Franchise Marketing – 10 Strategies for your Marketing Plan

Franchise marketing can be used by franchisees and franchisors to grow their business. Find out 10 strategies for a definitive marketing plan

Franchise marketing is a marketing method for franchisees and franchisors to grow their business. Digital marketing has become a major driver of the success of franchise marketing. Why is digital marketing a critical element of franchise marketing?

Franchise marketing utilizes digital marketing methods since digital marketing is instant-reaching, affordable (compared to non-digital marketing methods), and efficient. Franchisees and franchisors can use tactics such as email marketing and social media to increase conversions and sales.

In this article, we’re sharing 10 of our favorite franchise marketing tips, including some listed above and plenty more. No matter where you are in your franchise marketing journey, this article is for you, so keep reading!

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How to Create a Franchise Marketing Plan 

1. Establish Your Brand

As a franchisee or franchisor, you’re already associated with a well-known company. However, you want your franchised branch to succeed on its own, and that means finding a way to brand yourself outside of your parent company.

You likely will use the same logo and color scheme as your parent company for recognizability but think of other ways in which you can make your franchise stand out. 

Perhaps you use a slightly different tone than the one your parent company uses. You might focus more on storytelling. 

You could even focus more on customer service. According to marketing resource Curatti, more than 70 percent of customers prefer a brand because of its customer service. 

You should also pay attention to elements like your tagline and font choices: discover more about high-end branding.

Burger Kink works on its website using some franchising marketing strategies.

2. Redesign Your Website

Since you do have the safety net of a parent company as a franchisor or franchisee, you might think that your website can be a carbon copy of your parent company’s site but with a few local references thrown in or a couple of mentions of franchises.

We wouldn’t recommend it. One of the biggest facets of franchise marketing is a well-designed, responsive website

You can use your parent company website as the backbone or inspiration, but feel free to branch off and create the kind of design that will be appealing to your target audience.

We have many website design roundups on the blog, such as this one for luxury sites or this one for nonprofits.

Although none exactly hit the mark for franchises, you can still use elements of these site designs for your own website. 

Here are some design facets we recommend.

  • White space is good: Don’t overload your franchise website with so many graphics or videos that people get overwhelmed. That kind of design isn’t mobile-friendly, and it will cause people to bounce. Use some white space, which is intentional blank space on the site.
  • Easy navigation: Whether it’s a traveling navigation bar or a search bar at the top of the page, you want to make it exceptionally easy for people to find the information they need on your site.
  • Plenty of CTAs: Your franchise website will need CTA buttons or links as well. We absolutely recommend putting one above the fold and then elsewhere on the site so people have several opportunities to contact you or make a purchase.
  • Attention-grabbing graphics: When you do use graphics or videos, you want them to captivate the site visitor’s attention. Don’t choose graphics at random, though; incorporate them into your company’s vision or goals.

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3. Create a Content Marketing Plan 

The next facet of your franchise marketing plan is content marketing.

According to a 2022 HubSpot report, when marketers use content marketing, it’s to raise engagement, sales, and brand awareness.

You can achieve all those objectives and more. As we wrote about on our blog, content marketing is an educational opportunity for your audience. You can also use content marketing to create and nurture professional relationships.

Content marketing is not solely about blogging. Today, content is a wide umbrella that includes whitepapers, eBooks, webinars, case studies and testimonials, user-generated content or UGC, infographics, social media marketing, influencer marketing, email marketing, podcasts, and videos.

We’ll talk about social media marketing, influencer marketing, and email marketing as their own franchise marketing tactics later in this guide. For now, let’s discuss  how you can make a content marketing plan that works for your franchise.

First, you have to get to know your target audience. If you haven’t already segmented your current audience and created customer avatars or personas, begin by doing that. 

Then you need to do keyword research to determine what kind of topics your target audience is interested in. What are they searching for? What do they want to learn more about?

Next, you have to assess the competition. If a topic is oversaturated with videos, posts, infographics, you name it, your content will be a drop in the ocean.

Instead, don’t be afraid to select smaller niches. You won’t appeal to as broad of an audience, but the people you do attract will be looking for exactly the kind of information you produce.

Now it’s time to determine what your content production frequency will be and when you’ll post. The more content you can make, the better. You want to produce content twice per week at least. 

Once your content goes live, cross-promote it across your website and socials. Track engagement and make tweaks to your content marketing plan from there. 

A SEO expert is working on the website of a famous franchising brand to boost its organic traffic.

4.  Use SEO

Search engine optimization or SEO is a critical part of any marketing plan, including a franchise marketing plan. 

SEO determines where your franchise lands when people search for it. This is your chance to stand out from your parent company so you can funnel business to your franchise, but how do you get started?

Here are some tactics from a post on our blog about the importance of SEO that we’re sure will help.

  • Produce inbound and outbound links. The more of these links you have, the better, but they must be relevant or you can hurt your SEO standing. 
  • Always post high-quality content. Google considers content high-quality if it’s specific and unique. In other words, no outsourcing, and don’t spin content either.
  • Ensure your website is mobile-friendly. As we touched on before, you need a site where the elements and navigation load well whether users are on their phones or computers.
  • Raise your domain authority. This entails obtaining high-quality backlinks, removing dead links or bad links from your site, and producing content that other people want to link to.
  • Prioritize website loading speed. No one is going to wait more than a few seconds for a site to load in the 2020s. If your site is clunky, a lead or customer will leave. 

5. Grow Your Social Media Presence 

No franchise marketing plan is complete without a social media presence. 

With social media users expected to surpass four billion in the early 2020s (according to Oberlo), your franchise can connect with potential and current customers through social media. 

Social media is an ideal vehicle for establishing and building professional relationships, cross-posting content to introduce a whole new set of eyes to it, converting customers, building your brand, and establishing brand awareness.

You can give shoutouts to your most loyal followers, engage by responding to comments and direct messages, and use videos or images to showcase a different side of your company. 

You can even take customers behind the scenes to see what makes your franchise different.

Social media advertising allows you to create tailored messages that only segmented groups see. 

Today’s social media ads look native to the platform they’re designed for. This way, the average user doesn’t immediately see an ad and become dismayed.

The ADS Specialist of a web agency are promoting their business through digital advertising.

6. Use Digital Advertising

Speaking of social media advertising, that’s a nice segue into our next strategy for your franchise marketing plan, and that’s digital advertising. 

From mobile ads to display ads and pay-per-click or PPC ads, advertising gives your franchise the opportunity to reach new potential customers. 

As we touched on in the paragraphs above, segmenting your audience is critical for any digital marketing campaign. You don’t want to needlessly waste advertising dollars on people who aren’t receptive to what you’re advertising.

On the note of advertising dollars, your franchise must have an advertising budget

Whether that budget trickles down from the parent company or your franchise has to pay for the advertising yourself, create a budget that’s reasonable for the company according to your earnings.

Once your ad goes live and until it’s offline, you must review the metrics that come in. Is your ad reaching the desired target audience? Is that audience receptive to the ad?

How many conversions did the ad produce? How much revenue?

This data will allow you to retool your future ad campaigns so they’re even more effective next time. 

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7. Start an Email Marketing Campaign 

With about four billion people using email in 2022, says HubSpot, this is another huge untapped market for you to reach with your franchise marketing efforts.

We wrote a very useful resource on getting started with email marketing that should be beneficial if this is your first foray. 

The key is to generate a bountiful but efficient list of contacts. You can use some of the digital marketing measures we’ve discussed to this point such as social media advertising and paid ads to generate contacts.

We also recommend using opt-in forms and lead magnets on your website. Both will get site visitors to give you their contact information in exchange for something of value such as a whitepaper, chapters of an eBook, a podcast transcript, or a checklist.

To engage with your email list, you need to message them frequently but not too frequently that you end up in the spam filter. 

When you make offers to your email list, those offers must be compelling and–above all else–relevant.

A famous brand is using influencer marketing to promote their new woman's product.

8.  Use Influencer Marketing 

Franchises are in the unique position of having access to star power through their parent company, but as we’ve established, it’s all about making a name for yourself as a franchisor or franchisee.

To that end, influencer marketing can be a highly effective part of your franchise marketing plan. 

You’d find an influencer that you think gels with your brand and values. Then you’d contact them and ask to send them your products or services to try. 

The influencer will receive your products or services and then record a video or write a post about them. This introduces their audience to your franchise, and they will hopefully convert and become new customers! 

9. Try Remarketing

Another digital marketing strategy to implement into your franchise marketing is behavioral retargeting or remarketing.

Remarketing is a great chance to captivate the attention and interest of potential customers who you missed out on the first time around. 

You’d send an email or link your would-be customers to a website. In the email or website is a single tracking pixel that creates a cookie in the user’s Internet browser.

You can then show the user display ads or other forms of advertisements with your products or services to hopefully lure them back. 

Emailing the would-be customer with an exclusive discount offer or coupon code can also sweeten the deal!

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10. Embrace AI 

Global artificial intelligence is on the rise, reports trends site Exploding Topics. Before AI becomes a must-have digital marketing feature, incorporate it into your franchise marketing plan now.

How? Well, one of the easiest and most common ways to implement AI is with a chatbot on your website.

When your franchise shuts its doors for the day, a chatbot can answer a customer’s questions and address concerns. 

Digital marketing resource ThriveMyWay reports that businesses say that using chatbots has caused a sales spike of more than 65 percent!  

Conclusion 

Franchise marketing when used in conjunction with digital marketing can boost brand awareness, convert more leads into buying customers, educate and provide value to your customers, increase sales, and strengthen customer relationships.

If you’re ready to get your franchise marketing plan off the ground, contact the experts at Mediaboom. We’re digital marketing pros and can assist with digital branding, web design, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, digital advertising, and content production.  

Financial Advisor Marketing – 15 Ways to Boost your Brand

Financial Advisor marketing is an essential part of a business marketing plan. Discover these 15 Ways to Boost your Brand!

Financial Advisor marketing is an important piece of any financial advisor’s business. Financial Advisors are seen as trusted experts when it comes to money management. Individuals and businesses can benefit from consulting with Financial Advisors to make better financial decisions to build, generate and maintain their wealth. 

With only 23% of Financial Advisors adopting a defined marketing strategy, there is so much more untapped potential that you can unleash if you have a specific marketing strategy to help boost your brand.

