Most of us have learned over the past decade or so that you really can’t trust everything you read on the internet, especially given the fact that just about anyone can share information – many times about topics they’re not nearly qualified to talk about. The subject of content marketing is no exception.

How can you know what is and isn’t truth when you’re wading neck-deep through a sea of info? Let’s start by revealing 7 of the most common misconceptions being perpetuated on the web so you’ll know not to fall for them.

Myth #1 – Content marketing is one-size-fits-all.

Many otherwise savvy business professionals make the mistake of believing that the content marketing strategy that worked for another firm will also work for them. The truth is, a lot of unique factors go into determining whether your particular strategy will be successful. Posting 2 blog posts a week, updating Twitter and Facebook 3 times a day and sending out a monthly newsletter may have done wonders for Joe Schmoe down the road, but that doesn’t mean squat to your company. You have to work at it to see what formula is right for you.

Myth #2 – Successful content marketing is all about the keywords.

Over the past several years, Google has been moving away from the traditional keyword focused SEO and shifting toward quality (a change that has been a breath of fresh air for most of us). Now, instead of ranking your site based on how many times you use that magic word or phrase, your content will be measured by how relevant and useful it is for your readers. In fact, too many keywords may end up getting you in trouble with the search engine gods.

Focus on metrics like time on site to increase your SEO performance. We’ve seen a strong correlation between time on site and SERP rankings.

Myth #3 – If you post it, they will come.

Content marketing is by no means a “set it and forget it” kind of concept. To the contrary, you have to put a real, concerted effort into getting your content seen and, more importantly, shared. All the best material in the world won’t do you an ounce of good if nobody is actually looking at it. Be proactive about getting your content out there by sharing it across all of your social media channels and other marketing outreach efforts.

Tools like Buffer can help you post from your own accounts. Tap ambassadors to help you distribute content on your behalf as well.

Myth #4 – “Content” refers to the written word.

Sure, back in the day the term “content” may have referred primarily to writing, such as blog posts and articles. Those days are gone. Now, when people want content, they want variety. This means using images, infographics, memes, videos and anything else that will catch the eye and hold the attention of your audience. Don’t believe us? According to Kissmetrics, social media posts containing images get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more clickthroughs than plain text.

Myth #5 – Content marketing is complex and time consuming.

Many professionals believe this because creating content can seem like a scary task – especially if you’ve never done it before, or if you have no idea what type of content your audience would like. Actually, if you approach content creation from a standpoint of building relationships and making connections, it’s much less intimidating. You don’t have to create 20 page documents stuffed with facts and figures – trust us, that’s not what will reach your target anyway. Just be yourself. The rest will fall into place. And if you can’t figure out what your audience wants, ask them!

Myth #6 – Content marketing is easy.

At the risk of sounding contradictory to our last point, it’s also important to realize that producing quality content isn’t always easy. There’s both an art and a science to it. The art involves understanding your audience and what type of content would best reach them. The science involves knowing the logistics, such as where to find your target audience (i.e. Pinterest for women vs. Instagram and Facebook for consumers aged 18-34) as well as the best time to post on various platforms for optimum results. Otherwise you’ll be wasting valuable time and resources.

Myth #7 – Content marketing is meant to close the sale.

Marketing and advertising are two entirely different beasts – especially when it comes to content marketing. The fact that Google is now placing more emphasis on quality for SEO purposes should support this truth. Successful content marketing is not meant to close the sale. It’s meant to create a connection with your customers and prospects and foster a relationship between them and your brand. That’s why it’s so important to produce content that is customer-focused. It should never be a sales pitch.

Cash Register designed by Fiona Brand from the Noun Project,Tropical Island designed by Michael Zick Doherty from the Noun Project, Clothes designed by Daniel Hanly from the Noun Project

Do you suffer from any of these common content marketing myths? If so, it’s time to re-examine your approach and make some changes. What other myths or untruths about content marketing have you come across? More importantly, how have you overcome these hurdles to make your own content marketing strategy a success? Please share in the comments below.

The post 7 Content Marketing Myths, Busted appeared first on Ambassador.

If you’re looking for a way to reach more customers, there’s no doubt about it. Social media is the way to go. Digital marketing giant eMarketer estimates that social media platforms boast over 1.73 billion users worldwide. A number that’s expected to climb to 2.55 billion by the year 2017.

What’s more, according to a recent Nielson study, 46% of consumers turn to social media to help with purchasing decisions. This means that your prospects are most certainly out there, and they’re relying on the social aspect of the web more and more to help them decide who to do business with. So, how can you tap into this incredible opportunity to gain more leads for your own business? Let’s take a look.

Pick Your Poison

It’s important to point out that while there are dozens of social media platforms to choose from, you don’t have to participate in all of them. To the contrary, successful social media marketing is all about consistency, and if you’ve got too many pans on the fire, you’re sure to get burned out quickly. More importantly, you won’t get the results you’re looking for.

The key is to figure out which platforms your target audience is most likely to use – whether that’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or something else – and then focus on mastering those areas.

Generating Leads

Once you’ve chosen your main avenues for social media marketing, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and generate those leads. There are dozens of ways to approach SMM and many of them are highly successful. Here are a few ways to help you get started.

Create Content of Value:

If you want people to share their contact information with you, you have to make it worth their while. Focus on creating compelling content that your audience would find valuable, such as topics that address certain pain points and how your product or service can help. Then, create an eye-catching landing page that includes a brief outline of what’s in store, and a user-friendly, simple opt-in form.

Once you’ve done this, the next step is getting the word out. The most amazing content in the world is worth nothing if people don’t know about it. Social media provides the perfect means for drawing prospects in because it is designed to facilitate short, to-the-point communication. You can use these channels to share your content by including a quick, compelling description of what you’re offering, and then a shortened link to the landing page.

