Thursday 31 May 2018

Is Influencer Marketing Dead? A Hard Look at The Newest Data (and What You Can Do Instead)

Is anyone having deja vu?

Every time a new marketing tactic becomes more mainstream, marketers and researchers inevitably wonder if it has peaked and started to lose its effectiveness.

We’ve seen this before with SEO, email marketing, Facebook marketing, and many others.

is seo dead google search

It’s a fair question to ask, though.

After all, each year brings new trends in marketing, and some tactics can go out of style. It’s worth examining different approaches to see if they’re still effective.

The tactic we’ll evaluate today is influencer marketing.

Though influencer marketing has been around for a very long time, it has only become a popular marketing tactic in recent years.

With the influx of social media in 2004, influencer marketing exploded and became a lot more prevalent.

Now, fast forward 14 years later.

Influencer marketing has seen some incredible successes and even a few massive failures.

That’s why we need to take a closer look at influencer marketing in 2018.

Should you continue to invest in influencer marketing, or is it dead?

The answer isn’t exactly a simple “yes” or “no.”

But recent data can help you decide if influencer marketing has staying power and if it is the right tactic for your brand to implement in 2018.

The complex current state of influencer marketing in 2018

Let’s dive right in.

I’m going to address the million-dollar question that everyone is asking:

“Is influencer marketing dead?”

Here’s the answer: not really.

But, I have to admit, its future is uncertain.

At the moment, marketers are continuing to focus on influencer marketing as a viable and essential marketing tactic in 2018.

In fact, in the survey below, marketers picked it as the “fastest-growing online customer-acquisition method” over organic search, email, paid search, and more.

fastest growing customer acquisition method

There’s no questioning the popularity of influencer marketing, especially in recent years.

Marketers seem to be searching for new ways to involve influencers on a variety of campaigns.

And they’re investing in their influencer marketing campaigns, too. The influencer marketing industry is booming.

Projections show that marketers will spend $2.38 billion on influencer marketing on Instagram in 2019. That’s more than a $700 million increase from 2018!

instagram influencer marketing

But it doesn’t matter if marketers are fans of influencer marketing. We need to look at the data to see if it works.

Is it truly effective? Are you getting a bang for your buck?

The answer to both questions is still “yes.”

Data shows that influencer marketing is still providing marketers with a strong return on investment. Let’s take a look.

revenue per $1 spent on influencer marketing

The data shows that influencer marketing generates $6.50 for every dollar a company invests. Approximately 70% of companies earn $2 or more for every dollar, and 13% of companies earn $20 or more.

That’s valuable.

But you might not always be so lucky.

If you look closely, you’ll see that 18% of businesses didn’t receive any return on investment at all. When you factor this into how much a campaign can cost, things can get a little pricey.

This is one reason that many marketers (including myself) wonder how long influencer marketing will remain a viable tactic.

Many factors make the future of influencer marketing uncertain, too.

First, the FTC introduced regulations to “improve disclosures” in 2017. This helps consumers understand which posts are promotional, even if they are coming from an influencer.

While the regulations are needed, additional ones may cause some brands to stray away from influencer marketing due to the risk of malpractice.

Plus, influencer marketing campaigns are starting to get more expensive.

cost estimates of influencers

Mid-range influencers with 50,000 – 500,000 followers can charge anywhere from $400 to $2,500 for a post.

Influencers with a following in the millions can charge between $30,000 and $187,500 per post.

With such a large investment in a single post, marketers are expecting a huge ROI.

But there’s only one problem:

Many don’t know how to accurately measure the ROI from their influencer marketing campaigns.

An overwhelming majority (76%) of marketers agree that the biggest challenge of influencer marketing is determining the ROI of campaigns.

top influencer marketing challenges

How can you improve something if you don’t measure it? Worse yet, how can you even know if it’s working?

But the problem isn’t just with marketers.

Consumers are evolving, too.

The scale has tipped, and millennials are now trusting influencers less than they were in previous years.

millennial trust in influecers

Can you blame them, though? After all, think back to the Fyre Festival influencer marketing gaffe.

Influencers including Kendall Jenner, Emily Ratajkowski, Whitney Fransway, and many others promoted the event. But it didn’t live up to expectations.

girl sitting in private jet sharing on instagram

As a result of this failure, 94% of marketers stated they were “not likely” or “very unlikely” to seek out big-name influencers for future projects.

All of these factors play into the unstable future of influencer marketing.

As you continue with influencer marketing campaigns for now, you should also begin to test, expand, and optimize other areas of your marketing strategy.

Here are the alternatives to influencer marketing that you should be focusing on in 2018 to help accelerate the growth of your business.

1. Focus on experiential marketing for live events

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget there’s a whole world “out there.”

Your customers aren’t always online.

Live events can provide a unique touchpoint for your customers that influencer marketing can’t.

And they’re effective, too.

According to a recent study, “79% of brand respondents said they would execute more experiential programs this year compared to last.”

Take Clif Bar as an example.

