Even if it is more and more popular, influencer marketing is nothing new. It is as old as marketing itself. The reason it’s such a hot topic today is because how consumers perceive marketing and advertising messages thanks to newer technologies. New technologies are the base that generated this major rise of social media influencers. And influencer marketing trends are to be considered if you plan to use influencer marketing for your business.
Influencer Marketing Definition
For most people, what comes to mind when they hear about an influencer is a humongous social media following. But the truth is that this is a misconception, a confusion between popularity and influence.
An influencer is someone who has the ability to change the thinking or perception of others regarding a certain thing and is able to interfere and get them to make some decisions. In marketers’ lingo, this is simply someone that helps consumers buy from you.
How Do They Achieve This?
An effective influencer must absolutely have the following pre-requisite factors:
a. Salesmanship They must have a convincing style of communication in such a way that they can confidently sell their point of view to their followers and convince them to embrace it.
b. Credibility They must prove expertise and sound judgment with a level of authority on the subject matter to gain the followers trust and confidence.
c. Reach and Engagement They must have some kind of following but with a high engagement rate. A large reach is insufficient without the engagement.
If you are in doubt let’s check some numbers, some influencer marketing statistics: No less than 89% of marketers sustain influencer marketing ROI hits the same level if not higher than any other marketing channel.
If in 2018 only 39% of companies had planned to increase influencer marketing budgets, in 2019 their number reached 65%
Typically, influencer marketing budgets range between $1,000 – $10,000 per year, or $100,000 – $500,000 per year.
Instagram influencer marketing ranks first among the preferred channels for influencer marketing.
How Will You Know the Right Influencer for Your Business?
With the rise of more fine-tuned technology, anyone in business must engage both traditional and modern methods of marketing albeit on varying degrees. This is the guaranteed path to reach a larger slice of your target audience.
With that said, influencer marketing campaigns are better suited for some businesses than others because while some may appeal to the mass, others may be very niche specific. Business with products or services that fall in the fashion, food, beauty, or even travel industry may work perfectly with social media influencers. But businesses such as civil engineering or construction may require some good old traditional methods of marketing.
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So, to help you know if influencer marketing is good for your business, here is a small analysis that can help you:
• Are there any social media influencers in your industry and are your competitors using them? • Where is the majority of your audience consuming her content? (You must have this information already) is it social media? • Where does your audience find the information for her purchasing decisions? Where does she seek product recommendations? Is it on social media?
If the answers to the above questions are yes, then you should collaborate with social media influencers, no doubt. You must first vet them to ensure they’re credible, relatable, and can resonate with your target audience, this means they must fall within your niche. Their personality and style of approach must also be in tune with your brand voice.
The main metric that indicates an effective influencer is engagement. This can be broken down into:
• How many likes, views, comments, and even shares does the influencer receive on average per each post? • How does the influencer get along with the followers? What kind of relationship do they have? • Are the followers responsive and active? (some influencers have fake followers) • Is the influencer known beyond the social space?
Types of Influencers
Without going into deeper details, for the purpose of this article, there are three main types of influencers. Below is a brief summary.
a. Mega Influencer
This one has a massive following or audience and it’s now about who they know, but rather who knows them. They usually don’t have to engage because it’s the crowds that simply flock to them; they may include athletes or actors. Examples may include Will Smith, Oprah, or Kim Kardashian.
b. Macro Influencer
This influencer can be anyone with the right amount of audience. It may range from 10,000 to a million followers. These groups can comprise journalists, bloggers, or self-made social media stars. They are very niche oriented, which means they tend to have a voice over a specific category e.g. tech, fashion, politics, food, etc.
The way they have influence is the following: they build trustworthy content and opinions that people can rely on. But they offer quality engagement, and this is why they’re considered experts. A good example is Marques Brown Lee, a tech expert and influencer well-known in his space.
c. Micro Influencer
These are basically ordinary guys who may have about 500 to 10,000 followers. The reason they’re very recognized is because they tend to have the highest engagement as numbers, due to the small number of followers they have. They always come out more effective, sometimes even more than the mega influencers.
So, without further ado, and with the above understanding, here are the top influencer marketing trends to keep your eye on.
Top Influencer Marketing Trends
1. Increasing Budgets
Statistics have shown that 80% of marketers have found that Influencer marketing is effective. 65% of them plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets going forward.
Why is this? The answer is simple; the rate of customer traffic and customer quality is way higher than when other marketing channels are used. So this shows there is increasing confidence in social media influencers. The main reason for this as will be explained in more detail in the next trend, is that the ROI is quite high.
2. High ROI and Measurement Methods
For quite a long time now, measuring the ROI of influencer marketing has been its chink in the armour. But this is not really the case at all; the fact is that there isn’t a one size fits all approach, so the key performance indicators may vary from brand to brand. But they’re all measurable nevertheless.
Your goal could be to increase awareness, so you can use Google Analytics to track the number of users that became aware of your product through your influencer marketing campaign. If there’s a spike immediately after you hired the influencer, then you have your answer.
KPIs such as follower increase, impressions, or reach can easily be tracked. Another good indicator to track is hashtags, especially if you and your influencer are using your own specific hashtag, it will be very easy to track. As a matter of fact, Ad Week shared research that showed hashtags boost engagement by 12.6%.
Therefore, with the possibility of measuring influencer marketing campaigns under the belt, it’s then a no-brainer that ROI has the odds to climb higher as per statistics.
3. Micro Influencers Are Crushing It
Sometimes called Nano influencers, these are self-made stars with a number of followers between 500 to 10,000 on social platforms. These guys are considered just normal people. The reason why brands are gradually banking more on this group is that they’re very knowledgeable in their specific niches and tend to engage more with their followers, this creates a relationship based on trust and authenticity. When it comes to fees, they’re also much cheaper than the mega influencers.
So, long story short, they’re effective in their campaigns and more affordable. What most brands are doing, instead of going to one mega influencer, they’re engaging many micro influencers at once for greater success. They are a true force to reckon with.
4. Influencer Marketing Trends: Video and Live Streaming Are Becoming More and More Powerful
A Goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds, a second longer than a human’s attention span on the internet. Infographic shows that the average time spent on an internet page lasts between 10 to 20 seconds.
However video content holds up more especially if you’re able to capture the viewer’s first 3 seconds. It’s for this reason that video marketing has been growing across all platforms, hence the introduction of video features on all social media platforms. Research shows that 87% of marketers now use video as a marketing tool, and 83% confirm a good ROI when using video.
Videos have a way of bringing authenticity and social media influencers discovered this a long time ago. Brands are on board as well and now they sponsor live feeds on their influencer’s campaigns. Instagram influencer marketing and YouTube influencer marketing are particularly prominent in this. Facebook live is not behind either, a lot of collaborations are happening there too.
Some marketing activities that make this fun include the unboxing of new products, behind the scene live streams or Q& As, or popular explainer videos. Of which the influencer always drops the brand’s name every now and then throughout the stream.
5. Influencer Marketing Trends: Authenticity and Honesty Are Attention Gainers
People’s trust levels have really changed and gotten very sensitive especially when it comes to purchase decision. Authenticity is the backbone of influencer marketing. When the audience senses one fake or unrealistic vibe from their influencer, they automatically back off and no longer consider their opinion credible.
