Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Brand Bias: Does Branding Matter For Driving Sales in B2B? Here’s What The Data Says

Something every woman should know - WHY MEN LIE!

The marketing world loves to talk about branding.

Take a look at just about any marketing company in the world, and you’ll find the word “brand” on at least one page.

Startups and small companies frequently look for ways to get mentions online so they can start building their brands.

And big companies often preach branding, too.

You’ll see blog posts on “improving your brand” or something similar.

And you’ll often read news stories about how a particular brand is “valued” at a certain figure.

A recent example of this would be the digital communication giant Slack. Some have recently valued Slack as a $5 billion brand.

But when you get down to the brass tacks, does branding really have anything to do with, well, anything?

More specifically, does a brand actually correlate to sales, especially for B2B players?

This is a question that companies all over the world are discussing that needs an answer.

I want to show you what the data says about branding, sales, and how it affects you.

To get started, you first have to understand how brand loyalty and value have changed.

Then, I’ll show you ways to dig deeper into each.

The basics of brand bias

Branding is, in effect, a method of creating an image around your company, product, or service.

You’re probably familiar with many multi-billion dollar brands that have anchored themselves in your life.

You do everything you can to establish your brand, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

But is there data to back up this information?

And if so, what elements of branding are the most important to consider for B2B players who want to wisely join the trend?

Branding is considered conventional wisdom so these questions are often taken for granted.

I think that trend should change, so I’ve compiled a list of some of the vital elements of branding. This will help us determine whether you actually can prove ROI with them.

But before we get to those, you have to know a bit about the details of brand bias.

You’ll also hear marketers call it brand loyalty. The terms are pretty much synonymous.

Brand loyalty goes way back in our history.

history of brand loyalty

Without a doubt, you could ask your grandparents about the brands they were loyal to in their youth, and they could give you an extensive list with ease.

These relationships had the staying power many companies only dream about today.

But how has brand loyalty progressed to modern times?

Despite claims that brand loyalty is dead, the truth is that the bias is still overpowering in B2C arenas. In fact, 82% of adults in the US claim loyalty to a product brand.

And the translation to B2B here is only natural.

Those same brand-loyal people are likely to be amongst the decision-makers of your clientele in the B2B world.

They want to find a brand to be loyal to. It’s a mental shorthand that looks to make decisions easier and faster.

So the biggest overall change in loyalty isn’t that it’s dying. It’s that buyers are in the driver’s seat instead of brands. They now have the power to research brands carefully.

digitization and internet have put consumers in the drivers seat

But while the information available to your clients has grown, most industries show a relatively slow rate of growth in revenue compared to the astronomical rise of website traffic.

This trend might be eerily familiar to you. It’s likely that you’re seeing indications that the clients you’re trying to win are probing your brand and going elsewhere.

And you can bet that your target audience is doing extensive research on your brand before coming to a decision.

how many days consumers spend gathering information

So at the very least, it’s clear that loyalty has changed.

And this makes sense. When you change your customer’s reality, you have to change the marketing reality with it.

new marketing reality

The traditional brand elements like name recognition and being “top of mind” don’t pack the same punch anymore.

The result is that we need to turn more toward metrics like sales, ROI, and conversions to find an accurate measure of brand bias.

So let’s address this issue of “brand value.”

What does that mean?

This is another concept that people worldwide throw around, but the lines have become hazy.

brand strength index

As you would expect, because of the evolution we’ve seen in brand bias, there is an ongoing discussion of whether brand value is a monetary assessment of the company or a softer assessment of value delivered to your audience.

The former approach treats all marketing efforts as “branding” and calculates ROI based on this value.

Thus, a simple revenue-to-cost analysis provides ROI.

And unfortunately, the later causes many businesses to ignore their brand value altogether because it makes value hard to measure and puts it in a constant state of change.

The overriding principle that both tend to miss, however, is that a strong brand or “high brand value” can solve many common problems before they occur.

Therefore, linking brand value to ROI is a matter of showing a causal relationship between strong branding and the elimination of issues that can impact sales.

This requires us to look at the hard measurements that data gives us and tap into what we know of human behavior.

So now that you see the dilemma that faces marketers seeking to prove branding ROI, let’s take a look at how various sales-related data points link back to branding.

We’ll start, of course, with your biggest client.

Your brand may be the only thing keeping your biggest client

This is a pretty frightening claim, and you should be a little scared of it if you’re a B2B company.

Recently, Gallup found that 71% of B2B customers are actively considering taking their business to a different company.

b2b customers at risk of taking their business elsewhere gallup poll

That’s a staggering statistic.

But how could that be?

B2B companies should be best equipped to meet their audience’s needs, which makes a statistic like this seem out of place.

But think about the reality of the situation.

B2B companies frequently make enormous promises to their clients.

Even if they’re equipped to follow through, they set the bar high from the beginning.

And your problems compound when you remember the fact that bigger client companies have greater bargaining power.

You begin to ask, “what happens if we delay one deadline?” Suddenly, money starts to tighten in negotiations.

Tack on the ever-looming fact that poor economic growth mixed with other factors can slow success and force brands to adjust post-contract, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Even more pessimistically, only about half of B2B customers believe their vendor is delivering on their promises or feel proud to associate with that brand.

b2b customer vendor survey

Those are pretty dismal numbers when you think about it.

And this is given greater context by the fact that 81% of consumers are satisfied with the service of B2C companies.

What are B2B companies missing?

For one, B2B companies have been slow to respond from the traditional PR-dominated branding to a now marketing-dominated branding.

The best practice used to be leaving your image in the hands of your PR team.

