As per the latest statistics, the Instagram app has 2.3 billion active users internationally.

There are a number of reasons why people use this popular app - to connect, be inspired, or discover.

Instagram is one of the most influential platforms on the internet, ranks as the 2nd most downloaded app worldwide across all platforms and users spend an average of 30.6 minutes daily on the app. The majority of individuals, approximately 38%, use Instagram to share their cherished moments through pictures and videos, making it the most prevalent purpose for usage.

If you are a brand looking to grow your business online, it's a potent platform that you should definitely leverage.

Brands around the world use this social media platform to engage with their target audience. Then, why should you be the one that's left behind?

Generating the right engagement on Instagram develops your brand's community and boosts brand reach and awareness. This, in turn, adds generously to your online presence.

Now, the thing is, generating engagement on Instagram can be quite challenging, especially for businesses that have just started to use it for business growth.

But don't worry! In this post, we'll discuss some proven tips on how to increase Instagram engagement rate for the coming year. These tips will help ensure that your content quickly reaches your target audience, which, in turn, will lead to an increase in engagement. Let's start:

What Is Instagram Engagement Rate? How Do You Measure It?

Here's how you define an engagement rate:

The rate measures how many interactions your content receives based on your audience size, followers, or reach. Examples of such interactions include:

• Comments
• Reactions
• Likes
• Direct messages
• Saves
• Shares
• Click-Throughs
• Mentions

The significant reason you need to calculate your Instagram engagement rate is because you get clarity on how your audience reacts to the content you are sharing on this social platform. Another reason for knowing this rate is because it sheds light on the type of content that connects more with your audience.

Now, to the more important question How to measure Instagram engagement rate?

The method you use for calculating this rate depends on your social media goals. But, here's a formula that offers the simplest way to compute your Instagram engagement rate:

Engagement Rate = (Likes+Comments+Share)/Followers x 100

Image Source: Buffer

Tips To Increase Your Instagram Engagement Rate In 2023

You can always implement some tried and tested tips that will help increase Instagram likes, shares, comments, followers, views, and more. This way, you will be able to develop a strong and lasting engagement over time. Let's discuss these tips:

1. Your Images Must Stand Out

Instagram is a visual medium. However, you don't need to be a professional photographer in order to leverage this platform for your brand. You just need to create images that stand out.

To create impactful images, focus on creating main feed images that encourage people to check out what you have to say and prompt them to like, share, or comment.

To boost the oomph factor of your images, you can use a number of tools out there. Some of the Instagram editing apps you can use to jazz up your images include VSCO and Avatan Photo Editor. You can also use such apps to make your Instagram images look more consistent. When you maintain consistency in your images, your followers start to identify your content and are more likely to pause to take a look at your images while browsing.

2. Learn More About Your Audience

As you are curating content for your audience, it's best to know in detail about them. For instance, you need to know about the demographics of your target audience. Knowing this information helps define a number of crucial things, such as:

• The type of content you should post
• The times and days to publish
• Your brand voice

Instagram Analytics is the best way to learn about audience demographics.

Another way through which you can understand your audience is by using the polls and questions stickers in Stories. This way, you get to fathom what your audience really wishes to see on your Instagram account. Plus, you get bonus engagement and real-time feedback when you do this.

3. Create Video Content

If you are looking for ways on how to increase Instagram engagement rate at a skyrocketed pace, then it's about time you create and post video content on Instagram.

As per the latest stats, Instagram videos get 2x more engagement. Moreover, posts that have videos get 38% more engagement than those with images.

One of the most effective ways to create video content on Instagram is to narrate a story or offer valuable information in your videos. Doing so will help you grab instant attention and boost engagement.

Take a look at how John Liang uses Instagram videos to generate engagement. He helps his audience understand complex finance topics in an interesting, funny way through Instagram reels:

Image Source: Keyhole

Note: Instagram offers a variety of video options, namely: Story videos, reels, video posts, Instagram Lives, and IGTV.

Pro Tip: Whether you want to engage with educational video content or create entertaining reels, we recommend that you create a social media strategy for Instagram on how to fully utilize this platform for videos. This will help guarantee you long-term engagement.

4. Don't Underestimate Captions

While wondering about how to increase Instagram engagement rate, one aspect of Instagram is easily overlooked by many. Yes, we are talking about captions!

Captions are powerful indicators of your brand's personality and hold the ability to boost engagement for your posts. So, ensure you write enticing and insightful captions.

Note: The maximum length of Instagram captions is 2,200 characters, giving you plenty of space to create engaging captions for your posts. You can always create short and sweet captions for your posts, but don't be afraid to write longer captions if you have a great story to share with your audience.

5. Respond to DMs and Comments

A cardinal sin that many brands commit on Instagram and other social media platforms is not replying to comments and DMs. In case you are doing so too, always remember:

If you ignore your audience, they may ignore you too in the future.

Image Source: SproutSocial

Hence, when you see comments on your posts starting to pour in, join the conversation and respond to them. It's polite to do so plus your followers feel seen and heard. They even feel excited and look forward to having a conversation with you sometime again in the future.

Tip: Take out the time to engage with other accounts in your niche as well. We recommend that you like posts of your top fans or comment on important posts in your industry. And who knows? All the engagement love that you send out may get reciprocated to you in some way or the other.