Most genuine influencers may even try and talk about products without being paid or sponsored by the product owner (brand). This genuineness is what consumers are looking for. The passion-driven talks, explainers or any such content is the blood of influencer marketing.
Honest and credible influencers lead to a strong and effective campaign, and this is a growing trend it also explains further why micro-influencers are better than mega-influencers. It’s all about authenticity and not just sales.
6. Verifying Audiences
This point closely follows the one above. Every market has at least one fraudster. Social media influencer market is no exception, unfortunately. Greedy people want to buy followers because again, there are those others that make it possible to happen.
These fraudulent fake accounts (bots) can basically do what an organic follower is able to do, including liking or commenting on the posts. But because this is not a secret, brands now are more vigilant and are engaging third parties to verify that the influencer’s audience is indeed real. This is done before engaging the influencer to avoid dealing with consequences later.
7. Influencer Marketing Trends: Influencers Are Considered Entrepreneurs in a Competitive Marketplace
As influencer marketing keeps growing and as more influencers are earning some good money, they’re realizing that they’re a growing brand and thus are getting themselves more comfortable in this competitive space.
This means they’re getting more creative, and more business savvy and are able to use whatever resources they have on their own to create quality content for their audiences while leveraging on any relationships they build with companies.
Brands as well are watching and making use of the best opportunities that are not only much more affordable but also more effective and for this reason, most of them are building long-lasting relationships with their influencers.
8. Instagram IG TV Will Catch Up
YouTube influencer marketing has been on the lead for some time now because of course, video is king. However, with the rise of the IGTV, Instagram influencer marketing is gradually catching up. This is because its videos are short and easily digestible to the audience that doesn’t have too much screen time.
Influencer marketing is growing and evolving each day, and with this, there seem to be some new rules to abide every other time. As seen on the influencer marketing trends above, more will be expected in terms of budgets and growth of the entire industry as a whole. What this means is that despite all this growth, some best practices should be observed, as they won’t change no matter the future changes or trends.
Here they are:
i. Authenticity It’s been mentioned above, and it can’t be emphasized enough, whichever side of the marketing campaign you’re standing on, whether as a brand or an influencer, authenticity remains the paramount priority. This refers to the content being created as well as the collaboration relationships between the brand and the influencer.
This is key because once the audience notices something untrustworthy going on, she will back off. And this means a ruined reputation both for the influencer and the brand.
ii. Effective and Clear Communication This is a business venture both for the brand and the influencer. Any communication exchanged must be as elaborate as possible and must be conveyed in good time. So, what this means is that you must know what you want to achieve from this “marriage” before you put anything out to the public, to avoid misinformation drama.
To achieve this, it’s encouraged that the brands create comprehensive brief with all the guidelines they would like the influencer to use. The influencer on the other hand is advised to involve the brand in content creation just so that everyone can be on the same page. When everyone has approved the content and the process of execution, then it’s good to go.
iii. Stay Open To Learn and Re-learn Human beings never cease to learn. Each marketing campaign is always different from the previous one. And the marketing space and trends are constantly evolving, nothing stays the same. So, it’s important to keep learning and keep optimizing accordingly.
After each campaign, do some research and see how well it performed, tweak where necessary and boost what succeeded. Consider things like seasons to see how best to optimize. Keep learning.
Take Away
People are overwhelmed with internet data and what they do now is just skim through information. Brands have noted this and have found a way to engage with them through partnering with social media influencers to boost their chances of getting noticed through that split second of eyeball.
The above trends can guide anyone on either side to effectively get the best out of their marketing efforts, use of live video; staying authentic and using the social media influencers with the highest engagement rate will earn you a good ROI. Remember the saying, show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.
For a good number of people, there’s always the question of how they can improve their business or follow their passions to earn some extra cash in order to supplement their income and live the lifestyle they want. The path to success is really different for everyone except that today, there are more people than ever before searching for side hustle ideas.
So, what is a side hustle, is there a definition?
You’ve most likely heard the word hustler before; this could mean someone that has a main job as an employee and a second job where he’s self-employed.
A side hustle doesn’t need to be a complete side business and neither does it have to make loads of money, instead, it’s more about growth as a person and growth of your entrepreneurial creativity, and following your passion without leaving your current employment or necessarily investing all your savings into a venture you’re not so sure of. This is why it’s called a side hustle. It’s more about finding the answer to your financial woes from within and not from the boss.
What Is a Good Side Hustle to Invest in?
This is really simple, you just need to find a hustle that fills a need and dovetails what you do on a regular basis. For example, if your career is in finance your side hustle might as well be filing tax returns for people, so it fills a need and doesn’t pull you so far from your day job.
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A side hustle offers some financial security and offers you some sense of freedom and all you need for that is an idea, some free time and a drive. Thus, how can you benefit?
a. You Increase Your Savings/Income
For most people this is the most alluring reason, whether you already have a sustainable source of income or you have a passion that could earn you some dough, this extra cash is always welcomed. You can use it to pay any pending loans e.g. your student loan; you can save it up and just enjoy the feeling of freedom of some financial security.
b. Horn Your Skills and Experience
Bring your creativity out to play. Learn new skills e.g. communication seeing that you may now end up having customers or clients whom you will have to serve. You will also learn how to market, brand, and even design your product (even if you will be in the service industry, you will be a brand that will need stellar packaging and branding).
All these and more skills are incredibly useful and the more you horn them during this side hustle process, the more clarity you’ll get as far as your career and goals are concerned. They might also open for you some new avenues you never even imagined!
c. Test the Waters
There’s no better way to test ventures than through a simple side hustle without the full commitment. There’s safety in the fact that you don’t need to fully commit until you’re sure it will work. Whichever side hustle you pick the purpose should be to give you the satisfaction you desired, so if you realize that it isn’t delivering on that, you can simply drop it and pick another one. This is the beauty of side hustles, they’re flexible in nature and don’t require you to invest too much time, finances, or energy in them.
To have a supplementary clue check out some related statistics:
Is a Part-time Job the Same Thing as a Side Hustle?
A side hustle is all about creating assets for yourself. A side hustle can evolve into something bigger and therefore change your entire life. A part-time job is still a job, only that it earns you some money, in it, you’re still going to be controlled by someone and the pay will be dictated by them. Meanwhile, a side hustle has no limit to the amount of money you can make. So, a part-time job has very few in common with a side hustle.
Before offering you some brilliant side hustle ideas, check first some tips to guide you:
Tips to Guide You on How to Start a Side Hustle
i. Leverage the skills you already have
It can be fun to pursue a wild route that you’ve never tried before, true, but it would be smart to pick on a path you already have skills on. This isn’t to say that you keep doing your regular job outside; it just means that you pick on something that can use your already existing skills.
In case you’re not very sure of the skillset to follow through, create a list of all your strong skills and identify a few or just one that you feel could be the best suit.
ii. Solve a need
Of course, one reason you may be considering side hustle ideas is that you want to pursue your passion, but what if it cannot necessarily be monetized? On the other hand, if you can identify a need within your area and offer solutions, people will pay to alleviate their troubles. With that said, it’s possible to find yourself at an intersection between an unresolved thing and your passion, bingo!
