Growth marketing Archives - Page 3 of 3

How SMS marketing improves cross-selling and up-selling

Posted on 5 October 20226 May 2024 by Arham Khan

SMS marketing is the perfect and most effective tool for cross-selling and up-selling to customers. SMS not only boasts a 99% open rate but also provides the personalization and improved response times necessary to be successful in cross-selling and upselling to your customers.

Let’s explore the meaning of cross-selling and upselling and why SMS marketing should play a larger role in your marketing strategy.

What is Cross-Selling and Up-Selling?

Cross-selling and upselling are very similar. Regardless of which method you’re using, the goal is to help the customer visualize the benefit of buying an item that complements and fulfills a need not met by their original purchase; or committing to buying a higher priced item that meets their needs better.

Upselling is a strategy best used on long-term, repeat customers that have a history with the business. These customers tend to be more accepting of the recommendations given to them by the business due to the trust built over time. Showing other higher priced models or variations of an item they are already interested in purchasing, increases your AOV and helps the customer feel more satisfied after completing the purchase.

Cross-selling can be easily employed by giving suggestions of complementary items for the customer to buy along with the item they are already purchasing. For example, suggesting other cooking utensils or pots and pans to someone who just added a frying pan to their cart would be considered cross-selling.

How effective is SMS?

Take a look at these ecommerce SMS marketing statistics we’ve compiled and see for yourself:

1 in 3 consumers checks their text notifications within one minute of receiving a text.
More than half of consumers (51%) reply to a text message within 1-2 minutes.
Text marketing is incredibly effective, with SMS open rates as high as 98%.
Unlike most marketing channels, SMS marketing continues to be a best kept secret; 61% of marketers still don’t use it.
SMS marketing click-through rates for ecommerce brands can be as high as 36%.
More than half of consumers check their text messages 11 times a day or more.
On an average day, consumers check their text messages more than any other app on their phones.
In 2022, 70% of consumers opted in to receive texts from businesses.
61% of consumers say they want the ability to text a business back.
Customers don’t just want you to text them; 43% of consumers said they have proactively texted a business.
33% of SMS recipients react to CTAs in SMS marketing messages, and 47% of them end up making a purchase as a result.
60% of business owners who text their customers plan on increasing their SMS marketing budget in 2022.

Email versus SMS Marketing

Most ecommerce companies rely primarily on email to engage their clients. While there is still room for email in today’s marketing strategy, when comparing the effectiveness of email and SMS, the results provided by SMS are astounding.

SMS marketing click-through rates are significantly higher than email click-through rates are. Click-through rates between 20% and 35% are reported by many businesses. On the other hand, 64% of business owners report only a 1% to 10% click-through rate for email. The average click-through rate for email marketing is under 3%, though.

Many times, emails end up in spam folders or are simply ignored entirely. Unopened emails are wasted marketing revenue and time that your business could be directing elsewhere. Sure, you can continue to have email play a role in your marketing strategy, but SMS should be a main focus.

Product Suggestions: In this instance the customer has already chosen to purchase an item for your ecommerce business. Congratulations! Now a great way to cross-sell is by suggesting a complementing product that they may have already been contemplating purchasing. This drastically increases your customer’s lifetime value

You can accomplish this in many different ways, but some options are sending an SMS with a link to a tutorial video of the item recently purchased that includes suggestions of other complementing products. You can offer limited time discounts on a similar product or send click-to-buy links of items that the customer viewed, but did not purchase.

Customized Discount Codes : Discount codes sent with post-purchase texts are a great way to get customers to return while cross-selling and or upselling. You can choose what you want these texts to say, but here are a few examples:

“Bazinga! Now that was a great deal on those sunglasses! As a thank you for your very first purchase, here is a code for 25% off your next purchase!”

“Even sasquatch loves the fresh-smelling forest scents of Pine Tar & Co. Soaps! Now that you are using (and hopefully enjoying) the soap you purchased, ready to try out one of our other scents? Here is a 15% promo code for your next purchase.”

Subscription Offerings: A simple way to keep your customer coming back month after month is by offering a subscription. A gentle reminder can be sent through SMS to the customer each time they make a purchase encouraging them to take advantage of the 10% off every time this product is shipped when they have enrolled in your subscription.

As you can see, SMS is a powerful tool that you can use to keep customers informed while capitalizing on the strong open rates and attention of the consumer to also cross promote and upsell simultaneously. It’s really a no-brainer in today’s marketing world!

About the Author: Michael Lazar is an Executive at ReadyCloud, a multichannel ecommerce CRM software solution for online retailers with seamless returns software automation for today’s busy online retailer.

A leading SEO expert, Lazar has authored guides for countless companies and brands, helping online retailers improve their process, gain more traction and alleviate pain points and bottlenecks along the way.

How does data-driven marketing inform marketers’ approach to their campaigns?

Posted on 23 September 20226 May 2024 by Arham Khan

You can’t know what’s working in your business if you can’t put some black-and-white figures on it. Only with defined metrics can you define success.

Some companies used to take the ‘spray and pray’ approach to marketing. But as customers demand ever more personalised experiences, data-driven marketing has come to the fore and revealed the enormity of its potential.

As long ago as 2013, a study by Janrain demonstrated that 74% of online customers felt frustrated when content appeared that didn’t align with their interests. And in 2016 OneSpot showed that almost half of customers wouldn’t read or even engage with content if it was irrelevant to them. So we can only imagine how much more pronounced these effects must be today, after a decade’s worth of data-driven marketing has exponentially increased customers’ expectations of bespoke online experiences. If businesses are to have any shot at competing in this incredibly competitive marketplace, they must therefore focus more on generating, analysing and applying data to their marketing campaigns.

What is data-driven marketing?

Marketing campaigns generate data in more ways than most people can imagine, so it makes sense to then draw on those insights and leverage them next time around. That’s data-driven marketing: using data to inform all marketing decisions. It prioritises customers’ data above all other kinds to ensure marketing efforts are relevant to their interests and behaviours.

