Classic copywriting books are needed now more than ever. With the explosion of marketing technology, AI-generated content, and companies worldwide competing for the same customers, timeless principles are priceless. 

Because although AI can generate content, understanding human emotions and psychology, as taught in these books, is essential for creating an engaging and persuasive copywriting piece.

With all our new technology, it’s easy to get pulled away from the fundamentals of copywriting. However, when you combine the fundamentals with modern technology, you become unstoppable.

Breakthrough Advertising By Eugene Schwartz

Breakthrough Advertising is a favorite among copywriters. Eugene Schwartz, a direct-response copywriter who was prolific in the mid-20th century, is a legend.

Breakthrough Advertising is a dense book, and most reviews will only cite the Schwartz lessons from the first half. For example, almost every review will cite Schwartz’s advice that demand for a product cannot be created—only channeled.

(I guess I just did it too.)

That advice about customer demand is indeed sage wisdom to write down and remember forever. But it’s in the second half of the Breakthrough Advertising, which gets little attention, where I find the most gems. 

One of those gems is Schwartz writing about the topic of belief.

Belief is the goal, Schwartz states.

If you can channel the tremendous force of his belief—either in content or direction—behind only one claim, no matter how small, then that one fully-believed claim will sell more goods than all the half-questioned promises your competitors can write for all the rest of their days.

A prospect can’t fully accept and value your offer unless you build the necessary beliefs. Your coupons and bonuses will bounce right off your prospects unless they believe your product is right for them.

As an example, Schwartz describes a challenge he had in selling a TV repair manual. Back in the 1950’s, TVs were complex, intimidating machines that broke down constantly, leading to expensive repair bills.

The homeowner could save a ton of money doing TV repairs themselves. The problem was that nobody believed they could actually repair a TV.

Schwartz persuaded prospects they could repair the TV using nothing but his words. He did it through the way he structured his sales letter, strategically targeting belief after belief. You can find the full sales letter in Breakthrough Advertising—it’s incredible.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK TODAY:

These days, the marketing world is filled with hype and over-the-top promises. Schwartz advises us to dial down those big promises. Instead, focus on building belief. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes and ask, “What does my prospect need to believe in order to say “yes” to my offer?

If you want more on this topic of belief building in your prospect’s mind, I teach a step-by-step process in my own, Simple Marketing for Smart People.

The Robert Collier Letter Book

Robert Collier built a successful direct-response marketing business by sending simple letters in the mail. 

He used letters to sell all sorts of products, from coal (Collier was a mining engineer) to women’s dresses. But he mainly sold books. 

The books were typically stories from history, such as H.G. Wells’s The Outline of History, or personal development books around achievement and success. Collier sold over 300,000 copies of his personal development book called The Secret of the Ages.

His letters were clear, compelling, and most importantly—human.

Collier has a way of writing that makes you feel like he’s writing you a personal letter even though has was mailing these letters to thousands of people.

One notable letter was written to mothers and sold a home study course. It has the headline: “There is No University Like a Mother’s Reading to Her Child.”

Really tugs on the heartstrings, doesn’t it? That’s classic Collier.

Now, these letters were not merely for entertainment. He calls the letters he writes “Resultful Letters,” meaning the letters had to lead to results. That is, a purchase.

But it’s Collier’s way of getting the reader to take action (i.e., to purchase the product) that sets him apart.

His approach centers on knowing your reader. Collier states:

Familiarity with the thing you are selling is an advantage, but the one essential without which success is impossible in selling, by mail or selling in person, is a thorough understanding of human reactions. Study your reader first—your product second. If you understand his reactions and present those phases of your product that relate to his needs, then you cannot help but write a good letter.

Wise words for today’s copywriter.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK TODAY:

Use The Robert Collier Letter to add a human element to your writing. This book is different in that it’s learn by example. There’s not as much teaching as other copywriting books, but rather, you learn from Collier’s example letters, of which there are dozens.

Read Collier’s letters, his commentary, and his approach will sink in. The next time you sit down to write copy, you’ll naturally harness your inner Collier.

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

Claude Hopkins is a pioneering figure in advertising. His most famous book, Scientific Advertising, is short at just 87 pages. Yet, it’s still constantly referenced for its timeless principles.

In Scientific Adveritsing, Hopkins writes:

The lack of fundamentals has been the main trouble with advertising in the past . . . it was like a man trying to build a modern locomotive without first asserting what others had done.