And speaking of engagement, your first impression in the DMs matters too. Consider setting up a thoughtful Instagram welcome message to greet new followers and start conversations on the right foot.

6. Post Carousels

When you learn how to create attention-grabbing images by using the tools we mentioned before, you can consider posting some images with carousels as well.

Now, what are carousels, you may ask?

Carousels are posts on Instagram that possess a number of images. Surprisingly enough, the social team of Hootsuite have seen their carousel posts getting 3.1x more engagement than their regular posts (on average).

Image Source: Oberlo

7. Post Consistently and at Optimal Times

Our list of tips on how to increase Instagram engagement rate cannot be truly over without talking about the importance of consistent posting and the right time to post.

Ensure you follow a consistent posting schedule to keep your Instagram followers engaged. This will ensure you don't keep them waiting whenever they expect a new post from you every time.

Also, posting at the right time is vital. You don't want to be posting content while your audience is fast asleep in their beds, do you? Learn about the best time to post on social media and you are set!

Tip: For increasing engagement rate you can implement Instagram automation. It helps in automating comment replies, DM responses, story mention replies and posts scheduling.

8. Partner With Influencers

When influencers market your offerings, it increases your online presence and helps develop trust. Hence, an amazing way to broaden your reach and boost your engagement rate is to leverage influencer marketing. And the great news is, Instagram is simply the best social media platform for influencer marketing.

Take a look at how you can find influencers on Instagram:

• Carry out hashtag research
• See who your rivals are pairing up with
• Check out your Discover page
• Use an app called Upfluence

The best part about using influencer marketing is that you get great results without spending much. But this can only happen if you collaborate with nano influencers and not the high-budget ones. Nano influencers have a following of 1,000-5,000.

Pro Tip: While it's important to convey your expectations to the influencers you are collaborating with, ensure you give them the necessary creative freedom to promote your offerings.

9. Conduct Giveaways

Another effective way in which you can grow your engagement rate is by harnessing the power of giveaways.

Hosting a giveaway is something that your audience is more likely to participate in given how fun they are and that a prize is involved.

But what's in for you, you may wonder? Well, a lot of comments, likes, and shares. Also, you get to increase your brand awareness and followers.

If you decide to conduct a giveaway, here's what you need to keep in mind:

• Determine the goal of your giveaway. For instance ā do you want your audience to create on-brand user-generated content for you? Or, do you wish to increase your follower count?
• Post a clear picture that announces your giveaway.
• Clearly state what you expect from your audience in the caption. Write down the rules of the giveaway and announce the prize.

10. Go Live!

A tried-and-tested way to increase your Instagram engagement rate is going live on this social media platform. There can be plenty of reasons for you to go live: to sell a product, educate people, or have a chat with your audience.

Going live on Instagram helps you connect with your potential customers and showcase authenticity. Also, when brands use Instagram Live, these live broadcasts are pushed to the top of feeds, further increasing the chance of driving engagement. Your followers will even receive a notification stating that you have gone live.

Pro Tip: Take a look at the things you need to keep in mind before going live on Instagram:

• Make sure the video quality and lighting are excellent.
• There should be no background noise and the sound quality needs to be good.
• You can also co-host a session with an expert. If you do so, you can also quickly reply to the comments while the other speaker is speaking. Responding to the comments will further increase your engagement.

11. Analyze Your Performance

Lastly, don't forget to analyze the performance of the content you put out on Instagram.

To measure performance, you can use the Instagram analytics tool. The tool helps you track your growth and engagement rate. It also lets you know about the posts which showed a great performance and which didn't.

Note: The data you find in Instagram analytics tool will help you inform your approach to creating engagement on Instagram. It will assist you in creating content that catches the attention of your audience and engages them.

Hire Instagram Ads Management Specialists

A lot of digital marketing agencies find it difficult to fulfill their client campaigns. This is one of the biggest reasons why they use Instagram Ads outsourcing services for their clients. If you are an agency that's facing a similar situation, you can also consider opting for these services. The best white label agency to partner with to hire these services is DashClicks.

It's important to note that DashClicks offers Instagram Ads with its white label Facebook ads services. Using this agency's Instagram Ads outsourcing services will help drive qualified sales and leads for your clients.

Also, here's what you can expect when you hire Instagram ads services from DashClicks:

• The team will conduct maintenance and optimization once per week (at a minimum).
• You get a weekly optimization breakdown from the team.
• The experts at DashClicks possess the required certifications to guide your campaigns and ads.
• Results are guaranteed without unnecessary ad spending.

Wrapping It Up

From creating useful video content to collaborating with influencers, there are so many effective ways in which you can increase your engagement rate on Instagram. These tips encourage your audience to interact with your brand's content on Instagram, giving a boost to your reach and followers. A good engagement rate can increase your visibility and boost your reputation and credibility. So, ensure you diligently implement these tips to see fruitful results! All the best.

You need more social media clients for your agency, but when you search online for ways, you find stupid advice that hardly works today. Most "marketing gurus" will advise you to get the names and contact details of the websites and send them unsolicited emails.

But the reality points towards something else. We regularly receive annoying emails with messages such as "I've gone through your website and think I can help you make it look better and get higher rankings." Do we pay any attention to such emails?

How to Find Social Media Clients?

