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Going green is not just a trend, it’s a necessity. In the age of climate change, it’s important for businesses to take action for their impact on the environment. And what better way to do that than by incorporating sustainability into your marketing strategy?

Here are some of my top tips!

Use eco-friendly materials

Start by using environmentally friendly materials in your packaging and promotional materials. Use recycled paper and avoid single-use plastics.

Promote sustainable lifestyle choices

Your marketing messages should encourage customers to make more sustainable choices, such as using reusable bags, opting for public transport, and reducing waste.

Partner with organizations

Partner with organizations that share your values and promote sustainability. This will help you build credibility and trust with your audience.

Highlight your eco-friendly practices

Don’t be shy about highlighting your company’s eco-friendly practices in your marketing materials. Share your sustainability achievements with your customers and show them how they can make a difference by choosing your brand.

Measure your impact

Finally, share your progress with your audience. This will not only help you track your progress but also encourage your customers to make more sustainable choices.

By incorporating sustainability into your marketing strategy, you can not only reduce your environmental impact but also connect with customers who care about the planet!

Are you feeling a little burnt out from constantly posting on social media with little to no engagement? Well, don’t throw in the towel just yet! There are plenty of fun and creative ways to give your social media strategy the boost it needs to engage your followers and keep them coming back for more.

So let’s shake things up a bit with these five fresh and exciting ideas to spice up your social media game!

Create Interactive Content

Interactive content is a great way to get your audience engaged with your brand. Polls, quizzes, and surveys are just a few examples of interactive content that can help boost engagement. Not only do they encourage participation, but they also provide valuable insights into your audience’s preferences and interests.

Utilize User-Generated Content

User-generated content is like a gold mine for social media engagement. It not only gives your brand credibility but also fosters a sense of community among your followers. Encourage your followers to share their experiences with your product or service and share their content on your social media platforms. This helps to foster brand loyalty while increasing engagement rates.

Post at the Right Time

Timing is everything in social media. Posting at the right time when your audience is most active can help increase engagement. However, this can vary depending on your audience and the platform you are using. Analyze your social media metrics to identify the best time to post for maximum engagement.

Experiment with Visual Content

Visual content is king in social media. Experiment with different formats like photos, videos, and GIFs to make your content more eye-catching and engaging. Play with the colors, fonts, and text overlays to add some personality to your brand.

Host Giveaways and Contests

Everyone loves free stuff! Host giveaways and contests to incentivize your audience to engage with your brand. This can be as simple as a like, share, or comment to enter, or more complex with user-generated content or trivia questions. This helps to increase your reach, brand awareness, and engagement.

Boosting your social media engagement doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Follow these tips and remember to get creative with it!

Marketing is all about capturing the attention of your target audience and convincing them to take action. But with so much noise in the digital world, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out. So how can businesses cut through the clutter and create a lasting connection with their audience? The answer lies in the power of storytelling.

Stories have been a part of human culture for thousands of years and for good reason. They capture our attention, engage our emotions, and make information more memorable. And in the world of marketing, storytelling can be a game-changer.

Customer Stories

One of the most effective ways to use storytelling in marketing is by sharing customer stories. People trust other people more than they trust brands, so sharing stories of how your product or service has helped real customers can be incredibly powerful. 

Brand Stories

Another way to use storytelling in marketing is by sharing your brand story. How did your company come to be? What are your values and mission? Sharing the story behind your brand can help create a sense of authenticity and transparency, which can be especially important for building trust with consumers.

Product Stories

Finally, storytelling can be used to highlight the features and benefits of your products or services. But instead of just listing out the features, try telling a story that demonstrates how those features can solve a problem or improve someone’s life. 

So, the next time you’re crafting a marketing campaign, think about the story you want to tell. Who knows, it might just be the thing that sets your brand apart and makes all the difference.

Marketers, let’s be real. Time is our most valuable commodity. We’ve got campaigns to create, data to analyze, and trends to keep up with, all while trying to squeeze in some coffee breaks. 

Fortunately, there are some fantastic Chrome extensions that can help us get more done in less time. Check out these five must-have extensions for every marketer.

