Technology continues to make marketing easier and better for businesses. Entrepreneurs and marketers can now reach out to their target audience on various platforms through marketing videos.

But don't just jump into making marketing videos without doing any research first. Your videos will be more successful if you first determine the types of marketing videos you want to make. Once you know the types of video, then you can begin to produce it. 

If that feels overwhelming to you, don't worry. We will walk you through the basics of what you need to know below.

Different Types of Marketing Videos

Demo Videos

When you want to illustrate to your target audience how your products or services work, use a demo video. This will help you know that your audience understands the essential information about your brand.

Event Videos

When your business plans to host a conference or a fundraiser, create an event video. You can use marketing videos to promote your event, but you can also use video for round-table discussions.

Brand Videos

Brand videos are the most critical component of the entire marketing campaign. They showcase the mission, vision, and types of products and services offered by your company.

Educational Videos

Another name for educational videos is how-to or instructional videos. They teach the audience new information about products or services. The sales team can also use educational videos to illustrate products and services to customers, similar to demo videos.

Expert Interviews

Videos captured from experts or influencers play a crucial role in overall brand visibility and business growth. Remember to identify and use an expert that is knowledgeable in your industry.

Explainer Videos

Explainer videos portray a specific message and show your target audience why they need to purchase your products or services. Most of these videos give solutions to the buyer.

Animated Videos

When you have difficult concepts about your products or services, you can use animated videos with strong visuals to pass the message across to your target audience.

Testimonials

These videos give proof that your products and services are credible. They are generated from the former customers who’ve had satisfactory services from your business.

Live Videos

These are longer stream videos that show your viewers a general overview of your company. They draw closer engagements with your audience, enabling you to establish long-lasting relationships.

Virtual Reality Videos

Virtual reality video allows your viewer to check out your content from all angles, making it look so real as if the customer is right there with your content.

Augmented Reality Videos

AR videos come with an additional digital layer showing what your target audiences are currently viewing in the real world.

Personalized Message Videos

These videos present a platform to continue with an engagement or acknowledge an email or text from someone.

How to Create a Marketing Video

Before you start recording your videos, define what you want to achieve and the direction you plan to take. Know who your target audience is and their purchase behaviors. The video content and target location of your videos is also another thing to consider.

Create a Video Script

Writing a script should be your next course of action. Skipping this part can cause you to edit more than you need, and you may end up releasing a video way above its expected length. Use Google Docs for the best, real-time results.

Choose the Right Camera

The quality of your camera can either make or break your credibility. So, ensure you identify the best camera that will capture professional videos. You also need to understand how the camera works and how to shoot the best videos.

Get Set with Your Talent

Taking professional videos doesn’t need education qualifications. You can still capture quality videos as long as you are passionate about film and photography and understand your camera well with a little bit of coaching.

Shoot the Videos

This is now the time to shoot your videos. You need to be strategic and ensure that your camera is placed firmly at the right location. You will capture the video based on your marketing needs, expectations, and the platform you plan to use.

Organize the Video Footage

You need to organize your videos to separate the footage into various broader categories. If you leave as they are, it can become more complicated and frustrate the entire project. For best results, ensure you build a file structure and back up all videos using a standard naming convention for easy identification.

Edit Your Videos

Video editing is a crucial component that determines the outcome of your project. The videos need to appear eye-catchy to draw the attention of your audience quickly. Sometimes, it can be overwhelming and confusing to edit your videos. Fortunately, there is video editing software out there, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, which you can use to give your videos a professional facelift.

The Bottom Line

Now that you have your videos ready, you can go ahead and promote them on your preferred platforms. Remember, it may sound challenging and frustrating when starting, but it gets better, bigger, and easier after the first or second production.

The purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) is to improve your rankings within the search engine results pages (SERPs) to drive more traffic to your website. To achieve this goal, you need to ensure Google’s crawlers know each of the pages in your domain exist. Unfortunately, having a website isn’t enough. You have to grab Google’s attention and the attention of other search engines by maximizing internal links. 

Search engine optimization is a formula that takes patience and a little know-how. SEO link building is a crucial element to staying on top of Google’s bots, but it often goes underused. If you’re working to boost your SEO, take advantage of these tactics for implementing internal links. 

Inviting Google to Index Your Page

Point Google’s crawlers and your potential clients towards your most important pages by placing external links leading back to them. The number and quality of those links help determine your SERP ranking and establishing your page’s authority.

Ensure your pages are high in expertise, authority, and trust, or EAT, to link back to your page. Why? Because that shows Google there is value there, boosting your page in the process. However, it isn’t enough to simply direct external traffic to your homepage and popular content. You need to focus on all critical places within your domain, including the pages that drive revenue and conversions. As it turns out, the best way to harness your SEO power throughout your website is with a robust internal linking strategy.

What Are Internal Links and Why Do They Matter?

Like external links, internal links provide a pathway for access to your content. However, while external links direct traffic from outside sources to your pages, internal links connect all of your content to enable movement between pages within your site for both human and artificial visitors:

• Human users. Your site visitors utilize internal links to navigate your site to find the content they’re seeking. Simply put, if you don’t link to a page, your users won’t see it. And what’s worse, if you don’t establish a natural, easy-to-navigate system of linking to help your users find the content they need, you risk them leaving your site altogether. With a solid internal linking strategy, you’ll build a better user experience and direct users to your most important and most profitable pages.

• Web crawlers. Google’s crawlers rely on internal links to discover related content, determine its value, and map your site's internal hierarchy. When a page receives many internal and external links, Google assumes it to be valuable and relatively high in EAT. Taken one step further, the EAT you’ve already acquired through a quality backlink profile can effectively spread equally across your pages, but only if you take care to establish an effective internal linking strategy.

