Marketing Day: Featured snippets, social media for your online store & neural networks

Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

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Featured snippets: How much do you really know about them? [QUIZ]

Think you're an expert on featured snippets? Then put your money where your mouth is and take this quiz, created by columnist Stephan Spencer!

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How local businesses can turn the threat of on-demand deliveries to their own advantage

On-demand delivery services are making local businesses nervous, but columnist Brian Smith explains why this new shift in consumer behavior should be seen as an opportunity to grow.

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Best Practices for Building an On-Demand Content Strategy

On August 17th, join us as Mark Bornstein, VP of Content Marketing at ON24, highlights the best practices for building an on-demand content strategy. He’ll explain how to build your on-demand content network, and increase the reach of your content to generate more leads and expand your sales...

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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The Lowdown on the Rise of Influencer Marketing [Infographic]

Influencer marketing can earn your brand $7.65 for every dollar spent, according to an infographic by Influencer Marketing Hub. This marketing strategy is taking off... Is it time for your brand to work with influencers? Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Three Keys to Best-in-Class Marketing Budgets

Budgets aren't sexy, but they are vital for high-performing marketing organizations. If you can master these three keys, you'll create a best-in-class marketing budget--and you'll be well on your way to marketing success. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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How to Build a Massive Instagram Following (Without Buying Them)

How to use the power of social media to better market your online store

Contributor Steve Olenski explains the benefits of employing social media tools and techniques to let potential customers get to know your brand.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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How to craft the perfect outreach subject line

On average, journalists receive between 200 and 300 emails a day from people pitching story ideas. Those emails come from diverse sources: marketing, PR, SEO agencies, and other news outlets. Yet how many of those emails are actually opened and read by journalists? How can you ensure that yours stands out from the crowd? I […]

The post How to craft the perfect outreach subject line appeared first on Builtvisible.

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Are neural networks the next marketing creatives?

Researchers at the UK’s University of Warwick have trained the system to recognize which urban or rural scenes are the most beautiful.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Boost the Relevance of Your Content with Benefits and Features

One cool thing about being a content marketer is that you tend to become an expert in your topic. You probably know an awful lot about your business, your project, or your subject matter.

In fact, you might actually know too much about it.

It’s called the curse of knowledge. Because we research our topics deeply and spend so much time writing about them, we tend to understand the technical specs inside and out. We have a great grasp of the under-the-hood details that make the thing work. And we think customers want to know all about those details.

But most of your potential buyers? They don’t care.

What have you done for me lately?

To be effective, marketing needs to show exactly what the offering does for the person buying it.

The features of your offer are what make it work. The benefits are the results it creates for the customer.

What transformation does your product or service empower? What does it allow the customer to become that she isn’t today?

Jimmy Choo high heels aren’t coveted because they’re comfortable or well-made. (Even though devotees believe they are.) Women buy them to feel confident and gorgeous.

Hybrid cars aren’t popular because they’re fuel-efficient, money-saving, or environmentally friendly. The real benefits are feeling virtuous and smart, with the warm, fuzzy glow that comes from believing you’re saving the world.

Your content and copy will never be truly relevant to your audience until you translate your features into customer-focused benefits.

The five-minute feature check

Quick, take a look through the last persuasive piece you wrote (blog post, sales page, podcast script) and take note of all of the features you talk about.

• The process
• Your qualifications
• The patented mechanism
• The policy
• The dimensions
• The speed
• The materials

Copy and paste them all into a fresh document. Then, after each feature, add the words:

so you can …

The final results will be phrases like:

• I have 10 years of experience helping clients exactly like you, so you can feel confident that together we can solve even your trickiest widget problems.
• Our course is the most rigorous on the market, so you can leapfrog ahead of your competitors.
• Our grape jam has 50% less sugar and no weird additives, so you can enjoy it guilt-free.

In about five minutes, you’ll uncover the weak spots in your persuasive content — the places where you were thinking about you and what you offer, and not about them and what they get out of it.

