How to Encourage More User-Generated Content – UGC

Posted on August 5, 2020 by Universal Creator Posted in Content Marketing, General, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Social Media, Web Design

Encouraging More User Generated Content

Creating content for your brand’s online presence is very important and has multiple invaluable benefits for your business.

However quality content creation often becomes time consuming, expensive and can sometimes feel impersonal.

But what if there is another way to get high-quality content at little or no cost?

What if this content already exists and proves to be more powerful and authentic than all other marketing strategies combined?

User-generated content or UGC is a solution to many of the problems that brands face in building their online presence.

It has quickly become one of the most desirable marketing tools because of its simplicity and what it can achieve.

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Below are the content of How to Encourage More User Generated Content – UGC for your content marketing strategy.

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What is User Generated Content - UGC?

User–generated content (UGC) is any content—text, videos, images, reviews, etc. —created by people rather than brands.

And brands will often share UGC on their own social media accounts, website and other marketing channels.

Why is User Generated Content - UGC So Important?

Authenticity is more important than ever.

In a world of celebrity endorsements, sponsored posts and paid influencers, consumers crave authenticity more than ever.

Our survey revealed that 86% of people say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support.

This is especially true of younger generations – who now command $200 billion in annual spending power but are the least engaged with brands.

An overwhelming 90% of Millennials say brand authenticity is important proving that younger consumers prefer real and organic over perfect and packaged.

By using your fans’ and followers’ content you can build trust in your brand and nurture relationships with your customer base.

Research shows that 85% of consumers find UGC more influential than content from brands and a separate survey showed that 60% of people say that UGC is the most authentic type of content compared to just 20% for brand-generated content.

So it only makes sense to spend more time curating content from users rather than creating your own.

UGC also allows you to track mentions and conversations about your brand, giving you insights into what consumers think about your products and services and address any issues accordingly.

Last but not least user-generated content helps your brand save money and free up time to focus on other aspects of business operation.

A recent research reveals that the average mobile user takes about 150 photos every month.

With benefits like these you are probably wondering how to start a user generated content campaigns successfully.

Below we will discuss different ways to encourage more user generated content ideas from your fans and followers.

They are in no order of importance since all of them are equally important to encourage user generated content for the success of your content marketing strategy.

Further Reading: How to Improve SEO Rankings

How To Create User Generated Content - UGC?

1. Choose The Right Social Media Platform

For a user generated content campaign to become effective you must already have a strong online presence.

However for brands that have not gained a huge number of followers yet then the very first thing you need to do is to find out where your audience spends most of their time on social media.

You need to have an in-depth understanding of which type of content works best on each social media platform.

For instance Facebook works best for sharing stories while Instagram and Pinterest is the go to for visual content.

Here is what Buffer suggests for user generated content on social media:

Facebook: Videos and curated content
Instagram: High-res photos, quotes, Stories
Twitter: News, blog posts, and GIFs
LinkedIn: Jobs, company news and professional content
Pinterest: Infographics and step-by-step photo guides

When asking for content always remember to be clear and concise with what you need.

People are more than happy to share content with brands in hopes of getting featured but without specific guidelines you will end up with a ton of unusable low-quality user generated content on social media.

Further Reading: Create Engaging Content for Social Media

2. Create Powerful Hashtags

Hashtags are extremely valuable to your brand because they allow you to categorise your content and reach a wider audience.

According to Wikipedia –

“A hashtag introduced by the number sign or hash symbol (#) is a type of metadata tag used on social networks such as Twitter and Instagram and other microblogging services.

It lets users apply dynamic, user-generated tagging that helps other users easily find messages with a specific theme or content.”

When creating a user generated content hashtag campaign – it is important not to go overboard.

Research from Buddy Media reveals that tweets with a hashtag have twice the engagement than those without but using more than 2 hashtags can actually drop your engagement level by up to 17%.

Do you remember Coca-Cola’s #ShareaCoke campaign? It is one of the most unforgettable hashtag campaigns ever created that landed Coca-Cola about 25 million new Facebook followers.

Over 500,000 photos were shared and people created 6 million virtual Coke bottles. This encouraged their audiences to participate and generated lost more user generated content than ever.

What should be admired about the campaign is its simplicity. It placed a great emphasis on individual storytelling which sparked organic conversations thus, consumers felt compelled to participate without even thinking that they were promoting the brand.

The user generated content hashtag itself is catchy, easy to remember and includes a powerful call-to-action, leaving consumers flocking to stores looking for bottles with their names on it.

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

3. Collect Customer Reviews

Independent customer reviews are the cornerstone of every successful user generated content marketing strategy.

According to a recent survey:

90% say positive online reviews influence their buying decisions
72% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
87% of consumers say a business needs a 3 to 5 star rating before they use them

Reviews are only as powerful as the platform they are built upon which is why it is important to collect reviews from third-party review websites.

This will show customers that you are not manipulating the data. Today’s savvy consumers can spot fake reviews from a mile away and they know better than to trust a brand that scores perfect 5-star ratings all the time.

Reviews either positive or negative will also help your consumers make informed buying decisions.

While you are tempted to wipe away all the negative reviews about your brand but those are still valuable user generated content reviews that provide honest opinions from real users.

Customer feedback can help shed some light on what needs to be improved with your product or service and that is something that not only benefits the next buyer but your business as a whole.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

4. Create a Contest

Running a contest can help spark that much-needed buzz about your brand.

Contests help increase the volume of user generated content submissions and increase their quality.

The key to running a successful contest is to make sure that the reward is enticing enough to encourage participation on respective user generated content platforms.

You also have to emphasise that the prizes are limited as this will push your fans to be more creative with their entries.

However when creating a contest – it is important to keep things as simple as possible since you want more people to participate and not scare them away with complicated contest mechanics.

Libby’s the popular fruit and vegetable brand, executed this perfectly by capitalising on one of America’s favourite holidays.

They encouraged their fans to post pictures of what they are thankful for with the hashtags #Cansgiving and #Contest.

They even made the campaign more useful by providing a dedicated campaign page where fans could opt in to receive marketing emails in the future whilst encouraging more user generated content – UGC.

What was beautiful about this contest is that it was simple and consumer-focused.

Apart from rewarding ten advocates with an assortment of Libby’s goodies and $350 towards their Thanksgiving meal, the company even went above and beyond to show their values.

They allowed each winner to choose which among their three chosen charities – City Harvest, Children’s Hunger Alliance and Meals on Wheels America – Libby’s should make a matched donation to.

Further Reading: Minimalism in Web Design

5. Offer Rewards

There is nothing else that can motivate users more than rewarding their efforts.

Offering rewards for the things that they are already doing ignites an organic and spontaneous response that even the most expensive user generated content marketing campaigns could not easily accomplish.

One of the best things about rewards is that they normally do not require a ton of work in order to be earned.

It often only takes a few minutes to create a quick video, photo or short review so it is quite easy to encourage fans to participate.

Better yet rewards do not always have to be expensive. Unlike contest prizes the reward can be as simple as reposting a tweet or featuring their article on your website.

These simple gestures are enough to provide your most engaged fans the social recognition that they deserve.

This will make them feel that they are a part of your brand and also entice new users to submit fresh user generated content news as well.

Loews Hotels’ #TravelForReal campaign is a perfect user generated content example of a strategy done right.

They noticed that guests were sharing photos of their vacation stays at the hotel and hash tagging them and that they received a lot of engagement when they reposted their guests’ pictures.

Loews decided to get in on the action and celebrate real hotel guests instead of hiring actors or models to promote their brand.

By allowing their guests to share their own vacation experiences brings out the brand’s authenticity and provides future guests a true glimpse of what they can expect without any professional camera tricks or air brushing.

Consumers respond more favourably to images that depict real people and their lifestyle than those recreated by a brand.

Allowing your audience to tell their own stories humanises your brand and makes you seem more genuine.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

6. Support a Good Cause

One way to have an authentic connection with your audience is to support a good user generated content benefits cause that aligns with your brand’s values.

It shows your fans that you do not exist simply to make sales but because you have a greater vision to serve the needs of many.

Plus it encourages more user generated content – UGC from the audience.

Aerie’s #AerieREAL campaign is another user generated content example that changed the lives of many women.

There had been some controversy surrounding excessive photo editing of females in advertising and marketing and its impact on women’s self-esteem.

To take a stance on the issue Aerie – American Eagle’s brand of lingerie and sleepwear pledged $1 to the National Eating Disorders Association for every Instagram user that posted an unedited photo of themselves wearing a bathing suit.

Aerie even stepped up their campaign by featuring women with health conditions to model their bras.

Some of Aerie’s new faces include women with ostomy, vitiligo, Down’s syndrome and arm crutches.

By doing this Aerie is empowering women to feel comfortable and positive about their bodies.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks To Your Website

7. Create a Beta Group

The thing about today’s consumers is that they love getting involved and being heard which is why forming a beta group is one of the easiest ways to gather user generated content ideas without much effort.

All it takes is tapping into a group of fans or customers who are already interested and let them know that you have an ongoing promotion for a limited number of individuals.

It could be a coupon code, a free sample or a free trial run if you are selling a subscription service.

This is especially useful if you are planning to launch a new product, service or feature.

Approaching a select few to participate in your beta testing phase before it is released to the public gets those users excited not only because they will be able to test your latest offerings for free but because you are letting them know that their feedback matters.

By welcoming these individuals in you are building a community that you can always count on to provide you with honest insights about any new additions to your product or service.

This allows you to make the necessary adjustments early on and prevent costly mistakes in your user generated content marketing strategy.

Further Reading: How to Create Engaging Graphic Content For Social Media

8. Always Engage with the Users

Regular engagement gives your brand a personality that your audience can relate to.

Asking for favours may seem out of character if you do not communicate often or if you share very little content with your followers.

You can convince your customers to share their thoughts and experiences about your brand only if you treat them well. This is a great way to encourage more user generated content -UGC.

Participate in community discussions, answer questions and respond to feedback graciously. Be helpful, be attentive and most importantly – be human.

If you just started a campaign then do not forget to thank your fans and compliment their submissions.

If you fail to acknowledge them they might lose interest in whatever it is that you have to offer in the future.

Also remember to post valuable content consistently since this helps build anticipation from your audience.

Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO

Further Reading: Benefits of SEO

For more information about our services and how we can help you with your SEO needs:-

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How to Encourage More User-Generated Content -UGC

17+ Ways to Boost Low Conversion Rate in E-commerce

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Universal Creator Posted in General, Content Marketing, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Social Media, Web Design

Ways To Increase Conversion Rate on E-Commerce Website

Are you worried about the impact of a low conversion rate on your e-commerce website?

If visitors are not converting or there is a sudden drop in the conversion rate then your bottom line will suffer for it.

What can you do to recover those lost leads and sales? The first step is to identify the underlying cause.

There are lots of possible explanations for a poor conversion rate and we will look at those in this article.

Table of Content

Below are 17+ Ways to Boost Low Conversion Rate in E-commerce.

Click on any of them to get diectly to your prefered section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

What Is a Conversion Rate?

Your conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your website that complete a desired goal which is a conversion out of the total number of visitors.

A high conversion rate is indicative of successful marketing and web design that means people want what you are offering and they are easily able to get it.

By the end you will know what is responsible for your low conversion rate and how to solve them so you can increase your e-commerce conversions, boosts your sales and revenue and provide great customer service.

Further Reading: Create Engaging Content for Social Media

How do you calculate conversion rate?

Conversion rates are calculated by simply taking the number of conversions and dividing that by the number of total ad interactions that can be tracked to a conversion during the same time period.