Five SEO Strategies to Optimize Your Internal Link Profile

Useful internal linking helps you leverage all the SEO power you’ve taken so much care to develop to drive more traffic to your most critical pages. But, after you’ve determined your most authoritative or high-value pages, how should you go about building a quality internal link profile that promotes them? Start with these five strategies:

1. Structure Your Website

Some of the most critical internal links on your website reside within your navigation menu, which should be both easy to browse and prominently placed at the top of each page within your site. Then, you’ll need to build your site’s hierarchy; your homepage will reside at the top, with the most links directed towards and away from it, as it is the hub for users to navigate to all your other pages. At most, your users should only need five clicks to navigate from one page to another on your site.

2. Focus on Your Most Important Pages

Once you’ve established your page hierarchy, it isn’t enough to simply place links at random to connect all your landing pages. Instead, structure your links to focus traffic on your most high-value pages, such as pages containing your most defining thought leadership-related content or e-commerce opportunities for your users. 

In general, the most important pages should be no more than three clicks from your homepage, effectively transferring your earned EAT to those pages first. Other, more in-depth pages can still contribute value to your users and receive distributed EAT at a rate that coincides with their importance within your hierarchy.

3. Link New or Popular Pages 

Within your page’s hierarchy, it is crucial to group your content, linking pages with your most important information to relevant pages clustered around the same topics. However, it is also essential to focus on your newest and most popular content, especially if they are the same. 

Providing new and popular content suggestions on each page (often in the footer or sidebar) helps users make the connection between your most important pages and your most-frequented pages. It also helps distribute your link EAT value more effectively.

4. Address Anchor Text 

Links placed within your page’s content and leading to pages with relevant corresponding content are more valuable than a set of links within your page menu, header, footer, or sidebar. To seize on all this potential value, take these steps to optimize your anchor text:

• Perform keyword research to determine competitive, relevant keywords for the content on your page.
• Incorporate compelling phrases that make users want to click.
• Ensure that your anchor text accurately describes the content of the linked page.
• Only link to relevant pages that are useful to readers consuming the current on-page content.

5. Include the Right Number of Links

While including as many links as possible might seem like a great way to spread your link power, stretching your link power too thin can take away from the perceived value of your most critical pages. 

Also, Google’s crawlers will only crawl your website as a product of how fresh and popular your content is. Wasting this “crawl budget” on links of little value can mean your most important pages go unindexed. 

While some experts recommend no more than 75-100 internal links, including links within the header, footer, sidebar, and page menu, Google itself gives no specifics other than incorporating a “reasonable number of links.” Also, ensure that pages that don’t need link power (such as login pages) use nofollow links to avoid utilizing your crawl budget.

Maximize Internal Links for SEO Success

Any business developing a strong SEO strategy knows that it won’t go anywhere without the proper tools. With the right attention paid to your internal links, you enable Google to index all of your pages and optimize your site performance as you structure your internal link profile. 

By following the strategies above, both Google and your users will develop a thorough understanding of your website. This will boost your site rankings in the process.

Marketers work in a competitive landscape that forces them to keep tabs on trends and what their competitors are doing. They also keep a pulse on their customers and what’s important to them. 

This information will help you develop an approach for your multi-channel marketing campaign. An approach that will provide your customers with a similar customer experience and the right message across all digital marketing channels.

The data that your marketing campaign will be based on will help you understand your customer's specific marketing needs better. It will also populate your market research and improve the overall ROI. 

Running a multi-channel, or sometimes called cross-channel, marketing campaign ensures that you maximize exposure to your target audience. Which, with the recent climate in the retail industry, means you will have to increase your efforts tenfold.. 

In 2019, more than 40% of marketing professionals stated that integrated marketing channels are important; however, 46% struggled with the process and couldn’t do things properly. Thus, there is an urgency attached to improving your reach through effective multi-channel marketing campaigns, and here is how you can do it. 

Make Your Research Stand Out 

When you’re considering a potential channel for your multi-channel marketing campaign, don’t skimp on the research stage. 

Start by looking at your current customer data to see which channels will lead to a strong ROI based on past actions. Also, look at where your high customer engagement has come from in the past. 

From here, you can look for potentially successful channels for each audience segment. For example, if you divide your audience according to their age, you can easily classify which social media platform is most suitable. 

You can also implement a growth-share matrix to improve your digital marketing efforts. It is a competitive analysis framework that helps you divide your company’s products into four classifications based on their success. 

Choose Your Channels 

Expanding your reach only on social media platforms does not make a complete multi-channel marketing campaign approach. Yes, social media may be an essential engagement channel for many marketers, but you don’t need an account on each platform.

If you’re considering mobile marketing, ask yourself if your target audience will read your texts or just ignore them. 

No matter which channels you choose initially, you can still experiment with different channels.

Use Social Media for Post-Click Landing Pages 

In order to use social media for more traffic on your website, you’re going to need a strong and organic social media following. You can do this by offering relevant industry content, increasing your accessibility to customers, answering queries within a short time frame, and providing timely content. 

As a business, you can use your Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter following to market your post-click landing pages for things like product demos, services, or podcasts and e-books. After an adequate number of prospects complete the post-click landing page form, you can start emailing them new offers. 

Track Your Campaign Performance Across Channels 

After you’ve concluded your research, decided on your multi-channel marketing campaign channels, and selected adequate content, it’s time to track your campaign’s performance. To help you determine which channels are most effective in your campaign, use an attribution model. 

An attribution model helps you see how customers engage with your content across different channels and what actions they take before converting. Some of the most common attribution models that you may adopt are as follows:

• Linear Attribution: Whatever action a consumer takes gets equal credit on their journey to becoming a customer. 
• Last-click Attribution: The full credit goes to the last action the consumer took for their journey to becoming a customer. 
• First-click Attribution: Full credit will go to the first action a consumer takes on their customer journey. 

Don’t Forget about CRM System 

If you’ve been data-centric throughout your multi-channel campaign development, chances are you’ve already considered how your CRM system offers valuable insights into individual customers and leads. 