Data-driven marketing makes it so much easier to get everything in place: your budget, your products, your creative team. Without customer data, your marketing campaigns will always be at least something of a shot in the dark. But with the right data-driven marketing strategies, you can start developing and releasing campaigns that speak directly to your target audience, resonate with their wants and aspirations, and build precious trust and loyalty among your customer base.

What are data-driven marketing best practices?

No matter your business, product or campaign, there are certain tried and tested ways to get the most out of your customer data when incorporating it into your marketing efforts.

Manage your data

Data-driven marketing is an iterative process. That means it’s always evolving, its scope always expanding. You therefore need not only excellent data collection, but also high-quality data management. This is critical to the success of your data-driven marketing efforts because it provides crucial customer insights, highlights new marketing and acquisition opportunities, and saves you both time and money.

Know your audience

The success of your data-driven marketing campaigns depends on the accuracy of your customer data. You could have the most advanced data collection in place, but it would count for nothing if the data didn’t actually reflect your target audience. So before you start applying data-driven marketing strategies to your business, make sure you’re exceptionally familiar with your customers. Research your ideal customers, build your buyer personas, and educate your teams on these profiles. Moreover, reach out to current customers to better understand who’s actually buying your products. You could even hold focus groups to question a live audience and receive raw and unedited feedback.

Stay compliant

Your data is worthless if it doesn’t comply with the law by respecting your customers’ privacy. In recent times organisations and entire countries have cracked down on how businesses can use their customer data, reflected in laws like GDPR and the CCPA. These protect customer data and therefore customers, and hold companies accountable. Complying with these laws therefore makes your marketing more transparent, trustworthy and effective.

What strategies does data-driven marketing involve?

Today, personalised marketing goes quite a bit further than just greeting a customer by name via email. Now it’s all about delivering the right message at the right time—and on the right channel. This is where data-driven marketing is simply unbeatable in its efficacy.

But it can be a little overwhelming trying to work out how to start, and visualise where data-driven marketing actually fits in with your broader marketing efforts. So let’s check out some surefire ways to effectively leverage your customer data—and without compromising on audience engagement. It should be noted, of course, that these methods complement one another, and when implemented in tandem can produce results greater than the sum of their parts. So consider combining a few as part of your bid to personalise your marketing efforts.

Retarget your advertising

Retargeting, sometimes called remarketing, is an imperative for all marketers, but especially those operating across multiple channels. It enables you to keep your brand front-of-mind among individuals who have expressed interest or in some way engaged with your products or services. If someone browses a specific product on your site, their customer data means you can then resurface that product to that individual through such strategies as social media advertising and abandoned cart email marketing.

Segment your audience

Different customer groups exist within your wider target audience, so it’s up to you to delineate those boundaries. Targeted and personalised messaging goes a lot further than a general broadcast, and segmentation helps you reach the right people at the right time with the right message. If your store sells both men’s and women’s clothes, you’d need two respective sets of messages. And if your store has multiple geographies, you’d then need men’s and women’s messaging for each location.

There’s really no end to how granular you make your segmentation, because of course your target audience differs not only by their demographics but also by their preferences and pain points, not to mention where they are in the buyer journey. Data-driven marketing empowers you to precisely segment your audience, as well as automate your segmentation efforts. You’ll find this especially useful for email and social media marketing.

Align your teams

Customer data has so many more uses than just those of your marketing team—it can be leveraged by your sales and support teams, too. Moreover, its versatility can actually help you bridge the gaps between these teams, aligning their efforts and solidifying an overarching company-wide strategy. For example, you might invest in a customer data platform (CDP), which aggregates customer data to create individual customer profiles to use across the business, which negate the risks of disparate teams working with siloed customer information. By centring your marketing, sales and support teams around a CDP, you ensure your entire organisation is working with the same data, and thereby presenting a logical, consistent and cohesive customer experience.

Optimise your content

Without customer data, your content creation processes remain largely guesswork. Data-driven marketing provides that all-important context for your content, helping you understand and serve your audience through your advertising and the content you publish. Whether your data is demographic or psychographic, it provides valuable insights into how to best craft your content such that it addresses customers’ questions, pain points and goals.

Delight your customers!

Shoppers are browsing on multiple platforms, multiple devices—but they don’t want to be treated as multiple customers based on these behaviours. They yearn for a seamless experience no matter the channel. Data-driven marketing means you can accurately identify these customers no matter which device they’re browsing on, and provide them with a superlative omnichannel experience. This doesn’t just save you time and resources, but also refines the customer experience beyond anything many shoppers will have known before, and demonstrates to your audience that you’re paying attention to their needs and recognising their behaviours.

What are some great data-driven marketing tools to get started?

If you’re not sure where to begin with your data-driven marketing, the following tools are renowned for being easy to use as you learn how to track, manage and apply your customer data.

Google Analytics

Analytics is a leading tool for tracking and reporting on website user behaviour, empowering you with a greater understanding of your traffic, visitor sessions, bounce rates and customer demographics. Run reports on your conversions, acquisitions and user behaviour flows, and connect it to your Google Ads account to track and report on your ad performance. Best of all? It’s free!

Hubspot Marketing Hub

Whether you want to start out with the free version or go all the way with the premium, Marketing Hub is a brilliant tool for businesses looking to take a deep dive into the world of data-driven marketing. It connects to Hubspot CRM so you can track, analyse and deploy your customer data all from one place. Create optimised content, monitor social media activity, run retargeting ad campaigns, and launch segmented email campaigns.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a paid-for tool that enables you to track your digital brand performance, optimise your web content, and better understand the competition. Leveraging your customer data, Buzzsumo researches leading keywords, content types and published content to throw light on trends that could inform your content strategy. You can even track key metrics around your competitors’ content to see how it compares to yours.

Are you ready to put your data in the driving seat?

Your customer data has the power to transform generic broadcast-based marketing into poignant and personalised messaging that truly resonates with your audience. As cofounder of Pixated, a performance marketing and web design agency, I know that understanding your customers not only allows you to grab their attention and provide myriad solutions for their needs, but also boosts your revenue and unites your teams like never before. In that way you give ambitious brands the tools they need to build sustainable and scalable growth, enhance their visibility, and revolutionise their sales and lead gen. It’s a seriously rewarding endeavour!

Why do I keep seeing the same ads on every streaming service?

