Taking steps to mobilize your marketing isn’t just good business sense. By doing so, you’ll better prepare your brand for the future of advertising, most of which will be performed on increasingly smaller screens in an even faster-paced setting than we’re used to seeing. To this end, let’s explore a few reasons why mobile will reign supreme in 2019 and beyond.

1. Your SEO Rankings Depend on It

In recent years, appearing at or near the top of the page on Google search results has taken center stage as a chief marketing aim. After all, gaining access to this coveted spot can vastly improve visibility and increase conversions. In fact, the most recent industry statistics reveal that those websites listed in the first position of online search results gain around 33% of the overall traffic share. From there, the second position gets about 15%, while the third spot gets 9%.

Moz: Google Organic Click-Through Rates in 2014

What does this mean for your company? In short, it means that if you can manage to get your website to the top of local search results, you’ll have a 33% greater opportunity of someone clicking on your content. You’ll get there by implementing strategic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies. While much of your SEO ranking will depend on the content available on your website and how well you craft it to include inbound/outbound links, keywords and phrases, meta titles, descriptions and more, there are other ways you can boost your odds, as well. Chiefly, you can ensure your content is mobile-ready.

This year, Google saw its highest mobile search numbers to date, with 52.2% coming from mobile devices as opposed to laptops or desktops. In turn, the search engine giant announced in March 2018 that it would be rolling out mobile-first indexing. This means that, rather than indexing your website based on its desktop version, they’re looking at your mobile version first. Are images slow to load? Is text hard to read across the screen? Do graphics look wonky and out of context and is the layout all over the place? It doesn’t matter anymore if your website operates like a charm when fired up on a desktop. If it’s not user-friendly in a mobile version, Google will deduct major points from your SEO ranking.

This focus on mobile by Google is nothing new. Developers will recall that in 2015, Google announced an update referred to many in the industry as “Mobilegeddon.” This update essentially hurt websites that weren’t mobile-friendly and rewarded those that were. As a result, sites that failed to make the switch before the 2015 update saw a more than 50% reduction in traffic as their visibility and traffic waned.

Stone Temple: Mobilegeddon: Nearly 50% of Non-Mobile Friendly URLs Dropped in Rank

If you’re still on the fence about investing in a mobile-first marketing strategy, the statistics above point to its heightened importance. After the 2015 update alone, those website that were optimized for mobile saw a 30% jump in traffic while those that weren’t ready for the change only gained around 19%.

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2. You’ll Reach a Wider Audience

Though it might have been considered technological blasphemy only a decade ago, there is now a growing population of web users that access the internet via a mobile device only, eschewing a larger desktop or laptop altogether. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that 77% of Americans now own a smartphone while only around 75% own a computer.

Those quick to jump to the point might assume that Millennials comprise the demographic most likely to own only a smartphone. However, industry insights reveal that the 35-49 age bracket claims this spot, with a 96% mobile adoption rate. Conversely, the 18-34 age bracket comes in at only 91%. Keeping this in mind, many top brands are focusing on this age group in their mobile marketing campaigns. Take the recent “Sun Band” campaign created through a partnership between Nivea and FCB São Paolo.

The campaign was developed as a combination print and mobile one. Customers could pop a bracelet out of the print advertisement, wrap it around their kid’s wrist, and sync it to their smartphone via a speciality app. From there, they could set a safety perimeter, where they’d receive mobile alerts if their child wandered outside of the zone. As persons aged 35-49 are most likely to have older children who can play by themselves but should still remain under parental guidance, this was an ideal way to reach that coveted smartphone audience.

SpringWise: Print Ad is Also a Wristband 

While this reveals the role that mobile apps can play in a greater marketing campaign, it also demonstrates the importance of speaking to your target audience.

Yet, specifics aside, it’s important for marketers to keep in mind that alienating an entire demographic alone can prove detrimental to any brand, especially a small-to-medium-sized business that’s dependent on exposure for continued growth. That’s where targeted mobile marketing comes into play, and it cannot be achieved if links back to a company’s website lead to an ill-prepared layout that causes web users to quickly click away or onto a competitor’s site instead.

3. It Amplifies Your Social Media Advertising Campaign

Recently, social media platforms have realized the importance of mobile advertising and have made it easier than ever before to allow brands to target mobile users. Considering that nearly 80% of social media use now happens on mobile devices, it’s important that your content be as easy to access and simple to navigate for these users.

This is especially the case if you’re developing a niche mobile app rather than a static landing page, to convert web visitors and boost sales. You can advertise this app across the myriad social media platforms to reach customers that are focused on your specific industry vertical. For instance, by taking out a Facebook ad, you can discuss your mobile app download in greater detail, provide a link to it, and reach a greater audience than you would have by simply posting a button to it on your website. For a visual example, consider the case of the Marriott International mobile ad below.

Business2Community: New Facebook Ad Strategies That Will Reinvent Your Mobile Marketing 

Here, users can easily see the link to the mobile app “install now” download, as well as a customer testimonial, follower “likes” and other helpful information. By merging social media marketing strategies with a mobile-first focus, forward-thinking brands can see increased visibility across the board. This is especially the case when marketing to a specific niche or target audience.

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4. It’s More Interactive Than Ever Before

Gone are mobile campaigns that simply brought web visitors back to a company’s web page for more information. Rather, today’s outreach strategies are more interactive and dynamic than ever before, integrating elements that range from virtual and augmented reality (VR, AR) to artificial intelligence (AI) and a host of features in between.

