Many people believe that writing well means crafting the perfect turn of phrase. While cleverly chosen words are nice, what’s even better is a message every reader can understand and remember.

Before we launch into our topic, it’s useful to remind ourselves what the objective of copywriting is: to sell a product or service. But remember that effective copy moves people to action by selling outcomes and value, not products or prices.

Frame it as a conversation between you and your target customer. To avoid focusing on yourself, try visualising your prospect sitting across from you. Don’t talk “at” or “to” your reader – engage them by speaking with them and to their interests. Remove any barriers to action: Make your story logical and easy to understand so people can follow you where you want them to go.

It all starts with a great content brief

When creating content for a business, writers need a content brief, or specific guidance so that they understand the brand’s content strategy, mission, and goals. Without knowing exactly what we want to help readers achieve, copy is unlikely to be written in a way that genuinely serves the audience.

To start putting together your brief, ask yourself questions about …

The business:

• Who are they and what do they stand for? (company bio, mission statement, values)
• Where do they sit in the market? (brand positioning)
• What is their value proposition?
• What separates them from the competition?
• Do they serve any niche markets?

Your target audience:

• Who are you writing for? What is their age and gender?
• What is their current state of awareness?
• What do they do? What’s a typical day like for them?
• What are their problems and pain points?
• What brings them happiness or satisfaction?
• What stage are they in your sales and marketing funnel?
• What exact needs or pain points you are addressing for the reader? Will it help solve a problem, educate, inspire action, or entertain?

Your topic:

• What are you writing about? Why?
• What makes your product timely or relevant?
• What is your goal? Are you trying to inform, inspire, or convert?
• What action(s) do you want your reader to take?
• Will they be in a better place after having read your article? How?

Once you have clearly articulated your answers to these questions, the next step is to …

Structure your information

Think about why someone should want to read your article and make that value proposition clear. Think about the context, key things that readers should know, what angles most people overlook, and how you plan to organise this information.

Create a content outline before you start writing so you know where you’re going. Come up with a structure that makes sense. How granular you get is up to you, but at least have an idea of what points you’ll be making and in what order.

Limit your article to just one big idea, both for the sake of clarity and not boring your reader, who typically has a limited attention span, especially online. Create structure using relevant subheadings and lists so people can skim topics before deciding whether they’re interested in diving deeper. But don’t fixate on being perfect; expect that you’ll be shifting pieces of copy around and making adjustments as you go.

Know your topic

It’s always easier to write with confidence when you actually know what you’re talking about. The writing may be the sexy part, but without adequate research, you’ll have nothing of substance – or value – to present your reader. People don’t have time for clickbait fluff.

The Internet makes researching much easier than it used to be, so there’s no excuse not to do it. But because everyone has access to it, creating truly unique content can be a challenge. The best way to cut through the clutter and set your writing apart from other articles on the same topic is by using primary sources.

You’ll want to speak directly to at least one person in the business who knows the company’s operations, products, and services inside out. Ideally, you’ll be able to speak to some customers as well. For authenticity, interview people, record them with their permission, and use their language to describe things where possible. In this context, it’s fine to “tidy up” their language for readability; no one wants to sound inarticulate.

Writing dos and don’ts

1. Cut the bloat. Don’t use five words when three words will do, and don’t use more adjectives than you need. If two are similar, pick one, and don’t use more than three. Eyes tend to glaze over letters so use symbols instead of words ($, &, %) and numerals rather than spelled-out numbers (7 not “seven”).
2. Read and re-read your copy. Look for any inconsistencies or opportunities to eliminate redundancy, remove unnecessary words, and replace long words with shorter words. Shorter words are usually clearer, easier to understand, and easier to scan. They also flow better. Even when reading silently, people “hear” what it sounds like in their head. Fewer syllables create a smoother rhythm, allowing people to read without stumbling.
3. Focus on “what’s in it for me?” Remove instances of “we” and your company name and replace them with “you.” Focus 100% on what your prospect gets – not what you offer. They don’t care about you, but they do care that you care about them.
4. Explore layers of benefits. Every feature has a primary benefit, with additional benefits that flow on from that. For example, an online course may allow users learn any time of day. The secondary benefits might be spending more time with family, work schedule flexibility, and the ability to go at your own pace.
5. Repeat important messages. People don’t absorb everything the first time or even the second time. Don’t assume that because you put it in your headline readers will remember by the time they reach the end. Repeat persuasive copy wherever it will help visitors transact.
6. Write a descriptive social snippet and meta description. Focus on keywords as well as readability. Make sure your meta description reads like a normal sentence written by a human or people will assume your result leads to a spammy site. Social snippets should draw the reader in, perhaps by asking a question or telling them something controversial they may not know.
7. Get your content proofed. Have someone you trust read your copy. It’s always hard to spot your own mistakes, especially when you’ve read something multiple times. Your head may trick your eyes into seeing what you intended rather than what is actually there. If you don’t have a proofreader, at least make use of spelling and grammar checks. Apps like Grammarly can also help.
8. When in doubt, seek professional help. Assuming you have the resources, consulting an expert is ideal. Your copy may need only a few tweaks to make it work or you may need to start from scratch. Either way, being involved in the process – you become the primary source now – will lead to a better result than simply expecting a copywriter to do it all for you.

For expert help or copywriting advice, contact the team at Creative Content.

Department store entrepreneur John Wanamaker once famously said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” For many businesses, content marketing can feel like that – a nebulous exercise with results that can be hard to quantify. Because content marketing is equal parts art and science, with timing and a pinch of luck stirred into the pot, there is no sure-fire recipe that will work for all businesses and industries. To maximise your chances of success, developing a thorough understanding of your audience, what you have to offer them, and why they should care is key. Then it becomes about how to communicate that information and put it where people can find it.

First of all, what is content marketing? Simply put, it’s a strategic approach that relies on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted online audience.

While the exact definition may vary, content marketing’s goal is the same as other forms of marketing: to generate sales and expand your business’s customer base. The difference between content marketing and traditional marketing is that, instead of overt sales messages, it aims to provide useful content to prospects and customers. Why? Because people are ever more wary of being directly marketed to and prefer to decide for themselves whether your business has anything they need or are interested in. It’s a mix of demand (“I want…”) and discovery (“How about…?”).

Ideally, your content should answer questions they may have related to your area of expertise or offer solutions to a problem they are experiencing. Note that you should stick to topics your brand is in a position to know about; that’s the “targeted audience” part. It’s a mistake to go after everyone, especially if your products or services are specialised or relatively high cost. You want to be talking primarily to decision makers. The immediate goal here isn’t to get a sale, however – though it’s certainly wonderful when that happens.

So, what is the point of content marketing?

Content marketing is a long game that builds brand authority over time. How long does it take to build brand authority? Well, how long is a piece of string? Because it must be genuine in order to be successful, brand authority takes time to establish. You can’t create it from just one article in one month – expect it to take at least a year before you experience a significant lift. Also, content marketing is just one part of a marketing mix that may include paid search, SEO strategy, and traditional marketing, depending on the nature of the business, its products, and its customers.

Different pieces of content should be aimed at different parts of the sales funnel while some of it will be evergreen, serving as a general resource now and in the future. Content pieces can also be modified and repurposed, for example, as support materials for the sales team, as a newsletter item to existing customers, or as an ad promoted to potential clients. This effectively turns one piece into several, targeting different segments and giving you more bang for your buck. Content topics should be valuable as soon as they’re created and grow in value over time, improving your SEO ranking to bring in new business organically.

Good content marketing should do all of the following:

• Generate leads
• Increase online sales
• Expand customer base
• Increase brand awareness and authority
• Engage an online community of users

These first three will probably look familiar; they are what all marketing aims to do. These last two, however, are things that effective content marketing does that other forms cannot.

The key benefit of content marketing is that it unlocks the value already within your business, using it as an asset to impart knowledge about your business. This typically includes your company’s story and the narrative of how your team solves problems for people. This narrative should speak to the core of what makes you different and why people love you and your products or services. 

What content marketing does differently

Usually transmitted one-to-one in person or on the phone, your one-to-many message has almost limitless potential online.

When successfully executed, content marketing takes your expertise and uniqueness (why people love you and your services) and describes it in a way that customers can digest, staging it for where and when they might need that info. With a bit of thought and effort, you can establish an incredibly rich, authentic story of how you serve your clients, which is ultimately about something far bigger than promoting today’s offer: It’s an evergreen resource that assists the business and, if created strategically and timed correctly, compounds in value over time.

Content marketing should encompass the entire customer journey, from consideration mode to conducting research to evaluating who to choose. To retain existing customers, content could be repositioned to discuss how to get the best out of your products or services. Always aim to offer value and earn goodwill by giving them something without the expectation of reciprocity, the way you might do in your interpersonal relationships.

Pro tip: You can create resources and continually update them to answer questions and serve customers in a way that benefits them, which in turn builds brand authority, trust, and your ranking on Google.

Where traditional marketing falters

As you’re probably aware, traditional marketing takes place online too. It might be a simple site launching something: “We have this service, pick us!” followed by basic info. Even if the site has a blog, when businesses don’t know what to write about, they tend to talk about what they’ve been doing – “We’ve launched this product, we’re developing a new line, here’s our office Christmas party” – which is all well and good from an internal perspective to build team morale but is unstructured and pointless to the rest of the world. Without a plan, content like this doesn’t convert or do anything. With logic applied, however, content can solve problems, inspire people, and rank on Google to reach new audiences and get your business found.

Businesses that don’t do content marketing often rely on paid ads and word-of-mouth, both of which have their place, but paid ads may not be suitable for influencing people in certain industries, for example, accounting – where a high level of trust must be reached before the customer can consider converting. Another instance where content marketing is a more effective approach is when the offer is complex, with a lot of steps that need to be understood by your prospect first. “Free advice” and explainer information given via content marketing demonstrates your expertise and credibility piece by piece while establishing your business as a player in your realm.

When businesses don’t understand content marketing, their content misses the mark because it’s not written in a way that people would search for it – in part, because it’s not something they were interested in reading in the first place. So, first, change your tack: Look through lens of, what’s in it for your client? What do they want to know? How do they make a decision? Who else or what else can they choose? How can we help them choose you? What content would they search for that’s relevant to your service? What have you got to say about what they want to know about?

It may seem obvious, but don’t lead with, “We’re amazing – look at our amazing stuff.” Customers who can’t find you won’t see you – and even if they did, why would they believe you? Who are you? Build that credibility first.