Posted on 14 September 20226 May 2024 by Arham Khan

No matter your streaming service of choice, you’ve almost certainly come across the same ad. Over, and over, and over again. Repeated in every break, till you vow never to buy from this company in your life. No matter how fabulous the deal, or how much you secretly covet their products. And the company haven’t even done anything wrong here. If anything, kudos to them for such an insanely catchy jingle.

Some would say Hulu and Peacock are the worst offenders. But others have noticed this endless repetition of ads on TikTok as well. And if it’s not the same ad, it’s a plethora of ads for the same thing. It’s enough to make you throw your phone across the room. (Or maybe that’s just me.) What does this all mean for the future of ads on streaming services?

Advertising is coming for the streaming world in a big way

Many streamers, especially those with linear TV legacies, embraced advertising from the start. Yet more recently, giants like Disney and Netflix have adopted ad-supported business models, and both intend to roll out new tiers soon.

But while ad-supported streaming might sound like a great idea, it comes with risks. Most people can’t afford to pay for every streaming service, and ads enable users to access more content without breaking the bank. It’s win–win when done right. But done wrong, it’s a headache inducer.

Ad-based streaming is already mired in complicated ethical debates surrounding user data, viewer tracking, and who gets to know what you’re watching and when. But among all this philosophising, might we pose a humbler suggestion of our own: Can we make the ads themselves a tad more bearable? After all, if I’m going to binge an entire season on Hulu, I’m looking at four ad breaks a show, two ads apiece, for eight episodes straight. That’s 64 ads. If I see the same two ads 32 times each, you can bet your bottom dollar I ain’t purchasing either product or service. On principle. (And that’s not to mention that I might struggle even to reach the end of the season.)

Repetitive ads are seriously annoying, but there’s actually a sound rationale behind them

It all comes down to ad targeting. At a certain level of granularity, there aren’t many people whose interests, living situation, and budget all closely align with yours. Yet what are Peacock to do if they’ve promised an advertiser a certain number of ad impressions? If there were a million people who fit the bill for the target audience, no worries. But if there’s only a thousand of you, and a million impressions to serve, well—prepare to be singing that jingle for weeks on end. And yet there’s evidence to suggest that people are actually less likely to buy from a company if they’ve been repeatedly exposed to the same ad.

It’s a surprisingly tricky problem to solve. Even for a single show on a single platform, ads can come at you from a variety of sources: the network itself, the set-top box you’re watching on, potentially even the manufacturer of your TV.

But it doesn’t have to be like this—and some services are embracing change

A few networks have started embracing the idea of showing a single long ad at the beginning of a show, and then nothing for the duration. Ads on the pause screen are also an unobtrusive way to let me know how to save money on my car insurance without annoying me.

The number of streaming services is growing, and ever more platforms are vying for your cash. Yet there’s still no technology spanning them all to ensure you don’t see the same ad on Netflix, TikTok, YouTube, Disney+. Which means you absolutely will see the same ad in those places. The TV ad business is colossal, and that money is now being funnelled to platforms. So without some change in the way that cash flows, the resultant ads may slowly render those streaming services vaguely unwatchable for more and more people.

Deflation comes to ecommerce: online prices fall 2% in July

Posted on 14 September 20226 May 2024 by Arham Khan

According to the Adobe Digital Price Index (ADPI), online prices were down 2% in July compared to June, and down 1% compared to 2021. This is the first drop since January 2020, pre-COVID, and follows three consecutive months of slowing price increases.

In July American inflation hit a 40-year peak, topping 9%, a rate driven by rising ‘real world’ costs. For example, the petrol index fell 7.7% last month, offsetting increases in the food and shelter indexes, which in turn resulted in the all-items index going unchanged over the month. The energy index fell 4.6% over July as the petrol and natural gas indexes declined, but the electricity index increased. The food index continued rising, increasing 1.1% over July as the food-at-home index rose 1.3%.

It’s been a momentous month for online prices, too—especially when it comes to electronics

The ongoing inflation online reflects the price of digital purchases. 14 of the 18 categories tracked by the ADPI saw monthly price drops. Electronics, the largest eCommerce category, with 18.6% share of spend in 2021, saw the second biggest category price drop, down 9.3% YoY (2% MoM). That’s close to electronics’ pre-COVID level: prices fell 9.1% YoY between 2015 and 2019. This also marks the category’s third straight month of price drops.

Computers lead all categories, with a 10.2% drop YoY (3.2% MoM). Apparel had the biggest monthly price drops, down 6.2%, but dropped only 1% YoY. This has been apparel’s first notable YoY decrease. Last month prices fell only 0.1% YoY. Prior to that they’d been rising for 14 months straight.

Seven categories saw YoY price increases while dropping MoM: personal care, furniture, medical supplies, office supplies, appliances, home and garden, and flowers and related gifts. Groceries saw the biggest yearly price increase of 13.4%, and the second biggest monthly increase of 1.4%.

In July people spent $73.7bn online, $400m less than in June. But on a YoY basis, eCommerce spend in July grew 20.9%, driven by both Prime Day and record online sales for the overall retail industry. This year so far people have spent $525.4bn, growing 9.2% YoY.

What are the implications of these price decreases across the board?

On August 10 the news of a slowing American inflation rate was a potentially hopeful sign for the economy—but possibly not, too. Online prices might simply have dropped because people couldn’t buy electronics in light of increasingly expensive necessities such as food. Ditto the overall growth in online spending. Is it up because prices are up, or just because people are confident enough to spend more on items that are less expensive?

There’s another perspective, of course: perhaps we’re just adding more debt. Over the past year credit card debt has jumped by $100bn (13%), the biggest percentage increase in over two decades. Last quarter, with interest rates rising, credit card balances increased by $46bn. The impact of inflation has been apparent in the high volume of borrowing. And while seasonal patterns typically include an increase in Q2, the 13% cumulative increase in credit card balances since Q2 2021 represents the largest in 20 years.

According to Joelle Scally, Administrator of the Center for Microeconomic Data at the New York Fed, ‘While household balance sheets overall appear to be in a strong position, we’re seeing rising delinquencies among subprime and low-income borrowers, with rates approaching pre-COVID levels.’ Moreover, the share of current debt transitioning into delinquency increased modestly for all debt types, but still remains historically low. The delinquency transition rate for credit cards increased by 0.5%.

