Is There a Black Swan Event Lurking in Your Company’s Marketing Department?

Here’s how to Identify your next marketing black swan risk before it hits your company.


The news was filled last week with stories of bank failures, including that of Silicon Valley Bank. Faced with having insufficient funds to meet upcoming payrolls, the CEOs of many companies with now-unavailable deposits at these banks have likely had a sleep-deprived roller-coaster of a weekend.

Imagine waking up on a Friday morning to have your CFO or controller tell you that nearly all your ready cash has vanished. How would you feel?

Having gone through a similar rapid collapse over 20 years ago during the dot-com bust, I can tell you the experience is right up there with back surgery! At the time, I headed up marketing for a B2B supply chain and procurement software company. Like most companies, we were trying to grow as fast as possible to secure the best valuation for our upcoming capital raise.

I will never forget it. We received a $30 million term sheet on a $300 million pre-money valuation the week before the NASDAQ peaked. We all had dollar signs in our eyes and dreams of an upcoming IPO in a couple of years.

Instead, the very next week, the NASDAQ began to crash and with it went our term sheet. Over about 10 days, I went from planning to double my 20+ employee marketing team to trying to determine which 15 or 16 individuals I would lay off immediately.  Six months later, we ran out of cash and closed the company. Not fun!

History does not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

The mental scars of such events stay with you throughout your career. It’s one of the reasons Tempesta Media avoided being affected by the recent bank closings. Early on, we diversified our debt and capital sources. In short, we bucked the norm and so never went deep in the red relative to our revenue.

Over the next few months, everyone will discuss treasury management. What was once just an afterthought will be talked about at length. While everyone is rightly focused on this topic, they should also be aware that the next black-swan event–marketing channel concentration risk–is fast approaching.

risk

What is marketing channel concentration risk?

As the term implies, marketing channel concentration risk becomes a problem when firms rely too heavily on a small number of customer acquisition channels to maintain and grow their customer base.

Why should you be concerned about this risk? Because customer acquisition channels suffer extinction-level events during major recessions.

What is a customer acquisition channel extinction event?

Many small and mid-sized businesses operating at the time of the 2008 recession saw their marketing programs go through a massive upheaval. Before the recession, tested, reliable and consistent channels like magazine advertising, newspaper coupon inserts and direct mail were the marketing mainstays of hundreds of thousands of businesses. Several years later, many of these channels declined significantly or disappeared altogether. Numerous businesses that overrelied on the channels failed as buyer behavior shifted materially.

More recently, way too many firms went out of business during the COVID-related two-plus-year event-marketing hiatus because they couldn’t adapt quickly to the new marketing environment.

Despite these examples, here we are in 2023 after the worst banking scare in years, and businesses still haven’t learned the marketing channel concentration risk lesson.

disruption

Marketing channel concentration risk puts millions of businesses at risk for disruption.

I cannot tell you how many companies I talk to whose business relies wholly on one or two customer acquisition channels.

No customer acquisition marketing channel remains static from one year to the next. Competitive dynamics, new technology, changing prospective buyer behavior and many other factors cause individual channels to change, often becoming more or less effective than the year before.  

Yet, more firms than you would believe cling to one or two channels, optimizing at the edges, exposing themselves to disruption should a major recession hit.

How do you know if your company’s marketing channels are too concentrated?

In an ideal world, no one channel should represent more than 20% of your firm’s total customer acquisition volume. Translation: Make sure you have at least five different customer acquisition channels for your business. Anything less puts you at risk for trouble.

Getting to a diversified customer acquisition channel mix.

If your company has fewer than five customer acquisition channels or any one customer acquisition channel represents more than 20% to 25% of your new revenue, you have a problem.

To fix this, your marketing department should be testing new customer acquisition channels continually. Such testing is not a one-off thing, that is, it should be an ongoing function within your marketing department. You should test new options at least once each quarter. We also advise our clients to allocate 20% of their entire customer acquisition budgets expressly for testing new marketing channel testing.  

When is marketing concentration risk an emergency?

If your company has any one channel representing more than 50% of your overall new revenue, you have an emergency on your hands, especially given that the US economy appears to be teetering on the edge of recession.

Whatever your circumstances, you must make channel diversification a strategic corporate priority and allocate the resources needed to resolve or prevent marketing concentration risk. 

marketing channels

What channels should I test?

While every business has unique target customers, for B2B businesses that use digital marketing for direct (e-commerce) or indirect (lead generation) customer acquisition, we suggest Tempesta Media’s Bullesye Effect™, which takes a targeted approach to test new digital marketing channels. Starting with the highest ROI areas–content and SEO marketing–the methodology gradually expands into new channels that increase distribution but may have lower ROIs. However, when CMOs deploy these channels as part of a portfolio approach to customer acquisition, they can maximize distribution and channel diversity with a blended ROI target.

My marketing department is generalist and small. How can we master new channels quickly?

Many B2B companies have cut marketing staffing over the years, leaving themselves with a skeleton crew. While the crew members may be excellent experts regarding their companies and superb project managers, they might also be generalists in marketing knowledge.

Efforts to build internal channel-specific expertise most often prove futile because customer acquisition channels change so rapidly.

Consequently, an increasing number of B2B businesses, especially mid-market and enterprise companies, outsource the testing and execution of specific digital marketing channels. Such outsourcing has become increasingly attractive with the emergence of digital marketing-managed service providers.

What’s the difference between an advertising/marketing agency and a digital marketing-managed service provider?

In essence, a marketing agency brings human expertise to the table. They have experts on staff who know how to launch, optimize and scale new marketing channels.

Digital marketing-managed service providers take the agency model to the next level. They bring sophisticated marketing technology, deep analytics and industry-specific and human expertise together as one bundled solution. This saves businesses significant money and can drive better results. More importantly, these providers can get new channels in marketing quickly, allowing you to diversify faster.

Be ready for the next black-swan event today.

Like many businesses affected by this weekend’s banking disruption, you don’t want to be blindsided by a customer acquisition channel suddenly drying up. Take proactive measures now to strengthen and diversify your marketing. It may save you from having a harrowing “all-hands-on-deck” weekend sometime in the future.

Use a Managed Service Provider to Elevate Your Marketing Efforts

Managed service providers (MSPs) can help you achieve your digital marketing goals. They have the tools to scale your promotional efforts while reducing marketing costs. Elevate your business services marketing with an MSP.

Your customers interact with multiple channels before they make a purchase. For example, they will see an ad on Facebook and then recognize your brand name in the SERPs or engage with your email marketing before they convert. As more businesses understand the typical customer journey, their digital marketing efforts are expanding.

According to a report by CMO, more than 65% of businesses are expanding the number of channels they use to promote their brands – including 58.6% of B2B service providers. But unfortunately, it’s not easy to scale your efforts and launch new marketing programs with your existing resources. As a result, your business risks losing market share this year as your competitors ramp up their efforts.

There are solutions available to you. For example, managed service provider (MSP) marketing might be able to help you expand your digital efforts effectively. Learn more about this business services marketing option and how it can work for you.

company growth

Who needs managed service providers (MSPs)?

MSPs help businesses of all sizes, industries, and budgets but are particularly beneficial to firms that offer business services. Whether you run a niche SaaS company or provide support for healthcare brands, you can work with MSPs to achieve your marketing, sales and retention goals. Here are a few situations when an MSP can help your business:

  • You can’t afford to grow your marketing team. The average salary for a digital marketing professional (as of December 2022) is $57,337 per year. However, salary expectations can range above $100,000 for specialty roles and job postings in cities with high costs of living. Instead of hiring in-house specialists, you could scale your efforts to a higher level by contracting an MSP.
  • You don’t have a marketing team at all. Small business owners, in particular, can benefit from MSPs. You can focus on managing your operations and running a profitable company rather than keeping up with the latest digital marketing for business trends.
  • Your company wants to add a new channel. Digital marketing is an incredibly diverse field. You can’t expect your in-house content marketing specialist to keep up with SEM trends. Instead, you can hire an MSP to take over your paid ads and focus their time exclusively on these efforts.
  • Your company wants to dominate the market. Business service enterprises that lead the way in their fields often have a control hub of in-house employees working with specialized MSPs. If you have significant growth plans for 2023 and beyond, consider hiring a provider that can meet your current needs while preparing to execute your vision for growth.

These are just a few examples of companies that can benefit from MSPs for business services marketing. An effective MSP will evaluate your budget, industry, and goals before providing marketing strategies for business service growth.

What are the benefits of hiring managed service providers?

Your marketing strategies will evolve as your business grows and changes. There’s a big difference between the marketing needs of a startup and the enterprise it will grow into. Managed service providers can develop marketing strategies that produce new leads, convert customers and increase retention rates. They offer ongoing analyses of the changing market and strive to stay ahead of consumer demands.

Here are a few benefits of MSPs:

  • Stay on top of the latest trends. The success of an MSP depends on its ability to provide relevant strategies and innovative plans to clients. Hire a firm to keep up with the latest changes to Google’s search algorithm or popular social media platforms so you don’t have to. An effective MSP should follow the latest trends and come to you with ideas to improve your marketing efforts.
  • Scale your efforts. You can enjoy faster results when hiring an MSP instead of hiring an in-house team member. Skip over the recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training processes by working with an experienced service provider. Remember, it can take up to 12 months for the average employee to reach their full performance potential.
  • Reduce your workload. A trusted digital marketing partner will remove items from your workload. They will be accountable for reporting their success and will take steps to troubleshoot issues. This allows you to take on more of a supervisory role over your digital marketing footprint.
  • Save money. Find an MSP that meets your budgetary needs. Digital marketers usually charge between $1,000 to $11,000 per month for SEO services with similar rates for social media marketing. Email marketing providers charge between $335 to $3,500 per month. Some MSPs offer discounted rates to companies that hire them to manage multiple digital marketing channels at once.

MSPs also provide lower risk levels for business services marketing. For example, if you aren’t happy with your service provider, you can leave them and find another firm to work with. This is easier than developing an in-house team and counting on your staff to be successful.

successful marketing strategy

How do managed service providers ensure success?

When you hire a managed service provider, the team will work closely with your business to understand which key performance indicators (KPIs) you need to improve. Then, they will set high-level goals based on your business needs (ex., increased brand recognition and reduced churn) and tie specific metrics to these goals. For example, an SEO agency will track your brand’s search demand, indicating name recognition within the industry.

From there, your MSP will set windows to meet these goals and report on their efforts. At first, you might have a weekly check-in with your MSP as their efforts ramp up, which expands to monthly reviews with the organization.

Remember that different digital marketing channels come with different windows to see results. A company that runs paid ads or launches an email campaign can report results within a few weeks. SEO and content marketing companies might need longer windows (at least six months) for their efforts to drive results.

As long as you are aligned with your MSP on the metrics you expect them to track – and the goals they need to meet – you can continue improving your digital marketing efforts.

What should you look for in a managed service provider?

MSPs are as diverse as the companies they represent, so you must shop around to find a good fit for your business. However, a quality MSP can provide a long-term partnership that lasts for years. These companies can help you grow your business and evolve within your industry.

