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.

One-to-one marketing is a strategy that focuses on customer needs to establish strong relationships with consumers and ensure personalized interaction. It enables brands to boost customer loyalty and improve customer lifetime value. In this article, we’ll explore the advantages, disadvantages, and examples of one-to-one marketing. We’ll also narrate on how to implement this strategy. Advantages and Disadvantages of One-to-One Marketing Big sales volume, enhanced customer base, and high customer loyalty are the goals you can attain by undertaking one-to-one marketing and tailoring customized offers. Once you succeed in meeting customer needs, you can improve customer satisfaction. Let’s find out about more benefits you can reap after incorporating this strategy into your business. After establishing personal relationships with customers, you can: increase customer retention; boost sales; successfully implement upselling and cross-selling; reduce costs on marketing campaigns; obtain referrals; improve customer lifetime value; get free word-of-mouth promoters; increase ROI; earn customer trust; enhance customer base. However, like any other marketing strategy, one-to-one marketing has its disadvantages you should be aware of. They include: change in customer preferences will require you to change your personalized offers; high costs to approach each customer with customized service and product; the time-consuming character of the strategy. Now that you know the pros and cons, it’s time to find out how to implement the strategy in your business. How to implement one-to-one marketing? Since one-to-one marketing is based on individual relationships with customers, you need to perform several actions to establish good communication. We’ve prepared five mandatory steps to build trusting relationships with your consumers and increase profits. Let’s review them to unveil how to get started. Gather your team to define the goals. You need to meet with your team to determine your strategy's short-term and long-term goals. You should also discuss the budget and the resources you have to meet customers' personal expectations. After, talk to your sales representatives to identify and analyze customer needs and define the tasks you want to do first. For instance, if your website ensures an excellent user experience and provides elements of personalization, consider implementing new convenient channels for communication with customers. LIKE.TG’s chatbot builder empowers you to connect a chatbot to platforms like Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp and instantly assist all customers. As a result, consumers can choose a preferred medium to connect with your company. Collect valuable customer data. At this stage, you need to gather as much customer information as possible. Identify the interests, gender, occupation, needs, preferences, and expectations of your target audience so that you can effectively reach these people. Consider conducting a survey to gather customer feedback and recommendations. As a result, your sales reps will understand consumers’ needs and approach them with the right offers. You can store your customer insights in LIKE.TG’s CRM for free to make sure that your data is entirely secure. Identify customer needs. Divide your target audience into segments based on their needs to reach them with customized offers. Leverage a CRM to split your customers into groups based on specific parameters. This will help you reach consumers with the right solutions. For instance, your marketers can develop personalized emails for different segments based on their preferences and needs. Analyze the result. After the campaign launch, you still need to collect customer data. Keep an eye on their interaction with your company to find out their focus of interest. You can gather some additional information by establishing a reward program. Loyalty programs can help you gain valuable insights, build strong relationships with consumers, and encourage them to refer their friends. Be ready to adjust. You need to continue tracking your customer interactions to find out some more information about them. You can identify the topics they prefer and product upgrades they find useful. If this data requires you to change your approach, you need to adapt. For instance, if you reveal that a customer prefers one communication channel over others, develop a strategy for sales reps on how to interact with this person through this medium. Now it’s time to have a look at some outstanding examples to get inspired. One-to-One Marketing Examples There are many excellent examples of one-to-one marketing strategies used to win customers’ attention. After reviewing the approaches of different companies, you’ll find that you can reach your consumers in different ways. Personalized email from Webex Webex invites customers to explore their personalized email prepared for specific audience segments. The company offers clients to join its upcoming webinar. This customized email targets remote workers since the topic of the discussion is “Your Guide to Choosing the Right Devices for Remote Workers.” The webinar will be relevant for people who work online and need to select the right devices for their jobs. Recommended products from Uber Eats Uber Eats recommends products based on the cafes and dishes users prefer. For instance, below you can see products picked for you that you might want to order. This way, the company strives to provide personalized offers. Loyalty program from Sephora You can often encounter Sephora’s Beauty Insiders on the list of the best loyalty programs. Clients appreciate its program for its personalization index. The company’s three-tiered system of rewards can meet the needs of different audience segments and satisfy every customer. It also rewards its current customers with great gifts for being loyal. Congrats, now you can develop an excellent one-to-one marketing strategy to build good relationships with customers, increase sales, and revenues. Hope our guide and examples will come in handy when you decide to implement it.

Omnichannel marketing isa strategy that requires brands to interactwith their audiences across multiple online and offline channels, providing a consistent shopping experience. These channels include social media, websites, apps, email campaigns, chatbots, web push notifications, stores, events, and other means that can guide customers through theirbuyer journey.Omnichannel marketing helps brands gain customer loyalty, establish brand recognition, provide a personalized experience, reduce customer churn, and boost sales. In this article, we’ll review the importance and benefits of omnichannel marketing and get to know the difference between omnichannel and multichannel strategies. Next, we’llfind out how to create an omnichannel strategy with LIKE.TG and grab some inspiration from our outstanding examples. Why is omnichannel marketing important? According to statistics, 87% ofcompanies assume that omnichannel marketing is essential for the overall success of their brands. In today’s digital world, you need multiple touchpoints with your customer to close a deal. You can interact with your target audience in-store, on websites and social media, in chatbots, etc. With omnichannel marketing, you can focus on customer experience rather than communication channels. This type of marketing makes customers a top priority. This means that companies improve theuser experiencethey provide, personalize their offers, and ensure support in-store and online. As a result, customers are satisfied, and companies increase their customer base,strengthencustomer loyalty, and boost revenue. Since most people oftensurf several channels before shopping, brands should be ready to ensure a seamless and consistent experienceduring all of the possible touchpoints. Remember, a positive experience reduces churn and increases loyalty. Now that you know the reasons for implementing the technique, it’s time to figure out its benefits. Benefits of an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy Omnichannel marketing is gaining popularity due to the many advantages it brings to both shoppers and sellers. 50% of customers want to have the possibility to purchase online and pick up in-store. Let’s review the pros customers can obtain if a brand implementsan omnichannel marketing strategy. They include: seamless customer experience; additional shoppingoptions; more waysto reach a company and solve problems; convenient shopping; amazing in-store experience; personalized services; lesstime spent trying to contact a company. More and more companies leverage omnichannel marketing for a reason. With this strategy, your business can get the following benefits: brand recognition; reduced churn; customer loyalty; excellent customer support; high revenue; more purchases and closed deals; improved customer lifetime value; scaled business growth; bettercustomer experience; new audience segments; higher customer engagement. When you provide a seamless and convenient shoppingexperience for your customers across multiple channels, you’ll get many benefits in return. Let’s proceed to the next section to unveil the difference between omnichannel and multichannel marketing. Omnichannel Marketing vs. Multichannel Marketing Providing a best-in-class experience with a brand that communicates the necessary information to buyers requires time and the right strategy. Marketers need to be creative tostrike a chord with shoppers. To choosea strategy, you need to know the key difference between omnichannel and multichannel marketing. We’ll now review each of them in detail to understand it. Omnichannel marketing is a strategywhere entrepreneurs put customers at the heart of their businesses. Brands use multiple channels and personalized messaging to effectively lead prospectsdown the sales funnel. The strategy implies providing customers with a seamless and consistent experience. To attain this goal, brands use different channels. For example, users can see the items they have already viewed ona website. Customers can encounter ads for these products on Instagram, Facebook, other websites, etc. Multichannel marketing is a strategy that entails a brand delivering the same message across several channels. A brand shares the same content, promotions, offers, and news on all channels without providing a consistent experience to leadsand customers. So, omnichannel marketing aims at ensuring a seamless and consistent experience that helps lead a prospect downyour sales funnel. In contrast, multichannel marketing aims to expand a brand’s reach and attractnew audiences. The difference is clear now, so it’s time to jump into the next section to discover how LIKE.TG can help you create an omnichannel strategy for your brand. Howdo you create an omnichannel marketing strategy with LIKE.TG? Let’s now imagine that you have a new profitable business — acompany thatproduces soy candles. You are thinking about conducting workshops to teach people how to make such candles. Now you need to develop an omnichannel strategy to lead customers throughyour sales funnel smoothly. Let’s review different tools you can leverage. You can promote your candle-makingworkshop via paid ads on Instagram with CTAsthat bring potential participants to your landing page. LIKE.TG allows you to create a landing pagewithin 15 minutes without coding. On the landing page, users cangive their contact informationto participate in your classes and giveaway. The winner will get three homemade wax candles for free. In the first email, you should thank subscribers for signing up and welcome them to the upcomingworkshop. The second email is to provide subscribers with the workshop agenda and information about their teacher. The third email is to remind participantsabout the workshop, free guides, and a 20% discount they can get after they go through a short survey in Facebook Messenger. In the last email, you’ll promote the opportunity to receive a 20% discount for the nextworkshop if participants answer all questions in your Facebook Messenger chatbot. In a nutshell, you’ll need a bulk email service, chatbot and landing page builder, and Instagram ads to promote your event. Before promoting your lessonsvia email campaigns, chatbots, and a landing page, you need to register with LIKE.TG. It takes a couple of minutes to create a new account. Create an email campaign The first step is to create a new mailing list where you’ll keepthe email addresses you gather using asubscription formon your landing page. To do it,click “New mailing list.” Name and save your mailing list— you can editit whenever you need. The second step is to prepare a flow offouremails.LIKE.TG allows you to design your email from scratch or choose one of the existing free email templates. To create an automated email flow, go to “Automations” and click “Create new automation.” Then,type in your automation name and select your sender email address and name and unsubscribe form language. Don’t forget to save the changes. Once you click “Apply,” you’ll beredirected to the flow editor. Here, you can create an email flow anddevelop chatbotsfor different social media platforms. Tosend a post-registration email to subscribers automatically, set upyour flow start. Click the “Flow start” element and thenselect “Add subscriber” in the Settings anda mailing list for this particular email campaign. Now you need to drag the “Email” element and connect it to the “Flow start” element. Afterward, you’llneed tomanage the send-out. Select “Right away,”add your email subject line and preheader, and select the necessary email template. Edit the template to your liking. It will be the first email your subscribers receive. In the second email, you can talk about the agenda and teacher in more detail. The third email should remind your participantsabout the upcoming candle-making class and offer freeuseful materials for everyone who joins theworkshop. Once the workshop is over, askyour participants about their experience in the last email. Invite them to do it on Facebook Messenger. Once they answer the questions, they’ll have a 20% discount for the nextworkshop. The number of emails you send depends on the event and strategy. Theprimary aim is to hook more people, provide a consistent experience, and encourage them to join. Create a chatbot With LIKE.TG, you can set upTelegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messengerchatbots. So let’s take advantage of this feature and create a chatbot for your candle-making class. This chatbot will help you gather feedback from your participants andgrant them a 20% discount for the upcoming scented soy candles workshop. Go to the “Chatbots” tab. Click “Manage bots” andthen “Sign in with Facebook.” Connect your pageandsubscribe to your chatbot. To send a message to users right after they subscribe, click “Create a new trigger”and select the “After subscription” trigger type. Save the changes by clicking “Add.” Now let’s create a message flow. It will help collect feedback from participants and provide them with a 20% discount foryour next workshop. Once you add a trigger, click the “Create a flow” button. Usechatbot builder elementsto build a flow of messages you want to send to your participants. You can easily add chatbot messages with quick answers. Below, you can see a flow of messages from the candle-making workshop team asking participants about their experience in Facebook Messenger. In the chatbot, you ask participants whether they enjoyed the event and would like to participate in the next workshop. People can answerusing the “yes” and “no” quick answers. Once you have all the necessary information,grant your participants a 20% discount on the next workshop. After you finish, check if everything works properly. Now you can move on to creating your landing page. Landing page To design a landing page,goto the “Landing pages” tab and click “Create a website” and then “Mini page.” You can create a landing page from scratch or use the professional templates available. Let’schoose a pre-made one for your candle-makingworkshop and edit it a little— now we have a sharp-looking landing page. Paid Instagram ads To get started with ads on Instagram, go tothe “Advertising on Instagram” website and click “Create an Ad.” Once you click the button, you’ll be redirected to Facebook Ads Manager. After you read the non-discrimination policy, click “I Accept.” The next step is to select the objective of your future campaign. Fill inyour campaign name, select special ad categories, and proceed to the next step after clicking “Next.” The next step is to set up the budget, audience, destination, and duration of your ad. Type inyour ad name and select an identity and format. Once everything is ready, publish your sponsored ad by clicking “Publish.” When your ad is approved, it will be visible to your subscribers and leads. Now that you know how to create an omnichannel strategy, let’s take a closer look at how well-established companies launch their omnichannel marketing campaigns. Examples of Omnichannel Marketing Campaigns There are many amazing examples of omnichannel brandsthat provide consumers with the best experience. We’ll review different companies’ campaigns to see how the strategy works. So, let’s grab some inspiration. Starbucks Rewards The famous coffeehouse chain invites its customers to make use of its app. Since people now use mostly their phones to order something, the brand created a mobile app with multiple features. Customers can pre-order and pay at certain locations. You can pay for your coffee with a credit card, cash, or a special Starbucks Card. This way, you no longer need to wait in a long queue after a hard day at work just to get a cup of your favorite coffee. Customers can orderin advance and enjoy their evening with coffee. Moreover, they can even be rewarded forchoosing the brand’s beverages. Amazon Amazon synchronizes customers’ carts in the app and websiteif they are signed inand offers supportusing clients’ preferred communication channels.AmazonPrime members experience convenience when shopping with Amazon, as they can use anymedium to access the benefits of this membership. Spotify Spotify isn’t inferior to Amazon in its user experience. The brand has its own approach to fulfilling listeners’ needs and ensuring the convenienceof using the streaming service on different devices. Since people can use a web app, a desktop app, and a mobile app to listen to their favorite songs, the serviceimplements synchronization features. It means that a song a user listens to at the moment on a mobile deviceis also displayedonthe desktop app version as well. In a nutshell, you are the one to decide whether an omnichannel strategy is a good fit for your company. However, you should always remember that with personalized messages and a seamless user experience, you’ll always be one step ahead of your competitors and one step closer to your audience.

