Category: Content Marketing

So, you’ve spent a lot of time and effort in developing your company’s new app, and it’s now ready for launch. That’s fantastic! However, that doesn’t mean your work is done. Far from it, in fact.

Now the question becomes: How to make your app stand out from the millions of others available in both the iOS App Store and Google Play?

There are plenty of channels to market an app, and most serve different – and useful – purposes. Yet, as any seasoned marketer would tell you, if it’s notoriety and engagement you are after, you can’t leave video out of the equation.

A well-crafted video can showcase your app in action, boost engagement through clever storytelling, and ultimately lead prospects toward a conversion. Maybe you enlist the help of a skilled video production company to help you along, or perhaps you decide to go at it yourself!

The important thing, though, is that in today’s marketing landscape, a great video is a must to help apps build that vital early-adopters core-audience. And today, we are going to discuss a few things you should know as you work on your own.

Best Types of Videos to Promote Apps

The first thing you are probably wondering is, what kinds of videos work best when promoting an app? Well, even though app stores do present some restrictions in this regard (more on that later,) there are three types of videos that tend to do a great job:

• Demo videos: Videos showing your app in action are probably the first thing that comes to mind – and for good reasons. Demo videos give you a great way to give your target audience a glimpse of what you offer. They usually focus on running viewers down the list of your apps most prominent features.

• Explainer videos: Another hugely effective type of video to market an app. These are short pieces that describe your piece using storytelling to underline its key features and benefits. Explainer videos are also great at conveying complex apps or new services that could be harder to grasp with other videos.

• Video ads: a good ol’ ad can bring something different to the table, as they often appeal to emotion rather than features. A video ad for an app is more of a statement, as it also puts your company’s voice in the spotlight.

For a few more examples, take a quick look at some app videos online. You’ll quickly realize that most of them fall in some of the categories above. From displaying what happens on screen to using animation to bring attention to a specific feature, app videos mostly stick to one of these three types.

Why? Well, to put it simply, because they work so well.

Videos & App Stores

App stores are the obvious go-to spot to deploy your app videos.

After all, they are where most of your audience will come from, and are designed to facilitate conversions and get people to install your app. So, it’s only natural to prioritize them as the central spot for your video.

Since it’s highly likely your app will be available for either iOS or Android (or both), let’s take a look at the things you should keep in mind to use videos on those platforms.

There are three important differences in which the two major app stores handles video content:

• Video in search results: the iOS App Store will autoplay your app video in mute when it appears in a search, regardless of the device’s orientation. Google Play only displays the video’s thumbnail and requires your audience to click it for the video to play.
• Video on product pages: Google Play only allows one video per app in the product’s gallery, and once more, the user has to hit play to watch it. The iOS Store, on the other hand, allows for three videos, and these are set to be auto played when users put them in focus.
• Videos’ contents: all videos uploaded to the iOS App Store are approved manually by Apple. That means you have to follow their guidelines, such as the need for device-specific videos (for different iPhone models and iPads) that only show captured footage of your app and with specific durations. Google Play doesn’t restrict anything, though it does suggest things like shooting videos in landscape and showing Android devices and UIs.

As you begin planning and creating your videos, you should make sure to go over these differences and learn them by heart – doubly so if your app has both iOS and Android versions! After all, they can severely impact the way your video shapes up.

App Video Production Tips

As you look into making awesome videos for your apps, you should be aware of a few key elements and how they should come into play. And this applies even if you enlist the help of a production company to make your video!

Knowing these things will help you shape the process better and make sure you get exactly what you want for your app.

Duration

Your app video’s length is already somewhat limited by the stores’ guidelines, so you might as well stick to them. Also, even though Google Play is more flexible about it, it’s best if you keep your videos under 90 seconds to avoid overwhelming your audience.

Script & Storyboard

You might think that a video this short doesn’t need that much preparation, but you’d be wrong. You should treat these app videos as any other piece of content in your video marketing strategy – Meaning that you should work on a script and storyboard fleshing out the video’s structure, information, and scenes.

