The Basics of Marketing Funnels

A marketing funnel is more than a strategy; it’s necessary to help e-commerce stores convert visitors into loyal customers in the digital age. From the initial awareness stage to the final purchase, each funnel step is designed to guide potential customers through a seamless journey that enhances their shopping experience and increases the likelihood of a sale.

Emma and Nealey begin by breaking the funnel into clear, actionable steps. They explain how to attract visitors to your site and the importance of first impressions. “Once a potential customer lands on your e-commerce site, the real challenge begins,” says Emma. “It’s about making them feel welcomed, informed, and ready to purchase.”

From Awareness to Conversion

The series highlights critical stages of the marketing funnel, starting with creating impactful customer awareness. This involves understanding what draws customers to your site and ensuring the landing pages are attractive, informative, and optimized for conversions.

As customers move through the funnel, the focus shifts to education and engagement. Nealey discusses strategies for educating customers about products and guiding them toward making informed purchasing decisions. “Educating your potential customers is crucial,” Nealey notes. “It builds trust and helps them feel confident in their purchases.”

Addressing Abandoned Carts

A significant challenge in e-commerce is dealing with abandoned shopping carts. Emma and Nealey delve into strategies for re-engaging customers who have left items in their carts. This includes automated email reminders, offering special discounts, and streamlining the checkout process to make completing a purchase as easy as possible.

Technical Aspects and Building a Funnel

The technical setup of a marketing funnel is also covered in depth. The hosts explain the essential tools and software needed to build an effective funnel on your website. This includes recommendations for e-commerce platforms, email marketing software, and analytics tools that help track customer behavior and funnel performance.

Impact on E-Commerce Businesses

This article and video provide a blueprint for setting up a marketing funnel and emphasize its importance in today’s competitive market. By implementing the strategies discussed, e-commerce business owners can significantly improve their lead conversion rates and take their business to new heights.

“Having a robust marketing funnel means your sales process operates efficiently without your constant involvement,” Emma concludes. “It’s about creating a repeatable process that ensures every visitor has the potential to become a satisfied customer.”

As the e-commerce landscape evolves, GoDaddy’s “Transforming Your Sales: Marketing Funnels 2024” offers invaluable insights and tools for small business owners looking to optimize their online sales strategies and achieve sustainable growth.

Getting Down and Dirty with Marketing Funnels

In an era where digital commerce is not just an option but a necessity, strategically implementing marketing funnels is critical for success. For small business owners, understanding and deploying these funnels effectively can transform a stagnant online store into a dynamic sales powerhouse. Professionals can refine their approach by dissecting the journey from visitor to customer, ensuring every step is optimized for maximum conversion.

Understanding the Marketing Funnel Framework

At its core, a marketing funnel maps out the customer’s journey from initial awareness to the final purchase decision. This structured pathway is crucial for systematically converting browsers into buyers by guiding them through several key stages: awareness, consideration, decision, and retention.

Awareness Stage

The top of the funnel is where potential customers first contact your brand. At this initial point, the focus should be on capturing your audience’s attention through targeted marketing strategies that highlight the unique value proposition of your products. Effective tactics include SEO-driven content that ranks for key terms, engaging social media posts that resonate with your target demographic, and paid advertising that reaches a broader audience.

Consideration Stage

Once awareness is established, the funnel narrows to the consideration stage, where potential buyers evaluate your products against their needs and other market offerings. Here, educational content such as tutorials, reviews, and product comparisons can play a pivotal role. This content should not only inform but also showcase the products’ benefits and applications to sway the prospects closer to making a purchase.

Decision Stage

The decision stage is where shoppers are on the brink of purchase. Streamlining the process is vital, making it as straightforward as possible. Simplifying the checkout process, offering clear pricing and shipping information, and providing timely promotions or discounts can effectively nudge the shopper toward conversion. Additionally, addressing common barriers, such as potential security concerns, with robust reassurances and certifications ensures that customers feel confident in their decisions.

Tackling Cart Abandonment

A common hurdle at the decision stage is shopping cart abandonment. Proactive strategies to combat this include exit-intent popups offering discounts, cart-saving features that allow customers to retain their selections even after leaving the site, and follow-up emails reminding customers about their abandoned carts with a call to action to complete the purchase.

Leveraging Technology to Build and Optimize Funnels

The technology that supports any effective marketing funnel is the backbone of it. Choosing the right e-commerce platform that allows for the integration of various marketing tools is crucial. Tools for A/B testing landing pages, analytics software to track user behavior, and CRM systems to manage customer interactions are essential for optimizing the funnel stages.

Data-Driven Decision Making

In the age of big data, marketers can leverage analytics to refine their marketing strategies continually. By analyzing the data gathered at each stage of the funnel, marketers can identify drop-off points and customer hesitations. This insight allows for targeted improvements, such as adjusting email marketing campaigns to better meet potential customers’ needs or tweaking the user interface for improved usability.

The Role of AI and Automation

Advancements in AI and automation have introduced profound efficiencies in managing marketing funnels. AI-driven analytics can predict customer behaviors, personalize product recommendations, and automate customer communication through chatbots and personalized emails. This enhances the customer experience and frees marketers to focus on strategy and creative aspects of campaign management.

The Future of Marketing Funnels

As e-commerce continues to evolve, so will the marketing funnel strategies. Emerging technologies and platforms will offer new ways to connect with customers and streamline the sales process. For professional marketers, staying ahead means continuously learning and adapting to these changes, ensuring their marketing funnels are as effective and efficient as possible.

By mastering the art and science of marketing funnels, marketers can ensure their e-commerce operations participate in and thrive in the competitive digital marketplace. The journey from a casual website visitor to a loyal customer can be complex. Still, with the right strategies, it is a repeatable and scalable process that drives growth and sustains business success.

In a candid video that has set tongues wagging across the industry, entrepreneur Alex Morton lays bare the simple truth: people know what they need to do to succeed, but they’re just not doing it.

“Network marketing isn’t rocket science,” Alex declares. “It wasn’t complicated in 2011, and it’s still not complicated today.” His message is clear: if you want to make it big in this game, you’ve got to put in the work.

At the heart of Alex’s no-nonsense approach is the concept of daily methods of operation (DMOs). “Prospect five people per day, six days per week,” he advises. “That’s 30 people a week, 120 people a month. Even if 90% of them tell you no, that’s still 12 new customers or leaders every single month.”

