Your marketing team puts a lot of resources into web pages, social media, events, and more. But you need more than a “build it and they will come” approach. You have to carefully craft your messaging to persuade your target audience to take action — and that’s where a call to action (CTA) comes in.

A call to action should be so persuasive that it convinces people to take a desired action, whether that’s downloading a case study or buying your products.

But not all CTAs are created equal. Some CTAs are better suited to different stages of the buyer journey. You’ll need to choose the right types of CTAs to drive conversions and grow your business.

Let’s dig into what a CTA is, the different types of CTAs, and how your business can leverage them to earn more customers.

What Is a CTA?

People spend time online for two reasons: information or entertainment. The right call to action prompts passive scrollers to stop scrolling and take action on your brand’s content, usually in the form of a CTA button or further engagement instruction.

Without a CTA, all of the energy you put into your digital marketing would be for nothing. You need to make it very clear what your audience should do next, and CTAs do just that.

For example, you might use CTAs like:

  • “Sign Up For Our Newsletter”
  • “Buy Now”
  • “See How We Can Help”
  • “Download Our Free Guide”
  • “Sign Up For The Webinar”

If you’re putting in the effort to promote your brand, everything you create needs a CTA. CTAs shepherd people through your sales funnel, taking potential customers through an intentional pipeline that encourages them to engage with your brand.

The 5 Different Types of CTAs

Of course, you can’t use the same CTA for everything. A simple “Learn More” call to action button isn’t compelling enough to persuade potential customers to take the next step.

You’ll need to use different types of CTAs depending on:

  • Your customer persona
  • Where the customer is in your sales funnel
  • The content they’re consuming
  • What action you want the customer to take next

There are many types of CTAs out there, but these five are the most effective at boosting your marketing campaigns.

1. Lead Generation

Thirty-five percent of marketers say that lead generation is their top priority over the next 12 months, so this is the most common type of CTA.

If you want more customers (and we’re willing to bet that you do), you have to generate leads and warm them up until they’re ready to become new customers.

The thing is, you shouldn’t hit leads with a hard sell out of the gates, so most lead generation CTAs tend to be low-stakes. This includes CTAs like:

  • “Enroll in our free webinar”
  • “Download our recipe guide”
  • “Get $5 off your next order”

For this type of call to action, it’s a good idea to create lead magnets, which are pieces of content designed solely for gathering a lead’s contact information. Offer freebies like e-books, video guides, case studies, industry reports, or white papers to persuade people to convert.

Use lead generation CTAs for folks at the top of your funnel. You should place these CTAs in prominent places on your website, like your:

  • Sidebar: This displays the CTA on every page of your website, no matter where a lead goes. This gives you more airtime with new visitors, increasing the chances of conversion.
  • Landing pages: Create a landing page to promote your lead magnet as a free download. A dedicated landing page can boost your conversion rates and help with attribution, so this is a win-win.
  • Content: Add a lead generation CTA to the bottom of your blogs to pull interested leads through the sales funnel.

2. Content Marketing

You need to give customers something valuable to earn their trust. That isn’t an easy feat, but content marketing CTAs can help.

This type of CTA helps you deepen relationships with customers while branding yourself as a trusted subject matter expert. If leads find your content helpful, it can position your company as a trustworthy provider, which will (hopefully) encourage purchases as they go through your sales funnel.

Try CTAs like:

  • “Read more”
  • “Watch now”
  • “Take the quiz”

In terms of placement, it’s best to use content marketing CTAs on your blog page or social media. For example, try teasing your website’s latest post on LinkedIn with a content marketing CTA that encourages leads to visit your website.

3. Social Shares

Social share CTAs might sound more passive than other types of CTAs, but they’re an easy way to build brand awareness and trust. They help you engage with customers without asking them for anything other than a social media follow for the opportunity to continue serving them.

Social share CTAs encourage site visitors to either:

  • Share your website content to their social feed
  • Follow your brand on social media

You can easily add social share buttons across your website that will allow one-click shares on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Display them as a sidebar on your website, on blogs as pull quotes, or in your website footer.

We love these types of CTAs because they increase your brand’s exposure. Even if a lead doesn’t end up being a customer, the exposure alone makes social share buttons worth your while.

4. Subscriptions

This type of CTA is a must-have if your business leverages email marketing. With a subscription CTA, you encourage leads to sign up for your email newsletter.

But people aren’t going to subscribe to your list if you’re just going to spam them. Your emails have to primarily deliver value; you should only occasionally sprinkle in sales-y language.

For this type of CTA, explain why subscribing to your email newsletter is a good idea. That might look like:

  • “Don’t miss our new posts! Subscribe to our newsletter now.”
  • “Sign up for our Insiders email list to get free digital downloads every month.”
  • “Enter your email address to get monthly industry reports — for free.”

Many brands promote their email newsletters with eye-catching popup CTAs. You shouldn’t overwhelm website visitors with popups, but with the right balance, you could see conversion rates as high as 42.35%.

If you aren’t sure whether popup CTAs are a good idea, try A/B testing. This will tell you whether your website visitors respond well to the subscription CTA popup or if you should take a different approach.

But don’t worry. If your audience isn’t a fan of popups, you can still promote your email list on your blog, sidebar, floating banners, or product pages.

5. Purchases

The last type of CTA you need to use is the most direct, but it has the best chance of boosting your bottom line. Purchase CTAs like “Buy now” are ideal for the last stage of your sales funnel after leads have demonstrated interest in your brand or products.

Common purchase CTAs include:

  • “Add to cart” (for e-commerce sites)
  • “Enroll now”
  • “Get a quote”
  • “See pricing”

Since purchase CTAs are more of a hard sell, it’s best to place them on web pages where hot leads spend the most time. That’s usually your product pages or unique landing pages for nurtured leads.

Use the Right Types of CTAs to Seal the Deal

CTAs are a powerful but often-overlooked part of marketing optimization. If you don’t want to come on too strong too soon, be sure to choose the best CTA for the job. Pick CTAs based on where leads are in the sales funnel. Otherwise, they might leave and never come back.

To start writing more effective CTAs, choose from these five types of CTAs for inspiration:

  1. Lead generation
  2. Content marketing
  3. Social shares
  4. Subscriptions
  5. Purchases

But every business is different, so what works for another brand might not work for you. Get one-on-one advice for your brand: MBE Group offers customized CTA help to SMBs that are ready to grow. Chat with us now to get personalized advice for your CTAs — and watch your sales grow.

Copywriting and content writing are two valuable tools in any marketer’s toolkit. Although sometimes confused for one another, these unique and often complimentary messaging strategies can support the same marketing campaigns.

The easiest way to distinguish them is to think of their different goals. The goal of copywriting is persuasion, while content writing provides (relatively) unbiased information that educates the reader on a topic. While they achieve different goals, there are a lot of synergies between the two for a savvy marketer who knows how to employ them properly.

So, how can you use both disciplines to your advantage in your brand’s marketing? Here’s a look at the differences between copywriting and content writing and how you can leverage them to achieve your marketing goals.

What is Copywriting?

Copywriting refers to creating short-form sales copy to advertise or increase brand awareness among your target customer audience. Copywriting typically incorporates exciting product features, specific promotional offers, and compelling calls to action (CTA) that target prospective clients and convert them to paying customers.

A copywriter’s primary responsibility is to compose attention-grabbing editorial content that aligns with a business goal. The copy presents the highlights of the product, service, or other information in an interesting and memorable manner while being succinct and convincing. Their job might involve ideating on the concept of the ad or advertorial, writing sales copy aligning with a business goal, iterating and incorporating feedback from stakeholders, and editing and proofreading sales copy for accuracy.

Copywriting is explicitly “sales-y” to persuade a potential customer to complete an immediate action that moves them one step further through the sales funnel. They may click a button, subscribe to a newsletter or join an email list, open a landing page, download a resource or, of course, make a purchase. But copywriters also write more passive brand copy, like taglines, direct mail, sales emails, social media posts, or video scripts.

Ultimately, the copywriter is the avenue through which the brand’s value proposition reaches a prospective customer.

What is Content Writing?

Content writing is a style of long-form content creation that aims to inform, educate, instruct, or even entertain readers, with the primary goals of increasing customer engagement, lead generation, and conversion rates for your business.

