If you’re starting to coordinate your digital marketing plan for the upcoming shopping season, then you’ll definitely want to read through this guide carefully.

Inside, we’ll talk about various methods for better search engine optimization (SEO) and how to get in front of potential shoppers who are ready to get the best deals possible.

Here are twelve of the most useful ways to improve your Black Friday SEO for better results this holiday season.

#1. Check Your Technical Details

The first step in improving your Black Friday SEO really comes down to checking your technical details. 

After all, things like page load speed and broken links can greatly affect the way Google ranks your website.

A few tips? 

Double-check to ensure your server can handle excess traffic and resolve any 404 error pages. 

You should also place 301 redirects on any old landing pages or items that are no longer in stock.

From the technical side, you can also spruce up meta titles and descriptions with words like Black Friday and Cyber Monday (but remember to change them when the season is over!).

#2. Choose Specific Black Friday SEO Keywords

There’s no doubt that two of the biggest keywords for the holiday shopping weekend are Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

However, you don’t want to just target those words only in your content.

Instead, go a bit more specific with individual products or categories of items.

For example, long-tail keywords like Cyber Monday Deals on Televisions or Best Black Friday Skincare Sale.

Whatever makes sense for your niche or industry, choose the best search terms you would use throughout the year and add those extra Black Friday SEO keywords onto them.

#3. Showcase Reviews More Prominently

When it comes to Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping, reviews are a big deal. 

Why? Most people want to see whether the item you’re offering is worth their time or if they’re actually getting a good deal.

With more people switching to online shopping versus visiting brick-and-mortar retailers, being able to see reviews from past customers is really important.

That said, you can optimize your Black Friday SEO by including actual reviews — good or bad — from customers.

If you’re on Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce, there are tons of plugins and apps that can do this for you. 

Some will even splash the most recent product reviews across a small popup at the footer, which can be a great way to help site visitors discover new products.

#4. Create Specific Holiday Landing Pages

Another excellent Black Friday SEO tip is to create specific holiday landing pages.

Include plenty of good keywords that describe the products you’re promoting and the various discounts you’re offering on those items.

Depending on whether you have a high-ticket item or something else, you could even use video or other interactive content like quizzes on these pages.

The main goal here is to create another entry point for someone looking to shop for the holidays, which means publishing another page to your website is a great idea for improving rankings and boosting traffic.

#5. Bundle Products Together for More Content

If you have a small catalog or somewhat niche products, you can always consider bundling products together for more content that could rank in the SERPs.

This is a great way to boost your Cyber Monday and Black Friday SEO, as it conveys both a valuable offer and makes it easier for someone who doesn’t know a lot about your product to decide it is a great value as a giftable item.

Usually, these bundles don’t have to be huge or have a major discount on the individual price. 

But you can usually create some sort of savings that makes the shopper feel as though they’re getting the best value possible.

#6. Curate Seasonal Content for Your Blog

If you haven’t noticed with this list, adding additional content to your website is a good method for improving your Black Friday SEO.

That means curating seasonal content for your blog that covers topics related to how your product is ideal for use as a gift item, how to use it in the winter months, or whatever else makes the most sense for your niche.

Be sure to include those top Black Friday keywords in conjunction with specific terms, update your meta descriptions to include the term Black Friday, link to pages within your website, and handle all those technical SEO aspects that the crawlers love.

#7. Review User Experience (UX) for Flaws

Another major Black Friday SEO tip is to review your overall user experience (UX) for flaws and make changes accordingly.

• Is it too difficult for shoppers to find specific products within your navigation? 
• Or is your checkout process a few steps too long?

Find areas where you can improve the experience that customers have when they come to your page. 

While this isn’t related to search ranking directly, it can ensure those that do arrive from Google or Bing make a purchase instead of abandoning a cart.

#8. Build Links with Media Sources and Other Websites

As you likely already know, building backlinks is a critical component of off-page SEO. 

The more quality pages that link to your online store, the better your rankings and the easier it is to climb the SERPs.

That said, you can take a holiday approach to the process. 

There are many publications and websites out there that are looking to highlight specific Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. 

By getting into contact with them ahead of the shopping season, you can offer a deal where their readers get a specific coupon code in exchange for the publication including your product and brand in their list.

This is a pretty common practice in eCommerce around the holiday season, but it does take a bit of early discussion to make it worthwhile. 

Thus, you should start scoping out these firms in late summer or early fall to ensure you’re getting backlinks prior to Black Friday and the holiday shopping period.

#9. Give Website Visitors the Option to Share on Social

With Black Friday and Cyber Monday being such a big deal in the retail industry, it only makes sense that you want to be able to give those website visitors that arrive on your page the ability to share their favorite products on social media.

If you don’t already have this option on each product page, consider enabling it. 

These links not only create buzz, but they give you a social backlink that can help improve your SEO.

Furthermore, you could opt to provide a special discount for those that share items from your brand with friends or family members. 

There are tons of different plugins for Shopify and other platforms that make this process easy and give you that extra boost you’re looking for in terms of search optimization.

#10. Use an Omnichannel Strategy

If you’ve worked on your brand’s digital marketing strategy for a considerable amount of time, you already know that having an omnichannel approach is crucial to your success. 

But how does this relate to improving organic traffic on Black Friday?

Well, most consumers need to see advertising from a new brand several times before they start to trust a special offer. 

If a shopper has already seen your ads or posts on social media or through banner ads, they’re already going to connect you as an authority in your industry.

Thus, when they see your link in SERPs, they’ll be more apt to click on that link and go to your page. 

Building this kind of trust takes time, but prior preparation can make it so that you’re not only ranking high on Google, but getting the clicks that ultimately lead to orders.

#11. Understand Who is Buying Gifts from Your Brand

When improving your Cyber Monday and Black Friday SEO, it is important to think about your ideal customer persona and who might buy your items as a gift for them.

This is one side of digital marketing for the holiday shopping season that a lot of eCommerce brands miss, which is why it is such an important aspect to think about.

For example, maybe you own a skincare company for women. In that case, your search optimization and paid ads should try to attract those shopping for their partner or the best gift ideas for mom.

From there, choose long-tail keywords that best resonate with that particular demographic.

#12. Start Throughout the Year

Optimizing your website for Black Friday certainly isn’t something to start last minute. 

Instead, it should be a tactic that you’re continually working on throughout the year.

After all, when you’re already ranking high in the SERPs for evergreen keywords and topics, achieving the same for Black Friday or Cyber Monday content is a lot easier.

At that point, all you have to do is add content for seasonal deals and Cyber Monday and Black Friday SEO keywords.

Remember, search optimization is a marathon and not a sprint. 

The more you do early on, the easier it is to gain organic traffic during the busiest shopping season of the year.

Other Black Friday and Cyber Monday Tips to Consider

While Black Friday SEO is certainly important, it is really only one piece of the bigger holiday shopping season you’ll want to keep in mind. 

Here are a few additional tips you’ll want to consider:

Remember the Thanksgiving Holiday

Many eCommerce brands make the mistake of jumping straight to Black Friday and Cyber Monday with their content. 

Remember, you can use the whole Thanksgiving holiday weekend as a way to draw in customers. 

Consider running deals before and after Thursday or simply sending out messaging of gratitude to your existing shoppers on the holiday itself.

Start as Early as Possible

There’s a huge movement in retail to start Black Friday and Cyber Monday advertising as early as possible. 

Some brands like Walmart and Amazon are releasing their deal preview lists in October to get in front of shoppers who want to complete their gift-buying lists early.

Use Urgency Keywords for Missed Deals

Another thing you can do to boost all of your Black Friday advertising — whether that’s paid ads or just social media posts — is to use urgency keywords for missed deals. 