For instance, you can be passionate about organic products you can easily make at home, and then use your marketing skills to sell them. Thus, you have solved a need that people that are looking for organic products have and meanwhile fed your passion.
iii. Create a business plan
You may not be new to how business works, but you’re still going to need a plan. This will enable you to identify who your target audience is, how you can scale in the future, and also, who your competitors are. This information means you will be required to do some research which will help you carve out your niche as you view how feasible your idea truly is.
iv. Brand yourself
As indicated earlier, in order for you or your business to be taken seriously, you have to become a brand. As such, identify what you want to be characterized by; come up with a fitting logo and use fonts that people can identify your brand with. Have a website and social media profiles that reflect who you are and what you stand for.
v. Plan to scale
Why start a side hustle if you don’t plan to grow? Failing to plan is planning to fail, it’s cliché, but it’s more than true. When you start generating more clients you automatically make more sales and this means more work, and then what?
This calls for planning on how you will handle that when the time comes, by automating some processes, and by possibly employing someone to work on your behalf. That may mean eventually identifying a potential location that you can take up to carry out the business and so on. This is purely going to depend on your side hustle idea.
vi. Market and advertise
No matter what side hustle ideas you pick, as long as you’ll be there to make money, then you’re going to need to invest in some marketing and advertising. This usually involves creating relevant content, and taking advantage of the free social media platforms to reach your target audience, may also involve using paid advertising, and many more. These steps are going to be determined by the budget you have, so if you don’t have any budget at all, don’t get discouraged, social media is still free.
vii. Have a future plan
Again, planning is vital for any business. Soon you could be making some good money from your side hustle and may even consider making it a full-time hustle (not necessarily meaning that you immediately quit your regular employment). This may happen eventually, but what’s important now is for you to have a plan for two possibilities, one is when it grows and starts earning you good money, you need to have a plan on how to keep it growing. If, in case it makes you more money than your job, you may have to create a transition plan to being self-employed full-time.
The second possibility is if it doesn’t generate as much money as you anticipate, you can then have a contingency plan like an emergency kit to cushion you and the hustle.
Here Are Some Brilliant Side Hustle Ideas You Can Try Now
Ghostwriting
As a ghostwriter, you’ll be hired to write on various topics, while the credit and ownership go to someone else. You can also be hired by an agency at a considerable retainer or package for your ghostwriting services.
The best part about being a ghostwriter besides the money is the freedom to work from anywhere on the planet. And all you need is a laptop and a good internet connection and you’re good to go. So, if you love writing, this is a great side hustle idea.
An influencer is anyone who influences people’s buying decisions, as an influencer, your work will be content creation, customer engagement, photography (you can hire help if you don’t yet have the skills), speaking in public, etc.
Your revenue streams may be through becoming a brand ambassador, through sponsored social media posts, or doing digital marketing through exposure. If you have a reasonable number of followers, this side hustle idea is an easy path, if you don’t, it’s not a very hard thing to achieve. So, go ahead, pick a niche that you’re passionate about, and just start.
If you’ve got an eye for aesthetics and love taking pictures, then being a freelance photographer is one of the best side hustle ideas you can consider. But how can you make money? Selling your pictures online through a third-party seller such as Flickr, Shutterstock, who will do all the legwork for you for a commission. Alternatively, you can sell your content to magazines or newspapers looking for topical images, if e.g. you love travelling, then you can take pictures of your destinations and sell them to travel magazines and so on.
Weddings and parties are also another stream of income. You could also create photo books or sell printables.
Sell e-Books
These are simply books that can be downloaded online. Do you have a subject you’re passionate about? Or that you’ve excelled in and would like to share your knowledge for a fee? Well, there you have it – a great side hustle idea. You can write it yourself or hire the services of a ghostwriter to write it for you.
It can be on travel, food, health, romance, or just fiction. You can take advantage of Amazon’s best-seller section to check the winning categories and pick one that suits your interests. The advantage of platforms like Amazon is that you have the potential of reaching a larger audience that might not have known you exist.
To sell your eBooks, you should consider setting up your own website and selling it there directly; this will give you full control of the entire process and earn you some customer information which you can use to promote more books later.
Monetize a Talent
So, what’s your talent?
Here’s a hint, what are you passionate about? Could it be cooking? Designing clothes? Or dancing? The list is quite endless, but the bottom line is that you can easily turn this into profit. E.g. if music is your thing, you probably have guitar-playing skills; you can teach people in your local area and make some easy money through this. Remember to advertise yourself across your social media platforms.
Side Hustle Ideas: Become a Virtual Assistant
Being a virtual assistant is one of the most diverse side hustle ideas available. It can involve writing, scheduling social media posts, responding to emails, and so forth, it’s really going to depend on who you work for. All you may need is your laptop, a phone, and a good internet connection. But you will also need to have these basic skillsets that will come in handy no matter what your tasks will be.
· Communication skills
· A good understanding of all things internet
· Organizational skills
· Great customer service skills
You can make anything from $15 per hour. You can advertise yourself on social media, have a professional page or use platforms such as Fiverr.
Sell Services on Upwork or Fiverr
If you’re a professional graphic designer, research writer, or web developer, or possess similar skills, then you can get paid for your services by getting gigs through platforms such as Upwork or Fiverr. Writing gigs can start from $5, web design at $100, social media managers at $70 going forward, and much more.
You just need to sign up and create impressive profiles because the competition is harsh, once you deliver a stellar job and get a 5 star rating, then you’ll be on your way to earning some good money on the side.
This is a side hustle idea that may not make you money immediately, but if you’re consistent in delivering valuable and engaging content on a regular, you’ll be surprised at how much income a blog can bring you. Blogging will require nothing except passion, a commitment of a few hours daily or weekly, and unique niche content. Simply build an irresistible brand and back it up with an inspiring social media presence.
How will you earn money? Through affiliate links, your own products, or sponsored content among others.
Vlogging
This is all about making fun video content on a particular niche and uploading them on YouTube or Vimeo. You can make money on the side by shooting informative, fun, and unique videos on a regular basis. They could be about anything e.g. how-to-video, a-day-in-the-life videos and reviews of products and so much more. Some of the greatest vloggers simply play live games on YouTube and have millions of views.
How does this earn you money?
You can monetize your channel. In YouTube for example, your channel should be around for at least 12 months, have at least 1000 subscribers, and have about 4000 hours of watch time in order to be able to monetize. The money will come through affiliate marketing, sponsored content, selling merchandise as well as Google AdSense where you’ll be paid for ads that are run on your channel. Do you think this is your area? Go ahead.
Tutoring or Offering an Online Course
Are you inclined to academics? This is one of the most lucrative side hustle ideas today. If you like to teach and have the skills, the niche of tutoring is large. Whether it’s kindergarten children or college students, you have a wide variety of options to take advantage of.
You can choose to be an in-person tutor or offer them online. From STEM subjects to arts such as painting, there’s no limit to what you can do as long as you qualify and have the skills. The courses may take you time to put together, however, once you have them, you can use a site like Udemy (they’ll take away 50% of your earnings) or create your own site for this purpose.
If you have a gifted hand for creating beautiful unique crafts, then you can leverage the ready market that Etsy has created. Etsy is the most popular marketplace for unique hand-crafted items on the internet.
You can pick simple but great-quality items to start with, take great pictures and create an Etsy account and launch your side hustle. Learn more about Etsy and how you can maximize the opportunity for sales.
