The user interface is present in every consumer or business product.

Creating an item or service that effectively satisfies a need or want is critical for a successful production. However, how users perceive and interact with a device is equally vital.

Two practices sit at the heart of both of these dilemmas: user experience and user interface. Both must be designed alongside one another to ensure harmony within the final product.

By first understanding UI, we can begin to explore the definition of UI design, its core guidelines, and how UI designers effectively build user-friendly interfaces for everyone.

What is a User Interface?

A user interface is how a person can interact with a product or service. It's how we can enter inputs or commands, which the device then uses to yield a response.

There are four primary types of user interface:

A. Command Line Interface

The Command Line interface involves opening a command prompt to enter specific commands. When entered correctly, the device reads the request and returns additional prompts or the requested file.

Command lines are effectively obsolete in consumer products. As technology improved, designers were able to create new interfaces that were much more intuitive and user-friendly.

To try out a command line interface, open the Run command on your Windows PC. Then type calc' and hit enter. The command prompt reads the request and opens the calculator app on your computer.

B. Menu-Driven Interface

The menu-driven interface allows users to follow a series of menu commands as opposed to entering them freely into a command prompt.

The designer of the product understands the purpose of the product, and, therefore, designs a menu interface around the different options available to the user. They click on one menu prompt and discover new menu options based on their choice.

A menu-driven interface is not dissimilar to how we interact with technology or software now. Most products now utilize a GUI (which we'll go over next), while this style simply presents users with easy-to-follow options.

Examples of a menu-driven machines are ATMs or money kiosks you can still find in grocery stores, malls, or gas stations.

C. Graphical User Interface

A graphical user interface is what designers use in everyday computers and devices. Rather than confining users to a list of set commands, they can freely interact with all aspects of the device through graphical displays.

You're utilizing a GUI right now to read this content. A UI designer carefully planned an interface that allowed you to intuitively move from startup to browser, to this URL. You also utilized interfaces along the way by using Google search and this website.

GUIs are the standard. They're used in computers, phones, gaming consoles, televisions, and much more. It allows you to easily identify other software or content and provides a pain-free way to access any of it.

D. Touchscreen Graphical User Interface

A touchscreen GUI is markedly similar to a standard GUI. What fundamentally changes the experience is the manner of user input.

For decades, people have acclimated themselves to the nuances of the mouse and keyboard. It's still the preferred way for many to interact with a GUI for their everyday work or personal hobbies.

However, touchscreen functionality exists and is not going away. Touchscreen input often provides a better UI due to its speed, responsiveness, and natural tendency to reduce human error.

But, tapping a screen comes with its nuances that UI designers must face. This involves:

• Reading screen touches
• Responding to differences between tap and hold
• Haptic (physical feedback)
• New graphical icons and navigation methods

No matter which interface is used, a UI designer has to provide consumers with an ideal experience.

Next, let’s take a look at UI design itself to gain a better understanding of what UI designers handle regularly.

What is UI Design?

UI design is the process of styling an interface in a way that's aesthetically pleasing to view.

With that in mind, UI includes visual elements including typography, color palette, menu styles, and content presentation. UI isn't just a matter of taste. It can have a direct positive or negative impact on a user's ability to use or enjoy the website correctly.

It's here where many readers find themselves confusing UI with UX, or the user experience. To help you better understand, let's define UX next.

UI vs UX - How They Differ and Overlap?

While UI is how a user accesses and perceives a product, the UX is what the product provides for the entire customer journey as a whole.

The UX is how effective a product is at understanding the consumer and providing an effective solution for specific pain points.Ā  If a person can take advantage of your product and has an easy time doing so, you are providing a quality user experience.

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Let's use a modern iPhone device as an example.

Defining the UX starts with understanding the purpose of the device. It exists to be all-in-one handheld hardware that handles phone calls, SMS, emails, web browsing, task management, gaming, and much more. It aims to provide users with app solutions that effectively satisfy their every need.

The UX is the device's ability to provide this. It includes all aspects of their journey with the product including the inner tech, processing power, applications, settings, and ease of use. A great UX also recognizes where consumers may face issues and rapidly provides solutions to reduce or eliminate errors.

The UI of the iPhone is what users experience when interacting with the device. It includes its menu designs, graphical icons, fonts, text color, and touch responsiveness. It's a quality UI due to its intuitive nature, while also granting users the ability to modify the interface for improved accessibility.

While they are different concepts, they overlap frequently in the goal of satisfying users. The UX comes first and is guided by a firm understanding of your core audience. The UI serves to offer users the perfect design and presentation, aligning your needs with proven design concepts provided by a Presentation Design Agency.

UI Design Guidelines

Creating designs for your brand's website can be subjective. But, that doesn't mean that there aren't consistent rules for you to follow when building an effective interface.

Thanks to the constant feedback loop present between the user experience and user interface, we can measure what's most important when designing your website.

Those guidelines include the following concepts:

1. Quality UI Provides Clarity and Visibility

Many site owners make the mistake of overdoing it with their new site.

They become focused on adding new graphics, features, and content without considering whether a user can consume it all. These cluttered designs make it difficult for the user to engage with the site.

Quality UI designs do more with less. When you think of top-trending websites or household technology, you'll notice one thing - simplicity.

Clean, minimalistic UI designs deliver all of the information a user needs to know. It does not obscure a user's ability to understand the interface, nor does it overwhelm information.

It demonstrates the confidence that it understands the end-user and presents a UI that enables a quality UX. The user is able can access the feature they need without any hassle.

2. Great UI Provides User Freedom

By freedom, we mean that UI should allow users to explore freely and customize their experience. They continue navigating within the capabilities of the site but are allowed to take different pathways based on their needs.

Consider how your experience is when you interact with menu-driven interfaces. You know exactly what you need, but you have no choice but to sit through additional menus to get to your chosen destination. If the user makes an error during menu selection, they may have to repeat the process. This is an unappealing, frustrating UI.

Quality UI design recognizes that users within a given audience have their differences. There isn't necessarily a right way for them to use the site. Instead, the UI attempts to understand all of the different use cases and provides dynamic options based on previous actions.

3. UI Should Be Accessible

Accessibility is becoming increasingly important in the development of technology.

Creators are realizing that their design approach often focuses on your average, able-bodied individual. However, many people have restrictions or disabilities that prevent them from engaging with a UI as intended.

Accessibility problems manifest in a variety of ways. If your UI relies on communicating feedback with color, color-blinded users are disadvantaged.

If your presentation relies on image and video, the blind and hard-of-hearing are unable to engage with your website.

Offering realistic UI solutions to such individuals is not an easy task. Tech experts are assuredly already exploring the challenges some disadvantaged people may face as we switch more to touch screen technology. Voice options serve as a viable solution in some cases.

Providing a quality UI that includes accessibility goes back to the golden rule - understand your audience. If you're aware that users may face these setbacks with your UI, you must consider solutions in your overall UI design.

4. Smart Content Delivery

Personalized content is becoming increasingly important as businesses shift online.

The people using your website services are at different stages of their journey. If someone is brand-new, they'll want to learn more about your brand, the benefits offered, and other details that might push them toward signing up.

An active registered user does not need that information. They're already familiar with your website and use it for a specific purpose. Showing them the same content that you would show to a brand-new customer leads to a bad user experience.

Consider customizing your user interface to allow for a more personalized experience. This is a staple for online services such as social media platforms, CRMs, SaaS, and many others. Those sites leave cookies in the browser allowing your platform to recognize returning visitors.

Instead of seeing the same content as everyone else, the returning user gets greeted by name. They see the information that's immediately relevant to their needs and can quickly access any tools or apps to get started.

Personalization is not just important for quality UI, it's now mandatory for successful service, sales, and digital marketing.

5. Clear Feedback & Communication

Every website needs a method of communicating critical information to the user.

We take quality UI for granted in every device we use. A mouse cursor defaults to an arrow, showing users specifically where they're pointing at any given time.

