Cyber Monday may be a fairly new retail tradition, but this shopping event has quickly gained popularity since 2005 when the head of the National Retail Federation originally coined the term.
What is Cyber Monday? Put simply, it’s eCommerce’s answer to Black Friday.
As soon as the sun sets on the beloved American holiday, Thanksgiving, brick-and-mortar retail stores across the nation open their doors to consumers, inviting them into the biggest sale of the year known as Black Friday.
Shoppers spill through entryways, tripping over one another to snatch deeply discounted items off retail shelves. The frenzy is due in large part to the Christmas season that’s right around the corner. If a consumer plays their cards right, they can accomplish all of their Christmas shopping in a single evening thanks to Black Friday deals.
In the early 2000s, however, the burgeoning eCommerce market knew it was missing out, but instead of launching Black Friday deals of its own, the entire industry claimed the Monday following Thanksgiving for itself, known as Cyber Monday. For 24 hours, consumers could receive even better discounts while shopping online from the comfort of their own homes.
As of last year, Cyber Monday pulled in a whopping $10.8-billion in online retail sales, which represents an increase of 15.1% growth from the prior year of 2019.
Today, the upcoming Cyber Monday sales are expected to generate a seismic $11.5-billion in sales.
If you want a piece of the revenue pie, use the following tips to drive your Cyber Monday sales:
● Offer Product Bundles
● Advertise on Facebook
● Create an Amazon Seller Site
When it comes to holiday shopping and purchasing gifts, consumers love product bundles. Product bundling is a sales technique that groups several complimentary items together to be sold as a single unit for one price. Packaging the bundled products so that they appear artfully arranged is important.
By offering your online shoppers product bundles, you will naturally increase the average order value, move more products, and decrease your marketing and distribution costs. Just be sure to clearly state the exact savings per bundle so that shoppers know it’s more cost-effective to buy bundled products than those products individually.
Feeling overwhelmed and unsure of where to start in terms of packaging and branding your Cyber Monday product bundles? FTx 360 offers creative services that can handle everything from designing branded packaging to marketing your Cyber Monday product bundles online.
Running a Facebook ad campaign can help you crush your sales goals this Cyber Monday. ECommerce retailers who pour their hearts, souls, and budgets into well-designed Facebook ads that run for a full month before Cyber Monday are sure to see big financial returns, but the competition will be fierce.
Your ad should feature one strong visual image with clear branding and one CTA button, also referred to as a call to action button. This is not the time to use a lead generation CTA. You want your audience to click directly to your eCommerce site so that they can start shopping ASAP. If you have a Facebook Shop, all the better. Link your CTA to your Facebook Shop. This way, consumers can begin checking out your products and adding items to their Wish Lists that they can officially buy on the big day, i.e. Cyber Monday.
Setting up a targeted Facebook ad campaign that not only garners impressions but also maximizes click through rates and conversions is easier said than done. Get the greatest bang for your advertising buck with FTx 360’s social media marketing services. Our marketing specialists can target your audience and launch your Cyber Monday campaign today.
You might be thinking that the last thing you want to do is invest in Amazon when, for the most part, you’re certain that Amazon is your biggest competition. Well, you’re right and you’re also hurting your business. The fact of the matter is that Amazon is the #1 platform that consumers turn to for their online shopping, which means that if you don’t have an Amazon seller site, you’re running a very high risk that consumers will choose to shop with your competition simply because they’re on Amazon and you aren’t.
Creating a Seller Account on Amazon doesn’t have to be a major production. If you’re skeptical, you can actually begin selling from your customer account. However, we recommend making a formal Seller Account. The process is equally, if not less, complicated as creating a Facebook and Instagram Shop, which is to say you can be up-and-selling on Amazon within hours. The best part about using Amazon for your Cyber Monday sales is that Amazon’s platform handles payment processing and shipping parameters. All you have to do is import and organize your product images with descriptions, market your Amazon Cyber Monday deals, and fulfill orders once they start pouring in.
Want expert help navigating the ins and outs of launching an Amazon seller site that seamlessly integrates with your Point-of-Sale system and eCommerce website? Thanks to the nature of our interdepartmental teams, FTx 360 does it all and can amalgamate our eCommerce services and marketing automation services to meet your business needs.
There are so many more lucrative digital marketing tools you can and should include in your Cyber Monday marketing strategy… like:
● Launching Personalized Email Marketing Campaigns
● Minimizing the Number of Clicks to Purchase on Your Website
…but we’re going to wrap this article up for the time being.
Check out 5 Marketing Tips and Ideas for Your eCommerce Site as well as How to Set Up an Instagram and Facebook Shop if you’d like to explore additional marketing tactics you can use right now to boost Cyber Monday sales and your overall revenue throughout the upcoming holiday season, and beyond.
To learn more about FTx 360 or to speak with a digital marketing specialist, feel free to contact us anytime.
A call to action, or CTA for short, is a digital marketing term that refers to a prompt that invites users to take a specific action, such as clicking a button or entering their email addresses into an online field.
Call to action buttons can be found in every type of digital marketing campaign, including email campaigns, PPC ads, social media marketing campaigns, and even SMS text campaigns. In indirect forms of digital marketing, like blogs, you will also find CTAs such as invitations to leave comments below a blog article and social media posts that ask followers to “like, share, and follow.”
Common examples of CTAs include:
● Sign Up
● Subscribe
● Learn More
● Get Started
Call to action buttons help to guide potential customers through the buying journey. When you place smartly worded CTAs strategically across your online platforms, you can increase the CTR, or click through rate, of your campaign while simultaneously reducing the bounce rate. In short, CTAs improve conversions and boost revenue, results that every business owner should want.
Are you eager to incorporate effective CTAs into your digital marketing campaigns? Skip the article and contact FTx 360 right now! Or you can…
…read on to learn about the different types of CTA buttons you can use in your digital marketing campaigns to convert curious visitors into paying customers.
This type of CTA works best for businesses that sell software as a service, but can also benefit any company that offers subscription packages. According to GrooveHQ.com, offering a free trial can increase conversions by 328%. If you’re trying to sell a product or service that’s especially complex or “niche,” and your brand isn’t well known, then offering prospective buyers a free trial should set their mind at ease and generate positive word-of-mouth marketing in the interim. Once the free trial period has concluded, users will be all the more inclined to sign up for a paid subscription.
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You can use a Free Trial CTA on your website landing page, in a paid social media advertisement, or anywhere in-between. But you’ll first need to decide whether the free trial should be for 30 days or 14 days. It’s also a good idea to include a feedback survey towards the end of the free trial period.
Remember, the purpose of the free trial is to convince users to purchase the product or service, so aim to offer them just enough days to get them hooked. Then, be sure to keep an eye on the conversion rate of free trial users who end up purchasing the product or service after the trial has concluded. If users aren’t converting into customers, you’ll need to evaluate both the cost of the item and its perceived usability based on the feedback surveys.
When you state the greatest benefit of your product or service, your call to action will be all the more powerful. This type of CTA—the “Obvious Benefit” CTA—can be used to make a strong argument to consumers. For example, consumers might not automatically know that your product ordinarily costs thousands of dollars. By including the regular retail value as part of your CTA strategy, you can effectively convince people to buy the item at its current discounted price. You can use two buttons, or a blurb and a button, when designing your Obvious Benefit CTA, like we’ve done here:
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As you can see, the first line of the CTA states the obvious benefit of having a high-speed website. The second line of the CTA, which is the clickable button, clearly states what the visitor will receive once they click, namely their website speed will be analyzed. Obvious benefit CTAs are ideal for your email marketing campaigns, as opposed to paid social media campaigns, because email recipients are qualified leads, generally speaking, who will be more likely to click. Also, emails allow for a greater opportunity to make a structured argument to your readers.
The main thing to watch out for when using Obvious Benefit CTAs is the CTR. If your CTA click through rate is unusually low, it could be the result of convoluted or confusing verbiage used in the call to action itself. Are you trying to use a statistic to convince people to click? Make sure the statistic and its correlating point are crystal clear.
Social Proof CTAs are all about proving how popular your brand, products, and services already are, in order to convince consumers that they should give your business a try. In order to pull off using social proof in your CTAs, you’ll first have to gather data about your brand. What can you brag about? Do you have over ten thousand WordPress blog subscribers? Have you just surpassed fifty thousand YouTube followers? Whatever milestones you’ve reached as a business can be leveraged to develop a strong CTA. Just make sure that you aren’t embellishing your stats.
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It should come as no surprise that Social Proof CTAs work really well on social media. Try building a positive customer review into your Instagram CTA, or include the latest industry award your brand received in your next Facebook lead generation CTA. Even if your company is new and you haven’t garnered a ton of “social proof” yet, you can still leverage one of your recent achievements to create a powerful CTA, especially if you use video for your social post or ad.
Yes, video. Right now, social media video content far surpasses photo and image content when it comes to increasing engagement. When using video, you don’t need to write out your social proof in your caption. Instead, you can directly tell your audience why your brand is awesome and what you can do for them. For example, run an Instagram & Facebook ad campaign featuring a video where you tell viewers, “We’re the first organic vitamin company to obtain USP certification for ingredient purity and potency!”
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Are you looking for an affordable digital marketing agency to handle all of your marketing campaigns, including custom lead generation strategies that utilize the CTAs we covered in this article? FTx 360 offers social media marketing and email marketing services that include campaign handlings and marketing automation to simplify your life and change the way you do business. Contact us to learn more.