But with the rise in consumer research we talked about earlier, this trend is now damaging companies that are still opting for the old school.

The room for growth is astronomical, and B2B companies that fail to focus on their brand and market it effectively are essentially neglecting their future and their clients.

Your name, reputation, or brand could be the only factors preventing your clientele from leaving you.

Or worse, it could be what’s driving them to look for other options.

Brand loyalty improves engagement and customer acquisition

One of the biggest data points that links branding to B2B sales is customer acquisition.

If it’s possible to use your brand as a tool to help you gain clients, then it’s a logical conclusion that focusing on your brand can improve your marketing ROI.

And from the data I’ve compiled, there’s a compelling case that branding can indeed help improve customer acquisition.

Let’s start with the bad news.

Engagement levels for B2B customers are abysmal according to Gallup, coming in at only 29%.

b2b customers who are fully engaged

This might be a curious statistic to start off with, but there’s good reason for it.

The main reason I share this fact is because fully-engaged customers share more and are better brand advocates.

In other words, brand bias and customer engagement are directly correlated.

And it’s a basic marketing principle that loyal customers refer business.

loyalty and referrals

More than half of consumers who have a good experience with a brand will recommend it to people that they know.

And many of those referrals turn into loyal customers themselves.

So, that 29% of engaged B2B clients isn’t making a very big ripple when it comes to referral business.

When you consider that the remaining 71% of your clients could be referring you and aren’t, you start to see how important these numbers are.

And this picture gets a little grimmer when you take into account that two-thirds of touchpoints when a client is actively considering to do business with you come in the form of word-of-mouth or online reviews.

touchpoint during evaluation phase

That means your leads, audience, and potential clients are neglecting your trained sales team to see what others have to say about your brand.

And in 2016, 62% of B2B buyers were relying more on peer recommendations than on their own research.

In the technology industry alone, 60% of buyers look for peer-to-peer reviews to aid their decision-making process.

And the majority of your clients don’t care enough to share simply because they aren’t engaged with your brand.

Imagine what could happen if you increase your customer engagement.

You’d see much more growth.

And this concept is backed by data too.

investing in relationships econsultancy survey

49% of B2B companies report higher ROI by investing in relationships instead of acquisition marketing.

That translates well based on all of the other data we’ve been looking at.

By improving their current level of engagement with existing customers, their ROI increases.

And that is branding – pure and simple.

Branding motivates action

There’s another question we want to answer:

Does content (and ultimately branding) truly push your digital audience to take actions that lead to sales?

First, I think it’s worth showing you how actions, content, and branding share an inherent relationship.

One way to look at branding is in relation to the actions that your leads, customers, or website visitors take.

These actions are ultimately intended to culminate in a sale.

Marketers usually call this entire action-oriented process the buyer’s journey.

buyers journey roadmap

And as you can see, the B2B buyer’s journey is fraught with complexity.

Branding gives definition to your buyer’s journey primarily through the content you create and share.

The general consensus among marketers is that content motivates action among your audience.

actionable content pyramid

By moving through this process of fixing pain points, offering value, building a relationship, and earning trust, your content is reportedly building your brand and promoting further action.

That means that the role of content marketing is social brand building.

So, by providing the right content, the strategy is to push leads to an action and create a custom buyer’s journey that increases sales.

That means that a logical place to start for a data-driven relationship is tracking the ROI of your content marketing efforts.

You’re in luck, then.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, you can not only track ROI, but you can also attribute ROI to the various phases of your sales funnel.

phases of buyers journey where b2b marketers measure content marketing ROI

This is helpful in a conversation about branding, as it lets you narrow in how effective certain parts of your campaign are at motivating action throughout the sales cycle.

That means that you have a direct window to how content affects your branding at every stage.

What’s more, the overall lean toward content marketing is very favorable.

77% of B2B marketers feel that their content marketing is successful.

how b2b marketers rate their success

That’s a pretty impressive cohort of marketing professionals who feel their content marketing is leading to actions.

And there’s a good amount of data to back up those feelings too.

Again according to the Content Marketing Institute, 75% of B2B companies can show that content marketing has increased engagement over time.

content marketing goals and metrics

More engagement combined with precise ROI tracking makes for a strong case in terms of the branding/content/action relationship.

And when you tack on the fact that 94% of B2B buyers are going to be researching you online, these statistics only look better.

By providing actionable, curated content, you can boost conversions in your sales funnel and ultimately increase your business’s sales.

Branding often negatively affects internal productivity

You don’t often hear about your employees in terms of branding and ROI, but there’s an abundance of data that suggests a correlation between your brand and the degree to which individual employees are profitable.

In a parallel move to marketers, HR professionals have started focusing on what they call employer branding.

employer branding process

This is a concerted effort by companies to not only portray themselves favorably to external forces but also to align themselves with an internal brand.

And when you consider that engaged employees are 21% more profitable than their peers with lesser engagement, you begin to understand why.

What’s more, that same Gallup poll found that sales professionals are 20% more productive when actively engaged in their company’s brand.

So the correlation here is clear as day.

But what are the factors driving employee engagement?

Without diving too deeply into HR, there is one main element called the employer value proposition, or EVP.

employer value proposition

EVP works much like a traditional branding campaign, but you’re focusing on your brand image in regard to current and future employees.

You want to appear credible, reliable, and attractive to your employees in the same way you would a client.

The more you think about this, the more it makes sense.

Employees are the frontline of customer experience and the final link between you and your clients.

In essence, they’re ambassadors for your brand.

If they don’t buy in, sales will suffer no matter how strong or weak your digital presence is.