Hopkins laments that advertising success has felt like too much of a gamble, too much too much like speculation, like betting at the race track.

Do you see how even today, we’re wrestling with the same problem? We roll out a new product launch, ad campaign, or VSL, and it feels like we’re rolling the dice.

Hopkins believed advertising could be a safe and sure venture. But in order to do so, we must learn the fundamentals.

Hopkins then walks through his nearly 20 laws of advertising. He covers everything from headlines to distribution to giving samples. That last law, giving samples, was one of Hopkin’s favorite techniques. He sold a mountain of products by giving away samples. Hopkins believed the product should be its own best salesman. 

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK TODAY:

Each of Hopkin’s laws can be applied today. For example, his law of giving samples is easier than ever thanks to shipping across the world being easier than ever. 

His law on individuality and adding personality to your copy is critical given the massive amount of content on the internet and the difficulty of standing out.

Weave Hopkin’s laws into your next copywriting project and enjoy the results.

Your Turn

The benefit of learning copywriting from history’s greats is that they weren’t distracted by the internet and modern technology. That meant they put all their effort into the only tool they had—their words.

Study these great books to learn the timeless principles that lead to high-converting copy. Then, combine those principles with modern technology and watch your results soar.

The post 3 Classic Copywriting Books You Need Now More than Ever appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

In this day and age making sales is harder than ever, with a cost of living crisis in the U.K and several places feeling the pinch post-lockdown.  But how do you effectively create a customer relationship without rushing in?

What is CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) refers to a strategy you have in place to manage the relationships with potential and current customers.  Usually it is understood to mean the software, but it can also refer to the strategies your team puts in place for handling customers.  The tool CRM is used to store customer information and helps you analyse it to decide how to approach customers.

Why is CRM important?

CRM is important for the ways it improves the customer experience and the ways it reduces manual labour on the business end.   You can automate tasks to allow your team to spend more time interacting with customers and building those relationships.   It also allows you to keep messaging consistent across departments as you share the system and allows for personalisation in the customer experience.

Build a Rapport with Customers

When it comes to actually working with customers it’s important to remember the old adage ‘only fools rush in’ and take your time to build a rapport.  “It is tempting to rush in but you may end up giving the customer a poor experience, loose the sale or end up with a poorly implemented product at the end of the day that reduces the likelihood of a continued relationship,” warns Jennifer Marquez, a business writer at Essayroo and Big Assignments.  Take a gradual approach, giving your company time to deliver a good product and leaving the customer satisfied and more likely to maintain the relationship.

Don’t Promise What You Can’t Deliver

Be honest and realistic with customers.  If there is something they want the company to provide check to see it’s actually possible before you make any promises.  Too often customers are promised a certain timeline, a certain scope or even special features without anyone talking to those who will actually deliver the product.  Your honesty will help you out in the end as you are not likely to over promise.  This is where that rapport you have built comes in handy as you are able to speak plainly with the customer without trying to force a product on them.

Profile Prospects

Before you pick up the phone or go to your emails in order to contact customers you should take some time to do some research on your customer to see what will engage your customer.  This avoids awkward situations where customers feel hounded into buying a product and is likely to end up with a much happier customer and a bigger success story.  Use customer insights to create a profile of your prospect and to collate your research, this will allow you to build a long-term relationship and personalise your approach.

Choose a System that Works for Your Team

Choosing a system that works for your team is really a two-fold choice.  First you want to adopt a CRM strategy that best fits your team’s needs.  However, the main choice you’ll need to make is what software you wish to invest in and the category of CRM software that best fits you.  “Choosing the right CRM for your company can help you build effective profiles, manage your relationships and keep messaging consistent.  It’s important to take some time to research this,” cautions project manager Kathy Cline, Assignment writer and Boom Essays.  In broad strokes, there are three main CRM functional categories:

• Operational CRM Systems – day to day activity management with tools like customer record collation.  Suited for companies who have short sales cycles.
• Analytical CRM Systems – organisation and management of large amounts of data used to gain insight into the customer experience.  Ideal for companies with intense competition and numerous customer data points.
• Collaborative CRM Systems – connecting communication and data across the company’s departments creating a seamless customer experience.  Excellent for companies that need to manage a large data pool across a number of departments.

Take time to discuss with the relevant teams the options available and don’t be afraid to shop around on the market.  If you want a slightly more custom solution, look for a company that is able to tailor its product to your needs.  Remember to keep budget and the goals you want to achieve in mind.

