Website design is never truly complete. If you're trying to get more conversions out of that new landing page, it may be time to rethink that hero section or consider adding a video. However, you may not be sure what changes will work best.

Even the most seasoned marketing experts can't trust that their instinctual analysis will always be correct. That's why every marketer or business owner needs to be aware of how to run an A/B test in Google Analytics.

In this article, you should learn what an A/B test is as well as how you can easily set up various types of split tests with minimal effort.

What is an A/B Test in Digital Marketing?

An A/B test is a process of utilizing two versions of a sales page to determine what yields better results. You will start by fully designing your landing page including the layout, color choices, images, videos, and copy.

Then, you create a second variation of the page generally by modifying the existing format. These changes depend upon what exactly you are looking to test during this process. For example, you may have two strong approaches to sales copy, but are unsure of which will best speak to your audience. Another example may simply be recording and adding a personal video to engage new prospects.

After you create your two variations, you can direct a set percentage of your traffic to either page. A 50/50 split will see half of the users arriving at Page A with the other half getting the Page B experience.

Google Analytics then gathers various metrics in real-time to help you determine which page is the best performer. These insights may also help you better understand what creatives your audience responds to, so that future marketing ventures are naturally tailored for success.

Who Should Use A/B Testing?

Any website owner or business owner should be utilizing A/B testing in Google Analytics. Whether it's a website or a fancy new landing page, you're making that investment to get you qualified leads and improve your sales. The best way to do that is to constantly analyze what's getting results and making the necessary improvements along the way.

While the process of setting up A/B tests is relatively simple, it may not be so for newcomers who are unsure of what creatives need testing. As a result, studies show that most of these A/B tests will fail.

The good news is that we generally understand the reasons why most of these end in failure. Before we get into the specifics of how to set up your A/B test in Google Analytics, let's take a moment to educate ourselves on what not to do when performing your future tests.

What Causes A/B Tests to Fail?

Knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing best practices for success. Here is a quick list of things you need to be aware of and avoid to ensure that you make the most of your time and marketing budget:

1. You Aren't Making Any Significant Changes

Making small copy changes may seem appealing (and can yield results when done right), but it's not a substantial change that generally sees long-term differences. While you and your team might be able to point out the difference in a header, a paragraph, or an image, the overall layout of both variations remains fairly identical.

So - what should you change? Consider big picture items such as the overall tone or approach to selling your product on the page. An easy example might look like this:

• Page A features a CTA (call to action) in the headline along with a sign-up form, a relevant, high-quality image, and a brief paragraph telling users why they need to enter their information.

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• Page B features the same headline and sign-up form but replaces the image and most of the sales copy with a video.

In this particular example, Page B is going to outperform Page A most of the time. A quality video will yield better results than still images 75% of the time. Without that insider knowledge, you would need to rely on an A/B test to know for sure that the video was the deciding factor.

2. You're Testing Too Many Changes at Once

It's great that you have several ideas on how to approach your webpage. However, incorporating too many changes simultaneously may make it more difficult to isolate exactly which changes bolstered your results.

When creating your experiment, you should make an effort to simplify your hypothesis and put the variations to the test. Then, create a separate experiment down the line to further improve conversions. Don't view website optimizations necessarily as a sprint, but plan on making continuous improvements and revisions over time.

3. You're Stopping the Tests Too Soon

Testing is a continuous process. If you go into the expectation that you're going to make some quick changes and watch the leads roll in, you're going to be disappointed.

A/B tests are most effective when you allow sufficient time and conversion volume. It's common sense that you would put more faith in a survey of 1000 unique persons versus 100. Unless your brand is already a hot-ticket item, it can take several weeks to gather enough data of any real statistical significance.

4. The Tests Focus on Personal Bias

This one can be a bit harder to identify, but your personal bias may be blocking from you accurately assessing problems with the page. You keep making changes to the areas that should be driving conversions, but neither variation is outperforming the other in any noteworthy fashion.

True testing needs to be focused on what is actually happening, not your personal feelings or assumptions about the copy or web design. Unless you're confident that you know what to test, A/B testing may not be helping as your variations are not featuring any actionable changes.

Key Elements for Your A/B Testing

To ensure that you prepare properly, let's take a look at some of the key elements on the webpage that you generally want to be the focus of your A/B testing:

1. The Sales Copy

This is a broad category, but debatably the most important part of the page. Every person who clicks on the ad needs to be able to easily read and comprehend what they're being told on the page.

The description of the product, service, and offer should be clear and easy to digest. It's okay for your audience to have some questions, but they should feel informed and empowered to sign up or make a purchasing decision on the spot. If you're getting traffic to the page but have a low conversion rate, explore different ways to communicate the details such as bullet lists, product or service comparisons, and pricing details upfront.

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2. Headlines

Headlines are the first tool you use on a web page to get your audience engaged. It should directly address the individual and provide them with an immediate incentive to take action and learn more.

We can use another example to better understand an A/B test of two headlines from two landscaping services:

• Page A – Improve Your Home with Joe’s Landscaping Today!
• Page B – Sign Up to Get $100 Off Your First Landscaping Service Today Only!

Both headlines directly address the customer by using some form of “you,” but Page B is more engaging. The headline immediately describes the service, provides an attractive offer, and incentivizes immediate action by revealing a time limit. While improving your home sounds like a great benefit, A/B testing allows you to take a step back and determine the actual highlight of the page.

3. Social Proof

Customers continue to get more purchase-savvy online and tend to be more skeptical of a great offer. You can combat this effectively by offering your customers social proof. Examples of this may be testimonials, past sales figures, or current subscriber numbers.

You then place social proof on your landing page, but you're still not converting. Thankfully, A/B testing allows us to explore the possible reasons. The metrics may show that users are not scrolling down to see your testimonials at the bottom of the page, meaning that your B variation should try alternative placements to improve the impact and visibility.

4. Webpage Design

This may seem like a no-brainer until you consider how many visually unattractive pages you see every month as an active internet user. Poor color choices, illegible or hard-to-read text and lack of visual engagement with high-resolution images or video can cause users to bounce off your page quickly.

While problems with your web design may not be so severe, you still want to explore alternate page layouts and designs to activate your readers. The design should amplify the copy, gracefully walking readers through your pitch and naturally leading them to a call-to-action button.

How to Set Up an A/B Test in Google Analytics?

After you review the key elements of your webpage and come up with a few actionable hypotheses, you can begin setting up your A/B test. You will require a Google Analytics and Google Optimize account to begin.

AAfter logging into your Optimize account, complete the following steps:

1. Click on the appropriate Container name and navigate to the “Experiments” page.

2. Click “Create Experiment” Give your experiment an easy-to-identify name that’s relevant to the subject of testing.

3. Enter the URL of the page you wish to test.

4. Select “A/B test” Then, click “Create”

Now that your experiment is active, you should see two tabs on the page. One is the Variants card and the other is your Configuration card.

Creating Your Variant

1. On the bottom right side of the page, click “Create Variant” to begin.

2. Name this variant and click “Add.” You can do this again for as many variants as you need to create.

3. You can see your variants in a list on the page along with the number of changes currently present. Click on a variant anywhere to begin making your desired edits.

4. An editor panel will appear, and you can now make changes to the new page variant. When you are satisfied with the changes, be sure to click “Save.”

5. When all of the changes are in place, click “Done” to complete the variant.

Configuring Your Objectives

Now that you have a variant to test alongside your original page, you need to set the objectives for your Google Analytics A/B testing experiment. You can do this by performing the following steps:

1. On the objectives tab, select a Google Analytics View. Then, select a Primary Objective.

2. Click “+ Add Objective.”

3. Add a description and hypothesis that describes what you’re looking to test and achieve with this experiment. Then, click “Save.”

4. Next, we will select who to target with the new variant and when by going to the Targeting tab.

5. Under Who, select the split percentage of your audience you want to send to your variant page.

6. You can further establish targeting rules by utilizing the When tab. There are a variety of custom rules you can use to determine when your audience will see the variant. We encourage you to review this in-depth targeting tutorial from Google. Also, be sure to review Google’s policies before continuing with your new targeting rules.

When you are satisfied with the experiment, you can click “Start” to push your variant pages live. Google recommends allowing this experiment to run for at least two weeks or until a variation has a 95% probability to outperform the original.

Conclusion

Performing A/B split tests in Google Analytics is easy to pick up but offers a host of ways to get even more confident results with experience and know-how.  You may eventually wish to graduate from general A/B split tests to perform more in-depth content experiments.

Google also provides built-in reporting that you can review at the end of your experiment. Their reporting utilizes Bayesian inference, which is a statistical analysis method that helps to determine the actual likelihood of your variant outperforming the original. Optimize can also advise you on when it can no longer realistically gather relevant data to improve the results.

A/B split tests in Google Analytics offer numerous benefits with almost no downside, including:

• Ongoing performance analysis
• An easy way to make low-risk changes
• Learning from your audience to improve engagement
• Utilizing gathered data to improve your website and future webpages
• Noticeable improvements to conversions

If you have a page that you’re ready to test, you can use this information to start testing today. Stop wasting money on vanity traffic numbers, and start turning those leads into conversions.

Google is committed to the wellbeing and growth of local businesses, and it reflects in its past few algorithm updates. Google has paved the way for local businesses to get noticed within minimum efforts.

To boost your local business, you should pay attention to the following assets:

A. Google My Business profile
B. Name, Address, and Phone (NAP profile) at various places on the web
C. Social media
D. Google reviews
E. Social citations, if any
F. On-page Optimization with local keywords
G. Local link building

Most of these strategies are already being used by local shops and businesses. You can find the areas where they are weak and use it as an opportunity to gain a strategic advantage.

Schema markup is one of the most effective local SEO strategies that take SEO one step further.

So, you can add schema to your website and reap its immense local SEO benefits for a long time. Here are a few tips for using schema markup to boost your SEO.

One significant advantage of adding schema markup to your website is that search engines start giving more descriptive and informative results about your website. It can be crucial, especially in a saturated market where a little extra content can differentiate visitors and convert customers.

What is Schema Markup?

Structured data or schema markup is often referred to as the language of search engines. It has its semantic vocab, which is used as a code to provide more information about your content to search engines. The accurate information that is often displayed below the SERPs page title helps users know what they can expect on the web page.

Let’s discuss how schema markup works:

When you enter search queries like “SEO companies” or “SEO companies near me” in the Google search field, you get the search engine result page just like the one given above, where Google displays SEO companies near the searcher’s location.

