Planning & Researching Topics for Your Blog’s Content

Aug 28, 2020 | All

Your website’s blog serves more than a column for you to express your thoughts and ideas — it also serves to register the online footprints of your target audience, as well as helps up your website’s searchability factor when it comes to SEO.

If your business blog lacks organic visibility and barely registers the footprints of your target audience, you will no doubt be searching for ideas on how to attract them. Unfortunately, many online resources suggest finding blog post ideas in random and often fruitless ways, such as browsing social media networks and comments, sending polls, and even making use of blog idea generators.

The main disadvantage of these methods, though, is a lack of data proving overall audience interest, which only leads to unmethodical insights.

So, how do you know if the topics you choose are capable of attracting and engaging a significant portion of your target audience?

One thing is for sure: Researching blog topics requires strategy.

Let’s get straight into the complete workflow for compiling a content plan for your business blog, using a strategic and data-led approach.

Step 1. Outlining Your Blog Strategy

A documented strategy comes before all else. Here are the steps you will need to take to define one for your blog.

If you already have an all-encompassing strategy for your purpose, personas, and goals, you can skip to Step 2 to identify your blog’s core topics.

Determining Your Business Blog’s Purpose

This will help you set clear goals for all your blog content. Ask yourself:

  • Why do you need a blog? 
  • What area of your business are you trying to improve with your blog?
  • What do you expect your audience to do after they read your content?

Consider how your blog’s content will fit into your overall content strategy and, in turn, what kind of content people should expect to see depending on which stage of the buyer’s journey they are at when they visit.

Your blog’s purpose might be:

  • Attracting quality traffic;
  • Generating leads;
  • Driving conversions or
  • Educating users about your product.

Once you have identified the stage and purpose, you will develop a better understanding of which topics suit your blog and which might be better for other pages.

According to the CMI, 31% of B2B and B2C content marketers consider blog posts the highest-performing content type for building brand awareness. HubSpot also reports that B2B marketers who blog get 67% more leads than those who don’t, so it’s important to consider the potential a blog might have as part of your overall marketing mix.

Setting up Your Blog Goals

Think of a goal as one step on the path towards driving profitable action for your business, whether it is in terms of savings or revenue. Make your goals specific and measurable, for example:

  • Attract X% of the total addressable market (TAM);
  • Increase organic traffic by X%; or
  • Get X% more leads in a year.

Tip: To keep track of your progress and see the impact of your blog with the right metrics, choose a goal-setting framework that suits you best. For example, SMART, CLEAR, KPIs, or OKRs.

Defining Your Target Audience

Readers of your blog won’t always be buyers of your products. 

Be sure to get to know what your audience wants on an individual level so you can work out how to appeal to them with targeted, optimized content.

Create a portrait of each persona specifying their age, gender, interests, education, and job title, and explore the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) framework as part of our Ultimate Guide to Content Strategy to develop an even deeper understanding of their needs.

Deciding on the Content You’ll Publish

Think about what value you’re going to bring with your content and how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors’ blogs. 

Next, craft a mission statement for your blog. Include your company’s unique vision for content, the value that content provides, the audience it benefits, and the principles it upholds. 

With all this in mind, decide on the content you are going to publish. One of the approaches to this is to consider two kinds of content strategies, namely Publications and Libraries, according to Andy Crestodina: 

  • Publications cover the latest industry news and trending topics that may become irrelevant in the future. This content is mostly distributed by emails and social media to subscribed audiences.
  • Libraries focus on evergreen content, such as how-tos, best practices and guides. This content is distributed organically via search engines and makes your audience aware of your brand.

Devising how you are going to reach your audience — via search engines, social media or email, for instance — may give you a starting point for this. 

Tip: You don’t have to choose between Publications or Libraries, but rather decide on a percentage distribution that fits your blog strategy. For example, Flying Hippo offers the 80 percent rule, which consists of publishing 80% evergreen content and 20% timely content. 

Step 2. Identifying Your Core Blog Topics

Identifying your blog’s core topics allows you to get a bird’s-eye view of your future editorial plan.

Take the HubSpot topic cluster model as an example. The idea is to identify 5-10 core topics for your blog, and then expand on them using different data sources. 

Introducing Topic Clusters

Topic clustering is an SEO tactic that focuses on topics (as opposed to keywords) that:

  • Improve your website architecture;
  • Make it easier for Google to discover related content; and
  • Boost your search engine visibility.

To recreate this model for your blog, you’ll need to publish:

  • A ‘pillar’ page that roughly covers a general topic, and usually targets a high-volume keyword (e.g. ‘SEO copywriting’); and
  • Several ‘cluster’ pieces of content that focus on specific, long-tail keywords (e.g. ‘How to write SEO content’, ‘What is SEO copywriting?’).

Here’s what a topic cluster may look like, according to HubSpot:

The main advantage of this grouping model is that it gives an organic traffic boost to the whole cluster if just a single cluster page from the group performs well — but only if the interlinking is properly optimized. 

The pillar page should link to each piece of cluster content, while cluster pieces should link back to the pillar.

Determining Your Pillar Topics

To determine your pillar topics, think about them as they relate to your product or service. 

In this step, you’ll need to review your product’s value proposition and persona portrait. 

Merge your audience’s challenges with the challenges your product solves to find a common topic you could cover on your blog. 

