Children are so imaginative and they are never afraid to speak their minds. They always say the most unexpected things and can give you a different perspective on various things.
So it’s not that surprising that a teacher from the UK is always asking his first graders questions to see if maybe we got it all wrong. Recently, one of the teacher’s threads went viral. In that thread, he asked his students, ‘What’s the one thing you need to be an adult?’ and he shared their answers on the internet as well as adding some funny comments from himself.
Teacher on Twitter comes back again with another thread of his students’ answers, this time to the question ‘What’s the one thing you need to be an adult?’
The teacher’s name is George Pointon and this is not the first time that his tweets have caught the attention of other people. One time he asked his students to tell him a joke and over 200k people liked the thread. Bored Panda covered that thread here. Later, the thread with some wholesome answers to the question ‘What would you do as president of the world?’ also went viral and you can read that article here.
This teacher’s series is so popular and loved that people were asking if George has any plans to put the children’s answers into a book. And the answer is yes. He is actually looking for a publisher, so if anyone out there knows one, @GeorgePointon_ would be grateful for that information.
For now, the teacher came up with a new question: ‘What’s the one thing you need to be an adult?’ Over 30k people liked the thread, and rightfully so, as the children gave some awesome answers that you couldn’t say aren’t true.
So, what things do the kids think make a person an adult? Well, some of them thought that simple things like a beautiful dress and bigger socks mean that you’re an adult now. Another student pointed out that an ID shows that you’re an adult. Though George said that Toby didn’t really know what an ID is, but maybe you have to have things that, when you were a kid, you didn’t know the purpose of?
Other children got really deep and Jack, for example, thinks that you don’t need anything. Very philosophical and eye-opening. Exactly, because if you consider yourself an adult, you are; if not, then there is no question there.
In George’s eyes, the winner was Emma, who thinks that not giving up when it’s hard makes you an adult. This is an excellent view to life and if Emma holds onto this, it will bring her places.
And then there’s Wendy, who says that you need to be happy. I could be wrong, but having joy in simple things is what we, adults, consider so pure in children. The teacher couldn’t agree with this and goes as far as to say that adulthood is actually hell.
As mentioned, several threads on the teacher’s account have already gone viral, so Bored Panda asked George is there a secret formula or a common denominator, but apparently, it’s just random luck, “There is absolutely no secret formula or ‘rabbit in the hat’ about it. Children have this natural innocence and wonder that is both heartwarming and hilarious. Just give them a platform and I guarantee some total gems. But unfortunately, there is no consistent way to tell what people are after. My method is to do what makes me laugh and hope that people enjoy it also. For the most part, they do.”
If you were wondering if the children know that their answers get so much love on the internet, George reveals that his students don’t have any idea of his activities on the internet. “I don’t want them to get egos at such a young age. Fame might just change them. I joke, of course. Some of the parents have seen the threads and enjoy the analysis. Fortunately, they know me and that ultimately my best interest is with the children. It’s just nice to have fun and not take everything so seriously.”
George would also like to direct some word to his readers: “I just wanted to thank everyone for there amazing and continued support. It gives me great joy to see you interact with personalities of the children. They are wonderful and so are all of you.”
We asked how George comes up with the questions as the series has continued for a while now and he said that he thinks of the questions himself, but after some time, he got “the brilliant idea to turn the experience more interactive” and he says, “now I let the people decided between two options. After all this a democracy. It also means less work for me. Which is always a bonus.”
George added that the children love this weekly segment of their school week routine. “The kids love our weekly question. We call it ‘Question of the week’ and it has a theme song and everything.”
It’s always interesting to hear how children imagine their lives when they grow up, how adulthood works, or what they think about adults in general as they will grow up themselves. Adults have already forgotten what it was like to not know the struggles they have to deal with, so the simple outlook of children is like a breath of fresh air.
Inspired by this thread, other people also asked their little members of the family what they think is the one thing that makes you an adult. Those children also gave some hilarious answers.
Other people also asked their children the same question and got some pretty hilarious answers
If so, you need to focus your efforts on inbound marketing strategies for your startup.
Why?
It’s one of the best ways to take market share from bigger companies, and you don’t need a hefty Facebook Ads budget to compete.
Instead of broadcasting to the customer, as traditional outbound marketing does, inbound marketing focuses on creating reasons for the customer to come to you.
According to HubSpot, which coined the term “inbound marketing” back in 2006, the strategy consists of four stages.
It’s a proven system that works for the best companies in the world, and it has launched dozens of startups to stellar success.
Inbound Marketing Strategies for Start-Ups
Now that you know what is inbound marketing and how it works, let’s dive into the best strategies for inbound marketing for startups.
1.Use Facebook to Create a Target Persona
The first and most critical part of creating compelling content is understanding what your target customers want to learn.
You need to have an in-depth knowledge of your market so you can react quickly.
Here’s how you learn more about who your audience is by reviewing your Facebook Page Insights.
First, go to your Facebook page. At the top, you’ll see a button labeled Insights. Click on it.
In the sidebar that opens, click on People.
From there, you’re going to want to look at the Your Fans column. Check to see where the percentages lie to understand what demographics apply to your business.
This can give you a general feel for who is interested in your startup and start forming the basis of your target persona. But that’s not all we need.
Next, we will find out what interests these people and how you can write content that appeals to what they care about.
2. Survey Your Current Customers and Leads
The easiest way to get to know your target market is through a survey.
This doesn’t have to be complicated. If you already have an email list, you can send them a simple form through SurveyMonkey.
To make this work, you only need to ask one question: “What is your biggest struggle?”
Your goal is to understand the problems they’re facing so you can create compelling content that targets their deepest interests.
3. Conduct In-Depth Interviewsto Inform Your Inbound Marketing Efforts
Once you have the general feelings of your target market, it’s a good idea to start seeking out individuals you can contact for more in-depth information.
I recommend looking for a few clients or customers you’ve already acquired.
Ask them if they’d be OK with a 10-minute phone call or a video chat about their current struggles. Mention you’ll offer them advice if you can.
(Usually, customers are excited about this. It’s like a free consultation for them.)
Once you’re on the call, try to find out exactly what their biggest struggles are. Ask them to describe those struggles in the clearest language possible.
Get to exactly what frustrates them and what solutions they tried before but didn’t work.
If you create generic, self-serving articles and videos, you’ll never see success.
No matter how hard you promote this content or how you designed it to rank well in search engines, you’re going to struggle to find new clients and customers.
The best-in-class content marketers work tirelessly to adapt their content to the target audiences they want to attract — and where they are in the customer journey.
5. Writing Enticing Headline
Understanding the customer journey and their needs is critical to making great content, but it’s not the only strategy you’ll need to draw in new customers and leads.
The most important piece of the work you create is the headline. This is what will drive the most clicks and draw in new traffic.
You should spend lots of time crafting a headline that appeals to your most targeted customers.
Of course, you shouldn’t always have negative headlines.
But if you have a list of mistakes or talk about the worst strategies that could hurt your customer, this can be an effective way to drive traffic.
According to Demand Metric, companies with blogs generate 67 percent more leads per month than those who don’t.
If you’re going to produce this content, you need to make sure it works to its best ability.
7. Make Your Content More Visual
Humans love visual content. For your content to appeal to your ideal readers, make sure there’s more to it than just large blocks of text.
Including lots of images, charts, and graphs is a technique I use to make my content more appealing, and I’m not alone.
90 percent of bloggers include images in their posts, and those who add multiple images report stronger results.
The more visual your content, the more likely it’s likely to improve your inbound marketing efforts.
6. Write In-Depth Data-Driven Articles
Instead of writing short posts, you should be doing extensive research and producing in-depth content.
According to research by Curata, long-form content generates eight times more page views, nine times more leads, and three times more social media shares than short-form content.
You should be writing articles that are a few thousand words long and supported by lots of data and analysis.
