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10 Distinct Benefits of Video Marketing for Small Businesses

Posted on May 26, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

‘Less is more’ is the thumb rule of marketing. There is no better way than a video to convey your brand message in lesser time with a deeper meaning to a broader audience.

Videos are the best marketing tool for small businesses. It has high ROI and a better reach. With many marketers vying for the small internet space, videos are a useful tool to make your presence felt online.

There is no denying the fact that video marketing is one of the newest entrants in the promotion mix, something that gained popularity after the advent of digital marketing. However, small marketers still have many doubts before venturing into video marketing.

Is it worth the time and effort to consider using videos for promotion or not? Do I have enough resource to create one? Such questions regularly pop up in their minds to which they do not always get a satisfactory answer.

Here are 10 reasons why video marketing is a profitable way to promote business for small business owners and how they can use it to their advantage.

1. Videos generate trust:

Based on building relationships, video marketing works on the simple fact that ‘Action speaks louder than words.’ When you convey your message to your audience through a video, you establish an emotional connection with them.

Videos give you the flexibility to capture the sentiments of your audience. Therefore, it empowers you to build a long-term relationship with your clients.

2. Boost conversion:

Yes, videos boost conversion by 80%. When you add a product video to your landing page, it helps your viewers make an instant and informed decision. They make the purchase which eventually increases your conversion and your sales. It is, therefore, a wise decision to add videos to your promotion box and consider it more of an investment rather than an expense.

3. Google finds it easily: Ever searched for ‘How To’ on Google observed the striking results it offers. It is because Google loves videos and display them instantly when someone searches for it.

Videos, when embedded on your website or present via a Youtube link, have a higher chance of drawing customers to your website. This results in more traffic and more ROI.

4. Videos are self-explanatory:

While website content and blogs can sometimes be long to read, videos engage a customer for a few seconds to a minute to explain the concept.

Consider a new product you have just launched and want to inform customers about the same, which option you would choose, a blog or a video. Certainly creating a video works like 98% users say that they watch an explainer video to learn about a product or service.

5. Easy to share on social platforms:

When we talk about viral content, it is always the video that comes to our mind. Videos score over any other marketing tool when it comes to create viral content. Since videos are easy to share on social platforms and also on platforms such as Whatsapp and Hangouts, it has a wider reach and chances of more people viewing it are always high.

Today, more than 60% of social marketers make use of video content to convey their message and finds it more effective than any other marketing tool.

6. Improves search engine rank:

We all love to watch videos, and it is a great tool when it comes to sales and conversion. It is also good for how search engine evaluates your website.

With tools like Google Analytics, you can check the number of times visitors accessed your website and how long they stay by checking the bounce rate. You will observe a stark difference in the bounce rate and other parameters after you have implemented your video marketing strategy.

7. It makes you look modern:

Video marketing is considered as the latest and the most advanced marketing tool. When customers saw your product or brand video, they perceive your company as one with a modern approach. They appreciate businesses which are up-to-date and want to associate with such companies.

8. Videos are still not used by many small businesses:

Accept it or not, there are marketers who despite knowing the importance of video marketing, are not using it in their promotion mix. This gives you an advantage over other small businesses and even your competitors. You can create your niche with the help of videos and customers will remember you for a long time because of your video marketing strategy.

9. Power of Live videos:

Everyone is using Live streaming via Periscope or Facebook Live. Although a bit difficult and not everyone’s cup of tea, it is still prevalent among business owners and celebrities. The most significant benefit is it encourages people to engage and post comments. It instantly involves people as they can see response to their comments. It becomes easy to reach your target audience with such a tool.

10.Video appeal to mobile users:

Mobile phones and videos go hand in hand. Most of the consumers watch videos on their mobile, and since the number of mobile users is increasing, videos will gain more popularity.

Tying It All Together

Video advertising has now become more widespread and affordable too. It has a global reach and has the potential of reaching every consumer, be it any location, age and interest group. The key however still lies in creating an enticing video with precise content. It requires a creative mindset and knowledge of human psychology to create a video.

Small business owners should make it an integral part of their business promotion and use it to the maximum of their advantage.

Who is a Content Marketing Manager? What does he do?

Posted on May 23, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

If you have created content or worked on digital marketing you may have come across the role of a content marketing manager in your agency. In this post we will share the role of content marketing manager and what he/she can do to grow your business online.

But first it is important to understand how content marketing fits into digital marketing.

How Content Marketing Fits into Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a channel of marketing to build an online following for your brand on the internet. This could be through website traffic, email subscribers or YouTube channel followers.

Whatever the platform, the aim is to build brand awareness and convert visitors into leads and customers. Email marketing, social media campaigns, content marketing etc. are all part of digital marketing.

Content marketing forms the foundation of all digital marketing, since it is content that gives value to your visitors and converts them into your loyal audience, followers and subscribers. Content consists of text posts, infographics, videos, audio podcasts etc.

No matter what strategy you use digitally, good content is always going to be essential for it to succeed. For example, email marketing will require regular content that your subscribers find relevant and helpful. Without helpful content nobody will open your emails and they might even unsubscribe from the list.

Content marketing manager is someone who creates high quality helpful content with the aim of growing a loyal audience online. There are many activities and processes that form part of creating content. Let’s see what these activities are to understand them better.

Scope of Work

Content creation starts with researching deeply on the target audience. Understanding reader’s pain points and building content around it is essential to create relevant content. Without this, you risk putting out content that no one is even interested in reading.

Content managers can build on it if this information is already available with marketing department in the form of buyer personas and target market studies done. If not, then it is the content manager’s job to find out about their audience.

Converting knowledge gained on target audience into a content strategy is the next step. This involves setting measurable targets (growth in subscribers, increased CTR, increases conversions etc.) and developing a plan to achieve this. There are two parts to this-

1.Content planning – involves building a plan that details what content topics should be covered, in what format and on what channel. For example, a content manager may choose YouTube for educational videos or write a long form content on the blog.

Here the content marketing manager decides everything down to titles for the blog to the timeline for completion of each content piece. This plan has to be flexible enough to change in response to audience, market and competitors.

2. Content Plan Execution – This is the process of executing the content plan. Activities involve writing, video production, social media posting, sending emails and audience engagement. There is team of writers, video production, social media manager etc. that the manager must work with.

Lastly, content marketing manager must monitor content performance parameters and come up with ideas to continuously better the content. Feedback and customer engagement is an important part of successful content strategy.

