Think about what will happen if a business creates innovative, engaging content? One thing is for sure, it will help build trust among audiences and yield success in the long haul. That's why it's advised that even new businesses should implement a solid content strategy from the very start

This is because you published the kind of content that helps your target audience and convinces them to take action.

But, there is a larger problem to tackle here. In order to achieve the desired results, you must know how to build a content strategy that is going to be successful.

If the content marketing statistics of 2020 are to be believed, 38% of content marketers thought that their content marketing strategy was Average'. Only 9% rated their strategy as Excellent'. The data clearly shows that several businesses are struggling to develop a winning content strategy.

To develop a successful strategy, you are required to set goals, learn about your audience, and map out how a buyer will interact with the content you produce and publish. To help you through this process, we have created this guide.

The Guide to a Creating a Successful Content Strategy

For a better understanding, let us first define content strategy. A content strategy is defined as the ongoing process of converting your business goals and objectives into a plan in which content is used as the primary means to attain those goals.

Let’s take an example to understand the content strategy to simplify things further. Let’s suppose one of your business goals is to increase brand awareness (for the ultimate aim of driving revenue). After you develop a solid understanding of your audience, you can execute this content strategy to reach your goal:

• Focusing on your story: To increase brand awareness, one of the best content topics is your business’s story. Write about where you started, what your beliefs are, how you succeeded, and so on. Because of this content, your potential customers are going to connect with you on a personal level.
• Choosing your channels: Many types of content work well in increasing brand awareness. These include:
• ‍Blog posts: Blogs are an excellent channel for driving traffic to your website. They help you become a trustable source in your industry if you keep posting them on a regular basis.‍
• Videos: This type of content can help you in many ways to increase brand awareness. For instance, you can tell your potential customers how you function with the help of videos.‍
• Downloadable guides: We all love anything that’s free, right? If you advertise a free guide that people can download, it will definitely work in your favor.

Now, it is time to know how to create a content marketing strategy. But before that, you are required to answer some questions to nudge your content strategy in the correct direction and ensure it is best positioned to achieve your goals. This means, at this stage, you are required to do some research. After all, research is a crucial step in any strategic endeavor.

Here's a list of questions to ask:

1. Who Will Be Your Target Audience?

The first question you need to ask yourself is ā who will be reading your content? Also, as your content strategy can definitely cater to more than one type of reader, you need to determine the number of audiences you will be creating content for.

Now, you may also wonder how you will deliver content to these respective audiences. But, you don't need to worry about that. There are so many content types and channels to help you engage every type of customer your company does business with.

2. What Problem Are You Solving?

Ideally, your service or product should solve a problem that you are aware your audience has. Hence, the content you produce should coach your audience regarding that problem which will, in turn, help them recognize and address it.

It is important to note that a smart content strategy helps two categories of people:

1) Those who are still finding out their main challenges

2) Those who are using your product to tackle those challenges.

3. What Makes You Different?

Your potential customers must know what makes you different or better than your competitors. So that you can prove why people should choose you, you need to show them why you are worth listening to. This is where content' comes to your aid.

4. What Are your Main KPIs?

You are required to evaluate the success of your program before developing a content strategy. Ask yourself questions such as - do you want to generate leads? Do you wish for more page views? Are you looking for a boost in subscribers?

As content marketing is a long-term strategy, it is difficult to track its success. So, there is an entire list of KPIs that helps you know whether you are on the road to a successful marketing strategy. Some of them are listed below:

• Overall traffic: It is essential to track this metric because it tells you the number of visitors coming to your site and the posts that attract them. When you know this information, you then get an idea of the kind of content you must continue to produce.

• Click-through rate of internal links: Click-through rate is important to check as well. If some content has a higher CTR, you must examine it to see what is the reason for its high performance. This information can help you apply the same principles throughout your content.

• Social shares: These help to measure the engagement that your content is creating.

5. How Often Do you Want to Publish?

Ask yourself - how often will you be able to publish? Will it be daily or weekly? What will be your plan of action in a situation where your team is not able to publish the way you had planned?

6. How Often Will You Revisit Your Strategy?

Because of the ever-changing nature of the marketing industry, your strategy must be revisited and tweaked accordingly. Some of the questions you need to ask yourself at this juncture are ā how many times in a year will you evaluate your strategy's success? How many changes would you be willing to make? And so on.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy?

Now that you have answers to all the important questions, it is time that you get to know the specifics of how to develop your content marketing plan.

At this stage, it is important for you to know that there is no grand solution that any business can follow when we talk about content strategy. The strategy that you develop will be unique as per your situation. However, there are a few tactics that will steer you in the right direction. Let's discuss them one by one:

1. Set Your Goals

Start with a definitive objective. Doing so will help you stay focused and prevent you from publishing content just for the sake of it. Also, during this stage, ensure that your analytics are set up. It will allow you to track potential metrics such as social media shares, page views, and e-commerce conversions in your analytics tools.

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2. Conduct Persona Research

In order to craft a successful content strategy, you are required to determine your buyer's persona, which is also called your content's target audience. This is particularly crucial for those who are new to marketing. When you are aware of your target audience, you are able to produce relevant content that they would want to read and subsequently convert on.

In case you are an experienced marketer, you must revisit your audience parameters annually. This is because your target may have changed. You may have to re-evaluate if you wish to expand your existing target market or target a fresh group of people. Such a step is of paramount importance when it comes to growing your audience.

3. Research the Relevant Keywords

Now that you have clearly defined your target audience, you need to meticulously research the keywords that hold relevance to your target audience. There are a lot of tools to help you find keywords that will ultimately become the backbone of the content that you produce. So, ensure you research keywords that help you get higher SEO rankings for your business.

Let’s discuss some of the ways in which you can research relevant keywords:

a. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest produces keyword ideas from the search suggestions of Google. You can enter a keyword and Ubersuggest will find long-tail keywords of the term you typed in.

Now, you may wonder what are long-tail keywords. These are search terms with relatively low competition levels and search volume. These are longer in length (more than 3 words), such as “inexpensive life insurance for elderly people” and “order vitamin B12 capsules online.”

b. SEMRush

If you want an excellent recommendation for a paid keyword tool, go for SEMrush. The tool saves a lot of time in your keyword research. Just enter the website of your competitor in Google and examine the list of keywords they rank for. That's it; you can use this ready list of keywords for your own website.

4. Check the Competition

Once you are armed with the knowledge of your target audience and the relevant keywords, now is the time to analyze your competitor's content. This means a thorough examination of the keywords and areas they rank for. Check for the topics, length of content, and the keywords on their site and different distribution channels. In case you spot the areas where you can fill the gaps and offer better value to your audience, use it to your advantage.

5. Choose the Right Channels

The countless amount of distribution channels can seem overwhelming at first. However, it is recommended that you choose a few channels for content distribution, such as a YouTube channel and a blog. This allows the company to concentrate on distribution to the right audience using the right channels.

The channels for distributing your content will differ based on your resources and audience. The categories in which most distribution channels are:

1. Owned media channels: Owned media are the channels that belong to you, so you have control over your published content. It applies to your site, social media accounts, company’s blog, email newsletters, etc.
2. Earned media channels: Earned media channels are also known as shared channels. Earned media is like free advertising. It can range from a press release about your company to a person talking on social media about the products you offer.
3. Paid distribution channels: Paid channels cover media that needs payment for distributing content. Usually, they include paid influencer content, social ads, sponsored content, and PPC advertising.