Not only that, but a transparent and consistent brand will attract top talent at a higher rate.

That means that your brand can start bringing in high-performing professionals who will boost sales even more.

So while old-school elements like employee alignment are still big, branding is taking center stage with employee engagement and productivity.

Emotionally-charged branding efforts boost profit

Finally, I want to discuss the emotional side of your B2B brand and how it relates to your overall sales performance.

Brand loyalty always caries emotion with it.

Thankfully, brand connection is usually positive.

But that doesn’t mean you can just gloss over this point.

Tapping into the raw emotion of your brand can be a good way to see improvements in your sales.

For example, 64% of consumers report that their relationship with a brand is tied to shared values.

stand for something helpscout

Values are, strictly speaking, not necessarily a metrics-based type of measurement.

Humans often determine their values based on how they feel about certain subjects.

Whether that value stirs up controversy or elicits much response, it’s simply part of a business’s branding.

And under the microscope, it becomes much clearer just how important emotions are to branding.

emotional ad campaigns

By understanding your audience and delivering an emotional message, the evidence suggests that you will ultimately amplify your sales.

So it follows that emotional campaigns are more successful than rational campaigns.

emotion is more effective than logic in advertising

Interestingly enough, emotional branding efforts are even more effective than a hybrid rational-emotional mix.

That’s why branding is so powerful.

It’s the emotional core of your business.

But there’s more to consider when it comes to building an emotional brand.

We can also see how even certain words and phrases you use in branding can evoke emotional responses that drive sales.

ecommerce copywriting

While all of these might not be applicable to your particular B2B niche, there’s an undeniable emotional draw in each of these words and phrases.

And as long as you don’t cheapen your brand, proper emotional wording can improve your conversions.

The overall goal of emotion in branding is to create brand immersion.

This, in turn, creates loyalty and boosts sales.

So, by providing an emotional connection and going beyond a bare-bones service, you can see incremental boosts in sales.

That seems like a pretty compelling reason on its own to emphasize branding for your company.

Hyper-focused branding can improve ROI

As we’ve learned more about what works in digital marketing, our methods have evolved to match our capabilities.

One of the more noteworthy evolutions is account-based marketing, or ABM.

This hyper-focused version of marketing allows brands to cater their message to individual businesses instead of a general audience.

As a B2B-specific tactic, it’s a battle-proven method that can help you leverage your brand as the solution to your audience of one.

account based marketing stat

Strikingly, almost all B2B businesses that have attempted ABM have had a higher ROI on their marketing efforts.

And more importantly to branding, those same businesses saw a significant benefit from focusing on expanding their existing client relationships through ABM.

arm provided significant benefits

By focusing on the relationship and boosting engagement, these brands are seeing a higher degree of revenue for their services.

Imagine what it could do to your business then, right?

And perhaps even more telling are these statistics from ITSMA:

What other methods could you use to increase your reputation, relationships, and revenue across the board?

I’m not aware of any others.

And all of this rises and falls on branding.

ABM is all about presenting all of what you do as a solution.

It’s just relationships and engagement.

Conclusion

The branding message can get old for B2B companies, but it’s not going away anytime soon.

You’ve seen the data, and you’ve hopefully read the signs.

Your brand could be your only lifeline, or it could be pushing your biggest clients out the door.

You largely determine which scenario is the case for you.

Overall, branding improves engagement and keeps your sales funnel full of potential customers.

By positioning yourself strategically throughout your buyer’s journey with actionable content, you encourage your leads to convert and take action.

Focusing on your internal brand can boost employee loyalty and sales significantly.

And creating an emotional, well-rounded brand can position you as a reliable source in your niche and improve your sales efforts.

Finally, using a hyper-focused method like account-based marketing can revolutionize your branding efforts and draw a direct line to increased revenue.

Across the board, branding serves an important purpose toward your bottom line.

In what ways have you noticed your brand making a difference in your sales?

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

Reverse Phone - People Search - Email Search - Public Records - Criminal Records. Best Data, Conversions, And Customer Suppor

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

A Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up and Growing Your YouTube Presence

Something every woman should know - WHY MEN LIE!

Posted by AnnSmarty

When was the last time you saw a video on YouTube? I bet you've seen one today. YouTube is too huge and too popular for marketers to ignore.

If you don't have a YouTube channel, now's the time to start one.

If you have a channel and you never got it off the ground, now's the time to take action.

This article will take you through the process of setting up your YouTube presence, listing steps, tools, and important tips to get you started and moving forward.

1. Define your goals

If your goal is to become a YouTube star, you might be a bit late to the party: it's really hard to get noticed these days — too competitive. Stardom will take years of hard work to achieve because of the number of channels users have to choose from.

Even back in 2014, when I was reading about YouTube celebrity bloggers, one quote really stood out to me:

“We think, if we were coming to YouTube today, it would be too hard. We couldn't do it.”

That’s not to say, however, that you cannot achieve other, more tangible goals on YouTube. It's an excellent venue for business owners and marketers.

Here are three achievable goals that make more sense than fame from a business perspective:

1.1. YouTube for reputation management

Here's one thing about reputation management on Google: You’re never finished.

Even if your reputation is fabulous and you love every single result that comes up in the SERPs for your business name, you may still want to publish more content around your brand.

The thing is, for reputation management purposes, the more navigational queries you can control, the better:

Reputation

YouTube is the perfect platform for reputation management. YouTube videos rank incredibly well in Google, especially when it comes to low-competition navigational queries that include your brand name.