Most agency owners hire sales consultants and do a bunch of different things through trial and error until they find something that works. Or they follow random advice online to get the ball rolling.

The best tactic is to try inbound marketing, post valuable and engaging content on social media, try networking, and run paid campaigns. You can also try the irresistible sales formula we use and teach here at DashClicks. You'll find this proven formula in this article and other tips.

Here are some of the most powerful tips to find social media clients for your agency.

1. Try DashClicks' Irresistible Sales Formula

Selling digital marketing services and expanding the client base is easier said than done, especially for a newbie agency. There are many roadblocks in their way, such as a lack of trust, increasing competition, price wars, etc. So, why don't you try an irresistible offer that people have a hard time rejecting?

All digital marketing activities start with the creation of a professional website. So, many agencies sell their website development services with their SEO services package. The website's design, content, and user interface are crucial for high search engine rankings. A well-built website can be a game changer when you start online marketing for your venture.

Step-by-Step Formula to Sell Your Digital & Social Media Marketing Services

Here is the irresistible sales formula for selling your social media marketing services and expanding your client base. It begins with offering a professional-grade website of 30-40 pages you can effortlessly create using DashClicks' instant website builder, InstaSites.

A. Identify the businesses you want to target, make a list, and proactively create professional-grade websites for them using InstaSites software, and then do the following.

• Start a contact center.
• Train your sales reps (fronters or frontline salespersons) to pitch the people on your cold call lists and offer them custom websites free of charge.
• Ask your prospects to have a look at those websites through preview links.
• Make another call to get their feedback about the website after three days.
• Seek their permission and activate the website for them, if they are happy with the website preview.

B. Next week, make another call to know their opinion about the usability of the website and do the following.

• Tell them during the call that you also offer local listings on some major listing networks.
• Tell them the benefits of local SEO.
• If they need it, sign a contract.
• Outsource affordable local listing services through DashClicks' white label fulfillment center.

C. After two weeks, offer social media and Google paid advertising services to boost leads and conversions and get them fulfilled through DashClicks.

After six weeks, offer social media account management and posting services.

Click here to learn the details of this wonderful fail-proof formula that you can try subsequently. The article also includes the sales script for your sales reps.

Watch this video to know more:

2. Be Your No. 1 Client

If you're focusing too much on client acquisition and business expansion, it's time to focus on your own marketing and SEO. Treating your agency as your number one client will likely improve your online visibility and help you get loads of customers. Invest in your website and increase your social media presence.

3. Try Inbound Marketing

Inbound is the key. People will find you easily and flock to you if you act as an authority. To strengthen your inbound marketing, publish content vigorously. When you do it for some time, Google ranks your website higher on its organic search result pages, and people can easily find you through relevant search queries.

Most agencies focus on conversion and creating sales-oriented sites and fail as a result. So, focus on content publishing and inbound marketing.

Image Source: SuperOffice

Pro Tip: Most people search digital marketing agencies with keywords like top seo consultants, best digital marketing agencies near me, and best social media companies in Vancouver, etc. So, try to rank on SERPs with such keywords so that people can find you easily through organic search.

4. Focus on Service Quality

Provide quality services and achieve excellent results for your clients; happy clients will give you referrals. Successful agencies attract many clients as referrals from their existing or previous customers. Use your results to sell your services. You can use automation tools to do that. Soon, it will become autopilot. As a result, big agencies don't spend much on advertising. To catch big fish, they work on PR and brand building.

Image Source: SuperOffice

5. Tap Your Immediate Circle

As a newbie agency, tapping your existing circle is the key to finding social media clients. There can be many people in your friends, relatives and acquaintances who are running their own businesses or working as freelancers.

Get their contact details, make a list and tell them about your services. You can also send messages and emails to them. They can help spread the word about your agency if they haven't yet decided to hire social media marketing services for their businesses.

6. Try Social Networking

Try networking on social media sites and in local communities, clubs, and groups. While outreaching on social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, ensure that you tap everyone in your niche, not just your potential customers. These people can help you refer the client and close the deals.

While interacting with them, avoid the casual hellos and emojis and spark meaningful conversations.

Flaunt your expertise in social media marketing subtly by sharing strategies and tools you love to use.

7. Spend Time Where Your Target Audience Does

To gear up and embrace social marketing, you should significantly increase your online presence, especially in the places where your target audience spends most of their time. Here are some of these places -

• Facebook groups
• Twitter chats
• Sites such as Reddit and Quora
• Communities such as Slack and Discord
• Forums such as Black Hat World, Digital Point and CPAElites

8. Offer Freebies

Freebies attract crowds and sell like hotcakes. It's a proven strategy to attract new clients. Here is a list of freebies you can try -

• Social Media Content Calendar
• Daily Planners or To-Do Lists
• Instagram posting templates
• Free consultation
• List of Blog Headlines
• List of Social Media Captions
• E-Books
• How-To Guides
• Email Newsletter Templates
• Mini Courses
• Cheat Sheets
• Checklists
• Starter Kits
• Audio Trainings

Post about your free service everywhere online, where people recognize you as an authority. Highlight your free service on your website to create buzz and use it like a lead magnet.

See how Neil Patel offers his free 7-week action plan on his website to increase traffic on your website.

