Marketing Methods And The Merit Of Earned Media
Let’s be honest: you want to see your business’s name on the news, but you don’t want to have to pay to get there. After all, intentional ads are all well and good, but journalistic attention is far more likely to bring in the leads you can actually convert, right?
We understand. While owned media and paid media certainly offer their own benefits and have their own place within a multifaceted marketing strategy, there’s another ultimate form of media that brands are constantly chasing after… and possibly without even knowing its name.
Specifically, we’re referring to earned media.
The Ins-and-Outs of Earned Media
Simply put, “earned media” is any kind of publicity you and/or your brand receives without having to create or pay for it on your own. In other words, that five-star Yelp review? That public praise you were tagged in on Facebook? A passing recommendation of your business from one friend to another by word of mouth?
Those are all examples of earned media.
What’s more, earned media is becoming increasingly commonplace given the continual broadening of the internet, social media platforms, and the overarching globalization of today’s market.
And for you, that means more opportunities to convert customers. In fact, not only do 83% of online audiences trust their peers’ digital recommendations more than that of advertisers’, but “25-40% of all traffic and lead generation comes from earned media,” as reported by Newswire.
How Earned Media Is Earned
“Great,” you may be thinking. “Earned media sounds fantastic but how do I, well, earn it?”
Allow us to present you with a few key methods:
- Develop Exciting Content — When you have cohesive, catchy, and reliable content to share with your audience, chances are they’ll want to share it to their own stories and with their own friends.Specifically, “shareable content tends to be either really useful or really funny, and in the form of a list, infographic, or video,” as suggested by Hubspot. Whether you’re taking a public stand on an issue, unveiling a new innovative product, or simply rebranding for the coming year, you’ll always have the opportunity to develop increasingly exciting content.
- Engage Your Audience — While content provides you with a polished brand presence from the outside, developing your leads from the inside via engagement is what will garner trust.By responding to and interacting with your audience on your website and social media platforms, you can further build a positive brand reputation that is worthy of more attention. In some cases, this may also include capturing the attention of influencers. Beware, however, as the trick is figuring out how to gain the influencer’s endorsement without handing over a significant sum of money.
- Attend Live Events — By attending events that are relevant to your brand and industry, you can provide yourself with the opportunity to more literally and physically interact with potential leads.Try posting photos and videos to your Instagram story in real-time, tagging on-site advocates and attendees, spotlighting your company culture, and generally putting a face to your overall brand name. The more personalized you can make your brand, the more likely your audience is to trust you, gravitate toward you, and pull their network along with them.
Of course, these three methods aren’t necessarily the end-all-be-all for any one business. But they’re three distinct ways of building your brand’s voice and angling it in a way that individuals are more likely to take note of you.
Earning Made Easy
Developing a strategy for earned media is as helpful as it is challenging. After all, when you’ve effectively earned public attention without spending so much as a dime, you know your overall business is generating both effective products/services and an authentic presence.
The obstacle, though, is determining how to get there.
“When asked to identify the top three biggest challenges in implementing an earned media strategy,” Cision explained, “60 percent of marketing/communications professionals chose identifying and connecting with key influencers, 52 percent chose measuring financial impact of programs/prove ROI and 42 percent chose creating compelling content.”
But don’t worry — before you begin sweating over the small details, we want to remind you that you never have to develop, implement, or coordinate such a strategy on your own.
Not when you have Mad Men Marketing on your side, at least.
Our team understands that your focus should be trained solely on your existing responsibilities as a leader and entrepreneur. Thus, our services are specifically designed to offer you more than mere media management; namely, we provide creative digital campaigns, social media strategies, research-driven results, and more!
So, are you ready to interact? If so, reach out to Mad Men Marketing today by calling 904-355-1766.
The Model You’re Missing Out On: It’s Time To Factor In Freemium
Filing Through The Freemium Facts
The math is simple: Free Content + Premium Content = The Freemium Model.
In other words, freemium content utilizes a two-tiered conversion strategy aimed at targeting new leads with free content and/or services. This is because, by offering your audience access to your product with no strings attached, you can continually build trust with them — thereby optimizing your ability to retain their loyalty long-term.
What’s more, once they’ve gotten a taste for your free content, the key is to pique their interest with an enhanced or expanded version of those products, services, or content available only when they take the next step with their wallet.
