In order to reach your target audience, you need a very strategic content marketing plan and excellent copywriting skills. Technology is taking over the world and internet users are increasing rapidly by the day, hence the importance of digital marketing. You need a very effective digital marketing strategy to convert these internet users into customers which will result in more leads and increased profit.

It’s essential to get your content marketing strategy right as it makes a huge difference in achieving the desired result as well as a high return on investment. Hence, the need to employ a digital marketing agency who can interpret your business goals and convert it into an actionable content marketing plan that can easily be executed. Most full-service digital marketing agencies can also execute the content marketing plan, by writing copies (articles, web contents, advertising materials etc.) and distributing across several marketing channels.

Alternatively, you may decide to employ an in-house digital marketer, but here are some factors worth considering:

• Skills & Expertise: In order to carry out an effective content marketing plan, you will need lots of brains. You have to get someone with good copywriting skills, excellent social media management skills, a design genius and an aggressive digital marketer. Someone who is excellent in all the aforementioned areas is either impossible to find, very hard to keep or very expensive to hire.
• High Cost: While you might not mind paying excesses for the perfect digital marketing team, you have to keep in mind that if there is no high return on investment, the business is very likely to fail. It is not only about the salaries, you also have to consider costs of employment like hiring/recruitment cost, training cost, management, supervision, performance reviews, paid holidays, sick leave, benefits, office equipment, professional development cost etc.
• Difficulty in Finding Talent: The demand for professional digital marketers is on the increase. The best marketers are already taken by digital marketing agencies, and there’s even a shortage of skilled candidates for digital marketing roles. A shortage of talent and an increase in demand for skilled digital marketers mean it is very difficult or almost impossible to build the perfect digital marketing team.

Having mentioned all the above factors, it is worth considering few advantages of outsourcing your content marketing and copywriting to a digital agency like TopYouGo, and why it is the most profitable step for any serious business.

• Specialisation: A digital marketing agency has gone through the stress of hiring experts and they know how to select the best marketers. When you outsource your content marketing to an agency, you’re at peace knowing your business is in the hands of professionals who are skilled in digital marketing. They offer excellent copywriting services and skilled in developing the perfect content marketing plan. Their years of experience in the field enables them to know the exact digital marketing strategy to apply to your business in order to convert visitors into customers.
• Cost Effective: Outsourcing your content marketing needs to an agency also helps you save cost. You do not have to bother about recruitment cost, training cost, employee benefits, paid holidays etc. It saves you from the hassles of employ 3 or more people just for creating and implementing a content marketing strategy.
• High Return On Investment: A marketer’s biggest challenge is to prove return on investment. Outsourcing your content marketing and copywriting needs help take care of this diligently. A digital agency is filled with experienced experts who know how to get things done quickly and effectively. They are result focused and do not rely on trials or processes. An outsourced team knows how to analyze key performance indicators of a digital strategy in order to monitor ROI. They use this information to test, optimize and improve campaigns. This is very valuable and leads to a high return on your investment.
• Excellent Social Media Management Skills: The power of social media cannot be While an in-house employee might be learning on the job, a digital agency knows exactly what to do to build a strong online presence for your business on different social media platforms. They know how to generate leads through social media. One of the best ways to market your products or services is by doing it on social media. With a digital agency, you don’t have to be bothered about whether you’ll get the contents right or how you’ll create awareness on the social media. They have this covered as their social media management skill is next to none.

Outsourcing your content marketing and copywriting services to a digital agency is a very good business practice as you are left with more time to focus on other key areas of your business. Having professionals handle your business helps boost business growth and gives you a chance to compete with the likes of large corporations that have been in the game for years.

Contact us on +234 809 063 7632 to speak to one of our experts on creating a tailored content marketing strategy for your business.

After you’ve generated leads for new business, what do you do with them next? Here we talk about how to make the best first impression with prospective new customers and take the first step to developing a new relationship.