9. Boost Your Expertise and Authority Using Your Website

Businesses use their websites to list their services and how they function. However, you can also use it to showcase your expertise and authority.

For that, you can do the following -

• Add your case studies and make them available in downloadable PDF files. Subtly, prove how you can help your prospects.
• Give social proof of your previous clients, and add their logos.
• Add reviews and testimonials from happy clients.
• Share the awards and certifications you have earned, conferences you have attended, and journals in which you or your agency are mentioned.
• Add video testimonials of your clients.

Here is an example of reviews from happy clients -

Image Source: FreshBooks

Note that these are verifiable reviews with the name and details of the clients. It builds trust compared to the first name most agencies use.

See how Omada posted a customer video testimonial from one of its clients that cleverly captures the essence of visual interest.

10. Focus On Getting More and More Referrals

As per a Convince & Convert study, 83% of Americans say that recommendations from family and friends encourage them to buy a product or service. So, it's clear that referrals are the most effective way to find more clients for your social media agency.

Here are a few tips to get referrals -

• Offer excellent customer experience
• Politely ask your happy clients to provide referrals
• Collaborate with people offering similar services such as SEO and PPC
• Introduce a referral plan and reward people who refer clients to you

Final Words

Finding clients for your social media agency requires effort. You can apply the mix of tactics discussed above and find networking opportunities everywhere. Also, update your website to showcase your authority and build trust by adding video testimonials, reviews, certificates and case studies.

Use automation tools to your advantage to minimize manual work. You can use the DashClicks' Inbound App to manage and nurture leads. Similarly, you can use DashClicks' Deals App, the sales pipeline management software, to automate leads and deals management. Our Contacts App, the CRM software, will simplify your sales outreach by recording all the communication with your clients in one place.

Google Ads is one of those breakthrough platforms that have dramatically contributed to the transformation of the marketing world in the past years. Today, these ads are regarded as one of the most effective and result-driven mediums of paid online advertising.

How do you define Google Ads?

These ads let businesses reach users searching for products, services, and information on Google.

If you correctly execute your Google Ads campaign, it holds the potential to make your company more successful. But in order to do this, you need to know about all the latest changes to these ads. In other words, you need to know about the latest Google Ads updates and trends to plan for 2023.

In this post, we discuss the same in detail. Without any further ado, let's begin:

1. Cost Per Lead Increased for 91% of Industries

An important change to Google Ads you need to know is that the cost per lead (CPL) has significantly increased for 91% of industries.

But what's the reason for such an increase?

Factors such as ads appearing for low commercial intent queries and higher prices due to inflation have resulted in reduced conversion rates, leading to increased cost per lead.

Note: The Travel, Furniture, and Arts/Entertainment industries saw whopping increases of 69%, 54%, and 134%, respectively.

The average overall increase is 19%.

The above data is as per Google Ads benchmark report by WordStream.

2. Expanded Text Ads Are Now Over

For more than two decades, advertisers have been manually writing and optimizing their PPC ads on Google. In these years, Google rolled out a number of new search ad formats. If you observe the past years, Google made the size of standard text ads twice with Expanded Text Ads. And then in 2018, it increased the size of Expanded Text Ads.

Fast forward to today, one of the most important changes to Google Ads you should be aware of for the year 2023 is ā Expanded Text Ads have finally met their end. Now, Google's new default ad type is the Responsive Search Ad (RSA). The not-so-great thing about this ad is that it limits the control brands have on the messages of their ads on the SERP.

What RSA actually does is that it allows advertisers to provide a number of different text assets for Google. Then, Google pieces these assets together and creates an ad that appears on the SERP for every search.

3. Specific Industries Now Have Several Unique Ad Formats

To assist certain industries in adjusting to today's dynamically changing needs, Google rolled out a number of unique ad formats for them. For instance, verticals such as finance, auto, and travel got new ad types.

One example of the new ad types is the Vehicle Listing Ads. Google rolled out this ad format to help car dealerships showcase their old and new cars. This ad is shown predominately at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). You will find a car's price, image, location, and condition on this ad.

Note: The Vehicle Listing ad bears similarity to the already existing Local Inventory Ad by Google. Essentially, the Vehicle Listing ads require an active inventory feed to be submitted on a regular basis, which needs approval via Google Merchant Centre.

4. Text-to-Speech Voice-Overs for YouTube Ads

One of the most crucial Google Ads updates for 2023 that advertisers will definitely benefit from is The addition of a text to speech voice over tool to the Google Ads platform. Google has added it within the asset library.

Why use this tool? It will help convert your written script into natural-sounding speech. And it does so with the help of AI.

As creating voice-overs is supremely time-consuming for brands, this update will definitely help advertisers save up on a lot of time and effort.

If you want to try the tool out, here are some simple steps you need to follow:

• Open your asset library.
• Choose the video ad you wish to add a voice-over to.
• Enter your script and select a voice style that matches your brand voice.

And that's it! Your voice-over will overlay onto your video ad.

5. Google is Automatically Upgrading Smart Shopping Campaigns to Performance Max

Performance max campaigns generated a lot of buzz last year. Now, the news is, this campaign type will be completely replacing Smart Shopping and Local campaigns. Google stated that it will start automatically updating Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max in July of this year.

Don't worry, you will receive a notification from Google 2-3 weeks before it makes the upgrade. Your campaign's historical data and settings will transfer over by default.