Content + Game Plan = Success

As you develop your authority-building content, make sure you have a plan for how you’re going to promote it, which may include pushing it out with paid ads on Facebook or AdWords. The last thing you want to do is spend all this time and effort to create great content then have no way to share it, except with your current client base.

Then turn your attention to where your content is directing people: your site. Make sure your website copy is optimised, with clear base information, strategic SEO, and a call to action, where appropriate. Effective SEO begins with identifying business opportunities and understanding the client and their buyer journey, with keywords falling out of that understanding. Also make sure your site structure aligns with your strategy, for example, that you have content pillar pages to help you rank for relevant topics and search terms. Find and fix any orphan content, which means it has no links to other pages or services.

Definition: A content pillar is a substantial information piece on a specific topic or theme that can be broken into smaller sections, pieces, and materials. Examples of content pillars include eBooks, reports, and guides.

Depending on your focus, your plan could include monthly blogging, content promotion through social media and paid ads, and content remarketing. Take your best content and repurpose it for different platforms: Turn it into a podcast, YouTube video, or slide presentation with appealing graphics.

Then identify any content gaps by looking at the market and create resources to build brand influence. To get your brand seen by relevant audiences, explore the “watering holes” of your target customer and determine the best platforms for your content, whether that’s LinkedIn, the media, or a company newsletter. Once you have your ideas and promotion plan in place, think about what success look like, aka metrics. What exactly are you trying to do? Make sure your content marketing programme is structured to align with suitable goals and metrics and set up analytics and reporting to measure your results.

Pro tip: Focus on the right topics, the right keywords, and the right balance of content. If the sales process necessitates different pieces at each stage of the journey, prioritise content creation by its usefulness to the business as well as how difficult it is to do. Start with the easy wins then go from there.

Remember: education, information, then inspiration. When content is helpful and appealing, people spend more time engaging with it, which innately builds trust. Then it’s just a matter of time before your prospect needs your products or services and you’re first in line to deliver them, thanks to the top-of-mind awareness that effective content marketing creates.

If you are looking for help and advice about your content strategy then we can help! Contact our team to discover how we can help your business to grow its profile and engage with new customers.

Questions to ask yourself if you are writing your own web copy

Congratulations on taking the first step to knowing thyself.

The goal of these questions is to uncover insights that inform brand positioning, both today and in the future. By understanding your target audience and where they are in the decision-making funnel, you can better tailor your offer.

Questions fall into three main categories:

1. About you and your vision

Answers to these questions will be useful for your “About Us” and “Why Choose Us” pages.

• What is your point of difference? How do you compare to or differ from the competition?
• Why are you in the business you’re in? What inspires you to keep going?
• What philosophy do you bring to the service you provide?

2. About your ideal customer

Trying to appeal to everyone is a mistake. Questions in this section should get you thinking about how to target your ideal customer.

• Who are you targeting? List all relevant demographics and be as specific as possible.
• What alternatives might your customers use? Whether it’s a different product or a different provider, consider other options your customers have tried or might try.
• What are their fears or challenges as relates to your service? What do you do to help them overcome their fears? e.g., provide a free information pack or assessment: “Contact us for a no-obligation consultation.”
• What tone is most likely to resonate with your customers? Friendly and personable? Or professional and expert?

3. About how people find you online

• What words and phrases are they likely to use when searching for your products and/or services?
• Who are your competitors? Note which business people have compared you to when deciding on a provider.
• What can your business do that your competitors can’t or don’t?
• Who is not a good fit for your products and services? Do you only serve clients of a certain type or size? Are your products not suitable for certain uses?
• What action do you most want people to take when they visit your site? Be clear on your call to action: Do you want people to call you? Email you for a quote? Or complete a pre-consultation questionnaire?

If you need specific information before you can provide a quote, let people know what to have ready so that you can assist them as quickly as possible.

Bonus Round: Frequently Asked Questions

If you require customers to go through a process or understand more complex instructions, your business needs an FAQ page. (If your aim is to drive SEO, you’re better off placing a few FAQs at the bottom of the page they pertain to.)

Start by asking yourself: What are the top 10 questions your ideal customers ask you most?

From your FAQ list, you can then:

• Create a full list of features and specifications
• Translate each feature into a benefit for your ideal reader
• Consider the problems you help them avoid
• Consider possible objections to buying from you and decide how you can address them

This can then become a summary of your value proposition, which should appear on the homepage. This summary generally consists of a headline, possibly a subheading, and three to five bullet points. Your headline can simply state what you do or mention the key benefits of working with you.

We hope you found this guide useful! If you are stuck writing your web copy don’t hesitate to give our team a call, as professional web copywriters and content strategists we can easily craft your story into compelling and converting copy.

Web copy is important. It’s how people evaluate your business and decide whether or not to engage with you. It’s your salesperson who never sleeps.
Once done correctly, your website and the evergreen content on it should last you a while. Chopping and changing copy does your organic search ranking no favours and may even confuse your customers. That’s why it’s important to treat your copy as an asset for your business and do it the right way from the start.
Many good businesses exist in every niche, so standing out from your competition will require some soul searching. But before you write a word, you must understand who your content is aimed at and what their current “state of awareness” is when it comes to your business category, the products and services you offer, and other businesses similar to yours.

In this article, we outline the website content best practices you should follow with the goal to provide you with a website copywriting template that you can use to write engaging and relevant copy.

How to write a website

First, you need to identify what’s different about your business. To really hone in on your point of difference—what’s new, unique and/or interesting about your business—ask yourself questions about:

You and your vision: Why did you get into this business? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

Your current customers: Are most of your customers of a particular type or size? If you’re B2B, are they a one-man band, SMB or enterprise client?

Key messaging: Who is your ideal customer and what tone is most likely to resonate with them? What niches would you like your business to grow in?

See the full list of questions in this blog post

The goal of these discovery questions is to provide insight on company brand positioning and aspirations—where you currently sit in the market and where you’d like to be tomorrow. Whenever possible, ask team members who really know your products to weigh in.

Know what makes your clients love you

Copy that’s purely feature-driven is not effective. It’s likely that many of your competitors, if not all of them, have the same product features or services you do. Business growth—and even survival— depends on acquiring new customers.

When you know what your existing customers love about you, you can position your brand as a choice worth making. To do this, you must first identify what would make a client pick you over the competition.

Are they choosing you based on price, service or expertise? Do you have something unique to sell? While not every business can be unique, don’t fall into the trap of simply describing your services and saying how fantastic you are with no evidence of why that’s true. Offer benefits, reasons and testimonials as proof. Your web copy should ultimately demonstrate what you can provide in a way that makes people go, “Yeah, I want that.”

Google yourself

Do some research on Google to find out what prospective customers are searching for when looking for businesses like yours. Your research will inform your keywords, which will eventually be sprinkled throughout your headings and copy.

● See who else Google recommends under “People also search for …”
● Note who is currently ranking in position 1 (and who else is on page 1): What does that business say or do that you don’t?
● Make a list of keywords, always keeping in mind search intent

Ask existing customers for feedback

Interview people whenever possible, as you’ll get much better-quality responses that way. With a live conversation, you’ll be able to clarify questions and guide deeper answers. The end goal is to demonstrate your credibility and show that clients are happy with your services. For a simple testimonial formula, ask:
● Why did you choose our business?
● What was your experience like?
● Describe the business in three words

Plan for what pages you’ll need

Once you’ve developed your understanding of brand voice and positioning, you can start mapping out your site.
● Every site should have: Home, About Us, Our Team, Why Choose Us, Our Services, Contact
● Additional pages may include: blog, case studies, articles and other unique content
● Quality imagery is a must: Have professional photos taken and use high quality stock photos when necessary

Write the homepage copy last

It may seem counterintuitive, but the first thing customers see should be the piece you write last. Why? Because your homepage speaks to the essence of who you are and what you offer.
Most of the time, this kind of high-level clarity only emerges after asking those deep questions of yourself and your customers, thinking carefully about the responses, identifying common trends and distilling those findings into your mission statement.
Adhere to a formula across pages
By writing to a consistent formula on all pages, you’ll train people visiting your site to quickly absorb and extract information. Once you have your structure down, replicate it across all pages as much as possible. Here’s a simple formula I like to use. Feel free to tweak it to suit your business.

Example 1: Our Services
1. Overview: a summary of what you do
2. Detailed description: specific services you offer, including anything unique or hard to find
3. Benefits: what problem(s) you solve for your customer
4. Testimonial: feedback from customers in their own words
5. Footer (recommended): practical details appearing on the bottom of every page—location, hours, contact information, social media icons

Example 2: About Us
1. Overview: a summary of who you are
2. Detailed description: your company history, what motivated you to start the business, aka your “origin story”
3. Benefits: what values matter to you and your team (and carry over to customers)
4. Testimonial
5. Footer

Example 3: Why Choose Us
1. Overview: a summary of why your customers love you
2. Detailed description: how you serve people, what’s different about you
3. Benefits: how people feel after working with you
4. Testimonial
5. Footer

As you can see, your primary focus will be on defining the first three items for each page. (The testimonial and footer are optional; just be sure that the footer appears on all pages if you decide to include one.) Make sure that each page is it’s own and that you’re not just repeating the same things in different words.

Establish a tone that resonates with existing and future customers and keep your content aligned with that. For example, professional services tend to take a more formal tone that inspires confidence in their expertise while trade occupations are very service-oriented, highlighting their efficiency, ethics and any qualifications.

All seem a bit daunting? Hire an experienced Web copy writer

Of course, writing effective web copy is challenging, especially if you’ve never done it before. Whether you’re not much of a writer or just need a professional perspective, Creative Content can provide you with any level of service you require, from advice to hands-on help from our professional copywriters that frees you of the burden of creating content. We’ll eliminate the guesswork and do the hard work for you.

If you’re dead set on doing yourself, we commend you! Use our full list of discovery questions to gather detailed qualitative information. Remember to complete all of the outlined steps as thoroughly as possible and validate your findings with your team, your customers and even the content marketing experts at Creative Content. Good luck! We’re cheering you on.

According to Stats NZ, as of 2018, there were over 160,000 small businesses in NZ. That number continues to rise and with it – the competition. In 2020 it is not enough to simply create an amazing product or offer an incredible service, you’ve also got to tell people about it. You may have heard that the internet is this magical place where your dream clients are just a few clicks away. That is partially true, but it is going to take more than a few clicks.

Marketing. You’ve got to do it. Bigger businesses can dedicate money and resources into marketing departments. Small businesses don’t have that luxury, so they need to be careful about where to invest their hard-earned money. Consider this a little cheat sheet. Here are some basic concepts we need to clarify before moving forward.

