7 Creative Local Online Marketing Strategies for Growth

The world is becoming more and more mobile.

Customers don’t just search for products, services or businesses; they want to get these results at arm’s length.

Users want Google to use their location every time they search for something, even if they don’t add location modifiers like “near me,” addresses, etc. According to Google, these searchers have grown by 150 percent.

Keeping in mind this statistic, it makes sense for businesses to rely on local online marketing.

What is local online marketing?

Local online marketing or hyperlocal marketing is an approach that focuses on a smaller number of shoppers in a very specific area. In other words, it specifically targets people in highly localized and address-specific regions that want to purchase products or services locally.

Hyperlocal marketing is a super targeted form of niche marketing. Businesses don’t need to spend money on national campaigns to generate inbound traffic. Local online marketing can be focused on one block and build the foundation for an authentic one-to-one relationship with customers in a specific area. It seems less overwhelming but in reality a really tough goal to achieve.

The main goal of local online marketing is to increase foot traffic to retail stores and rely on near-me searches that have high commercial intent. When people do hyperlocal searches, they search with the intent to purchase.

For example, if you want to find a new bestselling book, you will probably type “bookstores near me that have this book.” By doing that, you want this book and know where to buy it now. You know that 78% of local mobile searches result in offline purchases. This is huge!

Taking into consideration these numbers and statistics, online and offline businesses are in a strong position to take advantage of hyperlocal marketing. Here are seven powerful ways to use a local online marketing strategy to grow your business.

1. Optimize your Google My Business listing

For small business owners that have physical locations, it is essential to optimize their Google My Business pages. Google My Business is the backbone of hyperlocal marketing.

Did you know that 33% of all searches on Google are related to location? You should focus on that and provide highly detailed information about your business.

Here are some essential things you need to include in your Google My Business listing:

• A unique business description that contains 750 characters to explain what differentiates your small business from competitors. You can add relevant keywords, and do it within the first 100 words. Avoid keyword stuffing.
• Add as many as possible high-quality photos.
• Your business address should be concise and consistent with the address on your website.
• List your phone numbers. Make sure to provide a local phone number to show in local search results.
• Set your operating hours and working days.
• Pick up the primary category that describes your business’s services, products, and goals. That will help you increase visibility for search terms related to your category.
• Have a lot of good reviews. Many people that search for your business check reviews and an average rating. A large number of quality reviews will result in higher rankings and sales.

Pro tip:

Represent your business name in a proper way. That will help users easily find you online. Many companies are making a mistake when using the legal business name on Google My Business. This may harm your sales and rankings.

People usually use Latent semantic indexing keywords (LSI) to find your site. Add these keywords, and you get ranking #1 in the Google Maps Rankings. Here is a good example from Injury Trial Lawyers, APC that we changed on GMB listing:

2. Create hyperlocal content

Small businesses that are interested in leveraging the local community want to participate in discourse communities in order to foster strong relationships and generate revenue. Developing local content can increase rankings and arouse people’s interest in a particular local area. First of all, you need to focus on what customers want to consume, but not what you want to create.

You can create different types of content, such as blog posts, videos, images, infographics, or academic articles. The perfect way to engage and entertain customers is to create online quizzes. You can use Survey Anyplace to make engaging quizzes quickly.

Analyze your content and produce the type of content that will resonate with your customers the most. Sometimes it can be difficult to reach an audience in a specified local area. You can try to hire local talents because they better know the interests and needs of a local area you are interested in.

You can also capitalize on specific events, landmarks, festivals or other points of interest on a hyperlocal level that might interest people when looking for in particular geographical area. Ensure to share your local content on your Google My Business pages, Linkedin, Facebook, and other social networks.

3. Make your contact info stand out on your site

Adding any contact information on your website makes it easier for a potential customer to contact you. It also makes your brand more open, contactable and tangible – which, in turn, can lead to more sales and conversions, and produce more customer satisfaction.

Ensure to include localized items like monuments, local landmarks, famous attractions, public streets and other local points of interest that allow people to easily reach you online and connect with your business. For example, in New York people might search for “cafes near the Empire State Building.” Including location-based keywords will make your business more visible to those looking around a particular area.

For local businesses, it seems obvious to add your contact information to each page of your website in the header and the footer. Let customers contact you right on your website with a click-to-call feature. You can also embed a live Google Map on your site. Here is a good example from Law Offices of John Rapillo:

4. Add structured data markup

When focusing on local online marketing, it is essential to categorize your business as local. Including structured data markup related to your business on your website pages will help Google find out as much information as possible about your business.

List different business attributes, such as address, business hours, phone number, social links, site logo, and an official name. If implemented properly, it makes it easier for your business to appear in relevant geographic search results. Make sure to incorporate the appropriate markup for each location to help people find your business easier.

To improve your search results with schema markup, use the Structured Data Testing tool. The tool helps detect possible issues and reduce the number of errors and warnings in your Structured Data tags.

5. Optimize for local search

While creating a website, each local business has two main goals: get found easily online by searching for their services or products, and convert website visitors into customers. It’s not enough to optimize your site for SEO. Local businesses must look beyond traditional ranking factors and keywords.

Your website needs to look professional on all levels. Everything needs to be high-quality. Do you know that it takes less than one second for users to define whether they like your site or not? Ensure that your site is easy to navigate. Don’t use a lot of navigation buttons. Lead people down a path to solve their problems and convince them to purchase your services.

If you want to improve your local ranking, you need to improve your demand generation strategy. It is important to analyze and optimize your on-page demand generation in order of importance.

Build a proper URL structure

Your URLs are the first thing users and Google will see. Google takes this into account when ranking content. Conduct keyword research and include the relevant terms in the URL. For example, if you help victims injured in car accidents in Los Angeles, you need to create a specific page to increase your hyperlocal rankings like “website.com/car-accidents-los-angeles.”