Tip: You can be proactive and make the switch yourself with the Performance Max self-upgrade tool. Switching as early as possible will arguably give you an edge over others who haven't. And the best thing is, the upgrade happens in just one click. Yes, it's that simple!

Image Source: Google Ads & Commerce Blog

6. You Will Now Get Diagnostic Insights for Performance Max Campaigns

Our list of changes to Google Ads will not be complete without talking about this update. In July, Google included a new diagnostic insights view to the Overview page and Insights page within the platform.

How will this help advertisers?

It lets you know if anything is slipping through the cracks in your Performance Max Campaigns. The tool assists you in recognizing issues related with:

• Billing
• Ad strength
• Budget
• Conversion tracking
• Strategy targets
• Policies
• Status

7. New Business Name and Logo Ad Assets

Verified advertisers are now getting some level of protection from Google with new business name and logo ad assets on the SERP. Take a look:

Image Source: Google Ads Help

Incorporating these new assets have also given businesses a chance to stand out on the already crowded SERP. These assets even work as a great visual addition to their ads that may help improve performance.

Note: To use these new features, advertisers need to complete the verification process with Google.

Partner With Reputed Google Ads Outsourcing Agency DashClicks

Are you a digital marketing agency struggling with this one question ā whether you should outsource Google Ads or not?

Outsourcing Google Ads will aid in the growth of your agency. Also, as the work is carried out by experts, the work of your clients will be in good hands.

So, you can always decide to outsource these ads.

In case you think about outsourcing, consider hiring white label Google Ads services by DashClicks.

Why?

DashClicks’ conversion-focused Google Ads campaigns help drive leads and sales for your clients. Here are a few important things you can expect when you decide to hire these services from DashClicks:

• The white label agency carries out maintenance and optimization for campaigns once a week at a minimum.
• The agency will also create outstanding ad copy variations so that a campaign reaches more leads.
• You receive a weekly optimization breakdown that you can share with your clients.
• The agency’s experts are certified and officially trained to create and manage Google Ads campaigns.

Tip: Here is a Google Ads optimization checklist that you can also refer to.

Wrapping It Up

From doing away with Expanded Text Ads to adding a text-to-speech voice-over tool to the Google ads platform, a plethora of updates have taken place this year that you should know of going into the new year.

Yes, we don't have certain features in Google Ads anymore. But, there also have been some great additions to our PPC campaigns this year.

Now that you are well aware of the latest Google Ad updates for 2023, you can start adapting your strategy accordingly. Now, get cracking!

Do you know what differentiates targeted advertising from generic advertising and makes it so effective? It’s the holy trinity of the following three elements that targeted advertising is based on, and it makes all the difference.

• Specific Traits of the Individuals
• Their Interests, Desires, and Needs
• Shopping & Browsing Behavior

Marketers use consumer data to segment their customers according to these three factors.

What Is Targeted Advertising?

Targeted advertising is an online strategy focusing on a customer’s specific traits, interests, and preferences. Marketers constantly need to track their online activities to dig into this information.

Target advertising helps brands cut through the noise the Internet is so full of. People are more likely to engage with personalized ads rather than generic ad messaging as they are bombarded with random ads everywhere.

Retargeting can further boost its overall impact. It takes ads personalization to a whole new level and helps if you push the prospect down the sales funnel by reminding him about the product pages that he had visited on your website.

Benefits of Targeted Advertising

Ad personalization has a deep impact on customer acquisition and retention. It improves the click-through rate (CTR) and customer lifetime value (CLV).

Additionally, target advertising enables marketers to send customized messages to different individuals based on the information collected about each customer. Your brand’s effectiveness lies in its ability to craft custom messages for its customers as per the information per its understanding and knowledge of its customers’ needs and wants.

The chances of customers responding to advertisements and engaging with a brand drastically increase with custom advertisements. Tailoring ads to niche audiences, like readers of crypto news, can significantly boost engagement and CTR.

According to research, 71% of customers prefer personalized advertisements. The study further reveals that 44% of customers become repeat customers with ad personalization.

Tips for Using Targeted Advertising for Digital Agencies

Agencies should ensure that their paid advertising campaigns achieve a high ROI. It is crucial for the acquisition and retention of customers as the agency business is already striving to sustain with increased competition. Many companies opt out of paid ads when they get poor or no results from paid advertising.

However, paid ads can be extremely effective, provided you avoid poor targeting and irrelevant ads. New and upgraded ad-targeting features of platforms like Facebook and Instagram help businesses effectively reach their target audiences.

Here are some tips for implementing targeted advertising for maximum impact –

1. Avoid Irrelevant and Generic Ads

Marketers make the grave mistake of filling a customer’s browser with irrelevant ads that are randomly displayed, and it hurts the brand’s reputation. In an age where artificial intelligence is everywhere, random ads may damage your prospects rather than boost them. You should ensure that your ads are not generic or badly placed.

Generic ads are created to promote commodities in general. Here is an example –

Image Source: Berkeley University

As it's obvious, these ads are not so effective or engaging.

2. Pay Attention to Ad Placement

Here are a few ads that ended up looking funny because of their bad placement.

For example, see this ad mentioned in Reddit chats:

Image source: Reddit

The “Adult Video” ad is overshadowed by the “Jesus Is Watching” billboard. Both ads have different intentions and messaging, but their placement makes them horrible.

