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I <3 making money at home ?

The WordPress mobile apps are the best way to manage your site from anywhere. If you’re already using the app, you might have noticed a new visual design that’s been rolling out. That rollout is complete in WordPress 17.1, which is available today for both Android and iOS. If you’re not already using it this is the perfect time to give it a try!

We add new features and improve the WordPress apps in every release, but our visual design hasn’t changed much in the last few years. Over the last few months we’ve thought about how to modernize the design of the apps. As we’ve implemented features like Dark Mode, we’re taking advantage of new components made available in the latest versions of iOS and Android.  

Bigger, bolder headers call out key product areas and create a distinction between the top level tabs and deeper levels of the apps. A new color palette pairs a more neutral background that lets your content shine with brighter blues that make interactive elements even more noticeable. A new serif typeface is a nod to WordPress’s roots in writing and publishing.

We hope you enjoy these updates as you use the apps and we’d love to hear your feedback. Reach out to us from within the app by going to My Site, tapping your photo on the top right, tapping Help & Support, and then selecting Contact Support.

<3internet marketing ?

Every business wants to feel like its customers and employees are happy. After all, it’s human nature to want to be loved, right?

However, “making people happy” isn’t just a nice-to-have. Doing so has real-world business benefits.

For instance, did you know customers will pay up to a 16-percent price premium and display greater loyalty if a company delivers an excellent experience? Or 63 percent of companies say retaining talent is harder than hiring?

What’s the common denominator between those statistics? They both demonstrate the value of feedback surveys.

By surveying your workforce or customer base, you can identify the things that are making them unhappy and take action to set them right. This means no more losing customers or talent to your biggest rivals.

Why Should You Use an Online Survey Creator?

I’ve already touched on a couple reasons why you should be using online survey creators to assess customer and employee sentiment, but there are lots more.

5 Reasons to Send Customer Surveys

1. Customers appreciate being given a platform for their opinions. According to Microsoft, 77 percent of customers say they look more favorably on brands that ask for and accept feedback.
2. Online surveys help brands deliver better customer service. That’s important, because 73 percent of Americans say experiencing good customer service increases their chances of spending more money than planned, according to research from the International Council of Shopping Centers.
3. Solving customers’ problems improves your retention. By surveying your customers, identifying the issues they’re facing, and overcoming them, you stand a better chance of keeping them.
4. Improving retention is cheaper than chasing new customers. In fact, acquisition is estimated to cost anywhere between five and 25 times more than retaining existing customers. That’s another compelling reason to start surveying your customer base.
5. Customer experience is the biggest focus for business leaders right now. That’s right, almost 46 percent of business leaders say CX is their top priority, ahead of product (34 percent) and pricing (21 percent). How can you improve your customer experience if you don’t understand how good (or bad) it is at the moment?

3 Reasons to Send Employee Surveys

1. Most of your employees aren’t engaged. Worldwide, 59 percent of employees say they’re either disengaged or actively disengaged at work. Using an online survey creator can help you understand why that’s happening (and hopefully turn it around).

2. Companies with engaged employees perform better. According to Gallup, highly engaged business units see a 41 percent reduction in absenteeism and a 17 percent increase in productivity. What’s more, a separate Gallup survey shows engaged organizations generate up to 18 percent more revenue per employee.
3. Employee engagement surveys help you improve processes like onboarding. After all, how can you deliver an effective onboarding program without gathering feedback from people who have recently experienced it? It’s certainly in your interest to get onboarding right, because 69 percent of employees say they’re more likely to stay with a company for three years if their onboarding experience was excellent.

Top 10 Online Survey Creators

Here are online survey creator tool options, including how they work and their main features.

#1: Qualtrics

How It Works

Increase your chances of asking the right question in the right way and at the right time by choosing up to eight question types and including 15 questions per survey. All surveys can be sent out via multiple channels, including email.

Main Features

Qualtrics’s ExpertReview feature helps you hone in on the right question types and survey formats by giving you real-time recommendations and letting you choose from a wide selection of expert-built survey templates.

Pros

• Qualtrics Surveys accounts are free to set up, with no need to enter a credit card number.
• Access over 20 template types, from demographic polls to employee suggestions.
• Built-in reporting lets you keep up with responses as they come in.

Cons

• Free accounts are limited to 100 responses and one active survey.
• The level of detail and range of options can be overwhelming for newcomers.
• With no “undo” functionality, editing surveys rely on finding the correct backup version.

#2: SoGoSurvey

How It Works

SoGoSurvey offers different options depending on the goal of your survey. For instance, customer experience surveys use APIs to automate feedback collection by hooking into your CRM, while responses are analyzed using natural language processing.

Main Features

Choose the plan that fits your needs. If you just need to send basic surveys, you don’t need to pay for functionality like auto-translation and advanced skip logic.

Pros

• Tailored options for customer and employee experience surveys.
• Add your own branding to the survey, thank you page, and more.
• Access regular best practice webinars and free training to help you get the most from the product.

Cons

• Comparatively expensive if you only need it for one or two months a year, with monthly prices starting at $199.
• Some features, like word clouds, are only available at the Enterprise product tier.
• In a similar vein, the free tier is very limited.

