Customer Experience Could Be The Reason Your Online Shoppers Aren’t Converting

November 25, 2020/by admin

Customer Experience Could Be The Reason Your Online Shoppers Aren’t Converting All humans — including your customers — are emotional creatures. That’s why it’s so important to make sure every interaction customers have with your company a memorable one — so memorable that they’ll want to recommend your business to a friend, family member, or colleague. That connection between your business and customers is exactly what customer experience is all about — providing the support that your customers seek throughout all stages of the buyer’s journey. You can think of the whole customer journey as a (very important) and complete transaction between your brand and customer, — what happens throughout that transaction and the way your customers feel define the customer experience. For instance, you visit your local ice cream shop; the waitress welcomes you with your name and immediately asks if you’d like your regular treat, a chocolate sundae with extra chocolate chips, or if you’d prefer to look at a menu. Wouldn’t this personalized and positive experience make you want to continue returning to that ice cream shop? Sometimes it hardly matters how the food tastes — the unique and delightful customer experience is what keeps you going back. This doesn’t just apply to brick-and-mortar stores either. For example, when a prospect visits your website, why would they want to stick around to learn about your products or what your brand stands for if they don’t feel valued, understood, and heard? In this case, it won’t matter...

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What Are Website Traffic Exchange Sites? (And Why You Shouldn’t Use Them)

Content Marketing Strategy

November 25, 2020/by admin

What Are Website Traffic Exchange Sites? (And Why You Shouldn't Use Them) Traffic matters. The more traffic your website generates, the greater your chances of capturing visitor interest, encouraging user action and generating sales. So it’s no surprise that traffic remains a top priority no matter what kind of site you run. As noted by a recent Forbes piece, everything from specific search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to contextually-relevant content can help boost traffic volumes and increase key metrics, while more technical traffic attractions such as reducing page load delays and improving user experience on mobile devices can also enhance your website impact. The potential downside? These traffic-boosting tactics aren’t quick fixes. They require time and effort to deliver ongoing results — and they’re not guaranteed. Website traffic exchange sites offer a supposedly speedy solution to deliver increased impressions and help your click-throughs climb the charts, but as noted by Google, they also come with significant risk “because they may lead to invalid clicks or impressions and result in your account being disabled.” Here’s what you need to know about website traffic exchange sites, how they work — and the red flags that make them a non-starter for sustained traffic over time. What is a Website Traffic Exchange? The idea behind a website traffic exchange is simple: Quid pro quo — you do something, and you get something in return. In this case, what you’re doing is visiting other business owners’ websites, and they’re visiting yours in return....

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How COVID-19 Could Shift Holiday Shopping Behaviors This Year [New Data]

Marketing Strategy

November 25, 2020/by admin

How COVID-19 Could Shift Holiday Shopping Behaviors This Year In 2020, B2C businesses all over the world pivoted their strategies as consumers dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did the pandemic force people to live and work strictly from home, but it also put a financial burden on many households and businesses. Now, as the holidays approach, both physical and online business owners are wondering if they'll still get the same level of booming business they saw last year. Because we (unfortunately) can't predict the future, we decided to survey a sample of nearly 300 general consumers about their holiday shopping plans. Specifically, we asked, "Compared to last year, how will COVID-19 impact your holiday shopping plans?" As part of the Lucid survey, participants could check all the boxes related to how their holiday shopping would be impacted. While you'll see that some of the responses align with research-backed shopping predictions, the overall results of the survey might surprise you: Data Source While you might not be shocked that many respondents are planning more online shopping than last year, you might be surprised that nearly one-third of them still plan to go to physical stores. Additionally, with 41% of respondents planning to spend less money or buy fewer gifts this year, you might wonder if budget-conscious consumers will still spend money on your products. Remember, this is just one small poll of general consumers. Had we zoned in on a specific audience target or location,...

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How to Predict and Analyze Your Customers’ Buying Patterns

Psychology

November 24, 2020/by admin

How to Predict and Analyze Your Customers’ Buying Patterns Buyers don't think like marketers or salespeople. Anyone who works in these departments can admit that. More importantly, buyers don't think like each other either. Each consumer follows their own set of buying patterns, whether they recognize it or not. For instance, someone who walks to work every morning may grab a coffee from the Starbucks on the corner — to them, that's part of their routine. To Starbucks, that's an established buying pattern. But if this person happened to move neighborhoods, they’d likely establish a new routine (and buying pattern). Buying patterns are important to recognize, analyze, and measure because they help businesses better understand and potentially expand their target audience. Buying patterns also fall in step with the customer journey, although they connect more with the psychology and motivations behind each stage. In this post, we are going to discuss buying patterns and how to predict those of your customers. What are buying patterns? Buying patterns refer to the why and how behind consumer purchase decisions. They are habits and routines that consumers establish through the products and services they buy. Buying patterns are defined by the frequency, timing, quantity, etc. of said purchases. These patterns are determined by factors such as: Where someone lives Where they work How much money they make What they enjoy and prefer What their friends and family recommend What their goals and motivations are The...

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How to Get Started With CRM-Powered Advertising [+ Why You Should]

CRM

November 24, 2020/by admin

How to Get Started With CRM-Powered Advertising HubSpot was founded during a time when people were under constant attack from aggressive outbound marketing tactics. I'm sure nobody misses the unwanted ads, spam emails, and cold calls that used to interrupt their day back in the mid-00s. Ad retargeting wasn't a thing, so we all had to settle for repeatedly seeing the same ads for products we had absolutely no interest in. Marketing has changed a lot since then. Thankfully. Nowadays, companies have the ability to develop engaging advertising campaigns that complement their inbound strategies and speak directly to their audiences' needs. The concept of journey-based advertising has been widely adopted and marketers can now create customized content for individuals at every stage of the buyer's journey. Targeting has become more sophisticated, meaning that ads are now less interruptive and more informative — so sophisticated, in fact, that that we now take for granted the quality of the ads we get served in our Instagram feeds and YouTube videos. Dare we say it — in some cases, the ad suggestions are actually really useful: "Oh, hey ad for that new running watch that I didn't know I needed but now am obsessed with." There is still a lot of bad advertising and mediocre marketing out there, but it's important to recognize just how far we've come. But, as advertising capabilities have evolved, so too has the digital landscape. And that has created a host of new challenges for marketers. ...