For example if you had 25 conversions from 1,000 interactions then your conversion rate would be 2.5% since 25 ÷ 1,000 x 100 = 2.5%.

Further Reading: Create Engaging Content for Social Media

What is a Good E-Commerce Conversion Rate?

A conversion is when a web consumer completes a desired action and the conversion rate is the percentage of total web visitors who took that action.

Typical e-commerce conversions include adding items to a shopping cart and completing a purchase or saving items to buy later.

If your site visitors are not doing those things then you have a big problem.

So what is a good e-commerce conversion rate? As with most metrics – it depends who you ask because e-commerce conversion rate benchmarks can vary widely.

Average e-commerce conversion rates are 1% – 2%. A 2%+ conversion rate should be the baseline goal for your online store.

Add to cart or ATC conversion rates are typically around double those of E-commerce conversion rate.

They are calculated by dividing the number of add-to-cart (ATC) event by the number of visitor sessions. There is less difference between smartphone and desktop conversion rates.

Monetate has good quality benchmarks of e-commerce conversion rates for their UK and US customers including ATC rates but that figure masks wide variations depends on location and device.

That is why in e-commerce what you consider a low conversion rate depends on whether you are aiming to achieve the average or reach double digit e-commerce conversions.

Regardless of your current conversion rate or goals there is always room for improvement to optimise your e-commerce revenue.

Now let us look at some of the reasons why you might have a low conversion rate.

They are in no order or importance since all of them are equally important for the success of your business – increasing conversions, leads and customer satisfaction.

Further Reading: How Does SEO Help Your Business Grow?

1.Not Good First Impression on Your Site

The main reason for a low conversion rate is that people do not like what they see when they land on your site or they cannot find the information they need.

If you are getting traffic but no conversions or have a high bounce rate on a page you think should keep visitors on your site then it makes sense to troubleshoot site design issues first.

We will tackle the most common design issues that hurt your conversion rate throughout this article.

However it is important to have a site that looks good and even more crucial to look after usability so consumers can get essential information and complete their desired actions without hassle.

Check conversion rate metrics, user flow, bounce rate and your conversion funnel in your analytics software to see where the issue is.

Some common reasons for low conversion rates include:

Poor navigation. Ensure that the most popular items are easy to find.
Poor filtering and sorting. You do not want to overwhelm consumers with too many options. They should be able to filter items so they get only those choices that meet their needs.
Poor search. Always ensure that search results are likely to match what consumers want. If visitors cannot find an item then they would not buy it.

Hubspot recommends removing left hand navigation elements to keep buyers more focused and changing your home page regularly to retain visitors’ interest.

Further Reading: How to Improve SEO Rankings

2. You Do Not Know Who Your Customers Are

Another issue to consider is whether you are clear on who your customers are. If you are not marketing to the right people then you will end up with a low conversion rate and sales will definitely decline.

That is why it is important to find out what your customers want. You will need to look at web analytics to see how people behave on your site and social analytics to see what they are sharing.

Pay close attention to online reviews and customer interactions via your customer helpdesk and messaging apps. You can also collect useful customer information via customer surveys.

All these will help you understand your market so you can create a customer persona and market more effectively.

When you get your marketing to specific personas correct that matches your audience segments then you are sure to increase your conversion rates.

You are aiming to deliver targeted customer experiences rather than a one size fits all approach.

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

3. Not Optimised Site

Another factor to look at is search engine optimisation (SEO) if your site’s experiencing a decline in conversion rate.

SEO is all about optimising content and web pages so they appear when consumers search online for your products using related keywords.

That word related is important because Google only shows the most relevant content when people search. If your pages are not showing up then consumers will not click and traffic will be low.

And if they do not find what they expect when they arrive at your site then conversions will be low too.

That is why it is so important to do keyword research for your niche and make sure your web pages meet searchers’ needs.

Tip: If you are running your e-commerce site on WordPress then use the Yoast SEO plugin to guide you through key SEO tasks and remove one cause of low conversion rates. Here is a guide to set up Yoast SEO to help you.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

4. Are You Mobile Friendly

Did you know that in 2019 there were about 11 billion mobile devices in circulation?

Online shopping market statistics reveal that businesses worldwide are engaging more and more of their customers through the internet.

Below you will see there is an increasing number of digital buyers as well as higher revenues for online shopping in different countries.

Moreover the average online store visits per user have become more frequent in the past few years.

The global online shopping market size is predicted to hit more than $4 trillion in 2020.
10% of total retail sales in the US come from ecommerce sales.
The countries with the leading average ecommerce revenue per shopper are US – $1804, UK – $1629, Sweden – $1446, France – $1228, Germany – $1064, Japan – $968, Spain – $849, China – $626, Russia – $396 and Brazil – $350.
Amazon made up 43.5% of the total online retail market in 2018.
1 in every 4 online consumers purchases from e-commerce stores once a week.
The digital buyers’ penetration rate across the globe is 47.3% as of 2018.

As mentioned improving conversions from mobile opt-ins are just of many reasons why you need to make sure your site’s optimised for mobile users.

The e-commerce conversion stats cited earlier show that people are using their smartphones and other devices to research products though mobile conversions.

That means that you need a cross-device marketing strategy and a mobile friendly e-commerce website to attract and retain customers no matter where they are browsing or buying.

If you are using mobile optins on your site to present special offers or related products – Optin Monster’s Page-Level Targeting will help you win over mobile customers by targeting optins to the device they are using.

Further Reading: How to Increase E-commerce Conversion Rate using Trust Badges

5. Nobody Understands Your Product

Product pages are where consumers browse to make a decision whether to buy hence it is an important area of your website.

One of the main reasons why some product pages can have a low conversion rate is because they fail to demonstrate the product to the potential buyer.

The upper right blocks were not meant to contain a lot of text and pictures – this is among widespread ecommerce website mistakes.

When you scroll down there is a lot of free space to the left and you have to scroll a lot to reach the end of the description.

Shoppers need to understand how the product benefits them and solves their problems and what the product’s main features are.

That will help define the value of the product and make it more likely for buyers to purchase.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

6.Low Quality Product Images

Images matter for conversions and that goes for e-commerce sites too. The better your product images looks the more likely your product pages are to convert.

Avoid tiny, low-quality, unclear images in favour of large, clear and interesting photos if you want to improve conversions.

Here is a great example from the Leica website:

You can also use product videos to win customers – video is proven to increase engagement and consumers stick longer with video and are more likely to convert.

Further Reading: Choosing Right Domain Name for Your Website

7. Your Copy Is not Persuasive

For best results with e-commerce conversions SmartInsights says copy must be informative, error-free, well written, descriptive, persuasive and emotional.

Persuasion is especially important.

According to Robert Cialdini there are six principles of persuasion that underpin buying decisions – reciprocity, authority, commitment and consistency, social proof, scarcity and liking. Craft persuasive copy and conversions increase.

Create copy to target those buyer personas as mentioned above. That will make sure each product appeals to the person most likely to buy it.

Your copy should also include powerful actionable words so you both stir up emotion and inspire action in your content marketing strategy and on social media advertising.

Last but not least spellcheck your copy so it is error-free. Consumers notice mistakes even if they are not aware of doing so and error-filled copy can hurt both conversions and reputation.

8. The Page Is Distracting

For best results make sure each page is focused on the core offer you want to make.

That means removing navigation and other unnecessary elements on cart pages or landing pages.

Check analytics for your pages to see if anything is stopping consumers from converting.

Go to Audience > Users Flow in Google Analytics and see where people are leaving the shopping process.

For even more insights on shopper behaviour you can enable enhanced e-commerce in Google Analytics.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Content Marketing

9. The Call to Action Is Unclear

Is your call to action (CTA) clearly written and visible? If not then you could be missing out on conversions.

It is absolutely crucial to have a single, clear call to action so visitors have no doubt about what to do next.

A good CTA is not just about copy. You also have to get the design and colour right so consumers can actually see it.

If consumers can see and understand your CTA then it is easier for them to take action.

Further Reading: Different Types of Websites to Create

10. Shoppers Do Not Trust You

There is no getting away from it – trust boosts sales and drive traffic to your website.

So if you are experiencing low conversion rates then one reason could be that visitors do not trust your site.

You can up the trust factor of your website by:

Avoiding junk marketing.
Using social proof including real customer reviews.
Showing that you are real by putting your address and contact details and if appropriate team photos on the site.
Including trust badges or seals so shoppers know their credit card details are safe and secure.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks

11. People Have to Pay for Shipping

Shipping costs kill conversions. That is why so many e-commerce retailers offer free shipping.

According to the Baymard Institute around 61% of people abandon shopping carts because of high costs including shipping costs.

If you are charging for shipping then think about making it free. And if you already offer free shipping make sure potential customers are aware of it by putting it on every page on your site.

Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO

12. Checkout Is Difficult

Baymard’s research also shows that two thirds of purchases are abandoned with 27% of people citing complicated checkouts as the reason.

If you can improve conversions enough to recover even a fraction of abandoning visitors then you will increase revenue from your site.

Here are some ways to do this:

De-clutter your checkout pages.
Make sure it is clear where shoppers are in the checkout process with a progress bar.
Remind people what they are buying with product images on the checkout page.
Include trust seals and shipping information so they know exactly what they are paying.

Another good fix for a low conversion rate is to have a guest checkout option so people can buy without having to sign up.

This works really well and then you can offer to save their information for the future. That offer is more likely to be accepted after a pain-free checkout.

Further Reading: 9+ Ways Why Video is The Future of Content Marketing Strategy

13. You are Not Using Exit Intent

Another fix for a low conversion rate is to make the right offer just before people leave your site.

OptinMoster’s Exit-Intent Technology is the perfect way to do that.

Exit intent detects when someone is about to leave your site and puts your offer in front of them.

A limited-time discount or tripwire offer can be a great incentive to buy.

And if you combine it with OptinMonster’s Page-Level Targeting to make sure the offer shown is related to the page they have been browsing then you will be even more successful in fixing that low e-commerce funnel conversion rate.

Further Reading: Why You Need a Mobile Friendly Website

14. There is No Remarketing or Retargeting Strategy

Retargeting is an essential part of any e-commerce conversion process. It is a way to get the attention of people who come to your site and leave without completing a purchase.

This is crucial because most people would not be ready to make a purchase on their very first visit to your site.

Ever noticed how when you leave a site and then go to Facebook you see an ad for that same site in the sidebar?

That is remarketing in action and it is very effective in increasing both engagement and conversions.

You can also use email retargeting campaign to:

Make offers to people who have been to your site before.
Personalise popups to boost sales.
Showcase relevant upsells to people browsing your site as shown below. That optin also uses OptinMonster’s Smart Tags feature.

Put the right offer in front of the right people at the right time and conversions increase.

Further Reading: How To Optimise Images for SEO

15. Your Tracking Code Is Not Working

If you are wondering why conversion rates are dropping then there is one external factor to consider – your analytics tracking code.

A sudden drop in conversion rate could mean that the code has not been installed correctly or needs to be updated to take account of a change you have made.

Check your code and do not forget to set it up to track micro-conversions too.

Further Reading: What are backlinks?

16. Your Pricing Strategy Is Wrong

According to research price is the most important buying factor for 60% of consumers. So one reason your e-commerce site might have a low conversion rate is because of a poor pricing strategy.

Marketers suggest to improve conversions then one needs to use psychological pricing techniques like:

Product bundling.
Putting the number 9 or 7 at the end of a price rather than rounding it up.
Using small fonts.
Making sure prices have only a few syllables when read.

