If you want to be seen online, you need your website at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).And if you want to be at the top of the SERPs, you need backlinks.Unfortunately, backlinks are hard to build on your own.You need to develop content. You need to build publisher relationships. You need to practice outreach. And you need to follow up.
It's a lot of time and effort that isn't guaranteed to make you successful.
That's why link building agencies and link building services exist.
Competent SEO experts have the knowledge, experience, and resources necessary to help you build all the links you need to dominate the competition.
The big problem is that there are too many link building services to choose from. Darn.
Now obviously, not all of these link building services are worth using.
So, we saved you a couple of steps.
We've done the research, so you don't have to, and we've compiled a list of the 20 best link building services that are currently available.
It's hard to overstate just how valuable links are in the SEO industry.Backlinks pass “authority,” a measure of trustworthiness, to your site. The more links you have, and the better those links are, the higher the authority of your site is going to grow. And the more authority your site has, the higher it's going to rank.
On top of that, link building can provide you with greater brand visibility, referral traffic, and even new partnerships and connections.
Taking advantage of link building services enables you to get all of these benefits without spending hundreds of hours of your own time tuning for SEO or working tirelessly to hire the perfect internal team.
The only downside is that some link building services use unscrupulous or predatory tactics, ultimately harming your site more than helping it.
Since Google has really stepped up its efforts in cracking down on low-quality content and links, these types of services are getting rarer and rarer.
But it's still important to do your research and find the best link building services you can afford.
What criteria are we using to declare the best link building services available?
We haven’t personally used all of the link building services that we’re about to list. Instead, we’re basing our assessments on publicly available information about each organization.
These are some of the best link building services that money can buy:
Yes, we put ourselves at the top of the list – why wouldn’t we? SEO.co and Link.Build are based in Seattle (with satellite offices across the country) and is a full-service SEO agency, offering consulting, link building, content development, onsite SEO, and other SEO services.
We’ve been serving everything from local startups to Fortune 500 enterprises since 2010 and we have an undying commitment to ethical, value-centric link building. If you’re ready to outwrite and outrank the competition, contact us for pricing and more details today!
LinkDoctor.io, in Sheridan, WY, currently has more than 138,000 keywords on page one. With decades of combined industry experience on the team and a deep knowledge of best SEO practices, LinkDoctor.io can help almost any site with natural link building services, across a wide range of niches. Pricing is available upon request.
Rhino Rank, located in Shrewsbury, UK, popularized the concept of “curated links.” With an uncompromising focus on quality and clients all over the world, Rhino Rank has been helping clients achieve global reach since its founding in 2017. Prices are highly competitive for the industry, with average price per link ranging from $42-200, depending on DA.
Siege Media is a fully remote marketing and PR agency that offers both passive and active link building services. It handles everything from initial research and outreach to link placement and quality assurance. Areas of specialty include fintech, e-commerce, and SaaS. Link building strategies are developed for individual clients, and pricing is custom.
BlueTree, located in Chicago, IL, is a digital PR agency that focuses primarily on SaaS and tech companies – but offers link building plans for a variety of businesses. Utilizing existing relationships with tech publications and a robust editorial approach, BlueTree is dedicated to building domain authority and organic traffic. Plans start at $2,500 per month.
uSERP, located in Denver, CO, is a full-service link building agency that relies on white hat, ethical outreach strategies and “quality over quantity.” With strategic direction stemming from content gap analysis, URL analysis, and other data-centric approaches, uSERP works with lean startups, major corporations, and everything in between. Plans start at $10,000 per month.
SureOak, based in Brooklyn, NY, serves industries including B2B services, SaaS, fintech, education, e-commerce, insurance, and healthcare. It offers a variety of link building services like editorial link insertions, link analysis, link reclamation, toxic link management, and even white label link building. Plans start at $2,000 per month.
Page One Power, headquartered in Boise, ID, is primarily focused on B2C clients – and has more than 12 years of experience serving them. With full SEO services, Page One Power can help you with onsite optimization, content development, and, of course, link building. It also offers white label services to other agencies. Pricing is custom.
Neil Patel is both an individual and the functional name for his marketing agency. Located in San Diego, CA, Neil Patel serves almost every imaginable business with high-quality content, onsite optimization, and link building.
Patel’s blog currently has more than 4 million links pointing to it – a powerful demonstration of what good content can do. Pricing is custom.
Green Flag Digital, also located in San Diego, CA, typically serves clients in SaaS, medical, real estate, and e-commerce, and exclusively practices ethical link building. They believe in trustworthy, genuinely helpful content – and they have a proven, 10-step process to ensure their clients get the best evergreen links possible. Campaigns start at $3,000.
The HOTH, based in St. Petersburg, FL, gets its name from the acronym “hittem over the head,” and strives to build natural, traffic-generating links for their clients. Using both offsite content and social media, the HOTH has a signature link building method that’s especially powerful for social media content. Pricing is custom.
LinksThatRank follows a 23-step process for quality control and maintains a blacklist that filters out the types of sites that Google typically frowns upon.
Every link placement is designed to meaningfully improve your chances of ranking – and you’ll receive a report when the work is done. White label services are available. Pricing ranges from $177 to $327 per link.
eCommerce Link Builders, in New York, NY, practices link building with a focus on return on investment (ROI) and quality over quantity. Through their plans, you’ll get access to blogs relevant to your niche, premium content creation, and exhaustive quality control. Link packages start at $1497 per month, but custom plans are also available.
Authority Builders, located in St. Pete Beach, FL, offers a robust dashboard where you can place orders, monitor progress, and generate reports to view your results. You can choose the websites where you want to build links – and they even offer a 365-day money-back guarantee. Pricing is custom.
Get Me Links, founded in 2019, offers services that include guest posting, niche edits, link packs, tiered links, and local links, so you can customize a full campaign that covers all of your needs. All you have to provide is a target URL and desired anchor text; Get Me Links handles the rest. Guest post links start at $160 per link.
Loganix, with locations in Vancouver, Seattle, and Honolulu, has access to a diversity of different publishing websites, including Forbes, Mashable, and Backlinko. Their guest posting services are the main draw, but they have a wide range of other SEO services that can help your business rank. Pricing starts at $200 per guest post.
Love to Link is an exclusively white hat link building agency that primarily uses guest posting as a link building tactic. They have a full team of in-house writers and their links are vetted to ensure they bring SEO value to your brand. Pricing starts at $139 per guest post, and services are available as packages or a la carte.
Samurai Marketers, in New York, NY, uses real-world data to acquire links from Google-approved websites across a wide range of different industries and niches. Each link is thoroughly vetted – and clients get access to a totally hands-off experience, with no requirements for developing new onsite content. Pricing is a la carte, and varies based on DA.
Outreach Labs is a fresh-faced agency that offers a mixture of digital PR and blogger outreach to acquire links.
It’s a tech savvy agency run by Ajay Paghdal, a seasoned link building veteran with over 10 years of experience.
They offer their clients full transparency through live dashboards, weekly reports, website approval and pricing based on website quality. Pricing is tier-based, depending on the website quality.
Link building is an investment.And as long as you choose the right partner, it's an investment that will almost certainly pay off.Here are some reasons to consider investing in or hiring a link building service:
However, it's important to note that not every link building company is created equal.Quality matters more than quantity when it comes to backlinks and off-page SEO.
Black-hat or spammy link building practices can actually harm your website's reputation and rankings. When considering link building strategies, prioritize those that focus on ethical (e.g. broken link building), white-hat practices and emphasize the importance of relevant, high-quality backlinks.
Everything begins with a conversation.So, if you're ready to talk about your current link building strategy, or if you just want to know more about how we can bring the best links to your website, contact us today!