The first contact with your new lead is absolutely crucial as it is your opportunity to really sell your business and build credibility for your brand. It is good to imagine you have walk-in customers in real life and think about how you would approach them to eventually close a sale.

Design a Strategy to Welcome your Leads

Before you embark on an email marketing campaign or other data-skimming, make sure you have considered the welcome journey that will nurture them so that doing business with you would be a natural next step.

Obviously, the starting point in this exercise is to generate the leads themselves, and through our previous articles you will have discovered some excellent ways to do this. The bottom line is that you should include an online form somewhere on your website, your email campaigns, and throughout your marketing materials so that you can capture the data of interested parties.

The more information you glean from your sign-up form, the more you can target your efforts to capture them as potential clients. You want to increase and retain their engagement through the content you send them so that a relationship is developed, and to keep your business in the forefront of your prospects mind so that they are more inclined to do business with you when the time is right.

Keep your Online Forms Short and Sweet

While you want to capture as much data on your prospects as possible, this can also present a problem. The more fields there are for your leads to complete, the more likely it is that they will abandon the page without submitting the form. Remember, unless they click on SUBMIT, you haven’t generated a lead.

For that reason, it’s always best to keep your initial online form to a basic format on the basis that you can collect more data as the new lead goes through your sales funnel. When you have received the first enquiry from a new prospect on completing the first online form, you can send a second form direct to their email address, refining their requirements and finding out more about their circumstances.

That way you will be developing the relationship organically and your lead won’t feel bombarded by questions from the onset!  You can also present your questions in such a way that it makes it less cumbersome for your enquirers to complete. For example, if you’re technically-minded, you can provide sliders so that leads can indicate price range, income level or whatever you want.

If you’re not able to go for this quite sophisticated approach, you can use tick boxes or simple drop-down boxes instead. You’re trying to make it as easy as possible for your leads to give you the data you need to target your marketing efforts with more accuracy and relevance for your prospects. If you need help setting up these kind of forms, there are plenty of form builders available on the internet, many of which are offering free versions, such as Contact Form 7, Ninja Forms, and Gravity Forms.

How to Write the Perfect Welcome Email

With all the new data you have, the first step is to send an email to those who have completed your first online form. The welcome email is an important tool in digital marketing, although its true value is often overlooked.

According to research, the welcome email gets one of the highest open rates of all emails and so it’s important to use the opportunity to the absolute maximum.  It’s an important opportunity to make an excellent first impression with a prospect who has already expressed an interest in what you have on offer.

Make your Welcome Email Work for You

You can set the tone for your business in the way you express yourself in your first email to a new prospect, so make sure you get your business tone of voice right to suit your ‘personality’. Think about what you would say to a new prospect if you were face-to-face with them. Perhaps you would want them to take a closer look at your product catalogue or portfolio for example. So you can make it available to new leads in your welcome email.

Gate all your contents offered in your welcome email and give readers a clear opportunity to click to find out more, which will be this email’s call to action (CTA). Then they will click-through to the landing page where your second online form is set-up, and then you can collect more data from each further enquiry to enhance your marketing operation even more. See – How Landing Pages can help grow your business.

Set up a Generic Welcome Email to Use Again and Again

It’s a good idea not to include any time-sensitive information in your welcome email so that you are not obliged to alter it in a short time. You want to write a welcome email that you will be able to have on auto-respond with your email provider, when a new lead completes your very first online form. You don’t want to include information that needs regular updating because your email may be sent out automatically with incorrect information.

It says a great deal about your business as to how promptly you respond to interest in your products or services after all. You want to ensure that you don’t make your welcome email too long or too cluttered with call to actions all over the place, and way too much information to keep your new prospect engaged.

Above all, it’s essential that you make sure your welcome email can be easily viewed on mobile phones and tablets as well as a desktop computer. Research shows that more than half of all emails are opened on mobile devices, another reason not to be too long-winded in your welcome email.