But Alex isn’t content to simply dispense advice from the comfort of his own home. He challenges his followers to take action, to step out of their comfort zones and embrace the hustle. “You can’t even talk to five people a day,” he admonishes. “So what are we talking about?”

For Alex, success in network marketing is less about mindset shifts and subconscious programming and more about good old-fashioned hard work. “My first 100K? It was brute work and effort,” he reveals. “You fall down, you suck at first, you’re scared to talk to people. But nobody cares because you’re selling them on believing in where you’re going.”

Alex also has a simple message for those tempted to drown themselves in a sea of self-help books and motivational seminars: “Read the book, do the seven steps, go to work.” In his view, there’s no substitute for action.

Alex’s no-nonsense approach is a breath of fresh air in an industry often criticized for its overblown promises and underwhelming results. And as his message spreads across social media, more and more aspiring entrepreneurs are taking heed, rolling up their sleeves, and getting down to business.

So if you’re tired of spinning your wheels and ready to take control of your financial future, take a page out of Alex’s book: stop making excuses, get off your butt, and start hustling. After all, in the world of network marketing, there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned hard work.

A journey that began in 1994, where the mere mention of Stanley Cups in the same breath as hot products of the future would have drawn laughter, has culminated in a staggering revenue surge for the company. From $74 million in 2019 to a staggering $750 million in 2023, the trajectory of Stanley’s success is nothing short of remarkable.

But beyond the numbers lies a masterclass in effective product marketing and the art of harnessing cultural momentum. As one observer notes, “with the Stanley Cup brand, you’re not just buying into a product, you’re buying into a community.” This sense of belonging, of being part of a tribe united by hydration, is a powerful draw that transcends mere utility.

With their blue-collar, utilitarian roots, Stanley Cups have managed to reinvent themselves for a new generation, thanks in no small part to the visionary leadership of Terrence Riley, the company’s president. Riley, no stranger to transforming the mundane into the desirable, previously worked his magic at Crocs, turning them into a fashion statement during his tenure as Chief Marketing Officer.

The secret to Stanley’s success lies not just in the quality of its products but also in its ability to cultivate a sense of exclusivity and community. Limited editions, scarcity, and the power of social commerce have all contributed to fueling the brand’s meteoric rise. While success has not been without its challenges, including instances of uncivilized behavior and concerns over product safety, Stanley remains undeterred.

In a world where brands vie for attention in an increasingly crowded marketplace, Stanley Cups have managed to cut through the noise by tapping into something deeper than mere consumerism. It’s not just about owning a product; it’s about being part of a movement, a cultural phenomenon that transcends boundaries.

As one industry insider muses, “We are all desperate to connect, belong, express who we are.” In Stanley Cups, many have found not just a water bottle, but a symbol of identity, belonging, and aspiration. And in a world where authenticity is currency, Stanley Cups are the real deal.

Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift, was recently interviewed on the B2B Growth podcast by John Rougeux who is VP of Marketing at Skyfii. Gerhardt discusses conversational marketing as a new B2B product category and how it is changing marketing from reaching out to you later to a conversation that is happening now:

Conversational Marketing is About Connecting You Now

Conversational marketing is a whole new way of thinking about marketing and sales. The traditional way of doing marketing and sales is all about later. Come to my website and fill out this form and somebody is going to reach out to you later, when it’s convenient for them. The big shift that is happening in marketing and business over the last five to ten years is customers have all the power today. You can’t make people wait. Information is free now.

I can find anything I want to know about a company without ever having to go to your website. It’s crazy to think that you are going to force people to go to your website, fill out a form, wait three days to hear back from your sales team, and then get a demo. Conversational is all about connecting you now with the people who are ready to buy now while they are live on your website.

B2P – Marketing to People

It’s not about buyers. It’s not about sellers. It’s not about sales. It’s not about marketing. It’s about people. That’s how people all communicate online today. I pressed one button in my car and I got a list. I ordered something from Amazon while I was here this morning to send back to my house and it’s going to be there tomorrow when I get home. There are countless examples of that. That is how we all behave online in our real lives today.

But then something happens weird happens. We go to our jobs in B2B and none of the tools that we use match how we actually buy as real people. That’s the most exciting thing to me about conversational marketing. It’s really closing the gap between B2C and B2B. We just call it B2P, marketing to people.

What Ties Our Products Together is Conversation

We have an email product and we have a landing page product. Black and white versions of those people would say everybody has email, everybody has landing pages. The thing that ties those together is conversation. That forces us to think about what is conversational email? What is conversational landing pages? What is conversational whatever? That one word forces our product team to think about how can we change this? If our fundamental stance as a company is that the internet should be one conversation, then how does that weave into everything that we build?

Ultimately what we care about is that email becomes a conversation. Meaning, the way that marketers have had to use email the last decade is a one-way channel. Email is meant to be a two-way channel. Marketers have been using it as, “John come to my webinar.” What happens if you actually respond to that email? Most of the time you can’t because it’s donotreply@ or it just goes to some inbox where nobody is answering it. That is a terrible experience. Our belief is that if you reply, “Hey actually I can’t make it. Can you reregister my colleague?” That should get handled. We are thinking of that from an evolution standpoint.

The same thing with landing pages. Most landing pages today are static. You go to the landing page, put a bunch of info in and you are gone. What if that was a real-time conversation on the page? That one topic has to weave itself into everything we do from a product perspective.

>> Listen to the complete interview with Drift Marketing VP Dave Gerhardt on the B2B Growth podcast.

Avishai Sharon, Co-founder & CEO of TrenDemon, discussed their software on ILTV:

How Do You Connect Content Marketing to Sales?

My personal background was heading a marketing agency for many years and one of my biggest struggles was how do I prove our value and our effort to our customers and how do you connect the impact of what we call content marketing to business goals and to sales? When we couldn’t find an easy way to show that correlation three and a half years ago we went ahead and founded TrenDemon to help companies do just that.

We connect their marketing efforts, which today rely mostly on content, you want your audience to consume valuable content, as opposed to just advertising. The big challenge is how do you attribute those efforts to sales? There’s actually a prior problem, how do you actually map the customer journey? How do you track those different touch points into one picture?