Contrary to the brand-mention-heavy style of copywriting, content writing involves planning, writing, editing, and publishing long-form content. It is often used online to attract organic traffic to the website through keyword-optimized content. Unlike copywriting, content writing is light on brand mentions and sometimes completely brand-agnostic.

Though there are many types of content writing, the most common these days is SEO-focused. SEO content educates the reader and signals to Google (and other search engines) that the article and website are reliable sources of information. Since it is a more long-form style (like articles, web pages, white papers, case studies, or e-books) and less focused on the brand, content writing may require a great deal of research or industry-specific expertise.

A content writer must start by researching relevant information to become familiar with the subject matter and be able to speak intelligently about it. They may need to engage with the brand’s marketing or PR team to collect additional information and context about how the article fits in with the overall content marketing strategy. Then, the writer must outline and write the article in a clear, concise, and informative way. They should include an intriguing headline to spark the reader’s interest and encourage a click-through from the SERP (search engine results page).

The writer must compose the article in the brand’s voice to align with other messaging across the brand’s paid and earned platforms. It must be carefully edited and proofread for grammatical correctness and factual accuracy. Only then can it be published.

And to think that some brands publish one or more articles per week, every week – it’s no wonder they need the help of a professional content writer or maybe even a team!

Copywriting vs. Content Writing: 6 Key Differences

Copywriting and content writing are different yet complementary ways of producing marketing copy. Though we’ve discussed each discipline individually, let’s compare these two marketing tactics side-by-side.

1. Goal

Perhaps the most distinct difference between copywriting and content writing is the goal of each.

In copywriting, the goal is to compel a prospective client to take immediate action, like buying a product or clicking on a button. Therefore, copywriting usually ends with a CTA that increases sales and drives organic traffic for your business.

Content writing, on the other hand, aims to inform, educate, instruct, or entertain readers about a particular topic. This may drive sales by informing you about a product with high-quality and valuable content.

However, an increase in sales is not the main goal. Content writers create content with a clear purpose, a brand’s voice, and engaging thoughts.

Businesses use content writers to build customer relationships with their target audiences. This leads to customer engagement with their products, increasing conversion rates and customer loyalty in the long run.

2. Length

Copywriting mostly produces short-form content, while content writing is for long-form content.

Copywriting needs to be concise and to the point, keeping the sales copy enticing and memorable.

Content writers, on the other hand, need anywhere between 500 and 2,500 words to effectively educate readers about a topic in an as in-depth and interesting way as possible.

3. Time Frame

In a similar vein, copywriting is usually created for one-time marketing campaigns meant to prompt a timely response. Data on the results of a campaign can be collected and analyzed within days or weeks. Campaigns are often short-lived, ending before the next launches.

However, content writing is a longer-term strategy meant to engage a particular target audience over time, which makes it more challenging to gauge the ROI of this investment.

4. Tone

The tone in copywriting is emotional, tapping into universal human feelings of fear, gratitude, happiness, trust, or superiority.

Content writing, however, appeals more to the rational mind. Since its goal is to educate its target audience, this style usually employs a more conversational, formal, or friendly tone to establish credibility and trust with the reader.

5. SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the process of creating content that offers information that people are searching for online. Google (and other search engines) look for robust, well-researched answers from long-established sources when deciding what articles to rank in the top search results.

Because short, uninformative, brand-mention-heavy content – like that which copywriters typically produce – is the opposite of what Google is looking for, these web pages very rarely will rank and are not worth optimizing for SEO.

A longer-form, brand-agnostic piece of content like that which content writers compose, on the other hand, will quickly catch Google’s attention – provided it is a high-quality article. That’s why content writing is an ideal format for increasing your brand’s site rankings.

6. Writer’s Experience

Copywriters are professionals in the marketing or advertising industry who have to understand the broader marketing strategy, business goals, consumer pain points, and competitor analysis to do their job well. They’re generally closer to the brand and may even work in-house.

Content writers are more often subject matter experts hired on a freelance basis because of their knowledge of the article’s topic. They may have some marketing expertise – especially in the field of SEO – but that’s unlikely to be their primary area of expertise. Instead, in order to do their job well, they need to be skilled long-form writers who can capture the brand voice and are adept at presenting complex information in a digestible way.

Both copywriting and content writing are important for any business to succeed.

Whether you’re a startup company or have more experience with digital marketing, you’ll need copywriters to drive sales and organic traffic at the start of the customer journey and content writers to convert those leads into loyal customers for future sales.

Leveraging Copy and Content Writing for Your Business

It’s easy to use copywriting and content writing interchangeably when developing digital marketing strategies for your business. And while the two domains occasionally overlap, these two types of writing are entirely different.

Copywriting is short-form content that compels a prospective client to perform a particular action, like buying a product or signing up for a newsletter. The goal of copywriting is to drive sales and increase brand awareness for your business.

On the other hand, content writing employs long-form pieces of content that inform, educate, instruct, or entertain readers about a particular topic.

Content writing aims to build a long-term customer relationship that encourages customer engagement with your business and customer loyalty to your brand.

Overall, your business will need both digital marketing strategies to succeed from the near term to the foreseeable future.

At MBE Group, long-form content writing is our specialty. If you want to outsource your content writing (and content strategy!) to a team of professionals you can trust, reach out to us to learn how we can implement a customized content strategy and help grow your business.

With close to 2 billion websites in existence today, separating the quality content from outdated, untrustworthy, or just plain sketchy websites is becoming increasingly important. But how?

The answer is an SEO term you may have heard about: domain authority, which determines your website’s authority on search engines compared to the many other websites out there.

In this article, we’ll explore all there is to know about domain authority, including how it’s calculated, how to determine your domain authority score, and how to increase domain authority for your website. Let’s get started.

What Is Domain Authority?

In order to organize the millions, and now billions, of websites on the internet, Google needed an objective way to compare and rank all of the sites that contain content relative to a search query.

That’s why Google devised a rating system — called PageRank — which assigns a score to every one of the sites in existence, based on the site’s usefulness, relevance, and trustworthiness. The SEO community refers to this score as a site’s authority, authority score, or domain authority (DA for short).

Actively managing your site’s authority score is the key to rising in the rankings, because Google will use domain authority scores to compare site quality and rank results in all of the search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher the DA score, the greater chance your site has of ranking higher, the lower the DA, the more difficult it will be to rank.

It sounds simple, but there’s a catch: Google’s PageRank algorithm is made up of many contributing factors — which we call ranking factors — and no one but Google engineers know exactly how it’s calculated.

How Do You Measure Domain Authority?

Unfortunately, there’s no easy formula to calculate your DA. The domain authority metric is based on a logarithmic scale of 0 to 100, where 0-20 is considered a low DA score, 20-50 is considered average, 50-80 is considered good to very good, and 80-100 is a very high DA.

The higher your domain scores with respect to DA, the higher your chances of performing well on search engines. The SEO tool Moz was the first to attempt to reverse engineer Google’s ranking scores (in fact, they first coined the term “domain authority”!), and their formula, and many others, takes into account:

  • Site authority: The quality and trustworthiness of the information you share on your site, and whether it was written (or at least endorsed) by someone who has training and expertise in the subject.
  • Backlink profile: The number, quality, and relevance of inbound links, or links from other websites, to your site. This metric only looks at links that Google is allowed to follow and index. Nofollow links have no impact on search rankings, so they aren’t included.
  • Link profile: The number, quality, and relevance of your website’s internal linking (links from one page to another on your site) and external links (links from a page on your site to a third-party website).
  • Site architecture and organization: Your website should be clearly laid out, easy to navigate, and provide a pleasant and useful user experience.

We also know that Google cares a great deal — and so heavily weighs — site speed and performance as a ranking factor, because it’s one of the few ranking factors they’ve publicly confirmed. It may also take into account a site or page’s performance on social media, but this could also be an indirect indicator — like if the page gets a large amount of traffic because it’s doing well on Pinterest, so we de-emphasize that.

Oh, one quick note: You may have heard the terms “domain authority” and “page authority” used interchangeably. However, domain authority measures the site as a whole, while page authority is an SEO metric that analyzes the strength of an individual web page and determines how well it performs against other pages on search engine results.

