Steps To Financial Freedom

How Brands Can Leverage Pinterest To Make Sales

January 4, 2020

Did you know:

Pinterest is such a key part of the buying journey for its users that over 90 percent of weekly active Pinners use Pinterest to make purchasing decisions.

Talk about buying power!

Not only are Pinterest users making purchase decisions on the platform, 83 percent say they are making purchases specifically based on the content they’ve seen from brands on Pinterest.

Pinterest is no longer simply a place to save ideas and build dream boards. Instead, Pinterest has turned into the world’s largest visual discovery platform.

And there are a lot of opportunities for brands.

We had a chance to chat with the team over at Pinterest about some of their best practices for brands looking to increase sales. We’re excited to share those lessons with you!

Here’s what we learned…

How people are using Pinterest

According to one survey, “47 percent of social media users saw Pinterest as the platform for discovering and shopping for products—more than three times higher than those who cited Facebook or Instagram.”

Seventy-seven percent of weekly Pinners have also discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest, and according to Pinterest, “people actually want to see content from brands while they’re on the platform–78 percent say it’s useful.”

Pinterest might not immediately come to mind as a platform to invest in for many brands, but it should.

Pinterest lives in a unique space on the internet where users are discovering content related to themselves and their aspirations rather than focusing on others, and this has turned it into a powerful platform for users to make purchasing decisions and discover new brands and products.

Clearly, Pinterest is not one to be ignored when it comes to your marketing strategy. Here’s how you can use the platform to drive sales.

How to leverage Pinterest for sales: 5 tips from the Pinterest team

There are some really simple ways that you can start leveraging Pinterest to reach new audiences and optimize your pins and profile for sales. Some of these tips might be easy to implement immediately while others might play into later strategies, let’s dive in!

1. Brand your pins

A whopping 97 percent of top searches on Pinterest are unbranded, according to the Pinterest team. For brands, this presents an opportunity to stand out and gain brand recognition through the platform.

Pinterest recommends adding a small logo in one of the four corners of your pin, this can be done really easily in a tool like Canva. You can play around with the design, of course, and add your logo wherever it feels best. In this example from Quip, they went with top centered to fit with the rest of the text on their image.

2. Create mobile-first content

As with most sites, mobile is extremely important on Pinterest. Eighty-five percent of Pinners are using the mobile app, so it’s important that your content appeals to them while they’re on their phones and appears properly in their feeds. If you’re linking back to your own content, it’s also important that the page that you’re sending users to is mobile friendly as well.

A tip from Pinterest here is to tailor your font size to phone rendering to make sure your fonts are legible on small screens and to design for a vertical aspect ratio. The ideal dimensions are 600 pixels x 900 pixels.

3. Create a similar look and feel

Have you ever clicked on a beautiful image on Pinterest only to be taken to a website that looks nothing like the pin? I have, and it left me really confused.

According to Pinterest, the best practice is to make sure your pins and your website have a similar look and feel, and that doing this pays off. In an analysis from Pinterest, they found that “Pins that went to landing pages with similar imagery had a 13 percent higher online sales lift.”

This example from Ettitude is really great. The pin they are sharing fits seamlessly in a lot of home decor and design tags on Pinterest.

And although their website uses different photos, it still has a similar feel to the pin.

4. Time your campaigns

A big element to social media marketing and campaigns is timing. When are people online and when are people talking about the things you want to talk about?

Luckily in the case of Pinterest, they release annual ‘Seasonal Insights,’ which helps take away some of the guesswork. A report that contains more than a dozen specific moments that take place throughout the year.

For example, their 2019 report shared that users start sharing holiday content in June all the way through December and that content related to the Summer starts getting pinned at the beginning of February.
They also have monthly trends reports. Here’s their latest for December 2019 trends on Pinterest, it shares specific trends like the search term ‘peach green tea’ is up 320 percent YoY!

These are great free resources that you can leverage to start timing seasonal campaigns around when people are starting to make specific seasonal purchasing decisions. I would never have thought that people start looking at holiday content in June but that’s super-specific information that can go a long way to help with timely campaigns.

5. Set up your shop

One of the main ways for Pinterest to help generate sales is for the products you are selling to be easily available through Pinterest. Luckily, the platform makes this really easy for brands to set up and feature prominently on their profiles.

