminating CTAs that involve newsletter subscriptions or inbound calling campaigns for this particular journey. 

6. Use the right tools

By now, you should have a close to ideal journey for each buyer persona. These are optimized when friction is reduced and your team is set up for success. The only problem is that nothing is ideal.

No matter how much you prepare, there will always be room for improvement, so you’ll need to arm yourself with the best tools for the job. Customer relationship management software is crucial. Other marketing tools can also help you automate and track each customer’s journey.

While you’re at it, don’t forget about the wealth of digital marketing resources available online. 

7. Optimize, rinse, and repeat

Completing your optimized customer journey map is only the beginning. You’ll need to take this process and repeat it for each business goal and buyer persona. Of course, you can use existing maps as templates for building new customer journeys.

Using marketing tools, you should be able to track the success of your freshly optimized touchpoints and overall conversion rates. Use analytics tools and trusty A/B testing to hone in on what’s working and what isn’t. 

Continue the process ad infinitum and reap the rewards of providing a seamless, frictionless customer experience. 

Optimize the customer journey today!

Businesses like yours desire their operations to run as smoothly as possible. Your customers will hold you to these same standards during the buying cycle. Now, at least, you should have the tools and team to identify what your customers want. 

This is the time to map out and optimize your customer journeys. That is, unless you’d rather wait around while they flock to competitors that offer a painless purchase process. Why not start improving your customer satisfaction levels today?

The post Creating a Journey to Customer Satisfaction appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Podcasting has become an increasingly popular way for businesses to reach their target audience and build a loyal following. But how can businesses use podcasting as a part of their overall marketing strategy?

I know firsthand as a business owner the importance of creating a targeted and effective marketing strategy that maximizes the value of each customer and builds long-term loyalty and advocacy for my brand.

That’s why I decided to leverage the power of podcasting by launching the Creative Visionaries Podcast as a part of my overall marketing strategy at Creative Marketing.

To create a targeted and effective podcast marketing strategy that maximizes the value of each customer and builds long-term loyalty and advocacy for their brand, businesses can turn to DigitalMarketer’s Customer Value Journey (CVJ) framework.

While it is most commonly used in the development of a marketing plan there is a huge opportunity to align each stage of the CVJ with the podcast marketing process.

Businesses can create episodes that attract listeners, build trust, and ultimately convert them into loyal brand advocates. This approach ensures that every podcast episode provides value to the listener, while also advancing them further along the customer value journey toward becoming a loyal customer.

To better understand how the CVJ framework can be applied to podcast marketing, let’s take a closer look at each of the eight stages:

• Awareness: At this stage, the customer becomes aware of the business and its products or services.
• Engagement: The customer engages with the business in some way, such as by visiting the website or signing up for an email list.
• Subscribe: The customer opts in to receive more information from the business, such as a newsletter or free content.
• Convert: The customer makes their first purchase from the business.
• Excite: The customer experiences the product or service and becomes excited about it.
• Ascend: The customer makes additional purchases or upgrades to higher-priced products or services.
• Advocate: The customer becomes a loyal fan of the business and recommends it to others.
• Promote: The customer actively promotes the business and its products or services to others.

Applying this framework to podcasting, businesses can create and market a successful podcast that guides customers through each stage of the journey.

At the Awareness stage, a business might promote its podcast on social media or through paid advertising to reach new listeners. By offering valuable and engaging content in the podcast, businesses can then move listeners into the Engagement and Subscribe stages of the journey.

Encouraging listeners to subscribe to the podcast and leave reviews can help move them into the Conversion stage, where they become paying customers.

During the Excite stage, businesses can leverage their podcast to deepen engagement and foster brand loyalty. By offering valuable content that speaks directly to their customers’ needs and interests, businesses can generate excitement and enthusiasm around their brand, further strengthening their connection with their audience.

This leads them directly into the Ascend stage, where customers are offered opportunities to move up the value ladder by making additional purchases or upgrades to higher-priced products or services, building a deeper relationship with the brand.

For example, a digital marketing agency could establish authority in their industry by offering marketing consulting services and using a podcast to provide valuable insights and tips to potential clients, ultimately building trust and establishing themselves as an expert in their field.