AI chatbots have revolutionized our approach to communication and customer service in many industries. They are powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to generate dynamic, intelligent responses based on keywords or phrases detected in the conversation.
By leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP), AI chatbots can better understand specific contexts and deliver tailored answers accordingly.
ChatGPT is an advanced AI platform that takes this a step further with its diverse capabilities, offering users more accurate information retrieval and refined conversations even for complex challenges.
AI models like ChatGPT are revolutionizing the landscape of AI chat through their advanced natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. Utilizing a large-scale transformer model trained on an extensive dataset of dialogues, ChatGPT provides high accuracy and understanding for human conversation and generates AI-generated responses that are fluent in style with improved cohesion across conversational turns.
It has also been optimized for both open-ended dialogue scenarios as well as specific query resolution systems. Leading chatbot software like these are essential in building the foundation for more sophisticated and effective AI assistants that understand human language in a natural manner. The ability of AI chatbots to work seamlessly across various interactions makes them indispensable tools in modern communication.
Through deep learning algorithms and preceding context sequences, ChatGPT-generated responses are able to draw associations across conversations from a number of nodes simultaneously to better provide solutions or understandings.
For instance, when asked follow up inquiries such as "What about X?", ChatGPT can draw on its recent discussion points and add pertinent answers accordingly in the same overall conversation thread.
Furthermore, these kinds of conversational abilities allow fewer interruptions from humans and create a more natural, human-like response.
This level of contextual awareness is particularly valuable in customer relationship management, where AI-driven interactions can enhance customer engagement and support.
ChatGPT's NLP capabilities are revolutionizing how complex conversations and queries are handled by AI chatbots. With its advanced language understanding and generation, it is now more adept at understanding contextual cues which enables it to provide detailed, accurate responses based on specific user inquiries.
The system also has enhanced memory robustness resulting in millisecond responses regardless of the nature or depth of the query.
As each request increases in complexity, the technology maintains highly efficient transaction speeds while providing superior customer service in a natural, engaging conversational style.
Additionally, as AI agents continue to evolve, they are becoming more adept at integrating AI image generation alongside text-based conversations, enhancing user experience across multiple domains. The best AI chatbots will continue to refine their capabilities, ensuring seamless interactions that closely mimic real human communication.
SourceChatGPT offers a natural and engaging conversational style to users. With its complex understanding of dialogue and immersion in language advancements, it produces accurate, prompt, and detailed responses that stimulate individuals as though the chatbot was a real person.
Additionally, ChatGPT features social skills such as recognizing emotions which aids in a more interactive user experience by making users feel comfortable with talking.
By continuously learning from interactions with people ChatGPT is able to enrich its knowledge of vocabulary as new expressions or terms are used in conversations, and keep up with language trends.
Therefore ChatGPT executes conversational AI interactions seamlessly, Elevating customer service while simplifying manual tasks for staff.
Enhanced user experience through personalized responses has pushed the boundaries of AI chatbot interaction for customers. ChatGPT responds in an even more natural and engaging tone customized to each conversation or thread.
Conversations are extended by proactively providing customers with relevant information requested and also suggested results as per their conversations to speed up response times. Customer engagement is improved when bots can target key interests, naturally adjusting conversation pacing and content based on current responses.
ChatGPT is equipped with the ability to handle multiple user queries simultaneously. This allows organizations to save time and improve efficiency by handling an entire conversation as one query rather than individual statements.
The tool also provides users with highly relevant, accurate responses quickly while providing a natural conversational intuition that puts humans at ease. In addition, it offers personalized marketing responses based on individual interaction history which empowers even more engaging interactions between chatbot and user. To ensure effective learning integration too, feedback is recorded from every interaction.
SourceThe adoption of AI-enabled chatbots has enabled organizations to move promptly and accurately turn around customer inquiries.
Expanding an agent's domain knowledge base is integral in providing timely and accurate responses that draw on a comprehensive base of information such as product features, services, industry trends, or technologies.
To avoid silos between model specializations, chatbot developers are now turning towards ChatGPT for sophisticated and multi-domain training modules which can collectively inject context to user queries from varied topics.
The ability to access vital, up-to-date information improves the effectiveness of AI chatbots. ChatGPT empowers this by providing comprehensive training on diverse topics and industries ranging from cognitive science and natural language processing to health care and sports.
Furthermore, webhooks in ChatGPT allow for real-time integration with external APIs enabling the quick transition from mere knowledge acquisition to practical implementations such as complex Q&As for customer service solutions or automated report generation in enterprises.
All this make it easier than ever before to take advantage of advancements in a huge variety of domains and stay totally up-to-date.
ChatGPT has the ability to extend its area of knowledge beyond the conversational domain. Not only can it remember earlier inputs and conversations, but it is also able to synthesize additional related data from external sources.
The training datasets feed into ChatGPT’s topic-specific knowledge bases, which allow its responses to be more accurate and relevant in real-world applications. Training on diverse topics also allows ChatGPT’s accuracy and wealth of language skills within any area or industry to evolve.
Advancing ethical AI practices is an important element in harnessing the full potential of chatbots. Unbiased and inclusive responses must be ensured at all times to avoid misframing data.ChatGPT through its training approach ensures that specific policies are embedded within response metrics when responding to user queries, offering valuable protection against discrimination and imbalance powered by prejudicial classification systems from chatbot responses.
To ensure the responsible deployment of AI chatbots, measures must be taken to mitigate potential risks associated with malicious use. ChatGPT features a continuous review system designed to identify any inappropriate or possibly harmful content among user responses.
Through its automated monitoring and reporting capabilities, it can alert stakeholders about suspicious behavior quickly and accurately in order to take corrective action right away.
Advancements in ethical AI practices seek to ensure responsible navigation of the complex opportunities and challenges presented by new technologies. Mitigating risks associated with malicious use becomes increasingly important as individuals interact with chatbots on a regular basis.
To prevent adaption or manipulation of the conversational system, extra measures need to be put into place, such as reputation protection techniques and code obfuscation to reduce digital footprints.
ChatGPT's detection systems allow developers and users to actively monitor for misinterpreted instructions, off-policy behavior and misuse of data, giving the AI technology greater reliability and peace of mind.
Pioneering Continuous Learning and Adaptability is a key capability of ChatGPT. It allows for an artificial intelligence chatbot that can naturally evolve to become smarter, faster, and more accurate with age in response to user interactions. By “learning” from each interaction it gains understanding and recognition of patterns so that future conversations are tailored to the user’s preferences.
In addition, it seamlessly integrates new data without having to repeatedly adjust its training datasets while constantly striving to provide better results as a result of feedback from user interactions.
By learning from each user and conversation it participates in, ChatGPT is able to build up knowledge in order to provide expected responses with improved accuracy rates and an ever-advancing level of capability.
This process is facilitated by advanced architectures that draw from comprehensive training datasets containing millions of conversational utterances to allow the ChatGPT bot to better understand contextual nuances and intent.
Ongoing feedback loops between users, trainers, and domain experts work hand-in-hand with the learning framework to ensure an ongoing dialogue, enabling the system to continuously learn new skills and deep dive into domain-specific knowledge.
In addition, the chatbot can be trained on a continuous basis through leveraging adaptive learning enabling models to evolve at an unmatched rate.
Through continual training with relevant datasets combined with feedback from users, ChatGPT evolves its responses in order to offer personalized services and greater accuracy.
With advanced conversational machine-learning techniques, this AI-powered chatbot is efficient at spotting subtle changes in understanding human interactions and adapting its response accordingly—ensuring that user questions are answered quickly and accurately according to their current needs.
This is an invaluable and revolutionary capability that moves AI chatbots closer to "real-world" levels of conversational ability and problem-solving.
