A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Green Apple’s Approach to Building a Marketing Strategy

Person writing ideas on sticky notes

Green Apple Strategy was founded as a full-service marketing agency built on the idea of serving clients differently. Rather than leading with marketing services, such as building a website or managing PR, we set out to be an agency that approached our work with a “business owner” mindset. Rather than thinking about marketing in its own silo, we wanted to come alongside our clients to strategically consider how marketing could impact their entire business—and alternatively, how other areas of their business impacted marketing. We wanted to be an agency that worked to build marketing strategies with the entire business in mind—not just the immediate marketing needs or sales goals. 

This is one reason why “strategy” is intentionally included in our name. Whether it’s onboarding a new client or renewing our annual contract with an existing partner, the strategic planning process is an integral part of our approach and one of the primary ways we add value to our clients. We build our marketing plans with a focus on strategic planning and then develop our tactical approach from it. This has given us the opportunity to learn some important best practices when it comes to building a marketing strategy. 

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Our Approach to Building a Marketing Strategy

Here are a few best practices we’ve incorporated into our approach after crafting hundreds of marketing strategies over the past decade:

1. Make sure the right people are in the room as you build the strategy.

One of the dangers of building a marketing campaign in a silo is that the strategy isn’t aligned with the direction that sales is headed, or it ends up creating headaches for other areas of the business.

Developing your marketing strategy with input from important stakeholders is one of the keys to creating a plan that supports every area of the business. At Green Apple, we are passionate about getting the right people involved. It’s not helpful to work solely with the VP of Marketing when the CEO needs to sign off on the strategy. At the same time, we want to include people who might be impacted by the strategy and tactics. 

Defining the right people depends on the unique characteristics of each company. Depending on who is making the decision and who will be impacted, we’ve worked alongside CEOs, COOs, CFOs, marketing leadership, and service-line managers to ensure our marketing strategies benefit the direction of the entire company. 

2. Coordinate with key stakeholders to help them understand where marketing is going and collaborate around areas of impact. 

Getting the right people in the room is one thing. Intentionally listening to their needs, thoughts, and questions is another. While we don’t expect a CFO or COO to understand everything about marketing or know specific best practices, we also recognize their perspective on how our strategy impacts their role is important. 

Oftentimes, we’ll host a listening session as we share our initial thoughts and strategy with key stakeholders. We want their feedback because they all have different perspectives on the business. This coordination and collaboration allow marketing to hear updates that might be happening in other areas of the company. These insights can be important for finding your next marketing angle or designing a strategy that will truly move the business forward over the next year. 

For example, if Operations is planning on rolling out a new product or service line—that’s a key tactic to consider. If a potential merger or acquisition is happening in the next year, that will drastically impact your marketing plan. Gathering as much information and perspective for where the entire organization is headed in the next year ensures marketing can fulfill its role and address the specific needs of the company—whether that’s brand management, sales-enablement, or enhancing the customer experience.  

3. Set realistic expectations and goals based on what’s realistically possible.

Unless you are Amazon or another major Fortune 500 company, the resources and budget you can devote to marketing are limited. That’s important to remember as you build your marketing plan. It’s easy to get so caught up in the excitement of all the possible tactics and strategies that you forget what’s actually possible with the resources you have available. 

That’s why it’s important to set appropriate expectations as you finalize your marketing strategy. You need to recognize everything that is going to be required to execute the strategy, including your budget, resources, and timeline.

Having this sort of honest and transparent conversation with clients has been one of the keys to our work at Green Apple. Over the years, we’ve worked with clients who only want us to develop a strategy they can execute internally. Other clients ask us to develop a strategy and then hire us to execute it. Because of our strategic emphasis and full-service capabilities, we’re able to provide value to both types of clients. We don’t rely on pushing a specific tactic or service. In every strategy session, we work with our clients to help them define the difference between what they should do or want to do and what they realistically can do.

4. Make sure stakeholders have a clear understanding of how marketing reaches your target audience.

One of our favorite parts in every strategy session is the moment when people realize how all of the marketing ideas and tactics work together to move their company forward. Whether it’s gaining clarity around their target audience or recognizing how all of the various marketing platforms create an omnichannel presence to reach today’s consumers, we love the “light bulb” moment when all the key stakeholders recognize the synergy a good marketing strategy can create. 