However, this is just one type of schema markup you can deploy on your website. As you can see, it’s beneficial for visitors looking to find the kind of products and services you sell.

Now, let’s discuss other schema markup values for local enterprises and how they can add better visibility to your business.

How to Do Schema Markup for a Local Business?

According to Search Engine Watch, you can follow these tips while implementing schema markups:-

A. Go through Google’s guidelines

B. Brush up on your coding skills. You need not master the coding to implement schema, but a fair understanding of Microdata and JSON-LD will make things easier.

C. Pick a suitable template and stick to it while creating code. Be as descriptive as possible. You can use many elements such as your social profiles, website URL, events, and Google Maps location to enrich your business’s local profile.

How to Choose the Best Schema Markups for Local Business SEO?

You can choose from the following five primary markup values for different website types:

1. Organization Schema Markup

Combine the power of Google local search features with organization schema markup and reap its many benefits. You can produce brand signals and improve your Knowledge Graph entry in Google search. It will also help you boost your website snippet presence. Add contact details, logo, and social profile links to grow your brand.

Example (with JSON-LD):-

<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{ “@context” : “http://schema.org“,
“@type” : “Organization”,
“legalName” : “Business Name”,
“url” : “https://www.example.com/”,
“contactPoint” : [{
“@type” : “ContactPoint”,
“telephone” : “+1-xxx-xxx-xxxx”,
“contactType” : “customer service”
}]
“logo” : “https://www.example.com/img.jpg”,
“sameAs” : [ “https://www.facebook.com/”,
“https://twitter.com/”,
“https://www.youtube.com/”,
“https://www.linkedin.com/”,
}
</script>

2. Website Schema Markup

You can also boost the schema markup of your website to view the Sitelinks Search Box feature. It helps your website name get featured in the search results (SERPs). However, an existing site search is needed to enable the Sitelinks Search Box element.

Example (with JSON-LD)-

<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context” : “http://schema.org”,
“@type” : “WebSite”,
“name” : “Business Name“,
“url” : “https://www.example.com/”,
“potentialAction” : {
“@type” : “SearchAction”,
“target” : “https://www.example.com/?s={search_term}”,
“query-input” : “required name=search_term”
}
}
</script>

3. Breadcrumbs Markup

A breadcrumb trail indicates a specific web page position in the site hierarchy, making navigation and exploring a better experience website. So, when a user starts from the last breadcrumb, they may go their way up in the site hierarchy, scrolling one level at a time.

The Breadcrumb schema includes rich snippets that you can create for different content available, “ web pages. These snippets will appear on the SERPs.

4. Site Navigation Schema Markup

This markup is used to explain your website's structure to the search engines to encourage better navigation. It is also used to boost organic sitelinks. Sometimes, visitors don't want to go to the home page and instead move to a specific page such as a blog or careers page. Site navigation markup facilitates them to choose the right page before even hitting the website.

5. Video Schema Markup

According to a WordStream survey, 87% of online marketers use video content. 51% of marketers mention video as the type of content that produces the best ROI globally.

Needless to say video content is quite important for businesses, and they should find ways to promote video content not only for engagement but also for the bottom of the funnel, i.e., conversion and sales. It also helps to rank in the search engines. For many search keywords, video content outranks your site rankings. It is more prominent in the “what is” and “how-to” type of content. You can use VideoObject schema for hosted or embedded video content. Your efforts are rewarded when you see that the rich snippets from your website show up in the google video search, and it becomes possible only because of the schema markup you use.

What are the Elements You Need to Create a Video Schema?

Here are a few elements that are included in the video schema:

• Name of the video/video title
• Description
• ThumbnailUrl
• UploadDate

You can use the schema elements to introduce your video to search engines in the following manner:

<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{
“@context”: “http://schema.org“,
“@type”: “VideoObject,”
“name”: “Name of the Video (title you gave it on YouTube/Vimeo/Website)”,
“caption”: “whatever caption you’d like this video to have – this isn’t a mandatory field, but I would recommend it”,
“description”: “A short description of your video: keep it concise (like your Video Meta Description in YouTube and Vimeo, so approximately 150 characters).”,
“thumbnailUrl”: “http://www.example.com/thumbnail.jpg,”
“embedUrl”: “A URL pointing to a player for the specific video. Usually, this is the information in the src element of a <embed> tag”,
“uploadDate”: “2017-04-05T08:00:00+02:00”,
“duration”: “PT1M33S – this section has to be in ISO8601 formatting”,
“contentUrl”: “http://i.vimeocdn.com/video/515473390_100x75.jpg?r=pad”,
“embedUrl”: “http://www.example.com/embed?videoetc”,
“interactionCount”: “2347”,
“transcript”: “A transcript of your video is helpful for SEO – it’s also great for adding more detail about the video for search engines to understand given that the description above is so short”
}
</script>

How to Implement Video Schema Markup?

Here is the process to implement video schema markup for your website:

1. Go to Google Tag Manager and create a custom HTML Video Schema tag.
2. Copy the above format (code) and edit the fields to reflect your video details.
3. Turn on the preview and debug mode, so you can ensure that it runs on the page containing the video.
4. Verify that the code is working and publish the video.
5. Also, try it in the Google Structured Data testing tool.

Maximize the Potential of Schema Markup Values

Follow these rules and get better results with schema markup. The process is pretty simple. You can list down all the popular schemas and identify the schema types to help you achieve your SEO goals. There can be numerous categories, but you have to choose what will help you boost your business strictly. Last but not least, don’t forget to mark up. The more content your markup, the greater visibility you achieve for your website. However, make sure that you don’t mark up hidden content. For example, don’t mark up hidden div or other hidden elements.

Validate It With Google

Regardless of how carefully you have written the code, you must run it through the Structured Data Tool from Google before deploying it. This tool is quite helpful. You can find various tools out there, but none offers the kind of quality this Google tool provides. A better course of action would be to develop a code that is written accurately so that you can rely on it. You can add the elements to fit your requirements whenever you need them.

How to Find the Markup on the Page?

Make sure that markup exists on the page. Copy and paste the JSON-LD into the page. Right-click on the web page>>View source>>Search for “LD+JSON” within the elements tab to check if the code exists there.

However, it would be convenient for you to use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool (SDTT) if you are doing it with the Schema app to deploy the code. However, soon SDTT will be replaced with the Schema Markup Validator (SMV), which is currently into its beta testing phase.

How to Use Schema Markup Validator (SMV)?

Google’s much-awaited Schema Markup Validator was launched in May 2021, replacing Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. The Schema Markup Validator is based on the Google SDTT. The SMV can extract RDFa, JSON-LD, and Microdata markup and identify syntax errors in the markup.

Step 1:  Launch test by hitting https://validator.schema.org/ in the browser

Step 2: Enter the URL you want to test for schema markup. You can also enter your page's HTML code snippet in the adjacent field.

Step 3: See the errors listed by the tool

How to Upload Your Schema Markup?

To simplify things while uploading your code, use a custom HTML tag from Google tag manager. For businesses that operate from different locations, it is advised that you generate codes for each of them and then implement them on your location pages to get the best local SEO results. Once the code is set up and ready to use, hit the publish button and validate it with the structured data tool from Google. You will need the URL of a website in the process. Finally, Google will notice your local business markup and increase the visibility of your pages.

Steps to Upload/Implement Schema Markup on Your Site:

1. Visit Google's Structure Data Markup Helper.

2. Select the type of data you want to markup from the given options.

3. Enter the page URL you want to markup or copy-paste the entire HTML code of your page in the “HTML” tab beside “URL”.

4. Select and highlight the type of elements to be marked up.

5. Add more markup items.

Use the list of data items as a reference, and highlight the other items on your page to add them to the markup list. It's not necessary to tag every item; choose the ones that are needed. But, the more things you choose, the better it's for you.

6. Click on Create HTML.

7. The Structured Data Testing Tool will also tell you how your page looks with the added markup. The tool will also display warnings if any.8. Now, add the schema markup you have generated to your web page.

How to Add Schema to Your WordPress Site?

WordPress is the most popular CMS around the world. So, it is time to discuss how to add schema to your WordPress site to help WP users. Here are a couple of options, and you can choose the one that fits your requirements:

1. Add basic information to your theme manually
2. Theme-based schema markup
3. Add basic information using an SEO plugin
4. Try a niche-specific schema plugin
5. Work with a generic schema plugin

Let’s discuss these options.

1. Add Basic Information to Your Theme Manually

Find an online tool and enter the information about your website to generate some markup. Get the output by tweaking your theme.

Schema.org JSON-LD Generator is a tool that you can try to create comprehensive, structured data entry.

Follow the wizard and complete the entries to generate. This way you can create either a generic entry or specific entries for web pages.

A JSON-LD (or JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is created when you enter all the details. It would help if you validated it with the Google Structured Data testing tool.

If you’re a beginner and don’t know much about JSON, copy and paste the code into your website and add the crucial business details such as business name, website, category, address, working hours, etc.

Get the JSON text ready as you’ll need it to add it to the WordPress website as a script. Go to the header of your page and add a script tag to do it quickly.

To add the script, you can either edit the theme of your site or use a plugin such as “Insert Header and Footer.”

Add the machine-generated script, save, and run your website using the Structured Data testing tool. It will ensure that the code is written correctly and ready to install on your website.

It is the easiest method of adding schema markup, where you don’t need any plugin and developers’ support. So, it can be done easily by the small local businesses that need their basic info to be displayed by the search engines.

2. Theme Based Schema Markup

With schema markup getting so much prominence, you can buy many themes online that support schema markup.

For example, you can try themes like Schema Lite and The Schema.

As you can see in the screenshot, the theme produces a variety of markup structured data that includes pages, header and footer, organization, blog items, and site navigation elements.

3. Add Basic Details Using Your SEO Plugin

Now that schema markup has become indispensable for SEO; most SEO plugins also allow you to add structured data.

If you use Yoast SEO, go to SEO > Search Appearance:

Most SEO plugins have almost similar settings to create schema markup data so that you can do it quickly.

4. Try a Niche-Specific WordPress Plugin

You can also try niche-specific plugins that generate markup schema for specific types of data. We’ll discuss one such plugin — “Event Schema” here.

Event Schema

If your site generates numerous events and you want them to be marked up as the Event structured data, you can try the Event Schema plugin.

It is the kind of output you can expect from this plugin on SERPs.

5. Work With a Generic Schema Plugin

Just like the themes, a few plugins can also output various types of structured data.