Interior Design
Again, one of the most lucrative side hustles ideas today. This field has great potential for high profit since it’s always in demand, particularly if you’re really good at it. So, how do you start?
If you can create your own website where you can showcase your capabilities, then start already, if you can’t create a website immediately, then leverage on social media e.g. Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook and share examples of what you can do.
The important thing is to be able to reach your target audience, thus use the venues mentioned above to find her and share your content there.
Side Hustle Ideas: Rent Your Car/ Bike
You probably have a car or cars that you don’t use often; could be a sports car, a truck, or a sports bike, renting them out could be a simple way of making some extra cash on the side, the same way Airbnb works. If the car is on a loan, then this would be a great way to help you pay it up! You can do this through the use of platforms such as Turo where you just need to list your car using the app. This is free.
You can then set up your daily price plus rules. Then indicate when your car will be available. The rest is about waiting for a client and the pay.
Delivery Services
Nowadays convenience is the new king of customer service. People want the convenience of easy delivery of food, groceries, medicines, and so on. Delivery services are therefore one of the most in-demand side hustles of our time. Starting a delivery service will require your time, commitment, discipline as well as some good investment. There are several types of delivery services, including van delivery, bicycle delivery, motorbike, and special delivery for temperature-controlled items such as medicines, etc.
You can pick the one that will be most suitable for your budget as well as the local area. You may also do some research on any rules and regulations of delivery in your region.
AirBnB
If you have some free space such as a guest house or boathouse or an RV and wouldn’t mind renting it out for some extra money, then get it prepped and get going. An Airbnb hustle is low cost but with the potential to frequently earn you money. Your own house may also be ideal if you travel a lot and are rarely there. All you need to do is ensure basic requirements like a good bed with pillows, a place to put clothes e.g. closet, clean towels, a fully equipped first aid kit, and some cutlery maybe.
Another key factor to consider is ownership of the space, if you own the property then that’s easy, but if you rent it you should ensure it’s allowed to do this. Finally, when all is set up just sign up to be an Airbnb host and start hosting.
Fitness and health are many people’s concerns and most seek help to stay disciplined in healthy routines. Are you in great physical shape and have a passion for things to do with health and fitness? Do you have the desire to help others as you earn from it? Then this is the hustle for you.
As a trainer you can choose to train in person or do it virtually, both options are pretty lucrative, so you may want to pick the one that will be most convenient for you.
Local Tour Guide
Are you an outdoor kind of person who enjoys culture, history, architecture, or art? Then is your side hustle, just waiting to be explored. You can be a tour guide in your local area and earn money while doing the fun things that you love. Just ensure to do as much research as possible in order to offer correct information and get started.
Drop Shipping
Drop shipping is a growing trend according to Google Trends. Drop shipping is where you sell products but the suppliers package and ship the products instead of you, or simply put, set up an online store and process sales without the inventory. You can create markups and earn without much stress.
All you need for this is a website.
Create an App
You don’t need to be a developer to be able to create an app, the freelance platforms such as Upwork or Fiverr mentioned above have some top of crème developers that can execute the ideas for you and the good thing is they’re quite reasonable when it comes to charges.
To leverage your app, add it to Google Play and the Apps Store. Earning through an app doesn’t necessarily require you to charge for it, so you can offer it for free but allow ads and have premium features that you can charge for. It’s not really so hard.
Invest in Financial Markets
Now, this is a great side hustle idea but may not be your first option especially if you’re not an expert at picking stocks or trading. This side hustle can be tricky in the sense that you can make some really good money or some deep losses. You need to have a sense of how financial instruments work before you venture here.
People are constantly moving, so this would make for a great side hustle idea. All you need for this is some initial investment e.g. a truck or van. If you don’t have your own, then you may be required to buy one. This will be guided by your budget, the amount you may want to put in for a side hustle, and your target market.
For example, if you want to target big firms or families then a large truck may be necessary, but if you’re looking for the more frequent smaller markets then even a van would suffice. Remember you have to put in place some best practices to ensure your clients’ goods arrive in perfect condition in order to get more referrals.
Uber or Lyft – Driving
You have free evenings and weekends and don’t know what to do with that time? How about you become an Uber or Lyft driver and make some money on the side? The good thing with these two platforms is that when you’re busy and don’t want to drive you can simply turn your availability on or off as needed.
To add some extra benefit, you can leverage the “destination mode” to carry riders in the morning on your way to work and in the evening on your way back. This is one of the most convenient side hustle ideas thanks to technology.
Custom T-shirt Design
Social media today is that gift that keeps offering, there are myriads of creative ideas that people want to explore. You’ve probably seen the “twinning” caption of people wearing identical clothes or t-shirts with identical prints. Why not explore this if you have an artistic inclination?
You can create custom-t-shirt designs or designs that can be printed on caps to match the t-shirts and so on. When the marketing strategies mentioned above are used, this can be a very effective way of making some good money on the side.
Take Home
The more money we make the more problems we get, that’s the famous quote, but it’s really furthest from the truth. For you as a hustler or an aspiring hustler, more money may mean the difference between barely surviving and making enough to give yourself a treat. More money could mean no more student loans.
More money could be the difference between barely getting by and prosperity, between just living and building your life. Therefore as you ponder on what is a good side hustle, have in mind the points mentioned above, without necessarily quitting your job, and consider one of the lucrative side hustle ideas listed here.
The Content Marketing Institute research B2B Content Marketing revealed that 85% of marketers consider higher quality, more efficient content marketing as being the first factor that contributed to their increased success. Thus, how to create quality content remains a tough question.
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The aphorism “quality content is king” is by now universally known and in general lines correspond to reality. You cannot contest that content is one of the base pillars of marketing today. Virtually every marketer, writer, or blogger wants engaging content, quality content, interesting content, useful content, viral content… But finally, what’s exactly engaging/interesting/quality content? Which are the parameters that a piece of content should accomplish in order to be classified as such?
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Tough question! Because what’s interesting for you, for me might not be, what you call useful a tier might not. So, this is a subjective appreciation. It’s up to the target reader to judge it.
Top performers have dug their way to find out what high-quality content marketing means for their audience and defined it. It’s a path each writer should follow.
Some tactics that can help you build high quality content marketing are the following:
Your Content Should Relate to a Problem or a Desideratum of Your Audience
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Each and every piece of your content should be audience-centric, focused on its interests, problems, challenges, or pleasure. It’s your job to define your audience, who you write for, and who’s your buyer persona. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes and depict which are their needs, research, or simply ask them. Validate your ideas with your audience, through a survey, social media, or Quora.
Quality content resonates with your readers and makes them read what you wrote and offers them something valuable to take away. Just give them what they want and need, when they need it, in the form of advice, lists of clear steps, tips, and insights.
“The more you help your readers with what they care about, the more they’ll come back” states Sue Dunlevie from Successful Blogging
Define Your Audience, Your Buyer Personas
Defining the exact features of your buyer personas has crucial importance for your content quality, as you need a specific person for which to write, whose problems you answer and solve. Before planning content or producing content, it should be clearly established who is the reader of that content. Establish details like gender, age, occupation, struggles, interests…
For example, Buyer Persona Mary: Mompreneur, 30-40 years, 1-3 children, interested in work-life balance and struggling with finance and budgeting
Buyer Persona Lindsay: Entrepreneur, 40-50 years, interested in improving client experience and struggling with content marketing and ROI
Personas help better understand who’s the reader, and the customer and ease the task of tailoring and further personalizing your message. Write for a specific person, not for everyone, not for SEO. Readers/ buyers are real persons looking for answers, for solutions. Your personas should rely on real persons, on details found out during real in-depth interviews and research.
