7 Marketing Tools Your Team Can’t Live Without

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Executing a marketing strategy is a lot like climbing a mountain. Both are focused on an audacious goal that requires effort and dedication to achieve. You need an intentional plan for how you’re going to climb the mountain. There will also be unexpected obstacles and unexpected turns along the way. Sometimes you have a clear path to reaching the summit. Other times, you may need a guide to help you navigate new terrain. 

And just like mountain climbing, you need a variety of marketing tools that can help you along the way. These tools may help you assess your current situation, work more effectively, and take the right steps toward reaching your goal. Each tool might serve a different purpose, but they’re all essential for your survival. 

7 Marketing Tools Your Team Can’t Live Without

Here are seven types of tools you need to execute successful marketing campaigns: 

1. Collaboration Tools

Executing a marketing plan requires significant collaboration. When you’re managing all the elements for your content marketing campaigns or seeking input on an important design project, there are numerous stakeholders and steps that need to be addressed. 

At Green Apple, our hybrid office model has trained us to become experts in marketing collaboration. Here are just a few of the collaboration tools that make it easy to collaborate with clients, team members, and freelancers in the Green Apple Orchard from across the country:

  • Google Workspace — Google’s collaborative tools such as Docs, Slides, and Sheets make it easy to create, approve, and deliver assets in a timely fashion. Rather than tracking multiple documents or attachments through email, Google makes it easy for team members and clients to collaborate in the same documents in real time. 
  • Basecamp —  Project management is essential for streamlining work and optimizing efficiency. Basecamp rolls all of the core necessities of project management into a browser-based tool that makes it easy to track campaigns from start to finish. We’ve used Basecamp for years, and it has become an integral tool for our team.  
  • Zoom — Video conferencing became an essential business tool during the pandemic. We’ve found it incredibly helpful for improving our team’s virtual meetings, meeting with clients in other cities, and connecting with The Orchard, our remote contract team members.
2. Design Tools 

The image you portray is important. The good news is that it’s easier than ever to find affordable design tools that make your brand stand out and look professional. Tools like Canva can be incredibly helpful for designing eye-catching graphics and images for social media. However, knowing when to use Canva and when to outsource to a professional can be essential to maximize the impact of graphic design for your brand. 

3. Digital and Social Media Management Tools 

With all the various social media platforms, it’s almost impossible to manage all of your content production needs without a social media management tool. Social media management tools help you plan, schedule, and monitor your social media posts. These tools also give you the chance to review and analyze your audience engagement on multiple channels. 

At Green Apple, Sprout Social is our social media management tool of choice. It makes it easy to manage various social media accounts for all of our clients. It also provides comprehensive reporting that provides a detailed look into content performance through competitive analytics and strategic insights.

4. Online Advertising Tools 

Online advertising has exploded in recent years. In fact, digital advertisements will account for more than 66% of the total global advertising spend by 2023. It allows you to create targeted messages to reach and expand your audience, improve your brand awareness, and generate more qualified leads.

At Green Apple, our digital marketing team collaborates with online advertising specialists to design and implement online advertising campaigns for B2B and B2C clients. Some of our favorite tools include Google Keyword Planner and Adstage. 

5. Lead Capture & Nurturing Tools 

If you rely on inbound marketing to generate sales leads, you need a marketing tool that captures potential customers and guides them through the marketing funnel. The good news is that most tools integrate with your website to create a seamless user experience.

Over the years, we’ve used lead-capturing tools such as Unbound and Leadpages to capture leads. We’ve also worked alongside several clients to leverage marketing CRMs such as Hubspot to track and manage marketing leads.

6. Website SEO Tools

Whether it’s keyword research, content optimization, or checking your current page rankings, every marketer needs a go-to tool for planning content and optimizing it for SEO. 

Green Apple recommends SEMrush, the top-rated keyword tool we use for our clients. We’ve found that it’s the best tool to implement SEO tips that actually work. Their platform offers comprehensive reports to monitor competitors’ backlinks and offers backlink audits for sites that have already linked to your website with an anchor text. 

7. Customer Experience & Testimonial Tools

In today’s digital world, consumers hold the power when it comes to your brand reputation. A negative customer review or poor client experience can have a devastating impact on your brand. At the same time, testimonials and feedback can be some of the most beneficial assets for brand management.

At Green Apple, we’ve worked with a variety of customer experience and testimonial tools to capture feedback for our clients. Delighted is a customer satisfaction platform that allows you quickly and easily capture feedback through customer surveys. LoyaltyLoop is another tool we use to better understand and improve upon the customer experience. 

Finding the right set of marketing tools can be overwhelming. It’s important not to lose sight of the forest through the trees. Focus on your end goal and then find the tools that will help you get there. Our team at Green Apple can help you determine which tools are a fit for you. We’d love to take a look at your marketing goals and help you design and execute a strategy to meet them.

How to Know When to Redesign Your Website

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Determining when to redesign your website is a common yet challenging business decision. On one hand, your website is often your most important marketing tool. An effective website can make a dramatic impact on your bottom line. On the other hand, redesigning your website requires significant time, effort, and resources. 

At Green Apple, we’ve had the opportunity to help dozens of clients redesign their websites over the years — a few of which have gone through multiple iterations. We want to help our clients make informed decisions on whether they should invest in a website redesign. We also want to help them avoid the mistakes businesses make when launching a new website. Sometimes they decide it’s time to redesign the entire site. In other cases, we help them identify small tweaks and improvements they can make.

How to Know When to Redesign Your Website

Beyond obvious factors such as security concerns or outdated functionality, here are a few questions we ask to help our clients navigate the decision to redesign their website:

1. What do the metrics say?

Google analytics and marketing metrics can play a helpful role in helping you determine the current state of your website. 