This can be something like “you just missed out, but here’s another chance” or anything else that makes it easier for a shopper to still see value even though they weren’t able to buy right away.

Wrap-Up: Best Tips for Improving Your Black Friday SEO

Improving your Black Friday SEO isn’t something that happens overnight.

But with a little planning and this list of tips, you can see an improvement in organic traffic this shopping season.

Are you looking for other ways to potentially improve your search ranking all year long? 

Our SEO Maturity Assessment is an excellent place to start!

The post Top Black Friday SEO Tips to Apply in 2023 appeared first on Rock Content.

Sending out emails to your marketing list is an important component of any holiday sale weekend campaign. 

But how do you craft messages that get them opened — and what is the best way to catch the attention of your target buyers?

Here are our best tips for better Black Friday email subject lines.

#1. Choose the Right Words

The first step in boosting your open rates is to choose the right words for your email subject lines. 

What does this mean?

To really gain attention from your audience, selecting words that are direct and offer immediate information is important.

That means using enticing words like sale and special offer to get to the point. 

After all, most people are looking for some sort of discount when they’re searching for holiday deals.

You can also use terms like markdown or closeout to really convey that there are deep savings to be had when making a purchase with your brand.

While this alone won’t be enough to capture the attention of your audience and help increase Black Friday sales, it is a great start.

#2. Build Urgency

It is also very important to build urgency with your email subject line for Black Friday. 

Ultimately, these sales are meant to only last a few hours or through the weekend.

However, this doesn’t mean you have to tell them to act fast or that they’ll miss out.

The terms Black Friday and Cyber Monday lead themselves to naturally create a sense of urgency — these days only come once a year, right?

Towards the end of your sales time period, you can also send out a last-chance email that lets your list know that this really is the final opportunity they have to save on a purchase.

#3. Use Exclusivity as a Draw

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is real when it comes to Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping. 

Using exclusivity as a draw is a great way to catch the attention of your existing customers.

There are several ways you can do this. You could start by using a VIP message a couple of days before Black Friday to explain that the offer is only available to a select few people.

(They don’t need to know that everyone on your list is getting the same offer.)

Then you could follow up with other Black Friday email subject lines that create further urgency, such as a suggestion that deals won’t last long or that there is a limited supply.

#4. Add an Actual Price or Discount Percentage

Another way to catch the attention of holiday shoppers is to add an actual price or discount percentage to your Black Friday email subject lines.

People like to see numbers, so it doesn’t matter what you put here as long as it matches a specific discount you’re offering.

For example, something like $50 off or 40% would be enough to at least spur most shoppers into taking a look at what you have available.

Of course, if you’re only offering a small discount or something that doesn’t have a set value (like free shipping) then you might want to skip this tactic. 

However, if you’re going deep with those sale offers, this is an excellent way to increase interest.

#5. Free Shipping Offers

Another great tactic for Black Friday email subject lines is to offer free shipping just for orders placed during the promotion.

While free shipping is something that is common with big corporate retailers, many smaller brands work on profit margins too small to really offer this all the time. 

That said, offering free shipping for Black Friday or Cyber Monday shoppers can be a great way to compete with those bigger brands.

If this is something you’re thinking about adding to your email marketing for the holiday season, be sure to run the numbers first. 

Maybe you have to give less of a price discount to counter the cost of shipping the order, which is probable with the expected increase in shipping rates for the 2023 holiday season.

#6. Choose Your Own Discount

People really like options, especially when it comes to something like the opportunity to choose their own discount.

Maybe someone would prefer a coupon for 40% off versus $10 off. It really depends on the volume they’re buying and the total order value.

Larger orders are generally going to go for the percentage, while single items are like choosing a set dollar amount.

In your Black Friday email subject lines, present both offers. 

This gives them a good idea that there are deals to be had, but that they don’t have to choose one until they’re ready to check out.

In fact, this is a great tactic to use for any sale offer or promotion throughout other important shopping seasons of the year.

#7. Include the Words Black Friday and Cyber Monday

As we previously mentioned, the words Black Friday and Cyber Monday innately lend themselves to two elements: a discount and a limited time to take advantage.

Most people get a lot of emails during the Thanksgiving weekend from retailers. 

Most will just skim subject lines until they see words like Black Friday and Cyber Monday — which is why you should find a way to include them in your messaging.

And remember that this doesn’t just pertain to the message you send on the shopping days themselves. 

Some major retailers start sending out Black Friday previews in October as a way to catch the attention of consumers.

#8. Use Active Words Where You Can

Another tip for creating the best Black Friday email subject lines is to use active words where you can.

Terms such as buy, save, earn, get, shop, and other similar ones often get a better response than messages that don’t include them.

Remember, you want the customer to understand immediately what value they’ll receive from your special offer, and using the right choice in active terminology is a great way to convey this on a psychological level.

You can even opt to pair these words with other tips we’ve included here, such as choosing their own discount or getting free shipping.

You can count on our professional writers to create the best copy for your campaign emails and content. Get to know their work in WriterAccess’ free trial!

#9. Dare to Be Different

Let’s face it. 

Your email list is going to get a lot of emails in the few days around Black Friday. It’s also going to get a ton of messages during that day, too. 

Instead of sending another message that people will ignore, use creative language and emojis to stand out from the crowd.

Any opportunity you have to catch their eye with playful wording or a little humor is certainly a good idea. 

Plus, emojis work to break up the endless list of messages in their inbox with a colorful and fun miniature image.

If you’re really planning to do something out of the normal with your Black Friday email subject lines, however, just make sure it is somewhat on brand. 

Your customers are already comfortable with your messaging as a company. If you go pretty far off script, you might see a little pushback from your existing clientele.

#10. Remember Thanksgiving

As an eCommerce brand, it is easy to get so caught up in plans for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

Instead, throw your audience a bit off by not mentioning either of them.

Send a Thanksgiving message the day before. Show appreciation and gratitude for your customers and the overall blessings of the year. 

Then, casually mention your weekend shopping deals in the body of the email.

Standing out from the competition as a brand is super important and this is one easy way to make that happen during the official start of the holiday retail season.

BONUS: Subject Lines to Test for Black Friday Sales

If you still aren’t sure where to start with crafting the best Cyber Monday and Black Friday email subject lines, we can help.

Here are a few samples for you to try out with your audience or edit to suit your needs.

• BLACK FRIDAY ALERT! Save $[XX] Now on [PRODUCT] Before They’re Gone
• CYBER MONDAY DEAL PREVIEW – Choose Between $[X] Off OR [XX]%
• VIPs ONLY! Black Friday Deals This Good That You’ll Want to Buy Two

Wrap-Up: Choosing the Best Black Friday Email Subject Lines

Amping up your holiday shopping season sales start with email marketing. 

With these tips, you should be able to improve your Cyber Monday and Black Friday email subject lines for a better response this year.

While we’re on the topic, if you’re looking to perfect your email marketing process throughout the year, we can help. Check out our Rock Content guide for more information!

The post Black Friday Email Subject Lines: Best Practices to Boost Open Rates appeared first on Rock Content.

By thinking about your needs now, you can help have the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales volume yet.

Not sure where to start? That’s okay. 

Our Rock Content experts have compiled a list of the best Black Friday advertising tips.

Of course, these ideas won’t implement themselves, which is why you’ll want to pay attention and start planning or executing them as soon as possible.

Let’s get started.

#1: Know Your Audience’s Needs

The first key step in creating the best advertising for the holiday shopping season really starts with knowing your audience’s needs.

If you haven’t yet created a few buyer personas that describe your target customers, then now is the time to do so.

Not only does this help you adjust your Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing message, but it also gives you a good idea of how to engage with them during other parts of the year.