Right Inbox

First on the list is Right Inbox. This extension is the #1 email productivity tool for Gmail, with over 250,000 professionals using it. With 11 features in total, this extension will save you time and make your email management a breeze. Some of the features include email tracking, email templates, notes in Gmail, and recurring emails. This extension will help you stay organized and efficient with your email management.

Grammarly

If you’re a marketer, you’re writing content all day long. Grammarly is an extension that will make sure your messages are clear and mistake-free. With 10 million users, Grammarly is the most popular extension by far. This software catches spelling and grammar mistakes as you write, so you don’t have to worry about any embarrassing errors.

Hubspot

When it comes to sending outbound messages, you can’t go wrong with HubSpot Email & Sales. With this extension, you can import contact information from your email directly into a CRM and track emails as they are delivered or opened by recipients. While it requires a subscription to both Marketing Hub and Sales Hub, it’s definitely worth the investment for a tool that will help you save time and keep track of your outreach efforts.

Tailwind AI Marketing Content Assistant

The Tailwind AI Chrome extension uses AI to produce natural-sounding copy for blogs, social posts, email campaigns, videos, and more. Tailwind customers and writers have seen the benefits of using AI-generated copy to save time while still producing high-quality content. The Ghostwriter icon in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen opens specialized tools that help you craft the perfect copy.

Bitly

Last but not least, Bitly is a platform that allows you to shorten your links, customize them, and share them with the world. This extension is a valuable tool for marketers because it offers insights into short-term campaigns and the ability to measure your company’s marketing efforts without having all of that data connected. With Bitly, you can easily track your links and optimize your marketing campaigns.

These five Chrome extensions are a must-have for every marketer. By streamlining your work and making your life easier, you’ll have more time to focus on what really matters: creating amazing campaigns and growing your business.

The reason that so many otherwise great local businesses fail on LinkedIn is that they’re not really sure what to do. They see Google publishing white papers and Wal-Mart rolling out national promotional campaigns, and they’re not really sure what their role is on the platform. Here’s your answer — let’s catch you up on the LinkedIn strategies you’ve been missing!

Say Something Meaningful

As a local business, you don’t have the reach or the bottomless resources of a Fortune 500 company. But what you do have (hopefully) is a point of view. You’re working in your industry every day—use that knowledge to offer insight that only you can provide!

One tactic that The Go! Agency uses for our clients is to curate content then share it with something meaningful attached. So if you were a fashion boutique, you might share a post about a runway in Paris with your thoughts about the styles.

“But Christopher!” You say, “I don’t want people to care about that fashion show in Paris, I want them to care about my local business!”

Think about the bigger picture. You won’t find success on LinkedIn if everything is explicitly about promoting your business. Rather, focus on giving people something of value that boosts your credibility at the same time.

There’s more to succeeding on LinkedIn than just having a point of view, though. You need to say it before people get bored.

Make It Quick

On every social media platform, users are scrolling through their feeds, paying (at most) half attention to what they’re looking at. That means you have to spit it out!

No matter how good your insight is, I promise you that nobody wants to read an essay before they even get to the article you’re sharing. Keep your LinkedIn posts to two short sentences AT THE MOST. If you can manage it, fewer than 100 characters is ideal.

While this does limit the nuance you can give in your posts, it also makes it easier for people to see what you’re talking about. That means more engagements, more connections, and more business opportunities going forward. Save the long-form content for the blogs and make sure that your LinkedIn updates will actually get read!

Join Relevant Groups

If you’re not joining LinkedIn groups, you’re missing a great opportunity to connect with people who would engage with your business. If you’re a salon, join some beauty groups! If you’re a restaurant, join a group for foodies! Whatever industry you’re in, there is going to be a LinkedIn group for your business.

Once you get in these groups, don’t be silent. Strike up some conversations! The key word here is “conversations,” though. You can’t just post constantly in the same group and hope that people will engage with you. Not only is that ineffective, but it’s a great way to get banned by a moderator for spamming the group.

Instead, like and comment on other people’s posts in the group. If you’re engaging with their content, they’re likely to reciprocate and send some attention your way. Just be sure to do the same when someone likes or comments on one of your posts!

Use This Advice ASAP

I’ve seen countless small businesses fail to use these best practices on LinkedIn—don’t be one of them! Starting today means you’re late, so hop on this train before you miss your chance for your small business to succeed on LinkedIn.