Marketing automation tools help deliver insights that fuel communications and ensure campaigns remain relevant. You can track the channels and devices your customers and prospects use. You can also track the brands they engage with, where they make their purchases, and where they go for their research. 

This helps you track their behavior and react timely with relevant and updated information. This will boost the efficacy of your multi-channel campaign. 

After you’ve carefully crafted your multi-channel marketing strategy with adequate research and data, you can move to streamlining the process of designing a consistent UX by customizing your post-click landing page platform. 

Final Thoughts on Multi-channel Marketing Campaigns

Multi-channel marketing means putting yourself in the shoes of your target audience and using multiple channels to interact with them. This approach takes into account the terms and choices of clients at a specific point of the customer journey. At the same time, this marketing strategy brings better results for lead generation and reaching wider audiences.

Nowadays, your potential clients can be anywhere. Better tracking and utilizing multiple channels are effective ways to communicate with your audience and improve user acquisition.

Use the tips above to launch and run your cross-marketing campaign and get the most out of it.

2020 was a unique year, especially for marketing professionals. The talks about 2019-led MarTech were swept away as the pandemic disrupted all walks of life.

With the year finally over, do we see AI, ML, bots in the marketing ecosystem resurging?

Experts don't think so.

Initial marketing predictions suggest this year will be all about customers. Target audiences' behavior and expectations will remain the main driving force for brands.

This is something we all saw coming.

Last year  drastically changed how customers interacted with brands. In-store exchanges saw an all-time low and digital interactions skyrocketed.

But online shopping is only one of the few trends that will continue into 2021.

Here’s a quick list of the marketing predictions for 2021:

Online Becomes Central to the Customer Journey 

As buyers spent months on months at home last year while in lockdowns, the customer journey changed. Buyers spent less money, and they tended to only buy the essentials. 

Even when the lockdown restrictions lifted, the majority of buyers continued relying on online means to make their purchases because it was convenient and safer. 

But this change meant businesses had to be available online in order to survive. As a result, 2020 saw businesses going digital or going out of business. 

This year will be more of the same.

We can expect the digitization of businesses across all domains. Customer and digital experiences will play a pivotal role in digital marketing strategies. Online interactions will shed their global outtake and local links will matter.  

Omni-channel marketing is the call for the year. Marketers need to make data-centric decisions to provide a customized digital experience 

Summary: The customer journey will revolve around digital touchpoints for every business.

Social and Environmental Conscious to Drive Marketing Strategies

Actions speak louder than words. In 2021, customers will focus more on a brand’s deeds to trust its message. 

In 2020, we faced several local and global issues in addition to the coronavirus making people more empathetic towards society. January saw the Australian bushfires followed by the Black Live Matter protests. 

Modern customers are anything but shallow. They want to connect with brands that have social and eco-consciousness. 2021 will only push them forward in their quest.

Brands that are empathetic towards societal and environmental causes will continue to thrive.

Tone-deaf messaging will be the biggest turn off for people and will become the fastest means to alienate them from a brand.  

Brands have a moral obligation to be good ‘brand citizens’. Marketers will need to focus on making an emotional connection with customers, not just posting positive messages of support on social media. Each brand’s messages should be strong and consistent.

Summary: The political and social events will force businesses to connect with their customers by being vocal about causes and taking steps towards improving the situation.  

Digital Experience Will be More Than a Buzzword 

Before 2020, digital experience was a buzzword that attracted marketers. They wanted to learn how to use digital experience in their customer experience strategies.

The pandemic led to a digitally-conscious customer who owns the online world. He knows what he wants and where to find it. Businesses are fighting hard to catch his attention.  

This customer is actively clicking, tapping, and scrolling through digital devices. And he’s demanding a more personalized digital experience. 

Customers are judging a brand by the digital experience it offers. They want technology to shape their online experience. 

Digitalization and customer experience will go hand in hand, and data-driven marketing strategies will play a significant role in its successful implementation. Data provides the truth required to know what the customer wants and what pushes them to make a decision.

Brands to Build an Analytics Center of Excellence

With data-driven marketing gaining pace, the Analytics Center of Excellence (ACE) will be on every brand's to-do list. 

Marketing teams will be onboarding data scientists to drill-down customer data. Procuring data will no longer work for any brand. They need to transfer the data to the right teams and people to implement them in a strategy. 

An ACE will be a team with the collective knowledge of the data, competitive intel, customer intel, and market intel. 

The data analyzed could range from price comparisons to shopping behavior to predictions to stock forecast.

Summary: ACE will allow brands to optimize their marketing efforts collectively by sharing the right intel with the right team at the right time. 

CMOs to Start Collaborating Across the Enterprise

Marketing will no longer be an individual’s work. Rather, it will be the collective efforts of all teams combined: IT, CFOs, sales, and business development. CMOs will work together to yield outcomes that matter. 

Being commercially accountable for the business will not be their only goal. CMOs in 2021 will need to master the skill of smart collaboration across the organization for impactful results. They’ll shift to people-led planning to target the customer obsession. 

Summary: As the tried-and-true practices are aging out, CMOs need to be the chief customer or experience officers handling the complete customer lifecycle.

People Context Matters Now More Than Ever

As we talked about people-led planning for teams, people context would take center stage for any marketing exec or team. 

Brands with moral leadership and people context will dominate the ecosystem in 2021. 

To build trust, brands will focus on people context to stay relevant. Those found preferring profit over people will drive people away and might even face backlash. 

An Edelman Brand Trust Report suggests that 71% of people will lose trust over a brand if they see it putting profit over people. 

The pandemic has affected customers drastically. They want associations with brands that are empathetic to their needs.

Summary: This marketing prediction has marketers investing their efforts and resources in building their company's brand image in a way that addresses customers’ concerns.

Content, Context, and Cadence for Value Creation

Value creation will be based on the three C’s: content, context, and cadence.

