Small Business Grants You Might be Eligible for

Small business grant programs can make a world of difference for a new small business owner. Not only do they provide a vital injection of funds, but they can also help to establish connections in your industry and build buzz around your product. 

If you plan on investing the time and energy into applying to a small business grant program, it’s important to understand the options available and pick the grant that’s right for your business. 

In this article, you will learn about 4 government grants and tax credits that your business may be eligible for:

Canadian Digital Adoption Program

The Canada Digital Adoption Plan (CDAP) is a Federal Government initiative which is intended to help small and medium-sized businesses boost their e-commerce presence, and run their businesses more effectively through digital technology. 

The CDAP aims to accomplish this goal by providing $4 billion dollars in total funding to small and medium-sized businesses who want to adopt new digital technologies.

Who is eligible?

The Government of Canada has outlined four mandatory criteria for eligible applicants to apply for The Boost Your Business Technology grant:

  • Incorporated at the national or provincial level; or be a Canadian resident sole proprietor.
  • Privately-owned for-profit entity
  • Maximum full-time employees of less than 500
  • Not more than 100 million or less than 500,000 in revenue in the last 3 tax years.

This program consists of two grant streams as following:

This stream is for SMEs with $500,000.00 or more in gross revenues during any one of the previous three tax years. With this grant, you will have the resources to hire and work with an accredited digital advisor to help you craft a tailored digital plan. 

This stream is for SMEs with less than $500,000.00 in revenue. It provides such applicants with a “micro-grant” of $2,400.00 to help cover costs relating to the adoption of digital technologies. This stream does not provide any additional funding to cover the cost of developing a Digital Action Plan”.

The Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED)

Companies of any size that invest in research and development (R&D) in Canada can take advantage of the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentive program, Canada’s largest R&D program.

Types of SR&ED tax incentives

  1. Basic research
  2. Applied research
  3. Experimental development

These tax incentives come in two forms:

  • Income tax deduction
  • Investment tax credit, which may be applied against income taxes payable in the current year, in a prior year, or may be carried forward to a future year. In some cases, the credit may be refundable.

Who is eligible?

Eligible R&D Projects

  • Address a technological or scientific uncertainty
  • Address, or attempt to address, a technological advancement, and
  • Use a systematic investigation or search

NOTE: Foreign companies can apply for the Canadian SR&ED tax incentives indirectly by forming a Canadian subsidiary company to perform eligible R&D work in Canada for itself or on a contractual basis on behalf of the parent company. 

The Innovative Solution Canada Program

This program is the Government of Canada’s initiative to partner with eligible Canadian small businesses and facilitate the early development, testing and validation of prototypes, as well as preparing a pathway to commercialization. 

The program’s Challenge Stream and Testing Stream help startups and small/medium-sized businesses (SMEs) overcome technology testing and development hurdles so that they can produce globally-demanded products and services, while also improving government operations.

Here’s what you need to know: 

  • If your idea is selected, you could receive funding to develop a proof of feasibility.
  • If your proof of feasibility is approved, you could receive funding to develop a prototype.
  • If the developed innovation solves the Government of Canada’s challenge, we could be your first buyer.
  • Funding amounts are identified in each individual challenge.

Amount of funding

Innovative Solutions Canada is structured around a graduated, three-phase process:

  1. Proof of Concept: Proving scientific and technical feasibility, and commercial potential, of an idea that addresses a public-sector challenge. Eligible applicants may receive up to $150,000 in Canadian government grants to offset up to six months of project expenses.
  2. Prototype Development: Developing a prototype based on the proof of concept in Phase 1. Eligible applicants may receive up to $2 million in Canadian government grants to offset up to two years of project expenses.
  3. Pathway to Commercialization: Should a Phase 2 prototype suit the needs of a government department, they may procure it from a business and become the innovation’s first purchase. There is no maximum to the amount of funds awarded through these contracts.

Who is eligible?

To participate in the Innovative Solutions Canada program, companies must:

  • Be for-profit and privately held;
  • Be incorporated in Canada (federally or provincially);
  • Have a head office in Canada;
  • Have 499 or fewer full time equivalent (FTE) employees;
  • Pay at least 50% of annual wages, salaries, and fees to employees and contractors who spend a majority of their time working in Canada;
  • Have 50% or more of their full-time employees located as their ordinary place of work in Canada; and
  • Have 50% or more of its senior executives (Vice President and above) with their principal residence in Canada.

Search and Rescue New Initiatives Funds

The Public Safety Canada has launched its Search and Rescue New Initiatives Funds to enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, economy, and innovation of search and rescue activities as it relates to the response and prevention objectives of the national search and rescue program.

The Search and Rescue New Initiatives Fund (SAR NIF) contributes financially towards projects that improve and enhance the objectives of the national search and rescue program.

Amount of funding

The annual SAR NIF budget is $7.6M. With multi-year projects ongoing the availability of funds for new projects will vary from year to year.

Eligible Projects

To achieve this, SAR NIF funding is provided for projects that:

  • Enhance the effectiveness of SAR response in federal, provincial and territorial jurisdictions;
  • Promote the sharing of response and prevention best practices throughout the SAR community; and,
  • Promote and improve SAR prevention.

Eligibility Criteria

  • Provincial and territorial governments, for profit and not-for-profit Canadian organizations and volunteer associations, and academia are eligible to apply to SAR NIF.
  • Those applying for SAR NIF funding must meet the following requirements in order for their application to be considered for funding:
    • Be an eligible recipient;
    • Have a minimum of 5% of in-kind and/or cash contributions as confirmed by the source;
    • Complete SAR NIF Application for Funding, including the Project Budget, and Project Work Plan.

Accelerate your business’s growth with small business grants

If your business has the potential to innovate your industry and build or utilize new technologies to serve the public good, chances are you’re a great candidate for a small business grant.

If you need additional support in determining the right grant and financial support programs for your business and apply for them, get in touch with us here

Share:

Amazon Rolls Out TikTok-like Shopping Feature

Amazon announced on September 8 that it is rolling out a new in-app feature called Inspire, a content hub in a scrolling format that can be engaged with through likes and will include links to Amazon products featured. This new feature serves as a new tool for brands, influencers and other customers to create photo and video-based content, which allows customers to discover and explore products. 

The new feature will be available to select U.S. users starting early December, and will become available to all users in the country in the coming months. 

Amazon’s shoppable content update put the e-commerce giant in competition with apps like TikTok and Instagram where influencers promote products. Content creators can now promote Amazon products directly on the app and shoppers are one click away from placing their order. 

Amazon's new content hub
Amazon's newly updated content hub

“Engaging and fun short-form video content is the easiest way to get my audience’s attention,” Practically Pursia, an Amazon influencer, said in a statement. “Inspire is going to help me expand the business I’ve already built with Amazon by giving my audience the convenience of shopping items from my content within the Amazon app instead of requiring them to leave and find the item on their own. It’s genius.”

Social commerce is predicted to be an increasingly popular shopping outlet in 2023. In fact, it continues to be a growing focus for many social media apps as well as brands. Facebook leads the way as a top choice for social commerce, followed by Instagram.

In-stream commerce is a key element of TikTok’s future growth strategy, with the platform already seeing big success with its on-platform buying options in mainland China. It’s faster and more convenient to make a one-click purchase on a product you see on social media instead of clicking through a bunch of links. 

Along with the rise of user-generated content, the implementation of social commerce will help boost lead conversion, as people are more likely to trust and buy products recommended by credible influencers they choose to follow. 

Social media usage is expected to remain on an upward trajectory over the next 2-3 years, and ad spends soar in certain industries amid economic uncertainty. Growing engagement will continue to fuel social commerce and generate venues for businesses. Social media giants like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok will only accelerate their technical advancement.  

Keeping up with trends and news regarding digital transformation is crucial to the success of brands and businesses. Not sure where to start? Advesa has a team of digital marketing specialists that are dedicated to coming up with and executing creative social media strategies that work for you in the long run.   

Connect with us today so we can transform your business vision into reality.