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6. Brainstorm Content Ideas

Based on the information you have gathered in order to understand your target audience and competitors, you are now in the position to brainstorm content ideas.

At this point, you can determine the type of content you want. Check what type of content will best serve your purpose.

Tip: For example, if you want your audience to constantly visit your website, going for a recurring schedule of quality blog posts can be a step in the right direction. On the other hand, if you want to showcase how your products work, you can shoot engaging videos for the same.

At the time of brainstorming, don't be afraid to try something new as long as it is backed by research. Build a list of ways that will help serve your purpose and execute your research. Then, narrow it down to the ones that will ultimately work the best.

To help you further in deciding the content types you can choose to execute your purpose, consider these pointers:

Social media content helps connect with younger audiences

Blog posts work well in informing your audience and driving traffic for your site.

Digital media, such as videos and infographics are brilliant ways to engage the audience in a way that they won’t easily forget.

7. Create an Editorial Calendar

Last but not the least, comes the aspect of publishing and managing your content. With an editorial calendar, you will be able to publish a diverse content library on your site. An editorial calendar will help you iron out the details of when and where the content will be made available. It not only helps you keep track of your content, but also ensures that you are consistent in publishing content.

In addition to this, you need to create a social media content calendar so that you can promote as well as manage content on various other sites.

Tip: It is important to go for evergreen ideas i.e. the ideas that will always be relevant. However, you must not ignore timely topics as they help produce spikes of traffic even when they don't form the bulk of your calendar. Keep in mind some niche holidays that will be of interest to your audience at the time of planning the calendar.

Bottomline

It takes a lot of planning and brainpower to devise a perfect content marketing plan. To simplify the entire process, ensure that you always focus on your audience and its needs while developing your strategy. Trust us, if you follow this approach, your audiences will certainly reward your website with page shares and views, with many of them ultimately investing in your business.

When you have a solid marketing plan in place for your business, you have already taken the first step towards gaining an advantage over your competitors.

Now, Happy strategizing!

Digital marketing has gathered momentum, and soon the industry will touch the $375 billion mark globally.

To harness its enormous benefits, you should first spend some time learning its various streams and fundamentals. Developing a roadmap and an action plan is the next most important step. The easy availability of numerous marketing options can overwhelm a beginner solopreneur, so cutting all the clutter, we bring you an actionable plan that includes where to start and how to proceed.

A strategic roadmap template will help you define and shape your marketing efforts to attain your goals faster. So, first, learn how to build and run a digital agency from scratch.

How to Build a Digital Agency?

Here are a few steps to successfully build your digital marketing agency:

1. Spend time on self-education
2. Choose your niche and leverage niche marketing
3. Start local
4. Perform competitor research
5. Create a professional website
6. Build a portfolio
7. Set a pricing model
8. Go social
9. Generate leads
10. Simplify client onboarding
11. Hire white-label services

1. Spend Time on Self-Education

You can get access to a host of free educational material from DashClicks that will sharpen and upgrade your online marketing skills. Most of the study material is designed for agency owners, and you’d easily be able to locate the sections dedicated to agency owners in our blog section.

Here are some of the resources you can refer to:

1. Blog
2. Video blog
3. Marketers Mindset Podcast
4. Webinars
5. Private Facebook Group
6. Support Center

• Video Blog

Dashclicks’ video blog is immensely beneficial for the agency owners as it shares proven digital marketing strategies directly from the successful agency owners, including Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks.

• Dash University

Dash University is the DashClicks' education, and training venture explicitly launched to help agency owners succeed in this challenging marketplace. Branded as a "university for agency owners," Dash University educates you on what works and what doesn't work.

Dash University conducts a new live online training session every week. With four distinct training styles, it helps you absorb all the information with minimal effort. With entertainment and engagement being the top priorities during the training sessions at Dash University, you can learn complicated stuff without feeling overwhelmed.

2. Choose Your Niche and Leverage Niche Marketing

Finding your niche is crucial to survival in this challenging marketplace. Most agencies promote themselves as full-service agencies, but it goes against them when targeting clients from a specific niche. Positioning yourself as an expert in a particular niche is the remedy that works wonders.

To know more about targeting a specific niche and other aspects of niche marketing, read this article - How to Grow and Scale Your Digital Marketing Agency in 2021

According to a HubSpot study, the average agency's profit margins are generally shallow ā reportedly between 10% and 20%. It is therefore essential to distinguish your agency from others.

The big question here is how to define your niche. Do some SWOT analysis and discover which type of company or industry you can serve most effectively, given your experience, exposure, and interest. For example, you can specialize in specific sectors such as tech companies, finance companies, and businesses linked with travel and hospitality. You can also choose the business types such as family-owned businesses, small businesses, and VC-funded companies.

Some of the niches you may consider are as follows:

• Roofers
• Painters
• Landscape architects and designers
• Educational institutions
• Massage Therapists
• Personal Trainers
• Tattoo parlors
• Engineering and technology companies
• HVAC
• Water Damage
• Rehab Centers
• Auto Shops

To pick the low-hanging fruit offered by niche marketing, follow these tips:

Show the proof of success in the category you claim to be an expert in through testimonials, mentions, or case studies.

Acquire expertise and knowledge of your niche as well as current and future trends. Keep yourself abreast with the latest industry updates through blogs, trade journals, and subject matter experts and influencers.

Get access to customized marketing tools and templates related to the niche you want to target.

It’s not necessary to focus on just one niche, you can choose multiple niches at a time, but these three tips apply to all of them. Hard work is the key to success, along with these tactics.

3. Start Local

Being in the same area builds trust among local businesses. It is comparatively easier to introduce your agency when you are a local player. Once you have a portfolio of local clients, you can easily penetrate the international market. Meet local community leaders, attend local events and get yourself featured in the local press. Participate in a social cause.

4. Perform Competitor Research

Performing a competitive analysis helps you in many ways, especially when you need to know your competitors’ specific strategies. You can use Ubersuggest, a keyword suggestion tool, to find the popular keywords and their variations.

Entering a broad term into the software to engage in keyword discovery will bring you many ideas to explore the topic. When you perform competitive research, you should follow these tips:

1. Restrict your competitors to 10-15
2. Find out how they are monetizing, i.e., making money
3. Delve deeper into their content marketing strategy

a. Take a look at their blog posts and social media posts
b. Check their content formats, i.e., podcasts, blogging, or vlogging
c. Analyze their SEO tactics

5. Create a Professional Website

Based on the competitor analysis and content marketing analysis, you can launch your website. All you need to do is choose a domain name and hosting service. Remember, your website is often the first touchpoint for your customers, so create it as per your branding. Avoid clutter and make it user-friendly.

1-Click Agency Website through DashClicks' Agency Website Tool

You can create a professional agency website through DashClicks' Sites App within a matter of minutes. You don't need designers, developers, and content writers to develop these professional and beautiful template-based websites.

6. Build a Portfolio

Building a portfolio is the prerequisite before you create your website. Offer free digital marketing services to your friends and their businesses to make your first portfolio. It will also help you get free testimonials that you can use on your website to build trust. You need not run a full-fledged online marketing campaign for a client to make a portfolio. If they have a local store or local business, you need to do local SEO for them through Google My Business and perform some directory listing.

When you have so many things on your plate and if it seems too much for you, you can order white-label directory listing services from DashClicks at an affordable rate. We are with you at every step of your journey to become a seven-figure agency.