The restaurant industry is chock-full of competition. In order to stand out and succeed, restaurateurs must provide diners with delicious meals and impeccable service, and that’s not all.
Restaurants must also provide diners with convenience, community, and conversation.
In other words, today’s diners expect to have an excellent experience, from the moment they decide to dine at your restaurant to the moment they sign the bill, and beyond.
They want ordering and dining options that are convenient. They want to feel welcome when they dine-in, and when they post photos of their meals on social media, they want to feel like they’re part of a community. Whether ordering delivery from home, picking their orders up from the curb, or meeting their friends at your restaurant, your customers are going to want to talk about their experiences online, in either a positive or negative light.
If you’re only offering food and beverages at your restaurant, you’re missing out. But the good news is that providing your diners with so much more than just a menu isn’t beyond your reach.
Give your diners an excellent all around customer experience by implementing these 5 powerful restaurant marketing strategies that are designed to help you retain loyal customers and increase revenue.
Mobile apps spell convenience, plain and simple. Does your restaurant offer customers a mobile app with ordering and payment options? This is not to be confused with a responsive web design that functions smoothly on smartphones, though it wouldn’t hurt to make sure your site is responsive. If you haven’t launched a mobile app for your restaurant, consider investing in a white-label app.
Here are some reasons to provide your customers with a mobile app:
● Consumers prefer in-app ordering above any other online ordering method
● Restaurant mobile apps help to increase customer loyalty
● A mobile app is a digital marketing tool that will give you direct access to your customers
Successfully marketing your restaurant can be tricky due to the fact that you’re not aiming to target a nationwide or worldwide audience. Quite the opposite, in fact, your goal as a restaurateur is to draw a local crowd of customers to your business. Using the hashtag #foodie on Instagram and maintaining a recipe blog are actually not going to cut it. Instead, focus your marketing locally by enhancing your Google My Business page. Add the Bookings feature to your GMB page, and enable the Check In feature on your social media pages.
Increase local SEO by incorporating the following ideas:
● NAP optimization is as simple as adding your Name, Address, and Phone Number to your business website
● Plug local SEO into your website content and GMB description to rank as high as possible on SERP
● Use geo-targeting in any social media advertisements you plan on running
Customer loyalty rewards programs have long since been proven to be one of the most effective marketing strategies for increasing customer retention and boosting sales. For restaurants, loyalty programs can be especially beneficial because they incentivize diners to try new menu items, increase order sizes, and return more frequently. You’ll want to choose a loyalty platform that comes with a mobile app and integrates with your online ordering system. We recommend the Loyal~n~Save platform.
Loyalty programs benefit both diners and restaurants in the following ways:
● Restaurant loyalty members dine 20% more often and spend 20% more per visit
● A loyalty program is a powerful marketing tools that enables you to launch email marketing campaigns, SMS text campaigns, and in-app push notification campaigns
● Loyalty programs include built-in CRM that will help you maximize the personalization of your marketing campaigns
It’s almost as though certain social media platforms were made for restaurant marketing. They say that experiencing a tasty meal begins with drinking in the sight of the food. You can give your diners a virtual taste of all that your restaurant has to offer by posting high quality photos of your dishes on Instagram and Facebook. An even better marketing idea is to include videos on Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, and YouTube that feature your chefs and cooks preparing your most popular meal items.
Consider the following your high-quality action plan:
● Encourage your customers to post photos of their meals on social media to increase word-of-mouth marketing
● Add your best photos and videos to your Google My Business page, and thank your online reviewers who do the same
● Include high-quality photos in your email marketing campaigns
Consumers rely on customer reviews to help them make purchasing decisions. Unlike other types of businesses, restaurants face extreme challenges because they must provide excellent food and outstanding service. A perky waitress is not going to make up for a bland dish, for example, which means that one subpar aspect of a customer’s dining experience can lead to a low-star review. Restaurants are held to such a high standard, in fact, that you would be remiss to overlook the importance of online reputation management and marketing. Even if you receive a poor customer review, there’s a lot you can do to correct it both publicly and privately.
Guard your online reputation in these ways:
● Respond to all reviews, both positive and negative, but avoid using autoresponders
● Strategically use loss leaders, such as a free dish or drink, to reward positive reviewers with surprise-and-delight and to assuage unhappy diners who left negative reviews
● Hire an online reputation management and marketing agency to leverage positive reviews and mitigate negative ones
FTx 360 offers unique, sure-shot marketing techniques for restaurants that are designed to attract and retain customers while spreading brand awareness locally across social media platforms and Google.
Our digital marketing services include website design & development, eCommerce solutions, content writing & marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, and other creative services that will transform your restaurant business into a growing enterprise.
Contact our marketing team to get started.
Have your eCommerce sales plateaued? Have they dropped off altogether? What if your eCommerce sales are barely increasing?
There’s actually a lot you can do to drive online traffic to your website and boost eCommerce sales. We’re talking about digital marketing. Implementing the right digital marketing strategy can effectively increase the number of shoppers who visit your website as well as increase the number of sales transactions that occur daily.
You might be thinking, what is “the right digital marketing strategy” exactly?
The answer to that question is tricky, and could depend on the nature of your business and your target audience. For example, if you own a B2B company, then the strategies you use to target potential customers will be different than if you own a B2C retail store.
That being said, there are a handful of digital marketing strategies that will deliver powerful results regardless of your industry or market.
Here are five marketing tips and ideas for your eCommerce site to help you drive website traffic, turn visitors into customers, and increase revenue.
Your eCommerce website visitors will not be able to touch, examine, or handle the products you’re selling, which is why the visuals you provide on your site are so important. Even if you’re selling SaaS or other services on your website, we recommend that you enhance the visuals as much as possible. What do we mean by that?
Instead of merely using a few product photos, include many high-res photos and a zoom-in function that visitors can use to examine the product in question. If possible, use 3D images of your products as well, and integrate “turning and rotating” capabilities so that shoppers can get a 360° view of the items you’re selling.
Try including a video tutorial or virtual tour of your SaaS, if applicable. When potential customers are able to watch a video demonstration of how your cloud-based software interface works, they will gain a better impression of the platform and be more likely to subscribe, enroll, or buy.
Digital marketers know that it’s far easier to retain an interested customer than it is to interest a brand-new one in shopping for the first time. This fact is true for both brick-and-mortar retailers and eCommerce websites, which is why all types of businesses dedicate a substantiation portion of their marketing efforts to targeting their existing customer base.
Your eCommerce site should have built-in features that enable shoppers to create their own secure accounts. These accounts should also have a Wish List feature that shoppers can use to “save” items to their Wish Lists. You can design personalized email marketing campaigns to remind customers about their Wish List items.
This marketing idea works best when the Wish List reminder emails contain detailed, relevant information. For example, don’t just remind a recipient that they never bought the sneakers on their Wish List. Instead, include customer reviews of those sneakers, offer the recipient a “buy this product now” discount code, or provide them with another incentive that will reward them for acting fast.
User-generated content is any digital content that is created by users, consumers, and “regular people” and not by a company or brand. User-generated content is typically found on social media platforms, but you can also find UGC across the internet. For example, a Google My Business customer review can be considered a type of UGC.
User-generated content that features your products or services is a form of word-of-mouth marketing. When business owners like you recycle user-generated content on their own platforms, it has the same effect. UGC tends to resonate with consumers. Consumers trust the opinions of other shoppers far more than they trust traditional advertising claims, which is why you should definitely incorporate UGC into your marketing strategy.
Try turning five-star customer reviews into social media posts. Retweet and repost UGC that features your products or services. Partner with social media influencers and ask them to post “unboxing” videos that feature them opening your products and using them in such a way that inspires their social followers to try your brand.
In an article we published earlier this month called How to Set Up an Instagram & Facebook Shop, we discussed the importance of why eCommerce retailers should set up Shops on both of these social platforms, and you should definitely check out the article when you have time. The biggest point we made was that when eCommerce retailers decide not to set up social media “shops,” they actually miss out on a lot of sales.
You’re probably thinking that you don’t need mini-eCommerce shops on social media when you already have the real-deal i.e. a fully-functioning, responsive, mobile-friendly eCommerce website. We get it. But we’re here to tell you that, nope, you’re wrong #sorrynotsorry. For today’s consumer, convenience is everything, which means that unfortunately, your Instagram visitors might not be willing to navigate out of the IG app just to shop on your eCommerce site.
The marketing possibilities that will result from having an Instagram and Facebook Shop are endless. Once your Shop is functioning, you can tag specific Shop items within your social posts, Stories, and even in the description boxes of your Facebook Live broadcasts.
Our final marketing tip today will help consumers emotionally connect with your brand, which is necessary if you want to gain and retain loyal eCommerce customers. Feature your company’s values in your marketing campaigns. In other words, we recommend that, first and foremost, you advertise what you stand for. Once you convey to your audience your brand’s ethos, then you can suggest relevant products that they might be interested in buying.
Of course, not all of your marketing campaigns and social media posts need to be focused on the issues that your brand cares about, but a portion of them should be. This will benefit your sales, too, because while the sneakers that you sell might not be a “conversation starter,” the social issues that you care about certainly will be.
The more comments, likes, and engagement your social media posts accumulate, the faster brand awareness will spread online. And the resulting brand recognition will attract website visitors and increase eCommerce sales.