What is a social media audit?

Don’t let the word “audit” intimidate you. A social media audit is simply an analysis of your social media profiles undertaken to determine what parts of your social media marketing strategy are and are not working. You look at all of your social media accounts and profiles to figure out what strategies you should keep, what you should stop, and what you can improve. It’s not so much an audit as it is a check-in, really.

Why do I need one?

Here’s a better question: Does your company want to waste time, energy, and money on an ineffective marketing strategy? The answer is probably no. You need to periodically check your brand’s social media profiles to make sure each is still doing what you want it to do. This will also be a good time to find and delete any profiles you no longer use. Here are just a few of the many reasons you should audit your social media presence:

1. It’s an opportunity to clean up your online presence.

Think of your audit like cleaning out your garage: when you’re trying to reorganize and optimize the space you have, you find a lot of things you’d forgotten existed. Are you using all of your social media accounts? You might be surprised to discover that you have profiles on social media platforms you have not visited in years. Are you still paying for advertising on any platforms? You can delete profiles that are no longer beneficial to your social media marketing strategy.

2. You can check out your profiles.

A social media audit will allow you to look at the whole of your social media presence. You can see which profiles are up to date and which ones need more current information. Use the audit to check out all of your social media profiles at once, so that you can edit and augment each as needed. Compare this to the piecemeal approach, where you vow to update your profiles when you remember, only to postpone the updates for when you actually have the time. With a scheduled social media audit, you can make the time.

3. You can retool your strategy. 

This is where the more technical aspects of auditing come into play. After you’ve weeded out the unnecessary profiles, you can make adjustments to the necessary profiles. Use each platform’s built-in analytics tool to determine what content gets the most traction. You can also see data like busy times for your sites, customer demographics, and more. You can get as broad or as specific as you like.

4. This is a chance to gauge your competition.

You should take a look at your competitors’ social media pages as you audit your own. What are they doing that you’re not? Does one competitor have more customer engagement than your brand? What type of posts are most popular for them? Are they following any industry-wide trends that you’ve ignored? Comparing your strategy to your competition’s is yet another good way to learn what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.

5. It’s a way for you to learn more about your customers.

As you gain insights into your competition (and thus your industry overall), you can also peek into the minds of your audience. Do they respond to one form of content more consistently than another? You could be wasting your time posting videos when your customers flock to blogs, or vice versa. This is yet another benefit of looking at the big picture: you can see your marketing from a holistic point of view.

If you have even one social media profile, then you stand to benefit from a social media audit. When was the last time you conducted a social media audit? We’d like to hear from you in the comments!

No one should settle for “meh” when it comes to social media marketing companies. We aren’t afraid to say that some of those companies just can’t hack it. The problem is they make the rest of us look bad in the process. So in order to save you a lot of time and money, as well as preserve our industry’s reputation, here are some hallmarks of a good social media marketing firm.

1. The staff members fill specific roles.

The smaller the firm, the more hats each employee wears. However, great social media marketing companies will have team members with specific jobs (account managers, content writers, graphic designers, etc.). That’s because those companies want these tasks to be completed by people who know what they’re doing. Sure, sometimes an account manager might throw together some graphics as a placeholder, or the team will split the duties of a coworker who’s on leave, but generally all roles are clearly defined. 

2. The firm is focused on your long-term success.

You want a firm that looks at the big picture. These firms won’t waste resources on campaigns or tactics that will not have lasting effects. The managers strategize with you on a monthly basis, but with an eye on their annual strategy for your brand. This technique can be slow to take-off, but then will yield steady results. Such social media management companies are proving that they are invested in their clients.

3. Your account reps are accessible and responsive.

(Please note the tacit “within reason.” Few reps will be on-call 24/7/365, unless otherwise stated and even then only in case of an actual emergency.) If you have a question, you can easily reach them for an answer. If you have a problem, they will address it immediately. You should be able to easily get in contact with the correct person when necessary. On a slightly related note, good firms have low turnover. This is great because it means you will probably keep the same account manager or creative team throughout your relationship with the firm. This also indicates that the firm has good management and reliable employees.

