You already know what doesn’t work in a product description, because you’ve read so many boring ones. BrandNames.net founder Justin Hamel puts it well when he describes a bad product description as “Using boring descriptions that just highlight the product features without drawing a correlation between the product/service and the buyer’s wants and needs.”

[ctt template=”4″ link=”5uDk5″ via=”no” nofollow=”yes”]Good product descriptions draw a correlation between the product and the buyer’s wants and needs.[/ctt]

Experienced product description writers are masters at connecting products to buyer’s wants and needs and highlighting features and benefits, but that’s only part of what makes a great product description.

So what makes a great product description? A few key elements jump out:

• It resonates with the target audience. A product description for a bass guitar pedal grabs a niche reader, even if it’s almost incomprehensible to a non-musician. Write with your buyer persona in mind and you’re much more likely to help them with make their purchase decision.
• It tells a story. Consumers tend to draw an emotional connection with products that have a story behind them.
• The format is easily digestible. Especially online, people scan instead of reading every word, so use of short paragraphs and bullet points help.
• It uses media effectively. Great product pages focus on selling the product with a mix of media types. Use of images is vital, so the consumer knows what they’re getting. Videos are also a great help, especially when audio is involved (that bass guitar pedal, for example).
• It highlights the most important or unique features first. We already know that dishwashers get dishes clean. Tell me what makes THIS dishwasher different from the rest. Strategic use of power words can help with this.
• It lets the consumer know how the product can impact their life. A great product description draws a picture for the reader of how the item can fill a need or solve a problem. Writing product descriptions that accomplish this can really spike your conversion rate.
• It’s written with search engines in mind. Product descriptions that sell well do all the things above, but they also help you organically rank in Google’s search results. How do you do that? It largely comes down to knowing which keywords to include in key points and understanding what intent those keywords signal so you can write your content to match.

Rachel Genson from BigCommerce.com adds that product descriptions should be “short, sweet and effective,” and cautions that marketers need to learn when to “show and not tell.”

Let’s take a look at some outstanding product descriptions to see how these elements come together.

Taco Bell’s Black Bean Burrito

John Lincoln, CEO of Ignite Visibility, points out this PD as an amazing example of product description writing that reinforces the brand. It’s whimsical and quirky, and it grabs the reader looking for late night munchies.

The Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to show some personality and style in your PDs. When a PD tells a story and matches the tone of the product, it converts — even for people who don’t like black beans.

Florida Farms’ Gift Basket

This PD surprises by starting with oranges and grapefruits, not the most expected holiday treat. It’s a brilliant choice, making yet another gift basket stand out during the holidays. Appealing adjective choices and the full description let you know what you’re getting.

The Takeaway: Note all those specifics. They let the reader feel confident that this basket is indeed a worthy gift. Of course this PD has a great photo with it, since no one would buy a gift sight unseen.

Think Geek’s Star Wars BB-8 Waffle Maker

Think Geek acknowledges that its readership is part of a special tribe — the tribe that needs something as specialized as a character-based waffle iron. This PD turns a want into a need with clever writing.

The Takeaway: Pull out all the stops to resonate with a niche audience, pulling out the in-jokes and targeted references to let the reader know you “get” them.

The post 3 Examples of Great Product Descriptions that Convert and Rank appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

PewDiePie

Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, just loved playing video games, and making videos of himself playing video games and posting them to YouTube sounded more fun than working at a hot dog stand. He started posting those videos in 2010, and it only took two years for his YouTube channel to hit 1 million viewers.

Clearly something clicked with his fans, who have propelled him to the pinnacle of YouTube stardom. While he’s paid a pittance for each view, PewDiePie has 11 billion views and a net worth of $61 million.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”TJluL” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Are #socialmedia stars more influential than traditional celebrities?[/ctt]

Smosh

The comedy duo of Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox started their website as Smosh in 2005 with little Flash animations. Soon they migrated to YouTube, where they started performing live action comedy bits, and they’re still going strong in 2017, with 22 million subscribers and seven different YouTube channels, including an animation channel and a gaming channel. Their slapstick comedy hits their viewers where they live, focusing on pop culture, especially video games.