Further Reading: 23+ Productivity Time Saving Hacks for Content Marketing

17. You are Not Sending Abandonment Emails

If you are not sending abandonment emails then you are missing out on potential conversions.

In contrast if you send them within the first hour after people leave you can often persuade them to buy.

Marketo suggests using a three-email abandonment sequence:

The first email is sent within the hour which aims to help with any technical issues that got in the way of completing a purchase.
The second is sent within 24 hours to warn people that their cart will expire.
The third is sent within 48 hours to provide an incentive for completing the purchase.

Combine this with checkout optimisation as mentioned above and you could easily recover some of those lost conversions.

Further Reading: 18 Ways to Recover Sales through Shopping Cart Abandonment

18. You Are Not Testing Enough

Testing is at the heart of conversion optimisation therefore it is a no-brainer to test your entire website user flow to see where you can make improvements and boost conversions.

Wordstream warns that you sometimes see conversion spikes that do not last after split testing but adds that if you do in-depth optimisation then you are more likely to get long-term conversion gains.

You can test landing pages, product pages, offers and CTAs to find out which ones your visitors respond to best.

It is easy to split test your campaigns. It only takes a couple of clicks to create a new split test in the dashboard then you can edit the new version of your campaign.

Results will automatically segment your traffic and collect analytics data so you know which opt in campaign works best.

Further Reading: How to Measure Your Content Marketing ROI – The Simple Guide

19. There Are External Factors

Sometimes a low conversion rate has nothing to do with your actions but it is all about what is happening externally.

Maybe one of your competitors has released a product that temporarily takes customers’ attention away from your offering.

Monitoring your competitors to see if you need to adjust your marketing strategy can help address some of the conversion loss.

Some ways to do this include:

Setting up Google Alerts for your competitors.
Monitoring their keywords with SocialMention, Seobook or Moz.
Using SimilarWeb to see who is visiting their sites.
Checking out content effectiveness with Buzzsumo.
Paying attention to social media analytics.

Further Reading: How To Increase Conversion Using Video Content Marketing

20. There Is No Live Chat

Consumers like talking to people and the use of live chat is only going to grow.

Offering live chat means that when people hit a bottleneck in the purchase process they can get immediate help.

This can increase conversions by up to 45%. Consider adding this feature especially during the checkout.

Want to easily add live chat to your site? Here is our roundup of Chat bot and Live Chats to get you started!

Further Reading: How To Optimise Images for SEO

Conclusion

Now you know how to fix some of the main causes of a low conversion rate on your e-commerce website see how you can boost conversions even more with these improvements above.

Check out our guide on how to conduct a conversion rate audit to identify your own leaks.

And see our guide on how to increase e-commerce conversion rate to keep your online store running smoothly and your overall strategy on the right track.

Content Marketing Experts

Our content marketing experts at Best-Digital Marketing Services are here to help your business to develop and implement effective content marketing to connect and improve conversions.

So contact us now and see how we can work together to create a more effective and efficient content marketing strategy to move forward.

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17+ Ways to Boost Low Conversion Rate in E-commerce

31+ Creative Ways How to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Universal Creator Posted in General, Content Marketing, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Social Media

What is Website Traffic?

Website traffic tells you how many users visit your website. Google Analytics tools will often tell you both the number of page views and the number of unique page views.

Page views are the total number of times anyone has visited your site while unique page views tell you how many people visited your site — some multiple times and some only once.

The idea is that the more website traffic you get the more opportunities you have to convert users.

How To Increase Traffic to Your Website With Innovative Ways

The challenge for any business is to make sure that when people look for a product or services they find you and not a competitor.

If you ask any business owner or marketer – what would they like the most in the world and their answer will certainly be – more customers!

What is next on a business’ wish list? More traffic to their website.

There is plenty you can do to increase traffic to your website at no cost except your time.

Today we are going to look at 31+ creative ways to increase website traffic and this includes several ways to increase website traffic for FREE.

There are in no order of importance since all of them are equally important and it will depend on your business goals and objective how you choose and mix them to achieve your desired outcome.

Table Of Content

Below are the content of 31+ Creative Ways How to Drive Traffic to Your Website.

Click on any of them to get diectly to your prefered section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

1. Simple Advertising

This is definitely obvious so we will look at it first. Paid search, social media advertising and display advertising are excellent ways of attracting visitors, building brand awareness and getting your site in front of people.

Create and amend your paid strategies to suit your goals – do you just want more traffic or are you looking to increase conversions too?

Each paid channel has its pros and cons so think carefully about your objectives before you reach for your credit card.

If you are hoping that more traffic to your site will also result in more sales, you will need to target high commercial intent keywords as part of your paid search strategies.

Yes – competition for these search terms can be expensive and fierce but the payoffs are more than worth it.

2. Build up On Internal Links

Once you have built up a decent catalogue of content then you can link it to your blogs and website guiding visitors to more relevant content.

The strength of your link profile is not solely determined by how many sites link back to you – it can also be affected by your internal linking structure.

You lost me here …..

When creating and publishing content always ensure to keep an eye out for opportunities for internal links.

This will keep visitors on your website for longer which helps boost your SEO and provide a better, more useful user experience – UX whilst driving traffic to your website.

However do not overuse internal links since too many of it will trigger a spam like reaction and visitors will bounce away.

3. Increase Social Media Presence

It is not enough to produce great content and hope that people find it – you have to be proactive.

One of the best ways to increase website traffic to site is to use social media channels to promote your content.

Build a presence on social media networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook etc. All of these activities help to get your name and website address out on the internet.

Twitter is ideal for short, snappy with tempting links, whereas Google+ promotion can help your site show up in personalised search results and seems especially effective in B2B niches.

If you are a B2C product company you might find great traction with image-heavy social sites like Pinterest and Instagram. This strategy will increase website and social media traffic for your business.

Here is more advice on making the most of social media marketing.

Add share buttons to your site to make it easy for people to share your content. And write content worthy of sharing and this is how to increase traffic to your website through social media.

Further Reading: How to Improve SEO Rankings

4. Leverage Long Tail Keywords

Do not just go with the most popular or high intent keywords in your market.

Then it is time to target long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords account for a majority of web searches – meaning that if you are not targeting them as part of your paid search or SEO efforts then you will be missing out.

No Way ….

Use keywords that are more specific to your product or service. With time Google and other search engines will identify your website or blog as a destination for that particular subject.

This in turn will boost your content in search rankings and help your ideal customers find you.

Ranking on Google is about owning a sphere of influence for a specific niche topic.

For example this blog post is targeted for those who want specific learnings on increasing organic traffic. We are not targeting every SEO-related keyword.

5. Encourage Incoming Links

Google prioritises sites that have a lot of incoming links especially from other trustworthy sites.

Wow really!!

Encourage clients, friends, family members, partners, suppliers, industry experts and friendly fellow bloggers to link to your site.

The more incoming links you have the higher your site will rank because the more authoritative you become in the eyes of search engines.

You need to be aware of sites that try to trick Google with spammy links from low-reputation sites and these links can actually damage your SEO.

This is how you drive traffic to your website using SEO.

6. Mix Blogs Up

There is no magic formula for content marketing success. For this reason – vary the length and format of your content to make it as appealing as possible to different types of readers.

Inter mix shorter, news-based blog posts with long-form content as well as video, infographics and data-driven pieces for maximum impact.

Further Reading: Create Engaging Content for Social Media

7. Blog Regularly

Blogging is perhaps the most effective way how to increase website traffic organically.

Why ….

It lets you go into more depth than your website allows and creates a large catalogue of helpful, persona-optimised content centred on your market niche.

Blogs also help improve your SEO because you are constantly adding new content to your page.

As a result of your improved SEO strategy – your organic lead generation will increa

Each time you write a new blog post you can email it to your subscribers. Post about it on social media.

Now you are able to generate new leads and get more traffic from multiple sources with just one blog post. This can help increase website traffic organically.

However poorly-written, spammy or cheap content can do more harm than good therefore avoid it at all cost.

8. Start Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is still alive and kicking despite what you may have heard.

It is a two-way communication. In addition to posting content to other blogs invite people in your niche to blog on your own site.

Securing a guest post on a reputable site can increase blog traffic to your website and help build your brand into the bargain.

They are likely to share and link to their guest article which could bring new readers to your site.

Just be sure that you only post high-quality, original content without spammy links because Google is cracking way down on low-quality guest blogging.

Here are a few tips on creating a guest post that will actually knock them out and create a stream of leads to your site.

So writing a popular guest blog post goes like this:

Use simple words – You want people to be able to read and understand quickly what you are writing about especially if it is about a complex topic. So write as a 5^th grade level.
Write advanced how-to blog posts– Once you have your topic – sit down and write out all the steps to accomplishing your stated goal. Then revise, working in greater and greater detail.
Links– Put plenty of internal and external links into your post. Bloggers love this.
Create a conversation – Ask questions throughout your post that invite readers to think about and respond to what you are saying.
Prove you are the authority – Fill your post with research and statistics that prove your point and show readers that you are an expert on this information.
Create powerful headlines – Finally, concentrate on generating some truly persuasive headlines. This is by far the most important feature so work hard at it and we know you can.

9. Write Amazing Headlines

Headlines are one of the most important parts of your content. Without a compelling headline – even the most comprehensive blog post will go unread.

Comprehend the art of headline writing.

For example the writers at BuzzFeed and Upworthy often write upward of twenty different headlines before settling on the one that will drive the most traffic so think carefully about your headline before you hit publish.

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

10. Plug Into the Blogosphere

The blogosphere is a reciprocal sort of place.

Read, comment and link to other people’s sites and blogs especially those operating in your market and hopefully they will read, comment and link to yours therefore attracting more prospects.

A good place to start is Quora. A neat tactic for getting your voice out there is to spend some time answering other peoples’ questions on Quora and providing real, valuable and tangible insights for the specific area you are an expert in.

11. Optimise for Your Readers

First you need to write your buyer personas so you know to whom you are addressing your content.

What ….

By creating quality educational content that resonates with your ideal buyers you will naturally improve your SEO.

This means tapping into the main issues of your personas and the keywords they use in search queries.

Optimising for search engines alone is useless and all you will have is keyword-riddled nonsense.

Please your buyer personas and you will automatically please the search engines and increase your SEO ranking.

12. Improve your SEO

Optimising your content for search engines is still a valuable and worthwhile practice.

Are you making the most of image alt text? Are you creating internal links to new content? What about meta descriptions?

Wait a minute …..

The meta title, URL and description are the three key ingredients for an optimised web page or blog post. It is simple yet effective.

In fact all on-page SEO factors are important to get right but meta descriptions and meta data means you can tell Google exactly what you are talking about.

You can use a number of tools including Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, HubSpot’s SEO tools and Ahrefs to help us optimise your pages but you have to work on each page in turn.

Optimising for on-page SEO does not have to take ages and it could help boost your organic traffic.

This is another way how you increase website traffic using SEO.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

13. Research the Competition

You can use software like BuzzSumo to check out what your competitors are up to.

Really ??

These services aggregate the social performance of specific sites and content to provide you with an overall view of what topics are resonating with readers and making the rounds on social media.

Find out what people are reading and talking about and create that type of content to bring traffic to your website.

14. Attend Conferences

Whatever industry you are in the chances are there are at least one or two major conventions and conferences that are relevant to your business.

Attending these events is a good idea but speaking at them is even better.

Even a halfway decent speaking engagement is an excellent way to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and gain significant exposure for your site.

