Content marketing is a marketing approach aimed at creating and distributing useful, valuable, and relevant information, establishing brand awareness, driving site traffic, generating leads, educating people about a specific brand and its products, building trusting relationships with potential customers, and many other purposes. In this video, a LIKE.TG marketer, Anna, explains how to use content marketing to your advantage. In this article, we’ll unveil why content marketing is important, discover statistics and benefits, and find out how it works. We’ll also review content marketing tips, services, and examples. Why is content marketing important? Content marketing is essential for establishing a strong brand and relationships with the audience that trusts and prefers your business over others. Since most people nowadays search for products and services online, you have more touchpoints with prospects when adding quality content to your company’s site. Useful content encourages leads to engage with your brand and ultimately explore your products. In the end, these people might want to get solutions to their problems. Using content marketing helps you obtain higher website traffic, get customer loyalty, establish a competitive advantage, build credibility, and increase the number of potential customers. You can explore more on the benefits in the next sections of this article. Let’s find out more about content marketing in terms of statistics to have some real proof of its importance and necessity for every company. Content Marketing Statistics Content marketing is a powerful tool that empowers you to educate your target audience on your brand, demonstrate your expertise in the field, and have more conversions. We’ll support these facts with statistics encouraging you to develop an effective content marketing strategy for your business. So let’s check out some of the most robust stats. 51% of users land on websites thanks to organic search; 74% of companies report a boost in lead generation when using content marketing; 90% of businesses include content marketing in their overall marketing strategy; 41% of marketers use content marketing for establishing brand awareness, 33% use it for building customer loyalty, and 38% use it for boosting sales; 80% of respondents report that their content marketing strategy was very successful; content marketing campaigns are more cost-effective since they cost 62% less than other types of marketing campaigns; 50% of companies intend to increase their investment in content marketing in 2024; short-form videos bring brands the highest ROI among different marketing channels; video is the top-performing content format because 45% of consumers prefer videos over other types of content; 87% of businesses mention that video content enables companies to keep their audiences engaged, resulting in lower site bounce rates. These are only a few statistics that should make you pay closer attention to content marketing for your business. In the next section, we’ll delve into the most essential advantages content carries when implemented right. Benefits of Content Marketing Content marketing has numerous pros for businesses of all sizes. This section will discuss it in more detail. Higher brand awareness. When you consistently share quality content, you improve the visibility of your brand and eventually boost your reach. While people explore your blog posts, videos, podcasts, and social media posts, they find out more about the products and services you offer. Although they might not instantly purchase your products, they can consider your brand in the future. Positive brand reputation. Valuable and useful videos, blog posts, articles, and other materials enable you to show yourself as an expert and build authority. It will result in trust, credibility, and a positive brand reputation. Improved customer engagement. Numerous content formats allow you to communicate with your audience and boost engagement. Blog comments, social media discussions, and other channels are great mediums for answering customer questions, interacting with prospects, and educating them about your brand. Trusting relationships with clients. When publishing high-quality content regularly, you can build trusting relationships with users, encouraging them to become your clients over time. As a result, you’ll have customer loyalty and retention. Better site traffic. If you share valuable content consistently, you can take top positions in search results. More visitors will come to your site because of the content you publish. Besides search engine ranking, you’ll have more social media shares and referrals. Cost-effectiveness. Unlike traditional ads, content marketing is more affordable in the long run. You need to create quality content that attracts site visitors and update it over time, so no costs will be needed after sharing content. It can serve you for years and engage prospects effectively. Effective lead generation and more conversions. With good content, you can capture prospects and lead them through the sales funnel. It will help you turn site visitors into customers. Competitive advantage. By creating content, you can demonstrate your perspective and voice. This will make you stand out among competitors and encourage users to land on your site. Now when the advantages are clear, let’s find out how content marketing works. How does content marketing work? Content marketing can be used for different stages of the buyer journey, from when prospects discover the product until they purchase it. Reaching business goals effectively implies using the right content at each stage of the customer journey. Below, you can find which type of content it is advisable to use at each stage. Awareness stage. The content at this stage should be educational and respond to prospects’ concerns, problems, and needs. Blog posts, videos, and email newsletters are the most suitable types of content for the awareness stage. Consideration stage. At this stage, your content should combine valuable information and marketing. By showcasing your product's features and how they can solve customer problems, you can create more reasons to consider it. The consideration stage usually includes the following content formats: checklists, how-to blog posts, how-to videos, and worksheets. Closing stage. At this stage, the focus shifts to the sale. Your main task is to show why your product stands out from the competition and the reasons why leads should choose your brand. You can show your expertise by using the following content formats: user-generated content, case studies, product videos, testimonials, etc. Now let’s explore more content types you can incorporate at various customer journey stages. Types of Content Marketing There are numerous types of content you can use to attract prospects and convert them into customers. In this section, we’ll discuss the most popular types in detail. Blog posts. Articles and blog posts are the most spread types of content companies publish on their sites. They help highlight various topics related to industry, products, services, or customer interests. Infographics. With infographics, brands can communicate important information through charts, graphs, and illustrations. This format allows marketers to provide essential data in a short, engaging, easy-to-understand format. Videos. Video content is now one of the most popular formats brands use to showcase products, tutorials, behind-the-scenes footage, customer testimonials, and more. Videos are interactive, engaging, and easily shareable across various communication platforms. Podcasts. Podcasts are audio recordings people listen to on the go, during a ride or a workout. They can be presented in various forms, including interviews, discussions, storytelling, and ads. Podcasts are a great format for effectively bringing value to customers and educating them about your product. Ebooks. Content such as ebooks and whitepapers offer comprehensive insights into specific topics, providing thorough analysis, case studies, and research findings. These materials are invaluable tools for generating leads, commonly exchanged by companies for email newsletter sign-ups. Case studies. These reveal your product's practical benefits. They act as social proof, demonstrating the genuine value and usefulness of your products, thus encouraging potential customers to consider them. Social media posts. Social media posts allow you to share a wide range of information, including images, videos, text, and links to your product or website. By posting on Instagram and Facebook based on a specific schedule, you can establish brand awareness, boost engagement, and encourage new purchases. Email newsletters. With email newsletters, you can introduce your brand to new subscribers, send them attractive offers, update them on promotions, and invite them to loyalty programs. Emails help you deliver the necessary content right to subscribers’ inboxes. Webinars. You can engage with your audience in real time using webinars and live streams. This content format can be used for presentations, QA sessions, workshops, and other real-time events. User-generated content (UGC). Reviews, testimonials, social media posts, and user-generated videos refer to the content your customers create. These pieces of content are essential for every brand since they help establish customer trust and improve sales. However, when creating any of the above-mentioned types of content, you need to consider the influence of SEO on it because it will influence your website traffic, your posts’ visibility, and your reach on various communication platforms. How to combine SEO and content marketing? You can easily combine SEO and content marketing when creating blog posts, videos, webinars, and podcasts for top search engine ranking. When you use relevant keywords and create quality content with appropriate visual elements, it’ll emerge at the top of search results. The first point lies in conducting keyword research. Use Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to find relevant keywords and create content your audience needs and searches for. It's better to use long-tail keywords and analyze competitors’ content to enhance your content and SEO efforts. With long-tail keywords, you’ll be able to target specific audience segments with smaller numbers of competitors and better conversion potential. After conducting competitor analysis, you can identify opportunities and understand the preferences of your buyer persona. The second step involves content optimization, focusing on adding keywords naturally, creating quality, relevant content resonating with your audience, and paying attention to content length. Thirdly, you should use clear structure and formatting, including headings and subheadings, optimized images, and internal linking. All these elements contribute to readability and SEO and ensure your content is visible to users. The next thing to do is to make sure your website is easy to use for everyone who visits it. That means it loads quickly, works well on mobile devices, and has a design that's easy for users to navigate. For the best combination of content and SEO, you should also build backlinks, choose the right channels for promotion, and develop a posting calendar. These steps are necessary if you want a wide reach and high brand visibility, resulting in higher conversions. Now let’s proceed to creating a content marketing plan. 11 Steps to Creating a Content Marketing Plan Determine your goals Understand your target audience Conduct analysis and content research Determine content KPIs Build content strategy Create a content calendar Identify your budget Create content Promote your content across multiple channels Evaluate results Optimize your content While developing a content marketing plan, align your content with business goals to effectively reach the target audience. That’s why we provide a detailed plan to create a plan for your company. Determine your goals. The first step involves identifying your objectives which should be accurate, measurable, and achievable. For instance, you can strive to improve brand awareness, drive traffic, attain more prospects, increase sales by 15%, etc. Understand your target audience. Conduct research to identify your target audience and develop an accurate buyer persona. You need to find their demographics, interests, problems, concerns, and preferences. Conduct keyword analysis and content research. When you decide to create new content, consider using tools to identify topics and keywords that are popular and needed. If you already have content, you need to analyze it and identify gaps, strengths, and areas for optimization. Pay attention to website traffic, engagement, and conversion rates to find out which type of content your target audience prefers the most. Determine content marketing strategy KPIs. You need to identify key performance indicators (KPIs). They’ll help you to track and evaluate the effectiveness of your content efforts. They are total visits, unique visitors, page views, traffic sources, time on page, backlinks, conversions, and many other metrics. Build content strategy. Your content strategy should be detailed and structured. It should mention all the aspects, including the types of content you'll create, content themes, messaging, and tone of voice. You should also identify and write your competitive advantage and have a unique value proposition for your product. Create a content calendar. For the best results, you need a schedule to publish your content. Consider creating a content calendar to identify the best days for sharing your blog posts, videos, social media posts, etc. Your calendar needs to include the topics, publishing dates, formats, and responsible team members. Identify your budget. Analyze the resources you need and you can allocate them for the execution of your content marketing plan. You need to calculate costs associated with experts, tools, software, and promotion channels. Create content. Align your content creation with your strategy and posting schedule. Make sure the content is relevant, valuable, and of high quality, resonating with your audience. Incorporate storytelling, visual elements, and interactivity to enhance engagement. Promote your content across multiple channels. Develop a promotion strategy to distribute your content across various channels and reach your target audience. Utilize social media, email marketing, SEO, paid advertising, and influencer partnerships to improve reach. Evaluate results. Monitor your content performance using special analytics tools and tracking KPIs, including site traffic, conversion rates, interactions with your content, and ROI. Optimize your content. Use analytics tools to identify weaknesses in your content and improve it based on the obtained data. Consider experimenting with new formats, promotion channels, and trending topics to improve performance. In addition to a content marketing plan, you need to develop a content marketing strategy. The next section provides a step-by-step guide on how to do this. How to create a successful content marketing strategy? To create a content marketing strategy that works, you need to consider several steps. We’ll unveil them below. Identify your primary goals. You need to have your main objectives clear when creating a content marketing strategy. They should be accurate, measurable, and achievable. Based on the goals, you’ll be able to find out how close you are to your primary business objectives when analyzing content performance. Develop buyer personas. The second step involves developing your ideal customer persona to understand your target audience and address their concerns. You need to identify their demographics, gender, needs, preferences, and pain points to create the right marketing offer and content. Conduct a content audit. If you already have content and you strive to improve it, consider running a content audit to identify your best-performing and low-performing content. This way, you’ll be able to focus on blog posts, videos, and social media posts valued by users. Make sure that all your content is relevant and high-quality. Find the right content management system. You should choose a content management system based on your needs, goals, skills, and budget. However, it’s better to focus on platforms that have all the necessary features and are easy to use. These include WordPress, Wix, Joomla, Magento, and others. Identify suitable content formats. Analyze your audience's preferences and the performance of existing content formats. Focus on the top-performing content to create more pieces and obtain a wider reach, visibility, and conversions. Optimize content for a wider reach. After publishing content, monitor its performance to identify the best blog posts, videos, webinars, podcasts, etc. This data will help you improve your content strategy and allow you to prioritize specific topics, keywords, and content formats. Now that you know how to develop a strategy, it’s time to uncover some excellent content marketing ideas and trends. Content Marketing Ideas and Trends to Follow in 2024 Interactive content User-generated content Personalization Evergreen content Content repurposing Short-form videos Creation of content with AI Sustainability Podcasts Communities Disappearing content Many companies incorporate various techniques and approaches aimed at driving visibility and awareness. However, not all of them are effective. In this section, we’ve compiled a list of content marketing trends that can bring your brand towards success. Interactive content. Engaging and eye-grabbing content is key to more interaction with users. You can achieve this by creating quizzes, polls, surveys, and infographics. Besides entertaining site visitors, this type of content brings value to users and customer insights to your marketers. User-generated content. It’s always a good idea to share successful customer stories and feedback to establish transparency and credibility. This way, you’ll not only gain trust but also showcase your products and establish a community. Personalization. Use all your customer insights and technology to craft personalized content that aligns with users’ needs. You can target potential customers with content based on their preferences, behaviors, and demographics for higher engagement. Evergreen content. Consider creating in-depth content with evergreen value. With such blog posts, videos, and podcasts, you’ll be able to attract website traffic and showcase your expertise. Content repurposing. You can bring even more value to users by repurposing your content and changing its format for site visitors’ convenience. For instance, you can turn long guides into short reels providing users with the best places to visit. You can transform any type of content you have into something more engaging. Short-form videos. Social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are perfect for sharing short videos called reels. They are engaging, short, and useful for users. Reels matching with algorithms and trends can easily become visible to millions of people, boosting your brand’s reach and visibility. Creation of content with AI. AI is an inevitable part of everybody’s life, especially now when you can create content with its help. Consider using AI tools for new content ideas, drafts, and personalization. Sustainability. Your content should reflect your company’s commitment to sustainability. Modern customers pay close attention to transparent businesses that contribute to social and environmental change. Podcasts. Podcasts are extremely popular now, so it’s worth incorporating this content format. When starting a podcast, you can share insights, tips, interviews with experts, and interactions with users. Communities. Consider using online forums, social media groups, and live events to build a community of people around your brand. By communicating with your target audience in a new setting, you can easily establish customer loyalty and encourage community members to refer their friends. Disappearing content. Instagram Stories and Snapchat posts are perfect for sharing time-sensitive information and driving fear of missing out. You can use them for flash sales, attractive offers, and promo codes to establish a sense of urgency. Besides following trends and ideas in 2024, you need to consider using content marketing automation for more efficient work for your team. Let’s find out more about it. Content Marketing Automation Since content marketing is a complicated process that requires a combination of various tasks and processes, businesses need technology to manage them effectively. This section explains why to automate content marketing, its benefits, and how to do it. Content marketing automation is an effective approach to effectively managing your content, improving efficiency, establishing consistency, building scalability, and incorporating personalization. With its help, you can create, schedule, and distribute content, personalize your company’s messages, and ensure consistent and data-driven customer communication. Yet these are not all the pros you can reap after leveraging automation. Content marketing automation helps you: make data-driven decisions; streamline various marketing and sales processes; improve customer experience; establish trusting relationships with your audience; build customer loyalty; segment your audience; provide relevant and timely content; improve customer satisfaction; consistently publish content; drive conversions; reduce human error; reduce the workload on your content marketing team; reduce costs associated with content marketing. To effectively implement content marketing, we invite you to follow our step-by-step guide. Choose content marketing automation platforms that suit your goals. Build a list of tools that will help you reach your primary business goals, complete your tasks, and apply all the necessary features. These tools should comply with your budget and experience managing such services. Test them during free demos and trials. To ensure that the platform is perfect for your business, tasks, and goals, consider taking advantage of free trials and demos. They will help you learn about the platforms' strengths and weaknesses, as well as their features and pricing structure. Determine your tasks. After selecting the most suitable solution, think of the first task you want to complete with the service. For example, you can try to publish posts on multiple social media platforms at a time. Segment your audience. After identifying the tasks, you need to segment your audience by their interests. You need to identify people who might be curious about the social media posts you want to share on your platforms. Develop an automation workflow. The process depends on the platform you choose. Some services allow you to drag and drop the necessary elements to build workflows quickly and easily. You can cross-post using automation and outline the schedule for publishing on autopilot. These parameters and more are easy to set up with intuitive solutions. Run tests. Before running your automation workflows, make sure that everything works properly according to your requirements. Check the workflows for rules and triggers to prevent errors. After that, run tests to identify any possible mistakes. Review KPIs to assess performance. After running workflows, you need to monitor their performance. Track the key metrics, including views, engagements, and interactions with this post. If you are looking for the perfect solutions to set up processes related to content marketing on autopilot, we recommend you consider the following platforms: HubSpot, Marketo, Quark, or Brightspot. They will help you effectively manage your content and share it with customers promptly. Now that you know about the use of content marketing automation, it’s time to find out which tools to use. Best Content Marketing Tools and Services Topic Research Tools Content Creation Tools Content Distribution Tools Content Marketing Analytics Tools Social Media Content Marketing Tools Content Marketing Management Tools Visual Content Marketing Tools Content Optimization Tools AI Content Marketing Tools You can use many content marketing tools and services to automate multiple processes and tasks related to content marketing. In this section, we’ve compiled the best platforms for different content marketing needs to optimize your strategy and maximize results. Topic Research Tools A thorough topic research is a must for top-performing content yet it’s difficult to search competitors manually. Topic research platforms allow you to find relevant topics and keywords in seconds and discover how users search for information related to your industry. These tools help identify trending topics and content across multiple platforms, analyze content performance (comments, shares, likes, etc.), identify keywords and backlinks, find search questions, and many more. The best tools for this purpose include SEMrush, BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, Google Trends, AnswerThePublic, and Reddit. Content Creation Tools Content creation tools enable you to create various content formats, including blog posts, social media content, emails, audio tracks, presentations, infographics, etc. Their features often cover video editing tools, text overlays, marketing calendars, content scheduling, social media management, AI-driven content generation, and many more. You can use Hemingway Editor, Grammarly, ProWritingAid for better writing, Adobe Premiere Pro and Lumen5 for video content, and Audacity and Anchor for audio content. Content Distribution Tools Content distribution tools differ in the channels you want to use. They usually have the following features: content scheduling, social media performance analysis, email marketing automation, list management, video hosting, live streaming, etc. For social media management, you can use Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social. If you want to create and automate sending your email campaigns, consider using LIKE.TG, Mailchimp, or Sendinblue. When you want to share your video content, you can use YouTube or Vimeo. Content Marketing Analytics Tools With content marketing analytics tools, you can evaluate the performance of different content formats. Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and Matomo help receive data related to website traffic, user behavior, conversion rates, campaign effectiveness, etc. Platforms like Sprout Social, Buffer Analyze, and Hootsuite Analytics allow you to get post-performance metrics, audience insights, and competitor analysis. Social Media Content Marketing Tools When using social media content marketing tools, you can effectively plan, create, schedule, post, and analyze content. You can choose Canva, Adobe Spark, or Snappa to develop visually appealing social media posts. If you want to manage and schedule your posts, consider using Hootsuite or Sprout Social. Content Marketing Management Tools Content marketing management platforms are designed to help you plan, organize, execute, and analyze content marketing performance. For content planning and organization, you can use CoSchedule, Trello, and Asana. They will help you schedule content, communicate with team members, execute content projects, manage editorial calendars, etc. WordPress and Medium are the services suitable for content publishing. Visual Content Marketing Tools You can use platforms like Asana, Trello, or Notion to plan and manage visual content projects, distribute tasks, collaborate with teams, and manage project deadlines. To provide interactive presentations and storytelling experiences, consider using Prezi, Haiku Deck, and Google Slides. Content Optimization Tools You can select among numerous quality services to optimize the relevance and performance of your content. Yoast SEO, SEMrush, and Moz Pro will help you improve content for search engines, readability scores, and provide suggestions for optimization while Optimizely, Crazy Egg, and Unbounce allow you to run A/B testing and optimize landing pages for better conversions. AI Content Marketing Tools Using artificial intelligence is useful for content creation, optimization, distribution, and analysis. If you want to create content, consider leveraging GPT-3 Powered Tools, Articoolo, and Writesonic. They will help you generate articles, blog posts, product descriptions, and social media posts. Platforms like Idio, BrightInfo, and OneSpot enable you to personalize content based on user behavior and preferences. It’s time to jump into the most crucial content marketing metrics, helping track content performance. 12 Essential Content Marketing Metrics Evaluating the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy is key for identifying pain points and optimizing the overall strategy. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the most crucial metrics to track after publishing your content. Page views (the total number of times users viewed your page); Unique visitors (number of individual users landing on your company website); Traffic sources ( the places where users come from); Average time on page (how much time users spend on your page with content); Bounce rate (percentage of users who leave your site after visiting only one page); Social shares (how many times users shared your content on their social media); Impressions (number of interactions with your content, including likes, comments, and shares); Organic search traffic (users landing on your site based on search results); Backlinks (the quantity of good inbound links from external websites to your content); Conversion rate (the percentage of users who took the desired action); Lead generation (the number of prospects generated through subscription forms and downloads; Customer acquisition (the number of new clients acquired). Besides metrics, you should also know what steps to take to do everything right. In the next section, you’ll find some useful best practices to help you seamlessly bring your content marketing strategy to life. 8 Content Marketing Tips Content marketing can be very effective yet it should have the right execution for the best results. Below you can find some great tips that will help you achieve your business goals faster. Be consistent. When creating and sharing content on your site, social media, YouTube, or other platforms, you should develop a posting schedule. Sticking to a predefined schedule enables you to be consistent in your content and provide users with value at specific timeframes. Depending on your audience preferences, you can share content daily, weekly, or monthly. Consider various content formats. Content can be presented in different forms and shapes to engage with the target audience and reach goals. You can combine several formats like blog posts, videos, infographics, podcasts, eBooks, webinars, or interactive quizzes to cater to different customer needs. Optimize for SEO. To reach top ranking in search engines, it’s a must for you to use relevant keywords, meta tags, and descriptions. All these elements will help you improve content visibility. Consider optimizing titles, headings, and body text based on the latest SEO algorithms and ensure that it’s good for users. Promote your content through different channels. Besides creating content, you should find the best ways to promote it and reach potential customers. Consider creating sponsored content or ads for social media, use email campaigns, guest blogging, and partnerships with opinion leaders to boost your reach. Interact with customers. Show your activity in comments by answering users’ questions, asking for feedback on your content, and organizing contests and giveaways. If you manage to respond quickly to customer actions in your blog posts, social media posts, and videos, you can show your appreciation for each of them. As a result, you can have a community of people who trust and love your brand. Use storytelling. By telling a compelling story, you can make your content engaging, competitive, and memorable. Consider adding memes, sharing customer success stories, or case studies to connect with users emotionally. Consider creating reels. By creating short videos based on the latest trends in Instagram and TikTok, you can get visibility and brand recognition. In a world of social media, you can become popular in days if you manage to create videos that resonate with the audience. Conduct online events. Webinars are a great idea for providing educational materials to your students and introducing your company. By demonstrating your expertise, valuable knowledge, and quality information, you can connect with your audience and resonate with their needs. Now let’s jump into the examples to find out where to get started with your content marketing strategy. Successful Content Marketing Examples You can find many brands that incorporate content marketing effectively and reach their business goals. We’ve compiled a list of successful examples for you to get inspired. Videos on YouTube — Move with Nicole Move with Nicole's YouTube channel is a great example of successful content marketing, driving views all around the world. Videos with yoga classes are short and sweet, allowing students with any experience to get started. Podcasts — Radiolab Radiolab is a podcast based on investigative journalism to provide answers to deep questions. Each episode focuses on different topics. One might involve science and other history, making it interesting and engaging for audiences with different tastes and preferences. Posts on Social Media — Influencers Posts on social media like Instagram and Facebook are very effective, especially when you have an enticing offer. In the example below, influencers collaborate to conduct a giveaway. This way, they can encourage engagement, including likes, comments, and views. The reel gathered 2,5 million views, around 80 thousand comments, almost 30 thousand likes, and over 4 thousand shares. Email Campaigns — Levi’s Levi’s drives subscribers’ attention with rewards and vouchers sent through email campaigns. The example below includes three vouchers customers can use to purchase their favorite items. The offer is time-sensitive, encouraging customers to purchase within a required time frame. This evokes fear of missing out and more sales. Blog Posts — Casper: 10 Dog Sleeping Positions + Their Adorable Meanings This article is an excellent example of a successful blog post, driving links from other websites and proving that the post is a reliable and credible source. It contains funny illustrations with all the most important information in short, readable text elements and enough white space, improving readability. Congrats! Now you know what content marketing is and why it’s essential. We hope that our tips and examples will help you develop a successful content marketing strategy.

