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Are you struggling with your site’s content performance? If so, you are not alone.

A recent survey shows 64% of marketers would like to learn how to build a better content strategy.

To survive the tough online business landscape, you need a smart content strategy at the core of your marketing campaign.

While most marketers create high-quality content for lead generation, they fail to build effective landing pages to boost their efforts.

If you want your content to convert, you have to understand the role of a great landing page.

Why are Landing Pages Important?

A landing page offers a follow-up to the promises you make in your content.

If you have invested heavily in content marketing and your site traffic is great, you expect high conversion rates.

If this is not happening, it is likely your landing pages are ineffective.

Landing pages are a crucial step in the customer purchase journey.

After investing heavily in the best web design and great content, your landing pages should complement your efforts in lead conversion.

A landing page boosts conversion rates, aids in collecting customer insight, generates buzz around new products or offers and helps visitors make decisions and so much more.

Research shows 68% of B2B businesses use landing pages for lead generation which assures future conversion.

Unfortunately, most marketers don’t invest in their landing pages.

While a lot of effort goes into improving a site’s search engine optimisation (SEO), the landing pages get short shrift.

A recent survey shows 77% of landing pages are homepages.

To make matters worse, Adobe says only 50% of landing pages are ready for mobile devices.

If you want to reap from your content strategy, you need to start leveraging the power of landing pages.

Landing Pages Best Practices

Here are some important tips to spruce up your landing pages and give impetus to your content strategy.

1.  Differentiate Between a Landing Page & a Homepage

For many businesses, there’s no distinction between landing pages and the homepage.

It is important to appreciate that these two are different in design and function.

A landing page is a tailor-made web page that follows up on the promises your content makes.

For instance, if you have a discount offer, a landing page will have specific information related to that offer.

The idea is to help the visitor make the final decision.

The goal of a landing page is to convert while a homepage can play multiple roles.

A homepage can feature multiple links, but your landing page content should strive to keep the visitor on the page.

2.  Boost Landing Page Loading Speeds

Internet users hate delays in any service they use.

With this in mind, you have to boost your landing page speeds or else lose prospective customers.

You have less than three seconds to convince the visitor.

If your landing page takes time to load, you will most likely lose your leads.

To improve loading speeds, minimize heavy elements and graphics, keep checking the loading speeds, compress images and upgrade your hosting package as your site traffic grows.

3.  Clarity is Key

One of the most important aspects of a landing page is clarity.

Your site visitor needs to know what is on offer in concise terms.

Create a clear, readable headline for the page and make sure it reveals the nature of the offer.

4.  Leverage Colour

First impression matters, and when a visitor comes to your landing page, you have to sustain their interest.

You can use a splash of colour on the main components of the page, including heading and subheadings.

5.  Responsive Landing Pages

Your landing page must display correctly on all screen sizes.

With more people going online through mobile, you have to consider this when designing your site.

Test your website on multiple internet devices to ensure everything loads perfectly.

This boosts the chances of conversion while reducing bounce rates.

6.  Leverage Landing Pages For SEO

Using an SEO-adaptive landing page design is a smart strategy to convert and at the same time, boost your rankings on SERPs.

Consider using minimal layout, decluttering your web page through clean design and a scroll motion slider on the page.

This makes it easier for both search engine crawlers and users to navigate your content.

7.  Use a Compelling Headline

A headline is an essential component on a landing page.

It can make or break the performance of the page.

When visitors land on the page, this is the first thing they see and for this reason, it has to grab their attention.

If it is captivating, visitors will most likely linger, but if it is boring, they might instantly click away.

Create a headline that is clear and instantly connects with the reader.

Final Thoughts

A great landing page boosts your marketing strategy by converting visitors into customers.

If you want to improve your content strategy, it is important to look at the whole picture.

Focus on all the contact points on the purchase journey from the search engine results, the landing page to the order page.

If you want to get more out of your content strategy, it is time to optimize your landing pages with these tips.

Does it seem like your business has reached its peak?

Has your sales remained stagnant for quite some time despite the fact that your product or service is still very much needed today?

Is the size of your target market increasing but the number of your customers remains unchanged?

If any of these is true for you, then you need to re-examine your marketing strategy. Your marketing tactics may have worked in the past, but they may no longer be effective today.

No business succeeds without any kind of marketing. Your marketing strategy though must be regularly fine-tuned to adapt to an ever changing world.

So, if you’re running a small business offering a potentially good product or service but are not drawing enough customers, there are some effective marketing tactics, like the ones discussed in Camino Financial’s article “5 Marketing Tactics To Drive Sales”, that may be just what you need to help bring in more sales.