Local Business Marketing:

In the simplest terms, local marketing is the strategy of marketing a business or brand and its products and/or services to a nearby audience. Your local fish and chips shop puts their menu in your letter box. A real estate agency sponsors a children’s rugby team. A landscaping business takes out an ad in the local paper. Those are examples of local marketing.

Internet Marketing:

This is also known as online or content marketing. It is the strategy of marketing a business or brand and its products and/or services over the internet. Internet marketing is a pretty broad term these days and can include content, email, search, paid media, and much, much more.

The best way for a small business to compete is to combine these two marketing strategies into what we like to call – you guessed it – Local Internet Marketing. Essentially, this is the process of marketing a business to its local community using online strategies to gain new customers and generate awareness.

So, what do you need to do to venture into the local internet marketing arena? We’ve compiled a list of the top seven ways to stay ahead of your competition and step up your local internet marketing game.

1. You need to have a fully functional website.

If your small business doesn’t have its own website or if your website is outdated and clunky, you might as well be handing profits to the competition. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is extremely important. In broad terms, it is the science behind making web pages rank higher on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Basically, you want to make sure that your website has the right keywords and their appropriate synonyms.

This is to make sure when your business keyword is typed in on google for your location, your website pops up on the first page.

2. You should start a blog for your business 

The benefits of blogging are great for raising the profile of what your business does. You can use your blog to do the following:

• Highlight your customers or employees
• Talk about your products or services
• Provide a unique perspective on something happening within your industry
• Distinguish yourself as an industry leader
• Share business news and local happenings
• Provide answers/solutions to the top ten questions/problems your customers always have
• Promote other local businesses

Make sure to keep it updated, use local related keywords and share your blog posts on all your social media sites to gain traffic to your website.

3. Jump on the social media bandwagon.

Regardless of your small business’ niche or type, using social media is an absolute must, especially for a successful local marketing campaign. Geo-location based apps such as Instagram and  Facebook are essential since people use tags to find close-by businesses that can supply their needs effectively. You can also target your Facebook ads to target specific locations in close proximity to your business. Make sure you share interesting and relatable content, post updates that are engaging and relevant, and participate in online conversations.

4. Google My Business will get you on the map.

This platform was built for local SEO marketing. When you register your small business, they will send you a confirmation postcard to make sure that it exists. Google (just in case you didn’t know) is practically synonymous with local search and online marketing. After your business is verified, potential customers who are close by- will have all your relevant information in one place. Your business will pop up automatically on searches based on the proximity to the person who’s searching for your type of product or services. You can upload menus, a list of services, pictures of your staff, weekly specials, and even videos on your Google My Business page to help your local audience find what they’re looking for.

5. Invest in locally-targeted Google adwords.

You can either invest in PPC or social media ads. PPC (Pay Per click, or Google Adwords) are a standard option for managing the cost, distribution, and targeting of your ads since they are limited to who and where your ad is shown. Again, Google uses keywords as its targeting method. Social media advertising has to do with how social media content is presented, and unlike search engines, which display data from the web, a social media newsfeed shows data from your followers, friends, and family, showing them ads according to their interests.

6. Build a community with neighbouring businesses.

Cross-promotion can be done online by offering a special promotion for your customers at a non-competitive business. For example, if you have a shoe store, you can offer a coupon for a local clothing designer when people make a purchase from you. This promotion can benefit you, as your customers have an incentive to buy your product, and the local designer because they’ll have more traffic driven to their store. Also, you should consider link sharing, which is adding links to other businesses within your own website or social media content and having them add a link to your business from theirs.

7. Participate in local online and offline events.

Whether it’s a fundraiser, a fair, or a rugby game, there are activities that your community cares about and you should participate in those community events, by supporting and promoting them. For example, use your Instagram to offer a special discount coupon to anyone who shares a picture of themselves at the local game and tags your business in it. Or, attend a fundraiser and offer a freebie for anyone who shows up and checks into the event on Facebook, Foursquare or Yelp. In fact, simply posting an update about a local community event, just to raise awareness, can be a great idea for your local internet marketing strategy, helping you build buzz.

Consider trying all these ideas as you improve your local marketing strategies, and if you need help putting them together, you can reach us here and we’ll be glad to help.

Every business knows they need marketing. But not every business knows how to go about creating and implementing a marketing strategy.

No matter your industry, product or service, marketing is at the forefront of your business’ growth and success. It’s how you build brand awareness, boost sales and bring in customers.

But what does marketing really mean? And who does what?

Often, businesses aren’t sure where to start.

A few decades ago, when the internet was still new, all anyone needed was a website. Then, as the internet evolved and competition grew, the matter of getting your website ‘noticed’ became more complex.

Blogging was essential, then social media, then SEO…

Marketing is hugely diverse. When it comes to strategy, ‘general advice’ is no longer applicable.

And that’s where some business owners can get confused. What happens if you don’t have a clue what your ‘sales message’ might be?

Some businesses may jump into a particular strategy such as video simply because they’re told they should, or they’ve read about it somewhere. They may end up spending money on putting together a video that isn’t right for their business and ultimately doesn’t work.

If you’re not sure how to implement digital marketing strategies on your own, a digital marketing agency can help.

Why pick a marketing agency to help your business?

1.      You’ll get an outsider’s perspective on your business.

When you’re immersed in running your business, it can be difficult to have an objective view of your audience.

An agency will take your own ideas and combine them with their outsider’s perspective to come up with a unique brand message that fits with your business. They’ll come up with ideas you might not have come up with yourself. Because agencies are experienced in working with different clients, they have a unique perspective on what works for which business.

A good agency will get to know your product or service, then they will tailor their digital marketing techniques that get you results.

2.      You’ll get help from the pros.

When you’re just starting up, you may stick to in-house marketing to keep costs down. But, as you grow (and in order to grow), you’ll need to implement a really effective strategy. And that’s a job in itself.

Sure, you can train up a few employees to do a bit of social media every now and then, but this can be sporadic – and, let’s face it, it might not be their ‘thing’.

When you hire a digital agency to do your marketing, you’ll get a team of people who know what they’re doing, and they do it well.

3.      You’ll get more time to do your own business stuff.

Digital marketing isn’t a matter of running the odd Facebook post. It’s an ongoing project that requires regular time and attention.

As a business owner, you’ve got enough on your plate without trying to promote yourself as well. That’s where an agency can come in and take over the nitty-gritty of marketing – leaving you free to focus on your business.

There are loads of companies calling themselves a digital marketing agency, but each may offer slightly different services.  Here’s how to work out which one is right for your business.

Here is a breakdown of the services each type of agency can offer…

SEO agency

Not sure if you need SEO? Well, consider that 93% of online users start with a search engine and 47% click on one of the first three listings that come up.

An SEO agency can help boost your company’s ranking on the search results page. There are around 200 ways they can do this. It usually involves a mixture of technical SEO optimising your site web site structure and creating great content that your audience and Google will love.

The agency will create a plan for improvement to your on-page content as well as create a strategy for ranking high volume and long-tail keywords.

An AdWords/PPC agency

Google AdWords is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform. It allows you to reach people through a) the Google Search Network and b) through the Google Display Network. Advertisers bid to have their ads shown to relevant audiences.

An agency will make sure your budget is used wisely. A team who is properly trained in Google’s programmes will know how to optimise your site using AdWords and ensure you comply with best practise.

A Website agency

Here’s where the line between ‘website agency’ and ‘marketing agency’ can be somewhat blurred. While both may be doing website design AND website building, each will be more focused on one more than the other. For example, one agency might be able to create beautiful websites that have poor back-end systems, while another agency might be highly skilled in back-end development but produce rather bland websites.

A Content marketing agency

A content marketing agency will develop a content marketing strategy, and then create content that reflects your business, and deliver it across the appropriate platforms. This involves locating your online audience, developing ideas for content, creating guidelines and a tone of voice, and much more.

Is there a one-stop shop for all my marketing needs?

Yes!

A digital marketing agency can do all of that

Digital marketing services can include:

–         Social media

–         Search engine optimisation (SEO)

–         AdWords/PPC

–         Website design/management

–         Content marketing

–         PR/Influencer marketing

–         Email marketing/EDM

Marketing – at its most basic – is about creating campaigns that generate leads. A good digital marketing agency will be made up of different specialists who contribute to each project. This can include Search Engine Marketing (a blend of SEO and AdWords) in order to guide search rankings and boost advertising performance. Most agencies will offer both these options as they can cross-sell services from one to another.

A marketing agency will conduct extensive research in order to understand the business’s aim and target audience. This research will help them figure out how best to build relationships with that audience and what their marketing strategy should involve in order to generate more interest in the product or service being offered.

Of course, web design agencies may also offer some of these services, too – particularly SEO, social media or even content marketing.

If you’re not quite sure what your sales message might be, a digital marketing agency like Creative Content is a good place to start. We’ll be able to kickstart a strategy and take a multi-faceted approach to helping your business.

Do you need help with your marketing? Contact our team for a free one-hour strategy session

Check out our other tips for small business marketing here.

Its usability, affordable pricing, and excellent features have made it one of the world’s most popular website builders – around 28% of all websites are hosted by WordPress!

If you’re using WordPress, you already know the incredible power of the mighty plugin. Plugins allow you to customise your site, and with nearly 30,000 plugins currently available you can adjust your website exactly how you want to.

Plugins aren’t difficult to use, but they do require a bit of maintenance. This includes culling plugins you are no longer actually using.

Too many plugins can make your website crash and affect its performance, security, and speed. Also, when you have plugins left unsupervised, you’re at risk when one of them is abandoned by their developers or hijacked by hackers, making your website even more vulnerable to malicious attacks.

Your first task in creating a brilliant, effective, and secure website is to assess your plugin situation, keeping in mind the adage ‘quality not quantity’.

So, what makes a quality plugin? Here are a few of our faves.

For caching

About 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% will abandon a page that takes more than three seconds to load. So caching plugins are an absolute necessity for a fast-loading website and significantly better user experience – especially for mobile users.

Our suggestion is WP Fastest Cache, which has both a free and premium plan.  This plugin works by creating static HTML files from any dynamic WordPress blog.

For security

Security plugins are a no-brainer. Despite WordPress having pretty sturdy firewalls, every user – especially businesses – should have a security plugin. This is even more important if your website gathers user data such as contact or payment details. A good plugin will block sensitive information from potential attackers without impacting usability for other users. You can choose between all-in-one solutions or plugins just to protect against specific issues.

