If you’re targeting other businesses, the best way to get their attention is through the channel that matters most to them: email. The trick is to rise above the other emails cluttering your prospect’s inbox. Here are three ways to do just that.

Create Smart Subject Lines

Compose short subject lines no longer than about 50 characters. Employ humor, personalization, flattery, controversy, metrics or simplicity to grab your reader’s attention. Avoid the word “free” to prevent setting off spam filters, as well as corny catchphrases, which could be a turnoff.

Always create honest headlines. The last thing you need is to entice readers to open your email only to disappoint them with irrelevant content inside. There’s no quicker way to lose subscribers.

Clean Your Email List

Using email as a lead generation tactic is a case of quality over quantity. It doesn’t matter how lengthy your email list is if it’s full of outdated or irrelevant addresses. Do what you can to clean your list and thus prevent bounces and blocks. If you acquire email addresses from a third party, ask about data cleansing and enrichment before you buy.

Optimize for Mobile Users

Professionals are increasingly turning to their mobile devices for productivity on the go. To make sure you’re reaching this audience, format your emails so they’re easy to read on smaller smartphone and tablet screens. This includes making click-through buttons large and colorful so users don’t have to zoom in, scroll down or rotate the device to take action. Anything you can do to simplify the experience increases your chances of getting noticed.

If you want to learn more about composing emails for lead generation purposes, contact SocialTract to see how we can help.

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Appeal to Your Target Audience

If you only produce content with a broad scope, you miss the chance to appeal strongly to a small target market. Articles about specific places or life experiences may not be universal, but the few people it applies to are more likely to relate and therefore share your content.

Make It Personal

People love quizzes and surveys about them. Interactive content is shareable because once someone takes a quiz, they want to share and compare results with their friends.

List Content

Numbered lists are easier to scan than blocks of text. By stating the number of tips, facts or stats in your headline, you let readers know what they’re getting into, increasing the chance of clicks and shares.

Pick Worthy Images

Posts with pictures garner far more attention than those without. Pick relevant images to accompany articles, and you’ll encourage clicks and shares. If you include graphs, charts and other original images, watermark them to ensure proper attribution.

Test Potential Headlines

Media giants such as Upworthy and Buzzfeed compose up to 25 headlines for a single article before settling on a favorite. Sometimes they even publish two or three headlines with the same article and scrap the least-shared headlines after one week.

You can copy this method by writing a few headlines and passing them around the office. Select a winner based on the headlines that catch people’s attention first.

Make sure the headline you publish shares crucial information. A few years back, the “proven” approach was to write misleading or enticing headlines to garner clicks through curiosity alone. This tactic isn’t as powerful today; readers have become more aware of the cheap trick and won’t click to avoid feeling duped.

If you need help creating shareable content on social media, contact SocialTract to learn more.

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While you need to search out prospects on LinkedIn, the first and most important step is to set up a powerful profile. Use these tips to help make a positive first impression on LinkedIn.

• Upload a profile picture – Your name and picture are the main factors people see when interacting with you on LinkedIn. Choose a quality, professional image of yourself to include with your profile.
• Create a professional headline –  This is the 120-character tagline right below your title and company name. The professional headline is optional, so many users miss the chance to incorporate proper keywords in this section.
• Fill out the experience section – A lot of businesspeople skip this field, but it gives you 1,000 characters to describe what you do for your company, not to mention plant a few keywords to make your profile more searchable.
• Make the most of the background summary field – You have 2,000 characters to expound on your background. Keep the description customer-centric and make the benefits you offer crystal clear.
• Dump keywords into the interests section – Found at the very bottom of your profile under “additional information,” the section for interests is the perfect place to paste the keyword list you use for SEO. Separate each one with a comma to make the words searchable. You can also include personal interests in this section, such as biking, hiking and yoga.

By using the right keywords in each of these sections, finding potential customers is easier than ever because your profile shows up in searches. Remember not to stuff keywords; descriptions should read naturally.

If you don’t have the time or expertise to find potential customers on LinkedIn, contact SocialTract for more help.

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Take Always’ “Like a Girl” campaign. The video has nearly 60 million views less than one year after being published, supercharging loyalty and brand awareness in the process. That’s the kind of success you can tap into by shifting your focus to storytelling.

Unite Your Audience

Want to be more effective at storytelling? Follow these tips.

The first key is to pinpoint something your audience thinks is worth watching and sharing. Give it meaning by playing out the story in the lives of relatable figures, and then summarize the takeaway. Finally, give your audience a way to address the takeaway in their own lives.