If you manage different pages that broadly resolve the same topic, group your keywords together to estimate the search volume for specific topics. The SE Ranking Keyword Grouper provides a nice solution for proper clustering.

Develop local-focused page titles and meta descriptions

They need to be persuasive enough to make people click on them.

Make the most of internal linking

Having the proper linking structure in your posts helps Google better understand what you are associated with locally and helps you rank better organically. Each web page should link to other pages on your website. If you have a navigation link titled “Practice Areas” with a drop-down menu with a list of practice areas like “rideshare accidents,” “bicycle accidents” and “truck accidents,” each of these pages should lead to the main “Practice Areas” page.

Use hyperlocal keywords

Location-based keywords are anything that describes your location. You can use city names, famous streets, historical buildings, monuments, and other well-known attractions. Include these keywords in product descriptions, company profiles, headlines and text of your web pages.

6. Create separate landing pages for each business location

If you manage different locations, it is important for local businesses to have specific landing pages for hyperlocal purposes. It will help boost your appearance in search and increase local rankings. Make sure to develop personalized content for each location. Include location-based keywords within your content and optimize your landing pages for these search terms.

Without local landing pages, you can’t improve your business’ local rankings. In case you run your business from 100 multiple locations, you don’t need to design 100 separate landing pages. Try to pick up those regions you wish to target in the first place. For example, Citywide Law Group made the section “Areas We Serve” with a drop-down menu of each location they serve where these landing pages lead to their homepage.

7. Target users with local advertisements

If you want to get more sales and higher advertising ROI, you can unite location-tracking features and geo-fencing. The last one helps you target someone in a very specific location based on users’ GPS. These sort of paid ads are very effective and can generate tons of qualified leads. Here are four smart ways to run your hyperlocal ads that will guide people to your store:

• Target customers near your location. Just specify a distance from your location and use your existing customer data to launch your ad campaigns.
• Target individual travel shoppers. Target them wherever they are online, especially tourist-heavy destinations, such as airports, railway stations, attractions, hotels, and other places.
• Take advantage of specific geographic events. If there’s any specific conference or event in a city where your business is located, you can use that to target customers in that area. That kind of event can drive up demand for specific products or services and increase sales.
• Target customers around a competitor’s location. This is a great way to show shoppers the benefits of shopping with you and make them buy in your store.

Bonus tip

When getting started with your local online marketing strategy, it is important to know how well you are doing on a local level. This means monitoring user behavior on your website and analyzing traffic quality from multiple sources, such as Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Instagram Stories, etc.

Finteza holds true for that. The tool provides insight into your local search experience, traffic sources that result in desired conversions, and show how well your local landing page is converting based on completed goals. The more detailed and accurate information you will get, the more effective your hyperlocal strategy will be.

Conclusion

Focusing on a small geographic area can be challenging but is greatly productive when everything is done properly. Local online marketing is a way to take your business to the next level and get new potential clients. Implementing the strategies listed above will make your business a staple in the local community.

Which local online marketing strategies have helped grow your business? Let me know in the comments below.

Guest author: Irina Weber is a blogger and marketing manager of SE Ranking. She creates and develops new marketing campaigns, writes articles about online marketing, social media, conversion optimization on popular websites like Jeff Bullas, WordTracker, Onblastblog and other authoritative websites. If you have any questions, you can reach her on Twitter.

The post 7 Creative Local Online Marketing Strategies for Growth appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

* This article was originally published here

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4 Inspiring Social Listening Examples From Brands Doing It Right

Social listening is a marketing tactic that has been around for a while and yet isn’t overused. Or, to be fair, isn’t used that much at all.

Have you ever heard about social listening? If not, I am here to uncover a whole new world for you.

Here’s a social listening definition:

Social listening (also called social media monitoring) means using a tool (e.g., Awario, Mention, Brandwatch) that finds all mentions of your keyword (usually, a brand) or keywords on social media and beyond.

The strategy is usually used to:

• Improve customer service (reply to brand mentions that you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise).
• Identify industry trends for product development and marketing campaigns.
• Manage the brand’s reputation (measure the sentiment around the brand and keep an eye on what people say).
• Perform competitor analysis and measure share of voice.
• Find relevant social media influencers.
• Find “hot” leads on social media.

Having said that, in most cases, brands don’t use social media listening for all of the above. In some cases, they prioritize one goal over another and put their resources into the goals that are considered more important. Other times, brands start with social listening, observe the data, and then decide on where the pain points and exciting possibilities are. As it happens, great discoveries are often made accidentally.

To provide you with real-life examples of how social listening is implemented, I wrote about four brands that I personally love. All of them use social listening in the most inspiring way.

1. Netflix invents Netflix Socks

The social media marketers behind Netflix are very good at what they do. That’s proven by the fact that their social media following keeps growing – Netflix US alone has almost 6 million followers on Twitter. That is the whole population of Colorado! And personally, I think a lot of this success has to do with their Twitter bio:

After all, there’s a whole generation that appreciates everything about Gerard Way.

Even this fact alone has to tell you something important – Netflix knows its target audience.

They know key target audience factors: millennial; used to having friends that exist only online; crave attention; do research before purchasing; value peers’ opinions more than that of movie stars; live for humor, self-irony, and sarcasm. And Netflix’s social media marketing team keeps all of that in mind – they post hilarious tweets, re-tweet opinions of users with only a couple of followers, and work with relevant influencers.

Netflix acts as every Internet user’s best friend. It spreads humor, understanding, and attention. And they use social media listening non-stop, because as they said at the Shorty Awards:

“When we aren’t posting, we’re listening, looking for the new trends igniting the entertainment world”

Through social listening, Netflix found out that many of the people binge-watching the shows were falling asleep. Not many brands would consider that a serious problem, but Netflix obviously saw an opportunity to show that they listen, they care, and they are as creative as a brand can be. So they invented Netflix Socks – smart socks that detect when the user is dozing off, send a signal to the user’s TV and pause the show. This way, no one wakes up to the screen of spoilers and confusion. The product was cheered, went viral, got tons of coverage, and even won a Shorty Award for creative use of technology. Now isn’t that something to learn from?