You can try a feature-rich schema plugin known as the Schema plugin. With a high star rating, it’s a popular plugin.

The Schema plugin supports:

• Knowledge Graph
• Creative Works
• Blog, WPHeader, WPFooter, BreadcrumbList, & other WP elements
• Third-party WordPress plugins such as WooCommerce,
• Schema Review

This plugin can also define new schema.org type outputs, so developers can go creative and add support for a specific type of markup.

Configuration Wizard in the plugin simplifies things and allows you to instantly define the schema markup for your website.

Conclusion

Despite the proven significance of schema markup on local SEO, only a fraction of websites and businesses have benefited from it. It is time to beat your competition by learning and implementing the Microdata and schema markup codes to enhance your website’s visibility on search engines. For an inexperienced eye, it might look like a tedious job. Still, if you follow the instructions provided above, you will be able to successfully place your business on the map, increase its visibility and attract more traffic to your website.

Selling SEO services can be pretty challenging for many reasons, and the most common ones are related to an incorrect strategy. The search engine algorithms and digital marketing trends are constantly changing. There is no way you can predict the outcome or the results of an SEO campaign, especially when it's related to your website's position on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Therefore, it becomes imperative to continuously educate the clients about the benefits of SEO and how far it can take them apart from talking purely about rankings and traffic.

SEO is more of a knowledge-based service, and therefore, you need to religiously inform the clients about what you are doing and its likely impact. In the absence of such interactive engagement between you and your client, you may not be able to explain the reason why they can't see an immediate rise in rankings and traffic. Therefore, it's recommended that you keep them informed and maintain transparency.

Even the slightest misunderstanding may lead to confusion, which may impact your entire SEO project and even jeopardize your relationship with your client.

So, whatever you do, keep it transparent and explain why you are doing it, what would be its likely impact, and the kind of results we can anticipate. SEO is not paid advertising where you can download the analytics and reports from Google or Facebook, and the client gets the complete picture.

You need not be an excellent salesman to sell SEO services. SEO is purely organic, and it's inevitable, so all you need to do is communicate the benefits of traditional SEO with your customer.

As soon as an update is announced, it would help if you took preventive actions to protect your website from any drop in rankings. You should also inform your client or prospective customer about the fixes required on your website to boost lead generation and conversion. With these measures, you'll likely win the clients and retain them without any extra effort.

Here are the 14 sales hacks every agency owner must know to boost SEO sales:

1. Talk Less and Listen More: Focus On Your Customers' Core Needs

There are different types of companies, and each one can be different in terms of their situation, their capacity to spend, product life cycle, industry, niche, and the target audience. So, a universal solution wouldn't work. You can offer a solution only after a preliminary need assessment, and most of the time, tailor-made solutions work best.

When you happen to be on the phone with a prospect, you feel compelled to speak incessantly about your services and how you can help that person. However, this is not a good practice from a sales perspective. So, even when you feel under pressure to pour out all the product knowledge you have, avoid it as it may overwhelm the listener.

Business owners know a lot more about their businesses than you may ever know. So, it would help if you took this opportunity to speak at length about their companies to get as many clues as you can. The more business owners reveal their needs, the better it is for you because it will help you run better campaigns and choose the right audiences. It's also the best way to know their customers' pain points, frustrations, and interests. You can, later on, use this information for full-fledged campaigns.

2. Avoid Over-Promise and False Commitments

Since SEO is both a science and an art, you can't say anything with conviction about SEO. Furthermore, SEO depends heavily on the ever-changing search engine algorithms sling with several other factors. Therefore, you should not over-promise and refrain from making false commitments, especially about rankings and numbers. Google warns against the agencies guaranteeing rankings or traffic volumes.

According to Google, nobody can predict the rankings based on their assumptions.

However, you can provide:

• Accurate information about how many hours you will put into a particular campaign.
• The number of reports you will generate every month.
• The realistic projections on a timeline backed by a sound strategy.

You should also inform them clearly that you can't predict anything. However, you can share the realistic expectations they can have using the strategy you're implementing. Always support your claims with your case studies.

3. Invest in Content Marketing

Investing in content is a brilliant idea, and you should use it judiciously both for your site and for your clients' websites. You can also invest in the content created for earned media and paid media.

For that, you should have an excellent in-house content team, so you can create valuable content intended to serve your targeted audiences.

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Establish yourself as an authority and showcase your knowledge by creating pillar pages and cornerstone content for your website. Create lots of content on SEO and the related topics.

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You can take inspiration from HubSpot's pillar and cluster approach to content creation. So, you can post both introductory and long-form content about SEO to create pillar content on your website. Such content will attract free traffic from search engines and establish yourself as an authority in your niche.

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Know the difference between pillar and cornerstone content before you proceed.

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Showing your expertise will always yield positive results. It will also generate a lead pipeline for your agency. So, while prospecting for SEO projects, if your lead asks you to provide specific information such as your approach to link building, you can send a polite email. The email should contain the link to a blog post on your website or some other resource, such as a YouTube video that explains your backlink strategy.

4. Educate Your Clients

SEO is a knowledge-based and active service, so you need to educate your clients from time to time if you want to retain them. You should also explain to them the secondary benefits of SEO and boost traffic and conversion in the long run. It will help if you share with them some strategies to establish your brand as an authority.

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Outreaching in the community and building links through it helps in brand building and increasing visibility. Similarly, it would help if you also communicated to your clients various local SEO activities that significantly impact your brand reputation and traffic.

5. Set Realistic Expectations

Nothing can be more frustrating than finding a client and working hard with them for a few weeks, only to find out that their expectations are entirely different from what you can offer. So, if you sit together and discuss the expectations before you commit your time and energy to the project.

SEO is a marathon and not a sprint, and you should make it clear up right in the beginning to avoid unrealistic expectations.

Apart from that, it would help if you also conveyed realistic expectations the client can have and the secondary benefits of SEO. It would help your clients stay realistic and avoid an unnecessary focus on rankings that might lead to disappointment later on. A clear understanding of the time frames required for different objectives will clear the path for a productive long term client relationship,

6. Share Case Studies and Previous Reports

It isn't easy to convince a client about hiring your services if an agency has ripped them off in the past. The right strategy for such a client is to share your reports and case studies. It will help you build trust quickly, win new customers and retain existing ones. According to a report, 42% of sales reps acknowledge prospecting as the most demanding stage of the sale process.

Here are some crucial facts about sharing the right content with the prospect during the consideration stage of the sales funnel:

1. Right content helps salespeople to take prospects down the sales funnel quicker.
2. But then you may wonder what type of content to send and when.
3. Make sure the content you share with your prospect addresses their specific situation and pain points.

Unfortunately, many marketers make a significant mistake when creating content for sales purposes. The content they create is usually about their brand, products, features, and services.

You can share case studies, previous reports, or specially created corporate demo videos, but these content pieces should address your prospect's pain points. If your content is all about your products and how great you are as a brand, it won't impress your prospects.

Here is an example of a demo video from the IKEA Place app. It reduces the need to explain things from scratch during your meeting with a prospect.

Image source

7. Perform Competitor Analysis for Your Prospects

Use popular SEO tools such as SpyFu or SEMrush and proactively perform competitor analysis for your prospective client. You can use it during prospecting. It will help you form an excellent impression of yours as a professional agency. It also means that you are serious, know your job, and care about your customers.

Competitor analysis is a critical SEO metric that helps business owners lift their rankings and boost traffic. It shows you where you stand compared to your competition and your competitors' strategies to rank on top.

Competitor analysis offers the following benefits for the businesses:

• Enables you to do comprehensive market analysis
• Offers insight into the development of products and services
• Helps in identifying spot trends in the market
• Helps in understanding and analyzing competitor strategies.
• Helpful in exploring fresh and innovative ideas
• Useful for understanding your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis)
• Useful in identifying and mitigating risks

8. Transform Your Prospecting Methods by Creating Instant Websites

As an agency, you can transform your prospecting methods by creating niche-based beautiful custom websites for your clients and stun them with your capabilities.

InstaSites, a DashClicks tool, helps you to bring the action-packed value that too within seconds.

The best feature of this tool is that you don't need to know coding to create websites.

Niche-specific templates

Now you can improve your prospecting methods by working with multiple niches. Choose from a variety of industry-specific templates to create an InstaSite.

Build single or bulk websites

InstaSites doesn't just build a single website at a time. You can instantly create multiple websites using its bulk website builder with the push of a button.

You can also create a conversion-focused custom website for your agency using DashClicks' Agency Website tool.

9. Use SEO Management Tools

SEO is vast, and it involves numerous activities. So, at times, it becomes overwhelming to manage your website SEO. You can use SEO management tools to simplify the otherwise lengthy and complicated SEO processes. DashClicks' beautiful white-labeled platform brings the benefits of these premium tools you need to succeed.

Source: DashClicks' White Label SEO Dashboard

SEO tools are pretty expensive if you buy an individual or agency account. For example, if you need help with local SEO or keyword research, you don't need to purchase different tools with high subscription rates.

Image Source

White label fulfillment services from DashClicks will use the best insights gathered from these tools to make your campaigns super successful.

Image Source: Google My Business insights on DashClicks dashboard provides cumulative data for easy comparison.

10. Automate Client Onboardings

Some tools can help you automate one of the most tedious tasks in an agency ā€” onboarding a new client. Onboarding is not an easy task, and despite your best efforts, it can involve a lot of repetition and wastage of time. Manual onboardings can eat up a lot of your productive hours.

Automatic client onboarding allows you to gather the essential information from your clients through an intelligent onboarding process. DashClicks' Onboarding Center allows automated client onboardings saving your time and hassle while also reducing the chances of human errors.

11. Try White Label SEO Dashboard

The secret sauce of a successful agency is organized efforts, streamlined operations, and repeatable processes. It becomes even more critical when you are scaling your agency.

DashClicks' white label dashboard provides all the information you may need about your digital marketing projects.

Let all the heavy lifting be done by the white label platform while managing your projects from a single dashboard. When you use DashClicks' white label SEO platform, you can upload your logo and favicon on the reports generated by us and serve your client as a 100% owner of the services provided. It syncs data from all channels, and you can access it in real-time.

Here is an educational video from DashClicks on How to Make 10k a Month.

12. Generate Automated Reports

Ask any agency owner, and they will admit that report generation chews up a lot of time in an agency environment. Automated reports will save you time, increase your productivity, and help you build a good impression of your agency. These reports allow you to depict data and insights using stunning graphics and tables.

It will take your employees a lot of time to generate such high-quality reports.