With a net worth and a yearly income of $7 million, the duo of Smosh is clearly doing something right.

VanossGaming

More gaming is going on at the YouTube channel of Evan Fong, who plays online under the name of VanossGaming. Unlike PewDiePie, Fong doesn’t attempt to put much of his personality online. Instead, he entrances his viewers with skillfully edited montages of his game playthroughs that make a connection to his audience by carrying them through an entire game in record time, often with a lot of humor. For his gaming and editing prowess, Fong has racked up well over 20 million subscribers.

Related: Social Influencer Marketing: A Must Have or a Waste of Time?

What You Can Lean From These Internet Rock Stars

Make an Emotional Connection

What’s the lesson big brands can learn from these newbie stars? It’s not what you might think. The lesson is that fancy production values may not matter to Millennials in the way that they’ve typically impressed and swayed previous generations.

Instead, this generation wants an emotional connection. They want to experience emotional authenticity. The sloppier production values of today’s internet stars don’t matter much if they can make that connection.

Your brand, too, can relate to Millennials by focusing on the emotional draw of your products and services. Avoid any sense of the fake to make a true connection.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”6qe3G” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Leverage #socialmedia stars to make an emotional connection with your consumers.[/ctt]

Connect With the Social Influencers

Authenticity and emotional connection matters as well when you want to ask one of these social influencers to represent your brand in some way. Most of these influencers are already earning enough money that big offers may not sway them, and some of them may fear that linking with your brand — or with any brand — will diminish the control they have over their lives and careers.

Because of this, to connect with them, you need to persuade these social media stars that your collaboration will be mutually beneficial. Show them you respect them and their audience, and make it clear that you won’t force them to deliver a message they don’t agree with. Once you do that, you may be able to jump on the social media success train.

The post Social Media Stars: Love ’em and Learn From Them appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Does this type of marketing work? You’ll hear a lot of debate from brand marketers. Take a look at some of the most up-to-date influencer marketing statistics, and form your own opinion.

The Audience for Social Influencer Marketing

The Stats: Teens are tuning in to social influencers in a big way. They consider YouTube stars up to 17 times as engaging as mainstream stars, and 70 percent of teens trust influencers more than they trust opinions from more traditional celebrities.

The Takeaway: Add another stat to the mix: 73 percent of Millennials feel responsible to help friends make purchasing decisions. Now you can see the ripple effect start to grow. Teens find influencers more authentic than traditional advertising, so they pay attention. If you’re trying to reach that market, better start looking for some influencers.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”y31mJ” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Today’s teens place more trust in social influencers than traditional celebrities. [/ctt]

The Products of the Influencer World

The Stats: It’s all about the look. Beauty and fashion brands are deeply into influencer marketing, with 86 percent of the popular YouTube beauty videos coming from influencers rather than fashion brands.

The Takeaway: Beauty and fashion brands have been paying attention to the rise of the influencers. As a result, 57 percent of them now incorporate social influencers into their marketing strategies.

What Platforms Host Social Influencers?

The Stats: YouTube isn’t the only place where influence is sizzling. Marketers point to Facebook and Instagram (which Facebook owns) as crucial in the influence world, and the 32 percent of the influencers themselves call out Facebook as the place to be. In addition, Twitter users are more than five times as likely to purchase when they see influencers there.

The Takeaway: If you want to use social influencer marketing, choose your platforms wisely. And whatever you choose, don’t neglect Facebook. In addition, plenty of influencers have well-trafficked blogs, so take a peek into the blogosphere when you’re looking for the right influencers for your brand.