So, while domain authority takes into account the factors affecting the root domain of a website, page authority only takes into account the factors specific to an individual page within the website.

That means they’re related: When a website has a lot of high-ranking web pages, the scores aggregate into a high domain authority score.

Tools That Calculate Your DA

To find out your domain authority, simply go to Moz’s free domain SEO analysis tool, enter your domain (URL) into the search bar at the top of the page, and click Analyze domain.

Using Moz’s domain checker, you can look up the DA score of any website you’d like. In addition to the domain authority score, Moz displays the number of linking root domains for you and the spam score.

Scrolling down, you’ll see more information about the top pages by links based on page authority, the top linking root domains based on domain authority, and the discovered and lost linking domains over the past 60 days, all for free.

While Moz is the most popular domain analysis tool and the SEO company that first coined the domain authority metric, there are other link explorer tools with slight variations to the DA metric you can use.

Here are some of the top choices:

  • Ahrefs Website Authority Checker: Ahrefs allows you to search the domain rating for an unlimited number of URLs without any initial sign-ups required.
  • LinkGraph Bulk DA Checker Tool: LinkGraph lets you look up the domain authority of up to 10 websites and web pages at once.
  • Semrush Domain Overview Tool: Semrush gives you an idea of your competitor or prospective customer’s strengths and weaknesses by comparing domains, assessing growth over time, and comparing organic traffic by specific markets.

Note that link explorers use their own unique factors to calculate domain ratings, meaning you may see varied rankings between the sites. So, to avoid inconsistencies you may want to pick one tool to use to monitor the progress of your SEO strategy.

4 Practical Ways to Increase Your Site’s Domain Authority for Your Website

Increasing your website’s domain authority score takes time and effort. Our top piece of advice to website owners as they begin to invest in SEO and content marketing is always this: Plan to be patient. Good content takes time. Ranking takes time, and ranking well takes even longer. And yes — you guessed it! — increasing your domain authority is a deliberate process that does not produce results overnight.

If you’re just starting out, you might see higher DA scores right away, but the higher your score, the more difficult it is to increase it. While you should absolutely use domain authority as one marker of the success of your SEO strategy, it’s not a dynamic metric that responds quickly to tactical changes.

That’s why it’s important to take a multi-pronged approach with a long-term outlook. Here are some practices you can begin to implement today to start building SEO momentum and strengthen your domain authority.

1. On-Site SEO Strategy

An on-site (aka on-page) SEO strategy is a blanket term for all the activities involved in optimizing a website for search engines in ways that increase the organic traffic to your site.

On-site SEO includes everything that a user will see and interact with when they load the site. So, yes, this is a big category! Setting your site up correctly from the get-go will give you a leg up on building good domain authority. This includes investing in a site that is:

  • Clean, user-friendly, well-organized, and easy to navigate. Remember, user experience is a major factor in Google rankings!
  • Optimized for all platforms, meaning it displays properly on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.
  • Has a clear and welcoming home page, an easy-to-navigate header menu, and is transparent about the purpose of the site or business, who runs it, what it offers, and how the business benefits (e.g. pricing).
  • Is located at a URL (web address) that is called something related to the business’s core offering.

Then, once you start to populate it with information and articles, make sure you’re optimizing for on-page SEO best practices like:

  • High-quality, keyword-optimized content that is organized with properly used header tags.
  • Unique and descriptive title tags and meta descriptions on each page.
  • Relevant images, videos, and infographics with proper alt text.
  • Appropriate internal and external links on every page and in each article. Internal links not only help search engines crawl and index your page, they improve user engagement and time on site — which is another positive indicator of your site’s value and domain authority.

2. Off-Site SEO Strategy

Off-site SEO is all about the actions elsewhere on the internet that reflect positively or negatively on your site’s domain authority. The most important and common source of off-site SEO impact is backlinks.

Remember that your backlink profile is the overall picture of the quality, relevance, and authority of all the links that point back to your website. High-quality backlinks come from well-respected websites within your site’s niche, and reflect very well on your site’s domain authority.

Spammy backlinks are those that have extremely low DA, lack substantive information, and are generally not useful or trustworthy. Google is very good at disavowing, or ignoring, a certain number of these within any backlink profile, but if most of your backlinks come from low-quality sites, that will start to negatively impact your site’s DA if you don’t actively work to earn high-quality backlinks and potentially disavow the low-quality links.

The most successful sites don’t leave backlinks to chance, and instead include a linkbuilding strategy as part of their overall content marketing plan.

The best way to build a strong backlink profile is by consistently posting unique, valuable, quality content worth linking to. Remember that readers and other content creators feel inclined to share and reference content that is thorough, substantive, and trustworthy with a unique point of view.

There are more proactive ways to share your links and improve your chances of earning backlinks. These tactics include sharing on social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn, guest posting on reputable sites with higher DAs in your category, and reaching out to sites to suggest your content as a replacement for any outdated or dead outbound links on their site.

3. Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the third leg of the SEO triangle and, although it doesn’t get as much attention as on-page and off-page SEO, it is critically important to the domain authority of any site.

We’ve already mentioned that Google values many elements of the user experience on a site as core ranking factors. That’s where technical SEO comes in!

In order to signal to Google that your site is reliable, well-maintained, and trustworthy, make sure that your site is:

  • Built in a way that minimizes load time. Neither users nor search engines have the patience for a site that loads like it’s on dial-up internet.
  • Secure, using SSL certificates. You know your site is secure if the URL starts with https, not http. Your host or website manager can set this up very simply using a plugin in most cases.
  • Established with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and your sitemap is submitted to both.

There are other technical SEO aspects to look out for, like redirect errors, slow load times, whether search engines can easily crawl and index your web pages, or if your structured data is easy to understand, but the bulleted list above contains some of the most critical ranking factors that can affect your site’s ability to build authority and succeed in search.

4. An Active Social Media Presence

The jury is still out on how essential, exactly, social media is to SEO success. Data shows there’s a relationship between sites that have a strong social media presence and sites that rank well on Google. But Google has yet to reveal whether this is a causal relationship — i.e. that its algorithm looks at social media activity as a ranking factor, or correlation — i.e. a large and engaged audience on social media drives more traffic to the content on a site, which in turn signals to Google that it’s useful content.

While the SEO community debates, it’s useful to enable social media engagement with your content. Most content management systems, like WordPress, Webflow, and Squarespace, allow you to add social media share buttons to your site.

It’s also free and easy for someone from your team to establish your social media handles and regularly share old-but-evergreen content with that audience. But don’t limit your shares to your own content. Connecting with relevant, authoritative sites and sharing their content builds relationships with authoritative sites in your niche, gets your content seen, and is another authentic way to build your backlink profile — and, in turn, your domain authority.

Finally, having an active social media presence is a way of reinforcing trust in your website and business.

Optimizing Domain Authority for Your Business

Domain authority is a score that serves as a way to compare your site against others in your niche, and predict how likely you are to rank for keywords in the search engine result pages that are important to your business.

Increasing your site’s domain authority score takes time and patience, and there’s no way to fake it. With an investment in a well-built site, and a commitment to publishing quality content, you can watch your domain authority grow for years to come.

To learn how MBE Group can help you increase domain authority for your website with unique SEO strategies, contact us.

I recently made the case that when you’re getting executive buy-in for a content marketing strategy, there’s more to it than SEO. There are also benefits to having your own content platform, such as a company blog.

An owned content platform means you’ll always have a free place for sales enablement content like case studies, customer experience content like how-to articles, and company news and public relations (PR).

After all, it typically costs a few thousand dollars to issue a single press release on a service like PR Newswire or Business Wire.

Don’t get me wrong — press release distribution centers are great for major news: They’re a scalable way to publish official messaging and reach reporters en masse.

But not every company announcement is press release-worthy. In fact, it’s common for companies to send only a handful of press releases each year.

Here’s where your company blog comes into play. Reporters who end up covering your news will link to you (so you’ll get some link building), and when people search Google for your company’s new product or features, you’ll rank in a top spot.