Do you need help marketing your eCommerce website? FTx 360 offers a full suite of eCommerce site development and marketing services that can help drive online traffic to your website and convert visitors into customers that return to shop time and again.
Our web designers work with scalable, easy-to-use eCommerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. Allow our skilled experts to revamp your site to optimize conversion rates.
If your website already functions beautifully, but your conversion rate is low, consider trying our digital marketing services:
● Organic SEO—Our affordable SEO services will insert targeted, relevant keywords into your website content to generate organic, refined, and consistent eCommerce traffic.
● Local SEO—Our local SEO services can optimize your web pages according to the location or locations that you want to rank in to drive organic traffic.
● Social Media Marketing—Our social media specialists can design and implement outstanding social media marketing campaigns for your company that will attract users, convert followers into customers, and turn customers into brand ambassadors.
● Product Copy Creation—Our creative content writers can produce accurate, SEO-friendly descriptions for your products and services that will engage your website visitors and boost your sales.
● Payment Gateway Integration—Our webmasters can integrate the leading payment gateways into your eCommerce site so that you can provide your online shoppers with multiple payment options and secure transactions.
Contact our marketing specialists to learn more about how FTx 360 can help you stand out within your industry, retain customers, and plan for long-term success.
Across all B2C and B2B industries, the average email open rate is 21.33%, according to MailChimp.com. Once emails are opened, the average CTA click-through rate across industries is 2.62%. These are only a few statistics, but they provide valuable insights about how challenging email marketing can be.
Interestingly, 49% of consumers prefer to receive marketing offers via email, as opposed to other direct marketing methods such as snail mail, in-app mobile push notifications, and mobile SMS texts.
If approximately half of all consumers prefer emails over other methods, why then do so few recipients actually open those direct marketing emails?
There are many reasons, which include the frequency of emails sent among other factors, but the biggest reason of all has to do with the email subject line.
Intriguing, personalized, and relevant email subject lines directly impact email open rates. Generic, bland, and random email subject lines are the reason emails wind up unopened in the Trash folder.
Marketers know this, which is why 87% of them prefer email marketing to any other digital marketing method. But digital marketers are skilled experts at crafting clever-sounding email subject lines with such great hooks that recipients can’t help but click.
By the time you finish reading this blog post, you will also have enough tricks up your sleeve to know how to write click-worthy email subject lines.
Here are 8 tips for creating the best email subject lines.
People are always looking for ways to make their lives easier. If there’s a way to streamline it, DIY it, or just plain simplify it “for dummies,” consumers want to know all about it!
When you include “How To” in the subject line of your email campaigns, the open rate of that campaign will naturally increase. The reason for this is because people understand that there is no downside to checking out a new way of getting something done.
How To Stretch After An Injury
This email subject line is clearly selfless. The sender isn’t trying to sell a product. Anyone who wants to learn how to safely stretch after they’ve had an injury will definitely open this email, and even more amazingly, a lot of recipients who haven’t experienced an injury will still click and read so they’re informed in case they injure themselves in the future.
Intrigue counts for a lot when it comes to email subject lines. A good hook will get just about anyone to click. But crafting a hook that truly works can be challenging.
In order to write a great hook into your subject line that is mysterious yet relevant enough to get recipients to open the email, we recommend that you first figure out the message of your email and then reverse-engineer the subject line into a relevant hook.
Does Your Dog Love THIS More Than You?
An email subject line that contains a question is naturally thought provoking, and amazingly, when the question itself is missing a key puzzle piece, the recipient will feel compelled to open the email just to find out what that missing puzzle piece is all about. In the case of our example above, the recipient will want to know what “THIS” is referring to, and they’ll also wonder if their dog could love anything more than his human-parent. By opening and reading the email, they’ll discover the full question, “does your dog love our massager-brush more than you?” And they’ll also discover how to buy that massager-brush product.
The scarcity principle works. The scarcity principle is a sales tactic that suggests to consumers that there is a limited quantity of goods and that those goods are in such high demand that soon there won’t be any left.
Whether or not goods truly are limited is actually beside the point. Using the scarcity principle to your benefit will cause your email recipients to psychologically react with urgency. They will not want to miss out on the deal, discount, sale, or item, and will hurry to buy… or at least hurry to open your email.
Only 5 Spots Left!
Assuming that the “spots” or tickets that are remaining for purchase are relevant to the email recipient, this type of email subject line can be extremely effective in terms of motivating your recipients to open the email. Scarcity emails have actually been around for a while, and consumers have become familiar with the unadvertised benefits, which can include discounts, freebies, and front row seats, among other rewards for acting fast. Curiosity alone could be what pushes your recipients to open this type of email subject line.
Similar to how the “scarcity” email subject line has the power to create a sense of urgency in the minds of recipients, the “countdown” subject line has a way of lighting the same kind of fire under your email recipients, shall we say, rear ends.
This type of “countdown” subject line works best when it’s used in a campaign series that includes no fewer than 3 emails to your recipients.
Ending in 3…2…1… Don’t Miss Out!
Based on your recipients’ familiarity with your email address and brand, they should be fairly curious about what will be “ending” and when exactly the “end” will take place. But what we love most about this subject line is how it combines mystery and urgency into one powerful CTA.
In 2021, there is so much more to email personalization than including the recipients’ first names in the subject line.
Today’s consumers are desensitized to one-dimensional personalization. In fact, some consumers have become downright jaded about it! Instead of simply using a first name, try using as much creativity as possible, like we did in this example.
Becky Loves Fiction, So This Book Is For Becky
The personalization of this email subject line goes way deeper than using the recipient’s first name. We’re willing to bet that Becky’s first reaction when she read this subject line was something like, “my local drug store paid attention to the fact that I like to buy romance novels throughout the summer?” What will she do next? Probably open the store’s email to find out the name of the book they recommend that she buys.
Using “emojis” in your email subject lines can add a touch of fun and humor, but there is one caveat. There are certain recipient email domains that automatically “flag” and send-to-Spam any email subject line that contains an emoji, so you’ll want to do your research before you try this method.
That being said, including emojis in email subject lines has become popular in recent years. The trick to using this strategy is that you must replace a word with an emoji. Meaning, the emoji can’t be decorative. It has to be practical, like the one used in our example.
May We Have This
?
Why do we love it? Who wouldn’t love finding a flamenco dancer in the subject line of their email? Assuming that the recipients have shown interest in dancing in the past, when they receive an email subject line like this, they’ll definitely click to find out who is asking them to dance and the rest of the details.
How could we blog about subject line tips without including this classic idea—the “promotional” subject line? The fact of the matter is that, as a business owner, you’re using email marketing to boost sales, which means a large majority of your campaigns are going to be purely promotional.
That’s perfectly fine! Just make sure to punch up your promotional email subject lines so that they sound fun, creative, and mysterious, instead of bland.
$50 Today, $250 Tomorrow
We love this subject line because it’s both straightforward and intriguing. We would want to know about any $250 product, service, or class that only costs $50 today, and because we would definitely open that email to find out more information, we’re confident that your email recipients will, too.
ECommerce shopping cart abandonment is a part of life, which is why it’s important for business owners to have a system in place of recouping those lost sales.
This is where the “follow up” email campaign comes in handy. The fact of the matter is that follow up emails work, but only when the subject lines are eye-catching enough to compel recipients to open and read. Let’s take a look.
Psst… Did You Forget Something?
This email subject line is intriguing without sounding creepy, which is why we love it! Most consumers appreciate being reminded of things they forgot to do, and if you also include a “buy now” special discount code, your shopping cart abandonment follow up email campaign will succeed at recovering sales before that revenue is lost for good.
There you have it! Try these email subject line tips and measure which ones deliver the highest email open rate for your marketing campaigns!
Are you new to email marketing or looking for a digital marketing agency to handle your next email campaign? Give us a call or visit the FTx 360 website to discover the wide range of digital marketing services we offer. Our marketing specialists have worked with both B2C and B2B businesses of all industries to increase customer engagement and sales, and we can do the same for your company. Contact us today to get started!
The digital marketing specialists at FTx 360 publish a lot of content each month in the form of blog articles. These articles are designed to help business owners like you implement effective digital marketing strategies that benefit their brands.
In case you missed them, the informative marketing articles we posted this month were:
● What’s New on Instagram in 2021
● 6 Back to School Campaign Ideas
● Utilizing Social Media for Your Business
● Marketing Strategies for Pet Companies
● 5 Ways to Improve eCommerce Customer Experience
● How to Plan a Marketing Budget
You can click to read any of these full, original articles to learn in-depth information about the specific digital marketing topic listed above. Otherwise, check out the summaries of each article below.
Instagram has not stopped evolving since it was launched over a decade ago. Today, Instagram users can shop, video chat, watch IGTV channels, and engage with other users on the platform in countless ways. Businesses can advertise and interact with potential customers, all while building their brand and social media presence.
Instagram has launched many improvements throughout the first half of 2021, and more features are yet to arrive as summer turns to autumn later this year. There are upwards of twenty Instagram updates, upgrades, improvements, and new feature launches to watch out for in 2021—far too many to cover in one article. So, we focused our first August article on the following five new Instagram features that are most relevant to your business account:
● Messenger API Update
● Professional Dashboard
● Option to Hide “Likes”
● Suggested Posts
● Interactive Stickers for Stories
This back-to-school season, retailers like you want to deliver a marketing campaign that actually resonates with consumers. Your current customers, as well as potential ones, aren’t interested in hearing about your products and services unless your campaign messages speak to them personally and address their wants, needs, interests, and pain points.