The Always brand did just that. They took a popular phrase everyone takes for granted and took its real meaning apart by interviewing men and women, boys and girls. The result was a highly emotional response that triggers viewers to share the message as an act of defiance against the phrase “like a girl.”

Make Your Audience the Hero

Gone are the days when the audience could be painted as a damsel in distress as the brand swooped in with its miracle product to save the day. It’s more effective today to empower the audience with slogans like Nike’s “Just Do It” and Apple’s “Think Different.”

Embody Your Story

Once you start down a path, don’t switch gears or you’ll destroy the progress you’ve made. For instance, what if Always posted a commercial that victimizes women following its powerful “Like a Girl” campaign? Social media would likely be up in arms. Once you start telling stories, live them every day to preserve your authenticity.

If you don’t have the time or expertise to build brand awareness through storytelling, contact SocialTract to see how we can help.

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Business Goals

You can’t strategize to accomplish anything if you don’t know what you want to accomplish. Assess your company’s needs and decide how social media can help you reach them. Examples include increasing brand awareness, generating leads and retaining customers.

Marketing Objectives

This is when you make your goals more specific. How many leads do you want to generate and on what time frame? Your objectives should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.

Ideal Customer Profile

When you know your target demographic — age, income, occupation, motivations, etc. — you can market the right content to the right people at the right time and in the right place.

Competitor Profiles

Compile a list of three to five main competitors. Find them online and analyze their content marketing strategy, including type and number of posts, time of day posting, and amount of followers. Implement those tactics that appear to garner the most engagement.

Accounts on the Proper Channels

Find out which platform(s) your ideal customer uses and foster your presence there. This prevents you from wasting energy in the wrong place.

Content Marketing Strategy

All successful strategies define the type of content to post, including text, images, links or videos, depending on the channel. It then pinpoints when to post. Frequency and time of day come into play here. Both content marketing strategy components require some trial and error.

Budget

Consider the tools you need to meet your marketing objectives, which may include social media monitoring, email marketing, CRM, graphic design, video production and advertising. Then allocate a budget based on these strategies.

Responsibilities

Assign members of your team to different tasks. When everyone knows who’s responsible for what, productivity increases and redundancy diminishes.

If you don’t have the time or expertise to build a social media marketing strategy, contact SocialTract to see how we can help.

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This makes one thing clear: Images are instrumental in garnering engagement and shares from your followers. Of course, not all images are created equal. Here’s a guide for knowing which images to choose for the most successful content marketing campaign.

• Stock photos – Sometimes all you need is a bright visual to catch your reader’s eye. In this case, stock images are a smart option if you don’t have the luxury of an in-house creative team to produce images for you. Some stock photo sites charge for access to their image database, but the extra attention your content garners is worth it.
• Screenshots – If you post about using software, it’s much easier to demonstrate what you mean with screenshots. Take time to capture your screen at key points and publish the images with your content.
• Infographics – It’s easier to read facts and figures when they’re published as a visually pleasing infographic.
• Data visualization – Are you trying to convey statistics from a recent study? Publish the findings with succinct charts and graphs to help readers visualize the information.
• Comics and cartoons – Lighthearted drawings could be exactly what you need to set a casual mood before delving into a specific post. Comics entertain and make your content more memorable.
• Memes –Find a picture and customize it with text for a meme that perfectly fits the context of your post.

No matter what type of image you choose to accompany your content marketing efforts, make sure it’s relevant. Never use an image just for the sake of having one.

If you don’t have the time or expertise to find the right images for your content marketing efforts, please contact SocialTract to see how we can help.

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Invite Customers to Follow You

Announce your social media presence on all marketing materials, including your website, emails, business cards and newsletters. Link your accounts together so if a customer follows you on Facebook, they’ll see you have a Twitter account as well. This also makes it easier to post to multiple channels at once.

Don’t Go Overboard

With all your accounts set up, you may be eager to start posting every hour on the hour, but resist the urge. Followers see excessive posts as spam and will become annoyed with you. You’ll lose followers and customers if you overpost, but you’ll be forgotten if you underpost. The trick is to strike the perfect balance between the two.

Offer Value

People don’t follow you on social media to hear advertisements for your products; they follow hoping you’ll post useful facts, solutions to their problems and entertaining content. Yes, you should keep your followers informed of your latest offerings, but become a thought leader by offering value and you’ll prove yourself a go-to source in your industry.

Open a Dialogue with Customers

Want to make your business feel more human? Respond to questions and comments on your posts. Always remain professional, especially when dealing with complaints, and make your responses personal.