Most marketers might think of gamification when they consider how these elements can be used to supplement an existing campaign. It’s not difficult to see why: The Pokémon Go craze alone was enough to show hopeful advertising leaders how including simple elements of AR can elevate a ho-hum campaign into a worldwide phenomenon if the strategy is correct. Yet, games are far from the only way that AR and its related features can be used to support a mobile strategy.

Consider, for example, what happens when you use your smartphone to scan a bottle of Heinz ketchup. You’ll have access to a host of recipes, product information and more with the simple swipe of a screen. Or, smaller companies can use AR tools to allow customers to “try” their products before committing to a purchase. This strategy was deployed by the app Ink Hunter. Here, users can see how a certain tattoo will look on their bodies before they go in for the permanent thing.

NoRiskSEO: How Augmented Reality Can Fit Into Your Small Business Marketing Plan

Of course, determining how to best integrate multiple digital elements together to create a cohesive marketing campaign can be a challenging task. The idea is to use all of the best technology-rich features in a way that offers a seamless and streamlined customer experience. While your in-house development and support staff may be able to work together to create a comprehensive plan, a digital strategist is often needed to make all of the elements work together to increase appeal and build your bottom line. By bringing on on board, you can get a bigger-picture view of your overall campaign and how to use mobile elements to enrich, rather than take away from it.

5. You’ll Reach Your Audience on a Personal Level

It’s one thing for someone to click on your link while at their work computer. It’s an entirely different thing for them to access your content while they’re scrolling at the kitchen table or on the subway to the office. At their core, mobile devices are personal. They’re usually carried on our person and they’re never too far from arm’s reach.

Keeping this in mind, brands can use mobile marketing to reach their audience on their own terms, at their convenience. Keep in mind that one study found that smartphone users check their mobile devices up to 80 times per day! Now, think of the impact your brand could have if your content is appearing at the top of their search screen or on their social media pages. That’s an incredible reach, and makes it far worth the investment it takes to get your content mobile-ready. That means, if your website still looks like the one on the left when viewed on a smartphone, it’s time to hold a developer’s meeting to get all staff on board with the conversion.

Google: Mobile Site Guide 

In most cases, you won’t need to entirely overhaul your existing content. Rather, there are a few checklist items you’ll need to follow to get mobile responsiveness right. They include considerations such as fluid images, responsive videos, strategic break points, meta viewpoint elements and more. For a more comprehensive list of design tips, this list offers a great place to start, especially if you’re interested in boosting your mobile SEO efforts. 

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Moving Forward: Making Mobile Marketing Work for Your Brand

You’re in business to convert prospects, cater to your customers and grow your sales along the way. As more consumers lean toward mobile devices, it stands to reason that brands without a focused mobile strategy will pay the price, especially as search engine giants including Google continue to emphasize its importance.

Before getting started, take an inventory of your existing content and your current marketing strategies. Then, take steps to convert them at the same time, so the result is a comprehensive campaign that’s as accessible as it is attractive. Not only will you grow your exposure, but you’ll also inch higher in search rankings and click rates as your content finally gains the handheld visibility it deserves.

The post Prioritizing Mobile Marketing: Why It’s Still a Key Part of Your Digital Outreach Strategy appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Regardless of the “why” behind a startup, there then begs a second question: “Who?” Small businesses succeed because enough people believe in them, patronize them and tell others about them. Before investing time, money and resources into further developing a business idea, purchasing supplies or building capital, startup leaders must determine who they’re actively trying to attract and sell to with their business proposition. Understanding and analyzing the target audience isn’t just a nice-to-have part of any company plan. It should be the very first chapter, as it sets the stage for the subsequent steps that follow.

Had Pinterest marketed its services to 65-year-old men in business suits rather than the crafty crowd, its profitability and longevity might have been in question. Yet, that’s one example of a brand that knows its niche through and through. From Uber to Airbnb and a slew of others in between, the same holds true for any startup that’s managed to make it past the dreaded fate that 90% experience and join the elusive ranks of the 10% that hold steady. Yet, finding your customer base is relatively simple when you’re an established business. You can look at others in your space and see who they’re selling to. What’s working and what isn’t? Which outreach strategies and ideas can you tweak to make your own?

But, where do you turn when you’re disrupting an entirely new space? What do you do when your startup is branching out into unknown territory and you’re not exactly sure who will be interested? In these cases, finding your target audience might be a little more complicated, but it’s not impossible.

Why Target Audience Analysis is Important

Especially if you’re in the early stages of brainstorming your startup, you might wonder why it’s necessary to invest marketing spend on audience analysis. After all, you already know that the average marketing costs for a startup can encompass around 20% to 25% of your overall revenue. Why allocate that amount toward extensively reviewing the “who” behind your advertising strategy?

The answer is simple: If you don’t perform this step now, your later marketing strategies, no matter how elaborate or expensive, will fail to reach their full potential. You have to know who you’re selling to and why before you can move forward with a business plan, talk to investors or take another step forward. If not, your conversion rates won’t be the only numbers that reveal the full scope of this missed potential. You also risk having sky-high customer acquisition costs, as well. The reality is that not everyone will use or even be interested in your product, so it’s critical to find those who will. Otherwise, you’re marketing to an audience of “everyone” and that’s an unwise way to spend any marketing dollar, whether you’re a fledgling small business or a Fortune 500 success story.

In fact, according to industry research, the top reason that startups fail is that there is no market need for the product or service they’re advertising. This accounts for 42% of all unsuccessful startups.

Why Startups are Easy, Hard and Mostly Fail: Damburst

This first reason alone sheds light on why it’s important to invest in market analysis before anything else. If you determine there’s not an actual need for the solution you’re developing, it’s best to figure that out now before you move too far into the costly, stressful and time-consuming endeavor that is building a startup from the ground up.

