The 6 Worst Guest Post Pitches You Could Send an Editor

Guest blogging can be a great way to build and grow your business. It’s a way to get your work in front of a new audience and it also helps you to build authority in your niche. It’s actually the most powerful and ethical link building tactic and if you know how to write a perfect guest post pitch, you will be getting some great results.

However, if guest blogging is done incorrectly, it can be quite ineffective and harmful to your brand. Several big blogs have stopped accepting guest posts. Why? Simply because with Google’s latest search algorithm changes, more and more people are sending guest post pitches while the quality of pitches is declining. That makes it much harder for bloggers to find quality content for their blogs.

That’s the reason I wrote this post – to show you how not to do guest posting and how to do it the right way so you can land some guest posts on popular and high-quality websites.

Let’s go over some of the worst guest post pitches that editors get, and how you can avoid making those mistakes.

1. Spammy guest post pitches

Sincerity is always a good idea.

One of the worst types of guest post pitches that editors get is from people who basically portray the following message:

“I didn’t read a single thing about you or your blog, but I have been following your website. I’m just trying to find quick and easy ways to get a link.”

Huh? That sounds like spam and that’s exactly where that type of email will go.

If you can’t spend at least 10 minutes writing an email that clearly outlines your guest posting idea, then why should editors take time to reply to a spammy email? Before you even sit down to draft the email, you need to do your research on the site so you can personalize and create a pitch that stands out.

If not, you’ll end up sending an automated pitch which is quite easy to spot as the language comes across as a “salesy” template without a detailed description of the guest posting idea. Not to mention that copying and pasting a template for a guest post pitch to hundreds of sites is impersonal.

Consider that editors read a LOT of pitches. So, if you got your template off the internet and just plugged in their name and yours, they’ve seen it before.

Another spammy tactic is sending an email multiple times in a short time period. For example, one pitcher sent an email four times in a three-hour period, with messages like, “did you see it? When are you going to publish it?” Furthermore, they proceeded to CC the entire department with, “help! she’s not replying, can you get in touch with her.”

That tactic is spammy and won’t get you the response you want. Our advice? Draft the perfect email and be patient. Remember that editors get hundreds of emails every day.

Here is what you should do to avoid coming across as spammy and automated:

• Sit down and write a real email. Editors don’t like replying to bots (and we’re guessing you don’t either).
• “Hello friend” is not an ideal greeting when you can easily find an editor’s name. An editor’s face and name are usually plastered all over their blog. So, if you’re submitting a guest post pitch to a blog that is operated by a few people, find the most suitable person and address them specifically. (If you’re not going to look around a site to figure out who you should be addressing, then your pitch isn’t genuine.)
• You shouldn’t talk about content generically in your guest post pitch when you can cite an article or a few, that you have written.
• Pitch on a topic that is related to the site.
• Don’t send emails that don’t say anything at all, like: “Hi, I want to contribute. Best, XYZ”

2. Poor quality pitches

The second worst type of guest post pitch an editor gets is one that claims that their posts are of good quality while their pitch is of poor quality.

You know, ones like these:

Example 1

Example 2

Editors sincerely understand that we all need to start somewhere as they were in that position once. They do take that into consideration, but they expect you as a potential guest blogger, to send a quality pitch with some references to your previous writing.

The aim is to see evidence of your writing and industry expertise; and your credibility.

Simply put, if your writing is subpar in your pitch, then editors won’t want to see your work.

Additionally, perhaps shockingly, some bloggers send drafts that contain 500 links that are completely unrelated to the topic. That is a surefire way of getting your pitch automatically rejected.

Here’s what you can do to prevent this from happening:

• Take time to draft and proofread your pitch (for grammatical errors). Ensure that it comes across as professional. (Tools like Grammarly can be of great help)
• Ask someone else to read your email before you send it.
• Include links to your previous writing. The goal is to provide proof that you can add value to their site and establish your credibility.
• Don’t state that you’re an expert in everything – nobody is an expert in everything.
• Don’t pitch 20 variations of the same topic. Each topic must be unique.

Note: If you pitch well but submit a poor or excessively promotional post, it won’t get published. Trust us, nothing angers blog owners like bad writing and promotional articles laden with backlinks. Most bloggers actually won’t post any articles with those characteristics. They prefer well-written and authentic posts that they don’t have to spend time proofing.

There is a common misconception that your guest posts don’t have to be as good as the regular posts on your site because the primary reason for guest blogging is to get people on your site to consume your higher-quality content.

That’s a problem.

That strategy is insurance for not getting another guest post opportunity on that site ever again. The blog owner may not even bother promoting those posts. Plus, people who read your content may not even go to your site.

So, if you’re not going to write a high-quality post, don’t even bother. Always write your best or nothing at all.

How can you prevent that from happening?

• Don’t submit keyword-heavy posts with minimal length. Google won’t even accept it.
• If you can’t write your own guest posts, hire a professional blogger/writer to write engaging content for you. Websites like Upwork, Fiverr and PeoplePerHour are great places to find skilled writers.

