3 Laws for Attracting New Clients
Follow these guidelines, and you can finally stop spending so much on ads…
When running a client-based business, the weeks and months can feel like roller coasters. Clients naturally come and go, depending on your packages and your churn rate. As entrepreneur Melyssa Griffin says, “Getting clients can be one of the most difficult and anxiety-inducing struggles for a business owner.”
So, what if there were “laws” for attracting clients that worked every time? Perhaps if you stayed ahead of the curve and instituted practices that would bring clients to you regularly, you wouldn’t have to scramble to invest in ads the next time you feel low on clients. With that in mind, here are three laws any entrepreneur should follow to attract new clients.
1. Appeal to them with content they’re likely to engage with.
The first and arguably most important way to attract new clients is to use content marketing, which entails creating value-driven content for your social media pages, blog or anywhere else your ideal customer might search for information on your business.
Jay Baer blogs for Convince & Convert: “Smart content creation doesn’t have an expiration date. As long as your expertly tailored content is floating out there on the web, it’s likely to find your target customers one way or another.”
And regardless of how it finds your target customer, the creation itself is important because it establishes you as a leader. In a blog post for Pennington Creative, Heather Mcdonald puts it well when she says,
“When customers are vetting companies, they’re looking for something more than a price tag. They want to do business with people who know their industry and are experts in their field.”
If you can answer your target customer’s questions and provide them with the answers and insights they need from a Google search, they’ll remember your company as the expert.
2. Use social media networks.
In today’s digital age, there’s no reason you shouldn’t utilize social media networks to attract new clients. After all, you have a whole world of potential customers in the palm of your hand. How to utilize them, however, is a loaded question with dozens of potential answers, all of which should be considered in tandem. You should offer quality content and branded stories with smart hashtags, but perhaps the most important thing to do is to be conscientious of the community you’re building, both on your business’s social pages and your own.
Alice Jackson recommends in a blog for Design Hill that replying to every comment and direct message you receive can help build organic engagement. The more that your followers can feel like they know you — either your personal brand or you as the founder on your company page — the more they’ll come to trust you. The same is true for if you receive a message on LinkedIn or Facebook. Reply, even if the message appears to be automated or part of a mass-emailing list. You’ll start to become top of mind.
3. Mirror your ideal client.
It’s a simple rule of attraction: Like attracts like, so you’re more likely to attract clients if you’re mirroring their actions and interacting with their social circles. Kent Littlejohn, CEO of Client.com, swears by this law, explaining,
“You need to remember that your reputation precedes you in the business world, so in order to make sure your potential clients have an interest, do high-quality deals and hire your own high-quality, high-ticket people as a way of breaking into networks of ideal clients.”
Because everything comes down to the crowd you’re in for networking, make sure you’re hiring and engaging with the type of people you want to work with, i.e. mirror them.
This is also an ethical matter, too. In all of your business dealings, act as you’d want a client to act towards you. Chances are that the reputation you’ll build for yourself will warrant referrals, even from those you’ve hired. And the more referrals, the more clients, which means more referrals and more client attraction. These laws will get you there.
Facebook adds new reporting for Click-to-WhatsApp ads
Ad campaign objectives now include traffic, conversions (for website), and post engagement.
Facebook has added traffic, conversions and page post engagement objectives for its Click-to-WhatsApp ads — ads that launch a WhatsApp chat via the Facebook News Feed.
Why marketers should care
Facebook’s Click-to-WhatsApp ads offers marketers and advertisers a way to start a conversation with consumers on its encrypted messaging app. The ads can be purchased through Facebook’s Ad Manager platform and display in a user’s Facebook News Feed. Now, in addition to messages, Click-to-WhatsApp ad campaign objectives include traffic, conversions (for website), and post engagement.