For example, one of the ways we support clients is by gathering customer feedback and testimonials. This becomes helpful for improving areas of the business, but it also provides an opportunity to create “customer spotlights” the company can promote through blogs and social media. These customer spotlights also become valuable sales tools that the business development team can use in proposals or pitch meetings. By creating a throughline, we’re able to leverage one simple idea to improve multiple areas of the business. 

5. Embrace the opportunity to learn and make adjustments as you go. 

Recognizing potential changes and creating space to learn and adjust are key to developing an agile marketing strategy that can evolve throughout the year. A marketing strategy should help you set a direction, but it should also give you the ability to evolve and adapt. Our marketing strategies include a process of continual learning so that we can optimize what we’re doing throughout the year. We also plan for the unexpected so that we can pivot if there’s a new service line or business need that arises. We’re not afraid to deliver a marketing strategy and then come back a few months later after analyzing the results to say, “We’ve identified a better way to do this.” 

Every marketing strategy should be developed with a long-term mindset that includes a process for looking at the data. We’re committed to changing directions if there is a more effective way to help the company succeed. 

Work with Us to Build Your Next Marketing Strategy

At Green Apple, our competitive advantage lies in our approach to strategic planning. If you’re interested in learning more about our process or discussing the specific ways we can help you, feel free to reach out to our team.

10 Spot-On Marketing Quotes

Table with laptop coffee mug notepad and phone

Finding new sources of inspiration and creativity can be one of the most helpful ways for marketers and business owners to stay proficient at their craft. You never know what might spark an idea or help identify the angle for your next marketing campaign.

At Green Apple, we like to keep ourselves inspired when it comes to new and better ways of marketing. Our team is constantly searching for creative practices and marketing ideas to incorporate into our work. It’s not uncommon for our team to share highlights from the latest marketing books we’ve read or quote thought leaders we’ve heard on podcasts during a whiteboard session.

10 Spot-On Marketing Quotes 

Here are ten marketing quotes we’ve shared that do a good job of capturing the essence of marketing, where it’s headed, and how companies can maximize their effectiveness when it comes to reaching customers and inspiring people to take action:

1. “Marketing strategy will impact every piece of your business, and it should be tied to every piece of your business.” – Brandon Andersen

I love this quote because it speaks to the new reality that marketing integrates with every part of your business and vice-versa. This is a key mindset in the way we approach marketing strategy at Green Apple. 

2. “The new reality is that sales and marketing are continuously and increasingly integrated. Marketing needs to know more about sales, sales leaders need to know more about marketing, and we all need to know more about our customers.” – Jill Rowley

Sales and marketing alignment is absolutely essential. This quote perfectly addresses the new reality of how the two teams should work together. 

3. “As marketing converges with customer service and sales, marketing today is more about helping and less about hyping.” – Joel Book

Marketing tactics aren’t the only thing that’s evolved. As marketing continues to work closely with customer service and sales, it’s important to adopt a helping mindset.

4. “Every email is an opportunity to test a different benefit or angle.” – Heather Morgan

Because of the nature of email, it’s an wise tactic to continually test your emails and collect analytical data to see what messages (and approaches) resonate most with your audience. 

5.​​ “Great marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problem; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems.” – Seth Godin

The best marketing campaigns are built around what potential customers are thinking and how to help them solve their problems. That’s the way you earn trust and attention. 

6. “Marketing is about becoming part of people’s stories.” – Bernadette Jiwa

One key to successful marketing is to position your brand in a way that makes your audience’s life better. Recognizing what customers want (and how marketing can help) is a key strategy to incorporate into your marketing approach. 

7. “Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart.” – Joe Chernov

Great marketing campaigns make the customer feel like the hero. Whether it’s through the blog content you write or the monthly email newsletter you send, it’s important to focus your marketing content on your customers, not just highlighting your brand. 

8. “The new wave of marketing is scientific marketing. It’s not about the big idea—it’s about making course corrections every day.” – Sharad Sharma

One of the best things about marketing in today’s digital age is the ability we have to constantly measure and tweak our efforts. Being able to optimize our campaigns has been one of the most beneficial practices we’ve implemented over the past ten years. 