2. L’Oreal chooses a correct product strategy

L’Oreal isn’t that much about having fun online and entertaining their audience. They take their marketing seriously. It also looks like every digital representative from L’Oreal has at some point spoken about the necessity and fruitfulness of social media listening. Esohe Omoruyi, L’Oreal’s Senior Vice President of Global Open Digital innovation and Business Development, said at Variety‘s Cannes Lions that social listening “is fuelling the product development cycle” by helping the company identify industry trends and showing what consumers are asking for.

While the brand mostly uses social listening for product development, it’s not the only goal that L’Oreal is after. Adrienne Rostaing, Market Insights & Data Manager, said the following in an interview with Brandwatch:

“Social allows us to refocus our actions on the present moment, tracking and adapting in real time to continuously improve the link with our consumers”

Social listening helps the company keep an eye on ratings, reviews, and conversations. L’Oreal believes that as consumers’ path to purchase is becoming more accelerated, it’s important for the representatives of the beauty industry to be everywhere. That’s why they also work closely with bloggers and social media influencers.

The following example illustrates how L’Oreal uses social listening for major brand decisions. When in 2011 the brand was faced with a dilemma of which hair product to develop next (omber, tie-dye, or splat), they turned to social media to discover which trend is the most promising. The company researched YouTube to identify user-generated content and unveil issues and opinions that their customers voice on social media. They identified thought leaders in the industry who could act as influencers. This, together with the analysis of Google trends, helped them make a decision – the company went with the ombre hair color trend and developed L’Oreal Feria Wild Ombre. The product became a huge success and the trend indeed lived on.

3. Fitbit develops “Reminders to Move”

Social media listening is sometimes compared to a tool like Fitbit –  something that lets you keep track on what’s going on with your body or your brand and gives you data to work with. Perhaps, digital marketers behind Fitbit knew about that analogy. In any case, Fitbit actively uses social media in their marketing, and it’s definitely working for them.

Like many other employees, Allison Leahy, the ex-director of the community at Fitbit (who now works at Spotify), said that in the online space, “Fitbit is trying to be everywhere you are and more”.

Being everywhere you are and more is the task of a social listening tool. At Fitbit, social listening is used to identify “emerging issues and to troubleshoot and gather information from customers who may be experiencing a certain type of issue”. The company collects ideas from their communities as well, as many Fitbit users have relevant expertise. The best ideas are then brought to the engineering teams.

Fitbit highly prioritizes customer care, using social media listening to “resolve all customer issues, provide customers with a little bit more delight from the brand, and give customers a really fast support experience”.

A good example of how the brand uses social listening for product development is the “Reminders to Move” feature –  a buzzing reminder that tells the user to get up and move a little bit. This genuinely useful feature (I should know, I never leave the computer without a reminder) was brought to Fitbit by the users themselves. Leahy, as an ex-blogger, understood the value of customer feedback, user engagement, and the power of an online community – a community that knows that the brand listens to them.

4. Taco Bell provides excellent customer care

Taco Bell is one of the most exciting and inspirational brands when it comes to social media. They are one of those brands that do funny interactions with other brands, work with comedians as influencers, and hire programmers to create an engine that does this:

via GIFER

It’s no surprise that Taco Bell is number five on Fast Company’s most innovative social media companies of 2017.

Loads of their ideas come from listening to social media in real time. They use research to create new social media campaigns and product ideas. They always strive to exceed customer expectations. As one of the marketers at Taco Bell said;

“Instead of sitting behind glass and listening to a focus group, we now have access to 20 million consumers and can be inspired by them and connect with them and have real relationships with them”

For Taco Bell, customer service is a top priority that they cater for with social listening. Not only do they retweet every cool thing that’s said about the brand, and often interact with users just for fun, but they also reply to customers’ complaints and value customers’ opinions. For example, when the company’s social media team noticed that the customers are often disappointed with cheese in the Quesalupa, they started sending out emails to restaurants to remind them how to follow the recipe so ensure customer satisfaction. They react instantaneously to such cases with the help of social media listening and ensure quality control amongst the company’s products.

Conclusion

Social listening is what helps brands be “everywhere” in real time. The benefits and implications of such ability are enormous, just like the power of social media itself. It’s up to you and your brand to choose where to direct this power. However, if you don’t know where to start, there are always best practices of brands, such as the ones above, to give you an idea.

Guest author: Alina Gorbatch is an experienced web marketing specialist and content writer at Awario. Follow @BlondeAlina on Twitter.

The post 4 Inspiring Social Listening Examples From Brands Doing It Right appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

* This article was originally published here

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5 Ways to Turn Unloved Blog Content Into a B2B Marketing Jackpot

B2B content marketing is a unique challenge. You have to post content regularly, insightfully, and uniquely, which can be very difficult given that many topics are constantly rehashed or restated by your competitors.

How can you make your B2B content marketing as effective and useful for your readers as possible?

In some cases, you can do so through your old or previously published blog content. Let’s break down how you can turn unloved blog content into a marketing jackpot for your B2B company now.

Why revitalize and republish old content?

For many brands, revitalizing old content is a good tactic because they have a lot of it! A full-fledged digital marketing campaign often results in dozens of old or unused blog posts and other written content.

That unused, unloved content can still earn your brand money or bolster your current marketing campaign. You’ve already created it, so why let it sit uselessly in the depths of your website’s blog? Think of it as a resource that shouldn’t be underutilized or ignored.

B2B marketing can be tough since you need to post a lot to stay relevant, but old content can fill in gaps for your current digital marketing campaign. Imagine that you need a few extra blog posts to fill out a posting schedule, which demands one post per week on your website. If you don’t have enough new posts, old content can sometimes fill in for new content if you tweak it correctly.