In summary, take the time to actually build a rapport with customers.  Speak with departments to find out what CRM tool would best suit their needs and train them in using it.  Keep everyone in the loop when it comes to customers, CRM tools help with this if you are a larger company.  Profile potential customers and do your research before diving in.  Most of all don’t promise the earth and deliver nothing, be honest with customers it will help build that relationship of trust.

The post Effective Customer Relationship Management: Not Proposing on the First Date appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Digital marketing is becoming more and more competitive.

According to Census Bureau’s data, almost 5.5 million new business applications were filed in 2021, which is a 53% increase from 2019.

Hit by global lockdowns and deprived of most traditional means of attracting customers, most of those businesses turned to the Internet in an effort to build traffic and sales.

This resulted in a higher than ever digital marketing competition.

How can a small business compete with that?

How can you generate sales from your small business website in this competitive environment? 

Here are some solid ways to do that.

1. Formulate a Plan

Successful planners often make successful entrepreneurs, laying out detailed (yet actionable) goals every step of the way. The fact of the matter is that if you have numbers you want to hit, you’ll be much more likely to have them in mind and aim to reach them constantly. 

Write them down and keep them somewhere so you can continually reference them throughout the year.

Create a Sales Plan

A sales plan is designed to outline your goals, tactics, audience, and potential hurdles. After laying out a sales plan, you’ll come away with concrete, measurable goals, including revenue targets and deadlines for hitting each metric. 

You’ll also spend time identifying your target audience, which will be crucial for success in marketing. Creating a sales plan is a necessary first step in meeting your overall business goals.

Create a Prospecting Plan

Think of your prospecting strategy as a guidebook for your sales team (even if your sales team is just you). It should cover all of your preferred sales methodologies, as well as information on who to target. 

Ask yourself which form of selling most closely aligns with your business and its goals, from cold-calling to trade shows, to a 100-percent-digital strategy.

2. Market Your Business

Building a good marketing strategy really comes down to two crucial factors: 

• Understanding your audience 
• Getting your product or service in front of your target audience. 

Anything you can do to gather information on your target demographic and then to effectively, affordably market to them will get you ahead in marketing.

Leverage 360-Degree Digital Marketing

Depending on the type of business you operate, you can probably get away with a fully digital marketing strategy. Focus on the most affordable methods first, such as building out your social media  and local business profiles. 

Social media is the best option for connecting with current, and future, customers. Consider pay-per-click and performance-based marketing options, such as affiliate marketing. This will help you get your product or service in front of a bigger audience for a much lower up-front spend.

Become A Certified E-Commerce Marketing Master

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Make Sure You Have a Loyalty Building Plan in Place

It is hard (and in many niches impossible) for small businesses to develop solid and consistent traffic generation methods.

So focus on retaining those customers that did find you and turning them into brand advocates.

There are many ways to achieve that, so create your strategy based on your business and product specifics:

• Set up a dedicated spot for your customers to become part of your community
• Use a solid CRM solution to organize customer relationship management process and identify steps where it may be failing
• Reply to comments and reviews when your customers are discussing your product or asking questions
• Encourage user-generated content by offering perks in exchange for sharing an unboxing video, a photo review of your product or a tutorial on making the most of it.
• Offer exclusive deals and packages. vcita offers a “Packages” feature that allows small businesses to bundle several services together and sell them as a package deal online at a discounted price. You can use vcita to create unique packages for your return users:

Research Niche Gaps and Competitors’ Fails

What are your competitors missing? Which features or products are they seeking and failing to find? You can actually turn the poorest experience into a business opportunity, if you learn to identify that opportunity.

Researching niche gaps is a great way to find a sweet spot for your business to stand out. SE Ranking competitive research tool allows you to identify your competitors’ strongest and weakest side. 

You can also use its keyword research tool to find searchable keywords that don’t have much competition (this is a great way to find what’s on demand but without a solid offering).

Social media listening is another great way to find customers who are dissatisfied with your competitors and identify what your competitors are doing wrong (and how you could fit in):

Make Sure People Can Find Your Business

Start by implementing the basics, including a well-optimized website and a detailed listing on Google’s My Business Profile platform (if you are operating a local business).

Optimizing your website through proven search engine optimization (SEO) tactics—such as including relevant keywords and building out detailed, useful pages—is an easy way to ensure that people can find your business. 