Use Calls to Action to Generate Demand (Even if There Isn’t Any):

Ever been shopping online and notice that nagging little “only 3 left” or “almost sold out” next to the item you’re looking at? Suddenly you’re faced with a choice. Either make a purchase decision, risk missing out altogether. This is a great way to close the deal, and it’s something you can use to generate leads for your own business by using social media to create calls to action. When people believe they must act now, or they’ll miss the boat – such as with amazing coupon code that is only good for 48 hours.

Monitor the Buzz about Your Competition:

When you hone in on exactly what people are talking about and what’s trending in relation to your competition, you can create marketing offers that are hyper-focused. For instance, if your prospects are tweeting about a particular competitor’s product or service, follow up by offering a coupon to try yours. You have the advantage of knowing these people are already in the market and interested in what you’ve got to offer, so they’ll be much more likely to convert.

Encourage Reviews:

Never underestimate the influence your existing customers can have over your prospective ones. According to a 2013 study by BrightLocal, 85% of consumers take the time to read through online reviews, including those shared on social media platforms. What’s more, 73% of respondents said that positive online reviews influenced the level of trust they felt for a business. This is why having passionate brand ambassadors is so important. When you can leverage your own happy customers to share their positive experiences with their own social networks, you’ll gain leads without even trying!

Make it Eye-Catching:

Did you know that visual data is processed by the human brain at a rate 60,000 times faster than regular text? It’s no wonder so many smart marketers are tapping into the power of visual communication, and social media provides the perfect avenue to do so. Take video marketing as an example. Research has revealed that 85% of people who view a product video will go on to purchase that product. So, grab your camera, tablet or smartphone and start recording. Then, share your pictures, memes, clips, infographics and videos via all of your social channels. Don’t forget to encourage your network to share.

Nurturing Those Leads:

Now that you’ve got the leads coming in, it’s time to shift into the role of nurturer. Not every lead is ready to convert the moment it comes in. For many, it takes time. You have to build trust and develop a relationship first. Again, social media is the ideal resource for doing so – especially on a grander scale.

The key to successfully nurturing leads through social media is by engaging, engaging, engaging (and then engaging some more). That means:

• Answering questions
• Responding to feedback
• Starting conversations
• Providing support
• Joining discussions
• Letting people see the personality behind your brand

Social media is much more than just a means for establishing and building brand recognition. It is also a powerful tool for generating leads, and for nurturing those leads effectively so that they convert. Follow this guide to generate more leads and more revenue.

Have you had success generating leads from social media? Let us know your favorite tips and tricks in the comments.

The post Using Social Media to Generate and Nurture Leads appeared first on Ambassador.

Being a marketer in the age of digital media requires savvy management and communication skills. Whether you need assistance with emails, sales leads, or help consuming the world’s massive amount of content, the following Chrome Extensions have got you covered.

Signals by HubSpot

Category: Email
Cost: Free

Signals is a must have extension for any marketer. This plug-in works like analytics for sales communications. HubSpot wanted to move into the sales process, and they brought their vast email marketing experience with them. According to HubSpot;

Signals is a notification app that helps you know when and how to engage your leads. It lives in Google Chrome, and connects to many of the other tools that salespeople use on a daily basis. Signals shows you real-time notifications based on “signals” coming from emails you’ve sent, your website, your CRM system, even social media.”

Boomarang

Category: Email
Cost: Free/$14.99

This extension will make answering email easier for any busy marketer. Boomarang allows you to schedule pre-written emails at any time.

For example, if you’re working with freelancers or team members in different time zones, you can write an email ahead of time and send it when your team member’s work day has begun. It can also be a great tool for following up with a sales lead you don’t want to forget about.

followup.cc

Category: Email
Cost: Free

Signals and Boomarang are great for managing your Gmail or Google Apps Email. However, not all of us are fortunate to be working with Gmail or Google Apps at work. FollowUp.cc is a similar service that works in a different way. There is nothing to install on your computer, so Steve in IT won’t care if you use it.

Forward the email you want to snooze to the followup.cc service (for example 1w@followup.cc). The followup.cc email address you choose will determine when the service should remind you (for example in 1 week). Followup will keep track of your snoozed emails for you, and send them back when you are ready.

Yesware

Category: CRM
Cost: Free

We all know that timing can be everything in closing a sales lead. But how do we know when the right timing is? Yesware helps answer that and similar questions with their analytics. E-mail templates, sales reminders, and an easy way to collaborate and report information will make your job easier.

Rapportive

Category: CRM
Cost: Free

Marketers are constantly meeting new people, through online and in person communications. Often, you’ll want to make sure you’re connected across social media platforms.

Rapportive allows you to easily connect. This extension allows you to see everything a marketer needs to know about a contact, all from your inbox. This is definitely a must have for staying connected.

But that’s not even the best reason to use Rapportive.

Pocket/Evernote (Tie)

Category: Content Consumption
Cost: Free

How can marketers stay up-to-date on content they read, write, and market? Many would recommend Evernote as a great way to keep track of all of your content online. We’re also recommending Pocket as a tie for solving this problem.

Evernote allows you to save websites, ideas, notes, and content all in one place. It’s favored by many marketers. Pocket also allows you to save ideas and notes but in a different format. You can place articles, videos or pretty much anything into Pocket saving directly from a browser or social app like Twitter or Flipboard.

Once you master Pocket or Evernote you will finally be able to make the internet your personal library.

Mozbar

Category: SEO
Cost: Free

For the marketer who wants to stay up-to-date on SEO, the Mozbar is the perfect solution. The Mozbar extension allows you to see all the important details you need to know such as Domain Authority, Domain MozRank, Domain MozTrust external links, keywords, no-followed or followed information

Audit a website quickly with this extension, or if you’re a subscriber to their software, easily access detailed information from your Moz extension.