To identify the first pillar topic, start by analyzing a specific feature that solves a specific user problem. Next, formulate this problem as a general concept, as per this model:

Product (or specific feature) > Specific user problem topic > Pillar topic

To give you an example, let’s say I develop a blog for copywriters. I sell an SEO copywriting tool (product) that helps my users to write optimized texts (problem), a concept that is widely known as ‘SEO copywriting’ (pillar topic). Other pillar topics I might define are ‘content marketing’, ‘content management’, or others that are relevant to both my audience and my tool. 

Formulate 5-10 pillar topics to keep your blog’s focus clear, and keep them in a file that you’ll expand on later.

Since this model is tied to organic activity, make sure your pillar topics are searched for online. To do so, analyze each topic with a keyword research tool to find more popular synonyms of these topics. 

Liz Moorehead suggests that your core pillar topic should have substantial search volume, but not too much: 500 searches per month may not be worth your time; 1,200 to 6,400 is more on target; and 33,000 is too many to consider. Keep in mind that these are just rough figures and may vary significantly from industry to industry and country to country. 

When you come up with your pillar topic, your next step is to find cluster topics you can cover using different data sources.

Recommended tools: 

Step 3. Expanding Your Topic List

Identifying your core topics will have sent you in the right direction for finding more ideas for your blog. 

Next, let’s look at topic research using multiple sources, such as:

  • Brainstorming;
  • Competitors’ keywords;
  • Search and social media trends; and
  • Keyword research tools.

Brainstorming Topics

You will probably already have a wealth of industry knowledge in your company to exploit for blog content topics. Invite marketers, product managers, and sales and account executives to pinpoint the most relevant topics for your users. 

Think of topics as general concepts, not as titles. These will be the foundation of your future keyword research.

Tip: Don’t like brainstorming or don’t have a team? Come up with at least three topics of your own that answer the questions from each group below, and proceed to the next step.

1. Industry Topics

Content on these topics may help you attract people who are genuinely interested in your industry, searching for trends, or looking to apply best practices.

Ask yourself:

  • What topics are most discussed in your industry?
  • What are the latest trending topics?
  • What do the industry experts discuss?
  • What topics are the most controversial?

2. User-problem-related Topics 

Creating content around these concepts may help you attract people who are looking to solve a problem, or profit by overcoming it. 

You can also relate to these topics as ‘issue or opportunity’ terms. Focus on your target audience’s pain points first, and then on the benefits they could get by using a solution to that problem. Think of what questions they tend to ask most frequently and what final goals they want to achieve.

Ask yourself:

  • What problems do people suffer from in your industry?
  • What fears do they have?
  • What are they trying to achieve?

3. Product/service-related Topics

Creating content on these topics may help you attract the attention of people who are looking for a solution to their problems. 

Think of which solutions people are looking for, and how they search for them. 

Ask yourself:

  • What products/services are you competing with?
  • How do users search for a product like yours?
  • What products/services are popular in your industry (even if you don’t compete with them directly)?

What to do next: Collect all the topics you have identified in a file with your pillar topics. Make sure you’ve indicated the data source next to each one. This column will help you prioritize your topics, learn where to dig out more information, and consider article distribution. We’ll come back to this file later.

Recommended tools: 

  • Topic Research to generate popular topics when I’m stuck, or to broaden a list of topics. Learn how to generate content ideas using the tool in a particular location and based on a particular topic you have in mind.

Collecting Competitors’ Keywords

The next step is to check relevant topics that both your direct and indirect competitors cover.

Remember that industry blogs are your competitors as well, even if they don’t sell a product like yours. You should keep an eye on them if you want to attract organic traffic on topics relevant to your audience.

Analyzing Competitor Blog Focus

Start by going straight to your competitors’ blogs and checking the categories to reveal their general focus. Remember to check tags and, if possible, filter them to see which categories are most prevalent on their blog. 

Any of these tags or categories could be your competitor’s pillar topics. Consider adding a couple of them to your plan if they match your strategy and have sufficient volume. 

Conducting Competitor Keyword Research

Next, you’ll have to proceed to competitive keyword research to find gaps in your strategy.

This step is unthinkable without using analytics tools. To find keywords that your competitors rank for, take a free 7-day SEMrush trial and use the Organic Research report. You’ll be able to not only research more than 18 billion keywords, but also access other data-driven tools to create your content plan.

Check keywords for:

  • The entire website (competitor’s domain); or
  • The blog section only (competitor’s subdomain).

Now, collect the most relevant keywords that your competitors rank for in organic terms. To do so, filter keywords by a specific word, e.g. ‘SEO’. I focus on collecting high-volume keywords first, but I also add those that have quite a low volume, but are still strategically important for our business.

What to do next: Export your keywords and copy and paste them into your original file. Don’t forget to indicate your data source.

Recommended tools: 

Finding Trending Topics

Now, search for trending topics relevant to your industry. For this step, you’ll need reliable tools that can help you spot organic trends that have proven to be of interest to your audience. 

Detecting Trends on Google

The most obvious data source is Google Trends. One by one, enter your pillar topics, and those that you brainstormed in the previous steps. Then, check their trending status (you can compare up to 5 keywords at once) and find related queries. 

Check queries that have the greatest increase in search frequency. Pay special attention to the results marked ‘Breakout’. Google describes these as queries that have had a huge increase in search frequency, as they are new and have had few prior searches.

If you see a spike in a particular month, the keyword may be seasonal. Mark it as such in your file, so you can schedule an article on this topic in advance.