• Content: What marketers offer to their customers or the message they want to send out. Be it in the form of videos, written content, infographics, GIFs, or any other thing. The value would depend on the type of content that they offer. 
• Context: The way content is offered and with what intent it’s presented. It addresses the individual need while delivering the message to ensure the right impact and required outcome.  
• Cadence: The frequency or number of times we offer the content to the audience. 

Brands need to create value for their customers so they can feel good from associating with a brand. A positive connection is what brands will be looking to build with their customers. 

2020 might have shifted customer behavior to digital means, but the human nature of being loyal to a brand that offers value remains the same.

Summary: To create value among customers, marketers should focus on the three C’s  - content, context, and cadence.

Wrapping Up Marketing Predictions for 2021

All in all, 2021 is going to be an interesting year for all marketing professionals. They will need to shift attention to building a connection with their customers and offer them value with their marketing strategy. 

Any brand, enterprise, SME, or startup can use these marketing predictions to draft a marketing strategy.

With the impact of a global pandemic, hosting events with large gatherings became impossible. Businesses had to transform their in-person events into virtual ones. And it looks like this trend is here to stay. Are you prepared to host a successful virtual event?

If you are looking for the best virtual event ideas or tips on how to host a successful virtual event, you have come to the right place. This article offers 10 tips that will enable you to host an engaging, entertaining, and impactful virtual event seamlessly. 

1. Create a strategy

Meticulous virtual event planning is a must to host a successful virtual event. You do not want your audience to leave as soon as they tune in. Whether you are planning to host a big event with thousands of attendees or a small-scale event, creating a strategy is foremost. 

Start by gathering data on your audience to understand what holds their interest. Curating an event that matches the taste and interest of potential attendees is the first step to success.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself before hosting a virtual event:

• Will the event be live, on-demand, or both?
• Will the event access be gated or free?
• Do you want to organize an event independently or are you planning to onboard sponsors?
• What are the KPIs and data you want to track?
• What will be the best time to host the event?
• Do you want to organize a live poll or survey to gather attendee’s opinions?
• How will you market your event?

2. Choose a virtual event platform 

Leveraging the right virtual event platform will be key to a successful event. As with any big decision you make, do your research first. Make sure the platform you choose can actually execute your vision the way you want. Also, look for a platform that offers analytics and metrics in real-time and enables attendees to have conversations with each other. 

Before making your final choice for a virtual event platform, ask yourself these questions:

• Does the platform enable real-time, two-way communication?
• Is on-demand content an option on the platform?
• Can the platform customize services?
• Is the platform capable of broadcasting content on multiple platforms at once? 
• Does the platform offer engaging features?
• Does the platform enable social media integration? 

3. Select a date and time 

Before picking the date and time for your virtual event, do a little research beforehand. Make sure your event is not clashing with your competitor’s event or national holidays. Scheduling conflicts like this will adversely affect the attendance at your event. 

If you are planning to host a large-scale event with global attendees, keep time zones in mind. Accommodating all attendees with global scaled events becomes a tricky task. Select a time that is suitable for the maximum number of attendees. If possible, make an on-demand option available to facilitate attendees who missed the livestream. 

4. Promote the event

Promoting and marketing your event is key. If your potential attendees are not aware of your upcoming event, no one will attend. Identify the key selling points of your virtual event and develop a promotion strategy accordingly. 

• Leverage your social media channels to promote the upcoming virtual event by running a countdown on Instagram and Facebook stories. 
• Run ads strategically to target the right set of attendees. 
• Promote the event website and pages.
• Market with the help of the right set of influencers. 
• Utilize SEO-friendly keywords for optimization.

5. Develop a microsite

A microsite is a small website created just for your event. Attendees can visit your microsite to gather all the information they need for the event: an agenda, speaker bios, chat boxes, and more. With the help of a microsite, attendees can access the content they missed at the live event as well. 

6. Troubleshoot for tech problems ahead of time

Just like in-person events, virtual events can experience unexpected technical glitches. Preparing for technical difficulties beforehand enables you to host a successful virtual event. 

Before kickstarting your virtual event, make sure to test your internet connection. Ask your speakers to do the same. Ensure that everyone involved in the event has a strong wi-fi connection. 

If possible, do a dry run. It will help you identify impediments that need improvement. Have a back-up plan in place. This could include pre-recorded presentations and videos to help keep the event going. All attendees are not tech-savvy, so prepare an easy to follow guide that enables your attendees to easily navigate the event.

7. Encourage interactions and engagements 

Create opportunities for engagement and interactions during the event. Encourage your attendees to ask questions via the event’s live chat functionality. Organize Q&A sessions to answer questions shared by viewers. Additionally, you can engage your audience by utilizing these tools:

• Live polls
• Surveys
• Gamification
• Quizzes and contests
• Puzzles

Organizing a chat room for attendees to have 1:1 or group interactions during virtual events enables attendees to have conversations in real-time, just like live physical events. 

8. Be inclusive and offer giveaways

Make your virtual events as inclusive and accessible as possible to ensure success. Make it a point to use big fonts and good color contrast at all hotspots.  

Offering giveaways at a virtual event has been a sure way to maximize attendance. It helps in attracting the audience to the event. Offer virtual benefits to attendees by offering free coupons, discount vouchers, or a virtual goodie to winners. 

9. Do a practice run with keynote speakers

To ensure a successful virtual event, rehearse with keynote speakers. Check their audio and video quality and prep them on how to keep attendees engaged while presenting. Ask your keynote speakers to maintain eye contact with attendees while looking straight into the camera to stay connected. Additionally, check the video resolution and audio quality beforehand to host a successful virtual event. 

10. Utilize analytics

Utilize the analytics to track the performance metrics of your virtual event. It helps you in gaining better clarity about which parts of the event performed exceptionally well and the hotspots that have maximum engagement. You can also get clarity and impediments of the event that did not work out and needs improvement for future events. 