Buffer

Category: Social Media
Cost: Free/$9.99

For all of us social media marketers, Buffer makes our lives just a bit easier. The extension offers a better way to share with your social media. My favorite part about Buffer is that it allows me to respond right away. When I find a buzzworthy item that I must share, I immediately use Buffer and add it to my tweets.

Buffer even pairs seamlessly with followerwonk. Use followerwonk to discover what time of day your twitter followers are the most active, and then automatically schedule your Buffer posts in one click!

Meldium

Category: Password Management
Cost: Free

Meldium is a must for managing team passwords. The extension works as more than just a password manager, it automatically logs you into your favorite websites without your fingers doing all the work.

You don’t have to type in your username and password again and again. You can get instant and safe access to your favorite places with Meldium.

vidIQ

Category: Analytics
Cost: Free

Ever wonder what YouTube video is going to go viral? With vidIQ you can stop wondering. The VidIQ chrome extension layers gobs of additional meta data into your YouTube browsing experience. Discover deep video insights such as Facebook likes, Facebook Shares, Tweets, Google Plusses, and much more. All of this data is calculated to create a vidIQ score.

[The] vidIQ score helps judge the likelihood of a video being promoted in Related Videos, Search, Recommended Videos, and more. [vidIQ uses] multiple metrics to compute this score including views, subscribers, social engagement, and other signals.

Momentum

Category: Utilities
Cost: Free

What’s a marketers worst enemy? Distraction. What compounds distraction exponentially? Facebook. Which is exactly why it can be treacherous out there for a social media marketer. Fortunately, there’s an app for that.

Momentum’s beauty comes from it’s simplicity. After installing the extension, new browser tabs open into a beautiful interface, with a simple reminder of what you need to tackle for the day.

Instant Translate

Category: Utilities
Cost: Free

In our globally connected world, you may come across a time where you’ll need to translate content. Google’s made this easy for you with the Instant Translate extension. It currently supports 66 extensions, and also provides listening options.

Honorable Mention: Custom Extension:Dev Warning

Category: Anything!
Cost: Free!

There’s nothing worse than sharing a dead link, or sharing a link to a staging server. My shop teacher taught me the importance of measuring twice and cutting once. I wanted a simple visual indicator when I am working in a dev or staging environment.

So I took a couple minutes and hacked up a simple chrome extension. If I am working with any url that contains localhost,dev, or herokuapp in the title, the extension displays a little red warning in the address bar.

Do you want to learn how to turn more of your customers, partners, affiliates, and fans into revenue generators?Request a custom demo from one of our referral marketing software experts today!

The post The 13 Best Chrome Extensions for Marketers appeared first on Ambassador.

Attract, Convert, Close, Delight. If you are an inbound marketer this is your mantra. Tell me truthfully, do you spend an equal amount of time nurturing customers in each stage? Most of the marketers I talk to tell me that they spend less and less time as they move through the stages of the inbound methodology.

Marketers spend most of their attention thinking about the ‘Attract,’ ‘Convert,’ and ‘Close’ stages of the inbound marketing cycle. Even the marketers that make delighting their customers a priority do so with the hopes of an upsell. I get it, we’re marketers, we like to focus on what we can measure. Plus, it’s the product team’s responsibility to improve the product.

The truth is, measuring delight is really easy. Here are 3 ways to measure ‘delight’ and leverage delighted customers to generate revenue.

How to Measure ‘Delight’

Our SaaS customers know the importance of achieving product/market fit. Let’s face it, it’s way easier to market a product that flies off the shelves.

Measuring delight doesn’t have to be difficult. The simplest way to figure out how happy your customers are with your product is to ask them 1 question; “Would you refer our product to a friend or colleague?“

This question is so important that it is considered The Ultimate Question, and is used to calculate your businesses’s Net Promoter Score®. The question is answered on a scale of 1-10. If the customer answers a 9 or higher, they are considered a ‘promoter.’ If the customer answers between a 7-8 they are considered ‘passive.’ Anybody that answers below a 7 is a ‘detractor.’

The Net Promoter Score® is then calculated by subtracting the percentage of promoters by the percentage of detractors to arrive at a number between -100 & 100. Voila! You now have a tangible metric to take to your product team. ‘Close the loop’ by working with them to develop an appropriate process for following up with any ‘detractors.’

Delight for Reviews

The primary reason marketers try to delight their users is to upsell existing customers. This is only one way to use happy customers to increase revenue. You can leverage a happy customer for new business as well.

Our ecommerce customers know how important reviews are for driving business. According to a 2013 Nielsen study, 68% of consumers trust fellow consumer opinions posted online. The number of consumers that trust online opinions has increased 7% since 2007. According to Nielsen, consumer opinions posted online are the 3rd most trustworthy form of advertising.

A simple way to increase your positive reviews online is to ask! The secret is to ask the right users. After administering your NPS® survey you should have successfully segmented your users into ‘detractors,’ ‘passives’ and ‘promoters.’ Use Boolean logic (many survey services provide this) to display a request to leave a public review of your product. If Boolean logic is too complicated, a simple reminder email will work just fine.

By proactively presenting your users with the NPS® question first, you are able to maintain transparency and solicit reviews in a positive way.

Delight for Revenue

As we learned above, the 3rd most trusted form of online advertising is consumer opinions. Guess what form of advertising holds the top spot? Recommendations from people the shopper knows! Since long before the internet, word-of-mouth marketing has been king when it comes to new business. Following the inbound marketing process will help you generate more word-of-mouth referrals.

If you are following the inbound marketing mantra, your customer has already proceeded through all 4 stages of the inbound methodology. You have taken the time to educate your customer about the value of your product before purchase. You have successfully trained your customer after purchase to the point of mastery. You have created something much more valuable than a sale. You have trained a new brand ambassador!

