Five Things Your Competitors Know About Authentic Online Marketing

Authentic: We hear this word often in business, not only when it comes to online marketing.

Build authentic relationships.
Create authentic marketing messages.
Send authentic letters or notes.

The reason we hear this word throughout all facets of our business is because authenticity stretches across every person in your company.

But how can brands show their audience that they are authentic without coming on too…inauthentic?

Let’s see what consumers think about authenticity and brands online.

86% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support.
81% of surveyed consumers said that they need to be able to trust the brand in order to buy from them.
66% of consumers think transparency is one of the most attractive qualities in a brand.
77% of consumers buy from brands who share the same values as they do.
79% of people say that user generated content highly impacts their purchasing decisions.

These numbers are astounding. And for a business owner like yourself – they should impact how you position your brand online.

What Exactly is Authenticity?

Webster defines authentic as “not false or imitation: real, actual” – which sounds simple enough. But how do we translate this throughout your online marketing.

Here’s Five Things Your Competitors are Doing that You Should be Too!

Do you watch your competitors online marketing and wonder why yours is falling on flat ears? Keep reading.

1. PEOPLE Are the Heartbeat of Their Business

One of the best ways to build authentic marketing campaigns online is to show the backbone of your business, your employees.

Your employees not only serve your customers but they are the difference in a thriving business and one that well, isn’t thriving.

Likewise, consumers want to support businesses that care and support their employees. Pulling down the sheet to show the back-bone of your business and integrating your employees throughout your marketing messages builds authenticity online.

2. Understand How to Serve Your Audience

Authentic online marketing stems from the understanding of your audience. Answer these questions before creating content online:

Who is your audience?
What do they like/dislike?
When they make purchased, what do they value the most?
When it comes to your brand, what means the most to them?

By identifying what matters to your audience your brand can build authentic, relevant content that inspires, educates and helps your audience.

3. Humanize Your Tone of Voice

Do you know what drives a consumer mad online? Seeing the same generic, bot responses to any questions that are posted to their brand.

Allow your social media managers to craft responses that are both authentic and human. Not only does this humanize your brand on social media – it builds great customer service and leaves a lasting impression.

Automated, generic responses are one of the most inauthentic things your brand can do online.

4. Consistent Content Creation & Publishing

Whether you content is on social media, YouTube, blog content or Podcasts – having consistency builds authenticity online.

Why?

The content your brand creates and publishes should serve your audience. But, if you go MIA for a few weeks, it leaves “some not-so-good tastes” in your consumer’s mouths.

Your audience follows you on these channels because they are interested in your brand. When you provide inconsistent content for them, it shows where your priorities are.

5. Support Non-Profit Causes

Does your business support non-profit organizations? This is a great way to build authentic messaging and get your audience involved.

Consumers want to feel that they are doing good when they spend their money. Showing them how you support different causes and organizations is just one way they know your brand is one they want to support.

However, inviting them to support the organization with you builds a human connection with your audience that drives an authentic approach.

Cut Through the Noise

When it comes to cutting through the noise in today’s online marketing arena – be authentic. Transparent companies that are considerate, compassionate and honest with their consumers build authentic online marketing campaigns.

Brands that are authentic in everything that they do seeps into their marketing messages online.

About Backstage Digital

Backstage Digital is a digital marketing agency specializing in lead generation for their clients. We create custom digital marketing campaigns that generate results for our clients. More importantly, our clients have a 24/7 dashboard to review the ROI of all digital marketing campaigns. Contact us to learn more.

September 28, 2020June 2, 2021

Email Marketing: 4 Tips to Launch Successful Email Campaigns

Email Marketing: 4 Tips to Launch Successful Email Campaigns

Did you know that 49% of consumers would like to receive promotional email marketing from their favorite brands? _(Oberlo.com)

Sometimes you might wonder, “what do I have to say to my list of contact?” There are so many things that are email worthy when it comes to your business like:

Product / Services Updates
Sales, Promotions or Specials
Upcoming Events
Educational / Helpful Content
Internal Behind the Scenes or Happenings

Here’s Why You Should Consider Email Marketing

I know what you are thinking, great…another marketing channel I need to figure out and keep updated. But let’s look at the data.

Conversion Rates

Get this, conversion rates for emails are higher than social media, direct traffic, and search _{(Smartinsights.com)}.

Wait – go back and read that one more time.

Conversion rates for your email campaigns are higher than several of your current digital channels. Meaning, investing time, resources and energy into delivering consistent and strategic email marketing campaigns will amplify your business.

Cost Effective

Email marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to market your business. Platforms like Constant Contact and Mailchimp offer plans for SMBs that allow you to grow and won’t break the bank.

Most email providers charge based on the total number of contacts in your database, so you have the power to control your costs associated with this marketing channel.

Email Marketing Automation

You might have heard about automation and wondered if it was worth it?

It is no shocker that custom automation workflows have the highest click-through rates. _{(Omnisend.com)}

Email automation can be as simple or complicated as your business requires. Typically for an SMB, a simple 3-step email automation campaign will benefit your business. Build out campaigns that align with your customer’s journey and where they might be in the buying process.