Plus, besides the time you spend writing the copy, it’s free! This is also extremely important for small businesses. Text Optimizer is a great tool to help you create a highly-relevant copy:

Encourage Cross-Business Collaboration

As a small business owner, you may not have a ton of employees but it is still important to keep them excited and motivated. Encourage your employees to submit content ideas, feature your team members on your social media profiles, let them contribute to your social media channels, etc.

Keep your team together even if you don’t have an office. Your employees need to be part of the family, and an effective communication strategy is vital for any business. Nextiva offers affordable small business communication solutions which will keep your team together:

3. Analyze & Adapt

Too often, businesses funnel big money into marketing and development without investing in detailed tracking and analytics. But you need both to thrive. 

Why does data matter so much for boosting sales? Because it allows you to measure—usually, in concrete numbers—exactly what’s working and what’s not working, and then it forces you to adapt accordingly. 

Be sure to track your results over time, so you know what strategies are working or if you need to pivot your plan. It is important to keep in mind seasonality, or any other factors, that naturally fluctuate your business, so you can accurately predict results.

Invest in Analytics Tools

Luckily, many digital marketing platforms include built-in analytics, but what about when you’re trying to track something that’s not single-platform based? Often, you can add tools and plug-ins to your website or store to keep track of where sales are coming from and other metrics. 

Using a comprehensive Rank Tracker that can connect many data points (rankings, traffic, conversions, etc.) is also essential:

Track All Demographics

As long as you have permission from your user or consumer, you can gather as much demographic information as possible. Pay close attention to patterns that emerge with regard to age, gender, geographic information, income, and education level. 

This will help you figure out exactly where to funnel your promotional dollars, including which social media platforms to advertise on and which affiliate websites or blogs to partner with.

Put Your Data to Use

What good is a fleshed-out set of data if you don’t put it to use? Make sure you’re using every single finding to keep your business agile, adjusting as needed to different consumer preferences and market trends. 

Be patient with your analytics, keeping a close eye but not being obsessive. In time, you’ll have a solid bank of information that will tell an obvious story about where you should take your business next.

Ask for Feedback and Focus on the Customer

A good sales strategy is one that serves both the seller and the consumer. As you’re going through your first year or two in business, make sure to always keep your ears open to feedback, focusing on specific ways you can improve the customer experience. 

Remember that happy customers tell their friends when they’re both satisfied and dissatisfied with a business, so keeping them smiling can help you grow your sales exponentially without you having to do anything at all!

User experience is a vital part of business success both on the web and in real life. If a customer had a positive experience and can leave a review, that will be invaluable when others are looking for similar products.

Positively interacting with customers and ensuring their satisfaction, will not only encourage them to return but also recommend your products to others.

Even though the Internet is getting super competitive, there are still a lot of opportunities to start a successful home-based business and set up a small business that will stand out. All you need is a plan, a solid technology partner and a good team!

The post 3 Steps to Sell More from Your Small Business Website appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

It’s getting harder to remember a time when the internet didn’t dominate the business landscape. In retail, entertainment, and many other industries, ecommerce and digital services have long surpassed their high-street counterparts. 

So, how exactly has ecommerce changed the way we do business? And, in turn, how has that changed the way we market? First, let’s look at how ecommerce affected the balance of the economy. Then we can start to understand why marketing has had to adapt to new digital techniques.

What is eCommerce and How Has it Impacted the Economy?

Since the early 2000s, the ecommerce market size has been growing rapidly. It only keeps accelerating, too. According to Insider Intelligence, US ecommerce sales are predicted to pass $1 trillion in 2022. Worldwide, they expect to see $5 trillion in ecommerce sales. 

Image sourced from McKinsey

As more businesses had success selling their goods and services online, others naturally followed. We have also seen a change in consumer attitudes as the convenience of online purchases proved popular. 

The fact that the global market size of ecommerce continues to grow reflects these changes. At the same time, advancements in logistics, distribution, and business technology continue to develop to support new ecommerce demands.

Moving Retail Online

When we think of ecommerce, the first thing that comes to mind is online retail. Consumer giants like Amazon have made online shopping fast, safe, and convenient. But small businesses have also found greater success by moving to ecommerce models.

That’s in part due to the greater reach of online channels. Social media and other sources have offered an inexpensive way for SMEs to reach a much wider audience. 

The Rise of On-Demand Entertainment

Growth in mobile device use has grown alongside ecommerce and digital services. Instant access to entertainment on the go is something that modern consumers have come to expect. 

