Category Archives: B2B

Amazon is everywhere. There’s no getting around it: From small sellers to large enterprises, getting your products noticed — and purchased — means you need a marketing strategy that lets you make the best use of this online ecommerce behemoth.

Today’s consumers use Amazon as their first point of contact for finding almost any type of product information. In fact, 63% of online shoppers go to Amazon to start searching for products. But with so many products available from multiple sellers with varying shipping options and discounts, it’s easy for your brand to get passed over by potential buyers.

Bottom line? Amazon is the ecommerce heavyweight. Love it or hate it, you need a market strategy that helps your brand stand out among the thousands of others all vying for consumer attention. That’s why we’ve built this guide — to help you build a profitable marketing strategy and succeed in the sales jungle that is Amazon.

Bookmark this post for later, and use the chapter links below to jump ahead to sections of interest.

1. Create an Amazon Advertising strategy.

Generally speaking, an Amazon Advertising strategy consists of four components: Amazon reviews, SEO, affiliate marketing and social media marketing.

What is Amazon Advertising?

Amazon Advertising (previously Amazon Marketing Services) is a pay-per-click service similar to Google Ads: Brands only pay when potential buyers click on targeted ads. Designing the idea ad is critical to getting your brand noticed and generating sustained revenue.

There are three common types of Amazon Advertising ads: Product Display, Sponsored Product and Headline Search.

Product Display ads show up on the side or bottom of Amazon SERPs and along the side of related product pages. When clicked, Product Display ads lead to a product page.

Sponsored Product ads appear in the Amazon SERPs and on product pages before the product description.

When clicked, Sponsored Product ads lead to a product page.

Headline Search ads are the most customizable Amazon ad.

They appear at the top of Amazon SERPs and can include custom ad copy as well as link to a branded landing page on which you can feature custom navigation, branded imagery, and select products.

2. Develop an Amazon reviews strategy.

Customer reviews and ratings are important. They’re even more important in the world of ecommerce, where shoppers can’t physically see or touch a product before buying. In fact, recent data found that customers prefer not to engage with brands that have less than 3.3-star ratings.

Amazon recognizes the power of customer reviews, and — true to their buyer-first mindset — makes reviews a major part of each product page. Shoppers can view customer images, filter reviews by suggested keywords, search for content within reviews, sort reviews by stars, and review customer questions and answers.

As a seller, you should always prioritize reviews. They can make or break a shopper’s decision to purchase — and the more positive reviews your product has, the more likely you’ll turn casual interest into conversion.

Here are a few ways to do this ask your customers to complete one. Here are a few ways to do this:

• Include a thank-you note and review request in your product shipment
• Send a follow-up email with a review request
• Sell a commonly-reviewed product

It’s also worth noting that Amazon allows sellers to respond to reviews. This offers a great way to engage directly with customers, express gratitude for purchases, and quickly address issues or complaints.

Learn new tactics for responding to customer reviews — the good, bad, and the ugly — in our free Ultimate Guide to Customer Reviews.

3. Deploy an Amazon SEO strategy.

Let’s be clear: Amazon dominates the ecommerce market in North America. But it’s not just an ecommerce site — it’s also a search engine. And as a search engine, it has its own search engine optimization or SEO.

Amazon’s search engine is called A9. It operates on its own algorithm and comes with its own unpredictable updates, similar to Google. A9 is also similar to Google in another key way: Searchers (in this case, buyers) are its top priority.

This is great if you’re a shopper, but more challenging if you’re a seller.

Thankfully, there’s a simple rule for Amazon SEO strategy: Think like a buyer. This means optimizing your content for three things: Discoverability, relevance, and sales. In other words, you want shoppers to see, click, and buy your products.

Create listings that reflect commonly-used keywords for your product category and make sure your product pages provide up-to-date, relevant information that offers direct value to buyers.

4. Integrate an Amazon affiliate marketing strategy.

Product round-ups published by popular blogging sites make it easy to scan a list of top-rated products and find direct links to Amazon.

But how do these products end up on the list? Affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is effectively an exchange: In return for your product being published/mentioned/shared, you pay a small fee to the affiliate site if readers click and purchase. It’s a win-win scenario that helps you drive sales and collect positive reviews. It’s also a critical way to build brand awareness, especially if the affiliate site generates a substantial amount of web traffic.

👉🏼HubSpot Tip: Tap into Amazon’s Affiliate Program. It’s free and easy to use and immediately connects you with approved affiliates.

5. Expand your Amazon social media marketing strategy.

It’s a good idea to expand your marketing efforts with a social media strategy that ties back to your Amazon page.

Here, the goal isn’t to create purely promotional Facebook, Twitter or Instagram accounts but instead cultivate a brand identity that offers value to your consumers with interesting posts, facts and links. You can also use your social media to share product updates, announce sales and giveaways, and invest in some paid advertising.

Here, the key is balance: Too much branded content and you’ll lose customer interest. The occasional mention and link to your Amazon page, meanwhile, can help you connect with prospective buyers and drive total sales conversions.

👉🏼HubSpot Tip: Share your social media accounts on your Amazon brand page and product listings to build your follower list.

1. Product Title

This is an Amazon product I actually purchased. You’ll see this example throughout the piece.

Your product title is a consumer’s first introduction to your product when browsing Amazon. While you should keep your titles concise, Amazon does allow up to 200 characters. Use this character limit wisely, though.

Here’s what we recommend including:

• Your brand name
• The product name
• Specific features (such as size, color, material, quantity, etc.)
• One or two distinguishing benefits or values

Here are some of Amazon’s title formatting rules:

• Capitalize the first letter of every word (except for words like “and”).
• Use “and” instead of “&” and numerals (“10”) instead of written numbers (“ten”).
• Don’t put pricing, seller information, promotions, and opinion-based copy (words like “best” or “leading”) in the title.
• Leave out details like color or size if irrelevant to the product.

Your title is prime real estate for two things: Product information and keywords. For most products, these are one and the same, but some sellers opt to add a few additional keywords to increase their chances of popping up on Amazon SERPs.

Ultimately, your title should match the words shoppers use to discover your product and educate them on your product before they get to your page.

👉🏼HubSpot Tip: Use tools like Merchant Words and Simple Keyword Inspector to research potential keywords and their search volume.

2. Product Images

While your titles communicate your product information, consumers often use your images to decide whether or not to further explore your product page. This is especially critical on a long list of Amazon search results — the right product imagery can help your product stand out from the crowd.

Once a shopper visits your product page, however, imagery is even more important and can dictate whether a consumer makes a purchase not.

Amazon allows up to nine product images, and we recommend using all of them with a simple caveat: Only if you have nine high-quality, relevant images.

While Amazon requires your main product image needs to be on a plain, white background, here are some tips for your other eight product images:

• Capture your product from different angles.
• Show your product being used or worn by a real person (not a mannequin or computer-generated human).
• Include content submitted by real customers — and make note of that on the image.
• Upload images that include charts, lists, or competitor comparison tables.

Amazon also offers shoppers the ability to zoom into each image. As a result, your product images should be at least 1,000px x 1,000px to ensure images don’t become fuzzy or distorted when customers zoom in.

👉🏼HubSpot Tip: Test your product images to see which one converts more shoppers (like an A/B test). To do this, record your sessions, sales, conversion rate, and revenue over the course of a week or month — and make a note of which image was set as the main image. Then, change the image and capture the same data.

3. Product Key Features (Bullet Points)

If a consumer makes it past your product title, images, price, and purchase options (if applicable), they’ll find your product key features, which take the form of bullet points. These bullet points allow you to go more in-depth about your product’s features, benefits, characteristics, and details.

Successful Amazon sellers use these bullet points to expand on features and benefits and to address common questions, misconceptions, or issues.

Here’s how we recommend you approach your product key features list:

• Write a paragraph for each bullet and include two to four sentences or phrases that are relevant to that bullet’s topic.
• Capitalize the first few words of each bullet to emphasize the feature, benefit, or question you’re addressing.
• Treat these paragraphs as you would an advertising campaign. This copy could be the key to converting page visitors.
• Avoid wasting space on information that’s obvious from product images or mentioned in your product title.
• Keep them simple. Write a paragraph and then edit it, set it aside for a few days and then edit again. Short and to the point is the goal.