Roles of a Content Marketing Manager

As you can see the scope of content marketing manager’s role is big. It stretches from research to project management and more. Therefore there are many roles and duties that he or she must deliver on.

Manage Team

A content marketing manager has to manage a team of writers, SEO specialist, video producer and social media manager. Depending of the size of the company some people may take on multiple roles.

It is advisable to have a team doing all of this as managing all of this by one person is very difficult for a brand. Some start-ups may start with only person for content but if you want to run campaigns that have a big impact then you will have to grow your team.

So he/she must also have management and leadership skills to manage a diverse set of people.

Content Strategy

As mentioned above setting a content strategy and plan (both are different) is the role of content marketing manager. This strategy must fit well with the overall marketing strategy of the company (offline marketing) and the business goals.

This requires someone who has experience and far sighted vision for the brand. This is why it is advisable to have someone with a good amount of digital marketing experience as a content manager.

Project Management

Implementing content plan requires project management role. Not everything will go as planned and there might be hurdles like delay in content completion, video production, negative feedback by audience. Content marketing manager has to be quick to make changes in such a case. He or she has to make sure all the projects within the plan are working in coordination.

Cross-functional collaboration

There are many functions a content manager has to work with. In fact there is no department that will not come in contact with content team .They have to work with products team to understand the product/service, collaborate with marketing team to work within branding guidelines and customer insights.

The more people content marketing manager works with, the better will be the content created.

Initiating Marketing Campaigns

Marketing campaigns give a boost to your online audience and increases brand recall.

Content marketing manager proactively launches online marketing campaigns. This could be influencer marketing campaign, email campaign, social media giveaways or live webinars. He is responsible for generating new ideas and testing them out too.

Putting It All Together

Content marketing manager is responsible for making a content strategy and executing it to grow online audience. Their role starts from studying the target audience to developing valuable and relevant content for them.

For this they manage a diverse set of team and collaborate with almost all functions to come up with content that converts visitors into leads and customers.

Why Hire a B2B Content Marketing Agency in 2018

Posted on May 22, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

B2B businesses are excessively talking about the need for a content marketing agency today. Hiring a content marketing agency is like having a support for your in-house team. They extend your resources and help you save time to focus on other activities.

Here are some important reasons why you need to hire a B2B content marketing agency in 2018:

1. Limited Internal Resources

One of the most important reasons to look at hiring a content marketing agency is limited internal resources. Most companies have a small content marketing team, who while being highly qualified don’t have enough time to prepare and execute a comprehensive content marketing approach. The content marketing agency helps to fill these gaps.

2. Sharing Your Story

Most B2B owners know that they do not have an interesting story. But not sharing the story at all gives these B2B businesses an impersonal, boring, and functional image. A content marketing agency focuses on the story you have and shapes it into an appropriate marketing strategy. It allows you to connect with your target audience keeping their perspective in mind.

Specialists at a content marketing agency understand what communication appeals to the target audience. They explain how your services can offer solutions to make their lives simpler. With the right story and right marketing strategy, you carve your own niche and establish a relationship with the people.

3. A Team of Specialists

Words play an important role in painting a picture of your business. Even if you offer something boring, content marketing experts have the acumen to prepare it interestingly.

When you hire a content marketing agency, you work with a team of specialists who are skilled in a particular area. They are constantly involved in the task of creating content and understand the target audience’s expectations well.

4. Produce More Content

Content marketing today means constantly churning high-quality blogs and articles. Small B2B teams cannot keep up with the pace of content development required to meet industry demands.

A content marketing partner not only assists you with the preparation of a suitable strategy for your brand. It decides on the types of content you require to reach your target audience. Finally, it also produces this content for you in your voice creating a dialogue with the audience.

5. Updated with the Current Trends

When working with an agency, you are certain that the experts are aware of the latest marketing trends. Internal content marketing professionals have a knowhow of what’s happening in the industry.

Agency specialists, on the other hand, also understand what’s working in different industries with increased exposure. They work on client campaigns on a regular basis. They understand the pros and cons of every tool that is implemented and only choose to use the best.

6. Vendor Relationships

For the success of a comprehensive B2B content marketing strategy, it is vital to use different channels, software, and tools. This way campaigns produce the right results. Owing to their nature of work, content marketing agencies have ongoing relationships with different vendors.

When a company hires a content marketing agency, it can leverage from the bonds that these agencies have with third-party vendors. Establishing connections with several different types of vendors on its own can be difficult, especially for a B2B small business.

7. Cost-Effectiveness

This may sound contradictory but is true. Establishing an internal content marketing team will require employees with various skills. It will also require subscriptions for different software for campaign management.

Even if you hire the various positions at entry level, you will be spending much more than what you would with an agency. Therefore, when you compare salary costs with retainer fees, you will definitely want to pay the retainer fees.

8. Lead Generation

Last but not least, B2B content marketing agencies help to drive and track leads. They concentrate on every lead that is generated and ensure that you do not miss out any. They have the right software to measure deliverables and map the output they have reaped from different efforts.

Hiring a B2B content marketing agency is advisable for most B2B firms today. It eases out the process of creating content allowing in-house teams to focus more on sales and customer service. Firms can focus on their growth projections and improve revenue goals without hiring specialist employees for these fields.

Get Ready for Voice Search Revolution

Posted on May 21, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

Imagine shopping for grocery, cooking and watering your garden all at the same time. With voice search and voice command technology this is absolutely possible today.

Voice search is simply searching the web by speaking to a device instead of typing it out. You may have already used this technology in your android phone while searching Google or in Google keyboard to convert speech to text in WhatsApp .In fact Location World estimates that 2 in 5 adults use voice search once daily.

Here are some statistics on voice search to get you up to date on how people are talking (or will be talking) to devices:

20 % of queries on Google mobile app and on Android devices were voice searches back in 2016 (Google)
Voice search will be 50% of total searches by 2020 (ComScore)
About 30% of all searches will be done without a screen by 2020, (Gartner)
There will be an estimated 21.4 million smart speakers in the US by 2020
As of January 2018, there were an estimated one billion voice searches per month (Alpine.AI)
1 in 4 shoppers used voice assistants in their holiday shopping during the 2017 season (CTA)
35.8% of millennials already use voice-enabled digital assistants at least once a month (eMarketer)

The rise of Voice Search

It is clear from the statistics that voice search is gaining momentum and will be at its peak by 2020. Sales of smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home are skyrocketing. Echo Dot was the best selling product on Amazon for the holiday season of 2018.