They focused on creating an experiential marketing activation at Pitchfork Music Festival last year. Their activation included a tattoo parlor, photo booth, and more.

tattoo parlor pitchfork festival

At the event, they distributed 26,000 CLIF bars, and one in 20 social posts with the tag #Pitchforkfest also featured the CLIF bar activation.

Live events provide a unique experience in real life, and their impact often expands onto social media.

HBO tapped into its live event playbook when they debuted their interactive Westworld event at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.

Participants boarded buses and went right outside the city limits for an immersive experience that brought to life the fictional Westworld town from the hit TV series.

The experience was highly detailed and highly personalized. Participants could get their picture printed on a western “Wanted” poster, which aligned well with the brand.

wanted jon woods poster

People constantly shared experience on social media during SXSW. It stole the show and earned 62% of the entertainment brand mentions at SXSW.

Live events are an important marketing tactic to help you connect with your customers in a meaningful and authentic way. Influencers simply can’t do that for you.

2. Invest in video content to share your company’s narrative

Video marketing isn’t just flashy, and it isn’t a fad.

It is here to stay, and it can drive serious growth for your business.

Most importantly, though, is that it is becoming mainstream and responsible for a bulk of Internet traffic.

According to estimates, video will make up more than 80% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021.

Hopefully, you already use video as a part of your content strategy. If not, you’re going to fall behind soon.

In a recent survey, 49.5% of marketers said that video will be a focal point for their marketing.

video marketing survey

That’s nearly half of all marketers.

Now, I know what you might be thinking: “My influencer campaigns already use video, so I’m all set.”

Unfortunately, you’re wrong.

You’re missing the chance to focus on everyday people and create meaningful, evergreen content that showcases your brand’s values and embodies your mission.

You can’t rely on influencers to create content that resonates with your audience. You have to do it yourself.

After all, brands often miss opportunities to connect with their customers. A study found that 78% of people feel that brands never connect with them emotionally.

But LinkedIn recently did this well in a documentary-style integrated video campaign. They used the hashtag #InItTogether for it.

Campaign Director Stacy Peralta talked about the impact of the campaign. She said, “I knew from the first reading of the boards that this was one of those rare opportunities.”

She added, “They asked us to tell real stories about real people, they wanted it shot in black and white, and they wanted energy, enthusiasm and candor from the people involved.”

That campaign generated great content for LinkedIn to share with their audience.

But where should you share your video content after you finish creating it? Well, consumers watch and engage with branded content in different ways on different platforms.

It’s important to know which works best for your business, but here are some generalizations across all social platforms for consumer viewing and engagement habits:

consumer viewing and engagement habits

As you can see, Facebook has the highest viewership as well as engagement numbers (60% and 49%, respectively), while Twitter has the least (41% and 22%).

The interesting part, though, is that there is only a 2% difference in viewership among the top three platforms: Facebook, Instagram (Video), and Snapchat. YouTube and Twitter fall close behind.

On the engagement side of things, it is much different. Facebook is the clear winner (49%) with YouTube (32%) coming in second. That’s a 17% difference.

So that gives you an idea of where you should be sharing your content. But now, you might be wondering how long your videos should be.

Thankfully, there is data to support the ideal length, and the conclusions are clear as day. Here’s the basic principle:

Make them short.

Approximately 56% of all videos that users shared in 2017 were less than two minutes long.

Viewers will lose interest and likely leave if a video is longer than two minutes.

average engagement vs video length

If you aren’t yet certain that video content can be effective in marketing, look at this experiment from HubSpot. They examined the difference between acquiring customers with video content and non-video content.

They tried switching to video content as opposed to blogs and whitepapers.

As they optimized and emphasized their videos, their views and engagement rates skyrocketed. Here were their engagement rates with their old strategy:

hubspot old engagement rates

Now, here were their engagement rates after they started emphasizing their video content:

hubspot new engagement rates

Before this experiment, their videos averaged 50,000 views per month. But in their first month of optimizing and promoting their video content, they achieved 1 million views. Those are clear results!

Another great example is BakedNYC’s video campaign.

baked nyc facebook

BakedNYC used video to capture emails, and their results were fantastic.

Through this campaign, they achieved a 40% increase in pie sales, a 68% increase in leads, and a 30% decrease in cost per lead.

Video content presents a huge opportunity for your brand. But creating quality videos might feel like a daunting task.

Don’t fret if don’t think that you can do this alone. You don’t have to be Steven Spielberg.

There are plenty of tools that can help you create engaging video content on a low budget in a tight timeframe.

One of them is Promo.

promo homepage 2018

I love Promo because they have over 12.5 million clips that you can customize. You can add music, text, and even your logo to personalize the clips and make them your own.

Magisto is another great tool to use.

magisto homepage in 2018

The cool thing about Magisto is that it has a smart video editor, which makes it incredibly easy to cut and edit your videos online.

These tools can help create great video content that will drive sales on your website.

If you want to get the most out of your marketing efforts in 2018, spend time crafting video promotional campaigns and fine-tuning your video content strategy.

3. Initiate an affiliate marketing program

Not having an effective affiliate marketing program in place is simply leaving money on the table.