Though it may seem counterintuitive to place your products and services in the background of your ads, this adjustment will help you convert consumers into paying customers. Your promotional content and messages should focus on personalization with the aim of conveying relevant offers that speak to the unique needs of each shopper.
With that in mind, try one, some, or all of these back-to-school campaign ideas:
● Email Marketing Campaigns
● Google Pay-Per-Click Ad Campaigns
● Facebook & Instagram Ad Campaigns
● SMS Text Message Marketing Campaigns
● Responsive Web Design Landing Page Campaigns
● Referral Code Campaigns
Integrating social media into your business strategy will afford your brand countless benefits, including helping you to spread brand awareness, expand your customer base, encourage online engagement with your brand, and increase the virality of your business.
Social media is such a powerful tool for business growth, in fact, that you don’t have to use every platform under the sun. Simply maintaining accounts on one or two social platforms will be enough to support your business needs and social media goals.
But how can you specifically utilize social media for your business? In our third August article, we suggested the following strategies:
● Schedule Organic Posts on Social
● Provide Customer Service Options on Social
● Run Sponsored Content on Social
● Cross-Promote Your Social Media Accounts
● Alter Your Social Content for Different Platforms
If you run a pet company, you understand that the love pet parents have for their furry friends is boundless. Pet parents delight in doting on their dogs and cats, taking photos of their pets, and connecting with other pet lovers online.
You can also connect with pet lovers online, boost your brand, and build your customer base, which is what this FTx 360 article was all about. To summarize, here are the best marketing strategies for pet companies that you can start using today:
● Create Educational Posts About Products
● Make Sure Posts Sound Personal and Not Promotional
● Ask Customers to Leave Reviews on Facebook
● Create Carousel Posts to Increase Viewing Time
● Launch a “Caption This!” Challenge to Boost Engagement
● Use “Insta Grid” as Tiles to Create a Bigger Picture
● Use Branded, Trending, and Location-Based Hashtags
● Encourage ReTweeting to Get the Word Out
● Tweet Photos of Adorable, Adoptable Dogs
● Create Grooming How-To Videos Featuring Your Customers’ Pets
● Use “Before & Afters” in Your Pet Care Tutorials
● Feature a Series on How To Register Pets as Service Dogs & Emotional Support Animals
● Cover Relevant Health Topics & Common Pet Health Issues
● Publish Articles Featuring Your Customers’ Pets
● Include a Newsletter Subscription Sign-Up Button
Customer experiences culminate in either satisfaction or disappointment. The result that ultimately follows is either increased business revenue or dismal eCommerce sales. Customer experience, or CX, is that critical.
You want your customers to have positive experiences when engaging with your brand online, but you might not necessarily understand what eCommerce elements will contribute to providing your website visitors with such an excellent customer experience that they successfully complete the online checkout process.
In this original article, we supplied in-depth steps and went into detail about the following five strategies you can implement to improve your eCommerce site’s customer experience.
● Offer Personalized Website Navigation
● Provide Customized Browsing Experiences
● Feature Customer Reviews & Testimonials
● Enhance the Checkout Process
● Build Brand Affinity with Valuable Content
There’s no alternative to getting serious about professionally marketing your business online, but what if you have no idea where to start?
Should you hire an in-house marketing team? Should you outsource your digital marketing to an agency? Most importantly, what is it really going to cost to launch digital marketing campaigns that successfully expand your customer base, retain loyal customers, build brand presence, increase revenue, and ultimately deliver a worthwhile return on investment?
If these critical questions have crossed your mind, then you’ve come to the right place.
In the full article, we went over how you can plan a marketing budget that will work for your brand. We strongly suggest you check out the original blog post if you want to specifically learn about:
● Why You Need a Marketing Budget
● How To Plan Your Marketing Budget
● Specific Digital Marketing Campaigns to Fund
● The Benefits of Hiring In-house Marketers ss. Working with a Marketing Agency
● How to Determine Your Overall Marketing Budget
A/B Testing, also called Split Testing, is a digital marketing method that uses two different versions of a single campaign to determine which content version performs better in terms of increasing social engagement and improving conversion rates online.
One version of the campaign content, called the A group, is the “control,” and the other version of the campaign content represents the B group, which contains the variation content. Testing different campaign content in this manner can inform a marketer like you which campaign version we should focus on and invest our marketing budget in.
In the world of digital marketing, the desired result is usually conversion, whether it be converting website visitors to newsletter subscribers, newsletter recipients to monthly subscription customers, or monthly subscription customers to brand ambassadors who use word-of-mouth marketing to successfully refer their friends and family to sign up for monthly subscription packages. You get the idea.
The use of A / B Testing can help you achieve tangible business goals, such as:
● Increasing Website Traffic
● Increasing Conversion Rates
● Lowering Bounce Rates
● Lowering Cart Abandonment
Our full article went over the steps you can follow if you want to ensure the best A / B Test results. To summarize, those steps are:
● Identify the Problem
● Identify Your Goal
● Pick One Variable to Test
● Create the Control Campaign (Test A) and the Challenger Campaign (Test B)
● Split Your Sample Groups Equally & Randomly
● Monitor the Results Throughout the Test But Do Not Alter Anything
One of the most powerful marketing tools you have is your website. Whether you have a B2B website, a B2C eCommerce site, or an SaaS platform that’s meant to target both B2B and B2C consumer groups, your website should be designed to pull in web traffic and keep visitors engaged long enough to do business with you.
Older, outdated websites simply won’t serve your digital marketing needs, and you’re probably aware of that. But what you might not be aware of is that your website could be outdated even if it isn’t that old.
In our final August article, we laid out how you can determine whether or not your website is up to date, and we also included the measures you can take right now to update your website if you determine that it’s outdated. But in summary, here’s what your business website or eCommerce site must include in order for it to be considered up to date by today’s standards:
● A Responsive Web Design
● A Call to Action On Every Web Page
● Fast Website Speed & Easy Site Usability
● Social Media Integration
● An Active Blog
Are you interested in partnering with a digital marketing agency? FTx 360 offers a wide array of digital marketing services at affordable costs. Whether you need web design & development, eCommerce marketing services, social media marketing, content marketing, blog articles and blog management, organic and local SEO, email marketing, marketing automation, PPC marketing, or reputation management—we do it all and love every minute of it! Contact us to learn more about what FTx 360 can do for your business and brand!
A/B Testing, also called Split Testing, is a digital marketing method that uses two different versions of a single campaign to determine which content version performs better in terms of increasing social engagement and improving conversion rates online.
One version of the campaign content, called the A group, is the “control,” and the other version of the campaign content represents the B group, which contains the variation content.
Testing differing campaign content in this manner can inform a marketer like you or me which campaign version we should focus on and invest our marketing budget in.
A/B Testing is most often used for email marketing content and social media ad campaign content, but of course it can be used to test any digital content campaigns you wish.
An example of using A / B Testing in a non-marketing scenario would look something like this:
A 4th grader named Tommy has a hypothesis that a plant that receives adequate sunlight will grow faster and appear healthier than a plant that does not have access to sunlight. In order to test his hypothesis, Tommy buys two plants of the same species and size. The plants have been potted with the same soil. He places one potted plant on the windowsill where there is direct sunlight. He places the other potted plant in his closet where sunlight will not reach it. Every day for two weeks, he waters both plants with exactly five ounces of water.
The result that he discovers confirms his hypothesis. At the end of two weeks, the plant which received adequate sunlight grew significantly and now appears healthy with bright green leaves and flowering buds. By contrast, the plant which was kept in his dark closet looks nearly dead.
Since the only differentiating variable between the windowsill plant and the closet plant was the presence or lack of sunlight, Tommy is able to confidently conclude that plants that receive adequate sunlight will grow faster and appear healthier than plants that are deprived of sunlight.
Sure, this example might seem overly simplistic, but the big takeaway that you understand from the A / B Testing of the two plants is that with the exception of sunlight every single variable was the same, i.e. the species of the plants, the quality of the soil, the amount of water used daily, and even the indoor air quality. The only difference between the A plant and the B plant was the sunlight variable.
In the world of digital marketing, an example of an A / B Test could look something like this:
As an adult who waxes nostalgic for the career he almost had in horticulture, Tommy now works as a digital marketer, has an overwhelming mortgage, and often contemplates whether he should yank his children out of public school. He also has a hypothesis—the email marketing campaign that he’s about to launch, which includes a paid subscription sign-up CTA, will perform better if the email includes an incentive offer associated with purchasing the subscription.
The goal of the email marketing campaign is to convert recipients into paid subscribers, and Tommy needs as many new paying subscribers as he can get, because he has that mortgage and those kids to think about….
So, he creates a copy of his email campaign, naming the copy “Test B” and naming the original “Test A.” The only difference between the two email campaigns is that the A Test (original) does not contain an incentive offer, whereas the B Test includes an incentive offer.
Tommy composes a sentence regarding the CTA incentive offer, which happens to be a free ebook download, and plugs the sentence into the B Test email template. Concerning the B Test email, anyone who signs up for a paid subscription will have access to a download link to receive the free ebook.
He launches both email campaigns, the A Test and the B Test, and waits… for two weeks.