When you click on an app, the cursor shifts to an hourglass. We know this as the symbol for loading.

These types of UI feedback allow users to understand the results of their actions. Conversely, if the cursor didn't switch to an hourglass, we would know to try again. If the problem persists, there's likely an error they need to investigate.

There are other methods of communicating feedback to users based on your goals. For example, smartphones require a way of distinguishing a single touch from a sustained press. The latter usually trigger haptic feedback or a physical sensation to communicate success.

Quality UI design communicates when actions work and also when errors occur. You can improve our UI further by communicating exact errors and directing users to quick solutions.

The UI means more than being just aesthetically pleasing. It effectively communicates everything the user needs to know before they take their next action.

6. Be Consistent in Your UI Design

Consistency is important, whether it's within the same product or across multiple.

The more a user interacts with your interface, the more they will learn the language. They understand all of the nuances, what indicators represent, and how to move from place to place.

Do not upset that experience by making the interface different in other places. Otherwise, the user now is tasked with learning a new set of rules, making your interface both frustrating and confusing. There's no consistency in what the user can expect.

The rule of consistency should persist across devices. We can continue our previous iPhone example to see how Apple achieves this.

Whether you're using an iPhone, an iPad, or a Mac, the interfaces are consistent. The first two are virtually identical, allowing anyone to easily pick one up if they're familiar with the other. The Mac has some necessary differences, but the process of understanding and navigating iOS is effectively the same.

Apple's approach to UI design is what makes more of its user base loyal. If someone uses an iPhone, there's a natural incentive to choose their other devices thanks to its consistent UI and UX. Not only do users understand how to use the tech, but they can also jump from device to device with zero issues.

7. Allow Users to Correct and Avoid Mistakes

Everyone's been there. You're working on an important document. A distraction comes along and you accidentally misclick and delete critical information. It's a terrible feeling and the consequences can be huge.

That's why designers consider these occurrences by offering the ability to prevent errors. Seldom are users stuck dealing with one-off mistakes with most modern tech.

Instead, services generally allow you to undo, edit, or reverse your last action. This can help you correct typos, restore deleted files, or undo a saved change.

Some UI designers go a step further and offer warnings before allowing the action to occur. Their feedback loop might show that users frequently make a specific mistake. Thus, they add a confirmation menu to confirm your intention.

The UI Design Process for a User-Friendly Interface

1. Research Your Target Demographic

The UI design process begins early.

When businesspeople start a company, the goal is to provide some product or service that directly addresses an audience's need(s). However, determining what that offering will be relying on performing effective customer research.

Let’s say that a marketing agency wants to build an analytics tracking tool for its users. Its audience can range from new entrepreneurs to seasoned business owners. When we research these types of people, we can make some early conclusions about what our service needs:

• It should allow for a variety of analytics integrations
• The setup process should be easy for newcomers
• It should clearly define metrics and KPIs for each platform
• It should be customizable and allow users to choose their highlights
• It should protect the security of their accounts

There’s more to include, but this is a great starting point.

Each bullet details something that our team needs to keep in mind when designing both the UX and UI. Our UX team is focusing on how to make sure users can perform the necessary actions with ease. The UI team needs to design the layout, menus, and presentations in a way that makes it intuitive for users to engage.

Doing this early research phase, reach out to your target audience and any existing customers. This is not an opportunity to sell something. Rather, you should entirely focus on their needs and what they hope to gain out of using your proposed website. Let them guide you on what your team needs to achieve and what you need to avoid with the final product.

2. Perform a Competitor Analysis

The chances are that you're not alone in your new business endeavor. Whatever you're proposing with your site, there's already another business doing the same or similar.

Creators need to be vigilant in understanding what the competition provides. With a live, working website, they've already had the opportunity to research, test, and refine various iterations of what you may be trying to achieve.

Analyzing your competitors will help your designers understand three critical details:

• Which features do you need to have to be competitive?
• Which problems are present in their design, so that you can avoid them?
• What can we do with our website to distinguish ourselves and/or outdo the competition?

As a minimum benchmark, your design needs to meet the industry standard. If your UI is lacking basic essential features, there’s nothing compelling users to choose you over a competitor.

Of course, your service will not be perfect on the first draft. Even industry-leading sites go through various drafts, prototypes, and extensive user testing to achieve a desirable result. Get ahead of the game by scouting the competition and understanding the assignment before you put pen to paper.

3. Use a Style Guide (or Create One)

Every brand should have a style guide. This is a designer's bible so that they know exactly what decisions to make within set brand guidelines.

A style guide is important to help make your site’s interface consistent with your entire brand image. This is important when considering UI design concepts such as:

• Typography
• Colors
• Imagery
• Logo implementation

This can at least serve as a firm starting point for your designers when crafting the site’s UI. From there, you can make future style choices for things such as sizing, icons, and customization features that are consistent with the overall image.

Working within set guidelines helps ensure that your team works toward a clearly-defined vision. You don't want your prototype to look alien to your brand, lest you create a cognitive disconnect between yourself and your audience.

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4. Start Sketching Your Initial Concepts

Every great design starts with putting pencil to paper. However, thanks to modern tech, there are a ton of tools and services to help make sketching easier.

Sketch, an aptly-named service allows teams to collaborate on UI sketch projects. It allows you to experiment with containers, drag-and-drop images, resize on the fly, and much more. Your teammates can see the changes in real-time, leave comments, or reach out directly with instructions.

Your sketches should be the earliest ideas of what your UI should look like. Start to play with the different ways you can display necessary information to your users. Once you have one (or a few) that you like, you can begin the process of wireframing.

5. Create Lo-Fi Wireframes

A wireframe is a blueprint of what your user interface will look like on the final website product.

When creating a wireframe, your primary goal is to create a clear visualization of what the user will see. You also want to map out how users will navigate one from one menu to another. Sharing this vision with the team will help to highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of the design.

The purpose of keeping your wireframes low-fidelity early on is to avoid wasting time on design elements prematurely. These lo-fi designs are sometimes called “gray boxes,” and are meant to show the basic format. You don’t need to worry about adding the right text or images to create the full interface just yet.

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As you become more confident in your UI design choices, you might start adding more elements that will be present in the final design. These are known as mid-fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes, with each becoming more detailed than the last.

If you already started sketching in Sketch, you can continue your progress from wireframe to prototype. However, other excellent tools exist for different skill levels including:

• Adobe XD
• Figma (Free Version Available)
• Justinmind (Free Version Available)

6. Move Toward Working Prototypes

Once you understand your user flow and solidify the UI design choices, start building a working prototype.

At this point, you've already settled on what the interface should look like to viewers. Now, your team needs to assemble a working version of the interface for further testing. Your goal is to establish a respectable version of the website you can present to your team and early testers.

Likely, your prototype will not resemble the final site. You're putting an early version of the product into outside hands. This new perspective will help you make continued changes to the style, colors, menus, text, and other presentation aspects. It can also help highlight opportunities to create a more optimized user flow.

After implementing continued feedback, you'll inevitably find yourself with your first mockup. This is a high-fidelity version of your final product and a close approximation of what will hit store shelves. As you fine-tune your mockup using a video mockup generator is a fantastic way to bring your static designs to life, making it easier to see how things will really work and look. Plus, it can provide some great feedback points from your testing team.

Quality UI Design Tips for Your Website

Your company's website can't just look good.

Its clean, minimalistic design needs to enable your visitors to have a quality experience when viewing your content. It should demonstrate a deep understanding of your audience so that you can provide them with what they need without delay.

Maintain clarity and consistency in all design aspects. Give users the freedom to explore other pages, while maintaining an intuitive sense of direction throughout their journey.

Above all else, test design changes and get feedback from your visitors. Because they're the ones engaging with your site regularly, they'll be the ones to spot room for improvement in either the design or potential feature additions.

Your website is never done. But, with a strong approach to your UI design, you'll consistently produce a product that's worth being at the top of the rankings.

Deciphering language used in search is a complex task.