Here are a few factors to review as you search for a digital marketing service provider:

  • Industry experience. Look for a firm that has other clients within your industry. These don’t have to be competitors in business services, but they should operate within your field. This ensures the MSP understands your customers, your terminology, and any legal limitations related to your marketing efforts.
  • Average client size. What kind of companies does the MSP typically represent? If your business is the firm’s biggest client, your growth options might be limited; however, if your business is the smallest client, you might not get the attention you deserve. Look for MSPs that are used to working with companies of your size.
  • Specialty or full-service capabilities. Decide whether you want to work with different agencies to handle each aspect of your digital marketing efforts or a firm that can handle everything. If you are interviewing full-service MSPs, ask about packages to receive discounts on your digital marketing plans.
  • Cost. Consider the cost of the MSP compared to the services they provide. The best MSP for your needs might not be the most expensive (or cheapest) option. Also, check each company’s different pricing plans; some MSPs charge flat-rate prices while others base their fees on marketing spending or sales.

During your search, ask to see case studies from previous or existing clients. Request samples of reports to see how firms prove results and sample contracts to learn how you can hold your MSP accountable. This will allow you to take action if you aren’t happy with the work they provide.

types of digital marketing

Setting up the standards for MSPs

When considering an MSP for your business, deliver your goals to your future contractor and decide whether their services and software platform makes it easy to manage all your digital efforts. Check if they have a full-service system that can handle all types of your marketing needs, for example:

  • content marketing,
  • video content,
  • influencer marketing,
  • email campaigns.

If you chose partnership with Tempesta Media, we will start with the Prova assessment. This is a comprehensive tool that analyzes more than 90 aspects of your current digital marketing program to identify opportunities to drive better results. We will assess your social media presence, brand positioning, and content marketing performance while initiating improvement strategies.

By studying the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, we will be able to capitalize on any identified areas of weakness that will yield insights benefiting your company. This will give the possibility to highlight why potential customers should choose you over the competition, driving leads to your company.

Take the first steps to work with Tempesta Media and schedule a meeting with us to get your marketing assessment.

Marketing in the Tech Industry: How MSP Marketing Solutions Generate Leads

Lead generation is the pivotal moment when a user becomes a potential client. This is the critical point at which your tech company stands out from the crowd. Increase the number and quality of leads to grow the number of real customers.

Lead generation can be challenging for tech companies as you have to deliver a result-oriented approach to strengthen your digital presence while laying the foundation for a successful long-term relationship with new customers.

The hardship begins with the difference between having a static audience and a dynamic one. Your sales team should have a marketing solution tailor-made for each customer’s needs.

Many tech companies immediately confront two main challenges when developing their lead-generation strategies:

  1. The overwhelming amount of content available online obstructs potential leads – it becomes the customer’s responsibility to sift data and seek products or services.
  2. Achieving visibility and reaching out to the right prospects are not overnight processes. Companies often lack the in-house resources to bring a comprehensive strategy to fruition.

As a result, savvy tech companies are turning to managed service providers (MSP) to up their game.

laptop screen

Shaping the user experience

The old saying that you never get a second chance to make a first impression has never applied more than in today’s digital marketplace. When a potential client hits your site or landing page, it’s the first step in building the complete user experience. How will that customer gauge the significance of your brand, the quality of your content?

Understanding your audience

MSP marketing solutions can ensure this initial contact is a positive, immersive experience by conducting thorough research into your audience and market.

Utilizing analytics and metrics specific to your scope, your MSP partner can develop a detailed buying journey map. This map will highlight the pain points of your audience and the various means prospects use to evaluate tech products.

For instance, 30% of product searches now launch immediately via search engine. An MSP can identify how to leverage SEO — including off-page — to connect you with the largest pool of potential buyers.

Increasing visibility

Visibility is another vital factor for facilitating initial contact with a prospect. Getting your content to rank at the top of search result pages is no longer sufficient. Optimizing content to achieve visibility can include:

  • Image results. Create infographics for each of your most important pages and services.
  • Featured snippets. Work with your on-page SEO and write eye-catching snippets.
  • Interactive result blocks. Use outlines to allow the users preview pages.

An MSP can help develop successful marketing for tech companies via multiple SEO strategies:

  • Keyword research helps identify searches that reflect the pain points of the audience.
  • Using the latest SEO best practices will ensure you meet the criteria Google values with its recent helpful content update.
  • Evaluation of your competitors’ SEO strategies against your own will optimize your visibility.

Content marketing and inbound lead generation

Marketing for technology companies delivers better results with a big-picture approach. Studying points for recalibration of your existing plan and exploring how to anticipate future needs change the game. By outsourcing SEO to an MSP, you benefit from a one-stop, synergy-driven approach — all your SEO and content creation is generated by the same partner, ensuring that every piece you publish will align with your SEO strategy.

Your content will also meet the user expectations produced by the optimized metadata displayed in search results — a critical factor for a lower bounce rate.

With two-thirds of marketers increasing their content creation budget in 2022, it’s more important than ever to adopt a competitive content marketing strategy. Here’s how an MSP can help:

  • An MSP can create a content calendar to help you publish fresh content often.
  • This partner can identify innovative ideas to help your audience keep up with the latest tech trends.
  • Being one of the first tech companies to discuss new trends will turn you into a thought leader.
  • An MSP can map the user journey and create high-quality content that consistently meets user needs at different stages of this journey.
  • Working with an MSP is an opportunity to explore a wide range of content formats and publication channels. Examples include blogging, guest posting, FAQ pages, white papers.

SEO strategy

The specifics that only professionals can cope with

On-page SEO. Even if you publish 100 articles on your website, it won’t always attract prospects. Marketing for technology companies calls for prioritizing visibility in search results, which is something an MSP can achieve by creating copy where the right keywords occur naturally. During the content development process, your MSP will optimize content to generate leads.

Off-page SEO. Plus, an MSP can optimize metadata and develop a strategic linking structure. Your vendor will also build a network of backlinks from authoritative sources to support indexing and ranking for tech topics.

Publication channels are another important aspect of any successful marketing for tech companies’ campaigns. Working with an MSP means you’ll have access to a team of digital marketing experts who can identify the right channels for distributing your content.

Typically, your marketing vendor will help you leverage a mix of owned and earned channels:

  • Owned channels can include your website and blog, as well as your email list, gated content, and social media profiles.
  • Earned media channels can include tech publications and press releases. You can also use online discussion platforms or social media groups.

Achieving continuous engagement

After establishing an initial touchpoint where the prospect develops awareness of your tech company and services, the next step is to lay the foundation for continuous engagement.

With B2B buying journeys becoming increasingly complex, a fast conversion isn’t a realistic goal. Instead, leveraging content to achieve continuous engagement will ensure that your solution remains one of the top options the average six to ten buyers involved in the decision-making process consider.

Providing a clear next step

Creating the initial contact isn’t enough to generate a qualified lead. As the B2B buying journey grows in complexity, prospects have an average of 59% more interactions with vendors.

Marketing for technology companies requires a series of contacts. You need to provide a clear next step to keep prospects engaged. You also need to build a flexible path since every prospect will have a unique buying journey.

 

iMac with a motivating screen wallpaper

Rethink marketing for tech companies with an MSP

MSP marketing solutions can make a difference at every stage of the buying journey:

  • At the top of the funnel, an MSP can help establish a positive initial contact by leveraging audience research, SEO strategies, and valuable content.
  • An MSP can leverage multiple content formats as well as an omnichannel model to achieve continuous engagement and increase prospect sophistication throughout the middle of the funnel.
  • A marketing partner can remove barriers to purchase to help prospects reach the bottom of the funnel besides developing content that supports purchase decisions and enhances customer satisfaction.

Do you need help with lead generation? As a managed service provider, Tempesta Media can identify and implement the right strategies for your niche. Beyond helping with lead generation, our comprehensive marketing plans can nurture leads and result in an effective and scalable sales funnel built around quality content and trustworthiness.

How is Tempesta Media different from other MSPs? Besides working with an experienced team of marketing and copywriting experts, we rely on two unique solutions to develop highly customized marketing plans:

  • Our Prova assessment is a 90-point audit that helps us get to know your organization, your audience, and your market better. This assessment establishes a baseline we use to inform our recommendations.
  • Our MSP service is a turnkey digital marketing solution we use to create marketing plans adapted to the unique needs and budget of each customer. This platform relies on modules that we can add or remove as needed for services like content creation, SEO, social media marketing, paid ads, and more.

Are you ready to take the next step in your digital marketing strategy? Contact us to learn more about working with an MSP or scheduling your initial Prova assessment!

Social Media Content Ideas That Perform Best for Healthcare

Trust is crucial in healthcare. Without it, you’ll have trouble connecting with your audience and gaining new patients. These proven social media content ideas can help your healthcare organization build trust with your patients.

Social media platforms are a great way to reach an audience. Facebook — the most-used social media site — has more than 2.9 billion monthly active users, with two-thirds checking the platform daily.

Healthcare marketers and providers need to understand how to use social media to:

  • Promote positive health behaviors.
  • Establish your organization as a trusted source.
  • Engage patients in their care.
  • Highlight successes.

These social media content ideas perform best online and can help you build your audience.

social media profile

Preventive Care News

A recent study looked at the way communities benefited from social media during the COVID-19 outbreak. However, social media is also a place where misinformation spreads quickly. You can combat this by curating good information from sources like the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

Keeping Up With the Latest Recommendations

Official guidelines for preventive care change regularly. For example, the USPSTF recently recommended adults aged 50 to 80 who currently smoke or have smoked within the past 15 years to get an annual lung cancer screening using a CT scan.

Publish this information on social media and make it easy to share online. This helps patients navigate through confusing (and sometimes incorrect) information.

Educate Patients About the Importance of Screenings

With preventive care representing over a third of health center visits, it’s one of the primary reasons why patients seek care. However, millions of Americans don’t have access to preventative care or are unable to keep up with official recommendations from screenings and other recommended appointments.

From discussing routine vaccination to cancer screenings, social media posts can act as powerful reminders to schedule these important appointments.

Your role is also to educate your audience about what happens during these visits and how preventive care can mitigate health risks. You can also discuss how early diagnosis and treatment can significantly improve health outcomes in many cases.

More Preventive Care Content Ideas

These content ideas will help you place preventive care at the core of your healthcare social media marketing campaign:

  • Share patients’ success stories that show how a routine screening led to an early diagnosis.
  • Facts and numbers about the prevalence of a health condition can make the risk feel more tangible and motivate patients to seek preventive care.
  • Educate about early symptoms to recognize, or how a healthcare professional can use diagnostic tools to screen for a specific condition.
  • Address and remove potential barriers to seeking preventive care by educating your audience about insurance options, income-based assistance programs, or discounts.

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Educational Content

People go online to find information about symptoms, diseases, and treatment options. A study published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE found that about 20% of online searches were health-related.

That presents many opportunities for healthcare organizations, but it also has some pitfalls for patients. Remember, not all information online is accurate, and sometimes it’s hard to sort through what’s good and bad.

Curating Content

You can make this easier for patients by sharing educational content on social media. Create this content from scratch or share information from reputable sources. The best are government sites, educational sites, and non-profit scientific or medical research societies.

With a plethora of educational content available from trusted sources, educating your audience can become a pillar of your healthcare social media marketing strategy.