Alternatively, you can hire a content marketing agency with experience in your niche. (A content marketing agency is a way to go if you want someone to handle the outreach process for you.)

3. Money, Money, Money

Money talks but not to everyone – especially editors who care about the quality of their content.

So, imagine you’re an editor and you receive the following pitch…

“Hi,

During my research, I found your blog on Google.

I need a couple of my unique posts on your website and I will send you payment via PayPal.

I have a good team of UK and US writers that will write good posts for your website. How much do you charge?

Look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best regards,

Paul”

OK, the first question that probably comes to your mind is, “why would any editor accept payment for subpar content to be placed on their site?” They already put their reputation on the line by giving you a platform to reach their audience, and that’s enough for them.

How do you avoid this mishap?

• Don’t offer payment to any blog in your guest post pitch.
• Quality pitches and quality content sells – that should be your currency.

Keep in mind that this is the first interaction you have with an editor of a particular site, so you need to remember proper etiquette. You’re not doing them a favor by paying them or not charging them.

4. Ignoring guest posting guidelines

Most blogs that you pitch have guidelines for guest blog posts. Some are extensive while others are vague, but they provide you with the necessary information before submitting a pitch to them.

If you don’t read the guidelines, you’ve already started off on the wrong foot. Some websites may even have a separate email address for pitches, a subject line they want you to use, specific formats to follow or guidelines for the topics.

Beyond the guidelines, there are specific emails to send pitches to. Not doing your research and sending your pitch to the wrong email or at the wrong time is one of the worst mistakes that people who pitch guest posts make.

Another common mistake in ignoring guest posting guidelines is pitching an article for the wrong domain. For example, the domain for pitching guest posts to GetResponse is blog.getresponse.com versus getresponse.com – one of them is the blog and the other is the main product page. They receive a lot of emails with people wanting to contribute to their main product page. Those pitches automatically get rejected. Moral of the story – make sure you read the guest posting guidelines, send your pitch to the right email address and offer to write for the right domain.

Back to guest posting guidelines… Here is how to avoid sending a pitch that doesn’t adhere to a specific site’s guidelines:

• For each pitch you send, do your research. Find out who your audience is and how your pitch will impact their site. If they have a similar article to the one you’re pitching, suggest a different topic that will fit well with their brand and yours. If your blog posts do not adhere to what the website stands for and other articles on their site, then your pitch won’t fit in and won’t be accepted.
• Read the guidelines twice and adhere to them. Knowing the guest posting guidelines is the first step to pitching to a blog. It will show editors that you’ve taken the time to research their website. Just like that, your pitch becomes more appealing.

5. Pitches that don’t provide tangible information

Another bad guest post pitch example is the ones that don’t provide any tangible information. They expect that they’re doing editors a favor by pitching them content; and that editors should, in return, Google them, do their due diligence and find out more about them online.

Well, no editor has the time to do that. Remember that they’re the ones doing you a favor and giving you a platform to expand your audience.

How can you avoid falling into that trap?

• Introduce yourself and talk about what you do in a couple of sentences.
• Provide a link to your Twitter, LinkedIn or blog profiles so they can learn more about you and your writing.
• The key is to give editors a good understanding of who you are and why they should consider you to write for them in a few sentences.
• Put forward your post suggestion in a detailed body paragraph. Get into the meat of it – talk about what problem(s) it solves, the questions it will answer and your research sources.

6. Demanding to be published

Last but not least, demanding to be published is a common mistake that a lot of guest post pitchers make. Remember that editors are doing you as much a favor as you are adding value to their website. If they deem your pitch to be of quality and feel that it would add value to their site, great!

If not, it just means that your pitch wasn’t good quality or that your ideas or work aren’t properly aligned with the goals of their site.

In that case, don’t send an email to an editor demanding that they publish your work. For example, one pitcher sent the following emails to an editor, “Hi, here’s my pitch, edit it” and “publish my guest post.”

*Crickets* and then right to the spam folder. It’s a surprisingly common mistake that you should avoid.

Wrapping Up

Pitching guest posts is the trickiest part of guest blogging. Especially if you are pitching to a large publication or one you have never had a connection with.

Google has made it quite clear that guest blogging just for links is not cool. That’s why guest blogging has a reputation for being spammy.

You should instead focus on using guest posting as a way to create interesting content for readers and to generate brand awareness. When you create good information for your audience, your guest posting efforts will generate good traffic and leads.

We hope this post helps you avoid the all too common guest post pitching errors that a surprisingly large number of marketers and bloggers make.

The good news is that you can minimize the potential for errors and maximize your chances of getting that much-coveted guest posting opportunity if you follow these best practices.

Guest author: Nikola Banicek is an internet marketing specialist at Point Visible, a marketing agency providing custom outreach and link building service. He’s a laid-back guy with experience in PPC, copywriting, and project planning. When he’s not working, he’s either gaming, watching football or anime.

The post The 6 Worst Guest Post Pitches You Could Send an Editor appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/worst-guest-post-pitches/

How to Drive More Business With Mobile App Optimization

It used to be the case that the “mobile web” was almost entirely separate from the “main” part of the Internet.

