Icetruck.tv News Blog

Promotional

Business

7 Promotional Tactics to Market Your Content Like a Pro

7 Promotional Tactics to Market Your Content Like a Pro


7 Promotional Tactics to Market Your Content Like a Pro

Did you know that 77 percent of American adults go online every day? And, of that 77 percent, 26 percent spend almost all of their day online.

Americans are plugged in more often than not — that means you have a lot of opportunities to share content with them and market your business’s products and services. 

To generate more leads and see conversions from your content marketing efforts, you need to make sure you’re using the right promotional approach.

Read on to learn about some effective promotional tactics that will help you market your content and spread the word about your business.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing approach that involves creating a variety of online content (blog posts, social media posts, videos, etc.) with the intent of building and retaining an audience.

The goal is to provide your audience with useful, valuable content to build trust and increase the likelihood that they will purchase products or services from you in the future.

Importance of Content Marketing

There are a number of benefits that come with having a strong content marketing strategy, including the following:

  • Improve trust and build brand reputation
  • Improve website conversions
  • Improve search engine rankings
  • Bring in new leads in a cost-effective way

Content marketing also helps you to establish yourself as an expert or authority figure in your industry. This, in turn, increases your conversions and helps you to build a solid reputation for your business and brand.

Promotional Tactics Every Content Marketer Should Use

As you can see, good content marketing is essential if you want your business to succeed long-term. Here are seven promotional tactics that you ought to use when marketing your content.

1. Reach out to Influencers

Some people scoff at the idea of working with social media influencers. In reality, influencer marketing can lead to some incredibly high conversions.

Influencers who have spent time building a loyal following can be a great asset to your company and can really help to spread the word about your brand and the content you’re working hard to put out. 

Reach out to an influencer and ask for a quote to find out how much they’ll charge to share your content on their social media profiles.

2. Mention Your Sources

If you’re quoting professional sources in your online content — and, if you’re not already, you definitely should be — mention and tag those sources when you share your posts or videos on social media.

Often, your sources will see the mention and check out what you’ve created. They may even share your content on their own social media profiles.

This helps to expose you to a much wider audience and can increase the amount of engagement and the number of followers you get from a single post.

3. Email Your Sources

If you really want to ensure that a busy individual sees your content, try sending them an email.

Let them know that you’ve written a blog post or created a video in which you mention them or their research.

Many professionals have busy social media profiles, and there’s a possibility that they might miss your mention or tag.

If you email them directly, they’ll be more likely to be on the lookout for your post and may be more inclined to share it with their followers.

4. Submit to Content Communities

There are lots of websites on the internet dedicated to helping content creators grow their following and expose their content to a wider audience.

There’s a lot of competition on these websites, but they can be very helpful, especially if you’re putting out high-quality content. 

If you join one of these communities, it’s a good idea to do more than just self-promote. Share other people’s work and engage with others who are posting on the site — remember, this is a community.

It’s a good idea to share only your best content, too. You don’t necessarily want to use these sites for every piece of content you create.

5. Send Content to Your Email List

Don’t have an email list? Create one as soon as you can. An email list will provide you with direct access to people who are already interested in what your company has to offer. 

Once you have your email list, start sharing your content in regular email updates. Don’t spam the people on your list — limit yourself to a maximum of one email per day. 

6. Use Paid Ads Strategically

You can always go the paid route when you’re trying to promote your online content.

Be smart about the way you do this, though. Otherwise, you could end up spending a lot of money, and that’s money you might not necessarily get back.

Pay to promote specific pieces of content, the ones you really want to get out to a wider audience.

Make sure you label your content clearly as being sponsored, too. This helps to establish credibility and prevents you from being penalized by the platforms on which you’re advertising.

7. Hire a Professional

Finally, you might want to consider hiring a content marketing expert, like the ones available at this website, to help you get your content out to a wider audience.

There are lots of content marketing professionals out there who know the latest tricks and tools necessary to share your content with as many people as possible.

Just be sure to do your research before hiring one of these professionals to make sure they’re trustworthy and have a good online reputation.

Need More Content Marketing Help?

As you can see, there are a lot of different promotional tactics you can utilize as part of your business’s content marketing strategy. 

These seven tactics are great ones to start with when you’re first getting into the content marketing game.

Do you need additional help in establishing a content strategy, though? If so, we’ve got lots of articles for you.

Head to the Content Strategy section of our site today for a variety of resources that will teach you how to create great content, stick to a schedule, and increase your productivity.

Business

Gain Exposure! How to Create Brilliant Online Promotional Strategy for Your Coaching Practice

Gain Exposure! How to Create Brilliant Online Promotional Strategy for


Gain Exposure! How to Create Brilliant Online Promotional Strategy for Your Coaching Practice

A good sports coach inspires and educates players with the end goal of a team win. The same applies when working as a professional coach.