Content intelligence is using a service integrating machine learning and AI that allows marketing teams to conduct content discovery, research, and monitor competitors. It helps companies successfully communicate their marketing message, reach prospects, identify the most effective types of content, and boost conversions. In this article, we’ll unveil the importance of content intelligence and the 3 best tools. We’ll also show how to select the right content intelligence tool. Why is content intelligence important? Since the number of blogs, webinars, influencers, and online courses is constantly increasing, businesses need to find the most effective and fast ways to reach their target audiences and draw their attention. Each article, blog post, post on social media, or webinar is a chance to attract prospects and convert them. That’s why it’s vital to create quality and informative pieces of content. With content intelligence, you can receive insights into customers’ content preferences. It provides a clear understanding of the best content marketing strategy for your potential clients by using competitor data and conducting a comprehensive research. Besides a full understanding of your audience, AI empowers you to analyze content for style, tone of voice, and other metrics that influence buyer decisions; create customer-centric content; receive insights into various types of content and clients’ responses toward them; predict the effectiveness of your content strategy; share quality, appealing, and engaging content that drives attention. To sum it up, content intelligence enables you to effectively reach prospective customers, develop engaging marketing content, and identify the most powerful strategy for your company. Content intelligence allows you to avoid privacy concerns and collect the necessary information for your marketing team. Now that you know the benefits of AI, it’s time to find out how to select the right content intelligence tool to ensure all the necessary information and analysis of your content. How to choose a content intelligence tool? With the quick change in technology, the success of your content strategy depends on the tool you use. Since the effectiveness of your content directly influences your conversions and revenue, we need to uncover the steps to choose the most suitable platform for reaching your long-term goals. Let’s dig deeper into this topic. Identify the main issues of your content strategy. Although AI-powered platforms can help you with content creation, they are still more effective for research and analysis. That’s why for the maximum effectiveness of the tool, you need to provide your business data. Provide the tool with your company's challenges and the problems you want to solve. This information will help the platform identify patterns and connections. Later, you’ll be able to use this information to your advantage: improve your content strategy, reach more customers, and boost conversions. Explore several content intelligence tools and their features. Since the number of companies that use machine learning is still low, you need to explore the available platforms in detail. Conduct short research to find out the features and the value they provide. Align these features with your business goals. Content intelligence tools might vary. Some of them help manage content, while others create it. Depending on your objectives, you need to find the right tool. These services cover multiple functions, such as using big data for content analysis, creating automated content, or making word suggestions. We recommend you choose a platform specializing in specific tasks you need to complete. It will help your team avoid work overload. Analyze the way these services manage data. Your next step includes analyzing how the tools gather, use, and store data. Make sure that these platforms align with your business policies and customer expectations. Next, consider the data you need for your content strategy to maximize this resource. As AI tools leverage various information sources to make predictions and analyses, you need to choose carefully. Decide on the features needed. To avoid task overload, pay attention to the platform’s features. You should figure out which of the available features your team can manage. This way, the tool will suit your workflow and existing strategy. Focus on the primary features your business needs to receive value. Outline the plan of action. Before using the platform, you need to clearly understand what to do and how to attain it. For this purpose, consider developing a step-by-step plan. With its help, you’ll understand how to install and use the tool. Make sure to include the training for your employees in your plan of action since it will influence your future success or failure. When creating an outline, cover the most valuable features, the most complex features, and the platform’s problematic features. The plan will help your team apply useful functions and avoid unnecessary ones. Try out the chosen platform. Once you finish all the previous steps, it’s time to test the chosen AI software. First of all, check if the needed features work properly. Afterward, test the service by using your workflow. Finally, consider making notes to identify bugs. Now that you know how to identify the most appropriate AI-powered platform for your marketing team, it’s time to review the 3 best tools. We’ve gathered the most powerful platforms based on their features, user experience, results, and pricing. 3 Best Content Intelligence Tools In this section, we’ll provide the 3 tools to help you develop content that meets your customers’ needs and requirements. Hope that one of them will empower you to create high-converting content and increase your revenue. Optimizely Optimizely is a perfect solution if you plan to create high-performing content, run experiments at scale, and improve your commerce business. The service provides two options: content marketing and content management. Content marketing platform enables you to schedule campaigns and collaborate across teams. Custom and intelligent workflows allow you to create appealing and quality content for your website or social media. To ensure the best customer experience, the platform enables you to run tests. By conducting experiments, you can collect customer insights, generate quality content, and improve the experience with your company. An easy-to-use WYSIWYG visual editor helps change your site if it doesn’t meet visitors’ expectations. This way, you can improve user experience and drive conversions. Below you can see how to search the content in Optimizely. Free plan: An intuitive, easy-to-use project management tool for small marketing teams.Paid plan: Start at $79/month per user for dynamic intake forms, request dashboard, smart routing rules, etc. BuzzSumo BuzzSumo is a multifunctional AI content intelligence platform that enables you to perform the following tasks: content discovery, content research, influencers search, and monitoring. With the platform’s content ideas generator, you can easily find evergreen and trending headlines for your content. You need to browse topics, trends, and forums to get the required results. The service allows you to identify up-to-date trends and timeless classics. This content intelligence tool provides data ranging from 24 hours to five years. Consider finding the topic for your future article by exploring the high-demand keywords. Besides, you can look through the top-performing content and check its subheadings and structure to identify effective patterns. Explore questions on forums. By reviewing the questions, you’ll be able to get fresh ideas for your future topics and provide readers with value. After you create relevant content, BuzzSumo helps you identify the most effective channels for your target audience. This way, you’ll be able to improve user engagement. Before creating any piece of content, every company needs to conduct research. BuzzSumo allows you to scan billions of articles and social posts to identify patterns and gain insights. After using a special filter, you receive content formats that resonate with your audience. Below is an example of how to search for high-performing content on the web with BuzzSumo. Free plan: 30-day free trial.Paid plan: Start at $99/month for unlimited monthly searches, one year of data, 5 users, 5 alerts, and 50 exports/month. Curata Curata is a platform for content curation. The tool provides you with a wide selection of published content available online. The platform searches the web for highly relevant outcomes using keywords, authors, and bookmarked or shared content. As a result, you can find the top-performing articles and blog posts within your industry and identify similarities. This way, you’ll be able to find out the reasons customers prefer specific pieces of content. You can use this knowledge to your advantage when creating content for your website or blog. Curata organizes, annotates, and creates content to improve your company's credibility and reach customers. With a self-learning recommendation engine, you can receive content listed based on relevancy. After creating articles, you can publish and promote them through the preferred marketing channels. The platform helps you schedule and automatically post content. In the screenshot below, you can see how you can review hundreds of articles in Curata. Free plan: -.Paid plan: Contact customer support for pricing information. Congrats, now you have the 3 best platforms to choose from for a successful content strategy. Hope that information above will be useful for your marketing and content team.

What is confirmation email Confirmationemail is a kind of a transactional email sent to a customer after a certain condition is triggered. This email can be sent to confirm that a customer has placed an order at an online shop, subscribed to a newsletter, booked tickets, registered for a webinar. In LIKE.TG, you can send confirmation email automatically according to specific conditions and filters. Whyshould one send a confirmation email Email in itself remains one of the most effective tools when it comes to lead conversion. It is a very effective marketing channel and has a return on investment of (ROI) of $39.40 per email. Confirmation email, being an underdog among other types of emails has a couple of aces up its sleeve. These points might illustrate why email confirmation is important. Primary inbox Confirmation emails usually land in the primary inbox section. Increased CTRThey provide information vital to the user which in turn increases a click-through rate. Opportunity to upsell This type of email is a great opportunity to upsell products and services along with useful information they contain. Anticipation Emails of such type are anticipated, which means they have a higher open rate. Triggered by customers' actions These emails are triggered by customers’ actions which means you can learn theirbehaviorand preferences. Types of confirmation emails Order confirmation is an email sent to customers after they place an order on a business company website. With this email, a company confirms that the order is accepted and is being processed. Find out more in this article. Booking confirmation is an email sent to customers after they book something online. These can include plane tickets, hotel rooms, restaurant tables, travel package deals, etc. Registration confirmation is an email sent to users after they complete a registration process on a company’s website. These messages are also known as welcome emails. Subscription confirmation is an email sent to users after they go through the newsletter subscription process. These messages are also known as welcome emails and are often used to walk subscribers through double opt-in. How to set up email confirmation After the registration in LIKE.TG, it is really easy to set up your automated confirmation emails. Select the Automations tab and create new automation. Configure an automation flow by adding events, conditions and actions. Craft your own confirmation email or choose one from over 130 free responsive email templates. Review your settings and start your campaign. Email Confirmation Best Practices These are some basic but very important points to consider while creating your own confirmation email. Play around with your emails, A/B testing is a great way to see what works best. Wow your customer First impressions are important. The same goes for emails. Confirmation emails are the first to arrive to your customer’s inbox. Make reading your email a worthwhile experience. Make it short and sweet Online user’s attention span is getting shorter. You’ve got seconds to attract attention and say what you have to say. Stand out It is sometimes OK to use email templates but if you want to build your brand’s image - resort to your own design! It’s totally worth it. Be mobile ready More and more people tend to check their emails on the go. Make your own emails or use adaptive templates. They’ll look amazing both on your laptop and a smartphone screen. Incorporate your CTA Sure, confirmation email serves a purpose to provide transactional information, but why limit yourself? Upsell your products, invite your customers to join you on social media or offer a discount. It’s up to you. Just don’t over do it. Email Confirmation Examples Now, that we’ve covered main tactics to use while designing your own email confirmations, let’s see how different companies go through with their transactional emails. Order Confirmation Amazon provides all the necessary information concerning the order, in the same time they offer some magazine subscriptions based on a browsing history. Newsletter Subscription BuzzFeed keeps their newsletter subscription confirmation light and with a touch of humour. Also, they include a funny CTA button to have their subscribers double opt-in. Booking confirmation email Booking.com makes their confirmation email all about user convenience. The email has all the necessary information along with useful links to make changes to your booking and even a link to get directions to the hotel. Registration confirmation Blinkist keeps their registration confirmation email simple and elegant. They also ask the users to double opt-in and set expectations about their future newsletter frequency and content. Send a confirmation email