The potential for misinformation and false information propagation is an important limitation of AI chatbots, specifically ChatGPT. Without proper implementation of ethical AI practices, results generated by the chatbot may have inaccuracies or convey prejudice implications, both of which can lead to a skewed user experience.
Machine learning algorithms ingest learnings from large volumes of data and signals from previous conversations - as such, maintaining accuracy requires being extremely selective in the type of data used as well as employing rigorous integrity checks during training sessions.
Addressing ethical concerns and biases when deploying AI chatbots is a critical component often overlooked. Questions surrounding data privacy, questions of purposeful or accidental implicit bias, and other moral issues can reduce user trust levels.
Tackling those types of ethical concerns requires technology to conform to certain values such as conduct rule decision orientations. Additionally, by enhancing transparency and building auditing capabilities we could gain better insights into awareness from users on potential unfairness cues produced by chatbot interactions.
Data security and user privacy remain the foremost challenges when it comes to developing and deploying AI chatbots. This becomes even more problematic where real-time data that is fed into these chatbot systems holds private information and needs to be encrypted.
Balancing compliance with regulation standards like GDPR along with engineering limitations brings forth complexities that need to be taken seriously if building trust is important. Moreover, a single infringement could lead to reputational losses or legal issues down the line for companies using or connected with an AI Chatbot system proving its essential importance.
ChatGPT has shaken up the field of AI chatbots, transforming it from a limited technology hub to an innovative powerhouse. Its advanced language understanding and use of NLP give ChatGPT significant capabilities in user interaction, domain knowledge, ethical practices, and continuous learning.
With the right tools and AI strategy put in place for how they are used responsibly and ethically, ChatGPT is truly an exciting breakthrough that holds great promise not only inside the current realm of chatbots but for so many other future possibilities with artificial intelligence technology.
Regulatory frameworks must be implemented to ensure appropriate usage while preserving user privacy and security. As this space continues to progress there will remain more obstacles yet also opportunities ahead - all thanks to ChatGPT’s revolutionizing influence on AI chatbots.
Ever since ChatGPT launched, marketers have been using it to scale their content creation.
For SEO in particular, AI-generated content seems like an excellent way to speed up the content marketing process and significantly cut costs. Unlike the black hat article spinners of the past, ChatGPT (and similar tools like Jasper and Google Bard) produce intelligent, original content that reads as if it were written by a human. To the untrained eye, it’s hard to tell the difference.
So, why would you want to detect content created by artificial intelligence? If the output reads well, what’s the problem?
The issue boils down to quality. AI-generated content might read well, but it lacks depth and nuance. It can rank well in the search engines, but it’s not likely to provide adequate value for a visitor unless the topic is something extremely basic, like instructions for removing a carpet stain or directions to a business. Unfortunately, if you publish content made just for search engines, it will be considered spam by Google.
You may have heard that Google considers all automatically generated content to be spam. This was their position at one time.
In an Office Hours video from April 1, 2022, John Mueller clarified Google’s official position on automatically generated content, and stated, "If you're using machine learning tools to kind of generate your content it’s essentially the same as if you’re just shuffling words around… for us it's still automatically generated content and that means for us it's still against the webmaster guidelines, so we would consider that to be spam.
"Google’s official stance has since changed. On February 8, 2023, Google announced that AI-generated content is not against their guidelines unless it’s created to manipulate search rankings. Useful content created by automation is perfectly acceptable.
Despite the well-written nature of generated content, it can be detected easily.
AI-content-generating algorithms are basically a glorified form of predictive text, where the system knows the words most likely to come after one another. To detect AI, this process is reverse-engineered, where the system predicts the most likely word to come before a certain word.
Even though AI content is allowed, you might want to avoid publishing it to your website. If you hire writers to create content for you, and you’re not sure if they’re using an AI tool, here’s how to detect it.
One of the best AI content detectors is GPT-2 Output Detector. It’s free and you don’t need to register for an account. This particular tool is highly accurate and allows you to paste in more copy than other tools.
This tool uses a scoring system of real/fake, so the higher your content scores as real, the more likely it was written by a human. This tool doesn’t seem to have a character limit, but the more content you paste, the longer it takes to analyze.
Another great tool to use is GPT-Writer. Although some people have said it isn’t as accurate as other tools, it depends on the subject. For some content, this tool scores human-written samples as 100% human-generated content, while other tools score the same content at 98% human-generated.GPT-Writer limits samples to 1500 characters, but that should be enough to get the information you need. If you aren’t sure, run multiple samples.
AI-Detector – Content at Scale is another highly accurate tool and has a 2500 character limit, which is more than enough to get a decent analysis.
There are a few tools that don’t make the cut for reliability, but you may find them useful. The first one is AI Detector Pro (the free version).
Your input is limited to 200 characters, which may not tell you much. However, the paid options might be more beneficial. Even so, with accurate free tools like GPT-2 Output Detector, there’s really no reason to pay for a tool unless you need the extras, like reporting.
Originality AI is a plagiarism and AI detector, so you get the best of both worlds with this tool. However, some people have said it was really easy to alter a little text to bypass the detections and get a human score.
Often, when people use AI tools to generate content, they keep the headings intact or alter them by a word or two. You can reverse engineer an article by plugging one heading at a time into some AI tools to see what content is generated. If the content was written using the same AI tool you’re using, each heading will likely generate text that can also be found in the body of the article you’re investigating.
For example, say the article you want to verify contains the heading, “Why is AI content bad?” If you type this heading into Google Bard, you’ll get several bullet points in response. If the content of those bullet points also appears in the article either word-for-word or very similarly, you can be fairly certain it was written using AI.
You can also plug in full paragraphs from the article in question. If the AI tool returns content that is also found in the article, it is more than likely AI-generated.
Tools are great for detecting AI-generated content, but you can also use manual methods. Here are some things to look for:
Although you don’t need to worry about AI-generated content hurting your search rankings simply for being AI, there are several reasons to avoid it:
There are two main ways to avoid using AI content: to spin scraped content and to fill space on your website.
Scraped content is spam and spinning scraped content is plagiarism. Google has algorithms that can detect scraped content that has been altered by an AI tool. Publishing scraped content has always been considered spam, and using ChatGPT or any other tool to alter it is still considered plagiarism. In other words, don’t steal other people’s content and use AI to rearrange it to make it look original because Google will know.
Another use case to avoid is filling space. If you’re generating long articles to populate your blog or other website pages just to fill it out, you’re probably not providing value to visitors.
Back in December 2022, Google announced a Helpful Content system update that promised to detect and suppress content made for search engines and promote websites designed for humans.
Many people noticed a drastic drop in rankings after this update, even sites with high-quality human-created content. It’s too risky to use AI tools to populate your website for the sake of filling space. You’ll waste your time, money, and you probably won’t rank.
Poor-quality content that doesn’t provide value isn’t going to rank whether it was created by a human or ChatGPT. Google can tell the difference between AI-generated content created to manipulate search rankings and content that exists to provide value to web visitors. If you choose to use AI tools like Jasper, ChatGPT, or Google Bard, be responsible.
There’s nothing wrong with AI-generated content as long as it is helpful and provides value to your visitors. As long as you follow Google’s E-E-A-T Guidelines (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), you can rank AI content in the search results just like any other page.
Remember AI is typically not as good at developing high-level digital marketing strategies.
That's where we come in! Contact us today!
The data-driven sales strategy is a modern approach to sales usually powered by technology and data. Leveraging big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) tools today, digital businesses are able to analyze data and focus their resources on more targeted opportunities with higher returns.
The advantages of such sales strategy span from improved capability in decision-making processes, expanded customer understanding, enhanced sales effectiveness, and higher return on investment for companies. By integrating the thoughtfulness of human agents with powerful technologies capturing important insights, innovative businesses have begun threatening traditional approaches that once reigned in the market.