4. They listen to and address your concerns.

A good social media marketing agency will work with you. True, you might disagree with their advice, but they won’t force you to follow it. They will be knowledgeable about your situation and will have researched the challenges facing your industry. They have a vested interest in your success, so they will try to persuade you on the best marketing strategies. If a social media marketer follows the “customer is always right” mindset, then they probably aren’t doing a great job.

5. Good social media marketing firms have successful track records.

These agencies proudly display portfolios of previous campaigns and testimonials from satisfied clients. They have nothing to hide. Reputation matters: your agent should be able to provide references upon request.

What do you look for when hiring a social media marketing agency? Tell us in the comments!

Too many novice social media marketers focus on the wrong metrics when measuring the success of their social media campaigns. While it’s nice to get a lot of likes on your posts, they aren’t worth much on their own. Don’t mistake popularity for validation when it comes to your brand’s goals. In fact, don’t mistake likes for popularity in the first place. Instead, determine your goals and then apply strategies that will help you get to those goals. We’ll explain a few of the key metrics today.

1. Engagement

Likes are nice, but they alone aren’t enough to give you a good indication of audience engagement. What’s more important than likes is active participation, like comments and replies. That kind of engagement serves as proof that your audience is invested in your content. The number of shares will help you determine what content is perceived as valuable or interesting by your audience. Review your content to see what receives the most comments and shares. Do they have anything in common, like subject matter or posting time? What are the commonalities among your less-popular, less-shared posts?

2. Awareness

Again, this ties back to defining specific goals for your campaign. You don’t want to waste time, effort, and resources on a campaign designed to increase likes if reach is more relevant to your goals. To clarify, impressions are the number of times that someone sees content, while reach is the number of unique individuals who see it. If Ward sees an ad for Daughters of the Dragon Sriracha Marinade three times, that ad has three impressions and a reach of one. For some brands and under some circumstances, impressions might be paramount; for other brands and circumstances, reach matters more. Brands that want to broaden their audiences and find new consumers should focus on reach, while brands that want to strengthen their message to their existing audiences should focus on impressions.

3. Conversions

How many users were so impacted by your content or message that they took action? That is conversion in a nutshell. To determine this, you’ll need to have already determined your goals. Note that this should be more than “complete a purchase.” Do you want users to share your content? Do you want users to go to your website? Enter a contest? Fill out a survey? Measuring conversions can be as simple as tracking click rates. Take Joy’s law firm as an example. She ultimately wants prospective clients to come in for a free consultation at Meachum & Gao, but she understands that achieving this will take many steps. Therefore, her immediate conversion goal is for people to click through links from the firm’s social media profiles to the firm’s webpage. By tracking the click rate, she can see what content is most compelling to prospective clients. Armed with this information, she will be able to create enticing content that will motivate prospective clients to contact her office.

Remember that your goals will probably change over time, so it’s important to periodically reevaluate your strategies. Above all, never get too comfortable! Savvy social media marketers know that you must continually adapt and evolve to keep up with current trends as well as the needs of your consumers. 

What metrics have you found to be most valuable for your marketing strategy? Share with us in the comments!

On your mark… Get set… WAIT! 

I have seen so many marketing campaigns that feel like a pee-wee track meet: hastily organized, poorly attended, and all hell breaks loose at the sound of the starting pistol.

Too much money, time, and effort are wasted marketing the wrong message to the wrong audience. It’s hard to admit, but you’ve probably done it yourself.

“That’s impossible!” You say. “We hired the best copywriters to create persuasive content! Our design team made stunning visuals! And the videos were so expensive, they had to be good! But we didn’t see any return on our investment!”

You are frustrated and exhausted. “This was the absolutely perfect campaign!” You ask, “Where did we go wrong?” 

Well, I hate to tell you, but your campaign was doomed from the very beginning. When you planned that campaign, how much time did you spend researching and crafting the perfect target audience?

While most campaigns have target audiences, most marketers don’t give them the attention they deserve. When planning a campaign, there are so many different moving pieces that some aspects often get lost in the process. What I’m here to tell you is that defining your target audience isn’t just another thing to take care of in your planning — it’s the most important part.

If you spend a lot of time reading marketing articles, you’ll see a lot of them sharing the latest ways to “work” (note the scare quotes) the Instagram algorithm to your advantage or quickly boost your TikTok views, usually with just a few steps (kind of like those “one weird trick to losing weight” ads). Awesome, right? Wrong. 