Furthermore, YouTube videos almost always get that rich snippet treatment (meaning that Google shows the video thumbnail, author, and length of the video in the SERPs). This means you can more easily attract attention to your video search result.

That being said, think about putting videos on YouTube that:

  • Give your product/service overview
  • Show happy customers
  • Visualize customer feedback (for example, visual testimonials beautifully collected and displayed in a video)
  • Offer a glimpse inside your team (show people behind the brand, publish videos from events or conferences, etc.)

1.2 YouTube videos for improved conversions

Videos improve conversions for a clear reason: They offer a low-effort way for your customer to see why they need your product. Over the years, there have been numerous case studies proving the point:

  • An older study (dating back to 2011) states that customers are 144% more likely to add products to a shopping cart after watching the product video
  • Around 1 in 3 millennials state they have bought a product directly as a result of watching a how-to video on it
  • This Animoto survey found that almost all the participants (96%) considered videos "helpful when making purchasing decisions online"
  • Wistia found that visitors who engage with a video are much more likely to convert than those who don't

That being said, YouTube is a perfect platform to host your video product overviews: it's free, it offers the additional benefit of ranking well in Google, and it provides additional exposure to your products through their huge community, allowing people to discover your business via native search and suggested videos.

1.3 YouTube for creating alternative traffic and exposure channels

YouTube has huge marketing potential that businesses in most niches just cannot afford to ignore: it serves as a great discovery engine.

Imagine your video being suggested next after your competitor's product review. Imagine your competitors' customers stumbling across your video comparison when searching for an alternative service on Youtube.

Just being there increases your chances of getting found.

Again, it's not easy to reach the YouTube Top 10, but for specific low-competition queries it's quite doable.

Note: To be able to build traffic from inside your YouTube videos, you need to build up your channel to 10,000 public overall views to qualify to become a YouTube partner. Once approved, you'll be able to add clickable links to your site from within your videos using cards and actually build up your own site traffic via video views.

2. Develop a video editorial calendar

As with any type of content, video content requires a lot of brainstorming, organizing, and planning.

My regular routine when it comes to creating an editorial calendar is as follows:

  1. Start with keyword research
  2. Use question research to come up with more specific ideas
  3. Use seasonality to come up with timing for each piece of content
  4. Allocate sufficient time for production and promotion

You can read about my exact editorial process here. Here's a sample of my content roadmap laying out a major content asset for each month of the year, based on keyword research and seasonality:

Content roadmap

For keyword and question research I use Serpstat because they offer a unique clustering feature. For each keyword list you provide, they use the Google search results page to identify overlapping and similar URLs, evaluate how related different terms in your list are, and based on that, cluster them into groups.

Keyword clustering

This grouping makes content planning easier, allowing you to see the concepts behind keyword groups and put them into your roadmap based on seasonality or other factors that come into play (e.g. is there a slot/gap you need to fill? Are there company milestones or events coming up?).

Depending on how much video content you plan to create, you can set up a separate calendar or include videos in your overall editorial calendar.

When creating your roadmap, keep your goals in mind, as well. Some videos, such as testimonials and product reviews, won't be based on your keyword research but still need to be included in the roadmap.

3. Proceed to video production

Video production can be intimidating, especially if you have a modest budget, but these days it's much easier and more affordable than you'd imagine.

Keeping lower-budget campaigns in mind, here are few types of videos and tools you can try out:

3.1 In-house video production

You can actually handle much of your video production in-house without the need to set up a separate room or purchase expensive gadgets.

Here are a few ideas:

  • Put together high-quality explanatory videos using Animatron (starts at $15/month): Takes a day or so to get to know all the available tools and options, but after that the production goes quite smoothly
  • Create beautiful visual testimonials, promo videos, and visual takeaways using Animoto ($8/month): You don’t need much time to learn to use it; it's very easy and fun.
  • Create video tutorials using iMovie (free for Mac users): It will take you or your team about a week to properly figure out all its options, but you'll get there eventually.
  • Create video interviews with niche influencers using Blue Jeans (starts at $12.49/month)
  • Create (whiteboard) presentations using ClickMeeting (starts at $25/month): Host a webinar first, then use the video recording as a permanent brand asset. ClickMeeting will save your whiteboard notes and let you reuse them in your article. You can brand your room to show your logo and brand colors in the video. Record your entire presentation using presentation mode, then upload them to your channel.

Clickmeeting

3.2 How to affordably outsource video production

The most obvious option for outsourcing video production is a site like Fiverr. Searching its gigs will actually give you even more ideas as to what kinds of videos you might create. While you may get burned there a few times, don’t let it discourage you — there are plenty of creative people who can put together awesome videos for you.

Another great idea is to reach out to YouTube bloggers in your niche. Some of them will be happy to work for you, and as a bonus you'll be rewarded with additional exposure from their personal branding and social media channels.

I was able to find a great YouTube blogger to work for my client for as low as $75 per video; those videos were of top quality and upload-ready.

There's lots of talent out there: just spend a few weeks searching and reaching out!

4. Optimize each video page

When uploading your videos to YouTube, spend some time optimizing each one. Add ample content to each video page, including a detailed title, a detailed description (at least 300–500 characters), and a lot of tags.

  • Title of the video: Generally, a more eye-catching and detailed title including:
    • Your core term/focus keyword (if any)
    • Product name and your brand name
    • The speaker's name when applicable (for example, when you post interviews). This may include their other identifiable personal brand elements, such as their Twitter handle
    • Event name and hashtag (when applicable)
    • City, state, country (especially if you're managing a local business)
  • Description of the video: The full transcript of the video. This can be obtained via services such as Speechpad.
  • A good readable and eye-catching thumbnail: These can be created easily using a tool like Canva.

