How to Track Your Offline Marketing Campaigns

How can you track the results of offline marketing campaigns such as billboards, posters, magazine ads, or TV ads? Some marketers might say it’s impossible. But, we’re about to prove them wrong. With the right strategy in place, you can track your offline marketing campaigns to analyze the results and discover whether they’re worth the investment. And no, you don’t have to be a marketing genius to do it. In this post, we’ll show you why it’s important to track your offline marketing campaigns and how you can track them all by yourself without having to spend a fortune. Let’s get started, shall we?  

Does Offline Marketing Still Work?

Today, it’s easier to create an online marketing campaign than ever before. Almost anyone can easily launch a Google AdWords campaign or a Facebook Ads campaign instantly without having any prior experience. To make things even better, online marketing allows you to target specific audiences and easily track the progress and the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. With all these advanced technologies in place, some might wonder if offline marketing still worth the effort. Well, believe it or not, offline marketing still has its benefits. In fact, according to a study, offline marketing campaigns can actually help boost the effectiveness of online campaigns by 40 percent. Also, offline marketing still plays a major role in branding and influence as well. Which is why most businesses still invest heavily in billboards and TV ads.

Why Track Offline Marketing Campaigns?

The biggest downside to offline marketing is that there’s no way for you to track the effectiveness of your campaigns. There is no analytics for billboards and posters. You just keep pouring in money hoping for the best. At least, that used to be the case with offline marketing. But, not anymore. Now, there are ways you can go around this problem quite easily by mixing your offline marketing with online analytics. This allows you to track conversions and leads to understand whether or not your offline marketing campaigns work and which campaigns are more effective. You can then use the results to invest in the most effective strategies.  

How to Get Started

There are several different ways you can track your offline marketing. Depending on the type of campaign you’re running, you can decide how to track your conversions based on different strategies. Here’s how you can get started.  

1. Create Landing Pages

Creating offline marketing campaigns to drive traffic to your website homepage is a poor strategy that will simply be a waste of your money and efforts. Instead, you should create landing pages for each and every promotion of your marketing campaigns. This way, you’ll be able to easily track the page with analytics and, more importantly, convert your visitors into leads with an effective email opt-in campaign. The only problem with this strategy is that the URL of the page tends to get a bit longer when you create custom landing pages. These are not only difficult to show in banners and posters, but also makes it harder for people to remember. Which is why this next step is crucial for tracking offline marketing.  

2. Use UTM Codes and QR Codes

You can analyze your landing page visitors with Google Analytics. But, only to a certain point. For example, if you were to promote your landing page through different mediums like billboards and magazine ads, how can you measure the success of each campaign and figure out which drove the most visitors? This can be easily fixed by adding a tracking code to your URL. These are called UTM codes. If you’re using WordPress, you can use a tool like MonsterInsights UTM Builder to create custom tracking codes to be used with your different offline marketing campaigns. Then you can use a URL shortener to create a shorter custom URL. This will help you recognize different traffic sources in Google Analytics. Using QR Codes is another effective strategy to implement tracking in a convenient way which also allows users to easily scan the code using their smartphones to get more information about promotions.  

3. Utilize Coupon Codes

Another popular way to track your promotions is by using coupon codes. These usually work in print media, such as leaflets, flyers, and newspaper/magazine ads. While you provide the users with a discount to purchase your products, you also get to use those coupon codes to track your marketing campaigns by creating different coupon codes for each campaign. Whenever someone uses the coupon code on your website to buy a product, you’ll know where they came from.  

4. Track Phone Calls

It may be hard to believe, but it is possible to track phone calls. Using this method you can track your ad conversions via phone calls to make the most of your offline marketing campaigns. Certain services, like CallRail, provides marketers with solutions for tracking phone calls, record calls, and measuring call conversions with advanced reporting and analytics. While this doesn’t necessarily relate to website promotions, it may come in handy when you want to include multiple Call To Actions (CTA) in your offline marketing.  