Even without the statistics it is easy to anticipate that voice search will increase. We humans can speak 3x times faster than we can write. It also allows people to multitask while they are driving, cooking or doing household chores.

This is great for millennials who are hard pressed for time and like to multi-task. But this is also extremely convenient for older generation who will prefer speaking to typing it out. For example, it would be really easy for senior citizens to tell virtual assistants to order medicine rather than going out and getting it.

Although, only 10% of baby boomers use voice search compared to 35% of millennials, the habit will catch up soon with every generation because of voice as more natural communication channel.

This does not however mean that text search will completely fade off any time soon. There are some limitations to voice search because of which visual results will always have its own share.

Limitations of Voice Search

Users don’t always want one best answer

Voice search gives only one best answer always. But users are sometimes looking for options rather than one best result. Consider shopping for shoes on Amazon. You would definitely like to see a few options before telling Alexa to place an order.

As of now voice search results seem best for day to day transactional and informational searches. Until there is a way to overcome this limitation, users will prefer to screen to shop for products and services.

Voice search does not give visual information

What about ‘How to’ searches? Some information is best absorbed visually rather than auditorily. You would like to see how to bake a cake rather than hear it. This is why Google has started ranking videos and images over text for ‘How to’ searches wherever possible.

Users cannot surf the Internet

Surfing the internet is an experience in itself. Some people do this to learn about interesting things or pass their time. It is an interesting place where you can stumble upon something unexpected and new. This again cannot be replaced by voice results.

For the purpose of research and in-depth learning too, text is better. You can re-read the article at your own pace while making mental models of what is being read.

Voice search doesn’t give Privacy

Nobody will be comfortable with Google announcing their search results to the whole house every time. This limitation can be overcome by smart earphones, but until then people will prefer visual results on their private screens.

How does voice search work?

The groundbreaking part about voice search is the speech recognition technology. Search ability is nothing new and we have been searching the internet for many years. Voice search is powered by the same search engine but by converting voice into text.

The interesting part is that machines can now talk and understand like humans. Human communication is unique on this planet and there are many layers to our communication.

There are so many dialects, nuances and intricacies to our language that we are surprised when a machine answers us correctly just like a human.

Just the tone of ‘everything is fine’ said by a woman can give you an idea that nothing is fine, even though she is saying completely the opposite.

For machines to learn language, various fields of computing, linguistics, mathematics and engineering have had to come together. Machines must pick up on the right sound, convert it into bits and bytes and recognize them as meaningful data. This is done through several processes like

Language modelling -likelihood of certain words following others is used to improve accuracy

Artificial neural networks – network models that can recognize sound pattern after extensive training

Sound Matching – Simple matching of words based on memory of sounds

Pattern and Feature analysis – where each word is broken down into bits and recognized from its key features like vowels or syllables

Major Players In Voice Search

IBM was probably one of the first players to jump into voice recognition and showcased Shoebox, a machine understood up to 16 words, at the 1962 Seattle’s World Fair.

Voice search technology had a breakthrough in 1970 when Lenny Baum invented the ‘The Hidden Markov Modelling (HMM)’ approach to speech recognition. IBM continued to better itself using this model to improve speech recognition of more words.

Microsoft and IBM continued to launch software with voice recognition technology but most of us probably remember Google’s voice search app for iPhone and then Apple’s virtual assistant Siri in 2011.

Today Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Apple are major players in voice search. Each has its own advantages to play upon. Google has undoubtedly the best search results for Google Assistant while Amazon is a master of customer behaviour and data.

All are competing fiercely to be the market leader in speech and voice recognition market which is estimated to be worth $18.03 billion by 2023. Microsoft is collecting huge amount of data to teach its AI.

They have rented apartments in New York to pick up on sounds and dialects of languages. The idea is to be able to distinguish train noise, traffic and sirens from human voice.

Currently China’s search engine, Baidu, is at the top with 96% word accuracy. Google Now, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft Cortana are close at 95% accuracy.

Amazon Alexa too is almost on the same mark plus it has over 30,000 apps or ‘skills’ with 5000 new skills added every 100 days.

Industry experts are eying the 99% accuracy rate and say that use of voice search will explode at this level. With the current level of research and money that is going into voice recognition technology that time is not far.

Voice search changes everything

Voice search changes a lot for businesses. All the rules of advertising, online shopping and digital marketing are going to change for brands.

Advertising and Voice search

Voice search has little to no scope for advertising right now. Even in future customers will likely be annoyed if they hear an ad before getting the result. The visual screen allows marketers to place their ads in various spaces on the screen (banner ads, sidebar, affiliate links etc), but voice medium will not have any such option.

Brands will have to step up their content marketing to be the most helpful answer users are looking for.

Voice Search and Localisation

Mobile voice search are 3x times more likely to be local compared to text search. Hound, a voice query app, noted that more than 22% of information searched fell in the local search category (local restaurants, services, pet shops, ATMs, etc,). This is an opportunity for brick and mortar stores to grab.

Those that optimise for voice search and integrate their delivery channel with online ordering will be able to profit from this technology. We will share more on local voice search optimization in below section.

Voice Search and Buyer’s Journey

Human conversations are very contextual and hence our voice searchs are also going to be same. For example the questions ‘ which is the best speaker’ and ‘ how much is it for?’ are meaningful only when considered together. Without the context of first question the second question will be meaningless.

Virtual assistants also consider data on what apps the user is using and what his browsing history was. For this reason businesses will have to shift their focus from keywords to customer context. Touching the customer at the right time with the right message on the right device will be of essence.

To be found in voice searches companies will have to understand voice search optimization. Let us look what it is and how brands should optimize best for voice.

What is Voice Search Optimization

Voice search optimization is practices that make your content to appear in the voice search result. You must be familiar with keyword targeting for SEO, but how do you optimize for voice search?

Honestly, it is too early to answer this question already. We do not know how virtual assistants are picking results and how they will decide which result to voice in future. Google, Apple and IBM are probably figuring out a way themselves.

Google featured snippet and answer box is the search engine’s way to suggest one best answer for users in text search. Google assistant probably uses similar algorithm to pick a result for voice searches.

For now all we can do is study how people are searching by voice and what results Alexa and Siri are voicing.

A study of Voice Searches so Far

A survey of MindMeld found that 40% of users had started using voice in past six months. But what exactly are people searching for?

Voice searches can be broadly categorised into four buckets which are –

Transactional Searches – “Alexa, buy 2 pizza base”

Informational Searches – “ Google, who was the actress in Happy Days?”