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) are products with a short lifespan and recognizable packaging that customers buy regularly. Examples include foods, clothes, drinks, products for cleaning, cosmetics, etc. Today, the industry of consumer goods is considered one of the largest business sectors. Consumer packaged goods have a short lifespan and are in constant demand as customers purchase them on a routine basis. They usually have recognizable packaging designed to be easily identified by buyers. In this article, we’ll compare CPG and retail companies, explore consumer packaged goods trends, and see several examples. Consumer Packaged Goods vs. Retail It’s essential to distinguish between CPG and retail businesses, so let’s proceed to figure it out. When we talk about CPG, we mean companies involved in the process of development, manufacturing, and marketing that aim at presenting the final product to theirend user. Such brands don’t only sell products but also create them. Examples include huge corporations like Procter Gamble and Johnson Johnson or fashion houses like Prada and Gucci. The last two design and manufacture exclusive apparel and accessories and sell these goods in their retail stores. To compare, retail companies specialize only in selling goods and services to consumers through retail or online stores, social media, or other effective sales channels. Amazon, Walmart, and Target are famous examples of retail companies. These well-established retailers provide their customers with anything starting from food and clothes and finishing with equipment rentals. Now that you see the difference, it’s time to walk you through some trends. Consumer Packaged Goods Trends Digital technologies empowered the CPG industry to grow and prosper. Lately, the sector has undergone some major changes. Now people are closely acquainted with online orders, address delivery, and even personalized products. The industry continues to introduce new trends: Omnichannel marketing strategy. Consumers have different shopping behaviors. That’s why brands should analyze customers’ interests and preferences in products and communication channels. Besides, it’s advisable to optimize your company’s activity across different marketing platforms to lead your clients through all the stages of their consumer journey. Omnichannel marketing implies inbound marketing methods and channels that help acquire new consumers. Private labels. Many brands consider creating their private labels. This process can occur in any industry: cosmetics, food, clothes, accessories, etc. Private label products are goods that customers can find only in a specific store. This way, brands increase their profits and attract new customers. Acquiring competitors’ companies. One more trend that has been observed lately is acquiring or investing in a rival brand. Unilever is a great example. Starting from 2015, this multinational giant has bought a significant number of brands. Self-care products. Self-care is the number one priority for many people. Skincare products salesimprove drastically and continue growing. Meal kits. Cooking foods from scratch is always good for health, but it often takes a lot of time. Today, meal kits are incredibly popular, especially among people who are busy at work or parents who don’t have time for cooking. These pre-portioned ingredients save time on preparation and allow consumers to try new dishes and cuisines. Sustainable goods. Many people go green and care about products that affect our environment. As a result, there’s a rising demand for goods that can’t harm our planet. Companies try to address this demand. By becoming conscious, brands help save energy and preserve the public health and purity of our environment. Customized products. Lately, the approach has become very popular. Customized products are items you can change according to your taste. Since approximately 80%of customers would buy something from companies that offer custom products, many brands implement the strategy. Nissan lets their clients design cars, and Lenovo allows buyers to create custom laptops. Customization enables business owners to generate more sales, improve customer loyalty, and have more customer insight. Let’s now look at some big companies in the CPG industry. Examples of Consumer Packaged Goods You can find examples of CPG brands and companies everywhere. A lot of people worldwide purchase drinks from Coca-Cola, home and personal care goods from Procter Gamble, and foods from Unilever. However, you are probably more familiar with their brands. They include Ariel, Downy, and Cheer for fabric care from Procter Gamble. Unilever offers ice cream from Breyers, tea from Lipton, and beauty products from Pond’s. To conclude, you can encounter consumer packaged goods every day on any store shelves. Companies that offer such products are involved in the development, manufacturing, and marketing stages.

Consumer behavior refers to the actions consumers do while choosing, buying, and using certain products. Analyzing consumer behavior helps businesses understand the target audience’s buying habits and offer more appealing products. In the article, we explain why studying consumers’ behavior is important and how to do it, provide factors that influence buying behavior and highlight its main types. Why is it important to understand consumer behavior? Studying consumer behavior is one of the first steps when companies start working with new audiences. Discover why it is important to study people’s buying preferences and decisions. It allows you to provide personalized experiences. According to Stackla, 70 percent of people think personalization is vital. If you want to stand out from the competitors on the market, it is necessary to study consumers’ buying preferences and habits. Providing personalized experiences can help you increase customer loyalty because people will be more satisfied with your products and services. It can help you increase customer retention. Invesp states that it is five times cheaper to retain an existing client than attract a new one. However, according to Accenture, 41% of customers switched companies last year because of poor personalization. Study consumers’ behavior to provide more personalized experiences and increase clients’ retention. It allows you to improve your product management. Understanding tendencies in people’s behavior lets you predict what products will be successful among a certain audience. Discover what goods clients want to buy and what service they want to get to build a highly-competitive strategy and improve your products before the launch. Moreover, you can plan the approximate amount of material needed to balance the supply and demand of a new product. It shows new ways of product marketing. Studying customer behavior gives you a deep understanding of how your clients make choices. You can discover their pains, needs, and interests to use this data in future marketing campaigns. Create content to deliver strong messages and attract more customers. Use consumers’ behavior knowledge for upselling and cross-selling. It helps increase sales by focusing on the target customers. Understanding the peculiarities of your clients’ behavior allows you to develop competitive advantages. It will help you save money on marketing and generate more sales. Moreover, customer lifetime value may increase too, because clients will be satisfied with their experiences, and most of them may become regular ones. Now you understand why analyzing customer behavior is so important. Although, it might seem difficult, many factors influence people’s actions. In the next section, we provide the top 5 most important ones you should concentrate on while studying the behavior of your clients. 5 Factors Influencing Consumer Behavior Many factors influence people’s buying choices. Some are temporary, such as emotional state, and some are permanent, such as gender. Below we provide 5 main groups of factors that affect customer choices. Personal factors. Marketers always consider these points while creating a buyer persona. Firstly, take a look at the target audience’s demographics (age, gender, location, etc.). Then describe the lifestyle of your potential clients to understand their behavior better. By studying consumers’ way of living, companies identify customers’ pains, needs, and preferences. Occupation is also an important personal factor because people tend to spend more on products connected with their profession. Social factors. Family and friends affect consumers’ buying behavior the most because they form our lifestyle, preferences, and values. Social status also influences the way we buy. It is remarkable that consumers of the same social class tend to have similar buying habits. Cultural background is one more important point because our community influences our values significantly. Also, social factors include the level of education, religion, sexual orientation, current trends, etc. Psychological factors. These are the most difficult to predict because they depend on the human’s personality. They include mindset, the way a consumer perceives information, individual response, etc. Motivation primarily influences a person's behavior: the higher motivation, the higher chances for a customer to buy a certain product. One more important factor is perception. It shapes while the consumer gathers information, chooses, and uses goods. Perception may be positive and negative. Loyal customers have a stable positive perception of a product and the whole company. Marketing campaigns can influence people’s perceptions and persuade them to try new goods and spend more money. Economic factors. The cost of the product in comparison with customers’ income influences their choices greatly. The higher your clients’ income, the easier it is for them to make decisions and spend money on goods. The economy of the whole country also influences customers’ buying behavior. People who live in prosperous countries tend to spend more money on inessential items because their basic needs are covered. The amount of savings is also important, especially for expensive purchases, such as cars or houses, and influences buyers’ behavior directly. To achieve better results, marketers segment target audience groups by their income and suggest the best solution according to each group’s preferences. Situational factors. The purchase situation may play an essential role in the person’s behavior. Companies try to suggest the most comfortable conditions, such as location, lighting, music, and service to persuade consumers to buy their products. However, there are some situational factors we can not influence, such as the client’s mood time, day of the week, or season when the person is making a choice. With these factors in mind, it will be easier for you to predict consumer behavior. In the next section, we describe the main types of consumer behavior, provide their peculiarities and explain how to use them in your product promotion. Types of Consumer Behavior Marketers differentiate types of consumer behavior to identify the main patterns in their clients' actions. Below we provide the main differences in people’s buying behavior and explain how to deal with clients of every type. 1. Habitual behavior This is the most widespread type that we deal with when buying something daily. Such purchases are part of our routine, requiring little involvement and thought. For example, when you choose a chocolate bar in the supermarket. You do not need to think for a long time before purchasing; you just take your favorite one. To influence people’s habitual behavior, you need to promote your product actively. Brand familiarity is one of the main points in the choice, and this is why well-known and popular companies always win the competition when the person buys something habitually. On the other hand, brand loyalty does not play an important role in this type of decision-making. 2. Variety-seeking behavior This type is completely different from the previous one. When people seek variety, they buy something completely different from the product they used to choose, even if they were satisfied with it. For instance, you used to buy mozzarella, but decided to purchase feta or cheddar just to try them. Variety-seeking behavior often involves brand switching and it is ok. To reduce consumer churn you need to create a diverse product line and highlight the differences between your products. Improve your products and promote the changes to make people try them again and again. 3. Complex behavior We behave in such a way when buying expensive products that are difficult to choose. Such a purchase takes a long time decide. Consumers often research and analyze the pros and cons of many product alternatives to make the best decision. They can also ask their family and friends for advice. An example of such behavior can be purchasing a car because it is a long-term investment. To persuade people to buy expensive products from your company, you should give them a deep understanding of all the benefits. Highlight advantages on your website and on social media, and focus on them in paid promotions. Do your best to make clients buy your products again and again. 4. Dissonance-reducing behavior This type is similar to the previous one but occurs when there is little difference between the products. It is always difficult to choose for the consumers; they worry that they will regret the wrong purchase. For example, you want to buy an expensive diamond ring, and some of them are almost similar, so you want to reduce dissonance and buy the best one. Marketers suggest not only focusing on your products’ advantages but highlighting its unique features. Brand popularity is also very important because people tend to choose a familiar product from a wide range of similar ones. 5. Impulsive behavior While making impulsive purchases, consumers often take little time to choose and focus on the quality of the product, but not on its cost. For example, when you go to the department store to buy a coat and decide to take a new pair of shoes because they suit well. Such purchases are focused on the emotional state of the buyer. To increase the number of impulsive purchases of your products, we recommend using emotional marketing. Develop a reputation of a friendly brand and build strong relations with your clients. Every marketing message should call on certain emotions and highlight consumers’ pains and needs. Make the time needed to purchase your products as short as possible. 6. Average spending behavior This type is characterized by deep research before the purchase. Consumers want to buy high-quality products, but they are not ready to buy the most expensive ones and seek the best price-quality ratio. Typically, people set an estimated budget for such purchases, but consumers can spend more if they feel that the product is worth it. For instance, you want to buy a winter jacket and are ready to pay 400$ for it. However, you can even pay 600$ for a jacket if it is super-warm and very stylish. Marketers recommend placing reviews of existing clients and success statistics to persuade customers to pay more. It may be a good idea to create a product line with goods of different prices to offer people to choose the variant with the best price-quality ratio. 7. Economical behavior Some people are not focused on the quality of the products and try to choose the cheapest variants. We can often behave in such a way when the difference between products is almost unimportant. For example, you can buy cheaper plates if you like their design. Brand reputation and brand loyalty do not play a role in this choice. To persuade people with economical behavior to buy your products, you need to provide cheap but high-quality products with few features. Now you know the main peculiarities of each type of consumer behavior and are ready to use this knowledge in marketing. However, a thorough analysis of your client's actions is needed before developing a strong strategy. We highlight the main steps and explain how to analyze the behavior of your customers in the next section. How to analyze consumer behavior? Consumer behavior analysis is necessary for companies that want to grow and succeed in the market. Conducting research on clients’ behavior might seem complicated for some business owners, but it is not so. Read our pieces of advice in this section, turn them into practice and attract more clients to your brand. 1. Collect analytics and gather quantitative data The first step in analyzing consumer behavior is to gather as much information as possible. Check analytics of your social media accounts and a website, gather statistics about offline sales, and check quantitative data from your previous marketing campaigns. You will need such metrics as revenue, adoption rate, LTV, CAC, retention rate, churn rate, average deal size, close size, etc. Collect as much information as possible, and discover the data within the whole sphere. You will be able to compare your brand's statistics with your competitors’ stats to get a more holistic image. 2. Conduct interviews and collect qualitative data The next step is communication with your existing clients and people who represent your buyer personas. You can conduct in-depth research, using different polls and open-ended questions. Collect your clients’ demographics, and ask them about their preferences, needs, and pains. Focus on people’s buying decisions and ask them what things influence their choices. We provide some questions you can ask below. What do consumers think of your brands’ and your competitors’ products? How do they choose from different alternatives? What are the essential features of your product for them? What influences their buying decisions the most? (price, quality, service, etc.) Do they ask their friends and family for advice before the purchase? You can also add specific questions focused on your niche, people’s pains, and needs. Then collect all the questions and analyze them. Identify common trends and differences and go on to the next step. 3. Segment your audience and find common trends for each segment Once you gather all the information, it is time to analyze it. Identify a few groups within your target audience and highlight their differences. Then describe the way representatives of each segment of your target audience behave. It might be a good idea to distinguish the most valuable customers into a separate group and think about what they have in common. Use both qualitative and quantitative information to identify the behavioral trends in the groups. Then take a look at your customer journey and think about roadblocks representatives of each segment may have before the purchase. Highlight the most problematic steps and describe the ways to improve them. 4. Develop a strategy and make it work Now you understand your customers’ behavior, and it is time to think about future improvements. Optimize your product, services, marketing messages, and content. Remember about the specific needs of all segments of your target audience and develop different approaches to these groups. It will help your company grow without loss in quality and overspending. Then build a strong strategy and make these changes work. One more important thing is to stay relevant. Analyze the results of the changes from time to time and make improvements. If you want your company to grow and develop, consumer behavior studying should be a continuous process. Trends are changing so you should keep in touch and be flexible. Congrats, now you know what customer behavior is and why it is important, the types of people’s buying behavior, and the factors that influence it. You can also analyze consumer behavior and improve your business according to the results of this analysis.

Competitive positioning is a strategy that encompasses the marketing team’s efforts to differentiate a brand from its rivals. It helps improve the product’s value, customer retention and boost sales. In this article, we’ll uncover the importance and examples of competitive positioning. We’ll also discover how to create a competitive positioning strategy. Why is competitive positioning important? Every company strives to get more customers and, accordingly, more sales. Marketers develop various strategies to achieve the key goals. They revise existing tactics and prepare new ones. The main thing that attracts new consumers is the benefits one company can bring and others can’t. So to increase sales, businesses should provide unique and valuable offerings. This is competitive positioning. The ability of the brand to differ is essential in a market overcrowded with similar products. To gain a good position within the market, marketers pay attention to customers’ preferences, needs, desires, and current trends. The position depends on the product’s value and level of customer satisfaction. By increasing the value of your business and its product, you can boost sales. Reaching customers’ actual needs and solving their problems is a must for every brand. You can stand out from the competitors and even join the ranks of industry leaders. Now that you know the reasons why implement competitive positioning, let’s figure out how you can do it. How to create a competitive positioning strategy? If you aim at boosting your sales, you need to develop an excellent competitive positioning strategy. We’ll help you with that. Explore the following steps to do everything right and achieve your goals. Determine your key goals. If you want to track your goals and their achievement, you need to define them first. Work out a list of short-term and long-term goals. Consider gathering your marketing and management teams to deal with it. They will help you determine accurate goals you can reach with your business. Make sure that you know your market well. As a marketer, you should know the peculiarities of your company and the market it operates in. With deep market research, you’ll get to know the strategies to implement and find a perfect competitive position. Your team and customers will help you. Trends, competitors, and new products are the areas your should pay close attention to. Your task is to find out what companies and products clients prefer the most. Study customers’ feedback to unveil what they still lack in those goods. Identify and analyze your competitors. Competitors’ research is a must for those who want to improve their business and meet customers’ expectations. With the help of analysis, you’ll figure out the areas of your company you should improve. As a result, you’ll always stay relevant, up-to-date, and innovative. Your marketing campaigns will reach the hearts of your target audience. Set deadlines. To keep track of your progress, you need to set deadlines for every task, marketing campaign, and goal. Create a timeline to comply with the schedule. This way, you’ll know whether you succeeded in reaching goals within the time you expected. Define your perfect niche. When you are in your perfect niche, you can satisfy your customers by providing them with features others don’t have. Remember, your unique offer values a lot for consumers. You can market your products as unique and different from others within the right niche. You need to find things that make your brand exceptional and valuable. Now that the process is clear, let’s review some examples. They will serve you as a hint for your future actions. Examples of Great Competitive Positioning Strategy We can name hundreds of brands with outstanding examples of competitive positioning strategies. Let’s review a few to understand which points you can use to gain a good position within the market. Whole Foods Market The supermarket chain positions itself as one of the best grocery stores that offer only fresh, healthy, and quality products. According to the While Foods’ standards, people should eat well to live well, and that’s why the brand doesn’t sell products with harmful ingredients, colors, artificial sweeteners, and preservatives. Since more and more people care about their healthy diet, Whole Foods is among the best options. Patagonia Patagonia focuses on its values. The well-known clothing brand always stands for environmental protection, supports initiatives and movements that try to save it, and prevents people from harming nature. Their marketing campaigns are stunning, they help boost brand awareness and increase sales. “Don't buy this jacket” in 2011 aimed at helping our world by reducing the number of purchases. Patagonia encouraged customers to buy their clothes only if they needed these things. With its environmental initiatives and campaigns, the brand succeeded in retaining its competitive positioning. Axe The brand of male grooming products pays attention to the target audience, young teenage boys, and their needs. Axe is considered a way to become more masculine and charm girls. The focus on young men immediately provided the company with a strong differentiation and brand positioning. Even now, the product is associated with confidence and charm. Competitive positioning is essential to succeed, reach great sales volumes, and brand awareness. Hope our examples helped you get inspired.