Similarly, look at Monster.com’s ad below. Its placement makes it too hilarious.

Image Source: Bored Panda

The headline “seven new jobs” announced by Monster unintentionally coincides with a Fox News headline, “seven shot at Florida nightclub.” It looks as if the seven new jobs will replace these seven dead persons.

3. Avoid Unintelligent and Poor Targeting

Another problem with targeted ads is that sometimes they become “badly targeted” ads. The agencies should be watchful of these mistakes. Sometimes, the algorithms are responsible for such errors, but most of the time, marketers can avoid them by being mindful and alert.

See how every baby boomer is targeted with crypto, investment and mutual funds ads, even though they might not be interested in these things. It makes these “targeted ads” so annoying.

Similarly, lacking information about your audience can be a recipe for disaster for targeted advertising.

And this one, where a young person receives an ad for shoes meant for older adults.

And how can you even dub someone "broken" without sufficient information about them?

Poor targeting can annoy customers and leave them disinterested and confused. It's an utter waste of your marketing dollars.

4. Try Automated Targeted Advertising

Facebook introduced automated lookalike audiences to save hundreds of hours for marketers. Since Facebook is armed with a larger database of people and advanced automation tools and algorithms, the “lookalike” audience became an instant game-changer.

With these automation techniques, you can quickly reach your target audience more than anything else. So, why not make good use of it?

5. Keep Track of the Federal and State Data Privacy Laws

Last but not least, marketers should keep tabs on federal and state privacy laws around consumer data. People in the US and Europe are waking up to consumer data privacy laws.

Some of the annoyed customers even sue the brands for violating consumer data privacy laws. So, if someone opts out of automated profiling, you should respect it and not include them in your targeted audience.

Final Words

The digital marketing ecosystem is expanding like galaxies, and you can see ads everywhere. People are so used to seeing ads that they either turn a blind eye to them or eagerly wait to locate the cross or "skip ad" button as soon as an unwanted ad appears. It's also counterproductive for brands, as they waste thousands of dollars to display these ads to the wrong audiences.

So, they should serve the targeted ads with personalized content, keeping their needs and desires in mind. Social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram offer amazing audience targeting features to engage with your prospects and existing customers. If you need strategic guidance, contact the DashClicks team.

The latest statistics reveal that 82% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing, and for a good reason. It's simply one of the most powerful strategies for boosting website traffic, obtaining qualified leads, and increasing conversions.

If you are not currently leveraging content marketing for your brand, it's about time you do so. Although a word of caution here. Staying abreast with the latest trends is important owing to the ever-changing nature of content marketing. It's key to creating a solid content strategy.

In this post, we discuss these trends that will help amp up and fine-tune your strategy for 2023 and set your brand up for success!

Let's begin:

1. Create Long-Form Content

Why produce long-form content?

The answer is simple long-form content provides the most value to your audience. Also, when you offer your audience comprehensive information on a topic, they are curious to learn more about your business and stay on your pages longer. This way, you generate more leads for your business. You also gradually start to become their go-to information source for getting valuable information, further giving you a chance to establish yourself as an authority in your field.

Note: if you publish a long-form, high-quality content piece, Google will rank your page higher.

Image Source: Bramework

In all, long-form content is a win-win both for your business and your potential customers.

2. Focus on Voice Search

In 2022, voice search accounted for around 20% of total searches and is continuously growing. As more and more people opt for voice search, this will cause a change in content in the coming years.

When voice searching, the content we speak is not always parallel with the content we put in a search box. So, marketers will have to adapt their content to natural language; this includes questions and answers as well, since 50% of the voice searches depend upon featured snippets.

For this, marketers can use common words, include long-tail keywords in heads and titles, and utilize FAQs. For example, "what are the strategies for optimizing content?"

Tip: Take the lead by optimizing the natural language of the pages for "near me" searches.

3. Repurpose Content

One of the top B2C and B2B content marketing trends of all times is repurposing content. When you recycle or repurpose your content, you are able to:

• Re-use content on separate channels, such as social media and email.
• Update old content and augment your content marketing tactics.

Pro Tip: When you repurpose content, don't copy and paste. We recommend that you make changes according to the channel you will use. For instance, don't send a complete 1500-word content piece over email. Instead, trim the content to around 200 words and send it to your email subscribers along with a link to the full post.

4. Create Interactive Content

As you may already know, reaching and engaging today's consumer is becoming more of a challenge. With so much content out there, it is increasingly becoming hard to stand out and be memorable. People's limited attention span only adds to the problem. But we have a solution that can help you engage your audience and make a lasting impression Produce Interactive content.

You may have seen interactive content around you in the form of polls, quizzes, surveys, and calculators. Interactive content, as the name suggests, is interactive in nature. Hence, your audience is able to interact with such content rather than passively consuming it. And the amazing thing is, they enjoy the process!

This content doesn't even take much time to create and helps successfully drive two-way conversations.

Note: Create interactive content that offers your audience insights/tailored results on topics they care about or a problem they are struggling with.

5. Produce Niche Content

One of the latest content marketing trends to follow is creating niche content.

For those new to the term, niche content lays focus on a certain subtopic associated with your industry or business. The aim of the content is to appeal to a small group of individuals.