This is a great exposure for your business and will also increase website traffic through social networking.

15. Consistently Create High Quality Content

Try to write and publish as often as possible without compromising the cost of quality.

The more high quality content you have on your website or blog – the better opportunities you create on how to get traffic to your website organically.

Further Reading: How Content Marketing Can Help Your Business

16. Submit Content to Reddit

A notice of great importance – do not spam Reddit and other similar sites hoping to hit the jackpot of referral traffic because it is not going to happen.

Members of communities like Reddit are extremely savvy to spam disguised as legitimate links but it does not hurt to submit links that these audiences will find genuinely useful every now and then.

Choose a relevant sub-reddit and submit your content then watch the traffic pour in.

17. Get Active on Social Media

It is not enough to just share content through social channels – you need to actively participate in the community.

Where do I …

Do you have a Twitter account? Then join in the group discussions with relevant hashtags for your niche or industry.

Are your audiences leaving any comments on your Facebook page? Answer these questions and engage with your readers.

Nothing turns people off quicker than using social media as a broadcast channel.

Use social media as it was intended and actually interact with your fans to get your brand across, increase your engagement, help resolve their issues and increase your conversions. This will help you how to increase website traffic from social media.

18. Energise Email Marketing

So many businesses are focused on attracting new customers through content marketing that they forget about more traditional methods.

Honestly …

Email marketing can be a powerful tool and even a moderately successful email blast can result in a significant uptick in traffic.

Just be careful not to bombard people with relentless emails about every single update in your business.

And do not overlook the power of word-of-mouth marketing especially from people who are already enjoying your products or services.

A friendly email reminder about a new service or product can help you boost your traffic especially if you have a created an effective content marketing funnel.

Further Reading: Minimalism in Web Design

19. Speed Up Your Site - Turbo

It only takes 5 seconds for a potential customer to go to your competitors and you have lost your sale if your webpage is still loading.

If your site takes forever to load then your bounce rate will be sky high.

Make sure that your pages are as technically optimised as possible including image file sizes, page structure and the functionality of third-party plugins.

You can read more on how to increase your website speed and enhance your performance by clicking here.

The faster your site loads the better it will be for you – lower bounce rate, increased leads, conversions and sales.

20. Interview Industry Thought Leaders

Today interviews are for anyone who is willing to face the challenge and is confident in facing the questions, public and themselves.

You would be amazed how many people will be willing to talk to you if you just ask them.

How do I …

Send out emails requesting an interview to thought leaders in your industry and publish the interviews on your blog.

Not only will the name recognition boost your credibility and increase traffic to your website but the interviewee will probably want to share the content too thus further expanding its reach.

21. Create a Sense of Community

People want to speak their minds and weigh in on subjects they feel passionately about so building a community into your site is a great way to start a conversation and increase traffic to your website.

How do you …

Implement a robust commenting system through third-party solutions such as Facebook comments, Postmatic, Comments Evolved or create a dedicated forum where visitors can ask questions.

However do not forget to manage your community to ensure that minimum standards of decorum are met.

This is how you increase website traffic through social networking.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

22. Blow Your Own Trumpet

You can also link to your content yourself to your own personal blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and more without spamming of course.

If people come in from social media and spend time with your content then it is a strong signal to Google that the content is relevant, useful and interesting.

23. Participate In Blog Commenting

You probably visit at least a few sites that are relevant to your business on a regular basis so why not join the conversation?

No Way!!

Commenting does not necessarily provide an immediate boost to referral traffic right away.

By providing insightful, thought-provoking comments on industry blogs and sites is a great way to get your name out there which will ultimately drive traffic to your site.

Just remember that as with guest posting – quality and relevance are key therefore you should be engaging and networking with others in your niche to increase website traffic.

A well-thought-out blog comments can also demonstrate that you have the depth of knowledge and the expertise on the topic that make you a valuable contributor in the industry as a whole.

Who knows maybe your blog comment can lead to a guest posting position within that blog?

Of course you want to be the first commenters as more comments come pouring in.

The more your well-crafted, polished response will sink to the bottom the better it will be. To help with this try to use If This Then That or IFTTT

IFTTT uses recipes to perform user-specified actions. For example – If I post a photo to Instagram then save it to my Dropbox.

24. Marketing on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become much more than a means of finding another job.

The world’s largest professional social network is now a valuable publishing platform in its own right which means you should be posting content to LinkedIn on a regular basis.

Duhh..

However because of its targeted audience – LinkedIn has the ability to connect you to other fire-starters who can help you leverage your existing platform and grow your site beyond anything you could do strictly on your own.

LinkedIn’s own advertising network lets you target your ads precisely — including to specific job titles, company size, job functions and more.

You can even access group statistics on LinkedIn for groups you are not a member of thus enabling you to determine which groups will potentially bring you the best return on your investment of time and research.

Doing so can boost traffic to your site as well as increase your profile within your industry especially if you have a moderate to large following.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks To Your Website

25. Mobile Responsive Website

The days when internet browsing was done exclusively on desktop PCs are long gone.

Today more consumers than ever before are using mobile devices to access the web.

So if you asking your visitors to pinch and scroll their way around your website then you are chasing them away.

This is why you need a mobile friendly website that is mobile responsive to enable the ever increasing millennials to browse you website.

Even if you have a basic website you still need to ensure that it is accessible and comfortably viewable across a range of devices including tablets and smartphones.

26. Use Analytics Data to Optimise Results

Google Analytics is an invaluable source of data on just about every conceivable aspect of your site – from your most popular pages to visitor demographics.

Keep a close eye on your Analytics data and use this information to inform your promotional and content strategies.

Pay attention to what posts and pages are proving the most popular. Inspect visitor data to see how, where and when your site traffic is coming from.

Being able to see where they come from and what keywords they searched for allows you to fine tune your content. This is how you increase website traffic through google.

27. Produce Video Content

Text-based content is all well and good but video is definitely a valuable asset in both attracting new visitors and making your site get more engagement.

Data shows that information retention is significantly higher for visual material than it is for text.

Honestly ….

That is why 87% of marketers produce video content online. Videos yield a 157% increase in organic search traffic as well.

On top of that – 46% of consumers act after watching a video advertisement.

Give the people what they want. Your business should have a YouTube channel set up and you need to add new videos to it on a regular basis.

You do not need to spend a fortune to produce video content. It is simple and easy to create and edit your videos in-house.

People would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. This is a top reason why marketers say video content helped them increase website traffic.

This means that video marketing strategy is an excellent way to grab hold of your audience’s attention and boost traffic to your website at the same time.

Further Reading: How to Create Engaging Graphic Content For Social Media

28. Host Webinars

People love to learn and webinars are an excellent way to impart your wisdom to your eagerly waiting audience.

Combined with an effective social promotion campaign, webinars are a great way to increase traffic to your website.

Send out an email a week or so ahead of time and as well as a last chance to register reminder the day before the webinar.

Make sure to archive the presentation for later viewing and promote your webinars widely through social media.

This will help you increase website and social media traffic at the same time.

29. Go on Podcasts

Podcasts are expanding rapidly today. In fact one survey found that 26% of Americans regularly listen to podcasts.

Does that mean that you should grab the nearest microphone and start a podcast? No.

Instead we recommend going on other people’s podcasts as a guest.

This strategy works well and you need to go onto 1-2 podcasts per month.

And these episodes have brought us thousands of visitors. For example we once had 984 visitors in 60 days from a single podcast episode.

As a bonus you may usually get at least one backlink in the show notes which can help your search engine rankings.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks

30. Add Share Triggers To Your Content

In our experience, content largely succeeds or fails based on one factor – Does your content have Share Triggers.

What are Share Triggers? They are things you include in your content that push people to share it.

A lot of these principles were first discovered by behavioural scientists like Dr. Katherine Milkman, Jure Leskovec and Dr. Jonah Berger.

And they have proven in the lab what we discovered through trial and error. When you include Share Triggers in your content – people are more likely to share and link to it.

This is an example of increase website traffic from Backlinko:

One of the most powerful Share Triggers is Social Currency.

Social Currency is the idea that we share things that make us look good. And this Share Trigger is a large part of the reason that The Shrinking Dollar infographic mentioned below did so well.

This infographic confirmed what influencers were already saying: inflation is a big problem and their content backed up their rants with meaty data:

Every time an influencer shared their infographic with their audience it boosted their Social Currency.

So they shared it… again and again and it even got included in Google News thanks to a feature in The Christian Post.

All because they strategically added the Social Currency Share Trigger into their content – a brilliant idea of using share triggers.

31. Use Question Analyser to Create Useful Content

This strategy is an excellent and awesome way to make your content better. As you are aware – the better content = more traffic.

All you need to do is:

Find questions that your target audience asks online.
Answer those questions in your content.

Here is how to do it –

First use a tool like Buzzsumo’s Question Analyzer or Answer the Public to find questions that people ask:

Then you can either create an entire post to answer these questions …

Or include the answers into your content.

It is simple as that – a win-win for both of you and your target audience.

Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO

32. Improve Your Organic Click-Through-Rate

We have great news for all of you – If you want more traffic from Google then you DO NOT need higher rankings.

Seriously ….

Yes – you can focus on improving your click through rate (CTR).

For example – let us say you rank number 3 for your target keyword and your CTR is 4%.

And after a few tweaks here and there you double that CTR to 8%.

Now – you have just doubled your organic traffic without improving your rankings.

But wait there is more…

CTR is now an important ranking signal in Google’s algorithm so when you get a higher CTR – you will also improve your search engine rankings.

Hallelujah!

So how did you actually improve your CTR?

Here are a few tips that work great:

Add a number to your title like 23 or 98%
Write a compelling meta description
Test different titles and see which one gets the best CTR
Use titles that are highly emotional
Include your keyword in your URL

This is another way how to increase website traffic through Google.

33. Use Influencer Marketing to Establish Credibility

If your website is credible then you will be able to generate more site traffic.

One of the best ways to gain credibility is to leverage your relationships with influencers. You can approach this tactic in many different ways.

How ….

If you have the budget then you can use celebrities to promote your brand.

That is because these people are already known and trusted. Working with a celebrity shows your brand is legitimate.

Their endorsements will reach a wider audience. The problem is it is obvious to consumers these celebrities are getting paid to pitch for your products or services.

As an alternative solution you can use micro influencers to increase your product credibility.

One of the top reasons why we are advocates for using micro influencers is because they have high engagement rates with their followers.

Get these people to post about your products and you will get more traffic to your website.

Your new leads will be more likely to trust your brand if the recommendation comes from a social influencer.

Now you will have an easier time generating conversions and ultimately drive more traffice to your website with higher profits.

Further Reading: How To Optimise Images for SEO

34. Add Schema Mark-up to Your Content

Schema mark-up is a form of optimisation that involves putting a small piece of code on your webpage to help search engines return more useful results for users.

Whooosshhhh …..

It can also increase your likelihood of securing coveted featured snippets or position-zero rankings.

Implementing schema would not necessarily increase traffic to your website on its own but it will make it easier for search engine bots to find and index your pages.

Another benefit of using schema for SEO is that it can result in better rich site snippets which can improve click through rates (CTR).

35. Use The Power of Retargeting

What is retargeting?

Retargeting is the tactic of advertising to lapsed users who already have installed an app well after the conversion takes place.

Also known as remarketing this technique is popular because a user’s previous intent often makes them more likely to convert than new users.

Retargeting involves targeting customers through ads on other sites long after they have visited your own site.

Depending on the type of retargeting – you can often convince them to circle back to visit your site by displaying a product they may have looked at, an ad for an item they searched for and so on.