👉🏼HubSpot Tip: Look at reviews, complaints, and FAQs to learn what your customers love and not-so-love about your products. Proactively include and address these points in your list.

4. Product Description

If a consumer makes it to your product description, you can assume they’re on the cusp of making a purchase. How do we know that? Consumers have to scroll down a bit to find it.

Seriously. They have to scroll past Amazon ads, sponsored products, and other featured information. If they make it to your product description, they’re typically expecting to learn more about your product and finalize their purchase.

This makes your product description the ideal place to expand on your product bullet points, address some lesser-known features and benefits, and perhaps include some more images of your product. Additionally, consider listing details that set your product apart from competitors, such as specific construction methods, particular materials or interesting use cases.

Amazon allows the use of basic HTML markup in this section — including bold, italics, and page breaks — so utilize these to avoid publishing one big, boring paragraph of information.

👉🏼HubSpot Tip: Utilize Amazon’s A+Content option to make your content more scannable, professional, and consistent with your overall branding. We cover how to do this next.

5. Product Price

Setting the right price is critical for reliable sales conversions.

Start by determining your lowest possible sales price. This is effectively a “breakeven” price that includes the costs to produce your product along with money spent on marketing and any fees taken by Amazon — which vary depending on the type of item you’re selling, often between 8-20%.

For example, if these costs together total $10, this is your minimum price. You won’t make any money, but you won’t go out of business. While this can be a good starting point if you’re just breaking into the Amazon marketplace, your goal is to eventually sell products for as much as the market will bear.

To find your upper limit price point, do some research on similar, popular products on Amazon and see what they’re selling for. Next, determine how you want to position your brand — are you looking to lead the lower-cost market, or hoping to capture premium prices. Both are possible but require different approaches.

If you’re looking for premium prices, opt for whole numbers such as $50 or $100. For a lower-cost approach, go with a “99 cent” approach, such as $9.99 or $29.99.

6. Amazon A+ Content

The A+ framework provides pre-built templates that allow you to add additional features to your product descriptions, such as banners, tables, bullets, and interactive images and copy.

Source

The image above is the “Comparison Products” template, which is one of the most popular and functional templates for A+ Content. It’s now available via both Vendor and Seller Central and offers a great way to visually showcase how your product stacks up against the competition.

Factors that Can Increase Your Amazon Product Sales

1. Direct Marketing

A lot of Amazon marketing takes place within the platform (through advertising and SEO) but some sellers follow traditional direct marketing methods, too. While they require extra work, they can be beneficial for creating loyal customers and eventually bringing business off of Amazon to an ecommerce site, or driving users from social media sites to your Amazon account.

Direct marketing methods skip the middleman to present information about your brand directly to prospective customers. This includes the use of emails, text messages, phone calls, sales offers or newsletters.

Note: Be sure to read through Amazon’s prohibited seller activities and actions to ensure you remain compliant. The biggest takeaway? All direct marketing efforts must be done with the informed consent of customers — unsolicited contacts could place your brand at risk of removal from the Amazon marketplace.

2. Email

Follow-up emails are a great way to engage with customers and get feedback that could help make your brand even better. Start by asking buyers if they consent to email contacts or surveys after their product purchase.

If yes, make sure to take their feedback to heart, both by responding to their emails with a thank you and correlating their response with other emails to see if a pattern emerges around product price, quality or another characteristic.

👉🏼HubSpot Tip: If you decide to do email marketing for your Amazon products, don’t forget to ask subscribers if they want to opt-in!

3. Website

Amazon offers a well-recognized starting point for your brand, but many sellers are also branching out into brick-and-mortar stores or more niche marketplaces such as Etsy.

While Amazon can help you be discovered and subsidize your shipping and customer support cost, creating a separate website can help build your brand beyond Amazon and aggregate customers and email subscribers of your own.

👉🏼HubSpot Tip: If you have no interest in building and managing an entire website, create a simple landing page to start. This will at least give your brand an online identity outside of your Amazon store and provide another place to collect emails and promote your social media.

4. Shipping

One of the biggest draws of Amazon is fast, free shipping for Prime members. If you’re looking to compete in this massive marketplace, you’ll need to consider shipping costs, speed and conditions for buyers before you set up your store.

While smaller businesses don’t have the economies of scale that allow them to offer 2-day free shipping, it’s often possible to offset the costs of shipping once order values are large enough. As a result, it’s worth doing the math to determine where it makes sense for your brand to offer free shipping for consumers — this might be $50, $100 or $150 worth of products purchased.

Best bet? Set your minimum free shipping cost just above your breakeven point using a whole number. For example, if $129 worth of products purchased makes it worth your while to offer free shipping, set the minimum amount to $150. This helps generate slightly more profit and can help convince users to add one or two more items to their cart in order to avoid shipping costs.

Understanding Amazon Analytics

Amazon analytics provides a snapshot of what consumers are searching for, what they’re buying and how often they’re purchasing the same item. Called “Brand Analytics”, these metrics are available to sellers directly responsible for selling their brand in the Amazon store.

Brand analytics are found under the “Reports” tab in Seller Central.

Brand Analytics, Explained

There are six brand analytics categories. Let’s break down each in more detail.

1. Amazon Search Terms Report

The Amazon Search Terms Report shows the most popular search terms in the Amazon store over a specific period and the top three products that customers click on after searching for a specific term. This can help your brand better target keyword usage over time.

2. Demographics Report

The Demographics Report provides information about buyers of your product that they’ve consented to share — including age, household income, gender and marital status. This allows you to see the impact of your marketing campaigns and adjust target consumer bases as required.

3. Item Comparison Report

This report shows the top five products most frequently viewed on the same day as your brand’s products to help you identify your top competitors and see what they’re doing differently.

4. Alternate Purchase Report

The Alternate Purchase Report shows the top five products that customers purchased most frequently instead of your products. Effective use of this report can help identify areas where your marketing strategy may be coming up short.

5. Market Basket Report

The Market Basket Report shows the top three products most frequently bought at the same time as your products. This can help your brand identify key add-on product opportunities to help bolster total sales.

6. Repeat Purchase Behavior Report

The Repeat Purchase Behavior Report shows the total number of orders for their products along with the total number of unique customers. This makes it possible to zero in on specific user characteristics that may influence repeat buying and help inform long-term marketing strategy.

You’re Now the King 👑 (or Queen) of the Jungle

While the Amazon platform seems daunting, the right marketing strategy can help your brand see sustained sales success.

First, develop a solid Amazon marketing strategy. Next, make sure your product pages stand out from the crowd and ensure you’re taking take every opportunity to increase total sales. Finally, use Brand Analytics to pinpoint areas of improvement across your brand.

The result? Your Amazon products will meet consumers wherever they are — whether they’re researching products, comparing prices, or looking to buy — and help get them where they need to go: Your checkout page.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Instagram is a popular social media network for sharing photos, commonly accessed through a mobile app. Unlike other social networks, however, it does not have a desktop version.

This poses a problem for a lot of users who want to access features from their desktop computer. For example, let’s say you’re a social media manager for a prominent brand. The last thing you want to do is have an absentminded mishap where you accidentally post brand content to your personal Instagram account (or, worse, vice versa) simply because you’re logged into both on your phone.

Alternatively, it might be easier to upload company posts and videos via your desktop, rather than having your smartphone open at work.

Plus, your company’s files might be more easily accessible via desktop than mobile. For instance, if you use Photoshop to edit company photos, it’s likely easier to click “Upload” from your desktop when you’re done editing, rather than sending that same photo or video to your personal phone.

Perhaps you simply prefer the larger screen of desktop. Or, maybe you don’t have access to a smartphone so you can’t download the app on your phone.

For all of these reasons, you might be wondering, “Can I post to Instagram from my computer?” We have some good news — there’s a solution for you. Let’s dive into that, next.

In other words — Yes, you can post to Instagram from your PC or Mac desktop instead of on your mobile device’s app or browser. In this post, we’ll explore how you can post images and videos from your desktop computer.

How do I post to Instagram from my computer? [PC and Mac]

Whether you’re on a Mac or a PC, you can use workarounds to post from your desktop computer. Depending on the browser you use, the instructions will vary. Below, we’ll discuss how to do it on:

• Chrome
• Safari

Once we discuss these workarounds for posting photos, we’ll also discuss how to upload a video to Instagram from your desktop.

