Blog - Page 9 of 12 - Braveheart Digital Marketing

Should You Be Advertising Right Now?

We are a month or so into a Stay at Home order in New England and a like many small business owners you are wondering whether you should pull or pause your ad spending as the COVID-19 crisis puts a strain on your businesses.

The good news is that research shows that your buyers want you to continue to advertise.

A March 2020 survey by GlobalWebIndex asked internet users in 13 markets whether companies should continue advertising as normal. Nearly four in 10 US respondents agreed, and a similar share (35%) were neutral, compared with 28% who disagreed.

These results are similar to what we saw in a survey from Kantar, where just 8% of consumers in 30 countries believed that businesses should not advertising during this crisis.

This does not mean that your messaging now will be the same as before the pandemic.

In fact 77% of respondents said they wanted advertising to “talk about how the brand is helpful in the new everyday life,” and 75% said it should “inform about [the brand’s] efforts to face the situation.”

The type of messaging we are seeing work really well right now is advertising that shows that you are part of the community and what you are doing to help your employees, customers and community.

Here is a good example from Ford Credit giving customers that they have some breathing room around their car payments.

Or this tweet from Budweiser announcing they are diverting their sports budgets to crisis aid efforts.

In uncertain times, there’s one thing that remains certain: we are #OneTeam.

Let’s come together in support of the heroes on the front line of the health crisis.

Learn how you can join us and the @RedCross at https://t.co/a3OxgiGqeF pic.twitter.com/e7OC8cKAMm
— Budweiser (@budweiserusa) March 25, 2020

If you have gone dark with your advertising and are ready to emerge stronger and clearer, we can help you. Contact us today to get started.

B2B Sales - Account Based Marketing

In this episode of Five Questions with.. we’re chatting about B2B sales and how to do Account Based Marketing with Andrew Fox from AdDaptive Intelligence

Who is AdDaptive?

AdDaptive is focused on revolutionizing companies’ B2B marketing approaches by reaching niche audiences about midway down the funnel. By advertising only to targeted accounts and decision makes that matter most, they eliminate a lot of wasted ad spend.

Using data to focus on your best targets

Success for any B2B sales or account-based marketing campaigns is measured in the numbers of appointments made or revenue generated. leads and sales.

Quick definition: Account-based marketing, also known as key account marketing or ABM, is a marketing strategy that focuses on a set of target accounts within a market. It uses personalized campaigns designed to engage each account, basing the marketing message on the specific attributes and needs of the account

AdDaptive provides a B2B analysis report that can help you understand your target audience by name, location, NAICS code, revenue, total employees and years in business.

You can select the attributes of the businesses and decision makers you want to reach, or you can onboard your own data to build new custom audiences. With these custom audiences you can amplify the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and deliver better customer experiences, achieving a higher return on your marketing budget.

How is the Corona Virus impacting client’s ABM campaigns?

The approach is still the same in that we’re all people first. There is not a difference between B2B and B2C. It’s just people to people marketing.

Being authentic and emphatic goes a long way. Connect with people on a human level first. Reach out and touch base with them on a personal basis, making sure they’re okay. Understand that people are taking time to understand this new world because nobody had a global pandemic playbook that they could bring up and start implementing.

As a result, clients are looking for is a consultative approach. They want to know what is going on in their market and when it is safe to launch a new ABM campaign.

What does the future look like for B2B Sales?

It depends what industry you’re in, what business you’re in. Some industries have been hit harder than others and will take longer to bounce back.

Many companies we work with have not cancelled campaigns, they have just pushed them off a few weeks or months. As a result, I do think we’ll have a strong second half of Q2 and then a robust second half of the year.

If you have questions on B2B sales or account-based marketing, please fill out the form below.

The $95,000 Link Building Mistake

We own and manage a series of sports websites. From a four year period, we had a small team of linkers who worked on these sites daily—adding links, reaching out to other site owners, and engaging with sports fans on social media, forums, and other sports sites. After four years of steady link building, we directed our focus away from sports and stopped our active linking and outreach efforts. In retrospect, this decision—made 20 months ago—was a huge financial mistake. In the first four months using link builders, we generated $14,780 in revenue from our primary sports site. In the immediate four months after we stopped linking, our revenue dropped to $8,964. We suffered a 39% drop in revenue in just four months. Because this was our busiest time of the year, the full economic impact was partially hidden. Over the 20 months since we’ve stopped our outreach and linking program, our sports website has generated $28,633 in revenue. In the 20 months before we stopped linking, our site generated $123,757 in revenue. By stopping our outreach and linking program, we lost $95,124 in revenue! That is almost $5,000 a month! What Is the Correlation Between Linking and Revenue?