Time to put your ambassador to work! By implementing a referral marketing program you are able to turbo-charge a customer that is already promoting your brand through word-of-mouth marketing. For more information on implementing a successful referral campaign I recommend the following 3 whitepapers:

• Building an Effective Referral Program
• Choose the Right Incentive Structure for Your Ambassador Program
• Turning Customers Into Brand Ambassadors

Summary

• Measuring customer sentiment isn’t hard. Use the Net Promoter Score® to see how delighted your customers are.
• Work with the right internal teams to build a process around implementing detractor feedback.
• Solicit reviews from customers that are considered promoters.
• Don’t waste your customer’s education (that you paid for). Implement a referral program and put them to work!

Congratulations! You are able to now measure the effect that delighting your customers has on your bottom line.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, NPS, and Net Promoter Score are trademarks and registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld and are being used under license.

The post Attract, Convert, Close, Delight and Then What? appeared first on Ambassador.

I know what I have to do after work today. It’s the same thing I have to do tomorrow after work, and the day after that.

I have to do the dishes.

It’s the most unsatisfying chore I have. As soon as I empty the dishwasher, its full again! I feel like I am running on a treadmill, going nowhere.

I used to be running on the same treadmill with my email marketing campaigns. No matter how great last week’s blast was, this week I was starting from scratch.

I was constantly searching for something valuable to say to my list. Something that would resonate with subscribers that were receiving their very first email, and subscribers that were receiving their 12th.

Torrents of sweat ran down my brow every Wednesday. As my subscriber count grew, so did my anxiety. I was paralyzed with fear that I would include a typo or a spelling error.

It’s not like that any more.

Now email is probably my favorite channel. And it can be yours too. I’d love to show you the light.

In this article I’ll teach you 1 simple trick. When you get finished reading you will:

• No longer stress about typos
• No longer feel like you are wasting energy on email
• Rest assured that you are writing emails that resonate with new and old subscribers

Let’s get started.

The old way: Weekly Newsletters.

Email predates the internet’s explosive growth in 1996 by 3 years, and for almost as long as email has existed, it has been exploited by marketers for financial gain.

Until recently, email marketing tactics utilized a single methodology of sending mass email newsletters based on a specific cadence, such as once a week. At their best these emails would communicate relevant and timely information, such as a sale, or seasonal/holiday information like hours.

However, this system was easily corrupted. Marketers felt compelled to craft weekly emails, and would fill the gaps in time-sensitive communications with long form information.

At the surface, there is nothing wrong with this. Long-form content provides necessary information to educate potential and existing customers.

The trouble is, it’s easy to fall into one of two traps:

• Sending redundant emails. The longer a user has been subscribed to your newsletter, the more likely she is to receiving the same information more than once. This can be helpful, since it is important to communicate the most important information multiple times, however it is easy to take this too far. Result? Unsubscribe.
• Assuming too much knowledge from your audience. If you are attempting to avoid sending too many redundant emails, the alternative can happen. You send your novices communications that are too advanced for their needs. You are enrolling them in college-level courses, when they are just starting out at first grade. Result? Unsubscribe.

Finding the delicate balance of sending unique and relevant emails to your long-time subscribers, without intimidating your new ones is a careful art. If you can do it well (and have the time to write fresh copy every week), you are likely earning a hefty salary as an email copywriter and we would love for you to share your advice in the comments below.

If you are like most of us, and you struggle with finding the right balance, then fear not. There is a simple fix.

Enter: The drip marketing campaign.

The new way: Drip Marketing Campaigns

Fortunately, this isn’t a unique problem in the email marketing communities, and some enterprising entrepreneurs recognized the hurt and created drip marketing software.

Inspired by transactional email, drip campaigns break apart the campaign sequence, and start each subscriber at email number 1. Instead of subscribers receiving the same email every week, they receive the same email chain, starting from week 1.

Consider the following comparison between traditional email marketing and the new drip email marketing campaign:

In the old model, since Todd was the only subscriber during the first week (Week 1), he was the only subscriber that received the starting email.

The next week our list had grown to two users (Todd and Susan), but Susan had already missed the introduction email, and jumped in with the circle email.

This created a catch 22; why spend much time crafting the first email if Todd is going to be the only recipient? But if we don’t spend much time crafting our emails, then our list growth will be slow.

In our new model, every user receives every email, only in a different sequence than all of our other subscribers.

By week 2, Todd is already onto his second “Circle” email, building off the knowledge he gained from the introduction email in week 1.

But Susan had just subscribed to the newsletter, so she is starting her sequence at the beginning instead of in the middle of the chain.

It doesn’t matter that Heather didn’t sign up until week 7, she will still start her sequence at the first email.

Meanwhile, the author doesn’t feel like she wasted any effort crafting the first email in the sequence, since every new subscriber will be receiving it.

What’s more: if she spots a typo between week 1 and week 2, or pushes an update to her software, or needs to make any sort of change at all, it’s not a problem. She simply needs to go into her drip marketing software and make the edit.

Setting up your drip marketing campaigns.

With the right software setting up drip email marketing campaigns is really easy, and there are plenty of software options to choose from.

Email specific:

• Drip Price: $$
• SendWithUs Price: $
• Intercom Price: $$
• Customer.io Price: $
• Vero Price: $$
• Klaviyo Price: $$

Marketing Automation:

• Pardot Price: $$$$
• Marketo Price: $$$$$
• HubSpot Price: $$$$$
• Eloqua Price: $$$$$

Exploring each of these individually is beyond the scope of this article, so I’ll let you make your own decision based on your specific budget and needs. For the remainder of this tutorial we’ll be focused on integrating Drip since it is the software we have choosen at Ambassador.

Part I: Getting Started – Email Crash Course

The first step to achieving success with drip campaigns is the same as with traditional email marketing campaigns — getting users’ subscribed to your list.