Check out DashClicks' automated SEO report sample here.

DashClicks' InstaReports is a tool that produces anytime-anywhere reports for you so that you can create beautiful stunning digital marketing reports with a single click of a mouse.

13. Harness the Power of Social MediaĀ

Social media is mighty these days, and marketers can use it creatively to their advantage. Most SEO service providers aren't very active on social media, although they have their profile pages on major social media channels.

The primary reason is the lack of a well-planned social media strategy built around engagement and relationship building.

It would help if you had a long-term social media marketing strategy and should employ highly social media savvy and creative people to manage your social accounts. If you are influential on social media, you don't ever have to worry about your sales pipeline or leads.

14. Implement Paid Advertising

In the beginning, most SEO agencies aren't able to attract organic traffic and sales leads online because they don't rank high on search engine result pages. At this stage, you must invest in advertising on Google and social media to attract qualified leads and traffic to your website. It will build your sales pipeline, which you can use for a long time.

Conclusion

This blog has discussed a few tips and tricks to boost your SEO sales in a highly competitive space. While honesty, transparency, and top-notch customer support are the keys to success, nothing can beat the leverage you get by hiring white label SEO services. It allows you to scale and focus on your core areas while offering the best results to your client at an affordable rate.

According to a study from Datareportal, experts can estimate that roughly 4.20 billion people utilize some form of social media. That adds nearly 500 million new users in the past year.

Despite the prevailing negative attitudes toward social platforms, the power of their popularity is indisputable. Social media is continuing to change the way we deliver and consume content, learn about news, and purchase products or services.

With that in mind, is it possible to deliver a strong marketing strategy without establishing your brand on social media? The statistics are available, and marketing is simply mandatory if you want to compete and remain relevant throughout the rest of 2021 and beyond.

If you're still not convinced that you need to rethink your marketing strategy, take a look at these 50 social media statistics that you need to know as a marketer in 2021.

• General Social Media Statistics
• Facebook Statistics
• Instagram Statistics
• Twitter Statistics
• LinkedIn Statistics
• YouTube Statistics
• Pinterest Statistics

General Social Media Statistics

1. 4.20 Billion People Use Social Media - 53% of the World's Population

Regardless of how you view the value of social media, more than one in two people log in regularly. Individuals can access their profiles at home or on the go with mobile devices, making it easier than ever to stay connected.

In seconds, users can search for brands, research products or services, and make new purchases with just a few screen touches. Regardless of the platform, social media revolutionizes the way we interact with each other and with brands.

Does this mean that your brand should go all-in on posting and paid social ads? Maybe not, but it is essentially nonsensical to ignore the sheer size of the audience waiting to discover your brand. Even for general awareness, establishing your brand online can greatly impact your business's success.

2. The Average Daily Time Spent on Social Media is 2 Hours, 25 Minutes

The average amount of time spent on social varies by nation, with the Philippines leading the globe at 4 hours, 15 minutes, and the United States sitting at roughly 2 hours, 7 minutes.

For comparison, experts estimate that total daily internet usage by user ranges from 4 hours, 25 minutes on the low end, to nearly 11 hours total per day. This means that on average, roughly a third of the time spent on a device is spent on social media.

Sources: We Are Social, Hootsuite

3. 55.7% of that Time is Spent Using Mobile Devices

Mobile phones serve as the predominant way that all users visit the internet. Additional sources estimate that a staggering 91% of social media users are logging into their accounts with cellular phones.

For marketers, this means that the opportunity to reach your audience is now available nearly all hours of the day. Consider the ways that new users are discovering your brand and content, and be sure to optimize it for an enjoyable mobile experience.

The smoother you make the buyer's journey from discovery to purchase via their phone, the better your chances are for online success.

Sources: We Are Social, Hootsuite, Lyfe Marketing

4. The Number of Users by Social Media Platform

Thanks to an article from the Pew Research Center, we have a strong estimate of the number of social media users by platform.

YouTube leads the way by far with a whopping 81% of adults reporting to use the site regularly. Slightly further behind is Facebook with 69% of adults. The rest of the numbers are as follows (percentage of adults):

• Instagram – 40%
• Pinterest – 31%
• LinkedIn – 28%
• Snapchat – 25%
• Twitter – 23%
• WhatsApp – 23%
• TikTok – 21%
• Reddit – 18%
• Nextdoor – 13%

While YouTube easily dominates as the premier platform for video, Facebook has long been the market leader above everything else. With access to such a large and diverse userbase, marketers can curate content to target specific audiences.

Facebook makes this even easier with an easy-to-use advertising platform that tracks data from users who see and click on your ads. You can even utilize this data to create lookalike audiences to further target users that demonstrate an interest in your brand.

While the percentages decline significantly thereafter, those platforms still maintain loyal users. It's essential to learn more about who makes up those percentage of users so that you can curate a strategy that speaks to each platform's unique audiences.

Sources: Pew Research Center

5. 44.8% of People Use Social Media to Check Out Brands

The same digital report for 2021 featured above explains that a little less than one in two people will look for your brand on social media before they go anywhere else.

However, these statistics get more interesting when you view the breakdown by generation, with more than 50% of Gen Z users using social over search. Millennials aren't far behind at just under 50%.

That means if your brand isn't on social media, half of the people won't explore it any further. Competitor brands in your industry that are on social media will likely take their attention away, causing you to lose out on those potential leads forever.

While older generations still utilize the traditional search method, any marketer needs to understand their audience and the best ways to reach them. Remember - every corner of the internet is competing for a user's attention every second, so you're not doing yourself any favors by ignoring the top-performing platforms.

Sources: We Are Social, Hootsuite

6. Industry Experts Find Social Media to Be An Effective Marketing Tool

A Visual Objects report shows that 81% of small businesses plan to make a social media marketing investment in 2021. Social media use by businesses continues to grow as professionals are no longer able to ignore the value of what these platforms offer.

A slightly older study from Hootsuite shows that nearly all of them use social media to promote brand awareness among interviewed businesses. Additional reasons cited for utilizing social media as a marketing tool were managing reputation, engaging with the community, increasing sales, and learning more about their audience.

Social media allows you to skip the middleman and reach out directly to the individual. You can recalculate your marketing strategies based upon community feedback. Paid advertising campaigns will also automatically gather insights concerning engagement from those who may not comment, like, or share directly.

Sources: Visual Objects, Hootsuite

7. The Content That Performs Best Varies by Platform

Studies show that your business is better off taking a more targeted approach to reaching your audience depending on each platform.

For example, a survey of Paid Media specialists reports that video content can yield twice the amount of clicks as an image with text. Clients may report a 20-30% increase in conversions with better video content.

Instagram, on the other hand, is seeing a steady rise in Carousel engagement. Images still dominate as the primary type of user post at 67.82%, while only receiving a 1.74% engagement rate per post. Carousels are receiving 1.92% engagement and rising, while Instagram video receives just 1.45% engagement.

Finally, Twitter posts with images get 128% more retweets than videos. The tone of those posts generally differs due to the average age demographic that utilizes the platform.

This means that the job of a social media marketing specialist is to keep up-to-date with ever-changing trends. While dynamic content like video is almost always engaging, it may not always be worth the resources when you can get proven engagement with less. Getting better results for your business on social requires you to be an active participant in the community, not just selling to it.

Sources: Databox, Social Insider, QuickSprout

8. It's Time to Get Political

Your brand should stay on the sidelines when it comes to current social and political events, right?

Wrong.

Experts are finding that consumers expect brands to take a stand more than ever. 70% of online respondents felt it was important for brands to broadcast their values openly. This is largely due to the belief that a brand has greater influential power and reach to instigate meaningful change.

However, what are you to do when your stand represents the opposite of what some consumers believe? There is no concrete answer, but saying nothing and remaining on the sidelines may be as harmful as saying the wrong thing in some circumstances.

Nevertheless, consumers expect brands to speak out against issues, especially if they directly pertain to the business itself. Navigating these murky waters can be challenging, but it's important to be consistent in your values, to look out for your employees and consumers, and to promote sincere awareness and action on anything you believe is worth advocating.

Sources: SproutSocial

9. Social Media is a Cost-Effective Means of Customer Service

Responding to customer queries effectively is a problem every business needs to face. Using up employee time isn't effective, and hiring personnel just to fill up call centers isn't the most cost-effective solution in the long run.

Fortunately for business owners, studies show that quick customer service interactions cost nearly 1/6th of a call center interaction. The benefits don't end there. Responding to a query and solving the problem quickly greatly boosts positive brand impressions, and is far more likely to result in positive reviews, shares, and recommendations.

However, customer interactions on social media can be a double-edged sword. Failing to reply to customer concerns or leaving them with a bad experience can cause as many as 88% of consumers to avoid buying from your brand ever again.

Sources: SocialMediaToday

10. Great Customer Service Online Increases Sales and Engagement

The risks of social media are worthwhile, as a positive experience on social media makes users more than three times as likely to recommend your brand or share your content.

In percentages, 71% of consumers who feel good about the interaction will share, while only 19% who do not get an interaction will still share. Moreover still, those customers are likely to spend as much as 40% more as a result of this personal engagement.

A little goodwill and honest effort go a long way on social media. Remind your customers that there are regular people behind the brand, and make them feel good every once in a while!

11. Lack of Interest is the Number One Reason People Will Unfollow You

Most social media users will eventually unfollow a brand at some point. The question is, what are these brands doing wrong if anything, and what can you do to avoid the same mistakes?

The solution is as different as each user that initially follows, but the problem always comes down to a lack of interesting content. The key reason that anyone uses social media at all is to constantly be entertained, humored, or to get something personally beneficial out of the relationship.

Nearly 80% reported unfollowing because they were no longer interested, 67% said that the content was no longer relevant to the brand, while 41.5% said that the brand posts too often. Perhaps shockingly, reporting false information and poor quality products was the least of anyone's concern when it comes to following!

Sources: GoodFirms

12. Social Media is a Cost-Effective Way to Generate New Leads

The cost of social media advertising varies depending upon the platform as well as your goals. CPC, or cost-per-click, is generally the most cost-effective bidding option and can boost brand awareness and help gain valuable insights about your audience.