Use a checklist:

Youtube SEO checklist

5. Generate clicks and engagement

Apart from basic keyword matching using video title and description, YouTube uses other video-specific metrics to determine how often the video should be suggested next to related videos and how high it should rank in search results.

Here's an example of how that might work:

The more people that view more than the first half of your video, the better. If more than 50% of all your video viewers watched more than 50% of the video, YouTube would assume your video is high quality, and so it could pop up in "suggested" results next to or at the end of other videos. (Please note: These numbers are examples, made up using my best judgment. No one knows the exact percentage points YouTube is using, but you get the general idea of how this works.)

That being said, driving "deep" views to your videos is crucial when it comes to getting the YouTube algorithm to favor you.

5.1 Create a clickable table of contents to drive people in

Your video description and/or the pinned comment should have a clickable table of contents to draw viewers into the video. This will improve deep views into the video, which are a crucial factor in YouTube rankings.

Table of contents

5.2 Use social media to generate extra views

Promoting your videos on social media is an easy way to bring in some extra clicks and positive signals.

5.2.1 First, embed the video to your site

Important: Embed videos to your web page and promote your own URL instead of the actual YouTube page. This approach has two important benefits:

  • Avoid auto-plays: Don't screw up your YouTube stats! YouTube pages auto-play videos by default, so if you share a YouTube URL on Twitter, many people will click and immediately leave (social media users are mostly lurkers). However, if you share your page with the video embedded on it, it won't play until the user clicks to play. This way you'll ensure the video is played only by people who seriously want to watch it.
  • Invest time and effort into your own site promotion instead of marketing the youtube.com page: Promoting your own site URL with the video embedded on it, you can rest assured that more people will keep interacting with your brand rather than leave to watch other people's videos from YouTube suggested results.

There are also plenty of ways to embed YouTube videos naturally in your blog and offer more exposure. Look at some of these themes, for example, for ideas to display videos in ways that invite views and engagement.

Video sharing Wordpress

5.2.2 Use tools to partially scale social media promotion

For better, easier social media exposure, consider these options:

  • Investing in paid social media ads, especially Facebook ads, as they work best for engagement
  • Use recurring tweets to scale video promotion. There are a few tools you can try, such as DrumUp. Schedule the same update to go live several times on your chosen social media channels, generating more YouTube views from each repeated share. This is especially helpful for Twitter, because the lifespan of a tweet is just several minutes (between two and ten minutes, depending on how active and engaged your Twitter audience is). With recurring tweets, you'll make sure that more of your followers see your update.

  • A project I co-founded, Viral Content Bee, can put your videos in front of niche influencers on the lookout for more content to share on their social media accounts.

5.3 Build playlists

By sorting your videos into playlists, you achieve two important goals:

  • Keeping your viewers engaged with your brand videos longer: Videos within one playlist keep playing on autopilot until stopped
  • Creating separate brand assets of their own: Playlist URLs are able to rank both in YouTube and Google search results, driving additional exposure to your videos and brand overall, as well as allowing you to control more of those search results:

Playlists

Using playlists, you can also customize the look and feel of your YouTube channel more effectively to give your potential subscribers a glimpse into additional topics you cover:

Customize Youtube channel

Furthermore, by customizing the look of your YouTube channel, you transform it into a more effective landing page, highlighting important content that might otherwise get lost in the archives.

6. Monitor your progress

6.1 Topvisor

Topvisor is the only rank tracker I am aware of that monitors YouTube rankings. You'll have to create a new project for each of your videos (which is somewhat of a pain), but you can monitor multiple keywords you're targeting for each video. I always monitor my focus keyword, my brand name, and any other specific information I'm including in the video title (like location and the speaker's name):

Topvisor

6.2 YouTube Analytics

YouTube provides a good deal of insight into how your channel and each individual video is doing, allowing you to build on your past success.

  • You'll see traffic sources, i.e. where the views are coming from: suggested videos, YouTube search, external (traffic from websites and apps that embed your videos or link to them on YouTube), etc.
  • The number of times your videos were included in viewers' playlists, including favorites, for the selected date range, region, and other filters. This is equal to additions minus removals.
  • Average view duration for each video.
  • How many interactions (subscribers, likes, comments) every video brought.

Youtube Analytics

You can see the stats for each individual video, as well as for each of your playlists.

6.3 Using a dashboard for the full picture

If you produce at least one video a month, you may want to set up a dashboard to get an overall picture of how your YouTube channel is growing.

Cyfe (disclaimer: as of recently, Cyfe is a content marketing client of mine) is a tool that offers a great way to keep you organized when it comes to tracking your stats across multiple platforms and assets. I have a separate dashboard there which I use to keep an eye on my YouTube channels.

Cyfe Youtube

Conclusion

Building a YouTube channel is hard work. You're likely to see little or no activity for weeks at a time, maybe even months after you start working on it. Don’t let this discourage you. It's a big platform with lots of opportunity, and if you keep working consistently, you'll see your views and engagement steadily growing.

Do you have a YouTube channel? What are you doing to build it up and increase its exposure? Let us know in the comments.


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Monday, March 19, 2018

The Benefits and Importance of Customer Satisfaction

Something every woman should know - WHY MEN LIE!

I can’t get no satisfaction.

Aside from hearing it as the chorus in a rock n’ roll classic, it’s a phrase you never want to come from your customers. No customer satisfaction = no retention. No retention = shrinking customer base. And bad word-of-mouth. And plummeting profits.