Financial Advisors are also business owners, they take ownership of their book of business and build relationships with new and existing clients. Online marketing has changed the way Financial Advisors market to their target niche. 

Why do Financial Advisors need a Marketing Plan?

A Financial Advisor marketing plan is an important part of the business plan that highlights how the business will be able to reach its target audience, increase sales opportunities and positively affect its bottom line.

Read along as we discuss the ultimate guide of the top 15 marketing tools for online Financial advisors that you can use.

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1. Market research and brand positioning

Building your brand should be the number one goal especially if you are starting as a Financial Advisor. How people perceive your brand is an important aspect of your brand management technique. With an efficient branding technique, you are educating your clients and prospects on what to expect from your practice.

Keep in mind that there are thousands of Financial Advisors around and for your business to stand out, you should make it clear why people should choose you over the others. By presenting your brand consistently across all platforms, you can increase revenue by up to 23%

2. Target audience and niche

It is safe to say that Financial Advisors also have their target audience and niche that they focus on. At the beginning of your marketing plan, you should be able to pinpoint the target audience that you want to market to instead of casting a wide net. By identifying your niche, you can specifically develop a financial advisor marketing plan to reach these audiences. 

You will be better equipped with targeting specific industries or prospects with common interests. You can create different profiles for your target market and develop marketing plans within each profile.

3. Competitive analysis

By looking at what your competition is doing with Financial Advisor marketing, you will be able to see what the existing trends are and what you are up against. Make sure that you are not left behind by your competitors because you will lose out on prospective clients. 

In doing a competitive analysis, you can determine what draws clients to other Financial Advisors and try adopting this marketing strategy. Make sure that you are making it your own and not just copying what other Financial Advisors are doing.

Marketing experts are working on creating a new website for financial advisors

4. Website creation

The number one thing that business owners, most especially Financial Advisors should work on is creating their website. Your website is a reflection of your business and brand. It should be the best representation of what you are building and selling. 

You should know that only 20% of visitors read your webpage. So you have to make sure that the content on your website is engaging and eye-catching.

By making your website very easy to use and navigate, prospective clients will have a seamless experience while browsing and getting to know what you have to offer. Important parts of your website should include your services, experience, and contact information. You can also include client testimonials to further cement your role as an established Financial Advisor. Including your contact information is also important so that your prospective clients can reach out to you.

5. Content Marketing

The type of content that you are using should be optimized for your audience and should be constantly updated. By having a prowess for financial well-being, you will be seen as a trusted advisor, especially for people who don’t have the same financial well-being. As a Financial Advisor, you will have a lot of information to share with individuals and businesses. 

The content that you are creating can provide education and be used as a resource for potential clients. Your content can take any form from blogs to webinars and newsletters. Some Financial Advisors also use YouTube.  In developing your content, you can use different tools and methods just as long as the brand message is consistent among all the different methods you choose to employ.

Google Search Console shows the results obtained by a financial advisor after boosting its SEO

6. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization or SEO goes hand in hand with content marketing; actually, you can employ effective strategies so that search engines can better find your content. By showcasing helpful and authentic content you can build trust with your prospective clients and bring in new leads. For SEO to be effective, you have to drive traffic to your content and engage your audience to create a following.

7. Marketing automation and campaigns

The organization is key especially if you want to keep track of your marketing schedules and campaigns. On the other hand, you don’t want to overwhelm your audience with too many emails and marketing paraphernalia. By keeping on top of this, you can schedule the specific days and times that you want to share or post content.

By automating your marketing campaigns, you will have a chance to keep organized and track the results. This will ensure that your marketing campaigns are efficient and if they are not performing well, you can make changes and tweak them for the better.

8. Newsletters and Emails

Sending emails and newsletters are both low-cost Financial Advisor marketing tools that you can use to communicate regularly with your clients. You can schedule newsletters and drip e-mails as a primary form of communication. In this way, you can build trust and confidence with your client base. 

After meeting with your clients, you can send a thank-you e-mail for the first meeting and a summary brief of what was discussed. By writing about the next steps or actions needed, you will prompt your client to think about moving forward with the relationship. 

Newsletters are a great way to keep your clients abreast of what is happening in your industry. You can offer insights on current events and offer real-life examples of financial practices or changes.

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9. Testimonials

By featuring testimonials on your social media pages like Facebook, you can further cement your status as a trusted Financial Advisor. Testimonials are a great way you can showcase what you can do as a Financial Advisor. Prospective clients who are still on the fence about going to you will be able to see what you can do as evidenced by previous clients’ testimonials.

Your credibility and trustworthiness will increase tenfold when you are featuring satisfied clients’ views of what you have to offer. It can potentially convert current prospects into customers.

10. Hosting client events and joining local networking events

There is nothing more impactful than having client events and meeting new people through local networking events. Social events are much-needed especially when you are planning on building your book of business. Client events can range from casual to fancy and the mood that you want to set should be dependent on the goals that you want to achieve.

Having personal events is important so that you can get to know your clientele better. It is also a good way that your clients can bring in referrals so that you can meet them. It is a win-win because clients perceive these events as showing appreciation to them.

Google ADS shows the screen where to monitor advertising for a financial advisor

11. Paid digital advertising

Pay-per-click advertising works well with Financial Advisors because you will get optimal advertising through search engines and even social media. Contrary to popular belief, PPC is not that pricey because you only pay whenever someone clicks on your ad. This is highly effective because the prospective clients will go to your website to get more information about the services that you have to offer.

12. Social media

Social media is not only a tool that you can use to keep up with your friends socially. Nowadays, business owners use social media to keep up with the changing trends and stay relevant within their client base. You can use social media to share information about your webinars and other events. 

By publishing posts with hashtags, you can leverage your social media presence; whenever somebody searches for those tags, your posts will come up. 

Even though social media is considered a more relaxed and informal approach, you should always stick to professional-looking designs because it is a reflection of your brand. Another important tip is to always have a “Book Now” or “Contact Now” button on your social media page to ensure that people know where to go if they need to contact you and obtain additional information.

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13. Referral marketing

Referrals are the greatest compliment that existing clients can give you; they are bringing you new business and they will not do this when they are not satisfied with your services. A lot of Financial Advisors forget to ask for referrals or fail to add this to their sales cycle which leads to missed opportunities. 

By using referral marketing as part of your Financial Advisor marketing plan, you are making sure that this step is incorporated into your sales process. As a result, you won’t have any missed opportunities to get new clients from existing customers. 

Referrals are an important piece of any Financial Advisor’s business. According to the World Wealth Report, a total of 44.4% of individuals found their Financial Advisor through a referral

The most effective way for referral marketing is to add a link to your e-mail that will lead clients to a landing page. This landing page will enable them to put in referral information such as name, e-mail address, or phone number. By making it as easy as possible, your clients will be more inclined to refer people.

As part of referral marketing, you have to make sure that you are thanking and showing appreciation to the clients who have referred prospective clients to you. You can do so by sending personalized thank you letters or a small gift as a token of your appreciation.

Mediaboom shows how it has optimized its blog from an SEO perspective

14. Blogs

Besides your website, blogs are also an important online tool that you can use for Financial Advisor marketing. While websites are more formal, blogs can be free-flowing with topics ranging from current events or offering insight on different topics and scenarios.

You can add a comment section below for questions and commentary. This will enable you to connect with your clients and answer questions that they might have. If you are stuck on what to post on your blog, you can hold a poll with what clients want to read about. 

Starting a blog is the first step. To keep your audience engaged, you have to make sure that you update the content on it. Financial advisors are seen as experts and having a blog will boost your credentials even more.

15. Webinars

Webinars are a great way you can achieve Financial Advisor marketing success because they will propel your brand as one that can be trusted. One of the attributes that Financial Advisors are known for is imparting knowledge and expertise to their clients. With Webinars, you are not only educating your clients but you can reach a wider audience as well because your webinars can be easily shareable.

Making webinars as part of your online newsletter or marketing e-mails is essential; it gives added value to the information you are imparting to people. With webinars, you can showcase your personality and take on a trusted advisor role at the same time. 

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Conclusion

Financial Advisor marketing is an essential part of any advisor’s business and marketing plan. The main goals include growing the business and converting more leads into clients. With digital tools, Financial Advisors can focus on a target audience and niche which is much better than casting a wide net. 

By having a specific and defined marketing strategy, you will be able to expand your business, see more clients and generate more revenue.

Contact now Mediaboom to boost your financial advisor marketing.

B2B SEO – 10 of the Best Strategies for Organic Success

B2B SEO enhances your overall content marketing strategy, boosts your website and effectively makes leads come to you. Find out 10 of the best B2B SEO strategies

In a digital world where there’s a seemingly endless number of strategies for B2B lead acquisition and brand awareness, there’s one that truly stands out for its cost-effectiveness and long-term value: B2B SEO (search engine optimization, which yes, does really work).

When done right, B2B SEO enhances not only your overall content marketing strategy, but boosts your website and effectively makes leads come to you

In this article, we’ll discuss: 

  • What B2B SEO is 
  • The difference between SEO and SEM 
  • Effective strategies for organic success in B2B

What is B2B SEO? 

B2B SEO is the process of optimizing web pages so they rank for terms being searched by key business decision-makers. The goal of B2B SEO is to not only reach these decision-makers, but delight them and prove yourself a valuable resource for their business needs. 

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What’s the difference between B2B and B2C SEO? 

The biggest difference between B2C and B2B SEO is the target audience. The end goal of B2C (business-to-consumer) SEO strategies is for businesses to reach their target audience of consumers. The end goal for B2B SEO strategies, on the other hand, is for businesses to reach their target audience of business leaders and key stakeholders. 

The type of content that’s created for B2C SEO and B2B SEO is different, too. B2C SEO content may appeal more to a buyer’s emotions and focus more on storytelling, whereas B2B SEO content may focus more on logic, hard numbers, and thought-leadership.

What are the differences between SEO and SEM?

While the end goals for SEO and SEM (search engine marketing) are similar, their strategies differ. Key differences include: 

  • SEO focuses on organic traffic, a free channel that lends itself to long-term online growth. 
  • While SEM can also focus on organic traffic, it mostly focuses on paid strategies that can provide faster results, but don’t necessarily lend themselves to long-term growth. 