1. Navigate to Instagram’s website in your Chrome browser.

The first thing you’ll want to do is open up Google Chrome and navigate to https://www.instagram.com/ by typing it into the navigation bar. 

2. Open the “Settings” menu by clicking the three dots in the top right corner of the browser.

Instagram Account Credit: @Goodtomicha

Up in the top menu on the far right side, you’ll find three verticle dots. Once you click these, a drop-down menu will open up.

3. Scroll down to “More Tools” in the drop-down menu, and then click “Developer Tools”.

Developer Tools gives you access to a menu that opens up in a panel on the right side of your window. This will give you advanced control over how your browser displays content, helping you post to Instagram from desktop using Chrome.

4. Click the “Toggle Device Toolbar” mobile button.

On the top left corner of the new panel, you’ll see an icon with two squares that represent a tablet and a mobile device. Clicking it will reveal the Device Toolbar that gives you advanced control over your browser.

5. Choose which mobile device you’d like from the drop-down menu.

In the Device Toolbar, you’ll see another drop-down menu with a list of mobile devices. Selecting one will tell the browser to emulate how a website looks on that particular device you selected. 

Choose which mobile device you’d like on the drop-down menu, as well as how zoomed in you want to be.

6. Refresh the page to see the mobile interface of Instagram from your browser.

You should then be able to able to use Instagram straight from the emulation or even close the panel on the right side while retaining this “mobile view.”

7. Upload an Instagram post the same way you would via mobile.

You can upload a Instagram post the same way you would via mobile:

1. Click the “+” button.

2. Add filters.

Choose filters or other editing features like you would normally, then click Next in the top right of your screen:

4. Add captions, locations, and tags.

On the next screen, you’ll be able to add a caption, location, or tag people. When you’re ready, click Share in the top right of your screen.

1. Navigate to Instagram’s website in your Safari browser.

The first thing you’ll want to do is open up Safari and navigate to https://www.instagram.com/ by typing it into the navigation bar. 

2. Click “Safari” and then select “Preferences” in the menu bar.

Up in the top menu, click Safari. This is where you’ll find your browser’s “Preferences” settings in the drop-down menu.

3. Click “Advanced” and check the box that reads “Show develop menu in menu bar”.

Under “Advanced,” you’ll have the options to show the Develop menu in the menu bar. By checking this box, you’ll get access to a menu that will give you advanced control over how your browser displays content. This will help you post to Instagram from desktop using Safari.

4. Click “Develop” in your menu bar and then scroll to “User Agent”. 

Once you click out of the previous screen and return to Safari, you’ll see that new Develop option in the top menu bar. Clicking it will reveal the features that give you advanced control over your browser.

5. Choose which mobile device you’d like on the drop-down menu.

When you select User Agentfrom the Develop menu, you’ll see another drop-down menu with a list of mobile devices. Selecting one will tell the browser to emulate how a website looks on that particular device you selected.

Choose which mobile device you’d like on the drop-down menu.

6. Refresh the page to see the mobile interface of Instagram from your browser.

You should then be able to able to use Instagram straight from the emulation while retaining this “mobile view.”

7. Upload an Instagram post the same way you would via mobile.

Once you are able to view Instagram from your Safari browser, you can upload an Instagram post the same way you would via mobile — by clicking the “+” button, adding a filter or editing the photo, adding a location and caption, and clicking “Share” when you’re ready for your post to go live.

(The instructions for posting an image to Instagram are the same as they are for the Chrome browser instructions, listed above.)

How to Post a Video to Instagram Using a Desktop Computer

To upload a video to Instagram from your desktop, you’ll need to use a third-party service that offers social media scheduling software.

There are a few you might try, including the Flume App for Mac or Lately Social ($14 per user per month for Agency plan).

For our purposes, I used Lately Social’s free personal plan to upload and post a video directly to my Instagram:

Of course, if you’re doing this regularly it might be worthwhile to explore all the social media scheduling tools at your disposal to choose the one best-suited for your business’ needs.

Using Instagram Like the Pro You Are

Now that you don’t have to worry about transferring photos to your mobile device or juggling your work’s social media account on your own device, you’ll be able to grow on Instagram efficiently and effectively. From there, the sky is the limit for creating posts and growing your audience in a scalable way.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

With more than 1 billion active monthly users, brands are quickly recognizing the need to have a presence on Instagram.

But, as with any social network, the brands that are getting the most out of Instagram are the ones who are smart about what they post, when they post, how often they post, and whom they’re targeting.

But how do they know what’s a “smart” post for their business?

That’s where the Instagram data comes in. There’s a whole lot of research out there about Instagram — everything from the demographics of its users and how often brands are posting, to how negative space affects the performance of your posts (hint, hint: #26).

Read on to uncover more social media stats that’ll help you get ideas and improve your own Instagram posting strategy.

43 Instagram Stats

Click on a category below to jump to the stats for that category:

1. Instagram’s Growth
2. Audience & Demographics
3. Brand Adoption
4. Instagram Post Content
5. Instagram Posting Strategy

Instagram’s Growth

1. As of May 2021, there are over 1 billion Instagram monthly active users worldwide. (Source)

2. As of 2020, there’s an estimated 107 million Instagram users in the U.S. alone — which is predicted to grow to almost 126 million by 2023.(Source)

3. As of February 2021, 40% of U.S. adults say they’ve used Instagram. This is a larger percentage than use Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The only two social media apps more popular than Instagram are Facebook and YouTube. (Source)

4. Instagram generated $20 billion in ad revenue in 2019. In 2012, Facebook bought Instagram for one billion. (Source)

5. Instagram experienced a nearly 14% jump between 2019 and 2020 in its users’ time spent on the app, to an average of 30 minutes per day. This was higher engagement growth than all other social platforms. (Source)

6. Other than Instagram’s own account, the most-followed Instagram account as of February 2021 is run by professional soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, followed by celebrities Ariana Grande, Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, and Kylie Jenner. (Source)

Audience & Demographics

7. 71% of U.S. adults between 18-29 use Instagram, compared to 70% on Facebook and 30% on LinkedIn. (Source)

8. 47% of U.S. Instagram users make more than 75,000 per year.(Source)

9. As of October 2020, 510 million Instagram users are female, and 490 million are male. (Source)

10. 72% of teens use Instagram, and 57 million U.S. teenagers say Instagram is their preferred social media platform. (Source)

11. 500 million+ accounts use Instagram Stories every day. (Source)

12. 35% of music listeners in the U.S. who follow artists on Facebook and Instagram do so to connect with other fans or feel like part of a community. (Source)

13. The average Instagram user spends 30 minutes a day on the app.(Source)

14. 45% of Instagram users live in urban areas. (Source)

15. As of January 2021, the countries with the most Instagram users are the U.S. (140 million), India (140 million), and Brazil (99 million). (Source)

Brand Adoption

16. 70% of shopping enthusiasts turn to Instagram for product discovery. (Source)

17. 69% of US marketers plan to spend most of their influencer budget on Instagram. (Source)

18. 90% of people on Instagram follow at least one business. (Source)

19. 50% are more interested in a brand when they see ads for it on Instagram. (Source)

20. In a 2021 report, the higher education industry currently has the highest engagement rate of any other industry per post on Instagram, at 3.19%. Second was sports teams at 1.79%, and third was influencers at 1.42%. (Source)

21. 67% of users surveyed have ‘swiped up’ on the links of branded Stories. (Source)

22. 130 million Instagram accounts tap on a shopping post to learn more about products every month. (Source)

Instagram Post Content

23. 995 photos are uploaded on Instagram every second. (Source)

24. The median posting cadence across all industries is 4 posts per week. The median posting frequency declined by just 8% this year compared to last. (Source)

25. On Instagram, photos showing faces get 38% more Likes than photos not showing faces. (Source)

26. On Instagram, images with a high amount of negative space generate 29% more Likes than those with minimal negative space. (Source)

27. On Instagram, images featuring blue as the dominant color generate 24% more Likes than images that are predominantly red. (Source)

28. This is so much so that the latest Instagram statistics show that an average Instagram post contains as many as 10.7 hashtags. (Source)