You might not use the words “so you can” over and over again in your final copy — but you will be writing with an understanding of your audience benefits.

Not all benefits are equal

The curse of knowledge can also lead you to focus too much on what some copywriters call fake benefits.

These are the benefits of your product or service that you think are important. And you might be absolutely right. They could be critical to delivering the results your audience wants.

The trouble is, the customer doesn’t particularly care.

These could be things like:

• Stabilizing blood chemistry levels
• Improving efficiency of project delivery and implementation
• Mastering the ability to write a college entrance essay

But that doesn’t tell us what the buyer gets to have, do, be, feel, or become by moving forward with this purchase.

What those customers might actually want could be to:

• Get slim without feeling hungry
• Pull off a great project and look like a hero to their boss
• Feel like brilliant parents because their teenager got into a great college

Features do matter

Features are the specific, convincing details that demonstrate why your solution is effective. As long as they’re tied directly to customer-focused benefits, your buyer will stay interested.

Here are some features that have been translated into benefits and presented as a set:

This nutritional program stabilizes your blood chemistry so you can finally lose weight … without getting hungry.

Our proven process makes you more efficient … and that makes you look like a hero when you deliver your next project in half the time and under budget.

This quick course teaches your teenager how to write a masterful college entrance essay … which could be the deciding factor in whether they get into their first-choice school.

Take another look at your five-minute benefit check. Any fake benefits in there?

Wants, not needs

You’ve got one more check to make before you call it good.

Are the benefits you’ve identified things your audience genuinely wants, or are they things you think they need?

Paying for things we need is boring. Spending money on things we want is a lot more fun. That’s why it’s easier to sell big-screen TVs than life insurance.

When you’re translating your features into benefits, make sure those benefits are driven by wants. Look for emotional drivers like pleasure, comfort, status, and self-image. You can also seek to put a stop to pain, either physical or emotional.

It’s not only hedonistic emotions that can drive behavior — values like patriotism, justice, and fairness can play powerful roles with the right audience. It’s still a pretty good idea, though, to pair them with a little self-interested hedonism if you can. Fair-trade coffee wouldn’t sell nearly as well if those arabica beans didn’t taste so good.

We like to think that logical drivers like efficiency, physical health, preventing future problems, and scientific evidence influence our decisions, but, they typically don’t have much impact. But those “rational” benefits are helpful when they’re used to justify an emotional decision that’s already been made.

The customer who already wants the beautiful high-heeled shoes tells herself that Jimmy Choos will last longer and feel better than a cheaper brand.

The customer who already wants to feel enlightened and virtuous tells himself that the fuel economy of the Prius clearly makes it a sensible choice.

Marketing vs. manipulation

There’s an important difference between putting your best foot forward and crossing the line into manipulation.

The key lies in making two promises:

1. Don’t say things that aren’t true.
2. Don’t omit significant things that are true.

The impression you create with your marketing needs to be realistic and truthful. If it isn’t, you’re a con artist and a creep — and your audience will rightly shun you when they figure that out.

If you liked this Quick Copy Tip, click here to read other posts in the series.

The post Boost the Relevance of Your Content with Benefits and Features appeared first on Copyblogger.

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6 Strategies To Boost Ad Revenue For New Publishers

One of the most profitable modes of income for the online publishers today is the revenues from the ads that they feature on their sites. The publisher-brand bonding is becoming stronger by the day as more and more marketers are queuing up for securing an ad space on the publisher’s website. Publishers are now [...]

The post 6 Strategies To Boost Ad Revenue For New Publishers appeared first on Search Engine People Blog.

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How to Set Up Facebook Messenger Ads

Do you want to reach more customers and prospects using Facebook Messenger? Have you tried Messenger ads? Messenger ads display inside the Messenger app on the home tab, increasing the likelihood people will interact with your business. In this article, you’ll discover how to set up a Messenger ad. What Are Messenger Home Ads? Unlike [...]

