LinkedIn mistakes can be avoided with careful branding and strategy.

LinkedIn continues to be a powerful tool for brands, B2B, B2C and nonprofits, as well as business leaders — and instead of LinkedIn mistakes your company can make LinkedIn a tool for driving your bottom line. Often, companies and nonprofits as well as business leaders approach us to partner with them on LinkedIn strategies and execution. But a few things need to be in place before we start.

When and How to Get Started With LinkedIn

Front Porch Marketing first looks at the brand architecture, target audiences, and competitive environment. For a LinkedIn strategy to be successful, there has to be a good marketing foundation. Therefore, if the branding and strategy isn’t right to begin with, we will not be able to help. We believe in being stewards of our Clients’ budgets and brands, so we consider a one-off LinkedIn initiative to be shooting money into the wind. And that LinkedIn mistake isn’t brand- or thought-leader building.

With that said, these are the five most common LinkedIn mistakes we are seeing companies make right now:

1. Brand pages reposting individuals’ content on its feed

Individuals should share brand content on their feed not the other way around. Content should lead back to the brand.

2. Brand pages posting once or maybe two times a month is a LinkedIn mistake

People cannot see the posts without regular consistency. Be consistent to create connections with your audience.

3. Brand pages only posting what is happening with the company

But what’s in it for your followers? To be truly successful on LinkedIn, provide value and insights no matter where they come from. It’s not what’s all about you you you.

4. Brand pages are not being social

LinkedIn members are commenting and liking your posts. Are you engaging them and doing the same in return? Talk to your followers and this will lead to insights that will inform future content.

5. Business leaders are not convicted about the network

They say that people are only trying to sell me things, or that social media is a waste of time. And the worst of all, *that* isn’t worth sharing. Your followers want to know more about your company, what it stands for, how it can help them, what it’s like to work there and more. LinkedIn is not a mistake — it’s a platform for engaging with your employees, your future employees, your peers and the larger business world.

Want to chat more about LinkedIn, and not make a LinkedIn mistake?

We are happy to do so, to help your company understand how LinkedIn can be a business-driving tool for their industry online. Let’s have a real conversation on the Porch.

Programmatic Advertising is Driving Results.

After Q1, clients historically shift focus based on marketing, advertising and communications results so far in the year. The Front Porch team than also ebbs and flows to make sure our efforts are successfully driving topline revenue for our clients.

One of the tactics working for our clients right now? Programmatic advertising. As we start Q2 and continue into 2023, this advertising approach is driving results.

What is Programmatic Advertising?

It is a bit different than digital advertising. Programmatic advertising utilizes automation and algorithms to achieve success. Too far in the weeds: but it is about the process of ads purchased and sold. But it is different than traditional media-buying techniques. Programmatic advertising meets the potential customer when and where they are. This approach optimizes the efforts of the advertising, hyper targeting the most interested, most matched customers with the brand.

What is the Difference Between Display Advertising and Programmatic Advertising?

Clients often ask us what the difference is between display advertising and programmatic advertising, since in many cases they can look the same. The answer is that programmatic levels up:

• Display advertising refers to how ads are bought
• Programmatic advertising goes beyond simply placing a digital display ad on a website, and is more about how ads appear and in what format — serving the right ad to the right person in the right place at the right time

How to Get Started with Programmatic

Before you dive in, your team or your marketing partner needs to do the due diligence to understand your target market. With more in-depth information, programmatic advertising can work harder for your client and find the customers that are looking for your client’s brand.

Then, as you implement your plan, these are the things to look for and monitor in order to continuously improve and optimize your advertising, maximize your budget and reach the best customers for you:

• Cost per Click (CPC)
• Click-through Rate (CTR)
• Cost per Completed View (CPCV)

Want to Know More About Programmatic?

How can we help? The marketing and advertising landscape is evolving at the speed of light. And the Front Porch team is keeping up and leading the way to better outcomes for our clients. There are many benefits to choosing programmatic advertising such as efficiency and low-cost awareness. So please ask, as we love sharing our client successes, expertise and fodder. Sometimes the fodder isn’t relevant, but it sure creates great conversations and we’d love to have one with you.