9. “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” – Tom Fishburne

People don’t like to be sold to. The gift of effective marketing is that you’re building trust with customers and giving them the inspiration to take an action that will help improve their lives.

10. “There are a lot of opportunities that you can discover by listening closely to what your customers are saying.” – Joei Chan

Customer surveys and testimonial requests are some of the most effective marketing tactics we’ve deployed for our clients over the years. It’s amazing how the feedback provides valuable information about sales, customer success, product development, and operational processes.

At Green Apple, we’re constantly looking for new sources of marketing inspiration for our clients. We typically share what we’re learning each month through The Core, our monthly newsletter. Sign up to get the latest marketing insights and inspirations delivered directly to your inbox.  

How to Identify Influencers that Fit Your Brand

“Meeting your customers where they are” is an essential principle for effective marketing. Influencer marketing has become one of the most effective ways for brands to achieve that goal. It has become an integral part of marketing plans for both B2B and B2C companies, and there have been numerous studies on its effectiveness. 
  • 75% of companies plan to allocate more of their content marketing budgets toward influencers. (Source)
  • 51% of marketers say influencer marketing helps them acquire better customers. (Source)
  • 60% of consumers have been influenced by social media or a blog while shopping. (Source)
  • 95% of brands using B2B influencer marketing report that it has helped increase brand reputation and brand awareness. (Source)
Before you invest in influencer marketing, you need to lay the groundwork for your campaign to succeed. Identifying the right person to help you reach potential customers is key to effective influencer marketing. Here are a few helpful tips to help you identify influencers that fit your brand:
1. Know your target audience.
The first step in any effective marketing campaign is to identify your target audience, especially when it comes to influencer marketing. You want to know who you are trying to reach, what they value, and what problems they face on a daily basis. Doing this preliminary research will save you time and money by finding influencers who speak to those who are the most likely to find interest in your brand.
2. Use an influencer database or list to identify potential partners.
You may not know the best influencers to reach your target audience. The good news is that there are numerous tools that can help you eliminate the time-consuming process of searching for influencers on social media. At Green Apple Strategy, we’ve used platforms such as obviously and Mavrck to manage influencer marketing for our clients. These tools allow you to browse influencers available for partnerships while getting a sense of their audience and reach.
3. Find influencers who share your values and believe in your mission.
Finding an individual who really believes in what you’re doing makes a difference. As you look to identify the right influencer, it’s important to ensure whoever you work with wholeheartedly believes in your brand’s values and will accurately represent your brand to their followers. Working with an influencer who shares your values and mission makes the partnership a lot more enjoyable. It also makes a difference in the authenticity of the content they create for your brand.
4. Consider the quality of their content, not just the quantity of their following.
Audience size matters in influencer marketing, but engagement and quality are also important factors to consider. Don’t discount the importance of micro-influencers. Spreading out your influencer budget can allow you access to several different communities. Working with influencers also means giving them the creative freedom to make content for your brand. As you’re narrowing down your list of partners, consider: Is their content well thought out? Does it feel genuine? Are people actively engaging? Is there a noticeable difference in engagement when an influencer shares an ad versus a post that isn’t sponsored? These questions can help you identify influencers with genuine credibility. 

Looking to Incorporate Influencer Marketing into Your Strategy?

At Green Apple, we’re constantly evaluating the latest marketing trends and determining how to incorporate them into our clients’ strategies. We love answering questions like, “Does our company need TikTok?”  If you’re curious about the impact that influencer marketing can make for your brand, our team can help find influencers that fit your brand. We won’t build your marketing around the latest marketing trends—but we’ll help you maximize a platform’s potential if we believe it’s a good fit for your brand. 

Last-Minute Holiday Marketing Advice to Stand Out This Season

The holidays can be one of the busiest—and most stressful—times of the year for marketers. Target audiences and potential customers are busier than normal and bombarded with messages and advertisements during the holiday season. All of the hustle and bustle also comes at the end of the year when you’re making one final push to meet your annual marketing goals. 

Developing an intentional holiday marketing plan can be one of the most effective ways to keep you and your team on track during November and December. And if you’re just now recognizing the need, that’s ok. Putting a little thought and effort into your holiday marketing strategy can go a long way. 

After working alongside many of our clients to design holiday marketing campaigns, we wanted to take a few moments to provide some last-minute advice to maximize your marketing efforts during the holiday season. 