Navigational Searches – “Show me comparison of best phones in Amazon” These searches direct you to other apps.

Voice searches also tend to be more of question phrases. We are more likely to ask “How to bake a cake” than say “cake recipe”. Accordingly most of the voice searches start with ‘How to’, ‘When was’, ‘which’, ‘what’, ‘who’ and ‘why’.

Voice searches are also longer with more number of words and long tail keywords. This will help marketers to go niche in their content and target specific needs of users.

Meditative spotlight found out that 89% of people search for local business on their smartphone once a week. This means that local business optimization will work when it comes to voice search. After years of being dominated by big corporations, local businesses will finally have a level playing field to reach their customers.

Since users are looking for quick solutions around them while multi-tasking, mobile voice search is three times more likely to be local based compared to text search.

So far study of voice searches shows that they are long- tailed, specific, local and dominated by question phrases. Let us now look at what you can do as a business to optimize your site and content for voice search.

How to Optimize for Voice Search

Keep in mind that virtual assistants only give one best answer in voice search. So it’s all about being the relevant answer in different contexts instead of ranking for keywords. It is expected that search engines will consider customer data before suggesting a result. So, the result will not depend on just helpful content but also on user’s location, history and apps he/she is using currently.

Focus on Long Tail Keywords and short, snappy answers

Until now everybody has told you that long form blogs do well. That is about to change with voice search. For transactional and informational queries users will like to listen to a one line answer. For everything that they want to learn on they would prefer visual information in the form of videos or pictures.

Ranking in voice search answer will be about giving one -line answers specific to demographics of the users. It will not be surprising if Google takes in account your business location, customer demographic and site visitor profiles before selecting your answer.

Your optimization for voice search will depend on how well you can understand the user intent and answer it. Use tools like AnswerThePublic to come up with common questions that user can ask on your topic.

Think of all the questions possible about your industry, product or services and answer them in a direct way. This will also make it more likely for you to be at the position 0 or featured snippet in Google.

Even if you do write a long form blog make sure that the answer is at the beginning of the post. You can also mark the main answer in your post so that Google finds it easier to pick. This brings us to the next point.

Schema Markup

Along with content on your page Google also reads your structured data or structured data to understand the relevancy of content. This is HTML tags that go into your site’s source code.

Big search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex have come together to accept a common language of mark-up data that tells them the relevancy of content.

Because of schema mark-up Google is able to display snippets of search results with image of products, reviews and description arranged all neatly.

Though schema markup does not affect your search ranking directly (according to Google), having your information displayed conveniently does have a huge impact on your click through rate.

Also the information on opening hours, directions and reviews when you search for a local business is all because of schema markup. This is important for voice search because when users find you on searching they want to know directions to the store and opening hours etc.

Listing your business in Google My Business is also a great way to be found in local searches. Additionally optimize your content for your area, ‘near me’ and famous landmarks near your store.

Focus on questions

As mentioned above majority of voice searches are questions that start with how, who, what, when and why. Optimizing for voice search therefore means answering these questions in the most helpful way.

Start with studying all the questions your customers have. You may have already done this for your FAQ section. The next step is to turn these questions into blog posts so that search engines can easily find answers. You could also repurpose your existing content to answer voice search queries better.

Optimize for all Search Engines

Google has more than 90% share in text search. So optimizing for search engine essentially means optimising for Google. However, this is not the case with voice search.

Apple, Amazon and IBM have started on a level ground with Google this time and some are even ahead of Google in certain types of searches.

Therefore it is important to understand how Alexa, Siri and Cortana work with voice searches. For example, Alexa only buys product that are marked with ‘Amazon’s Choice’ badge.

Not much information is available on how other search engines work, but as voice search on these platforms rise experts will analyse what makes results heard in voice search.

Ethical Implications

Before we close the topic there are some fears regarding voice search technology that are being raised by thinkers. Although equally dangerous, these fears are not receiving as much attention as issues in Artificial Intelligence or Data Privacy.

The ethical question is this- are we putting our decision making power in the hands of big corporations? Are we being robbed of options in name of convenience?

The idea of Alexa buying grocery for you is not comforting to everyone. It is possible for big corporations to push their own agenda (of profit), by recommending you a sugar loaded cereal that compromises on your health. This technology is perfect to mask the knowledge we need to hear and just feed us the information that conditions our minds.

Then there’s also the issue of data privacy. To optimize voice search for you, voice assistants will have complete access to what you say, do and buy on all devices. It will be an ever-present character in your life that learns more about you every day.

Tying It All Together

Voice search is going to disrupt how brands have been attracting leads and telling stories. This is not just about ranking in voice search but about changing your customer experience altogether. Users are going to expect 100% accuracy from voice recognition software and ready answers to all their queries.

This does mean however that visual content is going to go away. Visuals will always be important considering the fact that it is the most important medium for us to learn new things and connect with others.

Visual media will probably be dominated by videos and images though. Voice search fits in perfectly where the need is informational or the command is transactional.

Voice search market is still at its nascent stage with big players such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon trying to dominate. Only players who perfect their voice recognition and learn from huge amounts of data will become the leader.

As far as impact on businesses is concerned the change is going to be significant. From ad placement to content creation, brands will have to rethink everything they are doing now.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact localization of search and contextual content will level the playing ground between large corporations and local businesses.

To stay relevant and be found by customers, brands must give out the right message at the right time on the right device. This involves answering relevant questions specifically using long tail keywords. Schema markup and local search optimization are also important for voice search optimization.

How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy in 2018

Posted on May 14, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

How do you know what’s the right content strategy for you in this ever-changing digital marketing world?

Google has come a long way from ranking results which are just stuffed with keyword. Also, many brands have proven that ranking content strategy is not about ranking first on Google.

So many start-ups have been successful with email marketing, social media, video content etc. For example, Leadpages grew its subscriber list from 0 to 15,000 within a year mainly from email marketing and tons of helpful content.

There are numerous ways to create and distribute your content. By the time you start implementing your video marketing plan you hear that influencer marketing is the next big thing.

This is precisely why picking a strategy and sticking with it is difficult for most marketers.

Add to this that most topics and niches are overcrowded by now. You will find brands already ranking with great content no matter what your niche is.

So how do you succeed in this challenging scenario? You have to be up to date and ahead of your competition in content marketing.

This is why we have put together a recipe to build a content marketing strategy that’s perfect for 2018 in this blog. Here is what you need to include in your strategy.