Every Business profile on Pinterest has the ability for users to create a “shop” tab.

The shop tab is just what it sounds like, a place where users can go to see all of the products your brand is selling. On the flip side, brands can leverage that tab to share pins that link directly to their sales pages for the specific product.

Pinterest makes this whole process quite easy, they even have a method for importing new products through Pinterest Catalogs. All you have to do is have your data source approved and then as you add new products to your website, they get automagically added to Pinterest as well.

We hope this guide helps you get started with or double down on your efforts with Pinterest. Let us know about your experience with Pinterest in the comments!

If you want even more Pinterest resources, the Pinterest team has created a free Pinterest Academy with tons of lessons in there.

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Brands can now buy Walmart sponsored search ads via API partners

January 4, 2020

Walmart Media Group named four initial advertising partners to support sponsored search campaigns.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Ubersuggest 7.0: The Ultimate Keyword Research Tool

January 4, 2020

Believe it or not, I’ve been working on Ubersuggest for
almost 3 years now.

I bought it on February 13, 2017, for $120,000 dollars as a test to see if I could get more traffic from a tool than traditional content marketing or SEO.

Since then the tool has come a long way, in which I’ve added tons of features that competitors charge $100 a month or even more for.

But I’ve finally got Ubersuggest to a point where I can start releasing features that my competition don’t even have.

So before, you head on over to Ubersuggest to work on your SEO,
make sure you read everything below because I’ve just changed up how you are
going do keyword research (in a good way).

On top of that, I’ve also released a few other features as well related to link data and traffic estimations.

Here’s what’s new:

More keyword data

The biggest problem I had with keyword research was how to find the right keyword.

Sure, there are metrics like CPC data, SEO difficulty, or even search volume, but assuming you find keywords with a high CPC, low SEO difficulty, and high search volume, it still doesn’t mean it is a good keyword to go after.

And there are a few reasons why…

Mobile searches aren’t worth as much – first off, if the keyword mainly gets searched from on mobile devices the conversion rate will be lower. It doesn’t mean mobile traffic is useless, it just typically means the keyword won’t be as valuable.
High search volume doesn’t guarantee lots of organic clicks – what happens if the keyword gets a ton of searches but no clicks? This sounds crazy, but it actually happens a lot. For example, when people search for “weather” in the United States, roughly 60% of the people don’t click any results.
Not all searchers are worth the same – some keywords get searched heavily by teenagers. Some keywords get searched heavily by people who are in their 30s or 40s. If the majority of the searches for a given keyword happen by a really young audience, chances are they won’t have a credit card and they won’t convert into a customer.

Because of all of this, I decided to change how the industry
does keyword research.

Now when you type in a keyword like “marketing” into
Ubersuggest, you’ll see this:

If you have been using Ubersuggest for the last year or so you may notice some differences… but if you haven’t let me break down what’s new.

First off, for any given keyword you will see what percentage of the searches are taking place from mobile devices or desktop devices.

For example, with the term “marketing” you can see that the majority of the searches are coming from desktop devices.

On the flip side, if you use Ubersuggest to look at the term “weather” you’ll notice that the majority of the searches happen on mobile devices.

And with any given keyword you can also see what percentage of the people even click on the SEO or paid results.

I love this bar chart because it tells me if I should even go after a specific keyword. Just because a term has tons of searches doesn’t mean you are going to get tons of clicks, even if you rank at the number 1 spot.

If you leverage paid ads, this bar chart is also helpful because it will give you a sense of how many people click on the paid ads as well.

Another chart that I’ve added is one that breaks down the age range of each searcher.

As you can see from the above image, Ubersuggest now shows what percentage of the searches take place between each age range.

This is really important if you know the persona of your ideal customer, as you only want to target keywords that your ideal buyer is searching for.

What’s also cool is this data is available for all countries
within Ubersuggest and for almost all of the keywords within our database.

Now before you head off to Ubersuggest and test it out, there are a few more features that I’ve just released.

More backlink data

Over the last few months, I’ve gotten feedback that our link database isn’t as big as you would like, so we have been working on fixing this.

First off, whenever you do a backlink search in Ubersuggest, you’ll start seeing stats on historical backlink data.