Reverse Engineering Successful Customer Journeys

The first thing we do is look at all the different touchpoints that a customer has had over his lifecycle. We ask the question, not just where do they come from, but how deep was their engagement? Did they actually watch the video? Did they actually read the article? Then you can start reverse engineering those successful journeys and say what’s common about all of these successful journeys.

What we found, and this is the interesting thing, we’re working with over 90 companies today worldwide and the vast majority of content the companies produce, over 90 percent, is ineffective at driving business goals. As you guys know it’s very expensive to create quality content and it takes a lot of effort.

If People Read the Right Content They Will Covert to a Sale

The second interesting thing is that if you do manage to find those 10 percent and you find a way to get it in front of the right people you’re actually able to improve dramatically your results. So there’s not just a correlation between what buyers did beforehand, there’s also a causation, a causal relationship, that if people read the right content at the right time they’re more likely to follow a path. We’re not probably as sophisticated as we believe that we are.

We’re a SaaS company, a cloud-based solution. We’re working a lot in the US and one of our biggest markets and growing markets is Japan. They’re investing a lot of content and a lot on technology. Essentially, because we look at the customer journey and not necessarily specific languages we can operate in any environment which allows us to grow pretty much anywhere. As long as they have content, which means that they’re producing something other than just advertising, they want people and audiences to actually engage with what they’re producing and they do have some business outcomes that they’re looking to measure.

About TrenDemon:

Founded in 2013, TrenDemon is the world’s leading content marketing attribution and optimization solution, helping marketers prove and improve their content’s impact.

TrenDemon insights can help you uncover your content marketing ROI, impact on business goals, and engagement to help guide the content strategy. Our optimization units will help you increase conversions and shorten time to convert on your owned assets.

TrenDemon proudly serves a wide range of customers, from Fortune 500s and brands to SaaS, B2B, and financial companies and is backed by leading VCs.

Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Marketing, discusses how B2B influencer marketing can be a highly effective force in driving leads and conversions for companies. Lee was interviewed by Tim Washer at the 2019 Content Marketing World Conference & Expo:

Influencer Marketing Is Powerful Because Of Influence Itself

Influencer marketing is powerful because of influence itself, not about the people. Influence has always been a factor in being persuasive and being effective as a communicator, as a marketer, and really being able to tap into the dynamics of that. The psychology and sociology of that is something that is everlasting, it’s evergreen. While there are trends in terms of tactics that come and go, there’s this consumerization of B2B. B2C influencers are misbehaving and have fake followers, etc. and some of that’s leaking over into B2B. But I think that’ll reconcile a little bit and kind of clean itself out. In the future brands are going to be looking at influence as a really key component of their holistic marketing strategy internally and externally.

A lot of people when they think of influencer marketing they think of a Kardashian or some people think of something like Baddiewinkle, a 90-year-old woman who wears hip-hop clothes and now has her own makeup line on Sephora versus someone like Tamara McCleary interviewing an executive at Dell about the right IT infrastructure for doing edge computing. That’s really what it’s about in B2B.

B2B Influencers Actually Have To Have The Main Expertise

One of the big differences between B2B and B2C influencers is that in B2B you actually have to have the main expertise. You actually have to be knowledgeable and have a depth of that expertise in what it is that you’re influential about. It’s also important to have a network for distribution and a place to publish your content. It’s great to have a personality and that’s less common in B2B, where you have charisma. Well, lack of personality is a form of personality I suppose. 

The good thing is that we’ve figured out ways to coach folks that have that domain expertise and an active following but they’re not necessarily used to being social. We are coaching them in how to activate themselves and to pull out the best of what they have to share in a way that’s very promotable. Many of them start to open up a little bit after we show them how to do it.

B2B Influencer Marketing Adds Up To Nurture and Conversion

In the planning stages (with a client looking to promote something) we’ll look at the topics that are important around the announcement and how it affects customers and how customers will think of that news and how it’ll affect or change their lives. Those topics are then what we want to be influential about. We’ll use those keywords or topics to search our network using influencer marketing software to find who is influential around those topics, who’s publishing content, who self-identifies around that topic, and whose audience is actually activated around that topic. We find those people who have trusted voices with an active community and we invite them to collaborate on content and give their opinion about the announcement. 

We co-create content with them in concert with brand messaging. So now instead of people just ignoring the press release we actually have storytelling happening with these different voices. You have this intersection of one or two or three or four influencers talking about this topic and those audiences intersect and cross. They intersect across channels too. Your customer is hearing this credible message not only from the brand but also from people that they trust in different channels. That all adds up to yes. That all adds up to nurture and ultimately conversion.

Nirosha Methananda, Vice President of Marketing at Bombora, discusses the challenges of marketing without annoying your potential customers by bombarding them with marketing messages in an interview with Logan Lyles on the B2B Growth Podcast:

Marketing Is Really About the Customer Experience

As a B2B marketer, I get marketed to a lot. It’s something that I have increasingly noticed and I’m probably not the only one. That’s just becoming part of the experience in terms of being inundated with different messaging and different calls and this, that, and the other. Use this, do this, buy this, whatever it is. It’s really not a great experience. It doesn’t necessarily provide value. Marketers are so busy as it is, and I know that is applicable across the board with everyone we are marketing to. Being able to cut through the noise and having an understanding of all these different things is very challenging. 

Having on top of it being inundated with this constant flow of messaging like meet me, meet me, meet me, is not very helpful. That’s one of the things that I’m passionate about. It’s really about customer experience. I think that is something fundamental to marketing. I feel like we have gone down this path of almost over automating and having to constantly pounce on people without necessarily being conscious and mindful of what their experience is on the other end. From my experience, it’s leading to me switching off and ignoring messages. I’m sure I’m not the only one. 

Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying

It also leads to this annoyance and irritation which leads to distrust of brands and that’s not great for this industry. From a customer perspective those bad experiences, unfortunately, more than good experiences, they stay with you for longer and you remember that. Another thing that we don’t necessarily think of is that it’s wasteful. It’s wasteful of time and it’s wasteful of money especially for marketing and sales where money is a precious resource. It’s not something to be wasted. That’s basically why I’m passionate about creating a marketing strategy that’s not annoying.

As an example, our Intent Event was our first flagship event that we did last year. It was a closed event so we did have limited numbers and we were limited as to what we could do with promotion. What we did was try to have mindfulness around what we were sending out and ensuring that it was helpful. Making sure that the recipients, the people that we invited, were given all the relevant information, but there was brevity in the communication as well as encouraging them to participate without forcing them to be there. 