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To avoid reaching pitfall #2, which is running out of money, let’s discuss how to find your niche at the onset.

1. Start wide, then narrow.

You don’t have to begin with a laser-focused perspective on who your target buyer is. You don’t even need to create a buyer persona just yet. Rather, begin the process by focusing on broad segments of the population that you think might gravitate toward your company. This might mean saying “Women in the United States between the ages of 22-40.” From there, you may segment later into stay-at-home moms, career women, outdoor enthusiasts, devoted crafters, and more.

Yet, beginning with a simple gender, location, age basis is often an ideal place to start. Already, by doing this step alone, you’ve narrowed down your audience and shifted your focus away from “everyone” to a more specific subset. Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean that 65-year-old men are absolutely prohibited from reaching your brand. It simply means you’re not spending valuable advertising dollars to reach that demographic at this point because they’re less likely to convert.

Take, for example, the ad campaign ran by Barbie in 2015. Titled “Imagine the Possibilities,” it depicted a young girl taking on myriad roles reserved for grown-ups, from college professor to sports coach to veterinarian. The scenes are sweet and tinged with humor as real-life witnesses interact with this pint-sized phenom who informs museum guests that one particular dinosaur fossil is “one year old.” At the close of the commercial, the same girl is shown simply playing with her dolls, acting out and imagining all of the aforementioned scenes.

Imagine the Possibilities: Barbie

Though this is far from a startup, it reveals the importance of properly branding to a target audience. The main character in the commercial is a little girl, no older than seven, who is the ideal target customer for the Barbie brand. This campaign wasn’t created to reach anyone other than those tykes, and their parents watching alongside of them. The commercial was narrowly focused, but that’s the intent. It was also wildly successful, winning the brand a coveted Webby Award in 2016 by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS).

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2. Learn from others.

There’s power in listening, especially when it’s to your competition. Though you’re technically going after the same market share, there’s likely room on the table for all of you to succeed. That’s because, regardless of how innovative your offering is, there’s already an industry either centered on or similar to what you’re providing.

To this end, it’s important to research how your like-minded peers are approaching the same issue you’re trying to navigate. What’s working for them? What needs adjusting? Of course, accessing this information might not be as quick or simple as you think. Rather, it will require immersing yourself in their outreach and promotional materials. Join their e-mail newsletter lists, follow them on social media and spend some time on their website and subpages. How are they wording their materials? What strategies are they deploying to convert on-the-fence followers? How has the virtual response been? Do people seem interested?

Take that feedback to your own drawing table and figure out how you can customize the successful and effective methods to make them your own, and how you can improve upon any weak areas you find along the way. The idea isn’t to undermine your competitors along the way, but to learn from them and use that knowledge to build up your brand such a way that the entire industry benefits.

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3. Ask questions, then listen carefully.

Of course, the best way to determine if there’s a market need for your startup and where it exists is to simply ask around! This is the entire premise around startup websites and crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter, which has successfully funded more than 150,000 projects to date through more than $4 billion worth of pledged dollars. The idea is that if you put your idea out there, explain it in enough detail and request contributions, you’ll be able to determine who’s putting money toward your project and from there, what kind of buyers will comprise your target audience.

Yet, virtual representation in this form isn’t your only option. You can also host one-on-one interviews or even hold focus groups to gauge feedback from interested parties. Say, for instance, that your brand was looking to target men between the ages of 18 and 24. That might sound narrow enough, but the truth is that it’s a large portion of the population and needs to be fine-tuned.

As you have these essential conversations, whether in a solo or group capacity, you can better close the gap, narrowing the target buyer down from simply a gender and age to more intrinsic details, including behavior, lifestyle, values and more. The below graphic demonstrates the four pillars of audience segmentation, including geographics, demographics, psychographics and behavioral considerations.

Getting Smart with E-Mail Marketing Segmentation: Email Monday

If you go the focus group route, aim to expand the group to no more than around 15 participants. In this setting, you can share with those involved the products and services you’re planning to rollout. If you have any samples, you can pass them around at this time, as well. From there, you can determine their response and gauge their overall reception.

From there, you can analyze both your positive and negative responses. Of those who responded favorably, how many had shared characteristics? For instance, were they all men over the age of 55 or women between the ages of 24 and 40? Did they all live active lifestyles? Are they all retired empty-nesters? Though it might be difficult to discern a pattern at first, stick with it. Chances are, you’ll reveal more about your target buyer than you originally thought.

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Future-Focused: What to Do Once You Find Your Niche Market

Of course, finding your niche audience and target market is the first step. From there, you’re better positioned to optimize your marketing campaigns moving forward. Don’t be discouraged if your initial perception on interest levels is ultimately proven incorrect. That happens with even the most seemingly accurate data. People change their minds, opinions, value systems and budgets on a regular basis and it doesn’t mean your initial information was incorrect. Rather, it simply means it’s time to dust off that laptop, perform a more thorough new analysis and tweak your strategy. As long as the intent to better understand your customers is at the forefront of every advertising decision you make, you’ll be poised to become a part of that elite startup group defined by the 10% who succeed.

The post Finding Your Target Startup Market: Three Ways to Find and Narrow Your Niche appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Yet, the reality is that we live in the era of Big Data that continues to see unparalleled and unprecedented growth. This means that every second presents an opportunity for us to capture information on our buyers, both those who are completing the checkout process and who might still be on the fence. From the links they click to the products they peruse, there’s no shortage of information to store, and forward-thinking brands are those that take the steps to do so.

