Content Marketing Archives - Shout.com

What is Data-Driven Marketing?

Evan — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 13:47:09 +0000

Internet use in the United Kingdom has increased by 78% year on year. This supports an earlier report by Cisco that forecasts monthly data traffic in 2021 will reach at least 10.6 Exabytes.

With the advent of mass digitalization and the mainstream acceptance of online transactions, data traffic is higher than ever before. For companies, this has opened the door for a more nuanced, effective, and intelligent initiative in the form of data-driven marketing.

What is Data-Driven Marketing?

Data-driven marketing is the process of collecting from data sources such as direct customer interaction and third party information to create more targeted and personalized marketing strategies.

By using this data as a compass of sorts, marketers can pivot their strategies to address the present and future needs and behaviours of the market.

This is significantly more effective and efficient in comparison to generic blanket approaches to digital marketing that cast an unnecessary (and expensive) wide net in the hopes of hitting a few targets.

What are the benefits of data-driven marketing?

The benefits of this approach include helping define consumers, identifying patterns that result in higher conversions, and designing a personalized customer experience.

This is especially useful considering the oversaturation of online markets. Consumers will almost immediately swipe past something generic, whereas a targeted campaign will attract attention.

Data-driven campaigns are becoming an industry standard, especially since most consumers already “expect” personalized products and experiences, as stated in Zenith research.

By reviewing customer data, you can build a catalogue of interests, hobbies, gripes and needs to strengthen your campaigns. If you collect a large amount of data, you can start to build customer profiles (buyer personas), which can be a real asset when choosing target audiences.

But the application of data-driven marketing efforts goes beyond your offerings and interactions, they can also be used to improve your content marketing campaigns. The more personal and solution focussed your content is, the more valuable it will be to your customers.

How to Get Started with Data-Driven Marketing

Social media

Today, the influence and reach of social media has made it a key asset for brands to connect with consumers whilst gathering important data.

Marketing teams just getting into data-driven marketing strategies will find that social media channels can provide some of the largest datasets via multiple organic touchpoints.

This is largely because social media often has integrated data-gathering tools that are assimilated into the users’ natural online journey.

Case in point: Instagram and its legion of followers. Instagram Analytics can clue you in on your followers’ interests and habits, thereby helping you fine-tune your marketing strategies.

While on the users’ end it just looks like they’re liking a post, for you, that is translated into important data that lets you know:

what posts work
which posting times are best
what future demand will be like

Twitter Analytics is another example that can help you track consumer attitudes. This can be done by reviewing top tweet activity, tweet impressions, and even mentions.

Of course, this doesn’t have to be work you do yourself. Many businesses will outsource this to social media agencies that can manage this time-intensive work and produce excellent results.

Email customization

Content optimisation via email is still one of the most common strategies employed by marketers. They usually require less content creation than social media posts whilst still providing a slew of useful consumer insights.

The issue with email, though, is getting recipients to open them, read them, and follow the call-to-action. The best way to leverage emails is to identify your email marketing metrics first.

Previously, our post on email marketing metrics identified some of these metrics as open-rate (OR), click-through-rate (CTR), and unsubscribe rate. In the past, email marketing was more generalized and clickbait-y. Nowadays, the more nuanced your emails, the better.

Different companies and different campaigns may each have varying key performance indicators (KPI). But when done correctly, these can illustrate the power of targeted content.

Pain point analysis

If you’ve already got an online presence (which nowadays, who doesn’t?), then you already have data coming your way. You may just not know how to interpret it, yet.

For starters, what you can do is take a look at your existing consumer journey. Analyse this from a third-party point of view, and see what issues arise.

This is also the time to look back on any previous consumer complaints and cross-check this with your own findings. Anything that intersects or overlaps needs to be addressed ASAP.

If social media and emails provide data that largely shows what works, then pain point analysis will unearth data on what needs to be fixed or improved. Take your cart abandonment, for instance.

The SAP Consumer Propensity Study revealed that a third of UK shoppers abandon their carts due to pain points like extra charges, redundancies, and lack of information. If left unaddressed, these pain points can cost companies up to £18 billion annually, according to Barclays.

To identify pain points with your customers, you can make online surveys to collect feedback. The more data you can collect, the more information you’ll have to action change and drive new strategies.

If you find your surveys aren’t performing as well as you’d like, take a look at these tips for increasing survey response rates.