As humans, we have the benefit of understanding not just what people say, but the context that surrounds it. Often, we can say a word or phrase, but offer an implied meaning that’s never stated. Nevertheless, we automatically understand the intention.

It’s this type of intelligence that Google continuously tries to provide in its search algorithms. It’s no longer enough to just do a keyword match. It needs to understand the relevance of what’s being said so that it can accurately serve that content to the right audience.

All of this is why Semantic SEO is now a critical part of your organic marketing.

In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through:

• What is Semantics?
• What is Semantic Search?
• What is Semantic SEO?
• How to Use Semantic SEO for Your Website

What is Semantics?

There are two primary components to linguistics and communication: lexicon and semantics.

Lexicon is defined as the actual units used in communication, otherwise known as words.

Semantics is the aspect of language that focuses on using logic to infer the true meaning and intention behind the words. It’s how we as people can communicate something with words, but mean several different things based upon a variety of internal and external factors.

For example, the word “monitor” has at least three meanings. One, it can be a verb that means to watch or observe. It can also be a noun that refers to someone who supervises. Finally, it can refer to the display you use when using a computer device.

The way we determine which “monitor” is right is through semantics. That is, we can logically deduce the meaning based on semantic clues like surrounding words, previous statements, or physical observation.

It is the process of matching the correct meaning to the act of communicating.

What is Semantic Search?

Understanding the meaning of semantics is essential for determining how it applies to search.

As search engine algorithms continue to evolve, they improve their ability to better understand the meaning behind our queries.

Therefore, semantic search is the idea of helping search engine algorithms understand the intention behind a search and the relevancy of the possible results. Google no longer just wants to match the query to on-page keywords, it wants to find the true meaning through the same logic means that we do.

How Search Results Used to Be?

In the early days of the internet, search engines used a fast, lean way to help users find content.

Any time you entered a keyword, you would receive hundreds of results featuring pages that included the keywords in your query. It was a guarantee that every found result mentioned your words at multiple points throughout the page. Because the lexicon matches, those pages were determined to be the best results.

How Search Results Are Evolving?

Thanks to our established understanding of semantics, we already begin to see the flaws with old SEO practices.

When sites wanted to improve their rankings, they would write a quick page to publish on the internet. This might be a quick list of tips about a subject with the primary intention being to use a keyword with high search volume.

The problem with taking keyword usage at face value is that it ignores the semantic aspects of communication. When someone enters a search into Google, the algorithm would not be able to interpret one meaning versus another.

For example, a user searches for “cheap compact disks.” Google previously had no way of interpreting the actual meaning.

Do they want to learn about which compact disk build quality? Do they want to find a cheap CD dealer? Or is there another intention that’s being obscured due to poor communication? Everyday internet users expect search engines to automatically understand their intentions.

Introducing the Knowledge Graph

Google understands that users want information fast. They want to learn all that they can about a particular query in as few clicks as possible to have a positive experience.

The company recognized that it had the advantage of processing and indexing an incredible amount of content daily. In this content lies important facts and answers to everyday questions that their users had.

As a result, it set out to create a database that collected accurate information about a particular topic. It would then be able to provide all of this information to a search user anytime their search query included a reference to the topic.

The Knowledge Graph is now present on every Google SERP. If you want to know last night’s football scores, you’ll find the information immediately without ever clicking a URL. If you wish to know to learn more about Google, you’ll find critical details such as a company description, founding members, current SEO, and location.

The knowledge graph includes virtually every important idea, place, company, or figure. The graphic is also able to provide direct links to related topics that are also found within this web of information.

It showed Google’s desire to provide users with answers to every possible question they might have regarding their query. They did this by utilizing previously established semantic connections based on content around the web. They would go on to take these new aspects of semantic search and apply them to the next big update.

The Hummingbird Update

Just a year later in 2013, Google launched the Hummingbird update. This allowed their search engine to better process different types of search queries based upon a variety of semantic factors.

Let’s revisit our prior example “cheap compact disks.” With Hummingbird, the search algorithm understands the true intention of the vague query. “Compact disks” is the primary keyword, but “cheap” provides the critical semantic context. It now knows that cheap refers to cost, implying that the user is looking to purchase low-cost CDs.

Because it can make this connection, it will no longer waste the user’s time by yielding guides or informational results. Instead, you now get results from sellers like Best Buy, Barnes and Noble, and Walmart linking to their music and audio sections.

It also had a tremendous impact on local SEO. When a user enters certain queries into Google, it can also derive semantic meaning from the person’s location. For example, if they search for “best Chinese food,” Google knows that the most relevant results are the ones physically closest to their location.

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BERT and Voice Input

While the changes to the SEO made a huge impact on semantic search, there was still work to be done.

The way people search continues to grow alongside technology. In the time it took to see the previous update, users began utilizing their mobile phones more than ever to input searches. We also saw a rise in hands-free devices like Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa among everyday consumers.

The promise of these devices meant that you no longer needed to enter your search with a keyboard. The on-the-go nature of new technology meant that users needed to be able to search for suggestions using their voices. This demonstrated continued issues with Google’s ability to understand more complex queries, especially those that were more conversational.

When typing, we tend to use as few words as possible, especially on a phone. We’ve also been trained in the old ways of SEO to focus on keywords and omit unnecessary fluff.

Those that use voice search revert to their traditional way of speaking. Instead of typing “semantic SEO,” someone may ask, “What is Semantic SEO and its purpose in content?” It’s easy for us to infer the meaning, but it can be tricky for the algorithm to understand the exact meaning of a longer query.

BERT, Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, is a technology that is designed to solve complex queries. It’s able to understand complex queries by looking not just at the keyword, but at all of the surrounding words as well as the sequence in which they appear.

BERT was also created to continuously learn from search users. The more that Google receives different types of searches, it takes steps closer to understanding the various ways humans communicate. It’s automatically gathering data and improving how it evaluates our efforts to learn new information.

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It may even be able to predict the next word in your query based on the words already entered. You can try entering a query into Google yourself and observe how quickly it generates an auto-filled response that matches your needs or comes close.

Google's SMITH Algorithm

Though it's still experimental, Google is currently testing its new SMITH technology, which stands for Siamese Multi-Depth Transformer-Based Hierarchical Encoder.

However, SEO experts know that this search advancement exists and promises to outperform BERT. While BERT is capable of predicting a few words based on user input, SMITH may be able to predict entire passages of text within a longer piece of content.

The full published study is available on Google's Research website. It explores Google's latest testing results, which seem to indicate that SMITH has its shortcomings. Currently, it seems that SMITH is not meant to replace BERT. Instead, both may be able to supplement the other's shortcomings.

While BERT focuses on short-form content, SMITH may be able to rapidly process entire documents. Together, they may be able to rapidly process the semantical meaning of the content of any web URL, regardless of length or size.

Now that you understand the purpose and history of semantic search, let's take a look at how it's impacting your SEO strategies.

What is Semantic SEO?

Semantic SEO is the process of optimizing your content to provide depth and meaning around a certain topic. Keywords still play a critical role, but the focus is on providing authoritative, complete responses to a user's search query.

Based on our previous discoveries in this article, we understand how this applies to our content creation efforts moving forward. Writing 500 words and including the keyword in your title and headlines does not lead to meaningful content.

Instead, Google's algorithm heavily favors pages that go into greater detail. High-ranking pages also make use of opportunities to link to relevant content both on and off-site for additional context. It's not just looking at keywords, but it's also reviewing the supporting text and links to derive the semantic meaning behind it.

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A. Search Intent and Relevance

You can optimize your website for semantic SEO by first considering the user's search intent behind a query.

Site owners can do this by considering the implied intention behind a keyword before selecting it. If the goal of your content is to provide information, you'll want to avoid transactional keywords and focus on informational ones. You can also help Google understand the intention and relevance of your content by utilizing semantic keywords.

B. What Are Semantic Keywords?

Semantic keywords are keywords that are closely related to primary keywords but have a slightly different, deeper meaning.