“Because free features are a potent marketing tool, the model allows a new venture to scale up and attract a user base without expending resources on costly ad campaigns or a traditional sales force,” as explained by the Harvard Business Review.
In other words, freemium content is all about strategically dangling the carrot in front of your audiences’ noses in an effort to lower your overall customer acquisition cost (CAC).
Finding Today’s Freemium Models
“Successful freemium apps offer continuously evolving content or services to provide value to users and to encourage engagement and monetization,” Apple reports on their App Store website. “Engaged users sometimes move quickly through content, and planning and resources are required to keep the pipeline full.”
Thus, one prime example of a freemium model in today’s market would be that of Spotify.
Providing users with a wide, nearly unlimited library of music and podcasts across all genres and industries, Spotify is arguably one of the most widely accessed music streaming apps across the globe today.
Of course, you can always use Spotify for free, in which case you’re provided with the same general services — like content access, discovery tools, playlist creation capabilities, and even music blacklisting options — as with Spotify Premium.
The drawbacks? Users can’t endlessly skip songs, download content to listen to offline, avoid annoying ads, or further customize their unique Spotify algorithms.
They can, however, do all of those things with Spotify Premium — which makes it entirely unsurprising that it has over 155 million paying subscribers today.
Fitting Freemium Into Your Marketing Plan
If freemium sounds like a fresh and flexible new model for your business, the only question, then, is how best to effectively integrate it into your marketing strategy.
After all, if you’re attracting plenty of new leads but are finding that few — if any — are paying for your premium services, you may be offering too much at the basic level, thereby dampening the allure of your higher-end product(s).
On the other hand, if you’re not attracting any new users at all, it’s time to reconsider what other boosts you can give to your basic offerings.
But don’t worry, if you’re struggling to find the best balance for your business, you don’t have to continue taking shots in the dark.
Here at Mad Men Marketing, we recognize that freemium content offers an excellent avenue for interacting with your audience, as opposed to interrupting them and consequently chasing them away. That’s why our team specializes in designing and developing a strategy in accordance with your business’s unique needs and goals — because, at the end of the day, conversion is key.
Effective freemium strategies are not far out of reach. To learn more about how our team can optimize your marketing model, contact Mad Men Marketing today by calling 904-355-1766!
A Blog About Blogging
How Can A Blog Impact My SEO?
Simply put, maintaining an up-to-date blog allows you to boost your search engine optimization in that, when you offer relevant information and answers, search engines will be more likely to position you higher up on their results pages.
In other words, when a customer searches a specific question on Google, the businesses that offer the most “optimized” blogs with regard to the answer will be the first to appear — and thus the most likely to be clicked on first.
In fact, research conducted by Demand Metric found that businesses who regularly blog produced, on average, 67% more leads per month.
So not only will a proper blogging strategy enhance your overall credibility from the viewpoint of the customer, but by effectively placing inbound hyperlinks and writing a persuasive call to action, you can also keep them in your sales funnel and guide them down the path to full conversion.
How Do I Optimize A Blog For SEO?
When considering Google’s ever-changing algorithms and the mountain of information available with regard to SEO, we understand that parsing through it all and finding the blog-specific bits can be challenging.
That’s why we’re here to help you with three quick tips to get you started:
The Key Is In The Word
Begin by picking one or two words, terms, or phrases that you would like associated with your business or blog. If you want to be a result when someone types in “air quality,” for example, that term should be one of your keywords.
Be sure to use your chosen keywords in your blog title, meta description, and in the body paragraphs. That being said, also be sure not to use “keyword stuffing” — basically, don’t choose more than two or three keywords and barrage your readers with them — and also make sure to use your chosen words in a coherent sentence.
How Much You Should Talk, Talk, Talk
WordPress reports that, “as a rule of thumb, blog posts should be at least 300 words to appear high in search engine results.” Meanwhile, the average length of a blog post has grown in recent years. A study conducted by SEMRush found that articles less than 3,000 words were not only three times more likely to get high traffic volumes, but they were also four times more likely to get shared.
Of course, that’s a pretty big gap from 300 words to 3,000 words. On average, we recommend keeping your long-form blog posts somewhere around 500 to 1,000 words maximum, with shorter blogs ranging from 300 to 500 words. Plus, remember that with the modern takeover of social media, audiences tend to have shorter attention spans.
Why Stop With Words?