So, how can business leaders make sense of all of these inputs? When stored disparately, they’re nothing more than facts and talking points. For instance, you may know that more females buy your products than men, or that the average web visitor spends 10 minutes clicking around on the various subpages inside your website. These are all valuable insights, but unless they’re aggravated together and used to form a cohesive analysis, they’ll do little more than remain on our data servers, unused to their full potential.

This is where buyer personas come in. Put simply, these are comprehensive representations of your target audience members. They incorporate features such as gender, age range, ethnicity, occupation, average household income, geographical location and more. In a nutshell, creating a buyer persona or a set of personas for your company is akin to taking everything you know about what works in your niche and coming up with the ideal person who is most likely to make a purchase from your specific company.

To this end, simply stating that your product is hot with “Millennials” or “Stay-at-Home Moms” won’t cut it anymore. Now, it’s not enough to generically categorize the persons you most want to attract into a lump grouping. To do so is to grossly underestimate the myriad personality types, preferences, buying habits and interests that comprise an entire demographic. The good news? If you have a social media presence, your business already has everything it needs to develop composite buyer personas that can help jumpstart more effective and targeted marketing campaigns. To this end, let’s discuss a few ways your business can leverage these platforms to learn more about interested buyers as well as the traits they possess and share.

1. The Power of Facebook Insights

More than 70 million advertisers currently use Facebook to market their wares. That means that, regardless of how unique or specific your business listing is, there’s a large probability that it will get lost amid the sea of like-minded competitors. You might understand the reasons why creating buyer personas is so important, but you may not realize how Facebook can get you there. Yet, it’s still beneficial to have a presence on the largest social media network in the world and here’s why: As soon as you create a business account, you’ll have instant access to Facebook Insights.

This simple dashboard holds within it a treasure trove of valuable customer data. From here, you can quickly see the kinds of people who visit your page the most often. These will include touch points such as gender, age, primary language and more. Though these characteristics are somewhat generalized, they are still important as they help you cut through the billions of people who use Facebook to find those who are actively engaged with your business. These numbers and percentages represent real people behind a keyboard or a smart screen, who are clicking on your links, commenting on or liking your posts, and sharing them with others. In short, they are the people who are actually interested in what you have to say.

From here, you can adjust the messages you send out to better appeal to these web visitors. You can also create the basis of your buyer persona, using information specifically around age, gender and location. From here, for instance, you may be able to tell that your Facebook posts are resonating the most with men between the ages of 25 and 40 located in the United States. Though it’s not incredibly specific, this insight is the backbone of your persona, which you’ll build upon in subsequent steps.

If you want to keep the analysis within Facebook, you might consider using a specialty app to integrate a poll onto your page. From here, you can survey your followers on the type of current contact that interests them the most, as well as what they’d like to see in the future. From that quick step, you’ve now narrowed your buyer persona down by interest.

From here, you can further leverage the power of Facebook to boost both your ads and your sponsored posts, targeting them to appeal to certain, defined audience type. This makes them instantly more effective, as they’re pinpointed to target the type of people who have already expressed an interest in your company or ones similar to it.

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2. Leveraging Twitter Analytics

You may already be using Twitter Analytics to know how effective your posts are and to discern your level and rate of follower engagement. Yet, you may not realize that this same tool can provide immense detail on exactly who is accessing your tweets. From within your Analytics page, visit the “Followers” tab. This resource works similarly to how the Facebook Insights dashboard does, grouping your followers primarily by age range, location and language. Yet, while you may be tempted to dismiss this data as you already have it elsewhere, take a second look at it.

Does it follow what you’re seeing on Facebook? It may, but conversely, your ideal Twitter audience member might be entirely different from someone who finds you on Facebook. Though there is no hard and fast data around the type of people who use one social media platform over another, there is research around what each demographic prefers. For instance, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that Americans between the ages of 18 to 24 are most likely to use platforms including Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram in addition to Facebook.

Image via Pew Research Center: Social Media Use in 2018

One way that Twitter Analytics distinguishes itself from Facebook Insights is the addition of an “Interests” tab. From here, your active audience members are further broken down by interest type. Ideally, you’ll want those interests to line up with the kinds of products and services your business provides.

For instance, if you’re a music production company, then “music” should be toward the top of this list. Otherwise, you may need to drastically adjust your messaging to appeal to the diverse list of subjects that pique your audience’s attention. Why is this step important? Research reveals that 67% of Twitter followers actively buy from the brands they follow on the platform. Thus, reaching them via the content that grabs their attention is worth the extra time it takes to conduct that research.

Image via Fedobe: How to Use Twitter to Brand Your Business

You can also see the kinds of devices that your visitors are using to access your Twitter content. This can be helpful if you’re in the process of making your site more responsive or mobile-friendly. Knowing whether iOS or Android devices are preferred can make a major difference in how you choose to lay out your site. It can also play into your mobile checkout capabilities, as well.

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3. Finding Topics of Interest through LinkedIn

Now that you understand more clearly who’s buying your products, clicking on your profiles and reading your Facebook and Twitter posts, you’re ready to create and curate outreach messages that are most likely to reach them. Yet, unless your content is strategically developed, your conversation could fail to convert. This is where LinkedIn can prove helpful.

After reviewing your Facebook Insights, polls and and Twitter Analytics, you’ll have a clearer picture of what interests your followers. Using this knowledge, head to LinkedIn and search for groups that center around these topics. For instance, if your followers are interested in sports medicine, you can search for this topic on the left-hand search bar and then sort by either “content” or “groups” (under the “More” tab) to find out what people in the industry are saying about this topic.

Consider the recent case study of UPS. While the brand’s customers are geographically wide-reaching, many of them share a common concern: eco-responsibility and sustainability. The company listened and launched a campaign to deliver packages in some locations via bike. Below is the LinkedIn post revealing the campaign.