Creating a Facebook business page and an Instagram account for them and creating a couple of posts is also a good idea. This approach has two benefits. First, it will help you in networking and spreading awareness about your business. Secondly, you may also win a paid contract in the process in case your friends liked your work.

Tip: Keep your portfolio ethical and verifiable.

Further reading: 11 Benefits of Using White Label Digital Marketing Services

7. Set a Pricing Model

For essential services, you can charge your client on an hourly basis. A flat retainer or a monthly fee is the simplest pricing model. You can also charge a percentage of spending as your fee, which offers a pretty transparent pricing model. Refer to a digital agency pricing guide or check out the market rates before you launch your agency. Here are some of the pricing options available to you.

1. Hourly charges — Straightforward, but it offers no incentive to work faster.
2. Project-based charges — If you have the required skills, charge a flat fee for any project. It’s understandable and easier to scale.
3. Retainer model — Ensure a good steady income each month. Good for you when your agency produces a large volume of work each month.
4. Recurring model —Offers discounted annual agency pricing plan. It’s Ideal for long-term projects such as SEO.

8. Go Social

Social media platforms enjoy a tremendous reputation as some are the most powerful communication mediums between the business and customers. So, as soon as you have your website live, create your company's social media accounts on the major social networking sites. These are the best places to build brand awareness and engage people to bring them into your sales funnel.

For further reading, please read: 14 Digital Marketing Tools to Boost Your Online Presence

9. Generate Leads

Generating leads can be the most challenging aspect of a business for a new agency, but you shouldn't be discouraged. We are sharing with you a formula that will help you generate leads. Keep your target customer in mind and create their buyer persona. Agencies generally succeed with their lead generation efforts through video marketing, blogging, and affiliate marketing.

Let's begin with video marketing

A. Start Video Marketing

Create a YouTube channel and start posting excellent videos adding your target audience's pain points. You can include case studies, how-to videos, and client reviews and testimonials in these videos. Please make sure you regularly post on your YouTube channel. Otherwise, it will lose its traffic and rankings. If some of your blog posts or articles perform well, you can always make vlogs of them. This way, you will soon develop a small audience that you can divert to your website.

B. Try Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing and cold email marketing also have tremendous potential. It involves referring or endorsing a product or service through a blog or your social media account. Sometimes, affiliate marketers also create a full-fledged website to sell a product or bundle of products. The affiliates earn a commission on each sale made through the unique links placed by them.

Further reading: Get Clients for Your Digital Marketing Agency in 2019 on Autopilot

C. Create a Lead Magnet for Your Website

Most of your website visitors never convert to leads. From readiness to commitment to an inadequate level of trust, there can be "n number" of reasons for this. For such visitors, you can use a lead magnet.

What is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is used to capture website visitors' contact information, so you can move them into your marketing funnel and nurture them till they convert and become your loyal customer. Ebooks cheat sheets, templates, whitepapers, and other learning resources are pretty popular these days as lead magnets.

Click this link to see the examples of lead magnets used by companies such as Instant Offices.

D. PPC (Pay Per Click)

Pay per click is one of the best marketing strategies for ROI to generate leads when you have little or no organic traffic. Both Facebook and Google Ads can boost your outreach beyond your expectations. PPC ads allow you to target a specific audience looking for services similar to yours, which is why these are highly effective for lead generation. However, it would help to keep a tab on your ad spend as it may soon go beyond your budget.

E. Content Marketing and SEO

The best way to generate leads is through content marketing and SEO. The organic traffic is free, and hence this is the best option to generate, nurture and convert leads.

Write content on topics your audience needs. Answer their queries, address their pain points and tell them how your products and services can help. SEO helps your website to get more visibility on search engines. It boosts traffic on your website that is primarily free. Create a blog and create helpful content and optimize it to attract search engines' attention to your blog.

Pro Tip: Hire white-label SEO and content marketing services as both fields require expertise, and hiring professionals can be a costly affair for a newly launched agency.

Here are the five benefits of hiring white label content marketing services from DashClicks:

In the end, this video will immensely help you to build, scale and grow your digital marketing agency.

The Exact Blueprint To Starting A Digital Marketing Agency

10. Simplify Client Onboarding

When your agency grows, you get more clients on board every month. Onboarding is a tedious and repetitive process, so it consumes a lot of your time and energy. Technology comes to your rescue in this and allows you to handle onboarding on autopilot.

DashClicks' onboarding platform allows you to automate client onboarding.

The intelligent onboarding process prevents all the manual work by gathering crucial information from the client. So, you can either complete it yourself or send them straight to your client via your white-labeled dashboard. The system also sends automated reminders through email to the client, so they don't forget to complete them. As a result, onboarding can be achieved without any delay.

11. Hire and Resell White Label Services

Spending too much on hiring and recruitment, in the beginning, can turn out to be a recipe for disaster. Instead, you should hire white-label digital marketing services, which are pretty affordable yet best-in-class.

It would be best to convey your brand values and preferences to your white-label partner, who will deliver the most suitable solutions to you. So, you can allocate your limited resources and time to marketing and sales and delegate all the functional and operational tasks to us. DashClicks' fully white-labeled marketing platform allows your agency's brand to shine. The platform will enable you to add your own branding wherever you want.

Further reading: Your Complete Guide to White Label Reselling

Additional Tips:

1. Keep your lead response time low. Typically, it shouldn’t be more than an hour, or else you may lose the client.
2. Set up an outbound sales team and create a lead pipeline.
3. Market your website first and bring it on top of search engine results. Try paid advertising on Facebook and Google too.
4. Invest in guest posting for link building and creating brand awareness.
5. Use original pictures & high-quality graphics on your website instead of cheap-looking stock photos.
6. Add personality to your brand. If you look like a replica of Jeff Bezos in his early days running Amazon from a single desk garage office, mention it. Talk about it in your About Us section and reveal your authentic self.
7. Frequently publish on third-party websites and LinkedIn for added exposure.
8. Guard your online reputation. Answer negative reviews, complaints, and queries promptly on social media and elsewhere.
9. Highlight your strengths and share your achievements.
10. Create powerful customer success stories and case studies and share them aggressively.
11. Set your milestones and long-term goals.
12. Build relationships with your customers, deliver excellent results and ask for referrals.
13. Delegate rather than doing it all by yourself.
14. Send letters and gifts to your clients at important events and festivals.
15. Hire and train the right people.

Are You Ready to Launch Your Digital Agency?

Even though the idea of launching a digital marketing agency sounds overwhelming, if you carefully tread the path and follow the tips shared above, with perseverance, eventually you will succeed. It would help if you had the right team, the right strategy, and the right tools to succeed in this competitive and demanding marketplace. DashClicks equips you with the right tools and strategy. Collaborate with your clients and offer free training using DashClicks educational and training resources. There is substantial money in the field of corporate training, and it will reduce your churn rate, too.

As we all are already aware, the year 2020 wasn't what you call a normal year. In this year, many things got impacted by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic - more people started to shop online rather than go to a retail store, companies began to adopt a remote-first culture, and in-person conversations transformed into video conversations. So, one can easily say that the last year brought along a variety of changes. During this time, something similar happened in the advertising and marketing turf as well.

The recent trends in PPC show that marketers have started to use Artificial Intelligence and Automation for creating data-backed ads. Plus, they are focussing on the buyer's journey now more than ever. Therefore, whether you're an agency or an advertiser, you need to be abreast with the newest trends and features to take your PPC game to a whole different level.