Analyzing Social Media Trends

Depending on where your audience tends to spend time, the exact steps of finding trends on each social platform may vary. However, the general workflow is the same, since the social trends are mostly personalized and tied to your profile interests. 

Subscribe to your industry influencers and media. Keep monitoring what’s being talked about and see what’s trending in your feed. 

Evaluate posts by engagement. Compare the number of likes (or other kinds of reaction) to the number of subscribers to see the scale of the audience’s overall interest. 

You may also want to check Reddit to see if there is a dedicated subreddit for your industry. If you’re lucky, you can sort posts by ‘Hot’ (trending) or ‘Top’ (most upvoted (liked)) topics within a preferred period. 

Besides trends, you can also use Reddit for keyword research to find more content ideas for your content strategy.

Another way to learn about social media trends is to search for industry research reports, like the ‘Top Twitter Trends’ we did last year.

Using Data-driven Tools

While the manual research in Google Trends may take hours, there are ways to find trending topics much faster. Using data-driven tools like Topic Research, which is available for trial, will help you find trending topics based on a particular location in no time. 

Type a topic you have in mind and find topics that have been trending online for the last 60 days by using the trending filter. Trending topics are marked with a fire icon. Also, you’ll instantly see the topic volume, allowing you to assess the organic interest of your audience.

To avoid manual research in social media, you can start tracking your competitors or industry experts using Social Media Tracker. This allows you to detect the most engaging posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, video on YouTube, and pins on Pinterest.

What to do next: Add new topics to your original file. Don’t forget to indicate your data source.

Recommended tools: 

Researching Keywords

Now, it’s time to expand the list of all topics and keywords you’ve collected, and make them more specific.

For this step, you can use Google Autocomplete, one of the best free keyword research techniques, or take advantage of your free SEMrush trial. You can research keywords using SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool, which features more than 18 billion keywords with volume, keyword difficulty, CPC and other metrics.

Broadening Your Keyword List

This step will help you find keywords or synonyms for your topics that you might have overlooked. Start broadening your keyword list by researching a single topic or keyword from your list one by one.

Search for expanded keyword phrases that include your queried term. Find long tail keywords that are more specific but less popular. Check for semantically-related keywords based on your list of seed keywords. If you’re using the Keyword Magic Tool, click on the ‘Related’ filter to see these. 

Repeat these steps for each keyword for which you want more ideas. 

Tip: What to get more specific? Head to our ‘Keyword Research guide’ and discover how to make use of SEMrush to research keywords.

What to do next: Export new keywords and paste them into your file. 

Recommended tools: 

Finding Related Questions

Be sure to search for questions that include your keywords, since questions allow you to better understand a searcher’s intent. 

Answering specific questions in your blog posts will help you bring value to your audience, and increase your chances of ranking higher or getting into featured snippets and voice search results.

Using Question Keyword Tools

Aside from checking Google’s ‘People also ask’ feature in the SERPs, you can find common questions by using tools that collect people’s search queries, such as Topic Research. Simply type a topic and explore popular questions via the filters.

What to do next: Paste your questions into your original file. Don’t forget to indicate your data source.

Recommended tools: 

Step 4. Filtering and Grouping Your Topics

Now that you’ve collected a list of topics and keywords, you’ll need to pick those that could bring the best results for your blog.

Next, you’ll learn how to clean your topic list based on keyword popularity and competitiveness. 

We will also get back to the topic cluster model so you’ll be able to group your keywords by clusters.

Filtering Keywords by Keyword Volume and Difficulty

This is where you need a keyword research tool that tracks search volumes, so you can be sure that your content plan is based on the organic interest of your audience. 

The key tactic here is to focus on keywords with:

  • The highest volume – the higher the volume, the more popular the keyword; and
  • The lowest keyword difficulty (KD) / keyword competitiveness – the lower the metric, the less competitive the keyword.

If you’re using SEMrush, the right tool for this task is Keyword Manager. Paste all the keywords from your file into the tool and update the metrics for each of them. 

Aim for keywords with low KD (around 60% or so), since these should be the easiest starting points.

You should also keep the keywords that have both low volume and low KD. They may not bring you the most traffic, but you might have an opportunity to occupy the highest Google position for them in your niche.

Also, if any of your questions have no or low volume, don’t rush to get rid of them. They are probably too long, but still contain a popular keyword. Keep all the questions in a separate tab named ‘Backlog’, and get back to them when you start creating an article. These questions will help you come up with headers or subheaders for your posts. 

At this point, you should be able to get rid of irrelevant, low volume or highly competitive keywords that won’t help your strategy. 

What to do next: When you’re done, export the keywords to a file. Clean up your sheet — leave only the metrics that matter to you, which might be volume and KD, as illustrated above.

Recommended tools: 

  • Keyword Manager to check up-to-date metrics for my keyword list and to prioritize keywords. 

Grouping Keywords by Topic Clusters

The next step is to cluster your keywords into the 5-10 core topics you identified earlier.

To do so, you will need to manually tie each keyword to a general pillar topic. During manual filtration and grouping, you may come across a more general or popular topic that fits your pillar topic list. This is when you can substitute your original topic, or add a new one.

When mapping keywords, try not to think about headlines just yet, but keep the final goal in mind. The goal of this model is to surround your future pillar page with related cluster content.

HubSpot calls pillar pages ‘Ultimate Guides’, which give a comprehensive overview of a general topic. The cluster content would include a number of related posts on more specific topics and keywords, which are still related to the general pillar topic, but in a narrower manner.