You can schedule regular posts where you simply share links to government resources, peer-reviewed publications, and other trustworthy resources.

Adding Value with Your Own Content

In spite of the internet making health information readily available, an estimated 88% of adults don’t possess a level of health literacy that allows them to navigate the healthcare system and receive the care they need.

You can help bridge this gap by developing content that is educational and engaging. As a health organization, you have unique insights into your community and the health risks that exist among the population you serve.

Take a more personalized approach to educating your audience by focusing on health risks that are prevalent among your community and the demographics you serve.

Another way to create value is to make educational content feel more accessible. Peer-reviewed studies and other publications can be dry and technical. Creating engaging summaries of the latest studies, official recommendations, and other important health information are great ways to keep your audience engaged.

Social Media and Blogging

Did you know that 68% of marketers use blogs? Blogging remains one of the most effective ways of connecting with your audience while supporting your SEO efforts with a steady stream of fresh content.

Don’t make the mistake of developing your blogging strategy independently from social media. You’ll get more out of your content marketing efforts if you create blog posts with social media in mind.

A blog with a weekly publication schedule will provide you with regular updates you can share on social media. Social media can become a powerful channel for driving organic traffic to your blog with engaging posts that feature eye-catching images and interesting facts your audience can learn more about by clicking on your latest blog post.

More Social Media Content Ideas

There are other healthcare social media marketing strategies you can use to make educational content feel more engaging:

  • Host a Q&A on social media so users can send their questions and get answers from an expert.
  • Take advantage of events like cancer awareness months to publish a series of posts designed to educate your audience about a specific condition, symptoms to watch for, and the importance of regular screenings.
  • Sum up important information in an infographic to help your audience learn about a new topic at a glance.
  • Share a quick fact of the day. A series of bite-sized posts with impactful statistics and other important facts can increase awareness of health risks and treatment options.
  • Have a specialist take over your social media account for the day. It’s an engaging way to have them share their expertise while increasing awareness for a specific condition or treatment.
  • Social media surveys can be an effective tool for assessing health literacy among your audience and designing better educational programs.

social media networking

Raise Awareness for Events and New Treatments

Healthcare is a field that evolves at a fast pace. Help patients keep up by turning social media into a hub where you share the latest updates for your organization.

Updates about Your Organization

Sharing regular updates about your organization will keep your audience involved while showing that you’re growing and evolving to better support the community.

These updates can also increase the usage rate of new services. Don’t just announce what’s new at your facility. Create content that connects new services with benefits that resonate with patients.

Better yet, keep your audience involved by sharing updates throughout the process of rolling out a new service, building a new location, or hiring a new physician. This approach will strengthen your connection to your community and create anticipation for upcoming changes.

Plus, with the digital healthcare market expected to grow at an annual rate of more than 16%, social media can become an effective tool for communicating the new digital tools you’re adopting and helping patients feel comfortable with this new environment.

Updates about your organization are also a great way to get feedback from your audience. Keep track of engagement and take the time to read the comments and questions you receive.

Comments can provide you with valuable insights into the expectations and needs of your audience. Use this information to inform future decisions regarding events, classes, and more.

Social Media and Hiring

Leveraging your social media presence can support your recruitment efforts. As a majority of healthcare organizations face a staff shortage, it’s more important than ever to use digital channels to reach out to a wide pool of potential candidates and show how your organization is innovating and making a positive difference to attract talent.

Plus, you can use social media to promote job fairs, open positions, and other events related to hiring. Increasing your outreach will help you find the best talent in the healthcare field.

For healthcare organizations with a volunteer program, social media can become a powerful tool for showcasing the accomplishments of these volunteers. You can promote new volunteering opportunities, reach out to a wider audience of potential volunteers, and celebrate everything your volunteers do.

Preventive Care and Health Literacy

Digital tools can help connect patients to health resources. A study from UC Davis showed that using an electronic population tool had a significant impact on helping patients receive the preventive care they needed.

Social media can be a valuable tool for increasing awareness of health fairs, screenings, and other events or services.

You can share dates for these events ahead of time and show images and other content from these events. Those who didn’t attend might decide to take part in the next event after seeing this content on social media.

As more organizations adopt a holistic approach to healthcare, more physicians develop personalized treatment plans that encompass societal and environmental factors.

Your Facebook posts or tweets can raise awareness for these issues and promote classes, webinars, Q&As, and other events designed to increase health literacy for these issues.

Plus, you can share content from these classes on social media as part of your outreach efforts. Filming portions of a class can be an engaging way to educate your audience, but you can also have an instructor share their thoughts in a Facebook post.

New Services

Keeping up with the latest trends and treatments in the healthcare field is challenging for 68% of physicians. Patients run into the same challenge of not knowing about the latest diagnosis or treatment methods, making it difficult for them to feel empowered and act as advocates for their own health.

Leverage social media to educate patients about the latest services you’re offering:

  • Discuss new drug trials you’re participating in.
  • Let your audience know about new equipment you’re investing in.
  • If you’re hiring a new specialist, introduce this professional to your audience in a social media post.
  • Tell your audience about your plans to launch a new patient management platform.
  • Show the benefits of scheduling a telemedicine appointment if you’re offering this service.

Educating patients about your services can increase their usage rate. It can also improve health outcomes. Something as simple as educating patients about what happens during a regular check-up, by sharing tips on how to prepare ahead of the appointment, can help patients get the most out of this service.

Fundraising

On average, Americans gave 4% more in 2021 compared to the previous year. If your organization uses fundraising to finance some projects, social media has the potential to become a cornerstone of your fundraising efforts.

A mix of organic posts and paid ads can help you target potential donors in your community. You can use social media to promote in-person events or request donations via a digital portal.

Using social media to celebrate accomplishments or educate your audience about new services will also show donors how their contributions are having a positive impact on the community.

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Staff Highlights and Accomplishments

When your staff is dedicated to your mission, they make patients feel comfortable about coming in for care. Highlight the great things your staff does by creating social media spotlights of them.

Use Visual Content

“Get to know you” posts with a picture of a friendly face are a great way to introduce staff members to your audience.

You can also use video to your advantage here, letting the staff member discuss their job and talk about why they love the work they do. It doesn’t require advanced video editing skills, just a smartphone and a room with good lighting.

Build Trust With Staff Highlights

With only 38% of Americans saying they trust the healthcare system, building trust is more important than ever.

Staff highlights can help repair trust by putting a human face on your organization. This type of content can also show what goes on behind the scenes and support your branding efforts by helping you create a unique voice.

Seeing content that features a caring healthcare expert can be a pivotal moment for a prospective patient who is still hesitating about seeking care. Staff highlights can also reassure patients that providing the best care possible is a top priority and having staff members discuss their job results in concrete examples of how you provide quality care.

Connect Staff Highlights to Your Other Goals

Beyond establishing trust, this type of content can support other goals such as educating patients about the services you offer or the importance of preventive care while sharing information in an engaging format.

Plus, highlighting staff accomplishments is a great way to celebrate those who make a difference. It can shape your organization’s culture and send a positive message to your audience about your values.

As mergers and acquisitions continue to shape the healthcare industry, focusing on your staff and using social media to put forward the human dimension of providing care can help you stand out.

Staff highlights can also send a powerful message to your workforce. As stress, burnout, and fatigue continue to create challenges in the healthcare field, using your healthcare social media marketing campaign to show how much you value care providers can help reduce the average 19.5% turnover rate.

User-Generated Content

One of the biggest misconceptions about social media content is that you have to create everything you post. Many successful organizations encourage users to create content they can post online.

For example, CaringBridge is a non-profit that helps people create websites to update family and friends about their healthcare journey. They frequently ask followers to share information and ideas on their Facebook page about various topics related to healthcare and overcoming illness.

However, there is one important caveat to sharing consumer content in the healthcare industry.

UGC and HIPAA Requirements

Patient privacy laws (HIPAA) protect your patients’ privacy. Sharing protected health information without the patient’s written consent can get you in legal trouble and cost you a lot in fines.

Anyone can comment or share information on your social media sites without you worrying about HIPAA violations, but if you plan to share something about a patient, make sure you have their written permission to do so.

You can prevent HIPAA violations by developing a process with clear guidelines for the creation of user-generated content. This process should include guidelines for identifying patients who are good candidates for sharing their stories, as well as best practices for obtaining their consent and keeping track of this documentation.

UGC and Testimonials

Patients can bring a unique viewpoint when discussing their experience with an illness or what receiving care at your facility was like.

Having patients recount these experiences via testimonials will result in content that feels relatable. For a prospective patient, seeing another human go through a similar health struggle can be inspiring and act as a pivotal moment in the decision to seek care.

You can also create content that features patients and the medical team they worked with. The patient’s testimony will feel engaging and relatable while the medical team can make the content feel authoritative, providing your audience with a behind-the-scenes look into how your organization develops treatment plans.

Use Patient Voices to Raise Awareness

User-generated content can also break down the stigma associated with certain health problems. For instance, experts believe that as many as 50 million Americans suffer from mental health problems, but it’s a topic many struggle to discuss openly.

Seeing patients discuss mental health, sexual health issues, or even aging can feel empowering and encourage patients to open up about their symptoms.

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Take Your Healthcare Social Media Marketing Campaign to the Next Level

Social media can have many benefits for healthcare organizations, including:

  • Educating patients about the importance of preventive care and boosting usage rates for various services.
  • Creating a meaningful connection to the community by sharing updates and celebrating achievements.
  • Inspiring prospective patients to seek care through user-generated and educational content.
  • Providing value to patients with content that supports health literacy.
  • Supporting your organizational values and culture.

Implementing a successful healthcare social media marketing campaign is a worthwhile project, but it can be challenging, especially for organizations that lack time and resources.

How Tempesta Media Can Help

It’s where a managed service provider can make a difference. Tempesta Media has been helping healthcare organizations for more than a decade and can develop a highly customized approach to social media marketing, reflecting the unique goals of your organization.

As a managed service provider, our first step is to learn as much as possible about your organization with our Prova digital marketing assessment. It’s a 90-point assessment that takes two weeks to complete. It gives us a comprehensive idea of your goals and challenges so we can tailor our approach.

Next, we’ll use our Performica turnkey solution to put together a personalized marketing plan. Performica is a flexible platform with different digital marketing modules that allows us to create a unique plan with social media marketing strategies, content creation services, SEO, analytics, and much more.

This approach allows us to implement the right strategies for your goals and budget while delivering measurable results. Contact us to learn more or get started with our Prova assessment!

Top Channels and Strategies MSP Marketing Services Leverage to Yield Results

A sound marketing strategy is more important than ever. As businesses face challenges linked to shrinking profit margins and heightened competition, generating a steady stream of leads and forming strong connections with prospects and customers can create a path forward.

For many organizations, in-house capabilities aren’t always a good match for the challenges linked to developing a digital marketing strategy. As a result, outsourcing marketing to managed service providers is on the rise.

What do these vendors do? Learn more about MSP marketing services, how these partners can develop customized strategies, and what the main benefits of working with an MSP are.

What is an MSP?

Outsourcing is on the rise. For many businesses, COVID-19 accelerated digital transformation and resulted in new workflows that facilitate working with remote partners.

