Lite1.4 Blog

The growing demand for “technology enhanced” eLearning solutions is currently driving the growth of the industry. It comes as no surprise at all that such a booming industry would even thrive in marketing.

One of the exciting factor is that for you to keep your eLearners. You can make use of this opportunity to promote your company through the giveaways and endorsements. For you to keep your learners engaged once the course is over, use this medium to start reminding them. With announcements about new lessons and new modules.

Collect feedback

For your course to be very successful, the learners need evidence that it will deliver results. If learners know that the others have been satisfied with the learning experience that you have provided, they will be more likely to enroll.

For this reason, it is of high importance for you to include the testimonials of past students in the launch of your course. It is more likely that a product with a known and proven track record will attract investors. More than the one without any recommendations at all.

As another method, you can also conduct a focus group to help gather feedback. Make sure that you are very open to constructive criticism because it is helpful in the long run.

Take advantage of this information to improve your course and then you will gain more perspective on how your it is being perceived. You will gain a lot of credibility when your satisfied learners endorse your course. Employing these tactics will be of help to you in building a more successful marketing campaign and the learner journey.

Use your social media

No matter which of the social media platforms that you are using to promote your business, you should begin your post with some teaser information as soon as possible about your online course.

While you are building your social media following, remember to avoid making all of your content posts about your course alone. Instead, make sure your social media channels provide your target audience with interesting content to get them interested.

The content that you are creating might come from other sources, and that is fine. Your audience will become accustomed to checking in with you daily if that is if you regularly post quality content on your social media. Once you have an engaged user base, you will have no problem marketing your own online course.

You can even utilize some certain apps to help you in marketing your courses to the exact audience that you are trying to reach. For example, some of the book summary apps are being used by authors to help them sell their books. This makes it pretty easier for people to start investing in buying a book when they have a summary. There is less or nothing to lose because the customer feels like they have gotten more information on the product.

The Business-to-Business (B2B) is a company that is providing services or products to other businesses, such as those that are involving a manufacturer and a wholesaler or a retailer.

The Business-to-Consumer (B2C) is the company that sells directly to the individual consumers. They are two separate business models that are serving different customer types: businesses and the other is direct to consumers.

Now, there are some factors that you will want to consider when you are creating your own customer profile—as much as the B2B is different from the B2C, so also are their consumers. So, here are some tremendous start-off questions to be asked and answered yourself so for you to get one step closer to understanding your consumer’s profile.

B2B
1. Do your goods or your services benefit a specific geographic location more than the other?
2. What particular range of revenue would a company need to have to afford your goods or your services?
3. Does your business target some specific personas within these businesses, whether it be the COO or the Director of Marketing?
4. What industries do you know would likely need or want the goods or services that you provide?

B2C
1. What kind of person would benefit from your goods or services?
2. Do your goods or your services benefit a specific geographic location more than another location?
3. Do your goods or your services help a particular target or a set of people, whether parents, seniors or the teens?
4. What is your consumer’s personal income bracket, and can they afford your goods or services?

You want to dip a little deeper? Good, it is advisable you should. You can check out some templates to build out your unique customer profiles. Keep in mind, that there is no such thing as just one type of customer. It is a great idea for you to build out more than one!

 

A Marketing Plan

Having a goal without a plan is really just a wish! And I hate to break it out to you, but four-leaf clovers do not work. So, let us start making a plan!!

Now, you should remember the three main marketing pillars that should be the foundation of every of the startup founder’s marketing plan are: the social media, the emails and the traditional/SMS.

There are so many reasons why it is very crucial to add social media to your marketing plan, and it is simple. First, it is the place where people spend most of their time online. This is not to say that you do not need a website. Of course you sure do, but there are about one billion active users on the Instagram even as we speak. The social commerce also entails the leveraging of social media algorithms to understand the customers’ social behaviours and their preferences.

Unfortunately, there is no magical manual for you to start a new business. I know, if only there was, right? And there is no such thing as the overnight success stories… that is all just hidden hard work. And no, we are not trying to make you scared or discourage you from becoming a startup founder. We just want to make sure you that know it is not an easy feat.