Affiliate marketing can bring in a lot of money for your business. To put it in perspective, 15% of the digital media industry’s revenue comes from affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing, you’re letting related sites and partners do the work for you.

So, where do you begin?

There are three types of affiliate programs that you can implement:

  • Pay-per-sale: The merchant pays the affiliate in relation to the number of sales that they received from their site.
  • Pay-per-click: The merchant pays the affiliate in relation to the number of clicks that visitors performed while browsing the affiliate’s site.
  • Pay-per-lead: The merchant pays the affiliates in relation to the number of people who sign up.

Affiliate programs succeed in ways that influencer marketing doesn’t. First, it’s usually a win-win for both the affiliate and the merchant because you share the same business goals.

Sites want to send you traffic so that they can earn money. You want the same thing because the affiliate will send you new customers. It’s a win for both of you.

In some cases, influencers don’t share the same mission. They might be just looking for a quick payout, which could lead them to share your campaign in a way that isn’t authentic or true to their brand or yours.

The Points Guy is an example of a company that has a strong affiliate marketing program in place.

He started his site as a place to show people how to travel by using points they’ve amassed from purchases. Now, the site is an affiliate site for credit cards, hotels, and flights.

In his AMA, he confirmed that he receives “2.5 million monthly unique views and gets $50-$400 per credit card someone signs up for.”

the points guy reviews in 2018

As a business, you can harness the traffic that is already in place for a well-oiled site. By giving them a little kickback, you both win.

They’ll make money, and you’ll acquire a new customer. It’s really a no-brainer.

4. Be responsive on social media and circulate user-generated content

If you’re reading this blog, I’d go out on a limb to say you have, at the very least, a presence on social media.

While influencers typically utilize social media to propel their efforts, sometimes taking matters into your own hands can retain customers and have a more profound impact on your sales.

Social media marketing has been an important part of any marketing strategy over the years, and it only continues to evolve in 2018.

most effective digital marketing tactic for 2018

Your customers are already hanging out on there. New data shows that a majority of Americans are now on Facebook and YouTube.

majority of american now use facebook and youtube

Once again, this fact reinforces your need for video content.

But how else can you use social media to grow your audience and increase sales? One important answer is quite simple:

By being responsive.

Data shows that companies can make a dramatic effect on their bottom lines if they are responsive and engaging on social media.

Consumers say that the best way for a brand to get them to make a purchase is by simply being responsive.

brand actions that promote purchases

If you respond on social media, people will talk about your positive customer service interactions. Studies found that approximately 48% of people tell their friends about a good customer experience on social media.

This creates a powerful form of word-of-mouth marketing. Your customers’ friends can soon become your new customers.

Facebook understand how impatient people are. They’re now labeling pages with badges that designate their response times.

facebook page about

To get the coveted “Very responsive to messages” badge, you need to achieve two things over the course of seven days:

  1. A response rate of 90%
  2. A response time of 15 minutes

But what if you get a lot of inquiries? How should you keep up with all of them?

Mention is a tool that can help you streamline your customer experience operations on social media.

mention homepage in 2018

It can provide assistance and organize your mentions in an easy-to-read way so that you aren’t overwhelmed.

An example of exemplary customer service on social media would be JetBlue.

jetblue interaction with customer on twitter

Before things got out of hand, they moved quickly and efficiently to resolve the situation, resulting in a happy, satisfied customer who might buy again.

But that’s not all. JetBlue cares so much about their customer service that they announced a partnership and investment in the customer service startup Gladly.

Here’s what Bonny Simi, the president of JetBlue’s corporate venture group, said about their customer service strategy:

“People just don’t want to call in anymore, so we are aiming for omnichannel communication that is on at all hours.”

He added, “[This communication should] take advantage of AI to resolve customers’ issues as quickly as possible, and that will work with all of the important messenger apps.”

As you work on being responsive on social media, you’ll want to circulate the incredible content (photos, videos, and comments) and great accolades that your users are sharing. User-generated content is incredibly valuable.

Sponsors generally pay influencers to post about their products or content. User-generated content, on the other hand, has no financial incentive.

It makes your brand more authentic.

which statement do you agree with

And it’s needed now more than ever.

Research shows that “92 percent of consumers trust organic, user-generated content (UGC) more than they trust traditional advertising.”

Currently, Southwest Airlines is running a user-generated campaign that they call 175 Stories. This integrated campaign invites customers to share their seat story using the hashtag #175Stories.

They even launched a microsite to further share the content.

southwest airlines explore the stories

Judging by a quick hashtag search, the campaign seems to be effective.

Encouraging users to act as your own photographers and share their content can have a positive impact on your business’s growth.

An active presence on social media is not only beneficial to your customers. It can also do wonders for your brand awareness and revenue.

5. Leverage social messaging apps to reach more customers and connect with existing ones

Mobile messaging marketing has emerged as a new trend in 2018.

It seems like social messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and many others) are all the craze these days.

And honestly, they should be.

Influencer marketing shares one message with many people. By using social messaging apps, you can send numerous highly-personalized messages to many people.

Users and businesses on Facebook send approximately 8 billion messages on Messenger every month.