By leveraging historical sales data and market data, businesses can make informed decisions that improve efficiency and maximize sales revenue. Additionally, customer relationship management (CRM) tools play a crucial role in refining sales and marketing teams' outreach by enhancing engagement strategies and streamlining communication processes.
Even though approaches like this may seem at times intimidating due to its fast-paced, ever-changing environment, having a lack of proper adaptation ability can result in lags behind increased competitive enterprises. Sales leaders who fail to embrace a data-driven strategy risk falling behind competitors who optimize their processes with AI-powered tools and data insights.
We will be examining the different advantages and challenges that come with adopting a data-driven sales strategy, thoroughly discussing the improved efficiencies seen in this area of operation, and providing initiatives to follow through on such implementation.
Therefore, it can be argued that an optimal data-driven strategy is key for success today. By highlighting its potential impact on business performance—including lead generation, conversion rates, customer lifetime value, and customer communications quality—together with cost savings in customer acquisition cost, companies can stay ahead in an increasingly data-driven marketplace.
SourceAdopting a data-driven sales approach provides businesses with robust insights that can be used to inform decision-making and shape their marketing campaigns.
With real-time access to accurate customer data and analytics, employers can stay closely aligned with what the marketplace wants, look for trends in purchase behavior, target specific leads more effectively, and eliminate the guesswork normally associated with age-old methods.
This helps facilitate informed decision making on-the-fly which enhances business strategy by identifying potential paths to increase profitability or disrupt the market before fixed strategies become obsolete. Improved decisional visibility offers unprecedented agility when dealing with competing deadlines and even completely unanticipated market surprises.
SourceData-driven sales approaches enable businesses to increase their understanding of customer behavior and preferences. Accurate customer data derived from the analysis can be used to segment customers and optimize campaigns for improved engagement.
Customer profiles with detailed insights can equip marketers with further intel on how best to market products and services, as well as provide personalized responses through the meticulous study of customers’ behavior in terms of purchases, browsing history, interactions, etc.
Through customer segmentation, businessmen analyze gathered information to rethink buying journeys that boost results like conversions. A more solid understanding acquired by data-driven marketing allows companies to offer product bundles tailored carefully to complementary services clients want or need most often and will value highly.
In that way, it leads businesses to present the most customer-oriented experience possible and enables eliminating guesswork in people targeting and nurturing along their journey with the brand. The result is satisfied customers who engage more efficiently with companies according to their stated needs, leading to better overall ROI per individual buy.
SourceSales performance optimization is a key advantage of using data-driven sales approaches. The use of accurate, real-time data enables targeted decisions and actions to be taken for optimal outcomes. Data can be analyzed to discover trends and patterns to assist in creating effective customer segmentation.
This insight helps sales teams engage with customers more effectively by providing tailored services that are better suited to their needs, leading to improved client satisfaction.
Predicting the most valuable leads as well as future opportunities boosts company revenue potential, while optimizing existing processes often results in increased sales efficiency saving time and relevant resources.
With enhanced predictive analytics for sales forecasting providing a competitive edge all parties involved will profit from this approach‘s implementation securely on track toward a successful end goal attainment.
Improved efficiency and productivity are one of the major advantages achieved with a data-driven sales approach. Using accurate and real-time data, businesses can efficiently streamline their sales processes, eliminate guesswork and manual labor, reduce errors, save time and resources, and move quickly towards greater ROI and efficiency goals.
Automation further helps by automating routine tasks so that they take less time, are less prone to human error, and are more cost-effective in terms of resources.
This helps create better customer experiences as customers' needs are met faster without any need for manual effort which in turn improves sales conversions as well as customer satisfaction and loyalty scores. Overall these efficiencies play an important role in driving peak performance top-line growth over the long term.
SourceData-driven insights can serve as a powerful competitive differentiator when used effectively. By leveraging accurate insights generated from data analysis, businesses have the potential to gain a valuable edge over their competitors.
Teams can identify trends in customer behavior and anticipate market changes quickly. This information allows them to adjust strategies and react to external factors with agility before their rivals even recognize the opportunity.
Data-driven approaches also lend themselves nicely to identifying unexplored revenue sources or untapped markets, bringing fresh value that rivals cannot replicate easily. Ultimately, data-driven solutions can be an invaluable asset for gaining a real competitive advantage within any sector or industry.
SourceAdopting a data-driven sales approach offers numerous benefits, including increased revenue and ROI.
Businesses can use it to identify high-value leads and optimize their strategic practices to maximize returns on investments. Data-driven insights help companies segment customers and tailor their marketing efforts to specific target groups. Additionally, businesses benefit from improved forecasting that enables them to create sales strategies that yield maximum profits.
Overall, with accurate customer and product analytics along with automation of routine tasks, firms are able to improve lead generation while increasing conversion rates—ultimately generating higher revenues in the process.
These days, businesses are collecting data from diverse sources and platforms. As such, it’s more important than ever to ensure that this data is of high quality and reliability, as bad or greasy data can lead not only to increased costs in trying to capture accurate information but unreliable analyzed trends.
Companies need to identify key internal dashboard metrics as well as external indicators for an effective operations structure. Cross-checks should also be performed regularly against historically validated statures sectioned off into demographic areas through empirical modeling adaptation measures.
Additionally, a detailed review of the business software must take place routinely in order to mitigate any potential mal technics that could possibly sabotage the vigilance margin through deploying surveillance authorities over notable technical anomalies discernible by sufficient proficient remediation speed only partaken utilized and united through universal protocols.
By doing so, companies small and large can ensure that as more data is collected it will be of the highest quality and accuracy.
These days, businesses are collecting data from diverse sources and platforms. As such, it’s more important than ever to ensure that this data is of high quality and reliability, as bad or greasy data can lead not only to increased costs in trying to capture accurate information but unreliable analyzed trends.
Companies need to identify key internal dashboard metrics as well as external indicators for an effective operations structure. Cross-checks should also be performed regularly against historically validated statures sectioned off into demographic areas through empirical modeling adaptation measures.
Additionally, a detailed review of the business software must take place routinely in order to mitigate any potential maltechnics that could possibly sabotage the vigilance margin through deploying surveillance authorities over notable technical anomalies discernible by sufficient proficient remediation speed only partaken utilized and united through universal protocols. By doing so, companies small and large can ensure that as more
The handling of private customer information and the need for secure data protection are prominent concerns when proposing a data-driven sales approach. Accurate personal data—such as financial transactions, addresses, email IDs, and birthdates—must be highly secured from unauthorized access to provide customers with privacy and due trust.
Having safeguards in place during storage and transmission is highly recommended when dealing with sensitive challenges like cybersecurity threats, identity theft, or personal data breaches.
Businesses must adopt strong encryption protocols meant to strongly discourage malicious or potentially damaging activities found within their database networks. Companies likely also should invest adequate resources into early detection of possible risks that endanger stored customer data profiles as tackling them back may come out tedious later on.
Integration of data sources and systems is an important challenge to consider when starting a data-driven sales approach.
Although obtaining analytics can enable companies to make faster, smarter decisions, getting these resources into one comprehensive platform won’t be instantaneous — it takes time and focus.
All systems created in different platforms must be coordinated together and both workers and managers shaped with up-to-date skill sets. The architecture might range from clean IT integration processes sharing small encapsulated chunks of information that rely on mature architectures.
Ongoing training and skill development is essential when implementing a data-driven sales approach. In order for businesses to optimize data-driven methodology, individuals need to understand the technical skills necessary to analyze complex data sets and to interpret those findings into actionable strategies that produce effective outcomes.
