Month: October 2022

A real estate marketing agency can be a difference-maker for any real estate firm. After all, the market is only getting more crowded, with The Close estimating that the National Association of Realtors has 1.6 million members in July 2022. What can a real estate digital marketing agency do for you?

A real estate marketing agency can promote your real estate services and grow your business. These agencies offer services like website design, content marketing, video marketing, SEO, email marketing, branding, advertising, and more.

In today’s informative guide, we’ll present all the information you need to know about real estate marketing agencies so you can hire an agency that does more for your real estate firm.

What Is Real Estate Marketing?

Let’s take it from the top. When we refer to real estate marketing, what exactly do we mean?

Real estate marketing promotes and advertises a particular real estate firm or its properties. The spotlight can even be focused on individual agents who are superstar sellers at your firm.

Those who engage in real estate marketing are referred to as real estate marketers. They understand how critical it is for a real estate firm to differentiate itself from the competition.

With their services, your firm can enjoy more exposure and generate more bites on any of the listings you have available.

Why Is Marketing Important in Real Estate?

Marketing is an important part of any field, but that applies to real estate especially.

Through real estate marketing, your firm can separate itself from your competitors and showcase which tangibles you bring to the table.

You can also showcase your value proposition and how it’s different–and better–than what the other real estate firms offer.

You’ll recall our stat from the intro that shows just how crowded the real estate market is. As of 2020, the National Association of Realtors notes that there are upwards of 106,548 real estate brokerage firms in the United States alone.

Without real estate marketing, differentiating yourself from the competition is hard. You might not be sure which marketing strategies to utilize, which can be a waste of time and money, both of which are precious.

You may also not be sure how to measure the success of your strategies, which makes implementing them useless in the first place.

That’s why we can’t recommend a real estate marketing agency enough.

What Is a Real Estate Marketing Agency?

Okay, but exactly what is a real estate digital marketing agency, anyway?

These agencies specialize in all forms of real estate marketing, including digital marketing.

They’re full-fledged professionals who are well-versed in the real estate market. They understand the importance of branding, establishing your value, generating new leads, and converting more of those leads to customers.

More so than that, they know the strategies that can help a real estate firm like yours achieve those goals.

There is no trial and error like there would be when you attempt real estate marketing yourself.

A real estate marketing company will review your current challenges and then formulate a plan that will deliver results the first time.

Your firm can rest assured that the money you put into the agency pays back dividends as your listings attract more attention, your customer base grows, and your real estate firm gets put on the map.

Real Estate Digital Marketing Services

Should you choose to invest in a real estate digital marketing agency, what kinds of services can they provide for your firm?

Per the intro, let’s go over the various services now.

Website Design

According to a report from marketing company Thrive Agency, the average Internet user will formulate their opinion about your website in only 50 milliseconds.

And yes, the basis of that opinion is based on your site design alone.

If you don’t win over a site visitor, then they may never return.

All elements of your website, from the homepage image to the navigation bar location, the placement of CTA buttons, the colors, and the fonts all influence a user’s opinion.

You want that opinion to be as positive as possible, and with a real estate marketing company on your site, you can finally have a site you’re proud of.

You’ll play a role in the design of your site, requesting elements and layouts, and the marketing company will do the rest.

For some inspiration, check out these real estate developer web design examples, construction website design examples, or real estate investor website design examples.

Content Marketing

The next area where a real estate marketing agency can help is in content marketing.

Content marketing encompasses all forms of content under the sun, from video marketing (more on this in a moment) to blogging, podcasting, eBooks, infographics, and webinars.

The marketing agency will be able to recommend which forms of content are best for your real estate firm based on factors like your target audience, the benchmarks you’re trying to reach, the strategies you’ve used in the past, and your current strategies.

You’ll create an editorial calendar with the marketing agency’s help that will plan out your firm’s content over the long term.

As you begin sharing frequent content, you should notice that your rate of engagement, website traffic, social media follows, and leads all go up. Content is powerful stuff!

Video Marketing

Most marketers–92 percent, according to video resource Wyzowl–state that video is a very important part of their respective marketing strategies, but you’d be surprised how many companies are stumped on how to begin with video marketing.

Perhaps they feel trepidatious about getting in front of a camera. Maybe they think they have nothing interesting to offer to the world of video, or they’re not sure how to use video as a medium to connect with leads and customers.

These are all concerns that a real estate digital marketing agency can address and help you overcome.

The marketing agency can recommend video topics that your firm can cover that hasn’t been done to death.

They can assist you in script-writing so your video is engaging, and even recommend locations and best practices for filming.

Although it can be a little awkward at first, with time, you’ll begin producing high-quality video clips that captivate your audience and achieve more of your marketing goals.

SEO and SEM

Search engine optimization or SEO and search engine marketing or SEM are two acronyms that confound most not involved in the sales, advertising, or marketing spheres.

All companies must be hyper-focused on SEO and local SEO, as this determines where your website will rank in the search results.

Having good SEO is the difference between being on the first page and getting hundreds if not thousands of hits (if not more) and being on page three where no one ever finds your real estate firm.

SEM is about visibility too by promoting your website through paid advertising. You can choose from AdWords, geotargeting, retargeting, or pay-per-click or PPC ads, among others.

If all that sounds a little confusing, worry not. By hiring a real estate marketing agency, they can utilize SEO measures that will help your site rise in the ranks.

The agency can also recommend SEM advertising avenues that are cost-effective and stick within your budget.