Working with your spreadsheet, introduce:

  • A pillar topic column with your 5-10 topics; 
  • A cluster topic column with the remaining topics distributed by core pillar topics; and
  • A product/feature column for each topic.*

*Keep in mind how your product or feature relates to your pillar topics (we identified this at step 2). Each of the cluster topics may match the same product or feature as its pillar topic. However, some of them can also be matched with a different product if that product meets the users’ needs better and topic search intent more precisely.

You may also distribute your trending topics throughout the table, or keep them separate, since their lifespan may be quite short.

Step 5. Identifying Potential Headlines

To earn and keep high organic positions, your blog posts must meet your audience’s expectations — in other words, they must match search intent.

Understanding the intent allows you to create the right format and come up with attractive headlines (and, of course, content) for your audience. 

Here’s how to identify search intent for your keywords, and decide on post types and headlines accordingly.

Matching Search Intent with the Buyer’s Journey

The specific intentions of search queries commonly fall into the following four categories:

  • Informational: The searcher is looking for specific information on a topic. The query may contain phrases like ‘guide’, ‘tutorial’ or question words, such as who, how, etc. (e.g. ’how to write SEO articles’). Informational keywords may indicate that the user is at the awareness stage (or pre-awareness, if they are not aware of a problem).
  • Navigational: The searcher is looking for a specific webpage or site. The query usually includes the name of a brand, product, or service (e.g. ‘SEMrush Site Audit’). Navigational keywords may indicate that the user is at the consideration stage, as they want to learn more about a specific product or service.
  • Commercial: The searcher is considering a purchase and wants to investigate their options. The query may contain product modifiers like ‘best’, ‘cheapest’, ‘top’, or ‘review’ (e.g. ‘best SEO writing tool’). Commercial keywords may indicate that the user is at the consideration stage, as they are comparing several products with the intention to buy one. 
  • Transactional: The searcher wants to purchase something. The query may contain such words as ‘buy’, ‘price’, ‘coupon’, etc. (e.g. ‘SEMrush subscription plans’). Transactional keywords mostly indicate that the user is at the decision stage, so they are ready to buy a product.

Identifying Search Intent for Your Keywords

To identify search intent for your own list of keywords, check for keyword modifiers from the previous section (e.g. ‘how’, ‘review’, ‘price’) and, if you need to, type a keyword into the Google search bar to check for any SERP features. For instance:

  • Featured snippets may indicate informational intent;
  • People also ask may indicate informational intent;
  • Site links may indicate navigational intent;
  • Google Ads may indicate commercial or transactional intent; and
  • Google Shopping ads may indicate commercial or transactional intent.

You should now decide how to deal with keywords from your list that fall outside of your blog’s purpose, such as ensuring navigational keywords point to category pages or transactional keywords point to product pages.

What to do next: Refer to the infographic above to identify search intent for every keyword from your keyword list, and mark it with the appropriate journey stage.

Deciding on Post Types and Headlines

Now that the priorities are set, you can start thinking about the kinds of posts and potential headlines you are going to create for your future blog posts. 

Remember to consider the searcher’s intent. No matter how creative your post headline is, when typing a search term into Google, a user expects to find specific information in a specific format. If you don’t provide this for them, you run the risk of losing both your audience and rankings.

Your topic list should already give you an indication of what people expect to find on a particular subject matter. Informational topics starting with ‘how to’ are expected to be covered with a how-to guide. Commercial topics containing ‘best’, ‘reviews’, or ‘cheapest’ are expected to be covered with a review or comparison article.

If you’re struggling to identify what content type you should produce, search for your topic to check what’s out there. Your competitors will certainly give you an insight.

You can also get back to your ‘Backlog’ tab and search for related questions that could serve as a title.

Concentrate on headlines that completely and clearly indicate what a reader will find inside, i.e. the problem they will solve or the benefit they will get from reading it. 

Recommended tools: 

  • Topic Research to find the most resonant headlines for a topic and to understand the user intent better;
  • SEO Content Template to analyze top-10 articles ranking for a keyword in a specific location, featuring an average word count, additional keywords, readability, and other metrics. All this data helps to get a full picture of what content type is more relevant for a keyword.

Step 6. Prioritizing Topics Based on Your Goals

Here are a few ideas on how you can prioritize your article publication in line with your business goals:

According to Your Cluster Topics

Pick a cluster that covers a specific user problem and create posts around it. You may want to choose a cluster that brings you the most visibility (high volume), so create a pillar page and then start writing cluster articles based on your comprehensive keyword research. 

Alternatively, you can start with creating cluster content focused on low-competition keywords to get some visibility on a topic, and after that, create a pillar page that will give a broader view of a high-volume topic. Thanks to low-competition topics that rank well, your pillar page may stand more of a chance of ranking higher and boosting the entire cluster.

According to the Buyer’s Journey

If your blog is mostly focused on a specific stage of the buyer’s journey, you should start developing content serving this stage first. Ensure you help the reader move to the next stage of the buyer’s journey by including CTAs and inserting relevant links into articles.

According to Volume and KD

If you’re focused mostly on organic traffic, you should mostly publish content that targets keywords with the highest search volumes and the lowest keyword difficulties to stand a chance of appealing to more people.

According to Your Product or Feature Releases

To support your product or feature release with blog posts, you could start producing content on any specific user problems it solves or benefits it gives, which you should have already identified in the product or feature development stage. 