This, in turn, saves you time and money and can help you meet your marketing goals with more flexibility than ever before. With that said, let’s break down five key tips to keep in mind for republishing or revitalizing old content.

Tip 1 – Remove or edit the publish date

First, take a look at the publish date for old articles. If the content is still relevant to your industry or niche, you can simply remove or edit the publish date. Once the date is gone or changed, you can republish the blog post.

Note that you should still update the content or spruce it up. Add some new sentences, restructure the content, and add a few new statistics or data points. This keeps the broader point of the content relevant and can help the old post rank higher in Google’s search results.

Removing or editing the publish date can make old content seem new for your readers. Should you go this route, consider keeping the original publish date in your notes for future marketing campaigns.

Tip 2 – Include old content in “roundup” posts

What if you have several pieces of old content that you want your readers to revisit? Consider making a “roundup” post that highlights some of the best pieces you’ve published in the past.

Imagine that you have a brand focused on B2B marketing. You have multiple high-quality posts that relate to different marketing areas, such as SEO, blog topics, creating a marketing profit and loss statement template, and so on. Create a new post with an “overview” structure briefly discussing each of those posts. Then link to the old posts within that new roundup post.

Not only does this count as completely new content, but it also facilitates traffic to your old yet still well-written content from the past.

Tip 3 – Include links to old posts in new ones

If you’re keeping a detailed publishing schedule for new content, consider interlinking your old posts with your new stuff. This provides you with two benefits:

• It makes the most of old, currently unloved content by funneling traffic to it.
• It improves your SEO by weaving new, quality links into your fresh content.

This strategy is extremely beneficial for B2B marketing, particularly in crowded niches or markets.

Tip 4 – Put old posts in a “featured” section

If you already have a featured section on your website where you highlight quality posts or blog topics, consider rotating some older posts to that section. It is a great way to bring traffic from your homepage to the depths of your site.

But what if you don’t have a featured section? Make one! The best way to introduce people to your blog is to have a dedicated section highlighting top-tier blog posts and guides. People will rarely navigate to your site’s blog by themselves, so make it easy for them with a flashy, accessible featured section. For the best results, add both new and old articles to the featured posts area to keep things fresh and exciting.

Tip 5 – Refresh “listicles” with new additions

Lastly, any good B2B marketing campaign probably has a few “listicle” blog posts under its belt. Listicles are articles that partially or primarily focus on lists of tips – this blog post counts as one, too!

The good news is that listicles can easily be updated and made evergreen by adding a few more items to their titular lists. For instance, say that you have a blog post called “Top 10 Ways to Market for B2B”. You can easily make the top 12 ways by having your copywriter go in and add another two ways at the top of the post. Then you can post the blog content as fresh stuff, editing or removing the publish date as noted above.

Even readers who have seen the content before may take a quick look at the new tips or hints. In this way, listicles can stay evergreen forever so long as you keep updating and adding to them.

Wrap up

As you can see, there are lots of great ways to turn your unloved blog content into B2B marketing tools. Once it’s written, blog content should work for you in perpetuity. Keep it evergreen and relevant, and give it an occasional focus so new customers can find the quality stuff your team posted months or years ago.

Guest author: Lee Li is a project manager and B2B copywriter with a decade of experience in the Chinese fintech startup space as a PM for TaoBao, MeitTuan, and DouYin (now TikTok).

The post 5 Ways to Turn Unloved Blog Content Into a B2B Marketing Jackpot appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

* This article was originally published here

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10 Ways to Get Sales on Shopify and Boost Your Conversion Rates

If you own an online business, a platform like Shopify is a great place to set up your store and put your products out in the market.

So once you’ve set up your online store, how exactly do you get sales and boost your conversion rates?

The answer lies in prioritizing your consumers’ demands while designing your store so that not only you can attract more visitors to your site, but also ensure that more of the incoming people make purchases.

Running a Shopify store allows you to control every aspect of your business, from deciding on your store design, choosing which audience you want to target, to mapping out your customers’ entire experience.

The increased control gives you more of an opportunity to experiment with techniques that focus on maximizing sales and conversion rates.

This entire process of implementing different sales tactics to increase the number of your paying customers is known as conversion rate optimization (CRO).

What are conversion rates?

Before proceeding to discuss conversion rate optimization strategies, let’s define what conversion rates are.

Conversion rates are essentially the number of people who purchase at your store out of its entire traffic. So, what we’re trying to find out is, from the people who visit your store, how many of them will actually buy something?

Conversion rates can be simply explained through the following example if a store has 20 sales and 500 visitors in a month, the conversion rate would be 20 divided by 500 and then multiplied by 100, which gives 4%.

The paying customers used in conversion sale calculations include the number of online sales, customers who add products to a cart or wishlist, and customers who joined email signups. So, conversion rate optimization would focus on increasing this percentage.

With this clear, let’s discuss the 10 major strategies employed to get sales and boost conversion rates on a Shopify store.

1. Upgrade your store’s homepage

Your homepage is the face of your online store and plays a very important part in creating a strong impression on your customers.

The homepage needs to be simple and comprehensive but also appealing enough to get visitors invested in learning more about your store. It is also an opportunity to establish the underlying theme of your store.

Here are some elements that need to be incorporated into creating an effective homepage:

• Add pop-ups so that the user’s attention is captured. Pop-ups can offer deals like signing up to your store’s newsletter in exchange for getting coupons and discounts
• Create sidebars that notify users of real-time sales. This feature inculcates a sense of urgency for customers and they are also presented with evidence of people buying from your store in real-time. Both of these factors have been proven to spur decision-making, making it more likely for your visitors to buy
• Add in testimonials and customer reviews about your products, site, and services to generate trust. This is an instrumentally important factor in attracting loyal customers

2. Organize your website

To make your visitors’ experience as stress-free as possible, your website needs to be well organized so that it is easy to navigate.

One of the key features that help the organization is creating an efficient search bar that takes customers directly to the products they are looking for.

It is ideal if your search bar is placed on your homepage to increase accessibility and directly take customers to their area of interest.