Remember that strategy for each company may be different but these are the basic ingredients that must be there in your content strategy if you want to succeed today.

Write Insanely Helpful Content

How Google ranks results has changed over the years and will keep changing in future too. There is just one way to make sure that you are ranking for years to come in your niche. And that is to write high quality content that answers reader’s questions.

Think of the pain points your customers face in your industry and create content to solve their problems. The content must be twice as helpful as the number one ranking result.

Even if you are not focusing on search engine it is a good practice to benchmark against the best performing content and then surpass it.

If the number one result on Google gives ‘10 helpful ways to increase sales’? Write ‘21 helpful ways’ instead to attract users.

Is the top content unbeatably good? Shoot a simple video to make the same points and embed in your blog. People (especially millenials) prefer to watch information rather than read it.

Remember there is always something you can do to improve the content already out there.

Write Long Form Content

Longer blogs typically perform better. The sweet spot according to most studies is 2000- 2500 words. However, even posts of up to 4000 words are now doing better in many niches.

Since every topic is overcrowded with content, it is now time to go niche in your topic and write in-depth content. In short write to cover more in narrow topic rather than touching on various topics in your industry.

Write for ‘Best women’s trekking shoes for Himalayan treks’ instead of ‘trekking shoes for women’ and cover everything possible under the narrow topic.

This also makes sure you are targeting long form keywords. Also, readers who fall under your narrow target are more likely to subscribe since you answered exactly what they wanted.

Of course it goes without saying that this level of micro-targeting can only be possible if you have done an in-depth research on your target market.

Use Video Content

2017 has seen a huge jump in visual content consumption. Cisco estimates the video content traffic will be 80% of all internet traffic by 2019.

Given that 4x times more users prefer watching a video rather than reading about a product it makes sense to invest your efforts in video. Live streaming on social media is big today. So is infographics and recorded video for helpful content.

Podcast is also gaining momentum since it allows users to multi task or listen when they are driving. So, simply converting your existing content to video or audio could also get you lot of traffic.

Optimize for Mobile

According to Business to Community nearly 80% of Internet usage will be from mobile in 2018!

That is a huge portion which should flip the way you look at device usage. It primarily means that brands should now start building for mobile and then optimize the content for desktop.

Use AMP pages for better mobile experience, make apps and focus getting share of the mobile screen for a winning content marketing strategy in 2018.

Have a Driving Purpose

This is important in an age where the internet is overflowing with similar looking ‘me too’ content. Being original and having a purpose sets you apart to your target market immediately. People connect with brands that have a cause and value that matches their own.

This is evident in case of the younger population. According to AdWeek, 49% of millennial will seek out brands that align with causes. This is more than any other generation.

Let’s Wrap It Up

Going niche is the best strategy to capture audience that is bombarded with unnecessary information all the time. Give your audience something they looking for and in a format they prefer and you are bound to succeed. Writing long form content which is helpful essentially takes care of this.

Focus efforts on video and mobile screen since that is where most of population is consuming content in 2018

The What, Why and How of Content Marketing:

Posted on May 10, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

Content marketing is disseminating information to your customers in the form of words, images, infographics, videos, and blogs that eventually translates into building customer engagement, trust and establishing a company’s image without writing any sales pitch. Interesting!!

But there is more to it. Content marketing is not a formula; instead, it is an approach which helps you reach your target customers by giving them something that adds value to their existing knowledge base and encourages them to buy.

Today, B2B companies are using nearly 30% of their digital marketing budget in content marketing. It has grown as one of the most influential media of communication between companies and their customers.

Why Content Marketing?

Knowing why you are doing content marketing is very important. While creating workflows, assigning responsibilities, and building a content calendar is an essential activity, but knowing the various reasons behind content marketing is pivotal.

Take a step back and look at the big picture, understand whether your brand needs it or not at first place. If the answer is ‘Yes,’ then what will be its ROI? What additional resources do you need to execute the content marketing?

Begin with the end in mind is the key to content marketing, therefore dive deeper and know why your brand needs content marketing. Some of the reasons are enumerated below:

Create Brand Awareness

When you share content in diverse forms with your consumers, it creates an impact on their minds. Content marketing helps you distribute your varied content on different media and establish your brand identity which is very important for the beginners.

Improve SEO and Traffic:

When you are present where you should be, it has an impact on your SEO and Google rankings. When Google ranking increases, it increases the number of visitors landing on your website. More visitors, eventually mean more business and revenue. Therefore, content marketing plays a vital role in improving search engine ranking and bringing traffic.

Enhance Engagement

When you write better content in the form of blogs, videos, infographics, and emails, it turns customer awareness into something more meaningful. A great content pays the way for more customer participation, helps in building a better relationship that can add an individual’s experience with your brand.

Increase Brand Perception

Building brand perception takes time, and it gets created from various sources. Content marketing is one of them. People gradually learn to identify you from your content, its presentation, tone, and style; that helps you in becoming a brand in the eyes of your consumers.

Helps generate leads

Content marketing is a handy tool in generating a lead when you write engaging content on your website or other social media platforms; it encourages your customer to sign-up to know more about your product and services. Therefore, while the objective of content marketing is to attract your customers, it eventually leads to generating more leads.

Increase Sales/Revenue

When you do content marketing in the right manner, it increases sales. The primary objective of content marketing is not only to convert potential leads into customers but also to retain customers and to maintain them as loyal buyers for future. Your content assists your consumers in deciding to purchase.

Become a Thought Leader

When you write enticing content, share your opinions about pertinent topics, you become a trusted resource. People listen to your thoughts and refer your opinion before they make a buying decision. Therefore, content marketing also helps a marketer emerge as a thought leader.

How is Content Marketing done?

There is no one size fits all when it comes to content marketing, different brands and different company sizes pursue different content marketing strategy. While a consistent presence on social media gives expected results to one brand, blogging, and video marketing fits the nature of other business.

Let us dig deeper to understand how content marketing is done:

B2B Content Marketing types:

Webinars

Nothing can substitute the experience of a live webinar when you want to generate qualifying leads. They are scalable and compelling and demonstrate what you want to communicate with your customers. Although expensive, it speaks about the viability of your product and proves to be a powerful tool for companies in B2B marketing.

Blogs

Come what may, the blog remains as one of the most effective and surest ways to deliver your message to your customer. It adds to customer’s knowledge and assists customer buying behavior. B2B marketers can use blogging to their best of their advantage and generate revenue.