Did you know research indicates that the majority of the human brain is dedicated to processing visual information, both directly and indirectly? Thus, by embedding visual content — be it videos, images, graphs, or something else — your audience will not only be more likely to become interested in the information, but search engines will also rank you higher. With alt text included, that is.
Think of it this way: the visual content itself is for your audience. Search engines, however, can’t see pictures. That’s why alt text is important — because it’s what tells those engines that there’s content embedded there. Oh, and don’t forget to use your keyword(s) in your alt text, too.
How Do I Know If My Blog Is Being Utilized Effectively?
If you’re already using Google Analytics as a part of your online marketing strategy, you’ll not only be able to automatically see how many people are on the different pages of your blog, but you can also dive into your “Audience Overview” and “Acquisition Overview” reports to get a better idea of how traffic to your pages has changed over time.
Otherwise, you might refer to several different markers of activity, such as…
Total page visits
Impressions and reach
The average length of a reader’s stay
And more
But, if you do not know how to find this information — or worse, you have no idea how to utilize it — you may find it difficult to adjust course and optimize your blog efficiently.
That’s why, here at Mad Men Marketing, we don’t just offer creative copywriters who will craft a cohesive blog for your business — we also offer research specialists who can curate your website’s analytics, thereby helping you to create the most successful and functional blogging strategy for your business.
You don’t have to embark on the journey of blogging and search engine optimization alone. If you’re ready to interact with your customers, contact Mad Men Marketing today by calling 904-355-1766!
How Online Marketing Strategies Are Evolving Into 2021
So if you’re wondering how 2020 has generated lasting changes in the world of online marketing strategies (and how that might impact your plans for 2021), we’ve got you covered.
Brand Activism, Engagement, and Transparency on Social Media
Constructing Conversations and Cultivating Communities
Did you know that, according to Forbes, approximately 62% of millennial consumers have affirmed they’re more likely to become a loyal customer of brands who interact with them on social platforms?
And not only can this form of relationship-building generate immediate lead conversion, but sparking and participating in these online conversations can attract a wider audience as well as allow you to lead the ever-changing narrative of your brand’s story and identity — particularly when it comes to the matter of values and transparency.
After all, with the rise and diffusion of social movements over the internet in the last several years — such as with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement over the summer of 2020 — consumers are becoming more and more invested in whether or not the brands they buy from are taking a stand, be it social, political, or otherwise.
For example, an online survey conducted by Nielsen determined that “a whopping 81% of global respondents feel strongly that companies should help improve the environment,” placing sustainability and environmental activism as top priorities for consumers across various markets.
Social Media? Meet PR
When breaking news emerges and spreads like wildfire or, worse, when your brand or client has a public crisis that needs to be addressed and put out, social media has quickly become one of the most versatile and efficient tools marketers have in their arsenal.
“PR and social media are based on communication, but social media, with its real-time messaging, amplifies your message, allowing PR to be [that much] stronger and more impactful,” Georgetown University reports.
Particularly with the advent of Twitter as a breaking news community and crisis management resource, more and more we’ve seen brands and agencies utilizing social media as their first line of PR defense. And once the 2020 lockdowns and election went into effect, that phenomenon only increased in frequency.
Don’t believe us? All it takes is one glance at any given Twitter account belonging to a politician, regardless of party affiliation. Not only will posting on social media allow them to reach their constituents immediately, but it is also a relatively surefire means of attracting the attention of journalists.
Diving Into the Digital Dynasty
Greater Engagement in E-Commerce
There’s little doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has changed the way consumers buy products, and with the continued spread of the virus, that change is likely here to stay. In particular, e-commerce has grown significantly as lockdowns led people to buy products online that they might have otherwise bought in-store during the long-past “precedented” times.
For example, Adobe Analytics announced that, on Black Friday of 2020, online sales had hit a total of $9 billion, thereby jumping up a whopping 21.6% in the span of one year.
But that’s not where it ends — social media wants in on the game, too. According to Business Insider’s projections, over 76 million Americans will complete a purchase through a social network at least once this year, making up approximately 38.4% of all U.S.-based social network users.
Thus, we recommend getting your online store up and running while the new year is still fresh, or at the very least revamping it to be more accessible via your social media channels.
A Continuation of Digital Developments
Did you know that approximately 60% of the global population were internet users as of April 2020? What’s more, 2020 effectively escalated overall digital traffic as a result of the pandemic, thereby introducing about 346 million new users to the internet over the course of about 12 months.