#3: SurveyMonkey

How It Works

SurveyMonkey is arguably the best-known online survey creator, and certainly one of the simplest to use. Set up an account for free and you can start building your first survey straight away.

Main Features

SurveyMonkey offers 15-question types, including multiple-choice, text box, and Net Promoter Score. Alternatively, choose from a catalog of more than 1,600 questions written by survey experts.

Pros

• Free account option is extremely generous in its functionality.
• Simple online interface is easy for anyone to pick up.
• Buy responses from specific audiences based on attributes like location, gender, age, income, and employment status.

Cons

• The simple layout isn’t necessarily the most professional-looking on the market.
• Free plans are limited to viewing the first 40 responses received.
• Harder to customize and personalize than some other options.

#4: Google Forms

How It Works

Know how to use Google Drive? Then you know how to use Google Forms. Just log into Drive, click to create a new form, then choose from a prebuilt template or start from scratch.

Main Features

In keeping with Google’s mobile-first ethos, Google Forms is responsive, making it easy to create surveys that look good and function smoothly on mobile devices.

Pros

• Completely free for personal use.
• If you already use Google Drive, you’ll be instantly familiar with how to use Google Forms.
• Add collaborators to build Forms with you, just like in other Google Drive tools.

Cons

• The simple interface can appear unprofessional, so it’s better for internal use.
• Limited ability to change the layout or add graphics and other media.
• Fewer question types available than some other platforms.

#5: Smartsheet

How It Works

Smartsheet is much more than a surveying tool. Rather, it’s a collaboration and work management platform that can be used to assign tasks, manage calendars, track progress, share documents, and much more. Surveys are just one part of the feature set.

Main Features

Forms can be created to gather survey responses, then shared via email or hyperlink, or embedded in dashboards or webpages.

Pros

• Follows the basic setup of Microsoft Excel, making it simple to use.
• Offers extensive automation and collaboration options.

Cons

• Surveys are only a small part of Smartsheet’s functionality, so you might be paying for a lot of features you don’t need.
• Users report some issues when importing and exporting from Excel.

#6: Client Heartbeat

How It Works

As the name suggests, Client Heartbeat is 100 percent geared toward measuring client satisfaction and improving retention. It’s a simple feedback tool that assesses happiness levels to identify unhappy customers.

Main Features

Choose from a list of prebuilt questions already being used by brands in your industry, allowing you to compare your scores against those of your biggest competitors.

Pros

• Live customer service dashboard can be accessed free of charge.
• Interface is simple to use without any training.
• Industry benchmarking adds context to your results.

Cons

• Features are more limited than some of the other platforms on this list.
• Specifically designed for customer satisfaction rather than employee engagement.
• Limited functionality makes the pricing a little expensive.

#7: Zoho Survey

How It Works

Zoho Survey is a highly customizable online survey creator, with extensive options for tailoring surveys to fit your brand and house style, plus the ability to choose from more than 25 question types.

Main Features

Zoho offers multiple ways to send surveys, from the basics (like web links and email campaigns), to more advanced options like QR codes and private group access.

Pros

• Free account level allows unlimited surveys with up to 10 questions and 100 responses per survey.
• Surveys can be embedded in emails, making them easy to access.
• Drag-and-drop interface makes it relatively simple to design complex surveys.

Cons

• Interface is perhaps harder to grasp than more user-friendly tools like Google Forms.
• Limited customization options, unless you upgrade to one of the paid product tiers.

#8: Qualaroo

How It Works

Qualaroo uses “Nudges” (a type of pop-up) to online survey creator customers when they’re on your website, rather than contact them down the line via email or some other channel.

Main Features

Unique calls to action can be created based on the language used by surveyed customers thanks to sentiment analysis powered by IBM Watson. For instance, angry responses might automatically generate a task for the customer success team to get in touch.

Pros

• Qualaroo claims its native surveys are 10 times more valuable than email surveys.
• Questions are asked when customers are on your site, making their feedback more timely.
• No impact on page speed, so it doesn’t hamper user experience.

Cons

• Pricing is based on tracked page views per month, which is more complex than other options.
• No templates for employee engagement surveys at time of writing.
• Best for micro-surveys of one or two questions.

#9: SurveyPlanet

How It Works

SurveyPlanet is a simple, affordable online survey creator with an extremely robust free tier offering all the functionality you need to build unlimited basic surveys.

Main Features

Unless you need advanced features like question branching (whereby users are asked different questions based on their previous responses), you’ll be just fine with the free version of SurveyPlanet.

Pros

• Offers a huge amount of free functionality, including unlimited survey responses.
• Simple pricing; if you want more features, there’s just one paid tier at $20 per month (or $180 per year).
• Access dozens of prewritten surveys and a bunch of basic templates for free.

Cons

• Branching (or skip logic) is only available for paid users.
• Likewise, customization options are limited at the free account level.
• Paid tier is less advanced than more expensive alternatives like SurveyMonkey.