Fortunately for us, the kind folks over at Drip provided a great feature for collecting email subscribers: The Email Crash-Course widget.

To create our email crash course, we turned one of our most popular ebooks and turned it into a drip marketing campaign. We created a specific email from each chapter of the ebook. Then we set the cadence to drip a chapter every weekday.

Once the campaign is created, Drip provides a really helpful tool in the form of their javascript pop-up widget. The widget is an unobtrusive overlay that can be configured to pop up from one of the browser edges, or as a modal.

Part II: Moving Subscribers

You should already be off to the races, sending users their first set of dripped emails. But what do you do after they finish their email crash course? You don’t want to let them simply fall off.

The next step is to nudge your users from the email crash course over to a longer newsletter campaign. Create your longer newsletter campaign. Navigate to the automation tab, and create a “New Automation Rule” and choose the most appropriate trigger and action.

Part III: Advanced Techniques

Pushing subscribers from one campaign to another is just the beginning of what’s possible. Try creating specific newsletter campaigns for your users based on potential MRR or specific vertical.

A simple recipe is to determine if a subscribed user is using a common domain name like gmail.com for their email address, and segment them into a “lighter” drip campaign. Be more hands on with users’ that enrolled using their company email address.

Conclusions & Other Ideas

Adjusting your strategy from traditional email marketing to drip campaigns will significantly make your email marketing life easier and free up hours of your time each week. That’s just the beginning of what’s possible though. Try segmenting your customers (create a drip campaign for all of your ambassadors to educate them about your product over time).

Here are a few other tips to help you succeed in the brave new world of drip marketing campaigns:

• Stay organized and plan your campaigns ahead of time.
• A/B test your emails. The beauty of sending every subscriber the same email is that you can continue to optimize.
• Segment your subscribers to deliver hyper-relevant campaigns.
• Don’t be afraid to unsubscribe low-quality subscribers from irrelevant campaigns.
• Stagger HTML and plain-text emails.
• Have fun and experiment!

Let us know in the comments how switching from traditional to drip or transactional emails have helped you succeed.

The post Easy Email Marketing for Lazy Email Marketers appeared first on Ambassador.

Summary

On Jul 21, 2014 at 5:58 PM, I extracted 2,406 front-page post records from GrowthHackers.com. I then analyzed those posts to gain some additional insight about the ecosystem. This is that insight.

For this first analysis I only extracted front page posts, posts that received at least four votes, or were posted prior to March 1. It was in March that the GrowthHackers team upgraded the ecosystem, causing only posts recieving four or more votes to appear on the front page. This means there is some discrepancies in the data that I will attempt to mend in a future, more thorough, crawl.

Basic Stats:

• 2,406 front-page posts were created on GrowthHackers.com between January 5, 2014 and July 21 at 5:58 PM
• The average number of votes per post was seven. The median was five and the standard deviation was 6.7.
• The average number of comments per post was 3.1. The median was one and the standard deviation was 5.1.
• The highest rated post of all-time earned 55 votes (http://growthhackers.com/all-growth-hackers-should-learn-these-7-technical-skills/).
• The most discussed post of all time generated 54 comments (http://growthhackers.com/questions/ask-gh-whats-in-your-conversion-optimization-stack/).
• The most active user by post count (by a landslide) was Anuj Adhiya (http://growthhackers.com/member/anujadhiya/).

Category Analysis:

The most popular two categories by a landslide are “Growth Hacks” and “Optimization.” Between these two categories they account for over 33 percent of all GrowthHackers.com posts.

The high volume of posts for these two categories account for the correspondingly high proportion of the aggregate share of votes and comments. A lower portion of “Customer Growth (broad)” posts accounts for a larger portion of the sum of votes.

This jump is even more evident when we begin to look at the sum of all the comments. The “Customer Growth (broad)” category jumps up to the number two spot. “Customer Growth (broad)” generates 13 percent of the total number of comments, despite accounting for only 10 percent of the total number of posts.

The “Must Read” category generates the highest average vote count per post. This makes sense, since the “Must Read” category is the only category on the blog that earns its own spot in the left-hand menubar. The “Customer Growth (broad)” category earns the fourth highest average amount of votes per post. “Growth Hacks” and “Optimization” both dropped positions dramatically. This also makes sense, since the high volume of posts dilutes the average quality per post as measured by votes.

The “Must Read” category is the most discussed post category, generating an more than 14 comments per post on average as Optimization continues to fall. This isn’t suprising since the “Must Read” category gets it’s own link in the left-hand navigation of the site. “Ecosystem” rises to the most discussed non-menu category, most likely due to the opinionated and abstract nature of the category itself.

Author Analysis:

So who’s curating all of this content?

The majority of the heavy lifting is done by a minority of the population. Growth Hackers take note; this is probably true of your customers as well (more on the Pareto principle). 63% of the GrowthHackers.com posts from Jan 5 to July 21 came from just 11 authors representing just 1.6% of the users that submitted posts that made it to the front page (650).

The largest aggregate number of votes and comments belongs to a small group of power users. The top 11 users earned 50 percent of all the votes dished out on GrowthHackers.com. The same group dominates the conversation, receiving 49 percent of all the comments on the site.

But quantity = quality. Ramon Cacho appears to be generating the highest number of votes per post, although he only posted one very popular post (http://growthhackers.com/facebook-ads-bidding-101-everything-you-need-to-know-supported-by-data/). Both KC and Charlie have posted at least two times, and Conrad has posted five times, making his high average even more impressive (but what would you expect from the founder of GrowHack).

The most contentious author award belongs to Ezra HaLevi, who is averaging 23 comments per post accross 3 front-page posts. It’s worth noting that Ezra has submitted five posts total. Two posts didn’t make it to the front page. It seems that when they do, they cause quite the discussion.