Akismet, for starters, is a plugin everybody should have installed on their site to combat spammy comments.

Our favourite all-in-one security plugin is Wordfence, which has a free plan or premium plans starting from $99. If your site deals with e-commerce, we suggest iThemes Security.

For backing up

Possibly as important as security is ensuring your website is backed up. It just takes one unlucky event – a malfunction, a malware attack, or hacker action ­– and you could lose all your hard work. It doesn’t happen very often, but if you are that unlucky non-backer-upperer, it really sucks.

We recommend UpdraftPlus, which comes free with WordPress premium plans and has several premium versions available. This plugin can back up to a range of different cloud platforms, such as Dropbox and Google Drive, or can simply send the back-up to your email.

Here’s a nifty video from Updraft on how to back up your site:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZCmAZ8rnMk

For search engine optimisation

Even if you have SEO specialists optimising your searchability, it’s always good to have an SEO plugin. It’s a big ol’ online world out there, and you definitely want your business to stand out at the top of Google search results.

In our opinion, the hostess-with-the-mostest is Yoast. Yoast SEO – again, available in free or premium – is easy to use, and tells you how to better your SEO as you go. It’s super-effective for blog-based sites, allowing you to make “bulk edits” to your site and manage SEO roles if you’d like your staff to also use it.

For image optimisation

Content is key, and words paint a thousand pictures (do we have that right?), but if you want to chuck a cherry atop your optimisation pudding, we recommend looking at your images.

Images – particularly big ones, or lots of them – can do terrible things to user experience.

Like any big gnarly files, loading takes time and can really slow down your website. So you might want to think about compressing some images.

When you’re decreasing an image’s size (or compressing) you want to retain its visual integrity – this ain’t Nintendo 64, after all (although wouldn’t be great if it was?).

We recommend TinyPNG for the job. It isn’t really a plugin per se, but it’s a very effective way to minimise your picture files without maximising pixilation. It’s free, easy to use, and there’s even a cute little panda on the dashboard smiling at you while you wait.

For social sharing

Social media is quickly becoming the most effective marketing option, especially for small businesses. If you’ve nailed your content, you need to have an easy way for people to share it. You need little buttons on the content – one click and it’s shared to the user’s preferred social platform.

Social Snap (free, the full version starts at $39) is our favourite button-making-plugin.

For forms

One excellent way to generate leads for your business is to include forms for users to fill out for enquiries, bookings, or e-commerce.

Contact Form 7 (a free plugin) allows you to customise and manage multiple forms in an easy coding-free way. This smart-form creator is also brilliant for preventing spam.

So, there you have it: the bare necessities of plugins. Tried and tested by us personally, these bare necessities (these simple bare necessities) will hopefully help you forget your WordPress worries.

On a final, more serious note (yes, we do serious): remember to check that a plugin has been updated recently (in the last 2-3 years) before installing it. This will help you avoid any nasty vulnerabilities.

Also, read user comments to find out if the plugin has unfixed errors that could put your site in jeopardy. This is especially important if you don’t have prior experience in coding or site development.

Alternatively, feel free to call us. You can also fill out our online contact form – it’s super-easy and spam-free.

Are you worried about ranking behind your competitors when people do a Google search on your industry? You’re certainly not the only one! Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a crucial tool to put companies directly in front of their audience, first.

Optimised copy answers the search intent of your audience while remaining readable and natural. The days of simplistic Google algorithms to determine the ranking of search query pages are gone, but many old SEO myths are still going strong. The ranking system has become more intelligent and complex to display the most relevant and high-quality copy first.

If you are thinking about writing your own copy rather than using professional copywriting services, we have prepared a list of tips for creating your own content.

DON’T keyword-stuff your copy

Many site owners believe that creating a relevant web page for a search query requires stuffing your copy to the brim with a target keyword as much as possible. Of course, your page needs to contain relevant target keywords, but sentence after sentence with the same word looks ridiculous and certainly makes for bad reading! Potential clients don’t respond to poor quality writing, and neither does Google.

DON’T write unnecessary copy.

It may seem that in order to cover all points of relevance to your audience, you have to write a lot of copy. Google does value in-depth copy, but you have to keep your audience in mind. Readers respond to compelling, well-thought-out text that gets to the point. If they see an overwhelming amount of copy, they might choose not to read it at all! Whether it’s a blog post or a landing page, make your copy comprehensive, succinct and genuinely enjoyable to read.

DON’T include hidden blocks of text with SEO keywords.

The ‘SEO trap’ is a common technique, but in truth, it is a waste of time and resources. The smarter Google gets, the more it values transparency!

DO take the time to understand your audience.

You can incorporate all the SEO techniques you like, but if your copy and entire website aren’t as relevant to your target audience as possible, you will not generate the traffic or leads you are hoping for.

To craft your website content to reach your ideal customer, consider what they want from your product or service. What tone are they expecting? What problems are they looking to solve? What information do they need to see on your web page in order to make contact or hit the purchase button? The more you understand your consumer, the better you can create copy that satisfies the search queries they make, and therefore rank your website highly.

DO incorporate Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

LSI keywords are semantically related to your main keyword. A lot of people think LSI keywords are synonyms. Synonyms are useful LSI keywords, but LSI incorporates all keywords frequently found together because they share the same context.

For example, ‘Apple’ and ‘iPhone’ and ‘smartphone’ are LSI keywords. However, ‘apple’, ‘juicy’ and ‘orchard’ are also LSI keywords; LSI ensures that the search query display shows pages relevant to the industry and topic your audience is looking for. Incorporating LSI, therefore, helps you better serve your user search intent.

Overtly stuffing your content with LSI keywords will, again, have you penalised by Google. Use them to help you rank, but do not let them interfere with the quality of your content. The idea of LSI is that you would naturally include the keywords as you write. You still need to create high-quality, well-written copy, but definitely with LSI keywords in mind.

Incorporating SEO into copy can take a lot of research and time – it’s completely normal to not know where to start! SEO research is particularly complex when it comes to small, niche (and therefore low search volume) businesses and products. To get it right first time and ensure the best results possible, you can bring in SEO and copy experts to optimise your site. At Creative Content, we use in-depth processes and advanced keyword research techniques to make your site as ‘optimal’ as can be!

The Creative Content process:

As a professional web copywriting agency, we make it our priority to create informative and inspiring website copy for our clients. We share our exact process for you so you can understand what is needed to complete a comprehensive plan for your business web content writing.

First, we need to understand your business including the services, the people and the company ethos. To do this we have developed a web copy questionnaire. Our goal is to understand what is unique about your business and the priorities of your potential clients. This helps us map your customer journey. We want to know how well-informed your customers are about your product or service before they visit your site, and what types of keywords you can think of that they would search to find you.

For particularly niche businesses, we have developed even more in-depth questionnaire to help web content writers create content specific to your very narrow audience. At this stage, we also do an analysis into the customer state of awareness about your product or service. For example; are your customers problem aware, but not solution aware? If so, we need to spend time explaining how your products solve their problem.

As part of our copywriting services, we use the questionnaires and work further alongside you to create the value proposition for your business. In essence, we identify why and how your customers would say ‘yes’ to your offer, and craft a succinct key message that often appears as a major heading on your home page, so readers are clear on the value of your business from the outset.

Armed with new knowledge about your business, we then utilise SEO software tools to generate target keywords and LSI keywords for you.

We follow proven structure elements that make your site easy to navigate and optimise it for search.

The ideal web copy structure

Headings that name the product in a way your target readers will understand.

Sub-headings briefly describing the benefit of the product to your market.

Summaries providing all essential information about your product. These have to be extremely well-crafted, as often people won’t read beyond summaries! The text needs to address the problem your product solves and why yours the best solution.

Quotes from you showing the human side of your company and the ethos behind your service.

Customer quotes describing how they experienced the benefits of your product – we help collect these testimonials.

Calls-to-action that encourage and provide avenues for readers to take the next step. In order to get more conversions, you need to get more potential customers to carry out a specific decision on your website. Usually, that action revolves around accepting an offer or contacting you.

We discuss our SEO copywriting strategy further here.

SEO copywriting is crucial to making your small business site as visible to your potential customers as possible. Correctly implemented techniques generate a surprising amount of traffic and leads for your website. You’ll be quickly convinced by the results of your new SEO strategy!

If you’d like to discuss SEO copywriting with us further, or find out how our professional copywriters can help you, get in touch with us.

Check out our other tips for small business marketing here.

Are you thinking about the next marketing campaign for your B2B business? Like many of the companies we talk to, you may be feeling confused about where to start – the services you offer may not translate well onto an appealing billboard or magazine ad, and even then, those ads wouldn’t effectively reach your small, specific target market!

The go-to strategies for B2Bs are often direct, outbound techniques – cold calls, tapping into referral networks or emails sent straight to identified prospective clients. This may deserve a place in your marketing toolbox, but it is not the only way to engage potential clients or your wider industry.

To generate leads, there are far better strategies to help you remain at the forefront of potential clients’ mind far longer than the time it takes for them to read the latest sales-focused cold email in their inbox!

B2B marketing versus B2C marketing 

B2B and B2C buyers have different mindsets. A typical B2C buyer is generally looking for one product, without much cost or risk to the transaction. Maybe, they’ll Google a product and read a few reviews or shop around, but often the sales process just a few minutes. Overt marketing tactics can easily inspire impulse buys for B2C customers.

B2B buyers are more sceptical and informed. Choosing to invest in a product line or service with business money carries far higher risk than purchasing as an individual. Also, a B2B purchase is often the start of a long-term relationship. So, they thoroughly research their future purchase before they even contact you.

Because the B2B buyer comes to you with knowledge, the best way to generate a lead is to have already established authority and trust within your industry.

To foster trust and bring your company to the forefront of your buyer’s mind first, effective strategies incorporating content marketing are crucial!

The elements you need for your ultimate content marketing strategy:

An absolute understanding of your audience

Content marketing is the creation of meaningful, helpful content with your exact consumer in mind. The goal of the content isn’t actually sales – it’s engagement. You are creating conversations and solving pain points for consumers in the wider context of your industry.

Content is useless if it doesn’t connect with your audience. Although you are discussing business and business processes, people make the purchase decisions. You’re targeting the key decision makers in these companies, so you need to gain their attention and respect through storytelling that resonates with them. You’re saying to your audience ‘I see where you’re at and where your pain points are, and here are several solutions…’ with an educational, interest-based focus.