Whatever your industry, you can no longer afford to ignore the importance of optimizing your website for mobile experience. Google recently revealed that more searches take place on mobile devises than on desktop computers in 10 different countries, including the United States and Japan. That means failure to optimize your website for mobile could leave you with as much as 30% fewer conversions!

How to Increase Your Mobile Conversion Rate

So, where do you start? You’ll need to decide whether your website will be responsive. This means it will automatically adjust based on whether the visitor is on desktop or mobile. Or if you’ll have a separate, mobile-friendly site you direct customers to. Regardless of how you get them to your site, designing your web pages with mobile users in mind is key to avoiding abandoned carts and a high bounce rate.

Optimize Your Website’s Bounce Rate with UX

A ”bounce rate” refers to the “percentage of people who visit [your] landing page and then ‘bounce’ without converting on a form or making a purchase.” Here you want a low number. Design is key to keeping potential leads and customers on your page for as long as possible. HubSpot completed an experiment by re-designing one of their content landing pages, placing an emphasis on UX design, and saw their bounce rate decrease by an average of 27%!

User-focused pages designed with mobile in mind tend to focus on simplicity. Good UX (User Experience design) can help. If a form is too long, there’s too much text to read, or the physical navigation of a page is overly difficult, visitors are likely to become frustrated and leave the website altogether. Poorly formatted pages are also more than aesthetically displeasing, as they tend to feel less reputable than their well-designed counterparts.

Safety Optimization Keeps Visitors On Your Site

It’s important that visitors feel safe while exploring your site. “Mobile users are more likely to have their passwords, app login info, and financial details sorted on their phones,” making them extra vigilant about the websites they visit. Optimize safety on your website. Make your website secure with HTTPS and displaying trust badges. This will put users’ minds at ease. Further, payment method mistrust results in 19% of customers abandoning their carts. If you don’t already make use of e-wallet payment methods like Android Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal, consider adding them to your payment offerings.

With mobile traffic contributing to the highest percentage of global web traffic, businesses need to optimize their online presence for mobile use. The information here will get you started on the right track.

Front Porch has currently four clients, both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C), with paid digital media campaigns ads and paid social media running. These clients are across different industries from financial and non-profits to insurance and ecommerce. These clients’ marketing strategies include paid digital media advertising because it works for them. We recommended integrating your digital marketing with your brand strategy as part of your overall marketing plan.

Maximizing A Digital Media Budget

Our digital ad philosophy is to consider what formats deliver the maximum opportunities possible for the budget available, to an audience most likely to be interested. This approach maximizes the resources of our clients.

Here is a sampling of paid digital media advertising tools that we are using currently to serve our clients in this space:

• Social – Ads served on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to build awareness, build relationships with the audience, and drive traffic to a website
• Digital Banner Ads – Ads served through browsers and in-app to build frequency and drive traffic to a website
• Streaming Audio – Ads served within music and/or podcast content cross-device, including smart speakers

How We Determine A Plan’s Effectiveness

So, what is the predicted ROI of a paid digital media advertising campaign? When the campaign is for business to business, not an “exit now for cheeseburgers”, it is trickier to predict. But this is how we view the situation, and read our analytics.

Here’s an example for a paid digital advertising campaign for a service business client of ours. Our standard average CTR (click-thru rate), which is the number of clicks an ad receives divided by the number of times it is shown, is typically .03-.05% for digital ad campaigns. (Social and Native can trend higher with more mobile impressions than Banner Ads served computers.)

So a digital media plan with about 1MM impressions per month would generate 300-500 clicks. These are the customers that click and come to our client’s website. But, the bounce rate can be high in the 90%. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. Thus with 300-500 clicks, this leaves 30-50 quality prospects per month. Which is a fantastic number for our service client.

If you’d like to know more about how a paid digital media plan might work for your business, just ask!

There are countless benefits to automating your social media efforts. But who is best served by these services and what are best practices when it comes to using them?

Social media automation is “the process of reducing the manual labor required to manage social media accounts by using automation software.” It goes beyond simply scheduling your posts ahead of time to include content creation, customer service, and analytics reports.