Take a look at the estimated CPC per platform to give you an idea:

• Facebook – $0.97 per click
• Instagram – $3.56 per click
• YouTube – $3.21 per click
• LinkedIn – $5.26 per click
• Twitter – $0.38 per click
• Pinterest – $1.50 per click

Facebook remains a dominant social marketing platform due to its enormous social reach, low advertising costs, and intuitive Business Manager. Due to shared ownership, you can seamlessly run your campaigns on Instagram as well with a few button clicks.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn still proves to be the best platform for B2B even if the CPC is a bit higher. All platforms give you the freedom to personalize your budget and monetize your campaign in a way that works best for your unique business goals.

Sources: WebFX

13. More Customers Are Beginning to Buy Through Social Media

eCommerce continues to explode in growth more than ever as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But, are people entering their payment information directly on Facebook or Instagram?

A Hubspot survey seems to indicate that social media purchases are trending upward. More than 50% of the interviewed users reported purchasing on social, with 36% using Facebook shopping, 24.5% on Instagram, 13.5% on WhatsApp, 10.5% on Pinterest, and 9% making up the remaining social platforms.

While it's by no means a prevailing number, it's very possible that social shopping will increase as these platforms build awareness around their shopping capabilities and establish the trust necessary for users to enter their sensitive information.

In theory, adding products to social media directly can greatly simplify the buyer's journey and result in additional sales for you and your business.

Sources: HubSpot

Facebook Statistics

14. Millennials Make Up the Greatest Share of Facebook Users

Statista reports that 43.3% of users are millennials, falling in between the 25-44 years of age range. There is a noticeable user dropoff in either age direction, with young teenagers and the elderly community making up the smallest percentages.

With that said, Facebook is still the primary platform used by the 65 and older group, with YouTube following closely behind. Younger users are likely to choose other social media platforms as their app of choice.

Sources: Statista

15. The United States Makes Up Just 10% of Daily Active Users

It's worth noting that the United States and Canada only make up about 10% of daily active users, with the majority coming from Europe and other parts of the globe.

Similar studies from the same source indicate that 56% of users are male, while 44% are female. In regards to income rangers, Facebook features an even split. If we can trust recent trends, more older generation users will pick up Facebook, meaning users with more income to spend on your brand.

Sources: Hootsuite

16. Facebook's Advertising Revenue Grows 22% Year-over-Year

Facebook offers one of the most diverse userbases and the largest share of the global population using social media. Along with its incredibly easy-to-use marketing center and costs that beat out other platforms, it's easy to see why the lion's share of Facebook's income comes from advertising.

Thanks to the 2020-2021 pandemic, Facebook expects accelerated growth as more of the globe adapts to eCommerce as opposed to brick-and-mortar shopping.

This also speaks to just how effective Facebook advertising is proving for small businesses. If you weren't already convinced that you're late to the party, you should be now. Facebook estimates that three million businesses now use their platform for advertisement.

Sources: Facebook Investor Relations

17. Facebook Stories Get 500 Million Views Daily

Nearly all of us are visual consumers. It's effectively a given that images and video will substantially boost interest and engagement with any given post. However, the Facebook Stories feature may be a key tool you're not utilizing in your marketing efforts.

Facebook Stories automatically appear at the top of the screen, guaranteeing maximum visibility for your content.

This type of disposable video content began with Snapchat. Shortly after, Instagram and Facebook dove in to capitalize on their version. The key detail to note is that while not everyone uses Stories, those who do demonstrate higher engagement rates, especially among the younger generations.

Sources: Hootsuite

18. Local Business Searches Grew by 23% in 2020

This is another trend that Facebook expects to continue as a result of the pandemic. While many are learning how to take advantage of eCommerce shopping, many others are making active efforts to support their local communities.

Facebook's internal search engine makes it convenient and easy to discover local businesses by industry. Just like any directory listing, keeping your business profile up-to-date on Facebook can be an easy way to draw in new customers with very little maintenance on your end.

Customers can learn more about your business on Facebook through business pages and groups, which leads us to.

Sources: Facebook for Business

19. 1.8 Billion Users Are Active Participants in Facebook Groups

Anyone on Facebook including individual users and brands can create private or public groups on Facebook. This presents an easy way to curate content specifically for a group that chooses to opt-in. When users join your Facebook group or follow your business page, you can trust that those users are there to learn more about your content.

Instead of focusing exclusively on chasing new leads through paid ads, you can invite users to learn more about your business directly. Post regular updates, offer promotions to group members and watch your engagement steadily increase over time.

Image Source

20. 1.3 Billion Are Using Facebook Messenger

Facebook isn't just for posting but serves as a primary means of text communications for many users.

You can further enhance your customer service capabilities by downloading free add-ons that allow you to distribute auto-responses to customer queries. Users feel confident knowing their questions are in queue for reviewal and allows you to win social currency for your brand.

Sources: TechCrunch

Instagram Statistics

21. Instagram Boasts 500 Million Daily Users, 1 Billion Monthly

While Instagram doesn't exactly have the reach of Facebook or YouTube, its monthly active users make up an enormous share of the global population.

Perhaps the most important statistic for your small business is that Instagram's popularity peaks in the United States. Note that monthly active users refer to anyone who has an account and logs in at least once every 30 days.

If you recall the statistics at the top of this article, Instagram ranks 3rd overall in our list (5th total if you were to include Messenger as its own platform along with WhatsApp).

Sources: Backlinko

22. Similar to Facebook, Millennials Make Up the Bulk of Users

Nearly half of users are millennials, falling between the ages of 25 and 44. However, this is the first platform we are looking at up close that consists of a bigger Generation Z userbase at nearly 30%.

Instagram proves to not be a popular item among young teens, and also sees a sharp dropoff in users aged 35 and over. The statistics show that Instagram is a young person's platform with just 5.9% of users making up the 55 and older community.

Sources: Statista

23. Tuesday's Are Red-Hot for Brand Engagement

Though overall trends tend to peg millennials as weekend content consumers, lunchtime weekday engagement proves to be primetime. This is likely the result of the work-from-home increase in 2020 but shows no signs of changing any time soon.

While Wednesday appears to demonstrate the longest timeframe for activity, Tuesday yields denser activity on average. Perhaps surprisingly, brand engagement on weekends is significantly lower than any weekday.

It looks like everyone needs the occasional workday distraction. Armed with the right research, it's the best opportunity for your brand to strike.

Sources: SproutSocial

24. Instagram Users Are Most Likely to Follow Brands

Each platform has its unique audiences with unique goals. It turns out, one of Instagram's primary purposes is to connect with exciting brands.

This survey study at Audience Project shows that 36% of Instagram users are looking to follow brands that interest them. This survey assesses each platform's userbase by user intent on each platform. Twitter is nearly identical for brand following.

Other popular platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook see a noticeable dropoff in this trend, indicating that brand connection is less of a priority for those users. While a platform like Facebook may offer a larger overall audience, perhaps the engagement tendencies of Instagram users may be more appealing for your brand.

Sources: AudienceProject

25. 130 Million Click on a Shopping Post Monthly

Facebook & Instagram report directly that an estimated 130 million active Instagram users click on shopping posts every month. Those users enjoy using Instagram to learn more details about a product before making a purchasing decision.

As Hubspot reported earlier in this article, 24.5% of Instagram users regularly shop and buy products directly through the app. As we continue to trend toward more social shopping, it's worthwhile for all eCommerce brands to start integrating new products and promotions within the Instagram platform.

Sources: Facebook, Instagram

26. Instagram Confirms There Are 500 Million Daily Active Instagram Stories Users

The video story trend started by Snapchat continues to work well for Instagram users. Any social feature that works well for everyday users is a feature that your brand can’t afford to ignore.

Merkle reports that Instagram Stories accounts for one-third of total ad spend for Paid Ads managers and accounts for a not-so-small 36% of all impressions across BOTH Facebook and Instagram combined.

Moreover still, despite the engagement rates that Instagram Stories can provide, ad spend for your average campaign continues to lower on Instagram every year.

Sources: Merkle Inc.

27. 50% of Stories Viewers Will Buy the Product

Instagram once again boasts that 50% of surveyed Stories users went on to purchase the product or service they learned about on their app. It’s important to remember that traffic, reach, and impressions are great metrics, but ultimately do not amount to much if there’s no buyer intent.

To summarize, Stories users demonstrate high levels of engagement, are very likely to complete the entire story, and have a 50/50 chance of becoming a customer after gaining awareness of your brand. As a business owner, you have to like those odds.

Image Source

Twitter Statistics

28. Though Not as Popular, Twitter Features 353.1 Million Monthly Active Users

Though it’s not quite in the same league as the platforms above, Twitter still features 353.1 million monthly active users, with 192 million of those participating daily.

The United States Makes up the largest percentage of those users at 68.7% with Japan following not too far behind at 52%. There is a steep decline in users from the rest of the world with India being a distant third at 18.9%.

Sources: Backlinko

29. Generation Z and Late Millenials Love to Tweet

Another Statista study proclaims that generate2% of 18-29-year-olds enjoyed engaging on Twitter out of surveyed respondents. The userbase drops off heavily with 30-49-year-olds making up 27% and 25% being 50+.

This is a continuing upward trend, however, as there has been a noticeable increase since 2019. Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the United States election drew additional attention to the platform. Global leaders utilize verified accounts to communicate directly to users online.

It’s also a platform that’s popular for spreading the news as the Tweet format forces these sources to truncate the most essential details into limited characters. This presents a great format for marketers to quickly grab attention and link out to articles, products, promotions, and much more.

Sources: Statista

30. Twitter Saw a Healthy Boom in Ad Engagement and Revenue Last Year

Twitter reports that the end-of-year 2020 saw ad engagement increase by 35% along with a subtle 3% decrease in cost-per-engagement. This is likely due to steady user growth along with continual eCommerce growth due to the pandemic.

In addition to this, Twitter announced in November several notable improvements to their ad platform to make building new creatives easier, while also improving algorithms and introducing the Learning Period. They also launched a new and improved Carousel ad format.

Sources: Twitter

31. 91% of Twitter Users Are Okay with Brands Getting Involved, with a Catch…

It turns out that Twitter users are very open-minded about brands joining the conversation, but only if their contribution is helpful and authentic.

While this is a general truth and a good rule for brands to follow on any platform, it might be especially true on Twitter as a result of its limited format. Humans are all about first impressions, and with just 280 characters to use, you need to make it count.

For example, simply jumping on a trending topic with a hashtag is likely to ring out as false. However, demonstrating meaningful efforts or donations toward a cause goes a long way toward creating a favorable reception.

Sources: Twitter

32. Well Over 500 Million Tweets Go Live Every Day

While that may seem like an overwhelming number, it’s important to understand how noisy that platform can get. That means that it’s important for your brand to curate a smart tweeting strategy that will allow your brand to take advantage of those 280 characters.