This chart will quickly show you if a site is growing in
backlink and referring domain count over time or if they are declining.

On top of that, we are even showing the daily new and lost link count for a given site.

I know the new and lost link count chart looks a bit off,
but keep in mind we started having Ubersuggest crawl more pages around the web
faster and more frequently. Hence you are seeing a big spike in new and lost
links.

But over the next 4 weeks, it should normalize, and you’ll see an accurate representation of new and lost links.

This will help you identify new link opportunities more
easily. Especially because you can now clearly see where your competitors are
focusing their link building efforts.

Better traffic estimations

Lastly in Ubersuggest, you can also enter in a URL and get data on any given domain.

From its estimated monthly search traffic to the number of keywords a domain ranks for to even its top pages based on link and traffic count.

We haven’t fully finished creating our new algorithm when it comes to traffic estimations, but the chart you’ll see now is much more accurate than the older one.

Even though this is a big improvement from our older charts, give it another 3 months and it should be extremely accurate.

When you are using the traffic analyzer report in Ubersuggest, keep in mind that this will give you a directional guide on how you are doing versus your competition.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoy the new changes to Ubersuggest.

I’ve made them in order to give you a leg up on your competition as the data in the tool is now something that most of you have never seen before.

And over the next two months, you’ll see some big launches in Ubersuggest. From a chrome extension to even more accurate traffic estimations to even an Alert system that will notify you when things are wrong with your site.

So, go to Ubersuggest and try out the new keyword features as well as traffic estimation and backlink features.

What do you think about the
new features?

The post Ubersuggest 7.0: The Ultimate Keyword Research Tool appeared first on Neil Patel.

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Snap Inc. Scoops Up Startup AI Factory

January 4, 2020

Snap Inc. liked Snapchat’s recently introduced Cameo feature so much that it bought the company that helped develop it. Snap confirmed its acquisition of AI Factory Friday, declining to provide any further details, such as terms of the transaction. The AI Factory website was taken offline at some point and remained in that state Friday….

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The Facebook Ad Types: How to Choose the Best Ad Type for Your Goals

January 4, 2020

Did you know that people in the U.S. spend 20% of their mobile time on Facebook or Instagram? And there are over 1.8 billion people using Facebook every month?

With so many active users, Facebook Ads are a no-brainer for any marketer looking to reach new audiences in a place where people are already spending a significant amount of time.

Facebook’s business platform has grown to be more and more sophisticated, giving advertisers more options to reach new audiences and retarget previous site visitors back to their brand. However, with so many different options, it can be difficult for advertisers to figure out which Facebook Ad type is best for any given campaign objective.

In this post, we’ll walk through each of the different Facebook Ad types and help you figure out which ads you should run for different campaign goals.

1. Post Engagement

If you regularly post content on your Facebook page, you probably know that some content performs better than others. With Facebook post engagement ads, you can drive more engagement on individual posts and expand its original reach. This helps you generate more activity on your posts and helps you get more organic followers quickly by offering them the kinds of posts they’ll see more of if they follow you.

In the example below, the Fashion Stork Club ad promotes an update this company made to their Facebook photos. Notice that the add displays the post engagement (likes, comments, shares) along with the post to encourage viewers to engage with it.

The ad also features a “like page” button which allows the advertiser to generate both page likes and post engagements all in one post.

Facebook Post Engagement

2. Instant Experience

While app engagement ads are intended to highlight specific features to drive in-app engagements, app install ads are focused on generating new users. Instead of calling out specific features, app install ads are more likely to showcase the app’s core purpose and main functionality.

App Install Ads

Image Source

3. Video

The video ad features help educate your audience about your product features using video.

Videos should be the highest resolution possible in aspect ratios 9:16 or 16:9. They also need to be a minimum of one second to a max of 240 minutes. A cool thing about Facebook’s video ads is that you can upload a 360 ad, which is an immersive experience where users can drag their finger or turn their device to see an ad.

Brand Awareness

In the example above, Spotify’s ad uses a creative, colorful video that focuses on finding new music and playlists for users to enjoy. While a user might see the add and decide to sign up for Spotify immediately, Spotify used the brand awareness approach to create compelling content to draw the user’s attention.

