The Found Gen

Marketing That Works.

blog

by

Are You Seeking the Right ROI?

How understanding ROI and setting correct expectations can play a critical role in your return on investment

Return on investment (ROI) is the measurement for the success of any investment that your business takes on – in marketing, training, software, hardware, even staples and paper, etc. It’s the benchmark for your bottom line. It tells you whether your investment was successful and how you might make future ventures in your business.

It’s great to be ambitious and continue to raise the bar in your business. Stagnation is the swamp that eventually swallows businesses whole. So, it’s appropriate to seek a high ROI.

But on the other hand, it’s critical that you set yourself up with realistic goals. Sure, everyone wants to increase their revenue by 10,000% but in the real business world – with real human customers and real-life constraints – this is not credible for most companies.

We all want our dollars turn into more dollars. How do we maintain that determined business drive while also creating realistic expectation on our ROI? And how do these expectations play a role in a successful marketing campaign?

Know thy self (and thy business)

To correctly gage ROI and to accurately predict the expected ROI you need to know how your business has historically performed. This takes detailed data over a substantial period of time and a correct analysis of this data (Blog: When Was The Last Time You Looked at Your Data?). You then take this data and decide where your marketing dollars are best spent.

For instance, if your business has seen a great ROI from email marketing campaigns but social media campaigns flopped, it’s not realistic to expect a 5x ROI from a social media campaign that has historically underperformed. You’ll either need to try a different approach or consider a different marketing avenue.

In a nutshell, you need to know your business and your goals in order to set a realistic expectation for your ROI.

Crunch the numbers

The standard ROI formula goes like this: Net return ÷ cost of investment x 100.

Seems straightforward enough but this formula is incomplete. Calculating ROI for marketing is notoriously difficult for a number of reasons. Huge corporations actually have customized complex formulas and algorithms that factor in any number of variables to accurately assess their marketing ROI.

You might think your ROI on a Google ad campaign is a simple formula but it can sometimes take months to see the full fruit of your marketing labors. Additionally some ROIs must take into consideration your business’s gross margin target, overhead expenses, cost-per-lead, and so much more.

The lesson is this: It’s never a good idea to invest blindly in anything. So, review your data, crunch the numbers and do your due diligence before setting goals.

Lifetime value

There’s another factor to consider in your ROI known as lifetime value. This is the value a customer brings to your business over their entire lifetime as your loyal supporter. It’s important not to get too fixated on that single transaction because a great business builds loyalty and trust, which leads to repeat business.

Let’s say you ran a marketing campaign that brought this hypothetical customer (let’s call her Kay) in through a pay-per-click ad. Kay factored into your ROI on that campaign, but she’s now a lifelong customer who will continue to invest in your business. Perhaps on the that first PPC ad the business only achieved a 2x ROI. Well, that’s not a great investment. But when you factor in the repeat purchases that Kay has made (and many more people like her), that ROI starts to grow to a 6x dividend as the months and years go by.

Give me the ROI numbers, already!

All right, all right. We know you’ve been waiting for a direct answer to ROI expectations but we wanted to make sure that the full scope of ROI calculations was understood first.

Here are the real numbers you can expect from a good marketing campaign.

You’re basically looking for a 3-5x ROI as a standard for a successful investment. So if you put in $1,000, you could expect $3-5,000 back.

This is a ballpark estimate because it really does vary by industry and it depends on the type of investment, each individual businesses’ benchmarks, bottom line and long-term business plan, in addition to any number of specific targets.

2x ROI is so-so, but for some businesses this can be a success depending on long and short-term goals. 10x ROI is fantastic and every would-be marketing guru wants to claim they can deliver this but it is rarely realistic.

Are you ready to see your best ROI? We can help you assess your business’s bottom line and create a campaign that can see an obtainable and valuable return on investment.

by

Marketing Is Not Sales. Here’s Why That’s Important.

Marketing and sales… They go together like a horse and carriage.

That doesn’t rhyme as well as Sinatra’s original version but the final line remains the same: You can’t have one without the other.

Marketing drives customers to sales and sales teams close the deal to generate the right ROI so that the marketing teams can keep their jobs.

Marketing is not sales. Sales is not marketing. But they are both crucial to the buyer’s journey and they are both dependent on each other.

For too long there has been this erroneous assumption that marketing and sales are two sides of the same coin. This not only does a disservice to the work and process of both marketers and salespeople but it creates an inaccurate notion of the purpose of marketing.

We’re here to set the record straight. And we’re also here to broker a peace treaty between marketing and sales because, ultimately, we need both for our businesses to be successful.