Let's take an example to understand the importance of creating niche content:

Suppose you own a bakery and you publish content on different baking-related recipes. As the content is generic in nature, it will appeal to anyone who is interested in baking. But, you can also create content that interests lactose-free, vegan, or gluten-free bakers.

Why do this?

This is because it will enable you to target smaller niches of bakers and get them interested in your content. If you think about it, it acts as a great way to attract specific leads, which you can then nurture to conversion.

6. Content Experience Is Paramount

Content experience is the manner in which your content is presented to your audience, from the way it engages your users to the page it lives on. Always remember to tailor your content experience as per your target audience. It will only lead to a boost in engagement and overall interactions.

Image Source: MKTR.AI

Keeping tabs on the latest customer preference and trends will also help you provide an optimum content experience.

Note: Always remember that your audience will consume your content only if it is convenient for them to do so. A video that takes a lot of time to load on their browser or a blog post containing a lot of pop-up ads isn't something that will keep their attention for long.

7. Use Videos

You may instantly think of blogging when it comes to creating content. But, it's about time that videos get their due credit.

Utilizing videos is hailed as one of the biggest content marketing trends that you need to follow for the coming year.

Why create videos?

This is because they are highly effective in engaging your audience and can influence their decision to buy. Take a look at these stats:

• 94% of marketers are of the opinion that videos have helped boost user understanding of their service or product.
• 90% of people are of the view that videos assist them in making a purchase decision.
• According to Hubspot, 83% of video marketers have said that they have acquired leads with the help of video content.

You can produce a variety of videos for your audience, such as live videos, informational videos, webinars, and explainer or how-to videos.

Here are some tips you can follow to create the most effective videos:

• Capture your audience’s attention by talking about an interesting fact or telling a story.
• Create mobile-friendly videos so that your audience doesn’t face a hard time watching them on their smartphones.
• Nowadays, people tend to have a lower attention span. Hence, make it a point to put important information in your video first.
• Follow a consistent posting schedule so that you don’t keep your audience waiting.

8. Optimize Content for Search Engines

This is one trend that never gets old.

Make sure you adequately optimize your content for search engines. It boosts the likelihood of search engines finding your content and increasing its ranking in the search results.

Take a look at some of the steps you can take to optimize your content for search engines:

• Use proper keywords and phrases. Learn how to do keyword research for SEO.
• Check how Google ranks its content. Optimize your content with EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).

9. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is one of the top content marketing trends for both B2B and B2C businesses.

For those new to the term, influencer marketing means partnering with influencers for the promotion of a service or product. Essentially, influencers are individuals on online platforms such as social media who can reach a massive audience via endorsements.

As you already may know, influencer marketing has long been famous with consumer brands. But, it's increasingly become the preferred choice for B2B businesses as well. The biggest benefit of using this type of marketing is that it helps get your brand in front of a large audience that you wouldn't have been able to otherwise. You don't even have to shell out loads of money in order to use this marketing.

10. Build Personalized Content

Personalized content is regarded as one of the most important trends of content marketing. Building such content helps provide a better and more unique experience to your audience.

But what really is personalized marketing?

Basically, it's a one-to-one marketing strategy that helps you offer a customized experience to your potential customers.

Image Source: Automatad

Let's understand this kind of marketing with the help of an example.

Suppose a person lands on your website to take a look at the ebook you are offering. In exchange for the ebook, you ask for their name and email id, which they provide. Now, the next time they visit your site, they receive a message on their screen that reads “Welcome back, [name]!” This kind of personalized message can create a lasting impression in the mind of the visitor. They get the feeling that the content on the website was created just for them.

Tip: When a visitor returns to your site, apart from showing a personalized message, you can also present them a list of recommended content for them to look at next (the content will be based on their previous interaction with the site). This creates a different kind of user experience altogether.

In all, personalized content helps you stand out and can very well be the reason for a visitor to choose you over your competition.

Rely on DashClicks to Get Relevant, Engaging Content for Your Clients

If you are a digital marketing agency that wishes to outsource content, then you can always rely on white label content services by DashClicks. The expert team at DashClicks creates content that will help generate more organic traffic for your client's website.

Here’s what you can expect when you decide to hire these services from DashClicks:

• Deliver 100% unique, supreme-quality content to your clients.
• The content will be well-researched.
• A team of accomplished writers will carry out the work.
• SEO specialists and writers will inspect the published copy to ensure that it brings the desired results.

Wrapping It Up

So many marketers are already planning to increase their content marketing budget next year. Hence, it's essential that you gear up and implement the latest content marketing trends for your business. It will help differentiate your brand from the others in the year 2023. From utilizing videos to content repurposing, the trends we have discussed so far will help set you up on the path to success and catapult business growth.

Ensure you implement the trends that will best suit your business and you will start to reap their benefits in due course of time. Best of luck!

Apart from an agency’s craft and quality, a strong agency-client relationship can help you achieve great results as a client.

A seamless client-agency communication results in exciting and encouraging campaigns. In a digital marketing environment, it is crucial that your agency understands your needs and frequently communicates with you. They must be willing to take the initiative and produce new, innovative ideas to ensure success in this dynamic and competitive field.