29. Image posts received 27.55% more likes than permanent video posts. (Source)

30. An average image on Instagram gets 23% more engagement than one published on Facebook. (Source)

31. The most geo-tagged city in the world is Los Angeles, California and the tagged location with the highest engagement is Coachella, California. (Source)

Instagram Posting Strategy

32. The best time to post on Instagram is Thursday between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. in your respective time zone. (Source)

33. Posts with a tagged location result in 79% higher engagement than posts without a tagged location. (Source)

34. 20% of users surveyed post to Instagram Stories on their business account more than once a week. (Source)

35. 44% of users surveyed use Instagram Stories to promote products or services. (Source)

36. One-third of the most viewed Stories come from businesses. (Source)

37. More than 25 million businesses now use Instagram to reach and engage with audiences. (Source)

38. 69% of US marketers plan to spend most of their influencer budget on Instagram. (Source)

39. In April 2020, the number of Instagram influencers cooperating with brands who used #ad decreased by 30% compared to April 2019, and it was the lowest total since August 2019. (Source)

40. The industry that had the highest cooperation efficiency with Instagram influencers was Health Care, where influencer posts were 4.2x more efficient than brand posts. (Source)

41. Micro influencers – those with less than 100,000 followers – made up an average of 93% of all brand cooperations in 2020. (Source)

42. 46% of B2B content marketers used Instagram as an organic play in 2020. (Source)

43. Instagram is now the most popular social platform for following brands. (Source)

Imagine this – you’ve recently created a new website to host your content, and you’re excited to see it go live. You can’t wait to dive into SEO and begin ranking for keywords and attracting an audience to your brand.

But then a friend emails you and says, “Hey, is there a reason I see this when I click on your website? “

Image Source

Undoubtedly, a “403 Forbidden” message is cause for immediate concern. How many potential viewers are you losing, as they come across your website to find this message?

Fortunately, there are a few quick-and-easy solutions to a 403 error. Here, we’ll explain the top three, so you can get your site up and running.

What you’ll typically see when you land on a page with a 403 forbidden error is something like this: “You don’t have authorization to view this page – HTTP Error 403.”

It can also have slightly different wording, like the example below.

Image Source

Wondering about the difference between a 403 and 404 error? Here it is: A 404 error happens when you access a page that no longer exists or cannot be found. A 403 error, on the other hand, indicates that your access has been denied due to incorrect credentials.

An easy way to remember it: 403 says “access denied” while 404 says “We can’t find what you asked for.”

What causes a 403 error?

There are a few reasons why you may see a 403 forbidden error. Here are the most common:

• Permission or ownership error – Permissions are represented by codes, which indicate what each type of user can do. If you have the incorrect code associated with a file or directory then your users may run into a 403 error.

• Wrong file or folder location – When uploading content to your site, you may have added it to the wrong directory, which is not accessible to your end-users.

• No index page – If your homepage doesn’t have an index page, it will not display correctly on a browser.
• Misconfigured WordPress plugin – A plugin may be blocking IP addresses to avoid malware, causing the 403 forbidden error.

Now that you know the causes, let’s address how to fix them.

How to Fix 403 Errors

1. Set the correct file permissions.

If you’ve configured your web server, you’ll want to add the server to the www-data group, and set ownership of /var/www to the www-data user and www-data group.

Then, make sure your directories are set to 755, your files are set to 644, and your dynamic content is set to 700. This determines which user types (owner, group, everyone) can read, write, and execute.

2. Make sure you have an index page.

Your website’s home page must be called index.html or index.php – if it’s not, you should rename the homepage to include one of those URL names.

Alternatively, you can upload an index page to your httpdocs directory and then set up a redirect on the index page to your real homepage.

3. Upload your website content to the correct directory on your server.

You might see a 403 forbidden message if you haven’t correctly uploaded your content to the directory on your server.

There are several different FTP clients you might’ve chosen to host your domain — let’s say you chose FileZilla, which is free and available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

To publish your content online, you’ll need to put your files into the public/htdocs directory.

Note: If you’re using FileZilla, these instructions will vary if you use a different FTP client. Once you’ve dragged and dropped your files into the directory, you should search your website’s URL to double-check they now appear online.

If you’re in your FTP server and don’t see the httpdocs directory, you can create a file within the directory with this title, which could also solve the issue.

4. Deactivate and reactivate your plugins.

If you suspect one of your plugins is responsible for the 403 forbidden error, temporarily deactivate all of your plugins.

You may have noticed the error shortly after installing a plugin. If so, start with that one and work your way down from the most recent installation to the oldest.

Then, one by one, activate each plugin and refresh the page to determine which plugin is causing the error.

As you can see, 403 errors can typically be resolved in just a few easy steps. It’s just about knowing where to look. 

This morning, I made a quick Google search.

When the results page loaded, I spent time clicking through the first page of websites to find what I was looking for. When I didn’t find my answer, I clicked back to that results page to look at the next one.

This process took me through to the bottom of the page until I refined my search and started the process again.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was actually contributing to a powerful metric — dwell time.

When we talk about metrics, we tend to focus on demographics. We ask questions like, Who’s looking at your site, where are they located, and what are their interests?. These interests help marketers make informed decisions about campaigns tailored to their customers’ interests.

Dwell time is the metric that runs through various search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s the time I spent reading those results pages before I went back to Google to take a look at other results.

Let’s explore more about what dwell time means, and its usefulness, below.

What is dwell time?

Remember that dwell time begins and ends with the SERP.

Simply put, dwell time is the amount of time a user takes analyzing a web page before clicking back to search results. If a web page has a low dwell time, it likely means the page didn’t match the user’s search intent.

It’s important to note, dwell time and bounce rate are two different things. Bounce rate is what happens when a user clicks on one page, and then almost immediately leaves the site.

For it to be considered dwell time, on the other hand, the user needs to click on a page from the SERP, stay a while, and then either click back to the SERP or otherwise exit the page.

If you use search engines, you rack up dwell time daily, without even thinking about it. I can already recall two separate instances in which I’ve contributed to dwell time today, all before lunch.

Essentially, dwell time metrics can show marketers if their web pages are capturing the attention and needs of browsers. It has the potential to tell you what to include on web pages, and what to exclude.

For instance, let’s say you write a blog article called “Social Media Tips and Tricks”. You notice the piece has a high click-through rate, but low dwell time.

Upon further inspection, you see the rest of the articles on the SERPs include comprehensive information regarding social media scheduling, how to create posts for social media, and which social media sites have the highest conversion rates.

More than likely, you thought your post was solving for a user’s search intent when it really wasn’t — which is why most readers jump back to the SERP to find an alternative source.

It can also lead to clues about improving UX. For instance, if you have a slow loading time on your web page, you may see that reflected in dwell time metrics, since a user might exit your page if it’s taking too long to load

This metric can lead to important decisions you make for your site, among other metrics.

Next, let’s explore how dwell time is calculated.

How is dwell time calculated?

In Google Analytics, you can determine your dwell time by looking at “Average Session Duration”, which tells you how long visitors are staying on a website on average. It’s measured by the total duration of all sessions, or visits, in seconds, divided by the total number of sessions.

A session begins when a user goes to a website. After 30 minutes of inactivity, or when the user leaves, the session ends. The inactivity cut-off exists so you can get an accurate report of your metrics without untrue inflation.

You can find this metric already calculated for you in Google Analytics, displayed in minutes and seconds. You can find it in two places in particular — first, when you log into your Google Analytics home, you’ll see “Average Session Duration” displayed on the homepage, which indicates the average dwell time on any of the accounts you’re tracking in Google Analytics:

If you want to explore “Average Session Duration”, or dwell time, for individual landing pages or blog posts, you’ll want to click “Behavior” on the left side of the screen, and then “Site Content” > “Landing Pages”:

Here, you’ll see the dwell time displayed as “Average Session Duration” in the table.

It’s important to note — “Average Session Duration” can depict dwell time, but the two aren’t the same. Dwell time can only come from the SERPs, whereas Average Session Duration might also measure someone’s time on-page after they’ve arrived from another landing page, social media page, or clicked on an email link.

Fortunately, you can account for this difference by simply adding a segment, “Organic Traffic”, to ensure you’re only seeing landing page metrics related to the SERPs.

“Average Session Duration” can help you analyze which landing pages are performing well in terms of dwell time, and which could be better.