Let’s use “search engine optimization” as our keyword. Examples of semantic keywords are:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Search engine optimization techniques
• Search engine optimization example
• Search engine optimization specialist
• Search engine optimization course

All of these keywords are directly related to the primary keyword. However, the additional words provide context to derive a slightly different meaning.

These semantic keywords serve to strengthen our primary keyword when used effectively.

If a user was to search “how to do search engine optimization,” our result will be more likely to rank high if:

• We utilize semantic keywords appropriately
• We fully answer the user’s query (including techniques and examples as seen in the LSI keywords)
• We link to other SEO-related content available on the site where applicable
• We avoid overusing primary or semantic keywords to boost visibility

Next, we’ll explain the best strategies for using semantic SEO when developing content for your website.

How to Use Semantic SEO Throughout Your Website?

Implementing effective semantic SEO tactics begins as early as designing your website.

Some of the best strategies involve structuring your content in a way that naturally groups semantically-relevant content alongside one another. This reverberates throughout your entire content creation strategy and futureproofs your site when making additions or changes.

1. Plan Content Using Keyword Clustering

Keyword clustering lends itself beautifully to everything we've discussed in this article.

Previously, SEOs would generate a list of keywords with high search volume. Then, they’d plan pages or articles around making generous use of that keyword.

Today, SEOs take their list of keywords and cluster them into groups by their shared relevance. You can do this by sorting your keywords by common words and the frequency in which they appear.

Let’s revert to a previous example. A digital marketing agency is using “search engine optimization” as a target keyword. Other relevant keywords that we can use are terms like “search engine optimization techniques” and “search engine optimization specialist.” We cluster these terms into one group due to their relevancy.

We can use these cluster keywords to support the content on our core “search engine optimization” page. You could speak about the SEO service, what a specialist does, and some techniques site owners can use. From there, you should build out pillar pages that dive into your cluster keywords in greater depth.

When you create and organize content this way, you help Google understand the relationships. As Google’s understanding improves, it becomes more confident in the type of content you’re providing, so that it can better match a user’s search intentions.

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2. Address Longer User Queries

Long-tail keywords are a mixed bag for many SEOs.

On one hand, they often get skipped due to their lower search volume. When a brand is eager to boost traffic, it doesn't seem worthwhile to create pages around these keywords.

On the flip side, longtail keywords tend to exhibit high levels of engagement. When fewer results are taking the time to answer a question, users are more likely to engage with content that matches their needs.

You don't necessarily need to create an entire article focusing on a longtail keyword. Instead, you can address them within the body of pillar content established during keyword clustering. While your pillar page will cover a host of material, you can capitalize on longer queries by answering important questions throughout your article.

A great place to find longtail keywords is by checking out Google's People Also Ask section on SERPs. These questions are actual search queries and feature the best available response from available content.

Answering these questions in your core content is an excellent way to pull in additional traffic without diminishing your results. You'll pull in clicks for those lower search volume keywords, while simultaneously strengthening the quality of your core content. You get more eyes on your website and Google rewards you for helping out its users.

3. Always Utilize HTML Markup

Every content creator and SEO should already be doing this.

When you organize and upload content, you must tag sections of your content correctly. This HTML markup language explicitly tells Google's crawler what is on your page. Everything on the page should feature a tag including the type of text, buttons, videos, images, or forms.

Regarding the text, there are rules for tagging each section.

• Titles are indicated by H1
• H2 are commonly used as sub-headers to flag important topics/keywords
• H3-H6 flag topics or questions that belong underneath other headers
• Paragraph text is marked with <p>

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A modern CMS will automatically update the HTML accordingly so that you don't have to code your website. However, you need to know how to markup your text correctly to ensure that Google can index your content correctly.

If you're interested in the various HTML markup tags you can use, check out a full library along with tutorials here.

4. Make Use of Internal Linking

The benefit of designing your content around keyword clustering is how it lends itself to internal linking.

As we've learned, Google processes all of the content on a page to determine the meaning as it applies to search intent. However, it also crawls the entire site when performing the indexing process. That means that it will follow links from page to page to understand the navigation and how each page relates to one another.

When you cluster your keywords, your content in each group shares a relationship. When content is closely related, there are more sensible opportunities to add internal links to other pages. Just like with semantic keywords, Google will follow these links and use the content to define a shared meaning.

Be sure to only link to content whenever relevant. Anything that's out of context will likely be seen as unreliable or spammy, hurting your SEO efforts in the long run.

5. Utilize Structured Data

Structured data, also known as schema markup, is a language used to help search engines understand your website content.

While other semantic SEO techniques reinforce relationships, this markup language tags and define sections of the webpage. It not only allows for better indexing and ranking but grants the possibility of using that information on the SERP.

Sites that utilize structured data enhance their search result by building a rich snippet. Search results with rich snippets get increased visibility by showing you important details such as:

• Product availability
• Pricing
• Ratings
• Authors/directors/creators
• Release dates
• Company

Those examples simply scratch the surface. There are over one thousand schema properties you can use whenever appropriate.

The recommended format for implementing structured data is JSON-LD, a JavaScript notation. You can either implement the code directly via JavaScript or by using built-in features found within your CMS.

There are also tools available online that can help you generate structured data based on the type of page you want to create.Ā  Check out Schema.dev's schema builder with a browser plugin option available. You can also test your new structured data before publishing it for indexing.

Semantic SEO is the Key to Higher Rankings

Search engine optimization has changed substantially in the last ten years.

Site owners can no longer ad fluff to their website that simply mentions keywords. Thanks to several Google updates, search algorithms can now understand the content, but can discern the significance and relevance of the material within.

Content creators must invest time in creating pages with depth. You may need two to five thousand words to effectively answer every reader's needs. The more authoritative your content, the more likely Google is to trust it.

But, you may also proactively aid search engines. Make sure to utilize semantic keywords, apply the proper HTML markup, and make use of structured data. Instead of counting on the algorithm to get it right, give it a push in the right direction to get better rankings.

If understanding SEO practices seem complex, you're not alone. That's why DashClicks offers a free platform to help you get started. You can select which keywords you want to track and monitor your progress over a given period. Set your goals and see how you stack up against the top competitors. Give us a try today!

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” Dwayne Johnson.

Brand consistency is the ultimate objective of any business because of its enormous benefits. It is the positioning that showcases a brand’s values and identity. It’s crucial because if you practice brand consistency, your audience can recognize your brand’s characteristics through your brand’s messaging.

What brand elements do the companies want to engrain in the minds of consumers, so they can remember their brand? These elements are as follows:

• The tone of messaging
• Logo
• Visual brand elements, such as colors and themes.

Together these elements help people easily recognize your brand across different marketing channels.

It’s crucial to differentiate your brand by practicing brand consistency, so it stays top of mind even amid growing competition. It will also boost customer loyalty and brand authority.

So let’s discuss how to practice brand consistency.

Is it as simple as that sounds? No way, it can be quite challenging!

What Is Brand Consistency?

Brand consistency is maintaining communication and marketing positioning according to your business values. It also involves the elements that create its identity.

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What if a Coca-Cola ad looks like this?

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Does it even look like a Coca-Cola ad? It seems more like a Pepsi ad and can confuse its loyal customers. That’s what makes brand consistency so crucial.

Now, look at the following ads for Nescafe. Look at the brand colors, themes, and tone in their messaging:

• Recharge yourself
• Charge your brain
• Warm up to the rains with Nescafe
• Enjoy a cup before the chaos

All the ads point to its basic appeal “To recharge and refresh yourselves for important occasions.“

The target audience is tired people looking for a little caffeine to refresh them.

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Importance of Brand Consistency

Coke and Pepsi have been arch-rivals for more than a century, but Coke dominates the soft drink market. Many people think Coke is an older brand, but that's not true. Pharmacists launched both brands in the US in the late 19th century. And you'll be surprised to know that even though Pepsi tastes better, the brand value of Coke is $33 billion against Pepsico's $18 billion.