This has led to the success of online subscription services in TV, gaming, and other entertainment. It also developed social marketing through sponsored, promoted, or monetized content on social video apps like TikTok or YouTube.

Small Business Opportunities

E-commerce gives small businesses a chance to compete with the marketing reach of much larger businesses. Through smart social media campaigns, SEO optimization, and other digital marketing techniques, small businesses can cut through the noise in competitive markets. 

Ecommerce Types

There are four distinct types of ecommerce businesses. Each has its own style of marketing. 

Image sourced from Digital Skill Blog

B2B

Businesses that sell directly to other businesses. These include SaaS companies like these providers of small business VoIP in Canada.  

B2C

Businesses sell directly to the customer. This could include online retailers or subscription services like Netflix. 

C2C

Customers selling to other customers. This includes the second-hand goods market and resellers operating through auction sites like eBay. 

C2B

Customers selling to businesses. This one sounds counter-intuitive, but what we’re talking about here is contract service provision. This can include freelancers, product testers, and so on.  

What is the Impact of Ecommerce on Marketing?

Marketing is nothing if not adaptive. As ecommerce has emerged and evolved, marketing has gone through many changes. Starting from simple banner ads and email campaigns, digital marketing has come to mean so much more.

The Decline of Traditional Marketing

As digital e-commerce marketing has grown, traditional marketing methods have fallen out of favor. They haven’t gone away entirely, though, and some businesses still make good use of TV, direct mail, SMS & sales calls, and even the good old billboard. 

New Marketing Channels

The decline in traditional methods was driven mainly by the growth of new online channels. These offer much higher reach at a relatively low cost. Social media sites, in particular, have allowed marketers to interact with their audience in new, more direct ways.

Customer Data & Efficient Targetting 

The most significant advancement in marketing from the rise of online culture is the use of customer data. This part of digital marketing is still advancing as new technologies like data analytics drive marketing insights.

Of course, customer feedback existed before the digital age. Yet, traditional marketing surveys had limited reach, and they could only tell you the customer’s direct opinion. Digital data is not only more accessible, but it also demonstrates customer behaviors. 

In analyzing these behaviors, marketers have found the greatest advantages in demographic targeting and customer engagement.

Free to use image sourced from Unsplash

10 Advantages of Ecommerce in Marketing

Why did ecommerce manage to overtake traditional retail and other markets? Well, there are some distinct advantages that ecommerce provides. 

1. Availability of data
2. Omnichannel marketing
3. Less physical restrictions
4. 24/7 sales & support availability
5. Global reach 
6. Digitization of products & media
7. Social & influencer marketing 
8. AI and advanced BI (Business Intelligence) technology
9. Marketing on the go
10. Marketing automation 

Whether it’s customer data at your fingertips, a global audience, or the ability to advertise straight to a customer’s mobile, ecommerce extends the reach of a business. That extends the reach of your marketing efforts, too. As your reach expands, your ability to target specific users or user groups increases as well.

Ecommerce Areas & Their Digital Marketing Techniques

Digital marketing and ecommerce are related, but they’re not the same. It’s more accurate to say that digital marketing evolved alongside ecommerce. Any business can use digital marketing, even if they only have a minimal online presence.

Website-Based Ecommerce Marketing

Services like Shopify UAE have made it simple for even small businesses to establish an ecommerce presence. These and larger online retailers tend towards SEO optimization as their main driver of traffic. 

SEO optimization is the process of making your site more visible in search engine rankings. It’s a cost-effective way to get your services in front of customers who are making either general or specific searches in your business area. 

On-site marketing is still a popular digital marketing tactic. It works on two levels as well. You can source inbound traffic to your website’s landing page through ads and backlinks on other websites and provide the same service to others to generate additional revenue. 

E-commerce businesses that are focused primarily on their website will also make on-site optimization a priority. Slow-loading websites are a major reason for high bounce rates in ecommerce. Your bounce rate increases by 32% as your page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds. That means it’s vital your marketing is backed up by good site performance.

Mobile Ecommerce & Mobile Marketing

Mobile apps and mobile browsing are other areas where digital marketing has had to adapt. Standalone mobile apps have led to the growth of personalized marketing via push notifications and in-app advertising. 

Personalization is based on analyzing a user’s habits and tailoring ads and offers to their preferences. This is a powerful tool for increasing ecommerce sales. Studies have found that up to 76% of customers are more likely to purchase from brands that personalize. 