So, you need to ask:

What is your core audience looking for? How do they communicate, and how do they expect to be communicated with?

Understanding the characteristics, needs and lifestyles of your consumers allows you to effectively craft marketing messages they respond to. A great example of this in action is our full rebrand of Connect Outsourcing, which we carried out based on extensive client interviews and market research to gain a deep understanding of their audience.

With your audience in mind, you can then begin to build your content.

An effective website

You need to completely tailor your website to your audience. There is no point creating an appealing website if it doesn’t contain useful, industry-specific information in the tone of the people you’re trying to connect with.

Given the risk involved in a B2B purchase, it is important to showcase up-to-date testimonials to assure prospects that your company ‘walks the walk’.

To be effective, your company website should be an industry resource engaging current and potential clients, solving their business problems in the wider industry context. FAQ’s sections, educational pages regarding your specialty or regularly updated blog modules can achieve this. We created effective educational resources for Aaron Martin of New Zealand Immigration Law, which helped position him as an authority figure on immigration. He is now a source for news outlets reporting on immigration! This exposure places him first in employers’ minds when they seek immigration law services.

Your website can’t just provide information! It should contain persuasive ‘calls to action’. Keep in mind the people-based nature of B2B business decisions – you’re not pushing consumers directly to carts or ‘buy now’ options but encouraging them to contact sales-people or request quotes. You can provide a bit more information about who they will be speaking with – showcase your staff as helpful, friendly or professional (whatever your audience is looking for) using an ‘about us’ page or staff profiles.

Succinct, clear copy is also crucial for websites. Read our thoughts on creating the most effective copy for your website here.

A social media presence

Social media platforms aren’t always the right place for B2B businesses – your industry content may not be what people want to see when scrolling through their newsfeeds! However, if used the right way, Facebook and LinkedIn in particular are valuable avenues to get your message noticed by your audience.

These platforms can start conversations around industry tips and news. You can share business advice for people in your industry, industry news, snippets of success stories or case studies and cross-promote blog material from your website. Essentially, you’re connecting with prospects on an interest level rather than sharing sales-focused content. The more visually appealing the posts, the better! Check out our guide to an effective Facebook video marketing strategy.

SEO

Potential B2B clients are likely to do a Google search to find solutions to their pain points instead of waiting to be found. You need to proactively place yourself in front of these clients as their solution! This is where Search Engine Optimisation comes in.

SEO helps search engines find you and rank you according to relevant keywords on your website. By improving your website rankings on a search query, you improve your visibility over your competition.

More visitors to your website means more leads! SEO experts help you apply the most effective keyword phrases based on pain points of your audience to optimise your site for search.

An engaging blog

Blogs provide a platform to showcase content outside of static website copy about your business. They also provide opportunity to build on your SEO keywords as you will be discussing industry-specific issues.

Blogs set you up as industry thought leaders. They help retain clients by continuing to provide them with useful information outside your specific service, and engage potential clients in a wider conversation led by your business.

Your blog should create engaging experiences, with each post providing unique and helpful perspectives. High-quality stories have power to push your prospects to take action and reach out to your business.

Potential blog topics:

• Business tips
• Pain point solutions
• Industry news
• Interesting features of your products or services
• Success stories and case studies

There is no point creating useful content without incorporating it into your wider marketing strategy – blog posts can be repurposed for social media and direct emails.

Ultimately, a well-crafted, relevant message must be at the heart of B2B marketing campaigns. It is far more effective to connect with your specified industry audience through education and helpful information, leveraged through several platforms, instead of overt sales messaging.

If you’re looking to start your new marketing journey, our Creative Content team specialises in B2B marketing. We create a cohesive strategy to build brand profiles and generate leads. You can check out some of our recent projects here. Contact us now!

Marketing in 2019 is impossible without great content.

As a marketer, I see my clients struggling to identify where they should spend their energy (and budget) to get digital leads, especially if they have a B2B service.

Marketing is becoming increasingly complex, with a range of platforms to choose from to speak to your audience.

Is your business still supposed to be posting on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram? What type of content should you share? How does creating social content actually generate leads?

As a forward-thinking entrepreneur, you know there has to be a better way.

Enter content marketing.

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach. It focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, drive profitable customer action.

Content marketing aligns with the new ways people engage with brands and content and develop brand loyalty. It’s integrated, intelligent, and customer-centric.

With content marketing you’re not simply pitching your products or services in traditional marketing copy. You’re providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects to help them solve their issues.

In some ways it is similar to what we see with the rise of the “freemium” product model. Now that people can access high-quality free advice and content online, it won’t cut the mustard to simply promote how great your product or service is. Your content needs to put your customer’s concerns first. This is especially important in light of the way Google serves any search query with the most relevant answers; your content needs to be accurately centring your customer’s questions if you want to appear on their Google search results.

Content marketing works to build the respect and admiration of your audience, but this will take time. First you need to earn their trust. You need to prove you have the relevant knowledge and (even more importantly) that you have integrity. Then you can become a guiding light that people turn to for authority in the noise of too much available information.

The authority you gain then transfers to your products or services, making customers that much more likely to choose you over the competition.

Regardless of what type of marketing tactics you use, content marketing should be part of your process, not something separate. Because of the complexities of the communication strategy required, it’s also something that I would recommend that you engage a content marketing agency to do for your business, rather than attempting it  on your own.  Quality content is now part of all forms of marketing.

So, what are the other benefits to your overall marketing strategy?

The Tangibles:

Site traffic: Traffic may be the obvious benefit, but it’s also one of the most important. Great content will bring people to your site, where they’ll also find information about your company and your products/services.

Improved SEO: The benefits of content for SEO are far too numerous to get into here. Great content attracts editorial links, which tells Google you’re important and authoritative. Google can also crawl your content, getting a better idea of what your company is about, which allows it to return your site for more relevant queries (including a great many long-tail queries). The list goes on, but it can be boiled down to this: without content, what is there for search engines to optimise?

Social media marketing: content marketing strategy comes before your social media strategy. An ideal mix of content for social media is always a mixture of unique and curated content based on the themes that relate to your audience interests. So high quality content based on informing your potential customers is ideal content to share on social media. It can also become great “lead magnets” if you are creating a Facebook ad funnel for inbound inquires.

PPC: for Pay Per Click to work, you need great content behind it. Content marketing is not direct sales copy- that is what landing page copy is designed for, but your content marketing is supposed to warm up your audience handling all of their objections and answering all of their questions before you make the direct offer in an adwords campaign. It is also useful in your Adwords remarketing campaigns, if someone doesn’t call or email from your initial ad then you can remarket to them to take them to more information where your content page may address common objections and give the information required to inform the potential customer of the process.

PR And Brand awareness: content marketing is all about championing the customer and solving their problems. It involves storytelling and providing useful and relevant customer-centred information. A flow-on effect from creating high-value content is that you can now position your brand as an authority on solving your customer problems. So, you can begin commenting on the “state of your industry” and sharing this as an opinion piece to your local media or business networks as an opinion piece to increase your brand authority.

If you’re looking for help to market your business, get in touch with our Content marketing team. We can help you to create a content strategy that will transform your sales and marketing activities.  Contact us now.

A New Year brings new opportunities, but if you are a small business owner, you probably have limited time when it comes to marketing your business. So, it’s vital that you know where to target your efforts to be the most effective. In this article we cover the 10 best small business marketing ideas in 2019.

1. Create a marketing plan for your business

If you think of small business marketing as the cake, your marketing plan is the recipe. And as any chef knows, without a recipe to guide you, your cake could end up a bit soggy in the middle! A marketing plan should include setting your goals for the year, and this should be targeted to focus your promotions. Ask yourself, which services do you want to promote? Which marketing channels do you want to try? If you are feeling stuck at setting your strategy or coming up with ideas, invest in professional help. Maybe all you’ll need is a video or marketing agency (even a copywriter). Make sure you start the year with a solid plan for the direction you want to take your business marketing.

 2. Make sure your business cards, brochures, and other promotional products are up to date

If your logo is dated, and your point-of-sale material looks like it could do with some help, it’s time for a revamp. Most businesses need to look at their marketing materials every 3 to 5 years, as brochures and logos can become dated very quickly. Always hire professionals for this – your son, niece, or well-intentioned neighbour is not the designer you want (unless they’re certified professionals with raving reviews on their portfolios). Remember your business card or brochure is designed to reflect people of your services. If you want your business brand to stand out and look professional, it’s imperative that your marketing collateral does the same.

3. Refresh your website

Keeping your website fresh is critical if you want to be found in 2019. Does your website look like a myspace site? Is it mobile responsive? Or, even worse, do you not even have a website? Unless you are so hipster it hurts, it’s time to hit refresh! As with your marketing collateral, your website is an investment, and you should only hire a pro. The website needs to be fully functional on all devices and user-friendly. Aim for a website that’s easily navigated, quick to load, and quick to inform your audience about your business. If you have too much content, or your site is slow to load and hard for users to navigate, it’s likely your customers will drop off your site and switch to the competition.

4. Be active on social media

If you’re marketing your small business on a smaller budget, social media is your best friend. While it’s no longer a free advertising tool, it’s still a lot cheaper than most other options. Its ability to convey targeted messages in real-time to a targeted audience also means way more bang for your buck. But user beware: due to social media’s popularity and constantly evolving nature, keeping informed and avoiding out-dated advice or “myths” can be a bit of a pickle. It’s highly recommended that you budget for professional help with your social media – even just to get you started.

5. Give free samples or trial periods of your product

Could you talk about your product on a Facebook Live stream or a webinar, or live stream your workplace activities? Or could you organise a Meetup event, perhaps hosted at your workplace, to talk about what you do? These are inexpensive activities that can create buzz around your brand, get people of your community together, and get the ball rolling about you and what you do at your small business. 

6. Look into video marketing

Video marketing is what’s trending right now. People are reading less and prefer to consume content in video format. Fortunately, good video marketing can be done on a budget. You can even use your phone (assuming it’s somewhat modern) propped up on a coffee-cup tripod to start practicing your video skills. If you’re too shy to appear in the video, you can use software like Loom to do a voiceover presentation, or to make animated explainer videos. Then upload the result to your preferred social media channel (don’t forget YouTube) with a title and good description. Simple as that!

7. Get your small business on directories and social services such as Google My Business, Groupon, Yellow, and Yelp

Thousands of people use these platforms to rate, ask questions, and discover new businesses every day. Registering for an account is free (you just need a Gmail address to access the Google My Business platform). These platforms make it easy to share information about your business and promote products and services through pictures and video.

8. Up your content marketing game

Content marketing is still strong in 2019. Love to write? Update your small business’ blog at least twice a month with useful information for your customers or think pieces about topics relevant to your industry. You could even write your own e-book about your personal business experiences, your industry, or your market niche. If you’re more of a talker (and don’t sound like Fran Drescher), you could launch your own podcast. A nifty app called Anchor is a brilliant tool for DIY podcasting.

9. Invest in SEO

Long term, being in first position on Google is going to bring you your ideal clients. But as a small business, how do you get there? Being on the first page of Google can be near impossible – especially if you are operating in a highly competitive market. But it’s not all doom and gloom. The easiest strategy is to try to rank for unique services (which will have less competition) or what is called “Long Tail Key Words”. This is definitely an area where you need to call in the experts. Ideally, pick a marketing agency that can see the big picture and help you achieve great search results in the long term, while maximising any marketing activities in the short term for more instant wins.

10. Do some good

Do something really out of the box and good for your community, like volunteering or sponsoring a local event. Organise free workshops or classes related to your craft to the kids from local schools and universities. Giving is not only good in itself, but is good for the image of your business, and also gives you some extra promotion. Alternatively, go without your company name and just ride off the positive vibes, man…

Start 2019 with your right foot forward and market your small business in the right way. You’ll improve not only your cash flow but also your community. If you need help, give the marketing team at Creative Content a call to see how you can kickstart your marketing this year.

In the modern marketing world, content is king. And with so many online resources, you may feel you’ve got a pretty good grasp on how to create it and use it well.

But as this marketing method’s relevance and popularity increases, so too does the number of myths and false expectations around it. Before these content creation traps trip you up, let us dispel some of the most common falsities.

Myth #1: Creative content should be highly produced

The reality: You don’t need to create a fantastic content marketing strategy with a high production value. Instead you should be focused on how to provide value to your audience.

Try to solve a problem that is relevant to your audience, answer a common question, or share an interesting new finding. You can do this easily in a 20-second video, a 400-word blog post, or even a simple post on social media. The point of difference in content marketing is how timely and “human” it is – over-production and big budgets won’t necessarily achieve that.

Myth #2: Produce content every day, because more content means more social reach

The reality: You should focus on providing better-quality content that helps your audience. If you’re focusing only on quantity, the quality is going to suffer.

Bombarding your audience with information every single day will make them ignore you. And the quality of your content and its social impact will diminish. Only better content delivers better reach.

Myth #3: No one is doing creative content marketing like we are, so we’re doing it right

The reality: Don’t assume just because you’re taking a different approach to creative content marketing it will be effective.

There’s a good chance someone in your industry is already making content to grab the attention of your audience. It might be video, podcasts, email, blogs, or some other type of creative content.

Just because you’re doing it differently, doesn’t mean you’re killing it!

It’s essential you understand how your audience wants to receive and digest information. This is just as important as knowing what kind of information they’re looking for.

Myth #4: Our creative content marketing is going to drive serious cashflow

The reality: The right kind of marketing can undoubtedly make you stand out. In a perfect world, you would see new customers roll in every time you publish new content.

However, that is rare even for major brands. Most of the content you create won’t directly increase your sales. And, if it does, it certainly won’t happen immediately.

Creative content marketing is a slow burner. It’s great way to nurture relationships and build a loyal audience who may eventually tumble to the bottom of your sales funnel and make a purchase. But first you have to win them over with your charming brand personality and your titillating creative content. So, don’t expect instant results.

Myth #5: We’ll only post long content because that drives the best results

The reality: It’s entirely possible to tell a story and make an emotional connection in content that is fast to consume. We can see this in the initial smashing success of platforms like Vine and Snapchat. You don’t necessarily need a lengthy blog post or a 10-minute video every day to succeed.

Of course, if you’re writing for a business-to-business audience you may want to put focus into longer posts to help build trust. But this is not essential, especially if your brand is focused on consumers. People don’t want to read anymore – they prefer videos and images. So, why not give them that?

Creating successful content can require a bit of trial-and-error. But from our experience, once you understand these basics it becomes a lot easier – and a lot more beneficial. Find a mix that works best for your audience and strive to deliver the value they’re looking for. And if you need more help developing a winning creative content marketing strategy adapted to your audience and your brand personality, contact us!

The goal of copywriting is to persuade, and the goal of a content strategy is to create purpose. So, does a content strategist have the same role as a copywriter? The answer is no! 

Over 170 million blogs are active online today, but it’s estimated only around 20% of blog content is actually linked to and read. You want content that is found easily in a search, is read by users, and has a positive impact for your business. It’s critical to the success of your marketing messages that you have a strategy for what you write about.

What does a content strategist do?

A content strategist gives your content a purpose and vision that is directly linked to your marketing and communications strategy. They ensure any copy written will be useful, usable, and relevant to achieving your marketing goals.

A content strategist blends their editorial skills with their understanding of the user experience to create content that is a communication pathway with purpose. Their focus is to generate copy that provides real value to your clients while showcasing your unique value proposition.

This requires an understanding of your business niche and your clients as well as thorough knowledge of the “decision-making  journey” to map a content pathway to attract, onboard, and convert the  audience.

Content strategists ultimately create an overall purpose to the copy, called the core strategy.

They put themselves in the shoes of each business owner and their audience to consider a website or marketing campaign. With these different perspectives they look at:

What are the business goals and how can the website copy or marketing campaign accomplish that?

Is the content pertinent to the audience?

What is the desired call to action for people to do after consuming this content?

How can we provide the best user experience?

What does a copywriter do?

Copywriters focus on crafting compelling copy that tells a story. They combine wit, writing skills, and empathy to create a call to action that will compel someone to purchase a product, sign up for a service, or fill out an inquiry form on a website.

A good copywriter understands sales funnels and will ask plenty of questions about their target audience before they start writing. Copywriters now handle most of the writing on a given website or within an integrated marketing campaign including: 

Website copy

Blog posts

News articles

Press releases

eBooks

White papers

Billboard advertising

Posters

Flyers

Radio and TV scripts

Interactive social media posts

How can content strategists and copywriters work together?

A content strategist determines where the content needs to go, and then works with a copywriter to write the copy. After the content is published, the strategist will evaluate performance and make sure the strategy is delivering value to the business in line with its goals. 

To put it simply, the content strategist defines how the site or campaign will be structured and what information will be included. The copywriter is responsible for crafting the actual words to engage users and drive them to those goals, getting them further into the conversion funnel.

When content strategy and copywriting have synergy, the result is a high-performance website or marketing campaign that helps you drive your business forward and stay relevant.

Are you trying to sell things over email but aren’t seeing results? Hire a copywriter. Don’t even know where to start your business content strategy? Hire a content strategist. Do you need both? Invest in a team like ours at Creative Content!

If you run a business, it’s likely you have to do some of your own marketing. This might be as simple as creating Facebook content or as in-depth as building a website. If you’re creating content without the help of a professional graphic designer, it can be a challenge to make your content look consistent and professional. Whatever your marketing needs, this list of 10 of our favourite digital marketing apps and Chrome extensions is for you. These are the apps that will ensure efficiency with everything from design to organising to communication. And even better, they don’t cost a thing.

Page Ruler

This Chrome extension is simple yet surprisingly handy. Page Ruler lets you measure pixel dimensions and positioning of any webpage element. This is useful for creating or recreating the look you want and keeping consistency throughout design elements. The ruler is a great tool for producing much tidier work, especially when you’re building your website.

Snip

Snip is a faster, easier way of taking screenshots – just click the snips and away you go.

The app has a feature that allows you to write or draw on the ‘snip’, which comes in handy for things like communicating edits to someone digitally, or showing your mum who lives 700 kilometres away where the ‘save’ button is.

Snip saves your screenshot image to your chosen file as a PNG, so you can insert it into documents, emails, social media, anywhere else that lets you add a picture. This app is a Windows feature, but if you are running on Mac there’s a similar version available in the App store.

Nimbus

Like Snip, Nimbus is used to take screenshots, but more specifically for web. The big benefit is that Nimbus allows you to capture shots of entire pages in one click. Similar to Snip, you can save the image as is or write and draw on it within the app. You’ll then have it saved as a PNG for later use, which is a major asset if you need to clearly explain specifics to web developers, designers, or clients.

Eye Dropper

Ever wanted to know what shade of blue the Google ‘G’ is? Or maybe you need the exact colour used on your webpage, but can’t get hold of your designer. Eye Dropper is a Chrome extension that allows you to pick, view, and copy colours from the web. Simply click the dropper on the colour you’re after and it will save to the app. It then shows you the colour formula in a range of formats so you can match it in any program you need.

WhatFont

Have you ever met a designer who can just look at a font and tell you what it is? Well, this is the more efficient (and less intimidating) app version.

WhatFont temporarily converts your cursor into a font detector that shows the name of a font as you hover over text. If you want to know specifics, simply click and it’ll show you the font family, style, weight, size, line height, and colour. This is super handy if you want to borrow another brand’s aesthetics (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all) or if you’ve simply lost your style guide.

Loom

We’ve talked about Loom before in our Top 10 Apps to Market Your Business, but it’s so good it’s worth another mention. Loom can be used to create quick videos of your desktop as you use it. It’s great for creating walkthrough videos that you can then share or link to. We use it to provide advisory services to clients who can’t meet face-to-face, but it’s also great for communicating clear, concise instructions or for creating social media content.

Lasso – Bookmark Manager

Lasso wrangles selected pages to bookmark, helping you herd them efficiently either into folders or by searchable tags. Each bookmark is saved under a ‘card’ that gives a brief, editable visual and description of the page. The interface of the app is a much more user-friendly way of managing bookmarks, especially if you have so many saved you forget what they all are (or why the heck you saved them in the first place). The dashboard also allows you to invite individuals or ‘teams’ to access chosen bookmarks or folders.

Reshot

Finding great stock images is key to creating good content. But if you have to post a lot of social media content this can get pricey if you’re paying $10 – $15 an image.

Enter Reshot: Reshot is a stock photo site that avoids cliché stock imagery.

Unlike the standard stock image libraries, the photos on Reshot reflect a photographer’s point of view. This means the photos are generally more interesting and higher quality than those on many other free stock photo sites. The site uses a simple license and terms that give you a lot of flexibility for using the photos.

Reshot photos are free, although you can also find photos for sale from Reshot partners. To browse the images or learn more, visit the website.

TinyPNG

If you are uploading images to your website, app, or social platform, you need to compress them to a small file size so they don’t slow down your website. Web app TinyPNG is an online PNG conversion tool that does just that. It makes your PNG image files tiny – or at least tinier then they were. It does this by selectively decreasing the number of colours in the image, which in turn reduces the file size. The visual changes in the image are practically undetectable and it can preserve any transparency (i.e., if it’s a clear-cut logo). TinyPNG can even convert animated PNGs. Converted PNGs can be used on your platforms but will use much less bandwidth, meaning they will load much faster.

Crop Photo

Crop Photo allows you to easily crop pictures without fiddling around with Adobe or other editing programs. Crop Photo features a bunch of templates designed to make cropping images for social media super easy, or you can use custom dimensions for your own projects (i.e., cutting an ex out of an otherwise great photo). You can then choose to save your image to your desktop, Facebook page, or Google Drive account.

So that’s our rundown of the 10 most useful marketing apps and extensions for digital marketing. Whether we are building a new website, creating digital content – or, let’s face it, just geeking out – we use at least one of these apps every day. For more great tools check out our previous blog Top 10 Apps to Market Your Business. And if you’ve got any projects that need a professional touch-reach out to us at Creative Content, we can help you to build your website, create great content and increase your online profile.  Get in touch with us Here.

Apps can be amazing tools to help you streamline processes. And with the right set of tools, you can spend less time managing campaigns and more time developing effective messages. They can also create a more enjoyable experience for your clients so that people are more likely to recommend you to others.

Check out our list of the top ten apps that we use every day in our agency that will help you with marketing your business.

1. Loom

Loom lets you create quick videos that display a desktop view of your screen. You can create a simple walkthrough video in a couple of minutes and easily share it by email or via an embedded link on your website. This is particularly good if you want to provide advisory services to clients who can’t meet face-to-face. You can also use Loom to create social media content to share.

Get it now: https://www.useloom.com

Cost: Free!

2. Canva

Canva is an incredibly simple platform to create professional-looking graphic design elements in minutes. If you need a quick graphic for a social media post or to jazz up a presentation or report for a client, you can create it in Canva in no time.

Canva has hundreds of pre-made templates for all kinds of professional uses. It also comes with handy images and font suggestions so that even the most design-challenged among us can create something classy and professional.

Get it now: https://www.canva.com

Cost: Free to use, with some premium fonts, templates, and images having a nominal cost.

3. ContentStudio

ContentStudio allows you to organise all your social media marketing from a single place. You can curate engaging content, share it through multiple channels, and strengthen your content marketing.

A popular feature of ContentStudio is its ability to fetch fresh content from over a thousand sources, meaning you can delve in and compile trending content from any niche or market. You also have the ability to compose unique posts and schedule them to be published through your social accounts, helping you create better-looking posts at a faster pace.

Get it now: https://contentstudio.io/

Cost: Free to use, with premium packages offering advanced features.

4. Asana

Asana is a simple project management tool designed to help teams organise their workload and get more done. In Asana you can map out steps, assign work, see what’s currently in progress or what still needs to be done, track due dates, and see visually how work is tracking. It’s a great tool to help your team manage their workload and to give you visibility over how client work is tracking.

Get it now: https://asana.com

Cost: Free to use, with premium packages offering advanced features.

5. Biteable

Biteable is an awesome site where you can create unique video ads, explainer videos, animations, infographics, and much more. You’re essentially able to create pro-quality video in the time it takes to drink your coffee. You have the ability to choose from hundreds of styles, insert your own digital content, choose high-quality soundtracks, and easily share it through multiple channels.

With a lot of social networking sites becoming more video-centric, this is the app you should be using if you want to set your business apart in the digital world.

Get it now: https://biteable.com/features/

Cost: Free package available with a limit of 5 projects per month or a premium package offering unlimited use.

6. Yesware

There’s no doubt that you send and receive a lot of emails. This clever app allows you to use simple email templates, and then see who actually opens your emails and clicks on any links. It also offers other useful email tools and shortcuts. It integrates with Gmail and Outlook, so you don’t have to learn a new tool.

Get it now: https://www.yesware.com

Cost: $12 per user per month, with a free trial period.

7. Trello

Trello is a project management tool much like Asana, but it’s probably even simpler. It’s great for small teams that don’t need a ton of tools or features, but just want to get more organised and have visibility around their workload.

Trello works with a system of cards – like virtual index cards on a big virtual pinboard. You can move and arrange the cards any way you like and add due dates, files, and collaborators.

Get it now: http://www.trello.com

Cost: Free, with premium packages offering advanced features

8.Pixel Me

Pixel Me is a great way to track and measure the links you’re posting and who is clicking on them. This means you can track the audience of the content you’re posting and target them again through remarketing. It gives you the opportunity to speak through different ad platforms to your custom audience and increase your brand awareness.

Get it now: https://pixelme.me/

Cost: Basic to comprehensive paid packages available

9. Missinglettr

Missinglettr increases traffic to your website’s blog by creating strategic, automated social media campaigns. It automatically pulls snippets from your blog posts to create promotional content – your only job is to review the content and choose how long you’d like to promote it.

Missinglettr markets the unique content you’ve created by connecting your social channels and running your campaigns for you. This provides regular social updates to your clients and encourages clicks to your content year-round.

Get it now: https://missinglettr.com/

Cost: Free, with personal and business accounts available.

10. Full Story

Ever wanted to know what your website visitors do once they land on your homepage? Want to find ways to convert more leads with your site design or copy? Then you need to try Full Story.

Once installed, Full Story tracks website visitors and shows you what those visitors actually do in a recorded video you can replay. It also shows you where your site traffic comes from and highlights areas of your site that cause visitor frustration. It’s great if you want to improve your online marketing and understand the effectiveness of recent online marketing campaigns.

Get it now: https://www.fullstory.com/

Cost: Free, with premium packages offering advanced features

These are the ten online marketing apps we love the most in our agency. With new apps appearing almost daily, there countless possible solutions to boost your online marketing and communication efforts. What are some of the apps that you use that we haven’t mentioned? Send us an email if you have a tool that you think we have missed! Contact us

You might think it’s best to list as much detail as possible on your website. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Listing a lot of information is effective for print publications, but it’s ineffective for a web page. This is because web pages have unlimited space but their readers have very limited attention.

To help you combat the challenge of copywriting for web, check out our top five tips for developing sharp and concise web copy.

Place your most important information first

Web copy is different from other types of writing. On a web page your most important information needs to come first. Often a simple statement of what you do and how you can offer value is the key piece of information needed.

This style of writing is called the ‘inverted pyramid’. Here the most noteworthy information always comes first before detail and background information. Journalists use this structure of writing so that you’re able to understand the bigger picture of an article from the first paragraph.

Your customers also want to understand the big picture first. Your web copy needs to succinctly convey from the outset what you can do for them.

 Avoid large paragraphs

Copy on each page of your website should be short and to the point. Large blocks of writing can be off-putting for browsers and can come across as clunky. Browsers are often scanning or looking for a quick answer when reading web copy, so it’s best to give them what they want rather than have them leave your page to find it elsewhere.

Keep in mind that you should also have around 250-300 words for SEO purposes so that your page can be optimised correctly and be discovered. Although 300 words may sound like a small number, you’ll be surprised how dense 300 words looks on a published web page.

Use customer testimonials

Reinforce the value of your business by putting client testimonials on each page. From a customer’s point of view, you are not the most credible source of information about your service. Testimonials from your clients will add to your credibility and increase the value of your proposition. They are a form of social proof with high persuasion powers.

Include a call to action

A call to action is vital. What steps do you want your browsers to take? What are they meant to do next? This could be simply a link to another piece of content you have, an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter, or a pop-up contact form asking them to get in touch. If you highlight what you want your browsers to do next, it’s a lot easier for them to engage.

Top tip: Always incorporate a ‘contact us’ link or contact details on every page so browsers can easily get in touch. Don’t make your visitors work hard by scrolling through every page searching for ways to make contact.

Establish a value proposition

Your value proposition is your conversation starter. It’s something that gets the reader’s attention and makes them want to learn more about you. Highlighting your value proposition enables your readers to understand your services and how you can benefit them. The quicker they can understand your abilities and why you’re better than the competition, the more likely they are to remember your business or product.

People looking at your website are often in a hurry and make quick decisions about whether you’re right for them based on your website content. That’s why it’s best to have your value proposition clear, concise, and credible.

Keep these top five pointers in mind to make sure your content copywriting is effective. Remember: don’t treat your visitors like information-hungry sharks. Position your information clearly and always get straight to the point. If you’re in need of a more professional copywriting hand to help, you can always contact us here for the right advice or to help you craft the right message for the web.

When a customer asks us this question, I always want to know:
Where do your current leads come from?

Understanding where you already get leads for your business is the key to finding value for your marketing budget.

Jumping too soon into an AdWords campaign when you don’t have a landing page squeeze page set up, or your sales copy in not compelling enough to convert any prospective visitors you do get can mean you can waste a lot of time and money on advertising that delivers no results.

From the outside digital marketing looks very attractive, as once you set up your campaigns, done right it seems you could set it and forget, watching the inquiries come in. The facts are, the further away the contact point between you and the customer you are trying to attract to your business, the lower the average conversion rate for acquiring that customer.

The reason most small businesses don’t succeed online is that creating a communication strategy where you don’t get the power of the face to face interaction, the harder it is to share, define and explain your offer to your customers.

I always suggest to a small business owner that you analyse where your current leads come from, and work on improving your content and presentation before stepping into the world of digital advertising.

Creating memorable media creates engagement and gets results.

Ask yourself what improvements in presentation, or communication could you make to your existing sales material? If your current conversion rate is say 40%, if you increased your ease of understanding around your offer with a new brand, flyer, and website would that increase your sales?

When you feel ready to enter into promoting your business with AdWords, get a good strategy set up first.

You need to understand the conversion process and all of the content that will need to be created to assist a customer to evaluate your offer from your website. You also need to be clear about the cost of customer acquisition Most AdWords agencies suggest if your business average sales value is under $250 because of the cost per click/ over the volume of inquires ad-words will never be able to deliver an effective return on your investment.

What advertising channels have you tried? What were your results?

Want to find out more about our small business AdWord services? Click here. 

Speak to us for free one hour strategy session and we can assess what marketing channels we think would be right for your business.

There is no doubt that Facebook is the largest social network.

Facebook has 1.65 billion monthly active users, with nearly one billion accessing the network on their mobile phones every day. As avid Facebook users scroll through their newsfeeds on both desktop and phone, brands face an ever-evolving challenge of creating thumb-stopping content.

Videos are shown to get more reach than any other post on Facebook, and the network is rapidly evolving into a video-centric platform. According to TechCrunch, Facebook has reached 8 billion video views a day and viewership continues to grow.

At their very best, videos can create experiences that are memorable, moving, and inspiring – experiences that brands and businesses can bank on.

Why brands should start making Facebook-friendly videos

On Facebook, video content has more power to increase brand awareness.

Video can speak on a level that text posts can’t. It can educate and entertain an audience easily and quickly through storytelling. Through creative and engaging video content, your brand or business has a higher chance of attracting attention and engagement. According to HubSpot, 80% of customers remember a video they watched in the last month.

Video content performs well on all devices.

Videos perform well regardless of which device is used to view Facebook. The responsive design ensures that your audience will see your video the exact same way every time. Simply Measured found that 60% of viewers engage in a video post in preference to a text post, so you want to make sure you get it right first!

Video has the ability to build greater social connectivity.

Using video correctly in your marketing strategy enables you to increase engagement with your direct target audience and their extended personal network. Forbes estimates that 92% of people who consume mobile videos share them with others, so a small amount of engagement can reach a larger audience and potentially go viral.

Without the right video marketing strategy you’re going in blind

Video content made only for Facebook requires a different focus than in normal video production. It’s essential you start with a video marketing strategy to determine the best approach.

You need a video that creates impact and results through the right balance of emotion, creativity, and knowledge of your target audience. Your strategy should involve targeting the varying audiences your business has, and creating a formula to engage and direct the audience into a customer journey.

One video shouldn’t be treated as a “one size fits all”. Ideally you should create a video for every Facebook ad campaign that is targeting a different activity or customer.

Tips for creating successful Facebook videos

Use the first few seconds wisely

You need to bring your story to life quickly. You want your video ad to quickly pique the interest of people scrolling through their Facebook feeds looking for content.

Consider showing brand or product imagery in the first few seconds so the viewer knows what your video is about as soon as possible.

Focus on storytelling

Video length is less important than telling a cohesive and concise story. Your video ad shouldn’t be longer or shorter than it takes to tell your story well, so create a storytelling arc from the first frame to the last that keeps your audience interested along the way.

Make sure you tell your story with and without sound

Videos on Facebook auto play with sound off, so it’s important to make sure your video ads entice viewers even when muted.

When sound is off, great imagery and on-screen text can help tell your story. When enabled, your video’s sound should offer additional value to viewers and further bring your story to life.

A long video (over 3 minutes) that showcases your background and founder story to a cold audience is not the right type of video to use in this format.

How to utilise the Facebook advertising platform

Most people are aware that you can “boost” a post to get engagement and views on your branded content.
But boosting a video posted on your Facebook page is a really costly and ineffective strategy to build brand awareness.

When you chose to boost a post, Facebook shows your ad to people who are most likely to engage with it. But not all engagement is equally useful to your business. Some users will simply click “like” and never engage with you outside of Facebook.

This kind of engagement is a waste of your time. You need a strategy that entices users to move from Facebook to your website, where they are more likely to convert.

Clearly, boosting a post isn’t the right metric that you want to choose to optimise your ad. So, what is?

We recommend creating a “video views” strategy. With this strategy, you share content with the people on Facebook who are ready to hear your message and are more likely to take the actions you want.

What is the video views strategy?

Firstly, target your video to a broad Facebook audience of your general demographic of potential customers.

Once the video has reached at least 1000 views, you create a second remarketing ad campaign to target those who watched at least 50% of the video. This advertising will invite them to learn more about your service or offer, usually with some sort of special promotion.

Running these ads continuously creates a funnel of viewers, who by watching your video are self-identifying to you that they’re interested in your product. This is the group of viewers who are ready to hear your brand message, and you can effectively target them with your business offer.

Where to now?

If you want to enter deep into Facebook marketing, there are many more strategies and remarketing steps that can be set up to further drive engagement and views.

Speak to us at Creative Content to find out more about how we can help you promote your videos on Facebook. We can get you set up with the right video marketing strategy for your business.

Creative Content completely redefined Connect’s unique selling proposition and business offer. We did this through client interviews, market research, and analysis. This led to a full rebrand, starting with a re-build of Connect’s website.

Facebook:

Cover Photo 851 x 315 px
Profile Photo 180 x 180 px (displays at 160 x 160)
TAB Image 111 x 74 px
Shared Image 1200 x 1200
Link Image 1200 x 627

Twitter:

Header 1500 x 500 px
Profile Photo 400 x 400 px
Image Display 880 x 440 px

Pinterest:

Profile Image 165 x 165
Pins 736 x INFINATE px
Board Display 222 x 150 px

Instagram:

Profile Pic 110 x 110 px
Image Feed 510 x 510 px

Google +:

Profile photo: 250 x 250 px
Cover Photo 1080 x 608 px
Shared Image 497 px (minimum width)

What Is Remarketing

Remarketing is the process of tracking your digital traffic from a search campaign (Google AdWords) and retargeting your message to your potential customers.

Why use remarketing?

If you have a search campaign running (AdWords) and you’re paying Google for traffic to your site, on average out of 100 people that visit your website only 4% will take an action after viewing your landing page. So if you are paying $1 a click then that is $25 per customer!

This is because not everyone is ready to contact you straight away, statistics show 30% of traffic are in a position to act but many factors delay them from doing so.

But you still have to pay Google for each click.

So what are you doing with the 96% of people who didn’t convert? That’s where remarketing comes in.

How remarketing works:

If a customer visited your website or a landing page but didn’t call or contact you, you can remarket to them on the Google Display network, the YouTube ad network or through Facebook.

This means when they are browsing other websites and they are logged into their personal Facebook account, an ad would appear for your business so they are reminded and can click on the ad again. You can do this by adding a tracking pixel (cookie) to them after they visit your page.

The price tag for re-marketing is much lower than a standard pay per click (PPC) search campaign.
While a Google Pay Per Click search ad could have an average cost per click of $2- $3, a remarketing ad has an average cost of $0.25-$0.60.

Just like a PPC search campaign, you are only paying when someone actually clicks on the ad. If they do not click on the ad, there is no cost, but you still are able to give a visual reminder about your site to that potential customer.

The reason that remarketing is so effective is that seeing your offer appear multiple times, creates brand awareness and reminds your visitor to take action.
So when they are ready to make that decision to pick a solution you are the one they remember to choose! And guess what is even better, your competitors are probably not using retargeting so you get a bigger piece of the pie

Customer case study

443 contact form inquiries (leads) in the last month, 19% are coming from Facebook remarketing alone (86 users)
Cost of each lead through Facebook = 32 cents 86 x 32 = $27.52 for 86 leads Cost of each lead through Adwords = is between $1.20 and $2.26

Contact Us

Get in touch with us to find out more about remarketing for your business or click here to learn more about digital marketing strategies.

How to make the most from a small AdWords budget:

From the outside AdWords looks very attractive, you simply set up your campaigns, set it and forget, and watch the inquiries come in.

The facts are, without a good strategy in place it is likely you will be throwing your money away with very little results! To create a great adwords campaign with a limited budget you will need to understand some basics strategies to implement a successful campaign for your business.

1. If you don’t have an effective landing page and your website is not optimised for mobile then stick to desktop search.

Mobile visitors are the least likely to convert on a non-responsive page especially if your landing page is not ideal.

Best practice tip: Create Targeted & Conversion Optimised Landing Pages

An important component of your ad quality score is your landing page, which is judged on the parameters of relevance, content originality, transparency, and navigability. You will not get conversions from poorly structured or outdated landing pages.

2. Limit your ads to key days/ key times that makes sense to your business.

Think about days and times that your visitors are more likely to search and when you are able to reply. If you take too long to reply to an inquiry then it is likely that they will look elsewhere.

3. Restrict your search area to localised search queries.

You can set a limit of area that your ads will appear or simply target one area close by your business.

4. Focus the budget on the keywords that are cost effective.

In some industries adwords is extremely competitive. For example, a search for “web design agency is $8.65 a click, whereas “Design agency” is $4 a click. So, it pays to look for unique and longer keywords to compete effectively on a smaller budget. Your best performing keywords are those that bring in conversions at the lowest price.

5. Make use of the “negative keywords” function.

It lets you exclude all the words associated with your expressions that don’t represent the needs of your target audience.

6. Make sure you have exact match set up for keywords instead of Broad Match.

Pro Tip: Keep your PPC expenditure in control, keep exact match or phrase match keywords. Speaking of web services industry, choosing exact match keywords such as [web design company] will not display your ad for terms like “website design company” or “web design agency”.

Manage your campaigns rigorously

7. The first rule to follow is to not spread yourself too thin.

Don’t create more than 3 campaigns at first so that you can manage them properly. Work on your segmentation and avoid keyword overlaps at all costs, so you’re not “paying” for them multiple times.

8. You can use effective ad extensions to make your ads more attractive; they have a definite effect on the click-through rates.

9. Generally speaking, you should adopt a very strict monitoring process; monitor the quality index for each keyword.

However, it’s not necessary to make changes every 5 minutes; wait until you have a certain visibility over time. Although it’s good to perform tests, it’s best to limit this practice if you have a tight budget. And above all, remove the keywords that aren’t working!

10. Refine your ads by trying as hard as possible to attract your genuine prospects and “scaring off” internet users who don’t belong to your target audience.

For example, you can specify the price of your product, which will prevent those looking for very low rates from clicking on your ad.

11. Avoid Dynamic Search Ads:

These ads are not triggered by specific keywords chosen by you. Instead they are displayed when someone searches for anything related to the content of your landing page. While this seems convenient, it often results in irrelevant impressions and clicks, which push your daily budget up.

12. Make sure you have conversion tracking in place

Not tracking conversions is essentially like driving down a windy road, in the dark, without your glasses. There is no clarity as to whether your marketing efforts are actually working. You could be wasting your money and time on Pay Per Click due to a lack of conversions.

To gain insight into what’s working and what’s not you need to by measure the conversions so you can see what campaigns, adgroups, keywords, ads, and landing pages are receiving the most conversions and make changes accordingly.

We can help you to set up all of these steps and create a cost effective adwords campaign that can grow with your business. Speak to us to set up your adwords and remarketing campaign today.

Contact Us

Get in touch with us here to receive a quote on how we can help improve your AdWords strategy accordingly to your budget.

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