Low and behold, at the end of the trial period, Tommy checks the performance of his A Test versus his B Test, and discovers that the B Test, which contained the free ebook incentive, resulted in almost 300% more paid subscription sign-ups than the A Test.
Tommy determines he will enroll his children in the nearby Montessori school that he passes every morning on his way into the office.
As the two examples demonstrated, A / B Testing is a scientific method that’s used to compare two different variables for the purpose of determining which variable will perform better and yield a desired result.
In the world of digital marketing, the desired result is usually conversion, whether it be converting website visitors to newsletter subscribers, newsletter recipients to monthly subscription customers, or monthly subscription customers to brand ambassadors who use word-of-mouth marketing to successfully refer their friends and family to sign up for monthly subscription packages. You get the idea.
A / B Testing is also used in digital advertising campaigns that appear on Facebook & Instagram, Google AdWords, and other online platforms.
A / B variables can be as simplistic as the color of a CTA button, or as complex as whether the CTA is a lead generation form versus a Shop Now button.
When used to compare digital marketing advertisement versions, the A / B Testing stage can last a few weeks to a few months, and the investments for both test campaigns tend to be low. Then, once the marketer ascertains which test campaign performs better, the failing test is pulled down and a large financial investment is then pumped into the winning campaign.
Using an A / B Test to compare two different options that could be used for one campaign variable will yield the clearest results. Meaning, when all campaign elements are identical except for one, you can conclude that if one campaign performs better than the other, it is because of the different variable.
For this reason, A / B Testing works best when only one variable, or campaign element, has two versions representing the A and the B. The results of the sunlight vs. darkness test told Tommy to “use” sunlight if he wants his plants to “perform” well. The results of the incentive offer vs. no incentive offer told Tommy to “use” incentive offers in his email campaigns if he wants the campaign to “perform” better, i.e. to successfully convert recipients into paying subscribers.
That being said, there is another form of A / B Testing that compares many different campaign elements between the A Test and the B Test. This form of A / B Testing is called “multivariate A / B Testing.” When this complex version of A / B Testing is implemented, it can be harder to pinpoint which specific variable or variables performed better.
For instance, let’s say you run a multivariate A / B Test for a website landing page. The goal of the landing page is to generate leads. In order to generate leads, the landing page uses a CTA incentive, which is a “locked” webinar. In order to unlock and watch the webinar, the visitor must complete the CTA. Both landing pages are identical except for the following variables:
● The Design Layout
● The CTA
● The Content Font Size & Color
The A Test uses a design layout that does not match the brand’s logo or website. The CTA is an email opt-in form. The landing page content uses an extremely large, purple font.
The B Test uses a design layout that so closely resembles a major competitor that it’s inevitable this thing is going to wind up in court. The CTA is a “Tweet This Now” button, and the landing page content uses a red, moderately-sized, cursive font.
A few weeks, or perhaps a few months go by, then the performance results are analyzed.
Did the A Test generate more email leads? Or did the B Test render more Tweets? How would a Tweet even generate a viable lead in the first place??? (Bonus points if you caught that critical error!) Which landing page succeeded?
As it turns out, Test B had more Tweets than Test A had emails… but what does that mean?
The data is, for lack of a better term, a pile of confusion.
Does this mean you should avoid launching multivariate A / B Tests? Not necessarily. If you have experience analyzing A / B Test data and feel confident you’ll be able to differentiate the performance results of many competing variables at once, then multivariate A / B Testing could potentially provide you with a wealth of valuable insights that help you launch an extremely successful campaign.
In fact, the following are the pros to launching multivariate A / B Tests:
● Provides valuable insights regarding the interactions between multiple content elements
● Provides granular data regarding which campaign elements positively or negatively impact performance results
● Enables marketers to compare many versions of a campaign, not just two, and conclude which one will have maximum impact overall
But multivariate A / B Testing also comes with cons:
● Can be highly complex and might require an expert to conduct an analysis of the resulting data
● Requires significantly more traffic than a normal A / B Test in order to render statistically valuable results
● Too many campaign variable combinations could cause the results to be too difficult to interpret, rendering the entire test and its associated costs a waste of time and money
If you want to launch a multivariate A / B Test but don’t want to go it alone, then give us a call. The marketing specialists at FTx 360 will make sure your test campaigns result in performance data you’ll be able to analyze easily… and yes, we’ll analyze the data for you, too!
So, you’re ready to get down to business and devise a digital marketing A / B Test. You’ve done your research and you’re already excited about improving one or many areas of your business. You envision achieving tangible business goals as a result of using A / B Testing, such as:
● Increasing Website Traffic
● Increasing Conversion Rates
● Lowering Bounce Rates
● Lowering Cart Abandonment
Here are the steps you should follow if you want to ensure the best A / B Test results.
Why do you want to launch an A / B Test in the first place? Have you launched a blog that isn’t getting any web traffic? Have you noticed that your Facebook “Shop Now” native ad hasn’t resulted in higher eCommerce sales? Do you suspect the subject lines of your email marketing campaigns are the reason your emails aren’t being opened? Before you can solve the problem, and before you will know how to solve the problem, you first must identify what the problem is.
Once you’ve identified the problem, you can identify the goal you’d like to accomplish using A / B Testing. The more specific your goal is, the easier it will be for you to reach it. For example, if your promotional emails aren’t being opened at an acceptable rate, you’ll want to make note of the current open rate and then decide what the goal open rate should be. Meaning, if the current email open rate for your promotional campaigns averages 8%, you might set an open rate goal of 16%. This is a tangible goal that you will be able to compare your campaign data with easily.
As we covered in this article, if you’re new to A / B Testing, then you should start with testing only one variable, or campaign element, as opposed to testing multiple variables at once. The precise variable you decide to test, however, should relate to both the problem and the goal you’ve identified. For instance, if the problem you’re facing is a low open rate on your email campaigns and you’ve set a goal of doubling the open rate, the only variables that pertain to your problem are the email subject line and the email lead-in description that appears in recipients’ inboxes. Those two variables are what your recipients can see, and based on what they see, they will either open your email or delete it. Choose to test only one of those variables. Let’s say, the email subject line.
This step is straightforward, but will be the most time consuming. It’s time to actually create the two email campaigns and set them up in your email automation software. Make sure that both tests are clearly labeled and that the different subject lines appear perfectly. Hopefully, you’ve spent adequate time researching how to write email subject lines that increase the chances of recipients opening them.
While splitting your sample groups might not always apply to the particular A / B Test you’re running, let’s take a look at this step anyway since it’s relevant to an email marketing campaign A / B Test. In this instance, you obviously can’t send two emails to the same recipient list, so you’ll need to create two recipient “groups.” The two groups should contain a cross-section of your subscribers that includes all demographics. Meaning, both groups should contain all ages, both genders, both new and old subscribers, both high-spending and low-spending customers, and so on. This is opposed to one group containing loyal, high-spending, mature subscribers and another group containing new, low-spending subscribers, which would skew the results.
Once you launch your A / B Test email campaign, automating that the A Test goes to one group while the B Test goes to the other group, you can kick back and allow an appropriate amount of time to go by. Depending on the nature of the A / B Test, you may want to let a few weeks or a few months pass. In the case of our email campaign, waiting a full week will be enough. The main point here is that while your tests are running, you can monitor the evolving results, but do not alter your campaigns.
After an appropriate amount of time has passed, you can analyze the performance of the A Test versus the B Test. Compare the results of each test to the goal you set for yourself at the onset of your campaign. Which test performed better? If so, how much better? Did either test meet or exceed your goal? Simply put, whichever test performed better is the one you should invest in moving forward.
FTx 360 can handle your campaigns and implement A / B Testing you can trust. Contact us now to get started or to learn more about what our digital marketing specialists can do for your business.
Yes, it’s August, but it isn’t too late to strategize and market your back-to-school promotional campaigns.
If the very thought of spearheading your own back-to-school marketing campaign overwhelms you, give us a call at FTx 360. Our marketing strategists can work with just about any budget and no campaign timeline is too short.
For those of you who are ready to tackle your own back-to-school marketing, this article is packed with the best advertising strategy tips to help you market your back-to-school sales, drive website and in-store traffic, and gain appreciative customers who will keep shopping with you into winter and next year.
This back-to-school season, you want to deliver a marketing campaign that actually resonates with consumers. Your current customers, as well as potential ones, aren’t interested in hearing about your products and services unless your campaign messages speak to them personally and address their wants, needs, interests, and pain points.
Though it may seem counterintuitive to place your products and services in the background of your ads, this adjustment will help you convert consumers into paying customers. Your promotional content and messages should focus on personalization with the aim of conveying relevant offers that speak to the unique needs of each shopper.
Rather than use salesy ads that feature products with discounted prices in a straightforward manner, instead, highlight the relevancy of your products and convey how your products will make your customers’ lives easier.
If it’s not immediately clear to you why some of your products would be relevant to certain segments of your shoppers but not others, then it’s time to dig into your CRM software data. Your CRM data—or Customer Relationship Management data which is associated with your online or in-store POS—contains the purchase histories of all of your customers along with other insightful data. By grouping your customers into segments, you will be able to identify the products, services, preferences, spending thresholds, and interests of each segment. Once you understand your customers’ pain points and know what they like, want, and need, you can speak to them in a manner that will seem personal to them, using “the three Ts of relevancy.”
