Category: Marketing Automation

Have you ever wished you could just use a picture to explain a process instead of words (or your hands)?
A process infographic could be just what you need to show your audience how to do something or how a process works. A well-designed one can establish you as an authority on whatever subject you choose to cover — whether you’re trying to show how your business’s coffee is sourced or train the new hire remotely.
Even better, they’re easy to create using a template or from scratch, meaning you can get started on one today.

What is a process infographic?
A process infographic simplifies and explains the steps of a process in primarily visual terms. Generally, it illustrates what happens during each step or phase with an intuitive layout that’s easy for the viewer to follow from start to finish. A well-designed process infographic makes the concept you want to share more accessible and saves you and the audience time.
Chances are, you encounter process infographics in some form pretty regularly in your daily life. Just imagine how much (more) complicated it would be to build your new Ikea desk if the instructions only included words and no visuals. Pretty daunting, huh?
Process infographics allow us to visualize how a process works more quickly and with more clarity. This makes them excellent training and educational tools — but also a smart marketing strategy.
Here’s an example of a process infographic that explains mechanical recycling:

Image Source: bluevision
For marketers — particularly those of us who are trying to market products or services that require a bit of explanation — process infographics are extremely helpful for connecting with potential leads and communicating your company’s value. Explaining how your company’s offerings can provide value to customers with visuals can make your marketing materials more memorable and impactful than using copy alone.
Where to Find Process Infographic Templates
If you want to create your own process infographic with a template, here are a few offerings for every budget.
Venngage
Venngage has a wide variety of process-specific infographic templates for a number of different purposes. If you’re looking to essentially plug your process into a finalized design and go, you’ll likely find what you want on Venngage. Monthly and annual subscriptions are available that give you full access to their template library and the ability to create and download your own process infographics.

Template available on Venngage
Canva
Canva has ready-made infographic process templates ideal for fun activities, recipes, and the occasional life hack. You can also create a blank infographic process template on the site if you can’t find one that fits your project. Canva has a free and paid version depending on your needs.

Template available on Canva
Visme
Visme’s library of process-specific templates includes an extensive variety of different options, including more flowchart-style process templates than other infographic builder sites. If you’re looking to translate a particularly complex process into a visual medium, Visme is a smart place to start your search for the perfect template. You can set up an account for free or get access to the full library as a premium member.

Template available on Visme
HubSpot
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention that HubSpot offers free infographic templates, including a number of process-specific templates that are easy to customize. All of our templates are free to use and compatible with PowerPoint, so you don’t need to download any new programs or apps to use them.

Template available from HubSpot
DesignCap
DesignCap is an online graphic design tool with a curated selection of process infographic templates available to customize to your needs. While their selection is technically smaller than other template tools on this list, every template was created by a professional designer. They offer many templates for free and have paid plans starting at $4.99/month.