There was certainly some urgency around some of our communication but it wasn’t you need to attend this and this is why you must attend this. It was more about being a bit more subtle in presenting them the idea and the concept of what it was, why it would help them, and exactly the information that they needed. What that meant was not sending out multiple emails, being very controlled around it, really thinking about what the experience was before the event, to during the event, to after the event. We were really focused on the customer and making sure that all of the content and communication was educational and helpful.

Nirosha Methananda, Vice President of Marketing at Bombora, discusses the challenges of marketing without annoying your potential customers by bombarding them with marketing messages in an interview with Logan Lyles on the B2B Growth Podcast:

Marketing Is Really About the Customer Experience

As a B2B marketer, I get marketed to a lot. It’s something that I have increasingly noticed and I’m probably not the only one. That’s just becoming part of the experience in terms of being inundated with different messaging and different calls and this, that, and the other. Use this, do this, buy this, whatever it is. It’s really not a great experience. It doesn’t necessarily provide value. Marketers are so busy as it is, and I know that is applicable across the board with everyone we are marketing to. Being able to cut through the noise and having an understanding of all these different things is very challenging. 

Having on top of it being inundated with this constant flow of messaging like meet me, meet me, meet me, is not very helpful. That’s one of the things that I’m passionate about. It’s really about customer experience. I think that is something fundamental to marketing. I feel like we have gone down this path of almost over automating and having to constantly pounce on people without necessarily being conscious and mindful of what their experience is on the other end. From my experience, it’s leading to me switching off and ignoring messages. I’m sure I’m not the only one. 

Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying

It also leads to this annoyance and irritation which leads to distrust of brands and that’s not great for this industry. From a customer perspective those bad experiences, unfortunately, more than good experiences, they stay with you for longer and you remember that. Another thing that we don’t necessarily think of is that it’s wasteful. It’s wasteful of time and it’s wasteful of money especially for marketing and sales where money is a precious resource. It’s not something to be wasted. That’s basically why I’m passionate about creating a marketing strategy that’s not annoying.

As an example, our Intent Event was our first flagship event that we did last year. It was a closed event so we did have limited numbers and we were limited as to what we could do with promotion. What we did was try to have mindfulness around what we were sending out and ensuring that it was helpful. Making sure that the recipients, the people that we invited, were given all the relevant information, but there was brevity in the communication as well as encouraging them to participate without forcing them to be there. 

There was certainly some urgency around some of our communication but it wasn’t you need to attend this and this is why you must attend this. It was more about being a bit more subtle in presenting them the idea and the concept of what it was, why it would help them, and exactly the information that they needed. What that meant was not sending out multiple emails, being very controlled around it, really thinking about what the experience was before the event, to during the event, to after the event. We were really focused on the customer and making sure that all of the content and communication was educational and helpful.

Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift, was recently interviewed on the B2B Growth podcast by John Rougeux who is VP of Marketing at Skyfii. Gerhardt discusses conversational marketing as a new B2B product category and how it is changing marketing from reaching out to you later to a conversation that is happening now:

Conversational Marketing is About Connecting You Now

Conversational marketing is a whole new way of thinking about marketing and sales. The traditional way of doing marketing and sales is all about later. Come to my website and fill out this form and somebody is going to reach out to you later, when it’s convenient for them. The big shift that is happening in marketing and business over the last five to ten years is customers have all the power today. You can’t make people wait. Information is free now.

I can find anything I want to know about a company without ever having to go to your website. It’s crazy to think that you are going to force people to go to your website, fill out a form, wait three days to hear back from your sales team, and then get a demo. Conversational is all about connecting you now with the people who are ready to buy now while they are live on your website.

B2P – Marketing to People

It’s not about buyers. It’s not about sellers. It’s not about sales. It’s not about marketing. It’s about people. That’s how people all communicate online today. I pressed one button in my car and I got a list. I ordered something from Amazon while I was here this morning to send back to my house and it’s going to be there tomorrow when I get home. There are countless examples of that. That is how we all behave online in our real lives today.

But then something happens weird happens. We go to our jobs in B2B and none of the tools that we use match how we actually buy as real people. That’s the most exciting thing to me about conversational marketing. It’s really closing the gap between B2C and B2B. We just call it B2P, marketing to people.

What Ties Our Products Together is Conversation

We have an email product and we have a landing page product. Black and white versions of those people would say everybody has email, everybody has landing pages. The thing that ties those together is conversation. That forces us to think about what is conversational email? What is conversational landing pages? What is conversational whatever? That one word forces our product team to think about how can we change this? If our fundamental stance as a company is that the internet should be one conversation, then how does that weave into everything that we build?

Ultimately what we care about is that email becomes a conversation. Meaning, the way that marketers have had to use email the last decade is a one-way channel. Email is meant to be a two-way channel. Marketers have been using it as, “John come to my webinar.” What happens if you actually respond to that email? Most of the time you can’t because it’s donotreply@ or it just goes to some inbox where nobody is answering it. That is a terrible experience. Our belief is that if you reply, “Hey actually I can’t make it. Can you reregister my colleague?” That should get handled. We are thinking of that from an evolution standpoint.

The same thing with landing pages. Most landing pages today are static. You go to the landing page, put a bunch of info in and you are gone. What if that was a real-time conversation on the page? That one topic has to weave itself into everything we do from a product perspective.

>> Listen to the complete interview with Drift Marketing VP Dave Gerhardt on the B2B Growth podcast.

Brand growth expert Austin Brawner of Ecommerce Influence interviewed Justuno CEO Erik Christiansen about conversion optimization:

Retailers Should Focus On The Last Mile

Conversion optimization is the same as it’s been for a while. People still don’t want to focus on the last mile. Finally, in 2020, we saw that shift when advertising got so expensive. Everyone is like, okay, we have minimal budgets, how do we stretch them? Finally, with all the competition from COVID where everyone’s shifting online everyone, they are saying that we can’t keep just throwing money at this. We’ve got to come up with the real problem.

When we first launched we had to pivot immediately because when we mentioned the word coupon or the word pop-up people just ran the other way. It’s been ten years of education and we’ve kept to the same message of investing in your current website visitors. Our main job still is to educate the online retailer about the basics. We ask most businesses, as you know with email, are you doing a 30, 60, 90 day, the basics? Are you doing a cart abandonment email? You cover the basics and you get so much further ahead.