First of all, while many of these articles share good practices to use when posting, there is no trick to understanding the algorithm. No one, not even the engineers behind these platforms, fully understands the algorithm. All of the tips, tricks, and tactics in the world are useless unless you fully understand who your target audience or customers are. 

Right now, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Well, that might be true for some business people, but I know who my customer is.” 

Again, I hate to tell you this, but… that might not be true. 

I’m not trying to insult your knowledge of your own business, but when you are marketing on social media you need much more than the standard demographic outline. With any digital or online marketing, you need to dive deeper and understand more elements of your target audience. 

Not to worry though, I have you covered. Here are some of the simple steps that we take our clients through when they are having trouble identifying their target audience. Let’s go!

1. Money, Money, Money, Money: Yep, everyone loves the green stuff. It is crucial for you to be able to identify a few key monetary aspects. Who, demographic-wise, is spending the most money? What product or service sells the most? What product or service delivers the highest margin? Once you know that, determine who is buying it. If you are a beauty brand that sells 1,000 hairbrushes for a profit of $10 and sells 500 hair dryers for a profit of $400, then I would look into the demographic makeup of that hair dryer crowd. The brand should focus on the products that bring in more money with fewer sales. Use your sales successes and current client roster as your starting point.
2. Sex Matters: If you have a product or service that is specifically made for a woman, it does not mean that men could not be loyal consumers of your company. Don’t ignore any markets or demographics without the proper data to back up your decision! Major opportunities are lost this way.
3. Location (x3): Where are your consumers? National, regional, statewide, citywide, or even more local? Why do I ask? Well, did you know that you can place advertising to specific audiences based on specific zip codes? Yes – you can be that specific. 

So now you will have a very strong initial idea of some of the basic concrete aspects of your target audience. But you want to take this further. You’ll need to create two more items: 

1. Baseline Audience Demographic Profile: This is where you take the information gathered from the initial three steps listed above and put it into an outline that can be used as a jumping-off point for further analysis and inspection. The profile would need the following information: age range, gender, location, average value of each new client/customer, net worth, household income, and any other pertinent data.
2. Buyer Profiles: This is where you can dive deeper and get more acquainted with your target audience. Buyer profiles allow you to create specific customer profiles that will reflect your audience in multiple ways. These take your existing data and delve deeper into various aspects such as interests, hobbies, media habits, and more. Buyer profiles will help you not only engage with your audience in a more human way, but also identify your audience faster.

While this might seem like a lot of work, the reward is well worth the effort. For one thing, digital marketing gives you more opportunities to target! For instance, did you know that on Facebook alone you can target based on restaurants that your audience visit, movies that they see, and political parties that they follow? And that is just scratching the surface.  

So as you can see, it is more than having a product and/or service and simply choosing your audience. Proper audience identification is a process that may take a little time, but pays dividends when completed properly. Take your time and ensure that you have this piece completed before moving forward with any costly or time-consuming marketing activities or initiatives. Otherwise, you’ll be left in the dust.

In today’s world, simply advertising to your audience is no longer enough to make an effective marketing strategy. Consumers are looking for a deeper connection with brands and want to know the stories behind the products and services they engage with. That’s where storytelling comes in.

Storytelling is an essential component of branding that can help draw in more sales. It allows brands to connect with their audience on a more emotional level, which can lead to increased engagement and customer loyalty.

Here’s how you can leverage storytelling to draw in more sales.

Know Your Audience – Understanding your audience is key to crafting a compelling brand story. Identify their needs, desires, and pain points, and tailor your story accordingly.

Be Authentic – Authenticity is key to building trust with your audience. Don’t be afraid to show the real people and faces behind your brand, and share stories that are true to your values.

Keep It Simple – Your brand story should be easy to understand and concise. Focus on the core message you want to convey and avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary details.

Use Different Channels – Storytelling can be delivered through a variety of channels, including social media, email, video, and more. Use different channels to reach your audience and keep your brand story fresh and engaging.

Overall, leveraging storytelling to draw in more sales is a powerful marketing strategy that can help brands stand out in a crowded marketplace.