Have you ever considered building your business subscriber base and making a targeted marketing approach? And wondered what and how to do it right.
Before getting started,
Who is your subscriber?
In simple terms, the audience is familiar with your brand and wishes to get regular updates via email and SMS. Okay, but what is the benefit of those subscribers for you in the long term? Well, those are the people you can rely upon for your business growth – sales, loyalty program, building audience, and more!
Email and SMS subscribers permit you to receive information from your end, be it product updates, new launches, offers/discounts, etc.
And now, what is targeted marketing?
To put it in a nutshell, instead of sending emails or SMS to large numbers of audiences, you define a strategy acquired from the data you have collected and create a subset based on their traits, interests, and preferences. Approaching those subsets effectively offers you numerous benefits.
Targeted marketing gives up to 5.3X times higher click-through rates than other marketing formats. One best ways to send a targeted message is via email marketing.
Now, let’s dive into the seven top techniques for subscriber growth and targeted marketing for your business.
1. Creating Irresistible Lead Magnets
We all know you don’t get something for nothing. So, what is a lead magnet?
Simply put, you give your customers (leads) free assets or special offers in exchange for their contact information, also known as gated content in the marketing term. The assets can be webinars, white papers, discount codes, eBooks, templates, or any other resources.
So, to gain access to the lead magnets, the leads have to give their details, such as name, email address, and, in some cases, company information and phone number. Once the leads are captured as a brand, you can start to connect with them via email, and if they are opt-in, you can contact them via SMS.
Research has shown that 50% of marketers have experienced higher conversion rates with lead magnets.
Five Types of Lead Magnet That Gain Results
1. Guides or Reports
Usually, industry guides and reports are great formats to get the leads’ information in exchange.
For example, during the big day sale event BFCM, Targetbay prepared a guide for the eCommerce store owners and marketers.
2. Ebooks
The ebook is another good way to generate healthy leads by showing your audience that you are experts in the market in offering solutions to their pain points, which won’t be too salesy.
For example, during the BFCM big day sales, TargetBay released ebooks that would benefit eCommerce store owners and marketers and help them stand out.
3. Case Studies
Another effective way to get leads in exchange is case studies, which are nothing but the success stories of past clients or customers. Usually, case studies act as social proof that can be highlighted to new customers for conversions.
4. Tool Kit or Resources
Educators offer resources or tool kits to their audience in exchange for their contact information. For instance, many DIY makers can offer tool kits or resources for their craft designs.
5. Webinars
Lastly, webinars are one good and effective way to grab your audience’s attention because visuals are more effective than written format to catch the lead’s attention.
That’s why many companies use visuals in their lead magnet. For instance, TargetBay hosts free webinars for their audience during BFCM by helping them with information and tips to boost their conversion compared to competitors. And the videos to the inbox of those who signed up.
2. Optimizing the Landing Page for Conversions
Attracting and converting leads is the biggest business challenge in this competitive market. It can be a startup after the MVP development or enterprise generating leads, which is important for your business. Growing your subscriber base is a sign of your business growth.
What is a landing page?
It is a standalone webpage designed to serve as a point of arrival for visitors who click the link to an advertisement, social media, search engine result (SERP), or other source.
Source: Netflix
3 Types of Landing Pages for Subscriber Growth
1. Click-through Landing Page
This kind of page serves as a bridge between the marketing campaign and the desired destination. The main purpose of this landing page is to make the visitor click on the link and redirect them to another page or website.
2. Lead Generation Landing Page
It is also known as a lead-capturing page, designed to capture valuable information from your audience. In exchange, you offer them valuable assets, such as their name, email address, etc.
For instance, “Everyday Health” offers different categories of wellness to send their newsletter to their subscribers so that it will be more specific to their needs.
Source: Everydayhealth
3. Sales Landing Page
This landing page is perfectly designed only for sales and promotion. This landing page can be designed to showcase key features, benefits, and unique selling points.
Elements to be Added to the Landing Page
When designing landing pages, you must remember the five core elements to add to your landing page, whether collecting leads or driving sales. A website deviates you from the core concept with many other products, but landing pages take you to the one core you are focused on.