Good practise is to serve every stage of the buyer’s journey with relevant, optimized content. Start from the pre-awareness stage’s topics and ensure you walk your reader through to the end, i.e. the decision stage, which may be another channel rather than a blog post. Make sure to interlink your blog posts, too, so the buyer’s journey does not get interrupted.

According to Trends

If your blog post is a news-oriented channel, you should publish articles on trending topics as quickly as it’s convenient for you to do so. Covering trends won’t allow you to create a content plan for a specific time period, but you can still produce evergreen content in the background to support your online visibility.

Source: How to Research Topics for Your Blog’s Content Plan

How to build and earn customer trust

How to build and earn customer trust

Aug 28, 2020 | Blog

What are the things you do before you decide to purchase a product from a new brand? The usual and most common thing to do is to read on the reviews from the past customers about the brand, the quality of the product, customer satisfaction, and most importantly if it is a legitimate brand. However, what if it is so brand new that there is not even one sale yet? This means there are no reviews and nothing for you to leverage.

How do you earn and build the trust of your customers? It is the hardest to earn when there aren’t any customers, to begin with. Don’t worry, this does not mean that it is impossible to gain their trust. Fortunately, there are several ways to establish this trust between your customers and your brand.

establish-this-trust-between-your-customers-and-your-brand

Add Human Touch To Your Business

What do you do when you met someone for the first time? You introduce yourself! Introduce yourself to your customers the way you met someone for the first time. 

This is why the “About Us” page is so important in every business website. It is the window for you to tell your story of how your business begins and why it began. It doesn’t have to be too formal and serious, in fact, people love to read about personal stories. You can write about the story of how your grandmother inspired you to start your business, or perhaps the history of how it all began. 

Stories like these give a personal touch and the human side of your business. This makes your customers feel emotionally connected to you and might even make them grow attached to you because of your touching, beautiful story of how you started from the bottom. It reminds them that there is a human behind this business.

personal-touch-and-the-human-side-of-your-business

Write Till Your Heart’s “Content”

Without being too pushy, good content is an essential tool to relate to your customers who have no idea who you are. A way to create content to slowly introduce your products is by blogging. Constant blog contents can show that you are invested and passionate in your business and that you also care for your customer’s issues. Customers love it when their issues are addressed, especially in a non-commercial way.

Content marketing is a way to demonstrate your specialty and expertise in your product and industry. Consumers will be able to see that you know your stuff and that they can believe in your quality and services. 

What kind of content can you write? You can write content such as tips on utilizing your products, benefits of the ingredients of your product, and many more. 

Your content has to be consistent, relevant and high-quality to actually earn the trust of your consumers. Add a Blog page to your website and start writing away!

 

“Excuse Me, What’s Your Return Policy?”

When it comes to trying out new stuff, consumers would want to really try new things but are worried it might not work. This is when they will check out if there is a return policy in your products. One of the most commonly searched and asked question is “Is there a return policy?” or “What if I decided I don’t want it anymore?” 

This is when you sweep your customers off their feet with your awesome return policy. Good return policies are the best way to let consumers know that you value their experience and to show that you are confident with the quality of your products. 

It immediately gives a sense of security to your customers because they know that if there’s anything they’re not satisfied with, you have their backs, no questions asked. Return policies actually make consumers even more tempted and willing to click on the checkout button. They know for a fact that they don’t have to worry that they are wasting their money on something they might not like.

Make sure that your Return Policy page is clear with the terms and conditions and it is linked to your FAQ page at the footer of your website.

Customer service

Live Chat Made Available

Consumers are just like the insecure significant other of yours that constantly need reassuring that their money is not duped. They want to speak to you immediately when they have doubts so why not be the good “partner” and be there for them when they need you?

Have a live chat or inquiry form for consumers to ask questions and make sure you respond quickly enough to earn their trust. Speed is really important when it comes to customer service. Customers want their questions answered almost immediately and having that live chat pop-up just adds brownie points to your new brand.

Chatting in real time and addressing their concerns encourage them to make the final step to purchase your item because customers feel valued and that they are talking to a real person and not a robot. It is almost as if they are shopping in a retail shop because there is a person behind the live chat answering all their questions and issues.

There are many other ways to earn the trust of your consumers. It is all about taking the first step and initiative to connect with them that will change their perspective of your brand. 

For more digital marketing inquiries, reach out to us at Weave Asia. 

Attracting Paid Traffic That Converts in 6 Steps

Aug 26, 2020 | Blog

With SEO and content marketing being a ‘long game’ that rarely generate results overnight, driving traffic to your website can be a challenge. In addition to that, social media marketing can also be pegged back by constant algorithmic changes. This can lead some marketers to prioritize paid web traffic (PPC) if they are launching campaigns and seeking quick results.

However, paid traffic generation certainly doesn’t guarantee quick results, as you’ll face a wide variety of factors from audience behaviours to advertising platforms. Each paid traffic source has its own price policy and requirements for the ads it presents, which means you can end up generating countless versions of ad copy, getting clicks that never convert into leads and sales, and overpaying for customers that don’t offer a good return on your investment.

These challenges can be overcome by creating and implementing a calculated and considered paid traffic strategy that relies on a combination of manual planning and AI automation. 

Hence, this article will explain how paid web traffic works, and how you can make it effective for your business with a comprehensive approach.

 

What is Paid Search Traffic and How Does it Work?