Social Media Marketing

Another area where a real estate marketing company can help is when it comes to social media marketing.

Most companies have a presence on social media today, and your real estate firm is likely among them.

However, if you’re just posting into a black hole, then you might as well have no social media presence at all.

With a real estate marketing company on your side, you can finally create the kind of meaningful social media posts that get people flocking to your page in droves.

You’ll get pointers on what to post on social media, how to track your social media mentions, and how to build engagement with your existing followers by engaging with them more.

Once you begin consistently posting valuable content across your social media accounts, you’ll find that your number of followers grows and grows consistently.

More so than that, the influx of social media users will lead to more website traffic as well.

Email Marketing

Through features such as opt-in forms, well-placed CTAs, and lead magnets on your website, you should find that more leads than ever offer their contact information.

Now that your real estate firm has an email list, you want to connect with leads and customers across all stages of the buyer journey through email marketing.

A real estate digital marketing agency can instruct you on what nature of emails to send per stage of the sales funnel as well as how to personalize emails and how to automate emails.

They can institute a drip marketing campaign that responds to a lead or customer’s needs at just the right time to secure the sale and thus the conversion.

You’ll also be instructed on how frequently to send emails. You don’t want to over-send, as then you’ll be a nuisance, but you don’t want to send emails so rarely that your customers forget about you.

Advertising

Advertising exists outside of the SEM sphere.

Throughout the life of your real estate firm, you’ll pay for advertising of all kinds, from social media ads to paid search ads, display ads, and even out-of-home or outdoor advertising such as billboards.

Your marketing agency can help you create an advertising budget if your firm lacks one and recommend the types of ads your customers and leads will be the most receptive to based on target audience research.

Branding

Who is your real estate brand?

A brand is a part of what helps you stand out from the competition. Your brand includes everything from your logo choice to your tone in your emails to the colors you use on your firm’s website.

A real estate marketing agency can help you establish your brand and then promote it to the world.

Should you have an existing brand, the agency can sharpen that brand so it’s even stronger and more coherent.

The Benefits of Hiring a Real Estate Marketing Company

Why else should you work with a real estate marketing company? Doing so can be advantageous in the following ways.

Lead Generation

If your real estate firm struggles to find leads or you have some lead sources but they always dry up, it’s a wise idea to hire a real estate digital marketing agency.

You’ll find that your influx of leads is no longer a trickle but a deluge. You’ll have more opportunities to capitalize on these leads.

Website and Social Media Traffic

Once you redesign your real estate website and begin posting better content on social media, the rate of traffic to both platforms will rise exponentially.

This can feed into your lead generation, naturally.

Stronger Brand

We’ve made it quite clear that your brand is part of how you capture clients compared to the competition as a real estate firm, so that brand must be well-established and solid as a rock.

With a real estate marketing company offering its services, you can be sure of both happening.

More Conversions

Real estate resource Stucco found that the real estate conversion rate is as low as 0.4 percent to 1.2 percent on average.

Self-reported conversion rates are higher, between three and five percent.

No matter what kind of conversion rate your firm is aspiring to, once you work with a real estate digital marketing agency, your conversion rate should undoubtedly increase.

Increased Sales

That’s not all that will go up. Your rate of sales will climb as more of your leads convert into clients who want to buy or sell property with your real estate firm.

Want to Work with a Luxury Real Estate Marketing Agency?

Have you decided that hiring a luxury real estate marketing agency is in your firm’s best interest?

Mediaboom could be just what you’re looking for. Our extensive real estate marketing services include content services such as video production, illustration, photography, and copywriting.

We offer marketing services such as campaign management, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, and content marketing.

You can count on us when planning your real estate advertising campaigns, as we can assist with ad management, media buying, and ads such as display ads, social ads, and PPC ads.

We even offer digital marketing services like digital installations, mobile apps, content management systems, e-commerce, and website design and development.

Conclusion

A real estate marketing agency can help your firm cinch more of its goals to grow, increase leads, convert and retain more customers, and separate yourself from the competition. We hope you consider Mediaboom as your marketing agency!

Video storytelling is a powerful tool to build your brand image and grab your audience’s attention. This narrative-based approach helps foster an emotional connection with the audience and can lead to increased brand loyalty. It offers a multitude of benefits that can also come in handy for creating a story for brand video marketing.

Video marketing can influence buyers’ decisions, helping grow your revenue, improve your website’s ranking on Google SERP, increase web traffic, and generate more shares. It can help you establish yourself as a credible source and a thought leader in your industry, giving you an edge over your competitors. 

Read on to learn more about video storytelling and how you can implement it effectively to your advantage. 

What is Video Storytelling? 

Video storytelling is like storyselling — only, it’s done by combining the power of words with the appeal of visuals. 

This marketing tactic is a unique and powerful method that uses a storytelling approach to forge an emotional connection with customers. When people get to know the person/people behind the screen, they are more invested in what you have to say and offer in terms of products and services.

A well-made, engaging video that focuses on the story rather than the product can build your reputation, drive engagement, and turn prospects into paying customers.

Essential Elements of Video Storytelling

Video storytelling, when done right, can give your brand a significant edge over its competitors. 

Incorporate these essential elements in your video to attract viewers and bring in conversions on a global scale. 

Big-Picture Themes

Product-focused videos are great, but videos that sell stories are even better.

Understand your product and tap into the spirit it embodies. You can then align with a cause that’s close to your core customer’s heart, and weave stories around it. 