Post Title Analysis:

There are three primary types of posts on GrowthHackers. “Ask GH:,” “Show GH:,” and regular posts. “Ask GH:” is where the user posts a question to the community. These posts generally don’t link to an external site, but instead maintain the discussion inside of the GrowthHackers.com ecosystem. “Show GH:” posts are when the user shares something with the community, usually slides or a video. These posts are also typically hosted inside of the GrowthHackers ecosystem. Finally there are regular posts, which link out to an external article.

Since I just used some simple regex on the title, these posts could be skewed if a user decides to include the string “Show GH:” in their regular post title. Next time I’ll perform regex on the post URL to see if I can extract more detailed information.

But how does each post type do?

The GrowthHackers community is quite supportive and loves to give each other praise on their accomplishments. “Show GH:” garnished the highest average votes per post. Not surprisingly, “Ask GH:” posts generated the most discussion.

Numbers in post title increased the average vote count by a small amount, but significantly underperformed posts without numbers in the title at generating discussion.

I performed the same analysis for posts with the word “slide” (caps agnostic) in the title. Both comments and votes improved when the post title indicated that the post contained slides. Including the string “video” in the title had a less dramatic effect, and actually decreased the average votes per post. 

I took a quick look at whether or not the length of the post title had any effect on the community’s reaction. Post title length formed a pretty bell curve, predictably skewing out towards longer post titles (you can’t have a negative post title length).

I segmented each post into either “Really Short” (0-50 characters), “Short” (51-100), “Medium” (101-150), “Long” (151-200), and “Really Long” (201+). My conclusion was that there was a varied effect on post comments, but “Medium” and “Short” post title lengths seemed to perform the best in terms of average votes per post.

Date Analysis:

One of the interesting things I discovered when doing my date analysis was what appeared to be a major drop in the number of first page posts. After closer examination I was able to determine that there was a change in the criteria that qualified a post to be displayed on the front page. After March 1, GrowthHackers.com required that a post accumulate at least four votes to qualify it for front page. Prior to that posts with only one vote were able to appear on the front page.

I was interested in how the activity and discussion of non-authors was growing over time. If you look closely at the cumulative graph, it’s very difficult to tell if the new criteria for front page posts had any effect on the derivative of the sum of the votes/comments.

Filtering out the posts that only have four votes or more we can see that it does diversify the author submissions, but not too dramatically. 

Methodology:

I used three primary tools to create this analysis; the Kimono web crawler, Google Sheets for some data manipulation, and DataHero to produce the graphs and charts.

Kimono made the process of extracting structured information from the site relatively easily. With the Kimono Labs chrome plugin installed I was able to create an API in one click.

This enabled me to crawl the front-page posts. In order to gather data beyond the first page, I attempted to use Kimono’s pagination feature. I quickly discovered that the GrowthHackers “next page” link disappeared around page six, so I switched to Kimono’s manual targeting feature. I used a scratch sheet in Google Sheets to quickly concatenate the URL structure to create links for all 272 pages. Pasting them into Kimono’s targeted crawling detail page made the process easy.

From there it was just a matter of getting the targeting just right, and downloading a CSV of the information.

I imported the CSV to Google Sheets to perform a little bit of data manipulation, like categorizing the post-title lengths into five categories “Really Short,” “Short,” etc… I also used Sheets’ “REGEXMATCH()” function to determine if the post title contained “Ask GH:,” “Show GH:” etc… Finally I used the “REGEXEXTRACT()” function to extract the post date from the byline and convert into a “VALUE()” that Sheets prefered to work with.

After that it was just a matter of visualizing the most interesting information with DataHero.

Do you want to learn how to turn more of your customers, partners, affiliates, and fans into revenue generators?Request a custom demo from one of our referral marketing software experts today!

The post An Epic Analysis of Growth Hackers (Charts Galore!) appeared first on Ambassador.

Any marketer worth their salt knows you must have a powerful and highly effective inbound marketing strategy to be successful. In fact, as of the beginning of this year, 60% of businesses had adopted some type of inbound marketing as part of their overall strategy. Hubspot found that inbound marketing generates 54% more leads than traditional outbound efforts.

Of course, knowing the importance of inbound marketing and actually achieving a successful plan are two entirely different things. With so many areas to cover and so many different directions to approach from, developing and implementing such as strategy can seem downright overwhelming

What you need is a guideline – a set of steps that you can use as a foundation. That said, here are seven steps to lay the framework for a monster inbound marketing strategy.

Step 1 – Pinpoint your target audience.

To develop a highly effective inbound marketing strategy, you must pinpoint who your potential customers are. Once you have a clear customer profile, you can begin developing a plan that will, in fact, reach those prospects. Without this information, you will be wasting valuable time and resources with less than impressive results.

Step 2 – Develop measurable goals.

Napoleon Hill once said, “A goal is a dream with a deadline”. You can’t have an effective strategy in any area of your business without clearly defined and measurable goals. Determine exactly what you want to achieve and by when (i.e. 15% increase in click-throughs by end of 2nd quarter) so you’ll have something to track and measure as you move forward. Without these measurements, you will have a tougher time knowing what you’re doing right and what areas need to be tweaked.

Step 3 – Formulate a plan to nurture leads.

Getting people to click on your content is only half the battle. What you do with those leads next will determine whether they become a paying customer or simply move on to your competition. The best way to develop an effective lead nurturing strategy is to understand who your customers are and what their needs and wants are. Talk to your sales reps that are in the trenches day in and day out, and pick the brains of your existing customers. (This is another reason it’s great to have loyal brand ambassadors, because nobody knows your customers better than they know themselves!)

Step 4 – Produce content that will appeal to your audience.