#10: Typeform

How It Works

Typeforms are customizable online survey creator forms that can be embedded on your website, launched in an email, or shared via hyperlink. Responses can be synced to Google Sheets, and notifications can be sent to other tools like Slack, so it’s easy to see when a response has been received.

Main Features

Unlike a lot of the other tools in this list, Typeform is all about building stylish surveys. You can even add visual elements like images, videos, and GIFs to your forms.

Pros

• Webpage forms are stylish, engaging, and fun to complete.
• Access extensive templates on employee engagement, branding, customer satisfaction, and more.
• Choose from 18 different question types.

Cons

• The editor takes some getting used to.
• Even the mid-tier package only offers 500 responses per month as standard, making it comparatively expensive to gather a lot of data.
• Typeform branding can only be removed at the middle product tier.

Conclusion

Clearly, there are a lot of choices in the online survey creator market. Employee and customer satisfaction surveys are valuable, so if you’re not doing them now, pick a tool with a robust free tier and get going.

Once you’ve found an approach that works, feel free to switch things up by testing more advanced features, formats, and layouts.

What’s your favorite online survey creator? Think I’ve missed something? Let me know in the comments.

Important Info !

The WordPress mobile apps are the best way to manage your site from anywhere. If you’re already using the app, you might have noticed a new visual design that’s been rolling out. That rollout is complete in WordPress 17.1, which is available today for both Android and iOS. If you’re not already using it this is the perfect time to give it a try!

We add new features and improve the WordPress apps in every release, but our visual design hasn’t changed much in the last few years. Over the last few months we’ve thought about how to modernize the design of the apps. As we’ve implemented features like Dark Mode, we’re taking advantage of new components made available in the latest versions of iOS and Android.  

Bigger, bolder headers call out key product areas and create a distinction between the top level tabs and deeper levels of the apps. A new color palette pairs a more neutral background that lets your content shine with brighter blues that make interactive elements even more noticeable. A new serif typeface is a nod to WordPress’s roots in writing and publishing.

We hope you enjoy these updates as you use the apps and we’d love to hear your feedback. Reach out to us from within the app by going to My Site, tapping your photo on the top right, tapping Help & Support, and then selecting Contact Support.

Who else? <3internet marketing

You want to get your products in front of the people who are going to buy them. When you get your products on eBay, you’re putting them in front of an audience of 185 million people, but with competition from over 1.7 billion listings, how can you make sure you stand out from the crowd?

One way to ensure you’re getting your products in front of the right audience is to make use of eBay ads. These are extremely easy to set up and can help propel you to the top of the search results, even in the most competitive categories.

How Do eBay Ads Work?

eBay ads can boost the visibility of your products by allowing them to feature at the top of the listings. With millions of products on the platform, eBay is a competitive place, and if you’re competing against hundreds of sellers all selling the same product, it can be difficult to stand out.

This is where eBay ads come in, allowing you to pay for your listing to feature at the top of the search results.

In this sense, it’s a lot like advertising on Google. You set up your ads, and your product can be featured higher in the search results, based on the quality and relevance of your listing and how much you bid.

One interesting difference with eBay’s main ad option, promoted listings, is you only pay if your ad is successful. Unlike many platforms where you pay every time your ad is clicked, with eBay, you only pay for your promoted listing if it results in a sale within 30 days of someone clicking the listing.

This allows sellers to get a clear picture of their return on investment (ROI) and is a big benefit of selling on eBay.

3 Types of eBay Ads

eBay offers a few different types of ads to suit your business needs.

Promoted Listings

Promoted listings are used by over 940,000 sellers and are the most common way of advertising on eBay. They’re an excellent way to get your product listing to the top of the search results.

To be eligible for promoted listings, you must:

• be in good standing (meeting eBay’s terms and conditions)
• have “above standard” or “top-rated” seller rating
• have recent sales activity

One of the most important aspects of selling products online is getting people to view your listings, and this ad type is a great way to gain access to eBay’s 185 million active users. By featuring at the top of the search results, you will bring more people to your product page, and then it’s up to you to optimize your product page to make the sale.

eBay offers great analytics to help you get the most out of your advertising, and the nice part is you only pay for your promoted listings once you’ve sold an item.

Display Ads

eBay now runs display ads across its network, giving you another way to reach your target audience. Similar to the display ads you can run on Google Ads, eBay’s display ads allow you to target users with interests in certain categories to drive more traffic to your listing:

• business, office, and industrial
• cars, motorcycles, and vehicles
• clothes, shoes, and accessories
• computers, tablets, and networking
• garden and patio
• health and beauty
• home furniture and DIY

This expands your advertising options, meaning you’re not just limited to reaching people through the search function.

Display ads aren’t available through the seller hub; instead, you can speak directly to eBay about this option.

Classified Ads

Classified ads are a good option for people who want to take advantage of eBay’s reach but sell a product that isn’t necessarily suited to selling on the platform.