When you sign a contract with a digital agency, you trust it; therefore, much depends on your relationship. So, apart from skills, which matter but are not a decisive factor in your success, other things matter more.

Maintaining a healthy long-term relationship with the agency is important. So, if there are cracks in it or your agency is not giving its 100 percent, you can be on the receiving end of the deal.

Regularly evaluate your relationship to ensure that you are getting what you need. You should also ensure that your agency is committed and dedicated to helping you achieve your business goals.

7 Ways to Spot a Great Agency-Client Relationship

Here are the seven tips for finding an agency that offers a great agency-client relationship.

1. Seek Transparency

Most businesses hire digital agencies because they don’t possess the expertise and skills required to achieve the desired results online and don’t want to expand their team size.

But, in the real world, finding a committed agency is not child’s play. Many mushrooming agencies say “yes” to every question you ask or request you make as a client. They act positively during conversations, but it can be a huge red flag. Transparent agencies don’t say yes to everything, especially the expectations that are irrational and unrealistic.

Image Source: Cascade

Pro Tip: A genuinely committed and professional agency will not say “yes” to all your demands. Instead, they will tell you upfront things that are achievable and that you shouldn’t expect in the given time frame. You can use it as a litmus test.

2. Get To Know Your Team

Professional agencies will provide you access to the entire team executing your campaign. Substandard ones will keep these things private. They can even go to the extent of introducing you to the senior team members, who will not supposedly handle your project.

They can assign your project to junior staffers or freelancers that can be incompetent.

This is not a good situation. You need to know who is handling what so that you can monitor your campaigns and provide your input wherever required to achieve the best results.

So, just after your sales meeting, ask the agency to arrange a meeting with the individuals handling your account.

Knowing the people involved with your campaigns and people you can refer to for feedback and operational details is crucial.

3. Have Flexible Processes

For better project management, your agency should have an adaptable and flexible process. You should clearly define every project’s scope of work (SOW). It should be properly mentioned in the contract, so everyone is on the same page.

You should precisely define the processes and document them for your reference.

However, it doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be any flexibility in the process. If you feel that something extra needs to be done urgently, you should be able to immediately change the course and do it.

Suppose you change your mind after signing the contract and want to pause a Google ads campaign for two weeks. A competent agency should be able to understand this and be able to pause the campaign without offering excuses and adhering strictly to the process.

4. Ensure That Your Needs Are Prioritized

It’s quite strange, but it is frequently observed that most agencies focus on generating as much money as possible from their clients. It’s justified if they offer value and charge for the premium services, but what makes it worse is that they aren’t willing to put that much effort and time into your project. Instead, they do as little as possible if you don’t track it regularly.

As a business owner, you should be aware that it is quite prevalent in the market, which is why businesses fail to get the best results and ROI on their campaigns. However, it does not apply to all digital marketing agencies.

Professional agencies focus on your business objectives to ensure your success because that gives them tons of business as referrals and positive reviews.

5. Ensure That You Can Communicate Smoothly and Effectively

You must ensure that you can communicate with your agency without hesitation or curbing. For a successful project, seamless communication should happen at all levels.

You should be able to communicate via email, SMS, phone calls, chatbots, or even WhatsApp messages if needed.

You should also conduct frequent meetings so everyone can sit down and get updates across teams. You should also have access to the analytics platform if they use one because that will maintain transparency.

Agency Tip: With DashClick’s white-label agency platform, an agency can offer their clients a unified dashboard through which they can track everything using the analytics software.

With the DashClicks’ Analytics software, you can change the settings and view the most crucial metrics on the homepage to instantly track the metrics that are most important for you.

6. Don’t Hire a Passive Agency

Even though it is an essential ingredient of success, few agencies are proactive and innovative. If an agency wants to add value, it must suggest new approaches and ideas to the clients to help them outsmart their competition.

A passive agency would follow the scope of the work and will do just what is needed and agreed upon initially in the contract.

Suggesting new ideas, tactics, and ways requires expertise and willingness to excel and supersede the competition. Sadly, it’s outside the DNA of every agency. So, choose the best agency that thinks out of the box and is highly innovative.

Image Source: Semrush

The most successful agencies in the world in which team members suggest new ideas and share possibilities with their clients.

It’s crucial to boosting their online presence and conversions. It is also observed that most agencies are interested in earning regular money without providing any value addition, and they consider it a success. They call it “business on autopilot.”

Brainstorming new ideas and processes takes a lot of work, and most agencies are not ready to put in that kind of effort.

Trading your expertise, following the latest trends, and sharing strategic possibilities are top signs of a reliable agency. Such agencies are always willing to research market trends and implement innovative practices.

It gives their clients an edge over others. Clients can greatly benefit from their knowledge and expertise to break barriers and achieve new heights of success.

7. Find an Agency That Is Passionate About Digital Marketing

Last but not least, you can easily assess whether your agency is passionate about digital marketing. They should love the work they are into. They shouldn’t do it just to add another income stream.

And if you feel that your agency is not working wholeheartedly, you should approach another agency. Be ready for the tough conversations because they will bring great value onboard.

Final Words

We have discussed a few red flags above to help you differentiate mediocre agencies from great ones. Use these tips to spot a great agency for your digital marketing campaigns. Make sure your agency is transparent, professional, and open for regular communication. Make sure that they use the latest tools and software and are data-driven.