But what’s a “good” average session? Let’s dive into that, next.

Average Dwell Time on Websites

The industry benchmark for average dwell time is considered somewhere between 2-4 minutes. It usually takes around this time to explore a website and get a feel for the design.

You’ll see this industry standard in Google Analytics when searching for benchmark metrics. To find these metrics, go to “Audiences” and then “Benchmarking” on the left-side of the screen:

Then, select whether you want to see industry standards across devices, channels, or locations.

For our purposes, let’s take a look at the industry standard for “Business & Industrial” across devices. As shown in the small numbers below the larger percentage, most businesses have an average session between 2-3 minutes (the second number depicted, i.e. 02:43):

Most marketers agree that it’s rare to see average session duration times over 10 minutes or less than one minute, so if you’re looking for a goal, between 2-4 minutes is where the average typically lies.

When you’re looking at metrics, it’s a good idea to look at all of them to get a full scope of how your site is performing. If you’re ranking high on the SERP, that means that your SEO is great, but if your website isn’t providing useful information, your session duration might underperform.

To provide a holistic experience for customers, looking into the meaning behind session durations is important.

How to Improve Dwell Time

A low dwell time tells you that when a user searches a query on Google and then clicks on your site, she’s disappointed with what she finds there — for whatever reason, it didn’t match what she was looking for, or didn’t provide the full answer she needed.

There are plenty of options for combatting this.

1. Make sure your introduction matches the reader’s intent, and follows good UX practices.

First, take a look at your introduction our UX at the top of the page. Is it easy to navigate, and does the text outline what the reader will find on the rest of the page? Best of all, does it help the reader find what she’s looking for quickly — either with a table of contents, or by using short paragraphs and bullet points to make the content more digestible?

User experience could be a major component of a low dwell time, particularly at the top of the page — since readers who aren’t impressed with the above-the-fold UX won’t stick around long.

Content matters, too. You might find you have a low dwell time if your introduction is confusing or doesn’t get to the point quickly enough. Alternatively, perhaps your content isn’t matching the user’s intent.

Take a look at other high-ranking articles on the SERPs to get a better picture of why this reader is searching for this topic. Intent matters.

Consider the following example: You see you have a low dwell time for your article, “How to Delete a Theme in WordPress.” When you click into the article, you find that the introduction focuses on why WordPress might be a good web hosting solution, as well as statistics to support the claim.

Except … readers who’ve just searched “how can I delete my WordPress theme?” likely already have an account and don’t need to be convinced of the strengths of the tool — they just need to delete a theme.

If your article isn’t hitting a good note with readers from the get-go, that could be a major contributor to low dwell time.

2. Ensure the page is fast and clean.

Slow loading time is a major deterrent to high dwell time — if your page takes too long to load, readers likely won’t stick around long.

Additionally, once readers are scrolling your page, if they find the images aren’t loading properly, or it’s an unimpressive experience, they might choose to abandon the page.

This means that having clean code and following SEO best practices for a quick load time (including compressing your images and caching your web pages) is critical to increasing your dwell time.

Ensure the page loads quickly and efficiently across browsers and devices, too. A good mobile-experience is vital here, since a lower dwell time on mobile will contribute to a lower dwell time overall.

3. Have good internal linking.

Dwell time is ultimately the amount of time someone stays on a page before returning to the SERPs — so including links to your other blog posts or landing pages is a good opportunity for keeping them engaged on your site for longer.

Follow good link-building practices to create the right infrastructure for both the SERPs and user experience. The key is ensuring your links are relevant to the topic at-hand. A blog post about social media, for instance, should link to other posts about Instagram or YouTube — not website development.

4. Embed multimedia elements.

Many readers might get tired of reading too much text, so consider breaking up the page by embedding videos, podcasts, images, and other multimedia elements to keep your readers engaged.

Along with improving dwell time, embedding these elements on your page could increase traffic to your brand’s other types of content. For instance, embedding a YouTube video on your blog post (when relevant) could increase views to your YouTube channel. Alternatively, including a link to a podcast episode might increase listeners.

Ultimately, dwell time is a sign that the quality of your content or the page’s UX isn’t good enough to keep readers’ interested. Consider how you might refresh your content to better match the reader’s intent based on what else is on the SERPs, and follow other on-page best practices to increase dwell time and delight your website visitors.

As a video marketer, editing might be the most important part of post-production. If you can’t seamlessly weave your shots together or get your cut to hit the right frame, your video will seem unpolished and disengage your viewers.

That said, if you’re operating on a shoestring budget, you might not be able to afford video editing software. So what’s a video marketer to do without editing software? Fortunately, YouTube offers a web-based video editor that is entirely free and accessible through its platform.

In this post, learn how to use YouTube’s native video editing tools, as well as best practices to keep in mind when editing your videos to ensure you’re keeping your audience engaged and interested in watching more.

How to Use YouTube’s Video Editor

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio

2. On the left sidebar, click Content.

3. In Uploads, click the thumbnail of the video you want to edit.

4. In the left sidebar, click Editor.

5. Trim the beginning or end of your video.

If you want to trim the beginning or end of your video, select Trim, which is next to your video’s timer and right above your timeline panel.

You should see a blue box around the sides of your video timeline panel. Drag them to chop off the parts of the beginning or end of your rough cut that you don’t want to include in your final published version. Click Preview to view the edit, and click Save on the top right-hand corner if you’re satisfied.

6. Trim clips out of the middle of your video.

If you want to trim a specific clip out of the middle of your video, select Trim. Next, in your timeline panel, click the beginning of the portion of the clip you’d like to remove and press Split.

Next, in your timeline panel, click the end of the clip that you’d like to remove and press Split again.

Finally, click on the blue line at either the beginning or end of your clip and drag it to the other side to trim it out of your video. Click Preview to view your edited video, and click Save if you’re satisfied.

7. Add an end screen to your video.

If you want to give your viewers the option to watch one of your related videos, playlists, or subscribe to your channel, click the end screen icon shown at the bottom of your timeline panel. The image below displays the end screen icon outlined in red.

You can upload your existing end screen template by clicking Apply template in the pop-up menu (this is a helpful guide for creating your own) or choose from the editor’s native options: Video, Playlist, Subscribe, Channel, or Link. 

When I was 12 years old, I used to look through my older cousin’s CD collection, a little confused.

I didn’t understand the need to have CDs when I could go on iTunes and listen to all my favorite songs. Then, when I was in middle school, I got my first hand-me-down iPod shuffle.

This is a great example of the product life cycle (PLC) in action. CDs were in the decline stage while the iPod was in the growth stage. Now, you’ll rarely find a CD in anyone’s music collection unless they’re enthusiasts or want to feel nostalgic for their younger years.

No one wants their product to become “obsolete” and reach the end of its product life cycle. Still, it’s important to understand what stage your product is in so you can make better marketing and business decisions. You can mature and grow in the marketplace by agilely responding to changing customer needs, adding new offerings to your lineup, and adopting new tech that keeps you up-to-date in the marketplace.

Below, we’ll learn what the life cycle is, take a look at the life cycle stages, and go over a few real-life examples.

As marketers, it’s important to understand how your tactics and strategies change depending on the stage your product is in.

For example, a brand new product will be marketed differently than a well-established, mature product. For the first, the marketing campaigns will focus on raising awareness, while for the latter, they’ll focus on maintaining awareness.

Businesses also use to product life cycle to achieve the following:

• Establish competitive authority. If your product is new and recently introduced to the market, you can market it as a new and improved alternative to an existing product. If the product is established, you can vouch for its long history of use in your branding.
• Decide on a pricing strategy. Depending on the life cycle stage your product is in, you’ll choose how to price the product. A new product may be priced lower to entice more buyers, while a product in the growth stage can be priced higher.

• Create a marketing strategy. Your product life cycle stage will determine which strategy to pursue. Maturity and audience knowledgeability plays a big role in the type of content you publish on your site and social media profiles.
• Respond before the product begins its decline. There’s no worse feeling than watching your product slowly become obsolete or be displaced by a competing product. By keeping the life cycle stages in mind, you can create a strategy that keeps you ahead of the curve as you reach the saturation and decline stages.