Another reason is to note that Twitter is one of the few platforms where posting more is better. The optimal tweeting amount per day is anywhere between 15-25 tweets. This is compared to just 1-2 posts per day on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

The shelf life of a tweet is drastically shorter than a post elsewhere, so be prepared to get involved if you want your brand to stand out on Twitter.

Sources: LiveInternetStats, Buffer

LinkedIn Statistics

33. LinkedIn is the Most Trusted Social Platform

According to a Business Insider Intelligence survey, LinkedIn ranks number one as the most trusted social platform for confidence and security.

The list contains nine different social platforms with the rest of the list as follows: Pinterest (2), Reddit (3), Instagram (4), Snapchat (5), TikTok (6), Twitter (7), YouTube (8), and Facebook in the last place.

Why does this matter? It means that users feel the most secure with entering personal information and engaging with content freely on LinkedIn. This is likely due to the highly professional nature of the platform and the focus on networking and employment.

34. It’s One of the Best Platforms for B2B Marketing

This should be of no surprise based on the nature of the platform. LinkedIn reports that there are over 57 million companies now actively using their service. It’s just as important for these businesses to connect with prospective business clients as well as scouting new talent.

It’s also the platform where you will find Fortune 500 company leaders and other like-minded professionals that can help you achieve your business and marketing goals.

LinkedIn is more about highlighting the leaders and decision-makers of a company than the company itself, allowing you to market directly to those who are interested in learning more about your products and services.

Sources: LinkedIn

35. The Average User is 36 – 55 Years of Age

This makes sense as the average LinkedIn member is typically a professional looking to network and further develop their career prospects.

This study of United States Users shows the breakdown of monthly users per age group:

• 15-25 – 16%
• 26-35 – 27%
• 36-45 – 34%
• 46-55 – 37%
• 56+ – 29%

Sources: Statista

36. The Average Conversion Rate on a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form is 13%

A study by WordStream indicates that your average lead-generation landing page converts only 2.35% of the time. However, the best-performing landing pages feature rates of 11.45% or even higher.

LinkedIn reports that its lead forms see a success rate of about 13% and generate about twice as many leads compared to every other social channel. This is likely due to the overwhelming B2B presence on the platform.

Like-minded professionals are interested in offers, products, or services that can benefit them or the business as opposed to grabbing the general cold customer through paid ads.

Sources: WordStream, LinkedIn

37. Taking Too Long to Reply to Those Leads Reduces Likelihood of Contact by 10x

Generating all of those leads won’t matter much if you don’t have a system in place to make contact with those individuals promptly. Studies indicate that waiting just five minutes reduces the likelihood of contact by as much as ten times.

While most companies will not be able to reliably deliver such an efficient response time, it’s essential to react quickly. This statistic can also help illustrate whether or not your sales team is receiving more leads than they are effectively able to deal with.

A large stream of leads may be an indicator that your marketing plan is working but ultimately results in a wasted budget if you don’t have the resources to capitalize. Determine an actionable goal for the number of new leads your business can handle and plan to make quick contact through multiple avenues including phone, email, and text messages.

Sources: HubSpot

38. LinkedIn Saw 60% More Content Creation in 2020

Marketers are successfully proving that LinkedIn can be about more than employment and networking. LinkedIn business reporting indicates that not only is that platform seeing more sales funnels, but the average CPC is dropping while the quality of leads and engagement improves.

However, compelling blog articles work great here, too. Consider that Bill Gates personally published some of the platform’s most compelling content that year. Professionals are hungry to learn from other professionals who have knowledge and insight to offer about important social matters and personal success.

Content creators can hugely benefit from reviewing content from some of the world’s most successful people while seeking to emulate it for your business. It ought to be every marketer’s mantra that content is king.

Sources: LinkedIn

39. The United States Features the Most LinkedIn Users

Individually, the United States as a country easily has the most active LinkedIn user accounts at around 178 million. The second closest country is India at roughly 76 million users.

Looking further down the list of most popular countries reveals that the rest of the world combined still makes up over 70% of all LinkedIn users, making it a viable tool for connecting and marketing around the globe. Tens of millions are using the platform throughout Asia, South America, and Europe.

It’s interesting to note that LinkedIn is one of the few international social platforms that is not currently banned in China.

YouTube Marketing Statistics

40. YouTube – The 2nd Most Popular Search Engine in the World

YouTube isn’t just a search engine, it’s one of the most powerful in the world only behind Google itself. While nothing may ever be able to outperform a platform that’s now become a verb, YouTube receives more volume than most other search engines combined.

In 2021, YouTube now represents so much more than funny, low-budget videos. It’s a neverending library of content relating to DIY, exercise, technology, music, video games, makeup, health & beauty, self-care, and business-related content. That list is far from exhaustive, and merely shows the potential the platform has to enhance your marketing strategies.

What makes this even more attractive is that since Google controls both platforms, YouTube video content often ranks well over videos hosted through other outlets. YouTube itself also now offers more than video, providing a direct social feed, direct messaging, and the ability to send notifications directly to your subscribers.

Sources: Forbes, YouTube

41. 1 in 3 Baby Boomers Actively Seek YouTube Content

While this generation generally makes up a fairly low percentage of many social platforms, YouTube has something for everyone.

Google estimates that as many as a third of baby boomers are taking advantage of YouTube to learn more about products or services before making a purchasing decision. It presents an extremely convenient way for people to learn and help themselves without needing to enlist others.

YouTube also provides the benefit of on-demand content that you can enjoy at an hour that’s more convenient for you. Long gone are the days of needing to catch people in front of the television with your advertisements.

Sources: Think with Google

42. 42% of Small Businesses Are on YouTube in 2021

A survey indicates that YouTube is now one of the most widely used social networks for advertising, only falling short of Facebook. This marks a rapid change in how and where businesses advertise. Shooting professional video used to be an intimidating venture, but new technology has made it easier than ever.

You can shoot short, quality clips with a modern-day smartphone and upload them to your channel within minutes. Businesses can tailor their channel according to their brand and easily share video content on other platforms. YouTube also makes it incredibly easy to embed video content on landing pages, websites, and more.

YouTube also offers some basic editing tools that can get you started. A quick Google search will also reveal several widely used editing software that can get you up and running.

One of the most important things for a business to do on social is to appear relatable and trustworthy. Personally made video content allows your audience to see the people behind the computer screen.

Sources: Statista

43. Creating Beginner Content May Significantly Boost Your Views

Google studies show that in March 2020, videos titled with the word “beginner” or some variation received 50% more views compared to the rest of the year.

The result of this specific statistic is once again a result of quarantine regulations during the pandemic. However, it does show that users on the platform are keen to look for tutorials and how-to content they can use from home.

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As an expert in your industry, you could create personalized, instructional content that your audience can directly benefit from. People remember when a trusted brand provides them free, valuable content, and will be more likely to subscribe and share your content with other potential buyers.

Sources: Think with Google

44. YouTube Can Be a Huge Boon for the Fitness Industry

If you’re a fitness expert or work in the industry, you know that getting people out of their comfort zone is one of the biggest hurdles in acquiring new customers. YouTube may offer a convenient, alternative solution.

Since March 2020, home workout videos increased in daily views by an incredible 515%. While this is once again an influence of COVID-19 restrictions, many users are looking for comfortable, private ways to lose those extra pounds from the comfort of home.

A quick search of the platform will reveal countless gyms and personal trainers creating effective workout videos designed to help users lose weight, gain muscle, and achieve other fitness goals.

Put out some great fitness content that can help your audience learn the basics and gain some confidence in their body. Once they’re a subscriber, you can continue nurturing those leads and convert them into paying customers.

Sources: YouTube Culture & Trends

45. Buyer Intent Beats Demographics, but Both Work Best Together

Google is helping out marketers by conducting their own studies to see how video advertisements perform depending on the targeting methods used.

Most marketers will utilize broad demographics, especially starting, to allow your campaign to learn. As they gather metrics, those experts will complete optimizations to get better results from the most active groups. This Google study shows at least with video content, buyer intent trumps demographic targeting.

Across all ads, there was 100% more purchase intent when targeting by intent alone. There is also a 167% increase in awareness and an incredible 267% increase in consideration. Ad recall also receives a boost of 32%.

The results were slightly higher when targeting both simultaneously. While you may not have the budget to do everything, the results show that intent should be the primary focus.

Sources: Think with Google

Pinterest Statistics

46. Pinterest Features a Potential Audience of Roughly 200.8 Million Users

While Pinterest ranks 14th on the popularity scale, it maintains a dedicated userbase that is continuing to grow in the past year.

A study previously used in this article from Hootsuite and We Are Social suggests that out of its total users, 200.8 million of them may be reached with advertisements.

The greatest number of these users are in North America, specifically the United States, with over 100 million active accounts along with over 10 million more from Canada.

The platform also has a strong footing across the United Kingdom and Europe with over 80 million more additional users. It does not have a strong basis in Asia, with no country cracking the top 20 countries by reach.

Sources: We Are Social, Hootsuite

47. Pinterest Reveals That 77% of the Ad Audience May Be Female

No other platforms in this article feature such a difference in users by gender. Pinterest reports that just 14.5% of their userbase that is part of the ad audience is male. However, this number may be changing as the number of male pinners grew throughout 2020.

Sources: We Are Social, Hootsuite, Pinterest

48. Millennial Women Make Up the Greatest Share of Users

The study shows that 30.4% of women ages 25 – 34 make up Pinterest’s advertising audience. That same age group features 6.2% men and another 4.2% unspecified.

The second closest age group is 35 – 44-year-old women making up 14.1%. However, it’s worth noting that Gen Z users saw the biggest growth growing 40% year over year according to Pinterest.

Sources: We Are Social, Hootsuite, Pinterest

49. Pinterest is a Video Platform, Featuring One Billion Views a Day

While most are aware of video prominent platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, Pinterest videos are blowing up.

The actual statistic shows just under one billion views a day. Pinterest is continuing to develop new ways for businesses and advertisers to better target their video advertising to users by demographic and interests.

This can prove effective on a platform that’s already known for promoting positivity, sparking creativity, and inspiring people to take up new projects and chase ideas. While you’re creating those tutorial videos on YouTube, it might be a good idea to cut some content specifically for your Pinterest audience.

Sources: Pinterest

50. Pinterest Shopping Visits Grew More than 50% in 2020

Finally, Pinterest reports that it saw a substantial increase in shopping activity throughout the platform. Additional studies indicate that as many as 85% of users are likely to buy something based on a pin.