This is not only better for your SEO rankings, but it’s also more helpful for your customers.
The better your content, the more likely your readers are to share it with friends, recommend your site to others, and implement what you say.
8. Use Storytelling in Your Content
Just because you base your content around data and analysis doesn’t mean it needs to be dry and academic.
You should work to produce the opposite type of content. You want to create articles that tell a story.
Why?
Using storytelling in your content (from sales pages to social media posts) is a way to create an emotional connection with your audience.
Storytelling has another powerful function. It creates brand recall. Research by Stanford University shows people are 63 percent more likely to remember a story than a statistic.
Not convinced?
Chris Haddad (a relationship coach) went from a 2 percent conversion rate to 8 percent by changing his sales page to include a relatable personal story.
How can you use this tactic in your startup? Look for opportunities to weave in stories when talking about your product or business.
Sure, your benefits and features are great, but the emotional connection you create with storytelling will close the sale and help grow your startup through inbound marketing.
This is because it provides you with backlinks, authority in the space, and relationships with key influencers.
But most people go about it the wrong way. If you aren’t using smart strategies to spread your startup’s message through guest posting, you might as well not do it.
If you want to reap the benefits of guest posting, you need to write consistently.
This is how the most successful startup owners have made guest blogging work well for them. Instead of a few posts, they wrote prolifically and gained ground quickly.
If you do a Google search for guest posts by Danny Iny, you’ll find dozens of pieces of content across the web.
This massive, consistent guest-posting strategy allowed him to grow his business Mirasee into the powerhouse it is today.
On his homepage, he displays an in-depth list of all the sites where he has been featured.
Dedicate some of your time to creating compelling content for other blogs to reach as many customers as possible.
10. Pitch to Blogs with Engaged Readers
Another problem I see with entrepreneurs who want to use guest posting as an inbound marketing strategy is that they don’t look for sites that will give them much ROI.
The truth is that every guest post requires work, and that’s work that needs to give you a distinct benefit in visitors or leads.
If you post on a blog that has a dead audience, you won’t get any benefit, and you’ll have wasted your time.
I like to look at the comments on different sites. For example, if I wanted to write a guest blog for WordStream, I can see their posts get lots of relevant comments.
This tells me the readers are engaged, and a blog post here might result in readers clicking through to my startup’s website and purchasing from me.
11. Maximize Your Results from SEO with Keyword Optimization
You need to understand SEO to achieve any success with your startup in today’s search-driven marketplace.
The most important things to focus on are basic on-page SEO and backlinks for your site and your content.
How do you do that? Keyword optimization.
You want to find specific long-tail keywords which you’d like to use for targeting your content.
The more specific someone is in their search, the more likely they know what they want and are close to converting into a customer.
12. Promote Your Content to Build Backlinks
Backlinks are perhaps the most important factor in your search engine results.
At the simplest level, backlinks are other sites that link to your site. There are lots of ways to increase the number of backlinks you get to your content.
By promoting your content to other relevant influencers, you can increase the number of people that link back to you.
The exact number of backlinks you need to be successful on the search engines varies depending on the keyword, topic, and the competing sites that are ranking well now.
With careful prompting, though, you can easily outrank pages on massive sites with more authority.
Not sure where to start with backlinks? I’ve created a free backlink checker tool you can use to find out who is linking to your startup’s competition.
13. Acquire Inbound Marketing Leads with Free Content
When it’s time to convert your visitors into leads, you need bulletproof strategies to get people to give you their email addresses.
The best method I’ve seen is to offer free content in exchange for this contact information.
If your startup is in the B2B sector, or if you appeal to customers who want or need in-depth analysis before purchasing, you can make an effective lead magnet from a report.
This is a great way to get leads because the comprehensiveness of your work seems like a great deal for an email address.
HubSpot’s list of marketing statistics includes a pitch for their “State of Inbound Marketing” report. This is a detailed guide with massive amounts of high-quality data.
But they aren’t giving this away for free. To receive the report, you need to provide a detailed amount of information that HubSpot will use to follow up with you on their products.
This is an effective way to drive your visitors into your sales funnel and reach them even more effectively.
14. Host a Free Webinar
One of my favorite inbound marketing techniques for startups is free webinars that encourage customers to learn in real-time.
This is great because it lets them see your face and understand your personality. Besides, lots of people will download a guide and never read it.
But if someone signs up for a webinar, you can see if they watch the whole thing.
I have used this kind of training on my homepage in the past. I didn’t call it a webinar, though. I just used the term “training.”
This is a great way to increase your leads as visitors must enter their first name and email address to access the training.
Since this is such a valuable teaching piece, people who come to my website are happy to provide their email address to learn SEO better.
15. Launch an Email Course
There’s another form of content you can create that will drive new customers.
Even better, it won’t require the extensive research that a report demands or the complicated backend software necessary for a webinar.
That strategy is to create an email course. This is a simple way to provide extra value without spending tons of time creating something with design elements or video.
If you’re currently giving away an e-book for your startup and you’ve found that it isn’t converting well, consider breaking down the content into sections.
Then use each section as a separate email. You may find that an email course or a masterclass converts even better than an ebook.
16. Start an Influencer Marketing Campaign
According to a survey by Influencer Marketing Hub, 75 percent of brands have a dedicated budget for influencer marketing, and 90 percent of respondents believe it’s an effective form of advertising.
If you do this the right way, it can be a free or paid method to get people excited about your brand.
First and most importantly, you need to make sure you’re appealing to the right influencers.
This is easy to get wrong, as the people you think you’re appealing to may not be persuasive to your target audience.
The earlier research you did on your audience should be a great starting place to understand who they pay attention to, but you might need to do even more work than that.
How do you find the right influencers for your startup? You can:
Google phrases like “top [niche] influencers.
Browse hashtags on Instagram related to your niche.
Use Influencer platforms to connect with creators.
Search key phrases on Ubersuggest to find blogs that appeal to your target audience.
17. Build Relationships with Influencers
Once you know which influencers are best for your brand, you need to start targeting them specifically.
While you can just run into promotion and start spamming them with requests to share the content you created, this won’t be very effective.
You’ll irritate them and ruin the relationship.
Instead, you need to start slow and gradually build a relationship with the influencers you’d like to promote your content.
You should also do everything you can to help those influencers by providing communication that’s always focused on their needs.
While it may seem frustrating to always focus on them, you’ll eventually start to build a relationship that allows you to make a small request.
If you’ve built great relationships from the start, they’ll be happy to oblige.
18. Build Effective Email Campaigns
You already know that email marketing is critical to a successful inbound marketing campaign for your startup.
But are you using it effectively?
Email marketing has a massive ROI.
According to Litmus, the average ROI was $42 for every $1 spent on emails.
But to make it work, you need to be strategic with how you promote your brand through email.
19. Send Helpful Content to Subscribers
First and foremost, you need to be useful to your subscribers. When someone signs up, you need to provide them with a reason to stay on your email list.
If you’re constantly spamming them or sending worthless content, they’ll unsubscribe and probably never return.
Instead, send emails with valuable information they can’t get anywhere else.
Buzzsumo does a great job with this in their articles and emails. Their weekly update includes a report on engagement on Facebook, based on 880-million posts.
That’s a hugely valuable piece of content I want to read.
More importantly, I want to stay subscribed to the newsletter, and I’ll keep looking forward to their emails.
This is the kind of reaction you need to build with your subscribers. If they’re looking forward to your marketing, you’re doing it correctly.
20. Stick with Email Marketing for The Long Term
You need to be in the email game for the long term.
If you’re not consistently providing great content with your inbound marketing, you’re going to be frustrated.
Instead of pitching your product immediately after someone signs up on your email list, send them a welcome sequence that gradually introduces them to what you have to offer.
In short, the vast majority of websites aren’t appealing to mobile users, and they aren’t putting in the work they need to make these changes.
Instead of actually converting their mobile customers, they’re losing out on valuable traffic.