This is one area where outsourcing via value added resellers (VARs) can be beneficial for scaling your systems.
Employees must also possess a keen understanding of all relevant software applications as well are appropriate methods for tactically applying distribution techniques.
Ensuring professional development through ongoing education will help ensure that all personnel remain abreast of changes in technology regardless of their level within the organization.
Data-driven sales approaches can provide a clear competitive advantage. By collecting and analyzing customer data, businesses can personalize their messages and offerings to increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ROI.
Additionally, these approaches offer tremendous benefits from improved decision-making to optimization of sales performance for businesses that view data as an asset.
In order to capture the most value with this many companies need to address the important data challenges such as quality control, privacy issues, and integration of systems while staying apprised of industry regulations and trends.
Overall, investing in a comprehensive data-driven approach will help companies stay ahead of emerging market conditions and ensure sustainable growth across new channels with maximum profitability.
There are numerous variables that go into running a successful social media marketing strategy. Factors like quality and frequency of posts, along with proper engagement quickly come to mind. These are obviously important, but choosing the network that caters to your target audience is equally important.
Since there can be a disparity in terms of user demographics on different social media platforms, you should understand which network best fits your business before launching a full-blown campaign. Here is a rundown of the demographic of some of the most popular networks to help you choose which one to use.
Many social networking sites, such as Facebook and Instagram, boast billions of monthly active users who primarily access these platforms through mobile devices. With social media apps becoming essential communication platforms, it’s important to choose the right social networking site that aligns with your business goals and target audience.
These two heavyweights are at the top of most marketers' to-do list, and rightfully so. Facebook is the elephant among social media channels. Twitter isn’t all that far behind. Consequently, both Facebook and Twitter tend to be great places to start your campaign and test the waters.
If your business has a broad demographic, you should be able to effectively reach your audience. The same thing can be said even if you have a relatively small demographic, and you’re trying to zone in on a smaller segment of the population. Regardless of your industry, you should be able to bring exposure to your business and establish a community around it.
While creating a presence on both of these networks is applicable to nearly any business, Facebook can be even more advantageous when you’re looking to reach females between the ages of 18 and 29. According to CMS Wire, the vast majority of Facebook users are women and young adults, which makes it ideal if this is your business’s main demographic.
When it comes to Twitter, it’s also popular with a young audience between the ages of 18 and 29. A large part of its user base is comprised of African Americans and individuals living in densely populated, urban areas.
Both platforms have millions of active users, making them a great platform to promote your business and interact with your audience. While other social media platforms are also part of the social media scene, Facebook and Twitter stand out as essential channels for paid advertising and enterprise social networks.
If you’re looking to grow your business and gain B2B networking opportunities, LinkedIn is an effective way to do so. Unlike other popular social media platforms that are more casual in nature, this one is designed for educated professionals who are looking to advance their careers. According to statistics by Quantcast, the majority of users have earned either a bachelor’s degree or completed grad school. Male users outweigh females, and a large percentage of them have no children.
LinkedIn users also tend to earn considerably more money than those on other networks.
For instance, individuals earning over $150,000 annually account for the largest number of users. Not far behind are individuals earning between $100,000 and $150,000.Another factor that differentiates this network from others is the average age of its users. Unlike many that cater to a younger demographic, LinkedIn users are typically older and range between 25 to 64 years of age. If you want to connect with an audience that is well-to-do and mainly consists of business professionals, this can be the perfect resource.
This popular social media platform has really gained a lot of momentum in the past couple of years. While it pales in comparison to the user base of Facebook and Twitter, it’s seen plenty of growth since its conception and could be a major contender in the near future. The concept of Pinterest is incredibly simple, which involves “pinning” images onto boards.
This simplicity combined with its eye-appealing aesthetic probably accounts for the success it has seen. Like Google+, Pinterest also has a significant disparity in terms of gender. The difference is that it swings the other way and has a massive female user base of around 72 percent.
Most users are relatively educated and have either attended college or have at least a bachelor’s degree. Users are primarily Caucasian and between the ages of 18 and 50. Going even deeper, the top geographic location of Pinterest is the south east United States including states like Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Due to the large volume of females who use this network, some of the most widely shared content is based in the following niches.
If your business focuses on any of these areas, Pinterest can be a potential gold mine. Since this site is image-centric, it’s a great resource for displaying pictures of your products or services in action. It’s also possible to achieve a level of virality on this network because of the ease with which users can share content.
Determining whether or not TikTok is the right platform for your business first requires an understanding of the platform itself and its purpose. To begin, it is important to know that TikTok is one of those social media channels that are primarily used by teenagers and young adults for entertainment. It allows users to create short videos, share them with others, and watch content from other users. It has also become a great way for businesses to reach potential customers, increase brand awareness, and engage with their audience. As a business owner, it is important to create videos that are both entertaining and informative so that viewers will be engaged and want to watch your content.
Additionally, if you can make sure that your videos are creative and original, viewers will be more likely to remember them. TikTok, like other best social media platforms, offers collaboration tools to help you create posts that resonate with your audience and expand your personal brand. When it comes to promoting your video content on TikTok, you can use hashtags, comments, and other forms of promotion to get the word out about your business. It is also important to understand that organic social reach on TikTok is limited by its algorithm; however, you can boost your reach by running ads or doing influencer marketing. At the end of the day, TikTok is one of the best modern social media sites for businesses to reach their target market and engage with their customers. With our help, you can create an effective strategy on this business platform that will get you the results you need.
Many business owners have heard of this social media site, but aren’t necessarily sure how it can fit in with their marketing campaign. In a nutshell, Tumblr is a microblogging site that allows users to share a variety of content including text, images, audio, and links. They can upload their own original content or re-blog content from other users. It has an incredibly easy-to-use interface which many people find appealing and has contributed to Tumblr’s success. While you could consider this network in its early stages, more and more legitimate brands like IBM and J Crew are taking the time to build their presence on it.
The most noticeable aspect of this site is its young audience. If you’re in a business that’s looking to reach people over the age of 35, then Tumblr isn’t for you. However, if you’re mainly looking to connect with consumers between 13 and 25, you should definitely consider this network. One of the most interesting statistics is that more young people in this age group now use Tumblr than Facebook. According to The Real Time Report, 61 percent of teens and 57 percent of young adults use Tumblr regularly, while only 55 percent of teens and 52 percent of young adults use Facebook regularly.
While it’s not completely clear why Tumblr is so popular among young people, it’s suspected that it relates to the fact that most parents aren’t using the site. Consequently, teens and young adults can use it without their parents constantly keeping tabs like they can on Facebook and other more notable networks. If your business offers a product or service that’s youth oriented, Tumblr can be an excellent choice. The best part is that competition is likely to be minimal for at least a few years.
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google+ have become the epicenter of marketing and social media campaigns for many businesses. According to Social Media Examiner, “83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.” While the act of posting content and interacting with followers is important, it’s even more important to measure the performance of your overall campaign through social media analytics tools. Doing so should ultimately help fine-tune your efforts, minimize mistakes, and increase exposure. Here are some techniques and useful tools to accomplish this.
Perhaps the best way to get an overarching idea of how well or poorly each network is performing is by using some basic features of this platform. Google Analytics is free to use and is the choice of many marketers because of its extensive features. Clicking Traffic Sources > Social > Overview will provide a rundown of all social networks that are bringing traffic to your site. This includes the number of visits via social referral in comparison to total visits, the number of visits from each network, and the percentage of traffic from each network. Reviewing this data will give you a rough idea of how well each social media platform is performing in relation to other networks.