There’s always low-hanging fruit

Everyone thinks businesses are run perfectly but most businesses are just a mess. What I’ve been trying to do is challenge my team to look at the basics. There’s always low-hanging fruit to improve your business. When it comes to retail, where’s the low-hanging fruit? Let’s break out your business to the basics like new visitors versus repeat. With the new ones, how many are there? What percentage of emails are we capturing? Are we sending those emails to your ESP? Are we putting in the basic workflows? There’s so much low-hanging fruit.

Then, you’re sending these emails, are you reinforcing those campaigns on-site? You spend so much time designing the email, sending it. Then it comes to that shopping cart abandonment. Do you even know how many people come to your cart each day? Do you know how many carts get abandoned and the dollar value? What can we do? The basics are still very much there in terms of opportunity to help people increase their sales lead capture and sales. How do you take one marketing dollar and stretch it as far as you possibly can? How do you also get creative? It’s all about creativity. That’s what marketing is and that’s what retail is. Retail is retailing and getting your hands dirty.

Avishai Sharon, Co-founder & CEO of TrenDemon, discussed their software on ILTV:

How Do You Connect Content Marketing to Sales?

My personal background was heading a marketing agency for many years and one of my biggest struggles was how do I prove our value and our effort to our customers and how do you connect the impact of what we call content marketing to business goals and to sales? When we couldn’t find an easy way to show that correlation three and a half years ago we went ahead and founded TrenDemon to help companies do just that.

We connect their marketing efforts, which today rely mostly on content, you want your audience to consume valuable content, as opposed to just advertising. The big challenge is how do you attribute those efforts to sales? There’s actually a prior problem, how do you actually map the customer journey? How do you track those different touch points into one picture?

Reverse Engineering Successful Customer Journeys

The first thing we do is look at all the different touchpoints that a customer has had over his lifecycle. We ask the question, not just where do they come from, but how deep was their engagement? Did they actually watch the video? Did they actually read the article? Then you can start reverse engineering those successful journeys and say what’s common about all of these successful journeys.

What we found, and this is the interesting thing, we’re working with over 90 companies today worldwide and the vast majority of content the companies produce, over 90 percent, is ineffective at driving business goals. As you guys know it’s very expensive to create quality content and it takes a lot of effort.

If People Read the Right Content They Will Covert to a Sale

The second interesting thing is that if you do manage to find those 10 percent and you find a way to get it in front of the right people you’re actually able to improve dramatically your results. So there’s not just a correlation between what buyers did beforehand, there’s also a causation, a causal relationship, that if people read the right content at the right time they’re more likely to follow a path. We’re not probably as sophisticated as we believe that we are.

We’re a SaaS company, a cloud-based solution. We’re working a lot in the US and one of our biggest markets and growing markets is Japan. They’re investing a lot of content and a lot on technology. Essentially, because we look at the customer journey and not necessarily specific languages we can operate in any environment which allows us to grow pretty much anywhere. As long as they have content, which means that they’re producing something other than just advertising, they want people and audiences to actually engage with what they’re producing and they do have some business outcomes that they’re looking to measure.

About TrenDemon:

Founded in 2013, TrenDemon is the world’s leading content marketing attribution and optimization solution, helping marketers prove and improve their content’s impact.

TrenDemon insights can help you uncover your content marketing ROI, impact on business goals, and engagement to help guide the content strategy. Our optimization units will help you increase conversions and shorten time to convert on your owned assets.

TrenDemon proudly serves a wide range of customers, from Fortune 500s and brands to SaaS, B2B, and financial companies and is backed by leading VCs.

Incorporate User-Generated Content

All companies have to face it: customers are no longer simply consumers. They are active participants and content creators and are impossible to ignore in your marketing strategy. UGC content serves as social proof for your brand reputation and product quality. New customers are more likely to purchase your product or service when they discover positive reviews.

You can capitalize on formal or informal UGC. You might (with the creator’s permission) repost pictures or videos demonstrating customers using or raving about your products, or you can solicit active participation through company-sponsored contests and giveaways. You also have the option to access UGC regularly through partnerships with influencers.

Brand partners and influencers allow you to set the terms for the content that will best serve your brand, and they allow you to reach a large audience through influencers’ trusted advice. Whatever direction you take, incorporating UGC into your marketing strategy is essential.

Create Quality Content

The content you release should reflect your specific audience’s needs and preferences, but one thing remains true for every brand. Your content must be of high quality.

Your long-form content, such as blog posts and research articles, should be grammatically correct, engaging, and contain optimized keywords to boost their SEO performance. Using tools like Ahrefs and Semrush, you can edit your work to increase your readership and add value to your customers.

Video content should also hold an esteemed position within your marketing plan. Videos quickly capture viewer attention and increase accessibility by utilizing audio, visuals, alternate text, and subtitles. While every company battles for customer attention, you can set yourselves apart through quality videos that present them with information quickly.

When you make or solicit videos, you should ensure they have high-quality visuals and audio, show multiple angles, and keep the product, creator, or customer within the frame. You must engage viewers through authentic and relatable stories.

Conduct Market Research

You might have the most impressive, trusted marketing practices in your toolkit, but they are only effective if you know your target audience. While many consumers share similar needs and preferences, you find business success in identifying their unique qualities and niche groups.

You must center your marketing strategy around your niche audience. Whether you’re launching your business or updating your previous marketing strategy, you must identify and narrow down your target audience to provide more personalized content and outreach. Build consumer personas and perform SWOT analysis tests to determine what calls to action, color schemes, and information your customers respond to.

When you conduct market research, stay on the lookout for trends that work for your industry and specific audience. Though trends come and go, incorporating some of them into your marketing techniques will help you stay relevant and generate excitement. Additionally, you’ll want to study your competition’s marketing strategies to take stock of their strengths and weaknesses. You can adapt what they do well to meet your business needs and avoid their pitfalls. Comparative market analysis will help you stay on budget and stand out from the crowd.

Outline Your Objectives

Developing a marketing strategy requires goal-setting. You need to know what specific results you’re working towards and implement measurable KPIs to reach them. When creating or updating your marketing approach, select a few long-term goals and outline short-term objectives.