Coke's market domination can be attributed to its ability to weave its way into our lives. Look at the way the brand communicates with consumers and the way the brand stays true to its values and mission. Their logo and brand color instantly create a feeling of warmth, feeling better, revived, and energized.

The secret to their success is brand consistency. Coke has kept its brand identity and product consistent for over 130 years.

How DashClicks Helps You Manage Brand Consistency?

DashClicks' white label dashboard allows you to customize your reports, websites, emails, and communications with your clients. And we are not talking about the logo or the brand name; you can customize virtually anything, including the background colors, fonts, messaging, and reports, through various tools and templates.

What's DashClicks?

DashClicks offers a white label platform and software to help agencies conduct their day-to-day operations faster and better.

DashClicks' marketing agency software and ecosystem can make life easier for agency owners. It simplifies and streamlines everything, including marketing, selling, fulfilling, and servicing. The built-in apps will help you structure, create and automate. The biggest advantage of using the DashClicks platform is that it enables you to scale your business.

Here are the four ways we can maintain brand consistency using DashClicks -

1. Dashboard App

Our reporting dashboard is the one source of truth for all your data. It allows you to use dozens of pre-built widgets across all your apps and pull your data into one unified client dashboard software.

The Dashboard application acts as the home page for your entire platform experience. This is a fully customizable page so that users can personalize their page view.

Watch this video to learn how you can customize everything on the Dashboard as an agency owner to maintain brand consistency while sharing reports and data.

2. Sites App

The strongest armor DashClicks white-label platform offers you is their Sites App. The App gives you the freedom to create the website of your dreams. Create and manage your websites using our white-label drag-and-drop website builder for agencies. It means you can fully customize it as per your branding needs. The website builder allows you to take control of your website without any coding knowledge and change the background colors, fonts, images, messages, content, headers, and footers, whenever you want. Our custom content management system (CMS) makes editing your website a breeze.

Watch this video to learn how to use Sites Apps -

3. Analytics App

DashClicks' Analytics App brings real-time marketing reporting software to your fingertips. With this App, you can monitor and report on all of your marketing campaigns in one place.

Apart from that, it's also a powerful branding tool that allows you to customize your reports with your logo, brand name, colors, and fonts. With this App, you can easily share reports with your clients highlighting your branding elements and keeping your agency top of mind.

4. Templates App

It is another powerful app from DashClicks that helps you manage brand consistency. With the Templates App, you can stack your templates and unify communication.

It allows you to create custom email and SMS templates and start unifying your messaging across your entire organization. To manage brand consistency, you can use custom SMS templates throughout the agency ecosystem.

Final Words

DashClicks ecosystem offers many apps that helps you manage brand consistency. We have already discussed how crucial brand consistency is for business growth and customer loyalty.

The templates app allows you to keep your communications consistent across the entire agency ecosystem. So, if you want to keep your agency top of mind, and manage brand consistency, use DashClicks' white label platform. Moreover, it comes with powerful automation tools.

Social media is one of the cornerstones of digital marketing.

Over the years, we've experienced the rise of platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Each has had a significant impact on how we deliver content, advertisements, and news to our followers.

TikTok is on a rapid growth path that could see it overtaking every other platform above it.

Its focus on video content, powerful content delivery algorithm, and the digestible format make it ideal for any age group to use. The New York Times even posted a recent article explaining how TikTok usurps even Google as a search engine among Generation Z.

Adapting to the latest trends is key for marketers, which is why your agency should be utilizing TikTok influencers.

The Power of TikTok Advertising

TikTok is currently home to over one billion active users.

It ranks sixth globally beneath platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. However, its growth rate year-over-year has been explosive. Experts expect it to reach nearly two billion users by the end of this year. It also reached the record of having the most app downloads in 2021 and 2022.

It's easily the most popular among Gen Z, specifically 16-24-year-olds, but still sees consistent use among older demographics. It beats out Twitter and falls only short of several Meta-owned apps.

The massive success of the user-generated content platform is giving rise to TikTok influencers. These creators have achieved celebrity in their way, building audiences of hundreds to thousands of people that regularly visit to view their content.

The power of influencer marketing is no secret. You're unlikely to watch a YouTube channel or listen to your favorite podcast without hearing a few ads from popular brands. That's because 93% of marketers use influencers and the number of yearly influencer expenses is expected to increase.

Marketers have everything to gain by utilizing TikTok. The social platform shows no signs of slowing down, and its predominant focus on video content promises generally higher engagement rates and ROI than competing platforms.

In short, your agency cannot afford to ignore TikTok as a marketing tool any longer.

What Are TikTok Influencers?

TikTok influencers are professional or semi-professional content creators on the platform. They create followings by providing unique content that caters to a specific interest or niche.

Brands recognize that these influencers have this consistent power over their following. They then sell advertisements or product placements with these influencers, knowing that prospects are listening and that the engagement rate will be high.

The bigger the following a TikTok influencer has, the more valuable they are to companies and marketers. They have the power to guarantee you exposure among their reliable, daily audience.

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Why Brands Are Hiring TikTok Influencers?

The TikTok platform is famous for its scarily-accurate algorithm. That means that users have a significantly easier time finding content created by influencers that match their tastes. It takes very little time for users to start receiving the ideal videos, making them highly addictive and difficult to click away from.

Brands crave this kind of activity and retention when deploying marketing initiatives. Traditional paid marketing requires experts to experiment with different audiences, curate their content, and continuously spend to earn more clicks.

Hiring TikTok influencers save brands both time and money in this regard. You can discover TikTok influencers that share an audience with your company for mutual gain. Brands also leave the task of content creation to the influencer, saving the team time and resources.

The TikTok influencer benefits by earning income from partnerships like these. It's not uncommon to find influencers promoting a product as either a one-time gig or sporting longer promotions over multiple video uploads.

The cost always weighs heavily in favor of the brand. Employing an influencer temporarily generally costs far less than employing and tasking your team to find audiences, create content, conduct tests, and so on.

The larger the following an influencer has, the more they will charge per sponsorship deal. However, even small to mid-sized TikTok creators command loyal followings. Even with smaller follower numbers, studies have shown that as much as 80% of consumers make purchases based on social media content.

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Your audience is more likely to trust a down-to-earth content creator versus a for-profit company like yours. Consumers seem confident that influencers will only promote or use products that they actually believe are quality. That audience goodwill extends to every brand that partners with that consumer.

How to Find TikTok Influencers?

Now that you know how powerful TikTok influencers can be, it's time to determine how to ally ourselves with the right ones.

Some solutions are as simple as becoming a Tiktok user yourself. However, there are also other platforms you can use to expedite your search.

1. Start Browsing Related Categories on TikTok

This is the most intuitive way to start finding TikTok influencers. It's beneficial for agencies to familiarize themselves with the platform they will advertise on regardless.

Brainstorm a list of content categories that fit well with your brand. Start by searching for any content that relates to your industry. If you sell a marketing service, look for other marketers or business leaders. If you're a technology merchant, check out some of the tech and software enthusiasts online.

You can also turn to your company's buyer persona. Look for the common interests shared among your audience, and consider exploring content in those areas as well. It helps to know your audience so that you can reach them even when they're outside of your usual territory.

Start browsing content and make a list of any creators you like. You can also filter TikTok results to find the content with the highest engagement rates. Typically, those creators sport those high numbers thanks to an already existing following.

2. Check Out Trending Hashtags, Too

The purpose of a hashtag is to categorize content by topic or subject matter. People using a certain hashtag and browsing those threads share the same interests as everyone else involved.

You can use this to your advantage by looking for hashtags that pertain to your area of expertise.

Browsing hashtags also helps you gain an understanding of what's hot and trendy among the average user base. If you can make a connection with creators using certain hashtags, you may be able to boost your voice even further than under normal circumstances.

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Just like with category browsing, stick to topics that are in your brand's wheelhouse. Stick to working with creators that share your brand's passion and values.

3. Check Out Other Social Media Platforms

Sticking to just one platform isn't as lucrative as it can be for influencers. They're like active elsewhere online even if just for content promotion.