1. Be sure to express gratitude to your current clients and customers. 

The holiday season is a great time to show your clients how valuable they are to your business. This is a simple and effective way to surprise and delight customers and keep them loyal to your brand. You could ship the same holiday gift to all your customers or take the time to send a custom gift to your top clients based on something you know about them.

If you’re running short on time, there are plenty of virtual client appreciation gifts that you can send last minute. 

2. Be creative and fun when incorporating holiday-themed messaging into your content. 

The competition for attention is at an all-time high during the holidays. One way to stand out is to take advantage of the spirit of the season by sharing light-hearted content. There are literally hundreds of ways to execute this. You could create a “12 Days of…” brand campaign on social media or send a funny online greeting card for your monthly newsletter that highlights your company’s human side.

3. Don’t let warm leads go cold during the holiday break.

While it may be difficult to schedule meetings during the end of the year, the holidays can also be a great time for closing new deals. With Q1 and new budgets around the corner, decision-makers are finalizing their vendors and goals for next year.  

Developing an intentional strategy to keep leads from going cold during the holidays could make a tremendous difference when it comes to hitting your annual goals or starting the new year with a lot of momentum. 

4. Find simple ways to give back to others.

More and more companies are adopting corporate social responsibility as a way to stand out and give back to society. Studies show that 84% of customers in the US will most likely buy from brands supporting the social causes they care about. If your company gives back in some sort of way during the holidays, don’t be afraid to share that through your marketing channels. 

Whether you’re looking for ways to connect with customers at the end of the year or need a fresh approach for the new year, our team at Green Apple Strategy can help. Contact us today to schedule a consultation to discuss your needs and learn more about our approach.

Surprising New Marketing Trends that Work

Every January, marketing pros come out with their “top trends” to watch for the upcoming year. These are popular and helpful resources since marketing always seems to be changing, and it can be difficult to keep up with all the trends. But we rarely take time to look back and highlight what marketing trends actually worked.  

At Green Apple, we’re constantly looking for new ideas or strategies that might help our clients achieve their goals. We also recognize that one of the most helpful tactics can be to stop and reflect on what’s working and what’s not. As we head into Q4 of 2022, we thought we’d take some time to reflect on the first nine months and highlight the marketing trends that have been most effective so far this year. 

7 Surprising New Marketing Trends that Work 

While AI, visual content, and personalization were all hot trends heading into 2022, here are seven tactics we found to be most helpful for our clients this year: 

1. Flexible Strategies that Pivot

Most companies head into a new year with a comprehensive marketing plan that lasts 12 months. The problem occurs when the strategies and tactics fail to produce results. Then what?

The one trend that everyone can depend on is that tactic effectiveness will change and shift throughout the year. We’ve found that developing flexible approaches that anticipate changes can be one of the most valuable ways to pivot your marketing efforts without abandoning your entire strategy. 

2. Surprise & Delight 

Consumers are seeking comfort and delight as they emerge from the pandemic. This year, we’ve seen incredible results from taking time to show appreciation and bring joy to someone’s day through surprise and delight strategies. These moments work as a brand differentiator, and they can also be a highly effective strategy for fostering long-term customer loyalty.  

3. Adapting Content Strategies to Meet Changing Consumer Habits 

The way people consume content has changed. While video-based content and social media were at the forefront of the discussion this year, it’s particularly important to consider your audience’s preferences when crafting your content strategy in 2022. A decade ago, most marketers focused primarily on written content, whether online or in print. Today’s businesses must consider the way content marketing and consumer habits have evolved. 

4. Promoting Your Corporate Social Responsibility Platform

As conscious consumerism continues to gain steam, many companies have made social responsibility part of their company DNA. On a large scale, we saw numerous companies highlight their plan to reduce their carbon footprint in 2022. But even on a smaller scale, we’ve seen the power of highlighting your company’s desire to make a positive difference in your community. 

5. Employee Engagement

In today’s digital world,  it’s essential to make an effort to know your customers on a personal level. Without it, your digital marketing efforts are likely to fall flat. Getting your employees involved in your marketing has become a powerful strategy. Shifting your marketing strategy from product- or service-centered to people-centered could be a helpful strategy as you look for ways to connect with your audience in Q4 and beyond. 