So as you consider how to use your blog for company news and PR, use this as your guide:

  • Understand what should be in a press release and in a blog post.
  • Make sure company news fits into your existing content strategy.
  • Structure your PR blog posts in a compelling way.

There’s a lot to unpack. If you prefer this in a visual format, check out our YouTube video instead:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/214k_eNK5zo

Press Release vs. Blog Post

When you’re considering whether your announcement is worthy of a press release, first ask yourself: Which journalist or media outlet will be likely to report on your news, and what would they say?

Do some research on the publications you admire, and be honest with yourself about the kind of stories they’re interested in.

Did you close a million-dollar funding round? That’s a press release that will certainly get picked up by at least TechCrunch and VentureBeat. They’ll report on the amount you raised, who the investors are, and what your company plans to do with the funding.

Are you a known brand launching a completely new product line? That press release will get traction by at least trade publications in your industry. Those reporters will want to learn more about why you’re expanding your product line and how you saw the business potential.

If your gut tells you that a reporter might find your announcement interesting but not newsworthy, or as a potential nugget of information in a broader news article they’re writing, that’s a sign your announcement is better suited for a blog post.

Still unsure? Here are some examples of press release vs. blog post worthy news:

  • A brand new product line should be in a press release… but a new feature or functionality should be in a blog post.
  • A business partnership where you’re launching a new product or service with another brand should be in a press release… but a vendor partnership with a new customer support platform would be in a blog post.
  • Financial numbers like revenue growth goes in a press release… but your mobile app reaching a milestone of 500 downloads is best suited for a blog post.
  • An analysis of your 10,000+ users’ data that signals a trend in your industry would make for an interesting press release… but a survey to 100 people in your email list would be a fun blog post.

When you announce news on your blog, you can still pitch it to reporters. It’s actually a good way to build a relationship with them. Think of how authentic and even helpful it could be to personally send this note to a reporter who covers your industry: “Just wanted to give you a heads up we published insights regarding our users’ data and how it relates to recent trends in the space.”

This could help you stay top of mind for reporters. If they’re working on an article about a trend in your space, they might reach out to you for a quote. And when you do have bigger news, they’re more likely to pay attention.

Want more on determining whether something’s a good press release or blog post? Check out our companion YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HhecWX1tiVM

Company News Within Your Content Strategy

Company news should be one pillar among several others. Overall, your content pillars might look something like this:

  • Thought leadership or happenings in your industry
  • Sales enablement, like case studies
  • Customer experience, like how-to content
  • Company news and announcements

A good content strategy will always include a key focus on helping your audience rather than talking about yourself. There are many examples of audience-centric content done right, ranging from true thought leadership to customer support.

For instance, venture capital firm First Round Capital has the well-respected First Round Review, which publishes lengthy articles geared towards helping founders with business strategy and hiring decisions. Sometimes these are in-depth profiles of executives, and other times they’re thoroughly researched playbooks for various job functions.

Then there’s Zendesk’s blog, a resource that covers the customer experience industry. Their blog posts also weave in customer support content to offer their users tutorials or advice on using the Zendesk platform.

Remember that your audience’s needs come first, and company news comes second. If your audience notices you only use your blog to talk about yourself, then there’s nothing in it for them — and there’s no reason for them to keep coming back.

Use your blog when you have an announcement your users can benefit from knowing.

Writing That Blog Post

Now that you have your blog post-worthy news and it’s working as part of a larger content strategy, you’ll want to make sure you publish the best blog post possible. Make sure your announcement is exciting and that it’s clear how your users can benefit from it.

One starting point is to act as though you’re a reporter who has an exclusive scoop on your company’s news. Try to be objective and dig deep so you can provide the most meaningful information to your audience. Here’s a framework:

Write an eye-catching headline that clearly states the news

Think of this as equal parts attention-grabbing and SEO opportunity. You’ll want to entice your audience to read, and you’ll also want to make sure you use your product or feature name in the headline so when users do a Google search for your product, your blog post will rank.

You can keep it simple with a couple of these common formats:

  • Introducing for
  • Do With Our New
  • We Reached With
  • New Tells Us

Including the post’s purpose will easily tip off to your users what the announcement means for them.

Be specific in your blog post

If your blog post is about a new feature, make sure to explain what the new feature is and how it works. Give the backstory on why you decided to launch this, what it means for the user experience, and what you hope to accomplish.

If your blog post is about company data and how it relates to an industry trend, be sure to write a couple paragraphs on how your team gathered and analyzed this information. Include observations, and consider putting some stats or key facts into bullet point form to help make the information shareable.

Use this opportunity to make your leadership or your colleagues shine. Get a quote from a departmental lead or another colleague who worked on the feature or partnership you’re announcing.

Include visual media

Use visuals to enhance your text. Include photos of a new product, GIFs of how the new feature works, a short video on the user experience. It’s your news, so you should have access to the best art to make the announcement shine.

Ahrefs does a nice job of using red-highlighted boxes to show what’s new about their dashboard. Levels, the continuous glucose monitor company, not only uses app screenshots but also charts of glycemic responses from research studies.

Point users to additional information

This is a great opportunity to help users learn more. Be sure to include information like price, and when and where users can buy the product. Link to related news or other relevant articles within your blog. Make sure you queue up help articles so your software users know where to go for troubleshooting.

And if you think there’s a chance reporters will want to reach out, consider adding a link to a contact form that goes straight to your marketing team.

Questions?

As you continue thinking about how company news fits into your overall content strategy, you can always reach out to us with questions.

When you want to take your content next level, contact us so we can partner on a custom proposal.

As a business owner, you may be disheartened when your blog posts increase organic traffic, but don’t convert to sales. You start to think that the content you (or an agency) wrote isn’t very good. You may even begin to wonder if you’re targeting the right keywords. The truth is, content that increases organic traffic doesn’t immediately lead to more sales. In fact, you need to nurture and convert the lead once you’ve built the traffic.

We know that sounds like a lot of extra work. Fortunately, you can nurture and convert leads by using your content smarter and making sure your CTAs are the best they can be. Here, we’ll talk a bit about the goal of organic traffic and how you can use content to increase conversions, not just sales. Plus, we’ll offer a few quick tips so you can optimize your CTAs.

The Goal of Organic Traffic

People often assume that the goal of organic traffic is to drive sales. While that can certainly be true, in most instances, consumers who arrive on your blog (or website) through a SERP (search engine results page) have never heard of your brand before.

So, the first thing to remember about organic traffic is that blog readers are usually top-of-funnel leads. That means they’re likely encountering your brand for the first time — and without a familiarity or level of trust with your brand, they may not be ready to make a purchase. At this stage in the funnel, most readers are simply gathering information or looking for advice. If you’re focused on organic traffic as a driver of sales, you may be disappointed when you see blog posts not “converting.”

This is why many marketers use a marketing funnel to visualize the way readers interact with content and why they visit your site. Skyword has a great graphic and explainer on how the marketing funnel works. Essentially, the top of the funnel is where lead generation happens. The goal for most businesses at this stage of the funnel is to increase awareness. You do this through blogs, webinars, social media campaigns, and marketing campaigns.

Once a reader is aware of your brand, they move through the sales funnel to an “interest” stage. This typically reflects the consumer signing up for the company’s newsletter or downloading an informational PDF. With more information, the reader may then demonstrate intent to purchase.

For example, the potential customer may add a product to their cart or sign up for a product demo. Finally, at the bottom of the sales funnel is the coveted sales conversion. The sales funnel is an excellent way of understanding how your business can address potential customer needs and different points in the funnel. You can then craft marketing campaigns to push them closer to a sale.

Organic search is a fantastic way to introduce your brand to new consumers, even if they don’t make a purchase immediately.

That’s why we tell all of our clients that the real goal of organic traffic should be increasing awareness and developing a relationship with prospective customers.

Just because you’re not achieving an immediate sale doesn’t mean there aren’t other benefits of investing in organic traffic. Organic leads may recognize your name and come back to you later. They may sign up for an email list or download a free whitepaper. Or they may recommend your service or product to someone else after reading your content. They might sign up for your newsletter to learn about upcoming products and services. Or perhaps they sign up for a free trial. Or maybe they complete another activity that helps lead them further down your sales funnel.

All of these actions should be considered conversions.