For example, If your website has a high bounce rate, you should conduct further investigation to see if the issue is based on slow page load speed, bad or unclear content, or a poor user experience.

Your conversion rate can help you determine if your website is doing its job of converting visitors into potential customers.  Websites that have a hard time generating leads and conversions are typically missing key elements that help with the conversion process.

2. How is the mobile experience?

In today’s digital-first age, mobile marketing is an essential tactic for every business. The majority of web traffic nowadays is conducted on mobile devices. Your website should be “mobile responsive” and also easy to navigate on a phone. If you have received numerous complaints about the mobile optimization of your site, it might be a good idea to get ahead of the issue by redesigning your website.

3. Does your website reflect the way you currently talk about your business?

Most businesses adapt the way they do business in order to keep up with the changing demands of their customers. For some, the way they talk about their business changes as they discover new messaging that resonates with their audience. It’s important that your website matches the way your leadership and sales team talks about your products or services. This is key to creating a cohesive user experience. 

4. How easy is it for people to quickly understand what you do and take the first step?

The ultimate goal of every website is to support business development. That’s why it’s essential to make sure your website is easy to navigate and understand. Having a disconnect at any level of a user’s journey can lead to confusion and frustration.

How do you provide a great experience? Make sure your website is easy to navigate, your content is easy and enjoyable to read, and you have clear calls to action.

5. Are you being outranked by competitors on important key search phrases?

Designing an SEO-friendly website is a foundational element for your marketing efforts. SEO is crucial because it makes your website more visible to searchers, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. 

One way to determine if you’re maximizing your SEO efforts is to conduct keyword research to see how you compare with other competitors in your industry. If your website is struggling to rank for important keywords, it’s likely that your website is not built in accordance with new search engine algorithms and needs to be redesigned.

Failing to keep your website updated can waste marketing resources, lose out on sales, or hurt your brand reputation. 

If you’re just looking for a website redesign, Green Apple might not be the best fit. But if you want to ensure your website is aligned with your overall marketing strategy and actively helping you grow your business, we’d love to talk. Through a comprehensive audit of your website, we can discover opportunities to improve your website so that it reaches your audience. Contact our team today.

5 Ways B2B Companies Can Get Out of Their Comfort Zone

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Consistency in marketing is essential. However, businesses can get so comfortable with their marketing processes and campaigns that they end up stuck in a rut. Before you know it, the strategies and tactics that are used to help you meet your goals don’t work anymore. How can B2B companies avoid the marketing rut? Finding ways to periodically get out of your comfort zone can be one of the most helpful ways to generate new ideas and regain momentum toward achieving your goals. 

At Green Apple, we approach our marketing strategies by doing everything we can to help our clients grow. Sometimes that means finding ways to help them think differently and get them outside their comfort zones. 

5 Ways B2B Companies Can Get Outside of Their Comfort Zones

Here are five helpful ideas that have helped our B2B clients expand their thinking and find new ways to enhance their marketing strategies:

1. Reexamine your audience and unique value proposition.

Your customers and target audience are human beings that are constantly growing, learning, and changing. That’s why it’s important to regularly evaluate your target audience as well as the unique value proposition you’re using to reach them. This can be especially helpful if you’re trying to market a complex product or service. 

At Green Apple, we recommend our clients take time to re-evaluate their audience at least every 3-5 years. We’ve found that taking time to consider who you’re trying to reach and what questions they’re asking is one of the most beneficial ways that B2B companies can refresh their marketing efforts. 

2. Consider testing 1 or 2 innovative marketing tactics each year to reach customers.

Marketing is constantly evolving. While you don’t need to implement every new trend, it’s important to consider which new tactics or platforms might help you move the needle. 

Each year, we try to include one or two innovative marketing ideas in our clients’ strategies. It’s been amazing to see how much of a difference this can make, especially for our B2B clients. In most cases, our clients don’t need to overhaul their strategies. They’re looking for a couple of new ideas that can be easily implemented. We may not execute these ideas, but they often help clients get outside their comfort zone and generate helpful conversations. 

3. Find an outside voice that can help you challenge assumptions and identify potential ideas you haven’t considered.

Have you ever felt like you can’t see something objectively because you’re too close to the situation? It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when you spend so much time, energy, and effort on marketing your company. At Green Apple, one way we try to add value to our clients’ strategies is by providing a third-party perspective on unique challenges and situations. 

This can be one of the most helpful ways to discover creative potential and opportunities within your business that you may have never considered.

4. Consider stealing a few ideas from your favorite B2C company.

You might be surprised by how effective it can be to follow the lead of B2C marketers when it comes to creating marketing campaigns that stand out. Over the years, we’ve found there are several marketing tactics that B2B companies can steal from B2C brands. 

The next time you notice a B2C company capturing your attention, take time to evaluate what made it stand out. How could you incorporate the same ideas into your efforts to reach potential B2B customers? 

5. Repurpose existing content into other formats. 

In most cases, B2B marketers rely on written content and in-depth resources to reach potential customers. As a result, B2B content marketers spend around 82% of their work hours on content creation each week. 

Repurposing existing content can be a way to get the most out of your content marketing rut by working smarter, not harder. At Green Apple, we’ve helped clients with everything from repurposing thought leadership into podcasts and reformatting blog posts into social infographics. 

As marketing continues to evolve, B2B brands need to stay nimble. Finding ways to get out of your comfort zone can be one of the best ways to ensure your marketing efforts continue to produce results year after year.  If you’re looking for a way to find new ideas for your B2B marketing strategy, our team can help. Reach out to us to schedule a strategy session​​ or let us know if there’s a specific question we can help answer.

10 Spot-On Marketing Quotes

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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. 

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

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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. 

What to Check 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. Create 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.