Awareness, Consideration, Conversion (or Decision)

Known as the marketing/sales funnel or the buyer’s journey and also known to have a hundred different variations, this model breaks down the road map of how a prospect becomes a customer. We like the simplified version of 3 steps: Awareness, Consideration and Conversion.

It’s a funnel that captures interested audiences until finally leading them to make a purchase. It’s important to visualize this process because, just like the shape of the funnel, the jobs of the marketing team vs the sales team become narrower as the potential buyer progresses on their journey. And the narrower it gets, the closer we get to differentiating marketing vs. sales.

Awareness

Building brand awareness is the primary job of marketing. This awareness leads to engagements, which leads to trust. Through content, social media, blogs, newsletters, paid advertising, and all those other nifty tactics, marketers cast a wide net to interest potential customers. Marketing provides relevant information, fosters conversations and communicates the value of a service or a product. It is as simple as that. But it’s also quite complex.

Building awareness with marketing isn’t just about throwing out a campaign blindly into the internet-ether and hoping for the best. It involves tons of research, evaluation and, most importantly, knowing your customers. When all this is done properly, with the right marketing tactics and a well-designed content marketing campaign, you capture the customers that will actually gain value from your brand. This will then lead them to…

Consideration

Here, the potential customer has become what’s called a “warm lead,” meaning they’re qualified, close to saying yes, but they need a little more information and convincing. The marketing team steps in again here to give even more targeted materials. Perhaps this is a personalized email or maybe it means engaging more on social media. These days this often ends up as the prospect researching and digging in on their own, most likely by reading your blogs or examining your product or service through reviews.

We’re still in the realm of marketing here. But as the customer gets closer and closer to making a decision, that’s when sales steps in to take over.

Conversion/Decision

Finally, we have reached the tip of the funnel. The customer has decided that they must have your product or service and they are compelled to make a purchase. In traditional businesses this could mean a salesperson stepping in and closing the deal, but more often these days it’s a matter of putting an item in a cart (either physically or online) and making the purchase.

If a more traditional sales model is taking place, then it’s absolutely crucial that the final stage in the buyer’s journey leaves them feeling good. If a buyer is happy with their decision and has a great experience, they will go on to become a loyal follower and even refer others.

The moral of the story?

While marketing and sales are intertwined, they have different roles and serve different purposes. Marketing is creating interest and awareness in goods or services. Sales takes these interested leads, reinforces the value of goods or services and converts the prospects into customers.

Marketing needs sales and sales need marketing. They rely on each other, so the best business will create a relationship between marketing and sales teams to best support the other and to let each team do what they do best.

For a smaller business or a single owner entrepreneur this means a bit of mental aerobics. But the primary consideration is to not turn marketing into icky sales drivel. Let marketing do what it does best: creating awareness and giving customers information. Then when it’s time to make a sale, seal the deal and leave your customers feeling fantastic about their decision.

Now, how do you feel? Confused? Amped? Let us know how we can help you master your marketing strategy so you can make the sales.

by

But No One Reads Email Anymore Anyway…

…And other myths about email marketing

This is the year email dies…Again?

So, you’ve heard email marketing is dead…

Yeah, so have we. Actually we’ve been hearing that every year for the past decade. Here’s the thing with this one. These so-called industry experts haven’t been right any of the past years and they’re not going to be right this year. Email is still very much alive.

Ready for the numbers?

Email marketing has an average return of $54 for every $1 you spend.

For B2B companies, 77% use a newsletter as part of their content marketing strategy and 59% say email is the most successful channel for generating revenue.

For B2C businesses, 59% of consumers surveyed say that emails influence their purchasing decisions. And if you’re an eCommerce business, 42.3% of Americans say they subscribe to emails to get deals and about 1 in 3 of those people will purchase.

Email marketing is also one of the best marketing tools for engagement. On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the engagement rate averages at less than 0.6%. The average open rate of emails is 22.86% with a click-through rate of 3.71%. In fact, email subscribers are 3.9x more likely to share content on social media.

Read ‘em and weep, naysayers. Email marketing isn’t going anywhere. In fact…

COVID made email marketing more important than ever

What do businesses do when a worldwide pandemic threatens to shut them down? They go to email! 2020 made email marketing rise to the top of content marketing campaigns for companies across nearly every industry. 2021 is looking to continue the email marketing trend, so you better get on the train.

People read emails, they just get A LOT of emails

Over 205 billion emails are sent each day and this number is expected to only increase. While COVID brought something of a revival to email marketing, it has now become an increasingly competitive market. Your emails need to be savvier than ever. You can keep ahead of the crowd with personalization, the assistance of AI technologies, automation, killer (and optimized) design and clear calls to action. Of course, you can’t forget the most important part: Content!

One of the greatest things about email marketing is that the fundamentals still hold true. It’s still all about getting the right message to the right person at the right time.