Let's discuss the 10 important PPC trends to watch in 2021 to help you with the same:

1. Understanding your Audience and Buyer Journey is Important

In 2021, the most successful PPC marketers are concentrating on their target audience. At a time when there is less control because of AI and automation, what matters most are the people who are seeing your ads. Doing so helps in driving qualified clicks.

In order to move ahead of the pack this year, advertisers need to think about their customers and how they decide to purchase. Spend time thinking about the following questions:

• What information do they require?
• Where do they interact?
• What are they searching for?
• How to measure success at every step?

Tip: It is important to know who has the likelihood to convert versus who is worth prospecting. This knowledge will help you segregate and independently manage both of them.

2. Remarketing

In 2021, we definitely expect to see remarketing getting the recognition it truly deserves.

Hence, remarketing is a marketing tool that demands all your attention. It is an excellent means of engaging with potential customers that, in your knowledge, are already warm to what you offer. It is also more affordable as compared to other marketing methods.

Let's know a remarketing fact after which you may end up rethinking PPC:

Remarketing conversion rates rise over time

It is found that conversion rates tend to rise as more users look at an ad within remarketing campaigns. The click-through rates may decline with time, but those who click on your ad after seeing it a few times in the past are the ones who become likely to convert.

It is important to remember that people can be busy or involved in one or the other stuff going on in their lives. Keeping this in mind, remarketing acts as a gentle reminder to end what they began on your website, all while reinforcing your messaging and branding to the user when they see you.

3. Video Ads and PPC

Let's begin to understand the impact of a video with some stats - People remember 95% of a message from a video.

Now, let's check how the video will impact PPC this year:

• An increasing number of marketers will begin linking to products in video ads.
• Marketers will start including virtual reality (VR) to offer real experiences to viewers.
• Instagram Stories in video marketing will not cease to dominate.

Google has added one of the most fascinating video ad features called Bumper Machine. It makes use of machine learning to make 6-second bumper ads from videos (90 seconds or less) in order to display across Youtube.

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The full-funnel video strategy helps marketers in managing 6-second bumper ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, and skippable in-stream ads.

If you want to foster positive interactions with your potential customers, take note of the following online video advertising trends for this year and beyond:

• DIY videos: With the help of DIY videos on video-sharing platforms such as Tiktok and YouTube, you can easily promote your business. You don't need a ten thousand dollar camera and a professional film crew to create an engaging video ad on these platforms. The thing that matters the most in online video advertising is that you should be able to grab your audience's attention with your concept. For this, focus primarily on your video's content when you decide to create DIY video ads for these platforms.
• Storytelling: With so many videos and ads on the internet, your content should be able to grab eyeballs. A story helps create a connection with your audience and appeals to their emotions. To use this trend, think of how your services or products can impact people's lives. Ask yourself these questions - how were their lives before you came into it? How did they overcome their challenges with the help of the tools you offered? How is their life after using these tools?
• Silent films: A lot of times people see a video ad without the audio. So, you can create your video ad in a way that captures the viewers' attention even when the audio is turned off. For this, you can ensure the visuals in your video ad are gripping. Also, you can use captions in these ads to tell your story.

4. Voice search for PPC campaigns

50% of consumers could be voice shopping by 2022. Therefore, it is more important than ever to create PPC campaigns for voice search and get featured in voice search results.

The three significant ways in which voice search impacts PPC are:

• Natural language: People tend to use a more conversational and natural style when they use voice search. Thus, the use of short-tail keywords may not provide you an advantage.

• Question-oriented: A lot of voice searches begin with question-oriented keywords.

• Mobile-first: Even though plenty of devices have voice search, it is used more on mobile devices.

Here's how you can optimize your PPC campaigns for voice search:

• Analyze current search terms: Check the specific search terms which people have used to see your ad to better optimize for voice search. Visit Google Ads and head over to the Search Terms tab to click on Keywords. Now, see the searches that start with:

a. Hey Sirib. Ok, Googlec. Where do Id. Alexa

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• Concentrate on long-tail keywords and question phrases: Compared to text searches, voice searches are longer and more conversational. A majority of voice searches begin with questions such as how, where, what, etc. Tools like Answer the Public aid you in discovering long-tail keywords and question phrases.

• Know the searcher's position in the buying cycle: Usually, people who use the terms what or who are at the awareness stage. On the other hand, people who search for where or when are closer to the conversion stage. For PPC, bidding on where and when keywords may provide an advantage.

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As you have researched long-tail keywords, question phrases, and current search terms, you can create a keywords list to optimize your current campaign or incorporate them in a fresh campaign.

Note: When it comes to platforms, concentrate on Bing and Google. This is because Bing is the default search engine for Alexa. On the other hand, Google is the default search engine for both Apple and Google products.

5. Diversification is Key

Loss of control in Google may result in more companies shifting PPC dollars to Microsoft Ads and other search engines.

PPC marketers should diversify their skillset beyond Google Ads. Advertisers must become fully aware of the advertising platforms which provide them more control over their reach, messaging, and spending. One cannot depend heavily on Google Ads like earlier.

Remember, diversification is vital for an effective PPC strategy. It is time to diversify advertising beyond Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads Search and Display. This means testing Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Verizon Media's native ads.

There are many alternative PPC platforms you can use to diversify your ad spend. Here's a list:

• LinkedIn: This is an ideal advertising platform if you are a B2B company. You can reach millions of users using targeting options such as company, job title, education, industry, company connections, and interests.
• Quora: Quora has about 300 million monthly unique visitors. To influence people when they are at the consideration phase of the buyer's journey, advertisers can target the content or users as per their activity on the platform.
• AdRoll: AdRoll helps businesses in running ads on different channels from one place.
• Bing: For every search on Bing, 34 searches are made on Google (Ahrefs, 2021). So, you can definitely use this platform.

6. Perfecting The Ad Message

How you articulate your ad message is of paramount importance in 2021. You must, therefore, focus on gaining deep insights into buyer personas. A wrong message is an opportunity missed.

How to craft a successful text ad?

To reach your potential customers, your ads should be alluring, hold relevance, must empower, and be specific. Let's discuss the best practices for writing excellent text ads and the mistakes you need to avoid:

• Highlight what makes you different: Tell people about the services, products, or offers that make you competitive. For instance, if you provide free shipping, then mention it in your text ad!
• Include promotions, prices, and exclusives: People often conduct a Google search to decide about something. Hence, mention if you have an exclusive product or are offering a limited-time discount.
• Prompt the person to take action: If you are selling something, inform the potential customers what they can buy. If you are providing a service, share your contact information. Calls to action such as call today, browse, purchase, get a quote, etc. provide clarity about further steps.
• Include at least one keyword: Keywords in your ad will depict your ad's relevance to what people need. For instance, if you want to include a keyword called basketball hoops, your ad headline can be buy basketball hoops.

• Ensure your ad is matched to your landing page: Take a look at the landing page (the page you link to from your ad). It should feature the products or promotions in your ad. Your potential customers can leave your site if they don't see what they came expecting.

• Ensure that your ads are high-quality: Your ads should not have extra spaces, unclear URLs, and strange capitalization.

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7. A Great Mobile Experience is Crucial

Are you amazed to see this in a list of PPC trends? You certainly shouldn't be. If brands want to win this year, they must have an easy-to-operate and accessible mobile site. It may surprise you, but many people have not even checked out their website on a mobile, let alone other devices.

Now, more than ever, it is crucial to have an up and running mobile site. It will only help you get traffic that you can use to your benefit. The importance of a mobile experience that delights visitors and continues to bring them back cannot be emphasized enough.