And don’t be afraid to get creative here. Give your imaginary buyer a name, descriptors, a list of likes and dislikes, etc.

#2: Think About Gift Giving Strategies

While it is important to know your primary customer, it is a good idea to also keep in mind that they won’t always be the ones shopping during the holidays.

Instead, have options for those who want to give your product or service to your ideal buyer. 

For example, a husband buying his wife her favorite beauty products or a mother buying a toy for her child.

This is where a lot of online brands go wrong with their ads. They don’t take into account their marketing needs to attract friends and family of their target audience. 

So, don’t miss out on seeing other angles like this when crafting your campaigns.

#3: Know When to Take on the Big Guys

The holiday shopping season is a madhouse when it comes to retail — both online and offline.

While you might be tempted to run some major campaigns to try to take on the big guy corporations, it isn’t always a good idea.

Instead, you might consider cutting through the noise and offering incentives directly tailored to current customers. 

Not only are they familiar with your brand and more likely to make a purchase, but they likely won’t skip on the chance to stock up on their favorites during a good sale.

#4: Focus on Those Looking to Pamper Themselves

Another excellent Cyber Monday and Black Friday advertising tip is to focus on those looking to pamper themselves.

If your product is something of a luxury item, high-ticket, or involves personal care, this is a great strategy to follow.

When it comes to these major sales days, a lot of shoppers are looking for things they can purchase themselves instead of just as gifts. 

This gives eCommerce brands an angle to take with campaigns that center around why it is important to treat yourself occasionally.

Of course, you would want to use this in conjunction with other front-facing approaches centered around holiday gift buying, too.

#5: Use Word-of-Mouth

Testimonials and word-of-mouth campaigns are super popular during the holidays. 

To help make this possible, you could run paid search or social media ads that outline the benefits of sharing a favorite small business retailer with a friend or family member.

If you have a customer incentive or bonus program, offer extra points or coupons for sharing posts via social media, email, and on other channels. 

For those with a tight advertising budget and an extensive number of existing customers, it can be a great way to see growth.

#6: Adding Pop-Ups to Attract Attention

When it comes to on-site advertising for your eCommerce brand, consider adding pop-ups to your page for just the day or the entire Thanksgiving weekend.

This is an excellent way to attract attention for significant savings or specials that you have going. 

It can also be a great catalyst for asking visitors to join your email list for additional savings or to join your customer appreciation program.

Likewise, you can also use pop-ups to alert shoppers to special clearance or Black Friday deals on a special landing page on your website.

#7: Create a Sense of Urgency

One of the best Black Friday advertising tips we have doesn’t consider the type of message, but rather the tone. 

After all, how you say something is just as important as what you’re saying.

The more you can create a sense of urgency with your advertising, the more likely shoppers are to take action. 

For example, use timers to show that special offers run out at a specific time. 

Some brands even offer a different deal every hour on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which keeps buyers coming back every hour to see what they could score.

#8: Advertise Buying Guides

Another really amazing holiday shopping campaign idea is to run advertisements for buying guides on your website. 

These can be a mix of products from your brand and others that you have worked deals with ahead of time. 

Think about themes like the best gifts for sports fans or what mom really wants for Christmas.

In some cases, retailers will even create specific landing pages for the guides and drive traffic to them through paid advertising. 

This is a great way to showcase great deals and more effectively push products that you need out of your warehouse, too.

#9: Retarget Past Customers

When it comes to running paid ads within the holiday shopping season, consider retargeting past customers. 

After all, they already know and love your brand, right?

By setting your Facebook ads or search ads settings to attempt to reach those who’ve previously made a purchase, you’ll be able to remind them of why they became fans of your company in the first place.

Plus, by alerting them to a Black Friday sale, they’ll be even more apt to buy based on their previous experience. 

It’s a win-win for you and your existing customers.

#10: Remember Brand Consistency

If you’re running multiple ads with an omnichannel approach for Black Friday, make sure you remember brand consistency throughout all of them.

What does this mean? 

Having an identical or similar visual aesthetic throughout all campaigns makes it easier for customers to spot your ads. 

When they finally get to a point where they’re ready to check out your offer, they’ll already have spotted your previous ads and know exactly what to expect.

While this is a tip geared at Black Friday advertising, it is really something you should be doing all year long for better brand recognition.

#11: Work with Micro-Influencers

To help spread the word about your specific Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, consider working with social media micro-influencers.

While some digital marketers forget that influencer marketing is a type of paid advertising, others have been able to use it to their advantage in the past.

Micro-influencers typically have a following under 10K on a specific social media platform with a moderate to high level of post engagement. 

These audiences are known to perform well for conversions, as they already trust the influencer they’re following.

Usually, the only cost is a gifted product sample or a small stipend for creating a post. 

You can also be hands-on with the content by asking for proofs ahead of time or just letting the influencer do their own creatives.

#12: Redefine Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Another tip to keep in mind is to redefine the terms Black Friday and Cyber Monday with your advertising.

As many of the big corporations discovered in the last few years, expanding their special offers outside the Thanksgiving weekend and offering so-called Black Friday incentives for the entire month of November works well.

In fact, it elicited such a huge response from consumers that some are even opening those offers up in the month of October.

By giving customers deals earlier and earlier, you can often encourage them to make a purchase sooner than later. 

This means scoring their sale for your brand before your competition is able to even start advertising theirs.

#13: Catch Last-Minute Shoppers

There are always those last-minute shoppers that wanted to score a big deal, but for whatever reason couldn’t make it to your website in time. 

You can use this to your advantage by using paid ads after the holiday weekend.

Utilize special coupon codes or bundle offers on products that maybe weren’t as crazy big sellers during the actual days, but still are what your target customer is looking for.

While the old saying that the early bird gets the worm is still true, you can always cater to the latecomers as a way to increase sales after the major deals are gone.

#14: Advertise Gift Card Specials

If you’ve paid any attention to the global shipping crisis happening right now, then you probably have at least some concern as to whether the products you’re selling on your website will actually make it to your warehouse in time.

That said, there are a lot of eCommerce retailers who are making a huge push for gift card sales in their Black Friday advertising. 

When the clogged supply chain clears up at the beginning of the year, there’s likely going to be a surplus of items available.

Gift cards are a good way to move items faster in the coming months and allocate spending with your brand.

#15: Use Humor in Your Marketing

One thing that always works is humor — especially if it surrounds something relatable.

When it comes to Black Friday advertising, don’t be afraid to show off a little humor in your message.

For example, maybe the husband bought the wife a horrible gift last year and you want to stop him from making the same mistake this year. 

Or a laugh for parents who spent lockdown trying to teach their kids at home and now need to find a really good gift for this year’s teacher.

How this works for your industry and what’s deemed humorous will likely vary. 

But, just remember that a good laugh is always an excellent way to catch the attention of your ideal buyer.

#16: Support a Cause

Most consumers these days will readily tell you that they prefer buying from brands that work to do good in the world. 

From a marketing perspective, adding support for a cause to your Black Friday advertising is a good idea.

As an example, maybe your company is donating a meal to a local food bank for every purchase made on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. 

Or you could match dollar-for-dollar to a specific charity for the purchase of a certain amount.

From a business perspective, this does a couple of things:

• First, it can create a situation where customers relate to and trust your brand for giving back. 
• And, second, it allows you to spread joy throughout the holiday season. 

A great double combination, right?

Wrap-Up: Black Friday Advertising Tips for 2023

If you’re planning your Cyber Monday and Black Friday advertising campaigns, this list is a good resource to ensure your message gets noticed by shoppers. 

The bottom line? Be creative with your messaging and offer value. 