Conclusion

The first communication you have from a new lead should kick-start your welcome strategy that will nurture your prospect until they’re in a position to transact business with you. However, once you’ve completed these steps, you have to remain consistent in your communication so that you continue to engage your prospects. By setting the scene with potential customers through your warm welcome, and by feeding them information while finding out more about them, you’ll be well on your way to developing a relationship that will last the long-haul.

If you need further assistance on bespoke digital marketing strategies or require help on implementing the tips provided here, do contact us and one of our experts will be in contact.

When used correctly, social media platforms can return more marketing value than simply brand building and networking with existing customers; you can also use sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to generate leads to convert into sales.

Furthermore – possibly the best aspect of generating leads via social media is that it is cost-effective and produces measurable results. Research has shown that social media marketing can increase your sales revenue by up to 24% when utilised for lead generation.

Here we take a look at the various ways you can turn your social media marketing campaigns into lead generating machines and ultimately, make more sales.

Starting with the basics, you have to consider lead generation as a way of gathering intelligence on your existing customers and potential ones. The areas you want to concentrate on are as follows:

• What kind of topics your target market has an interest in
• What service or products you provide that you can sell to them
• What their pain points are in terms of why they would buy your products or services and what problems they address
• How you can convert their interest into a sale

In the digital era, lead generation is all about content in its various forms: email opt-ins, video marketing, paid advertising campaigns, blogs and gated white papers, as per our previous article – How to use Content to Generate New Business Leads.

It is now easy to collect the data you need by drawing your target audience in with compelling and relevant content in all media formats and simply ‘gating’ it to encourage providing information to access the document or video. You can keep it simple and just request a name and current email address or you can perhaps ask product or service-related questions to get an idea of what they’re interested in. It’s always best to keep your online forms simple, without cluttering it up with too many questions.

The Role of Social Media Networks

So, how exactly do social media platforms come into play when it comes to lead generation?

Well, when you consider that 40% of people spend more time networking on social media than they do face-to-face, you can be pretty certain that your target market will be amongst them. All you have to do is pick the right social media channel for your business.

Facebook

Facebook has evolved considerably in terms of its advertising power. Changes made to its algorithm allow users to generate leads through paid ad campaigns which can be extremely budget-friendly compared with the more mainstream option of Google AdWords.

However, you don’t necessarily have to spend any money to generate leads on Facebook. You can run a contest to attract a lot of attention and shares while generating more email addresses for your CRM database. Give away your products or services to the winner of a simple raffle-type competition and you’ll get a wealth of responses. The only downside is that your leads won’t be qualified and that there’s a chance an element of them will only be after any freebies on offer!

It’s worth putting plenty of content on your Facebook page so that it’s more like a website. There should be more of a purpose behind your profile than just to build your brand and so it’s a good idea to put a call to action somewhere to encourage more than just ‘likes’ to your page.

Twitter

Twitter cards were introduced in 2013, making lead generation on Twitter a whole lot easier to achieve. Twitter Cards allow you to attach rich media like photos and videos that drive traffic directly to your website. When you Tweet a link to your website content, your card is attached making it easier for you to engage your audience and get them to see your website.

There are different Twitter Cards available from the basic Summary Card through to the Player Card, to which you can attach video, audio and media files. You can get plenty of help developing your lead generation campaigns from Twitter direct via their manual, Getting Started Guide. You can also use Twitter’s extremely useful analytics tools to find out in real-time just how your campaigns are running.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is considered the best social media platform for B2B advertising and because it specifically caters for networking professionals, it’s a natural fit for lead generation. You can now link your LinkedIn account with your Twitter account and post on both platforms simultaneously.

The best way to generate interest and ultimately traffic to your website using LinkedIn is by publishing interesting content using the network’s authoring tool. When you publish an article, blog piece or information about a special offer, always place a call to action at the bottom of your piece to encourage engagement.