1. Linking Affects Google Ranking Algorithm

While backlinks remain a vital Google ranking factor, effective link building encourages trust and popularity. According to Copyblogger, domain trust/authority represents 23.87% of Google’s ranking algorithm (source: neilpatel.com). While many marketers and business owners depend upon social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, a major component of Google’s algorithm is still link-based; the quality and quantity of your incoming links plays a significant role in where your website ranks for targeted keywords. If the quality and quantity of your site’s links suffer so too does your site’s ranking.

2. Link Erosion Negatively Impacts Google Ranking

Another reason why not having an ongoing linking and outreach campaign cost us $95,000 was link erosion. According to a report from the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group, over the last two years, 19.85% of links had eroded, meaning that one in five links in existence on January 1st of 2018 were no longer active on January 1st of 2020. Link maintenance is a key factor for revenue upkeep.

3. Don’t Get Lost in the Pages

If you made our mistake and neglected link building over the last two years, the odds are high that at least 20% of your links have atrophied or disappeared. That change is enough to make you fall from a high ranking on Google to page three, four, or five—where nobody will see you or buy your product or service. Don’t get lost in Google. Contact us today to fortify your links and keep you on page number one!

If you’re looking for help with SEO, contact Braveheart Digital Marketing today. We are a leading SEO Agency in Manchester NH that can help you to improve your website and reach new customers. Contact us today

Add Your Heading Text Link Building: Why Big Agencies Are Wrong to Neglect It

Several high ranking SEO people in big agencies have recently opinionated that content marketing has replaced link building and that link building services are no longer necessary.

I don’t think these agencies could be any more wrong. When Google announced the release of its newest algorithm called RankBrain a few years ago, Greg Corrado, a senior research scientist at Google, offered insight into the new algorithm:

“RankBrain uses artificial intelligence to embed vast amounts of written language into mathematical entities — called vectors — that the computer can understand. If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it isn’t familiar with, the machine can make a guess as to what words or phrases might have a similar meaning and filter the result accordingly, making it more effective at handling never-before-seen search queries.”

Greg Corrado

Senior Research Scientist, Google

In an article, Corrado mentions that RankBrain has become the third-most important part of the Google algorithm.

What are the other two most important components of Google’s algorithm? Google won’t say, but it’s likely the other two are on-page (related to page content) and off-page signals (related to inbound links).

The original Google algorithm was heavily weighted toward the value (authority) of incoming links. Although this dial has been turned down slightly over the last couple of years, it is still a major factor in how Google ranks websites.

Which brings me back to the stance of some of the big agencies. These agencies believe that—because of Google’s high regard for brands, any content that a brand produces has a high likelihood of ranking well. And if that is the case why should anyone invest in link building?

Well, because first of all link building is not only about increasing relevance in Google. At its core, link building is about delivering your content directly to your target audience. With social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest, online fan groups and forums, and smart phone apps, audiences are increasingly scattered across the net.

The importance of social media amplification cannot be stressed as we enter 2016. Social media is where your audiences are, especially the ones you specifically want to develop content for. That’s why social media amplification is part of link building, and that’s a big part of why link building is important.

If you don’t engage in link building (specifically across social networks), you are neglecting a huge opportunity to reach a sizeable portion of your target audience, and in turn—losing traffic, leads, sales, and conversions.

Don’t neglect your links. Contact us today, so we can link you to more traffic, more revenue, and more success!

Five Tactics To Improve Your Email Marketing Campaigns

Across your digital marketing channels, you may have noticed that we are living in a mobile world as mobile browsing has now surpassed desktop browsing in terms of percentage traffic:

1. Make sure your emails are mobile friendly

With this in mind, as email marketers, you cannot rest on your laurels when it comes to mobile optimization of your email marketing campaigns because the majority of emails are now opened on a mobile device.

2. Segment Your List

Your list is one of your most valuable assets, as it contains everything your contacts have told you about themselves since day one. Between behavioral and demographic information gained in your CRM, you’ve got your finger on the pulse of each contact’s engagement with your business. Use the data to segment your list and send tailored content to each group.

According to data from MailChimp, email marketing lists which are segmented see:

Here are a few types of segmented emails you might send to your list:

3. Have email come from a real person

This is such an overlooked, but easy to fix tactic. For your next email marketing campaign have your email come from a member of your marketing or customer service teams, or even your CEO – and let people know how to respond, so their reply won’t get bounced or ignored.

Sixty-four percent of subscribers open an email based on who the email is from. No one likes receiving an email from donotreply@example.com.

Steven Macdonald

digital marketing manager, SuperOffice

4. Make your subject line compelling and to the point.

Subject lines can make or break an email marketing campaign. They have to be compelling enough to persuade contacts to open the emails, but friendly enough to not turn them off. First and foremost, keep them short; lines with fewer than 50 characters have higher open rates, and anything over 50 runs the risk of being truncated.