Automating your social media processes reduces the time your team spends on repetitive tasks, decreases response times to customers, optimizes your posting schedule, and boosts engagement. It’s important to note, however, that social media automation is not the same thing as a social media strategy. In fact, automating your social media channels without a robust strategy in place can actually hurt you in the long run.

Be sure your content sounds “human,” even if it’s automated.

First, you’ll also need to be prepared to edit, cancel, or change planned posts. If events or trends warrant a response from your brand, be flexible. Next, make sure your posts are platform specific. In addition to different image display ratios and word count allowances, your audience’s expectations will also vary from platform to platform. Finally, you’ll need to customize your content or work with an automation tool that does it for you.

If you have a strategy in place and you’re aware of the potential pitfalls of automation, it’s time to decide what features will best serve you. Do you manage multiple accounts or produce a lot of content? It might be worth investing in a scheduling and publishing platform that will identify the best times for you to post make the publishing process more efficient.

Automating your basic customer service features

If you often interact with your customers and clients over social media, consider automating your basic customer service features. You can provide automated responses to questions. Automate “What are your hours?” Then, standardize your “welcome” message when you gain new followers.

There are an ever-increasing number of automation services and platforms out there. How can you find the right one for your business? Start with three basic questions:

1. What social platforms do you use most often?
2. Which automation features are you most interested in?
3. What is your budget for automation?

Your answers to these questions will help structure your search for the right automation platform. So start by looking at the large platforms, like Hootsuite and Buffer, and then seek out smaller service providers as necessary based on your needs. Got questions? Give us a shout!

Why Staying on Top of Public Relations Trends is Valuable

Public relations professionals play an integral role in a client’s online reputation. Part of a PR professional’s job is to stay atop the latest public relations industry trends. Trends can play an important role in managing a client’s account.

What was important to consumers in the past might look different today. PR is all about cultivating an image in the minds of consumers. So certain tactics and strategies may resonate with an audience at any given time.

According to the online media monitoring company Meltwater, the five top PR trends that should pilot brand strategy in 2023 are:

Data and Analytics:

In 2023, tracking the impact of a client’s public relations efforts will be key. PR teams need, at a minimum, basic KPIs like brand awareness and favorability, social media engagement, and quality web traffic. With today’s analytics and PR reporting technology, data will play an increasingly essential role in PR strategies. It is an important public relations trend to stay on top of during the year.

Diversity and Inclusion:

More companies are doubling down on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and for good reason. When employees can show up in a workplace where they can be their true selves they are more engaged. Employees are productive, and satisfied in their jobs. It is more than a public relations trend. It’s a shift in the way business will be done. As more consumers and employees raise their expectations of brands to embrace DEI at work, PR teams can expect it to be a recurring theme in their PR campaigns.

Influencer Marketing:

In 2023, focus on maintaining good relationships with existing influencers and connecting with new influencers. To fully leverage influencer marketing, PR teams need a good understanding of the influencer’s audience, niche, and content. These aspects go several layers deep and are full of nuances that can vary from one influencer to the next.

Without learning about these nuances, a company could end up doing more harm than good to its online reputation. One way to avoid potentially damaging influencer experiences is to add dedicated influencer resources to a PR team.

Personalized PR Pitch:

Tailoring PR pitches to individual journalists or influencers helps create messages that speak directly to their interests. It steers away from one-size-fits-none pitches. Instead it presents an eye-catching idea that’s hard to miss, even in an unpredictable news cycle. This helps to create instant trust and credibility. When pitching new sources you deepen the trust with media outlets and professionals. Keep this public relations trend top-of-mind when you practice media relations this year.

Authenticity:

As more marketers and PR professionals are using technology to develop custom experiences, it’s essential to maintain the human element. This makes personalization authentic. Consumers have increased their expectations of the companies with whom they do business. They expect brands to be transparent about ethics and values. Go beyond “marketing speak.” Authenticity is the intersection of these things. It’s no longer enough to spew generic phrases like “We’re in this together,” but back up your statements with actions. The bottom line: people have had many months to re-evaluate what’s important to them. They’re more discerning over how they use their time, which brands they engage with, and how they’re spending money.