For instance, Facebook might be bringing in 40 percent of traffic, Twitter is bringing in 20 percent, Google+ is bringing in 10 percent and all others are combining for 30 percent. Clicking “Network Referrals” will provide a bit more information, like total pageviews, and the average visit duration of pages per visit. Clicking “Visitors Flow” is another feature that shows which pages on your website visitors are landing on and from which social media platforms. Understanding this data is important because it’s a clear indicator of which networks are working, which need some attention, and which ones may be worth scrapping altogether.
One of the main indicators of how big your presence is throughout the social media realm is how many mentions your business gets across social media channels. This buzz is also known as social signals, which are a rising factor in search engine algorithms.
Hootsuite is an effective way to track those mentions and streamline your social media strategy. It’s also one of the most popular platforms and currently has over 600 million users. There are several other statistics that can be monitored, such as how many people have added your business to their circles on Google+, how many followers you have across major social networks, recent user activity, and daily growth.
When it comes to Facebook, you can determine who your fan base is by analyzing their demographic according to region, language, and posting source. Hootsuite also makes it easy to absorb data by offering over 30 different modules with a variety of charts and graphs. Since it’s available on mobile devices, this can be a great platform for keeping up with data while you’re on the go.
This has become the go-to social media management tool for many businesses. SproutSocial offers a plethora of features that cover pretty much every aspect of the social media process along with high-powered analytics. From the dashboard, you can keep track of:
In terms of published content, you can easily determine how many clicks and responses each message received, as well as the number of people each message reached. This is helpful because it’s possible to identify which types of content are creating the most buzz, so you can rinse and repeat later. It’s also possible to determine how well your brand is faring against other competitors. This is done by creating social scores based on engagement and influence and measuring them against the competition. By producing presentation-ready reports, it’s easy to track the long-term progress of a campaign across various social networks.
If you’re looking for comprehensive data to spot trends, brand reputation, and where your company stands against competitors, this is a platform worth considering. According to Simplify 360, they “provide you with a much-needed tool to listen to what your customers are saying about your brand on social media and a means to act on it.
Be it Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, news sites, or online forums, you will never miss out on any conversations that are relevant to your brand. ”When it comes to features, this software provides the basics like information regarding your demographics, the volume of traffic from major social media networks, and competitor tracking. There are also numerous other sophisticated features such as:
Like Sprout Social, simplify 360 produces engagement and influence scores in order to tell how your brand stacks up against competitors. It also has a detailed analytics system with numerous reporting options.
This is another platform designed to measure performance that has caught the attention of notable media companies like Tech Crunch, BBC, and Mashable. Their slogan is “social media monitoring and analysis made easy,” and their concept revolves around searching for hashtags or search terms. The data can then be exported to a spreadsheet, charts, or graphs for convenient viewing.RowFeeder is a bit simpler than the previously mentioned platforms and can only be integrated with Facebook and Twitter. Nonetheless, it’s helpful for tracking your campaign in detail and seeing how your brand is performing against the competition. Businesses primarily use RowFeeder for:
Finally, a simple way to determine how much your content is getting shared on various social media sites is by installing social share buttons. For WordPress-based websites, there are many plugins available, which only take a few seconds to install. Once set up, you can see how many times a piece of content has been shared on different networks. More social shares translate to more exposure and can be a litmus test for determining what sort of content or topics are popular among your audience.
With access to numerous social media performance measurement platforms, businesses have the ability to unearth detailed information that simply wasn’t possible a few years ago. By utilizing the right social media metrics, you can avoid making the same mistakes and improve all areas of your social media efforts. Over time, this should put you in the position to better understand your target audience, improve engagement, and generate more leads via social networks.
If you’re ready to launch your social media marketing campaign, see my article "How to Determine Which Social Media Network Fits Your Business” for a great starting point.
Do you have any other tools you prefer to use for measuring social media performance?
Do you need help with your organic social presence? Get in touch!
We are a Seattle-based content marketing agency. We specialize in link building, a form of off-site content marketing, which we'll cover here shortly, and we work with companies of all sizes to plan and execute link building and content marketing strategies.
Alright, let's dig into the good stuff.
So, this is content marketing 101, and the first thing I want to do is talk about the concept of content marketing because it might be a little bit different than what you're used to, or what you thought content marketing was.
Obviously, content marketing is all about content.
"Content" can mean creating content, visual content, video content, audio content— really, anything that communicates with your customers and holds some sort of value. We'll dig a little deeper into what constitutes that "value" later on, but for now, this is a good working definition.
The goals of content marketing are to make your brand more powerful and visible, resulting in higher conversion rates, more traffic, more leads, and more sales. In essence, we're just talking about higher traffic and higher conversion rates, which are the two elements of the online revenue formula.
But there are a few misconceptions that lead people astray when it comes to content marketing.
The first is that there's a formula for content marketing that works for everyone.
Some people have been pitched the idea as a fad, or a kind of gimmick, where some agency or expert has told them content marketing is a guaranteed path to success for any business. There are a lot of objective benefits that almost any company can take advantage of, but this line of thinking implies that content is a straightforward, plug-and-play type concept, and it's not.
It demands a lot of hard work and adjustment over time—and because every company is different, there really is no set formula that works 100 percent of the time. There are some major considerations and useful strategies that any business can implement, but there really is a trial-and-error component to a lot of this.
Another major misconception is that content marketing is a standalone or isolated strategy, and again, this isn't really the case. Technically, you could stand to benefit with just a blog, or just a whitepaper series, but the true power of successful content marketing marketing is better unlocked when it's made an integral component of a much wider web of interrelated strategies.
For example, content marketing can work closely in conjunction with an SEO strategy; if you know how to optimize content for search engines, you'll end up ranking higher for more keywords and appearing in search results for more keywords overall, which will increase the visibility of your content. Knowing the ins and outs of social media marketing gives your content more reach, increasing its value even further. Email marketing, even paid ads —there are a lot of options here to expand the reach of your content.
With that in mind, let's take a look at some of the benefits that content marketing has to offer the average business.
The benefits of content marketing are more than just giving your potential customers more value; it can actually improve your business in several different areas. Obviously, the bottom line is getting more money and more customers, but there are both direct and indirect paths to those goals.
For example:
Brand visibility is about how much exposure your brand is getting. Just having your name in front of more people and being top-of-mind with a wider portion of your target demographics is valuable. It means people will be more likely to buy from you when it comes time to make a decision, and it may even help you get some word-of-mouth attention. You'll get this by publishing more content in more places and getting it shared in bigger and bigger circles.
Brand reputation is similar but distinct from brand visibility. Rather than the sheer volume of attention your brand is getting, reputation is about what people think of you. So, with good, informative content, people are going to see you as more authoritative in your industry. You have this kind of subtle way of bragging through content—look at how much of an authority we are on this subject! Look at how much we love our customers! And since it's indirect, not an advertisement, people trust it more.
Publishing more high quality content for your website makes it bigger, with more indexed pages in search engines. And as long as you keep your readers interested, more is better. It means the average user's going to spend more time hopping between your pages and learning more about your brand, and you'll have more opportunities to eventually nail down a conversion. Speaking of which…
Conversions are where you make your money, so obviously, the more you get, the better. You might have a landing page, contact page, or product pages doing a lot of the work for you here, but don't underestimate the power of a call-to-action in a well-written blog article, YouTube video, or podcast radio show.
Do this consistently, and your conversions will go way up. But successful content marketing strategy doesn't just give you more opportunities for conversions, it actually increases the rate at which visitors convert, because it strengthens the credibility, authority, and trustworthiness of your brand.
So, there are a couple of search effects that come with a good content marketing strategy. First, as you publish more content, you'll have more pages on your website, which is going to make your site more relevant for a wider range of search queries.