Paid web traffic consists of visitors who land on your website after clicking on an advert. It can come from a variety of sources:

  • Display ads: Banners, texts, images, etc. placed on third-party websites;
  • Paid search: Ads that search engines like Google and Bing will show on their results pages (SERPs);
  • Social media ads: Ads served to users on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc;
  • Sponsored content: Advertisers’ content that publishers are paid to distribute; and 
  • Native ads: Ads that appear on a platform in a similar fashion to its existing media.

According to The State of PPC in 2019-2020 by Hanapin Marketing, 74% of marketers consider paid traffic generation to be a huge driver for their business. We need to recognize the key differences between paid and organic traffic from search engines to understand why that might be: 

 

  Where your content appears How you can get more visits How long the results take Price
Organic traffic You can occupy different positions on SERPs depending on how relevant your content is considered to be by the search engine, but some of the ads on the first page will always be higher By optimizing for search engines in a way that outperforms your competitors It is different for everyone, but strategies can take months or years to have a significant impact You don’t have to pay to appear in organic SERPs, but you do have to pay to create and optimize content, and invest in building links to increase your domain’s authority
Paid traffic At the top and the bottom of search results pages By managing bidding options, targeting options, and tweaking ad copy to outperform your competitors You can start getting visits and conversions on the day that you launch your ads, if properly optimized You pay based on the chosen model, e.g. cost-per-click (CPC)

It’s tempting to think that a switch to PPC will help you get more visits, especially when you can essentially buy them, but basic traffic is not what you need. Paid traffic needs to generate leads and transactions.

This is known as ‘relevant’ or ‘converting’ traffic, which means that the visitors you attract should be more likely to make a purchase. To get such visitors from your paid traffic sources, wherever they are placed, you can follow a 6-step system that covers each stage of the customer journey, from clicking on an ad to becoming a paying customer.

As part of a longer-term strategy further down the line, you’ll be able to leverage other digital marketing tactics to encourage these customers to stay with you.

 

 

How to Get Converting Paid Traffic to Your Website in 6 Steps

 

Step 1: Create a Smart Paid Traffic Roadmap

People who say that PPC doesn’t work might have tried to run their ad campaigns without planning them first. To avoid common pitfalls like little or no impressions, huge overspend, and low click-through rate (CTR), you should start by creating a detailed roadmap based on reasonable KPIs, thorough audience research, a clear marketing message, and a list of eligible channels to disseminate it.

 

Step 2: Plan Your Budget Wisely

One of the biggest mistakes in launching a PPC campaign is failing to conduct proper research in preparation.

Depending on the industry, the CPC can vary significantly. For example, in electronics, a click can cost an average of just $0.74, which is almost nothing compared to the insurance industry, where the average price is $14.50.

Another problem is that failing to do your calculations – i.e. working out not only how much money you are going to spend, but what you are going to spend it on, and what you want in return – can result in an increased ad spend that only brings a few low-quality leads to your site.

Here are 3 main questions to answer to help you properly plan your budget:

  1. Which keywords are you going to target? Depending on your goal (brand awareness or conversions), keywords may vary greatly in terms of price and competition. Start with the Keyword Magic Tool, which offers plenty of data about keywords and their potential, to find your targets.
  2. Which locations will you cover? CPC can change significantly between states and regions. Start by checking your industry using the CPC Map, and see which locations might be the best fits for your advertising, as well as which you need to exclude to make savings in your budget.
  3. What is your main KPI? Keywords that create brand awareness don’t necessarily drive conversions, as your audience is far less likely to be ready to buy. They are more curious than anything, so set only one KPI for each campaign.

 

Step 3: Create Winning Ad Copy

Have you ever felt like you have been misled about a product or a piece of content after clicking on an ad? Your audience won’t forgive you if you do this to them. Make a fair promise and deliver on it, and you’ll be more likely to encourage the actions you want.

Any compelling ad copy is made up of a targeted headline and a triggering description. The first tells your prospects what is in it for them, and the second explains how they can get it there and then.

How do you create targeted ad copy to attract relevant traffic?

  • Start with your target audience in mind. Think about what they need and how your solution can help;
  • Look at your competitors and try to understand their targeting and how to outperform them; and
  • Generate enough material for A/B testing: Write at least 3 unique headlines and 2 descriptions to develop an understanding of user preferences.

 

Step 4: Launch an Effective Landing Page

Now, imagine yourself clicking on your ad. Is your landing page worth exploring? Does it deliver on the promise you made?

Take a look at Fovitec’s landing page. It is supposed to be selling photography lighting kits, but it looks more like a warning sign, or an eviction notice:

To avoid wasting your precious paid clicks, check your landing page bounce rate, time on page, heat map, and form abandonment rate; this is one way to know exactly how appealing it is to visitors.

If they leave immediately after landing, the page probably doesn’t align with the keywords it’s displayed for, and you’re talking to the wrong people. If they stay for a while but never click the call-to-action (CTA), your offer doesn’t excite them – we could go on.

If you don’t have a landing page for your ads but you plan to create one, use these three pillars: relevance, attractiveness, and drive. This will mean that it is relevant to the user query, the content and visuals are created with your buyer persona in mind, and the title and the CTA emotionally resonate with your audience so much that they convert. Here are a few tips:

  • Title: Check the searches related to your seed keyword to collect more creative ideas;
  • Content: Make sure the data your prospects are looking for are on your page and easy to find and understand. Don’t clutter the page with too many deals and offers;
  • Visuals: Use good quality, enticing images, not the free stock pictures everyone has seen a thousand times before; and
  • CTA: Match it with the search intent. For example, people looking for tours tend to visit dozens of websites and accumulate a lot of information before making the final choice. So, “Get free quotes” will work better than “Buy a tour now”, as they’ll get an email and use it to remind themselves about your great offers when they might be more inclined to purchase.