The best part is that they usually have high open and click-through rates, too.

The growth of these messaging apps has skyrocketed in recent years. In 2017, over 76% of smartphone users worldwide used messaging apps.

mobile phone message app users worldwide

The graph also shows that, according to current projections, there will be 2.48 billion mobile phone messaging app users by 2021.

If you want to be where your customers are, then you should think about how you’re leveraging your messaging app strategy.

But what’s interesting is that not all marketers, for some reason or another, aren’t using this as a marketing tactic.

The State of Social 2018” study found that, despite the increase in interest and adoption of messaging apps, nearly 80% of businesses don’t market through them at all.

has your business used messaging apps for marketing

That’s bad for them, but it’s great for you.

Fewer businesses promoting their messages means a greater chance of yours cutting through the clutter.

Messaging apps are a great place to distribute content and offer promotional deals directly to your customers.

Look at how DigitalMarketer used a chatbot to distribute their “Ending the War Between Sales & Marketing” report.

Those interested in the report could connect their Facebook with just a simple click. Then, an automated message would arrive in their Messenger account with a link to the report.

It’s quick, easy, and even feels a little personal.

digitalmarketer chatbot

But this isn’t just a flashy way to distribute content.

It gets results, too.

For example, look at this retargeting campaign that used a chatbot to allow customers to “unlock a special discount.”

The results were incredible. They achieved a 48.2x ROAS (up from 5.6x) and a 1133% conversion rate increase.

HolidayPirates saw incredible success when they used a chatbot to deliver a promotion code to their customers.

They have over nine million digital followers, and they wanted to interact with them on social messaging platforms and send them a holiday promotion.

They grew their WhatsApp following to 750,000+ and achieved open rates of 50-60% and 90% click-through rates for the campaign.

holidaypirates how we attract subscribers

A 90% click-through rate?

That’s something you don’t see every day.

To get a chatbot set up, you just need to follow a few easy steps.

For this example, I’m going to use itsalive.io.

First, visit their homepage and click on “Get Started for Free.”

its alive get started

Then, fill out the information they ask for to register your account.

its alive register

From there, choose your plan and hit “Next.”

its alive choose your plan

Name and describe your bot, and then hit “Create this bot.”

its alive new bot

Click on the pencil icon to edit the test bot that you get by default.

is alive edit bot

Add your trigger and text. Triggers can vary from keywords to events. You can then program what you’d like the bot to do.

You can add as many triggers and texts as you’d like.

In this case, I am setting up the bot to answer FAQs.

is alive bot faq

Then, click the back button and select “Link to Facebook” in the menu.

From there, you’ll want to “Connect to your Facebook account” and select your business page.

Take special note of the test code as well. You will have to add that four-character code when you test your bot.

its alive link to facebook

Then, you can test your bot and see it in action for yourself.

its alive testing bot

Continue to tweak your bot until it accomplishes your business objectives.

Due to the widespread adoption of messaging apps and the generally untapped potential of social messaging marketing, your business could cut directly through the clutter with this tactic.

You should really consider how you can leverage it to reach new customers.

6. Continue to invest in your email marketing strategy

You might be thinking, “Email marketing. That’s so old school.”

While that may be true, it’s still a viable marketing tactic that you should double down on.

One advantage is that you can control and target your audience with email marketing better than you can with influencer marketing.

Emails are part of everyday life, and using them as a marketing medium gets results. After all, users send 149,000+ emails each day.

That might sound like a lot of clutter, and it is. But it’s important that you keep your business top of mind in your customers’ inboxes.

But why?

Email still has the highest ROI when you compare it to any other marketing tactic.

For every $1 businesses spend on email marketing, they average a $38 return.

email delivers highest roi

Notice how email marketing soars ahead of affiliate marketing, paid search, display ads, videos, social media marketing, and traditional marketing tactics.

If you want to assess the ROI of your email marketing campaigns, I recommend this email marketing ROI tool.

It’s very easy to use and can provide great insights into your current email marketing efforts.

Marketers even collectively agree that email has staying power in 2018.

In one survey, marketing professionals rated the effectiveness of digital marketing channels. Approximately 35% gave email marketing a “good” rating, and 18% rated it as “excellent.”

effectiveness of digital media channels

This put email marketing in the lead as one of the most effective digital marketing channels according to marketers.

In 2018, you need to have an email marketing strategy in place and execute highly-personalized and targeted campaigns.

Customers are expecting this in all marketing tactics, but especially in email. If you haven’t targeted your email, they’ll consider it irrelevant to them. You can bet they’ll delete it.

Even worse, they might not open it.

effects of personalization in the shopping experience

A total of 49% of shoppers said that personalization “has led shoppers to purchase an item that wasn’t planned.”

By personalizing your copy, messaging, design, and even your pricing structure, you can encourage conversions and move customers to buy.

You can do this by segmenting your lists (separating your lists to ensure the correct campaign is going to the right audience) and using dynamic copy or pricing.

segment your list convert

How do you make sure that you’ve personalized your email campaigns and that you’re sending them to the right people?