5. Leverage Augmented Reality

What does the future hold for offline marketing? Will it still work? Would people still interact with posters and flyers in the future? Well, the technology has found a way to make offline ads even more entertaining with augmented reality. Shazam recently rolled out an innovative new feature turning the music discovery app into an augmented reality solution for brands. Basically, this allows brands and businesses to create print ads with digital interactions by adding a small Shazam icon in the ads. When users scan the Shazam icons in print ads using the app, they receive more information about the business related to the ad on their own phones. It’s an incredibly fun and an entertaining way to make offline ads interactive. Of course, Shazam aims to provide businesses with analytics for these ads as well.  

Summary

Hopefully, these tactics will make you think twice about the way you approach offline marketing in your next promotion. As a modern marketer, you should always be aware of how to take advantage of every opportunity that comes your way. Mixing online marketing with offline marketing can bring you much better results than limiting yourself to just one strategy.

Optimize Images and Make Your Website Load Faster

Did you know that nearly half of your website visitors expect your site to load in 2 seconds or less? Even worse, most will abandon your site if it fails to load within 3 seconds. The good news is you can significantly reduce the number of abandoning visitors by speeding up your website. Images often account for most of the downloaded bytes on a web page. If you’re looking to significantly boost your page speed, the first thing you need to do is to optimize images on your WordPress site. Below are 5 image optimization tips for lightning fast loading.  

1. Compress images

The best way to prevent slow loading images on your WordPress site is to compress your images with your photo editing software before you upload them. But what if you don’t have access to the right software, or want to optimize the existing images on your site? An image compression plugin is the easy solution that lets you optimize images on the fly as you upload them to your WordPress site. Image compression allows you to reduce the size of your images without affecting their quality. Compression is the process of reducing the image size by removing image info algorithmically that a human eye can't perceive, so the image still looks clear and sharp. The best way to compress high-resolution images is with the the EWWW Image Optimizer plugin. Upon activation, you can optimize all the images automatically as you upload. It can also optimize your existing images on your site.  

2. Leverage lazy load

Do you want to use a lot of images on your site without making it load slower? Reducing the number of images is not an ideal solution, especially when you want to convey messages that can’t be done with just plain text. If you're using a lot of images on most pages of your WordPress site, you’ll want them to load only when they're visible to users, which is known as lazy loading. Lazy loading your images helps you to save your bandwidth and improve your page speed. To lazy load your images, you just need to activate the Lazy Load plugin on your site. It uses jQuery.sonar to load images only when they’re visible to your users.  

3. Use the right format

When editing images for your website, you often need to compromise between the display quality and the file size of the image. Saving images in the right format is the best way to optimize them and keep a balance between display quality and file size. Wondering which image file format is best for your website? Here’s a rundown of the most common:

• JPG is a lossy compressed file format. Use this format to store photographs at a smaller size. It’s the best choice for images with a lot of different colors.
• PNG is a lossless compression file format. Use this format for simpler images and transparent images. It's a good choice for storing line drawings and text at a smaller size.
• GIF is best suited for images that are very small and ones that use only a few colors. It’s a good choice for clip art, charts, etc.

Here's an example of how the file formats look different, courtesy of Bluewave. The best way to edit and save images optimized for the web is by using Photoshop. If you need a free alternative, you can use GIMP instead. Below are a few free online tools that help you optimize your images with a perfect balance in quality and file size.

• TinyPNG uses a smart lossy compression technique to reduce the file size of your PNG files without compromising its visual quality. You can upload up to 20 images, maximum of 5 MB each.
• JPEGmini uses recompression technology to reduce the size of images without compromising their perceived quality. You can either use their free web version or use a premium desktop app.
• ImageOptim is a Mac app that allows you to reduce the file size of images by removing bloated metadata. Its main benefit is that it lets you enable lossy minification so you can compress your images to get the smallest file sizes possible.

 

4. Prevent Image Hotlinking

Hotlinking is a process of stealing your server bandwidth by serving images on third-party sites, while still loading them from the original source. This practice is often followed by content scrapers and increases your server load as well as bandwidth usage. The easy way to disable hotlinking from your WordPress site is by adding the below code to your .htaccess file. RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http(s)?://(www\.)?yourwebsite.com [NC] RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ - [NC,F,L] Make sure to replace yourwebsite.com with your domain name in the above code. This code blocks hotlinking your images while still allowing images to be viewed in search results and on your website.  