At the Advocate stage, businesses can use their podcast to create a community of loyal fans who actively promote their brand. This can be done by encouraging listeners to share the podcast with others, leave positive reviews, and engage with the business on social media.

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Businesses can create long-term loyalty and advocacy by promoting their podcast to their existing audience and leveraging the Promote stage of the customer value journey, which involves creating a sense of belonging and community around their brand.

So, we’ve talked about how podcasting can really benefit businesses. It’s a great way to get your brand out there, engage with your customers, and connect with your target audience. Plus, it’s a powerful tool for establishing your expertise and building a strong, recognizable brand.

By incorporating the CVJ framework to guide their podcast marketing efforts, businesses can create a more targeted and effective strategy that maximizes the value of each customer and builds long-term loyalty and advocacy for their brand.

To Create a Successful Podcast, Businesses Should Follow Some Key Tips:

First, they should identify a specific niche or topic that appeals to their target audience. By focusing on a specific topic, businesses can differentiate themselves from other podcasts and create a loyal following.

Second, businesses should produce high-quality content that provides value to their listeners. This can include interviews with experts in the industry, tips and advice, and engaging storytelling.

Third, businesses should promote their podcast through various channels, including social media, email marketing, and paid advertising.

With dedication and creativity, podcasting can be a valuable asset for any business looking to stand out in today’s digital landscape. By creating high-quality content that resonates with their audience, businesses can increase brand awareness, engagement, and loyalty.

Incorporating the Customer Value Journey framework can help guide their podcast marketing efforts and create a more effective and targeted strategy. So, if you’re looking to take your business to the next level, consider starting a podcast today and join the millions of businesses already leveraging this powerful tool.

The post Revolutionize Your Marketing Strategy with Podcasting appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

The conversion stage is all about an entry-point offer.

In other words, we need the prospect to make a micro-commitment. The best way to do that is through a high-value, low-risk offer that lets them sample your wares without putting too much skin in the game.

Out of all of the stages, we truly believe that this one is the most critical. It’s also the one that marketers have the biggest difficulty with because it is by design a bit of a hybrid stage.

They’re not customers yet, but they’re not merely prospects. A lot of that ambiguity is why it works. We need a way to progress the relationship in a timely, appropriate, and sequential manner. 

How can we get our prospects to make a micro commitment that gives us the opportunity to deliver the aha moment? How do we get our prospects to meet us for coffee? 

The two methods of commitment that we as humans recognize is: Time and Money. The time on our calendars and the money in our wallets. 

Lets brainstorm some Entry Point Offers (what we call the deliverables at the convert stage, because this is the offer that you’re making at the entry point of the relationship.) We’re not looking to propose marriage on the first date we’re simply looking to meet for coffee, a micro commitment. 

The question we’re asking here is: What is something that your ideal prospect would only buy or register for if they had a very specific problem or challenge that you could solve? 

The most obvious answer here is giving a demonstration. If anyone registers for a demo then they recognize that they have a problem that you could potentially solve.

If you are a software company a demo is a great entry point offer. But let’s think about another way. What’s the kind of thing that if someone purchased you would know they were interested? 

For example, we once had ownership in one of the largest survival and preparedness communities on planet earth which also had an e-Commerce store. Our store sold all kinds of different items from water purifiers to fire starters and flashlights, and things like that. We found that not all of these products would necessarily suggest that someone was interested in survival and preparedness. 

For years our entry point offer was a very simple fire starter, a tool that could start fire even when wet. This entry point offer was very effective, but it wasn’t converting as high as we expected. Next up we tried a flashlight. 

Our flashlight offer exploded, sales went crazy, we sold out of these items. But no one who bought the flashlight was ascending into any of our other survival and preparedness offerings. What we found is that a flashlight is a very poor indicator that someone has a specific problem we can solve. The reality is that everyone would like a flashlight, regardless of their pains and problems, and doesn’t necessarily qualify them as a customer. 

We then went back to our firestarter. It didn’t sell as quickly as our flashlight, but it delivered a much higher quality of customer. Remember, only the people who have a specific problem or challenge that we can solve are the people interested in purchasing from us. 

What is your fire starter? What is the thing that only your ideal customer, if they saw it, would be interested in and everyone else would just pass it by? 