For example, if you’re in the clock business, you can focus on a grandfather waiting for the clock to strike 4 pm when his granddaughter comes home from school.

Simple but intimate stories like these resonate and inspire. And, as people typically choose brands that stand for the same cause as them, you’ll be able to attract a loyal customer base. 

Effective Narrative Arc

Follow the tried-and-tested structure with narrative arcs — introduction targeting pain points, body focusing on how it impacted you and what you did to change that, then a conclusion wrapping things up. 

Storytelling has multiple facets to it. And it’s important to be familiar with them to ensure success in your marketing venture. 

To structure your video effectively, answer the four P’s — Plot, Purpose, People, and Place. 

Tap Into Emotions With Memorable Characters 

Video storytelling offers an immersive medium, so use it to your advantage.

Make content that emphasizes the emotional quotient. For example, if you’re a small business, adopt a persuasive storytelling approach. Show people what makes you unique by focusing on reviews of how your products were received and shared by your customers. 

Emotions compel people to take action. 

When creating the storyboard for your video, focus on what your audience will connect with. Introducing a lovable and memorable character to strengthen the human element can make a huge difference. Follow it up with a call to action to give them the push they need to make a purchase. 

Raise The Stakes

The character/s you portray in your video have to want what you offer with a purpose — and a strong one, at that. Without it, that want will be superficial. 

It’s one of the reasons luxury brands never sell a product, only the experience they offer. 

Give your character a moving backstory and keep the human element intact. Focus on what emotion you want to evoke, and construct a story around it. It will help produce an inspiring video that hits just the right spot. 

Why is Storytelling Important in Videos? 

An estimated 122.4 million households in the United States have access to televisions. Combine this with 298 million smartphone users in the nation, and you have all the tools you need in your arsenal to create a massive impact. 

Studies show that stories are more important than facts, and 54% of all consumers prefer to see videos from the brand/business they support. 

This means video storytelling is arguably the best possible approach to marketing. 

Video storytelling combines a number of essential factors such as camera angles, emotions, music, and characters to create maximum impact. This method of delivery can break language barriers to resonate with audiences on a global scale. 

Video storytelling can also:

• Grow your company sales, according to 76% of businesses. You can further improve your leads and conversions by creating an effective marketing funnel.
• Influence buying decisions and increase web traffic as 66% of people were found to be more likely to do business with your brand after watching an online video. 
• Improve your Google ranking. Blogs and websites with videos are 53 times more likely to come on top of Google SERP. Being on the first page of Google search results practically guarantees your success in the industry — of course, you just have to pair it with quality goods and services.

8 Tips For Creating Powerful Video Storytelling 

Storytelling can seem challenging in video content marketing, but it doesn’t have to be. You just have to make it relatable by putting your audience in the center for it to work. 

These B2B marketing strategies can help grow your business, but you can also take a more structured marketing approach.

1. Have a Purpose 

Use strategic marketing to determine whether you’re targeting the right audience through the right channels with the right message. 

To achieve this, you need to truly know your target audience and their pain points. You can use Facebook ad campaigns to target the right demographic and then offer them special offers and discounts in exchange for honest feedback on what they want from your brand.

Be very clear about the impact you want to create. If you are uncertain about a promotional video storytelling idea, sit it out. Do not go with the first thing that pops up in your mind. Ideate, discuss and see if you can come up with something even better. 

2. Focus on One Emotion and One Story

Choose an emotion — whether it’s happy, sad, or hopeful — to make your story appealing to viewers. 

And more importantly, make sure that every aspect of your video, right from the plot and character to clothes and music, aligns with it. 

3. Use Humor and Plot Twists 

You can incorporate humor and plot twists in your video to generate a sense of intrigue among your viewers and make them feel more connected to the story. 

The more memorable you make it, the more it will be shared across social media platforms. It will ultimately result in better engagement, leads, and conversions. 

4. Get Groovy

Music is a highly effective tool that can tug at one’s heartstrings. Using the right music will set the tone of your video and evoke the emotions you want your audience to feel. 

It can also facilitate a deep connection, which can help convert your audience into paying customers. 

5. Take a “Show, Don’t Tell” Approach

You can give people statistics, reviews, and testimonials to prove your point, but make sure to keep everything visual. 

Nike and Apple are great at the “show, don’t tell” approach; use their videos as inspiration. 

6. Use Color Psychology

Colors evoke feelings, which can connect with emotions to help you attract your targeted customer base. You can use the power of color psychology to set the tone of the story. 

When done right, it can help you portray your brand voice, statement, and beliefs effectively. 

7. Use the Rule of Thirds 

Structuring the video with the rule of thirds format allows you to focus on the key elements. It will also ensure that the viewers are focused on the right elements in your visual storytelling, which can help build an instant connection.

8. Keep it Short and Snappy

The average human has an attention span of only 8.5 seconds. 

So, keep your video concise and impactful or you may lose your audience’s attention. This may seem restrictive, but you can tell a story in a few words — sometimes, with no words at all! 

Remember, a solid framework can engage the right people to give you the results you desire. 

Examples of the Best Storytelling Videos 

Take a look at these brands’ video storytelling approach, and you’ll understand why they were such a big hit with the audience.

Ben & Jerry’s: Social Mission

Ben & Jerry’s built trust by sharing the story of their business. 

Instead of following the lead of other businesses and creating a “Mission” page, the company focused on the company’s social missions by creating a video detailing precisely that.