On-page optimization is an integral part of any SEO strategy. It implies optimizing your site content to rank higher on a search engine results page (SERP). The goal of this practice is to create highly relevant and valuable content that meets users’ needs. In this article, we’ll explain why on-page optimization is essential, consider its elements, and share some useful tips. Why is on-page optimization important? According to BrightEdge, 53.3% of all site traffic comes from organic search. This makes business owners pay special attention to their on-page optimization since it plays a crucial role in understanding a user’s intent. The first reason you should consider on-page optimization is that it helps you realize what your target customers want. By analyzing the keywords consumers use in your industry, you will determine which queries they implement for navigational, informational, or shopping intent. Secondly, on-page optimization allows you to provide your users with valuable content that provides answers to their questions. Knowing their search queries, you can produce different types and formats of content that will fit users with various needs. As a result, you can grow your authority and credibility. Thirdly, search engines reward sites that people like. The more users click on your links in SERPs, the higher your page will rank. Hence, your domain rate will increase. Last but not least, occupying the highest positions in SERPs increases your conversions since people tend to trust the first three search results. Hence, you’ll get more salesif they manage to find what they are looking for on your page. To benefit from on-page optimization, you should know its core elements. Key Elements of On-Page Optimization In this section, we’ll uncover the main areas you need to work on to implement on-page optimization. Page content. This is a crucial element since search engines check everything you publish. Your content should be unique and high-quality. Google uses the E-A-T framework to assess web pages. E — expertise, A — authoritativeness, T — trustworthiness. Although there’s a need to optimize your content for both users and robots, Google wants site owners to create customer-oriented pages that meet customers’ needs. Title tag and meta description. They are HTML tags. When a user types a certain search query and sees a SERP, title and meta description are the first thing they pay attention to. Their main goal is to drive customer engagement and motivate people to click the link. With the right title and meta description, you can significantly increase your page CTR. Therefore, they should be relevant to your page content. Heading tags. They are responsible for the logical structure of your page content. There are six heading tags: H1, H2, H3, etc., where H1 is the most important and H6 is the least important. H1 is the title of your page, so it should be informative and relevant to a user’s search query. H2-H6 are used to highlight your headings and subheadings. Headings help readers comprehend the structure of your article betterand navigate to the necessary section. Internal links. To improve your website engagement, don’t forget to interlink relevant articles. This will help your readers learn all the necessary information in a logical order, step by step. When adding a link, pay special attention to your anchor text. To drive user attention, it should be relevant to its destination page and include corresponding keywords. These are the main elements of on-page optimization. Now it’s time to consider some tips that will help you master it. How toOptimize Your Content for On-PageSEO Optimize title tag and meta description Create high-quality content Optimize images Take care of internal linking Use SEO-friendly URLs Create categories and tags Since on-page optimization requires following some practices to meet the needs of users and search engine algorithms, we’ll share some tips for you to create a killer SEO strategy. Title and meta description are the first elements a reader sees when googling, so we’ll start with that. Optimize title tag and meta description Their goal is to attract user attention and tell them that this page provides answers to their questions. Although these elements don’t influence your ranking much, we advise you to optimize them for better performance. For this purpose, includea primary keyword in both your title tag and meta description. Use modifiers to inform clients about what exactly they will see if they click on your link, for example, a checklist, guide, case study, video, infographics, etc. This way, you will increase your chances of catching their attention. Keep user intent in mind. If it’s informational, use a corresponding modifier, for example, “What is Email Marketing.” Take into account the length of both tags. Google is constantly updating its algorithms, so you need to check them. To stay on the safe side, avoid putting overly long titles and descriptions since they will look poor on a SERP. Make your meta description support the title. Use active voice and keywords, and motivate users to followyour link. You can see an example of an optimized title tag and meta description below. Both elements include the main keywords (SEO, search engine optimization), title tag modifier (a simple step-by-step guide), and meta description that encourage users to follow the link to learn what to do for Google to like your content. Create high-quality content High-quality content is about producing original, unique, expert articles. This will help you improve user experience, meet their intent, decrease bounce rate, and boost CTR and conversions accordingly. If you aim to create valuable content, you can start guest blogging. Find experts in your niche and offer them to write articles that will help your audience solve their problems. Be ready to update your content regularlyto keep it fresh and provide new strategies and techniques. For your content to look visually appealing, mind paragraphing, numbered and bulleted lists, tables, images, and screenshots. Use keywords organically. Define your primary and secondary keywords to use them naturally when writing your piece of content. Avoid stuffing your page with keywords because Google can penalize you for that. Optimize images Remember to create unique images and avoid using stock photos since they bring little to no value to a user. Remember that the goal of adding images is not only to make your page more visually appealing but also informative. Each image should tell its story, help reveal a certain topic, and be helpful. Compress images before publishing them since they can weigh too much and load for ages when users open your page. Help Google understand what your image is about. For this purpose, create descriptive names instead of IMG_123456 since robots don’t understand this. Always write ALT texts for your images. Sometimes browsers can’t properly render images or fail to load, so having ALT texts is your airbag. It’s useful for both readers and robots. People with disabilities can use their screen readers to listen to the text describing an image. Therefore, if an image doesn’t render,your ALT text can explain what this or that image depicts. Besides, having ALT texts can help you rank higher because it’s associated with images. In addition, we advise you to pay special attention to the structure of your email files. Don’t place all your images into one folder. Create separate folders for different categories. For example, if you have an eCommerce business, your files can include “Men,” “Women,” and subfolders “Jeans,” “Dresses,” “Swimsuit,” etc. Take care of internal linking We’ve already mentioned internal linking. It helps users navigate through your site and understand a particular topic better while alsoallowing you to boost your new pages or pages that have little traffic. For this purpose, create a list of your most authoritative site pages that perform well and choose those that are related to the one that needs promotion. Then, place these links to your low-authoritative pages and include relevant anchor text. This way, you’ll share the value of your best page. Check out an example of internal linking from LIKE.TG. In our glossary, we define internet marketing terms and consider the most important issues. In our blog, we cover the same topics but more in-depth. We often advise our readers to study the topic better in our blog. Use SEO-friendly URLs URLs should be concise, clear, and informative. For this purpose, include your primary keyword in the URL, make it reflect the title of your page, and avoid using special characters and unnecessary words. These words can make your URL too long, which is a bad SEO practice. Apart from that, remember to omit conjunctions, prepositions, and articles. Create categories and tags If you have a blog and cover different topics, we advise you to develop its structure. It will help readers navigate through your blog and enable search engines to understand your topics. Group all your articles by categories and tags. Congrats, now you know pretty much everything about on-page optimization and are ready to get started. With this list of tips at hand, you can create outstanding content that will meet your readers’ intents and tell search engines that it deserves high rankings.