“If you try to write to everyone, you’ll really be writing to no one” Gina Horkey, HorkeyHandBook
Mark W. Schaefer made research and revealed that 90% of one company’s sales are the result of the action of three to four buyer personas.
Write 1000+ Words of Content
A longer content, in principle, brings extended value to the reader. Now the trend in Inbound Marketing is about to change from 1000 – 2000 words content to 3000 – 10000 words, but that’s mainly for ranking reasons. And, also, it seems that in general people are more likely to return and share long-form articles.
Long-form articles are perceived as having higher authority and lead the reader from simple to complex in the same piece of content, a fact that attracts more readers. Long-form articles are in general highly researched, well-written and comprehensive, they cover integrally a topic and answer all related questions that might arrive. That’s why long-form is considered as having a higher quality, but the longer form doesn’t mean filling words to hit a number. Write a long-form article just when it is meaningful and adds value to the reader.
For the moment the paradigm “the longer, the better” gains momentum! However, a balance should be found, otherwise, we are going to find ourselves quite confused and in a not-so-appealing situation of starting to read a piece of content this year and finishing it the next.
How to Create Quality Content? – Format for Readability
Since visual content equals more interesting, and thus shareable, the format of the content is becoming more and more important. Besides the substance of the content, its structure counts also. A readable design that uses bullet points, lists, images, charts, or infographics makes content much easier to consume.
With such a huge quantity of content published every day, it’s not a surprise that most readers are in fact skimmers, reading about 20 – 28% of the content of a page. So, formatting is an absolute must to attract their attention and keep their interest alive. Large blocks of text are just about to become history.
It’s not enough to have stellar, well-researched content, it should have a great graphic format too. Like in the example below:
Formatting helps readability. Source: Backlinko
How to Create Quality Content? Use Your Own Voice in a Conversational Manner
Each writer has their own style and voice, so, use yours, don’t try to mimic someone else, the original will always be better than the copy. Be authentic, be you, use your unicity and you’ll find your own audience, the one that enjoys your style. Or as Neil Gaiman stated “The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision.” This is the differentiation element that will make you stand out.
If my style is academic and somewhat humorous, I will most probably never be able to write in a snappy sarcastic style and be authentic. Pretending or expecting a writer to write on all tones, all voices, and for all niches is amateurish nonsense.
Alicia Honeycutt considers the voice of a writer as being one of the “biggest secrets of professional writers”.
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Quality content is one that sounds natural, not like something forced. Writing in a conversational tone, similar to a conversation among friends is by far more engaging for your audience, than using an elevated, academic voice. So, write from your heart, write on their level.
How to Create Quality Content? Support Your Content with Data
These days providing good content is not enough anymore. In order to have high-quality content you need to research and back up your content with data. Facts are important and people enjoy reading facts, thus including them in your content becomes a must. Don’t omit to offer credit to the sources that endorse the cited facts.
High-quality content implies gaining your audience’s trust and establishing a relationship. Gaining and building trust is not as easy as it might appear, but providing value inside your content and having data from valid, authoritative, and recent sources helps achieve this goal. Do your homework and cite reliable sources that are reputed for publishing accurate information. This way your content will gain trust.
Relating and sharing stories is an essential human activity, we all love good stories and there is no surprise that stories are engaging and delight readers. Storytelling is fundamental to just about everything in our world and the manner in which we communicate, interact and live derives from it.
Use stories to teach lessons in an entertaining way. Use your own experience and speak about problems you encountered to help your audience solve similar challenges. Speak about inspiring stories of leaders and inspirational persons. Tell stories about other persons achievements and success.
As Bryan Eisenberg says: “Effective content marketing is about mastering the art of storytelling. Facts tell, but stories sell“.
Most often great content equals a great story.
Measure the Success of Your Content
High-quality content translates into traffic, engagement, sales, and ROI. Numbers and metrics will give you the exact measure of your success if your content has the desired quality. High-quality content attracts the target audience and converts it into leads and sales. Track and measure the results your content brings with tools like Google Analytics, SimilarWeb, or Open Web Analytics.
Your audience judges the quality of your content and metrics are the real proof. It’s your job to permanently watch your metrics, measure your progress and modify your strategy accordingly if the results are not as expected. Engagement, shares, and likes are important but leads, sales, and return on investment (ROI) are even more important.
But content is a mix of art and science, parts can be measured as for example engagement, partly not exactly as for example style and aesthetic.
Draw a Conclusion
Be helpful till the end and do the whole work for the audience, write a synthesis and formulate a conclusion for your content. Collect and provide supplementary resources concerning that subject for your audience.
In my conception, the above-listed tactics combined generate high-quality content marketing. What’s your opinion, what do you consider high-quality content? How would you create quality content? What tactics would you add up to this list?
These are wild times and a crisis like the one happening now has the potential to flip even the strongest businesses upside down. This season has left entire cities under quarantine, some businesses have completely shut down, events and conferences canceled or if lucky, just postponed or moved online. To add salt to injury, there are endless waves of speculations and presumptive forecasts even worse than the pandemic itself, that are hurting businesses even more.
But going through a global health crisis shouldn’t mean a rise in panic or disorder; neither should it mean there should be battening down of hatchets and binging life away, a crisis or downtime shouldn’t always mean doom and gloom. Business won’t be as usual and that’s ok. You and 99% of people out there are tapping into unknown waters and no one is prepared at all.
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It’s possible to make the best of every situation, particularly in how one frames it in their mind. For instance instead of feeling as if you’re entering a recession, think about a reset or re-evaluation and reinvestment in your brand, living through a pandemic for most businesses means that they (businesses) need to engage their sensitive gear in how they sell because this is a time of community building and service around the globe.
But how do you get here with all these uncertainties?
Here are 3 essential stages to help you build your crisis approach protocol. They’re interlocked phases that are effective in calming you during such a time, maintaining your business flow, and stimulating deeper creativity that you never knew existed within you.
Stage 1 – Take a Deep Breath and Put Yourself Together
As the owner or founder of the business, you’re its most valuable asset; therefore, unless you’re personally in a position of groundedness, capacity, wisdom, and strategy, you will not be able to hold together your team.
Keep Calm
It’s common for the global marketing community to create unhealthy patterns that can push you to operate in haste, panic, and create anxiety by making you feel as if you’re not doing enough, not being productive, or contributing much, this can trigger you to try and create more content, or panic produce in order to feel safe. This is wrong and unhealthy for both you and your business, and if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, this is the reason.
You need to detach yourself from this modeled behavior and instead reserve your resources in terms of time, and energy and focus on only the very crucial activities.
Take time to be calm, focus on how you’re feeling and stabilize yourself. How do you do that?
Step i. Keep your feelings under control
Any sudden, unexpected and negative event that leaves you feeling overwhelmed, confused and helpless is a traumatic event. If an experience creates feelings of overwhelming nature and is perceived to be life-threatening then it’s considered to be a traumatic event. So, we can affirm without being wrong that what we’re experiencing globally now is a traumatic event.