If you can accomplish these two things, your sales for the upcoming holiday shopping season will certainly show it.

While we’re at it, here are a few extra tips from our Rock Content team on how to improve ad performance!

The post Best Cyber Monday and Black Friday Advertising Tips for eCommerce appeared first on Rock Content.

According to research by Deloitte, the average American consumer now spends about $500 during the week of Black Friday and Cyber Monday — with numbers steadily increasing over the past few years.

Launching Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals can make all the difference if you want to drive more sales this holiday season. 

And if you’re wondering when to start planning your holiday marketing strategy, it’s now.

Is There Any Difference Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Traditionally, Black Friday occurs on the Friday following Thanksgiving in the United States. Cyber Monday, on the other hand, occurs on the first Monday after the holiday. 

Despite both events occurring near the start of the holiday season, there are some notable differences between Black Friday and Cyber Monday to keep in mind as you develop your business’s marketing and sales strategies.

Cyber Monday is all about online shopping.

Compared to Black Friday deals, which mostly take place at physical retail locations, Cyber Monday deals are offered exclusively online. While it’s true that some Black Friday deals may also be offered online, the main focus is on brick-and-mortar.

For consumers who shop for Cyber Monday deals, this means no waking up at the crack of dawn to venture out, fight through crowds, and wait in long lines. All their shopping can be done from the comfort and convenience of their computers, tablets, or smartphones.

Cyber Monday deals are only available for hours (or minutes)

While it’s not uncommon for Black Friday deals to sell out quickly, Cyber Monday is essentially designed around the concept of “lightning deals”.  They’ll expire after a certain amount of time or when a specific amount of inventory sells.

This can inherently generate a greater sense of urgency for consumers to make quick buying decisions. 

Comparison shopping is easier on Cyber Monday

Still, today’s consumers are savvy when shopping for holiday deals. On Cyber Monday especially, you can expect consumers to shop around for the best deals using any of the various comparison tools available.  CamelCamelCamel.com, a free Amazon price tracker, is a popular choice.

How to Sell More During Cyber Monday

With these key differences in mind, having separate strategies for Black Friday and Cyber Monday is a must. So, what are some practical ways to sell more during Cyber Monday 2023?

Make sure your website is optimized for mobile

A responsive website is perhaps more important on Cyber Monday than on any other day of the year. If your site cannot be easily navigated and used on any mobile device, you’re going to lose out on sales.

That’s because smartphones now account for more than 87% of eCommerce sales—and that number is only expected to rise.

Likewise, if your site isn’t optimized for mobile, your marketing campaigns will suffer.

Search engines like Google “punish” websites that aren’t optimized by ranking them lower on the results pages. It becomes even harder for potential customers to find your site in the first place.

Generate buzz with strategic marketing campaigns

Ideally, you’ll spend the weeks and even months leading up to your Cyber Monday sale getting the word out about the special deals and promotions your brand is offering.

The idea here is to build suspense and generate buzz around the upcoming deals. Get consumers more excited and eager to make purchases once Cyber Monday rolls around.

So, how can you generate excitement around your Cyber Monday campaign? Consider ramping up your email marketing, social media marketing, and content marketing. Highlight promotions and offer special “sneak peaks” of some of the deals you’ll be offering.

Paid search ads can also be effective, especially if you’re targeting the right keywords in your campaigns.

Make sure you’re prepared for the demand

What is the worst mistake you can make? Not being prepared for your Cyber Monday marketing strategy to actually pay off.

Your website’s server will likely see more traffic on Cyber Monday than on any other day of the year. Make sure it’s reliable and that it can handle the traffic without slowing down or crashing. Likewise, make sure that you have enough inventory prepared to sell out — and that you’re ready to fulfill and ship orders as they come in.

Get Ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday Early

It’s never too early to start thinking about your brand’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday strategies. Successful marketing teams are thinking about and planning for the holiday sales season year-round.

Now is a good time to start thinking not only about what your deals will look like come this holiday season but which strategies you’ll use to spread the word about your special deals and promotions. 

Start Your Free Trial With WriterAccess Today

With some careful planning and foresight, your brand can capitalize big time on the holiday shopping season. Ultimately, it boils down to knowing your target audience, marketing to them effectively, and starting early.

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to get the word out about your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. It’s probably time to start thinking about your email, social media, and other content campaigns.

WriterAccess can help you take your content marketing to the next level by connecting you to a pool of more than 15,000 qualified and specialized freelance writers.

Learn more and start your 14-day free trial today and see the difference for yourself.

The post Is Cyber Monday Better Than Black Friday? 3 Ideas to Sell More appeared first on Rock Content.

However, police nicknamed Big Friday “Black Friday” after shoppers caused multiple traffic jams. The name stuck even though retailers didn’t care for it.

Despite its rather inglorious name, Black Friday became popular in the United States and worldwide. It has been America’s biggest shopping day since 2001.

Even so, it could be more than a one-day event for your business if you plan it right. Properly leveraged, Black Friday can boost site traffic and sales in the long run. It also has the potential to build brand loyalty that will grow your customer base.

What does a successful Black Friday marketing campaign look like? This is a question that only you can answer. You alone know what your goals are and what they will look like when you reach them.

Even so, the pointers outlined below apply to companies of all sizes and industries. Read on to find out how to increase your odds of a successful Black Friday 2023.

Start Early

Maybe now isn’t yet the time to begin flooding customers with your Black Friday ads. However, the earlier the better to start planning and preparing your campaign.

Do you know what audiences you want to target? If not, do some research to determine who would be most interested in what you plan to offer.

Does your marketing budget include money for Black Friday advertising? If not, see how much cash you can afford to spend on Black Friday marketing. You’ll also want to decide how to spend your money in a way that maximizes results.

Will you need help from third parties to execute your Black Friday marketing plan? If so, find the professionals who can help you right now. You don’t want to be caught short-handed at the last minute.

It’s also a good time to look for micro-influencers to promote your brand name. These individuals tend to have a good conversion rate. They’re not expensive; in fact, you may only have to supply a free product in exchange for a review.

Procuring the products you want to offer for sale is also an important aspect of early planning. You don’t want your team to be overwhelmed by angry shoppers who can’t buy your goods. Such customers will likely ensure that your business goes viral on Black Friday for all of the wrong reasons.

Prepare Your Website

In 2021, online traffic went up by 37 percent on Black Friday and 21 percent on Cyber Monday. Is your website prepared to handle an influx of visitors? If not, now’s the time to set up stable, reliable web hosting.

View your website on various devices to make sure that it’s responsive and loads fast. If it’s too slow, you’ll lose shoppers to your competitors. People won’t wait for your site if they’re worried about other deals passing them by.

You’ll also want to make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices. It needs to be easy to view and navigate on any screen. This boosts online sales and even improves your standing in search engine results.

Check your online store to ensure that it’s optimized and compelling. Are there attractive photos of your products from various angles? As the old saying goes, “A picture is worth 1,000 words.”

Use meta tags for all of your product images. It’s a free, effective way to optimize your site for search engines.

Do you have online product reviews? If not, consider offering current customers a freebie or discount in exchange for an honest review. Positive reviews will build trust in your brand and help you attract new customers.

Create A Black Friday Landing Page

A compelling Black Friday landing page can help customers find good deals on your site. It can also help you stand out from the competition by promoting your unique selling points.

What sets your business apart from the competition? Do you offer something unique that people can’t find anywhere else? Are you the cheapest, most luxurious, or most eco-friendly?

Another way to stand out is to commit to giving a percentage of your profits to charity. Choose a cause that your target audience can understand and get behind. Tell people about it on your landing page.