Rather than present your product in a straightforward manner within your back-to-school marketing campaigns, instead, present your shoppers with a topic that’s relevant to one of their pain points. By addressing a specific topic, providing information on that topic that’s relevant to your shoppers, and presenting your product as the solution to the topic at hand, your marketing campaigns will resonate with shoppers.
For example, rather than post a photo of a notebook with a “60% off” sticker on social media, which is as uncreative as it gets, instead, feature this shocking fact in your social post:
“Students that use a pen and paper to take notes in class are 62% more likely to remember lessons in the long term than students who use laptops.” —Princeton University Study
That’s a conversation starter right there! As the social media conversation takes off in the comments section under your post, a byproduct will be that parents, students, and teachers rush off to purchase notebooks before they’re sold out… at your store.
In terms of marketing products and services that consumers need right now, promoting back-to-school offers during the back-to-school season is ideal timing, obviously. But we recommend that retailers go the extra mile by researching the return date for your local public schools, private schools, colleges, and universities.
Public schools tend to open earlier than private ones, for example, which means the back-to-school season in your region could begin in late July and extend through September.
To amplify personalization, you could launch different digital back-to-school promotional campaigns for each educational institution using school-specific social media hashtags, for instance. A little research will go a long way in this regard.
The third and final “T” of the 3 Ts of Relevancy has to do with the type of promotional marketing campaign you deliver to your customers. Our quote above states, “This is the format I prefer!” What we’re referring to here are the campaign delivery methods. Not all of your shoppers are going to want to hear about your back-to-school sale via email newsletter, but a lot of them will.
The next sections of this article will focus on the various campaign formats you can use to reach your current customers as well as new ones. This is where personalization is key, however. If you want shoppers to act on your back-to-school sale, you have to deliver your campaigns in the formats they want. You might discover that certain segments of your customers want one format while others want a different format. As a result, you might need to launch back-to-school campaigns in multiple formats, and that’s okay.
These are the most common promotional campaign delivery format methods:
● Email Marketing Campaigns
● Google PPC Ad Campaigns
● Facebook & Instagram Ad Campaigns
● SMS Text Message Campaigns
● Responsive Web Design Landing Page Campaigns
● Referral Code Campaigns
Let’s take a look at how you can use each one.
EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGN
Never overlook the promotional power of an email marketing campaign. Why are email campaigns so effective? Because the recipients have already agreed to receive emails from you. In fact, you can bet that emails are their preferred format in terms of hearing from you. Anyone who signed up for your email newsletter or supplied you with their email address to enroll in your loyalty program wants to hear from you via email!
Using personalization to promote the most relevant back-to-school items to your segmented email recipients, consider launching a campaign similar to this one we composed for a pet supply store:
Subject Line: A Back-to-School Bundle Just for You, [FIRST NAME]
Email: Get Fluffy ready for back-to-school season with these hand-picked items bundled just for your furry friend and you!
Relevant Product Bundle: Cat calming treats, an assemble-yourself cat tree, and a cat-themed adult coloring book
When it comes to finding the best back-to-school deals in town, a lot of consumers rely on Google to find stores near them. If you have yet to set up a Google My Business account, or don’t understand why you should, we’ve written an entire article on the subject, Making the Most Out of Google My Business, which will guide you through the process. Once you’ve set up your Google My Business account, Google’s geographically specific algorithms will start recommending your business in location-based search results. Then, link your Google AdWords ad to your GMB Page.
The best Google AdWords campaigns are attention-grabbing and hook the viewer right away. Bear in mind the 3 Ts of Relevancy when composing your PPC AdWords content, like we’ve done for this fitness center:
Web Page Title: Sara Dance Center | Last Chance to Join for $1
Web Page Description: Professional ballroom dance competitor-turned-instructor, Maria, is looking for 10 dedicated students to whip into shape this back-to-school season at the low cost of $1. Click to find out how you can participate in Maria’s 30-day Salsa program hosted by Sara Dance Center!
Taking photos of the kids on the first day of school and sharing them on Facebook and Instagram has become an annual ritual for most parents, and the back-to-school fun doesn’t stop there. In fact, parents and students alike use Facebook and Instagram to find deals on school supplies as well as search for apparel, accessories, and fashion styling inspiration. Running an ad campaign on Facebook and Instagram is a good idea for both brick-and-mortar retailers and eCommerce shops. Just remember that when you create your back-to-school ad campaign in Facebook Business Manager, use detailed targeting so that your paid ad isn’t wasted on the wrong users.
The most important aspect of any social media ad campaign is the Call-to-Action button you include. Don’t even think about running an ad without a CTA. It won’t be worth your time, money, or effort. In our humble opinion, the most valuable CTA you can include is a lead generator. Check out this example we put together for one of our restaurant clients who wanted to enroll customers into their loyalty rewards program:
Headline: Students’ Specials for Back-to-School
Description: This August and September, [RESTAURANT] is offering swag and sandwiches to students who sign up for our customer loyalty rewards program. Power through the long academic year with meals from [RESTAURANT]. Click the Sign-Up button below to claim your loyalty swag and sandwich, and start saving!
Call-to-Action Button: “Sign Up”
Lead Generator Fields: “First Name” & “Email Address”
Everyone loves text messages. In fact, most Americans prefer texting rather than calling when it comes to relaying quick messages. The average text message open rate is 99%, and 96% of all text messages are opened within 15 minutes. In terms of marketing, those are dream statistics. While you would never want to text your customers too frequently, choosing to contact them via SMS text message during one or two special times of the year is appropriate. One of those special times of the year should be back-to-school season since it’s second only to Christmas.
Launching an SMS text message campaign to market your back-to-school sale will only work if you’ve collected your customers’ cell phone numbers, and to be honest, this marketing campaign method works best for professional services businesses like salons, spas, and barbershops. If you run a professional service business, try an SMS back-to-school campaign idea like this one we launched for our beauty salon client:
Text Message: Want to be featured in our back-to-school lookbook? Revamp your look for a fraction of the price this August & September at [SALON NAME]! We’re offering 90% off to anyone who wants to model in our future social media marketing! Reply with ‘BOOK ME’ to reserve your appointment now!
Landing pages can be used for a variety of marketing reasons to pull in customers, but they all serve one major purpose—to convert website visitors into customers who complete the entire buyer’s journey. More often than not, a landing page will offer visitors a special gift, such as a free download, ebook, webinar signup, free trial, or exclusive access to products and services. Landing pages are unique in this sense because they don’t directly market products to visitors. Instead, they trigger instant engagement by featuring a form, survey, quiz, virtual tour, or some other personalized interaction. In terms of marketing your back-to-school sale, you can think of a landing page as an interactive step that motivates website visitors to buy your products. The trick with using landing pages as part of your back-to-school marketing campaigns is to make sure you have a responsive web design in place that displays properly on all devices.
As we mentioned, landing pages can be used in a variety of ways to promote your back-to-school sale, and a whole host of different kinds of businesses use them. Here’s an example of a back-to-school landing page we put together for one of our clients that runs an academic tutoring business:
Web Page Header: There’s only one thing you need to know… you’ll never stop learning.
Content: Take control of your learning by working on the skills you choose at your own pace with our online courses for students of all levels. Sharpen your skills with over 1,000 interactive exercises. Math, science, algebra, biology, computer programming, history, art, grammar & spelling, economics…
Start learning now.
Students receive free online classes and one-on-one online tutoring throughout September 31st. Interested in tutoring? There’s a form for that as well!
(Include two forms, one for parents & students to sign up and another for tutors.)
A referral campaign, or a “refer-a-friend” campaign, is a marketing strategy that retailers use to incentivize their existing customers to recommend their store and products to friends, family, and acquaintances. Typically, referral programs of this nature will reward their customers for making successful referrals and also reward the people they successfully refer. Often a discount code is used, i.e. a referral code. Launching a referral code campaign is a great strategy for brick-and-mortar retailers who want to boost back-to-school sales, and this campaign idea is also effective for eCommerce retailers.
The fun thing about this back-to-school campaign idea is that you can deliver your referral code offer to your customers any way you—and they—would like. You can send out an email marketing campaign or SMS text message marketing campaign that promotes your back-to-school referral code, place a Facebook & Instagram ad, reword your Google My Business Page to promote your referral code, and link to a new landing page that also has the referral code. The sky is really the limit when it comes to using referral codes as part of your back-to-school marketing. Check out what we did for our health & wellness client recently:
Hook: Give $5, Get $5
Headline: Help your friends feel their best while back at school
Body: Loving your health supplements and wellness products from [RETAILER]? Share the love with your friends, family, and fellow students! We’ll give them $5 off to support their wellbeing if they use your unique referral code! And we’ll give you $5 off your next order, too! Enter your email address to receive a unique referral code and start spreading the love!
Now that we’ve laid out six back-to-school marketing campaign ideas all you need to do is come up with personalized content and launch your campaigns! But what if you need help with the graphic design and layout of your campaigns?
Attention-grabbing advertisements are an integral aspect of any solid retail marketing strategy. Whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or an eCommerce shop—or perhaps both—your offline and online presence must be strong if you want to expand your reach, drive traffic, and convert first-time visitors into returning customers.
In order to help retailers do just that, our sister company, FTx, has developed user-friendly graphic design software. This software, AdPro, can be used anytime at no charge. That’s right, it’s free! This software was engineered to deliver professional results. Regardless of your skill level, the advertisements you can build will look amazing and can be used for all of your marketing, promotional, and social media campaigns.