Image sourced from McKinsey

More customers, especially in younger demographics, now choose to browse on mobile devices. That means that web-based e-commerce management has had to react to the shift as well. Mobile optimization is now as important to ecommerce software and sites as their desktop performance. 

Digital marketing for these sites can also take advantage of the benefits that come with personalization. On-site ads and offers, email campaigns, and more can be personalized by leveraging your customer data.  

Social Media Marketing 

Social media marketing is now used across all consumer-facing industries. Many B2B businesses maintain client links in part through social media networks like LinkedIn, too. There’s more to social media marketing than setting up a brand account and posting ads, though. 

Social listening (or social monitoring) is a popular way for marketers to gauge how their business is perceived. This indirect form of collecting customer feedback can lead to insights into your brand awareness and drivers of satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) in customers.

Influencer marketing, where brands work with online personalities, is also part of social media marketing. In most cases, brands target influencers with a highly relevant audience demographic or those with a wide reach (i.e., large follower counts). 

Social media has proven popular as a channel for customer communication, too. Many customers now prefer to reach out to brands with queries over channels like Twitter and Facebook. 

Customers expect quick responses, usually within 24 hours, when they reach out on social media. This means social media managers have become an important asset both for customer service and digital marketing purposes.

Free to use image sourced from Pixabay

Email Campaigns & Digital Marketing for Physical Businesses

Some businesses will never be able to do without a physical location. Even if this is you, you can still benefit from the advancements in digital marketing that have come with ecommerce. 

As we mentioned above, more traditional digital avenues like email marketing can benefit from personalization. Digital services have also integrated older methods of communication that remain popular, like VoIP with SMS functions. 

Final Thoughts: Ecommerce Has Changed Marketing For Good

Ecommerce and the rise of technology in everyday life have changed marketing forever. That doesn’t mean that marketing’s role has diminished, though. If anything, marketing, and especially digital marketing, are more relevant than ever.  

The post How Ecommerce Transformed Marketing  appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Unless you’re in an extremely niche market, then business is becoming increasingly competitive. Potential customers are looking for brands and products that really stand out from the rest of the pack. That means that your marketing teams need to be coming up with new ideas or using older ones to their optimum level to improve your brand’s social currency.

People have a tendency to trust the words of an employee of a brand less than those of their peers. After all, the employee is getting paid to say those positive things. In fact, 88% of consumers will trust an online review as much as a personal recommendation from friends or family. That means that good online testimonials can be a major business driver.

So, you can see the value of using testimonial advertising as a major part of your marketing tactics. Just what is testimonial advertising and what benefits does it offer your organization. How do you use it efficiently to improve your reach, awareness, and sales rates? Read on to find how testimonials can help you with anything from promoting your coaching services to writing a solar panel sales pitch.

What is testimonial advertising?

Simply put, testimonial advertising is using the words of your existing customers as part of your marketing efforts. As has been mentioned already, potential customers tend to trust reviews and recommendations from previous or existing customers so this is something you should focus on and use to your organization’s advantage. There are a number of Customer feedback tools available to help you generate these reviews.

For example, say you are marketing a VoIP service. While a potential customer may read your blurb, they are more likely to pay attention to your marketing if it contains reviews or quotes from real customers. Testimonial advertising has a more authentic feel to it than anything your professional marketers could write, making it a great way to connect with new customers.

Testimonial ads can take many different forms. How your marketing teams use customer feedback and recommendations can depend on the type of product you are marketing and what form the campaign takes. Some of those testimonial types you could consider using includes:

• Quotes from clients in any case studies produced by you or others.

• Images of reviews taken from your own site or 3rd party sites such as Amazon or Google.

• UGC (user-generated content) from any platform such as Instagram.

• Videos posted by customers on social media platforms such as Facebook.

• Positive discussions on forums or sites such as Quora.

Why are testimonial ads effective?

It all comes down to one word; trust. You want to build relationships with customers and the foundation of those relationships is that all-important trust. But it can be difficult to establish that trust and to then maintain it. With 88% of shoppers ready to trust what your previous customers say, testimonial advertising can suddenly become very important. It’s important to format your questions so as to get quality answers for feedback and testimonials.

When your marketing team extols the virtues of a cloud hosted PBX system, they may be being 100% honest but the perspective of customers is that your staff are paid to say those positive things. When the potential customers read what previous customers have thought, they will trust those words more and you can start building that relationship.

Video versus static testimonial advertising

There are two primary types of testimonial advertising. Which you choose, and where you use it, will depend on a number of factors such as the product you are promoting and the platforms you choose to promote that product on.