I like to think of every newly published page of content as dropping another hook in the water. The more you have, the more opportunities for "bites" you have from search engines! But if the page is the hook, then the bait is the quality of the content itself, and without good bait, you won't catch any keepers. So don't try to publish content with the mindset of only getting as many hooks in the water as you can – the better the bait or quality of that content, the better the catch will be.
The other main SEO benefits are the inbound links and brand mentions, which can be linked or unlinked, that result from content marketing. Much of your content marketing is going to happen off-site, which I call off-site content marketing, so that presents this opportunity for you to link back to your own domain. Even unlinked mentions of your brand name are thought to have an impact on SEO.
Those same links and mentions can result in really good referral traffic over time. I've found that providing links to relevant articles or eBooks on AudienceBloom.com within the context of other articles I've written is a great way to drive referral traffic.
Social traffic works very much the same way. As people read and share your content, you'll see traffic from those social media channels.
In particular, industries like software-as-a-service (SaaS) require customers to stay engaged with up-to-date strategies and troubleshooting guides for their ultimate success. This is why it's essential that SaaS businesses not only provide such information but also ensure they are constantly updated in order to retain customer loyalty.
Satisfy the desires and needs of your website users, including providing them with user-generated content options. This will ensure their loyalty over time - a key factor in driving long-term growth!
Okay, so here we have the principle of compounding interest as it applies to content marketing. In my opinion, this is what really separates content marketing from the pack in terms of different marketing strategies.
Now, in the financial world, you have this principle of "compound interest," where you earn interest on an investment, let's say, at a consistent rate, but every time you earn interest, you're actually earning interest both on your principal investment and the other interest you've already earned. This creates an exponential growth curve rather than a linear one, which results in tremendously better long-term benefits.
Collectively, these factors make it so content marketing pays off in a non-linear growth pattern, which means its long-term returns are just amazing.
Your sense of scale and ballooning authority are valuable at the later stages of growth, but when you first start out, you're going to feel like you're on an island.
You're going to have very few (if any) readers and a very (very) small audience. There's no getting around this. Content marketing is the best strategy for long-term payoffs, but in the short term, it's unlikely to give you instant results. You've got to be committed and patient for this to work.
As you continue your campaign and your content catches the interest of readers through paid or organic channels, you'll grow your audience steadily. Think of it as building roads and bridges to the island you started on.
Alright, now let's take a look at how you can actually build a strategy like this. I'm going to be breaking this down into a few main sections, but the two most prominent are 'on-site' and 'off-site' content.
So, your on-site content is everything that you have on your website itself. Now, there are a few main considerations you'll have for the type of content you'll want to provide here:
You want to make sure that nobody else has done this before. If you publish something that someone else has already covered, people aren't going to have any reason to read it. So, how can you make it original? That's up to you. Do some original research, come up with a unique idea, and experiment with something new—just make it stand out by making it different.
I could write about how much I love ice cream, but nobody needs to know that. However, people do need to know about content marketing efforts and how to start up their own content campaigns. On some level, your content should be practical for your audience—give them advice, tools, or information that's useful to them.
Nobody wants that fluffy content where there are a lot of words on the page, maybe, but it's not really saying anything useful. Give your readers concrete examples, creative illustrations, and specific data points. The more detailed you are, the better.
You can have good content that still isn't engaging—you need to grab your readers' attentions and get them really invested in your content. You can do this by making it more visual, or making it more entertaining. The real key here is to make your content more approachable overall.
I don't mean writing the same thing every week, because obviously you still need to be original, but there has to be some kind of similar thread between your content—the same voice, the same style, the same realm of expertise—give your readers something they can grow familiar and become comfortable with. That will keep them coming back for more.
These are the five main areas you'll really want to zero in on, and they apply to your off-site content, too.
Your on-site content is where you've got to start. Nobody's going to start accepting guest posts and submissions from you or your brand until you have some published proof of your content's quality and your brand's expertise. You can't just show up claiming you're an expert; you have to show people that you know what you're talking about, and usually, that means building up a cache of on-site content, sort of like a resume.
On-site content also gives you more creative liberties than external publishers will. There are no requirements to follow (other than the ones you set), and you won't be limited in terms of how often you want to publish, word counts, things you can and can't say, etc.
Beyond that, on-site content gives you all kinds of opportunities for customer acquisition and retention—you'll be able to include more calls to action, give your customers more value for their money, and really just strengthen your current customers' perceptions of who your brand is and how good your products and services are.
The best way to publish on-site content is with a blog on your website, and that's why I've pictured the AudienceBloom blog here. Make your blog your content hub. I recommend using WordPress because it's very user-friendly and can be augmented with a ton of useful plugins.
Off-site content, on the other hand, is a different animal in terms of the steps you need to take to execute it. The basic idea of off-site content is to publish content on behalf of your brand (usually a personal brand) on other publications. These publishers should be related to your industry or somehow reach your target audience. It's a long, slow, methodical process to guest post on some publications, but there are a ton of benefits to doing so.
What you see here is my author profile and archive at Inc.com, one of the places I contribute occasional columns. The visibility you can get for your personal brand and your company brand when you're represented in national publications like this is well worth the effort. Off-site content is where you'll get real brand visibility and reputation boosts; getting your brand's content featured in reputable publications within your industry will improve your brand awareness, trust, credibility, conversion rates, and all the other benefits we covered previously as well.
Off-site content is also a perfect opportunity to build links that point back to your website. These pass trust and authority to your site, which makes your site rank higher in search engines for relevant queries.
Now, obviously, there are a few challenges to off-site content that on-site content just doesn't have. You can write good content, sure, but meeting the quality, tone, formatting, and other requirements of external publishers can be a headache. But if you keep at it consistently and build your reputation as a great content producer, you'll easily be able to overcome those challenges.
Okay, so we've talked about on-site content and off-site content, and I've mentioned that one of the most important factors for content of any type is visibility.
Your job, with any content you produce, should be to maximize its readership in whatever way you can. Over time, that's gonna mean building up an audience of loyal followers or readers, so that every new follower you earn is another new reader for every piece of content you publish and syndicate thereafter.
There are a few keys to doing this successfully: Post regularly, respond, engage, and incorporate feedback. Let's discuss each of these briefly.
For now, I want to address this idea of getting started from scratch, which I'll admit, definitely isn't easy. When you're launching a new campaign, you'll have no followers, no external publications, no blog, and heavy investment before you start seeing any meaningful results.
So, where and how do you actually get started? I recommend starting with your on-site blog. Let's say you reach out to a new publisher to get some of your material featured. Where do you think they'll look first to see if you're the real deal? Probably your company blog. Let's say you reach out to an influencer in your industry on Twitter. After they check out your tweets, where are they going to look next? Probably your blog. So, as soon as possible, fill that blog up with the best content you can muster—think of it as a kind of resume you'll use to get your foot in the door for all the off-site content marketing you're going to do.
From there, start with relationships you might already have, even if they're not that strong or relevant. For example, you might have a connection on LinkedIn with an editor who works for the trade magazine you wish you could get featured in. Work your network to get an introduction, or introduce yourself through LinkedIn or email. Start small, and work your way up to bigger and better publishers and connections. It takes time and persistence, so don't expect it to come all at once, and don't give up when your outreach goes unanswered. Use Boomerang for Gmail to remind you when someone hasn't replied to your email after a few days so you can reach back out to check-in. Be persistent and don't give up until you get an answer, whether it's "yes" or "no."
In the same way, you can leverage the people you already know to give your social media profiles a leg to stand on. I'm talking about your friends, your family members, your employees—whoever you can get to follow your social media profiles.
Now, social media platforms aren't a numbers game—you don't just want any followers; you want good followers with the potential to actually become customers. But when you're first starting out, people may judge you based on those numbers, so give yourself a starting platform here with some initial followers or likes.