- Have a clear, unique selling proposition (USP)
- Add visual representation in your landing page as a hero shot
- Add the feature and benefits to the landing page to make it precise
- Add social proof
- Add call to action (CTA)
3. Implementing Smart Content Upgrades
You might have heard and come across “content is king” – it is only that way, only when you do it right and keep upgrading it.
So, now, What Is a Content Upgrade?
Simply, it is a powerful sister of a lead magnet, and you might be writing many blog posts and driving traffic to your site. And you see, the traffic is surging, but unfortunately, they aren’t converting as email subscribers. Relatable?
How Do We Turn that Traffic into Subscribers?
Well, that is where content upgrade works.
Content upgrades are highly specific opt-in offers that will turn each valuable, informative blog post into an email list growing steroids. You can write a blog with more valuable bonus content – your visitors must give their information to access that.
Source: Adoric
Why content upgrade is necessary? The statistics show that 70% of your website or blog visitors never return. So, capturing their attention and getting the information on their first visit is good to nurture them in the future. That way, Brian Dean of Backlinko added the content upgrade for 15 blog posts – BAM!! His site conversion has been boosted by 185%.
Steps to Do Content Upgrade
- Step 1: Check your Google Analytics to find the top-performing blog post, and choose the top five or seven blog posts to add the content upgrade. As you are already gaining more traffic, you will get more leads.
- Step 2: After selecting the blogs to add the content upgrade, do the same for your newly written blogs and make it part of your system.
- Step 3: Next week, choose the next top five performing blogs from the older post and add a content upgrade. You don’t have to create different content upgrades for all the older posts; if the blog concept is the same, you can repeat the same content.
4. Leveraging Social Media for Subscriber Acquisition
Yes, social media presence as a brand. How could we miss that? Nowadays, social media has become part of our daily lives. It became a habit for people to check on their social media right off the bat.
Importance of Making a Social Media Presence
Social media has become part of the modern customer journey; every brand aligns its presence with social media. Even with economic constraints, marketers and business owners still use social media and invest in it to run target campaigns.
Social media strategy can make or break your brand because 94% of business leaders agree that social media data positively impacts building a brand – according to Sprouts Social.
Here are the importance of the social media presence as a brand
- Building Brand Reputation and Loyalty
- Targeted Audience Engagement and cost-effective Marketing
- Good Customer Service & Better Understanding of Market Trends
- Increase Sales and Revenue
3 Effective Ways to Turn Social Media Followers into Your Subscribers
1. Put a Landing Page in Your Bio
It is about promoting a link on your social media post or bio. Sometimes, it can be multiple links, making the post or bio look clumsy. Even some social media platforms don’t allow you to give links on the post (Don’t look around Instagram, I am pointing you).
Some platform links, such as “Linktree,” can help you add more than one link in an organized way. And you can add the Linktree link to your bio.
2. Give an Easy Way to Sign Up
Your followers don’t have so much patience to go search for an opt-in or signup in your post. To put it more simply, if I have an apple pie in front of me, I will obviously eat it. If I have to go and search for it, I will go, but not too long.
The same; make it easy for your followers to convert to your subscribers.
On Twitter – You can see how “Digital Dentistry” has asked it’s followers to become its email subscribers.
Source: Twitter
On Facebook – You can see how the SaaS eCommerce platform “App Sumo” made it easy for their followers to join the community and gave links to turn them into subscribers.
Source: Facebook
3. Run Ads
The one quick and effective way to turn visitors into leads or email subscribers is by running ads on social media platforms. The platform has made it easy for businesses to run targeted campaigns with few clicks and with little investment.
5. Running Targeted Email and SMS Campaigns
Now you have built your email list via social media, website visitors, and content upgrades. What’s next? As a brand, you have to do target marketing rather than a blasting approach, which doesn’t give your business any ROI.
We all know targeted marketing includes some set of steps to be followed, like defining your goals, choosing your target audience, and then choosing the target channel to reach them, as well as segmentation.
We are here in the third step, the channel to choose – I would say in one go, undoubtedly go to email and SMS marketing channels.
Do I need Targeted Marketing?
The short answer is “Yes”. Because,
1. Everyone does it
This isn’t always a good approach, but in this case, it is. Whether you are selling products or services to reach your target audience, you must run a targeted marketing campaign because your competitors do that before you.