The founders explained how social consciousness drives every aspect of their business and their aim to create prosperity for everyone involved — right from the farms the ingredients are sourced from to employees, franchisees, and customers. 

They showcased their desire to make a positive impact, one delicious ice cream at a time.

McDonald’s – The Gift

In this short video, the brand pushed a heartwarming story about a mother and her son. 

We follow the journey of a teenager who receives a second-hand car from his mum on his birthday. He clearly isn’t satisfied with the car, but the first-car feeling soon reels him in and he gets home with some Maccies — specifically, chicken nuggets — for his mum, emphasizing the importance of the little things in life. 

This simple act shown in the video highlights that you don’t need a lot to be happy, while simultaneously showing that the items on the McDonald’s menu are low-cost. 

Tesla: Fully Charged | Testimonial

Tesla created a testimonial video to show its customers how the company is taking steps towards a more sustainable future. 

The captivating video focused on the day-to-day life of the customer, right from driving a Model S Tesla to removing food from the fridge with his toddler in one hand. 

It’s a simple video that focused on the positive product experience it can provide organically, without being product-centric.

Headspace: Company Culture

Headspace captures how employees feel about the brand’s desire to make the world healthier and happier. It focused on its employees and their experience in the company in a super-engaging video. You listen to the employees’ personal experiences as they explain how working at Headspace is so different than working at any other company — essentially because meditating every day is encouraged. 

As you listen to their experiences, you don’t even realize how subtle and effective the push toward their product — the meditation app — is. 

Looking for inspiration? Take a look at these amazing examples of brand storytelling to help you tell your brand story in the best way.

Word To the Wise

Video storytelling is a powerful tool, but only when it’s done right. 

Each business has a diverse customer base. It’s thus crucial to ensure that the narrative you’ve chosen for your corporate video storytelling resonates with your audience — irrespective of their age, sex, or race. 

Avoid controversial topics and political standings. They’re great for gaining attention and getting your 5-seconds of fame, but if you hit the wrong note, they could land your brand in some serious trouble. Case in point — Pepsi’s collaboration with Kendall Jenner. 

Instead, you can adopt a cold open approach to get your brand in front of the customer. Then, use statistics and feedback to draft a video that will not get lost in translation.

Conclusion

Compelling video storytelling is highly effective at building engagement, forming connections, and increasing brand recognition. However, it can be a pretty hard nut to crack. We, at MediaBoom, can turn the tide in your favor. You can contact us through our website to see what the art of video storytelling can do for your business.

It’s no longer enough to be mobile-friendly. In 2022, your website should be mobile first. That means your entire online presence should be built with the fact in mind that most of your audience will view it from a mobile device. When you get to that point, the advantages for your business can be significant. In fact, here are 7 ways in which your mobile-first web design will benefit your online marketing efforts.

1. Mobile First Improves Functionality

What do you need your website to accomplish? It’s a seemingly simple question that can quickly become complex. You probably want to raise your brand’s profile and credibility, while also encouraging conversions to leads and customers. Keeping all of these goals unified and prioritized becomes more difficult the more complex your site gets.

In that case, functionality is key. You need to make sure that each user’s experience is as positive as possible in order to maximize your progress to goal. We already mentioned navigation as an important part of that effort above. But it goes much further. A mobile-first website accounts for your visitors’ click behaviors and eye movements, making their experience as intuitive as possible throughout the buyer’s journey.

2. Mobile First Web Design Increases Conversions

A mobile-first website loads more quickly than its desktop counterparts. That, in turn, significantly decreases your bounce rate, and positively impacts your bottom line. In fact, faster landing page load times have a significant impact on your conversions. Account for mobile load speed, and your leads and customers will trend upwards.

In eCommerce, that emphasis becomes even more important. Users who get confused and frustrated with your site’s functionality will abandon their shopping cart quickly. Considering that almost 40 percent of all transactions now occur on mobile devices and that share continues to grow, you need to build your eCommerce website with mobile users in mind.

3. Mobile First Lets Your Content Marketing Shine

Chances are your brand is using at least some kind of content marketing to elevate its profile, build credibility, and garner conversions. But how successful can that content marketing be if you don’t account for what is or will soon become the majority of your audience? Mobile-first design, on the other hand, allows your content marketing to shine.

Now, your blog posts are designed to be read easily on even the smallest smartphone screens. Your readers find intuitive ways to convert, should the content convince them. Meanwhile, contact forms are simple to fill out to build content conversion effectiveness.

4. Mobile First Enhances Customer Relations

Don’t underestimate the importance of a mobile-first approach as it relates to your existing customers. Through all of the above, you can grow your conversions and customer base. But you also need a strategy to retain them for maximum revenue. To get to that point, you need to emphasize your customer service and relations operations.

Mobile-first is not the only factor in that effort, but it can be a significant help. Existing users should be able to easily find your contact information, find your brick-and-mortar address, or add loyalty discounts to their shopping cart. These existing customers are even more likely to use mobile devices than first-time searchers. Build your website with them in mind for maximum long-term success.

5. Mobile First Keeps Your Audience Engaged for Longer

Simply put, your audience stays on your site for longer if you don’t frustrate them. But too often, desktop-oriented navigations do just that for their mobile audiences. Meanwhile, long paragraphs that condense to walls of text on smartphone screens invite clicking away rather than reading.

A successful mobile-first design accounts for these potential drawbacks. Scrolling is minimized but encouraged through visual content. Meanwhile, streamlined and simplified navigation encourages users on any device to browse rather than bouncing after only viewing a single page.