Best of all, free AdPro comes with a full library of industry-specific templates and holiday themes, including back-to-school templates and themes!
Interested in working with a digital marketing agency to handle your promotional campaigns this back-to-school season and beyond? FTx 360 can work within any budget. Our experienced social media and email marketers can handle your campaigns, target your audience, and help take your business to the next level. Contact us today to get started.
Have you ever walked into a house and fallen in love with the atmosphere? Everything from the home furnishings to the stylized decor to the archways that connect each beautifully laid out room contributed to the wonderful experience you had while there. At the time, you might not have been aware that an architect had to draw up blueprints and contractors had to construct the home, first and foremost, in order for the interior design team who came in next to paint, furnish, and decorate. You see, your experience at the house, which left a lasting impression on you, would not have been possible without the architect and the contractors who built according to the blueprints.
In the same way, the specific experience you have on any given website would not be possible without the architect of the website, otherwise known as the lead web developer, and his or her team of builders who are the web developers that actually construct the website by writing coded language.
Producing a final website is not possible without a web designer, or website design team, just as a house would never go on the market until the walls had been painted, the floors tiled, and the overall decor arranged to give the best impression to prospective buyers. Today, we are going to focus on web developers, but if you would like to learn more about web designers, check out Web Design Trends, which goes into detail on the subject.
In this article, you will learn about website developers, what they’re responsible for, and what they can do for your business. Frontend, backend, and full-stack web development skills are just the beginning of what professional website developers bring to the table. They also create the basic structure and presentation of a website using website scripting languages. All-in-all, their work greatly impacts SEO, inbound marketing, and even revenue increases. Keep reading to discover everything there is to know about web development and what hiring a web developer can do for your company.
A website developer is a skilled programmer who specializes in building “World Wide Web” applications, i.e. websites.
The anchor of a website, which is the bedrock that web developers build upon, is a URL. In today’s competitive market, all websites use “custom domains.” A custom domain, also referred to as a vanity URL, is the branded website name that appears in the address bar of every web browser. Custom domains are not free and must be purchased by a qualifying provider and registered.
There are three primary types of web developers who build out custom domain URL websites. These are frontend developers, backend developers, and full-stack developers. Let’s take a look at what each of these three types of developers do.
The term “frontend” refers to the “visitor-side” of a website. When you visit a website, everything you see from the layout to the color scheme to the CTA opt-in forms appear thanks to the work of the frontend web developer. Because frontend developers are responsible for the UI, or user interface, they tend to work closely with the site’s web designer. Frontend developers use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to craft the best UI possible, which we will take a closer look at further in this article.
As you might have guessed, just as the “frontend” developer is responsible for everything website visitors will see, the backend web developer is responsible for everything that happens behind the scenes in order to make a website function. Their territory is often referred to as the “server-side,” because backend developers work on the “guts” of the website within the server, application, and database. In order to ensure excellent UX, or user experience, backend developers collaborate with frontend developers as they develop code.
Highly experienced web developers generally go beyond offering either frontend or backend development services. Instead, these developers learn both sides of the development equation. Any website developer who offers frontend as well as backend web development is called a “full-stack web developer.” Known in the industry as development geniuses, full-stack web developers do it all because they know it all.
Whether you hire front-end and back-end developers or hire a single full-stack developer, your web developers should be mindful to build MarTech into your site for you. Shorthand for “marketing technology,” the term MarTech refers to any marketing software solution that helps marketers research, strategize, execute, analyze, and optimize their campaigns across all digital platforms. MarTech combines marketing with technology, and oftentimes marketers will consolidate multiple MarTech solutions into a stack, known as a MarTech Stack. The purpose of utilizing MarTech is to improve engagement with customers and drive sales, and yes, really smart web developers will build your website with your future marketing strategies in mind.
Every website presents an interface to the visitors who navigate from one web page to the next. The presentation of a website’s basic structure is the result of web developers using programming language to write code. The most common programming languages in use today are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Let’s take a look at each one so that you become familiar with web development jargon.
“HTML” stands for “hypertext markup language.” This programming language has been considered the standard markup language for websites since the 90s. You can think of HTML as the foundation that must be laid prior to building a beautiful house. Providing the basic structure of a website, HTML is the bedrock that other technologies, such as CSS and JavaScript are fixed upon.
Short for “cascading style sheets,” CSS directly impacts the experiences visitors have when they interact with a website. CSS programming language modifies and enhances HTML to define the website’s layout, formatting, and overall presentation. This programming language is considered a cornerstone technology for the World Wide Web. Like HTML, web developers are experts in CSS due to the fact that reliable, functional, well-performing websites cannot be built without this essential language.
Another crucial layer to constructing a website that performs excellently is JavaScript, a complex programming language that is used to control the behavior of different web page elements. What do we mean by that? JavaScript’s logic-based programming language is how web developers include opt-in boxes, newsletter signups, and other CTAs on websites. Without JavaScript, websites would not be “interactive.”
No matter which programming language your web developer uses—HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or a combination of all three—they should be mindful to include coding that offers a “responsive web design.” This term refers to technology that automatically resizes, rearranges, and adjusts website content so that it displays correctly on all mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, iPads, and other handheld devices. Also known as “mobile optimization,” responsive design is a necessary aspect of web design and development.
Website developers have a massive responsibility—to provide the best user experience, or UX, possible. Since web developers construct the layout of a website, which involves working closely with website designers, they are responsible for creating visually interesting and experientially engaging web pages that load fast and perform excellently. This means that web developers take extreme care when developing landing pages and optimizing websites for their inbound marketing potential, which includes coding opt-in forms and other marketing CTAs right into the web pages
themselves. Let’s take a look.
Landing pages have many synonyms, such as a lead capture page, squeeze page, and destination page, to name a few. Whichever term is used, this type of page refers to a single web page that’s
used as part of a digital marketing CTA for lead generation. For example, when an internet user clicks on a SEO search result, marketing email, or online advertisement, they are directed to the landing page that the web developer has set up. Landing pages typically display content that’s relevant to the user’s search or the ad the user clicked. And yes, a savvy web developer will be your best bet for including lead generation capabilities like this on your website.
A savvy web developer is also your best bet for connecting effective inbound marketing channels to your website. Inbound marketing strategies include content marketing, SEO, social media, blogs, and other digital marketing methods that draw consumers into a business’ marketing funnel. Inbound marketing campaign content places an emphasis on personally connecting with consumers and solving consumer pain points, which indirectly promotes the business’ products and solutions. Put simply, inbound marketing is any strategy that helps potential customers discover a business or
brand.
As we mentioned, opt-in forms and other CTAs are coded right into your web pages by your web developer. These forms and CTAs appear on websites and function as data collection tools. When a lead fills out an opt-in form on your website, information about the lead is automatically gathered and stored for you to leverage in the future during your marketing campaigns.
Web developers, as you can see, are truly responsible for the fate of the websites they develop.
SEO, or search engine optimization, refers to the objective of driving online user traffic to a website by elevating the website’s standing with search engines such as Google. Ideally, businesses want their websites to appear on the first page of Google’s search results whenever a user is looking for a company like theirs. Using relevant keywords within web content optimizes search engine ranking. Keywords are words, phrases, or questions that a Google user might type into the search bar in order to generate a list of possible websites relevant to their search topic. The term SEO only applies to non-paid, organic search results. Web developers contribute to the SEO of the websites they develop.
As a business owner, you want to maximize your daily site visitors. A “site visitor” is any internet user who lands on or navigates through your website. Websites collect valuable visitor data, including IP addresses and cookies, to determine how many unique site visitors have visited each web page, where those site visitors came from, and what actions they took while visiting the website. This is data you want, which means optimizing your website for SEO is a must. What can you do with visitor data? A lot. By analyzing the number of visitors that land on your website, you will learn important metrics such as the overall visitor frequency along with crucial demographic information. This information can then be leveraged during the creation and publication of additional website content to improve website traffic and increase sales revenue.
Launching a blog is easily the most worthwhile strategy in terms of integrating new SEO into your business website, so be sure to ask your web developer to include a blog on the site they develop for you. By featuring a blog on your website, you will organically begin to build brand awareness, improve SEO, drive website traffic, and increase revenue. Short for “web-logs,” blogs are actually considered an original social media platform for two reasons. Posts can be published frequently to immediately engage an audience, and discussions are often triggered based on the articles’ content. These discussions unfold in the comments section beneath each post. By including opt-in forms within your blog posts and automating the publication of each article, you can effectively convert website visitors into loyal customers.
Another effective SEO strategy involves using “dynamic content” on your website, and any web developer worth his or her salt will program your site using dynamic content. Also called adaptive content, dynamic content refers to the component on web pages that changes the page’s content based on visitor data, behavior, and preferences. Because these content changes can be automated, dynamic content keeps site visitors engaged while freeing up marketers to focus on other tasks. Changing the content naturally updates the web page’s SEO, which can improve search engine ranking.
Business owners who want to avoid hiring a web developer and who are not prepared to learn how to use HTML editors and in-line coding themselves might opt to use a WYSIWYG website building platform instead.
Instead of writing web page code and building your website from scratch all on your own, you could opt for a What You See Is What You Get, or WYSIWYG, website building platform. These user-friendly platforms come with rich text editors, drag-and-drop editors, and point-and-click editors. In other words, a WYSIWYG platform will enable you to quickly build and edit your website once you have chosen a template from their CMS. Let’s take a look.