Setting goals will help get your team on the same page and allow you to track your progress and adapt to unforeseen challenges. Actionable market plans increase brand awareness, generate leads, and boost revenue.

Take SEO Strategies into Account

You can’t overlook search engine optimization when creating and sharing content with your target audience. Including optimized keywords and generating backlinks to your website in other off-site articles boost your search engine rankings and allows you to share your credentials and expertise with a larger audience.

SEO also helps you improve the customer experience. By adapting your content to reflect what your customers are looking for, you make it easier for them to find solutions to their problems.

Conclusion

You can improve the results generated from your company’s marketing strategy by incorporating user-generated content, conducting market research, and outlining your objectives. While it might seem like the marketing world is an ever-changing landscape, if you base your marketing techniques on your target audience’s needs and preferences, you’ll find success.

Microsoft has released its August product updates, including Target Impression Share automated bidding.

Manually managing a search campaign can be a tedious process, especially when trying to stay at the top of the results. Microsoft’s August update aims to help address that with Target Impression Share automated bidding.

“A new addition to our suite of automated bidding strategiesOpens in new window is the exciting new Target Impression Share strategy, now available in Microsoft Advertising online and Editor,” writes Kevin Salat, Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft Advertising. “With this strategy, you set your budget, where you want your ads to appear, and your Target Impression Share, and Microsoft Advertising automatically sets your bids.”

Microsoft is a distant second to Google in search market share. Nonetheless, rolling out features that continue to make it easier for customers to use its services can only help it gain ground.

TikTok has revolutionized the social media industry with its short-form videos. Countless influencers’ careers have started on TikTok, with short-form videos that have gone viral. Hotels are now using short-form videos to show off their properties, attract guests, and tap into people’s desire for something unique.

“TikTok is no longer considered a dance-trend app for teenagers,” Richard Hyde, managing director of Small Luxury Hotels, told Skift. “The platform is rapidly aging up. We’ve seen engagement from users of all ages on our Small Luxury Hotels of the World account.”

“Authenticity is quickly becoming the new cultural currency,” he said, speaking of the popular “behind the scenes” approach. “Our hotels are experiential, entertaining, spontaneous, enriching, and fun – like Tik Tok. The platform doesn’t require polished content. Users will sniff out professionally made videos and they won’t perform as well. Our TikTok strategy is based on showing our beautiful hotels from a guest’s perspective.”

As Skift points out, TikTok is an especially valuable resource for hotels and companies with limited marketing budgets. Savvy marketers can tap into existing trends and then tie in their products or services, thereby benefiting from the wealth of user-generated content.

For example, the report highlights The Retreat Elcot Park in the English countryside, which tapped into the popularity of Netflix’s Bridgerton.

“With the Bridgerton tag trending on TikTok, we entered that cultural conversation in an authentic way,” Hyde said. “Using a soundbite from the new series, we framed the hotel as a place that Bridgerton fans must visit.”

“The TikTok reached an audience of 50,000 — 86 percent of whom discovered the video via the ‘For You Page’, meaning they were not following us yet,” Hyde added. “The comments were filled with friends tagging each other saying that they must visit the property.”

“As well as discoverability, ‘saves’ are an important metric for us,” Hyde explained. “Users are now saving the destinations they would like to visit in the future.”

TikTok has clearly evolved far beyond its roots and is now playing a major role in many companies marketing campaigns. With a little effort and even less budget, your company could benefit from this phenomenon and reap the rewards of engaging with user-created content.

Scott Tousley, Senior Team Lead of User Acquisition for all products at HubSpot, was recently interviewed on the B2B Growth Podcast by David Kelly, General Manager at Sumo Dojo. Tousley discusses how HubSpot is using Surround Sound Marketing Strategy to drive leads and sales:

Surround Sound Marketing Strategy Starting to Take Off

There is a very smart individual at HubSpot named Alex Birkett based out of Austin, Texas. He is working on this concept that is really starting to take off called Surround Sound Strategy. Essentially what that means is that it runs with the notion that marketers are selfish. All we care about is how do we drive more traffic to our website. I don’t care where it comes from. Whether it comes from search or social or referral traffic or email, it doesn’t matter. You’re always looking at how do I get more traffic to my website? The reality is that when we are trying to buy something you don’t go to one website. You go to multiple different websites when you are trying to make a purchasing decision.

For example, I’m in South Lake Tahoe right now. One search I just did recently was “best bars in South Lake Tahoe.” I wanted to see a list and I wanted to see some reviews from a couple of different websites. I also like to surf, so let’s say I’m in the market for a new shortboard. So I search for “best shortboards 2019.” First, I’ll read a listicle, then I will go back to Google and I will click on the next list. Then I will go back again and click on the next list. Then I will start to narrow my decision based on seeing the same thing over and over. Once I narrow it down I will do a versus search such as “lost puddle jumper” vs. “channel islands average joe.” I’ve narrowed my decision at that point.

We Want To Be At All Stages of the Purchasing Decision

What we are trying to do at HubSpot right now is figure out how to be everywhere. We want to be at all stages of that purchasing decision when people are searching for “what is the best blank that exists today.” Well, there are a ton of lists that are out there and a ton of review sites and HubSpot’s B2B software (has to be there). There are a lot of review sites just dominating search engines right now like Capterra, G2 Crowd, and Software Advice. A lot of those are pay to play. You have got to pay to get listed on what appears when you land via search. Most of them are.

But listicles are free. Not only are they free to get added to, but they are free to create. That’s one of the biggest things we are working on right now. How do we change our mindset from being so obsessed at driving traffic to our website? How do we make sure that HubSpot’s brand is everywhere when you are doing your product research and you are on many different websites? We actually sometimes prefer that we drive traffic to multiple different websites where we are listed versus just to our own. It’s good for social grouping.

Listen to the full interview with HubSpot’s Scott Tousley.

It seems obvious when you see it written down, but few people understand the implications of this.

There is little you can do about talent: you either have it or you don’t. I can take dance lessons all my life, eat healthy, sleep early and train obsessively, but if I lack the raw talent, I will never make it. It’s as simple as that.

There is also very little you can do about luck. Actually, there is something you can do about it – more on this in a minute. Luck is being in the right place at the right time, being seen by the right person, feeling the zeitgeist before everybody else does, and expressing it through your art. You have little control on any of this.