Finally, make sure your landing page has a clear call to action. People ought to be able to see at a glance what you want them to click on. The links should lead to specific e-store pages where people can buy what they want.

Build A Sales Strategy

What types of deals do you want to offer Black Friday shoppers? Discounts are great, but they’re certainly not your only option.

Other great deals include BOGO offers, giveaways, sweepstakes, and coupon codes. Extra perks and amenities can be great bonuses for people who buy a service. Offering freebies is yet another effective way to stand out.

Take some time to consider what will appeal to your target audience. You could even post a survey on your social media account and ask people what they’d like best.

Another good tactic involves letting your audience choose between two discount options. Some, for instance, may appreciate 20 percent off their entire order and others might prefer a $10 off coupon. Presenting a choice shows consumers that you care about meeting their needs and wishes.

Free shipping is a must and should also be included in your strategy. About two-thirds of shoppers expect it for every purchase. Around 80 percent of them expect it when they spend substantial amounts of money.

Strengthen Your Marketing Efforts

One important reason to start early is to strengthen your marketing efforts ahead of Black Friday. You want your site to be easy to find when people type in keywords related to your business. You also need to have brand recognition so that people will trust you enough to buy from you.

Optimizing your site for search engines will pay off when the big day arrives. There are many ways to accomplish this, including paid advertising and link building. However, one particularly effective method is content marketing.

Content marketing builds brand name recognition and promotes your business as an industry leader. This boosts your SEO and increases the number of people who visit your site. It often results in a higher conversion rate.

If your business doesn’t have a blog yet, now’s the time to start one. Make a schedule and create engaging content on a regular basis.

If you do have a blog, decide which keywords you want to target ahead of Black Friday. It’s also a good idea to check your stats to see what types of content your audience desires.

Social media content marketing

It’s not only your site that needs content. Your social media pages ought to provide engaging content as well. This material should not only inspire site visits but also be shareable in a way that boosts word-of-mouth advertising.

Text isn’t the only content option for your social media channels. You can also use videos, photos, and infographics. Visual content generates more positive responses than text.

Email content marketing

Come November, companies will start flooding consumer inboxes with Black Friday advertising. Your email messages need to stand out if you want to generate sales.

Your tagline should grab attention. It should build urgency or create fear of missing out (FOMO). Use the words “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday” so that customers know the offer is time-limited.

Your email should include a clear offer. Customers need to know what they’re getting without having to visit your site.

At the same time, not all emails have to be promotional. Wish your subscribers a happy Thanksgiving; they’ll remember your good wishes and your business name.

Creating great content for your site, social media pages, and email list is a lot of work. Thankfully, you don’t have to create winning content while juggling all other aspects of Black Friday preparation.

WriterAccess has thousands of experienced, vetted content writers to help you out. It also offers AI tools to help you find the best writers for any project. Check out the free 14-day trial period to see how you can use the platform to its fullest potential.

Streamline Your Conversion or Sales Funnel

The summer months are a good time to analyze your sales funnel and conversion rate. If something isn’t working, you want to change it long before November arrives.

What is your bounce rate? If it’s above average for your industry, make sure that you’re using the right keywords in your content and advertising. You may also want to re-examine the target audience you’re trying to reach.

What types of ads bring in the most visitors? What is the conversion rate for these visits? Tons of visits won’t grow your business if they don’t result in sales.

What landing pages do customers visit before buying something from you? What information appears on these pages? You’ll likely want to build on this content to boost visits and sales.

What landing pages generate the greatest profits? It may not be the pages with the most visits. You can achieve better results by knowing what high-paying customers desire.

Choose The Right AI Tools

Now is also a good time to optimize your site with AI tools that improve the customer experience. A chatbot can provide immediate support whenever it’s needed. This will free your human staff members to complete other important tasks.

AI can also personalize a user’s experience by making targeted product recommendations. This helps customers find great deals without spending a lot of time on your site. It not only boosts sales but also customer satisfaction rates.

AI tools for shopping cart abandonment are particularly effective. They can remind your customers about the great offers they’re about to miss out on. You could also use these tools to provide extra discounts that will incentivize customers to make the purchase.

Create A Strategy For Building Brand Loyalty

Once you’re done planning for Black Friday, it’s time to look ahead a bit. How can you use Black Friday to turn new customers into loyal ones?

You may want to consider a loyalty program. You can give new shoppers points that they can exchange for discounts on future purchases. This will make people want to keep coming back to your store.

A thank-you email also goes a long way toward cultivating customer loyalty. Include a small free gift, coupon, or other special offer to show your appreciation. Make sure that your customers know how to reach you if they need assistance.

Encourage first-time customers to sign up for your email updates or follow you on social media. This helps you stay in touch with them. It also gives them access to helpful content and tailored product recommendations.

Decide ahead of time how you want to leverage Black Friday to expand your customer base. Remember, it’s up to seven times cheaper to retain current customers than to acquire new ones.

Get Help From The Experts

As you can see, there’s a lot to do if you want to make the most of Black Friday 2023. Starting early will help you take care of everything without stress or pressure. It will also let you test various strategies and find the best ones.

You may want to enlist help from marketing experts. Doing so will enable you to showcase your business in the best light on Black Friday. It will also lay the foundation for successful year-round advertising.

Content Cloud is the ideal solution for any business in any industry. It’s a one-stop shop for everything you need to make your business successful.

Content Cloud offers top-tier content creation services. It can boost your SEO and build brand awareness. It also increases your conversion rate to improve the bottom line without breaking your marketing budget.

Content Cloud can help you create winning visuals and engaging pop-ups. It enables you to perform A/B testing on ads to ensure that you’re hitting the mark. Furthermore, it tracks data and information while safeguarding consumers’ personal data.

Content Cloud also offers tools to help your team collaborate on projects with ease. It’s ideal if your employees or freelancers don’t work in the same office.

Are you ready to break your Black Friday records and give your business a long-term boost? If so, check us out to see if we’re a good fit for you. We look forward to not only meeting your needs but exceeding your expectations.

The post How To Prepare Your Business for Black Friday in 2023 appeared first on Rock Content.

Technically, Ion didn’t qualify for the competition, still, it could make a stack. This was a fun project that highlighted the versatility and effectiveness of Ion.

Here’s the story of how Ion’s marketing tech stack was a hit at the 2016 Stackie Awards and played an important role in revolutionizing the platform.

What Is a Marketing Technology Stack?

A marketing tech stack allows you to visualize the tools to achieve critical goals. For Ion, the marketing stack focuses on the buyer’s journey.

The stack offers a comprehensive map of the marketing and sales activity that guides this journey. It includes social management, website administration, marketing automation, sales packaging, and quotes.

Competing Ideas

When Brinker and his colleague started sketching out their stack’s framework, there were many different ideas. They thought about designing the stack from a marketing perspective based on outputs, such as:

• Social generation
• Lead generation
• Demand generation

They also considered an old-school advertising lens, such as:

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

Ultimately, their approach to the marketing technology stack was to concentrate on the buyer’s journey.

Marketing Technology is Sales Technology Too

One of the notable things that happened while creating the stack involved the decision to include sales tools. It was clear that marketing technology was also sales technology.

They have some of the same objectives.

Foundational and Helper Marketing Technology

The stack categorized tools into two primary classifications: foundational and helper. It shows the foundational tools with colored ribbons that identify this group. The tools include:

• Ion Interactive platform – Creates interactive content for a website and across the lifecycle
• Pardot marketing automation – Uses Ion’s buyer profiles to target, segment, and nurture potential customers during the buyer’s journey
• Salesforce’s CRM – Aggregates buyers for the sales team

Helper tools in the stack include:

• Hootsuite – For social media management
• Squarespace – Website and blog
• Quotient – Sales packaging and quoting

Operational Marketing Technology

There are tools that are integral to marketing that sits over the buyer lifecycle and falls outside the foundational and

Certain tools fall into additional classifications that are integral to marketing. The stack separates them into two sections: marketing dashboard and agile marketing management. The tools in these groups include:

• Trello – Project management
• Slack – Organizational communication
• Google Analytics – SEO and keyword management
• Geckoboard – KPI dashboards for key metrics in real-time

These tools have less to do with the buyer’s journey and more involvement with operational functions in marketing.