 

Step 5: Utilize All the Platforms

According to this Smart Insights study, Google controls 67.78% of the search engine market, which makes Google Ads highly competitive. This means that the CPC there can be so high that your return on investment (ROI) will be minimized. Besides that, Google is probably not the only place your target audience visits. For example, the professional-focused platform LinkedIn might be one of the best places for business-related ads if you are a B2B company.

Reaching out to people across all the platforms they use, not just Google and Facebook, is a great way to make the most of your ads by placing them in front of potential customers more frequently (within reason).

When it comes to brand safety and technical issues, utilizing several platforms also reduces your risk because you will still be visible on others even if one fails or goes down.

 

Step 6: Introduce Automation

By this point, you might be wondering exactly how much money you need to budget to keep getting results, or which channels will be the most effective in your long-term paid strategy. What will the optimum bid become for each channel? What should you do if you have never created ads before? What if you followed all the steps and still don’t have any leads or conversions? Answering these questions requires a lot of research, or, alternatively, a bit of AI help.

PPC automation technology uses AI and machine learning to boost your paid traffic wherever possible, from selecting the channels to reporting on results. However, some tools only automate bids, whilst others only optimize ads, and you’ll need at least one more to match your ads to likely prospects.

It is possible to fully automate the traffic acquisition and lead generation processes, though, by way of Traffic Jet. This tool creates, manages, and optimizes paid campaigns across various platforms based on your goals, budget, targeting, and competitor analysis.

It’s important to note that Traffic Jet can’t do your strategic planning and landing page creation for you; it’s designed to be employed as part of your own comprehensive plan according to the steps outlined above, so you can continue to optimize performance with the help of insights from AI.

Here’s how Traffic Jet can help you:

Budgeting

There is a simple PPC calculator​​​​​​​ that analyzes your objective, area of interest, average CPC in your industry, and KPI, and estimates the ad spend in one click.

Ad Copy

Traffic Jet can build your ads based on your ad copy and the creatives you upload, or extract the images, text, metadata, and keywords from your landing page, and use them to create thousands of ad combinations for testing.

Platforms and Optimization

Traffic Jet will analyze hundreds of paid traffic sources, including Google Search & Display, Microsoft Advertising, Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, Quora, and Reddit, to find the most relevant platforms based on your goals (awareness or lead generation). The algorithm monitors the effectiveness of each platform, and optimizes your campaigns accordingly.

Monitoring and Reporting

The tool checks how much traffic each ad sends to your website, verifies its quality, experiments with channels and creatives, and delivers the results to your Google Analytics and internal Traffic Jet dashboard, so you can monitor and analyze performance.

 

Building a Paid Traffic Strategy for Your Business

As you can see, a paid traffic strategy can be effective if you are concerned with not simply increasing the number of visits to your site, but attracting the kinds of visitors who are interested in buying your products and services.

If you follow the steps listed above (develop a roadmap, plan your budget, create winning ad copy, launch an effective landing page, and leverage multiple platforms), and combine that with PPC automation technology, you will stand a better chance of converting this traffic into leads and sales.

Using tools like Traffic Jet will help you refine the plan, get quicker results with the power of AI, and free up some time for you to focus on other more demanding aspects of your advertising strategy.

Source: 6 Steps to Attracting Paid Traffic That Converts

The Importance of having a website

The Importance of having a website

Aug 25, 2020 | Blog

When you are searching for something on the internet, you usually hope there’ll be an official website for you to look for more information about. A website is a platform where your brand lands the first impression on your potential customers. 

It’s shocking that a lot of known brands and big companies still do not have websites. There are so many benefits to owning a website for your business.

If you’re still not convinced that having a website is important for your business and brand, then read on and let us convince you otherwise. 

why-you-need-a-website

As we were saying, every second, people around the world are searching for something on the internet. Having a website makes your business and brand seen and it is basically promoting your brand all around the clock. Your website stands a chance to be seen when people are searching for an item or anything related to what your business and brand have. 

It is also a cost-effective and 24-hour ad in the digital world. Sure, there are newspaper advertising, billboard advertising, radio and TV advertising but those actually cost more than owning a website. The former advertising methods are only temporary for a certain limit of time, however, owning a website means you get to have it for as long as your website is active.

website-as-a-24-7-salesperson-for-your-business

Not only that, it is also a 24/7 salesperson for your business. With a website, you can display all your products and services and sell or promote them at any hour of the day from people around the world. You save on labor costs and with FAQs on your website page, your customers are able to get their questions answered. You can also add an inquiry page on your website for customers who have further questions and you’ll be able to answer them when you’re available.

 

“The future of retail is the integration of Internet and digital services with the retail network.” -Charles Dunstone

 

A website provides convenience to your customers. With just a few keywords in the search bar, they are able to search for things they are looking for. And with e-commerce in your website, they can easily purchase the stuff they need with just a click away. Online shopping is the most popular shopping method these days. You can even buy groceries online and have them delivered to your doorstep in just an hour.  Even if the customers are not clicking the checkout button on your website, at least your products are made known to them, which increases the chance of customers coming back to check it out again. It’s a retail shop in the digital world.