Not only should your piece of content warrant sharing within LinkedIn, you can link to it from other networks like Twitter, as mentioned above and also by putting the link manually on Facebook too. In essence LinkedIn provides you with the opportunity to have your content hosted somewhere other than your website.

The other reason creating and publishing your own unique content on LinkedIn is so effective for lead generation is that the network regularly promotes pieces to its 400 million users, according to the fields they’re working in which can connect you directly with your prospects.

Instagram

Instagram is probably the least developed tool for lead generation among its social media counterparts. However, it’s still possible to generate leads when you keep it visual. Instagram is a sharing network for photos and videos principally and users can share and comment on the posts that catch their eye.

If you want to generate leads, you need to read and respond to any comments to garner further engagement. Instagram is also a great platform for short video clips which, if you’re entertaining and creative, it is relatively easy to generate interest that can go viral. Not only is Instagram great for brand building and really getting your name in front of your prospective client base, it’s really effective as a tool to engage your audience and turn them into clients.

The good news is that you don’t have to do this all by yourself, you can employ the services of a digital marketing agency like ours to help you manage your social media pages adequately, and at a very resonable fee.

If you need further assistance on bespoke digital marketing strategies or require help on implementing the tips provided here, do contact us and one of our experts will be in contact.

This is where digital marketing comes in. In order to benefit from this large market, you would need to hire digital marketing experts so they can use their vast experience in creating awareness for your business with the best digital marketing strategies.

The major goal of digital marketing is to boost your business online and engage your target audience. Now you may ask “How do I achieve this goal?” This shouldn’t be the problem. Your major focus should be on how to choose the best digital marketing agency for your business. These agencies would lift the burden off your shoulders so you can focus on the core services you offer.

These digital marketing agencies analyze your business and device a digital marketing strategy that would catch the attention of your target audience and seek prospects out of them.

One effective way to boost your business online is by building strong social media presence and sharing regular links to the company’s website and its new products, features and news.

A digital marketing expert knows how to create captivating contents and how to keep your customer base committed to you. It is not enough to have quality contents as these contents need to penetrate the digital world and attract more customers. A good digital marketing agency knows the right strategy to use in marketing your contents to your target audience, and how to generate new leads using contents.

Your social media pages also have to be engaging and not left to die off. When contracting a digital marketing agency, make sure they have the ability to engage existing and prospective customers. They should also build active interaction between people and the company through these social media pages. This will boost your business and help you understand your customers and what they look forward to from your company.

You can also use digital marketing to boost your return on investment (ROI), drive sales and further improve the revenue of your business. Instead of investing millions of naira on TV, radio and print adverts, investing in digital marketing helps you work within budget and save your company a whole lot of money. Running an email marketing campaign would also help your business reach more prospects which could translate to sales, awarenes and engagement.

The success of each campaign can be monitored and this would help you know what you are doing right and what you are wrong. You can take note of these observations and make changes where necessary so as to reach more people with future campaigns and improve sales.

In summary, digital marketing is one of the most effective ways to boost your business online and engage your target audience. As I mentioned earlier, the digital space is the largest market you can think of and there are so many things to benefit from digital marketing. So a business should hire the best digital marketing agencies so as to realize its goals with ease. Doing all of these without the help of digital marketing experts might lead to the loss of prospects that would have been so easy to gain in the first place. So make sure you choose only the best digital marketing agency that you can fully depend on for the growth and success of your business.

These days, you can use content to attract a wider audience to your products, goods or services and catalyse growth which will ultimately improve your profit margins significantly.

However, there’s good content and bad content and there are also different kinds of content serving specific purposes, depending on the platform you’re publishing them on. Here, we will take a look at how you can maximise your marketing return on investment (ROI) through smart use of high-quality content to achieve measurable results.

Know your Target Audience

This is the most important step before implementing any kind of content marketing strategy. It’s worth taking the time to compile a profile of your client demographic with as much detail as possible, including lifestyle choices, hobbies and any other random fact you may have noted about the individuals or companies you do business with.