Related: How Facebook is Changing the Marketing Game with Influencers

The Cost of Influencer Marketing

The Stats: U.S. marketers have been increasing the portion of their marketing budgets allotted to social media, up to almost 12 percent from an initial 3.5 percent in 2009. In 2016, the average cost of an influencer marketing program ranged from $25,000 to $50,000, with those numbers expected to double in 2017.

The Takeaway: The barrier to entry in social influencer marketing is very low, so now is the time to start experimenting with it, if you haven’t already. If you’re still skeptical, keep reading.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”7U1E0″ via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Every dollar spent on influencer marketing generates $6.50 in return.[/ctt]

The Bottom Line: The ROI of Social Influencer Marketing

The Stats: Here’s some encouraging influencer marketing statistics: Studies show that influencer marketing content delivers a return on investment that’s 11 times higher than that of traditional digital marketing. Every dollar spent on influencer marketing generates $6.50 in return.

The Takeaway: One final statistic: 94 percent of brands using social influencer marketing find it effective. Given the low cost, there’s not much reason to avoid it and plenty of reasons to give it a try.

Social influencer marketing is here to stay, and it’s becoming increasingly mandatory in certain consumer goods categories. Dip your toe in this market (easy to do, given its relatively low cost), and see what kind of ROI you might get.

The post Social Influencer Marketing: A Must-Have or a Waste of Time? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Facebook Still Rules Social Media

Especially for news sites, Facebook is the place to be. According to Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism July 2017 study, Facebook holds a 70 percent share in the social media space, with fully 47 percent of news consumers using it. Facebook’s messaging apps continue to grow as well. If you’re a content marketer, this means that even if Facebook isn’t an ideal marketing choice for your product, you must have a presence there.

Take a look at the 2017 Digital News Report to learn how human editors are holding up against algorithms, plus surprising new facts about news consumption.

Google Controls Traffic

Google picks up more than 16 percent of all the traffic on the web. Following behind at some distance are Facebook, YouTube (owned by Google), Yahoo and Amazon. Of note for content marketers: the vast majority of U.S. online users are spending significant time on Google and Facebook, both with user rates hovering over two-thirds of the online population.

This study from digital marketing consultant Alexandar Tachalova and SimilarWeb also reports on market share across U.S. industries, showing that Amazon and eBay control almost 75 percent of all online marketing, and it touches on specific industries such as gambling and travel.

Related: 3 Powerful Content Marketing Metrics You Have to Be Monitoring

Get Emotional!

A fascinating study by BuzzSumo published in June 2017 shows that headlines that provoke an emotional reaction get the greatest clickthrough response. Whether the headline promises to “make you cry” or “melt your heart” with “tears of joy,” tugging at the reader’s emotion is consistently effective. The most effective headline phrase was “will make you,” which promises an emotional response from the article. How effective was it? It resulted in double the engagement numbers of any other phrase.

Check the study out to see which phrases and even numbers pop for readers in headlines, drawing on analysis of more than 100 million online headlines.

The Top Content Marketers and What They Have in Common

The Content Marketing Institute’s 2017 annual report on B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America compared content marketers at all levels to see what they had in common. The most successful content marketers show a strong commitment to content marketing and have a realistic understanding of what this type of marketing can achieve. In addition, they measure the ROI on their content marketing constantly, and they stay nimble, adjusting their content marketing strategy quickly when needed.

This important study also dives deep into content marketing strategy as well as team organization, content creation and goals and metrics for online content marketing.

The Essential Content Marketing Issues for 2017

The 2017 Incite Marketing Report hones in on the key issues driving marketers in the current environment. Most important? Personalization and understanding customers. Brand storytelling is also a huge issue for content marketers, growing significantly over previous years in importance, especially for marketing technology firms. Almost half of all marketers feel it’s important to build immersive customer experiences, and the importance of social media for customer engagement had the greatest year-over-year increase in importance of all issues studied, with marketing tech experts again keying in on it.