On-target earnings (OTE) are compensations employees expect to receive from their companies once they meet a specific quota and match the required performance. These are sums that consist of a base salary and sales commissions. In this article, we’ll unveil the benefits of on-target earnings and uncover how to estimate them. Benefits of On-Target Earnings Sales representatives receive their salaries using two options: a basic salary covering sales and on-target earnings, which means you get sales commissions to your primary salary. Employees always expect a high salary from companies. However, different businesses have requirements, which are usually strict. They require new hires to match their performance, demonstrate professionalism, and meet their projected business goals. Every company needs an on-target strategy to shape a team of professional sales reps and encourage them to bring excellent results. Companies should consider implementing an on-target earnings model since it sets revenue expectations and encourages employees to work better to get good salaries. As a result, an employer reaches its company objectives while an employee gets a high salary. Sales managers use OTE as a reference point which indicates whether sales reps should bring more effort. It can be the speed of work, the number of sales, or the number of prospects reached. OTE is widely used as a recruiting tool. Recruiters strive to get the best talents by showing on-target earnings numbers. Moreover, it can help determine whether a candidate can reach such results and is ready to work towards attaining these goals. On-target earnings enable company departments to align their efforts toward achieving company goals. They can focus on profits and expenses. If employees manage to do it, they receive good commissions. Now that you know the advantages of OTE, let’s find out how to estimate on-target earnings for your business. How to calculate on-target earnings? Since on-target earning for the sales team consists of a base salary and commission from the sold items, the OTE formula is calculated based on these two indicators. For the executive team, you need to figure out the base salary and bonuses these employees get after reaching specific brand objectives. We’ll uncover the calculations below to set OTE for your sales or executive team. Identify the base salary. To determine the right salary for your employees, you need to look through the average annual base salary for this position. It will help you choose the appropriate sum of money. When setting the salary, keep in mind that you should provide a salary enough for living. Sometimes sales reps can’t meet expectations despite all their effort. Calculate the sales quota you want your sales reps to reach. The next step is determining the sales quota you want for your company. Make sure that it’s attainable for your sales representatives. Your quota should be approximately 6-8 times higher than your on-target earnings. It can be based on the previous experience of your reps, but you still need to challenge them to grow and bring profit to your business. Set your brand’s projected objectives. If you need to estimate OTE for your executive team, take care of the bonus system. It depends on the projected business goals. You need to determine them first. For example, you can create a task to redesign a landing page or train new hires. After setting the goals, you need to think of the difficulty level of these tasks and determine the time frame. Once you finish with these points, you’ll be able to identify the right figure for the bonus. Add up your base salary and commission. The last step implies adding up a base salary and sales commission to calculate OTE for the sales team. If you want to estimate on-target earnings for the executive team, you should add base salary and bonus amount. Say a sales representative in the New Company receives $28,000 as an annual base salary. This person has a sales commission of 1.2% with a target of $100,000 per month. If the sales rep succeeds in hitting the target, this person will receive an additional $1,200 per month. After calculating, we can figure out that sales reps at New Company get $14,400 of commission annually. To estimate the OTE, we should add the base salary and commission per year. OTE = $28,000 + $14,400 = $42400. Congrats, now you know what on-target earnings are and why they are essential. Hope that our guide will allow you to calculate these figures for your company.

Off-page optimization is an essential part of your SEO strategy. It implies using several techniques outside your site to improve its ranking on a search engine results page (SERP). These techniques include creating valuable backlinks, commenting on blogs, joining forum discussions, guest posting, etc. In this article, we’ll explain why off-page optimization matters and share some effective techniques to improve your SEO strategy. Why is off-page optimization important? Building high-quality backlinks goes a long way when it comes to creating valuable content. None of these strategies can be underrated. Search engines use a site’s backlinks to assess its quality and authority. The more links from authoritative resources your site has, the higher its position on a SERP. You can use Ahrefs or Moz to discover your Domain Authority (a score from 0-100). Mind that search engines do not use this score to rank your site, but it provides you with information on your ranking potential. If it’s low, you should work on both on-pageand off-page SEO. The logic behind off-page optimization for search engines is the following: If an authoritative site provides valuable content links to your site, it means that your site is worth it. Otherwise, this linking resource won’t put its reputation on the line since it shares its power and authority with you. Then, a search engine algorithm takes into account the relation between the content of the site that places a link and your site. It analyzes the number and quality of other links on the linking page, anchor text, trustworthiness, and popularity of the linking site to judge whether your site is worth high rankings. Now that you know that off-page optimization is as important as on-page SEO, it’s time to learn some tips and tricks to improve your rankings. Off-Page Optimization Techniques Check out your backlink profile Build high-quality backlinks Pay special attention to your social media Start guest posting Try to join local listings Communicate with potential leads on forums Make use of broken link-building tactic In this section, we’ll uncover the steps you should take to constantly improve your rankings with the help of off-page optimization. We’ll also cover the channels you can use for better performance. Let’s start with evaluating your current position. Check out your backlink profile.First and foremost, you need to have a clear picture of your situation. For this purpose, you can use various toolslike Ahrefs, Moz, Screaming Frog, or SEMrush. With their help, you’ll find out the total number of backlinks to your site, referring domains, and pages best by links, anchors, and your Domain Rate (Domain Authority). The latter will help you compare your backlink profile to your competitors’ one and plan your strategy accordingly. Build high-quality backlinks. Remember that quality beats quantity. You won’t rank high if new sites with poor authority link to yours. You’ll see tangible results if you get links from sites with high Domain Rates, organic search traffic, related topics, and relevant links. Note that you should never buy links since Google penalizes this. Pay special attention to your social media.Even though social media shares are not a ranking factor, and backlinks from social networks don’t influence your SEO, you can’t ignore this powerful channel. You can increase your rankings with branded queries. Besides, social media are kind of separate search engines. People go to social networks to communicate with a brand, find answers to their questions, and see some behind-the-scenes. Therefore, consider providing a cohesive user experience and support brand consistency across all channels. Start guest posting. Look for companies that are similar to yours so that their target audiences may need your solution. Offer them cooperation: you’ll write a valuable and expert piece of content, and they publish it on their blog. Apart from benefiting from their authoritative link, this will help you increase your brand awareness and outreach, drive referral traffic from this site, and bring in new leads. However, you should be ready to provide this site with unique and highly relevant content. Try to join local listings.A local listing is a directory a user sees when googling “...near me/nearby”. Being listed on a popular directory such as Foursquare, for example, provides you with a valuable backlink from an authoritative source and new leads. Communicate with potential leads on forums. This tip may seem outdated in case you’re going to spam each discussion with your links. Approach forums differently. Thousands of people use Reddit and Quora to find answers to their questions and talk to experts and like-minded people. Hence, why should you miss this opportunity to build a community and get some backlinks? Look through popular discussions where you can share your expert knowledge and experience to help people. Make use of broken link building. Broken links harm sites a lot, but you can use them to your advantage. Find your competitors’ broken links, no matter whether these are links to your site or not, inform the site owners about them, and offer to replace them with relevant links to your site. This is a win-win for both since you’ll help this site reduce the number of 404, improve the user experience it provides, and benefit from getting a valuable backlink. Now you can try the strategy you like the most or combine them for better effectiveness and increased ranking. And don’t forget about the power of on-page optimization.

Nudge marketing is a selling technique that requiresmanipulating customer behavior to close more deals. Marketers use psychological insights to speed upclients’ decision-making process. In this article, we’ll explainhow nudge marketing works, share some effective techniques, and provide inspiring examples. Stay tuned! How does nudge marketing work? Nudge marketing is about discovering psychological mechanisms that influence customers’ purchasing decisions. Nudge is a motivator that makes people buy. So, nudge marketing aims to transform this stressful decision-making process into a pleasant customer experience. Since leads often feel uncomfortablewhen making adecision, hesitate, and look for more reasons to buy, marketers use this approach to provide them with these reasons at the right time and in therightplace. To understandhow nudge marketing works, remember the last time you bought fries or a cup of coffee at McDonald’s. In both situations, clients choose whether to buy a small, medium, or large portion. This is a win-win for both parties because customers have a choice and often prefer the large portion since the price difference between medium and large portionsis not that tangible. As a result, they make seemingly independent decisions and spend more money, and both parties are satisfied. Some people consider nudge marketing manipulative, which can be debated. Essentially, nudges are not clickbaitor spam. They appeal to consumers’ psychology, interests, preferences, motivators, buying habits, and values. So, when implementing nudge marketing, brands consider previous customers’ experiences and needs, whichallows us to call this approach personalized. Brands using nudges manage to make the buying process less stressful for clients, create personalized and targeted offers, and improve their sales funnel. To make this strategy work for your business, we’ll share some practical ideas that will help you increase sales. Nudge Marketing Techniques Some of the ideasmay be familiar to you since these are well-known tips that help convert more site visitors into customers. You can analyze your conversion rate,single out the strategies that helped you convert more leads, and implement them in your nudge marketing campaign. FOMO Each of us has once missed some profitable opportunity— whether it was a missed 50% discount on a sweater or a lack of seats foranevent, it sticks in our mind. Next time wesee a time-limited offer, our subconscious reminds us of this painful experience. As a result,we are afraid of missing another valuable deal and make impulse purchases. Marketers are familiar with this phenomenon and use it quite effectively to drive more sales.Take a look at an example of an email campaign promoting a hot deal with the help of FOMO. Social Proof This is another powerful marketing technique that encourages people to take action. Let’s saythat you are hesitating about which restaurant to visit, and you see that one of them has a long queue. You will probably consider it the best choice since people have already been there and trust it. Social proof means that people lookup to companies’ existingclients’ orthought leaders’ opinions and make decisions accordingly. They trust the choice of authoritative people. Marketers use this strategy to drive leads’attention and convert them into clients. Below you can see how a company encourages users toleverage their services with the help of social proof. Product Labels Placing a functional product label isthe new black today. Brands follow the most popular trends and use them in their selling techniques to increase revenue. They enhance product characteristics with unique features people can’t ignore. Eco-awareness and recycling are gaining momentum today, so brands don’t miss the opportunity to showthat they care about our planet. The North Face knows something about nudge marketing and uses this technique to promote the company’s clothes from recycled materials. This way, the brand positions itself as eco-aware and helps customers feel that they bring value by buying their goods. Decoy Effect This marketing technique is used by companies that providemultiple versions of the same product or several pricing plans. The goal is to persuade a customer to buy the most expensive product bypresenting other items’features as less valuable in comparison to it. This way, customers are sure that this most expensive item is the best choice. Examples of this phenomenon includes selling small, medium, and large portions of coffee or fries, where the difference between medium and largeportions is insignificant. Spotify provides a comparison table for users to choose the best fit for them. The most expensive optionimmediately strikesthe eye with itslong list of featuresand little price difference. Now that you know the most effectivenudge marketing techniques, we’ll share some inspiring examples that stand out from the crowd. Examples of Nudge Marketing We’ll provide online and offline examples of nudge marketing for you to see that this technique can be used in different industries and formats. Misguided encourages users to buya dress with a discount by informing them that several clients have already purchased it during the last 48 hours. This way, a brand creates scarcityusingcustomers’fear of missing out. Volkswagen ran an experiment in 2009. The brand was looking for a way to make more peopletake the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator. They created a fun piano staircase, which made66% ofpeoplechoose thestairs. Hubbub, anenvironmental organization, used a nudge marketing approach to reduce cigarette litter.The company placed Ballot Bins to ask people about trendy events and encourage them to keep the streets clean. This marketing campaign offered people to choose the best football player in the world. Congrats, now you know how nudge marketing works, have some effective techniques at hand, and can grabsome inspiration from the examples above, so create your perfect campaign and blow up sales!