2. Improves Engagement
One effective way to improve your engagement is running a targeted email and SMS campaign. This marketing type helps your brand keep your audience updated and engaged with your brand. Though there are multiple ways to approach your target audience, like social media and ads, this email and SMS channel still has its own place.
3. Highest ROI to Win
Because targeted email and SMS marketing is sent only to the specific target audience based on their preference, interests, behaviors, and more. This helps you to move the high-valued customers into the sales funnel easily. And also you spend on what only works.
How do I Run a Targeted Marketing Campaign?
A targeted marketing campaign completely depends upon the data you collected for your brand. However, some tools can help you run your campaign successfully and effectively.
1. Marketing Automation
This is a much-needed tool for a brand to do the repetitive task effectively and save time. The marketing automation platforms like BayEngage are designed specifically for marketers and eCommerce store owners to make their work easy. The marketing automation tools let you streamline your workflow, be it an email or SMS.
For instance, your audience has abandoned their cart, and you want to bring them back by informing them by email and SMS. Marketing automation software like BayEngage helps you to do that with the right email template, SMS ideas, time delay between two channels, and more!
2. Customer Data Platform
A CDP is software that helps your business to collect, manage, and activate data from multiple sources. A powerful CDP integrates all forms of sources to collect the data and create a single profile for one customer. This gives you a centralized database for your business.
3. Customer Relationship Management
A CRM successfully gathers customer interactions from different channels and allows businesses to drive growth. The CRM software is mainly designed for sales, marketing, and service teams to manage relationships between customers, teams, and vendors.
4. Data Management Platform
Lastly, DMP helps you collect data from different sources and organize it to build a perfect profile for every single customer. From there, it is easily shared with the marketing team – for their digital ad platform or in-house marketing channel. So the right content can get to the right place.
6. Hosting Webinars for Direct Engagement
Webinars are video presentations, workshops, or lectures hosted online with some webinar hosting software like Zoom. Many B2B businesses host these webinars, as well as some B2C.
Webinars are a highly interactive form of B2B and B2C marketing that builds authority and relationships for your brand. Most SaaS product-based companies like TargetBay conduct online webinars for their audience, giving tips for conversions, personalization email and SMS campaigns, segmentations, or even conducting webinars on how tools can help them for business growth.
Some actionable tips to get more subscribers with webinars are
- Choose a topic that appeals to a wider audience.
- Use exit intent popups so the website visitors can be altered with that for signups.
- Use a countdown timer to create a small urge to join the webinar
- Drive more signups using the email marketing sent to your existing subscribers and make them invite their circle of friends with incentives
- Timing matters; always choose the best time and day to host your webinar
- Create a landing page for your webinar and promote that via social media channels
- Never advertise your webinars with “reply immediately”; give them signup forms.
- Ask your guest speaker to promote your webinar in their circle.
7. Gamification Technique to Boost Engagement
Gamification in lead magnets works due to the psychological impact on the brain because people work hard or like to receive appreciation and rewards. When it comes to their favorite brand, this gamification technique works wonders. A customer can spin a wheel by giving an email information to get some discount or gifts. Customers can join the customer loyalty program to receive free rewards/points.
Ways to Get Lead Magnets via Gamification
1. Spin a Wheel Contest
We must have seen this contest in many eCommerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, and Nykaa. This is one of the most effective marketing strategies to generate leads easily.
Who doesn’t like to spin the wheel? I’m sure you also would have done it like me.
Source: glowskinbeauty
2. Loyalty Program
Customer loyalty programs are given to existing customers for being loyal to the brand. These are customers whom the brand can rely upon all the time. In that way, brands like Starbucks have an excellent loyalty program for their new and existing customers.
If I have missed any ways of lead magnet through gamification, comment on the blog let’s explore and expand new techniques.
Ready to Discover Lead Magnet and Target Marketing Techniques?
In the realm of the marketing landscape, achieving subscriber growth isn’t just a numbers game; it’s a strategic dance of engagement, relevance, and targeted precision. Throughout this exploration of “Subscriber Growth And Targeted Marketing: 7 Top Techniques,” we’ve uncovered key strategies that propel your marketing efforts to new heights.
As you embark on your journey of subscriber growth and targeted marketing, remember that this isn’t merely a checklist; it’s a guide. A guide to fostering meaningful connections, delivering relevant content, and, most importantly, building a community that believes in the value you bring. Happy Strategizing!