Now that you know exactly who it is that you’re targeting (and have a picture of what they want and need), it’s time to get to work producing content that fulfills those needs and wants. Don’t get caught up in the myth that content only applies to blog posts. Be creative and diversify. For example, if your audience is primarily adult women, start pinning on Pinterest, where 80% of users are female. If your target is known to spend a great deal of time on Facebook, create infographics and entertaining memes that are more likely to be shared. Think outside the box but keep your eye on your target at all times to make sure you’re working toward your goals.

Step 5 – Strategically time your marketing approach.

Think for a moment about your own activity online. You probably get tons of email every day, most of which ends up in your trash folder – except those relevant messages. If you have time to go on social media, you can only do so at certain intervals and for short amounts of time. When you come across an interesting blog post, you scan it quickly to garner only the most important points. This information is valuable when developing and implementing your own marketing campaign. The content you produce should be interesting, valuable, to the point and distributed at an optimum time.

Step 6 – Enlist the help of your best customers.

When you’re developing your inbound marketing plan, don’t forget to reach out to your loyal customers and get them on board. By expanding your reach further to include the networks of your brand ambassadors, you’ll have access to that many more prospects without having to do any extra leg work. And the stats don’t lie. Nielsen’s latest Consumer Trust in Advertising report showed that 68% of people trust the opinions of others that they find online. So, gear up your loyal followers and send them out to spread the word.

Step 7 – Measure and tweak.

The final step, but perhaps the most important, is measuring the results of your strategy on a regular basis. Are you meeting the goals you defined in the first step? If not, what areas can you improve on to change that? What things are working that you can expand on for even more success? Make the necessary adjustments, and lather, rinse, repeat until you get it right.

Creating an inbound marketing strategy may seem like a daunting task, but when you break it down like this, it doesn’t have to be. The simple steps provided above should give you a solid foundation on which to build and nurture a highly successful marketing campaign that will attract the prospects you want and help you retain the customers that will help you continue to grow your business.

The post Create a Monster Inbound Marketing Strategy in 7 Easy Steps appeared first on Ambassador.

“People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction”

~ Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot

The key to this quote is the fact that marketing is an ever-changing, constantly evolving field. What worked even just a few years ago may be completely irrelevant today. If you’re going to continue to realize success, you must be willing to adapt to change as it occurs.

That said, here are 6 ways to breathe new life into your existing digital marketing strategy.

1. Spread the Wealth

It seems as if a new online platform is being introduced every few months, which means that your audience may not be getting their news and information in the same places they were just a short time ago. Don’t pigeon-hole your marketing efforts into one area. Even if you’ve been successful there previously, if you’re putting all of your eggs into one basket, eventually it’s going to come back to bite you. Research all of your available avenues, experiment with new channels, and then track key performance indicators (KPIs) so you know what’s working.

2. Align Strategies

Marketing is not one-size-fits-all. What works for one organization may turn out to be a complete flop for another. The best way to develop and execute a successful marketing plan is to align your marketing strategy with your business strategy. Next, develop strategies for the functional areas within marketing that align with the marketing strategy. Alignment not only gets everyone on the same page and increases efficiency, it also signficantly increases your odds of helping the business to meet or exceed its goals.

3. Analyze the Competition

Most businesses are doing competitive analysis, but this typically doesn’t go much beyond checking out their products and/or services and keeping an eye on what they’re up to from afar. If you really want to get a leg up, you have to delve deeper. Tap into your existing customers and ask them what they perceive to be the real differences between what you and your competitors have to offer. They’ll appreciate your concern and you’ll get real-time feedback on how you can improve on your own marketing efforts.

• Run a competitive link analysis using tools like Open Site Explorer
• Put competitor URLs into Adwords keyword tool for content ideas.
• Monitor your customer’s brand terms. Take advantage of their stumbles.
• Monitor your customer’s referral links on Twitter.
• Pick a fight. Rivalry games are always sell outs.
• Secret shop your competitors offerings.

4. Provide Value

A recent study conducted by Verint revealed that just 24% of consumers believe that companies take notice of their opinions, and only 29% feel that they are valued as customers. These stats speak volumes to the low opinion many consumers have about brands. By focusing on providing value to your audience – through content, offers, and support – you can change this view and gain a significant competitive differentiator. As a bonus, the more valued your customers feel, the more likely they are to recommend your brand to customers, friends, family, colleagues, and others.

5. Build Relationships

Successful marketing is not only about driving as many new sales as possible, but rather developing and nurturing long-term relationships based on trust that earn you brand preference, repeat business, and brand ambassadors. That’s one of the reasons social media marketing is so powerful. You should strive to make your marketing efforts as personal as possible, and to engage as often, and as quickly, as your customers want and deserve. Show customers and potential customers that you truly care, and your marketing will be exponentially more successful.

Read next: Building a World-Class Referral Program – The Definitive Guide

6. Include Clear Calls to Action

Everything you touch should include a clear call to action – or next step – for your audience. Whatever it is you want people to do – whether it’s signing up for your newsletter, connecting with you on social media, downloading your eBook or making a purchase – don’t just sit back and hope they’ll follow through. Compel them to! Even if you’re happy with the results your calls to action are delivering, you can always do better. Therefore, test, test, test. Whether it’s simply A/B testing, or more advanced multi-variate testing, always be testing and finding new ways to improve your marketing efforts. (Take a lesson from HubSpot, who saw an incredible 1300% increase in CTR just by tweaking their call to action buttons).

Whether you employ some or all of these tips, the important thing to remember is that marketing is a fluid field, where being agile is critical. If you’re going to be even more successful and profitable than you are today, you absolutely must be willing to evolve to meet the changing wants, needs, and problems of your audience.

The post 6 Ways to Improve Your Marketing Strategy appeared first on Ambassador.

Completely automated workflows and campaigns? Predictive analytics that help us actually achieve the Holy Grail of marketing (right message, for the right customer, at exactly the right time)? Technology stacks that intuitively and seamlessly connect with each other to deliver dynamic insight?