Therefore because it’s hard enough, be gentle with yourself. What you may be feeling could be extreme stress or anxiety or even exhaustion accompanied by zero motivation. Be kind to yourself.
Going through trauma affects several parts of your brain including the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for decision-making. Another important responsibility the prefrontal cortex does is to slow down and become “clouded” when you’re going through a trauma. Why this happens is because there’s a lot of pressure on your brain when you’re going through such experiences. So, you need to take very deliberate care of your brain and nervous system so that it can work for you.
Do Less.
As our society model encourages us all to do more, contribute more, and show up more, at this point doing less will heal you, allow you to grieve, and help you up-level. This is what stabilizes you.
You’re able to process the crisis, be present and connected to other people and be present even for yourself, be realistic about your feelings. As you take these steps to prioritize yourself and care for yourself, you’re building your own personal capacity as you increase the capacity to be able to care for others in the nearest future. This is the regulation of your nervous system.
Here is a little deeper explanation.
Your energy isn’t something you can predict in advance, but it’s the one thing that your brain consumes a lot during the processing of the crisis. This explains why you may feel more tired during a crisis than at normal times. Rest is therefore extremely essential; rest can come especially through sleep. So, don’t be afraid to sleep enough or sleep more.
To know whether you’re stabilized you can do a quick check by identifying your feelings. That is, are you calm, connected, present, and feeling grounded? If yes then you’re stabilized, but if you still feel tense, anxious, overwhelmed, worried, and irritable, then you’re still unstable, and if you feel low energy, disconnected or like you’re shut down, take some time off and rest, until you achieve the calm feelings mentioned above.
Step ii. Address the basic needs
These are food, water, shelter, and medicine.
One way to calm your nervous system is to address your most basic needs. Here is where Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs comes to play. Your basic needs according to Maslow are categorized into different levels of human needs, the most basic or baseline needs are food, water, shelter sleep, medicine, and the like. So, what’s the connection between your baseline needs and crisis management? Simply because until these needs are met, your brain will have a very difficult time focusing on any other actions.
Step iii. Ensure that elements related to your personal safety are in proper order
These include your finances as well as your mental health.
Do you care enough about your body and your health? This is the next aspect as importance after the basic needs are met. Good health is a great privilege that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Things to check here are health coverage, supplements, preventive care, and so on. This is especially of concern if you have to purchase or pay for them at this time.
Another key component in your health care is the daily routine that you do to keep healthy. This may include daily work-out, drinking sufficient water, at least 8 hours of sleep, yoga, and so on.
For your financial safety, you just need to know how much money you need to cover the baseline needs mentioned above. This number is very important because it will guide your next course of action.
Your emotional and mental safety is very pegged to the baseline needs mentioned above. If you feel you need any support, do not refrain from reaching out to trusted sources.
Remember that a complex part of any crisis particularly a global crisis is that there’s often very little any individual can do to escape, no amount of “busy-ness” can distract you, nothing can mask you enough, and sometimes all you have to do is care for what is an immediate need.
So how do you cushion yourself in this fourth step?
Assess your physical needs by ensuring environmental safety for you and your loved ones, if safety is not guaranteed then a move to a safer location would be a good option. Ensure also that you have access to good healthcare. And finally, ensure that you have finances for your basic needs. This can be helped by cutting out some non-essential expenses such as holidays, clothes, and participation in events, and saving these amounts for later since the crisis may not have a definite end date.
When all these are in place, but you still feel mentally or emotionally strained, it’s ok to seek additional help at little or no cost.
Step IV. It’s OK to ask for all the support that you need
Self-care is great, but when in a crisis this is not even half enough. A crisis is not a time for solitude. Social support is super essential for your sense of security and safety. At times such as during the Covid-19 global crisis, the kind of community care that you need may be difficult to achieve due to health concerns, but this makes this need even more important.
Although the truth is that people often don’t know how to ask for help because they don’t want to bother, they also don’t know how to offer it. Thus, in order for you to get the social support you urge for, the emotional isolation must be broken. Do not withdraw during these times, break the cycle of guilt within yourself. So, what can you do?
The first thing would be to analyze your feelings and identify where you need support. Whether you’re feeling sad, inadequate, or even unable to describe what you’re feeling, it’s recommended to try to identify them because this is an essential step in self-stabilization. And this is how you’ll be able to know the kind of support to seek. And when you seek help, you will most certainly get it and possibly be able to help other persons as well.
Source: YouTube
Stage 2 – Stabilize Your Business
You’ve successfully passed phase one and are now a stable person. This next phase is all about your business’ stability. It’s about taking stock of where it is at the moment and taking any possibility of moving it forward and helping it thrive. Even though the uncertainty that surrounds us all is way beyond your control.
This is how to go about this phase:
Step i. Future-proof your business finances
A crisis can wreak havoc even with the best-laid waterproof business plan. Here you should asses the current financial state of your business. Armed with this information, you’ll now be able to make wise-fitting decisions that can future-proof your brand in order to cushion it from the unpredictability that comes with the crisis and enable you to move forward.
An assessment of your business involves knowing how much cash you have reserved, identifying any outside funds that your business can access if the need arises, how much revenue you are bringing in at the moment and in the near future, how much you’re spending currently and whether these expenses are essential and finally establish how long your business can keep running with the currently available funds.
All this information is the foundation of your current business decisions.
Step ii. Activate the maintenance mode
So, because this is an uncertain period, it’s best to rationalize your resources and energy, as well as your time, to last you as long as possible. A maintenance mode is a period where only the bare minimum is used to keep the business running.
This may include minimum sales required to generate the minimum revenue needed to pay minimum bills. So, what this means is that you may also be required to run a minimum team that will handle minimum business. This is not to shut you down; rather, it’s an essential mode to help you survive during difficult times and most importantly, allow you to explore other profit-making tasks that your business can venture into that match with the times.
Just like you need to calm down and be stable, your business too requires a calm moment for it to keep standing; you don’t want to keep running high production with zero sales as this will just destabilize everything. This is the baseline for your business too.
With that said, you need to define what maintenance mode is for your business. Here are key factors you should consider:
Business expenses – This will vary depending on seasons, during a crisis you want them to be as lean as possible. You can go through your expenses to see some recurring expenses for things such as office supplies or subscriptions that may not be necessary at this time, you can cut them. Leave only the essential bills.
Your Team – Although this should be a last resort, in some cases you may have to reduce some roles and only keep the essential members to keep the company running.
Your Business Revenue – This should be your new goal, just make enough to keep the lights on. To figure this out you already identified your baseline expenses and know exactly for which interval you’ll be able to keep the business running in a lean mode.
Remember, no business can stay in maintenance mode forever; this is just a short-term measure to keep your business surviving until the crisis diminishes or is over.