Don’t let that happen to you. Make sure your site is responsive and that it works well on mobile.
22. Install Hello Bar
If you want to get more conversions from the traffic you’re sending to your site, you should consider installing Hello Bar.
This is a simple tool that allows you to add a signup form at the top of your website. Since it’s unobtrusive, it won’t distract from the user experience.
But since it’s always at the top of your pages, it will drive massive conversions.
It’s a great way to get a few new leads each day.
23. Drive Conversions with Content Upgrades
If you want to skyrocket the conversions you’re getting from the content you publish on your website, look no further than a content upgrade.
Unlike a traditional lead magnet, a content upgrade will optimize your highest-converting pieces of content.
Because the people reading this article are interested in finding out more about the words that can make their writing more effective, this is a great way to encourage them to sign up.
You can do the same thing. To make this work, find a popular article and create a custom bonus that adds to the piece of content you’ve already written.
Link this in the article, and watch the new leads for your startup skyrocket.
24. Test and Refine Your Inbound Marketing Strategies
It’s no secret that I think testing is the only way to improve all kinds of marketing.
This applies to the inbound marketing strategies you’re using for your startup as well.
You need to monitor your results and make gradual improvements to different components of your campaign.
If they don’t work as expected, you should refine those strategies and try something new. But even if they do work for you, I recommend going back and making improvements.
Keeping an A/B split-test running at all times is a great way to make small but consistent changes to your marketing strategy and to make sure everything is working at its best.
Inbound Marketing Strategy FAQs
What is an inbound marketing strategy?
An inbound marketing strategy attracts prospects to your brand by creating valuable content that is relevant and helpful.
What are the five inbound principles?
The five principles of inbound marketing are standardize, contextualize, optimize, personalize, and empathize.
What are the types of inbound marketing?
Videos, blogs, pillar pages, eBooks, social media, press releases, infographics, newsletters, research papers, podcasts, webinars, and expert interviews.
How do you develop an inbound strategy?
You need to know the purpose of your content, your target audience, and how your content fits in with the buyer’s journey.
Inbound Marketing Strategies Summary
If you’re launching a startup, you want to make sure you’re implementing the best practices for extremely fast growth.
By now, you know that inbound marketing is the most effective way to increase your visitors, leads, and buyers.
You’ll need to attract customers by understanding their deepest needs, aspirations, and struggles. Using that data, create epic content that draws them in like a magnet.
Extend your reach to other sites, present your content around the web, acquire new customers, and build your influence and authority.
You’ll need to include SEO best practices so that customers can find you through search engines as well.
Once you have the traffic, convert those visitors with free content and influencer marketing that drives leads.
With a compelling email campaign and a high-converting website, you can grow your business like never before.
Which inbound marketing strategies will you use to grow your startup?
Having a car (and being able to drive one, of course) is great. The amount of flexibility and independence it provides to your life is huge. But with great freedom comes great responsibility. To the car, yourself, and everyone on the road.
To show you what it’s like to sit in front of the wheel, Bored Panda has compiled a list of the funniest and most relatable car memes we could find on the internet. From dealing with BMW drivers to parallel parking, here’s what every driver goes through on a daily basis!
As it becomes increasingly challenging to grow organic reach, more and more marketers are looking to paid ads.
Since this monetary model is by no means novel, that means there’s a crowded space for these ads. You want to ensure your dollars dedicated to pay-per-click (PPC) are getting their money’s worth.
Maybe you’ve written scintillating paid ad copy that speaks directly to your audience’s pain points. Maybe you’ve drafted a graphic that is the perfect balance between branding and intriguing. Maybe you’ve set your budget and ad parameters and are ready to go.
How do you get those paid ad leads to actually convert?
This, of course, is the challenge of paid marketing. You can do nearly everything right, but without clear direction for your audience to further interact with your paid ads, you’ve done little more than create a pretty picture.
To help you make the most from your paid ad dollars, we dive into the five best methods for converting paid ad leads.
5 Methods to Convert Paid Ad Leads
While the term conversion can conjure different meanings to different marketers, for the purpose of this post, we’re defining conversion as any desired action, whether that be purchase, form-fill, email capture, or simply a learn-more action.
Regardless of your current working definition of conversion, the following methods can help your paid ads convert, enabling you to reach your marketing goals.
Below, we break down five tried-and-true methods that can help your paid ads translate to valuable conversions.
1. Route Leads to a Chatbot or Messenger
As technological capabilities evolve, so do our strategies for lead conversion. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance, increasing opportunities for chatbots arise.
In fact, it’s projected that chatbots will manage 85 percent of customer interactions in the near future.
These days, chatbots are built into many websites. Visit nearly any site, and you’ll be greeted by an automatically generated message asking you what you’re searching for and how the bot can help.
In addition to simply operating as a help feature, chatbots can be used as a tool to improve site visitor experience, not to mention completely changing the way brands communicate and interact with their existing and would-be consumers.
Since chatbots are infinitely customizable and can provide personalized responses, how consumers interact with your brand has changed drastically.
With successful chatbot addition to your marketing strategy, you can improve your customer’s journey through increased personalization and drive conversions through an interactive platform.
How can you incorporate chatbots into your paid ad strategy?
It’s easy: Instead of sending an individual who clicks on your paid ads to a classic web form, direct them to a chatbot. There, they can engage in a personalized, targeted conversation that can lead to the conversion you’re aiming for.
While simply having a chatbot is a great strategy to increase paid ad conversions, writing good copy for the bot can make a good strategy great.
Here are our top three tips for successful chatbot copywriting:
Sound conversational: Chatbots are not the time to flex your vocabulary. In fact, messages written at a third-grade level receive 36 percent more responses. Using simple and clear language is key.
Have a cohesive tone: Choosing the right voice for your chatbot depends on the tone of your business. Whether you’re fun or formal, be sure to mimic that style as you develop your chatbot’s responses.
Use a catching hook: You want your site visitors to interact with your bot. To ensure this interaction happens, use a compelling hook to catch their interest. Check out this example from Purple, a mattress company that excels at snagging attention through an emotional pull.
2. Direct Leads to a Landing Page
Historically, paid ads drive to landing pages, and this isn’t a bad thing.
The trouble with landing pages occurs when they’re not optimized properly. You may have the most compelling paid ads on the web, but if your landing pack is lackluster, your conversion rates will be, too.
Below, we share our top five tips for making your landing pages work as hard as you do:
Research user behavior: If you don’t understand how users interact with your page, it’s hard to understand what is and isn’t working. You can employ free tools that build a heat map on your pages, letting you better understand what your users are doing so you can tailor the layout to meet their movements.
Identify pain points: Be sure to create copy that indicates you have a clear understanding of your audience’s problem—not to mention a clear, simple solution. When you lead with pain points, you’re that much more likely to intrigue your audience, getting them to sign up for that demo or join your email list.
Provide value: Without fail, your landing page should offer some carrot to your audience. Whether that’s a whitepaper or a video, a webinar or a podcast, make sure your landing page offers your audience something they’ll find valuable (and find easily on your page).
A/B test: Test everything. We mean it. Anything you can track the performance of, track it. The more data you have about how specific elements on your page are performing, the more likely you are to get very close to the ideal set of on-page elements that lead to conversion.
Remove distractions: Less is more when it comes to your landing pages. Have a lot of great content? Good. Hold onto it—now is not the time to use it. As you build your landing pages for paid ads, be selective in what you include. There’s a singular action you want your site visitors to take. Don’t confuse that message by overburdening your page.
3. Direct Leads to Forms on Social Media
Another way to increase conversions from your paid ads leads is to drive direct leads to forms on social media. With 83 percent of marketers using social platforms to advertise, there are a lot of paid ads appearing on social.
How do you get your paid ads to translate into a conversion on social platforms?
By following best practices. Let’s take Facebook, for example. The social media giant reports over 2.7 billion active users per month. With that many active users, you know there’s a plethora of marketers.