Template available on DesignCap

How to Create a Process Infographic Without a Template
If you can’t find a process infographic template that fits the process you want to visualize, you can always create your own from scratch.
For the mechanics of conceptualizing, structuring, and creating a cohesive design for your infographic, you can check out our step-by-step blog post here to develop your own infographic design in PowerPoint. Below, we’ll chat through a few tips specific to process infographics you can apply to any design.
Pick one process to explain.
Process infographics are good at breaking down complex subjects, but you still want to limit the scope of your design to one single topic that can be explained in a linear way — i.e., things that have a start and an end. Trying to explain too much in one visual can make your design confusing. Stick to one central idea per infographic.
Speak to your audience, not yourself.
This applies to most marketing strategies, but it’s always important to remember that you are — more often than not — not your target audience. Chances are, you know a lot more about the subject of your infographic than your audience, so it’s easy to fall back on that knowledge as you plan your design.
Because your audience knows less than you do about this subject, it’s important to approach any complexity from their perspective, taking the time to explain more elements than you would need yourself.
Map out each step with a clear start and end.
As you start outlining your infographic, identify where your audience will start (what they likely know about the process before reading the infographic) and where you want them to end (what you want them to know by the end). With those specifics in mind, map out the steps of
Experiment with the layout.
What’s the best way to structure the information of your process infographic? This will ultimately depend on the “shape” of your information.
For example, a supply chain infographic will likely benefit from a straightforward, linear way of displaying information, but a process like how your company recommends specific products for different needs would need more of a flowchart style design. Experiment with different ways to lay out each step of the process you’re describing until you find one that makes sense.
Edit for clarity.
Once you have a draft of your process infographic completed, give it a re-read and check for areas that might be unclear or confusing. Or even better, ask someone else to review your work with a fresh pair of eyes.
Don’t skip this final review — the goal of your infographic is to make something complex more accessible, and not everyone learns new information in the same way. Having someone else take a quick look can help you refine your infographic so it suits a wider audience.
Visuals succeed where words can fail.
We’ve avoided using this particularly relevant cliche for this entire article, but here it comes: a picture really is worth a thousand words. Using visuals to aid in your explanations of complex subjects or processes can help make your marketing materials more accessible and human.
The next time you’re tasked with breaking down a subject that seems to resist clear explanations, consider making a process infographic instead.

As mentioned in the title. Most of our leads and prospects can be found on these 3 platforms. Possibly if the mentioned service serves SEO as well it would be a cherry on top, but right now we are perfectly fine with using google search console and ahrefs.
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Improve your ROI with these email marketing best practices for 2020. Making it easy to send the best email marketing campaigns.

Characteristics and Strategies of Service Marketing, no business can survive in the market today without a strong service marketing strategy. Even physical products need exceptional service support to succeed. Do you do everything you need to manage service marketing? Read on to find out.
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The start of a new year means new goals and the chance to start fresh. That feeling of wiping the slate clean, both at home and at work, leaves us inspired and motivated for the year ahead. That feeling is all the more refreshing after a year like 2020.
In order to help you get organised for the year ahead, we’re highlighting some of our popular time-saving features. These will help free up your schedule so you can focus on more important things.
Here are some of our customers’ favorite features for saving time and doing more.
Features to help you find what you’re looking for
These actions help you move through your campaigns simply and quickly. Less time spent poking around looking for information means more time getting work done.
Campaign categories
Your campaigns are organised into easy to understand categories: draft, sent, and deleted. There’s also an overview page which shows your recent scheduled, draft, and sent campaigns at a glance.
Tagging
You can create and filter by customized tags to organise your campaigns in the way that makes the most sense for your team. You can even use multiple tags for total customization.
Thumbnail and list view
You can choose to view your campaigns either in a list or as a series of thumbnails. List view provides a succinct summary of your campaigns, while thumbnail view shows a handy view of your email design.
Search improvements
If you can’t remember what you named a campaign, you can search by subject line and by category (such as draft, sent, deleted) to help you find campaigns faster.

Date filtering for sent campaigns
No need to scroll through all your sent campaigns to find the one from last January. Use the date filter to view campaigns sent during a date range of particular interest.

Features to help you complete tasks quicker
There never seems to be enough hours in the day, especially when you’re planning for the year ahead. These efficient actions in the Campaign Monitor app will make your life easier and help you move through your email tasks quickly.
Single-click copy
Hover over an existing campaign and click copy to quickly duplicate the campaign in a new draft.
Quick preview
To see a quick view of an existing campaign, click on the three-dot icon for that campaign and select preview.

Quick rename
To rename any sent or draft campaign, click on the three-dot icon for that campaign and select rename. 
Features for smarter campaign management
Better campaign management means you spend your energy creating stellar content and less time dealing with the nuts and bolts of email. Say hello to less frustration for an enjoyable experience with Campaign Monitor.
Restore deleted campaigns
Campaigns are stored in a deleted folder for 30 days after deletion. You can restore campaigns within that time frame or you can permanently delete them from there. Never again worry about losing something you need.