These ads are available in several categories:

• business, office, and industrial: $9.95 for a 30-day listing
• specialty services: $9.95 for a 30-day listing
• travel: $9.95 for a 30-day listing
• real estate: $150 for a 30-day listing

Your ad is shown, the user clicks on it, and then eBay puts you in contact with the buyer to negotiate the sale outside of the platform. This means you’re paying only for the ad, not the fees for selling on eBay, but it also means you don’t get any of the protections you get as an eBay seller.

eBay Advertising for Large Brands

eBay also offers a more bespoke advertising service for large brands.

This option offers big advertisers branding solutions to help optimize their product pages and acquire in-depth insights into customer motivations to help brands get the most out of the platform.

This option might offer great benefits, but it requires a big commitment to advertising spend to be accepted. If you’re a large brand looking to make eBay advertising an essential part of your marketing, then it’s worth reaching out to the eBay team and exploring the option further.

How to Set Up Your eBay Ad Campaign

Setting up eBay ads is quick and simple. In just five steps, you can create promoted listings and boost your product’s visibility at the top of the search results.

1. Log in to Your Seller Hub

Your seller hub is where all your product listings live, and this is where you can create your eBay ad campaigns. Go to https://www.ebay.com/sh/, select “Marketing,” then “Promoted Listings” from the sidebar.

2. Click “Create Your First Campaign”

If you’re new to promoted listings, you’ll be brought to a landing page that explains what they are and how they work. Click “Create Your First Campaign” to get started.

3. Choose How to List Your Promotions

You have three different ways to list your promotions:

• Simple listing selection: This allows you to promote your products individually, making good use of eBay’s smart recommendations.
• Bulk listing selection: This option is for people who want to promote lots of products with consistent stock and low turnover rates.
• Creating rules: Rules allow you to automatically promote current and future products. This option works well for sellers with dynamic inventory and high turnover rates.

4. Apply Your Ad Rate

This is where you choose how much you wish to pay for your eBay ads. Represented as a percentage of the total sale value, you’ll notice that eBay gives you a recommended ad rate for your product.

These are normally a good place to start, but if you want to change it, you can use the slider to set it to anywhere between 1-100 percent of your sale’s value.

5. Review and Launch

Lastly, you need to name your campaign and review the details. You can also set a date for the campaign to begin and end. Once you’re happy with everything, click “Launch.”

Tips for Creating Effective eBay Ads

As with any form of advertising, it’s important to have a good return on ad spend (ROAS), and the way to achieve this is through optimization. It doesn’t matter how many people your ad reaches if you’re not using the right keywords or your listing is of poor quality. There are several elements you need to get right.

Use Relevant Keywords

Choosing the right keywords to reach your target audience is extremely important. People don’t always search in the ways you expect they might, so you need to understand your audience and do your keyword research.

As with Google Ads, it’s important to match user intent with your ads, which means getting the right keywords in your titles, descriptions, and throughout your product listings. Slight differences in your keywords can make a big difference in the success of your ads, so make sure you’re optimizing to meet the demands of your target audience.

While it’s important to make sure you’re using the right keywords, it’s also important to remember not to keyword stuff. eBay’s algorithms are smart, and they understand when you’re using language naturally and when you’re stuffing keywords solely for SEO purposes.

Include High-quality Images

It’s proven that high-quality images lead to more sales than average images.

When someone walks into a shop and buys a product, they get to see it with their own eyes and feel it in their hands. When they buy online, they don’t get this benefit. Instead, they’re reliant on your images and words to give them a good feel for your products. This is why your images are so important and can make a significant difference in the success of your ads.

High-quality images are likely to get more clicks and help boost your conversion rate.

Promote the Items That eBay Recommends

eBay faces huge competition for your advertising money. If it doesn’t deliver results, it knows you can easily go to Google, Amazon, Walmart, or any other number of advertising platforms to boost your sales.

To ensure this doesn’t happen, eBay uses its vast amount of data to recommend which items you should think about advertising. These “handpicked” recommendations are the products eBay believes are most likely to benefit from a promoted listing and have a “Recommended” tag next to them in your campaign manager.

Perfect Your Listing Title

When someone sees your ad in the search results, they don’t have a lot to go on. All they see is your title, a thumbnail image, pricing, and some details about shipping.

There aren’t many opportunities to earn someone’s click.

This means small details can make all the difference, and your title is a huge part of this. If you can create concise titles that match user intent, you can give yourself a much better chance of getting the right people to click your ad.

Sometimes people create product listings or blog content, and the title is an afterthought, but this is the first thing everyone looks at. They might just be a few words, but titles play a massive role in whether someone clicks your link and reads through your product listing.

Review Your Performance

One of the great things about advertising online is you have access to so much data. Information is power, and when you make the most of your analytics, you’ll find ways to optimize your eBay ads.

Head to the “Performance” tab in your promoted listings dashboard and make use of metrics such as impressions, clicks, and sales to evaluate how your eBay ads are performing. If you’re not getting the results you want, consider making changes to your titles, product page, bid price, and images. Make sure you keep checking the performance until you find the formula that works.

Conclusion

eBay ads give you an excellent opportunity to reach a targeted, engaged audience of buyers.