6. Micro-Stories & Bite-Size Content 

Tiktok and other video-based marketing channels were all the rage at the beginning of the year. And while they’re influence has undoubtedly grown, we’ve seen the “micro-content” trend expand to nearly every marketing channel. For example, we’ve seen incredible success in helping our clients reformat content into micro-infographics for media. In short, the easier we can make it for people to read and digest our content, the more likely they’ll share it. 

7. SMS Marketing 

Text campaigns were one of those surprising trends that no one was really talking about at the beginning of the year. And yet, it seems like so many companies have turned to SMS marketing as a way to reach customers. SMS messages have an open rate of 98%, making texts the superior marketing channel. While many B2C companies have used SMS for product alerts and promotions, we’re curious to see if there are ways B2B companies can utilize it to engage customers as the tactic continues to evolve. 

While you might not be able to predict which channels and tactics will really work next year, you can embrace the timeless principles and strategies that are behind them.

7 Ideas to Get Your Employees Involved in Marketing

In today’s world, everything is marketing. Subsequently, every area of your business has valuable insights or perspectives that could be beneficial for your marketing efforts. Taking the time to get your employees involved in marketing creates opportunities to connect with your audience on a human level.

While other teams and departments might not be responsible for your marketing goals, they can all play a valuable role in enhancing brand perception, improving lead generation, and creating more meaningful connections with your customers. 

7 Ideas to Get Your Employees Involved in Marketing

Here are seven effective yet fairly simple ways to get your employees involved in your marketing efforts: 

1. Invite Your Sales and Customer Success to Speak into Marketing Messaging

No one knows the challenges that your audience faces every day more than your sales and customer success teams. Knowing these challenges—and how you’re uniquely equipped to help them—is essential for sharing a clear and compelling marketing message.

There are several important questions your marketing team can ask sales and customer service to help improve your marketing copy and connect with your audience. 

2. Equip Your Customer Relations Team with Easy Ways to Share Positive Feedback & Reviews 

Customer reviews are powerful marketing tools. Yet many marketers don’t have direct access to feedback or testimonials from customers. This is where equipping your customer relations team with resources to capture feedback and reviews can really help. 

It could be something as simple as an email template they can use to ask permission to share a positive review or implementing a customer survey platform to capture feedback.

3. Share your Team’s Expertise through Your Content Marketing.

If you offer a professional service, your team likely has knowledge and experience that can be beneficial for your audience. Finding ways to empower your employees to create content for your marketing can be a powerful way to position your brand as a thought leader in the industry and earn the trust of your audience. 

4. Build an Employee Advocacy Plan

Your employees can also be your best promoters. This is one reason why many businesses have started creating a dedicated employee advocacy program within their organization. Helping employees understand their role as brand ambassadors can create tremendous dividends for the overall health and success of your company. 

5. Make it Easy & Compelling for Employees to Share Your Social Content

Your marketing team spends a lot of time, energy, and effort to keep your social media platforms running. And yet, most employees don’t recognize how helpful and powerful it can be to simply share the content that you’ve created. While there are many reasons why people might not share your social content, the best way to overcome all of them is to create social content that your employees actually want to share.

6. Create an “Employee Spotlight Series” on Your Blog

At the end of the day, people connect with people, not brands. Consumers like hearing from real people more than sales campaigns that aren’t designed with a personal touch. Employee spotlights are a powerful way to share stories from an employee’s perspective. These spotlights can be very powerful tools when it comes to building trust and loyalty among other employees and even customers. They can also be helpful in recruiting new hires.

7. Acknowledge Social Responsibility or Volunteerism In Your Marketing

Many companies have a corporate social responsibility platform or promote ways for employees to give back to the community throughout the year. Promoting these activities through your marketing channels can be a great way to highlight your employees and create meaningful connections with your audience. When you share content that is focused on your team, employees are also likely to share the event and the content with their family and friends, generating goodwill and increased brand exposure.  

We hope these ideas create an opportunity to integrate your marketing into your company rather than keeping it siloed. Finding ways to get employees involved in your marketing can be a powerful way to leverage your company’s community to create deeper, more personal connections with your audience. 