How should you approach SEO in a disrupted world?

Posted on 14 September 20226 May 2024 by Arham Khan

Good SEO reflects what people are actually searching for—not what you wish they were searching for. And that’s perhaps never truer than during periods of global turbulence.

But how can you gain traction with your pivots when you don’t know what huge change might occur in the next 24 hours?

Take the past two years: COVID, seesawing economies, the invasion of Ukraine… But what these events have taught us is that even the most effective and logical SEO strategies remain subject to reevaluation if the online search landscape demands it. Even if your industry isn’t directly tied to world events, you’d probably benefit by shaping your SEO goals more closely to current affairs.

So with that in mind, today let’s explore how marketers can pivot and adjust in times of change and crisis.

What is the role of SEO when the online landscape is so volatile?

SEO’s fundamental purpose is to add value by providing information relevant to people’s searches. That value becomes even more imperative when we find ourselves in a state of acute disruption.

SEO strategies focusing on transactions will generally be far less effective than those that provide users with the expertise your company is uniquely qualified to convey. Let’s say you manufacture car parts. In a crisis, why not focus on supply chain issues and ideate solutions for the problems your target audience of distributors are facing, rather than building a landing page expressing sentiments about an ongoing war unrelated to what you do?

How does turbulence affect your SEO KPIs?

The economy impacts different B2B and B2C companies in different ways. Tech firms scramble for funding, or find themselves under pressure from anxious investors even while their target audiences cut budgets. Retail and eCommerce companies experience tightened customer spending, exacerbated by higher cost of goods. And this is relevant right now, today: people aren’t throwing their money around as they did even just one year ago, in 2021—so your SEO KPIs need to reflect that change before it’s too late.

Let’s start with your SEO conversion rate. While it should still be a KPI, it might not actually be the most helpful optimisation benchmark at present. Instead, why not focus on more upper-to-middle–funnel KPIs:

time on site
traffic
percentage of returning visitors
number of touchpoints
number of pages visited.

These KPIs can then accommodate two key strategies:

Nurturing and engaging users with valuable information until they’re ready to spend again

Enhancing your purchasing funnel with content that reassures people they’d be spending their money wisely were they to buy your product or service

There’s a silver lining for SEO in all of this. Disruption leaves gaps in the funnel because of decreased paid media budgets. SEO can fill those gaps. So maintain a holistic view of your marketing goals, and continually analyse how your SEO can contribute to them.

What resources can you draw on to inform your SEO pivots?

While you should always keep a close eye on the macroeconomy and global trends, there are several tools you can use to inform your strategic adjustments as well.

Google Trends and keyword research tools

Understand the topics and queries users are searching for, or those they’re not searching for as much as they did in the past.

Data from paid search

Aligning with your paid search team can gain you access to realtime information on user search behaviours. They can inform you about keyword demand and whether their campaigns are converting more or less without competitive shifts. Either change could indicate an adjustment to the customer journey.

Customers and leads

Cancelled subscriptions and repeat purchase slowdowns are red flags that your target audience’s needs are changing. When you see the signs, consider sending out surveys to collect feedback on their priorities, then incorporate that information into your keyword and content strategies. (Your product and promotional teams will appreciate the free data as well!)

Traffic and impressions

If traffic and impressions are increasing or decreasing despite your rankings staying the same, people’s interests are broadly and swiftly shifting. Cross-reference your data with Google Trends, and look specifically for historical trends (including seasonality) to ensure you’re really looking at the bigger picture.

How can you get instant traction with your pivots?

It can be tough getting your head around the idea of quick results on a long-term channel. After all, SEO is all about trust and authority, so momentum often has to build over time.

But if you focus on long-tail and low-competition keywords to gain interest in your brand, you can actually build that authority with relative speed and boost your backlink volume at pace. For example, while you won’t be able to start immediately ranking for supply chain, you can certainly make headway with why is there a supply chain shortage.

Organic social media can also gain you rapid feedback on topics that resonate with your network. If a post generates a load of constructive engagement across your channels, you’ve likely hit on a subject that would benefit from a deeper dive. Try a LinkedIn poll to surface sentiment, then feed this data into your SEO programme.

However your audience responds, and no matter the information they provide you with, all that data is useful for honing your SEO campaigns. So grab the topics and responses from this pivot and build a keyword list accordingly. This is a great way to think up new blog titles or ideas for guides to optimise your existing marketing pages. And once you start seeing progress on those terms, you could turn your attention to more competitive and higher-volume keywords closely related to the long-tail terms you’d worked with initially.

There are other paths besides SEO, of course

In a time of global turbulence, it’s important to return to your roots with SEO. Depending on your perspective, marketers doesn’t exist only to grow brands and businesses, but also to provide searchers with high-quality answers to their queries and solutions to their problems. And even if SEO’s not the realm you want to focus on right now, that’s okay too—and we can help.

5 ways to avoid over-automating your marketing

Posted on 14 September 20226 May 2024 by Arham Khan

The age of automation has well and truly arrived.

Whether online or at the supermarket checkout, automation technologies have become the standard tool for streamlining workflow and operations. They are undoubtedly one of the greatest business development tools ever invented. But as with the adoption of any new technology, there’s a risk of companies growing too dependent on it. If you’re not savvy with how you implement automation, it could cost you not only your profit but your business, too.

1) Don’t forget to continually optimise

Automation relieves a lot of stress for business owners, but don’t fall into the trap of ‘set and forget’. Optimising your automated systems is a manual process, but digital marketing is a fluid and ever-evolving environment. You can’t turn your back on it for a moment.

Make sure your automated systems are optimised for the current online climate, and that they meet the criteria of the most up-to-date search engine algorithms. If you have a dedicated development team, direct them to build in automated tools and advantages as they construct your systems. Remember, though, that to capitalise on that effort you must then maintain your systems well, and optimise your automation for best results.

Automation will only do what you tell it to, so treat it like an employee who needs observing and managing rather than like a consultant who can be left to their own devices. Pay attention. Automation exists to make you a profit, not cost you exposure.