Yes, you need a great product. Yes, you need a competitive price. But the future belongs to the experience around your product or service, through each stage of your sales funnel.

In fact, Walker Consulting predicts that experience will be the key differentiator by 2020. Not the price nor the product itself. It will first and foremost be about the experience – and customer satisfaction – you provide.

“It comes down to how your customer experiences the brand – and how that brand makes a person feel.” ~ Alex Allwood, The Holla Agency

In essence, their satisfaction with your brand, your product, your service, your messaging, and more, will make or break you. Are you ready for that?

In the 2018 Digital Trends report, Econsultancy asked which opportunity businesses were most excited about for the year ahead. The #1 response?

Customer experience (aka CX).

More than content marketing, more than mobile, more than personalization, and more than social. Experience – and by extension, satisfaction – beat out some very heavy hitters.

The good folks at Walker also discovered that 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better CX.

Businesses are going to focus on customer satisfaction and experience, and consumers are actively looking for those brands that deliver on the promise.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? But of course, you may have more questions than answers: how do you achieve customer satisfaction? How do you increase customer satisfaction? How do you define customer satisfaction?

Let’s dig in.

What Is The Meaning Of Customer Satisfaction?

Before we explore it in more detail, we need to define customer satisfaction itself.

At its most basic, customer satisfaction measures how your product, service, and overall experience either falls short, meets, or exceeds customer expectations.

How you measure it varies from business to business. Some may base it entirely on retention and repeat customers, while others may create a numerical value based on data and/or customer feedback.

Regardless, it measures, rates, and attempts to manage how happy your customers are with you, your products, and your brand as a whole.

Happy = good. Not-so-happy = bad. It’s really that simple.

Why? Glad you asked.

The Importance of Customer Satisfaction in Business

It’s obvious that satisfied customers are a good thing. However, it may be a bit harder to articulate exactly why.

The short answer: companies that prioritize customer satisfaction grow and increase revenue. Those that do not, don’t.

So, are you prioritizing customer satisfaction and success? And if you’re nodding your head, are you absolutely sure? Less than half of surveyed consumers – only 48% – believe the brands and businesses they buy from are actually doing so.

Growth and revenue are key elements of a successful business. That goes without saying.

Benefits

Beyond the growth correlation – if you actively work to increase customer satisfaction, you’re more likely to see an increase in revenue – there are plenty of other reasons to make it a top priority.

Take word-of-mouth, for example. It matters, especially in the ultra-connected and always-on digital world we call home. We can instantly share our experience with a brand with thousands of others on social media and review sites like Yelp.

And aside from that potential reach, we trust and seek out online recommendations:

That’s a lot of potential goodwill and positive publicity. But it works both ways. 60% of consumers share a bad experience with others – and they tell 3x as many people – compared to only 46% who share the good ones.

The takeaway? You’d better do your best to ensure each customer interaction is a positive one. If you don’t place a premium on relationship marketing and customer satisfaction, you won’t be aware of problems or complaints until it’s too late.

Once the word is out, it’s out. As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. If you prioritize keeping your customers happy, you’ll a) reduce the number of unhappy ones, and b) know about and work to resolve dissatisfaction that much faster.

Win-win.

But the benefits of a customer-first approach don’t stop there:

Brand loyalty
Why would a happy, satisfied customer ever look elsewhere or want to leave you? You’ll see lower churn, and higher retention. And a 5% increase in retention can increase profitability by as much as 25-95%. Let that sink in.

“Return customers tend to buy more from a company over time. As they do, your operating costs to serve them decline. What’s more, return customers refer others to your company. And they’ll often pay a premium to continue to do business with you rather than switch to a competitor with whom they’re neither familiar nor comfortable.” ~Fred Reichheld, Creator of Net Promoter

Brand buzz
A platoon of happy advocates and cheerleaders singing your praises on social media and review sites is the absolute best publicity that money can – or can’t – buy. Work to make it happen.

Brand trust
Consumers trust people – even strangers – more than they do advertising and marketing.

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.” ~H. James Harrington, CEO of Harrington Management Systems

Measure, understand, control, and improve.

Customer Satisfaction Goals

So, what should your customer satisfaction goals include? Hard to say. No one knows your business better than you. Your goals may not be my goals, and vice versa.

Generally speaking, you want to keep things simple. Use the SMART goal system (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-limited). Set only 1-2 at a time (otherwise they start competing with each other). Write them down (studies show you’re 2-3x more likely to follow-through). Keep them realistic.

Your first goal should be to start collecting customer satisfaction data if you haven’t already. That’s a no-brainer, and we’ll get into the how in a moment.

Identify the problem spots, the bottlenecks, and the frequent complaints.

After that, your goals may include reducing churn or increasing retention by X%, reducing the number of contact points with repeat customers, decreasing complaint response time, increasing the NPS by X%, experiment with different communication channels, boost the number of “completely satisfied” customer interactions, reduce shipping time, and so on.

What would most benefit your business and your customers? Go with that.

Learn How to Measure Your Customer Satisfaction

Now we get to the meat and potatoes. It’s all well and good to plan and promote customer satisfaction within your business, but how exactly does that play out in the world?

Hubspot recommends a simple acronym to remember the steps: OCCAM (as in Occam’s Razor, the idea that the simplest explanation or approach is usually the best one):

  1. Outline goals and plan.
  2. Create customer survey.
  3. Choose trigger or timing.
  4. Analyze the data.
  5. Make adjustments.

You can’t get much simpler than that.

Begin by asking yourself: Why? Why am I doing this? What do I hope to accomplish? What do I want to get out of this?