Tip: There is a high chance that people who see your ads on mobile devices want to call you or know your location. You can show your phone number and location with call extensions and location extensions. Also, think about crafting ads that are specifically aimed at potential customers on mobile devices. For this, use your site's mobile version as a landing page.

8. PPC Automation

One of the significant trends in PPC advertising to look out for in this year is automation the use of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for automating labor-intensive tasks linked with Google and Bing ads.

Automation in PPC is not something new, but it is important to note that it will start to play a significant role this year.

Automation will be used for the optimization of PPC campaigns and PPC experts will willingly adapt it to:

• Put an end to low-performing ads and give priority to the ones producing the best results
• Recognize performance issues within an account
• Dynamically produce ads based on website content and user behavior
• Automatically create ad performance reports

Tip: DashClicks' White Label Dashboard helps you to manage your client's PPC Campaigns. If you are an agency and want a personal white label dashboard for PPC clients and manage things with the help of automation, you can check out DashClicks' White Label PPC. Sign up for the platform today. It's free!

9. Artificial Intelligence

As we are all already aware, AI continues to transform the world. When it comes to PPC, it will help marketers to create outstanding ad campaigns and will be specifically useful in:

• Calculating how ads impact quality scores (a quality score is a value that considers your relevance, landing page quality, and click-through rate)
• Predicting the CTR of future ads.
• Knowing the likelihood of conversion from a particular customer.
• Examining the bids which have the likelihood of getting maximum traffic.
• Optimizing keywords, campaigns, or ads when a particular event takes place (for example, when your CPC falls below a particular amount).

As AI becomes more aware of your audience's behavior, it can create targeted ads more accurately. This, in turn, increases the performance of your PPC campaigns as well as Bing, Google, and Amazon ads.

AI can power up Amazon Ads campaigns in the following ways:

• Make bid changes according to the predicted revenue per click of keywords.
• Automate bids for both long-tail and short-tail keywords.
• Provide comprehensive diagnostic information for active keywords.

The benefits of AI don't end here!

AI is incredibly useful in creating great reports. Adzooma, a Google partner, can make PPC reports in just a few steps. Here's is what you need to do:

• Link your Google Ads account
• Go to the reporting tab in the top corner and click on Create Report.
• Add the elements you need in the report along with images, your logo, and text.
• Choose the metrics you want, such as ACoS, keywords, etc. in the format you require (line graph, table, etc.).

And you are done! Your report will get created.

10. Virtual Reality Ads

Virtual Reality's growing popularity has given rise to new opportunities for advertisers. The goal of virtual reality ads is simple - to help viewers try out the product before they purchase it.

The significant ways in which VR can change PPC ads are:

• VR gives information about parts of the screen that the viewers are interacting with and the parts that they are looking at.
• It makes use of eye-tracking technology for ad activation. When the user looks at it for a few moments, the ad begins.
• The Gen Zers and the Millennials are using VR the most, and hence, it is easier to target them in the upcoming years.
• 360-degree videos are one of the best videos to make consumers know about and interact with your products.

Bottomline

To make the most out of your PPC advertising campaigns, you need to know and leverage these latest PPC trends. This year, there will be an increase in video ads (which also includes 360-degree videos). AI and automation will transform the way businesses make and run ads. Also, marketers who will optimize their ads for voice search are going to see improved results.

The biggest mistake newborn agencies make is to strive for high-ticket clients right from the onset. While it's a good idea to have high ticket clients onboard to generate instant revenues, the strategy won't take you any far as it has a fundamental flaw.

A large number of low-ticket clients is always better than having a small number of high-ticket clients. There are two primary reasons for that. The first reason is that this industry has a super high churn rate, which is three months only. Secondly, it's much more challenging to win a new client than upselling an existing client or offering them recurring services.

So, you should choose your method of prospecting carefully. We have laid out this entire process to help you understand the best practices recommended by Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, to grow your agency and boost its revenues.

Mantra: You need to LOWER CHURN to improve revenue growth in your agency. So, every step you take to reduce churn will ultimately help you increase your revenues and survive as a business.

1. Start With a Low Barrier to Entry Products

The best way of prospecting is to start with an irresistibly low barrier to entry products that people can buy easily. For a digital agency, it can be a professional-grade website. DashClicks tool InstaSites allows you to create instant websites for your clients within seconds.

With InstaSites, you can create a beautiful looking instant website based on a niche-based template and ready with content and graphics. It will provide a truly transformational experience for your prospects. You can offer a completely professional-looking website for $199 + $40 per month. So, it will become a source of recurring revenue for you for at least the next six months.

The fact is that a website is an inexpensive product that brings with it a lot of value. It's easy to sell to build relationships with a prospect. Furthermore, it takes a lot of time to make a professional website, but with DashClicks tools, you can instantly create a ready-to-use website. If you share how the website will look like, they will be impressed with your speed and skills.

2. Use a Value Ladder Approach for Upsells & Downsells

After selling the website, you shouldn't sit idle. Instead, you should call up your client and ask them for feedback. Since most of your clients are probably local businesses such as roofers, plumbers, home services providers, masons, and carpenters, they must promote themselves as local businesses on the web.

They need to get their directory listings fixed as there can be several inconsistencies due to manual errors which can prevent your customer from being able to contact you. The customers who search for local businesses or services through their mobile phones or local directories such as Yelp can't find you if you have an incorrect building number mentioned there.

Price rebuttals are common, but if there is any other reason stopping them from buying your product or service, you can convince them of the value of the product versus its price. For example, you can push directory listing services to boost their local SEO and attract more local traffic.

88% of people who search for a local service on their smartphones visit the store the same day.

3. Sell Recurring Services (Monthly Payments)

The best way to become a millionaire is to have multiple clients paying you recurring fees every month rather than a few clients paying a one-time hefty fee.

What is a Recurring Payment?

Just like you pay for Google Apps, Kindle Unlimited, Netflix, loan repayments, kids' school fees, and perhaps your website hosting, there are millions of people and agencies who make recurring payments for a service.

Recurring billing happens when you allow a merchant to automatically charge you for specific services as per the schedule mentioned in your contract.

Many household items, electronic goods, and furniture items are available on a recurring payment basis from different merchants and physical and online stores such as Amazon. Recurring transactions are so common that the total volume of annual recurring transactions in the US alone is estimated to be around $473 billion in 2021.

Here are a few ways you can sell recurring billing to your customers:

1. Make recurring payments the standard way to buy or subscribe to your digital services.
2. Give many options to your customers and support as many payment types as possible.
3. Don’t overcharge and introduce a fair price point that your customers find easy to pay.

Here are the recurring methods suggested by Chad. If you buy white label services from DashClicks, you can easily offer your clients the following recurring subscriptions. DashClicks will do the fulfillment:

1. Create a website through InstaSites in a matter of minutes and sell it to your prospect @ $49/month + $199 Setup Fee
2. When they become your customer, share with them the value of local SEO for incoming traffic and sales and offer Directory Listing Services @ 199/month + $99 Setup Fee. Again, source these white label services
3. Offer them Social Media Posting services and charge $399/month + $99 Setup Fee
4. Offer them SEO services and charge $699/month + $199 Setup Fee
5. Offer them PPC services and charge $999/month (roughly) + $699 Setup Fee

Irresistible Sales Formula Training Course

Conversion of leads is the biggest challenge for marketing and salespeople. Here is an irresistible sales formula from Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, that will help you turn leads into high-value clients. The training course introduces you to proven prospecting systems that will assist you in filling the pipelines with qualified leads and teach you how to make those leads an irresistible offer.

