March 29, 2024
​

This Week's Top Marketing News

How Marketing Integration Boosts Cross-Channel Success

Marketing is not that complicated when you get down to the basics. It is simply being the brand the consumer recalls when the time comes to make a purchase. But, if it’s that simple, why does it feel so damn hard? The challenge is cutting through the noise.

This is where marketing integration can help you continue to get your message across to target customers. Marketing integration is the act of unifying marketing across channels. Two key components of marketing integration are:

Uniform Messaging: Consistent messaging to boost brand awareness and trust

Sharing Data Across Channels: Allowing data to flow between platforms using automation to trigger impressions when the customer is active and interested

Too many marketing campaigns live and ultimately die in single channels. They are too one-dimensional limiting the impact that frequency fueled by technology can have. Generating a sales conversation with a customer can take up to 7-8 touchpoints. Marketing integration leveraging a unified message can reach a larger audience. Delivering this message in multiple formats across different channels increases the touchpoints needed for engagement.

“In 2019, marketers who used three or more channels in any one campaign earned a 287% higher purchase rate than those who opted for a single-channel campaign.”

​
​Fish Food: The good news is that marketing integration has never been easier to implement. Once you have created your unified marketing message, there's a wide array of automation tools that can help you position your brand in front of customers when they are interested and engaged. You have to strike when the iron is hot and realize the compounding effects of frequency. Distracted customers quickly forget… everything.

​
Skimmers, Swimmers & Divers: 3 Types of Visitor Your Website Must Cater For

Not all website visitors are created equal. Some come to your site completely educated on their problem and solutions that can help them. Others are just beginning to understand the problems. Since you do not know who is where in the buyer’s journey you have to cater to everyone as much as possible.

Landslide Creative outlines 3 types of website visitors in this infographic to help you structure your website to appeal to the masses.

• Skimmers are scanning text looking for information so they can quickly move on.
• Swimmers will stop and take a moment to read more of your content.
• Divers go into the depths of everything you have to share exploring all your nooks and crannies.
  ​

​
9 Ways to Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Page in 2024

Your LinkedIn Company Page should not be an afterthought. LinkedIn is where professionals go to network. Make sure your brand is well represented using these 9 optimization techniques to enhance your LinkedIn Company Page.

1. Upload a great profile image and banner
2. Write a compelling “About Us” section and include relevant keywords
3. Post to your Company Page regularly
4. Grow your audience
5. Build a Career Page
6. Build a Product Page
7. Keep up to date on the LinkedIn algorithm
8. Answer all comments and DMs
9. Host a virtual event
   ​

17 Types of Content Marketing

Content marketing is an essential part of any successful marketing strategy. Simply put, if you are not creating content that helps your ideal customers navigate through the buyer’s journey, someone else is and you are missing out on a huge opportunity.

You might be asking yourself why create new content when there’s already so much out there. Every single topic has been covered umpteen times by countless individuals. There is no shortage of content already out there but the one version that does not exist is YOUR version. You have a story and you have a very specific voice that (believe it or not) people want to hear. If that’s not enough, consider what content marketing can do for your business.

Backlinko outlines these 4 benefits you can realize from your content marketing efforts:

• Driving traffic to key landing pages
• Spreading brand awareness
• Building relationships
• Bringing in revenue
• Generating social shares and backlinks

Okay, now you’re tuned in and ready to begin outlining your content marketing strategy. Where do you start? That’s easy. Go to the places your customers are. This can be found by surveying/interviewing customers and learning where they spend their time researching before, during, and after making a purchase,

The first thing most people think about when they hear content marketing is blogging. Yes, blogging is the OG of content marketing but there are a lot of additional channels and formats to create content beyond text alone. Here are 17 different types of content you can create to communicate your message to your audience.