Image via Social Media Examiner: Four LinkedIn Mini Case Studies

This is just one example of how brands can listen in on the conversations taking place around their industry and specialized niche, then leverage that information to create innovative and personalized campaigns. Within the groups, you can find active discussions around current hot topics, questions and trends that can prove valuable fodder for jumpstarting your content campaign. What are people wondering about, sharing and passionately discussing? Knowing the answers to these kinds of questions can help you create messages that are most likely to resonate within these communities.

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Compiling Social Media Insights into Complete Buyer Personas

Once you’ve leveraged social media to get a clear picture of who your active social media listeners and participants are, you’re one step closer to creating a thorough buyer persona. Though the information provided via each platform is relatively surface-level, when they are used in conjunction with one another, valuable insights can be found.

Start with Facebook Insights to get a basic view of what content is popular and who’s at home, at work or on the train accessing your data. From there, visit the Twitter Analytics page to find out what these audience members are interested in, what devices they’re using to find and share your content from anywhere around the world. Then, bring it all together with LinkedIn groups and content pages, where you can find those data points worth talking about. When utilized comprehensively, these myriad social media platforms can act as the portal you need to get closer access to the buyers you need to reach the most.

The post Leveraging Social Media Data to Create Robust Buyer Personas appeared first on RELEVANCE.

The idea behind influencer marketing is that, out of someone’s substantial number of followers, if even a fraction of that readership clicks on a brand’s link or actually follows through and buys the offering, that is just as effective as placing a traditional advertisement in a magazine. Though novel and new, the approach appears to be working. In fact, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) recently reported that 75% of advertisers in this country employ influencer marketing. Moreover, 43% of these leaders plan to amp up their spending in this marketing sector over the next year and of those who aren’t currently going this route, 27% anticipate making strides toward it by 2019.

Yet, while there used to be only a few standouts in these spaces, an influx of tech-savvy brand ambassadors have tapped into the earning potential available through influencer marketing. As such, it has become even more difficult for someone to crack into the top layer, with most remaining in the mid-level marketing realm. In fact, this veritable oversaturation may be diminishing or even reversing influencer efforts as a whole. A recent study actually found that that there is a negative correlation between the size of someone’s Instagram following and his or her post engagement rate. As a result,

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[Source: “Average Engagement Rates of Instagram Influencer Marketing, Smart Insights]

Put simply, these are persons who, though their following might not be as large, are standouts in their specialty spaces. From knitters to interior designers and every maker, creator and doer in between, micro-influencers might not boast the 50k+ numbers that their traditional counterparts do, but the following they do have is fiercely loyal. Thus, when brands within their wheelhouse reach out to them for a campaign, they can be more confident that the readers who see the posts actually care about and are invested in the industry at hand.

Forward-focused brand leaders interested in partnering with micro-influencers to boost their name recognition and attract new interest should understand a few key tactics when handling this newfound team. To that end, here are six ways to engage your core team, effectively plan and manage their commitments and ensure the highest return for your investment.

1. Remember they’re partners, not employees

One of the most common mistakes that brand leaders have when they first hire a team of micro-influencers to help promote and spread the word about their company is that they approach these new partners not as equal-level colleagues but as employees instead.

It’s important to remember that collaboration in this sense is a two-way street. Your brand benefits from the partnership by increasing its audience reach and in return, the micro-influencers gain exclusive access to an insider community, where they’re often offered free products or service in exchange for acting as a voice or face of the line.

To keep morale high and expectations in check, keep in mind that while the partnership should be collaborative and open, it is not a space for demands. If contributing to your efforts ever begins to feel more like work than reward, there are plenty of other avenues the influencers can pursue apart from your business.

2. Introduce rewards and motivations

Employee speak aside, it is helpful, on the other hand, to encourage your micro-influencer community to create and share engaging and informative posts about your brand. To spur this effort along, it can be helpful to introduce a little friendly competition. For instance, you may want to develop a virtual, shareable leaderboard that includes a list of your micro-influencers along with how many likes and shares their last related post received or the number of comments it garnered.

Reveal this data with the intention of being as transparent as possible. When others in the community see the performance of their peers, it’s likely they will feel motivated to step up their own game accordingly. In fact, research shows that 78% of employees would be willing to work even harder if they felt recognized and rewarded. To follow up, be sure to have simple rewards (such as free brand swag) available to hand out to the top scorers.

In keeping with the rewards aspect, it’s also helpful to highlight to your prospective micro-influencers just what they can receive out of the partnership, as it is a two-way collaboration. Consider the success of the recent micro-influencer campaign that MINI Australia just completed. In partnership with Vogue Australia, the brand partnered with five micro-influencers who were standouts in the local Australia fashion scene. The idea behind the campaign was to use Instagram to showcase a new MINI convertible model. MINI brand leaders allowed these five influencers to not only pose next to the car and post about it on their pages, but they also handed them the keys and let them test drive it as well.

Source: “Influencer Marketing Case Study: Micro-influencers For A Groundswell Approach with MINI Australia: Nora Chan Instagram, Scrunch]

The resulting 14 Instagram posts that followed achieved more than 8,300 engagements that ultimately drove traffic back to the MINI website. In addition, the campaign reached a readership of 147,800 online followers. Perhaps most importantly, however, was that the influencers themselves were able to enjoy and take part in the process, allowed creative reign over how they styled their photos and content.

3. Keep it light

While a lighthearted competition can be a great encourager, it’s important that it remains just that -- lighthearted. No one should ever be made to feel not as important, popular or necessary just because their metrics are down. At the end of the day, it’s more productive, and ultimately profitable, to establish a sense of community among micro-influencers rather than cultivate feelings of bitterness or jealousy.