Final Word

As hosting virtual events becomes the norm, keeping attendees engaged and entertained with online events has become a must. In this article, we summarized 10 tips you need to follow to host a successful virtual event. Hope this article answers all your queries about virtual events!

What comes to your mind when you think about intensifying your online business? Of course, it’s traffic! And what’s the fastest way to gain more traffic? Undoubtedly, advertisements! 

Let’s assume you have done your research, found the optimal keywords, and decided the ideal budget. However, you don’t seem to be getting traffic through your ad campaigns. That hurts, right? 

To acquire more traffic and reach a great ROI in the form of potential customers, you need to be creative. Your ad strategy must be unique and persuasive in order to turn a click on an ad into a customer. 

Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the ad copy you have been using or plan to use in your next campaign. All compelling ad copy written needs some specific components to make it effective and compelling. 

In this article, you will learn all the essential factors to increase your ad conversion rate and make people feel good about buying your products or services. 

Checkpoints For Captivating Ad Copy

The Headline

Focus your attention on the headline first since its sole purpose is to engage with potential customers by grabbing their attention. Before you start writing it, be very clear about who your target audience is so that you write something that speaks to them. 

The headline should also state the main point of the ad by pointing out the benefits or discounts offered or by persuading the potential customer to click on the ad to learn more.

The Hook

This part of your ad copy should stimulate an emotion in the potential customer while helping them to connect with you. The message in this text will help them determine if you are indeed talking to them. The hook is one of the hardest parts to write, but phrasing it correctly can help you in optimizing your conversion rate. 

Problem

Simply put, you must address the problem or pain point your potential customer is feeling when they see your ad. In order to do this well, it is crucial to make them realize that you understand them and their feelings. Help eliminate their feelings of isolation, and offer them your support. 

After discussing their pain point or problem, the next step is to provide them with a promising solution. But remember that the solution should not be a product; rather it should be positioned as a specialized tool, discovery, or approach.

The Offer

This is where the product comes into view. For the problem you have discussed above, this product will become the easy and fastest method to acquire the solution. Here you have to provide details like: what it is, where to get it, how it will work, when to expect it, and how much it will cost. 

Remember, the worth of your offer should remain more prominent than the price. The higher the price gap, the more tempting your offer becomes. You can do this in two ways: providing a discount or offering premium services. 

Benefits

After sharing the offer, explain in detail the benefits to help your potential customer see why they should buy your product or service. In this section, your ad copy should enlist all the advantages and features someone can expect to receive after making their purchase. 

At this stage, you also have to overcome any objections your potential customer might have. Simply put, you have to offer them an immediate benefit. While your services may not work instantly, you need to develop a feeling of excitement among potential customers. 

Social Proof

With social proof, you can help eliminate any fear your potential customer may have. Social proof will help in developing trust between your brand and potential customer as well as position you in a place of authority. 

Here, you can share some testimonials, reviews, and social media comments. But remember to use real social proof, otherwise your business will not survive for long.

Scarcity

If you choose to add a scarcity angle to your ad copy, it urges the potential customer to buy your product or service immediately. It creates FOMO, or the fear of missing out, on your offering. 

This tactic is used everywhere around us. For example, when you receive an email telling you about a 24-hour only clothing sale on your favorite brand. If done appropriately, the email won’t seem pushy and you’ll check out the sale without a second thought. 

Risk Reversal

When you reach this part of writing the ad copy, you have already created trust between your brand and the potential customer. Now, you can share the payment terms, expectations from purchase, and the guarantee of the product. It should be written in clear terms to help prospects clearly understand and proceed. If you have done your job well, the value of your product or service will outweigh any risks they may be concerned about. 

A Call To Action

Now, you have to tell your potential buyers what they need to do. There must be one visible call to action button that helps them to move to the next step. That could be to buy your product or service or sign up for a newsletter or free trial. Don’t ever put more than one call to action button in your ad copy because it will not clearly direct the potential customers on what to do next. 

However, if your copy contains more than a hundred words, you can place the same call to action button throughout the pages so that the reader doesn’t have to scroll far to access it. 

Conclusion

Ad copy can easily make or break the connection between your product and potential customers. Writing compelling, relevant ad copy is vital in the success of your ad campaigns. If you want potential customers to stop everything they are doing and focus on your advertisement, then you have to give something worth their time. Give them a good user experience.

Recent events have fundamentally changed customers’ buying behaviors and the way they interact and engage with businesses. While some of these shifts have been lingering for years, many have been expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic and will likely stick around long after that.

The most significant transition in customer purchasing habits is the sudden rise in online transactions. Ordering groceries, medication, retail goods, and household items have never been this convenient. Online banking has seen a major surge, even in older generations. People are recognizing the benefits of making financial transactions via laptops, smartphones, and tablets without ever having to leave their homes.

In an ever-changing economy, being able to respond to radical shifts in customer behavior is critical. Many businesses have already begun their digital transformations to provide the best experience possible, and they’re meeting their customers exactly where they are – online. Businesses are revamping their websites to create tailor-made online user experiences that will have potential clients clicking and repeat buying.

Here are four things to keep in mind as you seek to improve the online user experience of your website.

Your website is your customer’s first impression of your brand.

Websites are extremely powerful marketing tools and the center of your business. In today’s digitally savvy world, it has unquestionably become the first point of contact a customer will make with your brand. Just as it takes a few seconds to form an impression of someone upon first meeting, the same philosophy applies to your website.

Your brand’s website serves two main purposes – one that benefits the business, and the other that assists the consumer.

First, it is the ideal platform used by a business to tell its story and communicate what it sells and does. Second, it is a place for potential customers to educate themselves on a product or service with the intent to buy.

Improving the online user experience

With more consumers making purchases via the internet, it becomes easier to distinguish forward-thinking companies from all the others. Digital offerings must now match the experiences we receive when we enter a brick-and-mortar store. Websites with confusing user interfaces that do not simplify the buyer’s journey will only lose them to competitors.