Think of SEM as the channel to focus on if you need big results quickly (but you’re going to cough up some cash for it), and think of SEO as the free long-term strategy that may take some time to build.

Read on for the best B2B SEO strategies 

There are plenty of B2B SEO strategies businesses can utilize to put the right messages in front of the right decision makers. Read on to learn the best strategies your business should use for maximum organic growth. 

A B2B business owner has boosted SEO, managing to close a major deal with his client.

Tips for the best Business to Business SEO strategy 

1. Identify your target audience 

The first step to take in a B2B SEO strategy is to identify your target audience. The target audience for B2B content typically consists of business leaders, executives, and other business-decision makers. The goal of B2B, after all, is to market your business as a solution to another business’ problem. 

Once you narrow down your target audience, put yourself in their shoes and think about their needs. Think about things like their: 

  • Business needs 
  • Industry needs
  • Tech needs
  • Workflow needs 

Putting yourself in your target audience’s shoes and thinking about their needs helps you craft your messages—and sparks content ideas.

2. Analyze your current content 

If you’ve created B2B content already, inventory it and analyze it. Identify key topics you’ve already created content around and how that content has performed. Ask yourself: 

  • How old is this content? 
  • Is it still accurate?  
  • How is the content structured? 
  • What format is the content in? 

Analyzing the content that already exists is essential for SEO content planning. That way, you don’t accidentally cannibalize existing content and create more work for yourself. 

While analyzing your content, it’s also crucial to look at your data and see how the content performs online already. Tools you can use to analyze organic search data include: 

  • Semrush—A powerful SEO and marketing tool that allows you to analyze your website’s content, from keywords you rank for to keyword opportunities that can help your content grow organically. 
  • Ahrefs—Another powerful SEO tool that helps you analyze your backlinks, find keywords to target, and audit your existing content. 
  • Google Analytics—Google’s platform that gives you key insights into how your content performs, measuring pageviews, visitors, time on site, etc. It can also show you the top performing content on your website. 

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3. Identify topics you want authority in 

Creating content to boost your B2B SEO is a smart move, but you want to be strategic about the topics you want to have authority in. Having authority in a topic means you want to be seen as an expert in that specific topic field. Typically, B2B companies that create content aim to have authority in their industries. 

Building authority in specific topics is an extremely important element for SEO. For starters, “authority” is a key factor in Google’s E-A-T standards (more on that shortly)—the “a” in E-A-T stands for authority. Authority is also important for building trust with your audience. 

Trust is important to have from both a content and consumer perspective. Statistics show that, according to a survey, a whopping 81 percent of consumers say they need to be able to trust a brand in order to buy from them. 

Since the ultimate goal for B2B SEO is to boost your Google rankings and make other businesses come to you organically, and ideally have them turn into clients or partners of yours, it’s important to create authoritative, trustworthy content.

4. Keep E-A-T in mind 

As previously mentioned, it’s incredibly important to keep Google’s E-A-T standards at the forefront of your content creation plan with B2B SEO. E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. According to Semrush, E-A-T is a crucial way that Google looks at pages on the web, and how it differentiates between low-quality content and high-quality content

So, how do you create E-A-T content? Keep these tips in mind: 

  • Write what you know—As a B2B company in a specific industry, you and your employees have a wealth of knowledge to share with the world. Create content you know and have expertise in. Or, hire freelancers who are also experts to create the content. 
  • Pay attention to the author—Who writes your content is another factor to consider with EAT content. Part of gaining authority and trust with content is having the right people write your content. Make sure the authors of your content have some level of expertise in the topic they’re creating content for, whether they’re an expert themselves or have written about the topic in the past.
  • Back your statements up with facts—Anyone can say pretty much anything on the internet. Support the claims in your content with statistics, facts, and research. That way, both Google and your audience know that what you’re saying can actually be backed up. 
Example of keyword research to enhance SEO for B2B

5. Do your keyword research 

Doing keyword research is another crucial element for your B2B SEO strategy. Keyword research is the process of looking up search terms (also known as queries) and creating content that ranks well for them. Important tips for keyword research include: 

  • Analyze the intent of the keyword—Think of the intent of a keyword as the reason why people are searching for a specific query. Are they looking for information, to purchase something, or for something that has a specific brand or product in it? Looking at the intent of a keyword will help you determine the structure and makeup of your content
  • Look at the monthly search volume (MSV)—Looking at how much search volume a keyword gets will help you prioritize your content. For instance, if you have a keyword with 20,000 MSV compared to 1,600 MSV, you may prioritize the keyword with 20,000 MSV since your content can get more eyeballs on it. Looking at the MSV may also tell you if you need to create multiple pieces on a topic as opposed to just one piece. 
  • Don’t forget the long-tail keywordsLong-tail keywords are keywords that are longer than the average keyword and, typically, are more specific. For instance, “best email service providers” is a keyword, but “best email service providers for small businesses” is a longer, more niche keyword to target. Going after long-tail keywords can help you reach more specific audiences and create niche content that answers targeted topics

6. Focus on content structure 

The structure of your content is an important pillar of B2B SEO to pay attention to. Content structure refers to how your content is laid out. If you’re writing a blog post or article, content structure includes: 

  • Subheadings 
  • Paragraph length 
  • Bulleted lists 

Remember, at the end of the day, Google’s main job is to provide the best possible answers for search queries. Being strategic with your content structure will help Google better recognize your content.

For instance, instead of writing one long paragraph, break your piece up into scannable paragraphs. According to Medium, paragraphs that are too long (and too short) are not favorable for SEO. Instead, focus on paragraphs that have between 100 and 200 words each.

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7. Don’t forget technical SEO

As important content creation and on-page SEO are for B2B SEO overall, technical SEO is another crucial element to hone in on. Technical SEO refers to the technical elements of your website that help it rank higher on search engines. Some elements of technical SEO include: 

  • Site speed 
  • Crawlability 
  • URL structure 
  • Indexation 
  • Site map 
  • Metadata 

Why is technical SEO important? Technical SEO helps you inform Google that your site is top-notch and easy to maneuver and, as such, is the best website to rank on the first search engine results page (SERP). If it’s been a while since you’ve checked on your website’s technical SEO and overall website health, take the time to perform a thorough analysis. Take a close look at your website design, too. The excellent content you produce will need a great home, after all. 

8. Produce thought-leadership content 

Producing thought-leadership content can help your B2B SEO strategy on multiple fronts. For starters, it helps you build credibility and trust, which search engines can reward. It can also help with your business development and lead generation goals. 

How? If other business leaders see your thought leadership piece, they may be impressed with your industry insights and thoughts. As such, they may be inclined to take action, whether that’s following you on social media, following your blog, signing up for your newsletter, or reaching out to you directly about your product or service

Examples of thought leadership content include: 

  • Blog articles discussing latest industry trends 
  • White pages 
  • Webinars 
  • Social media posts discussing industry trends 
  • Research reports 
Mediaboom shows how they optimized SEO for their landing page

9. Optimize your landing pages 

Landing pages are great ways to generate leads in B2B. A landing page is a page a web user lands on after clicking on an ad or coming from another specific campaign. Landing pages are beneficial because you can tailor your messaging directly to the user—you already have a good idea of their needs and intentions since they’re coming from a specific campaign. That also allows you to create a strong page call-to-action. 

You should optimize your landing pages for SEO, too, so they have a better shot at ranking on the first SERP. Many of the same on-page SEO principles apply to optimizing a landing page compared to optimizing content, including: 

  • Optimizing for a keyword, if possible 
  • Incorporating the keyword naturally in the copy
  • Structuring the content properly 
  • Monitoring page speed 

10. Interlink your content 

Interlinking your B2B SEO content is a strong SEO strategy to incorporate into your content creation strategy. Interlinking your content means you add hyperlinks to your content throughout your pieces. When you interlink your content, you signal to Google that you have other relevant content within the topic you’re writing about, and therefore, have expertise in that area

Interlinking content has other valuable SEO benefits, including: 

  • Aiding in crawling and indexing 
  • Boosting your pages 
  • Helping user navigation (and, as a result, possibly increasing time on site) 

Key tips to keep in mind when interlinking your content include: 

  • Linking to relevant anchor text—Ideally, the anchor text is the keyword for the piece you’re linking to 
  • Linking relevant content—Link to other content that relates to the content you’re writing about so it gives more context to the overall topic for the user
  • Spread the SEO wealth—If you already have a page that ranks really well, go in and see where you can add relevant internal links to spread the SEO wealth to those other links. 

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Need help with your B2B SEO strategy? 

We get it—B2B leaders have a lot on their plate, and doubling down on B2B SEO can feel like an uphill battle. However, it’s an extremely beneficial organic strategy that, when done right, increases authority, ranking, and ideally, lead acquisition
If you want to get a pulse on your current SEO performance, and learn how it can be improved, contact Mediaboom today for a free SEO evaluation. Our expert team will work with you to evaluate your current SEO strategy and explore where there’s room for growth, including with local SEO optimization and solutions.

HVAC Marketing – Top 8 Strategies to Grow Your Company

An HVAC marketing strategy should include mobile-friendly web design, SEO, reviews and testimonials, and a referral system.

HVAC marketing focuses on companies in the heating, air conditioning, and ventilation sphere. Digital marketing is the ideal complement to your HVAC marketing plan and can give you the edge that your company needs.

Why do HVAC businesses need digital marketing?

HVAC marketing works best with digital marketing strategies as you can separate your business from your competitors to boost your audience and sales. Some digital marketing elements that you may use include SEO, email marketing, content marketing, and social media marketing.

In this exploratory guide, we’ll examine 8 digital marketing facets that belong to any good HVAC marketing plan. Your company can then strategize how to grow!

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How to Create a Successful HVAC Marketing Plan

1. Build a Mobile-Friendly Website

What kind of website currently represents your HVAC company?

A website is more than a chance to introduce current and potential customers to your long list of HVAC services. It’s also an opportunity to make a good first impression on leads who are curious about what you do.

You know the saying. You only have one chance to make a good impression, so the first part of your HVAC marketing plan must be to prioritize a mobile-friendly website design

According to review resource Review42, 70 percent of website traffic is from mobile devices, namely smartphones. 