That’s what the men’s shirt company Twillory had to answer.

The team initiated an email campaign when they moved into a larger warehouse. They sent the below email to their first-tier recipients and achieved a 48.5% open rate and an 8% CTR.

twillory

To their less-engaged tier, they stripped the graphic away and took a simpler, personalized, text-based approach.

all text email

This resulted in “a 33% open rate and 11% click-through rate with a group of people who had not engaged in over 270 days.”

That’s a significant impact for their email marketing efforts.

If you want to effectively reach your customers, then deploy smart, personalized, and targeted email marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

Influencer marketing isn’t dead.

At least, it isn’t dead yet.

For now, it still can perform as a viable part of your marketing strategy. The influencer marketing industry is still booming, and it’s still profitable in many cases.

But it may not be around for much longer. It’s becoming increasingly expensive, there’s no guarantee of results, it’s difficult to track the ROI of campaigns, and users are beginning to trust influencers less.

You need to prepare for alternate ways to acquire customers.

Turn to video content to share a compelling narrative about your brand or help put a product on display.

Engage with customers directly on social media. Go out of your way to provide out-of-this-world service experiences that will turn your customers into passionate fans.

Focus on messenger marketing and directly share content, promotions, and solutions through messaging apps.

Finally, double down on email marketing. But as you do so, make sure that you target the right audience and personalize your messages with dynamic content.

If you do all of this, you’ll be ready if the days of influencer marketing come to an end.

What marketing tactics will you use in place of influencer marketing in 2018?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.



from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog https://blog.kissmetrics.com/is-influencer-marketing-dead/

Key Web Development Concepts for Marketers

When I work with my marketing team, I know we have the same goal: to provide the users of our site with the best experience possible. Though as a developer I won’t typically be tasked with creating content, there are some key metrics and concepts that I keep in mind when developing that will help both the marketing team and me achieve our goals. Here are some fundamental concepts web developers focus on when building web pages, and what they mean for you as a marketer.

First Meaningful Paint and Time to Interactive

First Meaningful Paint and Time to Interactive are particularly useful metrics in determining the performance of your web page. Essentially, the shorter these times, the faster your users can access and engage with the content on your page. Though your web team does a lot of work to ensure these that the First Meaningful Paint and the Time to Interactive occur as quickly as possible—by using CDNs, modularizing code so only what is needed loads, minifying CSS and JavaScript—there are considerations the marketer can make when working with designers or designing their content that effects these metrics.

Let’s go a bit more in-depth.

The First Meaningful Paint (FMP) is the first time that your web browser renders content on the page that is useful to the end user. Let’s say you have a website all about different types of ducks and on your homepage, you want to feature a “Duck of the Month” as the homepage hero, or rather, main content above the fold. The FMP is the point at which the user can first see the image of your “Duck of the Month” as well as any headline or text attached to the image. 

Time to Interactive (TTI) is closely related to the FMP and will come after the FMP. Using the previous example, let’s say our “Duck of the Month” hero also has the ability to play the quack of the duck when clicked on, and you can swipe from left to right for more images. TTI is the time it takes for these features to become available on the page for the user to use, or when the page or app becomes useful.

So, as a marketer, what can you do to help ensure that the time to reach the FMP and TTI is as short as possible? Lots of things!

Ensure Your Best Content is Always Above the Fold

Though this may seem like a no-brainer, it helps exponentially if any content OR interactivity you want from the site is above the fold. Essentially, developers can leverage techniques like “lazy loading,” to ensure that code/images/features are only loaded once a user does an action that would necessitate the code/images/features, such as scrolling down the page or clicking on a button. To ensure you get your fastest FMP and TTI times, you want to put your most valuable content and features front and center.

Driving Off the Page Isn’t Best Practice

The beautiful thing about Web 2.0 is that we can get assets from other sources at the touch of a button, or er…click of a mouse. But loading too many external assets, or relying on too many styles, fonts, and images that need to be loaded from other places can slow your page down. Try instead to use in-house assets or give the files you need to your devs to cut down on load times.

Use Images Optimized for the Web, and Proper for Your Situation

Essentially, it boils down to this: JPEGs are good for smaller images and times when you don’t need your images to be pixel perfect. For example, they make good thumbnail images, background images (depending), icons, etc. PNGs are good to use when you need absolutely pixel-perfect images and are better for pictures of people, larger images on your site, images with text attached etc. Furthermore, many image modification applications, like Photoshop, usually have an option for optimizing images for the web. Since loading assets can take up the bulk of loading time for your page, you want to make sure you are cutting down file size wherever possible, and that usually means using JPEGs wherever won’t affect your user experience.

Bounce Rates and Exit Rates

Bounce and exit rates are key marketing metrics for your site, as they tell you essentially how users are interacting with your pages, how quickly they leave, and where in your conversion funnel they opt out. Your dev team can use these metrics too as a way to see if there are particular issues with the site.

For instance, high bounce rates could be indicative of long loading times. When we talk about how quickly the page should load, we’re talking about a page loading at a maximum of two seconds, and a goal of under half a second. So, pages that take longer than that to load are likely to see users abandon the site before the page even loads, increasing your bounce rates.