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The Simplified Guide to Google’s RankBrain Algorithm

Technical SEO

November 24, 2020/by admin

The Simplified Guide to Google's RankBrain Algorithm Not long ago, if you wanted to find a place to eat, you needed to search for a term like “Boston restaurants”. But, today, you can instantly find a good restaurant that’s nearby if you just search for the term, “Where should I go for dinner?” That’s because Google is sophisticated enough to recognize your intent or the implications of your query. However, prior to 2015, you needed to type the most straightforward queries into the search engine to find the answers you were looking for. So how did Google evolve to understand their searchers’ intent and implications so quickly? Well on October 26, 2015, they confirmed that they updated their algorithm with a machine-learning artificial intelligence system called RankBrain. In other words, RankBrain helps Google understand a searcher’s intent and serve the most relevant content to them. How Does Google's RankBrain Work? As explained above, RankBrain was designed for the searcher's experience in mind, particularly when it comes to understanding the intent and relationships behind seemingly complex searches. In order to better explain this functionality, we break down how RankBrain works in conjunction with Google's algorithm as a whole: RankBrain and Other Ranking Signals Before RankBrain, Google used a number of ranking signals to determine: Relevance to the searcher's query The authority of a particular website and page to provide a trustworthy answer User experience so that the searcher would have their needs met in an enjoyable way and without...

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How to Build a Market Development Strategy [Free Planning Templates]

Marketing Strategy

November 20, 2020/by admin

How to Build a Market Development Strategy Your business is getting by just fine – but still, the questions remain: Could you be selling more? Is there an opportunity to increase market penetration? Is there any way you could engage in further product diversification? Companies hoping to increase revenue can do so in a variety of ways — such as an increase in advertising budget, expanding their sales team, and investing heavily in product development. However, one of the often overlooked ways to strengthen your gross sales is a purposeful, well-researched, and expertly executed market development strategy. In this article, we'll explain what market development is and how you can employ it to increase sales and grow your business. What is market development? Market development is the expansion of your total addressable market (TAM) and how much market share you can expect to claim. A market development strategy can focus on how a business might grow revenue by embracing one or both of the following initiatives: Developing a new product line to increase revenue by selling to new customers, or up-selling to existing ones. Creating a plan to sell existing products/services to new demographics, through such initiatives as adding locations or expanding delivery radius. In the first scenario, TAM increases because by offering a new product or service, you're effectively increasing the maximum amount of revenue you can attain from your existing customer base. Think of a jeans company that starts to design shirts and jackets...

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How 8 Brands Mastered Marketing and Sales Alignment

Marketing and Sales Alignment

November 20, 2020/by admin

How 8 Brands Mastered Marketing and Sales Alignment I've written about the importance of sales and marketing alignment before, but the point can't be understated: businesses undeniably have better success when they align sales and marketing teams. Plus, having strong alignment between sales and marketing is mutually beneficial for both teams — in fact, sales and marketing alignment can help your company become 67% better at closing deals, and can help generate 209% more revenue from marketing. If you're anything like me, however, it's likely helpful to learn through example. Which is why we've reached out to eight brands to learn how they mastered marketing and sales alignment. I'd encourage you to use the following examples as inspiration for your own process as you work to better align your teams, but remember — marketing and sales alignment will be unique to each individual company. For that reason, you'll find the most benefit from this post if you pick-and-choose from these strategies which aspects feel most authentic to your own company culture and business goals. Let's dive in! 1. Crossbeam rolled out company-wide OKRs. Robert Moore, Co-Founder and CEO at Crossbeam, told me: "At Crossbeam, we've rolled out company-wide OKRs that change each quarter and can be measured using sales, marketing, and product data from HubSpot." He adds, "Everyone at Crossbeam has access to dashboards that update in real-time with our progress toward these key results, and our progress also auto-posts to Slack each morning to keep people in...

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Why Blogs Fail — And How to Make Sure Yours Doesn’t

Blogging

November 20, 2020/by admin

Why Blogs Fail — And How to Make Sure Yours Doesn't Of the 1.7 billion websites in the world, 600 million are blogs. And the number of US bloggers is set to reach 31.7 million in 2020. Clearly, blogging is competitive. You're constantly vying for people's precious online attention, which is around 15 seconds for more than half of readers. But for many, the benefits of running a blog outweigh the time, cost, and effort involved. That's because in 2019, marketers who prioritized blogging received 13X more ROI than companies that put it at the bottom of the stack. Beyond revenue, blogs are a great way to raise brand awareness, share engaging articles, and bring in new customers. Seems like an easy marketing win, right? Not quite. Before you hit 'publish' on that first piece, it's important to consider why blogs fail. To figure out what causes blogs to flop, let's look at a handful of blog statistics — and simple ways to make sure yours is a success. But first, let’s answer that nagging question in the back of your brain: So, we know what percentage of marketers feel their blogs aren’t successful, but what might have contributed to this failure? And how do you avoid these mistakes? Let’s take a look. Why Blogs Fail 1. The blog lacks a content strategy. Do you know why your blog exists? If so, does your content support that raison d'être? One of the main reasons why blogs fail is...

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