As digital adoption increases, marketers can expect that consumers will be more tech-savvy, discerning, and busy contributing to online traffic.

Although data-driven strategies can seem overwhelming at first, understanding how it best applies to your company ensures stability in a digitally evolving industry. For more help, take a look at how 5 ways big data can add to your digital marketing strategy.

This article was written by: Andrea Rosalinda Campfield

The post What is Data-Driven Marketing? appeared first on Shout.com.

Creating an Effective Lead Capture Quiz

Evan — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 12:47:03 +0000

Quizzes are a simple and effective marketing tool for both generating leads and engaging your existing customers.

They’re so effective because they’re easy and fun to fill out, offer a reward (in the form of results), and cost you very little in the way of resources or time.

Asides from being a cheap method of engaging prospective customers, they also offer a way of gaining insight on prospects to allow for lead segmentation in future campaigns.

Why quizzes generate leads

Quizzes are so successful as lead generation tools because they offer personalized results and naturally encourage sharing. But, let’s dig into why these factors mean that quizzes generate leads and how that’d good for you.

Personalized results:

Quizzes capitalize on a lead’s desire to discover or confirm something about themselves, which is to say they appeal to a curiosity in your audience.

Shareability:

The quiz format naturally encourages leads to share their results, which increases exposure for your quiz and generates more leads.

The best thing about using quizzes for lead generation is that you can create them for any audience. Your topic can be chosen based on industry, sector, role, interests or something more generic (like a personality quiz).

As long as your topic/ title entices leads by targetting that curiosity, you’re bound to see some good results. For example:

What type of marketer are you?
What is your personality type?
Should you hire a GDPR consultant?
Any employee should know these 5 things about their job
Could you pass the 6th grade?
What body shape are you?

How to create a lead capture quiz

Shout’s Quiz Builder is the perfect tool for building lead generation quizzes. Using the drag and drop builder to add questions, a pre-built form for capturing leads and robust features for showing scores and writing personalized results, creating quizzes couldn’t be easier.

Just follow these steps and you’ll be good to go in no time:

Tailor your quiz to your audience
Add a lead form
Create personalized results
Follow up with a welcome email

1. Tailor your quiz to your audience

Evaluate what you know about your target audience and create a quiz that’s tailored to their interests. On top of this, frame your quiz in a way that focuses on leads’ problems or concerns. Then you can address these in the results or in a follow-up email once you’ve collected their contact information.

Think about it as writing quiz questions to lead back to the service or product you provide and the hinting at the solution (your product or service) in quiz results.

2. Add a lead capture form

For the highest conversion rate, place your lead capture form between the last question page and the results page. This will encourage leads to enter their information in return for their results.

People are reluctant to hand over personal information, so if you place the lead capture form at the start, quiz takers may leave before answering questions.

Placing the lead form at the end means that leads will have something to lose if they leave and something to gain if they fill out your form.

3. Create a rewarding set of results

When creating a lead generation quiz, it can be easy to put all your energy into writing questions but fail to provide a robust set of results for quiz takers.

This can block leads from moving down the sales funnel and converting because the reward for their time and their personal details is lacklustre.

It can also be a detriment to the ‘sharability’ of your quiz, which is something you’ll be relying on to increase your brand exposure. If people don’t feel that your content is rewarding or valuable, they certainly won’t share it with their friends and colleagues.

Word-of-mouth marketing is how content goes viral online, so it’s really important that your quiz takers want to share their results (and in turn sharing your quiz and branding) within their circle.

A successful quiz provides a detailed set of results that answer the questions leads had about themselves when they started. It should be something interesting that they would think to share with their friends and that encourages others to take your quiz for themselves to see how they differ.

4. Follow up with a welcome email

Once a lead has reached this point, you’ve already engaged them and collected their contact information. But you don’t want this to feel like their last interaction with you, so you’ll want to think about how you can continue this relationship.

A welcome email is a great way to ‘warm’ leads. This is important because you don’t want them to forget about you the moment they get their quiz results, you want to foster a long-term relationship.

Use the welcome email to share a little more about yourself (or your brand) and how you can help solve your leads’ problems. Do anything you can to build trust and provide value so that they keep coming back to you in the future.

Take a look at our article on how to write welcome emails that keeps subscribers reading for more tips on improving welcome email engagement.