Get Access to all our courses, tools, training & curriculums, mentors, and communities including Dash University and Call Center Secrets. To create a successful marketing agency, you can join Dash Elite Program and youā€™ll get free access to all of the above.

Note: Watch this video to know more about the Dash Elite Program.

4. Offer Promotional Prices on Long-Term Commitments

People are not likely to say yes to every sales offer, but they love discounts and offers. Capitalize on this psychology and offer them an irresistible package on long-term commitments. Shift your positioning and review your prices. Pick up your phone and check if they are hesitating to say yes to your previous offer.

If so, offer them a much better-discounted price for the long-term commitment. This trick will likely work and help you to add another customer to a recurring payment contract. It will boost your cash flow and offer you the ability to survive for a long time.

5. Build a List

None of your campaigns will succeed if you don't have a list of prospects. Lists are essential as marketers aptly say that the money is in the lists. Email lists, social media followers' lists, and even telephone numbers obtained from similar or lookalike databases can do the trick.

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The more extensive the list, the more money you are likely to make. Use these lists for email marketing campaigns and social media campaigns.

6. Build a Sales Team

Building a sales team is highly crucial to a digital agency. But, what about its structure and sales strategy?

Chad further explains it in this way. You can build a sales team of tele-callers, and sales reps referred to as “fronters” and “closers,” respectively. You can generate a list of your prospects as per the services you offer and your physical location. In this list, you can also include people who have:

1. Visited your website
2. Expressed interest in your business during an event, a meeting, or online interaction.

Source: Top 10 Fastest Ways To Add Additional Revenue to Your Agency

7. Overdeliver Since the First Customer Interaction

To decrease churn, you must overdeliver since your first customer interaction. If you make it a part of your mission statement, it will not go unnoticed, and soon people will get to know about you through word-of-mouth publicity. The standard churn rate is 3-5%, so, if you can manage it within this limit, you're doing a great job.

Over-delivering never fails to impress your customers, and it gets acknowledged almost immediately. Overdelivering leads to customer delight and loyalty, and it helps you boost your brand image. It also dramatically reduces the churn rate, which is a significant challenge for the agencies.

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8. Create an Easy Onboarding ExperienceĀ

Onboarding can be tedious both for you and for your clients because of lengthy documentation and paperwork. DashClicks white label dashboard makes onboarding a smooth process by taking care of all the repetitive tasks. DashClicks' intelligent onboarding process automatically gathers essential information from your clients. You can buy the service from DashClicks' fulfillment store and automatically allow your clients to access the white-labeled onboarding platform.

Most agencies complete the onboardings themselves, which chews up lots of your time, straining precious resources. The best way is to send them straight to your client via your white-labeled dashboard.

It will also help reduce churn in a big way.

9. Educate Your Customers

Educate your customers to reduce churn and grow your revenues. Certain aspects of digital marketing require education, especially when you're running a campaign, and your client has no clues about its purpose, scope, TAT, and estimated time to expect results. As a result, the churn rate is often high in SEO projects.

The core services such as SEO require a lot of communication between the client and the agency because people are generally unaware of its value, dos and don'ts, methodologies, and complications.

When you hire white-label SEO or digital marketing services from DashClicks, you also get access to a host of educational material from DashClicks such as their highly informative blog, Video blog, Marketers Mindset Podcast, Webinars, Private Facebook Group, and Support Center.

• Video Blog

DashClicksā€™ video blog is highly beneficial for the agency owners as it shares proven digital marketing strategies directly from the successful agency owners, including Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks.

• Dash University

Dash University is DashClicks’ education and training venture explicitly launched to help agency owners succeed in this challenging marketplace. Branded as a “university for agency owners,” Dash University educates you on what works and what doesn’t.

Dash University invites its members every week to a new live online training. With four distinct training styles, it helps you absorb all the information with minimal effort. Engagement and entertainment are the salient features of the university, so you can learn complicated stuff without feeling overwhelmed.

10. Increase Communication With Your Clients

ARC triangle is often used in Scientology, a 20th-century belief system invented by L. Ron Hubbard. The ARC triangle has three components:

1. Affinity
2. Reality
3. Communication

The triangle is often used to describe the dynamics of human relationships and emotional connections. Affinity is the degree of affection or love between two persons to be described as the emotional state. Reality reflects the state of mind or agreements on what is real. It forms the basis of our behavior toward others.

Communication is considered one of the most crucial in all of the three elements, and it happens through the exchange of ideas. According to Scientology, improving communication will improve all three aspects of the ARC triangle, including affinity and reality. So, if you drag one corner of this triangle, you'll also have to pull the other two in equal proportion to keep the triangle in its original shape. According to these principles, most of the human survival issues emanate from ineffective communication.

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Similarly, in the business environment, it's essential to establish effective communication. Poor communication will always result in conflicts, misunderstandings, and a lack of trust.

11. Offer Full Transparency

Your business relations become more vital when you have complete transparency. It leaves no room for mistrust and confusion, and as a result, the relationships last longer. Maintain transparency in terms of costs, business policies, and other vital issues. Your clients will appreciate that and reciprocate it with loyalty and long-term business.

Conclusion

These were some of the ways to add additional revenue to your digital marketing agency. Most of the methods recommended by Chad are already tested. Surrounding yourself with the people who have already done it is the best way to learn from them. Mentors and business coaches can help, but they can't provide you with expert advice because they don't have the experience of running an agency and marketing it. For expert advice, you can look forward to someone who's been doing marketing for quite some time. A mastermind community can also help.

Many marketing agencies make the mistake of putting too much stock into vanity numbers such as traffic and leads generated. While getting customers in the door is part of the process, it won't matter much if your sales team is unable to close the deal.

According to studies, a staggering 80% of new leads never lead to a sale, which leads to wasted time, funds, and a frustrated sales team.

However, this is in no small part caused by the fact that countless marketing companies fail to utilize proven marketing and sales tactics that can help improve this percentage. More still never make the effort to analyze the data from their failures and improve.

Below, we're going to provide you and your team with seven steps you can follow that are guaranteed to help turn marketing leads into closed deals.

1. Know Your Buyer

Countless classes, textbooks, and webinars exist promising to convert you from a zero-sale representative into a master. The truth is that selling a product to a lead is not as complicated as you may believe. The problem is that you need to be spending far more time listening to your audience than you spend talking.

Leads come in a variety of types. Many are motivated enough to research the industry to find a reputable company and eventually make a purchase. This person already determined that your product or service could benefit their life or help solve a major problem.

Others may happen upon your business thanks to careful marketing but are not yet ready to take the leap just yet. In some cases, they may not even be aware that they are experiencing a problem that could be resolved with your services. These leads require some nurturing and follow-up.

Finally, some leads may not be interested at all, whether it's due to financial means or general lack of interest. Your team should immediately filter these types of leads out and look to refine your demographic targeting strategies.

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However, in all of these cases, you won't know your buyer until you take the time to listen to their needs. Great marketing and sales are about forging a relationship. Your customers come first, and that comes with giving them the respect of treating them as more than a potential sale.

Make the effort to gather more data from the lead and allow them to give you the ammunition you need to close the deal. What is their biggest pain point? What are they struggling with and how might your product or service benefit them? What is their budget? Instead of walking into a sales encounter with a pre-planned speech, let them tell you how you can help them.