Pro Tips for Launching Successful Email Marketing Campaigns

Make a Plan

Don’t even open your email software without already planning out your email campaign. Put your pen to paper first to plan. What are you going to say and who are you going to say it to? We recommend drafting email content in a Word Doc with the goals listed at the top for easy reference during your planning.

Take this a step further and align your email marketing plan with your other marketing channels to keep messaging consistent across social media, website, email and any direct marketing you are executing.

Pro Tip: Brainstorm a list of topics and keep it running for your email marketing campaigns.

Automate Your Email Marketing Campaigns

If a prospect from your email database opens your first email, have emails in place that send out within a few days to continue the conversation surrounding that topic.

This not only builds efficiencies with your email campaigns, it allows consumers to flow through your marketing channel from awareness to conversion with the help of educational, promotional and sales content throughout your email campaigns.

Pro Tip: Several email software platforms have this capability in place for 2 or 3-step email automation campaigns.

Video, Video, Video

Adding videos to your email can increase click rates by 300%._(Oberlo.com)

Keep video first when putting together your email marketing campaigns. In today’s digital landscape, we expect video content from the brands we purchase from. Videos can be a simple explainer video or some shots of your product “In action” – it depends on the overall message of your email campaign.

Focus your target persona at the forefront of your video strategy when combining video and email marketing for the ultimate win!

Keep it Consistent

Can you believe that your customers want to hear from you? Keeping things consistent is essential to keeping your brand at the top of their minds.

49% of consumers said they would like to receive promotional emails from their favorite brands on a weekly basis. ^_(Oberlo)

When we talk about consistency with a brand, we always recommend starting small and building from there. Starting with a monthly email campaign, then increasing to a bi-weekly might be the perfect fit for your audience.

Whatever you do, keep things consistent vs the “every-now-and-then” approach.

Email marketing can seem overwhelming because there are several factors to executing a successful email campaign. These are just a few short tips to ensure you launch a successful email campaign for your brand!

September 15, 2020September 15, 2020

Which Digital Marketing Channels Should My Business Focus On?

Facebook, YouTube, Google Search, Your Website, SEO, Paid Search, Funnels – the amount of digital channels you have the option of marketing your business on can get overwhelming, fast.

Digital marketing consists of marketing that takes place on any type of technology device. But how on earth does it apply to your business?

What channels should we consider for digital marketing?

Before answering this question, it is essential to understand who your audience is, what problem they have and how to best communicate your solution to your audience. Depending on your target persona, depends on where you should focus your digital marketing efforts. Let’s take a deep dive into several different digital channels:

Search Engine Optimization – SEO

Optimizing your website on a consistent basis generates warm, high quality traffic which converts into leads or sales for your business. SEO is a long-term digital marketing channel, meaning your results won’t happen overnight – but when you do see them, they are typically the best out of several digital marketing channels.

Social Media Marketing

As your business focuses on identifying which digital marketing channels are important for your target persona, understanding which social media marketing platforms will generate the best results for your business is essential. For example, if you are a B2B business, it is highly unlikely that your target audience will be hanging out on Pinterest.

Social media marketing is a digital channel that allows your brand to tell a story, build a community and humanize your brand across your audience. Most social media platforms also have paid advertising that you can utilize to hyper target your audience in order to generate revenue for your business.

Email Marketing

Sixty-one percent of SMBs report that more than half of their revenue comes from repeat customers, rather than new business. (Fivestars)

Building an email list is the first step to monetizing email marketing for your business. You might be thinking “what would I write about in the email campaigns?” Always provide value, educate, offer insight, show proof using testimonials and create promotions for your email campaigns.

Email marketing is also a cost effective way to jump into digital marketing. Without needing to make large investments on ads – email marketing consistently drives results while also being budget friendly for SMBs.

Search Engine Marketing

Looking for quick leads or business? Search Engine Marketing, or SEM is a great way to generate paid traffic. By bidding on keyword phrases that people type into search engines you can increase your website’s exposure using paid search. Don’t have time to wait several months to start ranking in Google search results, consider this channel to jump to the top of the rankings.

SEM also targets warm traffic, much like SEO because you are targeting keywords that are relevant to your business.

Is Digital Marketing the Same for Every Business?

Ab-so-lute-ly not! Every business is different. Goals are different. Audience is different. And digital marketing capacity and budget is different.

Therefore, take a step back and look at your business’s short term and long term goals. Then craft a digital marketing strategy that aligns with your business.

Digital marketing sounds great, but what are the benefits?

Tracking – What if you could tie a purchase to a specific marketing campaign, channel or ad dollar? Because you are marketing your business online, you can.

Cost – Typically running digital marketing campaigns you can make your total budget go much farther than traditional marketing methods like radio, billboards and print.

Faster Results – With some digital marketing channels, like SEM and paid ad campaigns, you can get faster results for your business and see a quicker ROI

Which Channels Should I Focus On?

When it comes to your business, it depends on several factors. Your audience, budget and long-term business goals impact which channels to focus on. The great thing about digital marketing is that you can start small and expand to other channels as your business continues to grow.