Email

Email marketing brings positive value for B2B marketers. Its biggest benefit is not only the way it gets delivered to the customers but also in it being the best tool for nurturing the lead. Crafting regular emails forms an integral part of content marketing and is one of the most dependable strategies too.

Social media:

Undoubtedly the cheapest and the most consistent result producing platform, which is integral to any content marketing effort is social media. When done thoughtfully and with absolute consistency, social media marketing creates results that no other platform offers.

White Papers

White papers are valuable research and data points that give not only information about the business but also elucidates on industry trends, stats, government regulations, etc. In B2B, the white paper holds their importance and should be considered as a critical element for content marketing.

Infographics

When you want to pass on your message to your customer in a quick form without taking much of his time, infographics are a handy tool. It is entertaining and visually appealing, therefore should form a part of any content marketing effort.

Case Studies

Through case studies, a customer is advocating your brand; you are mentioning how you helped his brand in reaching new heights through various marketing efforts. Such case studies engage customers who have the same pain points, and it inspires them to take help from your company. It is a great approach and should form a part of your content marketing strategy.

Check the video below to get an idea about content marketing methodology

What are the popular B2B Content Marketing tactics?

When you adopt content marketing in your marketing strategy, there are a few tactics which you should know about. Whether you are B2B or B2C, these tactics will make way for your success.

Let us list down the most important ones for you:

Create content that connects with your audience: Everything you create should work towards building your brand and connecting with your customers. The objective should be to reach the target audience and not the largest audience through content marketing.

Deliver value: This is the golden rule, deliver value at every touch point you interact with the customer. Educate, advice, advocate, entertain, inform and inspire your customer at every point to make your content marketing effort fruitful.

While selling, sell tactfully, do not push your customer to buy or load him with a lot of unnecessary information or messages, and don’t just speak for yourself, sell subtly.

Make use of user-generated content: Any content marketing effort is futile if it does not involve the ultimate user. User-generated content is a fantastic way to engage your customers and make them feel valuable.

Different content mix: Do not just stick to one content type, instead create a combination of different content that suits a B2B company and more specifically your brand.

Seek feedback: Feedbacks from your customers help you improve your brand image, therefore make sure that you ask your user to give feedbacks either on your website or through an email.

Optimize and audit your current strategy: When you optimize and monitor your current strategy, you get to know what you were doing wrong or which activity was the most result producing. Therefore, it is an important tactic to monitor and optimize your strategy from time to time.

Plan a distribution strategy: A content distribution strategy is crucial as it brings your content in front of your audience. Therefore, plan a robust and yielding content distribution strategy.

Build relationships: The last but not least content marketing tactic is to focus on building relationships rather than just conversion or revenue. It gives far-reaching results, and building relationship with customers has other notable benefits too.

B2B Content Marketing trends in 2018

The inclusion of Artificial intelligence and virtual reality:

Brands have to embrace AI and VR in their marketing mix else there are all chances that they might lose their customers to their competitors.

Influencer marketing will be on upsurge:

Influencer marketing will move away from the hands of big brands to the smallest level of business; it will spread its wings across all spheres of business.

Original content will top the list:

In 2018 too, nothing will be more important than the creation of original content. The marketer will focus on newer ways to create fresh and unique content to mark their presence.

Personalization and customization will be necessary when marketers will deliver product or service to its consumers in 2018.

Future of B2B Content Marketing:

The future of content marketing is at an all-time high this year and will see a quantum increase in the years to come. A little bit of change in their strategy and marketers will enjoy a host of benefits from their content marketing strategy and will earn more. A few changes that the marketers will have to embrace:

More investment and a higher budget
Increased use of Search Engine Marketing
Explore all social media channels
Communication and documentation of strategy

Tying It All Together

Content marketing is a time taking action, it does not produce results overnight. It might take few months to even a year to see the results of a content marketing strategy. However, the effects can be significant, and it can become your most cost-effective marketing channel.

How Much Does It Cost to Make a Promotional Video

Posted on May 9, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

A promotional video has inherent great worth in it. Those appear genuine as characters in them display real facial expressions and body language.

The dialogue of the characters in the video simply adds meaning and power to the ideas behind the creation of the product. Lending the product a bit of candor, the promotional videos lend credence to the concepts of utilities in the product.

More often than not, promotional videos are most effective in giving detailed product demonstrations. Moreover, the videos have proven their mettle in engaging the attention of the viewers.

As entertainment and educational values are ingrained in them, the videos are great marketing tools.

As the videos are really persuasive, the messages in the products and services stay etched in the minds of the customers forever.

Making a commercial video includes several types of costs.

Let’s make a list of them.

Cost of camera
Selection of location and cost involved
Fees of models or actors
Post production costs

Although the above costs would vary from case to case, there are certain factors that influence the costs. Let’s know them one-by-one.

Script and the idea behind it

“Ideation” or generation of an idea is the most important part of making of a promotional video. For this, a creative script writer could literally cast a magic spell through an interesting script. Usually, a good idea leads to compilation of a good script.

A witty script writer simply transforms the idea to an interesting script. A good script writer could charge between 4000 to 10000 rupees. For a commercial video, a good script is the first stepping-stone for making a successful commercial video.

Shooting of the video project

Cost of transportation

This part of the making of the commercial video is the costliest. It has many things that simply add to the piling of the expenses. Let’s begin with the cost of transportation.

The production houses charge 20 to 30 rupees per kilometer. They could even charge a fixed amount for the same.

Cost of camera

The cost of camera with the operator could cost an additional expense of 20,000 to 30,000 rupees in a day. This amount is applicable for a commercial in a national television.

But if the commercial video is being made for a local television or simply for a cable network, the complete all inclusive costs could come to 30,000 rupees.

Cost of additional equipment

Besides the above, the producer would have to incur additional types of costs, such as charges for track and trolley, chains and jibs, and lights etc.

Actors and models & their fees

The popularity of actors and models plays decisive part in the cost of making promotional videos. When the advertiser makes up his mind to hire popular models and actors, it certainly adds to the cost of video. If the budget for the promotional video is less, the producer could opt to hire new faces in the industry.

While the budding actresses or models would, of course, work for the producer for a paltry sum of five or ten thousand rupees, the fees of the established models or actors could come in huge amounts. Nowadays, successful television actors charge whopping amounts for their roles in the videos.

Post-production expenses

Usually, the making of a video goes through three phases, such as pre-production, production, and post-production. Editing matters the most in the aftermath of production.