This was back when you might try to get online from a Motorola flip phone, entering a web address that started with WAP. The Wireless Application Protocol resulted in “web pages” that were really just strings of text you could navigate through for basic information like weather and sports scores.

The “mobile web” of today, of course, is a far cry from those early days, which makes it even more surprising why so many companies haven’t learned to fully embrace (and capitalize on) the mobile experience.

Mobile App vs. Mobile Web

The truth of the matter is that more people are spending time going online via their smartphones and tablets than they are through their laptops and desktop computers.

Given this, many brands assume that they have their bases covered if they offer a mobile-friendly website… but, that’s just part of the equation.

Even when you look at giants in the industry like YouTube and Amazon, actually using their mobile websites isn’t really the best possible user experience. And, because these experiences aren’t ideal, it is likely that they are missing out on valuable user interactions (including product purchases, in the case of an eCommerce portal like Amazon) because people on their phones just don’t want to bother.

You’ve likely noticed, either consciously or unconsciously, that there are several areas where mobile apps are preferable over the equivalent mobile web experience. Of course, as a business, you really should be offering both, and the overall mobile strategy for your brand should encompass both points of contact.

Think about the last time you opened up the Amazon shopping app on your iPhone or Android phone. If you’re a frequent shopper of the site, you’ve likely at least perused through the vast catalog on your mobile device. Now, think about the last time you actually tapped in “amazon.com” in your mobile web browser and looked around the site that way. It’s probably a remarkably rare occurrence, if it has ever happened at all.

A mobile-optimized website – which should really be offering a perfectly responsive design that loads quickly and features “thumb-friendly” navigation – is essential, but it is not sufficient on its own.

In order to succeed as a business, in order to capitalize on greater opportunity, your brand needs to have a mobile app. And it needs to be a good one.

Absolutely, there are simple tools out there that can effectively translate a mobile website into a simple mobile app, but that’s also not enough. This is especially true when it comes to opportunities to leverage mobile-specific features, like instances where the user may benefit from being able to use their device’s camera or location tagging or integration with other mobile apps.

Once an app is installed on a mobile device, it is much more likely that a user will choose to interact with that app than they are to open up their mobile web browser and seek out your website through their bookmarks (if they chose to bookmark your site at all). The app icon is there, clearly visible, so even if the user doesn’t choose to interact with your app daily, the branding is always there and this helps tremendously with brand recognition and retention. The app icon serves as a reminder of who you are and what you offer.

Once you have a mobile app, here are a few things you need to be doing to optimize it for user experience and business outcomes.

Tracking app ratings and reviews

How do you convince users to download and install your mobile app in the first place? Just as with so many other aspects of your business, your decisions here need to be data-driven. With a comprehensive suite like AppFollow, you get an all-one-one management service that can handle everything to do with driving growth and monitoring your app.

This involves keeping tabs on all the most important metrics, in one place, including reviews and ratings, as well as downloads and revenue.

When you monitor those ratings and reviews, you can be much more effective at responding in as timely a fashion as possible. Customer service is critically important, and these early reviews can also reveal potential pain points within your app that you can address in your next release or update.

Competitive analysis

As its name implies, AppFollow also allows you to follow and compare your app against competitors. Particularly when you take advantage of consolidated competitor insights, you gain the ability to tap into potential areas for growth in ways you may have overlooked. This lets you discover worldwide trends, for example, and track the apps that are being featured in the respective app stores. You can even get notified up to 24 hours before your app gets featured, in case you want to make any of the necessary arrangements to fully capitalize on such a huge opportunity. This, in turn, can lead to even greater app visibility and higher conversion rates.

Mobile app optimization also means streamlining your workflow. The whole point of having a comprehensive solution is that it saves you the time of having to bounce between different applications in service of maximizing your app’s reach and impact.

AppFollow can integrate with several services you may already be using, making it easier to deal with user issues and track your app performance. You can respond to app reviews with Slack or Zendesk, for instance, or receive game sales reports delivered to your Discord account. You can even have Trello cards created automatically for each app review, ensuring they receive the attention and go through the process they deserve.

App store optimization

It’s important to recognize that while some app store optimization (ASO) techniques and best practices are generally applicable across the board, it’s equally important to recognize that each niche or target market may require slightly different tactics as well.

If you’re in the business of publishing mobile games, for instance, then tapping into something like Lab Cave by Fibonad might make a lot of sense. The more gaming-centric company has iterated over 300 games, working hard on improving app visibility and conversion rates in such a competitive space.

The focus here isn’t necessarily on being as responsive as possible to ratings and reviews, or with monitoring keywords for optimization purposes. Not completely. Instead, a big part of this process has to do with the actual launch and publishing of mobile games in the first place.

A game development studio may know how to create a great game, but it takes a great publisher to ensure the game gets into the right hands (and as many hands as possible). This expands into monetization and marketing, which lend themselves to even further analytics, particularly as they relate to ad mediation for ad-supported mobile games. This is one of the most effective ways of growing your bottom line given your existing user base.