The satisfaction that you get from creating something (either big or small) feels so good, but it also add in some negativity, and there comes some complications. But with more satisfaction comes more of the obstacles that you will have to leap over.

One thing that we know for sure is that every startup journey starts with an existential crisis. We understand fully well that this investment becomes a branch of their life, and every other person that is a startup founder knows this.

So we want to first inform you that you should take a deep breath and then relax. Then, we are going to walk you through some of the explicit goals that you will need to set and some of the strategies that will help you to succeed.

Early Important Goals For Startups

Get Online

A crucial lesson that has been learned these past couple of years and that lesson is that being online is an absolute must if you want to survive. Of course, this also goes for any startup founder. The Dog walking company? Get online. The Personal trainer? Get online. The Scuba Diving Pizza Delivery Man? Interesting, but also, you can get online.

So how is it possible to you ‘get online’? There are a couple ways.
The First one is your website: This is your hub for the people to understand who you are and what you are selling.

Second, social: This is a great place where you can reach your target audience, you can also build brand awareness, and educate your consumers on the benefits of your goods or your services. You must have a firm understanding of your audience and also the message you want to get across before you start introducing your company to the whole world.

Provide Unique Profiles

As a startup founder, you have at least for one time or the thought once if your business plan is unique. Which is very smart. With so many businesses that are out there, you will want to stand out and offer something that is new and different to the world. This also stands to be true to our customers. So you must be able to establish and create your ideal customer. Remember that this will be changed and be also refined over time, but you must have the understanding of who would benefit from your products or services the most.

Now you must be thinking and calculating, how do I do this? A great place for you to start is to determine if you are a B2B or you are a B2C. And you just need to refresh your memory, here is what they mean:

The Business-to-Business (B2B) is a company that is providing services or products to other businesses, such as those that are involving a manufacturer and a wholesaler or a retailer.

The Business-to-Consumer (B2C) is the company that sells directly to the individual consumers. They are two separate business models that are serving different customer types: businesses and the other is direct to consumers.

The Email marketing is the single most effective marketing channel that is out there. If you want to do it well, it is not easy, but it is very worth the effort. Studies consistently have shown that emailing a subscriber base will regularly translates into revenue over time.

These email marketing best practices can possibly set you on a strong path to help you fine-tune your email marketing strategy. As another revenue that is generating the marketing channel.

Driving Traffic

The whole point of you sending your email messages is to drive traffic to your landing page. It is really just that very simple. If you are not driving the clicks to your page, your email subscribers can not be converted into customers.

The key to driving the traffic to your landing page is just quite simple. Just have one primary call to action (CTA) in your email message. Having multiple CTAs will only lead to distraction to the reader and will make them confused. When they are confused, they will leave your email or delete it.

That proposition (why should the consumers give their email addresses or other data to brands?) is recently the central driver for any of the modern marketer’s strategy.

Whatever eventually the solution or the combination of solutions that replaces the third-party cookies and the mobile ad targeting/tracking. The brands that have been most successful in motivating their audiences to opt in and to share their data are the ones that should be given the most useful first-party data. For centering their identity management and the marketing. The better the identity management, the better the brand can be able to deliver its part of the value exchange.

Also, the brands that has the most robust first-party data are the ones that will likely fare better in the maintaining of the brand loyalty. Through useful customer relationships and also the increasing of their customer base through the customer referrals and the second-party data exchanges.

 

Meeting Customer Need

Many marketers have now recognized that the third-party cookies were never that great of an asset. The Cookie matching techniques — needed to make them very useful across the web are simply notoriously inaccurate. Often times scoring an accuracy rates of not more than 40%, and the consumers continuously have been complaining about the ads following them across the sites. Sometimes even after they have purchased that product. The tracking and the attribution across the mobile apps have been plagued by the similar user irritation as well as fraud.

Marketers can now bring in their customers and their visitors as partners in meeting their needs. While they are reducing wasteful spending of the marketing budgets in the process. The key trick is just to understand that the quality of the visitor/customer data is now as very important to a brand as the quality of its products.