A complementary product is an item that is bought together with the main product. These products are used in conjunction, so complementary goods often bring little value or can’t be used separately, such as petrol, SIM card, and baking powder. In this article, we’ll explain why brands use complements, show the difference between them and substitute products, and provide some examples. Why do brands use complementary products? To boost sales, retail stores often decrease the price of a basic item and increase the price of its complementary product. Such a bundle seems beneficial to consumers. Retailers analyze customer demand and place these bundles close to each other. This is how stores sell razors and blades, flour and baking powder, laundry detergents, and fabric softeners.Companies can increase theirsales volumeand revenue this way. However, complementary products have negative cross elasticity of demand. It means that if the price for the main item increases, consumer demand for its complement decreases since it often brings no value just by itself. Hence, companies’ sales volume decreases significantly, and retailers have to drop the price of the main item to cover the costs. Complementary products are sometimes confused with substitute products, so let’s make the difference between them clear. Complementary Products vs. Substitute Goods Complementary products are closely related to the main product. They often can’t be consumed alone. Therefore, the demand for the main product generates the demandfor its complement. Marketers eithersell them together or promote a complementary product after selling the main item. This way they can increase sales. Substitute products have the same features as the main product and solve the same problem. Hence, they can be used interchangeably. For example, customers can buy margarine instead of butter, Samsung Galaxy instead of an iPhone, and Xbox instead of Play Station. Consumers look for substitutes when the price for their desired product increases, as a result, the demand for this item decreases. Now you see the difference and realize the economic connection between complementary and substitute products. It’s time to check out some examples. Examples of Complementary Products We’ve already mentioned some examples of complementary products. These are goods that can’t be consumed without the main products, for example, a SIM card without a mobile device, gasoline without a car, baking powder without flour. Now we’ll share some examples of complements that are promoted together with their main product: mobile device accessories (cases); boot polish; tennis rackets and a ball; game consoles and games; hair straighteners and heat protection; laptop bags; cartridges for a printer; spices for meat and fish; laces for sneakers; DVDs for DVD players; bullets for guns; brushes for eyeshadows. Congrats, now you know why brands sell complementary items, realize the difference between them and substitute products, and know some examples of both.

A competitive strategy is a long-term marketing plan that companies develop to defend their market position and gain a competitive advantage. Why is having a competitive strategy important? The higher the competition in your industry, the harder it is to keep pace. When you enter a concentrated market, you should set a high bar, or else you won’t manage to compete with your business opponents, especially with those who sell similar products. To build a successful business in such a competitive environment, you should thoroughly analyze your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and advantages. Take into account all possible threats as well. Consider researching the needs, problems, and preferences of your potential clients to cope with this task. They can tell you what your current products lack so that you can enhance them accordingly. With a thought-out competitive strategy, businesses can make more informed decisions and constantly improve their products or services. In the next section, we’ll review the main types of competitive strategies. 4Types of Competitive Strategies American academic and economist Michael Porter divided competitive strategies into four types. Check them out below. Cost leadership strategy.It suits large businesses that can produce a big volume of products at a low cost, and that is why Walmart implemented this strategy. It means that companies using a cost leadership strategy are the lowest price sellers on the market. Hence, the cost price of a product should be low to make a profit. This is possible with the help of large-scale production and high capacity utilization along with a variety of distribution channels. The competitive advantage within this strategy is the lowest price. Differentiation leadership strategy. This is a killer strategy that allows brands to stand out among competitors. It requires identifying a unique quality that makes a company different. With this strategy, businesses become superior to their rivals on the market, which allows them to charge more for their products. Starbucks and Apple belong to brands using this strategy. Cost focus strategy. This strategy is similar to the cost leadership strategy in terms of providing customers with the lowest price. The only difference is that a cost focus strategy implies targeting a specific market segment with its unique needs and wants. This way, it’s easier for companies to establish brand awareness. Companies using this strategy often concentrate their efforts on geographic markets with special needs. Differentiation focus strategy. Companies using this strategy also focus on specific market segments, but their driving force is the unique value. While cost focus strategy means providing the lowest price in a small niche, differentiation focus strategy means improving the product with the help of unique features that will make your company stand out on the market. For example, there are a few hotels in Egypt or Turkey for adults only. This way, people can relax and be sure that no child will bother them. Congrats, now you know why competitive strategy is worth considering, and you can choose the best one that will fit your business goals to step up your game.

Concentrated marketing is a strategy that involves a brand directing all effort and resources to develop and market a product for one specific segment of the target audience. This strategy is especially effective for small businesses as it helps obtain a good position in one marketing segment. Advantages and Disadvantages of Concentrated Marketing Concentrated marketing, the main purpose of which is to create an offer for one specific segment, comes with several benefits for small companies. The strategy allows small businesses and startups to function even with limited resources. Some other advantages of concentrated marketing include: the opportunity to analyze and understand the needs and wants of a select audience segment; a company can become a professional in meeting the needs of a certain segment of customers; cost-effectiveness due to the absence of mass production and mass advertising; more loyal customers if their needs are met. However, the strategy also has disadvantages. They are as follows: high dependence on customers’ preferences, a shift might result in decreased effectiveness for your marketing campaigns; risk of neglectingother profitable segments; risk of brand failure in the event of decreased product demand. Now that you know the advantages and disadvantages of concentrated marketing let’s compare this strategy with another one — differentiated marketing. Differentiated vs Concentrated Marketing The major strategies include differentiated, undifferentiated, and concentrated marketing. Next, we’ll take a closer look at differentiated and concentrated marketing to explore each of them and find the distinctive features. Differentiated marketing By using differentiated marketing, companies can appeal to two or more segments of their target audience or marketing segments through their campaigns. Brands target various well-defined customer profiles to create a wider customer base, increase brand awareness, communicate personalized messages, and meet customers’ needs. After creating special approaches for different segments of the target audience, company messaging is more likely to resonate with the unique needs of clients andyou can expect even more benefits includinghigher customer loyalty, better business-customer relationships, and even more. Like any marketing method, this strategy has pros and cons. The benefits of differentiated marketing include fulfilling customers’ needs, increased customer reach, and more revenue. However, the strategy also has its cons. They are as follows: unstable brand identity and high expenses. Concentrated marketing Unlike differentiated marketing, concentrated marketing is presented as a single marketing campaign, single message, and a single product for one specific target segment. This strategy is the best fits startups and small firms as it enables them to find their ideal lead or niche. Also, a concentrated marketing strategy doesn’t require you as a business owner to spend a lot of money. Plus, by focusing on the needs of a very narrow group of customers, you’ll be able to build authority and become an expert in your niche. Concentrated marketing can be the starting point for your subsequent marketing strategies that focus on a wider target audience. The downside to this strategy is that it only works with one small segment. Hence, businesses might find themselves in a trap when it’s time to grow. This happens because companies typically stick to one unique value proposition and brand voice. Now you know that the major difference between the two strategies mentioned above is the number of segments they target. So let’s move to the main features of concentrated marketing. Features of Concentrated Marketing Concentrated marketing has features that help you understand the business models it best suits. A concentrated marketing strategy: can be implemented by small companies; helps companies focus, meet the needs and produce goods specifically for one audience segment; involves the efficient use of resources for production, distribution, and advertising; requires a company-expert in the market that knows the core product necessary to get into the niche market; can’t acquire a larger customer base. We’ve reviewed the features of concentrated marketing, so now let’s proceed to the examples. They’ll show you the successful implementation of this strategy by several world-known brands. Examples of Concentrated Marketing In concentrated marketing, brands usually select one audience segment and try to meet the needs of customers. Let’s review some examples from famous manufacturers to see how it works. Rolls-Royce The luxurious car manufacturer was established in 1904 in Britain, Rolls-Royce knows a thing or two about concentrated marketing. The brand has customers in more than 120 countries and is well-known for the quality and price of its cars. Rolls-Royce targets customers with liquid assets of at least $30 million. This car manufacturer reaches their clients using personally signed letters. The brand sells approximately 800 cars per year. Rolex The brand founded in 1905 is now considered one of the leading names in the watch manufacturing industry. Their promotional campaigns always include different famous, influential, successful athletes and artists who depict the brand’s target segment. Ads created by Rolex convey that successful, strong people with status wear Rolex watches. This shows that the watch manufacturer is targeting career-orientated people. Munchkin The infant and toddler company founded in 1991, Munchkin, specializes in manufacturing and distributing products for children. The brand creates products and chooses parents as their target audience. Additionally, the company creates articles on parenting for their blog. They target moms and dads using different strategies when they search for certain baby products and use mobile-friendly tactics to reach busy parents. Omega The Swiss watchmaker established in 1848 is famous for making some of the finest watches in the world. Omega is a world-known brand with a great reputation because their products have excellent quality, durability, and resistance. Their ad that features Rory McIlroy, a famous golfer, depicts the brand's ideal client — a successful, influential, and good-looking person. This personality has passion and expertise in sports or other industries. So, Omega targets customers who try to balance their family and career. Now you know about concentrated marketing, its advantages, and disadvantages which is essential for selecting a target market strategy for your business. The examples above will inspire you and bring your ideas to life.

A confirmation link is added to a confirmation email. A click on it automatically adds the user to a mailing list, ensuring that the subscriber’s email address is active. Let’s learn a bit about the subscription first since the confirmation link is an integral part of this process. The CAN-SPAM Act and other anti-spam regulations require brands to opt-in users. To ensure a new subscriber’s email address is valid, and enable further communication via emails, marketers use a double opt-in approach. It works as follows: a user fills in an email address in a subscription form, then gets a confirmation email to that address, opens it, and clicks the confirmation link. Yes, double opt-in takes a little more time for people to subscribe, but if they want to be in touch with your brand, they will finish the subscription. Besides, such an approach makes your mailing list healthier with no invalid emails. It results in a better sender reputation. How to add a confirmation link with LIKE.TG? It’s not a big deal. With LIKE.TG, a confirmation link integrates with a confirmation email and is included in the subscription form creation. So, here’s a complete instruction on how to create a subscription form. Let’s briefly review the main steps now. Find the “Subscription forms” tab in your LIKE.TG account and choose a layout for your subscription form. Drag and drop necessary elements and customize them to your liking. Below is the screenshot from the LIKE.TG subscription form builder. After that, go to “Form options.” Here you can select the mailing list(s) where the newcomers will be added to, edit subscription notification, and customize confirmation email text. You can change the text, its font, and size. A confirmation link is connected to a button like on the screenshot below. As you can see, adding a confirmation link is a piece of cake. Let’s view more examples to get a better understanding. Confirmation Link Examples There are two types of confirmation links in email marketing: a link connected to a button and a link as classic hyperlinked text. Pinterest. It is an example of the confirmation link connected to a button. Optinmonster. It is plain-text email, so the link is also added as text to match the style. Wendy’s. Here’s another example of a button with a confirmation link. They even offered a plan B in case the link doesn’t work. You need to copy and paste another link into a browser. To learn more about email marketing, read our blog, and subscribe to email newsletters.

A competitive analysis is a strategy that encompasses researching a brand’s main rivals to receive insights into competitors’ sales and marketing strategies and product features. It helps a company develop effective tactics, strengthen the existing strategy, outperform competitors, and gain a bigger market share. In this article, we’ll unveil the importance of competitive analysis and figure out how to do a competitive analysis. Why is competitive analysis important? Companies use many methods and tactics to stand out in the market and outperform competitors. However, they often forget about a deep competitive analysis. Running a quick familiarization with major competitors' websites and social media profiles isn’t enough. You can miss out on crucial insights into your rivals’ sales and marketing strategies. This is essential to make your business prosper. A comprehensive competitive analysis means a lot for your business. It helps get acquainted with the work of your competitors, their product features, tactics, and sales strategies. By running an analysis, you’ll identify the gaps in your competitors’ work and use them to your advantage. This is a great opportunity for you to outperform them and capture a bigger market share. On the other hand, you can also determine their strengths to figure out your weaknesses and make improvements. Once you get all the important insights, you can stay relevant and up-to-date. Your product will always meet the high standards of the market and customers. Besides the benefits mentioned above, a competitive analysis also allows you to develop your unique value proposition and the features that enable your product to stand out in an increasingly competitive market. Knowing your competitive advantage helps you plan your future marketing efforts and tactics. You’ll also be aware of the methods that will keep you ahead and stay relevant for consumers. Competitive analysis will provide you with customer reviews that discuss the drawbacks of competitors’ products. Now that you know the reasons to implement a competitive analysis, let’s walk you through the steps necessary to do a competitive analysis effectively. How to do a competitive analysis? Running a competitive analysis requires you to do several mandatory steps. Since you need to conduct the analysis regularly, you should have a clear understanding of it. Identify your competitors. Before diving into the process, you need to determine your actual competitors. To do it, you need to name all competitors and divide them into two groups: direct and indirect. When running a competitive analysis, you need to assess the work of direct competitors. These companies operate in the same geographic area and offer a product that can be a substitute for your product. However, you still need to remember your indirect competitors (they provide a different product but it can solve the same problem). Their position within the market can change at any time. Define the products they offer. Unique product or service is the main advantage of every company. That’s why it’s crucial to examine competitors’ complete product lines and the quality of their goods. Pay attention to details that might help improve your tactics, such as pricing, discounts, special offers, loyalty programs, etc. You should also research their market share, their buyer persona, pricing strategies for online and in-store purchases, their competitive advantage, and ways to distribute products. Explore rivals’ sales strategies and their outcomes. A sales analysis might require you to spend much time and effort, but it’s worth it. Once you do it, you’ll receive valuable insights into your future strategy. To do it, you’ll need to have a look at competitors’ sales processes, the channels they use to promote their products, discounts they offer, yearly revenue, and the total sales volume they receive. Besides, figure out whether your rivals scale and implement partner reselling programs. Analyze customers’ reasons for not purchasing the product. Look through competitors’ pricing and benefits. To set a fair price both for you and your customers, you need to determine the price your competitors charge for similar products. After you know competitors’ products and their pricing well, you can judge whether your product is superior or inferior. For instance, if you and your competitors offer the same products, you know that your item has more unique features compared to others, you can make it more expensive. However, when doing that, be ready to explain why your product is worthy. If you don’t have some more useful features and the quality of the product isn’t higher than competitors’, you better charge less. If you sell subscription-based services, you can offer excellent customer support and a seamless user experience. You should also explore some additional rivals’ perks that help them take a superior position among customers. Competitors’ free trial versions, referral, and loyalty programs can be the reasons you lose clients. Study the way competitors market their products. The easiest way to explore competitors’ marketing approaches is to visit their websites. It can help you answer important questions and identify gaps in your business. You can uncover whether they have blogs, podcasts, features articles, webinars, ebooks, case studies, and media kits from the website. Moreover, you’ll receive information about their online and offline campaigns, press releases, the content they publish, and FAQ section. Pay attention to rivals’ content strategy. You need to look through the websites’ content to identify the type of content they publish and their frequency (once a day, week, or month). Then read their articles to evaluate their quality, relevance, and usefulness for readers. Assess content accuracy, grammar, brand tone, readability, and visuals. Once you analyze their content, you’ll have a clear picture of the benefits they offer and the reasons why customers value them. Use this information to your advantage. Figure out customers’ level of engagement with competitors’ content. To do it, you need to check customers’ responses to their posts. See the number of comments, likes, and shares. Also, look through the comments to find out whether the majority of them are positive or negative. You should also identify the topics that resonate with the target groups the most. Take note of these topics to write quality and informative articles for your blog. Don’t forget to check the competitors’ content for tags, share buttons, and social media following. The next step is to identify the ways competitors promote their content. Evaluate the keyword density and internal linking. Analyze competitors’ social media profiles and strategies. Nowadays, it’s a must to monitor social media profiles and see how your competitors promote their products. Get to know what helps them increase the level of engagement: social sharing buttons, links to social media, CTAs, etc. Check out the platforms competitors use for promotion and find out which of them you don’t use. Then, conduct an analysis: choose the platforms you don’t use and assess the level of engagement. To get the measure, you need to see the number of fans, content engagement, and virality. Once you analyze them, decide whether it’s a good idea to create an account for your brand as well. Conduct a SWOT analysis. It’ll also be useful to do a SWOT along with your competitive analysis. It will provide you with your opponents’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Afterward, you can compare them with yours and decide what else needs to be done to become the industry leader. Competitive analysis will serve you as a helpful tool in identifying your competitive advantage and evaluating competitors’ sales and marketing tactics. Its results will pave a path towards the more effective functioning of your business and improvement of strategies.

