Benefits of content marketing for startups

When you are a newly minted business, you do not have enough budget to invest in the expensive television, radio or print ad campaigns. However, the need for creating brand awareness and acquire new customers is no less. 

Let us see what benefits the budget-friendly content marketing can bring to such start-ups -

•  Producing and sharing content on social media helps you kick-start and increase your brand's online presence

•  Creating valuable and original content demonstrates your industry expertise and helps start establishing yourself as a thought leader

• It is very easy to start – you can either start a blog, podcast or a vlog depending on your niche and target audience behavior

• SEO-optimized content offers you a huge potential to improve your search engine ranking, online visibility and organic traffic

•  Offering helpful content that helps your target buyers arrive at an informed decision can greatly shorten your sales cycle

Contact a digital marketing company to get started with your content marketing campaign.

Top 5 Skills You Need to Become a Successful SEO Specialist

As Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more important than ever to increase your online visibility, draw organic traffic and strengthen your credibility, it is natural for the demand for SEO specialists to be on the rise. If you are thinking about embarking on an SEO career, you will want to obtain more information about certain skill set that organizations look out for.

Let us have a look at the topmost skills you require to become a successful SEO professional in the competitive digital marketing industry -

Critical and analytical thinking

An SEO professional needs to be clear that no same strategy will work for every website. He/she has to carefully audit every website they are working on, for any shortcomings and come up with suitable solutions to fix them.

Also, a website rank will not be consistent. It may be positively or negatively affected at any given time. An SEO specialist must be adept at unconvering the cause behind a sudden rank drop, so that the issue can be fixed as quickly as possible.

Research skills

As an SEO specialist, most of your time is going to be spent on research. From keyword research and competitor analysis, to keeping up with the latest techniques and Google algorithm updates, research will be an important part of your job responsibilities.

Basic programming skills

This may not be a hard-core requirement, but technical considerations such as page speed, server side redirects, rendering, etc., are an important part of every optimized SEO strategy. A basic knowledge of languages like HTML, CSS, or JavaScript will help you work better with these aspects and use them to improve your SEO efforts.

Communication and team work

You will need to regularly work together with other team members such as content writers and digital marketers to make sure that your SEO strategy is being executed perfectly.

Also, you will time-to-time find yourselves in a position to explain SEO concepts to a client in a manner that is easy to understand, making communication skills an absolute necessity.

Content skills

It is rare that an SEO professional will need to produce content, but there are times when it can become necessary. Also, content being an integral part of SEO, you need to have an understanding of the right kind of content and the quality required to make it user-friendly.

How to Build Your Personal Brand on Instagram

Instagram is rapidly becoming the golden goose for businesses looking to strengthen their social media presence. With numbers of active users in billions, it is one of the best platforms to build your personal brand, humanize your interactions with your followers and gain new ones.

Let us see some actionable tips that will help you define and set apart your personal brand on Instagram -

Set your goals and objectives

Like with any other strategy, you need to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve from your Instagram account. Analyze your competitors for how they are interacting with their followers, the hashtags they are using and the kind of content they are posting. This will give you an idea of what is working well, what your audience is and isn't responding to, and what you can do to differentiate yourself from them.

Set a voice or theme for your brand personality

Having a unique voice or theme will help your brand become more memorable for your followers. Pick a theme or voice and keep everything from the brand colors and logos to fonts consistent, so that your followers can easily identify you and know that you are staying true to your personality.

Get your hashtags in order

Hashtags are the best and most effective ways for brands to get discovered on Instagram. Luckily for you, the platform allows up to 30 hashtags for a single post. Thus, you have plenty of options to reach new audience by using hashtags that are relevant to your niche.

Leverage the power of Stories

Millions of people watch Instagram Stories everyday. In fact, businesses claim the credit for one-third of the most viewed Stories. You can use this feature to post a behind-the-screen video of your company or host a live event to capture your followers' attention and generate more engagement.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inboundmarketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

How to Create an Effective Editorial Calendar For Your Content Marketing Strategy

Why do you need an editorial calendar?

Content marketing involves a lot more than haphazardly scribbling a blog whenever you have the time. You also need to think about the objective you want to accomplish with every single piece of content you create, along with planning the distribution of content on relevant digital platforms.