Innovative companies using e-commerce solutions that allow for greater insight into what your website visitors are interested in buying today and what they’ll want to buy tomorrow will prevail. However, the data collected can only come from customers who click. Here are the top four factors that influence customers to click on your website and keep coming back.

Factors that influence user experience

1. Usability

The navigation and structure of a website form the base for a great online user experience. Calls to action (CTAs) are of utmost importance and should be clear and easy to understand. Businesses must be mindful of their visitors’ goals when building a layout so that it effortlessly gets them from point A to point B.

Customers shouldn’t have to struggle to figure out how to add or remove an item from their cart. And they shouldn't have to ask for more information regarding a product that piques their interest. See how Airbnb guides its visitors in search of places to stay with clear messaging and composition.

2. Consistency 

There is no easier way to disengage a visitor than by being inconsistent. Design elements like fonts, colors, and imagery should work together harmoniously throughout and across each page. Vitruvi does this beautifully, by providing a user-friendly design that compels users to return on more than one occasion to purchase their stone diffusers and essential oils.

3. Personalization

The best way to personalize a potential buyer’s journey is to show them product recommendations. These can be based on the user’s individual browsing history or the buying habits of others with a similar profile. These recommendations are implemented on e-commerce platforms using machine-learning algorithms. Take a closer look at how Nike provides recommendations on “other items you might like” that help customers discover new products and increase sales for the business.

4. Feedback (giving customers a voice)

The only way to truly improve a product or service is to welcome constructive feedback directly from the people buying them -- your customers. In fact, asking customers for their feedback is the number one driver for long-term success.

Adding feedback widgets to your website that encourage comments is essential. They provide the information needed to make better decisions and show customers their opinion matters.

Insight into customers

Knowing how to improve the online user experience means learning more about the people clicking on your website. The cornerstone of this valuable customer data is the technology behind it. Businesses are gaining an in-depth understanding of their website visitors’ browsing habits through analytical tools, ultimately improving customer satisfaction.

Businesses are turning browsers into buyers with intuitive tools like the point-of-sale system, utilized for critical customer insights. Technology companies like Lightspeed understand the importance of arranging the entire organization in such a way that delivers exceptional customer service. They’re helping businesses grow their customer base through e-commerce offerings designed to leverage the four factors that influence user experience – usability, consistency, personalization, and feedback.

Offering freemium plans for products and services allows companies to acquire new users on a regular basis. However, offering free trials does have a downside. A vast majority of customers don’t take further action once the free trial ends. 

Freemium products -- irrespective of industry and function -- face one constant challenge: converting trial customers into paid customers.

No business can run without paid subscriptions, so the sooner trial customers convert to paying customers, the better the long-term prospects of the business. 

Let’s explore some possible ways you can increase your number of converting customers. 

Tips to Increase Paid Subscriptions

Customers signing up for your free trial shows that your marketing engine is working, but there is still a long way to go before you can turn these trial customers into paid ones.  

Once the customer signs up, you have the opportunity to earn their trust and to show them that the paid subscription is worth the price. 

This begins with creating a positive onboarding experience. 

1. Improve in-app onboarding

The onboarding process is the first contact your users have with your product, so you want to make the experience easy and pain free. 

Use the bulleted tips below to help you create a streamlined and engaging in-app onboarding process. 

• Keep it short and contextual.
• Use real-time app screens and not abstract screens.
• Provide proactive and reactive guidance.
• Use visual hints to guide the user through controls and settings.
• Use sample data that the user can customize to get a hang of the product.
  

2. Provide personal support

At the end of the day, users are people. They want attention, especially when they are trying to figure out how to use a new software product. Personal support in the form of a phone call, support articles, chatbots, or even live chat software can make the onboarding journey easier for users. 

If your users feel taken care of and that their questions will be answered in a timely manner, they are more likely to buy your product later on when it comes time to convert to a paid subscription. 

3. Offer a top-tier plan on trial basis

Offer a trial product that gives unbridled access to all your product features, like those available in a top-tier paid plan.  

There are several advantages to offering a top-tier plan on trial. The first is, the user gets to experience the product in its truest form without any restraints. This helps them understand how the product can help them achieve their objectives.  

Also, once the trial expires, the user will be able to notice the stark difference between a paid plan and a trial version. The lack of features in the trial version itself may encourage them to upgrade to a paid subscription. 

4. Run upsell campaigns

Upselling persuades customers to upgrade to a paid version or move up to a higher plan. From a sales perspective, it is never easy to upsell to customers. However, well-planned and targeted upsell campaigns can do the trick. 

For example, for every business, volumes spike during the holiday season. They have more sales, customer support tickets, etc., during the holiday season. Email campaigns carrying an upsell message can convert customers on the trial plan to the paid plan.  

5. Restrict essential features in free plans

Most users will stick to free plans if they are able to make do with the features available. This is typically the case with small businesses that have minimal use cases and also a bare minimum budget for their operations.  

One way to restrict users from sticking to free plans is to cut short the features available on the trial plan. You can continue to offer a higher plan during the trial, but once the trial expires, restrict the features to a bare minimum. This will likely prompt users to upgrade to a paid subscription.  

6. Highlight what they are missing in trial plans

Most often, customers can’t see what they are missing out on when only using a trial plan. They need to be educated on what they can gain by moving to a paid subscription. This can be done in two ways:

• Email nurture campaigns 

Create a separate segment of trial customers and target them with the latest feature releases available on higher plans. Highlight the benefits of the feature and how it can augment the user’s productivity if they upgrade.  

• In-app notifications

In-app notifications and visual cues within the app can nudge the user to see what is possible in a higher plan. This can be used strategically — for example, when the user is using a long-wound way to do something, like customizing a report or dashboard. Strategically positioned notifications can help nudge users to a paid plan. 

The Final Word

Asking trial customers to upgrade to a paid subscription plan is easier said than done. Even the most experienced sales folks find it a tough challenge. However, there are other means to achieve it.  