Branding

As with any other promotional material, you want your brand to be present throughout your app videos. This means that you should include your colors, logo, name, and set the overall tone to match your company’s branding throughout the entire piece.

Content

Whatever it is your app does, there are three essential components you’ll want in your app videos.

First, there’s the call to action, which encourages people to install your app. Then, you should always include where people can get it – even if you’re using the video in the same store where from where they can install the app. Finally, work on an eye-catching thumbnail, as it will serve as some eye candy wherever the platform doesn’t allow autoplay.

It Doesn’t End with the App Stores…

Believing that your app’s promotion begins and ends with app stores is a mistake you should avoid. Video opens up a lot of opportunities to grab people’s attention and generate buzz around your app, so you should implement them all throughout your marketing funnel.

From using them on landing pages to embedding them in email campaigns and sharing them on social media… There’s plenty of benefits to be reaped from an awesome app video.

Also, I’d also recommend you to upload your vid on platforms like YouTube and Vimeo – Something you’ll probably have to do if you are publishing your app on the Play store.

Lastly, it is also worth remembering that you shouldn’t create your app’s video in a vacuum; they should be a piece of your larger marketing push!

The right app video can be a powerful addition to any marketing effort and works amazingly in tandem with other elements of your strategy. They can bring your app a lot of visibility and awareness while helping to boost SEO, engagement, and overall interest…

All things that will contribute to your app’s success!

They said email would become obsolete with the rise of faster means of global communication. Yet, look at where email is right now. The number of emails sent and received by businesses and is expected to continue to grow even beyond 319 billion by 2021. Companies around the world are investing heavily in their email marketing strategies and growing their email lists, all for the chance to increase customer engagement, boost brand loyalty and trust, drive traffic, and of course, capitalize on repeat business in the process. For a recruiter, Email marketing can be a very effective tactic to reach potential candidates. When it comes to professions in high demand you will need all the help you can get.

By combining email marketing with promotions and stellar content, and by integrating personalization into the strategy, forward-looking brands take their companies to new heights of success rather quickly – but only if they manage to get people to sign up to the newsletter in the first place.

As you might have guessed from the title, social media management and marketing is one of the best ways to achieve this goal. Let’s take a look at some of the most effective ways to build your email list through social media.

Host giveaways and promotional campaigns

There’s no denying that people love free stuff. In fact, #giveaway and  #discount are some of the most popular hashtags on social media. Offer something for free, advertise it extensively, and chances are that you will get a lot of people interested in your brand and products in a very short amount of time. So naturally, one of the greatest ways to get people to sign up to your email list is to host an occasional giveaway across all of your SM channels. This tactic is more about acquiring quality email addresses (meaning getting quality leads), instead of getting thousands of new subscribers.

Now, there are numerous ways you can host a social media giveaway, and even though growing your email list is your no.1 goal, you should outline other key goals as well. The simplest way to get people to share their email address with you is to have them sign up for your newsletter to be able to participate. Make sure your promo products are valuable enough to spark interest in the community, though!

Take a look at this small coffee shop and their way of using incentives to promote their newsletter and build their email list on social media:

By offering discount codes to their subscribers, they’re encouraging their followers to not only join their mailing list but also continue to purchase their products. Note that discount codes are also great because of their universal value and flexibility. That way, your subscribers will get a great deal while also being able to choose the product on their own.

Use CTAs on your profiles

Calls to action should be an integral part of your overarching digital marketing strategy, and they should be an integral part of your email and social media strategies as well. According to a study, using CTA words such as share, please, like and now in your Facebook posts can almost double their effectiveness. 