Driving downloads through search ads

The other side of the ad equation involves running ads of your own to drive downloads and installs of your mobile app. Again, optimization goes a very long way here and your decisions need to be data-driven.

SearchAdsHQ is an Apple Search Ads Partner, giving you access to new features and improving your overall experience so that you can manage your search ads campaign as quickly, as easily, and as efficiently as possible.

Data is inherently dynamic and bridging the gap between the two sides is really how you’ll best be able to grow your business. You need to optimize for keywords, impressions and taps, but you also need to ensure that those taps lead directly to the ROI as measured through paid subscriptions, purchases, registrations, and other actions that feed directly into your bottom line.

As these two sides can be suitably integrated and connected through SearchAdsHQ, you can trace a user’s path from the banner tap through to the desired in-app action, not one that leads to app abandonment.

A complete process requires a complete solution

To fully take advantage of the huge upside of mobile apps, you really need to look at every step along the process. It starts with recognizing the power and influence that a mobile app can have, particularly in regards to the benefits a mobile app can have over an equivalent mobile web experience. A mobile app provides a much more direct line of communication with the end user, one that leads to greater and more frequent engagement, as well as a better user experience overall.

At the same time, a terrific mobile app in isolation isn’t going to do you much good. By leveraging app store optimization (ASO) tools like AppFollow and Lab Cave, you stand to improve your app’s discoverability in the respective app stores. By keeping a close eye on user reviews and ratings and by monitoring the featured apps for your chosen category or niche, you can propel your app to the top of the charts and skyrocket your weekly install numbers. You should increase user engagement and track the ideal conversion paths for your search ad campaigns, too. It really is a comprehensive process, end to end.

If your company doesn’t already have a mobile app with a defined purpose and objective, both in terms of usefulness to the user and driving more business and growing your bottom line, then you’re missing out on a potentially incredible upside. A great mobile app is a powerful investment for all business of all sizes. And it’s an investment that will surely pay off in spades if you play it right.

Guest author: Zac Johnson is a world-renowned blogger and entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in the online marketing space and has helped his readers generate millions of dollars online. He shares his story and guidance at ZacJohnson.com

The post How to Drive More Business With Mobile App Optimization appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/mobile-app-optimization/

The 4-Step Process to Set Up an eCommerce Marketing Funnel

Not everyone who hears about your brand will want to purchase your products right away. Customers want to know more about your brand and what you have to offer. Before they make a purchase, they go through a whole buying journey.

To understand your customer’s buying journey, it’s important to understand the eCommerce marketing funnel.

In this article, we’ll take a look at what an eCommerce marketing funnel is and how you can leverage one to your advantage.

What is an eCommerce marketing funnel?

An eCommerce marketing funnel is designed to illustrate the route customers take while making a purchase. It follows the customer’s journey right from the time they become aware of a product to the time when they make a purchase.

It’s a concept that gives you insights into the customer’s psyche. You can also use the funnel to understand the concepts of cross-selling, upselling, subscription-based models, and customer retention.

Image Source: Freshworks

The essence of marketing lies in knowing which phase of the marketing funnel a particular customer is in. Based on that, it’s important to send the right message.

To understand how to convince potential customers to buy your products, you need to find answers to the following questions:

• In the buyer’s cycle or the marketing funnel, which stage are they in?
• What are the major problems they face?
• How can your product solve their problem?
• Why should they choose you over your competitors?

Having a clear answer to these questions will market your product to your customers. Not just that, you’ll also know how to convince them to take the desired action.

Steps to build your own eCommerce marketing funnel

If you run an eCommerce site, you should know how to build your own marketing funnel. It can help you boost sales. Let’s take a look at what you need to do at each stage.

1. Awareness Stage

At this stage, your potential customers have a problem that they are looking to solve. You need to find them and convince them that you can solve their issues in the best possible way. For this, you need to make them aware of your services, products, and your brand.

However, some customers may already be aware of your existence. It could be through a friend’s recommendation, social media, or maybe a simple Google search.

For any eCommerce business, the ultimate goal is to draw in as many people as possible in this stage. This stage is at the top layer of the funnel.

During the awareness stage, your job is to inform and educate potential customers about your brand. Don’t try to make a hard sell. All you need to do is to give information and advice to your potential customers.

Here are some of the ways you can increase your brand awareness and reach out to a broader audience:

• Content Marketing: You can use blog posts, infographics, GIFs, videos, podcasts, and more to improve your visibility and awareness.
• Social Media Marketing: Make social media profiles on multiple platforms to reach out to as many people as possible.
• Influencer Marketing: You should collaborate with the top influencers in your niche to gain credibility along with visibility. To find the right influencers, you could use a platform like Influence.co.
• SEO: Before you create your content, invest some time in finding out what people are searching for. Based on that, optimize your content to improve your rankings on SERPs.

2. Interest Stage

During the interest stage, potential customers are already considering buying your product. They are interested in your brand’s story and products. They want to know more about how you solve a specific pain point.