The video production companies could charge up to 5000 rupees per hour for editing the video.

In some cities in India, the production companies charge 2000 to 3000 rupees for editing the video. In case the producers include motion graphics or animations, the expenses for editing even could go higher.

2D & 3D Promotional videos- a new dimension in product’s marketing

As new technology is breaking ground, 2D & 3D animation technology helps a lot to showcase products in concise and clear way.

As multi-media and video animation services are now going through a boom time, the animated videos could literally bring revolution in products’ marketing.

Moreover, animation videos are literally wonderful to explain products and concepts or ideas in the marketability of services.

To add to it, the videos are fully entertaining and those have the versatility to deliver the messages to the core audience.

No need to hire models, actors, and select location and props-great advantage in cost

The promotional videos made with the help of 2D and 3D technology have great advantages in the cost of its production. Those are as follows;

The advertisers could create animated videos by completely adhering it to the brand guidelines.
In case of necessity, the advertiser could make such videos without hiring actors and models.
As locations and props add great expenses to the making of promotional videos, those are not even necessary, when videos have the applications of 2D and 3D technology.
Last but not least, the making of 2D and 3D promotional videos could take place completely through in-house productions.

The power of 3D Animated Video- simply unbelievable

The integration of 3d promotional video could integrate an immediate sense of production value as it has proven its mettle for adding a sense of depth and special effects of lighting. With apt movement of camera in 3D technology, the video seems to acquire a new high of professionalism.
The 3D animation not only adds dynamic movement to the video but also makes the video clip colorful with varying compositions. As a result, the transitions in the video could easily catch the attention of the viewers and convince them to buy the products and services.

How to Avoid Common SEO Errors that Hurt Your Rankings

Posted on May 4, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

Everyone talks about how you can increase your ranking in Google. But people rarely tell you the mistakes to avoid.

Entrepreneurs usually have to make the mistake to find out what they have to avoid.

In this post we will tell you the most common SEO errors that you must avoid to rank well in Google and other search engines. So let’s get started!

Low word count

Word count indirectly affects your SEO as a value adding post will be at least 500 words long. In fact, posts with word counts between 2000 to 3000 words are ranking at top of Google.

A study by SerpIQ found that word count of around 2500 was ideal.

Word count of below 500 will not do much for your ranking and hence should be avoided. People will not gain much from such a post and low time spent on your page is considered bad signal by Google.

Long Title

Title tags are important for your SEO because they appear as the clickable link in search result and are the first thing a user sees and judges your site on. Long titles that are above 65 characters will exceed display limit and hurt your click-through rate.

An attractive title that fits in the results space is important to rank on first page. The idea is to strike a balance between a long tailed title and the optimal length of 60-65 characters. Use tools such as To The Web to get a snapshot of how your page will appear in Google search results.

Duplication of Content

Duplication of page content confuses web crawlers as to which page they should rank. This also directs your traffic to two different pages and divides your page authority. You can use Google Tag Assistant to check for any duplication.

Also use canonical tags on your pages. They tell Google which pages to rank in case of identical or duplicate content

Missing Description

Description is the content that appears just below your title in search results. It is the second thing that a user reads after your title and hence is important to get them on your page. Pages missing this critical description will hurt your SEO efforts. As pages on your site increases the possibility of missing description also increases.

Use tools like SEO MozPro to check this regularly and update your meta descriptions.

Server Errors

A server error is a response by your server indicating that it is unable to load the page. Too many server errors can pull down your ranking within a matter of hours. This error could be:

Code 500 – internal server erros

Code 503 service unavailable

Both the errors will close access to your site by humans as well as Google crawlers leading to a significant drop in rankings. A study by Search Engine Land found out that ranking for keywords dropped as server errors increase for a site.

Image Courtesy : https://searchengineland.com/super-fresh-google-index-server-errors-rankings-impacts-230975

Insecure Pages

HTTPS is a protocol that allows secure exchange of user data with the site server. Not having a secure page negatively affects SEO. Two of the most common problem with insecure pages seen on the web are-

-Mixed Content, i.e. having both HTTP and HTTPS content on one page

-HTTPS pages linking to insecure HTTP page.

Your page must not have any insecure content or link to any insecure resource.

Low Quality Links

You must be aware that the quality of link that point to your site affect your ranking. But did you know that the sites you point to are also important. Linking to spammy websites and insecure pages will negatively affect your rankings. Therefore be sure to link to sites with good reputation and domain authority.

Loading Speed

Loading speed directly affects your SEO metrics. Every fraction of second is crucial when it comes to page loading. You can take some measures to decrease your page load time if it is more than 1.5 seconds. Consider browser caching, faster server response time, compressing images and content for faster site experience.

10 Distinct Benefits of Outstream Video Ads

Posted on May 3, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

As digitization steps in with its innumerable benefits, social media has grown by leaps and bounds. At this crucial point of time, marketing strategies are fast evolving new changes that could bring richer dividends.

Out-stream videos are the latest in this trend to bring in a new type of ad format, which would allow the publishers to display their video ads at different places in the content. Such videos appear in text line or in the web-page corners.

Although, out-stream videos have not gained massive popularity, the usage has now increased rapidly. As the publishers felt hurdles in the past in the creation of ads for the users, out-stream videos have brought a new lease of life, which would benefit both users and advertisers.

Let’s know about ten distinct benefits of out-stream videos.

Out-stream Videos ads- most dependable independent units

Out-stream videos work as independent units without becoming introduction to another video. For this, various distinguished publishers such as Mashable and Rolling Stone have begun using out-stream ads through in-read formats. What does it actually mean? Let’s understand.

When someone is going through an article, he or she would be able to watch an auto-play video. When the reader scrolls down the video, it simply leaves his or her area of vision. It also gives the reader another advantage to unmute the video in case he wants to listen.

Highest monetization of sites- a distinct advantage

Out stream ads allow publishers to monetize their sites without pestering the readers, which is a striking advantage. Moreover such ads have the catchy and cool formats with proven utilities to reach middle ground and bestow opportunity on the publishers to monetize their sites.

With these utilities, such videos would become immensely popular in the world of online video advertising in the upcoming years.

Unique positioning of ads in the editorial content – capable of running in any device

Out-stream ads have great innovative formats, which could position the video advertising in the center of the editorial content. Once the reader gets it inside his vision, the video begins playing. But it starts pausing, once it is less than 50% visible.