7 Tips for making an effective lead capture quiz

Shout has over two decades of experience when it comes to quizzes and we’re prepared to share what we’ve learned with you. Here are 7 tips for optimizing your lead generation quiz:

Pick a topic based on your audience
Write an eye-catching title
Keep the quiz short
Add rich media to boost visual engagement
Keep your lead form short (link to lead form article)
Test, test, test
Share your quiz in the right places

1. Pick a topic based on your audience

For your lead capture quiz to perform well initially, it has to be tailored to your target audience. If your quiz has no bearing on their life or interests, it will fail before it begins.

You might not be intimate with your audience (yet!), but you will know at least one thing about them; a shared problem or something they enjoy. Pick a topic based on this and write your questions to prime quiz takers for what you eventually want to market to them.

2. Write an eye-catching title

It’s all well and good having to perfect topic and a solid set of questions, but if your title fails to catch the eye your quiz will be lost in the scroll.

Make a strong first impression with a snappy, captivating title that challenges people to click and start answers. Ensure you’re using personal language like “you” and “your”, it may seem simple but it’s an effective way to engage people quickly.

3. Three minutes, max

You want your quiz to be short and sweet to maximize your completion rate. If your quiz is too long, you’ll likely see a lot of drop-outs. If it’s too short, people may feel you’ve only created the quiz to collect their contact information.

The perfect balance is 5-7 questions with around 5 clear answers to choose from for each. Because people expect results to be personalized, they’re going to spend a decent amount of time reading questions and answers to ensure they pick what’s most relevant to them.

4. Add rich media to boost engagement

You want to make your lead capture quiz as engaging as possible, which means you don’t want it to get stale. Including rich media (such as images, videos and GIFs) is the best way to keep things feeling fresh.

All visual content should be the best quality it can be, nothing puts people off more than images and videos with low resolution or sizing issues.

5. Keep your lead form short

The lead form itself should be short and simple to fill out. People are already going to be cautious of handing over their personal information, so tread as lightly as you can at first. The fewer number of fields you include, the higher number of leads you’ll collect.

You can always collect more of their info later on as part of an email campaign. Take a look at our article lead form optimization for 9 tips for increasing conversions for a little more help.

6. Test, test, test

Once you’ve finished writing questions and results, it’s absolutely essential that you test your quiz thoroughly. Make sure all points are assigned correctly and each result corresponds to the answers needed to be chosen to achieve it.

If people feel that the result they received is in no way relevant to the answers they chose, they will not share the quiz with others. In fact, they might feel ripped off.

7. Share your lead capture quiz

Now you need to get eyes on your quiz. You’ll want to share it across all your social media accounts, from Twitter to Pinterest, and encourage your quiz takers to share it themselves.

According to Buzzsumo, quizzes are shared around 1900 times on average. The more you encourage that sharing, the more leads you’ll generate and the more insight you gain from your audience.

Wrapping up

Hopefully, we’ve convinced you that quizzes are a simple and effective tool for lead generation. But they don’t just have to be used for capturing leads, they’re also super useful for engaging your existing audience in an interactive way or even for running competitions or contests.

Once you’ve started a lead generation campaign, you’ll need to start thinking about how to assign value to them. This process is known as lead scoring.

If you want any more ideas for generating leads, take a look at these 13 lead magnets and how they can grow your email list.

The post Creating an Effective Lead Capture Quiz appeared first on Shout.com.

Writing a Call-To-Action that Converts

Evan — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 15:48:53 +0000

What is a call-to-action?

A call-to-action (CTA) is a piece of content on a webpage or advert that prompts your audience to take the next step, whether it is to make a purchase or learn more about your products.

Your CTA can be an image, hyperlink or button. But buttons are by far the most commonly used format for a call-to-action, so keep that in mind.

Types of CTAs

You’ll have a host of CTAs across your website, which type you use will depend on the intended action for leads. Here are a few of the main purposes of CTAs:

Lead generation
Grow your email list
Collect form submissions
Encourage readers to learn more
Take leads to your store
Share your feature list
Direct to your social media accounts
Sign up new users
Promote events

How can a good CTA improve conversion?

A good CTA will stand out to your audience and creates a sense of urgency. You have to remember that website visitors (or ad viewers) will see the same old words and phrases over and over.

So, you have to find a way to be both original and persuasive in a concise way.

There also has to be clear intent in your CTA. This is to say that anyone who reads it will know exactly what action they’re about to make when they click.

It’s not just the CTA text that has to draw your audience in. There are multiple factors that contribute to an effective call-to-action.