• Static ads: with this type of testimonial advertising, you are only using text and an image (or images). The image may be chosen by you or it may be part of the original testimonial from the customer. For example, a customer may have talked about their preferred client portal solutions. They may not have included an image of their choice so you could add one later.
• Video ads: These can be a great option as they add an extra layer of realism and are very hard to fake. The video may be of them using the product and showing what they love about it or it may be simply them talking about the product, the benefits they gained from it or the problems the product solved for them.

1. Static testimonial ads

These tend to be the most popular because they are quick and easy to produce while still being effective. All you need to produce one is a quote from the (happy) customer – though it is advisable to keep it fairly short; perhaps between 30 and 50 words. Add their name to the post and, as mentioned, a photo either from them or from yourself.

Static ads can be posted on any platform you use or you can use your most popular platform as a base and cross-post from there. The downside of using static testimonial ads is that their credibility can sometimes be questioned. After all, most people will just see something that Bob from Newark says, so how do they know that Bob is a real person?

2. Video testimonial ads

Video testimonials offer you a far higher level of credibility as they are more difficult to ‘fake’. There is an authenticity to video testimonial advertising that is lacking in static ads. When someone is talking directly to the camera, consumers can not only listen to what they say; they can also observe facial expressions and body language during the video too.

The other big advantage with video testimonials is that they can offer more information, even in a short video, than any static ad could ever achieve. For example, in a one-minute speech, the speaker could say anywhere from 120 to 200 words. Given we recommended a maximum of 50 words in a static ad, you can immediately see that videos offer far more scope.

Challenges of video testimonial advertising

Of course, video testimonials offer more challenges than a static ad. With the latter, all you need is a suitable quote from a satisfied customer (which may be as simple as a screenshot from a review site and an accompanying photo).

There are perhaps two major challenges when it comes to businesses adopting more video testimonial advertising. The first is cost (if produced in house) and the second is the logistics and time. If you are a small business, then you can consider purely user-generated content (with perhaps a few post-production tweaks) but larger organizations may want to go a more professional looking route.

However, when you see the many videos produced by ‘ordinary’ people online, you realize that many of them look great thanks to the budget or free filmmaking software available today. You only need to spend some time on TikTok to see the wide range of both marketing and fun videos being produced.

Even with the best looking customer-made video, you will likely want to add some finishing touches to it. After all, while the customer message is what is important, there are other considerations to take into account. And if you are asking customers to make video testimonials for you, you could provide a template much as you might use a digital agency proposal template within your business operations.

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Some of the things you may want to add in a post-production phase includes:

• Adding branding elements including logo and colors to the finished video so it is immediately identified with your business.
• The customer’s name (and title and company if you operate in the B2B market),

• Transcribing the speech in the video (which can help your SEO efforts) or using subtitles to add extra information.
• Background music (this should be thought out carefully and should complement the video so Norwegian Black Metal is probably not a good idea).
• Adding in extra information using slides, infographics, or similar.

So, as you can see, while more complicated, video testimonials can be far more effective than their static counterparts. And while many organizations may be worried about the costs of video testimonials, one study showed that 72% of marketerssaw ROIs of anywhere from 50-500% when using video testimonials as a marketing tool, and that also included improvements to their conversion rates.

The takeaway

There is no argument that customer reviews are credible and can help drive better lead generation and conversion rates. While your marketing team may write great copy and flawless product descriptions, having someone who has actually bought and used (and is satisfied with) your products say how happy they are can be a real gamechanger.

You have a lot of choice when it comes to sourcing testimonials; from casual discussions on Facebook to reviews left on independent third party sites. It’s how you use them that is the important factor. From a simple static testimonial used as a banner ad to a well-produced video that imparts information that a potential customer finds useful.

With increasing competition in the marketplace, marketers have to be increasingly more creative and often have to think about the box. Customer testimonials offer a rich source of material that praises your product or brand and that your marketing teams can use in various ways to get your message to your target demographics. We hope that this guide will help you to get more customer testimonials for your product or business.

The post What is Testimonial Advertising: Promote Your Business Through Customer’s Feedback appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

The big season is almost upon us. Is your small business ready?

It is harder and harder to compete with corporate websites with huge advertising budgets.

When just lots of consumers think the term “holiday sales” is synonymous with Amazon and Walmart, it is too challenging to get your products in front of buyers’ eyes.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday routinely transform the fate of otherwise struggling businesses from precarious to solidly profitable. Holidays are a time when people are looking to spend more than usual. 