Facebook has been aiming to monetize its encrypted messaging app for some time now. In Jan. 2018, the company first launched a business app and business profiles for marketers using the WhatsApp messaging app. Facebook’s Click-to-WhatsApp ads began rolling out in August of last year, launching a pre-filled WhatsApp chat that allowed users to message a business via the app. (Advertisers running Click-to-WhatsApp ads receive metric reports in their Facebook Ads Manager dashboard tracking how many conversations were started via the ads.)
Expanding its ad offerings to WhatsApp is a logical next step for Facebook as its News Feed ad inventory continues to become more saturated. With these latest features, marketers will be able to attach specific ad objectives to the Clicks-to-WhatsApp ad campaigns — further integrating a Facebook-to-WhatsApp engagement strategy.
Should publishers build a common tech platform together?
From a business standpoint, publishers aren’t competing with each other so much as they are with the big technology platforms — Google, Facebook, Apple, and so on. Yet publishers expend huge amounts of energy optimizing competitively against one another.
I believe that publishers will attempt to collaboratively build interoperable technology products in order to survive.
Over the past several years, many publishing companies have tried to differentiate themselves by building their own technology platforms. Smaller publishers have also been forced to focus more on technology just to keep pace with a quickly evolving industry, but they’re usually priced out by the competition.
In this environment, consumers have benefited from generally improved user experiences: better mobile experiences, faster page load times, and improved ad targeting. But the many other necessary areas where publishers have invested in technology — content management systems, asset and workflow management, various kinds of data and knowledge management optimizations, and so on — aren’t readily apparent to the user and have not yet substantially improved the bottom lines of these companies.
Therefore publishers — especially legacy print companies — are facing some hard truths...
Please click here to read full article on Nieman Lab.
Amazon adopts MRC viewability standard for conversion attribution
Amazon announced this week that is now using the Media Rating Council’s (MRC) standard for viewability when reporting view-through conversions.
Why you should care
Under the MRC standard, an ad impression is considered viewable when at least 50 percent of the pixels are in-view for at least one second. Only impressions deemed viewable based on that standard are eligible for view-through conversion credits.
Until this update, advertisers have been able to opt to show ads only when an impression was viewable, but conversion attribution was not based on viewability. Instead view-through conversions were reported based on impressions served, with an attribution window of 14 days.
The change means that the view-through conversions Amazon now reports are based only on ad impressions that had a chance of being seen by the users that converted.
10 trends in digital content for 2019: Management is vital to success
Technology will transform managing and optimizing content archives from an overwhelming chore to a lucrative discovery and revitalization.
Today any organization working with content has a new responsibility – content accounting. As content has become the new currency, it’s not enough for companies to create content and forget about it. Instead, content has costs associated with it that must be assessed along with the benefits.
Indeed, content management has become a discipline, a vital job for any organization. And, as such, it needs to be treated rigorously, not only viewed through a creative lens.
- Content marketing moves beyond marketing for easier access
- Growing video content leads to more metadata and automation
- Privacy and security grow more important along with cloud storage
- Old content becomes new again
- Analytics become more important
- Content is optimized for new uses
- AI helps add context to enhance content
- Move to the cloud accelerates
- New high-value uses of digital content emerge
- Predictive asset management will improve bottom and top lines
The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Four years ago, if you were a BuzzFeed or a Vox, you’d just eye NBC as your exit path. Now that story isn’t as attractive.
Obvious but newsy: Consolidation is coming. Vice, BuzzFeed, and Vox Media are all looking at their balance sheets and don’t have the numbers they would want to IPO. There’s some chatter that they will attempt to merge, but that just seems like compounding an existing problem of too much overhead and not enough revenue.
There will have to be layoffs in non-core areas. Perhaps BuzzFeed will have to pare back on some of its more ambitious news gathering and coverage. Let’s hope not.
The biggest albatross is that big media companies like Disney (focused on fighting Netflix) and NBCUniversal (not sure what they’re focused on!) aren’t buying. Four years ago, if you were a BuzzFeed or a Vox, you’d just eye NBC as your exit path. Now that story isn’t as attractive.