“You win or lose with the subject line in your email, so make it as compelling as possible,”

Michael Weiss

cofounder & managing partner, C-4 Analytics

5. Optimize Your Thank You Page

This might be the most overlooked part of any email marketing campaign. The thank-you page that you see after you have signed up. Here are four ways that you can begin to cultivate a more personal relationship with your subscribers:

Tell them how excited you are that they’ve joined your list and that you’re grateful they took the time to sign up.
Give them a preview of the awesome content they’ll be receiving from you and the frequency with which they’ll receive it.
Include social sharing buttons.
Ask them to whitelist your sender address.

Email marketing can be on of the most powerful tools that a business has. How are you using email to drive customer loyalty and revenue?

Why Do Jewelry Stores Fail at Storytelling?

There are few purchases in our life that emote more emotion than jewelry. We buy jewelry to mark significant dates in their lives – engagements, weddings, birthdays, anniversary’s, promotions, etc.

Each jewelry purchase has a backstory, which is why I am astonished to find online jewelry stores focus just on the product and not the emotional connection with the piece of jewelry.

Take Blue Nile for example. One of their featured products on their home page is a Aquamarine and Diamond Halo Loop Dangle Pendant which sells for $2,300.

These are the words that Blue Nile uses to sell this beautiful pendant:

This beautiful drop pendant showcases an exceptional pear-shaped aquamarine gemstone suspended from a delicate diamond loop halo of brilliant diamonds set in 18k white gold.

That’s it? Just 25-words. Cold and sterile is what comes to mind when I look at this page.

Its not just Blue Nile that does this. Look at Cartier one of the premier brands in the world.

There is no price on these beautiful earrings, but you can be sure they cost a pretty penny. And Cartier displays these earrings with 55 words and one picture. Not very compelling.

Compare those two examples with how Rolex positions its watches.

Notice the difference? Rolex uses lots of pictures and 439 words to evoke why you want to own this particular watch? See the difference in language here between the Blue Nile page and the Rolex page? Blue Nile uses very few words that are product specific. While Rolex talks a lot about the product, it is also using evocative language to make you feel invested in the product.

There was a great interview recently on eMarketer with Simon Sproule, Aston Martin’s global director of marketing and communications, about advertising to high-net-worth consumers.

While Aston Martin are focused on the luxury market there are learnings from their approach to storytelling that is applicable to all companies in all markets, especially Jewelry retailers.

Aston Martin’s approach to storytelling and marketing is based on this according to Sproule:

“If you’re talking about content in the sort of broader sense of the term, storytelling is the way in which we engage with the high-net-worth market on a personal basis. There’s a baseline to the brand, which is a story and a set of values that we tell consistently around the world. One of the hallmarks of the great luxury brands, of great brands in general, is the consistency of storytelling.”

Simon Sproule

Aston Martin’s global director of marketing and communications

If your jewelry store does not have a story to tell about your products then they are just selling another commodity. You have no way to differentiate your brand or your business. Creating a brand story is about building something that people care about and want to buy into.

It’s about thinking beyond the utility and functionality of products and services and striving for the creation of loyalty and meaningful bonds with your customers.

A brand story is not just a catchy tagline that’s pasted on a billboard to attract attention for a week or two. Your story is the foundation of your brand and a strategy for future growth.

What story are you telling your customers?

Eight Ways To Effectively Grow an Email List

in order to build an audience of engaged sports fans for our sports network, we decided to increase our email list. While email marketing may seem old fashioned, email is still one of the best marketing channels in the B2C market according to a recent Conductor study. By accumulating 23,000+ people on our email list, we generated over $200,000 in sales.

Here’s how we did it:

1. We Made Capturing Email Addresses a Priority Within the Site Design

We strategically placed callouts and signup forms, along with targeted pop-up ads to collect email addresses. Although pop-up ads may seem another outdated tactic, there’s a reason why many top sites still use them; they work.

2. We Turned Deficiency into Opportunity

For example: if a Steelers’ fan searched for “Pittsburgh Steelers Tickets” and found our Steelers ticket page before the NFL released next season’s schedule, the fan would leave our site without discovering the schedule or adding to our revenue. To turn the fan’s experience around, we added email forms stating: “If you want to be notified when the NFL releases the Steelers schedule, leave your name and email address.” Not only could we let the fan know when the schedule came up, but we could also update said fan with Steelers NEWS and other relevant updates. This enabled us to build relationships with fans.

3. We Tested Subject Lines Again and Again

We constantly tested subject lines to find out the most efficient. Most mailing programs allow you to A/B test subject lines in the same email campaign. A/B testing allowed us to see open rates as high as 84.6%!