Another element that can be added to aid customer navigation is increased search bar intelligence.

This will ensure that when your user looks something up on your site, spelling mistakes, similar items, and alternate products are all taken into account to maximize the chances of your customer finding products they are interested in.

Making accurate product categories is also an essential part of organizing your site.

3. Plan your product pages

Product pages are the web pages created for each item that your store is selling. Organizing product pages effectively can direct your customer towards more items they may be interested in. This increases sales chances.

One way to direct customers to their area of interest is by having similar products show up on a certain product’s page.

Product pages are your opportunity to sell your content to the customer. You need to convince them of the value of what they are looking at so that they can consider purchasing it. To do this, your product page needs to have all relevant details available so that your customer is not doubtful.

Here are some of the details your product page should include:

• High-quality photos of the product from multiple angles
• Videos/gifs of your product
• An option for viewers to zoom in and out on and to rotate the item’s photo so that it can be viewed in detail
• Include the product in different colors
• Mention the item’s price and include all costs so that at check out there is no unexpected cost that discourages the customer from going on with the purchase
• Display authentic reviews for each product. These create a sense of trust in the users and are evidence of your content’s value.
• Directly label an out-of-stock item and give users the option of leaving their contact information on the site so that they can be notified when the product comes back in stock

4. Make the checkout experience as stress-free as possible

Your visitor will not be considered a paying customer until their payment order is complete and the product is in their hands.  Creating a hassle-free check-out is vital in ensuring that this entire procedure proceeds smoothly.

To simplify your check-out experience, give your store an auto-fill/pre-fill option for customer information. Customers fill out auto-fill forms faster and this helps boost conversion rates.

Another important feature to add is sending your customers thank you/confirmation emails when an order has been placed. This will let you stay in touch with your paying customers and make it easier for them to link back to your site.

5. Offer a user-friendly shipping and returns policy

Free shipping is one of the most effective ways to attract to your store and ensure that they complete their purchase.

Apps like Dynamics Shopify Integration connector are a great way of keeping track of customer orders and all relevant shipping details. Dynamics Shopify Integration in particular is guaranteed to deliver orders accurately and on time while offering support for different currencies, order cancellations, refunds, and chargebacks.

One of the best features of this app is that it has an installation fee that you have to pay once. After that, the only payment required is a small amount of yearly licensing fee. The app allows you to place any number of orders and does not charge you based on order frequency.

Having a clear refund policy is also an important feature that boosts sales. Refund availability makes customers less hesitant to place orders which leads to increased conversion rates as well.

6. Create a contact page

Creating a comprehensive contact page that includes mobile information and email address allows customers to easily communicate with you and your store’s team.

This is extremely important in helping your relationship develop with your customers because it provides a channel for them to be heard and convey any feedback or concerns.

These are key features your contact page should include:

• An email address
• Your phone number
• Your store or headquarter’s physical location
• Your work hours
• Links to your social media accounts

7. Maintain the speed of your website

The speed and performance of your website directly affect the incoming traffic and the number of paying customers present.

According to Google surveys, 53% of mobile visitors will stop using your store’s site if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

8. Make your site available on mobile devices

Ensuring that your store functions well on mobiles is essential in increasing incoming traffic, making customer experience smooth, and in turn, increasing conversion rates.

More than 54% of total online customers use mobile devices as recorded by Statista – that means more than half of your incoming traffic is using mobile. This is why it is crucial to develop a mobile-responsive site so that you can cater to the needs of all your customers.

9. Use customer history to make personalized product recommendations

By keeping track of your customers history, you are better equipped to know what products they are interested in. This will ensure that they filter their feed to promote products that are more specific to their tastes.

Providing items that cater to your customers means that they are more likely to make purchases, thus increasing sales and conversion rates.

10. Invest in a social media marketing strategy

A good social media marketing strategy will incorporate establishing and promoting your products on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Setting up direct check-out links on your Instagram and Facebook accounts will also ensure that your customers can instantly purchase through any platform. This accessibility will encourage buying customers and help bring up sales.

A social media marketing strategy also includes investing in paid social media advertising. This includes sponsoring influencers and Youtubers so that they can help promote your products. Through these channels, you can increase your reach and expand your target audience. Fans of social media celebrities are also more likely to purchase items that have been approved by these influencers, guaranteeing you an increase in conversion rates.

Conclusion

Shopify is a great platform to build an online business and if used correctly, you are sure to maximize sales and conversion rates. Conversion rate optimization strategies aim to do exactly that.

With our carefully compiled list of sales and conversion rate increasing strategies we hope you can be one step closer to achieving an efficient and profitable business.

Guest author: Danish Saud, is a market research analyst and writer specializing in performance marketing and E-business. He is particularly proud of his ability to learn from past mistakes. When he isn’t helping firms create more profitable sale strategies you can find him going through modern art museums, walking his dog or scuba-diving.

The post 10 Ways to Get Sales on Shopify and Boost Your Conversion Rates appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

* This article was originally published here

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Trends in the NFT Market and What it Means for Business in 2022

Since 2019, several News channels from across the globe have covered the boom experienced in the cryptocurrency market. Many people previously made and lost money when trading cryptocurrencies as the market was heavily in continuous turmoil. But thanks to the emergence of Bitcoin and Ethereum, many strange and creative innovations have come about.

One such innovation is the invention of a blockchain-based technology known as NFT (Non-Fungible-Token). This innovation is similar to cryptocurrency as it relies on blockchain to maintain a record of the transactions. Currently, NFTs are being widely used in the trade of digital artworks ranging from a snapshot of the first tweet ever made by the CEO of Twitter to video footage of the latest NBA dunks. These digital artworks are sold for millions of dollars and aren’t the only ones.

Many people are unaware of the difference between NFTs and Cryptocurrency. So today, we’re going to discover the difference between these two terms, and then inform you of the upcoming trends driving the NFT market.