4. Event Responses

Whether you have a new store opening or just want to boost awareness for one of your store’s existing locations, you might consider using the local awareness ad type to drive brand awareness in specific geographic regions. This ad type is largely the same as brand awareness ads, but will be more oriented and targeted via location.

Local Awareness

For example, Cold Stone Creamery used a local awareness ad to target people in a geographic area when their store in Bangladesh opened. Notice how in this ad, Cold Stone chose to use a video as the creative asset featured in the ad. This is a great way to engage users and entice them to stop scrolling down their newsfeed.

5. Offers

During the website conversion ads section, we touched on the fact that you could use conversion-focused offers as a landing point for your Facebook ad. That said, Facebook also allows you to set off-site offer downloads as a campaign objective.

Whether you have discounts, holiday deals, or content-specific offers to promote via Facebook ads, the offer claim objective allows you to customize your ads with calls-to-action specific to the offer. For example, you might use a “Learn More” call-to-action if you’re offering something that’s good only for the first 500 sign-ups, like in the ad example below:

Offer Claim Ad

Image Source

As you can see, the offer claim Facebook Ad type should lead your users directly to a sign-up page on your website where they can claim the offer you promoted.

6. Lead Generation Ads

In a traditional lead generation conversion path, users are driven to a landing page where they fill out a form. For example, you might use a Facebook offer claim ad (like we discussed in the previous section) to drive users to your website and have them fill out a form there.

The downside to this conversion path is that users are required to leave Facebook altogether once they’ve clicked on the ad to actually claim what you’re promoting. Luckily, Facebook offers the lead generation objective, which allows you to collect lead information without forcing your audience to ever leave the Facebook app.

Here’s an example that shows the conversion path the user goes through on a Facebook lead ad.

First, the user see a traditional conversion-focused ad:

Image Source

Once the user clicks on the add and/or call-to-action (in this case, Sign-Up), they see this pop up within the Facebook app:

Facebook Lead Ads

Next, the user can click the register button and see a form (of your choosing) with their information auto-filled.

Facebook Lead Ads

Once the user submits the form on the lead ad, they can click out of the ad and go back to browsing on Facebook. It’s a great user experience and Facebook will sync with your CRM so your leads are right where you want them.

Want more information on how to set up and successful target Facebook lead ads to the right users? Check out this comprehensive guide.

7. Page Likes

In some cases, you may want to use Facebook Ads to expand your organic reach. When this is your campaign goal, you should use the page like ad type to encourage new users to “like” your page. Once they do, they’ll be able to see your organic content when you post it.

Page Like Ads

Image Source

Page like campaigns are best for advertisers who put lots of effort into their social media presence and produce content specifically for their Facebook users to drive engagement.

Keep in mind, you can also ad a “like page” call-to-action option to other ad types if you want to accomplish two goals with one ad.

8. Slideshow

Slideshow ads, in Facebook’s opinion, are kind of in the video category, kind of not. Think of them as billboards: they move quickly and can give an immersive ad experience. Slideshows are an affordable alternative to video, and also provide a quick loading time, so you can capture the attention span of someone who doesn’t want to wait for videos.

These are a possible option for you if you want to quickly make ads. Facebook gives you the option of choosing from stock images and free video editing tools to make your ad spectacular. You can even choose music.

Slideshows are also great for you if you want to simplify a process that is a little bit more complex. Like Carousels, you can use quickly moving images to tell a story or sequence.

9. Carousel

Carousel ads are very diverse and Facebook hosts them on their website, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network. Carousels lets you show up to 10 images or videos in one ad. This expansive ad space embraces creativity.

Common ways to use carousel ads are product demos, product highlights, showcasing specs about a product, and a way to tell stories. Although they’re popular on Instagram, Carousels also have a place on Facebook, and can attract users who are into an interactive experience.

10. Collection

If you’re releasing a lot of products at once, collection ads may be something you look into, especially at the end of a campaign that drives a lot of interest. This is because collection ads lets interested buyers move from discovering your product to purchasing in a streamlined method.

Collection ads are pretty much like an online store, with a primary image of the product along with four images customers can tap through. If they decide to purchase, they can do so without leaving the platform.

11. Image

For driving visitors to your site, a quick creation process, and keeping things simple, image ads are right up your alley. They are a common form of an ad and come with fewer bells and whistles than other formats. Still, they can be extremely effective.