Copy scheduled campaigns
You can copy a scheduled campaign to create a new draft. No more waiting until the campaign has sent to start working on your next one. Simply copy the campaign and get to work.
Bulk delete
Want to clear out all your old campaigns? Hover over an existing campaign and a checkbox will appear. From there you can select multiple campaigns and choose delete. 
Compare sent campaigns
Compare results from multiple campaigns to see which are performing best. Hover over a campaign and use the checkbox to select the campaigns you want to review, then select compare. 

Wrap up
Feedback from our customers shaped these updates and will remain at the heart of how we grow in the future. Because email marketing should be enjoyable, with fewer frustrations and hair-pulling.
The new year is a time for new beginnings, new goals, and new systems. We here at Campaign Monitor know you need to make the most of every second of your workday in order to do more of what you love. 
The post Save Time While Doing More appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Got an ebook you want to promote? Or maybe you’re planning to write one and want to make sure you launch it the right way? Either way, this post will teach you what you need to know about ebook marketing.

Big Idea or Enduring Question: A warm welcome goes a long way in solidifying a company’s culture! If so then, why not provide existing users an ability to auto-follow new users in chatter? Chatter is a great way to boost collaboration … Continue reading →

When it comes to growing your brand and boosting your revenue, social media matters.
Here’s why: More than three billion people worldwide now have social media accounts, and 54% of those users leverage social media to research products.
The biggest challenge? Finding the right platform for your social media posts where you can connect with your ideal audience.
While many businesses leverage sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to promote their content and increase conversion rates, there’s also a case to be made for more business-focused frameworks like LinkedIn.
In this comprehensive guide to LinkedIn sponsored updates we’ll tackle the big questions — what are LinkedIn sponsored updates, how do they work and how much do they cost?
We’ll also offer a list of sponsored updates best practices to help your brand make the most of this social content solution.