What exactly are NFTs and Blockchain?

An NFT is a non-fungible token that validates the owner or creator of a digital art piece. This is done through the help of blockchain technology. Blockchain is a technology that works as a decentralized ledger that records transactions on a series of computers connected across the internet.

Suppose you have 10 computers maintaining the ledger, and now, if you make a transaction, such as to sell a digital art piece to a buyer, then that transaction and its details will be recorded on this ledger. Once an entry has proceeded in this ledger, no one can alter or erase it till the transaction has been completed.

Are you wondering what this accomplishes? Are we just recording information on multiple computers for nothing? Not exactly. By using blockchain, digital creators can post or publish their work online and not worry about any piracy or theft issues since each NFT has a unique code. The code is developed through a mathematical algorithm that assigns a unique hash code that is transmitted to every blockchain server.

Now, in the future, if anyone attempts to recreate the valued NFT and sell it as their own, it will show as a counterfeiter since their NFT won’t have a unique hash code. Hence, when an NFT is checked for authentication, the blockchain servers will show that it is not authentic and is owned by someone else.

How are NFTs different from cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrency works as a decentralized currency whose per unit value, along with the owner’s name, is saved on the blockchain. The main difference between cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and an NFT is that a cryptocurrency is interchangeable while NFTs aren’t. For example, you can swap a Bitcoin for any other cryptocurrency, such as Ethereum tokens that meet the same value. But with an NFT, there is no way to trade them as each NFT has a unique dollar value. Some may even be worth millions, while others can be sold for as little as $5.

Another thing that sets NFTs apart from cryptocurrency is having certain conditions or values added to them as a term for monetizing art. Suppose you have a digital art piece for an NFT. Now that NFT can store things on the blockchain ledger that a cryptocurrency cannot. Things such as the name of the original creator, date of creation, name of people who have bought it earlier and at present possess it. While even more complex conditions and terms can be applied, which has gained much prominence, each time an NFT is sold or resold, the original creator gets a share from each sale.

This has vast implications for digital creators as it becomes hard to track intellectual property on something as significant as the internet without the help of a decentralized ledger that is used in blockchains. 

Upcoming trends in the NFT market

According to Bloomberg Business, the NFT Market grew to a value of almost $40 Billion in 2021. And we expect that it will grow further as blockchain technology advances and the world begins to adopt NFTs as the new fine art market. Below, we cover the trends introduced in the NFT Market in 2022.

Community branding

Source: Handout (Bored Apes Yacht Club is a collection of NFTs featuring 10,000+ unique apes)

By community branding, we don’t mean that the world will start creating brands for their own communities since that’s already happening. Community branding implies that the community will control the brand rather than the people running the brand itself. This will create opportunities for creators to instill a piece of their creative genius into a design or brand they believe in. And by doing so, they will create bold designs that were never thought of by the original brand before.

For example, the “Bored Ape Yacht Club” is a compilation of 10,000 unique Ape NFTs that are designed by the people, for the people. This is a brand that was unheard of before 2021, and currently, it has signed partnerships with huge brands like Adidas. All because the community supporting the Bored Ape Yacht Club created fresh and unique designs.

Web 3.0 and NFTs

The Metaverse is one of the first examples of a new digital world known as Web 3.0. In this web version, we can interact with the virtual environment through VR and AR to become wholly immersed in an endless world of digital possibilities. But there can be a few complications in a digital world where you can interact with the environment, and the environment can interact with you.

One complication that can arise in a digital world like the Metaverse is ownership. People are already buying virtual real estate to promote their brands globally. But how exactly does a computer know who owns which digital asset in a collection of possibly trillions and billions? Through the same NFTs, we’ve covered in the earlier passages.

A virtual reality world can maintain a record of sales and purchases made across the Metaverse and similar projects with impeccable accuracy by using blockchain technology without human intervention. Even new or further transactions will occur similarly, and due to no human/ manual major data entries, the blockchain tech hence will prove safer and secure.

NFTs and music

Music creators are one of those communities that will benefit the most from the inclusion of NFTs in the intellectual property market. Since NFTs provide the chance to make your mark on your work forever, music creators will benefit from the implications NFTs will have against online music piracy. And thanks to that, Music creators will be paid exactly what they’re owed each time their tracks are played. What’s more, NFTs in Music will allow die-hard fans the chance to purchase limited-edition tracks from their favorite artists without having to worry about the exclusivity of their purchased soundtracks.

Gaming tokens

Have you ever bought something in an online game and regretted it five minutes later? Maybe it was a mod for a weapon or a skin for your avatar that just didn’t look as nice during gameplay? This is one of the things that NFTs can fix, and that’s barely scratching the surface.

Major game creators like Ubisoft have already invested in blockchain technology that allows their gamers to purchase and unlock items with intrinsic value. Allowing you to even sell these items in a secondary market to earn back some of the money you’ve spent on the game. Furthermore, creating several opportunities for people who want to earn money from playing games. Letting them sell their accrued virtual assets online once they’ve been unlocked and assigned an NFT will grant them this opportunity.

Personalized NFTs

Source: Apple’s new Memojis announced at its annual WWDC conference

With the advancement of interactive characters, such as Apple’s Animoji, we can rest assured that the entire digital world will begin creating virtual characters for its users. And one way these can be made unique for premium artists is by creating personalized NFTs that display while performing. These NFTs can be anything from a simple image video animation to even alive and interactive characters. This will have implications on how much money is invested in the Music NFT market and could impact several other things that are yet to be discovered.

Guest author: Nathan Enoch Burridge has been a part of the Digital Marketing Industry as a writer for years. His passion is to help people in every aspect of online marketing flows through his in-depth expertise with the industry and current employer Website Turbix. Nathan Burridge is also an author for several niches, including tech blogs. He likes spending time with his family, studying cultures, volunteering, and working for positive change. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Medium.