There are three main types of retargeting:

Site Retargeting

This is the simplest form of retargeting – showcasing your ads on other sites that your visitors go to.

The idea is that this keeps your brand in their peripheral vision and in the back of their mind.

There is a great deal of flexibility here which lets you display the actual product the customer viewed, multiple products, image ads and so forth.

Intent or Behavioural Retargeting

This type of retargeting is more complex and results when a user follows certain behaviours that could potentially lead to a click through on your ad.

They may have made purchases on similar websites, searched different keywords or have the same interests as your customer base.

This type of targeting can also be segmented geographically based on their level of interaction with your other lead generation channels like surveys, emails or a combination of factors.

Customer Relationship Management -CRM Retargeting

What Is CRM?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the combination of practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyse customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle with the goal of improving customer service relationships and assisting in customer retention and driving sales growth.

CRM systems compile customer data across different channels or points of contact between the customer and the company which could include the company’s website, telephone, live chat, direct mail, marketing materials and social media.

CRM based retargeting focuses on your email list especially those customers who have not opened your emails.

CRM retargeting uses cookies to track your mailing list users online and show ads for your site on the pages they visit.

There are several retargeting tools and services available – each with varying price levels and features.

Here are 2 that you can compare.

AdRoll – One of the biggest and most popular brands in the retargeting industry. Includes pricing based on impressions + fixed-price margin.

Retargeter – Also offers ad design services in addition to retargeting. It offers search-based, CRM, Facebook and dynamic retargeting.

Conclusion

We get really excited just talking about all of these tactics that can drive traffic to your website because they are the tactics that anyone can use.

As we have tried to show you throughout this article they have been used by people effectively.

We have used them for ourselves as well as for clients and so we know they work.

Ultimately to increase website traffic all you need to give your customers is what they want – quality advice, on-time information and clear insight.

Experiment with any of the above creative ways and if you have any questions – Contact us today and we will help you resolve them.

For full Digital Marketing Services package

and select the package that suits your business needs.

If you prefer to discuss your requirements first just

or fill your details with a message of your requirements at

Further Reading: Benefits of SEO

For more information about our services and how we can help you with your SEO needs:-

Hope you are enjoying and learning a lot with abundance of information about:-

31+ Creative Ways How to Drive Traffic to Your Website.

23+ Great Ways To Use Productivity Time Saving Hacks For Content Marketing

Posted on July 16, 2020 by Universal Creator Posted in General, Content Marketing, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Social Media, Video Content Marketing

Productivity Time Savings Tips For Content Marketing

Most of us wish there was either more time or fewer things to do in a day.

This has been a worsening problem for years but even more so now since we entered a global pandemic.

Content marketers face the same problems at work like everyone else and job stress is one of the most common types of stress according to the American Institute of Stress.

The most common cause is workload and it is clear we need less on our plates.

Do you want to increase your productivity and reduce your stress levels?

A few simple changes in your work habits can make a huge difference.

How many of us work in a company culture that prioritises mental health and self-care enough to give us fewer projects when we are burnt out?

Unfortunately – not enough therefore we need to come up with solutions to streamline, organise and optimise your marketing processes to get the same results without working so many hours.

If you are one of those who can never find enough time in the day to finish everything you want to then this article is for you

There are ways to do this at every step of the content marketing process and for every type of work you do which can add up to saving hours per week.

Here are a few tips to help you save time and make the most of your working hours.

Table Of Content

Below are the content on 23+ Great Ways To Use Productivity Time Saving Hacks for Content Marketing.

Click on any of them to get diectly to your prefered section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

How to Plan Content More Productively

Let us talk about setting the idea stage. Planning and idea creating can be done more productively without compromising any cost to creativity or effectiveness.

Here we will be providing you with some of the most essential tips or hacks how to increase productivity whilst saving time when creating your content marketing strategy, plan or ideas .

1. Plan Before You Create Content

Jumping into content creation without an outline or overview of what you want to achieve will result in you having to do more revisions later or even re-do some of your work from scratch.

Save yourself time in the long run by investing a few minutes in making an outline when you start working.

When you know which points you want to cover you will be able to produce the piece more quickly and easily.

Always plan in advance how you are going to promote and repurpose your content.

That way you are not scrambling or wondering what to do next once you hit publish on something new.

This planning can include:

Where you are going to post or promote your content.
What format that promotion will take.
When will the promotion take place and it can be both short-term and long-term.
How are you going to repurpose that content?
When is that repurposing going to happen?

In fact there is more planning and project management at this point in the content lifecycle than there is in the writing process.

2. Know Your Audience.

You can save yourself time and revisions by knowing who you are creating content for in the first place.

Make some audience personas if you have not already and keep them in mind as you work.

Think about what kind of tone and approach will be most effective with your existing and future target audience.

Further Reading: How to Improve SEO Rankings

3. Set Clear Goals.

Goals give you a road map to follow which means that you will spend a lot less time fiddling around with any unimportant work thus saving you time.

Set weekly, monthly and yearly goals for your content marketing strategy and make a step-by-step plan to achieve them.

If a job on your to-do list does not help you to move toward your goals then rethink whether you really need to be doing it.

4. Use To - Do Lists.

To-do lists are a great productivity tool – they let you organise your priorities and see at a glance what you still have to finish.

Be realistic with your to-do lists. If you try to cram a week’s worth of work into one day then you probably would not get half of it done and you might end up discouraged at yourself.

All the day-to-day customer feedback and insights need to be captured in an idea file to reference when it is time for your next dedicated brainstorm.

Focus on finishing two or three main tasks every day where possible without putting any pressure or stress on yourself.

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

5. Brainstorm Content Ideas in Batches

When you or your team sits down for dedicated brainstorming or idea sessions make the most of that focus on creative thinking.

Once you get into the zone do not stop at one idea. Come up with as many as you can as this will save you time in the future.

For example – sit down and come up with the appropriate content marketing ideas until you run out not just for a post at a time or for a week.

Because if you have ever had a deep brainstorming session you will know that the first idea is the hardest one to come up with.

Take the first idea and follow it down whatever path it takes you since this will help you plan and come up with content marketing ideas for a whole content marketing campaign rather than one by one.

6. Capture Ideas as You Have Them

Even with dedicated brainstorming sessions you are still going to come up with a lot of ideas on the roll.

In fact – we recommend it.

We have dubbed it living in practical idea mode and you need to be sure to capture those ideas as it pops into your head.

For example – say when you are chatting to a colleague or customer and you realise that this could or should be a blog post then write that down immediately.

So when your brand receives a social media mention that makes you say the same thing – screenshot it and save it for later use for content marketing on social media.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

How to Create Content More Productively

The content creation process is still a lot to streamline to save time. And is still the continuation of productivity time saving hacks for content marketing.

Let us talk about a few of the ways you can do that.

1. Work When You Are Alert and Creative.

Know what kind of worker you are and take advantage of it.

If you are a morning person then tackle your tough jobs as early in the day as possible.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

2. Use an Outline as a Skeleton

Outlines are essential and a lot of people think it is a waste of time to think and map out what you are going to say before you tackle the task.

This is like saying it is a waste of time to figure out your route or look at a map before starting a road trip.

For example – say when you are chatting to a colleague or customer and you realise that this could or should be a blog post then write that down immediately.

So when your brand receives a social media mention that makes you say the same thing – screenshot it and save it for later use for content marketing on social media.

3. Do One Thing At A Time.

Multitasking might make you feel productive but according to neuroscientists it is actually just distracting you from both of the things you are trying to do.

It also depletes your energy, leaving you with less will power and motivation for later.

No matter how full your to-do list is – do not be tempted to multitask. Always knock out one task at a time as this will save you time in the long run.

Further Reading:Create Engaging Content for Social Media

4. Do Similar Tasks In Groups

Try to do similar tasks all at once instead of spreading them out over the day or week.

Once you hit your rhythm with the first task then all the rest of them will be easier.

For example – if you need to make several phone calls – block off half an hour to get them all done.

5. Separate Research from Writing

Another way to save time on the actual writing is to perform any research and collect any links you need before you start forming full sentences.

This research can include:

Pulling the links to any existing blog posts you want to reference.
Finding examples that prove your points.
Interviewing experts or asking for written quotes.

You want to do whatever you can so that once you get into the zone and start creating without opening up Google in a new tab to look anything up later.

Research is like rabbit holes and is another way to get distracted from focusing on writing.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks

6. Take Comfort Breaks.

Pushing yourself too hard is counterproductive and you will get mentally fatigued, make more mistakes and need longer to recover later.

Keep your energy levels up by pacing yourself.

Take a few minutes every hour or two to get up and stretch, make a cup of tea or read a few pages of a book and drink lots of fluids.

If you tend to forget to take breaks then remind yourself by using a timer or an alarm of some sort.

7. Divide Long-Form Content into Short Sessions

Finally when it is time to start writing – do not spend hours and hours on writing if you can help it.

If your content is going to take more than a few hours to produce then break it up into shorter sessions with breaks in between.

And feel free to extend your writing sessions to what works best for you.

Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO

How to Distribute Content More Productively

As we mentioned earlier there is still a lot to do once you press publish and yet so many of us lack some sort of system or process for doing it.

Therefore any method of organisation or systemisation will save you time and effort in the long run.

And since this has a compounding effect so the sooner you do them the more time you save.

1. Create a Repeatable Process

First get the overall content distribution and promotion process organised.

Decide on an overall checklist or system to use as a starting point for each piece of content and that includes things like:

Where and when to post on social media.
Where to schedule those social media posts.
List of communities or forums that can be used in distribution.
Relevant influencers to email with outreach.
How to email your newsletter subscribers about the content.

This can be customised for specific campaigns or pieces of content but having a system to start with will save time spent scrambling.

Further Reading: How To Optimise Images for SEO

2. Automate Repetitive Tasks.

Do you hate spending time on repetitive or monotonous tasks? There is probably an app out there that can make your job simpler.

For example HootSuite and Buffer are two popular tools that can help you streamline and automate your social media accounts.

All you need to do is search the web for any repetitive tasks that can be automated and try to use it to your advantage thus reducing and saving some time.

3. Prioritise Tasks With Highest ROI.

Not all the things on your to-do list are equally important so weight them accordingly and try to complete tasks with the highest return on investment –ROI first.

If you are not sure what to prioritise then look at your data.

Notice which types of content drive the most traffic, leads or conversions and put most of your energy into those.

Delegate the less important jobs – if possible or do them after the bigger tasks are finished.

4. Drop Unnecessary Tasks.

If you are not getting any results from something you do on a regular basis then stop doing it.

Put that time towards something more useful instead that produces a sense of accomplishment.

Further Reading: What Is Video Marketing?

5. Create Evergreen Content.

Evergreen content marketing is a long-term asset so creating it is a smart investment of your time.

It is still fine to create some seasonal or time-bound content but make sure some of your content will stay fresh and useful for months or years to come.

6. Reuse Copy from Base Content or Re-purpose

Do not try to write all your social and promotional copy from scratch. Take advantage of copy and paste.

What….

Yes – you will need to customise the copy a bit after you paste it from one platform to another and it will still take less time than starting from scratch.

Great content is hard to create so why not get all the use you can out of it?

Look for ways to repurpose your best pieces so they will keep on working for you.

For example you may want to turn a how-to blog post into a slide share presentation or turn the information from a chapter of your e-book into an infographic for your website and more.

7. Curate content.

If you need an idea for a quick blog post or email newsletter then pull together some of this week’s best content in your field and publish the collection of links with your commentary for your readers to enjoy.