Millions will shore up their savings year to have the money for the purchases they want. Large brands spend months strategizing the holiday season promotions they’ll roll out to maximize their sales.

Unfortunately, small (ecommerce) stores are frequently caught flat-footed. They don’t invest resources or time into getting their business well-positioned for the looming flood of customers. If large businesses cannot afford to ignore the season, neither can small ones.

Here are three steps content and SEO can help your holiday promotion and marketing efforts:

1. Identify New Seasonal Landing Pages to Put Together and Promote

Holiday season when everyone is busy buying gifts for everyone, including friends, family and obviously themselves, is the season of new unexpected searching trends to emerge. 

People start thinking about buying things differently: They buy not for a need of something, but to stand out and make the best gift.

SE Ranking keyword suggestion tool allows you to research those new buying decisions by allowing you to filter out words you cannot compete with and focus on your niche. You can also filter results by difficulty to find search queries with lower organic competition:

Once you have identified those search queries with big potential, create new landing pages of related products and link to those landing pages from across your site. 

This trick can work for both service- and product-based businesses, because holiday sales are done by all types of businesses these days. For service-based businesses, researching holiday searching trends and bundling services with related products will help boost sales and create word-of-mouth marketing opportunities.

Setting up these seasonal landing pages is also a great idea because this gives you more pages to promote on social media. These could be “collections” of products that would serve a specific holiday searching pattern and all of these could be linked off from the main “Christmas gift ideas” section. You can set these up with plugins for WordPress or “Collections” feature for Shopify.

Depending on the nature of your business, it may be a good idea to set up a separate mini site to make sure your main site remains focused. This idea makes sense when your holiday promotions and lists do not align well with your current brand and product positioning.

Setting up a separate project is quite affordable these days, even for small businesses. All you need is a new domain. You can host it on your current server, and use free CMS (e.g. WordPress) and free themes.

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2. Create Seasonal Content to Target Semi-Transactional & Informational Queries

Many of those search queries you’ll come across will be purely informational. Think about all kinds of DIY ornaments, costumes, packaging, etc. that is being researched prior to the holiday season. 

Informational search intent means a searcher is looking for answers to questions, tutorials and how-to videos without willing to buy anything.

Semi-transactional intent search intent refers to a searching journey that can actually result in a purchase, even though it was initially planned as a research rather than a buying process.

Both of these types of keywords are useful for boosting your holiday sales for a few reasons:

• People may buy even if they didn’t initially intend to buy (hello, holiday impulse shopping!)
• That traffic will enrich your data and grow your audience, so that you can re-engage those people with things like retargeting ads (i.e. ads targeting the past users of your site).
• This content brings brand awareness, especially if it attracts bloggers and journalists who can link to your site.

It all comes down to:

• How well your content engages your audience
• How well your content is optimized for conversions using contextual calls to action.

To give you just a quick of how content may turn readers into buyers, here’s two examples of contextual CTAs in action:

And here’s another example, only in SaaS industry:

Note how contextual CTAs in this example perfectly align with content on the page. That is exactly why you need to develop lead magnets for just about any content you put on your blog.

3. Identify Your Best Timing

Your own web analytics will give you lots of clues as to when your past-year’s holiday traffic started peaking. 

Google Trends is another great tool to identify the best timing for your seasonal content and its promo to start. For example, based on that tool, it looks like the interest in “ornaments” starts growing consistently mid-October, year after year:

Another tool that is helpful for picking your timing is Visualping that offers a cool SEO monitoring feature allowing you to monitor your competitors’ landing pages to be the first to know when they put up their holiday promos. 

With this trick, you’ll never be behind your competitors in starting your pre-holiday marketing.

Conclusion

Holiday season is overwhelming for small businesses trying to make the most of consumers’ hectic buying decisions. Discoverability becomes the most important marketing factor when urgent and impulse shopping drives consumers to buy the moment they see what they need (even if they didn’t know they needed it).

Holiday marketing starts with thinking about the products you want to be included in your promotion. Next, use your email list to reach out to existing customers with heads-up of what goodies are in store for them. By the time the big season arrives, you need to have all the assets and data ready to start marketing and remarketing your products to your current and future customers.

The impact of the holiday promotion could give your sales a momentum that lasts for months.

The post How to Use Content & SEO to Support Your Seasonal Marketing appeared first on DigitalMarketer.