2) Beware the pitfalls of automated bidding

Automated bidding automatically sets your bids on your ads based on their likelihood of getting clicked and achieving a sales conversion. The system can be customised for a specific sales goal or business objective, and saves hours of effort for business owners.

As we saw above, it’s appealing to just ‘set and forget’, and assume your approach to sales and lead gen is one-size-fits-all. But running automated ad campaigns unsupervised is unwise to say the least, and could cost you profit if you get complacent. Many algorithms aren’t (yet) as smart as humans, so your AI won’t be able to outperform a sales professional in this arena. Don’t shy away from automated bidding, of course, but use it as a tool, not a crutch. Marketing still demands human interaction, albeit online.

3) Keep your brand message front-of-mind

A perennial focus in digital marketing is customising your customer’s experiences. AI and automation can be hugely helpful in making this happen, but there’s a fine line between automation technologies helping you run your business and totally disregarding your customer’s existence. After all, you are your brand. So if you let automated systems do all the talking for you, eventually your customer will feel neither seen nor heard.

This doesn’t apply only to customers. Your brand is an employer, too, and adopting this mindset helps you attract the best talent. Because while automated software is useful for recruitment, when you’re marketing for candidates you need a human touch. So leverage your automation more for behind-the-scenes efficiencies, when candidates are less likely to see it.

4) Be mindful of over-messaging

Automated messaging systems can be a saviour for a business owner trying to optimise their customer service and comms. They help build and maintain rapport with the audience—but you can overdo it. Sending too many automated messages can be disastrous for your business. Over-messaging negatively impacts your recipients, damaging your engagement and client relationships, and it adversely impacts your app or website, too.

It takes years to build a brand. It takes seconds to burn your reputation. With automated messaging, it’s all about quality over quantity. Strike that balance.

5) Never automate what shouldn’t be automated!

There are so many ways automation technologies can improve your sales and branding, but there are certain aspects of your business that just shouldn’t be automated—even if they can be.

Cybersecurity: Thieves and hackers constantly find new ways to break through cybersecurity systems. Manually ensuring yours are optimised maximises your business’s security and protects your customers’ data.
Customer engagement: People want to know they’re dealing with a real person. They’re not naive, and will often pick up on when they’re talking to a bot.
Social posts and messages: There are plenty of automation systems for social media engagement, and they’re a godsend for those who find marketing on these platforms to be tedious. But if you are such a person, it’s worth outsourcing your business’s social media marketing so it can be optimised in a human way. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use systems to automatically post your content at particular times, of course, only that you shouldn’t rely on automation and AI if you want to enhance the impact of your marketing.
Marketing proposal templates: Digital marketers must ensure their marketing proposal templates come direct from them or one of their team, and include personalised comments relating to the specific prospect. Sending automated proposals may insult your client, and a pitch is far more likely to succeed if it’s customised to their needs.

Moderation is the key to successfully implementing your automation technologies

Marketing automation is a brilliant way to optimise and streamline your business, but it’s still just a tool like any other, and therefore has limitations as to how and when it should be implemented. Automation is no substitute for graft and passion. So use your raft of automation technologies as a complementary utility in growing your business, not as a business model unto itself. Find that balance—hard as it is—and you’ll reap the rewards.

Amazon and the One Stop Shop: What sellers should be aware of

Posted on 15 February 20226 May 2024 by Arham Khan

The One-Stop-Shop is a new set of regulations concerning VAT duties in the European Union that was introduced in July 2022. The OSS offers a lot of opportunities and other steps on the way to EU-wide VAT compliance for online sellers and included changes concerning

Delivery thresholds in the EU
Taxation of goods sold in B2C distance selling
VAT registration duty

This is especially true for entrepreneurs selling goods via Amazon and delivering with the help of FBA programs, as they tend to sell their products on a variety of marketplaces in Europe and in several European countries. However, the usability of the One-Stop-Shop for Amazon Sellers is greater than the usability for Amazon FBA sellers. Find out why below.

One-Stop-Shop for Amazon Sellers

Previously Amazon Sellers had to register for VAT in their home countries and in all countries to which sales exceeded the delivery thresholds, which were set by each country and usually set at 35,000€ or 100,000€. In all countries in which Sellers registered for VAT, they had to submit regular VAT returns.

Following the filing of returns, VAT needed to be paid separately to each tax authority, following differing deadlines and format. Furthermore, all sales prior to the crossing of the threshold limit were taxed with domestic VAT rate, which was paid to the domestic tax office, while all sales after the threshold was exceeded were taxed with foreign VAT rates and the VAT liabilities paid to foreign tax authorities.

All of the processes detailed above changed with the introduction of the One-Stop-Shop. While participation in the OSS happens on a voluntary basis, the introduction of the One-Stop-Shop was also accompanied by the abolishment of the former country-specific delivery thresholds in favour of an EU-wide applicable threshold of 10,000€. This new delivery threshold is reached by all cross-border deliveries combined and, therefore, crossed much earlier, leading to an increased urgency for foreign VAT registrations. This is why the OSS is a good option for many Amazon Sellers.

With the One-Stop-Shop, an OSS registration and the submission of an OSS return in your home country replaces the foreign VAT registrations and returns. From the beginning, foreign VAT rates need to be applied to cross-border sales, through all VAT liabilities are paid collectively to the domestic tax authorities who then redistribute the amounts.

However, the OSS only applies to cross-border transactions. A VAT registration in your home country and the submission of domestic VAT returns are, therefore, still necessary. For the same reason, Amazon Sellers using Fulfilled-by-Amazon programs to deliver their products to customers EU-wide are facing a challenge, as products are stored in warehouses located in various countries and might not always cross borders when being delivered.

One-Stop-Shop and Amazon FBA

Within the PAN-EU FBA program, participant’s products might be stored in England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and the Czech Republic. Just based on storage, VAT registrations are mandatory in all of these countries. However, participation in the One-Stop-Shop is still possible.