Company values are the core principles, ideas, and beliefs that set the direction of a company’s teamwork. They determine the way your brand interacts with clients and shareholders. In this article, we’ll unveil why company values are important and how to create them. We’ll also review brands with excellent core values. Why are company values important? Company values are essential for every business since they unveil the principles, beliefs, and fundamentals of your brand while determining the way of operation for your workers. Core values help identify the best ways of achieving key business objectives. After selecting the right core values for your company, you can reap several benefits. In general, they allow you to maximize performance, increase employee engagement, and improve workers’ principles. Clearly defined fundamentals enable your workers to make crucial business decisions based on your company’s mission. They understand your business purpose and do everything towards its achievement. Your team respects what your brand stands for and helps you achieve the desired results. Since your employees are professionally ready to provide you with the necessary outcomes, their productivity, time management, and morale improve. For example, if you strive to start environmental initiatives, your team will help you do it in the best possible way. When hiring new people for your team, make sure they know and understand your values. This way, all team members will align their work toward achieving the common good. Communicate your principles in job offers so that you can identify the right candidates who appreciate your work. Company values help you differ from your competitors. People who share the same principles will choose you over dozens of other brands. Resonating with consumers is essential for improving lead generation and customer retention. Now that you know why company values are crucial for your business, let’s find out how to create them. How to create company values? As an entrepreneur, you have no limits on setting your values. Sustainability, simplicity, honesty, and transparency are just a couple of examples. You are the one to decide which priorities and beliefs to determine. In this section, we’ll unveil the ways to create them for your business. Consider brainstorming. Brainstorming is a very helpful technique when it comes to identifying the values of your company. Gather your team members to share their opinions and ideas. This way, the chances of creating a list of relevant principles are bigger. Be open-minded and encourage all team members to provide their associations and fundamentals that relate to your business. Write down all ideas on a separate list and review them. Identify those that perfectly describe your mission, vision, and values. Analyze your mission. Before brainstorming, consider seeing your company’s overall mission. Your mission statement is a reflection of core values. For instance, if you want to create a beauty brand that stands against animal testing, you should show it in your mission statement and company values. Explore your brand’s mission and you will automatically come to the right values. Make up a list of fundamental questions about your business. You should figure out what your company appreciates the most. Think of the things that will be over the desire to make money. For instance, if you focus on reducing the environmental impact of manufacturing, you can use special packaging for your product, machinery, and production process. Be specific when defining your values. Being specific is critical for both your customers and employees. Clear values are necessary for the perfect hiring process. You need to communicate them to your candidates to find the right members of your team. These people should support all your principles and beliefs to maximize productivity. Pay attention to your target audience. Customer feedback can become a perfect source to identify core values for your brand. Make sure that your product satisfies consumers in terms of superior quality and low price. Identify factors that influence buying decisions of your target audience. For example, they might need transparency in manufacturing, ingredients, and sustainability. Now that you know how to develop company values, let’s review several examples of brands with appealing core values. 5 Companies With Inspiring Core Values If you want to get inspired, consider looking through several examples on our list below. Bayhealth Bayhealth is a healthcare system with a mission to provide excellent healthcare to the people around. The company communicates its core values to its clients: compassion, teamwork, respect, accountability, and integrity. Its hospital workers care about every patient and are responsible for their actions and professionalism. The company’s employees strive to build trusting relationships with every patient and ensure transparency. Gusto Gusto is a platform that enables small companies to manage hiring, payroll, onboarding, time, and compliance. The company’s core value is transparency. The service’s senior management shares every performance review with all of Gusto’s employees. Gusto advocates the needs of others, strives to perform better, and improves all time. Discover Discover is a credit card brand focusing on innovation, simplicity, respect, openness, enthusiasm, and collaboration. The company’s team believes that to build a successful business, they need to follow these principles and satisfy clients. The company ensures that Discover’s customers make well-informed decisions with all these fundamentals. Coca-Cola You can find the brand’s values on its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion page. The company cares about gender and racial equality and does its best to achieve it. Its team focuses on women holding senior positions within the company so that they represent 50% of employees. Coca-Cola also pays attention to sustainability. You can explore all their efforts on the brand’s website. You’ll find the company’s statistics on water usage and recycling. Coca-Cola is a people-focused company and highlights it. The company cares about its customers, employees, and everybody involved in the process of product development. Its team is sure that everybody is important and can bring a difference to our planet. The brand ensures the protection of the human and workplace rights of every employee. Whole Foods Whole Foods, a famous supermarket chain, sells high-quality organic foods to its customers. Besides excellent service and products, the brand cares about its communities and environment. To show the company’s commitment, it established the Local Producer Loan Program, which ensures low-interest loans to local farmers. You can also explore the brand’s contribution to the environment and its related initiatives. Congrats, now you know what company values are and why they are essential. Hope our guide and examples inspired you to create a list of appealing values for your business.

A company profile is a business summary created to convey the main information about the product or service to the target audience. It covers the history, values, mission, vision, and advantages of a specific company. You can find a company profile in 'About Us' on a business’ official website. In this article, we’ll uncover the importance of a company profile and how to write it. We’ll also review several excellent examples. Why is a company profile important? A company profile serves every business owner as a promotion tool that speaks to the target audience. A company profile helps you establish a positive and lasting first impression on your audience. A well-designed profile allows you to be visible across various marketing channels: websites, social media, messengers, forums, etc. Customers can find information about your business and product through preferred platforms when they are interested. If you manage to deliver essential information to your clients, you can stand out from the competition. Relevant, useful, and reliable companies always take priority among consumers. Your task is to resonate with your audience and provide them with a solution. An engaging company profile generates leads and converts them into customers if they receive all the necessary information. An appealing profile enables you to establish brand awareness and credibility. Showing professionalism, transparency, and quality is critical since these facts influence buyer decisions. When you do it right, it will help you reach your key business goals. Make sure to share your engaging brand story and cover appealing branding so that people trust your company and choose it over dozens of others. Company profile introduces your product to customers and uncovers its benefits. People can instantly find out whether it will help them solve their problems and attain the necessary results. Besides, a profile gives a clear understanding of your business to your future employees. You can find perfect candidates during the recruiting process. Now that you know the importance, it’s time to review how to create a company profile. After exploring this section, you’ll be able to do it for your business. How to write a company profile? Writing a company profile isn’t an easy task, yet vital for every entrepreneur. This section will guide you through this process to create a well-thought-out ‘About Us’ page for your business. Determine profile purpose. To create a working company profile, you need to set its purpose. It will help you align the statements with your key goals. If you strive to get new investors, consider covering your company’s profit, business performance, and product benefits. When you wish to drive customers’ attention, it’s essential to include your values. Choose a relevant style. Make sure that the style you use for your profile is appealing and engaging. Check your text for readability. The style of your profile depends on the field you are in and your target audience. You can be traditional, creative, or visual in your statements. Your task is to resonate with your customers and make them engage. Share your brand story. There are dozens of businesses that sell products similar to yours. However, there’s always a way to make your company stand out. An appealing brand story makes you unique. That’s why you need to put all your effort into writing it as best as possible. Introduce yourself to your customers and let them know who you are and what you do. You can tell your audience about your inspirations and reasons for starting this business. Include a mission statement. Create a mission statement and include it in your company profile. Ensure that your mission unveils your target customer, competitive advantage, and the product your offer. Cover company history. Create an overview of how, why, and when you established your business. Include the values, key events, and other notable facts about the brand’s past. Do it chronologically so that customers can understand where you started and what you have achieved until now. Write your achievements. Showcase your rewards and achievements if you have them. It denotes that many people trust you and purchase your goods. Awards establish trust and credibility. Share testimonials. You can increase sales by simply sharing testimonials. Ask satisfied customers for feedback to create testimonials. They will serve potential consumers as a source of information. The feedback will help consumers make positive purchasing decisions. Make sure to add a call to action button. Consider adding a call to action button to your company profile. It will help consumers continue exploring your website. You can invite them to discover your product, ask for a call, or visit your office. Include contact information. To drive more prospects, you need to provide contact information. Ensure that all your website visitors can reach you through the website, phone, social media, or messengers. Include your contact information in your company profile. If potential customers are interested in your company and product, they will strive to know more about your business. Now that you know how to develop a company profile, let’s jump into examples. They’ll help you decide where to start. Examples of Company Profiles You can find hundreds of amazing company profiles designed by famous brands on the internet. We’ve decided to gather the most recognizable brands and their profiles in this section for you to grab some inspiration. BathBody Works BathBody Works is a well-known retail store chain that sells soaps, fragrances, and candles. The brand’s profile appeals to its target audience by unveiling the company’s achievements and years of successful work. From the ‘About Us’ page, potential clients can instantly know about the company’s product offers and the number of stores open. It shows the authority and the popularity of BathBody Works’ items among consumers. Its company profile covers the brand’s values, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion, based on which the chain operates. PUMA PUMA designs and manufactures athletic footwear, apparel, and accessories. From the company profile, you can see that the company operates in the sports field. The brand encourages people to take risks and be brave. PUMA’s customers are people involved in sports who are ready to transform. The company strives for the best quality to ensure that all training goes well with its consumers. Waze Waze is a platform where users obtain real-time driving directions based on live traffic. The service is helpful for those who want to avoid traffic jams and reduce their stress level on the road. Waze encourages cooperation among drivers to inform about jams and navigate the best routes. The company values the time of its users and helps find the best ways out of overcrowded streets during busy hours. Congrats, now you know what a company profile is and why it’s essential. Hope that our examples inspired you to create an appealing company profile for your business.

A communications plan is a roadmap required to deliver information effectively to certain stakeholders. It covers the message, target audience, and marketing channels. In this article, we’ll unveil why a communications plan is essential and how to create it. Why is a communications plan important? Developing a communications plan for stakeholders is essential since it enables you to outline a clear purpose for a product launch or new initiative. With its help, you’ll develop a relevant message that will communicate all your ideas and thoughts. A communications plan can come in handy during difficult periods for your company. When your business experiences a crisis or damaged reputation, you need a roadmap to deliver the right message to your customers, employees, or investors. It can help you improve the situation and gain their trust. If you don’t experience any problems with your brand, you still need to be prepared for various scenarios. A communications plan serves as a step-by-step guide for your team. Now that you know about the importance, it’s time to find out how to write it. The next section will provide 8 easy steps to create a communications plan for your business. How to write a communications plan? Developing a detailed communications plan is critical for both product launches and crises. That’s why we’ve prepared a list of actions you need to do to write this document right. Let's find out how to do it. Identify your communications materials. First, you need to analyze your company environment and find out why you need a communications plan. This step is essential for determining problem areas. Say you want to launch a new product and don’t know how to communicate it to your shareholders and customers. Start with auditing your marketing approach to figure out the gaps. Gather all crucial information to identify all gaps within your marketing strategy to prevent repeating them. Once you finish, you’ll be aware of these areas and cover them in your communications plan. Consider receiving feedback from customers to unveil some more problems. Keep these facts in mind when choosing channels, writing a message, and determining the target audience for your new product launch. Determine SMART goals. Once you audit your materials, proceed to set your objectives. Remember that your goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely). Figure out what you want to attain with this communications plan. Make sure to write specific goals which you can achieve during a certain period. Define your target audience. Creating a relevant and timely plan requires you to define your audience. You should know your listeners to make a great pitch. You can write for clients, employees, investors, media outlets, etc. The message should be different based on the group of stakeholders you want to reach. For instance, consider creating a press release with your brand objectives if you write for media. When you write a communications plan for your workers, make sure it contains some internal information and some space for follow-up questions. Outline your plan. Once you finish with the previous steps, you can proceed to creating a plan. Make sure to include the following points in your plan: purpose, roles and responsibilities, and how to create a successful response plan. Consider inviting representatives from your target audience so that they give some input. Choose the right channels. When selecting the channels, make sure that you know whom you target and the message you want to communicate. Consider the preferred communication channels of your shareholders. For example, if you want to deliver your message to your customers, you can use social media or email campaigns. When you strive to reach your employees, consider using a special working platform, company email, or offline meetings. Make sure that your channels will help attain your objectives. Gather a team of professionals. Based on the purpose of your plan, collect a team of employees. Professionals in this field will help you effectively develop a strategy and promote your initiative to shareholders. Set due dates for each stage. Each step of your plan should be completed within a given timeframe. That’s why you need to decide which of them will take you longer to finish. Evaluate the results. After you finish the plan, you can see what aspects still need improvement. Present your communications plan to shareholders to see what went right and wrong. It will help you avoid the same mistakes in the future. Congrats, now you know what a communications plan is and why it’s essential. Hope that our guide will help you once you decide to make it for your business.

Competitive intelligence (CI) is a process of collecting, analyzing, and using information about competitors or clients to improve competitive advantage. It helps understand thecompetitive environment, challenges, and opportunities and use data properly to develop effective strategies. In this article, we’ll review the importance of competitive intelligence, its types, and sources, learn how to conduct competitive intelligence, and explore several best practices and examples. Why is competitive intelligence important? The market changes all the time, so you need to stay ahead. You can’t build a successful business just on guesses and assumptions. With competitive intelligence, you can understand your competitors’ motivations and behaviors. Knowing their attitude and objectives allows you to shape your product development, pricing, and brand positioning. Competitive intelligence is the basis of your company’s strategy. It enables firms to gather data about the industry, environment, rivals, and competitive products or services and analyze them. CI helps: identify and analyze industry trends to decide on future moves; obtain knowledge and insights into expectations, trends, and technologies; analyze strengths and weaknesses; allocate resources more efficiently; improve ROI; boost the process of product launching; predict the steps of competitors; make the right business decisions. Now that you know about the importance of competitive intelligence, let’s proceed to its types. Types of Competitive Intelligence The main objectives of competitive intelligence are to allow a company to understand its market, make confident strategic decisions, and increase ROI. For these purposes, businesses use different types of CI. Competitive intelligence activities can be divided into two main types: tactical (a short-term process that strives to contribute to the solution of such issues as capturing market share or increasing profits); strategic (helps with long-term issues, including key risks and opportunities a company can face). Now that you know the main types, it’s time to move forward and explore the sources of CI. 7Sources of Competitive Intelligence Social media platforms Sites of competitors Syndicated research reports Marketing tests Product reviews Pricing and packaging updates Changes in positioning and messaging We’ve prepared seven sources where you can find useful data about your competitors. So let’s review them. Social media platforms. Analyzing customers’ comments on different social media platforms enables you to compare your products with your competitors’ alternatives. Honest feedback can help you improve your products and services. Sites of competitors. Competitors’ sites enable you to analyze their products and services, provide you with insights into their business, and share information on their updates. Many tools can help you make a competitor analysis like SEMRush to monitor changes in competitors’ ranking or use Ahrefs to check any URL’s top organic keywords and determine how much traffic your rival obtains on them. Syndicated research reports. These reports are crucial since they provide data on growth forecasts, company profiles, market-related numbers, and trends. With the help of these reports, you can obtain an overview of your market, main competitors, and what makes them special. Marketing tests. Landing pages and A/B tests are particularly important as they allow you to have an insight into the plans of your competitors. By monitoring your rivals’ campaign tests, you can figure out what works best and what doesn’t need to be implemented. Product reviews. You can also analyze third-party product reviews. This information helps you determine what customers of your rivals like and dislike about their products or services. This way, you will obtain essential facts about competitors: their strengths and gaps. Knowing what consumers think about goods enables you to identify your opponents’ weaknesses and receive a competitive advantage. Pricing and packaging updates. Changes made to packaging and pricing also affect marketing campaigns. That’s why it’s critical to share them with internal teams, for instance, with sales. These updates show shifts in your rival’s strategy, for example, when they implement business expansion. Changes in positioning and messaging. It’s worth mentioning that if your competitor changes messaging or positioning, you need to monitor those changes. This way, you can gauge the direction of your rival. For this purpose, team members visit the competitors’ sites and focus on home pages, blog posts, landing, and product pages. You are aware of the primary sources of information now, so let’s consider several steps to conduct CI. How to Conduct Competitive Intelligence Research Identify direct and indirect competitors Choose the main focus areas Gather the necessary information Conduct a competitive analysis Share your findings Use the information to let your company benefit Although competitive intelligence is essential for every business, not everyone is well versed in this process. We’ve prepared several steps to help you get started. Identify direct and indirect competitors. First of all, you need to know your competitors. If you have a lot of them, identify at least your top five direct rivals. Afterward, determine your indirect (firms in the same industry that don’t compete with you for customers), aspirational (companies in the same industry that can provide inspiration for your business), and perceived competitors (businesses that can come up during the sales discovery process but don’t compete with you). Understanding your competitors means knowing your competitive environment. Choose the main focus areas. Once rivals are identified, it’s time to determine the areas you want to focus on for data collection. You need to gather all the information you can obtain online and from your front-line teams. It’s worth narrowing the search circle to process information more efficiently. Gather the necessary information. During this step, you have to explore your competitors’ sites, products, social media platforms, and content. Find detailed information about each of them. Conduct a competitive analysis. At this stage, your manager breaks down the information and pulls out the main trends and the most important data. Afterward, the information is organized in the right manner to convey it to all the teams. You need to create your competitors’ profiles and continue to track their updates: changes in products or services and customer reviews. Share your findings. To improve the strategies, share your findings with stakeholders. You can do it by conducting a meeting, sending emails, or using an internal chat. Store data on a reliable platform so that your team can access it easily. Use the information to let your company benefit. Make your data actionable for each of your company’s teams. Your marketing team can use it to start new marketing initiatives, while the sales team can use this data to improve scripts and sales processes. Let’s jump into the best practices. Competitive Intelligence Best Practices Companies have to obtain customer trust and provide excellent customer experience, and high-quality products to be successful. However, this process takes time and effort and requires collecting data about competitors and customers to know what to expect. CI is the key since it allows businesses to gather and analyze the necessary information. In this section, we’ve prepared three competitive intelligence best practices. Create competitive habits. CI is a constant process, that’s why it isn’t enough to collect data once. When you share competitive intel with your team, remember to do it wisely. There’s no need in sharing every new piece of information with little to no context with your sales team. Team members will spend a lot of time processing it, so it’s better to analyze how valuable these data points are first. Provide relevant insights. The timing of the insights can sometimes be critical. For example, your company’s team can face a lack of necessary data. That’s why you should have a channel for internal communication to share your insights and different updates on competitors and customers on time. Analyze your wins and losses. Companies often don’t know why they’ve won or lost a deal. They rely on accurate feedback from their sales reps, while it would be much more effective to interview their customers and see the notes in CRM. Let’s grab some inspiration from the examples below. Examples of Competitive Intelligence Each business needs to know its external environment to operate successfully. That’s why companies in different industries consider competitive intelligence in their strategies. Further, we’ll review examples where entrepreneurs use their knowledge of CI. Startups. Since large companies have big budgets, resources, and necessary technology, startupsneed to adapt to competitive intelligence insights. This way, they can understand their customers and offer better solutions. Let’s take Airbnb, for example. This company managed to satisfy the needs of clients by using technology and consumer insights. Airline tickets. A great example of using competitive intelligence is the way airlines do it. They change the prices of their tickets every day based on the information they obtain. For instance, if competitors increase the prices on a certain route, this company will do the same to receive good revenue. Besides, airline companies track the actions of potential customers to make price adjustments. For example, they spot users who search for the same flight details several times and increase prices. To improve their competitive advantages, brands need competitive intelligence since it increases their chances for success. They search for data on websites, reports, and customer feedback to understand the gaps and undertake several improvements.