But wait — there’s more. Statista reported an overall 38% year-over-year increase of home data usage between March 2019 and March 2020, meaning more people than ever before are spending recreational time on the internet at home; thus, marketers can more effectively launch campaigns, catch their attention, and capture leads.
Oh, and don’t forget to make way for new mediums in the digital realm. After all, not everybody on the internet is out to read social updates and watch cat videos. Rather, some people just want to listen.
For instance, today, more and more consumers are using their digital devices to access podcasts for educational and recreational purposes. In March of 2020, Edison Research revealed that, at the time, “more than one-third of Americans age 12 and over (104 Million) are consuming podcasts regularly.” And almost a year later, that volume of digital listeners has likely continued to increase.
And we know, we know — we just launched a lot of numbers and changing information in your direction at once, so why not also let us take the lead in helping you adjust your 2021 strategy accordingly?
Here at Mad Men Marketing, we believe that businesses should not only be rooted in a position of interaction (as opposed to interruption) with their audience, but we, as marketing experts, should also specialize in the ever-fluid nature of online engagement and advertising so as to ensure your long-term success and growth.
That’s why we offer comprehensive digital advertising solutions, creative design, and web development services for clients of any industry or market. If you’re ready to interact with your customers (as opposed to interrupting them), contact Mad Men Marketing today by calling 904-355-1766!
Services, Solutions, and Skills: Why Social Media is Integral to Your Marketing Strategy
After the days of shuffling around your “top friends,” adding music to your profile, and seeing Tom’s face consistently popping up across the platform, it’s hard not to laugh a little as we now watch TikToks, monitor political news on Facebook, and plaster our pet photos across Instagram.
That is to say, social media has grown, hasn’t it? And, in that case, shouldn’t your marketing strategy, too?
Saying “Hello” to Social Media
With the advent of the internet came the inherent opportunity for marketers to embark upon the newest advertising frontier. And as the total amount spent on online advertising grew exponentially by the early 2000s, it was only a matter of time before social media platforms began to dip their toes into the waters of online revenue generation, too.
Today? Social media advertising is expected to amass a total of $39.6 billion by the end of 2020, which is approximately 9.4% higher than that of 2019.
Of course, many entrepreneurs today seeking social media glory (or attention, at the very least) may not necessarily find that surprising, seeing as internet users are reported to spend a daily average of 2 hours and 22 minutes per day on social platforms.
Thus, as social media continues to flourish, so, too, will the opportunities for businesses to attract and advertise to new audiences.
It Pays to be Social
While we may have started by discussing the advertising-specific avenues of social media, it goes without saying that these platforms act as more than mere digital billboards for brands. Rather, they act as the venue by which businesses can attract new individuals, thereby increasing their overall rate of exposure.
In fact, according to a 2020 analysis conducted by Hootsuite, “52% of all online brand discovery still happens in public social feeds,” meaning that, on a year-over-year basis, more and more consumers are turning to social media to feed their spending habits.
In fact, this trend is likely to increase in the near future, judging by the current breakdown of active social media usage by generation:
Baby Boomers — 48.2%
Gen X — 77.5%
Millennials — 90.4%
And that’s before we take Gen Z into account. In short, social media isn’t just another avenue for advertising your particular brand or product (though it is that, too)! It also allows you to interact with your audience, rather than interrupting them, thereby increasing your ability to strengthen your brand identity, monitor and track leads, place yourself at the center of the conversation, and more.
Social Innovation and Integration
By integrating social media into your overall marketing strategy, you’re providing yourself with the opportunity to innovate and explore new methods of audience engagement that you might not otherwise have with other forms of traditional media advertising.
After all, social media may be just one cog in the proverbial marketing machine, but it’s also one that continues to grow and thrive as technology and communities develop.
That’s why, here at Mad Men Marketing, our social media team comes equipped with an arsenal of services, including the ability to help you generate effective paid social media and strategize your organic social media!
We understand that your attention should be rooted in the day-to-day responsibilities of running your business, not reading every little social media comment or message that lights up your push notifications. Thus, we don’t just offer social innovation and management, but we also provide you with monthly analytics to clarify your brand’s return on investment, as well as strategize the effectiveness of future social media campaigns.
If you’re ready to interact with your customers (as opposed to interrupting them), contact Mad Men Marketing today by calling 904-355-1766!