Business Perspective

Of course, Ion has changed a lot since 2016. The modern Ion empowers sales teams by harvesting data from interactive content and collating it.

By gathering this information, Ion creates a simple visual tool that salespeople can use to better understand their buyers.

Ion helps reveal the buyer’s digital journey and profile it for the sales team.

Explore the Interactive Version

Today’s Ion is fully interactive. Ion collects data from interactive content to help sales and marketing teams learn about their customers.

It empowers the sales team using information that comes directly from buyer interactions with unique content. Ion takes that data and creates simple yet fun visualizations that clarify its meaning.

Ion’s (r)Evolution

Ion engages teams at a level that wasn’t possible back in 2016. Most marketing assets, like blog posts and videos, were static at that time. The modern consumer wants more from their buyer’s journey. They want their digital environment to be interactive.

Interactive content enables readers to connect with the material on a personal level. Modern marketers take it to the next stage with content that makes buying fun and informative. As consumers play with this entertaining content, they reveal details that the sales team can use to identify their needs more accurately.

Interactive content includes:

• Calculators
• Quizzes
• Surveys
• Polls
• Personality tests
• Augmented reality overlays
• Giveaways
• Contests

Once-static marketing materials are becoming interactive, such as ebooks, white papers, and infographics. Interactive marketing engages the consumer in a meaningful and memorable way.

Each interactive activity supplies valuable information that sales teams can use to gain a better understanding of the buyer’s behavior and journey. Some also require them to provide contact information that sales personnel can use to boost conversions.

Every completed field answers a question, and checked boxes also mean something. It’s not always easy to interpret the meaning, though. That’s where Ion comes into play.

Ion’s Sell-Side Experience takes all that interaction and creates a visual element that is easy to understand. It also gives the sales team access to individual customer information that this content collects.

If Sally enters a contest to win a new car, she has to provide contact information. This tells the sales team that Sally might be looking to buy a car soon, for example. Ion helps sellers understand the needs of customers and the best ways to approach them.

The Customer Journey with Ion

Ion doesn’t stop at just one piece of interactive content. It organically collects data through many pages of interactions. Then, with one click, the sales team can visualize the customer’s journey. They can look at each step and see the information harvested from it.

Since sales and marketing teams work hand-in-hand, they may collaborate on the results provided by Ion to understand the customer journey better. They could look for ways to tweak the content to filter out unqualified buyers and extract more meaningful information. As a result, Ion provides sales intelligence, something you can use to increase your revenue.

Scott Brinker and his friend learned a lot from creating the marketing technology stack in 2016. This information likely played a role in the interactive Ion being offered today. It’s time to discover how that modern version of Ion can help your business.

Request a demo of Ion and find out how the power of interactivity can serve your sales and marketing teams.

The post Ion’s Marketing Technology Stack appeared first on Rock Content.

Not only can you drive more traffic to your website, but you can boost your SEO tactics in the process.

However, while all content marketing is valuable, interactive content is a step above the rest. Instead of relying on the user receiving information passively, interactive content invites them to be a part of the experience.

Engagement drives conversions, which leads to stronger sales and a better bottom line.

Fortunately, Ion Sell-Side Experience from Rock Content is designed to make interactive content easier.

Now, you can create valuable content that helps your marketing and sales teams align in new ways.

To that end, let’s look at five ways you can supercharge your revenue by using Ion.

What is Ion Sell-Side Experience?

Ion is an all-in-one interactive content platform that aligns all of your departments under a single umbrella. On the marketing side, your team can create engaging pieces like:

• Quizzes
• Surveys
• Calculators
• Assessments
• Interactive Infographics

Then, as your audience uses this content, you can capture plenty of insightful data. Each action is logged within the system, making it easy for both marketing and sales teams to view how users are engaging with each piece.

Best of all, Ion Sell-Side allows you to utilize multiple content pieces within the same funnel. As a consequence, you have more control over the customer’s journey from start to finish.

By getting this kind of bird’s-eye view of the process, it’s much easier for sales reps to reach out to leads and create meaningful interactions based on what they’ve done already.

Ion works for ongoing content marketing and SEO, and it can be deployed for specific campaigns. Once you realize the revenue potential of Ion, you’re sure to get extra creative with its possibilities.

5 Ways to Supercharge Revenue by Using Ion Sell-Side Experience

Understanding the basics of Ion Sell-Side Experience is only the beginning. As you familiarize yourself with the platform, it’ll be much easier to see how it can generate sales. Here are five ways to maximize your ROI with Ion Sell-Side.

1- Create a cohesive marketing and sales strategy

All too often, companies struggle because of the disconnect between their marketing and sales departments. On the one hand, marketing teams are there to promote the brand and specific products or services.

Basically, marketing reps are the ones making promises.

On the other hand, sales teams are there to close deals and make sure that customers get what they expect. Overall, the sales team has to deliver what the marketing team promised.

Unfortunately, when these departments aren’t aligned, sales reps aren’t familiar with the specific details regarding various ads and promotions. So, the customer is expecting one thing and getting another.

This kind of disharmony can lead to higher churn rates and more dissatisfaction among new leads.

Fortunately, Ion Sell-Side Experience bridges the gap and allows both departments to work side-by-side within the same platform.

Now, sales reps can get a behind-the-scenes look at the kind of content the marketing team is developing and plan their sales pitch accordingly.

Additionally, Ion can help facilitate more communication between both sides. For example, the sales team can make recommendations about specific language to use (or avoid) to drive more conversions.

Also, since sales reps are the ones speaking with customers, they can provide valuable insight into what those customers want the most.

When both teams are working together instead of separately, it’s much easier to generate revenue. Now, the marketing team is making promises that appeal to a client’s target demographic, and sales reps can take that momentum and close the deal that much faster.

Overall, Ion Sell-Side Experience boosts your bottom line by making your teams more efficient and effective.

2- Gather more personalized data from your audience

If there’s one core operating word for modern marketing techniques, it’s “niche.”

Gone are the days of promoting your brand or product to the maximum number of people in the hopes of getting conversions.

Now, targeted marketing can make it much easier to convert a lead into a sale.

However, for niche marketing to work, you need to know as much about your audience as possible. Fortunately, Ion Sell-Side makes that a breeze, thanks to the way its interactive content works.

On the customer side of things, taking a quiz or survey can be fun and rewarding. In some cases, the reward may be literal in the form of free products or discounts for participation.

On the marketing and sales side, both departments can see how users interact with the content and make decisions accordingly.

For example, if one content piece is getting the most engagement, the marketing team can focus their attention on refining that piece or creating similar types of content.

Overall, this kind of personalized information allows both marketing and sales to adjust their techniques to drive conversions. By analyzing the data, it’s much easier to understand the user and answer questions like:

• Why does this person want to interact with this content?
• What does the user hope to achieve with this content?
• How does this content benefit or add value to the user?
• What actions will the person take after engaging with this content?

That’s not to say that all interactive content should have the same answers. Some pieces may be designed to boost brand awareness by being fun and enjoyable. Other content may have specific objectives, such as curating a product or service experience for a user based on their results.

Either way, interactive content provides so much more insight because users have to engage with it. For example, gathering information about someone based on how they interact with a blog page is much harder than if they took a quiz or filled out a survey.