What are LinkedIn Sponsored Updates?
Let’s start at the beginning: What exactly are LinkedIn sponsored updates?
Also called sponsored content, the official LinkedIn help page says a sponsored update is, “a LinkedIn Page update that is sponsored as an advertisement and is delivered to the LinkedIn feed of members beyond those who follow your company.”
In practice, LinkedIn sponsored updates are advertisements created by your company or marketing team which are then served to LinkedIn users who either follow your page or follow pages in a similar content space.
These ads are served as part of the native LinkedIn feed and typically include a combination of relevant text and contextual images or videos, in turn helping them blend in with similar user content rather than stand out as paid-for advertisements.
When designed and deployed well, LinkedIn sponsored updates can help drive organic interest in your brand from both current followers and a wider audience of LinkedIn members. Worth noting? While these posts are designed to follow the format of familiar user updates, they’re always labeled as “sponsored content” to ensure there’s no misleading users or confusion.
What Types of Sponsored Updates are Available?
Brands can create four types of direct sponsored updates:
Single Image Ads
Single image ads include one image and text that are displayed directly in targeted member LinkedIn feeds.
Carousel Image Ads
Carousel ads contain multiple images in succession that users can scroll through to get a better sense of your products or services.
Video Ads
Video ads offer a way to include multimedia marketing with in-feed videos that users can watch on-demand.
Single Job Ads
If you’re looking to expand your team, you can create single job ads for your targeted audience. They must promote a single job opportunity and be linked to an active job post on LinkedIn.
You can also create what’s known as “direct sponsored content”. These ads won’t display on your LinkedIn Page or Showcase Page before being served as advertisements.
As a result, they’re often used by companies to test several marketing approaches and see which one produces the best results and use it as the basis for more robust sponsored content updates.
How much do LinkedIn sponsored updates cost?
The short answer is that more resource-intensive ads — such as videos or carousels — will cost more than their single-image counterparts.
The long answer is slightly more complicated. First, it’s important to understand that LinkedIn uses a bidding model for sponsored ads; you select and create your ad type and then specify how much you’re willing to pay — a minimum price exists to ensure advertisers are fairly paid, but you’ll never be charged more than your maximum upper limit. Differing ad providers then bid on the service and the lowest price wins.
Ad price is also determined by your target audience and relevance score. If your target audience is in high demand, you’ll be charged more because there’s greater competition to capture user interest. You can also lower your ad costs by creating relevant ads. The more relevant and content-rich your ad, the less you’ll pay — because there’s a better chance of engaging LinkedIn users.
It’s also worth considering the best cost model for your ad: Cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM). CPC means you only pay when users click on your ad and visit your site, while CPM means you pay for every 1,000 views or “impressions” of your ad.
If your goal is generating brand awareness, opt for CPM. If you have an established audience and are looking to drive click-throughs and conversions, choose CPC.
LinkedIn Sponsored Updates Best Practices
Want to get the most from your LinkedIn sponsored updates? Keep these best practices in mind:
1. Follow LinkedIn sponsored update specs.
Each type of sponsored content comes with its own specifications.
Single image ads: Up to 255 characters for the ad name, 150 characters of intro text to avoid truncation, URLs with “http://” or “https://” and JPG, GIF or PNG files that are 5MB or smaller.
Carousel ads: Use a minimum of two cards and a maximum of ten. Each card has a maximum file size of 10MB and dimensions of 6012 x 6012px. Supported formats include JPG, PNG and non-animated GIFs.
Video ads: Video ads must be three to 30 seconds in length, between 75KB and 200MB and in MP4 format. They must also be less than 30 frames per second (FPS).
Single job ads: Single job ads should be concise, relevant, and clear and follow the same image guidelines as single image ads. They must also link to an active job posting on LinkedIn.
Failure to follow these guidelines may result in ads being rejected. If ads contain misleading or inappropriate content, LinkedIn may choose to remove the ads or terminate your LinkedIn account.
The service also makes it clear that “spam” posts are not permitted: According to their Best Practices for Sponsored Content page, “Businesses that post updates excessively are subject to review by LinkedIn and could risk having their LinkedIn Page deleted.”
2. Don’t overshare.
While targeted, relevant content can help drive user interest, too many ads too quickly can result in over-saturation.
LinkedIn recommends regularly tweaking your content strategy to deliver analysis rather than simply news, include curated content (with credit) from other sources, and repurpose older content where applicable.
3. Test, test, test.
As noted above, direct sponsored content is a great way to try out new advertising efforts and see what sticks.
With the social media market continually evolving, it’s worth evaluating ad performance every few weeks to see what’s working, what isn’t, and where specific changes can help.
4. Spend wisely.
Sponsored updates can get expensive as you incorporate new advertisements and use multiple ad types.
Here, it’s worth tracking your ad spend and switching from CPC to CPM models once click-through rates start to rise. If ads begin losing steam, consider moving back to CPM to generate increased awareness.
5. Find new markets.
While engaging your target market is critical, diversify ad objectives is also important to expand your overall impact. LinkedIn recommends using tools such as Lead Gen Forms to find better leads, assess ROI and manage your advertisements at scale.
LinkedIn’s sponsored update model offers a streamlined solution to help brands reach their target market, expand brand awareness, and boost ROI. Best bet? Start with direct sponsored content to see what sticks, then choose the cost model that makes the most sense — CPC or CPM — and adjust as needed to reach the largest LinkedIn audience.

There’s nothing obvious about great email marketing. Sure, we all know the basic formula for success — reaching the right people with the right content. But, how you narrow down who those people are and what kinds of content will track with them is a process that takes a lot of skill, not to mention…
The post 6 Things Every Email Marketer Should Be Doing This Year appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

Steps To Marginally Maximize Profit In Water Bottling Plant ​ Marginal Profit is the profit generated from the sale on one product in a business. Maximizing the Marginal Profit is essential in the sustainability of water bottling plants. If you intend to maximize Marginal Profit for your plant, I have addressed the steps in this article. https://ibottling.com/steps-to-marginally-maximize-profit-in-water-bottling-plant/ #bottledwaterplan #businessplan #bottledwaterplant #bottledwaterbusiness #bottlewaterbusiness #waterbusiness
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