However, as with any e-commerce platform, there’s a ton of competition, and you need to be able to find ways to stand out from the crowd. eBay ads give you this opportunity, but you’ve still got to be creative with your titles and make sure your product listings are perfectly optimized to create sales.

For most sellers, promoted listings are going to be the best option to allow them to reach more customers, and they’re easy to set up and very effective. One of the nice things about this ad format is that you don’t pay until you see results, so you’ve got plenty of opportunities to optimize your process and make sure your eBay ads are working for you.

If creating your own ad strategy and optimizing your product descriptions or website isn’t up your alley, reach out to our agency. We can help!

Have you had success with eBay ads?

Who else? <3working from home

“Software as a Service,” abbreviated as SaaS, is quite popular in the field of business marketing right now.

According to a study, the average number of SaaS apps that are used by various establishments has doubled from 8 to 16 since 2015. Not just that, statistics also show that the global workload of SaaS organizations reached $206 million in 2018. It is projected to grow and reach $380 million by the year 2021.

This makes it pretty clear that SaaS marketing is on the rise in 2021. Not just in 2021, but it has been on an upward index especially in the last few years. That being said, SaaS product marketing has several new trends being adopted by top businesses and marketers all across the world.

In this article, we will discuss the top 10 SaaS product marketing trends that will be very useful for every establishment trying to implement and utilize the potential of SaaS marketing.

Before we move on to the top trends in SaaS product marketing that can be useful this year, let us discuss a few more things that can be essential knowledge for all marketers and businesses associated with SaaS.

What is SaaS and how does it work?

SaaS or “Software as a Service” is basically a software licensing and delivery model. It involves software that is licensed on a subscription basis and is hosted centrally. SaaS is also referred to as “on-demand software”. Microsoft formerly referred to SaaS as “software plus services”.

The model involves the method of software delivery that enables data access from any device that has a working internet connection and a web browser. It is a web-based model, and the software vendors distributing such models host and maintain the servers as well as the databases. They also develop the code of an application that is used in the SaaS model.

The biggest advantage of SaaS is that it removes the hassle of installing and maintaining software. All you need to do is access the software with the help of an Internet connection and a web browser. This removes the complexities and complications involving software and hardware management.

For instance, let us take the example of Netflix. Netflix is a very popular OTT platform that has millions of subscribers all across the world. Netflix is a SaaS-based company that offers software to watch licensed videos on its platform. Netflix uses a subscription-based model through which the user opts for a certain subscription plan and pays a fixed amount of money on a monthly or annual basis and they can watch any video on the platform as long as their subscription is valid.

The best part about SaaS models is the fact that SaaS customers do not have to buy or maintain any hardware or software. It offers easy access to applications and all you need to access the application is a working Internet connection.

Key characteristics of SaaS – the reason for its rising popularity

According to statistics, 73% of organizations reported that almost all their apps will be SaaS-based by 2021. Along with that, 93% of CIOs have either adopted, are adopting, or making plans to adopt cloud SaaS for their establishments.

Now there must be a few reasons that have led to the rising popularity of SaaS in today’s times. The reasons are the few key characteristics and benefits offered by the model to its users. We can compare the SaaS model to the working of a bank and get a more comprehensive understanding in simple terms.

The platform protects the privacy of each customer while providing highly secure and reliable services, on a large scale. All the customers of a bank use the same financial systems and technology. Yet they do not have to worry about the security of their personal data, accounts, and information. There is no chance of anyone else accessing their personal information without appropriate authorization. SaaS models work just like that.

Let us take a look at the key features and characteristics of SaaS. This will help us understand the reason behind its popularity and its worldwide usage in recent years.

• Multitenant Architecture

Just like a bank, in a multitenant architecture model, all users and applications share one single common infrastructure and codebase. This infrastructure is centrally maintained by the host/vendors. As SaaS vendor clients are all on a single platform and codebase, vendors can quickly and more efficiently innovate and implement changes. This can save a lot of development time that would otherwise be spent on the maintenance of several outdated code versions

• Easy and Efficient Customization

SaaS models enable users to easily and effectively customize various applications according to their business needs and processes. This is enabled without any effect on the common infrastructure. The architecture of the model enables customizations in a compartmentalized way. They are unique to every user and are preserved by the use of timely upgrades. This ensures lesser risk for customers and lower adoption costs.

With the SaaS model, you can customize applications with a simple point and click. This makes traditional business software appear completely outdated and takes away the huge time involved in updating conventional business software.

• Improved Data Access

Improved data access from any networked device makes the platform easier to manage privileges and monitor data usage as well. 

SaaS trends

Businesses have started to develop SaaS integration platforms (or SIPs) to build additional SaaS applications. SaaS has moved beyond standalone software functionality and has become a platform for different mission-critical applications. Statistics suggest that the total size of the public SaaS market was projected to reach $157 billion in 2020 with 80% of businesses already using at least one SaaS application.