To make your paid ads stand out in the crowd and actually convert, you can build forms into your paid ads on the platform. That way, users don’t have to navigate away from their social scrolling to, say, sign up for your newsletter.
To drive even more conversions via forms on social media, consider using these two best practices for incentivizing:
Share a discount code: Everyone loves a discount. To increase your paid ads conversions through forms on social, try offering audience members who take your desired action a unique discount code. This way, you’re not only converting, but you’re also building goodwill with your audience.
Host a competition: If offering a discount code doesn’t apply to your product or will reduce the perceived value, host a competition.
Both of these strategies allow you to deliver value to your audience while still achieving your conversion goals.
4. Route Customers to a Purchase Page
If your aim is conversions from paid ads, drive customers to a purchase page. This strategy is highly effective, as it considerably shortens the buyer’s journey, taking an individual directly from interest to purchase. By eliminating steps in between these two phases, you dramatically increase the likelihood that your ad will convert.
Clothing line Hello Molly uses Instagram paid ads to advertise its garments. If users click on one of the images, they’re taken directly to the purchase page for that item.
By driving directly to the page, you shorten the number of steps your potential customer has to take to convert.
What’s more, the consumer doesn’t need to leave the confines of Instagram. The entire sales process occurs in the app.
5. Direct Leads to Your Blog
While, at times, blogging may feel like a technique of the past, your blog should still play a vital role in your content marketing strategy.
In fact, blogs continue to outrank emails, books, and whitepapers as the most effective type of content, and if you’re not driving your paid ad leads to your blog, you may be missing out on a slew of conversions. After all, your blog is a hub of content that speaks to pain points and fills in knowledge gaps within your industry.
If your conversions are focused on asset downloads, you should definitely drive traffic from paid ads directly to relevant components on your blog.
How to Know Which Method Is Right for You
Feeling overwhelmed by these five options? Don’t be! Knowing which method is right for you is all about understanding the true goal of your overall ad campaign.
Determine your conversion goals
Think about what action you want your leads to take. Do you want their email address so you can send them your newsletter? Do you want them to download resources you publish? Do you want them to make a purchase? These are common conversion goals, though yours may be something else entirely.
Decide where you want to direct users who click your ad
You will most likely direct your users to a landing page, purchasing page, or a lead generation form.
Decide which method is best for you
Map out your goals with the strategies listed above and decide which will be most helpful for you to reach your goals.
For example, if you’re hoping to increase whitepaper downloads, consider linking to a synopsis blog that includes a download option of the entire paper.
If your goal is to increase purchases you should definitely drive your leads from paid ads directly to product pages.
Paid Ad Conversions FAQs
If you’re still not sure about how to convert paid ad leads, here are a few commonly asked questions to help guide you:
How Can I Encourage Paid Ad Leads to Convert?
To drive your paid ad leads toward conversion, be sure to align their destination with your conversion goal. If you’re looking to drive purchases, consider directing leads to a purchase page. If you’re looking to drive whitepaper downloads, drive to a blog. Regardless of the goal, be sure to send your leads to a location where they can take clear and direct action.
How Can I Incorporate Chatbots Into Paid Ad Strategy?
Incorporating chatbots into your paid ad strategy is simple and can result in increased conversions given the endless possibilities of this conversational tool. Instead of sending an individual who clicks on your paid ads to a classic web form, direct them to a chatbot. There, they can engage in a personalized, targeted conversation that can lead to the conversion you’re aiming for.
Which Paid Ad Conversion Strategy Is Right for Me?
Regardless of your conversion goal, be sure that the location you’re driving leads to that goal. When conversion and destination are aligned, the conversion process is compressed, making it easier than ever to achieve your conversion dreams.
How Can I Optimize My Landing Pages for Conversion?
Here are five keys for website optimization: A/B test, prove value, address pain points, remove distractions, and research user behavior.
Conclusion for Paid Ad Conversions
As the use of paid ads becomes increasingly ubiquitous, driving consumers to the right location to convert becomes even more important than ever before.
Clear direction is always important for online consumers, but it’s never more important than in the steps that lead to conversion. By having a clear and direct goal for your paid ads and aligning that goal with a landing location that correlates, your potential customers are that much more likely to become consumers.
When you pair the right content with the right process, you unlock the door to successfully converting paid ad leads.
If you decide you want to employ these strategies yourself even though you think they may be beneficial, let our agency know. We can handle the heavy lifting for you.
What’s the most successful conversion path for leads from paid ads that you’ve used?
Are you searching for new audiences to tap into to grow your base?
If you answered yes—and, let’s face it, all marketers are looking for new audiences—then you’ve come to the right place.
The platform offers marketers a unique opportunity to further brand recognition and grow their follower base in a somewhat unconventional form.
Part blog-host, part social platform, Medium provides writers with a unique mode of connection with their audiences.
The platform has over 400,000 paying subscribers ($4.99 per month or $50 per year), which should make Medium attractive to marketers from size alone.
Read on to learn how marketers can take advantage of the unique capabilities of this platform and why you should consider giving this content platform a whirl.
What Is Medium?
Self-identifying as the “YouTube of writing,” Medium offers writers of all kinds (poets, journalists, comic artists, etc.) space to share their work with a vast audience and get paid in the process.
The platform averages over 200 million views a month, making it a hot destination for the web’s readers. With over 100,000 writers actively using the platform, it could be an excellent destination no matter what kind of content you create.
Wondering how these writers get paid? While there is the option to write just for the sake of sharing ideas with no payment, they can also join the Medium Partner Program (MPP) and just get going!
Unlike other writing opportunities, which typically pay by the word or the hour, MPP members are paid based on the amount of time paying subscribers readers spend reading their articles. They also get a small commission if a non-paying member subscribes within 30 days of reading their articles.
And while this is all well and good for writers, your marketer brain may have snagged on that 200 million monthly views.
How can marketers take advantage of this unique audience willing to pay to gain access to the platform?
The answer is simple: advertise on Medium.
Types of Ads of Medium
“Advertising” on the site is, in a word, unusual.
While the term “advertise” may conjure images of paid search and skyscraper banners, Medium doesn’t allow conventional advertising. While companies can’t promote products, they can harness the unique platform to grow brand following and exposure.
Understandably, and especially since making money isn’t guaranteed, this may sound like the soundly disliked idea of “creating for exposure, not payment.” I suggest switching your way of thinking on this one: Rather than this being an opportunity to sell your stuff, you’re selling your brand and building trust.
People are, frankly, tired of constantly having ads thrown in their faces. Reading an article that may hint at your brand’s goals (perhaps by using subtle embedded links) but focuses on helping or even entertaining them in other ways may draw attention to your brand in a less pushy way.
The platform rewards content visibility purely on the strength of writing, using a unique algorithm that considers post reach, likes, and comments. Plus, everything posted gets indexed by Google, which is a boon to your search engine optimization (SEO).
While we’ve briefly discussed the rationale of sharing content on Medium to share your reach and grow your audience base, there are several other benefits for harnessing the platform’s power:
Build brand awareness without overwhelming readers with sales-focused materials.
Increase visibility by inviting industry influencers to collaborate on your publication.
Diversify channel content promotion since Google indexes all Medium content.
Drive more clicks to your website through embedding links inside your content.
Create an audience by encouraging readers to subscribe to your publication.
Increase backlinks to your website to bolster your link-building strategy and SEO.
In short, starting a content stream on the site could improve your audience size, strengthen your SEO strategy, and drive more clicks to your website.
Rules and Guidelines for Medium Content and Ads
Medium intends to make people engage their minds, not their wallets, so there are rules about what you can and can’t publish on the site.
In addition to pretty standard rules against harassment, hate speech, and doxing, the platform includes some additional rules that posters must adhere to.
Ads, Promotion, and Marketing
Don’t post third-party sponsorships.