A customer satisfaction survey is one of the easiest and most reliable methods for getting a snapshot of satisfaction levels around a particular element of your business (your products, your complaint resolution, your customer service, and so on). Popular methods include:

  1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), which measures their satisfaction on a particular interaction.
  2. Customer Effort Score (CES), which examines the ease with which they were able to have their issue successfully resolved or complete an action (like making a purchase).
  3. Net Promoter Score (NPS), which asks how likely they are to recommend your business to someone else.

Next, determine who will receive your survey, and when. Immediately after a purchase? At the end of an online chat? A week after a complaint was lodged? Look to your goals from the first step for guidance here, as the who and when is determined by what you’re trying to accomplish.

The cardinal sin of data collection is doing nothing with it. Once you have the data, make sure you analyze and use it to make improvements. Otherwise, you’ve wasted everyone’s time and effort.

Some methods are easy to analyze – NPS is simply the percentage of Detractors subtracted from the percentage of Promoters – while others are more complicated. Many customer satisfaction tools have built-in analysis as part of the service. If not, a quick online search can provide dozens of tutorials and how-to guides.

Surveys with a single question and a multiple-choice answer are typically best, but don’t be afraid of longer ones with open-ended questions. They require more effort in both creation and analysis, but they also provide deeper and more varied understanding. You get what you put in.

Once you have some insight, use it. Make adjustments. Unclog bottlenecks. Remove friction. Make it easy and convenient for your customers to get what they want and do what they need to do.

That’s the whole idea.

3 Customer Satisfaction Examples

Looking for some inspiration? Here are three examples of the satisfaction game done right:

In Action

Trader Joe’s is a popular chain of grocery stores with 470+ locations. They have a truly remarkable return policy that puts customers completely at ease and removes all friction, especially those thinking of trying a new product. They will literally take back any product – even if it’s open and/or partly consumed – without a receipt. No. Questions. Asked. The policy includes food, beverages, and alcohol. Don’t like that new wine or beer? Bring back what’s left, get a refund.

“Try it. We think you’ll like it. If you don’t, bring it back for a full refund.” ~Trader Joe’s

With a generous return policy like that, you can bet everyone is recommending them to their family, friends, and followers.

Read or Leave a Review
Amazon clearly knows what it’s doing. Every product on the site has a star-rating at the top of the page, and every customer is encouraged to leave their honest review.

Click the upside-down triangle, and you can select the star-rating that matters most to you, and instantly read the comments left by those consumers that rated it as such. What problems did people have that resulted in a 1-star rating? What pros motivated others to give it five stars?

Not only is Amazon collecting mountains of valuable data on customer satisfaction to answer those questions and more – allowing them to identify common complaints and issues – but they’re also leveraging that data immediately as testimonials – both positive and negative – for those thinking about making a purchase. One-click. One stop.

And that’s one of the many reasons why Amazon is the king of the e-commerce game.

Customer Satisfaction Survey
The humble customer survey performs outside its weight-class. Easy to create and execute, but delivers a powerful data punch.

Dashlane is a password vault and manager. Already one of the most popular in the niche, they’re not resting on their laurels.

This simple NPS survey was sent out via email to existing customers, literally takes just seconds to complete, but collects priceless data and makes their customer base feel warm, fuzzy, and appreciated (their opinion matters).

The Best Strategies to Improve Customer Satisfaction and Retention

Convinced yet? You should be, so let’s jump into some of the best strategies for better customer satisfaction and retention.

Net Promoter Score

The NPS is one of if not the most popular strategies for gauging customer satisfaction with and loyalty to a particular brand. It’s simple, easy to calculate, and boasts some excellent completion rates because it takes just a few seconds to complete.

One basic question (usually a straightforward one like “How likely are you to recommend us/this product to your friends and family?”), and a scale from 1 (least likely) to 10 (most likely). That’s it.

Anyone answering from 0-6 are called Detractors. They’re your unhappy customers, and they can do a lot of damage to your reputation if left to fester.

Passives are those that answer either 7 or 8. They’re satisfied, but not really enthusiastic.

Your Promoters are those customers responding 9 or 10. They’re happy, loyal, and frequently recommend your brand and products.

Your NPS is a quick calculation:

Percentage of Promoters – Percentage of Detractors = Net Promoter Score (a value ranging from a low of -100 to a high of 100).

Just knowing your score instantly tells you how your customers feel about you. But you can do so much more with it: segment your customers into promoters (reward and encourage them), passives (what can you do to increase their enthusiasm?), and detractors (what issues are making them so unhappy?), collect “reasons why” (most services allow for a follow-up open-ended question about why they responded as they did), drive reviews and improve retention.

The Likert scale survey can deliver most of the same benefits, too.

Social Media Monitoring

The internet is awash in people talking about, well, everything. It’s your job to keep abreast of what people are saying about you, your brand, and your products. You can’t sit back and assume everything is hunky-dory.

To that end, social media monitoring has become a keystone of digital existence. And there’s a long list of top quality tools and services that do it for you (more on that below).

Select one, set a few keywords and phrases, and start listening. The faster you “hear” that someone had a bad experience, the faster you can reach out and try to fix it. Likewise, the faster you “hear” someone had a great experience, the faster you can reach out and thank them, possibly offering some special reward or discount for their patronage.

Listen. Respond. React.

Ask for Feedback

Ask and ye shall receive. The simplest way to improve customer satisfaction and retention is to ask for feedback.

Consumers are ready, willing, and able to provide feedback and reviews…if you ask them. Far too many businesses don’t bother. What better way to find out exactly how they feel about everything and anything than asking them directly?