The product life cycle benefits businesses because they can shift their wording and positioning to best market the product at the stage it is in. If your product has recently been introduced and you try to market it as a long-established solution, consumers will see right through it and trust you less as a result.

Below, I’ll cover the product life cycle stages in more detail.

1. Development

The development stage of the product life cycle is the research phase before a product is introduced to the marketplace. This is when companies bring in investors, develop prototypes, test product effectiveness, and strategize their launch. Due to the nature of this stage, companies spend a lot of money without bringing in any revenue because the product isn’t being sold yet.

This stage can last for a long time, depending on the complexity of the product, how new it is, and the competition. For a completely new product, the development stage is hard because the first pioneer of a product is usually not as successful as later iterations.

Development Stage Marketing Strategy

While marketing typically begins in the introduction stage, you can begin to build “buzz” around your product by securing the endorsement of established voices in the industry. You can also publish early (and favorable) consumer research or testimonials. Your marketing goal during this stage is to build upon your brand awareness and establish yourself as an innovative company.

2. Introduction

The introduction stage is when a product is first launched in the marketplace. This is when marketing teams begin building product awareness and reaching out to potential customers. Typically, when a product is introduced, sales are low and demand builds slowly.

Usually, this phase is focused on advertising and marketing campaigns. Companies work on testing distribution channels and try to educate potential customers about the product.

Introduction Stage Marketing Strategy

This is where the fun begins. Now that the product is launched, you can actually promote the product using inbound marketing and content marketing. Education is highly important in this stage. Your target consumer must know what they’re buying before they buy it. If your marketing strategies are successful, the product goes into the next stage — growth.

3. Growth

During the growth stage, consumers have accepted the product in the market and customers are beginning to truly buy in. That means demand and profits are growing, hopefully at a steadily rapid pace.

The growth stage is when the market for the product is expanding and competition begins developing. Potential competitors will see your success and want in.

Growth Stage Marketing Strategy

During this phase, marketing campaigns often shift from getting customers’ buy-in to establishing a brand presence so consumers choose them over developing competitors. Additionally, as companies grow, they’ll begin to open new distributions channels and add more features and support services. In your strategy, you’ll advertise these as well.

4. Maturity

The maturity stage is when the sales begin to level off from the rapid growth period. At this point, companies begin to reduce their prices so they can stay competitive amongst growing competition.

This is the phase where a company begins to become more efficient and learns from the mistakes made in the introduction and growth stages. Marketing campaigns are typically focused on differentiation rather than awareness. This means that product features might be enhanced, prices might be lowered, and distribution becomes more intensive.

During the maturity stage, products begin to enter the most profitable stage. The cost of production declines while the sales are increasing.

Maturity Stage Marketing Strategy

When your product has become a mature offering, you may feel like you’re “sailing by” because sales are steady and the product has been established. But this is where it’s critical to establish yourself as a leader and differentiate your brand.

Continuously improve upon the product as adoption grows, and let consumers know in your marketing strategy that the product they love is better than it was before. This will protect you during the next stage — saturation.

5. Saturation

During the product saturation stage, competitors have begun to take a portion of the market and products will experience neither growth nor decline in sales.

Typically, this is the point when most consumers are using a product, but there are many competing companies. At this point, you want your product to become the brand preference so you don’t enter the decline stage.

Saturation Stage Marketing Strategy

When the market has become saturated, you’ll need to focus on differentiation in features, brand awareness, price, and customer service. Competition is highest at this stage, so it’s critical to leave no doubt regarding the superiority of your product.

If innovation at the product-level isn’t possible (because the product only needs minor tweaks at this point), then invest in your customer service and use customer testimonials in your marketing.

6. Decline

Unfortunately, if your product doesn’t become the preferred brand in a marketplace, you’ll typically experience a decline. Sales will decrease during the heightened competition, which is hard to overcome.

Additionally, new trends emerge as time goes on, just like the CD example I mentioned earlier. If a company is at this stage, they’ll either discontinue their product, sell their company, or innovate and iterate on their product in some way.

Decline Stage Marketing Strategy

While companies would want to avoid the decline stage, sometimes there’s no helping it — especially if the entire market reached a decline, and not just your product. In your marketing strategy, you can focus on nostalgia or emphasize the superiority of your solution to successfully get out of this stage.

To extend the product life cycle, successful companies can also implement new advertising strategies, reduce their price, add new features to increase their value proposition, explore new markets, or adjust brand packaging.

The best companies will usually have products at several points in the product life cycle at any given time. Some companies look to other countries to begin the cycle anew.

International Product Life Cycle

The international product life cycle (IPL) is the cycle a product goes through in international markets. As products begin to mature and companies want to avoid the decline stage, they’ll typically begin to explore new markets globally. When products reach mass production, manufacturing and production shifts to other countries as well.

The international product life cycle stages are identical to that of a normal product life cycle. The development stage looks differently, however, because local customs and regulations can affect how long it takes to bring the product to a new marketplace.

Beware: once you lay the groundwork in a new marketplace, your competitors will be sure to follow, and the life cycle stages will continue up until saturation and eventually decline. Your option is to either expand into another market or learn from prior mistakes and innovate before the decline stage rolls around.

Next, we’ll look at some examples of product life cycles.

Let’s follow the product life cycle of popular products that have since reached the decline stage.

1. The Typewriter

The typewriter was the first mechanical writing tool — a worthy successor to pen and paper. Ultimately, however, other technologies gained traction and replaced it.

• Development: Before the first commercial typewriter was introduced to the market, the overall idea had been developed for centuries, beginning in 1575.
• Introduction: In the late 1800s, the first commercial typewriters were introduced.
• Growth: The typewriter became a quickly indispensable tool for all forms of writing, becoming widely used in offices, businesses, and private homes.
• Maturity: Typewriters were in the maturity phase for nearly 80 years, because this was the preferred product for typing communications up until the 1980s.
• Saturation: During the saturation stage, typewriters began to face fierce competition with computers in the 1990s.
• Decline: Overall, the typewriter couldn’t withstand the competition of new emerging technologies and eventually the product was discontinued.

2. Vine

Skipping forward to the 21st century, we see the rise and fall of Vine, a short-form video sharing app that was the source for many a meme at its peak but eventually declined due to other platforms.

• Development: Vine was founded in June 2012 and mainly competed with Instagram.
• Introduction: The app was introduced to the public in 2013. Its differentiating factor was its short-form video format — users had only seven seconds to film something that was hilarious, absurd, or a mixture of both.
• Growth: Only two years after its release, Vine had over 200 million active users. Its popularity led to the advent of the phrase “Do it for the Vine.”
• Maturity: Because it was only in the market for a few years, Vine never reached the maturity stage. While adoption was high, it was still a fairly new app.
• Saturation: Vine competed in an already saturated market. Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube were the preeminent names in its category, and Vine soon started to decline in use.
• Decline: When Musical.ly and, later, TikTok were introduced, Vine lost a large amount of its user base and shut down. It was succeeded by Byte, a similar short-form video sharing platform.

3. Cable TV

Remember the days of switching TV channels to find what to watch? I do — and they feel distinctly like something of the past. While cable TV is still around, it’s safe to say that it’s nearing the decline stage.

• Development: Cable TV was developed in the first half of the twentieth century. John Walson has been credited with its invention.
• Introduction: The first commercial television system was introduced in 1950, and by 1962, the technology saw the first hints of growth.
• Growth: After a decades-long freeze on cable TV’s development (due to regulatory restrictions), the technology began gaining traction, and by 1980, more than 15 million households had cable.
• Maturity: Cable TV matured at around the 1990s. Around seven in ten households had cable.
• Saturation: The start of the 21st century saw an oversaturation of this technology, and it also started to compete with other modern developments such as on-demand services and high-definition TV (HDTV). While the internet was still in its nascent stages, it would soon gain on cable TV as well.
• Decline: From 2015 onwards, cable TV experienced a marked decline. Online video streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu have taken precedence — and this trend is set to continue.

Not all products need to face the decline stage. Companies can extend the product life cycle with new iterations and stay afloat as long as they have several products at various points of the product life cycle.