Further, 80 percent of the sites that rank the best all have mobile-friendly elements. This will matter more when we talk about SEO, which we will very shortly. 

A mobile-friendly site is one in which all the elements work seamlessly together on a smaller screen as they would on a desktop computer. 

You may have to work with a graphic designer or a web developer to get your site ready for mobile users, but the results will be worth it.

After all, Review42 says that most consumers–61 percent–don’t return to a site that isn’t mobile-friendly. Your HVAC site could stop losing traffic.

If you’re struggling with other areas of your HVAC website design, we have a handy post full of inspirational designs for you to review and emulate.

Mediaboom shows the results achieved in terms of traffic after boosting SEO

2. Use SEO

Search engine optimization or SEO is integral for any company to succeed and thus is another must-have component of your HVAC marketing plan. 

SEO, if you’re not familiar, determines where the HVAC website that you worked so hard on will rank when someone searches for HVAC companies online. 

For your purposes, we’d recommend using local SEO strategies.

Local SEO grows your SEO standing in your neighborhood, which is why it’s such a natural part of your HVAC marketing strategy. 

According to HubSpot, most Google searchers–46 percent in all–want local information. Thus, you’re appealing to almost half of Google searchers when you use local SEO tactics.

Here are some of the tactics that we recommend you utilize per our post above.

  • Create a Google Business Profile and fill it out completely if you haven’t already.
  • Consider a backlinking partnership with other local businesses.
  • Provide your contact information on your website so your HVAC company might appear on local business listings online.
  • Make local-centric content. 
  • Obtain more customer reviews (more on this in a little bit!).

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3. Pay for Digital Advertising

The next part of your HVAC marketing plan is digital advertising

Even if you only hope to become known on a local level, you still can’t forego advertising. This is your chance to reach new markets and potentially grow your customer base, which will in turn grow your revenue.

On our blog, we recommended digital advertising platforms such as native or display ads, LinkedIn advertising, Instagram advertising, Facebook advertising, and Google Ads

Let’s explain some of these advertising methods in more detail now.

  • Native or display ads: Display ads, which are also known as native ads, pop up everywhere on the Internet. You may see them on social media, when checking your email, or when using a website. The ads blend in well so first-time viewers may be more receptive to the message in the ad because they might not realize it’s an ad. 
  • Social media ads: Speaking of social media, these days, every social platform has its own paid advertising method. You choose which audience segments you want to see the message, create the ad based on various types, run the ad, and review analytics all within the social media ad manager. 
  • Google AdWords: Google AdWords is a great tool for local search. You can bid for long-tail keywords, which resonate more with local audiences, and then create highly targeted ad campaigns.

Our two top pointers for digital advertising as part of HVAC marketing are this. 

First, you must create an advertising budget. Canadian resource BDC states that B2C companies (like your HVAC business) spend five to 10 percent of their revenue on ads while B2B companies spend only two to five percent.

Our second piece of advice is to segment your audience. Unless you split your audience into smaller groups based on demographics, geographics, and psychographics, then you’re wasting advertising dollars on groups that might not care what your message is. 

Mediaboom shows the testimonials it has obtained thanks to the provision of very efficient services

4. Acquire Testimonials and Reviews

Video testimonial software Boast.io states that more than 90 percent of today’s customers will read a review before they buy something. 

That goes for products and services alike, so if your HVAC company doesn’t have very many reviews or even no reviews, that’s the next part of your HVAC marketing plan to focus on. 

Ideally, you want full-bodied testimonials that share how your HVAC services benefitted area customers. When leads and customers read these testimonials and reviews, their trust in your company will increase. 

How does your HVAC company begin acquiring reviews? In our post about medspa reviews, we shared some excellent pointers that we’ll recap now.

  • Focus on high-quality service: Reviews can kind of write themselves, especially if you’re providing excellent service. Your customers will want to share their experience with others, so they’ll feel inclined to leave a review.
  • Ask: Yes, sometimes it really is as simple as asking your customers to leave you a review. Make it easy for them to review your HVAC company by linking them to the appropriate source.
  • Incentivize: If your customers still aren’t biting, then incentivize them to leave reviews with discount codes. You could even create an exclusive contest that only reviewers can enter. Make sure you choose a fabulous prize. 

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5. Create a Content Marketing Plan

No HVAC marketing plan is complete without a content marketing strategy. 

With content marketing, you can convert more leads into customers, improve customer loyalty, and increase your SEO and thus your ranking. 

In our post about content marketing services, we recommend incorporating the following elements into your content marketing plan:

  • Blogs
  • Podcasts
  • User-generated content
  • Webinars
  • Videos
  • Infographics
  • Case studies
  • Whitepapers
  • eBooks

No matter which type of content you produce, be it written content or video, it has to be valuable. 

Valuable content is informative and educational. It teaches the reader something they didn’t know, but it’s not presented in a dry format. It’s exciting and engaging. 

When writing content, that means short paragraphs, bullet points to break up the text, and images, such as what you see on this blog. 

If you produce videos or podcasts, then watch your recording times. Video resource Vidyard says a two-minute video is a perfect length. 

Maybe you can go five minutes, but when you’re just starting out with HVAC content marketing, don’t go longer than five minutes.

Another key to content marketing success is consistency. You should create an editorial calendar and follow that. Produce more content than you need so that even on those weeks when it’s a holiday or you’re sick, your content production doesn’t suffer one iota.

A marketer is launching an email marketing campaign for his HVAC client

6. Deploy an Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is powerful stuff! You can grow your audience, help convert leads to customers, nurture current customers for more loyalty and engagement, and build your sales. 

Plus, it’s a cost-effective part of your HVAC marketing strategy.

We wrote an informative guide on email marketing for service businesses that details an action plan for beginning with content marketing.

Here’s a brief rundown of that plan.

First, you need a goal. Does your HVAC company want more sales for the quarter? New leads? Better customer retention?

Once you determine your goal, you must segment your audience according to which groups are conducive to achieving those goals. 

Next, you want to focus on expanding your email list. This is where content marketing comes from. You can take a few chapters from that HVAC eBook you wrote or gather some infographics and offer those as lead magnets. 

From there, you determine the kind of email content you’ll send (newsletters, tips, etc.) and the frequency. Your HVAC company can send emails daily, weekly, or monthly as well as somewhere in between.

You don’t want to send emails so seldomly that your customers forget about you, but emailing too often could cause your audience to unsubscribe.

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7. Use Social Media Marketing (Including YouTube)

Social media is an invaluable tool for increasing brand interaction, finding new potential customers, helping your content reach new eyes, improving your reputation, and connecting with your audience. 

As part of your HVAC marketing plan, you must be ready to develop a strong social media presence. 

Just as posting content regularly is important in your content marketing strategy, you must be active on social media as well.

Having an active social media presence doesn’t exclusively mean posting, posting, posting. You want to engage with your audience, responding to comments and messages. 

One social media platform that you should especially focus on for HVAC marketing is YouTube. That’s right, you or someone else in your company will have to get in front of a camera and make videos. 

Did you know that as many as 88 percent of marketers are already using videos? So says Wyzowl. If your HVAC company isn’t, then you risk being left behind. 

Video marketing is a unique opportunity to pull the curtain back on your HVAC company. You can do employee profiles or show a behind-the-scenes glimpse into what the average day in the life of an HVAC worker looks like.

You can also use video to educate and inform. Perhaps you do a video tutorial showing your audience how to do basic at-home HVAC maintenance.

HVAC business leaders are building a referral network to supercharge their marketing

8. Build a Referral Network

Whether you’re a dentist or an HVAC tech, there’s no denying that referrals are a powerful way to build a business. That’s why they’re our last recommended part of your HVAC marketing strategy. 

Retail TouchPoints, a retail insights service, notes that more than 85 percent of consumers trust referrals. 

After all, when their friend or family member suggests a product or service, it seems much more genuine than a company doing the same.

How do you generate the kind of referral network that builds your audience and adds strong leads to your sales funnel?

You want to start with your most loyal, long-term customers. They can be a part of your pilot referral program. Then, gradually trickle it down to the less-long-term but still viable customers, and so on.

The best referral programs have awesome incentives. Those incentives should build so that the more referrals your customers offer, the better the benefits they’re receiving. 

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Conclusion

These 8 strategies as part of an HVAC marketing plan use digital marketing methods that have long since been proven effective. 

Whether your HVAC company is new to the marketplace, or you’ve been around for a while but you’re not making a meaningful impact, these methods are the first steps to growing your business. If you need more personalized help with your digital marketing strategy, you can count on the pros at Mediaboom. We’re a local digital marketing agency that offers content marketing, SEO, content production, social media marketing, email marketing, web development, and digital advertising services.

B2B Digital Marketing – How to Make it Work for your Business

B2B Digital Marketing: discover why it is important for your business. Strategies and tools to earn maximum ROI and business efficiency.

B2B digital marketing refers to digital marketing strategies or content that is targeted specifically at businesses and organizations. This should be on the high priority list of companies who sell products and services to other businesses. 

Why is B2B Digital Marketing so important?

Marketing to consumers is completely different from marketing to businesses. There are different strategies and tools that you can use specifically for business development. All these B2B digital marketing strategies are geared towards earning maximum return on investments and business efficiency. 

For businesses, there is usually a group of decision-makers that should be consulted before purchasing products or services. There is a hierarchy of command that needs to be followed, as opposed to selling to individuals where only one person is involved. 

In getting digital marketing to businesses, you are not just selling your products or services; you are also letting them know more about your brand, philosophies, and company mission. By having an in-depth connection with businesses, your company can cultivate long-lasting relationships and bring in more revenue. 

Another main difference with selling to businesses is that they are making purchases as a part of their long-term solution which results in a long relationship and the possibility of renewing future contracts. This is the main reason why businesses should target other businesses for marketing their products and services.

Marketing to businesses is important because this can lead to longer relationships with your clients which can positively impact your bottom line. Here are the top 10 b2b digital marketing tools that you can use to grow your business:

  1. Email marketing
  2. Company Website
  3. B2B Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Content Marketing
  4. PPC Campaigns
  5. Optimize your online and offline marketing
  6. Social Media Marketing
  7. Use Reviews, Feedback, and Testimonials
  8. Customer Referral System
  9. Influencer Marketing
  10. Campaign report generation and tracking

Read along as we discuss the top 10 B2B digital marketing and how you can further utilize these tools to make your B2B marketing campaign strategic and successful.