Nonprofit email marketing is a marketing approach that involves the communication of non-profit organizations (NPO) with their donors and volunteers through email campaigns. It helps communicate with the target audience, update it on serious issues and impact, and share mission and values. In this article, we’ll unveil the importance of email marketing for nonprofit organizations and teach you how to write converting emails. We’ll also review 10 best practices and some great examples for nonprofits. Why is email marketing important for nonprofits? The existence of nonprofit organizations such as churches, public charities, public clinics and hospitals, and volunteer services organizations depends heavily on their donors. That’s why finding the best ways to share their purpose, reach the target audience, and encourage them to help is crucial. Nonprofits use different approaches, including email marketing, to receive funding from individuals, corporations, and government institutions. It’s a cost-effective way to interact with donors and make them act. As of 2022, there are around 4.3 billion email users. It indicates that many people around the world use their inboxes to send emails and receive updates from businesses and NPOs. Moreover, according to statistics, 99% of these people check their emails at least once a day. Email marketing can help attain several marketing goals for charity and nonprofit organizations. First, once potential donors subscribe to your email newsletter, you can thank them for joining your mailing list. After that, you can introduce your organization to the target audience and tell these people more about your mission and values. Secondly, when having direct access to the audience at any time, you can interact with donors through emails and update them on important projects. Thirdly, besides being a source of information, emails can encourage donors to act and provide help when needed. For instance, if you need to close an important fundraiser, send out an email campaign containing all the necessary information for donors and include a call to action. It will allow them to access a link where they can donate. Finally, building trust is also essential and possible with email marketing. Now that the benefits of email marketing for nonprofits are clear. Let’s find out how to write a converting email. The information in the following section will empower you with the knowledge that encourages people to make donations and support your organization’s existence. How to write a converting email for nonprofits? Writing a good email is essential for all, including nonprofit organizations, since it can influence donors’ decisions. To do everything right, we offer you to check out the tips below and apply them to your email campaigns. Let’s dig in! Use email marketing service. Email marketing service is a platform that uses software to create and send professional email campaigns to a big number of subscribers. With this platform, you can send bulk email campaigns, use templates to create professional emails, segment your mailing list, personalize email campaigns, schedule the sending of emails, and send relevant emails to potential customers. A good service with an excellent reputation enables you to improve your email deliverability and open rates. Moreover, a platform with automation features allows you to send emails on autopilot based on customer behavior. For instance, you can send a welcome email when a prospect subscribes to your newsletter. LIKE.TG is an example of such a service that empowers you to create quality email campaigns for free. Create an outstanding subject line. The subject line is the first thing everyone sees when opening the inbox. An eye-catching subject line encourages donors to open the email and at least read it. Use a short and clear phrase to communicate your message. Make sure to retain the unique voice of your organization. Since a lot of people use their mobile devices to check their inboxes, create a subject line that is 50 characters or less in length. It should sound urgent to make donors open the email faster and act. To be more specific and convincing, consider using statistics or data points. Provide a complimentary message in your preheader. It should contain key details. Make sure that the information in the preheader doesn’t duplicate your subject line. Make sure it provides extra information your donors need to know about your incentive, project, or impact. Provide updates on your organization. When people donate, they want to know the results of your fundraising campaign. They need to know how much money you collected and what goals you reached. So, once the fundraising campaign is closed, update your donors on the results. Share stories of those in need and your volunteers, products provided, items bought, etc. It’s always a good idea to attach proof of your actions. You can take photos during volunteering and share them via email. They will demonstrate the activities you do to reach your organization’s goals. Make your emails sound grateful to donors for help. To encourage volunteering and donations, your emails should convey your gratitude for the support provided. Show that donors’ and volunteers’ time and money are much appreciated in your organization. People should feel they are needed. You can show it by sharing the impact of their donations and help. Use numbers to demonstrate the results. For instance, your email can include the following sentence “Your donation helped save x animal shelters.” For sure, not all of the volunteers and donors are active in their inboxes. But you can always change the situation. Consider sending personalized emails that include information on their particular donations and social impact. It will make them open the email and check it out. Add a call to action button. A CTA helps you encourage donors and volunteers to perform specific actions. It can be a donation or volunteer help. That’s why your call-to-action button should lead donors to the page where they can complete this action. The button can look like this: “Donate,” “Help Now,” “Volunteer Now,” “Refer a Friend,” etc. Make sure that your CTA is visible and straightforward and takes donors to the right page where they can donate or help. Now that you know how to create a converting email, it’s time to explore some more approaches to incorporate email marketing into your organization right. Let’s check them out. 10 Email Marketing Best Practices for Nonprofits There are many strategies you can use to reach your donors and volunteers. However, emailing them doesn’t mean they will perform the necessary action. We’ll uncover the 10 most effective techniques that work. Stick to our list to get the necessary results and complete your nonprofit’s mission. Send a welcome email to new subscribers. Subscribing to a newsletter doesn’t mean people are aware of what you stand for. That’s why welcome emails exist. They help introduce your organization to potential donors. You can cover the crucial points in a welcome or thank you email. Unveil your mission and values. Emails should include reasons for fundraising and the help you’ve already provided. Cover the details in your welcome email to show your impact and establish trust. This way, you’ll also be able to educate your new audience about your nonprofit organization. Interact with donors on special occasions and holidays. It’s important to reach your donors during the holiday season. Many of them might want to donate money and provide help to those who are in need. Consider engaging with your donors through emails during this time. Prepare a fundraising email and send it a week after Thanksgiving or another big holiday. Encourage subscribers to donate and gift people with food, clothes, or medications they need. Incorporate Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is a perfect time for fundraising. It’s a generosity movement that takes place on Tuesday after Thanksgiving. That’s the time when people donate money and provide support to those who need it. Consider this event for your organization if you want to collect more donations. Send emails informing people about your fundraising event. Your email should be short and to the point. Make sure to provide the progress of your fundraising campaign and the results. Update donors with your organization's projects. There are many ways to keep in touch with readers. One of them — send updates on your progress. It can be any information starting from the money you managed to fundraise to new projects you established lately. Use statistics as proof. Every storytelling needs facts and real data to support your opinion. You can do it by adding statistics to your email. This information should support your statement that this or that problem needs a solution immediately. For instance, if you want to go fundraising and build new animal shelters, you can provide the number of homeless animals abandoned by people. You can also add statistics about the percentage of cats and dogs living on the streets. Send emails regularly. Regularity of sending emails is a must if you want to grow your organization and make a social impact. For this purpose, consider creating a content schedule where you will mention the articles and the time when they need to be sent to donors. This way, you’ll increase the number of donors for your organization. However, be wise when sending emails and choose perfect intervals. No need for too many emails to your potential donors since they also receive a lot from brands. Personalize emails. Applying personalization manually will take your team a lot of time and effort. That’s why we recommend you consider a special service that allows you to create email campaigns and use personalization. LIKE.TG empowers you to create and send highly personalized emails and increase your open rates. Use variables to add receivers’ names to greet them in your emails. Segment the audience and send relevant emails. Email list segmentation ensures that you send only relevant emails to your target audience. Since people on your list are at different stages of their journey with your organization, there’s no need to send generic messages to all of them. It won’t be useful and effective for your nonprofit organization. You should choose topics your potential and existing donors are interested in. To segment your list, you need to pay attention to the following factors: donation amount, actions taken at your channels, level of engagement, and topics of interest. For instance, if a person donated $500 to support your animal help project, you can share similar projects with this donor. Your email campaigns depend heavily on the level of donor engagement. For example, a person who donated $5 once is less involved than someone who donates regularly. The higher the engagement, the more interactions you need with your donor. Make your emails look visually appealing. Use visuals (photos, infographics, statistics, videos, etc.) in addition to text. This is because it’s more difficult for receivers to perceive information when no other elements are included. Use visuals to divide your text into readable parts. Use photos from your volunteering and the help provided. Demonstrate to donors the impact you have on our society. Assess your email campaign's performance. You aren’t all done after running the campaigns. You still need to monitor and evaluate their performance. Set key indicators to figure out whether you reach your marketing goals. If something goes wrong, you need to conduct an analysis and identify issues. To improve the performance, you should eliminate them. Now that you know how to send an effective fundraising email, it’s time to explore some excellent examples. Consider using these techniques for your organization to drive donations. Nonprofit Email Marketing Examples Many organizations provide social change to our society. They all use email marketing to attract new donors and volunteers and ask them for help. In this section, we’ll cover the best examples of email marketing for nonprofits to encourage you to use this channel. FeedingAmerica FeedingAmerica is a charity organization fighting hunger in the US. This nonprofit food bank ensures food for people who need it. The organization actively uses email marketing to welcome new subscribers and encourage donations. In the screenshot below, you can see an example of a welcome email from FeedingAmerica. The email is designed to thank people for joining the community and educate them about its mission. It uncovers the things volunteers do with the help of donations by providing real facts. You can see the number of people they ensure support to. The email also contains links to their Facebook and Twitter pages and a button to contact the charity directly. At the bottom of the email, there are several CTAs to donate or explore the organization’s website. Autism Speaks Autism Speaks is a nonprofit organization established to create an inclusive world for all individuals with autism. The organization conducts research, provides support to individuals with autism, and does advocacy. To complete all these tasks, Autism Speaks needs support from donors. Reaching these people is possible with email campaigns. The charity uses emails to update on the events. For instance, the organization had a fundraising campaign during Giving Tuesday. It’s a day after Thanksgiving dedicated to giving back. During this day, the organization accepted donations from those who wanted to help people with autism. With the help of an email, Autism Speaks informed those who participated about their impact. In 24 hours, they altogether managed to collect $100,000. The organization sent an email to all subscribers to let them participate. They had the chance to do it by using the call-to-action button “Donate.” The Trevor Project The Trevor Project focuses on preventing suicide among LGBTQ people. The project used email campaigns to update donors and volunteers about events, anniversaries, awareness days, and holidays. They are great occasions to contact your donors and interact with them. The email below is dedicated to “Intersex Awareness Day.” The organization had a perfect opportunity to uncover this topic and explain what it means to be intersex. They also attached related research for receivers to check out. The email also includes a CTA at the bottom for individuals to make donations. Congrats, now you know what nonprofit email marketing is and how to use it right for your organization. Hope that the examples above inspired you to create a quality email campaign to reach your donors. Use LIKE.TG to design professional email campaigns for free without any knowledge of the code.

Email Newslettersending is a means of sending communications, group announcements, and advertisements. It involves sending messages with particular information to a set of recipientsaccording to a predefined schedule. In this video, you'll find out how to come up with email newsletter ideas for marketing campaigns. Electronic newsletter sendingtoday include email, SMS, and webpush notifications. In addition, one can mention postal mailing sending(the ordinary paper ones that come into our home mailboxes),or sending out product samples. Electronic newsletters are sent out through a mailing service.