For instance, you may be tempted to set rigorous posting schedules to keep track of everyone’s activities and make sure that each influencer is pulling his or her own weight. While you can (and should) keep backend calculations of this data, it’s usually not necessary to make this knowledge public to your partners.

By maintaining an environment of positivity, you’ll inherently spur them to work harder to contribute rather than making the entire process seem like a chore that no one really wants to do. In fact, studies show that when people are brought up in their professional endeavors and made to feel confident about their progress, they’re up to 12% more productive.

Moreover, they are also more likely to recommend their work endeavor to others, turning them from partners to brand ambassadors, a concept developed by Bain & Co. as a measure of loyalty. If asked “How likely are you to recommend our organization?” those answering 0-6 are classified as detractors, while those in the 7-8 range are passive and ones who answer 9-10 are promoters. Brands who partner with influencers want those responses to score between a 9 and 10 and as such, motivation and reward are key.

Micro-Influencers

[Source: Employee Engagement: Seeing the Bigger Picture, OfficeVibe]

4. Thoroughly vet and onboard all prospects

Before you sign on the dotted lined and enter into a partnership with a micro-influencers or community of them, it’s important to make sure you both know what you’re getting into. While numbers are obviously the first thing that most brand leaders look at when determining who, in the vast sea of social media, should represent their lines, don’t let these figures be the totality of your consideration.

You also want to make sure you work well with the other party and that he or she is eager to represent your brand. Take your time during this process and be sure to set clear guidelines and expectations from the onset so there isn’t any confusion once the ball gets rolling. Then, once you’ve established the partnership, go ahead and ask the micro-influencer to complete a small, manageable task, such as sharing an image of your new product and using a related hashtag in an Instagram post. This is a strong way to boost their confidence and help them see the potential in this new opportunity.

On the other hand, if you wait a month before sharing your first contribution request and make it a challenging one at that, you risk burning out your partners before they even really get started. So, start slow and simple and build from there, especially during the onboarding process.

5. Help them connect as a group

[bctt tweet="Individual micro-influencers within your greater network will share the common goal of being interested and active in the industry at hand." username="relevance"]

Say, for instance, you are a niche loose-leaf tea maker with a micro-influencer team of 10 people who are known across social media as being tea experts enthusiasts. Have these experts talked to one another outside of this collaboration? Have they attended similar conferences or worked on some of the same projects?

Chances are, some of them have knowledge or connections that could benefit the others, and vice versa. Rather than keeping them apart, encourage them to bounce ideas off one another, ask each other questions and request help from each other when needed. Often, a closed social media page (think a private Facebook group) is an ideal way to spur this dialogue. Remember to not only create the page but to join it yourself. This is a simple way to be a part of their collaborative efforts and offer support when needed.

6. Don’t exacerbate social media stress

From afar, micro-influencers might seem like they have a dream job and in many ways, their flexible setup is admirable. Yet, their careers are not without their fair share of challenges and as their partner, it’s helpful to make their efforts as seamless and simple as possible. For instance, don’t ask them to display megasized graphics on a social media account that just isn’t equipped to do so. In a similar sense, resist the urge to bombard them with an email overload, text them incessantly at the top of every hour or send push notifications every time something even marginally important needs to be shared.

You can also help them take the guesswork and stress out of determining what to post and how to say it. If your brand creates and shares a particularly noteworthy piece of content, for example, you can use SMS messaging and push notifications to alert your micro-influencer community that something new is out, and here are the steps to share it with your followers.

The Rise of Micro-Influencers: Recognizing and Rewarding Potential

Though it might require a little more work at the beginning to find micro-influencers who fit your industry and have a large social media following at that, rest assured that taking the time to perform this research is critical to ensuring the long-term success of both your brand and marketing campaign.

Ultimately, the micro-influencers you choose will become instantly integrated into the fabric of your company. As such, creating an environment that encourages creativity and originality while also keeping the competition friendly is the touchstone to a well-performing campaign. These six steps above can help you recruit and retain the influencers who can do the most for your company. In return, you can learn, one step at time, how to become a brand they actively seek out to promote.

The post The Rise of Niche Micro-Influencers and 6 Ways to Attract and Engage Them appeared first on RELEVANCE.

In a world where so many flash-in-the-pan tactics have failed, why has the hashtag remained a constant? It has less to do with the symbol itself and more to do with the sense of community it immediately implies. Take the #MeToo movement for example, and consider how many people were connected across the globe who otherwise wouldn’t have found each other had it not been for that simple tag. The digital marketing industry as a whole can be a complex and overwhelming sphere to live in, and as such, something as unfussy and straightforward as the hashtag offers a breath of relief, not to mention extreme usability.

Yet, there’s a difference between hashtagging (yes, it’s a verb, too) strategically and over-using the technique. A pointed message can quickly become lost in translation if #every #single #word is underscored with the symbol. When utilized correctly, however, it can make all the difference in an effective social media marketing strategy and one that fails to deliver. Here are a few pointers for how to get it right.

1. Don’t forget to tag locally

Local advertising is one of the most powerful tools in your outreach arsenal. In fact, local advertising revenues bring in more than $145 million annually, with traffic derived from customers right within your own backyard. While it’s true that digital marketing affords us the opportunity to reach a wider geographic audience than ever before, don’t discount the power of selling to your own community. You’ll likely find followers who are passionate about supporting a local business and those types of local supporters are invaluable to growing your brand reputation.

Leverage local hashtags in your tweets, posts, and pins to grow community awareness and add your voice to the conversation. Whenever possible, you can also organically hashtag your location to remind web visitors where you’re located and make it easier for local shoppers to find you.