It requires the marketing and sales teams to come together and act as a single unit. The strategies explained above help with that. What have you tried to make your trial customers opt for paid subscriptions?

Reddit is one of the most active social communities in the world with an audience of 1.55 billion unique users per month. Unique in many ways, Reddit combines the advantages of both a forum and a social network. 

People trust people, and that’s why this platform can be a great place for the promotion of your personal brand or business.

Let’s cover the basics first, and then dive into tips on how to promote on Reddit to your advantage.

How Reddit Works

Reddit is a web-based platform where users develop communities, post content, vote on links, and share comments. Simply put, it is a social news site that enables users to discuss content. This online community enables individuals to explore, classify and exchange valuable knowledge. 

To prevent spammers from bothering readers, Reddit came up with "karma" points. Users get karma through their reviews and links being up-voted by group members. If you send spam to Reddit for your unrelated content, you can get down-voted by members. 

Reddit also restricts the number of times you are allowed to add content to the site. 

Tips for Promoting Your Content

Below, I will share some tips on how to share and promote your content on Reddit’s platform. Let’s have a look!

1. Be a Redditor first

First, you must be a Redditor and gain karma. This means you have to spend time on the platform by engaging in subreddits and the group members. Start by finding subreddits that pertain to your area of expertise and industry. Then begin tapping on links, reading posts and upvoting yourself to the ones you want. Comment and react to comments. Preserve your appearance and be a real Redditor.

2. Find subreddits in your niche

Reddit's inbuilt search engine is trash, but it's good enough to find the subreddit you're searching for. Your article may be hard to notice on big subreddits, so post on smaller subreddits where you can find people to support and engage with your article. Sidebars of broad subreddits typically list smaller subreddits relevant to your articles.

3. Create a few accounts

You will improve your promotion of your brand and content by setting up several Reddit accounts. For example, create a special subreddit for your business and start discussions with other accounts. Do note that Reddit closely tracks whether users are teaming up for promotion and may restrict them if they see it.

4. Comment on top submissions

The best way to get upvotes and karma is to comment on the most popular articles, like those on the front page. You may add a separate comment or participate in ongoing discussions, which are much more likely to give you a few karmas. 

Note that a comment does not really mean anything unless it is important and valuable. Otherwise, you could get down-votes, which is the inverse of promotion.

5. Don’t upvote your post from various accounts

Regarding advertising strategies, Reddit is very strict. If administrators find out about your gimmick, all the accounts (especially this with low karma) can be blocked. Therefore, concentrate on getting upvotes from actual individuals and don’t waste time reacting under your posts to their comments.

6. Follow the rules

Every subreddit has its own set of regulations. Some will ban you after your first violation. Always check the sidebar before posting on a new section.

7. Don’t add hyperlinks to your text

Share the name of your blog without linking to it. For example, type "Travelpayouts" instead of "blog.travelpayouts.com." Make it look like you're talking about a brand for the benefit of other people and not just trying to sell it. Interested people will find your brand and you won’t attract the unwanted attraction of admins.

8. Try the helpful extension

Reddit Enhancement Suite is a common browser extension that simplifies the development of posts and comments, broadens images, and covers up your visited and down-voted posts.

There is a subreddits bookmark bar that enables visibility and moderation.

9. Delete old posts without comments or upvotes

You can't satisfy everybody, so downvotes are likely. The best thing to do is delete negative feedback entries, and you will stop losing karma.

10. Ask friends to upvote your post

When starting your accounts, gather support from your friends, but don’t use this tactic on all your articles. It's also necessary to get feedback on your articles, so try and generate all sorts of activities for your post.

11. Check the subreddits every day

Reddit is a forum with a high level of user engagement, so new posts show up very rapidly. Regularly search for articles that are close to your niche or expertise and leave feedback. You can easily increase your karma this way and prevent losing the opportunity to promote your brand properly.

12. Create error-free posts

Properly inspect your articles for errors before posting. If you don't, you could get negative or abrasive feedback, or maybe even downvotes.

13. Ask for support

If you're a new user and want support from the community, you can request support on Reddit. User accounts are depersonalized here, so users are able to share their views freely without fear of disapproval. You'll get an honest answer and learn how to publicize on Reddit at the same time.

14. Post in other languages

If you speak several languages, don't miss the opportunity to reach a wider community. Reddit is accessible in 70 languages, and your potential clients may not only be in the English-speaking community.

15. Respond to every comment on your posts

Provide feedback to users who show interest in your materials. You're going to earn karma as an active customer. By showing gratitude to readers’ comments, you will increase trust. 

Always, check to see if someone in your profile has commented back on your post.

16. Ask the admins for permission

In order to advertise on Reddit, you will need to seek permission from the admins of the related subreddit, since neither admins nor users would tolerate offensive advertisements. To build trust, place your link effectively and efficiently. For example, define the issue people face and illustrate how your product can improve the issue or start by sharing a case study. Your message is meant to add meaning to the audience and involve them in the conversation.

17. Cite your sources

Remember to cite your sources when sharing facts and numbers to build trust with Redditors. It'll also allow you to confirm that the content you provide is reliable and correct. In addition, users are more likely to share your articles if they seem reliable, which will instantly extend your scope.

18. Don’t capitalize all letters

Do not use all capital letters in one word in titles, the article body, or comments. Not only will the Reddiquette prohibit this, but capitalized titles are often difficult to read.

19. Use dedicated subreddits

Search the subreddits that your target audience uses the most. Paying attention to large sections of Reddit is complicated if you are a new user, so start with simpler subsections. For example, in the marketing subreddit sidebar, you will find thematic links: content marketing or digital marketing. 

20. Bonus tip: Upvoted posts bring dofollow links

When you post to communities with user-generated stuff, you get nofollow links by default. Although, if your post earns a certain amount of upvotes, the link will eventually become a do-follow link. 