Keep Your Product’s Life Cycle in Mind

Whether you’re developing a brand new product or working with a mature, well-established brand, you can use the product life cycle stages as a guide for your marketing campaigns. Each stage will dictate how you inform your audience about the product, how you position your brand in the marketplace, and how you decide to move forward after the decline stage. By keeping your product’s life cycle in mind, you can invest in better marketing campaigns that result in a higher ROI.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

In 2019, nearly one-third of online consumers in the U.S. used the internet on a daily basis to search for local businesses. And as of 2021, Google had 86.6% of the market share of search engines — meaning, getting noticed on Google is an effective way to boost business volume and find new customers.

To help companies reach prospective consumers, Google introduced a feature called My Business Posts. It allows businesses to share relevant information that appears within Google Search and Maps results themselves, rather than taking users to a new webpage.

Despite their potential benefits, however, Google My Business Posts haven’t seen significant uptake from brands. Do a quick Google search and you’ll find a My Business Help page along with a host of questions like, “Do Google Posts work?” or “Do businesses really use Google Posts?”

In part, this lackluster uptake stems from the ubiquity of Google and our own familiarity with these posts — many businesses assume that Google’s algorithms will pick and place relevant data automatically. In actuality, companies need to create and schedule their own My Business Posts.

Here’s what you need to know about the best-kept secret of local SEO — and how to make My Business Posts work for your brand.

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When crafting your Google Posts, you’ll have ample opportunity to grab your audience’s attention. You can describe your offer, product, or event in up to 300 words, upload an image, video, or GIF, and add call-to-actions to prompt product purchases, reservations, and newsletter signups. Your audience can share your Google Posts on social media too.

To make sure your business is constantly publishing fresh content on their search results, Google sets a seven-day life span on each of your Google Posts. The only posts that won’t expire after seven days are ones promoting events, but they’ll disappear once the events end.

Google Posts also has an analytics feature, which shows you how many impressions and clicks your posts get. This might seem like a limited amount of metrics, but they ultimately provide enough information to help you grasp which Google Posts resonated with your audience and which ones did not.

It’s also worth noting that Google My Business listings are free to create, schedule, and post.

While it’s logical to assume that Google would try to monetize the surging popularity of local search by selling ad space on company listings, the search giant decided to do the opposite — they gave every company with a Google My Business account access to a tool that lets them advertise on their business listings for free. Posts created with Google My Business will appear both in Search and Maps results, making it easy for users to find what they’re looking for without being redirected.

How to Use Google My Business Posts to Get Customers

Originally launched as “Candidate Cards” in 2016, Google Posts would only show up in relevant search queries for political candidates who wanted to promote their brand on the search engine.

A few months later, Google decided to roll them out to a select group of small businesses. And by July 2017, the search engine made Google Posts available to every business with a Google My Business account.

Giving every business the opportunity to use Google Posts levels the playing field in the digital marketing space. SMBs without much SEO expertise are now able to leverage the massive reach of local search to grow their business. Consider that for the first six months of 2020, calls to businesses driven by data on My Business Posts rose 61% as customers grappling with pandemic pressures looked to verify if companies were open, closed, or somewhere in between.

Ready to try making a Google My Business Post? Here’s how.

Let’s break down each step in more detail.

1. Log into Google My Business.

Start by signing into your Google My Business account on your desktop or mobile device. If you have more than one location, select the location you’re creating the post for and then select “Posts”.

Worth noting? You can also create a post directly from Google Search. First, make sure you’re logged into your Google My Business account, then search for and select your business profile. Click “Promote” to get started.

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2. Choose the type of post you want to create.

Next, choose the type of post you want to create — Update, Event, Offer, or Product.

Now, you can add elements including photos, videos, texts or buttons. 2020 also saw the addition of COVID-19 Posts, which can be used to add temporary business hours, operating conditions, or safety and hygiene notices.

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3. Craft the post.

If your content isn’t engaging, regardless of the strength of your marketing strategy, it won’t produce results. Crafting captivating content is the only way you’ll attract your audience’s attention and gain their trust. To effectively connect with people and inspire action using Google Posts, here are three copywriting tips you can follow.

1. Create headlines that appeal to people’s self-interest or give news.

With only 58 characters to spare in your title, you must get to the point of your offer. But to get people to click, you also need to clearly communicate your offer’s value, benefits, and relevance. How do you grab someone’s attention with such little room to work with?

• Headlines that appeal to the audiences’ self-interest
• Headlines that provide news
• Headlines with attention-grabbing words and phrases
• Headlines that are clear, easy-to-read, and fluff-free

2. Publish Google Posts that are clear, concise, and compelling.

Even though you technically have up to 1,500 characters to describe your offer, only the first 100 characters show up in Google’s knowledge panel.

To immediately hook people and persuade them to click on your offer or read the rest of your description, try sticking to one message per Google Post. Spotlighting your offer’s main benefit or feature, especially in the first 100 characters, will make it easy for your customers to understand its value and increase the likelihood of their click-through.

Another way to boost your Google Post click-through rate is by leveraging scarcity. People value objects and experiences that are rare — having something that most people want but can’t have, boosts our self-worth and sense of power.

And since each Google Post has a seven-day lifespan, you can also align your offer’s deadline with your post’s expiration date and use words and phrases that evoke a sense of urgency, like “Exclusive offer” or “Limited availability”. These psychology-backed tactics will skyrocket your offer’s perceived scarcity and, in turn, its consumer demand.

3. Use a large, high-quality visual to make your Google Post stand out.

On a website that’s dominated by text, vivid visuals are refreshing and eye-catching. But supplementing your copy with a standard stock photo or amateur iPhone picture won’t grab anyone’s attention. Vibrant photos will make your Google Post stand out and grab the attention of your audience. So, make sure you take photos or record videos with good framing, lighting, and a decent camera.

You also want your visual to take up most of the space on your post, so make sure your photos have the minimum image resolution of 720 pixels by 520 pixels.

4. Publish your post.

When you’re ready to go live, click Publish. If you’d prefer to see what your post will look like before publishing, select Preview. Don’t like it? Click Back, then Edit to refine your My Business Post. Once live, your post will be visible on both Google Search and Maps results.

5. Check your post status.

If your post isn’t coming up on search results, head back to your My Business account to check the status. “Live” means it should be visible on both Search and Maps results, while “Pending” means it may be in the uploading stage, the processing stage, or is being verified by Google.

If the post status says “Not Approved”, it won’t show up on Maps or Search, but the question mark icon next to the post will show which content policies the post currently violates.

Google My Business Post Examples

Let’s take a look at a few engaging My Business Post Examples

1. Kate McElwee Photography

When you search “Boston wedding photographers, you’re shown a list of photographers in a list on the left-hand side of the page and their locations on the right-hand side of the page on a Google Map.

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2. Boston Yoga Union

When you Google “Boston Yoga Studio”, a number of options appear in a list on Google. You’ll see the results on the Google Map.

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If you click on one of the photographers in the list, you’re shown their contact information, hours, rating, and samples of their photography, all without ever having to leave the Google Search results page.

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3. Bostonia Public House

If you search “restaurants in Boston” on Google, you’ll be shown a long list of restaurants paired with a Google Map showing you where each restaurant is located.

If you click on a restaurant in the list, as I did with Bostonia Public House in the screenshot below, you’ll be able to “Reserve” your table without ever leaving Google. You also have access to the menu, reviews, images of the restaurant, and more all on this page.

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Use Google My Business Posts to Maximize Local SEO Marketing

As a free and easy tool for connecting with customers, Google My Business Posts offers massive potential for local SEO marketing. The caveat? While your posts will appear on both Maps and Search results, generic content won’t get noticed in an increasingly competitive marketing landscape.

In effect, Google provides the tools you need to get the job done — but it’s up to your business to create compelling, context-aware content that captures consumer attention.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

This blog features research from NetLine’s annual State of B2B Content Consumption and Demand Report for Marketers. To learn more about the buying behaviors of B2B professionals, download the 2021 Content Consumption Report.

When we encounter the unknown, we usually do so very cautiously.

In March 2020, when “The Pause” came upon us, the expectation was that things would, “return to normal” within a few weeks, maybe a month or two at max. I don’t need to tell you how wrong we all were.

Putting all of the unknown COVID presented to us as a species aside, perhaps what impacted us the most was the sense of limbo we all felt in the early days of lockdown. For many, this period of purgatory extended into every aspect of their lives, allowing everything they experienced to be called into question.  