Share:

The Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing in 2023

In today’s age, customers, leads, and audience members expect high-quality content from their favorite brands. Unlike traditional advertising methods that bombard customers with information to get their attention, content marketing provides content that aligns with the values of the customer.

Here’s a complete guide on how to get started with content marketing. This includes what content marketing is, examples, and strategies you can include. Let’s start with the basics!

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is a marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing content to attract, engage with, and retain an audience. This can include blog posts, checklists, ebooks, infographics, videos, and more. A well-executed content marketing strategy helps businesses establish expertise, promote brand awareness, and nurture leads.

More and more marketers acknowledge the power of content marketing as 82% of them are actively investing in content marketing. However, content marketing is not just publishing a thin piece of content and hoping people will find it. The most common reason why content marketing strategies fail is when it’s not important or relevant to the target audience. Therefore, knowing the interest of your audience and the type of content to promote are the keys to your success. 

Types of content marketing?

Content marketing comes in various shapes and sizes. Here is an overview of some of the most common types:

Blog content

Having a blog on your website that resonates with your market is considered one of the most effective types of content marketing. In fact, companies that produce blogs attract an average of 67% more leads monthly than companies that don’t blog.

This is because well-written blogs drive more organic traffic to your site from search engines. When writing blog posts, make sure your posts are optimized for SEO and make sure the copy is engaging for your readers. 

Website content

Did you know Google receives more than 8.5 billion searches a day? So if you want your website to be found, including website content in your content marketing strategy is a must.

Website content marketing refers to any material you publish online and ensures the right people will find your website at the right time. This includes all the pages on a website and downloads, like the homepage, landing pages, case studies, checklists, Ebooks, etc.

In addition to having valuable content, it pays to build, design, and optimize your website for search engines. When you combine SEO content with SEO web design, your website is more likely to increase organic traffic and maximize the potential of your marketing budget.

Social media content

Social media accounts for over 4.2 billion global social media users, making it one of the best ways to drive traffic with content marketing. By including engaging social media content, businesses can enhance brand awareness, boost sales, and attract a wider audience. You can use a variety of platforms to distribute your content, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat & Pinterest. 

While social media has evolved into communicative and content-sharing platforms and tools that allow users all over the world to connect, it also provides immense potential for businesses to engage with customers across their customer journey. Businesses are increasingly incorporating user-generated content (UGC) into their social media marketing strategy to increase their brand exposure and value proposition

Infographic content

Infographics are a valuable tool for visual communication. The information and data are presented in an easy-to-understand graphic format in order to catch the viewer’s attention and hold it. With a combination of simple wording, concise statements, and captivating illustration, infographics help content marketers educate their audiences and provide useful information. This can add value for leads and customers while it can make complex topics easy to understand for everyone.

Video content

Over the last few years, video marketing has become incredibly popular as 86% of businesses use video as a marketing tool, compared to 63% over the last 3 years. Customers are in line with this trend as 73% of them say they prefer to learn about a brand’s product or service through video.

Video marketing refers to the use of videos to market your product, increase engagement, and on your digital and social channels, educate your consumers and customers, and reach your audience with a new medium. By utilizing video marketing in your content strategy, you can boost conversions, improve ROI, and help you build relationships with audience members.

Podcast content

With over 383.7 million podcast listeners worldwide, publishing a podcast on Apple iTunes or Spotify is a great way to provide value for your audience. From the listener’s perspective, podcasts make an effective way to learn about a brand as they are extremely accessible and great for multitasking.

Business-wise, podcasts allow for a lot of creativity because they can be about any topics, including those that are related to the product and service they want to promote. That’s why many businesses and media outlets have begun creating and sharing their own podcasts.

Content marketing examples

In order to understand how you can incorporate content into your marketing strategy, use the following examples while creating your own strategy:

Example of TedTalks Daily podcast content marketing

TEDTalks is already world-famous for its videos. These are relatively short presentations (under 18 min) and are a great way for scientists, researchers, technologists, business leaders, artists, designers, and other industry-leading experts to take the TED stage to present their “Ideas Worth Spreading”.

The only problem was that not everyone was able to watch a video lecture in comfort while retaining a sense of their surroundings. To include this wider audience, TEDTalk introduced TedTalks daily so that everyone could get their TEDTalks Daily served up.

Example of Chewy’s website content marketing

Chewy is an online retailer of pet products that combines both social media and website content to promote its different products. Chewy’s YouTube channel is full of advice regarding pets, training, and animal health. In the description of the video, there is a link to a post on the company’s blog that provides more information.

The posts include tips and tricks from potty training a new puppy to baking homemade treats to planning a pet-friendly vacation. They also provide links to where pet owners can buy the materials they need from the official Chewy website. This encourages viewers to visit its website and make purchases.

content marketing
Chewy's Youtube channel

Example of Spotify’s social media content marketing

Social media’s most successful content marketing campaign, Spotify Wrapped, is one of the internet’s favorite end-of-year traditions. Spotify users get a fun roundup of all the music they’ve listened to that year. The roundup is broken down into genres, years, artists, and more, and is displayed with brightly colored graphics. Users have the option to share their Spotify Wrapped playlists on social media. 

The key to their successful content marketing is personalization. Customers feel more special and understood when they receive personalized assets. Therefore, they are more inclined to engage and share your content with their followers.

Spotify 2022 Wrapped

Example of Notions video marketing content marketing

Webinars are a great tool for businesses to establish trust and create a connection with their audience. That is one of the reasons why 95% of businesses believe webinars are an important part of their marketing strategy.

One of the brands that make the most of its content marketing strategy is Notion. Notion’s webinars are a hit because they offer unique online business advice. While Notion’s webinars revolve around business advice, they also feature exclusive productivity tips, employee highlights, a typical workday at Notion’s headquarters, and more.

Content marketing strategies

There is no one-size fits all content marketing strategies. The following content marketing strategies are the most common and easiest to include in your next campaign. 

Thought leadership strategy

The first of three content marketing strategies is improving thought leadership. If you wish to be recognized as an expert in your field, then you should produce thought leadership content. The main focus is to produce new, edgy, in-depth, and attention-grabbing content. 

The second most important characteristic of a thought leadership marketing strategy is a strong publicity and distribution plan. Integrating a strategic content plan into your content marketing strategy is a must if you want to make sure people actually read it.

Lead generation strategy

Lead-generating content focuses on creating and distributing interesting, engaging, and relevant content to attract and create leads for your business. Lead magnets or a high value promise are extremely important as this content has the power to make or break a deal for your business. Because the better your content marketing strategy, the more leads you will capture. 

SEO strategy

The third content strategy uses search engine optimization (SEO) to attract leads instead of pursuing them (as with advertising). In short, SEO is crucial because it makes your website more visible, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. SEO optimization is most helpful to local businesses, SAAS companies, and products-based businesses, but almost every business can benefit.

How to develop a content marketing strategy?

Now it’s time to use everything you’ve learned today to create your own content marketing strategy. This simple X step process helps you create an effective strategy:

  1. Develop specific (SMART) goals that help you understand why you are creating the content. A few of the top goals of creating content are to boost sales, build relationships with customers, and increase brand awareness
  2. Identify and define your target audience. The most effective way to do this is by creating a buyer persona.
  3. Conduct competitor research. Do not only include traditional competitors in your research because with content marketing you’ll be competing for people’s attention and time.

    NOTE: Describe which content marketing strategies work and which don’t for your competitors and try to discover why. This will help you with creating your own strategy.
  4. Conduct keyword research to ensure your content will be found when people are searching for it on Google and other search engines.
  5. Create and plan your content schedule: Your goal is to create a content schedule that will help you keep accountable for publishing content regularly, which is a must in content marketing. This schedule should include a calendar of publication dates as well as the individuals responsible for creating the content.
  6. Create and publish high-value content. Prepare your content according to your schedule and ensure you include every (tiny) bit of information in order to produce high-quality content. Don’t rush creating content merely to meet the deadline on your content publishing calendar. After you’ve prepared the content, make sure to post and promote the content on all your social media accounts.
  7. Analyze and improve regularly. The final step in your content marketing strategy is to analyze and measure your results so you can make any necessary changes to enhance your content marketing efforts and reach more audience members. Don’t forget to keep updating your content over time.

