Performance marketing is a type of online marketing that implies paying for results such as ad views, downloads, clicks, sales, app installs, etc. It helps brands grow faster and ensure smart investments. In this article, we'll uncover the benefits of performance-based marketing, explain the way it works, consider the channels, and provide examples. Benefits of Performance Marketing Marketers who focus their efforts on performance prefer to pay for the desired actions of their potential clients rather than for annual subscriptions in marketing services. They make this choice due to several reasons. Check them out below. Performance marketing reduces the risk of losing money. If you implement Facebook and Instagram marketing or invest in chatbots and email campaigns, you need to pay for ads and messages in advance, so you can't be sure of their efficiency. Performance-based marketing allows you to plan every dollar from your marketing budget to bring you ROI. This way, you pay only when a lead makes a purchase, downloads an ebook, installs an app, etc. Performance marketing is measurable. Since this type of marketing is focused on results, they are easy to track. Brands use different analytics tools to evaluate the results of their campaigns. They can choose the best channels and invest money wisely based on their insights. Performance marketing provides a high level of transparency. Companies set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals that leave no chance for a guessing game. This way, your partners know your requirements well and do their best to reach your goal. Performance marketing lets you gain lots of insights. Monitoring the data in your analytics tools, CRM, and services allows you to define the most effective strategies and channels as well as tactics that work worse. Hence, you can abandon a strategy on the go and develop client-oriented campaigns based on user behavior. Now that you know why companies choose performance-based marketing, let's find out the way it works. How does performance marketing work? It depends on the channels you use. Generally, performance-based marketing includes 2 parties that agree on a clear goal and commission. For example, if you want to pay for displaying your ads on Google, you need to place bids. The amount of money to pay depends on the pricing model chosen. You can pay either for clicks or for impressions. Alternatively, you can partner with publishers or influencers. Influencer marketing is trendy nowadays since people trust other people more than brands. In this case, you, as an advertiser, set your goals, for example, 100 sales. If an influencer agrees, they create a campaign and promote your product with their promo code. This way, every time a person uses it, you know that this or that influencer is the source of your ROI. Finally, an influencer gets the commission from every sale. Affiliate programs work the same way. Publishers get an affiliate link and place it on their resource. People following this link to purchase from a brand bring money to the publisher. You can find an example of this technique in lots of listicles on the internet. For example, put "Top 10 Digital Marketing Tools" on Google and look through the articles. If you find a link to a specific service in a listicle, it will be an affiliate link. Now that you know how performance-based marketing works, let's find out the most popular channels. Performance Marketing Channels Social media marketing, native advertising, partnership marketing, and search engine marketing (SEM) allow brands to bring to life strategies focused on getting immediate results. Let’s find out how these channels work. Native advertising. The main advantage of native advertising is that it doesn’t look like an ad. This promotional message looks natural; however, there's no call to action. Marketers use native ads with different content formats. The most important thing is that an ad message should fit the content perfectly. You can pay per clicks or impressions by choosing this type of ad. SEM. It helps brands increase their awareness and blow up sales both for free and for money. We’ll consider paid advertising in search engines. Marketers create ads that are placed on the top of the search engine results page. To create an ad, you should choose a keyword and take part in the auction where the highest bid wins. The bid is the amount of money you’re ready to spend. Using SEM, you pay for user clicks on your ad. Social media marketing. Facebook, Instagram, TikTik, Twitter, LinkedIn are the most used social channels among people of different ages. These social networks allow brands to engage with their audience, increase traffic and awareness, blow up sales, etc. You can choose from a variety of pricing methods: cost per click, cost per view, cost per impressions, cost per acquisition, etc. Partnership marketing. It includes affiliate marketing and influencer marketing. This is a collaboration between an advertiser and publisher on mutually beneficial terms. Advertisers usually pay for sales, leads acquired, downloads, app installs, etc. Providing an affiliate with a special link lets advertisers identify the source of ROI, hence, determine the most profitable strategies. It’s time to see an example of performance marketing. Example of Performance-Based Marketing Skillshare offers its clients an affiliate program. The company pays affiliates $7 for each customer brought to the brand. Congrats, now you know the way performance marketing works, its benefits, and channels. Analyze your audience to create an effective performance marketing strategy.

Owned media is a set of properties a specific company has full control of and can use for free. It includes websites, blogs, email campaigns, webinars, forums, accounts on social media, and video sharing platforms. In this article, we’ll unveil why owned media is essential and compare it with earned media. We’ll also review 6 owned media strategies and examples and provide you with a guide on how to measure owned media value. Why is owned media important? Owned media is an essential part of effective media strategy because it helps companies build a brand, find new customers, and increase engagement and profits. A successful business should have different owned media formats like website, blog, forum, app, email newsletters, webinars, and social media channels. With the help of this content, companies can drive attention, boost organic traffic, and win customers. When users land on your website, owned media should provide them with value. If site visitors receive the necessary information, answers, and solutions, they can become loyal customers and bring you revenue. Content published on your website should draw prospects’ attention so that they pay attention to your offering. With its help, you’ll be able to sell your product without convincing customers to do it like paid ads. Owned media plays a crucial role in your SEO. If your content targets a specific audience segment, has strong headlines, includes target keywords, and covers unique visuals, search engines will notice it. As a result, your content will take top positions in search engines. Owned media carries many benefits to its owner. You pay less for these materials while having total control over your informational property. You can improve it any time and use it to your advantage: post on social media, send it to customers or make some alterations without paying additional costs. Moreover, you can share your materials through your marketing channels without contacting third-party services. Now that you know the importance, let’s discover the difference between owned and earned media, and it will help you avoid confusion with the two terms. Owned Media vs Earned Media In this section, we’ll make the difference between owned and earned media clear since sometimes people misinterpret these two media types. After exploring this section, you’ll be able to categorize your content. Owned media is content you create and have full control of. You can publish it on your website, social media accounts, and forums and send it via email newsletters, chatbots, and push notifications. Content for your website influences your SEO, organic traffic, conversions, and sales. If your team of marketers and copywriters manage to create quality content, you can drive attention and visits to your website. However, when people land on your site, ensure that you provide them with useful materials and a seamless user experience. As a result, users will leave your website satisfied, with a solution and the intention to purchase your product and solve their problems. Earned media is content generated by customers in which they discuss your product or service. Examples include recommendations of influencers, PR, customer reviews, shares of advocates, etc. This type of media is also known as word-of-mouth marketing, which implies people promoting your product or service. You can receive recommendations for money and for free. Earned media allows you to build brand awareness, recognition, and trust. According to statistics, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from their friends, and 37% of people trust influencers’ reviews. Earned media helps your product shape a positive first impression, and show expertise. Now that you know the difference, it’s time to discover some owned media strategies. Consider implementing them to improve your marketing strategy. 6 Owned Media Strategies Companies use different content formats for multiple purposes such as establishing brand awareness, increasing customer engagement, receiving conversions, boosting sales, etc. Paid, earned, and owned media imply using effective strategies to capture attention, engage users, and win customers. We’ll list the most powerful owned media strategies so that you know what to do with your valuable content. Publish content that solves problems. In our busy world, time matters the most. Show your expertise by writing long informative blog posts. When customers have problems, they need fast, short, and accurate answers. So, provide them. Write content that helps your target audience without focusing on a sale. If prospects like your product, they will purchase it. You should ensure that your website, blog, or social media channels bring solutions to your target market. Track trends on social media. Social media platforms are constantly evolving and establishing new trends. If you want to stay visible on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, you need to adapt your content to the new requirements. Since algorithms always change, they can make your content viral without any paid promotion. Let’s take Instagram as an example. Lately, you can see Instagram posts in your feed very rarely. Moreover, you see the promoted posts and videos of people you don’t even know. It all happens because of the changes in people’s preferences. Nowadays, social media users prefer to watch reels, so brands and influencers record them. These short videos communicating the main value are engaging, interesting, and informative. Implement popular content formats. Leave some space for experiments with your content. If you only publish blog posts, consider recording webinars or podcasts. If these formats fit with your target audience and industry, it’ll bring you increased engagement. However, before creating something new, conduct research and survey to find out whether your customers will welcome a new format of your work. You can provide them with multiple options, and they will decide by voting. For example, you can ask your audience whether they would like to receive some new materials in the form of a webinar, live on Instagram, podcast, or online course. Stay updated on the latest algorithms. Since SEO contributes to the visibility of your website in search engines, you need to monitor the changes in Google’s algorithms. It will help you comply with Google’s ranking factors and stay at the top of SERPs. For example, due to the rising number of voice searches, search engines welcome conversational content. So you need to take it into account when creating articles to stand out among competitors and rank high. Invite experts to create content. Writing useful articles is no easy task. You might have a team of talented copywriters yet it’s still not enough to create in-depth content. That’s why you need to have experts who will check your blog posts and add professional opinions. For instance, if you have a blog, it will be useful for writers to cooperate with experienced professionals in the field who have knowledge and skills beyond Google. Look through potential candidates to find the right person for this position. Promote your content through various marketing channels. You can promote your content organically by complying with SEO principles, sharing content on social media, or using paid ads. It will help you gain exposure and brand recognition. Now that you know the strategies, let’s find out how to measure owned media value. The next section will help you evaluate the usefulness of your content for users. How to measure owned media value? Since owned media is crucial for reaching prospects and driving their attention, we need to discuss how you can measure the results it brings. To measure owned media, you need to analyze the social networks you use. Consider leveraging special social analytics tools like Sprout Social, BuzzSumo, HubSpot, and Google Analytics to receive a detailed analysis of your content performance on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Besides analyzing the success of your content, you can also reveal the achievements of your competitors. Researching each of your channels enables you to receive insights into your content performance. After the analysis, you’ll know what works and what doesn’t. As a result, you’ll be able to enter some alterations and make your users happy with your blog posts, articles, and social media posts. To assess the progress, look at comments, likes, discussions, recommendations, retweets, mentions, and impressions. Once you look through these metrics, you’ll have an in-depth understanding of the quality of your content and the satisfaction of readers. Social media management platforms empower you to identify the best-performing content formats. You can apply this information for your next marketing campaigns and publishings. Analysis of competitors’ social media performance will enable you to dive deeper into their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. After figuring them out, you’ll be able to identify less effective strategies and implement successful techniques. Valuable content will help you shape and grow your community. Later, you’ll be able to generate brand advocates and promote your company to a wider audience. Now that you know how to measure the success of your owned media, it’s time to proceed to the examples. You’ll be able to find out the most popular owned media channels. Owned Media Examples Companies have a wide choice of options when it comes to formats of content and channels they want to use. We’ll list the most popular and successful examples of owned media for you to consider. Websites, apps, and blogs Websites and blogs are your most important owned media property. With these marketing channels, you can consistently communicate information to your prospects and customers. You can cover different topics related to your product and industry and solve users’ problems. Website, app, and blog help you distribute information, establish brand awareness, and educate website visitors. If users like your content and product, they can convert into customers. Moreover, a website or blog with valuable articles gains a top position in search results and generates organic traffic. Forums Old but effective forums still capture their position as successful community builders. Although people nowadays are more likely to use social media platforms for communication, you still need to give forums a try. Consider initiating a forum, organizing content distribution, and community activities. Email campaigns An effective email marketing strategy enables you to communicate your message, distribute content, and inform customers about new releases, promos, and discounts. You can deliver your content directly to subscribers and make sure that they open your emails. Each email campaign contains a call-to-action button that leads customers to the offer they look for. LIKE.TG’s drag and drop editor enables you to create professional templates without any knowledge of HTML or technical skills. Below you can see how to create an email campaign using a ready-to-go template in LIKE.TG. Social media networks An increasing rise in the use of social networks and around 4.70 billion social media users indicate that social media platforms are worth considering for your owned media promotion. Social media brings you wide reach, a large following, brand recognition, trust, and new customers. Create profiles on the top-performing platforms to share your content with your target audience. If you have quality content, they will like, share, and comment. As a result, you’ll gain exposure. Congrats, now you know what owned media is and why it’s crucial. Hopefully, our strategies will help you use your unique properties right.

Paid advertising is an online placement of ads on relevant platforms for which an advertiser pays. It works based on a bidding system. This is an auction where an advertiser ready to pay more money for an ad space wins. Advertisers pay either for impressions or for clicks. In this article, we’ll tell you the truth about the efficiency of paid advertising, cover its benefits, consider the most profitable types of paid ads, and provide examples. So, stay tuned! How effective is paid advertising? The efficiency of paid advertising for your company depends on your industry, type of business, and goals. To make an informed decision, consider the statistics below. Google ads statistics show that every $1 spent on paid ads brings businesses $2 ROI. The average CTR of paid search ads from the first position is 7.94%. General PPC statistics tell that PPC is profitable for 79% of marketers. PPC ads allow companies to increase their brand awareness by 80%. Google ads bring 65% of clicks from ads containing buying keywords. Top 3 sponsored ads drive 41% of all clicks made by users on Google. Online users following PPC ads are 50% more likely to convert than those using organic search. 32% of brands invest in PPC ads to sell their products instead of promoting the company. So, paid ads do help businesses increase their brand awareness and revenue. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of this advertising type. Why are paid ads important? Implementing paid advertising doesn’t guarantee success for your business. It requires investments and thorough planning while organic promotion only requires time. So, the best approach is to combine these strategies effectively. Discover the benefits of using paid ads below. Immediate results. Compared with organic promotion, which requires months or even years to see the results, paid ads let you quickly evaluate their efficiency right after the launch. For example, if you promote your product via Instagram Stories, you’ll be able to see the results instantly. A perfect choice for startups. Startups and new businesses that haven’t been online yet need paid ads to find their target audience, demonstrate their product to the public, bring innovations to the market. Without ads, new it’ll be difficult and time-consuming for new businesses to get promoted. Targeting options. While organic promotion offers no targeting opportunities, platforms providing paid ads let marketers choose the necessary demographics, gender, age, interests, preferences. Setting all the options, you’ll manage to speak to the right audience and blow up your campaign results. Global outreach. Paid ads allow you to collaborate with businesses from similar industries all over the world since the main ad placing factor is its relevancy. Besides, you can easily find new audiences working with publishers from different niches. As a result, your audience grows. An additional advantage in a highly competitive market. Shopping, hospitality, travel, and logistics are considered the most competitive industries in the world. It means that it’s challenging to appear organically on the first page of the SERP, especially if your market share is low. Paid ads let you bring your company in front of its potential clients. Retargeting opportunities. With the help of paid ads, you can bring users back to your website. If a big percentage of your site visitors ads items to their shopping carts without buying, views the same product from time to time, and navigates the site, you can launch retargeting campaigns according to their interests and drive more sales. Analytics. All the advertising platforms make it easy for their clients to measure the success of campaigns. You can monitor the number of users who saw your ads, clicked through, and converted into clients. This way, you will have a clear picture of your marketing efforts and change your strategy on the go. Now that you know about the efficiency of paid advertising and its benefits, it’s time to get acquainted with the types of ads. Paid Advertising Types Social media marketing Search engine marketing Display marketing Influencer marketing Today marketers have a wide choice of ad types at their disposal. They include social media marketing, search engine marketing, display marketing, influencer marketing. With their help, companies bring in new leads, increase awareness and recognition, blow up sales. So, let’s take a closer look at each one. Social Media Marketing In 2021, 4.48 billion people used social networks which is 13% more than the previous year. On average, every user spends 145 minutes a day on different social networks. If your target audience is made up of young people 18-29 years old, you should know that 84% of this group are using social media every day. 71% of satisfied social media users would recommend the company they had any experience with to their friends. All these facts make us believe that social media networks have become an integral part of everyone’s life, and you as a marketer can’t underrate their power. So, let’s take a closer look at their advertising opportunities. Facebook Facebook is the leader among social media users. 2.5 billion people use the platform every month. They not only look through the feed and check out their friends’ profiles but look for the necessary products and services, search reviews and testimonials, examine the profiles of their job candidates. Facebook provides excellent options for paid advertising. It offers a platform with a big choice of features available. These are Facebook targeted ads, and they work based on a bidding system. Advertisers place bids on several ads with the necessary target audience, and the winner is chosen through a lottery. Facebook provides 3 tools for ad targeting: Core Audiences, Lookalike Audiences, Customer Audiences. With the help of the first tool, you can pick up the right audience based on its demographics, location, interests, behavior, connections. Lookalike Audiences allow you to reach people similar to your existing customers. Custom Audiences let you get in touch with people who have already interacted with your brand below. These contacts may include people from your mailing list, Facebook, CRM, app users, and site visitors. Below you can see an example of a Facebook ad targeted by location. DoorDash offer delivery and takeout from local restaurants. It promotes their free delivery campaign and lets users order it right from the advertising. Follow a quick guide on our blog to create Facebook ads that work. Instagram This social network has more than 1 billion active users every month. They spend half an hour on the platform per day on average. 81% of users use Instagram to look for products and services. 130 million people click on buying posts monthly. With the help of Instagram, you can bring in new leads, increase your brand awareness, demonstrate your products, help customers via a chatbot, show some behind-the-scenes, and blow up sales. This social network enables clients to promote their Instagram posts, Stories, Highlights, and profile. To create an advertising campaign for Instagram, you need a Facebook business page and switch your Instagram account to a business one. Then, you can go to the Facebook Ads Manager and start creating your campaign. Follow the official instructions. Below you can see an example of promoted content on Instagram. Zara encourages users to check out their new collection via a Story. After clicking the link, users will be redirected to the website. LinkedIn 310 million people are active LinkedIn users monthly. According to HubSpot, LinkedIn is 277% better for generating leads than Facebook. 55 million brands are on LinkedIn. This social network is a great place to find like-minded people, hire top specialists, and look for jobs. With the help of LinkedIn, you can get in touch with senior managers, influencers, and decision-makers which makes it a perfect platform for building business connections. You can create an advertisement with a Campaign Manager. Firstly, you need to choose a goal. It can be awareness, consideration, conversion. Then, you need to select your targeting criteria. LinkedIn offers more than 20 categories to target the right audience. They include company name and size; job title and seniority; member schools, interests, and groups; skills, etc. Then, choose the format of your ad. It can be an image ad, video ad, or carousel ad. Lastly, set a budget and schedule. Below you can see an example of paid advertising on LinkedIn. Salesforce promotes its brand by sharing a downloadable playbook for success. So, every social media platform provides various profitable options for effective promotion. Identify where your target audiences hang out and start creating your campaign. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Search engine marketing aims to promote your website on the search engine results page. It lets you generate more traffic to your site, build brand awareness and recognition, get immediate results, and blow up conversion rates. Compared to SEO, SEM drives results faster. You can experience these benefits by creating Google Shopping ads, text ads, responsive ads, and local service ads. Search engine ads work based on an auction system. Advertises carry out thorough keyword analysis before participating in the bidding. They choose the most relevant keywords for their business. For better performance, advertisers consider keywords with lower competition but high volume. One of the most important factors for evaluating the quality of an ad is a Quality Score. Google wants to provide users with the best experience so it analyzes if your ad can satisfy their search intent. Advertisers with the highest Quality Score and the maximum bid (the amount of money they are ready to pay) get the highest ranking positions. Note that a high Quality Score also allows you to pay less for your ad. To launch an advertising campaign on Google, you need to create an account in Google Ads manager. Google also provides a variety of targeting options. So, follow this step-by-step guide to create an advertisement. Below you can see an example of the search engine results page. Ads are placed at the top and have the corresponding label. Display Marketing It means display advertisements shown on relevant websites. They can include text, images, or video. Advertisers encourage users to visit their website, buy a product or take any other desired action. You can reach new audiences and promote your company on relevant websites with display ads. And increase conversions. Google Display Network allows companies to get started with display marketing. To create a display ad, you need an account in Google Ads. Set your goal, choose the bidding strategy and budget, and find your target audience. You can also make use of targeting options. Follow the instructions from Google. With the help of display advertising, you can launch retargeting campaigns to bring back users who viewed specific items or added them to their shopping cart on your site. Below is an example of a retargeting display advertisement. Influencer Marketing This type of paid advertising implies collaborating with influencers and opinion leaders from your industry who have many followers. These people have expertise, knowledge, trustful relationships with their audience, and authority. People trust their recommendations and want to have a similar lifestyle, products, etc. Influencer marketing allows companies to reach new audiences, boost their awareness, enhance lead generation, and enrich their content strategy since it’s up to an influencer to choose the promotional methods. You need to find the right influencers to create a successful campaign. These people should have expertise in your industry. Make sure that their audience is active and loyal. For this purpose, check their subscribers and comments for bots. You can use special tools like trendHERO. If you’re on a tight budget, consider partnering with micro-influencers. A skincare brand Biossance collaborated with a famous actress Reese Witherspoon to promote its products. She creates videos and shares sincere recommendations on her Instagram account. Check out our tools and tips on how to find niche influencers for your business. Now that you know about the most effective types of paid advertising, let’s inspire you with more examples. Examples of Paid Advertising Let’s find out how famous brands reap the benefits of paid advertising. Check out their formats and visuals to identify the most appealing for you. A famous marketplace for tourism and vacation rentals, Airbnb asks users via a Facebook ad whether they’re looking for a second home or having a holiday. This is a way to attract attention to their campaign. The service offers customers to earn extra money by sharing their homes when they’re away. BoltFood chose an attractive way to promote its delivery service at a pleasant price. They added a photo of a delicious biscuit that immediately attracted attention and encouraged them to swipe up to get the offer. Puma collaborated with a famous singer Dua Lipa. She demonstrates their sneakers, presents new collections, and acts as the brands’ model. Congrats, now you know the benefits of paid ads, the way they work, have some inspiration from world-known brands, and can start creating your campaign right now. Attract new audiences and blow up sales!