That’s thanks to the fact that Pinterest’s platform can act as a built-in sales funnel for your various products when set up correctly. Users not only sell products but provide visual evidence of the value each can bring for their home or future projects. It’s a far more attractive proposition than simply browsing listings on Amazon.

Sources: Pinterest, HighSpot

There you have 50 valuable marketing statistics that can help your small business or marketing agency create an effective marketing plan for the months ahead. If there are any additional details you’d love to learn about these platforms (or to learn more about one that wasn’t discussed), please let us know and we’ll be sure to update you in future posts!

Businesses these days are spending a lot on marketing and advertising to generate leads. It is painful to see when those leads are not converted into sales despite the best efforts from your sales team.

Here are some of the problems salespeople face. According to a survey, 48% of salespeople complain that they feel threatened by the low price competitors, and it's a big issue while closing a sale.

The average closing rate is less than 50%, even for the best salespeople.

Furthermore, the closing rate has been incessantly undergoing a sharp drop for the previous six years due to increasing competition.

So, is there a formula that the most successful salespeople across the world use to increase conversion?

It is also true that 20% of the best people close 80% of overall sales deals. Would you like to know the secret of their success? According to experts, your sales pitch plays a crucial part while closing the sale. So how should you write your sales pitch?

In this article, you'll find three essential tips and an eight-step process to write a winning sales pitch that will change the game for you forever.

A. Make It More Conversation-Oriented

Traditional sales pitches don't work anymore. You can see smart salespeople in formal suits making sales presentations. Still, the percentage of salespeople hitting their sales targets has dropped from 63% to 53% since 2015. So, it is more about meaningful conversations in the reversed situation than making pitches more like a one-way street.

It's no wonder that only 13% of executive buyers believe that salespeople genuinely understand their business issues while demonstrating a way to solve them. Most salespeople are so obsessed with their products and brands that they completely forget who they are talking to and their struggles. So, initiate conversations and discuss the problems your prospects are facing.

Reverse-engineering the sales pitch may dramatically change the game for you.

One major drawback with a traditional sales pitch is that it leaves you with just two options - a "yes" or "no." It is not aimed at building relationships. And it would help if you had a dialogue to build strong relationships rather than a monologue.

B. Reverse Engineer the Game, Put Buyers First

Now that you have moved away from pitching, you need to start a need-based conversation with the buyer. When conversations happen, you build trust and establish effective communication. Since every buyer is different in terms of personality, situation, buying capacity, and needs, you need to assess their needs first. During the sales meeting, you can discuss in detail how your product or service will meet their needs and address their pain points. It will also help you to display a need for them to buy the product.

It will also help you know whether your customer is a right-brain thinker or a left-brain thinker. The left-brain thinker thinks and decides based on logic and facts, whereas the right-brain thinker is more creative and emotional.

C. Don't Keep It Dry and Formal; Use Storytelling to Connect

Storytelling is extremely helpful in sales because it allows you to connect with your customer. It helps them relate to your brand on a personal level and gives them a reason to buy your products or services. Storytelling is scientifically proven to impact the human mind, especially the subconscious mind, and it aids in training, education, marketing, and sales.

It also helps in boosting sales as all humans perform 99% of their activities using the subconscious mind and only 1% with the conscious brain. So try to engage your buyers with storytelling as it will help you close the deal and generate revenue quickly.

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Your sales pitch is indispensable to maintaining your company's cash flow and revenues. It is imperative, therefore, to pay attention to your sales pitch and make it right.

The Eight-Step Process to Writing an Effective Sales Pitch

Here is the eight-step process to writing an effective sales pitch that you can use to improve your sales numbers:

1. Identify the Buyer Personas for Your Business

It's essential first to create detailed buyer personas for your business to write an effective sales pitch. Here is a simple way to do that:

A. Describe your offer and how it can help people or businesses solve their problems.

B. List all the features of your product and then write down the corresponding benefits. While writing benefits, you need to be highly creative. Go beyond the general benefits and think about benefits to a wide range of people and customer segments.

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C. Now brainstorm the buyer personas of the customers who are likely to buy your product. You can also dig into your CRM database and customer profiles to get deeper insights into the buyer personas you can target using your sales pitch.

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The idea is to use a different pitch for each buyer persona to make it even more effective.

2. Create Attention-Grabbing Headlines and Email Subject Lines

According to Copyblogger, 80% of people will read your headline, and only 20% will read the rest. Readers' attention span is decreasing sharply with increasing content on the web, so you need attention-grabbing headlines to hook them. The same is true for email subject lines.

With a flood of emails in users' inboxes, it becomes highly critical to choose the subject lines that can instantly attract the user. A slightly dull subject line can reduce the open rate significantly. Again defining buyer personas will be extremely helpful here as it will help you craft the headlines and email subject lines according to the interest of your audience.

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Here are a few tips for writing better headlines:

A. Use emotions in your headlines because it increases the engagement manifold. The articles with emotionally charged headlines perform better than articles with straightforward headlines.

B. Don’t keep your headlines short. A study by CoSchedule reveals that headlines between 16 and 18 words produce the most engagement.

C. Still, as mobile users are growing exponentially, it is advisable to use short and sweet headlines so people can read them on their tiny screens without being distracted by the wordiness.

D. Use power words such as “horror stories,” “never again,” “price break,” “Frenzy.” and “Frugal,” to boost conversions.

However, consistent testing of your headlines is recommended as it will help you figure out the types of headlines that grab your audience’s attention and lead to increased response.

3. Support Your Claims With Data

People love to read the data that is reliable and is backed by authentic references. According to a study by Dimension Research, 90% of respondents confirmed that positive online reviews influenced their buying decisions in a big way. Because online reviews are taken as proof of your claims, your pitch needs to be full of facts and stats.

Since you are making a serious claim that you can solve a problem for your buyer, it would help you support your claims with case studies, stats, survey results, and references from authentic sources.

4. Ask for Sales

In the previous points, you learned how to use a sales pitch to address your customers' pain points and tell them how your product solves their problems. You also learned how to use facts and data to support your claims. The next step is highly crucial, and most people skip that. 85% of the meeting sessions between sales guys and their prospects end up without the sales representatives ever asking for the sale and it's a considerable number.

The above stats also explain the reason why most of the sales pitches fail. Now that you have convinced your prospect that your product has excellent features and can solve their burning issues, it's time to tell them what to do next. Otherwise, it will fade away from their memory, just like a Netflix show or an Instagram post.

The call to action may include asking them to click a website link or dial a phone number to close the sale. Make sure that all your efforts may go to waste in this noisy world if you don't use a pre-decided call to action.

5. Refine Your PitchĀ

A few last-minute tweaks can completely change your pitch and make it more professional and feeling. So, run a spell check and a grammar check, look for missing information, broken sentences, and missing words and phrases.

A rushed or hastily written pitch can throw a negative impression, so polish it before clicking the “send” or “publish” button. And don’t forget to add the touch of personalization in the end as it might make it much more effective.

6. Write a Follow-up Message

Even the best pitch written by an expert will not work if you don't have a follow-up schedule. There is a 21 percent chance that your follow-up email will get answered even if your first email is not responded to. After several follow-ups, the possibility that the recipient will respond increases by up to 30%.

For sales pitch examples on how to write sales emails and follow-ups, refer to these templates.

7. Be Consistent and Systematic

Even the best pitches and follow-ups aren't going to work if you aren't consistent and lack a systematic approach. Decide how many pitches you have to send in a week and follow-ups with the clients you have already approached. If you are consistent, the conversion will keep on happening, and it will keep your business afloat.

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To be consistent, you can do the following:

1. Decide the number of pitches to be made every week.
2. Decide the number of appointments to be made every week.
3. Spend some time on improving your pitches to achieve better performance and results.

With this kind of planning, you will maintain consistency despite your busy schedule, meetings, and other obligations.

8. Keeping on Experimenting and Tweaking Your PitchĀ

Like other marketing strategies, you should keep experimenting and tweaking your sales pitch to figure out what kind of messages are most effective. It will help you write beautiful sales pitches that produce the best results.

Conclusion

With the above steps, you can consistently improve your pitching and keep on adding clients successfully. You will also be able to write your sales pitch within 10 minutes.

So before you approach your prospective customer the next time, use the tips given above and see the results for yourself.

Remember, traditional pitches are no more effective in sales because these are more about your brand, products, and features. Your customers might not be interested in who you are and what you do. They are more interested in how you can solve their problems. Keep the customers' requirements before everything else and tailor your pitch accordingly.

Contents

Introduction

1. Outsource from Reliable Vendors with a Proven Track Record
2. Discuss the Long Term Costs with Your Vendor — Both the Current Estimates and Surprise Elements If Any
3. Choose the Outsourcing Partner Based on Their Core Competence
4. Make Sure There Are No Communication Issues or Language Barriers
5. Make Sure They Can Handle Emergencies and Challenges Quickly and Efficiently
6. Have Face-to-Face Conversations When You Outsource Critical Services
7. Discuss a Clear Scope of Work
8. Communicate the Budget in as Much Detail as Possible
9. Ensure the Safety of Your Data and Intellectual Property
10. Make Sure Your Partner Uses Agile Methodologies
11. Check Their Infrastructure and Technologies
12. Make Sure Your Outsourcing Partner Provides Post Development Support
13. Outsource with a Proper Plan
14. Conclusion

There are always two options for digital marketing agencies: Set up your in-house operations or outsource your projects. Outsourcing is considered an intelligent business strategy these days. It is practiced worldwide where businesses delegate their tasks and projects to someone else for a price that is agreed upon in the contract.

It can be highly advantageous for both startups and well-established companies alike if used strategically. So it's essential to have a plan before you outsource. It allows you to focus on your core competence and helps you reduce costs. It can be a lifesaver for growing businesses struggling with their day-to-day challenges. In addition to that, it allows you to maintain operational control at the same time.

However, the common challenges include handling it properly and choosing the right outsourcing partner for your agency.

Here you will find 13 no-nonsense tips to choose the right outsourcing partner for your agency:

1. Outsource from Reliable Vendors with a Proven Track Record

Outsourcing from a novice and lesser-known company can be the biggest mistake of your life. Royal Bank of Scotland wanted to upgrade its banking system in 2012. So, it signed a contract with a lesser-known IT vendor.