Key takeaways

Do you already have an effective content marketing strategy that helps your business increase conversions and build meaningful relationships with customers? If not, use the tips, examples, strategies given in this article to do so!

Determine which type of content works best for your business and audience, and develop a content marketing strategy to begin boosting your bottom line today.

If you want to guarantee that your next content marketing strategy is fail-proof, get in touch with our team of marketing experts that are armed with the latest content marketing strategies to ensure your next campaign will be a success!

Stay up-to-date and get your hands on all the latest news and technology with Advesa’s weekly in-depth insights and news.

Share:

12 Email Marketing Tips for Successful Campaigns

With over 4 billion email users worldwide, having an optimized email marketing strategy is considered one of the most effective ways to reach and connect with your target and existing customers. 

In this article, you will get your hands on 12 email marketing tips that will guide your email marketing efforts to success. 

1. Select the right email marketing software

Having the right software is incredibly useful if you want to make your next campaign a success. With tools like MailChimp, Active Campaign, and Mailerlite you can automate a lot of processes rather than manually handling them. This will ease your workload, you’ll enhance personalization to improve results, and it’s easier to measure and optimize campaigns.

In order to help you understand how these software work, you must understand how the right email marketing software can support you in your journey. Regardless of what your goal is, make sure you choose the software that aligns with your business goals. 

For those who can’t decide, most email automation tools shown above include the following features to start with.

  • Data analytics: Different platforms offer more or fewer reporting features. These should start with some of the most fundamental email marketing metrics such as open rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate, and click-through rate. 
  • Marketing automation: Email marketing software can help you set up automatic sequences for everything from welcome messages to order confirmation emails
  • Mobile optimization: most email marketing platforms automatically optimize messages for smaller screens and provide a variety of templates designed for mobile users. These features allow users to quickly skim emails on smartphones and tablets.
  • Personalized emails: With email personalization, you can leverage detailed information you know about your customers to position your brand and messaging in a way that resonates with them.

2. Ensure email deliverability

No matter how great your email marketing campaign is, if it does not reach your subscribers, then your hard work has been a waste of time. That’s why building a strong email reputation is extremely important as it ensures your emails land in the right folder.

 While your email marketing automation software will do most of the work, there are 3 guidelines you can utilize to improve your deliverability:

  • Authenticating Email Domain: Domain authentication is a way to verify that an email is sent from the sender it claims to be. First check your email reputation, then navigate to the DNS page of your automation software and adjust the settings accordingly.

  • Remove and re-engage inactive subscribers and make it easy for customers to unsubscribe from your emails. Doing this regularly will enhance your metrics as well as your email reputation.

  • Never use unethical ways to collect emails and avoid sending the same emails to your entire list as this increases the chances of your content ending up in the spam folder and subscribers leaving your list.

3. Create optimized lead magnets

Whether you are just starting out or already have a strong subscriber list, you grow your business faster and gain more exposure for your brand when you focus on attracting potential leads. A lead magnet, or “high-value promise,” is a free thing you can offer prospects to attract and convert these subscribers.

In order to create a successful lead magnet, make sure it’s relevant to the product or service that you are trying to sell. An irrelevant or arbitrary lead magnet will most likely flop when it comes to sales because it doesn’t strategically lead your prospect closer to your solution.

Here are a few examples of lead magnets you can use today to collect subscribers for your listings:

  • E-commerce stores can use discounts and coupons to lure in new subscribers.

  • Companies that offer services to their audiences share checklists or ebooks as high-value offers.

  • Coaches and consultants that use webinars to share their experiences and insider tips.

4. Segment your subscriber list

After your new subscribers have subscribed to your email list, it is time to make sure they receive the right emails to enhance the customer experience. In order to accomplish this, you can use list segmentation to divide your subscriber list into smaller lists, such as based on age, gender, or behavior.

This process helps you engage better with subscribers as it guarantees your subscribers receive information that’s relevant to them and won’t find unnecessary emails in their inboxes. In fact, list segmentation enhances your email marketing efforts as it improves the click-through rate to 8% (CTR) and drives 18 times more revenue compared to general emails.

Segmenting your subscriber list can be done in multiple ways. If you already have customers, then you can utilize existing data about customer behavior to create smaller lists. When you’re just starting out, ask customers about their preferences through a form or quiz during the sign-up process. 

5. Set up your emails for personalization

Every business should strive to include personalization in their campaigns. In fact, personalization in email can​​ help you get more out of your email marketing efforts by significantly driving up open rates by 22.28% and click-through rates by 3.32%

If you want to implement personalization into your next campaign, start by gathering as much data about your customers. Then utilize this information by optimizing emails so they feel more personal and relevant to your customers.

Here are a few examples you can implement today:

  • Mention the subscriber’s name in the subject line to grab attention.
  • Use the subscriber’s birthday to send them a birthday gift
  • Use subscriber’s location to promote events or sales nearby
  • Send tailored product recommendations based on past purchases

6. Encourage readers to respond

Did you know that email marketing isn’t only about selling? Brands that get the most out of their efforts are those that are able to establish loyal customers. The most effective way to accomplish this is by creating emails that empower your subscribers to engage with your brand.

Your goal is to create emails that feel written by humans instead of them being spammed with non-relevant or generic content for the masses. By utilizing the steps below, you will create emails your subscribers will want to respond to. This will improve deliverability, build better relationships, and encourage them to come back for more.

  • Provide a compelling subject line that asks a question or gives them a good reason to read and respond to the email.
  • Include a real reply email address and use a sender name that sounds less like a brand and more like a human. 
  • Use active language in the email copy and entice the reader to take action. It can take as little time as responding to the email, reading the whole email, or simply wishing them a great day.

7. Always include a call to action

Every email should have one clear and compelling CTA that recipients can act on. Research has found that emails with a single, effective CTA earn 371% more clicks than those with multiple CTAs or no CTA at all. There are two types of CTAs: hyperlinks in the body copy and buttons.

To incorporate a strong CTA in your emails, use creative language that will attract your readers’ attention and encourage them to follow through. Use the following guidelines to help you get more action from your CTAs:

  • Use action-oriented text.
  • Keep it short (two or three words).
  • Create urgency to improve click-through rates

8. Optimize for mobile

Since 70% of emails are opened on a mobile device, having an email marketing strategy that is optimized for mobile-friendly is vital. Users who experience a poor mobile experience are 52% less likely to work with that company, while mobile-friendly emails increase opening and click-through rates and empower more people to work with them.

The key elements to consider when designing mobile-friendly emails include:

  • Font type, size, and color are easy on the eyes.
  • The email and landing page load quickly.
  • Clear and easily tappable CTAs

9. Set-up follow up campaigns

Automated email sequences can save you time and money and help you scale your business. You can utilize customer data to set time-based and behavior-based triggers to send timely, relevant, and personalized messages that nurture, engage, and convert leads into paying customers.

You can apply this to various email campaign types. Here are the 5 most common:

  • Welcome email sequence
  • Onboarding email sequence
  • Abandoned cart email sequence
  • Repeat customer email sequence
  • Re-engagement email sequence

10. Timing is everything

Did you know that your email marketing strategy is dependent on timing? Statistics show that 8:00 am is the most effective time to send emails because it yields an open rate of 20.32% and a click-through rate of 7.79%. Moreover, at 5 pm, click-through rates are higher than at any time of the day.

However, the best time to send emails to customers depends on several factors and it may be different for your particular customers. To find the best time to send your customers emails, use existing metrics about their behaviour and perform A/B testing.

11. Do A/B testing for better performance

An email can never be “perfect.” However, A/B testing your emails before sending them can help you get pretty close to creating one. The aim of A/B testing is to send out a small sample of your email list to two different versions of your email. The version that performs best will be sent to the rest of your subscribers.