Neuromarketing is a strategy that uses the knowledge of neuroscience and cognitive science to accurately identify customer needs, desires, and preferences. It studies consumers’ responses to marketing stimuli and assesses non-conscious reactions to specific advertising campaigns, packaging, design, etc. The approach helps develop effective marketing campaigns and strategies that resonate with the target audience. In this article, we’ll find out whether neuromarketing is legal, its importance, and how it works. We’ll also unveil 6 techniques, outstanding examples, and get to know how to implement neuromarketing into your strategy. Is neuromarketing legal? Many scientists highlight the controversial nature of neuromarketing. Some people assume that several types of ads might be deceptive and dishonest. They also add that these methods influence people’s brains and encourage customers to take the desired action. On the contrary, neuromarketing advocates claim that their techniques help understand customers’ needs and desires and serve them better. Neuromarketing companies operate ethically towards consumers the same way regular advertising agencies do. They don’t intend to promote illegal and deceptive products and create ads that control consumers’ purchasing decisions. Neuromarketers say that this approach allows customers to understand the patterns of their choices. Besides, it enables people to find out whether companies manipulate their buying decisions or influence them. Now that you know whether the strategy is legal, let’s explore the reasons that might encourage you to implement it into your business. Why is neuromarketing important? Although neuromarketing is controversial, it’s still essential for businesses. It encompasses different techniques that enable brands to understand customers’ needs and preferences and meet them. They can also study customers’ responses to different types of ads, campaigns, and product packaging. As a result, business owners can choose the best option among all available and improve campaigns and strategies' effectiveness. Besides the mentioned reasons to consider neuromarketing, you can reap even more benefits from this strategy. It helps: identify customers’ non-conscious responses to different ads, designs, methods; develop new unique strategies; resonate with the audience’s needs and desires; improve advertising campaigns and strategies; explore the feelings and emotions particular ads, logos, phrases can trigger in customers; improve customer experience; satisfy customers; increase sales; gain competitive advantage. With neuroscience’s help, marketers can identify product elements that receive a favorable response from customers and increase sales. So now that you know about the importance, it’s time to figure out how neuromarketing works. How does neuromarketing work? Neuromarketing uses functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalogram tools to scan people’s brains and evaluate physiological and neural signals to specific ads, packaging, design, etc. Brains’ responses are crucial for companies since they provide business owners with a clear picture of customers’ needs and wants. Marketers show ads, packaging, or product design to customers and track their reactions and brain activity. After they get responses and measure the changes, companies can decide what steps they need to take next. Brain scanning allows brands to track every brain activity such as eye movement, the change of pupils, face expression, heart rate, emotions and empower brands with customer insights. Based on the given results, companies can decide how to improve their ads and content, product packaging and design, website design, and branding to hook the audience’s attention and resonate with customers’ needs. Now that you know how neuromarketing works, it’s time to walk you through 6 useful neuromarketing techniques. 6 Neuromarketing Techniques To successfully implement neuromarketing, brands need special tools and neuromarketing specialists. They will empower you to use the following neuromarketing techniques. Eye-tracking (gaze). The technique focuses on gaze and where customers direct it. With its help, you can figure out colors, fonts, ads, designs that succeed to grab their attention. Besides, eye-tracking can also cue the objects that evoke confusion among these people. If you are interested in brand recognition, you can find out the customers’ recognition speed. This approach will tell you whether you have a high level of recognition or need to work on it to make people recall your company faster. Once you choose eye-tracking, it allows you to improve website design, packaging, and ads at a low cost. Although the technique is easy to manage, it won’t help you evaluate customers’ emotions. So use it with biometrics to get a more detailed analysis of your target audience. Pupillometry. This method draws conclusions based on the state of subjects’ pupils. It checks whether the pupils are dilated to assess the level of customers’ engagement. With its results, you can figure out the steps to revise ads, site design, and product packaging. The approach is relatively cheap and easy to execute. Facial coding. This method focuses on the facial expressions of subjects to identify emotional responses. It enables you to figure out the emotions people feel: happiness, fear, anxiety, surprise, satisfaction, etc. For a relatively cheap price, you’ll receive information that will help you improve your ad content and resonate with the audience. Biometrics. This technique identifies the level of engagement and the type of response (positive or negative) based on skin respiration, conductance, and heart rate. Biometrics allows you to make your ad content in accordance with people’s desires. Together with eye-tracking, it can significantly improve the ads and content you choose for them. Electroencephalogram. It enables you to reveal customers’ engagement and recall with the help of electrical signals that come from neurons inside the brain. This relatively expensive technique enables you to evaluate changes in short periods and improve the quality of ads and branding. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This most expensive approach provides detailed emotional responses, recall, and customer engagement. To perform the method, you need a lab. fMRI identifies blood flow in the brain during high neural activity. As a result, you receive information that helps improve branding and set prices. Now that you know the methods you can use and which of them will help reach your goals, it’s time to unveil how to effectively make neuromarketing a part of your strategy. How to implement neuromarketing into your strategy? Neuromarketing is a vast concept that helps marketers grow a business faster. However, you should know how to adapt its methods into your strategy to be effective. We’ve prepared some steps for you to consider. Study patterns of eye-tracking. Although you might not have paid much attention to eye movements and changes in them, they can provide insights into your business. Eye-tracking can identify whether customers like your advertising, product packaging, and design. The technique can also determine the elements on your ads online and in-store that drive more attention. By studying the gaze of customers, your team can define the things that help stand out and hook the audience. Gather a group of research participants to figure out whether customers like your company’s colors, font, and visuals. Look carefully at customers to find out whether they got engaged with your ads in a store. Once you figure it out, you’ll know what to do with your ads, packaging, and branding next. Create a positive personality. It’s a well-known fact that a smile drives attention, and images of happiness release endorphins. As a result, people become more interactive and open to society. Being friendly, open-minded, and cheerful enables you to be closer to the audience. It will establish trust and transparency. If you place an image of a smiling person on your ads or social media posts, it will shape a positive image of your brand. People will be more likely to purchase with your company. Simplify the rules to enter. When you ask prospects to insert their credit card details to get a free trial, you are more likely to scare them away. They will look for a service that doesn’t require this information. Users who sign up for a free trial without submitting card details are more likely to convert into customers. So consider this fact and try to reduce the barriers to entry. You can simplify the sign-up process, create intuitive web forms, and enhance the buyer journey. Implement psychological tricks. Marketers adapt numerous tricks to capture customers and influence their buying decisions. All companies use specific price points to convince shoppers that they save a lot. For example, you’ll often encounter prices like $99.99 instead of $100. Some companies can remove the dollar sign. Neuromarketers highlight other “tricks” that might be useful for the brand’s revenue. If you place goods with light colors on the top shelves and goods with dark colors on the bottom shelves, your sales are more likely to increase. Use sensory marketing. By appealing to customers’ senses, you can reach them and build a positive image of a brand. You’ll win attention and build trust. Nice smells and pleasant lighting can create an exceptional atmosphere and ensure an outstanding experience for customers. It’ll have a positive effect on sales. Scents can create great memories and excitement people will associate with your brand later. The process is clear, so let’s proceed to some real examples. They will provide you with a clue to creating a unique neuromarketing strategy. Examples of Neuromarketing We’ve prepared some examples that demonstrate the usefulness of neuromarketing research. You’ll see that brands even change their designs to the most suitable options for customers. So let’s jump in. Chips Ahoy The legendary cookie brand is our first example of how neuromarketing helped be closer to consumers. After conducting research, the brand’s team received crucial information on the product’s packaging. Marketers found out that people couldn’t read since the brand used inappropriate colors. To eliminate the issue and find the right design, the company implemented an eye-tracking technique. Chips Ahoy’s team demonstrated different design options and chose the best one based on the response. The brand changed the packaging and improved text, image, and colors. Game of Thrones This research was designed to show whether people find video materials more engaging than audio. To figure this out, researchers took the same video and audiobook scenes from Game of Thrones to analyze the physical responses of participants. The results showed that the video was 15% more interesting, but the audiobook caused a faster pulse rate and higher body temperature and skin conductivity. Neuromarketing has many benefits and reasons to implement it. Consider using our techniques to grow the sales and revenues of your company.

Odd-even pricing is a psychological pricing strategy that aims to shape customers’ perception of the value provided by a company. There are two opposite types of this strategy that fit different businesses. Let’s make the difference between odd pricing and even pricing clear. An odd pricing strategyinvolves putting an odd number at the end of a price, for example, $1,99, $2,95. An even pricing strategyimplies a price ending in a whole number or zero, for example, $2, $3,50. Brands using these strategies strive to achieve different goals depending on their business size and target audience. Let’s discover why companies choose an odd-even pricing strategy. Is odd-even pricing effective? Definitely, yes. Companies implement these strategies to appeal to their consumers’ subconscious. Let’s face it, sometimes each of us falls for the trick “$1,99 Today Only”. This makes us feel that we manage to save money, and it seems like an extremely profitable bargain. And no wonder! Since we read from left to right, our brain considers the left part the most important, so when we see “$1,99”, we round it down to $1, which is definitely cheaper than $2. This frames our perception to a great extent. In this case, our subconscious murmurs to us: “This is a great bargain, don’t miss it!”. As a result, we buy more of a bargain than a necessary product. This strategy is widely used in retail and ecommerce. They often promote campaigns like “Shirts starting at $9,99”. Who would miss the chance to buy a shirt for less than $10? However, brands using an even pricing strategy pursue quite the opposite goal. They don’t want their clients to feel like they are saving a lot by buying a product for $100. Such companies lay claim to being called an upscale brand selling premium products. Hence, they want their client to feel special and unique. This strategy helps brands build their identity. Now, it’s time to see some examples. Examples of Odd-Even Pricing Banana Republic used an odd-pricing strategy to promote their spring dresses starting at $19,99. They included a wide variety of dresses into their email campaign to make this bargain even more appealing. Mattress Firm has a diverse audience, and it often uses an even pricing strategy. The mattresses are promoted as lux products, and that is why this pricing method is just to the point. Now you know what stands behind popular brands’ strategies. You can either choose one to maintain your brand reputation or combine them for better performance. Make use ofLIKE.TG promotional tools:emails, web push notifications, and SMSto reach wide audiences.