The tricky part is proving to potential clients you have what it takes to help them achieve their goals. You don’t have the national press coverage of professional sports highlighting your every career move. 

Follow this guide to create a brilliant online promotional strategy for your coaching practice to build credibility and attract paid customers. 

Face Biggest Challenges First

It’s very important to understand your motivation for outreach. All businesses need money, but knowing exactly how a post on social media will cure this problem is important. 

Save yourself time by creating a list of your biggest challenges before taking any action. This list helps you identify your goals and ignore the many distractions available online promising you instant customers.

If you are currently marketing online, divide your list between what works for you and what has not produced any success. 

Research Your Audience

Once you understand your challenges and needs, analyze the needs of your customer. Marketers can’t read the minds of customers, so they use data to prove any assumptions made.

Start with social media analytics tools to get demographic data on your ideal client.  Each social media platform has a different type of user and can help you avoid wasting time with demographics that don’t match your audience. 

With enough data, you can create a buyer persona. A buyer persona outlines details about a person like where they work, education level, family status, salary, gender, and fears. 

By creating a buyer persona, you know your ideal client and can make ads or posts that resonate with them directly.

Promotional Strategy vs. Ideas

A brilliant online marketing plan is a strategy, not a list of ideas. Ideas are great for coming up with targeted design schemes but ineffective when it comes to creating a plan of action. 

Armed with research your ideal client and business needs, your next step is to use your research to decide the most effective tools. Consider the amount of time it takes to execute each tool and whether you have the budget set aside to cover the expense.

Starting a campaign and abruptly ending it is one way to become discouraged. Choose online marketing tools that allow you to maximize time, money, your business goals, and your customer’s buyer persona. 

When you factor in each of these categories, it helps you weed through dozens of irrelevant marketing options online. 

Web Design

Design a professional website that speaks to the needs of your clients. A well-designed website means capturing the attention of visitors and keeping them on each page longer. 

The average visitor’s attention span is 8 seconds which is 1 second less than a goldfish. Pages that are clean and easy to read allow customers to navigate your website, learning more faster.

If you don’t know how to design pages yourself, hire help. Web designers study user experience to learn layouts that attract more clicks to areas you want. If you can’t afford a web designer, there are alternatives. 

Templates exist that allow you to use proven design styles that attract customers. The site helps you capture user data learning stats like which pages visitors click on most.  

Remember buyer personas when choosing page content.  If your ideal client is a parent, it may be beneficial to add a family photo with your bio on the About Us page to connect with potential customers. 

Get Press

Hiring a public relations professional can mean getting access to media contacts who can include you in a story. While you may not get an article specifically about your business, contributing a quote to an existing story builds your credibility.

News coverage means getting exposure to a much broader audience than you might have access to on your own. Add any press you receive to your website to show off your position as a trusted expert. 

Start a Blog

Starting a blog is a great way to attract repeat visitors to your website and optimize your site for search engines. Blogs are an overwhelming idea for some. The responsibility of constantly adding new ideas weekly or monthly seems like hard work.

Automate a series of blog posts through a publishing service to simplify the process. Instead of coming up with new ideas over and over, write several posts when you feel inspired. Schedule the posts over a period of time to keep your blog active.

Remember to keep your posts engaging. Be personable. Tell a story. This blog is a good example of how to capture your audience with memorable posts. 

Learn from Competitors

Competitors who are successful can show you a paved road to getting the results you want. Do an audit of a competitor’s website to determine why customers spend time there. 

Look at the way coaching services are described. There may be keywords or customer needs you are overlooking with your marketing materials. 

The same applies to marketing strategies. Consider advertising where competitor ads are present to gain market share.  

Research tools like Buzzusmo help you learn the types of content that receive the most shares. This is helpful because it can tell you what content is valuable by topic. Review the top content posted to see where you can improve in your messaging.

When to Bring in Help

Online marketing can seem like an endless set of tasks. Without direction, it’s easy to simply move forward with what’s easy instead of what’s an effective promotional strategy.

New online marketers need to keep things simple but not at the expense of business goals. Consider hiring a professional if you are not tech savvy or find yourself adding more strategies than you can manage on your own.

Your goal as a coach is to help clients succeed. Know when to find your own coach who can help you in areas where your expertise falls short. 

Doing so allows you to focus on your craft instead of learning a whole new job. For more information on content marketing, visit our website. 

Business

5 Innovative Promotional Products for Marketing

5 Innovative Promotional Products for Marketing


5 Innovative Promotional Products for Marketing

The right promotional products marketing strategy can increase the effectiveness of your brand by up to 44%. It increases your brand recognition while it excites your customer base because who doesn’t like to receive things for free?