Don't limit your TikTok influencer search to just TikTok. Check out the social media platforms you use personally or professionally and visit content creators there. More often than not, their profiles will feature a list of the usernames and aliases they use on every platform.

Content creators that primarily use sites like Twitter, YouTube, or Twitch are also branching out into the TikTok space. Smart content marketing encourages us to repurpose existing content for extended results. Those creators take that advice and regularly cut and edit content to build their discoverability in new areas like TikTok.

In short, if an influencer has a following on one platform, chances are, they're on TikTok. Knowing that they have a presence on multiple platforms may also make working with them a better choice than someone restricted to one service.

4. Create a List from Search Results

A fairly routine way of finding TikTok influencers is to let others do the work for you.

You can type in “(any industry or category) TikTok influencers” into Google search and find reliable results. Many of these are business and marketing sites compiling useful lists for SEO purposes.

Check out as many of these lists as necessary and compile your list of who to research. You should never take a site's word for it, especially if the content is somewhat dated. You still need to get searching and learn more about these influencers for yourself.

Then, look up these names online and start exploring their content style. Also, be sure to check that the influencer is still active and showing worthwhile follower numbers.

5. Utilize Third-Party Influencer Platforms

Finally, you can take advantage of the various influencer marketing platforms available online.

These services track influencer activity across a variety of social media websites. All you need to do is build your brand profile, select some choice keywords, set your criteria, and automatically get results.

Some of these platforms like Upfluence can even identify influencers within your customer records. Upload your historical customer contact data and find out if any current or past customers already have a following online. If they're already shopping with you, it won't be a hard sell to strike up a partnership deal.

An added benefit of utilizing these services is the ability to manage your influencer campaigns directly within the same platform. It's a perfect way for both parties to monitor results 24/7 with full transparency. You'll know which influencers are making an impact and which ones you'll want to continue working with moving forward.

Examples of these platforms include:

• Mavrck
• Upfluence
• Traackr
• BuzzSumo

Things to Consider When Selecting TikTok Influencers

When researching TikTok influencers, know that there's more to consider than reach and engagement.

Even though influencer partnerships can be brief, some risks come with bringing someone outside into your brand. How the public perceives that person directly influences how they view your company.

As you check out some of the top preferred influencers in your field, keep these key points in mind:

1. Check the Person's Online History

What you see from a person's recent content may not tell their whole story. In our world of being always online, it seems almost inevitable that public figures and influencers find themselves in trouble at some point.

This generally happens due to some past action, behavior, or statement that the public discovers. Murky details sometimes come up after a person achieves notoriety as they did not have an online presence prior.

Many creators can sufficiently navigate these scenarios and maintain an active following. However, it's a judgment call for your brand to determine who to avoid when considering its history. Some of your audience may be quick to judge a brand that associates with an influencer that does not share their values.

2. Language, Tone, and Delivery

The reason for avoiding an influencer partnership doesn't have to be wrapped up in their closet's skeletons. Content creators may utilize certain language or deliver their messages in a way that differs from your brand.

They don't have to match your voice one for one. However, it's important to aim for consistency to not alienate your existing audience or undermine your values.

As an example, family-friendly companies have an expected way of speaking. The tone can range from professional to conversational, but the verbiage is clean and acceptable for all ages.

That company might choose to avoid working with influencers that use colorful language, harsh delivery, or produce explicit content. They may have a passion for your brand and industry expertise, but associating with certain traits might have the opposite effect as desired.

There isn't a strict rule on this as exceptions can always be made. There's a line to walk when allowing influencers to appear human versus following a pre-written and branded script. You may even need to take risks, experiment, and measure the audience response for future campaigns.

3. High Follower Count Isn't Always the Answer

It's sensible for brands to filter influencers by follower count. The bigger their audience, the more bang you'll get for your buck. However, engagement rates generally matter more than overall reach, especially if your goal is to drive sales.

Thanks to this social media age, there are more communities of all sizes. As long as there is a passion for it, you'll find groups ranging from one hundred members to one hundred thousand. The secret is that smaller communities can also provide excellent returns when utilized correctly.

Data shows that engagement rates are higher when an influencer's audience is smaller. A study of Instagram showed a 5% engagement rate when the audience was no more than 5K. The engagement rate drops to under 2% when the community grows larger.

TikTok, of course, throws us a bit of a loop as engagement rates tend to stay consistent no matter the follower count. Influencers with 5K followers or less saw just over 12% engagement, while those with higher counts saw 13-14%.

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The takeaway here is that even smaller influencers drive action on social media. There's a psychological effect individuals feel in smaller communities allowing them to feel seen and heard.

These micro TikTok influencers also charge cheaper rates. This allows your agency to branch out into multiple communities and expand your brand recognition further throughout the platform.

4. There Are Always Risks

No matter what you do, there is always an inherent risk in hiring a third party.

Anything an influencer says or does has a rippling impact on their community. When your brand forms that association, those thoughts and impressions are now extended to you. When the influencer is in good standing, that favor passes to your brand. But, the same is also true when an influencer damages their reputation.

The risk extends both ways. Trouble on your brand's side can potentially harm the image of an influencer. For this reason, there's always motivation for both parties to clearly define terms, understand the assignment, and deliver results accordingly.

Take the time to follow the tips in this article and do your research. You can mitigate the risk as much as possible by carefully vetting who you interact with ahead of time.

Recruit TikTok Influencers to Boost Your Online Presence

The future of social media marketing is already here. Billions of consumers worldwide spend significant portions of their week checking out content from their favorite creators.

Those creators have the benefit of selling themselves as the product. They garner more favor and trust with audiences than most brands ever can. That's why more agencies and businesses are investing in influencer marketing as a viable strategy for reaching goals.

Start developing smart research strategies to find the ideal TikTok influencers. Make sure that their audience has a shared interest and can connect with your brand's offerings. Try to work with influencers that share your values to keep your messaging consistent across all channels.

Finally, don't limit yourself to the platform's biggest followers. Though the reach is attractive if you can afford it, smaller creators often show the same if not higher engagement rates than major celebrities. You benefit from spending less and earning more transactions than you might with a traditional marketing campaign.

If you want to learn more about TikTok, DashClicks can help you get started with our state-of-the-art platform and white label TikTok ads service. Sign up today to create your free account and start tracking your TikTok campaigns with our intuitive integration features.

Negative reviews & stories and unfortunate incidents about brands and products are the new normal in the business world. Such stories and reviews can be an instant turn-off for customers and prospects looking to buy products online. Poor reputation management can backfire on all your marketing efforts. Therefore, reputation management is even more crucial.

How Does Reputation Management Work for Clients?

Negative stories, comments, and reviews published online can tarnish your brand image. They may also negatively impact sales as visitors and prospects may change their purchase decision at the very last moment, especially at the bottom of the sales funnel. So, all your efforts and money spent on lead nurturing goes down the drain.

The objective of reputation management is to professionally respond to negative customer comments online and react to stories posted with the intent to paint your company in a bad light. It includes publishing a post on social media, writing and publishing an article, or releasing a public statement addressing the story's content.

It frequently happens as an image makeover exercise, especially after an unfortunate incident that might spoil someone's brand reputation.

Almost one-third of the reputation market comprises small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This article will also discuss how to discover, retain, and expand clients and get a pie of this lucrative market.

How to Get More Reputation Management Clients?

It's an opportunity your agency can grab, as the service complements other digital marketing services such as SEO and social media marketing. Here are some of the proven ways to get more reputation management clients.

1. Create a Landing Page for Reputation Management Services

First, you must create a landing page for reputation management services, as you can divert your leads and prospects to this page for conversion. A landing page should be specifically designed for conversion purposes, so it should be clutter-free and highlight your previous achievements.

You can add a small introductory video at the beginning of the page to inform the customers about the importance of reputation management and how you can help them by providing result-oriented reputation management services.

A few testimonials of your satisfied clients will be a plus.