5. Use CSS instead of images

Using an image often requires a larger number of bytes than HTML, CSS and JavaScript. A great strategy to boost your loading time is to leverage CSS effects wherever possible instead of using an image. For instance, you can generate certain shapes like gradients, rounded rectangles, and drop shadows by using simple CSS. While using CSS, keep an eye on browser compatibility because not all browsers render it the same way. By following the above image optimization tactics, you can drastically improve your page loading time. Keep in mind that for every second you shave off of load time, you're encouraging your visitors to stay on your site longer.

Easily Add a Contact Form to Your WordPress Site

Looking for an easy way to create contact forms? WordPress doesn’t allow you to create contact forms natively, and if you’re not a developer, creating a contact form on your website can be a tedious task. The beauty of WordPress is that there are tons of different plugins that let you easily create contact forms on your site. But it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all those different choices. What are the pros and cons of each, and which one is best for your website? Let’s take a head-to-head comparison between the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress.

1. WPForms

WPForms is the most beginner friendly contact form plugin that comes with a drag and drop form builder to create beautiful WordPress forms. With WPForms, you can quickly build forms in just a few clicks with pre-built form templates. Contact forms, subscription forms, order forms, and more templates are available so you don’t have to build common forms from scratch. There are also plenty of more advanced features, including conditional logic, multi-page forms, geolocation, form abandonment lead capture, and more. You can also integrate WPForms with your email newsletter service to easily build your list. Pros:

• 100% responsive forms: Your WordPress forms will always look great on any size device.
• Optimized for speed: WPForms is highly optimized for web and server performance. It doesn’t negatively impact the page speed of your site.
• The easiest plugin: Several pre-built templates are bundled with WPForms, so you don’t always have to create a form from scratch. Just pick a template and edit it as necessary.

Cons:

• Free version is limited: The free version of WPForms comes with all the basic features most users need to build a contact form. For more advanced features such as order forms, digital signatures, and more, you’ll need to invest in the premium version. With the premium version, you’ll be able to integrate with third-party services like OptinMonster.

Price: A free version is available in the WordPress repository. For advanced features, you can get a license starting at $39.

Who Should Use WPForms?

WPForms is the best solution if you’re looking for the easiest way to build a form. Without any assistance, even a beginner WordPress user can create a WordPress form with WPForms. Developers looking for an easy contact form plugin to set up for their clients to edit forms themselves will also find WPForms to be the best option. If you’re looking for advanced features such as digital signatures or form abandonment lead capture, WPForms is also a very affordable option.  

2. Jetpack Forms

Are you already using the Jetpack plugin on your site? Jetpack is a multipurpose plugin by Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, that offers different modules to enhance WordPress features like WordPress stats, mobile themes, related posts, and more. Jetpack Forms is one of the most popular features offered by Jetpack. If you’ve already installed Jetpack on your site, you can create simple contact forms by activating the contact form module. Pros:

• Customizable contact forms: Jetpack’s form builder allows you to make simple customizations like adding basic form fields. It also offers an option to change the subject line of the email sent to you whenever someone submits your form.

Cons:

• Limited options and features: The main downside is you can’t create complex forms with Jetpack Forms such as order forms, newsletter forms, post submission forms, and more.
• Bundled in a large plugin: Jetpack is a large plugin that includes separate modules for various features like basic site stats, related posts, and more. If you just need contact forms, there’s no need for such a large plugin on your site.

Price: Free

Who Should Use Jetpack Forms?

Jetpack Forms is most suitable for those who are already using other Jetpack modules on their site, and only need to create very basic forms without much customization. Otherwise, it’s not necessary to install such a large plugin to create simple contact forms.  

3. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is the most feature-rich contact form plugin in the market. It lets you quickly integrate your form with tons of different third-party online services through addons. With Gravity Forms, you can build powerful and complex forms with ease. The plugin is also developer friendly, so you can extend its functionality per your requirements. Pros:

• Tons of addons: Gravity Forms allows you to install from a huge list of optional addons that let you integrate your form with a variety of third-party services.
• Enhanced features: The plugin is constantly being improved with more advanced features. With Gravity Forms, the possibilities for creating a powerful form are endless.
• Developer friendly: If you’re a developer who needs to customize your form to any extent for clients, Gravity Forms might be the right solution.

Cons: Gravity Forms is a premium plugin. If you don’t have a budget to purchase a premium contact form plugin, Gravity Forms is not for you. The personal plan doesn’t come with any addons, and it allows you to use the plugin only for a single site. Price: Starting at $39

Who Should Use Gravity Forms?

Gravity Forms is not for everyone, especially for those who are on a limited budget. The plugin is a good fit if you need to create highly complex contact forms or want a developer friendly form that lets you customize your forms per your needs.  

4. Visual Form Builder

Visual Form Builder is yet another easy to use contact form plugin. The plugin is fully responsive. Both the admin and front-end interfaces adjust to any screen, so you can create contact forms on the go. The plugin is available for free to download from WordPress.org directory. There’s also a premium version available with addons for features such as payment processing. Pros:

• Basic spam protection: The premium version gives you an extra layer of spam protection with Akismet.

Cons:

• Each addon sold separately: If you need access to a lot of addons to enable more features, the pricing can quickly get more expensive than other form plugins.

Price: $29. Addons can be purchased separately.

Who Should Use Visual Form Builder?

If you’re looking for a cheap basic plugin with some cool features for your website, you might want to consider Visual Form Builder.  

5. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms comes with a simple drag and drop interface and visual styler. The plugin allows you to build forms in just a few minutes. It also allows you to choose from 30 different field types, so you can build any type of form. You can download the basic plugin for free from WordPress.org plugins directory. To access more advanced features like user registration, payment processing, and email marketing integrations, you can find several addons that can be installed along with the pro version. Pros:

• Style customizations: Its visual styler lets you change the look and feel of your form. You can change field colors and sizes, add backgrounds and borders, and more.
• Extendable with addons: Formidable Forms helps you integrate your form with several payment systems and online services.
• Supports charity: A portion of every Formidable Forms fee is donated to the Operation Smile charity.

Cons:

• Expensive: No addons are available with the basic license plan. Compared against other plugins, the basic plan is more expensive.

Price: Starting at $49.

Who Should Use Formidable Forms?

Formidable Forms is best suited for those who want to customize the look of their forms, but it can be pricey compared to other plugins.  

6. Contact Form 7

With 3+ million active installs, Contact Form 7 is the most popular contact form plugin in the official WordPress plugin directory. You can also find a limited number of addons for Contact Form 7. It is the only plugin featured in this article that doesn’t come with a drag and drop form builder. There is a learning curve if you’re using the plugin for the first time. However, the plugin provides you with a demo form that you can see inside your WordPress dashboard, so you can look at it to learn how to create a form. Pros:

• Free: The plugin is 100% free of cost.
• Established: As the plugin has been around for many years, many WordPress themes support and recommend Contact Form 7, and there are many third party addons available.

Cons:

• Coding skills required: The plugin expects you to have a basic understanding of HTML to create a contact form. The form builder interface looks almost like the text editor.
• Limited features: You can’t build a complex form with Contact Form 7 because it supports only a limited number of addons. The documentation contains technical jargon which would be hard for beginner users to understand.

Price: Free

Who Should Use Contact Form 7?

Contact Form 7 could be a nice choice if you know HTML and just need to create a simple contact form for your site, and don’t mind digging deeper into docs to find answers when needed.  

Which Is the Best Contact Form Plugin For You?