 

What else can a website do your business? It builds credibility for your brand and business. Think about it. When you heard of a brand or a product, you want to know more about it. You will go on the internet to search for more information and details, hoping to see its website. Now, if you don’t see a website, you somehow feel a little skeptical of the brand immediately. A website is like the ambassador of your brand in the digital world. 

 

“You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything.” -Beth Comstock

 

You might think it is a hassle to own a website, especially if you’re not a tech-savvy person. What if we told you, it is the easiest and most convenient way to do your online marketing and ads AND branding for your brand. You can easily edit and update your website content at any time you need to. 

importance-and-benefits-of-owning-a-website

Now that you know the importance and benefits of owning a website, do you have a business that definitely needs a website? Keep in mind that owning a website solely does not miraculously help with your brand and business sales. A bad website is better off with no website at all. 

A good website means your website is user-friendly and contains good content and photos. A good website brings more opportunities to your business, but a bad website leaves a bad impression and drives away your opportunities as well. A bad website makes your brand look tacky and run-down.

In conclusion, it is important to have a website for your business as it not only drives more sales and opportunity, it builds up a good reputation for your brand. Always remember that a good website that looks professional will buy the trust of your customers. Also, it makes your brand look confident and trusting.

If we have you convinced about getting a website for your business, and you’d like to start, reach out to us, Weave Asia. With our team of experienced web designers and developers, we are sure to design a professional website that suits the nature of your business. Contact us for further details and we’ll be happy to give you advice on how to help build your business in the digital world.

 

Six ways to reach your brand’s target audience

Six ways to reach your brand’s target audience

Aug 25, 2020 | Blog

Before you even start your business, there are a few things you’d list down a couple of important things to focus on. These are the things that will help your business grow and get your brand out there to the people and potential customers. Amongst the many important points to build your business, one of the main focus is your demographics or also better known as your target audience. Certainly, every brand has their target audience as it defines your brand. There is no such thing as a one-for-all brand.

Why is a target audience an important aspect? As mentioned beforehand, these are the people who define your brand and product. They are the core of your sales in your business. They are the one driving your business because they buy your products or services. They are the ones that your business and brand serve and seal a deal with.

So how do you reach your target audience? What are the vital steps to take to make sure the right target audience is attained for your business and brand?


Define your target market:

A few important questions to note down when defining your target market for your business. This will easily help you filter out the people who “will”, “maybe” or “never” purchase your product or services. With these people being filtered out, you will know how to curate your marketing strategies in the most targeted and cost-effective way.

Sit down and focus on these few points that will help narrow down your target audience:

Demographics: Who are your buyers? What is the age of your customers? Are they females or males, or both? What is their general income? What is their profession? 

Behavioral: How do they use the internet? How do they consume media? Do they prefer online or offline marketing?

Psychographics: What do they like? What do they dislike? What are their interests, attitudes and values? How do they think?

When all these are narrowed down, you will know who your target audience is and how your product can appeal to them.

Now that you know your target audience, how do you reach them? Let’s say for an example that your company is a beauty brand that sells products ranging from skincare, makeup, hair and body products, then your target audience will be mostly female buyers aged 18-65. How do you reach female buyers who are 18 to 65 years old? Here’s how.

 

Know where they spend most of their time online

There are dozens of social media platforms out there that can reach to your potential customers. Women are spending a lot of their time browsing websites and online stores. Some would also check out blog shops on Facebook and Instagram pages that they follow.

Create content that will appeal to your customers

According to our example of beauty products business, we have a target audience of females aged 18-65 years old. So, what content will draw their attention? They are probably consumers who like a new makeup range, or a skincare product that could reverse aging, or probably a hair product that makes your hair soft and bouncy like A-list celebrities on the red carpet. Creating enticing content with relevant information is bound to get some clicks into your website or online store from your potential customers.

 

Collaborate with niche bloggers or social media influencers

Here is the part where you would need to do some scrolling and “following”. Look out for key opinion leaders (KOLs) or social media influencers who specifically focus on a certain category or topic. In our example case, it would be getting someone who is a beauty guru, makeup guru or a styling guru. Get in touch with them to work on a campaign with your brand. There are a lot of ways these bloggers can help promote your brand and reach your target audience. Some of the many ways are getting them to do an “unboxing video” of products you sent them. These products will be the products you want to market to your customers and buyers. These bloggers can also do reviews of your products and perhaps introduce a new range of skincare your brand has. 

 

Create targeted ads

With quality content that will captivate your target audience attention, what do you do with the content? Where do you display this content? With Facebook Ads of course. Facebook Ads will be able to reach the target audience you want by simply clicking the demographics you’d want to reach and these ads will appear to your target audience. We’ve talked about Facebook Ads in our previous articles that you may find helpful.

 

Ensure your content is mobile friendly

With great content and Facebook Ads running your campaigns online, it is vital to make your content mobile friendly as well. Most of your customers are browsing through their phones most of the time, especially when they’re on the go and want to just quickly scroll through their social media. 

Your content has to be able to access every platform and fit perfectly on mobile devices. 

 

Partner with other brands

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a competitor to be your partner. Look for a brand that complements your products and that can fall right in place with your brand without looking too forced. For beauty products, especially hair products, partnering with a well-known hair salon will help get your brand exposed to your target audience. You just have to think out of the box and find a good complement for a partnering brand.

 

We hope this article has helped you understand better about how having a target audience is important to your brand and company. A target audience in a way helps you survey your products whether it is something they’ll be repeating their purchase on, and whether or not they would recommend a friend as well. 

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