2. Consider hashtagging in Instagram comments

Especially on Instagram, it can be easy to lose your message amid the thousands of other businesses who are also tagging everything and anyone in their posts. Stand out for all the right reasons by skipping hashtags altogether on occasion and instead, adding them in a comment on your post immediately afterward. You’ll still rank for the hashtags, but your post won’t look the least bit spammy.

Research reveals that Instagram posts with 11 or more hashtags earn around 80% more interactions compared to those with only two. Therefore, don’t eschew tagging altogether on this platform, but be a little more selective and strategic about how you display them.

3. Avoid generic and broad hashtags

Sure, everyone can hashtag #selfie, but there are currently more than 338 million people who had the same idea on Instagram. You may show up in the top of recent posts, but you’ll quickly move down the line as others replace you. Instead, focus on industry niche hashtags that people who are truly interested in your products and services will search for. This strategy works for virtually every industry, from retail to Food and Beverage and myriad sectors in between. Restaurant owners can tag their individual menu items; financial services providers can use tags to help customers compare rates; small business owners can tag their merchants and vendors when a new shipment comes in. This way, there is less competition and you’ll have a greater chance to showcase your posts. Do a quick audit of what other companies in your sphere are tagging, as well as what your target audience is searching for, and tailor your hashtagging strategy accordingly.

To make sure the hashtags you’re using are relevant, it’s helpful to analyze their performance to see how much traffic they help drive to your site. An effective hashtag isn’t just one that includes you in an industry community. It’s one that draws web visitors in and encourages them to explore your product offering further, eventually leading them down the path to purchase. You could have the most creative and carefully curated tags in the world, but if they aren’t helping you generate a larger following and building your bottom line, it’s time to rethink them.

Hashtag Your Way to Success

In today’s Digital Age, it can be easy to assume that any attention online is good attention. After all, if people are talking about you, that’s good brand buzz, right? Well, yes and no. Standing out and getting noticed should be an aim, but not at the expense of your business integrity and reputation. Hashtagging sporadically or without intention can render your efforts ineffective or even detrimental to your brand. The next time you go to press that pound sign, make sure you’re ready to add that tag to your voice and associate your name with that dialogue. Then, you can press “post” with confidence.

The post Hashtagging for Results: The Power Behind That Pound Sign appeared first on RELEVANCE.

The Future of Branding

Now, however? Today’s entrepreneurs are more equipped than those in years past, but that instant access to myriad digital resources, with social media marketing, email, SMS messaging, and video collaboration chief among them, can be more of a headache than a help if not utilized correctly. Thus, it’s no wonder that business owners are burning out at an unparalleled speed. Research shows that age plays a factor in this mental and physical exhaustion, though the trend doesn’t follow the pattern you might expect. Only 59% of those from the Baby Boomer generation reported burnout compared to 84% of Generation Xers and a staggering 94% of Millennials.

So how can these enterprising groups avoid the inevitable? The veritable catch-22 is that with so much potential to grow and thrive also comes the potential to crash and burn if proper care and attention isn’t given at the first sign of burnout. When the leader at the helm of a business isn’t as passionate about the brand as before, that sentiment can quickly travel down throughout the company in a domino effect, eventually resulting in lost clients and a waning brand identity.

Here are three ways entrepreneurs and business owners can stay on fire for their brand and maintain the enthusiasm to grow it, all while juggling the day-to-day demands of running a business and managing a workforce:

1. Schedule strategically

From the outside, it might appear that one of the advantages of entrepreneurship is the ability to set your own schedule. Once you build up your team, you can sleep in a little later, come in with a mug of coffee in hand, go over a few to-do lists and sit back while others take care of the heavy lifting, right? Unfortunately, the opposite tends to be true. Without proper focus, business owners can become flooded with tasks and responsibilities to the point of exhaustion.

The key here is striking a balance. To regain order and a sense of calm, it’s helpful to start by making a clean organizational sweep. File that big stack of papers on your desk, clear out any excess clutter, and delete those few hundred emails that keep sticking around. Then, schedule your time to make sure the highest priority items get taken care of first. These will be your customer-focused, big-ticket items that could result in lost revenue if they slip. Then, as time allows, tend to the others. At the same time, be sure to schedule in breaks and adequate vacation time to ensure there’s enough of a reprieve to come back recharged.

2. Delegate as necessary 

There are likely people on your staff who are experts at what they do. That’s the reason you hired them in the first place! When you’re feeling overwhelmed as a business owner, take an inventory of all the work on your plate (that one that feels too full) and consider if you can delegate any of it to a staff member who might have more time to complete it. Of course, this isn’t a free pass to give all your work away, but it is a reminder that you don’t have to carry the entire company on your own.

Even if you’re a small, two-person business still finding your sea legs, remember there are third-party companies with the skill sets, resources, and talent available to help complete much of the work you’re drowning in. Yes, it will require an investment on your company’s part, but how much is really being accomplished if you’re stuck in an endless, back-and-forth cycle of spinning your wheels? From website design to social media marketing, consider if there are any local partners who may be able to lend the helping hand you need.

3. Celebrate your successes (big and little)

One quick way to boost your team’s confidence and ease the tension, even when the office feels like a pressure cooker? Find a success story and celebrate it! This doesn’t have to be the closing of a major deal, though that’s certainly a reason to get excited. Rather, it’s often equally rewarding to highlight even the smallest accomplishments, such as a salesperson upselling an order or a team meeting its quota for the month. Even if as the owner, you weren’t directly involved in the effort, a win for the company is a win for all, and noticing those actions can go a long way in boosting team morale.