To do this for Hazel & Hem Boutique, you just need to offer a low-cost item to get them involved in the brand. In this instance, we’ll have them offer one of their most popular bracelets for only $10 if you’re a first time customer.

For Cyrus & Clark’s Media agency, once the trust has been established through the subscribe stage, it’s time to show your prospects what you can do. They’ll offer their $5,000 90-Day Strategic Plan for just $500. $500 may sound like a lot for an entry point offer, but it’s appropriate if the average target avatar is generating millions in sales. 

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If you haven’t added paid traffic to your T-shaped marketer toolbelt, you’re missing out. Paid search marketing is a proven marketing strategy for getting instant results and dialing in the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.

Let’s talk about the benefits of paid traffic.

#1: Speed to Market

The first benefit of paid traffic is speed. To illustrate what I mean, let’s compare paid ads to search engine optimization. You may think this is an unfair comparison, but it illustrates my point perfectly.

Search engine optimization or SEO is the process by which you try to get your content to rank in the search engine results pages or SERPs. SEO strategy includes keyword research, meta data, backlinking, and all kinds of technical elements. Most people view organic traffic as any traffic you don’t have to pay to get in front of.

With organic marketing, it can take three months to get a piece of content to appear as a search result. In other words, to rank organically.

If you’re trying to optimize for a term that has any level of competition, it can be 3, 6, 9, 12+ MONTHS before you begin to see any traction.

With paid traffic, you can see traffic the next day.

Both paid traffic and organic search traffic are critical to business success. But paid traffic needs to come first. Why? Because it’s so freakin’ fast. In the realm of digital marketing, you need proof of concept before you can scale. Proof of concept is difficult to have without speed. 

Quickly & Easily Test Campaign Elements

Speed has another benefit. It gives you the opportunity to quickly test what’s working or not working with your ppc ad.

You get to test your ad copy, pricing, the call to action, landing pages, the ad creative, etc. And it can all be tested quickly.

Testing takes the uncertainty out of paid advertising. It doesn’t take a lot of time or money, because paid traffic is so fast.

#2: Analytics You Can Actually Track

Another of the benefits of paid traffic is the analytics that back it up.

With organic marketing, social media marketing, and especially email marketing, there are limited data points, and those data points are being taken away from us because of privacy first initiatives.

With paid traffic, the advertising networks – Google AdWords, Facebook, Bing ads, etc. – have to give you this information because you’re paying for the traffic.

The Conversion Path

A conversion path is the sequence of events a user goes through before they engage in a desired action. It’s important to track the conversion path and look for the common behaviors of your best customers.

It’s difficult to track the conversion path with free traffic.

For example, organic social traffic is very disparate in terms of the information that you’re given. Because of the iOS 15 update, we don’t see things like open or click through rates for email marketing.

But because the advertising networks like all that ad revenue, they allow paid advertising customers access to advanced and detailed analytics. When you track the conversion path, you start to see the story people need to be told before they’re willing to convert.

#3: Optimization of Every Element of the Campaign

Who is this paid ad reaching? Where is the conversion happening? What time is our social media ad performing best?

With paid advertising, you can optimize everything with minor tweaks. You can’t optimize or change these variables outside of a paid ecosystem.

Again (beating a dead horse), because you’re paying for that Facebook ad, Google ad, Bing ads, whatever, the network gives you opportunities to enhance your ad campaign.

When you pay attention to the data, you see exactly where the disconnect is. Then you can make minor tweaks to improve the performance of your paid search ad long term.

The changes don’t have to be major. Everybody’s heard the analogy about the plane that’s off course by 1% that ends up in an entirely different country over time. Your campaigns will be the exact same way.

The ability to optimize your campaigns is one of the strongest benefits of paid traffic.

#4: Enhanced Customer Targeting

One of the major differences between free traffic and paid traffic is targeting. With paid traffic, you get to decide who you put your ads in front. This is an amazing benefit, especially given how much information these ad networks know about people.

Ad networks have 70 million demographic and psychographic profiling factors on every human on the planet.

Who is your target audience?

• Where do they live and work?
• What are their interests?
• Are they married?
• How much money do they make?
• What products do they buy online?

From a machine learning perspective, this data is important. Why? All the ad networks are reverse engineering intent. They want to understand why people do what they do. They want to know what makes people buy.