And it merges continuously back into the web-page as the reader completes viewing the content. The other distinct advantage of such videos is that it could run in every device, browser, and operating system without any problem.

Best usage in mobiles- handy and convenient

As research has shown already, highest number of readers prefers to read content via cell phones, out-stream ads run excellently on the mobile phones, especially on smart-phones.

Normally people spend more time in looking at the videos in their smart-phones, the out-stream videos have proven their efficacy.

Out-stream ads- more contextual and less insidious

As the customers have always felt that such videos appear almost like organic content, those are not invasive and naturally related to content.

It gives the liberty to the readers to view completely or partially and this advantage certainly adds worth to the overall content presentation, while adding value to the information presented in it.

Publishers enjoy out-stream ads the most- popular with brands, bloggers, and traditional media

Nowadays, all types of brands, bloggers, and traditional media have begun using out-stream video. As earlier, the readers were habitually going through grey text, addition of multicolored videos makes the content visual friendly and for this reason, the readers like to stay on the page for longer time.

Out-stream videos add dimension to story-telling- a new dimension to learning

Such videos have altogether added a new dimension to story-telling. It gives the readers alternative ways to explore. Making the information accessible to every learner, who is having problems such as lower reading skills, shorter spans of attention, and vision impairment, such ads have proven their mettle in the world of online advertising.

New way of presenting information- publishers’ delight

As the publishers have forever looked for ways to present information, out-stream videos have proven their worth in this area.

Just think of the online cooking videos, those are really great sources of passive learning. Watching such videos really adds fun as it is sometimes boring to browse a written recipe.

Unique solution for the marketing needs- complete engagement of audience

Out-stream impressions are completely unique as solutions because those do not come attached to any other content. Unlike You Tube ads, which begin even before the commencement of the videos, the out-streamed ads appear alone in the placement of ads in the articles of the websites.

This endows unique benefits on the ads to grab the attention of the audience, while the ads do not interrupt the viewing experience of the readers.

The advertisers have always found that such ads give great opportunities for their marketing needs. They have opined that such ads give them real opportunities to buy video solutions programmatically as those give better satisfaction to users.

Simply speaking, the business houses find the buying experiences of such ads extremely satisfying as their customers feel less disrupted, while they go through the content of the article.

Behavioral targeting-easier by out-stream ads

The out-stream ads enable the publishers to keep a list of videos to meet the rising demands of people, who want to place good but related ads in their content.

This helps the publishers to make the behavioral study of particular group of users and guides them to identify new chunks of essential users.

The following are the three distinct advantages that out-stream videos certainly bestow on the publishers and readers;

Improvement in viewing of a content
Better rate of clicking on the ads
Greater versatility in the placement of ads in the article

As a result more than 70% of advertisers and 77% of the agencies have found the out-stream ads to be uniquely effective and essential for their purposes.

Literally, such videos have brought a halt to search for new formats for making of videos that could enrich their efforts for developing engaging videos.

B2B Website Best Practices to Follow in 2018

Posted on April 30, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

Digital channel in marketing has changed how leads are generated in B2B business. Today it is completely possible to sit back and watch your leads coming to you.

But this is possible only when you have successful website, effective lead page and a content marketing plan that works.

Your website is your digital presence and it is where your leads will come in contact with your business first.

Therefore it’s important that you have website that best projects your brands as well as convert those leads for you

In this blog we will share best practices to follow for your B2B website in 2018.

But first it’s important to understand objectives for your website.

The requirements of a B2B website are very different from a B2C website. For starters, your deals are generally high value meaning that customers spend a substantial amount of time researching on the solution.

The buying cycle is also longer sometimes running into months or even a year!

You should hence assist your customers in their search. The website that adds most value throughout the buying process will be more likely to convert the lead.

What kind of a site will add value throughout the process? Read on to know.

Target your Site

Your website must be as targeted as your marketing strategy. Who do you want to serve in the market? Is it small business or big corporates?

The next step would be research everything about your target audience. You must have an average visitor’s expectation from your website and even the solutions they are looking for.

Aiia, which is into promotional products, does this beautifully by speaking directly to their customer’s emotion. This is possible only when you know your audience intimately.

You must design your site for your audience and write in the language they speak. Every industry has its own lingo and jargon.

Speaking in that language will tell your readers that you understand them and have experience in their industry.

Automate Processes

A good website in 2018 must take advantage of automation available today. You can automate email campaigns right from collecting mail IDs to nurturing your mailing list with an email campaign. Use Auto-responders to confirm visitor actions like sighing up for a webinar or eBook.

A lot of queries can be resolved through an FAQ section or a chatbot. Use of chatbots lowers customer care calls and also resolves customer objections with ease.

In fact according to study by Nuance Enterprise, 75% of customers said they find self-servicing as a convenient way. More customers prefer instant chat based solutions over calling a company executive.

Personalize Experience

With tools such as ConvertKit, Mail Chimp and Optimizely you can personalize your website for each client who visits your website.

The first step is to collect data on how visitors are interacting with your website. Next is to identify segments of visitors and how they differ from each other.

For a B2B website the segments could be region, past purchases, industry and buying stage. Not all information will be available with you but you can use cookies and other tools to identify which category your visitors falls in.

Tools such as Hubspot and Smart Content allow you to create smart lists for your website. For example, all visitors from Asia-Pacific will be shown a different homepage image.

ConvertKit allows you to take specific action based on visitor event. For eg, it adds all the first time visitors to remarketing ad list automatically.

Make it Intuitive

There are so many decisions to make when it comes to design. Design affects how your brand is perceived, your customer experience and even your conversion rates. Always strive for a website that is intuitive and easy to understand.

Above picture is an example of how your website should NOT be. The visitor has no way to know where he is on the site, there is information load and too many call to actions. Keep the following in point in B2B website design:

Show the navigation path (also known as breadcrumb) at the top of your page. It tells the user how they landed on the page
Limit call to action to one or two
Videos have become very popular but they can also be distracting sometimes. Use manual pay video and avoid autoplay
Highlight selected menu option
Have thank you pages and action confirmation page like “thank you for signing up”
Keep your website design consistent on all pages. Different colors and fonts can cause confusion in visitor’s minds.

Keep Improving

Lastly, maintaining a high converting website is a continuous process. Just implementing the above practices and forgetting about it is not going to make a huge difference in the leads you collect.

For true transformation you must continuously test what is working and what isn’t. Improve something every day and you will soon see that your website can be your biggest source of leads and revenue.

In the fast changing digital world you cannot afford to stop working on your website.