The study’s focus on how to market effectively to customers who are tired of being marketed to makes it a must-read for all content marketers. Key areas covered in the report include personalization, marketing attribution, and storytelling as content.

Check out all these research studies to see how your own content marketing may need to adapt to today’s changing marketplaces.

The post Research Studies Every Content Marketer Should Read in 2017 appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

To perform A/B testing in content marketing, you need two versions of the same marketing element. Typically your current version is assigned as the A version, or the control. A modified version of the same element becomes the B version.

Whatever platform you use to conduct the A/B test, such as dedicated testing tools like Optimizely or Google Optimize, will randomly serve up one of the two versions to visitors who visit your page. Many landing page builders such as Unbounce, Instapage or Landingi have built in A/B testing tools that also do the job.

When the A/B test is complete, you can analyze the results and use the element that gave you the best results.

What Should You Test?

You can assess the efficacy of many of your web page elements with A/B testing. Marketers commonly test elements such as headlines and calls to action, but they neglect other elements such as layout, design, images and navigation controls.

Duolingo’s VP of Growth Gina Gotthilf has her team running no less than five A/B tests at any time. She credits a large part of the company’s growth from 3 million to 200 million users on changes made to this language-learning app based on the test results.

Gotthilf’s most successful tests weren’t random; instead, they were trying to find a solution to a problem. One test, for example, was designed to stop the leak at the top of the company’s sales funnel, and this led to a test that showed huge success by letting users test drive the app before they sign up.

Related: What’s the Latest on Keyword Ratios, and How Do You Calculate Them?

How to Perform A/B Testing

Follow these basic steps to use A/B testing for content marketing and improving your website:

1. Determine what you want to assess. Do you want to generate more leads? Do you want to increase sales? Your goal with each A/B test determines the specifics of the test. Don’t overthink each one, since you’re likely to do lots of A/B testing as you tweak your marketing approach. Start at the top of your sales funnel and work your way through it with subsequent tests.
2. Decide what specifics you want to test. Is your headline iffy? Are you questioning whether the colors you’re using are right? Pay attention to the finest details. Start at the beginning from your user’s point of view, and work your way through each page and element of your site. You’re going to do a lot of A/B testing, and the important thing is to start somewhere.
3. Develop the A/B test. Create a new version of whatever element you’ve decided to test. Try a new button color. Rewrite your headline. Change only one element at a time, or your test results may be skewed and you won’t know how to interpret them. Use resources such Google Analytics’ Content Experiments feature, Optimizely, Unbounce or Visual Website Optimizer to set up the tech you need for your A/B test.
4. Gather data. Make sure you have an even amount of data for the A and B options before you start to analyze the results. Don’t pause the test while you’re gathering data, and don’t edit any of the elements you’re testing, even if you think you already see a clear pattern of results emerging. While you can use a time period (say, three weeks) as the determinant for data collection, a better choice is to set a sample size and wait until you’ve reached it. Use an online sample size calculator to determine the size you need, and aim for at least 95 percent accuracy.
5. Analyze the results. Once you have all your data, use a split test calculator to help you confirm that the results are accurate and statistically significant, and take action to make changes to your content marketing accordingly.

Once you’ve completed A/B testing on one element of your marketing, move on to the next one until you’ve covered every aspect and honed your site to a fine polish.

The Most Important Lesson

Set realistic expectations before you start testing. The vast majority of A/B tests (typically nine out of 10) will show negligible or no results. Instead of getting discouraged and walking away, analyze those unexpected results and learn from them. Does the negative result tell you anything about your visitors? Did you start out with the wrong hypothesis?

Also keep in mind that contrary to the success stories you might read, A/B testing is a marathon and not a quick fix. Don’t expect to change your Sign Up button from red to green and see a 300% increase in conversions. Take the time to put together a comprehensive A/B testing strategy instead of randomly testing elements for the sake of testing, and you’ll see solid success over time.

The post How to Perform A/B Testing Like an Expert in 5 Easy Steps appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.