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2. First, Approach Your Existing Clients

As an agency, you must already have many satisfied customers, so the best strategy is to start with your existing clients. Many of them must actively be seeking reputation management services.

On average, it costs nearly five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. It will be easy for you to offer your services to your existing clients because all the factors, i.e., familiarity, confidence, and trust, will work in your favor. Some of them must already be availing of these services and might not be quite happy. Once they get to know about your professional ORM services, they will flock to you.

3. Approach Companies With a Damaged Reputation and Poor Reviews

Reputation management is a service you can provide to almost every client of yours, but still, it would be better if you find the customers who'll drive the most benefit. You can use sales intelligence tools such as UpLead, Datanyze, and Salesforce's Snapshot Report to identify such clients.

You can combine the insights from these tools and offer a free trial to the raw leads. This step alone would help you a lot in your effort to seize reputation management clients. When equipped with such crucial and useful information, businesses will form a positive image of your agency.

A free trial will convince them about the efficacy of your tools and tactics. It will help them realize that these are the kind of services they need and that you have expertise in them.

4. Use Email Drip Campaign

A drip campaign is a part of the sales funnel strategy comprising a series of automated emails. These emails are sent to your website visitors based on the specific action they took on your website. Their actions will also decide how many emails to send and their frequency.

Here's a flowchart to demonstrate how drip email campaigns work -

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Drip marketing serves two purposes. On the one hand, it helps you keep in touch with your audience in a highly personalized manner, and simultaneously it keeps you top of mind by informing them about the special offers, dates, and events.

For example, you can use a drip marketing campaign for a prospect if they have:

• Placed an order
• Attended an event at your store
• Attended a webinar
• Signed up for a newsletter or subscribed to your YouTube channel
• Download a report or eBook
• Abandoned a shopping cart
• Interacted with sales or customer service
• Not placed an order for a while

Drip marketing can boost sales by turning casual visitors into buyers, encouraging repeat purchases, and turning a dormant audience into an active audience.

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5. Use DashClicks Reputation Management App

DashClicks offers a reputation management app that helps you win more customers. This tool can efficiently manage your reviews across multiple sources from one dashboard and boost your reputation.

The reputation app allows you to compile your business reviews in a single dashboard. Effortlessly track your ratings and publish replies with one software tool.

This tool allows you to communicate with customers from every review source and leave replies without leaving the Reputation app.

You can also track your average rating, best review sources, and peak performance months 24/7 with your reporting dashboard. Invite customers to leave business reviews by sending carefully designed emails and SMS messages with one button press.

Once you add reputation management to the list of the services you offer and approach a few existing clients, you'll be stunned by the positive response you get from your clients. You may soon utilize cold calling and other sales tactics and see that your clients list is growing beyond your expectations, and you may not have the resources to accept any more clients. In the meantime, our white-label reputation management tool will help your agency to scale.

Further Reading: How DashClicks Reputation Management Software Can Help You Protect Your Brand Online

6. Ramp up Cold Calling Campaigns

The easiest and the best way to boost your business is cold calling. But, you need to have a well-planned strategy for that. At DashClicks, we train agencies in the art of cold calling. We use InstaSites, our bulk website development tool, as a prospecting tool to push our services step-by-step.

To learn this technique, watch this video -

‍

You can also read it in the blog format here -

How to Replicate the Prospecting Gold Mine

DashClicks provides you with enormous educational material to improve sales. Watch this video to learn how to close sales in four simple steps.

7. Try to Grab the Number #1 Slot

Last but not least, try to make your agency a reputation management leader. And it's possible with the right strategy and the best reputation management team to support you.

If cold calling seems difficult, you can watch this video to learn the secrets.

This article will also help you succeed as a digital agency -

Success Formula to Build a Profitable Agency From Scratch

A Sales Call Script to Sell Your Digital Products

Read this article for a complete sales call script -

How to Use InstaSites Software to Super Charge Your Sales

Final Words

With DashClicks behind you, you're ready to grab the #1 slot in this niche. With our reputation management software, you'll add happy clients swiftly and consistently. It will increase trust and brand value.

Are you ready to encash this hot new opportunity in the market?

If you want to make a sale, then you need to know your customer better than they know themselves.

Pushing a product onto someone rarely works. We exist in a time when consumers feel bombarded by hundreds of solicitations a week about a new good or service. They're likely to avoid you because, more importantly, you don't know them.

To increase your returns, your brand needs to know the customer down to the individual. This is what we call a buyer persona.

In this article, we're going to clearly define buyer persona, the benefits of creating one, and how to research yours effectively.

What is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a profile based on all of the attributes that would make the ideal customer for your business.

The buyer persona contains all of the demographic data that distinguishes one social group from another. It should include details such as age, gender, occupation, location, and income.

In addition to personal or career attributes, buyer personas also highlight customer needs, wants, and pain points. In short, your brand should be able to imagine a somewhat-real idea of what this customer experiences on a daily basis. With this knowledge, you can posture your marketing and sales efforts to have a greater impact.

Buyer Persona Examples

Finding the right buyer persona for your brand is critical for creating successful sales. Everyone has a unique profile, but your brand needs to be able to meet their needs and pain points effectively. Let's take a look at a few examples of imagined buyer personas for a digital marketing agency targeting automotive companies.

Buyer Persona Example 1

Buyer Persona Example 2

Buyer Persona Example 3

Buyer Persona Example Analysis

Based on these three example profiles, we can already uncover commonalities that will be vital in guiding our marketing and sales processes.

First, we see that our target customers at these automotive brands are not gender or race-specific. There isn't enough data to suggest that leaders in these automotive brands favor one gender over another. Therefore, our attention rightly focuses more on their occupation within the company and their ability to implement our services.

Second, the age group appears to have a pattern of including individuals anywhere from 30-40. Because leadership positions tend to trend toward older individuals, we may want to continue research to either extend our range or make it more precise.

The responsibilities of these personas differ within their companies. However, there is a common thread in that these leads play a role in helping the company close sales with the right customers. Employing effective marketing tactics and managing leads effectively is the challenge they face regularly.

Finally, we benefit from knowing how these individuals spend their time online at work and at home. Some seem to be more social-savvy than others, but there is a throughline in using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in both scenarios.

With this data, our buyer persona starts to look like this:

While our example individuals had their differences, there are enough shared attributes for us to begin realizing a more effective pitch for our agency's services. We know who to target, where to reach them online, and what problems they face.

Now, we use this data to position our services as the solution to those pain points.

Benefits of Targeting Buyer Personas

Targeting carefully-crafted buyer personas is key to improving your marketing efforts.

Customers now demand a personalized experience when shopping or receiving advertisements. A survey study by Segment featuring 1,006 respondents concluded that an overwhelming 71% feel frustrated by impersonal experiences with brands.

When you deploy personalized content to audiences, you're doing what is now expected of companies to remain competitive in the industry. Buyer personas are your ticket to achieving this.

Here is a list of everything you can benefit from by targeting buyer personas with your marketing campaigns and content creation efforts.

1. Improved Targeting

It helps to know who you're talking to before you initiate the conversation.

Without understanding your buyer persona, you find yourself talking to everyone, and, therefore, no one at the same time. Compare this to blindly approaching every customer that comes by on the sales floor. Not everyone has the same needs, and you'll never know who will be receptive based on a blind guess.

When you begin compiling important qualifiers regarding your customers, you become more efficient in your sales approach. You spend less time and money going after those with zero interest and focusing your efforts on those that matter more to your company.

2. Improved Content Creation

If you know who you're targeting, you immediately gain a better understanding of how to approach the conversation.

This applies to not only in-person or phone conversations but should influence your website copy, blogs, paid ads, landing pages, and more. Instead of casting a wide net and hoping for the best, you're now prepared to tailor your offers and messaging to those who are most likely to engage with you.

Furthermore, improving your buyer personas and creating new ones offers compounding benefits. When you're creating the right kinds of content for your audience, the performance data becomes even more meaningful. You'll know what works, what doesn't, and what you can do to get consistent results moving forward.