The Marketing strategy is a process that can give room for an organization to concentrate its limited resources on their greatest opportunities. So to increase their sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

The Strategic planning involves an analysis of the strategic initial situation of the company prior to the formulation. The evaluation and the selection of the market-oriented competitive position that contributes to the company’s goals and the marketing objectives.

At one level, the first-party data is acting as the hub because it is the lynchpin for the identity management. Which merges the various sets of data into the integrated profiles of actual individuals. Using specific connectors like the email addresses, for instance, the marketers can possibly tie together different elements of the consumer behavior across the purchase records both online and offline. The website visits, the customer communications and other sources into one identity. Additionally, the third-party data can also be layered on top of the first-party data. Giving a broader understanding of the visitor or the customer.

Value Exchanges

On another level, the first-party data becomes the central. When a brand is taking a look at expanding its audience reach through the second-party arrangements.

These type of exchanges, often conducted anonymously in the clean rooms and/or the privacy sandboxes. Allow brands to match attributes, and sometimes identities, with other brands in ways that it protects the users’ privacy. However, such an arrangement will only work out in the long run that is if the participating brands have a high quality data.

To say in other words, the quality of your first-party data is not only that hugely valuable to providing the type of information. The offers and relationships that your own customers and visitors want. It is also very essential to allow you grow your customer base through the exchanges with other brands. Where an exchange of equal value is very vital to a continued cooperation.

Value of  Exchange in Advertising

Additionally, the quality of the user data directly affects the advertising attribution. Without an accurate attribution, the marketers are just spending money blindly.

However, it is another type of value exchange that has currently become the centrepiece of the brand’s marketing efforts. Namely, the value exchange between a customer or visitor on the one hand and then the brand on the other hand. You want the visitors to provide you with an email address for a mailing list, or to register and login. Or to offer other kinds of information or the consent because doing so will be of benefit to them as well as to you.

Over countless years of the commerce, marketers have successfully fine-tuned the skills. Skills that is needed to convey the benefits of a product or the service to their known and unknown prospects. The marketers have to hone the ability to possibly convey the benefits to customers and visitors of providing their own information.

1. You Are Not Having An Interaction With Followers

Do you post your content without really paying any or less attention to what the people have to say about it? If so, then you are taking the “social” out of the social media. It is very important for you to interact with fans and with your customers via your channels. It is a good way for you to get feedback, to get address complaints, and see what you are doing right.

2. You Are Being Too Spammy

The age of sales talk is now slowly dying down on the internet. Today’s internet is more of a conduit for the conversation and the information than anything else. Go over and view the last few things that you have shared on your social media accounts. If you are sounding more like a robot or like a telemarketer than an accessible human being, then it is time for you to figure out how you can better relate to your audience.

3. You Are Not Managing The Interaction

Should any unacceptable behavior or any language at all make its way onto your business page, you should try and consider laying down some house rules. Also create a document that clearly spells out the disruptive behavior—such as any inflammatory posts and any spamming—and also make it accessible to everyone who is interacting on your social sites or your blog. If anyone breaks any of the rules that you have set down, you can either give them a warning or you can just block them from your pages altogether.

4. You Are Wasting Too Much Time Posting Updates

For you to start updating each of your social networks one at a time can be very tedious. If you are still posting some updates one at a time, now you need to consider simplifying the process with a scheduling tool like the HootSuite. This program gives you the opportunity to monitor multiple Twitter and multiple Facebook accounts and pages from the same interface, and even it lets you to schedule your posts and also your tweets ahead of time.

5. You Are Not Being Original

Anyone can share, anybody can retweet, and rehash news that they have read elsewhere, but do you have anything that originally yours that you can say to your audience? Sure, doing the retweeting and the sharing of valuable information is a great idea, but you should not forget to also take time to create and share your original content. If you have any need of help in the content creation area, you can just hire an outside help. A professional writer, a photographer, or a social media consultant can be of great help to you helping you to create original, sharable content for your online communities.

If any of the above stated applies to you, then do not worry. You are not alone. As mentioned before, the social media moves very fast, and it can also be hard to keep up. Every business should take a look at their strategy every few months so to make sure it is still working for them. No matter what it is, there is always room for your improvement.