Keep It Up

Your social media marketing efforts will only work if you stay involved. Dropping out, even for a month or two, could give your competition enough time to drown you out by the time you jump back in. Customers might even assume you’ve left altogether and unfollow you when clearing out their cluttered accounts.

If you don’t have time to spend on social media marketing, don’t get discouraged! SocialTract is here to help maximize your social media presence. Contact us today to learn more.

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Create Business Profile Pages

Put your best foot forward and set up review pages on top reviewing sites, including Yelp, Google and FourSquare, as well as sites specific to your industry. Include contact info, business hours and photographs to flesh out the page since an empty profile could turn off some prospects.

Ask for Reviews

With your profiles set up, anyone can visit and write a review. Bolster the number of positive reviews you receive by asking loyal clients to write one for you. Whether you ask in person, via email or with a link, the best time to ask is immediately after your loyal customer makes a purchase, while the positive experience is still fresh in their mind.

The fact is many people are only inclined to write a review when they’re angry about a negative experience. It’s important to ask for positive feedback from loyal patrons to ensure your review profiles don’t have more negative feedback than positive. Satisfied customers are usually happy to write about good experience; they just may not think to do so without an invitation.

Follow Up

Personal thank you cards to regular customers who leave positive feedback go a long way in strengthening loyalty and keeping your brand front of mind.

Don’t Play the System

Some unscrupulous businesses post fake positive reviews. Others controversially offer discounts or free services to customers if they leave good feedback. These practices could result in a backlash of negative reviews or having your account banned on certain review sites. Playing the system could ruin your reputation, so it’s best to stick to totally honest tactics for garnering positive online customer reviews.

For help setting up your business profile pages, contact SocialTract. Our goal is to help further your business by improving your online presence.

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Post the Right Content

You may run out of fresh ideas to post within a week of joining social media. But why go it alone when you have a vast resource to draw from? Use the Internet to the fullest and you’ll find an endless supply of sharable articles, photos and quotes.

For example, simply enter keywords into a social media monitoring tool and gain access to great sharable content. You can also subscribe to industry blogs or research influencers to create a community. With these social media management tips, you’ll never run out of things to share!

Manage Your Community

The same monitoring tools that reveal sharable content also help you uncover advocates of your brand. By taking time to segment community members into different categories, you can focus the brunt of your efforts on social media users who are most likely to respond and grant you the return on investment you’re looking for.

Social media channels also deserve different amounts of attention. You may find the most customer engagement comes from Twitter. This means you shouldn’t spend half your social media management time bolstering your Facebook presence. Maximize engagements on the channel that seems to work best instead of spending endless hours trying to perfect your presence everywhere.

Manage Your Reputation

Rumors escalate quickly on social media. If your brand is shown in a negative light by one commenter, it could snowball to devastating proportions before you even notice. Social media monitoring tools can’t prevent negative comments, but they can bring them to light so you can proactively join the conversation and nip negativity in the bud.

If you don’t have the time or expertise to engage in social media management, hand off the duties to SocialTract. We can help your brand expand and garner new followers across different social media channels.

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The purpose of developing of a marketing strategy is to effectively allocate your time, money, people and other resources to reach your goals. If you want a successful strategy, be sure to implement these five key points.

Developing a Successful Marketing Strategy

• Define your target segments – Segmenting your market is useful because it lets you create different experiences for different groups of customers. Rather than dividing your market by inconsequential demographics such as age, gender and income, make segments based on variables that predict profitable customer behavior, such as Internet profile, media usage, lifestyle and purchasing behavior.
• Tailor offers to your target segments – Based on your knowledge of each segment’s needs, you can tailor your marketing strategy to deliver a different message to each one. In practice, you may not be able to afford a totally customized experience for every segment, but remember, the more your message matches an individual customer’s needs, the more successful your strategy will be.
• Make your product or service unique – Every industry has competition, but by offering something unique, you become sought after for your ability to satisfy an unmet need. This is more important than beating a competitor’s low price.Imagine what would happen if your business disappeared overnight. Would your customers be sad? Would they find it difficult to take their business elsewhere? You want that answer to be a resounding “yes.”
• Anticipate the future – Change happens all the time, from markets and customer needs to distribution channels and competitors’ offerings. The most successful marketing strategies plan for the future and design company offerings accordingly.
• Be SWOT aligned – This means you take your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats into account, focusing your marketing strategy on your company’s competitive advantages and avoiding the effects of your relative weaknesses. This helps you target which segments you’re better able to compete in.

Strengthen your marketing strategy. Reach new levels of success. Contact SocialTract for help.

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