                                          

Creating an editorial calendar would greatly help you streamline and organize this entire process. It will leave you plenty of time to properly strategize and create content before the actual publishing. Thus, an editorial calendar will not only help you save time and efforts, but will also improve the overall quality of your content.

Let us see how you can create an effective editorial calendar

Select an editorial template

Often, the main reason content marketers hesitate to create a calendar is that they have no idea where to start, or think that the task will take up too much time. You can use one of the many online calendar tools available and use readymade templates to make the process easier.

Establish your content objectives

If you haven't already, now is a great time to determine your content marketing objectives. They could include -

• Increasing your brand awareness

• Improving your SEO efforts

• Portraying yourself as an industry thought leader

• Driving more traffic towards your website

•  Generate leads for a product or service

Make sure that your calendar prioritizes and reflects and all these objectives.

Research and come up with content ideas

Conduct an in-depth research to get an idea of what kind of content is performing well in your niche, and the kind of content (and formats) that is preferred by your target audience. Based on this research, you can start coming up with different ideas for topics and headlines.

Perform a thorough keyword research

Before you start creating content on these topics, conduct a thorough keyword research and include the high-ranking keywords in your content so that it will easily show up in search results. As far as possible, try to categorize your keywords according to user intent (navigational, transactional or informational), so that it will have better chances of ranking for the relevant searches.

Analyze your results periodically

Regularly monitoring the performance of your content will allow you to optimize your strategy for better results.

A digital marketing company can help you create a detailed editorial calendar, as well as create content that is mapped to your marketing objectives.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

What is SEM and What Does an SEM Specialist Do?

If you are fascinated by the workings of the search engine that decide which pages show up first in the search results and which pages get pushed down, the job of a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) specialist is the right one for you.

                           

In fact, as more and more businesses are moving online and competing for the larger share of user attention and website traffic, they are on the hunt for SEM specialists that can be a value addition to their digital marketing team.

Before diving into an overview of the roles and responsibilities for this job title, let us first understand the meaning and purpose of SEM.

What is Search Engine Marketing?

SEM is nothing but the practice of increasing the visbility of your website or brands on search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and so on. SEM encompasses different methods including organic ones such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and paid ones such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. 

Who is an SEM specialist?

An SEM specialist is a person who puts their knowledge of how search engines pull up results to work on behalf of their organization. Their aim is to ensure that when the organization's target audience searches for specific keywords or queries, their website or relevant web page/blog will rank as high as possible. The higher the page ranks, the more probable it is for the user to click on it, get engaged and progress towards conversion.

The overall daily responsibilities of an SEM specialist include -

• Research and keep up-to-date on the latest trends and search engine algorithm updates to make sure your strategy is on the right track

•Target and test new keywords that are relevant to your niche and target audience

• Work on the website's overall SEO strategy including keywords, analyzing content, technical SEO and making changes whenever required

• Set up and manage PPC campaigns

•  Analyze website performance through online analysis tools for different statistics such as website traffic, traffic source, etc., and modifying strategy based on the metrics

Education and skills required to become an SEM specialist

While the requirements will depend upon the organization you are applying to, here is an overview of the common skills and educational requirements for the job -

• A bachelor's degree

• One or more years of relevant experience

•  Good communication skills

• Basic understanding of SEO and PPC

•  Basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

•  Strong analytical and problem-solving skills

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

How to Plan an Effective Digital Marketing Campaign for Your Customers

Planning a digital marketing campaign involves a lot of careful considerations and requires a tremendous amount of skill, especially when you are doing so for a third party.

How effectively you plan and execute a campaign for your customers will form the crux of customer satisfaction and your future relationships with them. 

Let us see the best practices you can adopt while crafting a digital marketing campaign that will maximize the ROI for your customers -

Define the marketing objectives

Naturally, the first step for any campaign will be to define the ultimate objectives. This will help you gain a clear sight of the steps you need to take to achieve these objectives. It is best to limit the number to two or three, as working towards too many objectives can scatter your efforts in different directions. Along with objectives, you will also need to set a timeframe and budget for the campaign.

Some possible objectives for a digital marketing campaign are -

•  Increase brand awareness

•  Improve SEO to increase online visibility and traffic

•  Generate quality leads or enquiries

•  Engage customers on social media

Define the target audience

The next step will be to determine who you will be speaking to, their business needs, pain points and how your customer's solution can help them overcome their problems. You can further segment your audience into smaller groups according to factors such as demographics, geographical location, job titles and so on. This will enable you to hyper-personalize your messaging for generating a better response and engagement.