Source: YouTube
Step iii. Spread some care/ love
With the above steps checked, your business is on the rails, you can breathe, and it can survive. So, now it’s time to extrapolate this calm to your people, be it staff, partners, or customers. It’s in your best interest to know that people who are part of your business network whether directly or via proxy are ok and will be there when your business will take off again! Who are these people?
a – Your Team – Organize weekly catch ups
Check-in on them to find out if they’re safe and ok. Show them they’re valued and offer any support that you can. At this point, it’ll also be a good idea to communicate any changes happening in order to keep them focused on the maintenance tasks you’re working on.
b – Your Existing Clients or Customers
These are people that are already committed to your brand, show them support and ensure your customer service is at the highest possible level. Show them empathy and encourage them, making them feel they are your business’ top priority.
c – Your Potential Customers
Extend your care to this segment as well, be compassionate, and offer a message of hope. This may be the impulse someone needs to make it through the day, and they may never forget you for that.
This final stage is about leading your business forward into the future during and past the crisis through revenue generation. It’s the transition period from your maintenance mode to a growth mode. This involves having both short-term and long-term strategies; here are a few steps to walk through this:
Step i – The Short-term strategy
Pick the path with the least resistance – create simple but quick or fast wins; easy sales that will require as little from your business as possible.
Create relevant offers – pick the ones that will be most profitable to you and the easiest to sell offers. If you don’t have an offer that’s relevant at this time, it’s time you create one.
Other ways you can generate revenue in the short term include creating digital versions of your service or improving an already existing one. Offer lower tariffs for some of your tickets or DIY versions that are hybrid. It’s all about innovation that fits with the current situation using the least resistant route.
Step ii – A long-term strategy
Every crisis eventually does come to an end. Having achieved all the difficult parts above, your mind is now in a healthy state to consider the future.
Have a futuristic view of your business, look at all the emerging trends, you may notice technology taking over and thriving where humanity cannot. Consider such options, how much can you automate? if the case.
Besides the trends, as a business, you can look out for weaker hands looking to sell or merge, or, you as a business may consider merging to stay alive. Whichever long-term strategy you pick, let it be sustainable, thoroughly thought through, and able to see you on the other side of the crisis.
Wrap Up
No one can say with certainty just how long a crisis such as the Corona Virus pandemic will last. Its effects on the economy in general as well as our individual lives continue to be visible. You can do something by adapting to the circumstances both as an individual and as a business. This is how new trends and ways of living are born.
All businesses need constantly new leads and new clients. In our digital century, this is done through free-generated traffic and paid traffic. When referring to paid traffic Google AdWords Search Network and Google AdWords Display Advertising are among the main actors. This article is a Google Display Ads tutorialthat will discuss how to set up Google Display Ads in detail.
But first, let’s clarify the above-mentioned notions:
Google AdWords Search Network: These are the ads that appear on top of a search engine results page and have the case “ad” in front of them. Within AdWords Search Network you bid on keywords for a limited number of ad spots. Consequently, the competition for a certain keyword may raise your ad costs quite fast.
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Google AdWords Display Advertising: These are ads that are shown on different sites and pages across the web. This option offers a multitude of ad spaces, in various formats and types, combined with different targeting options to reach local or global audiences. Practically any site can register itself into Google AdSense and offer space for ads in exchange for a commission. Google AdWords Display uses the space in Google AdSense to promote ads.
To have an idea of the size and reach that the Google Display Network can achieve, take into consideration that about 3 million sites are registered to AdSense and covers 90% of Internet users.
The key difference between Google Search Network and Google Display Network is that in the second case, users are not actively searching for a product or a service. Displaying ads on Google Display Network is, in fact, “interruption marketing”, as it is introduced while the prospect is surfing the Internet.
Because of this difference, you have to employ different campaigns to target each network. So, you need to have a campaign targeting the AdWords Display Network and another campaign targeting the AdWords Search Network!
To maximize the efficiency of your ads budget, you need to have a clear understanding of how to use correctly the Google Display Network. The abilities of targeting and segmenting offer a high lucrative potential for advertisers.
Along the time Google AdWords evolved from the search advertising platform to Gmail, video, search partners and display.
Google Display Network offers several formats for adverts and a handful of sizes. The types of ads you can create through Google Display Network are:
* Text Ads – these are composed exclusively of text, one headline, a maximum of two lines of text and a URL. Text ads are very similar to those of the search network. You have also the possibility to test more versions of text ads to see which generates more results.
* Image Ads present a static image that can be customized with background colors and types of layouts. The image ad will occupy the entire ad block.
* Video Ads are trending, as video content is gaining momentum and YouTube is a participant in the Display Network. As a consequence, you have the possibility to have ads displayed on YouTube videos.
* Rich Media Ads – comprise interactive elements, like animations or carousels of products. The interactive elements change based on the user’s interaction with the ad and the characteristics of his profile.
Google Display Ads Sizes
You have many options to choose from: simple images or animated, or HTML5 ads in a variety of sizes as listed here. The formats supported are .jpg., .gif, .png, .zip and .swf and the image should not be larger than 150KB.
Taking into consideration that each site participant in Google AdSense will define the ad block size that it hosts, you should consider creating ads of different sizes to fit in the various ad block options. This is a prerequisite to avoid having your ads limited from exposure on certain sites because you don’t have the right dimension ad to fit the respective ad block.
In general, rich media or image ads will have a better click-through rate but will be displayed less. Also, you need to be aware of the fact that in an ad block, just one image ad fits, meanwhile, text ads may be able to share the block. Hence while displaying image ads you have to outbid the combined cost of the text ads.
Google Display Ads Tutorial: Define What Is the Potential of Your Ads Profitability
Before starting to create a display campaign, you should verify which is its potential to generate profit. Check up on the following:
Offer
Decide which products/services you want to advertise. It’s better to start with your most thought service or product, as this is your best chance to see profit rapidly.
Capacity
Establish how many products or services you can provide in a certain period, based on your resources. If you provide coaching sessions, for instance, you have a limited time for that. If you produce a product like cakes you have a certain capacity to produce and deliver. You do not want to have more requests than you can handle, so, adjust your ad spending accordingly.
Cost and profit estimation
Check your numbers first, see how much will cost the acquisition of a new client using ads and compare it with your profit per customer. If your estimated cost is larger than the potential profit you can generate, paid ads are not an option.
Decide on Target Buyer Persona
If your ads campaign has enough potential for profit, the next step is to decide the buyer persona, the ideal client that will be the target of this campaign. In principle, you should have the buyer personas defined in your marketing strategy. To perfectly target your ads campaign, you need the buyer persona that you want to focus on.
Your business might have several buyer personas, defined by demographic elements, problems they try to solve and motifs that generate the need for your product or service. The customer avatar will help you further in building the optimum ads campaign. For your buyer persona establish the following details:
* Which is the problem they want to solve?
* Why do they need a solution to this problem?
* Why is your product/service the best solution?
* Which is the offer that can entice them to act and buy?
The buyer persona is the foundation of the targeting activity while building an ads campaign. And the success of your campaign relies heavily on proper targeting.
Google Display Ads Tutorial: Targeting on the Display Network
When building your ads campaign, you are directly interested to have your ad shown to the persons that are most interested and more likely to buy your products/services. That translates into proper targeting, which can be achieved via:
Placement Targeting
Placement targeting allows you to choose the sites on which your ads will be displayed. This option is effective for filtering a certain demographic element or a specific interest that is relevant to the target audience.
If you identify industry-specific sites or forums whose audience is likely to be interested in your offer, you should pick those as placement for advertising. To find out which sites Google considers relevant for your keywords and where you should display your ads, check AdWords Display Planner.