Avoid affiliate marketing.
Disclose all affiliate links.
Post nothing that remotely resembles spam or exists primarily to drive traffic or sales.
Deceptive Content
Don’t impersonate a brand or individual.
Avoid deception to generate traffic.
Disclose all gratis goods and services received.
Don’t use deceptive metadata.
Duplicate Content
The site has recently taken a firm stance against duplicate content, prohibiting:
unlisting and republishing an old post
deleting and republishing a post without large-scale changes
posting the same story in different publications
Much like any other content platform, there are best practices content creators should keep in mind.
Medium Best Practices
Craft a strong, clear headline.
Share original work that isn’t simply a review of industry topics.
Avoid calls to action (CTAs) and salesy language. This may go against every marketing instinct, but Medium isn’t about sales—it’s about sharing ideas.
Employ images on the cover of your story, as they improve the user experience (UX).
As you begin building your Medium content strategy, be sure to follow these best practices and be mindful of the rules to help ensure content success.
How to Create Ads on Medium
Now that we’ve covered the benefits of creating content on the platform, let’s discuss how to start a publication on the site.
1. Navigate to the Publications Option
Select your picture in the top right-hand corner of the screen, then navigate to and select “Publications.”
2. Select “New Publication”
Look near the top right of your screen and click the “New Publication” button.
3. Identify Your Publication
Fill out all information the site and readers need to know about your publication.
When adding your publication’s name, think beyond your business’ name and consider options that may resonate in your industry. A publication avatar is required, and it shows up in all previews of your content. So, choose wisely.
4. Add Your Social Profiles
In addition to adding your email address and social profiles, you can (and should) select up to five relevant tags, allowing your work to be discovered by interested parties.
5. Include Editors and Writers
In this infinitely editable space, include people with posting power on your publication.
6. Customize Your Medium Homepage
Your homepage is infinitely customizable, allowing you to change colors, header layout, background images, and much more.
Analytics for Medium Content
While there are other strategies for tracking your analytics on Medium, the platform offers metrics to help you track your content’s performance.
You can view your metrics by clicking your profile picture and then “Stats.”
By assessing these metrics, you can track individual pieces’ performance and gain a better understanding of your audience. You can then tailor your content to appeal to that audience or adjust your content strategy to appeal to a different group of individuals.
How to Publish Content on Medium
Sharing your first piece of content is just a few steps away. Here’s how to post and optimize Medium content:
Add your story
To begin, select your profile picture from the top right-hand corner and choose “Write Story.”
Add Photos
Select the + button from the left side of the post and then click the “Camera” button to upload a pre-saved image.
Embed Third-Party Media
Navigate to a new line of your story and paste the URL of the content you want to embed, then press “Enter.”
Schedule and optimize your post
Select the “Publish” button in the top right-hand corner. From this menu, schedule your post, add tags, or adjust your title and subtitle.
Publish!
After you’ve made the necessary changes, choose “Publish now” to make your story available.
Medium FAQs
How Much Does It Cost to Advertise on Medium?
Not a dime! Starting your publication on Medium is free.
Is the Paid Version of Medium Worth It?
Yes, though remember: This is to subscribe, not write. Although you needn’t subscribe to write, subscribing allows you to read work from a diverse population of writers and may provide a unique perspective into popular industry topics and competitors’ work.
What Is Medium’s Partner Program?
Medium’s Partner Program was created to pay writers and ensure wider post-distribution across the platform. Writers are compensated by how engrossed members are by their work: The more members read, the more writers learn. In addition, the site distributes a portion of every subscription fee to the writers their individual subscribers read most frequently each month.
What Analytics Does Medium Provide?
Medium offers publishers a robust metrics view, including:
-views -reads -fans -views by traffic source -reader interests -internal vs. external views
Guide to Medium Conclusion
As with all content platforms, be sure to follow Medium-specific best practices, with a particular eye towards ensuring your content doesn’t sound too promotional.
As you begin to familiarize yourself with the tools offered, you’ll likely become more adept at targeting audiences that may be interested in your content through the tagging tools and other strategies.
Using the platform’s offerings in conjunction with your existing content marketing strategy, you can significantly expand your reach, grow your audience, and reach new markets.
What’s the best piece of content you’ve seen on Medium?
If you’ve ever experimented with your hair, you know that mistakes are almost inevitable. Especially if you’re dyeing it — so many things can go wrong. The color can turn out to be totally different than you expected, the hair dye bottle can spontaneously explode and cover all of your bathroom in pink or your head might turn into a watermelon because you’re allergic to the product. It’s pretty wild.
So in order to show you the possible side effects of going full Dennis Rodman, Bored Panda has compiled a list of the funniest (and saddest) hair dye fails ever. Continue scrolling, upvote your faves, and tell us if you’ve experienced something like this in the comments!
#17 I’m Sharing This For Educational Purposes Only. She Bleached Her Box Colored Hair At Home And Then Put A Relaxer On It To Control Frizz. Her Hair Is Beyond Recovery
#33 When You Practically Burn Off About Half Of Your Hair But You’re Still Basically Orange. Oops Guess This Stuff Is Stronger Than The Stuff I Used To Use, I’ll Know For Next Time
Well if I lose all the hair guess I can start fresh.
#43 Tried Bleaching My Hair To Get Rid Of The Red So I Could Go Deep Blue. The Bleach Only Got Rid Of The Color On My Roots The Rest Went Pink. I Dyed It Anyway
I thought it would go blue to purple instead but the dye didn’t stick to my hair and only the roots went blue, the rest stayed red.
#45 I’ve Been Indoors For A Couple Months Now And I’m Now Dyeing My Hair For The Second Time (And Yes It’s 1AM And I’m Home Alone And Covered In Hair Dye Right Now)
That catchphrase that just sticks in your head like a catchy tune. Sometimes it even has a little jingle or rhyming structure that adds some flair. You know it works because it stays with you. You remember it, and you remember the company it stands for.
Does your brand need a slogan? Probably. Here’s why.
What Is the Purpose of a Business Slogan?
A good slogan is catchy and bounces around your head like an earworm. However, a good business slogan is more than just a catchphrase.
It’s a rallying point for your brand. It envelops everything you stand for and everything you offer to the public.
It’s a battle cry, of sorts.
In fact, the etymology of the word slogan reflects just that. The term comes from a Gaelic Scottish term used as a battle cry. In the early 1700s, the term slogan described catchphrases used by political or other groups.
These days slogans are more important than ever as we are awash in visual and audio media, from TV and radio to the internet and digital media.
A great slogan cleverly sums up what you do, inspires engagement with your audience, and sticks with them until they need your product or service.
Your slogan can be written and spoken after your brand name, to help people remember what you’re about. You might place it just after or under your name or logo on your website, social media, marketing materials, or use it in ads. This helps your slogan become synonymous with your brand name.
Why Should Your Business Have a Slogan?
Is it worth taking the time to create a slogan for your business? In most cases, yes. Getting to the heart of your business and finding a phrase that wraps everything you stand for in an unforgettable way can become a powerful brand asset.
A great slogan ranks up there with your business name, logo, and web design.
These are just a few of the many benefits of creating a slogan for your business. If you’re convinced, it’s time to get started on putting your slogan together.
How to Create a Business Slogan
It’s a tall order to create a short and simple slogan that absolutely hits it out of the park. The best slogans are short, unusual, and simple to pronounce.
It’s not easy, but it’s worth the exercise to come up with the right slogan.
Consider What Makes Your Brand Special
Before you can start to create a slogan, you have to think about what your business is offering the world. A few things to ask include:
What are you selling, and why does it matter?
What values is your company built on?
What do you stand for?
What change do you bring to your customers?
What change are you trying to bring the world?
A few places you can look for inspiration include your:
brand assets like infographics, webinars, or e-books.
Determine Your Goals
When it comes to marketing efforts, you should always start with your sales goals. What are you trying to accomplish? What are your plans for the future, and how do you get there?