Experts reveal that positive feedback boosts employee engagement, performance and retention. It’s worth taking the time of your day to notice even the littlest achievements, as they can make the big challenges that much less daunting to tackle.

Building Your Brand Without Losing Yourself

Building up a solid brand following and active audience requires dedication, time, and tons of effort. As the business owner, you might be feeling the strain of all this responsibility resting square on your shoulders. Yet, with a little refocusing, it is possible to boost sales and grow your client list without burning the midnight oil every night and waking up in a few hours to start the whole process over again. As we move further into 2018, leaders will be those who take the time to ensure that every action and to-do list entry is one that will breathe life into their organization, and likewise, back into themselves.

The post Building Up, Not Burning Out Your Brand appeared first on RELEVANCE.

That said, there are a few new products that are totally changing the game. These smart tools might be tech-savvy and innovative, but they’re arguably our greatest assets when it comes to building loyal brand communities of engaged and excited followers.

Innovation That Solves Client Pain Points

While this is one that will look different for every industry, the top way that companies are leveraging smart technology is to meet their customers right where they are and address some major pain points along the way. Many of these products fall under the smart home category, as demonstrated by this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

From a smart clothespin that affixes to your clothesline to monitor weather conditions and tell you when it’s the best time to do laundry to a washer and dryer system from Whirlpool that syncs with your Apple watch and Alexa home system to alert you when it’s time to change cycles, there’s virtually no limit to what brands can achieve. The key? Consider your audience base, and what their frustrations might be with your industry. Then, seek to integrate technology that can offer a viable and valuable solution.

Smart Packaging That Delivers

One way to boost customer loyalty and improve retention rates? Make sure your customers know they can trust both you and the products or services you deliver. One way to do so is to incorporate smart packaging into your delivery operations. For example, one Polish-based company created a “Talkin’ Things” label that utilizes Near Field Communication technology.

When customers receive a shipment in the mail, they can scan the label and quickly discern whether or not the product is genuine or counterfeit. They can also learn important product information, such as sealing integrity and expiration date, with a quick scan. The label, designed to feature NFC technology as well as Radio-Frequency Identification, cloud computing and mobile app capabilities, was a finalist for last year’s NFC Innovation Award.

This type of label is especially effective for brands in the food and hospitality niche, as well as pharmaceuticals. By protecting brand integrity and bolstering customer security, it offers a creative new way for customers to connect and stay informed at the same time.

Online Community Forums That Engage

Want your customers and brand advocates to feel like they’re truly a part of your company? Why not allow them a firsthand look into your development process, and allow them to try their hand at creating some new product lines?

Forward-thinking companies such as LEGO and DEWALT are doing just that. The former hosts its LEGO Ideas online community, wherein members can submit renderings of their ideas for new game set creations. In a similar vein, DEWALT’s Insight Community is full of more than 10,000 end users who offer product feedback, ideas for new developments, and worksite challenges they’d like to see addressed.

While the technology might not be cutting edge, this innovative use of online member forums certainly is. It’s also smart, as it allows brands a firsthand look at their customer base, and there’s no sharper assessment tool than a first-person anecdote of a specific challenge that only your brand can solve.

Another benefit to this type of system? It allows you to recognize loyal and active customers. For instance, LEGO reviews all product submissions that get more than 10,000 fan votes on the Ideas community. When a winner is chosen, that person’s name is affixed on all product packaging and marketing. He or she even gets a cut of the profits! Talk about an incentive worth going after.

Beacon Technology That Alerts Customers to Promotions

Here’s a question for brick-and-mortar businesses: How many times have you ran a company-wide promotion and expected a ton of foot traffic, only to come up short? If that scenario sounds familiar, your marketing strategy might not be solely to blame. It’s likely that people simply didn’t know you were holding the sale, or weren’t alerted in time to stop in.

Beacon technology is out to change that reality. Stores can affix these tiny beacons to the outside of their storefronts to learn when someone is walking by who might find the promotion attractive. Powered by Bluetooth technology, these allow you to send a discount code or other special incentive to someone standing directly outside of your door.

Moreover, they’re also great tools for customer analytics. Using the data gathered by the Bluetooth beacon, retailers can quickly see the effectiveness of each promotion. Was there a particular time of day that they worked better? What about appealing to certain age groups or other demographics?

Virtual Reality That Lets Customers Try Before They Buy

While e-commerce is booming, research reveals that 65% of customers would rather come into a physical store to make a purchase. Why? There’s a hands-on tangibility to in-store retail that cannot be replicated on a screen, no matter how fancy the graphics or how advanced the HTML.

As such, many companies are merging the two worlds, offering customers a smart and immersive in-store experience that leverages the latest and greatest in technology advancement, all while catering to the fact that they’re there in person. One way they’re achieving this balance is through the use of virtual reality systems.

From dressing rooms that let you see how an item of clothing will look in various forms of lighting to smart mirrors that let you visualize yourself in a particular setting, such as on a beach, wearing an outfit, these tools are taking the user experience to an entirely different level.

Even if you’re not selling clothing, consider how virtual reality can benefit your customer experience, and whether or not it’s worth the investment to both impress your client base and keep happy customers coming back for more.

Standing Out and Building Brand Love in 2018

Customers now have access to virtually any piece of information they might need, right at their fingertips. Moving forward, successful companies will be those that recognize this potential and leverage new, smart technology to create more meaningful and impactful client relationships.

Digital functionality is becoming sharper and more advanced than ever before, but standing out as a brand doesn’t just mean buying the best systems out there. It means using them strategically to engage clients, build brand loyalty, and improve satisfaction ratings for now and for years to come.

The post 5 Trends That Change Customer Interaction appeared first on RELEVANCE.