By understanding why potential customers are reading a specific blog post, you can craft calls to action (CTAs) to meet their needs.

Let’s say that you’re a keto jerky company writing a blog post about the latest health trends this year. Readers who end up on your blog may be active keto dieters or they might just be curious individuals looking for health trends. If you design your CTA with a focus on encouraging readers to purchase your jerky, it probably won’t be effective. Why? Because readers may not be at the point in the purchase lifecycle where they’re ready to hand over their credit card information.

Instead, they could be trying to understand the health benefits of jerky over other snacks, or learning how to read ingredient labels, or collecting information to help determine which brand and flavor they are most likely to enjoy. Or perhaps they’re only interested in the latest health news. Not every reader is ready to buy.

That’s why it’s far more effective to focus your CTA on a smaller ask that’s more in line with the reader’s immediate needs — like signing up for your newsletter where they can learn more about keto. This way, you’re more effectively targeting readers who may be on your site for informational purposes only at this point. Then, in your newsletter you can add more information about the diet, why it’s useful, and how they can try your products.

This is why we encourage clients to think about conversion as more than just a sale. In an ideal world, we’d be able to make one CTA and close the deal. But when you consider email sign-ups, downloads, and free trial sign-ups as conversions, you have the opportunity to build trusted relationships with customers and foster brand loyalty and repeat purchasing behavior.

Pushing a sale from the first contact with a prospective customer likely won’t result in a sale. But if it does, it’s more likely to be a one-and-done purchase — and your content can do better!

How To Use Content To Move Readers Through the Sales Funnel

You can’t just write content and expect it to convert. As mentioned, you need to nurture your organic traffic leads in order to make sales. First, you need to attract prospective customers to your content by ensuring it’s optimized for search rankings. (Otherwise, interested readers won’t find it!) Not only should you be using SEO best practices and content strategies to boost your website ranking, but you should also tailor your content to meet your conversion goals.

1. Identify the Goal of Your Content

Writing informative and SEO-friendly content is a great way to boost top-of-the-funnel and middle-of-the-funnel conversion. These types of conversion include newsletter sign-ups, quiz completions, downloads, free trial subscriptions, and building an online community. Start by figuring out what you want your content to accomplish, but don’t just think about sales. Once you have a goal in mind, you can craft better content and CTAs to seal the deal.

2. Use Your Content More Than Once

Our clients who are most successful in making conversions are using the same piece of content in lots of different ways. They don’t just write a blog post, publish it, and move on. Instead, they may take key points from the article and put it in a newsletter. They may condense it down and share the essential details in a social media post. Or they might include the information in a paid ad.

By repurposing content, you’re putting your brand and products in front of multiple audiences. Someone who doesn’t regularly read your blog may find your post on social media and check out your website.

You’re also targeting users at different points in the sales funnel more effectively. For example, a blog article may be designed to offer introductory information to people who are new to your brand. Taking some of the information and repurposing it in a newsletter helps you better target customers who may have already made a purchase — or one who added your product to their shopping cart but didn’t complete the purchase.

Finally, you may be reinforcing your authority with the same prospective customer by presenting them with variations on the same information (like a blog post and a podcast). Trust and authority are much more likely to lead to sales, and repeat sales, than pushy calls to action.

3. Present the Important Info First

In the age of the internet, attention spans are shorter than ever. You have just a few seconds to catch the eye of your reader before they move on to something else. To increase the chance of a conversion from your content, you need to prioritize the information that is most important to the reader and make it skimmable.

With this in mind, we recommend writing in a pyramid style. This term means you include the key details within the first few paragraphs. Some sites even have a bulleted section highlighting the main points of the article. This way, readers can confirm that the article is relevant to their needs before they spend time reading. Further down in the content, you can include more granular details for the readers who want to spend time reading the entire article.

4. Use Visuals

Since attention spans are short, using visuals — like photos and infographics — in your articles can help keep prospective customers on your site longer, increasing the possibility of conversion. Furthermore, infographics and other visuals can help you explain complex topics without demanding that the reader digest pages of text. These visual elements can also help you highlight a CTA in a more appealing way.

We did this with our Cup & Leaf blog with so much success that we were able to increase sales directly from blog posts! The key was to make the information visually appealing and eye-catching. Some people may hang on every word about the benefits of tea, but others simply want an easy solution to a problem. As such, we designed our CTAs to focus on common issues that could be solved with a purchase of our tea — and it worked.

We prominently placed a customer pain point over an image that was eye-catching but not distracting. Next, we added a quick description of how our product could help. Finally, we included a CTA in our brand colors, and linked the image to our tea products. This made it easy for readers to buy and supported our conversion goals.

How To Make CTAs More Successful

Now that you know how content and conversions work in your overall marketing plan, you can improve your processes. Here are a few tips for making better CTAs and increasing conversions.

1. Select Color and Sizing

The color and sizing of your CTA button is important. Marketers have found that green and orange buttons perform well, but you can also choose colors that match your branding. Optinmonster has a great breakdown on the best CTA colors if you need some help. Whatever hue you choose, make sure the CTA is easy to read and doesn’t get lost on the colored background. For example, don’t use a light purple button on a dark purple background. Instead, go for contrasting colors for the information you most want to draw readers’ attention.

Make sure the size of the CTA isn’t overwhelming or too tiny. Look at your webpage on both mobile and desktop and size the button so it’s easy to see but not distracting.

2. Use Descriptive Action Words

Write in an authoritative tone by using action verbs that reflect what you’re selling. Don’t just add a button that says “go” with a link that takes users to a sign-up page.

Instead, use active and descriptive phrasing such as:

  • Sign up for our free trial
  • Join our newsletter
  • Reserve your seat
  • Download our travel guide

You can also add a sense of urgency by making your button reflect limited-time deals. Adding the word “now”, encourages users to sign up right at this very moment. You can also use a CTA for a short-term promotion like “Buy our guide for 50% off today only.”

3. Make It Visible

This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be shocked at the number of websites that don’t do this properly. Don’t hide your CTA below the fold if it’s on a main page of your site (it may make sense to place the CTA at the end of a blog post, though). Place it near the top of the page so readers can easily navigate where you want them to without having to scroll down endlessly. It’s also helpful to put the CTA button where users will see it after reading about your offerings. Since we read left to right, CTA buttons are best placed to the right or bottom of the text.

4. Utilize Different CTAs on Different Pages of the Site

Many businesses need to have different CTAs. Maybe you want to have people sign up for your newsletter and also purchase your software. When you have more than one CTA, you need to decide which ones are the most important and most relevant to different types of information.

Prioritize your CTAs by making the most important one the most visible and accessible. You can include other CTAs lower on the page or on other landing pages, depending on your products and services.

Optimize Content To Increase Conversions

When looking at success metrics for content, it isn’t just about sales. Conversions can include things like newsletters sign-ups, free trial sign-ups, and free product downloads. Many blog readers are at the top of the sales funnel, so using your blogs to exclusively drive sales will be ineffective.

Instead, use content to nurture leads and meet potential customers where they are. As your organic traffic increases, repurpose your content and craft your CTAs so that different types of readers learn about your brand.

Need help writing great content? We can help with everything from content planning and optimization to link building and blog writing. Contact us today to get more customers with our SEO-focused content marketing.

This point was well taken, as many of our MBE Group clients are global entities targeting a global audience, or are part of the global supply chain.

Several years ago, we handled a crisis firsthand, where a chemical production plant in Germany caught fire, halting production of a chemical ingredient for plastic pellets used in the creation of car and truck parts, toys, heart stents, aviation components and products for dozens of other industries. This chemical sat at the very beginning of the product supply chain, approximately four or five steps in – depending on the industry – and was critical to producing so many items.

At the time, there was fear that this plant could be shut down for six months, essentially crippling the global plastics manufacturing industry. Luckily, an alternative was found, but not before many companies went into crisis mode, which required communicating with employees, shareholders, suppliers and customers.

The bottom line was that a chemical made in a single plant in Germany affected an entire supply chain of products in multiple industries around the world, and few knew it.