With passive content, you have to make educated guesses about how it impacted the user. With interactive content, you know what they did and why.

3- Make better content that drives engagement

As we mentioned, engagement drives conversions, so Ion Sell-Side Experience makes it much easier to create content that is highly engaging. However, the same rules regarding value and relevancy still apply.

For example, let’s say that someone wants to find the best product for their needs. You could create a comparison tool that allows users to see side-by-side comparisons of different products.

Even better, if the user inputs their preferences beforehand, the tool could even rank products based on how well they meet the user’s criteria.

However, if the comparison tool was limited to only your products (or a select few alternatives), it wouldn’t be as impactful.

Thankfully, once you know what your customers value the most, you can create targeted, interactive content to appeal to those values.

From there, your sales team can step in and add context or answer questions the user may have about the content, your products, or your brand. This kind of nurturing can then lead to better sales overall.

4- Build an easy-to-see marketing and sales funnel

One area where many businesses struggle is knowing where a lead is in the marketing or sales funnel at any given time.

Since users can interact with a brand on multiple platforms at multiple times, it’s virtually impossible to get a full view of those interactions and touchpoints.

Ion Sell-Side Experience helps alleviate this issue by integrating with other CRM tools and providing back-end data for all content within a specific campaign.

Basically, from a single dashboard, your sales team can see which content pieces the user has engaged with so far and where they would fit within the funnel.

By laying this information out so clearly, it’s much easier for sales reps to contact leads at strategic touchpoints.

Since the reps know what the user has (and hasn’t) done already, they can use that information to create a more appealing and personalized sales pitch.

5– Focus on qualified leads

Part of the reason why so many sales reps struggle is that they’re trying to appeal to users who have no interest in the product or service. These kinds of interactions can be defeating and lead to a lower closing rate for most of your sales staff.

With Ion Sell-Side Experience, interactive content can help qualify leads, so they’re either warm or hot, not cold.

By allowing your sales reps to focus more of their time and energy on qualified leads, they can close more deals and boost your brand’s revenue in the process.

Ion’s customization options allow you to gather as much information as possible about a lead before your sales team reaches out. You can also use analytics to determine the best time to make contact.

This way, you’re stacking the deck in your reps’ favor with each new lead. With that kind of foundation, it’s much easier to supercharge your revenue.

Create a Better Sales Strategy With Sell-Side Interactive Content!

Are you ready to see how Ion Sell-Side can boost your bottom line? Does the idea of an integrated and cohesive marketing and sales strategy sound exciting?

We’re more than happy to schedule a free demo so you can see all the details of Ion’s interactive content up close.

Our team can also help spur creative ideas so you can figure out how to boost engagement with each new content piece you create.

Stop waiting for customer data to come to you.

Be proactive and let Ion Sell-Side empower your marketing and sales teams today!

The post 5 Ways to Supercharge Revenue with Rock Content’s Sell-Side Experience appeared first on Rock Content.

Additionally, you’ll be able to use those insights (all first-party data) to improve the customer experience, get better leads, and more.

But what is sell-side marketing, and is it important for you to use it?

Here’s more information to help you understand exactly what this term means and why Rock Content’s professional services team is the right choice to help you launch your branded content experiences.

In this blog, you’ll learn:

What Is Sell-Side Marketing?

Sell-side marketing refers to how your business will use its tactics or strategies to sell items or services to your customers.

Essentially, think of this as building your funnel—you will start by capturing your prospects’ attention, engaging with them, building up interest, and then getting them to make a purchase.

Inevitably, this kind of marketing has many phases and opportunities for interactions with your prospects.

It builds interest and ultimately results in persuading the prospect to make a purchase.

The sell-side marketing process, on your end, will give you a more profound look into what your customers are looking for and at what point they convert.

When you work with us in your Ion account, you will see the prospect’s path as they interact with your landing page and experiences.

The timeline will reflect when the prospect converts, giving you important data that you can use to help improve the user experience.

The Benefits of Sell-Side Marketing

Side-sell marketing has several benefits, but two important ones are improving brand awareness and lead generation.

Brand awareness

With a sell-side marketing campaign, you create a landing page that customers interact with.

They may take advantage of a one-day sale or timed shipping offer, both of which help you build brand awareness while also collecting important first-party data about the users who visit your site.

With the right interactive content, users get used to seeing and interacting with your brand, building up meaningful experiences, and developing a positive perception of your brand.

Lead generation

With sell-side, marketing professionals can leave detailed information and tips about each potential lead.

Then, the sales team can look deeper into those leads, potentially creating the opportunity for more conversions thanks to understanding the customer journey.

Users only provide information when they get valuable content. Provide them with that content in an interactive form, and you may improve your lead generation results by two times or more.

Types of Sell-Side Marketing

Sell-side marketing can take a few forms, such as service-oriented websites and transactional eCommerce sites.

For example, a transactional site has the main purpose of selling products to the user, whereas a service-oriented site has the primary goal of building a relationship to sell a service.

Some other types of sell-side marketing might include brand-building websites that only support branding but rarely sell any products or services, and publishers or media sites that are for entertainment or news purposes.

Strategies for Effective Sell-Side Marketing

When you’re marketing to anyone, you need to approach your marketing campaign the right way.

Start by targeting the right audiences.

For example, if you’re selling toys, you probably want to target younger children, their parents, or perhaps grandparents, but not teens or young singles who may not be interested in kid stuff.

The next step is to create compelling messaging.

When you keep your users interested, they’re more likely to continue through your funnel.

For instance, if they are captivated by a free download, they’re more likely to enter their email into your contact page.

Additionally, don’t be scared of A/B testing to see what strategies are or aren’t working.

Side-sell marketing allows you to shift your focus within hours or days instead of weeks or months, so it’s simple to adjust as you go for better results.

Common Mistakes in Sell-Side Marketing and How to Avoid Them

There are several common mistakes businesses make with sell-side marketing.

The first is that some businesses fail to target the right audience.

The second is that they may use outdated tactics to draw in customers or gather their data, leading to problems with the user experience or data collection efforts.

Failing to target the right audience

Failing to target the correct audience is harmful, no matter what kind of marketing campaign you’re running.

When you don’t target the right audience, the people who come to your landing page are more likely to bounce, meaning you won’t have any real data past the first stage of your marketing funnel/side-sell.

Using outdated tactics

Outdated tactics will hurt you in the years to come, especially as Google takes away cookies with Google Analytics 4. You need to switch to gathering first-party data, which is what you can do with your side-sell experience on Ion.

With Ion, you’ll be using advanced tactics to collect organic, first-party user data, which can then be used to implement a better user experience (and get more conversions).

Skipping interactive content

If your marketing campaigns don’t use interactive content, then they’re not doing everything they can do for you. Interactive content improves brand awareness and engagement.

How? It makes users engage with your content, which helps them get to know you better.

In the future, users will recognize your brand more easily, and they’ll be more likely to have a positive perception of your business.

Take Advantage of a Sell-Side Experience

The right sell-side experience can help you get a head start against the competition.

Ready to learn more about how Ion can benefit your business?

Request a demo today, and we’ll help you see Ion sell-side feature in action.

The post What Is Sell-Side Marketing? appeared first on Rock Content.

The better you know your lead, the more personal you can make your sales approach.

Ion’s Sell-Side Experience gathers information about a potential buyer. It takes data from interactive content and creates a visual representation that tells a story.

Quizzes, calculators, and assessments give you details about the buyer. You can use the interactive journey data to personalize a sales pitch.

Ion collects data from pages of interactive content before bringing that information together in a visual format. It is a service that enables you to be proactive about your sales process using actionable buyer data.

