Facebook & Instagram introduce new user tools to track time spent on the apps

Both platforms are rolling out an activity dashboard and new features to help users manage how much time they spend looking at their phones. The post Facebook & Instagram introduce new user tools to track time spent on the apps appeared first on Marketing Land.

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You need 23 keywords in a blog post to rank well. Not.

Contributor Jessica Foster debunks keyword density myths and other SEO content misconceptions. The post You need 23 keywords in a blog post to rank well. Not. appeared first on Marketing Land.

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The ultimate guide to HTTP status codes and headers for SEO

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How to Increase Profits by Focusing on Customer Retention Strategies

There’s a common misconception that businesses need to acquire new customers if they want to make more money.

Getting new customers is obviously beneficial and can help your business grow. But that’s not the only way to boost your profits.

Focusing on customer retention is a much more viable and cost-effective marketing strategy.

In fact, it will cost you six to seven times more money to acquire a new customer than it will to retain an existing one.

Not only is retention cheaper than acquisition, but it also has a very high ROI. Research shows that you can increase your profits anywhere from 25-95% just by increasing your retention rates by 5%.

Imagine how much more money you’ll make if you increase those retention rates by 10% or even 20%.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying you should completely ignore your acquisition efforts. But if you are looking for ways to market your company on a budget, it’s in your best interest to focus on your existing customers.

Take a look at these loyalty statistics for ecommerce brands:

As you can see, customers who have made multiple purchases with a brand have a higher add-to-cart rate and conversion rate than new shoppers.

These customers also generate more than six times the revenue per session than new shoppers.

So it only makes sense that you should be prioritizing these customers.

I’m sure you’ve heard this age-old proverb: “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

You’ve already got these customers in your hand. Don’t risk losing them by putting all your effort into customer acquisition.

I’ll show you the best ways to increase profits with customer retention.

Leverage your blog to establish loyal readers

Most people may not associate blogging with customer retention. But blogging overall is one of my favorite content marketing strategies.

In addition to helping you increase website traffic and generate new leads, blogging can also help you engage with your loyal customers. This is especially true for ecommerce brands.

Ask yourself this question.

How often does the same customer visit your website?

I’m guessing you’re not getting repeat purchases from the same customer on a daily basis.

But if you’re releasing new blog posts each day, or even a few times per week, you give your customers a reason to keep checking your website.

Hook these readers with your content. If they use your products and read your blog, your brand will be on their minds more often.

Plus, the more they visit your site, the greater chance you have of getting them to buy something else. This strategy is extremely cost-effective.

The only major cost is the time it takes to write each post. In 2017, the average time it took people to write a blog post was just over three hours.

It’s well worth your time and effort if you’re able to leverage this strategy to create loyal readers and retain your existing customers.

Use surveys and interviews to get feedback

In order for you to properly focus on retention, it’s important for you to understand what causes customers to leave a business.

Research shows 68% of consumers leave a business because they don’t feel the brand is valuing them.

Only 14% will leave because they’re unhappy with your product or service. And 9% of customers leave because of your prices.

What does this tell you?

Customers care significantly more about how they’re treated than the products and prices of what they’re buying.

One of the best ways to show your customers how much you care about their opinions is by asking them directly. You can use surveys and interviews to generate more revenue for your business.

This strategy accomplishes a few things.

First, it shows customers you care about them, which we already established. But the results of these surveys and interviews can also help you make your business better.

If you’re doing something wrong or your brand could use some improvement, you’ll find out from these campaigns.

Once you’re able to identify what needs to be fixed, customers will be happy to see these changes get applied.

This type of service enhances the customer experience, which I’ll elaborate on in greater detail shortly.

Implement a customer loyalty program

The name says it all. The purpose of establishing a customer loyalty program is to create loyal customers.

Research shows that consumers are much more likely to shop at stores with loyalty programs.

Give your customers what they want.

There are many different ways to approach your loyalty program. For example, you can reward your customers based on how often they shop.

These types of programs have been around forever, and I’m sure you’ve participated in them during your life.

A local pizza shop in town may give out punch cards to their customers. After ten visits, they get a free pizza.

But with the advancements in technology, this type of “punch card system” has evolved. Businesses with mobile apps have been able to eliminate the need for customers to carry a physical card. We’ll discuss mobile apps in greater depth as we continue.

If your business operates online, you can track your customers’ purchases through their profiles.

Another type of loyalty program rewards your best customers. For example, let’s say two customers each made a purchase from your store ten times in the last six months.