It’s easy to get off track here if you don’t stay focused. Don’t just focus on the number of sales you want to make; think about how you want customers to feel about your brand and what solution you really deliver.
Consider this—Goodyear sells tires, right? However, when consumers buy tires, they aren’t concerned with what type of rubber or the years of research the company put into developing the proper tread. Consumers want tires that will keep their families safe; that’s the real purpose of the brand.
Keep your guiding documents at the forefront and let them drive your journey toward your slogan. It’s critical to stay on-brand as you are creating your slogan.
Think about what you need this slogan to do for your brand:
What do you want people to know about your brand?
What products or services should be the focus?
What values and visions do you want to communicate?
What solution does your company really deliver?
Let those answers guide you to the right business slogan.
Start Writing
Whether you decide to hire an outsourced marketing consultant or keep it in-house and write it for yourself, the first step is to start developing ideas.
Just start writing. How many ideas can you come up with?
Write them all down. Don’t limit yourself or do any editing yet. Now is the time to just let the ideas flow. Let one idea inspire another. Dare to be a little off the wall. Don’t stop until you run out of ideas.
When you start petering out, start thinking about your brand name and try out some of the ideas after it. How do they sound together?
Imagine a radio or television commercial. Describe your services or products and think about how those slogan ideas sound at the end of that description.
As you test the slogans out loud, you may start developing more ideas. Write them down! Don’t stop to edit. Just keep adding to the list.
Dare to Be Original
It may be tempting to go out and listen to other slogans, but you probably already have enough of those rolling around in your head.
We hear so many slogans that our brains are already primed to know what sounds good and what doesn’t.
Listening or reading a bunch of slogans while creating your own could do two things detrimental to the process:
They could cause you to accidentally steal the structure or concepts of other slogans you love. You definitely don’t want to sound like everyone else.
Getting into the competition mode can stifle your creativity. As you read others’ slogans, especially ones you consider successful, you might start to judge your ideas. Great ideas develop organically on their own; don’t let competition stifle them.
Make It Timeless
Slogans need to stand the test of time. You want people to associate your brand name with your slogan, which means it has to stick around for a long time so they can hear it many times.
This means avoiding anything too contemporary or trendy. Some things to avoid could include:
playing off a popular series or song title
building off a political campaign slogan
reflecting a current pop culture reference
using “new” slang
To create a timeless slogan, use words and phrases that are universally understood, at least by most speakers of your language.
Try to keep it shorter and avoid any complex phrases or words.
Keep it simple, and a bit straightforward, to help make sure it stands the test of time.
Appeal to Your Audience
As with everything in marketing, you need to consider your target market when you’re putting together a slogan.
How do they talk? Are you using language and syntax that is natural to your audience?
If your target market uses a certain register of English, you can lean into using that style of language. Remember what we talked about above, though.
You don’t need to stylize your slogan to match a certain trendy or slangy way of talking, but you can ensure you use language your target market can relate to.
Another aspect to keep in mind as you shape your slogan is what is important to your target audience. What do they want from your brand, or your competition? What’s important to them?
Think about what they are actually getting from your brand, but dig a little deeper. What are their aspirations? What do they envision their life to be with your brand?
Speak to those needs, rather than just your benefits.
Pare Down Your Ideas
Time to start paring down your ideas. Don’t be afraid to be a bit brutal. It can be hard to nix your favorites, but use the ideas above to weed out slogans that don’t work.
Which ones are too trendy or contemporary? Let them go.
Which ones are too much about your brand, and not enough about your target audience? Take them out.
How’s your list looking now? Do you still have too many ideas? If your list is still too long, here are a few more filters to take out the ones that won’t work as well.
Which ones are too long?
Which ones aren’t very memorable?
Which ones sound too much like someone else’s?
Which ones do you just not love?
Pare them down to a few that will really work. It’s okay to still have a few great ones. How do you decide what to do next? Let’s look at the last step.
A/B Test Your Top Ideas
Do you still have two ideas left to consider? If you aren’t sure which is “the one,” it’s time for an A/B test.
How do you do that? Start by asking friends, colleagues, or business associates. You might also consider using a focus group.
Whichever path you choose, make sure you present each slogan in the same format. For example:
Create a branded logo with each of your slogan ideas.
Design a newsletter header with each slogan idea.
Record a demo commercial with the slogan ideas at the end.
Now share with your audience. Which one do they respond best to? Is there a clear winner?
If not, consider the feedback they share. Think about the criteria listed above. Did one not appeal to them? Was one not as timeless? Or was it too confusing? Keep in mind that simple is usually best. You can also use A/B testing in paid ads to see which slogan draws in the most traffic or sales.
Best Business Slogan Examples
Let’s get down to the specifics and look at some slogans that work and analyze why they are so effective.
McDonald’s Slogan
Bah, bah, bah, bah, bum. You’re already singing it.
The “I’m lovin’ it” slogan from McDonald’s comes with its own little jingle, but that’s not the only thing that makes it work. It’s simple, it’s memorable, and it’s aspirational. It speaks to a happy life full of things you love.
Burger King
For decades, Burger King touted a brand that let you live life on your terms. The “Have It Your Way” slogan accomplished speaks about their products and about a greater vision in life. You can have your burger your way, and just maybe, you can have life your way, too.
In-N-Out Slogan
Sometimes simple is best. The In-N-Out slogan is an example of a timeless, simple slogan that speaks directly to what its customers want.
FAQs About Slogans
What makes a good slogan?
It’s short, memorable, and speaks to the target audience. Ideally, it should be timeless so it can be used for years to come.
What is a slogan example?
McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle is an example of a catchy slogan.
What are good slogans?
Burger King’s “Have It Your Way” stood the test of time, by speaking to the burgers and an aspiration. In-N-Out’s “Quality You Can Taste” slogan is simple and holds up over time.
How do you create the perfect business slogan?
Start with your own business goals in mind, then think about your target audience and what’s important to them.
Creating a Catchy Slogan Conclusion
When it comes to setting yourself apart in the market, branding is crucial. From your visuals to your voice, every component needs to speak to a common goal of who you are and what you’re about.
More importantly, they need to speak to what your target market is looking for. Your slogan is another piece in this puzzle, giving your marketing collateral and campaign another element to work with. Get creative, but stay on course, and create the perfect business slogan for your brand.
LinkedIn is a perennially underrated social media platform. It’s not always easy to quantify how effective you are on the platform though. Enter LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index.
This handy metric tells you exactly how effective you are as a social seller while highlighting how you can improve. In this article, I’ll cover everything you need to know about the tool, how to use it properly, and how to improve your score.
What Is LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index?
Launched in 2014, LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) measures how effective you are at social selling on the platform.
LinkedIn uses four factors to calculate your SSI:
establishing a personal brand
finding the right people
engaging with insights
building relationships
Each factor is worth 25 points. Complete them all, and you’ll get a perfect score.
There are several reasons to aim for a high Social Selling Index. For starters, a high score increases your reach on the platform. Even if the LinkedIn algorithm doesn’t directly take your SSI into account when determining the reach of posts, all of the individual factors that go into calculating your SSI help you reach a wider audience.
LinkedIn provides data to back up some of these claims. According to their Social Selling Index page, leading social sellers create 45 percent more opportunities than lower social sellers and are 51 percent more likely to reach quota. In addition, 78 percent of them outsell peers who don’t use social media.
How to Find Your LinkedIn SSI Score
It’s simple to find your SSI on LinkedIn. If you’re already logged into LinkedIn, follow the link below to see your score.
You can also access your SSI through Sales Navigator by navigating to Admin and clicking User Reporting.
Key dashboard information to pay attention to includes:
your SSI score
the score for each of the four components
how your SSI compares to your industry
how it compares to your network
We’ll discuss what each of these metrics means in detail next.