Exit rates might be more indicative of a problem with the functionality of a page, or a page layout, later on in your conversion funnel. For instance, a user gets all the way down to some of your awesome gated content, and when they go to submit the form to get access to that sweet, sweet content, if the form times out, or doesn’t submit, or takes a long time to submit, they will leave frustrated.

Since these metrics are typically used by your marketing team, GA or SEO specialist, you might want to draw attention to these particular metrics to your dev team so they can take a look at how to make those particular pages better. They might see something that looks okay on the surface but could subtly affect user experience. Or they might notice that this particular functionality looks fine and shiny on Google Chrome but is a nightmare on Safari! Either way, don’t be afraid to bring these metrics up and have your team investigate.

Responsiveness:

Your front end developers know that responsive design is a must. As a marketer, this is probably also one of your biggest concerns. We want to be able to reach out and engage with our users anywhere, anytime, and on any device. The implementation of responsive design is often placed on the shoulders of the front end developer, but they can’t do it alone. Often times, what looks good on a desktop or what functions well on a laptop, aren’t going to be what looks and works well on someone’s phone or tablet.

Ensure Your Designs Are “Mobile First”

This is more of an instruction for whoever is designing the layouts for your web page, but you can consider this too when making content. Essentially, any designs for mobile device sizes need to be in place before the designs for tablet and desktop can be considered.

The reasons for this are fairly simple:

  • There is less space on a smaller screen.
  • A touchscreen has different functionality from a mouse
  • Frequently, phones may not be connected to Wi-Fi, so your FMP and TTI times become even more important.

Make sure you have all your mobile designs and needs to be considered first, and then work from there. By considering the mobile use case first, we free ourselves up to add to the desktop experience instead of limiting that same experience for mobile devices. It allows us to create more and constrain less when making the website.

Scaling Content

Some of your content is bound to not scale to mobile well. Look at this image of the cast of LOST:

LOST 1

Even here, it is a bit too small. Primarily, you can tell it’s the cast of LOST because the image is large enough that some of the faces and people are recognizable. This is great for your desktop or laptop, where the average viewport size is around 1000 to 1400 pixels wide.

Let’s shrink this bad boy down to mobile size though, shall we?

Lost 2

Oh boy. Look at it now. Can’t really tell what it is at all, except a bunch of people standing around under a moon. Could be for anything, Twilight, Vampire Diaries, Harry Potter (that one guy looks like Hagrid doesn’t he?) Phone widths range between 320-pixel viewports for smaller devices and 400 – 475 for the larger devices. That’s not a lot of width when you consider some of the assets we use in our content.

Now, I know you might say “well, there is explanatory text for the image.” This doesn’t help all too much since images should help clarify the purpose of your site and, in doing so, be self-evident. When you need one element, text, image, video, sound bite, whatever, to explain—not enhance—another element on your site, that is no good. So, when thinking responsively, consider how you might have to change your assets and content to ensure the best experience over multiple device sizes, even going so far as to have different assets for mobile and desktop experiences if absolutely necessary.

To Conclude

As a marketer, you know how to best engage with your customers and your development team knows how to best create a platform for that content to reach them. By ensuring you are using the correct types of assets, and thinking responsively, you can help enable your web team to cut down on loading times and get your users engaged more quickly. You also can help them to find places to improve your site by sharing the metrics that matter to you. When you and your dev team work together to make either large scale or incremental changes to your website, you ensure that users visiting your site have the best and most engaging experience possible.

Are there any tactics you’ll be taking back to your marketing team to help you work with web dev in a more cohesive way? I’d love to keep the discussion going in the comments!

The post Key Web Development Concepts for Marketers appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.



from Marketo Marketing Blog https://blog.marketo.com/2018/05/key-web-development-concepts-marketers.html

The Easy Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Website

In 2017, 71% of small businesses had a website, and 92% of businesses without a website said they’d have one by the end of 2018. Today, having a website is as necessary for a company as having a phone number.

Maybe you’re starting a new business venture or developing your personal brand. Or, maybe you’re looking to update your company’s outdated website. Whatever the case, creating a new website can feel overwhelming, particularly without technical expertise or a budget for web developers.

To alleviate any frustration you might feel, we’ve put together a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to creating a website. Best of all, you won’t need a coder, web designer, or big budget to create one -- all you’ll need to do is follow the seven steps below.

How to Make a Website for Free

1. Choose Your Platform

The first thing you’ll need to do when creating a website is find the right CMS (content management system) for your business. There are plenty of free or budget-friendly site builders out there, but they aren’t all created equal, so you’ll want to weigh the pros and cons before choosing one.

For instance, consider whether you need a platform that allows you to code, or whether you’d like to avoid coding altogether. You might also narrow your list if you want your website to support multiple languages. Perhaps you simply want to check out templates offered by different CMS systems, or price ranges to see which you can afford.

Check out 9 of the Best Free Website Builders to simplify your decision-making process. Once you’ve chosen the best CMS for your needs, continue to step two.