With a single, stunning image and little text, you can create a stunning image ad, where that picture will be the focal point. Images on Facebook gives you a format to use, with spaces to make sure your photo is incredible and you have the option to include copy.

How to Choose Which Facebook Ad Type to Use

We’ve covered all of the different Facebook Ad types campaign objectives you can use to meet your specific ads goals. But is that all encompassing? Not really.

In reality, many of the Facebook Ad type campaign objectives overlap, and you could use multiple ad types to accomplish the same objective. Additionally, Facebook has many different options for you to choose from once you pick a campaign objective, which means choosing an ad type isn’t even half of the battle.

So how do you decide which ad type to use?

1) Define your campaign goal.

Before you begin any ad campaign, you first need to determine what the goal of your campaign is. Are you trying to drive conversions on your website? Drive attendance for an upcoming event? Simply get more customers to your local store?

Don’t just come up with a campaign around which ad type you want to use. Instead, start with your own marketing needs and build your ad around it.

2) Choose relevant types you could use.

Once you’ve defined the goal of your ad campaign, take a look at the different Facebook Ad types available to you. Luckily, you already know what each of the ad types are.

Choose the type most relevant to your goals. You probably noticed Facebook has multiple ad types you could use for a single objective. If your goal is to drive downloads for an ebook, for example, you could use any one of the following options:

Clicks to Website
Website Conversions
Lead Generation
Offer Claims

3) Narrow down your options.

Once you’ve chosen which ad types are most applicable to your needs, choose the one you think will work best for you campaign. Or, use the same creative, copy, and targeting options to set up a campaign test using different ad types and see if one performs better than the other.

4) Write copy and create assets.

One great feature of Facebook’s Ads Manager tool is the wide range of creative and layout options you have available to you. Not only can you choose between image, video, photo grid, and carousel layouts, you can also customize your ads for mobile and desktop audiences.

Facebook also has lots of different calls-to-action you can use on your ads, or you can choose not to use one at all! As you run different ad campaigns, make sure to test and analyze what works best for your audience.

5) Use different ad types for different campaign goals.

Don’t just stick to one ad type for all of your campaigns. Instead, make sure you’re optimizing your ads for the right campaign objectives. Try out different Facebook Ad types and different ad campaigns to optimize your ad strategy for your audience.

6) Target the right audience.

Creating the draft of your ad is only half the battle. The other half is figuring out how to target the right audience for your ads campaign.

Luckily, our free guide to Facebook Lead Ads has an in-depth section on how to set up your targeting strategy for any ad campaign you run.

7) Test, analyze, and repeat.

Once you’ve defined your campaign objective, selected your ad type, created your ad, and targeted the right audience, it’s time to analyze your results.

Remember: digital advertising is all about testing, analyzing, and optimizing future ad campaigns over time. Make sure you follow this important final important step, and you’ll be on your way to implementing a high-ROI ads strategy in no time.

You may be wondering, “Okay, which Facebook Ad type should I definitely try right away?

We just put together this in-depth guide on Facebook Lead Ads. It’ll help you learn everything you need to know about optimizing lead generation ads that allow users to submit forms to you without ever leaving Facebook. Check it out here or click the banner below.

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Instagram Stories Ads: What Marketers Need to Know

January 4, 2020

Want more leads and customers from Instagram? Have you considered Instagram Stories ads? To explore what you need to know about Instagram Stories ads, I interview Susan Wenograd on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Susan is a Facebook ads expert and the chief marketing officer at Aimclear, a marketing agency focused on paid search and […]

The post Instagram Stories Ads: What Marketers Need to Know appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.

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Snap Inc. Scoops Up Startup AI Factory

January 4, 2020

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The 7-Day Challenge to Jumpstart Your Email Marketing in 2020

January 4, 2020

Every year, 80% of new year’s resolutions fail by the time February rolls around. Launching your email marketing strategy shouldn’t be one of them.

That’s why we created a simple, 7-day challenge to help you dominate email marketing in 2020.

By the end of it, you’ll have launched the most important parts of a successful email marketing strategy. And the best part? You only need 30 minutes or less each day to complete this challenge.

(Don’t have an email marketing platform? You’ll need one. Set up a FREE email marketing account in AWeber.)