Copywriting Tips that Inspire Your Customers to Take Action

Two Women Typing on Laptops

Inspiring customers to take action is the goal of any marketing campaign. Achieving that goal requires knowing the words that will resonate with your audience and motivate them to take the appropriate next step. This is why copywriting is such a powerful part of marketing.

There are dozens of things to take into account whenever you’re writing marketing copy. You’re thinking about your audience, the medium you’re communicating through, and what you’re trying to achieve. You’re also trying to determine what will capture their attention and keep them engaged. Most people don’t realize how challenging it is to accomplish such a feat.  

How do you inspire your audience to take the action you want in a way that doesn’t come across as a hard sell? In this post, we wanted to highlight a few tips from our writers in Orchard when it comes to creating marketing copy that inspires people to take action. 

Copywriting Tips That Inspire Your Customers to Take Action

1. Identify and solve a problem.

Great marketing copy creates tension that resonates with the audience and then provides a release. During the attention-grabbing phase, it’s essential to identify your audience’s needs or problems so that you can ultimately present a solution.

2. Use short, simple sentences.

You need to make it easy for people to read your content. This is especially true for writing copy that will be published on digital platforms. Reading from a screen is hard. When you write long, meandering sentences, your readers have to work harder to make sense of it. 

3. Don’t bury the lead.

This old adage from journalism also applies to marketing copy. While creating tension is important, you also don’t want to lose your audience’s attention. If you want to inspire action,  it’s best to get to the point. Your audience should know the next step they should take to resolve their issue within a few minutes of reading. 

4. Make sure to emphasize the benefits your customer will experience. 

A common reason marketing copy doesn’t inspire action is that the focus shifts from the audience back to the product or service. While it may be important to highlight the unique features of your product or service, your audience cares more about how it will benefit them. 

It’s important to start with benefits before you dive into whatever features you want to highlight in your copy. 

5. Read what you write out loud before posting.

The best marketing copy makes you feel like you’re having a conversation. It’s personable, relatable, and easy to follow. Reading your copy out loud before you post it is one of the easiest ways to improve your copywriting skills. 

6. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes. 

Many times, marketers can be so close to their product or service that they forget what it’s like for their audience to experience it. This is where it can be helpful to take a step back and try to read your content from your audience’s point of view.

As yourself…

  • Would I click this link?
  • Would I find this helpful?
  • Would I enjoy this content?

Any response other than a quick “yes” might indicate that you need to spend more time on your copy.

7. Provide an appropriate call-to-action.

Part of our role as marketers is to guide people through the buying process. In the same way, you don’t ask someone to marry you on the first date, it’s important to know the appropriate “next step” to offer your audience. 

Writing copy that inspires customers to take action is both an art and a skill. It requires that you understand your audience’s core challenges and needs. It also involves knowing how to guide them toward the right next step. 

If you’ve struggled to inspire potential customers to take action or you suspect that your website copy might be a reason you’re not attracting new business, our team can help. You can subscribe to our newsletter for marketing tips or reach out to learn more about the ways we can support your marketing needs.  

The 10 Details to Look for When Testing Your New Website

Launching a new website is no small feat. It requires a combination of strategy, creativity, design, and web development skills to execute the hundreds of details required for planning and building it. After hours of preparation and collaboration, the last thing you want is to launch your website without making sure it’s ready for an audience. Testing your new website before it goes live is absolutely essential for a smooth website launch. 

As a full-service marketing agency, we’ve had the opportunity to help launch dozens of websites over the years. Along the way, we’ve learned certain best practices when it comes to completing the final details and testing a website before it launches. 

10 Details to Look for When Testing Your New Website

Here are 10 areas of your new website to test and review prior to going live. Within each of these categories, there might be dozens of specific details (e.g. – forms on multiple pages), so it’s important to create a comprehensive checklist that includes all the pages on your new site: 

1. Website Functionality

Making sure your website integrates with your existing systems and third-party websites or plugins is the first priority during a website review. This includes testing all outbound links, internal links, and forms on your website. Making sure your website is fully functional also means checking for HTML and CSS validation to ensure your website is accessible to search engines.  

2. Site Navigation and Content

In addition to checking the back-end functionality of your website, you also want to make sure it’s usable for your audience. This includes testing and verifying navigation features that make your pages easy to use and understand. This is also a time to review your content for any final editing or proofing that might be needed.  