3. Improved ROI

The positive benefits continue to snowball into what matters most - your bottom line.

When you create buyer personas, you know who to speak with and how to speak with them. Now, you can start pushing toward closing more successful deals and boosting your ROI.

Businesses and marketers alike don't want nonqualified customers entering their doors. It costs time and money for a person's attention, and attracting the wrong leads is a poor investment. Instead, you'll now focus heavily on the audiences with the strongest interest and purchase intent, even if it means less traffic overall.

You'll spend less time chasing vanity metrics like overall clicks or daily traffic to make your agency look better. Your brand will benefit more from closing more deals with qualified leads that align with your buyer persona.

4. Better Consumer Feedback

Finally, interacting with your buyer persona gives way to more actionable feedback. In our always-online world, everyone has an opinion. But, which opinions about your brand really make a difference?

Opinions and feedback from engaged and paying customers are critical for growth and success. They've already committed to interacting with your brand, but now you can discover how to make your offerings even better.

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You can get better feedback and improve your shopping experience by doing your research ahead of time. Let's dive into how to do buyer persona research so that you can start finding better leads today.

How to Do Buyer Persona Research?

If you're a currently operating business, you likely already have data on hand that's valuable for building buyer personas. However, more information will only further improve your efforts.

Your marketing efforts might prove rough at first. But, by employing these tactics, you can use your buyer persona research to create better customer profiles.

1. Evaluate Your Brand

This should be the first step in creating any type of business. It's the reason why companies typically state their mission, vision, or goal by existing.

A successful business does not exist simply to sell a product or service but to provide actionable solutions to customer pain points. In the process of defining these goals, you should naturally begin to consider who will benefit from your offerings.

As a white label digital marketing agency, we know that our mission is to serve other agencies and entrepreneurs. We strive to complement their business efforts and provide fulfillment services to cover any gaps in their own business offerings. For these reasons, we know we want to focus on B2B buyer personas that work in the digital marketing field.

You should apply the same thought process when establishing your buyer persona. Understand who you want to reach, but leave an open mind for the various audience segments that make up that broad spectrum of potential clients.

2. Survey Your Existing Customers

Unless you're a brand-new agency with no clients, you already have research options available.

Brands of any size will benefit from interviewing their customers directly. Your audience interaction shouldn't always be entirely focused on a sale. Building rapport with your existing customers and maintaining their satisfaction is crucial for growth and scaling.

Check-in on your customers and ask how your product or service is treating them. This not only shows that you care but invites them to speak honestly about your strengths and weaknesses. You might discover concerns about price, quality, or customer service, all of which speak to customer needs and pain points.

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You can also obtain information by sending our customer surveys. Take the opportunity to curate a series of questions for your newsletter subscribers or your previous customer list. If you're an e-commerce brand, invite them to leave reviews on any products they purchase shortly after they complete their transaction.

Brand questionnaires need not only apply to the actual transaction and experience with the service. Ask your customers what type of content they like to see, where they spend their time browsing, and how you can improve their browsing experience. Any feedback you receive simultaneously builds out your buyer persona and helps you improve your marketing efforts.

3. Collect Information from Your Prospects

Many marketers, particularly in PPC areas, leverage their content to collect lead data.

These initial campaigns are known as discovery campaigns and exist to help with lead segmentation. While boosting sales should always be a focus, taking the time to learn more about your audience is beneficial for long-term results.

Your ads and landing pages for these types of campaigns should reflect this. However, this is still a transaction and your average web user is not going to relinquish their data for free. You can offer incentives, otherwise known as lead magnets, to encourage users to provide some personal data.

Lead collection forms on your landing page can give you the attributes you need to qualify who's reading your content. You can ask for as many qualifiers as you want. Just be mindful that many users are hesitant to give out anything too personal, nor do they wish to spend too much of their free time helping you out.

Finally, the paid platform you're using likely offers a tracking pixel to assist with collecting some of this data automatically. You can install a Facebook or TikTok Pixel on your site to track users that click on your ads on those platforms. Then, you have information about who they are, how they found your content, and how they spend their time on social before they reach your form.

4. Create a Negative Buyer Persona

If your buyer persona is your ideal customer, then the negative buyer persona is the individual that you do not wish to attract.

While scaling and growing your sales is the goal, some people will never be the right for your product or services. You can give yourself an edge in crafting your buyer persona by defining criteria that would rule out a potential lead.

For example, a business that sells garage door repair services is interested in home or business owners. Individuals that do not fit those categories, like apartment renters or those that live at home, are not ideal for their company. They do not have a garage door and cannot benefit from their service in any way.

Other negative criteria might not be so clear without research. Price is often a tricky factor to consider as you need to balance the cost of business, build quality, and accessibility to customers. Once you decide on a firm price point, you'll want to rule out customers outside of a certain income level as they likely cannot afford your premium product.

Knowing what to avoid is just as essential as knowing whom you wish to target. Take the time to evaluate your brand, consider your customer base, and define the attributes that make up your negative buyer persona.

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How to Create a Buyer Persona?

Armed with a library of research, we can now begin the process of creating a buyer persona.

Let's start by reviewing our research.

1. Analyze and Segment Your Data

In our earlier example, we created three basic customer profiles. After performing your research, you likely have information from dozens, if not hundreds, of customers that you need to consider.

We recommend compiling your audience data in spreadsheet software like Excel. You can also utilize form builder and tracking software like DashClicks to quickly organize your information. Then, you can download all of your collected data in a CSV sheet to use in other applications.

Segment your data for easier browsing. Some categories you may want to implement include:

• Sex
• Age
• Location
• Occupation
• Income Level
• Interests
• Social media profiles
• Housing

Your criteria will differ based on your brand’s unique needs and requirements.

Then, start to highlight the most consistent attributes shared across all of your surveyed leads and customers. Add each of these qualifiers to your buyer persona profile until you start to form a clear picture of your average ideal customer.

Do not necessarily rule out any qualifiers that aren't ranked at number one. There may be a significant enough number of customers that can benefit from your brand to consider making additional buyer personas.

2. Rule Out Any Negative Buyer Persona Qualifiers

Our earlier process of creating a negative buyer persona will help us in eliminating unuseful information. Some of your surveyed leads might have tangential interest in your brand, but do not make for worthwhile prospects based on your previously established reasoning.

You'll now have a list of buyer persona attributes shared among your viable audience. You've eliminated any unworthwhile prospects and can now move forward in building and sharing your buyer persona with your team.

Note that ruling out certain leads now does not necessarily mean you should forget them for good. Some of your most interested leads might only have one or two factors going against them right now. Oftentimes, you can use this data to consider proposing new goals that can help you extend your offerings to new audiences when it comes time to scale.

3. Start Implementing Changes to Your Strategy

With your initial buyer persona(s) created, it's time to start utilizing them in your marketing efforts.

Buyer persona-focused content should not apply only to new efforts. You should communicate with your SEO, content, and social media teams to revisit existing plans and previous content. Revisit your work and consider how effective it is in addressing your new ideal buyer persona.

This process should prove educational. Take the opportunity to tweak content as necessary to begin addressing your ideal customer. Use a daily task tracker to write daily notes and provide feedback to your team as you come up with new ideas for better content moving forward.

Your entire team must be on the same page in understanding your buyer persona. Consistency in your message is key to building trust. With persistence, you can begin to establish your brand as a household name with your new target audience.

Buyer Personas Lead to Better Marketing

Creating a buyer persona is essential for improving business efficiency.

Your company needs to be aware of its audience and important customer pain points. Simultaneously, those prospects are demanding personalized content from brands that want their business.

The buyer persona helps aid both in meaningful content creation and accurate campaign targeting. Your team focuses on how to deliver the right message while ensuring that those words reach the most ideal ears.

Finally, it will provide you with meaningful, actionable feedback. You'll interact with genuine customers and learn how you can improve your experience from discovery to the final sale.