The post Trends in the NFT Market and What it Means for Business in 2022 appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

* This article was originally published here

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The 16 Best Ways to Get More Followers on Instagram in 2022

When you’re crafting your digital marketing toolkit, you might be wondering how to get more followers on Instagram. After all, creating a business account is only the first step.

If you don’t have anyone following you, or more importantly – if you don’t have anyone relevant following you, then your efforts won’t pay off in terms of generating customers. You need to have a strong follower base to show great content so they will convert into customers.

But how do you find these followers? Well, here are 16 different ways you can get more followers on Instagram this year.

16 Ways to get more followers on Instagram

1. Gain New Followers On Autopilot

The easiest way to earn new followers on Instagram in 2022 is to use an Instagram growth service.

Think of it this way. There are plenty of things in your business that you can automate. Email sequences, chatbot responders, and social media posting are just a few examples. Why not add follower growth to that list?

Growing your following using an organic method can take a lot of time, but it’s one of the best ways to generate quality followers. Using an Instagram growth service simply automates that process.

Top Tip When Choosing An Instagram Growth Service

The biggest thing to look out for when considering an Instagram growth service is what kind of followers you are attracting. This is why we recommend Kicksta. They attract 100% real and organic followers who will actually engage with your brand as opposed to bots.

2. Create A Strong Hashtag Strategy

Using the right hashtags is a great way to attract Instagram followers because it helps your posts land in front of the people who want to see and engage with your content. Even if you don’t use a particular keyword in your post copy, as long as it’s relevant you can use that keyword as a hashtag. Then, the people who are interested in and following that hashtag will be able to see your post.

Top Tip To Creating A Hashtag Strategy

It can be difficult to decide which hashtags to use, though. There are a few ways to make the process easier. First of all, use a hashtag generator tool. As long as you have a few keywords to get started, this tool can help you find related hashtags.

Another great idea is to see what hashtags your competitors are using. You likely won’t want to copy them exactly, but mixing in a few of their hashtags can be a good decision.

Finally, as with any new tactic, track your hashtags analytics to see what’s working. You don’t want to spend time using a hashtag that isn’t bringing you, new followers.

3. Explore Instagram Reels

Reels are going to continue to grow in popularity throughout 2022. Whether you love video or hate it, it’s here to stay. If you haven’t created a Reel yet, now’s the time to do so. You can start with something simple. Just pick a song, point to various places in mid-air on-beat, and then add text where you’re pointing to that explains a concept or something about your business.

Top Tip For Creating Instagram Reels In 2022

The best tip when it comes to Reels is to start posting and then keep posting consistently. The more Reels you create, the better you’ll become. So, make sure you can keep trying different types of videos and see what resonates with your audience. Make sure you’re watching your analytics to see what they like. And have fun with it. Sure, this is business, but video should be enjoyable for you to make and for your audience to watch.

4. Stay On Top Of Your Posting

Speaking of consistency, if you’re looking to get ahead in 2022, you need to make sure you’re posting consistently and at the right times. If you build up a strong following and then only post randomly, they’re not going to know what to expect from you and they might decide to unfollow. Instead, create a schedule and stick to it. You don’t have to post every day, but decide what’ll work for your business and commit to it.

Top Tip For Instagram Posting Best Practices

If you’re worried about staying on track with your schedule, don’t be. You can easily have a secret weapon: use an Instagram scheduling tool. With a scheduling tool, you can create your posts in advance and set them to post on your schedule. This way you never have to worry about what you’re going to post on a particular day or if you’re going to remember to post before you have to go to your doctor’s appointment or whatever else might be going on for you. It’s all prepared in advance.

5. Maintain A Consistent Tone And Feed

Staying consistent is important for both attracting followers and keeping them. If someone sees one or two of your posts, decides they like you, and wants to follow, they’re going to want to continue to see the same tone. If you come across as knowledgeable, to begin with, you don’t want to then change your tone and seem flippant and carefree. That’s not what your followers signed up for, so to speak.

Top Tip For Maintaining Consistency Across Your Account

Before you start posting (or before you publish your next post), think about what you want your tone to be on Instagram. Are you going to be playful? Irreverent? Professional? Fun-loving? There’s no right or wrong answer, but you need to make a decision for your brand and then stick with it. Choose a few adjectives that describe your brand in the tone that you’ve chosen and try to use one of them in each of your next few posts while you’re getting the hang of this.

6. Optimize Your Captions For Engagement And Search

Much like you would optimize your blog post for SEO, you can optimize your Instagram caption for search, too. Believe it or not, people are using Instagram to search for plenty of things, including businesses. Make sure you’re using the right keywords so you can land on the right results pages. If you’re a photographer in Chicago, make sure that most of your captions include the phrase “Chicago photographer” if you’re trying to find potential clients.

Top Tip For Caption Optimization

Beyond search, though, you can create more engagement on your posts through your captions. Use strong calls to action (CTAs) and questions in your captions so your audience knows how to respond. Sometimes someone might want to engage with you, but they aren’t sure what kind of comment to leave. When you ask them a question or tell them “tag your friend who’s interested in learning this,” you make it easier for them to engage with you.

7. Optimize Your Bio To Attract New Followers

Your bio can make or break you when someone lands on your profile to hit that “follow” button. Here are some best practices for each piece of your bio:

• Profile picture: if possible, include people. If you’re going to have your logo, make sure it’s clear enough to see in a tiny circle.
• Bio: in your actual copy, make sure you use the right keywords – your bio is searchable, too!
• Branded hashtags: if you use specific hashtags related to your brand, include them in your bio so people can see and use them.
• Highlight: use the highlights to your advantage by saving FAQs, your brand’s story, product introductions and other pieces of information your followers might want to know.

Top Tip To Optimize Your Bio

To take your bio to the next level, though, use a link in the bio tool to include multiple links to your blog, eCommerce page, and other social media sites. This is an important tip because now you can share multiple links at once, and you don’t have to worry if someone finds a post from weeks ago that sent them to your link in bio. You can just add additional resource links so everyone can find what they’re looking for.