We’ve looked at various popular contact form plugins available for your WordPress site. With all the different contact form plugins out there, it is easy to get overwhelmed. If you need a fast and easy way to create beautiful contact forms, even with advanced features, WPForms is the best choice for you. You can try the free version and then move on to the premium version when you need enhanced functionality. If you’re after a feature-rich plugin, and want highly customizable complex forms, Gravity Forms is the best plugin for you. Which one is your favorite plugin? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

If your blog isn't monetized, you’re losing money. Blogs can be monetized regardless of their topic, number of followers, or purpose. Even if it’s your passion project, your blog can and should make you money. Both new and older posts can bring in passive income. Making money with your blog is easier than you might think; all you need are the right tools. We’re going to take a look at the 8 best WordPress plugins to monetize your blog. Don’t have a blog yet? No problem—get your site published in minutes with HostGator’s one-click WordPress installs. Learn more here.    

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the most popular conversion optimization software available. It helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers, so you can grow your email list, increase your page views, and make more money. You can use their pre-made templates and drag-and-drop builder to create high converting optin forms including popups, slide-ins, and floating bars. The tool comes with behavior targeting so you can show the right message to the right person on the right page at the right time, thus making maximum revenue. Cost: Plans start at $9/month when paid annually.   

2. WPForms

WPForms is a customer acquisition tool that lets you easily create customized forms designed to capture visitor information for lead nurturing purposes. It has pre-built templates that are all mobile responsible and translation ready. This means you’ll never lose a single customer, no matter what device they’re on or where they live. WPForms offers additional features to monetize your blog. Their true customization options—including the ability for users to upload files and make payments or donations— lets you create forms for everything from initial contact request forms, customer service questions, new subscriber optins, and even membership and product orders. It’s the easiest form creation software to use, and it’s flexible enough that you can make any form you need to bring more profit to your blog. Cost: Plans start at $39/year  

3. Insert Post Ads

The Insert Post Ads plugin inserts ads directly into blog posts themselves instead of just having ads on the periphery of your page where they are easily ignored. In-content ads have increased visibility and a significantly higher likelihood of engagement, drastically increase click-through rates and revenue. The plugin can even insert these ads automatically so you don’t have to manually enter each one into every post, saving you a ton of time and simplifying the process. Its flexibility lets you choose where and how often you want the ads to show up, giving you complete control over how many ads are showing up in your content for maximum potential revenue. Cost: Free  

4. ThirstyAffiliates

Aside from ads, affiliate selling is perhaps the fastest way to monetize your blog. ThirstyAffiliates lets you import affiliate links from Amazon and other major selling sites. You can quickly and easily earn commissions from sales just by placing these links in your content. They have a link creator that cloaks the affiliate link in your URL; when a user clicks, they’ll see a redirection from your URL instead of a traditional affiliate link. This also ensures reliable sales tracking so you earn commission on every sale, guaranteed. Unlike other similar plugins, ThirstyAffiliates has options like “Open Link in New Window” so you won’t lose readers from your blog in exchange for commission. You can also add images and graphics to affiliate links to make them more eye-catching and dynamic, driving more clicks from the customer and commission for you. Cost: Basic plan is free, with add-ons available for purchase  

5. WooCommerce Memberships

WooCommerce’s Memberships plugin lets you create membership-only sections on your site. You are in complete control of how much access you want to give and to whom, allowing for different levels of membership (and price points) to be created. You can even drip content to different levels of membership, giving new content to “premium” members first, which can incentivize users to pay for more exclusivity. You can sell memberships as an exclusive product or as part of a different package purchase, so you can offer the types of memberships that benefit your business and sales most. Cost: $149/year for a single site  

6. Ad Blocking Detector

Ad Blocking Detector can detect the ad blocking software that has cost bloggers large amounts of revenue. This plugin will automatically replace blocked ads with other types of content like newsletter sign-ups, which provide alternative methods to monetize your blog and prevents overall loss of revenue. It recognizes all major ad blocking browser extensions to offer you the best protection possible against lost opportunities for monetization. Cost: Free  

7. Videe.TV Monetization

The Videe.TV Monetization plugin lets you place high-engaging video ads in your content. This means more clicks and more commission while enriching your blog posts with relevant videos. This plugin provides you with a library of video content you can choose from to create playlists that you know your audience will find relevant and interesting, maximizing views. Each user view earns you a commission, and their real-time reporting helps you track every cent as you earn it. Cost: Free  