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However, it proved to be a significant mistake on the part of the Royal Bank of Scotland. The glitches in the software left millions of customers disgruntled as they could not access their accounts, check balances or perform even basic banking transactions. The glitch was so severe that millions of accounts lost visibility.

As a result, many customers lost faith in the bank's ability to manage their accounts and moved to other banks. It is a lesson that the Royal Bank of Scotland will never forget.

You can check customer reviews on the following review sites:

1. Google
2. G2
3. Capterra
4. Cuspera
5. CrozDesk
6. Serchen
7. SaasWorthy

Google Reviews of DashClicks

DashClicks Reviews on G2

Key Takeaway: Outsourcing has become inevitable in modern times, but it also has downsides if not handled carefully. It might ruin your branding and adversely affect your reputation and customer loyalty if your outsourcing partner cannot manage critical functions and eventually commits a grave error.

2. Discuss the Long Term Costs with Your Vendor ā Both the Current Estimates and Surprise Elements (If any)

Failure to understand the project in its entirety can be disastrous for your business. A similar payroll system outsourcing disaster happened in Queensland Health Department in Australia in 2010. The contract was awarded to IBM in 2007, and they made the same mistake when they miserably failed to estimate the long-term cost of the project.

We know that very few people can doubt the capabilities of IBM. Yet, it became the most spectacular technology failure on the planet. As estimated by IBM, the project's initial cost was AU$6 million, but soon it realized that it was far more extensive and challenging than they had initially imagined.

They announced in the middle of 2008 that the project cost was more than AU$27 million. So after several years of struggle and no success, the Queensland Health Department finally asked IBM to take its finger out. But by then, the project cost was already touching 16000% more than the original estimate.

When the application was being implemented, it led to over 35,000 payroll mistakes in the aging system. As a result, most of its 85,000 employees and healthcare professionals were either incorrectly paid or not paid at all. In addition, the minister of health had to resign because the facility was a public sector undertaking.

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Even after spending AU$1.2 billion, the software application was not working correctly. IBM failed to understand the scale of the project and proposed a cost that was too good to be true, but IBM was awarded the contract because of its global reputation. Later on, it dawned upon them that they had committed a historical blunder, and the project cost was beyond their wildest imagination.

Key Takeaway: The job of project estimation should be given to experts familiar with the destination country, the nature and size of the project, and the complications involved. Your outsourcing partner must understand the intricacies and challenges of the project, and if they don't, you should convey it to them. It's better to include surprise elements, if any. Please don't fall for the lowest quote. It may lead to disaster.

3. Choose the Outsourcing Partner Based on Their Core Competence

Apart from the Queensland debacle, IBM faced another fiasco in 2004 when JP Morgan fired them from one of their megaprojects worth $5 billion. It was a seven-year IT contract when JP Morgan suddenly changed their mind, fired IBM, and employed its own in-house IT team. But this time, it was not IBM's mistake.

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It was the wrong decision of the bank and their failure to assess their core competence that led to the disaster. It caused millions of dollars to the bank with abysmal results when they reemployed their in-house team. Choosing the right outsourcing partner is crucial to your success, especially if you don't have the core competence in a particular field.

For example, many agencies in the US have core competence in SEO or web designing, so when their clients ask them to run Google or Facebook ads for them, they approach a professional white-label agency like DashClicks and outsource these services. It saves them a lot of time, hassle, and money.

DashClicks has large teams dedicated to providing best-in-class digital marketing services such as White Label SEO, White Label PPC, White Label Facebook Ads, White Label Social Media Posting, White Label Content Marketing, and InstaSites.

Ref: White Label Reselling vs. Doing It All Yourself‍

Ref: 11 Benefits of Using White Label Digital Marketing Services

Key Takeaway: If somebody tells you that outsourcing is terrible and you should try to do everything in-house, itā€™s best to ignore their rants. The fact is: outsourcing exists for a reason, and people go for it as it helps them achieve their business goals and scale their operations, especially when they can't afford to hire expensive in-house employees.

4. Make Sure There Are No Communication Issues or Language Barriers

Hiring the wrong outsourcing partner can be pretty expensive for you. Here is a firsthand account shared by Jonathan Long, a business consultant. One of his clients outsourced SEO Services from an overseas company that agreed to sign the contract for less than $500 per month.

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When they started running the campaign, they circulated a press release. Unfortunately, its outsourcing partner mentioned in the press release that the products caused health issues. Obviously, they didn't mean to say that, but the communication issues led to misunderstanding and seriously damaged the brand.

Key Takeaway: Ensure that the SEO reseller or the white label services you hire are competent enough. To minimize communication errors, they should preferably be native English speakers or non-natives with proficiency in the English language.

5. Make Sure They Can Handle Emergencies and Challenges Quickly and Efficiently

Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic outsourced check-in and boarding software and airline booking services to Navitaire, a software development company. Software failure is the last thing airline passengers can anticipate, but it happened twice in three months, and every time, it took more than 24 hours to get back on track. As a result, many flights were canceled, and thousands of customers were thrown into panic.

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Key Takeaway: The ultimate test of your outsourcing partner's proficiency is how quickly they can fix things if an emergency strikes and shuts down operations wholly or partially.

6. Have Face-to-Face Conversations When You Outsource Critical Services

HR is a critical function in small and medium-sized companies, but they outsource it to cut costs and save time. However, its execution is much more complicated.

When a third party is assigned to recruit and manage people, there can be a massive discrepancy regarding the new hires' skill-sets, attitude, and work culture. It can be detrimental to your organization's interests and prospects.

Key Takeaway: When you decide to outsource HR functions, have face-to-face conversations with your outsourcing partner and communicate with them your exact requirements along with your Agency's vision and work culture.

7. Discuss a Clear Scope of Work

It would be best if you had a clear and well-documented scope of work before you even think of approaching an outsourcing partner. It's imperative to have a clear vision of your business goals. You must also have a crystal clear understanding of your needs and how you can meet them to achieve the desired results.

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Sometimes agencies are not able to clearly define their scope of work because of the technicalities involved. In that case, you can jot down a few questions and start answering them:

• What exactly are you looking for?
• What could be the most feasible solution for this problem?

Brainstorming these questions may help you crack the code of writing a clear scope of work given the issues faced by your organization. When you can identify the core problems, you can prepare a blueprint to solve each one of them with a minimum spend.

Outsourcing shouldn't be considered a plug-and-play type of arrangement where you can automatically anticipate the desired outcomes. The only person who knows everything about your business is you. It takes time for the 3rd person to understand your business and breed familiarity, which breaks down barriers and ensures the desired results.

Key Takeaway: Vague requirements don't work with outsourcing partners, so for the best results, try to be as specific as you can when it comes to sharing your scope of work.

8. Communicate the Budget in as Much Detail as Possible

The cost of the project is the most ignored but highly crucial part of your outsourcing contract. It impacts everything from your relationship with the vendor to the quality of services. Both these factors are critical to the success of your overall project. Don't expect to receive superior services at highly discounted prices.

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So before you discuss the precise scope of work, you should also figure out the exact amount you will invest in the project and communicate it very clearly to your outsourcing partner. If possible, make sure that it gets mentioned in the contract. Many a time, it happens that the outsourcing agencies or businesses agree to a budget in a rushed meeting, and soon, the costs start snowballing quickly due to incorrect estimates.

Key Takeaway: Don't rush when it comes to preparing and communicating the budget. You should do it very carefully and every minute detail should be taken into consideration to avoid surprises later on.

9. Ensure the Safety of Your Data and Intellectual Property

In the digital age, data security and privacy are among the two most prominent business concerns. Handling sensitive information of your customers is crucial to the survival of your business as your customers have exhibited a lot of trust in your enterprise. When you outsource business processes, you also end up sharing sensitive customer data with your vendor. Therefore, it is imperative to manage data with a high degree of safety and security and sign a nondisclosure agreement with them.

Key Takeaway: Outsource with a vendor who has the best systems, tools, and practices in place to ensure data security and intellectual property rights. They should also have a proven track record in it. If possible, hire a local service provider who can regularly conduct network and security audits at the premises of your outsourcing partner to make sure that they are taking the required precautions to ensure the safety of your client's sensitive data.

10. Make Sure Your Partner Uses Agile Methodologies

In this fast-paced business world, customer requirements and demands are changing rapidly. If you are not an agile business, you may soon lose your client base. New companies might take you over if you don't use Agile methodologies to satisfy your customers' specific and ever-changing requirements.

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Key Takeaway: To use agile methodologies, your outsourcing vendor should have a high degree of collaboration among their teams. They should have people with leadership qualities and problem solvers to understand and respond to new requirements immediately.

11. Check Their Infrastructure and Technologies

Before you finalize your contract with your outsourcing partner, try to make sure they have the infrastructure and technologies required for your project. If they are located outside your country, make sure that you visit their premises in their home country.

Key Takeaway: Unscrupulous businesses worldwide offer the best prices to win outsourcing contracts, but either they don't have sufficient infrastructure or depend on the infrastructure of others with no infrastructure of their own. The same goes for the technologies they use. So before you sign the contract, make sure they have the proper infrastructure to run your project.

12. Make Sure Your Outsourcing Partner Provides Post Development Support

Post-development support is crucial to the success of any project. There can be several things or issues after the project is completed where you might need the help of your outsourcing partner. Ensure that your outsourcing partner provides this, or else you would have to pay for it additionally and waste a lot of time and money.

Key Takeaway: To avoid hidden charges and unnecessary inconvenience related to the lack of post-development support, make sure that you read lengthy contractual agreements along with all the fine prints.

13. Outsource with a Proper Plan

Outsourcing is not a bad idea as long as you have an outsourcing plan in place. It helps you scale when you don't have sufficient infrastructure. It is also one of the most innovative strategies that a startup can implement. In the light of the above examples, you should have a proper plan before deciding to outsource so that you can avoid the apparent mistakes a startup can make.

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Ref: Exact Steps To Building, Growing & Scaling A 7-Figure Digital Marketing Agency

Conclusion

In a rapidly changing business world, where business requirements change frequently, outsourcing can boost your efficiency and allow you to focus on your core competence without losing any of your clients, thereby propelling the growth of your agency.

There are lots of companies that have scaled through outsourcing in the previous two decades. It's a long list that includes HP, Intuit, Microsoft, Apple, Citi, Procter & Gamble, Orange, Cisco Systems, Oracle, Nestle, Dell, GE, AT&T, Verizon, American Express (Amex), Facebook, Fidelity, and IBM to name a few. It is your turn now! Follow these tips and choose the right outsourcing partner for your agency's growth.