At the Automotive Aftermarket Product Expo (AAPEX) show in 2019, some members of our team attended a keynote presentation by former U.S. President George W. Bush. A point he made multiple times to the audience of several thousand representatives from the world’s largest automotive replacement parts manufacturers was: “what happens in other places affects you.”

That crisis, along with much of our day-to-day work relating to current supply chain issues and other manufacturing challenges, teaches us that communicating globally requires an understanding of who your audience is, along with two essential elements: a streamlined process and consistency of message.

As a member of IPREX – one of the largest independent communications agency networks in the world – MBE Group belongs to a versatile, nimble, experienced and seamless group of more than 70 partner agencies.

Through IPREX, we gain insight on how to understand and reach local, regional and global audiences, and experience by executing marketing campaigns with our partners. In fact, during the past year, MBE Group has worked with multiple partners in the United States, as well as those in Mexico, Ireland, Spain, South Africa, China, France, Germany, England, Japan, India, Singapore and others to launch companies and products, as well as internal initiatives, such as ESG and DEI.

At the recent IPREX Annual Global Conference in Amsterdam, our Asia-Pacific regional partners conducted a session on media relations in their region. It highlighted the distinct differences between countries, as well as within each individual area. For example, The Times of India – the third-largest daily publication in the country, and the largest-selling English-language daily in the world – has more than 80 editions. Having affiliates on the ground in India can help to ensure we are hitting the right contacts at the right outlets, so messages are received by the intended audience.

So, what can you do to ensure your marketing activities hit their targets on a global level?

When you get started, pay close attention to KPIs like engagement rates. Clearly identify the content that your audience engages with so you can get a good feel for what they would like to see more of in the future.

5 Keys to Communicating Globally

1. Understand that your communication is always global

With instant access to news and social media, anyone – anywhere – can see/read what you’re saying. You cannot isolate your efforts to a single area or region. Information flows freely. Once it’s out there, it’s out there.

2. Know your audience

Are you targeting customers, employees, or shareholders? Tailor your message accordingly. If you’re talking to employees, which level? Executives or plant workers? Your executives around the world likely speak English, while many of the plant-level workers may not. If you need translations, use a reputable agency with native speakers, as opposed to software. The agencies will understand the nuances of each country.

3. Be relevant

What is relevant in Singapore may not be relevant in Japan. New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles have vastly different news interests. Extrapolate this globally to ensure that you’re providing the right message to the right audience. Connect with colleagues or affiliates in-region to ensure what you have to say matters to their audience.

4. Account for time differences

When pushing news out globally, consider the time zones. Simply blasting out a global release at 11:00 am in Detroit, when your target audience in China is asleep, likely gets lost in the inbox. Stagger the outreach to accommodate your target audience.

5. Budget

This should be an obvious consideration, but distributing news internationally carries a premium. In many cases, MBE Group uses its local affiliates to distribute releases, both to ensure impact (wire releases generally go to bulk inboxes), reduce overall cost (by approximately 75%) and maximize local relationships.

Whether you’re handling a crisis, or launching a company, product, or new initiative on a global or regional level, ensuring effective and relevant localized communications is essential. Talk to us to learn how we can help.

 

What’s more important: customer acquisition or customer retention?

This is one of the most heavily debated questions among content marketers. And if you were to ask Kristen LaFrance to weigh in, her answer would be clear: Customer retention creates predictable, recurring revenue for the company — and therefore is far more valuable than a new customer who makes a one-time purchase.

Kristen, who is Head of Resilient Retail for Shopify, believes the best customer retention strategies are those that create real human connection. In fact, Kristen argues that deep-rooted customer loyalty is the only way small businesses can compete with large conglomerates like Amazon (who will always win on price and convenience).

But how does a brand build loyal, predictable, and recurring customers? How does a company spark real conversations and provide meaningful incentives that could increase customer retention? Kristen argues that discounts, referral programs, and loyalty programs will only take you so far — instead, you need to build a brand experience that makes your customers feel connected with your company.

Customer Loyalty and Retention: 4 Strategies

What makes a customer choose you over one of your other larger competitors?

While customer retention is certainly not a new concept, the COVID-19 pandemic shed new light on the topic. At Shopify, Kristen witnessed small businesses suddenly trying to compete for online sales with Amazon. As Kristen noted throughout the episode, independent shops will never be able to beat these mega retailers at price or convenience. They could, however, beat Amazon at customer relationships.

To build a brand experience your existing customers will rally around, keep the following customer retention strategies in mind.

1. Remember That Every Piece of Content Is a Customer Touch Point

Consumers want to feel a personal connection to your brand. To transform one-time connections into ironclad customer loyalty, your company needs to be hyper-aware of every conversation, across every channel, to every single one of your customers. Believe it or not, content is one of those “conversations.”

Kristen advises that companies stop thinking about the word “content” and start thinking about the phrase “touch points.” Use blog articles to attract loyal customers, not just readers. Every support team interaction, e-commerce blast, social media marketing campaign or messaging exchange, or YouTube video is also a touch point between brand and consumer. The more you can exceed customer expectations at every touch point, the better your chances at retaining a single customer.

Look for unique ways to create unforgettable customer experiences at every touch point. For example, Kristen recently placed an order with an online retailer who donates a blanket to a person in need for every blanket sold.

When Kristen received her order, she was surprised to see a checklist of toiletries and other essentials inside. The checklist encouraged Kristen to reuse the cardboard shipping box by filling it with necessities and giving it to the next homeless person she passed by on the street.

This checklist created a memorable touch point between the brand (the blanket company) and the consumer (Kristen). If that essentials checklist wasn’t written, Kristen would have tossed the box in the recycling bin, resulting in a lost connection between brand and consumer.

To start building better brand loyalty, revisit every content channel in your arsenal. Are you missing any potential consumer touch points? For example, at MBE Group, we have our social media channels, several targeted email marketing automation sequences, internal conversations and workflows between editors and clients, a client onboarding process, a podcast, a blog, case studies, and an email newsletter, giving us numerous opportunities to create memorable experiences between our audience and our company.

2. Create a VIP-Level Membership Program

Creating subscription programs is one of the best ways to establish recurring revenue and increase the lifetime value of a customer. However, to improve your customer retention rate, subscriptions should offer much more than the convenience of a repeat purchase. The goal of a membership program isn’t just to reduce your churn rate, but to invest in deeper connections between your brand and customer, starting from the very first purchase.

When executed correctly, loyalty programs create raving fans that provide free word-of-mouth marketing. Over time, this can positively impact your bottom line by improving customer retention and income predictability, and organically generating opportunities to upsell and/or cross-sell to retained subscribers, rather than having to invest in the far less cost-effective practice of cultivating new customers more frequently.

Kristen encourages retailers to elevate their subscription offerings from a straightforward rewards program into a VIP-level, white-glove membership program. Entice loyal customers to purchase a subscription to gain members-only community access to limited content, new product previews, or special promotions.

For example, if you own a local fitness studio, you could allow VIP members to sign up for classes two hours before non-members. Or, if you own an independent candle shop, you could mail new scents and samples to membership holders at the beginning of every month.

Regardless of what category you’re in, establishing a customer loyalty program that delights your core customers (or, better yet, exemplifies how well your brand understands its customers’ needs by alleviating one of their pain points, like early-access sign-ups mentioned above).

3. Create a Brand Experience

Tactical customer retention strategies — like loyalty programs, customer surveys, and special offers — will help retain customers, but only to an extent. According to Kristen, true customer loyalty is built through a branded experience.

Kristen notes that BarkBox, the dog toy subscription service, recently went public due to capitalizing on memorable brand experiences. According to Kristen, there’s very little need to receive dog toys in the mail every month — but BarkBox made receiving those packages so fun, fur parents couldn’t live without it. Through fun packaging, unique products, and viral at-home videos, BarkBox transformed something ordinary (opening a cardboard box) into something worth remembering — which will keep customers coming back for years to come.

Similarly, the brand lore of Zappos offers dozens of examples of how they establish and uphold a unique and rewarding brand experience for every customer, from a proactive replacement of an important pair of shoes sent to the wrong address, to sending a bouquet of flowers to a customer who had undergone a medical procedure. But not every Zappos customer service story is that extreme. Mostly they’re known for their responsive and empowered agents who can provide a personalized experience and solve problems without wasting your time — and they have the testimonials to prove it.