LinkedIn Social Selling Index Metrics
As I mentioned above, LinkedIn uses four factors to calculate Social Selling Index: establishing a personal brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships.
But what do each of those metrics actually mean?
Here’s what you need to know.
Establishing a Personal Brand
For this metric, LinkedIn looks at how complete your profile is and the quality of the content you post on the platform. Do you have a cover photo, a complete job history, and recommendations? How many posts are you creating, and how many views and comments are those posts receiving?
Finding the Right People
This metric is heavily focused on Sales Navigator, making it tricky for free users to get a good score. LinkedIn wants you to use its tools to find the right people, reach out to them successfully, and create systems and automation to make the process smoother.
Engaging With Insights
Are you sharing popular content? If not, then you probably won’t score too highly in this metric. The more content you share and the more views, likes, and comments it receives, the better you’ll score.
BuildingRelationships
The final metric is all about network management. It’s a measure of how often and successfully you reach out to people.
How to Use LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index
Exactly how useful is LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index beyond being a vanity metric? It’s a fair question.
Some people, like Andrew O’Hearn, don’t see much value in the tool. He believes SSI is a way for LinkedIn to push Sales Navigator.
Do we really want to reinforce the ‘keyboard commando’ proclivities of some LinkedIn users who don’t often test their online assumptions in the real (face-to-face) business-related networking communities?
I think there are quite a few things you can do with SSI, however. Here are a few reasons to pay attention to LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index.
Measure Your Personal Brand
Checking your SSI is a great way to understand the strength of your personal brand and take actionable steps to improve it. After all, what gets measured gets managed, and you may not realize just how far you are behind your peers until it’s pointed out.
Because every improvement results in an increased score, SSI also provides a way to gamify the process, making you much more likely to actually do it.
Identify Areas for Improvement
You may think you’re slaying LinkedIn, but perhaps you’re not making enough new connections or posting enough valuable content. Either way, your SSI can easily highlight areas to improve.
Use It as a Benchmark
Perhaps the best use for your SSI is as a benchmarking tool. The tool automatically compares your profile to other people in your industry and your network, so a quick glance will show you where you currently stand.
You can also use your personal score to track improvements and growth as a social seller. This is exactly what Microsoft did with their sales reps. When they first onboarded users onto Sales Navigator, their median SSI was 48. After a few months of training and activity, their average SSI score increased to 56.
The impact of that increase was telling. Those with higher SSIs saw a 37-percent increase in opportunities, and every 10-point increase saw 4.3 more opportunities.
How to Improve Your SSI
It doesn’t matter what your SSI score is, there’s bound to be something you can do to improve it. Below I’ve listed five of the best strategies to improve your SSI and increase your effectiveness on the platform.
Fill out Your LinkedIn Profile Completely
The first and easiest thing you should do to improve your Social Selling Index is to completely fill out your profile. There’s a lot to do here, so here are some jumping off points to get you started.
add a profile picture
fill out your job title
add a helpful, keyword-rich summary
add your education and skills
request recommendations from colleagues and clients
add examples of your work in the featured section
You’ll be amazed at how much your SSI score can jump just by filling out your profile properly. Be careful, though. You don’t want to include so much information that your profile becomes unreadable.
Whenever you are adding information to your profile, always ask yourself whether people would find it useful.
Connect With the Right People on LinkedIn
You need a big network to succeed on LinkedIn. Remember, while quantity is important, so is its quality. That means you shouldn’t send invites to random people. Instead, you take the time to find the right people.
That means people who:
you know personally
are thought leaders in your sector
work in your sector generally
are people you buy from or sell to
The more cohesion in your network, the stronger it will be.
Use LinkedIn’s advanced search functionality to find the right people to connect with. Some of the features are only available for premium accounts, but even free users can leverage filters to find relevant people to connect with and improve their SSI.
You can also find related connections under “My Network” > “People you may know.”
Post Quality Content Targeted for LinkedIn Users
One of the easiest ways to improve your SSI categories is to post quality content. This will improve your personal brand, build relationships, and engage with other users.
Quality content can come in the form of LinkedIn posts, or you can try more advanced tactics.
Engage With Your Network and Beyond
Having a big network is important, but so is engaging with them. You need to be in regular contact with a good chunk of your network to show the algorithm you’re committed to building long-term relationships.
Don’t just spam a load of people with connection requests. Aim high and start to follow thought leaders in your industry. Engage with their content thoughtfully and try to strike up a conversation. Make sure you’re responding to everyone who comments on your posts, too.
Conversations are becoming more important than ever on the platform. LinkedIn reports a 43 percent year-over-year growth in conversations during Q3 of 2021. The more engaged you are, the higher your SSI score will be, and the more conversations you’ll end up having.
Use Sales Navigator
One of the reasons LinkedIn pushes the SSI is to encourage adoption of Sales Navigator. In fact, it’s impossible to get close to 100 without using the paid-for subscription. If you already are a Sales Navigator user, you’ll want to leverage as many of the tools’ functions as possible.
In particular, use the saved search feature to automate finding relevant people to connect with.
Social Selling Index FAQs
What is a good LinkedIn SSI score?
A good LinkedIn SSI score is 70+. Between 40 and 70 can be considered okay, while under 40 is poor.
A good SSI score can help boost your influence on the platform and make sure you are doing all the things you need to do to become a good social seller.
How often will my SSI update?
LinkedIn updates the Social Selling Index once a day.
How is the Social Selling Index calculated?
LinkedIn uses four categories to calculate Social Selling Index: establishing a personal brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships. Each category is worth 25 points.
Social Selling Index Conclusion
LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index shows how effectively you’re using the platform. Given the importance of social selling in many B2B industries, that kind of insight is crucial. It’s also a way to see how you compare to your industry rivals and find areas for improvement.
With a little more time spent crafting your profile, growing your network, and engaging with peers on the platform, you can send your SSI soaring. That can mean substantially more leads and sales. So, get out there and start making LinkedIn work harder for you.
Customer satisfaction is crucial to the success of your business. No matter how innovative your product or competitive your pricing, if your customers are ultimately unhappy, they’re not going to stick around.
As such, it’s no surprise 45.9 percent of businesses surveyed in 2020 named customer experience as their number one priority over the next five years:
What exactly do we mean by “customer satisfaction?” Why is it so important, and what can you do to improve it? Read on to find out.
What Is Customer Satisfaction?
Customer satisfaction is a measure of how people feel when interacting with your brand. It can be influenced by any number of factors, such as:
perceived product quality
perceived product value
convenience
customer expectations
communication
complaint handling
Every brand, no matter how successful, wants to improve customer satisfaction. To do that, they need to define two things:
who their customers are
what it takes to satisfy them
Part one isn’t as simple as it sounds. Let’s take the example of a hospital. It might have two distinct customer bases:
the patients it treats
the insurance companies it sells patient data to
Clearly, those two audiences have very different goals, and keeping them happy requires two vastly different approaches. To make matters even more complicated, satisfying one audience may sometimes be detrimental to the other’s happiness.
4 Benefits of Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is more than just a “nice to have.” Getting it right has specific, tangible benefits, including:
1. Increase Brand Loyalty
Never take your customers for granted.
According to PwC, 59 percent of U.S. consumers who love a product or brand would ditch it after several poor experiences. More concerningly, almost one in five would do so after a single bad experience.
On the flip side, if you do everything in your power to keep customers happy, it stands to reason they’ll be more likely to stick around for the long term.
2. Boost Trust
According to Edelman, 81 percent of consumers say brand trust is a deal-breaker or a deciding factor in their purchase decisions.
Yet trust is pretty thin on the ground, with just 34 percent of consumers saying they trust most of the brands they use or buy from.
How do you make your brand more trustworthy? One way is to improve satisfaction. According to a study from Eastern University Sri Lanka, customer satisfaction logically precedes customer trust; those two things rarely exist in isolation.