A majority of small businesses plan on outsourcing some tasks this year, and 24% are planning to outsource marketing.

The traditional agency model isn’t always a good fit for these small and medium organizations. As more SMBs seek digital marketing services packages, the MSP model emerges as a solution.

Managed service providers appeared in the late 1990s in the IT field. These businesses offered a subscription model with a monthly fee for a variety of IT services. One of the advantages is to have access to a flexible offering with different service tiers or customizable packages.

This model translates well to marketing. Between the rise of the omnichannel model and innovations in analytics, many marketers find that they need a flexible partner who can take a customized approach.

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What do MSP marketing services do?

MSPs typically have a flexible model where customers can build digital marketing services packages with different elements. The services can vary from one vendor to another, but most MSPs offer these core building blocks.

SEO

Search engine optimization can get technical with practices like managing redirects or adding no-follow tags to your links. A successful SEO campaign requires skills and a thorough understanding of the signals search engines use to rank pages.

You also have to find the right balance between optimizing your content and developing copy that remains engaging and easy to read. It’s crucial to keep up with the latest trends, such as mobile-friendliness or Google’s recent helpful content update.

Visibility in search results has become a major differentiator. Competing with in-house resources is often not realistic. Plus, implementing SEO in-house means you’ll have to go through a trial-and-error process to figure out which strategies yield results.

Outsourcing SEO to an MSP makes sense:

  • MSPs have SEO experts on staff. These professionals have years of experience and will know right away which on-page and off-site strategies are relevant to your goals.
  • An MSP can improve your ROI by taking a strategic approach. Experts can analyze what your competitors are doing and keep track of search trends for your niche to focus on the most profitable SEO strategies.
  • Having the same team work on your SEO campaign and other aspects of your marketing strategy means that you’ll get more out of your marketing budget as content creation or social media linking practices support your SEO strategy.

Content creation and publication

Prioritizing content creation is more important than ever:

  • Google’s latest update favors quality content that delivers value to users.
  • The buying journey is becoming increasingly digital and self-directed. Content plays a crucial role in supporting a wide range of buying tasks.
  • With the end of third-party cookie support, a content-first strategy can replace retargeting campaigns.

It’s no surprise that 71% of the most successful businesses describe their content creation strategy as mature while only 5% of the least successful organizations have a mature content strategy.

Like many other aspects of your digital marketing plan, managing content creation in-house can be challenging. On average, it can take five hours to create an 800-word blog post. This process involves multiple employees and takes up valuable time.

An MSP can complement your team’s ability to write, or take over the entire content creation program:

  • MSP marketing services give you access to talented writers who use their industry knowledge and writing skills to create content that supports conversions, a top content marketing goal for 65% of brands.
  • Editors can oversee your campaigns and make sure content is consistent with your branding preferences. They will also ensure that content meets spelling, grammatical, and readability requirements.
  • SEO experts can optimize your content to generate more organic traffic.

Beyond writing and editing, an MSP can help with publication:

  • You can work with your MSP to create a content creation schedule. The MSP will deliver fresh content regularly to keep your audience engaged and support your SEO efforts.
  • A steady stream of content will help you stay active on channels like social media or email.
  • Publishing content regularly makes it easier to establish your brand as a thought leader by discussing the latest trends.
  • An MSP can use data to identify the best channels for content publication based on your target audience’s preferences and behaviors.

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Social media

Social media users now exceed 58% of the world’s population. Social media usage keeps growing with the user base increasing by 10% between 2021 and 2022.

These platforms have changed the way we communicate. They’re also shaping our buying habits. Consumers are likely to turn to social media to discover new products or find reviews, but social media is also important for the B2B niche. LinkedIn is now a top platform for 40% of B2B marketers.

Managing social media in-house is time-consuming. Tracking results is challenging since vanity metrics can reduce visibility over your ROI. Plus, managing some aspects like paid ads or analytics can be technical.

MSP marketing services can help:

  • Social media marketing experts can develop a strategic approach and identify the right platforms and content formats.
  • These experts can also optimize your posts for engagement with engaging copy, hashtags, or images.
  • They can even track engagement and determine the best time of day to post.
  • You can work with an MSP to develop guidelines employees can follow when interacting with social media users for branding purposes.
  • An MSP can track results and uncover your social media ROI by focusing on meaningful KPIs.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has an average ROI of $5.78 for each dollar spent. Over 90% of marketers are now using influencer marketing, and this fast-growing channel goes beyond consumer products. There is an emerging market for B2B influencers who can make a difference by using their industry expertise to endorse products.

Launching an influencer marketing campaign can yield drastic results. Tempesta Media was able to increase leads by more than 300% for a customer by leveraging a mix of content creation, social media marketing, and influencer marketing strategies.

Getting started with influencer marketing can be intimidating. Finding the right influencers, managing these partnerships, and developing guidelines for content creation and endorsement requires some experience with this channel.

Reaching out to an MSP will ensure that you get the most out of influencer marketing. A vendor can help you leverage this trend by using data to identify the right influencers, vetting these partners, and tracking results.

Email marketing

Branded emails remain an effective way of keeping prospects and customers engaged. Delivering the right email at the right time can help a prospect move along their buying journey or cement a long-term relationship with a customer.

Email marketing spending is up. While only 50% of marketers described their email strategy as aligned with their other marketing practices in 2020, this percentage was up to 95% in 2021. A growing number of marketers are taking a deliberate and strategic approach to nurturing leads via email.

Nurturing email has the potential of becoming a cornerstone of your marketing plan. It’s a channel that allows you to engage and nurture leads while delivering personalized content that meets the expectations of your audience.

However, managing email marketing in-house includes a few challenges:

  • Implementing segmentation and other personalization techniques can be difficult.
  • You’ll get more out of your email marketing efforts if you rely on software designed to help you track results, automate tasks, and more. Choosing and learning to use the right email marketing software is a potential barrier.
  • Tracking your open rate, click-through rate, and other KPIs will help you make better decisions for your email campaigns. However, implementing an analytics campaign represents an investment of time and resources.
  • Coordinating your email marketing efforts with your overall content marketing strategy and other channels can be challenging.

MSP marketing services can help you get more out of your email campaigns. You’ll get to work with experienced professionals who can design and implement successful campaigns:

  • Your MSP can take steps to improve your email deliverability rate and avoid spam folders and filters.
  • A vendor with a strong data strategy can leverage analytics to improve your open rate and boost engagement.
  • Outsourcing content production means you’ll get a steady stream of fresh content for your email list.
  • You can also count on your MSP to optimize email series and turn this channel into a reliable qualified lead generation tool.
  • An MSP partner can also help you keep up with the latest privacy trends and best practices for sending emails.

Paid ads

Half of the marketing budgets don’t invest enough to maximize ROI. Marketers are turning this trend around by increasing spending, and social advertising and paid search are emerging as the top spending categories.

Paid ads are an opportunity to improve visibility in search, reach out to specific audience segments, and more. However, several obstacles can prevent you from optimizing an in-house paid advertisement campaign:

  • The bidding process can be technical. A sound bidding strategy ensures that you’re not overspending on ads while delivering the best ROI possible.
  • Third-party cookie support is coming to an end. For many marketers, switching to a strategy that relies on first-party data can be a challenge.
  • A successful paid ad strategy needs to account for your SEO efforts and other organic strategies. Failing to coordinate your efforts can result in unnecessary competition between your different pages or ads.
  • It’s also important to analyze how your competitors use paid ads. Once you know more about the channels or keywords used, you can adapt your approach to limit direct competition.
  • Paid advertising is a long-term commitment. You need to invest time and resources to test strategies, track results, and optimize campaigns.

Due to the technical nature of paid ads, MSP marketing services can make a difference thanks to their expertise. Paid advertisement is an area where an MSP can deliver measurable results and help you maximize your ROI by targeting the right keywords, creating compelling ads, and actively optimizing your campaigns.

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Remarketing

Repetition is crucial for awareness and information retention. With the average internet user seeing thousands of ads every day, it’s easy to develop ad blindness and ignore branded content.

Remarketing helps users remember and notice your brand. It increases awareness by creating a series of connections with a user.

Remarketing isn’t about showing the same content repeatedly. Instead, a sound remarketing strategy should deliver value and promote engagement by following the user through the different stages of the buying journey.

Once you combine your remarketing strategy with your sales funnel model, you can create meaningful touchpoints at different stages of the user’s journey. Each touchpoint can deliver a memorable experience or provide the user with the information they need to move to the next stage. Creating a succession of touchpoints helps users remember your brand. It also establishes your business as a trusted source of information.

With the end of third-party cookie support planned for 2024, there is a strong need to take a new approach to remarketing that prioritizes first-party data.

MSP marketing services can help you plan a successful transition to first-party data. You can also work with an MSP to uncover valuable insights into the buying journey to identify the best touchpoints for remarketing. Plus, digital marketing services packages that include content marketing will result in a more organic experience as your content marketing strategy supports remarketing at different stages of the buying journey.

developing content marketing strategy

Fully customized digital marketing packages

There is no one-size-fits-all in marketing. With MSP marketing services, you can expect a flexible and highly customized approach.

The offering will vary from one vendor to another, but MSPs stand out thanks to their fully customized solutions. You’ll typically work with a professional who acts as an account manager. This expert will get to know your organization, goals, and challenges.

Your go-to person will develop a customized package with marketing services and service tiers that make sense for your goals and budget.

In most cases, MSPs complete audits or assessments to learn more about your current marketing efforts. They will look at your current results, the audience you’re targeting, and the channels you use. They can also analyze your market and competitors.

This initial assessment is a strong baseline for building a marketing plan that addresses your unique goals and challenges. Your MSP will use this initial assessment to recommend digital marketing service packages with content, channels, and strategies that make sense for your organization.

This approach ensures that you don’t pay for things you don’t need. You can also expect fast results and an optimized ROI.

The benefits of MSP marketing services

Why outsource marketing to an MSP? Let’s recap the main benefits of working with these highly flexible and result-oriented partners:

  • An MSP helps you save valuable time by taking over a wide range of marketing-related tasks. Your in-house team can focus on other important things.
  • Managing costs is easy. Most MSPs have a monthly subscription model. Costs are transparent and you can plan future spending. Plus, you can adjust your personalized package if your budget fluctuates.
  • MSPs have employees with years of experience when it comes to working on content creation, SEO, paid ad campaigns, and more. You’ll benefit from this extensive expertise at a fraction of the cost of hiring in-house experts.
  • Thanks to their highly personalized approach, MSPs are able to offer customized digital marketing services packages that reflect your needs and goals without having to pay for things you don’t need.
  • The MSP model values transparency and is result-oriented. You can expect regular reports to track how your marketing campaigns are performing, constant optimization, and recommendations for taking your marketing efforts to the next level.
  • Besides being comfortable with the latest marketing software, MSP employees keep up with the latest trends and best practices.

marketing idea

Summary

The MSP model is on the rise as more businesses decide to outsource marketing. It’s also emerging as an ideal solution for small and medium organizations due to the highly personalized nature of this model.

From saving time to reducing costs and getting measurable results, there are many benefits associated with MSPs. The capabilities can vary from one vendor to another, but you’ll typically build a customized service package with elements like SEO, content creation, email marketing, paid ads, remarketing, and more.