Here, it is your job to make it easy for people to contact you. You can connect with them through email newsletters, ebooks, or even on social media comments.

The key is to be proactive in your approach. Don’t wait for potential customers to reach out to you. You could also offer free product samples to get them interested.

Furthermore, you could also showcase testimonials to provide some social proof on your website or even in social media ads.

As you can see in the screenshot below, AdEspresso uses this strategy for its Facebook Ads.

Image Source: KlientBoost

3. Desire Stage

During this stage, your potential customers are ready to buy a product. But they aren’t sure if your product is better than the rest of the competition. So, you need to make sure you highlight your product’s special features and what makes it stand out.

In addition to this, it’s also a good idea to give discount coupons, cashback offers, and warranties. A good deal can prompt people to make a purchase.

The product pages on your eCommerce site can also make a lot of difference in the interest and the decision stage. Your product description should answer your target customers’ most pertinent questions. Give clear instructions regarding return policy, product usage, and other important details.

For inspiration, take a look at Nike’s product page below. Not only does it highlight all the benefits clearly, but it also gives details about the kind of research that went into designing their shoes.

Image Source: StoreYa

4. Action Stage

Some marketers refer to this stage in the marketing funnel as the retention stage. Once a customer makes a purchase, you need to make sure they enjoy the buying experience.

Only then can you win their loyalty and retain them. If you can impress your customers, they could also become your brand advocates.

Sephora’s Beauty Insider Program is a great example of this strategy. From early access to products to one-of-a-kind experiences, they have it all in their loyalty program.

Image Source: Allure

Track the performance of your conversion funnel

For better insights into your customer behavior, you need to track the performance of your conversion funnel. For this, you can add UTM codes at the end of your regular URLs. They are designed in such a way that they give more information about each link to Google Analytics.

By tagging your URLs, you’ll get to know the value of your online campaigns, especially when you are trying to get more traffic to your website. You will get reports on the conversion metrics of each campaign.

Final thoughts

If you want your eCommerce business to have killer sales, you can’t ignore the marketing funnel. During each stage, you need to make sure you’re giving your potential customers relevant information to push them to the next stage of the funnel.

The key to setting up an effective eCommerce marketing funnel is to know which stage your prospects are in. Using this information, you can optimize all stages of your funnel for higher conversions.

Do you already use an eCommerce marketing funnel? Please share your experiences and insights with the community in the comments section.

Guest author: Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is the co-founder of Attrock, a digital marketing agency. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities. Find Shane on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Linkedin. 

The post The 4-Step Process to Set Up an eCommerce Marketing Funnel appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/ecommerce-marketing-funnel/

How to Manage a High-Performing Remote Marketing Team

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the amount of remote workers, and for good reason. Not only has this style of work become more accessible with technological advances, but employees themselves are increasingly seeking it out.

In a recent survey, over 35% of American employees stated that they would change their job for one that allowed full-time remote work.

When it comes to marketing, remote teams can allow you to take advantage of this employee trend, while at the same time bringing multiple benefits to your business:

• Tapping into a wider global workforce allowing you to make a team with a well-rounded set of marketing skills.
• Reduced overhead costs from no longer needing to maintain a large physical office.
• Increased employee satisfaction by providing them the flexibility that employees are seeking.
• The potential to increase employee engagement and productivity if you manage your team effectively.

Given these potential benefits from using a remote marketing team, questions arise around how to form a high-performing team and avoid some of the common problems facing remote teams. Below you’ll find some of the most important steps in setting up and managing a remote marketing team that will meet all of your needs, as well as common mistakes to avoid.

It all starts with the right people

The first, and arguably most important, step in forming your remote marketing team is choosing the right people. The job search itself has become increasingly easy with different online services to help you find the right talent, but making the right selection is a strategic process that’s left up to you.

Most people tend to want to hire employees who share a similar background and experience. This can lead to a lack of diversity in your team, a real danger for any marketing team that’s trying to attract a broad range of clients. Therefore it’s important to try to ensure as wide a range of skills and life experiences as possible in your team.

Striking the right balance can be difficult, as there are multiple factors to consider. Select employees with complimenting skills and backgrounds. This will help avoid any basic conflicts and instead allow your team to play off each others’ strengths and experiences.

Mistake to avoid: Hiring team members who all have a similar background and profile. This can lead to groupthink and reduce innovation.

Invest in getting to know each other

Once you’ve chosen your team, you’ll likely be ready to role up your sleeves and get to work. After all, why else would you hire a team of marketing experts?

There’s an important step in the team creation process that you shouldn’t ignore, however. The highest performing teams are ones where colleagues know each other beyond their basic professional functions and feel comfortable working together.

Building a certain level of trust can be a challenge with remote teams given the dispersed nature of the workplace (you won’t be able to gather around the proverbial water cooler for small talk, for example). That’s why it’s important to create structures and procedures around team building. This could be:

• Setting aside time during the onboarding process for colleagues to share something about their life stories, and what brings them to this type of work.
• Adding an element to team meetings of team members sharing something exciting from their personal lives.
• Creating periodic team-building type events where colleagues can share something they’re passionate about outside of the workplace.