In the case of incentivizing social media followers and audiences to subscribe to your mailing list, you want to place CTAs strategically on your social media profiles, as well as social media content. What this does is it drives traffic to your landing pages and free downloads. Take a look at the way this digital marketing agency uses Twitter to encourage their followers to visit their website and download a free eBook:

Of course, the only way to access the free material is to join your mailing list, so make sure that the CTA as well as the material are compelling and offer true value to the consumer – this will also help you build customer loyalty. When you create a free download that solves a unique problem your customers are facing, and when you promote it on social media through regular posts and CTAs, you’re effectively raising your chances of obtaining quality email addresses. After all, the people who download these items are showing a genuine interest in your brand.

Listen in on the chatter on social media

In the ever-evolving social media world, knowledge equals power. If you are to refine your content and your entire approach to social media engagement and communication in an attempt to inspire more email opt-ins, you need to act on deep industry insights and actionable data. This is why comprehensive social mention monitoring is so important nowadays, as it gives growth-oriented businesses the insights they need to tailor their messages and posts to the current trends and climate on social media. Most importantly, monitoring what is said on social media allows you to tune in on the online chatter, and discover what moves and motivates your target audience. In fact, in Australia, the brand image of a company is so important that there are companies in all major cities specialized in this field, such as this brand agency in Melbourne.

It’s these types of insights that will give you an edge over the competition, and most importantly, help you optimize your content, CTAs, and advertisements to promote your newsletter in the most effective way possible. Listen to the conversations about your brand and industry on social media, collect the data, and create actionable reports to boost your email marketing strategy as a whole.

Use Facebook and Insta stories to promote your newsletter

Facebook and Instagram Stories represent a social media goldmine for businesses that know how to leverage their unique features to reach their marketing goals and win repeat business. As a matter of fact, half of the businesses on Instagram create at least one Instagram story a day. What’s more, one-third of the most viewed Instagram stories are created by business accounts. In the case of email marketing, Stories represent the perfect platform to advertise your newsletter and get people to hop over to your site, and subscribe. You just need to get creative to make it work.

Successful SM Stories boast captivating visuals, branded elements, and of course, compelling content to incentivize social media audiences to follow a link to a certain page. To gain their full attention, though, be sure to tease certain products or services. Give them a glimpse of what’s to come in your Story, and then emphasize how joining your newsletter will give them instant access to its features, or keep them up to date with the latest news regarding the product.

Boost sign-up rates with live SM events

Live social media events, much like Stories, have the power and potential to raise brand awareness and help business leaders achieve numerous social media goals. For example, Facebook Live generates 35% more engagement than regular videos. And much like Stories, live events can help you boost sign-up rates. But you need to make it worth the customers’ time. You’re not doing live events to sip coffee and have a chat, you’re doing them to pass on knowledge and relevant insights, showcase products, or tease the audience about the future of the brand.

The main portion of your live event should be geared towards delivering value to the audience and gaining their trust. At the end of the event, you will offer in-depth summaries of the topics you’ve covered, neatly wrapped up in free downloadable content. Incentivize people to grab their free summaries by heading over to your site and joining your email list.

Wrapping up

Email marketing and social media are two complementary digital marketing tools that need to build each other up over time, and with the help and guidance of an experienced marketing expert. With these tips in mind, go ahead and use your social media presence to inspire global audiences to join your mailing list and take your brand forward.

In the fast world of social media, it is important that you know your audience and understand what they are looking for when it comes to content, entertainment, and information. Many people think that the main purpose of social media posts should be to sell. This is far from the truth. All you need to achieve is getting people to want to find out more about you and your business. Simply put; social media is a great way of building meaningful relationships with your niche. Below I will give you simple tips on what type of content will do well on each platform; Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.  

Your First Job; Stop Them Scrolling

When it comes to social media users, you have to understand that people have a very short attention span. Exactly eight seconds, according to some researchers. There is also a lot of content on every platform, and you will have to grab the attention of your audience if you want them to stop scrolling. That is why video content does so well on most of the platforms. You have to get creative and have an engaging headline that will get them to stop and want to listen.