This is a good way to fill a gap in your posting schedule and it is also an easy way to network with your peers and thought leaders in your field.

Everyone appreciates a good inbound link and a shout-out.

Further Reading: How to Create Video Marketing Strategy For Businesses

8. Spend time on the right social media channels.

Social media is a crucial part of content marketing strategy so make sure you are using it for maximum returns.

Focus your efforts on platforms you know your target audience are using most of the time.

Do not waste your time on platforms that are irrelevant since too much work will result in too little or nil returns.

For example there is no point in crafting your tweets every week if your target audience is mostly on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.

9. Build in Future Buffer Time

Give yourself some time to block out say a month to three months after a piece of content has gone live.

This gives you time to re-promote, repurpose and update or optimise things to keep them fresh.

Optimising and repurposing tend to be one of those things that easily get pushed to the back burner or tomorrow’s to-do list because we do not plan for it in advance.

These buffer time blocks can change that.

10. Find Productivity Tools That Work for You.

There are tons of productivity tools and apps that will help you stay on task and work more efficiently.

Content-gathering tools like Trendspottr can help you stay on top of breaking news in your field whilst apps like StayFocusd and RescueTime can help you track your work hours and avoid distractions.

Further Reading: What Are the Different Types of Digital Marketing

How to Keep Content Wheels Turning Productively

1. Make An Idea Bank.

Creative blocks can be a real time-waster.

To prevent your mind from going blank when you need a good idea- always keep a small notebook with you all the time.

Write down all the ideas that cross your mind -big and small. You never know which one will be just what you need later.

2. Have A Backlog Of Content.

Keep your stress levels down by staying ahead of your content marketing posting schedule.

If you have got an emergency content stash then you will be covered if something urgent comes up the day before your next blog post is due.

So you do not have to pull an all-nighter to get everything done.

3. Listen To Your Audience.

Usually finding good ideas for content is as simple as checking in with your audience.

Poll your readers on which topics they would like you to cover or pay attention to what your target audience is talking about amongst them.

Use that as your jumping-off point for your next email or blog post.

4. Stay With Your Team on the Same Page.

If you work with others then make sure you have a clearly defined schedule and everyone knows what is expected of them.

Communicate as often as possible so that you do not hit any unexpected snags or get held up waiting for someone else’s feedback or edits.

5. Delegate When It Is Appropriate.

Know which jobs you need to do yourself and which ones you could outsource to somebody else.

When you have a task that falls into the latter category, do not feel guilty to pass it on especially if you have a lot of other things on your plate.

Be Productive and Start Saving Time

Content marketing is a busy and often stressful job. If you are not careful then your work can eat up all your time and still leave you feeling like there are no hours left in the day.

Good time management can go a long way towards fixing this problem and improving your work-life balance.

So while you might not see a huge immediate difference – just be aware that you will be saving your future self-days and weeks of stress over the next few years or more

Use these tips as a starting point to save time and see what works for you of productivity in content marketing.

For full content Marketing Package functionality

and select the package that suits your business needs.

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Further Reading: Benefits of SEO

For more information about our services and how we can help you with your Video Marketing needs:-

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23+ Great Ways To Use Productivity Time Saving Hacks For Content Marketing

5 Trust Badges That Reduce Cart Abandonment for Businesses

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Universal Creator Posted in General, Content Marketing, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Social Media, Video Content Marketing, Web Design

Trust Badges Can Increase Conversion Rate for E-commerce

Trust badges are the key to increasing your conversion rates for any business websites.

What are trust badges and how can you utilise it to your advantage from your competitors?

A trust badge is a badge or seal that you place on your website that is meant to inspire or induce trust in your potential customers.

These are usually visible during add to cart and checkout stages but placing them directly on the home page is also gaining trend.

They provide website visitors that your page is legitimate and any data customers share will be secure through third-party service providers.

When trust seal companies have agreed to place their badge on your website customers can be assured that all the processes taking place are safe and secure.

Trust badges come in different shapes and sizes and signify different things to potential customers like security features that keep credit cards and other private information safe.

For e-commerce retailers this is a huge lost opportunity especially when you consider all the costs and effort it takes to get consumers interested in your product or service in the first place.

This is a huge toll on your bottom line if you let 75% of visitors leave without making a purchase after:

creating content
social advertising
referral marketing,
investing into branding
SEO and SEM
optimising their journey with smart UX and CRO strategies

Table Of Content

Below are the content on 5 Trust Badges That Reduce Cart Abandonment for Any Online Business or E-Commerce.

Click on any of them to get diectly to your prefered section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

What is a Trust Badge?

A trust badge is a symbol or icon placed on your website that assures your visitors and customers that the page is legitimate and all processes are safe and secure.

How to Calculate Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate?

To calculate the cart abandonment rate- you need to divide the total number of completed purchases by the number of created carts.

Subtract from one and then multiply by 100.

For example – if you have 300 carts created and 100 completed purchases then your cart abandonment rate is 67%.

How can we stop abandoned checkouts?

You can help reduce the number of people who abandon their shopping cart on your site:

analysing your current checkout funnel
email remarketing
SMS remarketing
retargeting ads
by using exit intent overlays
live chat and chatbots and more

Further Reading: How to Improve SEO Rankings

Do Trust Badges work?

Actualinsights* asked study participants two key questions to see how trust badges has had an impact on them.

Here is the first question.

Over 75+% of consumers did not buy because they did not recognise the particular logos – which show the importance of recognised trust badges is paramount.

Here is the second question.

As you can see – over 60% of consumers did not make a purchase because there were no trust badges.

Consumer’s still had a significant amount of doubt regarding a brand’s security measures when trust badges were not present.

Failure to use or include the right ones could be a potential deal breaker.

Further Reading: How to Increase Website Traffic Using SEO

Can Trust Badges Improve Conversion Rates?

In today’s digital world it is normal for consumer to be cautious of online shopping since a lot of people have been losing their identities, security, cash and more simply buying a product online.

When customers come to your e-commerce website for the first time they are being introduced to your brand.

You want to ensure that they know your e-commerce website is a safe, secure and trustable for them to complete their purchase.

On average over 75% of potential customers who visit an e-commerce site abandon their carts. Trust badges may be the answer to battling shopping cart abandonment.

There are numerous reasons why almost three-quarters of customers do not complete their purchases.

A study from the Baymard Institute outlines the major factors:

17% of respondents said that they did not trust the website with the credit card information
21% of them pointed to the lack of trust or complicated online checkout.

It is clear that building that trust is an integral part of increasing your conversion rate.

There were a lot of different elements that play a role in building trust but the most important factor was having trust badges displayed on the website.

A whopping 48% of respondents said that trust badges reassure them that the site is secure and trustworthy.

The same survey found that:

76% of respondents said trust seals affected their sense of trust in a website.
61% said that they had not made a purchase because there were no visible trust badges or logos when they went to a website.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

Types of trust badges

There are five main types of trust badges that you can add to your website.

Each one has a different meaning and is used for a different purpose.

They are in no order or importance since all of them are equally important for their intended purposes.

You can either use a couple or all of them on your website simultaneously and it depends on what you are trying to achieve.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

1. Safe Checkout Badge

This is the most important type of trust badge the safe checkout badge is a seal given when you sign up with a company that provides an SSL certificate.

Secure Socket Layer -SSL protects the internet connection and the information that is shared across that connection.

This badge indicates that your checkout process can be trusted, the information is encrypted and your customer’s credit card information is safe and secure. This kind of trust can help to improve your conversions.

There are many safe checkout badges out there but the most trusted and recognised badges quickly alert your customers that your site is trusted.

The most well-known SSL badge is from Symantec and you may recognise them better as Norton, VeriSign or LifeLock.

You can also get trust badges that are recognised around the globe from PayPal and Shopify.

Safe Checkout Badges are most effective when displayed near your Add to Cart buttons and on your checkout page.

Further Reading:Create Engaging Content for Social Media

2. Accepted Payment Badge

When consumers see a recognisable brand it helps them feel more confident and that is why accepted payment badges are so effective.

Having MasterCard, Visa and PayPal badges as your payment options can boost the level of trust in your website.

A study conducted by cxl.com found that consumers are familiar with a brand they have a perception of security. The study says – For the most part -greater familiarity also meant a greater feeling of security.

It also confirmed that a whopping 42% chose Visa-MasterCard as the most recognised brand while PayPal was voted as the most trusted brand with 25%.

You can place these buttons in the footer of your website and also on your payment page.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks

3. Free Shipping & Free Returns Badge

By letting your customers know that they can receive and return any products ordered without any additional fees – you eliminate some of the perceived fear and risks of ordering from an online store.

This can be introduced through trust and safety for your customers with a Free Shipping and/or Free Returns badge.

This badge is flexible in placing and can be used effectively at different places across your website.

We recommend having a Free Shipping and Free Returns badge on all Add to Cart and Checkout pages.

It can also be effective on your homepage, header and on you Frequently Asked Questions page or a dedicated Shipping and Returns page.

By offering free shipping and free returns you are letting your customers know that you believe in the quality of your products, their happiness and satisfaction.

This trust badge is a perfect match to a Money-Back Guarantee Badge if you are choosing to use one.

Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO

4. Money Back Guarantee Badge

The money back guarantee badge is possibly the most effective trust badge of all.

It completely eliminates the fear and perceived risk of buying a product or service online whilst assuring your potential customers that you have their best interests in mind.

This badge is completely free you can make it yourself to match your brand or find a free downloadable version online.

If you have a Money Back Guarantee Badge you should display it loud and proud so every single customer sees it.

It should be in the same places as your Safe Checkout Badge near the Add To Cart button and the Checkout button.

Further Reading: How To Increase Conversion Using Video Content Marketing

5. Third Party Endorsements

These trust badges are about showing that your business is credible because it usually involves an application and review process which signals to consumers that you are an established business.

If you cannot think of any third-party endorsement badges then think about the Better Business Bureau Accredited Business and Google Customer Review badges. These are two of the most trusted examples.

A third-party endorsement badge can take a lot of work but the extra work is worth the extra payoff as these badges can have a immense impact on your conversions.

Just think about when you shop on Amazon – you look for highly-rated items with lots of reviews and even an Amazon Best Seller badge. Think of these third-party badges in the same way.

Consumers are more likely to buy from you if they know that other customers have had a great experience buying from your store.

These badges are usually placed in the footer of your website and should be more prominent than the accepted payment badges.

Which Trust Badges Inspire the Most Trust?

Each trust badge has its advantages and disadvantages but all of them have shown to increase trust and conversions so how do you know which badge is most effective for you?

With regards to safe checkout badges the brand that you choose has a large impact on how much reassurance it gives to your customers.

In a study conducted by cxl.com the three most recognised branded trust badges for safe checkout were McAfee (79%), Verisign (76%) and PayPal (72%).

Brand recognition is important since it is correlated with the logos that give customers the most reassurance.

PayPal, Verisign and McAfee topped the list in that order and the results show the gap between the recognisable brands and others.

If you are in a position to offer a money back guarantee then do so since it is a powerful trust badge that you can implement.

There have been instances where – just by adding money back guarantee trust badge on website have seen sales increased by 32%.

Free shipping badges and offers have been shown to increase sales between 16% and as much as 90%.

The best solution is to use a few trust badges together so this will have the biggest impact on your conversion rate.

Crunch the numbers to find out which badges are most cost-effective for your business.

Further Reading: What Is Video Marketing?