Utilizing Public Relations Trends Helps Build Brands

Paying attention to PR trends can assist brands know the who, how, and when in addressing challenges and opportunities. This helps companies recognize and then embrace PR opportunities.

Put Your Marketing Must-Have Plan in Place Now.

Are you ready to tackle your company’s marketing must-have plans for next year? You’re in luck! We’ve simplified that list for you, to get you started. Your business success can be mapped out ahead of time with these five guideposts put in place to execute against.

Having a plan means you know what to do to build your business according to seasons, holidays, business cycles, trends and more. And, if you need help formulating any of these must-haves — or executing them, please ask us!

The Marketing Must-Haves:

1. Marketing Plan

What are your 2023 business and marketing goals? Define them now. Make a marketing plan. Then add in audiences, competition, SWOT, strategies and tactics. Know who you are and what you’re doing. Know what makes your company unique, and what your brand’s biggest benefit is.

2. Content Calendar

This important calendar includes social media and blogging as marketing initiatives. Know what you’re going to talk about every month and every week using this calendar. Take advantage of social media trends. Every content strategy needs a roadmap with dates, and this calendar is super helpful for engaging your consumer on a regular basis.

3. Marketing Timeline

Calendarize key events pertinent to your business, down to the day. Know what events to capitalize on for business success. Plan out when you will carry out campaigns for advertising, digital or print, as well as event pushes, PR and media relations, holiday and event marketing and more.

4. Marketing operations — including people, technology and analytics

Do you have the right team in place? Do you have enough team to get the job done next year? What tech and analytics tools do you need to execute and then evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies against your goals?

5. Marketing Budget

Once the four above have been defined, put numbers to each of them. Create a marketing budget that maximizes your impact. Plan for this budget quarterly, and then, manage to it monthly. Staying on track will pay off.

No matter the size of your business, start on your marketing must-haves now.

Take the guesswork out of what to do next week, next month, or just next with these five marketing must-haves for planning your next business year! We’ve seen our clients grow year over year when we help them set these must-have marketing goals in place. Then, we work together diligently all year to execute against them for business growth and success. It can work for you too.

How do you define a testimonial? Put simply, a testimonial conveys an individual’s thoughts or feelings toward a product or service.

In marketing, praise from a happy customer is one of the most important tools a company can use to show potential customers the value of its products and services. Not only that, they help your business build trust with customers, which ultimately leads to increased sales. And it goes without saying, a satisfied customer is your brands best advocate.

Testimonials are powerful marketing tools

Leveraging testimonials is a powerful tool you can use in your marketing efforts and there are many ways you can implement them in your strategy. Let’s spend a few minutes highlighting three ways to take advantage of them.

1. Display testimonials on your website.

Think about your favorite websites? Now go visit a couple of them. Chances are you’ll find a customer comment or two prominently displayed on the homepage of the site (or sprinkled throughout the site.) Your website is your front door for customers to learn about and purchase your product or service. So it makes sense you use this valuable real estate to tout what your loyal customers are saying.

2. Use testimonials in your social media efforts.

Do you ever find yourself at a loss for fresh social content? Testimonials are a great way to engage customers. They are usually short in content making them perfect for sharing across your social channels. If you want to take it a step further, try video testimonials. Start by asking your customers to submit a short video reviewing your product or service and their user experience. Conclusion? A customer providing insight into how your company positively impacted them can be very powerful.

3. Incorporate them in your email marketing.

Email marketing is yet another way you can incorporate customer praise. First, tie it into your email content. For example, if you’re promoting your top-selling coat for the winter season ahead, include two or three customer testimonials all raving about varying benefits (value, warmth, style, etc.). Second, email is a great way to collect customer testimonials. So, try to include a link to a feedback form and ask customers to submit a testimonial for potential use in upcoming marketing initiatives.

Overall, I think you’ll agree it’s easy to see why testimonials are a popular strategy in advertising your business products or services. If you haven’t considered implementing them into your marketing initiatives, what are you waiting for?

How can your company create better social media content and increase engagement? A cost-effective marketing strategy that is often overlooked today is employee — we prefer “team”— activation. Not only can employee activation, hence forth, team activation, benefit brands externally but internally as well.