If this is the case (and this IS the case), then what differentiates you from the hordes of aspiring actors, singers, writers, dancers, photographers, painters… It’s hard work, surely? Well, yes, hard work is key. It’s what nourishes the seed of talent and grows it to its full potential, it’s what allows you to keep going until you are at the right place at the right time, but it’s not enough. All successful artists work hard. Extremely and obsessively hard. It’s the only way to make it. And yet it’s not enough.

Marketing Becomes the Great Equalizer

But when your competition is just as talented and is working just as hard just as you are, only marketing can set you apart. Well, technically there is also luck: enough luck can make up for lack of talent, hard work and marketing, but you cannot direct luck.

Think about it: why do you think Hollywood keeps pumping out so many book adaptations, sequels, prequels and spinoffs, rather than creating original stories? Because audiences would rather pay to see something they know, something they believe to be good, rather than take their chances on a movie they know little about.

In a world where there is an abundance of art (songs, books, photographs, music, paintings, poems…), the only way to be commercially successful is to have a loyal following. Re-read this and understand that this applies to all artists from New York Times bestselling authors to aspiring bands practicing in their garage. To all of them.

I would argue that all aspiring artists need to dedicate a serious amount of time to creating a base to push them through (unless, that is, they have a massive amount of talent or luck – no, hard work doesn’t cover for marketing).

Self promotion has always been possible, but it’s always been scorned – as if talking about your work meant that it had to be mediocre – and it’s incredibly distracting. It’s as far away from talent, inspiration and discipline as it possibly can be. And yet it’s the reason for so many successes.

Based on a True Story

The Blair Witch Project and Papillon chose to go the “it’s a true story” route. It worked and it made them hits in their time. Arrival of the Gods went a different way. They claim to be creating something new. A self described video novel, this is an audiobook with an original music score and ambient animations (not too different from lo-fi music videos). If we can agree that books are going to line our shelves for the foreseeable future, then this might represent a trend we will be seeing a lot of.

There is a strong appeal to claiming that intriguing facts really happened, and I’m not sure that video novels are a new idea (it sounds very similar to a visual novel to me), but what Arrival of the Gods is doing right is their focus on social media and creating an audience before the actual video novel even goes live.

Their Instagram channel is a 101 on how to launch a project when you’re nobody. They have teased, released dozens of visuals from the upcoming video novel and even published a few chapters as an ebook. There are bios about the team, videos where they explain what a video novel is and there are even a couple of teaser trailers. And they’re not only on Instagram, they’re on YouTube, Facebook and they have a full website on which a handful of influencers praise the virtues of the book.

In Conclusion

If there is an example to follow for fledgling artists this is it. It’s going to take work, a lot of work, and it’s going to distract you from becoming a better artist, but it’s going to be worth it. What editor, label or gallery is going to pass on an artist with a hundred thousand (real) followers on social media?

Why is it important to resist the urge to have your content do the selling?

Tim: What we do at The Tot is provide trust and advice and mindfully curated products. For it to be considered trusted advice it needs to come from a credible real place. It needs to be authentic and it needs to come from experts, people who know what they are talking about. At The Tot we work with a network of experts around the globe to create parenting content. What first-time parents are looking for most is information and they are just as likely to turn to a website as they are to go to a doctor and they are even more likely to go to a website than to ask their own Mother. If we are able to develop and curate content of moms sharing to other moms, that develops a relationship and provides values for them.

How do you measure the success and performance of a content-driven marketing strategy?

Matt: When you consider measuring in general, there are so many different formats that are out there that people can leverage. Oftentimes, people are saying… well I want articles for my blog. What type of article are you looking for? What is the goal of that piece of content? Are you trying to drive organic search and bring in new audiences so they can learn who you are or are you trying to engage them a bit more with videos and infographics? Every single format has a very specific measurement.

Beyond that, your measurements are somewhat different than your basic media buying for example, where you spend a dollar and hope to make back three, or some version of that. When we are looking at content marketing, especially when it is brand agnostic, the real important ideal there is to think about how can I actually give something to my audience that resonates with them, teaches them and solves a problem. Then ultimately, your brand is there waiting for them.

Awareness, Engagement, Advocacy

The three things that I look at are awareness, engagement, and advocacy. The first thing you would want to do in building a content marketing strategy is to consider the idea of awareness, giving awareness to the people you are working with. Then having intent-driven content. People are asking questions in Google all the time and they are getting answers. If your site has the answers in its content, especially if it’s early stages, then that’s going to do something that most (ecommerce) sites aren’t doing, which is to put eyes onto your site, without the brand and product coming into play at first.

With this brand agnostic content, the bulk of your content is primarily text-based content. With measurement I look at eyes on site and what they are doing when they get there. Are they jumping around to different pages or are they bouncing right away? When you bring in somebody to your site where it is solving something you have to have something that is engaging to keep them there and keep them coming back.

Tim: We definitely watch inside of Google Analytics to be able to see the pageviews, what people are doing, and how they move from the editorial side of the site to the product side of the site. We also use content as part of our marketing program. It’s definitely an upper funnel prospecting piece.

Quality Content is Just as Important as Ad Spend

Tim: As somebody who came from an ad agency working with clients who had large ad spends and then coming to a start-up to help them grow and find customers, we didn’t have a large ad budget. What we did have though is this wonderful bank of content. This quality content has become just as important as the ad spend. Every month we put together a new prospecting campaign with a variety of articles and then we keep some evergreen pieces of what performed and that gives us a really good indicator of the type of people we are able to draw and attract to the site. It’s very contextually targeted so somebody that is clicking and looking at an article titled, “9 Ways to Prepare for a New Baby,” is probably going to be our customer.

Neil Patel, digital marketing expert and founder of Neil Patel Digital, discusses the seven online marketing mistakes in his latest video release:

Stop Making These 7 Online Marketing Mistakes

I’m going to break down seven online marketing mistakes that you need to stop. You’re probably wondering you’re doing all these things but why aren’t you seeing results? Even if you’re doing the right things, if you’re also doing the wrong things at the same time it’s going to hurt you and it’s going avoid you from getting the results that you deserve.

Mistake 1: Not Collecting Emails

The first mistake you are making is not collecting emails. It doesn’t matter how good you are with SEO or marketing only a very small percentage of your visitors are ever going to convert into customers. By collecting emails not only can you get people to come back to your site but you can convince them to convert over emails.