6. Mobile First Accounts for All Users

The first benefit of mobile-first responsive web design comes in the drawbacks of its alternatives. Unlike a design optimized for desktop users, building with mobile users in mind means optimizing your online presence for all users.

That’s because, at its best, mobile-first design is responsive to all screen sizes. Desktop users will be able to see an expanded version of your site. They will also benefit from the streamlined navigation and visual content that is the signature of most mobile-first websites.

7. Mobile First Web Design Elevates Your SEO

Search engine optimization is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy today. Through mobile-first design, you can increase your ranking today while also preparing your brand for the near future. In short, it’s an essential step toward enhanced and sustainable SEO for your website.

Mobile factors already influence your search engine ranking today. In the future, that becomes only more important. As Google has rolled out its Mobile-First Index, only websites with a plan in place to account for this shift can sustain and even improve their ranking over time.

Start with Mobile First Web Design to Elevate Your Online Marketing

In short, mobile-first web development has and should become an essential part of your digital marketing strategy today. In addition to simply accounting for the majority of your audience, it also benefits your online marketing in more ways than one. In many ways, it acts as the catalyst to make sure that the rest of your digital efforts work smoothly and effectively. As a result, your mobile first website is an effective first step toward elevating your online marketing for 2022 and beyond.

Email marketing campaigns are one of the best ways to acquire new leads and customers as well as engage with your existing customers. Your own email list is a valuable resource and something that doesn’t depend on paid advertising or Google’s algorithms.

You can launch an email marketing campaign whenever you want and send traffic to your sales pages, website, or anywhere you want. The bigger your list gets, the more profitable it becomes. There’s no question that even with the growth of social media, email is still an extremely popular and effective tool.

Many businesses, however, wonder how to actually get started with this time-tested strategy. Before you focus on the mechanics of your email campaign, it’s important to understand your objectives. You should have a goal and call-to-action with every message you send. Let’s look at some of the goals you might have for your campaigns along with guidelines on how to achieve them.

Email Marketing Campaign Strategy – Find New Customers

Email marketing is a powerful tool for finding new customers and selling more products. You can entice people to join your email list in exchange for information (often in the form of a newsletter or e-book), a coupon, or a free sample. Through emails, you can often turn prospects into customers. According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the median ROI for email is 122%, four times higher than any other type of marketing. More recent data, released in 2021, show that for every US dollar invested in email marketing campaigns, the ROI is 36 US dollars.

Here are some ways to grow your list faster and acquire new customers.

1. Build your list efficiently and ethically

You can grow an email list with paid ads, social media, or by using existing contacts as leads. Make sure, however, that you only send emails to people who have opted into your list. Otherwise, you risk spam complaints!

2. Create relevant and compelling offers

Email marketing is more competitive than ever and people need a good reason to join another list. While e-books, reports, and newsletters can be effective hooks, you need to focus on an issue that’s relevant to your audience. Identify a problem and promise them a solution. For example, if your audience wants to lose weight, a “Free e-book on weight loss” is a little too vague. Better is something like “Learn how a mother of four lost 30 pounds in 3 months by exercising only 20 minutes per day.”

3. Promote your offers far and wide

You can promote your lead-generating offer using paid ads, social media, blogs, forums, videos, webinars, podcasts, or at offline events such as trade shows.

Create and Enhance Your Relationship With Customers

One of the most valuable functions of an email list is to increase customers’ knowledge of your brand and build loyalty. When you make a sale, this is only one stage in what will, hopefully, be a longstanding relationship with a customer. Email is one of the best ways to do this. Here are some guidelines for doing this more effectively in your email marketing campaign.

4. Send messages consistently

If people don’t hear from you regularly, they’ll forget about you. Find a schedule that works for you and stick to it. You might want to send out a weekly newsletter with a few shorter messages three times per week. Marketing Sherpa reports that 61% of consumers like to receive weekly promotional emails from businesses. Test different times and days to find out when you get the best engagement. The more consistent you are, the better your response will be.

5. Create helpful content

Cover topics that are important to your customers. When you supply your audience with engaging content, you’re establishing yourself as an authority and building relationships. This is valuable even when you’re not directly selling anything.

6. Use a consistent theme

When you send out your newsletter or messages, use a consistent theme or template that helps people recognize your brand. This should match your website, social media pages, and any other channels and platforms where you’re active.

7. Segment your list

If you’re new to email marketing, it’s fine to start with a single list. As your list grows, however, you can engage more effectively by sending the most relevant messages to customers. Email segmentation allows you to separate readers by gender, geography, interests, or past buying behavior. For example, if you sell clothing you can send different emails to people who typically buy men’s or women’s clothes.

8. Increase engagement with transactional emails

Transactional or triggered emails are sent automatically based on some event or certain consumer action. Examples of this include welcome messages when people join your list or sending emails to people on their birthdays. Another very effective type of triggered email is to alert people when they’ve abandoned their shopping cart.

Track Your Email Marketing Campaigns

If you want to get the most out of your email marketing campaigns, tracking your results is essential to improve your strategy. There are many factors that can increase your effectiveness, such as:

9. Find the best time to send emails

You can Google this and find the results of other people’s studies. However, each business is different so it’s best to test this for yourself.

10. Open rates

If people aren’t even opening your emails, you can’t expect results. Changing subject lines and sending messages at different times can improve open rates.