With this principle as your guiding light you are on the right path. Add some brilliant AI technologies that feature behavior-based personalization and automation, create relevant, dynamic content and continue to foster a relationship with your customers and you can’t go wrong.

Viva email!

by

Are You Tracking Traffic to Your Blog Properly?

A successful blog can mean different things to different people and businesses. One company might be seeking higher engagement and PR. Another might be solely interested in converting leads. While another company may want to build a loyal following.

Regardless of your niche, industry or area of expertise, everyone needs the data that will tell them whether or not their blog is successful based on their key performance indicators (KPIs). With all readers coming to your site, engagements and leads, you are sitting on a treasure trove of data that can further fuel your business. You need to make sure you’re tracking all that priceless data correctly.

Welcome to the wonderful world of blog analytics.

Analytics can help you track your impact with impressions, clicks and click-through rates. They can help you understand your traffic performance, your authority, your readership engagement and your lead generation.

Here are the key tracking methods you can use to measure your blog’s success.

Page views and visits

A visit measures the number of times your site was seen by a user. Any time a user views a page on your website this qualifies as a page view. This can tell you how many people are visiting your site, what pages they’re visiting and how your inbound links may be assisting  or hindering them from more page views.

Search impressions

These come from the number of times your post has been seen in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The higher you rank, the more traffic will be driven to your site. If you’re ranking low, it’s time to review your SEO.

Clicks

It’s great the people are searching for your topic, but you need them click. the more clicks, the more traffic. The more traffic, the more potential customers.

Click-through rate

The click-through rate measure the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. A high percentage means your impressions are doing great. Even if your post had low traffic, if your click-through rate is high, you’re doing something right.

Traffic by channel

The channel refers to the path your readers take to visit your content. This could be coming from social media, email campaigns, landing pages or search engines. This can tell you which channel is most successful for your business.

Time on page vs. bounce rate

You want your readers to spend as much time on your page as possible. Analytics can measure the average time people spend on your site. This can tell you how engaging and relevant your content is. On the other hand, bounce rates refer to people coming to your site or page, finding nothing worth their interest, and leaving. Both metrics will help you gage whether your content is resonating with your audience.

Top traffic posts

By seeing which posts gained the most traffic you can get a better understanding of what content your audience wants. This can help you tailor future blogs to meet your customers’ needs.

The list could go on… But we don’t want to wear you down with too much tactical analytical talk.

We hope you get the point. Analytics are crucial measurements to help you determine the effectiveness of your blogs. Analytics will also help you build your bottom line when it comes to your marketing strategy and budget. DO NOT skip analytics or simply gloss over your indicators. This is priceless data that your business needs.

And we didn’t want to leave you without some tools for tracking your traffic.

Here are some of the best tools for measuring analytics.

  • Google Analytics
  • Tableau
  • Momently
  • HubSpot Marketing Hub
  • SEMrush
  • Google Search Console
  • Visitor Analytics
  • Clicky Analytics
  • Bitly

We wish you the best in digging through your data. If the numbers are overwhelming you, we can help!

by

Is Your Blog Set Up For Readership?

A beautiful blog with no audience is like sending your great American novel out into space. Maybe someone someday will find it and appreciate it’s relevancy and artistry. Maybe not. But the odds are stacked against you in this noisy word.

If you’re writing a blog for the pure pleasure of putting words out onto the internet, then go for it. Just don’t expect much response. But if you’re writing blogs as a business because you’re trying to gain traction, find customers and grow your brand, then you need a more targeted approach.

You need to set your blog up for your readership.

Here’s how…

Know your readers (AKA your ideal customers)

If you don’t know who you’re writing your blog for, you’re essentially writing for no one. If you think you can just write great content and expect the right people to find it, sorry, but that’s not how this game works. You need to know your audience, down to the color of the buttons on their shirts (or maybe they hate buttons and swear by athleisure wear).

Start asking some big questions, then get more and more narrow in your research. You can’t be everything to everyone. Better to be everything to a select group of people (as in, your target audience).

Who are they? Get to know them inside and out. What do they do? Profession, motivations, career goals and ambitions. What do they want? Know their hopes and dreams, their needs, their pain points and the questions that they mull over all day long. No detail is too small when it comes to researching your readers.

Give your readers the content they want

Once you’ve figured out who your readers are, the next step is learning what they want from the content that you provide. This is about giving them both the content that they are searching for, as well as the form of content that they prefer.

Start by making a list of important, relevant topics about your business that you are an expert in. Next, find the keywords that fit in with those topics. You can use sites like Quora, Answer the Public or Google’s Keyword Planner to see who is searching for what and how often.