8. Mobile Ad for WordPress

The Mobile Ad for WordPress plugin focuses on the increasingly-important mobile ad revenue. It offers ad units designed specifically for mobile users and sites. The ads they serve load faster and don’t use as much data as traditional ads, resulting in optimal performance and more clicks. This plugin gives you plenty of customization options, including different ad formats to choose from and the ability to choose when users see your ads. You can even wait to show users an ad until they’re clicking away from your site, so you don’t lose traffic until they’re already leaving.  Cost: Free  

Conclusion

Monetizing your blog doesn’t have to be difficult; these plugins allow you to generate additional income on all of your posts without a lot of hassle. Choose one of the plugins above to get started and you’ll be on your way to making money from your blog.

As a writer, you may be looking for ways to enhance your WordPress blog and expand the reach of your content. The good news is, there are a vast number of WordPress plugins that can help. The bad news is, it can be difficult for writers to choose the best ones. Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about that.

In this article, we will share the 9 best WordPress plugins for writers that can enhance your blog and expand your reach.

Don’t have a website yet? No problem. Get your site published in minutes with HostGator's one-click WordPress installs. Learn more here.

1. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the best WordPress plugin for ranking your blog posts in the search engines. It optimizes your page title, meta description, focus keywords, sitemap, social metadata, and much more.

This plugin is a must-have for any content writer. (See this guide on how to install Yoast SEO.)

Cost: Free with multiple price tiers

2. Edit Flow

Edit Flow helps your editorial teams to collaborate on your posts and pages.

This plugin adds an editorial calendar to your dashboard so you can look at your monthly content plan. It also creates custom statuses for keeping track of the key stages in your workflow. You can even communicate with your writers and editors in the private editorial comments.

Cost: Free

3. Monster Insights

Monster Insights helps you to monitor your daily blog traffic with Google Analytics.

This plugin allows you to easily setup Google Analytics on your WordPress site with just a few clicks. It highlights your most important stats, so you can easily grow your blog traffic and get a clear idea of how you are doing at a glance.

Cost: Free or pro version at $89 / yr

4. WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress plugin for adding forms to your site. Its features make it the most powerful and user-friendly WordPress form builder on the market.

This plugin creates contact forms and custom form types with a powerful drag & drop builder. It also includes simple and beautiful form templates that you can start with to save you time. Plus, you can create high performance forms with their smart conditional logic.

Cost: Free with paid upgrades starting at $39 / yr

5. ClicktoTweet by CoSchedule

ClicktoTweet is one of the easiest ways to get more shares for your content.

It is a simple WordPress plugin that encourages readers to share your content by adding Click to Tweet boxes in your blog posts.

Cost: Free

6. Revision Control

Revision Control gives writers more control over the WordPress post revision system.

You can save revisions of posts or pages in your WordPress backend. It allows you to set the number of revisions for your content, and these settings can be changed according to your needs. You can also delete post or page revisions from Revisions post meta box.

Cost: Free

7. Co-Authors Plus

Co-Authors Plus is the best author box plugin that adds multiple authors to one post. If you have two or more contributors working on one post, then this is the plugin for you.

You can add bylines to WordPress posts, pages and more with the search-as-you-type input box. It allows you to list the authors anywhere on your site using template tags. It also has multiple templates for displaying the authors.

Cost: Free

8. Post Forking

Post Forking allows writers to create an alternate versions of their content for a collaborative approach to WordPress content curation.

This plugin gives authors the ability to submit proposed revisions and to edit published posts without the changes appearing immediately.

Cost: Free

9. TinyMCE Spell Check

TinyMCE Spell Check helps you to identify the mistakes in your posts and correct them by adding a spell check button.

With this plugin, you no longer have to copy and paste your blog posts into a Word document to check for errors: you can do it right within your WordPress backend.

Cost: Free to try with upgrades starting at $29 / month

WordPress plugins make it so much easier for writers to enhance their blog and expand the reach of their content. Now that you know the best ones, choose one of the above plugins to start with. You’ll see the improvement in no time.