To give just one example, 87 percent of consumers read online reviews for local businesses in 2020, up from 81 percent in 2019.
Unfortunately, consumers are significantly more likely to share negative reviews than they are positive ones. According to American Express, U.S. consumers tell an average of 15 people about bad experiences, whereas they only share good experiences with 11 people.
In other words, it’s a numbers game. You know consumers are naturally less inclined to shout about the good stuff you do, but if your customer satisfaction is high, you’re well placed to reap the benefits of word-of-mouth marketing.
4. Grow Your Audience and Sales
We already know satisfied customers are more likely to tell their friends and family about your brand, which in turn gets you in front of a wider audience.
However, did you know those satisfied customers will also spend more?
According to the same American Express survey referenced above, U.S. consumers are prepared to spend 17 percent more if a brand delivers excellent service.
What’s more, 84 percent of companies that improve customer experience report an upturn in revenue.
How to Measure Customer Satisfaction
It’s not enough to simply hope your customer satisfaction will improve. You need concrete plans to drive it forward, backed by robust data. To do this, you need to gather customer feedback through polls, surveys, and feedback sessions. Here are three types of feedback to collect to help you measure customer satisfaction and examples of questions to ask.
1. Overall Satisfaction
It can be helpful to gauge a customer’s general opinion of your product or service before drilling down into the specifics. Positive answers indicate they are happy with their purchase decision, while negative ones suggest they have some degree of buyer remorse.
Example question: Overall, how satisfied are you with [Product X]?
2. Repurchase Intent
Given the close ties between customer satisfaction and loyalty, it makes sense to use a customer’s repeat purchasing plans to measure their general happiness. Consumers who say they are likely to buy again may also be more likely to leave positive reviews or share their experience with friends and family.
Example question: Will you shop at [Company X] again in the next month?
3. Word of Mouth
NPS customer satisfaction surveys are centered on a single question about whether or not the customer would recommend a given brand or product. This sort of feedback allows companies to understand whether the user’s experience aligns with their expectations.
Example question: Would you recommend [Company X] to your family and friends?
3 Steps to Improve Customer Satisfaction
Data is the key to improving customer satisfaction.
However, data alone can’t transform your customers from unhappy to loyal. You have to focus on gathering data effectively, then use those insights to take action. Follow these three steps to make it happen:
1. Conduct Customer Surveys
Surveys play a key part in your quest to improve customer satisfaction, so the feedback you generate must be useful.
Unfortunately, there are no guarantees. Even if your survey is perfect, customers don’t always tell the truth about how they feel. What’s more, they might make mistakes when completing your survey. In either case, you’re not getting a true picture of customer satisfaction.
However, there are some proactive steps you can take to generate more impactful feedback.
Concentrate on keeping your survey as short as possible to capture more responses. Research from SurveyMonkey shows completion rates drop off when surveys contain more questions:
Surveys containing ten questions have an average completion rate of 89 percent, dropping to 79 percent for 40-question surveys. It may not sound like much, but it means if you’re surveying 1,000 customers, you’ll get 100 more responses from the 10-question version.
In other words, if a question doesn’t have the potential to yield unique insights, it shouldn’t be in your survey.
Also, it pays to remember the purpose of polls and surveys isn’t to “cook the books.” You’re not trying to earn artificially high scores by confusing or manipulating respondents.
Instead, you’re trying to get an accurate picture of what customers actually think about your brand. Avoid leading or loaded questions, which attempt to steer people toward a certain answer. For instance:
Bad question: Thousands of customers have left five-star reviews for [Product X]. Would you do the same?
Good question: How likely are you to recommend [Product X] to a friend?
2. Monitor Social Media Mentions
Customer surveys will only get you so far, because they only gather opinions from the types of people who are happy to fill in surveys—which might exclude a huge chunk of your audience.
For a more accurate view of customer satisfaction, keep a close eye on social media, too. Tools like Linkfluence and Mention help monitor brand mentions and conversations relevant to your company and product. They even use machine learning to assess the sentiment of those mentions.
This gives you access to a broader customer pool than potential survey respondents and ensures you’re on hand to help customers when they need it.
3. Implement Constructive Feedback
Once you’ve gathered a bunch of feedback, it’s time to take action.
One of the biggest challenges is to identify an effective, repeatable way to prioritize those actions. After all, it’s unlikely every customer wants the same thing. Some might be asking for faster shipping; others might want a slicker checkout experience.
Transparency is key. Most consumers are pretty reasonable, and they understand you have finite resources. Make it clear you’ve heard their feedback and, if the demand exists, you’ll work on a fix.
LEGO has come up with an ingenious way to do this. It created a dedicated site, LEGO Ideas, where brick-building fans can submit product ideas. If an idea gathers 10,000 votes from the community, it’ll be considered for production.
3 Customer Satisfaction Examples
Looking for inspiration to level up your customer satisfaction? Check out these three examples of brands that are rocking it:
1. IBM
Tech giant IBM was named the number one company for customer satisfaction in the latest Drucker Institute Company Ranking. Its success stems from its customer-centric approach to software development, which involves making decisions based on the goals and ambitions of end-users, not just how they use a specific tool.
Speaking to Harvard Business Review, IBM’s VP of Platform Experience Charlie Hill explained: “We want to bring our design thinking muscles to explore and play with how the user’s experience could be better in the future.”
Key Takeaway
Put your customer first. Whether you’re selling a piece of software or a pair of shoes, think about what problems brought them to you in the first place, and what success looks like to them.
2. Chick-fil-A
Ranked top of the American Customer Satisfaction Index across all industries, Chick-fil-A stands out thanks to its superb in-restaurant customer service. Its staff is regularly named the friendliest of drive-through brands, and they also outshine the competition on order accuracy.
This is no easy feat when it’s up against huge global names like KFC, McDonald’s, and Starbucks.
Key Takeaway
Invest in your people. Whether they’re dealing with shoppers in-store or helping them online, their professionalism and courtesy have a huge impact on your customer satisfaction rating.
3. Trader Joe’s
Grocery chain Trader Joe’s has an NPS score of 62. For context, the average score in the grocery niche is 24. The brand stands out by truly going the extra mile for its customers. In one famous example, a Reddit user told how the chain broke its “no deliveries” policy to help out an 89-year-old who was snowed in during the holidays. The comments on that viral post are littered with other Redditors recounting their own experiences of receiving superb service from Trader Joe’s.
Key Takeaway
Give your team members a degree of autonomy to delight customers. It should be quick and easy for them to get signoff on the sorts of small, spontaneous acts of kindness that can make the biggest difference to consumers.
Customer Satisfaction FAQs
What does customer satisfaction mean?
This is how you measure your customers’ experience to see if it meets or falls short of their expectations.
Why is customer satisfaction important?
Growing companies are more likely to prioritize customer success than companies that don’t have a growth mindset.
What are the benefits of high customer satisfaction?
Customers trust recommendations from others and look at reviews before deciding to convert with a business. High satisfaction means a customers is more likely to recommend your business and leave a positive review.
How does customer satisfaction help branding?
High customer satisfaction can increase brand loyalty and trust.
How do you improve customer satisfaction?
To satisfy your customers, you need to understand what they want. Collect data through surveys, polls, and feedback sessions, and monitor brand mentions through social media.
What happens if customers are not satisfied?
Unhappy customers are unlikely to keep buying from your brand. What’s more, they’re highly likely to tell people about negative customer experiences through reviews, social posts, and word of mouth, which can damage your reputation.
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Conclusion of Customer Satisfaction Guide
Customer satisfaction is crucial to your business, regardless of your product, industry, or niche. You must make it a priority. That’s true today, and will only increase in importance in the years to come.
Collect, analyze, and use data on customer satisfaction for every stage of your sales funnel, every interaction, and every product launch. Pick and choose your moment, of course, as no one wants to be inundated with surveys all the time, but no area is off-limits for selectively surveying and asking for feedback.
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