Automation is key to today’s email marketing. Let’s take a look some more advanced automation techniques for when you are ready to go beyond a basic email newsletter strategy: RSS-based sequences and nurture sequences.
Basic Automation: Email Marketing 201
Adding a little bit of automation to your email marketing strategy can help nurture “cold” leads without a lot of extra hands-on effort. Let’s look at two basic automations when you’re just getting started: Welcome sequences and follow-up sequences.
How to Market Your Book: A Complete Strategy in 5 Stages
Today’s successful writers are entrepreneurs. While this may seem intimidating at first, the good news is that building a business around your writing doesn’t have to happen all at once. It can be built little by little, in stages. Here’s a blueprint to get your content strategy in order, connect with the right people, and form a supportive community.
List Segmentation Strategies: Email Marketing 201
Good list segmentation in email marketing lies at the intersection of what’s meaningful to your audience vs. what’s important to you. If it’s one or the other, it won’t work as effectively. In practice, there are 3 distinct ways to segment your email list.
Be a Part of the Community You Serve
Participation is a signal. When you are a part of the community that you aim to serve, it shows that you’re invested. That it’s important to you. That you care. Not only is it a way to develop trust, but it can also help you see emerging trends in your sector.
Content Marketing Has Changed
Have you noticed that social media is not as effective anymore? That your website traffic is down? That people aren’t opening your email newsletters as much? Content marketing has changed – a lot – over the past 5 years alone.
Repurposing Content: Blog Strategy 201
Repurposing content is one of the best ways to get more out of your blog as a small business. With some careful planning up front, you can think a few steps ahead and save yourself time – while building a set of content as a valuable business asset.
Building Anticipation: Blog Strategy 201
Building anticipation is a terrific technique for getting readers back to your site. Producing a blog series is a great way to achieve this. It has the added benefit of an SEO boost around one of Google’s strongest ranking factors as well. There are two strategies that I use.
Why Your Author Platform Is So Important to Publishers
Today’s publishing industry takes fewer chances on new authors. Having a strong author platform is one way to show that you are a low-risk investment. Why has this gotten even more important to publishers? Let’s take a look at the shift in power dynamics and what it means for authors trying to get signed.
Optimizing for Search: Blog Strategy 201
Each post you publish is an opportunity to get found by a future customer. Let Google help you. Optimizing for search is one of the best things you can do for your business blog, and it should only take an extra 5-10 minutes for each post. Episode 151 goes step-by-step through my SEO Treatment Plan.
Ethical Marketing Is Not an Oxymoron
Aggressive marketing tactics might have been effective in the past, but today’s consumers are more savvy. They see right through the lies, deception, and whitewashing. Ethical marketing is the only way to set yourself apart – to treat your customers with respect.
Creating a Pathway to Purchase: Web Strategy 201
What happens when a visitor arrives at your site? Do you have a pathway set up to guide them from that first visit through dozens of points of contact until they become a customer? If this isn’t all set up in advance – Web, blog, social, email, and online store – there’s little point in getting traffic to your site.
Beyond Getting Traffic: Web Strategy 201
We are obsessed with getting traffic to our websites. I want to challenge that concept, because let’s face it – random traffic doesn’t do that much for you. Web Strategy 201 is getting beyond just “traffic” as a goal and making your site much more active in the sales process.
More Than Just a Showroom: Web Strategy 201
Competition on the Web is tough. You can’t just hang your shingle and expect people to show up. A basic website isn’t good enough anymore – it needs to function as a PATHWAY for prospective customers. Here’s how to make your website carry more of the sales load for you.
Content Marketing 201: Beyond the Basics
Have you noticed that some of the basic strategies behind your website, blog, social, and email marketing have started to lose some of their effect? That’s because content marketing is now mainstream, with everyone relying on the same set of tactics. Time to level up with Content Marketing 201.
The Internet Is One Big Rickroll Now
The promise of the Internet has been ruined by advertising. There is no article you can read, video you can view, or social feed you can scroll through without being interrupted by some advertiser’s desperate attempt to steal your attention. Every time I experience this, I feel like I’ve been Rickrolled.
The Customer Journey: Five Common Waypoints
The interaction between you and your customer is unique to your business. But the “customer journey” has some common waypoints as we go from attracting that initial set of customers to developing a stable of loyal advocates.
The One Word That Diminishes Your Work
People don’t mean to diminish your work, but that’s exactly what they are doing when they use this one insidious little word. It undervalues your expertise and experience by making it sound simple – as a way to sell you on doing something, paying you less than you’re worth, or not paying you at all.
Build, Connect, Optimize: The Three Stages of Good Marketing
A solid marketing plan has three stages, depending on the growth cycle of the business. In the season finale of Marketing Without the Marketing, I take a look back at the past year and how this has influenced my most recent projects.
SEO and the User Pathway
SEO always starts with a simple query. But it doesn’t end when the user finds your site. For SEO to be truly effective, we need to set up a pathway to serve the user more than once so we can build trust over time. And of course, this needs to be set up and ready to go before the first visit.