Choose your digital channels

Once you have identified the personas you want to target, you need to decide how you are going to reach them. The selection of channels will be based on your marketing objectives, behavior of target audience and your budget.

Some of the most effective and popular digital channels are -

• Website and landing pages

•   Emails

•   Social media

•   Content marketing

•  Paid advertisements

Set the right KPIs to measure the campaign performance

Once you start implementing, measurable KPIs will let you know whether or not your digital marketing campaign is working as expected. You can adjust your strategy based on the results of the execution metrics. 

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.

Effective B2B Lead Nurturing Strategies

More than collecting interest leads, it is important for B2B marketing companies to nurture them and keep them moving through the funnel till they convert into customers.

                                

Break your leads into different categories

Categorizing your leads as warm, hot or cold will give you an idea of the stage they are currently at, and the amount of nurturing they will require to move further.

Use email marketing

Segment your leads into hyper-focuses categories and send personalized messages.

Leverage marketing automation software for quick response

Lacking a fast response, you stand at a risk of leads going cold.

Use targeted content

Send your leads useful content that is tailored to their interests and business challenges, to engage and delight them.

Clearing the air between content marketing and content strategy

We have often noticed our clients get confused between content marketing and content strategy. They think both the terms have the same meaning. It is true that they overlap each other, but there are marked differences between the two.

                     

In the simplest terms, content marketing deals with creating and publishing content on various social platforms, in a way that it is readily available to your target audience. Often, the aim is not to promote or sell, but to simply add to the readers' knowledge and provide an actionable takeaway. It helps you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry, and be recognized as a trustworthy source of information.

On the other hand, content strategy is one of the pillars of a successful content marketing campaign.

Apart from deciding what kind of content you should create, it deals with the following considerations -

•  What is the goal of your content piece?

•  Who are you writing for?

•   What are their pain points?

•  How can your solution overcome their problems?

To sum up, both content marketing and content strategy are different, but one cannot exist without the other. Both are necessary to achieve the ROI you desire.

Content marketing myths that are holding you back

Content marketing is by no means an easy discipline, and with the constantly evolving trends, it is easy for myths and misconceptions to slip by and be considered as a common practice or understanding. 

Let us have a look at some common myths that need to be dispelled for your content marketing success -

The content should promote your business or product

Not all type of content should focus on your business. Rather than pushing for a sale right away, your content should focus on engaging and educating your target audience.

You do not to pay much attention to social efforts

If you do not actively promote your content on social media, how will your target audience know that it exists?

Only long-form content is important for ranking

Long-form content has its uses, but the length of the content should depend upon its purpose. Write for your audience, and not for the search engines.

Anybody can create content

Creating content requires a unique skill set. A combination of professional writers and subject matter experts is important for creating content that is truly engaging, useful and relevant.

A digital marketing can help you both devise an effective content marketing strategy and create content that will put forth the business value of your solution in front of your target audience.

Tips for social media storytelling

Using storytelling in your social media marketing strategy lets you form a human connection with your customers, and generate engagement far more than any cold advertisements and facts you might otherwise throw at them.

Here are some tips to help you make the most of this powerful technique -

Share your own personal experiences
Your own personal experience, from which you can deliver an inspring takeaway, will both entertain and educate your followers.

Leverage User Generated Content (UGC)
UGC is a powerful way to get customers to tell their own stories and making them feel involved with your brand, while simultaneously increasing your credibility.

Use visual content
Using videos or a series of images will uplift your story more than just using plain text. The combination of imagery, music and speech will truly keep your followers immersed in your story.

You can get in touch with a digital marketing company for effectively executing storytelling as a part of your social media strategy.

Best practices for outbound links

As the name suggests, outbound links are the links that point from your website to a different one. They are just as important as inbound links for SEO, as they can increase your credibility when you send your visitors towards useful and quality content, as well as indicate topical authority. 