Deliveries from the home country to foreign countries are taxed with foreign VAT rates and appear in the OSS report, as detailed above. Deliveries from foreign warehouses to customers in the same country are settled in a froeign VAT return, while deliveries to third countries are again appearing in the OSS report filed in the home country. Lastly, deliveries from foreign warehouses to customers in the Seller’s home country appear in the domestic VAT return.

As evidenced, the usability of the One-Stop-Shop for Amazon Sellers using FBA is smaller than the advantages of the OSS for pure Amazon Sellers selling only from their home country. However, the new scheme can still be advantageous. This depends on the delivery volume, the chosen FBA program, and the customer base and is best decided on a case-by-case basis.

Technical solutions for the One-Stop-Shop

If you want to or have to use the OSS to fulfil your VAT duties in Europe as an Amazon seller another challenge facing you are the different VAT rates. This is especially true if you sell products from several niches or Amazon product categories to which country-specific reduced VAT rates apply. A solution comes in the form of the hellotax OSS full-service package.

This VAT service provider specialised on the Amazon and FBA E-Commerce business offers their proprietary OSS software in combination with an OSS registration. The software automatically calculates VAT rates and compiles reports which aid in the creation of OSS reports. The hellotax team of local tax accountants then regularly files your OSS returns.

The OSS service can also be used in conjunction with the regular VAT services, which include VAT registrations EU-wide and the submission of regular VAT returns. All your VAT duties are therefore taken care of by one service provider and you can concentrate on scaling your Amazon business while staying worry-free and VAT compliant across the European Union.

6 best ways to use stock photos in your ads

Posted on 22 April 20216 May 2024 by Arham Khan

Images add an attractive element to a display ad. And with 65% of the world’s population termed as ‘visual learners,’ pictures play an important role in conveying the information to the audience.

However, not many of us have the time or the resources to curate professional, customised images for each display ad that we run. In fact, many reading this blog are busy business owners and marketers who are looking for ways to run their ads without spending most of the day at a photo studio. This is where stock photographs come to the rescue.

Yes, most marketers might cringe at the name of stock photographs, but in reality, these assets are valuable in bringing your ads to life. Besides being readily available, they are cost-effective and available in a variety of categories to fill in the visual gap of your ads. However, you should know how to use them correctly, and this is where we come in!

In this guide, let’s review some practical ways to use stock photos in your display ads that will make them stand out.

Avoid Getting Sued

The first and foremost rule of using stock photos is to avoid getting a lawsuit. Yes, you may hear it rarely, but this does happen in the stock industry world when businesses get sued for using images that weren’t licensed for commercial use.

To avoid getting caught in a law infringement, it is essential that you educate yourself about the different licenses before you start searching for a stock photo to use in your ad. Generally, the stock photo licenses are divided into three categories:

Public Domain: As the name suggests, the public domain is the property of the public – that’s you! The stock photographs that fall under this category are free game, and the users can use them without any license or permission. You also don’t need to attribute the author and can utilise the Public Domain images without giving credit.
Royalty-Free: Another standard license that you will see in the stock photography sector is the royalty-free license. This type of license requires the users to pay a one-time payment that will allow them to use the photograph across several platforms without needing to purchase the license. However, want to make sure that you read the terms and conditions carefully to understand the legal requirements, especially for attribution.
Rights Managed: The Rights Managed license gives the marketers one-time permission to use the stock image. This means that you will have to purchase a license each time you utilise the same image on a different platform. Because of this, Rights Managed images are not preferred for use in ads as you will have to repurchase the license each time you decide to run the same in a second ad or on a different platform. However, Rights Managed images are unique, and you will rarely encounter the problem of seeing the same picture on a competitor’s ad with the use of this type of license.

Avoid Cliches

One of the things that make marketers so wary of stock photographs is that some of them are too generic and cliche. If you look closely at the database of stock images, you will see hundreds upon thousands of photos that look over-posed or unrealistic.

A woman dancing with a bowl of salad, men striking a pose in business suits, and a businessperson hugging a briefcase are just some examples of cliche stock photographs that you should altogether avoid in your display ads. Not only that, but these kinds of stock photographs are often overused in display ads and will make you look lazy in front of the audience.

When choosing stock photographs for your ads, your goal is to find images that resonate with the core message of your ad. Consider how well a photo will compel the viewer to click and move down the sales funnel. Instead of going with the first photograph you see, search thoroughly to find the one unique visual that portrays your brand’s message in the most efficient manner.

Be Relevant

While this should go without saying, we are going to say it anyway: Aim for relevance! When scrolling through your newsfeed, you may have seen countless examples of display ads that don’t seem related to the content of the ad. These types of ads misleads the viewers who often become confused as to what the ad is really about.

Ultimately, this will reduce their trust in your brand and negatively impact their purchasing decision.

Food chains do a great job at avoiding advertising pitfalls. In their Facebook ads, they use their primary product in the ads in order to display relevancy to their content. Just take a look at the example by Domino’s Pizza. They use a clear picture of their offering – a pizza to advertise their newest deal. A clear image to portray what you will be receiving at their stores.

Be Candid

As we mentioned above, the biggest problem with stock photographs is the unrealistic appearance of people as the main subject. Not only do posed images of people look unauthentic but cheesy as well – completely turning off the viewers.

However, humans relate to humans, and adding pictures of them having fun or enjoying your brand is one way to get the attention of the audience. When possible, use original photos of people using your products/services. You can also use behind-the-scenes footage of your employees working in the background.

But if it’s not possible to get customised shoots of people, look for stock photographs that appear candid and not over staged.

‘Unstock’ the Stock

Adding your own touch to the stock photograph is another way to make them personalised for your specific marketing campaign. Something as small as cropping the photo or adding a small amount of text can help make the photograph more contextually relevant to your ad.

However, remember to check the licensing details of the stock photo provider you choose to ensure they are allowed for modification. While most stock photo agencies allow editing of their photos, it won’t hurt to recheck the fine print to make sure you are not breaking the law.

Here is an excellent example from an ad by Little Spoon. They combined a generic stock photo with their own ad copy and call to action. They even added their own logo to the ad copy to make it look more personalised.

Test Your Ads

There are millions of stock photographs on the internet, and most marketers become greedy when they see the plethora of images available. Well, when it comes to ads, it is ok to be a little greedy. This is because you don’t have to limit yourself to one image per ad. You can create various versions of the same ad and test to see which one works best.