Does the MSP model sound like a good fit for your organization? Tempesta Media has over a decade of experience in helping clients achieve their marketing goals.

Our first step is to complete a thorough 90-point digital marketing assessment to get to know our new clients better. We can then work together to build a customized service package with our Performica framework that includes modules for content marketing, email marketing, social media, influencer marketing, SEO, and much more.

Learn more about our Prova digital assessment to get started, find out more about our Performica framework, or take a closer look at our pricing options.

Top 10 Benefits of Outsourcing to an MSP Marketing Company

Outsourced marketing solutions are the future of digital marketing.

Digital marketing is at the core of the modern business model. Digital channels have become crucial for connecting with customers, becoming an industry leader, and achieving growth.

However, a successful digital marketing strategy requires an amount of work and a level of expertise that is often difficult to achieve with in-house capabilities, especially for small and medium businesses.

As a result, more organizations are turning to outsourcing. A marketing partner can take over time-consuming tasks, deliver consistent results, and help improve marketing ROI.

Find out why businesses are opting for the MSP marketing company model, and which benefits they derive from these partnerships.

1. Save valuable time

The average workweek can vary a lot from one organization to another. For some entrepreneurs, it’s not unusual to work 50 hours a week. Others are responding to labor challenges and inflation by reducing work hours to avoid increasing compensation.

Time is a valuable resource. Managing this resource successfully directly affects growth. Whether your marketing team works 50 hours a week or is adopting shorter workdays, you need a strategic approach to managing time and focusing on creating the most value possible during work hours.

For businesses without a dedicated marketing team, content creation tasks are an afterthought in a busy schedule. Crafting quality pieces of content can take several hours and involve multiple employees, which means project managers often have to choose between sacrificing quality or slowing down the production schedule.

An MSP marketing company can take over a wide range of marketing-related tasks and free up valuable time. You can retain some marketing tasks in-house and give employees plenty of time to develop high-quality content or decide to have employees focus on other important tasks, such as phone or in-person interactions with customers.

2. Manage costs

Marketing spending is up. On average, businesses are spending 9.5% of their revenue compared to 6.4% last year. In spite of this increase, marketing budgets are still lower than pre-pandemic levels.

In-house marketing can be costly. An employee costs close to $39 an hour between compensation and benefits, and this amount can be higher for positions that call for more competitive wages. You also have to factor in the cost of hiring and training.

As the buying journey continues to become increasingly digital, customers expect to connect with brands on their preferred channels. Adopting an omnichannel approach and coordinating your marketing efforts means you need a multi-disciplinary marketing team with experts in areas like email, social media, paid ads, analytics, copywriting, editing, SEO, and more.

Small and medium organizations typically don’t have the resources needed to put together a large team. Employees often end up wearing many hats and might lack the time, training, and expertise for the scope of their work. Providing your team with the latest marketing tools and software will also add to your in-house costs.

One of the benefits of outsourcing digital marketing is that you can choose an MSP with a monthly subscription model. You’ll get to build a customized package with a predictable cost, and you’ll have access to experts with expertise in several areas. Plus, the result-oriented approach means you can expect to get a measurable return on your investment.

3. Access top marketing talents

An MSP marketing company gives you access to some of the top talents in different marketing fields.

Putting together an internal team with the same level and scope of expertise can be challenging for most businesses. Hiring requires an investment of time and resources, and some talents are in high demand and can be tough to attract and retain.

In the tech industry, 48% of businesses have a small marketing team, sometimes with a single employee. This trend isn’t isolated. In spite of higher marketing budgets, most businesses don’t plan on increasing their marketing team size.

Keeping up with the demands of a digital marketing plan can be difficult and overwhelming for a single employee or a small team. The benefits of outsourcing digital marketing include having access to these different roles through your MSP vendor:

  • Your MSP can fulfill the role of a CMO by helping you develop a vision and overall strategy.
  • Account managers can act as marketing and project managers. These professionals take a CMO’s vision, turn it into a concrete plan, and coordinate the execution.
  • You’ll also get to work with market research experts who can help you study your market and competition or keep up with the latest trends.
  • Many MSPs offer analytics capabilities. This service replaces an internal analytics expert who can measure and optimize your marketing performance.
  • One of the benefits of content marketing outsourcing is that you’ll have access to a wide pool of copywriters and other content creators with industry expertise.
  • You’ll also work with editors who can ensure your content meets quality standards and is ready for publication.
  • MSPs also have social media managers on staff. These professionals can build and manage an online community on your behalf.
  • Your MSP will have SEO experts who can optimize your content.
  • You might also need to work with PR experts who can manage press releases, mentions in the news, and more.

An MSP marketing company gives you access to all these different roles as needed. You’ll get to work with some of the top talents in the marketing industry without any of the costs and challenges linked to hiring and retention. Plus, the MSP model means all these roles belong to the same organization and can work together to achieve consistent results.

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4. Get marketing results fast

Tempesta Media was able to increase leads by 53% for customers in only three months by using a mix of content marketing, off-site and on-site SEO, and paid ads. This kind of fast result is what you can expect when working with an MSP.

The benefits of outsourcing digital marketing include having access to a team of experienced professionals. These experts have worked on similar campaigns in the past and know which strategies will yield the results you’re looking for.

In-house teams make the best decisions possible based on the information available to them, but their limited experience compared to an MSP partner means that there is often a trial-and-error process. It can take weeks or even months to get even data to optimize or decide to scrape a marketing campaign.

This approach is costly, and it gives your competitors the opportunity to strengthen their digital presence while you’re testing different strategies.

Once you identify a strategy that works well, it’s only a matter of time before you have to make changes to response to the latest market trends. An MSP can make you more reactive by identifying the right strategies faster and anticipating these changes.

5. Adopt a proactive approach

Switching from a reactive approach to a proactive marketing plan allows you to anticipate issues before they arise. No matter how closely you monitor marketing performance and other factors, a reactive marketing strategy means that new challenges have time to impact your organization negatively before you respond.

An MSP marketing company can anticipate changes by conducting market research and monitoring the results of your marketing campaigns. For instance, the vendor you choose to work with can anticipate when you’ll need to focus on new client acquisition or adopt a new channel to keep up with the competition.

Being proactive will help you meet customers’ expectations. If a company fails to anticipate their needs, 45% of consumers will switch brands.

A proactive approach will also turn your brand into an early adopter when new channels and trends emerge for your niche. Plus, the benefits of outsourcing content marketing include being able to publish content on short notice to address the latest hot topics for your niche and establish yourself as a thought leader.

6. Benefit from a personalized outsourcing

One of the benefits of content marketing outsourcing with an MSP is the highly personalized approach these vendors take.

It’s true that outsourcing isn’t without its share of potential drawbacks. Finding the right partner can be a challenge. You can end up with a partner that doesn’t match your culture or vision. A common concern is that your marketing partner won’t be able to reproduce the voice and branding that made your organization unique.

The rise of digital marketing means users have access to more content than they can consume. Achieving authenticity and using hyper-focused channels that make sense for your audience are crucial strategies for standing out.

The kind of personalization that only an MSP can offer will make a difference. The MSP marketing company you choose to work with will get to know your organization, your market, and your target audience to develop a customized approach aligned with your goals and the expectations of your audience.

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7. Build flexible and scalable marketing processes

Digital marketing moves fast. There is always a new trend to incorporate, an emerging platform to turn into a new channel, or a new industry issue to address for thought leadership.

There are other potential reasons why flexibility can give you an advantage:

  • You might need to amp up your marketing capabilities for a specific campaign or event, such as a promotion or new product launch.
  • Your organization is going to grow over time, and your digital presence should grow with it. Reaching out to a new niche can be a crucial factor for growth.
  • Landing a new contract with a major client can cause your needs to change overnight.
  • Resilience is key in the current business landscape. You might have to make some unplanned spending cuts and temporarily scale back on your marketing efforts.

This level of flexibility can be difficult to achieve with an in-house team. The main variable you can use to create a flexible team is hiring. However, HR professionals agree that it takes around 60 days to hire a new employee, and you’ll have to give new hires a month or two to catch up and become fluent in your company culture.

Outsourcing to an MSP marketing company means you can build a customized marketing package. Your vendor will give you the possibility to include different services or choose a service tier. It’s a flexible model where you can add or remove services as needed.

You can make changes to your package to develop a presence on a new channel, increase content production for an event, or get help for a special project. An MSP makes you scalable, and you can scale up quickly so you don’t miss out on any opportunities.

8. Keep up with the latest trends

Digital marketing evolves at a fast pace. Marketers need to constantly think ahead and identify the next trend that aligns with their target audience’s preferences and behaviors.

Keeping up with the latest trends means developing a presence on emerging social media platforms that resonate with your target audience. It also means adjusting your SEO strategy to reflect the latest search engine algorithm update or updating your content marketing plan to account for new formats and preferences in consuming content.

For instance, with over 123 million voice assistant users, a growing number of brands are optimizing their content to appear in featured snippets that the Google assistant can read out loud. Some brands are also exploring video results, slideshows, and other varied content formats that increasingly appear in search results.

Keeping up with the latest digital marketing trends is also important in the context of Generation Z coming of age. You need an inclusive marketing plan that addresses the needs and expectations of these digital natives.

With 64% of 18 to 26 years old seeing their brand choices as a form of activism, many brands are rethinking their core values. An updated marketing strategy is crucial for clearly communicating your commitment to the societal and environmental issues that young adults care about.

In-house teams already have a lot on their plate, and there might not be enough time to keep up with the latest trends. Plus, developing a modern marketing plan also requires identifying the trends aligned with a company’s branding strategy and target audience. It’s also crucial to learn enough about a new practice or platform to implement a new strategy successfully.

Investing in the wrong marketing trends can be a costly mistake and adopting a trend after a competitor has already done so won’t yield the same ROI.

One benefits of outsourcing digital marketing to an MSP is that you’ll get help from a team of industry experts. These professionals know what is happening in their field. They can anticipate the next trends and determine the latest practices and strategies that correspond to your marketing goals.

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9. Increase your marketing ROI with a result-oriented strategy

Among B2C marketers, a staggering 48% are unsure of their in-house team’s capability to demonstrate content marketing ROI. This statistic reveals that failing to track marketing performance is a widespread issue.

Several obstacles can stand in the way of implementing an effective strategy to track results in-house:

  • Without a proper analytics strategy in place, visibility over marketing performance is difficult to assess. In-house teams don’t always have sufficient resources and skills to implement successful analytics programs.
  • Not having enough data to inform decisions means in-house teams often take a trial-and-error approach. As a result, marketing campaigns are often scraped before they can generate a consistent ROI. A succession of short-lived campaigns can be costly.
  • Establishing clear goals and a timeline is challenging for teams that lack experience or don’t have enough historical data.
  • In some cases, the capabilities of the in-house team in terms of time and budget aren’t realistic for the organization’s marketing goals.

One of the benefits of content marketing outsourcing with an MSP marketing company is that you’ll work with your vendor to discuss your goals, create a concrete marketing plan, and break down this plan into smaller steps with a specific timeline. MSPs use a result-oriented model to optimize your marketing ROI and help you unlock growth.