Where could you insert a memorable experience, thereby increasing your customer lifetime value? Could you light candles at your local shop to create a branded smell when customers walk through the door? If you’re a clothing retailer, could you include a handwritten note when you ship packages to your most loyal customers? Or, if you sell craft coffee, could you include recipe cards for mocha lattes or other fun drinks with each shipment?

4. Build a Customer Feedback Loop

Don’t try to guess what your customers love about your brand experience. Instead, allow your current customers to lead the way in revising your customer retention strategy, providing first-hand feedback on what works and what doesn’t.

You can measure customer engagement and decrease churn by utilizing regular customer satisfaction surveys, sending follow-up emails, fielding customer complaints, or asking for reviews post-checkout. However, Kristen argues that customer feedback doesn’t even have to be a formal (or automated) exchange.

In fact, Kristen believes that brick-and-mortar businesses carry a competitive edge over digitally native brands in that they witness consumers interacting with their brand first-hand.

For example, brick-and-mortar businesses have a better understanding of the demographics and psychographics of their customer base, without having to ask, and know which sections of the store consumers shop first, how they might style an outfit, or which questions they ask sales associates. These interactions should directly influence your marketing strategy, product descriptions, website user experience, and other online features.

Generating these first-hand conversations is actually one of the main reasons we started the MBE Group Marketing Podcast. By engaging in regular conversations about content marketing with other content marketers, we expand our knowledge base to better serve MBE Group clients. In addition, it allows us to carry these conversations into written pieces of content, such as social captions and blog posts.

Web-based businesses benefit from the amount of customer data they are able to accumulate about their customers’ behavior, but they miss out on access to invaluable context around the customer journey – not to mention opportunities to effectively measure customer loyalty — by not creating frequent opportunities to hear from the customers themselves.

Customer Retention Starts and Ends With Your Brand Experience

Customer retention programs are the backbone of a scaling business. While many business owners can easily get lost in attracting first-time buyers, repeat customers will always carry more weight. They make recurring purchases, send referrals, and increase word-of-mouth marketing for your brand.

Building a successful customer retention strategy takes more than a few discount codes or online sales. Instead, to build a loyal customer base, you should take a hard look at your content ecosystem and customer life cycle, ensuring that every brand touch point is a memorable, joyful one. In addition, allow your existing consumers to drive your retention strategy, asking for feedback on a regular basis.

Every piece of content you write is part of your branded experience — from long-form blog posts to the copy on your website. Contact us to learn how to devise a content strategy that attracts loyal customers, and how our tried-and-true strategies for growing sites from 0 to 100,000 visitors and beyond.

Shows and events are back. Here are five things you need to do to get the most value out of them.

After more than two years, “real” trade shows, conferences and events are making a full return. Yes, many returned in 2021, but none were at a level we considered actually “back to normal.” Despite the burnout from virtual meetings – and a clear interest in returning to in-person interaction – attendance and participation were down, and many exhibitors and attendees lacked the energy and purpose they had prior to the pandemic.

The initial pandemic lockdown in 2020 caused marketers to drastically rethink how to promote their brand or products to customers, and the return to trade shows and in-person events has caused a similar adjustment. While many marketers went fully virtual, they realized that tactile and human interaction with their products, and more, their people, are essential to brand and relationship-building.

From targeted industry events and conferences to full-scale national and global trade shows, the calendar for the rest of 2022 and early 2023 is packed. It is possible to exhibit at a show every month, if you chose, which we wouldn’t recommend.

So, how do you maximize budget and choose the most important and relevant events to attend? What should you do before and during the show with so many virtual, digital, and in-person options?

1. THINK STRATEGICALLY 

Are you launching a new product or breaking into a new market? Are you targeting a specific type of customer or some media attention? Is the show product or industry-specific? Asking these questions – early, like, nine months early – will help establish anchor points on your calendar and enable proper planning and a clear vision for your approach to the event.

2. CUSTOMER FIRST

Target the events that will ensure you get consistent and relevant contact with your customers. Make sure they know you’re there and that your message to them is clear. Think about a promotional plan well in advance of the event, utilizing social media, eblasts, digital marketing and more to make your presence known.

3. GET INTERACTIVE

The booths with the biggest crowds and consistent traffic often have something cool for people to see and do. Gone are the days of simple static displays. People want to touch and experience. Incorporate VR or AR, apps, video and compelling design to get people to understand why your brand, product or company is relevant – and matters to them. Then figure out an engaging way to get that message across.

4. START EARLY

We cannot stress this enough. If you need animations, apps, or interactive displays, you need plenty of lead time. Producing high-end animations (think: Pixar, CGI, vector animations, AR or VR) can take at least 45 days to complete, minimum. For example, rendering one second of animation for use on-screen can take upwards of forty-five minutes, meaning a :30-second animation could take up to 24 hours to render for one round of edits and review.

5. ADD MORE TIME

The trade show and digital world are experiencing labor shortages. If you need that booth design and layout for an event in September, you should be planning it in June. Nearly everything related to booth builds and trade show assets is taking twice as long. And, don’t forget shipping. If that booth needs to go from Detroit to Las Vegas, you should plan for at least one extra week, given current challenges in long-haul transport.

The biggest difference between the pre-2020 shows and today is that the shows themselves have changed. Many have worked aggressively to evolve with the market and make the attendee experience paramount.

The Las Vegas Convention Center opened a massive, 1.2-million square-foot facility to support its largest events including CES and SEMA, which not only expands available floor space, but also makes it easier for attendees to get around the show with the new underground “Loop”, using electric vehicles to transport show attendees from one hall to another.

The Detroit Auto Show moved its dates to September with the intent of establishing a full indoor-outdoor event, where attendees can ride along in vehicles from several automakers on at least five different types of tracks.

MBE Group works with clients around the world, supporting them through trade shows big and small. We’ve seen it all, and can partner with you on everything from strategy to execution. If you have shows on the schedule for the fall and winter, the time to start planning is now.

It’s here! After many months of anticipation, Google has finally started to roll out the Page Experience algorithm update, which you may also know as the Core Web Vitals update, since that was the most novel — and, to many, scary — part of the update.

When you run a blog or work in SEO, a new algorithm can trigger a Pavlovian reaction of fear and dread, even before you know what the update will target. But in this post, I’m going to share five easy ways to quickly and powerfully improve your core web vitals.

Whether your site is experiencing a major traffic drop or not, it’s worth looking into these solutions!

This Update Is Actually Good News

First, a little background on this Google algorithm update. Most updates, when done right, are actually good news for site owners and Google users.

I have a 4-year-old whose primary job at this age is to try to outsmart and out-negotiate me at every opportunity. My job is to set boundaries that allow him to explore the world without overplaying his hand and creating an unsafe or unpleasant situation for him or the people around him.

Google algorithm updates are kind of like that, and their job is to keep content creators from — either intentionally or unintentionally — creating unsafe or unpleasant environments for Google users. If you’ve never parented a strong-willed kid, this metaphor may not make sense to you, but stick with me.

Like the parent of a strong-willed 4-year-old, Google is not an omnipotent monster that gets off on controlling the way you run your site and playing with your emotions (even though it may often feel that way). It’s just a machine whose only goal is to nudge content creators into making the internet (what Google feels is) the best, most enriching and enjoyable experience for all Google users.

So, instead of being scared or angry about this update, remember that Google is actually doing you a favor by giving you the opportunity to improve key aspects of your site that make it more functional and appealing to your users.

Today I’ll guide you through five easy ways to do just that.

5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Core Web Vitals

Core web vitals sound complicated and intimidating, but really what they boil down to is making sure your site loads and responds quickly, and content doesn’t jump around the screen as the site loads. All of these qualities are important for providing a pleasant user experience, according to Google.

There are a few common issues that cause sites to fail their core web vitals assessment, and these five relatively simple solutions will solve many of them.

Improvement #1: Compress Images

Google has made no secret of how seriously it considers site load speed as part of its overall quality assessment of a site. Site speed has been an important component of its ranking algorithm for years, and the emphasis on load time in Core Web Vitals only goes to show that they continue to weigh this metric heavily.