Let us have a look at some of the best practices to make the most out of your outbound linking efforts -

                              

• Link only to relevant and useful website content, otherwise you are risking your own credibility

• Make sure that the links are naturally included, and not forced into your text, to improve the overall quality of your content

•  Avoid mutual back-linking as a quick way to increase authority and rank, as Google can devalue such links

•  Make sure that the links open in new tabs, so that the users can easily find their way back to your website

A digital marketing company can help you manage your link profiles, and optimize your overall SEO strategy according your business goals.

Key factors that influence B2B purchase decisions

B2B marketing companies are often puzzled by the buying decisions of their target audience. Sometimes, even promising leads do not complete their journey to the final conversion. Naturally, with the complex nature of B2B sales cycle, the involvement of multiple decision makers and typical high investments required, a complete understanding of consumer decision-making process is not possible. 

However, understanding the factors that can influence their buying decision can help you shape your marketing strategy accordingly. 

The most prominent factors include -

•  External factors like fluctuations in money market, change in government policies and behavior of competitors

•  Whether or not your potential customers feel that they have an urgent need to act

• Present financial condition of the organization

• Interpersonal conflict among key decision makers

• Individual factors like social status or age of decision makers

Types of keywords in SEO you need to be aware of

Needless to say, keywords are an integral part of an SEO strategy. However, choosing the right kind of keywords that will maximize your SEO efforts can be confusing. Let us understand the different types that are available to us -

Short-tail keywords

Made up of three words or less, they have a high volume of search; however, they are also very competitive and difficult to rank for. It is also difficult to pinpoint the user intent for these keywords. You can use them across your content, as they can be helpful for signalling topical authority.

Long-tail keywords

Made up of more than 3 words, they are more specific than short-tail keywords and are easier to rank for. You can use them for drawing traffic to targeted landing pages or blogs.

Seasonal keywords

They are typically related to a specific trend or event, such as the release of a new movie. You can get a great search volume from them, but only for a short amount of time.

Geographical keywords

Keywords that revolve around a specific location, can be very helpful for local business SEO.

Intent-based keywords

Keywords that match a specific user intent such as informational ("how to", "best ways to"), navigational (direct name of a brand or a website), or commercial ("buy", "comparison").

A digital marketing company can help you choose the right kind of keywords for your business and marketing goals, and run optimized SEO campaigns.

How to convert your blog into a lead magnet

B2B marketers who blog get 67% more leads than those who do not.

Yes, blogs are worth more than establishing yourself as a thought leader and increasing website traffic. Done right, they can bring an influx of qualified leads for your digital marketing efforts.

 Of course, the basic requirement is that the content should provide value to your readers, but the blogs should encourage them to strike a conversation with you. Make smart use of the comment section to engage readers, answer their questions, and if possible, schedule a call or set up an email communication.

Apart from comments, set clear and easily visible CTAs that will prompt readers to either subscribe, sign up, or download. Give them as many avenues to engage with you as are practical. 

When they subscribe, take the opportunity of the welcome email to communicate what kind of content they can expect from you, and direct them to your website or social media.

Thus, with the combination of quality content, clear CTAs, and open-ended communication, your B2B blog can be an effective lead generation tool.

How much content does a B2B buyer consume before making a purchase decision

It has long been established that the greater part of the buyer's journey takes place online. Majority of buyers turn to Internet searches when they find themselves in the need of a product or service. Obviously, this process does not go on indefinitely. There has to be a certain limit to the amount of content consumed by the buyers, before they settle on a vendor.

A recent study from Forrester has shown that this limit is 13 content pieces for the average B2B buyer. These pieces are further broken down into 8 pieces from the vendor and the remaining 5 from third-party sources. The type of content covers a wide range from blog posts and whitepapers to videos and customer testimonials.

The study also revealed that the vendor website remains the topmost source of information for the buyers and is consulted throughout all the stages of buyer's journey. Along with internet search, social media and emails, peer reviews also play an important role in the purchase decision.

The results have once again highlighted the importance of quality content. With just around 8 content pieces to sway the buyer to your side, you need to make every one count.

How to ask for a testimonial from customers

Not every customer is going to leave a glowing review on your website, even if they are happy with your product or service. Sometimes, they only need a prompt from your side to do so. But, many business owners hesitate to ask for testimonials, as they fear nagging the customers.

However, you should not overthink about it. Most customers will be happy to leave you a review, if you ask them in straightforward and simple words. The first rule is to act quickly. Ask them for a review within the first one or two days of the purchase, while you are still fresh in their mind. 