Also, when you publish and syndicate new material, have these people share it with their own friends and followers—it's the fastest way to start picking up some new connections. Don't be afraid to ask for followers and likes! There's one final but super important point I want to make. Your readership isn't just a mass of people to broadcast your content to—they're independent thinkers with thoughts and feelings on your material, and you'd do well to listen to them.
You have to nurture your relationship with your audience if you want your readers to stay loyal. That means giving them the best possible content you can and readily addressing their needs, concerns, and questions.
There should also be a degree of escalation in all your relationships, not just with your audience. Your publishers, your influencers, your readers, all of it—if you want to keep your momentum moving forward, you have to steadily increase your overall investments.
I still feel like I've only scratched the surface about what content marketing is and how to do it effectively. I've touched on the basics about what makes a good post, or about how content marketing affects SEO, or how to syndicate your content to best serve your audience. These are all topics that merit their own webinars, but I'm hoping this introductory lesson was more than enough to cover the kind of "start to finish" or "10,000-foot view" I wanted to achieve.
That being said, I've covered pretty much everything I had, and I'd like to open the floor to questions.
It's a business owner's dream: high-end clients willing to pay a premium for your product or service.
But, as the proverbial Pareto Principle would tell us, there is only a small contingency of companies on the margin who are able to maintain high-growth, high-margin, and high-profile, mid-market business.
Experience and data inform us that small changes in direction can create large swings in both revenue and profitability as you land larger enterprise deals.
Here are some tips on how business owners can move up market in a way that works best for their company's goals.
There is a temptation, especially for startups, to chase revenue from nearly any source, including smaller customers.
It's not desperation but more a situation of convenience and practicality.
If someone's willing to pay for something and revenue is tight, you might be tempted to cave.
But for a firm looking to move up-market, the discipline of knowing when to say no can be critical for both your time and your brand.
There is a measurable opportunity cost of your time and resources.
And, if you want to be a premium brand that serves higher-end clients, you'll likely want to steer clear of the riff-raff.
Having the discipline to say no to revenue can be difficult, especially when you might be desperate for more business.
Firms that start with a niche-focused strategy face this challenge with regularity.
And while the Gaussian Curve shown above tells us the curve has a tail and that we can charge more to more people, there will still be situations where discipline will be required.
When it comes to moving up-market for a unique service offering, it will be more about saying no to negotiating down for your offering than it will be about saying no to a particular niche.
Up-market movers don't JUST target specific niches; they target enterprise customers by their ability to pay and then offer a premium white-glove solution that solves a real-world problem.
Offering higher-end products or services isn't about just raising your prices.
It's about adjusting your offering to match the level of value you provide to clients. In some cases, adding more or better features can help to create a viral tipping point for your brand.
When this happens, it has a multiplier effect in that you can raise prices at the very moment demand spikes. A sales manager should be attuned to these market shifts and guide the sales team accordingly.
But, keep in mind, if your services are far superior to the competition (and even your upmarket customers know it), you may already have a premium offering.
In such a case, just raise prices. This approach can significantly increase your average contract value and refine your sales model to better target high-value clients.
High-end customers respond well to custom and flexible pricing options as they understand the value of what you're offering.
Consider creating different packages or tiers of products, services, or price points that cater to higher-end enterprise buyers without sacrificing profits.
One of the best business models where this can be implemented is in successful SaaS companies where customers can be both enterprise and entry-level.
Enterprise buyers typically have longer sales cycles but often result in higher revenue per customer, making it worthwhile to focus on fewer customers with higher spending potential.
If people can charge stupid amounts for bottled water, you should be able to eek-out a bit more margin for your offering.
By creating more sophisticated and visually appealing materials, you can demonstrate that your brand is one of quality and professionalism.
This, in turn, will help attract higher-end customers who are looking for reliable and trustworthy products and professional services.
If you are intent on charging more or getting in front of the right customer or client, you will need to invest in a marketing and sales process in the following ways:
Create customer segments that legally allow you to charge more for similar products or services based on the target demographic.
This could mean bifurcating and rebranding. In some cases, market segmentation could mean even higher margins for a larger bulk of the lower-end customers who pay less.
It really depends on both your target market and your product or service offering. When it comes to strategy, however, the following graph shows better than I could tell:
Networking with more affluent connections is an essential step for any business looking to move up the market. To do so effectively, it's important to have a plan in place that will ensure success.
First, identify the type of people you need to connect with to reach your target demographic. This could include industry leaders, key influencers, or other high-end connections in your niche.
Once you have identified these people, find ways to build relationships with them that will help you establish trust and credibility. For example, attending exclusive events and having meaningful conversations can be a great way to network with more affluent connections and get your brand name out there.
It's not enough to just offer high-end products or services – you need to make sure that customers are aware of the value they will be getting from them.
Make sure that you communicate this value clearly as part of your enhanced marketing efforts.
The sales team plays a crucial role in this process, ensuring that the benefits are effectively conveyed to potential clients. Also, your product roadmap should reflect features and improvements that support your value proposition, reinforcing your product market fit.
Prioritizing this alignment across the company can drive the company's growth, even amidst competing priorities.
Developing exclusive partnerships is an effective way to move up the market by charging more for products or services.
By partnering with other brands or businesses in the same industry, truly enterprise companies can leverage their connections and resources to create unique offerings that are tailored to higher-end customers.
In today's connected world, social media is a great place to start.
Differentiate yourself from the competition by providing a unique value-add.
If you have a product offering, that product should have something that makes it different, unique, and better than comparable offerings.
In some cases, your brand equity and innovation can be unique enough that you occupy a higher-margin value in the minds of consumers.
Achieving that realm is all about the offering and perception.
Either way, you should always be seeking to innovate, iterate and improve. If you don't, you not only won't be able to charge a higher margin, but your competitors will eat your lunch.
Not only do these programs help to increase customer loyalty, but they also serve as a way to incentivize large customers to keep coming back and buying from you.
First, solve a real problem, and then give them a reason and incentive to return.
Take input from your customers about how to improve everything from design to product features to post-purchase service.
Implement changes that provide the added value customers expect, and they are more likely to pay more.
Include changes and inputs into your CRM and marketing automation chains with your enterprise sales reps.
And, as we've stated previously, so much of what is given as "value" is often in the perception.
Customers and enterprise clients that can both have input and ownership in the process of design and feature sets are more likely to feel a sense of input and be willing to pay more.
Target higher-end customers by providing personalized, tailored services and solutions.
This means going above and beyond the usual customer service approach of simply responding to queries and resolving issues.
Instead, companies should strive to offer a more personalized experience that takes into account the individual needs of their customers.
Microsoft has almost always played catch-up with Apple in many areas, but one of the biggest areas was customer service.
Superior service and ownership of the entire value chain are the reasons Apple holds such impressive profit margins.
Because of their higher margin offering, Apple continues to best nearly every retail statistic with the Apple retail concept.
But Apple is only one high-profile example of how to provide value-added service as part of a premium offering.
You are justified in simply increasing prices if:
Adding more value via better service or improved features (and subsequently increasing prices) will, in most cases, increase your margins far above where they were previously. It has a multiplier effect.
Amazon has a mantra coined by CEO Jeff Bezos:
The idea of moving up-market with your product or service can be intimidating, but it doesn't have to be.
It is possible to increase the value you offer customers and charge more for your products or services without sacrificing quality or customer satisfaction.
In short, it's about improving customer success to make more money and improve your own profit margin.
Moving upmarket involves understanding what makes your customers tick and how they perceive value in the products and services you provide.
Moving "up market" means more than just charging more.
It often means improvement and then crafting the right marketing message targeting your ideal customer persona for your brand.
That's where we come in. We service numerous locations around the country.
Let us help you with your next marketing campaign.
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