11. Click-through rates

Your objective is to get people to take action on your emails, which means clicking on your links. Different types of links, images, and landing pages can improve your CTR. Click-through rates vary depending on your industry, but generally, you should be seeing a CTR between 2-5%.

12. Conversions

This is even more important than CTR as it measures how many of your recipients actually purchased a product or took whatever action you wanted.

13. Bounce rate

You want to be aware of how many of your emails actually get delivered.

14. Return on Investment (ROI)

This tells you how profitable your campaigns are. It’s especially crucial to know your ROI when you’re using paid advertising.

15. Email Analytics

You can conduct email analytics using tools such as Google Analytics or with email marketing campaign services such as MailChimp, AWeber, or Get Response. If you outsource email marketing to an agency, they can handle this on your behalf.

Email Marketing is a Powerful Long-term Strategy

While you can’t see instant results with your email marketing campaigns, it’s really more of a long-term strategy for building your business than a quick fix. The benefits of your efforts will increase over time. The larger your list gets, the more profitable it becomes. Of course, it’s also important to target the right customers to get a better response and ROI. As you gain experience, you’ll be able to improve your campaigns based on analytics and customer feedback. Email marketing has been around for a long time and all the evidence suggests that it will continue to be a viable method for many years to come.

Lead nurturing is what guides prospective buyers through the sales funnel and can ultimately inspire their first purchasing decision. If your company doesn’t already have a lead nurturing program, you’re behind the eight-ball. Why should you focus on nurturing leads?

Lead nurturing can achieve many company objectives, including new lead generation, boosted sales (opportunities for upselling and cross-selling too), better engagement, and more conversions.

In this guide, we’ll explain what lead nurturing is, the benefits, and how to create a comprehensive lead nurturing process so your company can be poised for success. Make sure you keep reading!

What Is Lead Nurturing?

According to conversion rate optimization company Invesp, 80 percent of new leads never become anything more than leads. They just disappear out of the funnel at various stages.

That alone explains why lead nurturing is such a crucial component of any successful marketing plan.

Nurturing leads involves connecting with leads who are early into your sales funnel and thus not yet ready to make a purchasing decision and forging a successful professional relationship with them.

It’s in connecting with your leads that they can learn more about your company’s products and services and feel readier to move through the sales funnel, eventually making a purchasing decision.

Lead nurturing is a major part of the buyer’s journey and can reduce the rate of leads who languish in the sales funnel.

A Small Biz Genius stat found that nurtured leads commit to bigger purchases at a rate of 47 percent compared to leads that aren’t nurtured.

Building that relationship is key!  

Lead Generation and Nurturing: How They Differ

Companies focus a gargantuan effort on leads, as these are prospective customers. Yet lead generation and lead nurturing are two very different things. Here’s how.

Lead generation is the process of attracting potential buyers or leads through a series of marketing, sales, and advertising measures.

For example, companies will post online content, coupons, and other content that’s designed to grab attention, bring a lead to a website, and get them to provide their contact information.

Lead nurturing starts after lead generation.

At the beginning of the sales funnel where a new lead enters (especially an unqualified lead), they have very little information on your company and possibly little interest as well.

The lead nurturing process does more than build a relationship but provides information and quells doubts and concerns as well.

Now, nurturing leads does entail sending relevant content and emails just as lead generation does. Nurturing the lead is the follow-up to inspiring their signup on an email list and is what motivates their purchasing decision.

If you leave an unnurtured lead to make their own decisions, then their choice might be no decision at all.

The Benefits and Goals of Lead Nurturing

What kinds of benefits and goals can you achieve by nurturing your leads? Per the intro, let’s go over the advantages now.

New Lead Generation

Lead generation is a process that should never stop, at least not for profitable companies.

Nurturing the leads you have in the funnel will produce more engaged customers.

Those customers might be more willing to participate in your company referral programs or even recommend your products and services of their own volition.

This, in turn, brings on new leads for your company.

More so than being unqualified leads though, if these leads are coming from the recommendations and referrals of your existing customers, they may be considered qualified leads.

Qualified leads are readier to buy, which tremendously benefits your company. 

More Sales

It’s not only that you have a higher chance of earning a sale out of a nurtured lead, but you can continue to earn from them in a multitude of ways.

For instance, since you took the time to educate your lead on your company’s products and services, they’re likely surer of what they want to buy.

You can try to upsell or cross-sell the lead, which might have a higher chance of success thanks to your nurturing efforts.

Even outside of that initial purchase, no matter how small or large it is (and you’ll recall that the stats from earlier suggest it will be large), that will likely not be the only purchase from this lead.

Now that they’ve converted into a customer, if they’re pleased with the quality of your products and services, they will surely purchase from you again.

The increased rate of referrals as discussed above can also more generously pad your bottom line.

Higher Conversions

What is your company’s current conversion rate?

While it can and does vary by industry, marketing resource WebFX says that a good conversion rate on average is 10 percent.

If yours is lower than that, lead nurturing is a strategy you must implement immediately. You could in turn see your conversion rate catch up to what your industry standard should be and possibly even surpass that.

Better Engagement

Once you’ve begun successfully converting more leads, you can keep them engaged using the nurturing strategies you have been.

After all, nothing is worse than going through the effort of converting a customer and then failing to continue engagement.

Customer engagement will deepen their sense of loyalty towards your company, better the overall customer experience, and foster a stronger trust in you.

What Is a Lead Nurturing Email?