There are many components of site speed, but for many sites, the size of their images slows down the site because large file sizes require a lot of data to be downloaded from the server, which takes time. This is especially impactful for image-heavy sites.

The process of image compression removes any excess data from image files by taking away or grouping together certain parts of the image. When done properly, the image looks exactly the same to the naked eye, but much smaller to the computer loading your website. Smaller images = faster load time = happier Google.

How to compress images depends on your site itself and what CMS you’re using. The easiest way to compress images without losing visible quality is to use a WordPress plugin like Shortpixel, which will automatically compress images when they’re uploaded so you don’t have to do anything manually.

Other CMSs like Shopify and Webflow automatically compress images somewhat when they’re uploaded, but there is room for improvement. For maximum control over your image compression, you may want to use a third-party tool like TinyPNG to compress your images before uploading them.

Improvement #2: Install a Caching System or Plugin

Caching basically means allowing your computer to remember some of the site’s elements so that it doesn’t have to load the entire site from scratch each time. I’ll bet you can figure out where I am going with this: less to load = less time to load the page = happier Google.

Activating caching is easiest if your site is on WordPress. There are a variety of plugins that can do this for you, but my personal favorite is WP Rocket. It’s a paid plugin, but reasonably priced and well worth it. When I installed it on my baking blog, my mobile health score (which Google calculates based on core web vitals performance) went from somewhere in the 50s up to the high 80s — just from that one change!

If you are not on WordPress, you may need to speak to your hosting company or technical support advisor about how to set up caching for your website. It may require a small time or financial investment upfront, but it will be well worth it for the performance improvement!

Improvement #3: Remove Unused Plugins

This one is primarily for WordPress users, but while we’re on the subject of plugins, it’s important to think about what you have installed versus what you actually need to run your site successfully.

Certain plugins, or too many plugins (of any kind) will inevitably slow down your site load time, time to interactivity and content stability. In other words, they can drastically harm your core web vitals.

What you’ll need depends on your site, but here’s what you want to keep:

  • Image compression
  • Caching
  • Anti-spam (I like Askimet)
  • Security (I like MiniOrange 2-Factor Authentication)
  • Data backup (I use Vaultpress)
  • SSL (this may be able to be done without a plugin)
  • SEO (Yoast is the most commonly used, although there are other good ones — and no plugin will guarantee SEO success!)

We also see a number of other plugins on any given site that provide custom appearances and functionality, depending on the site’s purpose. There is no wrong number of plugins, but there is a wrong type.

Avoid or delete (not just deactivate):

  • Plugins that aren’t updated regularly. You can see when the last update was before downloading — if it hasn’t been updated in a month or less, skip it.
  • Plugins that aren’t widely adopted, unless it’s a very niche plugin that you have a reason to trust.
  • Plugins that are “heavyweight,” or not coded efficiently. Excess code means it takes longer to load and will slow down your site. Very old, rarely updated plugins tend to be “heavier,” and some plugins will note that they are lighter weight in their description (when you’re searching for new plugins, click the “More Details” link to view the full description of each plugin). If all else fails, run a site speed test for your website with only one plugin turned on, testing each plugin one by one, until you find the ones that are causing the biggest site speed issues.
  • Plugins that are incompatible or untested with your version of WordPress.
  • Image sliders — these always, always, always slow down your site. Some popups may also put your site speed in jeopardy.
  • Jetpack, which is infamous for slowing down site performance and conflicting with other plugins and features. Plus, you should be tracking your traffic with the industry standard Google Analytics anyway (which can be installed as header code or using their lightweight plugin).
  • Anything you don’t need or use anymore.

Improvement #4: Use System Fonts

From a site speed perspective, there are two kinds of fonts. System fonts are the common fonts that are already loaded onto most computers. Custom fonts are specialized fonts that are not already on a user’s computer when they load a website, and therefore time must be spent downloading the font before the site can be displayed.

I think you can probably connect the dots by now. The more a computer needs to download to load a site, the more time a site takes to load. So, it’s in a site owner’s best interest, from a site speed and therefore ranking perspective, to use a system font whenever possible.

Improvement #5: Implement Lazy Loading

Lazy loading is a feature that prevents elements on a webpage from loading until they are visible on the screen. That means that only a fraction of the elements on the page need to be populated for the page to be considered loaded, and the rest populate as the user scrolls.

Two of the most common elements to be lazy loaded are ads and photos, though other elements may be appropriate for lazy loading, depending on your site. These are resource-heavy elements that get your site loaded and interactive as quickly as possible.

Implementation takes different forms, depending on what you want to lazy load. For ads, reach out to your ad network to see if they have a solution or can activate this feature. For photos, your caching plugin might have an option to lazy load images, or (if your site is on WordPress) you can use a dedicated plugin like this one to lazy load images.

Improve User Experience Down to the Core

This is hardly an exhaustive list of all of the ways you can improve your core web vitals. But these are five of the most common and easily fixed conditions that slow down your website and interfere with user experience.

Ultimately, that’s all core web vitals are: measures of what Google considers to be some of the most important aspects of user experience.

Above all, you know what your users need. Customize any needed updates for your unique audience so their visit to your website is enjoyable and efficient.

In 2020, Google announced it would adjust its algorithms to factor in user experience (UX) and user interaction (UI) design into its page-ranking evaluation. What the changes mean for the industry was a key focus during a Vitamin T. webinar, “Put It To The Panel: The Future of UX & CX”. Panelist Rob Huddleston, UX/design director at Capital One, noted how a number of years ago, responsive and mobile-first designs were priorities set by Google that sent a signal to the C-suite that we need to be paying attention to the user’s experience. Google is now taking it a step further to prioritize not only how a website displays in various browsers and device screen sizes, but also how users interact and engage with web experiences and content. Huddleston continued saying, “User experience and customer experience is now a rallying cry to set a fire to organizations because Google says so.”

The need for an intense focus on UX/UI is not just hot amongst designers, but also changing conversations for SEO experts, content creators and marketing managers whose jobs it is to ensure websites are optimized for health and higher ranking on search engines. With Google changing the game, the industry has already seen global companies and large organizations invest in major enhancements to their websites – ensuring optimal appearance and enhancing how users engage with site content. For example, the CIA recently launched its new website www.cia.gov. It no longer looks like a poorly designed government website cluttered with information and an excessive amount of links requiring many clicks for the user. It’s clean and clear in conveying what the user is being asked to do on the website.

Want to know how your organization’s website will fair with the impending changes? Our website and UX design team is knowledgeable about Google’s ranking systems and can support your website audit and future redesign. Below is a list of items our team typically examines first.

Top UX Design Principles

1. User-First

Great design always centers around the user. First and foremost, ensuring your website design meets your users’ needs should be the top priority, which Google is more strongly affirming now. Humanizing your brand to connect with people always leads to a better product and brand experience.

2. Hierarchy

Elements on a web page shouldn’t carry the same weight. Certain items need to have a larger scale and others need to have a smaller scale to create a priority for your content and make it easy to scan.

(Pro Tip: Add Google Analytics or a heatmapping tool to gauge average time spent on your web page before and after design improvements to see if users are spending more time on a page with clear and clean hierarchy or getting further down the sales funnel).

3. Navigation Bar Structure

Create a structure to your website offerings in the navigation bar. Make what you offer clear and key content easy to find (with one or two clicks).

4. Consistency

The Law of Similarity is a principle meaning, “when things appear to be similar to each other, we group them together and so we think they have the same functionality.” In all design, but UX design in particular, styling elements that are similar to each other and have a similar function help with quicker user understanding. For example, keep elements that are interactive the same color and style. Group like content together. Along the same lines, make different elements actually look different. The less time users need to spend figuring out how your website works, the easier and happier they will be.

5. Short and Organized Content

Keep it short and succinct. Users do not want to read large blocks of body copy. Break out your copy into bullets or icon boxes. Use the design of your content to support the purpose of your website.

As these changes are being rolled out by Google, it’s a great time to ask for a website design budget and give leadership and stakeholders a reason to prioritize revamping your site. MBE Group offers website, UI and UX design services as well as conversion rate optimization of existing websites to support your business and online goals. Set up a time to talk with our team about your existing website needs or an entirely new build.