MSPs also rely on analytics experts to track performance with precision. This data allows an MSP to be more reactive and adjust a marketing strategy if needed.

Analytics improve transparency since you’ll receive regular reports that show how your marketing campaigns are performing. This information can support future decisions and even give you a competitive edge since analytics currently supports only 53% of marketing decisions.

10. Get access to the right tools and tech

Among CMOs, 26% consider data and analytics as one of the top capability gaps for their marketing department. As digital marketing becomes increasingly complex and technical, having access to the right tools can make a significant difference.

Adopting marketing software and other tools in-house isn’t always practical. There is a significant upfront investment linked to implementing a new solution. There are also ongoing costs with software subscriptions or licenses.

Selecting marketing software that meets the needs of your in-house team can be challenging, especially if your marketing experts lack experience with this type of buying decision. Adoption can be another barrier since not all employees are comfortable with technical tools and training represents an additional expense.

Challenges expand beyond your in-house marketing team. Running marketing apps in the cloud or hosting marketing software on-premise requires help from an IT department. For small and medium organizations, the current capabilities of the IT team and IT infrastructure might be insufficient.

Failing to adopt modern marketing tools and tech can hurt the performance of a marketing plan and make it difficult to compete against organizations with a larger tech budget.

Working with an MSP marketing company means you’ll have access to marketers who can rely on a number of tech solutions to optimize your campaign. You won’t have to incur additional costs linked to implementing these tech tools and the MSP team will already have plenty of experience with these apps and software products.

Technology can give you an advantage in the following area:

  • An analytics solution can significantly improve visibility over different digital channels, help you measure results, and support decisions.
  • Finding the right balance between personalization and data privacy is tricky. Data privacy management software helps you streamline the collection and usage of customer data to mitigate risks, improve compliance, and ultimately deliver a better experience.
  • A CRM solution can bridge any existing gaps between your marketing efforts and your sales team. You can gather valuable insights about your customers and prospects, automate personalized content distribution, and more.
  • Marketing automation solutions can help you save time on a wide range of tasks, including content publication, personalized emails, reminder emails, and more.

10+.Embrace innovation

Outsourcing creates value in more than one way. One of the benefits of working with a third-party vendor is to gain a new perspective.

Besides giving you access to new skills, an MSP marketing company with a diverse team of professionals will bring fresh ideas to the table. Your new partner will help you consider issues from a different angle and might come up with solutions you would have never thought of.

The post-COVID market is volatile and navigating inflation, labor mismatches, geopolitical uncertainties, and other challenges might require a significant strategic shift. Innovation is more important than ever and could be the key to unlocking growth.

Summary

Thanks to their holistic and result-oriented approach, MSPs can address a wide range of marketing challenges that businesses of all sizes face.

The two most common reasons for outsourcing are saving time and managing costs but working with an MSP marketing company has many other advantages. You’ll get access to a wider talent pool, benefit from a flexible and scalable marketing plan, leverage the latest tech tools and trends, and much more.

Are you wondering how an MSP could help your brand? At Tempesta Media, we have been supporting the marketing goals of our customers for a decade with a unique blend of expertise, dedication, and result-oriented planning.

Our secret? We take the time to get to know every customer before developing a highly personalized plan. We use our Prova assessment, a two-week process that covers 90 points, to learn as much as we can about a business and its market.

Next, we use our Performica framework to develop a customized marketing strategy. Performica is a turnkey solution that allows us to build flexible marketing packages by selecting modules aligned with the unique goals of each customer while taking their budget into consideration.

We’ll deliver regular updates regarding how your campaigns are performing and take your feedback into consideration to continuously improve your marketing plan. Our flexible Performica framework also means you can add or remove modules as needed for areas like content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, and more.

Learn more about how Performica works and how it could transform your digital marketing strategy.

How to Promote FAQ Articles and Why They’ll Improve Your Website

As the buying journey becomes increasingly self-directed, marketers need to offer resources designed to help prospects access the information they need.

Here’s why a great FAQ website is a must-have tool to enhance the user experience and help prospects move along the buying journey.

How to promote and share FAQ articles

Build a FAQ section on your website with dedicated pages for each Q&A. By structuring your FAQ section so that each query is hyperlinked to a separate page, each answer becomes searchable on your site and Google.

Incorporate your FAQ articles into your site’s knowledge base. Some marketing tools have great knowledge bases, for example, HubSpot’s service hub. Customers and prospects should also be able to easily spot it on the Home page and the navigation menu.

FAQ articles will also be useful in areas where visitors go when they need assistance, such as the Contact Us page.

Chatbots have become much more advanced thanks to artificial intelligence. The chatbot can open with a helpful Q&A based on a user’s action on your website. Or you can trigger the chatbot to respond to specific questions with helpful articles. This helps the customer by providing a quick, prompt answer. It also saves your team time by not having to answer each question individually.

New features and platform updates are best accompanied by helpful articles to ensure users help themselves.

Why is FAQ content a great strategy to incorporate?

When done right, FAQ articles can provide real value to both your business and your readers.

Visitors will see it as a demonstration of your expertise as it relates to your product or service and business model. By directly addressing their concerns and removing any purchase obstacles, you also show more value to your customers and prospects.

As an SEO strategy, FAQ articles increase the frequency with which you publish new content, as these pieces are typically easier to create and there are many opportunities to add new responses. FAQs improve your website performance, as they tally up the number of pages visited per session and improve bounce rates.

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How to identify the right questions to add to your FAQ website

The purpose of a FAQ page is addressing barriers to knowledge. Whether a user needs to know more about a product or needs proof that they can trust you, these barriers stand in the way of the purchase.

The first step to developing an effective FAQ page is to identify the questions your audience is likely to have. However, with sales representatives having approximately 5% of a prospect’s time during the buying journey, you’ll have to use a variety of methods to better understand what the buying journey looks like and which questions are likely to arise:

  • Customer service representatives can help. Mine the questions they receive the most.
  • Traffic patterns can show which pages get the most clicks and give you an idea of the topics visitors want to learn more about.
  • Use Google Search Console to track the searches that lead users to your content. These searches can reflect common questions among your visitors.
  • Go further by getting your target audience involved. Use a mix of interviews, surveys, and focus groups to ask about the information buyers need at different stages of their journey.

The set-it-and-forget-it approach won’t work for your FAQ page. You need to keep this content current by using search trends, feedback from customers, and input from your customer service team to identify new questions you should add.

Writing compelling responses

Now that you have a list of questions for your FAQ website, you can craft compelling answers. A good FAQ answer should be easy to understand and straight to the point. It should clearly, fully address the need for information.

Use these tips to create effective FAQ answers:

  • Start your answers with Yes or No when possible. Focus on readability, and make sure you deliver a full answer to the question.
  • Avoid technical jargon. Write from the point of view of your audience and use terms and expressions they would use.
  • Use bold or italics to draw attention to important words or sentences and make important information stand out.
  • With close to 60% of traffic being on mobile, it’s important to optimize your content for small screens. Keep your answers under three or four lines.
  • The Q&A format is ideal to let your voice and branding come through in your writing. Think of writing FAQ answers as a conversation to make your content more engaging.
  • Some questions might call for more nuanced answers. Write a summary and invite visitors to a link offering more about the topic.

Linking to and from your FAQ page

Get more out of your FAQ page by incorporating it into your internal linking scheme. Since clutter can get in the way of navigation, it’s best to keep your main menu options to five or six links. If you don’t have room to add your FAQ page to your main, add it to your secondary navigation scheme under About or Resources.

You should also link to your FAQ website in your footer. The idea behind this practice is that users might scroll through an entire page without finding the information they need. Seeing a link to your FAQ provides them with a helpful next step. Plus, linking to your FAQ in your footer is a common practice and visitors will expect to find the link there.

Your FAQ page is an important element in the content consumption journey. It can be a great way to suggest next steps by sharing a few internal links in your answers, while supporting your SEO efforts:

  • Add links to your Contact page. A sidebar can make this link more noticeable, but you can also incorporate a contact link to your copy if some answers are too complex to explain on your FAQ page in detail.
  • Link to pillar pages for topics users might want to explore in depth.
  • For questions that require a lengthy answer, link to blog posts with more detailed information.
  • You can also link to specific documents, including product manuals, warranties, privacy policies, and return policies.

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The importance of a user-friendly FAQ page

Ideally, your FAQ website helps users come away with a clear answer to their questions and a positive opinion of your brand.

Creating a user-friendly FAQ page with an engaging design can be challenging due to the amount of content to include. You can create a comprehensive FAQ page while facilitating navigation with these solutions:

  • Use an accordion design where users have to click on a question to reveal the answer. Users can see more questions at a glance and easily find the ones relevant to the current task.
  • Organize your questions in categories so users can easily jump to the section that is relevant to them.
  • A search bar for your FAQ page or entire website will allow users to look up their questions and find helpful content from your Q&As.
  • Use words and expressions your audience would use instead of technical jargon. It will help users locate relevant content with a search bar or the Ctrl+F feature.

FAQ pages and the self-directed journey

The modern buyer is autonomous and self-driven. For many prospects, the buying journey is about consuming content at their own pace and on their own terms. This approach empowers buyers, but it can create some challenges when information isn’t readily available.

By mapping this self-directed journey, you can better understand potential barriers or pain points and address them by developing relevant FAQ content. Inviting prospects to visit your FAQ page at the right moment in their journey can also help them progress to the next stage.

Here is how you can develop a FAQ page that supports the self-directed buying journey:

  • Craft answers that provide enough details to address the request for information so that the prospect has everything they need to progress to the next stage of their journey.
  • Make sure your FAQ includes answers relevant to different stages of the journey, including practical concerns like cost, compatibility, or support options.
  • Provide an alternative to the FAQ page in case your answers don’t meet a user’s needs. A link to contact customer service is a must-have feature.
  • A good FAQ page should reduce the workload of your customer service team. This reduced workload is an opportunity to focus on delivering more engaging experiences when a prospect or customer contacts a representative.

Turn your FAQ into a pivot for human contact

Your FAQ website can become an important pivot in the user’s journey. With the buying journey becoming increasingly self-directed, you need to look for touchpoints that create opportunities for human contact.

Prospects who visit your FAQ page are fulfilling a need for knowledge, and while some answers can be short and concise, others can act as a pivot for exploring a topic in more detail with the help of a customer service representative or salesperson.

Turning your FAQ page into a pivot for human contact will help optimize the user journey, an approach that can result in a 20% increase in customer satisfaction and boost revenues by 15%.

Use these tips to leverage your FAQ page and generate human contacts:

  • Add a contact link that is immediately visible.
  • Write copy that encourages readers to reach out.
  • Explain the value of using the contact link. For instance, you can point to a representative who will provide a more personalized answer.
  • Offer different ways of contacting you.

Not all answers are good candidates to act as pivots. Focus on optimizing answers that denote a higher level of sophistication from the prospect as well as questions where personalized answers would provide more value.

Leverage your FAQ website to build trust

Did you know that around two-thirds of consumers are unlikely to make a purchase if a brand loses trust? Trust is a crucial factor shaping buying decisions and customer retention, especially in the context of digital buying journeys where prospects have to share data with vendors and make decisions without in-person interactions.