Simply send them an email and SMS asking to take some time to leave a review on your website. You can even register on third-party review sites and give them a choice of where they want to leave the review.

Sometimes, a customer might even praise you while conversing verbally. Ask for permission to put their words in writing and post it on your website.

You can even offer incentives like a discount on the next purchase on leaving a testimonial, to encourage more reviews. Ultimately, they will greatly help you boost SEO and add to your credibility. Thus, all you need to do is to shed any hesitation, and simply ask what for what you need.

Why should B2B marketers pay more attention to voice search

Though a novelty around a decade ago, voice search has rapidly become a norm thanks to advancements in machine learning and speech recognition algorithms. There are tons of statistics that only confirm how much voice search has, and will continue to grow in the foreseeable future.

Now, B2B marketers have always been a bit slow to adopt major technology changes, but it's a different story with voice search. Users have long passed the stage of using voice searches for weather updates and traffic conditions. They are using it for obtaining more in-depth informations, such as questions that include "how", "why", "what" or "where". Moreover, featured snippet results are also pulled from voice searches.

Thus, optimizing for voice search will tremendously help SEO and help you get in front of your target audience at the right time.

Dos and Don'ts of B2B marketing

Dos

Segment your target audience

Even if your target organizations appear similar, each of them will have unique needs and business challenges. Focus your messaging to fit their individual needs for a shorter sales cycles and increased conversions.

Have a lead nurturing strategy in place

Dealing with a large volume of leads can cause many of them to fall out from the pipeline, owing to lack of attention on your part.

Choose the right KPIs

Instead of focusing on vanity metrics like page views and number of likes on social media posts, focus on actionable KPIs like conversion rate that will help you steer your digital marketing campaign in the right direction.

Dont's

Copy your competitors blindly

Competitor analysis is important, but what worked out for them might not be right for your business.

Focus only on your product or service

Focus on helping your customers and target audience solve their business challenges and meet their requirements.

Underestimate SEO

All your efforts to reach out to your target audience will be in vain if you are not visible on search engines.

Ways to increase the credibility of your website

In an era where online frauds are so rampant, consumers are wary to trust any new brand or business they come across. Trust factor becomes the basis of their purchase decision. As your digital marketing website is the top source of information about you and your brand, it is essential to establish your credibility through this medium. 

Let us have a look at some ways to increase your website trustworthiness and credibility -

1.                 List your physical address to show that you are an authentic and operational business

2.                 Make sure that your contact information is easily visible

3.                 Improve overall website design, user experience and content

4.                 Showcase information about your staff, their expertise and credentials

5.                 Include testimonials and reviews from your existing customers

6.                 Get an SSL certification for website security

7.                 Display your professional partnerships or your biggest clients

7 SEO Tricks to Improve Your Google Ranking

No matter how much efforts you put into the design, user experience and content of your website, they would not yield results unless you are showing up higher in Google search results.

                       

Let us have a look at some tried and tested SEO tricks to help you increase your ranking -

Introduce you main keyword as early as possible in the content

Not only the number of times you use a keyword, but its position also makes a difference when it comes to ranking. Google gives priority to relevant keywords that can be seen at the top of the results. However, take care that you weave the keyword naturally through the content.

Increase the loading speed of your website

Slow loading pages put off website visitors and increase your bounce rate. Moreover, page speed is an important Google ranking factor. Removing any unnecessary design elements, enabling browser caching and reducing the number of unused or unnecessary plugins are some quick ways of increasing your loading speed.

Optimize your website for mobile experience

Google has long since started prioritizing mobile versions of websites over the desktop ones. Proving a great mobile experience will definitely help you boost your position in related searches.

Search for and fix any broken links

A sufficient number of quality backlinks is great for SEO, but some of these links might be broken and escaped your notice. Multiple 404 errors greatly harm both user experience and website ranking.

Optimize for local SEO

People are increasingly using their smartphones to search for businesses near their location. Thus, optimizing for local SEO, coupled with customer reviews and testimonials will greatly increase your chances of ranking high in local searches.

TSL Consulting Pvt Ltd is an integrated marketing company based in India. We offer customized outbound marketing, inbound marketing, digital marketing and data profiling services to a wide spectrum of small and mid-sized organizations.