2. Respond Immediately

According to a lead response survey courtesy of Drift, a business is ten times less likely to make contact with a lead if they wait more than five minutes to make contact. Despite this alarming statistic, most companies don't make the effort to contact their leads in even five days.

With that in mind, your team is likely losing sales daily by not enforcing a lead management system that takes advantage of lead freshness. Think of a lead that's no more than five minutes old as hot. When your lead is hot, they're motivated to learn more, they have a problem they want to solve, and they're actively looking for you to sell them on your products or services.

A lead that's even thirty minutes old or longer moved on with their day, found solutions with competitors, or simply forgot about your company altogether. If you're one of those companies waiting more than five days, you've made your task of closing a sale that much more difficult.

While your company may not have the means to respond to every lead quickly, there are alternative solutions. The same study suggests that the top-performing companies are staying on top of trends by utilizing automated software such as chatbots to handle initial communications.

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This artificial intelligence helps the lead remain engaged and can benefit you by acquiring some of the necessary information you'll need as we discussed above in step one. Companies are also switching to dedicated lead management systems that allow you to automatically assign leads to key representatives for each marketing campaign. It will also hold your reps accountable to ensure they're moving quickly to close the deal.

(Source: Drift)

3. Nurture the Right Types of Leads

While managing your leads might already be a challenge, closing sales proves more complicated as 96% of visitors that click on your ads or landing pages aren't ready to purchase. This means that your marketing team still has a long way to go after successfully obtaining that initial ad click.

The amount of time you need to spend nurturing a lead will vary greatly depending on your industry. Examples of lead nurturing can include targeted email campaigns, a friendly check-in phone call, content marketing, social media marketing, and more. Each strategy can prove effective as they allow you to target specific buyers at their stage of the buyer's journey. Continued marketing also ensures that your brand stays fresh in their mind.

Even returning customers require nurturing. Brands that make the effort to satisfy customers with engaging content and compelling incentives produce 20% more sales opportunities with those leads as opposed to non-nurtured leads. Take the time to get to know your leads, even if it takes time and multiple follow-ups.

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Nurturing the right types of leads also means identifying and releasing poor-quality leads. If leads do not respond to your nurturing efforts, then it's likely time to target new audiences. You can also experiment with creating arbitrary deadlines that create urgency and push customers to follow up with you before their opportunity expires.

(Sources: Marketo, Invespcro)

4. Analyze the Data

While losing leads to poor marketing efforts or failure to close sales isn't ideal, it also provides the most useful information you'll receive to improve your strategies.

Marketing continues to evolve rapidly and companies that stay on top of the latest advances and trends are the ones that benefit the most. Advertising platforms on Facebook, Google, YouTube, and so on provide campaign-tracking algorithms that constantly analyze marketing performance. They are also constantly gathering data from your target audience.

These tools provide your company with a significant advantage by eliminating the time-consuming tedium of sorting through the data. However, your campaign managers need to utilize this information to fine-tune your campaigns and improve the overall quality of your leads. When your marketing team supplies better leads, your sales team should have a much easier time closing the deal.

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All of the pressure is not just on your paid search and social experts. The internet provides a variety of high-quality software that can help you manage and track the performance of your sales team.

An example of this includes call-tracking software such as CallRail, which you can seamlessly integrate into your website or ad campaigns. You'll be able to listen in on sales calls, understand how your team can improve, and implement that feedback into future negotiations. Utilizing the same CRM software across the entire company will also ensure that each team member is on the same page.

Utilizing the information provided and joining your sales and marketing efforts could lead to a 38% higher likelihood of closing sales.

(Source: Sujan Patel)

5. Differentiate from the Competitor

An issue you may be facing now is the fact that virtually all of your competitors are reading tips like these and doing their best to implement them into daily strategy. When competing companies are vying for the same leads with the same tactics, what can you do to differentiate from the competitor?

According to some of the top sales experts, it largely comes down to customer focus. Consider how many sales interactions you partake in without receiving as much as simple eye contact or a personable greeting. It's a common feeling for the customer to feel like they're just part of another sales and marketing machine.

While this step is similar to the ones mentioned above, it is necessary to stress how important it is to avoid an overly sales-y' approach and ask questions that cut to the core issues. Some of the most successful sales representatives frequently make contact with leads long before broaching the subject of the sale. All the while, they're making the customer feel heard, valued, and important.

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Additionally, the best salespeople not only know their industry but know how to use it effectively with customers. They identify with the customer's experiences and essentially visualize themselves as someone on their team. When both parties are on the same side of an issue, it becomes us versus the objective, not a company peddling an item that may or may not work.

While other strategies can help you differentiate your company such as discounts or free incentives, going the extra mile to forge relationships is all you truly need to jump to the front of the line. Customers will recognize it, and not only will they buy, but they'll also stay loyal to you for it.

(Source: SalesEngine)

6. Provide Incentives

This step encourages you to turn the focus inward and find ways to motivate your sales team. Many companies will utilize traditional incentive programs such as providing rewards to each months' top earner. However, newer companies are creating specific incentives that work to get the best out of each of your sales representatives.

One of the best motivators for an employee will always be cash. It's one of the biggest reasons why many sales companies still rely on commission to pay or supplement the pay for their teams. Companies that can provide unlimited commissions can motivate individuals that are driven to earn as much as possible each workday.

However, additional incentives such as paid time off, travel on the company budget, or a meal for the family can provide temporary motivational boosts. While your team is pursuing these incentives, they'll be taking the initiative to improve their skills on their own. With enough time, study, and hard work, your sales team will improve overall for all future interactions long after the incentive expires.

7. Ask to Close the Sale

While all of the previous steps focus on listening, observing, and establishing a relationship with the customer, it's important to know when it's time to stick the landing. Not every lead operates the same way, and many require that final push to recognize that it's time to commit to the deal. Still, many sales reps will lose countless leads every month by not completing this simple step.

If you're concerned as to whether or not it's time to ask, go down this list and ask yourself if you've satisfied the lead's needs. If you made prompt contact, made the effort to follow up, explained how your company can help with their objectives, and explained the deal, they will know if they intend to purchase.

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While a “yes” answer is ideal, a “no” does not mean the deal is over. Use this opportunity to ask more follow-up questions to determine if there are any concerns left for you to alleviate. If you ultimately lose the deal, thank them for their time, and promise to check back in at a later date to see if they were able to find a better solution. You may lose out on this deal, but maintaining the relationship can sow seeds for an opportunity down the line.

Starting Turning Your Marketing Leads into Sales!

With these steps in mind, your team knows what it needs to do to improve your marketing and sales processes. You can't win every deal, but listening to your audience and investing the time in the relationship will differentiate your company, bestow value to the individual and to what you're selling, and create loyal, returning customers for long-term success.

Follow these steps with every lead, and always continue to make the effort to analyze your efforts and improve with each sales interaction.

Social media is responsible for permanently changing the way we converse. Likewise, it directly impacts your ability to succeed as a business locally and online.

Social media lead generation strategies not only establish brand awareness, but actively encourage your audience to interact with you, each other, and, ultimately, help you achieve your goals.

If you've avoided the social media game this long, it's time to make a change. Below, we're going to give you the primer you need to learn about social media marketing, the best platforms to use for advertising, and the seven effective tactics that can show you how to get more leads on social media.

How Effective is Social Media Marketing?

To give you a clear answer to this question, it's important to consider the unique goals a company may have when using social platforms.

For many businesses and corporations, social media is one of the best tools to analyze consumer data in future strategies. A survey conducted by Sprout Social indicates that as many as 85% of executives are using or plan on using social for this exact purpose.