Should they both be rewarded equally?

If one customer spent $100 and the other customer spent $1,000, it makes sense to reward the customer who spends more money.

You can implement a customer loyalty program with various spending tiers. Each time a new customer reaches another level, they’ll receive a more significant benefit.

This strategy gives your existing customers an incentive to spend more money since they know they’ll be rewarded. As a result, it will be much easier to retain these customers.

Grow your email list

Another great way to focus on customer retention is through email marketing.

As you can see from this chart, email yielded the highest results for customers who return to ecommerce websites compared to other referring channels.

You should be collecting email addresses from your current customers.

Once you have their email addresses added to your list, you’ll be able to send them exclusive offers and promotions.

This will increase the chances of them buying again. They won’t not be making repeat purchases so frequently if you aren’t reminding them of these offers via email.

Just don’t go overboard with these messages, or it could backfire.

Don’t send promotional content to your subscribers on a daily basis. This will annoy them and lead to lots of unsubscribes from your list.

Instead, only send content that adds value to their lives. For the most part, you can’t go wrong with a discount. It’s a great way to drive sales from your existing customers.

Incentivize customer referrals

Most businesses would consider customer referral programs as an acquisition strategy.

While I’m not disputing that, I want you to understand that they can also double as a retention strategy if you set them up properly.

The whole idea of a referral program is to get your current clientele to bring in new customers. But most people won’t do this out of the kindness of their hearts.

Sure, they might like your brand and be happy with your products, but do they love you enough to go out of their way to spread the word to their friends and family?

That’s why you need to offer an incentive for referrals. Check out this example from Airbnb.

It’s a simple structure. Customers who refer their friends will receive a $20 credit after the person they referred books a trip.

So yes, they’re getting a new customer. But their existing customer also has a reason to make another purchase since they want to take advantage of their credit.

The more people they refer, the more money they’ll receive in travel credits.

You can implement this same type of referral structure to your business. It will reward your customers for their efforts and give them a reason to continue making purchases in the future.

Offer product suggestions

You should be encouraging your customers to create a profile on your platform.

This will help you personalize their shopping experience. Personalization has major benefits to consumers and brands alike.

These customer profiles will allow you to monitor their purchase history and browsing behavior.

Now you can use this information to recommend products to your customers.

As you can see from these numbers, consumers are more likely to buy from brands that suggest products based on their purchases and browsing behavior.

Nearly half of consumers say they purchase more from retailers who personalize their shopping experience and send personalized emails.

These product suggestions are a great way to make more money. For example, let’s say you have an ecommerce store that sells sporting goods.

If a customer adds soccer cleats and a soccer ball to their shopping cart, it’s a pretty good indication that they’re playing soccer.

So before they checkout and complete the purchase, you could recommend shin guards, soccer socks, and a water bottle as potential suggested items they might be interested in buying.

This will help increase the average amount of each transaction.

Provide excellent customer service

I briefly touched on this subject earlier when we talked about using surveys and interviews to get feedback from your customers.

But excellent customer service goes far beyond that.

This needs to be a priority for your business. Customer service needs to part of your overall company culture.

From the CEO all the way down to the employees at the bottom of the organizational chain, everyone needs to know how to treat customers.

Improving the customer experience will help you drive loyalty and retention.

Make sure you’re available to help your customers.

Let them reach out to customer service agents via as many methods as possible:

• phone
• email
• live chat

Just because your business operates from 9 AM to 5 PM EST on Monday through Friday doesn’t mean your customer service hours end then.

What if a customer on the West coast has a question on Friday at 6 PM local time? Don’t make them wait until Monday morning to call you.

Give them options. Go the extra mile to keep your customers happy.

According to studies, 86% of people say they are willing to pay more money for better customer service.

That’s right. You could charge more for your products and services if you treat your customers the right way. They’ll still keep coming back to buy more.

Segment your email list

Earlier I explained that you need to add subscribers to your email list.

Now I’m telling you to take that strategy one step further. You need to segment your subscribers to maximize your email campaigns.

There are plenty of ways in which you can do this. For example, you can put them in lists based on their age, gender, or location.

You can even segment your target audience with generational marketing.

Putting your email subscribers on separate lists helps you deliver more personalized content to each person.

Take a look at some of the top benefits of email segmentation:

If you go through each one of these benefits, you’ll notice they all translate into one common result.

All of these will help you generate more profits.

Develop a mobile app

We live in a world where mobile technology has seemingly taken over.