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1. B2B email marketing

A whopping 93% of B2B marketers use email which makes it an effective tool to include in your company’s B2B marketing campaign. Email marketing is a quick and easy way you can reach your target audience. The number one goal of email marketing is to turn your target audience into subscribers which enables them to receive emails regularly from your company. 

In creating emails targeted to businesses, you have to put yourself in the business owner’s shoes (which is not hard to imagine since you are a business owner yourself). The main question that concerns entrepreneurs when they see marketing emails is “How will this product or service help my business?”. 

With this in mind, you have to be wary of the main goals of business owners which is to make their business operations run efficiently and increase the bottom line figures. 

Email marketing can be a double-edged sword. The average email open rate across all industries is 21.33%. It means that you have to make your e-mail subject line stand out from the rest to not get lost in the mix. 

Another important part of an email marketing campaign is to always have a call-to-action link or section so that your audience will either buy the product right from the e-mail or click on a link to get more information. 

2. Company Website

Your company website is the best representation of your company on the World Wide Web. With this in mind, you have to make sure that your website is easy to navigate and can capture the attention of your audience. If your website design is too cluttered and hard to read, your prospective customers will give up on getting more information about your company and move on to the next one. 

With over 81% of buyers visiting a website before making a purchase, you have to make sure that your website is accessible and easy to find. Keep in mind that when marketing to businesses, you have to realize that the decision-making process involved multiple people and your website will be shared with all the key players.

Mediaboom shows how it has optimized its website from an SEO perspective

3. B2B Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Content Marketing

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is vital to any marketing campaign and most especially in B2B. The first thing that your prospective business customers do when they hear about your brand or company is to search online. In this way, they can get to know more about what you are offering.

SEO goes hand-in-hand with content marketing because after searching your company through Google, your prospective customers will click on your website and this is where content marketing comes in. Content marketing can help position your company as being a trusted advisor in your chosen field and by placing education and information content in front of your viewers, you are helping them make informed decisions.

4. PPC Campaigns for B2B Digital Marketing

Pay-per-Click advertising enables your business to be strategically placed in front of your target business audience through search engine platforms or social media. These campaigns usually entail an investment up-front but it will pay off by increasing your visibility. 

Instead of highlighting your products or services, you can also use PPC Campaigns to promote your brand. By having a buyer persona in mind, you feature ads or content that they can relate to.

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5. Optimize your online and offline marketing

The implementation of your B2B digital marketing strategy should go hand in hand with your offline B2B marketing strategy. It is not a matter of choosing one over the other but rather striking a great balance between the two which can lead your business to success.

Here are some ways that you can create a happy marriage between your offline and online marketing:

  • Having your website, social media information, or a QR code on printed marketing materials
  • Gathering e-mail addresses through in-person events and product launch parties –is a great way to generate leads
  • Offer content that can only be retrieved or viewed online such as your blog or newsletter subscription
  • Showcasing your social media presence through competitions or giveaways

6. Social Media Marketing

With 83% of B2B marketers using social media, your company will be amiss if you don’t capitalize and include social media marketing as the main focal point of your marketing strategy. Different social media sites have their purpose and social media subscribers can be individuals and businesses. Having a social media presence itself is key so that you can interact with your audience and customers. 

B2B marketing through social media has its drawbacks because business-to-business sales cycles are usually longer than business-to-consumer. But having a social media account comes in beneficial so that businesses can find you. And get to know what your brand is all about.

Mediaboom shows the great reviews it has gotten

7. Use Reviews, Feedback, and Testimonials

Utilizing customer reviews, feedback and testimonials are all important tools that you can incorporate into your B2B digital marketing tools. All this feedback builds your company’s credibility and showcases a third-party non-affiliated view of your products and services. Reviews online can be leveraged by outranking your competitors and improving your organic search engine click-through rate. 

8. Customer Referral System

Referrals are a great way to grow your business and are one of the most overlooked B2B digital marketing tools. A satisfied customer will happily refer more customers your way. Actually, this is the highest form of compliment that they can give to your company.

Referrals can either be paid or organic. Paid referrals are done by extending an incentive for the business to refer your company over to another person or business. The incentive can either be in a form of a discount or a freebie. On the other hand, organic referrals are achieved by naturally asking a satisfied customer for referrals.

An influencer has been hired to promote a B2B company

9. Influencer Marketing

With the boost in social media activity, there are a lot of influencers, that is individuals who can influence a person’s buying prowess. Tapping into influencer marketing will enable you to reach a wider audience because influencers can promote your business to their social media followers. 

To entice their followers into buying or getting to know your products, most influencers will put up an exclusive discount code to entice new customers. Over 71% of consumers are most likely to purchase a product after social media referrals; as a result, influencer marketing is a great tool that you can get the word out about your brand and company.

10. Campaign report generation and tracking

You can implement all the B2B digital marketing tools you want. But, in the end, how will you know which one is effective without measuring KPIs and tracking it? By effectively tracking the performance of different tools you can make changes to your marketing strategy implementation for the ones who are not performing as you would expect. 

The reporting that you have should cover conversion, rankings, and organic traffic brought about by the different tools that you are using. This will enable you to have an appropriate comparison. Also, you can see which ones are working versus the ones that need improvement.

Keep in mind that your digital marketing strategy should be fluid; you can always redefine your targets and change your strategies if it is not effective. 

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Conclusion

In conclusion, there are a lot of B2B digital marketing tools that you can use for your company. Businesses usually employ the use of different tools together to reach a maximum impact on their target business audience. Like with any type of marketing, there is no shortcut to get to your results. 

With the tools listed above, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to reaching your marketing strategy goal. Also, all these tools are available to everybody. As a result, the best way to stand out from the rest is to implement unique strategies that will highlight your brand. Are you unsure of where to start? Enlisting the help of a B2B marketing agency will help steer you in the right direction. 

Franchise Web Design – How to Design a Top Quality Website

With franchise web design services, you get online exposure and reach more people interested in your business. Learn what makes a good franchise web design.

Franchise web design must appeal to a wide and varied audience while still maintaining brand unity. A web design that’s not just functional but also attractive is a powerful tool for businesses, especially franchises. It helps you convey your brand to visitors and makes it easier to engage with your content.

In this post, we are discussing: 

  • Top 10 franchise website designs
  • The best strategies in franchise brand development
  • How to create a marketing funnel for franchises
  • What makes a good franchise web design?

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Top 10 Franchise Website Designs

Franchise websites are a great place to look for inspiration. With an established company name, brand, and products, owners must focus their efforts on marketing. If you’re thinking of starting your own franchise business, these sites should give you plenty of ideas:

1. McDonald’s

The web design of McDonald's franchise

McDonald’s is one of the most iconic fast-food brands of all time. Its website reflects this brand authority with a simple design that allows users to quickly and easily find what they need, whether it’s nutritional information, a list of locations, or information about hiring. The site is sleek, straightforward, and clearly communicates all relevant information: just like the brand itself!

2. Burger King

The design of Burger King franchise website

Burger King may be known for its flame-broiled burgers and Whopper sandwiches, but its website design is anything but a hot mess. With a layout that makes navigating from location to location easy and intuitive and an attractive color scheme that perfectly matches the logo, this site has everything you need to know about your favorite “have it your way” restaurant.

3. Subway

Subway franchise website and its design

Subway‘s website brings fun back into fast food with vibrant colors, fun music and sounds, and an interactive map with a store locator function. It also offers easy-to-find nutritional information and FAQs so that customers can get all the facts they need in one place.

4. Planet Fitness

The design of Planet Fitness franchise website

The Planet Fitness website is well organized, with each page clearly labeled and featuring a cohesive aesthetic. The bright colors and friendly vibe perfectly match the brand’s mission statement: “Making the world a happier and healthier place. It’s simple to navigate through pages and find what you’re looking for using the top navigation bar or the drop-down menu.

5. 7-Eleven

The web design of 7-Eleven franchise

7-Eleven has taken full advantage of its existing brand recognition by including its iconic logo on every page. They also use a minimal design that focuses on high-quality visuals, which is excellent for businesses that rely on brands to sell products.

6. Starbucks

Franchise web design: the home page of Starbucks

Starbucks is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Their website reflects their brand as a trusted, familiar name that people turn to for comfort and joy. The Starbucks website is easily navigated, with clear calls-to-action easy to find and understand. It also features an engaging video that introduces visitors to the Starbucks brand story and provides them with a warm welcome. The overall feel of the site is smooth, relaxed, and inspiring.

7. Pizza Hut

The design of the Pizza Hut franchise website

Pizza Hut‘s website design is as straightforward as you’d expect from a pizza franchise. Their homepage has only two menu items: “Order Pizza” and “Checkout.” When you click on either of these options, it immediately takes you to the real meat of their site—their online ordering system—which makes it easy for customers to get exactly what they want. The rest of the site content revolves around this goal: making sure customers can easily order pizza whenever they want it.

8. KFC

The Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise website: focus on its design

The KFC website is clean and simple. The layout is easy to navigate, making it simple to find the information you need quickly and effectively. The site uses a consistent color scheme with a red background, white text, and gray links, making it easy on the eyes. The KFC website is also well-organized, with sections for the company’s history, services offered by its franchisees, and a list of locations that are available for purchase.

9. Ace Hardware

Franchise web design: the Ace Hardware website

The Ace Hardware website is also clean and simple. The layout is straightforward to navigate, making it simple to find the information you need quickly and effectively. The site uses a consistent color scheme with a red background, white text, and gray links, making it easy on the eyes.

10. Hooters

The Hooters website design

The Hooters website has all the elements of a great franchise website. It is simple yet appealing. Hooters’ menu is front and center — just what a hungry customer wants! The images are bright and inviting while still being tasteful. And, of course, they include the logo front and center at the top of the page, so customers know exactly where they’re at with just one glance.

What are the Best Strategies in Franchise Brand Development?

In franchise marketing, brand development is all about refining and expanding on a company’s existing identity. And with franchise brand development, a lot of the traditional marketing strategies that work for a single business don’t apply. The best strategy for success is to focus on the customer’s end goal and how their local business can help them achieve it.