In the next section, we’ll outline lead nurturing strategies to utilize, but for now, we want to talk about one strategy in particular, and that’s email marketing.

Through an email campaign, you can nurture your leads.

These email campaigns are advantageous for a variety of reasons.

For one, they’re highly personalized.

A report from HubSpot found that 99 percent of marketing professionals found that personalization is the key to furthering customer relationships. Your customers will respond strongly to personalized content as well.

Second, a lead nurturing email is often automated. This has the double benefit of nurturing existing leads and possibly qualifying new leads as well.

Blogging Wizard states that one’s rate of qualified leads can increase by up to 451 percent through marketing automation software.

Your drip email campaign will captivate the lead’s attention and grab them at just the right time so that you can maintain engagement even when you’re not necessarily in front of your computer or phone to send an email.

Lead Nurturing Strategies

Are you ready to put together your own lead nurturing strategy but need some insights? This section will tell you what should comprise that strategy so you can begin fostering stronger relationships with your leads.

Targeted and Relevant Content

As we’ve touched on several times already, your strategy to nurture more leads involves sending them relevant content.

What relevant content is will vary by your industry as well as your audience.

In addition to sending relevant content, you also want the content to be targeted.

In other words, this content is separate from what you send to long-term customers who are already well-acquainted with your products and services because they know and own them.

Personalized Emails

Going back to our point from the last section, personalized emails are such a critical touch when nurturing your leads.

You’ll recall that the crux of lead nurturing is relationship-building, and it’s hard to build a relationship to the degree you have to when you regard your leads impersonally.

It suggests that your leads are interchangeable and replaceable, that they’re but one of thousands.

Taking the time to personalize content will make a difference.

You can add the lead’s name to an email subject line or send them recommendations based on the products or services on your website that they’ve been browsing.

Lead Scoring

Not all leads are necessarily worth engaging with.

You’re trying to find the most qualified leads to nurture since those are the ones who are the likeliest to become customers. The best way to do that is through lead scoring.

When you score your leads, you review their behavior for a predetermined period and then assign each behavior a numerical value.

At the end of the predetermined period, you add up those values to get a lead score total.

The numerical values will be either positive or negative.

For example, when a lead opens an email, they get points. If they click through the links in your email, this nets them more points.

A lead who unsubscribes from your email list or bounces from your website would lose points.

A/B Testing

Another element of lead nurturing, albeit one that doesn’t get as much attention, is split testing, also known as A/B testing.

A/B testing, as the name implies, involves testing two versions of something to determine which will gain the highest rate of receptivity among your audience.

You can split-test just about anything, be that your email subject lines, the email body itself, social media posts, your website homepage, CTA button placement, blog posts, you name it.

Determining where to place elements or what kind of copy you’ll use matters. A/B testing points you in the right direction of which version of these elements to use so you can build stronger lead relationships.

Multi-Channel Lead Nurturing

Another element of your strategy should be multi-channel lead marketing.

As you might have guessed from the name, this method of nurturing leads involves using several channels at once to foster a solid relationship faster.

For instance, you might engage with the lead over social media while at the same time sending them emails or SMS messages.

Time is of the essence when trying to convert leads, and multi-channel lead nurturing ensures no stone is left unturned.

Marketing and Email Automation

Although we’ve talked about nurturing leads as mostly a solitary endeavor, that’s not quite accurate.

When you nurture leads, you’re not just doing it one at a time. You’re nurturing several, possibly dozens of leads at once, maybe even hundreds.

Each deserves the same level of attention and personalization so they feel prioritized and valued, yet you only have 24 hours in the day.

That’s why using email and marketing automation is so critical. Even when you can’t be at the office, automation will continue the nurturing journey so it’s like you’re there responding to your lead at every turn.

Buyer’s Journey Analysis

It’s also wise to assess your company’s current buyer’s journey and what that looks like from beginning to end.

A buyer’s journey analysis is a review of how your leads move through the sales funnel, including at which stage they make that initial purchase and convert.

From awareness to consideration, purchasing, and hopefully secondary and third instances of purchasing (and more on top of that), you need to map out each stage so you have a better idea of when you need to begin nurturing your leads in the future.

How to Create a Lead Nurturing Campaign

To wrap up, here is a succinct review of the steps you need to follow to create your own effective lead nurturing campaign.

1. Segment Your Audience

Your audience is comprised of people at all stages of the buyer’s journey. You only want those leads who have recently entered the sales funnel and who, from your lead scoring results, your company has deemed viable potential leads.

2. Share Valuable Content from the Start

Your first contact with a lead is not a sales pitch, as that’s not very nurturing. Rather, you want to provide value right off the bat, whether that’s a helpful blog post or a checklist.

3. Begin Email Marketing with Objectives

Once you’ve got the lead’s contact information, you can begin taking them through your automated email marketing campaign.

Every email you send, even if you’re automating it, should have an objective that’s slowly working you towards your short-term and long-term goals.

4.Create a Timeframe for Progress

Based on your buyer’s journey analysis, roughly how long should it be until your lead is ready to make a purchasing decision?

Once you have an idea of when your lead is readier to make a buying decision, you can review their progress and see if their behaviors match the timeframe.

5.Track Your Results

From there, it’s time to review your findings and gauge your successes.

Did the lead convert? Was their purchase commensurate with what a first-time purchaser usually buys or was it bigger than usual? Smaller?

Since you took the time to nurture your leads, remember that your efforts should pay back dividends around this time.

Conclusion

Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with your leads to elevate them into customers.