A/B testing allows you to test almost every aspect of your email marketing campaign. Not only does this help you improve your campaigns, but also learn what your audience likes and dislikes, as well as how they interact with your company. This is what ultimately gives your business a competitive edge in the industry.

12. Utilize email analytics

The key to successful email marketing is understanding which parts of the strategy are working and which aren’t. This is because even the tiniest detail in key metrics, like bounce rate, opens, clicks, and unsubscribes can tell you a lot about the performance of your campaign.

Measuring email analytics and comparing it with both industry metrics as well as your own past will help you make future decisions for your next email marketing campaign.

Key takeaways

Now that you are armed with 12 email marketing tips, you are in a better position to build successful campaigns. 

The key to creating a successful email marketing strategy is to test certain systems and structures. Consider thinking outside the box to see good ROI and to create long-term clients.

Creating a successful email marketing strategy involves trial and error. If you want to avoid spending your valuable time and money testing different email marketing strategies, it’s helpful to work with a team of digital marketing experts who can come up with tailored email marketing strategies that work for your business. 

Stay up-to-date and get your hands on all the latest news and technology with Advesa’s weekly in-depth insights and news.

Share:

Social Media Marketing: Definition and Strategy

Social media now becomes the standard for a business’s digital presence. People tend to engage with and buy from brands with credible and consistent social content. For this reason, social media marketing plays a critical role in the success of every business.

As of 2022, there are approximately 4.59B social media users around the world. That’s more than half of the world population! In the upcoming years, this number is projected to increase even more. So how do you get started and leverage social media marketing to grow your brand and engage your buyer?

In this article, you will learn what social media marketing is and how you can leverage it to grow your business. 

What is social media marketing and why is it important?

The implementation of strategies on social media to increase brand awareness and market products and services, and drive website traffic is called Social Media Marketing (SMM)Tapping into the social media powerhouse is the best way to reach as many people as possible and create meaningful touch points with new and existing customers.

The power of social media marketing is driven by its increasingly innovative features of social media in three core marketing areas: connection, communication and customer data.

Connection: Social media offers a variety of mediums–from content platforms (like Youtube and TikTok) and social sites (Like Facebook and Instagram) to microblogging services (like Twitter)–for businesses to reach and connect with their target audience locally and globally. Social media marketing allows businesses to connect with their customers throughout their customer journey. 

Communication: While traditional marketing only offers one-way communication–from business to consumers, social media marketing creates engaging conversations for all parties involved. As social media strategy allows user-generated and community-based content creation and sharing, businesses can leverage the power of the online communities and free advertising opportunities from electronic word-of-mouth (wEOM) recommendations between existing and potential customers

Customer Data: In addition to providing companies with a way to engage with existing customers and reach new ones, social media marketing also provides built-in data analytics that allow marketers to track the success of their campaigns and identify more opportunities to engage. Most social media tools have the capacity to extract customer data and turn them into actionable market analysis for businesses to generate the most optimal solutions.

All of the key features of social media marketing mentioned serve the ultimate purposes of driving traffic back to your website and increase sales through strategically promoting products and service. 

Planning a Winning Social Media Strategy

A social media strategy is a document outlining your social media marketing goals, the tactics you will use to achieve them and the metrics you will track to measure your progress and success. 

A good social media marketing strategy should start with defining your brand positioning to your target audience so that you can identify the invaluable resources that only you can provide to your audience and potential customers. 

Understanding your brand tone and personality and expressing them strategically across all platforms will help you attract and nurture the right audience for your brand.

Understand your target audience

The key to success for many brands on social media is to attract the right audience. Learning and understanding your target audience can help you create relevant and valuable content and grow a strong audience base. 

Determine the demographics of your customers such as age, gender, and location by asking what they do, where they live, and what social platforms they are on. It is also important to find out what their interests are and what topics they mostly talk about. 

Social listening can help you discover what your target audience is talking about. Without social monitoring, businesses usually exercise their effort aimlessly and are more likely to fail to make any return on their investment in social media marketing. 

Understand your brand tone/persona

Brands’ social media accounts tend to have some personality. For some, it’s professional and informative and for others, it’s witty and humorous. 

If you already have a brand voice established for your overall marketing strategy, you can extend that to your social media marketing strategy with a tailored approach by social platforms. 

Since social media is predominantly content-oriented, visuals, captions and related copy are crucial pieces of branding your social media posts. The content usually shares the same voice and tone guide, which should embody the brand philosophy, personality traits and vocabulary.  

If you have multiple people managing your accounts, having a guide to reference keeps your team aligned so it doesn’t seem like your company is writing from different perspectives. 

Data collection is key when it comes to social media marketing because your knowledge on your target audience will define the right social media marketing strategy for your business.

Social media advertising

Identifying the type of social media marketing as part of your strategy will help you effectively structure your budget. Paid and organic social advertising are both powerful tools best harnessed for different goals. Understanding the pros and cons of each type will help you create a holistic approach that balances awareness with conversion.

Organic social media

Organic social media refers to the free content (posts, photos, video, stories, etc.) that all users, including brands and their audience, share with each other on their feeds. 

As a brand, when you post organically on your account, you can expect reach and engagement from the following sources:

  • A percentage of your followers
  • Your follower’s followers (if your followers decide to share your post)
  • People following any hashtags you use.

Non-paid social organic advertising can also come from your brand advocates in the form of user-generated content (UGC). 

UGC is any form of content, such as images, videos, test, and audio, that is posted by users on online and social media platforms. 

In a gigantic sea of information and new content rolling out every day, authentic social content is the floater for content creators to stay afloat. People are more likely to trust and buy products recommended by people who have no affiliation to the brand. Incorporating authentic social content into your social media strategy will help you increase your brand trust and credibility. 

Paid social content

On the other hand, paid social content refers to content shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc with specific new targeted audiences when brands pay money to these platforms. 

Paid posts are the best way for brands to target new audiences on social media and convert them to customers. Business and organizations use paid promotion on social to:

  • Raise brand awareness and attract new followers in a shorter amount of time compared to organic non paid content
  • Promote their newest deal, content, event, etc
  • Generate leads
  • Drive conversions

NOTE: Paid social media marketing generally does not include influencer marketing, which is typically arranged directly with the influencer on a particular platform. For more information on influencer marketing, check out our key strategies for influencer marketing.

Building Your Social Media Marketing Calendar

Advanced planning and scheduling are extremely important parts of a successful social media strategy to ensure every step leading up to and after content posting and engagement is implemented timely and smoothly. A social media marketing calendar can help you visualize all your planned posts for the next weeks or months ahead.

Here are some factors to consider for your social media marketing calendar:

Frequency and Consistency

Frequency indicates how often you post on social media and consistency is the quality of always behaving or performing in a similar way, or of always happening in a similar manner. 

To maximize the effectiveness of social media marketing, you need to be strategic with the frequency and consistency of your content. 

For each social network, there is an approximate frequency of posting that optimizes your ability to connect with your target audience. In addition, you must be consistent in tone used, the way you communicate online, the types of content you share and your posting schedule, so that people can better recognize and remember your brand. 

Original vs. curated content

One of traditional marketing’s common practices was to create as much original content as possible. But creating original and engaging content on a daily basis is a time-consuming task, if ever possible. 

Marketers now depend on other sources and other companies for ready content and simply share them from time to time. This has given rise to content curation.

Contrary to content creation, which means that you create original content that is unique to your brand, content curation is the process of gathering existing information related to a topic relevant to your niche and sharing it with your followers. 

While original content is important when it comes to building a unique voice for your brand, it can be time-consuming and challenging to upkeep on a daily basis. Generally, curated content takes less effort than creating fresh new content. However, you need to be mindful of competition and your own reputation when using curated content. 

Considering the pros and cons of each type of content, it is best to use a blend of original and curated content. Both are powerful methods for your social media strategy and calendar and can aid your brand’s growth. 