Even worse is that if the most promising startups are getting passed on, what happens to the small fries? Mic, Refinery29, Mashable — that ilk— will all have to make some hard decisions (and some already have, as we’ve seen).
I know everyone is saying it’s the year of the podcast, and sure, whatever, maybe. I think it won’t be the actual year of the podcast until someone builds the analytics system to give proper ROI tracking to advertisers. Right now, ad dollars going to podcasts are nothing compared to traditional and digital ad spend. Prove to brands you’re delivering customers and high listen-through rates (beyond the existing “enter the promo code for X podcast on our brand website”) and the ad dollars will really come.
Right now, it’s brand advertising. We need someone to create the AdSense of podcasts. Scale works!
84% CMOs believe their business model is under threat
CMOs today are facing an unprecedented challenge to reimagine their role and value within their organisation. Their business models are under threat, their customer is increasingly unpredictable and their competitors ever more diverse.
In the midst of this ever-shifting landscape, The IBM Institute for Business Value, in cooperation with Oxford Economics and partnership with The Drum, has launched The Modern Marketing Mandate, defining three new CMO archetypes and setting new standards for how marketing gets done.
Based on insight from more than 12,800 CxOs, representing six C-suite roles across 20 industries and 112 countries, the IBM’s Mandate suggests that the modern CMO mission has to extend beyond marketing in order to succeed.
For the first time since 2010, market factors surpass technology as the most important external force impacting their businesses. 84% of CMOs surveyed in the report believe their business model is under threat. Not just from technological disruption, but also because of the changing market dynamics, changing customer preferences and new distribution channels.
These factors sit squarely in the CMO wheelhouse and with the business environment shifting from product-led to experience led, if ever there was a time for CMOs to take centre stage, it’s now.
As brand stewards and customer champions CMOs need to strategically address how to help their organisations compete by increasing value; creating personalised customer experiences; and transforming corporate cultures to think and operate in truly customer-centric ways.
The vast majority of CMOs surveyed (74%) recognise that driving continuous, innovative, purposeful reinvention is an increasingly important part of their role. The pressure is on to deliver more accountability and increase sales and revenue for predictable profitability. According to the survey, a considerable number of CMOs report their organisations are struggling.
Digital marketing in 2019: Here’s where we’re headed this year
Brands that embrace emerging technologies and advertising formats - like connected TV, visual and voice search and AR advertising - will thrive in the new year.
From the rise of voice advertising to the connected TV revolution, there were major strides in the digital marketing space this past year. The momentum sparked in 2018 is on track to accelerate in 2019 as technology advances and our digital-driven world continues to evolve. Here are the top trends I expect to dominate the landscape in the new year.
Connected TV
As anticipated, we saw advertising via connected TV (CTV) become more prevalent in 2018, doubling its growth over the past year. Reaching 38 percent of video ad impressions in the second quarter of 2018, CTV overtook mobile, which accounted for 30 percent of video ad impressions according to Extreme Reach. With traditional cable subscriptions on the decline and CTV viewership consistently on the rise—projected to reach 190 million users in 2019 — CTV presents a modern-day vehicle for media consumption, offering unparalleled reach and targeting capabilities. In 2019, the upward trend will likely continue as increasingly more advertisers recognize the opportunity to precisely and efficiently reach their desired consumer demographic in ways that were previously not possible through traditional television commercials.
Instagram TV
This year, Instagram launched its own YouTube competitor: Instagram TV (IGTV). Unlike fleeting Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours, and traditional Instagram videos, which only allow users to record up to one minute, long-form IGTV content occupies a permanent home on the platform, with the capability of recording videos up to an hour in duration. Still, in its nascence, IGTV will cement its role in the social media landscape in 2019, demonstrating the potential to disrupt the video market with its unique branded content opportunities. Whether utilized as a platform for sharing instructional videos (a la Buzzfeed’s Tasty), or for showcasing interviews with key industry influencers, IGTV is a way for brands to meaningfully engage with followers and stay relevant in today’s rapidly changing social media environment — all while harnessing the power of video to reach audiences with impactful messages in an increasingly fragmented market.