Now that you know our recommended strategies, you can begin generating more leads, qualifying them, and nurturing the most viable candidates for conversion!

If you want to get the best results from your marketing campaigns, you need to meet your customers where they actually spend time. This is most likely a combination of search engines and social media sites.

Paid advertising is one of the fastest ways to get targeted traffic if you choose the right places to advertise.

The following are your five best options for digital advertising platforms to get more engagement, sales, and opt-ins from your marketing efforts.

1. Google Ads

Google was one of the first major digital advertising platforms and it’s still one of the largest. Even as social media captures more traffic, you can’t afford to overlook the world’s largest search.

Even with competition from other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo, as of 2021, Google captured 78% of the world’s search engine traffic.

One of the areas in which Google is now particularly strong is local search. While many businesses now compete fiercely at local SEO, paid local listings are a way to ensure that your business gets seen by people searching locally.

Google Ads is one of the costliest paid advertising platforms because of its size and scope. You can mitigate the costs, however, by bidding on long-tail keywords rather than the most popular and competitive ones. This is often effective when targeting local customers, as you can focus on neighborhoods and regions as well as cities.

For example, “Brooklyn fitness classes” is fairly broad but if you narrow it down to neighborhoods and types of fitness classes you might choose “Park Slope Pilates classes” or “Williamsburg yoga.”

The Google Keyword Tool can help you identify the best long-tail keywords in your niche. This Google Ads cost calculator will help you estimate the costs of your next campaign.

2. Facebook

The largest alternative to Google AdWords is Facebook. As the leading social media site, Facebook offers you the chance to connect with a very large audience and create extremely targeted campaigns.

Compared to other social sites, Facebook’s demographics cover the entire spectrum – young, old, male, female, all corners of the earth, all interests, etc. This makes it relevant to businesses in every industry.

While Google Ads allows for many types of targeting, such as by geography, device, and, of course, keywords, Facebook gives you many more targeting options such as gender, age, interests, income, and education. This makes it one of your best choices for niche marketing.

Facebook is now competing with Google for local marketing as well. Facebook’s Ad manager is useful for studying your results and refining your ads. You can test various types of ads, such as images, videos, and boosted posts.

If you have a Facebook page, you can send paid traffic to your page and build your following.

3. Instagram

Instagram is one of the leading visually-based social media sites. Its members tend to be young and obsessed with photographs and other engaging images such as short videos and memes.

As it’s owned by Facebook, the digital advertising platform is the same one you’d use for Facebook. Some advertisers use both social media sites but you can also focus solely on Instagram.

There are a few choices for Instagram marketing. One is to sponsor posts, which people will see in their feeds. You can target your audience using similar criteria as with Facebook ads.

Another option for Instagram is influencer marketing. Influencers are people with large followings whose opinions can motivate people to buy products.

You can reach out to such people individually or buy shoutouts on various marketplaces. Make sure you choose influencers who are popular with your audience, not simply people who are famous in a general way.

This type of marketing works best if it appears natural and authentic. Ideally, you build a relationship with influencers who recommend your products because they really believe in them.

4. LinkedIn

While most people know that LinkedIn is the leading social media site dedicated to business, not everyone thinks of it as a viable option for advertising.

LinkedIn, however, offers several interesting advertising options including promoted InMail messages, sponsored content, and text ads. These types of ads give you a chance to reach businesses of all sizes in several ways.

InMail, which is LinkedIn’s own messaging option, lets you send personalized messages to people who fit your demographic. As with Facebook, you have some good targeting options although in this case, the focus is B2B whereas most other social sites are B2C-oriented.

Sponsored content is a good way to build your brand. You can, for example, post an article on LinkedIn and sponsor it.

5. Display and Native Ads

These types of ads aren’t actually a distinct platform but often appear on popular websites.

Placing banner ads or native ads on targeted websites is another way to reach your desired audience.

You can place display ads on Google and Facebook in addition to their many other advertising options. If you want your ads to appear on influential websites (such as news sites or sites owned by large companies in your industry), you can work with ad networks that specialize in finding the best placement ads.

If you want to try native ads, which have the appearance of organic posts or articles, Outbrain and Redirect.com are leaders in this field.

6. Other Advertising Options

There are now more choices than ever for advertising online.

While we’ve covered some of the most popular choices, you may also want to try other possibilities as well. YouTube, which is owned by Google, has its own video advertising platform that works through AdWords.

Snapchat is a good choice if you’re targeting younger users such as millennials or Gen Z.

Pinterest is an often overlooked possibility that’s especially good for promoting physical products.

Another site you may want to investigate is Reddit.

How to Choose the Best Digital Advertising Platforms

With so many choices, it can be challenging to find the ideal advertising solutions for your business. Here are some of the considerations to keep in mind:

• Go where your audience is. If you’re marketing to other businesses, LinkedIn is a great choice. Snapchat has a young audience while Pinterest’s users are mainly women. Just about everyone uses Google and Facebook.
• Identify your goals. Are you trying to gain publicity for your brand, acquire leads, or sell products directly from your website? Before you can decide where to advertise, make sure you’re clear about what you want to achieve.
• Set a budget. You need a realistic budget to help you decide which paid digital advertising platforms are most appropriate for you at this time.
• Always test your results. The only way to really find out what works for you is to test. Don’t jump into a new platform all at once. Test ads, make tweaks, and see what happens. When something works, scale up. When it doesn’t, try another type of ad or another platform.