Objection handling is managing objections potential customers have before, during, or after a sales pitch. These concerns can be related to pricing, timing, and product features. Objections become obstacles to purchasing products from a specific company. In this article, we’ll uncover the importance and types of objection handling. We’ll also review seven sales objection-handling techniques. Why is objection handling important? Some prospects can have concerns, objections, and arguments for not buying your product. That’s why sales representatives need to be ready to deal with those objections and find counterarguments to prospects’ statements. Objection handling enables your team to change opinions about your product to positive ones, show value, explain the price, features, etc. If your salespeople can successfully manage prospects’ concerns, they can help these people understand your product better. You have the chance to explain everything they need and erase hesitations they have. Objection is a part of the selling process, and sales reps should be ready to deal with it. For sure, concerns are the obstacles to converting a lead into a client. They make it more difficult and longer. However, if sales reps succeed in changing opinions, they can still move these leads down the sales funnel. When prospects don’t buy your product for a long time, it means that they have some thoughts about price, value, benefits, features, and value. However, your salespeople shouldn’t let these leads go. They should bring proof that your product works and unveil its value. For instance, if you sell cosmetics and a prospect wants to buy a lip tint but isn’t sure about the tone, provide a consultation. Your sales rep can help choose the most suitable one. The ability to handle objections influences the success of your business. If your salespeople manage to retain these prospects and encourage them to buy your products, it’ll positively impact your revenue. You’ll have a bigger customer base, increased ROI, and improved customer satisfaction. Now that you know the importance of objection handling, it’s time to discover the types. Types of Sales Objections Sales objections can be divided into four main groups. In this section, we’ll review each group in detail so that you can identify customers’ concerns and find ways to deal with them. Lack of budget. Prospects' first and most common objection is “Your product is too expensive.” People are usually concerned about the financial risks they take when they purchase expensive products. If the main reason for a potential customer not buying the product is budget, it can sometimes take time for sales reps to encourage them to complete a purchase. However, salespeople can still do it by implementing the right approach. They need to demonstrate the real value of your product and show that it’s worth paying more for better quality, more features, or faster results. Your team should uncover your competitive advantage and position your product as the best among all available options. Lack of trust. The second concern of prospective customers is brand awareness. When communicating with sales reps, prospects often say they can’t buy from your company because they’ve never heard of it. There should be trust and brand recognition. For sure, everyone wants to buy from brands they know and recognize. When you have a warm call, it’s easier for salespeople to establish trust. If prospects have interacted with your website, seen your ads, or checked your products, your sales rep just needs to remind them about it. However, it’s harder to build trust when leads hear about your company for the first time. They need to learn about your brand and the products you offer. That’s why your sales team must prepare a powerful sales pitch covering your product's value. Your salespeople also need to talk about your authority in the industry. Lack of need. Some leads don’t understand why you offer this or that product and how it can help in their situation. If such a scenario happens, you should qualify these prospective customers to discover their problems, needs, preferences, etc. Ask them open-ended questions so that they can fully understand their issues and find out whether your product fits as a solution. If yes, demonstrate the value of your product for this particular situation. Find a personalized approach to every prospect so they can see your solution's benefits. Lack of urgency. The last type involves timing. The first task of your sales team here is to find out whether the time is really the issue or if prospects just want to end the conversation. Your salespeople should ask questions about why the solution isn’t relevant at the moment. It will help you determine whether time is the main reason for not buying your product. Sales reps should also ask about the issues that are a priority for them. Time isn't the main reason for prospects' concerns if the answers are vague. Now that you know the types, it’s time to review the most effective sales objection-handling techniques. They will help you increase the number of conversions during conversations with leads who need clarification on their purchase. 7 Sales Objection Handling Techniques In this section, we’ll uncover how to overcome customers’ concerns and sell products successfully. Let’s dive in. Listen to your prospects attentively. When people have sales objections, it’s essential not only to talk but also to listen. Proactive talking can’t help you figure out prospects’ reasons and arguments for not buying from you, but listening can. Ask open-ended questions to identify customers’ concerns and understand their needs. Listen to every word they say to understand their point of view. Avoid interrupting leads when they share their concerns with you. Give them time to speak up about their problems and objections related to your product. Repeat their concerns. After potential customers finish their speeches, you need to repeat back what they said. It’ll help you make sure that you understand everything right. Besides identifying potential clients’ reasons for rejecting your offer, you can show you care and value them. It will positively influence their trust in your brand. Acknowledge their objections. Once you understand why prospects refuse the product, you need to show empathy and demonstrate that you acknowledge their point of view. However, this doesn’t mean you should continue your sales pitch or recommend your competitor’s solution. You need to be wise when choosing words. Show them empathy by saying “I understand your point of view.” Let’s imagine that you sell photo presets, and a prospect is concerned about how to use them if he has never done it before. In this situation, you can say “I understand your concerns, but our team of specialists will help you start using the presets and provide you with all the necessary tutorials.” This way, you show that you acknowledge their point of view and provide a solution. Ask questions to continue the conversation. Sometimes prospects share their concerns and are unwilling to continue the conversation. To prevent potential customers from leaving, you need to ask open-ended questions. This way, the conversation will continue, and you’ll be able to find out more about this lead’s problems and point of view. The more concerns they share, the more time you have to close a deal. Use the information provided to your advantage and give counterarguments based on what you hear. Provide social proof. Use information about your customers who successfully implemented your solution. You need to find success stories of clients with similar concerns and share them with your prospects. It will demonstrate to them that the fear they have is unjustified. Give some space for leads to think and connect with them at a specific time. When your prospect needs more time to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of your product, you need to determine the time to follow up. Discuss the time and date when you can call these leads back to listen to their decision. Mention that they can reach you anytime if they have some unanswered questions about your product. Make sure to provide detailed answers when they make up their decisions. Prepare for objections. Concerns and points of view from customers happen often. So it’s better to get ready for them. You can use previous conversations with customers to make up a list of concerns people frequently have with your product. Prepare counterarguments for thoughts potential customers might have on your product. It will help you avoid pauses, wrong language, or unnecessary statements. You should talk to the point to convince buyers that the team will help them with onboarding, features, the technical side of the product, etc. Congrats, now you know what objection handling is and why it’s essential. Hope that the list of techniques above will serve you as a roadmap to successful sales.

Nonprofit marketing is the use of marketing methods to communicate an organization’s message, encourage donations, and call for volunteers. It helps raise awareness, draw people’s attention, and invite new volunteers to join a community. In this article, we’ll unveil how nonprofit marketing works and how to create a marketing plan for a nonprofit. We’ll also invite you to explore nonprofit marketing strategies and tips to improve the effectiveness of your organization. How does nonprofit marketing work? Calling for donors and volunteers might be challenging for nonprofit organizations. That’s why their teams develop and incorporate various marketing techniques and strategies. They help communicate their mission and attract the public's attention to solve the problems they raise effectively. Nonprofits create logos, websites, blogs, ads, and work out media campaigns to connect with the target audience and hook their attention. Marketing campaigns empower them to convey the main ideas and causes to get the right people involved. As a result, an organization can increase its list of volunteers and people ready to provide donations. Nonprofits start with establishing awareness among people about their organizations and actions. This way, they can reach a broad audience and introduce its causes. Afterward, organizations’ employees implement different techniques to promote a cause or service and educate donors, volunteers, and other people about the nonprofit’s work. Nonprofit communities encourage donations by hosting fundraising events or conducting campaigns. Organizations need nonprofit marketing to draw attention to fundraising initiatives and donations, call for volunteers and drive social change. Now that you know how nonprofit marketing works, let’s figure out how to create a marketing plan for a nonprofit. How to create a marketing plan for a nonprofit? Creating a marketing plan for a nonprofit requires the same amount of time and marketing effort as a business. However, this step is essential for building awareness and engagement. Moreover, a detailed marketing plan helps put systems to place and deliver your marketing content. Let’s find out how to do it effectively in five steps. Identify your key goals. Your plan should bring you towards achieving your key objectives. That’s why you need to outline them. Strategic, actionable, and attainable goals will help you determine what measures to take. Your objectives should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely). For instance, the organization that prevents environmental abuses cares about endangered species and raises environmental awareness can determine the following goals: create one post per week to update people on the issue of ecological abuses and endangered species worldwide; boost website traffic by 20% within six months, educate people about the nonprofit organization to bring environmental awareness, start posting one article per week next on May, 30. Strive to understand your audience. Charities and nonprofits target multiple groups. They include constituents, customers, volunteers, and donors. To approach all audience segments effectively, you should understand the needs of each group. Since each segment will differ, it’s critical to develop a unique marketing strategy. Once you create a buyer persona for each group, you’ll be able to figure out how to approach these people and encourage engagement. For example, if you have an animal shelter, you’ll need to come up with different messages for donors and volunteers. Your email copy can’t be the same for different segments. Work on your message. Your key messages refer to the information your audience will hear, share, and remember. They reflect your organization’s mission and causes and show your importance. Creating relevant messages will help you unite marketing efforts and reach key audiences. Your messages should be consistent but vary depending on the recipient. A message to volunteers will encourage them to join the community and help homeless animals, while a message to donors will encourage them to donate. The community should do it to achieve a common good — to improve the welfare of homeless animals. Develop a relevant marketing strategy. Choose the marketing channels you want to use to reach your audiences. Consider leveraging email marketing, influencer marketing, conducting online and offline events, and selecting the preferred communication platforms. Before using these channels, you need to do some tactical planning. Find out what to do with the tactic you choose to appeal to the audiences, the time and place of these marketing efforts, budget, team, and alignment with the organization’s key goals. Evaluate the performance. Once you start implementing your marketing strategy, consider analyzing its performance. This way, you’ll be able to unveil the things that work and don’t work properly. After identifying the weaknesses of your marketing strategy, you need a change. To determine problems, pay attention to the key performance indicators. For instance, if you use email marketing, check out the email open rate. If you implement video marketing, you need to find out the number of views. Now that you know the steps, it’s time to explore the strategies. 5 Nonprofit Marketing Strategies We’ve prepared a list of five nonprofit marketing strategies that will help you bring awareness and attract more people to the cause. So, let’s dive in. Leverage email marketing. Sending a couple of emails to contact your donors or volunteers isn’t enough. Email marketing is more powerful than you think. You can call for volunteers or donations with a weekly email newsletter of your new content and monthly emails, including donation needs. As a result, you’ll boost awareness and engagement. Consider using an all in-one-marketing solution. LIKE.TG enables you to set up a series of emails thanking subscribers for joining your community. Besides, you’ll be able to create email campaigns with updates about your organization, needs, and news and schedule their sending. Consider content marketing. As a nonprofit organization, you should educate people about your mission and values. You can do it with content marketing and blogging. Bring valuable materials to your website, share posts, and create videos. This information will help you bring in new subscribers, volunteers, donors, etc. Often, nonprofit organizations have limited human resources and budgets, yet you can always find a way to share your main goals in a blog. Repurpose your content to save your resources. Consider creating infographics, including a short version in emails with a link to the full article, using visuals from blogs for social media networks, etc. Use public speaking. People behind your organization are essential for making your audiences trust your nonprofit. If people trust these opinion leaders, they will dedicate time and donate money to your organization to contribute to economic or social change. The best way to introduce your team to the audience is by using public speaking. Tell people a powerful story to the audience not acquainted with your organization to communicate the things you do to save other people, animals, environment or contribute to the safety of our planet. Think of social media. Social media marketing is increasingly popular among nonprofit organizations because it can demonstrate an organization’s personality and engage with the audiences directly. To successfully incorporate this strategy, you need to share news about your nonprofit, recruit volunteers, fundraise, and increase brand awareness. Make sure that your social media posts are consistent and relevant and include your key messaging. Build a website. A nonprofit’s website is a source of information for your audience. It includes the principles you stand for and things people can help with. Besides, your site should include event information, videos, photos, and other resources that bring people awareness. Now that you know the strategies, it’s time to unveil the tips. 3 Nonprofit Marketing Tips If you are looking for ideas to make the most of your nonprofit marketing, consider 3 tips below. Nurture donors with email campaigns. Email marketing is a perfect channel for nonprofits and a donor engagement tool. With email campaigns, you’ll be able to get in touch with people interested in supporting your organization either by providing donations or help. Craft engaging content for your website. Write compelling and engaging copy for your website, emails, and social media. Every word and phrase can make a difference and encourage people to participate in your community and bring change to our society. Your new ideas, volunteer stories, and actions should be short and clear so that people can understand the main purpose of your organization. Consider multi-channel marketing. Once you have your key messages and content schedule ready, organize a system of follow-ups for your website, social media, email, phone, etc. Since people use multiple platforms for communication, you need to show your presence. If you don’t manage to communicate your message via phone, you can always send an email or a message on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, or other communication channels and find out whether it was opened. Congrats, now you can apply your new knowledge to create an accurate marketing plan for your nonprofit. Hope our strategies and tips will also come in handy when you decide to increase the effectiveness of your charity work.