In the course of all this questioning, we realize how little trust we have in so much of what’s before us.

“In a post-Covid world…trust is everything.”

In her 85th edition of her brilliant fortnightly newsletter, Total Annarchy, my Instagram BFF Ann Handley wrote those words. While the context was different, the statement remains correct. 

Regardless of whether your company is based on in-person foot traffic or a cloud-based service, everyone felt COVID’s impact. The behaviors of consumers and how they evolved during 2020 forced businesses back to the drawing board. As Jay Baer said last Summer, it was important for everyone to disclose the state of their operations. Questions as benign as, “Are you open?” became incredibly relevant to customers who genuinely didn’t know.

Research from McKinsey highlighted how consumer shopping behaviors changed during the height of The Pause. I wouldn’t be burying the lede to say that trust influenced quite a bit of these decisions.

While there was a considerable push to drive local economies during the Spring and early Summer of 2020, consumers eventually returned to big brands they knew and trusted in a big way. According to the article, “large consumer-goods manufacturers represented ~50% of sales in 2018, they accounted for only 16 percent of the growth in 2015–18, that share of growth rose to 39 percent in 2018–19 and reached 55 percent in the first three weeks of April 2020.”

McKinsey’s analysis projects that the scale of a brand will once matter again. “Big brands are again winning consumers’ trust.” The reason that big brands seem to be winning greater market share now is because what they deliver is often (or has a larger chance of being) more predictable. 

While this research only talks about B2C businesses, the same lessons can be applied to B2B organizations, too. 

Why Successful B2B Content Marketing Requires These 3 Elements 

In analyzing more than 40 Petabytes of B2B content information, our research surfaced three key elements that, when used correctly, give B2B Marketers the best opportunity to build tangible success through content. Naturally, there is connective tissue that binds all of these elements together: Trust.

While trust has always been a pillar of every business relationship, COVID revealed just how crucial it truly is. To achieve success moving forward, your Content Marketing must convey to prospects and clients that your business is not only a trustworthy partner but also reliable enough to depend on you. 

Security

COVID took everyone by surprise and impacted revenues across the board. Moving forward, businesses are going to do everything they can not be caught off guard again.

To do this, organizations will do their best to build strongholds, not only for themselves—like the increased interest seen in database management content—but as a means to identify and align with allies who can accommodate seamlessly without introducing any kind of doubt or volatility, within their own ecosystem. 

Predictability

While safety offers a degree of expectation, predictability raises these expectations. Sure predictable might sound boring, but in reality, after a year plus of, “who know what’s next,” certainty is sexy. 

To confirm this, we need look no further than the surge in consumption from professionals in the Legal, Insurance, and HR fields. Their desire to better protect and predict the hurdles their employees and employers/clients/businesses will encounter lead them to consume as much content associated with COVID, remote work, and every human resource implication imaginable as they could. These pros knew that they would be the ones expected to answer questions regarding these topics while simultaneously acting as a calming and reassuring presence. (No pressure, guys.)

Simplicity

Hundreds of thousands of businesses claim to cover ABC. Unfortunately, most of the time they can only handle R, K, and sometimes C. How on earth can prospects figure out what you do well if you’re not even sure?

The Pause gave companies a chance to reinforce what you offer customers starting from the ground up. Things like your FAQs, About section, and the homepage of your website (the cornerstones of your messaging) were easy candidates for pieces that needed a good hard look. Take a look at them now; is what you do to help businesses understood and expressed clearly and simply? If not, you’d be well-served to revisit this and try to boil it down into the simplest terms possible.

The basics are the basics for a reason. Businesses are looking for content that gives them a foundational path forward: “What do I need? What do I do?” Sweat the small stuff—because your potential customers are, too. This is especially true when their backs are against the wall.

Root Your Content in Trust

We all know that without trust, we have nothing. 

As we’ve highlighted through this blog, trust means way more today than it did just 15 months ago. If you’re able to convey why your business is an expert worthy of being trusted in your industry, you stand to outperform your competition.

By focusing on Simplicity, Predictability, and Security, you’ll better anticipate the needs of your clients and prospects and in turn have the opportunity to win something just as prized as their business: Their trust.

The full 2021 State of B2B Content Consumption and Demand Report for Marketers is now available.

One of the first things I do every day is check my email. And I’m not the only one.

Did you know that roughly 80% of marketers have reported an increase in email engagement in 2020?

And that the number of global email users is set to grow to 4.48 billion users by 2024?

Additionally, email marketing has the highest return on investment for small businesses and is the second most effective medium for building brand awareness.

Wow. Those stats alone serve as a reminder that email marketing is not a thing of the past. It’s continuing to grow and is a major way that brands learn about and engage with their customers.

As the adage goes, email marketing is about sending the right message to the right people at the right time.

But, how do you do that?

In this post, let’s review the top strategies you can use to get to know your email subscribers according to research.

1. Use analytics.

A great way to learn about your current email subscribers is to dive into your analytics. Find out what emails perform best. Is there a pattern? What topics is your audience most interested in?

What emails do they engage with the most? What day/time are your open rates higher?

Analytics can help you figure all of this out so you can be in touch with and provide content that your audience wants.

Cynthia Price at Litmus says, “If emails could talk, you could learn a lot about your subscribers. Oh, wait. They do. Open rates, click-through rates, and other standard email metrics all give you signals. They’re interested. They’re not. They’re done.”

But how do you optimize other things like templates? Or apply what you learn in your email program to other channels?

Price explains, “With analytics that go beyond opens and clicks. When you know which email clients your subscribers use, you can optimize the experience for them. For example, what if the majority of your subscribers are on mobile and using Dark Mode? You’ll want to incorporate that into your design strategy and QA & testing process. Or let’s say you know an email has a high forward or print rate. You might have a possible viral piece of content on your hands. Don’t miss out on insights like these—see what your subscribers are telling you.”

Ultimately, monitoring your metrics will help you identify what your audience is interested in.

2. Participate in social media listening.

Did you know that 37% of consumers find purchase inspiration from their social media channels?

Paying attention to what your audience is doing on social media will help you learn more about your consumers so you can understand the content that they want to see.

Think, “What are they interacting with on social media? What type of information are they looking for?”

With this information, you can learn what content your audience really enjoys.

3. Send polls.

This might seem a little too straightforward, but honestly, the best way to learn about someone is to ask them questions.

Send out polls in your emails and learn about your audience.

For HubSpot’s Service Blog, the daily email newsletter includes a question of the day. This helps us learn more about our audience on a regular basis.

4. Conduct A/B testing.

A/B testing is one of the most reliable ways to learn what type of email content your email subscribers react well to.

In fact, companies that A/B test every email see email marketing returns that are 37% higher than those of brands that never include A/B tests.

You can use A/B testing to see what types of subject lines work best, what type of email copy, and more.

Price says, “You can optimize content by A/B testing like 90% of marketers. Or personalize to deepen engagement. Birthday emails are said to get 3.42 times the revenue of a standard promotional email.”

5. Segment your lists.

Segmenting your email list when you learn more information about your audience will help you send better, personalized emails.

Emails that have personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened and marketers have found a 760% increase in email revenue from segmented campaigns.

Essentially, email segmentation can help you increase open rates and improve click-through rates.

When you go to segment your list, segment by how people found your page. What were they signing up for? For instance, someone who purchased a product and someone who downloaded a specific lead magnet will be interested in different email newsletters.

You might segment your list by people who want to learn about blog posts and those who are interested in sales information.

Additionally, you can segment by location. Or maybe even open rate — send emails to your most engaged subscribers.

This will help you send the right emails to the right people.

6. Do buyer persona research.

If you don’t have a buyer persona, you might consider creating one. This will help you understand your subscriber’s problems, goals, challenges, values, demographic information, and more.

Conducting buyer persona research will mean that you’ll interview customers and learn about their preferences. Then, create a fictionalized version of your customers based on real data. This is another reason why it’s so important to use your analytics to learn more about your subscribers.

7. Try new things.

Getting to know your email subscribers can be a fun way to experiment with email marketing. Try new things and see what your audience responds to. You can try different types of content, different rich media, or different subject lines.

With email marketing on the rise, it’s important to optimize your strategies. You need to really know your email subscribers to reap the benefits of email marketing.