With that said, not every product is going to be a winner with your customers. If you want to learn which products are going to appeal the most, you’re in the right place.

Just continue reading for our tips.

Promotional Products Marketing Ideas

Are you interested in product marketing, but don’t know which products to use? Here are 5 powerful product marketing ideas!

1. Fancy Pens

Promotional pens will always be one of the most tangible marketing products out there. Not only that, they are extremely cheap to buy in bulk.

With that said, you can take this classic piece of marketing material up a notch.

Using promotional pens that write from one end and have a stylist on the other makes this simple product twice as useful. This almost guarantees that potential customers aren’t going to lose yours like they do others because the stylist tool makes using phones and tablets even easier.

2. Apparel

Give out t-shirts or sweatshirts at your next promotional event. Make sure your company information is clearly displayed on them along with an interesting, eye-catching image.

Not only will the people wearing the shirts have all your details on hand, the people who see them wearing it will begin to recognize as well.

3. Promotional Umbrellas

Promotional materials are most effective when they are useful items that appeal to the masses. This is where promotional umbrellas come in. Everybody needs an umbrella at some point and they are large enough to act as a nice, clear display of your brand.

4. Beer Koozies

Beer koozies make it easy for you to hold cold beverages at events like concerts and barbeques without feeling like your hand is going to freeze. And because of that usefulness and their ability to travel well, people are obsessed with them.

If your brand is young and fun, koozies will help show your customer base that side of your brand’s personality.

5. Pop Sockets

Pop sockets are applied to the back of a cell phone and are used for multiple reasons. They act as a stand that holds the phone up while you watch videos, they include grips so that you can better hold your phone, you can even wrap your earbuds around them to keep both of your favorite things together.

So, why are they a good marketing tool? People always have their phones out. In fact, the average person checks it every 12 minutes.

If your business is displayed on this device, your brand will always be within customers’ reach, increasing their chances of contacting you when they have a need.

Follow Us

The way you market your business tells customers a lot about your values, views and brand’s personality. This is the way you go about your promotional products marketing strategy should be personalized based on the customer base you are reaching out to.

Follow us for more marketing trends and strategies.

Business

5 Smart Promotional Strategies for Your Legal Website

5 Smart Promotional Strategies for Your Legal Website


5 Smart Promotional Strategies for Your Legal Website

Busses and benches had their time, but now the internet is the best place to reach potential clients. What promotional strategies can you use to get people to your legal website?

Legal marketers face many issues, but increasing your online presence can solve them.

This article will give you strategies to expand the reach of your legal website. Once you get more traffic, you can start converting those leads into paying clients.

Take a look at your current marketing strategy, and let’s get into improvements.

Mobile Optimization

So many companies optimize their websites for mobile users now that people expect it. They’ll go to another website if yours isn’t optimized.

Create a responsive design for your website. That will analyze what device the visitor is using and adjust the layout accordingly.

Google favors websites that take usability into consideration. Proper mobile optimization improves your SEO scores.

Content Marketing

If you’ve read an informative blog, you’re benefitting from content marketing.

Unlike invasive, annoying advertisements, content marketing focuses on providing value to the consumer. With informative blogs, you can create a helpful reputation with potential clients.

Content marketing also improves your SEO scores by building links and keywords.

Content marketing is over 60% less expensive than other promotional strategies. Plus, it generates three times the leads.

Overall, it provides valuable information and directs them towards your legal site. That’ll generate more leads than pestering them with ads.

Social Media

Social media is vital to spreading your online presence. You’ve nailed down your audience, so research which social media outlets they use.

The legal industry can confuse the average person. Social media is a great way to answer their questions with valuable information.

This also gives them an outlet to share great experiences with your law firm.

You want to engage people. Consider asking for their opinions on hot button topics related to your services.

Be Accessible

In the era of everything online and on-demand, clients want 24/7 access to you. If they’re looking at your website or social media, they want you to answer their questions right away.

One of the best promotional strategies is referrals. Provide a website experience your clients will happily refer.

For example, industry leader Babcock Partners has a live chat function on their website. If clients have questions, Babcock Partners can answer immediately.

Automated Promotional Strategies

Your marketing team shouldn’t waste their time sending out hundreds of emails. Automate your marketing process anywhere you can.

Many services exist to send out emails automatically. That way, leads get a prompt welcoming email when they sign up for your email list.

You can also program automated social media posts. Your team can spend more time replying to comments than posting.

Pulling it All Together

Promoting your legal website involves a complete presence on the internet.

You can’t just blast people with ads and expect traffic. With tactics like a social media presence and content marketing, you can generate organic traffic to your website.

Have you used any of these strategies? Which ones perform the best?

Leave a comment to let us know!