Your franchisees will be using the brand to communicate with customers (and potential partners), and in the end, it’s their relationship with those customers that determine their success. To create a cohesive brand, you need to provide detailed guidelines for how your franchisees’ brands should look and feel. These guidelines should include:

  • A clearly defined brand voice and tone
  • Color palette restrictions and examples
  • Font restrictions and examples
  • Logo design specifications (if applicable)
  • Guidelines for product or service messaging

Once you’ve established your guidelines, use them as a basis for your franchise web design. You want all of your franchisees’ sites to share a consistent aesthetic—but within that aesthetic, you want each site to stand out as its own entity. This means giving each site its own unique color scheme, fonts, and so on while making sure they all follow the guidelines you’ve set out—and making sure they all use templates that meet your standards for style.

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How to Create a Marketing Funnel for Franchises

The most effective way to get your franchisees involved in promoting your brand and company is to create a simple, powerful marketing funnel that they can easily implement into their businesses. A marketing funnel is a system that helps businesses drive their sales. It takes leads through stages, where the goal is to get them to the bottom of the funnel and convert them into customers.

The first step in creating a marketing funnel for franchises is establishing your strategy. This involves deciding what you want the campaign to be about and who the target audience should be. It also includes determining what kind of content will best reach this target audience.

Next, it’s time for awareness. It would help if you got potential customers positively thinking about your brand. This can be done through social media posts, blog posts, infographics, and more! Once they have been made aware of your product or service, they are much more likely to consider it an option when making their next purchase.

Finally, it’s time to close the sale! You can use email marketing campaigns or other forms of direct outreach to speak directly with potential customers who have already shown interest in your product or service by making them aware of it previously through one of the previous steps (awareness). This allows you to make sure each person receives personalized messaging that speaks directly to their specific needs and wants while also helping you track how many people are responding positively vs. negatively. And this also helps you determine whether or not you’re on the right track with these campaigns!

Zara is a franchise with an outstanding website design

What Makes a Good Franchise Web Design?

If you’re looking to build a franchise website or re-design an existing site, then look no further than these ten elements:

1. Use a compelling web design theme

One of the first things you should consider is the theme of your design. The theme ties together all of the different elements on your site, from the color scheme to the font. While it may be tempting to choose a design theme based on what’s popular in web design, this may not be a good long-term strategy. You want your franchise website to have a timeless look that will stand out for years to come, so try to pick a theme that will be as relevant today as it was ten years ago.

2. Use Compelling Images

Images and font styles work together to create an engaging design. This is why it’s important to choose an appropriate font style that matches the images on your website’s homepage. Try using bold headlines and subheads, but don’t overdo it—if you make every piece of text larger than life, your website will look cluttered and unprofessional. Instead, pick one typeface you like and stick with it throughout most of your site (except for large headlines).

3. Create a unique logo for your franchise website

One way to make sure visitors recognize your brand is by coming up with an original logo for every franchise location. You can use this as part of your web design theme by including it in the header or footer of each page. The color scheme should be consistent with other elements on the page so that users can easily identify where they are within the site hierarchy when navigating from one page to another.

Navigating the Mc'Donalds website is very simple and intuitive

4. Make sure the franchise site is easy to navigate

You want your franchise website to be easy for visitors to navigate so that they can quickly find what they’re looking for. This means that you should have a logical website framework in place and include a search function if you have a lot of content on your site. A well-organized navigation bar, clear headings, and consistent page layouts will make it easy for consumers to get where they want to go on your website. You don’t want your customers to choose another franchise because yours was too hard to find information on!

5. Use a mobile-friendly web design

With how prevalent smartphones are today, it’s not surprising that most people search for local businesses on their phones instead of desktops or laptops. This is especially true for franchises with multiple locations spread out over a wide area. If your franchise web design isn’t mobile-friendly, it won’t display properly on mobile devices and you could lose out on customers who can’t easily find the information they want from your website.

6. Incorporate special graphics and icons into your website design

Customizing your site with special graphics, illustrations, and icons can make all the difference in how it’s perceived. You want to make sure that the graphics are appropriate for the business you do and that they fit the overall theme of your site. A web design that uses icons and graphics to highlight key information can be more appealing than one with just text. It also helps visitors quickly find what they’re looking for by using colors and visuals instead of words.

A franchise is using its social proof to get more customers

7. Share social proof by including customer reviews

If you already have happy customers who love what you do, why not show it off? There’s no better way to demonstrate value than letting other people say great things about what you offer. Reviews are the best way to get people interested in your product or service because they provide an honest look at how good it is from someone who has actually used it. Sharing these reviews on your website will help build trust with potential customers who might be hesitant about purchasing something new.

8. The franchise site should have strong content

Good franchise web design should have strong content with valuable information for potential customers. Focus on creating content that answers questions about your industry and provides value to those interested in learning more about it—this can be anything from blog posts with tips for getting started in your industry to videos with interviews of experts in related industries.

9. Your home page has to be optimized for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing a website so that it ranks higher in search engines when people search for certain phrases related to your business. The higher your site appears in search results, the more likely people are to visit it; and the more traffic your site gets, the more likely people are to become leads (and eventually customers).

SEO optimization is critical to any company that does business online, but it’s especially important if you’re selling franchises. That’s because prospective franchisees are going to be doing a LOT of research online before deciding which companies they want to invest in. If your website isn’t optimized for search, they might not even find out that you exist!

10. Focus on calls-to-action (CTAs) and lead generation strategies

When users land on your pages, you have to let them know what they should do and why they should choose your business over competitors. CTAs let users know the next step they should take, while lead generation strategies help you get the most value from each of your web pages.

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To Conclude

Your website is the best first impression you can give your customers. If you’re a franchise, that means it needs to be a good one—and also needs to fit in with the brand. If you are interested in marketing services for your business, Get in touch! Our digital experts can help you take your franchise to the next level.

How and Why You Should Implement Tourism Marketing

With Tourism Marketing, you can reach more people interested in your hotel. Find out why it is important for the hospitality industry.

In a booming industry such as hospitality, differentiating your hotel through tourism marketing becomes that much more critical. You want to give consumers a reason to choose your hotel over the multitude of others in the vicinity. How do you create a tourism marketing plan?

Here are some tourism marketing strategies to implement:

  • Segment your audience
  • Optimize your site for mobile
  • Build an email marketing list and connect
  • Develop your brand
  • Use social media 
  • Produce valuable content
  • Improve your SEO

In today’s article, we’ll discuss in more detail what tourism marketing is and its importance for hotels. We’ll also delve into the channels and strategies listed above to improve your destination marketing campaigns.

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What Is Tourism Marketing and Why Is It Important for Hotels?

Why tourism marketing is such an important part of a digital marketing strategy for hotel managers?

Tourism Marketing Explained

We’ll start with a definition. 

Tourism marketing encompasses the marketing tactics that hospitality businesses use to reach their target audience. The goals of tourism marketing are usually multiple. A hotel may wish to increase its leads, bolster its branding, and increase bookings. 

Through destination marketing, those goals are all achievable and then some! 

The Importance of Tourism Marketing for the Hospitality Industry

As we touched on earlier and detailed in our guide to hospitality marketing, standing out among the competition is crucial for increasing your hotel’s bookings. That’s the chief reason your hotel should consider tourism marketing.

Hospitality marketing uses elements such as storytelling and branding, and that’s what truly sets your hotel apart from the competition. 

It’s not only your dedication to customer service, as any hotel should be dedicated to customer service.

Through tourism marketing, you can communicate unique elements. You can tell about your fabled location, your staff, and your story to a receptive target audience.

The hotel owner has found a new customer after applying tourism marketing

What Are the Main Channels and Strategies of Tourism Marketing?

Next, per the information in the intro, let’s delve deeper into tourism marketing channels and strategies that can propel your hotel to the next level. 

Audience Segmentation

You must be cognizant of the makeup of your audience to benefit from tourism marketing. Segmenting your customers is the way to do it.

You should split your audience into groups based on demographics (age, gender, marital status, income), geographics (location), and psychographics, which are motivating behaviors that often fuel purchasing decisions. 

Your hotel might wish to create customer avatars or profiles to personalize your bigger, more dominant audience segments. 

As a matter of fact, avatars help you better understand the pain points and motivations of your varied audience groups.

Having segmented your audience, you can now ensure that your tourism marketing messages reach only those who are interested and could be receptive to those messages.

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Website Optimization

According to marketing resource HubSpot, across only the first quarter of 2021, global website traffic from mobile devices hit a whopping 54.8 percent. 

This stat tells you that most of your customers and prospective customers are going to browse your hotel’s website from their phones or tablets.

It’s no wonder that a mobile-optimized website is one of our top hospitality marketing trends for 2023

If your hotel’s website isn’t already designed for adaptivity between desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets, that’s your first order of business. 

That might entail you reworking the design of your site so it’s more responsive and looks good on smaller and larger screens alike.

When it comes to website design, simpler is often better, as exemplified in our collection of luxury travel websites

As you browse through, you’ll notice that although some design elements are certainly disparate, many consistencies appear.

Travel and hotel websites should embrace inviting images of the nearby area that invoke a sense of calm, luxury, and relaxation. Use bold fonts, large typefaces, and brief headlines. 

Ensure your navigation is streamlined and easy to use as well.  

The hotel copywriter is sending the newsletter to all subscribers to his new mailing list

Email List Building

Within the umbrella of tourism marketing is email marketing.

Your hotel needs a robust email list. You can keep the line of communication open even once your customers have left the hotel (and your tourist destination) and are back to their day-to-day lives.

Sometimes, all it takes is a well-timed email full of photos of lush landscapes or tropical beaches to inspire someone to book a getaway. 

Building an email list will rely on some of the other tourism marketing strategies we’ll discuss, such as branding and content marketing

Your website needs both opt-in pop-ups and exit intent pop-ups timed to grab a site visitor’s attention. 

Once you have your email list, here are some pointers for keeping your audience engaged.