Next, find out what kind of content your readers prefer. Do they like infographics, videos, memes, data-driven research, inspirational content, industry insights or timely news? Dig deep into the research and you will come out with the form and the content that your readers will devour.

Be consistent

Once your readers start coming to you, they want to know they can depend on you. If you only blog once every thirteenth moon, they’re going to go somewhere else for what they need. If you blog in batches and dump out content they won’t know how to sift through the relevant information. Pick a schedule and stick to it (you better have a stellar content calendar!). That way your readers can know what to expect. They can subscribe to your blog or newsletter and look forward to your insights.

Optimize

People like their blogs to look a certain way. Search engines like optimized blogs more as they crawl your site and rank you in their results. Yes, this applies to SEO but there’s a lot more to it. This includes but is not limited to:

  • Meta titles and meta descriptions
  • Keywords in post title and subheadings
  • Internal links
  • Credible outbound links
  • Customizing the URL
  • Crafting an engaging title
  • Responsive design
  • Avoiding jargon
  • Format with shorter paragraphs
  • Image alt-text
  • Offering share buttons
  • Using strong CTAs

Synchronize with social media

When you post new blogs, make sure you are coordinating their launch with a social media campaign. Additionally, you can use snippets from your blogs as content in your socials. The big idea: when you create great content, you need to share it and let people know how it can help them. Get them to click, get them to engage and get them to share it with their followers.

Good things take time

One final piece of blogging wisdom: give it time. Blogs are not meant to be a get rich quick scheme (no matter how many big shots out there are claiming otherwise). Blogs take time to write well, they take time to rank on search engines and it takes time to build your credibility. But if you follow all of the steps above and you stay CONSISTENT, you will see results.

So, how about it? Are you ready to revitalize your blog? Or are you ready to launch a new blog with a systematic and targeted approach? Awesome!

Let us know how we can help.

by

Social, Blogging, Email – Oh My

You have about 1,001 things to do for your business. We get it. You’ve got orders to fill, clients’ demands to meet, emails to respond to and make sure you don’t forget to eat all day.

Multitasking is just the beginning of your business juggling act.

And then you’ve got the content to create, post and coordinate in a seamless content marketing plan. How can you possibly make it all work?

Well, no one ever said running a business was easy, but we have some tips that will make your content campaign run a little smoother and more effective. And, most importantly, lighten your workload.

How’s your content marketing plan, really?

What’s your content achieving without an overarching strategy to create and disseminate your message? It’s time to take a good, hard look at your content marketing plan. Answer some of these questions about your mission and goals: Who is your target audience? What content and what platforms will you use to reach them? What problems are you solving for your target audience?

Then you need a way to measure your success. Set your key performance indicators (KPIs) to gain evaluative measurements on how your strategy is performing.

Lastly, you need to know where to place that great content to get the best results. Find out where your customers are. Think strategically and identify the channels and resources available to you to best amplify your content.

Outsource

The most important thing you can do to take some of the weight off of your shoulders is to outsource. There are literally thousands of companies and individuals that specialize in content generation and meeting your marketing needs. Of course, finding the right content marketing strategist can be easier said than done.

You need to find someone who can speak in your brand’s voice, understand your industry and write content that provides provide value. When content provides value, it doesn’t feel like a marketing ploy. It’s communicating authentically, building trust along the way. And people do business with people they trust.

Unless you have the time available to create all your business’s content (which is full-time job and then some), you should absolutely, unequivocally outsource your content creation.

Schedule it out

Got a content calendar? You better. Without a detailed and fully fleshed out content calendar, you’re essentially tossing your content into the void and hoping for the best. You’re running the risk of wasting all your content with haphazard scheduling. Plus, you’re making the management of your entire strategy more difficult than it needs be.

A content calendar creates organization, consistency and quality, plus it gives you a way to further improve your strategy through metrics. You can better predict the seasonality and trends of your industry and set your business up for long-term success.

Synchronize

A content calendar will help a ton with coordinating your various content marketing campaigns by fostering an underlying strategy of synchronizing your content. Blogs can build off of each other and create a system for internal links that are great for SEO and keep the customers spending time on your site. Your social campaign can be fueled by your blogs and vice versa. Newsletters and blogs can boost and add to each other’s content. All those blogs you’re writing could build up to an eBook, case studies or white papers.

Creating all this content in a vacuum is not effective. Let your content come together to create an overarching strategy. This saves time and makes for a more effective campaign.

Sometimes managing your content can feel overwhelming. Take it off your plate. You have more important things to do. You should be focusing on the things that you do best, the things that bring you joy.

Let us help you create a content marketing strategy and manage all your content. You’ll breathe easier knowing that your content is in caring and professional hands. And you’ll free up time to focus on building up other aspects of your business.

Let us show you how we can help.