CMS, or content management systems, provide users with technologically simplistic templates. These templates can be edited with drag-and-drop features, as we mentioned. The user-friendly nature of website builders with CMS allows the user to construct a fully functional website or eCommerce store without the help of a professional web developer. This is due to the fact that the CMS platform itself handles all of the basic backend infrastructure. Once your WYSIWYG website is established, the CMS software platform will help you create, manage, modify, and schedule all of your content in an organized, easy-to-execute manner.
Let’s take an in-depth look at “point-and-click” editors, “drag-and-drop” editors, and mobile-optimized responsive website design so that you’re fully informed in case you choose to go the WYSIWYG route.
Point-and-click editing is a design feature that empowers the user to add elements of code into web pages without having to formally program that code into the backend. Point-and-click editor allows the user to easily add plugins, source buttons, and code snippets among other widgets to the pages of their website or eCommerce store without having to rely on a web designer. Businesses can also invest in free-standing point-and-click editors to create, write, and revise their Wikipedia pages and other online business encyclopedias.
A drag-and-drop website builder enables users to create a website without having to learn CSS commands or write code. The user simply selects a basic layout theme from a library of professionally designed templates and proceeds to drag-and-drop widgets, fill in text, and make other alterations to personalize the site for their business. Drag-and-drop website builders give business owners the freedom to build their websites exactly as they want and easily update their web content without having to rely on a web designer or agency.
A mobile-optimized responsive website design template is a build-your-own-website template that has been designed to display correctly on all devices for optimal viewing. The templates themselves are coded to automatically adapt to any screen size and orientation so that the website looks great, functions well, and is easy to read on computers, smartphones, and tablets. If you opt to build your own website instead of hiring a professional web developer, then be sure to choose a web building platform that offers mobile-optimized responsive web design templates.
At the end of the day, your business website has the potential to be your most powerful digital marketing tool. When visitors land on your website, they read the home page, navigate through the entire site, and decide whether or not to purchase your products and services based on their experience interacting with your website. For this reason, making sure that your website performs excellently is the most important thing you can do for your business.
Is your website performing as well as it should? Our article, What Do Customers Look For in a Website? can help you determine where your site stands in the eyes of consumers, so be sure to give it a read.
If your website or eCommerce store isn’t performing as well as it should, you could try your hand at constructing a new site using a WYSIWYG web building platform like Squarespace, Wix, or Weebly… Or you could have the website development team at FTx 360 handle your site for you. Our web developers work hand-in-hand with artistic website designers to produce stunning websites that strike a perfect balance between beautiful and functional, and our websites always load properly on mobile devices. Contact us to check out our portfolio or get your project started with our web development services today.
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Is it time to outsource your digital marketing?
When you first opened your business, you probably did just about everything yourself. This is par for the course. In the beginning, the owners of most start-ups and small businesses handle every aspect of their day-to-day workflow either themselves or in-house by assigning tasks to their employees.
But this is only manageable for so long. As a business grows, its needs expand. Continuing to assign new tasks to pre-existing employees runs the risk of overburdening them, which could lead to sloppy work and unhappy workers.
There are certain signs that indicate it might be time for you, as a business owner, to consider outsourcing your digital marketing, which include:
● Your current staff doesn’t have the skills. Effective digital marketing includes a lot of moving parts. Trends change constantly. New technologies and platforms emerge regularly. Is it reasonable to expect your account managers to post on social media during their “down time”? Will the quality of their digital marketing efforts be very good when it’s outside of their chosen career path?
● Your digital marketing initiatives are focused on tasks and not strategy. In order for any marketing campaign to succeed, you must have a plan in place. When your team is overworked, they’ll only have time to address day-to-day tasks and their mindset will be to “get stuff done.” Digital marketing isn’t about getting stuff done. It’s about getting the right stuff done and parceling out strong campaign tactics that result in increased revenue and overall business growth.
● You’re anticipating company growth and planning for business expansion. Have you recently signed a bunch of new clients? Have you opened a second retail location? Are you about to launch an eCommerce site? If you’re in the process of expanding your business, then you might be assuming you’ll have to hire additional staff to keep up with the demand, and you’re absolutely correct. But hiring an in-house marketing team shouldn’t be your first move.
If you’re considering outsourcing your digital marketing, but are still on the fence, this article is for you. Here are the 5 benefits of outsourcing your digital marketing.
PROVIDES A FRESH PERSPECTIVE TO YOUR BRAND
As a business owner, of course you love your company. But as they say, love is blind. Way-back-when you first saw your brand-new company logo, you thought it looked amazing, and it probably did. But as time passed, your love for your brand might have kept you blind to the possibility that your logo, and other marketing elements you’ve been using over the years, haven’t exactly updated to stay on trend.
That’s a problem. An outside marketing agency will add a fresh perspective to your brand. Their professional experts will be able to see the big picture of how your brand should fit into your industry’s market and make the necessary upgrades for you.
AFFORDS YOU FLEXIBILITY
Unlike the high commitment that comes with hiring an in-house employee or a team of in-house marketing associates, working with a digital marketing agency will afford you flexibility, and is therefore considered low or no commitment by comparison. This is a huge benefit. If you don’t like the finished work that a digital marketing agency provides, you can release them because you hired them on a project basis and entered into a short-term contract. Simply move on to the next agency for your next project and test them out in the same manner.
When an agency delivers results as promised after the completion of their first project for you, then you can engage them for the next project. But if they haven’t delivered or if the ROI is dismal, then you’re free to move on. This kind of flexibility will save you from getting locked into an agreement with an agency that isn’t serving you properly.
Digital marketing takes time. It can be challenging, tedious, and demanding. Creating marketing campaigns, generating awesome content, and scheduling all of your digital marketing is a full-time job. While it might seem like hiring one in-house employee to handle all of your digital marketing is a smart idea, the fact of the matter is that digital marketing is extremely dynamic.
You will be hard-pressed to find one individual who possesses all of the skills required to write flawless content, create stunning graphics using graphic design software, research trending SEO keywords, and accomplish everything in-between. Hiring an entire team of marketers in-house to address all aspects of your digital marketing could cost a fortune when you factor in salaries, employer taxes, health insurance matches, and other associated expenses. To minimize your overhead and save yourself time and money, outsourcing your digital marketing is the way to go.
In the long run, partnering with a digital marketing agency will give you firsthand access to expert knowledge. The marketing professionals at full-service marketing agencies like FTx 360 include web and mobile app developers, SEO experts, graphic designers, copywriters, social media experts, and most importantly, campaign strategists, all of whom will comprise your dedicated team.
As you interface with your account manager, you’ll have the full breadth of support from the entire team. This includes access to advanced marketing and analytics tools, such as SEMrush, which might otherwise be unaffordable if you, as a business owner, opted to purchase a subscription. The benefits of having access to expert-level knowledge are never ending.
● The agency will accomplish your marketing tasks on their schedule, and when the unexpected arises, you will have to exercise patience until their marketers have time to help you.
Tip: Before hiring an agency, ask them about their timelines for specific projects and how they will accommodate last-minute marketing requests. The best digital marketing agencies will assign an account manager to your business who will be available to help you immediately, no matter what.● While an outsourced digital marketing agency is far cheaper than paying the salaries of in-house marketing associates, the costs can still add up depending on the agency you go with, how many experts they assign to your account, and how dynamic your projects or tasks are.
Tip: When working with a new agency, really pace yourself. Don’t ask them to handle 100% of every aspect of your digital marketing. Carefully review their price points per service. Go with one or two services for a short period of time. And be sure to analyze the ROI before asking them to handle more of your marketing needs.● Marketing professionals, especially creative experts, are known for their ability to decisively execute their creative vision. But their strong ideas for your company may not completely align with your own vision for your brand’s future. You hired them for a reason, however, and you will have to accept their directive and allow them to do what they do best.
Tip: Prior to working with any digital marketing agency, sit down with their professionals and probe them to find out their creative vision for your brand, especially if you’re considering full-blown rebranding. See if they’re willing to create mock-ups of the image graphics they have in mind for your company. Vet them as deeply as possible. And understand that once you hire them, their expertise will trump your inclinations for your business. The major takeaway is that outsourcing your digital marketing will absolutely benefit your company, but it doesn’t come without risks. That being said, you can easily mitigate the disadvantages of working with a digital marketing agency by thoroughly vetting each agency you’re considering. Ask them hard questions and don’t accept sugarcoated answers. Be realistic as you assess your options, and once you decide to go with an agency, start slowly, engage them on a project-per-project basis, and carefully analyze whether or not they’re delivering the results they promised. Are you interested in outsourcing your digital marketing? FTx 360 offers a wide array of digital marketing services at affordable costs, and we never pressure our clients to turn over all of their marketing to us straightaway. Our professional marketing experts take pride in their skills and enjoy the process of proving themselves to new clients. Whether you need web design & development, eCommerce marketing services, social media marketing, content marketing, blog articles and blog management, organic and local SEO, email marketing, marketing automation, PPC marketing, or reputation management—we do it all and love every minute of it! Contact us today to speak with a marketing expert about everything FTx 360 can do for your brand! Want to read more articles like this? Enter your email below to subscribe to our mailing list and be the first to know about the latest marketing trends!"Marketing is enthusiasm transferred to the customer."
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