A net promoter score (NPS) is a metric presented as a single question asking customers to assess the likelihood of recommending a company on a scale of 0-10. Once a company receives the results, it divides customers into groups based on their rate: promoters (9-10), passives (7-8), and detractors (6-0). In this article, we’ll unveil how to calculate a net promoter score. We’ll also review how to measure and improve this indicator. Why is it important to measure a net promoter score? A net promoter score enables marketers to identify problems in their businesses. With its help, entrepreneurs can gauge customer experience and loyalty. After calculating an NPS, you can figure out the opportunities for future business and revenue growth. A two-minute survey allows you to receive customer insights on customer loyalty. After measuring customers’ willingness to recommend your brand, you can unveil whether consumers like and appreciate your product and company as a whole. If your NPS is 9 and higher, it means that consumers are loyal to your brand and have a positive customer experience. If your net promoter score amounts to 7 and lower, it indicates that you should consider some improvements to increase customer satisfaction. For example, you can make some alterations to customer service, user experience, product features, etc. Asking respondents open-ended questions about the reason for their rating can provide insights into customer dissatisfaction, and it helps you identify problems and eliminate them. NPS estimations prevent you from having your brand reputation damaged. This short survey allows you to identify problems within your company. If you see that consumers give you low ratings, ask them about the reasons. It is necessary to improve your product or service and make customers happy. Now that you know why assessing an NPS is crucial, let’s discuss some essential calculations. The next section will help you estimate the metric for your company. How to calculate a net promoter score? You need to get the indicator whether you have a large business or a small family company. It will help evaluate the experience with your business and assess customer loyalty. Let’s figure out the process step-by-step. To estimate a net promoter score, you need to create a short survey asking customers to rate the likeliness that they will recommend your company to their family, friends, and colleagues. They should provide you with a rating on a scale of 0-10. After, calculate the percentage of detractors and promoters. Then, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Now let’s have a closer look at the formula to make everything clear for you. NPS = (Promoters/Total Number of Respondents) - (Detractors/Total Number of Respondents) For instance, if you decide to send a survey to 100 respondents and receive 60 promoters, 10 passives, and 30 detractors, your net promoter score would be 30 (60% - 30% = 30%). Simply put, you need only four steps to get your NPS and work towards its improvement. Send a survey to customers. You can ask whether customers are likely to promote your company to friends on a scale from 0 to 10 in different ways: surveys, social media pools, or pop-up notifications. Provide customers with a 10 numeric scale to select the rating. Don’t forget to ensure a blank field so that clients could explain their scores if they wish. Their open-ended answers will help you make alterations to your service faster. Organize responses into three groups. Once you receive the answers, split them up into three groups: detractors (0-6), passives (7-8), and promoters (9-10). It will help you count the number of satisfied, neutral, and unsatisfied customers. Estimate the percentage. The next step is identifying the percentage of detractors, passives, and promoters. Divide the number of people in each group by the total number of respondents. Afterward, convert your indicators into percentages. Calculate the NPS metric. Once you finish estimating the percentage, subtract the detractor percentage from the promoter percentage to get your net promoter score. As a result, you’ll be able to see the eagerness of your customers to promote your product. Now that you know how to calculate an NPS, it’s time to proceed to the next section. It will help you figure out whether the metric shows positive results and high customer satisfaction. How to interpret a net promoter score? After estimating the metric, you need to interpret it right. In this section, we’ll unveil the scores that are considered satisfactory for your business and indicate that people are happy with your product. Every NPS above zero is a positive metric. It indicates that you have more promoters than detractors. It shows that you have more satisfied customers than unsatisfied ones. If your score is 50, your customer service, customer experience, and product are excellent and customers are happy. When you have an NPS of 70+, it shows that consumers rate your company as the best. They eagerly recommend your product to friends, family, and colleagues. Since a universal standard for an NPS doesn’t exist, most businesses use competitors' scores as a comparison. This way, they find out whether it’s necessary to improve the measure. If the metric is lower than your rivals’, then you should explore their customer service approaches and adapt their methods. Now that you know how to interpret your score, let’s see how to measure it. How to measure a net promoter score? After exploring the ways to calculate and interpret the metric, it’s essential to know how to measure it. Let’s now review the example to figure it out. Let’s say you’ve already sent a short survey to consumers asking whether they will recommend your company to others. Once you’ve collected the results, you identify the number of respondents, the promoters, passives, and detractors. You have 100 respondents, including 70% of promoters, 10% of passives, and 20% of detractors. It’s time to estimate your net promoter score. To do it, subtract the percentage of detractors from promoters. NPS = 70% - 20% = 50. Your net promoter score is 50, which is an excellent result. It shows that people enjoy your product and will promote it to their closest people. Since the metric doesn’t have universal standards, you can also measure your NPS the other way. You need to see the NPS of competitors and compare it with yours. This way, you’ll know what actions you should take next. If your net promoter score is lower, consider conducting research. Identify the top performing companies in your industry and analyze their strategies. Do everything possible to make your business a better place for consumers. Now that you know how to measure an NPS, let’s uncover how to improve it. If you’ll have a low NPS, you’ll be able to eliminate the problems and increase the indicator. How to improve a net promoter score? After receiving the results of the survey, you might wonder how to use this information. In this section, we’ll unveil the strategies that will help you increase your net promoter score. Show customers that you hear their feedback. During or after the short NPS survey, asking open-ended questions, conducting interviews, and sending follow-up emails are essential. It will help you identify the reasons for high or low scores. This information is crucial for your company since it helps increase satisfaction and customer loyalty. Once you gather the necessary feedback from customers, you can focus on providing them with the best experience. When improving customer service, product, or user experience, pay attention to customers’ input. Consumers will be happy to see that you care and strive to improve. First, start with consumers who are not likely to recommend your company (a group with a 0-6 rating). Assign a person who will contact these customers and understand their problems and complaints. Afterward, direct your efforts on improving the situation and eliminating these issues. Make sure that your team works towards better NPS. Conduct meetings to explain that the net promoter score is crucial for attaining the brand’s major goals and reaching growth. Every team member should understand that they need to do all in their effort to get new promoters. Promoters help establish brand recognition, trust, brand awareness, and new customers. Explain the NPS’s peculiarities and ways to track, calculate, measure, and improve it. Moreover, you can reward your team for receiving positive net promoter scores and feedback. Conduct regular meetings. These interactive meetings will help you make sure that everyone strives to provide customers with the best experience. Besides, you can discuss the main problems and try brainstorming to find the best solutions. You can also talk about the alterations to your company to increase customer satisfaction. Use open-ended customer responses. NPS surveys often include open-ended questions. Marketers use them to find out the reason for a high or low score so that they can instantly remove the issue. Customer feedback serves as a guide for departments. It points out the areas that need their close attention. Congrats, now you know what an NPS is and why it’s essential. Make use of our instructions to calculate the opportunities for future business growth.

Non-price competition is a strategy that implies attracting customers and increasing sales by providing superior product quality, a unique selling proposition, a great location, and excellent service rather than lower prices. It helps brands stand out and win new consumers. In this article, we’ll unveil which businesses use non-price competition. We’ll also review the benefits and methods of non-price competition. Which companies use non-price competition? Today, price is one of the many factors that influence customer decisions. Nowadays, people pay close attention to quality, features, customer service, and many other things. They influence their consumer experience hence buying decisions as well. Many brands rely on non-price differentiators like quality, unique selling proposition, competitive advantage, location, customer service, etc. The majority of them you use daily. For example, Airbnb provides vacation rentals, apartments, beach houses, and unique homes. The company offers its product as a service. The brand’s team ensures an amazing experience for its users and cares about their safety and comfort. Other businesses that rely on non-price differentiators are oDesk, TaskRabbit, and Fiverr. In the technology industry, Apple remains a leader in product sales. The company has relatively high prices on its iPhones, iPods, MacBooks, and iPads. The brand relies on the quality and endurance of its products, and that’s why people still prefer to purchase Apple products rather than its substitutes. Starbucks is one of the most successful coffee companies in the world. People know them for their tasty coffee and names on drinks. Consumers visit its coffee shops despite the high prices for food and beverages. People like to go to Starbucks and pay around $5 for a small cappuccino rather than visit McDonald’s and buy the same drink for $3. Now that you know what types of companies use this marketing strategy, it’s time to unveil the advantages. They will help you figure out how you can benefit after implementing the approach. Benefits of Non-Price Competition You can reap numerous benefits after successfully implementing non-price competition. Let’s discover them in this section. The benefits of non-price competition include: increased demand; higher sales; bigger market share; higher revenues; competitiveness within the market; the possibility to stand out; positive reputation; brand recognition; visibility; constant product improvements; wide customer base; healthy competition. Now that you know the pros, it’s time to jump into the methods. The next section will help you figure out how to incorporate non-price competition approaches. Methods of Non-Price Competition Non-price competition implies using various approaches to catch prospects’ attention and convert them into loyal customers. We’ll review the most effective ones to use for your business. They will help you shape a big customer base, drive sales, and increase customer loyalty. Let’s explore them all. Provide superior quality. Often companies differentiate themselves from others by providing customers with high-quality products. It causes higher prices. Although the price might be relatively high, people still buy the products because of the quality they can’t find in any other brand. For instance, Apple users will continue to purchase Apple products because they already know they will serve longer and provide an exceptional experience. Ensure excellent customer service. Customer representatives play a great role in building a positive reputation for your company. Make sure to have friendly, open-minded, and compassionate customer support agents. They should listen to customers’ pain points, answer questions, and solve their problems. Customer support agents also need to participate in customer onboarding. If your team does a great job, you can attract new customers, win sales, and receive higher revenues. Create loyalty programs. Many companies have already implemented loyalty cards. They contribute to customer loyalty and more sales. Consider rewarding your current consumers with cashback and points. This way, the number of repeat purchases will increase. Many airlines have already incorporated this technique into their business. For example, customers of Emirates can redeem their Emirates Skyward Miles to book a flight to any destination in any class. Customers earn points when they book tickets with Emirates. Provide after-sales service. The communication with consumers doesn’t end when you get a sale. You should help your customers after the purchase when they face problems with a product, onboarding, warranty, repair, etc. Your customer support should react to users’ inquiries. They need to provide warranties, free repairs, product changes, or consultations. Great after-sales service encourages customer trust and brand loyalty. For instance, Whirlpool kitchen appliances have a one-year warranty from the date of purchase. Implement innovation. Since customer demand, trends, and preferences often change, companies should be ready to adapt. They need to be open to innovations. To stand out from the competition, you should be ready to roll out new product features and pivot to new demographics. For example, when the demand for water-resistant products increased, Samsung developed waterproof watches and smartphones. They implemented new technologies to provide these items. Ask customers for reviews. Customer opinion is essential for business owners and other consumers. Ask your current consumers about their experience using your product. They can share positive reviews about your product or service on various platforms in open access like Yelp, Facebook, and Google My Business. Since people pay attention to the recommendations of their friends and read reviews before purchasing a product, customer reviews will help them make a confirmative decision. For example, if you sell on Amazon, let users leave comments about your product. With LIKE.TG, you can ask for reviews through multiple channels, such as email campaigns, chatbots, and SMS. The service allows you to create an automation triggered by purchase and send emails asking for feedback or review. Ensure a unique selling proposition. The modern world requires you to provide customers with customizable products. These goods can serve the needs of various people. For instance, lactose intolerant people now have many substitutes for dairy products. Vegans can enjoy gluten-free, sugar-free, and vegan products in different industries. For example, Body Shop provides vegan products not being tested on animals. Offer free delivery. Reward your customers with free delivery once they buy for a certain sum of money. It will encourage them to purchase although the price for the product isn’t reduced. People often pay attention to perks like free delivery, gifts, rewards, discounts, etc. Congrats, now you know what non-price competition is and why it’s crucial. Use our methods to improve the profitability of your business.