5. We Segmented Our List

If we were selling Red Sox World Series memorabilia, we only sent email notifications to Red Sox Fans. By sending relevant content to segmented, focused groups, we achieved click rates as high as 66.3%!

6. We Tested The Format Of Our Emails

The biggest jump in our click-through rate came after we redesigned the email to make the CTA clearer, more visible and mobile friendly.

7. We Implemented Gary Vaynerchuk’s philosophy of Jab, Jab, Jab, and Right Hook.

Not every email has to be sales-focused. We sent emails that highlighted content on our website and covered breaking NEWS stories. As a result, our opt-out rate was under 0.5%.

8. We Used MailChimp’s Scheduled Post Feature to Our Benefit

With MailChimp’s scheduled post feature, we were able to deliver the emails to sports fans across the USA and Europe at the most optimal times to reach our targeted audiences. For example, with London five hours ahead of New York City, it wouldn’t make sense to email Londoners and New Yorkers at the same time. The scheduled post feature allowed us to deliver emails at the beginning of our fan’s day—whenever that day began, which improved our open and click-through rates.

As a result of implementing these strategies, we grew our email list from zero to over 23,000 with over $200,000 in sales via email. The success of our email strategy in engaging fans and generating revenue demonstrates that email lists are still one of the best ways for brands like ours to stay in touch with fans and customers.

Looking to stay in touch with your fans and customers, get in touch with us!

Measuring Success in Content Development

Prospective clients often tell us that their previous or existing SEO agency is producing X pieces of content for them on a monthly basis.

My follow-up question is always “How is that working out for you?”

Many clients respond with “What do you mean?”

Content and Goals

In many cases, content developed for “SEO” reasons is not tied into the goals of the website or business. This content is produced to rank well. If anybody ever reads the content or responds to the page’s call for action—these are considered bonuses and not expectations.

When a client asks us to develop content for them I ask them two questions:

What is the goal of this content?

The three most common content objectives are to increase leads, to increase sales, and to build awareness. Occasionally the client desires content that is not product-related. For instance, some clients require a FAQ page, covering the most commonly asked questions. In this case, the goal might be to decrease the number of support phone calls over time.

How will content success be measured? By rankings?

Typically, increasing rankings is not a goal of content creation because SEO agencies often develop content targeting a very specific long-tail keyword that barely anyone searches. Is ranking #1 for an obscure keyword really the goal of content development? In most cases, the answer is no.

By leads or sales?

Sometimes a client will need content developed around a very specific product or service, where the search volume is low, but the buyer intent is really high. In this case, the goal for that piece of content is to generate leads or sales. It is not to rank highly because ranking highly without the subsequent sale doesn’t help the client reach their business objectives.

How Are You Measuring Success?

When your SEO agency creates content for your website, how are you measuring its success and impact on your business goals and objectives? Are your content goals directly linked to your larger objectives? If not, let us help! Contact us to learn more about our content marketing services.

If you’re looking for a content marketing agency that can help you achieve your business goals, contact Braveheart Digital Marketing today. We’ll be happy to discuss your content needs and provide a content strategy that aligns with your overall business goals.

Should You Be Advertising Right Now?

Recent Posts

B2B Sales - Account Based Marketing

Who is AdDaptive?

Using data to focus on your best targets

How is the Corona Virus impacting client’s ABM campaigns?

What does the future look like for B2B Sales?

Recent Posts

The $95,000 Link Building Mistake

1. Linking Affects Google Ranking Algorithm

2. Link Erosion Negatively Impacts Google Ranking

3. Don’t Get Lost in the Pages

Recent Posts

Add Your Heading Text Link Building: Why Big Agencies Are Wrong to Neglect It

Recent Posts

Five Tactics To Improve Your Email Marketing Campaigns

1. Make sure your emails are mobile friendly

2. Segment Your List

3. Have email come from a real person

4. Make your subject line compelling and to the point.

5. Optimize Your Thank You Page

Recent Posts

Why Do Jewelry Stores Fail at Storytelling?

Recent Posts

Eight Ways To Effectively Grow an Email List

1. We Made Capturing Email Addresses a Priority Within the Site Design

2. We Turned Deficiency into Opportunity

3. We Tested Subject Lines Again and Again

5. We Segmented Our List

6. We Tested The Format Of Our Emails

7. We Implemented Gary Vaynerchuk’s philosophy of Jab, Jab, Jab, and Right Hook.

8. We Used MailChimp’s Scheduled Post Feature to Our Benefit

Recent Posts

Measuring Success in Content Development

Content and Goals

What is the goal of this content?

How will content success be measured? By rankings?

By leads or sales?

How Are You Measuring Success?

Recent Posts

What we do

Email us