Add Free Trust Badges to Your Business Website

There are many options when it comes to trust badges. Some of the most esteemed badges are expensive example – McAfee Secure starts at $15/month but scale up as the size of your business grows.

PayPal Trust Badges

If PayPal is one of the ways you accept payments then their free trust badges are a perfect way to start increasing your conversions.

With downloadable PNGs or as source code available you can have a PayPal badge up on your e-commerce store today.

Click on the image below to view full list.

They have three different types of badges available:

Return Shipping is On Us
Backed by PayPal
Support Small Businesses

Shopify Trust Badges

If you have a Shopify E-commerce store then this app is available through the Shopify App Store and it is a perfect addition to your website.

Click on the image below to view full list.

You have access to 670 different accepted payment badges in a variety of design styles that you can easily drag and drop to your product pages.

If you upgrade to premium then you can have your accepted payment badges on your cart page, homepage and the footer.

Further Reading: How to Create Video Marketing Strategy For Businesses

Convertful Trust Badges

Convertful’s free downloadable PNG badges are great for any e-commerce store with 60 different free badges that cover 6 major sales objectives.

Each badge comes in five different styles so you can choose something that works with your store’s design.

Click on the image below to view full list.

Convertful are looking at the problems that customers identify that lead them to abandoning their carts and tailor their badges to solve those problems.

Badges include:

Secure Payments for those worried about sharing their information online.
Money-Back Guarantee to inspire trust in your product and services.
Express Checkout to avoid losing the 35% of people who abandon carts when they have to create an account.
Free Shipping & Free Delivery to combat the extra costs that are too high.
Fast Shipping & Delivery for those worried about slow shipping times.
Payment Options to list the variety of payment options you accept.

TrustLock.co Trust Badges

TrustLock.co has over 120+ free website trust badges that you can use on your e-commerce store.

You must link back to their homepage to use them for free but that is a small price to pay for a somewhat recognisable badge.

Click on the image below to view full list.

The free badges include:

30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Credit Card Processor Logos
Fully Secured SSL Checkout
100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
100% Money-Back Guarantee
Guaranteed Safe Checkout
AES 256-BIT SSL Secure
Best Price Guarantee
Free Shipping
PayPal Logos or Stripe Logos

The free badges do not have the TrustLock logo featured on them. To access badges with the logo you need to pay for a premium account which costs anywhere from $9 to $20 per month.

Further Reading: What Are the Different Types of Digital Marketing

Conclusion

You have approximately 5 seconds to build trust with your potential customers.

Displaying trust badges on your website is definitely a cart abandonment solution whilst creating trust with your customers and increasing conversion rates.

However if you are finding it difficult then seek an experienced marketing agency like Best–Digital Marketing Services to help you set up strategies to recover sales through shopping cart abandonment.

For full Content Marketing package functionality

and select the package that suits your business needs.

If you prefer to discuss your requirements first just

or fill your details with a message of your requirements at

Further Reading: Benefits of SEO

For more information about our services and how we can help you with your Video Marketing needs:-

Hope you are enjoying and learning a lot with abundance of information about:-

5 Trust Badges That Reduce Cart Abandonment for Businesses

How Emotional Marketing can Boost Facebook Ads

Posted on July 1, 2020 by Universal Creator Posted in General, Content Marketing, Responsive Web Design, SEO, Social Media, Video Content Marketing

Ways to Increase Your Facebook Ads using Emotional Marketing

Facebook advertising is like an auction with both winners and losers.

And you want to be on the winning side – don’t you?

Therefore you need to create Facebook campaigns that finish the race as champions whilst collecting new customers in the process.

An effective move would be creating ads that catch consumer’s attention before any other Facebook post or ad can get to them.

While there are many tips and hacks written across the web –here is one that is highly promising – playing on consumer’s emotion.

Table of Content

Below are the content on How Emotional Marketing can Boost Facebook Ads.

Click on any of them to get diectly to your prefered section or you can scroll down slowly and read from the start.

What is Emotional Marketing?

Emotional marketing refers to marketing and advertising efforts that primarily use emotion to make your audience notice, remember, share, like and buy.

What ….

These emotional marketing values typically taps into a singular emotion, like happiness, sadness, anger or fear to elicit a consumer response.

There are four basic emotional categories – happy, sad, afraid/surprised and angry/disgusted.

Robert Plutchik’s “wheel of emotions” illustrates some of these emotional spectrums using colours.

Depending on your product, industry and audience you cannot always target general happiness.

How come …

Just like with your marketing goals you must dig deep and define precisely what feeling you are aiming to elicit.

This will influence the details of your marketing — your copywriting, media, graphics choices, etc. and help you to be effective as possible.

Why Emotional Marketing Works

Trend Hunter Marketing analysed 55 emotional marketing campaigns and found the average popularity score to be 8.0 — higher than in other categories.

By spicing up your Facebook campaigns with emotion and thrill you can allure your Facebook audience to make them click and purchase.

An analysis of 1,400 successful ad campaign case studies found that campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) as those with only rational content.

There is no limit to the importance of emotional marketing that you can bring into play – excitement, melancholic, shock, fear, happiness – just to name a few.

Further Reading: How to Improve SEO Rankings

Emotional Marketing Strategies

This post will teach you how emotional marketing can boost your Facebook ads and celebrate a great victory over the competitors.

Below are different ways how emotional marketing can increase your Facebook ads with some examples of emotional marketing.

There are in no order of importance since all of them are equally important. You may choose a few or all of them or mix and match as you like.

1. Make the offer about the buyer.

Make sure your offer is one that speaks to your audience and not just a list of your product’s features. Make it about them.

Why ….

Remember that your offer and ads should not be a long list of your product’s features or new user experience – UX updates.

Google manages to turn their rather technical offer into something that is actually about the reader.

Google’s Facebook ad makes it crystal clear that it is all about you, nothing but you.

New domains that tell your story
Get your domain today
Find a domain name for your story

Further Reading: How to Write a Good Meta Description for SEO

2. Use memorable symbols

People are quick to build new associations between everything they see. That is why you should include positive symbols in your ad design to make your audience remember you with positive emotions.

Positive symbols can include:

Checkmarks
Smiley emoji/s
Celebration emoji/s
Stars

Asana’s Facebook ad creative displays a growth curve together with a checkmark icon.

What does it make you feel? If you are a prospect for Asana then you are likely to feel the relief of completing work in time.

You probably noticed how colourful all the Facebook ad examples in this article are.

There are two reasons for that:

We are in love with colourful ad designs because our brain loves colours.
Your target audience will also love colourful ad designs because all their brains love colours.

Research has discovered that consumers make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interaction with either people or products and anywhere from 62 – 90% of their decision-making is based on colours alone.

You should be able to make colourful Facebook ads align with your branding as a go-to strategy and it is an easy win.

3. Learn to Handle Negative Feelings

A Facebook ad sparking negative feelings is not always a bad thing especially if it first ignites the negative thoughts and then offers a solution to cheer you up.

Really…

Do not overdo the negativity in your ads. The key to successful Facebook ads lies in just the right amount of negativity.

A study by Stanford GSB and Tel Aviv University discovered that small doses of mild negative information also called blemishing effect might actually strengthen a consumer’s positive impression of a product or service.

Contently’s ad headline makes many marketers worry: If the future of content isn’t blogging, what am I going to do?

But just as the ad’s negative headline has grabbed the reader’s attention it also offers a solution: More videos. More downloadable content. More infographics.

According to the viral content study – some negative emotions contribute more to going viral than others especially the negative emotion of anger.

No Way…

Emotions like sadness is less likely to be shared but where it inspires high-energy emotions like awe, anger and anxiety it is more likely to be shared.

Anger wins the award as the most viral emotion. Note that anger is typically directed at the topic – not the author or publication.

Inciting anger in readers requires some tolerance for dealing with controversial topics.

The study also found that controversial blog posts receive twice as many comments on average however this could alienate customers and partners.

Awe will be the safest and most reliable path towards viral content. Awe is more than surprise – it is the reason we cannot stop watching movies with big explosions and larger-than-life heroes.

Creative inventions, completed labour-intensive projects, stunning design and novel are all ways to fill viewers and readers with awe.

Here is how to put negative feelings to good use in your Facebook ads:

Capture your audience’s attention with a negative headline.
Let your audience know about a small default about your product to show you are not hiding anything.
Remind the readers of a negative fact or situation they encounter on a daily basis.

It is absolutely amazing to see how emotions affect buying behaviour in consumers across the spectrum.

Further Reading: Get Traffic to Your Website Fast

4. Hope for Better Future

We all hope that we are going to be funnier, smarter and prettier.

That is why we buy new things — to improve our lives. While deep inside, everyone knows that most of the time material things would not make us happy but we still keep hoping they will.

Aaahh Guilty …

Shopify’s Facebook ad plays on the emotion of hope by using aspiring language and brilliant copywriting.

Start your journey and Get more out of life are both great slogans and talk to Shopify’s target audience and it offers hope.

Emotion of hope can be activated by masterful copywriting and also provide a platform or a solution to reach a better future.

If you promise to double a company’s revenue then also be clear about how you will do it.

5. Nail the Ads-Audience Match

Make sure your ad’s offer, design and messages match with your Facebook target audience.

Johnathan Dane from KlientBoost likes to divide Facebook audiences into three distinct groups:

Ice cubes – people who have never heard of you and have not visited your website before
Lukewarm audience –people who know who you are but cannot exactly tell what it is that you do
Volcano lava traffic –people who have bought something from you before or are way down the conversion funnel on the path to becoming a customer.

Each of these temperature levels needs a dedicated Facebook ad emotional campaign if you are going to reach them effectively with a different offer and approach to ensure emotional advertising effectiveness.

Further Reading: How to Measure Your Content Marketing ROI – The Simple Guide

6. Repeat Time-Sensitive Offers

When you give people too much time to make a decision they are going to postpone the conclusion and will likely forget about it.

However when presented with a limited time offer – consumers get worried about missing out on the awesome offer.

No Way …

Use deadlines to make people click now. The best thing about limited time offers is that they really work.

Applying scarcity and urgency on a website for an online entrepreneur did increase sales by 332%.

Here is how Target has done it:

Another emotional marketing example is Groupon who has even added the end time with the time zone specification to make their offer feel more urgent.

This way there is no doubt when the offer’s going to end.

How to create emotional content marketing as a sense of urgency in your Facebook ads by following some of these principles:

Define clear dates like Today only or Offer ends in 24h
Offer a great discount like Get 60% off today
Keep your offer simple and brief
Place your best offer in the ad’s headline or the image
Match the ad’s offer on the landing page

7. Show the Excitement

Excitement is known for its ability to increase impulse and make people act quickly and it is one of the best emotional marketing approaches to date.

If you manage to get a person excited in your Facebook ad offer they are a lot more likely make the purchase based on the momentum.

According to Paloma Vasquez author of The Psychology of Social Shopping who points out that:

In a state of excitement or arousal people think and behave very differently. Emotional states trump rational thinking and it is easier to sell to consumers when they are excited.

This Facebook ad by Blue Apron showcases delicious-looking ingredients. What feelings do you get when you look at it?

Maybe you feel hungry. Maybe you feel like eating healthy does not have to be a pain in the butt. Maybe you even feel joy because the bright colours are joyful.

Are any of those feelings bad for Blue Apron? No.

Do you think those feelings are bad for click-thru? Definitely No.

As you look at Blue Apron’s Facebook ad – you will notice that it breathes excitement for many reasons: the bright ad colours, the delicious mouth-watering meal and the energetic tone of voice.