Your Second Job: Entertaining

People are not looking to buy anything when they are browsing social media sites. All they want to do is get inspiration, tips, and get entertained. That is what so many small and medium sized business owners get wrong. You will have to create content that is entertaining, informative, useful, and educational. Videos are great for personal branding. Giving people something to talk about and discuss, jumping on a popular topic is better than blatantly advertising your event. 

Your First Job; Entice Them

It is important that you include a call-to-action that creates the connection. It doesn’t have to be a sales pitch; simply something about engagement. When you create “value posts”, which means that you are giving out some helpful information, you can ask questions. You can also get people to contact you. However, be careful; when you are adding a “call-to-action”, you should not ask people to like or share your content openly, as social media sites will reduce your post’s visibility. 

Your End Goal; Add Them To Your Sales Funnels

The main purpose of social media is to add people to your sales funnels and follow up the initial contact. This doesn’t mean that you should be sending your signup links to every page possible. You will have to find a clever way of getting people to contact you and want to find out more. For example, you can mention in a comment that you have a free guide that answers their specific question. Once they are in your sales funnel, you an automatically nurture the relationship. 

What Content Does Well On Twitter

Twitter is one of the fastest platforms out there. The lifespan of a post is just a few seconds. You will need to ensure that the first impression is the best possible. Twitter is also one of the platforms where curated content (other people’s posts and news articles) do well. At the end of the day, people want to get the best information possible as quickly as possible. If your feed is full of valuable content, they are more likely to follow you and get to see other posts. Twitter is also a hashtag-driven platform, and you will have to do your hasthag research to reach the right audience.

Facebook Marketing Tips

Facebook pages used to make a killing a few months back. It was when the company discovered that they were giving away too much free traffic when page visibility across the board took a hit. You really need to get a group set up. Facebook groups are still doing great, and you will need to make the most out of the engagement in the beginning. You can grow a group faster than a page, and there will be a great number of people who want to have a personal relationship with you and want to connect with you and your brand. Giving value is a must, though. Facebook groups with regular live videos and training units do really well. 

LinkedIn Content That Gets the Engagement

LinkedIn is one of the strangest social media platforms out there, and only a few people understand how it works. The rule of thumb is that the more engagement the post gets in the first few minutes, the more chances it will have to go viral. If nobody engages with it, it will get buried. A good tip is to tag people you think will comment on your post, who might be interested in the topic or happy to give their opinion. Infographics also do great on Instagram. 

Pinterest Post Tips 

Pinterest, just like Instagram is a visual platform. People are looking for inspiration and content for their posts. The good news is that everything (including videos) you pin will link back to your original post on your website. Just like on LinkedIn, infographics do really well on Pinterest, and they have the best chance to go viral, if you are not in the design niche. Of course, if you are selling products, you will need to feature them on related boards and create collections. However, if you are in the coaching and consulting business, for example, you can still post your PowerPoint slides and your infographics and get loads of traffic. 

Instagram Posts and Marketing Guide

It is important that you consider the demographics of Instagram. You might think that it is full of young female fashionistas, but in fact there are more young men on it than women. Nonetheless, you will need to entertain your followers and give them something to look forward to. If you shy away from IGTV and Instagram lives, you will never stand out. You will need to overcome your own misconceptions and put yourself out there. Short video articles also do really well on Instagram. You can turn your existing blog posts into engaging videos. 

Social media platforms change every day. Algorithms change every couple of weeks, and you have to consider your audience to make content stick and achieve your marketing goals. Automation is great, but it doesn’t replace manual engagement. Make sure that you choose a platform your audience is most likely to be present on, and focus on providing value before delivering the sales pitch. 

About the author:

Laura Farkas runs LMNts Marketing, a full service sales funnel agency. She works hands-on with business owners to ensure that they are able to achieve success through digital marketing. She works with UK and international clients in every niche, tailoring the sales funnel service to their needs.

When browsing through websites that offer services and products, you may notice that many have blogs that provide information on topics related to their industry. These can sometimes take the focus away from the actual products and services being sold but can still be informative pieces for the user.