3. User Experience

Creating a compelling user experience is key to attracting potential clients to your website. Before you launch, you want to make sure there aren’t any issues that might impact the experience people have on your site. When checking user experience, seek feedback from several individuals who haven’t worked on the website project. They’ll be able to see the site with new eyes and identify any issues that might arise when a new visitor first encounters the site.

4. Mobile Responsiveness

Making sure your website is optimized for mobile is essential. Responsive web design is a design that fully meets the needs of users and is displayed without any problems on any type of device or browser. The layout should automatically adapt to different sizes and capabilities of various devices. It should also take into account the way people explore websites on their phone through scrolling, touching, and zooming. 

5. Page Loading Speed 

Your website must have a fast page load speed if you want to be optimized for search engines. If the site is slow, it won’t get displayed among the top results. The ideal website load time for mobile sites is 1-2 seconds. 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load. 

6. Your CTA Buttons

Your calls-to-action are one of the most important aspects of your website. They help visitors take the next step and inform you that people are interested in your products or services.

It’s important to make sure the CTA buttons on your website integrate with your marketing and sales management systems. In addition, it’s helpful to make sure your CTA buttons are large enough to see, appropriately titled, and optimized to motivate people to take action. 

7. Security

Making sure your website is secure from potential hackers is critical, especially if you have a customer portal that stores any confidential information. Running penetration and vulnerability tests on your website can help you verify that the information system you’ve chosen protects data and maintains functionality as intended.

8. Your Website Backup Strategy

In today’s digital age, you want to have a plan in case your website crashes. Make a concrete plan addressing where you will back up your site, how often you will conduct a backup, and what your implementation plan will look like after launch. 

9. Your Website Metadata

Analyzing your metadata before launch is another way to ensure your website is optimized for search. You want to make sure each page has unique meta descriptions and that your metadata is properly in place for any social media sharing content. All spelling and grammar should also be correct in your metadata to make it properly searchable and indexable. 

10. Your Website is Linked to Google Analytics

Google Analytics 4 is one of the most helpful tools we have when it comes to managing your website. Before you launch, it’s important to make sure your website analytics codes have been added, funnels and goals have been added, and all your accounts are synced. If you run any digital advertising campaigns, you’ll want to make sure those accounts are synced as well. 

Let Our Team Handle the Details 

Failing to conduct a final test is one of the most common mistakes businesses make when launching a new website. At Green Apple, we do everything we can to help our clients avoid these pitfalls. If you’re looking for advice or support for designing a new website, our team can help. We’ll work to make sure your website fits within your overall marketing strategy and is built with longevity in mind. Connect with our team today to learn more about our process and share a bit more about what you’re looking for.

How to use SEO Best Practices to Get More YouTube Views

Video is no longer just another tactic to help you get the most out of your content marketing. It has become an absolute must if you’re serious about getting your product or service in front of the right people. According to a recent Hubspot report, video was the most commonly used form of content marketing in 2021, overtaking blogs and infographics.  However, simply creating videos doesn’t mean your customers will find or watch them. Developing a strategy to increase YouTube views is just as important as creating videos. This is where understanding YouTube SEO best practices come in handy. YouTube SEO, as the name suggests, is optimizing your videos to rank higher on the YouTube search engine. 