This allows you to generate content that will appeal directly to the demographic most likely to buy into your product or service. The objective here is to create a community among your existing and prospective clients or customers, where you become the go-to source for whatever you have on offer.

Use ‘Gated’ Content to Grow your Prospect Database

Once you’ve established what kind of content is going to be of genuine interest to your clients and prospects, be it a special promotion or an offer or a new development in your sector, you can start to ‘gate’ certain pieces so that you can collect data.

Most people who have worked in sales and marketing know that the secretary of a prospect is referred to as the ‘gatekeeper’. They are the ones who determine who will or will not be passed through to speak directly to the person the caller is trying to reach. In other words, they ‘qualify’ every caller by taking contact details and finding out the reason for the call.

With content you can do something very similar, particularly if you have written a juicy white paper or industry report. You have to ensure your content serves a purpose to your prospects. Make it interesting, engaging and compelling enough for them to want to read what you’re producing.

Then you can host your document on your website or landing page and let everyone know it’s there by emailing the download link to your database, tweeting or posting links on your social channels or running a small AdWords campaign.

Before a download is permitted, the visitor is encouraged to complete a form with whatever information you want to record, like email address and phone number. Try not to ask too many questions and most importantly, make the document something that’s really worth your prospects’ effort.

Using Links in your Blog Articles is Essential for Good SEO

Creating good backlinks to your website is good SEO practice and it encourages more traction among your visitors who will stay longer to find out more, thereby increasing the possibility of turning a prospect into a sale.

You can also link to other non-competing businesses in your sector to increase your profile in the search engine results, particularly if it’s an organisation or company you refer to in your blog pieces or news articles.

It’s important to make all your links relevant so that Google doesn’t flag your pieces for bad SEO. If you’ve written a blog about a certain aspect of your business, that’s a great opportunity to link to another piece on your website along similar lines.

It’s always a good thing to quote and link to industry or government sources in your pieces and write about any current and relevant consumer or manufacturer surveys for your field, as Google looks favourably upon those types of links, boosting your position in its rankings.

Create a Regular Newsletter for your Existing and Prospective Clients

The best way to grow a community among your client database is with regular communication with a newsletter. It’s also the perfect opportunity to summarise and link to any articles you’ve written that month to generate more traffic.

This way you can reach out to those prospects that have shown an interest in your content and encourage them to read more. Whilst engaging your prospect’ interests directly with your blogs, articles and white papers, you will also be establishing yourself as an authority in your field and they’re going to be even more likely to do business with you.

You can publicise your newsletter through your social channels too, as with all your other content, by posting an enticing sentence that fits the character limit, together with a download link. You can choose to gate your newsletter and encourage subscribers and followers too.

Make sure you are consistent if you decide to produce a regular newsletter. Repetition is key when it comes to delivering your marketing message.

Always have a Call to Action (CTA)

Whatever you write and publish for your clients and prospects, make sure you end with a specific call to action. If you want to promote a special offer for example, include information on how readers can take up your offer in the conclusion, and also encourage them to act immediately.

Don’t go overboard and have several CTAs littered through everything you write and publish – just have one and make it simple, direct and compelling enough to encourage a click-through.

If you aren’t the Best Writer, find someone who is!

Google is continually updating its algorithm to favour well-written, informative and current information over keyword-stuffed, meaningless text walls. If you want to get to the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs), you have to keep your content fresh, engaging and relevant.

A good writer is a specialist in the content marketing arena and knows how to navigate algorithm updates and approved SEO practices to ensure you get the highest rankings. If you don’t feel up to the challenge, hiring someone with the knowledge makes enormous business sense.

The content your business produces represents you and indicates your level of professionalism (and success) in your chosen field. Whereas in the past, it was the tech-heads that commanded the highest salaries, these days you’ll find out that it’s in fact the writers that are at the top of the food chain – and with very good reason too.