The rule of thumb is to start off sharing 40% created and 60% curated content and adjust it from there according to what resonates with your audience.

Caption with brand tone and relevant hashtags

Caption is an essential factor of social media marketing, which can define the success of your social media strategy. While it is true that most social media platforms are visual-oriented, the most impressive visual is incomplete without an engaging story to go along with it. The caption of the Instagram post tells the audience the story behind the visual, adding context to the post. Besides, an effective caption offers an opportunity to spark conversations and trigger desirable actions. It also allows you to connect with your community.

In addition to engaging captions, attaching relevant hashtags to your post will help increase your exposure and chances of getting discovered by new audiences. All of these factors are needed to beat the Instagram algorithm and ensure the success of your social media strategy. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating captivating captions and using hashtags:

  • Keep it simple
  • Be authentic
  • Create an attention-grabbing opening line
  • Use power words
  • Include a question and call-to-action
  • Add some humor
  • Don’t over sell
  • Don’t forget to add relevant hashtags to create visibility for your content. People can find your content through hashtags. Hashtags also help you touch on the interests of your target audience.

Measuring Your Success (Analytics/ROI)

As you plan your social media marketing campaign and calendar, you need to determine how you will evaluate your success. Without metrics to track the progress of your social media strategy, it’s hard to know which efforts are paying off and how to optimize your resources.

The number of followers alone is not always a good indicator to reflect the level of your success. There are other more reliable indicators that you should take into account when tracking your social media marketing efforts. 

Here are some common KPIs you should pay attention to:

Engagement rate

Engagement is, by far, the most important social metric of all. The more engagement your post receives, the higher your viral reach is likely to be. 

Consistent high engagement means your audience knows and trusts you. It’s an indicator that you’ve created a community around your brand. 

When measuring engage, here are some common metrics to pay attention to:

  • Likes and shares: From Facebook to YouTube, liking and sharing are universal actions users can take to express appreciation and interest in your content
  • Audience growth: the rate at which your followers grow in a given period of time. This indicator can inform your posing schedule and consistency.
  • Followers/following ratio: Your follow ratio indicates your credibility on social media. If you follow 500 people but only 90 follow you, it may turn people off from following you.

Impressions/Reach

Impressions and reach of social media platforms tell you very different things about the performance of your ads and content. Impressions calculate how many times your content is displayed no matter if it was clicked or not. If an ad pops up on people’s screen a total of 300 times, the number of impressions for that ad is 300. 

 Reach is the number of people who have seen your content. If 100 total people have seen your ad, that means your ad’s reach is 100. 

There are 3 types of reach on most of the major social platforms:

Organic reach: refers to the number of unique people who saw your content organically (for free) on their feed or explore page.

Paid reach: is the number of people that see a piece of content that has been paid for, like an ad. It’s often determined by factors like budgets and audience targeting.

Viral reach: is the number of people who saw your content because one of their friends interacted with it by sharing, liking, or commenting on. 

Conversion KPIs

Conversion KPIs measure how many social interactions turn into website visits, newsletter sign-ups, purchases or other desired actions. Conversion metrics reflect how effective your social media strategy is and whether it’s leading to actionable outcomes. This KPI group usually include:

Conversion rate 

This indicator refers to the number of users who perform the actions outlined in your social media call-to-action, such as visit your website or landing page, subscribe to a mailing list, make a purchase, etc.) compared to the total number of clicks on that given post. A high conversion rate shows that your content actually delivers value which makes the client want to take action. 

Click-through rate (CTR)

CTR is the percentage of people who view and click on your post CTA (call to action) it included.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who click on your post, but then shortly leave the page without engaging or taking action.

Cost per click

CPC is the amount you pay a social media platform per every time someone clicks on your paid social media post.

Flourish on social media and grow your business

While most businesses choose to refuse to take action, you have the opportunity 

Since the rise of social media and in influencer marketing, the dimensions of social media marketing have completely shifted. Use this blueprint to distance yourself from all the noise and to connect and engage with your target audience. 

Now the time has come to take matters into your own hands and create your own influencer marketing strategy. If you can’t find the time and resources to do the work, it’s wise to partner with a team of brand and design experts. Either way, your business will flourish on social media.

Share:

Small Business Marketing 101: Definition and Strategies

Small business marketing involves getting your products and services in front of potential customers. Despite the fact that two out of three customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations, small business owners often struggle to fulfill this expectation due to less visibility and a lack of resources.

To help you succeed in this journey, we will guide you in the exact step-by-step process on how to create effective small business marketing in 2023. This includes how to create a fail-proof small business marketing plan, and proven and tested small business marketing tips to give you the competitive edge.

What is small business marketing?

Small business marketing is the process of getting your brand, products and services in front of the eyes of more potential customers. It involves various types of marketing strategies, both online and offline,  to grow small business revenue and expand market share. 

Small business marketing strategies are, therefore, somewhat different from general marketing, considering different challenges small businesses face.

How to develop a fail-proof small business marketing plan?

Set and understand the long-term goals of your business

The first step to creating a fail-proof marketing plan is to define specific goals, and the most effective way to do this is by using SMART goals. The acronym SMART means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. 

If used properly, it can be of great benefit to your business as these types of goals are easily tracked. Moreover, it gives businesses a more focused sense of direction, greater focus, increased motivation, and higher productivity.

In contrast to creating generic goals, such as “More Leads”, try creating SMART goals, such as “Generating X leads per month from social media”.

Know your target audience

Did you know that more than 20 percent of small businesses fail within the first year, and that one of the main causes is a lack of research and not knowing who the target audience is? 

Despite the fact that only a small percentage of small business owners include a persona in their small business marketing plan, it is considered to be one of the most effective ways to identify and define your target audience.

In order to create a buyer persona, gather a mix of information about the kind of customer you want to target. This can be done using surveys, interviews, existing paid databases, or even your CRM. Then, use customer segmentation to group your customers based on common characteristics. 

In the final part, you can begin creating a visual representation of your ideal customer. Done correctly, then you have yourself a buyer persona who will help you craft messaging that resonates and will be your go-to customer for all your future marketing efforts.

Establish your value disposition

The value proposition is an easy-to-understand promise that explains why a customer should buy a product or service from that particular business. The ideal value proposition is to-the-point and appeals to a customer’s strongest decision-making drivers. 

When forming your unique value proposition, remember to collect feedback early on in the process and to think of it as an ongoing process. Next, you can start creating your own value proposition by following these steps:

  1. Use the data you’ve collected while defining your target audience to create a list of all the benefits your product offers to customers.
  2. Identify what value these benefits bring to the customer.
  3. Use your buyer persona and describe precisely what you’re offering, then describe what benefits and values your product offers makes your brand stand out.

For example, the Nike’s value proposition focuses on satisfying its customers with a superior product made out of the best available materials and latest technologies, which is also fashionable and worn by supreme athletes and sports stars and accessible to anyone.

Set your metrics and KPI

By this point, you’ve gathered all the information you need to create a successful small business marketing plan. Before you can start putting it into practice, you must ensure you’re on the right track during your journey. 

Setting KPIs and tracking metrics to get a better understanding of your business performance is a very effective way to do this. Implementing KPIs in your company means you can set goals, devise a strategy to reach your goals, and evaluate your performance along the way. 

Metrics are important because they help you track progress toward your goals and make important business decisions. They both provide you with important information about your business’s performance in key areas so you can make informed decisions about how to reach your goals.

Small business marketing tips to boost your results

Go omnichannel

In order to win over your target audience, the #1 priority for businesses is to create a seamless experience as 73% of consumers prefer shopping through multiple channels. Businesses that meet and exceed customer expectations increase the average purchase frequency by 250% and the average order value by 13%. 

To create a successful omnichannel strategy, make sure you have well-defined goals, and be clear about your target audience, and what platforms they use. So you can start brainstorming how to utilize technology to provide personalized or seamless customer experiences. 

For example, creating cross-channel experiences in-store and online, such as on Instagram and Amazon. In addition, restaurants can use a mobile app to introduce a loyalty program to their customers by offering a free dish in return for subscribing to the newsletter.