Yes, through A/B testing, you can run two ads simultaneously to the same audience to see which one resonates with your audience the most. However, I would recommend that you only use a different stock image and use the same ad copy in all your ads. This way, you will be able to see the difference in reaction to each image.

Final Words

These were just some tips to get you started with stock photographs in display ads. As you can see, stock photographs are a great way to add a visual element to your ads. With these tips, you can now turn your ads into engaging and effective tools. Good luck!

Top tips for scaling your app acquisition campaigns using Facebook ads

Posted on 30 December 20206 May 2024 by Arham Khan

In this era of apps, we see an ever more significant need to utilise the tools and processes aligned to digital marketing in a way that ensures the market you’re focusing on is targeted correctly and the ROI is maximised through Facebook ads.

Here are some tips for your next app acquisition campaign through Facebook ads
Facebook ads have great potential to maximise your app acquisitions, so make sure your social media ad strategy is working for you, not burning through the ad budget
With practical tips on how to create Facebook app acquisition campaigns, you’ll learn the key aspects of creating successful Facebook ads

Facebook ads are the number one source of paid traffic to generate app downloads. But due to its success, Facebook can also be a highly competitive place to run campaigns and you must do so with knowledge of how to get your app noticed with the correct targeting, messaging and budgets.

In this guide, you’ll be given a full introduction to ensuring your Facebook ad campaigns are optimised to ensure your app acquisition can scale quickly and profitably. We want you to spend time focusing on ensuring maximum visibility by understanding the foundations.

Let’s get straight into it. You have an app. You have spent time designing and developing it. You’re proud of its functionality and design, but let’s be realistic – you haven’t spent all that time and money as a hobby. Here’s the step by step guide to fulfilling your app acquisitions potential.

How to Build Your App Acquisition Campaign

1. Make sure your goal is clear.

Are you looking to raise more awareness for your brand?
Are you trying to retarget and therefore remarket to expired users?
Are you seeking to attract new users?
Is there a need for you to increase engagement in your app?
Have you got a special offer that needs to be promoted?
Are you needing to market your app’s website URL?

When you create your campaign in Facebook Ads Manager, make sure you select ‘App Installs’ as the primary objective, as this will give you the functionality and tools you need to create the right type of campaign and allow you to add your app as your final URL, taking potential users directly to the download page.

2. Know your audience. This is by far the most important part of your ad campaign set up. Knowing your audience ensures that you can target the right people out of the over 1.5 billion users, which means that you will need to be as precise as possible in this part of the campaign setup. As you would expect, finding the correct audience reach is intricate at every level from age, location, interests, job titles etc. Spend plenty of time on this step.

A tip here would be to look at Facebook’s Audience Insights tool as this will help you narrow your targeting down.

3. You are spending good money on your ad, so it’s only right that you make it count! Your ad needs to be really good… Obvious? Not at all. It is essential. Your success is absolutely dependent on this to be successful with your campaign. Do not underestimate or race through your ad creation. The ad is your brand and your brand is the ad. They are not separate and therefore the design and content must be consistent and aligned. You have only a few seconds, not even as many as 10 seconds to grab a user’s attention, so the key is to draw the eye and the focus as quickly as possible.

A creative asset is a key aspect. Worth a thousand words, to use the old adage, so your ad needs to use the best possible storytelling picture possible for your app. Depending on the type of app you are advertising, it might be a better idea to consider a carefully thought through video to show people how your app works and what they’re going to get from downloading it. Don’t try to save money here, employ someone to make it who really knows what they are doing.

Like every single piece of literature we see on the newsstand or internet, a headline is an opportunity to convince your audience to read the whole ad. Words need to be well chosen to strike the right note. It’s a good idea to include a call to action in your headline. Tell the reader what you want them to do. Use Facebook’s preview tool, which will appear on the right hand side as you develop your advert, to make sure your headline is short enough to be seen across all devices. Don’t use the word count up for the sake of it, make it short and snappy.

Your ad copy needs to inform your audience quickly of the value your app brings or what your offer is. You don’t have a lot of room to get the key message across, so – as above – keep it short and sweet. Think impact, think what’s the point of using our app, think how can I write this and present it in a clever and creative way.

And then there’s the essential component – your Call-to-Action (CTA). If it’s not automatically set to encourage users to install or download your app, make sure you change it. The power of this tool is the key to unlocking the full potential a download of your app.

Scaling Your App Acquisitions Requires Constant Testing and Optimising

In summing up, it is essential that you test as much as you can as part of the ad creation process. Different audiences may actually yield different results, so it’s best to test these separately. Visual assets are the essential draw. If your creative assets aren’t eye catching enough, then you must be willing to change them for better alternatives. Remember, the whole purpose is to get as many people as possible to take your desired campaign action, and your Facebook ad campaign cost has one function – a higher return on the investment you’ve made.

Key Takeaways

Use the ‘App installs’ campaign objective during the Facebook Ads Manager campaign set up phase
Knowing your audience ensures that you can target the right people out of the over 1.5 billion users
A creative asset is a key ingredient to a good app acquisition campaign
A headline is an opportunity to convince your audience to read the whole ad – make it count
Your ad copy needs to inform the audience quickly of the value your app brings
Don’t forget your Call-to-Action

5 Facebook advertising campaign examples to steal

Posted on 18 December 20206 May 2024 by Arham Khan

With all of the different social media platforms available now, there’s plenty of choice when it comes to ad placements. Discover some of the most memorable and effective Facebook ads to inspire your next campaign.

Get inspiration for your next campaign from five leading brands delivering innovative ads.
Facebook ads are the perfect location to launch your next product, so make sure your social media ad strategy is ticking every box.
With practical tips on executing your social advertising strategy, you’ll learn how to create measurable ads that stand out.

According to the latest research, 78% of internet users in the UK are still active on Facebook so it’s important to take advantage of the platform’s enterprise ad tools to broaden your audience reach. In this post, we take a look at some of the ways leading brands are delivering innovative ads and generating great results.

Smart Visuals: ModCloth

Credit: Shortstack

Facebook has put a lot of effort into making different types of ads that you can publish to your target market. One of them is the slick image carousel format, as used by ModCloth here. You can add up to ten images to a carousel for the user to tap or swipe through in their feed, although a lower number would probably be more effective.

You can show off different products with ease, as ModCloth has done here. With the same model showing off different looks, ModCloth are showcasing their best products and giving a sense of the fun retail experience. It also increases the chances of a user seeing something that they might like. The more products, the better the odds.

Know Your Value: Adobe

Credit: Falcon.io

You should use your Facebook ads to the best of your brand’s advantage. Think about what you already have at your disposal that can really make your ads pop. For Adobe, they have access to hundreds and thousands of stunning premium images. Not only does their ad look good, but it gives a sense of the kinds of images that their users can access too.

With their trademark logo stamped across the front, this image says a lot with very few words. The more you can do with imagery, the better, as social media users scroll fast and are unlikely to read long passages of text.

Play With Humour: Edible Blooms

Credit: Shortstack

At the end of the day, Facebook is a social media platform. Most of its users are there on an informal basis, so don’t get too serious with them. Edible Blooms got the idea perfectly with this witty and relevant ad. Tapping into a relatable problem of needing to make up with your partner fits with their target market and might bring a smile to someone’s face.

Instant Call To Action: LEGO

Credit: Hootsuite

Making the most of Facebook’s other features in your ads is a great idea, like this one from LEGO that promotes an event. The more touchpoints you can create with your audience, the better. In this case, once someone has clicked ‘Interested’ on an event, you can reach their notifications by posting in the event, inviting them to Like your Page and so on.

Using ads like these to build a closer connection with your audience is ideal. There is so much content on Facebook feeds that it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. Heading to areas like Groups or Events lets you populate those spaces with relevant people and reach them more directly.

Simple Bonuses: Snapfish

Credit: Shortstack

People browsing on social media are used to being shown opportunities to buy or sign-up for different products all the time. Using a freebie to grab their attention is a great way to stop them scrolling and get them to focus on your brand.

Here, Snapfish leads with everything that you can get for free if you download their app, as well as showcasing their branding as much as possible. This helps encourage users to both download their app and start shopping, as well as increasing brand awareness even for people who don’t click on the freebie itself.

The main thing to remember when creating a Facebook ad is to get creative. Every one of these successful ads took a unique quality of their brand and made it stand out from the other, generic posts on Facebook. Use their layouts and fresh ideas to show off your brand’s best features and you’re sure to see your Facebook stats soaring in no time.

Top tips for killer performance marketing campaigns

Posted on 17 December 20206 May 2024 by Arham Khan

Here are our top four tips to ensure your next performance marketing campaign is your best one yet.

Learn from four winning examples of big-brand performance marketing campaigns.
Take their best strategies on board to ensure your next PPC or paid social media ads guarantees great results.
Discover examples from a variety of platforms and find innovative ways to supercharge your ad strategy.

Executing a strong performance marketing campaign is a true skill. It takes accurate data and fresh ideas to hit the right targets, whether that’s for conversions, brand recognition or any other metrics. Since performance marketing focuses so closely on ROI, it’s more important than ever to do all you can to meet those sales targets. Some of the most leading brands provide great examples of well-executed campaigns that have garnered huge success.

Keep Everything Native

When employing social media ads for your brand, you’re engaging with an audience on someone else’s platform. Your instinct might be to encourage them to leave that platform and head to your own, through a link to your website or app. However, keeping everything within the original social platform can actually work to your advantage.

TVideo, a video streaming service, increased their app downloads by almost 50% by making their app download and account creation possible all within Facebook. Users didn’t need to open a new browser or get held up at loading screens, making everything fluid and as easy as possible. Sticking with Facebook’s navigation served TVideo well.

Credit: SMBP

Connect With What People Care About

Whether you’re looking for better engagement, more conversions or improved brand outreach, you need your audience to care about your campaign if you’re going to have any level of success. Airbnb took action in 2017, at the heart of the refugee crisis, to contradict some bad PR from allegations of racism towards their hosts.

Credit: Lindsay Gamble, Medium

They launched a paid ad campaign across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag #WeAccept to showcase their efforts to house refugees across Europe. They also donated $4M to refugee charities, while regularly sharing stories of hosts from various backgrounds. Their engagements skyrocketed, with 85% positive responses to the campaign, underlining how people engage with causes close to their hearts.

Quality Can Make The Difference

Social media is often populated with pretty standard quality posts. You can make your ads stand out by upping the quality going into your content, especially if you sell a more premium product. Wayfair is a great example of this.

To make the most of Instagram’s in-app retail features, Wayfair promoted a series of their most popular products with exceptionally high-quality photos in realistic looking homes. They tapped into the aesthetic nature of Instagram, knowing that Instagram users are used to seeing luxurious and filtered versions of reality. People want to recreate this perceived perfection for themselves in their own homes, and these ads promised to do just that with one click.

Instagram users could buy the products showcased beautifully in the ad with just a few clicks within the app. This way, Wayfair made the most of the aesthetic-focused characteristics of Instagram users, coupled with the easy-to-use retail features. It was the perfect storm for a successful social ad campaign.

Tap Into New Trends

Social media platforms create new features all the time. Any modern brand needs to stay up-to-date on these trends and make the most of them to advertise their products. If a brand shows its audience that it stays in line with the modern changes of an app, it helps the brand’s image stay young and fresh.

Credit: The Blueprint

Converse demonstrates this perfectly in their Stories campaign. They used clean, fresh photography in Instagram Stories to pop up alongside organic content, combined with well-chosen influencer posts. Their diverse campaigns fit their target market perfectly, launching a new range of products successfully. They were one of the first brands to use paid ads in Stories, as audiences weren’t used to seeing branded content there. Being the first through the door gave them the edge over the competition and helped the ad campaign to make waves with ease.

Performance marketing campaigns can be tricky to get right at first, but once you have a winning formula, they’re a cost-effective way of achieving your brand’s marketing goals within a budget. Keep testing different ad and paid campaign formats to see what works best for your business. Remember that you can never stop learning and experimentation can often be your path to success.