There are different strategies you can use to build trust, from managing your online reputation to providing outstanding customer service. You can also focus on building transparency to turn prospects into leads.

A FAQ page will make your brand more transparent by immediately providing users with the information they need. You can use your FAQ to anticipate concerns, share information in a clear and concise manner, and show that you have nothing to hide.

Making your FAQ page easy to find by using internal links and using your answers to link to other relevant pages also shows that you value transparency. You also show dedication to providing as much information as possible so prospects can make the best decision.

Plus, encouraging users to contact you if they can’t find the information they need shows you care about their concerns.

Your FAQ page and search results

As prospects gather information to complete various tasks during their buying journey, they will turn to search engines to issue questions. They might have a specific question about a product or service, need information about billing or support, or want to clarify your policies regarding returns or cancelations.

Optimizing your FAQ website can help provide prospects with clear answers directly on the search engine result page. With Google using formats like featured snippets or People Also Ask results, users can find answers to their questions without having to visit a webpage.

Targeting these result types will increase visibility in search results. It can also help drive clicks from users who need more information. With 53% of web traffic coming from organic search, an optimized FAQ page can have a positive impact on SEO and traffic.

Plus, optimizing your answers for these result types ensures that search engines won’t show content from your competitors or other sources when displaying direct answers.

Here’s how you can increase your chances of having your answers featured in Google results:

  • Write clear answers that are short enough to appear in featured snippets. Keep your answers below the 50-word range if possible.
  • Optimize your questions and answers with strong keywords to indicate what your content is about.
  • Use natural-sounding questions that reflect the queries users would issue. With over 123 million voice assistant users, natural-sounding questions will also help you capture traffic from voice searches.

FAQs and content creation opportunities

Your FAQ page can be a starting point for developing great content creation ideas. If you find yourself struggling to write a concise answer, the question could benefit from a more detailed blog post to provide users with the information they need. You can also craft blog posts to extend on some of your answers, illustrate them with examples, or discuss different scenarios.

Plus, adding links to these blog posts on your FAQ page will support content discovery as well as helping your SEO strategy.

You can also get more out of your FAQ page by using this content for your social media and email marketing campaigns. You can, for instance, share a weekly Q&A on social media as a question of the week. It’s an original way to keep your audience engaged with short posts that provide value.

You can do something similar by adding a Q&A to the bottom of your weekly newsletter and give recipients an additional reason to open emails.

Get help crafting a successful FAQ page

From identifying the right questions to writing compelling answers, creating a great FAQ page can be challenging. It’s also important to consider how this page will fit in your overall SEO and content marketing strategies.

As a managed service provider, Tempesta Media can develop a high-quality FAQ website that engages and converts.

We can deliver highly personalized content creation services thanks to our unique 90-point Prova digital marketing assessment. This assessment allows us to learn more about your goals, branding, and market so we have a solid foundation to work on when developing personalized content.

Next, we’ll create a customized marketing plan with our managed solution. We’ll use the findings of our Prova assessment to select the modules and strategies that make sense for your unique goals and budget. With modules like content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, paid ads, and much more, we can develop a FAQ page aligned with your goals and help with other aspects of your digital presence.

Contact us to learn more or schedule your initial Prova assessment!

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Benefit Your Business With a Social Media Management Company

Social media has become a major part of marketing and networking for businesses. With millions of different corporate pages and profiles across all social media platforms, you need to make sure your company has a strong social media presence to capture potential customers. A social media management company that offers custom services can help you save time while successfully managing your social media networks.

Many entrepreneurs are overwhelmed by social media because it is time-consuming to maintain an active presence for their business across channels. Fortunately, there’s a solution that can help you stay on top of all the competition on social media. 

Social media management companies or social media managed service providers can handle all the processes connected with social media activity for you. It’s difficult to assess the numerous advantages that these kinds of services can bring to your company. Social media management companies can provide support starting in the early stages, such as account creation, and stick with you all the way through to setting up paid campaigns for lead generation.

Creating accounts on social media

A good social media management company can help you create and manage your social media accounts and ensure they stay up to date and relevant. But first, it’s necessary to identify the appropriate social media management channel. Professionals who help craft  your social media marketing strategy from scratch know the latest trends and data, which helps them make an appropriate decision.

Based on the latest statistics, Facebook is the most popular social media for B2C as well as B2B. When creating an account, you should consider a lot of factors. But the first questions a social media management company will ask you are:

Just starting with these two questions, an expert group of social media managers will be able to create accounts on the appropriate social media channels for your business and design an original, custom social media marketing strategy, by using the best social media practices.

Depending on the package option you choose with your social media managed service provider, a good social media management company may also train your internal employees on some social media services. The best part is that they’re always available to take care of any updates or changes needed in your account when necessary. 

Social media is an important part of your content marketing strategy. For that reason, you need to ensure your company maintains a strong presence on as many social channels as possible. Understanding how to develop an online presence and advertise on multiple social platforms has become a vital component of every business’s success, with billions of individuals on social media internationally.

Some benefits of having a social media presence

As a brand, you can reach out to millions of people in a matter of seconds through the power of social media. You don’t have to worry about the overhead costs because social media is your best friend when you’re trying to reach a large audience for a low cost. By using social media for even a small part of your marketing strategy, you can gain a lot of visibility for your brand

The beauty of social media is that it’s constantly evolving and offering new features and ways to interact with consumers. With a social media management company as your business partner, you will be able to see the latest social media best practices in action in the most effective way. 

Social media branding

Branding is crucial since it creates a lasting impression on customers and informs them about what to expect from your business. It’s a technique that helps you stand out from the crowd and state exactly what makes you the better option.

Social media is important to your branding efforts. As you design your social media pages, focus on information and images that strengthen your brand. By answering these kinds of questions, a social media company can create a powerful branding strategy to promote your company on social media: 

  • Who are you? 
  • What do you do? 
  • What’s special about you? 
  • Why should I care about you?

To build a strong brand, you need to have a solid social media presence. If you want people to use your products or services, they have to connect with your brand. 

However, building a brand on social media is not as easy as just creating a Facebook page (though you can learn to do it well). You need to understand the type of content people are interested in seeing. If you are just starting out on social media, It can be challenging for you to figure out and take into account all the small pieces, like the type of content you should be posting to pique your audience’s interest.

Branding is necessary to establish an identity and recognition for your products and services. Your followers and consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that they know and trust, and more likely to stay loyal to a brand they have already developed a relationship with. 

Social media SEO 

Social media optimization, or SMO, is about attracting visitors to your social media pages. It is very different from search engine optimization, but has the same goal of increasing traffic to your pages. 

SMO is considered one of the most important components of marketing today. One key difference between SMO and traditional SEO is the fact that unlike search engine results, social media crawling cannot be automated by software. It is updated almost in real time, making it very difficult for robots to determine when they have updated data.

Content creation for social media

Social media content creation is a more complex procedure than it looks. Your team may not be finding success on their own, as it can be time-consuming and difficult to manage. It also requires creativity and constant attention to social media trends.

Many companies struggle with this aspect of marketing for a few reasons. The most common stumbling blocks in social media content creation are:

  1. Not knowing your audience and their problems and interests.
  2. Not knowing the types of content that work best for social media.
  3. Not understanding the focus of a particular social network and how to identify the right type of content for each social media channel.
  4. Not having a social media editorial calendar in place.
  5. Lack of automation of the content planning and posting processes.
  6. Not using hashtags and other tricks to increase the visibility of published social media content.

Best types of social media content

It is important to know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to using the most popular social media platforms. And, since social media use has increased dramatically over the last few years, it’s crucial that your company’s social media content is top-notch. 

If you want your social media content to work for you, then you should create content that will generate interest and boost traffic to your business. Here are some of the best-performing content types for social media:

  • Written posts, articles and e-guides. These kinds of posts can help you gain credibility and improve your reputation by showing your knowledge within the industry.
  • Curated content. By presenting relevant articles and resources from other sources that you trust, you can share the latest industry updates and provide your audience with a piece of valuable information that you haven’t outlined yet in your own blog.
  • Reviews and testimonials. People value other people’s opinions and experiences over what a company claims, so testimonials and reviews are vital.
  • Announcements. Spreading the word about new goods, events, live streams and other significant events can help generate buzz and keep people informed about what’s going on with your company. Audiences adore getting behind-the-scenes information about their favorite stores and companies!
  • Images. Long-form blogs are far less digestible and compelling than visual content. Smartphone cameras can produce breathtaking images, and various applications make it easy to edit them.
  • Infographics. These are used to accompany explanations, data and other written concepts. Infographics are tops at communicating complex ideas.
  • Videos. It’s convenient to record videos, and they’re highly entertaining. How-to tutorials, video tours, and product updates and demos are all examples of fantastic video content that may improve website traffic and revenue.

The importance of hashtags for social media

Hashtags are words or phrases preceded by the pound sign. When you click on a hashtag, you can see all of the posts on that particular subject. Hashtags help connect content to the person seeking it without requiring them to search for it in a specific app. 

Hashtags can be used in a variety of ways. They can categorize a post to make it easier for others to search and find. They can be used to add a source or location to a post. For example, when posting from an event, you might add the name of the event to provide context. The above scenario wouldn’t necessarily be classified as a chat tool, but could be if the users add that functionality themselves.

An abundance of companies offer social media management services, but there are two main types. One service makes the most of the platforms by creating content and engaging with customers appropriately. The second service helps with your overall social media strategy, whether its focus is on selling or building a community.

Tempesta Media is the second type of company, with full service. As a part of Tempesta Media’s managed service, a team of professionals can create a comprehensive social media content marketing strategy for you, starting with analyzing your competitors’ environment by providing actionable insights and recommendations for their implementation. Our social media professionals can manage your social media production from the moment of account creation, through every step of production and improvement.

Publishing social media content

The internet is a fast-paced world where content is king. If you always want to be known as an industry leader, you will need to make sure you are publishing useful and evergreen content on your social media accounts. But who has the time to go through all of the information you find, make it interesting for your audience and also make sure it is shared in the right way?

Keeping up with content publishing on social media can be a full-time job. With so many posts to schedule and so much engagement to monitor, it can be completely overwhelming. A social media management company will essentially do all of this for you.

Maintain the right posting frequency

Posting frequency is only one part of the equation when you’re trying to get people to click on your posts, and it’s something you should look into when creating your publishing schedule. 

One of the most important steps a social media management company takes is to develop a posting strategy for social media. In other words, what social media channels will your company post to, and how frequently? It sounds easy enough, but it can actually be a bit tricky if it’s overlooked. 

To help you figure out your social media posting frequency, we’ve put together a list of the most popular social media platforms, along with the best recommendations for publishing frequency: 

  • Facebook: 1-2 posts per day.
  • Twitter: 1-2 times per day, but no more than 3-5 times per day. Be careful.
  • LinkedIn: 1 post per business day, which is 20 posts per month. Companies that post weekly on LinkedIn see a 2x higher engagement rate.

Don’t forget about the time

We all know there can never be just one formula for what works and what doesn’t when it comes to the best time to post on social media. It’s unique to each business and its specific audience. 