Adopt a customer-centric approach

By embracing a customer-centric approach to your omnichannel strategy, you enable your company to put the customer first at all customer touchpoints. According to Deloitte and Touche, customer-centric companies were 60% more profitable compared to companies that were not focused on the customer.

Adopting a customer-centric strategy requires centralized access to customer data and insights. Having a CRM database can help facilitate a better understanding of customers to provide a unified front that delivers better customer experiences. In addition, it will also help you provide a positive experience and create an army of brand advocates.

Hone in the power of brand advocacy

When a customer feels valued and their needs are met or exceeded, they are more likely to stay loyal to a brand and spread the word. Applying a customer-centric approach is a great way to build an army of brand advocates. 

Now it’s time to hone in the power of brand advocacy as they are more likely to leave positive customer reviews, give testimonials, and tell their friends about your brand and your products.

Brand advocacy comes in the following 4 different forms:

  • Customer brand advocacy
  • Influencer brand advocacy
  • Affiliate advocacy
  • Employee brand advocacy. 

All four are excellent brand advocacy strategies that any brand will benefit significantly from using. Instead of using all four, pick one group of brand advocates and start building relationships by engaging with them. The better you do this, the more they will spread the word. 

Promote yourself on social media

With over 4.2 billion social media users, social media is a powerful business tool to promote your business as it reaches a wider audience. In order to leverage the power of social media for your small business, use the following tips:

  • Use of the latest social media trends will allow businesses to create meaningful touchpoints with new and existing customers. 
  • Leverage the power of your brand advocates by sharing social proof, testimonials and customer reviews as they are 50% more likely to influence a purchase.
  • Social media community management is a great way to discover how well your brand is engaging with your audience and establishing long-term relationships. This can include responding to comments, answering questions, and interacting with customers on social media.

Focus on building a user-friendly website

In addition to social media, having a user-friendly website is one of the most valuable assets in your small business. Since it allows users to access information on any device, boosts search engine optimization, increases time spent on the site, and increases reputation.

Here are a few ways to create a winning website:

  • Optimize your website for conversion. This includes compelling copy, carefully planned call-to-action (CTA), mobile friendly, and SEO web design.
  • Implement a reliable content management system (CMS) that helps you create and manage your digital content. Choose one with features matching your needs, including user-friendliness, pricing, and scalability.
  • Make sure you implement tracking tools like Google Analytics. This will enable you to track the metrics and KPIs you defined in the early stages to verify you’re on the right track.

Utilize email marketing to nurture leads

From all the leads you’ve gathered through your social media and website, most of them are not ready to buy. In fact, it takes an average 6 to 8 touches to transform a lead into a customer.

Utilizing email marketing to nurture leads is according to 47% of marketers the most effective strategy as it can bring in a 451% increase in qualified leads. Lead nurturing examples can come in many forms like:

  • Welcome campaigns
  • Promotional campaigns
  • Educational campaigns
  • Renewal/re-engagement campaigns

The ideal way to approach a lead nurturing campaign is to take it one step at a time. Here are some of the best practices you can use to nurture leads from your email marketing strategy:

  • Provide valuable content
  • Focus on one relevant topic per email
  • Keep it short
  • Test your emails and track key metrics

Be timely and responsive on all channels

Once you have cultivated an effective lead generation strategy through one of your channels, it’s critical to respond promptly and ensure they will return. According to Statista, 27% of people surveyed indicated that a lack of effectiveness when responding was their number one customer service frustration. Followed by 22% lack of speed and lack of accuracy was the biggest frustration.

The quicker the response time, the more quickly progress can occur. In the end, being timely and responsive on all channels will give you a competitive edge as you meet and exceed customer expectations. One of the best practices to create personalized experiences and create timely responses is by leveraging the power of a CRM system.

Manage relationships with a CRM

In this post, we’ve covered multiple strategies on how to attract customers, nurture leads, and gather a goldmine of information about customer behavior. A customer relationship management (CRM) system allows you to manage this information in one place. You can use this information to identify sales opportunities more effectively and check if you’re on the right track to meet your metrics and KPIs. 

Cloud-based CRM platform Breadstack uses the power of artificial intelligence to help supercharge e-commerce businesses. Their data-driven suite of tools helps their customers:

  • Visualize segmented target audiences with AI-built customer profiles to target specific customers and create a more personalized experience.

  • Deliver a seamless omnichannel experience by assisting in managing inventory across all online and offline stores in one dashboard.

  • Analyze customer behavior to deliver personalized experiences that your customers will love to respond to and predict what your customers will do next with behavior-based analytics.

Breadstack serves as a textbook example on how to utilize the potential a CRM system can add to your business. The features differentiate from creating personalized experiences based on AI to data driven decision making in order to help their customers to deliver a next-generation ecommerce experience.

Create an effective marketing plan for your business

Over the last decade, the digital landscape has formed small business marketing as it is today. 75% of small business owners think that internet marketing is extremely effective for attracting new customers. 

 However, digital marketing is a big umbrella that requires a lot of knowledge and effort to effectively implement. The good news is you don’t have to do it on your own. The Government of Canada and Advesa are here to help you. The government offers financial aid options to help you grow your business, including the recent Digital Adoption Program (CDAP).

Ensure your marketing success by partnering with a team of digital marketing specialists. Advesa’s team of experts is highly dedicated to coming up with proven and tested smart business marketing strategies that are specifically designed to help your business win in the long run.

Connect with us today so we can transform your business vision into reality.

Share:

Customer Loyalty: Definition and Strategies

Customer loyalty is the measure of how much trust and affinity customers have for your brand. It’s a key factor in determining the success of a company, as it indicates how likely customers are to continue purchasing goods or services from your brand. 

If your customers are less likely to remain loyal to you, this means they’re more likely to switch brands in response to another company’s marketing efforts. In this article, you will learn how to build and maintain customer loyalty to grow your business sustainably.

What is customer loyalty?

Customer loyalty marketing is a strategy for improving customer relationships, enhancing customer retention, and increasing sales. It can be accomplished through a variety of tactics, including customer surveys, customer engagement, and customer recognition programs. 

It’s important to recognize that loyalty marketing and customer loyalty programs aren’t the same thing – but they’re closely related. While customer loyalty marketing is the broad term for a company’s efforts to improve customer relationships, customer loyalty programs is one of the specific marketing strategies for achieving these goals. 

Loyalty marketing and customer engagement

Loyalty marketing strategies include different types of customer engagement, typically including customer surveys and rewards programs. Customer engagement is the process of interacting with customers to understand their needs and help them solve problems. This can include communicating with customers via social media, responding to comments and questions on social media, and sending targeted emails. 

Customer surveys are a type of customer engagement, which helps businesses assess how they can improve their products and services to serve their customers better. The surveys can take many forms, but they’re typically used to understand what customers think and what they want. Rewards programs are a longstanding way to encourage customers to return to your brand.

Why is Developing Customer Loyalty Important?

Customers who are loyal to your brand are less likely to abandon you in favor of a competitor’s products. Developing customer loyalty can help protect your company from losing profit in the event of a decrease in sales. 

There are a number of reasons why focusing on building a great customer experience and customer loyalty is important to any organization:

Brand advocacy

Beyond reaching for their wallet, loyal customers can boost your business in other ways, one of which being brand advocacy. Brand advocacy is a term used to describe actions taken by people who love your brand and continuously support your organization by promoting products and services to new customers and prospects.

Customers are willing to become your brand advocate once they have consistently received positive customer experiences with your brand. So they show their support in various ways. That may be by sharing their positive opinions about you on social media, leaving positive reviews or simply telling their friends and family. 

Investing in company loyalty isn’t just about preventing customers from leaving. It’s also about maximizing the opportunity for growth. Combine all these loyalty effects together, and it’s estimated that customer disloyalty can stunt growth by 25%- 50%.