2. Get a Domain Name and Web Hosting

One of the easiest ways to appear illegitimate as a company is to shirk on paying for a domain name. If you were looking for a freelance writer, would you more likely hire from Carolineforsey.weebly.com or Carolineforsey.com? A .weebly or .wordpress extension is an indicator you didn’t pay for the full service, which might seem unprofessional or lower in quality -- worst case, a consumer might wonder why you can’t afford the full service, and draw conclusions that you’re not fully established.

Fortunately, purchasing a domain name is typically inexpensive, and there are a few different domain sites you can use. Both Godaddy.com and Bluehost.com are cheap, secure, and effective options for buying a domain name, with added benefits such as SSL security and office 365.

Here’s where it gets tricky. You’ll need to choose a domain name as similar as possible to the name of your company, but with over 1.8 billion websites out there today, your company's name might already be taken.

If your ideal domain name is already taken, consider using a different extension. I’d advise you to use one of the three most common extensions if you can: .com, .net, or .org. However, if it makes sense for your business, you might want to check out an alternate extension like .us or .shop.

Play around with it. Once you’ve chosen and paid for a domain name, you’ll usually also get personal email accounts attached, so make sure you’re happy to use your domain name as your main online identity.

3. Choose a Template for Your Site

Now, for the fun part.

On whatever CMS platform you chose, take the time to browse through templates and themes, and choose one you think best represents your brand.

When in doubt, you can’t go wrong if you choose something clean with straight lines, and a limited amount of text. If you need some inspiration, check out 20 of the Best Website Designs to Inspire You in 2018.

Ultimately, no one knows your business better than you. Take the time to consider which template would most likely appeal to your ideal demographic.

Within your CMS, you can probably use filters or search to narrow down on templates related to your industry.

It’s important your template is responsive, so your site will look the same on all devices. When considering templates, you also need to decide whether you want a static header or slideshow header, and how many pages you’ll need to fit in your menu bar. Stay away from hard-to-read fonts or flashy backgrounds that could distract a consumer from understanding your core message.

Once you’ve chosen a template and theme, take the time to customize it. Your site’s design and functionality is your chance to persuade an audience to take a closer look. It’s imperative your design makes sense to your ideal consumer and works to enhance your product’s success rather than hinder it.

4. Add Pages to Your Site

It’s important to plan exactly which pages you’ll need to include in your site. While it varies business to business, I’d guess you’ll need at least a "Home" page, an “About Us” page, a “Services/Product” page, and a “Contact Us” page.

Of course, you can choose to rearrange page topics any way you want, or combine them. If you’re unsure, check out other company websites within your industry to get ideas for how to organize your navigation bar, or which pages to include and exclude.

I might be biased, but you should probably also include a blog -- you know, sometimes they come in handy.

While every platform is different, it’s typically easy to add and remove pages on whichever platform you use.

5. Write Content

This is arguably the most important step. Now that you have your pages set up, what will you put on them?

I’d suggest writing rough drafts for pages like your “About Us” page and landing page. Talk with coworkers and stakeholders -- what message do you want to put out there? What tone do you want to set? Should you make jokes and be funny, or aim to be more inspirational?

If your online audience stumbled across your site, what questions would they have first?

Imagine your website is your only chance to have a full conversation with a potential customer. The landing page is the preliminary introduction, “Hey, we do XYZ.” Your “About Us” page digs deeper, “We are XYZ.” And your products or services pages are your big push to the finish line: “You want to work with us? Great, here’s how you’ll benefit.”

During this stage, it’s imperative you do your keyword research.

For instance, if you’re selling eyeglasses, and you notice “retro eyeglasses” has more monthly search volume than “vintage eyeglasses”, you might use this research to steer the direction of the content on your site.

If you’re stuck, check out competitor’s websites to gauge what other companies in your industry are doing.

6. Fill in General Settings

Once you’ve filled in your pages with the heavy-hitter content, you can still increase your search visibility by filling in gaps in your CMS settings.

Make sure you include a site title and tagline in the “Settings” of your website building platform. Go through, and check out the URLs -- are those optimized for search?

7. Install Plugins

Lastly, take a look at your site and figure out what you’re missing. The best CMS platform will ideally offer all the integrations you need. Perhaps your business is ecommerce, in which case, it might be wise to install a Shopify plugin extension.

Or, maybe you want to ensure your website is secure, to protect client data. In that case, find a plugin that offers firewall protection and attacks malware or other threats.

Whatever the case, browse your plugin library and pick and choose a few you think will take the effectiveness of your site to the next level.

Once you’re ready, click “Publish”, and your site is ready for use.

How to Make a Website with Google

Google Sites is one of the simplest web builder platforms I’ve used, but with that simplicity comes less sophisticated templates and tools. I’d primarily suggest using Google Sites to make a website for a business event, for internal use amongst employees, or for your personal brand.

I wouldn’t suggest using it to host your business’s primary website since the tools and functions are limited. Even if you want a simpler site right now, you might want to expand down the road, and Google Sites could make that option difficult.

Having said that, it’s still an incredibly fast and easy option. Plus, it allows you to “share” with other Google accounts, similar to Google Docs, so you can collaborate on a site.