Know And Understand Your Customers

Who are they?

What needs do they have that your product or service can meet?

Can you find them in the internet or in the real world?

You can start answering these questions by conducting regular surveys to get an indication of what your customers think of your product and what role it plays in their daily lives. Or, you can also meet them in person so you can have a more relaxed discussion with them. Offering incentives or appreciation tokens will encourage them to have these discussions with you.

As you identify the specific customer need your product or service is satisfying, you’ll logically get a clearer picture of who you should be targeting.

For example, let’s say you sell home-cooked meals.

If your clients are saying that buying your product saves them they’d otherwise use cooking, you’d be looking at a market group who don’t have too much time in their hands for cooking and preparing meals. Most likely, these are busy working individuals whose age range may run from 21 to 60.

This will also tell you to focus on them and not to spend too much time with teenagers, senior citizens and people who spend most of the day at home.

5 Marketing Tactics That Will Help Your Business

If you already know who your clients are, then it’s time to start thinking of some marketing tactics you could use to boost your sales.

1. Grasp of Your Competitive Edge

In today’s business world, products and services from different providers are so similar that customers can’t take too much time trying to identify the best one.

This is where a clear and distinct product differentiation needs to be strongly communicated to your target market. If your competition, for example, is also offering convenient, time-saving and delicious food, compare it with yours.

Does yours offer more time saved?

Is yours tastier?

Does your packaging seal in and preserve the content’s quality better?

Does your product have one feature not found in others?

Do you have a friendlier, more personalised customer service?

Whatever it is, make sure it’s persuasively communicated to your target consumers in a way they’ll perceive your product to be superior.

2. Personalise All Your Approach

It’s a digital technology-driven world that we live in today. With all the electronic devices and gadgets, smartphones and tablets surrounding us, the personal touch is fast vanishing.

Boosting your sales requires personalising your approach every step of the customers’ journey, online or offline.

This boils down to having your marketing, sales and client service teams working hand in hand towards having a better understanding of who these customers and prospects are and how to best handle them.

Get into your customers’ shoes. You’ll have a better perspective of how they see your company, product brand, and service.

Craft your message well and meet them where they mostly hang out.

3. Keep Your Customers Happy

Among the many marketing tactics, this is one that is often taken for granted.

Many businesses make the mistake of focusing too much on acquiring new customers instead of keeping current ones. When you make a sale, you create a relationship between your business and your customer.

That relationship should be mutually beneficial and maintained with great effort.

Gone are the days when people lined up for your product or service (unless you are Apple!).

Nowadays, you have to woo them to consider your product or service.

Customers who feel they have been neglected or forgotten will no longer buy from you again. Worse, they’ll tell others of how bad your business treated them.

On the other hand, customers who feel they are valued by your business will surely return and by word of mouth, inform others to also buy from you.

Treat your current customers like you would treat a friend. Listen instead of arguing with them, especially if they have problems with your product or service. Send them a text or e-mail to ask if the product they bought from you is serving them well or even just to say “hi”.

4. Get into Email Marketing

This is one of the most effective marketing tactics. It’s so easy, you can get it started today. And thankfully, it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

The premise, of course, is that you’ve built a list of customers, prospects, and subscribers. You then market your product in a personalised, friendly manner (not an in-your-face hard sell) by e-mailing them regularly so that you stay on top of their minds when they need your product or service.

A very popular form of e-mail marketing is the newsletter. It’s where you can talk about product news, promotions, big deals, customer reviews, and testimonials.

When done interestingly, with lots of customer-relevant features and valuable information, a newsletter can help generate sales and profits.

5. Develop a Social Media Strategy

With just about everybody spending at least 3 hours in front of a computer or a smartphone for leisure, social media management is a great medium to use for your marketing tactics.

You can reach potential customers and clients on sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. You can then drive them to your website and blogs that should provide the answers to their questions, issues, and concerns.

Address as many of these as you can.

As you regularly do this, it will enable you to build and establish trust and to foster relationships that should ultimately result in more sales.

It’s Time to Use Marketing to Your Advantage

These are tried and tested marketing tactics small and medium-size businesses have adopted in their day-to-day operations. As they see their sales volume growing and over-all business expanding, they religiously continue to apply these.

Isn’t it about time you tried at least one too? You won’t regret it and your sales will boost so much you’ll never go back to the olden ways!

You might remember your grandpa’s old typewriter.

A clunky old thing that was unusually loud, uncomfortably heavy, and frustratingly impractical.