Don’t hit “send” 500 times

In the beginning, you may have your email list containing ten people. Maybe less. At that level, it is not a big deal to put them all on BCC making use of your regular email address and service and sending it out. Once you have like hundreds, or even thousands of names on your list, the technical aspect of simply emailing them all will get complicated. Your standard Gmail account may likely be exhibiting some symptoms of stress thanks to Google’s new AI spam filters.

Most of the web hosts help newbie email marketers to take the next step in the technical sophistication by offering email services like the autoresponders, the multiple email boxes for your domain, the web mail, and other handy features for a marketer. A reputable service should fully abide by the GDPR data privacy requirements.

Most hands-on the HostGator reviews explain how you can set up email in a GDPR-compliant manner, as does the HG knowledge base also. As your list grows, it will eventually become too cumbersome for you to manage even with a web host’s resources. At that point, it is time to look into a full-fledged email marketing service like the Constant Contact.

Make use of the email format that works best for your audience

You need to think about your target audience. Are they more likely to open their email on a phone or on a laptop? Will the HTML slow down the loading time and motivate the reader to close and to delete the email? Will it also add anything of value to the email itself?

It is only you that can answer those questions, and a whole lot depends on the quality of the underlying code. As you are deciding, be aware that poorly-executed HTML will increase the odds that your readers will delete the email before finishing it. That also means they won’t be forwarding it to their associates.

The bottom line

Be ready and expectant to be horrified by the perceived complexity when you first dig into the idea of the email marketing. It can be somehow overwhelming but only if you are a rank newbie and you are trying to implement every tool and strategy at once.

Just start simple. Create a landing page, also drive traffic to it, collect email addresses as many as you can, and then send the list emails periodically. Lots of online marketers have been very successful by just doing nothing more than this.

Later you can start to figure out the autoresponder sequences, the list segmentation, and the conversion techniques. For now, take it easy, it is a step by step approach. Select one of those email marketing services that we have mentioned up there and then start taking action.

Many people have a free level or trial period. Ultimately, the only thing standing between you and your first email marketing campaign is just inaction. Change that by taking the bull by the horn, take action now. Good luck

Know that the Email marketing is far from dead. In terms of return on investment, it is still holding up as a viable campaign element. The trick is for you to know how to make use of this resource to its best advantage.

Even in a world with so much options for the electronic communication, the email still remains an affordable and a very effective way to connect with your consumers. But the most important bit is for you to make sure that your emails go to the right people – qualified leads and prospects.

If this campaign is your first campaign, do not feel overwhelmed. You will need just a little help, so that you can create a plan that is very effective and that brings the positive attention you want. You can learn more on how you can start your campaign and see some listed tips to get started.

What is a Qualified List Anyway?

The last thing that you will want to do is buy a list, to blast out emails, and then sit and hope for the best. If you want reasonable results, your list must be qualified. What does this mean?

A ”qualified” email list has the email addresses of those who have for sure expressed their interest in the types of goods or services that your company is selling. Those addresses may be the individual consumers, the buyers for other companies, the department heads, or anyone else with the authority to start making purchases. The tie that is binding them together is that they have indicated the desire to receive emails related to the products they want.

How will you get a qualified list?

One approach is for you to have consumers opt in to receive your emails. That often gives provision for a list’s foundation.

Do not overlook the generating qualified recipients by making use of your social media accounts. A simple post that have a link included back to the opt-in page on your website allows the interested parties to sign up. Combined, the list will be composed of those recipients who are more likely to open and to read the email than just to hit the delete key.

Now that you know who you are emailing, it is time for you to launch your first email campaign.

The cost? Email marketing is also very super-affordable, which makes it super exciting and great for small businesses.

But for you to just start sending an email message promoting of your business isn’t enough. So many people are inundated with a ton of promotional emails they recieve every day, and many get deleted without even being read. That is why you will need to make sure that your emails will stand out through the noise.

So, where are you going to start and what can you do for you to be successful with your first email campaign? Launching your first email marketing campaign, which will be a boost engagement for your company and for your company’s sales is very important.

Here are some tips for launching your first email campaign.

1. Create emails with a specific purpose or specific offer

If you are really serious about mounting an effective campaign, then the email text must focus on the engaging of the recipients in a specific way. You will need to offer them something in exchange for them reading the email. You have to make a compelling case for accepting the offer.