It’s a little scary, to be honest with you, because they’re getting good at it. But the better they get, the bigger your advantage.

You can take advantage of machine learning through targeting.

As you can see, the benefits of paid ads are immense. I’m not here to tell you that paid ads are the only thing you need to do. There are not the end-all-be-all. But paid advertising should be a cornerstone of your digital marketing foundation because of these benefits.

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NOTE: This content came directory from DigitalMarketer’s Paid Traffic Mastery Certification.

The post 4 Benefits of Paid Traffic You Can’t Afford To Ignore appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

With the rise of social media and digital technologies, marketers and businesses were expected to evolve from email marketing. 

However, email marketing is still a reliable tool. Various researches show that email will become some of the most widely used and popular communication platforms in the future.

But before you utilize these free email marketing tools, find out how email marketing is used to interact with users and if it will remain a viable strategy in 2022.

The Data Behind Email Marketing

Here are a few stats to prove email marketing’s dominance in marketing strategies globally:

• In 2021 alone, the number of worldwide email users was about 4 billion, which is expected to increase to 4.6B users worldwide in 2025
• More than 300B emails are forecasted to be received and sent every day in 2022

But if you want to derive maximum benefits from email marketing campaigns, you have to take an all-inclusive approach towards making the right and fitting email marketing strategies. 

Luckily, there is a range of credible, effective, and free email marketing tools you can use to organize and schedule various email campaigns. 

What’s more, they even provide analytics to ensure success. 

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5 Reasons Why Email Marketing Is Still Vital In 2022 

And if you needed more convincing, here is why you should stick with email marketing:

1. Email Marketing Allows for Personalization

Email marketing enables marketers to create customized content for customers according to their buying patterns, journeys, behaviors, and other factors. 

Utilize data trackers and analytics to know what interests consumers have. Plus, what sort of products or content do they like most. 

For instance, if your consumers like a particular clothing design from your catalog, you can personalize emails by including related products. 

Essentially, you can use email automation software tools to view where your consumers lie in a sales funnel stage and create content accordingly. 

2. It Produces Better Outcomes Than Most Other Marketing Channels

Believe it or not, email marketing gives the highest ROI (return-on-investment) than several other marketing means. 

So for every one dollar spent, email marketing produces more than $40 in ROI. 

In addition to that, it provides improved conversion rates. Various studies show email generates 66% of conversions. It’s 40-times more efficient and successful than other social media channels.  

To get the best results, regularly monitor the metrics of your email marketing campaign, such as click-through rates, engagements, bounce rates, etc. 

3. Email Marketing Cuts Costs

Compared to conventional marketing approaches, email is both cost-effective and straightforward. 

To begin with, you don’t require a huge budget to advertise, produce, or print the ad. Therefore, it avoids the associated expense of hiring a digital and video production crew. 

In email marketing, all you’ve got to do is hire a professional graphic designer to create appealing visuals along with excellent content, and you’re all set. 

Additionally, as people increasingly rely on mobile phones now, email is an effective way to connect with potential customers. 

4. It Creates Brand Loyalty & Connection

Email marketing campaigns are among the most effective ways to boost brand awareness among customers. 

For example, you could send informational content regarding brands’ mission, products, values and interact in a much healthy debate with your targeted groups. 

When your potential customers better understand what your business stands for, chances are, they can engage and connect with it much better. 

So to form a steady connection with users, create consistent, long-term email marketing strategies to keep consumers anxious for your next email. 

5. Email Marketing Amalgamates with Other Marketing Means Seamlessly

One of the best things about email is that you can integrate it seamlessly with various other social channels such as:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• LinkedIn 

For instance, businesses can put social platform icons in emails and request readers to follow. 

In addition to that, you could display a collage of Instagram posts in your emails to show consumers a sneak peek of your business’s Instagram profile. 

Many marketers place “Pin it” options in emails to enable consumers to directly save images to their accounts. 

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Takeaway

Email marketing strategies are a winning way to communicate with potential customers and collect valuable insights.

And these resources will help you create a cohesive buyer journey and build brand awareness among the audience. 

The techniques mentioned above will help you create robust email marketing strategies that compel new customers to engage with the brand.

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