A competitive environment is a system where different businesses compete with each other by using various marketing channels, promotional strategies, pricing methods, etc. This system has regulations within it that companies should follow. How does a competitive environment affect businesses? Your competitors can directly affect your business and the decisions you make. Let's imagine two online clothing stores that pose a threat to each other in terms of business development and profit. One of them decides to conduct a flash sale before Christmas and provide their customers with 40% off sitewide. The other store will also need to come up with a great offer to attract leads and customers, raise sales, sell unpopular products and, as a result, gain revenue. Similarly, if one coffee company brings out a new product to the market, their competitor will need to consider growth hacking. Thus, competition can be beneficial as it motivates companies to get better and improve their products. A competitive environment also has a positive effect on customers. Businesses often offer high-quality goods at an affordable price to win the attention of consumers. Besides, companies have to bring out their products through innovations. However, competition can sometimes complicate the existence of a business. Let's take two companies within one location, for example. If one of them sets low prices and discounts, it will be difficult for the second company to compete. Now that you know how a competitive environment influences your business and customers, it's time to proceed to the types of competition that define the relations between and among sellers and customers. Types of Competitive Environment It's essential to understand what types of competitive environments there are to assess the economic environment in business. You should know how companies and markets function so that you can analyze industry and market news, policy changes, and legislation in the future. Let's distinguish the main types of competitive environments and review each of them in detail. Pure competition. In a perfectly competitive environment, many small companies produce similar products, and many consumers buy them. These manufacturers are small, and thus they can't influence the price, defined by supply and product demand. For example, when a farmer brings dairy products to the local market, this person can't change the market price and agrees with the going one. Monopolistic competition. In this environment, many manufacturers produce different products, although they might serve the same purpose. Customers can distinguish the products because of the differences in quality, features, etc. Businesses actively use advertising to promote their products and convince consumers that they are not like other products and have better quality. Companies in monopolistic competition are price makers, which means that they can influence the product price. However, to justify the price increase of their products, they should offer something exclusive to be unlike other businesses, for example, improve the quality of their goods. Oligopoly. In this market model, there's a small number of businesses, usually two or more. It's considered stable as companies don't compete but collude to obtain high market returns. Firms set and keep prices high together or under the leadership of one particular company. In an oligopoly, profit margins are higher than in a more competitive environment. However, the main problem of this market structure is that businesses often face a prisoner's dilemma, an incentive to cheat and act in their interests at the expense of other companies. Monopoly. There's one company that produces a unique product. This manufacturer doesn't face any competition, and the product doesn't have any substitutes. Also, a monopolist decides on the product's price and sets barriers for new companies to enter the market. Perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly are the four main market structures you should be aware of when entering the market. Now it's time to move to the competitive environment analysis. Competitive Environment Analysis To develop a great marketing strategy, you need to understand your competitors and their tactics. At this point, you need a competitive analysis framework to reach your business opponents. Let's discuss several most popular frameworks. SWOT Analysis. You can assess the external and internal factors that influence your company. This framework helps you identify competitive advantages, compare your opponents' strong and weak sides on different marketing channels, and define your further marketing steps. Strategic Group Analysis.This framework characterizes the strategies of all strong competitors in various strategic dimensions. It allows you to identify your competitors' positions in the competitive environment and the factors that bring your business a profit. It also enables you to identify the key aspects of success and assess your position among competitors. Porter's Five Forces. The basis of this framework lies in exploring the competitive market forces in the industry and helping define the industry's strengths and weaknesses. It involves five elements: new entrants, buyers, suppliers, substitutes, and competitive rivalry. These five influence the level of competition in your industry. Growth-Share Matrix. By using this framework, you can decide which products are worth investing in according to their competitiveness and attractiveness within the market. It's particularly useful for large companies since it helps them define their product portfolios and decide which products are worth continuing to invest in and which are no longer worth it. Perceptual Mapping. This framework allows you to see the position of your product against the alternatives of your competitors. It enables you to understand how your customers perceive your product compared to competitors' and whether your positioning strategy matches your target audience. It can also help you find the gaps you need to resolve. To fully understand different market structures, let's walk you through some examples. Examples of Competitive Environment Every business plan of even a small firm contains a section about competitive environment analysis. As you already know from the information above, it includes all the external factors that influence your business and the product or service you offer. Let's take electronics, for example. Samsung is a company founded in South Korea that specializes in electronic and smart appliance technology. Their competitors include Apple, Sony, Huawei, Intel, and many more, which is why Samsung's team tries to create a product that is better than competitors' alternatives using innovations that can attract prospects. Changes in technology or the way customers buy products can influence the types of competitive environments. For example, Amazon changed products' distribution and customer expectations. Introduced innovations influenced the number of consumer goods companies and opened markets for small firms that previously had no opportunity to compete with more prominent companies. Your business can find itself in different types of competitive environments. That's why it's critical to understand the difference between them and be ready to assess industry and market news, policy changes, and legislation. Resources: The article "What Is the Meaning of Competitive Environment?" on Small Business defines the term and explains the five elements of a competitive environment. The article "5 Competitive Analysis Frameworks Explained with Visuals" on the Alexa blog provides readers with five competitive analysis frameworks.

Comparative advertising is an advertising strategy that enables marketers to compare their brand with their competitors’ brands and highlight their benefits. Companies using this strategy present their product as the best choice. Is comparative advertising legal? Yes, it’s definitely legal. Comparative advertising makes companies develop faster and generate innovative ideas in a highly competitive environment. In addition, this type of advertising attracts user attention, unveils the best features of several competing alternatives, and allows consumers to make an informed decision. However, do not forget that the Lanham Act regulates false advertising in the USA. In simple terms, when producing comparative ads, remember that they should refer to some scientific research, study, or any verifiable results. You can’t just say that your medicine is the best choice to deal with food poisoning. Such claims need thorough investigations, experiments, and scientific evidence. To be on the safe side, companies should not: mislead their consumers by providing ambiguous information; contradict facts and research results; sugarcoat any data. Generally, the law regulates what you say about your brand, claims you make about your competitors, and the way you present them. If you aim to ensure legal compliance, remember that you should not violate any aspect of the false advertising law. Do not forget that a plaintiff must prove to the court that a claim from the advertising is false. We strongly recommend that you compare your brand to similar brands. However, don’t compare your company’s products to startups or any much smaller organizations because you can look like a bully, and there are chances that consumers know nothing about your competitor. This way, you can harm your reputation, and as a result, your potential clients will choose the offended company because of sympathy and your free advertising. As you see, comparative advertising is a chance of development and a significant risk at the same time. You should know the advantages and disadvantages of this type of advertising to be fully aware of its possibilities. Pros and Cons of Comparative Advertising If you want to have a clear picture, check out our considerations on the topic below. Advantages of comparative advertising include the following ones. Brand awareness increase. If you compare your products to the products of a bigger brand, you can boost your brand awareness significantly. Providing reasonable facts that make your company a better decision than a well-known brand is an effective way to attract the attention of a big audience, which will work in your brand’s favor. More informed customer decisions.Consumers often don’t carry out their research because they’ve got used to buying this particular item for years. They are not familiar with the situation in your niche, and thus, competitive advertising is a game-changer here. You can even demonstrate the flaws of your competitors but keep in mind that you should cover the way you outperform competitors in this particular aspect as well. Still, there are some tangible disadvantages that you need to consider. Your brand can be subject to the law. This is the worst outcome, but still, every marketer can face it. Check and prove every claim you make in your ad to avoid legal wrangling. Don’t mislead your consumers and follow the rules we’ve outlined in the previous section. You can harm your reputation. Comparing your brand to a smaller company and excessive bullying can scare away your customers. People can perceive this strategy as a cheap trick, so don’t go too far with your claims. Remember that your ad should be light-hearted. You can lose customers. This may be the consequence of your damaged reputation. You risk not only wasting advertising money by scaring away potential clients but losing your existing ones who might consider your brand unworthy. Do not forget that your key aim here is not to diminish your competitor’s achievements but to highlight yours. Despite all the risks and disadvantages, comparative advertising is still a great marketing strategy. Big brands often choose it for their campaigns, just like the one in the example below. Example of Comparative Advertising Big brands sometimes poke fun at other brands to make a good impression, but the jokes are kind and light-hearted. Check out an example of comparative advertising produced by BMW. The brand knows that each child has their favorite superhero like Spiderman or Batman, so the brand turned BMW into a superhero. They hint that even a Mercedes wants to become a BMW. This funny ad encouraged tens of thousands of likes and retweets. Now that you know about the pros and cons of comparative advertising, you can get inspired by the examples and create your outstanding campaign.

Сommon, or indirect, costs are costs that can’t be attributed to a product or process. These expenditures relate to a group of individual costs. In this post, we’ll figure out what common costs are, how they correlate with other types of expenses, and how you can calculate them. Let’s start by answering how you can avoid these costs. Are Common Costs Avoidable? On average, a business has both avoidable and unavoidable costs. Avoidable costs are all the expenses you can eliminate. For instance, if you stop manufacturing one of your products, you will get rid of expenses on raw materials, labor, and so on. However, even if you wipe out specific product lines, you’ll have to pay for rent, electricity, and water. These expenses are common costs. You bear them no matter what, which makes this type of spendings unavoidable. One more point to consider is the difference between joint and common costs. Read on to learn how they correlate to one another. Common Costs vs. Joint Costs Though the terms “joint costs” and “common costs” are often used interchangeably, they have different meanings. Joint costs occur when one process or element results in outputting several goods. For instance, you can derive kerosene, fuel oil, gas­olene from crude oil. Common costs arise when a firm outputs several products. However, these expenses can’t be attributed to any of these products directly. For example, a manager's salary is a common cost. You can distribute it between several manufacturing processes, but it's not related to any of them. The nature of common cost makes counting them difficult. To help you get your head around it, we’ve prepared three cost allocation formulas. Common Cost Formula Counting the sum of all of your common costs is not rocket science – just sum up expense items. Things get trickier when you find out how to cut these costs as you'll need to distribute them. There are three ways to allocate common costs: stand-alone, incremental, and the Shapley value method. Let’s discover the formulas for them and crunch some numbers. Stand-alone method In this case, you distribute costs according to the percentage each department would have paid separately. Imagine that department A pays $900 for rent and a department B pays $1,500. The total sum for the departments is $2,400. Then the company got a discount from a property owner and now pays only pays $2,000. To allocate this sum between two departments, count the percent each of them paid initially. A stand-alone amount for the department A is $900/$2,400*100 = 37.5%. A stand-alone amount for the department B is $1,500/$2,400*100 = 62.5%. To count the sum after allocation, multiply the percentage of the new sum. Department A’s payment after reallocation is 37.5%*$2,000 = $750. Department A’s payment after reallocation is 62.5%*$2,000 = $1,250. Incremental method You can use this method if one of the costs is inevitable and the other is additional. For instance, the company's goal was to renta workspace for department B. The adjoining room was vacant, and the firm decided to rent it and place department A there. In this case, you need to subtract the additional cost from the total amount: $2,000 – $1,500 = $500. So, now department B pays $1,500 and department A – $500. If theworkspace for a department A was the initial goal, the table turns: $2,000 – $900 = $1,100. In this situation, department A pays $900 and department B – $1,100. Shapley value cost allocation Method According to this method, you need to count two or more costs and calculate the average. The payment for a department A would be ($500+$900)/2 = $700. The department B would pay ($1,500+$1,100)/2 = $1,300. Now you know how to calculate and allocate common costs. Let’s move on to practice and find out what kinds of costs you may encounter. Common Costs in Business The problem with creating a list of common costs is that they differ for various businesses. However, you can consider the following expenditures to be the common costs in most cases: rent; phone and utilities; licenses and tax deposits; professional services; insurance; travel expenses; office and other administrative supplies; marketing budgets. Marketing budgets are unavoidable costs. Still, you can cut these expenses by applying marketing automation services. Sign up with LIKE.TG to automate your email, web push, SMS, and chatbot marketing.