All of those things might come to fruition (some are already here). Or they might not. As most of us know from experience, predictions are unpredictable — just ask former Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer. That said, prognostication is still a worthwhile exercise because it helps us reflect on the past, envision the future, and test new ideas that allow us to get ahead of the pack.

Click for sound

So, what is the future of marketing?

Here’s a sampling of some of the biggest marketing trends from four of the marketing world’s smartest people, all of whom were kind enough to contribute to our newest eBook.

Former HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe on the Value of First-Mover Advantage

“If you’re willing to try things before they go mainstream, that willingness — even if you’re not particularly good at that specific thing — gives you a disproportionate advantage. If something takes off, you’re already ahead of the inflection point. You’ve had time to test, learn, and get really good at it before everyone else jumps in.

That said, leaders don’t seek risk for risk’s sake. They accept risk as a natural byproduct of a worthwhile reward.”

Click to tweet

MarketingProfs Chief Content Officer Ann Handley on the Rebirth of Quality

“I believe 2016 is the year content marketing grows up. Strategy, processes, and metrics will mean something. Creativity and craft will trump speed and quantity. Marketers will tell bigger stories with a braver focus and bolder voice. That’s the future. Content marketers who don’t adapt won’t like the results.”

Click to tweet

Former Campaign Monitor VP Agata Celmerowski on Self-Driving Marketing

“As much as some of our industry wants to pretend otherwise, I don’t believe the advancement of technology excuses marketers from cultivating a basic level of technical literacy.

You don’t need to know how to code your entire website to be a great digital marketer. But when your CMS defaults your clever animated gif to sit right on top of a paragraph of text, you’ll appreciate being able to adjust the padding directly in the code. Beyond small stuff like that, understanding the basic operating mechanics behind the tools you use and the medium you work in is a prerequisite for unleashing the full extent of your creativity.”

Click to tweet

Ambassador CEO Jeff Epstein on a New Pillar of MarTech

“Instead of seamlessly managing customer relationships through a handful of cohesive marketing platforms, most marketers today are drowning in a patchwork of point solutions.

That’s going to change. Instead of manually managing and monitoring post-sale customer engagement (NPS surveys, reviews, testimonials, customer feedback, referrals, etc.), marketers will come to rely on a single platform that sews all of that functionality together. This will give marketers full control over customer relationships at scale, which will yield better experiences for end users and better results for marketers.”

Click to tweet

What’s your prediction?

While I’m confident the four trends above will play a big role in influencing how we operate in the future, I’m also confident a big part of our future will be dictated by technologies and innovations none of us are talking about right now.

So, what do you see when you envision the future of marketing? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Give me a shout on Twitter @JoshZywien. And if you want to dive a little deeper into each of the trends above (plus three more), download your copy of our eBook below.

The post 4 Predictions from 4 Experts on the Future of Marketing appeared first on Ambassador.

If your brand is looking to bridge the gap between an engaged audience of customers and effective inbound marketing efforts, then it’s time to consider a referral marketing strategy. With a referral marketing strategy, customers become invigorated and incentivized to refer while attracting new customers to your business. When done the right way, referral marketing is intuitive and innovative. Plus, you can become the office superstar that has leveraged organic customer behavior to meet marketing goals (and hopefully get that promotion you deserve).

We’ve done the bulk of the research to get you started, you just have to figure out what a customizable automated referral marketing platform looks like for your company. Trust us, your boss will appreciate it.

What is referral marketing?

Referral marketing happens when brands use trackable programs to reward current customers for recommending a brand’s product or service. The most effective way to track, manage, and scale referral marketing efforts is through an automated platform. Automated referral marketing software is an innovative solution for companies seeking an alternative to traditional outbound marketing efforts and a new stream of revenue. By harnessing the organic power of word-of-mouth, referral marketing transforms existing customers into brand ambassadors and invites new customers to become loyal customers.

What will our company gain from it?

In addition to a more empowered customer base, your brand will acquire rich leads or new sales that reach your brand through recommendations from trusted family members and friends within their network. This allows for a more streamlined process to engage with consumers and nurture them into becoming loyal customers and brand ambassadors. Each referral comes with their own data that is tracked through the platform and can be used to guide future strategic decisions.

What is the ROI?

Although success looks different for every company, referral marketing enables your brand to unlock revenue from existing and prospective customers. According to Forbes, a study done by Goethe University revealed that customers recommended to businesses were 18% more likely to stay with companies than other customers. A referral marketing strategy can provide an organic entryway into to your brand that attracts rich leads who are even more likely to stay with the brand as a loyal customer. Referral marketing boosts the quality of your customer experience and the quality of your customers. ROI is accessed through an increasingly valuable audience of engaged, loyal and aware customers.

Why now?

It’s time to try something new. Why not incorporate the time-tested methods of word-of-mouth communication? Brands can capture trackable and informed leads while boosting brand awareness and enhancing the customer experience in a way that traditional marketing methods cannot. Referral marketing empowers you to incorporate companywide goals into a measurable and rewarding experience for customers, all while driving revenue for your brand.

How can we implement it?

Automated referral marketing technology allows for highly customizable campaigns that maintain a brand’s look and feel while targeting specific audience segments. By providing shareable links for referrals through a customizable platform, companies can attract prospective customers and empower brand ambassadors with incentives that drive revenue.

Conclusion

Now that you understand the basics, it’s time to guide your boss to give you the green light. Download or print our Executive Summary for Referral Marketing one-pager and prepare to hear praise at your next review. Good luck!

Do you want to learn how to turn more of your customers, partners, affiliates, and fans into revenue generators? Request a custom demo from one of our referral marketing software experts today!

{{cta(‘5c6befcb-8f8a-4021-a358-dfd655940a1c’)}}

The post 5 Things About Referral Marketing Your Boss Wants to Know appeared first on Ambassador.