It might be a message on social media, a short email, a pop-up on your site, a push notification, a link at checkout or the end of a chat, or anything else you can think up. The method isn’t all that important. The asking is.

Customers want to feel appreciated and recognized as individuals, not just dollar signs. Asking for their opinion gives them that, and gives you the concrete data you need to make good business decisions.

They feel respected. They feel valued. And that’s half the satisfaction and retention battle right there.

Provide Solutions

Asking for feedback is one thing. But how do you use that to improve customer satisfaction?

You provide solutions. If they’re unsatisfied with some aspect of your product or service, it’s easy to offer excuses and get defensive.

That benefits no one. You need to provide solutions to their complaints.

Shipping takes too long? Offer an express option. Customer service not available at midnight on a Tuesday? Launch a chatbot or self-serve help center.

Their problems + your solutions = better satisfaction and retention.

Try implementing these four strategies to increase customer satisfaction today. Not tomorrow. Today. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it will kick start things and deliver some quick wins to motivate you and make you hungry for more.

Customer Satisfaction Tools And Methodologies

No matter what strategy or method you’re considering, the tools exist to make it fast, affordable, and convenient for businesses or any size or budget.

Net Promoter Score

Social Media Monitoring

Customer Feedback

Online Reviews

User Testing

Email Survey

No matter what you need, a Google or Bing search will find you dozens of tools and services to get the job done. Then, do it. Ask the right questions. Make the right decisions.

Are Customer Satisfaction Surveys Useful?

Ah, the $64,000 question. Is it worth it?

Short answer? Yes.

We’ve already seen the connection between prioritizing customer success and revenue growth. That alone makes it a worthwhile exercise.

Identifying satisfied customers allows you to nurture them into loyal customers using reward programs, special incentives, personalized content, and more.

A focus on customer satisfaction makes you stand out from the masses. Not everyone is doing it yet. Make an impression now.

Satisfaction surveys bridge the gap between what you think you’re doing, and what your customers believe you’re actually doing. For example, 80% of surveyed CEOs said they deliver an exceptional customer experience, but only 8% (!) of customers agreed. That’s a serious disconnect.

In 2018 and beyond, the customer experience and satisfaction is everything.

What is The Best Way to Deal With a Difficult Customer?

No matter how hard you try, you will encounter unhappy, upset, and difficult customers. How you deal with them will determine your overall success.

You can’t make everyone happy all the time. Don’t even try. When a difficult customer crosses your threshold – digital or otherwise – follow a few best practices:

  • Listen without interrupting. Let them rant and vent and get it all out. They want to be heard.
  • Apologize with empathy. Let them know you understand the issue, and appreciate how frustrating it must be.
  • Ask questions for clarification as necessary. Explicitly ask what they would like to see done in response.
  • Offer solutions. Never excuses. If you can’t give them exactly what they want, offer alternative solutions. Use positive language: instead of saying “I can’t do that”, try leading with “here’s what I can do…”
  • Remain calm. Some customers are unreasonable. Keep your emotions in check.
  • Follow-up later to determine if it was resolved to their complete satisfaction.
  • Learn from the experience.

Of course, they are other tips and tricks you could employ in the situation, including some psychological strategies if you want to get fancy, but the steps outlined above are the simplest way to turn a difficult customer into a satisfied one.

How To Treat Customers And Provide Them a Good Service

With respect.

It goes deeper than that, of course, but treating them with respect at all times goes a very long way in creating happy, satisfied, loyal customers.

In addition to that:

  • Have open lines of communication. Email, phone number, social media profiles, online chat, instant messaging, and more. Provide the channels they want.
  • Respond to communication – both positive and negative – in a timely manner. As a rule of thumb, people expect an online answer in well under and hour.
  • Under-promise and overdeliver.
  • Say “thank you”.
  • Train your staff in delivering spectacular customer service. It’s a skill. Don’t assume your employees have it already.
  • Listen. Respond. Ask for feedback. That’s the satisfaction loop to create.

We could devote an entire post to this subject. Suffice to say, follow the golden rule: treat others as you’d like to be treated. You may be a business owner, but you’re also a customer at other times. What do you look for in exceptional customer service? Do that.

Common Questions About Customer Satisfaction

The quality of questions you ask determines the usefulness of the answers you get. You can – and should – ask questions about every aspect of your customer service:

  • The quality and quantity of offered products/services
  • Your commitment to customer success
  • Your pricing
  • Company transparency
  • Accessibility to both your customer service reps as well as your products/services themselves
  • Your consistency
  • Your business aesthetics, including your sites, physical stores, brand messaging, and corporate values and ethics

Ask how well a product meets their needs. Ask about the most important missing features. Ask which features are most important to them. Ask them what one thing they would change. Ask if they’d recommend your business or product to a friend. Ask if they’re likely to buy from you again. Ask about the ease in which they accomplished their purpose (make a purchase, make a complaint, resolve an issue). Ask about your competition. Ask, ask, ask.

Ask questions. Get answers. Then ask why they gave that answer. Keep it short. A multiple choice or scale question with a short input field to explain why is about all you need.

Conclusion

Customer satisfaction is 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 funnel, every interaction and touch-point, every product launch, and more. 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.

That’s how you improve. That’s how you grow. And that’s how you turn customers into repeat customers and repeat customers into cheerleaders.

About the Author: Neil Patel is the cofounder of Neil Patel Digital.

Reverse Phone - People Search - Email Search - Public Records - Criminal Records. Best Data, Conversions, And Customer Suppor