Whichever approach you take, be careful to allow team members to engage at a level they are comfortable with. Not everyone will be as open to sharing as others initially, so don’t try to force it.

Mistake to avoid: Jumping into work without investing in inter-personal relationships. This can reduce collaboration due to a lack of trust.

Agree on the ground rules

Setting clear expectations and guidelines around how your marketing team will collaborate and communicate is the next crucial step in this process. Just because it’s a flexible work environment doesn’t mean that it’s a free for all, and there are certain dos and don’ts of remote work that you should consider when laying the ground rules.

Take the time to engage with your team members on some reflection questions about the type of work environment you are aspiring to:

• When should everyone be available online for real-time collaboration?
• What is the expected time frame for returning emails?
• What is the policy for working on weekends and holidays?

These are just a few of the questions that will help you create a supportive and constructive work environment. Allowing your team to co-create these rules will ensure that they have ownership over them, and therefore are more likely to follow them.

Mistake to avoid: Allowing team members to have complete freedom to set their own schedules and communication styles. This can lead to frequent misunderstandings and miscommunication.

Provide the tools to collaborate

Once you’ve agreed upon your working style and schedule, it’s important to make sure your team has the tools they’ll need to effectively work together. It’s worth considering investing in some of the professional collaboration tools on the market, and not only rely on freeware.

In order to keep your remote marketing team on task and productive, you may want to consider some of the following types of tools:

• A secure team communication platform can help facilitate your team’s collaboration by providing them a virtual workplace where they can securely work together.
• A task accountability tool can help your team keep track of their marketing tasks and workflows, and see what others are working on.
• A content calendar can map out what content your team should publish, where and when.

There is an ever-growing number of options for collaboration and communication tools out there. When making your selection it’s important to get your team’s input on the decision as well. This way you’ll ensure you’re choosing the tools that are most likely to accelerate your team’s collaboration.

Mistake to avoid: Relying on a wide mix of different tools. This can leave your team vulnerable to security risks and create a confusing communication environment.

Train and monitor

Regardless of how highly-skilled and experienced your employees are, there’s always room for improvement. This is especially true in the marketing field where new technologies and ways to reach potential clients are constantly appearing. Creating a structured professional development approach is therefore crucial to high performance.

It’s important to set aside the time to keep your team up to date on the latest trends. Ongoing training also has the added benefit of allowing your team members to spend time together getting to know each other.

Continuous training is one aspect of your marketing team’s professional development, but it’s also important to create a clear performance management system. Set specific professional development and performance targets for your team members depending on their function. For best effect, make this a two-way discussion so that your team members feel ownership over their own performance.

Mistake to avoid: Failing to create a clear professional development plan for employees. This can lead to lower motivation and failure to keep up with new marketing trends.

Take time to reflect and praise

Praise and positive feedback are crucial to a healthy team environment. When working with a remote marketing team it’s important to make this a part of a set routine, given the dispersed nature of the team. It’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming that employees know they’re doing a good job.

Setting aside time to recognize success not only makes employees feel valued but also highlights examples of excellent work that others can follow. Take the time to point out, for example, the most effective marketing post of the week, the strategy that led to the most new clients, or any other metric you deem important.

These reflection processes can also help to keep your marketing team together and feeling appreciated. When it comes to retention, employees who feel that they are recognized for their good work are 5 times more likely to stay at the company.

Mistake to avoid: Assuming employees know they are doing a good job and failing to celebrate and highlight success. This can leave employees wondering where they stand and lead to demotivation.

In conclusion

Tapping into the remote working trend can help you create a marketing team that is flexible, innovative, and most importantly, high performing. In order to accomplish this, however, it’s important to take steps to provide the right environment for your team to thrive.

With a well thought out management approach, a remote marketing team can be just the thing to kick start your business’ growth!

Guest author: Nikola Baldikov is a Digital Marketing Manager at Brosix, an Instant messaging software for business communication.

The post How to Manage a High-Performing Remote Marketing Team appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/remote-marketing-team/

How to Boost Lead Generation With Personalized Quizzes

These days, the attention span of your audience is at its lowest point in human history.

We know that 55% of visitors stay for 15 seconds or less on a page and that their attention span is limited to, more or less, 8 seconds. As a consequence, you have these 8 seconds to capture their attention and another 7 seconds to deliver them something worthy in order to convince them not to leave your page.

A common mistake marketers and business owners frequently fall into is trying to attract everyone to their product instead of focusing on attracting the right people.

You need to come up with something that speaks to people on an individual level in order to trigger the best results.

Moreover, you are dealing with an audience that was raised by social media, the same social media channels that keep them engaged at all times and give them a voice.

Can you give them a voice as well? Can you actively engage them in your content marketing process? You can, and with this article, I will try to pinpoint the best strategy towards this end: the “personalized quiz”.

What is a personalized quiz?

Digital marketing may transform your business but interactive content will take it to another level.