Artificial Intelligence and chatbots
Artificial intelligence (AI) is another pivotal trend to watch in 2019. According to Salesforce, 51 percent of marketing leaders are already using AI in some form, and more than a quarter will begin using AI technology in 2019. It’s no wonder: AI provides enhanced analytics that helps marketers more efficiently plan and execute campaigns. Specifically, Business Insider notes that artificial intelligence can be used to better perform keyword tagging, segmenting and tracking in current campaigns. As marketer adoption increases, we will see the technological capabilities of AI continue to improve. One major way this will take place is through chatbots. Powered by AI automation, bots are reshaping the way customers interact with brands. Available to answer queries and provide helpful direction, chatbots move website visitors through the customer journey and offer a personalized experience — all while leveraging machine learning to improve their interactions over time. Odds are, by the end of 2019, chatbots will become the norm on business websites across a broad range of industries.
Augmented reality advertising
It’s no secret that shopping online offers comfort and convenience, but until recently, it faced one chief obstacle: the fear of a purchase not being the right fit — whether a pair of sunglasses, lipstick shade or living room couch. Augmented reality (AR) technology has emerged to help brands solve this problem for customers — and many have capitalized on its capabilities. For instance, Wayfair and IKEA allow customers to visualize what furniture items would look like in their home and Sephora enables customers to upload a selfie and “try on” makeup. Thanks to the “Amazonification” of our world, consumers are opting to buy online now more than ever before and AR is propelling the e-commerce industry into the future with a model that makes advertising not only personalized but fun for the user. With Facebook recently introducing AR ads — following the lead of Snapchat — we have only scratched the surface of what this technology can accomplish, and we will no doubt see advertisers continue to push the boundaries of AR innovation in the coming months.
Voice advertising
When 2018 kicked off, we predicted that the emerging popularity of voice-activated devices would encourage advertisers to venture into new territory with voice advertising—and indeed, they did. Today, millions of people use voice devices to ask for information, compile shopping lists and place orders with ease — and advertisers are starting to take notice. But this is only the beginning. According to ComScore, an estimated 50 percent of all searches will be conducted through voice by 2020, leaving a wide-open opportunity for brands to take advantage of this shift by developing creative voice campaigns using distinctive phrases, jingles or even by borrowing recognizable influencer voices.
Also, given that a majority of voice searches are expressed in natural language—unlike text queries, which tend to be shorter and only include a few keywords—voice provides advertisers with greater context surrounding the user’s needs. Ultimately, this allows brands to more effectively tailor ads and landing pages to the exact information the user is seeking. Search engine marketing (SEM) advertisers need not fear this shift in search format: they are already prepared for the rise of voice, so long as they are bidding on short-term keywords that are relevant to the business.
Visual search
Another up-and-coming form of search, visual search enables consumers to capture photos of desired products with their smartphones and locate similar items within a given store’s inventory. Home Depot and Urban Outfitters have already tapped into this new arena on the retailer side, and platforms including Pinterest, Bing and Google have rolled out search functions that allow users to locate items inspired by objects in the real world. For instance, if you are looking to emulate the trendy pair of sneakers your friend is wearing, you can take a picture of them and obtain a list of results that closely mirror the style of shoe, with the option to purchase. Exhibiting revolutionary application possibilities, it will be fascinating to see where visual search takes us in 2019.
In today’s fast-paced, on-demand society, innovation drives progress at lightning speed. Brands that embrace emerging technologies and advertising formats will thrive in the new year, remaining ahead of the curve, while those focused solely on tried-and-true traditional models may well find themselves lost in the shuffle as competition for consumer attention infinitely increases.