From an SEO perspective, creating regular blog posts for your website is essentially a no-brainer. Not only does creating blog posts keep your content up-to-date and keep users on your site for longer, but it can also help you to target additional long-tail keywords and phrases that you wouldn’t necessarily target for the core products or services for your website.

For example, if you sold mountain bikes you may target terms such as ‘mountain bikes’, ‘off-road’ bikes for your main product page. Terms such as ‘best tyres for mountain bikes’ could be targeted for a blog, however. As a result, you’re targeting a key term that’s still relatable to your website and it can drive additional traffic to your website.

Blogging for your website is important and there are additional SEO efforts that you can do to give your blog a little extra push in the rankings and bring in even more traffic. Below, we outline the reasons why you should put in this extra effort to optimise your blogs for your website.

Can blogging actually help your SEO strategy?

Any digital agency manchester based will tell you that it can. Although it’s worth noting that having a blog isn’t itself a ranking factor to help your website rank high. Instead, it’s a feature that can contribute to helping your website rank higher as it supports the efforts of the ranking factors you need to position high in search engines. When you create a blog that includes informative and well-researched content, it can be a great addition to your SEO strategy. Here’s how:

1. Blogging keeps your website up-to-date and fresh

If you ever came across a website and realised that the content that you were reading was out-of-date, it’s unlikely that you’ll continue to trust it as a resource for information. It’s likely the website has been neglected or it has gone out of business, which shows there’s no dedication to keeping the website running or informative. 

This is a big no-no from a Google point of view. They don’t want to provide their users with out of date information so they’ll simply rank websites higher who are updating their content and keeping their website informative for users searching around the topic. Applying fresh content to your site is one of the search algorithms that Google considers as a ranking factor. Blogging is a perfect way to do this considering there won’t be many reasons to update your homepage, for example.

2. Users will stay on your website for longer

The main aim for Google is to provide their users with websites that answers their query the best through search results. This means, if a user clicks the first website to a query and then immediately goes back to the search results, this indicates to Google that the website wasn’t useful for the search query. Alternatively, if the user stays on the website for a long time then it suggests that it’s really useful. 

Whilst it’s not indicated by Google that dwell time is a definite ranking factor, they have suggested that it’s something they keep an eye on. This is why blogs are useful as it’s likely to have plenty of content that the user will read through keeping them on the page for longer. Particularly when blog posts are open to having more comprehensive and longer information as it’s been researched that pages with longer content are likely to rank better when they have around 2000 words.

3. You can target longer-tail keywords

Whilst it’ll be great to rank for the service that your company specialises in, you need to be realistic considering there are probably 1000’s of other companies also specialising in a similar service. This makes targeting the keywords that you want to far more competitive and harder to rank. This is why the option to target long-tail keywords is a good addition to your SEO strategy as the keywords will be more niche and easier to target. 

It’s also an extremely important aspect of your SEO strategy to target longer-tail keywords as many search terms now include an average of 4 or more keywords. The reason why blogs are so beneficial to target long tail keywords with is because they’re easy to embed within your content compared to your service/product pages. So “best tyres for mountain bikes” will be perfect to fit into the title “what are the best types for mountain bikes when travelling off-road?”.

Whilst this won’t attract as many searches as “mountain bikes”, they will still be attractive for audiences that are suitable to your industry. As they’re easier to target, there’s a better chance of claiming position 1 and attracting more traffic compared to positioning 20 for a higher search volume term.

4. There’s the opportunity for internal linking

Another important aspect of SEO is gaining links and internal links. Internal links are easy to get considering you can generate them yourself. Internal linking on your website helps to creating a website structure and an easier user experience.

Whilst you’ll find opportunities to internal link through your main pages, blogging provides endless opportunities to internal link elsewhere. As more pages increase from blog topics, the easier it is to link other pages with each other.