Because of the high flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of SaaS models, more and more businesses are incorporating them. SaaS has found its applications in a range of areas and industries. Some of the most common areas of SaaS applications are:

• Collaboration/Social Media/Business Communications
• CRM
• Customer Services and Support
• Human Resources and Talent Management
• Ecommerce
• Product Procurement, Expenditure, and Sourcing
• Business Management
• Software Development and QA/QC Testing
• Business Intelligence
• Business Analytics
• Budgeting, Reports, and Business Planning
• Governance, Risk & Compliance Assessments
• ERP, Manufacturing and Supply Chain
• Finance and Accounting Systems

That being said, every business must be aware of the latest SaaS product marketing trends to make the best use of the model in 2021. Let us take a look at the top trends of SaaS product marketing.

Top 10 SaaS product marketing trends of 2021

With the SaaS industry expecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.22% between the years 2019 to 2023, and the market size to grow by USD $60.36 billion during 2019-2023, let us take a look at the top SaaS product marketing trends that will be at the annex of the market in 2021.

1. The popularity of feature marketing

SaaS solutions are constantly evolving and companies are consistently adding new features, tools, and plug-ins to their applications and products. Feature marketing is where SaaS companies make parallel products that offer added value to the same users. Although, these products are independent and secluded from the main product of the company.

SaaS businesses are continuously collecting feedback from their existing customers to improve their existing products. Along with that, the addition of new features will open up opportunities to create additional useful content for the website. We all know that fresh content enhances the SEO of a website and generates more traffic, helping in acquiring an increased number of customers.

The key benefits of feature marketing in 2021 are:

• Attracting new customers
• Diversifying the business into different market segments
• Converting free trial users into paying customers with new upgrades
• Retaining existing customers with new features

2. Native Advertising

Image Source

Statistics suggest that around 26% of all Internet users block ads on their devices. Reports also suggest that ad blocking will cause a loss of revenue that is expected to reach just over $12 billion in the U.S. in 2021.

These statistics clearly indicate that display ads are losing relevance and may not be as effective for SaaS products. This is why native ads are gaining popularity and will be widely adopted in 2021.

Native ads open up great opportunities to reach your prospects during their time of decision making and also stand to be a key to converting such an audience.

Native ads are most effective when the content is valuable to the readers so most businesses are creating content that answers the queries and problems of their audience. Highlighting the role of the product in problem resolution stands to be the key element of native ads in 2021.

Along with that, native ads can be posted on a business website or any other third-party website and can effectively bypass ad blockers. Studies have shown that native ads are viewed 53% more times than traditional display ads.

3. Use of AI and ML for hyper-personalized marketing campaigns

Statistics suggest that the Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS) market will reach $6-7 billion by the end of 2023. A lot of SaaS companies are utilizing AI to enhance user experience. This has been particularly enabled by the use of chatbots. Studies show that 80% of B2B marketers have predicted that AI is likely to revolutionize the industry by the year 2020.

AI and ML in SaaS marketing can help in data-driven marketing campaigns and hyper-personalized campaigns that are highly user-centric. AI and ML make use of behavioral and real-time data. This is used to make highly contextual messages that are closely relevant to users. AI technologies can also process huge volumes of data. When AI is combined with ML, they can optimize various marketing campaigns to ensure the best ROI.

4. Product or platform unbundling strategies

Platform unbundling strategies are likely to enhance and improve conversion for SaaS companies in the near future.

This has been enhanced by the realization of SaaS companies that indicate that not all functionalities on a platform are suitable for every prospect and their individual needs. This is where product unbundling strategies can be very useful.

Through product unbundling, companies divide their products into smaller and more specific parts. These specific parts help solve the specific problems of users. This helps companies to optimize and improve the user experience.

5. User-centric branding

In 2021, the motto of SaaS companies is to create a brand that aims at relationship-building with prospects. This will be done through the creation of user-centric stories. This means that brands will create content that users want to hear. Marketers have come to realize that branding in SaaS, especially in 2021, is very important.

Several SaaS companies are significantly emphasizing branding. This is to create a distinct brand identity that helps them stand out in the crowd. SaaS companies are emphasizing offering consistent details across all customer touchpoints.

6. Flexible pricing strategies

The price of SaaS products directly influences the purchase decisions of customers. According to studies, 98% of SaaS companies have achieved positive results by changing their pricing policies, as of 2018.

A majority of SaaS companies will therefore adopt flexible and data-driven pricing strategies in 2021.

While unbundling is going to affect the price of products, separate and flexible pricing will be adopted. This will ensure that users pay a small price for a service that can resolve a particular problem, instead of purchasing the entire package or all the services.

Some of the pricing strategies that are expected to get more popular in 2021 are:

• The freemium model will remain a key part of the pricing strategies in the SaaS business.
• The per-user pricing model is a user-based pricing model, and the price is set by the number of users of the product.
• Pay as you go is another popular pricing model. Common to cloud service providers, this pricing model enables users to pay on the basis of their usage within a certain period.
• Market penetration pricing where companies enable users to use all the features of a product at a very minimal cost.
• Business size-based pricing offers different pricing plans for different business sizes. These include small, medium, large and enterprise-level businesses.

7. Customer retention optimization

More and more users are on social media channels. This has made engaging with customers on social media one of the best ways to enhance the customer experience. Customer acquisition is a tough task in the SaaS business and customer retention, a more difficult one. Improved customer experience will enhance customer retention, customer satisfaction and will encourage customers to pay more. This will subsequently increase revenue as well.