A black chunk of blocky metal.

It kept jamming every few minutes if you didn’t know how to press the keys just right, and it left your fingers stained blue whenever you had to change the ink ribbons.

While your grandpa loved it, you were a little less convinced – why bother with something that obsolete when you can have a sleek, shiny new laptop that’s as light as a feather, barely makes a sound when you type, and can store all your documents on a hard drive that takes up no space at all.

Personal computers over typewriters, emails over letters, cell phones over landlines, Netflix over cable, Uber over taxis.

And what’s next, cryptocurrencies disrupting traditional banking and payment services?

We’ve yet to find out.

Even though it’s been around since 2009, blockchain is still a buzzword on everyone’s lips.

While no one can truly predict the extent of its impact in the future, we do know that change is coming.

As with any innovative form of technology, disruptions can be expected.

Here’s which industries need to be on the lookout for potential problems and opportunities.

Banking

The bank always takes a fee.

You want to wire some cash to your mom to help her pay the bills?

The bank will take a small percentage or a set fee, and if she’s overseas, the rates will be even higher.

While banks usually don’t charge too much for these kinds of services, one portion of your money will still go to the bank instead of your mom.

Blockchain, on the other hand, enables you to wire money for much smaller fees and through channels that are inherently even more secure than what banks offer.

There’s almost no risk of a system collapse, and it’s nearly impossible to steal from it because there’s no central “vault.”

The decentralised way blockchain works enables everyone to have their own private safe space to store money, bank records, and other documents.

Blockchain is based on public ledgers that anyone can access, and this eliminates the need for a trusted third party source to handle transactions.

Your transactions are 100% your own, you have all of the autonomy.

However, banks are now developing their own cryptocurrencies and adopting blockchain solutions.

This will improve their services, and reduce operational costs.

And it’s unlikely the government would ever allow banks to fall apart.

The blockchain is disruptive, but it won’t break the banks – they will merely have to adjust.

Healthcare

Healthcare is about to change drastically.

The way things are now, the medical industry spends a huge chunk of its funding on operational costs like filing, record keeping, and accounting.

Your medical records are kept in centrally located files, which are subject to data breaches, theft, and loss.

Blockchain can solve this.

Currently, patient records are spread across multiple providers and organizations, but blockchain could help medical professionals put together all of these pieces of data in real-time and ensure that everything is comprehensive and up-to-date.

Patients will be able to access their medical information regardless of where they are in the world, and they will still be highly-secure.

This is one of the most practical ways to manage massive amounts of data and make it easier for doctors to give diagnoses.

Government

Say goodbye to voter fraud.

Traditional voting relies on mail votes or standing in line to vote in a booth.

And these votes have to be counted.

This makes fraud relatively easy, and regular online voting isn’t much better either.

Because a central authority is used, problems appear.

Blockchain can help here too.

People can vote online without revealing their identity, and the system can count the votes with 100% accuracy because it knows that one vote is always attributed to one specific ID.

One such platform already exists – MiVote.

This program works like a digital ballot box, and it’s token-based.

Once you make a registration in the official ledger you can vote through your smartphone and the whole process is smooth, reliable, and secure.

Implementing blockchain in government systems has other benefits, too.

It makes it very difficult to skew data, so government records will become even more difficult to tamper with.

It discourages corruption and opacity, which means politicians will have to be a lot more open about what they’re doing.

This transparency is there for us regular folks as well – digital asset registries will become available and blockchain will make it much more difficult to do things like commit tax fraud.

Retail

Blockchain will directly affect supply chain management and retailers.

Why do we even go to stores?

Because that’s the middleman we need when we want to get a pack of gum, a shiny new gadget, or a washing machine.

With blockchain, buyers and sellers can be directly connected, without any need for additional fees for the middleman.

Blockchain also tracks everything.

Let’s say, for example, you decide to buy some apples and have them delivered.

When you get them and bite into one, you realise it’s all bruised and as sour as a lemon.

Who do you blame for this?

Blockchain transparency allows you to retrace all the steps, from the delivery company, to the store, to the supplier, to the producer, even to the farmer who grew them.

We’ll be able to find the weak links and companies will be able to build their reputation through validated transactions shared by multiple supply chain partners.

Intellectual Rights

There are already startups that are giving musicians the option to get paid directly from fans instead of giving away a percentage of their earnings to record companies or platforms.

Blockchain makes it possible to better catalog songs with their respective creators, and it solves the issue of licensing because it offers hashing and proof of existence.