Take a look at the four steps below to create a free Google Site.

1. To create a website with Google Sites, go to https://sites.google.com/new . Then, click the red “+” sign in the bottom right corner.

2. Next, choose a theme from your list of options on the dashboard to the right of your Google Site.

3. Now, you’re ready to add content to your site. For instance, I added the title, “Caroline’s Consulting Business”, by using the “Text box” tool in the Insert panel. The Insert panel also includes options to embed images or links, or connect to your Google Drive or Google Docs. For example, I circled “Google Docs” in the image below -- I clicked that button to embed my “How to Take a Screenshot on Windows” Google Doc into my landing page.

4. Once you’re happy with the way your site works, click the purple “Publish” button at the top right.

How to Make a Website on Wordpress

WordPress is the fastest growing CMS, with over 500 new sites built daily. It’s one of the more popular options -- it offers a large library of templates and themes to ensure you’re able to create a site that matches your brand, opportunities to mix-and-match plugins, and tools to monitor your SEO.

WordPress is easy to use and budget-friendly, and its versatility makes it a good option for anyone from a small business owner to a blogger.

If you’ve decided you want to create a website on WordPress, here’s how.

Disclaimer: For the sake of simplicity, I’m showing you how to create a free WordPress site. However, your platform might look different depending on which version you choose.

1. Go to https://wordpress.com/create/ and click the blue “Get Started” button. 

2. Fill out the Step 1 form, including your site’s name, your site’s topic, and primary goals.

3. Fill out the Step 2 form -- in this step, you’ll either input a domain you’ve already bought, or you can choose a domain straight from here. I chose the free option, “carolineforsey.wordpress.com”, but I’d highly recommend choosing a paid option to appear more official.

4. Choose your payment plan, depending on your goals, budget, and business type.

5. Now, your site has been created. You have a dashboard on your left, but you can also continue to follow the step-by-step instructions you’re offered on the landing page (i.e. “Upload a site icon”).

6. First, I’d suggest clicking “Themes” beside “Customize” on your dashboard on the left.

7. You can search through all the themes or search depending on your subject. For instance, I searched “subject:blog” to find themes related to my business’s topic. There are free and paid options. Select one -- you can always change it later.

Screen Shot 2018-05-30 at 10.16.07 AM

8. Next, click “Add” beside Site Pages on your dashboard, and fill out content for a page on your site. On the right, you’ll have “Page Settings”, where you can include featured images, page attributes, etc.

9. Lastly, explore the “Configure” section of your dashboard. This is where you’ll find plugins, settings, and options to add people to your WordPress site.

How to make a website with HubSpot

Lastly, let’s take a look at how to make a website with HubSpot. If you’re already using HubSpot’s CRM, it probably makes the most sense to build a website within HubSpot to integrate all your sales and marketing needs in one place.

HubSpot offers a variety of plugins and extensions, themed templates, and sophisticated tools for SEO analysis.

If you want to build a website with HubSpot, it’s easy and intuitive. Here’s how:

1. Within your HubSpot portal, click “Content” on the dashboard at the top of your screen. Then, click “Landing Pages”.

 

 

2. Next, click the orange “Create landing page” button. 

landingpagecreatenew

3. Name your page, and then click the orange “Create page” button.

landingpagecreatenew

4. Now, you’ll be taken to this “Select a template” page. Scroll through your options, search page templates, or check out the Marketplace. When you’ve found a template you like, select it.

5. This is your landing page. You can scroll over text boxes, images, or other modules to edit them. In the below picture, I scrolled over the “See The World” Banner Text, and when I click it, it allows me to edit that text.

6. You can also click the “Edit modules” tool on the right side of your screen and edit from there. For instance, I selected “Service 2 Text”, which directed me to the “Make it your own” paragraph on my landing page. You can add texts, images, sections, forms, and more from the “Edit modules” section.

7. When you’re happy with your landing page and want to move on, go back to your dashboard and click “Content” at the top of your screen, and then “Website Pages”.

8. Here, you’ll click the orange “Create website page” button and name your page, just like your landing page. Then, you’ll be taken through a similar process of choosing a template and adding content. If you want a more in-depth tutorial, check out A quick tour of website pages.

9. If you want to incorporate your social media accounts, click “Social” on your dashboard. You can monitor all your social media accounts and also publish tweets, Facebook statuses and comments, Instagram pictures, and other content straight from your HubSpot dashboard.

10. If you want to check out your site analytics, go to “Reports” and then “Analytics Tools”. You’ll need to install the tracking code, which is easy to do within the HubSpot platform by clicking the orange “Install the tracking code” button. If you’re still unsure, check out How to install the HubSpot tracking code.

11. If you want to write blog posts, go to “Content” > “Blog” on your dashboard to create, publish, and monitor your website’s blog posts.

This is a fairly broad and general overview to get you started building a website with HubSpot, but there are plenty of more in-depth features and tools you might want to explore with a HubSpot specialist, or by checking out some articles on academy.hubspot.com.



from Marketing https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-make-a-website