4 SEO Tips to Get More YouTube Views

If you’re looking for a way to increase your YouTube views, here are four SEO best practices as you add and upload your videos:
1. Incorporate Keywords Strategically
Keywords play a valuable role in any SEO campaign. Whether you’re optimizing your website or uploading videos, identifying the right SEO keywords for your business is the first step. When it comes to YouTube, there are several places you want to strategically incorporate keywords for your videos. You want to include your keyword in the video title, description, tags, and file name. It’s helpful to identify one or two main words that describe your video and feature them prominently in your description and title.
2. Add a Custom Thumbnail Image, Cards, and End Screens to Your Video 
The video itself also plays a key role in SEO for YouTube. A custom thumbnail image for your video can make a drastic difference in the click-through rate.  Cards and end screens are also helpful images to create and add to your video. YouTube cards are preformatted notifications that encourage people to take desired actions during your video. End screens appear after a video finishes and tell a viewer what they can do next. Both cards and end screens can optimize the viewing experience and encourage viewers to watch another video or take further action when they’ve finished.
3. Use Subtitles in Your Video
Using subtitles and closed captions is another tip for success in YouTube search. Both subtitles and closed-caption files contain the text from the video in a transcript. This is where using keywords while talking is important. By including keywords in your video and adding subtitles, you’re able to reach our audience and increase your rankings. Make sure you provide accurate captions and subtitles and don’t indulge in keyword stuffing.
4. Creating Engagement and Ask for Comments to Increase Rankings
Engagement is one of the biggest factors in your video rankings. Comments on videos also appear to be an influential ranking factor. As you create your videos, consider how you might ask for feedback or comments. Another thing you can do to increase engagement is directly replying to comments on your videos. Responding and creating a dialogue will help you create a community from the ground up.  All these components may seem a bit complicated, but they’re incredibly easy to deploy. Remember: there’s a huge audience on YouTube, and when you optimize your videos for YouTube, you also increase your chances of your brand reaching your target demographic. Discover our unique approach to helping small businesses optimize their SEO efforts through Green Apple’s SEO Silo.

5 Ways to Repurpose Your Outdated Content

Let’s face it. You put a lot of time, energy, and effort into creating content for your audience. As time goes on, it can be deflating and frustrating to see the shelf-life of your content become outdated. But that doesn’t always have to be the case. Finding ways to repurpose your outdated content is a great way to get the most out of your content marketing and be more agile in your marketing efforts.  

Why Repurpose Your Outdated Content?

Here are a couple of specific reasons we love helping our clients find ways to repurpose content:

1. Repurposing content enables you to maximize the investment you’ve already made. 

Rather than crafting every single piece of content from scratch, repurposing outdated content enables to you tweak what you’ve already created. This saves time, energy, and money. In most cases, you don’t have to do a complete overhaul, (although that’s also an option). Repurposing content enables you to take what’s already there and make sure it appeals to today’s audience. 

2. Repurposing allows you to maximize your best content for new audiences. 

Repurposing content can help you take your great, old content and give it a breath of fresh air (and some much-needed visibility). It’s also worth considering updating calls-to-action to articles that are still generating traffic to help you increase lead generation potential.

5 Ways to Repurpose Your Outdated Content

There are several approaches you can take to repurposing content. Here are a few tactics we’ve found to be most valuable. 

1. Conduct an SEO Audit to Determine Which Content to Update

The first step in repurposing outdated content is to identify which blogs or resources are the most beneficial to refresh. This is where a content audit can help. An SEO content audit is a process of assessing existing content on your website to determine how you can get more and better quality organic traffic to each blog post or resource.

2. Add New Ideas or Project Examples to Your Content

One simple way to make outdated content more relevant is by updating it with new insights or portfolio examples. More than likely, the majority of your content is evergreen. Why throw out the whole post when only 20% is outdated? Updating your content could be as simple as adding a few recent statistics or highlighting a new “tip or trick” based on the latest industry insights. 

3. Turn Content into Infographics, Videos, or Podcasts

Transforming written blog posts into videos or podcasts is a great way to extend the shelf-life of your outdated content. These are also helpful ways to repurpose content for different audiences. Some people prefer visual infographics over text statistics. Others choose podcasts over ebooks. Reformatting your content for different mediums means appealing to more audiences and extending your reach.

4. Utilize Content in Email Series

If you’ve written a few blog posts on the same topic, consider repurposing them into a newsletter series or email course. An effective marketing E-newsletter can showcase your best blog posts and resources. You can send this on a monthly basis or create custom email journeys for different personas as they’re added to your email list. 

5. Add Guest Posts or Third-Party Articles to Your Site

If you’ve already been guest blogging as part of your digital PR campaign, why not maximize that content by adding it to your site? All you need to do is to ask the owners of the sites if they’re comfortable with you republishing the content on your own blog. This also provides them with added exposure to the post if you include a link back to it saying where it was originally published.

When it comes to maximizing your content marketing effort, find ways to work smarter, not harder. These tips will help you develop a strategy to repurpose outdated content and reach more people. Any effort will be worth it as it gives you a chance to help others, build your audience and grow your business. For more help in optimizing your content efforts, reach out to us to schedule a strategy session.