Higher and more consistent profits

Repeat customers are often the most profitable. Repeat e-commerce customers spend more than double what new customers spend ($52.50 average cart size for repeat customers, compared to $24.50 for new customers). 

Customer Lifetime Value remains high as acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. And existing customers spend on average 67% more than first-time customers. A focus on the importance of customer loyalty results in higher profits and overall company success.

Customer loyalty program examples

These are our top 5 picks for the most innovative customer loyalty programs. This will give you some customer loyalty program ideas to start your own today.

Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime customer loyalty
Amazon Prime program

In order to differentiate itself from competitors like Walmart, eBay, and Alibaba Group. Amazon launched its Prime membership program to convince customers to buy products through Amazon exclusively. 

Amazon Prime is an example of a paid loyalty program as members pay a flat annual fee in order to get access to unlimited free two-day shipping on millions of items, as well as other perks, like Amazon’s streaming service and Prime Day sales. 

Over the last 5 years, Amazon Prime’s subscriber count has rapidly grown from 99 million users in 2017 to 153 million in 2021, and matter of fact it shows no signs of slowing down. In addition: the majority of Amazon shoppers (65%) are prime members, as they also spend four times more than other Amazon customers.

Sephora Beauty Insider

Sephora Beauty Insider customer loyalty program
Sephora's Loyalty Program, Beauty Insider

As a retailer of personal care and beauty products with over 25 million loyal members that make up as much as 80% of their annual sales. Sephora’s Beauty Insider rewards program is wildly popular among its users as they reward them for each purchase based on an innovative points-based loyalty program.

One of the unique aspects of their approach is the ability for members to decide how to use their reward points. Beauty Insider members can redeem their reward points for things like gift cards and discounts. This flexibility enables Sephora to offer their products for a lower price without cheapening the perceived value of their products.

Starbucks Rewards

When Starbucks Card Rewards made its debut in the spring of 2008, it was one of the first omnichannel experiences that used a mobile app to run a loyalty program. In order for customers to accumulate loyalty points (point-based loyalty program), customers had to order or pay with their Starbucks app. 

As a result of centralizing customer transactions in the app, Starbucks created a system to gather information on customer preferences and behavior. As a result, they were able to increase customer lifetime value by offering personalized experiences.

Numbers also show Starbucks’ loyalty program’s success. In the third quarter of 2022, the number of U.S. members rose 13% to 27.4 million, and interim CEO Howard Schultz shared: “Our loyal Starbucks Rewards members drove a record 53% of U.S. company-operated revenue.”

Qatar Airways

Customers of Qatar Airways can choose from two different loyalty programs instead of just one. The airline has its own Privilege Club and they have partnered with different brands in the travel and finance niche for a collective loyalty program.

Qatar Airways Private Club membership is a tier based program that uses points (Qpoints) membership to reward customers based on the tier they are in. The higher your membership tier in the Privilege Club, the more benefits they will enjoy. The number of Qpoints each member can earn depends on the travel sector, the airline they are flying with, and the fare they pay (booking class). 

In addition, the brand also rewards its customers with Avois. Customers can collect this form of currency and spend it at one of their 100 global partners. Whenever they travel, book a stay or rent a car with any of their 100 global partners, customers can benefit from multiple rewards.

The North Face XPLR Pass Program

The North Face Customer Loyalty
The North Face's loyalty program, XPLR Pass

The North Face’s XPLR Pass program uses a point-based loyalty program to offer different rewards specifically designed for their customers’ lifestyles. Customers can earn points traditionally as for every dollar spent they will earn 1 Peak Point. But the outdoor retailers also incentivize their customers in a unique way by having them attend special events organized by The North Face, check in at particular locations, download their app, and so on. 

The reason why The North Face customer loyalty program is considered America’s program is because it speaks directly to its loyal customers and offers them a tailored experience that fits their individual needs. That’s why it doesn’t offer generic discounts on general-use products. 

In addition, the points North Face’s rewards can be used to redeem personalized experiences, like unique travel experiences in Alaska or Nepal. This reward and loyalty program with your customer in mind is specifically designed to strengthen the bond between the customer and the brand.

How to Create a Customer Loyalty Program

In order to ignite and maintain customer loyalty, companies provide programs for their most frequent customers to encourage loyalty and trust. In order to attract loyalty and create long-term relationships with their customers, businesses use customer loyalty programs, such as points-based, tiered-based, paid-based, and value-based. The aim of these programs is to incentivize customers to spend more money on your products or services in order to let them ‘earn’ the benefits. 

Set up referral program

A referral program is similar to a loyalty program as it rewards customers for their engagement with a business. The difference is that referral programs incentivize existing customers to promote products to their friends and family. 

Creating referral programs can benefit both existing customers and brands. Businesses benefit as they are able to attract a wider audience as people are 90% more likely to trust and buy from a brand recommended by a friend. In addition, the average customer lifetime value will increase because referral programs encourage existing customers to come back for more as they benefit from a variety of perks.

Engage customers on social media

In 2022, there were approximately 3.96B social media users and in the coming years, it’s projected to increase even more. Having better social media engagement has become incredibly important as it is a powerful tool for creating a stronger relationship between the customer and the brand. As a result, this will provide more opportunities to build brand loyalty, increase word-of-mouth referrals and increase sales.

Engaging with your customers can be as simple as interacting with them. In terms of potential, engaging with customers is just the tip of the iceberg. By measuring social media engagement you can provide valuable insights into how well the content is resonating with the audience. This gives businesses a tangible metric of performance to increase customer loyalty.

Here are 3 things you can start doing today to increase customer loyalty by engaging with them on social media:

  • Listen and interact with your audience
  • Offer benefits and other rewards on social media.
  • Sharing behind-the-scenes information

Encourage customers feedback

Customer survey
Customer survey

Customer feedback consists of the experiences, perspectives, feelings, and problems shared by the community that you serve with your products and services. Gathering and leveraging the power of customer feedback is essential to delivering a great customer experience. Not only does that provide valuable insights into how customers feel about your brand, but it also helps brands identify problems and opportunities in their products and services, understand their audience better, and stay competitive.

Here are 4 methods of obtaining feedback from customers:

  • Customer feedback through emails
  • Send out surveys
  • Focus groups 
  • Using digital channels

When you gather feedback, make sure you are open to both positive and negative feedback. The importance of negative feedback cannot be understated. When negative feedback is handled well, your business can greatly benefit from it, as 45% of customers say they are more likely to visit a business if it handles negative reviews honestly and professionally. After all, developing the loyalty of your customers begins with being loyal to them first.

Leverage customer data for insights

Data is indispensable in business. Businesses that collect data collection and use the insights make it easier for customers to shop with them in the future. Customer data can be used to predict what percentage of repeat customers you can expect. 

Leveraging customer data not only helps businesses increase customer loyalty, it is also a powerful tool that helps you understand which of your products are best received by consumers, which communication channels get the most responses, etc. the insights can help you create a better experience for your customers.

Using a simple survey can help you understand how likely your customers are to recommend your brand. You can calculate the net promoter score (NPS) from this and measure customer loyalty to your business. In short, leveraging customer data for insights can be a game-changing strategy to increase customer loyalty.

Final thoughts

Ultimately, customers can only become loyal to your brand if you make it worth their while. This means providing excellent customer service, providing what your customers need, and actively pursuing ways to improve their experience. 

Customers who feel appreciated are more likely to remain loyal to your brand, and their loyalty can help your company thrive. As you work to improve customer loyalty, it’s important to keep in mind that achieving brand loyalty is a long-term strategy. It’s not something that happens in a few weeks or months – it’s a process that can take years. 

It’s important to develop customer loyalty programs that consistently work in the long run. Advesa is a team of experts who are well versed in branding and digital marketing to help you create an excellent customer experience.

If you want to stay up-to-date and get your hands on all the latest news and technology with Advesa’s weekly in-depth insights and news.

Share:

What is Customer Experience? Why It is the Ultimate Marketing Tool

Consumer’s perception can make or break your business. The importance of the customer experience cannot be understated as it is the heart of every successful business. A happy and satisfied customer is more likely to turn into a loyal customer and an advocate for your brand. 