8. Video marketing

Online videos make up 85% of all the consumer Internet traffic in the U.S. Video marketing is something that can simply not be ignored in any marketing field or campaign. Marketers and business owners, especially SaaS companies, are investing hefty sums in video marketing. Text-only content is slowly losing relevance and video content is the new “hit” of the marketing field.

9. Creating a brand experience

Customer needs are constantly evolving. Customers are seeking core value propositions, which drive performance and results. Brand positioning and messaging have become essential in the SaaS market, especially for customer acquisition and retention. The brand experience customers are looking for must be distinctive and attractive and also build a genuine and natural emotional connection with users.

10. Interactive infographics

Studies show that infographics are liked and shared three times more than any other type of content. It is also suggested by reports that 40.2% of marketers consider infographics to be the best visual format for audience engagement. SaaS companies are already utilizing interactive infographics to engage with prospects and this year will be no different.

Final words

With the above list of top 10 trends of SaaS product marketing in 2021, you can formulate the ideal strategy for your marketing campaigns.

Make sure you implement them in the right way and watch out for any other rising trends in the market in the near future! The market is dynamic and ever-evolving. So keep your mind and eyes open to all possibilities.

Guest author: Harikrishna Kundariya, a marketer, developer, IoT, ChatBot & Blockchain savvy, designer, co-founder, Director of eSparkBiz  Technologies. His 8+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and ChatBot.

The post The Top 10 SaaS Product Marketing Trends for 2021 appeared first on Jeffbullas's Blog.

Important Info !

You want to get your products in front of the people who are going to buy them. When you get your products on eBay, you’re putting them in front of an audience of 185 million people, but with competition from over 1.7 billion listings, how can you make sure you stand out from the crowd?

One way to ensure you’re getting your products in front of the right audience is to make use of eBay ads. These are extremely easy to set up and can help propel you to the top of the search results, even in the most competitive categories.

How Do eBay Ads Work?

eBay ads can boost the visibility of your products by allowing them to feature at the top of the listings. With millions of products on the platform, eBay is a competitive place, and if you’re competing against hundreds of sellers all selling the same product, it can be difficult to stand out.

This is where eBay ads come in, allowing you to pay for your listing to feature at the top of the search results.

In this sense, it’s a lot like advertising on Google. You set up your ads, and your product can be featured higher in the search results, based on the quality and relevance of your listing and how much you bid.

One interesting difference with eBay’s main ad option, promoted listings, is you only pay if your ad is successful. Unlike many platforms where you pay every time your ad is clicked, with eBay, you only pay for your promoted listing if it results in a sale within 30 days of someone clicking the listing.

This allows sellers to get a clear picture of their return on investment (ROI) and is a big benefit of selling on eBay.

3 Types of eBay Ads

eBay offers a few different types of ads to suit your business needs.

Promoted Listings

Promoted listings are used by over 940,000 sellers and are the most common way of advertising on eBay. They’re an excellent way to get your product listing to the top of the search results.

To be eligible for promoted listings, you must:

• be in good standing (meeting eBay’s terms and conditions)
• have “above standard” or “top-rated” seller rating
• have recent sales activity

One of the most important aspects of selling products online is getting people to view your listings, and this ad type is a great way to gain access to eBay’s 185 million active users. By featuring at the top of the search results, you will bring more people to your product page, and then it’s up to you to optimize your product page to make the sale.

eBay offers great analytics to help you get the most out of your advertising, and the nice part is you only pay for your promoted listings once you’ve sold an item.

Display Ads

eBay now runs display ads across its network, giving you another way to reach your target audience. Similar to the display ads you can run on Google Ads, eBay’s display ads allow you to target users with interests in certain categories to drive more traffic to your listing:

• business, office, and industrial
• cars, motorcycles, and vehicles
• clothes, shoes, and accessories
• computers, tablets, and networking
• garden and patio
• health and beauty
• home furniture and DIY

This expands your advertising options, meaning you’re not just limited to reaching people through the search function.

Display ads aren’t available through the seller hub; instead, you can speak directly to eBay about this option.

Classified Ads

Classified ads are a good option for people who want to take advantage of eBay’s reach but sell a product that isn’t necessarily suited to selling on the platform.

These ads are available in several categories:

• business, office, and industrial: $9.95 for a 30-day listing
• specialty services: $9.95 for a 30-day listing
• travel: $9.95 for a 30-day listing
• real estate: $150 for a 30-day listing

Your ad is shown, the user clicks on it, and then eBay puts you in contact with the buyer to negotiate the sale outside of the platform. This means you’re paying only for the ad, not the fees for selling on eBay, but it also means you don’t get any of the protections you get as an eBay seller.

eBay Advertising for Large Brands

eBay also offers a more bespoke advertising service for large brands.

This option offers big advertisers branding solutions to help optimize their product pages and acquire in-depth insights into customer motivations to help brands get the most out of the platform.