Eye-catching design
Compelling copy
Placement and visibility
Solve a problem for your audience

Eye-catching design

First of all, you should already have a solid design for your page/ blog post/ advert.

This design should be consistent with your branding and will be one of the first indicators to readers that your content is worth sticking around for.

Your CTA should then stand out from all your other content. Usually, this is done by choosing a button color that contrasts with the rest of the page.

It’s also important to consider how your content and design encourage a natural flow towards your CTA, both in messaging and structure.

Compelling copy

Whilst your CTA button design is a factor you have to consider, its copy is much more important when it comes to converting visitors into leads or customers.

Now the big challenge here is the limited amount of space you’ll have to write compelling content, especially if you’re using a button.

The CTA text itself should convey the action your audience is being asked to take. E.g. “Discover our products” or “Visit our store”.

If you’re worried about overfilling your button with text, you can always write some copy in the surrounding area to accompany it.

Slack is a great example of this, giving a summary of what prospects will be taken too without overloading them with information.

And you can do it without writing a whole paragraph, HelpScout targets readers who have a larger user base and offers them a custom CTA: “10 users? Get A Demo”.

Placement and visibility

Where you choose to place your CTA is essential to its success. Firstly, it has to be visible to your audience. You can’t expect readers to go searching for your CTA, it absolutely needs to get their attention on its own.

And secondly, the content itself has to have an impact on them. You can achieve this by offering a solution or writing copy that evokes emotion in readers.

Below are some stats collected by Grow and Convert on the what CTA placements have the highest conversion rates.

Sidebar CTAs: 0.5% – 1.5%
Generic end of post CTAs: 0.5% – 1.5%
Pop-ups: 1% – 8%
Sliders and bars: 1% – 5%
Welcome Gates: 10% – 25%
Feature box: 3% – 9%
Navbar: Varies

As you can see, where and how you display your CTA has a massive impact on your conversion rates. And it’s clear that Pop-ups, Welcome Gates and Feature boxes are likely to have the highest return.

Pop-ups and Welcome Gates are more aggressive than the other options, so overusing them can frustrate your audience.

But as they have such a high click-through rate you will want to take advantage of them, so it’s just about finding a good balance.

Solve a problem for your audience

Audiences will be reading your content because they have a need or a problem that needs to be solved. Whether it’s to fill a gap in their knowledge or service they need to be provided, they’ve come to you for answers.

Use your CTA to show leads you can provide that knowledge or solve their problem. This is a tactic sure to increase your click-through rate and build a stronger relationship with your audience.

Improving your conversion rates

So you have a CTA you like, but it’s not performing the way you want it to? Don’t worry, you’re not the first to experience this.

Here are a few tips we’ve picked up for improving the “clickability” of your CTAs:

A/B test your CTAs

If you’ve not heard of A/B test (split tests), it’s where you create two or more variants for content and show it to different people in your audience randomly.

Split testing is essential for increasing conversions, as you can identify which call-to-action button performs the best with your audience.

Don’t split test too many variables at once, as the more you have the longer you’ll need to test for a definitive result.

The best thing about split testing is its versatility. You can run an A/B test on any of your campaigns or content to improve your overall digital marketing strategy, whether it’s an email subject line or Facebook ad.

Write copy in the first person

We’ve already made it clear that effective CTAs address a need or solve a problem. You should couple this with copy written in the first person to further personalize each leads individual experience.

By first-person copy, we mean using “my” instead of “you” or “your”. This makes your content all about the reader and each action feel unique to them.

Add a muted CTA

A muted CTA is a second button placed next to the first that encourages leads to make a different action.

This might seem counterintuitive, as you don’t want two competing CTAs in the same space, but they’re a good option for when you want to provide leads with more information before they click your main CTA.

It is essential that the muted CTA is a different or ‘muted’ color, as not to draw attention away from your primary CTA.

Each has a target audience at a different stage of your sales funnel, so it’s important to highlight this in the CTA design.

Below you can see that Asana does this expertly, encouraging leads to request a demo before creating a free account.

Those who are ready to sign up are ready to make a decision and convert, whilst those who interest or evaluation stage will need more information before committing.

8 Tried and tested CTAs

We wanted to give you an idea of the most used CTAs and how they grab attention. But don’t worry, if you’re not a fan of the standard CTAs in the headings, we provide some robust alternatives in the sections below.