When was the last time you saw someone without a cellphone?

Building a mobile app can have tons of benefits for your business.

As I explained earlier, an app can replace a physical customer loyalty card. You can also use your app to implement other strategies I’ve discussed, such as a customer referral program, product suggestions, and a platform for customer surveys.

Furthermore, you can use your app to improve your customer service. Allow app users to contact a representative directly from within the app.

As far as retention goes, mobile apps create a 50% greater chance that an ecommerce customer will return to your online store within 30 days.

Mobile apps also have extremely low shopping cart abandonment rates.

The average shopping cart abandonment rate for a desktop site is 68%. When customers add an item to their shopping carts from a mobile browser, that number jumps to 97%.

But with mobile apps, the shopping cart abandonment rate is only 20%.

You can get that percentage down even lower if you follow my high ROI shopping cart abandonment prevention tactics.

Conclusion

New customers aren’t the only way to increase profits for your business. Focusing on customer loyalty is more effective and cost-efficient.

Use your blog as a way to get your customers to visit your website on a more frequent basis.

Show your customers you care about them by asking their opinions with surveys and interviews. Create a customer loyalty program.

Provide incentives to your customers who refer friends and family.

Add customers to your email list and segment those subscribers to personalize your marketing campaigns. Take that personalization one step further, and suggest products based on the browsing history and previous purchases of your customers.

If you enhance your customer service, you can even charge more money for your products and services.

Develop a mobile app to help you implement these strategies and drive more sales.

By prioritizing customer retention, you’ll be able to generate higher profits.

What customer retention strategies does your brand use to drive more sales?

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Choice and Respect Don’t Have to Be Mutually Exclusive

There’s a great line in this Wall Street Journal article about airlines and the way they structure and price their fare classes. The CEOs of Delta Airlines and American Airlines were interviewed, and at one point, were each asked to comment on the size of the seats in coach or economy class. Here’s the reporter’s line:

“Neither apologizes for packing in more, skinnier seats. Their message: If you want more space, buy it.”

Being a frequent flier myself I know that’s the choice for customers of most airlines. Still, even if it is the right business decision, I would’ve advised some gentler messaging. Hearing that is like being on the wrong end of the sort of back-handed comment that can leave a scar. Ouch.

We approach choice a little differently. Our own experiences and observations in the high-tech industry have taught us that offering a service that is too prescriptive, one designed to serve everyone the same way, while being cost-effective, almost always ends up being a poor deal for the customer.

Why is that?

Because, in the software world, even when it comes to SaaS-delivered software, each customer feels that their implementation is different enough from everyone else’s that they need some special variation of a standard service, one that addresses their unique needs. So what’s a vendor to do?

Offering Too Much Choice Can Be a Cost Sinkhole

One sure way for a service or support organization to raise the ire of a CFO is to continually ask for more budget when, in return, that offers no substantial, measurable financial impact to the company. They can point to abstract measurements of successful implementations, increased customer satisfaction, and greater customer engagement but those things, unfortunately, are not linked return on investment.

And if that organization were to expand exponentially and offer many different packages that attempt to meet the unique needs of all their customers they would quickly set off alarm bells. Left undeterred, that would eventually imperil the company’s bottom line. So a compromise is needed, but that doesn’t have to mean an inferior and uncomfortable experience for anyone.

We believe the compromise is to keep it simple but comfortable (unlike airlines that seemingly focus only on the simple) and still make available to those customers who feel they need them, a number of add-on services they can purchase.

Even though a core value proposition of the cloud is speed, cost of deployment, and a faster time to value, in the business world it’s impossible to escape the reality that each business has its own particular reasons for designing processes that use the software in a certain way. This can be very challenging for software vendors and whether customers are aware of it or not we can’t say, but there are endless debates within the walls of those vendors about the wisdom of providing too much choice.

Still, as Tien Tzuo, founder and CEO of Zuora, says in his recent book, Subscribed, on the topic of churn and retention, “The takeaway is pretty clear: the ability to solve for a broad range of customer problems, with a broad range of solutions, increases retention.” Even though he made that comment in the context of selling to customers, I believe the same principle applies in after-sale scenarios just as well.

Respect is Not Such a Difficult Consideration

At the end of the day, again to simplify, all we’re really talking about is respect. Not all customers are the same. Not all business challenges are the same. Because one company needs to buy more service to accomplish its goals shouldn’t infer that another company that chooses to go with the base service is worth any less. As long as the base service contains sufficient value and provides a good experience for the majority of customers, the vendor can feel confident that any list of extra services would be finite and manageable. Customers will notice and appreciate that kind of choice. Those vendors that recognize this and understand how that fundamental trait factors into enhancing the customer’s overall impression (and therefore, how it weighs heavily on how they would judge their experience) will be the ones who see higher levels of retention and lower levels of churn.