What is Team Activation?

Team activation provides team members with social media guardrails. This approach allows them to share content and ideas on social media that align to their interests and professional goals.

More than 10 years ago, employee advocacy was popular. Team activation is similar but more engaging and collaborative. Employee advocacy forces team members to blast boilerplate messages and brand content to their social networks. The generic approach and efforts of employee advocacy fizzled out over time.

But team activation encourages employees to authentically create and share content that aligns with their company, on their own channels. If done properly, team activation benefits brands from employee engagement and communication to marketing and sales. As well as much more.

How does this work on different social channels?

Team activation works across all the social networks, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Over the past few years, according to our clients’ successful team activation campaigns, we have found:

• Team members grow to consistently like brand posts on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
• Whereas they like LinkedIn posts and tweets, they also reshare or RT the information to their personal accounts.

How does this help the brand internally?

When team members are socially engaged, they are more likely:

• Stay at their company
• Optimistic about the company’s future
• To believe the brand is more competitive

How does this approach help the brand externally?

Here’s a fact: sales reps using social media as part of their sales strategies outsell 78% of their peers. According to Social Media Today, content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than organic content shared by brand channels. More and more, social algorithms bury a company’s page posts, tweets, pins, etc. And, people believe individuals’ social media posts and engagement are more authentic and creditable than a brands’.

Done well and right, your team becomes real brand advocates. Think less expensive form on influencer marketing. We can help. Front Porch Marketing holds collaborative in person or virtual team workshops. Also, we do one-on-one team member training.

Successful email marketing can be a cost-effective way to market your business. When done right, you’ll be keeping your brand top-of-mind and become a trusted resource for your customers. They’ll look forward to your emails because you’ll be sharing your knowledge and solving their challenges.

Keeping your audience engaged with email marketing, as a part of your overall marketing strategy, is an excellent way to introduce new products, solve an on-going pain-point for customers, give a tutorial, keep your customers up-to-date about the industry, and more.

How Do You Do Successful Email Marketing?

There is a lot to designing an effective and efficient email campaign to be successful. The most important question to ask yourself: Are you leading with the audience in mind? Everything you do should be from THEIR perspective. It’s for them. Help them. Guide them. Solve their problems.

Then ask yourself: Are you overselling? Your brand and your products do not always need to be the hero in email marketing. Afterall, this is an on-going dialogue you’re having with your customers. Establishing a relationship is a longer-term proposition. Don’t oversell. Again, be helpful. Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself: What do I need? What will make my life easier or better?

Getting Started With Email Marketing: Do This Not That

Your email marketing is a fail if it doesn’t contain these four elements. Set yourself up for success by making sure these four things are included thoughtfully in each email you send:

1. Look professional — Make sure the email platform template is set for your brand fonts and colors. Design is key to successful email marketing as well — design a nice header and footer. Link to your social channels in your footer. Stay consistent from month to month with this template and your customers will start to recognize your email and your brand, and look forward to your next email.
2. Have a call to action — What can readers do to learn more? Use a button in your email that links back to your website where the reader will read more, download something, watch a video, contact you for more information or order a product. For instance, if you are linking to a blog post, tease them in the email, but don’t reveal the real scoop…ask them to “Read More” and click the button to go to your website for the rest of the insight.
3. Date and time — When do users want to engage and not unsubscribe? Many email programs like Mailchimp will tell you when the best time is to send emails to be successful. Statistically, Tuesday mornings are the day most people open their emails.
4. Don’t try too hard to sell — Engage your audience and don’t make the email be all your company. Again, be helpful: share hints, tips, tricks. Give away your knowledge and they’ll see you as the industry leader and come to you to solve their problems (with your products or your service.

Most Importantly: Be consistent.

Successful email marketing campaigns provide content to make readers’ lives better. They are informative, not sales-y. Email marketing campaigns provide value, real value, to customers’ lives consistently. Create a schedule using Google Sheets and plan each month’s topic, date, and assign responsibilities. After a while, it becomes easier and easier to stick to your schedule and create smart, thoughtful, nicely designed emails that make your brand the one that customers turn to again and again.