1. Get started

“Get started” is one of the most commonly used CTAs, especially by Saas organizations. And for a good reason. It’s an actionable phrase with clear intent for your audience.

If you’re struggling with a CTA for your homepage or pricing table, we’d recommend you go with this. It isn’t the most exciting option, but it is a safe play.

2. Sign up free

So you’re looking to get more users signed up and you need something to catch their eye. They’re going to be looking for a sign-up button of some sort, so don’t get so creative with the copy that risks leads mistaking it for something else.

Adding “free” to your sign up CTA is an extra incentive for leads to take action. It lets them know they can start testing your product without paying upfront. And that sort of good-faith agreement is a great way to build relationships with your potential customers.

If you’re not a fan of “Sign Up” you could always opt for “Create an Account” instead. It has the same intent as “Sign Up” and primes users to fill out their details.

Alternatively, you could describe what exactly will be free once they create an account. FreeOnlineSurveys does exactly this (“Create a free survey”) with their sign up form:

3. Get in touch

This is another example of a strong CTA with a clear directive. You’ll be using this on a contact page, your homepage or possibly in your website footer to encourage a point of contact with prospects.

Some do go for “Contact Us”, but we do think “Get in Touch” is a little more personable. And you do want to seem human to your audience.

If you have a targeted inbox for more specific inquiries, you can always customize your copy to indicate this. For example, “Get in Touch with our Sales Team”.

4. Learn more

If you need to explain how your product works for leads to make an informed purchase, you should use the “Learn more” CTA to do this.

Link it to a landing page or blog post with more descriptive content. You don’t need to get too creative with the CTA copy, but it should be placed near an image of the product or in the product page header.

This way it’ll be clear to leads what specifically they’ll be learning more about.

5. Add to cart

It’s best to be direct with product CTAs. If a lead is already on your product landing page, your next task is to get them to add it to their basket/ bag/ cart.

You’ve already piqued their interest with your content and product images, so you now need to encourage them to commit.

And a direct approach is the best way to do this. If you’re not seeing a great conversion rate on this CTA, you may need to consider tweaking your supporting content to focus on the benefits of your product. Or, you could even offer an extra incentive like a discount or deal.

6. Buy now

Just like “Add to Cart”, “Buy Now” is a little more direct, which can be risky when you’re asking customers to commit to you in this way. But it can definitely work to encourage leads to purchase a product.

And the other benefit is that their intent is clear when they click, which is a powerful indicator of your product’s appeal.

7. Subscribe

You’ve probably seen this CTA being used to get you to subscribe to an email newsletter or marketing chain. But it’s not very persuasive in and of itself.

So you’ll want to add some text in the area surrounding the CTA to explain the benefits of your email campaign. What problems are you solving? How does your content stand out from the competition?

Or even better, you can offer a lead magnet to get people to subscribe to your email list.

Once you’ve gotten people subscribed to your list, you’ll need to think about your email strategy, head over to our email marketing guide for a full walkthrough and some helpful tips. But if you want some help creating an engaging campaign from your very first email, take a look at this guide for writing a welcome email.

8. View demo/ Book a demo

Offering a demo often makes for an effective CTA, as leads can get a good overview of your product without any commitment.

But whilst “View Demo” and “Book a Demo” are actionable CTAs, they don’t carry much impact.

Salesforce does a great job of preserving actionable intent, whilst also spicing up the copy of their button with something for conversational.

“Watch SaleForce in Action”, there’s just something about that copy that makes you want to click. And there’s no reason you can’t replicate this for your own landing page.

Conclusion

Calls-to-action are some of the most important elements on a page, so writing great copy is essential when considering how to launch a new website.

For more of an idea of the what copy creates the best CTAs, take a look at this list of buzzwords for your call to action.

And we wanted to finish by rounding up all our points for creating a successful CTA:

Standout design
Compelling copy
Actionable intent
High visibility
Solves a problem/ address a need
Split test your call-to-action!
CTAs shouldn’t compete with each other
Written in the first person

It’s essential for leads to know what’s in it for them if they click your CTA. Ensure your content makes it clear what the benefits of clicking your CTA are.

And remember it’s not just about your button color or CTA text, the placement is super important.

Finally, you absolutely have to follow through on your promise. If a lead gets to your landing page after clicking your CTA and it isn’t what they expect, they’re certain to bounce.

For more information on increasing conversions, take a look at our article on lead form optimization.

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