What’s My Message to Airline CEOs?

No one disagrees that a business needs to offer only those services it has determined it can afford to deliver while keeping an eye on achieving healthy margins. Everything and everybody that constitutes a flight on an airplane comes with a price and so it makes sense to have different classes of service. It also makes just as much nonsense to offer nothing but business class seats. And yet, there is that nagging issue of (what should be) the need to show respect for all customers.

Choice is good for customers, and it really is a smart business practice. But even the lowest class of service needs to be as pain-free as possible. Why wouldn’t you make all classes of service as valuable as possible for customers in each class? Doesn’t it make sense that when they receive (and in the case of airlines, feel) value, that they will return the next time?

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How to Publish Regularly, Even If You Lack Writing Confidence

Recently, a writing student asked me about the dilemma of keeping to a publishing schedule, even when you can see all of the flaws in your own writing. How can we publish content every week, or even every month, when we still have so much to learn? Most of us run into this sometimes —
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CMWorld Interview: How Tamsen Webster Drives Irresistible Change in Marketing

Few things are more inspiring than the before-and-after weight loss photo: two drastically different figures juxtaposed against one another, usually connected by an impossibly short span of time.

It’s not just the physical transformation that is striking in these portrayals. Even more so, it’s the mental transformation. Something clicked in that person’s head, causing them to fully commit and make the difficult changes necessary to turn their goals into reality. Then, they did it.

Branding expert Tamsen Webster saw this dynamic play out, in various forms, time and time again during her many years as a leader in the Weight Watchers organization. And it’s a big part of what drove her to create Red Thread, a messaging framework focused on tapping into those deep, uniquely human motivations that spark action (or, as she puts it, make inaction impossible).

At Content Marketing World in September, Tamsen will speak about How to Make Your Ideas Irresistible. In anticipation of her session, we chatted with her about uncovering shared values with your audience, eliminating “one-size-fits-most” messaging, and aiming to change perspectives rather than beliefs.

What does your role as Founder and Chief Messaging Strategist at Find the Red Thread entail? What are your main areas of focus and key priorities?

Well, the nice thing about being a solo practice is that it means what I need it to mean at the time! My days are spent in a mix of work with clients, business development, and product/content development – I go where my energy, inspiration, and needs take me.

How would you succinctly describe the “Red Thread Method” and why it makes sense for today’s content marketers?

We can’t change what people do until we change how they see. The Red Thread Method helps you uncover that link for a particular audience and business goal so you can build content and messaging around it.

What did your experience as a Weight Watchers leader teach you about the fundamentals of creating irresistible messaging?

Pretty much everything. I know that sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Week in, week out at Weight Watchers, I saw what did and didn’t move people to make changes – what kinds of information they needed, and in what combination. When I took those lessons and looked at the marketing around me (including marketing I had helped produce!), I realized how often we focused on what we wanted people to do differently more than what they needed to hear to see the differently. Once I started switching my marketing to match the framework of messaging I built for myself at Weight Watchers, lo and behold, I became a much more effective marketer.

How can marketers stop seeing change as a barrier and start seeing it as an opportunity? What’s required to drive this shift in mindset?

That all depends on why they see change as a barrier in the first place. The only thing that will shift that mindset is understanding how it puts both something marketers want and something they believe is in jeopardy. For example, if a marketer wants to be seen as an expert in social channels, they likely see change in those areas as something to be overcome – the constantly shifting landscape makes it impossible to expert in all things all the time. If they also believe, however, that “the only constant is change,” making inaction impossible: they’ll either need to change their goal, their attitude toward change, or how they go about being seen as an expert. The key is always in finding that combination of wants and beliefs that makes inaction impossible.

Some find it counterintuitive that in order to increase your reach and impact, you need to narrow your message. Why is this important in today’s environment?

It’s all about fit for the message. Think about the last time you bought something that was “one size fits all.” Did it fit? Probably yes – you could get into it. Depending on your size it was cavernous, achingly tight, or in the category of “this’ll do.” But did fit like it was yours? Could you identify it blindfolded? Of course not. Now imagine you’ve had something tailored to fit you – like a jacket or a pair of pants. Done well, it should fit like a glove. If you put it on, you’d know instantly that it belonged to you.