A personalized quiz provides interactivity because it involves the user directly and gives them a personalized experience based on how they answer the questions. Plus, quizzes have higher engagement rates than surveys or almost any other type of content.

These types of quizzes were made popular by social media and are very popular these days on all channels.

However, in order to understand a personalized quiz better, we should try to take a quick look at two types of quizzes that are generally used by content marketers today:

The Regular Quiz: Delivers a general result, a score without much additional information.

The Personalized Quiz: Delivers results that are especially relevant to the respondent.

This allows you to offer a first recommendation within the outcome of your assessment. But, more importantly, it might be a good choice for lead generation. It opens up a window to ask for the respondent’s email and send over more customized recommendations or resources. A relevant example, in this case, comes from this Boot Camp Digital case study.

Personalized quizzes are more than a mere interaction between a marketer and their audience.

According to Wordstream, a quiz can get you a conversion rate of up to 64%. This is huge, considering that there are lots of (costly) options you can try without even getting close to this number.

On top of that, personalized quizzes have an 81% completion rate. (Ever published a social media post, article or blog that could live up to that?)

Why use quizzes as a marketing tool?

Quizzes have a huge conversion and completion rate. These generate leads and allow you to convert casual visitors into paying customers. They also offer a level of interactivity that regular posts are incapable of.

According to this study published by Demand Metric, conversion rates spike high when the content is interactive, compared to passive. The cost per lead can be decreased up to 90%.

According to the same report, the amount of shared content also has a lot to do with interactivity, as we can see from the following screenshot:

What types of interactive content should you use? Are personalized quizzes effective in this case? Well, according to the statistics, they are.

In fact, almost half of the interaction includes quizzes these days, surpassed only by infographics, contests, and calculators.

In sum, the answer is yes, quizzes and especially personalized quizzes, are great marketing tools and you can use them as an effective addition to your overall marketing strategy. All you need is to know your audience, know what questions they ask themselves, what they need to know and the answers they seek.

Which quiz questions should you ask to boost lead generation?

This question you ask depends mostly on your strategy and your ultimate goals. For instance, you should start by asking yourself what is it that you want to gain from the respondents and how may it help you improve your success?

Capabilities of an effective quiz

• You learn more about your respondents. Quizzes allow you to learn more about your target audience and as a consequence, to better strategize your marketing tasks. By knowing who they are, what they are like and why they would benefit from using your products and/or services, you can optimize what follow-up content you use to keep hold of your audience’s attention.
  (As well, you can use them as a basis for case studies which can be converted into other pieces of content marketing that may be helpful in the long run.)
• Allow the respondents to learn more about your business. Through your quiz questions, they get to know you, your brand and some of the benefits of becoming your customers. If, for example, you create a five-minute quiz that works like a decision tree, you can direct respondents to a page about a specific service that is highly relevant to them.
• Help respondents learn more about themselves. They might not know about some services or products or about the fact that they need them. Quiz questions can help respondents understand the problems they have more accurately.

Think as a salesperson

In order to better understand this process, try to remember every time you had to talk face to face with a sales professional. They do not jump in straightforward and go for the sale right away.

Instead, try to figure out your audience’s concerns, pains, worries and let your quiz offer a solution to those pains. Knowing your audience may be one of the best assets you can use right away in a marketing campaign.

Let’s say that you are a marketing agency or a professional that works for a marketing agency. And you have been tasked with getting customers for content marketing campaigns. The customer’s “pain”, in this case, is how to generate more leads.

Which questions can you ask them?

You can start with questions like the following:

“How did you hear about us?” or, “What kind of results do you hope to achieve and when?”

Then, you can continue with the following questions or something really similar:

A. What activities do you currently have in place to collect leads?

B. What’s your biggest challenge with your current methods?

C. What’s your current cost per lead?

You can vary these questions and adapt to each of your respondents in particular. If you know a few things about them (e.g. They represent a company), things will be easier. If not, try to follow their lead and pay attention to what they are saying. Every little detail matters in such cases.

You should seek to ask for respondents’ contact information or other relevant data without being overly upfront about it.

How do you get their emails?

If you are afraid of losing a conversion if you ask about personal details such as the email address, you can always give something in return. There are three possible approaches here.

• Give something of monetary value (a voucher, a price reduction, etc.)
• Give something of intellectual value (personal report, redirect to online courses or blog posts that are relevant based on the person’s results)
• Give a small snippet of information at the end of the quiz, even if people didn’t leave their email.
• People who chose to leave their email get rewarded with more elaborate and detailed information.

Anyway, those who are committed to finding the right answers to their questions will have no problem in giving you their email address, their real names or a contact phone number.

Let’s look at a real-life case study from a retail company, Elephant Pants. It is all about a quiz that supposedly jump-started their business.

Their campaign was based on a quiz that started with the most simple and yet effective question they could have asked their audience: “Which pair of Elephant Pants are you?”

This is a very personalized quiz that starts with a personalized question and ends with a personalized response. In fact, it proved to be quite effective considering the results. At the end of the quiz was a link that led to their Kickstarter page. Here are the numbers:

They managed to raise the funds they needed in order to launch the business and at the same time, they have collected enough names and emails to establish a base of customers.