One can almost feel the excitement of opening the subscription box and discovering its treasures.

When using the excitement tactic in your Facebook ads do not let the sparkle fade before the purchase is made.

Why …

An article in the Wall Street Journal suggests that it takes 20 minutes for the feeling of excitement to pass. In most cases emotions fade even faster.

Therefore it is best to keep your ad’s landing page as straightforward and compelling as humanly possible and lead the visitor to sign up.

A few tips for creating exciting Facebook ads:

Use bright colours in the ad design.
Try using exclamation marks and keep your ad copy short.
Include an ad image that shows excitement.
Showcase your product at the most exciting moment of its lifecycle.
Make sure that your offer is actually interesting to the target audience.
Insert a discount offer to give the final nudge and make the ad irresistible.

Further Reading: What is SEO Friendly URL Structure

8. Make People Happy

One study found that emotional articles were shared more often and also confirmed that positive posts were shared more often than negative ones.

What if the same rule applies to your Facebook ads – will positive ads get more likes and clicks?

There are three main tactics to use in emotional marketing happiness in Facebook ads:

Brightly coloured ad design.
Including an ad image with smiling people.
Using adjectives and verbs with positive connotations.

Eventbrite has been applying all the three methods across their Facebook ad campaigns.

From smiling people relating to happiness..

To bright and contrasted colours.

Eventbrite’s ads do add positive emotions towards the offer and also encourage consumers to associate the entire brand with happy feelings.

If your goal is to make people remember your brand as a mood-booster on a rainy day then create more positive ad designs.

A study analysed more than 1 million online reviews on sites like TripAdvisor and found that restaurants received significantly better ratings on days with nice weather and worse reviews on any day with rain.

Emotional marketing happiness can work especially well for B2C brands especially for alcohol producers who often publish commercials with people enjoying themselves on the beach or at a party.

9. Create a Curiosity Gap

Have you ever thought what makes Upworthy and Buzzfeed headlines so irresistible? It is the curiosity gap.

In simple terms the curiosity gap is the discrepancy between what we currently know and what we would like to know and it works wonders if your goal is to get people clicking.

Copy Hackers was able to get a 927% boost in clicks on their Pricing page after applying the tactic.

Yes of course curiosity gap can also be incorporated into your Facebook ad copy.

The formula of curiosity gaps is simple – Ask people a fascinating question or tell them a cool story and leave the best part untold.

When targeting a cold audience it is best to fill in their curiosity gap for free whilst with warm audiences you can ask for something in return like their email address.

There are three primary elements that go into the curiosity gap publishing model:

Emotional Marketing Headlines
Publishing frequency
Going Viral

The reason why this works is that people have a natural tendency to connect the dots and discover the answers.

It will be hard for them to resist reading and clicking on your Facebook ad after it has posed a fascinating question.

This is another emotional marketing advantage.

Further Reading:Create Engaging Content for Social Media

10. Master the Art of FOMO

Have you ever attended an event and thought – Maybe something cool would happen this is likely to be FOMO – the fear of missing out.

56% of consumers are afraid of missing something like an event, news or something important if they do not keep up on social media.

A lot of data suggests that FOMO is most prevalent among millennials.

Around 69% of millennials experience the phenomenon and according to Strategy Online – 60% of millennials make reactive purchases because of FOMO.

In other words they will buy something just because they feel they might miss out.

Really …

People are afraid of being left without an amazing experience but FOMO does not only apply to attending events. It also applies to other aspects of life and business.

For example, using emotional marketing images by showing huge numbers of people OptinMonster have helped, that makes the reader think that everyone else is already using their services and the person reading is the last one out.

By confirming over 24.1 Billion opt ins served, 600,000+ sites using OptinMonster and 217 Million conversion – OptinMonster makes the reader wonder if they are missing out on something.

How to use FOMO in your Facebook ads:

Mention the number of people already benefitting from your product.
Pose a question and hint how that person is missing out on a great opportunity.
Make the reader feel like there is a fascinating community they are not part of… Yet.
Make your Facebook ad offer limited by time to nudge people to sign up faster.

11. Create Location-Specific Ads.

Another case that calls for special measures is location-based targeting.

If you are targeting a specific location then test the inclusion of location-specific images and messages in your Facebook ads.

Airbnb’s Facebook ad is targeting people living in Bangkok by inviting them to join a hosts’ meetup.

Hired’s ad combines a specific audience – software engineers with location-based targeting.

The result is a Facebook ad that is more likely get a lot more clicks than a generic ad promoting their platform would produce.

Mazda in collaboration with Merchenta created customised ads based on geographic radius to target people who were likely to visit a specific Mazda dealership.

Visitors who saw these ads converted at a 53% higher rate than the control group. Almost 1 in 5 consumers interacted with the personalised ad.

Further Reading: Ways To Create Quality Backlinks

12. Remove Barriers Before They Are Formed.

Try to eliminate common restrictions and risks even before they are formed.

One of the reasons people change their minds about making a purchase last minute is that they come up with new objections or restrictions not to make the purchase.

As explained by cxl.com:

Whenever there is a transaction there is always risk. Usually the vendor has the buyer carry most of the risk however if the risk is too big then the purchase would not take place.

Try offering guarantees to eliminate or reduce the perceived risks your prospects might have.

Lyft counters the objection will I even make any money? by offering new drivers a $500 a week payment guarantee:

If you are a coffee lover then Blue Bottle Coffee’s Facebook ad will win you over with its’ free trial which neutralises objections around having to go into the store to try the coffee out.

The ad copy reads: Choose your coffee. Pick your frequency. Skip a shipment. Cancel whenever. Enjoy anytime. Notice the terms – Skip a shipment. Cancel whenever.

That is the perfect guarantee showing a potential buyer that they are free to cancel the subscription at any time.

No matter if you are in SaaS or e-commerce – if you can offer your prospects to overcome their restriction or objections then it is all worth it.

13. Make the Customer Feel Safe.

Try offering your buyers a money-back guarantee or subscription cancellation offer is a great way to do this.

Another way to make people feel great about their purchase is to remind them that they are making a smart choice.

How …

Dollar Shave Club’s Facebook ad uses a no-strings-attached strategy with this line: No commitment. No fees. It also says that their product is the smarter way to shave.

The person who buys the subscription will know they have made a clever deal and will feel good about it.

However the real emotional marketing value of this Facebook ad hides in the sense of belonging it creates.

The Dollar Shave Club’s ad copy tells a story about an exclusive set of members who enjoy awesome benefits of using the service and makes you want to belong to it.

Feeling the need to belong is a fundamental human need to form and maintain at least a minimum amount of lasting, positive and significant interpersonal relationships.

By turning your product into a bigger story of community you will attract more people who want to be part of something.

How to use emotional marketing value to create a sense of belonging:

Frame your offer as an invitation into an attractive community.
Include the names of influencers using your product.
Mention the size of your user base to convince people of the community’s worth.
Make the entry challenging enough for the person to value the community.

Further Reading: How to Write Good Title Tags for SEO

14. Include facts and research results

A report has confirmed that MRI neuro-imagery shows that consumers use emotions rather than information to evaluate a brand.

If you are looking for a strong emotion that will immediately catch your audience’s attention then create an offer that will surprise them.

A simple way is to conduct an original survey and share interesting emotional marketing statistics with your ad audience. That is exactly what Grammarly has done:

You can also learn to apply the surprise and delight approach that is based on the principle that nice surprises make people feel special and important.

Offer a free coupon or some other pleasant surprise to win your Facebook target audience’s attention and trust via a series of small gestures.

Have a coffee on us. G2 Crowd offers a $10 Starbucks gift card in exchange for filling in a quick survey. This works for two reasons:

People are pleasantly surprised to get the gift card.
By filling in the survey they are becoming familiar with G2 Crowd’s brand.

According to Nielsen study – 83% of people say they always trust the recommendations of friends and family which makes it ever more important to engage your target audience.

When you create noteworthy Facebook ads – they will distribute organically via the likes, comment and shares by your target audience.

Further Reading: How To Optimise Images for SEO

15. Unlock the Power of Guilt

People feel guilty about different things but one thing is for sure – if you can hit the right nerve then you will win their attention.

Not sure…

Consumers who feel guilty tend to respond well to small, short-term fixes. That is why the number of new gym memberships soars after a long holiday period and declines shortly after.

Guilt as an emotion can be used effectively in the B2B industry.

A study published by researchers at The University of British Columbia suggests that guilt can be a powerful tool for motivating self-improvement and for selling self-improvement products and services.

Scoro’s Facebook post asks – Are you working hard or hardly working? makes a person think whether they are really contributing enough.

Are you guilty of procrastination? The Facebook ad also offers a quick solution – 89 productivity hacks to improve oneself.

Remember that emotional marketing with guilt works best if you also provide a quick fix to the audience’s problem.

Slack’s Facebook ad has taken a similar approach by stating – Your inbox is out of control.

This is another reason why utilising strong emotional word Yikes in the first ad image instantly catching consumer’s attention. Slack provides both – a problem and a solution.

How to use guilt for successful Facebook campaigns:

Remind your audience of a small mistake they are making.
Offer a quick solution to their problem.
Use strong words that spark negative feelings and help to grab attention.

Conclusion

Emotions are central to emotional marketing advertising effectiveness and can generate at least a 23% increase in sales.

Applying emotional marketing techniques to your Facebook campaigns is easy.

All it takes is smart copywriting, original ad design and lots of creativity.

Emotions can go a long way in helping to create click-worthy Facebook ads.

Find out what works best for your target audience and see your sales results grow.

To wrap up – here are nearly all the emotions listed once more: The fear of missing out, excitement, curiosity, happiness, negative feelings, hope, pride, urgency, surprise, sense of belonging, guilt, feeling of importance and more.

Do you want your video content marketing to convert? Contact us today to see how we can help you develop content that gets results.

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Further Reading: How to Increase Conversion Rate and Reduce Bounce Rate on Website

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Table Of Content

1. Simple Advertising

2. Build up On Internal Links

3. Increase Social Media Presence

4. Leverage Long Tail Keywords

5. Encourage Incoming Links

6. Mix Blogs Up

7. Blog Regularly

8. Start Guest Blogging

9. Write Amazing Headlines

10. Plug Into the Blogosphere

11. Optimise for Your Readers

12. Improve your SEO

16. Submit Content to Reddit

17. Get Active on Social Media

18. Energise Email Marketing

19. Speed Up Your Site - Turbo

20. Interview Industry Thought Leaders

21. Create a Sense of Community

25. Mobile Responsive Website

26. Use Analytics Data to Optimise Results

27. Produce Video Content

28. Host Webinars

29. Go on Podcasts

30. Add Share Triggers To Your Content

31. Use Question Analyser to Create Useful Content

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How to Calculate Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate?

How can we stop abandoned checkouts?

Do Trust Badges work?

Can Trust Badges Improve Conversion Rates?

2. Accepted Payment Badge

3. Free Shipping & Free Returns Badge

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Table of Content

What is Emotional Marketing?

Why Emotional Marketing Works

Emotional Marketing Strategies

1. Make the offer about the buyer.

2. Use memorable symbols

3. Learn to Handle Negative Feelings

5. Nail the Ads-Audience Match

6. Repeat Time-Sensitive Offers

7. Show the Excitement

9. Create a Curiosity Gap

10. Master the Art of FOMO

11. Create Location-Specific Ads.

12. Remove Barriers Before They Are Formed.

13. Make the Customer Feel Safe.

Conclusion

How Emotional Marketing can Boost Facebook Ads

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