The way you look at customer experience impacts how you run and manage your business as a whole. A customer-centric approach across all departments helps businesses grow sustainably. That’s why creating and maintaining a great customer experience is crucial to your success. 

In this article you’ll get your hands on proven and tested strategies and examples on how to create seamless consumer experiences. 

What is customer experience?

Customer experience is the result of every interaction a customer has with your business. Every interaction customers have with your brand during the customer journey shapes their perspective. It results in how they perceive your brand as a whole and ultimately impacting your brand reputation and revenue. 

The two main touchpoints that shape a customer’s experience are people and product. The former refers to the quality of interactions between the customer and your customer service agents. While the latter refers to the performance of your product or service.

Why is customer experience important?

The exact reason why and how the customer experience is important for businesses depends on their goals and the industry they compete in. Having a poor customer experience can damage your reputation and cost you revenue, customers, and your most valuable employees.

Unsatisfied customers will most likely express their dissatisfactions in an online review, which can significantly impact your brand image and reputation. With the being said, customer reviews are powerful; they can be your best sale person when handled properly with a great attention to customer service and experience.  

Remember customers have a plethora of options at their fingertips, so it’s important to provide a remarkable experience and educate them on your brand and products.

A positive customer experience can be crucial to any business’s sustained growth since it promotes customer loyalty, helps you retain customers, and encourages brand advocacy. 

More benefits of delivering a high-quality customer experience include:

  • High customer retention as 93% of customers who love the service they receive will become valuable repeat customers.
  • Increase customer loyalty through warm and positive interactions, which results in a 306% higher lifetime value for customers if they have spent time with you.‌
  • Boost sales and conversions as 86% of customers say they’re willing to spend more for a better customer experience.

How to measure customer experience?

  • Measuring Net Promoter Score
  • Identify Churn Rate
  • Feature requests
  • Analyze customer support ticket trends

Measuring customer experience helps businesses define and prioritize what works and what doesn’t. Important initiatives that you can undertake to measure customer experience are calculating the Net Promoter Score, identifying the churn rate, feature requests, and analyzing customer service ticket trends. 

Let’s dive deeper in how you can use these 4 methodologies to measure customer experience:

Measuring Net Promoter Score (NPS)

customer experience measurement
Net Promoter Score Formula

A great indicator of how well customers are satisfied with the products and services your brand offers is by analyzing the Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS measures the probability that your customers will recommend your brand to their friends, family, and colleagues. This gives you valuable insights into people’s personal experiences, which can help you increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The use of customer satisfaction surveys on a regular basis is a valuable marketing tool. This will provide valuable insights into your customer experience with your brand and product or service throughout the whole customer journey. These insights will tell you what you need to improve and where you already provide an excellent experience. 

Identify Churn rate

Churn Rate Formula

The churn rate is the rate at which customers stop doing business with a company over a given period of time. For example the number of subscribers who cancel or do not renew their subscriptions. The churn rate is a useful indicator of how well a business is retaining customers. This reflects the quality of service the company is providing, as well as its usefulness.

Nevertheless, its limitation is that it does not define the types of customers that are dissatisfied. This is because newly acquired customers are more likely to leave than retained customers. Therefore, calculating the churn rate regularly can provide valuable insights into why customer retention increases or decreases so that appropriate action can be taken.

Feature requests

Feature requests are a form of product feedback to discover ways to improve your product and better serve the users’ ever-evolving needs. A smooth feature request process can demonstrate to your customers that you’re listening to them and prioritizing their needs, in turn earning their trust and loyalty.

In order to achieve this, start by creating a centralized place to capture and organize feature requests that helps you gather valuable data. Analyzing this data will help you figure out what aspects within the business need to be improved. After consistently gathering, prioritizing and handling feature requests, the overall brand image and customer experience will improve drastically.

Analyze customer support ticket trends.

Whenever your customers interact with your contact center or help desk, you receive valuable data that can inform your customer experience. Once you review the data consistently, you will begin to observe trends in the submitted tickets. You can use these insights to determine how well your team interacts with customers and which product issues to focus on. 

By implementing this process, the total number of tickets reps receive will be reduced while the customer experience will be streamlined and enjoyable.

4 proven and tested strategies + examples to improve customer experience

Personalization

Personalizing consumer experiences throughout the entire customer journey can help create long-term relationships between the brand and the buyer. Personalization can take on many forms, like thank you emails to customers after purchase, follow-up surveys, recommendation based on user preferences. The purpose of personalization is to make customers feel valued even after the sale is made. This is a great way to boost the overall customer experience.

Grammarly makes use of all the data it collects from its users to deliver weekly reports, providing an analysis of their writing technique. These personalized features establish the brand as a vital tool for content creators, writers or people worried about silly typos in their emails.

It also acts as an upselling strategy, reminding users that they’ll get even deeper insights into their writing habits and fix more problems if they upgrade to a paid account.

How Grammarly makes editing suggestion based on user's context input

Implement customer loyalty programs

Creating a loyalty program specifically designed for your audience is a great way to build a long-term relation between the customer and the brand. The aim is to incentivize customers to spend more money on your products or services in order to let them ‘earn’ the benefits.

A well-structured and personalized loyalty program can generate significant benefits in recurring revenue for your business by improving customer experience. Here’s how Starbucks Reward Program became the pioneer of using a omnichannel experience with their loyalty program:

Did you know that Starbucks was one of the first businesses that used a mobile app to run a loyalty program? Customers could use the app to accumulate loyalty points but they had to pay with the app.  

The brand used these centralized customer transactions in the app to gather valuable information on their customer preferences and behavior. As a result, they were able to boost the customer experience by creating personalized experiences. For example, recommendations based on previous consumption and go-to Starbucks recommendations when customers are on the road.

Build an omnichannel strategy for a better customer experience

An omnichannel approach is all about making the customer’s life as easy as possible. Building an omnichannel experience is a great tool to meet this ever-growing need. The strategy includes multiple channels for sales, customer support, and marketing. 

In order to create a successful omnichannel experience, you must be able to make it as easy as possible for customers to connect with the brand through their preferred channels. This in the end contributes to better team productivity and an improved customer experience.

For example, there is a common frustration among customers who place online food and beverage orders that they still have to wait for their orders to be processed, assuming they can pick it up immediately. The fast food chain, Chipotle, aims to eliminate that frustration by using an online system and mobile ordering app that allows its users to place an order wherever they are. It ensures that no matter what the order includes, it will be ready by the time they arrive.

Implement customer feedback to enhance customer experience

Measuring customer satisfaction is a profound first step in improving the overall customer experience. Several proven and tested strategies for measuring customer experience are already presented in this article. 

Now it’s time to use this information and choose the right channels for communicating with your customers to gather actionable feedback. With channels like live chat, in-app, or chatbots, you can get customer feedback almost immediately after each interaction. This process helps us understand how customers feel about the product and how satisfied they are with it. Ultimately, you will be able to provide better experiences to consumers.

Among businesses that utilize the power of customer feedback is Uber. This brand is well known as a consistent innovator in the rideshare space, which developed a two-way feedback system for customers: riders and drivers.

For Uber, it was essential to consider both drivers and riders as customers. This is because satisfied drivers will want to drive for Uber, and happier drivers empower happier customers who will appreciate the company’s services.

Final thoughts

Creating seamless consumer experiences cannot be understated as they can make or break your business. Therefore, it is crucial to use customer feedback to identify how key points along your customer’s journey can be improved. As soon as you begin doing this on a regular basis, you’ll start noticing trends that will reveal valuable insights that hold the key to an unparalleled customer experience.

Having helped businesses create seamless customer experiences, we know the time and effort needed to get a project like this off the ground. That’s why our team of experts is ready to guide you with proven and tested framework that ignites a digital transformation within your business.

If you want to stay up-to-date and get your hands on all the latest news and technology with Advesa’s weekly in-depth insights and news.

Share: