Make Your Offers More Enticing

As marketers, our intentions are straightforward; we’re people pleasers. We want to make sure our audiences are engaged with our companies or causes, which can be more challenging than it seems.

So, how can we draw people into our market?

The answer is simple: Offers.

Offers range from eBooks, presentations, reports, videos, and blogs to giveaways and sweepstakes – basically anything that you’re providing for consumers coming directly from you or your company. Offers require a lot of developmental planning, which is why they’re often brushed aside and deemed too time consuming.

Fortunately, there are a few simple steps you can take to ensure your offers are enticing your audience:

Emphasize scarcity. Using phrases such as “Limited Time and/or Quantity” in your offer create a sense of urgency among your audience; if they don’t act soon, they won’t receive whatever it is your willing to share with them. This will force people to act fast and make YOU and YOUR BRAND a priority.

Encourage people to hop on the bandwagon. By human nature, we’re more likely to participate in something if we see others are already involved. This “bandwagon effect” can be useful for marketers; indicating how many people have already taken part in your offer is a great way to establish credibility. Just be sure your claims are true and believable – no exaggerations here!

Newsjack. Stay on top of what’s trending, and incorporate it into your offer if possible. If a lot of people are talking about something, it increases interest, and more importantly demand. Give the people what they want with your offer!

Create offers for different stages. Not all of your audience is on the same level, so your offers should reflect these different stages. Creating unique offers for each stage shows that you’re acknowledging everyone – not just those who are already familiar with your brand!

Avoid jargon. Nothing screams “unprofessional” like using jargon words or phrases in your offer. You want to add meaning and emphasis to your subject matter, so avoid overused terminology (things like “flexible” or “ground breaking”).

For offer and content development, online marketing and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215.230.9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com.

Generate Leads with a Call-To-Action

A Call-to-action (CTA) is the single most important attention grabber in the world of online marketing. A CTA is an instruction to your audience that is intended to elicit an immediate response, for example, “Call now,” “Click here for more,” or “Visit today”.

While CTAs may seem straightforward, you’re not the only one creating them, which means it’s imperative that your CTA stands out amongst your competitors. If your CTA isn’t persuading people to click your offer, it serves no purpose.

But if every brand is fighting for consumers’ attention, how will your CTA stand out?

Placement. You want to place your CTA where everyone will see it – in most cases, this is “above the fold,” meaning the part of your web page that is viewable without scrolling down. According to heat map analysis, anything below this point will only be viewed by half of the people who access your page. A simple fix like this can double your impressions and increase leads.

Clarity. While being clever can certainly attract consumers, being clear is much more important. It’s essential that you are specific when providing details describing how someone would benefit from your CTA. This way, they’re interested in receiving your offer because they know exactly what they’re getting out of it.

Contrast. Make your CTA stand out! Blending your CTA in with your website design is a recipe for disaster; use contrasting colors and an easy-to-read design to ensure people are seeing your offer – and clicking it!

Link to a landing page. Your CTA is intended to send people to a relevant landing page with an offer – NOT to drive traffic to your homepage! You’re ultimately looking to generate leads, and in order to do so, you need to send your traffic to a page that will convert visitors rather than simply increasing website traffic.

Specialize. If you’re offering different products and/or services, your CTAs should reflect each one. Consider making a separate CTA for each individual offer and placing it on that designated webpage rather than creating one general CTA for all of your offers.

Thank your visitors. Increasing your engagement with everyone who fills out a form is a great way to turn prospects into loyal customers. Creating a “thank you” page that appears after someone completes a form is a simple way to show you care – and also a great way for you to promote additional offers and/or content.

Perfecting your CTA will make your offers stand out amongst your competitors while ultimately increasing leads – and who doesn’t want that?

For content marketing including CTA design, email marketing, landing page development   and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215.230.9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com

Content: The King of SEO

Online marketing has quickly made SEO (Search Engine Optimization) a priority for many businesses looking to improve search rankings, increase website traffic, and ultimately generate leads. However, not many people realize that content directly impacts just how successful their SEO will be. According to Todd Lebo*, partner and CMO of Ascend2, “Creating relevant content is not only the most effective tactic used for SEO purposes, it’s also one of the most difficult to execute.”

Content marketing isn’t always directly linked to SEO, and for that reason, many businesses fall short in this category, which ultimately hurts their search rankings. Because content marketing takes time to build and become successful, it’s often overlooked. People like to see immediate results, and search engine rankings are able to provide them with that. While an increase in search engine rankings is great, it’s your content that will ultimately sustain these rankings over time.

But how can you be sure that the content you’re developing is helping you reach your SEO goal?

One of the most important elements in this process is QUALITY, not QUANTITY. Many people think that the more you post, the better. However, it’s better to share meaningful content every once in a while rather than something insignificant every day. Ensuring your content is relevant to the type of traffic you want to drive to your website is vital; you want these visitors to keep coming back! Don’t overdo it here though – you want your content to be searchable, but not to a point where you’re forcing in keywords or topics just so your content is seen.

Another content tip is to make sure you’re staying up-to-date with the changing search engine processes for all different types of devices, and tailoring your content accordingly. If you’re unaware of what’s new or up-and-coming, your content may be stuck in the past… And who wants to read that?

While developing relevant content for your target audience can seem tedious and difficult, it’s vital for your long-term SEO success – be patient with your content and you’ll thank yourself later!

For SEO, website optimization, online marketing and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215.230.9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com

Email Campaigns: Timing is Everything

When planning an email campaign, there are a lot of different factors to consider such as audience, email design, layout and copy. Often times within this planning process, the single most important factor is overlooked: the best time to send your email campaign.

Timing is everything, and we’re not just referring to morning, afternoon, or evening – days of the week also play a huge role in the success of your campaign. Because these options are seemingly endless, planning for the “best” time might be overwhelming.

Here are some general guidelines to keep in mind:*

• Monday
  • Highest ROI
  • Best day to send out email surveys
• Tuesday & Thursday
  • High volume days to send emails
  • Tuesday had the highest open and click-through rates
• Wednesday
  • “Middle ground” – neither the best day, nor the worst day to send emails
• Friday
  • Good day to send emails for retailers
  • Conversation rate only 2% behind Tuesday, which had the highest conversion rate of all days
• Saturday & Sunday
  • Open rates are the highest on the weekend – 44% on Saturday
  • Higher click rates – 10% on Saturday
  • Highest bounce rates

Additionally, time of day is one of the “make-or-break” email campaign planning aspects.

• Early morning (before 9am)
  • Highest click rates, highest bounce rates
• Mid-morning (10am-Noon)
  • Best email open rate = 10am
• Lunch time (Noon hour)
  • One of the worst times to send email – lunch break
• Early afternoon (1-3pm)
  • One of the worst times to send email – “work zone”
• Late afternoon (3-5pm)
  • Most email activity happening overall from 2-5pm
• Evening (5-7pm)
  • 26.4% of recipients opened B2B promotions
  • 17.9% opened holiday promotions
  • People are more likely to open emails on their own time rather than at work
• Late night (7-10pm)
  • Open rates reached 15.1% for messages between 8-11pm
• Late LATE night (Midnight-4am)
  • Lowest email volume, highest response rate
  • Open rates peaked at 20.4% for messages at 12am

Remember to take these factors about your audience into consideration as well:

• Mobile Email
  • Accounts for 15-70% of email opens
  • Friday through Sunday render the most opens
  • Special offers, vouchers, real-time tracking, and newsletters are the most preferred type of mobile emails
• B2B & B2C Audience
  • Wednesday & Tuesday tied for most effective email days
  • B2B marketers ranked Tuesday as best sending day

All in all, it’s important to test your campaigns to see which ones are the most successful.

*Source: Pinpointe.com

For email campaigns and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215.230.9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com.

The Top 10 Most Trusted Brands in America

We’ve narrowed it down from the top 50 most trusted brands in America to the top 10 – but what makes these brands rise above the rest? More importantly, how can your business benefit from these success stories?

In our new eBook, you’ll discover what traits make brands trustworthy, and how this trust among their customers ultimately shapes their success. Learn from the best and apply their techniques to your brand so it can be successful too! Check out Traits of The Top 10 Most Trusted Brands in America here -> http://hubs.ly/y0VK7F0 

For branding, and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215.230.9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com.

Responsive Email Design: Why You Need It

The design of your emails is equally as important as the content in your email itself – but we’re not just talking about pictures and graphics. With people accessing emails across multiple platforms and devices, particularly mobile devices, the layout and responsiveness of your email plays a vital role.

Various studies show that people who check their emails multiple times a day on their mobile devices and more likely to delete their emails if they do not display properly.* With the ease of accessing emails on tablets and mobile devises, potential customers can delete messages just as easily as they can view them. Without the proper design responsiveness, potential customers won’t be reading with your email.

So what can a responsive email design do for you?

1. More interaction. Keeping your message short, sweet, and easy to read will get your message across in seconds. This will lead to more people potentially clicking or interacting. Lengthy, poorly designed emails require too much time to look at, and as a result, are often deleted.
2. Better reputation. People like when things work. Creating an email that is consistent across all possible platforms and devices shows responsibility, which establishes your brand as trustworthy.
3. Embracing micro-moments. When do you check your email? A lot of people check their mobile email whenever they WANT to (when they have a spare second or two), rather than checking it when they HAVE to on a computer (work, school, etc.). Drawing customers in during these moments that may only last a few seconds is extremely effective because it makes your brand prominent during a time that you couldn’t plan for it to be.

* According to the US Consumer Device Preference Report: Q4 2013 from Movable Ink

* Via “The ultimate mobile email statistics overview” on Emailmonday

For responsive email design and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215-230-9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com. 

Improve Your Visual Content: Quick Fixes to Engage More Viewers

While we all like to think our content is important, it’s not always necessarily engaging. Adding visuals are a great way to provoke interest, but they can also hurt your content just as easily as it can help it.

To be clear, visual content is much more than just “pictures” – it also includes infographics, videos, and other digitally manipulated images. These various forms of visual content lead to endless possibilities, so where does one start?

First, you need to understand just how important visual content is when it comes to online engagement – in fact, it has been proven that content with compelling images get 94 percent more total views * than content without it. Bottom line: If you’re not using visuals of some sort, audiences are not looking at your content.

Incorporating visuals is just the start – there’s a right way and a wrong way to engage your audience. Visual content should be creative but easy on the eyes, goal-oriented, and accessible from all social media platforms and internet mediums. Most importantly, it should be relevant to your brand. If your visual content falls short of these qualifications, it’s probably losing appeal among viewers.

Your visuals should also be unique while remaining easy to understand. For example, adding a busy or complex image to a post can be just as harmful as not adding one at all. Additionally, your visual content should be helping you meet a goal. Sure, visual content generates views, but the goal should be bigger than that. Use visuals to help get your written content noticed and to help you tell your story.

Ensuring your visual content is the appropriate size, file format, etc. is extremely important when sharing it across multiple social media networks or mediums – keep in mind that everyone should be able to engage no matter how they access it! Make connections with your visuals and let them do the talking – you want your audience to look at them and ask meaningful questions about YOU! Start a conversation!

Overall, gaining viewers with visual content is a great start, but it’s important to keep in mind why you want people to be engaged with it.

For content marketing, online marketing, and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215-230-9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com

*SOURCE: Ekaterina Walter, coauthor of ‘The Power of Visual Storytelling’