• Blogging
• Video
• Podcasting
• Infographics
• Email
• Visual content
• Ebooks
• Lead magnets
• Whitepapers
• Slideshare presentations
• Quizzes/tools
• Checklists
• Courses
• Webinars
• Slide decks
• Free apps
• Social media posts

​
​Fish Food: This long list can be overwhelming. Don’t let it scare you. Start simple and create one piece of content in whichever format you feel most comfortable. If you like writing, create a blog. If you’re comfortable talking into a microphone, record a podcast. Choose topics that align with the most common questions your customers ask you. Those very same questions are being searched for on Google and YouTube by so many others who have never heard of you. This is a great opportunity to get your brand in front of brand-new eyeballs. Once you’ve created that first piece of content, repurpose it into different formats and spread it across different channels.

​
13 YouTube Description Templates That Have Helped Our Videos Go Viral

You finally finished editing your masterpiece of a video and uploaded it to YouTube. So much time was spent outlining the video, writing the script, shooting too many takes, editing all of those shots into a seamless video, and adding the graphics. Before you hit that publish button, make sure you’re giving your video every possible chance to be found by the 2.5 billion YouTube users. Invest time in creating a great video description. The YouTube description is your chance to provide additional information about the content of your video. This is extremely important for letting the YouTube algorithm know what your content is about and how it should be indexed and ranked. This HubSpot article provides 13 useful templates for you to use in your YouTube videos and YouTube Channel.

20 Mind-Bending Illusions That Will Make You Question Reality

Remember sterograms? Those were the squiggly lined pictures you would stare at and eventually see a 3D object appear. They were really popular back in the late 1900s which is what my daughter likes to refer to as the time I grew up. Optical illusions can make you second-guess everything. Check out these 20 mind-bending illusions and let us know which one puzzles you the most. The cat hidden in the vertical lines got me.

44 Best Thank You’s for Your Purchase Messages

It’s amazing how much impact something as simple as a “Thank You” can have these days.

We are all thankful for the customers that purchase our products and services. Unfortunately, we sometimes forget to include that after a purchase is made. Sure, you might have a redirect page on your website after they enter the Buy Now button that says thank you and gives additional information about their purchase. Everyone is doing that. This article from Shopify shares 44 different ways you can thank your customers for buying from you that will leave a lasting impression and increase the likelihood of future business.
​

Developer APIs Herald a New Era of AI Integration

One of the most common questions we’ve received in the past 12 months is “How can we integrate AI into our business”? It’s a great question. AI is exciting but also brings a lot of confusion.

Most of us have tinkered around with ChatGPT by entering various prompts to see how it works. It’s amazing how quickly this tool can create useful text that can be applied in a variety of ways. What’s even more exciting is this tool is built using an open-source framework called OpenAI. An open-source framework is a decentralized software model that anyone can integrate with (or use) the tools they want to develop.

LimeWire is opening a world of possibilities in the AI image creation field by providing REST APIs that can be integrated into your website and apps. What does that super-nerdy sentence mean? They are providing open access to their AI technology so you can develop tools on your website or app to generate images using AI.

Here are some things this technology can do:

• Text-to-image generation: Input text instructions for the AI to create a unique image
• Image-to-image generation: Use an image (or multiple images) to generate a new image
• Background removal: Removing the background around an object in an image
• Image upscaling: Making an image larger without losing quality
• Image inpainting: Have AI insert elements (like your product) into existing images
• Image outpainting: Seamlessly fill in missing gaps in your images

​
​Fish Food: Think for a moment about how you could potentially use this technology on your website. What are some of the ways your site visitors could benefit from manipulating images they upload to your website? This type of tool could attract a lot more attention and traffic to your website and brand. Don’t just stop with AI image generation. There are a lot of additional AI open-source options available to streamline and automate just about anything you can imagine.

​

Earn Sweet Gear by Sharing Have friends who'd love our newsletter too? Give them your unique referral link (below) and get an awesome reward when they subscribe. [RH_REFLINK GOES HERE] facebook twitter linkedin email PS: You have referred [RH_TOTREF GOES HERE] people so far Start Sharing Now