As you do so, providing anchor links in the text helps Google to understand what the page links to – increasing the strength of your target keywords.

Make sure you optimise your blog posts

Having a blog on your website can be one of the most powerful tools in your SEO kit. Publishing blog posts regularly will help to strengthen the authority of your website and influence your overall ranking. So, next time you’re writing a blog post think about the optimisation opportunities that you have and enhance your website’s potential.

Over the years, the paradigms of online and digital marketing have experienced various shifts. This signifies that if one strategy worked well for you last year, it might not work for you this year given the ever-shifting trends and advanced tactics.

Sure some tactics helped you build a reputable and upright position in the market, but it might not help you achieve your ultimate goals. As a business, you need to keep up with the changing digital marketing trends and advancements.

There is no doubt that you are attracting the customer base and generating leads to run your business, but these two things will not expand the sales funnel, and you might not attain the optimal ROI with them.

In this highly saturated market, you can generate leads by building an intimate and trusting relationship with your target audience. This is to portray to them that you are the optimal choice for their needs.

To stay on the radar and expand the business, you need to be ubiquitous and focus on six top digital marketing trends of today such as;

Relevancy at the Top of Mind

Long gone the times when you had to win the race of having maximum email addresses and leads to become the hunter of the market and your relevant niche because it does not seem to work in 2019.

Today, people demand relevance and intimacy, and these things will help you become the leader of the highly saturated markets.

As a business, you must be thinking about generating huge revenues, and that is possible by creating an intimate and relevant relationship with your audience.

Relevancy signifies that you offer the right solution at the right time to the right person.

Attention Is Coinage

If you fail to capture the attention of your target audience, consider yourself out of the game right away.

It will not work even after investing hefty amounts in marketing and advertising because attention is way more expensive than currency.

The reason for this expensiveness is its high demand and less supply to the business given the high competitive natures.

So, once you capture the attention of your target audience, take hold of it because only then, you can win their money! 

There was a time when penetrating different markets signified expanded marketing, but today, you need to penetrate the market at the right time with the right solution to the right people.

Try To Be Tai Lopez

Yes, we are talking about the guy who is an advisor, investor, consultant, and financial planner of over 20 multinational businesses and that guy seems to be everywhere with his mastered skills. 

He has the skills to reach the target audience with such a coup that he defines the meaning of being pervasive or ubiquitous.

By ubiquitous, there is nothing about being in front of the public but being in front of the people who are the leads for the business.

This perfect combination of ubiquitous and relevance will earn you top of the mind position, which signifies that your target audience trusts you for providing the value of their money.

Go Multi-Platform

Dominating one channel is never enough. You can understand this with the fact that people on YouTube cannot see what you post on Facebook, and people on Facebook will not know about your web position.

Now, we understand that businesses cannot afford to create different content for each platform so, devise the content and re-purpose it as per the channel.

For instance, if you have created a vlog, you can re-purpose it into an article and upload on the website, re-purpose it into a podcast and upload it on Facebook, etc.

Later, you can take the fragments of this content to develop the micro-videos or social media posts.

Evolving Of Marketing Funnel

A step-by-step marketing funnel is old-school because your target audience probably has experienced it a gazillion times.

To expand the business channel, you need to stand out and create a marketing funnel which ensures a real-time performance along with trust-building and experience. Today, the audience depends on you for taking them to the ultimate step.

There was a time when countdown timers and scarcity made a big hit, but today, you need to engage your audience with the relevant content that is at their engagement and awareness level at the right time.

This step will build the trust among your audience, and you will experience the expansion of marketing funnel.

Invisible ROI Is Integral

Sales and lead generation were optimal to revise some years ago, but today, the ad spent for brand awareness are bringing an ultimate value.

However, this does not imply that generating leads isn’t essential, but you need to develop the audience base rather than being sale’sy for them.

If you don’t focus on developing the audience and keep investing in lead generation, there will be an expansion of ad investment, but the conversation rate will go down the hill.