Pay-per-click or cost per click (CPC) isa type of digital marketing,where an advertiser pays a search engine a fee for every click made on the ad. This is a method of buying visits to a website rather than ranking in the organic search results. With this video, you'll get to know the way PPC advertising works, along with CPC and CPM. PPC is a good idea for those who want to drive qualitative traffic to their website as PPC add is shown only to potentially interested users. Models to Calculate CPC Flat-rate PPC. An advertiser and the website's owner agreed upon a fixed amount of money for each click. It can be changed only after the reconsideration of the agreement. Bid-based PPC. The advertisers take part in the auction, the aim of which is to get the maximum of clicks for the lower price. They inform you about the highest price they are ready to pay. It's done to ensure that advertisers don't bid lower than the actual value of the keyword is. Factors That Influence CPC Сompetitiveness. There is the maximum cost per click for every particular industry. If the competitiveness is high, it will be more challenging to fight for better ranking. Still, if all the advertisers of the same sector are ready to pay $5, the quality of the add will matter. Quality Score. The quality of an ad is essential as search engines take care of user experience. For example, advertiser John is ready to pay $7 per click, while Ann — $5. A search engine will analyze the add itself, a keyword, the relevance to the landing page, and past keywords' performance. If John's keyword is "leather sneakers," and the ad leads to leather oxfords — a search engine will not place this ad first even for $7. If Ann's keyword is "leather sneakers," and the ad leads to a page with leather sneakers — her add will be considered more relevant as it satisfies the user's need. Besides, a search engine predicts the CTR of the add basing on its past performance. So, the higher is the Quality Score, the higher the ad will rank in the Search Engine Results Page, and the lower the CPC will be. Season. Seasonal campaigns are very popular since the advertisers can choose the time of the year when they can spend more money in the shortest period. Geographical location. You can set specific locations like countries, cities, territories to show your ad topeople from there. It will help to find the right people who need your services. Time of day. It is essential to know when your potential customers are likely to interact with you and look for your services. For example, if you sell cars, the users are not expected to search them at 9 am on Monday because they are at work. The best time is probably in the evening. In contrast, they can look for a book during the break or lunch. Google Adwords is the platform for PPC advertising that works with the keywords, ad text, landing pages, and maximum bids to provide a good user experience. Try PPC advertising to enlarge your target audience in the shortest period!

Permission marketing is an approach that requires explicit consent from a user to start communication. For the first time, this concept appeared in a similarly-named book by Seth Godin in 1999. Permission marketing is still relevant today when users are being bombarded with millions of interrupting ads online. When you ask for permission to communicate to users, it should sound like “Hey, I’ve heard you had a problem. Would you like me to help you get it fixed?” Permission marketing is an alternative to interrupting marketing — an outdated model that works based on “spray and pray” tactics, spreading information on the crowd of people in the hope that somebody will respond. The law requires getting permission from the users in email marketing, SMS marketing, and Facebook Messenger marketing, so not following these principles will damage your business’ reputation. Feel free to check the video, which illustrates the three big ideas from Seth Godin’s book. Benefits of Permission Marketing Allows making the first touch with an engaged audience Lowers your spending Increases the accuracy of your marketing efforts It helps to build loyalty and reputation Allows making the first touch with an engaged audience. Those users who gave their permission are warm leads, which are easier to convert and build relationships with. This is how you can filter your audience. Lowers your spending. Putting your business in front of everybody takes more time, money, and efforts to sift the leads from the crowd of uninterested people. That’s why permission marketing goes hand to hand with targeting. Increases the accuracy of your marketing efforts. It’s smart to promote sports nutrition for people who go to the gym. If you show the same products to artists, mechanics, car owners, teachers — chances are that they don’t need sports nutrition products at the moment. The principles of permission marketing help you generate leads more accurately. It helps to build loyalty and reputation. Asking for permission is a sign of respect for the users, so they will be more likely to trust your brand and stay with you at every stage of their buyerjourney. Permission Marketing vs. Interruption Marketing These are two anticipating principles of doing business. Interruption marketing is any marketing messagethat users didn’t ask to receive. Among the examples are TV and radio ads, billboards, pop-ups in the browser, and annoying ads on YouTube, which disturb users’ activities. This interrupting approach is a fast way to increase sales, but it has its downside. Your pushy ads can annoy even your target audience instead of just drawing their attention to the value your brand could bring. Permission marketing, in its turn, is an approach that tends to respect people’s privacy, being more friendly and less pushy. Since it would be strange to ask for permission to sell, the emphasis lies on providing help and value. Examples of Permission Marketing Email marketing Chatbot marketing SMS marketing Web push notifications Email marketing The CAN-SPAM Act in the United States and other laws require opting in users. A double opt-in is the safest approach because it confirms their subscription, ensuring that companies will send emails to real and engaged people. Chatbot marketing You can create a chatbotfor Facebook Messenger and Telegram to automate the work on some lifecycle stages. In chatbot marketing, you can’t send messages to anyone unless they’ve given permission. To initiate communication, the user needs to click on the button “Send Message” on Facebook Page and then “Get started” in the chat. SMS marketing Similarly to email marketing, this channel requires consent from the user for sending short text messages, which is called SMS opt-in. Web push notifications Marketers send web push notifications to share news and updates instantly, but they can’t communicate such messages unless users allow doing so. Permission Marketing Best Practices Tell users how to start and stop communication Set expectations Let users manage their preferences Push personalization to its limits Tell users how to start and stop communication. Make it clear how to consent, and in case the user is no longer interested in information you share, make it easy and intuitive to stop. Check some poor and good examples of unsubscribe link in the emails here. Set expectations. Let users know how often you will contact them and which topics you will cover, so they could fully understand whetheryour servicesare relevant to them. Let users manage their preferences. If the user feels overwhelmed with message frequency, allow changing preferences. Treating users with respect is a way to build trusting relationships and keep them from negative experiences, which may result in unsubscribing. Push personalization to its limits. Ask users to share their data with you at any stage of their lifecycle. It will help to create a seamless experience and keep your customers loyal. Read this blog article to get the best practices regarding permission-based email marketing.

Outreach marketing is a strategy that aims to find individuals and organizations that may be interested in your business. It helps to increase brand recognition, facilitate the promotion, and boost revenue. The essential idea is to provide an incentive in exchange for a favor rather than insist on making customers buy goods or services from your company. Outreach marketing allows for mutually beneficial cooperation for both parties. Benefits of Outreach Marketing Increasing your online presence Improving the quality of content Personalized approach Creating and empowering collaborations Unlike big corporations that have sufficient funds for lavish, large-scale campaigns, small companies often can’t afford campaigns of the same caliber. How can small companies get involved in multi-faceted activities? Relatively cheap solutions are offered due to recent digital advancements. Increasing your online presence. This strategy allows you to increase your outreach all over the globe. You can find partners who will promote your brand to their devoted customer base. This way, your audience will grow without your participation. Improving the quality of content. Through localizing and optimizing website content, it is possible to attract more users. Evaluate what successful bloggers and writers do to capture a broader audience. Modify existing successful strategies to promote your products or services. Personalized approach. It’s necessary to add a human touch to what you do on the web. With the help of blogs and links, for instance, you can develop a personalized approach for clients. Creating and empowering collaborations. Small businesses can combine their resources and fill in the gaps for each other to assist in expanding the customer base. These four pros are the main reasons a small company would want to engage in outreach marketing. Finally, outreach marketing is a great way to obtain a competitive advantage. Any organization can gain these benefits with the right outreach marketing strategies. Email Marketing vs. Outreach Marketing The significant gap between these two is that in outreach marketing, a message is sent to users who are not familiar with your business. With email marketing, emails are always created and sent to your target audience that opted in to get notifications from your company. Outreach marketing is about: delivering an advertisement to users who have visited your site; cooperating with a data enrichment service to receive a list of decision-makers; trying to reach out to your audience on social media platforms. Outreach cold emails are perfect for targeting users who are looking for possible solutions to their existing issues and needs. As for marketing email, once again, this is for users who are interested in your news and offers. Email marketing refers to: сlients that you wish to retain; users who visit your website but not committed; potential buyers who have subscribed for a free trial; users who agreed to receive emails from a company. How To Do Outreach Marketing Come Up With Intriguing Subject Lines Show the Value Keep Researching Show How They Will Benefit Encourage Users to Share Feedback Now, the question is: how can you do outreach marketing effectively? Different experts share various approaches to outreach marketing. We have prepared the five most useful ones. Come Up With Intriguing Subject Lines Statistics show that the average email open rate is currently around 18%. The email subject line is your first chance to stand out in your recipient’s inbox. It might seem like a challenge to create an engaging one for someone you don't even know. It is critical to personalize headings to avoid spam filters that are common nowadays. Show how the recipient can benefit by merely opening your message in 5-7 words. Look at the subject line of the outreach email below. The sender personalized it and provided value before offering a deal. Show the Value If you start with an excellent solution to one’s problem, people will pay you back. Think about the benefits the cooperation with your company may bring to your partner. Highlight the problem that your company is solving, and only then provide the rest of the information. Keep Researching There is always room for improvement, so you should not stop searching for new ideas. Look for ways to start your emails differently from regular cold emails. It’s important to customize each message to improve client relationships and your overall marketing performance. In the email below, the sender researched a bit and used their findings to ensure a personalized approach. Show How They Will Benefit There is another useful technique that is easy to miss. It is known as reserve blogger outreach. It’s about offering recipients a chance to obtain benefits from you, as an email author. An example of mutual collaboration could be a writer creating guest posts for one’s website to get backlinks. Encourage Users to Share Feedback Some people are too scared to hear a critique, so they don’t ask for comments. Even negative feedback is valuable because it points out gaps in your work and helps improve the product or service before you lose a large share of your audience. Besides, people love to be heard. Thus, they will feel needed if you ask for their opinions. Getting feedback is also an excellent way to start a conversation with customers you previously haven’t interacted with. Outreach Marketing Tactics As a recent study has shown, about 83% of customers rely on recommendations from their peers when it comes to ads. You may benefit from using these outreach marketing tactics: Get in touch with successful bloggers in your industry; Come up with influencer events; Involve a network focus; Use quotations and testimonials; Make sure that you communicate with the right people; Tell your success story; Automate business communication. With a bunch of tips, tactics, and examples at hand, you can empower your outreach marketing strategy. Using LIKE.TG, you can automate sending bulk emails without much hassle. Register and give it a try!

PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) is a cloud computing model that delivers hardware, software, and infrastructure tools to the customers through the internet. Usually, providers host development and deployment resources at their data centers which lets companies be more flexible and support web application lifecycle faster and cheaper. In the article, we identify PaaS advantages and types, and compare it with SaaS. We also provide examples of PaaS and describe their features. Advantages of PaaS According to Statista, the PaaS market will be worth about 136 billion dollars in 2023, and worldwide spending on PaaS services is growing from year to year. Discover why this model is so popular and find out its benefits below. It makes application development and maintenance easier. PaaS hosts hardware and software tools on the remote servers and offloads most management on the provider. It lets companies reduce the number of administrative tasks and serve the platform easier. Also, some PaaS include pre-coded components, which let companies make their apps suitable for multiple platforms in a few clicks. It allows remote teams to work together. PaaS provides a shared software environment which makes the development process more flexible. Your employees can access the tools from anywhere they have an internet connection, which lets teams work on the same projects worldwide. It provides access to various resources. Typically, PaaS services offer many cloud-based tools, such as operating systems, development tools, databases, etc. You can use them right from the shared software environment, having only an internet connection and subscription to the service. It lets companies save money on the tools in the stack, which may be too expensive to install and manage independently. It lets you enter the market faster. Using PaaS helps you save time on purchasing and integrating hardware and software. You need to connect to the cloud-based service to start working on the development. Moreover, pre-coded components simplify your employees’ work a lot so that they can create applications much quicker. It is easy to scale. You won’t need to purchase additional hardware and software if more capacity is required. PaaS offers a more scalable approach. You can buy extra capacity right from the service, enlarge infrastructural resources and start using them immediately. It helps reduce equipment expenses. PaaS lets you try sophisticated tools without overspending on their purchasing outright. Also, it allows you to reduce costs on building and scaling application platforms, licensing costs, and management ones. A pay-as-you-go model helps you avoid expenses on unnecessary tools and services. It lets you avoid risks. You do not need to purchase software specifically to adopt new features. PaaS allows you to test various technologies without huge investments, such as operating systems, languages, databases, and other tools. You can get a vast application stack taking minimal responsibility and opt-out of some features anytime if it is necessary. These benefits motivate many companies to start using PaaS in their app development. However, it may be difficult to differentiate it from SaaS, as they are rather similar. We compare these models and describe each one’s peculiarities in the next section. PaaS vs SaaS According to BusinessWire, the SaaS market grows by approximately 9% every year. At the same time, PaaS is growing at 21.8% a year, Gartner states. Discover the difference between these two models and why more and more companies start using them. PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) offers a cloud-based application stack necessary for performing complex tasks, such as app development and management. Companies don’t need to buy and install any underlying infrastructure because providers host all the components on their servers. However, it is a brand’s responsibility to manage the app’s workload, as PaaS just offers tools to simplify this process. Also, businesses can retain control over the application’s features and associated information which lets consumers be more confident in data security. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) is a cloud-based software that you can access and use through the internet. It offers a complete application stack based on the remote servers so that you don’t need to purchase and install your infrastructure. Its main difference from PaaS is that SaaS providers manage workload and underlying IT resources, so companies cannot regulate app features, data storage, and information security. It lets companies save time and resources, but at the same time, they lose control over the critical part of the workflow. Now you understand the difference between these two cloud computing models. Let’s further discover the types of PaaS you can use in your app development. Types of PaaS It may be difficult for some companies to figure out the peculiarities of different PaaS and choose the most suitable one for their app development. We review the most widespread Platform-as-a-Service types and describe their characteristics below. Public PaaS lets companies control software development and reach all other necessary components, such as storage systems, databases, frameworks, etc., through the public cloud. In such a case, providers host all middleware so that you don’t need to purchase and install infrastructure for app development. This type of PaaS may be a good decision for some simple apps, but some companies refuse to use it to avoid the public cloud and ensure greater data security. Private PaaS arranges application components into software that you install within the firewall and maintain in your company’s on-premises data center. It can be fully customized to your business requirements and work in a private cloud to provide complete data security. This type of PaaS helps companies be more flexible, reduce cloud sprawl, use internal resources more effectively, and comply with privacy requirements. Hybrid PaaS is a combination of private and public ones. It uses a hybrid cloud to provide a mix of different deployment types. This PaaS offers an infinite capacity as the public one and, at the same time, lets you control an internal infrastructure as the private one. Communication PaaS (CPaaS) allows developers to add features for users to voice, video, and messages in real-time. You do not need to build an infrastructure for your application and write code to let consumers communicate inside your app. This PaaS already includes programming interfaces and advancement packs. Mobile PaaS (MPaaS) offers an integrated environment to simplify mobile app development. It helps improve local applications, such as GPS, calendar, contacts, etc. without coding. MPaaS lets you access them directly through the gadget. You can use this computing model from the public, private or hybrid cloud. Open PaaS provides software that doesn’t include hosting. To develop and run your apps, you can use any programming language, operating system, and server. This PaaS lets consumers deploy their applications quickly and run them in an open-source environment. PaaS for Artificial Intelligence (AIPaaS) allows you to build applications that include artificial intelligence without purchasing hardware and software directly. It has pre-trained machine learning models that you can customize according to your app’s features. You can also integrate different AI capabilities to empower your application with such complex capabilities as speech-to-text conversion. Integration PaaS (iPaaS) lets you connect various applications on the cloud without purchasing additional infrastructure. You can integrate data and workloads across different environments to make your apps work together. Understanding the main types of PaaS allows you to choose the best one you need to streamline development processes in your company. Continue reading to find out the best Platforms-as-a-Service and discover their features. Examples of PaaS Nowadays, there are many PaaS on the market, so it may be difficult for some businesses to figure out their peculiarities and select the best one. In this section, we describe the most popular Platforms-as-a-Service and highlight their features that can help you streamline your app development. Google App Engine This PaaS lets you build applications in the most popular programming languages, such as Node.js, Java, Ruby, C#, Go, Python, or PHP. The service manages infrastructure issues for you to focus on coding. You can create an environment for developing your products and host different versions of your applications on the same PaaS. Also, Google App Engine provides a wide range of integrations inside a huge ecosystem of Google Cloud. Track the app performance with Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging and discover bugs immediately using Error Reporting. Moreover, this PaaS lets you define access rules with the App Engine firewall to ensure your data is completely safe. Pricing. A few main components influence the cost of this PaaS. They are standard environment instances, flexible environment instances, and App Engine APIs and services. There is also a free trial, as new clients get 300$ in free credits to test the service. Then you can request a custom quote to have a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Look at the screenshot below. Here is the interface of the Google App Engine developer. To run the project locally, you need to add it from the contextual menu on the left. There are also opportunities to restore your developments from history, validate them and compare them with each other. Microsoft Azure This service lets you use preferred languages, infrastructure, and frameworks during your app development. Also, you can integrate and manage different environments through the hybrid cloud. Microsoft Azure commits to open source, but it allows users to connect with their own data centers and other clouds. This PaaS allows you to build AI-driven apps and create your machine learning models. Moreover, the service provides real-time data-driven insights to predict consumers’ needs and meet them by introducing new features. You can share this information using dashboards and visualizations without worrying about its security because Microsoft Azure has intelligent threat protection. Pricing. This PaaS has a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on the features you use. There is also a free trial, as Microsoft Azure provides 200$ of a credit you should use for 30 days. Below there is an interface of the developer portal in the service. With this PaaS, you can host documentation about your APIs, publish it and share it with consumers. AWS Elastic Beanstalk This PaaS is useful for managing apps developed in the most popular programming languages, such as Java, NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker. You can upload a code. The service will deploy it automatically, there are no changes necessary to go from a development machine to the cloud. Elastic Beanstalk lets you scale your application automatically based on its specific needs and retain full control over the workload and AWS resources. Also, this PaaS helps you track the health of your app by collecting more than 40 key metrics. It provides dashboards for visualization and notifications to learn more about your performance. Additionally, you can set up Elastic Beanstalk to update automatically and always have the latest versions of this platform. Pricing. This PaaS has the pay-as-you-go model for over 200 services. There are some services, such as AWS Compute and AWS Machine Learning, that you can use for a specific amount of money per hour. There is a statistic tap in AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Here you can monitor your environment health, target response time, the number of requests, and CPU utilization. Also, this service lets you define the time range you want to track your performance. Salesforce This service provides a drag-and-drop editor to create applications for mobile, tablet, and web without coding. Also, it supports all programming languages so that you can build your app on the preferred one. Salesforce works on most public clouds so that you can scale your developments without code development tools. This PaaS lets companies build integrated flows and manage complex processes automatically. You can connect different data sources with API-led services. Also, Salesforce provides AI-based insights into your app’s performance and suggestions on how to improve it with AI-powered automation. Pricing: Free trial — details are discussed individually. Platform Starter — 25$ per user every month. This plan provides access to all the mentioned features and 10 custom objects. Platform Plus — 100$ per user every month. This plan provides access to all the mentioned features, a lighting console, and 110 custom objects. There is an App Builder in Salesforce. Here you can track competitors’ development models, display, and retail quality, and discover shared guidelines. SAP Cloud This PaaS lets you develop and deploy applications without coding using drag-and-drop capabilities. You can build apps for Web, iOS, and Android. SAP Cloud can help you streamline this process with a library of pre-built content, reusable theme patterns, and 400 built-in formula functions. There are also many connection opportunities, as this PaaS offers thousands of integrations with the REST integration wizard​. Moreover, there is a wide range of fully automated processes, such as monitoring, database and application lifecycle management, HTTP requests, etc., that you can use to manage the workflow easily. Pricing is discussed individually. There is a free trial of 30+ features for 12 months. Below there is a drag-and-drop application builder in SAP Cloud. You can see the logic of your app and make changes quickly with a visual UI that lets you preview results in real-time. Congrats, now you know what PaaS is, its advantages, types, and differences from SaaS. Also, you can choose the best Platform-as-a-Service from the 5 best ones to optimize app development in your company and boost it on the market.

Partnership marketing is a mutually beneficial collaboration between two brands. Companies with similar goals partner to increase their brand awareness, target audience, and revenue. In this article, we'll unveil the benefits of partnership marketing, consider its types, and share some tips and examples. Stay tuned! Benefits of Partnership Marketing Whether you are a startup striving to build your brand awareness, or an established brand seeking a new narrow audience to target, partnership marketing is worth your consideration. Creating a strong business alliance allows you to get inspired by some fresh ideas and use more expert resources to make your business grow. With a well-planned partnership marketing campaign, you'll be able to reap the following benefits. Reaching new audiences. This is the main advantage of partnership marketing. By collaborating with another company, you'll automatically expand your outreach. The main task within this business goal is to share the same values and provide both parties' customers with useful solutions to their problems. Increasing brand reputation. If you partner with a big and established brand, you can count on the trust of their audience. This way, you'll get access to new audiences and a positive impact on your brand reputation. The Halo effect explains this phenomenon. If the big brand manages to build trustful relationships with its customers, they won't doubt its partners. Reducing marketing costs. Partnership marketing is a great tool to save some costs on advertising. You no longer need to pay for clicks or impressions because you can promote the products of each other on mutually beneficial conditions. If you need some paid advertising tools, you can split the costs in half with your partner. Bringing more value to your audiences. When thinking of partnering with any brand, consider the value you can provide your customers with. Working with another company, you take advantage of its experience, skills, specialists, resources, opportunities. This will help you increase your expertise, create better content and offers to satisfy your unmet customers' needs. Increasing revenue. Since partnership implies a shared budget and reaching out to new audiences, you can not only reduce costs but sell more to new customers who believe that their favorite brand can cooperate with a reliable brand only. Now, that you know about the most important advantages of partnership marketing, let’s consider its types. So, you’ll be able to choose the best option for your business. Types of Partnership Marketing There are a lot of types of partnership marketing today. To make the right choice, set the goals of future collaboration and ensure that you share the same values with your potential partner. Check out the types below. Content. You can create content in collaboration with another company. It can include articles, webinars, podcasts, infographics, white papers, videos, etc. By combining your resources, you’ll be able to create unique and high-quality content. To gain even more profits, brands share the links to their partners’ content which contributes significantly to SEO as well. Affiliate marketing. This is a relationship between an advertiser and a publisher. The latter can be a website, blog, or influencer promoting the product of an advertiser via an ad, post, email campaign, etc. They receive the commission which is the percentage of sales. For example, a beauty care brand can co-operate with a beauty blog that will promote its products in relevant articles. Distribution partnership. This type of partnership marketing implies cross-promotion. One brand can give a promo code for a discount in another brand’s store, promote its new launches via email campaigns or QR codes. Influencer marketing. This is a trendy approach today. Brands collaborate with influencers from the same niche. Companies provide opinion leaders with their products and ask them for promotion in case they would prove useful. An influencer can share a discount with its following and receive any kind of reward for this cooperation. Product placement. It is similar to influencer marketing. Product placement implies including a partner’s logo or mentioning it in films, TV shows, and movies. Co-branding or joint products. This type means that two brands collaborate to create a new product or improve an existing one together. The goal is to produce a product valuable for both audiences. Sponsorship. It is a widely used type of partnership marketing that implies advertising the partner during any event. For example, sporting, media, and local sponsorships. It helps increase brand awareness and recognition. These are the most popular types of partnerships created by a lot of world-known brands today. To get the ball rolling, read on. How toConductPartnership Marketing In this section, we’ll share useful tips and several techniques of partnership marketing, so you can choose those that can help your reach your goals. Provide turnkey services. You can partner with a company that complements your solution. For example, if you are a hairdresser, you can collaborate with a makeup artist to provide fiancees with these important services. This way, women won’t be that stressed about finding all the specialists for their big day, and you can split your advertising costs. Look for partners in different industries. If you are an established brand, you might be interested in completely new audiences that you haven’t worked with before. For this purpose, you need to search for partners in parallel clusters. Still, they should not be your direct competitors. Align your goals. To build an effective and successful partnership, you should have similar goals and expectations. If one of the brands won’t be satisfied with the collaboration, it will definitely reflect on its audience, so it may cause resentment. Therefore, it’s important to agree on all the conditions in advance to stay on the safe side. Play fair. Honesty and transparency are key for a successful partnership marketing campaign. Identify the strengths of both parties and act accordingly. You should share your fresh ideas and useful resources to produce something unique. If any misunderstanding occurs, communicate with your partner to eliminate it as soon as possible. Cross-promote each other. Even if you’re going to launch a campaign together, it would a great idea to introduce your new partner to your audience. This way, your clients will have some time for research and will learn more about the value your cooperation provides them with. You can inform them about your collaboration with an email campaign or promote the partner’s products relevant to your audience. Look for a partner to build long-lasting cooperation. Avoid the rush and working with a large number of brands. Quality is more important than quantity in partnership marketing. A one-time campaign won’t bring your lots of benefits, but in case this cooperation fails, you risk ruining your relationships with a brand. So, spend some time to find the best fit for your business and negotiate your expectations and outcomes thoroughly. Now, that you know pretty much about partnership marketing, get inspired by the world-known collaborations. Examples of Successful Partnership Marketing We’ve collected several examples of world-renowned partnership marketing projects. Adidas and Kanye West World-famous rapper Kanye West collaborated with Adidas to promote a line of sneakers called Yeezy. Kanye’s popularity created a lot of buzz around Adidas, allowing the Yeezy collection to earn its cult status. In 2019, the year when this partnership campaign took place, Adidas’ earnings skyrocketed by almost 20%. BMW and Louis Vuitton This partnership was targeted at the customers from the premium segment. At first sight, these brands do not have much in common, but they collaborated around the idea of comfortable business traveling. In this co-branding story, BMW promoted its new i8 model, a luxurious and comfortable sports car, while Louis Vuitton promoted their four-piece set of suitcases and bags. Starbucks and Spotify These brands build their partnership around the idea of the so-called “music ecosystem.” Together they promoted an experience rather than particular products. In exchange for placing Spotify’s adverts on their cups, Starbucks employees were given free access to Spotify Premium, which enabled them to create customized playlists and choose music to play in the cafes. The aim of this collaboration was to popularize the idea of listening to music via a streaming service. Nike and Apple These giants started their partnership in the early 2000s when the first iPod was released. Since then, they have constantly been promoting their brands together, especially around active lifestyle and sports. For instance, Nike and Apple announced the new Apple Watch, where Nike designed hand stripes for this product. Burger King and McDonald’s This is a rare example when two fierce competitors cooperate for the good of people. Burger King (notorious for their provocative campaigns) asked their customers to buy Big Mac instead of the Whopper because McDonald’s was donating money from each Big Mac for a charity that day. As a result, this event created a lot of unprecedented buzz around these old rivals, despite the fact that some people found this idea controversial. Congratulations, now you know what partnership marketing is, learned its types, and gained more inspiration from some famous collaborations.

Outcome-based selling is a sales strategy that implies a sales rep focusing on the long-term outcomes the company’s product can bring to a client. Instead of communicating a product’s features and immediate advantages, salespeople talk about the long-term gains for prospective customers. It demonstrates how much the company is interested in clients' success and encourages customer loyalty. In this article, we’ll uncover the benefits of outcome-based selling and the process of creating its strategy. Benefits of Outcome-Based Selling Companies implement outcome-based selling because of the advantages it brings. In this section, we’ll discuss them in detail. As the shopping behavior of customers changes and evolves, marketers should be ready to adapt to these trends. Today’s sales representatives understand clients’ needs and desires and stay updated on the trends. After implementing an outcome-based selling technique, businesses can reap multiple benefits. Improve customer loyalty. Since relationship-building is one of the fundamentals of outcome-based selling, it helps show how you value customers. The technique demonstrates that you identify prospects' needs and provide relevant long-term solutions for their problems. If you communicate the value of your product to potential clients and establish trusting relationships, you can encourage customer loyalty. After understanding the real value of your product, consumers will buy from your brand. Boost the perceived value of a business. Since outcome selling is customer-focused, you can communicate the value of your brand and the necessity of your product. By contributing to the client’s success, you increase your company’s value in your customer’s eyes. Your prospects and customers will appreciate your commitment and efforts to solve their problems. Close more deals faster. Consumers will acknowledge your customized approach and solution to their problems. You can win deals faster by focusing on customers’ needs and selecting the right offer. Clients satisfied with your personalized approach will stay loyal to your brand, buy again, and recommend your company to others. Encourage repeat purchases.They will come back when you treat your customers well and solve their problems. High-quality products always make customers perform more buys. Repeat purchases will bring your big revenue. Provide maximum value for clients. By focusing on the outcomes of a product, salespeople can ensure maximum value for clients. They search for the best solutions to meet customers' needs and provide customized offers. Now that you know the advantages of outcome-based selling, it’s time to apply this marketing approach to your business. Creating an Outcome-Based Selling Strategy In this section, we’ll discuss developing an outcome-based selling strategy. We’ll unveil this marketing approach step by step so you can follow it and bring it to life with your company. Understand your buyer persona. Before talking to prospects, you need to understand your ideal customer. To approach them right, explore their needs, preferences, preferred communication channels, desires, problems, demographics, etc. This information is essential when you want to close a deal. Being attentive to your leads and showing care contributes to effective communication with potential clients. You need to clearly understand the person you are talking to. That’s why make sure to have an accurate buyer persona that covers all these crucial points. Identify customers’ needs, challenges, and goals. Familiarize yourself with every customer you need to communicate with. You should explore all the available channels and sources to find out detailed information about your potential clients. Search for data through companies’ websites, accounts on social media, and companies’ content to uncover essential information. If you find information about the financial performance of your client’s business, stock performance, and various reports, pay attention to this data. Search for a perfect solution that meets these needs. Once you find all the necessary information about customers’ needs, challenges, and goals, you need to consider how your product fits these requirements. Remember, with outcome-based selling, you focus on long-term outcomes and solutions. Potential customers should understand that your solution will help their businesses in the future. They will successfully reach the long-awaited outcome. Get ready with the references of your information. Decision-makers always seek hard insight and proof. That’s why you need to prepare the resources to refer to when they ask for this data. Ensure that your sales reps can provide potential customers with a high-level technical explanation of your product and its operation. Moreover, prepare data-backed insight, and get ready with case studies and customer testimonials. Provide outcome-based conversation. The conversation of salespeople with your leads should be compelling and engaging. Remember that your sales reps sell the product not for immediate use but for the future. Your sales team should have good storytelling skills to convey all the information and convince them of the product’s usefulness in the long term. Congrats, now you know the pros of outcome-based selling. Our guide will help you implement it for your business.

Paid media is a form of advertising thatinvolvesusing paid ad placement topromote a brand. It is an effectivetechnique to generate more traffic and increasebrand awareness. In this article, we willdiscuss why you should use paid media and how it works, explain the difference between earned, owned, and paid media, highlight the most popular paid media channels, and give some tips on how to create a paid media strategy. Why use paid media? Paid media can include social media ads, search ads, banner ads, display ads, native ads, etc. You canuse a channel that is potentially the most profitable or mix different ones for better performance. We will explain why using paid media in your marketing strategy is vital. Paid media allows you to drive more traffic.Paid ads can help you ensurea wider audience will see your content. It is one of the quickest ways to spread the word about your brand and find new customers. You can instantlyreachyour target audience. Your potential customers alreadyhang outon a certain platform. Consequently, if you advertise on this particular platform, itwill be easier for you to reach these people, engage them, and spark their interestin your business. It is easy to track your paid marketing efforts. Platforms that provide the opportunity for paid advertising also offer lead generation analytics. You can analyze this information and identify the best channels to promote your business at a reasonable price. Paid media helps increase brand awareness.Large-scale campaigns not only drive conversions but attract potential customers. We will describe how it worksin more detail in the next section. How does paid media work? Businesses pay for placing their content on other companies’ websites, social media accounts, videos, etc. Examples of paid media include paid search results, social media ads, newsletter sponsorships, and influencer marketing. The audience of these ads includesusers who have not bought anything froma company before but are potentially interested in its products or services. Typically, it targets specific consumer segments, such as sales prospects or past customers. The cost of paid media greatly depends on the channel type, ad duration, and setup if you ask someone to help you with it. Other costs include content creation, website configuration, design, production, etc. There is no surefire way to predict why one piece of content becomes popular. If you do your research, find out where most of your audience hangs out, create a paid marketing strategy, and choose the platform correctly, you will be able to increase your brand exposure. People who may have never discovered your company on their own can become your clients after seeingyour ad on different platforms. You should make potential customers believe they need your product andlet themknow you canfulfill their needs. Using paid media and company resources correctlycan help you form your earned media. There are different types of media that you can use to reach your business goals. Read more about them in the next section. The Difference Between Earned, Owned, and Paid Media It is vital to understand the difference between three types of media channels: paid, owned, and earned. Here, we will describe each one and explain how to use them to promote your business. Paid media As you remember, paid media involves posting ads on your customers’ preferred media channelsfor a certain payment. Advertising platforms help you expandyour campaign reach and increase brand awarenessusing different types of content, such as photos, videos, texts, GIFs, banners, search engine ads, collaborative content, etc. Using paid media helps you reach your target audience and find new customers. Owned Media As the name suggests, these mediaare created, promoted, and controlled bya business owner who wants to develop their company. These channels can include a product website, social media pages, company blog, and YouTube channel. The audience of owned media consists of existing customers. The main reason to have your own media channels is to build long-term and trusting relationships with the audience. You can alsobuild a landing pagethat your paid ad viewers can visit and convert. Inthiscase, conversion depends on the quality and relevance ofyourcontent. Earned Media Earned mediarefer to online word-of-mouth promotion. It is usually seen in the form of ‘viral’ content. The audience of earned mediaincludes brand fans, subscribers, and leads in the consideration stage. These people create user-generated content (UGC) and promote your businessusing word of mouth. Examples of such media include recommendations, mentions, discussions on sites, likes and comments, online reviews, and content sharing. Earned media channels form a recognizable, honest, and reliable brand image. This is the result of a well-planned marketing strategy,customers’brand awareness, and activebusiness promotion. Paid media should work in tandem with earned and owned media to help your business grow. Although each optionrequires lots of time and costs, you can still reap many benefits if you create awinning strategy andimplement it correctly. We recommend combiningpaid, owned, and earned mediain your marketing strategy to have a synergistic effect. To build an effective strategy, you need to choose the right channels. Let’s find out more about them in the next section. Paid Media Channels Here, we will concentrate on various ways you can promote your brand through paid media. The most popular channels are search engine ads, social media ads, banner ads, native ads, OOH, and DOOH ads. Let’s look at each one in more detail. 1. Search engine ads Search engine advertising is a branch of digital marketing. Ads are posted on search engines such as Google and then appear on the search engine result page (SERP). This type of advertising is a cost-effective way to promote businesses. All ads go through the ad auction before theyappear in search results. It always occurs when someone searches for something. To enter the auction, advertisers identify their keywords and state how much money they want to spend to place their ads. If the keywords you bid on are in a user’s search query, your ads enter the ad auction. Thereare a multitude of factors that influence the SERP ad placement. The two main ones are the maximum bid and the Quality Score of your ads. Your maximum bid is the biggest amount of money you are willing to pay for a click. Your Quality Score is based on the overall quality of your advertisement. Search engine advertising works based on two pricing models: Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Pay Per Impression (PPI) ads. When you use PPC ads, you pay only when a user clicks on them. To usethis model effectively, you should identify the relevant keywords and choose the right platform for advertising. When you use PPI ads, you pay each time your ad is displayed on a site, and it does not matter whether people click on it or not. Viewing PPI ads costs cheaper than clicking on PPC ones. They are usually charged per thousand impressions. You can see an example of a search engine ad below. This is the first ad that appears when youlook for a school to learn Chinese. 2. Social media ads You can create a business account onalmost every social media platform to promote your new posts or boost existing ones using one of today’smost popular ways of advertising. You can advertise to users depending on their interests, behavior, demographics, location, etc. The most popular social media for advertising now are Facebook and Instagram. They allow you to create targeted posts, stories, and reels to reach your audience. You can also promote your brand with the help of influencer marketing and native ads. Inthis case, bloggers advertise brands’ products to their followers. Businesses pay these people a negotiated amount of money or a percentage of the campaign’s profit, or some even accept gifts and goodies in exchange for an advertisement. For example, here isa Pinterest display ad that redirects users to the Instagram account of a fashion brand where potential customers can buy its products. 3. Banner ads They are also called display ads and web ads. This type of advertising is embedded into the publisher’s website in the form of an image and text, but it can also contain GIFs, videos, and interactive elements. Banner ads show up on websites for a limited period of time and lead to advertisers’ sites. You are not restricted by users’preferred socialmedia when using banner advertising. Businesses often use contextual targeting. Inthis case, you specify certain keywords and findsites to place your display ads on. You can also target users based on their interests, geographic location, language, demographics, and certain publication topics. There are a few ways to place your ad on a site. You can do thiswith the help of ad networksthat allow brokersto buy ad space and then sell it to advertisers. Another option is to go for an ad exchange, which is a digital marketplacethat enables display advertisers to buy ad inventory from ad networks. Banner ad cost is calculated according to the number of impressions and depends on its placement, size, and the audience of the website you are advertising on. An advertising campaign typically lasts for at least a month. To measure the effectiveness ofan ad, companiestrack their CTR, which isthe percentage of users that click on your ad. The efficiency ofan ad (click-through ratio) is the number of clicks divided by the number of ad impressions. Take a look at this banner ad at the bottom of the website page. When you want to watch ‘Moana’ on this site, you will see an advertisement that offers you to buy tickets to the cinema. 4. Native ads Native ads look like unpaid content, so users often do not identify them as ads. This type of advertising shows up on publisher websites as sponsored and recommended content, advertorial articles, and collaborative content. Native ads are popular across social medialike Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. According to the studycarried out by IPG Media Lab Sharethrough,native ads have more chances to become viral on social networks than display ones. Consumers look through native ads 53% more frequently than display ads, and 32% of people are ready to share such information. Have a look at thisInstagramnative adexample below. Here we can see that the blogger promotes a clothing shop that sent her a shirt and sweater. This photo looks natural, and people understand that this is an ad only from the caption. Now you know how paid media channels work and are aware of their advantages. Let’s proceed to the next sectionto discover how to combine them to create a paid media strategy. Paid Media Strategy It iscrucial that youknow the basics of marketing and sales if you want to promote your business successfully. We give some advice on how to create afoolproof paid media strategy from the first try. 1.Find out more about your audience Before starting an advertising campaign, you need to do some research. This step is vital because the success of your ad depends on the knowledge you have about your target audience. Start from these questions: What type of content do your customers prefer? What channels do they use to find goods? What topics are most likely to pique the interest of your audience? What ad formats do these people find more appealing? After having done the research, you canmove on to create ads. 2. Diversify the channels It is difficult toinstantly single outthe most effective advertising channels, but we recommend concentrating on the ones your customers use the most. However,try to diversifyyour advertising budget to try different platforms and save yourself from overspending. Determine the most effective channels, and split your budget between them. Make sure the content you promoteis channel-appropriate. 3. Use both display and native ads Consumers do not want their online experiences to be interrupted by ads, so many internet users are biased towards brands that do that. However, customers’ attitude towardsnative ads is better,as they do not contain aggressive advertising messages. Consequently, native advertising raisesyour campaign’seffectiveness and increases your potential clients’loyalty. Natural advertising does not fall into the “banner blindness” zone because it does not invade users’ personal space and fits intoany platform format rather organically. Consumers receive the needed information and do not notice the difference between the plain and promoted content. Moreover, users cannot blocktheseads. Check out this ad for a clothing shop. The influencer made a photo on her own, so it looks native and does not cause banner blindness. On the other hand, display ads are eye-catching and visually appealing. They increase your potential customers’brand awareness and provide more remarketing opportunities.Take a look at thisApple display ad example. According to WordStream, it was one of the most effective ads in 2020. As you can see, there are bothbenefits and disadvantages to these two types of advertising. 4.Partner with influencers Using influencers’ content in your ads is one of the types of native advertising.These people have a large audience who trust them and often buy products thatbloggers promote. Find creators who have an active audience and produce amazing content. Check their reached accounts and content interactions. Work only with experts in your niche. Choose bloggers who have the same values as you do and a trusting relationship with their audiences. For instance, let’s takethe collaboration between Lady Gaga and Dom Pérignon as our example. They created a special limited-edition product, and now Gaga promotes it on her page as an influencer. 5. Promote user-generated content User-generated content is original content created by your audience. It is a type of earned media that you can use to advertise your product. The most popular examples of UGC are photos of your product, online reviews, mentions, and recommendations. Consumers trust reviews from other people. Consequently, happy customers are the best advocatessince they can give plenty of unique feedback based on their experiences with your brand and provide social proof. Check out an example of UGC content on the page of a fashion brand called CULTNAKED. They use photos made by their customers on their own page for promotion. 6. Create a video Video is becoming more and more popular in advertising. According to research conducted by Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing Survey, 93% of marketers who use video say that it’s an important part of their marketing strategy. Moreover, 87% of video marketers reported that video ads give them a positive ROI. You can create video ads to promote instructions, guides, unboxings, and reviews. Work with your in-house team, hire an agency, or partner with an influencer to create high-performing video content. Congrats, now you are ready to create a successful paid media strategy. If you are interested in your brand promotion, LIKE.TGoffers lots of opportunities, such as sending promotional email campaigns, creating chatbotsand landing pages, and automating your sales with the CRM system. We provide 24/7 support, high quality, and unlimited free pricing plans.

Online reputation management (ORM) is establishing and managing a positive perception of a business. It covers encouraging positive reviews, tracking brand mentions, and responding to users’ comments on social media, product review websites, and other platforms. ORM enables you to improve the perception of your brand, encourage trust, build credibility, establish visibility, gain authority, and boost sales. In this article, you’ll learn why reputation management is important and how to manage it. We’ll also unveil 5 ways to improve this measure. Why is online reputation management important? A positive impression online is a must for every business that strives to be successful. Online brand reputation management helps you adjust the way the audience perceives your brand. Besides a positive attitude towards your company, you can establish trust and credibility and build authority in your market. However, a good ORM isn’t just a perfect image on social media. It’s a global work of your team that covers all channels you broadcast your message through. Product review websites, online communities, social platforms, and other online places for open discussions can influence your company. That’s why you need to develop a strategy that will cover all these channels and monitor information about your product and brand in general. Establishing and maintaining a positive narrative about your company is a challenging task. Yet you can do it successfully with the right online reputation management strategy. For instance, if you have one dissatisfied client, you can lose him. However, it’ll be very problematic for you if this person leaves a negative review on a site like TripAdvisor, Amazon Customer Reviews, or Yelp or comments under your post on social media networks. It can influence your brand reputation, credibility, transparency, and authority. To prevent that from happening, ORM comes into action. With its help, you can instantly track all brand mentions, respond to negative comments, and solve customer issues immediately. It’ll help you avoid more complex consequences that impact the profitability and reputation of your business. By showing customers your care and trying to solve their problems instantly, turn comments into an advantage. Trust, transparency, and sales are the things you can earn if you manage to respond to negative comments, bring your arguments, acknowledge your mistakes, and solve problems when necessary. Now that you know about the importance of ORM, it’s time to unveil how to manage it. How to manage your online reputation? If you don’t want dissatisfied customers to influence your reputation by sharing negative reviews, you need to know how to manage your reputation online. In this section, we’ll uncover some important steps for you to consider during ORM. Let’s dive in. Analyze your online reputation. The first step you should take is to research your brand reputation. During this audit, you need to find out what people say about your company and product. This way, you’ll be able to figure out what works with them and what isn’t doing well. Check out all the channels you use: social media networks, your website, and third-party sites. Find all the necessary information by opening an incognito browser window and searching for your brand name, its ratings, reviews, and comments. You can find the information faster using a special monitoring tool like Semrush or Social Searcher. After collecting all the data, you can make conclusions about the way customers perceive your company. Develop a strategy. When creating an online reputation strategy, select areas you need to improve. Identify and focus on the urgent tasks first. Once you decide to manage your online reputation across several channels, it can take time for your team to do it at a time. That’s why it’s critical to develop rules and create guidelines. Communication guides enable employees to stay consistent and use the same brand voice across various platforms. They also help prioritize tasks when several team members work on the same task. By developing communication guidelines, you can navigate your workers how to respond to customers’ comments, reviews, and feedback. Define which tasks are urgent and need instant reaction and those with secondary importance. Build your brand’s tone of voice and mention it in your guidelines. Your content creators and managers should know how to write articles and answers to customers in compliance with your company. Keep an eye on brand mentions. Every brand owner should know what people say about his company. Monitoring brand mentions lets you quickly respond to customers’ negative reviews and prevent the problem from escalating. If you answer too long, it might influence your reputation. There are two ways to track brand mentions: Google Alerts and special social media monitoring tools. Consider setting up Google Alerts for your company name and get emails once there are new results related to your topic. You can also use a special tool like Sprout Social, Brandwatch, or Mentionlytics. These platforms prevent you from searching websites with your brand mentions and analyzing them. Social media networks cover statements in blog posts, social media posts, news articles, and forum comments. Come up with a crisis management strategy.A crisis can happen at any time with any business. You need to develop a crisis management strategy to deal with the problems that might arise. It should cover the steps team members should take to overcome specific problems. Cover the ways to respond to social media mentions. When developing a crisis strategy, consider using social monitoring platforms, track industry trends, identify the most powerful channels, assign tasks to people responsible for specific areas, and draft responses. Encourage clients to leave their reviews and comments on your product. You need positive customer feedback to gain trust, credibility, and authority. Besides, you’ll be able to establish an online presence and visibility. Ensure your clients can leave reviews on product review websites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Prospects will notice positive feedback from previous customers when they consider your product. Good customer reviews influence leads’ decisions and encourage them to make purchases. Allow clients to leave comments under product cards on your website. Ask them for a review once they receive and try your product. You can send an email campaign reminding them about feedback. Create a professional email campaign with LIKE.TG in minutes. Take care of negative reviews. Since negative feedback prevents prospects from choosing a product, it’s essential to manage them. First, you need to identify the level of urgency to provide responses. Take care of negative feedback that emerges at the top of SERP. Search for negative reviews on all platforms your company appears on: Google Business Profile, social media, Trustpilot, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and many others. Secondly, once you find all the negative feedback, respond to the most problematic ones first. Answer comments fast and be polite. You need to show your respect and care to clients and strive to solve their problems. If your company is responsible for the issue, acknowledge your mistakes and say you’ll eliminate the problem immediately. Answer comments under your posts on social media to solve problems in public. It will show potential customers that you are approachable. Make sure that your content is branded. Stay consistent with your branding. All the content you share on your website, social media, and third-party websites should comply with your branding. Your messaging and brand tone of voice should be the same everywhere. It makes your company recognizable. Branding covers all aspects of your business, including branded searches, responses to customer feedback, communication on social media networks, and responses on Yelp, TripAdvisor, or Trustpilot. Partner with the right opinion leaders. When collaborating with influencers, keep in mind your and their reputation. Choose opinion leaders wisely, including their reputation. Their mistakes can make your online brand reputation hurt. Since you can’t control the content of other individual posts, it can be a problem in the future. For instance, there are many scandals connected to celebrities posting inappropriate and sometimes very offensive content. The brand can also become a victim of this scenario. Now that you know how to manage your reputation, it’s time to figure out how to improve it. Let’s check out the 5 ways. 5 Ways to Improve Your Online Reputation Management Reputation is a very fragile concept, especially at a time when all the negative comments are visible and easily accessible on social networks. Since every negative review impacts your company, we’ll show you how to prevent it with ORM. We’ll unveil some tips to improve it. Track social media networks. To have a perfect online reputation, having accounts on various social media platforms is not enough. For greater success of your brand, you need to monitor and update your social media profiles. Consider using special social media monitoring tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Agorapulse. Strive to regularly post on your social networks and increase your organic following. Share Stories, Reels, and posts to expand your reach and communicate with your prospects. Reply to comments under posts and encourage discussions to increase activity on your social media. Let customers leave reviews on special platforms. Positive online reviews are powerful tools for influencing the decisions of potential customers. Most prospects search the internet to find out whether a product or brand receives positive reviews. They look through product review websites and comments under your posts to find the necessary information. If your product has many positive reviews, it increases the possibility of a person buying it. According to statistics, 95% of clients read online reviews before purchasing. Positive reviews increase trust in a brand, and more leads buy from businesses that have reviews from previous customers. Write for your blog. Online reputation depends on all online platforms, including your blog. Blogging allows you to build authority in your industry and show your expertise. Share useful content with users to help solve their problems and encourage them to purchase your product. By publishing quality content, you can gain the trust of your audience, establish a strong online presence, and build a community around your brand. Reply to negative customers’ comments. You need to be wise when answering comments under your social media posts or product reviews. There’s no place for criticism or discussions with customers. You need to be short and clear in your answers. Thank clients for their feedback and promise to eliminate the issue (if it exists). When customers have some problems, solve them. Use this information to improve your product and prevent this situation from happening again. Treat your clients with respect and avoid any negative discussions and debates. Avoid participating in debates. As a professional, you shouldn’t be affected by criticism or hate. Don’t participate in discussions with users under your posts or on discussion platforms. It can harm your online reputation. Always try to solve the problem offline to provide real value to customers who experienced problems with your product. Congrats, now you know what online reputation management is and why it’s essential. Hope that our guide will help establish and maintain a positive brand reputation online.

Organic reach is a social media metric used to assess the number of unique accounts (people) that have seen a company’s post or another piece of content you shared on social media networks like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or Tiktok. It doesn't cover the number of accounts reached with paid advertising and other paid promotional tools. In this article, you’ll learn why organic reach is essential and get to know the difference between organic and paid reach. We’ll also uncover how to boost organic reach on social media platforms. Why is organic reach important? It helps brands establish brand awareness, gain new prospects, increase customer base, encourage more conversions, and build long-lasting relationships with clients. With 4.9 billion users, social media platforms have become the perfect channels for communicating with potential clients and promoting your products to a wide audience. Social media allows you to expand your reach and enter new markets. Organic reach is a metric to evaluate how many accounts you managed to reach and promote your products organically. The more people see your post, Story, or Reel on social media, the bigger your target audience. As a result, you can experience an increase in prospects interested in your product, more conversions, and better brand recognition. By gaining followers, you target people that comply with your buyer persona, attract leads, and reach new audiences and markets. Creating organic content for social media is a cost-effective way of generating leads. The bigger the organic reach, the more prospects you can obtain without spending costs on customer acquisition. When you have many interactions with your brand on social media, such as likes, comments, and shares, you can establish trust and credibility. Since prospects pay attention to the visibility of your brand and the comments people leave, it might work for you. This fact will instantly influence prospects’ decisions when they consider your brand. Moreover, it means you have a strong community that adores and supports your company. Now that you know why you should care about your organic reach on social media, it’s time to find out the difference between organic and paid reach. Organic Reach vs Paid Reach In this section, we’ll make the difference between organic and paid reach clear. You’ll find out how to attain business success with these two approaches. Organic reach is a social media metric encompassing the number of unique accounts the brand interacts with by using posts, Reels, Live, IGTV, and Stories on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok without paid marketing tools. It enables you to build brand awareness, reach more prospects, establish trust and credibility, increase conversions, and attract more followers. Organic reach is an essential metric that empowers you to interact with leads and customers without spending additional costs on promotion. Posts and reels are promoted organically because of the likes, comments, and shares. Paid reach is a metric that allows you to measure the number of unique accounts that see your content promoted through paid marketing tools (paid social media ads or sponsored content). Paid ads help reach, interact with, and convert potential customers. Paid advertising allows your brand to communicate with prospects who haven’t interacted with your company yet and educate them about your product. It’s an easy way to reach new people and build a bigger customer base. Now that the difference is clear, it’s time to uncover some helpful tips for increasing your organic reach on Instagram and Facebook. How to increase organic reach on social media? You can reach potential customers without having to spend advertising dollars. In this section, we’ll unveil some tips for increasing organic reach on Instagram and Facebook. Instagram Instagram users make it a powerful marketing tool and platform for communication with the target audience. You can promote your product through the network using effective methods organically. Let’s find out what you need to do to boost your organic reach and attain key business goals. 1. Use hashtags specific to your industry With Instagram hashtags, you can categorize or label content and make it more discoverable. They enable you to reach a wider audience that has never interacted with you. Even more, these people are already interested in the industry your product is related to. Consider using hashtags in the caption of your Instagram post, Reel, or Story. As a result, you’ll expand your audience. Make up a list of hashtags relevant to your industry and use them whenever you need it. Check out how a cafe uses hashtags to its advantage. 2. Publish posts consistently Consistency is rule number one when it comes to publishing posts on Instagram. To increase visibility and engagement, consider sharing posts once a day. However, you can still adjust your schedule based on your brand and audience’s preferences. Instagram algorithms will positively influence your brand if you post quality content regularly. Consider using the Insights feature if you hold a business Instagram account. This analytics empowers you with information about your audience, including when they are most active. 3. Create Reels Reels are short 15-second videos that contain important information for users. Since Instagram prioritizes Reels content, it’s important to incorporate this marketing tool. Besides, reels are shareable, so customers can send your short videos to their friends and family. This way, they can promote your account for free. You can share your products in a creative way and increase engagement. In the screenshot below, you can see a Reel from Rhode. 4. Make Stories Instagram Stories is a great tool for reaching several business goals: improve brand visibility, generate new prospects, interact with existing followers, improve brand transparency, and receive feedback on your products. With this marketing tool, you can implement real-time marketing and share real-time videos about your product. Charlotte Tilbury informs about the new product release through its Instagram Story. 5. Conduct giveaways You can draw attention to your brand and encourage prospects to participate with giveaways. Your current customers can become brand advocates and share information about your giveaway with their friends and family. As a result, your post will have a wider organic reach. Besides, it will promote brand awareness. More people will get to know your brand and explore it. Your post will have more impressions and followers. Giveaways allow you to increase your customer base and boost conversions. Below you can see an example of a giveaway. 6. Write a good bio and include a link to your website When users look through posts in their feeds, they can come across your content. If you sell products and want to develop your brand, having a proper bio is crucial. Make sure to include the name of your company, your industry, and a short description of your company. Remember that adding a link to your company website is a must. This is how prospects can find out more about your brand and product. Consider building a bio link page for your social media networks with LIKE.TG for free. This way, you’ll be able to house all essential links to your company on a single custom landing page. Below you can see how a good bio should look like. 7. Use IGTV IGTV empowers you to improve the visibility of your brand and products, educate your audience, and entertain prospective customers. You can build a following base and a strong community around your brand. You can establish trust and credibility by providing answers to users’ questions and ensuring them with quality content. These videos, up to one hour long, help you explain all the details about your product and company in general. You can introduce your values, mission, and vision. Below you can see how Mejuri uses IGTV to introduce their jewelry to potential customers. 8. Collaborate with influencers According to statistics, 61% of users listen to and trust recommendations from opinion leaders. Influencer marketing contributes to organic reach growth. Cooperation with opinion leaders is a great way of reaching people in your industry who haven’t interacted with your brand yet. Influencer recommendations can encourage leads to explore your company’s account and the products you offer. If your product is interesting to them, they can consider a purchase. Below you can see an example of a paid partnership of Selena Gomez and Puma. Facebook Facebook is also an effective marketing platform for promoting your product to a wide audience. It’s time to review some useful techniques to reach more unique accounts organically on Facebook. 1. Optimize your content for the platform Content created for Facebook differs from the one you write for Instagram. That’s why you need to optimize posts for the platform. First, think of unique captions that differ from your Instagram posts. Don’t use irrelevant hashtags. Secondly, avoid sharing links that lead to the external source. It’s better to keep people on Facebook. You can use content formats that don’t require users to follow the link. Add infographics, statistics, and videos that are placed on your page. Thirdly, encourage discussions. Consider sharing posts where users can share their thoughts and points of view. This way, you’ll introduce your brand and increase impressions. Below you can see how Burger King encourages comments under its Facebook post organically. 2. Develop a schedule for content posting Analyze the time of the highest user activity to identify the best timing for content posting. Work with your team to create a schedule and publish posts consistently. It will enable you to ensure the visibility of your content and prospects’ interaction with your brand. 3. Create videos Educational video is a great tool for gaining views, establishing brand awareness, and bringing value to customers. That’s why consider developing videos related to your industry. They will solve customer problems and encourage purchasing with your company. Videos are shareable, so they can go viral among your potential customers fast. Moreover, the information in the video is easier to understand. In the screenshot below, you can see an example of a video Kayak shares with subscribers. 4. Use Facebook Live When you go live with your subscribers, it allows you to engage with them in real-time. Exposure and strong relationships with customers are two more benefits live can bring. You can livestream directly through Facebook. Let users share their reactions and comments. 5. Share posts on Instagram to Facebook When you create content for Instagram, you can make use of platforms’ features and instantly post content to two networks at once. It will help you reduce the workload on your team and stay engaged with your target audience. Congrats, now you know what organic traffic is and why it’s essential. Hope that the tips above will help you reach more unique accounts on Facebook and Instagram. LIKE.TG will help you create a quality bio link page that contains all of your priority links and communication channels and house them on a single custom landing page. Consider using chatbots for Instagram and Facebook to improve customer satisfaction.

Confirming an order is an important part of any business-customer relationship.Companies send this transactional email to provide the customers with detailed information about their order. AfterregisteringwithLIKE.TG, you can send order confirmation emails automatically without much effort. In the video below, Alex nails the order confirmation routine. Check it out to set up an effective order confirmation flow! Along with other automated messages like welcome emails, thank you emails, or confirmation emails, an order confirmation email is considered to be not just a formality or a tool to inform your customers about the status of their order. It is also a great opportunity to build a rapport with your clients. Personalization is a great technique that can be used to make your order confirmation email look and feel friendlier. When to Send Your Order Confirmation Email This email should be issued when a customer places an order on your company’s website. With this email,you confirm that you have accepted a client's order. Email itself remains one of the most effective tools used by businesses to maintain a healthy and lucrativepattern of communication with their clients and, most importantly, their returning customers. Order confirmation emails are no exception. They can be used both to serve as a tool to provide your customers with vital information concerning their order and to lay the ground for possible future interaction with your brand. How to Send Automatic Order Confirmation Emails There's no need to have any technical skills or a programmer in your team to send these emails. Let's confirm subscribers' orders! Provide your customers with special care and set transactional email sending after a user places an order. Leave the technical side of things to LIKE.TG. Register and send order confirmation email! RegisterwithLIKE.TG. Use our drag and drop editor to design your order confirmation email template. Go to Automation 360 and create an event — order placement. Create an email automation flow. Track conversions. Before constructing an order confirmation email template, it is a sound idea to plan what details you plan to include. What to Include in an Order Confirmation Email It is best to keep a balance between brevity and friendliness. Here is a list of the essential transaction details to be included in an order confirmation email. order number an item (product or service) quantity price (per item) billing/shipping address payment methods shipping method and cost estimated delivery time (optional) Crafting an email template is not that of a difficult task, but if your imagination well has run dry, get some inspiration from the collection of free responsive email templates. Use LIKE.TG’s drag and drop editor to design your emails that cut through the noise. Once your email template is ready, and the email workflowis set up, your customers will receive their order confirmation emails after they push that ‘place my order’ button on the order confirmation page. Order Confirmation Page An order confirmation page is a page within a company’s website, often referred to as ‘shopping cart,’ where customers can see the list of items/services they opted to buy from the company. A typical order confirmation page includes a list of items, their quantity, the price per item, shipping options, and cost as well as the total cost of the order. Order Confirmation Email Examples The email below is sent by Airbnb to confirm a reservation. The company provides all the vital details including the time and date, check-in time, address, reservation code, and an amount to be paid. What is good about this email is that a customer can change his reservation and contact a personal host anytime. In addition, Airbnb provides important information about the house rules and amenities as well as offers five unique things to do in San Francisco. This order confirmation email is sent by Tens. They used personalization to inform a user that they’ve received his order. The client can check its number, the items ordered, total price, card number, billing information, and the address. DoorDash sent the email below to inform a client about order confirmation. This food delivery service allows users to check the dishes ordered, find out the time of delivery as well as monitor it in real-time. Send an order confirmation email.

Outbound marketing is traditional marketing, which appeared long before the invention of the Internet, and it is used up to this day. Watch this video to find out the difference between inbound and outbound marketing! The most popular outbound marketing channels are telemarketing (cold calls), direct mail (physical mailing), advertising in the media (TV, radio, printed, outdoor, banner advertising, etc.), exhibitions, etc. Outbound marketing is also called distracting, as communications via the channels mentioned above are rarely expected: people watch TV, listen to the radio and read magazines, not for advertising. Their goal is exciting and useful information (content). Features of Outbound Marketing: Brings a quick result; Due to its traditional nature, this strategy is easily perceived by the persons who administrate budget; Due to its "product-orientation," outbound marketing works only on those customers who plan to purchase very soon. To increase the flow of customers, you need to increase the budget proportionally. Consumers perceive advertising and other types of outbound marketing less and less, so to increase the "penetrative power" of the message and to circumvent the mental filters of the consumer, it is necessary to attract expensive specialists: marketers, advertisers, PR specialists, etc. High competition - everyone "does it." High entry possibilities for such types of marketing as TV advertising, media advertising on visited portals. So, outbound marketing involves significant expenses. Besides, it provides consumers with little education, and content is not always of high value.

Opt-in is an inbound marketing approach whereby a marketer solicits a potential customer’s permission to send them promotional or other types of content about a brand. It is also known as permission marketing and can be single opt-in or double opt-in. Sending several unsolicited messages to a prospect’s email can hurt a sender's reputation and image. But unlike outbound marketing strategies where marketers advertise to the market as a whole, opt-in is a more targeted, effective, and ethical approach. In opt-in marketing, prospects agree to receive a company’s content. This content can contain advertising, newsletters, offers, and so forth. Why is email opt-in important? Build a mailing list fast Help tailor promotional content to meet Increases open rate Make it simple to follow up on a buyer In the eyes of potential customers, there are a lot of things that can be regarded as spam. These may be emails they do not want, emails they do not expect in their inbox, and anything they subscribed to but later decided to opt-out. Therefore, e-commerce owners need to up their marketing game to avoid being blacklisted. The good news is that using opt-in can benefit a business’s marketing in several ways. Build a mailing list fast. Opt-in, specifically single opt-in, helps marketers to create big mailing lists quickly. Single opt-in is a one-step process, and prospects can register even from third-party websites. Help tailor promotional content to meet subscribers’ interests. When prospects opt-in for a company’s emails, the marketer is in a better position to predict the type of content that appeals to each subscriber. Increases open rate. Most promotional emails end up in the trash without being opened. But with opt-in, a brand can enjoy high open rates of sent emails. Make it simple to follow up on a buyer.Marketers can follow up on customers who have made purchases to either up-sell or cross-sell to them. On that note, LIKE.TG has a convenient feature know as Automation 360 that allows online business people to automatically send welcome emails, thank you emails, offer discounts on future purchases or ask for feedback after a customer makes a purchase. Using Subscription Forms in an Opt-in Marketing Approach A signup form is the best way to encourage prospective clients to opt-in for email marketing messages. This form typically prompts a site’s visitor to enter their email address to receive marketing emails. Subscription forms can be placed on any page of a website and can have different designs. To create a subscription form that prompts many visitors to subscribe, register with LIKE.TG. How to Setup Subscription Forms with LIKE.TG Go to subscription forms Select “Form Builder” or Form Templates Add a mailing list or create one Choose elements to add to the form Set up design parameters Apply Changes, save, and get the code LIKE.TG offers a convenient and easy-to-use editor that helps users build custom subscription forms. Four types of forms suit different users’ needs: Embedded form Floating form Pop-up window Fixed form To get started creating a subscription form using LIKE.TG, you should: Go to subscription forms. On the LIKE.TG homepage, click on products then subscription forms. On the subscription forms page, click on “create custom subscription form” to build subscription forms for a website. Select “Form Builder” or Form Templates. Pick a template form and edit it or create a new form using LIKE.TG's form builder with a wide choice of layouts, colors, images, and fonts. Add a mailing list or create one. One can add an existing mailing list that LIKE.TG will update with new subscribers, or create a new list. Plus, it is also possible to add several lists at one time. Choose elements to add to the form. There are many elements one can add to a form using our form builder. They include an input box, checkbox, radio buttons, drop-down lists, text, images, and spacer. Set up design parameters. Depending on your preferences, LIKE.TG allows you to specify settings such as width, background, borders, font, and design the corners of your form. Apply Changes, save, and get the code. Once everything is setup, click on “Apply Changes” followed by “Save and Get Code.” Double Opt-in Marketing Technique Double opt-in is when a user signs up for email marketing messages, and an automated email with a link is sent to the subscriber to confirm the subscription. This email typically requires the user to click on the link and confirm that they are the owner of the email and that they agreed to join the mailing list. What are the benefits of double opt-in? A better quality mailing list Opportunity for immediate interaction Low unsubscribe rate Better click-through rate A better quality mailing list. Double opt-in helps marketers gain high-quality addresses. Plus, there is a smaller risk of retaining inactive and non-existent addresses on a mailing list. Opportunity for immediate interaction. Online marketers can communicate with subscribers through confirmation emails to talk about their brand or provide product/service offers. Low unsubscribe rate. With double opt-in, a smaller number of prospects are likely to unsubscribe from a brand’s marketing emails than with single opt-in since these users expressed their wish to receive emails from you twice. Better click-through rate and conversion. Online businesses that utilize a double opt-in approach record higher open rates, click-through rates, and ROI. Confirmation Emails with Double Opt-in Marketing A confirmation email is the most effective way of carrying out double opt-in. It involves sending a triggered email to a visitor who subscribes to marketing emails through a subscription form. The email confirms that a customer has subscribed to a brand’s marketing content. By using LIKE.TG, an online marketer or business owner can create and send subscribers automatic confirmation emails with ease. How to Setup Confirmation Emails with LIKE.TG LIKE.TG is an easy-to-use email service that allows users to create subscription forms for websites, confirmation emails, thank you pages for double opt-in, and a host of other things. For double opt-in confirmation or thank you emails, you should do the following: Create a subscription form using LIKE.TG's Form Builder. Use a template or form builder, create a signup form to get new subscribers. Make a notification about a subscription. In the form options, enter a subscription notification title. Fill in the text of the confirmation email. Add a corporate/registered domain address in the “From address” section. You can then edit the email text by inserting code or using an HTML editor. Enter a URL for the Confirmation Page. The last step of creating a confirmation email using LIKE.TG is choosing a page where the subscriber is redirected after clicking the confirmation link. Create a subscription form

Organic traffic is the traffic you receive from visitors who choose your site in the search results after typing a query in Google or Bing. It helps boost sales, ROI and increase the number of customers. In the video below,Alex reveals powerful strategies to boost your website's organic traffic. Check it out! In this article, we’ll unveil the reasons to keep an eye on organic traffic and compare organic and paid traffic. We’ll also explore the 7 tips to improve your traffic and get to know how to analyze it. Why is organic traffic important? People can land on your website in different ways. Some come naturally from the search results and others from PPC ads. Organic traffic targets the right people and brings prospective customers to your site for free. To make a query in a search engine, users key the words into the search bar with specific intent. They seek to find accurate answers to their questions or solutions to their problems. The listed search engines provide results based on the searches people make. Your company and product can become a long-awaited solution. If you resonate with their needs, you can convert users into clients. Teams develop and bring to life various SEO strategies to bring more people to their websites and boost organic traffic. Unlike paid ads, organic traffic is free and brings in new leads. The more visitors your site has, the bigger the possibility of obtaining new prospects and consumers. As a result, your revenue grows. Besides, websites with high organic traffic are considered the most trusted sources with high-quality content. So, you’ll have the opportunity to improve your brand reputation. Now when the importance is clear, let’s identify the peculiarities of two different types of traffic to your site. Organic Traffic vs Paid Traffic Sometimes, it might be confusing to find the difference between these two types of traffic and how each of them impacts your business. Let’s figure out how each of them works. Organic traffic refers to the searchers who come to a website from a link they get after typing a query in Google. This traffic is free. Users enter special combinations of keywords into the search and look through the search results to find the sites with the most relevant and quality answers. So it’s critical to identify users’ keywords and use them. If your company provides helpful information and a solution to the problem, searchers will click a link to your website and land on it. Most often, people choose links in the top rankings of Google. They are at the top because they comply with SEO principles and quality. Paid traffic refers to the users who come to your website from paid ads. Since many people click the first links in search results, companies often pay to appear at the top. You can easily spot the little yellow box “Ad” near the title and understand that this is a paid ad. However, most people ignore it when they need to find materials fast. Many brands choose PPC ads rather than improving their SEO strategies since it’s time-consuming. In this case, they use AdWords to place an ad on Google. In a nutshell, organic traffic is free, and people land on your website when they choose your company in the unpaid search results. On the contrary, paid traffic requires you to pay money to place ads on Google and emerge at the top of search results with the “Ad” sign. Now you know the main difference, so it’s time to uncover 7 strategies to boost traffic from search results. 7 Ways to Increase Organic Traffic to Your Site Tactics that help boost organic traffic are numerous. We’ve prepared a list of ideas you can consider to boost your traffic. Make changes in the non-performing content. You can’t always create articles that have an excellent performance. Some fail to deliver the necessary conversions, organic traffic, referrals, etc. To avoid an unpleasant impact on your website’s reputation, you need to identify such articles and improve them. Run an analysis to identify the best-performing and non-performing content. Then, compare these materials, improve or rewrite the underperforming. Pay attention to featured snippets. These are pieces of content such as paragraphs, definitions, lists from websites that appear in Google. Your organic traffic increases if brief excerpts from your articles appear in a featured snippet. You need to add headers, include “how-tos” in your articles, leverage analytics tools to unveil how competitors can emerge in snippets, and conduct keyword research to appear in featured snippets of the necessary search engine. Besides, strive to provide users with clear and accurate answers. Write intriguing headlines. The first thing that draws attention when users search for relevant content is the headline. That’s why you need to choose the headline carefully. It should be short, eye-catching, intriguing, sweet, and clear. Implement guest blogging. Guest blogging is a perfect way to bring new readers to your website and eventually customers. Write articles to publish them on reputable and relevant websites related to your industry. People who find your materials valuable will land on your website and explore other articles. If they consider your product or service the right solution, they can become your clients. Remember about mobile-first design. The usage of PCs for online shopping is in the past, so it’s time to prepare your website for mobile users. Check if smartphone owners can use your website easily. Create an excellent website design and clear intuitive navigation so that customers can see every necessary element on their small screens. Don’t forget about whitespace, a visible CTA button, and website speed. Every additional second to your website load time decreases your conversion rates. Think over the SEO strategy. Improve your content and images for search engines. Use internal links to bring users to your new articles. Meta descriptions play an important role in landing new users on your website. Consider blogging. You can increase the number of keywords fast if you start blogging. If you do everything wisely and publish expert articles on the related topics, you can eventually become an industry leader. You’ll increase trust, credibility, and transparency. As a result, people who look for the related information will also explore your product. To resonate with the audience, you shouldn't focus only on your product or service but strive to help users find answers. If you decide to start blogging, you need to research and analyze the keywords competitors rank for. Decide which topics are the most relevant for you and the searchers. Make a schedule for when you should create and post your content. Do it regularly. Now that you are aware of ways to enhance your traffic naturally, you need to figure out how to analyze it. How to analyze organic traffic? It’s a must for a company to track its organic traffic. Changes can indicate some problems, for example, an algorithm change or penalty. You should immediately solve to preserve your ranking on search engines. Leveraging Google Analytics regularly is a must. Dashboards, custom reports, and segments are the tools necessary for data analysis. You can use custom reports to explore organic search analysis in report view and dashboards to see this information in widgets. Segments enable you to filter all your data and see only organic traffic. To sum it up, organic traffic influences the success of your business. Together with traffic, new customers come to your business and bring your big profits. That’s why make sure to make everything possible to drive your organic traffic and contribute to your company's growth.

Online market research is a process of collecting information owned by your company and published online by other sources. During the research, you learn about your clients, industry, and competitors and seek improvement. Gathering this data enables you to explore the characteristics of your target audience, understand their needs and problems, and drive sales. It helps launch new products, reach new markets, and improve business performance. In this article, we’ll unveil why brands need online marketing research and review online market research methods. We’ll also provide you with a guide on conducting such research and the tools you can use for it. Why do you need to conduct online market research? Online market research helps startups and established companies. You can build a new brand from scratch or run an existing business smoothly with research. The information available online can be diverse. You can find data about your industry (how it’s better to enter the market, the level of competition, and what products are in need), target audience (their needs, preferences, requirements, and problems), and competitors (explore their marketing strategy, promotional approaches, and things that make them succeed). Every business owner faces problems when launching a startup. It can happen due to a lack of information about the market, target audience, customer demand, or product quality. There are many reasons why clients might prefer other brands. However, with a proper online data analysis, you can run a new brand effectively and reach your business goals. After completing online research, you can obtain materials crucial for a successful business. This is a must to understand your customers and the market you want to enter. Besides helping new companies, online market research allows existing businesses to improve. Research is an effective technique for business owners who face difficulties in sales, lower product demand, customer churn, etc. With proper market analysis, you can identify the issues your company has. Research enables you to access and evaluate the work of your competitors and find out why they succeed. By analyzing their strategies and positioning, you can improve your marketing approach and other areas that influence customer decisions. As a result, you’ll get more sales, reduce churn rate, and improve customer retention. In addition, you can find new business opportunities for your company. For instance, launch new products in high demand, enter the market in new cities or countries, or incorporate new business models. Research helps you understand the behavior of your customers. By analyzing how your customers shop, you can improve the usability of your website and user experience. As a result, higher customer satisfaction and lower cart abandonment. Now that you know why online market research is essential, it’s time to review the methods you can implement. Online Market Research Methods There are four groups of online market research to find the necessary information for your business. Let’s review each of them in detail to have a full understanding of these methods. Primary market research. The information a company obtains isn’t in public access. A business is a full owner of the data its team receives. Business owners get the necessary information through online surveys, focus groups, and interviews. You can obtain information about your target audience (preferences, problems, complaints, feedback, product trial, observations, etc.). Secondary market research. When conducting secondary market research, companies can find data in open access on the internet. It’s freely available and cheaper than primary research. Competitor websites, media outlets, reports, and more are secondary information sources for brands. Qualitative market research. This type focuses on the target audience's feelings when using your product. It’s usually leveraged before launching a new product to understand customers’ feelings, emotions, thoughts, and points of view. When conducting qualitative market research, companies choose small groups of people. They ask questions through surveys, interviews, forums, and focus groups to receive customer insights. Brands incorporate this research when they want to market a new product or feature and find out what customers think of it. It can be done before the launch or after the trial period. Quantitative market research. This type relies on data with numbers. Business owners use primary and secondary data to predict patterns and trend spots. It’s usually presented as raw data, graphics, tables, and charts. A survey is the most common type of qualitative market research. As a rule, it includes answer options with a numeric value. Now that you understand the four online market research methods, let’s dive into the process step by step. How to conduct online market research? Since online market research is crucial for building a successful brand, we’ve decided to provide you with a guide on how to do it. Stick to our instructions to get all the necessary information about your industry, target audience, and competition. Let’s dive in. Consider keyword research. With keyword research, you’ll determine whether the demand for the product you want to offer is high. This way, you’ll be able to predict the success of your product within the market. Although high search volumes don’t guarantee high sales, they still can show that the interest among users is real. Keyword research is also essential for developing an effective inbound strategy. This way, you can figure out opportunities for generating organic traffic to your website by optimizing your content. Use tools like Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner, or Keyword Tool to conduct the research. Analyze competitors. You need to conduct a complete market analysis to enter the market for the first time. This analysis should include research on competitors. Before running a new business with a specific offering, ensure there’s no high competition in your niche. Identify your main rivals in ecommerce and online marketplaces. After listing your main competitors, consider exploring and analyzing their business model, sales funnel, and website. This information will help you understand their strategy better and find out how they managed to succeed. With online research, you’ll be able to uncover their advertising strategy, website design, content marketing strategy, pricing, return policy, etc. All these facts will help you build a brand customers will be happy with. Use the information obtained to your advantage. Explore consumer trends. During product research, you should identify and understand the latest consumer trends. When researching, determine the character of product interest (declining, stable, seasonal, all-year, or growing). Consider using special tools like Google Trends. Type the keyword (for the product or industry) you are interested in and choose a timeframe. Use social media networks. Since the number of social media users is constantly increasing, it’s a must to leverage this channel. Today, social media isn’t only about communication but business as well. Brands broadcast their ads, communicate brand messages, share products, and sell them. That’s why Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are the sources of information for your research. Customers’ preferences, wishes, problems, complaints, and comments can be found. After analyzing this information, you’ll be able to understand what works with your target audience and what things you should avoid. For a deeper analysis, you can follow opinion leaders and check hashtags related to your industry, and analyze competitor sentiment. Make use of forums and customer comments. Search for the forums related to your industry if you want to find out more about your target audience. Choose the most popular forums with your customers involved and register. Encourage communication with your potential clients, and provide them with answers, tips, and tricks that might be useful. Participate in discussions and help these people solve problems. This way, you’ll be able to know your target audience better and establish trust, credibility, and awareness about your brand. Strive to provide real value for your future customers, and they will acknowledge your product. You can encourage conversations by asking questions related to your product and brand. This way, you can understand what customers prefer, like, and dislike. This information will be helpful once you start running your business. Now that you know what steps to take when conducting online market research, let’s explore some tools that will reduce the workload on your team. These platforms will help you obtain necessary information faster without the manual search. 5 Online Market Research Tools Paperform Loop11 Temper Ahrefs BrandMentions Running a new company, opening a new store, or reaching a new market requires comprehensive online market research. This process might take time unless you use a special tool. In this section, we’ll unveil effective platforms enabling your team to do it faster. Paperform Paperform helps you design online forms for your customers. It suits startups and enterprises. With its help, you can create online forms based on your needs and receive customer insights. The surveys are customizable, so you can develop any form and comply with your brand standards and style. Forms from scratch and templates are available. If you need to design a form fast, consider using pre-built templates. It will take you minutes to complete. Paperform allows you to build memberships, set up subscriptions, and collect donations. Web forms, surveys, polls, tests, and fillable forms are the products you can make with the service. Below you can see what Paperform’s interface looks like. Free plan: free 14-day trial.Paid plan: Starting from $24 per month for unlimited forms, 10,000 form views, one user, payment collection, and 10 MB maximum file size. Loop11 Loop11 empowers you with customer insights to improve user experience with your website. The platform offers you to use GPT-4 and collect insights from hundreds of users. It will help you assess the success of your product within the market. With its help, you can test prototypes, live sites, and competitors without adding code to the product. Loop11 enables you to complete multiple studies: A/B testing, accessibility testing, search engine findability studies, mobile and tablet testing, user testing, true intent studies, and more. Besides, the platform allows you to record videos and audio of your users so that you can see the experience with your product with your own eyes. Below you can see a cart abandonment project template you can choose in Loop11 to conduct your research. Free plan: free 14-day trial.Paid plan: Starting from $199 per month for moderated and unmoderated testing, unlimited tasks and questions, and three projects. Temper Temper is a perfect solution for business owners who want to evaluate customer satisfaction with their brands. With the service, you can instantly know which areas in your product or company need close attention and new solutions. There are three ways of assessing your business with Temper. You can put the form on every website page to understand overall satisfaction with your product. The inline form enables you to receive insights on a specific item (it’s placed on a page with a certain product). You can also get insights on your customer support by sending an email that contains a customer satisfaction form. By tracking customers’ feedback with Temper, you can receive crucial data for your business. No need to rely on gut feeling because now you can easily find out whether clients are happy with your product. Below you can see the satisfaction forms you can design in Temper. Free plan: —.Paid plan: Starting from $12 per month for unlimited questions, no Public Ratings Page, generic thank you, and Temper branding. Ahrefs Ahrefs is a platform that enables you to build links and explore keywords. With its help, you can ensure your company website is optimized based on the latest SEO trends. After registering in the service, consider receiving insights on organic keywords, competitor research, backlink profiles, domain rating, and content. It’ll help you understand the logic of customers’ searches and sites that can help you promote your product online. Below you can see Ahref’s Site Explorer and the information it helps you obtain. Free plan: —.Paid plan: Contact customer support for information about pricing. BrandMentions BrandMentions helps you effectively manage social media networks. With the platform, you can see comments related to your brand or competitors. You’ll be able to see brand mentions across various channels, like social media platforms, news, blogs, videos, and more. BrandMentions allows you to find out who discusses your company, receive insights about your target audience, establish social media presence, perform sentiment analysis, develop influencer marketing strategies, and many more. You can see how to track your brand mentions on social media and on the internet in general with BrandMentions. Free plan: 7-day free trial.Paid plan: Starting from $99 per month for 15 keywords, 5,000 mentions, daily updates, and 1-month historical data. Congrats, now you know what online market research is and why it’s essential. Leverage our guide and choose the best tool to research your target market. Hope that our hints will help you reach your business goals.

An operational CRM is software that enables you to manage interactions with potential customers and build relationships with them from one place. It helps you store customer data, manage marketing campaigns, and keep an eye on the progress of deals. In this article, we’ll unveil why brands need an operational CRM and its benefits. We’ll also uncover how operational CRM works, review its features and components and provide the 3 best CRMs to consider. Why do brands need an operational CRM? Businesses need an operational CRM to focus on crucial tasks and improve the productivity of their departments. The software enables businesses to automate the routine process and take care of interactions with clients. This way, brands can allocate more resources to developing quality sales pitches, demo walkthroughs, the content of email campaigns, new marketing strategies, and many more. Operational CRM allows you to automate repetitive tasks like sending emails, updating customer information, scheduling meetings, and managing lead scoring. Operational CRM becomes your medium for communication between departments. You can schedule meetings to communicate, exchange information, and share experiences. You’ll be able to receive accurate information about each customer and improve communication with them. If you understand your clients' needs, you can provide them with the right offers. When sending the relevant message and offering the product, you can manage to solve the problems. As a result, satisfaction with your brand will increase. Now that you know some reasons to use an operational CRM, let’s proceed to the next section to explore the pros. Benefits of an Operational CRM Companies leverage operational CRM because of the various advantages it brings. A platform empowers you to improve several points of your business. It helps create personalized marketing campaigns; establish trusting relationships with clients; improve conversions; reduce customer churn; improve customer retention; successfully incorporate cross-selling and up-selling; encourage customer loyalty; increase revenue; boost customer satisfaction; store customer data; attract more customers. Now that you know the benefits, it’s time to unveil how operational CRM works. How does an operational CRM work? Operational CRM combines several areas: sales, marketing, customer service, and analytics. You can manage these processes from one place. All you need to do is choose a CRM that suits you best regarding business goals, price, features, and usability. Once you register, you’ll be able to import your customer data to the CRM. When your information is stored in your CRM, you can decide where to move next. Create deals to keep track of your existing and upcoming deals. When you have complete data about your prospects and clients, you can improve your sales, customer service, and lead generation. Analytics helps you figure out how to approach customers, determine the right offer, choose suitable sales pitches, etc. CRM is essential for task delegation. If you want to improve the productivity of your sales team, you need to automate multiple tasks. Use your CRM to set up and schedule follow-up email sending. As a result, your sales reps will have more time for interaction with your customers. They will be able to prepare personalized offers, targeted messages, and proper communication. Now that you know how operational CRM works, let’s uncover its features. Operational CRM Features In an increasingly competitive business environment, companies need CRM to keep all their information, tasks, and communication security in one place. A customer relationship management system is more than a storage space for your contact cards. Operational CRM’s features include: integration with third-party services; workflow automation; customer service; social media monitoring; sales forecasting; email tracking; employee monitoring; lead management. Now that you know the features, it’s time to proceed to the components. The next section will help you determine which business areas you can improve with CRM’s help. Operational CRM Components Operational CRM consists of four main elements: sales, marketing, analytics, and customer service. Let’s review each in detail to find out how a CRM can help you in multiple areas. Sales. Detailed information about your prospects and customers provides your sales departments with benefits. Sales representatives can prepare a scenario for communication, tailor their message, and craft a sales pitch. Marketing. To develop a successful marketing strategy, you should understand your target audience. You need to determine the things they need, the solutions they look for, and their requirements. Operational CRM enables you to identify qualified leads and reach them with your message. CRM provides you with information about the preferred channels, demographics, etc. Analytics. CRM’s analytics allows your team members to explore customer insights to identify trends and monitor behavior. After reviewing this information, you can decide on your strategy and approaches and choose communication channels. You’ll be able to find a way to cater to the needs of consumers. Customer service. Operational CRM empowers you to automate the processes related to customer services like contact, information gathering, problem-solving, and resolution. With its help, you’ll no longer have unsatisfied customers who contact the wrong department. A platform will help you keep an eye on clients and provide help to them as soon as needed. Now that you know essential information about operational CRM, including its components, let’s discover the 3 best services. Consider using these platforms to improve the productivity of your departments and save resources. 3 Best Operational CRMs We’ll review three excellent operational CRMs in terms of pricing, features, and usability to help your company automate repetitive tasks. Let’s start with the LIKE.TG built-in CRM. LIKE.TG LIKE.TG allows marketers to optimize the delivery of valuable content, communication with prospects, the productivity of sales and marketing teams, and visibility of contacts and deals within one platform. You can accept orders, collect customer data, and store all information in LIKE.TG’s CRM. Your CRM database is a reliable source of information for different areas of your business. Your sales and marketing departments can use the data to craft sales pitches, develop personalized messages, establish communication, and create marketing campaigns. LIKE.TG enables you to create cards called deals to track interactions with prospects and consumers while they move through the sales funnel. The platform records all customers’ inquiries, problems, questions, and needs. It helps you develop the optimal scenario for a seamless sales process. After looking through the information in LIKE.TG’s CRM, you can start proper communication with a lead or client by using email campaigns, chatbots, web push, popups, or SMS. Moreover, CRM allows you to set up automated email campaigns to optimize sales and prevent customer churn. Your sales team can create deals manually or set up integrations to add them automatically after your sales reps communicate with clients. Consider connecting your LIKE.TG CRM to the preferred channels, such as chatbots, email services, popups, subscription forms, etc. You can also create deals manually. Choose a pipeline and click “Add Deal.” With LIKE.TG’s operational CRM, you can contact clients through the record in your CRM database. You’ll reach them through the channel they came from. This way, you can contact your customers through their preferred communication channels. Below you can see how to create a contact card in LIKE.TG’s CRM. The CRM is free for 5 users in your account. Freshsales Freshsales empowers you to personalize engagement, decrease sales cycles, and reach your sales goals within one place. CRM’s 360° view of your clients provides insights into customers’ interactions and helps deliver a personalized message, targeted offer, and quality communication. The platform allows you to monitor your employee activity and performance. You can supervise them on various tasks and ensure they complete them effectively and on time. Besides, it helps identify team members who struggle with certain tasks and assist them for better results. Your team can figure out the areas that need to be improved for better productivity of your marketing and sales departments. An easy-to-use CRM helps you identify quality leads and reach them through email campaigns, chatbots, popups, web push notifications, and SMS. Since site leads are most engaged, consider chatting with prospective customers through your website to generate more potential clients. In the screenshot below, you can see how to create a new contact card with Freshsales. Freshsales has one free and three paid plans. The free plan covers contact and account management, contact lifecycle stages (they capture your contacts’ lifecycles), built-in chat, email and phone, 24x5 support, and a mobile app. The cheapest paid plan costs $18 per month and provides you with a visual sales pipeline, AI-powered contact scoring, sales sequences, up to 2,000 bot sessions, and WhatsApp Business. Pipedrive Pipedrive’s sales CRM is easy to use and set up. It helps you keep all your prospects in one place and focus on closing deals. The platform’s sales assistant provides suggestions based on your previous performance. It enables you to see the gaps and improve your sales. To reach your prospects, you can set up an automated flow of emails. Synchronize your calendar with the email service you use to send email campaigns at the right time. Pipedrive’s CRM is a secure place for communication between departments. You can collaborate with other teams, share ideas, and help each other when necessary. Below you can see how to add a new contact card in Pipedrive. Pipedrive offers a free 14-day trial and four paid plans. The price for paid plans starts at $15 per month. You’ll get lead, deal, calendar, pipeline management, simple data import, easy customization, 24/7 support, and 300+ integrations. Congrats, now you know what an operational CRM is and why it’s essential. Register with LIKE.TG to explore all the benefits of its CRM.

An opinion leader is an individual who has expertise and authority in a certain industry and their audience’s trust. This person is famous and can influence consumers’ opinions. In this article, we’ll review the role, characteristics, and examples of opinion leaders and explore how to become an opinion leader. What is the role of an opinion leader? Opinion leaders act as an intermediary between marketers and theirtarget audiences. They obtain information about a certain product, summarize its pros and cons, and convey it to consumers in a simple way. Thought leaders also update consumers on product news and give advice on how to use it. They provide the audiences with their personal experience so that consumers can decide whether to purchase a specific product or service. Now that you knowmore about the role of an opinion leader, it’s time todetermine the characteristics you should have to become one. Opinion Leader Characteristics To become a reliable source of information, opinion leaders should possess several main qualities. They help gain popularity, trust, and recognition. Let’s review them to understand what kind of people can grow into influencers. Knowledge and expertise. These individuals are aware of the pros and cons of the products or services they promote. That’s why before sharing a product with the target audience, opinion leaders spend some time exploring a product and its features. Later, they communicate the value of a certain productusing their accounts on social media and other channels. Charisma.Opinion leaders should be able to charmpeople and win their attention to makethemlisten.Charismaenables them to influence customers and make them love the narrator. These people are role models that present a type of living everyone wants to have. As a result, customers trust their recommendations and buy products to become similar to influencers. Influence. Sinceopinion leaders are role models for many, customers believe and trust them. With the help of authority and expertise,they encourage consumers to purchase products they recommend. However, influencers have to prove that the products they promote actually work. For example, if these people recommend skincare, they should have good glowing skin. Professionals in handling PR. Brand promoters are professionals in digesting information and communicating it to the target audienceusing simple language. They are mastersof public speaking and can easily win customers’ attention and loyalty. Social media presence. Publishing posts and photos, sharing their experience with a product, andcreating stories on social media is the best way for opinion leaders to reach customers. Different platforms allow influencers to share the necessary information and promote it in a friendly manner. Thought leaders’ socialmedia profiles should contain expert industry-specific information. They update followers on webinars, conferences, and courses and encourage them to participate. Now that you know the main characteristics, let’s discuss how to identify key opinion leaders. How to Identify Key Opinion Leaders There are two different types of key opinion leaders: traditional and digital. We’ll review the ways to identify each of them. To identify opinion leaders in the digital world, you need to pay attention to the main metrics: qualitative and quantitative. Finding appropriate influencers for your brand requires exploring the quantitative aspect. It refers to the number of followers, mentions, shares, and frequency of posting. You’ll also need to explore the qualitative aspectthat includes content’s quality and relevance, meaning that you should define whether their content suits your target audience. If you aim to identify traditional key opinion leaders, you need tolook for speakers at conferences and events related to your industry and top experts in the field. This will help youfind traditional influencers for your business. Now that you know how to identify digital and traditional opinion leaders, you should alsoknow what it takesto become one. How to Become an Opinion Leader To become the public’s favorite, a person should be an expert in the field and have the necessary skills and knowledge. These points are necessary to influence the masses and make them trust your experience and recommendations. In a digital world, it’s easier since your expertise and skills can gain exposure and a huge following. There are several recommendations you should stick to when considering becoming an opinion leader: Select the industry you specialize in. A person can’t be a specialist in all industries at once. An individual possessing valuable information, skills, knowledge, and experience in a certain field can bring a lot more gains and insights to their audience. That’s why you should choose one niche that fits your expertise. You cango with marketing, design, education, programming, etc. It’s essential to choose an industry you are interested in to keep gaining new knowledge and demonstrating enthusiasm. Create content for your online channels. You can grow your audience fast with the help of social media. Create an accounton Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube to sharevaluablecontent with your subscribers. Publish content regularly. To keep people engaged, you need to constantly add new content to your channel or account. You should create articles, videos, and photos to attract new people. Work with influencers. If you are just starting your channel, consider cooperating with established opinion leaders. It can be done in different forms: interview or promotion. This way, you will obtain the necessary experience, new knowledge, and skills while your account gains users’ trust and credibility. Ensure your material’s uniqueness. Make sure to include original content in your articles, blog posts, photos, and videos since it helps establish a positive online reputation. Do your best to provide readers with your expert opinion and unique content people would find quality and useful. Let’s see the examples of some great opinion leaders to help you get your creative juices flowing. Examples of Opinion Leaders There area lot of personalities who are able to win people’s trust and attention by using their charisma, knowledge, experience, and other characteristics. Let’s review some of the most famous opinion leaders to see how they succeeded in reaching a wide audience. Carson Tate She is a famous business and life coach and a founder of Working Simply, Inc. Carson is a speaker and a best-selling author who focuses on productivity and engagement. The productivity tips she reveals on social media help followers achieve their goals. Arianna Huffington Author, businesswoman, and co-founder of The Huffington Post — this is not even the full list of this successful woman’s achievements. The well-known author wrote 15 books and built a great social media presence. 2.8M of people on Twitter getvaluable information from her posts and learn something new from Ariana every day. Congrats, now you know the characteristics of opinion leaders and their roles. Hope that the examples above will inspire you to become an opinion leader in your industry.

An opt-in page is a page designed to convert users into subscribers with the help of a lead magnet. Marketers use this technique to encourage more people to share personal data with them. Insights gained from that data allow brands to communicate quality and personalized email campaigns to their audience. Opt-in Page vs. Landing Page These two types of pages are similar as they share the same goal: collect as many marketing leads as possible. However, there are some differences between them. An opt-in page uses a lead magnet — a practical gift that users want to get for free. Also, all the necessary information and the fields to fill in with personal info are usually placed above the fold on opt-in pages. While landing pages can be much longer, containing lots of details, images, several CTAs, and, what’s more important, are designed to sell products. Lastly, an opt-in page converts users into leads, while landing page belongs to a lead-to-customer conversion type. Let’s move on and find out what makes an efficient opt-in page. How to Build an Opt-in Page Create a value proposition Add a lead form Include a clear CTA Opt-in pages differ from industry to industry and brand to brand. Every company offers a different kind of value, requires various types of data in exchange for that value, and uses different communication styles. To create high-converting opt-in pages, you should optimize them for your business goals and include three essential elements to all of your opt-in pages: Create a value proposition. Tell your future subscribers what they will get in exchange for joining your community. A professional and attractive opt-in page must include a lead magnet that offers something helpful, like a free ebook, ticket to an event, free trial to your service, etc. Make sure your value proposition is relevant. Add a lead form. A lead form contains fields for providing personal info in exchange for your value proposition. Find the right balance between the amount of value you share with people and the number of fields they need to fill. The more value you offer the more specific details you can ask for, like location, phone number, name of the company users employer, the position they hold in that company, etc. Include a clear CTA. A call to action should clarify the next step for users. For example, “Download a free guide” or “Grab my ebook.” Let’s see how marketers bring these simple ideas to life with a few examples. 3 Opt-in Page Examples The first example is Wishpond’s opt-in page. It has a simple design, but it’s well-structured, all the elements are readable and get to the point. What makes this opt-in page effective? The title clarifies what the guide is about; It explains the goal of creating this guide — to help drive Facebook engagement; It lists what users will learn with it; The lead form only asks for essential information, and targets to the specific and interested audience by asking for their website’s URL; The CTA is encouraging, and it contrasts with the background color. It allows users to share this page on Facebook and Twitter. The next example is from TopMarketing. This opt-in page has a lot of white space, which makes it easy-to-digest. However, the lead form fields are a little lost in this background. What makes this opt-in page effective? The title clarifies what the ebook is about; It shows an appealing image of the book to create demand; It provides a list of what users will learn; A checkbox asks for permission to allow sending monthly emails, which means the company tries to start communication right away. The last opt-in page example is from Hitenism. It focuses user attention on their experience in the field using by social proof to the company’s advantage. What makes this opt-in page effective? The number of visits changes in real-time, which creates FOMO; The value proposition is executed as a quote from a well-known expert; The image of the phone and tablet hints that this ebook is optimized for mobile devices. Now that you’re acquainted with opt-in page examples let’s finish this guide with some best practices. 5 Best Practices for Creating Effective Opt-in Pages Avoid long opt-in pages Make sure your CTA button contrasts with the background color Use directional cues, like arrows Get creative Qualify and segment leads using an opt-in page We’ve collected a list of best practices that will help you generate more subscribers from your opt-in pages. Avoid long opt-in pages. The longer your opt-in page is, the more users will bounce without reading it to the end. If possible, place all the necessary information above the fold. Create multichannel subscription forms. They will help you collect subscribers' email addresses and let them contact your brand via chatbots in Facebook Messenger and Telegram. All you need is to add a link to the necessary chatbot. Make sure your CTA button contrasts with the background color. Your CTA should attract user attention, so make sure that it is eye-catching. Use directional cues, like arrows. A little arrow, as if it was written with a permanent marker, will show users where to look. It’s an easy way to focus their attention on the lead form that works subconsciously. Get creative. Opt-in pages usually have a standard structure. Try to stand out from the crowd of competitors by adding interactive elements to your opt-in page, including GIFs, animated CTA buttons, or a carousel with all the necessary details. Qualify and segment leads using an opt-in page. Think about what data you should ask users to share with you. The more information you have, the more relevant and personalized offers you can provide in the future. Congratulations, now you know what an opt-in page is and how to create an efficient one to bring leads for your business.

Omnichannel eCommerce is a selling strategy that combines multiple online and offline marketing channels to ensure a seamless shopping experience for customers. It empowers companies to provide consistent and unified experiences across various channels, including sites, apps, social media networks, physical stores, and other points of interaction with clients. In this article, we’ll explain the importance of omnichannel eCommerce and the difference between it and multichannel eCommerce. We’ll also provide you with a guide to creating a successful strategy, 9 best practices, and examples of omnichannel eCommerce. Why should you use omnichannel eCommerce? There are multiple reasons for companies to consider implementing an omnichannel eCommerce strategy. Here are the main ones. Improved customer experience. By incorporating omnichannel eCommerce, brands can ensure a seamless shopping experience across different channels, enabling clients to interact effortlessly with the companies. This results in better customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention in the long run. More sales opportunities. By interacting with customers through multiple channels, businesses can expand their reach and capture sales from different segments of their target audience. Omnichannel strategies also enable cross-selling, upselling, and personalized recommendations, driving higher conversion rates and revenue. Competitive advantage. Since customer expectations change quickly, companies providing a superior omnichannel experience stand out from competitors who use traditional-only models. Brands with well-executed omnichannel strategies manage to differentiate their products and draw the attention of clients, prioritizing convenience and flexibility. Improved inventory management. When using omnichannel eCommerce platforms, businesses can unify inventory data from several channels, providing instant access to stock levels and eliminating the chances of overselling or stock shortages. It contributes to efficient inventory management, reduces storage expenses, and boosts operational effectiveness. Data-driven insights. After incorporating omnichannel strategies, marketers can access abundant customer data from various touchpoints, including online, in-store, and social media interactions. By analyzing this customer data, brands gain essential insights into customer behavior, preferences, and trends. As a result, they can tailor marketing initiatives, product assortments, and operational strategies based on this data for better effectiveness and higher sales. Compliance with changing market trends and consumer behavior. Since consumer preferences and shopping habits are changing fast, omnichannel eCommerce strategies are necessary for meeting customer requirements and preferences, including multiple fulfillment options like in-store pickup, same-day delivery, or subscription services. Now that you have some reasons to consider an omnichannel eCommerce strategy for your business, it’s time to proceed to the difference between omnichannel and multichannel eCommerce. Omnichannel eCommerce vs Multichannel eCommerce Omnichannel eCommerce and multichannel eCommerce are both approaches for promoting and selling products across various marketing channels, yet they differ in several areas and levels of integration. Omnichannel eCommerce is a strategy focusing on a seamless shopping experience across all channels. It helps unify the customer experience, providing consistent branding, messaging, and service through each company channel. When a business incorporates omnichannel eCommerce, it prioritizes seamless customer experience by offering convenience, flexibility, and personalization. Prospects and clients can smoothly switch between online and offline channels, such as browsing online and completing in-store purchases. Since all the channels are integrated, all their data will be automatically saved. Multichannel eCommerce is a strategy that implies promoting and selling products through multiple channels, yet these channels often operate independently. Marketers can’t ensure cohesive experience and consistency in messaging and branding across all channels when using this approach. Customers have various purchasing options, but their experience might differ when they choose different channels. Clients can sometimes experience product availability, pricing, and promotion inconsistencies when switching between online and offline channels. In summary, while multichannel eCommerce uses multiple channels to offer products, omnichannel eCommerce integrates all these channels, ensuring a seamless and consistent shopping experience for each customer. Omnichannel approaches focus on satisfaction, efficiency, and data-driven insights, allowing companies to stand out in an increasingly competitive market. Now, let's learn how to create an omnichannel eCommerce strategy to increase your business's sales. How to create a successful omnichannel eCommerce strategy? Developing a well-thought-out omnichannel eCommerce strategy is a complicated process that involves planning, integrating online and offline channels, and providing a seamless shopping experience. To make the process easier for you, here's our step-by-step guide to help you create it faster. Understand your target audience. Before executing your omnichannel strategy, start by analyzing your target audience. Conduct research to learn their preferences, shopping behaviors, and expectations. After that, analyze customer data and collect feedback to gain insights into their needs and requirements. Choose communication channels. The second step involves identifying customers’ favorite marketing channels, including websites, mobile apps, social media networks, online marketplaces, physical stores, email, SMS, and others. Consider using marketing tools like LIKE.TG to centralize your customer data and consistently send your messages through email campaigns, SMS, chatbots, sites, and other crucial promotion channels. Develop consistent branding. Ensure consistent branding across all channels to establish a cohesive brand identity and deliver a seamless customer experience. It includes visual elements, messaging, tone of voice, and customer service. Incorporate inventory systems. Consider using platforms that allow you to synchronize inventory levels across all communication channels. This will help you provide customers with accurate product information and select the best delivery options for them. Ensure cross-channel communication. You should enable clients to switch between channels during their shopping process without interruptions. For instance, they might browse products on your brand’s site, add items to their cart via your mobile app, and complete payments through chatbots. Ensure a seamless mobile shopping experience. Since mobile shopping prevails nowadays, you need to make sure that your site and app are responsive for different devices and screens. They should offer a smooth browsing and purchasing experience on smartphones and tablets. Personalize customer shopping experience. Consider using customer insights to tailor the customer shopping experience with your brand to their specific needs and requirements. This needs to be applied to every channel you use for support, promotion, and sale. Consider providing personalized product recommendations, targeted promotions, and tailored content based on customer behavior, purchasing, and browsing history. Provide several payment options. To improve customer convenience, consider offering several payment methods. These methods can include debit cards, digital wallets, bank transfers, and “Buy now, pay later” options. Ensure several fulfillment options. Offer flexible fulfillment options such as buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), curbside pickup, same-day delivery, and ship-from-store. This allows customers to choose the most convenient fulfillment method for their needs. Evaluate and analyze strategy performance. Monitor your key metrics across all marketing channels to assess their effectiveness. These include sales performance, customer engagement, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction. You can use this information to improve your omnichannel strategy, optimize the customer experience, and adapt to market trends. Let’s imagine that you have a sports apparel brand and want to implement an omnichannel strategy. We’ll show you how you can do it easily and fast using LIKE.TG. Let’s dive in. Step 1. Create a user-friendly website You need to establish an online presence by creating an intuitive and easy-to-navigate brand site. It should let customers seamlessly browse and purchase your products. When developing your site, ensure that it looks good on laptops and smartphones, allowing users to have the best experience with your company. Moreover, your site should provide personalized product recommendations based on the items users explore. You can create a stunning mobile-friendly website by using LIKE.TG. The platform lets you use ready-to-go templates, and add readable texts, functional forms and buttons, and elements that fit perfectly on any device. Below is the process of building a website from a template in LIKE.TG. Step 2. Ensure social media integration Since social media is a vital part of everybody’s life, allowing exploring news, new topics, discovering new items, and purchasing products, it’s a must to establish connections through these channels as well. Consider adding chatbots to the channels your customers use most often. It can be Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook, or all of them altogether. Chatbots will help you provide timely instant responses to customers' FAQs and hand the chats to your support agents in case customers face complex issues. LIKE.TG will help you do it easily without knowledge of the code. You can see how easy it is to create a chatbot with LIKE.TG. You need to add text and build the flow. As a result, users will be able to get answers to common questions, book an appointment, and buy the product through social media networks or messengers quickly and with no effort. Step 3. Build mobile app Consider creating a mobile app for your customers for better convenience and experience. The app should be available for iOS and Android. You can use the app to provide exclusive deals, early access, and an excellent shopping experience. Now that you know the steps, let’s explore the best practices for a robust omnichannel eCommerce strategy. 10 Best Practices for a Killer Omnichannel eCommerce Strategy To create an effective omnichannel eCommerce strategy, you need seamless integration of multiple channels, ensuring an excellent shopping experience. Yet there are some more points to consider when doing it. Below are some key best practices to keep in mind. Get ready with consistent messaging. Make sure to maintain consistent branding, messaging, and design elements across all channels you decide to incorporate, such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and physical stores. It will help you develop a recognizable brand experience for customers. Find the perfect marketing solution. There are plenty of marketing platforms, reducing the workload on your team. With their help, you can provide consistent messages through email campaigns, chatbots, SMS, web push notifications, and many others. LIKE.TG is one of them. This omnichannel marketing solution allows you to build chatbots for Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook, providing the latest and most relevant offers. Even more, using the platform’s CRM will help you store all customer data synchronized and track all your marketing efforts in one place. It results in consistency and a well-executed marketing strategy. Provide a seamless cross-channel experience. Enable customers to switch between online and offline channels effortlessly. Offer features such as click-and-collect, buy online, and pick-up in-store to provide convenience and flexibility. Consider using personalization and customization. When sending messages through various channels, personalize marketing messages, product recommendations, and promotions across all channels using customer data. AI and machine learning will help you deliver relevant and targeted content that meets the expectations of different audience segments. Incorporate mobile shopping experience. To resonate with the increasing number of mobile shoppers, consider making your eCommerce company’s site mobile-friendly. Your site and mobile app should offer a seamless experience when used on smartphones and tablets. Ensure customer support around the clock. If you want your customers to get all the necessary assistance and increase conversions, you need to provide consistent and high-quality customer service across multiple channels, such as live chat, email, phone support, and social media networks. Make sure that your prospects and clients can contact you quickly and get timely responses. If you want to do it fast and without much effort, consider using a multichannel solution like LIKE.TG. With its help, you’ll be able to answer FAQs, recommend products, accept payments, and handle exchanges and returns in seconds through chatbots for channels like Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, and WhatsApp. Moreover, you can add live chat to your website to provide prospects and customers with timely assistance at any stage of their customer journeys. Provide a simple checkout process. By ensuring a fast checkout process and removing any unnecessary steps, you’ll be able to reduce cart abandonment rates and encourage more conversions. For a smoother experience, your customers should have several payment options, guest checkout, and one-click ordering. This will help your company speed up the purchasing process and improve customer satisfaction. Incorporate loyalty programs. Consider implementing loyalty programs and rewarding existing customers for engagement and purchases across multiple channels. These include discounts, points, exclusive offers, and other perks for more repeat purchases and loyalty. Improve strategy. Track and analyze key performance metrics regularly across all channels to find areas for improvement. A/B testing and experiments will help you improve user experience, conversion rates, and the effectiveness of your strategy in general. Ensure effortless returns and exchanges. Your business might have various scenarios, including returns. Such inquiries can influence customer satisfaction in a good or bad way. Everything depends on implementation. If you strive for improved satisfaction, then make sure that customers can make returns and exchanges across all available channels seamlessly and without much effort from their side. These instructions will help you develop a powerful omnichannel eCommerce strategy, ensuring a smooth, customized, and memorable shopping experience. Now, let’s explore some excellent examples of omnichannel eCommerce strategies. Examples of Omnichannel eCommerce Several companies have effectively executed omnichannel eCommerce strategies. Here are three noteworthy examples from famous brands. Starbucks The famous coffeehouse chain presented worldwide successfully incorporates an omnichannel eCommerce strategy by combining channels like mobile app, website, and brick-and-mortar coffee places. Customers can order their favorite drinks using the mobile app and enjoy coffee or tea in-store, at the drive-thru, or via curbside pickup. Moreover, the company offers a loyalty program for regular customers that spans all channels. According to this program, consumers get points for their purchases and then can redeem them for pleasant rewards. There are even more attractive offers for customers who order through the mobile app, have their birthday, or come with tumblers. Alo Yoga Now a well-known athletic apparel retailer, Alo Yoga, is another amazing example of effective and seamless integration of site, mobile app, social media, live chat, physical stores, and other channels that ensure a positive shopping experience with this sportswear brand. Oysho Oysho, an international chain for sports apparel, seamlessly combines multiple marketing channels for better customer support, promotion, and sales. Customers can use the brand’s Instagram to explore new arrivals and follow the link in the bio to proceed to the checkout process. Congrats! Now you know what omnichannel eCommerce is and why it’s essential. We hope that our guide, best practices, and examples will help you develop a successful omnichannel eCommerce strategy. Register in LIKE.TG to seamlessly use various marketing channels for your business. References: This article determines the term and unveils how to incorporate an omnichannel eCommerce strategy. In this article, you’ll find the difference between omnichannel and multichannel eCommerce strategies.

An online business is a business conducted entirely on the internet. Online business may encompass selling goods and services, as well as SaaS solutions. In this video, Alex shares valuable insights on how to start a business from home, specifically through online education. Why does your business need an online presence? The growing popularity of eCommerce is the number one reason to start your business online. According to Nasdaq, by 2040, consumers will make 95% of their purchases online. In 2020, the number of digital buyers worldwide reached two billion people. An online presence increases trust in your business – customers feel more confident when they can connect with a company effortlessly. Meanwhile, the internet is crucial for easy access to a brand. According to Microsoft research, the share of people who prefer to get in touch with businesses online is growing. In 2017 alone, the number of customers over 35 using social channels to reach brands doubled. Lastly, an online presence helps you build strong, long-lasting relationships with your customers. According to a KPMG report, clients stay loyal to businesses if they provide excellent customer support and personalized experiences. It’s not a coincidence that the largest online businesses are famous for their aspirations to maintain profound connections with their customers. In the next part, we’ll look at the internet's largest businesses. Top 10 Online Businesses Online is a complex realm that encompasses tiny startups and businesses with whopping market capitalization. Here are the Top-10 online companies worldwide: Amazon – an American internet-based retailer of a wide swath of products; Alphabet Inc. (Google) – an internet search giant leading in search, contextual advertising, and other online offerings; Facebook – the world's most popular social network. Tencent Holdings – an Asian online tech giant best-known for its messaging service WeChat; Alibaba – a Chinese e-commerce giant; Netflix – an American video streaming company; Salesforce.com – the most well-known CRM system provider; JD.com – a Chinese e-commerce company; Booking.com – an online travel company that lets users book reservations for restaurants, hotels, rental cars, airline tickets, safaris, cruises, and other travel services; Baidu – a Chinese search engine. As you can see, the top earners include eCommerce websites, multimedia services, B2B software, search engines, and so on. This means that there is a place for almost any type of good or service online. Mull over the business niche you’d like to fill – the next part will give you some hints about it. Online Business Ideas Direct sales Virtual assistance Amazon FBA store Affiliate marketing Puzzled over what idea to choose for your online business? To get the ball rolling, think about your existing strengths and skills first. You can apply almost all of them to an online environment. For instance, if you’ve been working as an HR manager for a while, you can offer consultations and resume creation online. If you think deeply and get creative, you may find a way even if you can not perform your work online. Let’s say you’re a general contractor, and you need to be on the spot physically to do your job. In this case, you can launch an online course to share your secrets of craftsmanship with colleagues. If you stick to this approach, your experience and expertise will work in your favor. However, if you want a fresh start, look at the ideas for beginners we’ve picked for you. Direct sales Direct sales often occur at home, in a cafe, office, and so on. It makes this realm perfect for online businesses. Many companies refuse to keep an in-house selling team and prefer to outsource this work. You can offer your service as a sales representative or join an MLM-company, such as Amway or Avon. Advantages: Promising business model. From 2015-2018, direct sales generated an annual growth rate of 1.7%. This trend continues to increase worldwide. Strong customer relationships. One-on-one interaction allows you to provide personal experiences and keep customers engaged with your brand. It results in a sustainable income for you. Low investments. All you need to launch your business in direct sales is a landing page and messaging for your prospective partners. Virtual assistance Virtual assistants help entrepreneurs, businesses, and executives organize their work. Appointment scheduling, errand execution, and basic marketing tasks are the usual duties of assistants. A majority of these tasks can be performed online. Advantages: Perfect for starters. You don’t need profound expertise to start a career as a virtual assistant. Your main advantages are being organized, dedicated, and marketing-savvy to a certain point. Growth opportunities. As you increase your expertise and reputation in this field, you may hire and train other assistants to work under you. Amazon FBA store eCommerce is an enticing niche to start your online business. However, maintaining your internet shop may be arduous work. Consider applying FBA to facilitate shipping, storage, and customer support – Amazon will take care of these processes. Advantages: Simplicity. You can zero in on marketing, finances, and legal matters, while Amazon performs the mundane tasks. Cost-effectiveness. Amazon charges a fee for its services. However, it’s still cheaper than handling shipping, storage, returns, and customer support in-house. Amazing service. Let’s face it – Amazon has more resources to satisfy its customers than any small business possibly can provide. Affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing lets you get income for sharing a product or service on your blog, social media, email list, and so on. You’ll get a commission each time a lead from you converts into a customer. To start with affiliate marketing, join an affiliate program – many companies, such as Shopify, Tripadvisor, HM, offer this option. Advantages: Passive income. By placing a banner on your blog or website once, you can earn commission fees forever. You will find a couple of tips on finding your niche along with a guide to launching your online business. Read the next part of this writing to learn more. How to Start an Online Business Find a niche Do research Learn online business laws Choose the right platform Drive online traffic Analyze your performance Rolling out a business is a complex task that encompasses tons of processes and actions. To make it more clear-cut, adhere to the six essential steps listed below. Bear in mind that this list is not comprehensive, but it will come in handy at the initial stage. Find a niche Most online business starters try to get their heads around the idea for their business. If you still cannot decide on this, here are a couple of tactics you can stick to: Pinpoint issues you face from time to time. Have you ever experienced problems finding a quality good or service? Instead of perceiving it as another annoying situation, think of it as a business opportunity. People around you may struggle with the same issues and wish to pay someone to tackle it for them in the form of a product or service. Conduct online research. Google can help you find out what problems your audience wants solved. To spot them, do keyword research – find out what people are looking for. The next step is to visit forums where users share their difficulties – read them and try to find a way to solve these problems. After taking these initial steps, you’ll get a clearer vision of what niche to choose. Knowing it, you can play around with the details, such as the products you sell, your unique selling proposition, and so on. 2. Do research When you’ve found a niche, you may get excited and want to start acting right off the bat. Avoid jumping the gun – test your business idea first. For this purpose, you’ll have to study the market, competitors, and target audience. Start with evaluating market viability. Try to understand how practical your product or service is and what challenges you may face. Take into consideration as many details as you can. You’ve learned a bit about your market while defining your business idea. Now you can test the waters – launch a website to check the demand for your product or service. It’s also a great way to gain some traffic and collect pre-orders before you’ve opened. Remember to look at your competitors – an in-depth analysis of their businesses gives you hints on your unique selling proposition, marketing, mistakes to avoid, and so on. Make a full list of your rivals, including all the ways your customers tackle their issues. Carefully examine websites, customer experiences, market positioning, price policies, and other details. Finally, pin down who your target audience is – follow our guide to define and reach them. For better results, combine strategies from the guide with other frameworks, such as the jobs to be done (JTBD) approach or Ben Hunt's customer awareness ladder. 3. Learn online business laws Legal stuff may seem to be the most tedious part of launching a business. However, knowing online business laws not only keeps your firm from failing, but also helps you get additional benefits. Start getting an idea about the legal side of eCommerce by reading online business regulations. Whatever country you’re in, most of the rules are available online on government or local business associations’ websites. For instance, US citizens may look through the Small Business Administration (SBA) site for a rundown of online business laws. Learn about tax obligations for your online business. Carefully examine different tax regimes and options; some of them may be milder than others. Last but not least, get information about the tax deductions available to you. 4. Choose the right platform Building your website from scratch with the help of developers or special agencies is not the only option. To find the perfect platform for your online business, consider your niche, your business needs, and the places your target audience prefer. Sometimes you don’t even need a website. For instance, if you’re a small handmade store, you can market your goods through Instagram, Facebook, or WhatsApp. All three of these platforms have tools for helping users shop without leaving an existing platform. Another option is joining a marketplace, such as Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Aliexpress, or others. The main advantage of this variant is the lower competition. If you decide to go for a stand-alone website, you can still reduce the cost of launching it – just use a website creator. Follow our guide on webpage builders to learn more about different options, essential features, and pricing. 5. Drive online traffic Your online business needs traffic, so think about how to drive it to your platform. We’ll take a closer look at different ways to promote your business online in the following part of this writing. For now, let’s discuss some additional rules. First of all, employ the power of networking. Word of mouth is still one of the most effective ways to promote your firm. Share information about launching your business with your friends and family, former colleagues, social media followers, and so on. This move will create brand awareness and a customer base for the first time. If your business has an unusual conception or affects social life, you may try to reach the media. Write a press release for local magazines and websites. Include your brand name, mission, and purpose, as well as a brief product assortment. Media representatives often need comments or expertise for their publications – help them and get your brand promoted. Join services that coordinate journalists and speakers, such as HARO or ProfNet. 6. Analyze your performance Keeping track of your performance underlies the success of your business. If you monitor your indicators, you can make timely changes to your strategy, outline new development directions, and improve your business model. Here are three groups of key performance indicators (KPIs) you should keep an eye on: eCommerce data helps you understand your website performance and customer journey. The most common indicators here are the number of sales, conversion rate, traffic, and bounce rate. Marketing success indicators help you evaluate your marketing efforts. These metrics will vary from channel to channel. For instance, open rate and click-through rate are important for email marketing, average position – for SEO, the number of followers – for social media. Business KPIs measure your overall business performance and financial results. Here are a couple of examples: customer lifetime value, gross profit, average margin, and so on. Leveraging your key performance indicators is almost impossible without a well-produced marketing strategy. Let’s unveil the most effective channels for your online business promotion. How to Promote Your Business Online SEO Web push marketing Email marketing Chatbot marketing Instagram marketing WhatsApp marketing Thankfully, you can go loads of different ways when it comes to promoting your business online. Here we’ll look at some effective channels and best practices to help you drive desirable results. SEO Search engine optimization, or SEO, allows your website to appear in top positions on the search engine results page. Your rank in search results is crucial for your online business’s success – the first page gets 71.33% of all clicks. 70% of marketers say SEO is more effective for driving web traffic, clicks, and sales than PPC ads. Best practices to adopt: Optimize for voice search. Roughly 30% of people use voice search, and this number is soaring. To keep your SEO on point, adapt your content to users' complete questions. Become mobile-friendly. Mobile device users generate more than half of internet traffic worldwide. To connect with this audience, make your website suitable for mobile screens and optimize your loading speed. Employ SMM. Social media is efficient as a stand-alone marketing channel. Better yet, SMM affects your SEO positively as it drives quality traffic to your website and improves ranking factors, such as on-page time, bounce rate, and so on. Nike shows the perfect example of quality work with SEO. The sportswear brand appears in the top-3 position on the results page for the query “running shoes.” According to Ahrefs, the website has high domain rationing – 81 and over 35 thousand backlinks. Web push marketing Web push marketing is another term for advertising through short notifications in a browser or mobile app. This tool is perfect for keeping your audience engaged with a brand and moving them down the sales funnel. According to LIKE.TG’s statistics, users subscribe to notifications in 44.32% of cases. The average reaction rate to web push notifications is 7.8%. Best practices to adopt: Play around with frequency and timing. Non-stop untimely messaging is the main reason web push marketing falls flat. Such notifications irk recipients instead of engaging them. Try to send notifications less than five times a day and consider each user’s time zone and lifestyle. Segment your subscribers. Segmentation works wonders with the efficiency of your marketing – it can raise your CTR by up to 218%. While dividing your subscribers into groups, take into account their browser language, subscription preferences, region, and type of browser. Add multimedia. Pictures can be a game-changer for your web push marketing – big images drive more attention. You can use multimedia to hook the reader, affect their emotions, and add some extra text. We’ve created a notification with LIKE.TG to boost sales and added an eye-catching image and CTA button. Our tool for web push marketing allows you to segment your audience and preview the notification in different browsers. Email marketing Good old email marketing it’s still one of the most effective ways to promote a business. It helps brands nurture leads, increase sales, improve customer experience, and build strong relationships with their audience. This channel is ROI-effective – companies earn $42 for each $1 spent on email marketing. Best practices to adopt: Personalize your emails. Personalization is king – by personalizing your subject line, you can get a 50% higher open rate. For better results, consider going further and personalizing your email body. Employ new formats. Simple text is way too old-school – people prefer interactive emails. You can add a bit of interactivity with different multimedia formats, such as sliders, GIFs, or videos. The latter boost your click-through rate by 300%. Automate your email flows. Email automation is a time saver for busy online business owners. Better yet, it lets you maintain regular connections with customers and boost conversions. Take a once-over of the flow we’ve created with LIKE.TG’s Automation 360 tool. It starts after a prospect opens a subscription expiration email. Then, depending on the recipient's actions, the flow automatically sends new messages and drives the lead towards the purchase. Chatbot marketing Chatbot marketing lets businesses acquire, nurture, engage, and support customers at relatively no cost. This software, based on predetermined scenarios or AI, can cut operational costs by 30%. Best practices to adopt: Create a chatbot persona. People are willing to interact with other people, so your chatbot should resemble a human. To leverage it, give your chatbot a name, create an image, and think up the tone of voice and specific phrases. Couple your chatbot with email marketing. Together, these channels reinforce each other and drive exceptional results. For instance, you can use a chatbot to collect emails or segment subscribers. Make your bot proactive. A chatbot can do more than simply answer users’ questions. Use your bot to provoke conversations and send promotional campaigns. In this case, you can keep a customer engaged with your brand longer. In the example below, the simple chatbot created with LIKE.TG helps clients subscribe to email campaigns and get consultations. Our service allows you to create chatbots for Facebook and Telegram without any technical background for free. Instagram marketing With over 1 billion active users, Instagram is the second most popular social network. This channel is perfect for business-to-customer interactions, as 90% of users follow one or more companies. Best practices to adopt: Use stories and highlights. With these options, you can market your products effectively. 62% of users said Stories provoked their interest in a product or brand. Use interactive elements. Instagram Stories have polls, quizzes, challenges, questions, countdowns, and other tools to deepen your interactions with followers. By using them, you can make your content more memorable. Launch an Instagram shop. With this tool, you can increase sales without paying a dime. Here is an example of an Instagram shop from Benefit cosmetics. The company showcases its best-selling and the most useful products. WhatsUp marketing WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform in the world, with 2 billion active users monthly. This channel is perfect for small businesses thanks to its specific options, such as product catalogs, statuses, and so on. Best practices to adopt: Create broadcast lists. This feature lets you segment your contacts and send relevant offers to each group of subscribers. Use group chats. This tool is perfect for communications with groups of prospects when they need to make a decision altogether. Craft a product catalog. Catalogs in WhatsApp resemble Instagram shops. Look at the example of the WhatsApp catalog below. It allows you to send certain items through the messenger or share links to the whole showcase. Once you’ve learned some of the best marketing channels, test each of them. Part of the strategies listed above will work wonders for you, while another part will make no impact. The only way to find the most effective techniques for your business promotion is to experiment with them and stick to the tips we’ll share in the next part. 3 Tips for a Successful Online Business Handling an online business is a complicated task. No wonder you can get disoriented with it once in a while. Let our simple tips guide you in these difficult times. Work on improving your conversion rates. Work on conversion rate improvement may seem too arduous or time-consuming, but avoid striking it off your list. Better conversion is key to higher profits without additional investment. To soar your conversion rates, follow our comprehensive guide on conversion rate optimization. Maintain customer data safely. Even leading online businesses have had hard times after user data leaks. The public outrage in these cases is whopping, but understandable – it’s a business’ duty to keep its customers’ information safe. To avoid pitfalls with your customers’ data, consider storing it in a CRM system – most of them have advanced data safety features. To choose the best option for you, follow our tips. Offer great service. High-quality service is the name of the game for most businesses, both online and offline. 96% of customers believe the quality of service underlies their loyalty to a brand. To nail this part of your business, make sure your representatives are friendly, quick, and proactive. 32% of people expect a company to respond to a message on social media within 30 minutes. To automate the processing of repetitive requests and take the load off of your support team, create a chatbot using 13chats. After registration, a big free plan is already available to you, and there is a detailed guide in the knowledge base on creating a chatbot. We’ve unpacked the main points of launching an online business, including ideas, essential steps, and marketing channels. To facilitate your work on business promotion, try LIKE.TG. Our ecosystem of services lets you handle your marketing strategy effectively with no sweat.

An oligopoly is a market structure that involves a small group of large companies that have all or almost all sales in the industry and often collude to reduce competition. The level of competition among firms within this market system is lower, while companies have monopoly power and obtain higher revenue. Why do oligopolies exist? Companies often collaborate to set a specific price or an output rather than compete with each other because of several economic benefits oligopolies allow to obtain. Firms in oligopolies control the prices, making it more difficult for other businesses to enter the market. This way, they prevent the emergence of new competitors that can hinder their business growth. However, new companies can charge lower prices and jeopardize the longevity of revenues thatcolluding companies have. You can find oligopolies among steel manufacturers, oil companies, railroads, airlines, and pharmaceuticals. In this market structure, companies choose to obtain the benefits of their collaboration rather than compete. They set prices together or choose a leader that will increase the prices, and other firms will follow. Now that you know why oligopolies exist, let’stalk about the top features this market structure has. 5Features of Oligopolies Interdependence in decision making Price rigidity Conflicting attitudes Monopoly power Advertising There are four main types of market structures: pure competition, monopoly, oligopoly, and monopolistic competition. We’llnow review the main features of this market system to distinguish an oligopoly from other market forms. Interdependence in decision making. A small number of big companies in an oligopoly can’t operate independently. For example, the decision of one firm to launch an extensive advertising campaign will provoke countermoves. Since firms in an oligopoly offer homogenous products, they all influence the prices and output and can’t ignore the actions of their competitors. Price rigidity. Each company has to stick to the price in this market system. If one company cuts down the price, competitors will make a more drastic reduction, leading to a price war and letting no one benefit. Conflicting attitudes. In this market structure, you can find two perspectives. In the first one, companies understand that competition can’t bring them benefits and try to cooperate to maximize their revenue. In the second one, the idea of increasing profit leads to conflict and antagonism. Monopoly power. A limited number of companies in an oligopoly with a significant market share enables these firms to control the price and output. Therefore, this market structure has some monopoly power. Advertising. It is a powerful instrument with the help of which a company in an oligopoly can start an aggressive campaign to capture a big part of the market. In this scenario, other firms will have to use defensive advertising. Now it’s time to move to the pros and cons of this market structure. Advantages and Disadvantages of Oligopolies Companies in oligopolies are large, and they set standards to control prices and competition. You might have asked yourself why oligopolies are so widespread, especially inmass media, the tech industry, airlines, entertainment, and social media platforms. The answer is simple — because of the advantages that this market structure brings to businesses. They include the following pros: low level of competition; high potential to receive big profits; a great demand forproducts and services controlled through oligopolies; a limited number of companies makes it easier for customers to compare and choose products; more competitive prices; better quality of products and services since brands need to survive in the market; better customer support; price stability within the market; more informative ads. However, everything has drawbacks, and oligopolies have them too. The major cons are: limited customer choice; high barriers to entry; companies are not interested in innovations since the level of competition is low. Now that you know the advantages and disadvantages, let’s proceed to the next section to learn how an oligopoly works. How does an oligopoly work? In oligopolies, collusion processes are sequential. They are necessary to define the price and output or boost the profit. That’s why this market structure is somehow similar to a monopoly —it consists of a few big companies that collude to obtain the necessary results. By increasing the price, they have an opportunity to receive higher profits and produce a smaller amount of goods. However, collusive oligopolies are risky since the most efficient companies will break ranks by reducing their prices. These firms break the agreement mainly to increase their market share. A threat of defection, low level of coordination, and illegal price-fixing are the factors that deter collusion. That’s why these companies often face the possibility that one of them can agree to collude, then break the agreement, and undercut the revenue. Now that you know how this market structure works, we’ll proceed to the difference between an oligopoly and a monopoly. Oligopoly vs. Monopoly Let’s review the features of these two market systems to make the difference between them clear. In an oligopoly, there are two or more companies that control the market. In this market structure, no firm can keep the others from influencing the industry and offering goods that differ a little bit. Since it doesn’t have any superior force, firms prefer to collude rather than compete. This strategy makes it extremely difficult for other players to enter the market. In a monopoly, there’s one dominant firm that sells goods or provides services. A company in this market structure has enough authority and power to prevent competitors from entering the marketplace. There might be various reasons that make it difficult to enter the industry, such as technology, patents, government regulation, or capital requirements. In a monopoly, we can find only one seller, a price maker whocan set high prices and reduce the choice for customers. Nevertheless, buyers will pay the price if there are no substitutesavailable. Let’s move to the next section, where we’ll walk you through the types of an oligopoly. Types of Oligopoly Further, we’ll review four main types of this marketing structure based on the relationships between companies within the market: perfect oligopolyimplies that companies offer homogenous products (for example, the steel and aluminum industry); imperfectoligopolymeans that firms manufacture differentiated products (for instance, soft drinks and cigarettes); collusive oligopolyrequires companies to cooperate in setting the price and output; non-collusiveoligopoly appears when firms within an oligopoly market compete with each other. Next, we’ll discuss the pricing strategies of oligopolies, so let’s dive in. Pricing Strategies of Oligopolies Companies in oligopolies can use predatory pricing, which means keeping prices very low, sometimes even under the full cost of production. This strategy is used to force competitors out of the market. Besides, firms also implement a limit-pricing strategy to hinder new companies from entering the market. In this scenario, firms reduce the price sufficiently and make it unprofitable for other players to enter. You can also encounter cost-plus pricing in this market structure. It’s a strategy in which the price of a good is defined by adding a specific markup to a product’s unit cost. It is useful for oligopoliesandfirms that manufacture different products since a few companies that dominate the market often share the same expenses. One of the examples is petrol retailers. Nevertheless, there is always a risk because competitors can adopt a more flexible method to obtain a bigger market share. If you want to compete in an oligopoly market, you should know the main peculiarities of this market system, which we’ll discuss next. How to Compete in the Oligopoly Market The interdependence that exists within an oligopoly determines the way companies compete. The decisions on the price and output of the firms within this market system depend on the behavior of other companies. Businesses that operate under the rules of an oligopoly can’t act independently. They usually take into account the actions of their closest competitors when making decisions. Let’s take Texaco, a company that operates in petrol retailing, for example. Say, the company wants to get a bigger market share by cutting down the price. If their competitors Shell and BP find out about this, they can reduce their prices as well. The way firms compete in an oligopoly depends on their objectives, the nature of their goods or services, and the contestability of the market. Some firms compete on the price, and others try to enhance the quality of their products. When trying to demonstrate their benefits to the leadsand customers, oligopolists prefer to implement non-price competition. It involves distinguishing products or services to increase sales by using methods other than price. Now that you know how companies compete, it’s time to discover how to enter this market. How to Enter the Oligopoly Market Oligopolists always maintain their dominance in the market and establishhigh barriers to entry, which makes it hard for new players to enter. When giving thought to entering this market structure, remember that there will be obstacles, such as economies of scale and patents, government regulations, and expensive technology. Companies need to overcome these and other challenges if they want to be a part of an oligopoly. However, this does not have to discourage but motivate you to develop a well-thought-out strategy. Let’s dive into several examples to help you grab some inspiration. Examples of Oligopolies Nowadays, you can find different oligopolies in various industries. If you are curious about corporations that belong to specific market structures, we’ll walk you through some of them. Entertainment. Hollywood and its movie production studios have been an oligopoly for a long time. Disney, Warner Bros. Pictures, Universal, and Sony are the biggest movie studios based on their market share. Airlines. The airline industry in the United States can also be referred to as an oligopoly since four leading domestic airlines dominate the market. They are American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, and United Airlines. Search engines. People use search engines every day for their personal needs. There are around ten most popular search engines in the world. However, only a few of them dominate the market. The two major search engines are Google and Bing. Google is a leader among search engines and the most popular search engine. In February 2021, Google had 86.6% of the search market share, while Bing had 6.7%. Social media. As of 2021, there are 3.96 billion users of social media worldwide. Today, we can’t even imagine our lives without social media platforms that dominate the market, like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Facebook is considered the world’s biggest social media platform because it has 2.45 billion monthly active users. Big technology. When we talk about oligopolies in big tech, we usually mean operating systems for phones, laptops, or PCs. Among smartphones, customers can choose between Apple iOS and Android. If you need a computer or laptop, the choice isn’t too big either since Apple and Microsoft Windows are the most popular and influential. Automobile manufacturers. Although the world knows dozens of automobile manufacturers, and people can choose any of them, the situation is quite different in the US. General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Stellantis North America are the largest automakers that represent an oligopoly. You can see multiple examples of oligopoly in your everyday life: platforms you use for communication, operating systems of the smartphones or laptops you buy, and search engines you know. Now you can easily distinguish this market structure from others.

An online chat is an instrument that ensuresbetter communication between a leadand a company’s customer support agent. It helps answer clients’ questions and solve their problems. A live chatis opened automatically whenever a user visits a website or clicks on a special widget. With LIKE.TG, you can create a live chat for your website for free to convert more site visitors into customers. In this article, we’ll uncover the reasons to implement a live chat and its benefits. We’ll alsoreview the topfive online chat platformsand find out how to create an online chat for social media. Why should you implement a live chat? An online chat isa must-have tool for any company in addition to email campaigns, chatbots,web push, and other valuable tools that help move prospectsdown the sales funnel. According to SuperOffice, 79% of consumers say they prefer live chats, and immediacy is the number one reason they choose this channel over others. At the same time,live chats don’t require visitors to leavea website. Prospective customers can keep exploring certainproducts and their features while chatting with an agent. This marketing instrument is beneficial for both businesses and consumers. With a live chat, agents canhelp a visitor and manage orders simultaneously. It helps business owners improve the process of communication with prospects, which results in a visible increaseinconversion rates. Websites with live chats have higher customer retentionandsales volumeandmore repeat purchases. They can ensurea prompt response from a customer support team, increaseonlinesales, improve the customer onboarding process, simplify the process of sharing the necessary information, welcome new clients, etc. Now that you know the primaryreasons to consider using online chats, it’s time to review the benefits you can reap in more detail. Live Chat Benefits There are many perksa live chat can bring to your business, so let’sgo over them: Reduce your customer support costs.Buyersoftentry to reach customer support reps via phone callsto get instant answers. However,this way of communicating can cost business owners even more. According to99firms, a live chat costs 15-33%less than providing customer support via phone calls. Live chat platforms help agents manage several chats at once and assist customers when they have problems using a product. Enhance yourcustomer service and customer loyalty. Customer satisfaction is higherwith website live chatssince itmakes users feel more confident about a company’s credibility and the help it can instantly provide. Consumers can receive answers fast, have their problems solved, and get help whenever they need it. As a result, they are more likely to purchasefrom a brand again. Boost yoursales volume. Online chats improve conversions. Data shows that a person is more likely to buy a product after communicating with a live chat agent. According to statistics, 38% of customers say that they purchase a product after having a great conversation with an online chat agent. Instant access toyour support team ensures lead generation and higher sales volume. Unveil your customers’ problems. It’s sometimes tricky for traditional support services to instantly identify the pain points of their leads and customers. A live chat provides team members with all the necessary information about each customer found in the chat history. Every customer support agent can access it before starting the conversation. Customer support reps can filter, sort, and search the history tosingle out customers’ key concerns. Smooth outyour customer onboarding. Customer service experience also has a significant impact on the onboarding process. Live chats enable newcomers to instantly contact the person responsibleand receive answers to questions on how to use a product, assistance, or solutions to problems. Excellent and instant customer service ensures that customers will continue using a brand’s product. Some people think that having a live chat requires specific skills and is expensive and difficult to implement. In the next section, we’ll prove the opposite by reviewingseveral services that help create online chats. You canchoose a free plan or a paid one with more features, and the price ofthe latter starts at $12. 5 Online Chat Tools for Your Business LIKE.TG LiveChat Zendesk ChatBot HelpCrunch We offer you to review the top five online chat tools that can helpboost your customer satisfaction. After exploring each of them, you’ll be able to decideon the one that suits your business the most. LIKE.TG The platformenables you toenhancecustomer satisfaction and boost conversions by improving the quality of your customer support.Ourdrag and dropbuilder allows you to customize the color, format, and style ofyour chatto your liking, branding, and company style. You’ll only need a few minutes to set up a widget.You can integrate a live chat with chatbots, landing page, and CRM to provide the best user experience, increase your reach and keep track of all leads on a single platform. Withan automated flow, you can answer users' FAQs, help them choose the necessary product, collect their data, accept payments, or provide a link to your chatbot on social media. Users can see a live chat based on the conditions: time spent on a website, pages visited, number of sessions, etc. 3 predefined triggers can start the conversation — welcome message, standard reply, and unsubscribe from bot. You can create more triggers that will work based on keywords. In your flow, you can use text, images, files, and user input. If a user wants to speak to a live agent, your bot can tell about your business hours. You'll see the interaction history with every user in your LIKE.TG account. Also, you can manage user data and store it in the CRM. In our Knowledge Base, you'll find guides on setting up a live chat, interacting with website visitors, and creating an automated live chat flow. Below you can see the process of customizing a chat widget. Free plan:1,000 active users and 10,000 conversations across all messaging apps.Paid plan:the price depends on the number of subscribers. LiveChat The platform helps you create targeted messages that respond to specific customer actions, share files, and use a built-in ticketing system. The service allows you to add chat widgets and help customers during checkouts. If you have several websites, LiveChat enables you to manage them from one account. The platform also provides you with a chance to improve engagement by sending greetings, sharing announcements, and inviting users to chat. Below you can see a list of chats and the wayLiveChat helps you manage them simultaneously. Free plan: 14-day trial.Paid plan: From $16 per month, billed annually. Zendesk Established in 2007 as a help desk for customer service, Zendesk isnow a popular platform that enables you toleverage differentchannels of communication with customers and unifythem in a single workspace. Besides the listed features, the platform also enables you to track your site’s visitorsas well as their location and browser. You can also connect your bot to channels like Facebook or WhatsApp. All conversations with customers are kept in a centralized workspace so that all agents can explore the context ofany conversation to provide clients with appropriate solutions. Below you can see how to get started creatinglive chatmessages for different channels. Free plan: 14-day trial.Paid plan: From $59 per month per user, billed annually. ChatBot The service has a drag and drop visual builderthat allows youto create a message flow. Before actual conversations with visitors, you would definitely like to ensure that everything works properly. ChatBot allows you to test your messaging within the platform. You can launch the chatbots you need on your website by using their free chat widget. Customize the look of your chat so that it complies with your brand style and website design. With ChatBot, you can apply pre-built templates like sales bot, offline form, greengrocery, discount bot, and many others. Segment customers based on your requirements and variables. Below you can see how to create a bot in the editor and test it whenit is ready. You can use the available options to setyour chatbot messages. Free plan: 14-day trial.Paid plan: From $42 per month, billed annually. HelpCrunch The platform helpstake your conversations to the next levelusing livechats and automated greetings. HelpCrunch invites you to use offline and pre-chatforms to collect information about your leads and pre-qualify them. You can increase the productivity of your support team. With HelpCrunch, your agent will be able to manage up tofive chats simultaneously. You can also use the opportunityto customize your live chat widget to your liking and company style. Make use of 20 customization options and custom CSS styling toadjust different wallpapers, button style, size, and color to match your brand personality. Below you can see how all conversations with customers look in HelpCrunch. Theplatform allows you to handleyourcustomers’ issues fast with the help of automated messages. Free plan: 14-day trial.Paid plan: From $12 per monthfor each user, billed annually. Using special platformsto create and handle live chats can greatly improve the quality of your customer service and help your agents process more information with ease.Go over thekey features, and choose a platform that complies with your requirements and needs. Since the popularity of online shopping rises and people spend more time on social media, you should consider implementing a live chat so that customers can receive instant help. How to Create a Social Media Online Chat with LIKE.TG Chatbots help businesses handlesimple questions andissuesthat prospects and customers often face. Online chats simulate live communication and make it more human.They can perform different tasks and simplify the work of your customer care agents. If the majority of your customers comefrom your website, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, or Telegram,you might want to adopta live chat. How to create an online chat for Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram To start, you need to register with LIKE.TG. If you have an account, simply sign in. Afterward, go to the “Messengers” tab, and click the “Connect channels” button. If youwant to create a Facebook live chat, click the “Sign in with Facebook” button, and go through the authorization process. It’s necessary to create your first bot. After that, select the groups for which youwant to create a chatbot. Click the “Enable” button to runyour chatbot. One more important step is to subscribe to your chatbot so that you can make sure your campaigns and automated messages work properly. When youget new subscribers, the bot will send them welcome messages. LIKE.TG invites you to try a free pricing planandsend up to 10,000 messages per month to your subscribers. Now that you know how to create an online chat for Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, let’s explore how to create one for Telegram, apopular platformthat has 55.2 million users every day. How to create a chatbot for Instagram Register in LIKE.TG if you don't have an account yet. To connect a chatbot to your Instagram account, you need a Facebook brand's page, an Instagram business account, a personal Facebook profile, and a second (personal) Instagram account. First, you need to link your Facebook page to your Instagram business account. This can be done in three different ways. Below we will show how to do this using one of them as an example. All three methods are described here. Open your company's Facebook page and go to "Settings." In the "Instagram" tab, click "Connect account." Then click "Continue." Sign in to your account. If the account you connected is not yet a business account, you will be offered to change it. To do this, follow the prompts. Next, you can move on to connecting the bot to LIKE.TG. Go to the "Chatbots" section of your LIKE.TG account and click "Connect." Check the items behind the checklist, check the box “I completed the previous steps,” and click Continue with Facebook.Log in to the Facebook account linked to your Instagram business account. Select the account for which you will create the bot and the linked company Facebook page. Grant the LIKE.TG app permissions and click Done. And lastly, you need to add an owner to the created bot. To test your chatbot, make the second Instagram account (personal) the owner of the bot. To do this, log in and scan the QR code or follow the link to your Instagram business account. Click "Message" on the profile, enter the code, and send a message. If everything is done correctly, you will receive a welcome flow. Follow the step-by-step instructions in our Knowledge Base. How to create an online chat for Telegram If you want to develop a chatbot for Telegram, open the app, and sign in to your account. First, search for @Botfather in the Telegram searchbox, and select the official bot. Make sure to choose a bot with a blue checkmarknext to its name. Next,click “Start” to activate it. You’ll obtain a list of commands to handle your bots. Select the /newbot command, and send it. The next step is to create a name for your bot. Your customers will see it when communicating with your agents. You should also select a username so that people can find itusing thesearch box. Make sure to create a unique usernamethat ends with the word “bot.” Once you are done with that,you will receive amessage thatincludes a link to your bot and some commands to help you manage it. Afterward, youwill need to connect your bot to LIKE.TG. To do it,you will needa token. Check out our article to figure out how to find a token for an existing bot. Learn how to create an automated chatbot flow in our knowledge base. Congrats, now youunderstand the benefits of a live chat, know the topfive services to create it, and have instructions on how to create a chatbotfor social media. Make use of the knowledge you have to provide your leads and customers with 24/7 support.

An onboarding email is a message which a user receives right after subscription. Very often, brands send an onboarding email series to guide and educate subscribersabout how to use a product effectively. Marketers aim to make the buyers’ journey smooth. Watch the video below to get useful insights into the art of greeting new subscribers. Find out how to create a series of welcome emails that help with step-by-step onboarding. An onboarding email series that starts after a visitor signs up should engage and build trust with the customers, share valuable information about the product or service, and finally, convince a recipient to take action. Still, boring and irrelevant onboarding campaigns that give the reader no value can lead to a high unsubscribe rate and almost zero email open rate, which may influence email sender reputation. So, if you manage to discover the users’ pain points while providing information about your product, your onboarding email series will work out. Why is an onboarding email important? When a new user signs up, it takes effort and dedication to make them stay and hopefully convert. Onboarding emails are useful for showing prospective customers how a particular product or service can make their lives better and reassuring new subscribers that they made the right choice. That is why a well-thought onboarding email — personalized and well-timed — will enhance user experience with the brand and get more leads to convert quicker. In the end, good onboarding email practices help businesses retain their customers. How to Write an Onboarding Email Series Research and understand target customers Segment the recipients based on their behaviors and activities Create onboarding emails for each stage in the customer lifecycle Trigger the user’s emotions Use a single and persuasive CTA Communicate consistently Creating a highly personalized onboarding email campaign can boost your conversion rates significantly. Here’s a checklist for designing successful customer onboarding emails: Research and understand target customers. Understanding customers’ wants and needs will help you create tailored onboarding messages. Pay particular attention to how visitors are using the website or app and their actions before converting. Segment the recipients based on their behaviors and activities. Don’t senda standardizedemail to everyone on the subscriber list. Instead, segment the mailing list based on the data available on individual users. Knowing their previous behavior and preferences can help predict their future actions. Create onboarding emails for each stage in the customer lifecycle. If a user has just subscribed, the first onboarding message they should receive is a welcome email. However, the same email cannot be sent to a passive subscriber. Create onboarding emails according to the stages of the customer lifecycle and answer common questions at each phase. Trigger the user’s emotions. Emotions have a high impact on decision-making. So, tap into the user’s emotions and imagination by writing a story-based email that will captivate every subscriber. Use a single and persuasive CTA. Don’t place too many CTAs because they may confuse users. Take them a step at a time with only one call to action per email. Communicate consistently, but don’t be nagging. Send valuable emails to subscribers regularly, but notso oftenthat you will irritate them. Rather than manually sending messages, schedule the date and time to send an onboarding email automatically. How to Send an Onboarding Email Series with LIKE.TG With LIKE.TG, you no longer need to send each onboarding email to every subscriber manually. Automation 360 allows to create an email flow in advance and send it to users after they perform a particular action. After the registration, upload your mailing list to LIKE.TG. Then, go to “Automations” and choose “Automation 360”. The event that starts the onboarding email series is joining a mailing list, so select “Add subscriber.” After that, your imagination comes into play. Add as many emails as you wish — set conditions to send behavior-based messages. In our example, we started with a welcome email to greet the newcomers. Say, a user expressed interest in SEO while leaving their email address. So, we offer to study SEO. After that, we share other useful courses in online advertising. From here on, one can target specific groups of subscribers interested in different content. Follow this guide to send automated emails in LIKE.TG. Onboarding Email Examples Users receive this email after subscribing to Fairygodboss. The brand explains how to get the most of the membership. An onboarding email from Payoneer explaining how their “Manage Currencies” feature works. An onboarding email from Alison invites a subscriber to take a course. Onboarding Email Best Practices Here are some best practices for creating successful onboarding email campaigns: Use a real and comprehensive sender name together with your brand logo to build brand awareness. Focus not on your product features but on the problems it solves. Create a compelling subject line that will reflect the main idea of your onboarding email. Encourage users to share and refer the brand to friends. Offer customers a free trial or a special discount to test drive the product. Include customer feedback and reviews into your onboarding email series to persuade the clients. Send behavioral emails to ensure a personalized approach. Understand the reasons for your churn rate by merely asking clients why they no longer use your product — they will help you improve.