Hashing is like your digital fingerprint because it allows a document to be processed into a fix code that’s yours alone, and it can’t be copied or repeated.

Proof of existence is the recording of these hashes on the blockchain.

This makes it easy to trademark or patent something, and prove authorship.

Companies such as Binded allow artists to protect original images that they have created, and companies such as Ujo Music allow them to protect their music.

Our future is in blockchain.

Whether it turns our world upside down all at once or allows us to embrace it step by careful step, there’s no running from it.

The world is posed to implement new blockchain solutions into everything, and now it’s up to us to learn more about them and use them to their full advantage.

Influencer marketing has evolved from a mere buzzword amongst the noisy, overcrowded digital marketplace into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Brands scrambling to figure out how to stay current have turned to influencer marketing, and many of them have even received a 520% return on investment, based on a 2018 statistic.

Moreover, statistics show us that 49% of consumers take into consideration an influencer’s product testimonials before deciding whether or not to purchase an item.

This effect on consumers’ spending habits has prompted many marketers to allocate a budget for influencer marketing.

But like any other marketing strategy, developing an influencer campaign requires careful planning, cooperation, and attention to detail if you truly want to enhance brand credibility and reach your target audience.

Here are a few simple steps to get you started:

1. Create Goals That are Actionable and Measurable

The initial step is setting realistic goals.

Whether you want to expand your network to reach the younger audience or enhance the relatability factor of your brand, defining your objectives makes it easy for you to choose the ideal influencer or platform for your campaign.

Take into account the industry you belong to, the market you want to target, the type of channels you want to use to spread your business’ message, and the influencers’ style and network that are best suited for your campaign.

Ideally, for instance, a skincare brand should collaborate with multi-channel influencers who have huge followings on YouTube and Instagram.

These platforms are where most of the younger demographic spend their time online.

On the other hand, if you’re aiming to target a network of professionals, you should consider launching your campaign on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.

Knowing where to place your content and who to collaborate with are crucial if you want your campaign to have a better chance of success.

2. Find the Perfect Influencer For Your Brand

Your potential influencer should tick all the right boxes in terms of content quality, follower count, engagement, and style.

Marketers often make the mistake of reaching out to an influencer for a collaboration prior to doing a thorough background check.

First things first: check if your prospect is engaging in fraudulent activities (i.e., fake followers and fake engagement).

There are tools readily available to quickly scan the engagement activities and follower/following ratio of the influencer to identify their legitimacy.

For example, Instagram has the IG Audit tool, which gives a rundown of a user’s estimated real follower count and average engagement activity.

It is  also equally important to scroll through past posts to see if they’ve already collaborated with brands that have a product or service similar to yours.

Moreover, there’s a growing trend among brands and marketers who choose to work with micro and nano-influencers.

They have relatively fewer followers than celebrities and macro-influencers but they deliver quality engagement.

This is a great option for brands that want to establish their reputation through influencers who post consistently engaging and relatable content.

Once you’ve chosen who you feel is the appropriate person to represent your business across various channels, you can reach out to them via email or private message.

3. Get Creative

Set the budget and lay out your plans to the influencer.

You should be concise about everything – from the type of campaign you want to execute to the content you want to publish.

You can be upfront about the relevant posts you want for your campaign, but don’t interfere with the influencer’s unique style and creativity.

It’s important to be open to suggestions and collaborate with them in order to get the creative juices flowing and produce a win-win outcome.

Whether you want the influencer to post sponsored content, a product review or a contest/giveaway, give them all the required information they need to do so.

Provide the requested tags, and call-to-actions, and let the influencer take care of the rest.

They should be experienced in knowing exactly how to peak the interest of their followers, and further drive interaction and engagement.

Modern, hard-to-please consumers have grown tired of all the digital noise and product promotions that lack sincerity and transparency.

They are smart enough to detect if the influencers are forced to promote a product they don’t actually like.

So it’s crucial to establish a meaningful, collaborative relationship with the influencer instead of just dismissing them as mere marketing tools.

4. Monitor the Success of Your Influencer Marketing Campaign

Monitor the reach, engagement, and conversion to see if your campaign is yielding the desired results.

Keep track of the number of likes, shares, and comments on the posts, as well as the business website traffic.

A significant increase translates to your influencer marketing campaign, effectively reaching a wider audience.

Although enhancing brand awareness is one of the major priorities of brands, the end goal should always be increasing revenue.

Tools and software are also available to effectively measure if sales performance has improved.

If you don’t see an upswing in results, however, you can always invest in careful re-planning and revising to better cater to the needs and wants of your target demographic.