Day 1: Choose your email template and brand it. (30 minutes)

This step is often overlooked. Many people use different email templates every time they send an email. Or, they never fully customize a template to match their brand.

But branding an email template and using it consistently are important. Your brand sets you apart from your competitors. It allows you to be unique and develop a personality for your business. It builds credibility and trust between you and your subscribers. Your subscribers can see your content and immediately tie it back to you.

Step 1: Choose your email template. Find an email template that works with your brand and your message. A plain template is often better than one already filled with colors and background images, because it’s easier to make it your own. Then, add your logo to the top or bottom of the email. (Inside AWeber, there are 8 NEW email templates you can easily customize to fit your branding. Choose the template format you’d like. Then drag and drop to add your images and build the layout you want.)

Step 2: Add your brand colors to your template. Don’t overdo it! Too many colors can be distracting. Try adding your brand colors in just a few places, like your call-to-action buttons, header image, or headlines.

For example, in the welcome email of AWeber’s FWD: Thinking newsletter, we incorporate our brand colors by using a header image with AWeber’s green and blue gradient and a call-to-action button with our brand’s shade of blue.

Homework: Watch this video on How to Design an Awesome Welcome Email.

To do: Choose an email template and add your logo and brand colors to it.

Day 2: Customize your confirmation message. (15 minutes)

A confirmed opt-in message is an email you send people immediately after they fill out your sign up form. It asks them to verify they want to subscribe to your emails by clicking a link or button in the message.

Confirmation messages are optional but strongly recommended. They serve as proof that your subscribers definitely want to be on your list. So internet service providers (like Gmail and Yahoo!) may deliver more of your messages to the inbox when you use confirmation messages. Plus, it prevents subscribers from signing up using fake email addresses.

To make your subscribers more likely to confirm their subscription, you can follow these common best practices for confirmed opt-in emails:

Keep your content short.
Explain the value your subscribers will receive by subscribing to your list.
Tell them what they need to do to confirm.

Homework: Read Writing Confirmation and Welcome Emails People Love.

To do: Set up and customize the subject line and content of your confirmed opt-in email. (If you’re an AWeber customer, you can follow these directions to complete this step.)

Day 3: Create a sign up form. (30 minutes)

Sign up forms allow your subscribers to easily join your email list. You can promote your form by adding it to your website and sharing a hosted sign up form with your audience. Hosted sign up forms allow you to share your form anywhere, even if you don’t have a website.

Homework: Read 9 Inspiring Sign Up Form Ideas to Grow Your Email List.

To do: Write your sign up form copy and build your form using ideas from the homework post you just read.

Day 4: Write your welcome email (30 minutes)

A welcome email is the first message subscribers receive after joining your list and confirming their subscription. And it gets a lot of attention — on average, open rates are 4 times higher and click-through rates are 5 times higher than other emails, according to marketing research company Experian. You can take advantage of this above average engagement by crafting an excellent welcome email.

Your welcome email should:

Welcome subscribers to your email list.
Deliver the lead magnet you promised on your sign up form.
Explain what kind of content you’ll send subscribers, how often you’ll send it, and what they’ll learn.
Introduce yourself or your business.
Ask subscribers to add you to their address book. (This is called whitelisting and it can help more of your emails bypass the spam folder.)

Once you draft your welcome email, take some time to personalize it! Personalization makes your subscribers feel you’re writing a message specifically to them. Something as simple as including your subscriber’s first name in the subject line or body of your welcome email can boost opens and clicks.

Homework: Read The One Email You Should Always Send and How Personalization Can Help You Connect with Subscribers.

To do: Write and build a welcome message for your subscribers using AWeber’s Drag and Drop Email Builder.

Day 5: Automate your welcome email. (10 minutes)

You wrote your welcome email. Your next step? Automate it. That way, your subscribers will receive it immediately after they sign up for your list.

Simply create an automated series for new subscribers in your email marketing platform. Here’s how:

Build a new automation series in your email marketing platform. Make sure it’s set up to send to every new subscriber.
Paste your welcome email content into the template you chose on day 1.
Add your welcome email to the series.
Activate your series.

Your email marketing system does the rest!

Homework: Read Email Automation 101: How to Use Automation.