Messages operate the same way. We way we want customers to feel a part of the brand. We want them to feel like the brand belongs to them. But then too often we send out “one size fits most” messages… and wonder why we don’t get that sense of belonging that’s a hallmark of great brands.

Your brand is not for everyone. It isn’t. It’s for the people who want something you can help them get, who value the same things you do, and who see the world the same way you do. And that’s not everyone. Full stop.

How do the tenets of giving great presentations and speaking sessions apply to the bigger picture of content marketing?

Any truly great presentation doesn’t just inform and inspire… it implants a new way of seeing. It gives you something that you can’t unhear. Something that creates a permanent shift in thinking, and thus in behavior. Most content marketing doesn’t need to inspire (at least not in the go-climb-a-mountain or be-your-best-self sense), but it does need to create that same shift.

I’ll say it again: you can’t change what people do until you change how they see. There’s no better example than TED Talks that a very short piece of content can do just that. (The longest TED Talks are only about 2500 words – not long!) The more content marketers can adopt those lessons from great talks, the more powerful their messages will be, no matter the subject.

But hear me on this: those lessons aren’t just the surface things like “give it an SEO-friendly title” or “tell a personal story.” Both of those techniques can be helpful.

But the lessons marketers really need to learn are around where the greatest levers in messaging are. And here’s what’s counterintuitive: the most powerful levers at our disposal are the ones that don’t move – people’s wants and beliefs. Yet so much of marketing focuses on trying to get people to want something they don’t actively want or believe something they don’t currently believe. The only things we’re likely to change in the short term are perspectives. And that’s what great talks – and great content in any form – do.

Looking back, is there a particular moment or juncture in your career that you view as transformative? What takeaways could other marketers learn and apply?

It started with a mystery. See, I spent the first 15 years or so of my marketing career working in and with nonprofits. Here in Boston, where I live, those nonprofits share a lot of donors. What was fascinating to me: why would one donor give to so many different organizations? And what tied those different organizations together in the donor’s mind? Was there a pattern I could see?

I wanted to know the answer to that question because, at the time, I was in charge of the fundraising communication strategy at Harvard Medical School – and convincing people to give one of the world’s richest institutions even more money was a none-too-simple challenge. I’ll spare you the whole story, but what I discovered was this: while there wasn’t a usable pattern for why people gave money at all (that could range from self-serving to altruistic), there was something I discovered I could use.

There was a pattern to what kinds of things they gave money to – even across very different nonprofits. There was a pattern to what they wanted to accomplish through their gifts. So, for instance, if someone tended to give money at one institution to solve a specific problem (say, to a hospital help cure cancer), they tended to always give to solve a problem (to a museum to improve access for underserved youth). If they gave at one institution to expand the scope of impact, they tended to always give to expand the scope of impact, etc.

Once I figured that out, it became simply a matter of putting what we did at the Medical School into terms that matched what they were looking for. I could, for instance, take the same need we had at the medical school (say, to fund a new type of high-powered microscope) and frame it through multiple lenses. It could help solve a specific problem (age-related hearing loss), it could help expand scope (because it could help us understand the mechanisms that caused hearing loss), it could improve training of medical students (because they could better see the mechanisms in questions).

The lesson for all marketers is this: what people want tells you what they’re looking for out in the world. Our job isn’t to shift their attention to something new. It’s to show people how we fit in that existing line of vision.

Which speaker presentations are you looking forward to most at Content Marketing World 2018?

Tina Fey, of course. The panel on longform content with Ann Handley, Mitch Joel, and Dorie Clark looks amazing. I’d love to see Brian Massey and his talk on behavioral science talk, since I’m such a junkie for that stuff. Ahava Leibtag’s session on lessons from songwriters is sure to be great, too. I wish I could see Kathy Klotz-Guest – she has such amazing content and I’ve yet to see her speak in person (but she and I are speaking at the same time!). I’m also excited to Nichole Kelly coming back on the speaking scene, and with an important perspective – something she calls “conscious marketing.”

Follow the Thread

We really appreciate Tamsen sharing these thoughtful and substantive responses. Make sure to catch her live on September 6th in Cleveland; although she writes eloquently, there really is no substitute for the energy and passion she brings onstage.

She’ll be joined at CMWorld by dozens of other speakers. You find thought-provoking nuggets from her and many others by exploring the slides below.

These insights probably won’t change your fundamental beliefs… but they just might change your perspective.

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