Final thoughts

Reddit is a permanently updated, unlimited source of useful information on almost any subject. Use the time you spend on Reddit to your advantage. You can both develop your personal brand and help your business to enhance its authority and attract new audiences. 

While marketing is ever-evolving, marketers can still benefit from the lessons of more traditional marketing approaches in order to boost their organic search performance. 

Even as digital approaches continue to demonstrate their value, the core principles of offline-based marketing still ring true. Technologically fluent marketers even understand the power traditional techniques hold and their relevance, especially when combining strategies to optimize their presence online. 

In the age of the internet and online exposure, some traditional marketing techniques are in decline. However, others are thriving and boosting businesses in both the analogue and digital worlds. For instance, small business owners may find TV and radio to be too costly. However, signage and billboards have the power to drive interest on a new scale now that users have the ability to instantly query on their phones anything they see. 

Let’s take a look at seven key ways analogue approaches have infiltrated the mainstream. 

1. The Importance of Well-Thought-Out Campaigns

More traditional media channels like print, radio and television were the only avenues available to appeal to audiences from the comfort of their own home. The costs associated with this sort of service can go into the tens of thousands depending on the type of advert you run and the time of day in which it arrives. 

This forced marketers to be more shrewd with their advertising campaigns and represents a valuable lesson to be learned in modern marketing.

Advertising online is cheaper than TV, but this can open the door for complacency among marketers. Fundamentally, social engagements don’t automatically turn into conversions, and they don’t necessarily lead to organic searches. 

Some see traditional marketing as incompatible with digital approaches. However, analog campaigns can certainly drive organic searches. 

One of the most effective cases for this can be found in Brewdog’s traditional campaign in 2019. Rather than using billboards and television, their campaign simply displayed the word ‘advert’ in capital letters alongside an image of a product. 

In the golden age of traditional advertising, this would have been seen as a wasted opportunity to push sales. Instead, it features just enough brand signifiers to convert audience curiosity into searches. 

2. The Value of Tangible Marketing

One aspect of traditional marketing that can never be overtaken by its digital counterpart concerns tangibility. Giving target audiences the chance to hold and touch your branded product is hard to replicate online. 

In fact, the chart above shows that tangible products lead the way for retailers to engage with and retain customers. 

Placing a physical item in your customer's hands can build a connection that evolves into brand loyalty, recognition and conversions. Tangible materials can also be more memorable and meaningful for prospective customers. 

Internet marketing has looked to replicate these forms of tangibility by turning to influencer marketing. By utilizing respected influencers to showcase products and interact with them as if they’re actually customers with a sample, marketers aim to establish some form of psychological connection between their products and customers. 

But still, the levels of brand recognition and loyalty that comes from physically interacting with products generates more organic searches and increases intent to purchase among consumers. 

3. Valuing Relationships

In the glory days of traditional marketing, customers amounted to more than simple statistics regarding impressions and click-throughs. Marketers could concentrate on appealing directly to real people, with more personal aspects associated with generating sales. 

The most competent marketers in this pre-internet age would form customer relationships through conversations. Focus groups and other interactions can tailor campaigns that resonate on a personal level. 

The arrival of advanced analytics platforms show demographic information regarding customers and their behavior. This allows marketers to further personalize targeting and retargeting functions. Some platforms can even forensically pick the precise times of day a target audience is most active to determine when to display ads. However, these features are worth little if nobody knows what their targets actually think of the content they see. 

By utilizing a traditional approach like building relationships with consumers, marketers can use what they’ve learned online to appeal to a vast audience of like-minded users around the world. 

4. The Necessity of Perfected Pitches

In the golden age of traditional marketing, you could not tweak advertising content easily. There was no way to use A/B testing with large audiences.

Marketers had one opportunity to make a sale. With no second chances, advertising materials had to come with a winning tagline and pitch. 

Today, businesses spend more time looking at ways to protect their branding, rather than focus on perfecting pitches. However, this seems like folly in an online space. That venue is flooded with competitors and undercutting offers. 

Even if your modern pitches come in the form of email subject lines or title tags, uphold the traditional methods of creating engaging one-liners that spark interest. 

Modern marketing gives new life to some traditional approaches. When it comes to perfect pitching, marketers now have the freedom to create more oblique advertising taglines and approaches. It’s vital to build intrigue that will invariably lead to organic searches and brand recognition. 

5. Transferring The Value of Keywords

Some facets of marketing remain just as valuable in any era. This is certainly the case for keywords. 

Traditionally, keywords created instant brand recognition in analogue advertising. Kodak’s "you press the button; we do the rest" advertising campaigns in the late 19th century achieved a resonance that’s stood the test of time. 

Today, the challenge of keyword advertising campaigns is easier than ever with platforms effortlessly identifying the most effective long-form keywords to rank for in search results. 

In this manner, traditional advertising could complement online keyword campaigns. By identifying high-value keywords, marketers can use the phrases to create profitable slogans that can prompt online and offline campaigns and subsequent search engine queries as a result. 

6. Harnessing The Art of The Freebie

Another marketing strategy that’s certainly stood the test of time is the art of the freebie. Whether they’re free digital courses or physical information booklets, consumers love getting stuff for free. 

Be sure to work some form of branding and figure out what information can be offered by your organization free of charge. If your business claims to be experts in a specific field, demonstrate your expertise in a free book or prospectus. 

7. Championing Event Marketing

Traditional copyright marketing ruled the roost in days of yore. However, in this day and age, it’s vital to generate a buzz. While generating compelling copy has successfully transitioned into a more online space, event marketing is still one of the most effective ways of not only building interest in products and services but also in terms of networking. 

Modern online marketing practices may have become essential in ensuring the long-term viability of businesses, but it’s safe to say that traditional approaches are going nowhere fast. As we continue to look for new ways to optimize conversions and search engine queries, it appears that traditional marketing is still on hand to teach us a thing or two about winning customers.