  • Use graphics: According to email template resource Unlayer, you could see a 1.12 percent higher click-through rate just by adding graphics to your emails. 
  • Personalize your subject lines: Email automation makes it easy to schedule your messages, but you have to add the personalization yourself. Another stat from Unlayer notes that email personalization can increase email opens by up to 26 percent.
  • Nurture with newsletters: Monthly or bimonthly, you should send newsletters to your email subscribers. You can nurture relationships by keeping leads and customers in the loop about what’s going on at your hotel. 
  • Don’t forget their birthdays: This might sound silly, but it’s anything but. A 2020 report from Campaign Monitor found that birthday emails boost your transaction rate by 481 percent more compared to sending a promotional email. The revenue per email is also 342 percent greater! 
Mediaboom shows how its logo is highly branded

Branding

Going back to our point from before, branding is a must-have component of your tourism marketing strategy.

As we detailed in our post about hospitality branding, branding encompasses your customer experience, values, ideals, story, color scheme, logo, and tone. 

Finessing your hotel’s branding can establish trust among your current customers and incentivize curious leads to look into your hotel. 

You and your key stakeholders will have to sit down and thoughtfully consider every element of your brand. 

Two different colors and typefaces can have very different emotions associated with them, so think carefully about what you’re trying to convey! 

Content Production

One pillar of your destination marketing strategy is content marketing.

Your hotel should determine which goals you want your content marketing to solve, be that lead generation, awareness, or brand building. 

Then you need to create a content strategy that will document what kind of content you’ll produce and how often.

Don’t just dip your toes into video marketing; jump in headfirst. This Statista chart shows that digital video content is being viewed by Americans at an increasingly higher rate. 

The content you produce can be funny or educational, but above all else, it must be valuable. Perhaps you do a video series on tourist destinations around your hotel or write a blog post about the history of the area. 

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SEO

Website optimization is technically SEO, but that’s not all your hotel must focus on as part of your tourism marketing plan. 

The following tips can elevate your website’s standing in search engine rankings.

  • A/B test: Before new elements of your website go live, split-test them to determine which version is likelier to perform well among your audience.
  • Focus on high-quality content: That’s right, content marketing is an SEO strategy as well. As you write content, try to win the featured Google snippet for that topic or keyword.
  • Use long-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords are the current trend in the Google algorithm. The specificity of these keywords offsets their lower search rate, as searchers who want the information contained in the keyword will get exactly what they were looking for.
  • Repurpose old content: As your hotel’s blog grows, it pays to go back at least every year and reassess old content. Update old posts, add more sections to sort content, or even delete some posts. 
A hotel customer is sharing her experience on her social media

How Effective Is Social Media for Travel Marketing?

The social media jungle grows larger and denser all the time. 

Your hotel is expected to have a social media presence. That’s why the use of social media must be a part of your tourism marketing strategy.

In our post on hospitality social media, we wrote about the many benefits that social media can deliver for hospitality industry professionals. Here’s a recap.

Betters Your SEO 

Social media is a great vehicle for SEO. In fact, by maintaining a healthy social media presence, you can increase your organic traffic. You can also expand the lifespan of the content you post when you share it on social media. 

Strengthens Relationships

Social media is a chance for your customers to directly interact with you. 

Sure, some of your audience will leave likes on your posts, but many more will comment. Some will even direct message you. 

Whether you use your social media accounts to respond to positive customer comments or to smooth over poor experiences that customers had, you’re building rock-solid foundations for professional relationships. 

Builds Trust Through Social Proof

Social media is also a great way to generate social proof. Your customers can review your hotel on platforms like Facebook. Others who find your public Facebook page can then read the reviews and decide whether they want to book with you.

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Conclusion 

Tourism marketing focuses on areas such as branding, email list building, SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing. To increase bookings, solidify your brand, and set you apart from the competition.

Mediaboom is a digital marketing agency that serves professionals in the hospitality industry. Whatever your marketing goals, our expertise and long-standing experience can get your hotel the results you want.

B2B Content Marketing – How to Improve Your Business

Improving a B2B content marketing strategy requires obtaining current audience data, doing content audits, and ramping up ad spending.

Per the 2021 HubSpot state of marketing report, more than 60 percent of marketers have a B2B content marketing strategy. Your company may be struggling to come up with such a strategy yourself. How can you strengthen your B2B content marketing?

Here are our top tips for improving your B2B content marketing strategy:

  • Determine your goals 
  • Do deep audience research 
  • Revise buyer personas
  • Do a content audit
  • Expand on email marketing, ads, and website design

In this article, we’ll discuss what B2B content marketing entails and the importance of this form of marketing. Then we’ll delve deeper into the points above. Your company will be so able to create an actionable, efficient B2B content marketing strategy! 

What Is B2B Content Marketing?

B2B is short for business-to-business, and it’s the opposite of B2C, which is business-to-consumer. 

Rather than produce content with the goal of reaching the everyday consumer, B2B content marketing targets other businesses that are capable of making purchasing decisions. 

Although the audience may be different, the goals of content marketing are the same. Your B2B business should strive to:

We’ll talk later about the types of content you can produce for your B2B audience. For now, we’ll say that most importantly, B2B content must be valuable. 

Your audience wants to take something away from having read, watched, or otherwise consumed your content. Usually, they’re hoping for tips they can directly apply to their business to grow it.

That doesn’t mean your content has to be bland or dry though. Anything but!

If it fits within your personal B2B brand to interject some entertainment into the content you produce, then that’s fine. Engaging content is going to get views, after all.

Just don’t sacrifice quality and value in the name of entertainment.

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Why Is a Content Marketing Strategy Important?

Most B2B companies today have a documented content marketing strategy. Utilizing such a strategy can be highly advantageous for these reasons. 

Standardizes the Process for Planning

When you develop a B2B content marketing strategy, then you know you can implement the strategy this week, next week, and three months from now. 

That’s a much better option than the alternative, which is flying by the seat of your pants and producing content when and if your team can agree on an idea.

Consumers expect consistent content, and that’s true of B2B customers as well as B2C customers

Through consistently posting content, you prove your reliability to your audience, which could improve their rate of trust.

Further, you could boost sales. According to Inc., consistently showcasing your brand such as through content marketing can lead to a revenue boost of 23 percent. 

Affords You the Option to Target Specific Demographics

It’s hard to determine which target demos you’re after when you’re rushing through content just to get something out there.

Fostering a B2B content marketing strategy as part of your business development affords you the time to be more careful and methodical about which audience segments your content will be tailored towards. 

Personalize your content tone and the type of content according to that which is the most appealing to your B2B audience. You can even determine which promotional and distribution channels are the most appropriate.

Taking these measures can ensure the success of your B2B content marketing campaign. 

The web agency meeting was focused on budgeting for the creation of new content

Allows for Content Budgeting

It doesn’t matter whether your B2B business is a startup, or a Fortune-500 company. No one wants to go over the preestablished marketing budget. 

The amount of money that’s best to spend on B2B content marketing varies based on your industry and company size. However, Forbes suggests that upwards of 30 percent of your overall marketing budget should be allocated for content marketing. 

Gives You Consistent Metrics to Track Progress

Has your website traffic spiked this month compared to last month? What about this quarter versus last quarter?

Has your YouTube channel gained subscribers, and how many?

With metrics attached to your B2B content marketing campaign, these questions don’t have to linger. You and your team will be able to clearly see what’s working and what isn’t. So, you can finetune your marketing campaign even further for next time.

The Types of Content Marketing and the Best Ones for B2B

As promised, let’s now go over the types of content that may comprise a B2B content marketing strategy.

Admittedly, not every type of content we’re going to present may naturally slot into your campaigns. But we’ll recommend which ones to use and which to skip. 

Blogs

This article you’re reading is on a blog, which is one of 600 million according to Oberlo.

You want the blog content you produce to be actionable and valuable first and foremost, then entertaining secondly.

The same writing tips for any blog apply to a B2B blog. Write short, snappy sentences and don’t make paragraphs too bloated.

As for the length of your content, longer-form content that’s 1000+ words is best. 

Writing longer content is a good chance to establish your B2B business as a topic authority, and longer content can elevate your SEO as well. 

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Videos

We’d also highly recommend videos as part of your B2B content marketing strategy. 

Most businesses use videos, and so failing to do the same will leave a noticeable gap that your audience will ask about.

Video resource Wyzowl states that most videos that companies make are explainer videos. They are followed by social media videos, presentation videos, video testimonials, video ads, sales videos, and product demos.  

Case Studies

Case studies are highly valuable, as they show a potential B2B customer what your company has achieved for other customers. 

When putting together a case study, be as illustrative as possible.

Detail precisely what your customer’s issue was and how your B2B services helped the customer overcome their challenges. Include as many numbers and stats as you can, especially sales numbers.

eBooks

We’ve already established that long-form content is excellent in the B2B market and that the content you produce should be actionable and valuable.

What better way to provide value than to write an eBook? 

Research what kinds of eBooks exist in your industry before you start writing. If you can improve upon an existing topic or concept or even provide more up-to-date content, then you can cover an existing topic.

You should still select a target audience for your eBook and use relevant keywords to ensure your writing resonates with your B2B audience. 

Infographics

An infographic takes the content you’ve produced on your blog or even brand-new content and translates it into a visually appealing format.

Infographics, when done correctly, are highly sharable. They’re a valuable tool for building a brand, establishing credibility, and proving authority and thus slot in well into a B2B content marketing strategy. 

Checklists

How does a new company in your industry establish itself? What are the trends in your niche for the year? What are 10 things everyone starting off in your industry needs to know?

You can answer these questions by producing easy-to-read checklists. Then you can use the checklist–as well as infographics and singular chapters of your eBook–as a lead magnet. 

User-Generated Content 

User-generated content or UGC does exist in the B2B sphere, often in the form of third-party reviews, guest bloggers, customer video or written testimonials, and UGC FAQs.

UGC is perhaps not a critical part of your B2B content marketing strategy but would behoove you if you can manage it. 

Whitepapers

A whitepaper is a six-to-eight-page document that expands upon a topic or concept. Whitepapers are longer than blog posts but not longer than eBooks. They too would fit in well in your content plan. 

Memes

Lastly, there are memes, which are joke images or videos. Although some B2B industries might be able to utilize memes effectively, this type of content is better-suited for B2C industries in most instances.