Unlike analytics, Sell-Side creates an actual timeline of the buyer’s interactive touchpoints and enables the salesperson to instantly see what the buyer did.

It provides explicit data about the buyer’s needs, priorities, budgets, and capabilities. It is unprecedented for the sales team to have such high-quality data that can be acted upon.

Real-World Examples of Buyer Timelines

Since this is an entirely new concept, I thought I’d share real-world examples of how Ion uses Sell-Side to align marketing and sales.

Hopefully, this will give you an idea of how Ion can generate high-value insights for your sales team. Keep in mind that the whole idea of Sell-Side is that it surfaces whatever data is of the highest value to you and your sales team.

These examples show what’s important for me to communicate to sales as Ion’s CMO.

For privacy reasons, I’m using my own buyer data as an example here. Each buyer’s timeline is automatically generated for them, a personal and specific reflection of their interactions. Buyer timelines are private and secure.

Sales Insight: Content Consumption

How a buyer consumes content over the course of their interactive journey can say a lot about their engagement and maturity.

Our sales team really gobbles up our white paper and e-book content consumption visualizations (like the one below).

Here you can see my personal buyer’s Sell-Side Timeline (on the left).

I am the ‘buyer’ (that’s my Gravatar automagically pulled into my user profile), and everything I’ve done across my interactive journey is illustrated in my timeline.

This screenshot shows what a salesperson would see when they looked at my timeline and clicked into my most recent touchpoint — a ‘consumption’ Sell-Side that shows how much of an interactive asset I consumed.

Some touchpoints in the buyer’s interactive journey may not be worth diving deep into. Sell-Side makes it easy to visually identify which ones are important.

Sell-Side makes it easy to visually disregard those by rendering them differently (without a rectangular screenshot). The idea is that it’s fast and efficient for salespeople to scan a Sell-Side Timeline and know what’s important.

Sales Insight: Quantitative Readiness

Calculators can provide some pretty incredible sales insights into fit and quality.

Budget, pricing, and solution calculators have obvious value, but our sales team also uses other calculators (like our value calculator, shown below) to help them understand fit.

Earlier in my buyer’s journey, I interacted with a value calculator. How and what I calculated helps sales understand my scale and needs as a potential customer.

Ion has several calculators in its interactive journey. Here’s a Sell-Side that shows how the buyer configured their solution and calculated their budget.

Knowing where buyers stand in terms of readiness and qualification helps sales engage with more relevance and specificity.

Sales Insight: Qualitative Readiness

Ion uses a lot of interactive self-assessments in our buyer’s journey. If you’re in a nascent market that requires education or nurturing a new concept, assessments are a great way to understand common needs, maturity, and readiness across your universe.

Our ‘program builder’ helps buyers set their priorities, and the Sell-Side of that experience helps our sales team understand which buyers have priorities that align with our solution.

Assessments generally provide a treasure trove of potentially valuable data. As you can see in our Sell-Side for our program builder, sales are provided with a clear roadmap of the buyer’s priorities.

Sales Coaching: What It All Means

Often, just visualizing how a buyer responded isn’t enough.

In those cases, our Sell-Sides are augmented with highly specific sales coaching that helps the salesperson better understand the context and meaning behind responses.

Everything you see below is personalized, answer-specific sales coaching.

This Sell-Side shows how the buyer answered our Content Marketing Assessment, but it also provides answer-specific sales coaching to help the sales team add value to the answers as they converse with the buyer.

Here, marketing is giving sales supporting facts and tips that are dynamically shown based on the specific answers the buyer provided.

How Your Sales Team Can Use Sell-Side

In case the examples above haven’t been enough to clarify how to use Sell-Side, here is a compilation of useful tips based on our own experience at Rock Content.

Turn the results page into a Sell-Side page

If you look at the results page from an interactive experience, you can turn it into a Sell-Side page to better understand the data. The Sell-Side page lets our team quickly view the assessment’s answers.

The page also allows us to break down the data and make sense of it. For example, it provides scoring suggestions based on rules.

Customize your Sell-Side pages

You can customize Sell-Side pages in a way that makes the most sense for the experience and our process. That might mean breaking it down into a single page or seeing all the pages from one single experience at the same time. This allows us to review users’ results in a new, more condensed way.

Do a review while the live interactive experience is still happening

You can look at the results even if a live experience is ongoing. It allows us to get a more comprehensive view of the experience while it is in progress.

Make adjustments as needed during the live interactive experience

Being able to review the results even when the live experience is still active allows us to make changes if necessary. The changes you make to the Sell-Side will not affect the interactive experience for the user.

Tweaking the user’s experiences can further target our view when the time comes to collect and understand results. That might mean:

• Changing content and its position
• Adding new replacement tokens to get more information
• Removing content that isn’t serving a purpose in the Sell-Side experience

These tweaks can save us time later.

Manage your replacement tokens

Replacement tokens are what show the data. For example, first and last names or email addresses are examples of replacement tokens.

Reviewing the results pages during the interaction enables us to add or remove replacement tokens to get a better overall view of the results. It doesn’t change the user’s side of the interaction, just the data collection.

Perhaps you decide it would help to know the location of the user. You can add that replacement token while the interactions are still live. The Sell-Side platform will populate this information when displaying results.

Changing replacement tokens doesn’t affect the experience for the user. It simply changes the data you see on the Sell-Side page. It allows us to streamline our review process and better understand the interaction.

Share your Sell-Side pages

You can easily export our Sell-Side pages to other sales team members. Not everyone on the team will use the platform. However, they can still benefit from the information it provides. By setting up an outbound field, you create a link that they can click to see the data.

The link will allow them to view a timeline showing the experiences that users have within Ion. They also have the option to look at the data displayed along the timeline with just one click.

Develop a personalized approach for each lead

The real beauty of Ion’s Sell-Side process is the ability to leverage data taken from interactive content. You use that data to clearly understand the buyer’s journey for each lead. This helps us enrich our sales pitch and develop a personalized approach to creating the conversion.

You don’t have to rely solely on marketing tools like buyer personas. There is data right in front of us, delivered in a visual representation. You use it to pinpoint the specifics of each lead.

By knowing individual leads a little better, you get a sense of the journey they take when making a purchase. That helps turn customers into brand loyalists.

Sync with your marketing team

You understand the unique relationship between marketing and sales teams. By using Ion’s Sell-Side, you pick up the conversion process right where the marketing team left it. They create the interactive content that generates the data.

Sales take that data and use it to understand our clients. Then, you leverage the data to generate personalized sales pitches and drive conversions.

At Rock, our sales team takes what they learn from using the Sell-Side platform and provides feedback to marketing. That helps them fine-tune their content and understand the ideal buyer. We build a symbiotic relationship around Sell-Side.

Ion’s Sell-Side creates an interactive journey that starts with the marketing team, shifts to the user, and then circles back to sales. The program supplies data using interactive content that was created to better understand the buyer’s journey.

From that interactive content, sales personnel receive actionable data that can be used to understand leads and personalize sales pitches.

Wrap Up

Sell-Side provides resources that allow us to adjust the population of data even while the interactive process is still active.

We can see the information that we need and tweak the results to better understand what each lead desires and how to drive their individual conversion.

With Ion Sell-Side, we can learn key facts about the buyer, including their journey, timeline, and the content they consume along the way. We develop a sense of their maturity and readiness to purchase.

I hope these examples and explanations help stimulate your own ideas of how you could leverage the interactive journey for your sales team.

See how Sell-Side works for yourself by requesting an Ion demo today!

The post Making Explicit Buyer Data Actionable for Sales: Examples of an Interactive Journey appeared first on Rock Content.