Niche marketing is a technique that implies targeting a unique audience segment with specific needs and wants. It helps companies understand the needs of a certain group of people and address them instantly, encourage customer loyalty, and have fewer competitors. In this article, you’ll explore the advantages and disadvantages of niche marketing and figure out how to find your niche. You’ll also review some excellent examples of successful niche marketing ideas. Advantages and Disadvantages of Niche Marketing It might be challenging for some brands to sell because they can’t meet the requirements and appeal to the tastes of a broad audience. However, choosing a specific niche and focusing on the wants of a certain market segment can be very beneficial. A company specializing in selling clothes for pregnant women can predict the desire of women to look good and comfortable during this special time. Brands can create loose clothing that customers like and don’t create discomfort. Although the benefits of niche marketing are already clear, we still need to discover them in more detail. One of the key advantages entrepreneurs should pay attention to is the reduced competition. Once you decide to serve a specific audience segment, you’ll see that only a few companies provide the same product. Since your target audience is smaller than usual, you'll be able to invest more resources and time in improving customer service and relationships with consumers. As a result, your company will encourage brand loyalty. Since advertising for niche marketing is highly targeted, you’ll save marketing costs. If your product doesn’t have many substitute products, customers will pay even if it’s more expensive than usual. So you’ll have a good profit margin. Yet niche marketing also has its disadvantages. They include limited growth and profits, business risks, vulnerability to market changes, lack of “economies of scale,” dependence on a single product, etc. Now that you know the pros and cons, it’s time to uncover how to find a niche market. How to find a niche market Stick to our short step-by-step guide to find your perfect niche. We’ve prepared five steps for you to consider. Identify your key interests and passions. The areas you are interested in will be perfect ideas for your niche marketing. Think about your hobbies, skills, and the things you are good at. For this purpose, try brainstorming to figure this out. Think about what you do in your spare time, your natural skills, and topics you know and like to learn about. Research customers’ pain points. Once you identify your main ideas, proceed to the needs and problems of your target audience. After, decide how to solve their pain points with your product. Think about how your passion or interest will meet customers’ needs and what things will motivate them to purchase your product. Researching your target audience is essential since it’ll help you identify their buying behaviors and challenges. Leverage various marketing tools to create your buyer persona. Conduct competitor analysis. Before establishing a brand, you need to make sure that the product you want to offer doesn’t have a high level of competition. A great idea isn’t enough for starting a business. You need comprehensive competitor research. After conducting an analysis, you’ll know your competitors and their offerings. It’ll help you find the right direction and marketing strategy. Use tools like ClickBank, Google Trends, and Ahrefs to do quality competitive research. Once you do it, you’ll identify the best selling products and find out whether your product meets customers’ needs. Calculate the profitability of the chosen niche. If you want to establish a startup, you need to check whether it can bring profit. To evaluate the possibility of success for your niche, pay attention to the following factors: customer location, product quality, demographics, price, and target audience’s interests. If you find out only a few companies selling similar products after the research, your brand can be successful. Also, analyze the price points of rivals to sell your product at a competitive price. Test your product for success. Develop a landing page or a simple site for customers to find your product. Consider providing visitors with a trial period or free products. The product you offer shouldn’t be fully priced. To attract more visitors, use paid ads. As a result, more users will be acquainted with your brand. This way, you’ll find out whether people are interested in your offer and are willing to pay the price to get it. If your test fails, revise your strategy and pricing points. Look for the areas that need your immediate action and attention. Now that you know how to find your perfect niche, let’s explore some successful examples. Examples of Successful Niche Marketing Ideas Brands with special niches have many great ideas you can leverage to implement niche marketing successfully. Below we’ll review some of them for you to grab some inspiration. Georgetown Cupcake The two sisters and co-founders of Georgetown Cupcake followed their passion for baking and opened a great place for cupcake fans. The variety of pieces amazes and allows you to make stunning presents for your loved ones. Everyone can find a cupcake based on their tastes: Chocolate Ganache, Red Velvet, Vanilla Birthday, etc. Lefty’s After being limited to working for someone else’s vision, the owner of Lefty’s Cheesesteak decided to open a fast-food company for left-handed customers. It’s a perfect example of a successful implementation of niche marketing with lefties as the target audience. Divvies Divvies serves people with dietary restrictions to peanuts, tree nuts, eggs, and dairy. The brand helps customers live a life without limitations and eat their favorite fresh bakery, vegan and nut-free cookies, and cupcakes. With the company's help, people with food sensitivities can still eat everything they wish. This exclusive brand successfully serves this segment of people. Congrats, now you know the main advantages and disadvantages of niche marketing. Hope our instructions and examples will serve you as a hint for your further niche marketing efforts.

A national brand is the brand of a product manufactured and spread nationwide using a brand name and owned by this company. It brings companies brand recognition, customer loyalty,and high revenue. Advantages and Disadvantages of National Brands National brands are considered superior to private labels because they have brand recognition and high revenue. National brands have the following advantages: reduced marketing expenses because the brand already has wide recognition; a high level of customer loyalty; a high level of visibility so consumers can recognize the brand on the shelves of stores; high customer trust; nationwide distribution; promotion on television; people are more likely to repeat their purchases if they like the products. Nevertheless, like any other brand, it has its cons too. There are several disadvantages to consider: high costs for start-up companies; decreased profit margin if the prices are too high for customers; no exclusive marketing rights. Now that you know the advantages and disadvantages of national brands, let’s review in more detail national brands and private labels. National Brand vs Private Label Years ago it was easy to find products with private labeling on the shelves of grocery stores. When national brands had colorful packages and words describing the high-quality of the products, private label products were considered “generic” without having special packaging or branding. That’s why consumers at that time assumed that a private label was inferior to its competitor — national brand. However, times have changed. Nowadays more and more retailers invest in their private labels to differentiate themselves from other brands and develop customer loyalty. Hence, product manufacturers should understand the difference between the both types of products, their pros and cons to select the most appropriate for them. National Brand A national brand can be defined as a brand of a well-established product. This company has a name that people love and trust and although the price of such products is usually higher, consumers still don’t stop buying them. You can find national brands everywhere. Let’s take Breyers, for example. The company is famous for its tasty ice cream and frozen dairy desserts made with the best quality ingredients and can be found in the freezer section in any store. Customers choose national brands because they are considered to be more reliable and familiar, and, of course, their products have higher quality. To become a national brand a company needs years of growth and success in the industry. However, all national brands begin from small companies and only a handful of corporations become recognizable and gain the trust and love of their consumers. You can buy products from national brands nationwide. Therefore, to deliver products anywhere in the country, such brands have numerous manufacturing centers and distribution channels. Besides, national brands tend to use media advertising extensively to create and maintain brand awareness among their prospects and customers. This also helps them to be the most recognizable brand. You can find examples of national brands in your everyday life: fast food, clothing, laptops, foods, etc. Private Label In 2016, Amazon began to provide its customers with fashion and clothing accessories under its private labels. Now Amazon owns the ten most successful private label brands. This event improved the situation with private labeling and gave an idea to retailers to follow the same procedure. A private label product can be defined as a product that a retailer obtains from a third-party manufacturer and distributes it under its brand name. Retailers mention what goes in it, the details about the product's package, and the label. According to Statista, the market share of private label brands in the US was 19.3% in 2018. Private labeling brings the following pros to your business: eliminated additional costs as you don’t need to spend resources on a premium brand name and costly marketing campaigns; improved manufacturing process that results in higher customer loyalty; steady sales due to the lower prices. Yet business can't do without risks. By investing in a brand's design and its packaging, private label owners risk losing their investment costs in the event of a product failure. Besides, this type of brand can suffer from the lack of customers’ trust and recognition that national brands have. Despite the risks, private label products are more and more popular due to consistency and affordability. Now you know the distinctive features of these two brand types, so let’s walk you through the examples. They’ll help you identify national brands among those that you often meet in your everyday life. Examples of National Brands Wrangler Ben Jerry's Levi Strauss Co. To see what is meant by a national brand, check out these great examples from different world-known brands. Wrangler The company founded in 1904 is famous for its clothing, particularly workwear. The brand created in the US is especially appreciated for its jeans. Customers choose Wrangel because of their western clothing and comfortable jeans. Ben Jerry's The brand established in 1978 is known for its ice cream and frozen yogurt. Consumers know firsthand about their great ice cream and social missions. Founded in the US, the company was later bought by the world-known multinational company Unilever. Today, the world has over 5,000 of their ice cream shops in thirty countries. Levi Strauss Co. The company founded in 1853 in the US is famous internationally for its denim jeans. The brand manufactures not only jeans but also jackets, T-shirts, shirts, skirts, belts for men, women, and children. Levi’s is considered to be one of the biggest apparel companies in the world and a leader in the production of jeans. Their products are now available for customers in 110 countries. In today’s world customers still trust national brands more because they are recognizable, memorable, trusted, and proven over the years. People are willing to pay more for quality and recognition. However, private labels that provide consumers with a lower-cost alternative albeit slowly but gain popularity now. Resources: The article “Brands Versus Private Labels: Fighting to Win” describes the advantages and disadvantages of national brands and private labels. The article “4 Benefits of Private Labeling for Your Brand” explains the term and provides readers with the benefits of private labels.