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How to Create a B2B Content Marketing Strategy

To wrap up, we want to share our tips per the intro for developing and improving your B2B content marketing strategy. 

Determine Your Goals 

What does your B2B business hope to achieve? You probably have common marketing goals such as lead generation, customer conversions, brand awareness, better SEO, and more sales. 

Once you’re aware of what those goals are, you can create stepping stones on the path to eventually reach the outcome you desire. 

Do Deep Audience Research 

Who is your B2B audience? 

Since the composition of an audience changes all the time (which is true of B2B industries as well as B2C), you must keep your finger on the pulse of your buyers, especially long-term customers.

Now is a great time to issue your current customers a survey to learn more about them. The circumstances of some of your customers could have changed between the time they first bought a product/service from you and now.

The way you market to those audience members should change in kind, so get to know who is in your audience at current. Then your B2B marketing strategy can follow. 

The marketing team is reviewing the strategy for identifying the buyer personas of their client's B2B business

Revise Buyer Personas

Buyer personas are a useful marketing tool for visualizing large audiences with hundreds to thousands of people as one overarching personality. 

Your B2B company likely already created a slew of buyer personas to represent the most common personality traits and pain points among your customers. 

Now that you’ve gone back and done more extensive research on your audience, it’s best to update your buyer personas as well. 

Do a Content Audit

Unless you’re starting your blog from scratch, then you have content that may stretch back over months or even years. 

Your B2B website can benefit from a content audit.

During a content audit, you review your existing content, track its performance and other metrics, and determine what the fate of your content will be.

For example, you may wish to update content that’s outdated or add more words to very short-form content. You can rewrite content that doesn’t fit your new standards. 

You may even wish to delete some content. 

By updating the content on your blog, you can direct refresh traffic to it, so make audits a regular part of your content plan. 

Expand on Email Marketing, Ads, and Website Design

Finally, the last part of your B2B content marketing strategy should be promotional. 

Double-down on email marketing and advertising. Build your email list but don’t be afraid to prune dead email addresses.

Since you’re directing so many potential customers to your website, now is an ideal time to focus on your site design. You might even wish to redesign your site. 

We have a post highlighting some great examples of B2B web design that can serve as inspiration.

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Conclusion

A B2B content marketing strategy starts with a goal. Content audits can help, as can advertising, email marketing, and developing buyer personas. If you’re struggling to formulate a workable B2B marketing plan, trust the pros at Mediaboom. We’re a B2B digital marketing agency that can help your company in many ways. Contact us – we can support you by generating leads, establishing retargeting funnels, boosting your email list, raising brand awareness, and elevating your SEO.

Why You Need Both Types of Marketing – Inbound and Outbound

Inbound vs Outbound Marketing – What Is The Difference And Which Is Better For Your Business? Let’s dive into these two Marketing Methods.

Experts still argue about which method of Inbound vs Outbound marketing is more effective when it comes to planning marketing strategies and budget allocation for the next quartile: Is it ok to use both methods and can they be aligned to support and strengthen each other?

From a traditional standpoint, while outbound marketing is an excellent tool for those looking to push their message to a wider, unfiltered audience, inbound marketing is great for businesses actively looking to attract targeted prospects. 

Of course, the parameters of these types of marketing have evolved greatly in the past decade, some of which might surprise the average marketer! So, which kind of marketing should you prioritize for your brand? Come dive in with us as we explore the pros and cons of each.

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The Differences Between Inbound vs Outbound Marketing

Inbound marketing distributes content that is meant to funnel people to your website. Conversely, outbound marketing is made to proactively reach out to customers so they garner interest in a given product or service.

More often than not, outbound marketing is more wide-sweeping and aggressive in its approach. The expectation with outbound marketing is that potential consumers will convert.

On the other hand, inbound marketing is often more subtle, focusing on providing groups of individuals to make purchases over time. 

Let’s look at both of these marketing approaches more closely to get a better understanding.

Inbound Marketing 

The focus of inbound marketing is on attracting potential customers to your products or services. Remember, consumers are always searching for new products online. A recent study suggests that 63% of consumers begin their journey of buying new products online.

Consumers will often begin searching for products or services as a solution to a problem they have or a void they need to fill. Where you come in is crafting content that can show these consumers how your particular products or services can help. Provide people with the answers or solutions to the burning questions in your industry, and you will see conversion. 

Ways to approach inbound marketing:

There are several ways to approach inbound marketing, including video content, photos, blogs, guidebooks, and much more. The important thing is figuring out a way to differentiate yourself from the competition with this type of content. 

To do so, try embedding testimonials, product comparisons, reviews, or competitive pricing in your content. You want to make sure that your messaging is consistent and your content is thoughtful. 

Example of how an article has been SEO optimized to support inbound marketing

Inbound Marketing example:

Let’s say you have a customer that is on the hunt for a new lawnmower. They might type in “best lawnmowers on the market today” into their preferred search engine. If the very first organic blog post they see is “The Best Lawnmowers for Homeowners,” they’ll hopefully be able to get helpful, unbiased reviews to base their buying decision.

Once they’ve read your article, they might be interested in learning more about outdoor home improvement.

Luckily, you’ve left a convenient link at the end of your article encouraging them to sign up for your newsletter, where they can learn more about everything that has to do with outdoor home improvement! 

As they begin receiving your emails, they realize that you’re the main authority when it comes to home improvement, providing you with leverage to sell your products or services to them in the future. 

Of course, inbound marketing goes much deeper than that. Let’s take a look at some of the main advantages surrounding inbound marketing so you can get a better idea as to why it’s a good idea to implement it in your marketing strategy.

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Pros of Inbound Marketing

There are plenty of unique benefits that inbound marketing can provide. Here are some of the top benefits: 

  • Educational Content – Inbound marketing can provide educational content at every stage in the sales funnel.
  • Non-Invasive – Your potential customers can read your blog posts and check out your content whenever they’d like.
  • Up-To-Date – Because you continuously update your website, you continue drawing in leads who are interested in new content over time.
  • Quantifiable Results – Every piece of your inbound marketing strategy can be tied to a specific metric, which you will be able to monitor as time goes on.

Cons of Inbound Marketing

While there are many benefits to inbound marketing, it certainly isn’t right for every company. Here are a few of the main disadvantages of inbound marketing:

  • Consistent Maintenance – When it comes to inbound marketing, it’s important to continuously maintain your content so that it speaks to the ever-evolving needs and desires of your customers.
  • Time and Effort – Developing and testing out different inbound marketing strategies to find the right one for your brand can take a lot of time and can cost a lot of money.
  • Holistic Approach – You’ll have to purchase tools that help you integrate and implement cross-channel campaigns.
Call center operators are applying outbound marketing techniques

Outbound Marketing 

Outbound marketing differs from inbound marketing in that it sends out messages to vast amounts of people in the hopes of making sales. People often associate outbound marketing with traditional marketing, including billboards, events, direct mail, radio, newspapers, and cold calling. 

You can also apply outbound marketing to modern technology too, such as pay-per-click advertising

When most people discuss inbound marketing vs outbound marketing, they only discuss outbound marketing from a traditional standpoint. However, digital outbound marketing is still alive and well, and can be extremely beneficial for modern businesses. 

More often than not, consumers are not even looking for, and in some cases aren’t even aware, of the product that is being advertised to them. A consumer might be looking through a random website or watching TV when an ad pops up about your product. 

Mediaboom has created a billboard as an example of outbound marketing

Outbound Marketing example:

Suppose a person is driving down the freeway and sees a billboard for a major phone company providing deals on monthly plans. For a split second, that person might think about how much money they spend on their current phone plan and how they’d like to spend less. However, that thought most likely sits in the back of their mind. 

When a few weeks pass by, they’re watching TV when they get hit with a commercial talking about that very same phone plan. Once more, they consider buying into a new phone plan that can save them money, though when their favorite show comes back on, they forget about it again.

Finally, a few months go by, and they open their mailbox, finding a mail offer with a coupon for 15% off the first month of a new phone plan. Luckily, that person also received their exceedingly high phone bill through the mail at the same time and is finally ready to make the switch. 

That person never knew that they wanted to buy a new phone plan, though when ads kept popping up in every aspect of their life, their brains kept telling them it was time. 

Ways to approach outbound marketing:

While traditional outbound marketing may not be for every business, most every business can still find success with digital outbound marketing

Some of the most popular digital outbound marketing tactics include:

These kinds of new-age outbound marketing tactics can be very helpful in delivering a story, which many consumers want now. 

Of course, outbound marketing goes deeper than that. Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of outbound marketing. 

The marketer is making a phone call after getting a client through outbound marketing

Pros of Outbound Marketing

There are many benefits of outbound marketing that we urge you not to overlook. Some of those benefits include:

  • Quick Results – Consumers that find interest in the products or services you offer are more likely to hop on them fast. 
  • Targeted Digital Advertising – While traditional outbound marketing is less targeted, you can choose your digital advertising channels carefully to target your preferred audience.
  • Brand Awareness – There are people who may have never heard of your products or services. With outbound marketing, you can reach those people.

Cons of Outbound Marketing

Of course, getting outbound marketing right can be a difficult game. Here are a few of the main cons of outbound marketing that you should consider:

  • Hard To Make Relevant – Outbound marketing is far more generalized, which is why it can be difficult to make it appealing to everyone.
  • Can Be Costly – Purchasing billboard space, digital advertisements, television advertisements, or store banners, can be very expensive. Even smaller forms of outbound marketing, such as direct mail, can add up.
  • Easy To Tune Out – Because consumers are so unphased by outbound marketing, many tune it out. We guarantee that even YOU throw out your junk mail or mute your television when the commercials come on.

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Finding The Right Strategy For Your Needs

Of course, the ultimate question is, inbound marketing vs outbound marketing, which is better?

Basically, outbound marketing is for those who want to spread a message on a large scale. Inbound marketing, on the other hand, is ideal for those who want to target smaller groups of consumers directly.

The cost of implementing outbound marketing can be expensive, though the yields can be high. If you want to take a more targeted approach with a smaller financial risk, you might consider sticking with inbound marketing. 
Regardless of the strategy, you choose to implement, our team at Media Boom can help. We specialize in SEO solutions and digital marketing, navigating the ever-changing world of marketing. Make sure to get in touch with us today to learn more!