So, let’s take a look at some general rules of the best time to post on social media to get the greatest reach for your company’s social media accounts:

  • Facebook: Try to keep your post timing between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
  • Twitter: Mornings and late evenings are the best times to post on Twitter. Try publishing between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. or between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.
  • LinkedIn: Monday and Tuesday from 8 a.m.–2 p.m. Post on Wednesday from 8–10 a.m. and at noon, on Thursday at 9 a.m. and 1–2 p.m., and on Friday at 9 a.m.

When posting times are used correctly, your social media can help you reach new customers and increase sales. Tempesta Media’s platform, along with its social media solutions, specifically its Simple Social Share™ feature, allow you to use one centralized dashboard to create, schedule, publish and optimize social media posts while getting higher ROI and ROT.

Analyzing your social media program performance

It is important to analyze your social media data to see if there are any ways you can improve your use of social media. If you don’t take the time to analyze the data, you will fail to optimize and scale your social media marketing program

The analysis should include data about your target audience, the type of content, the timeline and other factors that are important for your business. The social media management company will focus on finding out what works and what doesn’t, where improvement can be made and new ideas for social media marketing campaigns.

It will take time to analyze your social media program’s performance from all angles. This includes using analytics not only from your own websites, but also from the social media platforms where you are promoting your business. You can learn a lot about your customers by paying close attention to these statistics. For instance, through analytics, you may find that a certain social media platform is not providing you with nearly as much traffic as you think it should be.

Here are some social media program performance metrics that a social media management company will definitely pay attention to while performing the analysis:

  • Engagement (clicks, likes, shares and comments). The engagement rate is frequently used to determine how active your audience is with your social media content and how effective your brand efforts are. Consumers who are engaged interact with brands through behaviors like “likes,” comments and social sharing.
  • Awareness (impressions and reach). Impressions and reach are both critical metrics to evaluate, especially if your social goals are focused on brand awareness and perception.
  • Share of voice (volume and sentiment). Volume and sentiment are two factors that influence how much of a person’s voice is heard. A measure known as share of voice is frequently employed in public relations as well as in competitive research and paid advertising campaigns. It shows how much of the online world your company is involved in. If you’re a Chicago-based surgery clinic, for example, you can see how many people are talking about your business online in comparison to your competitors.
  • ROI (referrals and conversions). Both sales and marketing goals, as well as major business goals, are linked to social referral traffic and conversions.

Final thoughts

You can benefit your business now by hiring a social media management company. A social media management company can help you promote your business, increase your follower count and enhance your target customer base.​

A social media management company can cover everything from social media strategy and implementation to the daily operations needed to keep a profile running effectively. Most social media management operations take a considerable amount of time. This is time you can better spend focusing on increasing revenue and other important aspects of your business while still developing and maintaining your company’s online presence on various social media sites and reaching out to new and potential customers.

Enlisting the help of a social media management company is one of the best decisions you can make for your business. 

Marketing Managed Services: What are the Benefits for your Business?

Time and money are of the essence, yet companies never have enough to spare for marketing. Luckily, marketing managed services can handle your program for you.

While investing in a digital marketing strategy may not seem like your highest priority, it’s really your best chance at survival. In fact, 14% of small companies go out of business because of poor marketing. Despite its importance, that doesn’t change the fact that many businesses just don’t have the time, money, or resources to allocate to a marketing program. That’s where a marketing managed services solution offers its value.

What is a marketing managed services solution?

Think of the different pillars of digital marketing – content, social media, SEO, email, and influencer. These aren’t silos. Rather, they work together, building off each other to create an advanced, connected strategy.

Marketing managed services takes all five pillars off your plate, driving better results by doing what so many companies don’t have the capacity to: create one unified program. With managed services, you still gain all of the benefits of an established digital marketing strategy, but you don’t have to manage anything internally.

Your managed services provider will handle everything from content planning and production to SEO optimization, from social media posts to industry influencer partnerships. By having one provider oversee each pillar, you get a cohesive program that leads to cost savings, better results, and more (while you still get to focus on your other business tasks).

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What are the benefits of managed services?

While the advantages of a marketing managed services provider have a ripple effect throughout your company, these are some of the most prominent benefits you will see from that partnership.

Lower costs

The cost of a managed services solution is predictable. Subscription-based and scalable, this solution enables you to have both a more accurate budget and the flexibility to adapt to changes you need to make. Compared to an internal marketing program, where your team may fluctuate in their productivity levels and free time, a consistent solution leads to a more manageable budget.

Not only is marketing managed services predictable, but it also costs less as a whole. In fact, with the right partner, like Tempesta Media, you can achieve reliable results at up to 80% less cost than keeping marketing in-house. Indeed, you don’t have to worry about dedicating a full-time team (their time and salary) to digital marketing (planning, writing, optimizing, publishing, promoting, updating, and more).

Expert team

Instead of hunting for the right digital marketing pro, social media specialist, SEO whiz, and expert writers and editors, marketing managed services providers already have experienced and prepared professionals trained to manage your program effectively. From the beginning stages of planning all the way through amplification, providers have the experts who can craft industry-specific content that appeals to your audience.

Updated tools, tech, and techniques

If you have ever managed an internal digital marketing program, you know that there is a lot more to it than what meets the eye. Fortunately, managed services solutions have access to the tools and technology needed to make a real impression:

  • Latest best practices in SEO optimization.
  • Newest trends in social media and influencer marketing.
  • Content marketing integrations for easy publication and tracking.
  • Tools and tech for the seamless creation of email campaigns.
  • Streamlined platforms to easily manage programs in one place.
  • And more.

Without a marketing managed services partner, you are left to handle the associated time, energy, and costs that go into a comprehensive program like this.

Streamlined program

As briefly mentioned above, managed services providers have the technology to host primary aspects of a digital marketing program in one streamlined platform, making for a process that runs equally as smooth. In fact, marketing managed services providers often establish service-level agreements, holding them to certain standards of quality to meet the needs of their clients and encourage simple yet effective processes.

With a platform like Tempesta Media’s, it’s a hub for everything a successful program needs, like assignment scheduling, analytics and social media integrations, and a comprehensive list of content for easy organization. On one platform, you can see a piece of content progress from its creation all the way through publication, saving time and promoting ease of use.

More qualified leads

With a marketing managed services provider, you can rest assured that your digital marketing program will never lag, dwindle, or die out. Your partner will treat everything from content creation to social media posting to search engine optimization with the utmost importance.

What does this mean for you? You benefit from a consistent program that steadily captures leads and brings them down the sales funnel. Let’s take content marketing as an example.

Without a partner to advocate the importance of content, it’s likely that the program would become stagnant, ending with your team haphazardly publishing content whenever they find the time out of their busy schedules. This irregular frequency doesn’t leave your audience with much of a journey to follow, leaving countless qualified leads stuck halfway through the sales pipe.

But with a managed services provider, your content won’t ever see a gap, and your audience will be smooth-sailing down the pipeline.

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Marketing managed services can give you better results

With the help of a managed services partner, you can watch your digital marketing tactics transform into a program that saves money, simplifies processes, and creates more qualified leads. All the while, you and your team can focus on other business-critical tasks without any sacrifice.

Need help?

Tempesta Media offers marketing managed services to companies in the business services, financial services, and healthcare industries. As mentioned above, we can provide up to 80% cost savings in your content, social media, and influencer marketing programs compared to an internal team.

With our proprietary platform, qualified team of industry experts, and knowledge of the latest trends and best practices, Tempesta Media can drive exceptional results and create quality content at scale.

Reach out to us today to learn more about our managed services and see how we can generate success for your business!

To discover other ways to optimize your marketing programs, download our e-book, 100 Mistakes Businesses Make When Starting, Optimizing, and Scaling Content Marketing Programs.

Why Business Services Need Managed Services Marketing

Managed services marketing providers can help business service vendors achieve cost savings and access the latest marketing innovations and technologies.

Many business service vendors are familiar with managed service providers (MSPs). For years, they have used them to meet IT needs. But MSPs can be useful for core business functions that go beyond just technology. That’s why so many business services companies are exploring the benefits of managed services marketing.

ROI and cost savings

It doesn’t matter how big or small your business services company is or how many years you have been open. All companies run their operations with the goal of achieving the best ROI for the money they spend.

The largest expense on the balance sheet of most organizations is labor. It can account for as much as 70% of total business costs when you factor in salaries, benefits, taxes, and other expenses. Companies that want to achieve better ROI and cut down on labor costs must find ways to limit the number of full- and part-time hires on their payroll.

Most business services companies only ever consider two rather limited options:

  • Hire more internal employees and build an in-house marketing team. But as marketing expands to encompass more specialized skills, it gets harder to keep costs down and still get the experience you need.
  • Hire a marketing agency. Most traditional marketing and advertising agencies charge high fees and you lose some control. They may also only have a limited understanding of what you do as a business services provider. This makes it hard to target the right audiences with the right messaging.

Managed services marketing is a middle ground. These services can augment your existing marketing team. You won’t need to hire an expensive agency or more employees. The end result is a better ROI for your limited marketing budget and better marketing services.

Access to newer technologies

Marketing MSPs can also help your company access the latest technologies in digital and content marketing. As a business services company, you have to be able to leverage the latest technology and innovations to both keep up with competitors and appeal to the changing needs of your customers (who are also adapting to new tech).

Fortunately, MSPs have invested in tools for creating and publishing exceptional content. This gives you more precise targeting in marketing and advertising efforts. With the right managed services marketing providers, business services get access to:

  • Robust content management and reliable production of new materials.
  • Optimization for targeted B2B customer profiles with unique takes on each.
  • Marketing project management tools and related CRM integrations.
  • Accurate B2B reports and data analysis on all campaign segments.

It would be costly for business services to invest in marketing technologies that aren’t part of their core business. Managed services marketing still allows you to take advantage of the latest technological trends. Moreover, it helps you save on set-up and ongoing costs.

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Expertise in marketing

Finally, marketing MSPs give business services companies access to a larger pool of expertise. There are more than 10 different specialty areas of marketing today. If you plan to do all your marketing internally, you will need to hire in some or all of these areas in order to target all of your customers’ preferred platforms and unique needs:

  • Market research.
  • Content marketing.
  • Search engine marketing (SEM).
  • Social media marketing.
  • Influencer marketing.
  • Product marketing.
  • Event marketing.
  • Video marketing.
  • Direct marketing/advertising.
  • Public relations and communications.

And these are just the broad areas to cover — within digital marketing or content marketing, there are dozens of subspecialties. Hiring a marketing generalist doesn’t help with in-depth experience and specialized skill sets. It’s harder to run your campaigns without the right talent and skills.

A managed services marketing partner can connect you with talented professionals experienced in the business services industry. You won’t need to hire more internal marketing staff. Successful MSPs work in conjunction with existing marketing team members to supplement the work you’re already doing. This allows your team to focus on strategic initiatives that help your business grow.

The bottom line for business services marketing

Whether you’re a small business services provider with no marketing team or you have a team that could use some help, MSPs provide you with the expertise and technology to build effective marketing campaigns. Plus, it can save you money and offer a better return on investment than hiring additional employees.

Find out more about Tempesta Media’s MSP solutions and how much of a difference they can make for your business services company. And download our 100 mistakes e-book to discover common pitfalls companies can make in their programs so you can set yours on the best path forward.