The moment someone gives you their email address think of that as a micro-commitment. They’re much more likely to convert into a customer because they committed, they already gave you something. That’s why you want to collect emails. You can do this through sliders or exit pop-ups. You can do this for free using tools like Hello Bar.

Mistake 2: Not Collecting Subscribers Through Push Notifications

The second mistake you’re making is you’re not collecting subscribers through push notifications. There are free tools like Subscribers.com that’ll make it easy. Just add in a JavaScript or a WordPress plug-in and then when people come to your website they will automatically subscribe through the browser. Then anytime you have new content or products or services that you want to sell then you can notify them through Subscribers.

Mistake 3: Not Building a Brand

The reason tip number one on collecting emails and tip number two on getting more push notifications subscribers are really important is because you need to build a brand. This gets you into the third mistake. Google doesn’t want to rank sites that aren’t brands. Why is this? There’s an issue out there called fake news and that’s why they’re pushing brands over anything else. It’s not just going to be Facebook and in Google. Eventually, it’s going to be Twitter and LinkedIn and all the sites out there.

When you get people back to your site seven times you’re much more likely to build a brand. It’s called the Rule of Seven in marketing. So with your site, you want to provide an amazing user experience. When you provide an amazing user experience, create a great product, create a great service, it’ll help you build a great brand over time.

Mistake 4: Not Interlinking

The fourth mistake you’re making is not interlinking. You may notice on Google I’m ranking for terms like online marketing on page one. You’re probably wondering how do I do this? A lot of it comes out to interlinking. In my sidebar, I link to my most popular pages of content. When I write blog posts related to online marketing I link back to the online marketing guide that talks about what online marketing is. By having all these links it helps me rank higher.

Mistake 5: Just Focusing On Text-Based Content

The fifth mistake I have for you is just focusing on text-based content. The future of digital marketing is moving to video. It doesn’t mean you should stop doing text but it means you should also be doing video. When you do video you’re going to get more traffic because everyone’s lacking it. LinkedIn wants it right now. YouTube wants more of it. Facebook wants it. Instagram even wants it.

Why is this? They want to crush the television networks. You look at things like the Oscars or traditional movie theaters and they’re not doing as well. You look at traditional TV and they’re going to get crushed. Why? It’s because of Facebook. It’s because of Google. It’s because of Netflix. If you’re there creating that video content you can be part of it and you’re going to get extra traffic. They want as much help as possible to crush these big old-school companies.

Mistake 6: Sticking To Just a Few Marketing Channels

The sixth mistake that you’re making is you’re really sticking to just a few marketing channels. Marketing is competitive. People raise venture capital hundreds of millions of dollars just so they can compete in marketing and sales. You need to do more than one or two or three marketing channels. The more you do the better off you’re going to be.

Mistake 7: Not Asking For the Sale

The seventh mistake I have for you is not asking for the sale. Whether it’s a lead or whether it’s getting people to buy your product, there’s nothing wrong with asking people to buy from you. If you don’t you’re not going to generate any sales. Everyone’s like I get all this traffic through my online marketing but no one’s converting. Why? Because you’re not asking for a sale.

As usual, some opinionated Redditers expressed their thoughts on the ads:

1-800 Flowers CEO discusses the company’s growth that was accelerated by the pandemic:

Ecommerce Growth Accelerated During Pandemic

What we’ve seen is an acceleration of growth in our company that began back in 2018 and really then accelerated even further in 2020 with the pandemic. It’s driven by the need for us as people to connect and express ourselves. As a company whose vision is to inspire more human expression, connection, and celebration, and as an ecommerce leader, we’re well-positioned in the trends that we see coming out of this pandemic. We think these trends are sustainable going forward.

We started out as one flower shop many years ago. What we’ve done is created this e-commerce platform for growth, a platform for expression, connection, and celebration. It starts with this all-star family of brands that we have led by Harry & David, 1-800-Flowers, Cheryl’s Cookies, Shari’s Berries, and our recent acquisition just this past August of Personalization Mall. You see us now as a company in the expression and connection business with a leadership position in floral, a leadership position in gourmet food gifting, and certainly now leadership and position in expressions and personalized items which is a fast-growing market.

You’ll continue to continue to see us grow by organic product development of products that help customers express and connect. And as we’ve done through acquisition, adding to that platform and leveraging that platform that we’ve built.

Need To Express and Connect Is a Lasting Trend

Hopefully, the vaccines accelerate and we turn to some sense of normalcy sooner rather than later. As we look at our business, the momentum we saw began in 2018 and 2019 and then accelerated with the pandemic. We’ve been on a good momentum growth even before the pandemic and we really see ourselves now as a bigger stronger company than we were prior to it. We’ve acquired Personalization Mall just this past August and by putting it on our platform and leveraging our digital marketing expertise we accelerated the growth of that company. It grew by 50 percent this last quarter.

A year ago August we acquired Shari’s Berries and took a business that was stagnant and losing money to now one that’s got a nice growth rate and is generating a nice contribution margin as well. If we just keep our focus on what the consumer is looking for to help express and connect then we’ll be continuing to see double-digit growth for some time to come. That trend that we’ve all learned from being isolated, our need to express and connect is a lasting trend coming out of this pandemic along with the shift from offline to online.

LinkedIn introduced Stories last year as a way for professionals to share short videos that would disappear after 24 hours. Liz Li, Senior Director of Product at LinkedIn, says the company was surprised to learn that some people wanted their videos to have more permanence than Stories provides.

You wish videos could live on your profile, not disappear. In developing Stories, we assumed people wouldn’t want informal videos attached to their profile, and that ephemerality would reduce barriers that people feel about posting. Turns out, you want to create lasting videos that tell your professional story in a more personal way and that showcase both your personality and expertise. 

Feedback also indicated that many users wanted tools to create more engaging videos.

LinkedIn appears to be listening to the feedback and plans to kill off Stories by the end of September. The company will then take the feedback and lessons its learned, and roll them into a new and improved video experience.

We’ve learned a ton. Now, we’re taking those learnings to evolve the Stories format into a reimagined video experience across LinkedIn that’s even richer and more conversational. We want to embrace mixed media and creative tools of Stories in a consistent way across our platform, while working to integrate it more tightly with your professional identity.