Social media is also a powerful way to increase brand recognition and promote a consistent flow of traffic to your profiles and your website. One of the latest studies courtesy of We Are Social and Hootsuite indicates that approximately 44.8% of the worldwide population is using social media for brand research.

Even countries trending toward the lower end of this study see one in three internet users turning to Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube before using any other resources. For added perspective, 4.66 billion of the world's 7.83 billion population use the internet regularly.

For sales-focused readers, the same study estimates that 27.5% of people using social media head online specifically to discover new products or services to purchase. Even when spending cash isn't the primary goal, statistics are showing that three out of four people will buy something online this month, regardless of gender or age group.

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What Social Media Platforms Should My Business Use for Advertising?

In terms of sheer numbers, Facebook continues to be unbeaten in terms of active users with 2.85 billion accounts. The runners-up include YouTube at 2.29 billion and Instagram at 1.39 billion. The rest fall below the billion-plus user threshold.

This doesn't mean that platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, or even Reddit aren't useful for achieving your business goals. For example, LinkedIn on average features users of a higher income bracket, with four of five members being the decision-makers at their companies. This makes it the most popular social network for B2B transactions.

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Twitter primarily appeals to the millennial and Gen Z demographic and generally allows for more fun, conversational approach. A different study courtesy of Sprout Social indicates that there was a 35% increase in ad engagements as the number of monetizable users continues to grow on the platform.

With that in mind, every social media platform is potentially viable depending on your unique business goals. Consider your motivations for exploring social media marketing, see how those goals fall in line with a platform's user base and begin creating your strategy from there.

How to Get More Leads on Social Media?

Now, we'll explain seven easy, yet effective tactics you can use to boost your social media performance and get more leads immediately.

1. Create an Optimized Business Profile

While each social platform might offer different customization options to take advantage of, there are rules you should always follow.

1. Upload a high-resolution brand logo or image that you can use for your profile picture. Ensure that users can easily identify the picture even when the image is cropped. Your business should aim for instant recognition.
2. Make sure your business information is always up-to-date. This includes having a valid phone number, email address, physical address, and business hours. If this information does not match up with other directory listings for your business online, it makes it that much more difficult to do business with you. At worst, it can harm your overall SEO score.
   Additionally, hyperlink your contact information if the platform provides this option.
3. Link your social profiles back to your website or landing page. Social media users can learn about you on the platform but will continue their journey by clicking through to your main location.

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2. Utilize the Platform's Advertising Features

The Facebook Ads center is one of the most popular and affordable tools across all social media platforms. You can immediately cross-publish and manage Instagram ads from the same location.

However, other social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google are making it easier than ever to manage and optimize your ads while lowering your cost-per-lead every month.

These systems utilize algorithms that constantly manage and track the performance of your campaigns 24/7. It can observe audience behavior, determine the optimal display dates and times, and ultimately eliminate poor-performing ads that are hurting your return on investment (ROI).

Continuously optimizing your campaigns also means having the ability to nurture your leads who have yet to make a purchase or opt-in. Nurturing means retargeting users at the stage where they previously left off. You can create ads that target those that visited your landing pages, filled out a form, or left an item in their cart.

Finally, all of this invaluable data allows you to create new campaigns for remarketing to the same audiences while also creating lookalike audiences that target new leads. The possibilities for advertising on social media are limited only to your strategies and creativity.

3. Use Social Proof Directly from the Platform

Today's customers are likely to be skeptical of a brand trying to work their way into their goodwill on social media. However, a little social proof can go a long way in quelling any doubts or concerns regarding your products or services. Customer testimonials are great to have regardless of where you advertise.

Thankfully, your customers won't hesitate to let you know exactly what they think of your business or offers on social media. You can use this to your advantage to let real people sell your brand for you. A 2020 study from Wyzowl states that as many as two out of three people are likely to purchase a product after seeing a review from another user that had a positive experience.

A significant part of using social media effectively is to utilize what the platform provides you. Speak with your customers, gather feedback, and incorporate the positives into your advertisements, while using the criticism to improve your brand.

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4. Determine the Right Incentive for Your Goals

To convert a lead into a customer, you need those contact details that will allow you to move the sales process along. However, savvy internet users won't give up that information without the right incentive or lead magnet. After all, no one wants yet another daily or weekly email in their inbox that ends up getting moved to the spam folder.

One of the best ways to help motivate users to provide their information is to provide them with an immediate incentive that's worthwhile. These incentives should be relevant to your brand and your offer.

A specific example could include a roofing company offering a free ebook containing expert tips homeowners can use to inspect their roofs and protect their homes. Your ad and landing page do the work of reminding the user of how important it is to protect their investment, while the free offer pushes them over the top. They get something useful out of the deal with no monetary investment, and you get their contact details for future interactions.

Other examples of powerful lead magnets could include entering sweepstakes for free prizes, coupons, or gift cards. As long as the reward for entering is a worthwhile one, you are sure to quickly generate details from leads with some promotional effort.

Consider what your brand can offer upfront without giving away the best parts of your business. Not only will you generate leads, but those future customers will remember how you helped them before they ever became a sales figure.

5. Sponsor Popular Content

If you engage with any podcast or video content in 2021, you've undoubtedly heard a sponsored advertisement. This is because many brands have found tremendous success by locating content online that already comes with built-in popularity. However, it's important to recognize if consumers of that content will identify with yours.

This doesn't mean forcing internet users to sit through a boring ad read. Allow content creators to sample your products or services for themselves. When they become fans of your brand, their use of your advertisements in their content becomes much more natural and features the built-in social proof we discussed previously above. Except this testimonial is perhaps more impactful as your audience is already a fan of the person promoting you.

Encourage your social media manager to research opportunities to connect with a variety of digital content creators. Doing so can provide a cost-effective, seamless way to bring like-minded brands, creators, and audiences together for success.

6. Target Advertisements to the User

Some forms of digital advertising can only target certain keywords or phrases. Social media provides you with the names, interests, and browsing habits of everyone who engages with your profile and your advertisements. These platforms provide you with the ability to create highly personalized ads that target specific users effectively.

Use the ad center of each platform to learn what topics, offers, or discounts appeal to different types of users and run multiple campaigns that target different types of users. They are much more likely to respond and become leads when a brand is speaking to them personally as opposed to lobbing a general offer at the biggest target.

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7. Talk to Your Audience

Perhaps the most basic tactic, but without a doubt the most important. Social media is inherently a conversational platform. Users share their likes, dislikes, passions, favorite content, favorite brands, and so much more. A brand that is simply trying to peddle its wares won't mesh well with the established norms of the digital space.

Engage with your audience regularly. Using social media for marketing isn't as simple as scheduling a daily post. It requires you to respond to user feedback, demonstrates the values of your brand and your team, and demonstrate authenticity to anyone that you might hope to become a customer someday.

Pay attention to what users are saying about your industry. Follow trending topics, keep up-to-date with hashtags, and help users understand what your business is truly about. Deceptions and misleading statements won't get you far, and the reputation that you will gain will stick with you for far longer. Engage with your audience and treat them as people, and they will treat your team in kind.

Start Generating Leads on Social Media Today!

With these strategies, your brand will begin to make noticeable strides on social media, regardless of the platform you start with. Social media can also effectively work in conjunction with other marketing efforts such as content marketing. Ensure that your campaign manager stays active on social and regularly utilizes your gathered analytics to create and promote new campaigns. With time, you will gain followers, likes, and shares just like the top brands.