8. Work With Influencers

Influencer marketing is the real deal in 2022. People trust the influencers they know and love, and your brand can benefit from that. If you’ve never tried working with an influencer, this is your year. Think of a good pitch and then try it. Begin by following them and engaging with their content so that they know you exist before you slide in their DMs and pitch a partnership.

Top Tips For Working With Influncers

Believe it or not, it’s an excellent idea to consider working with a micro-influencer. Major influencers with millions of followers don’t have as strong of a connection with their audience as micro-influencers do. In this world, that connection means everything because it means the followers are ready and willing to trust what the influencer has to say and recommend. Also, make sure you share the same target audience. Working with an influencer is only effective if their audience will be interested in your brand.

9. Take Advantage Of The Location And Tagging Tools

People like to support local businesses, so the more you can use the location tag, the better. Even if you’re an online company that can help people in various locations, using the location feature can be helpful. Also, whenever it’s appropriate, tag other people or brands in your posts. It might seem counterintuitive, but it works.

Top Tips For Adding Your Location And Tags

Shoutout or mention other Instagram accounts in your posts when possible and tag them in your content. This will help you show up in their tagged photos, and they might even share the post out of appreciation! If they did, this would expose your content to more users who might be interested in checking out your brand.

10. Engage Your Followers With Giveaways And Contests

Giveaways and contests help boost your engagement. This shows Instagram that your content is valuable and makes the algorithm more likely to boost your posts and share them with new people. It also helps potential new followers see that people actually do engage with your posts, so your content is worthwhile.

Top Tip For Giveaways And Contests

Whenever possible, try to build your contests around User-Generated Content (UGC). Ask people to post about your brand on their profiles and tag you for a chance to win. Not only will you be able to re-post those posts, but you’re also generating endorsements from real people. Their friends are going to see them speaking highly of you and be interested in checking out your page.

11. Be Authentic And Relatable

2022 is all about authenticity. Your followers want to see that you’re a real person or brand they can relate to easily. Gone are the days of the perfect, highly-curated feeds, but that doesn’t mean you should just throw random pictures on your feed. You still want to create a nice-looking page, it just doesn’t need to be so manicured that nothing is out of place.

Top Tip For Authentic And Relatable Content

Believe it or not: memes. Everyone loves memes right now. If creators don’t jump on the meme train, they might be left behind. If you’re not sure where to start, scroll through your explore page and see what memes appear there. Use those as inspiration for creating your own.

12. Create More Presence On Video

We mentioned this earlier regarding Instagram Reels, but there are more ways to use video on Instagram. IGTV and Instagram Live aren’t going anywhere, so they should be a part of your Instagram strategy.

IGTV can be a great place to put product demonstrations. Your audience wants to see this, so it’s likely to get strong engagement. When it comes to Instagram Live, try doing a Q&A or something else where you are generating engagement while you’re on Live. You can always save the video and use it as an IGTV so you’re getting multiple uses from it.

Top Tip For Creating Video Content

Most importantly, have a plan for your content before you begin to film, especially for IGTV. Longer-form content can feel overwhelming to create, but having a plan can make it feel more manageable. Even if you don’t have a true script, if you know what you’re filming and what you’ll be talking about, you’ll feel more in control. Another great idea is to know how you want to break down this long video into smaller pieces. Are you going to pull out a few 15-second clips to put in your Stories? Are you going to re-publish this on YouTube? The possibilities are endless.

13. Create Content Worthy Of Sharing And Saving

Instagram’s algorithm is all based on proving to Instagram that people are interested and engaging with your content. If Instagram sees people are sharing and saving your content, they will know it’s worth seeing, and it’s more likely to show it to more people. This, in turn, can help new potential followers see your content.

Top Tips For Getting People To Save And Share Your Content

Start mixing in some inspirational posts to your currently planned content. Just like on Pinterest, if you’re posting inspirational content people will save it to come back to later. It’s also easy for people to share their Stories, because it’s something that anyone wants to hear. Additionally, post relatable or educational content. Again, it’s easy for someone to share because it applies to many people.

14. Hop On Popular Trends

Trends are popular for a reason: many people enjoy what they’re about. Whether it’s a new dance or trending audio on Reels or a new hashtag and post style for your feed, try jumping on a trend the next time you see one. It’ll bring you new Instagram followers and it might just be fun.

Top Tip For Following Instagram Trends

Stay aware of what’s trending right now by spending time on Instagram regularly. Scroll through your feed and spend time on the Explore page to see what’s popular.

15. Engaging Instagram Stories

Instagram provides so many tools to encourage your followers in your Stories, use them! Stories are one of the most popular elements of Instagram these days. Many people just get on the platform to scroll through Stories, rather than the feed.

Top Tips for Instagram Stories

There are many different stickers, like the question box or the poll sticker. Using these built-in engagement tools can help you generate responses from your audience. Use the poll to create this or that Stories, asking your audience for their opinions. A question box can lead to a lively Q&A. Gifs are just plain fun.

16. Monitor And Adapt Your Strategy

In social media, things move fast. To attract new followers in 2022, you have to be consistently analyzing and adapting your content to stay in the game. If you aren’t monitoring your analytics to see what’s working and what isn’t, you’re going to fall behind.

Top Tip For Social Media Strategy

Take advantage of Instagram analytics and post insights. They’re built into your app, and they’ll show you what posts are resonating best with your audience. From there, you can decide how to move forward and what content you should create more of so that your audience continues to engage with it.

Time to get started

So there you have it: 16 ways to optimize your strategy on Instagram and attract new followers at the same time. Many of these are small changes to what you’re already doing, but some might take a little more time and effort to roll out. Which one will you implement first?

Guest author: Samantha Hackett is a Marketing Coordinator at Kicksta with expertise in all things Instagram and social media marketing.

The post The 16 Best Ways to Get More Followers on Instagram in 2022 appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

* This article was originally published here

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