To obtain the placements just search for the target keyword and click the tab “Get placement ideas”:
After you get this list, check each site and you will access information concerning demographics, ad inventory and formats. Then decide if the respective site is a good fit for your target buyer persona.
Demographic Targeting
Based on your buyer persona characteristics you can filter the target of your ads based on gender, age, income, civil status, etc. And have the possibility to exclude categories that do not fit your buyer personas. If you sell bras, for instance, you can confidently exclude men from your targeting.
Contextual Targeting
Contextual targeting is the primary targeting option as it is based on keywords associated with your offer. So, you have to write a list of 5-15 words or long tail keywords relevant to the purpose of your ads. Subsequently, Google will display your ads on sites related to your keywords.
Constantly verify the sites where your ads appear and adjust your keyword list in concordance. To obtain this info check the “Placements” section.
Topic Targeting
Topic targeting offers the possibility to select the topics of the pages where your ads will be displayed.
The problem with topic targeting is that you cannot refine too much the topics, they are just very general. For example, a topic is “Marketing” and you may be interested just in content marketing or strategic marketing. Hence, the best way is to combine different targeting methods, to ensure your campaign is highly targeted.
Audience Targeting
Audience targeting is realized upon two different criteria interest and remarketing.
The targeting based on interest refers to the browsing history of a person, if she visited repeatedly a certain site, Google concludes she has an interest in that area. If a user is visiting several times voyage and travel sites, the conclusion is that the respective person has an interest in travelling. This method is different as it targets the user, not the site he is visiting.
Remarketing targets only former visitors to your site. Using the cookies placed on the connected devices of your site users, Google is able to subsequently display your ads when these users are visiting other sites as part of the Display Network. Remarketing offers several options from simply targeting anyone who visited your site, to more advanced ones like targeting just persons that took a certain action on your site or remained a certain amount of time.
Obviously combining two or more targeting options is likely to bring you better results, because of highly effective targeting. The number of potential impressions will decrease, but your ad will be shown only to persons that match all your criteria.
Once the basics are defined, let’s pass to effectively creating your campaign.
Keep reading!
Google Display Ads Tutorial: Create a Compelling Offer
Since on Google Ads Display Network the prospects are not actively looking to buy or searching for products or services, your ads need to capture the attention, pop-up, be very relevant, promise an irresistible offer and include a powerful call to action.
Some offers that can entice prospects are:
· First-time discounted offers
· Compelling free guides, ebooks, and case studies
· Free consultations
· Extended guarantees
· Additional gifts on purchase
Google Display Ads Tutorial: Craft Mesmeric Ads
The next step is to create the ads that will serve your initially stated purpose, clicks and new traffic to your site, or new leads and potential customers.
When creating your ads, you should concentrate on two directions:
· To attract your buyer persona and to encourage her to take the desired action
· To discourage not qualified viewers to click on your ads and waste your budget
Keeping in mind the above-mentioned desiderata here are the core components of your ads:
· Significance for your buyer persona. The copy of your ad should be relevant to the characteristics of your buyer persona in order to attract her attention.
· A substantial and irresistible offer. Your offer should highlight and emphasize the benefits that your customer will have for using your products/services.
· An enticing and powerful call to action. After attracting the attention of the right persons on your ads, and presenting a very attractive offer, you also have to inform your potential leads what’s the next step. And that’s the job of the call to action. Consider inserting a key benefit on the call to action, as this can increase your clicks. For instance, this version of the call to action “To explode your traffic, get in touch now” will generate more clicks than “Get in touch now”.
Tip: For cost-efficiency reasons, it’s better to start with text ads and test the ad copy first. After that combine the best copy with images.
Google Display Ads Tutorial: Create High-Converting Landing Pages
Incontestable, having mesmeric ads is of capital importance, but having a high-converting landing page is even more important. So, pay attention to the following elements of a great landing page:
· Powerful headline related and highly relevant to the ad copy.
· Pertinent content in line with the promise listed in the ad.
· Compelling offer continuing and detailing the expectations created in the ad.
· Social proof – insert testimonials, reviews and opinions from customers and third parties to strengthen your credibility.
· Precise call to action – its purpose is to convince prospects to act by installing call to action buttons in prominent, key positions.
Tip: Continuously test different formatting of the landing page till you obtain the version that brings you the best results. Even apparently insignificant changes have the potential to improve conversions.
Measure Results and Track Conversions
There are various types of AdWords conversions, in function of your type of business:
· Form subscription
· Online sales
· Leads from ads
· Leads from the website
· Offline sale import
Offline sales import refers to the sales that result offline after a first contact via Google AdWords. The import method is used to track the results of the online campaign when its results are concluded offline.
Collecting and analyzing the results, and the revenues from each of your ad campaigns is crucial for the optimization of your campaigns’ ROI. This way you have the possibility to adjust or close the ad campaigns that perform poorly or do not perform at all. Tracking will provide you with insights to refine your bids on targeting options.
To enable the tracking function for your conversions, head to the “Tools” tab, and choose “Conversions” from the menu. To install a new conversion, click on the prominent red button “+Conversion”
You have different source options to track the conversions, from your website, from apps, from phone calls or to import. Just select the appropriate option and follow the indications to add the conversion. To finalize the conversion tracking procedure, you need to insert a conversion code on your site.
Google Display Ads Tutorial: How to Set Up Google Display Ads
To practically create the campaign for the Google Display Network you need to follow several steps:
· Click on “Campaigns” in the bar menu
· Click on the red button “+Campaign”
· Choose “Display Network” from the drop-down menu
· Give a title to your campaign
· Choose “No marketing objective > All features” to have all the features available
· Set the right parameters
Among the most important parameters to set we count the:
· Geographic area to target
· Budget and bids – opt for “Manual CPC” and “Enable Enhanced CPC” to have maximum control over your bidding and still take advantage of Google’s functionality that employs the historical conversion data. You also have the possibility to set your daily budget spent on ads.
· Ad delivery – the “Advanced settings” menu allows you to choose “rotate indefinitely”, a function that permits split testing of the copy of your ads. Define the “frequency cap”, so your ads are not shown several times to the same user at a certain moment in time.
· Define your ad groups with different targeting options.
· Set the bid – initially use the information you got from Display Planner, after that adjust based on the results obtained
· Set the targeting criteria already established above
· Insert your ads – start with text ads first and use several versions to identify the highest performer
· Choose the device where your ads will be displayed from the Settings menu
Now your ads are ready to go live!
Remember to always test and improve your campaigns. Constantly review your results, check ad performance, landing page performance, targeting and adjust accordingly.
To ensure your ads success in the long run you have to optimize and improve them continuously.
In practice, just a small part of your ads will be responsible for the major part of results. Pareto principle applies in ads world also: 80% of results are brought by 20% of ads. You should concentrate your efforts just on those ads that bring you the best results and returns.
Google AdWords Display Advertising is the best option to enhance performance via paid traffic, for businesses that cannot face the competition on the search network.
To have a rough idea about the results you should expect from paid advertising, check the infographic realized by WordStream with industry benchmarks:
“The average click-through rate in AdWords across all industries is 3.17% for search and 0.46% for display”
The opportunities offered by Google Display Advertising are monumental, but to get significant results you should always be up to date with the Google Display ads’ best practices and implement continuous testing and improving process.
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