This option might offer great benefits, but it requires a big commitment to advertising spend to be accepted. If you’re a large brand looking to make eBay advertising an essential part of your marketing, then it’s worth reaching out to the eBay team and exploring the option further.

How to Set Up Your eBay Ad Campaign

Setting up eBay ads is quick and simple. In just five steps, you can create promoted listings and boost your product’s visibility at the top of the search results.

1. Log in to Your Seller Hub

Your seller hub is where all your product listings live, and this is where you can create your eBay ad campaigns. Go to https://www.ebay.com/sh/, select “Marketing,” then “Promoted Listings” from the sidebar.

2. Click “Create Your First Campaign”

If you’re new to promoted listings, you’ll be brought to a landing page that explains what they are and how they work. Click “Create Your First Campaign” to get started.

3. Choose How to List Your Promotions

You have three different ways to list your promotions:

• Simple listing selection: This allows you to promote your products individually, making good use of eBay’s smart recommendations.
• Bulk listing selection: This option is for people who want to promote lots of products with consistent stock and low turnover rates.
• Creating rules: Rules allow you to automatically promote current and future products. This option works well for sellers with dynamic inventory and high turnover rates.

4. Apply Your Ad Rate

This is where you choose how much you wish to pay for your eBay ads. Represented as a percentage of the total sale value, you’ll notice that eBay gives you a recommended ad rate for your product.

These are normally a good place to start, but if you want to change it, you can use the slider to set it to anywhere between 1-100 percent of your sale’s value.

5. Review and Launch

Lastly, you need to name your campaign and review the details. You can also set a date for the campaign to begin and end. Once you’re happy with everything, click “Launch.”

Tips for Creating Effective eBay Ads

As with any form of advertising, it’s important to have a good return on ad spend (ROAS), and the way to achieve this is through optimization. It doesn’t matter how many people your ad reaches if you’re not using the right keywords or your listing is of poor quality. There are several elements you need to get right.

Use Relevant Keywords

Choosing the right keywords to reach your target audience is extremely important. People don’t always search in the ways you expect they might, so you need to understand your audience and do your keyword research.

As with Google Ads, it’s important to match user intent with your ads, which means getting the right keywords in your titles, descriptions, and throughout your product listings. Slight differences in your keywords can make a big difference in the success of your ads, so make sure you’re optimizing to meet the demands of your target audience.

While it’s important to make sure you’re using the right keywords, it’s also important to remember not to keyword stuff. eBay’s algorithms are smart, and they understand when you’re using language naturally and when you’re stuffing keywords solely for SEO purposes.

Include High-quality Images

It’s proven that high-quality images lead to more sales than average images.

When someone walks into a shop and buys a product, they get to see it with their own eyes and feel it in their hands. When they buy online, they don’t get this benefit. Instead, they’re reliant on your images and words to give them a good feel for your products. This is why your images are so important and can make a significant difference in the success of your ads.

High-quality images are likely to get more clicks and help boost your conversion rate.

Promote the Items That eBay Recommends

eBay faces huge competition for your advertising money. If it doesn’t deliver results, it knows you can easily go to Google, Amazon, Walmart, or any other number of advertising platforms to boost your sales.

To ensure this doesn’t happen, eBay uses its vast amount of data to recommend which items you should think about advertising. These “handpicked” recommendations are the products eBay believes are most likely to benefit from a promoted listing and have a “Recommended” tag next to them in your campaign manager.

Perfect Your Listing Title

When someone sees your ad in the search results, they don’t have a lot to go on. All they see is your title, a thumbnail image, pricing, and some details about shipping.

There aren’t many opportunities to earn someone’s click.

This means small details can make all the difference, and your title is a huge part of this. If you can create concise titles that match user intent, you can give yourself a much better chance of getting the right people to click your ad.

Sometimes people create product listings or blog content, and the title is an afterthought, but this is the first thing everyone looks at. They might just be a few words, but titles play a massive role in whether someone clicks your link and reads through your product listing.

Review Your Performance

One of the great things about advertising online is you have access to so much data. Information is power, and when you make the most of your analytics, you’ll find ways to optimize your eBay ads.

Head to the “Performance” tab in your promoted listings dashboard and make use of metrics such as impressions, clicks, and sales to evaluate how your eBay ads are performing. If you’re not getting the results you want, consider making changes to your titles, product page, bid price, and images. Make sure you keep checking the performance until you find the formula that works.

Conclusion

eBay ads give you an excellent opportunity to reach a targeted, engaged audience of buyers.

However, as with any e-commerce platform, there’s a ton of competition, and you need to be able to find ways to stand out from the crowd. eBay ads give you this opportunity, but you’ve still got to be creative with your titles and make sure your product listings are perfectly optimized to create sales.

For most sellers, promoted listings are going to be the best option to allow them to reach more customers, and they’re easy to set up and very effective. One of the nice things about this ad format is that you don’t pay until you see results, so you’ve got plenty of opportunities to optimize your process and make sure your eBay ads are working for you.

If creating your own ad strategy and optimizing your product descriptions or website isn’t up your alley, reach out to our agency. We can help!

Have you had success with eBay ads?