Commercialization is the process of introducing a new product to the market. It includes stages such as production, distribution, marketing, sales, and customer support. In this video, you’ll find out how companies commercialize their products. In this article, we’ll review the importance of commercialization and its advantages, compare product commercialization and product launch, explore several steps to commercialize your new product, and see examples. Why is commercialization important? Commercialization is the process that allows businesses to raise and solve problems of new products and bring them to the market. It helps companies decide when to launch a certain product by reviewing various factors influencing or delaying a launch. There might be multiple factors affecting a product, like unfavorable market conditions or inquiries requiring some changes. Firms make some critical choices and strategic decisions. One of the essential parts of the process is deciding where to launch. Companies choose whether to bring their product to a local, national, or international market. They also take into account the resources available,such as operational capacities and capital. Business leaders also conduct marketing research to define their primary consumer group. The importance of commercialization is evident now, so it’s time to review the advantages it has. Advantages of Commercialization Companies create new products and services to meet unanswered customer demands. They make products that can solve many consumers’ problems and decide on their feasibility, costs, and ways to roll out commercialization strategy. Commercialization enables business owners to develop products with great benefits that people will admire. Let’s get to know some more advantages of commercialization. They are as follows: better choices of products and services that customers can obtain; increasedROI; efficient production process; thought-out decisions; reduced public expenses. Now that you know the pros, let’s proceed to the next section, where we’ll make the difference between product commercialization and product launch clear. Product Commercialization vs. Product Launch People often use words like “commercialization” and “product launch” to define the same thing. However, these two concepts represent different processes. The two main factors that make these terms different are timing and goals. Product launch is the process that occurs when a product is created and is ready for release. Businesses implement promotional strategies and use diverse channels to reach maximum exposure. When a company launches a product, it has already gone through the idea conceptualization stage. At this stage, companies are ready to bring their product to the audience, and they usually need a marketing partner to present it. The main aim here is to boost interest in your product and increase customer awareness. Product commercialization is the process that starts before the product is ready. It involves turning certain ideas and concepts into products that will be accepted by the audience and ultimately bring high profitability. The process involves production, distribution, marketing, and sales. Commercialization enables customers to obtain a wider choice of products and allows companies to generate more revenue, increase efficiency, and reduce costs. It’s a critical process since it entails making strategic and tactical decisions. They affect the success of a product and a company in general. To succeed, business leaders create a commercialization plan. Let’s look at the six main steps required to commercialize the new product of your company. 6Steps to Commercialize Your New Product Define your offer Align the product with your businesscore Identify your target audience Promote your product Use a sales plan Forecast the results your productcommercializationcan bring The commercialization process can be boiled down to six steps. They allow companies to determine production volumes and methods, choose distribution channels, and implement specific marketing techniques. Let’s discuss each of the steps in detail. Define your offer. Create an overview statement that contains clear and detailed information about your product, describe the benefits customers can obtain after buying it, and mention the problems it can solve. Remember to determine your pricing strategy and decide on the price of your product for customers and other stores or companies. Align the product with your business core.You should understand how close your new product is to the business core (strength and competencies) to define several strategic directions necessary for your commercialization plan. If your product is similar to those your company has produced before, it means that you won’t need new strategies for product promotion. However, if the product is more diverse than your core, then you’ll have to do more work to set up the new infrastructure. Identify your target audience. Start with your current customers, and find out whether your new product will satisfy their needs. If you want to define your new audience, you can create a buyer persona to make everything clearer. Remember to include the initial customer profile in your strategic plan. Promote your product.You should be active with your social media and email marketingto reach more customers. LIKE.TG enables your company to send personalized emails that will reach your target audience. With our drag and drop editor, you can easily create professional email templatesthat encourage people to purchase your new products. Define social media platforms your customers prefer the most. Consider using Instagram Stories, paid ads, power of opinion leaders, pay-per-clickson Facebook, pre-roll ads on YouTube, and many others. Use a sales plan.You should tailor a sales plan for your new product. It helps choose strategies that will enable you to reach your ideal buyer. The plan covers the aspects of business growth: target audience, revenue goals, strategies and tactics, metrics, business goals, market conditions, team capabilities, and resources. Forecast the results your product commercializationcan bring. One of the critical parts of commercialization is predicting the sales volume your company will reach in the nearest three years. The forecast includes your gross margin, sales quantities, operating income, capital expenditure, and return on net assets. Now that you know the six steps to commercialize your product, let’s jump into some examples. Examples of Product Commercialization Many companies launch a lot of various products but only commercialize a few of them. This is because the process includes strategic and tactical decisions that take time and influence market success. Let’s walk you through the examples so that you can grab some inspiration. Let’s imagine that there’s a cinnamon rolls company, for example. It has grown from a small startup and demonstrates promising results. The company decides to commercialize its cinnamon rolls by selling them as packaged products to local grocery stores. As a result, consumers can buy their products in more locations and drastically increase this company’s profits. The same applies to the apparel industry. A store that sells clothes and accessories and has many regular customers can also try to reach more clients online. The store can partner with online retail services. It can become popular in different cities and deliver its goods to more people. Hence, product commercialization entails production, distribution, marketing, sales, and other functions necessary to achieve success. It occurs when a small company has grown and is ready to reach new levels and a larger audience.

Competitive advantage is a brand’s ability to provide customers with products or services that are better in quality or cheaper than competitors’ alternatives and can outperform them. It helps companies generate more sales and earn higher profit margins. In this article, we’ll cover the importance, types, and examples of competitive advantage and also review the best ways to gain it. Why is competitive advantage important? Competitive advantage is essential because it makes a product or service look more attractive to consumers. To gain customers’ attention and make people choose their products or services, brands create unique and high-quality products, set lower prices, provide excellent customer service, unusual features, or flexible return and exchange terms. Doing this helps companies get high sales volume, profit margins, and a high level of customer loyalty. A business with a superior offer is in great demand among buyers. It generates more sales and brings good revenue to its owner. To stand out among competitors and surpass them in some areas, different companies leverage advanced technology, hire a team of professionals, ensure excellent customer support, or create a fantastic service. These steps help them increase market share and get a bigger ROI. Entrepreneurs also aim to improve their productivity and efficiency, trying to build successful brands. Since a lasting competitive advantage brings a lot of benefits to businesses, companies’ owners try to attain it in several ways. They implement something competitors don’t have, launch new innovative products others can’t duplicate, implement innovation, and more. Having a clear competitive advantage provides a company with certainty and enables the right allocation of resources. Now that you know why competitive advantage is essential, let’s unveil its two main types. Types of Competitive Advantage Companies with a competitive advantage have a unique position that brings benefits to their stakeholders. There are two main types of competitive advantage you can use to make your business grow: comparative and differential. Comparative advantage refers to the ability of a certain business to manufacture products more efficiently than its rivals. Simply put, it occurs when a company can produce products that are similar to its competitors’ alternatives but sell them at a lower price. The strategy helps bring in more customers and increase revenues. Let’s imagine that two companies offer perfect substitutes,but one of them sells the same product for a lower price. For sure, a customer will choose a cheaper one, especially if there’s no visible difference between the two. For example, a person wants to buy sneakers of a certain brand in a retail store. This customer can choose between two open stores. One store sells these running shoes for $50, and the other one sets the price of $45. The client will buy from the second brand to save money. Differential advantage refers to the situation in which a company creates products or services with superior quality, additional functions, benefits, or an interesting appearance. Brands often use new technology, a strong brand identity, and their best personnel to manufacture high-quality products. These crucial factors support a company’s increase in market share and ROI. Apple is the best example of a brand with a differential advantage. The company manufactures innovative products like iPhones, MacBooks, AirPods, etc. The brand has a high level of customer satisfaction with product quality and appearance so that clients are even ready to pay a much higher price for its smartphone or laptop. Let’s take a look at some strategies to obtain a competitive advantage. 4Ways to Gain Competitive Advantage If you want to develop a competitive advantage, it’s worth thinking about a suitable strategy to reach this goal. Consider cost leadership.Companiesoften implement cost leadership strategies to take positions of industry leaders. You can use the approach if your company can provide consumers with product qualitysimilar to your rivals’ alternatives but for a lower price. To apply the strategy, you should find how to manufacture the same goods at a lower cost or use your resources more efficiently. Remember that there shouldn’t be any additional costs since you still need to obtain a good profit margin. Pay attention to the factors that influence your efficiency, such as technology, equipment, personnel, etc. Implement differentiation. This strategy focuses on making a company different from others. Your brand shouldn’t necessarily stand out and be memorable only because of low-price products. There might be other attributes that encourage people to buy from you: unforgettable experiences, innovations, a wide variety of products, etc. Think about it to make your brand look more attractive. Once you have something that distinguishes your company from other businesses, search for a specificaudience segmentfor which this attribute matters and communicate your message through the most suitable channels. Utilize focus strategy. To stay ahead and outperform your competitors, you should always maintain a competitive advantage. If you want to leverage the strategy, you should choose a market segment and focus on it. Do everything possible to develop a product or service that cansatisfy your customers, solve their problems, and obtain great results. As an option, you can become a manufacturer of products with the lowest cost in this narrow segment or provide customers with unique products. Seek strategic alliances. This strategy is closely connected with business partnerships. If you want to gain a competitive advantage, consider teaming up with other companies in the same or related industry. Strategic alliances are similar to joint ventures and are used to pool resources and gain profit at the expense of other businesses. Now that you are acquainted with four main strategies to gain a competitive advantage for your company, it’s time to walk you through some real-life examples. Examples of Competitive Advantage Both big corporations and startupscan have a competitive advantage. Your company should provide customers with something essential or necessary for them: enjoyable experience, innovation, variety, or low price. We’llreview how established brands do it to help you get inspired. Zara Zara’s main competitive advantage is an efficient and organized supply chain and logistics. The clothing company controls all manufacturing processes and meets customer demand very fast. The brand’s team manages all the processes professionally and prevents possible problems. Zara produces and delivers clothes worldwide within a couple of weeks. McDonald’s The main advantage of this famous fast-food company with a rich history is its products at affordable prices. You can conclude that the brand implements a cost leadership strategy. This indicates that McDonald’s can leverage economies of scale, produce fast food, and spendless money at the same time. This allows the brand to sell its products at a lower price than its main competitors. Starbucks One of the most important things each brand should bring is a positive experience–it should be unforgettable, exciting, and unique. This chain of coffeehouses has been doing it for years. Starbucks developed this almost legendary idea to put their customers’ names on coffee cups. Now no one can pass by this coffee house without stopping for a cup of hot cappuccino or iced caffelatte. Now you know that competitive advantage helps attract more customers, establish brand loyalty, and make you differ from your competitors. Companies do a lot to gain it and utilize different methods to stand out among rivals because they know that it’s worth it in the long run.

A cold lead is a type of marketing lead that expresses no interest in a brand or service. These leads might have never heard of a company. Sales representatives usually reach them via cold emails or cold calling. In this article, you'll get to know the difference between cold, warm, and hot leads. You'll also learn how to generate and convert them in warm leads. So, stay tuned! The Difference Between Cold, Warm, and Hot Leads Although cold leads demonstrate the lowest engagement level, they are as important for companies as warm and hot leads, because they provide new opportunities. Let's make the difference between these types of leads clear. Cold leads might have never heard about your brand. They don't know that you provide a specific solution to their problem. Alternatively, they might have subscribed to your email newsletter to get a checklist and never interacted with your emails then. Or, your sales representatives cold them some time ago but they expressed no interest in your brand. So, their email address or phone number exists in your database. These leads are at the top of their buyer journey. They are valuable for your business since they have the features of your ideal customer. With a thought-out lead nurturing strategy, you can convert them into customers. A warm lead is in the middle of your sales funnel. This type of lead have expresses their interest in your product. They might have subscribed to your email newsletter, followed you on social media, visited your website, or left their contact information. Warm leads are aware of your solution but they're not ready to purchase yet. These leads also require some nurturing efforts from your side but they're much easier to convert into clients. Hot leads are the most promising prospects. They are at the bottom of your sales funnel. These leads need a final push to buy from you. They are aware of your solution and even know your competitive advantages. Hot leads are highly qualified and don't require any nurturing activities to become customers. Now that you know the peculiarities of each type of lead, we'll consider the ways to generate cold leads. 3 Ways of Generating Cold Leads There are three ways how your sales reps can generate cold leads. The choice depends on the specifics of your product, your budget, and your level of intrusiveness. Let's consider each one. Cold calling. Sales reps contact people they have never interacted with before. This is a great way to tell about the benefits of your products and consider their competitive advantages. Sales reps should be ready with an effective sales pitch. What's more important, they need to be interested in the needs and desires of leads to provide the best solution. A good sales rep should be able to face objections. To make this strategy work, do some research before calling, develop a script, and identify the best timing. You need to know your prospect well to provide value. Cold emailing. It's an old but gold way of generating leads and increasing brand recognition. Companies send email campaigns to people they have never interacted with before. The most important thing here is that you should not buy email lists. This is SPAM. Leads should share their email address with you. To succeed in cold emailing, choose a reliable email service. LIKE.TG is one of those platforms. You can send up to 15,000 emails to 500 subscribers each month for free. Warm up your IP address, verify your emails, create an informative subject line and design a nice email to make this strategy work. Social media. Whether you work with B2B or B2C clients, they all spend time on social media. You can't underestimate the power of this channel. Find out the platforms preferred by your target audience and generate leads there. It can be LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. These platforms provide lots of chances to generate leads. You can share the testimonials of your existing clients to let your leads look through them before making a choice. You can also create a chatbot with LIKE.TG for free to communicate with your potential clients 24/7 without the need to hire a new employee. A chatbot can provide information about your product, assist while making a choice, provide help, answer FAQs, handle orders, etc. Finally, social media is a great place to build your brand community. Now that you know how to connect with your potential clients, we'll share some tips on how to convert them into warm leads. How to warm up cold leads? There are lots of marketing strategies that will help you convert a lead into a customer. You should invest time and money into producing high-quality personalized content. Let’s take a closer look. Provide personalized communication. People appreciate brands that care about their needs, wants, and desires. In a highly competitive market, it’s not the price that makes people choose a brand but the service. Spend some time on research and collecting data about your prospects to provide them with personalized offers in the future. You can do that via email campaigns based on personalization and segmentation. Develop targeted content. Leads at different sales funnel stages are interested in different content formats based on their engagement level and knowledge of your product. Create checklists, step-by-step guides, podcasts, webinars, and cases to attract potential clients, demonstrate the benefits of your product, show how things work, and share reviews of your satisfied customers. All these content types will help you achieve specific goals. Create a lead nurturing strategy. With its help, you can move leads down the sales funnel. It helps educate them, provide help and the necessary information right when they need it. A well-thought nurturing strategy implies sharing valuable content, sending emails, and regular follow-ups based on users’ actions. For example, if they added an item to the shopping cart without purchasing, you can once set an automated email sending. This email will remind them of the product in a cart and provide a discount to buy right now. This email can be sent to all subscribers with items in their shopping cart. LIKE.TG provides Automation 360 that helps automate communication with clients and increase conversions. Run webinars. A webinar is an online event that helps companies bring in new leads, and increase engagement, brand recognition, and website traffic. During a webinar, you can demonstrate the benefits of your product, show how it works, and share some lifehacks. To get the email addresses of the attendees, you can either let them access it with their address or promise to share the recording in exchange for an email. So, this is a win-win for both parties. Offer a free plan or trial. For SaaS companies, it may be difficult to generate new leads since they are not ready to invest immediately. Users need much time to research, ask for recommendations, and compare different services before purchasing. So, help them to make this decision with a free trial or plan. They will help them evaluate the benefits of your company and understand what they’re paying for. If they like your product, they will buy a subscription to continue using it. Do your best to help your new lead realize the power of your product. Congrats, now you know how to approach cold leads to convert them into paying customers. Register with LIKE.TG and make use of email service, SMS, web push notifications, landing page builder, CRM, and chatbots to build long-lasting relationships with your clients!

A cold email is an email sent to a recipient that a company hasn't interacted with before. It helps build long-lasting relationships with clients and partners, especially in B2B. In this article, you'll get to know the benefits of cold emails, how they differ from warm emails and SPAM, and learn how to write and send them for free. Stay tuned! Why send cold emails? Cold emails are great for starting partnerships and scaling a business. With a thought-out strategy and personalized approach, you'll reap the following benefits. Networking opportunities. Cold emailing is a powerful tool for establishing partnerships after events, conferences, summits, etc. You can collect email addresses of companies in cooperation with which you're interested and contact them immediately after the event. Lead generation. Email marketing is one of the most popular and effective ways to generate new leads. Prospects can leave their emails while visiting your online or offline store, or you can collect the addresses of interested users during your event. Since people leave their contacts, they're potentially interested in buying from you, so don't miss this chance to acquire new leads. Recruiting opportunities. While looking through profiles on LinkedIn or communicating with specialists during the events, you may find potential candidates that will perfectly suit your company. Cold emailing allows you to headhunt to find top talents. Brand recognition. Cold emails help brands establish recognition without much effort. After users share their email address with your company, they are not likely to remember it and recognize its logo while scrolling the feed. So, you can send them targeted and personalized email campaigns. Sometime later, they will associate a specific problem with your brand as a potential solution, which will be to your advantage when they have to choose a product or service. Boosting traffic. If you launch an event, webinar, or workshop, sending an email to users who have shared their addresses previously is a great idea. You'll increase the number of attendees, which you can later convert into clients. Increasing sales. Emailing is a proven way to increase sales. You can inform your subscribers about updates, product launches, and hot deals via an email campaign. This way, you'll increase engagement and multiply conversions. Sometimes, marketers hesitate to send cold emails, confusing them with SPAM. Although, a thought-out cold email strategy has nothing to do with SPAM. So, let's make the difference clear. Cold Email vs SPAM Cold email is contacting a user with whom you haven't interacted before. They might have left their email address while visiting your store, or you might have received them during a conference. So, while sending a cold email, you state where you've got their email address and communicate the goal of a potential partnership with your company. SPAM is an unsolicited email. It means a user hasn't shared their email address with a company. It might have parsed a list of email addresses on the internet. More importantly, a SPAM email's goal is to trick something from a recipient. So, the sender's name is usually fake, and the email is not sent from a business email address as it should be. In addition, such an email provides no opt-out button. So, you see that the goal of a SPAM email is to deceive a receiver with fake information. In contrast, a cold email aims to establish business partnerships. To create a winning cold email, check out the next section. How to write an effective cold email? Having users' email addresses is not enough to start cold emailing. Follow these three steps to prevent your emails from landing in the spam folder and harming your sender's reputation. Step 1. Warm up your IP address If you have a new IP address from which you haven't sent emails before, you need to do a warm-up. Otherwise, your campaigns will land in the spam folder, hurting your sender's reputation. IP warm-up is a chance to tell email service providers that you're not a spammer. A warm-up implies gradually increasing the email-sending volume, which usually takes 4-12 weeks. Firstly send emails to your engaged subscribers who are most likely to interact with the email. Then, increase the number of emails sent day after day. This way, you'll build a good sender reputation. Read this article to learn how to do IP warming correctly, and check out five valuable tips. Step 2. Check your mailing list A high-quality mailing list is the basis of effective cold emailing. Use LIKE.TG Email Verifier to ensure wise investments and keep your mailing list clean. With this tool, you can verify email addresses on your list to find invalid ones, preventing you from sending them to non-existent addresses. As a result, you'll have a high sender reputation and a list of valid email addresses. Watch the short video below to verify your email list for free. You can collect users' email addresses by creating a smart widget using our templates or find leads on social media. Check out LinkedIn and Facebook to find users who have interacted with your company. They might have commented, sent you a message, or asked questions. Request their email address for further communication. Using such tools as Snov.io, you can get an entire lead profile having their email address. This will help you send highly targeted and personalized emails. Step 3. Stick to the correct cold email structure Follow the tips below for your email to look professional and build trust among its recipients. Each email element should be thought out. Send from a business email address. This step is vital as it increases the loyalty and deliverability of your campaign. Business email address includes your domain name, so recipients can easily recognize you. For example, "[email protected]" or "[email protected]." For more details, follow our guide on how to set up a business email address. Write an informative subject line. Your subject line, along with your sender name, is the first thing a recipient sees in their inbox. It makes them decide whether to open your email. So, take it seriously. First, make it short and sweet. Mind that users' smartphones can cut off subject lines. Make sure to make it as informative as possible. It should be relevant to your email body and reflect the central message of your email. Avoid writing clickbait subjects since they tend to deceive subscribers. You risk harming your sender's reputation. Keep away from using excessive capitalization and spammy language. This will lead your email to the spam folder. If you have a subscriber's name or any other personal information, use it to personalize your subject line. This will blow open email open rates. Follow the tips to create a subject line that converts. Make use of an email preheader. You can see it after the subject line. Very often, email senders underestimate the power of an email preheader. Use it to your advantage. Keep it short, include emojis, and encourage subscribers to open an email. Make sure your preheader supports the email subject line idea and continues it. Here you can also incorporate personalization for better performance. Read this article to create an effective preheader. Craft a nice email body. It is the central part of your cold email. To create an effective email, you should know your subscribers. Research a bit to find out who you're going to talk to. Learn their demographics to speak their language. Avoid gendered language, familiarity, and exclamations. Personalize your greeting to set a friendly tone of communication. Get straight to the point, and don't beat around the bush. Communicate why you are writing and explain where you got subscribers' email addresses. Thus, you will immediately answer the questions that the recipient may have. Avoid using slang, colloquial language, and professional terms not to scare off a potential client. Personalize your email body as well if you have some subscriber data. Include a clear call to action. It should tell the recipient what they should do next. Make sure it's short, visible, and easy to click or tap. The CTA button should be only one. Create a neat design. It should be consistent with the design of your brand. This will help you increase brand recognition. Create a professional email signature. It provides subscribers with information about the email sender. Include your name and company name, email address, position held, business phone number, company logo, link to your website, and social media icons with links to your company's profiles. Provide an unsubscribe button. This is a must. Otherwise, your email will land in the spam folder. Let users unsubscribe in one click. Make this option visible and easy to click and tap. Now that you know how to design a perfect cold email, learn how to send it for free with LIKE.TG without having to code. How to send a cold email for free? LIKE.TG provides a bulk email service. You can send up to 15,000 emails each month for free to 500 subscribers. Design a professional email template with an intuitive drag-and-drop email editor. You don't need code knowledge or any technical skills. Personalize your subject line and email body for a higher email open rate. You can also collect site visitors' email addresses with our subscription forms. Create a form using a pre-designed template. To create a cold email with LIKE.TG, follow the three steps below. Step 1. Register with LIKE.TG If you don't have a LIKE.TG account, register. Step 2. Upload your mailing list You can upload an existing email list or import it from other services. Upload a file or copy and paste the necessary addresses. Create variables for subscribers' data. It can include any information. Below is a mailing list created in LIKE.TG. You can enable email verification while uploading the addresses to ensure a high-quality mailing list. Step 3. Create an email campaign With the LIKE.TG convenient email editor, it won't take you more than an hour to create a professional email campaign. You can use a pre-designed template or design a unique email. Check out a webinar invitation email below to see how things work with LIKE.TG.Drag the text, picture, and button blocks from the left to your email body, and design them on the right. You can preview your email before sending and track the email open and click-through rates after sending. Congrats, now you know the advantages of cold emails and how to create a powerful campaign. So, register with LIKE.TG and get started!

With LIKE.TG, you can track the number of unique clicks when your subscribers: open your email; click on separate links; click on the image of your email campaign; view attachments. Marketers track the number of clicks in every email because it is an opportunity to analyze results and improve the email marketingstrategy. To see the statistics, click the "My campaigns" tab, choose a campaign, and go to "Campaign statistics." Here you can find the information about how many people opened your email. In "Campaign statistics," you will also see the "Click map" tab where you have an opportunity to take a look at which links work best in the email. You can see what this looks like in the example below. The unique clicksof each link are located in small green blocks. By analyzing how many people click on particular links, you can find out: which calls-to-actionare more productive; which images your subscribers prefer; what to use best: pictures, videos, or GIFs; and if it is a good idea to attach files to your emails, and so on.

Cold calling is a sales technique that implies communication with a prospective customer who had no interaction with a brand before. This person doesn’t know about the product, its benefits, and its features and shows no interest in it. This sales approach is usually based on phone calls or telemarketing. In this article, we’ll unveil how cold calling works and share five tips and techniques. We’ll also show you how to create a cold-calling script. Does cold calling work? Cold calling is an old but gold marketing approach that implies contacting people who have yet to show interest in a specific product or service. Sales representatives from different companies often call prospects or use telemarketing to reach them. Sales teams present the product and tell how people can benefit from it. Salespeople can also apply other popular channels to contact consumers. They use email campaigns and door-to-door visits. To win customers during cold calling, sales reps should possess specific traits of character. They need to be persistent, sympathetic, friendly, and ready to face objections. Before communicating with consumers, sales representatives conduct short research on their customers’ demographics and explore the market. It helps them find the right words during phone, in-person, or messages. When sales reps call potential customers, they can receive numerous responses. Salespeople must instantly react to these responses to continue communication and convert a person into a client. Many consumers hang up the phone or terminate calls because they are unwilling to engage in cold calling. However, some consumers still become interested in a product offered and show interest in meet-ups. Nowadays, many new methods like email, text, and social media are considered more effective, so cold marketing has become less popular. However, if the technique is perfect for your business, then go ahead and implement it with your sales team. Now that you know how cold calling works, it’s time to explore tips and techniques if you feel like incorporating cold calling into your company. 5 Cold Calling Tips and Techniques If you need cold calling for the success of your business, you probably need some effective techniques. We’ve listed tips and techniques below so that you can successfully implement this sales strategy in your company. Do research before calling. Calling without research isn’t an option if you want to close deals. To attract customers’ attention, you need to come up with a worthy offer. That’s why conducting research and knowing your prospects is necessary. You’ll be able to address their needs and solve problems. This way, you have a higher chance of being heard. By exploring leads’ data, your sales reps can avoid getting into undesirable scenarios, objections, disputes, frustrations, and phone terminations. Moreover, a clear understanding of your prospective consumers allows you to personalize offers based on their needs and save time. Create a script. To successfully implement cold calling, you need to have a clear script. You should write it and cover the following aspects: a step-by-step plan of action, answers to FAQs, and approaches to objections. However, your sales team shouldn’t get your script by heart. Consumers won’t appreciate listening to a generic message. The communication shouldn’t be robotic because prospects can hang up the phone. Your salespeople should use this information to their advantage without making interaction the same for everyone. Make sure that they find a personalized approach to every lead. Identify the best timing. The day and time you decide to contact your potential customer also matter. There are busy days and hours when people simply don’t have time to communicate with sales reps. You need to look at your call records to identify the best hours to call. This way, you’ll be able to figure out when prospects answer the phone most often. It indicates that they are willing to communicate at this time. Make sure you are ready to find arguments. As a sales rep, you can’t give up on a customer after the first objection. This role requires your sales team to deal with objections professionally and always find arguments for customers. You’ll be able to prove that your product is worthy and make leads change their mind. Consider developing a guideline for newcomers to sales. However, if your sales representatives encounter rejections, your sales team should be ready to accept “no” and proceed to the next prospect. It prevents your company from spending time, resources, and efforts on potential customers with no interest. Avoid starting a conversation by presenting your product. The most common mistake salespeople make during cold calling is beginning their talk with a sales pitch. You should first question customers’ opinions about the product, their needs, challenges, etc. After you figure out that it meets customers' requirements, craft the offer based on their needs, and start your personalized sales pitch. It will enable you to achieve the best sales results. Now that you know the techniques, it’s time to proceed to the process of cold-calling script creation. How to create a cold-calling script? Cold calling can be ineffective if your script isn’t detailed and thoughtful enough. In this section, we’ll uncover how to write a cold-calling script that helps convert prospects into customers. Find your verticals. Rather than spending time on people who aren't into your product, you better focus on those willing to buy and value your product or service. In cold calling, picking up the right potential customers is crucial since it can be time-consuming to work with objections and hang-ups. Moreover, if consumers demonstrate a negative history of communication with your sales reps, it’s better to avoid contacting them again. Focus your efforts on people who can become interested in your product. Analyze the list of your leads who successfully converted into consumers. Try to find a consistent pattern. Choose a couple of verticals. After a short analysis of your customers, you can find out that consumers from retail and banking prefer to purchase your product or service. Find 20 suitable leads. Once you are done with verticals, continue looking for a perfect fit. Consider using all your outlets and tools to identify your prospective customers for cold calling. You can get the best results by searching on LinkedIn. The platform is perfect for finding potential clients. Use the service’s filters to narrow your search and find the right people. Say you are looking for educational platforms that might need your online course builder. Type “General manager” and use the necessary filters. In this case, you might need filters like “People,” “Country,” and “Education.” Conduct research. In cold calling, there’s no need to rush. The more you explore your prospect, the higher the possibility of winning consumers. Use LinkedIn at its most: explore the company’s main tasks, the prospect’s responsibilities and duties, your experience with similar businesses, and a “fun fact.” Besides, make sure to spell the potential client’s name right. You can check the name pronunciation on LinkedIn or use PronounceNames. Congrats, now you know what cold calling is and how it works. Hope that our short step-by-step guide brought you closer to understanding this technique. If this method doesn’t suit your main business purpose, consider using LIKE.TG’s bulk email service, chatbot creator, SMS, and web push notifications.

Clienteling is a technique that allows companies to build long-term and trustful relationships with customers focusing on increasing their satisfaction. They implement an individual approach that helps create relevant offers based on clients' preferences, purchase history, behavior, and other data. With a CRM system, you can collect, store, and use customer data to your advantage. LIKE.TG provides a built-inCRM that lets marketers keep all information about clients and launch campaigns on a single platform. In this article, you'll learn the benefits of clienteling, how it works, and how to implement this technique in your business. Why is clienteling important? Clienteling is all about personalizing the interaction with a customer at each buyer journey stage. According to McKinsey, this tool helps reduce acquisition costs by up to 50%. Instapage states that 77% of customers are ready to pay more and recommend a product if a brand provides a personalized experience. SmarterHQ states that 90% of users prefer sharing their behavioral data with companies if it saves money or improves customer experience. According to Grenis Media research, 40.5% of online users would like to see ads targeted to their preferences. Statistics prove that 56% of online customers will likely return to a brand recommending products based on their previous interactions. Personalization is a powerful tool that helps brands reap numerous benefits. Benefits of clienteling The statistics mentioned above let us list several advantages of this sales technique. Clienteling helps reduce customer acquisition costs. Brands often concentrate their strategies on working with existing customers rather than acquiring new ones since it's much cheaper to keep your clients engaged than to invest in reaching new audiences. Your satisfied customer will likely return to your brand after having a positive experience. So, it's a surefire way of increasing sales and reducing costs. Clienteling allows you to increase sales. Customers appreciate brands that take care of their needs and want to provide the best experience. Creating personalized offers, assisting at each stage, and providing an excellent after-sales service encourage clients to pay more and recommend a brand to their friends. Clienteling enhances building an advanced customer base. Since online shoppers are happy to share their behavioral data with companies to get a better experience, it's a great chance to collect valuable insights about your audience. The more data you have, the more personalized and targeted offers you can provide. Clienteling enables companies to create highly effective targeted ads. Consumers make their customer profiles expecting to receive personal discounts and hot offers and be in the know of the latest releases and new collections. They would like to see ads based on their preferences, interests, and previous interactions since it saves them time searching for the necessary product and shows that the brand cares. Clienteling boosts the number of loyal clients. Loyal customers help brands grow. They bring them more money, show what can be improved, and promote the company organically. Every satisfied client can become your potential customer. So approaching each consumer individually will make them return to your brand and become its ambassador. Now that you know the benefits of clienteling, discover how it works in the next section. How does clienteling work? To realize the power of clienteling, let's have an example. Say you're visiting a pet store you've already bought from before. You enter the store and walk down the shelves until the assistant offers their help. They ask you what kind of pet you have, its breed, and age, and identify if he has any health issues. Then, they need to determine which food your pet prefers and how you care for him. After the discussion, they can make their suggestions. You make the final decision, purchase, and leave the store. It seems like a pleasant experience, right? Now let's model a situation where the store uses clienteling. An assistant recognizes you when you enter the store and asks how your pet is doing. He opens your profile and gets all the necessary information about your pet. Then the assistant might be interested if your pet loved the food or accessories you've bought before. You share your impressions and tell what you need. Analyzing your pet's profile, the assistant quickly finds the best-fitting product. He can also recommend new products or toys for your pet. You buy several items and get a bonus card. An assistant can also ask about your pet's birthday and include this data in the profile for you to have a discount on this special day. As a result, you've spent less time finding the necessary items, got some bonuses, and were offered to get even more on your pet's birthday. The second situation seems much more attractive, and you may want to return to this store again because it provides a highly personal approach. This is how clienteling work. You need to collect data about your consumer, their history of interactions with your company, preferences, and interests. Then, leverage this data in your strategy to build long-lasting relationships. Collecting this data manually will take much time and effort, so you can use a CRM system. It will store information about your clients and record all the deals, and you can access customers' profiles anytime and make informed decisions. LIKE.TG CRM allows you to manage all your sales processes, launch campaigns, store customer data, and connect with them from a single platform. You can invite your team members and share access for better performance. Below you can see the board with all the deals created categorized based on their status. Opening a deal card, you can see the information about the deal and the lead, the history of interactions, comments, and the sales rep responsible for it. You can add fields and comments, contact a customer right from the card via email or chatbot, or close the deal. LIKE.TG allows you to establish long-lasting relationships with your customers, generate more sales, and automate business processes with the help of email, SMS, web push campaigns, landing pages, chatbots for Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and even sell your online courses. It is a multifunctional marketing platform for small businesses and established brands. Now we'll share four recommendations that will help you master clienteling. 4 Clienteling Tips To create an effective strategy, you should consider several important aspects, including your customer care team. Take a look below. Implement an omnichannel approach. Customer experience is the top priority in omnichannel marketing. Consumers have touchpoints with brands on websites, social media, promotional emails, web push campaigns, etc. Implement an omnichannel approach to provide a consistent and smooth buyer experience across all the channels. You can acquire leads through your website, nurture and qualify them via a chatbot or live chat, and convert them via emails. Unlike multichannel marketing, omnichannel marketing focuses on delivering a positive experience rather than communicating the message through all possible channels. Ensure the cooperation of your sales and customer care teams. For your sales reps to provide users with targeted offers, they should know their pain points and issues preventing them from buying from you. Since a customer care team deals with consumers more than other departments, they can provide the necessary answers. Ask them to record FAQs and the most popular issues to analyze this data and improve your sales strategy. Choose a reliable CRM. Since this tool is fundamental for a winning clienteling strategy, it should satisfy your needs. Look for an intuitive CRM to help beginners get started without hassle. Make sure it provides communication tools to work on a single platform. To evaluate the benefits of a CRM, choose a service with a free plan or a free trial. This way, you'll know what you are paying for before investing. You can use LIKE.TG CRM for free for 5 users in your account. Segment your customer base. Segmentation is one of the primary personalization tools, and it allows you to divide your list based on common characteristics such as age, gender, occupation, income, country, etc. With a segmented list, you can create personalized campaigns and send them to different groups in one click. LIKE.TG offers both ready-to-use segments and advanced options for better results. Congrats, now you know the benefits of clienteling and how it works, so get inspired by the tips and register with LIKE.TG to boost sales and establish long-lasting relationships with your customers!