Some of the offerings that you could consider making include:

1. Notice and the ability to register for an upcoming event
2. Signing up for an email newsletter
3. The Discounts on specific goods and services
4. The Announcements of new products

You may want to ask if you can include more than one offering? Yes, but it is not always the best move. One of the offers might just be lost in the shuffle. You would do well to stick with just one purpose for that email and then you can follow up with a second one that contains a different offer after a few days later.

Remember that your content must not have anything containing any element that hints of a scam. Be up front and very clear from start to the finish. You will be able to get more readers that way.

2. Write an eye-catching subject line

Can you remember the old axiom that was at the core of Toastmasters International training? That works with the email campaigns too. The “Three S” approach, these are the stand up, the speak up, and the shut up, they can translates well into this kind of campaign.

Make use of the subject line to make a point or to ask a question. Follow with information that the recipient can use in the first paragraph. Also follow with the content that backs up that information. Close with a way for you to learn more by clicking over to your own website.

That is it. Forget about the flowery phrases or trying to impress readers with a great wall of text. You need to keep it very simple and to the point. More people will want to read the whole thing and be inspired to ask for more.

3. Choose the images and the videos that are directly related to the email topic

It is fine to include the images or the embed video in your marketing emails. You just need to make sure that they accomplish more than just taking up space.

The images must be directly relating to the email topic. Unless you want to sell a new pet product, kittens are not a good choices. Make use of an image that shows the product or at least someone using it. That will create context.

The same is also true with video. Make it very short, very sweet, and also relevant. No one has the whole time to watch a video as long as a TV show. Use your video to make a quick point and let it direct the reader to the product. Do it in just less than three minutes.

Here is an example of an abandoned cart autoresponder series
Over 75% of people have abandoned their shopping carts online. In your ecommerce store, you will notice 3 out of every 4 people who add something to their cart leave without even paying you.

That is the bad news. The good news is that, it is possible you can…

1. Get a bunch of them (10% or more than) to come back and start buying
2. You can still set up that system once – and you will start getting results from it with no extra work

What is making a cart recovery email strategy so special?

The average ecommerce email open rate is about 15%. The Abandoned cart emails is laughing in the face of that number — cos they boast at nearly about 45% open rate.

Don’t just go and abandoned your 50 carts. Because you are fed up and you want to see exactly what types of abandoned cart emails people are sending.

Once you have learn how much the abandoned carts cost you with the free abandoned cart calculator, you can begin to use these same cart abandonment solutions to start recovering up to 63% of your lost sales.

Should you start sending an automated series of abandoned cart emails?

What is an abandoned cart email?

An abandoned cart email is simply a follow-up message that is sent to someone who is leaving a website without purchasing any of the items in their online shopping cart. The Abandoned cart emails are typically sent to those people who leave the part-way through checkout, and they can recover around 10% of their lost revenue.

An abandoned cart email is just meant for the 3 (out of every 4) shoppers who is leaving a website without completing the checkout process.

The huge benefit of abandoned cart emails?

They are automated. You can start to set up a series that goes out all on its own – and then wins back revenue that would otherwise have just disappeared.

Why do people abandon their carts?

Some of the common reasons people abandon online carts include:

1. Distractions
2. They forgot
3. Price or shipping costs
4. Website issues
5. Complex checkout process
6. Return or exchange policies
7. Comparison shopping
8. Just browsing

The Email autoresponder flow example

Now, that you know the technical side of things, let us check out some of the inspirational examples that can you recover.

Here are some examples of the common email autoresponders:

1. Confirmation email

A subscription confirmation email. This email is been sent right after a user have left their email address on a website. The Marketers use this method to build up a high-quality mailing list.

2. Welcome email

A welcome email. This is an onboarding email for the new subscribers. Marketers usually send this email to give a warm welcome and to show what their brand is engaged in.

3. Birthday email

A birthday email. This is a very good chance for you to congratulate subscribers on their special day, increasing sales and also raising the customers loyalty. Brands usually create special offers and also give discounts.

You can start to register and send an email autoresponder with the SendPulse!