This post How to Set Up Facebook Messenger Ads first appeared on .
- Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

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Report: Customer satisfaction with search drops, in social Google+ beats Facebook

ACSI rankings are based on survey of nearly 5,000 US consumers.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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#SocialSkim: LinkedIn's New Website Demographics, WhatsApp's Business Chat: 10 Stories This Week

This week: LinkedIn's powerful new website-visitor insights tool; WhatsApp's rumored business chat app and new milestone against Snapchat; Facebook's new Groups for Pages; an indispensable social media cheat sheet; and much more! Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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#SocialSkim: LinkedIn's New Website Demographics, WhatsApp's Business Chat: 10 Stories This Week

This week: LinkedIn's powerful new website-visitor insights tool; WhatsApp's rumored business chat app and new milestone against Snapchat; Facebook's new Groups for Pages; an indispensable social media cheat sheet; and much more! Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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#SocialSkim: LinkedIn's New Website Demographics, WhatsApp's Business Chat: 10 Stories This Week

This week: LinkedIn's powerful new website-visitor insights tool; WhatsApp's rumored business chat app and new milestone against Snapchat; Facebook's new Groups for Pages; an indispensable social media cheat sheet; and much more! Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Facebook Growth, Amazon Spark, and LinkedIn Web Demographics

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Social Media Marketing Talk Show, a news show for marketers who want to stay on the leading edge of social media. On this week’s Social Media Marketing Talk Show with Michael Stelzner, we explore Facebook’s latest growth with Mari Smith; Amazon’s social network, Spark, with Jeff Sieh; LinkedIn’s [...]

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Martech and ad tech: Challenges and opportunities

What's ahead for ad tech in the larger martech environment? Columnist Jim Yu lays out the difficulties, as well as the potential rewards.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Marketing Day: Twitter subscription ads, Adobe Target update & Segment tools

Here’s our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Source Marketing Land - Internet Marketing News, Strategies & Tips http://ift.tt/2uKel8E

LEGO logic rocks marketing automation

Overwhelmed by the big picture when tackling marketing automation? Contributor Mary Wallace explains how a popular toy has inspired a useful way of thinking about and deploying campaigns.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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How to tell whether a site is adaptive or responsive

Sometimes, it can be tricky to determine which mobile configuration a site is using. Thankfully, columnist Bryson Meunier shares several methods for discerning responsive and adaptive sites.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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The secret code of personal gain lurking in the Kardashians' Instagram comments

When a member of the Kardashian family posts on Instagram, the world pays attention. 

But, venture into the comments section, and you won't find countless declarations of admiration from devotees, you'll see endless streams of words that you might not be familiar with. 

Scroll through the comments on Kim, Khloe, Kourtney, Kylie or Kendall's Instagram posts, and you'll find a never-ending stream of"lb," "cb," "row," and "first" comments, punctuated occasionally by the odd "😍" or "🔥". So, what the hell do these words mean?

SEE ALSO: The Instagram 'pods' using likes to fight the new algorithm

These esoteric words are actually being used by Instagrammers to advertise themselves  via the popularity of the Kardashian family's posts in order to gain Instagram fame. The Instagram lexicon of personal gain, if you will.  Read more...

More about Instagram, Kylie Jenner, Social Media, Kardashians, and Kendall Jenner

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The Only Checklist You Need for Really Good Email Design [Infographic]

Use this checklist to make sure the copy, imagery, layout, and coding of your emails all help your email campaigns succeed. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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How to Use Predictive Analytics to Engage Customers Throughout Their Journey

From raising awareness, to educating prospects, to completing the transaction, to enhancing customer service and beyond, predictive analytics can help you anticipate customers' needs and desires throughout their circuitous buying journey. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

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Protecting your brand’s ads on Facebook — because there IS such a thing as bad publicity

Concerned about where your Facebook ads are appearing? Columnist Laura Collins discusses the issues surrounding brand safety on Facebook, along with some tips for organizations looking to protect themselves.

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