To do: Create a welcome series using AWeber’s automation platform Campaigns and add in your welcome email. (Here are step-by-step instructions for setting up your own welcome series in AWeber.)

Day 6: Publish your form on your social media channels. (20 minutes)

Your list is set up and your confirmation and welcome messages are ready to go. Now it’s time to put your hard work to the test and start to grow your list!

An easy first step is turning you social media followers into email subscribers. People who follow your brand on social media have already shown they want to hear from you. And there’s no better way for them to stay up to date on your latest content and sales than joining your email list.

Post a link to your hosted sign up form on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and ask your social followers to subscribe for exclusive updates.

Homework: Read 7 Expert Tricks to Grow Your Email List with Social Media.

To do: Add your sign up form to your Facebook profile and tweet out the hosted URL to your form.

Day 7: Share your sign up form with your connections. (20 minutes)

Reach out to the people you already know, like colleagues, friends, or family members. Ask them if they want to sign up for your email list.

Let them know what content you are offering and explain the benefits they would receive if they sign up.

If they say no, maybe the content you’re offering just isn’t for them. But maybe they know someone it would be perfect for. You never know until you ask!

Homework: Read How To Get Your First 50 Email Subscribers in Less Than 30 Days. Use the fill-in-the-blank copy template in this post to easily reach out to people.

To do: Contact 5 people you know. Send them the hosted URL to your sign up form and ask if they’d like to join your email list or share it with someone they know.

Ready, set, go!

Congrats! If you completed this 7-day challenge, you’re well on your way to launching a successful email marketing strategy.

Want more content like this? Subscribe to our FREE weekly email newsletter FWD: Thinking for email marketing tips from the pros.

Bonus challenge

Ready for your next challenge? Then try this: Create a lead magnet — a freebie you give subscribers when they sign up for your list. Lead magnets can increase the conversion rate of your sign up form.

For example, author and productivity expert Paula Rizzo offers a free List Making Starter Kit in return for signing up for her email newsletter, which she sends via AWeber.

Homework: Read How to Create a Lead Magnet in Less Than a Day.

To do: Build a lead magnet, add a link to it in your welcome email, and mention it on your sign up form.

The post The 7-Day Challenge to Jumpstart Your Email Marketing in 2020 appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

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Brands can now buy Walmart sponsored search ads via API partners

January 4, 2020

Walmart Media Group named four initial advertising partners to support sponsored search campaigns.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

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How Brands Can Leverage Pinterest To Make Sales

January 4, 2020

Did you know:

Pinterest is such a key part of the buying journey for its users that over 90 percent of weekly active Pinners use Pinterest to make purchasing decisions.

Talk about buying power!

Not only are Pinterest users making purchase decisions on the platform, 83 percent say they are making purchases specifically based on the content they’ve seen from brands on Pinterest.

Pinterest is no longer simply a place to save ideas and build dream boards. Instead, Pinterest has turned into the world’s largest visual discovery platform.

And there are a lot of opportunities for brands.

We had a chance to chat with the team over at Pinterest about some of their best practices for brands looking to increase sales. We’re excited to share those lessons with you!

Here’s what we learned…

How people are using Pinterest

Pinterest might not immediately come to mind as a platform to invest in for many brands, but it should.

Clearly, Pinterest is not one to be ignored when it comes to your marketing strategy. Here’s how you can use the platform to drive sales.

How to leverage Pinterest for sales: 5 tips from the Pinterest team

1. Brand your pins

2. Create mobile-first content

3. Create a similar look and feel

Have you ever clicked on a beautiful image on Pinterest only to be taken to a website that looks nothing like the pin? I have, and it left me really confused.

This example from Ettitude is really great. The pin they are sharing fits seamlessly in a lot of home decor and design tags on Pinterest.

And although their website uses different photos, it still has a similar feel to the pin.

4. Time your campaigns

A big element to social media marketing and campaigns is timing. When are people online and when are people talking about the things you want to talk about?

5. Set up your shop

Every Business profile on Pinterest has the ability for users to create a “shop” tab.

We hope this guide helps you get started with or double down on your efforts with Pinterest. Let us know about your experience with Pinterest in the comments!

If you want even more Pinterest resources, the Pinterest team has created a free Pinterest Academy with tons of lessons in there.

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