How to personalize your quizzes

Personalization is necessary to position the same product differently for different types of people. It prevents you from falling into one of the most common mistakes marketers make, one-size-fits-all marketing. It also makes it possible to attract a diverse group of customers with the same product without making material changes to it.

A. Offer information that is important to your audience

For instance, Disney knows what its audience is all about. They know that their stories and their characters are a common interest among fans and as a consequence, they adapt their quizzes to these interests. They give back information that is somehow valuable to the audience.

Here’s another example from Camelbak:

Camelbak develops and sells sporting goods that are supposed to “reinvent the way people hydrate and perform.” They are aware that there is a direct and strong relationship between sports and hydration and this is the main reason they have designed this interactive quiz, the “Hydration Calculator.”

This is an example of a “Top-of-funnel” quiz, aimed at visitors and customers who are interested in the topic of hydration but maybe not yet decided to buy the product.

B. Include all your important branded visuals and designs

Branded visuals show consistency and allow the audience to easily recognize you when they land on the quiz page or when they share quizzes across social media accounts.

They link back to your business, visually. They are easy to remember and easy to understand.

Plus, merely 80 percent of all the online content is comprised of visuals and it takes less than a second for a human being to form an impression of you based on what you are posting.

This means that the content itself, even if it is a well-designed quiz, will not contribute massively to your marketing campaign unless it is paired with some branded visuals. People might not remember your quiz or the answers they receive but the images will most likely be entrenched in their subconscious minds. And, when they come in contact with them again, they’ll seem familiar.

As a simple and effective example, take a look at the following screenshot:

Will you remember this quiz? Probably not. However, the official “Virgin” logo will most likely be stuck in your head. Or, maybe you have already noticed it. In case you know the company, there’s also a good chance you’ll take the quiz just because you trust their brand.

Whatever your motives are and whatever you feel the first time you see the logo, there’s one truth that applies to everybody – That little and apparently insignificant visual is probably the most important part of the quiz.

C. Ask relevant questions based on previous answers

Use skip logic and other similar features to ask only the most relevant questions based on the audience’s previous answers. Also, if you ask first for their name, address each individual by the given name in order to further personalize the quiz. You can also reuse answers for the follow-up questions.

What does the skip logic option mean? They will allow you to show follow-up questions based on the answers given by the recipient. Not everyone responds the same to a specific question and not everyone will see every one of your follow-up questions. However, the skip logic, when used, enhances the personalized experience and avoids asking irrelevant questions that can waste a respondent’s time.

The better you cover these aspects, the more you will grow the level of personalization.

You can learn from the above example and the way marketers make sure to use the respondent’s name a couple of times throughout the quiz. Thus, the entire process feels more like a personal conversation that stimulates the respondent to stay engaged and respond honestly. Also, at the end of the quiz, if they get wished a great day or other positive thoughts, this small gesture can prove to be quite effective in the long run.

D. Use a personalized results screen

Have you ever taken a personality quiz? I am sure you have, at least once in your lifetime. Remember the results? They usually divide the respondents into specific categories or segments. You can then deliver tips and advice based on the answers and the category the respondents were integrated.

A good example is this career quiz, which helps the students to make better career choices. It starts with a question most of us ask at some point in our early professional life – Which career is right for you?

Based on their responses, students get a specific suggestion to help them choose the best career opportunities and then, they are redirected to the most appropriate educational program.

Why would a university create a quiz like this?

By helping respondents make a better career choice, they manage to speed up the recruitment process. In fact, they acquire a minimum of 125 students per month.

Also, the quiz successfully replaces a series of other landing pages students should have to navigate through and read before applying for an educational program.

E. Offer personalized content based on the results of the quiz

For example, you can offer a personalized PDF report with tailored tips, tricks, and advice based on the scores of the respondents, access to an online course that seems relevant to them or a personalized voucher. If possible, the voucher should be based on a product or service offer according to the responses.

A good example, in this case, comes from Passions and Talents, a consultancy focused startup. And yes, their assessments are made through quizzes.

After the initial quiz, they offer a PDF report which comprises a series of advice and tips that lead to better career progression.

“The real insight for people comes with the second part of that PDF report. It contains a series of design thinking questions that help you reflect on your specific strength roles. It gives you a strong framework for an actual career search and serves as a guide in your resume writing, personal networking, job search, and interview process” said David Endean, the man behind the project.

Wrapping up

Quizzes are great marketing tools if you want to spice up your strategy with some level of interactivity. When personalized, these tools can really do wonders, generate leads and increase awareness for both the company and its customers.

Have you tried to conduct content marketing through quizzes? If yes, what were your results?

Guest author: Stefan Debois is the founder and CEO of Survey Anyplace, an online software tool to create engaging surveys, quizzes, and assessments. 

The post How to Boost Lead Generation With Personalized Quizzes appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

source https://www.jeffbullas.com/personalized-quizzes/